On the south side of the house is a well with an upturned bucket, and around ten o’clock and weather permitting, his wife takes the tub out there and busily sets about the washing. You can hear the peaceful, splashing, watery sound of clothes being washed while a nearby white lotus, sparkling beautifully in the spring sunlight, spreads an aura of indescribable serenity. Naturally, his wife is now somewhat faded, but even so she gives the impression that in her day she was better looking than average. She has her hair done up in a rather old-fashioned pile, with her puffy front locks taken up; she wears a striped cotton kimono, the ends of her maroon waist-sash hang to the ground, and as she busies her hands with the washing, her sash-bustle moves delicately. Presently her young boy comes up to her, calling “Mama! Mama!” and no sooner does he reach her than he gropes for her breast. “Now just wait!” she says, but the child pays not the least attention, and so hastily drying her wet hands on her apron, she sits down on the front veranda and takes the child in her arms. The girl also comes along and stands there.
The study, which doubles as the guestroom, is a six-mat room with a small, glass-fitted Western-style bookcase set up against the west wall and a chestnut desk against the opposite wall. A bowl of spring orchids stands in the alcove, and the scroll there is a reproduction of a landscape by Bunchō. The spring sunlight comes into the room, and it all seems very warm and pleasant. There are two or three magazines on the desk; the yellow wood-graining of a Noshirolacquered inkstone case stands out quite noticeably; and some paper—probably copy paper from his company—flutters in the spring breeze.
The hero of the piece is named Sugita Kojō, and it goes without saying that he is a literary man. When he was younger, his name had achieved a befitting degree of prominence, and two or three of his works had even been quite well received. Indeed, neither he himself nor anyone else had thought that at his present age of thirty-seven he would have come to be employed in an insignificant magazine house, commuting day after day and even doing trivial tasks such as proofreading magazines, or that he would have sunk banally below the horizon of the literary world. But there was a reason for this course of events. He had been the same for years, actually, but he had this bad habit of getting obsessed with young women. Every time he saw a beautiful young woman, his otherwise quite sharp powers of observation lost all discrimination. When he was younger, he wrote a great number of so-called girl novels, and for a time quite captivated the youth of the day. But for how long could such novels, devoid of proper observation and ideology, be expected to hold people’s interest? Finally he and his thing about girls became the laughingstock of the literary world, and his novels and other writings were all laughed down. To add to it, as has already been remarked, his features were unsurpassably uncouth, and this made things worse by the contrast which they created: With a face like that, how could he have turned out as he had? When in fact, judging from appearances, he had the looks and build of someone about to do battle with the beasts? Rumor had it that it was all doubtless a freak of nature.
His friends were once discussing his case.
“I don’t know—I just can’t make it out. Perhaps it’s some sort of illness. The thing is, he does nothing but think about girls—just thinks about how good-looking they are and nothing more. Now if it was us, well, we wouldn’t be satisfied with just thinking about them—the force of instinct would soon raise its head, wouldn’t you say?”
“You know, perhaps he’s got something physically missing somewhere.”
“It could be a character defect rather than a physical one.”
“No, I don’t think so. I just wonder if he wasn’t too self-indulgent when he was younger.”
“Self-indulgent?”
“Oh, you know what I mean! He abused himself too much. They say that if you go on with that habit for too long, then you get certain physical deficiencies and that the physical body and inner being don’t harmonize properly.”
“How absurd!” someone laughed.
“But he’s got children, hasn’t he?” remarked somebody else.
“Yes, he has got children,” the first speaker conceded. “But I did ask a doctor about this, and he told me that the consequences could take a number of forms. In extreme cases there’s a loss of reproductive ability, but apparently there’re also lots of people who end up just like Sensei. That doctor told me all sorts of things, you know, and I really think my diagnosis is correct.”
“Well, I still think it’s his character.”
“No, look, he’s ill, I tell you! He should do something to get rid of his desires, like going off to the coast or somewhere and getting some good air or something.”
“But it’s just too much to believe. If he were eighteen or nineteen, or even in his early twenties, then what you say might well be true. But he has a wife and children, and he’s almost thirty-eight, isn’t he? You’re just giving some sort of physiological ‘catchall’—it’s just too conclusive to be true!”
“No, listen, it can be explained! You’re saying this sort of thing can’t happen once you’re out of your teens. But the point is that there’re any number of cases. I’m sure that Sensei’s still going on with the habit even now. You see, when he was younger he was silly enough to pretend to believe that love was pure and sacred. But whatever he might say, he couldn’t fool his instincts, so finally he had to resort to self-abuse for his pleasures. Then when this got to be a habit, he became ill, unable to satisfy those instincts. I’m sure that’s the way it is! In other words, as I said before, his body and his inner being don’t harmonize properly. But it really is interesting, isn’t it? He’d pretend to be so clean living, and even convince other people, but now he’s ended up degraded, an example of decadence, just because he wouldn’t respect his instincts. Your lot are always criticizing me for believing in the force of instinct, but really, instincts are terribly important in people. You can’t live unless you follow your instincts!” he argued, waxing lyrical.
4
The train left Yoyogi.
It was a pleasant spring morning. The sun shone gently overhead, and the air was exceptionally clear. Untidy rows of new houses in the low land of Sendagaya and the dark rows of charcoal oaks, topped by the beautiful form of Mount Fuji away in the distance, passed quickly by like a kaleidoscope. But our man, preferring the figure of a beautiful girl to the beauty of mute nature, was almost completely entranced with the faces and figures of two girls opposite him. Gazing upon living beings, however, is more troublesome than gazing upon mute nature, and so sensing he might be discovered if he stared too openly, he was pretending to look to the side while flashing furtive sidelong glances at the girls. As someone once said, when it comes to girl watching on trains, it’s too direct to watch them face on, whereas from a distance it’s too conspicuous and likely to arouse people’s suspicions. Therefore, the most convenient seat to occupy is one diagonally opposite, at rather an oblique angle. Being an obsessive girl watcher, Sugita had not, of course, had to be taught this secret and had naturally discovered the technique for himself, never wasting any suitable opportunity.
The expression in the elder girl’s eyes was infinitely beautiful. Even the stars in the sky, he felt, lost their sparkle in comparison. Slender legs under that crepe kimono, a brilliant mauve hem, white-stockinged feet in fashionably high sandals, a beautifully white neck, beautiful breasts at the swelling of her chest—it was too much for him to bear. The other, plumper girl, on the other hand, took a notebook from her pocket and began to read it with great interest.
Soon they arrived at Sendagaya Station. He knew from experience that he could expect at least three girls to get on here. But today for some reason—perhaps it was a little too early or a little too late—not one of those familiar three appeared. Instead, a plain young woman got on, the sort you normally wouldn’t look twice at. So long as it was a young woman, even a rather ugly one, he would usually find some attractive feature on which to fix his gaze, such as nice eyes, a nice nose,
a white complexion, a pretty neck, shapely legs, or something of the sort. However, with this woman he could not, search as he might, find a single attractive point. This ghastly creature—with its protruding teeth and frizzly hair and dark complexion—promptly came and took the seat next to him.
The next station, Shinanomachi, was a place where relatively few girls got on. He could remember that on one occasion an absolutely beautiful girl, who had all the air of being the demoiselle of a noble family, had traveled next to him as far as Ushigome, but since then he had not seen her again, to his great disappointment. He was disappointed again today. The train took on a whole crowd of gentlemen and military men and merchants and students and the like and then sped off like some flying serpent.
Coming out through the tunnel, the train started to slacken speed, and from this point he strained to get a good look at the next waiting room. Suddenly his face lit up and his heart raced. He’d spotted a ribbon he recognized. There was a girl of about eighteen who got on here at Yotsuya and went to the Ochanomizu Girls’ School. She was a very attractively dressed girl with particularly charming features and so beautiful he felt there could be few to equal her even in Tokyo. She was slimly built, not at all fat but neither too skinny, her eyes sparkling clear, her mouth firm, and her cheerful face invariably flushed with a healthy crimson. Unfortunately, that day there were a lot of passengers, so she just stood there by the door, but at the conductor’s request to move down inside to ease the congestion, she soon came and stood right in front of him, reaching up for the strap with her white arm. It wasn’t that he didn’t think about standing up to give her his seat, it was just that if he did, then he would not only be unable to look at her white arm, it would also be very inconvenient to have to look down on her from above, and so he didn’t get up.
Beautiful girls in crowded trains—there was nothing he enjoyed quite so much, and he had already experienced this pleasure countless times. The feel of soft clothing, the elusive perfumes, the touch of warm flesh—he was stirred to indescribable thoughts. In particular, the smell of female hair aroused a sort of violent desire in him, giving him inexpressible pleasure.
Ichigaya, Ushigome, and Iidamachi passed quickly by.
The two girls from Yoyogi had both got off at Ushigome. The train took on a new look as it got more and more crowded. In spite of all this, he just gazed, like a man with a lost soul, in rapt admiration at the beautiful face in front of him.
Presently they arrived at Ochanomizu.
5
The magazine house where he worked, Seinensha, was in Nishiki-chō in Kanda, in the very next street to the School of Proper English. In front of the glass door facing the road stood a row of some half-dozen signboards advertising the latest publications, and on going in through that door, there was the grave face of the owner of the company, waiting at the desk of a room cluttered with magazines. The editing room was upstairs at the back, a single, ten-mat room with the west and south blocked off and therefore very gloomy. There were five desks lined up there for the editors, and his desk was in the dark spot nearest the wall, so dark, in fact, that on rainy days he could have done with a lamp. To make things worse, the telephone was right at his side, and its incessant ringing tormented his nerves.
Our hero felt thoroughly depressed as he changed onto the Sotobori Line at Ochanomizu and got off at the corner of Nishikichō san-chōme. It was as though his pleasant daydreams had been shattered, and he immediately pictured the chief editor and his own gloomy desk. Another day’s agony! He went straight on to thoughts about how trying life was. He came to the gloomy conclusion—as the yellow dust of the road danced before his eyes—that the world was worth nothing. He could clearly see how mean a chore it was to proofread and how petty it was to edit magazines. It was almost endless. If it had been that alone, however, it wouldn’t have been too bad, but those beautiful visions from the train, which still lingered on in vanishing, appeared vaguely in that wretched yellow dust, making him feel that his one real pleasure in life was thus somehow being destroyed by it all, and that was even more depressing.
Into the bargain, the chief editor was a sarcastic man who thought nothing of making fun of people. Even when he, Sugita, really tried and wrote something elegant, the chief would dig in with, “Ah, Sugita-kun, you’ve produced another love affair, I see!” At the least opportunity Sugita was mocked because of girls. Occasionally he would get angry and snap back that he wasn’t a child, that he was thirty-seven, and that there was a limit even to making a fool of somebody. But his anger soon died down, and he never learned and went on writing spicy poems and composing new-style poetry.
In fact, apart from gazing at the beautiful figures in the train, he liked nothing better than composing flowery, new-style poetry, and while he was at the office, whenever he had no work to attend to, he would take out some paper and write beautiful things as if his life depended on it. It goes without saying that many of his thoughts involved girls.
That day there was a lot of proofreading to be done, and our hero worked busily on it all by himself. Around two in the afternoon, he managed to get some of it out of the way and let out a sigh.
At this point the chief editor called over to him: “Sugita-kun.”
“Yes?” he replied, looking over to the chief.
“I’ve read your latest work, you know,” said the chief, laughing.
“Oh, really?”
“As usual, it’s beautiful. Just how do yon manage to write so prettily? You know, I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say you were a lady-killer! There was even one reporter I remember who said how surprised he was when he actually saw how well built you are—quite beyond what he expected, he said.”
“Really, is that so?” Sugita could do nothing except laugh.
“Three cheers for girls, eh!?” chimed in one of the other editors, mockingly.
Sugita got angry but considering it beneath his dignity to take up the challenge, he finally looked away. “It’s all so annoying—how can you understand the mentality of people who want to make fun of me, a man of thirty-seven?” he thought to himself.
He smoked a cigarette, unable to stand the misery of the gloomy, dismal room no matter how he tried looking at it, and the purplish blue smoke trailed upward in a wispy, soothing way. As he stared at it, the girl from Yoyogi, and then the girl student, the beautiful figure from Yotsuya, and all the others appeared in mixed-up fragments and seemed to blend into one person. He realized this was a bit silly, but he didn’t seem to find it unpleasant, either.
When it turned three o’clock and got closer to the time when he could leave, his thoughts turned to home. He thought about his wife. It was so useless, getting old like this. He was full of regret. To have spent his youth worthlessly and now to regret it—what use was that? It was absolutely pointless, he thought to himself again. Why hadn’t he made passionate love while he was young? Why hadn’t he tasted his fill of the delights of the flesh? What good was it to think of this now? He was now thirty-seven. It irritated him to think like this and made him feel like tearing his hair.
He went out through the glass door. His mind was completely worn out with his day’s labors, and he had a bad headache. The yellow dust being blown about by the westerly wind was miserable, so miserable. For some reason or other, today was a particularly miserable and trying day. However much he was attracted to the fragrant scent of beautiful girls’ hair, his days for loving were past. And anyway, even if he tried, he no longer had the wings to lure any beautiful bird. As he moved his bulky frame along, such thoughts made him feel life was no longer worth living, that he would be better off dead . . . better off dead . . . better off dead. . . .
He looked ill. His clouded eyes were a sign of his gloomy heart. It wasn’t that he didn’t think about his wife and children and peaceful home; it was just that such things now seemed far removed. Better off dead? If he were dead, what would his wife and children do? Even this thought now dwindled away, his spirit
having sunk so low it failed to respond. Loneliness . . . loneliness . . . loneliness—was there no one who would save him from this loneliness? Any one of those beautiful figures from the train would do—was there no one who would embrace him in her white arms? If only someone would, then he was sure he would be resurrected. He was sure that then he would discover life in hope, in challenge, in hard work. Fresh blood would flow through his veins. . . . At least, that was what he believed, but in reality it was doubtful if his spirits could be revived in this way.
The Sotobori train came and he got on. Straight away his sharp eyes sought for the colors of beautiful clothes, but unfortunately there was nothing on board to give him satisfaction. However, he felt more relaxed just being on the train, and from now until he got home he would be at his ease as if in his own little paradise. The various shops and signboards along the way passed before his eyes like a kaleidoscope, and this prompted various beautiful, pleasant memories.
When he came to change onto the Kōbu Line at Ochanomizu, he found the train almost full, due to an exhibition being held at the time. He managed to wedge himself in at the guard’s section, or at least, he managed to position himself on the outside of the right-hand door, where he took a firm hold of the brass pole. Glancing inside the carriage, he gave a surprised start. For there, just beyond the glass window, almost overwhelmed by felt hats and college hats and Inverness capes—in fact, looking just like a dove surrounded by a flock of crows—was the beautiful demoiselle from Shinanomachi, the one he had wished so much to see again. Such beautiful eyes, beautiful hands, beautiful hair. . . . How could such a pretty girl exist in this vulgar world? Whose wife would she become? Whose arms would hold her? He was overcome with sadness and misery. It will be a fateful day all right when she gets married, he thought. Taking advantage of the crowd of passengers and the glass between, he poured his heart, his very soul into her beautiful figure with her white neck, her black hair, her olive ribbon, her dainty white fingers, her gold, jeweled ring.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945: vol. 1 (Modern Asian Literature Series) Page 41