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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  My wife said, “His very madness weeps for what is done.” But I do not believe he regrets it at all.

  He hid the body of the old man somewhere.

  I cannot have him near me.

  ——day

  He is a glib talker with a look of wisdom, and some of the people respect him. He cannot be punished in this country. His illness has become critical. Things cannot be left as they are. We cannot wait for a leisurely understanding. By desperate appliance I must relieve this desperate disease.

  I am thinking of sending him to England.

  The death of the hero is all the more tragic when the villain is not killed.

  ——day

  The sweet girl is divided from her fair judgment. I did not know such sudden seething thoughts in one man’s heart could bring such distress to so many. I curse him from the depths of my heart.

  ——day

  When sorrows come, they come not singly but in battalions. We have done but greenly in hugger-mugger1 to inter good Polonius, but the people are muddied in their thoughts and whispers. Her brother Laertes in secret come from France feeds on this wonder to question our very person.

  ——day

  That I grieve not at my brother’s death—is that not rather a natural thing? To call it natural gives it an honorable justification. For me alone, it is an honorable justification. But he has destroyed that. That was all right in itself so far. When it comes to grief, though, it is that man who brought the grief to me.

  When I think of the event, even now I do not find it pleasant. Truly, the death of my brother, with whom I was raised from childhood, doth sadden me. There was, too, a certain joy for me. My heart has been set free. I cannot restrain my thoughts. That is no pleasant thing, to be sure. Can I not do something about it, though? To take pleasure in the freeing of my heart is no uncommon thing. For that very reason, there is at the same time something distressing to me. In that sense, there is nothing that so cripples me. Truly, I am more frightened by my own helplessness than I am by the thought that he may be planning to kill me. For me there is hardly a boundary between “thinking” and “doing.” (Not, however, in the meaning of doing immediately what one has thought.)

  I can say this with clarity. I never once thought of killing my brother. I have no memory of forming any such brutal plan against my brother. But it is not impossible that such an idea might have come to me without my intention. What could I possibly have done about that?

  My brother suspected something between me and his wife three years ago. Because she failed to notice my love for her, she had no idea that my brother was becoming suspicious.

  Between my brother and me there was sometimes a veiled enmity that arises between dear companions. From that time on, my brother would never go away and leave me at home. Whether traveling, whether hunting, I was sure to be invited. Whether it was travel, whether it was hunting, I could hardly enjoy myself. First of all, my brother’s constant watchfulness angered me. Even now, though, I think that was to the good. That gave me the courage to propose marriage to his widow.

  —It was a cold, moonlit autumn evening. The hunting dogs chained up in the shed were howling. Unaccustomed to my hard bed on the hunting trip, I could not go to sleep. A dim lamp cast a pale gloom on the neighboring beds of my brother and myself. In due course I fell asleep from fatigue, engrossed in thought. I drowsed between dream and reality. Not yet fully asleep, I was suddenly startled by a strange noise. As I opened my eyes, the lamp blew out; my brother was groaning in the darkness. In an instant, I perceived it was a nightmare. A dire voice sounded as if from a throat being strangled. It was ghastly. Thinking I would get up, I rolled over in bed and started to slide half out from under the quilts. A strange fancy struck me. I was astounded. In my brother’s dream it was I who was strangling his throat. It was surely an illusion. The fearful visage, vivid in the darkness, was me. It haunted me.—It looked so brutal. It was a brutal act. Then when I thought it was over, the strangling continued more violently, even maddeningly, to make me think it clearly was me.

  My brother continued groaning, howling. I knew not what to do.

  If only there had been a bright light there, I never would have been so troubled in my imagination. Things like that sometimes happened to me, so I was always prepared for it in my room. I would reach at once to light the lamp at my bedside. Whenever I awakened from a bad dream and whenever absorbed in some bad fancy, the light would dispel the vision. To help with that, I had hung in my room two or three landscape paintings of pleasing colors. Looking at them in the bright light, my state of mind improved at once. The bad mood eased. As I was almost unable to sleep without dreaming, I never forgot these preparations. I could not do that in a farmhouse on the hunting grounds. My eyes wide open in the darkness, I could see only those fancies. I could divert neither my eyes nor my head from the apparition.

  I buried my head in my pillow and stifled my breath for a bit. I had to change that mood. I tried biting my arm severely. Meantime my brother went peacefully into a deep sleep.

  Next morning I felt somewhat apprehensive, but my brother, showing no knowledge of any nightmare, spoke to me about the day’s plans for the hunt. I was relieved. But the fancy later returned suddenly to memory. A kind of distress possessed me.

  ——day

  It is about time for him to arrive in England. Recently I have been feeling kind of weak. But I haven’t the heart to pity a person who may kill me.

  ——day

  When I think about the day the news of his death will have come, I experience a bad feeling of unease. Whether I think about my wife or myself, the feeling is unbearable. There is nothing so unpleasant as waiting preoccupied with something bad. The “time” for it was naturally coming close. To control my weakness, I just must close my eyes firmly in sleep—.

  Here the diary stops. The fate of Claudius, though, need not necessarily be the same as it was in the play Hamlet. (The Author)

  THE PAPER DOOR (SHŌJI)

  Translated by Lane Dunlop

  My friend and I, as the sun went down, arrived at a certain hot spring in the mountains. Although we hadn’t been hiking, the buttock-cramping fatigue of being bounced along the mountain roads in a rickshaw left us ready for bed. Laying white cushions on our cheeks, we smoked cigarettes and talked.

  “Whenever I come to a hot spring, there’s a story I remember. Perhaps I’ve already told it to you,” my friend said.

  “What kind of story?”

  “It took place at the Kinokuniya in Ashi no yu. Back when the present Kikugoro called himself Ushinosuke. Almost ten years ago.”

  “I haven’t heard any story with Ushinosuke in it.”

  “He’s not in it himself, but a girl who looked like him is.”

  “I haven’t heard it.” I shook my head.

  “I’ll tell it, then. It’s about when I was loved.” My friend began:

  On the third floor of the Kinokuniya, there was a large room that had been divided. Since it was summer, the hotel was full. Both my grandparents, myself, my youngest sister, who was then in kindergarten, and her maid were all put up in half of that room. In the other half, separated from us by a single paper door, there was another party of five. It comprised a couple—the husband was said to be a lawyer in Kyobashi—the mother (a lady of about fifty who looked strong-minded and young for her age), a little girl of four or so, who was not just pretty but as beautiful as a doll, called Minori, and her maid.

  The wife was willowy and tall, with an extremely stylish figure. By her way of speaking, she seemed to be the daughter of a rich family. In the evening, she often sang excerpts from naga uta folk ballads, accompanying herself on a shamisen. Sometimes, on that shamisen, she would chant ballad dramas of the old days in a low voice. Every morning, she would teach the child Minori a song.

  The two children would soon have become friends in any event. The morning after our arrival, though, when the song practice next door began, my sister immediately w
ent out onto the veranda. Leaning back on her hands against the railing, rubbing her back against it, she quietly edged forward and peeped into the next room.

  When the stanza was over, the lady called out: “Please come in.” My sister, digging her chin into her chest and looking very solemn in a way children have, said nothing. I winked at our maid, Hana. Hana went out, and from then on my sister and Minori were friends.

  We’d already been there ten days or so. Minori possessed a great many folk toys from Hakone. When the mists had cleared off, she would take them out onto the large sundeck on the roof of the second floor and play there with my sister. Suzu, the maid next door, and our Hana were of an age. Leaving the children on their own, the two became close friends.

  This Suzu looked very much like Ushinosuke.

  Not long before, at the Tokyo Theater, I’d seen a farce featuring Chobei of the Kakitsu (not the Hanzuin), Kanbei of the Karasu-yama, and somebody named Sarunosuke as the villains. Suzu looked just like the country maiden, I forget her name, played by Ushinosuke. It had been my first glimpse of the theater. Those days, when there was a farce performed by the kabuki, I wasn’t content until I had seen each play twice over. The actors had only recently graduated from child roles. Ushinosuke, whose voice was changing, was as beautiful as a girl. I liked him the best.

  From that association, I quickly came to like Suzu, too. Of course, it was merely a slight attraction. . . .

  Her naive dark face, as plump as if it would burst, and her sparkling eyes went straight to my heart. A country girl, she didn’t say much. You could tell at a glance that she was a good person who didn’t know the world. Hana, a Tokyoite, easily had the best of her when they talked together.

  When I went with my sister for a walk or to the playground for a ride on the swing, Suzu, even if Hana wasn’t around, would coax Minori to come along and follow us. It was that open. Even when, as Minori’s playmate, she was doing something else, as soon as I got ready to go out, she would put all the toys away and come after me. She must have been fifteen or so; I believe I was about eighteen. We didn’t have much to say to each other even when we walked together like this. More and more, though, I had a lonely feeling when Suzu didn’t come along. Even if I had an errand to do, I would wait a while for her.

  Back then there weren’t any picture postcards of actors. Buying directly from the Moriyama shop in Shintomi-cho, just about the only place that had them, I collected actors’ photographs. A friend of mine, Hayashi, who’d introduced me to the theater, had had one of the late Kikugoro as the young priest Benten reduced at the Kogawa shop in Hiyoshi-cho and wore it on his watch chain in a frame as small as the ball of his thumb. I, too, had Hayashi get me one of Ushinosuke and wore it on my chain. I’d brought many other photographs of Ushinosuke with me. But I thought it very inconvenient that I couldn’t gaze at them to my heart’s content in front of my grandparents. It’s strange what I did instead, but anyway, I started looking at Suzu’s face now and again. At some point, it became a habit.

  In everyday life, one does not ordinarily stare at a person’s face as when one studies a face in a photograph or a person on the stage. Even for those who are constantly exposed to the public, being looked at is something they feel particularly. All the more did Suzu, no matter how carefree, have to take notice when I looked at her so often and so hard.

  When I say this, it sounds indecent, as if I thought only I were a good boy. But the truth is that I liked Suzu because she resembled Ushinosuke. Because her face reminded me of Ushinosuke’s, I wanted to go on walks with her.

  It wasn’t long before something peculiar began to happen. As I gazed intently into Suzu’s face, she now and then looked back at me in the same way.

  As I sat reading at a little table of lacquered papier mâché loaned me by the inn, which I had placed near the veranda, I would suddenly get the feeling that Suzu was not far off, watching me. And in fact, this was so. I could not understand why she was looking at me so hard. No doubt she was very fond of me, but to glue her eyes on my face because of that seemed somewhat odd. Afterward, I had this thought: might it not be that Suzu, taking my rude scrutiny as a sign that I was in love with her, began to gaze earnestly into my face to show that she, too, was in love with me? It may have been something like that. An innocent country girl might well have thought that way. But when it came to that, even though I liked Suzu, I felt rather uncomfortable. I was unable to look at her face as before.

  Perhaps at this point I should say something more about the family next door. The wife was a very good person. I liked her very much. Her husband was a disagreeable person, and I disliked him. A pallid, effeminate fellow, he wore a bushy, reddish moustache. The mother, a sharp-nosed lady as lean as a rail, wore her abundant black hair cut and let down, with a flat chignon. An extremely quick-tempered person, she always had to have her own way. One night, this kind of thing happened: At eight-thirty or so, the lady had summoned a masseuse and was having a medical rubdown. My grandfather, calling the maid, said to her: “Please ask the masseuse to come here when she’s through next door.” This must have been heard next door, and we could hear the maid telling the masseuse. It was not likely the lady didn’t know about it. Toward ten, when her massage was nearly over at last, the lawyer came back from a game of go or the like. “When I lose, my shoulders feel stiffer than usual,” he remarked, allowing as how he might have a massage himself. The wife, having gone to the bath or privy, was not in the room. Positive that the lady, who knew we were waiting, would speak to him, we listened intently. But she said nothing. The man had himself massaged for upward of an hour. After he was all finished, the lady’s words were: “My own massage has been cut horribly short.”

  By the time the masseuse came to us, my grandfather was in bed and sound asleep. I sent her away. The mother, who was like this at all times, also found fault with everything in a shrill, carrying voice. When the menu was brought, she, and she alone, must choose the dishes. And so, although the children were the best of friends, the adults had almost nothing to do with each other.

  One night, I read in bed until about midnight. Then I turned off the light to go to sleep. Although ours was a ten-mat room, with three sets of bedding laid out, it was pretty close quarters. So as to leave a space on the far side where one could get by, I lay right alongside the sliding paper door that partitioned the rooms. Next to mine was my grandfather’s bedding, and next to his, my grandmother’s. My sister, putting down a quilt that overlapped the edges of theirs, slept in between them. By comparison, Hana, at my grandmother’s feet, had plenty of room.

  Suddenly, at a sound, I opened my eyes. The paper door, which reached across the room in four panels, was softly sliding open. Wonderingly, I raised my head from the pillow. The panel, about two-thirds of the way open, softly, quietly, slid shut again. As it was farther down the room than I was, and with only the dim light of a paper lantern in either room, I could not make out who had done such a thing, or why. But right away I thought of Suzu. How bold of her, I thought. And why had she done it? Thinking that perhaps Suzu really had begun to fall in love with me, I felt something a little bit like happiness. Not really caring, though, I soon fell asleep again.

  The next morning, until I was in the bath and happened to remember, I’d forgotten all about it. Even when I did remember, it somehow seemed like a dream.

  At breakfast, it was mealtime in the next room as well.

  “Last night, that panel over there opened,” we heard the mother say.

  “Yes, it opened all right,” the lawyer said, with a small laugh.

  We heard this quite distinctly. But both my grandfather and grandmother were silent.

  “Suzu. Did you notice anything?” asked the mother, her voice rising slightly. For a moment, Suzu seemed stuck for a reply. Then she said: “No. Nothing.”

  “You mean you don’t know about it? But the panel’s right by where you were sleeping.” The mother’s tone was scornful.

  “It
doesn’t matter, does it?” As if reproaching the mother, the wife put strength into her low voice.

  At this point, I could not stay silent any longer.

  “Madam. I know about the door opening, too,” I called out in a deliberate, loud voice.

  “Keep quiet,” my grandfather said to me with his eyes, trying to restrain me.

  “The young man next door says he knows about it. Who opened it, then?” the mother demanded agitatedly. “The young man next door” had an unpleasant sound to it. I began to get angry, but my grandfather gave me a stern look. I forced myself to be silent.

  “Didn’t you open it, Suzu?” the indomitable mother continued.

  “No. I don’t like this.” Suzu’s slow country speech was like a bucket of water thrown over the conversation. Although she hadn’t said anything to lay the blame on me, once Suzu had doused all further talk, it was just as if I had been blamed. It made me sulky.

  “Mother, haven’t you said enough?” The wife seemed to be thinking what a shame it all was. It sounded to me as if they had been through this sort of thing many times.

  “Of course, it’s possible that everyone was too sleepy to know what was going on,” said the lawyer, who until then had fallen silent.

  “You speak of it so lightly. This time it was just about being open, so no harm has been done, but Suzu is about to be a bride. I don’t know if any of you are aware of it, but the night before last, the door was also opened about a foot. Did you know that?”