The next day, assisted by the adopted heir’s brother, Ogen found herself approaching Tokyo for the first time in a long time. At Shinjuku Station she had to transfer for the ride to Shinagawa, then take a rickshaw up a steep slope to the place where her brothers lived. Watching the labors of the rickshaw man from her seat in a rickshaw that she had picked up on the street, Ogen rode up the steep, winding street half in a dream.
Her second brother Naotsugu and her third brother Kumakichi received Ogen in the quarters that they shared.10 Kumakichi, whom Ogen had particularly wanted to see, just back from a sojourn abroad, was living temporarily with Naotsugu. It was a crowded and lively place in which Ogen and the elder brother of the adopted heir now found themselves. From the oldest down to the children, there were six people in Naotsugu’s household, and now Kumakichi and his two older children were with them. Among the relatives who arrived one after another to greet her, Ogen found that Naotsugu’s foster mother was still in good health, her scalp lustrous under her thinning hair and her posture still fairly upright. Following her, it was Naotsugu’s wife, Osada, who came in to express her welcome, her sleeves still tied up for housework, and she was followed by their daughters and a young nephew.
“I can’t get over how big Tarō and Jirō are getting to be. Sankichi is always talking about you.11 He’s growing too,” Ogen said to Kumakichi’s children before going to join her brothers.
Naotsugu had aged visibly since she last saw him, and she had to stop and think of how many years it had been since she had seen Kumakichi.
“I learned about your husband’s death while I was away,” Kumakichi recalled. Fresh from an ocean voyage of fifty-five days, he was burned dark by the sun.
“You are really looking good, Sister.12 I was expecting you to have become an old woman,” said Osada, who had come to offer refreshments. Well aware that she was being flattered, Ogen was delighted nevertheless. The four young nephews, excited by this rare meeting with their aunt, took turns at peeping in.
The elder brother of the adopted heir reported briefly to her brothers on Ogen’s condition before leaving with an air of having discharged his responsibility. From that night on, Ogen found herself packed in to sleep next to Naotsugu’s foster mother. Accustomed as she was to getting up in the dark, she awakened early as always the next morning, but this was not at all like being next to her daughter. It was a nervous strain just to draw the bedside smoking set over to her and have a quick smoke without disturbing the old woman still sleeping peacefully beside her. As if that were not enough, two days and then three passed in Tokyo without her brothers making any move to consult with her. To be sure, her brothers were delighted to be reunited with her after such a long separation, and they made a special effort to see to it that she was given special things to eat. But when it came to a consultation, they would simply tilt their heads without going beyond another observation of her condition. Ogen found their lukewarm attitude insulting. It was sad to think that after having had to endure the people of the Oyama family keeping knives and scissors away from her, she was now being observed with great caution by her very own brothers. What had she come to Tokyo for? There was no basis for consultation in any of this.
In the end she lost control over herself, right there in her brothers’ home. “To think that all these brothers cannot take care of a single sister—the fools!”
Ogen stood up in the corner of the room, trembling. She was aware that her upraised arms were moving spasmodically. Her brothers exchanged silent glances.
“That was a little bit strange,” Ogen said to herself as she sat down again at Kumakichi’s side, waiting for the dizziness to pass. Countless little glittering, golden fish-shaped forms had appeared out of thin air to pass in wild disorder from right to left before her eyes.
Her volatility had startled her brothers, but it also served to reinforce Ogen’s authority as elder sister. It was only now that her brothers began to talk things over with her. She herself forgot her moment of anger and began to feel that her brothers were worrying about her as they should.
One day when the October skies of Tokyo were already sparkling before her eye, Kumakichi invited Ogen to leave the house with him. Clouds of dragonflies were hurtling through the air, to the delight of her brothers’ children. Kumakichi took his sister to the room above a notions shop less than a block away that he was using as a workroom, returning to Naotsugu’s place only for meals and to sleep.
“It’s really getting to be autumn. It reminds me of the place at Komagata,” Kumakichi said. The Komagata place was a place full of memories for Ogen, since it was the house where she had lived for a while with her late son’s widow.
“I still feel sometimes as though I am being rocked aboard ship,” Kumakichi said, “It’s as though the hall at Nao’s place is a deck and the skies I see from there are ocean skies and the houses all are moving,” he said to Ogen.
Then he went on. “Now that you’re here, you can see what we’re up against. Things are very difficult at Naotsugu’s place right now. They’re having to live very carefully. You’ve got to take that into consideration. I’ll be glad to have you come with me as soon as I find a place of my own in Tokyo. Please try to get control of yourself.”
“Whether I get control of myself or not, there’s nothing particularly wrong with me,” Ogen replied. “It’s just that there seems to be some spot in my head that has been taken over. Once that heals, there will be nothing at all wrong with my health.”
“Are you sure?”
“You keep thinking of me as an invalid, and that is wrong.”
“But your adopted heir is a good, hard worker. Wouldn’t you ever want to help him out, work around the house, and plant whatever kind of flowers you like for the rest of your life?”
“Kumakichi, that would be true only if my daughter were in good health and we had adopted a husband for her. I lost all interest in staying in the Oyama household once my husband died. Just think of what it is like to have a daughter like Oshin. Think of what my job as a parent is like. You said something to me when your wife was still with us. ‘No matter how many children I have, I could never want to give one away.’ Think about that! That’s what it means to be a woman. That’s it; that’s exactly it. All I want is for you to rent me a place in Tokyo, no matter how small, where I can live with Oshin. Please think about this, you and Naotsugu. Please. I think I can get by on thirty or forty yen a month.”
“Do you really think you could do it? Aren’t you unable to get by no matter how much you have?”
“Nonsense! Even you are saying it. You’re all saying that I can’t handle money. Just settle me into some little place. How much would I need?”
“Well, at any rate, you ought to call on your adopted heir, too.”
“That’s very easy for you to say, but I made up my mind when my husband died. I decided that I would break off all connections with the Oyama family.”
Even after going to her brother’s workroom and talking with him, Ogen was uneasy again by the time she got back to Naotsugu’s place. Her brothers wanted her to use the opportunity provided by this trip to Tokyo to get more medical attention and to think more about her future plans, but she could not agree with them. Kumakichi, busy as he was, just back from his travels, had offered to find a good hospital for her, but Ogen did not think of herself as an invalid. The older she got, the lonelier she became. On the way back, Ogen bought some candy for her nephew with the pocket money she had begged from Kumakichi.
“Come here, Tarō! Come here, Jirō! You’re going to have to answer to me if you don’t treat your little brother well!” Ogen said playfully, dividing among the four children the sweets she had bought in an effort to assuage her own loneliness.
It took about a week after her arrival in Tokyo before Ogen began to feel the same way at Naotsugu’s house that she had felt at the Hachiya Clinic. Her reception by Naotsugu’s foster mother and his wife were somehow just not as hospitable as that of t
he solicitous Naotsugu, even though Ogen carefully commented on Osada’s child rearing, comparing it with her own experience as a parent. Nor was her application of her own long experience to Osada’s management of the kitchen well received.
“You know everything there is to know about cooking. You’ll have to teach me,” Osada would say, but her eyes glittered every time she said it.
The kitchen was relatively spacious, and the open space, filled with the chill autumn air, between the back gate and the storage shed even added a touch of luxury. From the kitchen Ogen could look out past the withered morning-glory leaves in the neighbor’s garden to the second-floor roofs stretching off beyond them.
“Please let me help, Osada.” Ogen said to her brother’s hardworking wife. Now that taro tubers had made their appearance among the autumn vegetables, Ogen remembered how much the people in the Oyama household had enjoyed the way she prepared them. She enjoyed standing beside the cooling brazier that day talking with Osada about her own cooking experience. But Ogen, wanting only to prepare a treat for her brothers, and Osada, concerned only with cutting costs, could not agree even on how much charcoal to add to the fire.
Ogen became a bit excited. Intending only to explain to her sister-in-law how to add additional charcoal, she said, “You’re too slow! Just try doing it the way I showed you.”
Forgetting that the fire tongs in the cooking brazier would be hot, she handed them to Osada point first.
“They’re hot!” Osada cried and her eyes, fixed right on Ogen, blazed with anger:
“Lunatic!”
Without actually saying that out loud, Osada ran off to her mother. Naotsugu came out of his room and said something. Ogen, completely taken aback by this unexpected turn of events, rushed off to join them. There she saw Osada, her tear-stained face buried in her mother’s breast.
“I didn’t do anything. I may have made a mistake, but I had absolutely no intention of trying to burn Osada,” Ogen said, trying to apologize to Naotsugu’s foster mother and Osada but unable to conceal her agitation. Naotsugu burst out laughing.
“Don’t put on an act like that! Running off to your mother instead of to me!” Naotsugu said, seeming to scold Osada, and then he laughed again, so loudly that he could be heard all over the neighborhood.
Struggling to get her agitation under control before Kumakichi returned from work in the evening, Ogen went to stand by a post at the edge of the veranda. From there she looked up at the sky and then stepped over to the dark camellia bush in the corner of the garden. The cold and painful ravages of being old with no place to go was mixed with the sadness of being treated as a nuisance by her own relatives. The more she tried to suppress her feelings, the more strongly they boiled up.
“We had a little drama among the women folks today. It got quite interesting while you were gone,” Naotsugu said right in front of his sister, recounting the day’s happenings with a casual laugh. Osada came in from the kitchen at that moment, carrying a dish of food that she had prepared.
Ogen turned to her. “Please, Osada. Let’s not quarrel. Let’s make up right now.”
“Of course, of course! It was nothing at all,” Osada smiled as though nothing were wrong as she transferred the dish from serving tray to table.
“Hey, this is a real country-style treat. This is really good,” Naotsugu said to Ogen, breaking into the country dialect of their childhood as he bit into a taro with obvious pleasure.
Ogen’s hands were trembling that evening, and she was able to get down very little of the special meal. Kumakichi ate in silence. After dinner she heard the worried Kumakichi’s low, quiet voice as he came to her side.
“Come with me, Sister—Let’s go and stay in the room above the notions shop tonight.”
Ogen nodded in assent.
The dark night came. Ogen followed Kumakichi out of Naotsugu’s house. She could see clearly neither the distant Milky Way nor the shapes of the constellations. When she went up to her brother’s workroom, she found that two sets of bedding had been brought over, one for each of them, and that hers had already been laid out. As soon as she had changed into her nightclothes, she threw herself down on the bedding, reflected on the day’s happenings, and gave a deep sigh.
“Kumakichi—How do I seem to you?” she said, sitting up in bed. Kumakichi sat in front of his desk looking toward her.
“I guess you just can’t help getting so excited. Just get a good night’s sleep.”
“No! I just asked you how I seem to you. That’s what I want to know. Everyone is turning against me and treating me as if I were crazy.”
Tears suddenly ran down onto Ogen’s chest. Her bony, aged hands struck the hard pillow with all her strength.
“In all humility . . .” Ogen was talking to herself again. “May the spirits of the gods draw near and protect this old woman. What everyone thinks is wrong—there’s nothing to it at all. Please protect my daughter Oshin, too. Protect her even now when her mother is not with her. . . . What could there be to worry about? In the eyes of her mother, this feebleminded daughter also is visible to the spirits of the gods—”
Kumakichi remained silent for a time, letting his sister say whatever she wished, but then he turned to her once again.
“Didn’t you get anything at all out of all those years with the Oyama family? You are your father’s daughter. Our father wrote poetry. There are some very fine ones among those he wrote while he was in the Hida Mountains. The words are short and the expressions awkward, but they still make clear his loneliness when he was away from home. It seems to me that things wouldn’t be so painful for you if you had something like that, too.”
“I don’t read poetry. Instead, I learned all sorts of things at my father’s side while I was young. Just ask me and I’ll tell you—I know everything.”
It gradually grew quiet outside. Kumakichi came over to sit beside his sister’s bed, a worried expression on his face. He remained silent, smoking one cigarette after another. The two people inside Ogen had at some time or other made their presence clear. They started a dialogue. Whenever one of them spoke, the other would respond.
“What happened to Kumakichi? Isn’t Kumakichi here?”
“He’s here.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Yes, he is.”
“Maybe he’s just an hallucination, too.”
“He said that he was an hallucination.”
“He doesn’t understand how his own sister feels, and he keeps making a fool of people. If that isn’t an hallucination, what is?”
The discussion between the two grew heated.
“Shhh! Be quiet!”
“I won’t!”
“Why won’t you be quiet?”
“Never mind why; I just won’t!”
She had split in two and was fighting with herself. It was as though the flame of her life was burning itself out with a frightful intensity. Try as she would to control herself, Ogen was helpless before this force that came raging out from within her. In the depths of her grief, she fastened on the idea of chanting something. A few lines from a certain nō play came to mind, and she groped her way through the memorized words, now drawing her voice out slowly, now listening intently to her own squeaky voice, forgetting all about the passing of the autumn night.
A drowsy-sounding rooster crowed.
“Oh! The roosters are crowing! It seems as though they can’t sleep either!” Ogen said. Then she suddenly came to herself to find Kumakichi still up, still sitting by her side. She had no idea of how many hours she had passed groaning on her bed. She was aware only of her brother sitting disconsolately under the lightbulb.
The next morning Kumakichi became furiously active. Ogen sensed that he had left the house to do something for her, but she became concerned about just where he might have gone. Once long ago, she had had a very bad experience when she had been put in a mental hospital in Negishi. She and her husband had come in from the country. She had insisted that she wo
uld not enter the hospital, but her husband ordered her to do so, and in the end she recognized her helplessness and agreed. She had spent about a year in the hospital, and now the memories of that time came flooding back. Even more than Ogen feared being put back into that jail-like place, she feared going to a place full of crazy people where she would be treated as a full-fledged lunatic herself. That afternoon Kumakichi came back from Koshikawa. He sat down with Ogen in that second-floor room over the notions shop and talked with her about being placed in a rest home. He said that it was a long way away, clear out at the end of the streetcar line along the Edo River.
“Thank you for your trouble. I kept you up until late last night. I’m very sorry.”
When he heard Ogen’s response, Kumakichi could only put a hand to his forehead and smile with relief.
“But if you’re talking about putting me in that kind of place, I won’t do it,” Ogen went on. “I don’t have that kind of illness. I know that if I go to such a place, I’ll only get worse.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but what I’m recommending is a rest home. It’s not like the hospital in Negishi. It’s just a place where people who are not seriously ill go for care. I think it would be just right for you. It’s got a big garden, there are private rooms for everyone, and they have good medicines. I’ve made arrangements so that you can enter tomorrow if you like. Just think of it as going somewhere for a good rest.”
“Don’t talk about such things, Kumakichi. Just rent a little house for me. I don’t want to go to a hospital.”
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 38
