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

by J. Thomas Rimer

  The flock had been there the previous day.

  It was there again today.

  Three days had passed. But the number of crows, the noise and the gloom, continued only to increase.

  One day a soldier patrolling the village came across a Russian peasant returning home with a rifle over his shoulder and a knapsack slung from its barrel. Both the gun and the knapsack were Japanese.

  “Hey, hold it! Where did you swipe that from?”

  “Over there.” The heavily bearded peasant raised a big arm and pointed toward the plain where the crows were flocking.

  “It was just lying there.”

  “Liar!”

  “There are a lot of them in the snow over there. . . . A lot of dead soldiers, too.”

  “You lying son of a bitch!” The soldier slapped the peasant hard across the cheek. “Move! I’m taking you to the headquarters.”

  It became clear that Japanese soldiers were indeed buried in the snow. The insignia on the knapsack indicated it was Matsuki and Takeishi’s company.

  The following day a company of men marched out to the spot over which the crows had been circling since the early morning. The crows were already swarming over the snow, striking greedily with their rapacious beaks.

  As the soldiers approached, the crows, in a crescendo of cawing, soared cloudlike into the sky.

  Partly devoured bodies lay scattered over the field. Their faces had been hideously mutilated and rendered unrecognizable.

  The snow was nearly half melted. Water seeped into boots.

  Screeching wildly, the flight of crows swooped to the ground some hundred yards away.

  The soldiers saw them pecking and tearing amid the snow and started after them.

  Again the crows whirled up, screeching and dropped down two or three hundred yards off. Corpses sprawled there too. The soldiers ran toward them.

  The crows were gradually fleeing farther and farther—two miles, five miles—touching down in the snow all along the way.

  MIYAMOTO YURIKO

  Despite her family’s wealth, Miyamoto Yuriko (1899–1951) was drawn to socialism by Russian literature, which helped focus her attention on the plight of the Japanese poor. Time spent in the Soviet Union from 1927 to 1930 transformed Miyamoto into a Marxist writer whose commitment survived arrest and persecution after her return to Japan. The novels she wrote after World War II draw on those experiences, and some of her early stories also show a deep concern for the effects of poverty on women. One is “A Sunless Morning” (Hikari no nai asa), published in 1923. The translator also wrote this introduction.

  A SUNLESS MORNING (HIKARI NO NAI ASA)

  Translated by Keiko McDonald

  Omon walked with a stoop. She was so thin her spine drew a sharp line down the back of her blouse. She wore a supervisor’s black uniform. When she appeared, all talking stopped. Her appearance silenced even the malicious gossip of the factory girls.

  Omon’s face was a pallid wedge, so dry and wrinkled no one could guess her age. While her eyes were strangely dark and deep, her lips were oddly lifeless. When she laughed or grew angry, they trembled, as if anxious to cover her large front teeth. When Omon walked, if seemed as if her joints must creak with every move. Somehow the sight of her made your blood run cold. You felt a peculiar mix of pity and fear. You found yourself wondering—was this woman born to be such a strange and lonely creature?

  Sad to say, Omon’s unhappy transformation began when she was twelve. That was when her mother died. Her name was Osai. Her fourth child was due when disaster struck.

  It was on a Saturday. Omon had come home from school at noon. She was playing happily in the sunlit hallway, making a kimono for her doll. Osai worked nearby, starching threadbare pieces of cloth on a board. She was puffy and languid, suffering from her pregnancy. Her fingers were red with cold.

  New Year’s Day was coming up. A band was playing in the street outside, drumming up business for the holiday sales. The sun picked out a glint of red in Omon’s hair. It strayed loose around her rather small head. She was daydreaming, thinking ahead to the holiday. Her family was poor, but that didn’t matter. She was filled with joy just imagining their New Year’s celebration. Her mother had promised to give her a new pink shawl on New Year’s Eve.

  Her reverie was broken by a sharp cry from her mother. “Omon! Do you know where Mrs. Sawada lives?”

  Omon, never a quick-witted child, looked up, her face a blank. Her mother’s sickly face was drawn with pain.

  “Don’t you know who I mean? The midwife who came here a while back. Her house is the one with a red lamp out front.”

  Omon pondered the question then answered slowly: “Yes . . . I know that place.”

  “Then hurry. Find her and tell her to come right away. Quickly. Do you understand?”

  Osai was clearly in terrible pain. Her brows were knit as she doubled over and crawled along the floor into the house.

  Omon returned from her errand to find her mother in bed. Osai was staring up at the ceiling, gasping for breath and moaning in a low hollow voice. Omon stood transfixed, sick with horror, as suddenly her mother’s eyes glazed over in a fixed demonic glare.

  As soon as the midwife arrived, Omon fled into the kitchen, quaking with terror. What horrible thing was happening? Would her mother cry out loud?

  Just then the terrible wailing began. Was it a woman crying out in pain or a howling beast? Omon blanched and trembled, eyes wide with fear. Yet she did as she was told. She lit a fire in the earthen pit and put water on to boil.

  Drops from the roiling pot fell into the flickering flames, sending up white smoke. Omon threw in stick after stick, choking the hearth in her haste to build a hotter blaze—as if flames could lick away her mounting sense of horror.

  Meantime, her mother’s fate was sealed in the corner of that little room. As daylight turned to dusk outside, the house grew dark and quiet. There would be no joyful sound of a baby’s birthing cry. All was mournful silence now as death drew near.

  Omon was sent to fetch her father. He worked as a security guard at a bank nearby. They returned to find Osai and her baby dead. She had died of eclampsia, a woman who had known so little happiness in this life. Even her death was a painful cheat—breaking her promise of a new pink shawl.

  Omon suffered all alone now in the deserted house with its ghostly hints of funeral incense. Her father was there, but not for her. He had always been a weak and joyless man, a man with no zest for life.

  Worse than the lonely house was the horror it had shown Omon. Her mother’s death had given birth to this monstrous pain, this horror of life in her daughter’s mind. Omon saw the world through fearful small black eyes. The happy-go-lucky daily life that others took for granted she saw as an illusion, a curtain concealing no end of horrors lurking, ready to strike.

  Her mother might have given Omon siblings to ease her fear. But all those babies died. Only this luckless one survived. Too bad for her, as it turned out, though not so bad for her father.

  Two years later he married again. A coworker served as the go-between. His new bride, Omaki, soon showed herself to be a jealous domineering wife. Needless to say, his hapless child became this woman’s unthanked drudge around the house. Day after day Omon meekly went about her chores, living the life of an animal tamed by endless routine. She worked quickly and quietly, doing her best not to disturb her new mother. She had called her own mother “Okkasan.” Omaki she addressed more formally as “Oka-san.” Even her father did not know why. Omon kept her secret to herself.

  Omon grew to be a thin shy girl who hardly ever smiled. Then, in the spring of her seventeenth year, something unexpected happened. One of her father’s friends arranged an introduction that led to an offer of work. Omon entered service as a maid in a mansion in downtown Tokyo.

  There she spent three years as companion for a lady in her sixties. She spent much of her time winding balls of unraveled yarn, never tired or bored by this mindless chore. Th
e old lady’s relatives despised her miserly ways, especially her string-saver mania for turning old stockings back into balls of yarn. Washing and unraveling old socks was her chief preoccupation. She worked on a large cloth cushion spread in the passageway outside the room that was home in her declining years. This south-facing passageway was sunny and warm.

  Omon sat in sight of the old lady, at a respectful small distance. Her small pinched face looked down at the work at hand, at skein after skein of yarn she wound into ball after ball for hours on end. They were stored in a box in the cupboard, more than twenty at a time, each the size of a clenched fist. When the old lady got enough ahead, she dispatched a supply to her old hometown in Okayama Prefecture. There they were woven into particolored cloth for kimonos.

  Omon was twenty-one before she took her first train ride. Even a child might laugh out loud at her naive surprise. Yet this is how the experience affected Omon.

  By this time she had been in service four years. The old lady, encouraged by her family, decided to visit the countryside at cherry-blossom time. It had been a good long while since she had seen her old hometown.

  Omon was predictably fascinated by the rapidly changing scenery as the train sped on its way. No more rolling yarn into balls! For once her hands were free, and so were her eyes. And so she watched the passing scene as merry as a child. Her joy was infectious, too. The old lady flushed with pleasure as Omon exclaimed softly: “Oh! What a view! Look, my lady!”

  Mountains loomed up and then vanished as the train passed into a tall dark forest. Then came a flickering light, and suddenly Omon was looking down at billowing ocean waves. As darkness fell, the moon rose up and lent its gleam to the speeding train. Omon felt like a dream was carrying her away. She wondered whether it would take her to another world. She was overcome with strange new feelings—joy mixing with anxiety, excitement tinged with dread. She yearned for words to express these feelings, but no words came.

  When they reached their destination in the countryside, Omon’s joy redoubled. Here the springtime air was soft, and soft was the grass that billowed lush and fresh, blessed with the promise of growth and strength. Omon’s heart leaped up. Her slender body tingled with pleasure she had never known before. She looked around at this new world with shining eyes. The very sky above seemed new.

  And so did she the next morning in the mirror. There, for the first time ever, she beheld some touches of beauty and charm. She looked, in fact, like a pretty little flower opening late.

  Even the old lady noticed a change. Usually quite indifferent to girlish beauty, the old woman said: “This country air has done you good. Your complexion is fairer.”

  The train trip had taken just under thirty hours. Yet Omon had undergone a wondrous change in that brief time. At twenty-one she was entering a phase that most girls experience at sixteen or seventeen. At last she was getting a taste of that fleeting time of joy when youth and gladness blend soul and body in a state of splendid purity.

  As luck would have it, Omon’s chance to marry came just at this time. Neither she nor her employer had any such thought when they set out for the country. Yet there, by chance, a man saw Omon and thought of his son. He was a merchant who enjoyed the patronage of the old lady’s country relatives. And so he approached her with a proposal on his son’s behalf.

  The journey itself had cheered the old woman and disposed her to favor the match. Excited by her own generosity, she improved on it by taking Omon’s feelings into account. She agreed to play the go-between but said nothing to the girl. Instead, she took Omon to a festival where, unbeknown to her, the young man himself could see and observe his prospective bride.

  The young man’s name was Tsuda. He was a well-placed company clerk, a good match for someone of Omon’s social standing. The old lady saw him as something of a catch, a husband far better than a girl in Omon’s situation could have hoped for. And so she urged the matter forward, even when Omon held back at first, alarmed by so sudden a turn of events.

  The old woman contacted Omon’s parents as soon as they returned to Tokyo. So it was that two months of spring, beginning with that journey, would be all this girl would ever know of the springtime’s hopes for happiness.

  She lived that time in a daze, apt to be caught unawares by flashes of happy expectation. The sky overhead, gleaming like a precious gem or a magnolia in the garden opening dazzling white—commonplace things that had power to interrupt her work with painfully vivid fantasies of wedded bliss ahead.

  She no longer fell asleep at night, wearily dulled by workaday routine. Her mind now filled with busy thoughts. One thought in particular haunted her day and night: would her stepmother Omaki approve this marriage?

  Her father Shinkichi answered the old lady’s letter immediately, in person. Bursting into tears of heartfelt gratitude, he thanked her profusely. “How can I thank you for all you have done for my poor daughter. She will be so happy now!”

  His phrasing suggested that he was speaking for himself alone. The old lady noticed and asked outright what his wife thought of this match. His answer was evasive yet reassuring, too. “I see no reason why she should be opposed to it,” he said. “And even if she were, why should I care?”

  The old lady was satisfied. “Your wife is bound to agree. Ever mother wants her daughter to be happy.”

  Things went smoothly from that point on. Then, just as betrothal gifts were due to be exchanged, the prospective bridegroom, Tsuda, made an unexpected request. He would be traveling to Tokyo on business and would be there ten days. He would very much like to stay one night at Omon’s house. He and the family could have a nice long talk and discuss the wedding plans.

  Omon was terrified. She knew what a hellion her stepmother was. Omaki might be trusted to be civil out in public. But in her own house where her power was absolute—look out!

  Omon soon yielded to horrified despair. Weeks of hopeful facts and blissful fancies vanished like the mirage that shows the thirsty traveler the way to dusty death. In the days leading up to her fiancé’s visit, Omon felt as though her heart had turned to ice.

  Her father sent for her on the day itself, but Omon refused to leave the old lady’s house. “It will only make matters worse if I am there,” she said.

  She spent that day in a state of high anxiety, pale and trembling. By nightfall she was far too faint to think of returning to the house where her fate was being decided even then. She could only imagine the worst that could happen if she appeared. And what if, by some miracle, things were going well? Even then she could only think of Omaki doing what she did in the bosom of the family—changing suddenly into the demon that she truly was.

  So it is with those long accustomed to misfortune. They are always the first to learn their own bad news.

  Omon had guessed right. Tsuda soon wrote to break off the match. There was no hope of patching things up. No news there for Omon. The news was knowing now with such bitter clarity all that marriage must mean to her. Others might know it as a source of domestic bliss. But marriage had laid a terrible curse on Omon’s life.

  It turned out that Omaki had been satisfied with insulting her future son-in-law to his face. She had indulged her mania for character assassination in another direction as well.

  “You can do as you like,” she told Tsuda. “Just don’t come crying to me after you’ve married an unchaste girl. A mother knows her daughter’s body better than anyone. . . .”

  Word got around of course, though some did question the truth of Omaki’s claims. It wasn’t as though she was Omon’s real birth mother, the one presumably familiar with every detail of her daughter’s body.

  Still, the harm was well and truly done. Omon soon lost the bit of luster that happiness had lent to her for such a brief while. She went back to being a downcast servant, a nondescript nonentity.

  Six years later the old lady died. Omon went back home to live. She soon found a job at the S Candy Company. Every month a good part of her small salary wen
t to Omaki to pay for room and board.

  Every morning before the sun was up she slipped into her wooden clogs and hobbled off to work, a crooked shadow of skin and bone.

  Before she was thirty, Omon could pass for over fifty. Her wrinkled face was that far gone. Once she passed thirty, her age was anybody’s guess. Loneliness and weariness had done what they do best.

  ORIGUCHI SHINOBU

  Origuchi Shinobu (1887–1953) is considered, along with his mentor Yanagida Kunio (1875–1962), to be one of the most prestigious modern scholars of Japanese folklore and early culture. Origuchi also was well known as a poet and a translator into modern Japanese of the earliest Japanese anthology of poetry, The Anthology of Ten Thousand Leaves (Man’yōshū). His one novel, Writings from the Dead (Shisha no sho), published in 1939, is a unique attempt to conjure up in fictional form the mental world of ancient Japan. The opening section is presented here.

  WRITINGS FROM THE DEAD (SHISHA NO SHO)

  Translated by J. Thomas Rimer

  I

  He awoke quietly from his sleep. In the midst of this black night, in this stagnation made all the more oppressive by the cold, he remembered opening his eyes.

  A soft sound. And again. Was the sound coming to his ears that of dripping water? Now, in the midst of what seemed to be this freezing darkness, the very lashes of his eyes seemed to separate by themselves.

  His knees, then his elbows, seemed now to return slowly to his buried consciousness, and something echoed in his head. . . . The muscles in his body were growing stiff, yet there was some kind of faint echo inside him as his body began to cramp from the palms of his hands to the bottom of his feet.

  And then, always this dense darkness. The pupils of his eyes, which could look around as he opened his eyes ever so slightly, became conscious of the pressure of a dark rock ceiling. Then of an icy stone bed. On both sides of him hung walls of rough stone. And then that drip, drip, dripping sound of water from the stones.