Ten Nights' Dreams

by Sōseki Natsume

  3. Kakei: A bamboo water spout placed at the edge of a pond to create a fountain.

  4. Ojii-san: Literally, “grandfather,” but usable in certain circumstances to address unrelated men of an advanced age.

  5. Obi: A sash of thick material worn as part of a traditional Japanese outfit.

  6. Shōji: Wooden-framed paper screens used as sliding doors and room dividers.

  7. Momohiki trousers: Tight work trousers, associated with farmers and other laborers.

  8. Tabi: Traditional Japanese socks dividing the big toe from the others so that zōri and other sandal-like footwear can be worn over them.

  9. Tenugui: A long, narrow hand towel of thin fabric.

  10. Waraji: Sandals made of rough straw rope.

  The Fifth Night

  The Fifth Night

  The fifth dream is a pastiche of imagery from Japan’s ancient and even mythological past. The increasing sophistication of the narrative hints at the ways in which Sōseki will push the boundaries of the dream conceit before the series is over.

  This is what I dreamed.

  Long, long ago, perhaps almost reaching back to the Age of the Gods1, bad luck in battle saw me defeated, captured alive, and dragged before the enemy chieftain.

  In those days, all the men were tall. They also all let their beards grow long. Around their waists they wore leather belts from which they hung swords that looked like clubs. Their bows looked like thick wisteria vines, torn straight from the tree. They did not lacquer or even polish them before use. They were simple and rough in the extreme.

  The enemy chieftain was seated on what looked like an overturned sake pot. He held his bow upright, gripping it square in the middle with his right hand and letting its lowest point rest on the grass below. Looking at his face, I saw that his bushy eyebrows met above his nose. In those days, of course, there was no such thing as a razor.

  As a captive, I was not permitted a stool, so I sat cross-legged on the grass. On my feet I wore long straw boots. Such boots were deeply made back then. Mine came up to my knees when I was standing. The straw around the top had been left partly unwoven so that it hung down like a decorative fringe, rustling with each step.

  The chieftain looked me in the face by the light of the bonfire and asked if I would live or die. It was customary in those days to at least ask this question of all prisoners. To choose life was to surrender, while death indicated refusal to submit. Die, I replied shortly. The chieftain threw aside the bow he was resting on the grass and began to draw the club-like sword that hung at his waist. The bonfire blazed in a gust of wind, sending flames flickering across the blade. I opened my right hand like a maple leaf and raised it, palm out, to just above eye level. This was a sign that meant Wait. The chieftain resheathed his thick sword with a metallic sound.

  Even in those days they knew love. I told the chieftain that I wanted to see the woman I cared for once more before I died. The chieftain said that he would wait until dawn broke and the rooster crowed. I would have to summon the woman to me by then. If she had not arrived by the crow of the rooster, I would be killed before I could see her again.

  Still seated, the chieftain gazed into the bonfire. Down on the grass with big straw boots still crossed, I waited for the woman. The night wore on.

  From time to time I heard the bonfire settle. This would make the flames lick at the chieftain as if thrown off-balance. The chieftain’s eyes would sparkle under his pitch-black eyebrows. Then someone would approach and throw a new armful of branches into the fire. Eventually the fire would begin to crackle. It was a valiant sound, a sound that could turn back the gloom of night.

  Meanwhile, a woman was untying a white horse from the oak tree behind her house. Stroking its mane three times, she leapt lightly onto its back. She rode bareback, with no saddle or stirrups. Her long, white legs kicked the horse’s flank, and it broke at once into a full gallop. Far off in the sky, she could see the faint light of the newly fed bonfire. The horse flew through the darkness towards this light. Its breath erupted from its nose like two pillars of fire as it ran. Still the woman urged it on, kicking its belly again and again with her slim legs. The horse galloped so quickly that the sky rang with the sound of its hooves. The woman’s hair streamed out in the darkness behind her. But still she did not arrive at the bonfire.

  Suddenly, from the side of the road where the darkness was complete, the woman heard the Cock-a-doodle-doo! of a rooster’s crow. She leaned back, pulling sharply on the reins with both hands. The horse’s two front hooves dug into the hard rock below.

  Cock-a-doodle-doo! the rooster crowed again.

  With a small cry of surprise, the woman let the reins go limp. The horse collapsed to its knees and pitched forward, rider and all. A deep crevice had lain just out of sight beneath the rocks.

  The impression the horse’s hooves left on that rock is still there today. It was the trickster Amanojaku2 who had imitated the rooster’s crow. For as long as those hoofmarks remain in the rock, Amanojaku shall be my sworn enemy.

  * * *

  1. Age of the Gods: The traditional name for the era in Japanese mythology before the accession of the first emperor, Jimmu.

  2. Amanojaku: A malicious figure in Japanese folklore who works to thwart and subvert human desires.

  The Sixth Night

  The Sixth Night

  Unkei was an influential Japanese Buddhist sculptor who died in 1223, but the modern narrator of the sixth dream nevertheless finds him at work at Gokoku-ji, a temple in Tokyo that was not established until 1681.

  Hearing that the sculptor Unkei was carving the Two

  Benevolent Kings1 at the main gate of Gokoku-ji, I decided to stroll over and take a look. I arrived to find a large crowd already gathered and vigorously exchanging opinions on the word in progress.

  A large red pine stood about seven or eight yards in front of the gate, trunk stretching towards the distant blue sky at just the right angle to obscure the gate’s tiled roof. The pine’s green foliage and the red lacquered gate contrasted beautifully with each other. The pine was well positioned, too. Rising unobtrusively from the left of the gate, growing broader as it slanted up and across to reach the roof, it had an antiquated air, even putting me in mind of the Kamakura era.2

  But the people watching were all of the Meiji era,3 just as I was. In fact, the larger part of the crowd was rickshaw drivers. No doubt they had grown bored of simply standing around waiting for passengers.

  “Talk about big!”

  “Must be a lot more work than carving a person.”

  As I considered this, another man spoke. “Huh, it’s the Benevolent Kings. They’re still carving the Benevolent Kings? You don’t say! I thought that all the Benevolent Kings were old as the hills.”

  “They do look strong, eh?” a different man said to me. “You know what they say, right? — there’s never been anyone stronger than the Two Benevolent Kings. They say they were even stronger than Yamato-Dake no Mikoto!”4 This man had his kimono tucked up around his waist, and wore no hat. He looked decidedly uneducated.

  Unkei kept his hammer and chisel in motion, utterly ignoring the commentary from his audience. He did not even glance behind him. Perched high above, he stayed hard at work carving out the faces of the Benevolent Kings.

  Balanced on Unkei’s head was something like a small eboshi5. I couldn’t tell what his clothes were made of — perhaps rough, unlined suō6 — but his loose sleeves were tied back to keep them out of the way. The effect was quite archaic. It made for a jarring contrast with his chattering audience. Why, I wondered, was Unkei still alive in the present day? It was a mystery to me, but I did not stop watching.

  Unkei, for his part, remained focused solely on his carving, apparently not finding the situation mysterious or odd in the slightest.

  A young man who had been gazing up at all this turned to me. “That’s Unkei for you!” he said, enrapt. “We’re not even here for him. It’s as if he’s saying, ‘
The only heroes under heaven are the Benevolent Kings and I.’ Just remarkable!”

  Intrigued by what the man had said, I glanced towards him.

  “Just look at how he uses that hammer and chisel,” he continued, without even pausing. “He’s transcended this world entirely — he’s entered the realm of supreme freedom.”

  Unkei was now carving out a bushy pair of eyebrows, about an inch high. No sooner would he bring the blade of his chisel back up than his hammer would come down at an angle to strike it again. A stubby chip fell as each blow rang out, and as I watched an enraged nose emerged from the hard wood, nostrils flared. Unkei showed no hesitation as he wielded the blade. He did not appear to be troubled by even the smallest of doubts.

  “Amazing that he can just throw the chisel around like that and still get the eyebrows and noses to come out the way he wants,” I said, almost to myself, as if too impressed to keep my thoughts inside.

  “Oh, it isn’t the chisel that makes those eyebrows and noses,” the young man said. “Those exact eyebrows and noses are buried in the wood, and he just uses the hammer and chisel to dig them out. It’s just like digging a rock out of the ground — there’s no way to get it wrong.”

  This was a new way to think about sculpture for me. If what the man said was true, I realized, then anyone should be able to do it. Suddenly wanting to try carving some Benevolent Kings of my own, I left the crowd to it and returned home.

  I pulled a chisel and a steel hammer from my toolbox and went out into my back yard. An oak tree had fallen in a storm earlier, and I had had it chopped up into firewood, giving me a pile of pieces of wood of just the right size.

  I chose the largest piece and began to carve vigorously, but unfortunately I did not find the Benevolent Kings inside. Nor, sadly, did I find them in the next piece I chose. Nor the third. One by one, I carved up every piece of firewood in the pile, but the Benevolent Kings were nowhere to be found. Finally I realized that the Benevolent Kings simply were not buried in Meiji trees. With this I more or less understood why Unkei was still alive.

  * * *

  1. Two Benevolent Kings: A fearsome pair who guard the Buddha in the Mahāyāna Buddhist pantheon. Many temple gates in Japan are flanked by carvings of the Two Benevolent Kings, known as Niō in Japanese. The pair carved by Unkei at Tōdai-ji in Nara are particularly well known.

  2. Kamakura era: 1185–1333 CE, the period when Unkei produced his best-known work. (He was born around 1150, in the preceding Heian era.)

  3. Meiji era: 1868–1912 CE. For Sōseki, the present.

  4. Yamato-Dake no Mikoto: Another name for Yamato Takeru, a legendary prince of ancient Japan.

  5. Eboshi: A type of hat common when Unkei was alive but archaic by Meiji times.

  6. Suō: A simple two-piece linen garment with leather ties, also associated with the period in which Unkei lived.

  The Seventh Night

  The Seventh Night

  The seventh dream has long been viewed as a metaphor for Japan in the Meiji era. Many at the time felt that the nation had lost its way in its attempts to modernize, yet had no way of influencing the direction in which things were moving.

  I found myself aboard a great ship.

  Day and night the ship cut its way through the waves, belching endless black smoke as it went. The noise was horrific. But where the ship was headed I did not know. All I saw was the sun, rising from the waves like a red-hot fire iron. It rose until it was directly over the tallest mast and then seemed to simply hang there, but before long it had passed overhead and gone ahead of the great ship. Finally, hissing like a red-hot fire iron, it would sink beneath the waves again. The boat would let out its horrific noise and give chase. But it never caught up.

  Once I caught hold of a crewman. “Is this boat headed west?” I asked him.

  The crewman looked at me for a moment, caution in his face.

  “Why?” he asked finally.

  “Because we seem to be chasing the setting sun.”

  The crewman guffawed and walked away, leaving me where I stood. Then I heard him singing a work song:

  The westering sun, does it end in the east?

  Can this be the truth?

  The east-risen sun, does it hail from the west?

  Can this too be true?

  Tossed on the waves, rudder for a pillow —

  Let it roll, let it roll!

  Heading to the bow, I saw many sailors gathered there to haul in the stout lines.

  I became terribly lonely. I did not know when I would ever stand on dry land again. Nor did I know where we were headed. The only certainties were the black smoke the ship belched and the way it cut through the waves. The waves themselves stretched on and on, a seemingly limitless field of blue. Sometimes they turned purple, too. But around the ship they were always churned pure white with foam. I was terribly lonely. Better to throw myself overboard and die, I thought, than to remain on a ship like this.

  Many others were on board. Most appeared to be foreigners. But there were faces of all kinds. Once, as the ship swayed under a cloudy sky, a woman clung to the handrail, weeping piteously. The handkerchief she wiped her eyes with looked white. But she wore a Western outfit, made of something like chintz. I realized when I saw her that I was not alone in my sadness.

  I was gazing at the stars out on the top deck one evening when a foreigner approached and asked if I knew any astronomy. I was so bored that I wanted to die. Astronomy meant nothing to me. I ignored him. But the foreigner then began to tell me about the seven stars that crowned Taurus. The stars, he went on, the sea, all had been created by God. Finally he asked if I believed in God. I ignored him, eyes turned to the sky.

  Once I entered the salon to see a splendidly dressed young woman facing away from me as she playing the piano. Beside her stood a tall, dashing man, singing alone. His mouth seemed terribly large. But the two of them appeared entirely without interest in anything outside each other. They even seemed to have forgotten that they were on a ship.

  My boredom grew desperate. At last I resolved to die. So, one evening, when no-one was around, I gathered my courage and leapt overboard. Except — the moment my feet left the deck and my link with the ship was severed, I longed to live. I regretted what I had done from the bottom of my heart. But it was too late. I was headed into the sea whether I liked it or not. The ship, however, had apparently been built extraordinarily tall, and so although my body was clear of it, my feet had yet to reach the water. With nothing to catch hold of, though, I drew closer and closer to the sea. I pulled in my legs as much as I could, but still I drew closer. The water was black in color.

  Meanwhile, the ship had moved on, belching the same black smoke as always. I understood for the first time that I would have been better off on board, even if I did not know where it was headed, but I could make no use of that knowledge now, and felt infinite fear and regret as I quietly fell towards the black waves.

  The Eighth Night

  The Eighth Night

  The eighth dream is one of the most cryptic and intricate of the series, dwelling on sight and perspective. Notably, the narrator appears able to see into the other dreams through the windows and mirrors of this one, raising new questions about how the ten dreams might be interrelated.

  Crossing the threshold of to the barber shop, I was greeted by a chorus of Irasshai!1 from several men in white who had been waiting inside.

  I stood in the middle of the square room and looked around. Two of the walls had windows, and mirrors hung on the other two. By my count, there were six mirrors in all.

  I approached one of the mirrors and seated myself before it. A well-stuffed cushion greeted my behind. This was a very comfortably made chair. The mirror reflected my face splendidly. Behind my face I could see a window. I could also see the low wooden slat screen around the raised corner of the room where accounts were kept. There was no-one at the low accounting desk behind the screen. The people in the street outside were visible from th
e waist up as they passed the windows.

  Shōtarō passed by, accompanied by a woman. He was wearing a Panama hat that he must have bought since I saw him last — and the woman, too; when had he made her acquaintance? It was quite beyond me. He seemed most pleased with both of his new finds. As I tried to get a proper look at the woman’s face, they passed out of sight.

  A tofu peddler blowing a trumpet went past. His cheeks swelled as if stung by bees as he held the trumpet to his mouth. They were still swollen as he passed out of sight, which weighed heavily on my mind. It made me feel as if he would stay beestung for the rest of his life.

  A geisha appeared. Her face was not yet powdered white. Her Shimada hairstyle2 sagged at the base, and looked sloppily done overall. Her face still looked half-asleep. Her color was so poor that I almost felt sorry for her. She bowed and greeted someone, but whoever it was did not appear in the mirror.

  Just then a large man in white approached me from behind, scissors and comb in hand, and began examining my hair. Twisting my thin whiskers, I asked him what he thought — could he do anything with it? Without saying a word, the man in white tapped me lightly on the head with the amber comb he held in his hand.

  “Yes, my hair, too; what do you think? Can you do anything with it?” I asked the man in white. He did not reply, but began snipping away with his scissors.

  I watched closely in the mirror, keeping my eyes wide open so as not to miss anything, but with each snip of the scissors a lock of black hair flew towards me, and eventually I lost my nerve and closed my eyes again. Upon which the man in white spoke.

  “Did Sir see the goldfish peddler outside?”

  I did not, I replied. The man in white snipped on, saying nothing more. Just then, someone suddenly cried, ——Look out! My eyes flew open and I saw the wheel of a bicycle framed by the man in white’s arm. I saw a rickshaw’s pole. But then the man in white placed both hands on my head and turned it firmly to the side. I could no longer see the bicycle or the rickshaw at all. The scissors snipped away.