Modern Japanese Short Stories

by Ivan Morris

  As the years passed, respect for details had become an obsession, and attachment to life a blind clinging; and the health prescriptions left to him had gradually dwindled to the bath and calisthenics.

  The precision one noted in the bath buckets characterized the workings of the house. From the places at the table, to the setting of the tableware, to the arrangement of the bedding, there was nothing that had not had its order preserved for decades.

  When, for unavoidable reasons, a rule had to be broken, X’s uneasiness wrung one’s heart.

  One day I was discussing the marriage problem with Yoshihidé in the garden cottage that was later to be his and his wife’s. There were persistent indications of quarreling out by the kitchen door. Summoned by the old woman as the tension mounted, Yoshihidé was slow in coming back. I slipped on a pair of clogs and went out through the garden for a look. In the narrow passage between the bath and the hedge, X was muttering something and walking back and forth in small, fretful steps, his hands clasped behind his back. His face registered the blackest dejection.

  “But it’s nothing an amateur can do, Father. The heater will have to be changed.” Yoshihidé had his head in the oven.

  “Can’t something be done? Can’t something …?” There was a tremor in the old man’s voice as he stopped behind Yoshihidé.

  The old woman was standing in the kitchen door.

  “It’s exactly as I’ve been telling you,” she said sharply.

  “Will it kill you to go without a bath for a day or two?”

  “Oh, Mr. Iké. Can’t something be done?” The shattered face turned toward me.

  To hide my confusion, I looked into the oven from beside Yoshihidé. The leak was large—that much anyone could see. X had been trying desperately to light a fire in the wet oven, and half-burned bits of paper and wood were scattered about as if to punctuate the long argument.

  Yoshihidé and I quieted him and saw him into the sitting room. After turning on the radio and assuring him that the younger brother would be sent for a plumber, Yoshihidé signaled with his eyes that we should withdraw to the cottage.

  Time after time we heard his father calling to his wife in the kitchen, asking if the boy had come back. When the sound of opening and closing doors stopped, there was a strange silence through the house,

  I do not know how long it was before we heard a shriek from the old woman. “In bed already, and it’s broad daylight. Whoever heard of going to bed without dinner, and you’re no baby or invalid either! I won’t have it! I won’t!”

  I remember the chill that passed over me: X might well be taking to his bed for good.

  As long as order was preserved, life was preserved. Yoshihidé and I at length realized that this philosophy explained the complications in the way of his own marriage.

  When the subject came up, the mother would say: “Whatever is all right with your father is all right with me.”

  And the old man would say, slowly and with great dignity: “We shall give the matter careful consideration, and let you know our decision.” There the matter ended.

  Though I was determined to act with restraint and deliberation, it was not always easy to hide my impatience.

  Then one day: “Mr. Iké, there is something I greatly regret having to tell you.”

  Given the importance of my mission, I was naturally startled by these grave words.

  “In the matter of the plate with which you entrusted me some days ago.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Since you told me you wanted a space left between family name and given name, I searched with considerable diligence for an example in Chinese texts and other materials at my disposal, and it now seems safe to conclude that precedents do not exist. I took responsibility upon myself, and have therefore been casting about for a solution. Now I hive resolved to ask that you release me from the obligation. I must beg your forgiveness. I am truly sorry.”

  He bowed deeply. I could think of no way to apologize for having let such a trivial request cause him such pain.

  “I see. My ignorance is appalling.” I then asked if I might not have him write my name according to the rules, and happiness flooded his face. He would do it immediately—he was most engaging as he turned to his brush and ink.

  A neighbor noticed the plate, which I hung out with slightly mixed feelings. It was the beginning of the war, and neighborhood associations were just being organized. As the praise was lavish, I mentioned the name of the calligrapher. My neighbor, who had a position in a Mitsubishi manufacturing company, said that he knew the gentleman—in fact had heard him speak of calligraphy when they chanced to be together two months before at the wake of a certain scholar. My neighbor was an authority on aeronautics, familiar to all of us as chief engineer for his company. I knew too that he lived between our station and the next.

  “A fine old gentleman in an old-fashioned frock coat. He sat bolt upright half the night. A distant relative of the dead man?”

  “Probably not a relative but a middle-school teacher,” I answered.

  “I think I understand, then. You remember the funeral in front of the station a couple of weeks ago? At the Hakusensha?”

  “I don’t believe I noticed. The laundry, is it?”

  There was a shabby little business district by the station, no more than twenty shops in all. Toward the middle was the laundry, a blue shack probably painted by the owner himself.

  “I came home on the last train and heard chanting. Five or six people from the neighborhood were in for the wake. And there was that same old man, I’m sure it was he, sitting bolt upright in his frock coat. It seemed odd, but I suppose it had something to do with his teaching.”

  I asked Yoshihidé, who frowned and broke in before I had finished.

  “The old man has gone to the funeral of every last friend and acquaintance, near and far, rain and shine. You didn’t know? And now that he’s retired at home he goes to all the wakes in the neighborhood. Old residents call him the funeral man. He never has anything to eat or drink, though. The nickname means that he’s a little odd, not that he’s looking for free meals.”

  * * *

  My friendship for Yoshihidé aside, I was more and more sure that both for Yoshihidé himself and for his family the girl he had chosen was the best he was likely to find.

  The girl and I conspired in a harmless way to have her visit the house. The conspiracy went smoothly, but it did no good whatsoever. Time passed. I became aware of something besides the old man’s irresolution. Though she may not have been conscious of the fact herself, the old woman revealed in her words and acts the maternal jealousy one sees when the moment arrives to decide upon a mate for a son. Yoshihidé had to be stirred to action.

  Yoshihidé’s absolute weapon was not of a violent nature, as I learned after he had used it. With the permission of a young uncle, his mother’s brother, he hid himself for about a week in the uncle’s house and made it appear that he had run away from home. The uncle and I were to solve his problem in his absence. As the uncle put it, there was no need for low comedy. He wanted to teach his sister a lesson, however, and he thought there might in the future be considerable advantage from “rebaptizing” the unworldly mother who would one day have to live with the young couple. And there was Yoshihidé’s own view:

  “It’s because of my father’s attachment to life that he’s getting old in such a hurry. His obsession with fixed routines, his fear of letting anyone new into the house—it all comes from a blind fight to hold on to what he has left of life. Both my parents think a woman is out to steal their son; but as far as the old man is concerned, I’ll really be playing the part of the affectionate son when I put an end to the nonsense for good.”

  Since the “low comedy” on the small stage of the X house made me a trifle uncomfortable, I shall describe only the essentials.

  Yoshihidé disappeared, leaving a farewell letter behind. The next day I visited the silent house. The old woman came hes
itantly to the door. She was most upset.

  “Mr. Iké. Yoshihidé—But come in. Father, Mr. Iké is here.” As she led me down the hall she gave me an emergency report. My own disingenuousness rather repelled me. The uncle had only that morning told me what I have recounted here, and I had come in disguise, so to speak.

  “See? Look at him! He’s completely useless when you need him most.” The old man was sitting bolt upright at his usual place in the parlor. “Ask him what he’s been thinking about since last night, Mr. Iké. He won’t say a word to me. He won’t understand how I feel.”

  X remained silent as I sat before him, though the upper half of his body swayed slightly. He would not usually have been guilty of such laxity.

  “Mr. Iké. Rasselas—” grave words came from him, words for which my ears were not prepared—“Rasselas was too happy and went out to seek unhappiness.”

  It was not only my ears that were unprepared for this remark. Between us was the profile of the old woman, a trace of whiskers apparent on the upper hp. She was looking at her husband in complete bewilderment.

  “Rasselas was too happy and went out to seek unhappiness.”

  His eyes were on the floor. Each word had its own special dignity, just as when he had first made the statement. After a short pause, he began again.

  The wife suddenly turned to me. “Think of it! An oldest son, and not just an adolescent either, leaving two old parents and running away from home. Neither his father nor myself ever did a thing to deserve it.” She spoke as if she could hold herself back no longer. For a moment she was choked with tears. “High school and college—you can’t imagine the sacrifices we made for him.”

  “Rasselas was too happy and went out to seek unhappiness.”

  I do not know which of the two made me the more uncomfortable. Rasselas, Rasselas. Clearly it was the name of a person. Someone in Shakespeare? Horace? Homer? Rasselas, Rasselas. I looked at the ceiling and sought to distract myself with these queries.

  “If he wants to get married, let him get married,” said the old woman. “But why can’t he come out and tell us, like a man? Weak, spineless, that’s what he is.”

  Some one in Roman mythology? That was it. The name had the sound of Roman mythology. A calm satisfaction came over me. But X was speaking again:

  “Rasselas. Rasselas was too happy—“

  “Oh, shut up! What the devil does it matter if Rasselas was happy? Will that foreigner bring Yoshihidé back? You’re useless enough anyway, and you’re worse with Rasselas around. I say he can go to the devil.”

  Even X seemed a little surprised. He looked into his wife’s face, over which tears were again streaming. I was pulled from my meditations.

  “Right, Father? Have I even once objected to this woman he wants to marry? That I have not! I’ve been quietly encouraging him all the time. The trouble is with you—you and your indecision. Mr. Iké knows all about it.”

  The battle is won, I thought.

  X had regained his self-possession. He was looking at the floor, and he seemed about to say something of Rasselas. I knew how to manage him. I put my arm around his shoulders, as Yoshihidé would have done, and spoke into his ear:

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be responsible. I’ll bring him back.”

  He nodded. The movement came to me warmly from his shoulders.

  * * *

  Having received a pretty young lady, the X house became more peaceful than ever. Yoshihidé told me that his father, so attached to fixed routines, took no notice of the cottage in which the young couple lived. All was quiet.

  The old woman seemed to dry and shrivel, but she continued to bustle around the house.

  We knew, as rations from the neighborhood association became smaller, that the war was approaching a crisis. The time came when Yoshihidé and I had as much spending money at the end of a month as at the beginning. There was nothing in the city to buy.

  For six months X had been muttering something about dizzy spells. One day, before spring came, he fell dead of a heart attack. He was seventy-three or seventy-four, I believe. At the wake and the funeral there were probably people from the neighborhood who thought that only the February cold had kept the “funeral man” away.

  The funeral was simple, as the times demanded. Tidying up afterward, Yoshihidé came upon his father’s diary. A diary I call it, but it was in fact a series of brief, cryptic notes, many quite undecipherable, in an old memorandum book. Evidently he had disliked rain. On rainy days the entry was limited to a single word: “Rain.”

  But what most startled Yoshihidé was that there were entries for a full week after his father’s death, written in his father’s hand. Suddenly cold, Yoshihidé glanced over the last pages. He was unable to hold back tears at what he saw:

  February 11. Clear. Two rolls. Sweet.

  February 12. Very clear. By the calendar the cold season is over. Colder than ever. Fish chowder. Rice curry.

  February 13. Very clear. Three pieces of candy. Sweet. A pint of milk. No rations.

  And so forth. I doubt if one can say that X picked too late a day to die. More terrible days were to come before the whole district was finally reduced to ashes.

  When I heard of the diary from Yoshihidé, I thought of one morning late in the previous autumn when I had seen the old man and woman as probably no one else ever saw them. I never told this to Yoshihidé.

  * * *

  In October, my wife had had her first child.

  Several hundred yards from the railway there was a fairly large hatchery; and the times were still such that a regular customer, if he did not mind risking a fruitless walk early in the morning, might every other week or so buy a few eggs. If he was very lucky, he might even go home with several ounces of chicken.

  The appointed morning each week was the morning when life seemed most worth living.

  I left home at about six. It was early November, and already chilly. Though I did think it rather a heavy mist, I did not realize, in the semidarkness, how heavy it was. As the headlight of the earliest train moved slowly past the crossing, I saw that it was a fog such as we had not recently had. I crossed the tracks. I knew the road well, but I felt a childish thrill at each step. Only my head and shoulders floated above the fog. My heart raced at the thought of the hatchery, however, and I did not let the fog delay me.

  I was to be disappointed. A military supply unit had advanced upon the place the day before and taken all the eggs. I had to be satisfied with three that had just been laid, indeed were still warm. Even so, I could hardly call myself unlucky.

  The barracks-like hatchery was dark on the brightest day. Restraining the impulse to rush home and pass the spoils on to my wife, I started for an old chair far back in the dim earth-floored room and filled my pipe with the powdery war-time tobacco. The small eastern window suggested that day had at length come. I bent to look out.

  The fog was hardly a fog any more, though the distant woods were still wrapped in white, and here and there a wisp sped to the west over the open fields. Lights faded and reappeared in the distance, marking the speed of the fog.

  A human form passed from left to right, startlingly close to the window. A hunting cap and stick—it was X. A step or two behind, in the baggy trousers that were standard wear for women in those times, was his dry, shriveled wife.

  Padding about in rubber boots, the owner of the hatchery wiped his hands, opened the wooden door, and came back into the empty building. As the two figures disappeared from the window, he spoke to them at the door.

  “Good morning. Sorry, nothing today. But now that you’re here, suppose you have a raw egg, each of you…. I beg your pardon?”

  I first heard the old woman’s thanks. Wondering whether to speak to them or wait for them to leave, I decided upon the latter course. I felt the eggs still warm in my pocket. As the rubber boots came near again, I walked to the door. I asked about the old couple as I paid for the eggs.

  “That old fellow? He says his ey
es are going bad on him, and he comes in to drink blood when I’ve been killing chickens.”

  I noticed that the cage usually full of chickens for the slaughter was missing. The place was quiet—there was not a single lamenting voice. If I had to see the old couple at the hatchery, I had picked a good day.

  If I left now, I would overtake them, each with an egg; and overtaking them, I would have to speak. I finally turned to the left, choosing a slightly longer route through the cedar grove.

  Among the trees, green with the last of the fog, the cold air washed my shoulders. I thought again of that soliloquy—I had almost forgotten it—and I said twice to myself:

  “Rasselas. Rasselas was too happy and went out to seek unhappiness.”

  * * *

  I am among those who were fortunate enough to return from the war. In the jungles and on the hills I called to Rasselas as to a guardian deity. I have never had the energy to find out who he was.

  THE HATEFUL AGE

  BY Fumio Niwa

  TRANSLATED BY Ivan Morris

  Fumio Niwa was born in 1904 into a family of Buddhist priests. When, on his graduation from Waseda University, he found that he was unable to support himself by literary work, he too joined the priesthood. He continued writing, however, and after 1932 his stories began to gain recognition.

  Niwa’s early works were stories and novels of manners, written mainly in the personal vein that had become usual for Japanese fiction. There was a strong sensualism in his writing, especially in his descriptions of feminine psychology and passion. “Superfluous Flesh” (1934), for example, portrays a young man’s growing interest in his mother’s sensual nature as he observes her relations with a lover. The subject of a mother eloping with her lover recurs in several of Niwa’s novels and is taken from his own childhood experience.

  In his more recent books Niwa has tended toward a form of objective realism and has frequently found his material in current social problems. Many of his postwar works consist of realistic descriptions of customs and circumstances in present-day rural and urban Japan. In particular, he has written a number of stories and novels dealing with the social confusion that followed the surrender of 1945. “The Serpent and the Dove” (1933), for instance, deals with one of the new religious sects that mushroomed in postwar Japan. “The Hateful Age” is a very explicit treatment of one growing social problem in modern Japan.