After the Banquet

by Yukio Mishima

  “What’s the matter?” Kazu asked, but he did not deign an answer. Noguchi finally bent over and thrust his head under the seat. A thought crossed his mind while he was searching, and he said to himself in a fairly loud voice, “The foyer. That’s it. I’m sure I dropped it in the foyer.”

  The spectators around him turned in his direction with frowns and disapproving clucks. Kazu, leading the way, got up and Noguchi followed her out. Once they were out in the foyer, Kazu asked, “Could you please tell me what you lost?” This time she was the calm one.

  “My Dunhill lighter. I’ll never in the world find one of the old ones in Japan now if I try to replace it.”

  “Over there is where we were talking during the intermission, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right. It was over there.”

  Noguchi was virtually gasping, and Kazu felt sorry for him. They went to the spot where they had stood, but nothing was lying on the bright scarlet carpet. The attendant at the reception desk, a middle-aged woman in uniform who apparently had time on her hands during the performance, came up and asked, “I wonder if this is what you are looking for?” The object she held forth was unmistakably Noguchi’s lighter.

  Kazu was to remember long afterward the look of unconcealed joy on Noguchi’s face when he saw the lighter, and she would often tease him, “I wish you’d show that expression not only to lighters but to human beings too.” But such incidents did not in the least daunt Kazu. Her eyes were free of prejudice, and she saw only Noguchi’s childish, simple-minded attachment to his possession.

  There were other similar incidents. Noguchi had said at the meeting of the Kagen Club, “Why don’t we drop all this talk about the old days? We’re still young, after all,” and that in fact expressed his attitude toward reminiscences over bygone glories, but when it came to articles belonging to the past, his attachment was extreme. As Kazu got to know Noguchi better, she often noticed him take out an old pocket comb and tidy his silver hair. When she asked him about the comb, it proved to be one he had used for thirty years. When Noguchi was young his hair had been so thick and unruly that the teeth of any ordinary comb were quickly broken. He had had this one specially made for him, a strong comb of boxwood.

  Noguchi’s tenacious attachment to old possessions could not be laid simply to stinginess or poverty. By way of protest against the superficial elegance created by the relentless pursuit of novelty under an American-style consumer economy, Noguchi stubbornly maintained the English-style elegance of clinging to old customs. The Confucian spirit of frugality went well with these aristocratic tastes. Kazu had difficulty in understanding Noguchi’s brand of dandyism which exaggerated its unconcern with fashion.

  Kazu, out for the morning promenade that she never missed even in the dead of winter, would wonder as she crushed underfoot the sparkling ice needles, which she liked better, which attracted her more in Noguchi, his aristocratic career as a former cabinet minister, or his present faith in radical ideas. His career had a glittering brilliance which readily appealed to the common run of men; his ideas, though she did not understand them, made her aware of something living and directed toward the future. Kazu had come to think of these two aspects of Noguchi as rather like complementary physical features, and, put as a question of preference, it was like being asked which she preferred, his sharp nose or his prominent ears?

  Their love progressed with extreme deliberation. The first time they kissed was when Kazu paid Noguchi a New Year’s call at his house. Kazu wore a kimono of celadon-colored silk dyed with vignettes of white bamboo leaves, silver gabions, and dark green dwarf pines. Her sash was embroidered with a large lobster in vermilion and gold on a silver gray ground. She left her mink coat in the car before going in.

  Nogochi’s gate was bolted, even on New Year’s day, and the house looked deserted. But Kazu knew that the broken bell had at last been repaired. In the course of several visits she had become aware that Noguchi’s maid, who would appear only after keeping Kazu waiting a long time, looked at her with an expression akin to contempt. Once when Kazu was present Noguchi had asked the maid to fetch from the shelf a book written in German, giving the title in the original. The maid had unfalteringly repeated the German title and, running her eyes over the shelves, immediately picked out the book. Ever since then Kazu had hated the woman.

  In this quiet neighborhood removed from the bustle of the main thoroughfares, the only sounds that Kazu could hear as she waited at the door were the clear, dry, distant echoes of children playing at the New Year’s sport of battledore and shuttlecock. She always felt humiliated before the driver every time she got out of her car, pressed the bell at Noguchi’s gate, and then was kept waiting an eternity. The only sign of New Year at this house was the symbolic branch of pine at the gate, diagonally lit now by the clear winter sunlight.

  Kazu stared down the deserted street before the gate. The sunlight brought into bold relief the complicated unevenness of the paving with its broken patches. Shadows of trees and of telegraph poles fell on the road. The black and somehow attractive thawed earth exposed in one place shone where a broad tire track was imprinted on it.

  Kazu strained to catch the tap of the battledore and shuttlecock. The children seemed to be playing in a nearby garden, but she could not see them, nor were there laughing voices. The sounds stopped. Ah, Kazu thought, the shuttlecock has fallen. A while later a steady tap-tap told her that the shuttlecock was again bounding back and forth. Then the sound stopped again . . . During the irritating, repeated breaks, Kazu visualized the brightly colored shuttlecock lying in the thawed black mud. Suddenly these intermittent sounds coming from an invisible garden behind a wall suggested to Kazu some sinister game played in stealth where no one could see.

  She heard the sounds of geta approaching the side entrance. Kazu braced herself, tense at the thought she would have to encounter Noguchi’s disagreeable servant. The gate opened. Noguchi himself came out to greet her, and Kazu blushed at this unexpected surprise.

  Noguchi was dressed in formal Japanese clothes. “I gave the maid the day off,” he explained. “I’m alone today.”

  “Happy New Year! Oh, you certainly look impressive in Japanese clothes!”

  But even as Kazu stepped through the side gate Noguchi’s immaculate attire aroused a sudden flare-up of jealousy. Who had helped him to dress? The thought upset her so much that by the time they were crossing the hall into the living room she was quite out of sorts.

  Noguchi made it a practice never to take any notice when Kazu was in a bad temper. He lifted with his own hands a container of the traditional spiced saké and offered some to Kazu. Resentful at having to start the New Year with unpleasant feelings, Kazu as usual gave vent to her emotions.

  Noguchi responded, “Don’t be foolish. The maid helped me to dress. She doesn’t look after my Western clothes as well as she might, but when it comes to kimonos she’s on her mettle.”

  “If you care at all about me, please dismiss that maid. I can find you any number who’ll be more attentive. If you don’t dismiss her . . .” Kazu broke off and burst into tears. “Even when I’m at home I’m so worried I have trouble sleeping at night.”

  Noguchi opposed her with his silence. He was counting the jasper-like fruit on a plant in his garden. He listened a while to Kazu’s grievances; then, as if he had just remembered it, picked up the spiced saké container again. Kazu, her hands covered by a handkerchief soaked with her tears, took the large cup he pressed on her, only abruptly to fling it on the tatami. She wept, her head pressed against the stiff silk of Noguchi’s hakama at the knee. She was careful at the same time to spread the dry part of the handkerchief against the hakama so that the silk would not become soiled.

  Noguchi’s hand quietly stroked the back of her obi. As he did so Kazu knew for a certainty that her smooth-skinned back, its rich, white resilience discernible through the pulled-back collar of her kimono, had caught Noguchi’s eye. Kazu recognized in the gentle, absent-minded m
ovements of Noguchi’s hand something like a familiar melody. It was afterward that they first kissed.

  7

  The Omizutori Ceremony in Nara

  Noguchi had a long-standing engagement to go with Kazu to Nara to see the Omizutori ceremony, but at the same time he was to be the guest of a friend, a newspaper executive. Naturally enough, all the arrangements of the journey were made by the newspaper. Besides Noguchi the party included an octogenarian journalist, an industrialist, and an aged financial columnist. Kazu could not understand when she learned the details why Noguchi should have invited her on what seemed a semi-official excursion.

  It was highly improbable that Noguchi, who always distinguished between public and private matters, would bring Kazu along on the same invitation without telling the others. But if they were to travel at his expense, it would be better for the two of them to go somewhere by themselves. There was no reason why they must take a trip on which they would be so conspicuous. It was clear to Kazu from the reports of people who had attended the Omizutori ceremony that even if she and Noguchi made their way to Nara independently of the newspaper party, they would certainly run into the others that night at the Nigatsu Hall.

  On top of everything else, Kazu was uneasy about the strain the trip would cause on Noguchi’s finances. She also disliked the prospect of feeling small before his distinguished friends. Kazu felt no hesitation in dealing with the most influential men in the country in her capacity as restaurant proprietress, but she disliked being obliged in her private capacity to talk to such people professionally.

  Kazu could only make various conjectures. She was irritated with Noguchi for not furnishing her with an explanation. She finally became depressed about the whole thing, and went to visit Noguchi with an envelope containing 200,000 yen. She intended to offer it to him for the expenses of the journey.

  Kazu was accustomed to seeing famous politicians calmly accept presents of cash. She had in the past been touched for gifts of one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, and even a million yen by Genki Nagayama, who needed the money for his personal expenses. But with Noguchi it was different. The money became the occasion for their first quarrel She discovered that Noguchi looked on the forthcoming journey in truly uncomplicated terms. “All I need pay is your railway ticket and hotel room. I was invited from the start and my expenses are taken care of. When I told the others I was taking the proprietress of the Setsugoan with me, everybody was delighted. The newspaper people offered to invite you too, but I insisted on paying for your share. Doesn’t that make sense to you?”

  “But the way I see it, this is our first trip together and I’d like to go to some quiet place where we can be alone.”

  “Would you? I thought I’d like to introduce you to my friends.”

  Their long argument abruptly subsided with these last words. Kazu was moved. The pure and unadulterated sentiments of such a man stirred an almost ostentatious joy within her. “Very well,” she said, “we’ll do as you say. But how would it be if after the trip I invited everybody to the Setsugoan by way of thanks for having been allowed to go along?”

  “That’s a good idea,” Noguchi agreed without visible enthusiasm.

  The party assembled at Tokyo Station on the morning of the twelfth before boarding the express train which was to depart at nine. Kazu was surprised to notice how young Noguchi looked. This was perhaps natural, considering that three of the five men present were over seventy.

  Kazu had taken great pains with her clothes for the journey, which would mark, as it were, the first public announcement of her relations with Noguchi. She had the idea of dyeing some element of the name Yuken Noguchi into the design of her kimono. The only character of his name which lent itself to pictorial representation was No, or “meadow.”

  Kazu had begun her preparations well before the departure. After much thought she had decided that even if nobody else caught onto the meaning of a pattern connected with Noguchi’s name, it would be sufficient if she alone understood. She ordered a kimono dyed with a pattern of white horse-tails and dandelions on a black slubbed crepe, the plants shaded with gold paint, to suggest a spring “meadow.” She wore a sash of light green striped silk, easy to fold and suitable therefore for a journey, and a sash clasp with a cloud ring pattern. Her plain gray cloak, patterned in narrowing vertical stripes, had a lining of grape purple. Her greatest ingenuity was devoted to the lining.

  The white-haired octogenarian, a distinguished figure who deserved his reputation as the trail blazer among Japanese journalists, was treated with the utmost deference by the others. He was a Doctor of Laws, and moreover had published numerous translations of English literature. A cynic in the English manner, this old bachelor favored every form of social reform except for the anti-prostitution laws. He was one of the rare people who called Noguchi by a diminutive. The retired industrialist was an eccentric haiku poet by avocation, and the financial critic could be counted on for an unending flow of malicious gossip.

  The old gentlemen were all congenial, neither ignoring Kazu nor making any obvious attempts to ingratiate themselves. The journey to Nara passed agreeably. The financial expert successively characterized different figures of the world of politics and finance as fools, blockheads, scoundrels, opportunists, mental incompetents, lunatics, wolves in sheep’s clothing, smart alecks, misers without equals in history, cases of hardened arteries, simpletons, and epileptics. The conversation then turned to haiku.

  “I can only look at haiku as a Westerner might,” said the aged journalist. After a moment’s pause for effect he continued, drawing on his encyclopedic memory, “There’s a story in the Chats on Haiku by Torahiko Terada about a young German physicist who came to Japan on a holiday and fell in love with everything Japanese. One day he proudly announced to his Japanese friends ‘I’ve composed a haiku,’ and showed it to them. This is what he wrote:

  In Kamakura

  Everywhere I went I saw

  Lots and lots of cranes.

  “To be sure, his haiku had the regulation five, seven, and five syllables, but it wasn’t precisely poetic. My haikus are not a whole lot different from his. Here’s one I thought up while listening just now to our friend here.

  Our politicians

  And financial tycoons too—

  Fools the lot of them.”

  Everybody laughed, though if the same joke had come from the mouth of a young man nobody would have cracked a smile. When the conversation got onto the subject of haiku, Kazu became uneasy about the design on the lining of her cloak. She kept the cloak on, even though the railway carriage was warmly heated, for fear the lining might be seen. Before long the conversation drifted from the subject of haiku.

  The men in their conversation laid an entirely excessive emphasis on accuracy and minuteness of memory. Their conversation somehow reminded Kazu, listening without saying a word, of young men trying to outdo one another in boasting of their knowledge of women. These old men were at great pains to impart credibility to their remarks by insisting on a quite unnecessary precision, and by referring to meaningless details. For example, where a younger man would have been satisfied with a, “Let me see, it happened in 1936 or 37,” these old gentlemen would relentlessly pursue the date. “Let me see, it happened in 1937, the seventh of June. Yes, I’m sure it was the seventh. A Saturday, I believe. I can remember getting off early from work.”

  The livelier the conversation became the more desperately they were obliged to struggle with natural decline, and these efforts on the surface at least resembled vigor. But in this respect too Noguchi was an exception. Kazu did not understand what could possibly interest him so in these men that he could enjoy their company; he alone maintained his youth by his dignity. As usual, he contributed an absolute minimum to the conversation, and if he became bored with a subject he would carefully count the segments in a tangerine he had peeled, and silently share the fruit with Kazu, giving her precisely half the segments. Even though Noguchi apportione
d her the same number of segments, their size varied, and Kazu’s share was actually less than half the tangerine. Kazu, suppressing her amusement, stared at the wrinkled bits of thin peel, the color of the harvest moon, still sticking to the fleshy fruit.

  As soon as the train arrived in Osaka at half-past six that evening, the party boarded a car sent to meet them, and drove directly to the Nara Hotel. They had no time to rest before they all went to the dining room. Nara was unusually warm for this time of the year. Kazu had long since been schooled on the bitterness of the cold at the Omizutori ceremony, and was therefore no less delighted than the old men at the warmth of this evening.

  The rites at the Nigatsu Hall begin each year on the first of March, but they do not reach their climax until the night of the twelfth with the burning of the crate-like torches, followed by the dipping of the sacred water and the secret Tartar rituals performed early on the morning of the thirteenth. The ceremonies on the night of the twelfth attract the largest crowds.

  The party hurried after dinner to the Nigatsu Hall, and was surprised to see how many people had already gathered below the hall. The crowd seemed less like participants in a religious ceremony than spectators at an extraordinary event.

  The moment for the lighting of the huge pine-torches was at hand, and the party, guided by a priest, made its way in the darkness through the milling crowd under the platform of the Nigatsu Hall. Noguchi, taking Kazu’s hand, marched ahead, oblivious of the precarious footing underneath. He bore no resemblance to the Noguchi who had hesitated to cross the road at Ueno; he feared cars but apparently not human beings. His bearing as he pushed through the rustic-looking people revealed his ingrained authority.

  The distinguished guests were guided directly up to the bamboo grill erected to prevent the crowd from surging into the temple. Directly before them, just over the railing, a flight of stone steps led up to the platform where the ceremony would take place. The aged journalist, exhausted by the walk, clung to the railing to catch his breath. The newspaper executive, constantly worried about his old friend, had provided a small folding chair for him.