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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  The door closed behind them.

  IV

  Okee learned from Oyoshi that there had been more arrests this time than ever before. The metalworkers had been dragged off to prison just as they were, in their overalls. Every day from five to ten dockers were seized. There were many students among those arrested.

  Seato, a clerk, was arrested two days later. He had been in the habit of visiting Rinkichi on Thursdays, when all the comrades came together. He lived with his old mother, who had worked her fingers to the bone for many a year, so that he could attend a commercial college. She had hoped that when he graduated from college he would get a good post in some big company or bank. She would be able to boast of her son’s salary to the neighbors. And she need not work any more then but could go every year to her hometown. Or her son would pay for her to go to one of those health resorts. There would be no need to tremble for fear that the rent would not be paid in time, or to go to the pawnbrokers, or put off the creditors. How fine it would be then! She had dreamed of this all her long life of toil, and this dream gave her the strength to carry on.

  At last Seato finished college and got a post. When he brought home his first earnings and put them on her knees, she sat for a long time with closed eyes, pressing the envelope with the money to her wrinkled brow. Later, when Seato came down to supper, he saw a new candle burning on the altar. His pay lay beside it.

  “I have been showing the money to your dead father,” the old woman said in a broken voice.

  On March 16 Seato heard that the comrades met at Rinkichi’s and the trade union had been arrested. Seato went home immediately, collected all his books and papers, and took them over to some neighbors. Nothing happened that day. Seato wanted to go to the trade union, but the others dissuaded him. The place was occupied just now by a number of detectives, and it would be dangerous to show up there. Several comrades had dropped into the union, and they were arrested immediately.

  Seato was glad he had not gone there. The same evening, however, he was arrested at his house.

  As soon as it grew dark, Okee left Kudo’s wife and made her way home along the crowded main street. Sleighs, motorcars, and buses raced past. A young couple were standing gazing in a brightly lighted shopwindow.

  They stood close together, whispering. Women in warm coats and men in thick camel-hair jackets went by. Workers and young lads with big empty bowls, children arm in arm, strolled past. Okee’s sorrow grew and grew. Hundreds of people were sacrificing their lives—and for what? For the workers. Was it right, was it just—that nobody thought anything about it, that people went by laughing and chattering as if nothing had happened? Okee could not understand it. Here in the street there did not seem to be any signs of trouble. Maybe the passersby did not know anything about the arrests, and that was why they had such happy faces. Of course, the government would not permit any news to be printed about the arrests.

  “Why did my husband do that? For whom?” Okee asked herself. She felt terribly lonely. The world was very empty. All her husband’s comrades had been fooled. Nonsense—that wasn’t true, either.

  V

  It was the sixteenth of March. All the morning the door of the police headquarters kept opening and shutting, letting in and out police armed to the teeth. Police cars with blue-striped wheels had kept driving up with a loud hooting of horns. The door of the head office would be flung open, out would come a few police with sabers in their hands. They would board the cars, the engines would hum, and the cars would glide away down the street. After a few minutes they would return with a new batch of prisoners. The prison in the police headquarters was full. Every time the keys grated in the lock, the prisoners inside would stop their talk and look up eagerly. Watari, Senzomoto, Sessito, and Sakanishi would recognize the newcomers and welcome them. The policeman standing guard would get as red as a turkey-cock. He would puff out his chest and make a fuss and splutter. Nobody paid any attention to him. All the fifteen men locked in this cell had been comrades, had fought side by side in the front rank. Since they were all together, they amused themselves by making as much noise as possible.

  Sessito curled himself into a ball and threw himself with all his force on the wall. Then again he bit his lips, puffed out his cheeks, and hurled himself on it like a bull. “Be quiet there!” shouted the guard.

  When Sessito saw that this was no good, he began to kick the walls. The others followed his example, and the wooden walls creaked. Only Ishida remained quiet.

  He walked up and down with folded arms, muttering something to himself.

  The door opened again. Senzomoto and Watari were led away. What did that mean? Left without their leaders, the others no longer kicked the wails.

  Ishida’s eyes fell on Rinkichi, who was sitting in a corner with his eyes closed. “He is here, too,” thought Ishida. He was afraid that there was something more serious behind today’s arrests than they had all imagined. He went up to Rinkichi Ogawa.

  “Comrade Ogawa.”

  Rinkichi raised his head.

  “Comrade Ogawa, what does this all mean?”

  “I can’t make it out myself. I was just intending to ask Comrade Watari about it.”

  “It’s evidently connected with our meeting about the present cabinet.”

  “Yes, I thought of that, too. But if such is the case, they need to lock us up for one day. But as it is—”

  The others crowded round them, listening eagerly. They got more and more excited. When had it started, this habit of seizing workers like puppies and throwing them into prison for no reason whatever?

  “Look here, the law says—‘It is forbidden to enter anyone’s house without permission of the occupants, understand—against the will of those living in a house, either after or before sunrise, except in cases where the life, health, or property of the population is endangered.’ This law applies to all save gambling dens and brothels. And what are they doing to us? They have attacked us in the middle of the night, when we were sleeping peacefully, and arrested us without giving any reason for it. The police allow themselves all sorts of liberties.”

  The workers listened attentively to Rinkichi Ogawa. Sometimes they shouted excitedly and stamped their feet.

  Rinkichi added:

  “It says in our constitution, comrades—‘No Japanese subject can be arrested, imprisoned, or punished without lawful reason.’ And how do things really stand? We have never done anything that could be regarded as lawful reason for arrest. We have been thrown into prison without trial and sentence. Our laws and constitution are a network of lies and fraud.”

  His words found their mark easily, since the workers themselves felt the injustice of their treatment. At the realization of their helplessness, they shuddered, as one shudders when a nerve is laid bare.

  “I say, let’s break down the door and go to the chief of the police! Make him tell us why we’ve been arrested!”

  “Yes, come on!”

  “Let’s do some shouting!”

  “It’s no use.” Rinkichi shook his head.

  “Why isn’t it any use?” Seato started on him, as he had always done in the trade union during a hot debate.

  “Now there’s no sense in that. We’re locked in. If we make a row it’ll only make things worse for us, and give them a reason to wipe us out. Our movement must develop in the streets; we must have the support of the whole working population. And actions like these, carried out by a score or so of people—are no good for anyone. Besides, things like that are altogether against our principles. We should never forget that.”

  “But how can we sit here quietly and do nothing? Should we just listen to your theories?”

  At that moment four policemen entered the cell. One of them, a thickset man with a square beard, looked at them quietly for a moment and then said:

  “You know, I hope, that you’re in a police cell now. What’s all this noise about?”

  He started to knock the workers about. When he went for Seato, t
he latter jumped quickly aside, and the policeman struck out too far and lost his balance. Enraged, he shouted, “Eh, you rascal!” and threw himself upon Seato. In a second, Seato’s body struck the wall with a dull, heavy thud. The policeman was breathing heavily.

  “Remember!” he shouted hoarsely, “you’ll have to pay dearly for your insolence!”

  Another policeman called out the names of several men from a list he was holding. These were led out. As they passed through the low door, they stooped slightly. Now only six men remained in the cell.

  Seato tried to rise from the floor, but the policeman kicked him twice.

  Some more police came in after a while to guard the six men left. All conversation was forbidden.

  Rinkichi sat near the high-barred window. The outlines of the people in the room swam.

  It seemed as if shadows and not people were moving up and down the cell. The yellow lamps paled. It was growing light. The cell became faint blue. Rinkichi’s head ached from weariness. Day began. It was very quiet in the police headquarters now. A sort of frozen silence lay over everything. Footsteps now approaching, now receding, could be heard. They would halt for a moment and then begin again. A door would open.

  Every few minutes a noise would come from the next cell. The sound of a heavy body being dragged along. Some resistance seemed to be made against the dragging. Dead silence. Somebody passed by, yawning loudly under the window, in the street below.

  “Why don’t they let me go to sleep?” somebody muttered in a dark corner of the cell. “It’s getting light. It’ll soon be day.” The eyes of the police on guard were swollen from want of sleep, and their faces were pale.

  When Rinkichi awoke, the pale morning light was pouring into the cell. It lighted up the weary faces of the prisoners. One sat with his head dropped on his chest; another stood leaning against the wall; a third stared fixedly before him.

  Every time that Rinkichi was taken to prison, he felt a terrible yearning to see his child. It grew well-nigh unbearable and robbed him of much strength. He had often noticed how fear for their families had drawn many of his comrades away from the movement. He knew that this fear was an enemy of the movement. He tried to jump over it like an acrobat.

  A new set of police came to relieve those on guard. One of them, Senda, went up to Rinkichi. He had known the latter for a long time and had frequently been sent to take Rinkichi to the police headquarters.

  “You know, Mr. Ogawa,” he addressed Rinkichi, “these arrests give the police a lot of trouble. We’re called out on duty even in our spare time, and no matter how tired we may be, we’ve got to go. I’m absolutely worn out.” He sounded sincere enough. Rinkichi wondered for a moment if the man was sincere or not.

  “Well, I’m sorry for you,” he answered without the slightest touch of irony.

  As the other police went out of the room, Seato shouted jeeringly:

  “I’m sorry for you, too!”

  Senda waited until the others had left and then asked Rinkichi softly:

  “Is there any message you’d like sent to your family?”

  Rinkichi was silent for a few seconds. He stared in a bewildered way at the policeman.

  “No, no,” he said at last: “No, I don’t want anything.”

  VI

  As Seato was being led to the lavatory in the morning, he heard a voice calling out “Hallo!” from a cell at the end of the corridor.

  Seato stopped. It was Watari’s voice. Seato saw Watari’s face pressed against the bars of the grating. “Is that you, Watari?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. How are all the others?”

  The policeman escorting Seato came up at that moment. “Be quiet!” whispered Seato and passed on. Why should Watari be in solitary confinement? What was behind all this? Seato could not guess for the life of him. When he came back to his own cell, he told Rinkichi about it. The latter listened in silence and bit his lip.

  Ishida also met Watari in the lavatory. He had no chance to speak to him, but he saw his quiet, resolute face.

  “Listen, do you know Bancroft?” Ishida asked Rinkichi on his return.

  “No, who is he? A Communist?

  “No, he’s a film actor.”

  “Well, why should I have such aristocratic friends?”

  The fact was that Watari’s appearance reminded Ishida of Bancroft, the film actor who had played the part of the hero in some pictures of the life of New York dock workers. Like Watari, the hero had met every danger with a calm and courageous face.

  KUROSHIMA DENJI

  Kuroshima Denji (1898–1943), like Kobayashi Takiji, created some of the most socially conscious writing of this period. Born on a small island in the Inland Sea and later drafted and sent to Siberia with Japanese forces in 1921 to assist the White Russians, Kuroshima vividly captured his personal experiences in his antiwar stories. A poignant example is “A Flock of Circling Crows” (Uzumakeru karasu no mure, 1927).

  A FLOCK OF CIRCLING CROWS (UZUMAKERU KARASU NO MURE)

  Translated by Zeljko Cipris

  1

  “Sir! Leftovers—please!”

  The children had blue eyes. They were bundled in threadbare, torn overcoats; heads buried in the collars. Girls and boys. Needle-like ice stuck in the gaps of their cracked shoes.

  In his arctic boots, Matsuki stood in the mess hall entranceway, hands thrust into trouser pockets.

  Windblown snow piled high, pressing against the windowpanes hard enough to break them. Water that gushed from a valley spring had here frozen into great slabs of ice. They rose in tiers from below, yesterday higher than the day before, today topping yesterday. This is Siberia all right, Matsuki thought. Ice rising layer on layer from ground level was something one never saw back home.

  In their clumsy Japanese, the children pleaded for Matsuki’s sympathy. The faces of all five expressed a determined effort to be endearing. There was open fawning in the way they said “sir.”

  “No leftovers?” repeated the children. “Please, sir, please!”

  “Here, take it.”

  Matsuki took the pail of scraps by the rim and rolled it to the door. In it were the remains of rice boiled with barley that the company had left unfinished.

  Lumps of bread had been tossed in. On top of everything someone had slopped the remnants of miso soup.

  The children, grunting happily, scratched one another’s hands shoveling the leftovers into the enameled basins they had brought along.

  The mess hall smelled of ancient rotten pickles with a mingled stench of rancid butter and jute sacking.

  Yoshinaga, who had been chopping cocklebur roots at the kitchen table, strolled over to the entranceway still wearing his jute-sack apron.

  Takeishi was tossing white birch logs into a pot-bellied stove. Inside it, birch bark crackled in the flames. He too walked to the doorway. “Kolya,” said Matsuki.

  “What?”

  Kolya was a boy with eyes round as marbles that continually rolled in circles in a rather pointed face.

  “Is Galya at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is she doing?”

  “Working.”

  Kolya stood there cramming his mouth with fragments of soup-soaked bread, and munching.

  The other children, too, clutched and gulped bread or boiled rice streaked with soybean paste.

  “Is it good?”

  “Um.”

  “Must be cold by now.”

  When they had transferred the very last grains from the bucket into their own basins, they hoisted these under their arms and ran up the snowy hill leading to their homes.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you!”

  The children’s overcoats and trouser hems flapped and twisted in the wind. The three men stood in the mess hall entrance watching them go. Thin, long legs vigorously stamping the snow like powerful springs, the children climbed t
he hill.

  “Nasha!”

  “Liza!” Takeishi and Yoshinaga called out.

  “Whaat?” The girls called back from the hilltop.

  The children all stopped for a moment and looked down at the mess hall in the valley.

  “You’ll spill your rice,” said Yoshinaga in Japanese.

  “Whaat?”

  Yoshinaga beckoned the girls with his hand.

  Yells and shrieks of laughter resounded from the summit. After a while the children scattered, each to his or her home.

  2

  The mountain’s low easy slope parted into two hills running gradually into a steppe that unfolded into the distance.

  The barracks lay in the ravine of the two hills. Here and there on the hills, and at their foot where the steppe starts to spread, the landscape was dotted with the houses of Russians who had fled their native regions, terrified by the revolution. There also were some indigenous inhabitants of Siberia.

  Their fields had been devastated and the livestock plundered. There was no way for them to work unmolested, to make a living. They lived in wooden houses whose siding walls were held together by rusted, dangling nails. The roofs were low. Straw and trash lay strewn around the buildings.

  In places, haystacks had been piled high. Carts stood parked under the eaves. Inside the rooms were old tables, samovars, embroidered curtains. From within, however, as if from a stable, exuded the odor of strange furs and animal fat.

  To the Japanese soldiers, that was unmistakably the smell of the white man.

  This is where the children came from daily, hugging their enameled washbasins. At times it was the old men or women who came. And sometimes young, nearly adult, women.

  Yoshinaga was from the first company. Matsuki and Takeishi were privates in the second. The three no longer threw away white sugar that had gotten mixed in with bread crumbs but put it aside on plates. They made sure the leftover soup was not dumped on top of the half-eaten bread. Then, when the Russians came, they gave it out.