by Taeko Kono
Toddler-Hunting
Copyright © Taeko Kono 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1969
Translation copyright © Lucy North 1996
“Bone Meat” translation copyright © Lucy Lower 1989
Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher.
Translator’s Note: Ted Fowler and Jay Rubin offered unstinting encouragement and assistance at different stages of this project. My sincere thanks also to Howard Hibbett, and to Kobayashi Fukuko, Yori Oda, and Ken Sasaki.
Publisher’s Note: Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Japan Foundation for the grant that assisted the publication of this title.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First published clothbound by New Directions in 1996 and reissued in a revised paperback edition as ndp1424 in 2018 (isbn 978-0-8112-2827-5)
Design by Erik Rieselbach
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kono, Taeko, 1926–
[Selections. 1996. English]
Toddler-hunting & other stories / Taeko Kono ; translated by Lucy North, with an additional translation by Lucy Lower.
p. cm.
Contents: Toddler-hunting (Yoji-gari) — Snow (Yuki) — Theater (Gekijo) — Crabs (Kani) — Night journey (Yoru o yuku) — Ants swarm (Ari takaru) — Full tide (Michi-shio) — Final moments (Saigo no toko) — Conjurer (Majutsushi) — Bone meat (Hone no niku).
ISBN 0-8112-1305-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Kono, Taeko, 1926– — Translations into English. I. North, Lucy. II. Lower, Lucy. III. Tide.
PL855.044A25 1996 95-47600
895.6'35 — dc20 CIP
eISBN: 9780811228282
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
CONTENTS
Night Journey
Full Tide
Toddler-Hunting
Snow
Theater
Crabs
Ants Swarm
Final Moments
Conjurer
Bone Meat
Afterword
Landmarks
Cover
Night Journey
Yoru o yuku, 1963
When the night game ended, her husband reached over to switch off the tv. The cheering crowds shrank down to a spot on the screen, and vanished.
“Hey, what’s taking them so long?” Murao asked, recrossing his legs and looking up at the clock. They’d told the Saekis to come after dinner, but it was nine-thirty and their guests were now long overdue.
“Well they can’t have forgotten,” Fukuko replied. “But maybe they won’t come now that it’s this late.”
Murao grunted, looking grouchy for a moment, but then his expression changed: “Shall we go barge in on them?” he suggested. “They’re bound to be home.”
“Shall we?” Fukuko didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go for a walk, and just drop by. If they’re out, they’re out.”
It was a Saturday night, so they could stay up as late as they wanted. Murao declared he would go as he was, in his yukata. Fukuko didn’t change out of hers either, and only put on a different sash.
Turning her key in the front door, Fukuko paused: “Did I lock the kitchen door?”
Murao walked around, and tugged the glass door.
“It’s locked.”
Fukuko drew the key out, and tucked it under her sash.
The night was unusually clear for the muggy season, moist and cool, and the stars were out. The evening train heading to the city was almost totally deserted. As Fukuko and Murao sat down comfortably on two of the empty seats, a fresh breeze poured in through the open windows — and everything, even the compartment’s milky lights, seemed shiny with a strange sort of excitement.
Fukuko had had no idea that a summer evening train ride could be such a pleasant experience. They and the Saekis were always visiting — it only took half an hour. The Saeki couple lived four tram stops away from the end of the railway line. But this was the first time she and Murao had set out in the evening just to drop by. The Saekis mostly came to them, since they had a car. They would visit the Saekis on their way back from a trip into the city, or else arranged to meet up at the couple’s apartment at the end of a workday. But sitting there, enjoying that pleasant night train, Fukuko was surprised that they’d never thought to take it before. It was strange, she realized, considering what good terms they were all on.
Fukuko had known Mrs. Saeki, or Utako, since they’d been little girls. Their families were neighbors, so once they had become friends, they spent all their time together. Utako was older than Fukuko, but only by two years.
When Fukuko started kindergarten, Utako was already in elementary school. Fukuko’s kindergarten, however, was the same one where Utako had been just before. Fukuko had gone to the same elementary school, too, and though she didn’t try to follow in her friend’s footsteps on purpose, she ended up going to Utako’s secondary school and women’s college as well. The war was in its final stages by the time Fukuko entered college, and students were being mobilized by class to work in factories, so she hardly ever saw anyone from different grades. When the students did return to college at the end of the war, the seniors were forced to graduate six months early, in September. Utako, however, joined the graduate studies program and continued to commute to college with Fukuko the following fall.
Fukuko didn’t copy her friend to the point of becoming a research student. She didn’t have any particular ambition, and when she graduated, she took a job as an ordinary clerk in a company. Utako, however, remained in college for years, becoming a research associate, then a lecturer, and now an assistant professor.
As a girl Utako had been an exceptionally good swimmer. She had spent so much time in her secondary school pool that she was never home until after six o’clock, even when she was studying for exams — her scores were outstanding, anyway. Fukuko had been taken aback by Utako’s preparations for the women’s college she herself was planning to enter a couple of years down the line. Utako came from an academic family. Her mother was unremarkable, an ordinary housewife, but her father was a university physics professor, and her two older sisters also studied science, and later became doctors of physics and medicine. Fukuko had assumed Utako would at least try to get into a prestigious teacher-training college or medical school. Utako, however, said she would be “bored to death” in those places.
Perhaps her older sisters’ bluestocking manner had put Utako off: even now as a college professor, she hadn’t the slightest trace of the stuffy scholar. Utako was the youngest of an academically inclined family, that was all — it was only natural for her to accumulate degrees. To Utako, hers was just another job.
Back in school, Fukuko could remember Utako helping her in all sorts of ways. She had learned to swim, for example, because of her friend. One day during Fukuko’s first year at secondary school, Utako had come over and made her practice swimming strokes, standing on the tatami. “You’ll soon get the knack of the sidestroke,” she’d said, and followed up with two lessons in the school pool. Fukuko, who had been incapable of anything more than floating facedown in the water and a few struggling strokes, suddenly found herself able to swim the length of the pool and back — and the next year, she qua
lified for the school long-distance race. Utako had invited her to go camping (otherwise Fukuko, then a new student, would have been too shy to go). She had helped Fukuko with her algebra homework when she had all but given up on getting it done by fall, coolly drawing up equations in the wink of an eye and practically providing the solutions. She’d even brought Fukuko the application form for college. When Fukuko was preparing for exams, Utako gave her advice on possible essay subjects: for the past few years, she said, the topic always had to do with the war.
“The dean marks the papers,” she told Fukuko. “He really likes it if you say things like, ‘Women are the lubricating oil of wartime society.’ Make sure you work that in somewhere.”
On the day of the exam, when Fukuko read the essay title, “The Role of Women in War,” she had quickly settled down to write.
Even so, despite all these favors, Fukuko had never felt weighed down by a debt — Utako never put on any airs. Fukuko was an eldest child; Utako was the youngest in her family; Fukuko never thought a gifted older girl was looking after her. She thought of Utako as a friend her own age — an extremely close friend.
In secondary school, the days they could spend at each other’s houses had necessarily become fewer, but in the afternoon, they would wait for each other at the station and walk home together. If that was their only time together for more than a month, Fukuko would start to feel that she simply had to have a proper talk with Utako, who seemed to feel the same way. Fukuko remembered them meeting during exercise drills on Saturday mornings. “Can I come over this afternoon?” one or other would say. “Can you come visit tomorrow?”
During the last part of the war they’d been assigned to different factories, which had put an end to their meetings. But afterwards, they’d made a point of getting together every other month, even when they’d grown up and left home.
Soon after Utako became a research associate, she met a young professor, one of her father’s former students. They became engaged. Six months later, eleven days before the wedding, Utako called off the marriage. She never said why she decided to do this, even though they’d always confided everything, and up until then she’d told Fukuko all about that relationship. Utako had then remained unattached for a long time.
Meanwhile, Fukuko resigned from her job and married Murao, a colleague two years her senior. They had taken their time deciding to get engaged, and Murao had delayed the wedding to wait for his younger sister to find a spouse, and again when his father died. By the time they were finally married, Fukuko was almost thirty. She had told Murao about Utako, of course, and Utako about Murao, but she hadn’t managed to introduce them. Murao was not a sociable man, and the opportunity never arose.
When Utako finally paid them a visit, though, Murao could not stop staring at her.
“She looks so young!” he exclaimed, as soon as she left. “You’d never guess she’s my age. She looks twenty-three or twenty-four!”
Utako was pleasantly slim and petite, not even of medium build. Her oval face, without an ounce of spare flesh on it, still looked as young and lovely as a girl’s, and the expression in her eyes was so innocent it was hard to believe she had been observing the world for thirty years. She looked the picture of supple fitness, though she apparently no longer swam very much. Her manner, too, was modest and unassuming. She never spoke of her sisters (one was married, and both had gained high academic positions) in a denigrating or critical way, but with simple and genuine admiration. That evening, she had left early, saying she still had to buy a book for one of her sisters: “If it gets too late, the store’ll be closed and it’ll be my fault that her work’s not done.”
“Your friend may be bright,” Murao remarked afterwards, “but she’s odd, isn’t she? Even for somebody who seems so young.”
Of course, this did not mean Murao disliked her. Utako was fond of drinking, that was all, and whenever she got slightly inebriated, she would get up from the table and dance for them. She would twirl around the room, humming a tune, raising her arms in sharp, graceful movements. And she had done this on their very first evening together.
“I’d like to go to one of your lectures sometime,” Murao had said, as he watched her admiringly. “To see the look on your face when you teach.”
“Out of the question. . . .” Utako dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand.
“I can’t understand why such an attractive woman isn’t married,” Murao came to wonder out loud, often, to Fukuko.
After Utako canceled her wedding, Fukuko had learned nothing more from her about it, nor about any other men she might have gotten to know. Fukuko once tried to broach the subject of the broken engagement, but all Utako said was: “He hasn’t married yet, either.” Of course, through other channels Fukuko had heard that two or three men had since made Utako offers of marriage. Apparently, however, they’d all been turned down. Since Utako never referred to these matters, even with her, and had canceled her engagement eleven days before her wedding, Fukuko supposed the reason for her reluctance to get married had to be personal and awkward — something that had left quite a scar.
When they were little, they’d affectionately called each other “Utako-chan” and “Fukuko-chan.” As adults, however, they’d become slightly more formal, with “Utako-san” and “Fukuko-san.” Murao, however, called her “Uta-chan” whenever talking about her in private, and Fukuko naturally began to do the same thing. When Murao started using this form of address directly to Utako, Fukuko again followed suit. Utako, however, continued to use the somewhat more distant appellation.
Every so often, Utako stayed the night at their house. If she were due to give a lecture the next morning, Murao would urge her to hurry along with him, and the two of them would leave together — looking for all the world like a pair of lovers, Fukuko would remark to herself as she happily watched them from the doorway. She informed them that this was what she thought, and made sure Murao knew that she took pleasure in the notion: “When you want an affair, have it with Uta-chan, please, then we’ll all live together.”
“Hm, not a bad idea,” he had replied.
But then, one afternoon, about three years later, Utako came to tell Fukuko that she was engaged.
“Actually,” she added, embarrassed, “it’s somebody you know.”
Not Murao, surely? Fukuko wondered for an instant.
“Somebody you know very well,” Utako continued. Smiling broadly, she announced that her fiancé was Saeki: “Don’t you think that’s funny?”
Fukuko had once, some years before, employed Saeki as an English tutor for her sister, when she was preparing for her high-school entrance exams. At that time he was a freshman at the university, her sister was fifteen, and she herself must have been about twenty-five.
Fukuko had at first attempted to tutor her sister herself, but Toshiko had done nothing but complain, accusing her first of incompetence and then of teaching her nonsense. All they’d done was quarrel. Fukuko had suspected that she probably wasn’t teaching her sister correctly. She had gotten her teaching certificate on graduation, but that had been at the end of the war when there were hardly any classes to take, so she’d found tutoring a strain.
“All right!” she’d told her sister: “Your next teacher won’t make mistakes, but he won’t stand your whining either!” And she went straight to the university, asked for names of any students needing part-time work, and arranged the tutor: that’s how she ended up hiring Saeki.
In the late autumn of that same year, Fukuko was on her way back from work and nearly home when she saw Saeki walking along a little way ahead of her.
“I really appreciate your helping my sister,” she said, catching up with him.
“Not at all,” Saeki replied, and after a few more steps, he added: “There is a matter I would like to discuss with you.”
“Oh?”
“If
you don’t mind, I’d like to talk to you after her lesson. In the living room, perhaps.”
“I see.” They had reached the house. He probably wanted to broach some uncomfortable topic, Fukuko thought, her sister’s exams, or perhaps her lazy study habits. Fukuko had employed him, and he no doubt thought she’d be easier to talk to than her parents.
“Well, see you in a little while, then,” she said, opening the gate.
They sat, facing each other in the living room, three hours later.
“Well, actually,” Saeki began, “it’s about some letters I’ve been receiving.” Undoing a gold button halfway down the front of his jacket, he drew out three, already opened, small blank envelopes: “Please read these.” He pushed them across the table to her, and buttoning up his jacket, sat with bowed head.
“Well, all right.”
Fukuko picked up one envelope and took out and unfolded a letter. At the top of the unlined page, she saw the words, “To my beloved,” written clumsily. Its next line began: “Oh, Teacher, I think you’re being so mean. . . .”
“What?” Fukuko said, frowning. “So Toshiko — ”
Saeki looked up, and snatching the letter back, turned it over to show her the name of the sender — a name Fukuko did not recognize.
“Who is this?”
“She’s my other student,” Saeki replied, “in her second year at high school. What should I do? Please read the other two.”
Fukuko had never seen a love letter in her life so she had nothing to compare these with, but all three began with the same words, “To my beloved,” and seemed appallingly overwritten. Petulant and complaining, they accused Teacher of being too mean to even acknowledge his student’s feelings, though he knew she was writing him letters.
“She’s really fallen for me, hasn’t she?” Saeki asked.
“It looks like that way.”
“What should I do?”
As far as he was concerned, he said, he had two options: either inform the girl’s parents and have them talk to her, or else give up the job as her tutor. But he was worried that the girl might do something drastic. That was why he wanted Fukuko’s advice. She had a sister. She had been a girl this age herself. She was equipped to predict the emotional reactions of adolescent girls.