Some Prefer Nettles

by Junichiro Tanizaki

  The Japanese order in personal names, with the surname first, has been preserved in both this introduction and the translation.

  I am indebted to the Ford Foundation for the grant that made experimental work on this translation possible. I am also indebted to Mr. Takahashi Osamu, who went over the manuscript and was most patient with my questions.

  October 1954 E. G. S.

  SOME

  PREFER

  NETTLES

  "You think you might go, then?" Misako asked several times during the morning.

  Kaname as usual was evasive, however, and Misako found it impossible to make up her own mind. The morning passed. At about one o'clock she took a bath and dressed, and, ready for either eventuality, sat down inquiringly beside her husband. He said nothing. The morning newspaper was still spread open in front of him.

  "Anyway, your bath is ready."

  "Oh." Kaname lay sprawled on a couple of cushions, his chin in his hand. He pulled his head a little to the side as he caught a suggestion of Misako's perfume. Careful not to meet her eyes, he glanced at her—more accurately he glanced at her clothes— in an effort to catch some hint of a purpose that might make his decision for him. Unfortunately, he had not been paying much attention to her clothes lately. He knew vaguely that she gave a great deal of attention to them and was always buying something new, but he was never consulted and never knew what she had bought. He could make out nothing more revealing than the figure of an attractive and stylish matron dressed to go out.

  "What would you like to do?" he asked.

  "It doesn't really matter. If you're going, I'll go too. If not, I can go to Suma."

  "You've promised to go to Suma?"

  "Not really. Tomorrow would do as well."

  Seated stiffly, her eyes fixed firmly on a spot two or three feet over Kaname's head, Misako began buffing her nails.

  Today was not the first time they had been faced with this difficulty. Indeed, whenever they had to decide whether or not to go out together, each of them became passive, watchful, hoping to take a position according to the other's manner. It was as if they held a basin of water balanced between them and waited to see in which direction it would spill. Sometimes the day passed without their coming to a decision, sometimes at the last moment they suddenly knew what they would do. Today was a little different, however. Kaname sensed that they would finally go out together. His refusal even so to be a little more positive was not entirely a matter of perverseness or laziness. He thought of their tense trips alone together, no less tense for being, as today, only the one-hour trip to downtown Osaka. He sensed too what Misako wanted to do. She did not have to go to Suma, she said, but there was not much doubt that she would rather go there to see Aso than be bored at the puppet theater with her father. It seemed necessary somehow to bring her feelings out into the open.

  Misako's father had called from Kyoto the day before and asked if the two of them would join him at the theater. Misako had been out, and Kaname had been rash enough to say that they "probably could." As a matter of fact he could not very well have refused. "Let me know the next time you come down for the theater," he had remarked once in a somewhat hypocritical attempt to please the old man. "I haven't been in much too long myself." He had evidently been taken at his word. Then too, quite aside from the play, it was not entirely impossible that he and Misako's father might not have another chance to talk at their ease together. The old man, now nearly sixty, was in retirement in Kyoto, where he lived the life of the conservative man of taste. While Kaname's own tastes were rather different and he was often enough annoyed at the old man's displays of connoisseurship, still the latter had played the gallant in his youth, it was said, and there remained something open and easy in his manner that Kaname found very attractive. The thought that soon they might no longer be father-in-law and son-in-law gave him considerable regret —in fact, he sometimes told himself ironically, the regret at divorcing his father-in-law might be somewhat stronger than the regret at divorcing his wife —and, though ordinarily such an idea would not have troubled him, he wanted one last chance to demonstrate his sense of filial duty.

  Still, it was a mistake not to have consulted Misako. He was usually very careful to consider her wishes. She had gone out the evening before "to do some shopping in Kobe," and as he talked to the old man the picture had come into Kaname's mind of the two of them, the old man's daughter and Aso, walking along the shore at Soma, arm in arm, and with it the flicker of a conviction that if she was seeing Aso then, she need hardly see him again the following day. But maybe he was being unjust. Misako never hid things from him. She disliked lying and she had no need to lie, and when she said she was going shopping, perhaps she was indeed going shopping. It was not pleasant, though, for Kaname to be told baldly of each visit to Aso, she must know, and perhaps he was not being too suspicious when he took her "shopping in Kobe" to mean something else. In any case, she would not accuse him of malice in having accepted the invitation, he felt sure—and then again, even assuming that she had seen Aso the evening before, she might want to see him again. At first her visits had been fairly infrequent, once every week or ten days, but it was not uncommon now for her to see him two and three days running.

  When Kaname came back from the bath, ten minutes or so later, she was still polishing mechanically at her fingernails, her eyes still fixed on the wall.

  "Do you want to see it?" she asked.

  She avoided looking at him. out on the veranda now, a bathrobe hung loosely from his shoulders, parting his hair in a hand mirror. As she spoke she brought the shiny, pointed nails of her left hand up close to her eyes.

  "Not especially. I told him I did, though."

  "When?"

  "When was it, I wonder.... He got so excited about his puppets that I finally nodded back to make him happy."

  Misako laughed pleasantly, as she would for the merest acquaintance. "You hardly needed to do that. You've never been that friendly with Father, after all."

  "In any case, maybe we ought to stop by for a few minutes."

  "Where is the Bunraku Puppet Theater?"

  "It's not at the Bunraku. The Bunraku burned down. It's at a place downtown called the Benten."

  "That means we sit on the floor? I can't stand it, really I can't. My knees will be agony afterwards."

  "There's no avoiding it. That's the sort of place people like your father go. His tastes have got a little beyond me—and after the way he used to love the movies. I read somewhere the other day that men who are too fond of the ladies when they're young generally turn into antique-collectors when they get old. Tea sets and paintings take the place of sex."

  "But Father hasn't exactly given up sex. He has O-hisa."

  "She's one of the antiques in his collection, exactly like an old doll."

  "If we go we'll have her inflicted on us."

  "Then let's have her inflicted for an hour or two. Think of it as filial piety." Kaname began to feel that Misako had some very special reason for not wanting to go.

  She went briskly over to the chest, however, and took out a kimono for him, carefully folded in a paper cover. "You're wearing kimono, I suppose."

  Kaname was as careful about his clothes as Misako was about hers. A particular kimono required a particular cloak and a particular sash, and each ensemble was planned down even to accessories like the watch and chain, the wallet, the cloak-cord, the cigarette case. Only Misako understood the system well enough to be able to put everything together when he specified the kimono he would wear. Now that she had taken to going out by herself a good deal, she always made sure before she left that his clothes were laid out for him. Indeed, when he thought of it, that was the only function she really discharged as a wife, the only function for which another woman would not do as well. Particularly when, as today, she stood behind him, helping him into his kimono and straightening his collar, he became most keenly aware of what an eccentric thing their marriage was. Who, looking at them n
ow, could know that they were not really husband and wife? Not even the servants, who saw them every day, seemed yet to have suspected it. And indeed weren't they husband and wife? He thought of how she helped him even with his underwear and socks. Marriage was after all not only a matter of the bedroom. He had known women enough in his life who ministered to that particular need. But surely the reality of marriage lay as much in these other small ministrations. Indeed, he could almost feel that through them marriage was revealing itself in its most basic, its most classical form, and he could think of Misako as an entirely satisfactory wife....

  Kaname looked down at the back of Misako's neck as he stood tying his sash. She knelt with a black cloak spread on her knee, attaching the cord for him, and the cord pin drew a sharp black line against the white of her hand. Now and then, as she worked the pin into place, the tips of her softly polished nails met with the slightest click. She perhaps knew from experience what sort of emotions the occasion would arouse in him, and, as if to ward off the possibility that she herself might be drawn into the same sentimentality, she went at her duties precisely, impersonally. That in itself, however, made it possible for him to look down on her, a sort of mute regret rising in him, without fear of meeting her eyes. He saw the curve of her back, he saw the soft roundness of her shoulders in the shadow of her kimono, he saw, where her kimono was kicked aside at the skirt, an inch or two of ankle above her sock, white and crisply starched in the Tokyo manner. Her skin, under these stolen glimpses, seemed fresher and younger than her almost thirty years, and had it belonged to someone else's wife he could have found it beautiful and exciting. Even now sometimes in the night he felt a certain desire to press close, to caress it as he had in those first nights after they were married. But the sad thing was that, since those early nights, her skin had quite lost its power to excite him. The very youth and freshness might indeed be due to the fact that he had forced on her a sort of widow's existence—the thought came to him less sad than strangely chilling.

  "And it's such a beautiful day." She had the cord ready and moved around to help him into the cloak. "It seems a shame to waste it in a theater."

  Kaname felt her hand brush against his neck two or three times, but her touch was as cool and impersonal as a barber's.

  "Shouldn't you telephone Aso?" He suspected that she was thinking of more than the weather.

  "No...."

  "I wish you would."

  "It isn't at all necessary."

  "Won't he be waiting?"

  Misako hesitated. "I suppose so.... When will we be back?"

  "If we go now and stay for an act or so, we should be out by five or six."

  "I wonder if it would be too late to go to Suma then."

  "It probably wouldn't be too late, but we don't know what plans your father has. If he wants us to go to dinner we can't very well refuse.... All in all, maybe you ought to wait till tomorrow."

  As he finished speaking, a maid came in to say that Misako had a call from Suma.

  MISAKO was at the telephone for a half-hour before it was agreed that the next day would do as well. She still looked pensive and unhappy when toward three o'clock they left the house. These expeditions alone together were becoming more and more of a rarity.

  They did sometimes go out on Sunday afternoons with Hiroshi, who was in the fourth grade. Hiroshi had in a vague way sensed that something was wrong, and it seemed necessary to reassure him. But how many months had it been since they had gone out quite alone? Kaname was sure that Hiroshi would be much less hurt at having been left out than delighted when he got back from school and found that the two of them had gone off together.

  Whether it was good to reassure him Kaname did not really know. The child was over ten, after all, and unless he is feeble-minded a child that age reacts not too differently from an adult. "Isn't he clever?—he seems to have guessed when no one else has," Misako once said. Kaname laughed. "Of course he has. Any child would, and only a mother would be surprised at it." Clearly he would one day have to tell Hiroshi everything, to appeal to his reason. Kaname did not doubt that the boy would understand, and to deceive him seemed as reprehensible as to deceive a grownup. Neither he himself nor Misako was wrong, Kaname would say; what was wrong was outdated convention. The time would come when a child need think nothing of having divorced parents. He would go on being their child, and he could visit one or the other as he chose.

  So Kaname would explain it one day. But in the meantime he could not be sure that he and Misako would not have a reconciliation, and in any case it seemed pointless to upset Hiroshi any earlier than was necessary. The "one day" therefore continued to be postponed, and, in the desire to see the boy happy, the two of them occasionally put on bright connubial expressions and went out for a walk with him. But the intuitive powers of a child that age were remarkable, Kaname sometimes thought. Hiroshi was probably quite beyond being deceived, and indeed he was perhaps acting a part as carefully as they were, hiding his troubles from them, trying to make them happy as they were trying to make him happy. The three of them would go out for their walk, each alone with his thoughts, each feigning easy, pleasant family affection. The picture was a little frightening. That his and Misako's conspiracy to deceive the world should have been allowed to include Hiroshi seemed to Kaname rather a serious crime.

  He could not bring himself to flaunt his marriage as a model for the new morality, the convention-free future. He had a strong case, he felt, and his conscience was clear against the day when he might have to defend himself; but he hardly liked the thought of going out of his way to put himself in a doubtful position. He preferred to live quietly, unobtrusively, casting no dishonor on his ancestors, a member of the leisure class—a marginal member perhaps, but still a member—with the capital, somewhat diminished, that his father had left, and with at least the nominal title of director of his father's company. He himself had little to fear from meddling relatives, but his wife's position was more dangerous. Unless he protected her he could easily find that they had both become shackled quite beyond hope of winning back any ground for movement. What, for instance, if rumors were to spread abroad and the old man in Kyoto, broad-minded though he might be, were to feel himself compelled for the sake of public opinion to disown her? "That worries me not in the least. I can get along quite well without my family," Misako herself said, but as a practical matter could she? Aso had a family too, and with her reputation ruined she might find that even if she freed herself from Kaname she could not go to him. And what of Hiroshi? What would his future be with a social outcast for a mother? If they were to be happy once they had parted, everything considered, it seemed wise for the moment at least to maintain the pretense of a marriage and to work quietly toward an understanding that would alienate no one. To keep the world from looking in on them, they gradually narrowed their circle of associations. There were still occasions, however, when they had to put on their disguises and act their parts, and Kaname always felt guilty and unhappy when they came up.

  Perhaps Misako did too and that was why she had seemed so reluctant to go out with him today. She was in many ways timid and indecisive, but she had a hard core that made her resist the demands of custom, duty, friendship, more strongly than Kaname himself could. She did not seem to mind acting with a certain restraint for the sake of Kaname and Hiroshi, but she did not care to display herself as a wife any more than she had to. It was not only that she disliked the deception. She had Aso to consider. He understood the situation and acquiesced in it, but he expected her to appear in public as little as possible, and he would hardly be pleased if he heard that she and Kaname had for no very good reason gone to the theater together in the heart of the very busiest part of Osaka. Whether Kaname sensed none of this or sensed it all and saw no point in worrying about it she could not say, and it added to her impatience not to be able to tell him clearly what was disturbing her. Surely there was no reason for him to go on cultivating her father. It would have been another matter
, of course, if it had seemed that the old man was to go on being "father" to Kaname indefinitely, but with the end of the relationship so near, were there not indeed reasons why it might be better to be more aloof? It would only upset the old man the more to hear of the divorce after this careless display of filial piety.

  The two of them, with their separate thoughts, boarded the train for downtown Osaka. The early cherries were just coming into bloom. For all the brilliance of the late-March sun, there was still a touch of winter in the air. Kaname's sleeve, where the black silk showed under his light spring cloak, glittered in the sun like sand along the seashore. As he pulled his hands inside his kimono he felt a touch of cold air down his back. He disliked the patches of winter underwear one so often sees at the neck and sleeves of a kimono, and even in the coldest weather he wore only a long under-kimono next to his skin.

  The car was half empty, it being an off hour, and at each station a few passengers unhurriedly got on and out. The roof was painted a fresh white, sending a strong light into the deepest corners and making the faces of the passengers look somehow bright and healthy. Misako had taken a seat on the side of the car opposite him. She sat with her shawl pulled over the lower part of her face, reading a small volume of translations. The white cloth cover, fresh from the bookstore, was clean and sharp as a sheet of metal, and her fingers against the binding were clothed in sapphire-colored silk net gloves, the pointed fingernails glowing softly through the tiny openings.

  Almost always when they went out together they took up their positions thus. If Hiroshi was between them it was a different matter, but if they were alone, side by side, the one feeling the warmth of the other, it seemed more than uncomfortable, it seemed almost immoral. One of them therefore would wait for the other to find a seat, and then carefully take a seat on the other side. To guard against the danger that their eyes might meet, Misako always had something with her to read, and as soon as she sat down she erected a screen in front of her eyes.