One day in May a graduate of our school, who was now a student in the Maizuru Naval Engineering School, had a holiday and came to visit his old middle school.
He was attractively sunburned and a powerful nose emerged from beneath his uniform cap, which he wore pulled down over his eyes: from top to toe he was the perfect young hero. Now he stood telling his juniors about the rigors of his present life with all its military regulations. Yet, although he was meant to be describing a life that was full of hardships, he spoke in a tone as though he were telling us about the most luxurious and extravagant existence. Every move that he made was full of arrogance, but, for all his youth, he was well aware of the importance of an assumed modesty. His chest, clothed in his braided uniform, was stretched out like the breast of the figurehead on a ship as it cuts its way through the sea breeze. He was sitting on the stone steps that led down to the school grounds. Round about him stood a group of students who listened eagerly to his words, and in the garden beds on the slope the May flowers were in bloom-tulips, sweet peas, anemones, and daisies; and above their heads hung the rich white blossoms of the magnolia tree.
Both the speaker and his listeners were stationary like monuments. I was sitting by myself on the ground a few yards away. Such was my manner. Such was my manner toward the May flowers and toward that pride-filled uniform and toward those bright peals of laughter.
Now this young hero was more concerned with me than with his admirers. It was only I who did not appear to bow before his dignity, and this thought hurt his pride. He asked the others what I was called.
"Hey, Mizoguchi!” he called out; this was the first time that he had set eyes on me. I stared at him without a word. In the smile that he now directed towards me, I could detect something like the flattery of a man of power.
"Why don’t you answer me something? Are you dumb?"
"I'm a st-st-stutterer," replied one of his admirers in my stead, and they all doubled up with laughter. What a dazzling thing it was, this scornful laughter! To me there was something brilliant-brilliant like the light reflected from the clusters of leaves-about this cruel laughter of my classmates which was so characteristic of boys of their age.
"What, you're a stutterer, are you? Why don't you enter the Naval Engineering School? They'll flog that stuttering out of you in a single day!”
I do not know how, but at once I gave a clear answer. The words flowed out smoothly, without the slightest volition on my part.
"I won't go there. I'm going to become a priest.”
Everyone was silent. The young hero lowered his head, picked a blade of grass, and put it in his mouth.
"Well, then," he said, "one of these years, when it's time for me to get buried, I'll be giving you some work to do.”
The Pacific War had already started.
At that moment I undoubtedly experienced a certain self-awakening. The knowledge that I was to stand waiting in a dark world with both hands stretched out. That some day the May flowers, the uniforms, my ill-natured classmates would all come into my outstretched hands. To be seized with the knowledge that I myself was grasping the world, squeezing it out, as it were, at the base.... But such a knowledge was too heavy to become a source of pride for a young boy like myself.
Pride must be a lighter thing, more cheerful, easier to see, more brilliant. I wanted something visible. I wanted my pride to be something that could be seen by anyone. For instance, the sword that he wore hanging from his waist was clearly such a thing.
This short sword, which all the middle-school students were admiring, was truly a beautiful ornament. It was said that the students at the Naval Academy were in the habit of using their swords secretly to sharpen their pencils. How elegant, I thought, to use so solemn a symbol for trifling matters of this sort!
It happened that the young man had taken off his Engineering School uniform and hung it on the white fence. The trousers and the white undershirt, as they hung there directly next to all the flowers-yes, it was the smell of a young man's sweat-moistened skin that they gave off. A bee mistakenly alighted on that white, shining shirt-flower. The uniform cap, adorned with its gold braid, rested on one part of the fence; just as if it were on its wearer's head, the cap sat there correctly, pulled down over the eyes. Its owner had been challenged by one of his juniors and had gone to the wrestling-ring in the back to engage in a bout.
Looking at these objects that he had discarded, I had the impression that I was seeing a sort of honorable grave. The abundant May flowers strengthened this feeling. The cap, which reflected the jet black of the visor, and the sword and its leather belt, which were hanging there next to it, had all been separated from his body and exuded an especially lyrical beauty. They were themselves as perfect as my memory of him-indeed, they looked to me like relics left by a young hero who has departed for the battle front.
I made sure that there was no one about. I heard the sound of cheering from the direction of the wrestling-ring. From my pocket I took out the rusty knife that I used for sharpening my pencils; then I crept up to the fence, and on the back of the beautiful black scabbard of the sword I engraved several ugly cuts....
From a description of this sort, people may judge at once that I must have been something of a young poet. But until this very day, far from ever having written a poem, I have not so much as written a memorandum in a notebook. I had no particular impulse to outshine others by cultivating some new ability and by thus making up for those points in which I was inferior. In other words, I was too proud to be an artist. My dream of being a tyrant or a great artist never went beyond the stage of being a dream, and I did not have the slightest feeling of wanting to accomplish something by actually putting my hands to it.
Because the fact of not being understood by other people had become my only real source of pride, I was never confronted by any impulse to express things and to make others understand something that I knew. I thought that those things which could be seen by others were not ordained for me. My solitude grew more and more obese, just like a pig.
All of a sudden my memory alights on a tragic incident that occurred in our village. I hough I was not actually supposed to have been concerned in any way with this incident, I still cannot rid myself of the definite feeling that I participated in it.
Through this incident, I found myself at a single stroke face to face with everything. With life, with carnal pleasure, with treachery, with hatred and with love-yes, with every possible thing in this world. And my memory preferred to deny and to overlook the element of the sublime that lurked in all these things.
Two houses away from my uncle's home there lived a pretty girl. She was callcd Uiko. Her eyes were large and dear. Perhaps because hers was a rich family, she had a haughty manner. Although people used to make much of her, one could not imagine what she was thinking when she was all by herself. Uiko was probably still a virgin, but jealous women used to gossip about her and say that her looks betokened a sterile woman.
Immediately after graduating from the Girls' Secondary School, Uiko became a volunteer nurse at the Maizuru Naval Hospital. The hospital was near enough for her to be able to go to work by bicyele. She had to report very early in the mornings and she left home in the gray light of dawn, some two hours before I set out for school.
One evening I lay sunk in gloomy fancies, thinking about Uiko's body. I could not sleep properly that night and, while it was still dark, I slipped out of my bed, put on my gym shoes and went out into the obscurity of a summer dawn.
That night was not the first time that I had pictured Uiko's body to myself. Something that had occasionally passed through my mind came gradually to adhere to it. Uiko's body, as though it were a coagulation of these thoughts of mine, became immersed in a gloomy shadow, which was both white and resilient; it came to congeal in the form of scented flesh. I used to think of the warmth that my fingers would feel when I touched that flesh. I thought, too, about the resilience which would meet my fingers and about the scent which would be like t
hat of pollen.
I ran straight along the road in the dawn darkness. The stones did not make me lose my footing and the darkness freely opened up the road ahead of me.
I came to a place where the road widened and led into the little hamlet of Yasuoka. Here grew a great keyaki tree. The trunk of the keyaki tree was moist with dew. I hid at the foot of the tree and waited for Uiko's bicyele to come from the direction of the village.
I had no idea of what I meant to do after I had waited. I had come running along here out of breath, but now that I had rested in the shade of the keyaki tree, I did not know myself what I was intending to do. I had, however, been living too much out of touch with the external world, and had as a result conceived the fancy that, once I leaped into the outer world, everything became easy, everything became possible.
The mosquitoes stung my legs. I heard cocks crowing here and there. I peered up the road. In the distances I saw something white and indistinct. I thought that it was the color of the dawn, but it was Uiko.
She was riding her bicyele. The headlight was turned on. The bicyele glided along silently. I ran out from the keyaki tree and stood in front of the bicycle. The bicycle just managed to come to a sudden halt.
Then I felt that I had been turned into stone. My will, my desire—everything had become stone. The outer world had lost contact with my inner world, and had once again come to surround me and to assume a positive existence. The “I” who had slipped out of his uncle's house, put on white gym shoes and run along this path through the darkness of the dawn until reaching the keyaki tree—that “I” had made merely its inner self run hither at full speed. In the village roofs whose dim outlines emerged in the darkness of the dawn, in the black trees, in the black summits of the Aoba-yama, yes, even in Uiko who now stood before me, there was a complete and terrible meaninglessness. Something had bestowed reality on all this without waiting for my participation; and this great, meaningless, utterly dark reality was given to me, was pressed on me, with a weight that I had until then never witnessed.
As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only things that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was always absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.
I was not looking at anything. Uiko, as I recall, was frightened at first, but, when she realized that it was I, she only looked at my mouth. She was, I suppose, looking at that silly little dark hole, that ill-formed little hole which was soiled like the nest of a small animal of the fields, and which now wriggled meaninglessly in the early dawn light-she was only looking at my mouth. And, having satisfied herself that not the slightest power was going to emanate from that mouth to connect me with the outside world, she felt relieved.
"Good heavens!" she said. “What an extraordinary thing to do. And you only a stutterer!"
Uiko's voice carried the freshness and propriety of a morning breeze. She rang the bell of her bicycle and once more put her feet to the pedals. She bicycled round me, as though she were avoiding a stone on the road. Though there was not another soul about, Uiko scornfully rang the bell of her bicycle again and again, and as she pedaled away, I could hear it echoing across the distant fields.
l hat evening, as a result of Uiko's having told on me, her mother called at my uncle's house. My uncle, who was usually so gentle, scolded me harshly. I cursed Uiko then and came to wish for her death; and a few months later my curse was realized. Ever since then I have firmly believed in the power of curses.
Day and night I wished for Uiko's death. I wished that the witness of my disgrace would disappear. If only no witnesses remained, my disgrace would be eradicated from the face of the earth. Other people are all witnesses. If no other people exists, shame could never be born in the world. What I had seen in Uiko's visage, behind those eyes of hers which shone like water in the dark, dawn light, was the world of other people-the world, that is, of other people who will never leave us alone, who will stand ready as the partners and witnesses of our crime. Other people must all be destroyed. In order that I might truly face the sun, the world itself must be destroyed....
Two months after she had told on me, Uiko gave up her job at the Naval Hospital and stayed at home. There was all sorts of gossip in the village. Then, at the end of autumn, the incident occurred.
We never so much as dreamed that a deserter from the Navy had taken refuge in our village. At about noon one day a member of the kempei-tai military police came to our village office. But it was no such rare thing for the kempei to come and we did not attach any particular importance to the visit.
It was a bright day towards the end of October. I had attended my classes as usual, finished my evening homework and was ready for bed. As I was about to turn out the light, I glanced out of the window and heard people running along the village street; they sounded out of breath like a pack of dogs. I went downstairs. My aunt and uncle had woken up, and we all went out together. One of my schoolmates was standing at the entrance of the house. His eyes were wide open with surprise.
"The kempei have just caught Uiko," he shouted to us. "They've got her over there. Let's go and look!"
I slipped on my sandals and started running. It was a lovely moonlit night and here and there in the harvested fields the rice racks threw clear shadows on the ground.
Behind a cluster of trees I could see the movement of a group of dark silhouettes. Uiko was sitting on the ground in a black dress. Her face was extremely white. Round about her stood some kempei and her parents. One of the kftnpei was holding out something that looked like a lunch box and he was shouting. Her father was turning his head from one side to the other, now apologizing to the kempei, now reproaching his daughter. Her mother was crouched on the ground and was crying.
We were observing the scene from the far end of a rice field. The number of spectators gradually increased and their shoulders touched each other silently in the night. Above our heads hung the moon as small as if it had been squeezed.
My schoolmate whispered an explanation into my ear. It appeared that Uiko had stolen out of her house with the lunch box and was setting off for the next village when she was caught by the kempei, who had been lying in ambush for her. She had clearly intended to deliver the lunch box to the deserter. Uiko had grown intimate with this deserter while she was working at the Naval Hospital; as a result she had become pregnant and had been dismissed. The kempei was now cross-examining her about the deserter's hiding-place, but Uiko just sat there without moving an inch and remained obdurately silent.
For my part, I could only gaze unblinkingly at Uiko's face. She looked like a madwoman who has been caught. Her face was motionless under the moon.
Until then I had never seen a face so full of rejection. My face, I thought, was one that had been rejected by the world, but Uiko's face was rejecting the world. The moonlight was mercilessly pouring over her forehead, her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her cheeks; but her motionless face was merely washed by the light. If she had moved her eyes or her mouth even a little, the world, which she was striving to reject, would have taken this as a signal to come surging into her.
I gazed at it and held my breath. At the face whose history had been interrupted at just this point, and which would not tell a single thing regarding either the future or the past. Sometimes we see such a face on the stump of a tree that has just been chopped down. Though the cross section of the tree is young and fresh in color, all growth has ceased at this point; it is open to the wind and the sun, to which it should never have been opened; it is exposed suddenly to a world which was not originally its own—and on this cross section, drawn with the beautiful grain of the wood, we see a strange face. A face that is held out to this world just so that it may reject it....
/> I could not help thinking that never again would there come a time either in Uiko's life or in the life of myself, the onlooker, when her face would be as beautiful as it was at this instant. But it did not last as long as I had expected. For a transformation suddenly came over that beautiful face of hers.
Uiko stood up. I have the impression that at that moment I saw her laugh. I have the impression that I saw her white teeth glittering in the moonlight. I can say no more about this transformation; for, as Uiko stood up, her face moved away from the moonlight and was lost in the shade of the trees.
It was a shame that I could not see this change that came over Uiko at the moment when she decidcd on betrayal. If I had in fact seen it in all its details, there might have sprouted up within me a spirit of forgiveness for people, a spirit that would forgive every sort of ugliness.
Uiko pointed in the direction of the mountain cove of Kahara in the next village.
"Ah, so he's in the Kongo Temple!" shouted the kempei.
Then I was infused with a childish sense of festive gaiety. The kempei decided to split into separate groups and surround the Kongo Temple from all sides. The villagers were called on to give their assistance. Out of spiteful interest, I joined a few other boys in the first party. Uiko walked ahead of our party as a guide. I was surprised at the confidence in her footsteps as she walked before us along the moonlit path, flanked by the kempei.
The Kongo Temple was a famous place. It was built in a mountain cove about fifteen minutes by foot from the hamlet of Yasuoka, and was known for the kaya tree planted by Prince Takaoka and for its graceful three-storied pagoda attributed to Hidari Jingoro. In the summer we often used to come here to bathe in the waterfall behind the hills.
The wall of the main temple was by the side of the river. The pampas grass grew thickly on the broken clods of earth and their white ears shone brightly in the night. Near the gate of the main temple the sasanqua were in bloom. Our party walked silently along the river.
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion Page 3