Sanshiro

by Sōseki Natsume

  —How many tickets was Yojirō supposed to sell?

  —As many as he could.

  —Wasn’t there any danger of selling more tickets than there were seats?

  —Yes, there was some danger of that.

  —Then wouldn’t there be trouble after the tickets were sold?

  —No, not at all, Yojirō explained with a perfectly straight face. Many people bought tickets out of sheer obligation, unforeseen events would keep others from attending, and there would be a little intestinal catarrh in the works, too.

  Sanshirō watched how Yojirō sold his tickets. He took money on the spot from those who gave it to him, and to students who did not he gave the tickets anyway. He handed out enough tickets this way to worry his more timid companion, who asked if Yojirō would receive the money later. Of course not, Yojirō answered. It was more profitable overall to sell a lot sloppily than a few carefully. He compared this to the London Times’s method of selling encyclopedias in Japan.56 The comparison sounded impressive enough, but it still left Sanshirō feeling uneasy. When he cautioned Yojirō, he received an interesting answer.

  “I’ll have you know that I am dealing with students of Tokyo Imperial University!”

  “Maybe they are students, but most of them are just as easy-going about money as you are.”

  “Don’t be stupid. The Literary Society is not going to have anything to say about people who don’t pay in good faith. They’re going to be in the red no matter how many tickets they sell.”

  “Is that your opinion or the Society’s?”

  “It is my opinion, of course, as well as the Society’s,” came Yojirō’s expedient reply.

  If one were to believe Yojirō, only an idiot would miss the performance. He held forth on the subject until his listeners began to feel like idiots themselves. But was he doing this to sell tickets? Or because he actually had faith in the show? Or simply to lift his own spirits and those of his listeners and ultimately the spirits of the performance, thus making the air of the world in general as lively as possible? This was a distinction that eluded his customers. And so, despite his success in making them feel like idiots, Yojirō was unable to influence them very much.

  He spoke first on the tremendous efforts of the actors in rehearsal. If what he said was true, most of them would be worn out before the day of the show. Then he talked about the scenery, which he said was extraordinary. He made it sound as though the Society had recruited all the talented young artists in Tokyo and had encouraged each of them to devote his special skills to it. Next he talked about the costumes. They were historically authentic in every detail. Then he talked about the plays. They were all new works and all delightful. He had any number of topics in addition.

  Yojirō said he had sent complimentary tickets to Professor Hirota and Haraguchi, and he had gotten the Nonomiyas and Satomis to buy the most expensive seats. Everything was going well. Sanshirō offered Yojirō his best wishes for the show’s success.

  *

  Yojirō showed up at Sanshirō’s room that night a changed man. He sat stiffly at the charcoal brazier complaining of the cold. More than the cold was bothering him, however, judging from the look on his face. At first he hunched over the brazier, warming his hands, but eventually he put his hands inside his kimono. Sanshirō moved the oil lamp from one end of his desk to the other, hoping to lend some brightness to Yojirō’s countenance. But with his chin buried in his chest, the black burr of Yojirō’s close-cropped head was the only part of him to catch the light. The lamp made no difference. What was wrong? Sanshirō asked. Yojirō raised his head and looked at the lamp.

  “Don’t they have electricity in this house yet?” His question had nothing to do with the look on his face.

  “Not yet. They’re planning to get it soon, though. Oil lamps are too dim for much of anything.”

  But Yojirō seemed to have forgotten all about lamps even while Sanshirō was answering him.

  “Something terrible has happened, Ogawa.”

  “What is it?”

  Yojirō produced some wrinkled newspapers from the breast of his kimono. There were two papers folded together. He peeled one off, refolded it, and thrust it toward Sanshirō. “Read this.” His fingertip lay where Sanshirō was to read. Sanshirō moved closer to the lamp. The headline said, “University Literature Department.”

  Heretofore, said the article, administrators of the University’s programs in Foreign Literature had assigned all courses to foreign instructors. But now, at long last, in response to the march of time and the demands of many students, the lectures of a Japanese were to be recognized among the compulsory courses. A search for an appropriate individual had been underway for some time, and the announcement of a decision in favor of one Mr. So-and-so was to be made shortly. This particular man was an outstanding scholar who, until recently, had been studying abroad under orders from the government, and his appointment was no doubt most fitting.

  “So, Professor Hirota didn’t make it?” Sanshirō turned to Yojirō, who was still looking at the newspaper. “Is this definite?”

  “I’m afraid so.” Yojirō cocked his head to one side. “I thought it was just about a sure thing, but we bungled it. Of course, I had heard the other fellow was pushing hard for it, too.”

  “But this is still a rumor, after all. You can’t be sure until they finally make it public.”

  “If that were the only thing, it wouldn’t matter, of course. It has nothing to do with the Professor. But…” He refolded the other paper and pointed to the headline as he placed it in front of Sanshirō.

  This article started out saying much the same thing as the first one and could hardly be expected to make a new impression on Sanshirō. When he came to the next part, however, Sanshirō was astonished. Professor Hirota, it said, was an unscrupulous schemer. He had been a language teacher for ten years, utterly unknown, a mediocrity, but no sooner had he heard that the University was due to appoint a Japanese professor of foreign literature than he began a furtive campaign on his own behalf and disseminated propaganda leaflets among the students. Moreover, he had urged a protégé of his to write an essay called “The Great Darkness” for one of the little magazines. It had appeared under the pseudonym “A. Propagule,” but in fact the author was known to be an habitué of the Hirota house, a student in the Faculty of Letters by the name of Ogawa Sanshirō. And so the article concluded.

  Sanshirō looked questioningly at Yojirō. Yojirō was already looking at Sanshirō. For a while, they said nothing. Finally, Sanshirō spoke. “This is bad.”

  The note of resentment in his voice was meant for Yojirō, but Yojirō had other things on his mind. “What do you think of it?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, what do I think of it?”

  “I’m sure the newspaper just published a letter to the editor as is. No reporter dug it out. Stuff like this comes to the Literary Review’s readers’ column all the time. That’s what a readers’ column is, after all—a pile of crimes. Look into most of the stories, and they’re a pack of lies. Some are lies on the face of it. And why do you think people print such stupidity, eh? The motive is always some personal advantage. So whenever I was in charge of the readers’ column I threw most of the ugly ones into the wastebasket. That’s just what this article is. It comes from the other guy’s campaign.”

  *

  “Why does it have my name and not yours?”

  “That’s what I was wondering,” said Yojirō, and then he attempted an explanation. “Maybe it’s because you’re a regular student while I’m just a special student.”

  To Sanshirō, this was no explanation at all. It did nothing to soften the blow.

  “Instead of that Propagule nonsense, I should have signed it ‘Sasaki Yojirō’ for all to see. There’s not another man alive who could have written that essay!”

  Yojirō was serious, as though Sanshirō had usurped his copyright.

  Sanshirō was finding this ridiculous. “Have you t
old the Professor?” he asked.

  “Ah, that’s the trouble. It doesn’t matter who the real author of ‘The Great Darkness’ is, but as long as it reflects on the Professor’s character, I have to tell him. You know what he’s like: before, I could have said I didn’t know a thing, that it was probably a mistake, that an essay had appeared in a magazine under a pseudonym, that he needn’t worry about it because it was written by an admirer of his. He’d have said ‘Oh?’ and that would have been the end of it. But not the way things are now. I’ll have to confess my responsibility. If things had worked out, I would have felt good doing my part anonymously, but now that I’ve failed, I’d never feel right keeping quiet. I’m the one who started it all. I’m the one who got that good, innocent man into this mess. And now I’m damned if I’ll just stand idly by and watch what happens. Strict questions of right and wrong aside, I feel sorry for him. It hurts me to see this happen to him.”

  For the first time, Sanshirō felt Yojirō to be an admirable man. “Do you think he saw the newspaper?”

  “It wasn’t in the paper we take. That’s why I didn’t know about it. But the Professor reads other papers at school, and even if he didn’t see it, somebody would be sure to tell him.”

  “So he probably knows by now.”

  “Of course he knows.”

  “He hasn’t said anything to you?”

  “Not a word. But then, I haven’t had time for a decent talk with him lately. I’ve been running all over the place with that drama thing—and I’m fed up with that, too! I ought to quit. Who cares if a bunch of idiots smear themselves with makeup and put on a show?”

  “The Professor’s going to blow up when you tell him.”

  “I suppose he will. I can’t help that. But I’m so sorry I had to stick my nose in and give him this to worry about, a man like that, without vices. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smo—”

  Yojirō cut himself short. A month’s worth of the Professor’s philosophical smoke would make a prodigious cloud. “He does smoke a lot, but that’s all he does. He doesn’t fish or play Go, he has no family life to enjoy. That’s the worst thing. He ought to have a wife and kids. He’s such an ascetic.”

  Yojirō folded his arms. “For once I put a little effort into trying to cheer him up, and look what happens. You ought to do him a favor and drop over.”

  “Do him a favor! I share some of the responsibility too, you know. I’ll go and apologize.”

  “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.”

  “All right. I’ll go and explain things.”

  Yojirō left after that. Sanshirō crawled into bed and lay there, tossing and turning. It was easier to fall asleep at home in Fukuoka. Here, there were so many stimuli: false news reports, Professor Hirota, Mineko, the handsome young man who came and took her away.

  *

  It was after midnight when he finally fell asleep. Waking at the usual time next morning was truly painful. He met another Faculty of Letters student in the lavatory, someone he knew only by sight. From the fellow’s perfunctory “Good morning,” Sanshirō sensed he had read the article. He did avoid the subject, however, and Sanshirō volunteered no excuses.

  As the warm fragrance of his morning broth reached him, Sanshirō found a letter from his mother. It looked like another long one. After he had pulled on his divided skirt—it was too much bother to change into Western clothes—he thrust the letter into the breast of his kimono and went out. Everything gleamed with a light frost.

  He came to the main thoroughfare. Practically all those he saw walking there were students, all heading in the same direction, and all in a hurry. The cold street was full of the vitality of young men. In the midst of this he saw the long shadow of Professor Hirota in a gray tweed overcoat. His stride made the Professor an anachronism in these youthful ranks. It was so much slacker than that of the others around him. The Professor’s shadow disappeared through the College gate. Inside was a large pine tree, its branches spread out like a giant’s umbrella blocking the front door. When Sanshirō passed the gate the Professor’s shadow had vanished. The only things out front were the pine tree and the clock tower above it. This clock always had the wrong time—if it was running at all.

  As he glanced in through the gate, Sanshirō twice muttered the word hydriotaphia. Of all the foreign words he had learned thus far, hydriotaphia was one of the longest and one of the hardest. He still did not know what it meant. He was planning to ask Professor Hirota. Yojirō had guessed that it was something like de te fabula, but Sanshirō saw an enormous difference between the two. De te fabula was a phrase that called for dancing. Just to learn hydriotaphia was a time-consuming effort, and saying it twice caused one’s pace to slacken. It sounded like a word the ancients had devised for Professor Hirota’s personal use.

  At school, Sanshirō felt as though everyone’s attention was fixed on him as the author of “The Great Darkness.” He tried waiting outside for class to start, but it was too cold. He stayed in the corridor. Between classes, he read his mother’s letter.

  Come home this winter vacation, it said, much like the orders she used to send him when he was at school in Kumamoto. Once, a telegram had arrived at the start of a vacation telling him to come home right away. Shocked to think that his mother might be ill, he had rushed back to Fukuoka. She was overjoyed to see him in one piece. What was this all about? he wanted to know. She said he seemed to be taking forever to come home, so she had asked an oracle of the Inari Shrine. It told her he had already left Kumamoto, which made her fear that something had happened to him on the way. Recalling the incident, Sanshirō wondered if he had been the victim of another oracle, but the letter said nothing about Inari. It did have a note squeezed between the lines saying that Miwata Omitsu was looking forward to seeing him, too. Omitsu had left girls’ school in Toyotsu and was living at home again. His mother had asked Omitsu to sew him a quilted robe, which should be arriving soon in the mail. Kakuzō, the carpenter, had lost ninety-eight yen gambling in the hills. Her report of this incident was very detailed, and he skimmed it. Apparently three men had come to see Kakuzō about buying a hill that he owned. He lost the money while showing them around the property. At home, he told his wife he had no idea when the money was taken. She guessed that he had been chloroformed, and Kakuzō said he did remember some kind of smell, but everyone in the village thought he had been cheated at gambling. His mother concluded with the moral of the story: if something like this could happen in the country, then he had better watch his step in Tokyo.

  As he was rolling up his mother’s long letter, Yojirō walked over to him and said, “Aha, a woman’s hand!” His spirits had improved since last night if he was making jokes.

  “Don’t be stupid, it’s from my mother,” Sanshirō answered with a touch of annoyance. He returned the letter in its envelope to the breast of his kimono.

  “Are you sure it’s not from a certain Miss Satomi?”

  “No, it is not.”

  “Say, have you heard about Miss Satomi?”

  “Heard what?”

  Just then a student came to tell Yojirō that someone was waiting on the floor below to buy a ticket to the play. Yojirō hurried downstairs.

  *

  With that, Yojirō disappeared. Sanshirō badly wanted to catch hold of him, but Yojirō was not coming back. There was nothing for Sanshirō to do but throw himself into taking notes. When the lectures ended, he went to Professor Hirota’s, as he had promised to do the night before.

  The house was as quiet as ever. The Professor was stretched out in the sitting room, asleep. Was he not feeling well? Sanshirō asked the old servant. No, that was not it, she replied. He had told her that he was sleepy from staying up late the night before, and he had lain down as soon as he came home from school. A small quilt lay on top of his long frame. Again Sanshirō questioned the maid in soft tones: what had kept him up so late? The Professor always stayed up late, she said, but last night, instead of studying, he had had a l
ong talk with Yojirō. Now that Yojirō had taken the place of studying, Sanshirō no longer had an explanation for the Professor’s nap, but at least he could be sure that Yojirō had had his talk with the Professor. He wanted to ask what sort of scolding Yojirō had received, but the maid could not be expected to know that. He had lost any chance of finding out when he let Yojirō slip from his grasp at school. Yojirō had probably gotten off lightly, though, judging from his good spirits. But then the workings of Yojirō’s mind were forever beyond Sanshirō, and he could not imagine what had actually happened.

  Sanshirō sat down in front of the charcoal brazier. The iron kettle was ringing. The maid withdrew to her room. Sanshirō sat cross-legged, warming his hands over the kettle and waiting for the Professor to wake up. He was sound asleep. Sanshirō enjoyed the tranquil mood. He tapped the kettle with his fingernails. He poured himself a cup of hot water, blew across it a few times, and drank it down. The Professor lay facing the other way. His hair was exceedingly short; he had probably had it cut just a few days ago. The tip of his heavy mustache was visible. Sanshirō could not see his nose from here, but the steady sound of his breathing was clearly audible. He was sleeping peacefully.

  Sanshirō opened Hydriotaphia, which he had brought to give back to the Professor. He sampled a few passages at random but understood very little. There was something about throwing flowers into the grave. It said the Romans “affected” the rose. He did not know what that meant, but he supposed you could translate it something like “to be fond of” them. The Greeks used the “amaranthus,” it said. This was not clear, either, but it must have been the name of a flower. A little farther on, the text became completely unintelligible. He took his eyes from the page and looked at the Professor, who was still asleep. Why had the Professor lent him such a difficult book? And why, though he could not understand it, did this book arouse his curiosity so? He decided in the end that Professor Hirota was himself hydriotaphia.