Sanshiro

by Sōseki Natsume

  *

  It was cold outside, the sky so high and clear it almost made him wonder where the morning dew would come from. Whenever his hand brushed against the silk of his kimono, that spot of skin felt a chill. He walked down one deserted lane after another and, turning a corner, encountered a roadside fortune-teller. The man held a large, round paper lantern that made him bright red from the waist down. Sanshirō suddenly wanted to buy a fortune, but he suppressed the impulse and let the man pass, taking such care to avoid the red lantern that his shoulder brushed against a cedar fence. A little farther on, he cut across a dark area and came out to Oiwake’s main street. There was a noodle shop on the corner. This time Sanshirō followed his impulse and ducked under the curtain in the doorway. He wanted a drink.

  There were three College students in the shop. One of them was saying that many professors had begun eating noodles for lunch recently. The delivery boys would come rushing into the school grounds as soon as the noon gun sounded, balancing stacks of baskets and bowls on their shoulders. This particular shop was probably doing a lot of business that way. One of the professors ate boiling hot noodles even in summer. Why would he do such a thing? He probably had a bad stomach. The three students went on like this, referring to their professors by their last name only. One of them mentioned Hirota, which started a discussion about why Hirota was still a bachelor. The opinion was expressed that he probably did not hate women, because he had a nude picture hanging on his office wall. Of course, it was a Western nude, so that didn’t prove anything. Perhaps he hated Japanese women? No, he must have been disappointed in love. Maybe that’s what made him such an eccentric. Was it true that some beautiful young woman often visited him?

  Before long the students began saying what an extraordinary man Hirota was. Sanshirō could not tell why they thought him so extraordinary, but all three of them had read Yojirō’s “The Great Darkness” and admitted that the essay was what had started them liking Hirota. There were quotations of some of Yojirō’s aphorisms, followed by enthusiastic praise of his style. Who could the mysterious A. Propagule be? In any case, they agreed, he must be someone who knew Hirota very well.

  This conversation cleared the air for Sanshirō. He felt new admiration for Yojirō in his decision to write “The Great Darkness.” Until now he had doubted that any purpose other than the gratification of Yojirō’s ego could be served by the flaunting of his “major” essays in a journal that, by his own admission, sold poorly. But as he listened to these students, Sanshirō was awakened to the power of the printed word. What Yojirō had said was true: writing anything, however modest, was better than not writing at all. This was where men’s reputations were made or broken! Sanshirō left the noodle shop overawed at the responsibility of those who wield the pen.

  The effect of the sake had worn off by the time Sanshirō reached his lodgings. Everything was so stupid, somehow. He was sitting at his desk, blank, when the maid came upstairs with a fresh kettle and a letter for him. It was from his mother again. He opened it immediately. Today he was overjoyed at the sight of his mother’s handwriting.

  The letter was a long one, but it had nothing much to say. He was particularly pleased that his mother said nothing about Miwata Omitsu. She had included a strange bit of advice, however.

  “You have been cowardly since childhood. This is a terrible disadvantage, and it must make examinations and such very trying for you. You know what a good scholar and middle-school teacher Okitsu Taka is, but every time he takes the qualifying examination the poor man trembles and can never write good answers, so his pay never goes up. He asked a friend of his, a medical school graduate, I think, to make some pills that would stop the trembling, and he took them before the examination, but he trembled just the same. I don’t think yours is so bad that you tremble, but you ought to have one of those Tokyo doctors make you something you can take regularly to give you some nerve. It just might work.”

  Sanshirō found her advice ludicrous, which made it all the more comforting. Mothers were so kind! He stayed up until one o’clock that night writing his mother a long letter. In it was the sentence, “Tokyo is not a very interesting place.”

  8

  This is how Sanshirō came to lend Yojirō money.

  At nine o’clock on a rainy evening several days earlier, Yojirō had paid Sanshirō an unexpected visit. The first words from Yojirō’s mouth were, “I’m done for.”

  Sanshirō had never seen him look so pale. At first he thought Yojirō might have been out too long in the chilling autumn storm, but when Yojirō sat down, Sanshirō realized that more was wrong with him than his color. He was in uncharacteristically low spirits.

  “Are you sick?”

  Yojirō blinked twice, his eyes skittish as a deer’s, and answered, “I’m in trouble. I lost some money.” With a worried look, he blew two or three streams of smoke from his nostrils.

  Sanshirō could not simply wait in silence for Yojirō to explain himself. How much money? Where had he lost it? As soon as the last stream of smoke was gone, Yojirō told the whole story without a break.

  He had lost twenty yen. Worst of all, it was someone else’s money. When Professor Hirota moved into the house in which he was living the year before, he was unable to pay the entire deposit of three months’ rent and borrowed the difference from Nonomiya. This was money that Nonomiya had asked his father to send him from the country to buy Yoshiko a violin. There was, therefore, no pressing deadline by which the money had to be repaid, but the longer it was postponed, the more Yoshiko would be inconvenienced. And in fact she still did not have her violin because Professor Hirota had not returned the money. He would have repaid it if he had been able to, but month followed on month with nothing to spare, and since Hirota was not a man to work for anything beyond his salary, he had simply let it go. Just recently, however, he had at last received the sixty yen due him for grading the College’s summer entrance examinations. It was with this that he intended to discharge his obligation, and the task of delivering the money had fallen to Yojirō.

  “That’s the money I lost. It’s unforgivable.” Yojirō looked as though he really felt he had done something unforgivable.

  “Do you have any idea where you dropped it?”

  “Dropped it? I bet it all on the horses.”

  Sanshirō was astounded. Even indiscretion had its limits, but Yojirō had so overshot them that Sanshirō could not bring himself to admonish him. And besides, Yojirō was so very downcast. Comparing him now with his usual ebullient self, one would have had to conclude that there were two Yojirōs. The contrast was simply too violent, provoking a simultaneous onslaught of amusement and pity that threw Sanshirō—and then Yojirō—into a fit of laughter.

  “Oh well,” Yojirō said, “I guess it will all work out.”

  “Does the Professor know?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Nonomiya?”

  “Of course not.”

  “When did you get the money?”

  “The first of the month. Just two weeks ago today.”

  “And when did you bet it on the horses?”

  “The day after that.”

  “And you’ve just let it go all this time?”

  “No, I’ve been running all over trying to come up with something. If I have to, I can let it go until the end of the month.”

  “Do you have some money coming in then?”

  “The Literary Review should be paying me.”

  Sanshirō stood up and opened his desk drawer. “I’ve got some money here,” he said, looking into the envelope containing his most recent letter from home. “My mother was early this month.”

  “Dear, sweet Ogawa! A prince among men!” Yojirō responded like a professional Tokyo storyteller, his voice suddenly full of life.

  Braving the storm, the two made their way to the main street of Oiwake after ten o’clock and went to the noodle shop on the corner. It was then that Sanshirō learned to drink sake at noodle shops.
Both of them drank with pleasure that night. Yojirō paid the check. He was never one to let others pay for him.

  *

  Nearly ten days later, Yojirō had still not returned the twenty yen. Sanshirō was too honest not to worry about paying the rent. He did not press Yojirō for the money, but he kept wishing that he would do something about it, and soon the end of the month was less than two days away. It never occurred to Sanshirō to hold off paying the rent in case something went wrong. Yojirō would bring the money without fail—no, of course Sanshirō did not have that much confidence in him, but he told himself that Yojirō had at least enough kindness to try to work things out. Hirota had said that Yojirō’s mind was always on the move, like shallow water, but if all that movement involved ignoring his responsibilities, Sanshirō was going to be very upset. No, Yojirō couldn’t be that bad.

  Sanshirō was looking down at the street from his second-story window when Yojirō appeared in the distance, approaching swiftly. He came as far as the house and looked up at Sanshirō.

  “You’re in?”

  Sanshirō, looking down, replied, “I’m in.”

  This vertical exchange of ridiculous greetings completed, Sanshirō pulled his head in, and Yojirō pounded his way up the stairs.

  “I’ll bet you’ve been on the lookout for me and worrying about the rent. I know you. That’s why I’ve been running all over the place. What a stupid business.”

  “Did you get your money from the Review?”

  “What money? They don’t owe me anything.”

  “Didn’t you tell me they were going to pay you at the end of the month?”

  “Did I? You must have misunderstood. I’ve had everything I’m going to get out of them.”

  “That’s funny. I’m sure you said they’d pay you.”

  “I said I was going to get an advance, a loan. But they won’t give it to me. The bastards don’t think I’d pay it back. And it’s only twenty yen! I wrote ‘The Great Darkness’ for them and they still don’t trust me. I’m sick of them.”

  “So you didn’t get any money?”

  “Not from them. I got it from somebody else. I thought you’d be in trouble if I didn’t.”

  “Oh. Sorry I put you through that.”

  “But there’s a catch. I don’t have the money. You have to go and get it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Well, when the Review turned me down I went to see Haraguchi and a few other people, but none of them could manage it for the end of the month. Finally I went to Satomi’s. I guess you don’t know him. Satomi Kyōsuke. Law graduate. Mineko’s brother. Anyway, he was out, so nothing came of that, either. By then I was hungry and didn’t feel like walking around on an empty stomach, so I stayed and talked to Mineko.”

  “Wasn’t Yoshiko there?”

  “Of course not, it was just after noon and she was at school. Besides, we were in the drawing room, so it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “So Mineko agreed to lend you the money.”

  “Does she have her own money?”

  “That I wouldn’t know. Anyhow, it’s all set. She said she’d do it. And the funny way she has of acting like everybody’s big sister, you can relax once she’s agreed to go along. There’s nothing to worry about, all you have to do is ask politely. But what a shock at the end! She said she had the money but she couldn’t give it to me. I asked her, ‘Don’t you trust me?’ She said ‘No’—and she was smiling! She’s too much. I asked if I should send you over and she said yes, she would give it to you. Let her do it any way she likes. Do you think you can go and get it?”

  “If I don’t go I’ll have to wire my mother.”

  “Forget it. A telegram now would be stupid. Even you can do that much, I’m sure.”

  “I can do it.”

  This took care of the twenty yen. Once that had been dispensed with, Yojirō began a report on the Hirota affair.

  *

  The campaign was making steady progress. Yojirō was visiting concerned students one at a time in their rooming houses whenever he had a chance. Individual discussions were the only way. When a lot of people got together, each one would come up with his own idea just to assert himself. Or else he’d feel slighted and act indifferent. Individual discussions were absolutely the only way. On the other hand, they took time. And money. But if he was going to worry about that, there would be no campaign. Another thing: he was trying not to introduce Professor Hirota’s name into the discussions too often. If the others thought this was all for the sake of Hirota and not for the students themselves, everything would fall apart.

  This was his technique for advancing the campaign, Yojirō said. Everything had gone well up to now. They had reached the point of convincing everyone that having only Westerners on the faculty was no longer acceptable and that a Japanese must be brought in to teach foreign literature. All they had to do now was hold another large meeting, choose some delegates, and send them to voice the students’ desires to the Dean, the President, and others. Of course, the meeting itself was just a formality and could be dispensed with since they knew pretty well which students would be the delegates. All were sympathetic to Professor Hirota. Depending on the progress of the negotiations, they might even bring up the Professor’s name.

  Yojirō sounded as though he had the world in his grasp. Sanshirō was not a little impressed with his abilities. Yojirō then talked about his having brought Haraguchi to see the Professor the other night.

  “You remember how Haraguchi urged the Professor to attend that dinner for literary men.” Sanshirō remembered, of course. That, too, had been organized by Yojirō. He had many reasons for doing it, he said, but the most immediate one was that an influential professor in the Department of Literature would be at the dinner. It would be a tremendous advantage to the Professor to bring him and the other man together at this juncture. Eccentric that he was, the Professor did not go out of his way to mix with others. But if Yojirō could arrange suitable opportunities to bring him in contact with people, then—in his own eccentric way—the Professor would associate with them.

  “So that’s what that was all about! I had no idea. You say you’re the organizer, but are all those important men going to come when they get an invitation from you?”

  Yojirō turned a somber gaze on Sanshirō. Then, with a sour smile, he looked away. “Don’t talk nonsense. It was my idea, but no one’s going to know that. I suggested it to Haraguchi and arranged for him to use his influence.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “ ‘Oh, I see.’ I can still smell the farm on you. Anyhow, you ought to go to the dinner yourself. It should be soon now.”

  “What’s the point of me mixing with all those important men? I think I’ll skip it.”

  “There’s that farm smell again. The only difference between an important man and a not-so-important man is the order in which they’ve entered society. You hear that so-and-so has a doctorate or such-and-such is a University graduate, but you meet him and he’s like anybody else. They don’t go around thinking how ‘important’ they are. You really ought to come to the dinner. It could do you good in the future.”

  “Where is it going to be?”

  “Probably at the Seiyōken in Ueno.”43

  “I’ve never been to a place like that. It’s going to be expensive, isn’t it?”

  “Well, maybe two yen each. But don’t worry, if you don’t have the money, I’ll pay for you.”

  Sanshirō thought of the twenty yen, but strangely enough it no longer seemed funny. Yojirō suggested they go to a restaurant on the Ginza for tempura. “I’ve got money,” he said. What a strange fellow! Sanshirō, who usually went along with anything, refused this time. Instead, they took a walk. They stopped in at Okano’s Confectionery on the way back, and Yojirō bought a lot of little chestnut-jam pastries. They were for the Professor, he said, and he went off clutching a bagful.

  *

  Th
at night, Sanshirō gave some thought to Yojirō’s character. Was that how you turned out after living in Tokyo for a long time? Then he thought about going to the Satomi house for a loan. He was glad enough of the new excuse to see Mineko, but he didn’t like the idea of approaching anyone for money, hat in hand. It would be a whole new experience for him, complicated by the fact that the lender was a girl, not an independent person. Perhaps she did have her own money, but if she were to lend it to Sanshirō in secret, without her brother’s permission, it might later prove to be an embarrassment for her, if not for him. Knowing Mineko, though, everything might well have been arranged from the start so as not to become an embarrassment. In any case, he would go to see her, and if it looked as though borrowing the money would be unpleasant, he would refuse it, delay the payment of the rent for a few days, and have the money sent from home, thus ending the matter.

  His thoughts came this far and took a new turn, filling his head with images of Mineko—her face, her hands, her neckline, the obi and kimono she wore. His imagination multiplied and divided them. He thought especially about their meeting tomorrow. How would she act toward him? What would she say? He saw ten, twenty different versions of the scene. Sanshirō had always been like this. Whenever he had to see someone on business, his imagination would concentrate on how the other person would act. He never thought about himself—the look on his own face, the things he would say, his tone of voice—until afterward. Then he never failed to think about them—with regret.

  Tonight, especially, he had no imagination to spare for himself. He had been having doubts about Mineko. But simply doubting her would never solve anything. On the other hand, he had no questions to confront her with, no Gordian knots to slash. If a solution was necessary for Sanshirō’s peace of mind, it involved nothing more than exploiting this chance to see Mineko in order to allow himself one final, precarious judgment based on her behavior toward him. Tomorrow’s interview would supply him with indispensable data for that judgment. And so now he tried to imagine what she would be like. The scenes he came up with, however, were always favorable to himself, and as such their accuracy was highly suspect. Each was like a handsome photograph of an ugly place. A photograph might be accurate in every way, but it would never be the same as the indisputably ugly original.