I have lived a shameful life.
I can’t understand how this thing called “human life” is supposed to work. I was born out in the country, in northeast Japan, so I was already fairly old by the time I saw my first steam engine. Back then I didn’t realize that the bridges in the station were there simply to let people cross the tracks and get to their platform. I thought they were there to give the station an air of sophistication and fun—like a playground. I maintained this belief for quite some time, and clambering up and down those stairs always seemed to me the height of refined entertainment. Surely, I thought, this was the most considerate of all the services provided by the railroad. When I eventually discovered that they were nothing more than a practical set of stairs, my sense of delight vanished.
Another time, when I was a child, I saw an illustration of a subway. It never occurred to me that it might have been designed with some practical purpose in mind. I thought that people must have grown bored with riding above ground and the underground trains were built to provide new and exciting ways to travel.
I was a sickly child and often confined to my bed. I remember lying there, gazing at the sheets, the pillowcase, the quilt cover and so on, wondering at their insipid designs. It wasn’t until I was nearly twenty years old that I realized that these things actually had a practical purpose, and, yet again, I was grieved by the dismal parsimony of humankind.
I never knew what it felt like to be hungry. No, I don’t mean my family was so wealthy that I never wanted for the necessities in life—nothing so cliché as that. Rather, I mean I had absolutely no idea what the sensation of hunger felt like. I know it sounds strange, but even when I was hungry, I didn’t know I was hungry. Whenever I got home from elementary or middle school, everyone would exclaim that I must be hungry, they remembered what it was like, they were always starving when they got back from school, and would I like some glazed beans? A bit of cake? Sweet buns? They made such a fuss that my inherent need to please others was roused and, muttering something about being hungry, I’d toss a handful of glazed beans into my mouth, but I never had the slightest inkling of what “hunger” was supposed to feel like.
Of course I eat—and I eat a lot—but I have almost no memory of eating out of hunger. I like to eat unusual dishes, delicacies. When I go out, I eat everything put before me, even if I have to force it down. That’s why mealtimes at home were truly the most wretched moments of my childhood.
Ours was an old, country-style house, and at mealtimes the entire household—some ten people—formed two lines facing one another, a small tray set out before each person, and I, being the youngest, naturally sat at the very end of one of those lines in that gloomy dining room. The mere sight of my family, eating their lunch in silence, was enough to send shivers down my spine. Worse still, being a country household, we had the same thing every day. There were no unusual dishes, no delicacies, nor, indeed, any hope of them, so I came to live in terror of mealtimes. Sitting at the very end of that gloomy row of trays, shivering in the cold as I picked up a few grains of rice at a time, shoving them into my mouth, I wondered why people felt compelled to sit down and eat three times a day, every single day. Everyone wore such solemn expressions as they ate that I began to entertain the notion that maybe this was all some kind of ritual. Perhaps, I thought, this was a sort of prayer—this act of gathering in the dreary dining room, all in a row, eyes downcast, three times a day, every day, always at the same time, trays lined up precisely, chewing food in silence whether we wanted it or not. Perhaps it was a ritual to placate the teeming spirits that filled the house.
When people told me I’d die if I didn’t eat I thought they were just making mean threats. Still, that superstition (even now I can’t help but think of it as such) filled me with dread. People die if they don’t eat, so they work. They have to eat. Nothing seemed more impenetrable, incomprehensible, or menacing to me than this.
It seems that I will end my days having never understood anything at all about the lives of human beings. I fear my idea of happiness is completely at odds with everyone else’s idea of happiness. This fear consumes me, sometimes making me twist and turn at night, groaning in agony, driving me to the brink of madness. Am I happy? Ever since I was a small child people have been telling me how fortunate I am, but, for my part, I felt like I was in hell, and the ones saying I was fortunate seemed incomparably and immeasurably happier than I was.
I was so miserable I sometimes thought I’d been afflicted with a dozen curses, any single one of which could crush the life out of a normal person.
In the end, I just don’t understand. I cannot understand the kind or degree of suffering that other people experience. Perhaps their “practical” suffering, the kind relieved by eating, is in fact the most extreme form of suffering—perhaps it is a suffering so ghastly, like the tortures of the deepest circles of hell, that my “dozen curses” pale to insignificance beside it. I don’t know. Yet, if that were the case, how do they endure it? How do they make it through each day without succumbing, without despairing, without committing suicide, even as they go on arguing about politics? Could they be such thoroughgoing egotists, so certain that this is the way things are supposed to be, that they have never once doubted themselves? If so, I suppose it might be easier to bear. I wonder if that is simply the way human beings are and that that is what makes them happy. I just don’t know. . . . I wonder if they sleep soundly at night, if they awake refreshed in the morning. What do they dream about? What are they thinking about when they are walking down the street? Money? Surely that can’t be the only thing. I recall someone saying that people live to eat, but I’ve never heard anyone say that people live for money. Yet, in the right circumstances . . . But, no, I don’t understand that either. . . . The more I think about it, the less I understand and the more I find myself assailed by the terrifying, disquieting idea that I alone am utterly different. I can barely talk to people. I have no idea what to say or how to say it.
That’s when I hit upon the idea of the clown.
It was to be my final attempt at courting humanity. Even though I lived in abject terror of people, I couldn’t abandon them entirely. So I used the single, tenuous thread of the clown to retain my connection. On the surface, a grin never left my face, but on the inside I was locked in a desperate struggle, walking a tightrope, bathed in sweat, the danger of disaster ever imminent as I entertained them.
From the time I was a child I have had no conception of the suffering of others or what was going through their minds as they went about their lives, even among my own family. Terrified and unable to endure the relentless awkwardness of human interaction, I found that, without realizing it, I had transformed into an accomplished clown. Before I knew it, I had become a child incapable of uttering a single word of truth.
When I look at my family photographs from that time, everyone is wearing a somber expression, but I alone—without fail—have my face twisted into a peculiar grin. This is one example of my childish, pathetic clowning.
What’s more, I never talked back when scolded by my parents, not even once. The smallest scolding seemed to me a deafening thunderclap, and it knocked me down with such tremendous force I thought I might go mad. Far from being able to talk back, such scoldings were like the pronouncement of some profound “Truth,” echoing down the generations and across endless ages. Since I lacked the strength to embody that Truth, even at that age, I had already begun to suspect I might be incapable of living among humans. I was incapable of arguing with others, nor could I stand up for myself. If someone criticized me, my first thought was that the other person must be right, utterly and entirely, I must have made a terrible mistake, it couldn’t be clearer. I endured such attacks in meek silence, but on the inside I writhed in agony, near mad with terror.
Of course, nobody likes being criticized and yelled at, but, in my case, I thought I glimpsed a terrifying animal nature in those angry faces—far more frightening and dreadful than any lion, crocodile, or dragon. Though usually concealed, a fit of rage might suddenly tear away the veil, just as a cow dozing idly in a pasture suddenly cracks its tail, obliterating a horsefly with a single blow. My hair stood on end and a shiver ran down my spine when I thought that possessing this instinct might be a necessary condition for living among humans. I came close to despair.
I lived in quivering terror of people, and, since I had no confidence whatsoever in my ability to speak or behave like a human being, I gathered up all of my fears and anxieties and concealed them in a box, deep inside my breast. I took enormous pains to conceal my melancholy and nervousness, and devoted myself instead to cultivating an air of innocent good cheer. Thus, little by little, I was transformed into an eccentric clown.
I would do anything so long as it made people laugh, it didn’t matter what. If I could make them laugh, I reasoned, they might not care that I didn’t really fit into their “lives.” Above all else, I had to avoid sticking out. I had to avoid becoming an eyesore to those human beings. I am nothing, I am the wind, the sky. Such were my thoughts as I strove to entertain my family with my clowning. I played the clown—desperately— even for the maids and servants, as they seemed to me far more incomprehensible and terrifying than my own family.
Once, at the height of summer, I put a red woolen sweater on under my cotton robe and marched up and down the hallway, making everyone in the house laugh. Even my eldest brother, dour and rarely seen to smile, burst out laughing and, as though he found the sight too delightful for words, called out to me saying, “Really, Yō-chan, I don’t think that suits you.”
What’s that? I may have played the eccentric but I wasn’t such a fool that I couldn’t tell hot from cold and I certainly wasn’t going to walk around in a wool sweater. I’d taken my sister’s woolen leggings and, pulling them onto my arms, let the ends peek out from my sleeves to make it look like I was wearing a sweater.
My father was often away on business and kept a villa in the Sakuragi district of Ueno, in Tokyo, where he spent the greater part of each month. Whenever he came home he always brought a mountain of presents for the whole family, even bringing some for our distant relatives. I suppose it was a sort of hobby for him.
Once, before leaving for Tokyo, he gathered all of the children in the parlor and, smiling, asked each of us what we wanted, writing the answers down in his notebook. It was rare for him to be so intimate and friendly with us.
“And you, Yōzō?”
With that, I was struck dumb.
The moment I was asked what I wanted I ceased to want anything at all. What difference did it make? It’s not as though anything could make me happy. At the same time, I was incapable of saying no to anything offered me, no matter how little I might desire it. I could not refuse anything, even if I didn’t like it. If I were being offered something I actually did want I could reach for it only timidly, like a thief fearing discovery, a bitter taste in my mouth as I writhed with indescribable terror. I lacked even the ability to choose one thing over another. I suppose that this failing was one of the causes of what was later to become my “life of shame.”
I just stood there, squirming silently as Father grew irritated. “A book, I suppose? Or there’s a place in Asakusa that sells lion masks, just like the ones in the New Year’s lion dance—just the size for a child. Would you like one of them?”
The moment he asked, it was all over. I couldn’t even come up with a silly response. My clowning had utterly failed me.
“You’d like a book, wouldn’t you?” My eldest brother said, his expression ever serious.
“I see,” Father said, exasperated. He closed the notebook with a loud snap, not bothering to write anything down.
What a disaster! I’ve made Father angry, his revenge will be terrible, I must do something right away, make amends before it’s too late! Such were my thoughts as I lay trembling in bed that night. I slipped from under my blankets and snuck down to the parlor, where I slid open the drawer containing Father’s notebook. Riffling through the pages until I found the list of presents, I licked the tip of a pencil and wrote “LION MASK” before sneaking back to bed. I didn’t want the mask at all. On the contrary, I’d have preferred a book. But I knew that Father wanted to get me the mask and the whole purpose of this late-night adventure—this sneaking into the parlor and so on—was to ingratiate myself with him and to restore his good mood.
In the end, just as I expected, my extreme measures met with resounding success. When Father got back from Tokyo I heard his booming voice from my room, telling Mother all about it.
“So, I’m at the shop and I open my notebook, and there it was—see, right here! ‘LION MASK.’ Not my handwriting, either. ‘What’s this?’ I think. I stood there trying to puzzle it out when it hit me. It’s one of Yōzō’s pranks! He just grinned and stood there like a lump but he must’ve wanted the mask so badly he couldn’t help himself. He’s an odd one, all right. Pretends he can’t decide but then, there it is in black and white. If he wanted it so much all he had to do was say so. I burst out laughing right there in the shop! Call him down right away.”
Another time I gathered all the maids and servants into our Western-style room and had one of the servants pound away on the piano (we may have been out in the country but we possessed all the accoutrements of a respectable household) as I ran around in circles, whooping in an Indian dance and making everyone laugh. One of my older brothers got his camera out and took a photograph of me. When the photo was developed you could see my tiny weenie peeking out from between the folds of the loincloth (I’d worn a thin, calico cloth typically used for wrapping packages) and this only served to bring the whole household down in gales of laughter yet again. I suppose that this too qualifies as one of my surprising successes.
In addition to the dozen or so monthly boy’s magazines I subscribed to, I ordered various books from Tokyo that I read on my own. So I knew all the stories of “Professor Nonsense” and “Dr. Whatsit” and so on by heart. I also knew all sorts of ghost stories, transcriptions of famous storytellers, scary stories from old Edo, and more, all of which meant I was never lacking in material. I kept my family laughing by saying the most outrageous things with a perfectly straight face.
But oh, at school!
I was on the verge of being respected at school. The idea of being respected utterly terrified me. To me, “being respected” meant fooling everyone with a near-perfect deception until someone, some omniscient, omnipotent person saw right through me, crushing my façade into a handful of dust and condemning me to a shame worse than death. That was my definition of “respect.” Even if I managed to deceive people and gain their “respect” eventually someone would find out and others would soon learn the truth. How terrible would their anger and revenge be once they realized they’d been duped? The mere thought of it made my hair stand on end.
I was in danger of being respected less because I came from a wealthy family than because I was, as they say, “brainy.” I was a sickly child, so it wasn’t unusual for me to miss a month or two of school at a time, confined to my bed. Once I missed nearly an entire year of classes. Yet, when the year came to an end I’d ride to school in a rickshaw and take my exams where, still weak from my illness, I’d score at the top of my class. Even when I wasn’t sick I never studied and spent all my time in class drawing cartoons. I showed them to my classmates during recess, narrating as I went and making everyone roar with laughter. When we had to write compositions I always wrote funny stories, even when the teachers told me not to. I knew they secretly looked forward to them. One day I handed in a story, written in a tragic vein, about how I took a train to Tokyo with Mother and, mistaking the spittoon in the corridor for a chamber pot, peed in it by mistake. (I knew it was a spittoon all along. I only did it to make a show of my “childlike innocence.”) Certain it would make the teacher laugh, I snuck out of the classroom as soon as he left and followed at a distance as he walked down the hallway. As soon as he was outside of the classroom he pulled my composition out from among my classmates’ and, reading as he walked, began to chuckle. He stepped into the teachers’ office and, no doubt having reached the end of the story, burst out laughing, tears streaming from his eyes. I saw him pass the story around to the other teachers. I could not have been more satisfied with the result.
A scamp.
I’d succeeded in presenting myself as a scamp. I had successfully avoided being respected. When grades came out I got ten out of ten in everything except “behavior,” in which I received sixes or sevens. This too was a source of no small amusement at home.
My true nature, however, was very nearly the antithesis of a scamp. Young though I was, I had already been violated and exposed to the most desolate things by our maids and servants. To this day I maintain that performing such acts, on a small child, is the vilest, the crudest, and the cruelest crime that one human being can perpetrate on another. Yet I endured it. Sometimes I even laughed, weakly, thinking that in this I had discovered yet another of those “special qualities” peculiar to human beings. Had I been in the habit of telling the truth I might’ve gone to Mother or Father, without shame, telling them of these crimes and begging for their help. Yet even my own mother and father were incomprehensible to me. Appealing to human beings for help? The idea was laughable. Even had I appealed to Father, to Mother, to a policeman, to the government—wouldn’t those people, adept as they were at getting their own way, just make up some story or other and that would be the end of the matter?
I knew all too well that I would never get a fair hearing. In the end, there was no use in appealing to others for help. All I could do, I thought, was to keep silent, to endure, and to persist with my clowning.
What’s that you say? That I have no faith in people? Since when did I convert to Christianity? When did I start believing that all people are sinners? Perhaps some people will scorn me thus. But why should a lack of faith in humans lead you straight down the path to religion? Even the people who mock me, don’t they live their lives happily, with never a thought for Jehovah or any deity, despite distrusting, and being distrusted by, everyone around them? This was also when I was very young, but one time a famous person from my father’s political party came to town to give a speech and a group of servants took me to see it. The hall was packed and I saw a number of people who were particularly close to my father, all clapping with great enthusiasm. When it ended and the audience dispersed, each group made its own way home on the dark, snowy streets, and I heard them savagely criticizing the speech. Some of these voices belonged to Father’s close friends. These so-called “allies” muttered angrily as they complained about Father’s terrible introduction, that they hadn’t been able to make heads nor tails of the speech. Then these very same people later came by our house and, stepping into our parlor, enthused over how successful the speech had been, their faces seemingly suffused with joy. Even the servants were guilty of this. When Mother asked them about the speech, they said it was fascinating. This, after spending the whole walk home complaining that there was nothing in the world so tedious as a speech.
This is but one example and an insignificant one at that. People spend their entire lives deceiving and lying to one another, yet, odder still, nobody seems especially offended by it. Human life is so full of pure, vivid, merry duplicity that I begin to think they don’t even realize they are deceiving one another. For my part, I’m not particularly troubled by the deceptions. After all, what is my clowning but a lie I tell the whole day through? Questions of morality and the notions of right and wrong you find in ethics textbooks have never interested me. What I find incomprehensible are the people who can lead such pure, vivid, merry lives even as they lie to one another. Where do they get the confidence? Nobody has shared this secret with me. Had they done so perhaps I wouldn’t have had to live in such terror of people, or to seek so desperately to please them. Perhaps I would’ve been able to avoid being excluded from the lives of human beings, perhaps I would’ve been able to live my life without tasting the hell of my nightly torments. In the end, it wasn’t because of my distrust of others or because of Christianity that I was unable to seek help even when the servants inflicted their hateful crimes upon me. It was because human beings had sealed their hard shell of trust against me, against this “I” known as Yōzō. Even Mother and Father sometimes did things that were incomprehensible to me.
It seems to me that women have an instinctive ability to sniff out the scent of my isolation, my inability to appeal to others. That, I think, is one of the factors that led to me being taken advantage of at various times in later years.
To women, I was a man who could be trusted with the secret of their love.