Modern Japanese Literature

by Donald Keene

  For a moment I could not see a thing in this expanse of glare.

  The snow scene was in a way like a fresh castle-ruin—this legerdemain was being bathed in that same boundless light and splendor which exists solely in the ruins of an ancient castle. And there in one corner of the ruin, in the snow of the almost five-meter-wide track, enormous Roman letters had been drawn. Nearest to me was a large circle, an O. Next came an M, and beyond it a third letter was still in the process of being written, a tall and thick I.

  It was Omi. The footprints I had followed led to the O, from the O to the M, and arrived finally to the figure of Omi himself, just then dragging his overshoes over the snow to finish his I, looking down from above his white muffler, both hands thrust in his overcoat pockets. His shadow stretched defiantly across the snow, running parallel with the shadows of the keyaki trees in the field.

  My cheeks were on fire. I made a snowball in my gloved hands and threw it at him. It fell short.

  Just then he finished writing the I and, probably by chance, looked in my direction.

  “Hey!” I shouted.

  Although I feared that Omi’s only reaction would be one of displeasure, I was impelled by an indescribable passion, and no sooner had I shouted than I found myself running down the steep slope toward him. As I ran a most undreamed-of sound came reverberating toward me—a friendly shout from him, filled with his power:

  “Hey! don’t step on the letters!”

  He certainly seemed to be a different person this morning. As a rule, even when he went home he never did his homework but left his school books in his locker and came to school in the mornings with both hands thrust in his overcoat pockets, barely in time to shed his coat dexterously and fall in at the tail end of the class formation. What a change today! Not only must he have been whiling away the time by himself since early morning, but now he welcomed me with his inimitable smile, both friendly and rough at the same time—welcomed me, whom he had always treated as a snotnosed child, beneath contempt. How I had been longing for that smile, the flash of those youthful white teeth!

  But when I got close enough to see his smiling face distinctly, my heart lost its passion of the moment before, when I had shouted “Hey!” Now suddenly I became paralyzed with timidity. I was pulled up short by the flashing realization that at heart Omi was a lonely person. His smile was probably assumed in order to hide the weak spot in his armor which my understanding had chanced upon, but this fact did not hurt me so much as it hurt the image which I had been constructing of him.

  The instant I had seen that enormous OMI drawn in the snow, I had understood, perhaps half unconsciously, all the nooks and corners of his loneliness—understood also the real motive, probably not clearly understood even by himself, which brought him to school this early in the morning. ... If my idol had now mentally bent his knee to me, offering some such excuse as “I came early for the snow fight,” I would certainly have lost from within me something even more important than the pride he would have lost. Feeling it was up to me to speak, I nervously tried to think of something to say.

  “The snow fight’s out for today, isn’t it?” I finally said. “I thought it was going to snow more though.”

  “H’m.” He assumed an expression of indifference. The strong outline of his jaw hardened again in his cheeks, and a sort of pitying disdain toward me revived. He was obviously making an effort to regard me as a child, and his eyes began to gleam insolently. In one part of his mind he must have been grateful to me for not making a single inquiry about his letters in the snow, and I was fascinated by the painful efforts he was making to overcome this feeling of gratitude.

  “Humph! I hate wearing children’s gloves,” he said.

  “But even grownups wear wool gloves like these.”

  “Poor thing, I bet you don’t even know how leather gloves feel. Here—”

  Abruptly he thrust his snow-drenched leather gloves against my cheeks. I dodged. A raw carnal feeling blazed up in me, branding my cheeks. I felt myself staring at him with crystal-clear eyes. ...

  On the switchboard of my memory two pairs of gloves crossed wires—those leather gloves of Omi’s and a pair of white ceremonial gloves. I did not seem to be able to decide which memory might be real, which false. Perhaps the leather gloves were more in harmony with his coarse features. And yet again, precisely because of his coarse features, perhaps it was the white pair which became him more.

  Coarse features—even though I use the words, actually such a description is nothing more than that of the impression created by the ordinary face of one lone young man mixed in among boys. Unrivaled though his build was, in height he was by no means the tallest among us. The pretentious uniform which our school required, resembling a naval officer’s, could scarcely hang well on our still immature bodies, and Omi alone filled his with a sensation of solid weight and a sort of sexuality. Surely I was not the only one who looked with envious and loving eyes at the muscles of his shoulders and chest, that sort of muscle which can be spied out even beneath a blue serge uniform.

  At my school it was the custom to wear white gloves on ceremonial days. Just to pull on a pair of white gloves, with mother-of-pearl buttons shining gloomily at the wrists and three meditative rows of stitching on the backs, was enough to evoke the symbols of all ceremonial days—the somber assembly hall where the ceremonies were held, the box of Shioze sweets received upon leaving, the cloudless skies under which such days always seem to make brilliant sounds in mid-course and then collapse.

  It was on a national holiday in winter, undoubtedly Kigensetsu. That morning again Omi had come to school unusually early.

  The second-year students had already driven the freshmen away from the swinging-log on the playground at the side of the school buildings, taking cruel delight in doing so, and were now in full possession. Although outwardly scornful of such childish playground equipment as the swinging-log, the second-year students still had a lingering affection for it in their hearts, and by forcibly driving the freshmen away they were able to adopt the face-saving pretense of indulging in the amusement half derisively, without any seriousness. The freshmen had formed a circle at a distance around the log and were watching the rough play of the upperclassmen, who in turn were quite conscious of having an audience. The log, suspended on chains, swung back and forth rhythmically, with a battering-ram motion, and the contest was to make each other fall off the log.

  Omi was standing with both feet planted firmly at the mid-point of the log, eagerly looking around for opponents; it was a posture which made him look exactly like a murderer who has been brought to bay. No one in our class was a match for him. Already several boys had jumped up onto the log, one after another, only to be cut down by Omi’s quick hands; their feet had trampled away the frost on the earth around the log, which had been glittering in the early morning sunlight. After each victory Omi would clasp his hands together over his head like a triumphant boxer, smiling profusely. And the first-year students would cheer, already forgetting he had been a ringleader in driving them away from the log.

  My eyes followed his white-gloved hands. They were moving fiercely, but with marvelous precision, like the paws of some young beast, a wolf perhaps. From time to time they would cut through the winter morning’s air, like the feathers of an arrow, straight to the chest of an opponent. And always the opponent would fall to the frosty ground, landing now on his feet, now on his buttocks. On rare occasions, at the moment of knocking an opponent off the log, Omi himself would be on the verge of falling; as he fought to regain the equilibrium of his careening body, he would appear to be writhing in agony there atop the log, made slippery by the faintly gleaming frost. But always the strength in his supple hips would restore him once again to that assassin-like posture.

  The log was moving left and right impersonally, swinging in unperturbed arcs. ...

  As I watched, I was suddenly overcome with uneasiness, with a racking, inexplicable uneasiness. It resembled a di
zziness such as might have come from watching the swaying of the log, but it was not that. Probably it was more a mental vertigo, an uneasiness in which my inner equilibrium was on the point of being destroyed by the sight of his every perilous movement. And this instability was made even more precarious by the fact that within it two contrary forces were pulling at me, contending for supremacy. One was the instinct of self-preservation. The second force—which was bent, even more profoundly, more intensely, upon the complete disintegration of my inner balance—was a compulsion toward suicide, that subtle and secret impulse to which a person often unconsciously surrenders himself.

  “What’s the matter with you, you bunch of cowards! Isn’t there anyone else?”

  Omi’s body was gently swinging to the right and left, his hips bending with the motions of the log. He placed his white-gloved hands on his hips. The gilded badge on his cap glittered in the morning sun. I had never seen him so handsome as at that moment.

  “I’ll do it!” I cried.

  My heartbeats had steadily increased in violence, and using them as a measure, I had exactly estimated the moment when I would finally say these words. It had always been thus with moments in which I yield to desire. It seemed to me that my going and standing against Omi on that log was a predestined fact, rather than merely an impulsive action. In later years, such actions misled me into thinking I was “a man of strong will.”

  “Watch out! Watch out! You’ll get licked,” everyone shouted.

  Amid their cheers of derision I climbed up on one end of the log. While I was trying to get up, my feet began slipping, and again the air was full of noisy jeers.

  Omi greeted me with a clowning face. He played the fool with all his might and pretended to be slipping. Again, he would tease me by fluttering his gloved fingers at me. To my eyes those fingers were the sharp points of some dangerous weapon about to run me through.

  The palms of our white-gloved hands met many times in stinging slaps, and each time I reeled under the force of the blow. It was obvious that he was deliberately holding back his strength, as though wanting to make sport of me to his heart’s content, postponing what would otherwise have been my quick defeat.

  “Oh! I’m frightened—how strong you are!—I’m licked. I’m just about to fall—look at me!” He stuck out his tongue and pretended to fall.

  It was unbearably painful for me to see his clownish face, to see him unwittingly destroy his own beauty. Even though I was now gradually being forced back along the log, I could not keep from lowering my eyes. And just at that instant I was caught by a swoop of his right hand. In a reflex action to keep from falling, I clutched at the air with my right hand and, by some chance, managed to fasten onto the fingertips of his right hand. I grasped a vivid sensation of his fingers fitting closely inside the white gloves.

  For an instant he and I looked each other in the eye. It was truly only an instant. The clownish look had vanished, and instead, his face was suffused with a strangely candid expression. An immaculate, fierce something, neither hostility nor hatred, was vibrating there like a bowstring. Or perhaps this was only my imagination. Perhaps it was nothing but the stark, empty look of the instant in which, pulled by the fingertips, he felt himself losing his balance. However that may have been, I knew intuitively and certainly that Omi had seen the way I looked at him in that instant, had felt the pulsating force which flowed like lightning between our fingertips, and had guessed my secret—that I was in love with him, with no one in the world but him.

  At almost the same moment the two of us fell tumbling off the log.

  I was helped to my feet. It was Omi who helped me. He pulled me up roughly by the arm and, saying not a word, brushed the dirt off my uniform. His elbows and gloves were stained with a mixture of dirt and glittering frost.

  He took my arm and began walking away with me. I looked up into his face as though reproving him for this show of intimacy. ...

  For all that, it was a supreme delight I felt as I walked leaning on his arm. Perhaps because of my frail constitution, I usually felt a premonition of evil mixed in with every joy; but on this occasion I felt nothing but the fierce, intense sensation of his arm—it seemed to be transmitted from his arm to mine and, once having gained entry, to spread out until it flooded my entire body. I felt that I should like to walk thus with him to the ends of the earth.

  But we arrived at the place for class formation, where, too soon, he let go of my arm and took his place in line. Thereafter he did not look around in my direction. During the ceremony which followed, he sat four seats away from me. Time and time again I looked from the stains on my own white gloves to those on Omi’s.

  TRANSLATED BY MEREDITH WEATHERBY

  SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  GENERAL WORKS

  Aston, W. G. A History of Japanese Literature. London, 1889.

  Bonneau, Georges. Histoire de la littérature japonaise contemporaine. Paris, 1940.

  Keene, Donald. Anthology of Japanese Literature. New York, 1955.

  ————. Japanese Literature. New York, 1955.

  Okazaki, Yoshie. Japanese Literature in the Meiji Era, tr. by V. H. Viglielmo. Tokyo, 1955.

  Sansom, George. The Western World and Japan. New York, 1950.

  PROSE

  Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke. Hell Screen, tr. by W. H. H. Norman. Tokyo, 1948.

  ————. Kappa, tr. by S. Shiojiri. Osaka, 1947.

  ————. Rashomon and Other Stories, tr. by T. Kojima. New York, 1952.

  Dazai, Osamu. The Setting Sun, tr. by Donald Keene. New York, 1956.

  Elisséev, Serge, tr. Neuf nouvelles japonaises. Paris, 1924.

  Futabatei, Shimei. An Adopted Husband, tr. by B. Mitsui and G. M. Sinclair. New York, 1919.

  Hino, Ashihei. Wheat and Soldiers, tr. by Baroness Shidzué Ishimoto. New York, 1939.

  Kobayashi, Takiji. The Cannery Boat. New York, 1933.

  Mishima, Yukio. The Sound of Waves, tr. by Meredith Weatherby. New York, 1956.

  Nagai, Kafū. Le Jardin des pivoines, tr. by Serge Elisséev. Paris, 1927.

  Natsume, Sōseki. Kokoro, tr. by I. Kondo. Tokyo, 1941.

  ————. La Porte, tr. by R. Martinie. Paris, 1927.

  Osaragi, Jirō. Homecoming, tr. by B. Horwitz. New York, 1954.

  Ozaki, Kōyō. The Gold Demon, tr. by A. and M. Lloyd. Tokyo, 1905.

  Tanizaki, Junichirō. Ashikari and the Story of Shunkin, tr. by R. Humpherson and H. Okita. Tokyo, 1936.

  ————. Some Prefer Netties, tr. by E. G. Seidensticker. New York, 1955.

  POETRY

  Bonneau, Georges. Anthologie de la poésie japonaise. Paris, 1935.

  ————. Lyrisme du temps présent. Paris, 1935.

  Hughes, Glenn and Iwasaki, Y. T. Fifteen Poets of Modern Japan. Seattle, 1928.

  ————. Three Women Poets of Modern Japan. Seattle, 1936.

  Ishikawa, Takuboku. A Handful of Sand, tr. by S. Sakanishi. Boston, 1934.

  Matsuo, Kuni and Steinilber-Oberlin. Anthologie des poètes japonais contemporains. Paris, 1939.

  Yosano, Akiko. Tangled Hair, tr. by S. Sakanishi. Boston, 1935.

  DRAMA

  Bowers, Faubion. Japanese Theatre. New York, 1952.

  Iwasaki, Y. T. and Hughes, Glenn. New Plays from Japan. London, 1930.

  ————. Three Modern Japanese Plays. Cincinnati, 1923.

  Kikuchi, Kan. Tōjūrō’s Love and Four Other Plays, tr. by Glenn W. Shaw. Tokyo, 1925.

  Kurata, Hyakuzō. The Priest and His Disciples, tr. by Glenn W. Shaw. Tokyo, 1922.

  Tanizaki, Junichirō. Puisque je l’aime, tr. by C. Jacob. Paris, 1925.

  Yamamoto, Yūzō. Three Plays, tr. by Glenn W. Shaw. Tokyo, 1935.

  NOTE: A much more extensive bibliography may be found in Borton, Hugh, et al., A Selected List of Books and Articles on Japan in English, French and German. Cambridge (Mass.), 1954.

  1 For an admirably detailed account of the literature written between 1868 and 1912, the reader
should consult Japanese Literature in the Meiji Era by Y. Okazaki, translated by V. H. Viglielmo. (Tokyo, 1955.)

  1 Translated by A. C. Scott in Playbook. (New York: New Directions, 1956).

  2 Some complete translations of novels by Natsume have been made, notably that of Kokoro, by I. Kondo.

  3 Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker (New York: Knopf, 1955).

  1 Meaning, probably, that the pictures, unlike life, are always the same.

  1 That is, stage left; to the right as far as the audience is concerned.

  2 The Yasukuni Shrine was founded in 1869 to honor those who had died fighting for the Meiji Restoration. It has become the shrine for soldiers who have died in all subsequent wars.

  3 The hanamichi is the raised passageway that goes from the back of the theatre through the audience to the stage.

  4 This is the acting climax of the play, and a familiar feature of the Kabuki drama. The actors would register various changes of expression in a series of poses.

  1 Takizawa Bakin (1767-1848) and Ryiitei Tanehiko (1783-1842).

  1 The shimada was the name of the hair style worn by young women.

  1 When this story was written, many women, and most courtesans, still blackened their teeth.

  2 The name Ryūgeji itself means “Ryūge Temple.”