Sanshiro

by Sōseki Natsume

  “With Ibsen women, it’s all out in the open. Mineko is wild deep inside. Of course, I don’t mean wild in the ordinary sense. Take Nonomiya’s sister: she has this kind of wild look at first glance, but in the end she’s very feminine. It’s an odd business.”

  “So with Mineko the wildness is directed inward, then?”

  Sanshirō listened to the others’ evaluations of Mineko without saying anything. He could not agree with either. To begin with, he found the use of “wild” to describe Mineko incomprehensible.

  *

  Eventually Yojirō left the room and returned wearing the same kind of formal outfit that Sanshirō had on—the dark coat, the split skirt. “We’ll be going now,” he said to the Professor, who merely sipped his tea in silence.

  They went out. By now it was quite dark. They were only a few steps beyond the front gate when Sanshirō spoke up. “The Professor called Mineko ‘wild,’ didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he’s like that. Given the time and place, he’ll say anything that comes into his head. It’s really a joke when he starts in on women. What he knows about them probably adds up to zero. How the hell can you understand women if you’ve never been in love!” Yojirō spat out the English word.

  “Yes, but you agreed with him.”

  “Right. I said she’s wild. Why?”

  “What’s wild about her?”

  “It’s not any one thing. All modern women are wild, not just Mineko.”

  “You said she’s like an Ibsen character, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Which character did you have in mind?”

  “Well… she’s just like an Ibsen character, that’s all.”

  Sanshirō was not convinced, but he decided not to pursue the matter. They had walked a short way in silence when Yojirō said, “Mineko is not the only one like an Ibsen character. All women are like that nowadays. And not just women. Any man who’s had a whiff of the new atmosphere has something of Ibsen about him. People just don’t act freely the way Ibsen’s characters do. Inside, though, something is usually bothering them.”

  “Nothing is bothering me.”

  “You’re just kidding yourself. There’s not a society anywhere without its flaws, right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Well, then, every creature living in a society is going to feel dissatisfied about something. Ibsen’s characters have been the clearest in their perception of the flaws in the modern social system. We’ll all be like that before long.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “I’m not the only one. All men of intelligence can see it.”

  “Does the Professor think so, too?”

  “The Professor? I don’t know about him.”

  “But it stands to reason. He said Mineko is calm and at the same time wild, didn’t he? If you interpret that, it means she can stay calm because she’s able to go along in harmony with her surroundings, but since she’s dissatisfied with something, she’s wild underneath it all. Don’t you see?”

  “I do now. What a mind he has! When it comes to things like this, the Professor is great, after all.”

  Sanshirō had been hoping to advance the discussion a little more in the direction of Mineko’s character, but with his gush of praise for the Professor, Yojirō had changed the subject.

  “The thing I wanted to talk to you about was—Oh, before I get to that, did you read ‘The Great Darkness’? What I have to say won’t make much sense unless you’ve read it.”

  “I read it at home after I left you.”

  “How did you like it?”

  “What did the Professor have to say?”

  “The Professor? He doesn’t know a thing about it.”

  “Well, I did enjoy it, but, I don’t know, it’s like drinking beer when you want to eat. It doesn’t fill you up.”

  “That’s fine. So long as it was exciting, that’s all that matters. That’s why I used a pseudonym. I’m still in the preparatory stage, after all. I’ll keep it this way for now and come out with my real name when the time is right. Anyhow, enough of that. Here’s what I wanted to tell you.”

  *

  At tonight’s gathering, Yojirō was going to bemoan the inactivity of the Department of Literature, and Sanshirō would have to join him. Since the inactivity was a known fact, others were certain to support them, and together they would devise a plan to correct the situation. Yojirō would suggest that a Japanese professor be brought into the Department without delay. Everyone would agree with him, of course, because it was so obvious. Then the question would arise of who would be a suitable candidate, and Yojirō would bring up Professor Hirota’s name. Sanshirō must then back him up with his wholehearted praise of the Professor. Otherwise, someone who knew that Yojirō lived with the Professor might raise doubts. Yojirō didn’t care what anyone might think about him personally, but he did not want to cause the Professor any embarrassment. Everything would go well, of course, since there were several others in on the scheme, but the more supporters they had the better. For that reason, it was important for Sanshirō to speak. In the event they reached a consensus, they would choose a representative to see the Dean and the President of the University. Things might not go that far tonight, but that was all right, too. They would play it by ear.

  Yojirō spoke with a singular eloquence. Regrettably, however, it was a slippery eloquence, and it lacked weight. At times it sounded as if he were delivering a deadly serious lecture on a joke. Essentially, though, his cause was a good one, and Sanshirō expressed his general approval. Only Yojirō’s somewhat devious methods bothered him, he said. This brought Yojirō to a halt in the middle of the street. They were standing now in front of the Morikawa-chō shrine gate.

  “To you it looks like I’m being devious, but all I’m doing is using human ingenuity beforehand to keep the natural order of things from going astray. That’s entirely different from hatching foolish schemes that go against nature. So what if I’m being devious? Devious methods aren’t bad. Only bad methods are bad.”

  Sanshirō could say nothing to this. He thought he had objections to raise, but he could not verbalize them. The only things in Yojirō’s speech that had made a clear impression on him were the ones that had never occurred to him before. Those were the parts that won his admiration.

  “That’s one way to look at it,” he answered vaguely, and the two walked on again side by side. The field of view broadened suddenly when they entered the University gate. The buildings stood out here and there as large, black shapes. Where the roof lines gave out, the luminous sky began. The stars were out in enormous numbers.

  “Look how beautiful the sky is,” Sanshirō said. They took a few more paces, looking up.

  “Hey, Sanshirō.”

  “What?” Sanshirō thought this would be a continuation of their conversation.

  “How do you feel when you look at a sky like this?”

  It was an unusual question coming from Yojirō. Sanshirō had any number of stock answers he could give him—eternity, infinity—but he was sure they would only invite Yojirō’s laughter, so he kept them to himself.

  “We’re so damned useless. Maybe I’ll give up this stupid campaign tomorrow. Writing ‘The Great Darkness’ won’t do any good.”

  “What’s this, all of a sudden?”

  “Looking at this sky does it. Sanshirō, have you ever fallen for a woman?”

  Sanshirō could not answer him immediately.

  “Women are terrifying,” said Yojirō.

  “I know,” said Sanshirō.

  Yojirō burst out laughing. The night-time quiet made it sound awfully loud. “What do you know about women?”

  Sanshirō hung his head.

  “It’s going to be a nice day again tomorrow, just what they need for the track meet. You ought to go. There’ll be lots of good-looking women there.”

  The two walked through the darkness to the student assembly hall. Electric lights were burning brightly in
side.

  *

  They walked along the wooden porch and turned into the dining room. Several others had arrived before them and gathered into groups. There were three separate groups of different sizes. A few individuals who chose not to join them were silently reading the hall’s newspapers and magazines. There were conversations going on everywhere—more conversations than groups, it seemed—but the room was relatively calm and quiet. The greater release of energy was in the billows of tobacco smoke.

  More and more students arrived. Their black shadows would materialize out of the darkness on the porch, then light up one by one and enter the room. At times, five or six shadows in a row would light up like this. Soon everyone was there. Yojirō was running back and forth through the smoke. Wherever he went he discussed something in hushed tones. Sanshirō watched him and thought, “The campaign is starting.”

  A little later, the student organizer called for everyone to find a seat. The tables had been set beforehand. The students flocked to the tables, in no order whatever, and the dinner started.

  In Kumamoto, Sanshirō had drunk only red sake, a cheap local brew.36 That was all Kumamoto students ever drank, and no one questioned the custom. If they went out to eat, it would be at the local beef house. Some suspected that the beef in that particular restaurant might be horse meat. The students would lift the meat from the plate and slap it against the wall. If it fell, it was supposedly beef; if it stuck, it was horse meat—like magic. For Sanshirō, this gentlemanly gathering of students was a unique occasion. He manipulated his knife and fork with great pleasure. And when those were at rest he consumed large quantities of beer.

  “The food here is terrible, isn’t it?” the student next to Sanshirō said to him. He was a soft-spoken young man with extremely close-cropped hair and gold-rimmed glasses.

  “I suppose so,” Sanshirō replied. With Yojirō he would have answered honestly that the food tasted excellent to a country boy like himself. But in this case he feared that an honest answer might be taken for sarcasm.

  The student then asked Sanshirō, “Where did you go to college?”

  “Kumamoto.”

  “Oh, really? My cousin went there. He says it’s a terrible place.”

  “Yes, barbaric.”

  Loud voices suddenly echoed from the far side of the room. Sanshirō looked over to see Yojirō holding forth to his immediate neighbors. Every now and then he would say something like “De te fabula.”37 Sanshirō had no idea what this meant, but each time Yojirō said it his listeners would burst out laughing. He grew increasingly ebullient. “De te fabula, we young men of the new age…” The student sitting diagonally opposite Sanshirō, a light-complexioned, genteel-looking fellow, rested his knife a moment to look at Yojirō’s group. Then he smiled and said, chuckling at his own French, “Il a le diable au corps.” Yojirō and his cohorts seemed not to have heard this; at that moment all four raised their beer glasses in an exultant toast.

  “He certainly is a lively one,” the young man with the gold-rimmed glasses said to Sanshirō.

  “Yes, he does a lot of talking.”

  “He once treated me to a plate of rice and curry at the Yodomiken. I had never seen him before. He just walked up and dragged me over there.” He laughed. Sanshirō realized that he was not the only one that Yojirō had treated to rice and curry at the Yodomiken.

  *

  Soon coffee was served. One of the students stood up. Yojirō started clapping wildly, and the others joined in.

  The one who stood up wore a new black student uniform and had already grown himself a mustache. He was extremely tall—a man made for standing up in front of others. He began to deliver a speech.

  “That we have gathered together here tonight to partake of an evening’s merriment in the name of friendship is in itself a cause for pleasure. It occurs to me, however, that the significance of this gathering is not merely social, that it may well produce something having far greater influence, and so I rise to address you now. This dinner began with beer and is ending with coffee. It is a thoroughly ordinary dinner. But the nearly forty men who drink this beer and coffee are by no means ordinary. And what is more, in the interval between our starting the beer and finishing the coffee, we have achieved an awareness of the expansion of our destiny.

  “The call for political freedom took place long ago. The call for freedom of speech is also a thing of the past. Freedom is not a word to be used exclusively for phenomena such as these which are so easily given outward manifestation. I believe that we young men of the new age have encountered the moment in time when we must call for that great freedom, the freedom of the mind.

  “We young men can no longer endure the oppression of the old Japan. Simultaneously, we live in circumstances that compel us to announce to the world that we young men can no longer endure the new oppression from the West. In society, and in literature as well, the new oppression from the West is just as painful to us, the young men of the new age, as is the oppression of the old Japan.

  “All of us here are engaged in the study of Western literature. A study of literature, however, is always and ever a study. It is fundamentally different from bowing at the feet of that literature. We do not study Western literature in order to surrender ourselves to it, but to emancipate minds that have already surrendered to it. We possess the confidence and determination never to study any literature, however coercively it may be pressed upon us, that does not coincide with this purpose.

  “It is in our possession of this confidence and this determination that we differ from ordinary men. Literature is neither technique nor business. It is a motive force of society, a force that is more in touch with the fundamental principles of human life. This is why we study literature. This is why we possess the aforementioned confidence and determination. This is why we anticipate from tonight’s gathering an effect of more than common importance.

  “Society is in violent motion. This is equally true of literature, which is a product of society. In order to avail ourselves of this motive energy, and to guide literature in conformity with our ideals, we insignificant individuals must band together and fulfill, develop, and expand our destiny. In that this evening’s beer and coffee have carried this hidden purpose a step ahead, it is precious beer and coffee, a hundred times more precious than ordinary beer and coffee.”

  When the speech ended, the assembled students all cheered enthusiastically. Sanshirō was among the most enthusiastic. Then Yojirō sprang to his feet.

  “De te fabula! Who gives a damn how many words Shakespeare used or how many white hairs Ibsen had? We don’t have to worry about ‘surrendering ourselves’ to stupid lectures like that. But it’s the University that suffers. We’ve got to bring in a man who can satisfy the youth of the new age. Foreigners can’t do it. First of all, they have no authority in the University.”

  Again the room was filled with cheers. Then everyone was laughing, and the man next to Yojirō shouted, “A toast to de te fabula!” The student who had spoken earlier immediately seconded the idea. But there was no beer left. Yojirō ran out to the kitchen. The waiters brought sake. When all had drunk, someone shouted, “Another toast. This time to ‘The Great Darkness’!” Those around Yojirō burst into raucous laughter. Yojirō scratched his head.

  When the dinner ended and the young men all dispersed into the darkness, Sanshirō asked Yojirō, “What is de te fabula?”

  “It’s Greek,” he said without elaborating, and Sanshirō let it go at that. The two walked home beneath the beautiful sky.

  *

  Next day, as expected, the weather was fine. It had been an unusually mild year, and today was especially warm. Sanshirō went to the public bath in the morning. It was nearly empty since men of leisure were then in short supply. In the changing room, he noticed a large poster for the Mitsukoshi fabric store. It featured a drawing of a pretty woman who looked something like Mineko. On closer inspection he saw that the eyes were different, and he could not te
ll how straight the teeth were. Of Mineko’s features, it had been her eyes and her teeth that had most startled Sanshirō. Yojirō was of the opinion that she was slightly buck-toothed, which explained why her teeth were always showing, but Sanshirō did not believe it…

  His mind thus occupied as he soaked in the bath, Sanshirō finally emerged without really washing himself. The awareness that he was a youth of the new age had been strengthened suddenly the night before, but nothing else had been strengthened; physically, he was still the same. On weekends, he relaxed far more completely than anyone else. Today, he would go to the track meet after lunch.

  Sanshirō had never been fond of sports. He had gone rabbit hunting a few times at home. And once he was the flagman for a college boat race. That time he was the target of a great outcry when he mixed up the red and green flags. Of course, the professor in charge of the pistol for the final race had failed to fire it. Or, rather, he fired it but it didn’t go off, and this confused Sanshirō. He stayed away from athletic contests after that. Today’s, however, was the first track meet to be held since his arrival in Tokyo, and he meant to see it. Yojirō, too, had urged him to go. According to Yojirō, it was the women, rather than the meet itself, that were worth seeing. One of those women would be Nonomiya’s sister. And with Nonomiya’s sister would be Mineko. He wanted to go over and say “Hello” or something.

  Sanshirō went out after lunch. The entrance to the meet was at the south end of the playing field. There the Rising Sun and the English flag were displayed crosswise. He understood what the Rising Sun was doing there, but why the English flag? Maybe it was for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.38 But he could not see any connection between the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and the University track meet.

  The playing field was a grass rectangle. Much of its color had faded with the deepening of autumn. The spectators’ area was on the west side, bounded at the rear by an artificial hill, in the front by the playing field fence, and arranged in such a way that everyone was herded into it. Too small for the crowd that had come, the place was packed. At least he did not feel cold, though, thanks to the good weather. He did see a fair number of overcoats, but there were also women holding parasols.