Sanshiro

by Sōseki Natsume

  “About Oroonoko,” the Professor said, interrupting the stream of smoke, “I don’t want you to make another of your careless mistakes, so let me just say this.”

  “I would be appreciative of any instruction,” Yojirō said with the utmost propriety.

  “A man named Southerne wrote a play based on the novel, and the play had the same title. You mustn’t confuse the two.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Mineko, still folding the suit, glanced at Yojirō.

  “There was a famous line in the play, ‘Pity’s akin to love.’ ” The Professor stopped here and produced great quantities of philosophical smoke.

  Now Sanshirō joined in. “It sounds like a line you might come across in Japan.”

  The others agreed with him, but no one could recall having heard such a line in Japanese. Perhaps they should try to translate it? But the results were inconclusive. Finally Yojirō voiced a characteristic opinion.

  “The only way we’re going to translate this is to make it like a line from a popular song. That’s the kind of thing it is, after all.” Everyone decided to cede full translation rights to Yojirō. He mulled over the problem for a while. Then he said, “It may be a little forced, but how about this? ‘When I say that you’re a poor little thing, it only means I’m crazy about you.’ ”

  “Terrible! Terrible!” the Professor cried, scowling. “It’s the cheapest thing I’ve ever heard!” He really did seem to find it offensively cheap, which brought a burst of laughter from Sanshirō and Mineko. They were still laughing when the garden gate creaked open and Nonomiya walked in.

  “Is everything put away?” he asked, approaching the veranda and peering in at everyone in the parlor.

  “Oh, no, there’s still a lot to be done,” said Yojirō, jumping at the opportunity.

  “Let’s have him help a little!” Mineko chimed in.

  Grinning, Nonomiya said, “You seem to be having quite a time. What’s going on?” He spun around and sat on the veranda with his back to the room.

  “The Professor was just scolding me for a translation I did.”

  “A translation? What kind of translation?”

  “It’s nothing, really. ‘When I say that you’re a poor little thing, it only means I’m crazy about you.’ ”

  “Wha-a-at?” Nonomiya turned to face them at an angle. “I don’t get it.”

  “Neither do we,” said the Professor.

  “What is the original supposed to be?”

  Mineko repeated the phrase for him: “Pity’s akin to love.” Her English pronunciation was clear and lovely.

  Nonomiya stood up from the veranda, took a few strides into the garden, and spun around, facing the room. “Not a bad translation at all, I’d say.”

  Sanshirō could not help observing Nonomiya and the direction of his gaze.

  *

  Mineko went out to the kitchen. She washed a cup, filled it with fresh tea, and brought it to the edge of the veranda. Inviting Nonomiya to drink, she sat down near him.

  “How is Yoshiko?” she asked.

  “Physically, at least, she’s recovered.” Nonomiya resumed his seat and drank the tea. Then he turned toward the Professor. “I went to all the trouble of moving out to Ōkubo, Professor, and now it seems I’ll have to come back to live in this area.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s my sister. She says she doesn’t want to walk through the drill field at Toyamanohara on the way to and from school. And she feels lonely at night waiting for me to come home when I’m experimenting late. She’s all right now while my mother’s here, but my mother will be going back to the country soon and she’ll only have the maid. They’re both a couple of cowards. They won’t be able to stand it alone in the house. What a lot of trouble!” He sighed, smiling, then looked at Mineko. “Take an extra lodger?”

  “Fine, anytime at all.”

  “Which Nonomiya will that be?” Yojirō interjected. “Sōhachi or Yoshiko?”

  “I’ll take either one,” Mineko replied.

  Only Sanshirō kept quiet. Hirota, on a serious note, asked, “And what about you, Sōhachi? What do you plan to do?”

  “As long as my sister is settled, I don’t mind living in a room for a while. Otherwise, we’ll have to move to another house. I’m thinking of putting her into a dormitory or something—someplace I can visit all the time or she can leave to see me whenever she wants. She’s still a child, after all.”

  “Well, that settles it—Mineko’s is obviously the only place!” Yojirō was offering his opinions again.

  Ignoring Yojirō, Hirota said, “She could stay upstairs here, but I’m afraid this fellow Sasaki is there.”

  “Oh please, Professor, let Sasaki keep his upstairs room!” Yojirō pleaded for himself.

  Laughing, Nonomiya said, “We’ll manage somehow. I do have my hands full with her, though—all grown up and still a little idiot. She even wants me to take her to see the chrysanthemum dolls at Dangozaka.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” said Mineko. “I’d like to see them myself.”

  “Well come along, then.”

  “I’d love to. You come too, Sanshirō.”

  “All right, I will.”

  “And Yojirō.”

  “Chrysanthemum dolls? No, thanks. I’d go to the moving pictures31 before I’d do that.”

  “The chrysanthemum dolls are a fine thing,” Professor Hirota began. “I doubt there’s anything so artificial in any other country. Everyone ought to see once in his life that such completely artificial creations actually exist. No one would go to Dangozaka to see them, I’m sure, if the dolls looked like ordinary people. If it’s ordinary people you’re after, you can find four or five of them in any house. You don’t have to go all the way to Dangozaka.”

  “A theory all your own, Professor,” Yojirō offered his critical opinion.

  “I always used to fall for those things when I was a student of the Professor’s,” said Nonomiya.

  “You come with us, too, Professor,” Mineko said finally. Hirota said nothing. Everyone else laughed aloud.

  The old woman in the kitchen called out for someone to come. Yojirō shouted back and left the room. Sanshirō stayed where he was.

  “Well, it’s about time for me to be leaving,” Nonomiya said, standing up.

  “So soon? You were supposed to be helping us,” Mineko said.

  “Oh, Sōhachi, can you wait a little while on that business we talked about?” Hirota said.

  “Yes, of course,” Nonomiya answered and went out through the garden.

  As his shadow disappeared beyond the gate, Mineko seemed to recall something. “Oh, yes!” she murmured and, stepping into her wooden clogs below the veranda, she ran after him. They stood talking in the lane.

  Sanshirō remained seated, silent.

  5

  He walked in through the gate. The bush clover he had noticed on his last visit, grown taller than a man, now wore a mass of autumn foliage that cast a black shadow at its base. The shadow crept along the ground and disappeared into the house. It also seemed to climb up the hidden sides of the densely overlapping leaves, so strong was the sunlight striking their outer surfaces. Some nandinas stood beside the garden wash basin outside the lavatory. These, like the bush clover, were unusually tall. Their three fragile plumes stood close together, leaves stretching above the lavatory window.

  The veranda was partially visible between the bush clover and the nandinas. It ran away at an angle that took off from the nandinas. The shadow of the bush clover struck the house at the far end of the veranda, although the bush itself was the first thing inside the gate. Yoshiko sat in the shadow of the bush clover, on the edge of the veranda.

  Sanshirō approached until he was almost touching the bush clover. Yoshiko stood up, her feet resting on the broad, flat stepping-stone in the garden. Only now did Sanshirō realize with a shock how tall she was.

  “Come in.”

  Again, she spok
e as if she had been waiting for him, which reminded him of that day at the hospital. He walked past the bush clover as far as the veranda.

  “Please sit down.”

  He sat on the edge of the veranda as ordered, his shoes resting on the garden stone. Yoshiko brought out a cushion for him.

  “Here, sit on this.”

  Again he did as he was told. He had yet to speak since entering the gate. This simple girl merely said to him what was on her mind without, it seemed, expecting any answer from him. Sanshirō felt that he was in the presence of an innocent young queen. He need only obey her commands. Flattery was out of the question. A sycophantic word from him, and everything would be cheapened. Better to do her bidding like a mute slave. The childlike Yoshiko was treating him like a child, but he felt no injury to his self-respect.

  “Did you want to see my brother?”

  Sanshirō had not come to see Nonomiya. Neither had he not come to see him. Sanshirō did not really know why he had come.

  “Is he still at the University?”

  “Yes. He always comes home late at night.”

  Sanshirō was quite aware of this. He did not know what to say. Then he noticed a box of paint and brushes on the veranda. Also a half-finished watercolor.

  “Do you paint?”

  “Yes, just for fun.”

  “Who is your teacher?”

  “I don’t have one. I’m not that good.”

  “May I look?”

  “At this? It’s not finished yet.” She handed the painting to Sanshirō. It was to be a picture of the garden. Only the sky, the neighbor’s persimmon tree, and the bush clover were done. The persimmons were too red.

  “Pretty good,” he said.

  “This?” said Yoshiko with a start. There was nothing forced in her reaction, as there had been in Sanshirō’s compliment.

  It was too late now for him to make light of what he had said or to insist that he had meant it. Either way, Yoshiko would be contemptuous of him. He went on looking at the picture, blushing inwardly.

  *

  Turning toward the parlor, he found it empty and still. There was no sign of anyone in the sitting room or the kitchen. “Has your mother gone home to the country?”

  “Not yet. She should be leaving soon, though.”

  “Is she here now?”

  “She’s out shopping.”

  “Are you really going to move in with the Satomis?”

  “Why?”

  “No reason—just that they were talking about it the other day at Professor Hirota’s.”

  “We haven’t decided yet. Maybe I will, though.”

  Sanshirō now had part of what he was looking for. “Have the Satomis and Nonomiyas always been close?”

  “Yes, old friends.”

  Did she mean that Satomi Mineko and Nonomiya Sōhachi were just “friends”? There was something odd in that, but he could not pry any further. “I heard that Professor Hirota used to be Sōhachi’s teacher.”

  “That’s right.”

  Yoshiko’s answer brought the topic to a dead end.

  “Would you prefer to live with Mineko?”

  “Me? I guess so. But I’d hate to be any trouble for her brother.”

  “She has a brother?”

  “Yes, he graduated the same year as my brother.”

  “Is he a scientist, too?”

  “No, he took his degree in Law. Mineko had another brother who was a good friend of Professor Hirota’s, but he died young. Now she has only Kyōsuke.”

  “How about her mother and father?”

  “No,” she answered with a little smile, as if to say that it was comical to imagine Mineko with parents. They must have died quite some time ago. Yoshiko probably had no recollection of them at all.

  “So that’s how Mineko knows the Professor?”

  “Yes. The brother who died was supposedly very close to the Professor. And Mineko likes English. I’m sure she goes there a lot to study with him.”

  “Does she come here, too?”

  Yoshiko had started painting again at some point in the conversation. She did not allow Sanshirō’s presence to interfere with her work, but she could still answer his questions.

  “Mineko?” she asked, adding some shadow to the thatched roof beneath the persimmon tree. “I made it a little too black, didn’t I?” She held the picture up for Sanshirō.

  This time he answered honestly. “Yes, a little.”

  Yoshiko wet her brush and started to wash out the black area. “She does.” Sanshirō had his answer at last.

  “Often?”

  “Yes, often.” She was still facing her picture. The conversation had become a good deal easier for Sanshirō once Yoshiko started the painting.

  *

  He watched in silence as she concentrated on washing out the black shadow beneath the thatched roof. But she used too much water, and her brushwork was inept. The black stuff streamed off in all directions, and the bright red persimmons turned the color of the tart, shade-dried kind. Yoshiko’s brush hand came to rest. She held the paper out at arm’s length and leaned her head back, looking at the picture from as far away as possible. Finally she murmured, “Oh well, it’s ruined.” It really was ruined beyond denial. Sanshirō felt sorry for her.

  “You ought to forget about this one and start a new one.”

  Facing the picture, Yoshiko looked at him out of the corner of her eye. The eye was large and moist. Sanshirō felt increasingly sorry for her. And then she burst out laughing.

  “How stupid, wasting two whole hours like this!” She painted several thick stripes lengthwise and breadthwise across the picture and slammed down the lid of the paintbox.

  “Enough!” she said, standing. “Come inside, I’ll make you some tea.” Sanshirō did not move. It was too much trouble to take his shoes off. Yoshiko’s belated offer of tea left him greatly amused. Not that he was laughing at her for performing her feminine duties in her own good time, but the sudden “I’ll make you some tea” struck him with a kind of irrepressible delight. This was not how one felt in approaching a member of the opposite sex.

  He heard voices in the sitting room. The maid was there after all. Eventually the door slid back and Yoshiko emerged carrying a tea set. Seeing her face from the front, he thought it the most feminine of feminine faces.

  Yoshiko poured the tea and set it between them on the veranda. She knelt opposite him on the matted floor of the parlor. Sanshirō had been thinking of leaving, but now that he was sitting near her, it no longer mattered. He had rushed out of the hospital that day, having stared at her and made her blush, but today he was all right. The tea was a good opportunity for them to start talking again across the width of the veranda.

  After they had exchanged a few remarks, Yoshiko asked him an odd question: did he like her brother Sōhachi? At first it sounded like something a naïve little girl might ask, but what she had in mind was a bit more profound. Academics, she said, look at everything as objects of study, and so their emotions dry up. But if you look at things with feeling, you never want to study them because everything comes down to love or hate. Unfortunately, as a scientist, her brother could not help viewing her as an object of study, which was unkind of him, because the more he studied his sister, the more his love for her would decrease. Great scholar though he was, however, Nonomiya still showed great love for his sister. Conclusion: he must be the best person in all of Japan.

  Sanshirō felt that her argument was perfectly reasonable and, at the same time, it was missing something. Just what it was missing, though, his muddled brain would not tell him, and he presented no open critique. He blushed to think that, in failing to offer a lucid critique of the remarks of a mere girl, he made such a feeble showing as a man. He realized, too, that one had to take these Tokyo schoolgirls seriously.

  Filled with a new respect for Yoshiko, Sanshirō returned to his rooming house. There he found a postcard waiting for him. “Please come to Professor Hirota’s tomorr
ow. We leave for the chrysanthemum doll show at one o’clock. Mineko.” Her writing looked familiar. He had seen it on the envelope in Nonomiya’s pocket. He read the card over and over again.

  *

  The next day was Sunday. After lunch Sanshirō went straight to Nishikatamachi wearing a new uniform and well-shined shoes. He walked down the quiet lane to Professor Hirota’s. From inside he heard the voices of a man and a woman.

  The garden of the Professor’s house lay just within the front gate to the left. One could enter the garden gate and approach the veranda without walking through the house. Sanshirō had been just about to slip the bolt, which was visible through a gap in the photinia hedge, when he became aware of the voices in the garden. They belonged to Nonomiya and Mineko.

  “Then you just fall to earth and die.” This was Nonomiya.

  “I think it’s worth dying for,” Mineko replied.

  “Of course, anyone that reckless would deserve to fall down and die.”

  “What a cruel thing to say.”

  At this point Sanshirō opened the gate. Standing in the center of the garden, the talkers looked his way. Nonomiya offered him an ordinary “Hello, there” and a nod. He wore a new brown fedora.

  “When did the postcard come?” Mineko asked Sanshirō, bringing the conversation with Nonomiya to an abrupt end.

  The master of the house was seated on the edge of the veranda, dressed in a suit and emitting his customary streams of philosophy. He had a foreign magazine in his hand. Yoshiko stood next to him, leaning back with her hands on the veranda and staring at the thick straw sandals on her outstretched feet. Obviously, everyone had been waiting for him.

  Hirota threw his magazine aside. “Let’s get going, then. Congratulations, you’ve finally dragged me out of the house.”

  “What an awful chore this must be for you,” said Nonomiya, going out with him. The two women looked at each other and shared a private laugh. They walked out of the garden in single file.