Time passed, and my wife’s mother became ill. The doctor who examined her told us it was incurable. I nursed her devotedly, both for her own sake and for the sake of the wife I loved. In larger terms, however, I did so also for the sake of humanity itself. I had long felt an urgent need to act in some way, but I remained at an impasse, sitting idle as the years passed. Isolated as I was from the human world, I felt for the first time that I was doing something of real worth. I was sustained by what I can only describe as a sense of atonement for past sin.
In due course my wife’s mother died, leaving my wife and me alone together. I was all she had left in life to trust and depend on, she said to me. At these words, tears filled my eyes to think that she had to trust someone who had forfeited all trust in himself. Poor thing, I thought, and I even said as much to her. “Why?” she asked, uncomprehending. But I could not explain. She cried then. “You’re always so cynical and watchful of me,” she said bitterly. “That’s why you say such things.”
After her mother’s death, I did my best to be kind and gentle to her, and not simply because I loved her. No, behind my solicitous attention lay something larger, something that transcended the individual. My heart was stirring, just as it had when I nursed her mother. This change seemed to make her happy. Yet behind her happiness I sensed a vague uneasiness that sprang from puzzlement. Even if she had understood, however, she would hardly have felt reassured. It seems to me that women are more inclined than men to respond to the sort of kindness that focuses exclusively on themselves, even if it is morally questionable from a stricter perspective, and that they are less able to fully appreciate the kind of love that derives from the larger claims of humanity.
Once she wondered aloud to me whether a man’s heart and a woman’s could ever really become one. I replied evasively that they probably can when you are young. She seemed then to be gazing back at her own past, and at length she gave a tiny sigh.
From around this time, a horrible darkness would occasionally grip me. At first the force that would suddenly overwhelm me seemed external, but as time went by, my heart began to stir of its own accord in response to this fearful shadow. In the end I came to feel that it was no external thing but something secretly nurtured all along deep within my own breast. Whenever the sensation came upon me, I questioned my own sanity. But I had no inclination to consult a doctor, or anybody else for that matter.
What this feeling produced was, quite simply, a keen awareness of the nature of human sin. That is what sent me back each month to K’s grave. It is also what lay behind the nursing of my dying mother-in-law, and what bade me treat my wife so tenderly. There were even times when I longed for some stranger to come along and flog me as I deserved. At some stage this feeling transformed into a conviction that it should be I who hurt myself. And then the thought struck me that I should not just hurt myself but kill myself. At all events, I resolved that I must live my life as if I were already dead.
How many years has it been since I made that decision? My wife and I have lived in peace together all that time. We have in no way been unhappy, quite the opposite. But this one thing in me, this thing that for me is so vital, has always been for my wife a place of incomprehensible darkness. The thought fills me with pity for her.
CHAPTER 109
Though I had resolved to live as if I were dead, some external stimulus would occasionally set my heart dancing. But the moment I felt the urge to break through my deathly impasse and act, a terrible force would rise up out of nowhere and press me fiercely back into immobility. A voice would bear down on me with the words You have no right, and I would instantly wilt and go limp. When a little later I tried to rise again, again this force would press me back. I ground my teeth in impotent rage. “Why do you stand in my way like this?” I would cry. The strange force would laugh coldly back at me and reply, You know very well why. And again my will would collapse.
You must understand that during all these long years of seemingly uneventful and monotonous peace, this grueling battle has been raging endlessly inside me. If my wife was vexed by my state, I was far, far more mortified by it myself. Eventually, when I could no longer bear to be immobilized inside this prison, and all my desperate attempts to break its bars proved futile, I began to feel that my easiest option really was suicide. “But why?” I hear you ask in astonished disbelief. The fact is, this strange and terrifying force within me had paralyzed my heart with its iron grip, blocking every exit route bar one—the way to death alone lay open and free for the taking. If I were to break this deadlock and move in any way, my steps could only carry me down that path.
Two or three times before now I have been poised to set off along the road to death that my destiny has laid before me so beguilingly. But each time my wife held my heart back. Needless to say, I have not had the courage to take her with me—I have been too cowardly even to confess my story to her, heaven knows, and the merest thought of inflicting double suicide on her and making her a cruel sacrifice to my own fate filled me with horror. My karma is my own, after all, and hers is hers. To cast our two lives into the flames together would not only be against nature, it would break the heart.
And yet it filled me with pity to think of her alone after I was gone. Those words she had spoken after her mother’s death—that I was all she had left in life to trust and depend on—were seared into my breast. I hung in a constant state of indecision. Sometimes, seeing her face, I felt glad that I had not acted. Then I would quail and cower again. From time to time she would turn on me a look that bespoke sorrowing disappointment.
Remember, this is how my life has been lived. My state of mind was much the same the day we first met at Kamakura and that day we walked together beyond the town. A black shadow was constantly at my back. I was dragging out my life on this earth for the sake of my wife. That evening after you graduated was no different. I meant it when I promised to meet you again come September. I fully intended to see you once more. Autumn ended, winter came, and even as spring drew in, I was still looking forward to our next meeting.
And then, at the height of the summer, Emperor Meiji passed away.1 I felt then that as the spirit of the Meiji era had begun with him, so it had ended with his death. I was struck with an overwhelming sense that my generation, we who had felt Meiji’s influence most deeply, were doomed to linger on simply as anachronisms as long as we remained alive. When I said this in so many words to my wife, she laughed it off. But then for some reason she added teasingly, “Well, then, you could follow the old style and die with your lord, couldn’t you.”
CHAPTER 110
I had almost forgotten the expression “to die with your lord.” It’s not a phrase that is used in normal life these days. It must have lain there deep in my memory all these years, decaying slowly. Reminded of it by my wife’s jest, I replied that if I were to die a loyal follower’s death, the lord I was following to the grave would be the spirit of the Meiji era itself. I was joking too, of course, but as I spoke it seemed to me that this old, disused expression had somehow gained a new meaning.
About a month passed. On the night of the cremation, I sat as usual in my study. As the imperial coffin emerged from the palace, I heard the boom of the funeral cannon. To me it sounded the Meiji era’s end. Later I read in the newspaper that it also signaled the end of General Nogi.1 When my eyes fell on this news, I seized the paper and waved it at my wife. “He died with his lord!” I found myself exclaiming.
There I read the letter that the general had written before he died. He had been longing all this time, he wrote, to die in expiation for his failure in the Satsuma Rebellion.2 I paused to count on my fingers the years he must have lived with this resolution in his heart. Thirty-five years had passed since the Satsuma Rebellion. By his own account, General Nogi had spent those thirty-five long years yearning to die without finding the moment to do so. Which had been more excruciating for him, I wondered—those thirty-five years of life, or the moment when he thrust the sword
into his belly?
Two or three days later I finally decided to kill myself. I would guess that my reasons will be as hard for you to fully grasp as I found General Nogi’s reasons to be. If so, it must simply be put down to the different eras we belong to, I think. Or perhaps, after all, our differences spring from the individual natures we were born with. At any rate, I have done my best in these pages to explain to you my own strange nature.
I will be leaving my wife behind, but fortunately she will not want for the necessities of life. I do not want her to witness any horror. I intend to die in such a way that she will not have to see blood. I will leave the world quietly, without her knowing. I would like to have her believe that I died instantaneously. I would be content if she decided I had gone mad.
It is now ten days since I decided to die. You should know that I have spent most of that time writing this long memoir to leave for you. I was planning to see you again and tell you all this in person, but having written it, I am now glad I chose this method, since it has allowed me to describe myself more clearly to you. I have not written from mere personal whim. My past, which made me what I am, is an aspect of human experience that only I can describe. My effort to write as honestly as possible will not be in vain, I feel, since it will help both you and others who read it to understand humanity better. Just recently, I heard that Watanabe Kazan chose to postpone his suicide for a week while he painted Kantan.3 Some will find this decision ridiculous, but no doubt his heart had its own reasons that made it imperative for him. This labor of mine is not simply a way of fulfilling my promise to you. It is for the greater part the result of a need I have felt within myself.
But now I have answered that need. There is nothing left for me to do. When this letter reaches your hands, I will no longer be in this world. I will be long dead. Ten days ago my wife went to her aunt’s place over in Ichigaya. Her aunt was ill and help was short, so I urged her to go. I wrote most of this long letter while she was absent. I hastily hid it whenever she returned to the house.
My aim has been to present both the good and bad in my life, for others to learn from. I must make clear to you, however, that my wife is the sole exception. I want her told nothing. My one request is that her memory of my life be preserved as untarnished as possible. While she remains alive, I therefore ask that you keep all this to yourself, a secret intended for your eyes alone.
Notes
CHAPTER 1
1 Kamakura: This former capital of Japan had recently established itself as a summer resort convenient to Tokyo, where visitors could indulge in the fashionable pastime of sea bathing.
CHAPTER 60
1 the basic exchange of marriage cups: Marriage formally took place with a simple ceremony involving drinking sake from the same cup.
CHAPTER 64
1 Hongō Hill . . . Denzūin Temple: An area of present-day Tokyo’s Bunkyō ward, where Tokyo University is located. Denzūin Temple is a Pure Land Buddhist temple.
2 the Sino-Japanese War: 1894-95.
CHAPTER 65
1 koto: A traditional zitherlike Japanese instrument with thirteen strings.
2 Ojōsan: The daughter is referred to throughout by this polite title for an unmarried girl.
CHAPTER 72
1 adopt a son-in-law . . . marry out as a bride: Although the wife traditionally joined her husband’s family register, formal adoption of a husband into the wife’s family was not uncommon in cases where the family had no son to receive an inheritance.
CHAPTER 74
1 the Komagome area: part of Tokyo’s present-day Bunkyō ward.
CHAPTER 81
1 Swedenborg: Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Swedish philosopher and mystic.
2 the Bōshū Peninsula: In present-day southern Chiba Prefecture.
CHAPTER 84
1 Chōshi: A fishing-port town in present-day Chiba Prefecture.
2 the famous Buddhist priest Nichiren: Nichiren (1222-82) founded the Nichiren sect, which places ultimate faith in the Lotus Sutra.
CHAPTER 85
1 the Ryōkoku district: A busy district centered around the Ryōkoku Bridge in Tokyo.
CHAPTER 87
1 the fierce Enma image that stands in Genkaku Temple: Genkaku Temple is in the Tokyo district of Koishikawa, close to where Sōseki imagines Okusan’s house to stand. Enma is the ruler of the realms of the dead.
CHAPTER 88
1 Masago-chō: An area in present-day Bunkyō ward, near Tokyo University.
CHAPTER 89
1 the New Year game of poem cards: A traditional game in which cards containing the second half of famous poems are turned faceup, and the participants must match each to the appropriate card containing the poem’s first half. The poems are those in the anthology Hyakunin isshū, “One Hundred Poems of One Hundred Poets,” a title usually referring to the collection made by Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241).
CHAPTER 100
1 elliptical course . . . three city wards: Koishikawa, Kanda, and Hongō wards.
CHAPTER 102
1 I had laid out my bedding . . . opposite direction: It is considered unlucky to lie facing west, which is the realm of the dead.
CHAPTER 109
1 Emperor Meiji passed away: See Introduction.
CHAPTER 110
1 the end of General Nogi: See Introduction.
2 his failure in the Satsuma Rebellion: In the civil war of 1877, forces loyal to the emperor clashed with those of the rebellious Satsuma province. The imperial forces won, but as regimental commander, General Nogi felt responsible for the enemy’s capture of the symbolic regimental colors.
3 Watanabe Kazan . . . while he painted Kantan: Watanabe Kazan (1793-1841), artist and scholar, painted the famous Kantan. It depicts the Chinese legend of a young man in the village of that name, who gains enlightenment when a dream reveals to him the transience of fame and glory. Kazan committed ritual suicide.
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