The Setting Sun

by Osamu Dazai

  I could tell that I had turned red to the nape of my neck.

  “Mr. Hosoda?”

  I did not answer.

  Mother gave a great sigh. “May I bring up something that happened a long time ago?”

  “Please do,” I whispered.

  “When you left your husband and returned to the house in Nishikata Street, I did not intend to say a word of reproach, but there was one thing that made me say that you had betrayed me. Do you remember? You burst into tears and I realized that I had been wrong to say such a terrible thing.”

  But my memory was that I had felt grateful to Mother at the time for talking to me in such a way, and my tears had been of happiness.

  “When I said that you had betrayed me it was not because you left your husband’s house. It was because I had learned from him that you and that painter Hosoda were lovers. That news came as a terrible shock. Mr. Hosoda had already been a married man for years and had children. I knew it could never come to anything, no matter how much you loved him.”

  “Lovers—what a thing to say. It was nothing but groundless suspicion on my husband’s part.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t suppose you can still be thinking of Mr. Hosoda. Where was it then that you meant when you said you had somewhere to go?”

  “Not to Mr. Hosoda’s.”

  “Really? Then where?”

  “Mother, recently I have discovered the one way in which human beings differ completely from other animals. Man has, I know, language, knowledge, principles, and social order, but don’t all the other animals have them too, granted the difference of degree? Perhaps the animals even have religions. Man boasts of being the lord of all creation, but it would seem as if essentially he does not differ in the least from other animals. But, Mother, there was one way I thought of. Perhaps you won’t understand. It’s a faculty absolutely unique to man—having secrets. Can you see what I mean?”

  Mother blushed faintly and gave a charming smile. “If your secrets only bear good fruit, it will be all I could ask. Every morning I pray to your father’s spirit to make you happy.”

  Suddenly there flashed across my mind an image of driving with Father through Nasuno and getting out on the way, and how the autumn fields looked. The autumn flowers—asters, pinks, gentians, valerians—were all in bloom. The wild grapes were still green.

  Later Father and I boarded a motorboat at Lake Biwa. I jumped into the water. The little fish that live in the weeds brushed against my legs, and the shadow of my legs, distinctly reflected on the bottom of the lake, moved with me. The picture bore no relation to what Mother and I had been discussing, but it flashed into my mind, only to vanish.

  I slid off the bed and threw my arms around Mother’s knees. “Mother, please forgive me.” I was at last able to say it.

  Those days, as I remember them now, were the last in which the dying embers of our happiness still glowed. Once Naoji returned from the South Pacific, our real hell began.

  CHAPTER THREE / MOONFLOWERS

  A sensation of helplessness, as if it were utterly impossible to go on living. Painful waves beat relentlessly on my heart, as after a thunderstorm the white clouds frantically scud across the sky. A terrible emotion—shall I call it an apprehension—wrings my heart only to release it, makes my pulse falter, and chokes my breath. At times everything grows misty and dark before my eyes, and I feel that the strength of my whole body is oozing away through my finger tips.

  Of late a gloomy rain has been falling almost incessantly. Whatever I do depresses me. Today I took a wicker chair out onto the porch, intending to work again on the sweater which I began to knit this spring. The wool is of a somewhat faded rose, and I am eking it out with cobalt-blue yarn to make a sweater. The pale rose wool originally came from a scarf that Mother knitted for me twenty years ago, when I was still in elementary school. The end of the scarf was formed into a kind of skullcap, and when I put it on and looked at myself in the mirror, a little imp stared back at me. The scarf was very different in color from the scarves my school friends wore, and that fact alone sufficed to make me loathe it with an unreasoning fury. I felt so ashamed to be seen in it that I had refused to wear it again, and for years it had lain hidden away in a drawer somewhere. This spring it came to light, and I unraveled it. I decided to make it into a sweater for myself, in the pious intention of resuscitating a dead possession. But somehow the faded color failed to interest me, and I had put the yarn aside again. Today, having nothing else to do, I took it out on the spur of the moment and idly began to knit. It was only while I was knitting that I realized the pale rose of the wool and the grey of the overcast sky were blending into one, making a harmony of colors so soft and mild that no words could describe it. I had never suspected that the important thing was to consider the match a costume makes with the color of the sky. What a beautiful, wonderful thing color harmony is, I thought to myself, rather surprised. It is amazing how when one unites the grey of the sky with the pale rose of the wool, both colors at once come alive. The wool I held in my hands became vibrant with warmth, and the cold rainy sky was soft as velvet. I remembered a Monet painting of a cathedral in the mist, and I felt as if, thanks to the wool, I had for the first time understood what good taste is. Good taste. Mother had chosen the pale rose wool because she knew just how lovely it would look against the snowy winter sky, but in my foolishness I had disliked it. I had had my own way, for Mother never attempted to force anything on me. During all this time Mother had not said a word of explanation but had waited these twenty years until I was able to appreciate the beauty of the color myself. I thought what a wonderful Mother I had. At the same moment clouds of dread and apprehension suddenly welled up within my breast as I wondered whether Naoji and I between us had not tortured and weakened Mother to the point of killing her. The more I reflected the more certain it seemed that the future had in store for us only horrible, evil things. The thought filled me with such nameless fears that I felt almost incapable of going on living. The strength left my fingers, and I dropped my knitting needles on my lap. A great sigh shook me. With my eyes still shut, I lifted my head. Before I knew what I was doing, I had cried, “Mother!”

  “Yes?” Mother, leaning over a desk in a corner of the room, reading a book, answered with a note of doubt in her voice.

  I was confused. In an unnecessarily loud voice I declared, “The roses have bloomed at last. Did you know it, Mother? I just noticed it now. They’ve bloomed at last.”

  The roses in front of the porch had been brought back long ago by Uncle Wada from France—or was it England? at any rate some distant country—and had now been transplanted here from our house in Nishikata Street. I had been fully aware this morning that one of them had bloomed, but to cover my embarrassment I pretended with exaggerated enthusiasm just to have discovered the fact. The flowers, of a dark purple, had a sombre pride and strength.

  “Yes, I knew,” Mother said gently, adding, “Such things seem very important to you.”

  “Perhaps. Are you sorry for me?”

  “No. I only meant to say that it was typical of you. It’s just like you to paste pictures by Renoir on the kitchen match boxes or to make handkerchiefs for dolls. To hear you talk about the roses in the garden, one would think you were discussing live people.”

  “That’s because I haven’t any children.”

  I was quite taken aback by my own remark. I nervously fingered the knitting on my lap. It was as if I clearly could hear a man’s voice, a scratchy bass, like a voice on the telephone, saying, “What do you expect—she’s twenty-nine!” My cheeks burned with shame.

  Mother made no comment but went back to her book. For some days now she has been wearing a gauze mask over her mouth, and that may have been the cause of her exceptional taciturnity of late. She wore the mask in obedience to Naoji’s instructions.

  Naoji had returned a week or so before from the South Pacific, his face sallow. One summer evening, without a word of warning, he had burst into th
e garden, slamming the wooden gate behind him. “What a horror! What atrocious taste for a house! You should put out a sign ‘China Mansions: Chow Mein’!”

  These were Naoji’s words of greeting on first seeing me.

  Mother had taken to bed two or three days before with a pain in her tongue. I could not detect anything abnormal about the tip of her tongue, but she said that the slightest movement hurt her unbearably. At meal times she could only get down a thin soup. I suggested that the doctor examine her, but Mother shook her head and said with a forced smile, “He would only laugh at me.” I painted her tongue with Lugol, but it had no apparent effect. Mother’s illness unnerved me.

  Just at this juncture, Naoji came.

  He sat for a moment by Mother’s pillow and inclined his head in a word of greeting. That was all—he immediately sprang to his feet and rushed off to inspect the house. I followed behind him.

  “How do you find Mother? Changed?”

  “She’s changed all right. She’s grown thin. It’d be best for her if she died soon. People like Mama are not meant to go on living in such a world as this. She was too pathetic even for me to look at her.”

  “How about me?”

  “You’ve coarsened. Your face looks as if you’ve got two or three men. Is there any sake? Tonight I’m going to get drunk.”

  I went to the village inn and begged the proprietress to let me have a little sake, in honor of my brother’s return, but I was told that they were unfortunately just out of stock. When I repeated this information to Naoji, his face darkened into an expression the like of which I never before had seen, and which made him a stranger. “Damn it! You don’t know how to deal with her.” He got me to tell him where the inn was and rushed out. That was that. I waited for hours for his return, but in vain. I had made baked apples, one of Naoji’s favorite dishes, and an omelette, and had even put brighter electric lights in the dining-room to add some cheer. While I was waiting, Osaki, the girl from the inn, put her head in at the kitchen door and whispered urgently, “Excuse me. Is it all right? He’s drinking gin.” Her pop-eyes bulged even more than usual.

  “Gin? You mean methyl alcohol?”

  “No, it’s not methyl, but just the same….”

  “It won’t make him sick if he drinks it, will it?”

  “No, but still….”

  “Let him drink it then.”

  Osaki nodded as if she were swallowing and went away.

  I reported to Mother, “He’s drinking at Osaki’s place.”

  Mother twisted her mouth a little into a smile. “He must have given up opium. Please finish the dinner. Tonight we’ll all three sleep in this room. Put Naoji’s bedding in the middle.”

  I felt as if I could weep.

  Naoji returned late that night, thumping loudly through the house. The large, room-size mosquito net was spread open, and the three of us crept inside.

  Lying there I asked him, “Why don’t you tell Mother something about the South Seas?”

  “There’s nothing to tell. Nothing at all. I’ve forgotten. When I returned to Japan and got on the train the rice fields looked unbelievably beautiful from the train window. That’s all. Turn out the light. I can’t sleep.”

  I turned out the light. The summer moonlight flooded into the mosquito netting.

  The next morning Naoji, lying in bed and smoking a cigarette, looked out at the sea in the distance. “I hear your tongue hurts you.” He spoke as if he had noticed for the first time that Mother was not well.

  Mother merely smiled feebly.

  “I’m sure it’s psychological. You probably sleep at night with your mouth open. Very careless of you. You should wear a gauze mask. Soak some gauze in Rivanol solution and put it inside a mask.”

  I exploded, “What kind of treatment do you call that?”

  “It’s called the aesthetic treatment.”

  “But I’m sure that Mother would hate wearing a mask.”

  Mother dislikes putting anything on her face, even glasses or an eye-patch if her eyelids are inflamed, let alone a mask.

  I asked, “Mother, will you wear one?”

  “Yes, I will.” Her voice was earnest. I was quite taken aback. Mother was apparently resolved to believe and obey anything that Naoji said.

  After breakfast I soaked some gauze in Rivanol solution, as Naoji had directed, folded it into a mask, and took it to Mother. She accepted it without a word and meekly tied the strings around her ears. She looked as she lay there pathetically like a little girl.

  That afternoon Naoji announced that he would have to go to Tokyo to see his friends. He changed to a business suit and set off with 2,000 yen from Mother.

  Almost ten days have gone by since his departure, and as yet there is no sign when he will return. Every day Mother wears her mask and waits for Naoji. She has told me that the medicine is very effective and that wearing the mask greatly relieves the pain in her tongue. I can’t help feeling, however, that Mother is not telling the truth. She is out of bed now, but her appetite remains poor and she seldom speaks. I am worried about her, and I wonder what can be keeping Naoji so long. No doubt he is amusing himself with that novelist Uehara and is at this moment being sucked into the frenzied whirlpool of Tokyo. The more I let my thoughts run along such lines the bitterer my life seems. It is a sure indication that I am at last losing control of myself when I burst out for no good reason with a report on the activities of the roses or mention the fact I haven’t any children—lapses I would never have believed myself capable of.

  My knitting fell as I stood up with a cry of dismay. I felt at an utter loss what to do with myself. With shaking limbs, I climbed the stairs to the foreign-style room on the second floor.

  This is to be Naoji’s room. Four or five days ago Mother and I settled this, and I asked Mr. Nakai to help me move in Naoji’s wardrobe and bookcases, five or six wooden crates stuffed with books and papers, and various other objects—in short, everything that had been in his room in our old house in Nishikata Street. We decided to await his return from Tokyo before we put the wardrobe and bookcases in place, not knowing where he would like them. The room was so cluttered that there was scarcely space enough to turn around. Aimlessly I picked up one of Naoji’s notebooks from an open crate. The words “Moonflower Journal” were written on the cover. The notebook seems to have been kept while Naoji was suffering from narcotic poisoning.

  A sensation of burning to death. And excruciating though it is, I cannot pronounce even the simple words “it hurts.” Do not try to shrug off this portent of a hell unparalleled, unique in the history of man, bottomless!

  Philosophy? Lies. Principles? Lies. Ideals? Lies. Order? Lies. Sincerity? Truth? Purity? All lies. They say the wisteria of Ushijima are a thousand years old, and the wisteria of Kumano date from centuries ago. I have heard that wisteria clusters at Ushijima attain a maximum length of nine feet, and those at Kumano of over five feet. My heart dances only in those clusters of wisteria blossom.

  That too is somebody’s child. It is alive.

  Logic, inevitably, is the love of logic. It is not the love for living human beings.

  Money and women. Logic, intimidated, scampers off precipitously.

  The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden’s smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics, economics, and all the other branches of learning.

  Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings.

  I can swear even before Goethe that I am a superbly gifted writer. Flawless construction, the proper leavening of humor, pathos to bring tears to the reader’s eyes—or else a distinguished novel, perfect of its kind, to be read aloud sonorously with the deference due it, this (shall I call it running commentary on a film?) I claim I could write were I not ashamed. There’s something fundamentally cheap about such awareness of genius. Only a madman would read a novel with deference. In that case it had best be done in formal clothes,
like going to a funeral. So long as it does not seem as affected as a good work! I will write my novel clumsily, deliberately making a botch of it, just to see a smile of genuine pleasure on my friend’s face—to fall on my bottom and patter off scratching my head. Oh, to see my friend’s happy face!

  What is this affection which would make me blow the toy bugle of bad prose and bad character to proclaim, “Here is the greatest fool in Japan! Compared to me, you’re all right—be of good health!”

  Friend! You who relate with a smug face, “That’s his bad habit, what a pity!” You do not know that you are loved.

  I wonder if there is anyone who is not depraved.

  A wearisome thought.

  I want money.

  Unless I have it….

  In my sleep, a natural death!

  I have run up a debt of close to a thousand yen with the pharmacist. Today I surreptitiously introduced a clerk from the pawnshop into the house and ushered him to my room. I asked, “Is anything here valuable enough to pawn? If there is, take it away. I am in desperate need of money.”

  The clerk, with scarcely a glance at the room, had the effrontery to say, “Why don’t you forget the whole idea? After all, the furniture doesn’t belong to you.”

  “Very well!” I said with animation, “just take the things I have bought with my own pocket money.” But not a one of all the odds and ends I piled before him had any value as a pledge.

  Item. A hand in plaster. This was the right hand of Venus. A hand like a dahlia blossom, a pure white hand, mounted on a stand. But if you looked at it carefully you could tell how this pure white, delicate hand, with whorl-less finger tips and unmarked palms, expressed, so pitifully that even the beholder was stabbed with pain, the shame intense enough to make Venus stop her breath; in the gesture was implicit the moment when Venus’ full nakedness was seen by a man, when she twisted away her body, flushed all over with the prickling warmth of her shock, the whirlwind of her shame, and the tragedy of her nudity. Unfortunately, this was only a piece of bric-à-brac. The clerk valued it at fifty sen.