The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  The situation was so funny that Bunzō could not help laughing. Almost immediately he realized with a pang that there was little difference between the man who was laughing and the one being laughed at. How painful it was to try to accept the idea that he had taken a job where he would completely waste the learning he had acquired with such sacrifice. For a time he just sat there stupidly, paralyzed with despair, until at last he forced himself to get down to work. For four or five days he sighed each time he looked at that old man, but as time passed, his sadness lessened.

  From then on he helped his mother by sending her money every month. He paid back his debt to his uncle in monthly installments, and his aunt’s attitude toward him improved markedly. At the end of the year he was promoted a grade and made a permanent employee. In the summer of the year before the beginning of our story, he had gone home for a visit for the first time in a long while. His joys seemed to multiply. The wrinkles on his brow disappeared, and he felt life had taken a change for the better. At this juncture we have a little romantic episode to tell, but before we do, let’s have a short biography of Magobei’s daughter, Osei.

  Magobei was by nature an indulgent father, and Omasa, a mother who could see no wrong in her own children, though she was cold enough to others. As a result Osei had been lovingly fondled all her life, like a precious hair ornament or a jewel wrapped in silk, and she grew to expect to have everything her own way. In short, she ended up a very spoiled child.

  She started going to grammar school at the age of seven to suit her father and took kiyomoto5 lessons to satisfy her mother. Being naturally clever, Osei grasped her studies easily, if only superficially. To her mother it seemed she was a prodigy in both her schoolwork and her music lessons. Omasa could not restrain herself from praising her daughter extravagantly, even to people who had not asked about her.

  A government official, his wife, and their daughter moved into the house next door and in due course exchanged greetings with their neighbors. As the parents got to know each other better, the girls became close friends and began to visit each other almost every day. The neighbor’s daughter was two or three years older than Osei. She was gentle and ladylike. Although she was only a child, she liked her studies and did quite well in school, perhaps because her father had been something of a Confucian scholar.

  Osei was a faddist by nature and found it necessary to mimic others even when she grew up, how much more so was still a child. She immediately fell under the influence of her new friend and imitated her movements, her behavior, and even her way of saying things. She quickly tossed aside her shamisen and placed a quill on her writing table. Omasa had no particular fondness for anything as disciplined as schoolwork, but whatever her beloved daughter wanted to do was all right with her, and she did not interfere.

  Now it happened that the neighbor’s girl was to enter a private finishing school in Shiba at about the time Osei was graduated from her school. Of course, Osei immediately wanted more than anything to enroll there too, and she tried desperately to persuade her parents to let her go. She talked of it in her sleep and even went on a hunger strike. They, in turn, felt that it was absolutely out of the question to send such a poor, defenseless girl off to school and tried to stand their ground just this one time. Osei moaned and groaned and said that there was no point in living if she could not go to school. In short, she made a great display of her misery. In the end her parents had to give in. With great misgivings, they allowed her to be enrolled in the school and sent her off with the neighbor’s daughter. This all took place two years before the time of our story.

  The headmistress of Osei’s school was a fine figure of a woman who arrogantly aired knowledge she had acquired secondhand from the newspapers. A loathsome creature, was quite forgetful of kindnesses received but always remembered any insult done her. She invariably managed a thinly veiled insult when she met someone she disliked. Although Osei was outspoken enough to her parents, she was a meek little lamb to everyone else and, being unable to bear the woman’s caustic comments, won her over by being obsequious. Under the influence of that great lady, the girl changed so completely that she was barely recognizable, which certainly shows what a precocious young girl she must have been. She dropped her neighbor friend before long.

  Things went from bad to worse after she started English at the school. She switched from a Japanese underrobe to an undershirt and adopted a Western-style hairdo, strangled herself with a scarf, and donned eyeglasses which ruined her perfect vision. Her self-approved transformation was perfectly ridiculous.

  At the end of the year preceding our story, the headmistress got a job as a teacher elsewhere and left the school. One by one her clever young charges departed. As a result Osei conceived a great affection for her own home. It seemed it was awfully hard for her to admit it, however, and so said she was leaving school because her Chinese studies were completed. That was in the spring, about the time when the cherry blossoms were failing.

  As we have said, when Bunzō came to Tokyo, Osei was a child of twelve, still wearing a little girl’s narrow obi and not quite grown up. She was very shy with her cousin at first, because she thought Omasa might have meant it when she jokingly told visitors he was Osei’s future husband. But children get over such things quickly, and the two young people were soon sharing sweets with one another. In no time they were fast friends.

  After Bunzō enrolled in school, he and Osei rarely saw each other; they did not spend more than a few hours at a time together. Then the girl went off to school too, and it was not until she was home for winter vacation that year that they saw each other for any extended period. By that time they were of a marriageable age, and they had to behave differently. Bunzō treated Osei coldly, with his characteristic reserve, and did not speak freely to her as he had when they children. And yet when she went back to school at the end of the holidays, he was quite lonely for the first few days, as if he had lost an old friend. Soon he forgot her again.

  When Osei finally left school, they found themselves living in the same house once more. Bunzō discovered that he felt gay and festive when she spoke to him in a friendly way. It was more than the pleasure of having another young person around—his whole mood changed peculiarly when he sat in the room with her. He would straighten his rounded back and adjust his neck and become very self-conscious and awkward looking. Distracted and uncomfortable, he found it difficult to concentrate. Everything seemed enveloped in a haze of unreality, and he lost his ability to distinguish fact from fantasy. There was only one object he could see clearly—still it was too early for him to understand what was troubling him.

  Early in the summer before the beginning of our story, the family had asked Bunzō to teach Osei English, and after they had begun the lessons, he found he could speak to her a little more readily. He began to talk to her about the status of Japanese women, the advantages of Western hairdos, or social relations between men and women. Osei answered him freely without considering that her cousin was a man. But strangely enough, as time passed, she grew rather quiet and demure during such discussions, and she seemed much more gentle and feminine.

  One day Bunzō noticed that she was not wearing her glasses or scarf. When he asked her why, she replied, “You told me they were bad for healthy people.” He could not help being pleased.

  Osei thus turned into a young lady, but Bunzō, by contrast, was extremely restless. While he was at the office, he kept thinking of Osei and waiting impatiently for the end of the day, and he was extremely disappointed if she was not home when he got there. He began to wonder if he might not have fallen in love with her. The mere thought of it made him blush.

  Since Osei had come home to live, worms had been breeding inside poor, unsuspecting Bunzō’s heart. At first they were very small and did not occupy enough space to give him trouble. But once they started actively crawling around, he felt as though he were peacefully departing from this world and entering a blissful paradise. It was like lying among
exquisite flowers and glittering leaves on a spring day, wafting on scent-filled air, dozing, half-awake and half-asleep, hearing the drone of a fly growing ever more distant. It was an indescribably glorious sensation.

  But all too soon the worms grew fat and powerful. By the time Bunzō had begun to suspect that he was infatuated with Osei, they were enormous and were crawling about, anxious to be mated. They depended on her encouragement for their survival, and if she had been cold, they would surely have died.

  But as it was, they were being half-killed. The worms seem to have found this state of affairs horribly painful; they wriggled around and chewed away at his insides, making him utterly miserable.

  Bunzō tried to guess what his aunt thought about his marrying Osei. It appeared to him that she was aware of what was happening between them and was simply pretending not to see anything, perhaps to save him any embarrassment. If that was the case, he might assume he had Omasa’s approval and could confess his feelings to Osei without hesitation. But he was checked by another voice within him which warned that he might very well be refused. He knew he had to go on suffering for a while longer.

  Let’s go on to the important part.

  IZUMI KYŌKA

  Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939) remains even today a popular figure for his tales, as well as for the theatrical dramatizations made from them, which often draw on the macabre, even the mystical, for their effect. Kyōka’s “The Holy Man of Mount Kōya” (Kōya hijiri, 1900) is a striking example of his abilities to mix the occult and the erotic, using traditional elements in Japanese storytelling to produce new psychological effects.

  THE HOLY MAN OF MOUNT KŌYA (KŌYA HIJIRI)

  Translated by Charles Shirō Inouye

  1

  “I knew it wouldn’t do much good to take another look. But because the road had become unimaginably difficult, I lifted the sleeves of my kimono, made hot to the touch by the sun’s rays, and reached in for the ordinance survey map that I had brought with me.

  “There I was on an isolated byway, making my way through the deep mountains between Hida and Shinshū. Not a single tree offered the comfort of its shade; and on both sides were nothing but mountains, rising so close and so steeply that it seemed as though I could reach out and touch them with my hand. Despite the towering heights of these mountains, there rose still others beyond them, each raising its crest above the next, blocking both bird and cloud from sight.

  “Between earth and sky, I stood alone, the crystalline rays of the blistering midday sun falling white around me as I surveyed the map from beneath the brim of my sedge hat.”

  Saying this, the itinerant monk clenched both fists, placed them on his pillow, bent forward, then pressed his forehead against his hands. We had become traveling companions in Nagoya. And now, as we were about to retire for the night in Tsuruga, it occurred to me that he had maintained this humility with perfect consistency and that he had shown none of the airs of the self-righteous.

  I remembered how we met on the train. I was traveling west on the main line that connects the cities of the Pacific coast when he got on at Kakegawa. He sat at the end of the car with his head bowed, and because he showed no more life than cold ashes, I paid him little attention. But then the train reached Nagoya, and everyone else got off at once, as if by previous arrangement, leaving only the monk and myself to share the coach.

  The train had departed from Tokyo at nine-thirty the night before and was scheduled to arrive in Tsuruga that evening. Since it was noon when we reached Nagoya, I purchased from the station vendor a small box lunch of sushi, which happened to be what the monk also bought. I eagerly removed the lid, only to find bits of seaweed scattered on top of the vinegar-flavored rice. I immediately knew that my lunch was sushi of the cheapest sort.

  “Nothing but carrots and gourd shavings,” I blurted out. The monk, seeing the look on my face, couldn’t help but chuckle.

  Since we were the only two passengers in the car, we naturally began a conversation. Although he belonged to a different sect, he told me that he was on his way to visit someone at Eiheiji, the great Zen monastery in Echizen, and planned to spend the night in Tsuruga. I was returning home to Wakasa; and because I also had to stop over in the same town, we decided to become traveling partners.

  He told me he was affiliated with Mount Kōya, headquarters of the Shingon sect. My guess was that he was about forty-five or -six. He seemed a gentle, ordinary, likable sort. Modestly dressed, he wore a woolen traveling cloak with ample sleeves, a white flannel scarf, a pillbox hat, and knitted gloves. On his feet he had white socks and low, wooden clogs. Though a man of the cloth, he looked more like a poetry master or perhaps someone of even more worldly interests.

  “So where will you spend the night?” His question prompted a deep sigh from my lips as I contemplated the drearier aspects of staying alone in a strange place: the maids who doze off with their serving trays still in hand; the hollow flattery of desk clerks; the way everyone stares at you whenever you leave your room and walk the halls; and, worst of all, how they snuff out the candles as soon as dinner is over and order you to bed in the dim shadows of lantern light. I’m the sort who doesn’t fall asleep easily, and I can’t begin to describe the loneliness of being abandoned like that in my room. And now that the nights had gotten longer, ever since leaving Tokyo I had been preoccupied with how I was going to make it through that night in Tsuruga. I suggested to the monk that if it was no bother, we might spend the night together.

  He nodded cheerfully and added that whenever he traveled through the North Country he always rested his walking staff at a place called the Katoriya. Apparently the Katoriya had been a travelers’ inn until the proprietor’s only daughter, well liked by all who knew her, suddenly died. After that, the family took down their shingle and, though no longer in business, were always willing to accommodate old friends. For such people, the elderly couple still provided family-like hospitality. The monk suggested that if such a situation were agreeable to me, we would be welcome there. “But,” he started to say, then paused for dramatic effect, “the only thing you might get for dinner is carrots and gourd shavings.” With that, he burst into laughter. Despite his modest appearance, the monk had quite a sense of humor.

  2

  In Gifu, the sky was still clear and blue, but once we entered the North Country, famous for its inclement weather, things began changing. Maibara and Nagahama were slightly overcast—the sun’s rays penetrated the clouds only weakly, and a chill seeped into my bones. But by the time we reached Yanagase, it started to rain. As my window grew steadily darker, the rain mixed with something white. “It’s snowing.”

  “So it is,” the monk said, not even bothering to look up at the sky. If he found the snow uninteresting, neither was he concerned with the ancient battleground at Shizugatake or the scenery at Lake Biwa. As I pointed them out, he only nodded.

  We neared Tsuruga, and I prepared myself for the annoying, or should I say frightening, tenacity of the solicitors who lie in wait at the station for potential customers. As I expected, they were there in droves, waiting for us to step off the train. They lined the road that led away from the station, forming an impenetrable wall around the travelers. As they closed in on us with their lanterns and umbrellas, all emblazoned with the names of the inns they represented, they called out and demanded we stay the night with them. The more brazen ones even snatched up people’s luggage and shouted out, “Thanks! This way, please!” No doubt, those suffering headaches would have found their heads pounding because of this intolerable behavior. But as always, the monk kept his head bowed and calmly slipped unnoticed through the crowd. No one bothered to stop him, and luckily, I followed right behind, emitting a sigh of relief once the station was behind us.

  The storm showed no signs of letting up. No longer sleet, its dry, light flakes brushed my face as they fell. Though it was still early in the evening, the people of Tsuruga had already bolted their doors for the night, leaving the streets d
eserted and quiet. Finally, we cut across two or three wide intersections, then walked for another eight blocks through the accumulating snow until we stopped beneath the eaves of an inn. We had arrived at the Katoriya.

  The alcove and sitting room had no decoration to speak of. But the pillars were impressive, the tatami new, and the hearth spacious. The pot hook dangling over the hearth was decorated with a wooden carp so lustrous I wondered if it were made of gold. Set into the earthen oven were two huge pots, each big enough to cook half a bushel of rice. It was a solid old house.

  The master of the inn was a short-cropped, hard-to-read sort of fellow, who had a habit of keeping his hands tucked inside his cotton jacket even when sitting in front of a brazier. His wife, in contrast, was charming, the kind of person who says all the right things. She laughed cheerfully when my companion told the story about carrots and gourd shavings and prepared a meal of two kinds of dried fish and miso soup with bits of seaweed. I could tell by the way she and her husband acted that they had known the monk for a long time. Because of their friendship, I felt very much at home.

  Eventually we were taken to our beds on the second floor. The ceiling was low, but the beams were huge unmilled logs, two armspans in diameter. The roof slanted down at an angle so you had to be careful not to bump your head on the ceiling where the roof met the walls along the edges of the room. Still, it was comforting to know that even if an avalanche came tumbling down the mountain behind us, it would not disturb such a sturdily built structure.

  I jumped right into bed, happy to see that our bed warmer had already been prepared for the night. In order to make the most of the heated coals, our bedding had been laid out at right angles so we could both take advantage of the warmer. The monk, however, pulled his futon around beside mine, intending to sleep without the comfort of the smoldering fire.