Of course, one finds in nearly every language books that describe, or that claim to describe, the writer’s life. In whatever language, such stories can be an easy way to invoke the “power of truth”: after all, the real life of a man or woman is involved. For that very reason, writers, in whatever language, must constantly fight against the temptation to sell their lives instead of their writing. Moreover, people invariably take a greater interest in the suffering of others than in their well-being. Hence writers must constantly fight against the most tempting of all temptations—to advertise their misfortunes. Indeed, the greatest misfortune that can happen to a writer is to work in an environment where touting one’s misfortunes passes for literature.
This particular affliction obviously plagues authors in Japan, where “I-novels” continue to flourish. Nonetheless, the facile passing off of a how-I-suffered story as literature falls far short of a tradition that has produced many of the greatest works in the last one hundred and fifty years. Nor does it help explain why, in Japanese, the “I-novel” is so very much better at invoking the “power of truth” than works of fiction.
What exactly is an “I-novel”?
In an “I-novel,” readers expect the writer to figure in the work in one way or another. Whether the work is in fact based on the writer’s life or is a contrivance is ultimately irrelevant. The author-protagonist of an “I-novel” is perceived as an actual, specific individual, one whose face may be publicly known in other media. The work is necessarily assumed to be truthful about that individual’s life. Moreover, readers tend to favor works that have no beginning or ending, and are fragmentary, finding them true to life, as life also has no opening or closure as such and is nothing but an accumulation of fragmentary experiences. In other words, what readers look for in this genre is the absence of the authorial will—of the intention to create, through words, an independent universe.
Why does this quasi-autobiographical genre continue not only to flourish but to achieve artistic excellence in Japanese? Or, to put it another way, why is it that the further a Japanese work strays from this tradition, the harder it is for it to invoke the “power of truth”?
I don’t know the answer. It may have something to do with the structure of the Japanese language itself. Since the only other languages I know are European ones, I have no way of judging Japanese as a linguist might. But I am aware that one of the many ways in which it differs from European languages is in how the personal pronouns—I, you, we, he, she, and they—function. In its European counterparts, these pronouns are the pillars of the language and are essential in constructing a sentence, even if they are only indicated by the inflections of verbs. This isn’t so in Japanese. Here, the personal pronouns are elusive, constantly shifting, often absent, and function like any nouns. This becomes most problematic when it comes to the use of the personal pronoun “I.” In their first encounters with Western thought, Japanese people tried to grasp the concept of a “subject”—a concept that has become increasingly important in the modern West. Yet in Japanese there exists no grammatical equivalent to, for example, the English word “I.” There is no grammatical “I” that can be used by anybody—which ultimately means no grammatical “I” that can speak as a “subject” independent of its context. In fact, there is no single word for “I” in Japanese but a variety of “I’s,” depending on who the speaker is and whom he is speaking to—a linguistic feature perhaps unimaginable to those who only know European languages. All this renders the notion of the abstract and transcendent “subject” difficult to conceive of in Japanese. And that may be one of the reasons why Japanese readers continue to look for an actual, specific individual in a story rather than perceive the story as the work of a writer’s imagination.
Again, I don’t really know the answer. My memory of that stormy night remains vivid, and I still can’t shake off the feeling that Taro’s story was heaven-sent. Yet once I sat down to write that story, what confronted me, obstinately and oppressively, was the difficulty of telling a real “story just like a novel” in Japanese.
I’VE REFERRED TO Taro Azuma by his real name. I couldn’t bring myself to write about him using another name because all my memories of him are linked to that name, beginning with the night my father first mentioned him. If he is still alive, I doubt that he’s living the kind of life where he would be aware of novels published in Japanese. And even if he did find out what I’ve done, I doubt that he would care. Any Japanese person who had lived in New York for any length of time would know who it really was, anyway.
1
A Welcoming Fire
THE STRAINS OF the “Tokyo Ballad” faded into silence.
It was a summer night in the mountains, far from the heat and clamor of the city. The only sound, creaking eerily in the hushed, cool air, was of the old bicycle as he pedaled along.
No matter how far south Yusuke rode from Route 18, he could not find a road that would take him eastward to Middle Karuizawa. Every side road he tried went farther south or just led to a summer house. Once, he found himself standing in a grove thick with briars; he could barely make out any animal trails, let alone a proper road. Another time he ended up in an open field that shone bleakly under the moonlight.
When he had left Route 18 to look for a quieter way through, he’d felt quite confident. Now anxiety was taking over, and he could feel the sweatiness of his palms where they grasped the handlebars.
The moon was full.
Even in the moonlight it was difficult to see where he was heading, with the forest a towering dark silhouette against the night sky. Bright rays wove through the backlit branches, illuminating only patches of the white-graveled mountain road. Once in a while he came across a lamppost, but the next would be far away, and even then it might be burned out or merely flickering, with a sinister, greenish glow. Until a short while ago, he could still see through the trees the lights of what might have been a cluster of summer houses, but he no longer knew if there was any habitation nearby.
Deep tire ruts made by cars prevented him from keeping the handlebars steady, especially as he was going downhill. Hearing the screech of the pedals and the grind of gravel beneath the tires, he began to feel out of control. But he wouldn’t slow down, propelled, perhaps, by the spell of the moonlight. He was jostled against the hard seat as he hurtled down the bumpy road.
Suddenly a shiver ran through him. The handlebars twisted to the left, and his body went flying off the bicycle. He had ridden into a hedge.
He picked himself up carefully, brushing away bits of twigs and dirt, and was relieved to find that he felt no real pain. He must not have broken any bones. He was sure, though, that the bicycle had not been as lucky. When he pulled it upright, he saw that the lamp was broken and the front fender bent. He looked at his Muji watch by the light of the moon: nine-fifteen.
Yusuke took a handkerchief out of his jeans pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead. Only then did he notice the penetrating trill of crickets, their cry ringing through the calm of the night air. In the mountains, autumn arrived early, ignoring the dictates of the calendar.
Beyond the hedge, a light came on. Someone had turned on the porch light of what seemed to be a summer house. He could see the person pull open a curtain, look out, and hurry outside. It was a woman. Perhaps to keep the mosquitoes out, she hastily shut the screen door behind her and then turned toward where Yusuke stood. Now that there was some electric light, he could see the outline of a meager gate—two wooden poles—just a short way in front of him. Passing through the gate and around a parked car, he made his way toward her.
Before he reached the steps, he paused, bowing slightly.
“I’m sorry about this,” he said.
The woman stared hard at this figure that had appeared out of the darkness. She looked slim, her hair casually pulled back. From a distance she seemed to be quite young, but as he drew nearer he realized she wasn’t either young or old. Like his own mother, she was of that age tha
t left people guessing. The porch light shone from behind her, making it difficult to see her face clearly.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I got lost and then somehow ran into that hedge.”
“It is rather difficult around here at night,” she said. He could barely make out her words.
“I was trying to get back to Middle Karuizawa.”
Yusuke felt uncomfortable as she stared. His collision with the hedge had already created an awkward situation, but with this lady coming out of her country house, there was some additional unease. Like most young people, he prided himself on thinking he was beyond being impressed by the wealthy. Besides, in this day and age, the owner of a cottage in the country might just as easily be an ordinary middle-class company employee with a second mortgage. But especially in this area, the summer house crowd struck him as rather different, their lives filled with luxuries and pleasures unknown to him.
“How do I get to Middle Karuizawa from here?” he asked.
She did not answer the question. She was instead gazing at his left arm: “Young man, you appear to be injured.”
He followed her gaze and saw by the porch light a dark red stain from his elbow to his wrist. Like many men, he had a strong aversion to the sight of blood. He hid his alarm and muttered, “I’m fine. Really, I am.”
Along with the tension and confusion he already felt, her peculiar way of speaking—like a character in some old-fashioned novel—echoed in his head.
She observed him for a little longer, then said, “Please do come in. I’ll show you the way on a map.” Yusuke hesitated. The woman’s words were perfectly polite, yet there was a cool detachment in her voice which paradoxically he found inviting, being shy. He did as he was told.
“The road is narrow. Bring the bicycle into the driveway. If a car comes by, I dare say it would be quite dangerous,” she added before walking briskly into the house.
I dare say it would be quite dangerous—Yusuke repeated the quaint phrase to himself while he headed back to the road. He could feel his wound throbbing as he dabbed at it with the handkerchief he’d taken out of his pocket.
The handlebars turned out to be bent as well, forcing him to struggle with the bicycle as he wheeled it in from the road. When he managed to steer the stubborn thing up to the porch and inspect it under the light, he discovered that the chain had slipped off too. He bent down and attempted to wind it back on, only to give up after a few tries. The thought of dragging the bicycle all the way back to Middle Karuizawa made his arms and legs, already heavy from the day’s fatigue, feel even heavier. At least he hadn’t wrecked a brand-new bicycle.
All was still. He could see no other lights. Perhaps the cottage stood alone in the woods or no one was staying in the houses nearby. After surveying the surroundings, Yusuke took his first proper look at the house. It almost made him gasp.
Though he had dimly taken in its appearance, he hadn’t realized how modest it was. Not only was the house small, it was old and dilapidated—so much so that it looked on the verge of collapse. Years of rain and wind had darkened the walls. The entire structure had started to decay, to dissolve into the ground, making it difficult to tell where the house ended and earth began.
Earlier, on his way back from Komoro, he had wandered around Oiwake on his bicycle and seen a number of empty, neglected cottages like this, but the house before him seemed, if possible, even more forlorn, with its yellow light seeping palely through a thin curtain.
Yusuke couldn’t help feeling a bit superior as he compared this shabby building with his friend’s summer place, made of imported Scandinavian materials—doors, windows, roofing—in a newly developed resort area in the hills. That house and its location were doubtless what a corporate executive like his friend’s father was expected to own.
He wondered about this woman. What did her husband do? Maybe he was a poorly paid college teacher with neither inherited money nor extra income. Or possibly a novelist whose books didn’t sell very well? Since Yusuke worked as an editor for a literary journal, the idea of writing as a profession came readily to mind. He knew that scholars and writers tended to spend their summers in the Oiwake area because property here was more affordable than in Karuizawa, or even Middle Karuizawa. Was her husband inside the house? The woman seemed old enough to have grown-up children and even small grandchildren, but he heard no family sounds from inside—in fact, he heard nothing. It was as if the place had been forsaken by the world.
Lit by moonlight, the yard around the house was also perfectly still. A thin scattering of pebbles covered what presumably was a path, which someone had weeded, but otherwise the area had been left to grow wild. Tall pampas grass rose in large clusters, the striped fronds shining silver and ghostly in the moonlight.
A sense of apprehension stole over him.
There was something about this place: it seemed to belong to a different time, a different realm. Perhaps because he had wandered all day long past rural scenes that were redolent of an older world, the house reminded him of a folktale he’d read as a child. A traveler seeking shelter at the end of a long day’s journey sees a faint light in a distant field and walks toward it, until at last he reaches a hut where a woman reluctantly lets him stay the night. In the morning, though, he finds only a pile of bleached bones on the floor and hears the wind howling through the bamboo latticework of crumbled walls. This weathered mountain cottage also seemed haunted, as though some unseen presence were warding off the outside world.
Yusuke took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. As he felt the mountain air flow into his lungs, he realized that he hadn’t breathed so deeply in all the four years since he’d started working. Yes, he had made the right decision to get away from Tokyo. This was his third day since arriving in Nagano on Friday. Even only a day ago, the working world still cluttered his mind—images of steel office desks and the weekly schedule tacked to the wall. But today he had woken up early and bicycled all day; and at last city life was in retreat. With a full week of vacation still to go, his ordinary routine now seemed remote, and he felt as if these seven days could last forever.
Yusuke took another deep breath and started toward the house.
He stepped up onto the front porch where the woman had stood moments before. The house appeared to have no entrance hall. When he peered in through a gap in the curtains, a room like any other lay before him, neither large nor small, furnished with a small wooden dining table and chairs in the center, a rattan rocking chair close by, and a low, carved table bearing a telephone and strewn with newspapers. Everything suggested a simple style of country vacation, yet something seemed odd. He knew what it was the instant he stepped inside. He had slipped back in time.
From the ceiling, a lamp dangled from an electric cord bound with black fabric, the old-fashioned kind with a shade that looked like a milky glass dish turned upside down over a bulb that glowed yellow. So modest was its light that, instead of brightening things up, it seemed to bring darkness out from every corner of the house. The pendulum of a wall clock swung back and forth with a faint, steady click.
It was not just that the room had nothing new in it. Its faded stucco walls, the uneven, knotty floorboards, the wooden columns with dark nicks, small and large—all belonged to a Japan of a generation earlier. Though he was too young to have actually lived in that Japan, it was somewhere he knew from the coarse grain of old black-and-white photographs, newsreels, and movies. The air in this house had been frozen in that time.
An odor once familiar to him filled his nostrils. The room just inside the front door had a wooden floor, but both rooms off to the left were made in the traditional style, raised a step up and covered with tatami straw mats. In the nearest one sat a tin-lined tea chest with its lid off. Once he saw the chest, he knew what the odor was—the smell of camphor mothballs.
The tatami room had the same hanging lamp, suspended over a floor cushion where he guessed the woman had been sitting. To one side lay a pile of clo
th, while on the other was a pair of glasses. The woman, though, was not there.
She stood farther down the dark corridor, expressionless, watching him.
Yusuke was well built, with broad shoulders. He was used to having women his mother’s age gaze up at him approvingly. Sometimes they would even stroke his arm and say, “My, my, young people nowadays are so good-looking,” which he found embarrassing. This woman was different. She looked at him with complete indifference, as if staring at a wall. She merely gestured toward the kitchen beyond the front room, and when Yusuke went in and stood at the sink, she handed him a small towel and left, saying only, “This may be of use.”
No man had come out to greet him. Yusuke wondered if she was a widow. Her attitude suggested that she regarded him as an intrusion, which suited him, since he disliked being around strangers himself. He would just ask for directions and leave.
The kitchen was small and dark. It was also damp, years of humidity having seeped into the walls, ceiling, and floor. The same kind of lamp with black cord and milky white shade hung drearily from the ceiling. As he stood beneath its small circle of light, the word “postwar” occurred to him. Yes, that was the word. Though he was vague about exactly which years it referred to, the term evoked the Japan of the years before his birth, a country still shabby and poor and slightly ludicrous when outlays of money were made, like a peasant woman getting all dolled up. Little money had gone into this kitchen, sparing it that comic effect, but it reeked of postwar frugality from every corner. There was a tin-lined sink on one wall and, opposite, a low cupboard whose sliding doors framed frosted panes. Next to it was a small Formica table on which an electric rice cooker sat, a type hardly seen anymore, with a white body, Bakelite handles, and a thin aluminum lid. The only evidence of the present day was a microwave oven, which looked fresh out of the box.
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