Kokoro

by Sōseki Natsume

  Above all, he puzzled me. Why should he have unburdened himself to me out of the blue like that? Why had his passion reached such a pitch that he felt he must confess it to me? And where had his normal self disappeared to? I could find no answers. I knew how strong he was, and how intensely earnest. I was convinced that there was a lot more I needed to know before I could decide on my own attitude. On the other hand, the thought of having anything more to do with him was strangely repugnant. As I strode about the town in a daze, K’s face, as he sat quietly in his room, was constantly before my eyes, while a voice seemed to be telling me that no matter how I walked, he would remain impervious to me. In short, I had begun to feel an almost magical power in him. Perhaps, I even found myself thinking, he had cast an evil spell that would last the rest of my life.

  When at length I came home, exhausted, there was still no sound of life from K’s room.

  CHAPTER 92

  Soon after I returned, I heard a rickshaw approaching. In those days the wheels were not yet lined with rubber, and you could hear the noisy clatter from quite a distance. The vehicle eventually pulled up in front of the gate.

  About thirty minutes later I was summoned for the evening meal. The room next door was still scattered with the bright disorder of the formal visiting kimonos that the two ladies had just taken off. They apologized to us for being late. They had hurried home, Okusan said, to be in time to prepare supper. This thoughtfulness, however, was quite lost on both K and me. At the table my responses were brief and curt, as if begrudging each word. K was even more taciturn. The two ladies were still in fine high spirits from their rare excursion together, so our black mood was starkly evident in contrast.

  Okusan asked me what had happened. I said I wasn’t feeling very well. This was no more than the truth. Then Ojōsan addressed the same question to K. He gave a different reply. He simply said he didn’t feel like talking. Why not? she demanded. On a sudden impulse, I raised my reluctant eyes to his face, curious to know how he would respond. K’s lips were trembling in that way he had. Anyone who did not know him would judge that he was lost for an answer. Ojōsan laughed and said he must be thinking those difficult thoughts of his again. He reddened slightly.

  That evening I went to bed earlier than usual. Concerned at my statement that I was feeling unwell, Okusan arrived around ten with some buckwheat soup. My room was already dark, however. She slid the door open a fraction and peered in, in consternation. As she did so, the lamplight from K’s desk cast a soft diagonal beam into my room. It seemed he was still up. Okusan came in and sat at my pillow, setting the bowl down beside me. “Do have this,” she said. “It will warm you up. You must have caught cold.” Grudgingly I drank the glutinous liquid, while she sat watching.

  I lay in the dark thinking until late in the night. What this amounted to, of course, was fruitlessly going over and over the same problem without arriving at any conclusion. At one point I suddenly wondered what K was doing right then in the room next door. “Hey,” I called out, only half aware of what I was doing. “Hey,” he immediately responded. He was still up. “Haven’t you gone to bed yet?” I asked through the doors. He was just about to, he replied. “What are you doing?” I asked. This time there was no reply. Instead, five or six minutes later, I heard as clearly as if it were happening beside me the rasp of a cupboard being opened and the dull thump of bedding being laid on the floor. “What time is it?” I asked. “Twenty past one,” he replied. Then I heard him softly blow out the flame of his lamp, and blackness and silence fell upon the house.

  As I lay in the dark, my staring eyes only grew clearer. Again without really thinking, I called to K once more. Once more he responded. At length, I brought myself to say I wanted to talk more about what he had told me that morning. “Is it okay to talk now?” I asked. I did not, of course, intend to have this conversation through closed doors. I was just hoping for a simple answer. But although K had responded willingly enough to my earlier calls, he now resisted. “Mm, well,” he muttered softly. Another shock of fear ran through me.

  CHAPTER 93

  K’s evasive response was unmistakably echoed in his attitude the next day and the day after. He showed not the least inclination to broach the subject at issue between us. Granted, he had no opportunity to do so. We could not take our time and discuss things calmly unless both Okusan and Ojōsan had left the house for the day. I knew this perfectly well. Yet it still riled me. I had prepared myself in wait for K to make the next move, but now I changed my mind and decided that I would be the one to speak first if a chance presented itself.

  I was also silently watchful of Okusan and Ojōsan. However, I detected nothing in either of them that was in the least different from usual. If their behavior had not visibly changed since K’s confession, I felt, then he’d clearly confessed himself to me alone. He had yet to broach it with either Ojōsan or her guardian. This thought brought me some small comfort. In that case, I decided, it was better to lie in wait for a moment when I could naturally bring up the subject rather than make it obvious that I was purposely creating one. I would lay the topic aside for the moment and let things be.

  Put this way, the decision sounds terribly simple. But the process I went through to reach it involved surges of thought and emotion, high and low, that swept through my heart like tides. I observed K’s stolid immobility, and imputed various meanings to it. I kept a close watch on all that Okusan and Ojōsan did and spoke, and questioned whether what I saw truly reflected what was in their hearts. Could that delicate and complex instrument that lies in the human breast ever really produce a reading that was absolutely clear and truthful, like a clock’s hands pointing to numbers on its dial? I wondered. In other words, only after a convoluted process of interpreting everything now one way and now another did I finally settle on my decision—although strictly speaking the word settle is singularly inappropriate for my state of mind at the time.

  Lectures began again. On days when our schedule coincided, we set off together, and if it was convenient for us both, we came home together. To an outsider, we would have appeared just as friendly as before. Yet each of us within his heart was most certainly thinking his separate thoughts. One day as we were walking along together, I chose my moment and suddenly took the offensive. I began by asking whether he had made his recent confession only to me or whether he had spoken also to Okusan and Ojōsan. His reply would indicate the approach I should take, I’d decided. He declared that he had not yet spoken of it to anyone else. This privately delighted me, as it confirmed my assumption. I was well aware that he was more daring than I, and that I was no match for his courage. Yet I also had a strange faith that he was telling the truth. Despite his three-year deception of his adoptive family over the matter of school fees, he had never been in the least deceitful with me. I was in fact all the more inclined to trust him on this evidence. Thus, suspicious though I was by nature, I had no reason to doubt his unhesitating answer.

  What did he plan to do about this love? I then asked. Was it simply something he had confessed to me in private, or did he intend to take practical steps to get what he wanted? But now he did not reply. Head down, he strode along in silence. “Don’t hide anything from me,” I said. “Tell me all that’s on your mind.” He declared that he had no need to hide anything—but he made absolutely no attempt to answer my question. I could hardly pause in the street and have the matter out with him then and there. I left it at that.

  CHAPTER 94

  One day I paid a rare visit to the university library. My supervisor had instructed me to check on something related to my field of study for the following week. Settling myself at a corner of one of the large desks, where the sunlight from the nearby window fell across me, I flipped through recently arrived foreign journals. I could not find what I wanted, however, so I had to keep going back to the shelves. Finally I came across the article I was after and set about avidly reading. At this point someone on the other side of the desk softly called my
name. Raising my eyes, I discovered K standing there. He leaned forward over the desk toward me, his face close to mine. It is library etiquette not to disturb nearby readers, so K’s action was perfectly reasonable, but on this occasion it strangely unnerved me.

  “Are you studying?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I have to look something up,” I replied.

  His face still hovered close to mine. In the same low voice he asked if I would come out for a walk.

  Yes, I replied, if he would wait just a little.

  “I’ll wait,” he said, and sank down on the chair directly in front of me.

  This had the effect of distracting me so much that I found it impossible to concentrate anymore. The conviction seized me that he had something up his sleeve and had come to discuss things with me. I was driven to lay down my journal and rise.

  “Finished?” K serenely inquired, seeing me begin to get to my feet.

  “It’s not important,” I answered. I returned the journal, and we left the library together.

  We had no particular destination in mind, so we walked through Tatsuoka-chō to Ikenohata and on into Ueno Park. There K suddenly broached the subject that lay between us. All things considered, it seemed obvious that he had invited me out for a walk for this purpose. But he still showed no evidence of moving toward a plan of action. “What do you think?” he asked. What he wanted to know was how I saw him, knowing the depths of love to which he had succumbed. He was, in other words, seeking a critical evaluation of his present state.

  I could tell from this how unlike his usual self he was. Let me remind you that he had none of that weakness of character that makes most people concerned with what others are thinking. He had the kind of daring and courage that would simply press ahead once he’d decided something. I had all too vivid memories of this characteristic from the time of his family troubles, so the difference in his present behavior was quite clear to me.

  Why was my opinion so important now? I asked him. The fact was, he was ashamed of his weakness, he replied in an unusually dejected voice. He was at a loss, no longer had a clear sense of things, so all he could do was seek a fair assessment from me. I cut in with a question—what did he mean by “at a loss”? He didn’t know whether to proceed or retreat, he explained. I pressed in another step, and asked whether he thought himself capable of retreat, if that was what he decided. Words now failed him. “It’s agony” was all he managed. And indeed he looked racked. If the person at issue had not been Ojōsan, I could have poured such a balm of soothing reassurances upon those poor tortured features. I flatter myself that I was born with a compassionate sympathy for others. Just then, however, I was a different person.

  CHAPTER 95

  I watched K’s every move, vigilant as a man pitting himself against someone trained in a different school of combat. My eyes, my heart, my body, every atom of my being, was focused on him with unwavering intent. In his innocence, K was completely unwary. He was not so much poorly defended as utterly vulnerable. It was as if I could lift from his very hands the map of a fortress that was in his charge and take all the time I wanted to examine it as he watched.

  Now I understood that he had lost his way in a labyrinth between his ideals and reality, I felt with conviction that I could knock him down with a single blow. My eyes fixed on this purpose, I stepped straight into the breach. I grew instantly solemn. It was part of my strategy, but in fact I was tense enough for it to feel perfectly natural, so I was in no position to notice that I was behaving shamefully, even comically.

  I began by tossing back at him the statement “anyone without spiritual aspirations is a fool,” the words he had used against me on our journey around Bōshū I threw them at him in precisely the tone he had used to me then. I didn’t do it vindictively, however. I confess that I had a crueler aim than mere revenge. I wanted with these words to block K’s way to love.

  K had been born into the Pure Land sect, which encourages its priests to marry, but once he reached his teenage years, he developed beliefs that were somewhat different. I am poorly qualified to speak on this, I know, as I lack much understanding of sectarian differences, but I was certainly aware of how he felt about relations between the sexes. K had always loved the expression “spiritual austerity,” which I understood to contain the idea of control over the passions.

  Later I had discovered that those words held a still more rigorous meaning for him. His prime article of faith was the necessity to sacrifice everything in pursuit of “the true Way.” Following the path was not only a question of self-denial and abstinence—even selfless love, beyond the realms of desire, was conceived as a stumbling block. I had often heard him declaim about this in the days when he was self-supporting. I was already in love with Ojōsan back then, so naturally I threw myself into defending the realms of desire. He had looked at me pityingly, with much more contempt than sympathy in his eyes.

  Now, with all that lay between us, the words I had just thrown back at K would certainly have struck home painfully. But as I have said, I was not using them to strike at the philosophy he had so rigorously cultivated. I wanted instead for him to stay true to his old convictions. Whether he attained his spiritual aspirations was beside the point—he could reach enlightenment itself, for all I cared. My single fear was that he would change the direction he had chosen for his life and thereby come into conflict with my own interests. In other words, blatant self-interest lay behind my words.

  “Anyone without spiritual aspirations is a fool,” I repeated, watching to see what effect these words would have on K.

  “A fool,” K responded at length. “I’m a fool.”

  He came to an instantaneous halt and stood rooted to the spot, staring at the ground. This startled me. He seemed to me like a cornered thief who will suddenly turn threatening. Then I realized that he presented no danger; all the power had left his voice. I longed to read his eyes, but they remained averted. Then, slowly, he set off walking once more.

  CHAPTER 96

  I walked along beside him, ready, or perhaps better to say lying in wait, for what he would say next. I felt quite prepared to spring an underhanded attack on him if need be. But I also had the conscience that education had instilled in me. If someone had appeared at my side and whispered “Coward!” I would surely have come to myself with a start. And if that man had been K, I would have blushed before him. But K was far too honest to reproach me, far too pure-hearted, too good. In the blind urgency of the moment, however, I failed to honor this in him. Instead I struck home. I used his own virtue to defeat him.

  After a while K spoke my name and turned to look at me. This time it was I who stopped in my tracks. K halted too. At last I was able to I look him directly in the eye. His superior height forced me to look up at him, but I did so with the heart of a wolf crouching before an innocent lamb.

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” he said. There was a strange grief both in his voice and in the expression in his eyes. I could say nothing in reply. “Please stop,” he said again, pleading now.

  My answer was cruel. I leaped like a wolf upon the lamb’s throat. “I wasn’t the one who brought it up, you know. You began it. If you want to stop, that’s fine by me. But there’s no point in just shutting up. You have to resolve to put a stop to it in your heart as well. What about all those fine principles of yours? Where’s your moral fiber?”

  At these words, his tall frame seemed to shrink and dwindle before my eyes. He was, as I have said, incredibly obstinate and headstrong, yet he was also far too honest to be able to shrug it off if his own inconsistency was forcefully brought home to him. Seeing him cowed, I at last breathed a sigh of relief. Then he said suddenly, “Resolve?” Before I could respond, he went on, “Resolve—well, I’m not without resolve.” He spoke as if to himself, or as if in a trance.

  Our conversation came to a halt, and we turned toward home. It was a fairly warm and windless day, but nevertheless it was winter, and the leafless park f
elt desolate. I turned once to look back at the russet shapes of the frost-burned cedars, their tips neatly aligned against the gloomy sky, and felt the cold sink its teeth into my back. We hurried on in the dusk over Hongō Hill and dipped into the valley below Koishikawa. Only now did I at last feel the beginnings of a glow of warmth inside my overcoat.

  We barely spoke on our way home, though our haste might explain this silence. When we were back and seated at the dinner table, Okusan asked why we had been late. I replied that K had invited me out, and we had gone to Ueno. On such a cold day? said Okusan in surprise. Ojōsan wondered what had taken us there. Nothing, I replied simply, we had just gone for a walk. Always taciturn, K now spoke even less than usual. He failed to make the slightest response to Okusan’s cajolings and Ojōsan’s smiles. He gulped down his food, and retired to his room while I was still at the table.

  CHAPTER 97

  These were the days before “the new awakening” or “the new way of life,” as modern slogans have it. But if K failed to toss away his old self and throw himself into becoming a new man, it was not for want of such concepts. Rather, it was because he could not bear to reject a self and a past that had been so noble and exalted. One might even say that it had been his reason for living. So his failure to rush headlong in pursuit of love must not be read as proof that his love was lukewarm. No matter how fierce was the passion that gripped him, the fact is he was paralyzed, transfixed by the contemplation of his own past. Only something so momentous as to drive from his consciousness all thoughts of before and after could have propelled him forward. And with his eyes fixed on the past, he had no choice but to continue along its trajectory. Also, there was in K a kind of obduracy and power of endurance lacking in modern men. In this respect I was confident that I knew him well.