Sanshiro

by Sōseki Natsume

  Sanshirō was in a daze. Squatting by the water, he began to see that there was something wrong, some terrible contradiction—but where was it ? In the young woman and the atmosphere of the University? In the colors and the way she looked at him? In his thinking of the woman on the train when he saw this one? Was it that his plans for the future had two conflicting courses? Or that he had experienced fear from a sight that had also given him great pleasure? This young man from the country could not be sure. He knew only that somewhere there was a contradiction.

  He picked up the flower that lay before him and brought it to his nose. It had no fragrance to speak of. He threw it into the pond, where it floated. Just then someone called his name.

  *

  Sanshirō turned his head. The tall figure of Nonomiya stood on the other side of the bridge.

  “So you’re still here,” Nonomiya said.

  Sanshirō stood up and, without answering, took a few lethargic steps toward Nonomiya. “I guess so,” he said at last when he was standing on the bridge.

  Nonomiya showed no surprise at his abstracted state. “Enjoying the cool?” he asked.

  “I guess so,” Sanshirō said again.

  After looking at the water for a moment, Nonomiya began to feel around in his right-hand pocket. An envelope protruded from the pocket, the writing on it apparently a woman’s. Unable to find what he was looking for, Nonomiya let his hand dangle at his side again. “The instruments are a little funny today,” he said. “No experiment tonight. I was going to take a walk through Hongō12 on the way home. Would you like to come along?”

  Sanshirō accepted with pleasure. They climbed to the top of the hill where the two women had been standing. Nonomiya paused to look at the red building through the green of the trees, and at the pond far below the cliff. “Nice view from here, don’t you think? See how just the corner of that building sticks out a little? From the trees. See? Nice, isn’t it? Had you noticed what a fine piece of architecture it is? The Engineering buildings aren’t bad either, but this is better.”

  Nonomiya’s appreciation for architecture came as a surprise to Sanshirō. He himself had no idea which of the two was better. Now it was Sanshirō who replied only, “Yes, yes.”

  “And the—shall I say—the effect of the trees and the water. It’s nothing special, but after all this is the middle of Tokyo. Very quiet, don’t you think? The academic life demands a place like this. Tokyo is so damned noisy these days.” Walking on, he pointed to the building on the left. “Over here is ‘The Mansion,’13 where the faculty meet. Somehow, they manage to do things without my help. All I have to do is continue my life in the cellar. Research goes on at such a mad pace nowadays, you can’t let up for a minute or you’re left behind. My work must look like some kind of joke to other people, but I can see it from the inside, and I know my mind is working furiously—maybe a lot harder than all those streetcars running around out there. That’s why I don’t go away, even in the summer. I hate to lose the time.”

  Nonomiya looked up at the broad sky. A meager gleam was all that remained of the sun’s light. A long wisp of cloud hung across the sky at an angle, like the mark of a stiff brush on the tranquil layer of blue. “Do you know what that is?” Nonomiya asked. Sanshirō looked up at the translucent cloud. “It’s all snowflakes. From down here, it doesn’t look like it’s moving, but it is, and with greater velocity than a hurricane. —Have you read Ruskin?”

  Sanshirō mumbled that he had not. Nonomiya said only, “I see.” A moment later he went on, “This sky would make an interesting painting, don’t you think? I ought to tell Haraguchi about it. He’s a painter, you know.”

  Sanshirō did not know.

  *

  They walked down the hill past the playing field and stopped in front of a large bronze bust. “DR. ERWIN BAELZ, PROFESSOR DER MEDIZIN, 1876–1902,” the inscription read.

  “How do you like this?” Nonomiya asked, and again Sanshirō could think of nothing to say.

  They left through the side gate and walked alongside Karatachi Temple to the busy avenue. The streetcars never stopped coming.

  “Don’t you hate those things? They’re so noisy!” said Nonomiya.

  Sanshirō not only hated them, he was frightened of them. But he said only, “Yes,” to which Nonomiya responded, “I do, too.” He did not seem the least bit bothered by them, however.

  “I don’t know how to transfer by myself,” he continued. “The conductor has to help me. They’ve built so damned many lines the past few years, the more ‘convenient’ it gets, the more confused I get. It’s like my research.” He smiled.

  The school year was just beginning. They passed many students on the street wearing new college caps. Nonomiya looked at them with evident delight. “A lot of new ones,” he said. “Young people are so full of life! By the way, how old are you?”

  Sanshirō gave the age he had written in the hotel register.

  “You’re seven years younger than I am. A man can do a lot in seven years. But time really does fly, you know. Seven years is nothing.”

  Sanshirō could not decide which was true.

  They approached an intersection where many bookstores and magazine shops stood on either side of the street. A few shops were swarming with people, all of whom were reading magazines. They would come and go, but never buy anything.

  “Not an honest man among them.” Nonomiya smiled and paused to thumb through the latest issue of the Sun.

  They came to the intersection, where two gift shops stood on opposite sides of the street to the left. The nearer one handled imported goods, the far one Japanese. Streetcars turning the corner thundered between them, bells ringing. The dense traffic made it almost impossible to cross, but Nonomiya pointed to the shop on the other side and announced, “I’m going to buy something over there at the Kaneyasu.” He dashed across between rings of the streetcar bells, with Sanshirō close behind. He went in alone, however. Waiting outside, Sanshirō looked at the display window. The rows of combs and hair ornaments behind the glass aroused his curiosity. What could Nonomiya be looking for in there? He went inside. Nonomiya dangled a ribbon in front of him as delicate and transparent as cicada wings. “How do you like it?” he asked.

  Sanshirō considered buying something for Miwata Omitsu in return for the fish, but he decided against it. Omitsu was sure to convince herself that he had something more in mind than gratitude.

  Nonomiya treated Sanshirō to dinner at a Western restaurant in Masago-chō. This restaurant had the best food in Hongō, Nonomiya said, but Sanshirō knew only that it tasted like Western cooking. Still, he ate everything he was served.

  They parted in front of the restaurant. Sanshirō was careful to return to his Oiwake lodgings by way of the familiar intersection, where he turned left. He wanted to buy some wooden clogs, but in the first shop he peeked into there was a girl in stark white makeup sitting beneath an incandescent gas lamp. She looked like some kind of grotesque creature made of plaster. Repelled, he headed straight home. All the way back he thought about the complexion of the young woman he had seen by the University pond. It was a tawny, foxlike shade, the translucent color of a lightly toasted rice cake, its texture incredibly fine. That was the only way for a woman’s skin to be.

  3

  The academic year began on 11 September. Sanshirō dutifully went to the Law and Letters building at 10:30. He found the lecture schedule posted up in front of the building, but not a single student. He copied the times of his lectures into his notebook, then went on to the administration office, where the administrative staff, at least, were present.

  “When do classes begin?” he asked.

  “On 11 September,” they answered as if stating the obvious.

  “But none of the rooms I looked into had any classes going on.”

  “No, because the professors aren’t there.”

  That was it, of course. Sanshirō left the office. He walked around to the rear of the building and looked
up through the large zelkova tree into the high, cloudless sky. It seemed brighter than the usual sky. Down a hill with low bamboo shrubs, he came to the edge of the pond and squatted down once again near the oak tree. He kept looking at the hill and wishing the young woman would come again, but there was no one. He knew he was asking too much, but he went on crouching there anyway. The boom of the noon gun14 startled him, and he went back to his room.

  The next day Sanshirō went to school at precisely eight o’clock. Entering the main gate, he noticed first of all the twin rows of gingko trees that lined the broad walk before him. Where the trees gave out ahead, the walk turned into a gentle downward slope, and of the Science building below the slope, only part of the second story could be seen. Far behind the Science building, the Ueno woods sparkled in the morning sun, the sun itself a backdrop to the woods. The great depth of the scene delighted him.

  On the right-hand side of the walk, where the row of gingkos began, stood the Law and Letters building. On the left, and somewhat farther down the walk, was Natural History. The two buildings were architecturally identical, with high arched windows surmounted by prominent triangular gables. A narrow stone border ran between the red brick and the black roof, rising to a peak at each gable. The bluish stone was a tasteful complement to the almost too-red brick just below it. The tall windows and high triangles were repeated at several points.

  Sanshirō’s newfound appreciation for the buildings was owing entirely to Nonomiya, but this morning he felt that his view of them had been his own from the start—especially the interestingly asymmetrical way Natural History was set back a little way from the gate instead of being in a line with Law and Letters. This was an original discovery that he would have to mention to Nonomiya.

  The library, too, Sanshirō found impressive. It was set just to the right of Law and Letters, and its main wing ran a good fifty yards farther out toward the gate. He could not be sure, but it looked as though it might be the same type of architecture as the others. And those five or six big hemp palms planted against the red wall were a very nice touch.

  The Faculty of Engineering far off to the left might have been based on some medieval Western castle. It was a perfect square. Even the windows were square. The corners and the doorway were rounded, however, along with some towerlike things that were probably meant to resemble castle turrets. It was a solid structure, as a castle ought to be, unlike the Law and Letters building, which looked ready to topple over. It looked like a squat sumo wrestler.

  He surveyed all that lay before him, called to mind the many other buildings excluded from his view, and experienced the whole with a sense of grandeur. “This is how the Seat of Learning ought to be. This is what makes it all possible—the study, the research. What a magnificent place!” He felt as if he were already a famous scholar.

  Once inside the classroom, however, Sanshirō waited in vain for the professor to appear, even after the bell had rung. But then, no students came, either. The next hour was the same. Sanshirō left the classroom incensed. Just in case, he walked around the pond twice before returning to his room.

  *

  Classes finally started some ten days later. As he waited with the others for the professor to come to the first lecture, Sanshirō was moved to reverence. Surely, he imagined, this was how a Shinto priest must feel as he dons his robes to perform a sacred ritual. Now he knew what it was to be struck with the majesty of academe. But this was only the beginning, for when the bell rang and fifteen minutes went by with still no sign of the professor, the suspense added all the more to his veneration. Soon the door opened and a dignified old man, a foreigner, walked in and began to lecture in fluent English. First Sanshirō learned that the word “answer” came from the Anglo-Saxon “andswaru.” Then he learned the name of the village where Sir Walter Scott had gone to grammar school. He carefully recorded both facts in his notebook.

  Next Sanshirō went to the lecture on literary theory. The professor entered the classroom and paused to look at the blackboard, where someone had written “Geschehen” and “Nachbild.” “Hm, German,” he said, laughing as he obliterated them with an eraser. This destroyed some of the respect with which Sanshirō had until then regarded the German language. The professor went on to list twenty definitions of literature that had been formulated by men of letters down through the ages. These, too, Sanshirō recorded carefully in his notebook.

  After noon, Sanshirō went to the main lecture hall. Seventy or eighty other students were there, and the professor spoke in a declamatory style. “A single boom of the cannon shattered the dreams of Uraga,”15 he began, the subject of Japan’s opening to the West immediately arousing Sanshirō’s interest. Finally, however, the mention of a great many German philosophers’ names made the talk extremely difficult. He looked at his desk top, into which someone had deftly engraved the words, “Flunk Out.” The person had obviously devoted quite a bit of time to this. The skill with which he had carved the characters into the hard oaken plank bespoke no amateur talent; this was a grimly rendered feat. The student next to Sanshirō seemed to be taking notes with admirable diligence. Sanshirō peered across at his notebook to find that he was not taking notes at all but drawing a caricature of the professor. As soon as Sanshirō glanced at his notebook, the student displayed his work. It was skillfully done, but Sanshirō could not make sense of the caption beneath it: “Cuckoo in the far-off heavens.”

  Sanshirō felt tired after the lecture. He stood at a second-story window, chin on hand, looking at the school grounds within the main gate. There was a large pine tree, a cherry tree, and a broad gravel lane running between them, nothing more. But the very fact that little had been done to the area made it all the more pleasant to look at. According to Nonomiya, the place had not always been so nice. Once, a teacher of his had been riding around here on horseback. This was years ago, during the teacher’s own student days. The horse, a bad-tempered one, dragged him under a tree. His hat became entangled in a pine branch, and the lifts of his wooden clogs caught in the stirrups. The barbers emerged en masse from the shop across the street to enjoy the spectacle. Several interested parties back then had pooled their funds to have a stable built on campus. They bought three horses and hired a riding master, but the man turned out to be a great drunkard and ended up selling a white horse, the best of the three, and drinking away the money. The old horse was said to have been sent to Japan by Napoleon III.16 No, that could never be, thought Sanshirō, but he had to admit that things had been pretty easy-going in the old days.

  At this point the student who had been drawing the caricature walked up to him. “These university lectures are so damned boring,” he said. Sanshirō offered some vague reply. In fact he was quite unable to determine whether they were boring or not. But from this time on, he found himself on speaking terms with the student.

  *

  Sanshirō was in a low sort of mood by then, too fed up with things in general even for a walk around the pond. He went straight back to his lodgings. He reread his lecture notes after supper, but this neither cheered nor depressed him. He wrote a jumbled letter to his mother.17 —The term had started. He would be going to campus every day. The University was really big and the buildings were really beautiful. There was a pond in the middle of the campus. He enjoyed walking around it. He was finally used to riding the streetcars. He wanted to buy her something, but he didn’t know what. She should let him know if there was anything she wanted. The price of this year’s rice would be going up soon, and she ought to hold off selling it a little longer. She should not be too friendly toward Miwata Omitsu. There were plenty of people here in Tokyo—many men, but many women too.

  When he had finished the letter, Sanshirō started reading an English book. Six or seven pages were all he could take. What good would it do to read one book? He spread his bedding on the matted floor and crawled under the covers, but it was no use, he stayed awake. He should see a doctor right away if he came down with insomnia, he was th
inking as he fell asleep.

  Sanshirō went to the University at the usual time the next day. Between classes he heard students talking about where some of this year’s graduates had gone to work, and how much they were being paid. Two who had yet to find jobs were supposedly competing for a post in one of the government-run schools. Sanshirō felt something heavy and oppressive, as though the distant future were closing in on him, but he forgot about it soon enough. More interesting were the remarks on Shōnosuke’s latest doings.18 He stopped a classmate in the hall, another student from Kumamoto, to find out who this Shōnosuke could be. The student told him that she was a ballad singer in the variety theater, went on to describe the theater’s signboard and where it was located in Hongō, and invited Sanshirō to accompany him there on Saturday night. Sanshirō was much impressed until the fellow added that his own first exposure to the theater had been the night before. Sanshirō thought he would like to go and see Shōnosuke for himself.

  He was about to return to his rooming house for lunch when the student who had done the caricature walked up to him. The fellow dragged Sanshirō off to the main street of Hongō and ordered him a dish of rice and curry at a place called the Yodomiken, which was a fruit store at the front and a small restaurant at the back. The building was new. The student pointed at the façade and said it was in the art nouveau style. Sanshirō was amazed to learn that there was an art nouveau style in architecture. On the way back, the fellow showed him the Aokidō café, another place frequented by students. They entered the Red Gate together and strolled around the pond. The student told Sanshirō how the late Professor Koizumi Yakumo19 had always disliked the faculty room. After his lectures he would walk around the pond. The young man spoke as if he himself had studied with Professor Koizumi. Sanshirō asked why the Professor never mixed with the other teachers.

  “It’s so obvious. You’ve heard their lectures. Not one of them knows how to talk.”