I have my dead, and I have let them go,
and was amazed to see them so contented,
so soon at home in being dead, so cheerful,
so unlike their reputation. Only you
return; brush past me, loiter, try to knock
against something, so that the sound reveals
your presence. Oh don’t take from me what I
am slowly learning. I am sure you have gone astray
if you are moved to homesickness for anything
in this dimension. We transform these things;
they aren’t real, they are only the reflections
upon the polished surface of our being.3
DECEMBER 18
Because the snow had finally stopped, I now went deep, deep into the woods behind, where I had never been before. I proceeded pleasurably through one grove after another, bathed occasionally by a splash of falling snow dropping with a sudden thud from a tree somewhere. There was, of course, no trace of any person’s steps, although here and there were the tracks of a rabbit jumping around. The trail of a pheasant crossed my path in a straight line.
Wherever I went, the woods were without end, while snow clouds spread widely overhead. I despaired of going farther, therefore, and I turned back. I seemed to have lost my way, and I could not find my tracks. As I walked rapidly and helplessly through the snow, I came out anyway in an area of woods that seemed promising for my cabin. I sensed behind me surely the footsteps of another. The sound was almost inaudible.
Without turning to took back, I hurried down through the woods. I said to myself with a heart-wrenching feeling the last lines of the “Requiem,” which I had finished reading yesterday.
Do not return. If you can bear to, stay
dead with the dead. The dead have their own tasks.
But help me, if you can without distraction,
as what is farthest sometimes helps: in me.4
DECEMBER 24
Evening. I was invited to the village girl’s home for a lonely Christmas. In winter this mountain village is empty of people, but because it is crowded with foreigners in the summer, even in ordinary village homes they seem to enjoy imitating that life.
About 9 o’clock I returned home from the village through the shadowy valley lit by the snow. Passing through the last of the bare trees, I noticed a lone, dim gleam of light from somewhere falling on a snow-covered thicket by the side of the road. I wondered why a light would be shining here, but as I looked around the narrow valley of scattered villas, I saw that only one house was lighted. I recognized it as surely mine up there at the head of the valley. “I live up there all by myself, don’t I?” I thought as I walked up the valley. “I hadn’t noticed that the light from my cabin could be seen through the woods this far down the valley. Look,” I said to myself, “all the scattered points of light in the snowcovered valley are from the light of my cabin.”
When I finally reached the cabin, I stood on the veranda and looked again to see how much the light of my cabin illuminated the whole valley. On looking, I saw that the light reached only a little way beyond the cabin. As you got farther from the cabin, the little light gradually dimmed and merged into the snowlight of the valley.
“When looked at here, that light that you can see so well from down there is nothing more than this,” I said to myself glumly. As I continued to stare vacantly at the shadows from this light, a thought suddenly occurred to me. “This light and shadow, isn’t it just like my life? The lights surrounding my life are no more than this, I thought, but like the light reflected from my hut, aren’t there many more lights to my life, too? Without my being aware of it, haven’t they led me to survive? . . .”
This unexpected thought rooted me there on the veranda in the light of the snow.
DECEMBER 30
It was truly a quiet evening. This night, too, I let these thoughts drift as they would through my heart.
“If I’m not happier than most, I’m not unhappier, either. Whatever is this thing called happiness we used to fret so much about? Now when I think I am forgetting, I can forget completely. For me now, though, I may be close to the state of happiness. Whatever you call them, my feelings are a little sadder—yet they are not without some pleasure. The fact that I can live so casually like this may be because I live alone, not mixing with the world. That I can do this with humility, though, is all thanks to you. Still, Setsuko, I haven’t once thought I was living alone like this for your sake. I think only that I am following my own will, doing what I like. Or if by chance I am doing it for you after all, the more I think I am doing it for myself, doesn’t that mean I am accustomed to a love that is more than I deserve? Aren’t you giving me your love without seeking anything from me?”
As I thought along like this, I stood up as if something had occurred to me, and I went out onto the veranda. I stood there on the veranda as always. I could hear the wind howling incessantly from far away, apparently from the opposite direction to the valley. I continued standing there, my ears bent to the distant wind as if I had come out here on the veranda deliberately to listen to it. The whole valley spread out before me was visible at first as one expanse of faintly lit snow. But as I watched unconsciously and my eyes became accustomed, lines and shapes appeared slowly one by one, perhaps supplied unwittingly by my own memory. I had become so familiar with it—what people call the “Valley of Happiness”—that because I had become accustomed to living there, I, too, thought it right to call it by this name. Just here—it’s so quiet—although on the opposite side of the valley, the wind is howling. Behind the cabin I hear an occasional small grating noise, but that may be the rubbing together of bare tree branches caused by the wind from afar. Leftover gusts of wind are blowing a few leaves around, making a weak rustling noise at my feet.
INAGAKI TARUHO
Inagaki Taruho (1900–1977) was a protégé of the novelist Satō Haruo, an essay by whom is also included in this chapter of the anthology. A writer of modernist fables, Inagaki sprinkled his various writings with references to his admiration for the Dadaists, Apollinaire, and the fanciful films of the early French silent film director Georges Méliès. The following excerpts from Inagaki’s collection One-Thousand-and-One-Second Stories (Issen ichibyō monogatari), which appeared in various editions and with varying contents from 1923 to 1936, reveal some of his imagination, charm, and fantasy.
ONE-THOUSAND-AND-ONE-SECOND STORIES (ISSEN ICHIBYŌ MONOGATARI)
Translated by Tricia Vita
The Man Who Came from the Moon
I was listening to the strains of a guitar escape through a yellow window in a painting of the night when I heard the uncoiling spring of a clock. From across the way a magnificent dioramic Mr. Moon arose.
It halted at a spot one meter off the ground, whereupon a man appeared from within wearing an opera hat and nimbly leaped out. Wow! While I was watching, he lit a cigarette and walked along the boulevard. As I followed him, the shadows of trees cast fascinating patterns on the pavement. In the instant that my attention was diverted, that man walking just ahead of me disappeared. I listened intently but could hear nothing resembling the sound of footsteps. Returning to the place where I started, before I knew it, Mr. Moon was climbing high as the pinwheels spun and flittered in the evening breeze.
On Finding a Star
One night in the shadow of a large dark house, a lovely luminous object had fallen. Only the eye of the blue glass lamp glinted on the far corner of the street, and so I picked it up As soon as it was in my pocket, I hurried home. On the way, I looked at it carefully beneath an electric light. A star had fallen from the sky and died. What?! It’s a piece of junk! I threw it out the window.
On Friday evening I went into a hat shop, where the figure of a young man selecting a necktie was reflected in a big mirror on the far wall. At that moment, he was also looking in the mirror. My eyes locked on his eyes. The young man brashly drew near. Over my shoulder he said, “Hey.”
W
ithout even looking his way, I answered “Yeah?”
He began, “Remember Wednesday night?”
“And what about it?” I replied.
“Not a thing!” The young man looked menacing as he shouted. All I heard was the glass door screech open when I was sent flying onto the asphalt of the city streets.
The Rock-Throwing Affair
“So you’re hanging around here tonight, too, huh?”
I flung a rock. . . . chink!
“Oww. Hey you!”
Mr. Moon jumped down and gave chase. I escaped by vaulting a hedge, crossing a flower bed, and leaping a stream. I ran for my life. An express train whistled and roared by just as I was about to cut across the tracks. Thrown into confusion, I was grabbed from behind. Mr. Moon banged my head up against a telephone pole. When I came round, a white mist was hovering over the fields. In the distance the red eye of a signal light was weeping. As soon as I’d risen to my feet, I looked up and shook my fist, though Mr. Moon pretended not to notice. When I got home, my whole body ached. I was feverish.
At that time in the morning when the streets turned pink, I stepped outdoors for a breath of fresh air when from the other side of the crossroads, someone I remembered having seen before walked over to me.
“How are you feeling? I must apologize for my conduct last night,” he said.
Pondering his identity, I made my way home where on the table a bottle of peppermint potion awaited me.
On Scuffling with a Shooting Star
One night on my way home from the opera as my car was rounding a corner, it collided with a shooting star.
“Get out of my way!” I yelled.
“Your steering is terrible!” the shooting star yelled back.
We scuffled and rolled around. My silk hat got crushed. A gas lamp got bent. A poplar snapped. I pinned down the shooting star. The shooting star sprang back up, knocking my head against the curb.
It was after two o’clock by the time the police helped me to my feet and I got home. Straightaway I checked the bullets in my pistol and climbed up to the roof. I hid in the shadow of the chimney and waited. After a little while, that shooting star passed overhead with a whoosh! I took aim. Bang! The shooting star traced an arc in the misty moonlight and dropped through a glass roof in the distance.
I bounded down the stairs, turned off the lights, and went to bed.
How My Harmonica Was Filched
One evening I stepped out the front door and met in a head-on collision with a shooting star.
I was amazed when no one was there.
I strolled beneath the sycamores while I gave it some thought. Then I wasn’t sure whether or not it had been a shooting star. But the impact of the collision had knocked my hat off. Upon inspecting the hat, I found that it was daubed with dust. I ran toward the house. As soon as I rushed into my room, I opened the table drawer. My harmonica was gone.
Overheard One Night in the Shadows of a Warehouse
“So Mr. Moon came out.”
“That guy’s made of tin.”
“What? Did you say tin?”
“Yes sirree. At any rate, it’s nickel plating.”
(That’s all I overheard.)
The Moon and a Cigarette
One night on my way home from the cinema, I hurled a rock.
That rock went over a chimney and struck Mr. Moon as he was singing a song The waning Mr. Moon’s tail end chipped off. He flushed red with anger.
“Now put me back together!”
“I’m truly sorry, I beg your pardon.”
“It’s unpardonable.”
“For heaven’s sake!”
“No! Put me back together!”
Mr. Moon looked unforgiving, but in the end he traded his forgiveness for a cigarette.
On Brawling with Mr. Moon
One evening on my way home from the cinema, I stopped in at a café, where at a corner table a big ball of a fellow was drinking a beer.
“What! I thought something was odd this evening. You’re already two hours late. If everyone knew you were out drinking at a place like this, you’d get a good thrashing.”
As I said this, the ball-shaped fellow got into a huff and retorted, “It’s none of your damned business.”
“You think you can get away with it that easily?”
“Whether I can or can’t, it’s you who’d better get out of here.”
“What did you say . . . ?”
“You got any complaints?”
I left it at that and was heading for the door. All of a sudden a beer bottle came flying at me from behind.
It was reflected in the mirror over the counter, and so I ducked as it whizzed overhead. The bottle hit the mirror. Crrashh!
“You sneak!”
“And you’re a no-good punk!”
“Such a wise guy, Mr. Moon.”
“All right Come on!”
“Let’s have a go at it!”
Mr. Moon pulled a dagger. I hurled a chair. Mr. Moon’s gang and my pals tussled and tumbled about Somebody switched off the lights. In the pitch darkness . . . a chair flew, a curtain fell down, a flowerpot got shattered. I landed a kick in Mr. Moon’s side and sent him flying. Mr. Moon knocked my legs out from under me. Somebody was swinging a table around, and the corner of it struck my head. While I was staggering to my feet, Mr. Moon took flight. I drew my six-shooter and fired, bang bang! But Mr. Moon got away.
A Red Cross ambulance and a police car arrived. They examined the injured. When I was giving my report to the police, Mr. Moon was reeling as he climbed the eastern horizon. I borrowed a gun from the military police and got down on one knee on the city street. I took aim at the target. Bang!
Mr. Moon plummeted headfirst.
And everyone cheered, Bravo!
Une Mémoire
A misty spring moon hung in midheaven. The woods and hills and rivers were pale and blue. In the distance, the ridge of a rocky mountain glimmered white.
A steady stream of moonlight poured down and flooded every place. From far, far, away ton koro pii pii.
The sound of a flute reached my ears It was so mournful and infused with nostalgia that I couldn’t even be certain whether I was hearing it. It came across faintly. When I strained my ears, the sound of the flute was accompanied by such a resentful, such a mournful, voice singing a sort of song, though I had no idea what it was saying.
Ton koro pii pii . . . pii . . .
When I heard the sound of the flute once more, the moonlight poured down and spilled over.
And then,
“No doubt it was on a night like this—”
From somewhere a voice murmured these words.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
In astonishment I’d asked the question, but the voice made no reply The moonlight merely kept streaming down.
And once again from seemingly nowhere, the murmuring I’d heard earlier returned full of resignation, sorrow, and now becoming somewhat indignant.
“No doubt it was on a night like this—”
“What do you mean?”
I blurted out the question, but the voice made no further reply.
I picked up a rock that I found at my feet, but before I could hurl it at the voice, something made me drop it with a disconsolate air.
It was a blue moonlit night. The mountains and hills and woods were shrouded in mist as if in a dream.
Ton koro pii . . . pii
ITŌ SEI
Itō Sei (1905–1969) maintains his high reputation as both a writer and a gifted translator into Japanese of such important British writers as James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. His own personal quest for what he termed “modernism” in his writing continued throughout his long career. Itō’s story “A Department Store Called M” (M hyakkaten, 1931) is an early example of those enthusiasms.
A DEPARTMENT STORE CALLED M (M HYAKKATEN)
Translated by Jeffrey Angles
I. Kusano Hitoshi
On the way home fr
om a bookstore where he had picked up some Western-language books he had ordered, Kusano Hitoshi, a university student in the liberal arts, runs into the actress Miwa Kiriko on the sidewalk of G——. Kiriko is the wife of his friend Narumi Umekichi. Kusano decides to take a walk and accompany Kiriko while she does some shopping. Together, the two of them enter the crowded floors of a department store called M.
At the cosmetics counter, Kiriko is busy trying to make up her mind. She has the salesgirl, a woman with a remarkably pronounced nose, bring out several bottles of perfume, each a different shape. From where he stands to the side behind her, Kusano watches Kiriko’s slender, white fingers toy with the lovely white, pale blue, and green bottles. His gaze shifts between them, the beautifully trim line of Kiriko’s neck and the face of the salesgirl with the protruding nose.
No doubt those bottles of perfume are from Paris, France. Land of men with beautiful mustaches. Of Upigan and Coty. Bonaparte thought wiping the body with eau de cologne was really good for the health. Read that in a teach-yourself French textbook. Ah, the nape of Kiriko’s neck. A beautiful woman is indeed a miracle. Here she is, queen of the Parnasse Theater. It was Narumi who first introduced us. My sole pleasure in life used to be visiting Narumi in Kiriko’s dressing room just so I could secretly catch a glimpse of Kiriko in her stage costumes. A royal princess asleep on a bed. A nymph born from the bud of a flower. A fair maiden in a flower shop. A naiad. And that’s not all. Kiriko has played so many roles! And then there’s Narumi who adores her so. I see Kiriko’s enticing form doing seductive dances on the stage of my dreams, but I could never tell Narumi about such thoughts. Narumi always has manuscript paper spread out on his desk. Once in a dark booth of the Bar Pompom when he was drunk, he told me his only goal in life was to write a play for her. He also said the theater manager was never able to trust his girls and that Shikayama Hikaru, the most popular actor in the whole joint, was madly in love with her. That’s why Narumi married her and she left the Parnasse. I wonder whether her resignation was voluntary or whether the manager made her quit.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 64
