Thousand Cranes

by Yasunari Kawabata

  PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

  Thousand Cranes

  Yasunari Kawabata was born near Osaka in 1899 and was orphaned at the age of two. His first stories were published while he was still in high school and he decided to become a writer. He graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924 and a year later made his first impact on Japanese letters with ‘Izu Dancer’. He soon became a leading figure of the lyrical school that offered the chief challenge to the proletarian literature of the late 1920s. Snow Country (1956) and Thousand Cranes (1959) brought him international recognition and he was the recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature. Kawabata died by his own hand on 16 April 1972.

  Thousand Cranes is translated from the Japanese by Edward G. Seidensticker (1921–2007), who was a prominent scholar of Japanese literature.

  Thousand Cranes

  YASUNARI KAWABATA

  Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN CLASSICS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published 1958

  Published in Penguin Classics 2011

  Copyright © Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1958

  Copyright © renewed Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1986

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-141-95022-8

  Contents

  Thousand Cranes

  The Grove in the Evening Sun

  Figured Shino

  Her Mother’s Lipstick

  Double Star

  Note on the pronunciation of Japanese names

  Consonants are pronounced approximately as in English, except that ‘g’ is always hard, as in Gilbert. Vowels are pronounced as in Italian. Also as in Italian, the final g is always sounded. Thus the name Kaname is pronounced Kah-nah-meh. There is no heavy penultimate accent as in English; it is adequate to accent each syllable equally.

  The Japanese name order has been followed throughout this translation, with the family name first.

  Thousand Cranes

  1

  Even when he reached Kamakura and the Engakuji Temple, Kikuji did not know whether or not he would go to the tea ceremony. He was already late.

  He received an announcement whenever Kurimoto Chikako offered tea at the inner cottage of the Engakuji. He had not once gone since his father’s death, however. He thought of the announcements as no more than formal gestures in memory of his father.

  This time there had been a postscript: she wanted him to meet a young lady to whom she was giving tea lessons.

  As he read it, Kikuji thought of Chikako’s birthmark.

  Had he been eight, perhaps, or nine? He had been taken by his father to visit Chikako, and they had found her in the breakfast room. Her kimono was open. She was cutting the hair on her birthmark with a small pair of scissors. It covered half the left breast and ran down into the hollow between the breasts, as large as the palm of one’s hand. Hair seemed to be growing on the purple-black mark, and Chikako was in process of cutting it.

  ‘You brought the boy with you?’

  In surprise, she snatched at the neck of her kimono. Then, perhaps because haste only complicated her efforts to cover herself, she turned slightly away and carefully tucked kimono into obi.

  The surprise must have been less at Kikuji’s father than at Kikuji. Since a maid had met them at the door, Chikako must have known at least that Kikuji’s father had come.

  Kikuji’s father did not go into the breakfast room. He sat down in the next room instead, the room where Chikako gave lessons.

  ‘Do you suppose I could have a cup of tea?’ Kikuji’s father asked absently. He looked up at the hanging in the alcove.

  ‘Yes.’ But Chikako did not move.

  On the newspaper at her knee, Kikuji had seen hairs like whiskers.

  Though it was broad daylight, rats were scurrying about in the hollow ceiling. A peach tree was in bloom near the veranda.

  When at length she took her place by the tea hearth, Chikako seemed preoccupied.

  Some ten days later, Kikuji heard his mother telling his father, as if it were an extraordinary secret of which he could not have known, that Chikako was unmarried because of the birthmark. There was compassion in her eyes.

  ‘Oh?’ Kikuji’s father nodded in apparent surprise. ‘But it wouldn’t matter, would it, if her husband were to see it? Especially if he knew of it before he married her?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I said to her. But after all a woman is a woman. I don’t think I would ever be able to tell a man that I had a big mark on my breast.’

  ‘But she’s hardly young any more.’

  ‘Still it wouldn’t be easy. A man with a birthmark could probably get married and just laugh when he was found out.’

  ‘Did you see the mark?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course not.’

  ‘You just talked about it?’

  ‘She came for my lesson, and we talked about all sorts of things. I suppose she felt like confessing.’

  Kikuji’s father was silent.

  ‘Suppose she were to marry. What would the man think?’

  ‘He’d probably be disgusted by it. But he might find something attractive in it, in having it for a secret. And then again the defect might bring out good points. Anyway, it’s hardly a problem worth worrying about.’

  ‘I told her it was no problem at all. But it’s on the breast, she says.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The hardest thing would be having a child to nurse. The husband might be all right, but the child.’

  ‘The birthmark would keep milk from coming?’

  ‘Not that. No, the trouble would be having the child look at the birthmark while it was nursing. I hadn’t seen quite so far myself, but a person who actually has a birthmark thinks of these things. From the day it was born it would drink there; and from the day it began to see, it would see that ugly mark on its mother’s breast. Its first impression of the world, its first impression of its mother, would be that ugly birthmark, and there the impression would be, through the child’s whole life.’

  ‘Oh? But isn’t that inventing worries?’

  ‘You could nurse it on cow’s milk, I suppose, or hire a wet nurse.’

  ‘I should think the important thing would be whether or not there was milk, not whether or not there was a birthmark.’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I actually wept when I heard. So that’s how it is, I thought. I wouldn’t want
our Kikuji nursing at a breast with a birthmark on it.’

  ‘Oh?’

  At this show of ingenuousness, a wave of indignation came over Kikuji, and a wave of resentment at his father, who could ignore him even though he too had seen the mark.

  Now, however, almost twenty years later, Kikuji was able to smile at the thought of his father’s confusion.

  From the time he was ten or so, he often thought of his mother’s words and started with uneasiness at the idea of a half-brother or half-sister sucking at the birthmark.

  It was not just fear of having a brother or sister born away from home, a stranger to him. It was rather fear of that brother or sister in particular. Kikuji was obsessed with the idea that a child who sucked at that breast, with its birthmark and its hair, must be a monster.

  Chikako appeared to have had no children. One could, if one wished, suspect that his father had not allowed her to. The association of birthmark and baby that had saddened his mother might have been his father’s device for convincing Chikako that she did not want children. In any case, Chikako produced none, either while Kikuji’s father lived or after his death.

  Perhaps Chikako had made her confession so soon after Kikuji had seen the birthmark because she feared that Kikuji himself would tell of it.

  Chikako did not marry. Had the birthmark then governed her whole life?

  Kikuji never forgot the mark. He could sometimes imagine even that his own destinies were enmeshed in it.

  When he received the note saying that Chikako meant to make the tea ceremony her excuse for introducing him to a young lady, the birthmark once more floated before him; and, since the introduction would be made by Chikako, he wondered if the young lady herself would have a perfect skin, a skin unmarred by so much as a dot.

  Had his father occasionally squeezed the birthmark between his fingers? Had he even bitten at it? Such were Kikuji’s fantasies.

  Even now, as he walked through the temple grounds and heard the chirping of birds, those were the fantasies that came to him.

  Some two or three years after the incident, Chikako had somehow turned masculine in manner. Now she was quite sexless.

  At the ceremony today she would be bustling about energetically. Perhaps that breast with its birthmark would have withered. Kikuji felt a smile of relief come to his lips; and just then two young women hurried up behind him.

  He stopped to let them pass.

  ‘Do you know whether the cottage Miss Kurimoto has taken might be in this direction?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ the two answered in unison.

  Kikuji already knew, and he could have told from their dress that they were on their way to a tea ceremony. He had asked because he had to make it clear to himself that he was going.

  One of the girls was beautiful. She carried a bundle wrapped in a kerchief, the thousand-crane pattern in white on a pink crepe background.

  2

  The two girls were changing to fresh tabi1 when Kikuji arrived.

  He looked in from behind them. The main room was a large one, some eight mats in area.2

  Even so, the guests presented a solid row of knees. There seemed to be only women, women in bright kimonos.

  Chikako saw him immediately. As if in surprise, she stood up to greet him.

  ‘Come in, come in. What a prize! Please, it will be quite all right to come in from there.’ She pointed to the sliding door at the upper end of the room, before the alcove.

  Kikuji flushed. He felt the eyes of all those women.

  ‘Ladies only, is it?’

  ‘We did have a gentleman earlier, but he left. You are the one bright spot.’

  ‘Hardly bright.’

  ‘Oh, certainly, you have all the qualifications. The one spot of scarlet.’

  Kikuji waved his hand to indicate that he would prefer a less conspicuous door.

  The young lady was wrapping her discarded tabi in the thousand-crane kerchief. She stood aside to let him pass.

  The anteroom was cluttered with boxes of sweets, tea utensils brought by Chikako, and bundles that belonged to the guests. In the far corner a maid was washing something.

  Chikako came in.

  ‘Well, what do you think of her? A nice girl, isn’t she?’

  ‘The one with the thousand-crane kerchief?’

  ‘Kerchief? How would I know about kerchiefs? The one who was standing here, the pretty one. She’s the Inamura girl.’

  Kikuji nodded vaguely.

  ‘Kerchief. What odd things you notice. A person can’t be too careful. I thought you had come together. I was delighted.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You met on the way. It’s a sign of a bond between you. And your father knew Mr Inamura.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘The family had a raw-silk business in Yokohama. She knows nothing about today. You can look her over at your leisure.’

  Chikako’s voice was no small one, and Kikuji was in an agony of apprehension lest she be heard through the paper-paneled door that separated them from the main party. Suddenly she brought her face close to his.

  ‘But there’s a complication.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Mrs Ota is here, and her daughter with her.’ She studied Kikuji’s expression. ‘I didn’t invite her. But it’s been the rule that anyone who happens to be in the neighborhood can drop in. The other day I even had some Americans. I’m sorry, but what am I to do when she gets wind of an affair? Of course she doesn’t know about you and the Inamura girl.’

  ‘About me and the Inamura girl? But I …’ Kikuji wanted to say that he had not come prepared for a miai, a meeting the announced purpose of which was to view a prospective bride. Somehow the words would not come. His throat muscles stiffened.

  ‘But Mrs Ota is the one who should be uncomfortable. You can pretend that nothing is wrong.’

  Chikako’s way of dismissing the matter annoyed him.

  Her intimacy with his father had evidently been of short duration. For the rest of his father’s life, however, Chikako made herself useful in his house. She would come to help in the kitchen when there was to be a tea ceremony and even when ordinary guests were expected.

  The idea that Kikuji’s mother should begin feeling jealous of a sexless Chikako seemed funny, worth only a wry smile. No doubt his mother came to sense that his father had seen the birthmark, but the storm had passed; and Chikako, as if she too had quite forgotten, became his mother’s companion.

  In the course of time Kikuji too came to treat her lightly. As he turned his childish tantrums on her, the suffocating revulsion of his younger days seemed to fade.

  It was perhaps an appropriate life for Chikako, that she had lapsed into sexlessness and been made a convenient fixture.

  With Kikuji’s family her base, she was modestly successful as an instructor in the tea ceremony.

  Kikuji even felt a certain faint sympathy for her when, upon his father’s death, it came to him that she had repressed the woman in her after that one brief, fleeting affair.

  The hostility of Kikuji’s mother, moreover, was held in check by the question of Mrs Ota.

  After the death of Ota, who had been a companion in the pursuit of tea, Kikuji’s father had undertaken to dispose of Ota’s tea utensils, and he had thus been drawn to the widow.

  Chikako hastened to inform Kikuji’s mother.

  Chikako of course became his mother’s ally – indeed a too hard-working ally. She prowled after his father, she frequently went to threaten Mrs Ota. All her own latent jealousy seemed to explode.

  Kikuji’s quiet, introspective mother, taken aback at this flaming intervention, worried rather about what people might think.

  Even in front of Kikuji, Chikako would berate Mrs Ota, and when his mother showed signs of displeasure, Chikako would say that it did Kikuji no harm to hear.

  ‘And the time before, too, when I went to have it out with her, there was the child, listening to everything. I ask you, didn’t I all of a sudd
en hear sniffling in the next room?’

  ‘A girl?’ Kikuji’s mother frowned.

  ‘Yes. Eleven years old, I believe Mrs Ota said. Really, there is something wrong with that woman. I thought she would scold the girl for eavesdropping, and what did she do but get up and bring her in, and sit holding her, right there in front of me. I suppose she needed a supporting actor to help with the sobbing.’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s a little sad for the child?’

  ‘That’s exactly why we should use the child to get back at her. The child knows everything. I must say that it’s a pretty child, though. A round little face.’ Chikako looked at Kikuji. ‘Suppose we have Kikuji here speak to his father.’

  ‘Try not to spread the poison too far, if you don’t mind.’ Even Kikuji’s mother had to protest.

  ‘You keep the poison dammed up inside you, that’s the whole trouble. Pull yourself together; spit it all out. See how thin you are, and she all plump and glowing. There really is something not right about her – she thinks that if she weeps pathetically enough, everyone will understand. And right there in the room where she sees Mr Mitani, she has a picture of her own husband on exhibit. I’m surprised Mr Mitani hasn’t spoken to her about it.’

  And, after the death of Kikuji’s father, this Mrs Ota came to Chikako’s tea ceremony and even brought her daughter.

  Kikuji felt the touch of something cold.

  Chikako said that she had not invited Mrs Ota today. Still it was astonishing: the two women had been seeing each other since his father’s death. Perhaps even the daughter was taking tea lessons.

  ‘If it bothers you, I might ask her to leave.’ Chikako looked into his eyes.

  ‘It makes no difference to me. Of course, if she wants to go …’

  ‘If she were a person who thought of such things, she wouldn’t have brought so much unhappiness to your father and mother.’

  ‘The daughter is with her?’ Kikuji had never seen the daughter.

  It seemed wrong to meet the girl of the thousand cranes here before Mrs Ota. And he was even more repelled at the thought of meeting the daughter today.