Modern Japanese Literature

by Donald Keene

  Midori did not answer. She lay face down under a quilt she had spread out in the back room.

  Shota went timidly up to her, careful to keep his distance. “What’s the matter, Midori? Aren’t you feeling well? Tell me what’s the matter.”

  Still Midori said nothing. She was sobbing quietly, her sleeves pressed to her face. There must be a reason, but what could it be? Shota was still a child. He could think of no way to comfort her. “But what’s the matter? Have I done anything wrong? I can’t remember anything.” He knelt there bewildered, trying to get a glimpse of her face.

  “You haven’t done anything.” Midori wiped her eyes.

  “What’s the matter, then?”

  There were things Midori could not talk about. Sad thoughts accumulated, vague thoughts that she could not define herself—thoughts that would never have come to the Midori of yesterday. How was she to describe the shame she felt? If only she could hide in a dark room, speaking to no one and showing her face to no one. She might have gloomy thoughts even then, but surely she would not be driven to these extremes of depression if it were not for the embarrassment of having to meet people. Ah, if she could go on forever with her dolls and her cutouts, if she could go on playing house, what a joy it would be. She hated it, hated it, she hated growing up. Why did she have to grow old? If she could only go back seven months, ten months, a year—it was as though she were already an old woman.

  And here was Shota nagging at her. Finally she lost control of herself. “Go home, Shota. That’s all I ask. I’ll die if you stay. It gives me a headache to listen to you, and it makes me dizzy to talk to you. I don’t want anyone to come near me, not anyone, and I wish you would go home.”

  She had never turned on him before. Shota could not begin to see what was wrong. It was as though he were groping his way through a dense smoke. “You’re hard to get along with, Midori. You shouldn’t talk that way.” He spoke calmly, but there were weak tears in his eyes.

  Could that move Midori? “Go home, go home. If you don’t go home you’re no friend of mine. I hate you.”

  “I’m going. Sorry to have bothered you.” He ran off without saying good-bye to the mother, who had gone to look after the bath.

  16

  Dodging and ducking through the crowd, Shota hurried back to the paper shop. Sangoro had closed up his potato stall and, with the profits jingling in his pocket, was playing big brother to the rest of his family. “I’ll buy you whatever you want. Just name it.”

  Shota came hurtling into the shop in the midst of all this joy.

  “Shota. I’ve been looking for you. I made myself a pile of money—let me treat you.”

  “You think I’d let you treat me? You’re too big for your size, that’s what you are.” This roughness was not like Shota. “I have other things on my mind,” he added gloomily.

  “A fight? Who with? Ryugeji? Chokichi? Where’d it start? Over there? By the shrine?” Sangoro shoved a half-eaten bun into his pocket. “It won’t be like the other time. Give me a little warning and they won’t whip me. I’ll get in the first punch. Come on, Shota, let’s go after ’em.”

  “Not so quick, not so quick. It’s not a fight.” But the matter was not an easy one for Shota to discuss. He pressed his lips tight together.

  “When you came running in that way I thought sure it was a fight. But listen, Shota. If we don’t get ’em tonight we won’t have another chance! Chokichi’s losing his right arm.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You haven’t heard? I just heard myself. My father was talking to the woman at the Ryugeji. Nobu’s going off somewhere to learn to be a priest. Can’t have much of a fight when he puts on those clothes. Sleeves getting tangled up, hanging all the way down to here. But from next year you’ll have both the main street and the back street. Nobody’ll be able to stop you.”

  “Quiet, quiet. Give you two cents and you’ll be off with Chokichi in a minute. A hundred like you wouldn’t make me feel a bit better. Go ahead, see if I care whose side you’re on. I wanted to take on Ryugeji myself, but if he’s running off there’s nothing I can do about it. I thought he’d wait till next year, after he graduates. Why did he make it so soon? The coward.”

  But he was not worried about Nobu. Instead he was turning Midori’s odd behavior over in his mind, and his usual song failed to come. The crowds pouring past seemed muted and lonely. At Midori’s, at the paper shop, Otori day was a mixed-up affair. All evening Shota lay sulking in the paper shop.

  From that day on Midori was a changed girl. She went to her sister’s room in the quarter when she had business, but she never so much as stopped to speak to anyone along the way. When her friends were lonesome and invited her out to play she put them off with endless promises, and even to Shota she was chilly, Shota who had been such a close friend. Her blush came too easily. It did not seem likely that the good days at the paper shop would ever come back.

  Many were puzzled by the change. Some wondered if the girl might be ill, but her mother only smiled knowingly. “She’ll be as saucy as ever before long. She’s just having a vacation.” Some praised Midori for having become so quiet and lady-like, some mourned the entertaining child who was gone. The gaiety disappeared from the main street like a fire put out. One seldom heard Shota’s singing, but each night a lantern, somehow chilly, would go by on the embankment, and one would know that he was out collecting the interest. Only Sangoro’s laughter, when occasionally the two of them went out together, was as it always had been.

  Midori heard nothing of Nobu’s plans. The old spirit was still put away somewhere, it was only that she had felt so unlike herself these last few weeks. She was shy, everything embarrassed her. One frosty morning someone left a paper narcissus at the gate. There was no message with it, but for reasons of her own Midori put it in a vase and sat looking fondly up at it. And then, she hardly knew where, she heard that the following day in a seminary Nobu had put on his dark robes.

  TRANSLATED BY EDWARD SEIDENSTICKER

  OLD GEN

  [Gen Oji, 1897] by Kunikida Doppo (1871-1908)

  “Old Gen” was the earliest of Doppo’s many short stories and one of his most celebrated. It has a romantic, lyrical strain which gives it something of the quality of a long poem in prose. The influence of English literature, particularly the poetry of Wordsworth, is apparent in “Old Gen” and many others of Doppo’s works.

  •

  Down from the capital once there came to Saeki a teacher of English named Kunikida. He arrived in the autumn and left around the middle of summer, but several months before he left he moved from downtown, which he hated, out to a place near the harbor. Kunikida was not a very congenial person and he seldom talked with anyone but the landlord of the new house where he was staying.

  One rainy and windy summer evening when the waves were pounding the shore he came down from his room upstairs to the porch where the two old people of the family were enjoying the cool. They were talking in the dark and fanning away mosquitoes. Since the evening wind was still blowing the rain lightly this way and that, sometimes a drop or two would wet their faces, but they began to reminisce with one another, enjoying the occasional drops of rain.

  That evening the landlord, among other things, told Kunikida about an old man named Gen. His life story was actually not very extraordinary, just the sort of thing one can hear all over Japan, but for one reason or another it impressed the teacher deeply. It seemed that he was, whenever he thought of it later, about to discover a secret. Gen seemed something like a box, containing some mystery or some answer, which no one could open any longer.

  The old man spoke slowly.

  “As you can see, even now there are only a few houses here near the harbor. The loneliness is always just as it is tonight. But think of when there was only old Gen’s house on the shore! That old pine tree by his house which now stands near the road was right on the shore in those days. People who came from town to take Gen’s ferryboat used t
o sit there in the shade on the rocks by the shore. Now there are not even any more rocks there, thanks to dynamite!

  “Well, Gen didn’t always live alone. At first he had a pretty wife. Her name was Yuri and she was born out on the island. There are lots of stories about them, but this much is true, because one night when Gen was a little drunk he told me himself. When he was twenty-eight or so, late one spring night someone knocked on his door. Gen asked who it was. A young woman outside asked him to take her to the island. Looking out at her in the moonlight, he recognized her as a young girl named Yuri who lived on the island.

  “At that time, although there were several boatmen along the coast, Gen was rather popular, because he was a fine young fellow and quite obliging. But there was another reason, too. I wish you could have heard him sing the way he used to sing in those days! Many people took his boat just for the music. It’s funny but even at that time Gen didn’t talk much more than he does today.

  “Some people think the young girl from the island asked for his boat so late at night intentionally. . . . Anyway, I asked him what happened that night on the bay, but even when he was drunk, Gen spoke very little. He only smiled and two deep wrinkles formed on his forehead. To me the smile seemed a little sad, and well it might be, as things turned out.

  “Well, they were married and for several years after the marriage he was happy as could be with his wife, but then when their boy Kōsuke was about seven years old she died during her second confinement. Several people offered to adopt Kōsuke and bring him up in their shop, but Gen refused, saying he couldn’t give up his only son after he’d lost his wife.

  “After this Gen seldom smiled and he never sang, unless he was slightly drunk. Then even his happiest song still sounded sad. Or perhaps people only thought so. But, no, really I think the death of his wife broke his heart.

  “On misty days he used to take his son with him in the boat, saying it was bad to leave him alone in his lonely house. The passengers felt sorry for them, and women who had brought cakes and candies for their children at home used to give some of these to this lonely little boy. On such occasions Gen didn’t express any thanks at all, as if he were not aware of their kindness. And yet nobody felt bad.

  “Well, two years more passed. When the construction of this new harbor was about half-finished, my wife and I moved here from the island and built this house. The hill was cut back and a new road was constructed, but Gen’s job remained just about the same.

  “Then when Gen’s boy Kōsuke was twelve, he was playing one day on the shore with some other children and somehow he drowned. The other children were afraid to tell their parents, so it was evening before anyone noticed that Kōsuke was gone and began to look for him. By that time of course it was already too late to do anything for him. Oddly enough, we found his poor little body just under his father’s boat.

  “After that Gen hardly sang at all. He stopped talking even with his best friends. He continued to run his ferryboat as before, but people began to forget his existence even when they used his boat. I myself only remember that he is still alive when I see him sometimes going by with his oar on his shoulder and with half-shut eyes.

  “Anyway, you are the first person who has ever asked about him. Maybe if you invite him in sometime for a cup of wine you can get him to sing a song. But usually we can’t understand what it says anymore. He never complains, but it’s rather sad, don’t you think? I feel sorry for him. . . .”

  This was as much as the landlord said that night. Several weeks later Kunikida finished his teaching in Saeki and returned to Tokyo, but there he kept on thinking of Gen, especially when sitting by his desk at night listening to the rain fall. He pictured old Gen remembering the bygone pleasant spring nights with his eyes half-closed by the fire and thinking of his drowned son Kōsuke.

  Thus the years passed and Kunikida remembered Gen sometimes and wondered how he was, long, in fact, after poor Gen, without the teacher’s knowing it, was dead and gone to his grave.

  One January day—it was the year following Kunikida’s story—the sky was dull and it seemed about to snow. The main street of Saeki was not so crowded as usual, the shops were darkened, and in the narrow lanes the stones were frozen. From the foot of the castle the low and melancholy sound of a temple bell spread out slowly over the town like a water ring in a fishless pond and died away.

  In the square children from poor families were standing about with ashen faces and playing unenthusiastic games. When a beggar came along, one of the children called, “Kishu! Kishu!”, but Kishu passed without paying any attention to them. From his looks his age might be fifteen or thereabouts. His long, wild hair grew down his neck and his long face with its thin cheeks made his chin seem sharp. His eyes moved slowly and without any life. The bottom of his coat was wet and ragged and barely reached his knees. Through the torn seam of one sleeve there appeared an elbow thin like the legs of a grasshopper.

  Just at this minute old Gen happened to come along also.

  “Kishu!” the old man called to him in a low, strong voice. The young beggar looked up dully and saw old Gen. Each stood for a while looking at the other; then Gen took out his lunch box and offered a rice ball to the beggar, who took from his pocket a cup to receive it. Neither the one who gave nor the one who received said a word. Then Kishu passed on without once looking back, but Gen followed the beggar with his eyes until he had disappeared around the corner of a street. Looking up toward the sky, Gen noticed one or two flakes of snow. He sighed deeply and once again he looked where the beggar had disappeared. Trying not to laugh, the children poked their elbows at each other, but the old man took no notice.

  In the evening Gen went back to his house. Despite the darkness, he did not light a lamp but sat in front of the fire with his face in his big thick hands. His shadow moved to and fro, huge, on the wall. Here a colored print, brought back by his wife from her parents’ home when Kōsuke was five or six, had hung ever since, turning slowly black from smoke. Gen listened to the whispering sound of snow that enveloped the house and thought about Kishu.

  One autumn several years before a woman beggar had appeared in Saeki. She brought with her a son about eight years old and whenever they came to a house together she usually got a good many things. As the charity of the people of this town seemed greater than that of other places, she must have thought that here was a good place to leave him behind, because she did the next spring. Later somebody who had been to Dazaifu said that he saw a beggarwoman very much like her in the company of a great big wrestler, begging at the gate of the shrine.

  When they heard this story the people of the town despised the cold-hearted mother and felt more sympathy for the abandoned child than ever. Thus, at first, the mother’s plan seemed to have worked. Some one taught him his ABC’s for the fun of it; someone else taught him reading, and he could recite one or two pages from the standard grade school reader. He learned a song from hearing other children sing.

  But the charity of the people of the town had its limit and it reached it pretty soon. While everyone felt sorry for the boy, no one wanted to take him in permanently. So sometimes people hired him to sweep the garden and were nice to him, but usually this, too, did not last long; other people began to say he couldn’t remember things or that he was dirty or that he would steal. Anyway, they put him down as a beggar and kept him outside their world.

  When he was young Kishu had played like other children, but, as the years passed and he grew older and the townspeople more hostile or indifferent, little by little his blighted heart withdrew, away, away to some desert island where the villagers never came and never wanted to come. He stopped thanking people. He ceased to smile or laugh. Seldom enough people saw him angry or saw him cry. If someone scared him with a stick just for fun, he moved away slowly with a kind of smiling face. He might make one think of a dog running away and wagging its tail when its master scolded.

  Late that night Gen left the fire and took his boat lan
tern with him out into the snow. To and fro the beam ran over white ground, shining magically. The circle of light paused at one house after another. In the square a policeman, too, was out; he came up to shine his lantern in Gen’s face. There appeared the deep wrinkles and thick nose of the tough old boatman.

  “You’re old Gen, aren’t you?” the policeman said in surprise.

  “Yes, sir,” answered Gen in a hoarse voice.

  “Who are you looking for so late at night?”

  “Have you seen Kishu around here?”

  “What do you want with Kishu?”

  “It’s so cold tonight I thought I’d ask him to stay at my house.”

  “All right. But nobody knows where he sleeps. . . . You had better not catch cold yourself.” And so the policeman went his way.

  Soon Gen came to the bridge and found footprints in the light of his lantern. They seemed quite new. Who else but Kishu would be walking barefooted in the snow?

  The fact that old Gen wanted to take in Kishu became widely known in no time. The people who heard it did not at first believe it. They were surprised and then amused. Some people laughed and said they would like to see Kishu and Gen sitting down to dinner by themselves. But, anyway, the people of the town began to talk about old Gen again, who had become hardly more than a memory by that time.

  A week or so after the snow Gen was about to untie his boat and set off one fine afternoon when two young men rushed up and boarded his boat, so that it was packed with people. Two girls who were going back to the island seemed to be sisters; they carried small packages and wore towels tied over their hair. There was an old couple with their grandchild, beside the two late-comers.

  As the boat moved out they all repeated the town gossip. One of the young fellows mentioned a play being given in the town; the elder sister said that she had heard the costumes were particularly pretty. The old woman said the play was not very good, not even as good as last year’s. One young fellow asked the sisters if it were true that the actor named Gorokume, who was said to be very handsome, was as popular among young girls on the island as he had heard. The sisters blushed and the old woman laughed out loud. But Gen kept his eyes fixed on the distant horizon and never joined in the conversation.