The Great Passage

by Shion Miura

  Majime also was taken aback. He thought it might be a joke and stole a look at his coworker’s profile, but Nishioka was wearing a self-satisfied smile.

  Where did he get such ideas? What if she had been looking at him? Wasn’t it just because he kept on talking to her? Majime had gotten the distinct impression that Kaguya was responding to Nishioka’s comments about her name and so forth only because she couldn’t ignore a customer. She’d swallowed her annoyance and been gracious.

  And yet for all he knew, a woman might well find someone like Nishioka attractive, someone who dressed smartly and had a take-charge attitude and a degree of charm. Majime felt some consternation. Rather than go out with someone who wore ordinary, tacky suits and was lackadaisical and forgettable—someone like him—she’d probably prefer to stay home petting Tora. In the midst of these arbitrary speculations on the workings of Kaguya’s heart, Majime fell into depression. Nishioka’s awed appreciation of his own appeal to women had reached a rarefied level, and Majime knew that his inexperienced self was unlikely ever to match it.

  “Mr. Nishioka, why don’t you move into Mr. Majime’s lodging house?” Professor Matsumoto cheerfully suggested.

  “Live in some ramshackle old place? No thanks.”

  “What a shame. It would be a fine chance to re-create the setting of Natsume Soseki’s novel Kokoro in modern times.”

  “Kokoro?” Nishioka walked on a few paces, frowning. “Oh, yeah, I remember. Read it in high school. The one with the farewell letter that went on forever. It was hilarious.”

  “That’s your response to Soseki’s masterpiece?” Once again Nishioka had succeeded in rousing Araki’s ire. “Tell me again, why are you in publishing?”

  “Can I help it if I thought it was hilarious?” Nishioka folded his arms. “Seriously, if you were about to do yourself in, would you sit down and write an epistle that many pages long? Who would? And anybody who got a final testament like that by parcel post would freak out.”

  “Actually,” said Majime, “I’m pretty sure he didn’t send it parcel post. It was too bulky for an envelope so he wrapped it in a sheet of strong hanshi writing paper, sealed it, and sent it by registered mail. But it was small enough to fit in the narrator’s pocket.” Funny, he thought, now that Nishioka pointed it out, the letter the character Sensei had written to the narrator before committing suicide really was inordinately long and probably wouldn’t have fit inside a sheet of hanshi, the smallest size of writing paper, or inside a man’s pocket, either.

  “Who was in charge the day they hired you? That’s what I’d like to know,” said Araki, sounding fed up.

  But as far as Majime could tell, Nishioka was by no means a bad employee. Patience wasn’t his strong suit, but his mind was unfettered. Just now, without trying he had pointed out something genuinely strange about Soseki’s classic novel. Maybe rather than being a plodder like himself, someone like Nishioka was better suited to lexicography. Maybe he was someone capable of uninhibited leaps who could see things in an unusual light.

  Majime’s steps became so heavy that his feet seemed to sink into the ground.

  Nishioka wouldn’t let the topic drop. “Tell me, why would Kokoro come to life if I moved into Majime’s dilapidated digs?”

  “Because that way the love triangle of you, Kaguya, and Mr. Majime would play out in a lodging house, just like the one in the book.”

  “Majime isn’t much of a rival,” said Nishioka teasingly. “No challenge there.”

  “You may know the concept of a love triangle in theory,” responded Professor Matsumoto with a serious expression, “but until you have experienced it in real life, you have no idea of the suffering and pain it entails. You cannot use a word properly if you don’t know precisely what it means. A lexicographer must tirelessly follow up actual experience with intellectual analysis.”

  If these words could be believed, the professor had been willing to see Nishioka and Majime mired in a messy love triangle just so they would gain firsthand knowledge of the term. The man was a fiend for lexicography. Majime shuddered. The professor’s bag, stuffed with used books, took on an air of menace, as if filled with unholy passion.

  “That’s a terrific idea.” Nishioka wasn’t, apparently, getting the same dark vibe. “You’re saying that for the sake of the dictionary we should go out and grab life by the horns. That puts Majime at a disadvantage, though, doesn’t it? Him being a virgin and all . . . Go for it, Majime! You can do it!” He nodded, quite pleased with himself, as he offered this nonsensical encouragement.

  Majime was bothered less by Nishioka’s teasing than by a seeming inconsistency in the professor’s remarks. “But sir,” he said hesitantly, “didn’t you tell us a while ago that you’ve never been to an amusement park? What about the need to experience the reality of that word?”

  “Oh, well,” the professor said airily, “I can’t bear the noise. But you people are young with energy to burn. You should be out there experiencing love and amusement parks and all the rest of it.”

  In his place? Was that what he meant?

  The others were taking the subway, so Majime parted from them at the station and began walking the rest of the way home. To benefit the dictionary, he wanted to win Kaguya’s heart and taste the wine of love if he possibly could; and if she was willing, he’d be happy to go to an amusement park, too. Korakuen was a stone’s throw away, after all. Yet to Majime the park might as well have been an ancient ruin in a remote desert. How could he tell Kaguya of his feelings for her? How could he get her to respond to them? First and foremost, how could he ask her out on a date? He didn’t have the slightest idea.

  It became routine for the dictionary editorial staff to alternate eating at Umenomi and Seven Treasures Garden after their weekly meeting.

  One morning, after seeing Kaguya working in the restaurant the previous night, Mrs. Sasaki came out of the reference room and told Majime, as he was heading toward his desk, “I think she’s a tall order.”

  “She?”

  “Kaguya. Majime, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  “You think Nishioka is more her type?”

  “Nishioka?” She snorted. “If there’s a woman alive who thinks he’s her type, I’d like to meet her.”

  What kind of man did appeal to women, then? Majime was even more confused.

  “He’s too shallow.” With that single, devastating word, she dispatched the absent Nishioka. “It’s not him you should worry about, it’s the men she works with.”

  “What?” Majime did a quick mental comparison of the craggy-faced master and the clean-cut senior apprentice. “You think she likes that other apprentice?”

  Mrs. Sasaki sighed pityingly and shook her head. “Listen to me.” She looked as if she wanted to add “you ninny.” “I’m saying Kaguya is wrapped up in her work. Getting her attention without interfering will be the hard part. Your approach has to be timed just right. It won’t be easy. Can you do it?”

  No. It was beyond him. Majime looked down and began sweeping up eraser bits on his desktop.

  Just as Mrs. Sasaki was leaving, Nishioka came back in, carefully folding a handkerchief. He had apparently just washed and dried his hands. “Hey, this is no time to sit and pick your nose,” he said seriously as he watched Majime clean his desktop.

  “Did something happen?” Majime asked, still keeping at his task.

  “I just overheard some news in the men’s room in the main building.”

  “You went all the way over there to use the bathroom?”

  “I had to take a dump. I like to do it in peace, someplace where nobody I know is around.”

  Majime was surprised to find Nishioka had such a sensitive side.

  “While I was in the stall, I heard someone say The Great Passage is being canceled.”

  “What?” Majime was on his feet.

  “Someone from sales, I think. They were gone by the time I came out, so I don’t know who it was. You haven’t heard any
thing?”

  “No.”

  Majime hadn’t been close to any of his coworkers in the sales department. He’d been an encumbrance. Nobody there would think to give him a heads-up if The Great Passage was about to run aground.

  “Making dictionaries eats up money, that’s the whole trouble.” Nishioka leaned back in his chair, making it squeak, and looked up at the ceiling. “What do we do?”

  Majime thought swiftly. Their frequent staff meetings had paid off, and editorial policy was pretty much set. If the project were aborted now, Araki and Professor Matsumoto would lose face. “We need to find out how determined they are to shut down the project,” he said. “See if there’s any room for negotiation. Meanwhile, we can establish a fait accompli.”

  “How?”

  “Reach out to specialists across the board and ask them to contribute.”

  “Aha.” Nishioka saw Majime’s point and laughed appreciatively.

  Normally, a number of steps had to be followed before outsourcing could begin. First, using the example collection cards, the final entry selections had to be made. Then the editorial policy had to be tightened, and a style sheet had to be drawn up. Contributions from upward of fifty people were necessary. Without guidance, the writing styles would be so different that it would take forever to sort them out. That’s where the style sheet came in, with model entries showing what kind of information to include, using how many characters, and in what form.

  Following their own style sheet, the staff would compose sample entries in consultation with the editor-in-chief, Professor Matsumoto. Doing so would indicate what adjustments to the style sheet were needed. The selection, naturally a small fraction of prospective entries, would have to include some with proper nouns, some containing numbers, and some requiring illustrations. The process of drawing them up and checking them would help determine the dictionary’s quality and orientation.

  Having model entries on hand made it possible to decide font size, layout, and design. The number of pages, total number of entry words, and cost would all come into focus. Normally, only then would requests for contributions go out, accompanied by guidelines and models. They had just started to create writing guidelines for The Great Passage, so under normal circumstances it would be premature to begin outsourcing.

  But Majime thought they should go on the offensive. The world of lexicography was surprisingly small; few publishing companies even had dictionary editorial departments. So far they had reached out only to fashion experts, but that was enough to start a rumor that a brand-new dictionary was in the works. In that case, all they needed to do was fan the flames of this rumor. Sending out requests to experts in a variety of fields would show everyone within the company and outside of it that The Great Passage editorial staff meant business.

  Yes, making the dictionary would cost money. But a dictionary was a publishing company’s pride, and a valuable asset as well. Publishing a dictionary that people trusted and loved would set Gembu on a solid foundation for the next twenty years. Killing the project at this point would give rise to unsavory rumors. People would suspect that Gembu was struggling or that management cared only about short-term profit—outcomes they would surely rather avoid.

  “Got a head for strategy, don’t you?” said Nishioka. “Way to go.” He started out the door, on his way back to the main building to see what further information he could pick up, and then turned around. “By the way, go ahead and use that approach to try to one-up me, if you want. Fine with me.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean with Kaguya. You’ll need to pull off some kind of trick to stand a chance against me.” He went off laughing.

  That might very well be, but it begged the question: What gave Nishioka such boundless self-confidence? Some people really did hold themselves in high regard. Majime could only marvel, watching him go. Then he picked up the phone to convey the urgent news to Araki and Professor Matsumoto.

  The Great Passage wasn’t yet scuttled. They decided to go all-out to keep it afloat. Nishioka and Mrs. Sasaki selected contributors and made phone calls, or paid personal visits to solicit contributions confidentially. Araki, in between visits to his wife in the hospital, stayed busy sounding out people at the highest levels, gathering support and feedback, while Majime and Professor Matsumoto struggled to hammer out a style sheet.

  To define one word, you inevitably had to use others. Whenever Majime thought about words, something like a wooden image of Tokyo Tower rose in the back of his mind: a precarious structure of words in exquisite balance, words supplementing words. However he compared existing dictionaries, and no matter how much data he gathered, just when he thought he had captured a word, it would slip through his fingers, crumble to bits, and vanish.

  Majime stayed home that weekend to think about words. In the back room on the first floor where he kept his stacks, he spread books on the floor and racked his brain. Wasn’t there some straightforward way to pinpoint the difference between agaru and noboru? They were both verbs meaning “to rise, ascend,” sometimes but not always interchangeable.

  “Still working on the dictionary?” said Kaguya, entering the room followed by Tora. “On a Sunday?”

  “Meow,” mewed the cat.

  Kaguya crouched on the floor across from Majime. Umenomi was closed Sundays, so instead of leaving early in the morning to buy fresh produce as she did other days of the week, she stayed home. Although stunning in her chef’s garb, she looked great in jeans and a sweater, too. Majime felt his pulse rise. It struck him that this rise was connected to another meaning of agaru, “to get nervous.” Being with Kaguya made him happy, but it put a strain on his heart.

  “Um, it’s pretty dusty in here,” he stuttered.

  “Am I bothering you?”

  Tora maneuvered around the piles of reference materials and gave Majime’s thigh an encouraging flick with his tail.

  “No, you’re not,” Majime quickly said.

  “I wanted to borrow a book on cooking, if you have any.”

  Just as he thought of nothing but the dictionary, she couldn’t stop thinking of work even on her day off. And yet she never cooked at home. She said she didn’t want to have to cook on her day off. “Listen to the girl,” Také would say with a shake of her head. “With an attitude like that, she won’t find herself a husband anytime soon.”

  In no position to entertain ambitions of tasting Kaguya’s home cooking, Majime took the initiative and, when he had the chance, would prepare three servings of Nupporo Number One. Kaguya seemed to like the junky taste of the instant ramen and ate hers with relish. The thought that food he had prepared was entering her body, would become her flesh and blood, always made him lean slightly forward to watch as she ate.

  If only she would stay in his room now and not be put off by him. Praying for this, he stood in front of the shelves and searched. Unfortunately, he saw no books on cooking.

  “I’m afraid I’ve only got one that’s remotely connected to cooking.”

  With slight dissatisfaction, she regarded the book he held out: The World of Fungi. On the cover was a photograph of a bright-red mushroom growing in damp earth. It didn’t look edible in the least.

  “I’ll collect more books on cooking from now on,” he said apologetically.

  “I’ll take a look at it, anyway.” She flipped through the pages, tucked The World of Fungi under her arm, and stood up. “It’s a nice day. You want to go somewhere?”

  “Where?”

  “How about Korakuen?”

  His heart started pounding hard enough to knock his soul right out of his body. This must be what was meant by the phrase ten ni mo noboru kimochi, “being on cloud nine,” literally “rising to heaven” with joy.

  In that moment, the difference between agaru and noboru became clear. Words that had been floating in chaos swiftly grouped themselves into interlocking sets. In his mind’s eye he saw an agaru tower and a noboru tower, each one soaring high in perfect, beautiful balance
. Forgetful of Kaguya’s presence in the room, forgetful of her invitation, he pursued the thoughts unfolding in his mind at bewildering speed. Controlling his excitement, he murmured, “That’s it. That’s it.”

  Agaru emphasized the place reached by upward movement, whereas noboru emphasized the process of upward movement. When inviting someone to “come on up for a cup of tea,” you used agaru, never noboru. That’s because the focus was on reaching a place suitable for drinking tea—the interior of the house, a step up from the outside—rather than the process of moving indoors. For “to climb a mountain,” the reverse was true; the correct verb was definitely noboru, as the emphasis was on the action of physically moving up the face of the mountain toward the summit, not just the moment of reaching the summit.

  Then what about that expression ten ni mo noboru kimochi (a feeling of rising to heaven)? Majime ruminated on the feeling he had experienced a moment before. Noboru was correct, not agaru, because his joy still had room to grow; he hadn’t yet attained heaven itself.

  Then he thought of something else. Elation was described by the compound verb mai-agaru. Why not mai-noboru? He knelt on the floor and folded his arms, pondering. In that case, the emphasis was on the elation itself, wasn’t it? And since elation was by definition a higher plane of feeling than normal, it was more appropriate to use the verb that implied attainment of, rather than transition to, that plane.

  Having come to a satisfactory resolution of the issue that had been nagging at him, Majime unfolded his arms. Only then did he notice that Kaguya was nowhere to be seen. Alarmed, he went out into the hallway. The first floor was silent. Maybe she’d taken offense at his clamming up. Maybe the invitation to the amusement park no longer stood. He mounted the stairs, heading for the second floor.

  The sound of her laughter sounded from Také’s room. Také seemed to be chiding her. Maybe she was laughing her head off at him for being such a bokunenjin (dummy). For once Majime found himself concerned about losing his dignity. He cringed. The idea that the woman he loved might ridicule him made him unbearably sad. At the same time, he couldn’t help wondering about that word bokunenjin. What was its origin? It sounded vaguely like a Japanese rendition of a Chinese name, like Motakuto for Mao Zedong, but that probably wasn’t right.