How, I wondered, could you regain a poetical frame of mind at times like this? I came to the conclusion that it could be done, if only you could take your feelings and place them in front of you, and then taking a pace back to give yourself the room to move that a bystander would have, examine them calmly and with complete honesty. The poet has an obligation to conduct a post-mortem on his own corpse and to make public his findings as to any disease he may encounter. There are many ways in which he may do this, but the best, and certainly the most convenient, is to try and compress every single incident which he comes across into the seventeen syllables of a Hokku. Since this is poetry in its handiest and most simple form, it may be readily composed while you are washing your face, or in the lavatory, or on a tram. When I say that it may be readily composed, I do not mean it in any derogatory sense.On the contrary, I think it is a very praiseworthy quality, for it makes it easy for one to become a poet; and to become a poet is one way to achieve supreme enlightenment. No, the simpler it is, the greater its virtue. Let us assume that you are angry: you write about what it is that has made you lose your temper, and immediately it seems that it is someone else's anger that you are considering. Nobody can be angry and write a Hokku at the same time. Likewise, if you are crying, express your tears in seventeen syllables and you feel happy. No sooner are your thoughts down on paper, than all connection between you and the pain which caused you to cry is severed, and your only feeling is one of happiness that you are a man capable of shedding tears.
This was what I had always claimed, and now I was going to try and put my theory into practice. Lying in bed I started to write a series of Hokku about the night's happenings. Since this was to be a serious venture, I lay my sketchbook open next to the pillow so that I could write down the lines as soon as they came to me. I knew that if I did not do this my mind would go off at a tangent, and they would be lost.
Aronia blossoms decked with dew:
Fool would he be who shook the bough.
These were the lines I wrote first. Although when I read them through I did not find them particularly engaging, neither did I find them too unpleasant. I next wrote:
The shadows of a spring night blend and blur,
But there amidst the blossoms I feel sure
A woman stands.
Fox or woman, woman or fox
That figure in the misty moonlight standing?1
I thought that this was rather like comic verse, and even though I had written it myself, I found it amusing. Things were going very nicely I thought, and warming to my subject, I scribbled the following lines as fast as they came into my head.
Not blossoms but the midnight stars of spring she plucks,
And weaves them into garlands for her hair.
She stands, damp hair just washed cascading down her back,
Streaking the clouds on this spring night with beauty.
Spring! And from a shadow comes a voice
Bestowing on the night the gift of song.
The spirit of the aronias that must be
Which on this moonlit night has ventured forth.
The song now flows, now gently ebbs away,
Wandering through the springtime 'neath the moon.
There she stands so utterly alone,
And beaten Spring draws slowly to its close.
As I read these lines through, I became sleepy and began to doze.
Perhaps spellbound is the best word to describe the condition I was in. Nobody can be conscious of himself when he is fast asleep, just as no one can ignore the world around him when he is wide awake. There lies, however, between these two states a strip of no-man's land in which you cannot be said to be awake, since everything is too obscure, yet on the other hand you are not asleep for a small spark of life still remains. It is as though 'awake' and 'asleep' had been poured into the same jar and stirred with the brush of poetry until thoroughly mixed. Imagine the bright colours of Nature shaded off until they almost, but not quite, fade into a dream; or this clear-cut world adrift in a sea of mist. Use the magic hand of sleep to smooth off all the sharp corners from reality, and then set it, thus tempered, gently pulsating. This is the state I mean. In such a condition your soul is just like smoke which, crawling along the ground, seems always on the point of rising into the air but never quite manages to do so. It tries to leave your body, but cannot bear the parting. Again and again it is on the verge of breaking out, but hesitates every time. Always at the last moment it fights to remain an entity, and twines itself about you lest its vast energy should be dissipated. Eventually, however, you feel its grip growing weaker and weaker.
It was while I was wandering in this no-man's-land of semi-consciousness that I heard the door of my room slide open. There in the doorway the phantom-like shape of a woman gradually materialised. I was neither surprised nor alarmed, but felt quite at ease as I lay there looking at her. I say 'looking at', but that is too strong a word, for actually she had slipped behind my closed eyelids. The apparition glided into the room, but I could hear no sound of footfalls on the matted floor. She was like some sprite moving on the surface of the water. Her skin was pale, and she had a wealth of jet-black hair which ran tapering to a point down the nape of her long graceful neck. Since my eyes were half closed, the overall effect was of holding up to the light one of those vignettes which are all the fashion nowadays.
The figure stopped in front of the cupboard. The door opened, and in the darkness I caught a glimpse of white as a pale arm emerged slowly from its sleeve. The door of the cupboard closed again, and the floor of my room, rising and falling in waves, bore the figure back to the doorway. As she passed through, the door slid itself shut behind her. My eyelids became heavier and heavier, and sleep gradually stole over me. I think that the condition I was in must have been very like that of a person who, having died, is in a period of suspension before being reborn into perhaps a cow or a horse.
How long I slept, wandering between man and horse, I do not know, but eventually I was awakened by the sound of a woman laughing. Opening my eyes, I saw that the curtain of night had long since been drawn aside, and the whole world was light again. The glorious spring sunshine had painted a dark lattice-work of bamboo on the shōji. As I looked out at the world through the circular window let into the shōji, it seemed that there was nowhere left for anything eerie to hide itself. My mysterious apparition had presumably returned to the land from which it had come, far far away across the Styx.
I got up, and went down to the bath-room just as I was. I lay back leisurely in the bath for about five minutes, just keeping my face above water, having neither the energy to wash myself, nor to get out. Why, I wondered, had I felt so peculiar last night. It was extraordinary, I thought, that just crossing the boundary from day into night should cause the world to fall into such utter confusion.
I felt very fit, but could not be bothered to dry myself. Still wet, therefore, I walked over to the bath-room door and opened it, thus letting myself in for another shock.
'Good morning. Did you sleep well last night?'
This was said at almost the exact instant that I opened the door. I had not expected to find anybody on the other side of the door, so this greeting, coming suddenly as it did, took me by surprise. Before I had a chance to reply, the person who had just spoken went round behind me.
'There you are, slip this on.' So saying she draped a beautifully soft kimono around me. Gradually I pulled myself together enough to say: 'Er. . . thank you . . . er . . .' I turned round to say this, and as I did so the woman drew back a little.
It has long been an established principle that the novelist must describe the looks of his hero or heroine in the most minute detail. If all the words and phrases which have been employed for this purpose by Western and Oriental writers from classical until modern times were collected together, they might well rival the great Buddhist Sutras in volume. Moreover, were I merely to pick out from this terrifyingly large number of epithets all those wh
ich adequately described the woman who was now standing there a little apart from me, they would make a list I know not how long. She held her body inclined at an angle, and was looking at me contemptuously as though enjoying my discomfort. Never in all my thirty years of life had I ever seen such an expression on anyone's face.
According to artists, the ancient Greek ideal of sculpture was to produce a figure which embodied what may be summed up as 'energy in repose'. That is to say a figure in which vital energy is on the point of being, but has not quite been motivated. The attraction of such a figure never palls, but becomes greater the more you look at it, for you always wonder what this energy would become were it unleashed: a whirlwind perhaps, or thunder and lightning. Thus it is that Greek art has continued to hold a wealth of meaning for generation after generation down through the centuries. Were the figure to move, all the great dignity of mankind which is dormant in the enormous potential force would be expressed. In the course of expressing this, however, the figure would be forced to change to some .other position in which a different set of conditions prevailed. Admittedly every one of these new positions would have its own individual potentiality, but once having moved, the figure could never again return to its original state of harmony. Any new situation would be as ugly as that resulting were a beautiful river to subside suddenly, revealing a bed of mud. It is for this reason that I think that wherever you have motion, you must also have vulgarity. The reason for the failure of Hokusai's comic pictures, and Unkei's statues of the two Nio1 lies in this one word 'motion'. Motion or repose? That is the burning question which governs the fate of us artists. One ought, more or less, to be able to put the qualities of beautiful women through the ages into one or other of these categories.
Looking at this woman's features, however, I felt at a loss, and was unable to decide. She stood there quietly, her mouth set in a thin line, and her eyes darting about restlessly, as though anxious not to miss even the smallest detail. In contrast to the fullness and composure of the lower part of her classically oval face, her forehead was narrow and formed a so-called widow's peak in the centre. Her eyebrows, moreover, almost met together, and twitched fretfully as though there were a drop of mint oil drying between them and causing a cold tingling sensation. Her nose was in perfect proportion, being neither too sharp and flippant, nor too round and dull. It would have made a beautiful picture. Considered separately, each one of her features had a distinct characteristic of its own, but all crowding in upon me in mad confusion as they were, it is no wonder that I felt bewildered.
Picture yourself standing on a piece of solid ground which until now you have always considered to be safe. Suddenly, it starts to buck and heave throwing you this way and that, and there is nothing you can do about it. Realising that such violent movement is unnatural to you, you do your uttermost to regain your former stance. All your efforts, however, are thwarted by the impetus of the original shock-wave which first threw you off balance, and you continue to move against your will. You are just on the point of giving up hope, and of resigning yourself to the fact that you will be forced to keep moving indefinitely. If you can imagine what your expression would be like in such a situation, then you know just how that woman standing before me looked.
Thus it was that behind the look of contempt I could see a desire to cling to someone, and beneath her sneering attitude I caught a glimpse of prudence and good sense. She tried to appear as though if she gave free rein to her wit and high spirits she could handle a hundred men with ease, but in spite of herself she could not contain the gentle compassion which seeped through the hard exterior. There was absolutely no consistency in her expression. She was a person in whom understanding and bewilderment were living together under the same roof and quarrelling. This lack of consistency in her expression was evidence of the conflicting nature of her feelings, which in turn reflected the instability of the life she had lived. Hers was the face of one who is oppressed by misfortune, but is struggling to overcome it. She was undoubtedly a very unhappy woman.
'Thank you.' I repeated the words with a slight bow.
'Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.—Your room has been dusted. Go and have a look. Til come and see you later.'
So saying, she turned lightly on her heel and hurried away along the passage. Her hair was swept up in a high, butterfly-shaped style which revealed her slender white neck.
That black obi she is wearing is probably only faced with satin.
Footnotes
1 A wide sash often knotted intricately at the back.
1 A part of the Zen sect of Buddhism.
1 An island near Tokyo.
1 A light-weight kimono, sometimes used to sleep in.
1 The fox in Japanese legends often assumes human guise.
1 Two mythological strong kings, who were bodyguards to the goddess Kwannon.
I wandered absently back to my room, and saw that, as she had said, it had been tidied and dusted. I still felt a little uneasy about what had happened the night before, and so I had a look in the cupboard just to put my mind at rest. In the lower part there was a small chest of drawers from the top of which trailed part of a printed muslin sash. This suggested that somebody might have come and taken some clothes or something in a hurry. The upper part of the sash disappeared from view into the folds of some delightfully feminine kimono. At the side of the chest was a small pile of books. The top one was Orategama by the Chinese Buddhist priest Haku-un, and under this was a copy of the classic Tales of Ise. Perhaps what I had seen the night before had not been an apparition after all, I thought.
I sat down aimlessly on a cushion in front of the low table which was made of ebony or some such expensive foreign wood. Then it was that my eye chanced to fall on my sketchbook. It looked very impressive lying there open, with a pencil still between the leaves. I wondered how those poems that I had feverishly scribbled down last night would look in the cold light of day.
Aronia blossoms decked with dew:
Fool would he be who shook the bough.
I was surprised to see that beneath this someone had written:
Aronia blossoms decked with dew:
Disturbed as dawn's light perches on the bough.
This had been written in pencil, and was therefore rather difficult to read. The writing looked too firm to be a woman's, and too graceful to be a man's. I looked at my next poem.
The shadows of a spring night blend and blur,
But there beneath die blossoms I feel sure
A woman stands.
Underneath this had been written:
The shadows of a spring night blend and blur
And blossoms and woman are as one.
Fox or woman, woman or fox
That figure in the misty moonlight standing?
This had been amended to:
Lord or lady, lady or lord
That figure in the misty moonlight standing?
Had these been written in an attempt to copy my poems, to improve them, or as an expression of agreement with my taste? Were they foolish, or were they meant to make me feel foolish? I just did not know.
She had said that she would come and see me later, so she might arrive at any minute, or when my meal was brought. Anyway, I thought, when she did come, I would get more idea of why she had written the poems. Thinking of the meal made me wonder what time it was. Looking at my watch I saw that it was after eleven o'clock. I really had had a good sleep. Missing breakfast and just getting up in time for lunch was probably good for my stomach, I reflected.
I slid back the shōji on the right-hand side of my room, and looked out into the garden, trying to determine where the events of the night before, which still haunted me, had actually taken place. I had been right about the tree, it was indeed an aronia, but the garden was larger than I had thought. Peeping out from the thick carpet of green moss, which, they say, is so delightful to walk on barefooted, were five or six stepping stones. Off to the left, a red pine growing among some rocks leaned out ov
er the garden from a steeply rising cliff face. Beyond the aronia was a small thicket, from the centre of which a clump of tall bamboo stems stretched their green lengths up and up, basking in the spring sunshine. My view to the left was interrupted by the ridge of the roof, but nevertheless it was obvious from the general layout of the place, that the ground dipped gently down to the bath-house.
The mountain sloped down to become a hill, and the hill sloped down to a level strip of land about a quarter of a mile in width. This in its turn shelved down into the sea and rose again sharply forty miles away to form the island of Mayajima, which was about fifteen miles in circumference. Such then was the geography of Nakoi. The hot-spring hotel had been closely terraced against the foot of the hill, and its garden extended about half way up, making full use of the rugged scenery. This made it seem that house and hillside were but a single unit; the one complementing the other. There were two storeys at the front, but only one at the back, so sitting on the verandah and dangling my legs over the edge, I was easily able to touch the moss below. I could now see why I had had to go up and down all those flights of stairs, and why I had thought that the house was so strangely planned.
The Three-Cornered World Page 5