The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature (Modern Asian Literature Series)
Page 108
The lights come up.
TSŪ (shaking Yohyō awake): Yohyō, Yohyō.
YOHYŌ: Mmm? Ah . . . (Mumbling.)
TSŪ: Listen. The cloth. I will weave it for you.
YOHYŌ: Eh? What was that?
TSŪ: I will weave the cloth for you.
YOHYŌ: The cloth? Ah—you’ll weave it for me?
TSŪ: Yes, I will weave it. One piece only.
YOHYŌ: You really will?
TSŪ: Yes, really. I really will weave it for you. So you can go to the capital with it.
YOHYŌ: I can go to the capital? Really?
TSŪ: Yes. So you will come back with lots of the money you like so much. And after that . . . and after that . . .
YOHYŌ: Oh—you’re going to weave it? I can go to the capital? Oh . . . yes, I’ll come back with piles of money. Piles and piles of money.
TSŪ: . . . (Staring at how pleased Yohyō is.) So—just one thing—the promise you always make. You know you must never look at me while I’m weaving. You know that, don’t you? You absolutely must not.
YOHYŌ: No, no, I won’t. Ah, you’re actually going to weave the cloth for me?
TSŪ: Listen to me. I’m begging you. You must keep the promise, you must. Don’t look in at me. . . . If you do, everything is over between us.
YOHYŌ: Yes, yes, I won’t look. Heh—I’m going to the capital. I’m going to make two or three times the money I made last time.
TSŪ: . . . Don’t . . . don’t look . . . (Goes into the other room where the loom is.)
The sound of a loom is heard. Sōdo leaps out of the shadows. Unzu follows.
SŌDO: We’ve done it! She’s started weaving—at last!
UNZU: All right, but watching her from the shadows, I began to feel very sorry for her.
SŌDO: You’re a stupid idiot. We’re about to make a lot of money—it’s not the time to start feeling sorry for people. . . . (Runs up into the house and goes to look into the weaving room.)
YOHYŌ: Hey—you can’t do that. You’re not supposed to look.
UNZU: Sōdo, you know you’re not supposed to look while she’s weaving.
SŌDO: Shut up, both of you. If I don’t see her weaving, how do I know whether it’s genuine Crane Feather Weave or not?
YOHYŌ: No, no, you can’t. She’ll get mad at you. Stop!
UNZU: Sōdo, stop!
SŌDO: Let go of me. Let go! (Looks into the room.) Ah . . . ah . . .
UNZU: What is it?
SŌDO: Ah . . . have a look. It’s a crane. A crane. A crane is sitting at the loom and weaving.
UNZU: What? A crane? (Looks in.) Ah . . . ah . . . it is a crane. The woman’s not in there. It’s a crane. It’s holding a few of its own feathers in its beak and moving forward and backward over the loom . . . I’ve never . . .
SŌDO: Well there you are, Unzu. Looks as though we’ve got it right.
UNZU: I suppose it does.
YOHYŌ: What is it? What’s going on?
SŌDO: That’s what you’re in love with—in there. Right, Unzu, we should have the cloth by tomorrow morning. We can go home and wait.
UNZU: I suppose we can . . .
YOHYŌ: Heh, you two—what’s in there? . . . Isn’t it Tsū?
UNZU (being hustled off by Sōdo): It’s a crane. There’s a crane in there.
Sōdo drags Unzu off.
YOHYŌ: A crane? Can’t be . . . can there? In the room? . . . I want to have a look. No, I mustn’t, I mustn’t. Tsū will be angry with me. . . . But what’s a crane doing in there? Oh, I do want to have a look. . . . Would it be wrong to have a look? Tsū, tell me. Tsū, I’m going to have a quick look. . . . No, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t. Tsū said I should not look. Tsū, Tsū. Why don’t you answer? Tsū, Tsū. . . . What can have happened? What’s happened? Tsū . . . no answer . . . I want to have a look . . . I want to look . . . Tsū, I’m going to have a little look. . . . (Finally he looks in.) Eh? There’s just a crane in there . . . no sign of Tsū. . . . Eh? . . . What’s happened? . . . Tsū . . . Tsū . . . She’s not there. . . . What am I to do? . . . She’s not there. She’s gone. Tsū . . . Tsū . . . Tsū . . . (He goes out of the house and disappears offstage, searching for her frantically.)
Afterward only the sound of the loom is heard. Blackout. Above the sound of the loom a poem is read aloud.
Yohyō, Yohyō, where do you go?
Over the dark, snowy plain, hither and thither,
Searching for Tsū.
Tsū . . . Tsū . . . Tsū
Your voice is cracked and hoarse,
Soon the rays of the morning sun play on the snow,
Afternoon arrives and it is the same:
Tsū . . . Tsū . . . Tsū
Now in the evening, behind the house,
Today as yesterday the whole sky is a deep, deep red.
The lights come up. The sound of the loom continues. Sōdo and Unzu come in supporting Yohyō, who is in a bad way.
UNZU: Yohyō, are you all right? Pull yourself together.
SŌDO: I didn’t believe it—there you were, lying in the snow—why did you go so far?
UNZU: You’d have frozen to death if we hadn’t brought you back.
YOHYŌ: Tsū . . . Tsū . . .
UNZU: He’s come round. Hey, Yohyō.
SŌDO: Yohyō, pull yourself together.
YOHYŌ: Tsū . . . Tsū . . .
Pause.
SŌDO: Is she ever going to stop weaving?
UNZU: You’re right. She usually weaves it all in one night. But this time it’s taking a night and a day.
SŌDO: Hmm. Perhaps I’ll take another look.
The sound of the loom stops abruptly.
UNZU: It’s stopped.
SŌDO: She’s coming out!
The two of them panic and jump down from the house. They hide in the shadows. Tsū emerges carrying two lengths of cloth. She looks emaciated.
TSŪ: Yohyō . . . Yohyō . . . (She shakes Yohyō awake.)
YOHYŌ (almost calling, as before): Tsū . . . Tsū . . .
TSŪ: Yohyō.
YOHYŌ: Tsū . . . (Realizes.) Ah—Tsū. (Embraces her tightly as he breaks into tears.) Tsū, where did you go? You weren’t here and I . . .
TSŪ: I am sorry. I took so long, didn’t I? I have woven the cloth. Look . . . here you are . . . the cloth.
YOHYŌ: The cloth? Oh, you’ve woven the cloth. . . .
TSŪ:. . . (Stares at the delighted Yohyō.)
YOHYŌ: This is great. It’s beautiful. Oh, there’re two pieces, aren’t there?
TSŪ: Yes, two pieces. That’s why it took me until now. So you take the cloth and go off on your trip to the capital.
YOHYŌ: Yes, I’m going to the capital. You’re coming with me, aren’t you?
TSŪ: . . . (Weeps.)
YOHYŌ: Yes—you’re coming with me and we’ll all go sightseeing.
TSŪ: Yohyō . . . you looked, didn’t you?
YOHYŌ: I want to get to the capital quickly. Tsū, you’ve woven it so well.
TSŪ: I begged you so hard . . . and you promised so faithfully . . . why, why did you look?
YOHYŌ: What is it? Why are you crying?
TSŪ: I wanted to be with you forever—forever. . . . One of those two pieces is for you . . . keep it and treasure it. I put my whole heart into the weaving so that you could have it.
YOHYŌ: Really, this is superbly woven.
TSŪ (grasping him by the shoulders): Keep it and treasure it. Take great, great care of it.
YOHYŌ (like a child): Yes, I will take great, great care of it, as you tell me to. I always listen to what you say to me. (Pleading.) Let’s go to the capital together.
TSŪ (shaking her head): I shall be . . . (Smiles and stands up—suddenly she is white all over.) Look how thin I have become. I used every single feather I could. What’s left is just enough to let me fly. . . . (She laughs quietly.)
YOHYŌ (suddenly sensing something): Tsū. (Tries to embrace her, but his arms enclose only empty sp
ace.)
TSŪ: Yohyō . . . take care of yourself . . . take good care of yourself always, always . . .
In the distance the children’s singing is heard.
Let’s make a coat for grandpa to wear,
Let’s make a coat for grandma to wear,
Lah-lala lah, lah lah lah,
Lah-lala, lah-lala, lah lah lah.
TSŪ: I have to say good-bye to the children too. . . . How many times have I sung that song with them? . . . Yohyō, don’t forget me, will you. We had only a short time together, but I won’t forget how your pure love was all around me or all the days when we played and sang songs with the children. I will never, never forget. Wherever I go, I will never . . .
YOHYŌ: Heh, Tsū . . .
TSŪ: Good-bye . . . good-bye . . .
YOHYŌ: Tsū, wait, wait I say. I’m coming too. Tsū, Tsū.
TSŪ: No, you cannot, you cannot. And I cannot stay in this human form any longer. I have to return to the sky where I came from, alone. . . . Good-bye . . . take care . . . good-bye—it really is good-bye. . . . (Disappears.)
YOHYŌ: Tsū, Tsū, where have you gone? Tsū. (Confused, he comes out of the house.)
Sōdo and Unzu leap out and hold him back.
UNZU (out of breath, to Sōdo): Heh . . .
SŌDO (out of breath): She’s disappeared.
Yohyō is in a state of stupor in Unzu’s arms. The children come running in.
CHILDREN (in unison, as if they were singing):
Come out and sing us a song, please do.
Come out and play some games, please do.
Come out and sing us a song.
Total silence.
ONE CHILD (suddenly points up to the sky): A crane! A crane! Look, there’s a crane flying up there.
SŌDO: A crane?
UNZU (scared): Ah . . .
CHILDREN: A crane. A crane. A crane. (Repeating this, they run off following the crane.)
UNZU: Yohyō, look, a crane.
SŌDO: It looks as though it’s having to struggle to stay in the air.
Pause.
SŌDO (to no one in particular): We’ve got two pieces of cloth. That’s great. (He tries to take the cloth that Yohyō is holding, but Yohyō clutches it to himself.)
UNZU (absorbed in watching the crane fly away, still with his arms round Yohyō): It’s gradually getting smaller. . . .
YOHYŌ: Tsū . . . Tsū . . . (Takes one or two unsteady steps as if following the crane. Then stands stock-still, clutching the cloth tightly.)
Sōdo also seems to be drawn in that direction, and the three of them gaze, fixed on a point in the distant sky. From offstage the sound of the children singing drifts faintly in.
ESSAY
KAWABATA YASUNARI
Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972), a sample of whose work appears in chapter 3, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. He was the first Japanese author to receive this honor, and he used the occasion of his acceptance address to review his debt to classical Japanese literature during his own literary career.
JAPAN, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND MYSELF
(UTSUKUSHII NIHON NO WATASHI)
Translated by Edward G. Seidensticker
The 1968 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
In the spring, cherry blossoms,
in the summer the cuckoo.
In the autumn the moon, and in
winter the snow, clear, cold.
Winter moon, coming from the
clouds to keep me company,
Is the wind piercing, the snow cold?
The first of these poems is by the priest Dōgen (1200–1253) and bears the title “Innate Spirit.” The second is by the priest Myōe (1173–1232). When I am asked for specimens of my handwriting, it is these poems that I often choose.
The second poem bears an unusually detailed account of its origins, such as to be an explanation of the heart of its meaning:
On the night of the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the year 1224,1 the moon was behind clouds. I sat in Zen meditation in the Kakyū Hall. When the hour of the midnight vigil came, I ceased meditation and descended from the hall on the peak to the lower quarters, and as I did so the moon came from the clouds and set the snow to glowing. The moon was my companion, and not even the wolf howling in the valley brought fear. When, presently, I came out of the lower quarters again, the moon was again behind clouds. As the bell was signaling the late-night vigil, I climbed once more to the peak, and the moon saw me on the way. I entered the meditation hall, and the moon, chasing the clouds, was about to sink behind the far peak, and it seemed to me that it was keeping me secret company.
There follows the poem I have quoted, and, with the explanation that it was composed as Myōe entered the meditation hall after watching the moon sink toward the mountain, there comes yet another poem:
I shall go behind the mountain.
Go there too, O moon.
Night after night we shall keep each
other company.
Here is the setting for another poem, after Myōe had spent the rest of the night in the meditation hall, or perhaps gone there again before dawn: “Opening my eyes from my meditations, I saw the moon in the dawn, lighting the window. In a dark place myself, I felt as if my own heart were glowing with light which seemed to be that of the moon”:
My heart shines, a pure expanse
of light;
And no doubt the moon will think
the light its own.
Because of such a spontaneous and innocent stringing together of mere ejaculations as the following, Myōe has been called the poet of the moon:
O bright, bright,
O bright, bright, bright,
O bright, bright.
Bright, O bright, bright,
Bright, O bright moon.
In his three poems on the winter moon, from late night into the dawn, Myōe follows entirely the bent of Saigyō, another poet-priest, who lived from 1118 to 1190: “Though I compose poetry, I do not think of it as composed poetry.” The thirty-one syllables of each poem, honest and straightforward as if he were ad-dressing the moon, are not merely to “the moon as my companion.” Seeing the moon, he becomes the moon, the moon seen by him becomes him. He sinks into nature, becomes one with nature. The light of the “clear heart” of the priest, seated in the meditation hall in the darkness before the dawn, becomes for the dawn moon its own light.
As we see from the long introduction to the first of Myōe’s poems quoted above, in which the winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings. My reason for choosing that first poem when asked for a specimen of my handwriting has to do with its remarkable gentleness and compassion. Winter moon, going behind the clouds and coming forth again, making bright my footsteps as I go to the meditation hall and descend again, making me unafraid of the wolf: does not the wind sink into you, does not the snow, are you not cold? I choose it as a poem of warm, deep, delicate compassion, a poem that has in it the deep quiet of the Japanese spirit. Dr. Yashiro Yukio, internationally known as a scholar of Botticelli, a man of great learning in the art of the past and the present, of the East and the West, has said that one of the special characteristics of Japanese art can be summed up in a single poetic sentence: “The time of the snows, of the moon, of the blossoms—then more than ever we think of our comrades.” When we see the beauty of the snow, when we see the beauty of the full moon, when in short we brush against and are awakened by the beauty of the four seasons, it is then that we think most of those close to us, and want them to share the pleasure. The excitement of beauty calls forth strong fellow feelings, yearnings for companionship, and the word “comrade” can be taken to mean “human being.” The snow, the moon, the blossoms, words expressive of the season as they move one into another, include in the Japanese tradition the beauty of mountai
ns and rivers and grasses and trees, of all the myriad manifestations of nature, human feelings as well. That spirit, that feeling for one’s comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony. A tea ceremony is a coming together feeling, a meeting of good comrades in good season. I may say in passing that to see my novel Thousand Cranes as an evocation of the formal and spiritual beauty of the tea ceremony is a misreading. It is a negative work, an expression of doubt about and a warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen.
In the spring, cherry blossoms,