To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

by Sōseki Natsume

  When I heard the story, it provided me with an image not of a beautiful Italian woman with brown hair but, instead, of Chiyoko with her own eyes and eyebrows. I further thought that if the girl were not Chiyoko but her sister Momoyoko, she would no doubt have gracefully accepted the gift with at least outward civility, no matter what her own personal feelings would have been. For Chiyoko that would have been impossible.

  My uncle Matsumoto, in his usual sarcastic way, has given the two sisters nicknames. He calls them Big Toad and Little Toad because their lips, which are a little too long for their thinness, resemble the toad-mouth-like metal clasp of a coin purse. He's always either made them laugh or angered them by this comparison. Calling them "toad" refers only to their physical features and has nothing to do with their personalities, though. But my uncle also has the habit of saying, "Little Toad's lovable for her gentleness, but Big Toad's a little too fierce." When I hear him make this comment, I want to question his critical eye, wondering what he takes Chiyoko to be. Her speech and behavior sometimes seem fierce not because she has something unwomanly or coarse in her, but because she abandons herself to her own too feminine tenderness, oblivious of everything around her—I'm sure this is right. Her discernment of good and bad, of right and wrong, is almost independent of anything she has learned or experienced. It merely flares up intuitively and takes direct aim at the person she happens to be dealing with. So you sometimes feel as if you've been struck by lightning; the strong jolt you receive means that sparks of purity are bursting from her. The sensation is completely different from what you would feel if thorns were flung at you or poisons poured into you. As evidence, I can vouch that many a time, no matter how violently she's scolded me, I've felt as if I'd had my very heart purified by her. I've even experienced some rare moments when I thought I had met in her one of the exalted. Standing alone, I would like to vindicate her to the world as the most womanly of all women!

  Where is the discontent I feel about Chiyoko in the role of my wife, this Chiyoko whom I think so much of? Once I asked myself this question. Even before I began thinking about the reason, I was frightened. I couldn't bear imagining for very long the two of us as man and wife. My mother would undoubtedly be astonished to hear these words. Even friends my own age would probably be unable to understand. However, since there's no need to let these solitary thoughts lie buried in silence, I'll tell them to you now. In a word, Chiyoko's a woman who does not know fear, but I'm a man who knows only that. And so, not only are we ill-matched, but if we were to get married, we would have to reverse our relationship as man and wife.

  I've always thought, "There's nothing more beautiful than a pure feeling. There's nothing stronger than something beautiful." It's quite natural that the strong shouldn't be afraid. If I took Chiyoko as my wife, I couldn't endure the powerful light emanating from her eyes. That light would not necessarily be expressive of anger—if it were one of mercy, love, or adoration, I would still feel the same. I would most certainly be cowed by it because I'm too deficient in emotion to return anything as bright as her emotion, much less anything brighter. I've been raised by the world as a poor drinker, unqualified to fully appreciate a cask of mellowed wine given to me.

  If Chiyoko were to become my wife, she'd certainly experience a cruel disappointment. In return for lavishly bestowing on her husband so much of the beautiful feeling that she's been endowed with, she'd certainly expect him to be active in society as the one reward for the mental nourishment she's given him. A woman as young and unlearned and narrow in outlook as Chiyoko is— pitifully so—would not regard a man as a man unless he grabbed the power or fortune actually visible to her eyes and devoted his entire mind and talents to worldly success. With the kind of simplicity she has, she's obsessed by the idea that if she were to become my wife, she could demand such activity of me and expect that I'd be capable of doing it merely because she demanded it. This is where the source of the unhappiness between us lies. And I am, as I said, of such a somber disposition that I'd be incapable of accepting the amount of that beautiful feeling she would offer as my wife. Even if I were able to absorb it—as thirsty soil absorbs water poured onto it— I could never be made to put it to the good uses she'd want me to. If her purity actually affected me in some way or another, it would only reveal itself in some unexpected form she'd never understand, no matter how often I explained it to her. And if she actually noticed it, she'd no more appreciate it than if I applied pomade to my hair or wrapped my feet in tabi of expensive silk. What I'm saying is that from her point of view, she'd only be wasting her beauty on me, and eventually she'd come to lament more and more our unhappy union.

  Whenever I compare myself to Chiyoko, I'm inclined to repeat the words "a woman unafraid and a man afraid" until the proposition seems not my own invention but one found in the pages of a Western novel. The other day my uncle Matsumoto, in one of his usual lectures, made a distinction between poetry and philosophy, and since then those words about fear have reminded me of poetry and philosophy, subjects quite alien to me. Although he's only a dilettante, he is rather well versed in those fields, so he was able to tell me a number of interesting things. But he was wrong in calling me "an emotional person like you," as if he implicitly attributed to me a poet's personality. The way I see it, not being afraid is characteristic of poets, while being afraid is the destiny of philosophers. My hesitancy, my inability to be resolute, comes from an oversolicitous concern about the results of my actions. Chiyoko's ability to behave as freely as the wind comes from the instantaneous outpouring of her heart. Her emotion is so strong that it blinds her to the future. She's one of the most fearless persons I know. And so she despises my own fearfulness. For my own part I have deep pity for her, liable as she is to stumble from the burden of emotion of a poet who does not realize the irony of fate. No, sometimes I shudder in terror for her.

  Keitaro had some trouble understanding the last part of Sunaga's narrative. Perhaps he was in his own way a poet or a philosopher. But these would merely be words used by others to characterize him as they saw him, and he considered himself neither. The words "poetry" and "philosophy" meant to him something dreamlike, almost beneath notice, with no value except possibly on the moon. Moreover, he had a thorough dislike of theory. A mere theory lacking the power to guide him, no matter how finely it was conceived, was as useless to him as a counterfeit bill. Therefore, he should not have allowed the phrase "a man afraid and a woman unafraid," which sounded like words found in a fortune-telling cracker sold by a street hawker, to pass without some comment. But since it was introduced into Sunaga's personal history as a natural sequence of the narrator's intimate thoughts, Keitaro felt he had to listen submissively in spite of not really knowing what it all meant.

  Sunaga also noticed that he had digressed. "This has gotten too theoretical, too complicated. I've let myself run on and on."

  "Never mind. It's really been quite interesting."

  "It's all because of your cane, isn't it?"

  "It seems so, oddly enough. While you're at it, why not go on a little more?"

  "I've got nothing more to add," Sunaga replied quite definitely and turned to look at the quiet flow of water.

  Keitaro too was silent for a time. For some strange reason, what he had heard from Sunaga—whether poetry or philosophy he couldn't tell—remained in his mind, towering like a huge column of a shapeless cloud that would not soon vanish. The silent Sunaga that Keitaro found sitting before him now looked like some singular person quite removed from the image of the friend so familiar to him. Certain that Sunaga still had something of the story yet to unfold, Keitaro asked when that incident last spoken of had occurred. Sunaga said that it was in about his third year at the university. Keitaro then asked what course the relationship had taken in this period of over a year, how it was proceeding, and what resolution Sunaga had come to. Sunaga merely smiled and said, "Let's get out of here first." They paid for their meal and left. As Sunaga observed the shadow of the can
e Keitaro wielded so proudly, he came out with another helpless smile.

  When they entered the compound of Taishakuten Temple of Shibamata, they looked as if they were obligated to pay homage to its commonplace edifice. Soon they went out the gate. Both were thinking that they would immediately take a train back to Tokyo, but at the station they found that they still had a great deal of time left before one of the slower local trains was due. They entered a nearby teahouse to rest. What follows is the story Keitaro got Sunaga to tell him on the strength of that earlier promise.

  There was one incident during the summer vacation intervening between my third and fourth year at the university. I was in my upstairs room, wondering how I would get through the impending hot season, when my mother came up to suggest a visit to Kamakura if I had the time. About a week earlier the Taguchis had gone there for the summer. My uncle actually doesn't like seaside resorts, so the family usually spent each summer at his villa in Karuizawa. But when my cousins insisted that year, he allowed them to spend the vacation swimming in the sea and so had rented a villa at Zaimokuza in Kamakura.

  Before the Taguchis left, Chiyoko had come over to say good-bye and to give us some information about the place. I had heard Chiyoko eagerly inviting my mother to visit them, telling her that even though she herself had not yet seen it, she had been told the house was rather large, built in two or three tiers on a cool bluff in the recess of a hill. So I advised my mother to go by herself, since it would be quite pleasant for her. She took from her kimono a letter that Chiyoko had given her. It was signed by both Chiyoko and Momoyoko, and conveyed what seemed to be their mother's order to have my mother and me join them. If my mother was to go, I would have to accompany her, for it would be worrisome to have someone her age riding the train alone. As for me, unsociable as I am, I hated causing trouble by forcing ourselves on a family already in confusion in a new place, even though we might not actually be a burden to them. But my mother's face indicated her desire to go, although it seemed much more for my own sake than hers, and that made me all the more disinclined. However, we decided to go after all. Others may not be able to understand me, but I'm that strong-willed and weak-willed at the same time.

  My mother, being of a retiring disposition, doesn't usually like going on trips. My father had been a strict man and had always demanded respect, so it seems she could seldom afford to be away from home. Actually, I have no memory of my mother and father ever being away for their own pleasure. Even after my father's death, when she had more free time, she unfortunately didn't have many opportunities to go when and where she liked. Without the convenience of traveling far from home or of remaining away a long time, she saw the years advance as the two of us, mother and child, remained in our house.

  I carried our suitcase to the train on the day we planned to head for Kamakura. When the train started, my mother smiled at me sitting there beside her and remarked on how long it had been since she was on a train. For that matter, it wasn't a frequent experience for me either. Our talk, under the influence of a fresh mood, was more lively than usual. We discussed what neither of us would ever remember in the least, allowing the conversation to follow its own course. Before we realized it, the train had arrived at our station.

  Since we hadn't notified anyone beforehand, no one was there to meet us. But when we hired rickshaws and told the rickshawmen the name of the owner of the villa, they recognized it at once and started off down a sandy road. I noticed that the number of new houses had greatly increased since my last visit. As I looked between the pine trees standing along the road, I saw some strikingly beautiful yellow flowers in the distant fields. At first glance I thought I'd never seen that kind of flower before. They looked something like rape plants. Over and over in the rickshaw I thought about the species this shimmering color belonged to until I realized that they were nothing more than pumpkin flowers, which amused me.

  When the rickshaws arrived at the gate of the villa, figures moving back and forth in the drawing room, which had had all its shoji removed, were easily visible from the road. Among them I saw a man in a white yukata, and the thought occurred to me that it was probably my uncle who had come a day or so before from Tokyo to spend the night. But when the entire family came out to the doorway to greet us, that man failed to appear. If it was my uncle, it seemed to me that he might just as soon have remained indoors. But when we went into the drawing room, he was not there either.

  As I was looking around for him, my aunt and mother began exchanging those wordy greetings typical of older women: "How awfully hot it must have been on the train," and "How fortunate to have come upon a house with such a fine view," and on and on. Chiyoko and Momoyoko offered my mother a summer yukata to change into and hung her traveling kimono out to air. A maid showed me to a bathroom where I could wash up with cold water. Although the villa was situated near a range of hills quite distant from the beach, the water was not as good as I had expected. When I wrung out the towel and glanced at the bottom of the washbasin, I found a sand-like sediment.

  "Use this." Chiyoko's voice came from behind.

  I looked back and saw her holding a dry white towel over my shoulder. I took it and stood up. From a drawer in the mirror stand nearby she handed me a comb. While I sat before the mirror combing my hair, she leaned against the bathroom doorpost and looked at my wet head.

  Since I didn't say anything, she spoke first. "The water isn't too good, is it?"

  Without turning my eyes from the mirror, I replied, "Why is it this color?"

  When the subject of the water came to an end, I put the comb on the mirror stand and stood up with the towel still over my shoulders. But before I did, she had left the doorway and started toward the drawing room. All of a sudden I called her to ask where my uncle was. She came to a halt and turned around.

  "He was here several days ago, but the day before yesterday he went back to Tokyo on what he said was business."

  "He's not here then?"

  "No. Why? Perhaps he'll come again this evening with Goichi."

  Chiyoko added that if the weather was good the next day, they were all to go fishing, so if her father didn't manage to arrive by evening, it would inconvenience everyone. And she urged me to join them.

  I was more concerned about the whereabouts of the man in yukata I had seen just before than I was about fishing.

  "A while ago wasn't there a man in the drawing room?"

  "Oh, that was Takagi-san, Akiko's brother. I think you know him."

  I didn't answer whether I did or not. But I recognized the name right away. I knew Momoyoko had a friend at school whose name was Akiko Takagi. I knew her face too from a photograph taken with Momoyoko, and I had seen her handwriting on a picture postcard. I had also heard that her only brother was in America or had just returned. As the son of a family that was rather well-off, it was no surprise he should be spending the summer in Kamakura. It would not even have surprised me if his family had a villa there. But I felt like inquiring from Chiyoko where this Takagi was living.

  "Just below us," was all she said.

  "In a villa?"

  "Yes."

  We went toward the drawing room without any further words about him. There my mother and aunt were discussing such things as the color of the sea and the direction the enormous statue of Buddha at Kamakura was in, talking as if these trivialities were of the utmost importance. Momoyoko informed Chiyoko that their father had sent a message that he'd join them by evening. Between them they talked about the pleasure of tomorrow's fishing expedition as if they were visualizing it before them and holding the delight in their very hands.

  "Takagi-san will come too, won't he?"

  "Ichi-san, you come too."

  I said I wouldn't. By way of explanation I added I had something to do at home and so had to go back to Tokyo that evening. Actually, I was afraid if Taguchi came with Goichi into this already congested house, there would hardly be room enough to lay my head down. Besides, I felt it would be
annoying to meet Takagi. Momoyoko told me he had been speaking about me with them, but in deference to us on my arrival had gone out the back gate to return home. I was glad I had been relieved of the strain I might have had to go through. That's how backward I am in having to meet people I don't know.

  When the sisters heard me say I'd be heading back, their faces changed to surprise, and they began to try to dissuade me. Chiyoko was especially bent on detaining me. She called me eccentric. She said that it was unreasonable to leave my mother alone and that even if I wanted to go home, she wouldn't let me. She's privileged to speak much more freely to me than she is even to her own sister or brother. I have often imagined how pleasant it would be for me, despite my many shortcomings, to walk through life if only I could behave as Chiyoko did to me, boldly, frankly, and—as she sometimes did though with good intention—despotically. I have often envied the little tyrant.

  "How threatening you are!" I said.

  "You're not being a good son!"

  "I'll go ask your mother. If she says you'd better stay, then stay," Momoyoko said. She sounded like she was trying to arbitrate between Chiyoko and me as she walked into the drawing room where the women were still talking.