by Ivan Morris
Moments later, Yojirō, lean and wasted like a sick dog, appeared before Lord Tadanao. The man seemed to have worn himself out in the last few days by the intensity of his anguish. He was deathly pale, and the expression on his face was sullen and murderous. His eyes were streaked with lines of red.
For the first time in his life Lord Tadanao saw before him an Echizen retainer revealing in his looks, without any attempt at concealment, his true feelings toward him.
“So, it’s you, Yojirō. Come closer!” Lord Tadanao spoke amiably. He felt somehow that he was now dealing as one human being with another, and he was even conscious of a kind of affectionate yearning for Yojirō. It was as if the barrier separating lord from retainer had been removed, and he and Yojirō now faced each other directly, simply as fellow men.
Yojirō slid himself forward on his knees over the smooth straw matting until he was only a few steps from his master, and then cried out, in a voice which might have risen from a tormented soul in the depths of hell:
“My lord! Even the code of loyalty is a trifle beside the great law of humanity! You have stolen my wife, and this is how I show my hatred!”
With the speed of a swallow in flight he sprang to his feet and rushed upon Lord Tadanao. A blade gleamed in his right hand. Even so, Lord Tadanao was too agile for his attacker. He caught the upraised arm with consummate ease, twisted it, and forced Yojirō to the floor. An attendant, acting with what he imagined to be considerable tact, took Lord Tadanao’s great sword from the boy sword-bearer and proffered it to his master. But Lord Tadanao brusquely pushed the man back.
“Yojirō! It is you alone who have shown yourself a true warrior!” He released his hold on Yojirō’s arm as he spoke.
Yojirō, still grasping the dagger, did not even raise his head, but prostrated himself in submission.
“Your wife, too, refused on every occasion to comply with my wishes. In this household of mine you are indeed rare creatures!” Lord Tadanao broke into loud and joyous laughter.
Yojirō’s rebellion had afforded Lord Tadanao double cause for rejoicing. First, he had been sincerely hated as a man, even to the point of an attempt on his life, and this gave him the feeling that he had been permitted for the first time to step down into the world of human beings. Secondly, he had been attacked in full earnestness by a man reputed to be the foremost swordsman in the whole fief, and he had most convincingly beaten down that attack. He could not believe that there was in this victory, at least, any element of deceit. He was able once more, untroubled by the doubts which had plagued him so long, to savor his old sense of exultation in victory. Lord Tadanao felt as if a gap had opened in the oppressive cloud of melancholy which had settled of late about his life, and he had caught a glimpse of the radiance beyond.
Not only did he permit Yojirō, who begged piteously that his lord’s vengeance might fall on him alone, to depart without a word of reproof, but he at once gave Yojirō’s wife her liberty.
Lord Tadanao’s joy, however, was short-lived.
On their first night at home after returning from the castle Yojirō and his wife, resting their heads close together on their pillows, killed themselves. For what reason they died was not made clear, but it was perhaps from a sense of shame, in that Yojirō had raised his hand against their hereditary lord, or perhaps because they were overwhelmed with gratitude at Lord Tadanao’s merciful kindness in granting them their lives.
However that may have been, Lord Tadanao heard the news with not the slightest gratification. Even Yojirō’s armed attack upon him, viewed in the light of his subsequent suicide, seemed to Lord Tadanao to have been a strangely incredible act. He wondered whether it had been no more than a calculated attempt to achieve a noble death at the hands of the master. If this were so, then Lord Tadanao’s amazing feat in seizing Yojirō’s arm before he could strike and forcing him to yield was not so very different from those amazing victories over the enemy commanders in the battles of the Reds and the Whites. After a little more of such reflection Lord Tadanao lapsed once more into a state of black despair.
The steady worsening of Lord Tadanao’s disorder from this point isn’t as recorded in the histories. In time he was not only casually murdering his own retainers but he reached the point of imprisoning and putting to the sword numbers of completely innocent countryfolk. The tale of “The Stone Chopping-Block” in particular, a story which has come down to us over the centuries in oral tradition, still produces in the listener a shudder of aversion. But, if Lord Tadanao perpetrated such cruelties, it may well have been because his retainers failed to treat Lord Tadanao as a human being, and Lord Tadanao, on his side, ended by treating his retainers in the same way.
VI
But this outrageous behavior was not to continue without end. While Lord Tadanao, in Echizen, proceeded freely from excess to excess, in Edo the Shogun’s ministers Lords Doi Toshikatsu and Honda Masazumi were privately revolving plans for his overthrow. Frontal measures against so hotheaded a daimyō, and one, moreover, who was closely related to the Tokugawa family, might have given rise to a serious disturbance. Accordingly, the ministers decided to send Lord Tadanao’s mother, who had taken Buddhist vows and was now known as the nun Seiryo, on a mission to Echizen to convey indirectly the resolve of the Shogun’s household.
Lord Tadanao received his mother, whom he had not seen for many years, with great affection. And, strangely enough, when told of the Shogun’s desire to dispossess him, he cheerfully signified his compliance, and very soon after, abandoning his great fief as calmly as if it had been a pair of outworn straw sandals, he set off for his place of exile, the town of Funai in northern Kyūshū.
On his way, at Tsuruga, he formally took Buddhist orders and assumed the priestly name of Ippaku. This was in the fifth month of the year 1623, when Lord Tadanao was a little past thirty years of age. From Funai he later moved to Tsumori, another town in the same province of Bungo, and at this place, on a small fifty-thousand-bushel fief granted him for his maintenance by the Shogunate, he passed the remainder of his days uneventfully, dying in 1650 at the age of fifty-six.
No systematic account of Lord Tadanao’s life in this latter period has been transmitted to us. But the lord of Funai Castle, Takenaka Shigétsugu, whose duty it was to watch over Lord Tadanao, caused his retainers to keep a record of the exile’s behavior to be forwarded to the Shogun’s minister Lord Doi Toshikatsu, and this small volume, entitled “Report on the Conduct of Lord Tadanao,” survives. The following is an excerpt:
“… Since his removal to Tsumori in this province, Lord Tadanao has passed his days quietly, showing no signs of violent disposition. His lordship has frequently remarked that when he lost his great family heritage he felt only an immense relief, as if he had awakened from a bad dream. He prays that he may never, in any future reincarnation, be born again as lord of a province. Though surrounded by vast numbers of people, he avows that he very often experienced the torments of a soul fallen into a hell of solitude. Concerning the matter of his dispossession, he appears to harbor no resentment toward anyone…. At times of relaxation he occasionally invites a village elder or a priest to a game of Gobang in his private rooms. It had been previously rumored that, when absorbed in this pastime, his lordship was prone to fits of temper more terrible than the tantrums of King Chou of the Yin dynasty, but of such behavior there has been no sign. When, on one occasion, the priest Rōnō of the Jokon Temple, a person with whom his lordship has established a particularly cordial relationship, ventured to remark that ‘Any man who had a fief of 3,350,000 bushels would have been tempted to model his behavior on the tyrant Chou—it was no fault of your lordship’s,’ Lord Tadanao merely laughed and was not in the least angry. Of late His Lordship has called into his presence even lowborn peasants and townspeople, and he appears to take great pleasure in listening to their rough and unaffected talk. When people observe his respectful bearing on all occasions, the consideration with which he treats his attendants, and his consta
nt solicitude for the welfare of the ordinary people on his estate, they never cease to wonder that this was the lawless monster who lost his family a province of 3,350,000 bushels….”
THE CAMELLIA
BY Ton Satomi
TRANSLATED BY Edward Seidensticker
Ton Satomi, born in 1888, was early associated with a group of well-to-do young literati who proclaimed themselves rebels against the materialism and pessimism of the naturalists. The leaders of the group espouse a sort of Tolstoian idealism, but their emphasis on the importance of the individual—again as a protest against the naturalists and their leveling impulse—meant that the group had almost as many philosophies as members. Satō himself was something of a heretic from the start. In particular, a richness in the texture of his prose and a preoccupation with the senses set him apart from his more ascetically minded fellows. He later developed what he described as a “philosophy of sincerity,” and his mature works, essentially Confucian in their affirmation of the natural rectitude of man, seem to hold that no act is to be condemned if the whole heart of the actor is in it.
The present story (Tsubaki in Japanese) was first published in 1923, when the author was thirty-five. It illustrates another part of Satomi’s philosophy his belief in the validity of literary values. It was written shortly after the great Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake and its announced purpose was to demonstrate that formal beauty was possible even then. The source of the young women’s hysteria will be clearer if it is remembered that the Japanese have a superstitious fear of the camellia, whose blossoms fall, not petal by petal, but whole, like severed human heads.
SHE was past thirty and still unmarried. She lay facing left, and she was reading a magazine romance by the light of a lamp with a low, scarlet shade. The night was still and cold: there was not a suggestion of wind. One would guess that it was not yet midnight, though the sounds of the last passers-by in the street had faded as the night wore on. The very lack of noise struck the ear with a special sharpness.
As she turned a page, she glanced over at her twenty-year-old niece. Their beds were perhaps six inches apart, and the girl lay facing her. The sleeping face was remarkably beautiful. Only the nose and forehead were visible, clean, above the velvet border of the quilt. The aunt gazed as though she were seeing the face for the first time.
“Aren’t you calm, though.” She wanted to tease the girl, to laugh with her. But the girl was like a thing modeled, so quiet that not even her breathing was audible. The aunt laughed silently. The floor matting, freshly changed just before they had moved in, rustled a little as she shifted her weight, and a wave of warm air rose over her neck and face.
For a time she thought of nothing but the progress of the story. Unfortunately she was not sleepy.
Far away a steam whistle blew a short blast. The night was really too quiet. She could not remember such quiet. She thought of waking the maid and having her move them upstairs so that the three could sleep together. But it would be a nuisance to get up. She went on reading.
The relations of the hero and heroine approached a crisis, and nothing happened. The men were unexciting—she was not likely to remember any of them. Her mind taking in almost nothing, she read on.
Slap.
It was by her pillow. Nothing before and nothing after, only the one sound. Something had fallen on the matting, that much was clear.
What would it be? She could not bring herself to look. Laying the magazine down softly on the bed, she pulled her left hand in and clasped her two hands to her breast. The icy cold of the left hand sank into the other.
Her niece was staring over with narrowed eyes.
“What is it?” The aunt started up. “What is it, Setchan?”
“No!” The girl jumped up quilt and all, and buried her head on her aunt’s knee.
“I asked you to tell me what was the matter. What is it, Setchan?”
Setchan raised her head a little. “Don’t!”
The older woman threw the weight from her knee and resolutely looked beyond the head of the bed. In the alcove, several feet farther away than she would have guessed, a large crimson camellia had fallen. It lay on the matting like a turned-down bowl. They had hated to leave the camellias in their old garden and had had the agent break off an armful, which they had brought with them. The celadon vase in the alcove was full of week-old camellias.
“Behave yourself, Setchan.” There was relief in her voice. The girl too raised herself from the bed.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I’m the one who should be asking that.”
“But you—“
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Didn’t do anything! You screamed at me.”
“The way you stared. And your eyes were half closed.”
“You were already terrified,” said the girl. “You stopped reading and pulled your hand under the quilt. Don’t deny it.”
“You saw me, did you?”
“I thought we had robbers.”
“Don’t be silly. But what woke you up?”
“You called me.”
“I did not. Why should I call you?”
“You didn’t?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then I must have been dreaming.”
“It was a camellia. A camellia fell.”
“Don’t!” Again the girl threw herself on her aunt. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t say such things.”
“Setchan, please. I’m surprised at you.”
“But why do you say such things?”
“What did I say to upset you? Look for yourself.”
“No, no, no.”
“Don’t be foolish, child. One of the camellias fell, and that’s what woke you up.”
“Oh?” At length the girl pulled her face away and looked timidly over her aunt’s shoulder toward the alcove. “Isn’t it awful. Bright red.”
“Red or white, it falls when its time comes. What if it is bright red?”
“It’s repulsive.”
“Suppose you throw it away, then.”
“I can’t. You throw it away.”
“It’s doing no harm. We can leave it till morning.”
“Swollen with blood.”
“Stop it, Setchan.” A frown wrinkled the beautiful eyebrows. The rebuke was in earnest. “You’re talking nonsense. I’m going to sleep.”
She pushed her niece away, turned over, and pulled the quilt up over her face.
“You’re cheating.” The girl lay where the force of the push had left her. Bundled from head to foot in the quilt, she held her breath and listened.
Silence.
She lay still for a time. Finding it hard to breathe, she timidly pulled her head up. Her aunt lay facing left, the quilt as always tight around her shoulders. “Isn’t she nasty!” The girl rolled away. The lampshade sent a violet light into the far corners of the room and planted a seal of death upon the face of the familiar seventeenth-century beauty on the screen.
“How awful.” The girl rolled over again. Her aunt in front of her was laughing convulsively. It was so unlike her—she laughed so little. But now she laughed, the bright quilt pulled hastily over her nose. Her body shook from shoulders to hips, her eyes were closed, she laughed on. At first the girl did not see. Then she saw as in a mirror, and she too was laughing helplessly. She laughed, she laughed. She could not say a word, she only rolled over laughing. The night was dead quiet. They had to control their voices, and the effort made it so much funnier. It was so funny, it was so funny. The more she thought of it the funnier it was. What could she do, it was so funny.
BROTHER AND SISTER
BY Saisei Murō
TRANSLATED BY Edward Seidensticker
Saisei Murō was born in Kanazawa in 1889. He was reared in a temple and largely self-educated. While still in his teens he began writing lyric poetry. In 1909 he moved to Tokyo, where he has lived since. His first career was as a poet: two volumes of verse appeared in 1918 and he was
immediately recognized as a first-rank poet in a school which the Japanese call “anti-naturalist.” The temper of the group was highly romantic, not to say fin-de-siecle.
Meanwhile Saisei was being encouraged by Ryūnosuké Akutagawa and Haruo Satō to write prose. His earliest prose works are in a strongly autobiographical vein, sketches of his boyhood and youth and his early Bohemian years in Tokyo. In their personal lyricism, they sometimes suggest the autobiographical writings of Naoya Shiga, and, as with the latter, one has trouble in accepting the Japanese description of them as fiction. The most famous of Saisei’s early works is a melancholy, sensual description of the years when he was first becoming aware of women and poetry.
The present story (Ani Imoto in Japanese) was first published in 1934, when the author was thirty-five. It marks an abrupt change in Saisei’s writing. Passions once under control now explode, and the manner becomes scandalously realistic, with the characters speaking billingsgate as a matter of course. Since the war Saisei has returned to his earlier, quieter mood—now, however, with a new awareness of the Japanese past.
THE WHOLE YEAR long Akaza lived half naked by the river.
He had a labor gang, and he went down to the river even in winter and worked from the shelter until the Chichibu Mountains were lost in the darkness. There was a stone hearth in the shelter. In cold weather, carp were good in sweet bean soup. In Spring Akaza would cast his net after red-striped dace. Skewered on bamboo splints from the rock-baskets, they would sizzle over the fire. Dace with their bellies swollen with eggs—he would devour bones and all. He seldom shared his catch with the men. If they were so hungry, let them have a try themselves—and he would point at the net with his jaw.
When Akaza’s gang built a jetty, his eye for packing rocks into the baskets had its effect. Even when the river, swollen from the thaws or the early-summer rains, tore at its banks for days on end, his baskets were seldom washed away. Supervising the process from one of the rock-boats, he would order the larger stones thrown in first and smaller stones packed in until there were no empty spaces.
