Romaji Diary and Sad Toys

by Takuboku Ishikawa

  I wanted to ride a train! That was my thought. I wanted to ride somewhere, anywhere, with no destination in mind and to a place I have never been before.

  Fortunately, I had about three yen in my purse.

  God! To ride a train! As I walked about with this persistent thought, drops of rain began falling. It cleared up before anything started in earnest, but by that time I was touring an emporium at Hirokōji. And then, thinking how foolish I was, I went inside a Western-style restaurant and ordered something.

  Just as I got back home after buying a pack of manuscript paper, a notebook, and a bottle of ink, Kindaichi also returned. We went to the bath together.

  "The Wooden Horse"!

  Friday, April 16

  What a stupid thing to do! Last night, until about three in the morning, I copied in my notebook The Flowery Night of the Hazy Moon, that pornographic novel of the Tokugawa period I had borrowed from the lending library. Poor me! I couldn't restrain my desire for that violent pleasure!

  I got up this morning around ten-thirty, a strange fatigue clinging to my mind. Then I read Miyazaki's letter. Oh God!

  Either everyone in my family must die or I must! It's one or the other. I actually thought so. I wrote him my reply. The basis of my life was laid out: money to get away from this lodging house, money to set my family up in some house, and money for their travel expenses. If I had only that sum of money, all would be fine. That was what I wrote. And then I wanted to die. I enclosed in the letter to Miyazaki one yen for him to forward to my mother. Although I'd been thinking for a while that I would send it, I didn't until today—out of distaste for writing to my mother—no, out of fear.

  I took the day off to copy the remainder of Flowery Night, continuing my work of last night.

  It grew dark out. Kindaichi came in and presented a number of statements to arouse my interest in writing. For no reason at all, I started fooling around thoughtlessly, recklessly.

  "Nothing is more reassuring to man than thinking his future is indefinite!" And I came out with my "Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

  Laughing, Kindaichi collapsed in a heap on the floor. Tapping my fingers on my rib cage, I asked, "Do you know what—what tune I'm playing now?"

  I kept doing all the ridiculous things I could think of until Kindaichi returned to his room. Then I immediately picked up my pen. Thirty minutes passed. Again I couldn't subdue the serious conviction that I'd never be able to write my story, that my future was hopeless. I went into Kindaichi's room and again committed a great many absurdities. I drew a big face on my chest, I changed my own face into several different expressions, I whistled an imitation of the bush warbler and the cuckoo—and then, finally, I picked up a knife and pantomimed a murder in a play. Kindaichi fled the room. Certainly I must have been thinking of that terrible thing at just that moment!

  I turned off the light in the room. I stood inside the shutter-box,14 the knife raised overhead.

  Later, when we saw each other in my room, both of us were disgusted with what had just passed. I felt I had no fear of suicide.

  And so what did I do the rest of the night? Flowery Night!

  About two a.m. A fire in the farthest part of Koishikawa. A single pillar of light red smoke heading straight up into a black sky.

  A fire! God!

  Saturday, April 17

  Around ten I was awakened by Namiki. I had pawned the watch I had borrowed from him, and so I hadn't yet returned it. When his voice summoned me from a deep sleep, I felt inexpressibly moody. A person who has committed a crime might have the same feeling if the place he is hiding in, a place where he had felt perfectly safe, is suddenly raided by the police.

  Needless to say, to have any kind of interesting conversation with him was impossible. Of course he didn't press me for the watch, but I felt the immense gap between our two personalities. We talked about Gorki and other topics, and then he left around twelve.

  Thinking I would definitely work on my story today, I stayed away from the office—no, it was because I wanted to have a holiday that I decided to scribble. At any rate, I did try to write something entitled "Red Ink," which I had thought through the night before. It was to be an account of my suicide. I set down about three pages in my notebook, and then I couldn't write a single word more.

  Why couldn't I? Because it was absolutely impossible for me to objectify myself. Yes, absolutely impossible. Anyway, I couldn't write, I couldn't get my idea in shape. I did try to write an essay entitled "Mokichi-ism," which I had thought I'd do when I was writing "On Coming Up to Tokyo," but...

  I met Kindaichi in the bath. He said his trip to Sakhalin would probably materialize, since he had just received a phone call from Dr. Jinbo. Kindaichi looked surprised, and I couldn't help feeling that way myself. He told me it would probably be during the spring if he went. Apparently he was going as a part-time employee of the Sakhalin Agency to do research on the languages of the Gilyak and Orochi.

  After finishing my bath, I felt sad as I sat at my desk. Kindaichi's hesitation about going to Sakhalin was due to the fact that he had been able to earn his living in Tokyo. It was because he was still single and still had many hopes. "If only I could be Kindaichi," I thought. If only!

  Before long he came in with the second volume of Doppo's Collected Works. He said he felt like crying. He said he'd been thinking only about me all day. I saw his eyes looking compassionately at me.

  I asked him to read me a few of Doppo's stories, including "Fatigue." Afterwards he told me many things about Sakhalin. About the Ainu, about eagles flapping their wings in the morning sky, about ships, about the great forests where no human had ever set foot....

  "How much will the travel expenses be?" I asked.

  "About twenty yen."

  "Hmm," I thought to myself. "When you get there," I said, "will you find me a job? Anything will do. Policeman would be fine!"

  My friend looked at me, a pitiful expression in his eyes.

  When I was alone, I again found myself continuing my unpleasant train of thought. The money was already half gone. Already I had received an advance from my company. And I couldn't write!

  It occurred to me to polish up my poems for Subaru, but as soon as I spread out my paper, I lost interest. I wanted to write a story about a man arrested by the police for sleeping in a vacant house, but I didn't even feel like lifting my pen.

  I wanted to cry! I really wanted to cry!

  "I will absolutely give up literature!" I said to myself.

  "What will you do after giving it up? What will you do?"

  "Die!" There was no other answer.

  "What am I to do?" I thought.

  Was there anything I could do? Was it preferable to go work on some local newspaper?

  But even if I did, it seemed it would not be easy to earn enough money to send for my family. If so, wasn't the primary question that of my family?

  There was, at any rate, really only one problem: how to free myself from this oppressive responsibility of earning a living. That was it.

  To have money or else absolve myself from responsibility. One or the other.

  Perhaps I'll have to carry this problem on my back until I die! In any event, I'll think about it after getting into bed. (One a.m.)

  Sunday, April 18

  I woke early, but didn't feel like getting up. Since the shutters were closed, my room was in semi-darkness. I was fidgeting in bed until eleven, the mere question of whether or not to go to the office too much to deal with. Should I go? I really didn't want to. Or should I not go? No, no, that would be wrong. While the matter remained unsettled, I heard the maid cleaning the room next to mine, so I had to get up. While I was washing, that bitch Otsune passed me in the hall after she had put away my bedding. "I'll clean your room for you after lunch. You don't mind, do you?"

  "No," I replied, pretending an indifferent tone.

  But inwardly I said, "'For you?' Bitch!"

  A card came from Setsuko. Again Kyōko hadn't felt well, s
o my wife had taken her to the doctor and found once again it was her stomach and intestines. To make matters worse, the doctor called it chronic. Setsuko felt uneasy because I wasn't there. She writes that she wants a letter from me.

  I decided to go to the office after all. One reason was that I had changed my mind after reading Setsuko's letter, but besides that, I didn't want the maids to think, "He's loafing again today!"

  "Well, if you don't feel like it, you can go somewhere else on the way and enjoy yourself!" With this thought in mind, I left, but once on the streetcar, I had my ticket punched for Sukiyabashi and ended up going to the office.

  In the streetcar I discovered a cute girl about three years old. As soon as I saw her, I thought of Kyōko. Setsuko would leave home in the morning and return at evening. And for the entire day only my mother and Kyōko in that wretched hole of a house! Grandmother and grandchild. When I thought about the entire day they would spend together, my eyes grew dim with tears in spite of myself. Nothing is more pleasurable to a child than food. When Kyōko would get tired of their monotonous and gloomy routine, she would most probably badger her grandmother for something to eat. But there would be nothing to give her. "Grandma, grandma!" she would cry. My mother would try to distract her, but Kyōko would not listen. "There, there," my mother would say. And lo, she'd come up with a piece of pickled radish!

  In my mind's eye I saw the indigestible food entering my darling Kyōko's mouth and harming her delicate stomach and intestines.

  As I had been absent for five days, my excuse a trumped-up illness, I felt somewhat ashamed on entering the office. Of course there wasn't the least bit of trouble. Somehow, once inside, I felt secure, since I didn't have to think about useless things. At the same time I envied those who had no ties, those who had to take care only of themselves with the money they earned.

  In my spare moments away from proofreading, interest in the operations of the newspaper stimulated me. I felt Otaru was the city with the most promising future in the newspaper industry. I imagined how pleasant it would be if I put all my energy to work by starting a newspaper there.

  My wild imaginings were endless! Tidal waves in Hakodate15 ... trips to Sakhalin with Kindaichi... meetings with political offenders in North Sakhalin, which is Russian territory.

  On my way home I saw a deaf-mute on the streetcar. She wrote the word Koishikawa in her notebook and, showing it to the conductor, received a transfer.

  My younger sister. A long letter had come from Mitsuko, who after leaving her parents, sister, and brother, had gone to Asahikawa this month with an English lady called Evans.

  ... I have recently become somewhat accustomed to this city, so it's a lot easier to bear. Still, when I am basking in the soft spring sunshine coming in through the windowpanes, I don't think of anything except my memories of Shibutami, our hometown.

  I remember the time when, at your bidding, I went walking along the mountain paths looking for violets. Perhaps you sometimes remember life in those days....On my desk is a lovely adonis. While I was looking at it today, I couldn't help remembering our hometown. We often walked around the graveyard searching for violets and adonises, remember?... And I recalled so many things. I relived again the resentment I had felt when you had scolded me long ago—please forgive me. There will never be another occasion which will cause you to scold me, even if I want you to!

  Why at those times did I not receive your scolding meekly? At this stage of my life I regret that more than anything else. How I wish to be scolded by my elder brother! But that is no longer possible. Truly, my attitude was wrong....Are you now corresponding with anyone in Shibutami? I myself want to write to Kiyoko Akihama, but I haven't sent her a single letter since I came to Hokkaido.

  By the way, we are going to visit Otaru and Yoichi again around the middle of May to attend meetings of women's societies and moral training groups....

  My eyes blurred. If I were to tell my sister my feelings as they actually were at this moment, how glad she would be! The only letters I now read to my heart's content are hers! Those of my mother and the letters of Setsuko—they're too sad for me, too hard to bear. Sometimes, if it were possible, I even want to avoid reading them. And what's more, I have now lost those friends with whom I exchanged letters that appealed so much to the heart of each of us. It's true that I read the letters from women who sometimes write me—a few young women—but theirs aren't sincere.

  My sister! My only younger sister! I am thoroughly responsible for her. And yet I haven't discharged that responsibility in the least. At the beginning of May the year before last, I was dismissed from my school in Shibutami for organizing a student strike, and it was decided that my younger sister would live with our elder sister in Otaru. We went together as far as Hakodate, my intention being to go to Hokkaido to find a job. The Sea of Tsugaru was rough during the crossing. My younger sister, seasick and pale aboard ship, was tended by me. I made her take some pills. Ah! that was perhaps the one time I acted like a brother toward my one and only younger sister.

  She's already twenty-two. If things had gone normally, she would obviously have gotten married, and she'd be holding a cute child. But things didn't turn out that way. I don't know how many times up to now she's made plans to support herself. Unfortunately, all those plans have ended in failure. My unlucky sister, who resembles me too much, was not made, after all, to conform to the actual world! Finally she sought God. No, perhaps she was searching for a job through God. She's now working for "God," supported by some cold foreign woman. Next year she's going to enter a mission school in Nagoya after taking their examination, and in a year she'll "dedicate her life to God" and become a missionary.

  Is my sister, who is so like me, really suited to becoming a teacher of religion?

  Possibly because our personalities are so similar, my sister and I have been on bad terms ever since we were little. It would probably be hard to find anywhere a brother and sister who were on such bad terms with each other. Sometimes she spoke to me like a younger sister, but I myself have never spoken to her like an elder brother, even from the time she was safely inside her straw crib!16

  In spite of all that, my sister doesn't feel any resentment against me. And what's more, she says she wants to be scolded by me as in the old days, and she deplores the fact that it's no longer possible to be. I wanted to cry.

  Shibutami! Shibutami! which I can't forget even as I try to forget it. Shibutami! Shibutami!

  Shibutami, which raised me and then persecuted me!... I felt like crying and I tried to cry. But the tears wouldn't come. My father and mother, who spent the most important part of their lives there, eighteen years—on those two sad, elderly people Shibutami left memories too bitter and painful. My older sister, who's dead now, lived there for only three years, maybe five. My second elder sister at Iwamizawa has forgotten Shibutami along with her once-gentle heart. She feels that it's shameful to remember the village. And Setsuko was born in Morioka. Is there anyone anywhere who like myself has been unable to forget Shibutami? The only person in this wide world who hasn't is Mitsuko!

  Tonight, I can't suppress my love for my younger sister, my poor younger sister. I want to see her! On seeing her, I want to say something an elder brother would say. I want to talk with her about Shibutami to my heart's content. I want both of us to return to those days long passed when we knew nothing of the bitterness, the sorrow, and the pain of the world. Nothing else is necessary! Sister! Sister! Will the day ever come when our family, all together, will talk happily about the old days in Shibutami?

  It had begun raining without my realizing it. The raindrops sounded lonely. If only I could gather together my father, whom I haven't written to in a year, and my mother and Mitsuko and my wife and child and all of us have dinner together, no matter how simple the meal would be.

  It seems Kindaichi's trip to Sakhalin will be only for the summer vacation. Today he went to Ōmiya with members of the Linguistic Society.

  Monday, Apr
il 29

  How this boardinghouse has perfected its ill treatment of its guests really takes the cake! I woke this morning around nine. When I came back from washing up, there wasn't even a fire in the brazier. I even had to put my bedding away. As I was lighting a cigarette with a match, the landlord's child came along the corridor. I ordered the youngster to bring me some burning coals and hot water. Twenty minutes later a maid brought in my meal. There wasn't a scoop for the rice. I pressed down on the bell. No one came. Again I rang. No one. After a considerably long time Otsune brought in the rice scoop and, almost hurling it at me, went out without a word. The miso soup was already cold.

  Beneath my window the flowers on the elder tree were in bloom. Long, long ago when I was living in the temple at Shibutami, I remember cutting off the branches of this tree and making pipes from the twigs.

  Whenever one of the maids behaves rudely to me, I think, "The slut! What if I paid all the money I owe and then threw them a tip? What flattering looks they'd assume then!" But will that time ever come?

  I began writing a story entitled "Toyokichi, School Servant," which I later changed to "Mr. Sakaushi's Letter," but before I had jotted down five lines, it was noon and I left for work.

  Nothing new there. It was amusing to see Old Mishina, the elderly novelist, trying various ways to get to know me. Kobayashi, the office boy, asked me, "What were the months that the stories you wrote appeared in Subaru?"17

  After returning home, I began writing "Mr. Sakaushi's Letter" in Roman script, but by around ten my brain got fatigued and I stopped.

  Tuesday, April 20

  In the corridor Otsune was talking to someone. I had not heard the voice of the other party before. It was a thin voice, a naive voice. It sounded like another new maid had come. All this happened at about seven o'clock. That was the first thing I was conscious of today.