Romaji Diary and Sad Toys

by Takuboku Ishikawa

  With springlike sunshine warmly illuminating the ground-glass windows, it was the kind of day that might have made everyone sweat if it hadn't been for the wind. The old keeper of the lending library, rubbing his nose with the palm of his hand, came in on his regular rounds. "It's real windy," he said. "But before the day's over, every last cherry tree in Tokyo will be blooming. That's how nice it is out, you see, even with the wind."

  "Spring has come at last," I said.

  The old man was of course totally unaware of the deep feeling behind my words. "Yes, yes!" he replied. "But spring, you see, is like poison to us. It's bad for business. Loafing's better than reading. Besides, it's natural for readers of books to keep them out a long time."

  I had a five-yen note in my purse,1 all that remained of the advance I had received at the office yesterday. I couldn't get that sum out of my mind all morning. It's probably the same kind of nagging anxiety that a man who usually has money feels when all of a sudden he's broke. In either case it's stupid. And though there's no difference in the degree of stupidity, there's a world of difference in the happiness of each.

  Having nothing else to do, I made a chart of rōmaji spellings. From that chart images of my mother and wife living beyond the Sea of Tsugaru came floating toward me. "Spring has come. It's April. Spring! Spring! The flowers are blooming. Already it's a year since I came to Tokyo. And still I'm not ready to send for my family and support them!" This is the problem that continues to flit in and out of my mind nowadays.

  Why then have I decided to write this diary in Roman letters? What's the reason? I love my wife, and for the very reason I love her, I don't want her to read it. But I don't really mean that! That I love her is the truth, and that I don't want her to read it is equally true, but these two statements aren't necessarily connected.

  Am I a weakling then? Not by any means. That is to say, this contradiction arises from the existence of that erroneous institution called Conjugal Relations. Matrimony! What a ridiculous institution! So what am I to do?

  How sad!

  A postcard from Chieko Tachibana in Sapporo telling me she was cured and checked out of the hospital last month on the twenty-sixth.

  Today is the final and decisive match for the tennis team from Kyoto University. They've been staying in the rooms next to mine. All the players left in high spirits.

  After lunch I took the streetcar to the office as usual. I read proof in a corner of our wide editorial room with the old-timers, and at about five-thirty, after finishing the proofreading for the first edition, I started back. That's the daily routine I go through to earn a living.

  Today the old geezers were discussing double love-suicides. What a bitter irony! After they talked about how they suffer when their legs get cold, old Kimura, his face all lewd and vulgar, said, "lshikawa, you're thinking, 'What rubbish these old men are gabbing about,' aren't you?" I laughed my "Ha, ha ha." That was a fine irony too.

  On the way home I walked along the main thoroughfare of Hongō to do some shopping. In one day half the cherry trees on the university campus2 had bloomed. It's really spring everywhere.

  For some reason or other the sound of footsteps back and forth along the crowded street exhilarated me. So many beautiful women in beautiful kimonos were out walking that I wondered where they had suddenly sprung from. It's spring! That was my thought. And then I was reminded of my wife and my dear Kyōko. I had said I would definitely send for them by April. And I haven't. No, I haven't been able to.

  God, literature is my enemy, and my philosophy is nothing but the logic with which I mock myself! It seems I want many things. Actually, however, isn't there only one thing I really want? Money!

  The tennis players in the rooms next to mine were defeated after all by the Tokyo University team.

  Around eight o'clock I went with Kindaichi to see a movie at a recently built theater out on the main street. All the men who did the commentary were poor.3 One of them, who reminded me of my middle school friend Shimodomai, amused the audience with a few off-color jokes. As I watched the man perform, I kept remembering Sakichi Miyanaga, whose desk was next to mine when I was in my first year at middle school and who since then seems to have been making his way through those depths of society we know nothing about. Once I heard a rumor he had become a movie-theater commentator.

  When we returned after ten, the room next door was in an uproar. One of the players had returned drunk from a party given for the team and had gone on a rampage, smashing electric bulbs in the rooms and breaking the lattice-work frames of the sliding paper doors.

  Outside my room I met Sakaushi, a member of the team and an old friend. He had been a classmate at upper primary school and was now a student in the Department of Science and Technology at Kyoto University. I hadn't seen him in eight years. The three of us—Kindaichi was the other—went into my room and, often laughing uproariously, engaged in childish banter until one or so in the morning. Eventually the noise next door subsided. A night of spring—the night of a day of warm weather in which all the cherry blossoms had fully bloomed in a single day—that night wore on.

  Alone and awake in the metropolis where the entire race of men was fast asleep, I realized, as I kept track of the breathing of others during that quiet spring night, how meaningless and trivial my life was in this narrow three-and-a-half-mat room.

  What will I look like when, sleeping all alone in this narrow room, I am overcome by some indescribable exhaustion? The final discovery of man is that he is far from great.

  Such a long time in this narrow room, nursing a weary anxiety and a foolish desire to seek out, by force if necessary, something to interest me—more than two hundred days have come and gone. When will I be able to... No!

  Lying in bed, I read Turgenev's short stories.

  Thursday, April 8

  I got up and washed, and even two hours later, they had not brought in my breakfast tray. So busy serving the students in the next room, the maids had probably forgotten me. The very fact that they have forgotten is an insult. Still, under my present circumstances it's right for them to forget me and insult me. With this thought in mind I laugh everything away.

  I reflected: In situations of this kind I had remained silent up to now, merely smiling. I had never once become angry. And yet was that because I am by nature tolerant? Probably not. It was because of my mask. Or else it came from some even more cruel intention. This was my thought, and then I clapped my hands to call the maid.

  The sky was calm and clear. As usual during the cherry blossom season, the streets seemed lively. Sometimes a gust of wind swept up particles of dust and fluttered the gay kimonos worn by flower-viewing passers-by.

  On the streetcar on my way back from the office, I met Hinosawa, who holds a degree in engineering. A genuine fop. The minute I sat down beside him in my old padded kimono with its frayed sleeves was exactly the right moment to say something sarcastic to him in his brand-new Western suit.

  "Well, did you go flower-viewing?" I asked.

  "No, I've got no time to look at flowers."

  "You don't? That's nice."

  What I said was quite commonplace. Something anyone would say. But I had intended it as a fine irony—to say something commonplace to this commonplace man. Of course there was little likelihood Hinosawa would understand, and he remained quite unflustered. That was what amused me.

  Sitting opposite us were two old ladies. "I don't like the old women of Tokyo," I said.

  "Why's that?"

  "They're distasteful. Somehow I feel lousy looking at them. There's something un-old-ladylike about them, not like the old women who live in the country."

  Just then one of the women began glaring at me from behind her dark glasses. Even the people around me were paying attention. I experienced a vague delight.

  "Do you really think so?" said Hinosawa, his voice as low as possible.

  "Speaking of women, there's nothing like the young women of Tokyo. All old women are horrible!
"

  "Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

  "I like movies. Do you?"

  "I've never taken the trouble to see any."

  "They're interesting. You ought to go have a look sometime. Suddenly it's light and suddenly it's dark, you know? It's rather funny."

  When he asked if it wasn't bad for your eyes, I could clearly see the dark color of confusion on his face. I couldn't help feeling slightly triumphant. This time it was my turn to "Ha, ha, ha!"

  Thinking I would mend my torn kimono, I went out around eight to buy some needles and thread. Hongō had that energetic pace befitting a spring night. In addition to the usual night stalls, I discovered many stands selling plants.

  Everyone was walking along shoulder to shoulder in apparent enjoyment. Without buying the needles and thread and even as I heard an inner voice crying "Stop! Stop!" I finally took out my purse and bought this notebook I am writing in, a pair of tabi, some undershorts, a roll of letter paper, and two pots of pansies at five sen each. Why must I hear that inner voice crying "Stop!" even when I purchase necessities? That voice says, "You'll be left without a penny!" and, "They're having a hard time in Hakodate!"

  I brought one of the pansy flowerpots into Kindaichi's room. "When I went in to see you yesterday," my friend said, "I kept wanting to tell you something, but I just wasn't able to." That was how his interesting chat began.

  "What's it about? I haven't got the foggiest notion what you mean."

  My friend finally started after hesitating a number of times. What he told me follows:

  It was on the first night of this month that the ten or so students from Kyoto University had come to our boardinghouse and occupied Rooms 7 and 8, that is, the rooms between mine and Kindaichi's. All the maids had been quite excited, intent on serving only them. Especially Okiyo. Since Okiyo, the prettiest of the five of them, was in charge of the third floor, she spent all her time, morning to night—sometimes till midnight even—with the spirited young students. Every one of them made a fuss over her, continually calling out, "Okiyo-san, Okiyo-san!" Some of them even used indecent language to her, and Kindaichi figured that a few of the students had tried tickling her. I had grown used to the ill treatment suggested by the sporadic, curt behavior of the maids and had thus more or less assumed an attitude of indifference toward whatever they did, so I hadn't felt that these goings-on were particularly unpleasant. But each time Kindaichi heard sounds in the rooms next to his, he was tortured, he said, by unutterable feelings of jealousy.

  Jealousy. What a subtle word. Unable to suppress these feelings, my friend had come to think himself a despicable person steeped in jealousy, the holidays from the first to the fourth of the month spent, he said, in absolute anguish. When he had gone to work at Sanshōdō on the fifth, he heaved a sigh of relief and felt, to use a favorite saying of that pathetic poetaster in the editorial section there, "Much more at ease here than at home." From that time on Kindaichi had regained some of his usual equanimity.

  Okiyo had come to work at our boardinghouse at the end of February. She's fattish in a sensual way, has a healthy complexion, and reveals something impudent and unyielding in her slightly squarish, thick-eyebrowed face. They say she's twenty years old. At any rate, it seems that when she first arrived, she made a real effort to approach Kindaichi. But Otsune—another interesting one—was intent oh dissuading her, so it seems Okiyo abruptly changed her mind about my friend. I was able to infer this much from Kindaichi's words. Afterwards, apparently, he was continually watching her with the feeling a man has when the small bird that has flown into his house suddenly escapes. It seemed to me that Kindaichi, inexperienced as he is in dealing with women, had not realized that Okiyo's innately lascivious yet somewhat domineering attitude had gained control of his rational faculties. On the last day of last month, Kindaichi—having never once offered the maids a tip—gave something only to Okiyo. Apparently, she told the other servants about it after she went downstairs. The next day Otsune's attitude, Kindaichi said, had undergone a complete transformation. A really ridiculous and pitiful tale. Nevertheless, the very fact that it is ridiculous and pitiful makes it interesting. It was at this point that the university students had arrived.

  The two of us agreed that Okiyo is a strong woman. Of the five maids, she works the hardest. On the other hand, they say that at the stroke of ten, she makes it a rule to go to bed no matter how much the other servants still have to do. No man can equal her in her work habits. And so before any of the maids had realized it, she was dominating them. She seems like an unyielding woman who seldom cries. Her character is that of the powerful.

  As for Kindaichi, though, there's no denying he's a very jealous person, and what's more, a very weak one. And there's no denying there are two sides to a man's character. Though gentle, good-natured, kind, and considerate, he is, on the other hand, a quite jealous, weak, and effeminate man with petty vanities. Well, that's beside the point. The students all left today except for two. Tonight, they were sleeping separately in Rooms 7 and 8.

  I had stayed up late. It was about one-twenty. I was busily engaged in writing when suddenly I heard footsteps stealing outside my room, someone breathing short and hard. Well! Breathlessly I cocked an ear.

  The breathing outside my door sounded, on this very quiet night, as violent as a storm. For a while there was no indication that the person would move on. Whoever it was seemed to be spying out the conditions in the various rooms.

  From the first, however, I didn't think it was a thief. Not by any means!

  Suddenly the shadow of a woman, her hair done up in a huge shimada hairdo, was clearly shadowed against the sliding paper door at the entrance to my room.4 It was Okiyo. Strong as she was, I could tell by the violence of her breathing after she had stolen up the stairs how violently her heart was beating. The corridor lamp had caused her silhouette to fall against my door. The door of the room next to mine moved quietly on its hinges. The woman entered. A faint voice mumbled, "Mm-mm." It seemed to me she had awakened the dozing man. Before long, she slightly opened the door she had closed and was apparently spying on my room. And then with the door left as it was, she once more entered the room.

  Again I heard that "Mm-mm." And then faint voices. She went to the entrance of the room and slid the door shut. I thought I heard her take two or three steps; then nothing more caught my ear.

  A clock striking one-thirty in a distant room. A rooster's faint cry.

  I felt as if I were suffocating. The two in the next room must have thought I had fallen asleep. If I had offered the slightest sign that I was awake, how embarrassed they would have been. I was in a real fix. So trying as hard as possible not to make a sound, I first took off my haori and socks and rose slowly to my feet, but I found it quite difficult to get into bed. It was about ten minutes before I finally managed somehow to crawl in. Even then I still felt somewhat suffocated. I was really having a difficult time!

  In the next room quick, warm, irregular breathing was faintly audible, like the breathing of a lion from far off. They were in the midst of rapturous pleasures.

  Hearing those sounds—those strange sounds—I didn't feel the least bit moved. From the very first I had felt as if I had discovered some good material for a story.

  "That man's really something!" I thought. He had probably remained behind just to make a conquest of Okiyo. Even so, that woman—how bold she was! Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, should I tell Kindaichi about it? But that would be cruel. No, it would be more amusing to tell him. The clock struck two.

  Before long I fell asleep.

  Friday, April 9

  Almost all the cherry blossoms are in bloom. It was a perfect springlike day, warm and quiet, the distant sky hazy in this season of flowers.

  As I was glancing at Chieko-san's postcard, which hadn't moved me in the least when it had arrived the day before yesterday, I felt an uncontrollable yearning for her. And I thought, "If only I could meet her just once before she becomes someone's wife!"
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  Chieko-san. What a fine name! And her walk, so graceful and light and yet young and girlish! Her clear voice! The two of us had talked together only twice. Once at the house of Ōtake, the principal, when I went to bring him my resignation. And once in her room at Yachigashira with its reddish-brown curtains hanging in the window. That's right, it was when I brought her a copy of Akogare. Both meetings were in Hakodate.

  God! It's been twenty months since we parted!

  I told Kindaichi about last night's incident. The storm it generated in my friend's mind will not pass away in a mere day or two, of course. It was evident that he didn't find the situation as amusing as I had. I soon learned that the man's name was Wakazono. He left around nine tonight. I was in my room with Kindaichi, and we heard the man's parting words to Okiyo. From their conversation I gathered that his rivalry with someone called Watanabe had made him remain behind to make a conquest of her. Immediately after Wakazono left, Okiyo, humming a tune, went about her work.

  At the office, today's first edition was finished rapidly, so I came back early, at about five. I forcibly suppressed an unbearable desire to go out.

  In the streetcar on the way home, I saw a child who very much resembled my Kyōko, whom I haven't seen since my departure last spring. The child was blowing a whistle with a rubber balloon attached to the end, and each time she blew it, she looked at me and hid her face, smiling as though she was embarrassed. I found her so cute and lovable that I could have hugged her. The nose, cheeks, and eyes of the child's mother so closely resembled my own mother's—in fact the woman's entire face did—that I felt my old mother must have looked just like that when she was young. The face, though, wasn't elegant.

  It's a spring night sweet as milk! A precious letter came from Jinko Tsubo—Koyakko of Kushiro.

  Frogs are croaking in the distance. The first frogs! The sounds of frogs remind me of the garden of Ozaki-sensei's house in Shinagawa, which I visited five years ago, and then of Hideko Hotta, who now lives on the coast at Kunohe.