by Naoya Shiga
It was just as well, he thought, that he remembered he had had such a dream. If he had not identified the source of his uneasiness, the entire day might have been ruined.
He had not come out with the express intention of calling on Ishimoto, but that was what he did, hoping that perhaps by now there would have been some communication from Kyoto.
The master had just got out of bed, the maid said, and led him to a cane chair on the verandah. It was a nice, still morning, with a touch of autumn in the air. The light of the sun, still very low in the sky, filtered into the mossy Japanese garden. In a cage hanging from the eaves above was a Java sparrow, singing busily. Its song had a low, crackling sound to it, yet was full and without harshness.
“How do you do,” said Ishimoto’s older daughter as she came up to him with some newspapers folded lengthwise. She was about six. She was followed by her younger sister, a fat little child of about two. She toddled toward him, holding out her father’s morning mail. “Me too,” she said, handing the letters to him. “Thank you,” said Kensaku, and patted her on the head. The older girl ran out of the room, leaving her sister to toddle after her as best she could.
Kensaku put the newspapers on his lap, then reached forward to put the letters on the table. The top one was rather fat, and was addressed to “The Honorable Viscount Ishimoto Michitaka.” Something about it suggested to Kensaku that it was from Mr. S.
Ishimoto appeared, his hair dampened with water and neatly combed. Kensaku pointed at the letter on top of the pile and said, “Might that be from Mr. S?” Ishimoto picked it up and looked at it. “Yes, it is.” He pulled the letter out and began reading it. After what seemed to Kensaku an inordinately long time, Ishimoto rolled the letter up and handed it to him. “It’s a good letter,” he said.
It was indeed a good letter. The young woman, Mr. S wrote, had besides her mother a brother considerably older than herself; Mr. N, the old gentleman, would talk the matter over carefully with them and reply in due course. What affected Kensaku particularly was Mr. N’s reply, as reported by Mr. S, when informed of the unusual circumstances of Kensaku’s birth: “Whether that is bad or not depends on the kind of person he is; if he himself has not allowed it to affect him adversely, then it is of no significance to me.”
Mr. S. ended the letter with a request for a photograph of Kensaku and a copy of something he had written.
“For an old man, this Mr. N seems unusually enlightened,” said Ishimoto. Kensaku said nothing, but inside he was terribly moved. With great effort he fought back the tears that threatened to fill his eyes.
While they were having breakfast a man came to see Ishimoto on a matter of business. Kensaku decided that this was an opportune time for him to go. Ishimoto saw him to the front hall, and said he would send Mr. S’s letter immediately to Nobuyuki.
Without intending to, Kensaku walked quickly. The pace was perhaps in keeping with his buoyant frame of mind. Gould he venture to assess his chances at seven in ten? Yes, he could, he told himself with a confidence he had not felt in a long time; indeed, he would be doing himself an injustice if he were less optimistic.
The young woman seemed at that moment very close; his image of her was life-size, not the distant figure that she had become since his return to Tokyo. And very soon he was seeing fragmented domestic scenes, in which she acted out her role as his wife. For the time being, then, his concern for Oei and her future retreated to the back of his mind.
When he became conscious of his surroundings again, he noticed that it was turning into a windy day. He walked toward Ginza, thinking that he would look for a farewell present for Oei. A watch was what he had tentatively in mind, with some suitable inscription engraved on the back. After going into several shops he finally found a watch he liked, with a nice old-fashioned shape to it. But he decided to forego the inscription, having failed to think of anything appropriate to say. He had come out with little money on him, so he arranged to have the watch delivered to him.
By noon he was back in Ōmori. When he told Oei about the letter from Mr. S, she was very moved.
That afternoon Kensaku wrote a letter to his friend Takai in Nara and told him all that had happened since they were last together in Kyoto. He then wrote a letter of thanks to Mr. S, and with it he sent a photograph of himself and a couple of magazines containing short pieces by him. That these pieces were to be read for highly pragmatic purposes with little heed paid to whatever artistic merit they might have did not please Kensaku. On the other hand, they were not things that he would have been happy to exhibit as examples of his craft as a writer either. They were, he now felt as he looked at them again, pretty shabby efforts.
Within a week he received a reply from Mr. S. It would be most convenient, he wrote, if Kensaku could come to Kyoto in two or three days’ time. Mr. N was obviously anxious to meet Kensaku before returning to Tsuruga, and had repeatedly asked when Kensaku would be in Kyoto again. Mr. N was due to leave very soon; of course Mr. S would not presume to press Kensaku to do so, but if he could possibly find the time to make the trip, it would be extremely convenient.
Miss Naoko (that was the name of the young woman) had left Kyoto yesterday. It had been arranged that her elder brother would send a photograph of her directly to Kensaku.
Kensaku showed the letter to Oei. “What am I to do?” he asked in consternation.
“Of course you must go.”
“But I feel I’m being summoned for an interview with some prospective employer!” He had been dubious about the dignity of having to present examples of his writing for their inspection; but this touched his pride even more.
“You were going there anyway ten days or so from now, weren’t you? This is hardly the time for you to start worrying about your dignity. After all, Mr. S, like Mr. Ishimoto, is only trying to help you.”
“You’re right, I suppose,” said Kensaku, making up his mind to go. “But will you be all right without me?”
Oei laughed. “What are you talking about? You were absolutely useless when we moved to this house, remember? I’ll get more done without you hanging about the house.”
Kensaku laughed too. “All right, then, I’ll go. I don’t want to be in your way, after all.”
Oei, pleased that Kensaku was in so agreeable a frame of mind, said, “Yes, a terrible nuisance, that’s what you are.”
Their landlord had lowered the monthly rent on the understanding that they would stay in the house for at least a year. Now that they were leaving before they had been there for a year, they owed the landlord some compensation. It had been Kensaku’s custom to send the maid over to him with the rent every month, but this time he went to his house in Sannō himself. And from there, after having concluded his business with the landlord, he telephoned Ishimoto to tell him that he would be leaving for Kyoto the next morning.
8
Mr. S was on the platform at Kyoto Station to meet him. “Leaving tomorrow” was all Kensaku had said in the telegram he sent him the day before, so that Mr. S’s presence on the platform was both unexpected and gratifying. It soothed his wounded pride, and made him feel even a little ashamed of his prickliness.
He would call on Kensaku the next morning, Mr. S said, and take him to meet the old gentleman. Kensaku had brought with him packages containing some things that he valued, such as fragile ceramic pieces, so he took leave of Mr. S at the station and went straight to the inn at Higashisanpongi in a rickshaw.
Mr. S appeared the next morning at the appointed hour. Tōsanrō, where Mr. N was staying, was only a short walk away from Kensaku’s inn.
The maid went inside with Mr. S’s card; then the old gentleman’s wife, whom Kensaku had seen from the path by the river, came out to the front hall, dressed rather more formally than usual. “Please come in,” she said, and led them down a narrow, dark corridor. “It’s a shabby place, I’m afraid.”
Mr. N sat upright, his back turned toward the river. He was wearing a light jacket over his kimono. See
ing the old gentleman dressed thus, Kensaku became a little self-conscious about his own attire, which was as usual informal.
“How do you do,” said Mr. N in a voice that was surprisingly clear and resonant for a man so slight. “I hear that you have decided to settle down in Kyoto for a while.”
“Yes,” said Kensaku. As he was not about to say any more, Mr. S adroitly added a remark or two on his behalf.
And so went the conversation, with little help from Kensaku. But he was far from feeling as awkward as he must have appeared to the other two. He had come expecting to be closely scrutinized by Mr. N, and was much gratified to find that the old gentleman, presumably out of courtesy, seemed in fact to be trying his best not to look at him. He had been immediately put at ease, then, however uncomfortable he might have seemed.
A simple meal was served, and instead of the maid Mrs. N herself poured the sake. But no one drank much. The conversation never touched on what was uppermost in Kensaku’s mind. There was some mention of Dr. Yamazaki, followed by a discussion of the fishing industry in Tsuruga.
In the old days, the old gentleman said, the fish caught around there was mostly salted and put away in storehouses. When, just before the Restoration, the Mito rebels under Takeda Kōunsai came to Tsuruga—they wanted to reach Kyoto, and since the Tōkaidō was closed to them, they had come by the northern route—they were promptly arrested and locked up in these storehouses. After some days in these dark, damp prisons caked with salt, the rebels got itchy sores all over their bodies. He couldn’t bear to look at the poor fellows, the old gentleman said. He then pointed to the shelves in the alcove behind Kensaku and said to his wife, “Bring me that pouch, if you will.”
“Excuse me,” said Mrs. N as she walked past Kensaku to the alcove. The old gentleman waited silently until the pouch was put in front of him. It was an old pouch, of purple wool that had faded very nicely—just the sort of thing that people in the old days used to put all their small valuables in. He pulled out of it a pair of glasses, a wallet, some matches, a pocket knife, a compass, and sundry other items. Among these was a small carving—a netsuke—which he showed his guests. “It belonged to one of them, a samurai from the Iwaki Sōma domain by the name of Sasaki Jūzō. He said I had been kind to him, and gave it to me.”
“Is that so?” said Mr. S as he picked it up. He glanced at it quickly and handed it to Kensaku. It was a little too light, too fine-grained to have been made out of buffalo horn. On it were carved, in the style of the painter Ōkyo, five puppies bunched together.
“I used to talk to him whenever I could. A good man, he was. But the cold was too much for him, and he died eventually, as did all the rest of them, poor fellows.”
Kensaku remembered the dream he had had about a week before. In it he, too, had committed some kind of offense against the state. True, the dream in retrospect had some charm to it, but he had woken up with an obscure, lingering sense of dread. And he imagined himself in one of those damp, salt-caked storehouses, his body covered with sores, having to watch his companions succumb one by one to the cold. Their suffering became almost too real for him then.
The rebels had first gone to Fukui, seeking protection. The domainal authorities, embarrassed by their presence and uncertain as to how they should be handled, had encouraged them to go to Tsuruga, which was just outside the domainal boundary, and then had had them arrested there. The rebels had been led to believe that Tsuruga would be safer for them. But, Mr. N said, one had to understand how very uncertain everything was in those days; no one knew which way the wind would blow; and the authorities were only trying to avoid being blamed later either for having protected the rebels or for having arrested them inside the domain.
To Kensaku’s relief no one brought up the subject of marriage that day. When Mr. S got up to leave, Mr. N looked at Kensaku and said, “You live so near, there’s no reason why you should go too.” Pleased by the old gentleman’s friendliness, by his evident sincerity, Kensaku decided to remain.
Mr. N had other stories to tell about the days just before the Restoration. One of them was about a band of rogues who had gone around collecting great sums of money in the name of the Imperialist cause. The fraud was discovered and they were all arrested. When asked at the magistrate’s court what “Reverence for the Emperor” meant, they answered that the phrase referred to some holy man who had become very popular of late.
By the time Kensaku took leave of Mr. and Mrs. N he had come to feel a great fondness for them.
The next day the old couple were busy doing their last-minute shopping and making their obligatory farewell calls. Yet they found the time to stop by at Kensaku’s inn to see him briefly.
On the following day Kensaku accompanied them to the station. There he met Mr. S, Dr. Yamazaki, Mr. N’s nurse, and a few others who had also come to see them off.
Now that the old couple were gone, Kensaku suddenly found himself at a loose end. It would be another week before Oei arrived, and he felt much too unsettled to look forward with equanimity to a whole week of idleness. It would be a good idea, he decided, to go away on a trip with Takai, to some place like Hashidate, or Shōdoshima, or perhaps even Ise Shrine.
The next morning Kensaku caught an early train to Nara, hoping to catch Takai before he went out. It was a sparklingly clear day. He walked from Nara Station to his friend’s lodging—it was a one-room annex of a teashop—in Asajigahara. To his disappointment he discovered that Takai had left Nara three days before to go and live in his hometown. He thought of visiting Murōji Temple, but quickly decided against it. To find out what train to catch, where to get off, and how to get to the temple from the station seemed to him far too much trouble. Rather than go to Murōji, then, he chose to visit Ise Shrine, which was the nearest of the places that interested him. On his way back to the station he stopped at the museum. He looked at nothing else in Nara.
He found the visit to Ise unexpectedly pleasant. He had heard that he would be required to bow to the “divine” white horse that was kept by the shrine, but this of course turned out to be a false rumor. The clear water of the River Isuzu, the great cedars grown to their full height—these he had heard about, but he had not imagined they would be so pleasing to the eye. He enjoyed, too, the performance that night of the Ise Dance given in Furuichi, the old pleasure quarter.
His inn was the Aburaya, long familiar to Kensaku through the kabuki stage. The guest in the room next to his, on hearing that Kensaku was planning to go and see the dance, had the sliding doors between them opened and not only suggested that he go with Kensaku, but that they have dinner together. He was quick to announce that he was a member of the Tottori Prefectural Assembly. “The assembly is in recess, you know,” he said. “I thought I’d give myself a little holiday.” Not knowing what it meant to be a prefectural assemblyman, Kensaku was at a loss as to how to assess the stranger’s self-importance; and every time the man mentioned the assembly, Kensaku felt a twinge of guilt at his own inability to give the right response.
There were a countless number of fine hot springs where he came from, he said; and the great mountain there (Kensaku failed to catch the name) was only second to Mt. Hiei as a sacred mountain of the Tendai sect. How big it was, he said, and how beautiful the country around it.
That evening a party of seven from the inn—some guests downstairs also wanted to see the dance—were guided by a maid through the streets of the pleasure quarter to the teahouse where it was to be held.
They were shown into a formidably old-looking room with woodwork so blackened that Kensaku wondered whether it was not a subtle application of dye that was responsible, rather than the accumulation of soot or some such natural process. They were made to sit in two rows on a rug spread over the floor, their backs toward a large, deep alcove. Standing before them was a low ceremonial table with some cakes and what looked like a printed programme placed on it. Beyond were bamboo screens partially hiding the front and sides of a section of the floor which, w
hen raised, would be the stage. It would be as deep, Kensaku guessed, as the passageway in a kabuki theatre was wide.
The man from Tottori Prefecture, who was sitting in front of Kensaku, turned around and said to him, grinning, “So you intended to come to this place all by yourself, did you? You have courage, I must say.”
Now that Kensaku thought of it, it was true that he might have felt awkward waiting in this huge room all alone for a dozen or so women to perform just for him.
The first to appear were the samisen players. As they sat down and held their instruments ready—they were not quite like any of the varieties of samisen Kensaku was familiar with—the wooden clappers were sounded offstage. The bamboo screens went up, the electric lights came on, the stage with a low railing around it was raised, and from either side the dancers, eight in all, appeared. The dance was extremely simple, indeed monotonous, and performed with an extraordinary lack of self-consciousness. It lasted for about fifteen minutes. The crudeness of the dance and the unmindful dancers, the lazy tone of the strange samisen, the old-fashioned surroundings—everything pleased him; and he thought that if he had come alone, he might have enjoyed the occasion even more.
