Modern Japanese Literature

by Donald Keene

  As you know, there is not a man aboard ship without one of these belts. They encircle every waist and each stitch carries a prayer for safety. Mine is of white silk and has a number of charms sewn into it. I do not understand the symbolism connected with each. Some are Buddhist and others Shinto. It makes no difference, of course. All are supposed to afford protection from wounds.

  Mother gave me an embroidered charm bag, which contains a talisman of the “Eight Myriads of Deities,” and a “Buddha from Three Thousand Worlds.” In addition to those, I have an image of the Buddha, three inches in height, of exquisite workmanship. This was a present from Watabe, who lives on the hillside. When he gave it to me, he said it had been through three wars. “No bullet ever touched the man who wore it,” he said. “It is a wonderful charm.” Three different soldiers had carried it in the Boxer Rebellion, the first Sino-Japanese War, and the Russo-Japanese War. According to his story, they came through without a scratch.

  All the men on this ship are loaded with tokens and amulets and belts and mementoes from their family and friends. On warm days, when we take off our shirts, these articles are seen everywhere. I do not mean to scorn them, but it would be interesting to study them all, with the superstitions they embody. However, one cannot disregard the heartfelt sentiment connected with them.

  There was one man who did scoff at them, and in no uncertain terms, either. He no longer does so. This man, Corporal Tachibana, is quite a character. He says he is an atheist. He likes to talk about his ideas and he deliberately provokes arguments, in which he stoutly defends the materialistic point of view. In these, he employs big, pedantic words that so puzzle the men that they cannot reply. Personally, I doubt that he himself understands the meaning of all the words he uses.

  Particularly when he has had a little wine, Corporal Tachibana used to like to ridicule the men about their charms and talismans. “Absurd,” he would say. “Absolutely ridiculous! If we could really protect ourselves with such things, there never would be anyone killed in war. The Chinese would use them, too, and so would every other kind of soldier. Then what kind of a war could you have, if nobody was killed? It is nonsense, and it is not befitting a member of the imperial army to do such things.”

  Of course, this was perfectly true and the men knew it. But still they believed in their pitiful little articles, the luck charms. To me, it seemed cruel and heartless of him. If he himself preferred not to place any stock in these ideas, very well. But why should he shake the faith of simple men who did? Strangely enough, however, he himself had a “thousand-stitches belt” around his middle.

  One day recently, when it was very hot, we were all on the upper deck, lying in the shade. Suddenly, without a word, Corporal Tachibana jumped over the side and landed with a magnificent splash. He is not a good swimmer, and when the foam and spray disappeared, we saw him sink. Then he reappeared, churning the water with his arms and legs. Immediately, two of the men stripped and dived in after him. At the cry, “Man overboard,” a boat was lowered.

  They pulled him into the boat and finally brought him up on deck again. His dripping hair was hanging over his face and his stomach heaved. In his right hand was his “thousand-stitches belt”!

  As soon as he caught his breath, he explained that when he pulled off his shirt, his belt came with it and the wind blew it into the sea. When he saw it fluttering into the water, he jumped after it.

  “Not because I was afraid of being shot, if I lost it,” he said, grinning. “I don’t believe it can protect me in war. But my folks were so sincere about it that I couldn’t just lose it in the ocean, this way. So I had to get it.”

  He must have thought we did not believe him, for he added, “The prayers of my people, reflecting on my brain, made me do it.” Men who had been listening to him, with sly smiles on their faces, suddenly grew serious. The joking stopped. Inadvertently, it seemed to me, he had denied his own arguments and revealed a belief little different from that of the other men. Unconsciously, I put my hand on my own belt.

  So much for today, I will write again soon.

  TRANSLATED BY BARONESS SHIDZUÉ ISHIMOTO

  THE MOLE

  [Hokuro no Tegami, 1940] by Kawabata Yasunari (born 1899)

  “The Mole” is a product of Kawabata’s period of full maturity, and reveals the mastery of the psychology of women which is perhaps the outstanding feature of his writings.

  •

  Last night I dreamed about that mole.

  I need only write the word for you to know what I mean. That mole—how many times have I been scolded by you because of it.

  It is on my right shoulder, or perhaps I should say high on my back.

  “It’s already bigger than a bean. Go on playing with it and it will be sending out shoots one of these days.”

  You used to tease me about it. But as you said, it was large for a mole, large and wonderfully round and swollen.

  As a child I used to lie in bed and play with that mole. How ashamed I was when you first noticed it.

  I even wept, and I remember your surprise.

  “Stop it, Sayoko. The more you touch it the bigger it will get.” My mother scolded me too. I was still a child, probably not yet thirteen, and afterwards I kept the habit to myself. It persisted after I had all but forgotten about it.

  When you first noticed it, I was still more child than wife. I wonder if you, a man, can imagine how ashamed I was. But it was more than shame. This is dreadful, I thought to myself. Marriage seemed at that moment a fearful thing indeed.

  I felt as though all my secrets had been discovered—as though you had bared secret after secret of which I was not even conscious myself—as though I had no refuge left.

  You went off happily to sleep, and sometimes I felt relieved, and a little lonely, and sometimes I pulled myself up with a start as my hand traveled to the mole again.

  “I can’t even touch my mole any more,” I thought of writing to my mother, but even as I thought of it I felt my face go fiery red.

  “But what nonsense to worry about a mole,” you once said. I was happy, and I nodded, but looking back now, I wonder if it would not have been better if you had been able to love that wretched habit of mine a little more.

  I did not worry so very much about the mole. Surely people do not go about looking down women’s necks for moles. Sometimes the expression “unspoiled as a locked room” is used to describe a deformed girl. But a mole, no matter how large it is, can hardly be called a deformity.

  Why do you suppose I fell into the habit of playing with that mole?

  And why did the habit annoy you so?

  “Stop it,” you would say. “Stop it.” I do not know how many hundred times you scolded me.

  “Do you have to use your left hand?” you asked once in a fit of irritation.

  “My left hand?” I was startled by the question.

  It was true. I had not noticed before, but I always used my left hand.

  “It’s on your right shoulder. Your right hand should be better.”

  “Oh?” I raised my right hand. “But it’s strange.”

  “It’s not a bit strange.”

  “But it’s more natural with my left hand.”

  “The right hand is nearer.”

  “It’s backwards with my right hand.”

  “Backwards?”

  “Yes, it’s a choice between bringing my arm in front of my neck or reaching around in back like this.” I was no longer agreeing meekly with everything you said. Even as I answered you, though, it came to me that when I brought my left arm around in front of me it was as though I were warding you off, as though I were embracing myself. I have been cruel to him, I thought.

  I asked quietly, “But what is wrong with using my left hand?”

  “Left hand or right hand, it’s a bad habit.”

  “I know.”

  “Haven’t I told you time and time again to go to a doctor and have the thing removed?”

  “But I coul
dn’t. I’d be ashamed to.”

  “It would be a very simple matter.”

  “Who would go to a doctor to have a mole removed?”

  “A great many people seem to.”

  “For moles in the middle of the face, maybe. I doubt if anyone goes to have a mole removed from the neck. The doctor would laugh. He would know I was there because my husband had complained.”

  “You could tell him it was because you had a habit of playing with it.”

  “Really. . . . Something as insignificant as a mole, in a place where you can’t even see it. I should think you could stand at least that much.”

  “I wouldn’t mind the mole if you wouldn’t play with it.”

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “You are stubborn, though. No matter what I say, you make no attempt to change yourself.”

  “I do try. I even tried wearing a high-necked nightgown so that I wouldn’t touch it.”

  “Not for long.”

  “But is it so wrong for me to touch it?” I suppose I must have teemed to be fighting back.

  “It’s not wrong, especially. I only ask you to stop because I don’t like it.”

  “But why do you dislike it so?”

  “There’s no need to go into the reasons. You don’t need to play with that mole, and it’s a bad habit, and I wish you would stop.”

  “I’ve never said I won’t stop.”

  “And when you touch it you always get that strange, absent-minded expression on your face. That’s what I really hate.”

  You’re probably right—something made the remark go straight to my heart, and I wanted to nod my agreement.

  “Next time you see me doing it, slap my hand. Slap my face even.”

  “But doesn’t it bother you that even though you’ve been trying for two or three years you haven’t been able to cure a trivial little habit like that by yourself?”

  I did not answer. I was thinking of your words, “That’s what I really hate.”

  That pose, with my left arm drawn up around my neck—it must look somehow dreary, forlorn. I would hesitate to use a grand word like “solitary.” Shabby, rather, and mean, the pose of a woman concerned only with protecting her own small self. And the expression on my face must be just as you described it, “strange, absentminded.”

  Did it seem a sign that I had not really given myself to you, as though a space lay between us? And did my true feelings come out on my face when I touched the mole and lost myself in reverie, as I had done since I was a child?

  But it must have been because you were already dissatisfied with me that you made so much of that one small habit. If you had been pleased with me you would have smiled and thought no more about it.

  That was the frightening thought. I trembled when it came to me of a sudden that there might be men who would find the habit charming.

  It was your love for me that first made you notice. I do not doubt that even now. But it is just this sort of small annoyance, as it grows and becomes distorted, that drives its roots down into a marriage. To a real husband and wife personal eccentricities have stopped mattering, and I suppose that on the other hand there are husbands and wives who find themselves at odds on everything. I do not say that those who accommodate themselves to each other necessarily love each other, and that those who constantly disagree hate each other. I do think, though, and I cannot get over thinking, that it would have been better if you could have brought yourself to overlook my habit of playing with the mole.

  You actually came to beat me and to kick me. I wept and asked why you could not be a little less violent, why I had to suffer so because I touched my mole. That was only surface. “How can we cure it?” you said, your voice trembling, and I quite understood how you felt and did not resent what you did. If I had told anyone of this, no doubt you would have seemed a violent husband. But since we had reached a point where the most trivial matter added to the tension between us, your hitting me actually brought a sudden feeling of release.

  “I will never get over it, never. Tie up my hands.” I brought my hands together and thrust them at your chest, as though I were giving myself, all of myself, to you.

  You looked confused, your anger seemed to have left you limp and drained of emotion. You took the cord from my sash and tied my hands with it.

  I was happy when I saw the look in your eyes, watching me try to smooth my hair with my bound hands. This time the long habit might be cured, I thought.

  Even then, however, it was dangerous for anyone to brush against the mole.

  And was it because afterwards the habit came back that the last of your affection for me finally died? Did you mean to tell me that you had given up and that I could very well do as I pleased? When I played with the mole, you pretended you did not see, and you said nothing.

  Then a strange thing happened. Presently the habit which scolding and beating had done nothing to cure—was it not gone? None of the extreme remedies worked. It simply left of its own accord.

  “What do you know—I’m not playing with the mole any more.” I said it as though I had only that moment noticed. You grunted, and looked as if you did not care.

  If it mattered so little to you, why did you have to scold me so, I wanted to ask; and I suppose you for your part wanted to ask why, if the habit was to be cured so easily, I had not been able to cure it earlier. But you would not even talk to me.

  A habit that makes no difference, that is neither medicine nor poison—go ahead and indulge yourself all day long if it pleases you. That is what the expression on your face seemed to say. I felt dejected. Just to annoy you, I thought of touching the mole again there in front of you, but, strangely, my hand refused to move.

  I felt lonely. And I felt angry.

  I thought too of touching it when you were not around. But somehow that seemed shameful, repulsive, and again my hand refused to move.

  I looked at the floor, and I bit my lip.

  “What’s happened to your mole?” I was waiting for you to say, but after that the word “mole” disappeared from our conversation.

  And perhaps many other things disappeared with it.

  Why could I do nothing in the days when I was being scolded by you? What a worthless woman I am.

  Back at home again, I took a bath with my mother.

  “You’re not as good-looking as you once were, Sayoko,” she said. “You can’t fight age, I suppose.”

  I looked at her, startled. She was as she had always been, plump and fresh-skinned.

  “And that mole used to be rather attractive.”

  I have really suffered because of that mole—but I could not say that to my mother. What I did say was: “They say it’s no trouble for a doctor to remove a mole.”

  “Oh? For a doctor . . . but there would be a scar.” How calm and easygoing my mother is! “We used to laugh about it. We said that Sayoko was probably still playing with that mole even now that she was married.”

  “I was playing with it.”

  “We thought you would be.”

  “It was a bad habit. When did I start?”

  “When do children begin to have moles, I wonder. You don’t seem to see them on babies.”

  “My children have none.”

  “Oh? But they begin to come out as you grow up, and they never disappear. It’s not often you see one this size, though. You must have had it when you were very small.” My mother looked at my shoulder and laughed.

  I remembered how, when I was very young, my mother and my sisters sometimes poked at the mole, a charming little spot then. And was that not why I had fallen into the habit of playing with it myself?

  I lay in bed fingering the mole and trying to remember how it was when I was a child and a young woman.

  It was a very long time since I had last played with it. How many years, I wonder.

  Back in the house where I was born, away from you, I could play with it as I liked. No one would stop me.

  But it was no good.


  As my finger touched the mole, cold tears came to my eyes.

  I meant to think of long ago, when I was young, but when I touched the mole all I thought of was you.

  I have been damned as a bad wife, and perhaps I shall be divorced; but it would not have occurred to me that here in bed at home again I should have only these thoughts of you.

  I turned over my damp pillow—and I even dreamed of the mole.

  I could not tell after I awoke where the room might have been, but you were there, and some other woman seemed to be with us. I had been drinking. Indeed I was drunk. I kept pleading with you about something.

  My bad habit came out again. I reached around with my left hand, my arm across my breast as always. But the mole—did it not come right off between my fingers? It came off painlessly, quite as though that were the most natural thing in the world. Between my fingers it felt exactly like the skin of a roast bean.

  Like a spoiled child I asked you to put my mole in the pit of that mole beside your nose.

  I pushed my mole at you. I cried and clamored, I clutched at your sleeve and hung on your chest.

  When I awoke the pillow was still wet. I was still weeping.

  I felt tired through and through. And at the same time I felt light, as though I had laid down a burden.

  I lay smiling for a time, wondering if the mole had really disappeared. I had trouble bringing myself to touch it.

  That is all there is to the story of my mole.

  I can still feel it like a black bean between my fingers.

  I have never thought much about that little mole beside your nose, and I have never spoken of it, and yet I suppose I have had it always on my mind.

  What a fine fairy story it would make if your mole really were to swell up because you put mine in it.

  And how happy I would be if I thought you in your turn had dreamed of my mole.

  I have forgotten one thing.

  “That’s what I hate,” you said, and so well did I understand that I even thought the remark a sign of your affection for me. I thought that all the meanest things in me came out when I fingered the mole.