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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  For every inch of boon there is a foot of bane, in our Threefold World: it is a burning mansion.42 From the doorway, someone called out: Master Shuun! Master Shuun!

  Chapter 10: Thus the Ultimate Identity of Beginnings & Ends

  1: ILLUSION’S ILLUSION ILLUSION: ILLUSION IS ITSELF MENTAL AND MUTABLE, HENCE COMMON

  The maid told Shuun, You’re wanted; please come. And since at his free-and-easy cabin there was nothing likely to be stolen, he left things as they were and went over to the Kameya Inn. Kichibei, an anxious expression on his face, greeted Shuun and led him to a back room.

  Well, now, Master Shuun. Your sojourn has grown quite lengthy. So much snow we’ve had, but now it’s mostly gone and vanished. Weather’s been pleasant recently; travel won’t be so rough. The goal of your cross-country pilgrimage was to study up on your own way: smoldering away indoors in this season is a waste. I’m sure you’ve realized as much yourself.

  It’s your youth. After your heart was ravished by that Tatsu, you didn’t bear a grudge at being abandoned; you even carved out that wooden image of her. That’s as daft as that Son of Heaven in Old Cathay, solicitous in matters of love but so ignorant of the world, burning his “Recalling-the-Dead” incense. If I disparage you here, it’s because I care about you. Truth be told, I want you to give it up, go back to the time before you met that Tatsu, resume once more your training tour, and win renown as a master of your art. As slight as our acquaintance is, even this old man wants to hear word of your good reputation. Now I’m not trying to roust you out in any way, but yesterday I did take a quick peek through the window and I saw your statue, splendidly completed. Staying in this place longer, then, won’t do you any good.

  The angrier I get at Tatsu, the more concerned I get about you. Last night I tried my best to see whether I could think up, honestly, from the gut and from the heart, a good outcome for you, my boy . . . oh, “sir.” And I say that from among the tools of your trade you’d best take a knife and cut away and cast away this useless love, and, without getting sidetracked, go off to Nara, or the Occident or somewhere. True, I urged you to marry and all, but that was the mistake of a lifetime. I don’t recall committing any other bad deeds apart from that one, but I did fear that it might be recorded as a sin in the Iron Register of Hell; so this morning when I offered up morning tea to the Buddha, I repented.

  I know: for this old man first to say “go” and then to say “stop” is like putting a lime stick in someone’s hands and then prohibiting cruelty to birds and insects. But bear with me, this is genuinely difficult. I do apologize; at the same time, I say to you frankly to cut that Tatsu right out of your thoughts. This time, finally, there’s nothing wrong with my reasoning. Even so, human beings are flesh-and-blood creatures: it won’t do to apply logical standards uniformly and rigidly. There are people’s feelings and whatnot, rather tricky matters.

  Strange to say, as easy as it is to go and offer a bouquet of common star anise at an ancestor’s tomb that isn’t even far away, it’s easier still to pay through the nose for a kimono made of yūzen dyed silk for your granddaughter. If we were to calculate profit and loss here on an abacus, you’d hardly need to multiply one “you” by two and carry the five’ll get you ten you’re better off leaving, by far. But put it onto the scale of human emotions, where the counterweight is your soul, then three times five might yield eighteen; one tiny cup of saké with a courtesan outweighing a strongbox full of dollars. Sexual desire has no number attaching to it: there’s no “two” to too much, no “three”; many’s the man in this world of ours whose finances have been made a shambles on that very account. Indeed, your own illusion and delusion, my boy—I mean, “sir”—lies in this matter of the emotions. I’m going to bring you to an understanding of this, and make you cut that Tatsu completely out of your thoughts, by giving you a good look at the true features of this imposter, love, as seen through the spectacles of what is called the Wisdom of Age.

  First, there’s the question, what is it that one cherishes, and who is it that one adores? This bears some looking into: it is passing strange. To this old man’s way of thinking, it’s doubtful any man is ever enthralled by a woman, any woman blinded by her love for a man: I’d say everyone—but everyone—falls in love with a shadowy image they’ve created themselves.

  The curtain rises on an ordinary person’s love when he notices fragrance of plum blossom and turns to see a willowy figure and an exquisite face. What a beauty! will be the admiring reaction, same with a Saigyō as with some ordinary chap. If he’s empty-headed, he’ll keep the woman’s image stowed away in the back of the pupil of his eye, not to forget.

  After that, with any karmic luck, he’ll run into her two or three more times; and with even a single greeting, Lady Shade begins to firm up. Her charming words he’ll rehearse obsessively deep within his ears. With any more luck comes an exchange of banter and little favors. The man might drop by with a copy of the New Authors Anthology43 as a present for her; the woman might then reciprocate: The summer sun is dreadful, relentless, in the late afternoon. You must be so hot! . . . as with an uchiwa fan from Gifu she sends a breeze his way and wrings out a hand towel in iced water for him. When things have gone this far, he is grateful, he is happy, and along with the melon he’s served, he relishes the sweet taste of the experience itself.

  Well, there’s no stopping now! A billowy soul enters My Lady Shade, and she comes alive, her face possessing all one hundred and thirty-two Buddha aspects. Her voice is purer even than a bush warbler that’s been fed song-enhancing pills; and she’s so devoted; she dotes on me so generously, so blindly! She is too wonderful! I will brook no interference! The man’s pushing a wheel from the side. Even at the cost of severing relations with his father, he is resolved to take her to wife.

  So he goes and has his happy wedding, only to discover that the real thing is not so pleasant as the fantasy. The nape of her neck is as glabrous as a tonsure. Under a breast is revealed a birthmark looking like burned sweet potato. When, furthermore, she carries on a vulgar disputation with the ragman, he cannot bear to hear that enchanting voice. And irksome it is when she is so generous as to lose at cards even when she plays with a marked deck. The curtain falls, with half the men in the world wondering ruefully:Why did I ever make this kind of female my spouse?

  Truth be told, just as a one-foot ruler can cast a two-foot shadow, so can the torch of one’s own heart turn the shadow of a woman who is nothing special into what one thinks might be a celestial maiden. This is how both love and hate take shape; and it is true of that Tatsu as well. You have merely fallen in love with an image fabricated by your own mind. Since you even put a halo on your statue of Tatsu, I daresay you worship her as a heavenly female bodhisattva. But a shadow’s a shadow. That Tatsu isn’t so noble, so wonderful a woman—even this old man realized that today; indeed, now I resent her. Do not be deluded; do not be deluded. This newspaper here—read it. Kichibei’s language had at first been polite; now it was rough.

  Shuun has been put through the mill. This old bore of a geezer! Posing as an expert and lecturing me on love, referring to my darling wife so disrespectfully as “that Tatsu . . . that Tatsu”: it’s too ridiculous. Yet even as he grimaced, Shuun made no direct reply.

  Is that whitewash I ordered yesterday ready yet? He snatched away the powder and brush and shoved the newspaper into his bosom. Deaf to the innkeeper’s remonstrance, he abruptly stood up, stamped across the tatami mats and out the room, and hurried back to his familiar cabin. When he saw his Icon of Liberty, standing there so calmly and serenely, his anger subsided. Straightaway he applied a primer of whitewash, careful to achieve just the right hue. Then he sat quietly, leaning against a column and gazing at the icon for some time. What foolishness.

  Perturbed by Kichibei’s words, Shuun opened the newspaper—and his eyes devoured a piece bearing the title “Lady Iwanuma and Marquess Narihira.”

  Ever since an exquisite Jewel from deep within the Mountai
ns entered the Gates of our Capital, three thousand Semiprecious Gems have found their Faces quite drained of Color by All the Chit-Chat lavished on the Beauty of our Day, Lady Iwanuma; whilst a Host of Princes of the Realm and Captains of Commerce have let their fiery Blood surge to their Heads as they sought desperately to win from Milady so much as a single Frown, if not a single Smile. However, according to our Intelligence, it is a certain Marquess, already known to Society as the modern-day Narihira,44 who has obtained the Consent of the Viscount and plans to tie The Knot ever so soon. As People all know, the brilliant and elegant Marquess is a fine Gentleman who well deserves his Reputation as the modern-day Narihira: the Lady is happy in her Match; the Marquess, too, in his. Three Cheers and Many Years for the Happy Couple! They have the undying Envy of Us All.

  All of a sudden Shuun flushed, Shuun blanched. He ripped up the newspaper and cast it aside, he cared not where, hitting something.

  2: LOVE’S LOVE OF LOVE: HOLY IS THE LOVE AS HARD AS DIAMONDS

  Who began the telling of lies? We live in a despicable world in which honesty is treated as stupid, truth as inane. When a man and a woman give each other their simple word that their love will not alter, the simple notion is that it will last a lifetime. So people used to say; and they deplored the character of those who instead gave themselves over to craftily worded vows, dipping life’s sparsely bristled brush of sincerity into watered-down ink of emotion for the ornamentation and beautification of their phraseology. But at least this entailed obtaining divine witness by defiling an ox king with blood, so it was still respectable.45

  Subsequently, it is written in a book somewhere, people came to mock Kumano46 without fear of punishment. Cherishing gold and silver like life itself, the parties to a marriage contract would prepare a formal promissory note: I hereby verify that I have borrowed the above-mentioned sum of one thousand ryō. . . . If there was a change of heart, the provisions would go into effect automatically and the money would be collected. Thus they secured their pledges with shackles of filthy coin. But this, too, went out of fashion, due to the advent of such tricks as writing the characters in squid ink or impregnating the inkpad for the stamped seal with tortoise urine.

  The current mode, so I am informed, is for the woman to be expeditious in appropriating her husband’s bond certificates while the man takes his wife’s parents hostage and uses them as servants. Getting a husband? A degree holder in philosophy or literature will be the most malleably employable. Getting a wife? A musician, painter, or midwife will be 30 percent more profitable! We live in a world in which men hope for someone adept at ruses like the badger game or thievery from the public baths yet at the same time so skilled in French and English and so schooled in the social graces that she can relieve young aristocrats of five or six gold rings a day, supposedly as engagement presents. My dear Shuun! You must take care—take very good care—not to be deceived!

  Such were the teachings and preachings of Shuun’s master. Shuun had laughed scornfully: What cynicism! But now: I see. I’ve been so straight and honest I’ve been a fool. My primary error was thinking of Tatsu as a female bodhisattva. One hides a crack in a blade by excavating a groove; when strength of character decays, falsehoods beautify. As in the letter Tahara brought me: How I have missed you! I have not forgotten you even for a moment. Morning and evening, I pray to the gods that sometime soon, when I have asked Father, I may at last be by your side. That made me so happy—something I now regret. His eyes narrowing sharply in resentment, he leaned, listlessly, against a column. He raised his drooping head and stared and saw the statue, calm and composed, its face expressing no awareness of the hurly-burly conflicts of our floating world; standing nobly, luminescent, like the clear moon in the vast heavens. Seeing this, he felt ashamed of the doubts he had harbored in his breast. He sighed.

  Ah, I’ve been mistaken. Tatsu is so marvelous, how can my heart entertain such meanness? The other day, in my room at the back of the Kameya Inn, we spoke without the slightest falsity about the great event of both our lives, mutually pledging our troth with no embellishments, no reservations. We vowed that even were heaven-traversing lightning to descend upon us at that moment, we two could not be torn asunder. However cruelly the viscount might exert authority and settle on some other man as groom, I trusted Tatsu with my life; and she her life put into Shuun’s hands. In what life and with what body, could she ever be united with a marquess?

  At that same time, she flung herself upon me, pressing her head against my lap, with no concern for her lustrous coiffure, and wept, racked with such affecting sobs: You care for such an unworthy woman as myself, on me bestowing such warm compassion; it is more than I deserve. I regret only my inadequacy in not knowing the words that should express my happiness, my joy.

  I cannot forget the morning you presented me with my own comb, my very ordinary comb on which you’d carved so many, many flowers. It was this sweet consideration that first touched my heart. How I prized that comb, taking care not to chip a single petal of a single floret of plum or cherry bearing traces of your knife! By day, I set this blessing of a gift upon my hair: a precious tiara made especially for me; and I was careful lest my slightest movement make it slip. At night, I stored it deep inside my sewing box, which I then placed next my pillow, that I might open it and look within—so often!—until, at last, I fell asleep.

  And then that day my uncle’s behavior was particularly vile—why I did not know—and he abused you verbally and so unfairly: it was on my account that you were made to listen to such unpleasantness. Every single word of his pained my heart. Suppressing my mounting distress—trying to contain it—I concentrated on your face. Your generous temperament did not permit you to resort to censure; what’s more, you effortlessly cleared a way for me. I was obliged to you many times over for too many favors thrown away on such as me. It’s one thing if you put me to some use, at least to massage your shoulders and to give your legs a rubdown; but instead, you spoke to me ever so gently. When all I did was to bring some warm water to the veranda for your ablutions, and a wooden toothbrush I’d frayed out for you, on a lacquered tray with a small plate of salt—such little things—you would speak so protectively, saying: Simply because I arise early, I’ve made you rise early, too. The cold morning wind plays havoc with your sleeves; it must be hard on you.

  Truthfully, I do not in the least regret entrusting you with my life of fifty years. In expending whatever sincerity, whatever thoughtfulness I could muster to repay your kindness, my attraction to you grew all the more, as if a heart was newly added. Before, I had not cared about my appearance; at some point now I began to be concerned how to make an impression. I would face the mirror and ask, under my breath: How should I arrange my hair so he will praise it? One evening, after taking a bath, I dared to put on just a little makeup and went nervously to the sitting room. You looked at me with a faint smile, and it seemed to me that there was something about your eyes . . . at which, though others noticed it not, the blood rushed to my head. This was not merely a question of appearances: unworthy though I am, in my heart of hearts I wanted to be loved.

  Realizing my feelings, perhaps, Kichibei had his exchange with you in which the two of you argued as to whether or not there was to be a wedding. By accident, I overheard the conversation, and—as if my soul were adrift and my footing unsure—I fled as in a dream into the storage room used for brushwood kindling—no one else was there—and there my tears spilled out. As if I could become the wife of a man such as yourself! I knew Kichibei meant well for me, but I resented his overbearing language; and his efforts were wasted on behalf of someone whose hopes would be fulfilled merely by serving you her entire life as a scullery maid. If you thought that I had asked him to speak to you, you would shun me and the breech would be irreparable. What would become of me? How would I end my days? Thus I grieved. And Shuun-sama, oh, Shuun-sama! Your words were so cold. I wept, wondering whether you thought of me as lightly as when a child releases a baby sparrow
it has caught.

  After that, without a word, you left Kameya. Feeling as though in one day I had burned the hay it took me a thousand days to gather, I lamented that perhaps my only future was to become a nun. When I learned that you were ill in Magome, how alarmed I was! But at the same time my foolish heart was glad of being able to nurse you. If I may say so, this care has borne results: today you’re well enough for us to put up your bedding. An occasion for congratulations, to be sure; but a little while ago, in the kitchen, I was depressed by the thought that now you would be leaving, once again. Mistress, she said that if I wanted to tie that karmic knot with you, I should, unbeknown to you, pluck one hair from your head and knot it tight with one of mine. Then I should chant the spell Fast, fast, law at last! and fling it into a mountain stream. Vexing as it was to be fooled by an elderly woman like that, for I knew that’s what it was, I so wanted to detain you, I thought I’d learn that ridiculous spell and try it, as if here I’d been taught something fine. That’s how deluded I was; how tormented was this little heart of mine. Being forsaken earlier—was I so inept? Was my heart so shallow? Thus I agonized, in solitary distress. But now! Your blessed words! Before the very gods, this Tatsu devotes to you her life!

  And her warm tears penetrated my robe. Could all that have been a lie? A newspaper may well relate inaccuracies. I can see myself it was shameful of me to consider that truthful and to doubt my faithful wife. And yet I cannot believe that they would carry a story cut out of whole cloth.

  This “Marquess Narihira” fellow looks like a man of high rank, dashing appearance, superb talents. Oh, how jealous I am! Rank have I none; nor am I handsome; my talents are dull: if we’re compared, I can’t compete. This is precisely why, perhaps, the viscount’s comment may be true: that her sentiments were undeveloped—immature emotions, altered now by immersion in the modish currents of city life.