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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  No sooner had the Christ of Nanking made this remark than he slowly stood up from his rosewood chair and, leaning over from behind a bewildered Chinhua, planted a gentle kiss on her cheek.

  She awoke from her dream of Heaven around the time that the light of the autumn dawn had started to spread with a chill through her narrow room. A dim, lukewarm shadow still covered the bed that was shaped like a tiny boat and hung with dusty curtains. Chin-hua’s face was half turned to the ceiling and barely visible in the darkness. Her sleeping eyes were still closed, and her round double chin was covered with an old blanket of indistinct color. Her oily hair was in disarray, glued to her pale cheeks by sweat from the previous night, and her teeth as slender as grains of rice peeked out whitely from between her slightly parted lips.

  Although she was awake, her mind still wandered in memories through her dream, from the chrysanthemum blossoms to the sound of the water, the roasted pheasants, and then Jesus Christ. However, as it grew lighter on the bed, insolent reality and the fact that she had crawled into her rattan bed with a peculiar foreigner the previous night, began to trample on the pleasant dreamlike sensations she had been experiencing.

  “If I’ve infected him with my illness . . .”

  Chin-hua’s feelings were clouded by that thought, and she felt she couldn’t bear to gaze at his face once again this morning. Even more unbearable was the thought of never again looking on his dear tanned face now that she was awake. After some hesitation she timidly opened her eyes and looked across the bed, which was now bathed in bright light. But to her surprise, other than her own self covered by the blanket, there was no sign of the man who had looked so much like the Jesus on her crucifix.

  “I wonder if that, too, was a dream?”

  She threw off the dusty blanket as she sat up in bed. She rubbed her eyes with both hands, lifted the bulky curtains, and cast her still sullen gaze into the room.

  The room revealed the contours of each of its contents with cruel clarity. The old table, the extinguished lamp, the chairs—one lying on the floor, the other facing the wall—everything just as it had been the previous night. But there was something else—amid the melon seeds scattered on the table, the tiny brass crucifix glistened in the light. Blinking her eyes as they adjusted to the light, Chin-hua looked absently around the room, still stretched coldly on her side atop the tousled bed.

  “Then it wasn’t a dream.” As she muttered the words, she wondered where the foreigner might have gone. Of course, it took no thought at all to assume that he must have slipped out of her room while she was still sleeping. But to think that the man who had caressed her so ardently had left without a word of parting was to her not so much unbelievable as something she could not bear to believe. And she had even forgotten to claim the promised ten dollars from this questionable foreigner.

  “Or did he really leave me?”

  Her heart still heavy, she began to put on the black silk jacket she had earlier flung onto the blanket. But suddenly she stopped the movement of her hands, and in that very moment a vibrant rosy coloration swept across her face. Was it because she had heard the footsteps of that peculiar foreigner outside her painted door? Or was it because the intoxicated smell of the man that had seeped into her pillow and blanket had happened to call up an embarrassing memory of the previous night? No: in that instant, Chin-hua realized that a miracle that had taken place in her body had completely cured the malignant syphilis from which she had suffered.

  “Then he was Lord Jesus!”

  Still wearing only her undergarments, she tumbled out of the bed and knelt on the cold stone floor to offer up an earnest prayer, just as had the beautiful Mary Magdalene who spoke to the risen Lord. . . .

  3

  One night in the spring of the following year, the young Japanese traveler who had once visited Sung Chin-hua again sat across the table from her beneath the dim lamp.

  “You’ve still got that crucifix!” When he teased her that night, she suddenly grew serious and began telling him the strange story of how Jesus, who had come down to Nanking for one night, had healed her affliction.

  As he listened to her tale, the young Japanese traveler’s thoughts ran as follows:

  I know that foreigner. He’s a mixed-blood, half Japanese and half American. His name was something like George Murray. He bragged to a friend of mine who’s a correspondent for Reuters that he’d paid for a night with a Christian whore in Nanking and that he’d slipped away while she was peacefully sleeping. The last time I came here he was staying in the same hotel, so I remember what his face looked like. He claimed he was a reporter for an English-language newspaper, but he was a perverse fellow, not at all in keeping with his good looks. Maybe it was being infected with this woman’s disease that ultimately made him go mad from a nasty case of syphilis. But even now this woman believes that this contemptible half-breed was Jesus Christ. Should I enlighten her? Or should I say nothing and leave her forever to dreams that are no better than an old European legend . . . ?

  When Chin-hua finished her story, he lit a match as though he had just remembered to do so and began puffing on a smelly cigar. Then with deliberate zeal he posed the ultimate question: “Really? How unusual! But . . . but have you never been sick since then?”

  “No. Not once,” Chin-hua answered without any hesitation, her face glowing as she crunched on the melon seeds in her mouth.

  ARISHIMA TAKEO

  Arishima Takeo (1878–1923) received a complex educational and cultural upbringing, during which he developed a considerable enthusiasm for the Bible and the works of Tolstoy. In his later years, these commitments helped him develop his personal stance as a novelist and critic, which might be described as a dignified humanism. Involved in various idealistic endeavors, Arishima remains, as does Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, a powerful symbol of the emotional and political difficulties faced by artists and intellectuals during these difficult years. “The Clock that Does Not Move” (Ugokanu tokei), written in 1918, is one of Arishima’s most celebrated shorter pieces.

  THE CLOCK THAT DOES NOT MOVE (UGOKANU TOKEI)

  Translated by Leith Morton

  When it was in Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber and adorned her splendid mantelpiece, there is no doubt that the clock did work. Amid the tender, erotic murmurings whispered between that flower-like queen and the elegant Louis XVI, the clock’s delicate spring slowly wound down, the seconds became minutes, the minutes became hours, and the gentle tinkling of the golden bell must have disturbed the tranquil silence of the night. It is said that from the time when the awful blade of the guillotine struck the queen’s neck a cruel blow—this queen who did not abandon the pride of the royal house even at the last—the clock stopped moving. Later, when Louis Napoleon inherited the great work left by his uncle the emperor and schemed to revive the French Empire, he moved the clock from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace in order to decorate a room there, but no clockmaker, however skilled, could make it work as it once had. Consequently, the clock was left in the palace in this condition for some time, and then, covered in dust, it was thrown out into the street together with the other useless junk, finally enduring the sad fate of being dumped in the corner of an old curio shop. Many were the customers who visited the shop, but none was sufficiently eccentric to feel any attachment to a clock that did not work. While the other goods were continually being replaced, this clock alone, as if it had put down roots, remained unsold year after year.

  However, while studying in Paris, a scholar of national politics, Professor R, happened upon the clock by chance and, taken by its history, purchased it at a bargain price and took it back to Japan with him. Thenceforth the clock was placed on a pretentious marble dais in a corner of Professor R’s large, gloomy study and carefully preserved, with nary of speck of dust allowed to fall on it.

  It was a heavy mahogany mantelpiece clock. Below the profile of the Byzantine-style lion with legs outstretched, a fine arabesque pattern had been carved, and from the
shadows between the flowers and leaves, five smiling cherubim with wings sprouting from between their shoulder blades, were peacefully peeping outward. The arabesque coiled and arced in complicated curves and completely enclosed the clock face. The base was made up of three layered rectangular blocks and supported the solemn clock without the least concern.

  The snow white face was bordered in gold and was fixed in the center of the clock, which, despite its gravity, was elegance itself, exactly as Proserpina had been embraced by Pluto. The steel hands were reminiscent of damask daggers, but falsely, they did not move. Yet looking at the big hand just about to point to twelve o’clock a little later than the little hand, the clear tones of twelve even now appear to be striking sharply from the golden chimes within the clock’s interior.

  An imposing, almost melancholy silence prevailed in the study—the din of peddlers and rickshaws could not penetrate—but the drops of melting snow fell from the eaves, and now and then the sound of snow striking the puddle below filtered through the glass windowpane.

  Reclining composedly in his reading chair drawn up next to the window, while playing with a fountain pen with his right hand, Professor R was engrossed in perusing a rebuttal of his work made by a young scholar, C. R had his protégé, Associate Professor B, draft an article on the history of statecraft under R’s name, which was the subject of the rebuttal. Over the rim of R’s spectacles prescribed for his farsightedness, which grew worse every year, Dr. C’s exceedingly systematic argument hammered away at the weak points, made a rigorous assault on Professor R’s intelligence, and seemed to demand assent. Dr. C hurled observations like sharp knives at B’s argument which, despite B’s clarity of mind, did not fully comprehend R’s theories in certain areas. Yet the assault did not end there. Various points made R think it would have been better if it had. He frequently encountered passages that pierced without error to the heart of his argument and proceeded to dig holes all through it. Dr. C was one of those young scholars who had recently returned from studying abroad. When he was at university, he zealously attended Professor R’s lectures. Despite being a frail, slender, feminine youth, his appearance left one and all with an impression of honesty, sincerity, and vitality. Privately, Professor R paid a good deal of attention to this young man. Consequently, while Dr. C was abroad, Professor R wrote him numerous letters in an attempt to employ him at a university where he had connections. But Dr. C sent back noncommittal replies, and as soon as he had returned to Japan, he established a political society that gathered together a small number of devoted scholars to begin an intensive research on political theories and issues. Society in general appeared not even to notice the existence of this small band, but among men of learning it began to exercise an influence of some significance.

  When Professor R arrived back in Japan, bringing with him the theories of Dr. Stein, whose vigor had overpowered contemporary academic circles in Europe, the world of learning was still virgin territory, a wild, open tundra. Outside the state schools, there was no possibility of funding for either research or educational institutions. It goes without saying that Professor R was blessed with a clear head for detail and exceptional energy, but the fact that no established scholarly models existed in Japan worked quite powerfully in his favor. As the sole theory of merit concerned with national affairs, R’s view was absorbed by the Japanese academic world just as a sponge soaks up water. His name immediately overwhelmed lesser mortals and spread from Japan to foreign lands.

  Professor R, however, was not a vain man who would swell up with pride at this. Individuals with a modicum of confidence in politics or jurisprudence took advantage of the troubled times to occupy important positions in administration and law. In the twinkling of an eye, they appeared to rise to the glittering surface of society, becoming the objects of rumor and the source of newspaper articles. But Professor R was a scholar to the last and did not show himself outside his study or office. His devotion to learning astonished his subordinates and also acted to admonish them. Every morning, after the caretaker opened the door to the lecture hall soon after he had finished cleaning it, the sight of Professor R greeted his glance before any other. The tall slim professor, wearing an old Western-style suit, holding under his arm a carryall made of purple muslin cloth, and not looking the least embarrassed, softly returned the caretaker’s greeting and entered his office. Buried up to his head in books and manuscripts, he did not leave his office except for lectures. When evening came, he left the office and, without detour, returned to his study at home.

  Despite this, he was by no means just an academic. Anyone who came into contact with him, no matter who he was, would find him possessing wisdom and a high degree of common sense: a man who believed in acting with unimpeachable virtue in everyday life. Thus respect and honor surrounded him as a matter of course.

  Moreover, unawares, Professor R’s theories gained weight as the basis of the government’s fundamental direction. Virtually all politicians who tried to make a name for themselves in the Japanese political arena used individual elements of Professor R’s theories of government. Those in authority begin to visit him and tether their carriages outside his entrance gate. On account of this alone, he had to extend his residence by a considerable distance. Every year the students he nurtured were appointed to important positions in government circles, and gradually the door to advancement was opened to them. His posts were carefully built up over the forty-two years since he had first begun lecturing at the university, proliferated like the clouds, and enlivened his later years. It seemed to him that everything was proceeding as he had imagined. He had no real complaints to speak of.

  A little tired, Professor R sat in his reading chair and, with Dr. C’s paper in which he had been engrossed on his lap, stared lazily toward the garden of melting snow, the interior made as warm as springtime by the flames in the heater. His two daughters and youngest son, who was still in high school, were strolling, laughing merrily in his large, flat, snow-speckled garden which, despite its plainness, had quite an air of artistry about it. Every time he saw them, his daughters appeared beautiful in their father’s loving eyes. He had intended to give his older daughter to Dr. C, but the young professor had turned down the match, and so now Professor R had arranged to give her away to a young scholar of criminal law. Numerous proposals of marriage had been offered to his younger daughter, who was just going on nineteen. A balmy spring seemed to lie ahead for both his daughters. But his schoolboy son had provided a poor harvest. This boy, who had finally reached the age of seventeen, had been written up in the press as having the reputation of being the brains of a gang of delinquents. He had sharp, cunning eyes, which, to borrow the words of specialists in abnormal psychology, could be described as possessing an innate criminality, set in the middle of a face so like his sisters’ that it could be that of a woman. When Professor R looked at him, he never failed to experience a sense of loneliness and shame and could not help but frown. Resting to clean off the snow from her garden clogs, the boy supported his older sister who was leaning against him, but then he swiftly thrust his hand into her sleeve and snatched from the sleeve pocket of her pretty underkimono something that looked like a letter. Startled, she tried to retrieve it, but tottering and likely to lose her balance in her attempt to remain steady on her feet, she was helpless as her brother taunted her, waving the Western-style white envelope in front of her nose. When he saw this, Professor R felt disgusted, and uncomfortable, he heaved a soft sigh. Adjusting his glasses, he forced himself to return to the article he had begun reading earlier. But in this article, too, aggravation had ambushed him.

  He returned to the page and began to reread the section he had marked in pencil. It was the part in which Dr. C had unsparingly criticized Professor R’s theoretical, circuitous defense of the then cabinet’s arbitrary management of diplomacy, not having received the Diet’s approval, which had consequently led to an outburst of public criticism. Not only had Associate Professor B not misinterprete
d or misunderstood R’s theories, he also had explained R’s main points almost too lucidly. But this only made things worse. Dr. C used the most painstaking logic to show that from Professor R’s usual perspective, his advocacy of the cabinet’s position revealed an attitude quite natural and conscientious. This he praised, but he pointed out caustically that the cabinet’s actions were a clear and deliberate violation of the constitution. At the conclusion of his flawless exposition, he wrote:

  The cabinet has trampled on the rights and reputation that Japanese subjects naturally enjoy under the constitution. Logic based fundamentally on Professor R’s theory exonerates completely the cabinet’s dishonorable conduct and further justifies all contingencies. One does not have to be an expert to know what value such a constitutional theory has.

  This was his conclusion. Professor R’s white eyebrows narrowed, and a deep vertical wrinkle appeared above his nose. Hot blood pumping restlessly through his thumping heart rose in his pale cheeks. As if he had been shamed in public, R’s eyes were wrenched involuntarily away from the pamphlet. While his coffin had not yet been nailed shut, his theory, which one could describe as his raison d’être, was starting to list without any assistance, like a tower built on sand. It was hard for him to contemplate. In addition, this bitter pill contained something even harsher. It had become a painful thorn pricking his conscience. Every time he encountered a situation like this, it showed him how hollow his life was. This was the horrifying result of a small amount of emotional involvement. When he graduated from the university’s southern campus, he was immediately chosen to study in Europe. Among the political theories he researched, there was one that demanded assent as the most logical and correct in regard to basic principles. With his brilliant scholarly mind, he could not avoid this conclusion. He investigated this theory thoroughly, with an intense interest and passion. The more he studied it, the more he was driven to realize that its contents and conclusions had woven into them the deepest instincts and logical course of human existence.