by Ivan Morris
Yüan Ts‘an ordered one of his attendants to take a brush and record the words of the being in the thicket. Quite clearly Li Chêng’s voice recited thirty-odd poems of elegant style and admirable sentiment. Yet as Yüan Ts‘an listened, the dismal truth dawned on him that his friend could never have achieved his literary ambition, however long he had lived. Though Li Chêng was a writer of skill and erudition, he clearly lacked the spark of genius that alone brings poetry to life.
When Li Chêng had finished reciting his poems, he paused for a while, then continued in the harsh, self-deprecatory tone which Yüan Ts‘an remembered from their student days:
“It really is absurd, but often as I crouch in my cave at night, I dream of my collected poems, beautifully bound, lying on the desk of some scholar in the capital. He picks up the book with an air of respect and begins to read…. How idiotic! Go ahead and laugh! Laugh at the poor fool who aspired to be a poet and instead became a tiger!”
Yüan Ts‘an was far from laughing as he listened to his friend’s bitter voice. He recalled how in the past such an access of self-ridicule had almost always followed Li Chêng’s flights of conceit.
“Yes, I’m a laughingstock,” Li Chêng went on, almost spitting out the words. “And here’s a final poem for you to remember me by. I’ve composed it on the spur of the moment … a poem about a poor fool like me.”
Yüan Ts‘an beckoned to his attendant to continue writing, and Li Chêng recited:
Misfortune followed misfortune
Till at last my mind succumbed;
Raging illness of the spirit then
Reduced me to this hideous form.
Now I dwell in murky caves
While you in golden chariots ride.
Last night I stood upon yon mountain peak
And faced the silver moon.
‘Twas not the dreaded tiger’s roar that
Echoed o’er the hills,
But howls of abject misery.
Meanwhile the fading light of the moon, the dew on the grass, and a cool breeze announced the approach of dawn. Yüan Ts‘an and his attendants had recovered from their first shock at Li Chêng’s metamorphosis. They had come to feel pity rather than fear for the tiger-poet.
“Alas, how tragic a destiny!” they murmured. “With all his knowledge and gifts—to come to this.”
Then Li Chêng’s voice continued:
“Earlier I told you that I ignored the cause of my transformation. And so at first I did. In the past year I have, I think, come to perceive at least a glimmering of the truth.
“In my human days, I retired to my home town, as you know, and shunned the company of men. People thought my behavior arrogant and haughty, not realizing that in large part it sprang from diffidence. I shall not pretend to you that I, the reputed genius of the town, was entirely devoid of pride. But mine was a timid pride—the pride of a coward. Though I had resolved to be a poet, I declined to study under a master or to mix with fellow writers, and this because of cowardly diffidence—because unconsciously I feared that, if I were to associate with other poets, the jewel of genius within me might be revealed as paste.
“At the same time, I hoped and half believed that the jewel was real, and I disdained to mingle with vulgar people whose lives were not spent in literary pursuits. Thus, I cut myself off from the outside world and lived in isolation with my family. More and more I looked down on the common run of men, and financial difficulties only served to increase my scorn for the world of money-makers. But the whole time the fear grew that I was, in truth, far from being a poetic genius. Pride and diffidence—the two battened within me until they became almost my entire being.
“It is said, is it not, that all of us are by nature wild beasts and that our duty as human beings is to become like trainers who hold their animals in check, and even teach them to perform tasks alien to their bestiality. My diffident pride was that of a wild beast and, despite all my intelligence and culture, I was in the end unable to keep it under control. This pride it was that prevented me from becoming a great poet. Well I know that many men with far less talent than mine have achieved poetic fame by humble study of the works of others and by devoted application. Yes, my pride it was that made life for my family a misery and for myself a torment! That raging pride finally turned me into a wild beast in form as well as spirit.
“Now, alas, the time for repentance has run out. My human days are ended and the last vestiges of my humanity will gradually disappear. O the waste! O the pity! Often at night I stand alone on those rocks and howl into the deserted valleys below. Will no one who hears me understand my suffering? The smaller animals hear me and in their lairs they prostrate themselves with fear. The mountains and the trees, the moon and the dew, hear me and marvel at the ferocity of the tiger’s roar. Leaping into the air and throwing myself on the ground, I howl into the night. But no one, nothing, understands the despair that seethes within me. And so indeed it was in my human days….”
Now the darkness had almost lifted. From the distance came the plaintive sound of a hunter’s horn.
“The time has come to part,” said Li Chêng. “The witching hour is close at hand when I shall again become a tiger in mind as well as body. But first let me make one more request. When you return to the north, pray go to my family in Kuolüeh. Say nothing of this meeting, but tell them rather that in the course of your travels you heard of my death. And if they lack for food and shelter, take pity on them, I implore you.”
When Li Chêng had finished speaking, there came the sound of wailing from within the thicket. Deeply moved, Yüan Ts‘an answered that he would comply with his friend’s wishes in every respect. Then Li Chêng’s voice abruptly reverted to its previous hard, self-mocking tone:
“No doubt you are thinking that I should have made this second request before the first. You are quite right. It is precisely because I was the sort of man who was more concerned with having people notice his own feeble poems than with providing for his starving wife and children that I ended up as a wild beast. By the way, may I suggest that on your return trip you take some other road? By then I may well be beyond recognizing old friends and I hate to think that I might tear you to pieces and eat you. In case you might ever have any desire to renew our acquaintanceship, pray halt today when you reach the top of yonder hill and glance back. You can then look at me for the last time, and that will remove any wish to meet me again.”
“I bid you farewell, my dear friend,” said Yüan Ts‘an courteously in the direction of the thicket. With solemn mien he mounted his horse and rode off, followed by his attendants. From behind the shrubs came the sound of harsh sobs.
When the party reached the top of the hill, Yüan Ts‘an looked back at the grove whence they had just come. Suddenly a tiger leaped out of the dense grass onto the road. For a few moments it stood there motionless, then gazed up at the pale white moon and howled thrice. As the last wail echoed through the valley, the tiger jumped back into the underbrush and disappeared from sight.
THE COURTESY CALL
BY Osamu Dazai
TRANSLATED BY Ivan Morris
Osamu Dazai was born in 1909 into a prosperous, well-established landowning family in the north of Japan. He killed himself at the age of thirty-nine by throwing himself into a river in the suburbs of Tokyo. His death caused little surprise. Not only was this his fourth attempt at suicide, but every aspect of his life and work seemed to lead inexorably to his dismal ending.
Dazai started to write in the early 1930s but it was not until after the war that he made his name in literary circles. In his writing (as well as in his death) Dazai was greatly influenced by the pessimistic Weltanschauung of Ryūnosuké Akutagawa. Dazai’s work, however, is far more circumscribed by the personal approach than Akutagawa’s, and it occasionally tends towards a certain monotony as, in page after page, he pours out the agony of his distraught life. This life, as Mr. Seidensticker has written, was “almost a parody on desperate bohemianism: fli
rtations with communism, drunkenness, addiction to drugs, repeated attempts at suicide.”
Dazai’s masterpiece is generally considered to be the novel “Setting Sun” (1947), which in fine, sensitive prose describes the final disintegration of an aristocratic family in postwar Japan. Most of Dazai’s work is marked by a thoroughgoing negative approach; he belonged to the so-called nihilistic school of writers much in vogue after the war at the same time that existentialism was making its mark in Japan. His later stories and novels provide a remarkable record of the spiritual climate in the early postwar years when all traditional values had been shattered and when much of Japan was, quite literally, a waste-land. He enjoyed enormous popularity, especially among the younger generation.
The profound pessimism that permeated Dazai’s writing did not deprive him of a certain sense of humor, and “The Courtesy Call” (Shinyū Kokan) is typical of his more lighthearted stories. The story was first published in 1946, when the author was thirty-five, and is autobiographical, at least in outline. Its interest lies as much in the picture that it reflects of the author himself as in the description of his “old friend.” Beneath its somewhat flippant surface, it is perhaps possible to detect Dazai’s troubled state of mind, which became intensified in the following years and which led to his suicide in 1948.
At the same time, it provides a rather refreshing contrast to the sentimental approach that many Japanese writers tend to adopt when describing members of the working class.
UNTIL THE DAY of my death I shall not forget the man who came to my house that afternoon last September. Although on the surface there may have been nothing very spectacular about his visit, I am convinced that it was a momentous event in my life. For to me this man foretold a new species of humanity. During my years in Tokyo, I had frequented the lowest class of drinking house and mixed with some quite appalling rogues. But this man was in a category all his own: he was far and away the most disagreeable, the most loathsome, person I had ever met; there was not a jot of goodness in him.
After my house in Tokyo was bombed, I moved with my family to a cottage in a remote country district where I had lived as a child and where my brother had recently stood for election. Here it was after lunch one day, as I sat smoking dreamily by myself in the living room, that a tall, corpulent man appeared, dressed in a farmer’s smock.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, when I opened the door. “If it isn’t old Osamu himself!”
I looked at him blankly.
“Come, come,” he said, laughing and showing a set of sharp, white teeth, “don’t say you’ve forgotten me! I’m Hirata, your old friend from primary school.”
From the dim recesses of my memory there emerged some vague recollection of the face. We may indeed have known each other in school, but as for being old friends, I was not so sure.
“Of course I remember you,” I said with a great show of urbanity. “Do come in, Mr. Hirata.”
He removed his clogs and strode into the living room.
“Well, well,” he said loudly, “it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”
“Yes, years and years.”
“Years?” he shouted. “Decades, you mean! It must be over twenty years since I last saw you. I heard some time ago that you’d moved to our village but I’ve been far too busy on the farm to call. By the way, they tell me you’ve become quite a tippler. Spend most of your time at the bottle, eh? Ha, ha, ha!”
I forced a smile and puffed at my cigarette.
“D’you remember how we used to fight at school?” he said, starting on a new tack. “We were always fighting, you and me.”
“Were we really”
“Were we really, indeed!” he said, mimicking my intonation. “Of course we were! I’ve got a scar at the back of my hand to remind me. You gave me this scar.”
He held out his hand for me to examine, but I could see nothing that even vaguely resembled a scar.
“And what about that one on your left shin? You remember where I hit you with a stone. I bet you’ve still got a nasty scar to show for it.”
I did not have the slightest mark on either of my shins. I smiled vaguely and looked at his large face with its shrewd eyes and fleshy lips.
“Well, so much for all that,” he said. “Now I’ll tell you why I’ve come. I want you and me to organize a class reunion. I’ll get together about twenty of the lads and we’ll have ten gallons of saké. It’ll be a read drinking bout. Not such a bad idea, eh?”
“No,” I said dubiously. “But isn’t ten gallons rather a lot?”
“Of course not,” he said. “To have a good time, you want at least eight pints a head.”
“Where are going to buy ten gallons of saké these days?” I said. “One’s lucky to find a single bottle.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I know where I can lay my hands on the stuff. But it’s expensive, you know, even here in the country. That’s where I want you to help out.”
I stood up with a knowing smile. So it was as simple as all that, I thought almost with relief. I went to the back room and returned with a couple of bank notes.
“Here you are,” I said.
“Oh no,” he said. “I didn’t come here today to get money. I came to discuss the class reunion. I wanted to hear your ideas. I wanted to hear you ideas. Besides, I wanted to see my old pal again after all these years…. Anyhow that won’t be nearly enough. We’ll need at least a thousand yen. Yu can put those notes away.”
“Really?” I said, replacing the money in my wallet.
“What about something to drink?” he said all of a sudden.
I looked at him coldly, but he stood his ground.
“Come on,” he said, “you needn’t look as if you’d never heard of the stuff? They tell me you’ve always got a good supply put away. Let’s have a little drink together! Call the missus! She can pour for us.”
“All right,” I said, standing up, “come with me.” From that moment, I was lost.
I led him to the back room, which I used as my study.
“I’m afraid it’s in a bit of mess,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he answered tolerantly. “Scholars’ rooms are always like pigsties. I used to know quite a few of you bookworms in my Tokyo days.”
I glanced at him suspiciously; his “Tokyo days” were, without doubt, another of his figment of his imagination.
“It’s not a bad little room, all the same,” he said. “You’ve got a nice view of the garden, haven’t you? Ah, I see you have some hiiragi holly trees out there. Now tell me: do you know what the word hiiragi comes from?”
“No,” I said.
“Ha, ha! You’re a fine scholar, aren’t you?” he said. “Don’t you really know? Well, I’ll give you a hint. The whole word has a universal meaning and part of the word means something that you bookworms use for scribbling.”
He seemed to be talking gibberish and I began to wonder if he was not mentally deficient. By the end of the afternoon I was to realize how far from deficient he really was.
“Well, have you figured it out?”
“No, I’m afraid not,” I said. “I give up. What’s the answer?”
“I’ll tell you some other time,” he said, smiling self-importantly.
I went to the cupboard and took out a bottle of good whisky, which was about half full.
“I don’t have any saké,” I said. “I hope you won’t mind some whisky.”
“It’ll do,” he said. “But I want your little woman to pour the stuff.”
“I’m sorry but my wife isn’t at home,” I said.
In fact she was in the bedroom, but I was determined to spare her this ordeal. Besides, I felt sure that the farmer would be disappointed in her. He would no doubt expect a smart, sophisticated woman from the city and, although my wife was born and bred in Tokyo, she had about her something rustic, almost gauche.
But the deception did not escape my visitor.
“Of course she�
��s at home,” he said. “Tell her to come and do the pouring.”
I decided simply to ignore his request and, filling a teacup with whisky, handed it to him.
“I’m afraid it’s not quite up to prewar quality,” I said.
He tossed it off at a single draught, smacked his lips loudly and said: “It’s pretty cheap stuff, isn’t it?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s the best I can get…. I wouldn’t drink it down too quickly if I were you,” I added.
“Ha, ha!” he said, putting the cup to his lips. “I can see you don’t know who you’re dealing with. I used to polish off two bottles an evening just by myself. And that was real Suntory whisky, not this watered-down stuff. I shouldn’t think this is more than sixty percent, is it?”
“I really don’t know.”
He took the bottle and poured a cup for me. Then he filled his own cup to the brim.
“The bottle’s almost empty,” he announced.
“Oh, really?” I said, assuming a nonchalance that I was far from feeling. I took another bottle out of the cupboard.
The man continued drinking and as the level of the whisky in the second bottle began to sink, I finally felt anger rise within me. It was not that I was usually jealous about my property. Far from it. Having lost almost all my possessions in the bombings, what was left meant hardly anything to me. But this whisky was an exception. I had obtained it some time before at immense difficulty and expense, and had rationed myself severely, only now and then sipping a small glass after dinner. At the beginning of that afternoon two and a half bottles remained, and I had looked forward to offering some to my friend Mr. Masuji Ibusé when he came to visit, for I knew that he was partial to an occasional glass. When this terrible farmer appeared after lunch, I brought out the whisky, never for a moment dreaming that he would take more than one cup. Now as I watched in impotent fury while he gulped the contents of the second bottle, I almost felt that the whisky was my lifeblood being poured down his insensitive gullet.
