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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  “Then I mustered up my courage and moved closer to it. It was a woman. Of course I couldn’t see the face, but when I saw the discarded wooden clogs on the road, I knew it was a young woman. . . . I was completely beside myself as I ran to the police box and reported what I had seen. You know the one at the head of the road as you go down toward Sannai from the Kōyōkan building.”

  “And the woman turned out to be the one you were in love with. Is that it?” Kondō remarked coldly.

  “That only happens in novels; no, that isn’t the way it turned out.

  “Two days later I saw an article in the newspaper about a nineteen-year-old girl who had an affair with a soldier and became pregnant. The soldier was transferred, and the girl, apparently at a loss as to what to do, had committed suicide. Anyway, the night I found her, I could hardly sleep.

  “But to my good fortune, when I saw my girl the next day, her face looked just as it always did, and when she greeted me with a smile in those languid eyes of hers, all my misery from the night before vanished. After that, for about another month nothing happened, and we went on joyfully and happily . . .”

  “Oh, this is really priceless,” said Watanuki, kicking the floor.

  Matsuki said very soberly, “Hey, keep quiet and listen—and then what?”

  But Kondō said, “I’ll tell you what happened next; I’ll bet it was like this. In the end the girl got bored, and that was the end of your divine love. Wasn’t that it?”

  Two or three of the men burst out laughing.

  Kondō went on, “At least that’s the way my love affair turned out.” Iyama asked, “Do you even know about things like love?” It wasn’t like him to say things like that.

  “I know Okamoto hasn’t finished his story yet. But shall I tell you about my experience with love? It’ll only take a minute. I became intimate with a girl. For a while, we were in ecstasy and had wonderful times together. The third month the girl got bored. We separated and that was it. This is the way all love ends. Of the animal called woman, ten out of ten get bored with a man after three months. When a woman gets married, she maintains the tie just because there’s no way out. The married woman just has to suppress her yawns and pass her days. Well, don’t you agree?”

  “You may be right, but unfortunately our relationship didn’t last long enough for her to get bored. Listen to the rest.”

  “In those days I was also fired with an enthusiasm for Hokkaido, just as Kamimura had been. To tell the truth, I still think life on Hokkaido should be pretty good. I used to imagine what life on Hokkaido would be like, and my love and I got some of our greatest pleasures talking about it together. Like Kamimura, I drew plans on a folio-size sheet for an American-style house. But there was a slight difference. Besides the red glimmer of light from the window, I wanted to hear the sound of happy laughter from time to time; I wanted to hear a girl singing in a clear, bell-like tone.”

  “But I didn’t have a woman,” Kamimura said remorsefully. Everybody laughed.

  Watanuki said, “That’s probably one of the reasons you switched your loyalties to the meat eaters.”

  Kondō thundered, “No, that’s a lie. If Kamimura had had a woman, he would have switched loyalties before he had ever set foot on Hokkaido. Don’t you know that women, the wretches, aren’t able to stick to a potato diet? They’re congenital meat eaters, just as I am. It just isn’t true to say that women like potatoes.” Again there was laughter.

  “And the two of us, . . .” Okamoto went on totally unperturbed, and this brought silence again.

  “The two of us decided to make Hokkaido our home. As our plans had matured, I first returned to my village to settle my affairs. I had some land which my people were looking after for me, and I was going to sell every bit of it and use the money to open new land on Hokkaido. I was planning to spend no more than ten days there. But first there was the matter of the family’s convenience. Then there was the matter of agreeing on a price, and I ended up staying there twenty days. Then a telegram came from the girl’s mother. I was shocked and rushed back to Tokyo. When I arrived, the girl was dead.”

  “Dead?” Matsuki cried out.

  “Yes, so all my hopes were in vain.”

  Okamoto hadn’t quite finished saying this when Kondō spoke up as if he were making a speech. “We who have just been allowed to hear this extremely interesting love story extend to you our deep gratitude. However, for Okamoto’s sake I will celebrate his love’s death. If that word is improper, I will say that I am glad, inwardly glad. Yes, I prefer to say that I am glad; I am glad that it happened that way, for if that girl had not died, I am convinced that the outcome would have been far more tragic than the tragedy of death itself.”

  He was all seriousness up to this point. But then perhaps he felt a bit foolish; he lowered his voice and said with a smile, “After all, women do get bored—there are different kinds of boredom. Two in particular are most tragic and hateful. With one you weary of life; with the other you weary of love. Men usually weary of life, and women weary of love. We grieve for the one and hate the other.”

  Then he returned to his more serious tone. “You hardly ever hear of a woman tiring of life. Young girls sometimes show signs of it, but that is just an abnormality arising from their thirst for love. Then they find love, and for a while they seem supremely happy. They really are happy, too. The total meaning of the word ‘happy’ is probably best exemplified in the condition of these girls. But they weary rapidly; that is, they finally tire of love, and surely there is nothing more difficult to deal with than a woman who is tired of love. I said earlier that this is hateful, but it’s rather to be pitied.

  “Men are different, for they often tire of life itself, and if, at this juncture, they encounter love, they find in it a means of escape. That’s why they throw their whole heart into the fire of love. In cases like this love becomes synonymous with life for men.” Then he turned to Okamoto, “How about it? Doesn’t my theory fit the facts?”

  “I don’t get the point at all,” Matsuki shouted.

  “So, you don’t get the point? As a matter of fact I don’t get the point very well, either, but I just felt like saying it. Anyway, Okamoto, this is what I think. When you say you’re neither a potato eater nor a meat eater and that you have one unusual wish, isn’t it that you want to meet the dead girl?”

  “No!” cried Okamoto, and he got up from his chair. He was already quite drunk.

  “First of all, I’ll say ‘no’ to that. If you’re willing to listen, I’ll tell you what my wish is.”

  Kondō raised his hand. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I definitely want to hear.” Everybody else kept silent and looked at Okamoto. Matsuki and Takeuchi looked serious, but Watanuki, Iyama, and Kamimura were smiling.

  “Once more I shout out ‘NO!’ Kondō was right in that I am a man who tried to escape my boredom with life through love. That’s why her death was such a blow to me. Just as I said before, my hopes were all but dashed. If there is to be found, as in an old legend, a special kind of incense that would bring back the dead, I’d buy three or four hundred pounds of it. I want to have her back once more, and this wish is so intense that I don’t care what happens to me or what other people might think. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve cried many times over her. Many times I’ve called her name and looked up at the sky. I certainly do wish she would come back to life once more.

  “But this is not the unusual wish I have in mind. It isn’t the one true wish I have. I have an even greater wish, a deeper wish, a more ardent wish. If only this wish were granted, I wouldn’t even mind if the girl didn’t come back to life, and if she did, and in my presence traded me off, I wouldn’t care. I wouldn’t even mind if her ghost stuck out its red tongue and laughed derisively in my face.

  “The passage ‘If I learn the proper way in the morning, I will gladly die in the evening,’2 is different in substance from my wish, but the feeling is the same. If my wish cannot be grante
d, I could live to be a hundred, and it would be to no avail—I would find no happiness. In fact, I would be living in pain. I don’t care if I am the only person in the world who has this wish. I’ll go alone in search of it, and if in my quest I have to commit burglary, murder, arson, or whatever, I wouldn’t regret it in the least. I’d do anything to have my wish granted. If there were a devil, and he would say to me, ‘Give me thy wife that I may rape her, give me thy child that I may eat him, and then to thee shall I grant thy wish,’ I would gladly give him my wife, if I had one; and if I had a child, I’d give it to him.”

  Matsuki shouted, “It’s getting more and more interesting. Hurry up! I want to hear what your wish is.” He was pulling on his beard with all his might.

  “I’m getting to it—I’m sure all of you are sick and tired of our rickety, unstable government. That’s why you want to combine the talents of people like Bismarck, Gladstone, and Hideyoshi and build a government of solid steel. You certainly have the desire to try to build such a government, and I really have that sort of wish, too, but my unusual wish has nothing to do with that.

  “I’d like to be a sage, a princely man, or the very embodiment of compassion.

  I’d like to be someone like Christ, Buddha, or Confucius. Yes, I want to be like them, but if my unusual wish can’t be granted, to hell with the sages and saviors.

  “Life in the forests and mountains—just saying the words makes my blood grow hot. This is what makes me think about Hokkaido. Often I take walks in the suburbs; and on these clear, winter mornings; whenever I look out over the horizon at the snowcapped peaks which surround the landscape, my blood surges in waves till I can’t stand it. Yet once my thoughts start dwelling on my wish, the scenery becomes meaningless. If only my wish were granted, I could even be content being a rickshaw man in a dusty, teeming city.

  “There have been all sorts of quibbling arguments about the mysteries of the universe, the mysteries of human life, about the origin of heaven and earth. Science, philosophy, and religion investigate these phenomena, explain them, and then worry about fitting them into a ready-made pattern. I would like to be a great philosopher, too; I’d like to be a greater scientist than Darwin; if I could, I’d like to be a great religious figure. But this is not my wish. If my wish isn’t granted and I should become a great philosopher, I would scoff at myself, and I would brand my face with the word ‘deceiver’!”

  “Hurry up and get to the point! What is your wish?” asked Matsuki peevishly.

  “All right, but don’t be surprised.”

  “Out with it, hurry up!”

  Okamoto said quietly, “My wish is that I want to be surprised.”

  “What’s that? That’s ridiculous!”

  “What did you say?”

  “Is that all you were driving at?”

  They all spoke as though they were disgusted; only Kondō seemed to be waiting silently for Okamoto’s explanation.

  “There’s a line of poetry which goes ‘Awake, poor troubled sleeper; / shake off thy torpid nightmare dream.’ My wish is that I want to shake off my dream demon!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Watanuki muttered.

  “I don’t want to know the mysteries of the universe; I want to be surprised at the mysteries of the universe.”

  Iyama stroked his cheek, “It sounds more and more like a riddle.”

  “I don’t want to know the secrets of death; I want to be surprised at the fact of death!”

  Watanuki scoffed, “Go right ahead and be surprised as much as you like. That’s simple enough.”

  “Faith in and of itself isn’t what I want, necessarily. But I do want to be plagued by the mysteries of man and his universe, plagued, in fact, to a point where without faith there can be no peace for me, even for a moment.”

  “Hmm, this is getting more and more puzzling,” murmured Matsuki, looking intently at Okamoto.

  Okamoto pounded the table without realizing it. “If anything, my wish is to gouge out my worn-out, grape-like eyes.”

  “Hurray!” Kondō called out unintentionally.

  “I don’t care to have the guts of Luther, who, at the Diet of Worms, refused to capitulate before the powers of the princes. But at the age of nineteen Luther had a surprise encounter with the mysteries of death. Alexis, his classmate, was struck dead by lightning before his very eyes. It is this part of Luther that I desire.

  “Watanuki said, ‘Go right ahead and be surprised as much as you like’—those are extremely interesting words, but one can never go right ahead and be surprised.

  “The woman I loved died; she has vanished from the earth. Because I had been a slave of love, I was terribly upset over her death. But the anguish I experienced was due to the loss of the object of my love, and I was unable to face up to the brutal fact of death. Nothing can dominate a man’s heart so completely as love. Yet there is one thing which presses down on man’s heart with a power many times greater.

  “What I mean is the power of custom: ‘Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting.’

  “This line states it perfectly. We are born into the world; from early childhood we come upon all sorts of things: every day we see the sun, every night we look up at the stars. Gradually even the inscrutable mystery of the universe becomes commonplace, and those who call attention to philosophy and science look at the universe as though they were standing outside it.

  Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,

  And custom lie upon thee with a weight

  Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.

  “These lines are only too true. That’s why my wish is to somehow shake off this frost. Somehow or other I want to be freed from the pressure of old, wornout customs. I want to stand on my own feet and live in this universe with a capacity to be surprised. I don’t care one bit if it means that I’ll be a meat eater or a potato eater or even that I’ll become a misanthrope and curse life.

  “I don’t care about effects. I don’t want to set up false causes. I don’t want to set up premises on the basis of playful studies based on custom.

  “Take the phrases like ‘moonlight is beauty,’ ‘the evenings when the flowers are in bloom are this and that,’ or ‘the starry nights are this and that.’ These effusive words of the poets are just a form of dilettantism. The last thing in the world they see is what’s genuine; they are only looking at phantoms through the eyes which are blinded by custom. They are making sport of the emotions. As for philosophy and religion, I don’t know what they were like in the beginning, but at least in the forms they have come to assume through the centuries, one finds the same thing.

  “I have an acquaintance that scoffs at people who make themselves miserable by raising such stupid questions like, ‘What am I?’ His point is that you cannot possibly know that which is ultimately unknowable. On the surface, at least, this is true. But this question isn’t raised necessarily in order to have it answered. It is a cry of the soul that is raised spontaneously when one becomes deeply aware of the real mystery of one’s existence in this universe. The question is itself a solemn expression of one’s soul. To scoff at people who raise this question is to confess to the paralysis of the spirit. My wish is to raise this question straight from the heart. Unfortunately, even when the question is uttered through one’s lips, it seldom comes from the heart.

  “‘From whence do I come?’ ‘Whither do I go?’ People often ask these questions. But in my opinion, the spring of religion flows in the heart of the man who cannot help raising these questions no matter how much he may try not to raise them. It’s the same with poetry, and that’s why anything not related to these questions is just wanton and false.

  “I’d better stop now. It’s no use! It’s no use going on! Oh, I’m exhausted! But I’ll say just one more thing, though. I want to divide people into two groups: people who are capable of being surprised and those who are indifferent.”

  Matsuki laughed while he asked, “I wonder which I
belong to?”

  “You belong to the indifferent group, naturally. All seven of us belong to the most indifferent of the indifferent group. Of the billion or so people in the world, I wonder how many there are who are not indifferent. Take the poets, philosophers, scientists, clergymen, scholars, statesmen. They are a pretty indifferent lot, too. They bandy about their theories, wear an expression of enlightenment on their faces, or go about tearfully. Last night I had a dream.

  “I dreamed I was dead. I was dead and trudging down a dark road alone, groping for the way, and without thinking about it, I cried out, ‘How could it have happened to me?’ Yes . . . yes, it was I who had cried out.

  “Now, this is what I think. Let’s say that every one of a hundred people today attends funerals or experiences the death of his parents or his children. Yet when these very same people die and stand at the gates of hell, they will no doubt cry out, ‘How could it have happened to me?’ and be mocked by the devil.” Okamoto laughed long and loud.

  “They say that one can be cured of hiccups if someone takes him by surprise. But you have to be quite an eccentric to want to be surprised when you can live an indifferent life and eat meat.” Watanuki laughed so hard that he had to hold his fat belly.

  “No; I say that I want to be surprised, but I guess I really don’t mean it . . .”

  “Oh, you are just saying it, then. Hee, hee.”

  “I get it. In other words, you go as far as making a wish, and no further.” “Yes, I guess it’s just a hobby with me.”

  Everybody was laughing, and now Okamoto joined in the laughter. But Kondō caught an expression of deep anguish on Okamoto’s face.

  MASAMUNE HAKUCHŌ

  Masamune Hakuchō (1879–1962) was, like Kunikida Doppo, deeply affected by his encounter with Christianity. A noted literary critic and story writer, he and other novelists of this time, dubbed “naturalists,” tried to reveal the emotional truth about themselves, however painful. His story “The Clay Doll” (Doro ningyō, 1911), a lightly fictionalized account of the unhappy start to his own marriage, also reveals some of the social and intellectual disparity between men and women in the Meiji period.