Modern Japanese Short Stories

by Ivan Morris

  * * *

  I had spent all day painting a huge advertisement for women’s dresses on a tin billboard. In the evening when I had finished, I decided to pass by Chō’s shop. It was a close, sultry evening and although the summer was almost over, the sun was extremely hot. There was not the slightest breeze. When I arrived, Chō was standing in a shirt and a pair of khaki trousers working on a shiny tin bucket.

  “Have you ever been to the girls’ circus at Asakusa?” he said when he saw me.

  “No, never. I’ve been to the opera once—that’s all.”

  “I’d like to go to the amusement park at Asakusa,” said Chō wiping the perspiration off his face.

  “Asakusa,” I said. “That shouldn’t be too difficult. It doesn’t take all that long to get there.”

  “It’s all right if you’ve got money. Then you can go to the mountains for the summer. But when am I going to have time to go to Asakusa? I suppose that’s what they mean by no leisure for the poor.” His face was wreathed in smiles; he looked as if he was imagining the gay, bustling pleasure grounds of Asakusa.

  Presently Kichikō, the engineer’s mate, joined us. He had on a short workman’s coat.

  “Well, hot enough for you?” he said in his gruff voice. “What’s happening? Anything interesting?”

  “No, “said Chō. “By the way, Kichi, where were you last night?”

  “Last night? Oh yes, after work I went down to the river at Ryōgoku to cool off.” He sat down on Cho’s workbench and began fanning himself.

  “Look, Chō,” said Kichikō after a while. “What about you and me climbing that chimney over there by the spinning mill? We’d get quite a view.”

  “In this heat?” said Chō. “How high do you suppose it is?”

  “Come on, don’t be a coward,” said Kichikō laughing. “It’s two hundred and fifty feet.”

  “Heights don’t bother me,” said Chō. “I was always climbing trees when I was a kid.”

  “Well then, let’s go.”

  “What about you?” said Chō looking in my direction.

  I remembered how I had once peered out of the window from the fourth floor of an office building. The pavement below had looked white and dry in the glaring sun, and the heat seemed to be flashing from the hard surface. Suddenly I had imagined how my blood would redden those burned, white stones if I fell out of the window.

  I glanced at Chō but did not answer.

  Just then Kichikō looked at me. “Come on,” he said. “You can have a go at painting the top of the chimney. It’ll be more fun than those billboards of yours!”

  I was too much of a coward to admit that I was frightened of heights. “All right, I’ll come along,” I said, even simulating a certain enthusiasm.

  The three of us left Chō’s shop. On our way we stopped at an ice cream parlor and each had a glass of iced water. Then we set out for the spinning mill. It was on a huge dusty plain at the edge of the city. As we trudged along, the shriek of the crickets reverberated in my ears like the sound of a boiling kettle. The perspiration was streaming down my forehead. We were all looking ahead at the chimney which reared itself before us under the blue, cloud-speckled sky. It had only recently been completed and the scaffolding was still coiled round it all the way to the top like a monstrous snake. There was no smoke.

  We reached the chimney in about fifteen minutes.

  “Are you sure it’s two hundred and fifty feet?” said Chō looking up. “It doesn’t seem that high from here.”

  “Come on and see,” said Kichikō. “You’ll get dizzy just standing down here staring at it.” He bent his head back and looked up to the top. “Imagine working up there, though,” he added. “They wouldn’t get me to work on a chimney like that for anything.”

  We took off our coats and threw them on the ground next to the solid-looking brick foundation; then we removed our shoes and socks and wet the palms of our hands with spittle. I put one foot on the rickety scaffolding and glanced back at the city: under the deep blue sky the rooftops stretched out in solid black rows; they looked very safe.

  Kichikō started climbing first; after him went the rotund Chō and finally myself. The steps were not built straight, but circled round the chimney in an endless-looking spiral. The narrow iron rungs dug sharply into the soft soles of my feet.

  I had not realized what this climb would be like. As the other two moved steadily upward round the chimney, I gradually began to fall behind. When I had reached about the halfway mark, I suddenly felt I could not continue. But glancing down, I realized that it would be at least as hard to start going down. From now on, I forced every muscle in my body to continue climbing. My feet no longer hurt, but my legs were trembling uncontrollably and although I planted myself firmly on each rung, I had the uncomfortable feeling that at any moment my body would float off into space of its own accord.

  The wind was blowing quite hard up here and I could hear some of the looser boards of the scaffolding clatter noisily. If just one of these flimsy rungs should slip or break, I’d lose my footing and go plunging headlong into space. At the thought, a cold sweat ran over my whole body. My hands were particularly clammy and I was certain that they would slip as I grasped the rungs above. If only I could wipe them or rub them with sand.

  Looking up, I saw that Kichikō had reached the top of the chimney. He was standing on the narrow bricklayers’ platform that surrounded it and leaning with both his hands on a low, perilous railing. He looked round at the scenery. Now Chō reached the top and joined Kichikō in admiring the view. From time to time they glanced down the side of the chimney to see how I was getting on.

  Finally I reached the top. It was broader than I had imagined while climbing—about six feet in diameter. My legs were twitching with a sort of cramp and I realized that I could not possibly stand on the platform with the other two. Instead I squatted down carefully on the wooden boards and held on to the bottom of the railing with both hands. My teeth chattered and my whole body was trembling.

  I no longer cared in the slightest what impression I was making on my companions. My only object now was to elicit their sympathy so that they might somehow help me to reach the ground safely. Normally they would have laughed to see me in this condition and probably they would have teased me. But now they just glanced at me occasionally without smiling or saying anything, as if it was quite normal that I should be in such a state. In some way, this attitude of theirs added still further to my anxiety. I should almost have welcomed some normal bantering. Instead I heard Chō saying: “Take a look over there, Kichi. The sea’s come right up close, hasn’t it? And look at those trams. They’re just like little crawling bugs…. What’s that tower over there?”

  “That’s the twelve-story pagoda of Asakusa,” answered Kichikō nonchalantly.

  I just stared straight down at the wooden boards. My head was blank and there was a haze in front of my eyes. Yet I could not help noticing between the wide cracks of the boards people down below like tiny black beans. At this sight my throat became clogged and I could hardly breathe. I must stay still, I told myself. If I try looking at the sea or the twelve-story pagoda of Asakusa, I’m done for.

  Gradually I noticed that the sun was sinking and that the whole sky had turned crimson. Why in God’s name had I come up here? How would I ever get down? I was bound to lose my footing on those endless steps. As my mind darted back over my past life, which now seemed infinitely remote, I remembered with shame how I had cursed the monotony and never felt really grateful for its safety.

  Only a few feet away gaped the huge, black, empty mouth of the chimney. I was aware of a distant rumbling sound coming from its depths, like the roar of some great monster. At the same time I suddenly realized that the entire chimney was swaying to and fro, even if only very slightly. I had forgotten that tall buildings and chimneys move in the wind.

  A sense of despair came over me. Just then I heard an astounding remark from Kichikō.

  “I d
on’t suppose you could do that trick of yours up here?” he said.

  I looked up at Chō, who was standing directly over me. His face at this moment seemed more enormous than ever. He smiled strangely and looked round.

  “Of course I could,” he said after a while. “I can stand on my hands anywhere. The trouble is, there’s no proper place to rest my hands on up here. These damned boards bend every time you step on them. Besides, this platform’s so narrow that the railing would get in the way when I raised my legs.”

  “Supposing we bet you? If you can do it up here, we’ll each give you a yen,” said Kichikō after a pause. “What about it?” he added looking down at me. “You’d give him a yen, wouldn’t you?”

  The whole thing was a joke, I realized. Chō was a determined fellow, but he wasn’t crazy. He obviously knew that this would be suicide. I nodded silently at Kichikō. I’d share in the joke, if that’s what they wanted.

  “You’d each give me a yen, eh?” said Chō. “That makes a whole day’s wages.”

  “Only look here,” said Kichikō laughing nervously, “if you make a mistake, it’ll be the end of you. I’ll have to go down and pick up the mess.”

  “You needn’t tell me. I can figure that out for myself,” said Chō. “The trouble is,” he continued, as if speaking to himself, “where would I put my hands?” He looked all round the platform. Then his eyes came to rest on the thick iron mouth of the chimney. He bent over and looked into the great black opening.

  “If I do it,” he said, “I’ll stand on this edge.” He felt the surface of the chimney top.

  “The trouble is, it’s damned slippery.” Suddenly his expression changed, and with a sense of horror I knew that he was going to try the trick. I wanted to stop him and began to stutter out something, but the words wouldn’t come. All I could do was to squat there gazing up at him intently with my sunken eyes. Surely, I thought, he could not be doing this for the two yen, however much he may have wanted to spend the day at Asakusa. Could it be that he was still trying in some strange way to get the better of that girl at the circus? Or was he emulating the little man and defying monotony in his own way? I never knew. The next moment I heard Chō say: “All right, I’ll take the wager. I’ll have a go.” There was no longer the slightest trace of laughter in his voice.

  ‘“Wait a minute,” said Kichikō, suddenly becoming dead serious. “You know what’ll happen if you slip.”

  “If I slip, that’s the end of me.” There was a touch of defiance in Chō’s voice as he threw out the words. He turned round in the direction of the city and stared at it for a few moments. The sun was rapidly disappearing now and strangely shaped tufts of cloud drifted past in the darkening sky. Yet the top of our chimney was brilliant red from the last rays of the sun, as if illuminated by giant flames.

  Chō spat on his hands and rubbed his palms carefully with a handkerchief to remove any trace of greasiness. Then he hung the handkerchief on the railing and, bracing himself, planted both hands on the iron mouth of the chimney. For several moments he stood there peering down into the huge, black opening from whose depths emerged the continual roaring sound. I glanced at him. His eyes protruded from their sockets, his short fat back bulged, repeated tremors passed down his arms, and his close-cropped head was wet with perspiration. All this time the chimney swayed rhythmically to and fro in the wind.

  Chō brought his legs together and drew them in as far as possible to avoid catching them on the railing. Once they were raised, it would be too late to make any adjustment. Should he then miscalculate and lose his balance, he would either fall headlong into the two-hundred-and-fifty-foot gullet of the chimney or backward over the railing and down to the hard ground below.

  His legs had now left the platform and were already a few feet in the air. My head began going round and I had to look down. When I next glanced up, Chō was gradually straightening his legs. A moment later they were fully extended and now he stood there on his hands, his body a rigid line against the evening sky. A presentiment of relief ran through me.

  Kichikō had not taken his eyes off Chō for a moment. He continued to gaze fixedly at him as he now slowly drew in his legs and began to retrace the line he had drawn in the air. Skillfully avoiding the railing, he gradually brought them back to the platform. For the first time since the performance had begun, I allowed myself to look straight at him. The strength of his entire body seemed to be concentrated in the bulging muscles of his arms. I noticed that a sort of spasm was passing from the nape of his neck to his shoulders. His hair was drenched.

  The handstand was safely completed. For a while none of us spoke. Chō stood staring straight into space with unblinking, protruding eyes. His complexion was not even pale, but completely colorless like a dead man’s. Round the corners of his mouth I detected a cool, dark, self-mocking smile.

  In a flash I remembered seeing such a smile once before. A car had come hurtling along the street where I was walking and had almost run over a man working on the tram lines. By some miracle he had escaped, though the side of the car must have grazed his overalls. Afterward he had stood there rigid in the middle of the street still holding a large granite paving-stone. His eyes were wide open and there was a weird smile on his face. The car disappeared in the distance and the people who had stopped to look hurried on; but the man still stood there staring straight ahead into space.

  Then I noticed a black bird skimming past directly over the chimney and silhouetted strangely against the dark sky.

  Kichikō was the first to go down and I followed him. Glancing back, I saw Chō still standing there on the platform. His face was that of a dead man. He seemed sunk in thought.

  LETTER FOUND IN A CEMENT-BARREL

  BY Yoshiki Hayama

  TRANSLATED BY Ivan Morris

  Yoshiki Hayama was representative, both in his life and in his writing, of the so-called proletarian school. He was born in 1894 in Kyūshū. His father was a petty government official and his childhood was spent in genteel poverty. Hayama managed to enter Waseda University, but he was dismissed for irregular attendance. Thereafter he worked as a seaman on a cargo boat and later on a coal-carrier. The appalling labor conditions aboard these boats are graphically described in “Men Who Live on the Sea” (1928), his best-known novel.

  Having abandoned the seafaring life, Hayama shifted from one occupation to another. He worked, among other things, as a printer’s canvasser, a clerk in a school office, a cement-factory laborer and an operator in a hydroelectric power station. Much of the material in his novels and stories (including “Letter Found in a Cement-Barrel”) was suggested by these experiences.

  In 1919, Hayama began to take an active part in the incipient and precarious labor movement; in the same year he was thrown into prison for an infraction of the police regulation governing the maintenance of public peace.

  From then on he was almost constantly in and out of prison. His novels and stories were usually written while in custody. In between his terms of imprisonment he was busy fighting in the abortive labor movement of the 1920s and early 1930s. He died in 1945 in great poverty.

  Given the inherent limitations of the proletarian school of writing, Hayama’s work is often remarkably effective. On the whole he avoids sentimentalizing his workmen-martyrs, and by his sparse, compact prose he manages to keep the reader’s interest in the story even when the plot is obviously contrived to convey a message. It is inevitable, however, that his work should rapidly have dated; much of what he wrote, like the story translated here, is likely to strike the reader as a downright parody on “proletarian” literature. “Letter Found in a Cement-Barrel” (Semento-daru no Naka no Tegami) was first published in 1926, when Hayama was thirty-two.

  MATSUDO YOSHIZŌ was emptying cement barrels. He managed to keep the cement off most of his body, but his hair and upper lip were covered by a thick gray coating. He desperately wanted to pick his nose and remove the hardened cement which was making the hairs in his nostrils
stand stiff like reinforced concrete; but the cement-mixer was spewing forth ten loads every minute and he could not afford to fall behind in its feeding.

  His working day lasted for eleven hours and not once did he have time to pick his nose properly. During his brief lunch break he was hungry and had to concentrate on gulping down food. He had hoped to use the afternoon break for cleaning out his nostrils, but when the time came he found that he had to unclog the cement-mixer instead. By late afternoon his nose felt as if it were made of plaster of Paris.

  The day drew to an end. His arms had become limp with exhaustion and he had to exert all his strength to move the barrels. As he started to lift one of them, he noticed a small wooden box lying in the cement.

  “What’s this?” he wondered vaguely, but he could not let curiosity slow down the pace of his work. Hurriedly he shoveled cement onto the measuring frame, emptied it into the mixing boat, and then began shoveling out more cement again.

  “Wait a minute!” he muttered to himself. “Why the hell should there be a box inside a cement-barrel?”

  He picked up the box and dropped it into the front pocket of his overalls.

  “Doesn’t weigh much, damn it! Can’t be much money in it, whatever else there is.”

  Even this slight pause had made him fall behind in his work and now he had to shovel furiously to catch up with the cement-mixer. Like a wild automaton, he emptied the next barrel and loaded the contents onto a new measuring frame.