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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  Of course, knowing how deeply Miss Tatsu is indebted to you, the viscount is most grateful. As a parent, it is only natural that he should send along these presents. You have refused them, but I cannot leave it at that. Somehow you must come to your senses and see reason. Your flexibility and kind acceptance—much appreciated. He certainly was glib. He had his say, fled back to Tōkei,32 it seems, and nothing more was heard from him again.

  Truly, this floating world of ours is one of torments! Derided by a monkey up in a tree, even a ferocious tiger would curse the distance.

  Had my pedigree placed me in the bureaucracy or the aristocracy, I’d have the tatami make a deep impression on that Tahara’s brow; I’d oblige him to address me with respect and awe. The viscount would have to acknowledge my worth: at the very least, I should be treasured as his son-in-law. How lamentable in this day and age, when the four castes are equal, for there to be a difference so great as that from beneath-the-earth to above-the-clouds. A million imprecations on the viscount for underestimating me, Shuun, so insultingly as to think to plaster my lips shut with paper, be it hundreds or even tens of thousands of yen!

  Still, it’s by no means beyond human understanding that Whatsis Whozim, Senior Grade, Fourth Rank, would not want an icon maker—a sculptor—for son-in-law: that point is moot. Although . . . icon makers trace their origins to the dynastic lineage of Emperor Kōkō and his son Koretada; Jōchō being the first in imperial history to be awarded high ecclesiastical rank in the Buddhist Church: hardly a proper object of disdain.

  In the West, poetry that has no voice but does have color is called painting; painting that has no scenery but gives form to spirit is called sculpture. I engage in this respected art, and with respect to heart, at least, how could I be inferior to Michelangelo? If I became the husband of some lady, why should that produce discomfiture? That being said, there’s no use sprouting horns of anger here and now. It’s awful! It’s over!

  Thus did Shuun gnash his fangs in rage, while lacking anything to sink those fangs into. It only increased his agony. This useless, hopeless body: I have no attachment to it. Oh, how I want to wash my life away in the seething waters of the Kiso River and return to the world before I saw Tatsu!

  Some nights, such thoughts as these altered his countenance quite dramatically.

  2: OBSESSION HEEDING NOT THE LESSON OF THE PARABLE OF THE PHANTOM CITY

  He wasted away; he wasted away.33 Emerging from that illness, he was racked with longing, wrung by sorrow, his body so emaciated that he could not revive his spirits. All his dreams were dreadful nightmares. He was mired in deep muddy marshes, his legs entangled in floating duckweed. He trod dewy moss-covered lanes as cold leeches dropped onto his neck.

  He would awaken sick at heart, wondering whether even the sun’s rays were weaker than before; bitter at his apparent abandonment by Heaven and Earth. He did not realize that his stop en route had already become a lengthy stay of almost three months. He was too discouraged even to move about inside the house, let alone march ten leagues a day to Nara. He dozed during the day; at times, in his delirium, he uttered the most outrageous ravings. Faced with visitors, he offered not a single jest, not even a half-smile.

  Gradually signs of spring appeared: breezes gently crossing the blue skies; tree canopies shedding their coats of snow; houses losing their icicles before one knew it, while from the eaves the water dripped incessantly, and below, the white stuff disappeared in patches. Thatched roofs facing south showed last year’s faces for the first time this year. At that: Long time no see! Even old folks with blurry eyes rejoiced. And: Water’s getting warmer. Undergrowth’s coming in. Hawks still not out? How about the pheasants? The eager ones even raced ahead to rumors about young sweetfish. Youngsters, for their part, grew frisky, along with the colts. Incongruously, our Shuun remained depressed.

  The old proprietor of the Kameya Inn worried lest this mood of Shuun’s swing suddenly into a mad gaiety: Hey, hey! Sir and madam wish to see me dance? An’ it’s a dancing me you want to see, the Kiso Road’s the place to be!

  There, there, don’t cry! This floating world of ours is one great wheel of fortune. Instead of staying stock-still here, like a barrow with one wheel stuck in a paddy, get out and about: who knows what wonderful woman you might meet next! There’s an old saying to the effect you won’t catch a fish under a likely willow tree, but you might pick a pearl out of your clam soup. So relax: you’re still young; you’ll find another love.

  Speaking in this quaint manner, the innkeeper drew, time and again, from the reductions of Tenpō-era treatises34 on romantic betrayal with which he’d stocked the brain in that bald skull of his, to offer up quotations, garnished with moldy old jokes. But Shuun declined to partake of them. On the contrary, no matter how entertainingly expressed, the innkeeper’s views served merely as something contrapuntal to Shuun’s sighs.

  This won’t do. So now the old man confronted the issue foursquare, earnestly embarking on a logical, lucid, long-winded disquisition. Strange to say, the normally gentle and mild Shuun, somehow annoyed, cried out in a violent tone of voice, coarse as an Ō-Satsuma singer: Your kind concern is both unwanted and unwarranted. Hold your tongue!

  Given such short shrift, the innkeeper beat a quick retreat and pondered strategy. If Shuun’s left to himself, he’ll be consumed for sure by a love sickness unfashionable in the modern world. Somehow or other I want to help him out, but—my word! This is a tough one. Maybe I should turn him out before he departs my inn wrapped in a shroud. But that would be unbearable. If only I hadn’t so rashly recommended his marrying Tatsu, then it would be a different story. But if I don’t put a proper finis to something I talked into happening in the first place, then I’ve gone and made Kichibei into something less than a man. Here was a happy, simple soul.

  But count the years: the years count. The old soldier was not mistaken in his reconnaissance. He now came to the conclusion that Shuun’s idle hands had generated an excess of mental energy and that this had naturally operated to cause him suffering. So one day, he turned to Shuun: You are the luckiest fellow in all Japan. Hark; I’ll tell you the dream I had last night.

  In a magnificent palace with golden sliding doors there’s a princess, wearing a costume so beautiful it dazzles the eyes. She’s facing the tokonoma (alcove) and doing something. Her temples and the nape of her neck between collar and coiffure look so soft, so fresh, I want to come up from behind and embrace her. If only I were twenty years younger, I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself. Even stooped over as I am, her allure is such that I tiptoe over for a closer look. With one hand, I raise myself up on the veranda to peek in, and I see her profile. To my astonishment, it’s Tatsu—a hundred times prettier than when she was a salted-flower seller but suffused with a melancholy manner so ghastly it makes my hair stand on end.

  I take a good look around. In the alcove hangs a single scroll painting of—guess who—you! Now I’m feeling a bit jealous. No sooner does that one unenlightened thought sprout forth, than eight hundred and eight foxes35 emerge in a pack from under the porch and go for my heels. This I can’t stand, so I run away. Then suddenly somebody shoves onto my head the sacred helmet of Suwa36 or maybe a paper sack big enough for a couple of pecks of millet. Then I’m even more confused about which direction to go. I blink and I blink and I find . . . that I’ve got my head stuck up the sleeve of my quilted nightgown!

  Ah, Shuun, you latter-day Katsuyori-sama!37 Buck up! Be proud! Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha! He laughed uproariously and kept on roaring as he slipped out of the room.

  But the story Shuun had just heard stirred up his longing all the more, leaving him still lonelier. He leaned against a column in lonesome contemplation. When, naturally, his eyelids closed—there, in distinct detail, was the figure of Tatsu.

  No, wait! He thrust out his hand to grasp the hem of her kimono, but the fleeting phantom vanished into the air. Nothing remained but bitterness. Now it occurred to Shuun that he should at least try to
capture her image in some tangible form. Without understanding how indebted he was, in this inspiration, to the master of the Kameya Inn, Shuun went off to consult him, acting as if the credit for thinking up the idea were his, Shuun’s, alone.

  Well now, your wish is not unreasonable. A quiet room? The house Tatsu lived in would be even better. Put in some tatami mats, and it wouldn’t be too bad both to live in and use as a workshop, at least for a month or so. What?

  You say you don’t want me to drop by for a chat? All right, understood. Shall I not send anyone around, then, except to deliver meals? But wouldn’t that seem too much like prison? Hmm. If that’s the way you want it, then that’s the way it must be. But I’ll just send along the newspapers from time to time. So you don’t want even them? That’s unwise. When your spirits flag, it’s good to see all the interesting and amusing things out there in the world of public affairs.

  The old innkeeper took the kindest care of Shuun and was satisfied to see him move, in high spirits, into his beloved’s former residence. The one difficulty was finding a good piece of wood large enough to sculpt into a standing figure. The innkeeper looked everywhere but couldn’t find anything. Finally he gave Shuun a large, thick, old plank of cypress.

  Chapter 9: Thus the Result

  1: THE ICON FINISHED, BUT THE SOUL STILL TROUBLED

  Nam’-ki-myō-chō-rai. . . .38 With valor & intrepidity, dedication & diligence, abstinence & purity, and with unstinting devotion, the sculptor pours into his work all his heart and all his mind, all his body and all his soul, chanting the while hosannas unto Heaven. Three bows and then the chisel; nine bows and then the knife. The wooden image he carves is one of awesome power. All thirty-two Buddha aspects, complete and coexisting in one form, and this one form identical with Buddha. We can be confident of divine favors!

  Thus spake the head priest, a rotten one. Such shallow speculation! These works are in fact commissioned by some king of gleaming baubles or some king of steaming noodles; so yes, the artist produces in awe and fear, heedless of the sweat streaming down his forehead or the wood chips flying into his eyes; knowing well that if an icon maker makes a mistake, there’ll be hell to pay! But then it won’t be a thing of joy, a product of the purest veneration. You know it, because this same sculptor, pleading exhaustion, skips the sutra readings in front of the main image at matins and vespers but never tires of chatting away late into the night beside the idol to Fortune—or beside the priest’s wife.

  That was the assessment of a young man who had sent his parents off to visit temples while he (the ogre’s away!), thinking it pointless not to disport himself in a dream world as ephemeral as a soap bubble, grabbed fistfuls of cash from the family shop’s receipts and flushed it down the sewage ditches of the pleasure quarters, in water black with the dye the courtesans use to stain their teeth.

  As for Shuun . . . from a flat plank, his carving gradually raised the form of Tatsu. This project had been commissioned by no one; he would collect no artisan’s fee. It arose simply from a surfeit of yearning love.

  One stroke of the blade: then he closes his eyes, lost for a while in thought. Won’t you buy my salted flowers? Her charming voice, issuing from that lovely mouth. Ah, there! There! Her image, captured mentally. Again the knife, again the chisel; and after every thrust he steps back and gazes.

  For how many days had he and she sustained each other, and been sustained, by their mutual love? But the joy he knew when his body, sweaty with fever and stinking with grime, was tended by willing and gentle hands has now vanished, a cloud before the wind. In vain do his sad thoughts fly to the capital. When I was leaving this house, after I’d first helped Tatsu out of her difficulties, if only I had resolutely shaken off those hands tugging at my sleeves, I’d not be suffering such anguish now!

  Thus complains the love that hates love, when “I” can hardly be distinguished from “I.” In this ecstasy there now appears before him the beautiful figure of Tatsu: her eyebrows expressive, seductive; her eyes fixed enigmatically on the comb he had given her. Ah, that’s it! He strikes the chisel once again, transferring this eidolon onto wood.

  Finally, after more than twenty days: a full-length image! Neither clothed in tattered rags, as when she was a salted-flower seller, nor yet dressed in the silk brocade of a viscount’s daughter but, rather, mantled in an elegant robe of woven flower blossoms: plum, peach, cherry, chrysanthemum. In the eyes of him who adored her, she appeared thus to be an incarnation of Kannon, goddess of mercy. Without regard to what others might think, he attached a halo; and with that splendid finishing touch, she resembled indeed a celestial maiden. Pleased with his results, he spent some time gazing at her lovingly.

  That night he was even more delighted to encounter her in his dreams. He poured out his heart to her in a refined effusion of feeling. But then: Your Shuun knew nothing of love. You led me into the depths of worldly desire and frailty, and for that, I hate you. To which she replies: The mere pleasure of being cherished is a shallow one. And since you hate me so to hurt me so, I want all the more to prove to you the solemn truth, upon my life, that I myself have had no change of heart. Now there’s a bother, for a man who already intends to cherish you all his life. That’s a lie! It doesn’t fit with what you said before. You, sir, are quite glib: you’ll say anything. She glowers (tongue-in-cheek) and makes as if to slap him, slightly raising her slender wrist. He firmly catches and gently holds it as he parrots a parody of her own language right back at her. Since you hate me so to hit me so, I’ll say that I myself have had no change of heart: a truth I swear to most solemnly on my life. This is so droll it draws a laugh from Tatsu even as she shrinks from him a little, saying in a soft voice: Um . . . my hand. Anything wrong with not letting go? Yes. Well then, that’s that. I am so sorry. He releases her hand at once and looks offended. But to keep a straight face, when she is peering at him from the side with a look of concern—that is difficult. Brusquely, he attempts to cover her eyes with his open hand. She then grabs and holds it, saying in rough male accents: Anything wrong with not letting go? Then merely the harmony of their commingled laughter. An affectionate scene continuing until . . .

  Daughter! Daughter! It was the viscount’s husky voice. But what Shuun opened his eyes to see, brushing past the window he had left open the night before, was a crow. Damn it. That thing, cawing. Upset, he turned to face the other direction and immediately saw that his carved image of Tatsu was clearly inferior to the person he had seen in his dream. The numerous flowers overlaying her body were distracting, a monstrous arabesque. He was dismayed; criticism welled up in his mind, but he could not think what now to dress her in. He worked it around in his head. He sharpened his blades.

  2: SELF-ENLIGHTENMENT: MODELING ONE’S FANTASY AS THE WAY TO REALIZE THE INEFFABLE TRUTH

  One blossom, then another blossom: Shuun pares away the flowers that cover up her arms; casting aside the decorations of his own design; attempting now to reveal the true natural beauty of her body. His efforts bring results: the more of the floral garment he has her disrobe, the more appealing she becomes. At last he reaches her shoulders and her neck. How could plum and cherry blossoms ever have a beauty so proud as to cover up the beauty of your flesh? He chips away and scrapes away; his blade is keen to take away the chrysanthemums concealing her plump, lovely nipples. These flowers have no fragrance. All they ever had was impudence.

  A funny fellow is our Shuun! The work that he did himself he resents as if it were done by Tatsu’s enemy; the nude figure he is now carving, a figment of his imagination, he believes in as if real. What has happened here, that he now castigates himself so, with solitary reproaches and regrets? Yesterday was folly. I painted mud on a jewel.

  Like a child on Sunday morning frantically rubbing an eraser over the “Mountain-Water” goblins39 he has doodled in a Bible, Shuun works in a flustered fevered frenzy of dedicated toil, his hand not leaving the knife nor the knife his hand, furious, oblivious to self and circumstance. His s
parkling blade gleams with the cascading glitter of a diamond under a lamp; that shearing sounds like the skyey rush of arrows as they slice straight through the wind. When he steps back to assess form and balance—kyū, kyū!—his heart rings, and—kō, kō!—his spirit sings, like the reverberations of a koto string that has snapped. He is filled with the power he acquired and the skills he mastered over years of training and experience: now all of that comes boiling, swirling, coursing into his fist. He himself knows no exhaustion, whether mental or physical; his mind is clear as clear can be: thus does Shuun evince the dedicated diligence of the paramita,40 neither resting his bones nor relaxing his muscles. How the perspiration bubbles up and beads upon his brow! He will not flinch: his is the never-receding resolve of avaivartika.41 The noise of our finite world does not enter his ears. He is unmindful of hunger or thirst; unstinting of body and soul; great of courage and fierce of spirit; unbounded, unhindered, and unafraid. Whisking away the sawdust and wood shavings with passionate exhalations, he blows onto and into the image, breathing into it a single-minded devotion as the light in his own eyes crystallizes into something terrible. And there! Emancipated from the false image of the floral robe; transcending the empty flowers of illusion; profoundly penetrating; without boundaries; all achieving, all perfecting; majestically solemn, gracefully elegant; awe inspiring in its truth, its beauty, and its sublimated power: the very icon of his liberated imagination.

  Shuun looked up at it, staggered backward a few paces, sat down with a thump, fingered one of the scattered flowers—and smiled.