by Osamu Dazai
Kikunosuke laughed a lot even as he grew plump, imparting to the cottage a sense of life that had been missing a year ago. The child had dazzling looks, resembling his mother in this regard. Since the monkey Kichibei would bring autumn grasses from the field and dangle them playfully over the child’s face, husband and wife could go to the garden and dig radishes without having to worry about the child.
As autumn came near once more, the couple felt alive with anticipation. It happened that the neighboring farmer did have some encouraging news for them. So one fine day Oran and Jiroemon went excitedly to see him and inquire more precisely into the matter.
After they had been gone awhile, the monkey Kichibei stood up inside the cottage. From the look on his face, it was evident that he knew it was time for the child’s bath. He did exactly what he remembered having seen Oran do. First, he lit a wood fire under the stove and brought the water to a boil. Then, seeing the bubbles rise, he poured the scalding water into the basin up to the rim. Removing the infant’s clothes, Kichibei looked into his face just as Oran would do, nodded several times, and then—without testing the temperature—plunged him right into the water.
“Waa!” That very moment the infant Kikunosuke ceased to breathe.
Having heard this shrill cry, the alarmed parents looked at one another and hurried back. Kikunosuke lay submerged in the basin while Kichibei fidgeted.
Oran scooped up her child, but he already looked like a boiled lobster. Unable to bear the sight, she merely fell back and let out a wail. Like one gone mad, Oran said that she would give up her own life to see the child’s sweet face one more time. Then she rose and seized this stunned monkey who had murdered her own baby. Though a mere woman, she brandished a piece of firewood over Kichibei’s head, intent on clubbing the monkey to death.
Jiroemon too was overcome with grief, and his tears fell without pause. But in spite of his sorrow, he realized that forgiveness would be better than revenge. So he took the firewood from Oran and tried to reason with her. The child had died, he pointed out, because that was his fate. Her wish to kill the monkey was understandable, but vengeance now would only harm Kikunosuke’s chances for salvation. The child could not return. Besides, he went on, Kichibei had only wanted to help them. Alas, he was only an animal and didn’t know much. It was too late to do anything now. Even as Jiroemon wept and said these things, the monkey shed tears in a corner of the room and brought his palms together in gratitude. Seeing him, the couple became all the more distraught. What sin from an earlier life, they wondered, could have caused this tragedy?
Once Kikunosuke was buried, the couple’s will to live on gradually faded, leaving both of them ill and confined to their beds. The monkey Kichibei diligently nursed them, without even sleeping at night. He didn’t forget Kikunosuke either. Every seventh day after the death, he visited the grave, adorning it on some occasions with flowers plucked by his own hand. A hundred days later, when the couple were feeling somewhat better, Kichibei went dejectedly to the grave and quietly made a water offering. Then, thrusting the point of a bamboo spear into his throat, he took his own life.
Worried over Kichibei’s disappearance, Jiroemon and Oran, each leaning on a cane, hobbled off to the grave. One glance at the pitiful corpse and they understood everything. Their grief was especially poignant, for they now realized how dependent upon the monkey they had become. So they gave him a proper burial in a mound that they built next to the grave of their own child.
And so, Oran and Jiroemon abandoned the world for good ... But, having written that, I’m not sure whether to have them pray to Amida Buddha of the Pure Land or chant the Invocation to the Lotus Sutra. In the original tale, Saikaku says that they chanted “All hail to the Lotus Sutra” incessantly in their cottage and read the Lotus Sutra without end. Tokuzaemon was a stubborn advocate of the Sutra. But, if his bigotry breaks through now, this tale of woe might well collapse. A real bind, if ever there was one. And so, all I can say is that Oran and Jiroemon, depressed at the thought of staying on in the cottage, set out through the autumn grass, their destination uncertain once more.
The Sound
of Hammering
Tokatonton
Dazai wrote this work in the fall of 1946, slightly more than a year after the Japanese surrendered to the Allied forces in World War II. At that time the nation had only begun the task of rebuilding, and extreme physical hardship was a daily fact of life throughout the society. Dazais story, though referring to material deprivation, focuses on such intangible problems as the collapse of will and the lack of purpose afflicting society in the wake of defeat.
The haunting symbol of these problems, indicated in the title of the story, was not the invention of the author. When a young fan wrote him about the sound he was hearing, Dazai recognized the literary potential of the phenomenon. In his reply he asked the permission of his correspondent to use the notion of this sound as a story motif while pledging not to borrow extensively from the letter. As Dazai went on to say, he was eager to evoke the traumatic effect that the war and the surrender had had upon the younger generation.
Disillusioned with his own age group and with the older generation too, Dazai emphasized in several postwar writings (though not in “The Sound of Hammering”) that a New Japan would arise only through the efforts of the young.
“The Sound of Hammering” consists almost exclusively of two letters: the first a long description by a young man addressed to an older writer as a moral authority, the second a brief response from this writer to the youth. The correspondent at first shows how closely he has read the author; in the end, he implicitly asks the writer to live up to his calling by advising him about his dilemma. Whether the writer measures up must be judged in accord with the answer he gives the young man in the coda.
Readers will probably differ as to whether the coda responds to the dilemma or amounts to a confession of failure. The persona of the older author virtually flourishes his biblical quote as a kind of panacea. However, the relevance of the quote is obscure, to say the least, and some readers will probably dismiss it as a mere rhetorical gesture. Given the serious, not to say desperate, tone that the author imparts to the youth’s plea, one expects a serious reply from the author within the story. It could well be that Dazai, with his self-mocking tendency, thought it more in keeping to disappoint such an expectation by denying to himself the role of moral arbiter.
Dear Sir,
Please advise me on a certain matter. I’m twenty-six years old and deeply troubled.
I was born in the Teramachi District of Aomori City. You probably don’t know the little Tomoya flower shop right next to Seikaji temple, but I’m the Tomoya’s second son. I graduated from Aomori High School and went to work in the office of a munitions factory in Yokohama. I worked there three years and then spent four years in the army. When the war ended, I came back home. But our house had been burned down, and my father, along with my older brother and his wife, were living in a shed that had been thrown together on the site. My mother had died during my fourth year of high school.
I might have squeezed into the shed, but that would not have been fair to the others. After talking things over with my father and brother, I took a job at a village post office about five miles up the coast from Aomori City. My mother’s family lives there, and her older brother is the postmaster. More than a year has gone by now, and I feel more trivial with each passing day. That’s why I’m deeply troubled.
I started reading you when I worked at the munitions factory office in Yokohama. I first read a short story in the journal Style, and then I got into the habit of looking around for your books. While reading them, I learned that you had gone to Aomori High School ahead of me and had lived in Mr. Toyota’s house during your school days. When I realized that, I was so excited that my heart nearly burst. If that’s Mr. Toyota the dry-goods dealer, why he lives in the same neighborhood as my family, and I know him well. Actually there are two Toyotas. Old Mr. Toyota is chubb
y, and his first name is Tazaemon. That’s just right for him, since the first syllable is written with the character for “chubby.” His son is also named Tazaemon, except that he’s thin and dapper. I’d rather see him named after some lithe Kabuki actor, Uzaemon for example. But all of the Toyotas are fine people, aren’t they.
It’s a shame that their house was one of those burned down in the last air raid. It seems that even their storehouse was destroyed. When I learned that you had lived in their home, I really thought of asking the younger Mr. Toyota for a letter of introduction. But I only dreamed of paying you a visit. That’s because I’m a coward. When it comes to doing something, I lose my nerve.
Well, after they drafted me, I was sent off to Chiba Prefecture. We were put to work digging fortifications along the coast, and that’s how I spent every day until the end of the war. It was only when I got a half day off now and then that I could go into town and look for your books. I took up my pen countless times to write you a letter. But once I wrote, “Dear Sir,” I was at a loss. As far as you were concerned, I was an utter stranger. And besides, I didn’t have anything particular to write about. I would simply hold the pen in my hand, totally befuddled.
Finally Japan agreed to an unconditional surrender, and I went back home to work in the post office. When I was in Aomori City the other day, I stopped by a bookstore and looked for your works. I found out that the war had uprooted you as well and you were back at your birthplace in Kanagi. When I read that, my heart seemed ready to burst again. All the same I still couldn’t work up the courage to pay you a visit. After considering all sorts of things, I decided to send a letter. This time I’m not at a loss after writing, “Dear Sir.” That’s because this letter has a purpose, a crucial purpose, too.
I would appreciate your advice on a certain matter. To tell the truth, I’m deeply troubled. I’m not the only one, either. Other people seem troubled by the same thing. Advise me for their saké as well. I felt like writing to you over and over—when I worked at the munitions plant, as well as when I served in the army. After waiting all this time, I hardly expected to be writing a letter that sounds so dismal as this one.
We were ordered into formation before the barracks at noon on August 15, 1945, to hear the emperor himself make a statement over the radio. But the static was so bad that hardly a word got through. When the broadcast finally ended, a young lieutenant promptly mounted the reviewing stand.
“You heard it?” he barked. “You see now? Our nation has accepted the Potsdam Declaration and surrendered. But that’s politics—it’s not our business. We’re soldiers, and we’ll keep on fighting till the very end. Then we’ll take our own lives, every one of us. That’s how we’ll make up to His Majesty for this defeat. I’ve been prepared from the beginning, so I want all of you to be ready too. Is that understood? All right, dismissed.”
Removing his glasses, the lieutenant stepped down from the platform, tears streaming down his cheeks as he walked away. I wondered if “solemn” was the word to describe the mood of that moment. As I stood at attention, the surroundings grew dark and misty, and a cold wind blew in from somewhere or other. My body seemed to sink of its own weight into the depths of the earth.
Should I take my own life? To die—I thought that alone was real. A hush had fallen upon the woods opposite the grounds, and the trees seemed like dark lacquer. A flock of small birds rose silently from the treetops and flew off like sesame seeds cast into the sky.
Ah, that’s when it happened. From the barracks behind me came the faint sound of someone driving a nail. Perhaps the biblical phrase describes what I felt then—And the scales fell from my eyes. Both the pathos and glory of military life disappeared in an instant. I felt utterly listless and indifferent, as though I had been released from a spell. I gazed across a sandy field in the summer noon without any feeling whatever.
Thereupon I stuffed my duffel bag to the seams and wandered back home.
That faint and distant sound of hammering was like a miracle, stripping me of every militaristic illusion. Never again would I become intoxicated by that nightmare with its so-called pathos and glory. And yet, that tiny sound must have resonated in my brain. For, ever since that day, I have become like one subject to ugly and bizarre epileptic fits.
Not that I ever become violent. Quite the contrary. Whenever I get excited or inspired over something, that faint sound of hammering arises from nowhere in particular, and I grow quite placid. The scene before me suddenly changes, leaving only a blankness in place of whatever images were present. I simply stare straight ahead, with a feeling of utter stupidity and emptiness.
When I first came to the post office, I thought I’d have enough freedom to work at whatever took my fancy. I decided to write a narrative of some kind and send it to you. During my spare moments in the post office, I worked hard at recording my memories of life in the army. By autumn the manuscript totaled almost a hundred pages, and I promised myself one evening that I would finish it the next day. When my shift at the post office ended, I went to the public bathhouse and soaked myself in the warm water. I was trembling with anticipation over getting to the last chapter that very night. Should I write it up as a grand tragedy in the manner of Eugene Onegin? Or end in the pessimistic mode of Gogol’s The Quarrel? While pondering this question, I looked up at the bare lightbulb hanging from the high ceiling of the bathhouse and heard in the distance the faint sound of hammering. At that moment a ripple arose along the surface, and I became merely another bather splashing about in a corner of the dimly lit pool.
Disheartened, I crawled from the bath and washed the soles of my feet. As I listened to the other bathers talk about rationing, Pushkin and Gogol seemed as uninspiring as the names of several foreign-made toothbrushes. I left the bathhouse, crossed the bridge, and went home. After eating my supper in silence, I went to my own room and thumbed through the nearly hundred pages of manuscript on the desk. It was terrible. So absurd, in fact, that I didn’t even have the strength to tear up the manuscript paper. I use it for tissue now. And, since that day, I haven’t written a line.
My uncle has a small library, and sometimes I would borrow a volume or two of collected stories from the Meiji or Taishō eras. I read purely for pleasure, liking certain stories and not caring for others. On evenings when it snowed, I’d go to bed early. Sometime during these listless days, I looked at a multivolume set on world art. I had once liked the French Impressionists, but this time I was unmoved by their work. Instead I gazed in wonder at the paintings of Ogata Kōrin1 and Ogata Kenzan,2 two Japanese artists of the Genroku period. To me, the azaleas of Kōrin seemed better than the work of any other painter, whether Cezanne, Monet, or Gauguin.
Once again my interest in things revived. Of course, I didn’t have any bold ambitions. I would simply be a village dilettante, not a master artist like Kōrin or Kenzan. As for a job that I could throw myself into—well, sitting from morning to evening at the post office window and counting people’s money was the best I could hope for. And for someone like myself without training or intelligence, this line of work was not degrading. Humility might have its own crown, and devotion to everyday duty could be the noblest life of all.
I was gradually beginning to take pride in my life when the conversion of the yen currency took place. Even in a village post office in the country—indeed, especially in such a place—everyone had to rush about since there were so few of us. We didn’t have a moment’s rest from early in the morning. No matter how tired we got, we had to receive deposits, stamp old currency, and whatever else besides. Aware that now was the time to repay my uncle for taking me in, I worked especially hard. My hands became numb, as if they were encased in steel gloves; after a time they no longer felt like my own.
Working like this, I would sleep through the night like a dead person. And the next morning I’d leap from bed the moment the alarm clock went off by my pillow, hurry to the office, and begin cleaning up. Cleaning was something the women in the off
ice usually did, but my own working pace had so picked up during the hurly-burly of the yen conversion that I rushed to do any sort of chore, no matter what. I kept increasing the pace too—more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today—as though I were half mad.
On the day this uproar over the yen conversion was to end, I rose as usual in the dim, pre-dawn light, frantically cleaned the office, and sat down at my assigned window. As the sun rose, casting its light on my face, I narrowed my sleepy eyes in a mood of utter contentment and recalled the dictum about work being sacred. Then, just as I breathed a sigh of relief, I seemed to hear in the distance the faint sound of hammering. That did it. In an instant everything appeared absurd. I stood up, went back to my room, crawled under the quilt, and fell asleep. When someone called me for breakfast, I refused to get up. I wasn’t feeling well—that’s all I said.
Evidently the office was busier that day than ever. And, with their best worker lying in bed, the others were sorely tested. Nonetheless, I dozed right on through till evening, an act of self-indulgence that increased the debt to my uncle. I simply had no interest in working and slept late the next day too. After I finally got up and sat down absent-mindedly at my place, I let out one yawn after another, leaving the work to the girl at the next window. The following day, too, and the day after as well, I was sluggish and morose. In other words, I had become your typical post office clerk.
“You’re still not feeling well?” my uncle inquired, a faint smile on his face.