The Miner

by Sōseki Natsume

  The weather, at least, was beautifully clear and bright. Against the mountain walls, which seemed to have been torn out of the red earth, the sun was shining. Saturated with two days of rain, the earth in the eastern sun evidenced no signs of drying out. Instead, it was absorbing all the rays the sun could give it. The showy scene was tempered by the moist softness within. Viewed from between one boiler and the next, the mountains below thickly overlay one another in a burst of blue. The wind had died. The air felt a good fifteen degrees warmer than the night before. By the side of the road, a single dandelion was in flower, its lovely color almost wasted here. This, too, was more than the savages deserved.

  I came to the infirmary. At the end of a ground-level, concrete-floored corridor some thirty feet in length hung a sign: “Examination Room.” Just before it on the right was another: “Waiting Room.” I turned from the six-foot-wide corridor and entered the waiting room. The floor here, too, was concrete, and on it were two long benches. A small glass window bore a sign in bold, square characters: “Reception.” I went to the window holding a piece of paper with my name on it. A young man of twenty-two or -three seated behind the window took the paper from me and proceeded to study it very closely, knitting together his almost non-existent eyebrows.

  “This you?” he demanded.

  I was not too pleased with his insolent manner. What need did he have to treat me with such contempt? “Yeah,” I said, answering him as brusquely as possible. He glared at me a while, as if waiting for some polite phrases, but I had nothing more to add and stood there with my mouth shut tight.

  “Wait here,” he said at last, slamming the window closed and going out. I heard his sandals flapping. What the hell did he have to make so much noise for?

  I sat on a bench. The receptionist was taking forever to come back. My mind wandered until the jangle appeared before me. I could see Kin being dragged to the window. And still they needed an infirmary? What was the point of prescribing medicine and giving treatment to patients here? What absolute hypocrisy! They torment the sick, they jeer at funerals, and still they send men to doctors? That’s taking civility to a new extreme.

  “Hey, you! Go around there.” The voice of the receptionist intruded on my thoughts. The arrogant young man had resumed his overbearing stance in the window and was glaring down at me.

  I left the waiting room. Turning right, I continued along the corridor and stepped up into the examination room, where I was struck by the odor of medicine. The smell reminded me that I was supposed to be dying soon. How strange if I were to die and become part of the earth here! I suppose that’s what they call destiny. I knew about “destiny” as a word, but I had never grasped its meaning—not really. I had been satisfied with knowing its definition, just as a Westerner might have to imagine what a bamboo shoot is. But bring together death, one of the great realities of man, and the hole, where the human animals known as miners live, and in the space between them dangle a pampered youngster who has lived without want until a few days before. Now, for the first time, the young man can see that destiny is a thing that uses its magical powers to toy with an innocent youth. What was until now a mountain becomes no longer just a mountain. What was until now the dust of the earth becomes no longer the dust of the earth. The sky, which had seemed merely blue to me, is no longer just blue. This infirmary, this room, this medicine, this odor: everything takes on the mystery of a dream. Everything. Who—or what—is the person sitting here in this chair? I can scarcely tell. He sees the world outside himself with clarity, but he has no idea what meaning that world might have. Seated in this room used as both an examination room and a pharmacy, I surveyed the things around me—the rug, the table, the medicine bottles, the window, the mountains outside the window. My eyes apprehended them with perfect clarity, but as nothing more than images in a picture scroll.

  Just then the door opened and the doctor appeared. His face was of the miner type. He wore a black morning coat and striped pants. Thrusting his chin out above his collar, he asked, “You the one?”

  His tone of voice to me conveyed less esteem than one ought to reserve in one’s heart for a horse or a dog.

  “Yes,” I replied, leaving my chair.

  “Occupation?”

  “No particular occupation.”

  “No occupation. How have you supported yourself till now?”

  “My parents have done that.”

  “Your parents. You’ve been sponging off them?”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  “So you’re a sponge.”

  I didn’t reply to this.

  “Take your clothes off.”

  I took my clothes off. After briefly checking my chest and back with a stethoscope, the doctor suddenly grabbed my nose.

  “Breathe.”

  I breathed through my mouth. The doctor brought his hand near my mouth.

  “Now close your mouth.”

  He placed his hand beneath my nose.

  “What do you think, Doctor? Can I become a miner?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Is there something wrong with me?”

  “I’ll write it out for you.”

  He wrote something on a square piece of paper, which he all but threw at me. “Bronchitis,” it said.

  Bronchitis. The first step toward consumption. And once you had that, you were finished. No wonder I had had a premonition of death when I smelled the medicine. So I was going to die, after all. Another couple of weeks and I’d be dragged to the window like Kin and forced to look at a jangle. Then I’d have my own jangle, complete with the chanting and the smashing of the wash basins. Of course, there might not be anyone who’d chant and smash for a newcomer like me, but … well, finally, I didn’t know what was going to happen. And that was all right, too. Even now, as I go on living and working, I don’t know what’s going to become of me. As long as the world continues in an unbroken flow, the bright colors will go streaming by. I had always felt a miner to be the filthiest thing in the world, but if you looked at everything as a series of constantly changing colors, questions of filthy or not filthy simply didn’t enter in. Since nothing mattered, you could do as you liked. If I kept my hands in my pockets, destiny would take care of things one way or another. I could die or I could live. It didn’t make any difference. Going to Kegon Falls would be too much trouble. Go home to Tokyo? Why bother? Two or three coughs and my life would be over. Destiny had blown me this far, and until destiny blew me away, just staying here would be the least troublesome, the most convenient, the best way to let things run their natural course. I could last until my death as long as I stayed here training in degeneracy. Other kinds of training might be difficult for a consumptive, but degeneracy …

  I came upon the dandelion I had noticed on my way down. Before, its color had struck me as too beautiful for this place, but now it made no impression on me at all. I stood there a while, looking at it and wondering why it had seemed so beautiful, but still it was not beautiful. Then I started walking again. Climbing the gradual slope, I naturally turned my face upward. As always, there were miners looking down at me from the barracks, chin on hand. Their faces, which on the way down had filled me with such loathing, now seemed like clay dolls’ heads. They were not ugly, not frightening, not hateful. They were just faces, as the face of the most beautiful woman in Japan is just a face. And I was exactly like these men, a human being of flesh and bone, entirely ordinary and entirely meaningless.

  In this state, feeling as if I were crossing a desert island, I came to the boss’s house. When I called out to announce my presence, the shoji door clattered open and a girl of fifteen or sixteen appeared. Ordinarily, I would have been amazed to see a girl like that in a place like this, but now I felt nothing. Like a machine, I stated my business, and she, with one hand on the shoji, turned to call into the house, “Father! Someone to see you!”

  I grasped the fact that she was the boss’s daughter, but, having grasped the fact, my mind did nothing w
ith it. Even though she went on standing there, I forgot all about her. Then the boss came out.

  “What’s up?”

  “I went to the infirmary.”

  “Did you bring your health certificate? Let’s see.”

  I had forgotten about the certificate in my right hand and now began to wonder where I had put it.

  “Look. You’re holding it,” the boss said.

  He was right. I smoothed out the wrinkles and handed it to him.

  “Bronchitis. You’re sick.”

  “Yes, I’ve been rejected.”

  “That’s too bad. What’re you going to do?”

  “Please hire me anyway.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Yes, I know. But I can’t go home anymore. Please hire me. Please. I’ll do anything—run errands, keep the place clean …”

  “‘Do anything’? What can you do if you’re sick? This is a tough one, but since you dragged yourself all the way up here, let me think about it a while. I’ll know pretty much what’s happening by tomorrow. Come and see me again.”

  Having turned to stone, I made my way back to the boiler.

  That night, I was calm when I joined the circle around the hearth. No matter what the miners said to me, I ignored them. Nor did I feel any need to do otherwise. Let them raise all the commotion they liked; let them pester me and treat me cruelly. They and I were nothing more than images in a group portrait carved upon a single plank of wood. When it came time to sleep, I did not put out a quilt but remained sitting cross-legged by the hearth. After the others had dropped off, I dozed a little, too. Since there was no one to feed charcoal to the fire, it gradually weakened, and with the increasing cold, I woke up. The chill seeping in around my collar gave me shivers. I went outside and looked at the sky. It was filled with stars. Why were they shining like that? What were they trying to accomplish? I went back inside. Old Kin was there, stretched out as flat as ever. When would he be given his jangle? Which of us would die first, Kin or I? Yasu had supposedly been in the hole for six years, but how many more years would he go on hammering ore? In the end, he, too, would be stretched out flat in the corner of the boiler. He, too, would die. Sitting by the fireless hearth, I went on thinking until dawn. The thoughts came one after another in an endless stream, but all were withered and dry—no tears, no passion, no color, no scent. No fear, no terror, no ties, no regrets.

  When the sun came up, I had the usual breakfast and went to see the boss.

  “Oh, you’re here,” he said cheerfully. “I found just the right job for you. It took a little doing. At first I couldn’t think of anything, but then it occurred to me—you can be the boiler bookkeeper. We can get along fine without a bookkeeper, of course. The old woman’s been doing it till now. But I know how badly you want a job. What do you say? If you want it, I think I can get it for you.”

  “I’m very grateful,” I said. “I’ll take anything. What does a bookkeeper do?”

  “It’s easy. You just keep the books. We’ve got a lot of men here, and they’re always buying things—sandals, beans, seaweed, whatever. You just write down what they buy every day. The old woman hands out the stuff. All you do is keep a record of who took how much of what. Then I just look at the ledger and deduct what they owe from their pay. It’s not exactly what you’d call hard labor. Anybody can do it. But we’ve got a bunch of illiterates here, you know. If you’ll do the job for me it’ll be a big help. What do you say?”

  “Sounds fine. I’ll do it.”

  “It’s not going to pay much, I’m sorry to say. Four yen a month. Minus food.”

  “That’s plenty for me,” I replied, not especially overjoyed. Nor, of course, did this give me any long-sought-for peace of mind. Finally, though, my position at the mine was set.

  The next day, I took my place in a corner of the kitchen and went through the motions of keeping the books. Suddenly the miners began treating me differently. Now, instead of despising me, they went out of their way to butter me up. And I promptly started training to be a degenerate. I ate the mine’s rice and the bedbugs ate me. Every day, procurers would show up from the towns with new pigeons. And every day they’d bring more kids. I used part of my monthly four yen to buy the kids sweets. Later, though, after I had decided to go back to Tokyo, I stopped doing that. I performed my duties as bookkeeper for five months. Then I went back to Tokyo. That’s all there is to my experience as a miner. And every bit of it is true, which you can tell from the fact that this book never did turn into a novel.

  1 A roofed, open-air stage in the precincts of a Shintō shrine for the performance of sacred Kagura dances. Here, the shrine belongs to the cult of Hachiman, the god of war.

  2 Two kinds of thickly padded cloaks worn in cold weather. The hanten is a short jacket, the dotera a full-length kimono normally used for lounging at home or sleeping.

  3 Flat wooden footwear raised about one-and-a-half inches off the ground by two horizontal “teeth” and held onto the feet (normally bare) by cloth thongs.

  4 The broad sleeves of traditional Japanese clothing normally served as pockets, but a dotera’s sleeves have open ends unsuited to storage. A haragake is a vest held on by straps that cross in back. Usually made of dark blue cotton, the haragake has a pocket at the lower front and is worn by a workman under a happi coat.

  5 A manjū is a bun filled with sweet bean paste.

  6 Itabashi was one of the many little post towns along the old Nakasendō Highway. Built to lodge and service travelers, these towns began as long, narrow assemblages of inns and restaurants stretched along each side of the road. See Translator’s Afterword, Note 5, for more geographical details.

  7 First used in 1869 between Tokyo and Yokohama, horse-drawn omnibuses had been replaced in the cities by horse trolleys after 1882 and electric streetcars after 1897. By the time of the novel, the run to Itabashi was one of the few routes still served by the omnibus; hence its association with the Itabashi Highway.

  8 “The way to Chow was like a whetstone,/ And straight as an arrow.” James Legge, The Chinese Classics, 5 vols. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 4: 353.

  9 The wearing of a red blanket as a kind of winter poncho was formerly common enough in rural areas for the term “red blanket” (akagetto) to be a synonym for “country person.”

  10 A reference to the Diamond (Kongō, Vajra) Sūtra. The three “worlds” are past, present, and future.

  11 In the traditional children’s song “Ōsamu kosamu,” a little boy flies down from the mountain, saying, “It’s cold!”

  12 Yin = dark, Yang = light.

  13 The “boss” or hanba-gashira was a semi-feudal figure who ran the dormitory for the mine owner and collected a percentage of the miners’ pay. The system, inaugurated in the Meiji period, was known for its brutality.

  14 A bitter-tasting traditional health tonic made from a bear’s gall bladder dried complete with the bile.

  15 A popular narrative form originating in the late eighteenth century, performed by a single chanter. The chanter was accompanied by a three-stringed shamisen and recited tales often dealing with military exploits.

  16 A Shintō shrine atop a steep hill in downtown Tokyo, known for its flight of eighty-six stone steps.

  17 A one-eyed, one-legged umbrella with a mouth as depicted in any of several picture scrolls from the Edo period such as Hyakki yagyō zu (Night Procession of One Hundred Demons).

  18 A notoriously steep road located in a mountainous province of western China bordering on Tibet. Ladder-like planks were installed to assist travelers over the worst terrain.

  19 Buddhism’s River Styx. The departed soul crossed this river on the way to Hell, his actions on earth determining which of the three crossings, from shallow to deep, was the appropriate one for him.

  Translator’s Afterword

  In the opening paragraph of The Miner (Kōfu), Sōseki suggests what the reader is in for as his protagonist walks through a long, narrow
band of pine trees: “Can’t tell if I’m making headway with only trees around.” Like the trees, which are never seen as constituting a fully comprehended forest, the events of the book are not going to “develop,” he hints: “No point walking if the trees aren’t going to do something—develop.” Abandoning any hope of forcing either the trees or the events into a preconceived developmental framework, he will play games with them, hoping for some sense of mastery—and perhaps some fun.

  The protagonist’s experience turns out to be a long, often funny series of discrete thoughts and sense impressions that constitutes neither a conclusive picture of the world nor a finished portrait of himself. Life, for him, is merely “a series of constantly changing colors … images in a picture scroll” (pp. 235, 233)1 and a literary work that remains true to life (and, most importantly, true to the indeterminate nature of human personality) will never “turn into a novel” (p. 239).