While I was dozing, someone entered my room. "Must be the new servant," I thought to myself dreamily. I breathed softly a few times and opened my eyes slightly.
As I had thought, a round-faced girl perhaps seventeen years of age was carrying in some coal for the brazier. "She looks like Osada-san," I thought, immediately closing my eyes. Osada-san was the daughter of the man in charge of the Shibutami post office. At that time, 1903, she was, if I remember correctly, fourteen, so now she must be—that's right—already twenty. Into whose family had she married?
While pondering this question, I remembered Shichirō Kanaya. And I drifted off to sleep.
Soon I woke again, though not so fully as to open my eyes. Rudely parting the sliding doors to my room, Otsune came in. She was taking the coals out of my brazier. When I opened my eyes, she said, "I'll bring some in later."
"You really do abuse me, don't you, you slut!" Intending to speak only to myself, I had blurted out these words. Otsune, coloring, said something. Mumbling to myself, I rolled over on my side.
During the forenoon my head was clear enough to allow me to write two pages of "Mr. Sakaushi's Letter." Then I went to work.
The city editor's staff was buzzing with activity because a train had overturned just this side of Kawasaki last night.
I left for home at the usual hour. Before long a telephone call came from Hiraide. It was to urge me to get my manuscript in for the tanka number. I gave him a random reply, but when I thought to myself, "Tanka! What rot!" I felt ridiculous remaining in my room, and I went out alone. I stayed at a movie theater on 5-chōme until nine. After that, inside a streetcar aimlessly for an hour.
In the morning I had brought my scarf to a pawnshop and got sixty sen for it. Then I had gone to a barbershop and had my hair cut short. I bought a towel and a bar of soap at some shop, and as I was about to enter the public bath just opposite, the affable wife of the bathhouse keeper told me, "Today's inspection day, so we won't be ready until eleven."
Wednesday, April 21
In bed last night I read a little of Tengai's Star of a Millionaire. His attitude in saying that he studied the world of business for a year with the thought of writing a book about it is in itself quite wrong. A second-rate novel. But as a writer he does have a formidable talent for arranging his episodes like an architect. An author with a poor imagination would be no match for him.
While I was reading the book, Kindaichi came in and asked if I had any hot water. He told me Bin Ueda was going to publish a magazine article entitled "The Novel is Not Literature."
"There! I told you," I said. "At last he's been forced to make that distinction. He couldn't abandon his classical view—or his taste—that poetry is the purest form of literature, yet he couldn't help recognizing the power of the new literature. And so he was probably obliged to make such a dualistic distinction!"
From today on Okiyo will again be in charge of our third floor. I got up early.
It's the season when the green foliage of the cherry trees is so beautiful. When I open a window, the colors of the haze-like young leaves stimulate my vision.
Yesterday on the streetcar I saw at least two men wearing straw hats. It's summer.
At nine o'clock I went to the public bath on Daimachi. This was the bathhouse I often used when I was living at the Sekishinkan after coming up to Tokyo. It hasn't changed at all: its large full-length mirror and its pleasant spray-shower are still there. The only thing that has changed is that the girl, perhaps seventeen, whom I saw last year and who looked like she was fond of men, wasn't on the attendant's stand.18 Flickering on the plate-glass window was the shadow of green leaves cast by the fresh morning sunlight. I felt as I had the year before. The bathhouse attendant was the same fellow as then. I realized that the hot Tokyo summer was just about on us. That one summer at the Sekishinkan! It was a period when in spite of extreme poverty, I was enjoying my "semi-bachelorhood," happy to be freed from the responsibility of supporting my family. No, trying not to remember that responsibility. It wasn't long before I had cast off the woman I was intimate with at that time.19 Now she's a geisha at Asakusa. Many things have changed in this one-year period. I gained several new friends, and then I broke with them.
While diligently washing my body, which seemed healthier than it had been at this time last year, I was steeped in these recollections. Oh, the violent struggle of this one-year period! And, the dreadful summer is coming again on me—the peniless novelist! The dreadful summer! alas! with great pains and deep sorrows of phigical [physical] struggle, and, on other hand, with the bothomless rapture of young Nihilist!
As I came out of the gate of the bathhouse, the expressful faced woman who soiled me the soap yesterday said to me "Good morning" with something calm and favourable gesture.
The bath and the memories bring me some hot and young lightness. I am young, and, at last, the life is not so dark and so painful. The sun shines, and the moon is calm. If I do not send the money, or call up they [them] to Tokyo, they—my mother and wife will take other manner to eat. I am young, and young, and young: and I have the pen, the brain, the eyes, the heart and the mind. That is all. All of all. If the inn-master take me out of this room, I will go everywhere—where are many inns and hotels in this capital. To-day, I have only one piece of 5 rin-dōkwa: but what then? Nonsence! There are many, many writers in Tokyo. What is that to me? There is nothing. They are writing with their finger-bones and the brud [blood]: but I must write with the ink and the G pen! That is all. Ah, the burning summer and the green-coloured struggle!20
From today on, due to the revision of the train timetables, the deadline for the first edition is earlier, so we have to remain until the second edition is ready. Report for work at twelve, leave at six.
In the evening Nakamura stopped in at Kindaichi's room. I went in to talk with them. Heard this man will join the Asahi newspaper staff after he graduates.
By phone, pressed for my manuscript by Hiraide.
Thursday, April 22
Because I retired early last night, I got up at six this morning. Then I wrote some tanka. The day, which had been so fine, clouded up in the afternoon.
In the evening I chatted with Kindaichi, made some tanka, went into Kindaichi's room again at ten, and had a hearty laugh reading him the tanka I had composed. We had a good time and made quite a row, and then I returned to my room and went to bed.
Friday, April 23
When I woke around six-thirty and went to wash up, the beautiful woman in Room 19, who Kindaichi said had bowed to him in the lavatory, was just coming out after washing. Hang it! "Too late, Yuranosuke!"21 I was washing my face, using the metal basin she had used, and thinking, "What a foolish thing you're doing!"
I wrote some tanka. It wasn't pleasant to realize that writing tanka was the only thing I had a good command of.
It began raining around eleven. What with the absence of the two old men, Kimura and Maekawa, I was too busy at the office even to smoke until the first edition proofreading was approved.
From about the time I was on my way home, it had become quite cold out. Moreover, I was so hungry that my kneecaps were shaking while I was on the streetcar. There I happened to meet Naganuma, an acquaintance from my middle school days. Wearing a bowler hat above his pale fat face and dressed in the fashionable style of a company employee or a civil servant, he looked arrogant. It seemed he was already a father. I gave him my card, writing my address on it, though I knew the bastard would never visit me.
Lately I've often been meeting former acquaintances on the streetcar. Just yesterday when I was about to get off at Sukiyabashi, a young man wearing a stiff obi and seated near the exit said to me, "Excuse me, but didn't you live at Morioka, Mr. Ishi—... Ishi—?"
"That's right, I'm Ishikawa."
"My name's Shibanai."
Kaoru Shibanai, that cute kid! On asking him where he was living, he said he was staying in Akasaka at the home of the former principal of Morioka Middle School,
Tada. I had to get off the streetcar without having had sufficient time to tell him my own address.
Kindaichi seemed hard at work on a draft of tomorrow's lecture. As soon as I got home and finished dinner, I set to work making tanka. All told, with those I had been writing recently, I had by about twelve o'clock set down seventy poems to which I had given the title "Seventy Poems: Don't Ask Me Again,"22 and then I went to bed satisfied.
The feeling after working all day without interruption, whatever the work may be, is incomparably pleasant. No doubt the really deep meaning of life lies there!
Saturday, April 24
Though it was a fine day, the thermometer only rose to about 63 in a wind from the north.
During the morning I selected forty poems out of the 698 tanka on "Fall" contributed by Subaru's readers. On the way to the office I dropped these off at Hiraide's along with last night's "Seventy Poems: Don't Ask Me Again."
Among today's news items was a report of the crossing of the Pacific by a training squadron.23 The article said that on the morning of the Springtime Worship Festival of Imperial Ancestors, all hands gathered on deck, faced West, and paid homage to our Imperial Ancestors. Old Mishina, the novelist who can hardly hear, said, "West isn't in the direction of Japan," and he refused to listen to any other argument. And Old Man Maekawa was quarreling with Round-Eyes Katō about Maekawa's absence without leave the day before. Maekawa resembles my father.
I returned a little later than usual. On top of the writing pad on my desk was something that looked like a letter. With heart throbbing as I flipped the switch on the lamp, I found it was from Chieko Tachibana in Sapporo! I had yet to send a reply to her postcard informing me of her release from the hospital.
She wrote, "Though I saw you only briefly in Hakodate, I am happy... from your letter that you have not forgotten me." And she wrote, "I have become well enough to go out for walks lately." And also, "I remember the old days." And then, "If you have time, at least a postcard...."
Kindaichi came in. He was beaming, probably because today's lecture had gone well. We talked about many things, but something in his eyes kept telling me, "Keep writing your stories." He said, "Write a sequel to 'The Footsteps.'" While he talked to me about the enthusiasm I had shown a month ago, he seemed to be blaming me for my loss of real interest in everything of late.
"I'd love to come up to your expectations at once, Kindaichi, but all my rivals have vanished! Somehow, it's not worth the battle."
"Rivals! That's absolutely right!"
"My rival at that time was Ōta. He really was."
"He most certainly was!"
"The transaction between Ōta and me came to a halt with unexpected swiftness.
Duality, duality! If that failed to explain
He was keen on setting up triality!
Oh, my clever friend!
When I wrote that tanka, who do you think I had in mind? Mr. Ueda, and after him, Ōta. I wrote three or four other tanka besides this one to spell out my ideological break with Ōta."
"So, you've already cast him aside then?"
"He has ceased to be a rival. And that's why I'm so disappointed. Rivals! Rivals! At a time when there are no authorities, it's terrible not to have strong rivals! In that area Doppo was great, really great."
Even this talk, however, did not cause my pulse to beat even a trifle faster.
Sunday, April 25
I have only one interest at present: to go to my office and for two or three hours do proofreading without a moment's rest. When my hands are not occupied, my head feels empty and time endless. I have even become accustomed to the roar of the rotary presses, which at first gave me such a thrill, so much so that they do not now ring out powerfully in my ears. When I thought about that this morning, I felt sad.
Am I not losing interest in everything? To lose interest in everything is to be abandoned by everything. And what if the time comes when I have had lost from everything?24
Last night I told my friend, "I've been running and I'm short of breath. At present I'm walking at a slow pace."
Today the great smokestack of the ordnance factory is not disgorging any smoke.
I went to the office and received my monthly salary—seven yen in cash. My IOU for eighteen yen was returned to me as well.
Last month I could only look at the twenty-five yen because all of it was handed back to Mr. Satō, so I had returned home without even a fraction of a sen.
Since it was Sunday, I went home after the first edition was finished. Then around four, I went to visit Mr. Yosano at Surugadai. He was out, having gone to see a play at a training school for actors, but as I was talking to Akiko-san upstairs, Yoshii called. The subject of Yoshiko Hirayama came up.
Akiko-san said that her husband's poems which were to appear in the coming tanka number were likely to bring on a good deal of comment from the public.
When I asked why, she said, "We quarreled the other day. All he does is dote on Nanase while being very cruel to Yatsuo, though I don't know why. And because he treats her so cruelly, she's becoming more and more nervous, crying even more, so I had him promise me he would not scold her for a week, but in spite of that he slapped her on the face, so I said that if he was that cruel to a child, I'd return to my parents, and then he got angry. His present tanka are about that situation. In many of them there's the line 'I was deserted by my wife' or something like that."25
"Is that so?" I said laughing.
"By the way, Miss Yamakawa died."
"Miss Yamakawa!"
So the hapless woman poet Tomiko Yamakawa had at last died!
Soon after Mr. Yosano came home, I took my leave.
Having left laughing over something we had been talking about, I walked a few steps before my tongue came out with a "Tut, tut!" I said to myself, "All right! I'm different from them. Wait and see, you fools!"
I bought a strip of twenty streetcar tickets.
I had a slight headache. I asked Kindaichi to go out for a walk with me. At Hongō 3-chōme, I asked him, "Where'll we go?"
"Hmm!"
We had our transfer tickets punched for Sakamoto and went to the Yoshiwara. It had been the second or third time for Kindaichi, but it was the first time in my life that I had set foot into this quarter that never sleeps. It was not as vast or as breathtaking as I had expected. We took a stroll around the district. There was no denying its appeal.
Soon after the great clock of the Kadoebi struck ten, we left the flowerlike district and went by jinrikisha to Asakusa. I suggested we take a walk around the garden at the foot of the Tower,26 but both of us had lost interest, and since we felt terribly hungry, we stopped at a sukiyaki restaurant. We got back a little after midnight.
"When I wake up in the night, the sound of raindrops seems like the whispers of lovers in the next room, and I have vague feelings—I feel as if a beautiful woman were sitting by my bed," Kindaichi said suddenly, something like that.
"Some vague feeling! I don't know how many years it's been since I've forgotten that kind of sensation!"
My friend also said something that implied he definitely wanted to stay overnight in the Yoshiwara.
"Great! You ought to. But what about marriage?"
"I'd get married any time if I could find a suitable woman. After I do, though, I probably won't have to go to such places!"
"No, I disagree. I think you ought to, even after you get married."
"You may be right."
"And, you know, Asakusa—that's merely a place for gratifying one's carnal desires, so to speak, so it doesn't matter who the girl you're with is. But if it's the Yoshiwara, I'd like to sleep with a real beautiful one. The place has historical associations, and it's all artistic. You go to bed inside a room which is the last word in splendor, a coverlet lining of burning red silk that seems as though it's about to go up in flames, a crimson red mattress so soft you feel as if your body is sinking when you lie on it, and just as a beautiful lantern is casting its deep sha
dow and you're suddenly awakened from an indescribable feeling of ecstasy, a beautiful girl is sitting gracefully by your bed. Magnificent!"
"Irresistible!"
"When you go to the Yoshiwara, you must have a beautiful girl. If it's at Asakusa, on the other hand, she must have, above all, a well-developed physique and privates without a flaw."
For nearly an hour the two of us talked about "that vague feeling" and about a girl whose surname was Kuji, who had been a student at Morioka and was said to be working in the Yoshiwara.
Monday, April 26
When I opened my eyes, I found the fire in the brazier had gone out. I felt as if the inside of my head were wet and clammy.
Just as I was thinking how to brighten my mood, a postcard from Namiki arrived.
As I read it, my head returned to its dampened state, utterly dark and cold. His card asked me to return, within the month, the watch I had borrowed from him—that watch I had pawned.
God! Never before had the question of death been so directly near me as today. Should I go to work or not?... No, no, first, before that decision, was the question of whether to die or not. ... Well, it wouldn't do to remain in my room. I'd go out, somewhere else.
It occurred to me to head for the bathhouse. Because I couldn't bear this unpleasant feeling. Because the good feeling I had when I had gone there the other day would come back to me. So I'd go to the bathhouse. And afterwards I'd think about the other question. So I went to the public bath on Daimachi. Until that moment I had actually intended to die.
It was comfortable in the bath. I thought I'd stay as long as possible. I felt that the moment I left this place, my fearful problem would pounce on me and force me to kill myself or do something else. I felt as if my body were my own only as long as I immersed it in the hot water. I felt I wanted to remain in the bath a long, long time. But it took me an unexpectedly short while to wash.
Romaji Diary and Sad Toys Page 11