Romaji Diary and Sad Toys

by Takuboku Ishikawa

  The synod of the Sōtō sect of Zen Buddhism had deprived Ittei of the post for failing to send in the regular donation of fees from temple income. Debts and traveling expenses for his son's illness might have had something to do with this oversight, but the main cause was Ittei's laxity in financial concerns. Stubborn by nature and somewhat naive in the ways of the world, he had disregarded the synod's repeated demands for payment. The dismissal meant that Takuboku had to assume responsibility for supporting the family.

  On March 2, 1905, Ittei and the remaining members of his family left their temple home. Takuboku, in Tokyo at the time, was informed of the event by mail. Ittei himself had no plans for the future. Angered by the attitude of some of the villagers and by the indifference of the synod, which had given no consideration to his meritorious service over the past twenty years, he had rashly left the temple. Finding his present difficulties too much to endure, he went to Aomori Prefecture to live with Katsurahara, his teacher-priest and brother-in-law. On March 23, 1906, a letter came from the synod in which Ittei was pardoned for his offense, and hearing the news, he left for Shibutami on April 10. Later a meeting of parishioners was held, and a decision was made to request Ittei's reinstatement. But a conflict between two factions erupted, one supporting the reinstatement, the other violently opposing it. With the intensification of his financial crisis, with further persecution from some of the villagers, and with added economic hardship caused by the birth of Takuboku's daughter on December 29, 1906 (Takuboku having married in 1905), Ittei once more left home, this time on March 5, 1907, his hope for the reappointment abandoned. Takuboku also moved away soon after. His father returned to Tokyo in December 1909 to live with his son, who was again poverty-stricken at that time. After a quarrel in which Ittei struck his wife, he again retreated in September 1911, though the ultimate reason was the family's unbearable poverty. Ittei did not even attend his wife's cremation in March 1912, but in April that same year, having been living in Hokkaido with his son-in-law's family, he came to Tokyo after learning of Takuboku's serious illness. When the poet died on April 13, his father was present.

  Takuboku's departure from middle school, his father's loss of position as temple priest, and the breakup of the family caused Takuboku considerable anguish. A fourth major concern in his life was his marriage to Setsuko Horiai, the sweetheart of his Morioka schooldays.

  Urged by the Horiais to speed up the proceedings, the Ishikawa family decided to hold the ceremony on May 30, 1905. At that time, Takuboku was in Tokyo. But on the appointed day, the traveling bridegroom was nowhere in sight. The go-between and the two families were panic-stricken. Finally it was agreed the festivities would take place in spite of the omission of the ceremony. The party opened lamely enough without Takuboku, some of the guests having already departed. Setsuko was calm throughout, apparently confident of Takuboku's good faith. A few days later Takuboku turned up without the slightest trace of embarrassment or guilt. The reasons for his delay remain unclear. Biographer Yukinori Iwaki believes the poet fell prey to anxieties, overwhelmed as he was by the heavy responsibility of supporting others when he was uncertain about providing for himself. In spite of an overweening pride in his literary gifts, Takuboku lacked real drive. He had left Tokyo on May 20; he had hoped to remain in Sendai for ten days and to return home by the thirtieth. The Sendai interlude may be called a failure of nerve, a futile attempt to escape the reality of a future commitment, but his actions show equally the egotism of a man of letters and the strong confidence he had in Setsuko's love.

  A further complication arose to mar these marital beginnings. Setsuko's father had been strongly opposed to the connection because he was an old-fashioned moralist who believed in arranged marriage, not in the freedom of choice of the young participants. He had reluctantly given his permission because his sister had threatened him by informing him the lovers might "do anything," implying the possibility of the double love-suicide so common in Japanese society. Takuboku's mother was also reluctant to sanction the match. The later quarrels between the new bride and her mother-in-law were more deep-rooted than the usual antagonism that exists in these complicated Japanese roles.

  Since the nineteen-year-old Takuboku was a new family man, he rented a two-room house in Morioka in which the bride, the groom's parents, and Takuboku's younger sister Mitsuko were to live. Five people in two small rooms proved cumbersome, and it foreshadowed even greater difficulties despite the fact that on June 25, 1905, Takuboku moved to a larger house in the city. The rent of five yen a month was a considerable sum, and the poverty of the family continued. Takuboku's mental distress was intensified by the fact that he had become the major support of his family. The newlyweds occupied one room in the five-room house where they enjoyed a brief period of happiness. The husband took pleasure in listening to the violin solos his wife played to him.

  The family income consisted of the small sums Takuboku received for writing a series of newspaper articles for the Iwate Nippō, presided over by his old teacher. Most of the living expenses, however, came from selling meager family possessions. Takuboku's attempt to start a new literary magazine was perhaps motivated more by economic circumstance than by literary inclination. Single-handedly he made an amazing effort to establish Shōtenchi (Microcosm), whose first number was a brilliant success. Critics in Tokyo were surprised by the fact that many noted writers contributed to this little magazine published in a small city in the north. But the venture was short-lived. Financial considerations prevented the appearance of the second issue.

  Takuboku was forced to find some other means of livelihood, and he finally decided to return to his native village on April 11, 1906, to accept, thanks to his father-in-law's help, a position as a substitute teacher at the Shibutami Primary School. The eight yen a month salary was low. That the young Takuboku was overly confident of his pedagogic talents is revealed in a diary he kept at the time. His attitude bordered on the arrogant. Apparently some of the villagers were against his appointment, afraid his personality would lead them into difficulties. He had of course not wanted to become a teacher, nor was he interested in village politics. Some misunderstanding, at any rate, was at work. It may be that Takuboku felt himself persecuted more than he actually was. Although it seems unlikely the villagers wanted to drive him out, Takuboku indicated they did in a tanka in A Handful of Sand (see p. 29):

  This sorrow of being driven from my home

  As if pelted with stones

  Will never disappear.

  He had a general dislike for the provincial mind one expects in a Japanese village. Though he had a special nostalgia for the rural area of his earliest and happiest years, he hated its inhabitants, mainly because of their treatment of his father.

  Setsuko gave birth to a daughter in December 1906, and the financial situation grew even more desperate, especially after the poet's year-long struggle to help his father regain the temple had failed. Determined to begin a new life in Hokkaido, Takuboku tendered his resignation from the school on April 1 that year, but on the nineteenth, in another maneuver typical of him, he persuaded the upper-course primary pupils to follow him to the southern edge of the village and go on strike to expel the principal. Then and there Takuboku taught them the chorus of a revolutionary song he composed on the spot. The commotion that ensued led to the principal's transfer, but instead of granting Takuboku's request to resign, the authorities ordered a dismissal, a further blot on the young man's record.

  The breakup of the family occurred next. Takuboku's wife and child Kyōko went to live with his in-laws in Morioka, and his mother moved in with a village acquaintance. In June 1907, Takuboku found a job as a substitute teacher in a primary school in the city of Hakodate in Hokkaido. Despite his low salary of twelve yen a month, Setsuko and Kyōko came to Hakodate on July 7, and the couple set up housekeeping at 18 Aoyagichō. His mother came on August 4.

  Misfortune, however, continued to dog him when both the primary school appointment and the side
job he had taken as a free-lance reporter were eliminated after a fire destroyed the greater part of Hakodate on August 25. He resigned from the school on September 11 and went to Sapporo to work as a newspaper proofreader. Soon he was invited to join the staff of a paper to be founded in Otaru, a port city near Sapporo. At a salary of twenty yen a month he was jointly in charge of city news with Ujō Noguchi, later a popular poet and songwriter. Takuboku rented two upstairs rooms and lived there with his wife, mother, and child.

  Before long, however, he joined in a plot with Noguchi to oust their editor, but the scheme was discovered, and Noguchi was forced to resign. Takuboku, oddly enough, received an increase in pay to become city editor on his own. At the post he displayed his talents to the full, editing the paper as he wished. He was the central figure in this newly established publication, yet characteristically he found himself opposing the chief editor. Takuboku finally managed to have his friend Shintarō Sawada declared editor-in-chief. Unfortunately a conflict within the staff again flared up in December, and Takuboku was physically assaulted by the business manager. Angry, the poet announced his own resignation in the very next edition.

  As soon as he resigned from the Otaru Nippō, Takuboku and his family were plunged into difficulties. They could not afford to live without an income for even a short period. Usually slow to act, Takuboku was worried this time and anxiously tried to find employment, but his repeated attempts proved useless. At this juncture his friend Sawada persuaded the president of the Otaru Nippō, who was also head of a newspaper in Kushiro, to employ Takuboku on the other publication, but Sawada's efforts were undermined by certain conditions Takuboku demanded before accepting the position.

  Nevertheless, on January 10, 1908, Sawada visited Takuboku to present him with a ten-yen note offered by the president. The poet was out, but both his wife and mother, their eyes stained with tears, received the money gratefully. Sawada strongly advised Takuboku to accept the appointment for the sake of his family, and he did. Sawada again visited the family about a week after Takuboku had set off for his job in Kushiro. The friend found the women trembling from the cold in a house devoid of paper screens. (Rented houses in Hokkaido were not equipped with these or with tatami mats.) Takuboku's family had been forced to sell their own screens, so they were without the added protection against the Hokkaido winter.

  Leaving his family in extreme poverty, Takuboku headed for Kushiro, located in the northeast end of Hokkaido. He assumed his new twenty-yen-a-month job as editor-in-chief of the Kushiro Shinbun. He had been told he would be city editor, but on arrival he found himself in full command. Deeply impressed by the esteem with which the owner regarded him, Takuboku was determined to improve the paper. His talents as a journalist bore fruit, and the Kushiro Shinbun soon overwhelmed its rival.

  One of the features in the paper was a column about geisha and their amours, which Takuboku himself had originated. To gather material, he visited restaurants and met geisha. In a letter to a friend, Takuboku said it was at Kushiro that he first began drinking sake. Before long he came to spend several days at a time at a "restaurant,"5 from which he went to work when he became sober and to which he usually returned the same day. Some Japanese restaurants, especially those in rural areas, had overnight accommodations.

  Of course it was not merely enthusiasm for his work that led Takuboku into such activities. He knew that naturalism was about to witness its golden age in Tokyo and that many writers were immersed in this new literary movement. To continue as editor of a local paper at the farthest edge of Japan meant isolation from these strong literary currents. It was partly to beguile the irritation caused by such reflections that Takuboku began his life of indulgence, but his lonely existence separated from his wife and child was another partial factor. In a letter to a friend, Takuboku said he had "found solace in the sympathy of a geisha who took away his sake-bottle... and prevented [him from] getting dead drunk."

  The geisha referred to was Koyakko, Takuboku's Kushiro sweetheart, whose brief connection with him he was to remember all his remaining years. Because he was the editor of a local paper and a well-known Tokyo poet, many women made advances to him, the most aggressive a hospital nurse and another the daughter of the incumbent of a Buddhist temple, but he paid little attention to them. His real attachment was to Koyakko. There had been a woman he had truly admired, Chieko Tachibana, a teacher at a primary school in Hakodate, but his devotion to her remained entirely platonic. She appears in twenty-three poems in his two tanka collections. The following are the most impressive:

  Her black pupils

  Absorbing only the light of this world

  Remain in my eyes

  As boys born in mountains

  Yearn for mountains,

  I think of you when in sorrow.

  __

  Were I to confess

  I wished to see you before I died,

  Would you give me the slightest nod?

  When Takuboku left Hakodate for Sapporo, he brought Chieko a copy of his first book of long poems, Akogare (Yearning), which had been published on May 3, 1905. Years later, on hearing about Takuboku's illness in Tokyo, Chieko sent him some fresh butter, the gift the subject of one of the tanka in Sad Toys.

  The relationship with Koyakko, however, was an entirely different matter. Born in Hakodate on October 15, 1890, and given the name Jin, she was the daughter of a dry goods retailer and his wife, Yori. When the girl was nine years old, she was adopted by her mother's elder brother, Matsutarō Tsubo. Upon his death, the young child was informally adopted by the owner of a small restaurant in Obihiro, the Hakodateya, and it was in this establishment that she learned dancing, samisen playing, and other requisites for becoming a geisha. Quite attached to her mother, however, Jin came to Kushiro where her parent had remarried, her husband the owner of an inn. Jin rented a house and became a star geisha on her own, serving for the most part the guests of the Shamotora restaurant.6 Pretty, accomplished, and sweet-tempered, she had taken as her geisha name Koyakko, yakko a common suffix for the profession, ko meaning "little" or "child."

  She found Takuboku "a small man of undignified appearance with a disproportionately large head," but he was quiet, he smiled when he drank, and women liked him. He easily succumbed to the effects of sake, for when someone pressed him to drink, he did not know how to decline with tact. On such occasions Koyakko often saved him by downing the sake herself. As she was a rather spirited girl, she acted as if she were actually in love with Takuboku when she was teased about her kindness to him. Accordingly, a rumor that they were attached to one another provoked the couple into an even greater intimacy. She came to visit him at his lodgings, and they walked together along the sandy beach at Kushiro. They fell in love in earnest. But due to Takuboku's decision not to remain in Kushiro, their affair was short-lived. The indelible impression Koyakko left on his memory is testified to by the dozen or so tanka about her in A Handful of Sand, a few of which follow:

  Waiting till I was dead drunk,

  She whispered to me

  Those many sad things!

  __

  When I was drunk and drooped my head

  And when I was thirsty and awoke,

  It was her name I called.

  __

  On the way back along corridors

  Creaking under these feet in the cold—

  Her sudden kiss!

  __

  While pillowing this head on her lap,

  All I had in mind

  Was myself.

  Koyakko's tender feelings toward him continued. His diary of October 26, 1908, reveals his surprise on receiving a postcard picturing a geisha, Koyakko herself, and he wondered how she had discovered his Tokyo address. On December 1, she actually turned up at his boardinghouse. They went for a walk and stopped at an Asakusa drinking house, and becoming inebriated and feeling "glorious," he once more escorted her back to her inn, where they kissed on parting. She called again five days later, and again they took a
long walk. She leaned against him and sang in a low voice, and later that night they went out to drink with his middle-school friend Kindaichi, who was living in the same boardinghouse at the time. When Takuboku visited Koyakko at her inn the next day, she was waiting for him, and after she sought his counsel about her circumstances, he advised her to become the concubine of her present patron. Eventually, she married this man, and from the union came the birth of a daughter. On February 26, 1909, Takuboku noted in his diary that Koyakko had wired him twenty yen. This period, shortly before he was to take a job with the Tokyo Asahi as a newspaper proofreader, was one of financial turmoil for him.

  Koyakko was divorced in June 1923 and returned with her daughter to the Ōmiya inn kept by her mother. Changing her family name to Ōmi, Koyakko took over the management of the business. She moved to Toyama in 1962 and a little later to Tokyo, where at the age of seventy-six she died in 1965 in a home for elderly women.

  Though only a geisha, Koyakko had apparently gone beyond the usual accomplishments of such women as evidenced by the following tanka she wrote:

  You visit this inn connected with Takuboku,

  But the woman in the poems, worn to a shadow.

  __

  Over sixty, and again I live that day of nineteen,

  Reading these poems written by my love.

  __

  As I talk about Takuboku, long outliving him

  Sweet memories of him and of my youthful days return.

  Probably Takuboku felt more guilt than happiness in this affair with Koyakko and his contacts with other women, for he was continually worried about his wife, mother, and child; on the other hand, his position as a writer preyed equally on his mind. He keenly felt his isolation from the literary circles in Tokyo where naturalism was nearing its heyday. His desire to become a writer, therefore, overshadowed both family and debauchery, and leaving Koyakko, who had desperately tried to dissuade him, he departed for Hakodate on April 15, 1908. He stopped there to raise travel funds and to find a house for his family while he was away. His friend Daishirō Miyazaki, whom Takuboku had met at a society for tanka poets in Hakodate in the summer of 1907, helped him solve both problems, and the aspiring writer left for Tokyo on April 24.