The Setting Sun

by Osamu Dazai

  Her words filled me with foreboding. Without a word I switched out the lights in Mother’s room. I turned on a lamp in the next room and, feeling unbearably depressed, hurried to the kitchen. As I sat there, eating canned salmon and cold rice, heavy tears fell from my eyes.

  With nightfall the wind began to blow harder and developed by about nine into a real gale with pelting rain. The porch blinds, which I had rolled up a couple of days earlier, clattered in the wind. I sat in the room next to Mother’s, reading with a strange agitation Rosa Luxemburg’s Introduction to Economics. I had borrowed this book from Naoji’s room (without his permission, naturally) along with the Selected Works of Lenin and Kautsky’s Social Revolution. I had left them on my desk. One morning, when Mother passed beside my desk on her way to the bath, she happened to notice the three volumes. She picked them up one after another, examined the contents, and then, with a little sigh, returned them softly to the desk. She glanced at me sorrowfully as she did so. A profound grief filled her look, but it was by no means one of rejection or antipathy. Mother’s chosen reading matter is Hugo, Dumas père et fils, Musset, and Daudet, but I know that even such books of sweet romances are permeated with the smell of revolution.

  People like Mother who possess a Heaven-given education—the words are peculiar I know—may perhaps be able to welcome a revolution in a surprisingly matter-of-fact way, as a quite natural occurrence. Even I found some things rather objectionable when I read Rosa Luxemburg’s book, but, given the sort of person I am, the experience on the whole was one of profound interest. The subject matter of her book is generally considered to be economics, but if it is read as economics, it is boring beyond belief. It contains nothing but exceedingly obvious platitudes. It may be, of course, that I have no understanding of economics. Be that as it may, the subject holds not the slightest interest for me. A science which is postulated on the assumption that human beings are avaricious and will remain avaricious through all eternity is utterly devoid of point (whether in problems of distribution or any other aspect) to a person who is not avaricious. And yet as I read this book, I felt a strange excitement for quite another reason—the sheer courage the author demonstrated in tearing apart without any hesitation all manner of conventional ideas. However much I may oppose morality, I am powerless to prevent the image floating before my eyes of the wife of the man I love, coolly and quickly hurrying back to his house. Then my thoughts turn destructive. Destruction is tragic and piteous and beautiful. The dream of destroying, building anew, perfecting. Perhaps even, once one has destroyed, the day of perfecting may never come, but in the passion of love I must destroy. I must start a revolution. Rosa gave tragically her undivided love to Marxism.

  It was a winter twelve years ago.

  “You’re just like that spineless girl in the Sarashina Diary who never can open her mouth. It’s impossible to talk to you.”

  My friend, so saying, walked away. I had just returned her, unread, a book by Lenin.

  “Have you read it?”

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t.”

  It was on a bridge from which you could see the Tokyo Russian Orthodox Cathedral.

  “Why? What was the trouble?”

  My friend was about an inch taller than I and very gifted in languages. Her red beret became her. She was a beautiful girl with a face which was reputed to look like the Mona Lisa’s.

  “I hated the color of the jacket.”

  “You are strange. That wasn’t the real reason, I’m sure. Wasn’t it because you’ve become afraid of me?”

  “I am not afraid of you. I couldn’t stand the color of the jacket.”

  “I see.” She spoke sadly. It was then that she compared me to the girl in the Sarashina Diary and decided that it was no use talking to me.

  We stood for a while in silence looking down at the wintry river.

  “‘Farewell, if this should be our parting forever, forever farewell,’ Byron.” She murmured and then quickly recited the verses of Byron in the original English. She gave me a light embrace.

  I felt ashamed of myself and whispered an apology. I began to walk toward the station. I looked back once over my shoulder and saw my friend still standing motionless on the bridge, staring at me.

  That was the last time I saw her. We used to go to the same foreign teacher’s house, but we were in a different school.

  Twelve years have passed and I have yet to progress a step beyond the Sarashina Diary stage. What in the world have I been doing all this time? I have never felt myself drawn toward revolution, and I have not even known love. The older and wiser heads of the world have always described revolution and love to us as the two most foolish and loathsome of human activities. Before the war, even during the war, we were convinced of it. Since the defeat, however, we no longer trust the older and wiser heads and have come to feel that the opposite of whatever they say is the real truth about life. Revolution and love are in fact the best, most pleasurable things in the world, and we realize it is precisely because they are so good that the older and wiser heads have spitefully fobbed off on us their sour grapes of a lie. This I want to believe implicitly: Man was born for love and revolution.

  The door slid open suddenly and Mother poked in her smiling face. “You’re still up. Aren’t you sleepy?”

  I looked at the clock on my desk. It was midnight.

  “No, I’m not the least bit sleepy. I have been reading a book about Socialism and I’m all worked up over it.”

  “Oh. Haven’t we anything to drink in the house? The best thing when you’re in such a state is to have a drink before you go to bed. Then you’ll be able to sleep soundly.” She spoke in a bantering tone, but there was an indefinable something in her attitude, a coquetry just a hair’s breadth removed from dissoluteness.

  October came at last, but it didn’t bring any sudden change to bright autumn weather. Instead, one hot, humid day followed another, rather as it does during the rainy season. And every evening Mother’s fever hovered a little over a hundred.

  One morning I noticed something frightening. Mother’s hand was swollen. This was just about the time when Mother, who had always enjoyed breakfast most of any meal, would only sit up in bed to eat a little rice gruel. She could not swallow anything with a strong odor. On that day she seemed to find distasteful even the smell of the mushrooms in the soup I had made. She lifted the bowl to her lips but returned it untouched to the tray. It was then that I noticed to my astonishment that Mother’s right hand was swollen.

  “Mother! What’s happened to your hand?”

  Her face also seemed rather pale and puffy. “It isn’t anything. This much of a swelling doesn’t mean anything.”

  “How long has it been that way?”

  Mother remained silent, a dazed expression on her face. I wanted to weep aloud. That distorted hand did not belong to my mother. It was some other woman’s hand. Mother’s hand is smaller and more delicate. A hand I know well. A gentle hand. A lovable hand. Had that hand, I wondered, vanished forever? The left hand as yet was not so swollen. But it was too painful for me to go on looking at Mother. I turned away my eyes and glared at a basket of flowers in a corner of the room.

  I felt the tears coming. Unable to bear more, I got up abruptly and fled to the kitchen. There I found Naoji eating a soft-boiled egg. On the rare occasions when he was at home, he was certain to spend the night carousing at Osaki’s place. The morning after I would find him in the kitchen morosely eating soft-boiled eggs, the only nourishment he would take. Then he would make his way back to the second floor, where he would spend his day in and out of bed.

  “Mother’s hand is swollen,” I said, my eyes on the floor. I couldn’t go on. I was weeping convulsively.

  Naoji did not reply.

  I lifted my head. “It’s hopeless now. Haven’t you noticed? When there’s a swelling like that, there’s no hope.” My hands were clenched on the end of the table.

  Naoji’s face also took on a gloomy expression.
“It won’t be long. Damn. What a disgusting thing to happen.”

  “I want to bring her back to health again. I want somehow to save her,” I said, wringing my hands. Suddenly Naoji burst into tears. “Don’t you see there’s nothing we can do? We can’t do a thing.” He rubbed his eyes furiously with his fists.

  That day Naoji went to Tokyo to inform Uncle Wada of Mother’s condition and to get instructions for the future. Almost every minute I was not actually by Mother’s side, I spent in weeping. When I went out in the morning fog to fetch the milk, when I smoothed my hair before the mirror, when I put on lipstick, it was always with tears. Happy days I had spent with Mother, this event and that, flashed like pictures before my eyes. There was no limit—and no use—to my tears. That evening when it grew dark I went out on the veranda of the Chinese room and sat sobbing for a long time. The stars were sparkling in the autumn sky, and at my feet a cat, I don’t know whose, was curled, motionless.

  The next day the swelling in Mother’s hand was even worse. She did not eat anything at mealtimes. She could not even drink orange juice, she said, because her throat was so rough and painful.

  “Mother, how would it be if you put on again that mask Naoji recommended?” I had intended to soften my words with a smile, but even as I spoke I broke into a wail of anguish.

  Mother said gently, “You must be worn out from the strain every day. Please hire a nurse for me.” I realized that she was more worried about my health than her own, and this made me feel all the more miserable.

  A little after noon Naoji arrived with Dr. Miyake and a nurse. The old doctor, who normally gave forth nothing but jokes, rushed this time into the sickroom in a kind of rage and at once began his examination. This concluded, he muttered to no one in particular, “She’s grown weaker.” He gave Mother a camphor injection.

  “Have you a place to stay, doctor?” Mother asked in a delirium.

  “At Nagaoka again. I have a reservation, so there’s nothing for you to worry about. Instead of fretting about other people, you must think more of yourself and eat a great deal of whatever you like, anything and everything. If you take nourishment you’ll get better. I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m leaving my nurse behind, and please make good use of her.” The doctor addressed his words in a loud voice to Mother’s sickbed, then gave a signal with his eyes to Naoji. Naoji went by himself to show the doctor to the gate. When he returned a few minutes later the expression on his face betrayed that he was holding back his tears. We tiptoed out of the sickroom and went to the dining-room.

  “Is it hopeless? What did he say?”

  Naoji twisted his mouth into a smile. “Disgusting. Her weakness seems to have grown much more pronounced. The doctor said that the end might come in a day or two.” His eyes filled with tears as he spoke.

  “I wonder if we shouldn’t send telegrams to everyone,” I said. I was surprisingly self-possessed.

  “I discussed that with Uncle Wada, but he said that as we are now we can’t afford such a big gathering. Even supposing people would come, the house is so small that we couldn’t very well ask them to stay here, and there are no decent hotels in the neighborhood. In other words, he says that we are poor now and haven’t the means to send for all the grands seigneurs in our family. Uncle Wada is supposed to come here immediately, but he’s always been such a miser that we can’t depend on him to help us. Even last night, of all times, he forgot Mama’s illness long enough to give me a severe lecture. Never in all the course of world history has anyone ever seen the light as the result of being preached to by a miser. There’s all the difference between him and us, let alone Mama. He makes me sick.”

  “But after all, I, or at any rate you, will now be dependent on him.”

  “Nothing doing. I’d rather become a beggar. You, my dear sister, will be the one who will have to depend on his favors.”

  “I—” the tears came, “I have somewhere to go.”

  “A marriage? Is it settled?”

  “No.”

  “Self-support? The working woman! Don’t make me laugh!”

  “No, not self-support. I will become a revolutionary.”

  “What!” Naoji looked at me with an odd expression.

  Just then the nurse called. “Your mother seems to want you for something.”

  I rushed to the sickroom and sat beside her bed. “What is it?” I asked, bending my head over hers.

  Mother remained silent, but I could tell that she wished to say something.

  “Water?”

  She shook her head faintly. After a while she said in a small voice, “I had a dream.”

  “What kind of dream?”

  “About a snake.”

  I was startled.

  “I believe you’ll find a female snake with red stripes on the step in front of the porch. Please go and look.”

  I stood up with a feeling of growing cold all over. I went to the porch and looked through the glass door. On the step a snake was stretched out full length in the autumn sun. I felt dizzy.

  I know who you are. You are a little bigger and older than when I saw you last, but you are the snake whose eggs I burned. I have already felt your vengeance, so go away at once.

  This prayer went through my head as I stood there, my eyes riveted on the snake, which gave no indication of stirring. For whatever reason, I didn’t want the snake to be seen by the nurse. I stamped my foot. “No,” I cried in a voice that was louder than necessary, “there’s no snake here, Mother. Your dream was not true.” I looked again at the step and saw that the snake had at last moved and was slowly gliding away.

  There was no hope, none. Resignation first began to germinate in my heart after I saw the snake. I had heard that when my Father died there was a small black snake by his bed, and I myself had seen a snake twisted around every tree in the garden.

  Mother seemed to have lost the strength to sit up in bed and remained in a perpetual doze. I put the nurse completely in charge of her. As for food, it now could barely pass Mother’s throat. After seeing the snake the tension in my heart had melted into something akin to a sensation of happiness, peace of mind one might even say, at the realization that I had now reached the very bottom of agony. My only thought now was to be with Mother as much as I could.

  I spent the whole of the next day close to Mother’s bedside, knitting. I am much faster than most people at knitting or sewing, but not very proficient at it. Mother used always to point out place after place in my knitting that was poorly done. That day I did not feel particularly like knitting, but I took out my box of yarn and for appearance’s sake, so that Mother would not think it strange that I spent all my time glued to her bedside, began to knit with a determination that suggested I had no other thought in the world.

  Mother stared at my hands. “You’re making socks for yourself, aren’t you? Don’t forget, unless you increase the length by eight they’ll be tight when you wear them.”

  When I was a child I could never knit properly, no matter how much Mother helped me, and now I discovered myself just as upset as I used to get then, only to be swept by nostalgia at the thought that this was the last time that Mother would ever guide me. I could not see my knitting for the tears.

  Mother did not appear in any pain as she lay there. She had not taken any food since morning, and all I had done was to moisten her lips occasionally with gauze soaked in tea. However, she was quite conscious and spoke to me from time to time in a composed tone. “I seem to recall having seen a picture of the Emperor in the newspaper. I’d like to look at it again.”

  I held that section of the newspaper above Mother’s face.

  “He’s grown old.”

  “No, it’s a poor photograph. In the photographs they printed the other day he seemed really young and cheerful. He probably is happier these days than ever.”

  “Why?”

  “The Emperor has been liberated too.”

  Mother smiled sadly and said, “Even when I want to cry, the tears
don’t come any more.”

  I suddenly wondered whether Mother might not actually be happy now, whether the sensation of happiness might not be something like faintly glittering gold sunken at the bottom of the river of sorrow. The feeling of that strange pale light when once one has exceeded all the bounds of unhappiness—if that can be called a sensation of happiness, the Emperor, my mother, and even I myself may be said to be happy now.

  A calm autumn morning. A sunlit, mellow autumn garden. I put down my knitting and looked off at the sea sparkling in the distance. “Mother,” I said, “I have been very ignorant of the world until now.” There was much more I wanted to say, but I was ashamed lest the nurse, who was making preparations in a corner of the room for a vein injection, should hear, and I stopped abruptly.

  “You say until now.” Mother with a wan smile caught me up on my words. “You mean that now you understand the world?”

  Inexplicably, my face crimsoned.

  “I don’t understand the world.” Mother turned her face away. She spoke in a low voice, almost to herself.

  “I don’t either. I wonder if anyone does. We all remain children, no matter how much time goes by. We don’t understand anything.”

  I must go on living. And, though it may be childish of me, I can’t go on in simple compliance. From now on I must struggle with the world. I thought that Mother might well be the last of those who can end their lives beautifully and sadly, struggling with no one, neither hating nor betraying anyone. In the world to come there will be no room for such people. The dying are beautiful, but to live, to survive—those things somehow seem hideous and contaminated with blood. I curled myself on the floor and tried to twist my body into the posture, as I remembered it, of a pregnant snake digging a hole. But there was something to which I could not resign myself. Call it low-minded of me, if you will, I must survive and struggle with the world in order to accomplish my desires. Now that it was clear that Mother would soon die, my romanticism and sentimentality were gradually vanishing, and I felt as though I were turning into a calculating, unprincipled creature.