by Akutagawa
Akutagawa & Others
* * *
THREE JAPANESE SHORT STORIES
Translated by Jay Rubin
Contents
Behind the Prison – Nagai Kafū
Closet LLB – Uno Kōji
General Kim – Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
Series List
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NAGAI KAFŪ
Born 1879, Tokyo
Died 1959, Ichikawa
UNO KŌJI
Born 1891, Fukuoka
Died 1961, Tokyo
AKUTAGAWA RYŪNOSUKE
Born 1892, Tokyo
Died 1927, Tokyo
These three stories are from the forthcoming Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories.
AKUTAGAWA IN PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
Behind the Prison
by Nagai Kafū
My dearest Excellency,
Thank you for your letter. I have been back in Japan for nearly five months.
I was in the West, as you know, but I was unable to find any fixed employment or to earn academic credentials during my time there. All I brought home with me was my collection of concert, opera and theatre programmes, as well as my photographs and nude paintings of female entertainers. I am a full thirty years old now, but, far from being prepared to start my own family, I continue to while away my days in a single room on my father’s estate, which is located behind the prison in Ichigaya. It has a rather imposing gate and a lush growth of tall trees. I’m sure you could find it easily just by asking for my father.
I will probably be here, doing nothing, for the time being. Indeed, I may have to spend the rest of my life like this. Not that I am surprised to find myself in this situation. The question of what I should do once I returned to Japan is the same old one that continued to trouble me even while I was lost in music or intoxicated by the lips of a lover, or gazing at the Seine in the evening from the shelter of spring leaves. I confess it was my inability to solve this painful problem, and not any irrepressible longing for art, that enabled a weakling like me to bear the loneliness of living abroad for such a long time. In a foreign country, so long as one’s health is unimpaired, one need have no fear of starving. One can abandon all concern for reputation and answer newspaper advertisements to become a waiter, a shop assistant – anything at all. Without the hypocritical label of ‘gentleman’, one no longer feels the shameful need to deceive others. One gains opportunities to observe the hidden truths of society and to touch the genuine tears of life. Oh, but once one has returned to the land of one’s birth – there is no place more constricting – one’s surroundings no longer permit such freedom, and one can no longer simply transcend the demands of social position. Like a skiff on a fog-shrouded ocean, I had no clear way ahead of me, no plans for the future when I landed in the port of Kobe with its low shingled houses and its monstrously twisted black pines. Perhaps I could stay there in hiding, I thought, rather than return to Tokyo where so many people knew me. At that very moment, a heartfelt cry reached my ears, the deep, strong voice of someone ascending the crowded gangplank –
‘Welcome back, brother!’
And who should appear before me, dressed in a university student uniform, but my very own younger brother! I had naturally lost touch with my father, especially during the past two or three years, but, greatly worried, he had contacted the steamship company, learned which vessel I had boarded and sent my brother to meet the ship.
Shamed by the extent of my father’s efforts, I felt an instinctive urge to hide my face. At the same time, I was sick of parental affection. Why did my parents not simply turn their backs on a son who had proved himself so unfilial? And why did that son feel so threatened by his sense of gratitude towards his parents? Why, when he tried to force himself not to feel such gratitude, did he succeed only in filling himself with pain and dread? No, nothing in this world is as oppressive and debilitating as blood ties. Any other relationship – be it with friend, lover, wife; be it obligatory or constraining or difficult – is something one has consciously entered into at some point. Only one’s ties with parents and siblings are formed at birth and are unbreakable. And even if one succeeds in severing such relationships, all one is left with is the unbearable agony of conscience. It is simply one’s destiny. Your Excellency, I am certain you have seen sparrows that have built nests in the eaves of your home. No sooner do the young fly away from the nest than they escape forever from this fateful shadow. Nor do the parents make any attempt to bind their offspring’s hearts with morality.
One glance at my brother, born of the same blood, his face so resembling my own, was all it took to fill me with an indescribably cruel emotion. In an instant, it seemed to sweep away the inexpressible nostalgia I felt, along with the sorrow, the joy, the vivid sense of freedom of my wandering years, leaving nothing behind. Suddenly the air enveloping me seemed to grow still, as might be imagined in a medieval monastery, cold as ice and clear as a mirror.
‘The six o’clock is an express train,’ my brother said. ‘Let’s buy our tickets.’
I said nothing in reply. At Kobe Station all I did was stare at a few unrefined but voluptuous American girls buying bouquets from a flower vendor. After arriving at Shinbashi Station the next morning, I found myself being whisked by rickshaw to my father’s estate behind the Ichigaya prison.
They held a little banquet for me at home that evening. My father turns sixty this year. He probably felt he had to give the party to keep up appearances regarding his son and heir, whatever the truth of the situation. They put me in the seat of honour before the tokonoma alcove where a calligraphic scroll hung inscribed with a long string of Chinese characters that meant nothing to me. Sitting at the other end of the table were my mother and father. To my right was the brother who had been chosen to carry on my mother’s family as pastor of a small church. To my left was my parents’ youngest child, the brother who had met my ship, sitting there in his impressive uniform, its gold buttons gleaming. There were flecks of grey in my father’s moustache, but his tanned face was more radiant than ever, and the added years only seemed to increase the youthfulness of his robust frame. My mother, by contrast, looked as though she had aged ten or twenty years during my absence. Now she was just a shrivelled-up little old lady I could hardly recognize.
I would want a wife or lover and, I dare say, my mother to remain eternally young and beautiful. When I saw her looking so aged, I could hardly lift my chopsticks to join in the feasting. Sorrow, pity and a mix of even stronger emotions struck me all at once: an intense desire to revolt against the fate that dooms us to perish.
Your Excellency, my mother was a young woman until I left for the West. People who didn’t know us very well used to ask if she was my sister. She was born in old Edo and raised to be a great lover of the kabuki theatre, a skilled singer of nagauta ballads while accompanying herself on the shamisen. She also played the koto. Approaching forty, she could still sing that wonderful passage from ‘Azuma Hakkei’ with ease, the shamisen tuned up to the high roppon scale: ‘Pine needle pins in her hair, she makes her way along the dewy cobblestones beside the Sumida River, writing brush in its case wet with ink …’ And yet she was very restrained in her tastes. As far back as her teenage years she is said to have hated the colour red, and I never saw an under-kimono of hers that could be described as gaudy, even when the family’s clothing was spread out to dry at the height of summer: perhaps a muted persimmon-coloured grid pattern, or a pale blue Yūzen print of plovers against white-capped waves. I’ll never forget all the theatres she took me to in the arms of my wet nurse – the Hisamatsu-za, the Shintomi-za, the Chitose-za – where we would i
ndulge in a rare treat of broiled eel on rice in our box seats. And those marvellous winter days in the warmth of the kotatsu, where she would spread out her colourful woodblock prints of such legendary actors as Hikosa and Tanosuke and tell me all about the old days in the theatre! Oh, the cruelty of time that destroys all things! If only I could stay for ever and ever with my mother, Your Excellency, enjoying those magnificent pastimes! For her I would gladly ferry across the Sumida on the coldest winter day to buy her those sakura-mochi sweets from old Edo that she loved so much. But medicine? That is another matter. Not even on the warmest day would I want to go buy her medicine.
Never have I had it in me to surrender to those ancient articles of faith which mankind has been commanded to follow. Such precepts are too cruel, too cold. Rather than bow before them, how often have I cried out in anguish, wishing that ‘I’ and ‘the precepts’ could be united in a perfect, warm embrace! But having despaired of such an easy resolution, I determined that I would confront them head-on, that I would do battle with Heaven’s retribution. My father is a stern disciplinarian, a diligent man, a fierce enemy of all that is evil. The day after I came home, he quietly asked me about my plans for the future. He wanted to know how I intended to preserve my honour as a man, to fulfil my duty as a citizen of the empire.
Should I become a language teacher? No, I could never presume to present myself as a teacher of French. Any Frenchman would know the language far better than I could ever hope to.
Should I become a newspaper reporter? No, I can imagine myself becoming a thief some day, but I am not so inured to vice that I would treat justice and morality as merchandise the way such people do. The scandal sheets Yorozu chōhō and Niroku shinpō present themselves as paragons of virtue, but any society reformed by them would be far darker than a society left wholly unreformed. I worry too much about this to sink to their level.
Should I become a magazine reporter? No, I am not losing sleep over social progress or human happiness to the point where I would stand up as an advocate for good causes. Nor am I the least bit bothered, as some journalists seem to be, by the cannibalistic, incestuous lives of animals.
Should I become an artist? No, this is Japan, not the West. Far from demanding art, Japanese society looks upon it as a nuisance. The state has established a system of education by intimidation and forces us to produce grotesque vocalizations that no member of the Yamato race has ever pronounced – T, V, D, F – and if you can’t say them you have no right to exist in Meiji society. They do this primarily so that some day we will invent a new torpedo or gun, certainly not to have us intone the poems of Verlaine or Mallarmé – and still less to have us sing the ‘Marseillaise’ or the ‘Internationale’, with their messages of revolution and pacifism. Those of us with a deep-seated desire to devote ourselves to the Muses or to Venus must leave this fatherland of ours with all its stringent rules before we can begin to embrace our harps. This would be of the greatest benefit both to the nation and to art itself.
No, no, there is not a single profession in this world that will keep me alive for the days that remain to me. Should I become a rickshaw puller wandering the streets of the city? No, I have too great a sense of responsibility for that. Could I safely fulfil the demands of the profession by delivering my passengers uninjured to their destinations? And what if I became a manservant cooking rice? Mixed in with the countless grains, might there not be an invisible chip of stone that would tear my master’s stomach, endangering his life? The more precise and subtle a human being’s awareness, the less he can presume to take on any profession, however humble. First he must starve, he must freeze, he must numb the precision of his mind, he must be blinded by his own selfish desires. At the very least, he must ignore the teachings of the ancient sages. Oh, you who sing of how hard it is to make a living! How I envy you!
I turned to my father and said, ‘There is nothing for me to do in this world. Please think of me as mad or crippled, and do not press me to live up to normal worldly expectations.’
For his part, my father would have found it a stain on the family honour were his son to become known as a reporter or a clerk or a servant or some other lowly worker. ‘Fortunately we have a spare room,’ he said, ‘and food. You can just live here quietly and keep to yourself.’ With that, he brought the discussion to a close.
These past few months, I have spent one blank day after another gazing out at the garden. The hot August sunlight casts the shadows of the luxuriant trees over the garden’s broad expanse of green moss. Here and there patches of light break through the trees’ black shadows, trembling with each passing breeze. I find the sight inexpressibly beautiful. A cicada cries. A crow caws. And yet the world, exhausted by the scorching heat, is as hushed as at night. A sudden shower strikes, but because the larger part of the sky remains blue and clear, I can see each thick thread of rain falling in the bright light. Each of the plants responds differently to the downpour, the delicate ones bowing to earth, the stronger ones springing upwards, the sound of the raindrops striking them varying from light to heavy depending on the thickness of their leaves. The shower symphony rises to a great crescendo with the rumbling bass drum of thunder that rolls through, to be followed by the gentle moderato of the green frogs’ flutes and a final hush as sudden as the piece’s opening. Then the entire garden – from the tiniest tree branches soaring aloft to the leaf tips of the kumazasa bamboo creeping among the ornamental boulders – is strung with crystalline jewels that lend a startling radiance to the mossy carpet, across which the massed trees’ long, diagonal, cloud-like shadows drift until the evening cicadas call and twilight arrives. Around the time a wind chime begins ringing incessantly and the servants light our paper lanterns, from the street beyond the front gate comes the light clip-clop of wooden clogs and the laughter of young women. A student ambles along, chanting a poem, a harmonica sounds, and somewhere far away the pop of what must be fireworks. A street musician passes by, lamenting another broken heart to the twang of a shamisen. The night deepens …
The insect cries grow louder with each passing day. When I lie down to sleep at night, a terrifying din travels from the closed-off garden all the way to the space beneath the veranda outside my room. What power rules these tens of thousands of creatures, what makes them all unite in one voice to besiege me like this? I feel as if I am camped alone on a magnificent plain beneath an endless sky, waiting an eternity for the dawn to break, but when I open my eyes the dim lamp on my desk reveals that I am actually lying beneath a low board ceiling that might come crashing down at any moment, my body confined by suffocating colourless walls and blank sliding paper doors. Then a keen sense of the nature of life in Japan overwhelms me – so limited, so lacking in depth. The sudden clatter of raindrops against the ceiling sounds like someone trying to play a broken koto. I hear the night wind tearing through the trees above. But the sound lacks the depth of a lion’s roaring in a dark valley, and I wonder if what I hear is the rustling of reeds on the shoreline of a great river flowing through a tropical plain. The insects cry without cease. They cry even after the break of dawn and the arrival of noon. And that is not all I hear. The rains fall day after day.
What a humid climate we have! I try closing all the shoji and lighting the hibachi in the corner of the room, but my kimono is still so moist I can’t help wondering if my skin will grow scales like some fishy creature’s. The fine leather binding of The Diary of Countess Krasinska, given to me as a keepsake by Rosalyn when I left America, has been all but destroyed by mould. The lacquer shoes in which I danced with Yvonne in a Parisian ballroom have grown a ghostly white fur. Cruel stains have formed on the summer topcoat I spread on the grass when lying there with Hélène in the Bois de Boulogne.
I hear the sad calls of vendors wandering through the neighbourhood and the clatter of shutters being closed nearby as night falls. Oh, the nights in Japan! No words can describe their darkness! Darker than death, darker than the grave, cold, lonely. Shall I call it a wall
of darkness – an indestructible barrier that cannot be pierced by any blade of rage or despair, that cannot be scorched by any flame of rancour or frenzy? I sit beneath the only spot of light in the whole room, a single oil lamp, reading and rereading the letters I exchanged with the people I knew in those days of joy, unable to read a letter to the end before having to press my face, in tears, against its pages. The cries of the insects fill the garden.
Eventually, however, it dawns on me that the intense cries of the insects have begun slowly to fade with the passing of each dark and lonely night. I find myself wearing a new padded haori over my lined kimono, the smell of the freshly dyed cloth oddly sickening to inhale. The rains have ceased. In contrast to the morning and evening chill, the sunny afternoons are frighteningly hot. The leaves have turned yellow, but how strange to watch them as they flutter down through the windless air on to the garden’s mossy carpet in the harsh, summer-like sunlight. I feel the deep melancholy of the French poet who sang of the South American climate: ‘Here the leaves scatter in the April spring.’
I go out to the garden one afternoon, a partially read book of poems in hand, and walk among the beds. The streaming rays illuminate each overlapping leaf of the plums, the maples, the other trees that grow in such profusion, casting their shadows like patterns on the mossy ground. Deep in this shade stands a gazebo. Beyond it is an unobstructed view of a flowering field. I sit to take in the immense blue sky at a glance. Thin white clouds spread across the blue from west to east as if painted with a brush, never moving however long I gaze at them. Countless dragonflies flit back and forth like the swallows one sees high in the summer skies of France. Multicoloured cosmos, taller than the gazebo, bloom in profusion beneath the harsh sun, spreading to all corners of the field, each of which is densely covered in low-growing kumazasa bamboo. Crimson amaranths seem to burst into flame. The Chinese bellflowers and asters retain their brilliant purple, but the white-flowered bush clovers are already past their peak and bow to the ground like the dishevelled tresses of a woman who has thrown herself down in tears, flowing towards my feet upon the gazebo’s paving stones. In their dewy shadows, one or two surviving insects cry out in thin melodic strains.