The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series)

by J. Thomas Rimer

  In the depths of the mountains? Who is she?

  Chapter 2: Thus the Embodiment

  ROMANCE, HER FATHER; HER MOTHER, REALITY

  Our world of entertaining sights to see still has its stories that are sad to hear. Once, in Kyoto, there lived a young geisha named Muroka, whose reputation towered higher than the pagoda at Yasaka, whose fame resounded louder than the Otowa Falls. But in time, even this colorful blossom, this local goddess, proved no exception to the rule that all that prospers must decline.

  Muroka became involved with a clean-cut and manly man named Umeoka something, a rōnin from the Chūgoku region, and decided to commit herself to him. Other customers were loath to patronize another’s lover; their calls grew few and far between. Let it be: one’s life blooms as briefly as a morning glory (so goes the song). Muroka tossed it all away as if with a flick of the geisha’s plectrum, after which she feared nothing, not even the shōgun’s dreaded Special Service Division. I play the three-stringed shamisen for many, but my heartstrings are plucked only by you.

  For more than half a year, Muroka sheltered this man, who needed a place to which he could steal away from a world and an era with which he was at odds. For all this adversity, their karmic knot seems to have been tied by some benign deity: the seed of a happy affection found hospitable lodging, and Muroka came to be in a family way, which they joyfully celebrated with an obi ceremony.

  Their briefly untrammeled brows were soon knotted into frowns by the turmoil of the Toba-Fushimi war. Her man was more resolute than she could bear: he declared he would prove his manly valor; leading a group of comrades, he prepared to join the troops of the new government. She would not stop him, though he was heading straight into the carnage of mortal combat. He would be taking the Azuma road eastward beyond the clouds; the Ōshu road northward under cold skies. He would leave without speaking of his return. If her brave words dutifully celebrated his grand departure for glory, would the sentiment on her lips be true? If her more narrowly focused female heart were strained with apprehension, would the tears moistening her eyes be so unreasonable? Indeed, her own romantic sensibilities were so highly developed that they multiplied the paths open to her feelings. A quandary that consumed her days, until finally it was the day. Into his Yoshitsune-style hakama11 she had sewn a talisman from the Otokoyama Hachiman Shrine.12 My foolish one, he had chided her just yesterday, with a half-smile. His voice lingered in her ears. But now, now he was perhaps a league away. Oh, and what use are these eyes of mine if they cannot spy even one day into his journey, she fretted. And if she vainly repeated these words, craning forward from the gate—that was understandable.

  A month passed. Then a second month. Always she was plagued by a bitter anxiety. The young geisha next door, practicing Tsukushi koto, sang some moralistic modern song of the sort one learns at school; a song Muroka mused on in the light of her own life and its unbearable sorrow. A-one, and a-two, and a merciless bill collector rang changes on a different tune, the clink and clank of coin—Pay in, pay up!—dunning her day and night. Her response to his call lacked strength. Like a princess vine torn from a male pine and buffeted by the harsh winds of the world, she drooped. She glanced sideways at a print by Hiroshige pasted amid other material on a cupboard door. As she looked at it, feelings of humiliation only deepened her sense of his absence. A single cry escaped her lips: Please return soon. . . .

  You’ve got cheek, demanding “return” when you don’t yield none! barked the bill collector. Muroka rejoined: Oh, please do not shout; it hardly becomes you.

  Muroka was now with child, a precious child, or rather the memento of her beloved, beloved of her before she ever saw its face. She could reflect on having heard one night that in Old Cathay, they valued prenatal care: what a contrast with the heartrending agony, the mortification, of her present circumstances!

  Even a celestial maiden, approaching death, is subject to the Five Symptoms of Decline. At some point Muroka’s tortoiseshell combs disappeared, and her pearl hair ornaments; her gorgeous coiffure was no more. She neglected her personal appearance; and her complexion, once said to be glowing, was now clouded with care. Her favorite garments were taken from her or sold off; there remained only one kimono, threadbare, for daily use. What heavenly perfume ought burning incense impart to such a garment? On whose shoulder could she cry? Her one relative was a younger brother she was better off without. Gambling he loved, and liquor: he had sunk into such ruin that the only person she could turn to was her kindly old maid.

  It was in this wretchedness that Muroka came to term, beautiful birth cries announcing the arrival of a jewel of a baby girl. This baby was given the name Tatsu, and she was the young woman selling the salted flowers, said the elderly innkeeper, concluding his story.

  It would appear that long ago, this innkeeper had acquired some insight into matters of romance, as a divine benefaction bestowed on him during a pilgrimage to Ise Shrine. Shuun himself was no wooden statue: wiping away his tears, he asked what happened next.

  One moment, if you please. Got caught up in my story. Fire wants wood.

  Chapter 3: Thus the Character

  1: HER MOTHER A PLUM BLOSSOM, THE FRAGRANCE DISPERSED BY STORMY WINDS

  Your mountain household, wherever, serves up some treat, it’ll be tofu, soy curd, dried salmon, that’s that. But you flatter me, sir: a modern, enlightened young man such as yourself come to this sitting room to hear out an old baldpate without squelching him right from the start. . . . Since the nights are long, my treat for you, if you like, will be to tell you Tatsu’s story. Pity, though: last year I’d have made it a touch more affecting, more pathetic; why, I could have moved a lighthearted Kyoto person—excuse me, a kind gentleman from Kyoto—to drop a tear right here in Kiso. But last spring, sad to say, one of my front teeth fell out, so there’s a bit of a breeze leaks through. Parish priest says, since then I don’t recite my Sacred Epistles13 very well. And I’ll have trouble with words like “skewer” and “roast.”

  While he was whistling this warning, the old man pulled a few long, leisurely puffs on a simple pipe, the kind used by the packhorse drivers, filled with local Seinaiji-brand tobacco. He thrust some pieces of wood carelessly onto the fire, provoking a flurry of ash, which settled onto his snow trousers. He slapped off the ash.

  All right, then. Maybe it comes from liking storybooks so much ever since childhood, but when I tell tales like this, people claim I get all carried away, I take on a funny tone of voice. The grandkids laugh at me every time, saying it gets hard to tell if I’m narrating the story or speaking a part. So if this is difficult, listening to me, well, force of habit. Bear with me.

  Now, then. Muroka so cherished little Tatsu that she was able to muster all the courage of a woman of keen emotions. Once again she took up her shamisen.

  But she detested the business of plying the streets of the pleasure quarters, greasing the wheels of frivolous parties for the entertainment of idiot plutocrats and presumptuous habitués. So this time, she changed her ivory plectrum for one of holly and began teaching music to children. She had years of training behind her; now she also remained chaste. The goal of raising her own child animated her efforts; she was most considerate of her pupils and became a popular teacher. Thus opened up for her a threadlike path. The thin but steady plume of smoke from her chimney attested to a life lived humbly and peacefully.

  But often during lessons, as her young girls screeched “Long ago and far awaaaaay” off-key to the point that Tatsu would burst into tears, Muroka’s heart sank. Her exhausted body could not even produce enough mother’s milk. She decided to put Tatsu out to nurse with a local family and redoubled her efforts to earn income. Seeing this, others were so moved they wept.

  Her husband had sent back no tidings at all, nor did she have so much as an address to which she might send a letter herself. Mother and child could hardly don travel vests and set off on a pilgrimage: she could meet her man only in her dreams. And yet waking, she wou
ld wonder why he had not spoken to her in any of those dreams: had he been struck by a stray bullet and killed? He cannot but know that I pray for him, abjuring both tea and salt until his return. If the gods know nothing of love, I shall not worship them. Such complaints spilled out along with her tears as the months flowed ceaselessly by, Muroka beginning each day in anxiety and ending it in resentment. I am unconscious of my own aging, but time flies, and Tatsu is toddling. On occasion, Tatsu would come with her foster parents for a visit. She would ask for sweets, her little tongue fumbling the words. And Muroka would cuddle her and find it hard to let her go. She is my darling, the living reflection of my husband.

  So after all this, in the autumn of Tatsu’s third year, Muroka took her back, to raise her at home, and that afforded some solace. In the midst of her loneliness, it put a precious smile on her lips, like sunshine warming her humble abode. But then why does my husband not come home to behold the loveliness of this child? I have taught her the proper manner in which to bow: When Father returns, you must do this. And with her child’s heart she has learned all the better for wanting her father. They awaited the day when he himself would praise how well mother had trained daughter in such graceful deportment.

  Has he been detained by some Princess Oto in her Dragon Palace? Muroka’s suspicions were now sprouting jealousies, not so much because he neglected her as because he neglected the child. Even a woman of propriety may suffer thus the pangs of emotion. Strangely, Heaven did not bestow its blessing on her.

  Fate is as unpredictable as a roll of the dice. Tatsu’s Uncle Shichizō, nicknamed Shichi the Shooter, was a profligate, a man of good looks and shameless character, shunned by one and all. Even lying down and grandly extended, his small figure occupied not so much as a tsubo, yet he could find no place for himself in the vast city of Kyoto. Drifting about as an itinerant carpenter, he gravitated down the Mino Road to the Shinano region, whereupon he found employment working on the construction of some wealthy man’s retirement home in Suhara. He obeyed the master carpenter’s orders to plane a column here, insert a panel there, but he was too crooked himself to follow the straight-and-narrow of the inked snap-string. Instead, he devised a romantic scheme to entrap Kichi, their client’s treasured daughter. Did his crude bamboo brush voice his sentiments on strips of shaved wood? Ultimately, this gold digger’s seductions excavated a tremendous pit into which the heiress tumbled. The rich man, himself blinded by parental affection and unable to discern the fellow’s true character, said that if this was Fate, he had no objection—a false romanticism that led him, with a sense of great relief, to take as son-in-law a wolf without peer in three provinces. Ignorance, they say, makes a man a buddha, and lo! the rich man joined the Buddha’s world that very year. Following this, Shichi the Shooter inherited the mountains, the woods, the house, the storehouse, even the pickle pots under the porch. He now sat in the village assembly: stiff-shouldered, straight-backed, legs folded in proper ceremonial position. What an absurd world we live in!

  Poor Muroka, in the meantime, had caught a touch of influenza during the season when clumps of clouds wander the sky and winds part the tall grasses of the fields. After that, she did not rise from her pillow. In the chill of the autumn nights, the chirr of the insects made a fading recessional; she was left with a feeling of resignation. Waking up alone in her lonely bed, she realized that she herself would soon vanish like a drop of dew, like a sliver of frost. With a trembling brush and watery ink, she drew up a rough account of Tatsu’s origins and stored it for safekeeping in an amulet pouch, together with an oblong strip of rice paper on which Tatsu’s father had practiced writing a poem. And she closed her eyes and she prayed.

  Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall be no more. When I perish, this child will have no one on whom she can depend. O, gracious deity of Kamo! Whatever the circumstances into which my child falls, may the turn of Fortune’s wheel be guided by your divine mercy! A geisha is no different from other women. If my husband still lives, please let us be reunited so that I may hear, under the shady grass, how once he was gladdened by my tender devotion!

  Muroka opened her eyes. In the dim lamplight, faint as a firefly’s, she saw the guiltless, sleeping face of Tatsu, dreaming—of what? Muroka sobbed quietly, biting her sleeve. I wish that before I die I could at least see her grow another ten years and have her hair coiffed in the gingko-leaf style! Just then Tatsu had a nightmare and cried out, Mother! It hurts! It hurts! Hasn’t Father come back yet? Gen-chan14 beats me, and it hurts! He hits me, saying a child with no father is the whelp of a dog, and it hurts! Oh, of course it does. Muroka cuddled her, and Tatsu, poor innocent child, fell back to sleep.

  But oh! is there anything more miserable than the illness of one who cannot afford to die?

  2: THE CHILD AS CLEAR SPRINGWATER BURBLING IN THE SHADE OF A ROCK

  The lattice door rattled open, then softly slid shut. Shichizō, bedecked in the finest apparel, his visage a study in arrogance, did not apologize for having been out of touch for so long but instead launched into a boastful recitation of how he had achieved his present status . . . and so I bring the wife—Kichi here—to make your acquaintance, and while we’re at it, show her the old capital.

  Following this tail end of Shichizō’s overblown narrative, Kichi (her head bowed low and her manner graceful) said: My name is Kichi. I am a simple country person. Happily, it is my good fortune to have become related to you.

  Though you may think me unworthy, please do me the honor of bestowing upon me your favor, now and forevermore. Please think of me as your true younger sister.

  Muroka was pleased indeed to observe in her speech the straightforward sincerity of a woman raised in the mountain country. And when Muroka then lifted a heavy head in welcome, Kichi further demonstrated the deep and gentle sympathy of her womanly heart. When my elder sister is so ill, how can I leave her and her little one in the care of strangers and myself go off to enjoy the sights of Gion, Kiyomizu, Kinkaku, or Ginkaku? Rather, let me stay by your side in this sickroom and look after you.

  Shichizō’s physiognomy waxed bilious. In his gut, he felt that Kichi was going too far, but he could hardly say so. If that’s how it is, this house is too small. I’d better go back to the inn by myself . . . where he took his evening repast, topping it off with a little liquor. Thus buoyed, he ventured out for a stroll, humming, exhaling the aroma of saké, on through the nippy river breeze, until his plover-like meanderings degenerated for the night in the pleasure quarters of Pontocho, or was it Kawabata? Disgraceful.

  Three days after meeting Kichi, a relieved Muroka decided that here was someone to whom she could entrust her child. And now, by Heaven’s blessing, her prayer was answered and she passed on to a peaceful repose; a sweet, soprano rendition of Namu Amida Butsu15 bidding farewell to these remains of a romantic spirit as she became a wisp of smoke rising from the Toribeno Crematorium, dancing like a fan in the wind of Buddha’s Law. A priest who had known her situation was convinced that a female bodhisattva of song and dance had now been introduced to Paradise, and he wept tears of pious joy.

  Kichi, feeling that things shouldn’t just be left as they were, gave some money to the elderly maid and let her go. Then, as she was tidying up the house, she found a bundle of something in the back of the family altar. Wondering what it was, she opened it to find a variety of coins adding up to just short of a hundred yen. Goodness! She gave this goodness a good look. To the person who, in the event something happens to me, is kind enough to take in Tatsu, I offer this sum, saved up one or two sen at a time out of my paltry income, as a mere token of my gratitude. . . . Traces of Muroka’s brushwork on the wrapping paper; words so deeply sorrowful Kichi felt goose bumps. How could I refuse to raise a child in whom such feeling has been vested? She took the five-year-old Tatsu, and they returned to Suhara with her husband.

  But the circle of cause and effect is as round as the mouth of a dice cup, and Shichizō’s true nature reemerged: though he lacked for nothing, h
e went back to guessing even or odd. His wife grew apprehensive for the prospects of the dwindling family fortune, which was falling prey to rogues and gradually being consumed. To her vociferous objections Shichizō retorted: Women know nothing about these matters. I know it all, inside and out; I can’t be hoodwinked by swindles like “badger-in-the-hole” or “the hair rope”; I’m no one’s dupe! After saying this, he would sally forth and not return for three days, four days.

  He traipsed around to gambling dens: now those of Matsumoto, now the ones in the neighborhood of Zenkō Temple, now those in the Iida-Takato area. When he lost, he compounded his folly by “chasing the robber to give him more.” When he won, he spent this easy money lavishly on serving girls and celebratory saké. It was a vice he could not control; it accelerated faster than the fleet footwork of a spring colt flying down a hill; the entire inheritance from Kichi’s father—the mountains, the woods, everything—was vanishing.

  Sick with worry, Kichi died in the winter of Tatsu’s tenth year. Now the girl began to know the sorrow of this floating world, and in her uncle’s absence, she was at a loss what to do. The neighbors were furious with Shichizō for having stayed away from home even during his wife’s final days—and at the house of some dubious woman in Nagakubo, no less. They took pity on Tatsu and came to her aid, making Kichi’s funeral arrangements for her.

  Shichizō, however—indifferent to his ostracism by any villager with a conscience—grew all the more dissolute. Ultimately, the rich man’s mansion in Suhara—even the stone lantern in the garden, with its covering of beautiful green moss—passed, sadly, into other hands. Shichizō has since moved into a dilapidated cabin nearby where he can still hear the sound of the wind soughing through the branches of the giant fir trees behind the gatehouse. Once they’ve gone crooked, the teeth of wooden clogs and a man’s character will not straighten out again in their lifetime. Now, when Shichizō has nothing decent to his name, he still cannot let go of his saké cup; now, when he uses twigs for chopsticks, he still boasts of his ivory dice. What a fool.