by Nagai Kafu
Before long, a carriage approaches from afar, advancing from the shadow of lush green trees; everything is deep indigo blue, from the four wheels to the driver’s costume and even his hat.
This flashy indigo blue might not be so striking anywhere else, but here, it is in such harmony with the clear blue spring sky and the bright new green leaves that it cannot help but attract people’s attention. I too am curious to see what sort of people are riding in the carriage. As they approach, I notice a woman wearing a hat with ostrich feathers dyed in the same indigo blue color and a flashy costume to go with it—she is, however, not very young. Riding with her is a young gentleman, from what country it is hard to tell, whose long, pitch-black hair hangs all the way to his shoulders just like that of men in the eighteenth century, sporting a short red moustache and pince-nez attached to a red ribbon.
People sitting on the benches were evidently struck by this curious scene, and they murmured among themselves:
“Whatever country does the man come from?”
“Maybe Mexico.”
“But the dark color of his hair must be of Spanish origin, so he is probably from South America.”
The coachman wielded his whip, and the carriage passed in front of my eyes and immediately disappeared among the cars that kept coming.
The spectators’ topics of conversation also kept shifting, corresponding to what passed before them, but I continued to look into the distance to see if I might still catch a glimpse of the indigo blue carriage that was just driving down the avenue.
This, however, was not because of the lady in the carriage. Rather, it was because I was convinced that the black-haired gentleman was Japanese. To be sure, when I first saw him he struck me, as he did others, as bizarre, but when I carefully looked at him as he passed close by, the expression formed between his eyebrows and his eyes clearly proved that he was of the same race as myself, no matter how he dissimulated his appearance.
What sort of a Japanese was he? Was the blond lady who was riding with him his wife? Or was she just a close friend?
Fortunately, within less than a week I was able to satisfy my irrepressible curiosity. It so happened that I ran into a Japanese friend at a certain place who had recently graduated from Columbia University and now had some connection with a newspaper in New York. Whereupon, after chit-chatting for a while, I casually mentioned the matter to him, and he responded in a tone suggesting that he knew we were going to talk about it, “Is that so? So you saw that man? Don’t you agree that he doesn’t look like a Japanese at first sight?”
“What kind of person is he? Do you know him?”
“Yes, indeed. He came with me to America on the same ship, and afterward, when I entered Columbia University, we were again together. . . .”
Then he told me the following story.
That man’s name was Fujigasaki Kunio. He is the eldest son of a wealthy count. He came to the United States to study and entered Columbia University, but he attended classes merely for appearance’s sake and spent his days just having fun, devoting himself to lively and free relations with male and female American students, picnicking and horseback-riding in the spring and ballroom dancing and ice skating in winter.
One year, then two years went by, and the third summer recess arrived. As I did not have enough money for my studies, I earned a little during the summer by rearranging the books in the house of a certain lecturer, Dr. So-and-So. Kunio had no such need and spared no expense to undertake a sightseeing tour of the West, from the hot springs in Colorado, which could be called the Switzerland of the American continent, to Yellowstone Park, which is considered one of the seven most scenic spots in the world.
It was soon autumn. The university reopened and students returned from all over, but there was no news or sight of Kunio.
I thought perhaps Kunio had gotten bored with school. Given his personality, this was understandable. He had always preferred play to books—not so much play as spending his time in idle comfort. I had often seen him lying down comfortably on a long sofa in his living room or on the green grass in the shade of a tree, leisurely smoking a cigar or watching the drifting clouds in the sky, without thinking or doing anything; I often said to myself, there could be no lazier person in the world.
I knew it would be no use admonishing him, but wrote him a couple of serious letters anyway, thinking that perhaps he might decide to return to school. Since I didn’t know if he had returned from his travels and I didn’t have his current address, I mailed the letters to the house he had lived in before the summer vacation.
There was no answer. Feeling a bit disappointed, one evening I took a walk and stopped by that house. The landlady came out and told me that no sooner had Kunio returned, about two weeks earlier, than he moved to an address on Central Park West. Greatly encouraged, I headed for that address. It was a tall apartment building, about ten stories high, facing Central Park.
I accosted a Negro porter wearing a purple uniform with shiny golden buttons, and he told me that the Japanese gentleman had a room on the eighth floor. I took the elevator and rang the doorbell.
Since it was a large building, the outdoor noise was completely shut out; as the air in the corridor was cool and still, like the inside of a cathedral, the sound of the doorbell could be heard clearly as it echoed far away at the end of a room.
I waited for someone to appear for quite some time, but there was no movement. So I tried pressing the bell a little longer. Finally, I heard some faint footsteps, and a lady opened the door just a crack, showing only her face.
I bowed politely, removing my hat, and said, “I would like to see a Japanese named Fujigasaki.”
Immediately the lady led me to the parlor, but as we walked down the narrow hallway, she anxiously stole a furtive look at my face.
The lady was, let’s say, about twenty-seven or -eight, it seemed. . . . She had a round face with a short chin, and her clear, blue-green eyes with long eyelashes had the usual indescribable expressiveness typical of a Western woman. But to my eyes, she looked quite indecent and lascivious, perhaps because of the blond hair loosely knotted behind her neck, almost tumbling down onto her shoulders, and because she was wearing an ample indoor gown for afternoon use, exposing her plump shoulders and arms.
I was taken to the parlor and left alone, waiting for Kunio to appear. In the next room I could hear the lady talking to someone, presumably Kunio, and soon the door opened and he entered the room.
Exclaiming, “I am very sorry,” he stole a glance at me and cast down his eyes, as if embarrassed. Assuming an air of nonchalance, I said, “Your travels must have been great fun, but . . . by the way, how about school?”
“Oh, school. I’ve simply missed a chance to go.”
“But it’s really a shame to quit now. If you just attend classes for one or two more years, you’ll at least be able to get a degree.”
“I don’t mean to quit school for good, but somehow in the morning . . . I am late getting up in the morning.”
So saying, he again looked down. I was lost for words myself and remained silent. Through the windows covered by mistlike, thin lace curtains, trees in the park that were starting to turn yellow provided a backdrop for the stillness of a sunny afternoon. All of a sudden, a sound came from the next room—someone playing the piano, or rather, toying with the keys as if to pass the time. It stopped abruptly in less than five minutes, and quiet returned.
Kunio seemed to be listening attentively without being conscious of it, but suddenly said, as if he had made up his mind, “I really appreciate your thoughtfulness. I have read your letters also. But for the time being . . . I may return to school someday, but for now I am going to take a leave.”
“Is that so? In that case, I won’t insist, but tell me, why have you come to such a decision?”
I asked the question casually, but somehow he seemed to take the word “decision” seriously; looking surprised, he gazed at me intently for a moment and then said,
as if he had changed his mind, “It’s not that I have come to a decision. It’s just that I have been bored with reading, and would like to take it easy and rest.”
I returned home without further ado, but after four or five days had passed, while taking a walk down the boulevard along the bank of the Hudson River on a fine autumn evening, I saw him and the lady of that house by chance, riding together in a carriage.
In this country there is nothing unusual about a man and a woman riding together, but it occurred to me, for no particular reason, that something was going on between the two of them, and that Kunio had given up school because of it. As always happens when one’s curiosity is piqued, I wanted to find out if my suspicions were justified, and so I continued to visit Kunio.
These frequent visits must have been bothersome to Kunio, but for me they were very useful, and in time I learned that my conjectures were not altogether wide of the mark.
For instance, one day I came to their parlor, following as always the Negro maid who answered the door, and saw the two sitting tightly close to each other on a sofa by the window overlooking the park; on another occasion, I came upon them as they were sipping wine from the same glass.
It was at least clear that the two were in love. But I wanted to know how the affair had started and what her background was. When an appropriate opportunity came, I pressed Kunio, who was no longer as reserved as earlier and told me that they had met at a mountain resort during his summer travels. She, he said, was the divorced wife of a wealthy man.
“Why was she divorced?” I asked further.
“Because she was of loose morals,” he answered and told me, perhaps against his will, all that he knew.
“In a word, you can say she is flirtatious. She says, for instance, that if she reads a novel and finds it interesting, she wants desperately to experience the same things. So it happened that within less than a year after she was married, she fell for a Polish musician with Tartar blood and had a tryst with him. Her husband found out about it and divorced her after a trial, giving her one fourth of his property. Once such a shameful event becomes public, you can no longer mix in respectable society. No matter how much money you have or how beautiful you are, you are a social outcast. When that happens, it is easy for anyone to give up and become desperate. This woman too started making playthings of all sorts of men.”
I was startled and asked, “But you . . . you know that she is such a depraved woman and still love her?”
Kunio smiled in silence, as if to say, of course. I was still more astounded and continued, “Do you really think that the woman loves you, such a dreadful woman? . . . Even if she does for now, don’t you think it is just a matter of time before she starts flirting with other men?”
“Of course, I can’t be sure. But I don’t care if this lasts just for a while, so long as this brief moment, whether five minutes or even one minute, brings me sweetness, not pain. In other words, don’t you think you are that much ahead for having had a pleasant dream?”
He smiled again and looked at me as if to pity me, a bookish type, for simply not being able to understand anything except scholarly matters.
For a while I was utterly at a loss how to interpret this. How on earth could Kunio feel any affection for the lady, knowing full well her immoral background that was too dreadful to hear about?
Later on, reading Daudet’s Sappho and other books, I came to understand that in certain circumstances men are capable of passionately loving women with such a background, even while feeling an intense aversion toward them. But Kunio’s feeling toward this lady seemed to be of an entirely different kind.
I continued to see him frequently; each time I learned to look at the matter from a different angle until I finally got at the truth. The upshot was that, while at one time I felt revolted and even wanted to spit in his face, after observing the situation more deeply, I reversed myself and ended up shedding tears of pity for him for having been born with such an unfortunate nature.
Poor Kunio! In him there is not the slightest sense of bold, strong, manly love. The usual positions of men and women are completely reversed for him; although he is a man, his ideal is to be held in a woman’s arms and spend a dreamlike life under her protection, to live the life of a so-called gigolo.
While in Japan, he had set foot in pleasure quarters from early on, even before he came of age, like many young men who are lured by them. He had money, came from a good family, and was also good-looking, so many women became interested in him. Among them were young beauties, but he didn’t pay the slightest attention to them, finding satisfaction in becoming the lover of an older geisha who treated him like a younger brother.
There are many in the world who are driven by monetary considerations to seek an older woman’s affection, but he was different, pursuing his rather singular desires even at the expense of his honor and status, which are even more valuable than wealth. Why on earth does he envy the lot of the actors who are kept as women’s lovers or the good fortune of a samisen carrier who helps tie a woman’s sashes? Even he probably could not explain.
His family accused him of having disgraced its name and practically disinherited him for a while, but this was more or less what he wanted, and he enjoyed a dissolute life reminiscent of the Edo era, for example by going to a bath house late in the morning, fluttering his mistress’s short coat over his shoulders in the spring rain.
This was too much for the count and his family, and they finally decided the best solution was to pack him off abroad. That is how Kunio came to study in the United States. But alas, in what may be called a quirk of fate, our young lordship, having traveled several thousand miles, once again fell in thrall to a beautiful sorceress and forgot all about his home, even his country, not to mention himself.
It really was a quirk of fate, to repeat myself. It is now nearly two years that Kunio has been kept by that lady. It is not amusing but rather sad, and it brings tears to my eyes to see how hard he tries not to let her tire of him, not to be abandoned by her.
I know many stories like this that I can hardly bear to repeat. But I wanted to explain why the man whom you encountered in the park was wearing his hair so long.
Women generally tend to become more violent and tyrannical the more accommodating men are. Especially someone like her, rejected by society and living in adverse circumstances for so long, becomes overly sensitive and angry without cause. She does things like break her cherished implements or jewelry or even hit her lover though she loves him very much.
But Kunio endures everything. One day, for instance, the lady mercilessly tormented Kunio and, on top of that, began tearing at her beautifully arranged hair, removed the jeweled comb, and smashed it to bits and pieces with her feet. It was hard to tell what she was feeling, but it was as if she doused herself with cold water on a summer day. . . . That may have been it, for she asked Kunio to grow his hair long like the portrait of Henry IV.
Immediately, Kunio began letting his shiny and abundant black hair grow; it came to reach his shoulders, and he nicely curled its edges.
When you saw him riding in the carriage, you may have thought that his long hair indicated an excessively foppish taste, but in reality all it did was to give her some peculiar sensation by letting her tear at it whenever she flew into a rage.
Spring and Autumn
In a small provincial town in southern Michigan, by the train route running in a straight line from west to east between Chicago and New York, there is a university called K––— [Kalamazoo College]. Among its many students, both male and female, are three Japanese, two males and one female. One of the men, Yamada Tarô, is, like the female student, Takezato Kikue, a student of theology, both having been sent from their respective churches in Japan, while the third, Ôyama Toshiya, has nothing to do with religion but is registered in the political science department.
These three had come to the United States in the same year and happened to end up in this school. As a result,
when they first met, they were so surprised that they hardly exchanged greetings with each other. But for Toshiya, studying law, it felt almost inconceivable that in this remote foreign country he should encounter a woman of the same race, with black eyes and hair. Whenever he saw Kikue in the school hallways, dining room, or wherever it was, he could not help but turn his head in her direction so that, within a month or so, he was able to recapitulate in his mind everything about her figure, from head to toe. Not that he admired that figure; actually, he was constantly critical of it. She seemed to be about nineteen, certainly not over twenty. Her hair was dark and glossy, but her forelock was frizzy and her hairline uneven. For a Japanese, her complexion was rather fair, but her only special features were her rather high nose and a charming, firm mouth. But what a round face, what small eyes, and what thin eyebrows! And what could one say about her narrow shoulders, which were clad in shabby clothes evidently made in Japan, and were too thick, or about her posture, bent over as if she were carrying some heavy load on her back? And her fat and short arms, or her shapeless fingers, which looked like green caterpillars. Thus commenting on her in close detail, Toshiya wondered why there were so many female students from Japan who were of this type. Some scientist should study the relationship between Japanese women’s intellect and physiology; somehow, drawing a deep breath, he called to his mind scenes from the streets of Hongô and Kôjimachi that are frequented by female students. In no time, however, he found himself thinking of his own past.
