by Ivan Morris
Niwa, an extremely energetic and prolific author, is constantly experimenting with new methods of expression and approach. His interest in Shinshū Buddhism and in the thought of the founder, Shinran Shōnin, adds depth to many of his writings. Fumio Niwa has one of the largest followings of the writers who started their work in the early Shōwa period.
“The Hateful Age” (Iyagarase no Nenrei) was first published in 1947, when the author was forty-three. It is an attack (almost unprecedented in Japan) on one facet of the family system. In this story, Fumio Niwa has criticized the traditional Japanese veneration for old people, and for longevity in general, which he considers to be both anachronistic and harmful. With the percentage of octogenarians in Japan increasing at a rapid rate (from 4.5 percent in 1950 to an estimated 10.8 percent in 1980), the story is, to say the least, topical. It has attracted considerable attention since its publication and the expression “the hateful age” has even passed into current usage.
Although this story is concerned specifically with conditions in postwar Japan, the general problem which it describes is, of course, far from unknown in the West. Apart from its sociologic interest, “The Hateful Age” gives an unusually penetrating picture of senility in its physical and psychological aspects.
With the permission of the author, certain cuts have been made in the present translation.
I
AT NIGHT, if anyone walked along the creaking passage to the toilet, he would invariably be startled by a voice from the darkness: “Who’s there?” It was not the eager voice of someone longing to establish a human contact in the lonely night; nor was it the surprised voice of a person suddenly shaken from sleep. No, it was a cool, wide-awake voice and one could tell that its owner had not slept a wink all night. They all knew that the voice was old Umé’s, and yet they could not help feeling a wave of revulsion.
The passer-by would identify himself—“It’s I, Granny”—and that normally was the end of the exchange. Umé’s granddaughters Senko and Ruriko had adapted themselves to this nightly ritual; their replies had become mere reflex actions. But in the case of Senko’s husband, Itami, things did not always go so smoothly.
One night as footsteps sounded along the passage and Umé called out her usual challenge, an irritated voice shot back: “It’s I—Itami. What do you want?”
Old Umé had expected no more than a word of identification, her question having been as automatic a reaction to footsteps as the creaking of the floor boards in the passage. Now in the darkness of her tiny room she sat up in bed, somewhat taken aback.
“All right, Granny,” repeated Itami, “tell me what you want.” Still no reply. There was, in fact, nothing for Umé to say. “It’s intolerable!” cried Itami, growing angry. “Whose house do you think this is? It’s my house, let me tell you, and I don’t have to give an accounting if I want to go to the toilet at night. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? You sleep all day long like a dead person, and then at night you stay awake spying on us. It gives me the creeps to think of you sitting there with your goggle-eyes listening to us breathing while we’re peacefully asleep. Why can’t you behave yourself like other old women?”
By this time the whole household was awake. The neighbors, whose house was separated only by a board partition, had also been disturbed by the angry shouts.
Itami strode back to his room, breathing heavily. His wife had turned on the light and was sitting up in bed.
“What’s Granny done now?” she said.
“I’m fed up,” shouted Itami. “Fed up! I don’t even feel I’m in my own house any longer. Why on earth should I have to get that old hag’s permission every time I go to the toilet?”
“Of course you don’t have to get permission,” said Senko in a conciliatory voice. “Granny just calls out like that automatically whenever she hears footsteps. I suppose she gets bored lying awake all night. So she says ‘Who’s there?’ to break the monotony.”
“Well, you’re her granddaughter,” said Itami, pacing up and down the room, “so I suppose you can make allowances for her. To me she’s just a hateful old woman. And an old hypocrite too. When people are watching, she pretends she’s half crippled, and totters about groaning as if every step were pure torture. But when she thinks no one’s looking, she walks along briskly enough. Then she’s got this delightful habit of stealing. The moment we’re out of our room, she rushes in, opens the drawers and helps herself to whatever she happens to find. I’m a pretty broad-minded fellow but I really don’t see why I should have to support a thief in the house.”
“But, Itami, you’ve got to remember she’s eighty-six years old. She really doesn’t know what she’s doing half the time.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I caught her taking money out of my wallet yesterday. All I know is that in that little body of hers the spite and hypocrisy and dishonesty of eighty-six years have coagulated into a solid core of wickedness. If she needs money, why on earth can’t she tell me? What I can’t stand is to have her stealing behind my back.”
Itami sat down on the bed. His face was livid.
“That old woman is a real cancer. She’s destroying our whole family. Your sister Sachiko and her husband shoved her on to us after their house was bombed and they moved to the country. They said they didn’t have enough room, but of course the long and short of it is that they couldn’t stand her any longer. So now you and your sister quarrel whenever you meet. She’s a regular disease, that old woman.”
“Oh come now, Itami,” said Senko, “don’t exaggerate.”
“I only wish I were exaggerating. No, there’s only one thing for us to do: get rid of her before she destroys us. If she starves on the streets—well, that’s too bad. People who don’t work and spend their time eating and being a nuisance don’t deserve to live these days. In any case, she can’t stay here any longer!”
“But if you throw her out, she’ll simply go to the police and give our name and they’ll bring her right back. There’s no point trying to put her into an institution either; nowadays they only take people who have no families to look after them. It’s not as easy as all that to get rid of her, you know.”
“And don’t think she doesn’t realize it. She’s a shrewd old thing and she knows that someone in the family is going to take care of her, no matter what she does. Well, it isn’t going to be me any more! The greedy, ungrateful, dirty old pig! ‘I want more rice, I want more rice!’—I can just hear her whining away at table. The other day I heard her say that we were trying to starve her and that she was going to get even with us by putting a curse on us all. ‘My curses never fail,’ she said. ‘When I curse people, they die!’”
“She said that?” said Senko, sitting up abruptly. “Well, this time she’s gone too far—even for me. I spend half my time looking after her and then I get cursed for my pains. We’ve done our duty for three months. Now Sachiko and her husband can take over again.”
“Excellent,” said Itami. “I’m glad you see things my way. There’s no reason they should get out of their responsibilities, just because they’ve moved into the country. Your trouble, Senko, is that you’re too kind to people.”
With this comforting thought in mind, Senko began to make preparations the very next morning to transfer old Umé to her sister’s place in the mountains. The practical problem of getting her senile grandmother to an unknown village hundreds of miles away was far from simple. Certainly the old woman never could have managed the trip by herself, even assuming that she had been willing to try. If only one could hang a label around her neck and hand her to the postman for delivery!
Yes, thought Senko, Granny was just like some sort of a disease, visited permanently on the family, and now afflicting the third generation. Umé had outlived not only her husband, but her daughter as well. Now Senko and Sachiko, the two older granddaughters, were saddled with the care of someone who should have died years ago. As Senko thought of her comfortable existence with Itami menaced by that malici
ous old woman, she began to grow very sorry for herself. They had had luck, Itami and she: luck in that their house was not bombed to smithereens like that of Sachiko and her husband; luck in that absence of children allowed them living space enjoyed by few of their compatriots; luck in that they could still afford the luxury of a maid. But now their good luck was about to run out because she could think of no way of transferring her grandmother to Sachiko.
Finally she hit on a solution which satisfied the demands both of practicality and of social convention. Ruriko, her younger sister, was the answer. Yes, Ruriko, it seemed to Senko, had been put into the world for the express purpose of fulfilling this delicate mission. As the old woman was incapable of walking more than a few yards, Ruriko, a strapping girl of twenty, would carry her up the mountain road on her back. After all, old Umé weighed little more than a sack of charcoal. True, it would be a bit embarrassing for the girl to be seen walking along with a dirty old crone perched on her shoulders, but a desperate situation called for desperate measures.
“You’ve always taken a lot of trouble over Granny,” said Senko to Ruriko that same morning. “Surely you won’t mind doing this last thing for her. After all, we do give you a nice home here, don’t we? You don’t want it all to be ruined.”
After much cajoling, abetted by sisterly authority, Senko prevailed on Ruriko to undertake the task.
II
And now came the morning of departure. Old Umé sat in the kitchen, seemingly unaware that a major change was impending. Senko and Ruriko busied themselves packing a bundle of their grandmother’s clothes and her other scanty possessions.
“All right,” said Senko, when they had finished, “we can start strapping her on now. Don’t worry, Ruriko,” she added, noticing her sister’s accusing expression. “It’ll all be ancient history by this evening. Remember, whatever Sachiko and Minobé say, you must leave her there. If they get angry with us—well, it can’t be helped. They passed her on to us on the pretext of having lost their house. Well, that excuse is beginning to wear thin. Itami and I stayed here in Tokyo right through the war at the risk of our lives and managed to save our house from incendiary bombs. We didn’t do it just to be saddled with Granny for the rest of our days.”
Meanwhile old Umé sat with a blank look on her wrinkled face. Impossible to tell how much of this conversation she had heard or absorbed.
“Just look at her!” said Senko with disgust. “She hasn’t even bothered to thank us for all the trouble we’ve taken over her. Itami’s right. She really is a cancer. All she can do is destroy things.”
“It’s time to go,” said Ruriko, standing up. Senko lifted Umé and strapped her to her sister’s back.
“Well, here are the tickets,” she said. “They’re our parting gift to Granny.”
As Ruriko trudged toward the station, she soon realized that though Granny weighed no more than a child, her body with its long legs and relatively short trunk was very much harder to carry. The thin lanky legs were clamped like a painful brace around Ruriko’s waist, and by the time they approached the station, walking had become an agony. The ordeal was not only physical. In carrying someone eighty-six years old, one is supporting not just a body, but all the weight of a personal history that has accumulated ponderously over the decades.
The compartment was crowded, but one of the passengers, seeing Ruriko enter with her peculiar burden, offered his seat. Directly opposite her was a woman in her thirties, also accompanied by an old lady. Soon after the train started she addressed Ruriko:
“Excuse me, but where are you taking yours?”
“I’m leaving her at my sister’s place in the country.”
“Well, we seem to be in the same boat.” said the woman, with a sigh. She and Ruriko exchanged the bitter smiles of people who share some painful illness. “How old is she?” the other woman asked.
“Eighty-six.”
“Mine’s eighty.” She glanced about the carriage and went on in a lower voice. “Why on earth do they live on to be eighty? I just can’t make it out. They live on and on and on, until they’re of no use to anyone—until even they themselves are fed up with living. All that mine cares about nowadays is food, and she can’t get it into her head that rice is rationed. She’s always accusing us of being mean to her, even though she gets her full ration.”
“Mine’s the same,” said Ruriko. “She’s got the appetite of two normal people. I really don’t know how she can eat so much, just sitting still all day.”
“They’re rice-eating spooks!” said the woman, with venom. “Just rice-eating spooks!”
Meanwhile the two “spooks” sat gazing vacantly out of the window at the changing scenery, evidently unaware that they were being discussed. The other passengers had overheard the conversation and were staring with undissembled curiosity at the two old women. From their expressions it was clear that they did not feel they were looking at human beings at all but rather at some strange species of superannuated plant or animal.
Apparently it did not occur to them that they all shared a common destiny with these old women, that unless their lives should be cut short by illness or accident, they too were condemned to become nothing but troublesome baggage carted along by their resentful families. With a little more imagination they might have regarded these two octogenarians not as members of some grotesque genus but as living warnings that they themselves would become old and useless, bereft of all joy of living and with only death to look forward to—yet still requiring three good meals a day. For some reason, the onlookers seemed to assume that they alone were immune to the scourge of senility.
After several uneventful hours, the train arrived at its destination. Gathering her courage, Ruriko set off on the four-mile trip to the farm where her sister and brother-in-law had made their home since leaving Tokyo. Soon she found herself on a rough country road which wound its way steeply over the hills; after less than a mile, her whole body was perspiring and her breath came in painful gasps. She set her teeth and trudged doggedly on. Abruptly she was startled by her grandmother’s croaky voice.
“Oh, my legs hurt! Put me down by the road, child. I’ve got to rest a while.”
“What’s that?” said Ruriko. “I’m the one that needs a rest, not you. But I’m not stopping now till we get there.”
“It hurts all over,” said Umé. “My legs feel as if they’re being torn right off. The straps are eating into my armpits.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ruriko, panting as she trudged up the hill, “but it’s your own fault. If you hadn’t threatened to put a curse on the family, you’d still be living comfortably in Tokyo with Senko. And I wouldn’t be going through this agony.”
“It hurts … it hurts!”
“Oh, stop it!” said Ruriko, giving her back such a shake that they both almost fell over in the dust.
It was a cold winter’s afternoon, but Ruriko was unaware of the temperature; her face was flushed and beaded with perspiration. A man passed in the opposite direction and gaped at the girl.
“Let me down, for mercy’s sake!” cried Umé. “My legs hurt so terribly. I beg you—dear little Ruriko, please let me down just for a minute.”
“You needn’t think you can get round me with that honeyed voice,” said Ruriko. “You always speak like that when you want something.”
They had reached the top of the hill now. Ruriko could see the rice fields, hills, and forests spread out under a lambent sky; she breathed in the clear country air. How she could have enjoyed it all had she not been saddled with an eighty-six-year-old crone!
“Put me down! Put me down! I’m dying, I tell you!”
Ruriko walked steadily on, paying no attention to her grandmother’s desperate cries, which reached a crescendo as a man approached from the opposite direction. “Help, help! I’m dying!” she screamed at him. The man stopped, nonplussed by the hysterical voice and by the extraordinary apparition of an old woman riding on a girl’s back far out in the country.
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Ruriko looked at him with a wry smile. “Really, Granny, you must try and be patient,” she said. “We aren’t nearly there yet.”
The man grinned sympathetically and continued on his way. Old Umé’s first maneuver had failed, but she had evidently sensed a certain open kindliness among these countryfolk and the next time someone passed, she uttered her appeal with redoubled vigor. “Help! I’m dying! I’m being murdered! Help me, sir!”
Again the man stopped and again Ruriko had to smile reassuringly. After this had happened three or four times, she felt that her face was fixed into a sort of grimace.
“All right, Granny,” said Ruriko, stopping suddenly. “I’ll let you down, if that’s what you really want. But don’t think I’m going to pick you up again. I’m through!”
She unfastened the straps and roughly put Umé down by the side of the road. When the old woman tried to get to her feet, she promptly lost her balance and fell headlong into the ditch; though she struggled to raise herself, her arms were too weak to be of any use. The road was at an incline and Umé’s head was pointing downward. She lay there at last without moving, as helpless as a trussed chicken. Her body was covered with mud and a dirty stream of water trickled over her; the blood oozed from her cheek and forehead, where she had grazed herself.
Ruriko stood by the road wiping the perspiration from her face; then she put a handkerchief under her dress and wiped her arms and breasts. The hair above her forehead was drenched, as if she had been caught in a rainstorm.
After a few minutes, Umé began to wriggle about in the ditch. She lacked the energy to call for help and her movements were so uncoordinated that she could not possibly sit up, let alone crawl onto the road. One of her legs stuck out at an odd angle, looking like an emaciated arm—and, indeed, for old Umé, the distinction between arms and legs seemed little more than academic. Her body had attained that peculiar thinness which denotes not starvation but a state in which food can no longer nourish the flesh and muscles. If one were to pinch her leg, the mark would remain for several minutes, and if one pulled the flesh on her arm, it would remain folded over, flaccid and inert.
