Sanshiro

by Sōseki Natsume

  All that Sanshirō could say was, “He takes things easy, doesn’t he?”

  “No, I wish he did take things easy. He can’t keep his mind on any one thing. He’s like that little stream near Dangozaka: shallow and narrow, the water constantly changing. There’s no discipline to what he does. If we go to a temple fair to look at the stalls, he’ll have a brainstorm and tell me to buy something crazy like a dwarf pine. Before I can answer him, he’s bargained the price down and bought it. I have to admit, though, he always gets a good deal at these flea markets. But no sooner has he spent my money than he’s locked up the house in the summer and left the pine inside. When we come back the heat has killed it and turned it bright red. He’s like that with everything. I don’t know what to do with him.”

  Sanshirō had recently lent Yojirō twenty yen. Yojirō said he was due to receive a manuscript fee from the Literary Review in two weeks, and he wanted the loan until then. His compassion aroused, Sanshirō took five yen from the money order that had just arrived from his mother and gave Yojirō the rest. The money was not due yet, but Hirota’s story was making Sanshirō a little uneasy. He could hardly reveal such a thing to the Professor, however, and instead he came to Yojirō’s defense.

  “Still, Yojirō has enormous respect for you, Professor, and he’s going all out for you behind the scenes.”

  The Professor turned serious. “What do you mean, he’s going all out for me?”

  Sanshirō had been given strict orders not to tell Professor Hirota about “The Great Darkness” or any of Yojirō’s other activities on his behalf. The Professor was sure to get angry if he found out what was going on. They had to keep it quiet while things were still in progress, and when the time came to let him know, Yojirō himself would be the one to tell him. Sanshirō changed the subject.

  *

  There were many things that brought Sanshirō to the Hirota house. First of all was the unusual way Professor Hirota lived. Indeed, certain aspects of his life were utterly incompatible with Sanshirō’s temperament. Thus it was partly curiosity that brought him here: he wanted to study the Professor to find out how one manages to turn out that way. Next was the fact that Hirota’s presence made him relax and forget about the competitive way of the world. Nonomiya was like Hirota in having something otherworldly about him, but in Nonomiya’s case it seemed that ambitions (albeit otherworldly ambitions) were what kept him aloof from conventional appetites. Thus whenever Sanshirō talked with Nonomiya alone, he would feel that he too must hurry into a full-fledged career and make his contribution to the scholarly world. It was unsettling, irritating. On that score, Hirota was tranquility itself. He taught language in the College, that was all. He had no other accomplishments—a disrespectful thing to say, it was true, but he published no research and was not in the least concerned about it. Therein lay the source of his easy manner, perhaps.

  Lately, Sanshirō had become the captive of a woman. He had surrendered himself to her. It would be pleasant enough if they were lovers, but this was an incomprehensible kind of surrender. He did not know if he was being loved or laughed at, whether he should be terrified or contemptuous, whether he should end it or keep going. He was angry and frustrated. There was no one better for him at such times than Hirota. Half an hour with the Professor and all his tensions were gone. To hell with women. It was mainly for this that Sanshirō had come here tonight.

  There was a serious contradiction in the third of Sanshirō’s reasons for visiting Professor Hirota. He was suffering over Mineko. The thought of Nonomiya with Mineko only increased the suffering. The person who knew Nonomiya best was the Professor, which meant that by coming to see him, the nature of the relationship between Nonomiya and Mineko should become clear to Sanshirō as a matter of course. If their relationship were clarified, Sanshirō would be able to adopt a definite attitude. In spite of all this, Sanshirō had never asked the Professor about them. Tonight, he decided he would give it a try.

  “Nonomiya has taken a room, I hear.”

  “So he tells me.”

  “I would think that someone who has lived in his own house would hate to move back into a room. I’m surprised Nonomiya could do that.”

  “Yes, he’s oblivious to such things. You can tell by the way he dresses. There’s nothing domestic about him. He’s very demanding with his research, though.”

  “Do you think he plans to live there very long?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he’ll take another house all of a sudden.”

  “Do you think he plans to take a wife?”

  “Maybe so. Why don’t you find somebody nice for him?”

  Sanshirō forced a smile. He should never have started this.

  “And what are your plans?”

  “Me? I’m…”

  “Still too young, of course. You shouldn’t have a wife at your age.”

  “That’s what they’re pushing me to do back home.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “My mother.”

  “Do you want to do what she says?”

  “Not really.”

  Hirota’s teeth appeared below his mustache in a broad smile. They were rather nice teeth. Sanshirō suddenly felt very close to Hirota. The feeling had nothing to do with Mineko, nothing to do with Nonomiya. It was a closeness that transcended any immediate advantage to him and made him ashamed to go on asking these questions.

  *

  “You ought to listen to your mother,” Professor Hirota began. “Young men nowadays are too self-aware, their egos are too strong—unlike the young men of my own day. When I was a student, there wasn’t a thing we did that was unrelated to others. It was all for the Emperor, or parents, or the country, or society. Everything was other-centered, which means that all educated men were hypocrites. When society changed, hypocrisy stopped working, as a result of which we started importing self-centeredness into thought and action, and egoism became enormously overdeveloped. Instead of the old hypocrites, now all we have are hypervillains. Have you ever heard the word ‘hypervillain’ before?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “That’s because I just made it up. Even you are—maybe not—yes, you probably are a hypervillain. Yojirō, of course, is an extreme example. And you know Satomi Mineko. She’s a kind of hypervillain. Then there’s Nonomiya’s sister, an interesting variation in her own way. The only hypervillains we needed in the old days were feudal lords and fathers. Now, with equal rights, everybody wants to be one. Not that it’s a bad thing, of course. We all know—take the lid off something that stinks and you find a manure bucket. Tear away the pretty formalities and the bad is out in the open. Formalities are just a bother, so everyone economizes and makes do with the plain stuff. It’s actually quite exhilarating—natural ugliness in all its glory. Of course, when there’s too much glory, the hypervillains get a little annoyed with each other. When their discomfort reaches a peak, altruism is resurrected. And when that becomes a mere formality and turns sour, egoism comes back. And so on, ad infinitum. That’s how we go on living, you might say. That’s how we progress. Look at England. Egoism and altruism have been in perfect balance there for centuries. That’s why she doesn’t move. That’s why she doesn’t progress. The English are a pitiful lot—they have no Ibsen, no Nietzsche. They’re all puffed up like that, but look at them from the outside and you can see them hardening, turning into fossils.”

  Sanshirō was impressed by all this in a way, but he was a little surprised at how the conversation had switched tracks and was running full speed in the wrong direction. At last Hirota, too, became aware of what had happened.

  “What were we talking about?”

  “Marriage.”

  “Marriage?”

  “Yes, that I ought to listen to my mother…”

  “Oh yes. That’s it. You really ought to listen to your mother,” he said, grinning, as if to a child. Sanshirō was not angered by this, however.

  “I see what you mean about my generation being hyp
er-villains, but not about yours being hypocrites.”

  “Look, do you like it when people are kind to you?”

  “Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t. There are times when people are tremendously kind to me and I hate it.”

  “When is that?”

  “When the formalities look kind but kindness itself is not the person’s intention.”

  “Does that ever happen?”

  “Tell me, do you really feel happy when somebody wishes you a Happy New Year?”

  “Oh, well…”

  “You don’t, do you? It’s the same when people tell you they’re ‘splitting their sides’ or ‘rolling over’ with laughter. Not one of them is really laughing. Being kind to people is like that. Some of us do it mechanically. Take my teaching, for example. My real purpose is to make a living, but the students wouldn’t want to see it that way. Meanwhile, there’s Yojirō, the leader of the hypervillains. He causes me all kinds of trouble, but he’s not malicious. He’s actually sort of loveable—like the Americans, the way they’re so brutally frank about money: the thing itself is their goal. There is nothing as honest as an action taken with the thing itself as the goal, and there is nothing less hateful than honesty. Restraint was the main thing my generation was taught, so none of us knows how to approach things honestly, without affectation.”

  Sanshirō was able to follow the argument this far. The urgent question confronting him now, however, was not a matter of general reasoning. He wanted to know whether a very particular individual he had actual dealings with was being honest with him. He thought again about Mineko’s behavior toward him, but he could not decide if it had been “affected” or not. Sanshirō began to suspect that his perceptions might be twice as dull as everyone else’s.

  *

  “Oh yes,” Hirota said, as if suddenly recalling something. “There’s more. Something very odd has come into fashion since the start of this twentieth century of ours, a convoluted tactic of fulfilling the needs of altruism through egoism. Have you come across anybody who does that?”

  “Who does what?”

  “Here, let me put it differently. It’s the use of hypervillainy to practice hypocrisy. You still don’t get it, do you? Maybe I’m not explaining it well. —Look. The old-fashioned hypocrite wants, above all, for others to think well of him, right? But there is a type of man just the opposite of this. He will purposely practice hypocrisy when he wants to hurt another’s feelings. He will act in such a way that the other person couldn’t possibly fail to see how hypocritical he is being. The other person feels bad, of course, and so he accomplishes his purpose. The honesty of conveying one’s hypocrisy to the other person for what it is, this honesty is the distinguishing feature of the hypervillain. And since all of one’s speech and actions appear on the surface to be good, it’s a kind of—not a trinity, not three-in-one, but two-in-one. The number of people who can use this technique skillfully seems to have increased greatly in recent years. For a civilized race whose sensibilities have grown extraordinarily acute, this is the best technique for achieving the most refined hypervillainy. It’s a barbaric situation when you can’t kill someone without spilling blood. Sooner or later, it’s going to go out of style.”

  Professor Hirota spoke like a tour guide describing an old battlefield, putting himself in the position of one who has witnessed the actual events from a distant vantage point. He spoke with the ring of affirmation, evoking the mood of the lecture hall. But it had its effect on Sanshirō, for he could apply Hirota’s theory immediately to the woman who filled his thoughts. He set up the standard in his mind and measured everything about her against it. Yet still there was much beyond measurement. The Professor closed his mouth and started blowing the customary philosophical smoke from his nostrils.

  Just then, footsteps sounded in the hallway. Someone walked in without knocking and came down the hall. A moment later, Yojirō was kneeling at the door of the study.

  “Mr. Haraguchi is here.” Yojirō said nothing about his own belated return, perhaps with good reason. To Sanshirō he tendered only a curt nod, and then he went out again.

  Haraguchi stepped inside, passing Yojirō at the threshold. He wore a Vandyke and mustache in the French style, had close-cropped hair, and he carried a good deal of fat on him. He looked two or three years older than Nonomiya. His kimono was far handsomer than Professor Hirota’s.

  “Well, it’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?” Haraguchi said. “Sasaki has been at my place, and we’ve been eating and what-not. He finally dragged me over here.”

  Haraguchi had an affirmative way of speaking and a voice that naturally brightened the spirits of anyone in his vicinity. Sanshirō had been fairly certain the Haraguchi announced by Yojirō was the painter whose name he had heard on occasion. What a gregarious creature Yojirō was! Sanshirō felt a wave of admiration for the way Yojirō made friends with so many older men. Then he grew stiff. Sanshirō always grew stiff in the presence of his seniors. He interpreted this to be a result of his Kyushu-style education.

  Hirota introduced him to Haraguchi. Sanshirō bowed respectfully and received an easy nod in return. After that he listened to the men’s conversation without a word.

  Haraguchi said that he had only one item of business, and he would take care of that first. He was going to hold a dinner in the near future, and he wanted Hirota to come. It was to be a simple, casual affair. The invitations would go to a limited number of writers and artists and university professors, mostly people who knew each other, so there would be absolutely no need of formality. The purpose would simply be to have dinner together and to exchange edifying literary conversation afterward. That was about all.

  He would join them, Professor Hirota answered simply, thus dispensing with Haraguchi’s business. The rest of their conversation was much more interesting.

  *

  “What have you been doing these days?” Professor Hirota asked.

  “I’m still singing Itchūbushi.39 I’ve already memorized five pieces, some good ones like ‘Eight Yoshiwara Scenes in Blossoms and Fall Colors’ and ‘Koina and Hanbei’s Love Suicide at Karasaki.’ You ought to give it a try yourself. They tell me it’s bad style to sing too loud, though. Itchūbushi was originally performed in small private chambers. But you know me, I’m always loud, and these songs have such intricate melodies I can never get them right. You’ll have to hear me sing sometime.”

  Professor Hirota was smiling. Haraguchi went on, “Bad as I am, though, Satomi Kyōsuke is even worse. He can’t get a single tune right. I wonder why—his sister is such a talented girl. The other day he said he couldn’t stand it anymore, he was going to quit singing and take up an instrument. Somebody suggested he try Idiot’s Delight.40 They said he’d probably do better banging away on some noisemaker in a shrine festival. It was hilarious.”

  “They really said that?”

  “Really. And Satomi actually said he’d do it if I would. It’s not as easy as you’d think, though. There are supposedly eight different styles of Idiot’s Delight.”

  “Why don’t you try it? It sounds like something an ordinary human being could manage.”

  “No, thanks. I’d rather take up the Noh drum.41 I don’t know, when I hear the plop of that little drum, I feel I’m not in the twentieth century anymore. I like that. I mean, how can anything be so delightfully half-witted in times like this? It’s great medicine just to stop and think about that. I may be easy-going, but I could never produce a painting like the sound of that drum.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve never tried.”

  “I couldn’t do it. How could anyone living in Tokyo now paint anything so serene? Of course, it’s not only painting—which reminds me, I wanted to do a caricature of Satomi’s and Nonomiya’s sisters at the track meet the other day, but they ran out on me. I’m planning to do a formal portrait soon and show it in an exhibition.”

  “Whose portrait?”

  “Satomi’s sister.
The usual Japanese woman has an Utamaro-style42 or some such face that’s all right for woodblock prints but doesn’t look good on canvas. Satomi’s sister, though, and Nonomiya’s could be painted. I’m planning to do a life-size painting of Mineko holding up a round fan and facing into the sunlight with some woods in the background. A Western folding fan would be in bad taste, but a round Japanese fan will be novel and interesting. In any case, I’d better hurry up. She could get married soon, and then I probably couldn’t run things my way.”

  Sanshirō listened to Haraguchi with great interest. When he heard that the painting would have Mineko holding up a fan, he was profoundly moved. Some mysterious, fateful bond must exist between them, he felt.

  “That doesn’t sound like a very interesting picture to me,” Hirota said frankly.

  “But that’s how she wanted it. When she suggested holding up a fan I thought it would be unusual and agreed to paint it that way. It’s not a bad idea. It all depends on how it’s done.”

  “Watch out that you don’t make her too beautiful. She’ll get more marriage proposals than she can handle.”

  “Good point,” Haraguchi laughed. “I’ll give it the medium treatment. Speaking of marriage, she’s just about that age. Do you know any likely prospects? Satomi has been asking me to keep my eyes open.”

  “What about you, Haraguchi?”

  “Me? I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t have much standing with her, I’m afraid.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think her brother tells her stories about me. She heard how I stocked up on Japanese food when I went to Europe. I told everybody I was determined to barricade myself in my room in Paris. So Mineko laughed at me and said, ‘The minute you got there, you changed your spots.’ She’s too much for me.”

  “Mineko won’t marry anyone she doesn’t want to. And she won’t be pushed. The best thing will be to let her stay single until she finds somebody she likes.”

  “Strictly Western style. Of course, all women will be like that from now on. Nothing wrong with it.”

  Then Haraguchi and Hirota talked at length about painting. Sanshirō was amazed at how many Western painters’ names Professor Hirota knew. Soon it was time for him to leave. As he was searching for his clogs at the back door, the Professor came to the bottom of the stairway. “Hey, Sasaki, come down here a minute,” he called.