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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  He was blessed with more than sufficient intelligence to comprehend this. In his heart, this conclusion held a great attraction for him. At the same time, his intelligence told him that this theory was utterly incompatible with the long traditions that had been bequeathed to his country and was equally incompatible with the direction taken by the current political forces. He realized that for this theory to be accepted, it would be necessary to completely revise the fundamental construction of the history of his country. A terrible crisis had befallen Professor R in his role as a scholar. And the millennia-old traditional spirit that had become strongly and deeply rooted within him achieved a final victory over this new theory.

  He believed that in the final analysis, theories could be only the products of history. It was impossible to transcend history, even in one single thread of thought. The belief that there was a mode of thinking that held that by denying history, fundamental human desires could be fully satisfied was merely a scholar’s idle dream, a self-indulgent fantasy. But after all, insubstantial indulgences nourished poets. For a scholar to become absorbed in such fantasies was shameful. Thus, to establish a theory that appeared to respond to the demands of his country’s history, he turned his back on his concerns as a human being and went to study at the feet of Professor Stein. Now, looking back on that time, he did not detect in his conscience any feelings of scholarly reproof for his actions then. But did he really decide on his theory because of these motives? He should have had absolutely no intention of achieving worldly fame. Nonetheless, this often happens.

  To protect one’s social standing, to be able to stand as a giant and evoke admiration in the eyes of the world, to create followers and admirers of one’s views close at hand, in short, to establish honor and fame in some capacity in the world: these are common motives behind the choice of one’s view of life and one’s intellectual doctrines. At the very least, this is a strong possibility. To tell the truth, reflections like these did occur to Professor R from time to time. Because he was confident that he had the ability to examine the true nature of things objectively, he had no intention whatsoever of overlooking this problem. No matter how he considered the matter, he could not believe that he was so contemptible an individual. Being a scholar, he should have put the dignity of learning first. This should have been so. Yet there was an emotion involved. Was this because of the demands of his scholarly conscience? Or demands rising from within himself ? The best case was that if one set of demands was fulfilled, then so the other would be; the worst case was the exact opposite. Even with his cold, sharp gimlet-like powers of judgment, he was unable to distinguish between the two sets of demands. But since he was not a psychologist, that was not at all surprising. So he gently put that notion aside. To use the word “should” was sufficient, he believed.

  Old age makes one impatient. Unless he finally made a decision about those matters on which a decision could be made before his death, he would run out of time. Such thoughts, such problems, troubled Professor R so much that he found it increasingly difficult to sleep. He tried not to let these ugly doubts show. He revealed no shame or any regrets about his theory; he never thought even once of revising it. This was because he had sufficient evidence to believe that the reason why he did not change his own theory was not because of his fear of seeing his firm social standing, painstakingly built up until now, collapse before his very eyes by doing so. Because the state, his theory, and he himself were in perfect accord, naturally he knew best of all where the weak points in his theory lay. If there was a theory with fewer weak points, he knew perfectly well that it was not altogether a bad idea to change it completely. “I am not such a fool as to be burned for the sake of my beliefs, since it may well be that what I believe is not of any great value. But if they say that I should burn so that I can declare my belief, or change it, then I will happily be burned.” When he had recently found these words of Nietzsche in his reading, he was sufficiently aroused by them to feel a warm sympathy with this paradoxical utterance. Now he had come to the point that he could never return to the courage of his youth and start the life he had built up so carefully. In a word, the very essence of his life itself would collapse because of his changing his theory. The reason why he had to support his existing position to the utmost actually lay elsewhere. What would happen if as a result of revising his theory, the safety and development of the state were threatened, the state that the power of his conscience had ordered him to protect? When it came to this, he made a firm decision to maintain his theory faithfully to the end. Now that he had taken this position, he could not prevent, in his essentially good and conscientious heart, a growing feeling of hatred toward Dr. C. It was a pity that he was still young and a man with a bright future, but Professor R came to believe that he had to knock him down so powerfully that he could not recover.

  That day, too, Professor R thought hard about these matters, and putting Dr. C’s article on his knees, he reached out with his left hand to push the bell on the wall. At that moment he involuntarily uttered a small cry and, frowning, placed his right hand on his left elbow. He had completely forgotten that in these last few days, because of the growing rheumatism in his left hand, when he moved his left elbow he experienced excruciating pain. Accepting the inevitable, he gently rose and pushed the bell with his right hand. When he sat for a long time, he found it difficult to walk. He thought that in just about everything his life was going downhill. Oddly, he could not help worrying about health troubles that in the beginning he would have overcome without any difficulty at all. He—who had always believed that when the time to die came, he would die gracefully—had noticed recently that to an unusual degree he was paying attention to various means of improving his health. When items were advertised as promoting health or longevity, he tried them indiscriminately. As if he were ashamed, he glanced at the ginseng extract on his desk.

  Once again he peered out of the window toward the front of the garden. He saw his youngest son, the high school student, seated in a porcelain chair in a corner of the garden illuminated by the sunlight through the clouds, engrossed in reading a worthless pocket book. Today, even though he was wearing his school uniform, he appeared to be playing hooky from school. When the subject of the boy came up, he thought bitterly about his temperamental and selfish wife. She has no understanding of our children or any plan for them; she must have let him do as he wanted and given him time off school as if it were nothing. Irritation rose unchecked in him. He was the type who wanted to have a proper reason for everything.

  There was a knock at the door and when he opened it, his wife came in. She had dyed her hair pitch black; it was piled on top in a style totally unsuited to her; and her red underkimono was sticking out from her sleeves. Starting from the time they were married, after being separated for a short period, when they suddenly exchanged glances, her face always triggered a bout of ill humor in him. After spending some time together, the ill humor disappeared, but now, although they had been together for such a long time, whenever he caught sight of her, the feeling returned. For Professor R, who had never strayed outside the boundaries of marriage insofar as sex was concerned, this unusual reaction was one of a number of things that were less than satisfactory.

  “My, how dark this room is . . . did you call me?” said his wife, making a little grimace with her lips as if to smooth things over, yet with an unusually sharp glance as she went to open the curtains. A look of distaste on his face, Professor R said calmly, “Just leave it as it is. I’ll fix up my study as I want. Could you give B a ring? Tell him to come over quickly, it’s something urgent. Now then, I wonder why the doctor hasn’t come.”

  His wife replied, “Certainly, dear.” But instead of standing up and going straight away, she began to list various jobs that could be done later. Professor R’s wife was the daughter of a vice-minister who had served in the cabinet in the early years of the Meiji era and had exercised authority as he wished, just like the high flyer that he had been.
While he was still alive, he gave his daughter in marriage to Professor R with an eye on his future. When R considered the vice-minister’s especially distinguished service to the state, he also paid his willful wife the deepest respect. From the point of view of the professor, who possessed a sharp intelligence, the workings of his wife’s mind, vague and circuitous to the point that one could conceive of her only as stupid, irritated him so that he wanted to stamp his feet in frustration. Nevertheless, he sought to guide her in her ignorance with as much presence of mind as he could muster. Today, too, among her various remarks were things to which he had to pay attention, and so he tried to sort these out in his mind as carefully as he could. There was the news that a doctor of law who was his colleague had suffered a relapse in his illness; that a distant relative, an old woman to whom every month he and his wife sent money in order to maintain the family grave in his hometown, had urged them to find a position for her son; that he was acting as a go-between for a young woman; and that the minister for home affairs was to pay him a visit in the afternoon. He felt annoyed, as if the dust of the city had forced its way into his study.

  Thinking about the dust, his eyes suddenly moved to Marie Antoinette’s mantelpiece clock. In accordance with the professor’s taste, the interior of the study had been cleaned inside and out, and the clock shone beautifully without a speck of dust. In fact, about a year earlier, the professor had entertained a wonderful fantasy about the clock. He imagined that the clock would begin to work just as it did once long ago. Actually, even now, he felt as if the clock was just about to start working. With its gold hand chiming, it would speak of past glories. As he gazed at it more and more, this conviction grew stronger. To see a clock, which should keep time, stop completely was both an eerie and a mystical experience. Staring at this clock in his spare time—which had become somewhat more abundant—he indulged himself in all sorts of idle fancies. On such occasions, sometimes the clock would suddenly stimulate thoughts of death, and taken aback, he would be shocked. A time will come when even I will die. All his theories, both the good and the bad fortune of his family, the glory for which he had lived until now, all would be blown away in the whirlwind of his excitement and disappear before his very eyes. His imagination conjured up his lonely figure inching step by step toward death. He fell into a cold, irrevocable despondency. Advancing into old age, with no assurance of life after death, only a person with a strong sense of self, whose confidence in the present had begun to crumble, would feel such anguish—which he could share with no one and had to suffer in sad isolation. This loathsome state of mind made him wish all the more for the clock to move. If only something good would happen—a sign—then the clock would surely begin to work.

  “Hurry up and make that call.”

  Professor R, who had been staring at the clock, forgetting all else, suddenly turned to his wife and spoke. Then his wife, for the first time, got up and left the study.

  “What’s going on with Tarō ? If he wants to stay at home then he can, but you should tell him to go to his room and read something worthwhile.”

  He called out after her retreating figure as he followed her with his eyes. She, it appeared, had lost her temper and made no attempt to look back.

  They named him Tarō, which means “first son,” in hopes that they would have more boys. With his ample means, the professor felt he could do with two or three boys. However, this only son almost appeared to have been born solely in order to make Professor R anxious about what would happen after the child’s death. The heavy, cold, leaden atmosphere of his household was trying unpleasantly to tell him about the failure of his life, now that it was already too late. Irritated, he folded Dr. C’s article in two on his knees. And he was bothered by small spasms in his left hand.

  His wife did not appear to be calling Tarō inside. He thought that he had to get up once again and lecture Tarō. But it was too much trouble to leave his seat. If he opened the window, he probably would be struck by the chill from the melting snow and get uncomfortably cold. But when he thought that he had to face Tarō’s accusing eyes, he felt a halfhearted sense of resignation perfectly suited to his fate as an aged father.

  He had no other recourse but to begin to read Dr. C’s paper once again. He made an attempt to find, at the very least, some errors in logic in the text. He wondered with some concern and a slight degree of interest what wit and learning Associate Professor B would display in his reaction to Dr. C’s criticisms.

  But in the end he sympathized with Dr. C’s rejection and recognized that he had to surrender. He felt that his own intellectual powers had decayed and that his mind was not working as sharply as it had in the past. He came to the painful discovery that his powers, which sometime in the past had gradually been lost, would never return. Eventually he closed his eyes, feeling as if he had been ground into powder, and he tried to suppress the waves of unease that struck his breast one after the other, as if he was waiting for a verdict of guilty to be read out.

  The melting snow fell from the eaves, and outside the window he could hear the sound of dripping water at long intervals, as before. So silent and still were his surroundings.

  In that way some time passed. All of a sudden the noon cannon reverberated throughout the fine, clear sky, and loud steam whistles from distant factories echoed in his ears like a chorus. The inspiring sounds of clocks chiming twelve from his neighborhood could also be heard.

  Professor R opened his eyes lazily and gazed at the Marie Antoinette mantelpiece clock. The gilt-edged, snow white face was located right in the center of the solemn, inexpressibly elegant clock, just as if Proserpina were being embraced by Pluto. The bronze hands, which made one think of damask daggers, remained stationary, unmoving. 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 inside the clock’s interior.

  But the bronze hands, which made one think of damask daggers, still did not move.

  EDOGAWA RANPO

  Edogawa Ranpo (1894–1965) began writing detective and mystery stories in 1923, the year of the Great Kantō Earthquake, and he usually is credited with being the first such professional writer in Japan. Ranpo’s real name was Hirai Tarō; he chose a pen name like that of one of the then most admired and popular of all American writers in Japan, Edgar Allan Poe. Ranpo gained a worldwide reputation for his tales, which often are filled with the erotic and the grotesque. “The Human Chair” (Ningen isu) is one of his early works, having been written in 1925.

  THE HUMAN CHAIR (NINGEN ISU)

  Translated by James B. Harris

  Yoshiko saw her husband off to his work at the Foreign Office at a little past ten o’clock. Then, now that her time was once again her very own, she shut herself up in the study she shared with her husband to resume work on the story she was to submit for the special summer issue of K—— magazine.

  She was a versatile writer with high literary talent and a smooth-flowing style.

  Even her husband’s popularity as a diplomat was overshadowed by hers as an authoress.

  Daily she was overwhelmed with letters from readers praising her works. In fact, this very morning, as soon as she sat down before her desk, she immediately proceeded to glance through the numerous letters which the morning mail had brought. Without exception, in content they all followed the same pattern, but prompted by her deep feminine sense of consideration, she always read through each piece of correspondence addressed to her, whether monotonous or interesting.

  Taking the short and simple letters first, she quickly noted their contents. Finally she came to one which was a bulky, manuscript-like sheaf of pages. Although she had not received any advance notice that a manuscript was to be sent to her, still it was not uncommon for her to receive the efforts of amateur writers seeking her valuable criticism. In most cases these were long-winded, pointless, and yawn-provoking attempts at writing. Nevertheless,
she now opened the envelope in her hand and took out the numerous, closely written, sheets.

  As she had anticipated, it was a manuscript, carefully bound. But somehow, for some unknown reason, there was neither a title nor a byline. The manuscript began abruptly:

  “Dear Madam: . . .”

  Momentarily she reflected. Maybe after all, it was just a letter. Unconsciously her eyes hurried on to read two or three lines, and then gradually she became absorbed in a strangely gruesome narrative. Her curiosity aroused to the bursting point and spurred on by some unknown magnetic force, she continued to read:

  Dear Madam:

  I do hope you will forgive this presumptuous letter from a complete stranger. What I am about to write, Madam, may shock you no end. However, I am determined to lay bare before you a confession—my own—and to describe in detail the terrible crime I have committed.

  For many months I have hidden myself away from the light of civilization, hidden, as it were, like the devil himself. In this whole wide world, no one knows of my deeds. However, quite recently a queer change took place in my conscious mind, and I just couldn’t bear to keep my secret any longer. I simply had to confess!

  All that I have written so far must certainly have awakened only perplexity in your mind. However, I beseech you to bear with me and kindly read my communication to the bitter end, because if you do, you will fully understand the strange workings of my mind and the reason why it is to you in particular that I make this confession.