I Am a Cat

by Natsume Soseki; Aiko Ito; Graeme Wilson

  However, it would seem that somewhere under that beastly brazenness, they retain some spark of human feeling, because, as soon as the sun comes up, they cover their shoulders, sleeve their arms, and tuck away their breasts. It is all the more odd in that, not only do they sheathe themselves by day to the point of near invisibility, but they carry their lunacy to the extreme of considering it extremely disgraceful to expose so much as a single day-lit toenail to the public view. Such inane contra-riety surely proves that women’s evening dresses are the brainchild of some gibbering conference of brain-damaged freaks. If women resent that logic, why don’t they try walking about in the daytime with bared shoulders, arms, and breasts? The same type of enquiry should also be addressed to nudists. If they are so besotted with the nude, why don’t they strip their daughters? And why, while they’re about it, don’t they and their families stroll around Ueno Park in no more than that nakedness they so affect to love? It can’t be done, they say? But of course it can. The only reason why they hesitate is not, I bet, because it can’t be done, but simply because Europeans don’t do it. The proof of my point is in their dusk behavior. There they are, swaggering down to the lmpe-rial Hotel, all dolled-up in those crazy evening dresses. What origin and history do such cockeyed costumes have? Nothing indigenous. Our bird-brained ladies flaunt themselves in goose-skinned flesh and feathers solely because that is the mode in Europe. Europeans are powerful, so it matters not how ridiculous or daft their goings on, everyone must imitate even their daftest designs. Yield to the long, and be trimmed down; yield to the powerful, and be humbled; yield to the weighty, and be squashed. Prudence demands a due degree of yielding, but surely only dullards yield all along the line, surely only chimpanzees ape everything they see. If my readers answer that they can’t help being dullards, can’t help being born without ability to discriminate in imitation, then of course I pardon them. But in that case, they must abandon all pretense that the Japanese are a great nation. I might add that all my foregoing comments apply with equal force in the field of academic studies, but, since I am here only concerned with questions of clothing, I will not now press the scholastic parallels.

  I think I have established the importance of their clothes to human beings. Indeed, their clothing is so demonstrably all-important to them that one may reasonably wonder whether human beings are clothes, or clothes are the current acme of the evolutionary process. I am tempted to suggest that human history is not the history of flesh and bone and blood, but a mere chronicle of costumes. Things have indeed come to a pretty pass when a naked man is seen, not as a man, but as a monster. If by mutual agreement all men were to become monsters, obviously none would see anything monstrous in the others. Which would be a happy situation, were it not that men would be unhappy with it. When mankind first appeared upon the earth, a benign nature manufactured them to standard specifications, and all, equally naked, were pitched forth into the world. Had mankind been created with an inborn readiness to be content with equality, I cannot see why, born naked, they should have been discontent to live and die unclothed. However, one of these primeval nudists seems to have communed with himself along the following lines. “Since I and all my fellowman are indistinguishably alike, what is the point of effort? However hard I strive, I cannot of myself climb beyond the common rut. So, since I yearn to be conspicuous, I think I’ll drape myself in something that will draw the eyes and blow the minds of all these clones around me.” I would guess that he thought and thought for at least ten years before he came up with a stupendous idea, that glory of man’s inventiveness, pants. He put them on at once and, puffed up with pride and all primordial pompousness, paraded about among his startled fellows. From him descend today’s quaintclouted rickshawmen. It seems a little strange to have taken ten long years to think up something as simple, and as brief, as shorts, but the strangeness is only a kind of optical illusion created by time’s immensely long perspective. In the days of man’s remote antiquity, no such breathtaking invention as pants had ever been achieved. I’ve heard that it took Descartes, no intellectual slouch, a full ten years to arrive at his famous conclusion, obvious surely to any three-year-old, that I think and therefore I am. Since original thought is thus demonstrably difficult, perhaps one should concede that it was an intellectual feat, even if it took ten years, for the wits of proto-rickshawman to formulate the notion of knickers. In any event, ennobled by their knickers, the breed of rickshawmen became lords of creation and stalked the highways of the world with such overweening pride that some of the more spirited among the cloutless monsters were provoked into competition. Judging by its uselessness, I would guess that they spent a mere six years in planning their particular invention, the good-for-nothing surcoat. The knickers’ glory faded and the golden age of surcoats shone upon the world, and from those innovators are descended all the green-grocers, chemists, drapers, and haberdashers of today. When twilight fell, first upon knickers and then upon surcoats, there came the dawn of Japanese skirted-trousers. These were designed by monsters peeved by the surcoat boom, and the descendants of their inventors include both the warriors of medieval times and all contemporary government officials. The plain, if regrettable, fact is that all the originally naked monsters strove vaingloriously to outdo each other in the novelty and weirdness of their gear. The ultimate grotesquerie has only recently appeared in swallow-tailed jackets. Yet if one ponders the history of these quaint manifestations, one recognizes that there is nothing random in their occurrence.

  The development was neither haphazard nor aimless. On the contrary, it is man’s deathless eagerness to compete, the driving stretch of his intrepid spirit, his resolute determination to outdo all other members of his species, which has guided the production of successive styles of clothing. A member of this species does not go around shouting aloud that he or she differs in himself (or herself) from others of the species: instead each one goes about wearing different clothes. From this observed behavior a major psychological truth about this race of forked destroyers may be deduced: that, just as nature abhors a vacuum,

  “mankind abhors equality.” Being thus psychologically determined, they now have no choice whatsoever but to continue enveloping themselves in clothes and would regard a deprivation thereof with as much alarm as they would face a cutting off of flesh or the removal of a bone. To them it would be absolute madness to cast their various clouts, a ripping away of their essential human substance, and as unthinkable to attempt a return to their original condition of equality. Even if they could bear the shame of being accounted lunatics, it would not be feasible to return to a state of nature in which, by all civilized standards, they would automatically become not merely lunatics but monsters. Even if all the billions of human inhabitants of this globe could be rehabilitated as monsters, even if they were purged of their shame by total reassurance that, since all were monsters, none were monsters, believe you me, it still would do no good. The very next day after the reign of equality among monsters had been re-established, the monsters would be at it once again. If they can’t compete with their clothes on, then they will compete as monsters. With every man-jack stark-staring naked, they would begin to differentiate between degrees of staring starkness. For which reason alone, it would, I think, be best if clothes were not abandoned.

  It is consequently incredible that the assorted human creatures now displayed before my very eyes should have taken off their clothes.

  Surcoats, skirted trousers, even their smallest smalls, things from which their owners would as soon be parted as from their guts and bladders, are all stacked up on shelves while the recreated monsters are, with complete composure, even chatting, scandalously exposing their archetypal nudity to the public view. Are you surprised then, gentle readers, that some time back I described this scene as genuinely spectacular? Shocked as I was, and am, it will be my honor to record for the benefit of all truly civilized gentlemen as much as I can of this extraordinary sight.

  I must start by confessing th
at, faced by such mind-boggling chaos, I don’t know how to start describing it. The monsters show no method in their madness, and it consequently is difficult to systematize analysis thereof. Of course, I can’t be sure that it actually is a bath, but I make the wild surmise that it can’t be anything else. It is about three feet wide and nine feet long, and is divided by an upright board into two sections.

  One section contains white-colored bathwater. I understand that this is what they call a medicated bath: it has a turbid look, as though lime had been dissolved in it. Actually, it looks not only turbid with lime, but also heavily charged and scummed with grease. It’s hardly a wonder that it looks so whitely stale, for I’m told that the water is changed but once a week. The other section comprises the ordinary bath, but, here again, by no stretch of the imagination could its water be described as crystal clear or pellucid. It has the peculiarly repulsive color of stirred rainwater which, against the danger of fire, has stood for months in a rain tank on a public street. Next, though the effort kills me, I will describe the monsters themselves. I see two youngsters standing beside that tank of dirty water. They stand facing each other and are pouring pail after pail of hot water over each other’s bellies. Which certainly seems a worthwhile occupation. The two men are faultlessly developed, so far as the sun-burnt blackness of their skin is concerned. As I watch them, thinking that these monsters have remarkably sturdy figures, one of them, pawing at his chest with a hand towel, suddenly speaks to the other.

  “Kin, old man, I’ve got a pain right here. I wonder what it is.”

  “That’s your stomach. Stomach pains can kill you. You’d better watch it carefully,” is Kin’s most earnest advice.

  “But it’s here, on my left,” says the first one, pointing at his left lung.

  “Sure, that there’s your stomach. On the left, the stomach, and on the right, the lung.”

  “Really? I thought the stomach was about here,” and this time he taps himself lightly on the hip.

  “Don’t be silly, that’s the lumbago,” Kin mockingly replies.

  At this point, a man of about twenty-five or twenty-six and sporting a thin moustache jumped into the bath with a plop. Next minute, the soap and loosened dirt upon his body rose to the surface, and the water glinted richly as if it might be mined for mineral wealth. Right beside him a bald-headed old man is talking to some close-cropped crony. Only their heads are visible above the water.

  “Nothing’s much fun anymore when you get to be old like me. Once one gets decrepit, one can’t keep up with the youngsters. But when it comes to a hot bath, even though they say that only lads can take real heat, that, for me, must still be really hot. Otherwise,” the old man boastfully observed, “I don’t feel right.”

  “But you, sir, are in spanking health. Not bad at all to be as energetic as you are.”

  “I’m not all that energetic, you know. I only manage to keep free from illness. A man, they say, should live to be a hundred and twenty provided he does nothing bad.”

  “What! Does one live as long as that?”

  “Of course. I guarantee it up to a hundred and twenty. In the days before the Restoration there was a family called Magaribuchi-they were personal retainers of the Shogun—they used to live up here in Tokyo at Ushigome—and one of their male servants lived to a hundred and thirty.”

  “That’s a remarkable age.”

  “Yes, indeed. He was in fact so old that he’d clean forgotten his age.

  He told me he could remember it until he turned a hundred, but then he just lost count. Anyway, when I knew him he was a hundred and thirty and still going strong. I don’t know what’s become of him. For all I know, he may be out there still, still alive and kicking.” So saying, he emerged from the bath. His whiskered friend remained in the water, grinning to himself and scattering all around him suds that glittered like small flecks of mica. The man who thereupon got into the bath was certainly no ordinary monster; for all across his back was spread a vast tattoo. It seemed to represent that legendary hero, lwami Jutaro-, about to decapitate a python with a huge high-brandished sword. For some sad reason, the tattoo has not yet been completed and the python must be guessed at. The great Jutaro- looks a mite discomfited. As this illustrated man jumped into the water, “Much too tepid,” he remarked. The man entering immediately behind him seems disposed to agree. “Oh dear,” he says, “they ought to heat it up a bit.” Just the same his features crack into a strained grimace, as though the water were in fact too hot for him.

  Finding himself right next to the tattooed monster, “Hello, chief,” he greets him.

  The tattooed monster nodded and, after a while, enquired “And how is Mr. Tami?”

  “Couldn’t say. He’s gone so potty about gambling. . . ”

  “Not just gambling. . . ”

  “So? There’s something wrong with that one. He’s always bloody-minded. I don’t know, but no one really likes him. Can’t quite put a finger on it. Somehow one can’t quite trust him. A man with a trade just shouldn’t be like that.”

  “Exactly. Mr. Tami is rather too pleased with himself. Too damn stuck up, I’d say. That’s why folk don’t trust him. Wouldn’t you say?”

  “You’re right. He thinks he’s in a class by himself. Which never pays.”

  “All the old craftsmen around here are dying off. The only ones left are you, Mr. Moto the cooper, the master brickmaker, and that’s about it. Of course, as you know, I too was born in these parts. But just take Mr. Tami. Nobody knows where he sprang from.”

  “True. It’s a wonder that he’s come as far as he has.”

  “Indeed it is. Somehow nobody likes him. Nobody even wants to pass the time of day with such an awkward bastard.” Poor old Mr. Tami is getting it in the neck from all and sundry.

  Shifting my gaze away from the section filled with filthy rainwater, I now concentrate upon the section filled with limey goo. It proves to be packed with people. Indeed, it would be more exact to describe it as containing hot water between men rather than as containing men in its hot water. All the creatures here are, moreover, quite remarkably lethargic.

  For quite some time now, men have been climbing in but none has yet climbed out. One cannot wonder that the water gets fouled when so many people use it and a whole week trundles by before the water’s changed. Duly impressed by the turmoil in that tub, I peered more deeply among its tight-squeezed monsters and there I found my wretched master cowering in the left-hand corner, squashed and par-boiled poppy-red. Poor old thing! Someone ought to make a gap and let him scramble out. But no one seems willing to budge an inch, and indeed my master himself appears perfectly happy to stay where he is.

  He simply stands there motionless as his skin climbs through the gradu-ations of red to a vile vermilion. What a ghastly ordeal! I guess his readiness to suffer such dire reddening reflects a determination to extract his full two farthings worth in return for the bathhouse fee. But, devoted as I am to that dim monster of mine, I cannot sit here comfy on my ledge without worrying lest, dizzied by steam and medicating chemicals, he drown if he dallies longer. As these thoughts drifted through my mind, the fellow floating next to my master frowns and then remarks, “All the same, this is a bit too strong. It’s boiling up, really scorching, from somewhere here behind me.” I deduce that, reluctant to come out with a flat complaint which might impugn his manliness, he is trying indirectly to rouse the sympathy of his boiling fellow-monsters.

  “Oh no, this is just about right. Any cooler, and a medicinal bath has no effect at all. Back where I come from we take them twice as hot as this.” Some braggart speaks from the depths of swirling steam.

  “Anyway, what the hell kind of good can these baths do?” enquires another monster who has covered his knobbly head with a neatly folded hand towel.

  “It’s good for all sorts of things. They say it’s good for everything. In fact, it’s terrific,” replies a man with a face one could mistake, as much by reason of its color as of its sha
pe, for a haggard cucumber. I thought to myself that if these limey waves are truly so effective, he ought to at least look a little more plump, a little more firm on the vine.