Modern Japanese Literature

by Donald Keene

  As I scrubbed my body, healthier than it was then, I lost myself in recollections—a year of terrible struggle! The dreadful summer is coming again on me—the penniless novelist! The dreadful summer! alas! with great pains and deep sorrows of physical struggle, and, other young with the bottomless rapture of hand, Nihilist!

  As I come out of the gate of the bathhouse, the expressful faced woman who sold me the soap yesterday said to me ‘Good morning’ with something calm and favourable gesture.

  The bath and the memories bring me some hot and young lightness. I am young, and, at last, the life is not so dark and so painful. The sun shines, and moon is calm. If I do not send the money, or call up them to Tōkyō, they—my mother and wife will take other manner to eat. I am young, and young, and young: and I have the pen, the brain, the eyes, the heart and the mind. That is all. All of all. If the inn-master take me out of this room, I will go everywhere—where are many inns and hotels in this capital. To-day, I have only one piece of 5rin-dōkwa:7 but what then? Nonsence! There are many, many writers in Tokyo. What is that to me? There is nothing. They are writing with their finger-bones and the brush: but I must write with the ink and the G pen! That is all. Ah, the burning summer and the green-coloured struggle!

  TRANSLATED BY DONALD KEENE

  THE WILD GOOSE

  [Gan, IX-XI, 1911-1913] by Mori Ōgai (1862-1922)

  Mori Ōgai was one of the leading literary figures of the early twentieth century. After his graduation from the Tokyo University Medical Department he spent several years studying in Germany, and returned to Japan to lead a double career as a writer and doctor. Some of his most famous works are translations from the German, and others describe his experiences in Europe as a young man.

  Among Mori Ōgai’s original writings the novel The Wild Goose, published serially in 1911-1913, probably retains the greatest appeal. It is the story of Otama, a girl who, after a false marriage with a bigamous police officer, becomes the mistress of another man. Later in the novel she falls in love with a medical student who passes her house every day, but he leaves for Germany before she can confess her love. The following excerpts deal with her life immediately after she becomes the mistress of Suezō.

  •

  Otama, who had never before been separated from her father, often thought of going to see how he was getting along. She was afraid, however, that Suezō, who came every day, might be annoyed if she were out when he called, and thus it was that her plan to visit her father was put off from one day to the next. Suezō never stayed until morning, and often he left as early as eleven. At other times, explaining that he had business that evening, he would stay only long enough for a moment’s smoke by the fire. Yet there was no day on which Otama could be sure that he would not come. She might have gone to her father’s in the daytime, but Ume, the maid, was such a child that it was impossible to trust her to do anything alone, and in any case, Otama did not wish to leave the house when the neighbors could see her. At first she had gone without thought to the public bath at the foot of the hill, but now she generally sent the maid down to make sure it was empty before quietly slipping out to take her bath.

  On the third day after she moved, Otama, who was prone to take fright at almost anything, had had an experience that quite took her courage away. On the day of her arrival, men from the grocer’s and the fish store had come with their order-books to request her patronage, but that morning the fishmonger failed to call, and she sent the maid out to buy a slice of fish for lunch. Otama had no desire to eat fresh fish every day; her father had always been satisfied with any sort of simple dinner, and she had become accustomed to making do with whatever happened to be in the house. But she had heard how people talk of “poverty-stricken neighbors who never eat fresh food,” and she was afraid that the same thing might be said of her, bringing shame on a master who had been most generous. She accordingly sent the maid to the fish store at the foot of the hill, mainly so that she might be seen.

  Ume found a shop and went in, only to discover that it was not the same one whose man had come for orders. The proprietor was out, and his wife was tending the counter. From the heaps of fish laid out on the racks, Ume selected a small mackerel that looked fresh, and asked the price. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you before,” said the fishwife. “Where do you come from?” Ume described the house on the hill in which she lived, whereupon the woman suddenly looked very displeased. “Indeed!” she said. “I’m sorry, then, but you had better run along. We have no fish here to sell to a moneylender’s mistress!” With this she turned away and went on smoking, not deigning to pay any further attention to the girl. Ume, too upset to feel like going to any other shop, came running back and, looking very wretched, repeated in disconnected scraps what the fishwife had said.

  As Otama listened her face turned pale, and for some time she stood silent. In the heart of the naive young woman a hundred confused emotions mingled in chaos, nor could she herself have untangled their knotted threads. A great weight pressed down upon her heart, to which now the blood from throughout her body flowed, leaving her face blanched and a cold sweat over her back. Her first conscious thought was that, after such an incident, Ume would no longer be able to remain in the house.

  Ume gazed at the pale, bloodless face of her mistress, sensing merely that she was in great distress, without comprehending the cause. She had returned in anger from the store, but now she realized that there was still nothing for lunch, and she could hardly leave things as they were. The purse which her mistress had given her for the shopping remained thrust into the sash of her kimono. “I’ve never seen such a horrid old woman,” she said in an effort to be comforting. “I don’t know who would buy her fish, anyway! There’s another store down by the Inari Shrine. I’ll run down there and get something, shall I?” Otama felt a momentary joy that Ume had declared herself her ally, and her face reflected a weak smile as she nodded approval. Ume bounded off with a clatter.

  Otama remained for a while without moving. Then her taut nerves began gradually to relax, and tears welled up in her eyes. She drew a handkerchief from her sleeve to press them back. In her heart was only one thought—how dreadful! Did she hate the fishwife for not selling her anything, or was she ashamed or unhappy that she was the sort of person that shops would not sell to? No, it was not that sort of feeling. Nor was it that she hated Suezō, the man to whom she had given herself and whom she now knew to be a moneylender. Nor indeed did she feel any particular shame or regret that she had given herself to such a man. She had heard from others that moneylenders were unpleasant, frightening people whom everybody detested; but her father had never borrowed money from one. He had always gone to the pawnshop, and even when the clerk had hardheartedly refused to give him as much as he asked for a pledge, the old man would never express any resentment over the clerk’s unreasonableness, but would merely shake his head sadly. As a child fears ghosts or policemen, Otama counted moneylenders among the things to be afraid of, but with no vivid or personal emotion. What,, then, upset her so?

  In her mortification there was very little hatred for the world or for people. If one were to ask what in fact she resented, the answer was, perhaps, her own fate. Through no fault of her own she had been made to suffer persecution, and this was what she found so painful. She had first felt this mortification when she was deceived and abandoned by the police officer, and recently, again, when she realized that she must become someone’s mistress. Now she learned that she was not only a mistress but the mistress of a despised moneylender, and her despair, that had been ground smooth between the teeth of time and washed of its color in the waters of resignation, assumed once more in her heart its stark and vivid outline.

  After a while Otama got up, took from the cupboard a calico apron and, tying it on, went with a deep sigh into the kitchen. She was now quite calm again. Resignation was the mental process she had most often experienced, and if she directed her mind toward that goal, it operated with the accustomed smoo
thness of a well-oiled machine.

  . .

  At first when Sueō came in the evenings, Otama would spread a mat for him by the side of the large square brazier, where he would sit at his ease, smoking and gossiping. She herself, at a loss to know what to do with her hands, would sit on her side, drumming on the edge of the brazier or playing with the fire tongs, and answer him shyly. After they had chatted a while, she would become more voluble, speaking mostly of the minor joys and sorrows that she had known during the years with her father. Suezō paid little attention to the content of her discourse, but listened rather as to a cricket in a cage whose engaging chirps brought a smile to his face. Then Otama would suddenly become aware of her own garrulousness and, blushing, would break off her story and return to her former silence. Her words and actions were so guileless that to Suezō’s ever observant eyes they appeared as transparent as clear water in a bowl. Her companionship brought a refreshing delight that to him was a totally new experience; in his visits to the house he was like a wild animal introduced for the first time to the ways ot human society.

  Some days later, when Suezō was sitting as usual before the brazier, he noticed that Otama, for no apparent reason, kept moving restlessly around the room without settling down. She had always been slow to answer and shy, but her behavior tonight had about if a new and unusual air.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked as he filled his pipe.

  Otama pulled the drawer at the end of the brazier halfway out and, although she was not looking for anything, peered intently into it. “Nothing,” she said, turning her large eyes to his face.

  “What do you mean, ‘nothing’? You’re thinking, ‘What shall I do, what shall I do?’—it’s written all over your face,” he retorted.

  Otama flushed and for a moment remained silent while she considered what to say. The workings of the delicate apparatus of her mind became almost visible. “I’ve been thinking that I ought to go visit my father,” she said. Tiny insects that must forever be escaping more powerful creatures have their protective coloring; women tell lies.

  Suezō laughed and spoke in a scolding voice. “Come now! Your father living by the pond not ten minutes’ walk from here, and you haven’t gone to see him yet? You can go now if you like. Or, better still, tomorrow morning.”

  Otama, twirling the ashes with the fire tongs, stole a glance at Suezō. “I was just wondering whether it would be all right—”

  “There’s no need to worry about a thing like that. How long will you stay a child?” This time his voice was gentle.

  Suezō was vaguely aware that there was still something in Otama’s heart that she was hiding, but when he tried to discover what it was she had given him that childish, trivial answer. Still, as he left the house somewhat after eleven and walked slowly down the hill, he knew that there was something. She had been told something that had aroused in her a feeling of uneasiness, he surmised. But what she had heard, or from whom, he could not tell.

  When Otama arrived at her father’s house by the pond the next morning, he had just finished breakfast. Otama, who had hastened there without even taking time to put on any powder, wondered if she might not be too early; but the old man, accustomed to early rising, had already swept the gate and sprinkled water about to settle the dust. He was now just finishing his lonely morning meal.

  The gates of the neighboring houses were still shut, and in the early morning the surroundings seemed unusually quiet. From the low windows of the house one could see through the pine boughs a weeping willow trembling in the breeze, and beyond, the lotus leaves that covered the surface of the pond. Here and there among their green shone the pink dots of blossoms newly opened in the morning sun.

  From the time Otama was old enough to think for herself she had dreamt of all the things she would do for her father, should fortune ever come her way, and now, when she saw before her eyes the house that she had provided for him, she could not but feel joyful. Yet in her joy there was mingled a drop of bitterness. If it were not for that, how great her joy would be at meeting her father today, but, as she thought with irritation, one cannot have the world quite as one wishes it.

  There had as yet been no visitors to the old man’s house. When he heard the sound of someone at the gate, he put down the cup of tea he was drinking and glanced in surprise toward the entrance hall. Then, while she was still hidden by the hall screen, he heard Otama’s voice calling, “Papa!” He restrained his impulse to jump up in greeting, and sat where he was, considering what to say. “It was so good of you to remember your old father,” he thought of saying in spite, but when his beloved daughter suddenly appeared by his side, he could not utter the words. Disgruntled as he was, he only gazed in silence at her face. Against his will his expression softened.

  Otama had thought only of how much she wanted to see her father again, but now was unable to find words for all the things she had planned to say.

  The maid poked her head in from the kitchen and asked in her country dialect, “Shall I remove the trav?”

  “Yes, take it away and bring some fresh tea. Use the green tea on the shelf,” said the old man, pushing the tray away from him.

  “Oh, please don’t bother to make special tea!” Otama protested.

  “Nonsense! I have some biscuits here, too.” The old man rose and brought back some egg biscuits from a tin in the cupboard and put them on the table.

  While the two drank their tea they chatted as if they had never been apart. Suddenly the old man asked in a rather embarrassed tone, “How are things coming along? Does your master come to see you sometimes?”

  “Yes,” said Otama, and for a moment she seemed unable to answer more. It was not “sometimes” that Suezō came, but every night without fail. Had she just been married, she might have replied with great cheerfulness to an inquiry as to whether she was getting along well with her husband, but in her present position the fact that her master came every night seemed almost shameful, and she found it difficult to mention. She thought for a moment, and then replied, “Things seem to be going all right, Papa. There is nothing at all for you to worry about.”

  “That’s good,” he said, though he felt at the same time a certain lack of assurance in his daughter’s answer. An evasiveness had come into their speech. They who up until now had always spoken with complete freedom, who had never had the slightest secret from each other, found themselves forced, against their will, to address each other like strangers and to maintain a certain reserve. In the past, when they had been deceived by the fraudulent police officer, they had been ashamed before their neighbors, but they had both of them known in their hearts that the blame lay with him, and they had discussed the whole terrible affair without the slightest reserve. But now, when their plans had turned out successfully and they were comfortably established, a new shadow, a sadness, lay over their conversation.

  The old man was anxious to have a more concrete answer. “What sort of man is he?” he began again.

  “Well—” said Otama thoughtfully, inclining her head to one side and speaking as though to herself, “I surely don’t think he is a bad person. We haven’t been together very long, but so far he has never used any harsh language or anything like that.”

  “Oh?” said the old man with a look of dissatisfaction. “And is there any reason to suppose that he is a bad person?”

  Otama looked quickly at her father and her heart began to pound. If she was to say what she had come to say, now was the time to say it. But the thought of inflicting a new blow on her father, now that she had at last brought him peace of mind, was too painful. She resolved to go away without revealing her secret, and at the crucial moment she turned the conversation in another direction. “They said he was a man who had done all sorts of things to build a fortune for himself. I didn’t know what to expect, and I was rather worried. But he’s—well, what would you say—chivalrous. Whether that is his real nature I can’t say, but he is certainly making an effort to
act that way. As long as he tries to be chivalrous, that’s enough, don’t you think, Papa?” She looked up at her father. For a woman, no matter how honest, to hide what is in her heart and talk of something else is not so difficult as it is for a man. It is possible that in such a situation the more volubly she speaks the more honest she really is.

  “Perhaps you are right. But somehow you speak as though you don’t trust the man,” her father said.

  Otama smiled. “I’ve grown up, Papa. From now on I don’t intend to be made a fool of by others. I intend to be strong.”

  The old man, suddenly sensing that his daughter, usually so mild and submissive, was for once turning the point of her remarks at him, looked at her uneasily. “Well, it’s true, as you know, that I’ve gone through life pretty consistently being made a fool of. But you will feel a good deal better in your heart if you are cheated by others than if you are always cheating them. Whatever business you are in, you must never be dishonest, and you must remember those who have been kind to you.”

  “Don’t worry. You always used to say that I was an honest child, and I still am. But I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately. I want no more of being taken in by people.”

  “You mean that you don’t trust what your master says?”

  “Yes, that’s it. He thinks I’m just a child. Compared to him, perhaps I am, but I am not as much of a child as he thinks.”

  “Has he told you anything that you’ve discovered to be untrue?”

  “Indeed he has! You remember how the old go-between kept saying that his wife had died and left him with the children, and that if I accepted his favors it would be just as though I were a proper wife? She told us that it was just to keep up appearances that he couldn’t let me live in his own home. It happens that he has a wife. He said so himself, just like that. I was so surprised that I didn’t know what to do.”