by Donald Keene
“Let’s go to the fair at the Kannon Temple. I’m allowed to spend tonight at home.”
Chokichi could not answer because his mother was in the next room. Oito, unperturbed, continued, “When you’ve eaten dinner, come call for me.” Then, after a pause, “I suppose your mother will come along.”
“Yes.” Chokichi’s voice had lost its strength.
Oito had a sudden recollection. “Do you remember how your uncle got drunk and had a fight with the old man who sold souvenirs? When was that? I was so frightened. I wish he could come tonight.”
Oito took advantage of a break in the lesson to say good-bye to Otoyo. “I’ll see you this evening. I’m sorry to have bothered you.” So saying, she tripped off.
6
Chokichi caught a cold. Instead of taking proper care of it, he made an effort to attend school the first day after the winter vacation, and thereby caused his cold to develop into influenza, which was very prevalent. He spent the rest of January in bed.
The big drum of the First Horse Day festival at the Hachiman Shrine had been booming since early in the morning. Sometimes the shadow of a little bird skimming over the eaves twinkled over the front windows, where the warm, mild afternoon sunshine poured in. It was bright enough to see inside the dim Buddhist altar in the corner of the sitting-room. The plum blossoms in the alcove had already begun to scatter. Spring was paying its joyous visit to this dark, shut-up house.
Chokichi had been up and out of bed for two or three days, and felt strong enough to go for a walk in the sunshine. Now that he had recovered, the serious illness which had brought him twenty days of suffering seemed to Chokichi an absolute godsend. He had felt all along that he had no chance whatsoever of passing the examination the following month, and the enforced absence caused by his sickness furnished him now with a most plausible excuse to offer his mother if he failed.
He found himself walking behind Asakusa Park. Along the narrow street was a gaping ditch, beyond which he could see under sparse, wintry-looking trees the dirty row of the backs of the shooting galleries. Sinister-looking rickshaw coolies loitered about the street, always quick to cluster behind any passer-by whose appearance was the least prepossessing, with invitations to board their rickshaws. Chokichi walked as far as a crossroads where he could see the stone bridge where a policeman always stood, and all the way beyond to Awaji Temple. Some people had stopped in the street and were staring up at the Miyato Theatre. Chokichi also looked at the brightly illustrated signboards.
Just when Chokichi was beginning to think that he ought to look for some shelter from the cold wind—warm though the weather was, spring had after all only just begun—he noticed the narrow entrance to the gallery and went in. He climbed a staircase with broken steps. Halfway up, at the turning, it became dark, and a foul, tepid air descended from the crowd in the darker recesses above. There were frequent shouts from the audience acclaiming the actors, and Chokichi, hearing them, felt the special pleasure and excitement that only a theatregoer who has grown up in a city can experience. He raced up the steps two or three at a time, and pressed his way into the crowd. The gallery, under the low sloping roof, was like the bowels of an ocean liner. The light given off by the naked gas lamps at the back of the theatre was cut off by the heads of the densely packed spectators. From the front rail of the gallery, where the standees were penned in like monkeys in a cage, the stage looked very small and remote because of the smoky, discolored air; the ceiling in contrast seemed extraordinarily big. The stage had just finished revolving, to the accompaniment of the beat of wooden clappers. Dirty cloths of a light blue were spread out under a platform on which stood a singularly angular stone fence. On the backdrop the lacquered gate of a daimyo’s mansion was depicted in miniature. The whole expanse of sky above the gate was painted an unrelieved black in the almost painful attempt to convince the audience that the scene took place at night. Chokichi, convinced from his experience at the theatre that the combination of “night” and “river” certainly meant a murder scene, stood on tiptoe, his neck craned in youthful curiosity. Just as he expected, the dull rumble of the drum was suddenly punctuated by a rapping on the stage, and there emerged from the shadows around a hut to the left, loudly quarreling, a man dressed as a servant and a woman. The audience laughed. One of the actors, pretending to be searching for something he had dropped, picked up a sheet of paper, and suddenly assuming a quite different attitude, began to read the cast of characters of the play. It was entitled The Evening Moon Amidst the Plum and Willow Trees. The announcement was greeted by eager shouts from the audience. At a signal given by another light beating of the clappers, a man in black drew back a curtain to the right, revealing three chanters in formal costumes and two samisen players, crowded together on a little dais. The samisens began to play immediately, and then were joined by the voices of the chanters. Such music had been Chokichi’s delight from childhood days, and not even the screams of a baby somewhere in the theatre or the voices of people shushing it could prevent him from catching perfectly the words that were chanted and the accents of the samisen.
“On a misty night when two or three stars are shining, and four or five times sounds the bell, should someone come pursuing me ...”
Again there was a drumming. Every face in the audience was aglow with excitement now, and some spectators were carried away to the point of shouting. A courtesan in a red underrobe with a wide neckband of purple satin rushed out on the hanamichi2 towards the stage, hunched over, and covered her face with a handkerchief.
“Down in front!” “Take off your hat!” “Damn you!” the shouts resounded.
“Fleeing, but she knows not where, pursued more closely than meshes in a fishing-net...”
The actor made up as a prostitute reached the end of the hanamichi and, looking back over his shoulder, recited some dialogue. Then followed a song.
“If you would come to me in secret, come by moonlight. Tonight no hindrance of a cloud will blot the moon. O tedious evening of waiting, all will be well, all will be well tonight. The fortuneteller said the clouds would swiftly pass away, and in the shining moonlight, face to face ...”
The audience was again in an uproar. A lamp had been lit in an enormous round hole cut in the center of the black sky of the backdrop, and the cloud-shaped objects in the air were tugged out of sight on strings which were plainly visible to the audience. The moon was so excessively large and luminous that it seemed much nearer than the daimyo’s mansion on the backdrop. But this did not in the least destroy the beautiful illusion for Chokichi or anyone else in the audience. When he remembered the big, round moon he had gazed at from Imado Bridge at the end of last summer while waiting for Oito, the stage was no longer a stage.
A haggard man in torn clothes and with disheveled hair walked out on the stage, his legs trembling as with exhaustion. He passed a woman, and turned to look at her face. “Izayoi, is it you?”
The woman clung to the man. “I have wanted so much to see you again!”
The spectators shouted, “Look at the two of them!” “Go to it!” “We’re jealous!” Bursts of laughter. And, from more romantically inclined people, “Quiet!”
The stage revolved as the lovers leapt into the water, and the set reverted to that of the first scene. The woman had been saved by being caught in a fishing net, and the man was crawling up the embankment from the river, unable to yield himself to death. The plot was thickened with new complications. There were bawdy songs, expressions of envy for the rich and mighty and of joy to be still alive, examples of the curious workings of destiny, and a murder: with that the first act ended. A terrifyingly shrill voice screamed almost at Chokichi’s ear, “Next show!” The audience began to move in surging waves towards the exits.
Chokichi walked quickly after leaving the theatre. It was still light, but the sun was no longer shining. The curtains and flags of the little shops were flapping wildly. Chokichi stooped and peeped into a shop to see the time, but inside the
low-roofed building it was pitch dark. He walked ever faster, afraid of the night wind after his illness. But when he caught a glimpse of the expanse of the River Sumida spread out beyond Imado Bridge, he could not help pausing a moment. The surface of the river shone a melancholy gray, and a vapor misted over the opposite bank, hastening the close of the winter’s day. A few seagulls glided in and out among the sails of the cargo boats. Chokichi thought there was something terribly sad about a flowing river. A lamp or two had been lighted on the opposite embankment. Withered trees, crumbling stone walls, dusty tile roofs—everything that met his eyes had a faded, cold color which brought back to him all the more vividly the bright figures on the stage. Chokichi envied the characters in the play so much that he almost hated them, and he bewailed his own fate. He was certain he would never attain such happiness. He thought that he would be better off dead, only to remember all the more bitterly that no one was willing to die with him.
As he started across Imado Bridge a wind from the river struck his face rudely, like a fist. He shivered with the cold, and this movement, to his surprise, brought from his throat a snatch of song which he could not remember having learned: “To speak more were folly ...”
It was a phrase of a melodic beauty unique to the kiyomoto3 style. Chokichi did not, of course, sing with the vigor of a chanter who throws his whole body into the music, nor as loud. The melody poured softly from his throat, and Chokichi felt as if it soothed a little the uncontrollable pangs in his heart. “To speak more were folly ...” Chokichi kept repeating this phrase until he reached the front gate of his house.
7
He went again the following afternoon to the Miyato Theatre. Chokichi yearned for the intoxication of that sensation of pathos he had experienced for the first time the previous day when he saw the beautiful scene in which the two lovers, hand in hand, sighed out their love. He felt an almost intolerable longing for the excitement of the theatre itself, for the murky second balcony hemmed in by the blackened ceiling and walls, for the lights and the crowd. Chokichi felt at times a sadness and a loneliness which he could not explain, and it was not only occasioned by the lost Oito. He himself had not the least idea of the cause. He knew only that he was lonely, and spent every moment in a frantic search for an indefinable something which would console him in solitude and grief. He felt an overpowering urge to relate the vague sufferings hidden in his breast to a beautiful woman—it did not matter particularly which one—who would answer him in a gentle voice. He sometimes dreamt not of Oito but of some unknown woman he had brushed by in the street—a girl, a geisha, or even a housewife.
Chokichi watched the play for the second time with just as much interest as the previous day. But today he also looked at the people who sat in the boxes. “There are so many women in the world. Why, I wonder, do I never meet even one who is kind to me? Any one would do. If some woman would only address a kind word to me, I wouldn’t brood so much about Oito.” The more he thought about Oito the more he longed for something which would diminish his suffering. If he had that something he would not be despondent over his schoolwork and his future.
As he stood there in the crowd of standees, he was startled to have someone tap him on the shoulder. He turned around to face a young man in a felt hat, with thick eyebrows and wearing dark glasses. He was leaning down from the tier above.
“Is that you, Kitchan?”
Chokichi, having said that much, was at a loss to continue, so surprised was he at the great change in Kitchan’s appearance. Kitchan was a friend from elementary school who always used to cut Chokichi’s hair at his father’s barbershop. Now he wore a jacket of Oshima pongee under his coat and a silk handkerchief around his throat. Chokichi caught a strong whiff of perfume as his friend leaned forward to whisper, “I’m an actor now.”
Pressed as he was in the crowd, Chokichi could do no more than stand there in dumb astonishment. The scene soon shifted to the mimed action by the river, and the hero of the piece rushed off onto the hanamichi, the stolen money thrust into his kimono. At this point the wooden clappers sounded. The curtain started to close, and the same man as the previous day moved through the crowd of standees, shouting, “Next show!” By the time the crowd started to surge toward the narrow exits the curtain had been completely drawn, and a drum was rumbling somewhere backstage. Kitchan caught Chokichi by the sleeve. “Are you going? Why don’t you stay for another act?”
A mean-looking man in theatrical livery came to collect the fee for the next act. Chokichi stayed where he was, although rather worried about the time.
Kitchan called, “There’s room here. You can sit.” He was in the empty back rows under the rear skylight. He waited until Chokichi was next to him before he began with a theatrical gesture to wipe his gold-rimmed glasses with his undersleeve of crepe silk. He said once more, “I’m an actor. I’ve changed, haven’t I?”
“Yes, you have. I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“Were you surprised?” Kitchan laughed as if overjoyed. “Such as you behold me, I venture to call myself an actor! I’m a new star. I appear again the day after tomorrow. Come and see me, won’t you? Go to the stage door and tell them to call Tamamizu.”
“Tamamizu?”
“That’s right. Tamamizu Saburo.” He pulled out his wallet from an inside pocket and showed Chokichi a small visiting card. “You see? Tamamizu Saburo. My name is not Kitchan any more. I’m Tamamizu on the programs.”
“It must be fun being an actor.”
“Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s hard work ... but when it comes to women, I’ve got nothing to complain about!” Kitchan darted a sidelong glance at Chokichi’s face. “Do you play around much with women?”
Chokichi did not answer, feeling it an insult to his manhood to say, “Not yet.”
“Do you know a house called the Kajita Palace? It’s the best in Tokyo. Let’s go there tonight together. You needn’t worry about anything. I don’t mean to boast, but I’m not exactly a stranger there.” Again Kitchan abandoned himself to foolish laughter.
Chokichi suddenly blurted out, “I suppose geishas are expensive, aren’t they?”
“Do you like geishas? They’re an extravagance.” Kitchan, the dew star, re-examined Chokichi’s face in some surprise. He added more confidently, “They’re not really so expensive, of course, but it’s a little silly to pay money for a woman. I know a couple of geisha houses in the park. I’ll take you along. Leave everything to me.”
For the past few minutes people had been climbing up in threes and fours, and the gallery was now packed. Some of those who had stayed on from the previous act were bored with waiting and had begun to clap in impatience. Behind the curtains the wooden sticks were beaten occasionally, and gradually the intervals seemed to be shortening. Chokichi stood up. He was tired of sitting.
“We still have a long wait,” Kitchan said, as if to himself, then added for Chokichi’s benefit. “That was what we call ‘turning’ clappers. It’s a signal to let the actors know that the props are ready. The act won’t begin for a long time.”
He lighted a cigarette with a debonair assurance. Chokichi murmured admiringly, “You don’t say so?”, and, still standing, surveyed the theatre. The members of the audience obviously did not know what the “turning” clappers meant, and were milling around on their way back to their seats after their stroll outside, afraid that the act would begin at any minute. Chokichi could see plainly the dust and tobacco smoke floating in the shaft of sunlight which slanted against the curtain from the side of the theatre. The late afternoon sunlight was strangely pathetic. Chokichi stared at the curtain patterned every now and then with waves by the blowing wind. An actor’s name was written on the curtain, together with a list of geisha from Asakusa Park who had presented it to him.
After a while Chokichi asked, “Kitchan, do you know any of those geisha?”
“Of course! The park is the special domain of actors.” Kitchan was probably rather humiliated. Truly
or falsely, he began to narrate in great detail the career, appearance, and character of every last geisha whose name appeared on the curtain.
The clappers rang out twice. The song for the opening of the act and a samisen were heard, and the curtain was drawn aside to the rhythm of the steadily quickening beat of the sticks. From the gallery came already shouts calling the names of the actors. The bored chatter of the audience died out at once, and the theatre took on a brightness and an animation like the coming of the dawn.
8
It was not until Otoyo had walked as far as Imado Bridge that she realized for the first time that it was April, and spring was now in its full glory. She was kept so busy taking care of the household all by herself that she normally was aware of the change in seasons only when the sun reached her windows from the clear blue sky and buds sprouted on the willow at the entrance to the eelshop across the street. When she emerged from her low-lying alley, where the view was always blocked by the rows of tile roofs, and stepped onto the bridge, Otoyo (who in the course of a whole year only left her neighborhood two or three times) was so astonished by the sight of the River Sumida in April that she could scarcely believe her eyes. The flowing water sparkled under the pellucidly clear sky; rows of cherry trees were in blossom above the green grass on the banks; pennants of every shape and color flashed at the university boat-house; and the air was filled with near and faraway cries. A throng of people out to see the blossoms were boarding and disembarking from the ferries. The scene around her was almost too brilliantly colored for Otoyo’s tired eyes. She started to go down to the ferry slip, but suddenly turned on her heels as if in fear, and hurried back to the street. She waited until the dirtiest rickshaw, and the one with the least prepossessing rickshawman, went by. She timidly called, “Rickshawman, how cheaply can you take me to Koume?”
