Modern Japanese Literature

by Donald Keene

We boarded the streetcar together and got off at my stop. Then we walked in the falling rain side by side under the same umbrella through the pitch-black streets. The young man, who up to this point hadn’t said a word, began to talk in a lively way. “I know all about you. You see, I’m a fan of Mr. Otani’s and I write poetry myself. I was hoping to show him some of my work before long, but he intimidates me so.”

  We had reached my house. “Thank you very much,” I said. “I’ll see you again at the restaurant.”

  “Good-bye,” the young man said, going off into the rain.

  I was wakened in the middle of the night by the noise of the front gate being opened. I thought that it was my husband returning, drunk as usual, so I lay there without saying anything.

  A man’s voice called, “Mrs. Otani, excuse me for bothering you.”

  I got up, put on the light, and went to the front entrance. The young man was there, staggering so badly he could scarcely stand.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Otani. On the way back I stopped for another drink and, to tell the truth, I live at the other end of town, and when I got to the station the last streetcar had already left. Mrs. Otani, would you please let me spend the night here? I don’t need any blankets or anything else. I’ll be glad to sleep here in the front hall until the first streetcar leaves tomorrow morning. If it wasn’t raining I’d sleep outdoors somewhere in the neighborhood, but it’s hopeless with this rain. Please let me stay.”

  “My husband isn’t at home, but if the front hall will do, please stay.” I got the two torn cushions and gave them to him.

  “Thanks very much. Oh, I’ve had too much to drink,” he said with a groan. He lay down just as he was in the front hall, and by the time I got back to bed I could already hear his snores.

  The next morning at dawn without ceremony he took me.

  That day I went to the restaurant with my boy as usual, acting as if nothing had happened. My husband was sitting at a table reading a newspaper, a glass of liquor beside him. I thought how pretty the morning sunshine looked, sparkling on the glass.

  “Isn’t anybody here?” I asked. He looked up from his paper. “The boss hasn’t come back yet from marketing. The madam was in the kitchen just a minute ago. Isn’t she there now?”

  “You didn’t come last night, did you?”

  “I did come. It’s got so that I can’t get to sleep without a look at my favorite waitress’s face. I dropped in after ten but they said you had just left.”

  “And then?”

  “I spent the night here. It was raining so hard.”

  “I may be sleeping here from now on.”

  “That’s a good idea, I suppose.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’ll do. There’s no sense in renting the house forever.”

  My husband didn’t say anything but turned back to his paper. “Well, what do you know. They’re writing bad things about me again. They call me a fake aristocrat with Epicurean leanings. That’s not true. It would be more correct to refer to me as an Epicurean in terror of God. Look! It says here that I’m a monster. That’s not true, is it? It’s a little late, but I’ll tell you now why I took the five thousand yen. It was so that I might give you and the boy the first happy New Year in a long time. That proves I’m not a monster, doesn’t it?”

  His words didn’t make me especially glad. I said, “There’s nothing wrong with being a monster, is there? As long as we can stay alive.”

  TRANSLATED ET DONALD KEENB

  TOKYO

  [Shitamachi, 1948] by Hayashi Fumiko (1904-1951)

  Most of the characters in Hayashi Fumiko’s writings belong to the Tokyo lower classes. She portrays them with realism and compassion, probably because as a young woman she experienced the hardships of their life. Her descriptions of postwar Tokyo are among the most somber and moving. Asakusa, where much of the action of “Tokyo” takes place, is an amusement district vaguely corresponding to Montmartre. It has a Buddhist temple dedicated to Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. A description of the same scene sixty years earlier may be found in The River Sumida.

  •

  It was a bitter, windy afternoon. As Ryo hurried down the street with her rucksack, she kept to the side where the pale sun shone down over the roofs of the office buildings. Every now and then she looked about curiously—at a building, at a parked car—at one of those innumerable bomb sites scattered through downtown Tokyo.

  Glancing over a boarding, Ryo saw a huge pile of rusty iron, and next to it a cabin with a glass door. A fire was burning within, and the warm sound of the crackling wood reached where she was standing. In front of the cabin stood a man in overalls with a red kerchief about his head. There was something pleasant about this tall fellow, and Ryo screwed up her courage to call out,

  “Tea for sale! Would you like some tea, please?”

  “Tea?” said the man.

  “Yes,” said Ryo with a nervous smile. “It’s Shizuoka tea.”

  She stepped in through an opening in the boarding and, unfastening the straps of her rucksack, put it down by the cabin. Inside she could see a fire burning in an iron stove; from a bar above hung a brass kettle with a wisp of steam rising from the spout.

  “Excuse me,” said Ryo, “but would you mind if I came in and warmed myself by your stove a few minutes? It’s freezing out, and I’ve been walking for miles.”

  “Of course you can come in,” said the man. “Close the door and get warm.”

  He pointed towards the stool, which was his only article of furniture, and sat down on a packing case in the corner. Ryo hesitated a moment. Then she dragged her rucksack into the cabin and, crouching by the stove, held up her hands to the fire.

  “You’ll be more comfortable on that stool,” said the man, glancing at her attractive face, flushed in the sudden warmth, and at her shabby attire.

  “Surely this isn’t what you usually do—hawk tea from door to door?”

  “Oh yes, it’s how I make my living,” Ryo said. “I was told that this was a good neighborhood, but I’ve been walking around here since early morning and have only managed to sell one packet of tea. I’m about ready to go home now, but I thought I’d have my lunch somewhere on the way.”

  “Well, you’re perfectly welcome to stay here and eat your lunch,” said the man. “And don’t worry about not having sold your tea,” he added, smiling. “It’s all a matter of luck, you know! You’ll probably have a good day tomorrow.”

  The kettle came to a boil with a whistling sound. As he unhooked it from the bar, Ryo had a chance to look about her. She took in the boarded ceiling black with soot, the blackboard by the window, the shelf for family gods on which stood a potted sakaki tree. The man took a limp-looking packet from the table, and unwrapping it, disclosed a piece of cod. A few minutes later the smell of baking fish permeated the cabin.

  “Come on,” said the man. “Sit down and have your meal.”

  Ryo took her lunch box out of the rucksack and seated herself on the stool.

  “Selling things is never much fun, is it?” remarked the man, turning the cod over on the grill. “Tell me, how much do you get for a hundred grams of that tea?”

  “I should get thirty-five yen to make any sort of profit. The people who send me the stuff often mix in bad tea, so I’m lucky if I can get thirty yen.”

  In Ryo’s lunch box were two small fish covered with some boiled barley and a few bean-paste pickles. She began eating.

  “Where do you live?” the man asked her.

  “In the Shitaya district. Actually I don’t know one part of Tokyo from another! I’ve only been here a few weeks and a friend’s putting me up until I find something better.”

  The cod was ready now. He cut it in two and gave Ryo half, adding potatoes and rice from a platter. Ryo smiled and bowed slightly in thanks, then took out a bag of tea from her rucksack and poured some into a paper handkerchief.

  “Do put this into the kettle,” she said, holding it out to him.

  He shook his he
ad and smiled, showing his white teeth.

  “Good Lord no! It’s far too expensive.”

  Quickly Ryo removed the lid and poured the tea in before he could stop her. Laughing, the man went to fetch a teacup and a mug from the shelf.

  “What about your husband?” he asked, while ranging them on the packing case. “You’re married, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes, I am. My husband’s still in Siberia. That’s why I have to work like this.”

  Ryo’s thoughts flew to her husband, from whom she had not heard for six years; by now he had come to seem so remote that it required an effort to remember his looks, or the once-familiar sound of his voice. She woke up each morning with a feeling of emptiness and desolation. At times it seemed to Ryo that her husband had frozen into a ghost in that subarctic Siberia—a ghost, or a thin white pillar, or just a breath of frosty air. Nowadays no one any longer mentioned the war and she was almost embarrassed to let people know that her husband was still a prisoner.

  “It’s funny,” the man said. “The fact is, I was in Siberia myself! I spent three years chopping wood near the Amur River—I only managed to get sent home last year. Well, it’s all in a matter of luck! It’s tough on your husband. But it’s just as tough on you.”

  “So you’ve really been repatriated from Siberia! You don’t seem any the worse for it,” Ryo said.

  “Well, I don’t know about that!” the man shrugged his shoulders. “Anyway, as you see, I’m still alive.”

  Ryo closed her lunch box, and as she did so, she studied him. There was a simplicity and directness about this man that made her want to talk openly in a way that she found difficult with more educated people.

  “Got any kids?” he said.

  “Yes, a boy of six. He should be at school, but I’ve had difficulty getting him registered here in Tokyo. These officials certainly know how to make life complicated for people!”

  The man untied his kerchief, wiped the cup and the mug with it, and poured out the steaming tea.

  “It’s good stuff this!” he said, sipping noisily.

  “Do you like it? It’s not the best quality, you know: only two hundred and ten yen a kilo wholesale. But you’re right—it’s quite good.”

  The wind had grown stronger while they were talking; it whistled over the tin roof of the cabin. Ryo glanced out of the window, steeling herself for her long walk home.

  “I’ll have some of your tea—seven hundred and fifty grams,” the man told her, extracting two crumbled hundred-yen notes from the pocket of his overalls.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Ryo. “You can have it for nothing.”

  “Oh no, that won’t do. Business is business!” He forced the money into her hand. “Well, if you’re ever in this part of the world again, come in and have another chat.”

  “I should like to,” said Ryo, glancing around the tiny cabin. “But you don’t live here, do you?”

  “Oh, but I do! I look after that iron out there and help load the trucks. I’m here most of the day.”

  He opened a door under the shelf, disclosing a sort of cubbyhole containing a bed neatly made up. Ryo noticed a colored postcard of a film actress tacked to the back of the door.

  “My, you’ve fixed it up nicely,” she said smiling. “You’re really quite snug here, aren’t you?”

  She wondered how old he could be.

  2

  From that day on, Ryo came regularly to the Yotsugi district to sell tea; each time she visited the cabin on the bomb site. She learned that the man’s name was Tsuruishi Yoshio. Almost invariably he had some small delicacy waiting for her to put in her lunch box—a pickled plum, a piece of beef, a sardine. Her business began to improve and she acquired a few regular customers in the neighborhood.

  A week after their first meeting, she brought along her boy, Ryukichi. Tsuruishi chatted with the child for a while and then took him out for a walk. When they returned, Ryukichi was carrying a large caramel cake.

  “He’s got a good appetite, this youngster of yours,” said Tsuruishi, patting the boy’s close-cropped head.

  Ryo wondered vaguely whether her new friend was married; in fact she found herself wondering about various aspects of his life. She was now twenty-nine, and she realized with a start that this was the first time she had been seriously interested in any man but her husband. Tsuruishi’s easy, carefree temperament somehow appealed to her, though she took great care not to let him guess that.

  A little later Tsuruishi suggested taking Ryo and Ryukichi to see Asakusa on his next free day. They met in front of the information booth in Ueno Station, Tsuruishi wearing an ancient gray suit that looked far too tight, Ryo clad in a blue dress of kimono material and a light-brown coat. In spite of her cheap clothes, she had about her something youthful and elegant as she stood there in the crowded station. Beside the tall, heavy Tsuruishi, she looked like a schoolgirl off on a holiday. In her shopping bag lay their lunch: bread, oranges, and seaweed stuffed with rice.

  “Well, let’s hope it doesn’t rain,” said Tsuruishi, putting his arm lightly round Ryo’s waist as he steered her through the crowd.

  They took the subway to Asakusa Station, then walked from the Matsuya Department Store to the Niten Shinto Gate, past hundreds of tiny stalls. The Asakusa district was quite different from what Ryo had imagined. She was amazed when Tsuruishi pointed to a small red-lacquered temple and told her that this was the home of the famous Asakusa Goddess of Mercy. In the distance she could hear the plaintive wail of a trumpet and a saxophone emerging from some loud-speaker; it mingled strangely with the sound of the wind whistling through the branches of the ancient sakaki trees.

  They made their way through the old-clothes market, and came to a row of food-stalls squeezed tightly against each other beside the Asakusa Pond; here the air was redolent with the smell of burning oil. Tsuruishi went to one of the stalls and bought Ryukichi a stick of yellow candy-floss. The boy nibbled at it, as the three of them walked down a narrow street plastered with American-style billboards advertising restaurants, movies, revues. It was less than a month since Ryo had first noticed Tsuruishi by his cabin, yet she felt as much at ease with him as if she had known him all her life.

  “Well, it’s started raining after all,” he said, holding out his hand. Ryo looked up, to see scattered drops of rain falling from the gray sky. So their precious excursion would be ruined, she thought.

  “We’d better go in there,” said Tsuruishi, pointing to one of the shops, outside which hung a garish lantern with characters announcing the “Merry Teahouse.” They took seats at a table underneath a ceiling decorated with artificial cherry blossoms. The place had a strangely unhomelike atmosphere, but they were determined to make the best of it and ordered a pot of tea; Ryo distributed her stuffed seaweed, bread, and oranges. It was not long before the meal was finished and by then it had started raining in earnest.

  “We’d better wait till it lets up a bit,” suggested Tsuruishi. “Then I’ll take you home.”

  Ryo wondered if he was referring to her place or his. She was staying in the cramped apartment of a friend from her home town and did not even have a room to call her own; rather than go there, she would have preferred returning to Tsuruishi’s cabin, but that too was scarcely large enough to hold three people. Taking out her purse, she counted her money under the table. The seven hundred yen should be enough to get shelter for a few hours at an inn.

  “D’you know what I’d really like?” she said. “I’d like us to go to a movie and then find some inn and have a dish of food before saying good-bye to each other. But I suppose that’s all rather expensive!”

  “Yes, I suppose it is,” said Tsuruishi, laughing. “Come on! We’ll do it all the same.”

  Taking his overcoat off the peg, he threw it over Ryukichi’s head, and ran through the downpour to a movie theatre. Of course there were no seats! Standing watching the film, the little boy went sound asleep, leaning against Tsuruishi. The air in the theatre seemed to
get thicker and hotter every moment; on the roof they could hear the rain beating down.

  It was getting dark as they left the theatre and hurried through the rain, which pelted down with the swishing sound of banana leaves in a high wind. At last they found a small inn where the landlord led them to a carpeted room at the end of a drafty passage. Ryo took off her wet socks. The boy sat down in a corner and promptly went back to sleep.

  “Here, he can use this as a pillow,” said Tsuruishi, picking up an old cushion from a chair and putting it under Ryukichi’s head.

  From an overflowing gutter above the window the water poured in a steady stream onto the courtyard. It sounded like a waterfall in some faraway mountain village.

  Tsuruishi took out a handkerchief and began wiping Ryo’s wet hair. A feeling of happiness coursed through her as she looked up at him. It was as if the rain had begun to wash away all the loneliness which had been gathering within her year after year.

  She went to see if they could get some food and in the corridor met a maid in Western clothes carrying a tea tray. After Ryo had ordered two bowls of spaghetti, she and Tsuruishi sat down to drink their tea, facing each other across an empty brazier. Later Tsuruishi came and sat on the floor beside Ryo. Leaning their backs against the wall, they gazed out at the darkening, rainy sky.

  “How old are you, Ryo?” Tsuruishi asked her. “I should guess twenty-five.”

  Ryo laughed. “I’m afraid not, Tsuru, I’m already an old woman! I’m twenty-eight.”

  “Oh, so you’re a year older than me.”

  “My goodness, you’re young!” said Ryo. “I thought you must be at least thirty.”

  She looked straight at him, into his dark, gentle eyes with their bushy brows. He seemed to be blushing slightly. Then he bent forward and took off his wet socks.

  The rain continued unabated. Presently the maid came with some cold spaghetti and soup. Ryo woke the boy and gave him a plate of soup; he was half asleep as he sipped it.

  “Look, Ryo,” Tsuruishi said, “we might as well all stay the night at this inn. You can’t go home in this rain, can you?”