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Three-Dimensional Reading

Three-Dimensional Reading : Stories of Time and Space in Japanese Modernist Fiction, 1911-1932, edited by Angela Yiu, University of Hawaii Press, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ras/detail.action?docID=3413489. Created from ras on 2021-08-18 06:45:23.

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Three-Dimensional Reading

X Stories of Time and Space in Japanese

Modernist Fiction, 1911–1932

Edited by Angela Yiu

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

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Publication of this book has been assisted by a grant from the Kajiyama Publications Fund for Japanese History, Culture, and

Literature at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Printed in the United States of America

19 18 17 16 15 14 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Three-dimensional reading : stories of time and space in Japanese

modernist fiction, 1911–1932 / edited by Angela Yiu. pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8248-3662-7 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN

978-0-8248-3801-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Time in literature. 2. Space in literature. 3. Japanese fiction—20th

century—History and criticism. 4. Experimental fiction, Japanese— History and criticism. I. Yiu, Angela, editor of compilation.

PL747.63.T52 T57 2013 895.6’34408—dc23

2012049637

University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability

of the Council on Library Resources.

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carol

Cross-Out

this book is dedicated to

my family

Hitoshi Masaki

Hiroyuki

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction by Angela Yiu 1

Part I Scenes of the Mind

Natsume Sōseki 29 A Strange Sound (Hen na oto, 1911)

Uno Kōji 37 The Law Student in the Garret (Yaneura no hōgakushi, 1918)

Kajii Motojirō 50 Scenes of the Mind (Aru kokoro no fūkei, 1926)

Kawabata Yasunari 62 The Sound of Footsteps (Ningen no ashioto, 1925)

Part II Time and Urban Space

Inagaki Taruho 69 Astromania (Tentai shikōshō, 1928)

Tamura Taijirō 85 Configuration (Keitai, 1932)

Yokomitsu Riichi 101 The Underside of Town (Machi no soko, 1925)

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viii Contents

Hori Tatsuo 109 Aquarium (Suizokukan, 1930)

Ryūtanji Yū 123 Pavement Snapshots (Peibumento sunappu–

yonaka kara asa made, 1930)

Nakajima Atsushi 143 Landscape with an Officer: A Sketch in 1923 (Junsa no iru fūkei, 1929)

Part III Utopia and Dystopia

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō 161 A Golden Death (Konjiki no shi, 1916)

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke 201 Wonder Island (Fushigi na shima, 1924)

Satō Haruo 211 A Record of Nonchalant (Nonsharan kiroku, 1929)

Yumeno Kyūsaku 240 Hell in a Bottle (Binzume no jigoku, 1928)

Selected Bibliography 251 List of Contributors 255

Index 259

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Acknowledgments

This book began with a happy meeting of minds. I was working on Satō Haruo’s “A Record of Nonchalant” and teaching it in my graduate semi- nar in June 2008 when one of my graduate students said she had found an image of the story on line. Thinking it improbable that a relatively unknown story would attract anyone’s interest, I accessed the website immediately, and the whole class was overwhelmed when the incredible image of “Nonchalant” floated on-screen before our eyes. This marked the unforgettable beginning of my friendship with the artist Sakaguchi Kyōhei. I e-mailed him promptly after class, and he replied within five minutes, promising to visit my class in a couple of weeks. When he came, a yet-to-be-discovered young artist in a yellow T-shirt, I knew that col- laboration between us was inevitable. “When I read a story, the entire spatial configuration just appears in my mind, and I sit down to draw for hours, sometimes through the night, until the image materializes on paper,” he said. “What do you use to draw?” one of the students asked. “A Mackee pen,” he said, referring to a commonplace oil-based felt-tip pen produced by Zebra that comes in various tips of precision. “Why?” “Why, because it’s affordable,” he laughed. Yet the vision of him conjur- ing the entire spatial and temporal dimension in one sitting using a non- erasable writing instrument always seems something out of this world to me. We spent the summer reading stories from the 1910s to 1930s—the age of modernism—I in the library and he among used-book stores, and we ended up with a short list that we both felt comfortable working with. That was the birth of this anthology.

Since then, in the span of a couple of years, Sakaguchi has acquired

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x Acknowledgments

a high public profile as an artist, writer, and social mover for his work on what he called the “zero yen house”—a concept that rejects the doc- ile acquiescence to the astronomical cost of urban living in Japan and explores an alternative configuration of living space by means of urban hunting and gathering of materials at no cost. After the Fukushima nuclear plant explosions in the wake of the tsunami in March 2011, he moved from Tokyo to Kumamoto and built a community living center called Zero Center, attracting the attention of the media, artists and musi- cians, academics, and politicians. Despite a demanding schedule and new commitments, when I e-mailed him about the image for another story after receiving a book contract from the publisher, he sent me a beautiful composition of Aquarium within forty-eight hours of my request. This anthology would not be complete without Sakaguchi’s artistic input and friendship, and to him I convey my deep appreciation.

I am also grateful to the translators who contributed their valuable time and effort to this volume. Jeffrey Angles, Alisa Freedman, Elaine Gerbert, Kyoko Kurita, James Lipson, D. Cuong O’Neill, Stephen Sny- der, and Dennis Washburn all responded without a moment’s hesitation when I requested their help. Not only did they give me their best work, they also had to live with my endless demands on revisions and strict deadlines. Many of them are prize-winning translators, yet they were all willing to work through every turn of phrase over many e-mail exchanges to perfect the translations. They also contributed significantly to the prefatory materials for the stories, and made helpful suggestions at vari- ous stages of the preparation of the manuscript. I feel very fortunate to be able to work with such conscientious translators and good friends.

This anthology would not have been possible without the generous permission to translate the stories and publish worldwide that the hold- ers of copyrights gave me unconditionally. Many of them were descen- dents of the writers, and not only were they prompt in granting me the permission, their encouragement and faith in me were the driving force behind this project. To Hashizume Hikaru, Inagaki Miyako, Kawabata Kaori, Kanze Emiko, Satō Masaya, Toda Yuki, Uno Kazuo, and Yokomitsu Yūsuke—the anthology embodies my sincere and deep gratitude for your willingness to share great works of art with the world. My gratitude also

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Acknowledgments xi

goes to Aida Hirotsugu at Kyōdō News and Kawakami Shōko at Shinchō bunko for their advice on the matter of copyrights.

The initial stage of this project was funded by a special grant from the Institute of Comparative Culture at Sophia University. I am indebted to the director, James Farrer, for his unwavering support. With the fund- ing, we were able to hold a workshop for the project and hire a manag- ing editor for the first draft of the translation. I would like to thank my colleagues Shion Kono and Michio Hayashi for their direct and indirect support. Tom Kain, a former M.A. student in my literature seminar in the Graduate School of Global Studies at Sophia, served as my loyal and persevering managing editor, going through over half of all the transla- tions and making painstaking and constructive criticism for every word and phrase. That the draft manuscript was submitted in good shape and received a contract rather smoothly was no doubt thanks to Tom’s metic- ulous editing. I would also like to thank Yoo Seonggoo for his help with the Korean Romanization in the Nakajima story.

My special gratitude goes to Pamela Kelley of the University of Hawai‘i Press, who guided and encouraged me in every step from submis- sion to publication. With her help and advice, I was able to focus on the manuscript and not worry about anything else, and I felt truly blessed to be working with her. I also wish to convey my heartfelt thanks to the two anonymous readers whose valuable comments were indispensable to the revision of the manuscript. I would add that I was genuinely touched not only by their enthusiasm but also by their promptness in sending their reports—while I was prepared to wait for months, they responded in a matter of weeks, and the speediness of their responses added great momentum to a manuscript that at one point I feared might disappear under the heavy demands of administrative duties. In the final and cru- cial stage of preparing the manuscript for publication, I was fortunate to receive the prompt and professional assistance from the copy editor Wendy Bolton, whose enthusiasm for the manuscript was heartwarming and encouraging.

I was fortunate to have a chance to present different parts of this manuscript at Yale and Columbia in October 2011. I would like to thank John Treat, Edward Kamens, and Aaron Gerow at Yale for their feedback

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xii Acknowledgments

and advice, and the graduate students in East Asian Languages and Lit- eratures who attended my talk for their comments and enthusiasm. My sincere appreciation goes to Paul Anderer, Tomi Suzuki, and Hikari Hori at Columbia for their thought-provoking criticism. I was also thankful for the intelligent questions and positive responses from the audience, especially the graduate students in East Asian Languages and Cultures.

I would also like to thank Lyman Tower Sargent, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, for showing a keen interest in my work on Japanese utopianism these past few years. He read my articles on Taishō utopianism and Satō Haruo’s dystopian fiction and solicited my opinions on many occasions on utopianism in non-Western literature. Thanks to his invitation, I presented the last sec- tion of this manuscript “Utopia and Dystopia” at the Society for Utopian Studies Conference in October 2011 and received positive and helpful feedback.

Eager to try out the effectiveness of this manuscript as a teach- ing text, I had students in my graduate seminar JS 511 Interpretations of Modernity read and present on the near-final manuscript in fall 2011. There was nothing more gratifying and heartwarming than their thoughtful responses and close readings. Many of them read both the translation and Japanese texts and made excellent suggestions for fine- tuning the manuscript. Students in art history reacted sensitively to the visual impact of the stories, while others responded intelligently to the political and philosophical aspects of the texts. We read the manuscript immediately after William Tyler’s Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan 1913–1938, and students found the link and comparison informa- tive and meaningful. To graduate students in JS511, a big thank-you for sharing ideas and a memorable reading experience.

The final phase of preparation for this manuscript took place when I assumed office as the Vice President for Academic Exchange at Sophia, immediately after the triple natural and man-made disasters of earth- quake, tsunami, and nuclear plant explosions in Japan. There were times when the demands of administrative work and teaching nearly pushed the manuscript off the horizon, but in the end, the intransigence, feisti- ness, and urgency of the stories proved to have a much larger hold on the

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Acknowledgments xiii

totality of my existence than I ever imagined. I would like to thank my friend and closest colleague Yoshiaki Terumichi for standing in for me at times when I ploughed away at my desk on this volume.

This book is written in the memory of two teachers who had a last- ing impact on me as a scholar and an individual. Sister Agnes McKeir- nan (1911–2011) taught me the profound simplicity of light and life, and Edwin McClellan (1925–2009) revealed to me the complexity of darkness and humor. Together they nurtured what is worthy in me as a scholar and teacher, and now in their absence, I hope to approximate what they have done for me by nurturing the next generation of scholars.

I would like to dedicate this book to my family with love and affec- tion. To my son Hitoshi, who shares my love of metaphors, may the adventure in reading never end. To my daughter Masaki, my steadfast companion and inspiration, follow your dreams and never give up. To my husband Hiroyuki, who is always there for me, thank you for being my home, my only home.

Finally, to all those who supported me in ways that I cannot fully enumerate, thank you for giving me a chance to narrate my dreams.

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Introduction

X by Angela Yiu

This anthology examines the profound ways in which the modernist imagination re-presents time and space in Japanese experimental fiction in the interwar years of the 1910s to the 1930s. The fourteen writers selected for this anthology experimented with a protean modernist style in a vivacious period between the nation-building Meiji (1868–1912) and the dark war years of Showa (1926–89). Their works capture imaginary temporal and spatial dimensions that embody various forms of futuris- tic urban space, colonial space, utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia. The development of mass consumer culture and moneyed capital stimulated the publication of many new and experimental journals in that period, and these in turn became the venues for the debut and development of nouveau art and literary movements, such as the Shinkankaku (New Sensation) School, the Shinkō geijutsu (New Art) School, the Proletar- ian School, and mass literature (taishū bungaku). Meanwhile, the frantic development of Tokyo as a leading modern metropolis in Asia to rival the capitals in the West and the expansionist vision of the Imperial state to extend its colonial transformation of other Asian cities into model mod- ern metropolises continued to tease the imagination of experimental writers, who developed narrative strategies and a language drawn from new forms of visual representation to reconfigure time and space. This results in mind-bending spatial and temporal re-presentations in art and literary texts that are constantly in flux—fantastical, futurological, haunting, and cautionary—and shaped an experimental language that aims at the distortion of space, time, and motion. The modernist impulse

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2 introduction

in the stories challenges realism, naturalism, temporal linearity, and the laws of physics. It is a language that is disorienting because of its formal disruption but also exhilarating and engaging for the same reason.

Modernism rejects the mimetic function of art through a re-imagi- nation of the human experience, and this includes new forms of presenta- tion in space and time. In the West, impressionist and post-impressionist art privileges the new conception of space in its departure from a rep- resentation of objective reality, while modernist fiction privileges the individual experience and presentation of temporality in its rejection of linear chronological time. This diversification in art and literature has to do with the inherent difference in the two art forms: visual art captures effectively the presentation of space, and literary art, especially narra- tives, appeals to one’s sense of time. However, the perception of time and space is inextricably linked since modernist texts tend to juxtapose planes of existence and consciousness across geographical and temporal borders to create a multidimensional and multiperspective experience. This anthology attempts to explore how the physical and empirical expe- rience of time and space is distorted and reconfigured through the prism of modernist Japanese prose. In locating modernism in the spatial and temporal reality of Japanese narratives, I hope to provide a context to examine Japanese modernism on its own terms as well as to situate it in global modernism, overall.

The title “Three-Dimensional Reading” does not refer to the Renais- sance system of perspective that created an illusion of three-dimensional depth on a flat, two-dimensional canvas. The term “three-dimensional” (rittaiteki) in this anthology comes from Rittai-ha, which is what cubism is called in Japanese, even though it is common now to refer to cubism as Kyubizumu. Rittai-ha suggests both a visual effect of presenting a single image from different temporal and/or spatial perspectives and a concep- tual cubist effect that emphasizes abstraction over realistic representa- tion. In 1908, the art critic Louis Vauxcelles, in writing about the art of George Braque, commented that he “reduces everything, places and figures and houses, to geometrical complexes, to cubes.”1 This form of reduction is a clear rejection of realism and a conventional three-dimen- sional perspective. Thus three-dimensional reading here refers to a

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Introduction 3

cubist reading that involves the discovery of a conceptual depth in a two- dimensional presentation of time and space, when the modernist writer breaks away from the seemingly coherent and stable representation of linear time and external reality in a single perspective and re-imagines the world in multiple time and spatial planes jostling simultaneously and spontaneously in a text, as in the way dreams seep into consciousness or when past and future time crowd into a present moment to gener- ate a spectrum of meaning and possibility in an otherwise flat surface. One of the clearest examples in Western visual art is Marcel Duchamp’s (1887–1968) “Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2” (1911), a work that depicts the successive phases of the movement of a single machine-like body on a flat canvas. Another example is Pablo Picasso’s “Girl Portrait circa 1936” in which the left and right sides of the canvas contain differ- ent expressions and emotional states to symbolize the multiple selves within a single person. In Japanese literature, Yokomitsu Riichi cites Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Yabu no naka (1922; trans. “In a Grove,” 1954, 1999, 2006) in his treatise “Shinkankaku-ron” (On New Sensation)2 as an exemplary work that presents a single event in multiple perspectives without a unifying narrative voice (or the conventional omniscient point of view) and thus renders the event unstable and conceptually unfath- omable. Yokomitsu emphasizes the rittaisei in modernist prose—in the rejection of chronology and temporal linearity in plot development, the breakdown of a conventional and recognizable concept of time and space and a shift to mental images, as well as the use of a sensual or aural real- ity to express conceptual depth and three-dimensionality.

To the three-dimensional reading of spatiality, I would add the need and possibility of a three-dimensional reading of temporality in order to understand the challenging presentation of time in the selected sto- ries. In an essay written in 1917, Satō Haruo provides a clue for a three- dimensional reading of time:

Since the critic of civilization (bunmei hihyōka) is neither simply an

idealist nor a sentimentalist prone to self-righteousness, he dwells

in a place where it is possible to be simultaneously idealistic and

realistic. In fact, his ideal finds its true meaning precisely when it

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4 introduction

penetrates the innermost core of reality. A critic is also a prophet,

a philosopher, and a poet. Yet precisely because he sees himself as

a critic, he stares reality in the eye and maintains close contact with

the flat temporal surface of “today.” He is in firm grasp of the fine

point where the ideal three-dimensionality of eternal time (eien to iu

risōteki rittai) penetrates the two-dimensional plane of today. That is

where he anchors the basis of his existence.3

Here Satō has provided a model or a metaphor for thinking about the intersection between eternal time (past, present, future) and each existential moment. Eternal time takes the form of a three-dimensional shaft that penetrates the two-dimensional plane of this very moment of existence. He suggests that it is in the fine point of crossing between the two kinds of time that the critic anchors his or her existence to critique the world. Without the three-dimensionality embodied in the crossing, any attempt in criticism will be superficial at best. Satō’s idea of time is a modernist attitude found elsewhere in the world. “To me there is no past and future in art,” said Picasso,4 referring to the endless possibili- ties of reinterpretation and adaptation of past art in creating new works. In a similar vein, James Joyce and T. S. Eliot’s works are so abundant in allusions that the past is summoned to life in the present to address the future. In a modernist moment, past, present, and future exist simulta- neously in a work of art and demand a new conceptual understanding of time.

In selecting stories from the modernist period to illuminate our understanding of past, present, and future time, and in harnessing our historical hindsight and the accumulation of critical insights to access past writings, we hope to establish the possibility of multiple imaginary crossings in which different temporal dimensions intersect to engender a rich and deep reading experience that liberates the reader from the shal- low confines of a present moment.

This anthology also incorporates five images by the contemporary artist Sakaguchi Kyōhei, whose two-dimensional ink-on-paper drawings based on five stories in our anthology capture the powerful conceptual dimension within and in between the lines. Sakaguchi called his text-to-

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Introduction 5

image artwork rittai dokusho (cubist/three-dimensional reading), a term that inspired the title of this collection.

Critical Context

Perhaps a word about the critical contexts of spatial theory and mod- ernist literature will help us situate this anthology. My selection of the stories was to a great extent informed by my reading of theories of space in Western and Japanese scholarship. These include critical concepts and terminology in the works of Martin Heidegger, Gaston Bachelard, Henri Lefebvre, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, David Harvey, Walter Ben- jamin, Maurice Blanchot, Isoda Koichi, and Maeda Ai, all of whom have contributed significantly to the theories of space on a multidisciplinary level. To examine the selected stories in this anthology, I will draw upon such concepts and discourses whenever relevant: the differentiation of place and space and their intricate relationship (Heidegger, de Certeau), the idea of social space (Lefebvre) and interior space (Bachelard), the exploration of utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia that capture the con- stantly shifting geopolitical dynamics of a world in flux (Foucault), the time-space compression that challenges conventional narrative strate- gies dependent on realism and linearity (Harvey), the flaneur and the metropolis (Benjamin), elusive death’s space as quintessential modernist space (Blanchot), power and ideology (Isoda), and the interchangeable nature of utopia and dystopia (Maeda).

In addition to references to theories of space, this anthology will also respond to existing theoretical and critical discourses on modernism and attempt to re-draw the parameters of global modernism, an endeavor that William Tyler has initiated in his pioneering work Modanizumu: Mod- ernist Fiction from Japan 1913–1938 (2008).5 Most Western studies focus primarily on European or English-language texts despite an increasing awareness of the diversity and global spontaneity of the movement. Among recent publications, Pericles Lewis’ The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism (2007), Steven Matthews’ (ed.) Modernism: A Sourcebook (2008), and Julian Hanna’s Key Concepts in Modernist Literature (2009) are particularly useful for the breadth and clarity of their academic dis-

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6 introduction

course. A typical guide to modernism would include an introduction to the historical and social context of modern times (the Industrial Revolu- tion, World War I, imperialism and the Empire, Fascism, the great leap in science and technology, urbanization, the proliferation of popular cul- ture and consumerism). Added to that is an outline of key themes, issues, and concepts, among which the avant-garde, dadaism, surrealism, cub- ism, futurism, imagism, vorticism, primitivism, etc., are crucial in eval- uating modernist art and literature. The catalog of Western modernist works central to the critical literary discourse inevitably includes Woolf ’s Mrs. Dalloway, Joyce’s Ulysses, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and Pound’s Cantos. Despite the fact that Peter Nicholls had argued persuasively in Modernisms: A Literary Guide (1995) for the need to study modernisms in the plurality of their global and diversified form, his sources were still limited to European and American texts, even with the inclusion of a chapter on African-American modernism.

In the Japanese context, Seiji Lippit’s Topographies of Japanese Mod- ernism (2002), William O. Gardner’s Advertising Tower: Japanese Modern- ism and Modernity in the 1920s (2006), Gregory Golley’s When Our Eyes No Longer See: Realism, Science, Ecology in Japanese Literary Modernism (2008), and William J. Tyler’s Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction from Japan 1913–1938 (2008) are significant publications in establishing the foun- dation for the study of modernism. In discussing the works of Akutagawa, Yokomitsu, Kawabata, and others, Lippit introduces a new and exciting critical language to examine literature, space, and the geopolitical ten- sion embedded in the texts of interwar Japan. Gardner’s book exam- ines the work of Hagiwara Kyōjirō (1899–1938) and Hayashi Fumiko (1903–1951) in urban environments that embodied popular culture, technology, urbanism, propaganda, media, with the emphasis on cultural studies. Golley transcends the academic borders of natural and social sci- ences as well as the humanities to create a fascinating critical language to discuss the modernist phenomenon in the works of Tanizaki, Yokomitsu, and Miyazawa Kenji. In particular, he borrows the idea of “Minkowski space”—the combination of the three dimensions of physical space with that of time into a four-dimensional space-time—to discuss the astro- physical phenomenon in Miyazawa’s world, a critical concept that is quite

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Introduction 7

different from the three-dimensional reading that this anthology sug- gests but nonetheless resonates in a playful and meaningful way.

Tyler’s book argues and illustrates convincingly that the literary experiments contributing to a definition of modanizumu is a sponta- neous and exuberant movement in style and expression responding to Western modernism in part but also boldly innovative and firmly embed- ded in the Japanese language and literary tradition. The selection of sto- ries in this anthology responds to some of the themes and issues that Tyler raised in his book, such as anti-naturalism, cosmopolitanism and popularization, the multiple self, and modernism in politics. In contrast to the broad sweep of Tyler’s survey-like collection, we focus on the coor- dinates between spatial and temporal configuration and modernism and select stories that embody the wandering modernist esprit of strange and bizarre imaginings. Furthermore, by situating the modernist phe- nomenon in the topography and time of Japan, we hope to give Japa- nese literary modernism a sense of locale and temporal orientation as we trace its place in global modernism. In his discussion of David Har- vey’s The Condition of Postmodernity (1990), Thacker points out that in an age where space replaces place in the general state of time-space com- pression, modernism redirects one’s attention to the inherent interest, importance, and uniqueness of locale.6 That is to say, even though Lon- don, Paris, Tokyo, New York, and Shanghai approximate one another on a global level as metropolises of speed, fashion, and mass consumption, they also capture the literary imagination by nature of their non-replace- able individuality. In the way the River Thames runs softly in the bleak modernist landscape of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, the Sumida River will bear witness to urban transformations and literary development in Japanese modernism. But the emphasis on the uniqueness of locale does not always have to entail what Harvey terms “the aestheticization of local, regional, or national politics.”7 The reader is encouraged to see a modernism engaged in a dialectic discourse between place as a physical locale and space as an embodiment of a multitude of symbolic, aesthetic, and political meanings. Thus to introduce Japanese (and colonial) place- names on the map of modernism is an attempt to explore the movement in a global context: how do concepts and issues associated with the mod-

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ernist movement and the accompanying process of urbanization, mass consumption, popular culture, and expansionism play out nearly simul- taneously in Mrs. Dalloway’s Regents Park and Asakusa Park; how are they similar or different; and how does the juxtaposition of modernist texts written thousands of miles apart enrich our understanding of the simultaneity and spontaneity of the modernist movement? This is when a dialectic interaction between two vastly different geographic partners becomes fruitful and necessary to our understanding of global modern- ism. I also hope that once we find the coordinates for both the Thames and the Sumida in our broadened vista of reading, the map of modernism will acquire a new and three-dimensional effect that transcends the limi- tation of a flat surface, enabling the reader to perceive the simultaneity of global modernism from different perspectives.8

The Writers and the Stories

The fourteen stories in this anthology are arranged under three kinds of re-presentation of time and space: (1) scenes of the mind; (2) time and urban space; and (3) utopia and dystopia. Needless to say there are untold possibilities in the choice of stories and groupings. Several factors determine our selection of stories:

1. All stories are engaging and twelve out of fourteen stories are trans- lated here for the first time to augment the list of modernist Japa- nese fiction available in English;9

2. Relatively obscure stories by well-known writers (Sōseki, Tanizaki, Kawabata, Satō) are included here to re-assess their contributions to the modernist tradition;

3. All stories address both the themes of spatial/temporal configura- tion and the modernist impulse;

4. Two writers—Tamura Taijirō and Ryūtanji Yū—are translated here for the first time;

5. The stories demonstrate the spectrum of aesthetic and intellectual possibilities in modernist fiction: dark and haunting pieces alongside light and playful ones; introspective, poetic pieces next to pictur-

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Introduction 9

esque, colloquial compositions; and stories that are in between— serious and comical, extroverted and contemplative, beautiful and grotesque.

Not all writers in the list are generally considered “modernist” in literary history, but their works are chosen because they show certain formal and thematic tendencies this anthology considers modernist. Sōseki is conventionally known for dark, philosophical full-length novels at the dawn of Japan modernization; Uno Kōji for his jōsetsu (rambling- recitation) style; Tamura Taijirō for his postwar treatises on literature of the flesh (nikutai bungaku); and Nakajima Atsushi for stories of ancient China and Micronesia. In this anthology, Sōseki is re-evaluated for his modernist perception of a sound-induced space; Uno for his imagination of an ever-expandable universe within the confines of his closet; Tamura for his sensitivity for the sensuality and terror of the mechanical form; and Nakajima for his capacity to describe the protean nature of colonial space which replicates the strange shapelessness of modernist space.

Kajii Motojirō, Inagaki Taruho, and Yumeno Kyūsaku were all from outside Tokyo and were “lone wolves” in the sense that none belonged to a literary salon or movement, modernist or otherwise. Kajii was iso- lated by his illness and died with hardly any literary recognition, but the unique collection of short stories he left behind has established his fame at home and abroad as a representative modernist in the depic- tion of the fragmented self and the doppelgänger that Tyler explored in his Modanizumu. Taruho’s friendship with the modernist poets of his time—Hagiwara Sakutarō, Kitasono Katsue—placed him in that league, and he shared with them the playful imagination of changing forms and shapes of things, an inherent skepticism of a stable, external reference, and a love for the lightness of tone. YumeQ, as Yumeno is fondly nick- named now, straddled the ambiguous border between “pure” and “mass” literature with his psychological and often complex writing style and his idiosyncratic propensity for science fiction and detective fiction, both of which feature prominently in our exploration of modernist genres in this anthology.

Tanizaki, Akutagawa, and Satō Haruo transcend the narrow confines

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of a single school or movement by virtue of their versatility and prolific career. While Golley has devoted a chapter to Tanizaki’s erotic science and Lippit to Akutagawa’s experimentation in urban cultural space in the modernist context, this anthology has focused on their interpretations of the space- and time-obsessed genre of utopia and dystopia fiction in the creation of a modernist space-time. Satō places himself among “crit- ics of civilization,” and indeed his voluminous critical writings attest to this calling. “For a man of letters, it is wrong not to possess or wish to possess the passion of a critic of civilization,” he wrote in 1927, a year before he published “Nonsharan kiroku” (A Record of Nonchalant), the story selected for this anthology. “Those who avoid in-depth criticism of life and dissecting social criticism are not fit to be called good critics of civilization” (Satō 1999, 74).10 “Nonchalant” combines his passion for social, literary, and moral criticism as well as a time-space imagination in an science fiction–like genre that predates the great dystopian literature in the West, including Adolph Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), and it is the intention of this anthology to place this work at the forefront of the modernist vision.

The only writers in this anthology directly involved in avant-garde movements or associated with modernist literary factions are Kawabata and Yokomitsu. In 1924, they were among the founding members of the Bungei jidai (Literary Age), a coterie magazine where the Shinkankaku style germinated. However, the magazine ceased publication in 1927, barely two years and eight months after its inception. In 1926, both of them joined the New Sensation School Film Association (Shinkankaku-ha eiga renmei) where the film director Kinugasa Teinosuke also belonged, and Kawabata wrote the script for the modernist film Kurutta ichipeiji (1926, trans. “Page of Madness,” 2008). In 1930, Kawabata was among the thirteen founding members of the New Art School, a short-lived movement that emphasized the autonomy of art and played a crucial role in attracting writers with a modernist bent, such as Ryūtanji Yū and Yoshiyuki Eisuke. But perhaps more significant than their brief associa- tion with these rapidly changing literary movements is their dedication to producing treatises, criticism, and literary works that came to define and shape Japanese modernism. Two years before the founding of Bungei

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Introduction 11

jidai, Kawabata had already expressed great dissatisfaction in an essay about the conventional hierarchical order and compartmentalization of “words, language, literature” and “human experience,” making one into the master and the other the slave, the conqueror and the conquered. “Once we go through the purgatory of self-doubt and self-rejection in the conventional use of words, then a new expression will be discovered.”11 Thus Kawabata’s modernist quest is for a new expression that erases the perceived boundary and difference between words and experience, between language and sensation, between literature and life. In another essay titled “Shinshin sakka no shinkeikō kaisetsu” (An Explication of the New Tendencies in New Writers, 1925), he writes, “There are only three ways in perceiving a white lily in the field: Is the lily in me? Am I in the lily? Are we separate? . . . The third form of perception belongs to the Naturalist way of writing, which is orthodox objectivism. . . . The other two forms of perception reveal the mark of a new expression in subjec- tivism. . . . Self and Other become one, and the borders among all things vanish as they merge into a single dimension in the mind.”12 Kawabata was to pursue and refine this vision again and again in different kinds of writings—the bawdy Asakusa kurenaidan (1929–30, trans. The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, 2005), the dream-like Yukiguni (1935–37, 1947; trans. Snow Country, 1957) and the many short compositions embodying dis- turbing images and piercing sensations, as in the one in this anthology.

Less than a year after Bungei jidai ceased publication, Yokomitsu went on a sojourn to China in 1928. He was no longer affiliated with any avant-garde journal or association, but he remained one of the most tireless theorists of modernist literature. His treatise “Shinkankaku- ron” (On New Sensation, 1925) in the second issue of Bungei jidai ties the contemporary art movements of futurism, cubism, expressionism, dadaism, symbolism, structuralism, and certain aspects of realism to shin kan kaku.13 He was also centrally involved in the “Keishiki shugi bun- gaku ronsō” (Formalism Debate, 1928–29), a literary debate between the Shinkankaku School and Proletariat Literature on the relations between the political masses and literary readership, as well as that between form and content of an artwork. But again, Yokomitsus most profound and lasting legacy in our understanding of Japanese modernism is the rich

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and varied body of literary experimentation he left behind, from the exploration of a cartographic, non-mimetic presentation of a town as in the selected story in this anthology, to the examination of a new under- standing of the bodily sense of time in Jikan (1931; trans. “Time,” 1956), and the philosophical exploration of the seduction and cruelty of the mechanization of human life in Kikai (1930; trans. “Machine,” 1962).

Hori Tatsuo and Ryūtanji Yū were intermittently involved with the modernist movements from the mid-1920s and early ’30s. Hori is gen- erally recognized for his Proustian stories of convalescence set in the patrician highland resort of Karuizawa, but this anthology highlights his affinity with the gritty, plebeian, sexually amorphous Asakusa, in a story that predates and rivals Kawabata’s Asakusa kurenaidan (1929–30). His involvement with modernist coteries was sparodic. Along with Murō Saisei, Nakano Shigeharu, Nishizawa Ryūji, and Kubokawa Kakujirō, Hori was involved in the founding of Rōba (Donkey) in 1926, a magazine that was proletarian in nature. In 1930, he joined the Shinkō geijutsu-ha kurabu (The New Art Club), whose members included Nakamura Murao, Kawabata, Ryūtanji, but that club lasted only a year. Ryūtanji had a stel- lar presence in the literary salon but faded quickly after a falling out with Kawabata. He turned his interest to the cultivation of cacti, a career change that is as idiosyncratic and surprising as the unpredictable stac- cato of his stories.

I will now proceed to discuss the categorization of spatial/tempo- ral configuration and the individual stories under each heading. “Scenes of the Mind” is a response to the obsession with interiority in I-novels and confessional novels that dominated the literary scene from the turn of the twentieth century. The choice of stories in this section provides a humorous, modernist twist to interiority by externalizing fears, anxi- eties, pathological obsessions, and dreams, and projecting them onto actual places or imaginary space—a room, an attic, a sick bed, or even a piece of furniture. One of the modernist responses to the dark and hid- den interiority of serious, brooding modern Japanese fiction is to give it a shape and project it onto a spatial dimension to mark its inescap- able reality and overwhelming monstrosity. By transforming interiority into interior space engorged with the mind’s unrest translated into the

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Introduction 13

sights, sounds, and smell of the surrounding, modernist texts add an absurd and terrifying dimension to previously intangible and invisible interiority. Sōseki’s “A Strange Sound” (Hen na oto, 1911) exemplifies this process of transformation. A Sōseki stand-in—an invalid confined to a hospital room—becomes obsessed with a strange sound coming from the room next door and begins to transfer his curiosity and apprehen- sion about the elusive space of death to the adjacent imaginary space shaped entirely by sound. In Uno Kōji’s “The Law Student in the Garret” (Yaneura no hōgakushi, 1918), a detached narrative voice tells the story of how a neurotic law student holed up in a six-mat attic room transforms first his room, and then his body-sized closet, into an infinitely expand- able territory of past reveries and current fantasies, a story that foretells with uncanny absurdity the plight and rationale of the pathological social recluse (hikikomori) in our time. Uno’s story also provides the model setting for Edogawa Ranpo’s “The Wanderer in the Attic” (Yaneura no sanposha, 1925), a murder/suspense story that exemplifies the ero-guro- nansensu14 of Taishō modernist literature. Kajii Motojirō, known for his modernist “invalid” pieces that play on the ideas of the double, shadow, and alter ego, captures with vivid grotesquery scenes of urban decay in “Scenes of the Mind” (Aru kokoro no fūkei, 1926) just to reject firmly grasped external reality in favor of its reconstitution in the metaphor of the wasting body. Kawabata Yasunari’s “The Sound of Footsteps” (Ningen no ashioto, 1925) echoes the themes of sound and the invalid in Sōseki’s and Kajii’s works. An amputee imagines a world beyond his field of vision based on the sound of footsteps he hears, creating a spatial dimension that is at once poetic, humorous, grotesque, and haunting.

The language, techniques of expression, and narrative strategy of these stories betray various modes of modernist writing: the reliance on a sonic dimension to create space, the doppelgänger, the permeable border between real and imaginary space as well as the inner mind and outer reality, and an overall sense of humor, self-deprecation, and absur- dity in depicting the somber themes of illness and death. Furthermore, all these stories address certain aspects of spatial theories, in particu- lar Gaston Bachelard’s theory of “topoanaylysis,” in which interior space becomes “the topography of our intimate being.”15 They all embody Henri

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Lefebvre’s theory of representational space, that is, space as imagined by inhabitants and an alternative dimension that rejects “the rational order and cool logic of the representation of space.”16 They also illustrate David Harvey’s emphasis of the body or the psyche as a “representational space” in reaction to the “representation of space” in modernity, an idea indebted to Lefebvre’s terminology.17 Finally, three of the four stories can be considered as études on dying as the narrators edge ever so gingerly toward what Maurice Blanchot termed “death’s space,” so that they can practice dying in their characters.18

“Time and Urban Space” comes naturally in an anthology on spa- tial/temporal configuration and modernism, since the dominating expe- rience in modernist literature centers on bizarre locales, urbanization, the metropolis, and colonized territories. Inagaki Taruho’s “Astroma- nia” (Tentai shikōshō, 1928) and Tamura Taijirō’s “Configuration” (Keitai, 1932) transform physical space and quotidian sensual perceptions into the extraordinary by focusing on how those perceptions are painstakingly constructed and received. A painter and a writer, Inagaki incorporates striking visual elements in his writing, some of which are reminiscent of early cinema. In “Astromania” he describes the homemade cinematic universe created by boys crazy about stars, using a language that borrows heavily from science fiction, visual art, popular culture, and cinematog- raphy, while alluding to the historical context of World War I as well as the military build-up in Japan and the Western world. “Configuration” is a challenging story that captures the frenzied movement and changing shapes of things in a mechanical age. The narration, told in a single para- graph, superimposes the sensation of a man’s fainting fit on his experi- ence of a plane crash during the war and captures the inward collapse of images in multiple temporal and spatial dimensions (e.g., palm trees, propellers of a fighter plane, and an overhanging fan) into a singular con- tinuum of existence and perception. Reminiscent of Georges Braque’s Man with a Guitar (1913), which captures the simultaneous visual rep- resentations of facets of a single item on a flat pictorial space, Tamura’s story is a fascinating response to futurism, dadaism, and cubism. Both stories explore a new spatial order embodied in physical empiricism yet seemingly untouched by external reality. In Taruho and Tamura’s worlds,

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Introduction 15

space becomes “outer space”—an alluring and haunting dimension that always lies a step beyond one’s reach.

Yokomitsu Riichi’s “The Underside of Town” (Machi no soko, 1925) is deceptively simple and resembles the mapping of a town. Yokomitsu experiments with the cinematographic point of view, stark and sensu- ous images, and a rhythmic tone of narration that generates Deleuzean repetitions to destabilize the text. Most notable in his description of the town is a deliberate experimentation with geometric shapes and the laws of physics, the way Cézanne transformed his still lifes and landscapes into colorful spheres, cones, and cylinders. Furthermore, the seemingly disjointed vignettes in the story are linked by an undercurrent of social criticism—a proletarian theme widely explored by modernist writers. Finally, in the context of spatial theory, Yokomitsu’s “mapping” rejects the stability of place and echoes Michel de Certeau’s idea of the tour, a concept that emphasizes the interpretation and transformation of space through the movement of the human subject traversing it.19 In other words, maps inform while tour narrates, and Yokomitsu takes us through a tour of a cubist landscape in his story.

For stories about city life and the ubiquitous mobo and moga in Jap- anese modernist fiction, Hori Tatsuo’s “Aquarium” (Suizokukan, 1930) takes the reader to the streets of Asakusa, the testing ground for the latest trends in popular culture and literature. Aquarium is a nickname for the venue where dance troupes and performers vie for a spot on stage and a place in the patron’s heart. It is a story of love, jealousy, lesbian- ism, murder, and suicide, told with the modernist touch of lightness and melodrama. Ryūtanji Yū’s “Pavement Snapshots” (Peibumento snappu, 1930) is a story told in the form of shifting and fragmented vignettes, resembling a cubist collage or pastiche. It echoes the twin obsessions of the flaneur20 in Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project21—a taste for detached and aesthetic observation and a passion for street photogra- phy. It captures the essence of the picturesque in modernist expression, as Susan Sontag aptly describes in On Photography,

The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker recon-

noitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller

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16 introduction

who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept

of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flaneur finds the

world “picturesque.”22

The last story in this category is Nakajima Atsushi’s “Landscape with an Officer” (Junsa no iru fūkei, 1929), which takes us to a Korean city in 1923, then under Japanese colonial rule. Nakajima was deeply interested in the human and spatial dimensions arising from the colonial power structure, and this story delineates the frustration, anger, and finally, helplessness in a tangle of relationships between Koreans and Japanese caught in the space of colonial daily life—in buses, eateries, brothels, and on the street. Gritty, confrontational, fragmented, and open-ended, this story addresses the issues of power, ideology, politics, and the human fac- tor in the production of space. Nakajima’s story illustrates how colonial space is twice appropriated: first in the physical and geographical dimen- sion, and second in a textual and linguistic dimension, when Korean names, words, and places are converted into Japanese pronunciation. In The Production of Space, Lefebvre writes, “Space is political and ideologi- cal. It is a product literally filled with ideologies.”23 No other spatial and textual configuration in this selection is more politically charged than Nakajima’s colonial Korea, in which he raised questions of disempower- ment, expansionism, modernization, and their repercussions in Japan and its colonies.

“Utopia and Dystopia” consists of stories that focus on alternative temporal and spatial realities typically found in science fiction, fantasy, and futurological fiction. With the founding of magazines such as Shin seinen and Kagaku gahō in the 1920s, science fiction and popular litera- ture went through a boom, and writers experimented with a mixture of styles and genres, rendering the division between highbrow “pure” litera- ture and lowbrow popular literature pervious. The period also coincided with Japan’s expansionist vision, and stories that contain visions of a new world abound, told as fantasies, dreams, or satires. All four stories in this section create self-contained worlds embodying various forms of physical and conceptual utopias that can easily be inverted as dystopias. It is as though the textual utopias and dystopias replicate and critique the

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Introduction 17

founding of “new worlds” in the actual geopolitical reality of imperialism on a national and global scale. Whether they are meant to be caution- ary, playful, or simply fantastical, utopian and dystopian texts typically question and reject the status quo, a mark of the modernist political and aesthetic attitude, and these four stories fulfill precisely that function.

The scholar Maeda Ai illuminates our understanding of utopian texts in his famous essay Gokusha no yūtopia (1981; trans. “Utopia of the Prisonhouse: A Reading of In Darkest Tokyo,” 2004).24 One of his major arguments is the reversible nature of utopia and dystopia. He draws our attention to the paradox that “the prison as a space of confinement was also a space of imagination” by reiterating the well-known facts that Campanella, the author of the classical utopian text The City of the Sun, was confined for twenty-seven years in a prison in Napoli, while Mar- quis de Sade, who constructed an entire textual utopia of eroticism and libertinism, was incarcerated in prison and a mental asylum for thirty- two years. Furthermore, the utopian projection in modernist fiction was largely driven by an urban predicament of confinement in the interwar years, and fiction served as a form of liberation from the physical and spiritual confinement of an impersonal and increasingly militaristic metropolis.25 The inherent reversibility of the two supposedly polar- ized states—confinement and liberation, hell and paradise, dystopia and utopia—is evident in all four of our stories. The easy inversion clearly emphasizes the fluidity, formlessness, and permeability of the two states and the necessary irony and satire embedded in them. Now I will exam- ine how the stories in this section reconfigure time and space in the text.

Tanizaki, known for his strong and idiosyncratic opinions on inte- rior space, urban space, and the ills of poor urban development in essays such as In’ei raisan (1933–34, trans. In Praise of Shadow, 1977) and Tōkyō o omou (1934, Thinking of Tokyo), creates an outlandish theme park of sorts in “A Golden Death” (Konjiki no shi, 1916) that parodies everything from materialism and mass consumption to an insatiable appetite for exoticism and foreign products. The story is schizophrenic in style and narrative strategy. While it contains swaths of highbrow art theory in Japanese and German quoted in the original language, it also embodies the perennial lowbrow themes of popular literature—sex, dramatic rise

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18 introduction

and fall in fortune, an ostentatious display of wealth, a bizarre death— and prefigures the mode of ero-guro-nansensu writing in modernist litera- ture. The plot is simple: the narrator and his childhood friend Okamoto are rivals in looks, intelligence, and family fortune, but by the time they reach adulthood, their paths diverge widely. The narrator becomes an accomplished scholar and writer as his family fortune declines, while Okamoto becomes increasingly drawn to aestheticism and decadence in his thinking and way of life. But what separates them most decidedly are their thoughts on art. While the narrator emphasizes the beauty of ideas, Okamoto takes an opposite view. To exemplify his emphasis on the importance of physical and material art—in the form of architec- ture, fashion, food, and above all, the human body—Okamoto casts his entire fortune into building a wonderland of extravaganza and carnality in Hakone.

The theme park–like wonderland consists of an eclectic assembly of replicas of famous architecture around the world. These include the Greek Pantheon, the Spanish Alhambra Palace, the Japanese Hall of the Phoenix, the Vatican, and the Chinese Epang Palace. As for his ostenta- tious display of artwork, sculptures alone include replicas of the statues of the Buddha, goddesses, real and imaginary animals from the Thirteen Imperial Tombs of China, and Rodin’s “Eternal Idol.” Central to the lav- ish and decadent display of riches and material art and architecture of the world is Okamoto’s gaudy and theatrical performance using his own body. Elaborately dressed up in different costumes every day, he assumes the form of a rose sprite, a faun, a reveler in Carnaval, but even these are not sufficient to satisfy him. Finally, he strips himself and first paints his body black as a native in Schéhérazade’s A Thousand and One Nights, then covers his body with gold leaves in imitation of the Buddha, just to die the abrupt, ridiculous, and titular “golden death” in the end.

Not only does this story directly inspire Edogawa Ranpo’s Pano ra- matō kidan (1926, Strange Tale of Panorama Island, 2013)—a representa- tive modernist text of ero-guro-nansensu—it prefigures the proliferation of theme parks in the late stage of capitalism (e.g., Disneyland, Universal Studios, Tobu World Square), the insatiable appetite in a mass consump- tion culture for ostentatious material gratification, and the intoxication

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Introduction 19

with kosupure (costume play) and avatars in the current digital game– obsessed world. With uncanny foresight, Tanizaki created a spatial dimension in “The Golden Death” that parodies the utopian/totalitarian dream-turned-nightmare in his time and prefigures the taste for vulgar extravaganza in ours, when pleasure and enjoyment reflect a perverse obsession with commodity and public display, especially that of the human body.

Akutagawa’s short and fantastical “Wonder Island” (Fushigi na shima, 1924) alludes directly to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726, amended 1735), long considered a classic to illustrate utopia and dys- topia. Akutagawa’s story features SUSSANRAP Island (the name is an obvious inversion of Mount Parnassus, home of the Muses for art and literature)26 with a 600-meter vegetable pyramid in the center that resembles Mount Fuji. All islanders are involved in the cultivation, trad- ing, evaluation, and finally, disposal of vegetables, and even professors in universities teach only courses on extinct species of European veg- etables. A cartoon-like political satire that prefigures the imaginary spa- tial dimension and creatures in his more famous Kappa (1927), “Wonder Island” satirizes Japan’s overflow of homegrown ideologies and literature (the warm-colored vegetables of red and yellow are said to have proletar- ian flavor while the cool-colored vegetables of lime and green, bourgeois flavor) sprouting mostly from dated European seeds and ready to be discarded once judged unpalatable by arbiters (critics) selected for their inability to either see, hear, touch, or taste. Despite the zealous over-pro- duction, the irony that no vegetable ends up on anyone’s plate is not lost on the reader.27 The islanders also idolize the chameleon BABRABBADA (suggesting modernist gibberish), which is said to have already replaced Jehovah and Allah in world religions as the prophet for commercial suc- cess, to the extent that department stores in New York are said to wait for a sign from the chameleon before they prepare for a new season. With a rotting mountain of surplus vegetables and the color-changing chame- leon as the god of sales, Akutagawa is unsparing in his acute criticism of over-production, groundless and fickle judgment, and the ultimate waste of effort in modern consumer society that has spread its rules over the literary world.

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20 introduction

Witty and amusing as it is standing alone as a miniature political sat- ire, “Wonder Island” opens up a new spatial dimension when positioned among Akutagawa’s other stories and essays on native and colonial space and place. For instance, “Ōkawa no mizu” (1912, “The Water of Sumida”) is an essay deeply colored in the nostalgic hues of the author’s remem- brance of his childhood days in the Shitamachi, and “Yūyūsō” (1927, “A Cottage in Ruin”) is a short story that explores the ghostly remains of an old house and an abandoned garden. In these works, realism and lyri- cism dominate the space of nostalgia and constitute the aestheticism of the past and the ruins. In comparison, “Wonder Island” rejects both real- ism and lyricism and fills its modernist spatial dimension with a pastiche of allusions (from Gulliver to Marx), strange typography, and a light- hearted mix of genres (satire, farce, fantasy). Dissimilar to yet reminis- cent of the strange places in Akutagawa’s “historical” fiction, “Wonder Island” creates a space that is exotic, inaccessible, yet strangely familiar by virtue of its nature of parody.

Satō Haruo’s “A Record of Nonchalant” (1929) is perhaps the most ambitious modernist experiment in this anthology. The story is set in the city of Nonchalant, which comprises a literally vertical future soci- ety extending from a subterranean world inhabited by an underclass of humans who subsist on gas to a high-rise world of mindless bourgeois who are slaves of fashion. Any attempt to challenge the stratification is punishable by memory erasure, voice muting, or death. Subterranean humans are given a chance for a “better life” by a cross-species surgi- cal change into plants. One feels inclined to call the story science fiction because it contains themes typical of the genre, such as futuristic worlds, aliens and improbable events, and a focus on spatial dimensions. It is also tempting to call this world a “dystopia,” even though the neologism did not gain currency even in the West until the Cold War period in the 1950s. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1994 [1932]), one of the earli- est classics depicting a modern dystopia, was not yet in print.

“Nonchalant” also responds to and critiques contemporary literary trends of its time. This includes a parody of proletarian literature, a tinge of the legacy of the Shinkankaku-ha in its rejection of realism and natu- ralism, and a keen awareness of the rise of mass literature. Yet “Noncha-

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Introduction 21

lant” is both none and a mixture of all of the above. It is a chimera that combines recognizable features of literary genres and trends that came in vogue in the 1920s, but it also treats each recognizable part as an alien to attack. As a result it is a self-rejecting, self-loathing chimera engaged in an absurd dance to define its own form—a form marked by discon- tinuities and confusion in its narrative strategy and clashing imagery. This unabashed display of nonsense and grotesquery ironically places the story in the league of modernist literature.

On the level of spatial imagination, Satō’s dystopian configura- tions betray a fascination with a complex urban space that features a vertiginous, over-built, future metropolis, environmental pollution and subterranean spatial confinement. This was an obsession common to the modernist writers who experimented with nansensu literature— essentially an urban genre—such as Yokomitsu and Kawabata, as well as many popular writers of Japanese science fiction in the second half of the 1920s, such as Kozakai Fuboku (1890–1929) and Edogawa Ranpo (1894–1965). Satō’s works—for instance, his debut story “Supein inu no ie” (1917; trans. “House of a Spanish Dog,” 1970), the twin stories “Den’en no yūutsu” (1919; trans. “The Sick Rose, a Pastoral Elegy, or, Gloom in the Country,” 1993) and “Tokai no yūutsu” (1923; trans. “Gloom in the City,” 1993), and the utopian story “Utsukushiki machi” (1919; trans. “Beautiful Town,” 1996)—have always featured his fascination with blueprints, floor plans, and Western and Japanese architecture. But “Nonchalant” reveals a spatial imagination in an absurdist mode and opens a dimension that is quite literally out of this world.28 Finally, the three stories by Tanizaki, Akutagawa, and Satō exemplify an awareness of both temporal and spatial three-dimensionality in their capacity to satirize society and politics in their own times as well as ours, but it is Satō’s science fiction–like story that is most self-consciously three-dimensional in time and space.

The anthology concludes with Yumeno Kyūsaku’s “Hell in a Bottle” (Binzume no jigoku, 1928). In this story, a brother and a sister shipwrecked as young children alone on a tropical island grow up to experience the tor- ment of forbidden love. The whole story is in epistolary form centering on letters found in three beer bottles retrieved from the sea. The letters are composed in vastly different styles. These include the formal kanbun-

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22 introduction

style (literary Chinese) letter from the village office about found bottles, the introspective and confessional rhetoric of the brother, the biblical and church language of sin and punishment that governs the thinking of the adult children who learned to read and write through the Bible (the only text they had), and finally the childish hand of children compos- ing their first letter to seek rescue. Despite the deliberately clichéd and melodramatic plot, the narrative reveals the spectrum of linguistic pos- sibilities in the formulation of the Japanese modernist expression. These include the blend of Chinese and Western influences, the patchwork of premodern and modern expressions, and a splash of eroticism character- istic of mass literature. The narrative reflects a mix of styles, genres, and language that forms the modernist narrative mode.

Nearly every story in this anthology contains some form of Fou- cault’s heterotopia, defined as “ a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites . . . are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.”29 Foucault uses the mirror, the screen, or the stage as examples of heterotopia because they contain both real and unreal spaces. Het- erotopia is a real space that acts as a counter-site, and it is important that heterotopia involves a sense of movement between the two sites. No other story in this collection embodies the idea more clearly than “Hell in a Bottle.” Within the compact space of each of the three bottles are uto- pia/heaven (the tropical island of abundance, beauty, and health) and its inversion dystopia/hell (a claustrophobic space of incest and guilt), dia- metrically opposite conditions that flow readily into each other to create a new spatial perception that challenges any presumption of an absolute and inherent nature of external reality. “Hell in a Bottle” demonstrates the modernist impulse to question, destabilize, and invert the conven- tional perception of time, physical space, place, and geography by insert- ing a dimension (in the form of the bottles and the letters they contain) in the narrative space that is both real and unreal, contemporary and his- torical, and forces us to recognize the space of fear and pleasure hovering in between the two sites. It is the movement in the space between that speaks most eloquently of the elusive modernist space this anthology hopes to locate.

The existing scholarship in Western and Japanese modernism and

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Introduction 23

spatial theories is indispensable in our attempt to forge a critical lan- guage and methodology to examine spatial configuration and modern- ism in Japanese literature. Even though both Peter Nicholls and William Tyler from their respective angles have argued persuasively for the diver- sity, spontaneity, and global nature of the modernist movement in world metropolises, it is still hard to place Japanese modernism in a global con- text and encourage cross-border studies without a more complete rep- ertoire of translated works. Peter Nicholls’ Modernisms: A Literary Guide (2nd ed., 2009) includes a full-length chapter on African-American mod- ernism but contains nothing outside the European and American literary tradition. In spatial theories and studies, Geographies of Modernism: Lit- eratures, Cultures, Spaces (Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker, eds., 2005) contains a chapter on African writing and one on imagism and the geog- raphy of the Orient, but nothing on Asian literature or Japanese spatial configuration. Finally, the study of utopian/dystopian literature, a genre tightly bound up with spatial imagination, has until now been largely a Western-oriented critical discourse. It is our hope that this anthology, by adding to the body of Japanese modernist fiction available in translation, will broaden the channel of dialogue in the global intellectual discourse on spatial/temporal theory, utopianism, and modernism.

Notes

1. Louis Vauxcelles, in Gil Blas, 14 November 1908, quoted in Edward F. Fry, Cubism (London: Thames and Hudson, 1966), 50.

2. Yokomitsu Riichi, “Shinkankaku-ron—kankaku katsudō to kankakuteki sakuhin ni taisuru hinan e no gyakusetsu” (On New Sensation—a rebuttal to criticism on New Sensation activities and New Sensation works) in Yokomitsu Riichi zenshū, v. 13 (Kawade shobō shinsha, 1982), 75–82.

3. Satō Haruo, “Bungei jihyō” (Contemporary literary criticism, 1927) in Satō Haruo zenshū vol. 20 (Rinsen shoten, 1999), 73–74.

4. Elizabeth Cowling, Picasso: Style and Meaning (London: Phaidon, 2002) 2.

5. In Modanizumu, Tyler wrote about the conventional critical strategies “that employed the aura of the West to bolster modanizumu’s claims to cultural legitimacy,” and suggested it is appropriate to “define Japanese modernism on its own term” (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008), 17.

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24 introduction

6. Andrew Thacker, Moving through Modernity: Space and Geography in Mod- ernism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, [2003], 2009), 39.

7. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 273.

8. I am indebted to Aaron Gerow’s comment in response to my presentation of a paper on three-dimensional reading at Yale University, October 19, 2011.

9. Two of the stories have been previously translated. Nakajima Atsu- shi’s Junsa no iru fukei was translated by Robert Tierney as “Landscape with Patrolman: A Sketch of 1923” and is available online only: http://ceas. uchicago . edu/ japanese/Sibley_Translation_Project.shtml (accessed December 26, 2011). Yoko mitsu Riichi’s Machi no soko was translated by Dennis Keene as “The Depths of the Town” in the anthology “Love” and Other Stories of Yokomitsu Riichi (Tokyo: Japan Foundation, 1974), 109–14.

10. Satō, “Bungei jihyō,” (Rinsen shoten, 1999), 74. 11. Kawabata Yasunari, “Gendai sakka no bunshō wo ronzu” (A Critical

Discussion of the Writings of Contemporary Authors) in Kawabata zenshū, vol. 32, 18–19 (Shinchōsha, 1982).

12. Kawabata Yasunari. “Shinshin sakka no shinkeikō kaisetsu” (An Expli- cation of the New Tendency of New Writers) in Kawabata zenshū, vol. 30, 176– 77 (Shinchōsha, 1982).

13. Yokomitsu Riichi, “Shinkankaku-ron—kankaku katsudō to kanka- kuteki sakuhin ni taisuru hinan e no gyakusetsu,” in Yokomitsu Riichi zenshū, vol. 13, 75–82, esp. 80–81 (Kawade shobō shinsha, 1982).

14. Erotic, grotesque, and nonsense—the three keywords that identify interwar cultural production that rejects realism, cultivates sensationalism, and embraces the ridiculous. For a full discussion of ero-guro-nansensu, see Miriam Silverberg, Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Also see Japan Forum, vol. 21, no. 1 (2009), Special issue: Urban Nonsense.

15. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space (1958), trans. Maria Jolas (Bos- ton: Beacon Press, 1969), xxxii. Bachelard focuses on the transformation of a stable, architectural place into a poetic, imaginative space, the way an inhabited house transforms into a home, and rooms and corridors articulate “the topogra- phy of our intimate being.” Calling it “topoanalysis,” Bachelard focuses entirely on interior space and leaves out location and geography. Bachelard’s theory is particularly useful when applied to an entire category of Japanese fiction obsessed with the interior, allowing dreams, the unconscious, or a particularly fertile imagination, often stemming from an invalid’s mind, to transform physi- cal dwelling into a space of infinite longings and possibilities.

16. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1974), trans. Donald Nichol-

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Introduction 25

son-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 42. Lefebvre outlined three categories of social space in The Production of Space. These include (1) Spatial practice—this refers to what people do in spaces, that is, experienced space; (2) Representation of space—this refers to space as perceived by planners, architects, and govern- ments, and are drawn on plan, maps, diagrams; (3) Representational space— this refers to space as imagined by inhabitants and is often linked to the minds of artists and writers. It rejects “the rational order and cool logic of the represen- tation of space; instead representational space is alive: it speaks.” Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 42. All three categories are present in this anthology, and no doubt the third aspect of social space—representational space—is closest to the modernist impulse.

17. According to Andrew Thacker, “Harvey argues that the space of ‘the body, or consciousness, of the psyche’ had been repressed by ‘the absolute sup- positions of Enlightenment thought.’ Now, however, ‘as a consequence of psy- chological and philosophical findings’ such interiorized spaces could ‘be liberated only through the rational organization of exterior space and time.’ ” Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 270. See also Thacker’s interpretation of Harvey in Moving through Modernity, 36–41.

18. In The Space of Literature, Maurice Blanchot quotes Kafka, writing in December 1914, “The best of what I have written is based upon this capacity to die content . . . I even enjoy dying in the character who is dying.” Maurice Blan- chot, The Space of Literature (1955), trans. Ann Smock (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [1982], 1989), 90. Blanchot comments that “Kafka feels deeply here that art is a relation with death” (1982), 91. This refers to the fact that art enables the writer to explore the space of death, or even practice dying (in one- self or in a character), by reconfiguring it as a textual possibility, especially in the appropriation and distortion of physical space, both indoors and outdoors, as a substitute for the unknown territory. Blanchot’s critical and philosophical discourse on the space of death is extremely helpful in our understanding of the elusive modernist space of death in the interior pieces by Sōseki, Kajii, and Kawabata, writers who are obsessed with the paradoxical form and formlessness of mortality.

19. Michel de Certeau writes that a place “implies an indication of stabil- ity” while a space “is composed of intersections of mobile elements.” The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Randall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 117. A further distinction is made between maps and tours. “Maps, con- stituted as proper places in which to exhibit the products of knowledge, form tables of legible results” de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 121. Tour, on the other hand, focuses on the experience of moving though space. See also Thacker’s analysis of de Certeau in Moving through Modernity, 29–36.

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26 introduction

20. Walter Benjamin’s much-quoted “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire” in Illuminations (English trans., 1968) draws upon the Baudelairean flaneur and transforms the interpretation of the urban landscape. The flaneur in Baudelaire’s world is a man of leisure who glides through the city with an air of superiority and detachment that marks him as an outsider, observer, and commentator. He is out of place in the turmoil of the city even if he appears to be mixed in with the pedestrians. Walter Benjamin, Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, [1968], 1985), 155–200, esp. 173.

21. Focusing on the shopping arcades of nineteenth-century Paris and the theme of the commodification of modern life, Walter Benjamin presents quo- tations and reflections on numerous published sources and arranges them in thirty-six categories, such as “Fashion,” “Photography,” “Advertising,” etc. The project began in 1927 and lasted until his death in 1940. See Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002).

22. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Picador USA, [1973], 1977), 55.

23. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 31. 24. Maeda Ai, Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity, ed. James

Fujii (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 25. I am indebted to Paul Anderer’s comment in response to my lecture

“Utopia and Dystopia in Japanese Modernist Fiction” at Columbia University, October 20, 2011.

26. See Akutagawa Ryūnosuke zenshū (Iwanami shoten, 1996), vol. 10, 340, note 14.

27. I am indebted to the contributions from my students in my seminar “Interpretations of Modernity” when we read this story together in December 2011, especially to Tetsushi Watanabe, who presented on this story.

28. For a full discussion of the story, see Angela Yiu, “A New Map of Hell: Satō Haruo’s Dystopian Fiction,” Japan Forum, vol. 21, no. 1 (2009), 53–73.

29. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986), 22–27, esp. 24.

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Part I

X Scenes of the Mind

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Figure 1. “A Strange Sound” (Hen na oto) by Sakaguchi Kyōhei (ink on paper, 2305 x 3449 mm), January 2009.

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A Strange Sound X Natsume Sōseki

Parallel to the peripatetic exploration of urban landscape in Sōseki’s full-length fiction are a number of proto-modernist short pieces and essays that depict the intricacies of interior space. These works are experiments with modernist techniques in configuring space through sound, a limited range of vision, and hallucinatory imaginings belonging to the invalid confined to his sick room or his study. The interior pieces, such as “A Strange Sound,” Bunchō (1909; trans. “Buncho,” 2001),1 Gyōretsu (1909; trans. “The Procession,” 2009),2 create an imaginary opening that is simultaneously liberating and confining and prefigures the obsession with reshuffling and imagining external reality within a narrowly enclosed space in later modernist fiction. These include the “attic pieces” by Uno Kōji (Yaneura no hōgakushi, 1918, translated in this anthology as “The Law Student in the Garret”) and Edogawa Rampo (Yaneura no sanposha, “The Wanderer in the Attic,” 1925), the “recluse pieces” by Satō Haruo (Den’en no yūutsu, 1914; trans. “The Sick Rose,” 1993; and Tokai no yūutsu, 1914; trans. “Gloom in the City,” 1993),3 and Kajii Motojirō (Aru kokoro no fūkei, 1926, translated here as “Scenes of the Mind”), and the “sound-obsession pieces” by Kawabata Yasunari (Ningen no ashioto, 1925, translated here as “The Sound of Footsteps”). These works essentially recast urban space as interior space where the mind reconfigures the oppression of an imper- sonal cityscape into an intimate landscape that contains mystery and one’s

“Hen na oto,” by Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), 1911. Translated by Angela Yiu. This translation is based on Natsume Sōseki zenshū, vol. 8 (Iwanami shobo, 1975), 374–80.

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30 natsume sōseki

darkest anxiety. In examining Sōseki’s interior pieces, I suggest a new mapping of Sōseki’s literary legacy by demonstrating how his engage- ments with the lurid transformations of interior space forged pathological interiors that anticipated those of later modernist authors.

The Sōseki reader is familiar with the narrative persona of the invalid secluded behind glass doors in his late works, turning a detached, pierc- ing, and lingering gaze on the world of representations within his field of vision, a gaze that also turns inward to embody a dissecting and unfor- giving introspection that leaves the Sōseki stand-in with no place to hide. Particularly striking is the invalid’s obsession with the spatial configuration of his immediate surroundings, as though he is trying to map out a famil- iar yet alien space each time. I suggest this obsession reflects Sōseki’s awe and fascination with the space of death, an intimate territory that dominates his consciousness yet remains perpetually removed and inac- cessible for the reason that he and indeed no one can actually experience and return to speak about death’s space. Thus what I call the “interior pieces”—those essays and fiction that repeatedly linger on the demise of others (humans, animals, plants, architecture) within the confines of his sick room—are collectively études or practice pieces for Sōseki to configure the elusive space of death as a way to anticipate its arrival, which is always too soon or too late, rendering him constantly unprepared or unsheltered in an interminable state of expectation.

Precisely because the space of death is at once mysterious, terrify- ing, and alluring, it has been the universal preoccupation of writers, phi- losophers, and thinkers throughout the ages. Among modernist writers in the West obsessed with death’s space are Kafka, Rilke, T. S. Eliot, Woolf; among Japanese writers, Masaoka Shiki, Sōseki, Akutagawa, Kawabata. Death’s space is mysterious and terrifying because it assumes the meta- phor of a destination but is no destination at all—a constantly shifting opening that promises no possibility of closure. For the same reason it is a space that lures and beckons. Virginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway (1925) con- verts Regent’s Park into death’s space, and T. S. Eliot turns London—the city and its hidden interiors—into a cosmos for the living and the dead in The Waste Land (1922). The modern metropolises under construction and destruction in the first few decades of the twentieth century, with their remaining monuments and ruins and their shifting streets and waterways as well as their dark, hidden interiors, serve as a convenient metaphor

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A Strange Sound 31

for the protean and mysterious quality of the space of death. I will also argue that death’s space is essentially modernist by nature in that it is by definition unfamiliar and unreal, constantly reinvented and reconfigured through changing perspectives, and resistant of any attempt in realism and mimesis.

“A Strange Sound” embodies three tropes characteristic of the shape- changing modernist prose: the reliance on a sonic rather than a visual reality, the idea of the double, and the lurid imaginations of one confined behind closed doors. The obsession with a spatial and identity doppelgän- ger—a dying man occupying a nearly identical spatial dimension as the ailing narrator—forces the narrator to confront his own mortality every single instance he hears the strange sound. In The Space of Literature, Maurice Blanchot quotes Kafka, writing in December 1914, “The best of what I have written is based upon this capacity to die content . . . I even enjoy dying in the character who is dying.” Blanchot comments that “Kafka feels deeply here that art is a relation with death.”4 “A Strange Sound” exemplifies the process through which art enables the writer to explore the space of death, or even practice dying (in oneself or in a character), by reconfiguring it as a textual possibility, especially in the appropriation and distortion of physical space, both indoors and outdoors, as a substitute for the unknown territory.

This story first appeared in the newspaper Asahi Shinbun (July 19–20, 1911), about a year after Sōseki vomited five hundred grams of blood and fell into a thirty-minute coma in the oft-referenced biographical event termed “Shūzenji illness” in August 1910. Soon after writing this piece, he embarked on a grueling lecture tour in the Kansai region at the request of his employer Asahi Shinbun, and again suffered numerous bouts of blood spitting and hospitalization due to his chronic stomach ulcer.

X 1

In the midst of dozing off, I woke to a strange sound coming from the room next door. At first, I could hardly tell what kind of sound it was and where it was coming from, but as I continued to listen, my ears began to formulate an idea. It was no doubt the sound of someone grating a

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32 natsume sōseki

radish or some such thing with a grater. I was sure of that much. How- ever, I could not imagine the reason for the need to grate radish in the room next door at this time of the day.

Oh, yes; I forgot to mention that this was a hospital. Unless you went fifty meters or so all the way to the kitchen two floors below, no one would be preparing meals. The hospital rooms did not allow the prepara- tion of food, not even sweets. Moreover, why would anyone be grating radish at this time of the day? I realized this had to be a different kind of sound that simply sounded like grating radish to my ears, but I still had no idea where and how such a sound was being generated.

Not knowing what it was, I tried to apply my thoughts to more meaningful subjects. Yet the moment this inscrutable sound reached me, it continued to reverberate in my ears and creep stealthily into my consciousness, making it impossible to banish it from my thoughts. All around was sunk in the deep stillness of a wood. All the incapacitated bodies lodged in this hospital wing seemed to have made a pledge of silence. Be they sleeping or thinking, no one spoke a word. You could not even hear the swishing sounds of the nurses’ slippers as they walked up and down the corridors. Enveloped by this soundless world, I was intrigued by the mysterious sound of what seemed to be someone grind- ing something down.

My room used to be a special one the size of two rooms, but the hos- pital had partitioned it into two rooms for the sake of convenience. So the annex where the brazier and other things were placed had a regular wall that bordered the room on the other side, but the six-mat room that held the beddings had a cupboard about 1.8 meters tall on the east, and next to it a sliding partition made of abaca cloth that allowed passage to the adjacent room. If I simply slid open the partition, it would be easy to tell what was going on next door, but of course the sound was not signifi- cant enough to warrant such an act of imposition. As the weather was getting warm, the verandah stayed open all the time. The verandah was a narrow strip of boardwalk that bordered the entire building. However, to prevent the awkwardness of patients stepping out on the verandah and looking straight into one another, a hinged door was erected between every two rooms to serve as a barrier. On the door was a narrow bolt in

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A Strange Sound 33

the shape of a stylish crosspiece, and every morning when the helper came to do the cleaning, he would bring the key from downstairs and open the hinged doors one by one. I rose and stood at the threshold. The sound seemed to be coming from behind this side door. Underneath the door was a five-centimeter gap through which nothing could be seen.

Thereafter, the sound repeated itself frequently. Sometimes it went on for five or six minutes and grated on my nerves, and there were also times when it lasted just half of that duration and stopped abruptly. But I missed the chance of finding out what it was. The patient was a quiet man, and sometimes he would call the nurse in a low voice in the middle of the night. The nurse was a commendable woman who would wake up immediately and respond with a cheerful and gentle “yes” as soon as he made one or two faint calls. Apparently she would then do something for the patient.

One day, the doctor on rounds seemed to be taking a much longer time than usual in the room next door. It was then that I detected some low, hushed discussion. It sounded like two or three people continuing a gloomy conversation that was making hardly any progress. Finally, the doctor’s voice—one can’t expect such a quick recovery, after all—could be clearly heard. Two or three days later, there seemed to be people going in and out of the patient’s room, but they all went about furtively so as not to disturb the patient. The patient vanished like a shadow at some point and left not a trace. The next day, a new patient moved in, and the name in white on the black plate hanging on the pillar at the entrance was replaced. The patient had finally left without my having ever found out what that strange sound was all about. In time, I also left the hospi- tal, and my curiosity about the sound dissipated.

Barely three months had passed before I found myself back in the same hospital. The room was just west of the one I used to have, the room number being different by only one. Although I was curious as to who was occupying my former room, I noticed there was not a sound all day; it was empty. The one next to it was the one that used to produce that

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strange sound, and I had no idea who was occupying it now. However, the physical changes that I was to experience were so intense that I could concentrate on little else; all my restless speculation about shadows of the past was redirected to my current condition and there was no time for me to give any thought to the radish-grating affair. Instead, I became more interested in the progress of the current patients who shared a fate similar to mine. I asked the nurse how many patients were in first class, and she said only three. Were they serious, I asked, and she said that it appeared so. In a day or two I found out from the nurse what those three were suffering from. One had esophageal cancer. One had stomach can- cer. And the last one had a stomach ulcer. The nurse summarily proph- esized that none of them would last very long.

I spent my days gazing at the small blossoms of the begonia plant on the verandah. The person who brought the plant here told me that he had wanted to buy some chrysanthemums, but the gardener was asking for sixteen kan.5 Let me have it for five, he said, but the gardener wouldn’t budge. Upon leaving, he said he would take it for six, but the gardener still wouldn’t hear it, explaining that chrysanthemums were pricy this year because of the flood. Remembering what he told me, I pictured a lively night street scene at a temple festival.

Before long, the man with esophageal cancer left the hospital. The one with stomach cancer, who said that death is nothing of consequence provided that one is resigned to it, died with grace. The one with a stom- ach ulcer became worse by the day. Waking up in the middle of the night, I could sometimes hear the attendant nurse crushing ice on the far east side. When that sound stopped, the patient died. I wrote in my diary. “Two of the three people died, and I am the only one left behind. Com- pared to those who died, the one left behind seemed pitiful. The one with a stomach ulcer was feeling nauseous and making retching noises day and night that echoed from one end to another, but the noise had stopped completely these last couple of days. I was relieved, thinking that his condition had stabilized, only to be told that pure exhaustion had prevented him from making those wretched noises.”

After that, patients went in and out, some to be replaced and some to return. My condition improved as the days went by. Finally, I could

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A Strange Sound 35

put on straw sandals and start sauntering along the broad corridors. Once, I happened to strike up a conversation with an attendant nurse. One warm afternoon, as a form of exercise after a meal, I walked to the washroom to change the water for the daffodils. Just as I was turning on the faucet, the nurse came to wash the teacups from her assigned room, and, after the customary exchange of greetings, she rested her eyes on the red clay pot in my hands and the bulging bulbs inside. Then her eyes moved to my profile and she commented on how my colors were much better now than before, apparently comparing my current state to what I was like three months ago.

“So you were here as an attendant nurse before?” “Yes, I was just next door to you. I was taking care of Mr. X for a

while—probably you weren’t aware of that.” Mr. X was my former next-door neighbor on the east—the man who

was making that strange noise. I looked at the nurse and couldn’t help but feel a little surprised that she was the one who answered “yes” ever so gently whenever she was called in the middle of the night. Still, I didn’t feel like bringing myself to ask about the reason for the sound that used to so excite my nerves. Saying oh, I see, I continue to wipe the red clay pot. The woman, however, abruptly changed her tone of voice, saying,

“At that time your room occasionally emitted a strange sound . . .” I felt as though I had been met with a counterattack and stared at the nurse. She continued,

“It was always around six in the morning.” “Oh, that!” Remembering what it was, I broke out in a loud voice.

“That was an autostrap—a leather hone. I shave every morning, you see, and I hone the razor on the leather hone. I still use it. Come and take a look if you don’t believe me.”

The nurse simply said “Oh, I see” and did not sound impressed. As it turned out, Mr. X was very curious about the leather hone and kept asking the nurse what it was. When the nurse said she didn’t know, Mr. X kept saying the person next door must have improved so dramatically that he could get up in the morning and make that mechanical sound as he exercised, and oh how he envied him, and so on.

“Very well, but what about the sound from your side?”

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“The sound from our side?” “You know, that strange sound, like grating radishes.” “Oh, that! I was grating cucumbers. The patient’s feet were burn-

ing and he asked me to cool them with cucumber juice, so I was grating cucumbers all the while.”

“So it was the sound of grating vegetables after all.” “Yes.” “Well, I’m glad I finally know what it was. By the way, what was Mr.

X sick with?” “Colon cancer.” “So there wasn’t much one could do.” “Yes, it was already all but over. Soon after he left the hospital,

he died.” I made my way back to my room in silence. In my mind, I compared

the man who irritated others with the sound of grating cucumbers and died with the man who provoked jealousy with the sound of a leather hone and recovered.

Notes

1. Natsume Sōseki, “Buncho,” trans. Angela Yiu, Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 40, no. 3 (Summer 2001), 484–500.

2. Natsume Sōseki, “The Procession,” trans. Marvin Marcus, in Reflections in a Glass Door: Memory and Melancholy in the Personal Writings of Natsume Sōseki (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009), 99–100. “Gyōretsu” is taken from the essay collection Eijitsu shōhin (Essays in Spring Days, 1909) in NSZ, vol. 8, 120–22.

3. Both stories are collected in Satō Haruo, The Sick Rose: A Pastoral Elegy, trans. Francis B. Tenny (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993).

4. Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature (Lincoln: University of Ne braska Press, 1982), 90–91.

5. Kan is an old currency denomination. In Meiji, one kan was equivalent to 10 sen, so 16 kan was equivalent to one yen sixty sen.

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The Law Student in the Garret X

Uno Kōji

Uno Kōji (1891–1961), who lost his father early in life, was raised by relatives in the Dōtombori entertainment district of Osaka while his mother worked. Financed by a successful relative, he came to Tokyo ostensibly to study law but entered Waseda University and pursued literature. When he first attracted attention with “Kura no naka” (1919; trans. “In the Store- house,” 1997), many in the literary establishment were taken aback. His first-person narrator, though forty years old, disported himself like a child. Though “confessional” in nature, the content of his revelations (his love of kimonos and smells and his sexual impotence) was startling and odd. The waggish tone was distinctly different from the serious and occasion- ally lugubrious introspections of the shishōsetsu (personal novels) that occupied a central place in Japan’s literary world at the time. “In the Store- house” had been preceded by “The Law Student in the Garret” the previ- ous year. The farcical, parodic tone for which Uno would become known is readily evident in this earlier story, whose protagonist turns his back on middle-class aspirations by not attending lectures on law but reading literature instead, and then undermines the image of the writer by fanta- sizing about his prowess as a sumo wrestler and a broad jumper. Like the rakugo comic monologues to which Uno’s early writing was sometimes likened, the free-spirited, improvisatory narrative ends suddenly on a note of surprise.

“Yaneura no hōgakushi,” by Uno Kōji (1891–1961), 1918. Translated by Elaine Ger- bert. The translation is based on the Uno Kōji zenshū, vol. 1 (Chūō Kōronsha, 1972), 52–60. The Chūō Kōronsha version is based on the Iwanami version in 1951.

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Some in the literary establishment were offended by Uno’s seemingly flippant attitude toward literature. Others found him strange, a man of curious tastes who was given the nickname of “Mannendoko no Uno Kōji” (Uno Kōji of the Ten Thousand Year Bed) because of his reputed habit of spending his days reading and writing in his futon. But none could deny that he possessed talent and exhibited none of the greenness often asso- ciated with young new writers. There was an unexpected maturity in the guise of immaturity in the work of this writer who positioned himself as an antipode to the self-serious, introspective shishōsetsu novelist, and the critical spirit underlying its comic perspective foreshadowed the reputa- tion that Uno would later earn as an unusually astute reader of literature and men.

Even though Uno was not conventionally identified as a modernist— his trademark jōsetsu (rambling-recitation) style seems to align him with the old school of narrative associated with the jōruri (the narrative that accompanies a Bunraku puppet show)—he has created a host of strangely effete and ineffectual men (dame otoko) in his stories that turn their back on the collective obsession of the modern Japanese state that emphasized the pursuit of a rich country and a strong nation. The frequenter of the storehouse lingers on kimono rather than career establishment and self- advancement, while the law student is socially and financially unproduc- tive yet placidly content in the state of misfit and social withdrawal. In that sense, like his fellow and junior Osaka writer Oda Sakunosuke (1913– 1947), best known for his seemingly antiquated tale of recitation Meoto zensai (1946; trans. “Hurray for Marriage, or Sweet Beans for Two,” 1994) and his attitude of “thumbing his nose at authority,”1 Uno also rejects a rising modern state boasting of its military prowess, imperial aggression, and upward-climbing citizens. If modernism is defined by its rejection of the status quo, Uno’s ineffectual male protagonists seeking comfort in windowless storehouses and body-sized closets no doubt challenge the megalomaniac dream of a modern nation to rival the imperial West in ter- ritorial aggrandizement.

This story was first published in the magazine Chūgaku sekai in Octo- ber 1918. It was included in the collection Kura no naka (Shūeikaku 1919, Shōwa shobō 1926, and Bunchōsha 1947), as well as in the collection Kura no naka/Ko wo kashiya (Iwanami shoten, 1951).

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The Law Student in the Garret 39

A lthough it had been five years since the law student Okkotsu San-saku graduated from the university he still didn’t have a regular job. He still went to sleep and woke up in the same room in the same lodging house that he first moved into when he came to Tokyo nine years ago (during which time the management had changed as many as thirteen times).

In his high school days he attended about two-thirds of the classes, perhaps because school regulations did not permit absences. And his academic record was quite good. After entering the university, he passed through the campus gate no more than forty times in four years, around ten times a year. As a result, he graduated second to last in his class.

Earlier, from around the third or fourth year of elementary school, he had begun to immerse himself in the reading of children’s magazines and fairy tales, and from that time on he had, however vague, an ambi- tion to become another Iwaya Sazanami2 in the future.

His father had died when Sansaku was three years old. He had left enough money to enable Sansaku and his mother to live on. But in exercis- ing special caution, his mother had entrusted the funds to an influential relative, and that had opened the door to great misfortune. Following a sudden business failure, the relative had gone bankrupt, and their savings had disappeared. That happened the year Sansaku entered middle school.

At that point, another relative by the name of Ōike appeared and arranged to pay for Sansaku’s school expenses. Ōike was his father’s cousin and had in the past received financial and various other help from Sansaku’s father. That was before Ōike became a near millionaire through a chance business undertaking. Ōike had decided that when Sansaku finished the first year of middle school he would be brought into his household and take an exam to transfer to a first rank commercial school. But no matter how he thought about it, Sansaku just could not bring himself to do this, and he left the Ōike household two days before the exam and ran back to his own home (that is to his mother’s birthplace where he had been living with her after the bankruptcy).

At that point Ōike gave in and allowed him to continue with his middle school education, paying just his school tuition as he had done

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before. In the beginning, Sansaku had maintained an excellent school record throughout both elementary school and middle school. It’s not that he studied so much for class after he entered middle school. In those days, he immersed himself in reading magazines and novels. Moreover, the desire inspired by Iwaya Sazanami in his childhood had gradually shifted, and his future goal changed to becoming a magazine reporter, and then from around the third year of middle school, to becoming a novelist. And that remained his unwavering goal up until the present. In short, he was a so-called child prodigy.

Well now, when he graduated from middle school, yet another problem arose. This was due to the fact that he insisted on studying literature, in spite of the fact that Ōike urged him to take the entrance examination to a commercial high school. After many quarrels, it was decided that he would strike a compromise and enter law school (a third party had inter- vened to resolve their dispute). It wasn’t clear even to the genius Okkotsu Sansaku how a compromise between commerce and literary studies com- puted to legal studies, but since he realized that it was impossible and unwise to go any further against the wishes of the relative who was pay- ing his tuition, in the end he had no choice but to enter the faculty of law. In this way, he spent the long years after high school graduation enrolled in the faculty of law, but devoting himself to reading only literature. Five years ago he had become a bachelor of law in name only after barely mak- ing it through the law school exams.

Around the time of his graduation, his relative Ōike who had been his guardian died. Naturally, it did not mean the end of the Ōike family, for there was someone to take his place, but when Sansaku graduated, the funds from the Ōikes stopped coming, as if the family had just fin- ished repaying their debt. As related earlier, Sansaku was a law school graduate, but he knew next to nothing about law. And among his rela- tives who harbored ill feeling toward him there was no one who would try to help him find a job. And he was proud and would not call on earlier graduates from his law school in an attempt to get a position. Moreover, among the earlier graduates there was not a single one who had much sympathy for him either.

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At that point the poor law school graduate was suddenly forced to seek a livelihood. Even when he had been at the university, he had had more friends in the literature department than in the law school, and he survived by doing cheap translations and writing fairy tales, work that he obtained through those friends; but now he had accumulated a consider- able debt to his lodging house. On top of that, after his graduation he had to send fifteen yen every month to his aging mother in his hometown.

However, in the past year or two he had fallen into even greater pov- erty. There wasn’t enough translation work. And he had run out of ideas for fairy tales. Moreover, he was just as uncomfortable about calling on his literary seniors and requesting work with bowed head as he had been about visiting the earlier graduates from his law school. (In other words, while he was very proud he was also very shy.) Because of this, at some point he had fallen behind in sending his mother money. And having fallen behind once, he ceased to care, and gradually he stopped sending money altogether. In the end, he no longer even hesitated to crumple up the letters pressing him for money.

Then about a month before, a letter came from home. As mentioned earlier, in those days he would leave the letters from home unread for several days and sometimes they would end up never read at all, but fortunately he opened and read this one right away. I said “fortunately,” because this was a letter containing extremely good news. It seemed that word of his frequently failing to send money to his mother got around to their relatives, and that some of them, having received assistance from his father while he was still alive and having become successful since then (as Ōike had), had gotten together and collected around ten thousand yen to enable his mother to open a simple but profitable store.

After receiving the news, he was so relieved about his daily living expenses that he felt completely drained.

“What was it she said? . . .” he muttered to himself, recalling the words at the end of his mother’s letter. “Those people had contributed money to enable her to open a store because I hadn’t supported her as I should have. And so I mustn’t even dream about asking her for a loan— you have no obligation to give me money, you say?—Humph! Who was going to ask you for a loan anyway? But wait. . . .” He went on talking to

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himself as he wracked his brain. “If my mother received it, it’s now my mother’s. And I’m not thinking of borrowing money from her to throw it away on pleasure. I intend to use this opportunity to do some serious work. . . . Therefore . . . and so . . .”

“Well, now I’ll just stop thinking about money and get serious about writing an adult novel . . .” (this is what he called a regular novel because for a long time he had been writing fairy tales).

“Until now I’ve done trifling, uninteresting, disagreeable work against my will because every month I had to send fifteen yen to Mother, but now that she’s secured a stable livelihood . . .”

Just as the traveler who feels no fatigue while he is hurrying along the road on his journey is suddenly overcome by exhaustion and collapses once he arrives at his destination, so Sansaku suddenly felt relieved and drained (actually, as mentioned earlier, he did not really send his mother money every month as he was supposed to). He began to feel that it would be all right to do nothing at all. And he ceased to feel like doing anything.

He once resolved to somehow begin writing an “adult novel,” since it had been his goal for which he had even neglected school, but when he thought about how after writing it he’d have to struggle just to get it published, let alone make money from it as he did with fairy tales, he immediately threw away his pen.

Since then he had spent every day sleeping when he was not visiting friends. For some time he had kept his bedding spread out on the upper shelf of the lodging house closet, which was divided into upper and lower halves. He did this in order to save himself the trouble of constantly tak- ing the futon out of the closet and putting it back.

“This is it. This is it,” he rejoiced to himself. “I may have been born in the country, but unlike the sons of farmers and shopkeepers, my phy- sique is extremely delicate, so I can’t just lie down anywhere and sleep with a stack of magazines or a rolled-up cushion for a pillow like everyone else does. This is great. This is perfect.”

As lazy as he was, he always woke up early in the morning at least once and got up, washed his face, and ate. But after an hour or two, he returned to the bed in the closet. At noon he was usually awakened by the maid who brought him his lunch on a tray. As soon as he had eaten

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lunch, he at once burrowed back into the bedding in the closet. Then in the evening he was woken again by the maid who brought in the eve- ning meal tray. When sleeping one dwells in an unconscious world, and so for him the three trays of breakfast, lunch, and dinner seemed like a Western-style, three-course meal in which dishes are brought in by a waiter one after another. And in the evenings, he usually took a walk or visited a friend and spent the time in idle talk. He always went to bed around 2 a.m. Still, Sansaku himself more than anyone was surprised at how well he slept. He sometimes thought about the fact that he never failed to dream while he was sleeping. “When I think about it, it may be that I actually spend little time sleeping. If most people have a few dreams while they sleep, I sleep a little in between dreams.”

Well now, the law school graduate Okkotsu Sansaku’s lodging house was midway up a slope and stood on flat ground about two feet lower than the surface of the street. And so although his room was on the second floor facing the street (that is, the slope), his face, as he sat in the room, was at about the same height as the faces of the people passing by on the street, and lying in the closet with the window open and the closet door open and looking at the street, he could see clearly the people passing by, while they, having no idea that there was someone in the closet, saw only an empty room as they walked by.

And so from the bed where he napped in the morning and in the afternoon, when he was tired of reading magazines, in the five or ten minutes before he fell asleep again, he would observe the people passing by on the slope as if he were watching a play. It got so that if they were people from the neighborhood, he was able to recognize them passing by even though he’d never exchanged words with them. “The invalid in that house over there looks a lot better; he’s walking often these days; fine, fine.” “Say, that young girl is unusually dressed up today.” While talking to himself this way, he’d lie in bed and watch the people go by, and even- tually slip into dreamland.

He had been extremely dissatisfied with the study of law when he was a student in the faculty of law. Now, he was a law school graduate in name alone, but for Okkotsu who had continued to lead the life of a literature

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student, nowadays literature and literati had begun to seem extremely unsatisfactory and deserving of contempt. In the past, he had thought that literary people possessed a splendid eye for judging all things in this world (of course, it may have seemed so only to him). But what about the conditions of the literary people that he saw and knew now?

“To take an example close to home,” the law school graduate Okkotsu Sansaku thought as he watched the street from his bed in the closet. “Now, take the face of that woman passing by over there. Among the literary people I know (actually, many of his friends who had been in the literature department when he was a law student had already become well-known literary figures), can any one of them adequately judge her face to say how beautiful or not beautiful it is, or assess her figure, or her way of wearing clothes, or her overall appearance?”

From the time he was young, he had been if anything a self-righ- teous, proud child, conceited about his abilities. In a word, he somehow held the world in complete disdain. Those tendencies had increased with age and now they seemed a bit pathological even to himself. At any rate, these past two or three years, not only novels but criticism, plays, the the- ater, and painting—all things called art seemed unsatisfying and filled with defects. Their defects and strengths (if there were any) were known only to him; in other words, he thought that there was no one other than himself who truly understood them. At times he thought about writing something to set an example or to serve as a guide, but in the end it never came to completion.

For example, whether it was going to a restaurant, or going to hear gidayū,3 or rakugo,4 kōdan,5 naniwabushi,6 or music or dance, or more vul- gar forms of entertainment such as comic posture dance or shimpa7 trag- edy, there was nothing that did not become an object of his appraisal. He thought he could discover something beautiful in anything, no matter how insignificant it was reputed to be, and he was pleased with himself for finding something that was not interesting no matter how interest- ing something was said to be.

One time as he lay in the closet he began entertaining such absurd ideas as: “Even if I were to become a sumo wrestler, I expect I wouldn’t be such a weak one. Ōarashi Tatsugoro, who is now said to be a great

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Hinoshita Kaisan8 wrestler was a classmate in my middle school; he was an inferior student who failed two grades in a row, and in the end he was two grades below me. Now, when I look at the sumo section in the news- paper, he is described as being an unusually smart sumo wrestler. Be that as it may, he and I often sparred in judo. I basically didn’t have strength, but my body lacked resistance, just like a lump of jelly, and so no mat- ter how much force he put into his biceps to try to knock me over, I was like the willow in the wind—yes, it’s a cliché, but the willow eludes the wind and is never defeated. In the meantime, I looked for the moment when he became impatient in his attack, and using his force against him, I always ended up winning. That guy Ōarashi from that time was pretty strong (though by no means extraordinary) but he never once beat me. If I had had as much training as Ōarashi, I’d surely be a splendid, or at least, a unique kind of full-fledged sumo wrestler by now.”

Thinking this way, Okkotsu Sansaku came to feel that if he were to have a sumo match with Ōarashi even today he would never be defeated. And then he grinned to himself in the closet as he imagined himself in sumo matches with each of the present-day sumo wrestlers.

At one time, he also thought, “I wonder why I didn’t apply myself more to the study of law? In today’s newspaper I saw that that unimagi- native, inarticulate, unimposing classmate of mine, that guy Kakii was named an up-and-coming young lawyer because of some insignificant case he handled. It seems that there’s nothing as easy to manipulate as the present world. (Sansaku thought only about the life fortunes of other people and forgot that the world was as hard for him to manipulate in the present as in the past.) “With my intelligence, and with my eloquence . . .” Thinking this way, he had on more than one or two occasions decided to buy some law books right away and set his sights on becoming a judge or a prosecutor (but that idea never lasted for more than an hour).

In short, he was lacking in the perseverance, courage, and common sense that are most essential for succeeding in the world. Each and every thing was too boring for him. Everything was insipid; no matter what he saw or heard, it was unpleasant for him and sometimes even made him angry. The lodging house landlady, wearing her hair in a bun so that it looked as if her thinning and stiff pomaded hair were neatly spread

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over a black lacquer wire net, was the target of his greatest displeasure. It seemed that she enjoyed and even insisted on being called “okusan”9 by the maids and even the boarders to mask the fact that she was the mis- tress of the elderly back-country gentleman who came by once or twice a week.

Sansaku alone had been deliberately addressing her as “o-kami- san”10 and she had never responded to his greeting. But Sansaku had continued in this fashion with the landlady who never answered him.

“How interesting is this world for you? . . .” “How interesting is this world for you?” was something that San-

saku was in the habit of asking others. “How about it, do you find life interesting?” One time he tried ask-

ing a friend this. “Ummm,” his friend muttered vaguely but did not answer. When he asked the same question of another friend, the friend pro-

nounced decidedly, “It’s not interesting.” Then Sansaku asked this other friend the second question that he

was in the habit of asking. “Don’t you want to die?” That friend answered, “I’d like to be killed before I realize it.” “Oh, I can’t stand it. Maybe I’ll ride an airplane. When I was in mid-

dle school I was the outstanding gymnast in the entire school, so I’d be sure to be good at flying an airplane.” He began his characteristic mega- lomaniac musings in this way. “But unfortunately I may be short on the essential, the most essential thing . . . courage . . .” and as usual he drifted off into a dream world on the bed in the closet.

In his middle school days Okkotsu Sansaku had been an expert at broad jumping. He would run six yards, push off with his left foot, and leap into the air with his two legs spread in a position as if he were swimming. When he made a single-wave trajectory and eventually began to land on the other side, he would lightly lift his body. The trajectory would become two waves, the distance jumped would increase, and when he was about to descend, he would twist his body, making it float up lightly. And since he usually landed on the other side making three wave- like patterns, compared to the jumpers who could not manage to make

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more than one wave, he was able to jump incomparably farther. Think- ing about it now, when he tried more and more to keep his body afloat while he was leaping, his body continued to fly through the air without mechanical assistance.

“This is interesting. This is really an easy trick for me. Hey, I’m already flying higher than that pine tree. I can see a lot of people below. It’s strange that not many people are amazed by my feat. They’ll under- stand before long. You’ll see. Because you’ll soon realize what a great thing I’ve done. Hey, I’m over the riverbank. River? Sea? It’s all the same. Keep going, keep going. There! It’s nothing at all. I’ve crossed the river.”—— But this was a dream. He didn’t remember when he woke up from the dream. It was only certain that he didn’t awaken as a result of the kind of failure that often occurs in a dream.

Though the dream was over Okkotsu Sansaku wasn’t the least bit surprised. He remembered clearly that he was a master broad jumper in his middle school days and that he had kept his body afloat in the middle of a jump.

“I wonder why I haven’t tried that by now. Running before jumping is the plane speeding down the runway. Jumping is the take off. Yes, that’s it. There’s no reason I couldn’t do it. But . . .” And even as he thought like this, he would rethink it. “But . . .” And he would change his mind again.

He left the closet and stealthily tried it out in the middle of the cramped six-mat room. But his body would not leave the tatami mat by a single foot, rather, he fell heavily and clumsily as if he had gained weight.

“No, it’s not supposed to be this way.” He grew all the more serious because of his failure. And he went out into the corridor. Fortunately, there was not a soul around. About a month before at the time of a major housecleaning, oil paper painted with chemicals and lacquer had been spread on the corridor floor to make the floor look better and prevent the spread of bedbugs. Since the floor was very slippery, when he was bored he would often skate on it in his slippers.

Now, with the flying skills evoked in his dream, he forgot himself and ran around on the floor and tried jumping. But he could no longer jump even a tenth as far as in his middle school days. And the fourth time he ran down the corridor, the moment he took off, he slipped and fell. As

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48 uno kōji

he went down, his shin banged against the staircase railing. He sat on the floor with his face twisted in an excess of pain, and at that moment the lodging house landlady with her hair styled in a heavily oiled bun came up from down below.

“Well!” The landlady opened her eyes wide and cried out, “Mr. Okkotsu!”

“Okusan!” He called her “okusan,” which he almost never did. It was because he remembered something that made him forget the pain in his shin and discover the necessity of addressing her this way.

“Okusan, tomorrow, tomorrow I will probably have some money, so . . .”

Anticipating the result of the nonsense he had uttered, and feeling the necessity of covering up his embarrassment a little more, he spouted anew the well-worn words while gasping from the pain in his leg,

“Okusan, this life is not very interesting, is it . . .” “No more for you than for me.” Answering clearly and without smil-

ing, the landlady went downstairs. “No more for you than for me? . . . Indeed, indeed.” The law school graduate Okkotsu Sansaku echoed as he sat on his

behind looking after the back of the landlady.

Notes

1. Oda Sakunosuke, “Hurray for Marriage, or Sweet Beans for Two,” in Sto- ries of Osaka Life, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Weatherhill, 1994), xiii.

2. Iwaya Sazanami (1870–1933) began his literary career as a founding member of the Kenyūsha coterie. He translated fairy tales from German into Japanese and became a well-known author of children’s literature.

3. Gidayū is a dramatic style of narrative chanting to samisen accompani- ment perfected by Takemoto Gidayū (1651–1714).

4. Rakugo is a comic monologue performance in which a seated storyteller impersonates the voices of the different characters in the story.

5. Kōdan are historical narratives recited to the beat of a closed fan. 6. Naniwabushi is a type of traditional Japanese narrative singing accom-

panied by a samisen. 7. Shimpa was a new school of acting developed in the Meiji period (1868–

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1912). While dealing with contemporary subject matter, often political in nature, its plots veered toward the melodramatic and its acting style was characterized by the kind of exaggerated mannerisms associated with kabuki.

8. Hinoshita Kaisan is an unparalleled master in an art or a sport. In sumo, it is equivalent to “Yokozuna,” the highest rank for sumo wrestlers.

9. A term used to address the lady of the house. 10. A term used to address the proprietress of a small business such as a

restaurant, inn, or lodging house.

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Scenes of the Mind X

Kajii Motojirō

The literary career of Kajii Motojirō, which spanned a few pro- ductive years between 1925 and 1932, was constrained by financial dif- ficulties and cut short by tuberculosis. The task of writing was such an ordeal that his oeuvre amounts to no more than about twenty fully real- ized short stories. Yet despite the obstacles he faced, Kajii developed a voice and style admired for its polish and inventiveness. More important, his willingness to engage in formal literary experiments that chronicle and celebrate the liberating powers of the imagination makes him a truly rep- resentative figure of Japanese modernism.

“Scenes of the Mind” displays for us the techniques of style and the themes that distinguish Kajii’s art. The protagonist, Takashi, is a flaneur— the kind of peripatetic urban stroller common to modernist fiction. The difference in Kajii’s delineation of this character type is that Takashi is dispossessed and alienated by poverty and disease, a man forced by his situation to find solace and release in the creative powers of his mind. Still, such liberation comes at a price, for the reliance on imaginative escape intensifies his feelings of isolation from society. The very conditions of his existence divide the world into radically separate and irreconcilable spheres: one illuminated by hopeful imagination, the other darkened by acute awareness of the inescapable tragedy of life.

“Aru kokoro no fūkei” by Kajii Motojirō (1901–1932), 1926. Translated by Dennis Washburn. This translation is based on Remon, Aru kokoro no fūkei (Ōbunsha, [1972] 1974) (4th ed.). This story is also in Kajii Motojirō zenshū (Chikuma shobō, 1999) vol. 1, 19–105.

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Scenes of the Mind 51

Like many of Kajii’s other stories, “Scenes of the Mind” reflects the anxieties and bouts of depression the author himself experienced as a result of personal circumstances. Yet his stories go far beyond autobio- graphical explorations of an individual’s state of mind to touch on more profound paradoxes that define the human condition—that we are beings bound by mortality, yet capable of imagining the eternal; that we can construct perfect ideals even as we live in a world marred by injustice and disorder; that we can recognize our common bonds, especially our shared mortality, even as we remain essentially isolated and alone. Kajii plumbs the inner recesses of subjective consciousness, but in a way that ultimately dissolves the individual subject. His art is not one of mere self- expression, but of transcendence achieved through the transformational power of literary language.

This story was first published in the coterie magazine Aozora, August 1926.

Takashi stood at the window of his room and stared out at the slumber-ing street. All the other windows were dark, since no one else was up, and the late-night silence was like a corona enveloping the streetlamps. The sharp, raspy chirring of gold bugs echoed intermittently.

The district was a complex labyrinth that didn’t see much traffic even in the daytime—the kind of place where the innards of fish or the bodies of dead mice might lie undisturbed for days. Ramshackle houses lined both sides of the street. One could see traces where they had been weathered by the wind. The fading dark, reddish brown paint and the crumbling fences of rough plaster created the impression that the peo- ple who resided there were leading lives as limp and lethargic as an old, worn-out hand towel. If the street that Takashi’s window overlooked were a dining table, then his room would be the seat occupied by the master of the house.

From time to time he could hear the pendulum on a wall-clock through a crack in the door. He could see the wind blowing darkly through

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some trees in the distance . . . then, a moment later, a nearby oleander tree began to sway in the depths of the night. Takashi stared intently into the scene before him. Each time the oleander swayed, the overhangs of the houses, which floated up dimly white in the darkness along the street, moved in or out of his line of sight, disappearing behind the branches, then reappearing. Takashi sensed that once more the vague, uncertain fancies he harbored in his mind would venture forth. Crickets were chirp- ing. The scent of withering plants somewhere close to him came wafting up faintly.

One time an acquaintance who was visiting him said to Takashi, “Your room smells like escargot.”

Another person told him, “You know, it doesn’t matter where you live. You make any room feel dark and gloomy.”

His futon bedding was spread out, crammed in amidst a messy clut- ter . . . a cheap kettle, the kind used for picnics, clogged with the dregs of black tea leaves . . . various books pulled out of their cardboard covers and tossed about haphazardly . . . scraps of paper. Like a gray heron, Takashi would sleep there during the day. Whenever he was awake, he could hear the sound of a school bell ringing in the distance. Then, in the evening, just when others were settling in to sleep and everything was growing still, he would come to the window and stare out.

His fancies, passing by like shadows in a thick fog, would gradually take shape and become distinct.

The scene outside the window repeatedly dissolved and re-formed before his eyes. One moment it looked completely familiar to him. The next it seemed utterly strange. Then another moment passed. He was no longer able to distinguish between the scene of the late-night street as it really was and the scene as he imagined it. The oleander standing there in the pitch-black darkness was his depressed state of mind. An earthen wall was illuminated by streetlamps that were out of his line of sight. The shadow of the wall blended into the darkness. His fancies had once again taken on three-dimensional forms.

In such a setting Takashi felt he would be able to beckon a scene of the mind.

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Takashi was up at the window so late at night because he found it impos- sible to sleep at that hour. Even when he tried to sleep he was tormented by dark thoughts that overwhelmed him. He had contracted a serious venereal disease from a prostitute.

A long time ago he had the following dream . . .

His feet are swollen. Along the top of his feet are two rows of what look like bite marks. The swelling is gradually getting much, much worse. And as it does, the bite marks get deeper and the area around them puffier.

Some of the marks are navel-like swellings. Repulsive soft flesh peeps out from the inside. Other marks are long slits, narrow and deep like the marks left by worms gnawing through old books.

It’s a peculiar feeling, for even as he watches, his feet continue to swell and turn bluish. There is no pain. The swellings are crimson, like cactus flowers.

His mother is there. “Ahh, just look at what’s happened to my feet!” His tone is accusing. “What’s it to do with me? I don’t know anything about it.” “But . . . you scratched me with your nails, didn’t you?” He believes his mother had pressed her nails into his feet, but as

soon as he voices his suspicions, it suddenly occurs to him that the marks may be a symptom of that condition.

He reconsiders and feels relieved that his mother knows nothing about his disease. In his dream, he urges her to help him. “Mother . . . do something!”

She’s at a loss, but after a while tells him, “All right, then, I’ll try to make it better.”

In the meantime, before he realizes it, the two rows of swellings and slits have spread. They now extend from his chest to his belly. As he looks down at them, wondering what his mother is going to do, she pulls at the skin of his chest (the skin had suddenly grown slack like a withered

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54 kajii motojirō

breast), fitting one row of the swellings over the slits like a row of but- tons fastened together. Takashi stares silently at his mother’s ministra- tions with a look of discontent. Each swelling on one row is paired with a slit on the other.

“This is Doctor So-and-so’s method of treatment,” his mother says. Takashi looks like he’s wearing a frock coat with lots of buttons. Still, he feels anxious, worried that if he moves even slightly the rows would immediately come undone.

In his dreams he was always turning on his mother, quarrelling with her while concealing his personal affairs. And even though they were just dreams, they affected Takashi.

Takashi wondered if his experience with prostitutes hadn’t become such an integral part of his depressing life that it was influencing his dreams. In real life he was seeing a young woman. She would do all sorts of mean, spiteful things, and whenever she behaved that way the image of a blunt, hardened hooker would rise up in his mind, filling Takashi with unbearable self-loathing. Each time he encountered that image he was even more aware of his own internal corruption, wondering just how much it warped him, like a wedge driven into his life.

Anxiety about venereal disease was another wedge warping his life. Part of an old recurring dream had turned into reality.

He would find himself eyeing a doctor’s shingle on some thor- oughfare. He would find himself casually reading an advertisement in a newspaper. Until now he had never once been so self-conscious. It would make him happy to see something beautiful. Then he would suddenly sense something unpleasant in his heart. Pursuing that feeling, his self- reflection always brought him back to that disease, just as he expected it would. Whenever that happened Takashi couldn’t help feeling that dark things were lying in wait for him everywhere.

From time to time he would take out those parts of himself that were ailing and gaze at them. They would plead with the expression of some melancholy creature.

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Takashi frequently recalled the events of that unhappy night.

He was sitting by himself in a room facing the street, where he could hear the voices of drunken men and of prostitutes calling out to their custom- ers. The lively sounds of samisen and taikō drums echoed from nearby, reverberating in his solitary heart.

Takashi thought, It’s this air! He strained to listen. The shuffling of shoes and boots. The clopping of geta clogs weaving in at intervals among the other sounds. He felt as if all this noise had some purpose. The calls of the ice cream vendor . . . the voices singing . . . every sound around him.

The geta he had heard just out front on Shijō Avenue did not have the same sharp reverberation as the geta of the servant girl in this brothel.

He sensed that the Takashi inside this room was the same as the one who, just a few minutes earlier, had been strolling along Shijō Avenue, letting his mind freely roam.

So I’ve come here after all, he thought. The servant climbed the stairs to his room. She was carrying a bra-

zier. The scent of wax from the charcoal cylinders permeated the space. Takashi could not satisfactorily put his feelings into words, but after the maid went back downstairs he was struck by how his mood could change so abruptly.

The woman was late. Takashi, anxious and impatient, decided on a whim to climb up to the fire-watch cupola on the roof of the brothel house—a space he knew intimately.

As he was about to climb the rickety stairs, he glanced over at a slid- ing paper-panel door, which was wide open. Futon bedding had been laid out inside the room and a couple was glaring at him. Takashi proceeded up the stairs, pretending he hadn’t noticed anything. After all, it was the sort of shamelessness one expected in an establishment like this.

When he reached the cupola, he saw that the buildings in the district were roofed entirely by dark tiles. Here and there, in the spaces between the houses, he could peer through bamboo blinds into rooms lit by electric

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lamps. A tall building that housed a restaurant rose up in a spot where he had not expected it. Is that Shijō Avenue over there? He could make out all sorts of things through the gaps between the tiled roofs . . . the vermilion gate of Yasaka Shrine . . . a forest faintly reflected in the light of electric streetlamps. Evening mists obscured things farther in the distance . . . the district of Maruyama and Higashiyama beyond it. The Milky Way flowed toward him from there.

Takashi felt a sense of liberation. From now on, he thought, I shall always indulge myself by climbing up here.

A black-crowned heron flew past, calling out as it went. A soot-black cat was walking along a roof. Takashi glanced down at a pot of withered autumn flowers at his feet.

The woman said she was from Hakata. Her Kyoto speech was peculiarly accented. Takashi complimented her on her attractive figure, and such flattery made her talkative. She told him that even though she was still new to the district, she had sold several thousand flowers the previous month, which ranked fourth among all the women of the licensed quar- ters. She did this because the geisha exchange registry always posted the names of those who sold the most, and the women at the top of the list would receive money for their sales. She also told him the reason she was so neat and pretty was that her madam, a woman she called Mother, paid special attention to industrious girls like her.

“That’s why I work as hard as I can,” she said. “Recently I caught a cold and was exhausted. Mother told me to take it easy, but I just couldn’t rest.”

“Are you taking any medicine?” “They gave me some pills, but those things cost five sen each! And in

any case, they don’t do much good, no matter how many you take.” As Takashi listened to her talking, images of a different woman—

one whom he had heard about from a certain man, a Mr. S—floated up in his mind.

Mr. S had told him how ugly this woman was and how ashamed he felt, no matter how drunk he was, to have to say her name when he called for her. He also mentioned that her nightgown was disgustingly filthy.

Mr. S had been given the woman quite by chance the first time they

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met, and he had a strangely perverse sexual experience with her on that occasion. He also said that after their first encounter he would always end up calling for that woman whenever he got totally drunk, no matter how much he tried to resist his urges. That impulse arose when he drank—a wild, violent desire that only that particular woman could satisfy.

When he first heard this story Takashi wasn’t especially bothered by it. He figured it didn’t matter all that much so long as the woman who performed those acts did so because she preferred such perverse pleasures. But when it occurred to him that it might be the life-or-death competition for customers at the brothels that forced the ugly woman to do what she did, he fell into a dark mood.

Mr. S mentioned that the woman never spoke a word to him. She was like a mute—though he admitted that he was never inclined to speak with her anyway. As soon as Mr. S mentioned that detail, Takashi won- dered just how many of her other customers preferred to remain silent.

Takashi let the woman he was with now prattle on, all the while imagining how she might compare to that ugly prostitute.

“You’re certainly a quiet one, aren’t you,” she said. Her skin was hot. Each time he touched her, exploring a new place

on her body, he was struck by how hot she felt. “I have to go meet another customer,” she said. She started to get

ready to leave. “You’ll be going home too?” “Yeah.” Takashi was lying down, watching while the woman turned toward

him to put on her kimono. While he was looking at her, he took stock of his own feelings—Well, how about it? Yes, this is it. What he had in mind by “this” was a specific feeling—I’m always thinking about women, and so I come to a brothel. A woman comes to my room, and at that point she’s still a woman to me. While she’s disrobing, she’s still a woman. But then, once the sex starts, I begin to wonder what I imagine a woman to be. I tell myself, “Well . . . this is a woman’s arm.” Yet even after I confirm for myself that it’s a woman’s arm, it doesn’t mean anything to me. Then, just as the woman pre- pares to go home, she once again displays her womanliness.

“Are the trains still running?” “I don’t know . . . I wonder . . .”

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In his heart Takashi was hoping that the trains had stopped run- ning. In that case, the proprietress downstairs might say to him, “If you don’t feel like going home, you may sleep here till morning.” Then again, Takashi thought that if he wasn’t going to ask for another woman, the best thing for him would be to have her insist that he go home.

“Aren’t you leaving with me?” The woman had dressed and made herself up, but she continued to

dawdle. Oh well, he thought, as he removed his sweat-soaked summer robe. Soon after the woman left, he told the servant girl to bring him a beer.

Sparrows were twittering with high-pitched voices around a water pipe. Takashi, who was half-awake, pictured in his mind the fresh exterior of the brothel growing light in the early morning haze. When he raised his head, he saw the light from an electric streetlamp glowing dimly in the morning air, illuminating the sleeping face of a woman.

Hearing the voices of the flower girls calling outside the entrance, he was now fully awake. Those voices struck him as refreshingly vibrant. He envisioned the color of the rising sun flowing over the various flowers and the evergreen leaves of sakaki.

Doors were soon bursting open throughout the district, and he could hear the voices of children out on the street as they made their way to school. The woman continued to sleep soundly.

“I’m going home, then I’ll go to the public bath,” she announced with a yawn when she finally got up. In the palm of her hand was the braided extension she wore atop her own hair. “If you don’t mind, I’ll be going now,” she said and left. Takashi went back to sleep.

Takashi descended the slope from the foot of the bridge at Marutamachi to the banks of the Kamo River. The houses facing the sandy banks were casting afternoon shadows.

Gravel used for repairing the banks was piled up along the river. The rocks gave off a unique, penetrating odor beneath the autumn sun. Off in the direction of Kōjin Bridge some centrifugal dryers had been left in a

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meadow by cloth dyers. Rolled tape measures, glittering in the sunlight, were lying around the dryers.

Below Kōjin Bridge the river waters were flowing downstream in ripples that resembled a bamboo blind. Beyond a sandbar, where sum- mer grasses grew in wild profusion, the shallow rapids shimmered and burbled. A wagtail flew off.

The rays of the sun seemed to pierce his back, but when he entered the shade he found the autumn chill was indeed crouching there. Takashi sat down in the shade.

People go by . . . cars go by . . . he mused. It’s hard being in the city. Cars and pedestrians were moving along a road on the opposite

bank. A municipal market beside the river . . . barrels of tar stacked in front of a shed . . . an empty lot where men were working, probably build- ing a house.

Now and then a breeze would blow from upstream. As he sat there, a crumpled piece of newspaper tumbled along in front of him, rustling as it moved. Obstructed by a small stone, the paper resisted the wind for a while, but eventually it rolled over the stone and was carried away once more.

A dog and two children were walking upstream. The dog came back and sniffed at the piece of newspaper, then tagged along after the chil- dren again.

A zelkova tree thick with foliage loomed on his side of the river. Takashi was charmed by the way the topmost limbs bent so softly in the breeze. He gazed up at them for some time, and as he did so he experi- enced in his mind the sensation of resting leisurely in those pliant green branches, swaying gently amidst tiny leaves in the air currents high above him.

Ahh, this feeling . . . Takashi mused. Observing does mean something, after all. All or part of my soul enters and possesses those branches.

Takashi pondered that feeling. He could sense in the upper branches of this tall zelkova the source of the temptation to sit at his window every night and give himself over to the mystery of a mind capable of observ- ing from afar his own depression and all the bitterness of his life and still finding momentary release.

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It’s hard being in the city. The Kamo forest to the north, dotted with vermilion torii gate-

ways . . . the mountains in the distance that seemed to be stacked atop that forest . . . the smoke spewing from the chimney stack of a textile mill with Mt. Hiei in the background . . . a red-brick building . . . a mailbox. Bicycles were crossing Kōjin Bridge, parasols and horse-drawn drays were moving along. Shadows stretched out along the river, and vendors blew their horns.

Takashi had experienced wandering the streets until the wee hours of the morning.

Except for the occasional drunk passing by, no one else was walking Shijō Avenue. Evening mists had settled on the asphalt pavement. Stores on both sides of the street had set out their garbage bins and locked their doors. Some people had vomited here and there, and some of the garbage bins had been knocked over. Remembering those times when he himself had been drunk, Takashi now walked on in silence.

When he turned into the row of shops on Shinkyōgoku, he found the place strangely lively for so late in the evening. From behind a closed door he could hear the clopping of geta as a woman with a metal basin prepared to leave for the bathhouse. A shop clerk was setting out a pair of roller skates, a man was delivering a take-out order of udon noodles, and some young men were involved in a game of pole-pushing in the middle of the street. It struck him that these people, who otherwise would be obscured by the crush of daytime crowds, could put their existence on show at this hour.

As soon as he left Shinkyōgoku, the district was once more plunged into the darkness of late night. The clopping of his own clogs, which he paid no attention to during the daytime, sounded strange to him. The stillness of his surroundings somehow made him feel ashamed, as if he were walking through the district hatching up some disreputable scheme.

Takashi had a small Korean bell hanging from his waist. A friend bought the bell for him at an exhibition at the Korean Pavilion in Oka-

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zaki Park. It was made of silver and decorated in blue and red cloisonné. It gave off a beautifully dry tinkle. He considered the sound of the bell, which was inaudible in a crowd but quite distinct on this street late at night, a symbol of his mind.

Here too the district opened before him as he walked along, just like that scene he so often stared at from his window.

He had never once in his life set foot on this street, but it seemed genuinely familiar to him all the same. It wasn’t some ordinary road he had passed through a limited number of times. So how long have I been walking here? Just then Takashi felt as though he would continue along this street forever.

At times like that the tinkling of the Korean bell would cause his mind to tremble. One time Takashi imagined his body was invisible and that only the sound of the bell was passing through the district. Another time he fancied that the ringing of the bell would gush forth from around his waist, flowing into him like a pure stream in a mountain ravine and circulating through his body to cleanse his disease-stained blood.

I will gradually get better . . . That one small hope, tinkling like his bell, sent a clear reverberation

through the late-night air.

The scene from his window was the same every night. For Takashi, each night was exactly like any other.

One night, however, Takashi noticed for the first time a bluish white point of light amidst the trees that swayed in the pitch-darkness. He assumed that it was some sort of insect. Takashi saw that same light the next night, and the night after that.

Then, after moving away from the window and lying down on his bedding, he would perceive a point of phosphorescent light in the dark- ness of his own room as well.

You are the incarnation of my illness. I will soon disappear into the dark- ness. But I feel that you will never sleep . . . that you will always be up and about by yourself just like that insect outside . . . a glowing blue phosphorescence . . .

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The Sound of Footsteps X

Kawabata Yasunari

Recent scholarship in Japanese modanizumu has steadily revealed a modernist Kawabata that complements, if not rivals, his reputation as the Nobel Prize laureate known for his intensely aesthetic and poetic mod- ern fiction. In fact, the modernist Kawabata has always asserted a clear presence in his works and literary roles. Not only was he among the core writers in literary movements such as the Shinkankaku (New Sensation) School and the Shinkō geijutsu (New Art) School as well as a founding member of the magazines Shin shichō (New Thought) and Bungei jidai (Literary Age), his wide spectrum of fiction, from The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1929–30) to Snow Country (1935–37, 1947) and Senbatsuru (1949–51, trans. Thousand Cranes, 1958), consistently experiments with a non-linear, elliptical narrative that often incorporates cinematic effects and elements of ero-guro-nansensu.

“The Sound of Footsteps” was published in June 1925, a year after Kawabata, Yokomitsu, and a few other writers founded the magazine Bungei jidai. The critic Chiba Kameo (1878–1935) described their works as a “nuanced art form that relies on implicit meaning and symbolism to allow a glimpse into the existence and meaning of an inner life through a deliberately narrow aperture,” and coined the term “Shinkankaku-ha”1 for

“Ningen no ashioto,” by Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972), 1925. Translated by Angela Yiu. The translation is based on Modan toshi bungaku IV: Tokai no gensō, edited by Unno Hiroshi, Kawamoto Saburō, and Suzuki Sadami (Heibonsha, 1990), 68–73. This story is also in Kawabata Yasunari zenshū (Shinchōsha, 1981), vol. 1, 66–70.

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that form of expression. The “narrow aperture” in this story is an ampu- tee’s obsession with the image of the leg and foot (both called ashi in Japa- nese) and the sound of footsteps, and how that obsession creates internal and external landscapes that are as evocative as they are disorienting and disturbing. In many of his works, Kawabata appears to be drawn to the heightened senses of the physically and mentally challenged, and through them he has created an entire world of new sensations and perceptions, as the term Shinkankaku suggests.

The brevity of this story prefigures his lifelong creation of over a hundred tenohira shōsetsu (palm-of-hand stories), each no longer than 2,800 words (seven pages of Japanese-style manuscript paper) and con- taining images that often quietly startle the senses. The playfulness and provocative nature of these short pieces no doubt stem from a long poetic tradition of tanka and haikai, but their proliferation in the modernist period may also be traced to the influence of French conté, compositions marked by intensity and brevity, introduced to Japan around 1923 by the writer Okada Saburō (1890–1954) after his Paris sojourn. “The Sound of Foot- steps” is representative of the conté experimentation—intensely beautiful, strangely grotesque, and capable of creating a protean spatial dimension based on hallucination and aural reality.

This story was first published in June 1925, in the magazine Josei (1922–28, Women).

He left the hospital where the paulownia flowers were in bloom.The doors on the second floor of the coffee shop opened up to the terrace. The waiter’s uniforms were crisp and white.

Refreshing coolness penetrated his left palm, placed casually on the marble top of the terrace table. Putting his face in the palm of his right hand, he rested his elbow on the banister and gazed upon each of the passersby below, as if to suck them up with his eyes. Buoyed by young, lively electric light, the pedestrians traced lighthearted steps on the pave- ment. The terrace was so low that he could have rapped the passersby on the head with his walking stick.

“The change of the seasons feels completely different in the city and the country—don’t you think so, my dear? Country folk would never feel

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early summer in electric light. There it’s always nature—the vegetation and trees—that colors the seasons. But in the city it’s the people. People create early summer just by sauntering down the street, don’t they? In the city, early summer belongs to the people.”

“Hmm, an early summer belonging to the people—of course,” he answered his wife, and remembered the fragrance of the paulownia flow- ers outside the window of the hospital room. Whenever he closed his eyes, he would drown in the hallucinatory sea of legs and feet that filled his head. The cells in his encephalon would all turn into foot-shaped bugs and crawl all over his world . . .

The bashful, smiling feet of a woman stepping over something. Cold, stiffened feet after the final twitch at the threshold of death. The legs dangling on the belly of an emaciated horse with scrawny quarters. Flabby, fat feet, like discarded whale grease, that sometimes tensed up in tremendous strength. The straightened legs of a beggar who stood upright at night even though he dragged himself around on his knees during the day. The neatly paired feet of an infant born between the legs of its mother. Tired feet of salaried workers trudging between work and home. Legs crossing the shallows and drawing the feel of cold, clean water in from ankle to calf. Feet searching for love, taking steps sharp as the folds on the trim legs of pressed trousers. The feet of a young girl whose toes only yesterday pointed outward but now settle grace- fully together—quite a surprise. Swaggering feet taking big strides as though saddled with a pocketful of gold. The feet of a weathered and disillusioned woman who wore a smile on her face and scorn on her heels. Sweaty feet liberated from socks, breathing in the cool air after a day in town. Beautiful feet that danced with resignation on stage, last night’s sins becoming today’s regrets. A man’s feet in a coffee shop tapping out the rhythm of a song about leaving a woman behind. Feet that sink with heaviness when sad and bounce lightly when happy. The legs and feet of sportsmen, poets, usurers, ladies, female swimmers, elementary school pupils. Legs, feet, legs—and most of all, his wife’s legs and feet.

Afflicted with an illness in the joint of his knee from winter to spring, he was forced to have his right leg amputated. His one missing leg gave him foot hallucinations in the hospital bed as he dreamed long-

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ingly of the coffee shop terrace, built like a pair of spectacles gazing upon the cheerful thoroughfare below. More than anything, he yearned to gaze at the healthy feet of passersby crisscrossing one another, and to listen to the sound of footsteps as their feet touched the ground.

“I never appreciated the real wonder of early summer until I lost a leg. I do wish to leave the hospital by early summer and visit the coffee shop,” he said, looking at the white magnolias.

“Come to think about it, the time of year when human feet are most beautiful is early summer. That’s when people walk around the city with the most verve, the most grace. You’ve got to leave the hospital before the magnolias scatter.”

From the terrace, he peered down intently at the passersby as though each of them were a lover.

“Even the breeze feels new.” “It’s the change of the season, dear. Even this fresh hairdo looks a bit

dusty today—not to mention my undergarments!” “I don’t care about those things. It’s legs and feet that I care about.

People’s feet in early summer!” “Shall I walk down there and show you mine?” “That’s not what you promised. When I had my leg amputated in

the hospital, you said the two of us would walk with three legs as one person.”

“And early summer, the most beautiful of the seasons, would make you happy?”

“Quiet! I can’t hear the footsteps!” He strained his ears solemnly to make out the precious sounds of

human footsteps amidst the noise of the night city. Then he closed his eyes. The sound of passing footsteps fell upon his soul like rain on a lake. His tired face brightened with a nuanced expression of pleasure.

That look of happiness, however, was short-lived. His color paled and he opened his eyes strangely.

“Don’t you see? Everyone is crippled. There isn’t a single balanced pair of feet in the footsteps I hear.”

“Oh dear, is that so? Maybe you’re right—people only have a heart on one side, right?”

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“But when the footsteps sound wrong, you can’t just blame it on the human feet. When you listen carefully, you can hear the illness of the soul. The sound you hear is the body woefully promising the earth a funeral to bury the soul . . .”

“I suppose so. But you could say that about anything depending on the way you think. You’re too sensitive.”

“Just listen! The footsteps of the city are sick. Everyone is crippled like me. I came here to enjoy the feeling of being around healthy legs and feet, having lost one of mine, not to discover yet another human illness, to plant a new seed of depression. Oh, how I must rid myself of this depression! We must go to the country. The human soul and body might be in better health there. I might even be able to hear the sound of wholesome footsteps.”

“No, that won’t do! Why don’t you go to the zoo and listen to the footsteps of the animals!”

“The zoo, indeed! Perhaps you’re right. The feet of animals and wings of birds are healthy and their sounds might just be beautiful and well-balanced.”

“Oh dear, listen to yourself! I was just joking.” “Human souls have been ill ever since we started walking on two

feet. Maybe there’s no way to avoid the crippled sound of footsteps.” So, looking like a crippled soul, he stepped into the car with his arti-

ficial leg, assisted by his wife. The sound of the tires hobbled along, as if the illness of her spirit were crying out to him. Along the road, electric lights dusted the young blooms of early summer.

Notes

1. “Shinkankaku-ha no tanjō” in Seiki, 1914, quoted in Zadankai Shōwa bun- gakushi, vol. 1, edited by Inoue Hisashi and Komori Yōichi (Shūeisha, 2003), 451.

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Part II

X Time and Urban Space

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Figure 2. “Astromania” (Tentai shikōshō), by Sakaguchi Kyōhei (ink on paper, 2305 x 3449 mm), November 2009.

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Astromania X Inagaki Taruho

Born in Osaka and raised in the town of Akashi near Kobe, Inagaki Taruho was an aviation buff since his youth. He founded a flying maga- zine (Hikō gahō) with his classmates at his high school Kwansei Gakuin, and applied for the Pilot Training School in Haneda (Nihon hikōki gakkō) when it first started in 1916, but was rejected because of his poor eye- sight. In 1921, Taruho went to Tokyo at the encouragement of Satō Haruo, who had read drafts of several of Taruho’s earliest stories and recognized in him an astoundingly original voice. These stories become the basis of Issen ichi-byō monogatari (One Thousand and One Second Stories), which Taruho published in 1923 and that has since become known as a classic of Japanese avant-garde literature. Borrowing inspiration from the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, Taruho’s stories are tales for a fast-paced age—little snippets of prose rarely requiring more than a few seconds to read. The principal character is a mischievous but dapper “Tsuki-sama” (Mr. Moon), a personified, top-hatted version of the moon who, along with other astronomical entities, descends to earth, drinks too much, and gets into all sorts of trouble. Full of surprising plot twists and illogical connections like those seen in the work of the cinematogra- pher Georges Méliès (1861–1938), Issen ichi-byō monogatari depicts a strange, surreal, and often funny world where all sorts of odd things tran- spire. These stories may seem at first glance to represent little more than

“Tentai shikōshō,” by Inagaki Taruho (1900–1977), 1926, rev. 1968. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. This translation is based on the 1968 version, which appears in Inagaki Taruho, Inagaki Taruho zenshū, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2000), 156–67.

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70 inagaki taruho

amusing and witty snippets, but Myriam Sas has argued Issen ichi-byō monogatari represents an evocation of a particular vision of modernity: a futuristic world dominated by “a poetry of rhythms and displacements, flickers and exchanges.” The brief, fragmentary stories are “free of total- izing knowledges and monolithic perspectives,” and they depict “a universe of accretions, where narrative proceeds by metonymy and leaps rather than by the proceedings of causal logic.”1

The following story is much longer and involved than any of the stories in Issen ichi-byō monogatari, but it reflects many quintessentially Taruho- esque elements, such as the author’s passion for astronomical entities, an extreme penchant for fine aesthetic details, a strange and often circuitous logic in which one thought leads to another in an almost stream-of-con- sciousness style, and a loosely structured plot that leads in unpredictable directions. The following story is called “Tentai shikōshō” in Japanese, an invented word written with the characters meaning “syndrome [involving a] preference for heavenly bodies.” In the earliest edition of the story, published in 1926, Taruho uses the invented English word “Asteromania” [sic] in the text, apparently as the “translation” of title. In later editions, he replaced the word with “Uranoia,” but the translation borrows the term “Astromania” from the first edition partly because it is easy to understand by English speakers, and because it has a fanciful modernist ring that seems appropriate for this playful, imaginative story.

This story combines Taruho’s dream of flying with his passion for mov- ies, and it captures his longing for alternative spaces and realities that are anything but down-to-earth. The physical setting of the story in Kobe, the references to overseas battles, and the special interest in astronomy allow him to introduce an abundance of foreign and otherworldly elements. The result, however, is far from just another exotic tale in a borrowed setting; the textual space becomes a mesmerizing, mysterious opening filled with an intense longing for the unknown.

In particular scenes, it erupts into visions so vivid that the text seems to swing into the cinematic. As a result, the work seems to feel less like a story than a long prose poem, which introduces scenes that linger almost like cinematic stills in the memory. (It is perhaps no coincidence that after coming to Tokyo, Taruho spent more time with modernist poet friends such as Hagiwara Sakutarō, Kitasono Katsue, and Kinumaki Seizō than with writers of prose.) As William Tyler has noted, by “avoiding plot-driven

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narrative and highlighting the episodic and cinematic,” Taruho “put his early character sketches or contés in service of an agenda that prioritized heightened emotional and artistic receptivity as a key tenet of modani- zumu,” the Japanese approach to modernist literature.2

Early in the story, Taruho describes a movie theater with a diorama depicting exotic locations built behind the screen. Many early European and American film companies made films that depicted dramatic landscapes in order to take advantage of the new cinematic medium and impress their viewers with shots of places they might never see otherwise. For instance, in 1901, British Mutoscope and Biograph Company released a film called Panorama of Grand Harbour, Malta, which shows a single 180-degree pan- oramic shot, panning from left to right, of the landscape, the town, and the Mediterranean Sea below. There were several films made of the Alps, including one British production called The Alps released in 1917. Films such as these were often shown at movie theaters and as Taruho sug- gests, inspired cinema owners to build dioramas that would impress their audiences. What is important to note here, however, is how Taruho draws upon the big, visionary, long-panning shots that one finds in early film to create a new modern literature that presents vast, visionary vistas within the text and that seems at points to veer into the hallucinogenic. One sees this especially in the descriptions of the dioramas that the narrator and his friend Otto build together and in the depictions of the strangely unfamiliar part of town they explore at the end of the work.

Taruho first published this story in the April 1926 issue of the maga- zine Josei (Women), but revised the text twice: first in 1948, then again in 1968. Most of these changes involve modifying turns of phrase, fleshing out, or paring down sentences somewhat, but they do not involve signifi- cant additions or subtractions that modify the plot.

X You are trying to duplicate your dreams,

dreams without a hint of the sun. —James Huneker, “Rebels of the Moon” 3

. . . How shall I describe that? It’s something that doesn’t have tradition in its nature, but even if it did, it’d be the sort that wouldn’t give you any

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of the customary feelings. So I guess you could say, in a way, things with “that” are empty and mechanical. If you were to explain it in the terms we were using that time when we were talking in the schoolyard surrounded by poplar trees, it’d be more like a clarinet covered with shiny keys than a circus elephant with a red carpet thrown over its back. Even so, a horse would be more apropos than an elephant, and a car would be better than a clarinet. Even better than the car would be one of those Wright Broth- ers–style airplanes, with its yellow wings and mounting sense of danger as it flies through the skies and casts a shadow upon the fields of barley below. As for films, I don’t really know which ones would be best, but as long as they’re a bit out of the ordinary, I suppose you could add them to the list. Still, it’s not so much the pictures that keep on moving as much as the pure and untarnished, sideways lettering of the titles that’s so chic.

—We never really expounded on aesthetics out loud like this. How- ever, now when I think back on how we used to give ourselves over to our feelings and experience things in such an impassioned way, I realize it was probably my friend Otto, who shared the same innate tendencies, that played such a crucial role in cultivating these aesthetic predilections in me.

It almost goes without saying that the kinds of things movie the- aters were showing at the time for entertainment—kineoramas full of landscapes that would rise up so mysteriously and transform into eve- ning, flash with lightning, or even sometimes be crowned with a rain- bow—drew us in precisely because they were artificial and so much more beautiful than the things we would ever see in nature. All of those magi- cal scenes came to us thanks to the power of electrical lighting. In the end, though, it was not necessarily for the illusions projected on the big white screen that we went to the cinema time and time again. It was more for that special moment when the screen would roll up and we saw what lay behind it: the panorama of Malta and the Alps constructed out of tin, cardboard, and paint. Before long, the two of us were discussing our plans for a small tabletop kineorama that we would make out of a cardboard box. After that, we went to his house, which was just under a nemunoki tree and located right in the middle of a sloping street packed with Western-style houses like his.4 Once in his room, we would delve

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into all sorts of enthralling, capricious projects. I could tell many anec- dotes about the time we spent together, but suffice it to say that we made a few experimental dioramas, which we called “Lake Geneva,” “Magical Arabian Palace,” “The Dream of the Pyramids,” and so on, before we finally decided to move on to the one we called “The Naval Battle of Port Arthur.”

Some time before that, I had seen a reenactment of the battle of Port Arthur on the seashore not far from where I lived.5 The set was divided into rectangles, one part of which depicted the harbor of Port Arthur. It was unforgettable—the destroyers cutting through the waves as they charged toward the harbor, the searchlights crisscrossing back and forth across the gloom where the moon had hidden itself in the clouds, and the sprays of water sent up as cannonballs were volleyed back and forth from the battery in front of them. Meanwhile, as all of this was happening, loud explosions reverberated through the tent where the performance was taking place. . . . Everything was just as marvelous as the advertisements had suggested—“Completed over the course of more than a decade to introduce the battle to the entire world”—so that performance was what Otto and I were trying to imitate. It was three months later, however, after we had finally completed the sign that said “World-Class Astonishing Cosmopolitan Port Arthur Naval Battle Pavil- ion” in outline letters on a khaki background, that the lead destroyers and torpedo boats we had made out of pieces from naval board games made their first appearance against the cut-out paper construction of Port Arthur. We had prepared a box full of azuki beans to rattle to pro- duce the sound of waves, and the boats would launch their attack against the fortress as we set off firecrackers. We created a sunset using a hand- held lantern covered with a thin sheet of red celluloid, and after that, the moon would rise, but unfortunately, the waves beneath it did not shine with white light like I had seen in the real Port Arthur Naval Battle Pavil- ion. To make matters worse we had succeeded in creating the illusion of a rainy night by punching tiny holes in a disk, which we would then hold up to a light and rotate, but we were not able to evoke the right image of the torpedo boats illuminated by the searchlights. This prompted another month of rethinking before Otto, who had been silent as he held a green

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pencil against his lower lip, finally suggested we abandon the Port Arthur reenactment. With his blue eyes shining, he instead began to talk about what he thought our next project should be—“Mr. Harvard’s Trip to the World of the Moon.” And so that was how we contracted our curious, long-lasting affliction, one that Otto named “Astromania.”

(You were the one who told me that at the very moment you were about to kiss someone in front of a starry sky, you became preoccupied with the idea that perhaps the exact same thing was happening at night in some city on some distant planet—that there was another “you” out there with your lover. . . . Since you said this, I can’t imagine you’ll laugh at our nostalgic feelings for the universe, which have something about them that echoes what you described back then.)

So, then, how did he describe the scene he wanted to build? It is just like the park in this town, with a circus, shows with acrobats on motorcycles, mutoscopes, and movie houses all lined up in a row—but it covers an area many times bigger than the entertainment center here, Otto said, describing the scene as if it were something he had seen in the foreign town where he used to live. The park, he continued, is known as Luna Park, and the “Trip to the World of the Moon” is in one corner of it.6 It has a round roof modeled after an observatory, and behind that, there is an arm constructed of steel beams that slant high into the air as if it’s connected to the evening sky and the reddish moon suspended behind the small houses. That’s where. . . . At this point in his description, he stopped, the words suspended on his tongue. Instead, he used his fin- gertip to trace the English words “Travelling to the Moon” in illuminated lights suspended in the air. A cable car rises from the tower and goes all the way to the moon, but of course, the cable car is really only part of the sign, and the “trip” to the world of the moon is really nothing more than a kineorama projected from inside the rounded roof. Still, Otto said, even though it’s a kineorama and I haven’t seen it yet, I do know it’s got to be way better than that Port Arthur Naval Battle Pavilion you’ve been talk- ing so much about.

But as I listened to him, I realized the scene he was describing sounded just like something I had seen in one of the Pathé Company films—the ones that have the mark of the red rooster on them.7 The

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reason is that his description of Mr. Harvard’s Trip to the World of the Moon was so much like one of those cleverly contrived movies where professors of astronomy or other whimsical men get into a big bullet or a gigantic soap bubble and go up to the moon. As he went on, I found that like those movies, his story involved a blue landscape on the edge of town. People rose through the air there, floating through the layers of clouds and starry sky toward the moon above. The moon had eyes, a nose, and a mouth that sucked them in, but no sooner had it done so than everything changed, and there were pretty flowers blooming on a series of pointed mountains that rose into the air like spears. There were strange birds flying about, and in the end, a monster popped out from the fissures in the rocks and chased the people around. Then, still tailed by the monster, they were spit out of the frowning mouth of the moon and fell upside down, once again passing through a sky filled with stars. When they finally reached the earth again, they landed right in the mouth of a volcano erupting with bright red flame . . .8

I could not hold back anymore and asked, “When they go to the palace on the moon, are there a bunch of ladies doing a big dance in unison?”

He said, “There’re all sorts of things that happen up there . . .” He had left out that detail, but in the films there are always scenes like that. The reason he left it out, Otto said, was that he thought it somehow shattered the harmony of the whole thing to have ladies who belong to our own mundane “real world” appear on the moon, which ought to be so distant from the world we know.

As he thought it over, he continued, “Yeah, I can’t say that appeals to me. I prefer demons that disappear in a puff of smoke when someone stabs them with a sword or weird monster mushrooms that sprout up in the twinkling of an eye. . . . Anyway, in the movies, it’s usually a per- son who goes to the moon, but in Mr. Harvard’s kineorama, there’s no actual traveler who goes up there; the viewer becomes the traveler him- self. That’s what makes it so special. When the moon appears, it fills the entire set, and you really think you’re going to get sucked into its huge mouth. Don’t you think we should do that too? We won’t have any moon princesses or anything. The part with the hills and forest and the begin-

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ning—there’s no reason we can’t draw that on blue celluloid and project it with a magic lantern. We can create the starry sky by taking a piece of flock paper and poking a bunch of little holes in it with a needle, then wrapping it around a dry photographic plate . . .”

It was as if he had already thought it all out. Shortly afterwards—it might have been the following day, I cannot remember—he brought out a cardboard box full of metal pieces that you could use to build things, another box containing over a hundred tiny light bulbs, and two cres- cent moons made out of paper.—In those days, erector sets like he had were extremely rare; his had been sent to him by his uncle in Nurem- berg. Needless to say, there were not enough parts to build the advertis- ing tower for the Trip to the World of the Moon, so he had gone to great pains to borrow them from other friends as well. The little Christmas bulbs were for spelling out the letters in the air, and the paper moons had been given to him at the stationery store in front of our school—he said, but as you know, the moons were made of pasteboard for those colored pencils made in Bavaria, the ones that let off a delicate, sweet smell when you sharpen them. Otto explained that we would hang them on either side of the main entrance to the kineorama theater as part of the design.

“Say, this moon has a really nice profile—you know the one you see on bars of Kao soap? That one’s no good at all.”9 As he said this, he held out the two paper moons with evident fascination, but both were facing to the left. I said that it was too bad we didn’t have a moon that faced to the right.

“You’re right, the two moons have to face one another—but it won’t work if we draw them by hand.”

“It’ll be fine. There are printed ones, too.” As an example, I pointed out that there was one on the poster hanging on the glass window of the automobile shop near school. The background was dark green with com- ets shooting across it, and in the foreground, there was an image of the earth surrounded by a tire.

Otto nodded his agreement. Apparently inspired by the image of the earth with the tire around it, he said, “Saturn is really chic, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, great!” “Comets are really cool too . . .”

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“Yeah, they are.” “You ever seen one?” “Sure, what about you?” “A long time ago. It was after midnight, a little ways north of the

eastern edge of the sky. It showed up like a ghost or something, but as I stood there watching it, it faded away completely. It was a little scary.”

Otto’s words conjured up an image of him in his pajamas outside on a cold balcony toward daybreak, gazing at the corners of the sky over the foreign city where he used to live. He added, “Probably Halley’s Comet . . . it’s really weird that things like that fly through the universe.”

Anyway, that’s how the conversation went; I find it strange that the memory remains so clear. Before I began to talk to him about such things, I had certainly thought the moon, stars, and comets were neat, but still, I would have thought it odd to declare that I liked astronomical entities as much as cars, movies, and other such things. In the conversation we had that day, however, I realized that it was perfectly acceptable to talk about my interests openly. I suppose that is why I remember the conver- sation like it was yesterday. Otto and I seemed to share the same views. In subsequent days, whenever he was not busy preparing the set, lights, and curtain for the kineorama, he busied himself by cutting out images of stars, moons, comets, and ringed planets like Saturn from scrap card- board he had collected. His enthusiasm infected me as well, and within two or three days, the room was filled with cut-outs of all sorts of astro- nomical entities—they were on top of the table, under the table, cover- ing the wall with the college pennants, and scattered all over the room. We even hung them from the ceiling on strings, no doubt giving fits to the maid who cleaned up his room afterward. Come to think of it, just as we were getting started, Otto spread one of each of the different types of cut-outs on the big, oval table in his room. He looked at them, amazed, and turned to me, asking, “It’s incredible that the things up there in the sky can be this wonderful, don’t you think?!”

That reminded me of something I had been meaning to ask but that had slipped my mind until just then. “Well, it’s just that the sun is so bor- ing, don’t you think?” I said.

Earlier, when we started having these conversations, I asked myself

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if everything in the heavens was really as strange, beautiful, and interest- ing as we had said, and that’s when I realized that the sun didn’t appeal to me as much as the rest. . . . Saturn, falling stars, nebulas, and even the globe in the science classroom were all really great, like the stars and moon themselves, but the sun just seemed so vulgar somehow. It seemed to me that it would be a real imposition to have a sun in our project. It certainly wouldn’t work with the gaslights we were going to use to illu- minate the nighttime landscape, the walls of the houses, and the figures of the people.

Otto didn’t miss a beat. It seemed he had already considered that question, and he took care of the matter with a simple response: “It’s the blue sky that’s at fault. The sun’s great when it’s shining up there in the middle of pitch-black space. You must have seen that picture they’ve got hanging up on the wall of the candy shop—you know, the shop with the red, triangular roof . . .”

The picture he mentioned was one that had stopped me in my tracks on the way to school. I had looked at it for a few moments and longed to own it. Even so, my friends said that they hadn’t even noticed it, and that alone was to make me regret my interest in it. When I left the house under the nemunoki, I went down to the confectionery at the bottom of the slope to take another look. I knew I would be late getting home, and my detour would only make me later, but I didn’t care. As I stood underneath decorative gaslight that made the tower-shaped jars filled with stars and marshmallows glitter in its light and turned to look at the poster of the French Mix hanging in the oak frame on the wall, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Indeed! Sure enough!” This was the second time I had seen it, and I was still impressed.—The poster showed an elderly astronomer dressed in a red conical hat and green clothes stand- ing on an observatory balcony that jutted out over a deep valley. He had propped up his telescope on a tripod and was pointing it toward the sun, which was just beginning to smile at him from its position just above the steep, rocky mountains on the opposite side of the valley. Sure enough, it was just as Otto had said. Everything in the picture worked together to produce an amazing effect—the pitch-black space that looked like it was giving birth to the entire night sky, the nice complexion around the

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eyes and cheeks of the sun, the hood of the sun’s corona and the gothic lettering that floated nearby, and the play of light and darkness on the clothing of the white bearded old astronomer who was catching the first rays of the sun . . . Anything other than the sun in this case simply would not have worked.

“Do you want to go see a telescope?” Otto asked me this question on Monday morning when we saw

each other at school.—The preceding Saturday evening, we had lit up the shiny little lights on Mr. Harvard’s tower, but I had somewhere to go on Sunday and wasn’t able to meet him then.

“Where is it?” “On A mountain—you know that guy, E? He’s back from London.

He’s constructed a building with a round roof on Mount A.” “Wow, really? Does his telescope have a wheel to adjust it?” “Of course! I saw Saturn through it. It was this big.” Otto made a

circle with his thumb and index finger. “What color was it?” “It was sort of like a mix of yellow and purple together.” “Could you see the rings?” “Clear as day—you can see the whole thing, the place where the

rings are real thin, the planet itself—everything. I wonder what you’d say if he showed it to you.”

The bell rang right then. He said, “Okay, see you later,” and ran up the steps of the bleachers by the sports field, leaving me behind. I was puzzled and wondered to myself when I might have possibly made the acquaintance of the gentleman he was describing. Someone construct- ing an observatory on Mount A? That was the first I had heard anything about it. Still, every time I went over to that part of town, I would find tennis courts, greenhouses, and fields full of flowers in unexpected places, so it wasn’t impossible I didn’t know about it.—I guess what I am trying to say is that here in this town, which slopes downward to the sea, there’s a whole area in the hills at the foot of the mountains that is surrounded by Western-style houses built in the Meiji period. It’s a bit complicated to explain, but all of them seemed to be announcing

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the places where their owners came from, saying things like “Osterholz, northern Germany—the town where I was born.” I thought it over and realized that if the observatory was somewhere behind that, then it was perhaps natural that people had not noticed. I imagined the place. There would probably still be piles of building materials under the rounded roof, and the room would still be full of the scent of fresh paint. As Otto pressed his eye against the viewer, he would have forgotten about every- thing else. The image of Saturn, its rings tilted at a spirited angle, would float against the star-filled backdrop of open space visible through the lens.—And then of course, there would be Mr. E. I imagined him to be a forty-something elegant, composed gentleman with a short mustache.

Later, Otto and I showed up just below the Tor Hotel. It was that time of day when the sun had finished tracing its arc overhead and had settled behind the mountains, and the twilight shadows had started fad- ing into darkness. Mount A was directly west from there on the other side of the valley. The arc lights were twinkling proudly at the top of the hill in front of us, as if marking a shortcut. Still, we made the decision to turn left and went down the wide, sloping street to the entrance of the area that used to be the foreign settlement. Bicycles and people wound their way around one another in the street. At a wall plastered with whisky and soap advertisements, a streetcar came around the curve, and we hopped on.

It was an early summer evening, and it felt like one in every way. I could feel the sweat on my back after walking down the slope. I looked out the window at the people mingling in front of the show windows of the shops outside, looking much like a futurist painting. As I held the leather strap overhead to keep my balance, I could smell the perfume of the western lady diagonally across from me. Meanwhile, as the wind coming through the windows tossed my necktie back and forth, I became caught up in visions of the things I was about to see. In just half an hour, I would be inside the house with the round roof, and it would be full of magical machines spread before my eyes. Mr. E would be explaining to us all sorts of things about the universe of the sky, and a moment later, I would be looking through the telescope at that other world, marveling over the stars and the planet on which we live. All of this would make me

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want to ride the sparkling tail of a skyrocket firework and fly at incred- ible speeds across the white expanses of the Milky Way. Plus, leaning on to the baluster around the top of his round roof, I would gaze at the view of the mad city below . . .

By the time the words “Here we are” snapped me out of my reverie, the number of passengers sitting in the seats had dwindled to two or three, and the lights from the roof of the nearly empty streetcar were casting a lonely light onto the green velvet seats below. Of course, this was the east side of Mount A.—We were now in the area that had been to the west of the slope from where we were little bit earlier. The shortcut would have taken us right though here. I got off thinking that the circu- itous route we had taken had brought us to the end of the railway line, but the railway tracks continued straight ahead to where they intersected a broad, flat avenue. On either side of the avenue, there were rows of blue gaslights stretching into the distance, each lamp illuminated and casting its own orb of light. Despite the weather we have here, there were also rows of big, leafless, knotty trees that looked very much like what you might see in an old German painting. They stood at intervals beneath the sky, which was so heavy with stars that it looked like they might rain right down upon the trees below. Wow, I thought to myself. I had not realized that there was a place like this in Kobe. Otto’s fair face turned toward me as he asked if I had any cigarettes. The box in my pocket was empty, so he told me to wait a minute. He ran down the street, disappear- ing twenty meters beyond the iron fence and shrubbery surrounding a dark mansion.

I found it strange that he was so familiar with this place, just as familiar as if it were the park in front of our school. I ran after him. The roads, which were lined with brick walls, soon came to an end at a T-shaped intersection, where a solitary gas lamp stood. I am not sure if it was due to the mist that filled the street, but the moist-looking light from the gaslight formed a pale halo as it cast its glow on the brick walls; this reminded me of a set of a strange play I had seen somewhere. A nar- row street went off at a right angle, and located right there was a tobacco shop. It must have been because the owners had lighted the blue glass store window from the inside that the entire thing seemed to sparkle

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and shine like a model of the palace of the Dragon King . . .10 That was what popped into my mind as soon as I saw it. Right then, a shadow appeared unexpectedly beneath the lights and rushed up to me, its feet pitter-pattering on the road. It put a paper carton into my hand. “That was all they had.”

They were cigarettes of course, but the first puff of smoke I took from them tasted like menthol. It wasn’t anything to fill the stomach, it was just enough to fill your mouth with a cool flavor. I took a look at the carton under gaslight and saw that the front of the silver paper package had the English words “Starry Night” written on them, but the tiny let- ters crammed onto the back of the package were so small that there was no way to read them without a magnifying glass.

“Where do you think these are made?” “Weird, aren’t they?” We started walking. Other than the two of us, there wasn’t a soul in

the streets of the strange neighborhood. The only thing accompanying us was the interplay of the glittering, twinkling stardust over our heads with the row of gaslights spread along the sidewalk.

Before long, we came to a crossroads. There was a row of manors lining the street, but towering behind the houses was a square brick building that looked like some sort of factory. A great deal of light was leaking from a high window, and I could hear a faint humming sound, but I couldn’t determine if it was something buzzing or the sound of an elec- trical current. As we walked below, I said, “I wonder what that could be.”

But Otto just replied indifferently, “I wonder,” and threw away the butt of his mentholated cigarette.

We lit new cigarettes, and as we puffed away at them, we cut straight across the lonely city streets, which were locked in some sort of trance. How many intersections did we cross where one side of the street looked just like the mirror reflection of the other? I began to wonder if all this wasn’t really part of a film and we were playing some role in a strange cinematic production. Otto, meanwhile, seemed to be lost in thought. He had slipped into a foul humor, so I hesitated to ask him anything. In the end, I felt I had no choice but to stay silent. . . . But then, all of the sudden, he stopped with the jerk of a mechanical doll.

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“Look there!” he called out in a suddenly cheery voice. “We need to climb up from the back.”

He pointed to the far left corner of the intersection—the sky was like lacquerware covered with tiny silver stars, and underneath it was a semicircular hill punctuated with trees that looked like poplars. At the very summit of the hill stood the silhouette of a round roof, and spilling from it was a trickle of light the very same green as Otto’s clothing.

Notes

1. Miryam Sas, “Subject, City, Machine,” in Histories of the Future, edited by Daniel Rosenberg and Susan Harding (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 217.

2. William J. Tyler, “Making Sense of Nansensu,” Japan Forum 21, no. 1 (2009): 9. For more on Taruho’s aesthetic projects, see Jeffrey Angles, “Chap- ter Five: Uninscribing the Adolescent Body,” in Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 193–224.

3. James Huneker (1860–1912): American music critic and writer. The short story “Rebels of the Moon,” about two escapees from a lunatic asylum who engage in a long discourse about art, madness, and genius, appears in his 1905 book Visionaries. It was translated into Japanese by the anarchist writer Tsuji Jun (1885–1944).

4. Nemunoki: An Asian tree known as Albizia julibrissim, sometimes known as a “silk tree.” With its small leaves and feathery flowers, it looks much like a mimosa. Taruho spent much of his childhood and early years living in and nearby Kobe, a city that slopes between mountains above and a port below. One neighborhood called Kitano still has many of the Western-style houses Taruho describes in this passage.

5. Port Arthur: The opening battle of the Russo-Japanese War. The siege of Port Arthur, which is located on the southeastern Manchurian coastline, began in February 1904 when a Japanese squadron of destroyers attacked the Russian-occupied fort there.

6. Luna Park: In 1907, an amusement park designed by Frederick Ingersoll and bearing this name opened in Coney Island. Over the next few decades, over forty other parks with this name, many of which were also designed by Inger- soll, opened around the world. In Germany, the country that readers learn is Otto’s home, there were Luna Parks in Berlin (1909–33), Cologne (1909–27), and Hamburg (1913, 1917–23). For much of its history, the Luna Park in Berlin

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was the largest amusement park in Europe. It featured rides, water slides, fire- works displays, musical performances, and sports matches.

7. Pathé: A film equipment company that was founded in France in 1896 and was a pioneer in the production of commercial films for entertainment.

8. In places, the scene Otto is describing sounds like Georges Méliès’ 1902 film A Voyage to the Moon, one of the first cinematic pieces of science fiction. Taruho is known to have watched this film and been profoundly impressed by it.

9. Kao: A Japanese cosmetics company that makes many products, includ- ing soap. Many decades later, their logo still features a smiling profile of a cres- cent moon.

10. Palace of the Dragon King: Japanese folklore speaks of a dragon king who lived in a magnificent palace made of precious substances such as coral and crystal. In the famous folktale of Urashima Tarō, a fisherman saves a turtle that is really the dragon’s daughter, and receives a trip to this palace as a reward.

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Configuration X Tamura Taijirō

Tamura Taijirō (1911–1983) is best known for two works he published in the immediate postwar period: a short story, Nikutai no akuma (Demon of the Flesh, 1946), and a novel, Nikutai no mon (Gate of Flesh, 1947). The novel in particular created a popular sensation—it has been adapted to stage, screen, and television numerous times—and secured Tamura’s critical reputation. These titles also provided the term that identified an important though short-lived postwar literary movement called nikutai bungaku (variously translated as “carnal literature” or “literature of the flesh/the body”). Although the notion that literature should focus on the individual physical experiences of the body (nikutai) immediately suggests an emphasis on eroticism and decadence, in fact the more important aim of the movement was to stress individual freedom and aspirations as part of a political and moral backlash against the decades-long celebration of the concept of kokutai (the “national polity” or, literally, the “body of the state”), which had been used to justify the authoritarian imperialist and militarist policies that resulted in catastrophic war and defeat. The concept of nikutai as used by Tamura arose at a moment of chaos and recon- struction when debates about subjectivity (shutaisei, literally the “quality of mastering one’s own body”), individualism, and personal responsibility were at a fever pitch.

Keitai predates Tamura’s nikutai bungaku by many years and at first

Keitai by Tamura Taijirō (1911–83), 1932. Translated by Dennis Washburn. This translation is based on Modan toshi bungaku IV: Tokai no gensō, edited by Suzuki Sadami et al. (Heibonsha, 1990), 372–85.

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glance the focus of the story seems to be more on machines than on the flesh. However, a closer examination of the language reveals an intricate knitting of aesthetic and philosophical concerns—the terror and beauty of machines and the inextricable relationship between machines and human experience in an age of mechanization. His language no doubt reflects the influence of the Italian poet Fillippo Tommaso Marinetti’s “Manifesto in Futurism” (1909), which rejects the stultified art of the past and glori- fies the liberating power of science and technology as represented by the energy, strength, and speed of the modern machine. Futurism as a move- ment spread like wildfire in Europe, igniting the development of Russian avant-garde and structuralism; and within three months of the appear- ance of the manifesto in Le Figaro, Mori Ōgai introduced it to Japan in the magazine Subaru.

By 1930 the twenty-volume Shin geijutsuron shisutemu (New Art Theory System) included one entire volume, Kikai geijutsuron, devoted, as the title in Japanese makes clear, to a theory of the art of the machine.1 In the first chapter of this volume, titled “Kikaibi no tanjō” (The Birth of the Beauty of the Machine), the editor, Itagaki Takaho, remarked on the innovation of the French architect Le Corbusier: “Le Corbusier’s theory of architecture rejected the imitation of various historical models and exalted the rationality of the form/configuration (keitai) of the machine.”2 The term keitai suggests both physical form and configuration in the sense that the beauty of the machine is something more than the totality of its parts or individual forms—that is, the beauty of a machine is the affective result of its gestalt. Itagaki further argued that “The mechanized environment stimulates new sensations and introduces the existence of the beauty of forms/configuration (keitaibi). At the same time, the machine provides fresh nutrients for art in continuing to distill its own form/configuration (keitai).”3 As a visual configuration (shikakuteki keitai), the machine can be evaluated aesthetically in the following three aspects: structure (as in a steel bridge or a battleship), clarity (as in the body of an automobile), and complexity (as in the internal mechanism of a flying machine).4

Itagaki’s theoretical inflection of the term keitai is present in both the title and the conception of Tamura’s story. Apart from the explicit reference to Le Corbusier in the text, other aesthetic elements associated with the age of the machine are evident in the use of natural imagery to describe mechanical figures, and in the narrowly focused perspective of the nar-

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rator. This perspective is an effect created by the visualization of multiple layers of time and forms, and it is closely linked to gestalt psychology. Gestalt (keitai) is a term from the 1920s—the Berlin School—and refers to the ability of human senses (especially the visual sense) to recognize whole figures or forms from separate shapes or elements. It was a term that circulated fairly widely in Japan, and the emphasis on sight/ocularism in modernist art is in part due to the influence of futurism and gestalt psy- chology. Tamura captures the fluid meaning of keitai as both physical form and configuration in the sense employed by gestalt psychology, through his depiction of a character who tries to perceive order in the totality of the images in his memory and thereby make some sense of his disorient- ing experiences. It is this particular feature of Tamura’s story that links him most closely to European modernism and to the other writers in this collection.

Even though Itagaki’s critical language seeps into Tamura’s story, Tamura questions Itagaki’s simple faith in the art of the machine, and plays it against his concern for the human condition in a mechanized age. In Keitai, Tamura expresses his fascination with and fear of the machine in two major ways: first, in the welding together of natural beauty (the body of a woman) and mechanical beauty (the well-oiled body of a fighter plane); and second, in the gory mutilation of the human body by the fly- ing machine and the ultimate and complete destruction of the machine itself. Human agents (e.g., the pilot) and machines (his airplane) become interchangeable in their appellation and fate, and subjectivity becomes highly questionable and ambiguous. In the end, Tamura’s story questions Itagaki’s glorification of the greatness, speed, and order of the machine, presenting a much more nuanced understanding of human subjectivity vis-à-vis the powerful machinery that finally overtakes human will and control.

Although Tamura is now most often associated with postwar culture, it is important to note that the origins of his literary practices lie in the modernist phase of his early career. On one level, Keitai may be read as a philosophical inquiry into the nature of freedom, agency, and dignity that develops into the literary expression of nikutai bungaku, and in this respect the story is representative of Tamura’s oeuvre as a whole, even though it is stylistically more daring and sophisticated than most of his later popular writings. By employing the technique of stream-of-consciousness or asso-

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ciative narration that creates both temporal and psychological disjunc- tions, Tamura puts his modernist sensibility on full display. Writing within the experimental parameters of literary modernism, he took as a recurring subject the basic paradox of the human condition—we imagine (and yearn for) unbounded qualities of freedom and dignity that our own limited, subjective natures block us from ever achieving. As Keitai demonstrates, this paradox cannot be resolved, but can only be re-imagined and possibly transcended through individual experiences of love or through spiritual awakening. It is in the powerful depiction of that paradox that Tamura’s fiction attains its status as art.

This story was first published in Shōsetsu (Fiction), a supplement to the avant-garde magazine Shi to shiron (Poetry and Poetics), 1932.

It came on like a heavy weight at the exact moment I placed my right hand on the black brass railing at the bottom of the white spiral stair- case I was trying to ascend. It’s coming on, now, isn’t it, I thought, letting go of my crutch and quickly trying to crouch there the way I always did. But it was too late. As I toppled heavily into the space behind the stair- case, falling face up, I caught the burning smell of skin rubbing on metal and felt a terrible throbbing pain in the palm of my right hand. The refraction of the early evening glow from the window at the top landing made the light seem like some translucent substance. I suffered a little from chronic cerebral anemia, which would cause me to black out, and so I felt lucky not to be spitting up any blood as a result of my tumble. Still, I had apparently suffered a slight concussion,for my eyesight was not at all normal. Of course, my eyesight has been odd ever since my optical nerves and eardrums were damaged in the crash—the incident seven years ago that has been the source of all the misfortune and personal ruin I’ve suffered since leaving my old familiar regiment and beginning the descent to my present wretched state. It’s not that I’m completely colorblind or anything. It’s more that the colors I can see are mingled together in a complex way. After I tumbled over, however, those colors mysteriously shifted to a single shade of gray. From where I was lying, the staircase looked like a snail shell spiraling upward. I was struck by how

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much the area behind the staircase resembled that valley, deep as a bot- tomless well, where I fell at the time of the crash. To begin with, the air around me was a dim, fuzzy gray and had the same oppressive feel as the cold dusky mist in that valley—a mist that totally enveloped my flesh, half torn asunder by the crash, and my blood, which shimmered as it gushed profusely from my broken left leg. I was lying face up then just as I was now. I remember that as soon as I woke up from the momentary blackout I had suffered as a result of the impact, I could make out white chestnut blossoms on the verge of scattering their yellow pollen. They were right above my head, clear and sharp, blooming in wild profusion like cold silver needles glittering in that twilight mist. When I peered more intently at the blossoms, wondering what in the world was going on with them, they started to look like white blood. For some time, with mouth agape and eyes locked in a frozen stare, I was transfixed by the beauty of the contrast between the whiteness of that blood and the dark gloominess around it. Indeed, I was so transfixed that for a brief moment I even forgot The Silent One, the very enemy I had just been fighting in the sky. What’s more, I forgot the bitter resentment I experienced as I was falling headlong when I caught a backward glance of his plane, Steel, continuing to fly on with admirable calm, maintaining the same quiet, steel-like balance it had possessed before our dogfight. Just then the wind suddenly picked up. It lashed my body violently, like a whip or a fern. A black pine was towering above the wildly blooming chestnut blos- soms, forming a canopy over my head. My burning plane, Sword, which had ripped through the tree and was caught in its branches, was creating a reddish black vortex amidst the flaming pine needles and resin. The swirling air currents were probably caused by the sudden downburst of wind. When I think back about it now, a tremendous roar must have accompanied the downburst, but my eardrums had hardly reacted to it. By the time I realized my hearing had been damaged, the shock wave of the air caused by the conflagration had already struck my body like some hard object, causing numerous tiny spasms centering on my spine and radiating out along my ribs to the sides of my torso. I had difficulty breathing, as though a small mountain was sitting on top of my chest. It wasn’t only the pressure of the flowing mist or the abnormal stimulation

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to my skeleton, but also those white chestnut blossoms that continued to drift down, fluttering onto my face and chest and joints with a weight heavier than a northern snowfall. Presently, something seemed to be growing, thrusting up from inside the white stuff beside me. I studied it and then realized it was my own plump arm adorned with a silver wrist- watch. I glanced at it fearfully, as if it were an object that belonged to someone else. It was 5:30 in the afternoon. I don’t know why, but I closed my tired eyes as if I were relieved. Immediately I sensed something beat- ing incessantly against the surface of my body—something moving rhythmically and constantly within the rapid current of air. It was the propeller. A Nieuport-Astra metal propeller continued to rotate obsti- nately on the nose cone of Sword, which was still burning overhead. Hav- ing lost my hearing from the shock of the crash, I was now sensing sound with my body. Mysteriously, my spine and ribs began to have rhythmic spasms, as if they were beating time in response to the rotation of the propeller. By the time I was aware of those spasms, my skeleton was already loudly vibrating. The propeller was loudly whooshing. The vibra- tions of my skeleton would not stop. The whooshing of the propeller would not stop. My skeleton vibrated on and on and on and would not stop . . . the propeller whooshed on and on and on and would not stop . . . my skeleton kept beating on and on and on and on and on and on and would not stop. In the meantime I closed my eyes, and somehow the propeller rotating inside my head gradually transformed into the blades of a large fan rotating in the middle of a ceiling, and the scene that opened up around me was the interior of Restaurant La Machine.5 It was beauti- ful inside . . . the kind of beauty derived from the structure of dark machines. The leaves of a black potted palm tree swayed like slippery, heavy oil. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but the place was con- structed in such a way that made it seem a little frightening and unap- proachable. I’m sure this is what people mean when they speak of the oppressiveness of machines. I was sitting in the innermost booth. The long palm leaves were shining black, and a pale, solitary woman in white appeared. Helen. Good evening. Good evening, Helen. Why would a Jap- anese woman choose such an unusual name? Helen. The name of a woman from faraway Greece. A white Helen inside a black machine . . . the

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contrast felt good. And what’s that? That board jutting out over there? It certainly has a magnificent, streamlined look to it. It’s new . . . probably just been made. But what on earth for? A simple ornament perhaps? It looks just like a wing on the plane of my enemy, The Silent One. Oh yes, that reminds me . . . my enemy, The Silent One . . . just what kind of man is he? I know very little about him. In fact, I’ve gathered hardly any intelli- gence on him at all. Apart from the oversized gray aviator’s coat wrapped around his large body, flapping like a tent in a violent wind, or the nearly vacant glitter of his aviator’s goggles, or the fact that he was a man of action, a man of absolute silence who lived up to his nickname, I don’t even know what he looks like. He was a silent man of action . . . and oh yes, because his aircraft was a bomber, he always flew when the skies were cloudy or during the darkness of night. The dull, smoky-silver fuse- lage shimmering silently, like steel. His plane with its dull, smoky-silver fuselage shimmering silently like steel looked as stern and severe as his principles. Of course, I’ve never heard him directly speak about his prin- ciples, nor have I ever seen him talk to anyone about them. I’ve only heard rumors from others in my regiment. To him an airplane is first and foremost a machine for flying, one that has, according to his personal standards, a purely utilitarian form. Beauty was irrelevant. However, his standards could not avoid aesthetic considerations altogether. Beauty was a necessary, objective corollary, a hard-and-fast truth. For if his prin- ciples weren’t beauty itself, then they were a lie. My glass is almost empty. Well now . . . I wonder if I’m not a little drunk? My booth begins to spin round and round, just like the propeller on the ceiling. The place is gray. The booth begins to spin round and round in the gray. The large eyes of a dragonfly. A dragonfly. It was Ernst Kropp,6 wasn’t it, who claimed a relationship between an airplane and a dragonfly? How interesting to contrast Kropp’s aesthetics with the principles of my enemy, The Silent One. My enemy, The Silent One . . . a disciple of Le Corbusier.7 But their aesthetic sensibilities are out-of-date and tiresome now. It’s gray. His plane’s fuselage is smoky silver . . . it’s gray. The gray is spinning. I wonder if I’m drunk. In any case, it’s a gray vortex. Look . . . Helen’s face is in the very center of the vortex. Why is her face the only thing not spinning? It must be because she’s at the hub of the propeller. But still, why don’t her

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eyes move? So tell me, Helen, if a plane is simply a machine for flying, then why should there be such a conspicuous difference in form between those made in Germany by Junkers8 and in France by Nieuport-Delages?9 Well, then, pour me a glass. Is it wrong to include the pure, visionary sensibility of the designer when developing an airplane? Even though planes are streamlined to cut through the air, there is still resistance that creates negative pressure. What’s more, the design process becomes even more complicated when Ludwig Prandtl’s theory of the Boundary Layer10 is figured into the calculations. So, Helen, the theory of my enemy, The Silent One, is really quite simple. In fact, it’s too simple. Look there! That’s odd . . . the vortex is spinning incredibly fast now. I must be drunk. In the meantime I begin to wonder why this woman’s eyes are so cold . . . so cold, in fact, they could easily slice through anything, like a chill razor. If her eyes are as cold as a razor, then so is my enemy, The Silent One. If I were to compare them, then, really, which one is colder? All of a sudden a thought occurs to me. Just maybe . . . no . . . for certain my enemy and this woman are lovers. That’s right . . . that means they’re making a fool of me. No doubt about it. No doubt about it. However, as soon as the notion struck me, I began to reconsider. It simply couldn’t be true. I then stared intently at the woman, thinking that in the end her coldness, that razor at the center of her eyes, was something that my enemy definitely pos- sessed as well. Helen. Hey! Heeeyyy! I yelled and stood up. And when I did something white fell and shattered at my feet. The sound of glass breaking. Blood-red wine spread over my trousers. I had the feeling I’d seen that color somewhere before, and after wracking my brain I recalled the color of the blood that had spurted from my broken left leg. And immediately Helen’s cold face transformed into cold white chestnut blos- soms, and the blades of the ceiling fan became the propeller still spinning around in the pine tree above my head, and what I thought was the sound of something constantly striking against reinforced concrete during a night shift of the maintenance crew at some manufacturing plant, a sound that had reverberated all the way to my booth, was in fact the flames of my burning plane striking me. The noise and the blaze together were a rock-like material. They formed a clear, distinct object that was striking me. I was being beaten over and over until gradually I lost con-

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sciousness. A gray vortex. Fog. Fog. And I said, Helen, just what kind of object are you . . . and then I lost consciousness and the sound of the pro- peller suddenly faded. Apparently I awoke soon after, but as I was becom- ing aware of things again, I passed out a second time. Just as I thought, I had fallen into a deep valley of fog where white chestnut blossoms were swaying, and the rotating propeller was reverberating slow and dull. Then something struck me with tremendous force. At first I assumed it was the ticking sound of the second hand on a watch, but when I looked, it was still 5:30, and because the second hand had stopped I tried to fig- ure out what was making the sound. It turned out to be my pulse, the pumping of my blood in my own body. Blood seemed to be bursting like fireworks in my veins, the veins just below my skin all over my body. After that, the next thought that came to me was related to my enemy, The Silent One. It had been a very, very long dogfight. And with the crash I figured my fight with him must already be over, and that it no longer mattered to me one way or another whether I had won or lost. In any case, it was over. I considered that good enough, and yet it suddenly occurred to me that that could not be true, that the fight would actually be starting now. For a long time we had been conducting a silent conflict, and today was the first time he had actually appeared in action. How do I know? Because at the time of my crash, I saw him with my own eyes as I was falling headlong through the sky while he continued to fly on calmly, like steel, as he always did. If that was the case, then the fight between us had only just begun. However, while I was falling through the air, I glanced quickly at my wristwatch and saw it was 5:30. And even after I crashed in the valley, time stopped like a stone and remained stuck at 5:30. Now I’m not all that knowledgeable when it comes to time, but still, why should I have been so relieved by time stopping? What’s more, I didn’t understand why I had come to hate my enemy so much. It wasn’t necessarily because of Helen. If I hated him because I thought Helen was his lover, then how do I reconcile that with the fact that I had heard noth- ing about him from her own lips? On top of that, I myself hadn’t the slightest proof there was any kind of relationship between him and Helen. Even if it was true that I was deeply in love with Helen, wasn’t it also true that I had heard no rumors that he loved Helen or that she loved

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him? When I considered the situation from this perspective, I was no longer sure if I really hated him, even though an adversary is an adver- sary and thus someone I ought to hate. As a result I felt confused and ended up doubting myself, as I always do. In any case, our combat began when I was on the crumbling concrete inside hangar number 3. I was absorbed in making repairs to my plane, Sword, munching on a sandwich filled with red sausages that resembled rabbit ears. All of a sudden the distinctive piercing sound of his plane, Steel, which I recognized right away, came rumbling over me like an earthquake. And then what . . . for no particular reason I rushed outside, as if I had been flung out of the hangar. In the darkness of night, a giant gray fuselage was on a calm, dark gliding path, shuddering as it turned up toward the sky, listing at the moment of the final kicking, churning up a cloud of dust. At that moment I saw a huge tent-like aviator’s coat whipping about like a flag, covering the large body of my cool, impassive enemy as he sat in the cock- pit. The vacant glare of his aviator goggles pierced me more sharply than a spear. Spurred into action, I rushed back inside the hangar where my plane was idling, and ran up to the severe, platinum-colored belly of my plane. After a few minutes my pure, brightly shining plane, Sword, was chasing after the enemy, The Silent One, who was disappearing into the distance in the evening skies. Until the moment I took off amidst bursts of bone-shattering explosions that were like blinding flashes of purple lightning, I remained vaguely aware, beneath the death-like tension I was experiencing, of things like the smell of sausage lingering unpleasantly in my nose. My extreme tension was accompanied by a strangely elegant rhythm, and I thought of trivial matters, such as time and rabbit ears . . . and then I too disappeared into the vast obscurity of a descending bank of clouds. What kind of hostility did he exhibit toward me at that moment in response to my challenge? I am confident that he displayed no hatred toward me. Not only that, I have now come to doubt whether he even acknowledged my existence as an enemy. Still, depending on how you look at it, that was typical of his behavior, and I considered his atti- tude a superb combat strategy, one that allowed him to act as if his ene- mies had absolutely no connection with him at all. At first his plane looked like a dot to me, the shadow of a bee. But as I gave chase, it grew

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bigger and bigger. Not only wasn’t he going as fast as he could, but he was also piloting a bomber that was much slower than my fighter plane, Sword. When I came directly below him, I saw the needle on my altimeter, which was next to the oil gauge, swinging wildly. The nose of my plane was pointing up. The very next instant I was falling straight toward the ground. It seems the first thing that came to mind when I fell into that valley was a story I had heard from Helen at some point. It was exceed- ingly strange. When Helen was a child she liked to go on walks by herself. One evening she said she ventured out alone onto a moor and saw a large number of small houses lined up . . . houses that looked like dwellings for dwarves . . . and they were aflame, buzzing and burning along with the grasses. Because it was odd that flames would be buzzing, I asked Helen about that, and when she thought about it later, she said that the place was in all likelihood an apiary, that the hives had been set afire for some reason or other, and that the music-like buzzing sound was separate from the fires and was probably produced by the wings of bees swarming around her. Not only that, Helen said she remembered it was the season when a certain flower with white petals—she didn’t know the name— was blossoming wildly, its petals scattering at her feet. I now wonder if, right after the crash, at the moment I noticed the chestnut blossoms and the sound of the propeller above my head, I didn’t briefly think about the white flowers and the buzzing wings of the bees Helen told me about? Regardless, I’m aware that those white flowers scattering at the feet of the young Helen were not chestnut blossoms; and when I pondered the matter further, I realized right away that the burning beehives must have been even smaller than Helen, who was still a little girl at the time. Every- thing was upside down. I was upside down in the sky when I observed that my enemy, The Silent One, appeared safe and serene, and even now that memory is upside down. At some point following the crash the sound of the propeller above my head, which amazed me by continuing to rotate on and on for so long, gradually began to fade and disappear. I who had lost my hearing, I who perceived the noise and the wind from the flames that were beating me so violently seemed to be falling gradu- ally into unconsciousness as the roar and the flames were disappearing. I didn’t reflect on the question of whether I was unlucky or lucky. I had the

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sensation of being in a place far, far away from those sorts of consider- ations. No . . . it would be better to say I was nowhere at all. This feeling began from the moment of the crash, but my senses were disordered. I was smelling with my eyes, hearing with my flesh. It was extremely bizarre. Then, at the end, I had the sensation that everything was gradu- ally becoming jumbled together, that I was reaching a kind of absolute numbness. I wondered if I was nearing death, and so, just to make sure, I glanced once more at my wristwatch, and when I did, I saw that it was glowing silver and still reading 5:30 in the afternoon. The concept that time no longer existed made my shoulders feel light, and as I was think- ing this would be my last endeavor, that thought plunged with me into the chill embrace of the fog closing in from all around, while simultane- ously the rhythmic, whirling noises . . . thump thump thump thump thump thump thump . . . thump thump thump thump thump thump . . . thump thump thump thump thump . . . thump thump thump thump . . . thump thump thump . . . thump thump . . . thump . . . unnnnn . . . ceased. Ahhhh . . . and then after a seemingly long interval, I continued sleeping off and on uselessly for seven years. From that moment on I was an empty shell. The various simple transformations that have occurred around me are the breathing of a shell. I first opened my eyelids on the life of a shell in a white bed in a military hospital. Soon after, I drew near the rain-soaked window of the hospital room and unexpectedly witnessed the regimental funeral for my enemy, The Silent One, a ceremony conducted without a body. For whose sake did I lose my right leg at the knee? And in its place I was given a black crutch. My enemy, The Silent One, did not return in the end. At the moment of my crash, while I was falling headlong, I definitely saw him calmly flying on, his bearing unchanged, but apart from that I did not witness the imminent aftermath. I, the one who fell, became a shell and was reborn, while he, the one who did not fall, will never return. A rever- sal that turned everything upside down. For the last seven years he and his plane, Steel, have not returned home. Do they even now continue to fly on silently, like steel? During those years I coughed up blood. Because of the blunt trauma to my ribs, I suffered from pleurisy, which damaged my lungs. With my lungs affected I left both my regiment and that gloomy hospital. I have collapsed many times over the past two or three

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years. The very first time was at a railway crossing on a line that was no longer in service. The next was in this apartment building, in my room, where there are no flowers. Then on a balcony, with clouds in the sky. Then in a restaurant, when I was staring at some asparagus and silver spoons. And then . . . now . . . at the bottom of this white spiral staircase. The person I am now is a shell. And in a shell there are no enemies or allies, there is no victory or defeat, and most of all no single, glittering volition called despair. After the crash I stopped going to Restaurant La Machine. I stopped seeing Helen. After all, a shell is a shell. Still, I have a life. A shell’s life. If you want to say it has no color or scent, then it’s a life without color or scent. If you want to say my life is a gray curtain, then it’s a gray curtain. But before the crash I was a virile young air force offi- cer. Sword was my home. It was simultaneously a machine where I lived and a lover I continued to fly, carrying with it my ambitions, my youth, my passion, my dreams . . . a lover like Helen, a machine called Helen. Helen in white inside a black machine and a platinum-colored machine called Helen . . . an ancient name that calls up associations with a laurel tree in Troy or, in the Japanese fashion, with a warrior’s sword. In any case, I lived my life at a frightening velocity. At the time I was unaware of living at such a velocity because I was youth and speed itself. Then after the crash I was a shell. There is no velocity in a shell. I could never fly through the skies again as a shell. My body was definitively divorced from velocity. Recently, however, I have from time to time experienced the horror of being suddenly assailed by the notion that perhaps I’m actually living at an absurdly extreme velocity. For example, all the mem- ories inside me appear either gray or white and seem terribly sluggish, as if they’ve been revived in slow motion. And when my thoughts reach this point, white fog, which seems to press down on my body, and fine parti- cles, which smell of dust, spin around in a vortex and slowly descend this spiral staircase, this snail shell stretching upward. And as they descend I come to feel the profound darkness of the space where I’ve fallen, so very much like the depths of that valley; and though I consider it fortunate that today my throat is not nastily spewing cruel red petals in place of white chestnut blossoms, I unconsciously glance over at that part of my shell-like body, my crutch, which I had momentarily forgotten. It stands

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straight up, propped against the black brass railing in exactly the posi- tion I left it when I tumbled over earlier. I stare at it. And because the crutch propped against the railing resembles a cross with white fog snak- ing around it, I can’t help feeling somehow that it’s my grave marker. A feeling of sacred reverence instinctively rises up in me, and in my heart I put the palms of my hands together in supplication. And, at the very moment that the fog and light mingle together at the top landing and descend like a spiral staff from the area around the oval window to form a faint beam that shines on my grave maker, a cuckoo clock indicating precisely 5:30 in the afternoon comes falling in a gyre over my head. When that happens I can no longer make sense of anything. What have I been thinking? Is the present moment that moment of the crash seven years ago? Was this grave marker there at the time of the crash? It’s only when I fall into complete oblivion, as I regularly do, that things become absolutely precise and certain. Just as I slip into deep unconsciousness I am vaguely thinking, without any reason, that if such accidental preci- sion is inevitable, then the world is full of the inevitable, is it not? I sud- denly notice myself mumbling yet again . . . inevitable . . . inevitable . . . in- evitable . . . my palms together in supplication . . . like time . . . like time . . .

Notes

1. Kikai geijutsuron (1930), edited by Itagaki Takaho (Mayuni shobō, 1991). This volume is part of a series entitled Shin geijutsuron shisutemu, edited by the Shinkō geijutsu (New Art editorial board), and first published by Tenjinsha.

2. Itagaki, ed., Kikai geijutsuron, 8. 3. Itagaki, ed., Kikai geijutsuron, 11. 4. Itagaki, ed., Kikai geijutsuron, 12. 5. There is a Fauvist work by Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) called Res-

taurant “La Machine,” at Bougival, which was painted in 1905. Tamura may or may not have had this work in mind, but his knowledge of European art makes it likely he did.

6. Ernst Kropp was a modernist designer/artist who did most of his work for the Deutscher Werkbund—Mies van der Rohe was among the more famous members of the Werkbund, a group that sought to fuse organic-mechanic design, to bring art into everyday industrial products and architecture, and to emulate

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the arts and crafts movement of the United States and Britain. The Werkbund paved the way for Gropius’ Bauhaus. Kropp published a book in 1926, Trans- formations of Form in the Twentieth Century (Wandlung der Form im XX. Jahr- hundert: Dem Deutschen Werkbund gewidmet), which was fairly well known in its day. His drawings of seashells must have left an impression on Tamura, who seems fascinated by the connections between organic and mechanic forms (staircase/shell, airplane/dragonfly, body/crutch).

7. Le Corbusier, byname of Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (born October 6, 1887, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland—died August 27, 1965, Cap Martin, France), internationally influential Swiss architect and city planner, whose designs combine the functionalism of the modern movement with a bold, sculptural expressionism. He belonged to the first generation of the so-called International School of architecture and was their most able propagandist in his numerous writings. In his architecture he joined the functionalist aspirations of his generation with a strong sense of expressionism. He was the first architect to make a studied use of rough-cast concrete, a technique that satisfied his taste for asceticism and for sculptural forms. “Le Corbusier,” Encyclopædia Britan- nica Online, accessed March 15, 2011, http://www .britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/137221/Le-Corbusier.

8. Hugo Junkers (born February 3, 1859, Rheydt, Prussia [Germany]— died February 3, 1935, Gauting, near Munich), German aircraft designer and early proponent of the monoplane and all-metal construction of aircraft. Junk- ers patented a flying-wing design in 1910, the same year in which he estab- lished an aircraft factory at Dessau. His J-1 Blechesel (“Sheet Metal Donkey”) monoplane was the first successful all-metal airplane (1915), and his F-13 was the first all-metal transport (1919). Many Junkers aircraft had a corrugated sheet-metal skin, which was copied by several American builders, including the Ford Motor Company. The Junkers works also built “Jumo” aircraft engines, designed one of the first turbojet engines during World War II, and played an important part in German airpower during the war, supplying the Luftwaffe with the Ju 52, a tri-motor monoplane used as a troop transport and glider tug; the Ju 87 dive-bomber (Sturzkampfflugzeug, shortened to “Stuka”); and the Ju 88, a twin-engine all-purpose bomber. “Hugo Junkers,” Encyclopædia Britan- nica Online, accessed March 15, 2011, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/308346/Hugo-Junkers.

9. Nieuport, later Nieuport-Delage, was a French aeroplane company that built racing aircraft before World War I and fighter aircraft during World War I and between the wars.

10. Ludwig Prandtl (born February 4, 1875, Freising, Germany—died August 15, 1953, Göttingen), German physicist who is considered to be the

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father of aerodynamics. In 1901 Prandtl became professor of mechanics at the Technical Institute of Hannover, where he continued his earlier efforts to provide a sound theoretical basis for fluid mechanics. From 1904 to 1953, he served as professor of applied mechanics at the University of Göttingen, where he established a school of aerodynamics and hydrodynamics that achieved world renown. In 1925 he became director of the Kaiser Wilhelm (later the Max Planck) Institute for Fluid Mechanics. His discovery (1904) of the boundary layer, which adjoins the surface of a body moving in air or water, led to an understanding of skin friction drag and of the way in which streamlining reduces the drag of airplane wings and other moving bodies. “Ludwig Prandtl,” Encyclopædia Britan- nica Online, accessed March 15, 2011, http://www .britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/473950/Ludwig-Prandtl.

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The Underside of Town X Yokomitsu Riichi

In 1924, Yokomitsu and Kawabata founded the magazine Bungei jidai (Literary Age), which served as a venue for modernist literature. The critic Chiba Kameo (1878–1935) coined the term “Shinkankaku-ha” for their literary movement, which he described as a “subtle artistic attitude that deliberately peers into the inner existence and meaning of life through the narrow opening of hints and symbols.”1 “The Underside of Town” is a short experimental piece that plays with the idea of creating a new order and perception of reality through the eye of the narrator at different levels: aerial, ground, and sometimes literally peering through a chink in the wall.

In “Shinkankaku-ron” (A Treatise on New Sensation),2 Yokomitsu considers “Futurism, cubism, expressionism, dadaism, symbolism, struc- turalism, and certain aspects of realism as part of the New Sensation School.” He values “the prismatic effect on a theme” when viewed through a medium that distorts or colors, “the leap in meaning in between seem- ingly docile lines of words, as well as the inversion, repetition, and speed- ing up of plot.”3

“The Underside of Town” draws heavily upon the visual impact of post-impressionist art in the West, especially the use of geometric shapes in the work of Cezanne, Picasso, and Braque. Cezanne’s landscape paint- ings simultaneously present deep space and flat design. In his own words, “Everything in Nature is modeled after the sphere, the cone, and the cyl-

“Machi no soko,” by Yokomitsu Riichi (1898–1947), 1925. Translated by Angela Yiu. This translation is based on Yokomitsu Riichi Zenshū, vol. 2 (Kawade shobō shinsha, 1981), 192–97.

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inder. One must learn to paint from these simple figures.”4 In a similar vein, Yokomitsu experiments with geometric shapes in his story to create a spatial representation of flat design with depth. He fills his story with the cone (the hill in the center of the town), horizontal lines (the streets), ver- tical line (a stack of copper coins), pyramid (the town), orb (the breast), and countless clocks in geometric shapes to create a surreal landscape through which his protagonist walks and makes detached observations. It is a prismatic landscape that suggests both lightness and solidity in its presentation.

In this work, Yokomitsu experiments with the re-presentation of space through mapping, an idea that Golley explored in When Our Eyes No Longer See. “Cubism also imitated the non-mimetic but thoroughly referential language of the map, one of the oldest conventions of spatial representation.”5 The rhythmic and methodical narration of one shop after another lined up on a street at the beginning and the end of the story imi- tates the way one peruses a map of a town, a method that Yokomitsu is to use again in his description of a marketplace in Shanghai in his novel of the same title. (“Shopkeepers in the alley bustled to wash away the dust. Boiled eggs stacked high on bamboo baskets. Heads of birds slumped over stalls.”)6 It is as though the act of “mapping” allows him to mentally grasp and artistically transform space—be it a colony or a slum—into a site for infinite storytelling.

Like many modernist works in the 1920s, the story has a proletarian overtone, but because of the brevity of the story, the proletarian theme is not fully explored. Avant-garde writers in the 20s and 30s, such as Kataoka Teppei and Hayashi Fumiko, moved easily from modernism to proletarian literature, even though some would have considered the two rather different in nature. Yet when one considers the fact that modernism rejects the status quo aesthetically and the proletarian movement rejects it politically, one sees a rational link between the two movements, and their intellectual appeal to Yokomitsu.

This story was first published in Bungei jidai, vol. 2, no. 8 (August 1925).

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A t the corner of the street is a shoe seller, piled high with black shoes from ceiling to floor. The girl there always looks wilted surrounded by these walls of shoes, closing like heavy doors all around her. Next to the shoe shop is the clock seller, where clocks climb all over the wall in a recurring pattern. Next to that is the egg shop, where an old man sits amidst the froth of countless eggs with a hand towel folded up on his bald head. Next to that is the potter. Surrounded by a cool, antiseptic white, doesn’t the young housewife look as though she is about to kick away the stacks of dishes around her.

Next to that is the flower shop. The girl there looks dirtier than the flowers, yet from time to time the face of the silly shop boy pokes through rapturously between the stems. Next to that, headless manne- quins dangle in the tailor’s shop, where the owner digs his anemic fin- ger into his ear as he sniffs at the aroma of cooking wafting in from the eatery across the street. Next door is the bookstore, stiff as plate armor, its door ajar like an open mouth. Next to the bookstore is a dry-goods store. In a corner of the deep, dark sea of woolen fabrics, an emaciated pregnant woman flashes her pale, flatfish eyes before sinking back into the pile.

Next to the dry-goods store is a girls’ school. At three in the after- noon colorful waves of virgins surge out of the gate. Next to that is a public bath, where the mermen and mermaids behind glass doors give themselves a good boiling and thrust their fresh, naked bodies on the wooden planks. Next to the public bath is a fruit store. The boy there kicks the fruits around like balls with a foot made strong by pedaling his bicycle. Next to the fruit store lives a surgeon. It’s not uncommon to see his bloated head ripening lazily in the white frame of the window.

Every day the man walks silently past these shops as he makes his way up to the top of the green hill. Three roads in town lead straight to the conical hill from different directions and wrap around its base. The lush grass covering the hill sways softly in the wind. He sits motionless in the grass, swathed in light, straining to soak up hope from the panorama of the streets.

He can’t work. Any mental exertion required for work gives him a headache, and as a result, he cannot make a living. All he can do is

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embrace his precious idleness every day on this hill. The objective exis- tence of various street scenes vies for his attention in his divided fields of vision.

In the northern heights, stately aristocratic mansions stand in a row, where air and sunlight pass through freely, unimpeded by grav- ity. Occasionally, pompous officers and ladies speed through the stone gates of the mansions by car, not quite as weightless as air and light. At other times, bundles of colorful dancing girls are delivered like bunches of flowers. There are also times when a shiny silk hat passes through, and at other times, a frock coat shaped like a bird. The man’s mind remains blank.

He looks down at the town confined like a narrow valley to the south. There, carbon dioxide emissions created a pressure system, and the only things with free access to the area are easterly winds laden with dust and pollutants, typhus fever, and the belching smoke of the facto- ries. There is no vegetation to speak of. All that gather are broken tiles, germs, and empty vats, as well as unsold goods from the market, labor- ers, prostitutes, and rats.

“What does it mean?” he asks himself. He needs money—a mere ten sen—so he won’t have to think at all.

And if he could quit thinking, he would be cured of his illness. Yet if he moved, he would sense hunger. Once he sensed hunger, ten sen a day would not be enough. So, like a bug seeking camouflage, he sits all day in the green grass with his bluish pallor. When dusk falls he goes down the hill into town. Sometimes he would be swept along by the dark avalanche of workers that pour out of the factory gates in a storm of fatigue. Form- ing a continuous slithering procession, they keep their eyes down, like a funeral march, and flow quietly into the underside of town.

Sometimes he would drift amidst the hungry crowd into a canteen. The skinned heads of pigs and cows tumble around the kitchen like so many sleeping Chinese heads while the workers sit in a stoic row behind narrow tables. When the food is slow to come, they beat their bowls with chopsticks. As steam fills the air, they stretch their necks in anticipation, their faces red.

After filling his stomach with scraps of a cow’s head, he would toss

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off ten sen and return alone to his lodging in the back alley. He rents a cramped three-mat room in the front of someone’s house. The room has a splintered pillar that leans off to one side, and sooty walls, carved into giant maps by streaks of rainwater and dotted by fly droppings. Leaning against the pillar, he kicks waste paper out of the way as his thoughts drift to a scene of suicide. Outside, children shake the hedges, pretending to be zoo animals. A masseur walks through the narrow street, announc- ing his service. The children file out behind the man and pretend to be masseurs. When all falls quiet, he lies on his side and looks out to see a single swollen breast through the crevice of the broken back wall across the street. The breast belongs to a pale, sick woman who always lies in the same position in the same place. Whenever he comes back to his room, the only thing he feels close to is that unseemly breast. It feels like fam- ily to him. He sometimes wishes to see the woman’s face, but whenever he looks, it is always that solitary unmoving breast occupying the entire space visible through the crevice of the broken wall. As he stares on, his world turns into a single expanded breast while the faint glow of early dawn comes upon him. Gradually the mountain of the breast begins to trace dazzling streaks in the space before him, until it topples like a col- lapsing turret under its immense weight, retaining only the afterimage of its form.

The man goes out at nightfall, when the sunken, garbage-strewn front street shines brightly like a festival. Street stalls line the sagging eaves, overflowing with cheap toys and tin goods that glitter in the night. The crowd streams in from the high streets on the circular rim of the cone. Looking restlessly around, he makes his way down to the vegetable market that spreads along the muddy bank to get some fresh air. There the unseasonable vegetable garden sucks up the light of the acetylene gas flame and sweeps verdantly over the street in the underside of town. The watered greens stand in rows like a vegetable patch, emitting a cool fragrance like the gentle whisper of a soft, green breeze.

At peace with this sense of quietude, he casts a friendly gaze at a mountain of copper coins piled up on a mat. The sticky stack of dull, copper-colored material looks like a mysterious tower, and he begins to imagine that the mechanical volume of copper coins lying still at the bot-

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tom of the town is the axis from which the whole town radiates in the shape of a magnificent cone.

“Alright, let me pull the axis out like a nail!” Imagining the town collapsing into bits and pieces, he creeps back

into the crowd again, satisfied. Yet, amidst the body odor of the crowd, a sudden rush of sadness overcomes him and he stands still. It is the fleet- ing sadness of existence, like an unexpected gleam on the dull surface of a cut piece of lead. But in an instant he grins and starts walking. Cutting through the empty vats piled up in the warehouse, he crawls into bed and curls into a ball.

He knew that selling three magazines would fetch him ten sen, and as long as he knew this formula, he had no fear of living. One day, long ago, he sold three magazines and was about to go out with the money in his hand, but he saw a filthy, blind old woman, someone he had never seen before, standing barefoot at the door. Holding some scrubbing brushes in her hand, she bowed at him incessantly, begging.

“I am already seventy, my husband died when he was seventy, and my only son is dead, too. The police don’t much like beggars, you see, so please, I beg you, buy one of my scrubbing brushes. I used to have some money, but my husband’s funeral cost eighteen yen and now I’m left with nothing. Please buy one of these brushes from me. Lodging costs 38 sen a night, so I’ll have nowhere to go if I don’t come home with enough. Please, I beg you, buy a scrubbing brush from me.”

He pressed the ten sen into the old woman’s parched hand and left. He would go to sit in the grass on the green hill.

“Life . . .” Thinking hurts his head. He falls silent and stands in the bright,

sunny street. The town unfurls around him. At the corner is a shoe seller, where the girl remains silent amidst the shoes in the shop. Next to that is a geometric clock seller. Among the many clock frames, those that move all point to three. He stops in front of the girls’ school. The colorful waves of virgins pour out of the school in his direction. Like a stake awash in rapid waters, he stands still, watching. The waves of virgins split into two in front of him and, like a swaying garden of flowers, flow gently on.

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Notes

1. Chiba Kameo, “Shinkankaku-ha no tanjō,” in Seiki, November 1924. 2. The full title is “Shinkankaku-ron: Kankaku katsudō to kankakuteki

sakuhin ni taisuru hinan e no gyakusetu,” in Yokomitsu Riichi zenshū, vol. 13 (Kawade shobō shinsha, 1982), 75–82.

3. Yokomitsu Riichi, “Shinkankaku-ron,” 79–80. 4. “Paul Cezanne,” in Britannica Online Encyclopædia, accessed December 4,

2010, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/103971/Paul-Cezanne. 5. Golley, When Our Eyes No Longer See, 173. 6. Yokomitsu Riichi, Shanghai, trans. Dennis Washburn (Ann Arbor, MI:

Center for Japanese Studies, 2001), 65.

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Figure 3. “Aquarium” (Suizokukan), by Sakaguchi Kyōhei (ink on paper, 2305 x 3449 mm), August 2011.

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109

Aquarium X

Hori Tatsuo

Hori Tatsuo (1904–1953), born in the quintessentially High City district of Kōjimachi and educated in the elite Tokyo First Higher School (Dai’ichi Kōtō Gakkō) and Tokyo Imperial University, was generally known for his genteel and psychological works such as Utsukushii mura (Beautiful Village, 1933) and Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises, 1937), written under the influ- ence of Proust, Rilke, and François Mauriac. But there is another aspect of his creativity that is rooted in urban Tokyo, the common people, and mass culture. In college he was involved with politically minded writers and crit- ics such as Nakano Shigeharu (1902–1979) and Kubota Tsurujirō (1903– 1974), and together they founded Rōba (Donkey) in 1926, a magazine known for its modernist and proletarian coloring. In 1930 he published “Aquarium,” a story set in the tawdry, plebeian entertainment district of Asakusa and anthologized in a collection that includes an excerpt from Kawabata Yasunari’s Asakusa kurenaidan (The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa, 1929–30). Both stories display a fair share of farce, ero-guro-nansensu, doubling, masquerading, homosexuality/lesbianism, murder, and above all, fond references to the Low City and its colorful and resilient denizens, all marks of Japanese modernism.

Some references to the venues mentioned in the story will enrich our understanding of the setting. Asakusa Rokku refers to the cinema and

“Suizokukan,” by Hori Tatsuo (1904–1953), 1930. Translated by Stephen B. Snyder. This translation is based on Modan toshi bungaku 1: Modan Tōkyō annai, edited by Unno Hiroshi, Kawamoto Saburō, Suzuki Sadami (Heibonsha, 1989), 106–24. This story is also in Hori Tatsuo zenshū (Chikuma shobo, 1977), vol. 1, 55–74.

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entertainment district in Asakusa. The titular Aquarium opened in 1899 in Asakusa and was the first private aquarium in Japan. The first floor of the building housed a number of tanks of ocean fish, the second floor a theater where the famous Casino Follies performed, and the basement an eatery. Next to the Aquarium was the Mokubakan Theater, which opened in 1902 and consisted of a merry-go-round on the first floor and an insect exhibit hall on the second floor, where freak shows sometimes took place. The Café Amerika opened in 1921 and was known for its abundance of wait- resses and its clientele of Asakusa opera stars and writers. The Asakusa Theater (Asakusa Gekijō) was originally the Asakusa Opera and opened in 1909. It doubled as a cinema and a performance theater for various dance troupes and comedians. Nikkatsu Film Company was established in Kyoto in 1912. In 1917, they purchased a villa in Sumidamura near the Shirahige Bridge and turned that into a studio for films set in modern Japan. The studio was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake.

This story first appeared in Modan TOKIO enbukyoku (rondo): Sekai daitokai sentan jazubungaku—shinkōgeijutsuha sakka jūninin (Modern Tokyo Rondo: The Sharp Tip of Jazz Literature in the World Metropolis— Twelve Writers from the New Art School), Shunyōdō, 1930. Included in the collection are works by the leading modernist writers: Kawabata Yasunari, Kuno Toyohiko, Yoshiyuki Eisuke, Abe Tomoji, Ibuse Masuji, Ryūtanji Yū, Sasaki Fusa, Kurahara Shinjirō, Nakamura Masatsune, Nakagawa Yōichi, and Asahara Rokurō.

X 1

In order to help you fully understand the ineffable appeal of Asakusa Park, I realize I could tell all the thousand things I know about it. But after some thought, I have decided it would be more convenient to relate just one strange tale, and one born of my imagination at that. Now, there are two possible ways I could go about telling this tale of mine. I could create all the necessary features of the background—a theater, a bar, an inn—right out of my fancy; or, instead, I could simply borrow these details from reality. And for my part, the latter course seems more expedient—because, as I have learned, the imagination, to

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a great degree, is a thing that grows more intense as one restricts and represses it.

So, I would ask your indulgence if I set my tale, according to the latest fashion, among the dancing girls of the Casino Follies, who are at present the talk of Asakusa Rokku. To be honest, I know almost nothing about these girls, but if my fantasies about them, conjured up to make my story more story-like, prove ill-considered or even rude, I suspect that this trifling transgression would be more likely to amuse the girls themselves than to anger them. Or so I would like to believe.

As most of you already know, the Casino Follies sits a short distance from the movie theaters in Rokku, above the Aquarium and next to the Mokubakan Theater, with its constant accompaniment of cheerful yet somehow melancholy music. The Aquarium was apparently one in name only; or, perhaps it is fairer to say that during my visits, which were all at night, I had almost never seen fish swimming in any of the tanks that line its walls. If one bothered to look more closely, however, there, among the cracks in the rocks where the light could barely penetrate, one might in fact spy various fish and other sea creatures, camouflaged in colors identical to those rocks, sleeping perhaps in the deepest crags. Moreover, next to each tank was a card identifying its occupant by some compli- cated scientific name—not one of which I now recall. A great many peo- ple passed through the Aquarium, since it was necessary to do so in order to reach the Casino Follies on the floors above, but it’s safe to say that few if any of them ever stopped to look at the fish.

As you mounted the last of the dusty stairs, mindful not to make too much noise with your wooden clogs, you would suddenly hear the music and see the girls dancing on the stage, there beyond the heads of those who had arrived before you—who invariably stood crowded around the footlights though there were plenty of empty seats in the back. On a first visit, a patron might be tempted to take a seat on one of these chairs in the rear, but he would soon get up again, realizing that it was dangerously flimsy, or that bits of straw protruding from large holes in the cover were already clinging to his clothing. All together, there were no more than two hundred of these unsatisfactory seats on the main level and about another hundred above, on the balcony that constituted the third floor

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of the building. I was then in the habit of climbing up to the balcony, though when I first started coming to the Casino Follies, I had invariably forced my way to the seats at the very front of the main floor in order to watch the girls dance from below, at the level of their formidable legs. But from that vantage point, I found myself breathing in a lungful of the dust that rose from the stage with every step of their dance, and so even- tually I held my breath and moved up to the front of the balcony, where I could look directly down on them from above.

Most of the dancing girls were between fourteen and twenty years of age. They wore blond wigs and heavy makeup, and were clothed in relatively elegant costumes that were said to be castoffs from a certain theater company. But it was clear to me that in their earlier lives they had been daughters of the backstreet tenements, factory girls or nurse- maids—and that most of them sang the words to their songs without fully grasping the filthy double entendre, danced their risqué dances without sensing the lewdness of the steps. They stood before the footlights, arms behind their heads, chests thrown out as far as possible—though their chests, it must be said, were in most cases rather small. . . . But all these things together—stairs, dust, seats, girls—gave rise to that appealing, indescribable, and utterly inimitable atmosphere that was the Casino Follies.

As I sat—or stood—in this hall, from time to time I would force myself to look away from the girls and around at the others who had come to watch them so attentively. My compatriots were, of course, almost exclusively male, and the majority appeared to be factory workers, office drones, or students. Since I myself had been coming here almost every evening, I could easily distinguish those among them who deserved the title of “regulars.” The shabby, leering vagrant who leaned against a pil- lar in one corner of the main level, for instance, or the cab driver who took up his position in the balcony directly across from mine and shouted “Yō-chan!”—his nickname for Komatsu Yōko, one of the dancers.

Recently, by the by, the legion of regulars has increased by one—a handsome, slightly swarthy young man, barely more than twenty, who seems a species completely apart from the rest of them. He wears a suit of some fashionable stripe in the occidental style and an oversized driv-

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ing cap pulled low over his eyes, and he props himself against a column in the balcony as he stares intently down at the stage. From time to time he makes deliberately coarse gestures, but they seem so unnatural somehow that I found myself thinking that a woman dressing up as a man might act just this way. But no sooner had I taken note of him than I realized I was seeing him at the Casino almost every night.

On occasion I would bring him up in conversation with friends. One of them reported that he had spotted the young man standing outside the door of the Aquarium after the Casino had closed for the night, while someone else said he had seen him drinking at the Café Amerika, sur- rounded by a circle of waitresses. Still another friend swore that he had passed a young woman in Western-style clothing on the street who looked exactly like the youth at the Casino and had thought for a moment that it was indeed the same person; but then he had realized she had looked much older and had concluded it must be his elder sister. But in any case, this much was clear: our young dandy had become enamored of one of the dancers at the Casino.

One night, after making my rounds in the Park, I returned at last to my own lodgings. It was nearly one o’clock, and I was utterly exhausted. No sooner had I entered the room than I noticed a letter on the desk, which proved, upon closer examination, to have neither return address nor a stamp on the envelope. I opened and read it—an urgent request, more like a police summons actually, that I come to a place called the “Sumi- reya” in Komagata—but when I had finished reading I still had no idea who had sent it. The author had clearly been agitated as he wrote, so much so that he had forgotten to sign his name; moreover, his handwrit- ing was too messy for me to recognize. The letter had apparently been delivered by an employee of this Sumireya, which I assumed was an inn, but I doubted that the people here at my own lodging house would have interrogated the messenger at this late hour. So, though I was so tired the mere thought of movement was repellant, I nevertheless found myself out in the street once again, stirred on by an overwhelming curiosity.

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I live in Mukōjima—and at that hour there was no way to get from there to Komagata but to walk. It was, moreover, the fastest way at any time of day. But as I walked along the deserted riverbank, past the dark- ened beer factory, I suddenly couldn’t help but feel that the anonymous letter was actually a summons from the night itself, that the name of the inn was simply a pretext and no such place existed anywhere in the city; and later, when I had scoured every inch of Komagata to no avail, I actu- ally started to believe my own fancy. But finally, as I was about to aban- don the search, I came upon a diminutive inn wedged between two large shops, indistinguishable from a private home except for the tiny sign above the gate: “Sumireya.” Still wondering whether I was in the right place, I made my way through the gate, which was so narrow I practically had to turn sideways to pass within.

An old woman came out to greet me, smiling like a bouquet of dried- up flowers.

“I think a friend of mine is waiting for me in Room 5,” I told her. “And who would that be?” “I’m afraid I don’t know the name.” With that she turned and left, and I made my way up to the second

floor. Until that moment I didn’t know what a “house of assignation” was, but it suddenly occurred to me that the term referred to a place like this.

I knocked at the door of Room 5, waited for a moment, and then went in—and to my surprise I discovered my friend Hata sitting there alone, his face wet with tears. He was a good deal younger than me, barely twenty years old, but he nevertheless went with us to the Casino, drank with us, and joined in when we discussed women—and only rarely did I have cause to remember the difference in our ages. But now suddenly I was seeing Hata’s true age, and at a glance I could tell that it was the pain of first love that made him cry, a variety of affection that was long since lost to me.

Then he made his confession much along the lines I had guessed. He was in love with one of the girls at the Casino Follies, none other than Komatsu Yōko. He told me that his desire for her had begun when he had first learned that I wanted her, and he begged my forgiveness with tears in his eyes for having pursued her in secret without giving me any hint of

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his intentions. Whereupon, I tried to convince him, apparently in vain, that though I admired the girl, I did not want her in the way he imagined. Then he went on with his story.

That night, after midnight, he had been haunting the deserted area around the Aquarium, lurking in the cold shadows, when suddenly he saw a pale light escaping from a window on the second floor of the shut- tered building and heard the faint strains of music. Supposing that the girls must still be practicing their dances, he found it difficult to leave and lingered next to the iron fence near the back entrance. As he waited, he realized he was not alone: two or three other men were concealed in the dark, clearly waiting for the rehearsal to end and the girls to emerge. Then a breeze sprang up, gusting about as if to remind them of the late- ness of the hour. At last, the rear door of the Aquarium slid quietly open and a girl appeared. She was wrapped in a blue cloak, her hair in braids— Komatsu Yōko, he thought, though he had caught only a glimpse of her. At that moment, the figures in the shadows began to stir, and one of them, leaving its hiding place behind a tree, moved quickly to her side, as if determined to be the first to reach her. He spoke a few words to her, she made some sort of answer, and then the two of them walked calmly away, oblivious to the covetous eyes that watched them.

Hata had followed them, hoping to find out where they would go. He feared that the girl, the object of his secret affections, would simply let the man take her home, and it made his heart contract to think that he was not the one accompanying her on this walk. Then, as he followed them, he turned his attention to the man. Apparently about the same age as Hata, he wore a ridiculously large driving cap and walked with an exaggeratedly long, swaggering stride—it was, he was nearly certain, the young person he and his friends had seen at the Casino and supposed was a woman masquerading as a man. Suddenly the pain and jealousy that had nearly made him give up the chase were overwhelmed by his curiosity, and he set off to follow them again.

They passed like the wind through the deserted stalls lining the street in front of the temple; then from Kaminari Gate they turned in the direction of Azuma Bridge. But when they reached the bridge they turned again, walking through Zaimoku-cho toward Umaya Bridge.

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He wondered where they could be going, but he knew little about these neighborhoods, and as he followed them through the silent streets, he felt as though he were passing through deep sleep itself. Suddenly anxious, he stopped, tempted to turn back. But he regretted his weakness almost immediately and took off after them once more. In the meantime, however, they had disappeared from sight. He searched the area franti- cally, until at last he spotted a light going on in a room on the second floor of a house and concluded they must have gone inside. Creeping up to the door, he discovered that it was a small inn with little to distinguish it from a private residence.

He hesitated for only a few seconds before deciding to go in. With a tip to the woman who ran the place, he managed to secure the room next to the one where the couple was installed. Then, suffering from the unmistakable sounds coming through the wall, he had sat down to write his letter to me.

Now that I had found him here, however, I had no advice to offer him. When he had finished his story, we sat in silence. It was quiet now next door, and my friend appeared exhausted at last by his pain, an exhaustion that had spread to me. In short order, I abandoned myself to sleep.

I awoke the next morning, startled to find myself sprawled out directly on the tatami. Hata was next to me, his tear-stained face plas- tered to the straw matting, but when he realized I was awake he looked at me and smiled broadly. Suddenly, his story from the night before came back to me—though I had no idea why he should look so amused now.

Then he began to speak, his soiled face still pressed against the floor, his voice low and confessional. In order to hear him, I had to get down and rest my head on the mat as well; but this odd posture soon helped me understand the reason for his childlike cheerfulness.

He told me he had been unable to sleep after I had dozed off and, in a fit of insanity born of exhaustion, had crept out of our room and into the one next door. If he was discovered, he planned to say that he had been half asleep and had wandered in by mistake. Then, he had made bold to turn on the light—and was completely dumbfounded by the scene that greeted him. Can you imagine what he saw? It was the naked bodies of

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two women, wrapped up together on the futon, four white limbs so simi- lar in color and so completely entwined that it was impossible to distin- guish which belonged to which woman. Though he stood there a long while, staring at the two drowned lovers washed up on the beach, it never once occurred to him to try to revive them. . . .

“He’s a woman,” Hata said, laughing with great good humor. “I don’t know what I would have done if he’d been a man, but when I found out we’d been right, that he is really she . . .”

I waited nearly a week for further news from Hata, but none came. Even- tually, I began to worry and phoned him. He said that he had still not managed to make the girl his, and he sounded as though his spirits were failing. Then he moved on to other matters.

The days that followed seemed as gloomy as heavy storm clouds. Somehow, the whole of Asakusa was unnaturally depressed, as though an inexplicable torpor had descended on the place, and I was overcome with a premonition that this gloom would give rise to strange and untoward events.

One evening, I was sitting at a table at the Café Amerika, lost in thought. Perhaps because I appeared so glum, none of the girls had seen fit to come up and sit with me. From the back of the café, from a table shielded from view by a screen, I could hear the cheerful voices of several of the girls who were apparently gathered around another customer. As I listened, the sound seemed to become the source of my foul mood, and, finally unable to restrain myself, I stopped one of the girls and asked her about the customer behind the screen.

From her description, I realized it was none other than the young woman who had been masquerading as a man. She was a regular at the café, but this evening she was unusually drunk. She had come in her cus- tomary costume, and she affected a man’s speech as she held court at her table in back. Furthermore, she was in the habit of leaving with one of the waitresses, one with whom she seemed to enjoy a special intimacy. It was all enough to make them thoroughly suspicious. At any rate, they

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had noticed that she had become somewhat unhinged of late. According to rumor, she had fallen in love with one of the girls at the Aquarium and had been buying her anything she wanted, but the girl had nevertheless come to despise her—which was apparently the cause of her madness. Furthermore, around the time that the rumors about the girl from the Aquarium had started, she had a very public argument with the wait- ress from the café, which, in retrospect, had probably been a matter of jealousy.

The waitress I had stopped told me this history in great detail. But she seemed to feel sympathy for the strange young woman, and I found myself listening with a certain pleasure.

“But who is this woman?” I asked at last. “They say she’s the daughter of a viscount, though no one knows for

sure. I’ve also heard she’s really some kind of reporter.” The news that she had begun to act erratically came to me like a

storm warning.

Later, outside, I waited for her to emerge from the Café Amerika. When she finally did, she was wearing her oversized driving cap and seemed terribly drunk. As she staggered along, each unconscious movement betrayed her true identity. Passing by the Kaminari Gate, she headed once more toward the Azuma Bridge, and I made up my mind to follow her.

This time she crossed the bridge and then walked along the Sumi da River, slipping into the shadows of the large building that housed the beer company. She crossed the river again at the Makura Bridge and walked along the waterfront in Sumida Park. A cold wind from the water blew around us as we passed the Kototoi Bridge.

She continued along the riverbank, and I followed. The path grew less level here and walking more difficult, and I realized we were leav- ing the city. The area was completely deserted, except for the occasional stray dog that would emerge from the blackness, sniff suspiciously in our direction and then disappear once again.

We reached Shirahige Bridge, but she showed no sign of turning back, marching quickly away from the city. I stopped, hesitating for a moment, torn between following her and abandoning my chase. As I

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stood watching, however, she suddenly turned and began climbing down the embankment, and I decided I would follow—though I had no idea where she would go once she left the river. The road in the shadow of the bank was pitch black and pocked here and there with dark puddles. She apparently made no attempt to avoid them, for I could hear dull splashes up ahead as she waded through—the only sounds to break our silence.

Eventually, I realized that we had wandered into a strange and unfa- miliar quarter. Then suddenly, looming ahead, I saw a very large building covered completely in panes of glass, nearly all of which were broken. Inside this ruin, which had once been a factory of some sort, weeds grew with luxuriant vigor. And beyond, I could detect the sound of the Sumida River, flowing in the darkness.

The girl stopped in front of the building, and I watched as she stooped to pick up a rock. Then she aimed at one of the few unbroken panes and threw the rock with all her might. There was the sharp, shat- tering sound, shards of glass fell to the ground, and the girl turned and hurried away from the building almost at a run.

To keep from losing sight of her, I was forced to run a bit myself, though she soon slowed to a more manageable pace. I followed, still unable to tell where she was heading or what she was planning to do. We passed behind the ruined factory, cut across a rice paddy and then through a cemetery, until we once again regained the path along the raised riverbank. I soon discovered that we were no longer near Shira- hige Bridge but had come to a large mill some way off. Nor did she stop here but, passing by the sooty, dark façade of the mill, hurried still along the river path!

At last I gave up my pursuit. I was utterly exhausted, and I had more than ample evidence that she was mad. Were I to devote any more atten- tion to her, I feared I might end up the same way.

I stopped and watched until she had disappeared from sight along the dirt embankment. Then I turned back and made my way toward the ferry pier at Kanegafuchi.

I was awakened by the gentle breeze from the water that announces the dawn and found I was stretched out on a bench at the pier. Barely

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thirty minutes later, I boarded a steamer coming downstream from Senjū Ōhashi. I had imagined the boat would be empty at this hour, but there were already a half-dozen passengers, all of them fishmongers headed for the market along the river. Between their lively conversation and the sound of the ferry’s steam engine that seemed to beat inside my chest, I at last came fully awake. I could feel myself being restored by the fresh- ness of early morning.

Realizing that the tall, glass-glazed factory from my nighttime adventure was looming on the left bank, I turned to one of the fishmon- gers. “What is that building?” I asked him.

“That?” he said, pointing at the structure. “It used to be the Nik- katsu film studio.”

I stared at the shattered panes from the deck of the steamer, feeling the full strangeness of the sight, and picturing the odd scene of the mad- woman, determined to break one last piece of glass with her stone.

One afternoon, two or three days later, I was gazing down from a window on the second floor of the Bat Bar at the crowds around the movie the- aters. Suddenly, a knot of people came racing through the scene, push- ing their way past the strolling mass. I thought immediately that there must be a fire somewhere, and a moment later I had joined the crowd and was rushing along with them. Turning the corner at the Asakusa Theater (formerly, the Opera Hall), we raced toward the Aquarium, and when we arrived, we found a great crush of people around the building—though no fire. At first I had no idea what was happening, but I soon realized that everyone was looking up at the roof of the Aquarium and many people were screaming—and then I saw her, a woman with wild hair, pacing back and forth on the roof as though it were the deck of a doomed ship. It took me only a moment more to realize it was the woman I had followed only a few days before. From time to time she would let out an unearthly scream, as if to silence the crowd below.

At five o’clock that evening, as the girls were dancing their Persian Lamp number, a pistol shot had rung out from a corner of the balcony.

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Fortunately, none of the girls had been injured, but the bullet had rico- cheted off the floorboards and come to rest in the backdrop. The shot had apparently been intended for Komatsu Yōko, who had been dancing in front at the moment it was fired. The shooter, of course, was none other than the handsome young man who had haunted the balcony. As he had tried to elude the men crowding around to apprehend him, his driving cap had come off, tufts of soft, feminine hair had fallen loose, and it was plain to all that he was actually a woman dressed up like a man. Taking advantage of their astonishment, she had managed to escape and scramble up to the roof of the building. One hardy soul had tried to fol- low her, but she had fired a second shot at him, grazing his arm. He was not badly injured, but he gave up trying to reach her and no one had dared to go up on the roof after that. They had simply retreated to a safe distance to jeer at her.

Such was the story I pieced together from the reports of those around me. It was now dinnertime and some people had begun to drift away from the crowd, but others stopped to take up their spots. As I stood there among them, listening to the eerie voice from the rooftop, I had the sickening feeling that I was myself coming face to face with death.

Seeing that she had a pistol, the police who had been called to the scene seemed reluctant to confront her, contenting themselves instead with the task of forcing down those who had climbed up in the tall trees around the Aquarium to get a better view. An hour passed with little progress and night was beginning to fall, but the crowd showed no sign of dispersing. On the contrary, it seemed to grow as the light faded.

At last it was dark. The roof was in shadow and it was hard to see the girl. The only evidence of her presence was the occasional mad scream, so uncanny it made your hair stand on end. Then, inexplicably, just as another scream rang out, someone in the crowd set off a rocket. As the firework traced streams of light in the dark, for just one moment we could see that awful figure, a mad woman on the roof, hair flying, pistol brandished aloft. A spontaneous cheer for the rocket went up from the crowd, but the woman seemed to think they were cheering for her, and she came to the edge of the roof like an actress approaching the foot- lights to take her bow. Just at that moment, however, a second flare shot

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up. The sudden flash seemed to startle her, she lost her balance, and she fell headlong from the roof.

I closed my eyes. The nausea I had been fighting—sickness unto death—overcame me then, and I could do nothing but walk away as I heard someone behind me scream, “She’s still breathing!”

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Pavement Snapshots X

Ryūtanji Yū

Especially prolific between 1928 and 1932, Ryūtanji Yū (1901– 1992, given name Hashizume Yū) published novels, anthologies, short stories, sketches, and manifestoes. He also founded movements defining how literature should respond to the modern moment, which he believed was characterized by the excitement of urbanization and commodity capi- talism. His debut novel, Wanderlust Period (Hōrō jidai), won the 1928 award for fiction on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the founding of Kaizō magazine. This was one of Japan’s first literary honors, preceding the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes by more than seven years. Ryūtanji was an exemplar of new writing styles that presented almost photographic views of modernizing Tokyo, the place he perceived to be the “vortex of modern life” (seikatsu no uzu), a phrase he used often. In these works of “street nonsense” (machi no nansensu), to borrow the title of his 1930 anthology, Ryūtanji magnified seemingly ordinary occurrences to reveal how Tokyo shaped human subjectivity and cultural production. He believed the city was best understood through wandering the “pavements” (refer- ring both to streets for vehicles and pedestrian walkways), spaces from which the patterns of daily life became most visible. He organized umbrella

“Peibumento sunappu–yonaka kara asa made” by Ryūtanji Yū (1901–1992), 1930. Translated by Alisa Freedman and Angela Yiu. This translation is based on “Peibu- mento sunappu—yonaka kara asa made,” (Pavement Snapshots: From Night to Morning, 1930) in Modan toshi bungaku, vol. 1: Modan Tōkyō annai, edited by Unno Hiroshi (Heibonsha, 1989), 168–93. The story also appears in Yoshiyuki Eisuke to sono jidai—modan toshi no hikari to kage, edited by Yoshiyuki Kazuko and Saitō Shunji (Tokyo shikishuppan, 1997), 132–40.

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coalitions of writers to pose a direct alternative to Marxist writing trends, which he attacked for failing to convey the realities of modern life and for writing propaganda rather than literature. One of these groups was the New Art School (Shinkōgeijutsu-ha), co-founded with Kuno Toyohiko and Asahara Rokurō.

“Pavement Snapshots” (Peibumento sunappu—yonaka kara asa made) appeared in and alluded to the May 1930 Modern Tokyo Rondo (Modan TOKIO rondo), a collection of urban stories by twelve New Art School authors edited by Kuno. As Ryūtanji references, these works fea- tured the hunt for Tokyo curiosities (ryōki), secrets believed to be hid- den beneath daily life. In “Pavement Snapshots,” the narrator takes the reader through five neighborhoods from night to morning, pausing to observe aspects of the city that could not, in reality, be seen simultane- ously. Ryūtanji developed a mode of expression to describe the commin- gling of the ordinary and spectacular and the commotion of crowds and vehicles. He writes loosely associated, descriptive noun phrases and errati- cally punctuated, forceful sentences. He includes fragments of conversa- tion, full of ellipses, to parody different social groups that represent urban Japan. He experiments with visual qualities of the page. He repeats kanji characters for emphasis and punctuates important ideas with exclamation points. “Pavement Snapshots” reflects his fondness for water metaphors and his trademark device of writing Western loan words as kanji character compounds cribbed with rubi to convey a sense of international modern- ism and global culture. This is true of “pavement,” which is written both in katakana and kanji. (Rubi is a printing method of inserting kana in small font beside kanji, thereby enabling readers to sound out pronunciation of characters they do not know.) This word play gives readers another layer of linguistic meaning through which to contemplate the new things and practices. In these and other respects, Ryūtanji’s techniques are similar to photographic and filmic montage, which puts images together in a way that condenses the narrative and draws attention to the symbolic mean- ings of individual sights and sounds. “Pavement Snapshots” is reminiscent of the genre of “city symphony” films produced worldwide in the late 1920s by movie makers with varying political and social concerns, including Wal- ter Ruttmann’s 1927 Berlin, Symphony of a Great City and Dziga Ver- tov’s 1929 Man with a Movie Camera. Ryūtanji depicts poverty, unhealthy labor conditions, and other urban problems, and the only censored part

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is a reference to proletarian strife. Yet he shows this suffering to be part of Tokyo’s allure, thereby preventing the reader from having an entirely negative view of modernity and thereby condemning city life in toto. While the nighttime scenes are of consumption, those of the morning dramatize production and are strongly conveyed in nouns, almost in the manner of futurist poetry. The closing images force the reader to progressively lower his/her gaze from the sky to the ground and to see impending war.

The end of Ryūtanji’s literary career was in part due to his animosity for Kawabata Yasunari and other members of the literary establishment. Ryūtanji’s stories and sketches were very similar in content and literary techniques to Kawabata’s novel The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (Asakusa kurenaidan, 1920–30), also excerpted in Modern Tokyo Rondo, which was deemed the quintessential work heralding the kind of literary movements Ryūtanji desired to lead. In the September 1934 issue of Bungei, Ryūtanji severely attacked Kawabata and even accused him of plagiarizing his 1931 novel Sora no katakana. As a result, Ryūtanji alienated himself from the Tokyo publishing world. He moved to Kanagawa Prefecture in December 1935 and devoted himself to the study of cacti. With the exception of the historical novel Capital of the Imperial Carriage (Horen miyako), nomi- nated for the 1943 Naoki Prize for popular fiction, he did not publish sig- nificant works until the early 1960s. The Ryūtanji Yū literary award was established in 1989. Although his studies on cacti circulated in the United States, this sketch is the first of Ryūtanji’s literary works to appear in its entirety in English.

Night Night Night With wings sheathed in the yellowish light of dusk, a flock of carrier

pigeons calmly traces a circle around a sooty stucco tower and disappears into a high nest atop a building. Soon the bright electric signboard on the newspaper company roof will unroll the jittery thread of the night’s news into the sky.

Elevated trains with rows of brightly lit windows come and go in

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between the dark, silent buildings with firmly shuttered front doors. On the street below, headlights stream like beads on a Buddhist rosary, and pedestrians crawl like ants. The streets teem with the evening bustle and the sound of the occasional steam whistle, sending tired echoes from the distant factory district.

A young, newly married salaryman cheerfully swings a shopping bag from the Matsuya department store.

Like a fish in an aquarium, the beautiful girl posing as a manne- quin1 spends the whole day in the glass show window fantasizing about a lover’s soft kiss on her red, chapped lips.

Laborers, their long hair sticky with rust and oil, finger union pam- phlets in their khaki overall pockets.

The twilight streets are a human deluge!

Wearing red neckties, sailor pants like sacks, their berets cocked over one eye—

“Shall we head to Ginza?” “Yes, why not.” “I wonder if it’s too early?” “Maybe.” “Shall we have a bite to eat?” “Yes, why not.” You don’t need a magnifying glass to see that they have absolutely

no “gelt” in their pockets!2

The rush hour electric trains3 roar past the windows of buildings— Streetlights streaming in the dark evening, their light sometimes

swallowed in the shadows of buildings. “Could you p-put out that cigarette?” stutters a pale-faced young

man, probably a laborer. “. . . ?” The ruddy-faced gentleman stares back, the cigarette’s gold

tip tucked beneath his mustache. His cheeks flushed with drunkenness, his double chin fat and greasy. In the dense smoke swirling under the light, Mr. Gold Tip glares at the young man across the squirming heads of the crowd.

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“What?” “Put out your cigarette!” “Humph. You the conductor?” “Put it out. You’re bothering everyone. Look, your smoke—can’t

you see it’s making us wince?” “Where does it say that I can’t smoke here? The sign just says ‘Please

refrain from smoking.’ ‘Please refrain from’ isn’t ‘Do not,’ you know.” Gold Tip’s face reddens again. “Mind your own business, you cheeky . . .”

“Cheeky?” “I can smoke if I want to. You going to stop me?” “You don’t give a damn if what you want to do bothers other people!” “Why should I care?” “That’s it!” At that moment, someone thrusts a powerful arm out from the

crowd and punches Gold Tip’s chin with a fist like a hammer. Pow! “You got him?” “Sure did.” Sneering at Gold Tip’s bloodthirsty face, the man remarks, “What I

like to do is hit people. You just said we could do what we want, even if other people don’t like it. Ha ha! Too scared to hit back?”

The lights of distant Odaiba shine in the windows.

Ginza, the heart of modern Tokyo, wakes up with the night. Deep crimson, green, purple. Neon signs cling to the retina. The blinking illumination of the Chevrolet advertising tower. Blue sparks shooting from a trolley—Crackle! The seven-story department store is open for business at night, its

windows brightly lit. “JOAK!4 We now begin this evening’s entertainment programming.

Our first song is the ‘Modern Tokyo Rondo’ by the amateur band of mod- ernist writers. The members are . . .”

The reverberation of jazz from the phonograph. The thunder of the autobikes. The hoarse siren of the traffic control.

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The clamor of shoppers browsing the night stalls. Tobacco fireworks5 sizzling on the pavement—Ssss! The Ginza men swarming the night crossroads.

“Oh!” Two couples pass each other by chance on the pavement glowing with light from the show windows.

“Well, fancy meeting here.” “Yes, indeed.” “It’s been a while since then, hasn’t it?” “Yes, it has.” “Please excuse my long silence.” “The same here. No need for apologies.” “What has happened since then?” “Well, nothing . . .” “Ha, ha! That’s quite alright. And how’s that going these days?” “. . . ?” “You know what I mean.” “Oh, that. The same as before.” “Ha, ha! Indeed. It certainly has been a while. You’re welcome to

visit if you feel so inclined.” “Thanks. Certainly . . .” “Well, we must be going. See you again some time. Good luck with

that. And send my regards to your wife.” “Oh, thanks. . . . So long.” They part. As soon as he returns to his partner, she asks, “Who

was that?” “Oh dear. I don’t know. Let me see. I wonder who it was . . .” “Don’t kid with me. You seemed to be carrying on awfully well. You

don’t remember?” “No . . .” “Didn’t he send his regards to your wife?” “He did, but I don’t even have a wife. He must have confused me

with someone else, even though it is pretty bright here . . .” “But you were playing along with him, weren’t you?” “That’s just polite street manners . . .”

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X Screech!

As the automobile spins quickly around the corner of Owarichō, the woman jabs her narrow finger into the man’s knee, as she tilts on the passenger cushion.

“Hey, where are we going?” “I don’t know.” “Oh, you’re angry again. You told the driver to take us to Ginza, and

we’re here already, aren’t we? You’re just making the driver go around in circles and causing him trouble. Where do you want to go? Should we get out around here?”

“If you want to get out, then go right ahead!” “What a louse! You’re still upset about what I said earlier? If so, then

you shouldn’t have brought it up. You started it, and you made me say it. I didn’t want to. Now you’re letting it eat you up inside. Just look at these bright streetlights. Aren’t those old-fashioned feelings of yours turning this place into a bunch of shadows? As my lover, wouldn’t you be embar- rassed if no other men looked at me? Wouldn’t you seem all the more tal- ented at catching me if five men—no, ten men—gave me the eye? First of all, as far as love is concerned these days . . . Oh, driver, circle around here. Then go straight down this street. Until we get to Shimbashi. No need to hurry. . . . This thing about love—if you have time to think about it, you’d be better off reading Marx. He’ll tell you that even if you can’t change the world, you’d feel better if you could change the way you look at it. . . . If you take a dancer as a lover, you’ve got to be in it for the whole deal. Sneaking into the dancehall, checking on whom I dance with and how often, if we’re dancing too close, how many tickets I get for one dance.6 . . . Come on! How stupid! No matter how many men I catch, it has nothing to do with your skills as a lover. Let me tell you something. If you’re going to take a dancer for a lover, then play the part and be more modern! Listen. If I really wanted to betray you, I wouldn’t be here with you right now. Believe me. Okay?”

She draws her cheek in close to him. Her cloud of crinkled bobbed hair tickles the man’s ear. Bringing her seductive rouged lips to his ear in a pointed O, she asks, “You in a better mood now?”

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“I’m not in a bad mood. I’m feeling just fine!” Hints of a frozen, feigned smile graze the corners of his mouth. “It’s always like this. What a louse.” The woman pinches his fingers resting on his knee and says to the

driver, “Hey, stop here!” “Huh?” “Here is fine . . .” The wheels skid on the water sprinkled to cool the street, and the

door opens with a bang. In her delicate dancing shoes, she springs lightly onto the pavement. There she stands: her scarlet dress hugging her fig- ure, her sheer stockings, and her ample bare shoulders.

“Here, hold my manteau a minute. One yen is enough, right? Why, it’s always one yen for two people from Kudan.7 What? Seventy sen per person! Well, since we let you listen to our love affair for free, why don’t you give us a discount? Appreciated. Okay, shall we go?”

“Where?” “Where? LL, of course. Or Saiseriya? Columbia?8 But LL is best,

right? I’m going to leave you with Yuriko and go round up some more money. Show some gumption—try to blabber over your drunkenness and drag Yuriko to a hotel. She’s good with men. If you’re good enough to throw me to the curb, I’ll look up to you. Make me jealous and chase after you some time. You’re starting to bore me.”

Three people push their way through the crowd around the portrait art- ist on the street.

“Lemme see.” One snatches a scrap of paper from another and stops in his tracks on the pavement. He carefully compares the drawing to the man, checking one against the other. Then he mutters, “Indeed. The pic- ture looks more like you than you do yourself.”

Shinjuku—Yamanote’s Ginza.9 Here, too, nighttime is a sea of lights, a human vortex. Behind the line of night stalls, a flood of one-yen taxies. The three floors of the Musashino Cinema10 swarm with a large audi- ence—I bet they will sweat during the love scenes of the talkie on screen.

“Which do you like?”

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“Me?” In front of the show window of the precious metals and jewelry

shop— The man’s small mustache draws closer to the girl’s ear, and she

leans toward him, pressing her forehead against the cold glass, which clouds up when she speaks in her coy, nasal voice.

“How about that red one? I bet it’s a ruby.” “It’s a little too red for me . . .” “Well then, how about that purple over there. I wonder what it is. An

alexandrite? Twenty-three yen. That’s pretty cheap, isn’t it? How about the pink one? Bright and pretty. Thirty yen. How about it? You don’t like it?”

“Well . . .” Her sweet tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth. “Yes, it’s pretty.”

“You want it?” “. . .” The girl touches her lips with her thin finger and wipes the fog

on the glass. She leans her shoulder against the man, aware of how to be effectively coquettish. Behind them, the noise of people squirming around the night stalls on the pavement mingles with the sound of the newspaper seller’s bell and the horns of the automobiles. Small transac- tions of love occur even in a lively place like this!

The man is a young bourgeois, impeccably dressed in fashionable spring clothes. The woman—well, she’s a slip of a girl who tries not to look poor.

Are they lovers? Well— “How about the pearl over there?” “That? Maybe . . .” “Or how about this one?” “. . .” “Right. Perhaps we should get the pink one.” Like a snake, the man’s pale, delicate hand slithers toward the girl’s

shoulder and rests lightly and firmly on it. As he applies quiet pressure, her breath trembles, and she gives off a delicate little laugh, voiceless and nasal.

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“Shall I buy it for you?” “. . .” “But you want it, right?” The girl presses her forehead a little harder against the window as if

to nod, and the man taps her shoulder—thump. A big, bright laugh rings out clearly.

“Okay! Let’s buy it. Come.” And the girl follows closely behind the man, walking shyly toward

the bright entrance door. Several minutes later. You’ll find them in an empty corner of the bright train station hall— “Alright, go over there and call my wife to ask her permission for

a night’s leave. Tell her your mother insists that you stay for the night and you’ll be back first thing in the morning. Okay? You go do as I say. A public phone is best—much less suspicious. I’ve stayed over at the club many nights playing mahjong, so she won’t suspect a thing. When I get home tomorrow, she won’t know I’ve been with you. Go use that phone over there. I’ll buy the tickets.”

The man’s lover is his live-in maid! The girl stops toying with the red gem on her finger and gazes up at

the man, an uneasy look on her face. Urged once more, she makes up her mind and heads to the phone outside.

“You have five sen, right?” “Yes.” The man walks over to the ticket gate. He opens the clasp of his wal-

let and thrusts out a fifty-sen silver coin. “Two tickets for Omori Station.”

In the vortex of dense smoke under the streetlight, a young man is bus- ily loading bundles of newspapers to be delivered to the localities onto a truck. Running his fingers through his long, lusterless hair and raking it behind his ears, he mumbles to his fellow workers, “It makes me sad to think about how many girls are losing their virginity in just this one night in Tokyo.”

But behind the window framed in concrete, the high-speed rotary press groans like the devil, promising to turn today’s world events into

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tomorrow’s sensations and sending them out in a dizzying waterfall of paper. Cold and indifferent journalism cuts up human society and casts the fragments in lead type. Here, one girl’s chastity—let alone human life itself—is worth less than a few cigarette ashes.

Crises in international relations, the French prime minister’s laryn- geal tumor, the failure of Soviet Russia’s eastern policies, the results of the disarmament conference in London, the disorder in China, the maneuverings of the Seiyūkai,11 the arrest of members of the Commu- nist Party, city councilors’ junkets, the disappearance of a millionaire’s widow, an elementary school student’s death on the train tracks, a new theory on the parrot disease,12 radio programs, advertisements for sani- tary napkins—

The fragments of modern society captured in the dance of the printed word.

The fully loaded trucks leave the newspaper company dispatch unit, going east, west, north, and south, kicking up dust in the night streets.

The wanton sounds of jazz drowned in footsteps—the crowd of dancers tracing endless circles on the dance floor.

This is the height of night for the dancehall. Perfume. Body odor. Cigarette smoke. Dancing dresses that look like poppies. Fake moles. Tuxedos on white powdered chests. “What do you think about this step?” “It’s strange. Like a duck’s waddle. What is it?” “Just like you said—It’s the ‘wandering goose.’” “No, really?” “Yes, I just invented it.”

The imposing, ornamental tile edifice of the Marunouchi Central Tele- graph Office13 is the central nervous system of the insomniac city. Phos- phorous-colored sparks, like fireworks, cross the dark Pacific Ocean

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night and dispatch radio waves like jazz. The jittery neural network of the entire world is integrated here, and the office windows burn as if on fire.

Click click click click. Clack clack clack! The submarine telegraph cables enmesh the globe in a net. Short and long radio waves wrap the globe in a veil. The central nervous system of the Far East, Japan by night!

The muddy night sky is reflected in dull red on the murky water under the newly reconstructed Sukiyabashi Bridge.14 An old beggar sits at its approach with two sad-looking borrowed children. His legs, all skin and bones, poke out like matches on the pavement, which still retains the winter chill.

A tattered cardboard box holds three one-sen copper coins. “Hey!” Two drunks amble by on wobbly feet, slurring their words as

they talk. “Where the hell are we going?” “Where? Like we agreed. To Shin-, Shinjuku.” “Shin-, Shinjuku? To a brothel?” “Quit living in the past, idiot. We’re going to get us a ‘stick girl.’15

Wait, there’s a beg-, beggar. Hey, old man! Been a, a while. How’s it going? What? Old man! They your kids? No kidding! . . . Hey, boss! Wait a sec- ond. He’s gone. Miserable lout. . . . Hey, old man, I asked you a question. What, they’re your kids? You’re mistreating them! What’s that? You let them lie around on the ground? For heaven’s sake, they’re not cats and dogs! What’s that? You said they’re not on the ground? They’re on the bridge? How stupid! This is where we walk with our dirty shoes. . . . Is the concrete their home on the ground? Give me a break! Look, they’re sleeping with their cheeks pressed against the concrete. Poor things, why don’t you two wrap yourselves around each other, it’s so darn cold! Okay, okay, just like that. . . . Oh, what filthy kids! Take them to the bath once in a while, okay? . . . Hey! Where did that son-of-a-gun go? Cold-hearted brute . . . Hey, old man, those children are so pathetic that I want to give you something, but I’m too drunk to get my wallet out. How about I come back tomorrow? Stay here till then. Okay. Bye. . . . What? You’re thanking

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me for my continued patronage? Don’t be ridiculous, you beast! Didn’t I say that I’d come back to give you something? Quit the sarcasm!”

Whoosh! The blinding headlights of an approaching automobile pierce the

darkness like shooting stars! “Watch out, you brute. Huh? Drunken automobiles. Watch where

you’re walking. Idiot. . . . Hey, boss! Where did you go? What? You’re taking a piss? Look at you, staggering onto the streetcar street to piss. . . . Okay. Lemme piss, too.”

11:00 p.m. On the Ginza front streets, the store shutters have been lowered,

and the line of night stalls is being hastily cleared up. On the pavement, bathed white under the lights and littered with innumerable advertis- ing fliers, men stagger as if swimming in twos and threes. These are the drunken customers kicked out of cafés and bars at closing time.

One-yen taxies stream down both sides of the pavement. Eyes— keen as those of pickpockets—peer out of the drivers’ windows, search- ing out potential fares. These eyes are the sharp tips of the modern city’s nerve endings!

“Bunkamura in Me-, Mejiro?16 That’ll you cost two yen. Yes, two yen. What? There’s no way other way to get back to the suburbs, you know. Okay then, how about one yen and fifty sen? One yen? You must be joking . . .”

“Where? Mejiro Bunkamura? Okay. I’ll take you there for one yen!” Vehicles with rubber tires with rates as flexible as rubber bands. All of a sudden— Amidst the terrible wail of sirens and the frantic fire alarm, an

imposing, dark-red fire engine speeds down the sleepy streets, trailing a whirl of dust.

Oh, no! A random killer at large? Or is it a fire? The Tokyo night sky is bright and silent, like dawn.

On the Ginza café back streets—

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In strict accordance with the new management order issued by the Maruyama Police Commissioner, the front doors of the cafés have all shut by the closing time, but warm light peeks through the gaps in the screens, and the charming whispers of the waitresses attending to the regular clientele leak quietly outside.

Press your ear against the crack of the door and try to catch what is happening inside. The waitresses’ secret laughs will tickle your back.

But wait a minute—isn’t that a familiar voice? No joke. The musicians of the Modern Tokyo Rondo—Yoshiyuki

Eisuke, Kuno Toyohiko, Narasaki Tsutomu,17 and the other are inside. “Hello . . .” Open the door—in the shadow of the single-panel screen

under faint colored electric lights, waitresses made up in bright rouge and a group of modernist writers are sitting around a table. Every writer there is a noted curiosity hunter.

“Well, well, do come in!” A hint of peach-colored drunkenness on his elegant face, Yoshiyuki

beckons us to have a seat on the divan. “It’s oddly quiet here. Reminds me of a wake.” “No, Narasaki was just about to tell us the true story of a tryst. You

know, that story about what happened at Shinanomachi Station the other day. Kuno regrets the bad bargain of trading an ox for a horse.”

“Cut it out, Yoshiyuki,” scolds the sage of the streets, Kuno Toyohiko. “I’ve got even more interesting urban curiosities for you. What’s so

fetching about some secret tryst with a girl who stinks of urine, any- way? Let’s leave that kind of thing to Narasaki and Ryūtanji—listen to me instead. One-yen taxi girls,18 stick girls . . . whatever you fancy. But remember, these stories are not from my personal experience.”

Well, this seems like quite a conversation, but, dear readers, I will leave this comfortable divan to you and continue my stroll through the somnolent late night streets.

The Marunouchi business center, shrouded in the misty moonlit night, is the fossilized streets of Arabian Nights. A few automobiles flow quietly down the asphalt road surface. The grand and imposing buildings reach- ing into the night sky are silent and dark, and not a light is on behind the

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windows. Specters of the daytime footsteps seem to drift in the subtle movements of the breeze.

On the elevated tracks that run through Tokyo Station, nighttime freight trains occasionally steal past—

Now the heart of metropolitan Tokyo seems to have fallen into a deep midnight sleep.

Asakusa! The cinemas of the Sixth District and the roadside eateries sleep

silently on the now empty streets. In the dark shadows of trees, a group of vagrants, like tattered litter, is chased from bench to bench by the police on patrol.

The eerie night howls of the wild Hanayashiki19 beasts. The street girls,20 well past their prime and looking monstrous in

their white-powdered faces, slip into the shadows—Hey! I’m going to make you jump!

Splash! The sound of the carp leaping in the pond. Rickshaw pullers on the prowl tug at the sleeves of the dwindling

passersby and hiss, “Psst, Mister! Over here. I know an interesting place you’re sure to like. How about it? Mister, how about a good woman? Not one of those professionals, mind you. What do you say? Let me show you the way.”

The Casino Follies dancing girls and the dust their bare legs have kicked up on stage have settled coldly behind the lowered curtain. In the aquarium below, the giant sea bream—one eye looking much larger than the other as it presses its nose against the chilly glass—dreams about the vast sea under a misty moonlit night.

The hazy spring full moon floats like a spirit above the forest on the grounds of the Imperial Palace.

2:00. 3:00. 4:00. The dark night of the metropolis is now the realm of the spirits of

the mountains and the rivers.

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Morning Morning Morning Dawn from the factory district of the Kōtō Ward! Rose-colored dawn. The sky above is transparent and full of stars,

the earth is veiled in evaporation from the night air. Steam whistle! Siren! Sounds finely entwined. Some break off on a high note. Some crack

loud and strong. Rising tones. Falling tones. Some close, some distant, some quiet, some loud, some poor, some rich—all converging on this point.

Factory. Factory. Factory. Cement factory. Muslin factory. Silk factory. Rubber factory. Paint factory. Glass factory. Iron factory. Lumber factory. Electric machinery factory. Dye factory. Pharmaceutical factory. Ship factory. Smokestack. Smokestack. Smokestack. Black smoke, reddish brown smoke, russet smoke, yellow smoke,

gray smoke, white smoke, shell-colored smoke, blue smoke, transparent heat-haze smoke!

The three-phase alternating current, the transformer on the cylin- der, the switch.

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Switchboard. Galvanometer. Voltmeter. Starter. Induction motor. Five horsepower, ten horsepower, fifteen horse-

power, twenty horsepower— Belt! Flying wheel. Pulley. Cogwheel. Machine. The dynamics of iron and oil. The howl of modern science. Production! Laborers. Sleep-deprived, Malnourished, Oil-coated laborers. Exploitation, class anguish, resistance, labor strife, collectives,

unions, strikes, Marxism, Proletariat XX, the Communist Party, and cell organizations.

“Workers of the world unite!” At the break of day, a flood of laborers pours out from cheap board-

inghouses, from flophouses, from apartments, from slums, and from the inside of iron pipes to eateries, to factories, to employment offices, to con- struction sites of bridges, to building sites, to rivers, and to the streets!

The salarymen from the suburbs surge forth—by electric railways, by government-owned railroads, by buses, and by streetcars. University students, secondary school students, female students, and elementary school students—

This is the morning high tide on the streets of Tokyo. The office buildings roll up their window screens in unison and suck

in the human torrent on the pavement. The elevators rise and fall like pistons.

Trading companies. Banks. News agencies. Department stores. Insurance firms.

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Stock brokerages. Transportation companies. In offices, the jazz of typewriters. The sound of pen against paper,

the ringing of telephones, the groan of mail chutes, and the clack of the date stamp—

On the streets. Trucks, sidecars, autobikes, bicycles, packhorse, and carts—they

overflow the pavement, going east, west, north, and south, piled high with bread, vegetables, textiles, chapeaux, glassware, pottery, building stones, and dirt.

When a packhorse laden with straw rice sacks and an ox-cart full of night soil pass each other, isn’t it without a doubt the epitome of human life? Why? It signifies that even without actually passing through our stomachs, the rice ends up getting where it is supposed to go.

Namu Amida Butsu. Oh! A light metal military plane in the sky. The sky, clouded with smoke from the factory district, the steam

hammer at a construction site with iron scaffolding, and the cement mixer on the street, the cogs on its gearwheel turning.

Tokyo is the vortex of modern life.

Notes

1. The woman is a “mannequin girl” (manekin gāru), a job in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Mannequin girls were similar to contemporary fashion models, but they stood still in shop windows, attracting the attention of passersby.

2. Ryūtanji intentionally uses kanji characters cribbed with the rubi “geruto” for “gelt.” Along with showing a possible German influence, “gelt” was slang for pocket change.

3. This refers to the shōsen densha, electric trains and railways under the auspices of the Ministry of Transportation and abbreviated as shōsen. The term was most commonly used for the Yamanote and Sōbu lines.

4. JOAK was the first Japanese radio station and began broadcasting in March 1925. It later became NHK.

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5. “Tobacco fireworks” (tabako hanabi) are tricks in smoking or lighting up a cigarette to simulate the effect of a firework.

6. Men purchased tickets to dance with the women who worked at dance- halls. To dance with popular dancers for an entire song sometimes required more than one ticket. At the end of the night, the tickets each dancer received were counted.

7. Here, “Kudan” is short for “Kudanshita,” a central Tokyo neighborhood. Ryūtanji uses French fashion terms, such as manteau (cloak) and chapeau (hat). This usage appeared in other works at the time, including Sata Ineko’s 1928 “From the Caramel Factory” (Kyarameru kōba kara).

8. Saiseriya was a popular bar, while Columbia was a café. Although both were Western-styled and served alcohol, cafés were places for leisurely conver- sations with companions and waitresses (jokyū); bars were primarily drinking establishments. Some bars were exclusive and only allowed regular patrons. Columbia was a conspicuously bright café on a street of many smaller, dark ones.

9. “Yamanote’s Ginza” (Yamanote no Ginza) was a 1920s nickname for the Shinjuku neighborhood.

10. The art-deco Musashino Cinema was built in Shinjuku in 1926 and was celebrated as an icon of modern Tokyo in literature, guidebooks, songs, and other popular media. Talkies were first screened in Japanese cinemas in 1929.

11. Seiyūkai, officially the Rikken seiyūkai, was one of the two major polit- ical parties in prewar Japan, the other one being the Rikken minseitō. It was established in 1900 and disbanded in 1940.

12. Also known as “Psittacosis” and “Ornithosis,” “parrot disease” is trans- mitted from birds to humans through droppings and feathers. The bacteria that cause the disease are most often carried by the Psittacine family of parrot-like birds. There was a severe outbreak of parrot disease in 1929 and 1930.

13. The Tokyo Central Telegraph Office, designed by Yamada Mamoru and completed in 1925, was a six-story concrete building, with one basement level. It was known for its parabolic arches.

14. In 1929, a new Sukiyabashi Bridge in Ginza was completed to replace the one that had been destroyed in the 1923 earthquake. (The first Sukiyabashi Bridge was built in 1829.) Its cream color was considered ultra-modern at the time. It became the site of Name Unknown (Kimi no na wa), a popular 1952 radio drama, 1954 film, and 1991 NHK morning serialized television drama about a man and woman who meet on the bridge after an air raid and agree to return six months later. The Sukiyabashi Bridge was torn down in 1959 and the moat beneath was filled in to build the Tokyo Expressway.

15. A “stick girl” (sutekki gāru) was a term coined in the early Shōwa period and refers to a young woman who was paid by the hour to accompany a man on

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a stroll through the city (usually Ginza) as a fashionable accessory or “walking stick.”

16. The bunkamura, or “cultural village,” which opened in 1922 in the west Tokyo suburb of Mejiro, was a cluster of “culture houses” (bunka jūtaku) that combined Western and Japanese elements to provide a model for new modern living. In the 1920s, bunkamura were constructed throughout Japan.

17. Yoshiyuki Eisuke (1906–1940), Kuno Toyohiko (1896–1971), and Narasaki Tsutomu (1901–1978) were young authors who participated in the same modernist literary groups as Ryūtanji, including the New Art School (Shinkōgeijutsu-ha) under whose auspices the Modern Tokyo Rondo was pub- lished. All three were known for writing about the erotic, grotesque, and non- sensical (ero, guro, nansensu) aspects of Tokyo daily life.

18. One-yen taxi (entaku) service began in Tokyo in 1927. As reflected by the name, a passenger could travel anywhere in the Tokyo metropolitan area for one yen. Fares were negotiable. A female assistant, or “one-yen taxi girl (entaku gāru),” often accompanied the driver and helped attract passengers.

19. The Hanayashiki was a popular amusement park in Asakusa that opened in 1853. At the time of the story, the Hanayashiki contained a small zoo, stunt birds, a puppet theater, and other sights and amusements. Lifelike dolls were placed outside the entrance. This park was renamed the Asakusa Hanaya- shiki in 1947.

20. “Street girls” (sutoriito gāru) were prostitutes who wandered the streets looking for customers. They were also called “street angels” (sutoriito enjeru).

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Landscape with an Officer: A Sketch in 1923

X Nakajima Atsushi

Coming from a family of scholars in Chinese classics, Nakajima is best known for his stories set in ancient China, such as “Sangetsuki” (1941; trans. “Tiger Poet,” 1962, “The Moon over the Mountain,” 2011) and “Li Ling” (1942; “Li Ling,” 2011). Recently, critical attention has also been directed to his Micronesia pieces set in Palau where he served for a brief six months as an editor of Japanese-language textbooks in Japa- nese-ruled Micronesia (1921–33).1 Not much, however, has been trans- lated or written about his stories set in colonial Korea under Japanese rule (1910–45), yet those stories occupy an important place in the identity and emotional landscape of a writer who was after all every bit a child of expansionist Japan. Nakajima spent six years of his youth (1920–26) attending elementary and middle school in the Imperial capital of Keijō in Korea as his father worked as a middle school teacher. He gained firsthand knowledge of colonial Korea, the setting for this story as well as two oth- ers, “Pūru no soba de” (1929, “By the Pool”) and “Toragari” (1929, “Tiger Hunt”). All three stories were published when he was barely twenty and still a senior high school student after returning to Japan.

Perhaps owing to the fact that Nakajima was in Korea for an extended

“Junsa no iru fūkei—senkyūhyaku nijūsannen no hitotsu no suketchi,” by Nakajima Atsushi (1909–1942), 1925. Translated by Angela Yiu. This translation is based on Nakajima Atsushi, Chikuma bungaku 012 (Chikuma shobō, 2008), 293–316. This story is also in Nakajima Atsushi zenshū (Chikuma shobō, 1976), vol. 2, 50–64.

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period at an impressionable age and he wrote the story when the experi- ence was fresh, he was able to see things through the eyes of the colo- nized people and narrate the story from the perspective of the subjugated rather than the Japanese rulers, a perspective not to be found in his Micro- nesia pieces. The result is a complex landscape that is painfully raw and gritty, filled with the shame, anger, and frustration of the colonized and the discomfort of the colonizers. The aura, fantasy, and exoticism that Nakajima is to achieve in his ancient China pieces and Micronesia stories later in his short life and career are completely missing in this youth- ful work. The colonial space captured here is not a distant place safely encapsulated in time; instead, it is made up of icy shards of uncontained suffering and self-reflexivity that pique the pride of the Korean protagonist and the conscience of the colonial narrator. The depiction of an ungov- ernable and nearly explosive colonial space seen through the eyes of the law-enforcing police officer—an intended irony—heightens the irresolvable conflict and misery that threaten constantly to spill beyond the boundary of place and time.

English translations of Japanese fiction set in colonial Korea are few and far between. This translation is an attempt to capture the way colo- nialism engendered a complex spatial dimension through overt territo- rial aggrandizement as well as the more subtle distortion of the native language. Between 1910 and 1945, colonial Korea was regarded as part of Imperial Japan, so many Korean words, including place-names and people’s names, were pronounced officially in Japanese. That the setting is outside Japan proper is clear in the original text because Korean words appear as loan words in katakana, and place-names appear and sound alien to Japanese even when they appear in kanji with a hiragana gloss. In accordance with the colonial practice, Nakajima glossed Korean place- names and personal names in Japanese pronunciation using hiragana, and in doing so conveyed the imperialistic possession of non-Japanese people and places in the age of colonialism. Certain Korean terms designating characteristically Korean things were glossed in katakana—the script con- ventionally used for foreign loan words—and this practice of glossing dis- tinguished even more clearly the non-Japanese nature of those words and emphasized the awkwardness and displacement of their existence.

In order to emphasize the superimposition of colonial space over Korean places, this translation will render all Korean place-names and

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words in Korean Romanization as a reminder of the Korean setting. Indi- vidual Korean personal names will go by Japanese Romanization to reflect the official colonial practice as well as the distortion of the colonial subjec- tivity and identity under foreign rule. The use of the Korean Romanization in the translation does not restore Korean sovereignty to its colonized territory; on the contrary, it emphasizes the Japanese rulers as foreign elements imposing on a rudely possessed space. In using the two sets of Romanization, I hope to convey an irresolvable sense of displacement and discontent in the colonial period. I also hope to trace the lingering sense of bitterness and resentment, palpable even today, that stemmed from the Japanese appropriation of Korean words and its colonial subjects. Korean Romanization is based on the system publicized by the Bureau of Korean Culture and Tourism, Notice No. 2000-8 (effective July 7, 2000).

The story was published in 1929 in Kōyūkai zasshi, the magazine of the prestigious Tokyo First Higher School.

The frozen corpse of a cat clung to the pavement like an oyster. A wind-torn red advertisement for roasted chestnuts swirled madly above it. Huddling in a corner of the street were five or six food stands bil-

lowing white steam. A woman, her stiff and dry purplish breasts hanging out of her thin durumagi jacket, stood in front of a stand slurping noodles sprinkled bright-red with hot pepper and blowing away the steam.

Waiting for the streetcar to go back to the police office, Chō Kyōei gazed absentmindedly at the scene. Two Chinese men in faded yellow outfits passed in front of him in a hurry, balancing poles on their shoul- ders. In the baskets suspended on the poles were unsold radishes, gleam- ing white. The crowd would soon begin to surge out like a tide. Under the evening sky glazed with a thin layer of ice, the bell of the French church rang out coldly in the air.

Sniffling in the cold and tucking his neck in, Chō Kyōei checked to see if his stand-up collar uniform was buttoned and looked up at the pale

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white spark of the electric wire overhead. After one streetcar had passed, a tall man strode toward him on the track. He was the section chief of the office. Chō saluted respectfully, and the section chief lifted his hand nonchalantly as he hurried on and disappeared into the crowd.

Once he boarded the streetcar, he stood on the driver’s platform as usual (due to his occupation, he could ride for free) and leaned against the glass pane, his hands in the side pockets of his trousers. Whenever he rode the streetcar, his mind would drift back to the memory of a certain Japanese junior high school student. . . . It was a summer morning. The student boarded the streetcar on his way to school as Chō took his usual place on the driver’s platform on his way out of the office. The student, probably hoping to enjoy a bit of the cool wind, stood on the driver’s plat- form and did not move inside. The platform, however, was not a place to stand, and the boy’s presence interfered with the operation of the train, so the driver told him to move inside the car. But he snapped back at the driver insolently.

“What about that guy,” the student said, pointing at the police. “If he’s not moving inside, don’t expect me to.” (His attitude no doubt had to do with the fact that the driver was also Korean). And the boy kept stand- ing there, looking amused at the confused driver and policeman. . . . To this day, whenever Chō recalled the look in the student’s eyes, he felt a sense of disgust.

The streetcar was crowded. Students with skates dangling from their shoulders. A male office worker with a bright red nose, a wife carrying shopping bags. Eomeoni2 with children on their laps, and the yangban3 privileged class buried in thick brown fur collars.

After a while, sounds of disagreement erupted suddenly from inside the car, and all of the passengers turned to the source of the dispute. A Japanese woman dressed in shabby clothes was arguing with a young man in white Korean clothing, apparently a student, who was holding on to the strap in front of her.

“I was just being nice, asking you to sit!” the woman grumbled. “But why did you say ‘Hey, yeobo’?4 What was that supposed to mean?” “I said ‘Excuse me, yeobo.’ ”

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“That doesn’t matter—either way you’re calling me a yeobo!” “I didn’t say ‘Hey, yeobo!’ I said ‘Excuse me, yeobo!’ ” The woman was completely lost. She looked around, perplexed, in

an appeal for sympathy. “All I said was ‘Excuse me, yeobo, there’s an empty seat here, so why

don’t you sit down?’ Why do you have to be offended when I was just being nice?”

Some people started snickering. The young man gave up and just gloated at that clueless woman. Kyōei yet again felt depressed. Why did that young man have to start an argument like that? Why did this mod- erate protester take pride in pretending to be someone else? Why did he have to be ashamed of who he was? . . . He thought of what had happened in the afternoon that day.

That afternoon, he went with Takagi, a fellow Japanese policeman, to stand guard at the speech-making campaign for the election of prefec- tural representatives, an event that took place at a kindergarten. After the speeches of several Japanese naichijin5 homeland candidates, the lone Korean candidate began. He had served as the head of the Chamber of Commerce and was well respected even among naichijin Japanese. In the midst of talking about his aspirations in cleverly manipulated Japanese, someone in the front row stood up and shouted, “Shut up, you yeobo!” It was an unkempt young man, barely twenty. Officer Takagi promptly took the offender by his collar and began to pull him out of the meeting place. At that, the candidate raised his voice a notch.

“I have just now heard a very regrettable utterance. However, I believe strongly that we are all proud to be Japanese!”

Energetic applause burst from one corner of the meeting place and began to spread across the gathering . . .

That incident came to his mind immediately. He tried to juxtapose the candidate with the young man in the streetcar. He thought about the nation of Japan, the Korean people, and himself. His mind then drifted to his occupation, and to his wife and only child to whom he was returning.

In fact, that disturbing feeling of “having left something behind” had been bothering him of late. The oppression of not being able to fulfill

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his obligation weighed heavily on his mind. Yet he did not want to trace the source of his torment. It was terrifying to know. It terrified him to have to wake himself up, to have to rouse his consciousness.

Yet why was it terrifying? Why? Perhaps the pale faces of his wife and child made him fear what he

had left behind. What would happen to them if he were to lose his job? Certainly, that must have been the reason. But was that all? Was that the only source of fear? If pressed for an answer, he wouldn’t know what to say.

Shuddering with fear, he tucked his neck in and shifted his gaze through the glass panel toward the wavering light on the street and the crowd flowing through it. The bell of the evening news delivery. The horns of the automobiles. The bright light reflected off the frozen pave- ment. The pack of fur collars gliding over it. The red-bearded jige coolies standing around on a dark street corner, a fertilizer cart without an ox, a garbage cart . . .

Chō got off the streetcar at Changgyeongwon. In the fierce light of an acetylene lamp in an alley, the ghostly face

of a fortune-teller with some sort of lung disease rose against the gloom. In front of a used bookstore, an old man chanted the eonmun6 Korean syllabary aloud, his hands trembling violently.

As he turned the corner, a man suddenly greeted him with a bow. He returned the bow and noticed that the man was a dignified gentleman wearing a sea otter fur collar.

“Excuse me, sir,” the man began, and inquired in extremely polite language about the residence of Mr. X, a high official in the governor’s house. (If this man was bound for Mr. X’s house, he must also be a high official.) Not having ever been addressed so politely, Chō was flustered but somehow managed to give him directions. The gentleman once again bowed and made a turn. . . . In that instant, Chō was seized by a great realization.

“Was that a pleasant experience, just now?” He asked himself in shock. “That Japanese gentleman addressed me politely and I was glad, wasn’t I? In the way a child is overjoyed to be taken just a little seriously by a grown-up, I was pleased despite myself . . .” He could no longer laugh

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at the young man in the streetcar. Nor could he say anything about the candidate for the prefectural representative election.

“It’s not just me, though—for so long, our people have been condi- tioned by history to feel this way . . .”

He glanced sideways and saw a man squatting by the roadside, uri- nating. People on this peninsula were incapable of relieving themselves standing up, he thought.

“Maybe this little habit is a testament to the spirit of our people, condemned forever to inferiority,” he thought.

The copper-colored sun traced its frozen December track and trem- blingly sank behind the bald red mountains. The Bukhansan mountain range jutted like an icy pale blue saw against the grey sky. From over the peaks, blades of wind slashed at people’s cheeks like light. The cold was bone-shattering.

Every morning, several people were found dead under the Nandae- mun Gate.7 Some died with their arms stretched out in a desperate effort to grasp the withered vines of the ivy clinging on to the walls of the gate. Some collapsed face up with purple spots dotting their face, suggesting that they had died in their sleep.

On the frozen River Hangang, old men bore holes in the ice and fished for carp while they puffed icy smoke from their long pipes. In the forest along the riverbank, poor people stole wood to stoke the fire in their ondol floor-heating device. Icicles of drool hung from the jaws of an ox pulling a cartload of ice, piled high like a pale blue hill.

Snowfall was rare. The roads were frozen hard, and feet of all kinds slid and slipped as they walked.

Koreans in namaksin wooden sandals shaped like boats. Young Japa- nese women in brand new zōri straw sandals. Chinese in kegutsu boots, furry as bear paws. Japanese houseboys in unsteady hōba wooden clogs. Aristocratic Korean students in freshly polished leather shoes. White Russian fugitives from Wonsan city in red high heels. Jige coolies— Korean laborers with heavy loads on their backs—in torn and tattered

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shoes that left their feet largely exposed. In rare cases, amputee beggars dragging themselves along on their buttocks exposed the stumps of their thighs, red and swollen from the cold.

1923. Winter was filthy and cold. Everything was filthy. Frozen stiff and caked with dirt. The alley

outside the S Gate was particularly appalling. The stench was overpowering. The smell of opium and garlic from

the Chinese, the mixture of cheap tobacco and red pepper from the Kore- ans, the smells of crushed hair and body lice, discarded pig innards and cat skin. These smells permeated the air, trapped in the frozen fragments scattered about.

But the morning air was somewhat cleaner. When magpies began to chirp on the withered branches of the acacia tree at the break of day, one could at least manage to breathe. Usually around that time, men with vacant looks in their eyes would emerge from the alley, rubbing their hands together to fend off the cold as they headed home.

Many women gathered in the alley. Kim Tōren was one of them. She was new and had no friends. The only woman friendly with her was Fukumi, whose last name no one knew. Her face was completely drained of color. They all looked unhealthy, but Fukumi’s pallor was the worst.

“She’s a big shot, you know,” the old woman next door gossiped about Fukumi. But no one knew why, nor did she talk about it herself. Everyday around four, she rolled up her sleeve and gave herself an injection.

Tōren had no idea where Fukumi got her money. Once she asked. Fukumi laughed sadly and said, “You’re new here. Don’t even dream of making as much as I do.”

Gun carriages rumbled across the bridge over River Hangang at great speed. The tips of the swords held by soldiers of the Yongsan division on the sandy bank of Yeongdeunpo reflected the blue water, flashing cold in the winter sunlight. Night after night they bivouacked on the bank for military exercises, bonfires blazing red and bright.

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A troop of students carrying a deer on their shoulders ran down the street, slipping as they went along. In the show window, a clay doll of Jihayeojanggun, a female general from the underworld, wore a solemn smile on her red face. The sound of the hammer from the Korean temple under construction resonated loudly under the arid sky.

On the grounds of the higher ordinary school, the new principal from Japan delivered a solemn lecture about the virtue of obedience. (He was somewhat tickled to recall that up until recently, he had been lec- turing on the spirit of independence and self-respect in Japanese junior high school.)

During history class at the ordinary school, the young teacher, somewhat embarrassed, spoke hesitantly about the invasion of Korea in the sixteenth century.

“Then Hideyoshi invaded Chōsen.”8

But the children just repeated those words like drones, just as though they were listening to a story about some faraway land.

“Then Hideyoshi invaded Chōsen.” “Then Hideyoshi invaded Chōsen.”

It was cold and sunny that afternoon. The withered acacia tree, covered in brown thorns, rustled and

swayed in the north wind. The wind-blown crowd stood in front of Nandaemun Station. They

all pinned their eyes on the entrance. Automobiles zoomed up to the exit and spewed forth the welcoming troop of high officials.

“The governor’s back!” “The governor’s back from Tokyo!” Officers with clattering swords at their sides stood vigilant over

the area. Chō Kyōei, mixed in among them, surveyed the surroundings from the rear. As he crushed newspaper tossed by the wind under the hole-worn soles of his shoes, he thought about the boyish face of the white-haired governor he once had the good fortune of seeing. Though the governor was from the military, like his predecessors, he had enjoyed a reputation like no one before him. Even many Koreans genuinely respected him.

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At that moment, the plump governor in a black overcoat and his familiar boyish face appeared at the exit. The welcoming party bowed in machine-like unison. The governor acknowledged the bows with a generous air and boarded the arranged automobile, and the emaciated secretary of state boarded the next car. Both cars turned at the corner of Severance Hospital and glided in the direction of Nandaemun Gate.

That was when it happened. A man in white, wearing a driving cap, suddenly leaped up from the crowd, aimed his pistol at the first car and pulled the trigger. It failed to fire. Hastily he pulled the trigger a second time.

The bullet shattered the glass window of the second car with a crash, penetrated at an angle and exploded inside. The two cars quickly gath- ered speed and vanished from the scene.

For a moment, the crowd stared dumfounded at the scene, but soon the police officers instinctively rushed to surround the perpetrator, who was still holding the pistol. They confronted the thug eye to eye. He was a thin young man in his mid-twenties. Holding the pistol tight, he stared at the police officers with his bloodshot eyes. Then he took his hat off and threw it on the pavement, laughed hysterically, and flung his weapon toward the crowd. The crowd reeled back. The police officers backed off instinctively and focused their eyes on the pistol. In the following instant, they beat the thug and held him down. He put up no resistance. Deadly pale with quivering lips, he managed a smile of contempt as he stared back at the officers. His messy hair fell over his blanched forehead. All traces of anxiety and excitement had disappeared from his eyes, replaced by the quietude of despair and a piteous derision.

Seizing his arm, Chō Kyōei could not bear the look in the criminal’s eyes. They were saying something. Kyōei was crushed under a weight twenty times that of the oppression he shouldered every day.

Who was the captive? Who was the captor?

Four or five women, white powder peeling off their trembling faces, leaned against the wall in the alley, waiting for men to walk by. In the

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refracted light, the shadows of newly installed earthen pipes stood silently in a row like so many prisoners.

“Hey you, come over here!” “No way!” the man laughed, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his

trousers and shook them. A woolen scarf wound around his hat, he hur- ried away in the streetlight. When all the traffic died down, the sound of a wall cracking somewhere in the distance penetrated the cold, quiet air.

“Me? Nothing much. My husband died and there’s nowhere for me to go, so I’ve got to work, don’t I?”

“What did your husband do?” “He sold furs in the Jongno shopping district.” In Kim Tōren’s room, the fair-skinned workman stuck his feet under

the thin, filthy mattress on the oilpaper lining the ondol heated floor. “When did he die?” the man asked. “This autumn. It happened just like that.” “Was it an illness or something?” “Illness? No! It was the earthquake. He dropped dead in the quake.” The man reached for the bottle and took a swig. “What are you saying, then? Your husband was in Tokyo during the

quake?” “Yeah, in the summer. He had some business over there, so he went

off to Tokyo with a friend and said he’d be back right away. Then it hap- pened. So he never made it back.”

The man looked in her face, startled. After a moment’s silence, he spoke sharply.

“So you don’t know a thing.” “ ’Bout what?” “He must’ve been . . . what a poor man.”9

An hour later, Tōren curled up in her thin mattress and wept. She saw the blood-covered face of her husband ablaze in the flames. He was shaking and trying to escape.

“I shouldn’t have said so much. I’m scared now.” The words left by the man sounded faintly in her head.

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A few hours later, Tōren scrambled around on the gray pavement at the break of day. She shouted at the people passing by.

“You know what happened during the earthquake?” In a loud voice she tried to tell everyone about what she had heard

the previous night. With disheveled hair and bloodshot eyes, she was wearing only a thin nightgown in the bitter cold. Passersby, taken aback by the way she looked, gathered around her.

“And you know what? They didn’t tell me a thing! Those bastards!” In the end, the police came and apprehended her. “Hey, why don’t you quiet down a bit, huh? Quiet down!” As the policeman got involved, she was suddenly overcome with

sadness and cried in a loud voice as tears poured down her face. “You’re a Korean like me, aren’t you? You, you . . .”

After she was led to prison, the alley outside S Gate continued to rot in the dark.

It was more painful than cold. Inside the body, every organ except the heart seemed frozen to death. The discarded fish gills on the road- side disintegrated in red, and a half-eaten pig’s head was scattered on the snow pile in the shade. Inside, people breathed the rotting smell of leek and garlic into their ailing lungs, barely surviving in the oppressive gas- like stench rising from the ditch.

Nothing changed. Every day around four, Tōren’s friend Fukumi rolled up the sleeve

on her discolored arm and gave herself a shot. Only then did she faintly recall that Tōren had disappeared. When night came, the same young Japanese man in tattered clothes would play squeaky notes on a violin that sounded like a wheel in need of oiling.

At the break of day, when it was still dark, the tall Chinese man who frequented the alley would leave, muttering:

“Those are some disturbing stars . . .” He gazed up at the dark sky. Then he would dig his hand into his

pocket to find some cash. “Hmm. Disturbing stars . . .”

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A meaningless refrain. In clattering and drunken footsteps, he made his way home on the frozen road.

Chō Kyōei walked absentmindedly past the dark old American embassy. Thinking of nothing in particular, his mind drifted to what had happened the night before.

Shortly after arriving home, he was summoned by the chief of police. He hurried back and entered the chief ’s office, fearful. Without a word the chief handed him a piece of paper and an envelope with his daily wages. So it had come to this, he thought. Four or five days earlier, there had been a fight between the students at Hwimun Higher Ordinary School and those at K Middle School. Chō and the section chief had had a verbal disagreement on the appropriate reprimand.

He took the piece of paper silently and went outside. Without head- ing home, he wandered about in the streetlight, clutching the money. His unsteady feet brought him to the Galbojip prostitution quarter outside S Gate. So tonight’s the night for the past to come back to haunt me, he thought . . .

That was something buried deep in the remote past. The light fog rolled in low as the streetlight leaked through the tree

trunks lining the road and cast stripes on the pavement. “Now what?” Deep in his confused mind, it was as if he were think-

ing about a completely different person. “What’s going to happen to them?” The colorless face of his wife

flashed across his eyes. The memory of a familiar room in a two-story building in the back

alley filled his mind. There were five or six crudely made chairs and a handmade table, on which stood two candles. The flickering flames of the candles shone faintly on the faces of the comrades. Someone with a red face pounded on the table. Another was tearing his hair, sunken deep in thought. Yet another scribbled feverishly with a pencil on a piece

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of paper. Everyone was burning with hope for the future. They began to whisper:

“Gyeongseong10 . . . Shanghai . . . Tokyo” . . . He thought vacantly about the past as he compared it with his cur-

rent pitiful state. “I’ve got to do something. No matter what.”

Before he knew, he was next to the Siksan Bank of Colonial Industry. In the shadows cast by the pillars of this magnificent stone structure with its cold, shuttered doors, the jige coolies were asleep like stones, their poles lying around beside them.

“Hey, hey!” He threw himself into their tobacco stench and started shaking one of them.

Mumbling something incomprehensible, the jige opened his mucus- caked eyes drowsily and promptly shut them again. Waving his bony hand to brush off Kyōei’s hands, he rolled over, and a long pipe fell from his ringworm-infested mouth on to the pavement with a clank.

“Hey you, you people!” Suddenly Kyōei felt a strange emotion well up from within. He shivered, and, burying his head among the ragged men, began to cry.

“You people, you people. This peninsula . . . this people . . .”

Notes

1. Robert Tierney, “The Colonial Eyeglasses of Nakajima Atsushi” (Japan Review 2005, 17:149–96) and Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

2. Eomeoni is the term for mother in Korean. 3. Yangban in Korean were bureaucrats who belonged to the traditional

ruling class in dynastic Korea during the Joseon dynasty (1392–1910). Modeled on the Confucian ideal of a “scholarly official,” the yangban title was conferred to those who passed the state-sponsored civil service exams.

4. Yeobo is a casual term used mainly between husband and wife in Korea. In colonial Korea, the Japanese military and police used it as a derogative term to address Koreans.

5. According to the pre-1946 Japanese constitution, naichi (Japanese

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proper) referred to the geopolitical region that covers the Japanese archipelago. Japanese in colonial Korea were called naichijin (homeland Japanese) to distin- guish them from the colonized Koreans (called genchijin, or locals).

6. Eonmun is an old term for Hangul, the Korean script marked not by Chi- nese characters but the Korean syllabary.

7. Nandaemun Gate was one of the main entrance gates to the capital city in dynastic Korea, and now stands in the center of Seoul. It was traditionally called Sungnyemun before the Japanese occupation, and the reference to S Gate later in the text most likely refers to the same gate.

8. Chōsen is the Japanese pronunciation of the Joseon dynasty (1392– 1910), established by the general Yi Seong-gye. Korea was referred to as Chōsen under Japanese colonial rule. The Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi invaded Korea in 1592 and 1598, intending to use Korea as a stepping-stone to invade Ming China.

9. The man is alluding to the anti-Korean sentiment after the 1923 Kantō Great Earthquake. Koreans were rumored to have poisoned wells and committed arson and robbery, which led to the indiscriminate killing of Koreans by mobs in Tokyo and Yokohama. See Joshua Hammer, Yokohama Burning: The Deadly 1923 Earthquake and the Fire That Helped Forge the Path to World War II (New York: Free Press, 2006), 149–70.

10. Gyeongseong was the name for Seoul in colonial Korea.

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Part III

X Utopia and Dystopia

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161

A Golden Death X

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965) is one of the most celebrated authors of modern Japan. This account of an artist’s obsession with beauty reflects Tanizaki’s early preoccupation with predominantly Western aesthetics. Beyond the many explicit references to Lessing’s Laokoon lie the “deca- dent” influences of Poe, Huysmans, and Wilde.1 The dys/u/topian space depicted in the story is heavily larded with images of Rodin’s sculptures and other Western artworks.

The artist’s “golden death” signifies his apotheosis; simultaneously it is the negation of his aesthetic of turning human life into an art form. As early as the following year (1915), the main character in another Tanizaki short story, Sōzō (Creation), confesses that he has abandoned a similar enterprise. For Tanizaki, this marks a philosophical about-face. Indeed, he eventually excluded “A Golden Death”—along with over thirty of his other Taishō Period short stories—from the first edition of his Collected Works (Chūō Kōronsha, 1957).

In a second, posthumous edition of the Collected Works (1966), “A Golden Death” was brought back to life, along with many of the others. Remarkably, the story was even featured in a volume of Tanizaki’s rep- resentative works published in Shinchōsha’s Japanese Literature series in 1970. That collection included only one critical assessment, a lengthy essay by one of the editors, writer Mishima Yukio (1925–1970), focus-

“Konjiki no shi” by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886–1965), 1914. Translated by James Lipson and Kyoko Kurita. This translation is based on Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō zenshū, vol. 2 (Chūō Kōronsha, 1937), 464–99.

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162 tanizaki jun’ichirō

ing exclusively on “A Golden Death.”2 Mishima terms this work a “failure,” structurally and stylistically, compared to Tanizaki’s other works. Endeav- oring to put Tanizaki’s entire oeuvre in perspective, his essay tries to shed light on the groundwork Tanizaki laid for his masterpieces but attempted to hide later on; at the same time this critical effort reveals Mishima’s own theoretical stance.

In fact, “A Golden Death” mercilessly mirrors and exposes any critic’s own strengths and weaknesses; later discussants, in turn, meet the same fate. That is because “A Golden Death,” for all its shortcomings, poses the ultimate aesthetic riddle, which Japanese writers at the beginning of the twentieth century bravely challenged: what is beauty, and where does it reside? Is it in Nature or in Art? Is it in the artist’s mind or the eye of the beholder? Mishima points out that Tanizaki’s later rejection of this story’s identification of a beautiful life with a beautiful body and a beautiful death marked a fundamental shift in the author’s life and literary art: an aban- donment of the pursuit of absolute beauty. Many scholars have observed that Mishima himself continued down the very path from which Tanizaki had turned away.

This story was first serialized in Tokyo Asahi Shinbun, in December 1914.

X 1

Okamura and I were friends from childhood. In early April of the year I turned seven, I began attending an elementary school not very far from my home in Shinkawa. Okamura commuted to the same school, escorted by a maid. Our seating assignment put us side by side in the classroom, our two small desks right up against each other. We also seemed to be alike in a number of ways.

In those days, my family was operating a large wholesale sake busi- ness, a thriving enterprise that was growing more prosperous by the day. To a child, the lively, bustling storefront provided an indefinable sense of both happiness and security. Whether for school or home wear, none of my clothes were cotton.4 As for my studies, I did exceptionally well. Arithmetic, reading—all subjects came to me with the greatest of ease.

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Every single thing I heard was committed to memory without the slight- est effort, the way black ink sets and shows on white paper. I had trou- ble understanding why many students found it so difficult to memorize things.

No student in any class in the entire school could compete with me in any of my fortes, except that in a few areas Okamura (and he alone) could in some ways compare to me or even surpass me. He was a hand- some lad, small in stature and refined in manner, who looked one or two years younger than me though we were the same age. His family was immensely wealthy, but both his parents had passed away at an early age and he had no siblings. He was being brought up under the supervi- sion of an uncle. The rumor then circulating in society was that he would eventually inherit an Okamura family fortune of enormous proportions, including securities, mines, forests, and real estate, totaling (reportedly) at least half the size of the Mitsui or Iwasaki fortunes.5 Compared to that, my own family’s “wealth” was far outstripped. That made me feel sad.

My kimono were the sort of long and loose bohemian affairs that might have been seen on some actor’s child. Okamura, by contrast, wore well-fitting Western clothes. He wore knee breeches and long socks, and short, soft-looking boots, and a jaunty sailor’s hat. In those days West- ern clothing was far more unusual than it is now: his apparel attracted more attention than mine, and that further raised his status as an object of envy.

In terms of mental acuity, as well, Okamura compared not at all unfavorably to me. However, he could not excel in all subjects, and love all branches of learning equally, as I did. He tended to dislike mathemat- ics. He was fond of reading. He showed particular skill in his composi- tions, though even in that area he did not surpass me. The two of us were particularly renowned for our literary ability, and we constantly com- peted with each other. When examination results came back I was sure to place first, school-wide, and he to place second. Teachers and students alike kept us both at arm’s length. And so, between the two of us, there arose an intimate friendship. We respected each other’s strengths, and privately despised our inferior classmates.

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For the next ten years, Okamura and I progressed at one and the same pace through the same academic curriculum. In the spring of our fifth year of middle school I asked him, on a whim, “When we graduate, which university will you enter?” “Why, the same as you, of course,” came the enthusiastic reply. From around the first year of middle school I had been proclaiming that in the future I would graduate from the faculty of letters at a university and become a great artist.

It was from this period that Okamura’s lack of aptitude for mathe- matics started to become increasingly conspicuous. I was top of the class, and now his class rank dropped substantially below mine. Starting with pure mathematics, he also detested physics and chemistry and indeed any subject requiring mathematical knowledge. Another thing he hated was history. He was forever saying, “History is just one long line.” His likes were: first, languages; next, apparatus gymnastics; then, drawing and singing. In his English studies, he seemed, even by his fourth year, to be equipped with the scholastic ability of a graduate, browsing diverse works of fiction and philosophy. He called in Western tutors to his home, and in no time at all was reading and conversing in German and French as well. His larynx and tongue were so well suited to the pronunciation of Western languages that when he read aloud, even from the tedious readers we were taught from at school, his voice resonated with an inde- scribable fluidity and sonority: one felt that in a flash it could all be transformed into letters of gold and gemstone. This was the era in which Maupassant’s works were all the rage in literary circles. But while the rest of us pretended to connoisseurship on the basis of somewhat dubious translations, Okamura could breeze through them in the original.

“Listen to this: in French, Maupassant sounds so beautiful!” With that, he read aloud to me a page or so near the beginning of Sur l’eau.6 I had no knowledge of French whatsoever, but to my ear these were some of the most exquisite sentences in the world. When he knew such a beau- tiful language, it hardly seemed irrational to me that he should start dis- tancing himself from Japanese literature, as he did suddenly around that

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time. And now, thinking back on this, I realize that it must have been his reading out loud that first fostered in me an interest in foreign lan- guages, and an understanding of them.

Languages were one thing; what was strange was his love of appa- ratus gymnastics. Baseball, tennis, boating, judo: he would try his hand at almost any form of sport or exercise; but it was apparatus gymnas- tics that he was most gifted at. Whenever he wasn’t reading something he was enjoying himself at the school’s athletics field, maneuvering his supple body around the high bar or parallel bars. As a child he was small in stature; but from the age of thirteen or fourteen he developed rapidly into a youth of impressive physique, both muscular and tall, combining cultivated grace with robust health. His hair was as black as a wig, and his pure white skin never tanned. His limbs were slim but masculine: at a glance one could tell that they were well suited to agile movements. Even when he returned home from school he would go straight to the appara- tus and exercise area he had set up in his backyard, where he would enter- tain himself for an hour, two hours, doing handstands and somersaults and never seeming to tire of it.

At first, in my heart of hearts, I quite despised this gymnastics mania of his. Nothing but art could give me pleasure. So convinced was I of this that I naturally viewed Okamura’s pastime as meaningless, tantamount to practicing acrobatics for the circus. Whenever I saw how absorbed he was in his routine—how utterly focused—it provoked such an antipathy in me that I felt like telling him, by way of admonishment, “You don’t seem cut out for an artist any more.”

One autumn evening, at dusk, immediately after school, I stopped by my friend’s mansion, as was my wont, hoping to engage him in literary discussion. But he seemed to be in the midst of his gymnastics routine, and had me shown directly to his practice area.

“Call me rude, but how about you trying just a bit of exercise, too?” He sang this out loudly as he balanced on the high bar with evident enjoy-

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ment, the blue serene above him. I was used to seeing him always in his school uniform (Okamura generally wore his uniform even at home) but here he had on a form-fitting exercise outfit of a vivid indigo, and his nearly half-naked body was strangely beautiful and alluring.

“If not, just wait there and watch, would you? I have to do this till I start sweating, otherwise I don’t feel right.”

With that, Okamura performed one stunt after another for a full twenty minutes more, not even pausing to catch his breath. And as I gazed at him, silently, I found myself gradually being won over, finally even envying his dexterous technique and nimble movements. The expression “like a bird in flight” might have been composed expressly as a figure for Okamura’s feats of agility.7 He leapt up from the ground to the high bar, flipping himself adroitly so that instantly upon making contact with the bar he thrust both legs up toward heaven—and then, with a marvelously swift move, suddenly he was hanging from the bar like a bat. His limbs seemed to spring out into thin air like the elastic of a pebble gun. Then he wound himself around the iron bar again, like something spooling on a wheel. And every time he whipped back and forth like this, the bar would impart to his body a painful-sounding thwack. When he finished with the high bar he went to the steps, where he did a handstand on the top step prior to jumping off. Then he used a bamboo pole more than ten feet long to spring up higher than the top branches of the pine tree in his garden. Anyone watching this spectacular “jump” of his would not think it humanly possible.

“Sorry to keep you waiting! Finally I feel better.” As he spoke, Oka- mura came over and stood beside me, a coating of silvery sand particles sticking like thin socks to the fine white skin of his calves.

That evening I was a captive audience to his disquisition on the rela- tionship between art and athletics. If one truly grasped the essence of the Greek spirit, that fountainhead of Western art, one could not fail to appreciate the supreme importance of athletics. All literature, all art, originated with the beauty of the human body. Nations that slighted the body would ultimately be incapable of giving birth to great art. Such was his point of view. He referred to his own apparatus gymnastics as “Gre- cian training.” He even made the extreme claim that without undergo-

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ing this sort of training, one was simply not qualified to be called a true artist, no matter how much of a genius one was. But I thought his posi- tion not unreasonable and realized that my former contempt for ath- letic exercise was a mere prejudice. For all that, I was unable to take his side completely regarding the supremacy of the body. In fact, I found his words to be quite eccentric. And I remember stating a contrary position:

“Thought outranks the body. Without great thought, there can be no great art.”

Things continued along those lines; and although Okamura and I both held Art to be our lofty ideal, it gradually became apparent, over the years, that we could not walk the same path toward that goal. Consid- ering that we two were not one and the same person, that was natural enough; what was sad was that certain other changes affected not only our thinking but also our very station in life.

For about two or three years my family’s business had fallen into a slump, and in piecemeal fashion our movable and immovable property, such as it was, passed into the hands of others. It became prohibitively difficult to maintain the shop. And just then, about half a year before I graduated from middle school, my father suddenly died. As eldest son and Shimada family heir I now had my mother and three siblings depen- dent upon me, and I was at my wit’s end as to how to support my fam- ily. After settling the various debts my father had left, all that remained to me and my mother and siblings by way of inheritance was a paltry two thousand yen in stock certificates.8 As a result, my relatives urged me to reconsider my hopes for the future, and to study engineering, or medicine, or at least law. I, however, stubbornly refused to comply. “I am intent on pursuing literature. Even if we cannot live as luxuriously as before, I will never let my family become destitute. But I am determined to establish myself as an artist.” And my resolve only grew firmer.

While my family had thus fallen into straitened circumstances, Oka- mura’s finances suffered no embarrassment whatsoever. His wealth was simply too vast to be destroyed by any ordinary shock. And he told me

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on a number of occasions that the moment he came of age, he wanted to escape from his uncle’s control and to try his own hand at directing the disposition of his entire estate.

“I am the only son of an immensely wealthy man; the sole propri- etor of a vast fortune, with a robust physique, refined features—and youth.”

Such was the sense of self he had amply nurtured within himself. At some point he had become appallingly arrogant, vain, and egoistical. He was just a middle school student; but he parted his hair, carried a gold watch, smoked cigars, and, most egregiously, sported a diamond ring. By his fifth year Okamura was known to—and loathed by—everyone in the school, not only the students but also the teachers; and it wasn’t just that he had no friends, no one even wanted to approach him. I was the only person who was close to him. And even I was sometimes offended by his speech and conduct.

“I am indeed a lucky person. In so many respects there can be few people favored by such fortunate circumstances as mine. . . . Yet my one dissatisfaction is that although my family has money, we have no title or court rank. If I were a child of the aristocracy, then I should be truly happy.”

Okamura uttered this grievance with a sigh. Until then I had not put the slightest negative construction upon his vanity or his extrava- gance. I had ascribed all that, not in any way to base desires, but rather to the delight in “beauty” that is so essential a part of the artistic tem- perament. Wealth is not always accompanied by beauty; but beauty is always dependent upon wealth. That was something I believed, so while I envied Okamura his wealth I harbored no antipathy toward him whatsoever. I thought he took pride in his personal wealth only because he took pride in his personal beauty. But this desire for worldly rank and position was entirely unexpected. When I heard that remark of his, I felt that I had overestimated Okamura’s character. I said to myself, I’ve been giving him too much credit. I’ve been duped. And then, to provoke some remorse on his part I stated, obliquely, “Having money is of course a fortunate thing; but under some circumstances it can produce unfortunate results. Whether one is conscious of it or not, wealth will corrupt the soul.”

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“No worries on that score. A rich man is corrupted only while he’s engaged in business in the hope of further adding to his fortune. But if a fellow who has money doesn’t work, and just fools around instead, then he’s always happy.”

He was not taking my comment very seriously.

The summer I graduated from middle school, I was successful in matricu- lating at Tokyo’s First Higher School.9 Okamura, however, did so poorly in mathematics that he failed the entrance examination. He might very well have gotten into a provincial higher school, but saying that he hated to be separated from Tokyo by so much as an inch, he resigned himself to having failed that year.

“I’m not in any rush. I’ll take the exams again next year. I’ll just have to study a little mathematics—as if I were dead to the world otherwise.”

This was not exactly the picture of discouragement. For quite some time after that, he worked on his geometry and algebra for two or three hours a day, each.

“What you really ought to do is to go study in the West, don’t you think?”

His reply to that suggestion: “There is nothing on earth I should like to do better. But my uncle will never permit it. While he’s alive . . . that’s out.”

Okamura’s uncommon extravagance had hitherto been constrained only by the rules and regulations of a strict middle school. Now, with his ties to school life completely cut for a whole year, he reached extremes of ostentation in both demeanor and attitude: it was a wondrous transfor- mation. Previously he had not found Japanese clothes much to his taste, but now in a flash he had a great many kimono and silk haori cloaks, made with striped patterns in flamboyant colors; and he paraded about in each of them by turns.

“Japanese men’s clothes these days are too sober by far. Western men’s clothes, but also Chinese and Indian men’s clothes, are replete with fresh colors and curving lines, making them fine subjects for both Japanese-style painting and oil painting. But Japanese men’s clothes

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can hardly be rendered in any way. Rather than wearing such unaes- thetic couture it would be far more beautiful to go around naked. Even in Japan, at the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate there was no dis- tinction between men’s and women’s apparel in the way in which both embraced festive colors. When we now celebrate Tōzan stripes instead,10 or profess an appreciation of the austere Yūki aesthetic,11 we are simply accepting and extending the tastes of conservative burghers at the end of the bakumatsu period.12 Today’s Japanese should by all means return to the debonair spirit and stylish flair of olden times, from the Keichō to Genroku eras.”13

Okamura followed through on his opinions by choosing to have his kimono custom-made, using feminine fabrics and patterns as much as possible without going to extremes; and that was what he wore about town. Sometimes he would wear a black silk crepe kimono with his fam- ily crest, and a padded over-jacket with a komon ground and kokumochi circles.14 He would wear men’s setta slippers,15 specially fitted with iron cleats so that he clattered as he walked. And sometimes he wore a match- ing ochre-colored kimono and haori, both made of rough kihachijō,16 with an informal, white, Hakata-weave obi.17 On those occasions he never wore a hat: instead, he let his long hair blow about in the breeze as his six-foot frame ambled along, with the most impressive, even imposing effect, not the least bit vulgar or comical, so that passersby would turn to gaze in wonder and admiration.

Around this time he also began to visit a beautician five or six times a month; he became a slave to cosmetics. Whenever he went out he applied a thin layer of liquid powder to his face, and a light rouge to his lips; but since his features had always been beautiful, no one noticed that he was doing such a thing.

“I believe that at any given moment I present a perfect picture.” That Okamura could speak so extravagantly and dress the way he did without seeming absurd was due entirely to an innate grace. That was something others could not match, try as they might: even I secretly admired it. Nor was it surprising that when Okamura went to divert himself in the plea- sure quarters of Shimbashi or Yanagibashi or Akasaka, the geisha abso- lutely worshipped him.

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I put it to him, “Now that you’re leading this kind of life, you’re going to hate the idea of going back to school, I suppose.”

He shook his head vigorously. “No, that’s not the case. I could never belittle the value of scholarship. You just don’t seem to understand my true character.”

In spite of this response I retained deep-seated doubts. But it would appear that somehow he had learned his mathematics, since he did splen- didly on the examinations the following summer, gaining admission to the First Higher School. I admired him all the more.

It was my constant resolve that in scholarship, at least, I must never lose out to Okamura. The fact that I was now an impoverished student only served to stimulate me: I applied myself to my studies with such absolute concentration and devotion that I became practically neurasthenic. My cheeks were drawn, my complexion pallid; I made a pitiable, forlorn fig- ure. Before one could become a great artist, I thought, one had to make a sufficient study of philosophy. So, with my shaky command of German, I diligently perused Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The direct effect of reading the small print of my cheap Reclam editions18 was that I rapidly became quite near-sighted.

“Reading books is important,” said Okamura, “but it’s far more important to maintain perfect eyesight.” So he never even tried to read small-print texts.

Then he pulled out Laokoon,19 which he had been studying under a German instructor at school, opened it to Chapter 14, and thrust it under my nose. “Talking about eyes reminded me,” he said. “There’s something disagreeable about this fellow Lessing. Look. He makes this statement here: ‘Aber müsste, solange ich das leibliche Auge hätte, die Sphäre dessel- ben auch die Sphäre meines innern Auges sein, so würde ich, um von dieser Einschränkung frei zu werden, einen grossen Wert auf den Verlust des ersten legen.’20 It would seem that Lessing is celebrating Milton’s loss of eye- sight. He’s saying that if one’s ability in the use of one’s bodily eyes limits the scope of the mind’s eye, then one would actually be better off without

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one’s bodily eyes. There’s something bizarre about his reasoning. If you ask me, as far as art is concerned the mind’s eye is useless without the bodily eyes. A full complement of the senses, in good working order, is the first requirement for an artist. That’s why Lessing is fundamentally mistaken in his understanding of art.”

“So you don’t acknowledge Milton’s greatness?” “Certainly not. Homer was a special case, but actually there seems to

be some room for doubt as to whether he was really blind.” Okamura’s attack upon Lessing was extraordinary. He tore into Lao-

koon, subjecting passage after passage to the most withering critique. “ . . . and then here he writes this sort of thing: ‘Achilles ergrimmt,

und ohne ein Wort zu versetzen, schlägt er ihn so unsanft zwischen Back’ und Ohr, dass ihm Zähne, und Blut und Seele mit eins aus dem Halse stürzen. Zu grausam! Der jachzornige mörderische Achilles wird mir verhasster, als der tückische knurrende Thersites; . . . denn ich empfinde es, dass Thersites auch mein Anverwandter ist, ein Mensch.’21 He’s commenting on the scene in which Thersites dies at the hands of Achilles: his face is smashed in from ear to cheek; his teeth protrude through the mouth of the wound, whence blood also flows—it’s all too brutal. The impression of Thersites as being ridiculous, which we have entertained up to that point, is thus annihilated. We begin to feel a greater distaste for Achilles, for having dared to perpetrate such an atrocious murder; and no matter how ugly Thersites is, feelings of compassion for him as a human being cannot fail to be aroused in us: that’s the thrust of it. But to my way of thinking, a ridiculous person is ridiculous to the end. The more monstrous his death, the more interest it holds for us, isn’t that so? If we imagine the face of the dying Thersites, whose existence had been so comical, now smashed in and bloody and squirming all over, surely we will think that ridiculous, too. To let one’s appreciation of literature be governed by moralistic sen- timents, so that one considers Achilles hateful and so on, is stupid.”

“There’s something morbid about this point you’re making. Hypo- thetically, just assume this cruel depiction were rendered not in a poem, but in a painting. Would you really think such a painting comical?”

Such was my attempt at rebuttal. But Okamura extended the same line of argument, waxing exultant.

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“Even if one doesn’t think it quite comical, one has to admit to feel- ing a certain pleasurable stimulus. Actually a painting of it would be even more amusing. It is certainly an error to differentiate aesthetic pleasure into such categories as the tragic, the comic, the joyful. In this world of ours there can be no such thing as pure tragedy, pure comedy, or pure joy.”

“On that point I would concur. So you do not admit the boundary Lessing drew between poetry and painting?”

“I most certainly do not. I am opposed to the entire purport of Lao- koon, root-and-branch.”

“Now that is a bit radical.” “Well, hear me out. It is my belief that if beauty cannot be appre-

hended in a single glance—I mean the beauty of color or form, exist- ing in space—then it’s not worth painting a picture of it or composing sentences about it. The most beautiful form of all is the human body. Thought alone, no matter how grand, is not something you can see and feel. Therefore it is impossible for beauty to exist in thought.”

“If one accepts that, then there’s no need to study philosophy in order to become an artist.”

“Just so. Beauty is not something one thinks about. It’s something you see and feel immediately. It’s an extremely simple process. Further- more, the simpler the process, the more intense the effect. You’ve read Pater’s Renaissance, haven’t you? I believe he argues there to the effect that the most “artistic” of all the arts is music.22 That is to say, there is nothing more direct or simple than the process by which music gives us pleasure. No matter how exquisite the poem or the painting, it will always carry some meaning. Whereas the sound of a piano or a violin car- ries absolutely no meaning per se. Sound is not a thinking proposition. It is merely something one can perceive as beautiful. In that respect, one could say that nothing captures better than music the ideal to which all art aspires.”

“If that’s the case, why don’t you become a musician? “Unfortunately, my ear is not as well developed as my eye. I am not

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so aesthetically receptive to music. The forms by which music arouses in people a sense of beauty are superior; but the content of that beauty, in and of itself, can be thought of as somewhat attenuated. Thus I would say that the ideal art would be that whose beauty can be perceived visually, but which is rendered by methods that are as musical as possible.”

“And you think you can produce such a difficult art?” “I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’d like to give it a try. And here let

me resume my attack on Lessing. One would have to say that the main view he espouses in Laokoon comes down to the following two state- ments delimiting the sphere of poetry and the sphere of painting. He writes, ‘In its coexisting compositions painting can only make use of a single instant of the action, and must therefore choose the one which is most pregnant, and from which what precedes and what follows can be most easily gathered.’ And he continues: ‘In like manner, poetry, in its progressive imitations, is confined to the use of a single property of bodies, and must therefore choose that which calls up the most sensible image of the body in the aspect in which she makes use of it.’23

“That’s the nub of it. Now for starters, I have substantial objections to his first definition. Unquestionably, I agree, a painting describes the ‘coexistence’ of things. But where’s the logic in saying that one must choose an ‘instant’ that is ‘pregnant’ enough to enable one to ‘gather’ what precedes and what follows? The attraction of a painting does not reside in the incident or story that furnished the title. For example, among Rodin’s works there is a sculpture of a certain human being hold- ing the corpse of another human being. It bears the title The Death of Sap- pho.24 But to appreciate the beauty of this work, is it absolutely required that one know the biography of Sappho? Must one understand what pre- cedes and what follows that moment? . . .”

“. . . I find this logic extremely bizarre. You see, I believe that the beauty of a painting or a sculpture should be directly sensed in the mind of the observer, entirely through the effect of its color or shape. If we say that

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Rodin’s Death of Sappho is beautiful, it is because the bodies of the two people appearing in that sculpture are beautiful. It has nothing whatso- ever to do with Sappho’s biography.”

“Still, if one knew the history, wouldn’t that make it all the more interesting?”

“But that would be a historical interest. One could not call it an aesthetic interest. Since that sort of historical interest is not a require- ment of art, it’s all the same whether one feels it or not. It follows that for the painter, if there is a single moment that must be chosen, that means capturing the state of a body at the point when the physique is in its best and strongest condition and the body has achieved its utmost potential for beauty. Yet Lessing again puts the most extreme constraints on the artist’s necessary choice of this ‘pregnant moment’: ‘Wenn Lao- koon also seufzet, so kann ihn die Einbildungskraft schreien hören; wenn er aber schreiet, so kann sie von dieser Vorstellung weder eine Stufe hörer, noch eine Stufe tiefer steigen, ohne ihn in einem leidlichern, folglich uninteres- santern Zustande zu erblicken. Sie hört ihn zuerst ächzen, oder sie sieht ihn schon tot.’25

“So he’s saying that if you look at the Greek sculpture of Laokoon,26 you’ll see that as the snake intertwines itself about his limbs, Laokoon is merely emitting the slightest of sighs. His expression is doleful but placid. By no means is his face contorted, nor is he at the point of issuing a groan. Yet in the presence of this sculpture, one can very well imag- ine his desperate suffering. Whereas if Laokoon were shrieking violently, showing an expression of extreme agony, then the sculpture would com- pletely lose any suggestive power. The imagination of the viewer could hardly take a single step outside the sculpture itself. All it could do would be to hear him merely moan, or witness him dying.

“Lessing’s ‘pregnant moment’ signifies an instant that avoids any such intense stimuli and leaves room for the imagination. If we accept this logic, then there will be few occasions indeed for representing human death in painting or sculpture. As I said earlier, to sense beauty one does not have to understand anything of the preceding or subsequent circum- stances. Whether Laokoon seems to be sighing, or shrieking, or covered

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with blood and groaning, so long as the beauty of his body during that instant is conveyed sufficiently, that is more than enough.”

“In that case, wouldn’t it be true that imagination is unnecessary to appreciate art?”

“Certainly. I absolutely detest anything so vague as ‘the imagina- tion.’ I cannot admit any kind of beauty other than that which is materi- alized clearly in front of me—that which I can see with my eyes, feel with my hands, hear with my ears. Unless the sensation of beauty is as intense as a bolt of light shot from an arc lamp, with no room for ‘the imagina- tion,’ I cannot be satisfied.”

“That sort of argument may fit the plastic arts, but it can’t apply to things like poetry or fiction.”

“I suppose the application might be extremely difficult, but I wouldn’t think it entirely impossible. If I were by nature more clever with my hands, I wouldn’t be doing literature, I’d be a painter or a sculptor. But it can’t be helped: I have talent only for combining words into sentences. At any rate, I want to try to use words in some form or another to treat the same sort of beauty that’s expressed in painting or sculpture. At this point, I myself don’t really know what sort of thing will emerge from my efforts, but let me make it clear at least that I utterly disregard Lessing’s maxim to the effect that poetry describes states progressively, and that it deals with only single properties of material objects.”

Okamura’s argument toward the end here was somewhat strained. Inwardly, I gave a bit of a scornful laugh, thinking, “How could this sort of logic have any practical validity? He thinks he can write something? Let him try!”

For two years or so, I was utterly absorbed in my studies. Then, from my third year in higher school, I began to try my hand at poetry and fiction, and to contribute my work to a variety of literary journals. I quickly made a name for myself in literary circles, marked as an up-and-coming author of whom much was expected. How happy that made me, back then! I

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fantasized that henceforth my name would adorn the pages of Meiji liter- ary histories along with the likes of Kōyō, Ichiyō, and Shiki.27 My success went straight to my head and I attempted a large number of works, indis- criminately, as the ideas emerged. In fact, my thoughts were flowing so freely that I was continually reaching for my writing brush; and no mat- ter how much I wrote, I simply couldn’t imagine ever running dry. I could not help feeling, “I have finally won out over Okamura.”

It was clear to anybody that Okamura was having an extremely dif- ficult time deciding what sort of attitude he should adopt toward Art himself. If you asked him about it, his reply would be the glibbest of self- promotions; but in not a single instance did he ever have anything actu- ally to show for it. As a matter of fact, he never seemed to be studying any serious works on literature, let alone philosophy (which he hated). He read, from time to time, a little French poetry or fiction; if not that, then books on fine art, from which he mastered the basics of especially paint- ing and sculpture: Western of course, but also Indian, Chinese, Japanese. And he would agonize, “It is infinitely, infinitely regrettable that I cannot paint!”

Once I asked him, “Of all the painters of the past, whom do you like the best?”

His reply: “In Japan, Toyokuni; in the West, Lautrec.”28

But if he liked Lautrec, he loved Chiarini.29 He was always saying things like, “The poor physique of the Japanese makes their acrobatics unattractive. The Western circus, like Chiarini’s, is even more artistic than a theatrical performance. I want to create art that has the feel of a circus.”

As the days went by, Okamura had grown more and more eccentric in both word and deed. On occasion, one could not tell whether he was serious or joking. “The most humble art form is the novel. Then comes poetry. Painting is greater than poetry, sculpture greater than painting, the theater greater than sculpture. But the greatest art form of all is the human body itself. Art begins with the effort to turn one’s own body into a thing of beauty.” He wrote such comments in the margin of a note- book, and showed them to me. The only part of it that he was actually

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putting into practice was the business about “turning one’s own body into a thing of beauty”: he had still not given up indulging in apparatus gymnastics and light cosmetics. He would also write things such as, “The circus orchestrates the bodies of living people to create a kind of music. That is what makes it the supreme art.”

Then there were comments like this: “When architecture and fash- ion are considered to be fine art, why cannot cuisine also be called a branch of fine art? Why is a pleasurable taste not considered artistic? This is a puzzle to me.” I told him, “The points you are raising here are a result of your not knowing aesthetics.” But he paid me no heed, replying, “Of what use are aesthetics?”

He also wrote, “With regard to the human body, masculine beauty is inferior to feminine beauty. What is called masculine beauty is for the most part an imitation of feminine beauty. When one speaks of the sexu- ally ambiguous beauty apparent in some Greek sculptures, it is usually that of a man possessing feminine beauty. . . .

“Art is the manifestation of sexual desire. Artistic pleasure is one type of physiological, even erotic, pleasure. Thus art is not something spiritual, it is sensual, through and through. Painting, sculpture, and music are of course included in this; even architecture is not outside the realm of consideration here. . . .

“The Greeks counted a large corporeal frame as one of the factors of physical beauty. Outstanding art is all large-mass art.”

And he noted down other such aphorisms, providing further glimpses of his morbid conception of art.30

As my own star began to blaze across the literary firmament, Okamura showed not the slightest jealousy or envy. Since, however, my efforts were completely meaningless from the point of view of his own conception of art, he was clearly not happy for me in the least. For my part, on the one hand I somewhat despised him, but on the other hand I also feared him. Simply seeing his face, I became extremely troubled with regard to whatever I was working on at the time: I felt I was proceeding blindly. I

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could not help thinking, “He’ll probably end his life without accomplish- ing anything great. And yet surely he is a genius.”

While I worked ceaselessly, Okamura continued to play cease- lessly. His initial declaration, “I respect scholarship,” he now repudiated. His extravagance and dissipation grew more profligate by the day; he attended school only rarely. In facial features, physique, and wardrobe, his erotic elegance and charm grew ever greater. One felt as though he glowed with an unapproachable aura. Frequently, as I was about to speak to him, I was so struck by his beauty that I fell silent. Many women shed tears on his account, some even tried to take their own life. This included women of nearly every station in life. He exploited his family’s status to frequent not only restaurants and teahouses but garden parties and soirées of all sorts.

Okamura’s West-worshipping craze was by now extremely robust. He would make such comments as, “Ah, I want to go to the West. I want to go to the West. It was my greatest misfortune not to have been born a Westerner with a magnificent physique.” And: “I detest all things Japa- nese.” Yet his uncle, for apparently complicated reasons, would not per- mit him to go study in the West.

Though he indulged himself in pleasures, day and night, his robust constitution did not suffer in the least. Drinking and smoking, however, did not meet his favor:

“Liquor and tobacco numb the senses, with the result that you can- not sufficiently savor pleasure. If you do not maintain perfect health, you will not be up to receiving strong stimuli. Liquor is inebriating; but when you sober up, you’re cast down in the dumps. I loathe melancholy. I always want to be in a sunny mood.”

Perhaps that explains why Okamura’s complexion was constantly sanguine, even radiant, and why his eyes seemed not merely cheerful but joyful.

While he was engaged in all of this, Okamura once or twice failed the year-end exams and did not move up. By the time I was a second-year university student, he was still obliged to linger on in higher school. But the real reason he had to stay behind was not because he had failed the exams. It was because he had so routinely played the truant. Sometimes

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he would disappear for a fortnight, even a month. He went absent not merely from school but from his own home. His classmates hardly knew he existed.

Then, in the autumn of my third year at university, he completely vanished. All I heard were rumors: “He quit school,” it was said. Or, “He was expelled.”

I should make it clear that around then my own reputation as a light of the literary world was gradually fading. Every time I published any- thing, heartless critics would heap upon it all sorts of invective—abusive and defamatory. On top of that, after being drawn down for tuition and my family’s living expenses, the inheritance from my father was by now seriously depleted. Like it or not, circumstances compelled me to write for money. And at this point that stream of ideas, which I had believed would never run dry, abruptly ceased to issue forth. Would I now, for the rest of my life, suffer the anguish of having to churn out an endless suc- cession of idiotic “stories” just to survive? The thought devastated me. I was left with the desolate feeling that no one leads a life so meaningless, so unartistic, as an “artist”!

Feeling so desolate made me think of Okamura. I had not seen him for far too long, so one day I simply took it into my head to drop by his mansion and see if he was in. As luck would have it, he was indeed at home. Gazing at me as I sat down on a chair in the parlor, he said, “We haven’t met for some time. You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

I compared our faces, reflected in a mirror that was in the room. And I was chagrined to behold my sad and forlorn air. Thereupon he suddenly beamed at me with a happy expression about the eyes, as of old: “You should know that from now on I am distancing myself from my uncle’s control, arranging affairs so that I have a free hand with my estate. Finally I shall be able to create my own unique art—you’ll see!”

“You mean that poetry you spoke of, once?” “Not poetry, nor painting, nor sculpture. Nothing so tedious. Some-

thing more immediate, and also much larger in scale. I shall construct in my own environs a dazzling Paradise of Art. I shall create an absolutely new form of art. You just hold your tongue—you wait and see!”

And he smiled.

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In the spring of his twenty-seventh year, Okamura began to undertake the unique artwork whose creation he had been planning. First, he deter- mined the value of his enormous fortune in its entirety, so as to divest himself of all of it, converting the proceeds into a production fund.

Several dozen leagues31 to the west of Tokyo, near the crest of the Hakone Mountains in the Sagami region, lay an immense tract of great scenic beauty, some sixteen acres32 of tableland situated to the left of the road that runs between the Sengoku highlands and the Otome Pass, and dipping down as far as the shores of Lake Ashi. On this tract, Okamura immediately started a gigantic construction project.

Employing hundreds of laborers a day, he began to fill in rice paddies, raze vegetable fields, level forests, and excavate ponds; to install foun- tains and create hills; personally devoting his every effort to the creation of a Paradise of Art built according to his own designs and specifications.

First off, he drew limpid lake water deep into his own grounds, and with it flooded a broad cove he had dug between hills so lush and ver- dant they seemed to be dripping with emerald dewdrops. He brought in sailing boats and gondolas and a Dragon-head/Cormorant-neck pair of ceremonial boats33 and all sorts of small watercraft, giving this area the effect of a picturesque port. Water from the cove was also diverted: here flowing as a small river, winding like an obi sash through the enor- mous park; there transforming itself into a rushing, rock-grinding tor- rent, gushing through fantastically shaped boulders that formed a jagged mountain outline against the sky; and elsewhere spraying out a curtain of mist many feet across as it shot out over the cliffs. On both banks of this river he cultivated narcissus, mountain breeze,34 iris, bellflower, maiden flower, and countless other flowering plants for all the seasons. On a sunny, south-facing slope he planted a peach orchard,35 where he also released cows, sheep, peacocks, ostriches, and all sorts of other birds and beasts.

Set against the backdrop of this encyclopedia of beautiful scen- ery were many structures representing the pinnacles of architecture— ancient and modern, East and West. On a lofty ridge of strange rocky

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prominences like those in a Nanga painting36 there was a Chinese-style tower recalling the poetry of the Journey to the Grotto of the Immortals.37 Enclosing the riotous colors of a flower garden, with a fountain in the middle, was a rectangular Grecian temple with a peristyle of stone col- umns. On a promontory jutting out into a lake: a Fujiwara-era fishing pavilion with a waterside gallery.38 Beyond a stand of trees that blocked the wind there was a Roman-style bathhouse constructed of marble, whose hot-spring waters seemed to bubble forth jewels.

Then there were different locations for his residences, specially selected for each of the seasons. In spring, an eastern eminence with a commanding prospect. In summer, the shore of a serpentine coastline favored by cool breezes. For autumn there was a secluded spot with a magnificent view of the foliage in the ravine below. And winter could be passed in the warm bosom of the mountains. One dwelling was done in the image of the Parthenon, another modeled on the Phoenix Hall of Byōdō-in,39 a third was indebted to the style of the Alhambra, and the last patterned on the Vatican Palace. Across the mountains and valleys the cinnabar soil and chalky cliffs glistened in the morning light, while evening suffused columns and roof tiles with the hues of the setting sun. The general effect seemed to be a realization of that line of ancient verse, “Mount Shu stands high, and on its top / Stands higher still the Epang Palace.”40

Everywhere, the grounds of these buildings and gardens were dot- ted with countless sculptures. Most of them were, like the buildings, imi- tations of ancient masterpieces. Images of buddhas and goddesses were there, it goes without saying; in addition there were statues of all man- ner of people and birds and beasts. The eye was drawn especially to both sides of the level road leading in from the stone gate at the entrance. There stood copies of the thirteen mortuary figures at the Imperial Ming Tombs: an elephant, a tiger, a kirin,41 a horse, and so on, recumbent or standing. And then, finally, in the grassy central courtyard of the estate, there was set Rodin’s Eternal Idol.42 Curiously, the face of the man in that sculpture had been deliberately and obviously remade as the living image of Okamura’s own countenance. Rodin’s sculptures had gener-

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ally been objects of worship for him, and he had collected almost all the famous ones.43

To finish this construction took another two years. But this was not the end of his “creation.”

“The work I have done till now,” he said, is essentially just prepara- tory to the creation of my own art. I have, one might say, merely set the stage. Now comes the real work.”

“Yes, I can see how that might be so. No matter how lavish the bud- get, or how grand the edifice, merely imitating the art of others could never qualify as your own creation.”

To that comment of mine, he replied with his usual arrogant smile, “At some point, as soon as it’s all finished, I shall notify you: save your appraisals till then, if you would. For a full half year, I shall be engaged in its creation and shan’t be meeting anyone. I must ask you to wait till I’m finished.”

Thereupon Okamura disappeared for a second time. He would be in Tokyo one day, then return to Hakone the next; or he might go off to western Japan, or else rush up to the north country, or even venture as far afield as Korea, China, India: it seemed he was traveling anywhere and everywhere, like some busy merchant. But during all that time, I had not the slightest idea what sort of creation he was attempting.

The creation to which I have dedicated my life is now completed. I am myself delirious with the beauty of the artwork that I have created. I do indeed believe that this is the ideal art that I have for so many years pictured in my head. To tell you the truth, I am not especially desirous of showing my artwork to other people. I should prefer to enjoy it alone. However, you understand my think- ing very well, and moreover, I promised. Therefore, on condition only that you preserve my secret, I urge you by all means to come and have a look. Would you simply consult your own convenience and come stay with me in Hakone for a week, ten days . . .

It was in the spring of the year following the completion of con-

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struction that I finally received this announcement. In a mental state compounded of equal measures of belief and doubt, I resolved to go for a visit, regardless, and off I went.

It was mid-April, one of those serene days when dense haze yields to a sky of lapis lazuli. I left Tokyo early in the morning, and by around two o’clock that afternoon I had ascended to the top of a mountain road, some four leagues from Yumoto, the area’s principal hot spring resort, reaching one end of a highlands from which one could view in the dis- tance the tower gate of Okamura’s estate. I had been to Hakone many times in the past for recreation, and I was relatively clear on the topog- raphy of the area; but with this grand estate taking dominion now, I felt that the natural order of the landscape—the mountains, valleys, and waters—had changed completely. I could not help recalling “the past” of Urashima Tarō or Rip Van Winkle.44

As I entered the gate, I found Okamura there waiting for me. He had a loose, white, Roman toga draped over his body, and sandals on his feet, and was squatting beneath the standing figure of an elephant that I men- tioned above. Crouched down like that, pleasantly bathed in the warmth of the western sun, he seemed drowsy.

“I’ve been watching you coming from far away. I was leaning against a column.”

As he spoke he pointed at the verandah of a chalk-white Western mansion some distance off in the mountains. On these premises of such subtle and profound beauty, even at midday it was hushed and deserted, as in a forest. Not a single other human form was present: just Okamura and me, and those weird sculptures. Presently he blew a whistle he had been holding in his hand, and from out of nowhere, to the delicate chime of a bell, a single ostrich came running up, pulling a cart festooned with garlands of flowers. Okamura had me get on, as did he; then he pro- ceeded, whip in hand, to drive still farther down the level road.

Sweet; pungent; aromatic: a plethora of floral perfumes over- whelmed my olfactory sense. As the garlands of flowers, like strings of beaded jewels, swayed and swung to the rhythm of the coach’s wheels, a host of butterflies gathered around to adore them, dancing incessantly in the air about us, while the clamorous cries of bush warblers seemed at

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times fairly to pierce my eardrums. As the road drew near the shore of the cove, we abandoned our coach and transferred to a small boat, which he rowed, dipping the oars into mirror-like water, toward the shade of the sheer cliffs on the opposite shore.

Rounding a bluff, we found ourselves in the middle of a spacious bay where we could take in at a glance the variegated outline of the moun- tains and the fields, the palaces and the towers, along the coast. Con- nected with this cove, Lake Ashi lay, replete, in the distance, shrouded in veils of mist. Looking about, one saw the peaks of the Hakone moun- tains—Komagatake, Kanmurigatake, Myōjingatake—wrapped like a folding screen around the contours of this sublime paradise. Straight- away I noticed, on the grassy banks not two yards from the prow of the boat, a standing bronze, perhaps ten feet tall, of a centaur carrying a goddess on its back and staring up into the sky.45 The boat had moored right at the beast’s feet.

The grassy sward extended some ten thousand square feet, let us say, bounded on one side by the water and on the other by rounded hills similar to those of Wakakusayama.46 The other two sides were blocked off by dense groves of poplars. On a knoll in the center was a hexago- nal pavilion, like a concert hall. All around it was an astonishing array of statues of people in all sorts of attitudes and activities: some gazing up towards the heavens, some lying prostrate on the ground, some leaning against columns, some sitting down on rocks. Their physical vitality was so well expressed that it seemed as though, if we approached them, they might all start moving.

“This is such a huge collection of statues, it’s breathtaking,” I said to Okamura over my shoulder. He nodded, looking pleased.

“I’m glad you feel that way, too. . . . These sculptures are all replicas of famous works, going back to ancient times. When you see them gathered here, in these conditions, they have an entirely different effect, don’t they? I went to the greatest pains over their disposition. Without put- ting them all here, together, exposed to the elements, you really could not feel the sublime power of the physical beauty that these statues con- vey. But when you view them like this, they don’t seem like mere lifeless forms—wouldn’t you agree? Don’t you feel like dashing over and shaking

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them by the shoulders? Seeing the naked bodies of these people illumi- nated by the setting sun, it almost seems a mystery why they remain so silent. . . . When the ensemble makes such a profound impression, there is no particular need to inspect each and every one in detail. But do note the deftness with which these replicas have been executed.”

About a yard in front of where the two of us were standing stock still, and so close to us that I felt my nose was practically touching it, was Michelangelo’s Bound Slave,47 writhing in pain, begging for mercy.

“Over here is the Apollo of Piombino, in the Louvre. This is the Apollo of Pompeii, at Naples. And the Doryphorus, by Polykleitos.”48

Okamura’s tone was passionate as he walked about, introducing each one. But I found it most disquieting that in one cluster, crazily contorted human shapes were so scattered over the pavilion’s roof and verandah and stone steps, and their arrangement so extremely unsystematic, as to suggest corpses that had been cast aside. Many were taken from Rodin’s oeuvre, the sculptures with the most shocking poses or expressions. On top of the tiled roof there were five or six bronze masks or heads strewn about, as if freshly decapitated, including the Man with a Broken Nose,49 Woman’s Head,50 Weeping Woman,51 and Agony.52

The ghastly form of Count Ugolino,53 starving and at the point of cannibalizing his own sons, was crouching like a caged tiger at the bot- tom of a staircase. Victor Hugo54 seemed to be resting one elbow on a bal- ustrade while stretching the other hand out in front, while behind him frolicked a Satyr and Nymph.55 A man in Despair56 had fallen over, clutch- ing a leg; next to him a man and woman were embracing and kissing in Eternal Spring.57

However, as the reader was alerted earlier, none of these was by any means Okamura’s own artwork. Meanwhile, like a Dante escorted by his Vergilius,58 after I had passed the initial threshold of lawn I was shown all sorts of truly amazing replicas of architecture and murals. Then, passing through a sylvan scene as profuse with various blossoms as a Jakuchū painting of flowers and fowl,59 I was guided into a veritable Elysium

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through which were strutting peacocks and parrots. Yet here I believe I should refrain from any attempt to give a detailed account of how these wonderful things achieved the apogee of beauty that they did: I shall rely, rather, upon the reader’s imagination.

As the evening sun was just beginning to slide behind the moun- tains, we made our way deep, deep into the forest, coming at last upon the margin of an ancient spring. The leaves of vines, matted like arame seaweed, wrapped themselves around the trunks of trees whose foli- age was already dense and dark, making such an intricately complex entanglement of branch and vine that it blocked passage, while a prolific undergrowth of grass and shrub enshrouded the moist earth; the ensem- ble producing a primeval quietude, in the midst of which stood a still pool of water as crystalline as lapis lazuli. At that point, from somewhere or other, there came the sound of trickling water.

“Just go over to where that sound is coming from, if you would.” At Okamura’s instruction I followed the sound of the water: part-

ing the brambles, I came to the edge of a pool. As I stood there, looking across it, I noticed the standing figure of a woman on the opposite shore, possessing a divinity one would be hard-pressed to define. Green leaves carpeted the ground all about. The nymph’s back fit snugly into a ten- foot-tall cave-like alcove in the wall of a cliff behind her. She was standing upright, supporting on her left shoulder a vase, which she held in both hands. The trickling sound came from water flowing out of the vase and ceaselessly falling to the water’s surface. Her figure was reflected in the pool to the smallest detail, but upside down, the two forms being joined at the soles of the feet.

“That’s a realization of the painting, La Source, by Ingres.”60

Before Okamura had finished uttering that comment, the nymph had blinked those charming large eyes of hers, while the slightest of smiles played briefly upon her lips. I instantly felt an icy chill pass through my body. This nymph, with her alabaster skin and her golden hair and her sapphire eyes, was a living creature! In the gloaming, as dusk encroached, it seemed to be her intention, by thus exposing her plaster- white body, to preserve the integrity of her painted pose for all eternity.

When we quit the forest and came out upon the hills, with a pros-

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pect of the distant colonnades of the Grecian temple, I saw two more living paintings asleep on garments spread upon the grass. One was Gior- gione’s Venus;61 the other, Lucas Cranach’s Nymph.62

“Unlike the earlier sculptures you saw, those ones over there could not be called mere replicas. Just as a painter borrows material from a novel, I have simply borrowed the compositional structure of some paintings. They are nonetheless my creations.”

This was the first time Okamura had made such a claim. It was considerably past sunset by the time we arrived at the

entrance to the bathhouse, which was surrounded by classical sculptures on the theme of bathing. The interior of this magnificent edifice was bril- liantly lit by electric bulbs, their rays piercing the domed glass ceiling and refracting brightly into the night sky. Putting an ear to the front door, one could make out the sounds of water splashing, and of dozens of people swimming about like dolphins.

Opening the doors and entering, I then stopped and stood transfixed for some time, stunned by the effect of the lights, the colors, the steamy vapors. The bath proper was sunk some three or four feet below the level of the marble floor, and was so large as to merit being called a pool rather than a bath. One of the four walls was decorated with Roman murals and friezes. Here and there on the oval fringe of floor at the water’s edge were more centaurs, spaced about six feet apart. Yet their faces all bore the countenance of Okamura, in different expressions: crying, laughing, angry; and the goddesses mounted on them, flogging them, were all live human beings, every one. When I looked at the several dozen creatures cavorting dolphin-like in the water, I found that they were a group of beautiful women in silver sheaths, like chain-mail, which had been fas- tened around their lower bodies so as to simulate the appearance of mer- maids. As soon as they caught sight of us, they raised their hands high, all in the same way, and cried out a welcome. Then, their silvery scales glittering, they leapt up onto the paving stones at the rim of the pool and disported themselves at the feet of the monsters.

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In addition, there were three or four small baths, filled with milk, or wine, or peppermint liqueur. Mermaids frolicked there as well. Lastly we came to The Pond of Hell,63 crammed to the brim with human bodies.

“And now we cross over that. Don’t worry, just follow me, if you would.”

So saying, Okamura took me by the hand and we proceeded to tramp over clumps of flesh.

X I have not the courage to write more. In any event, it is sufficient simply to add here that, compared to an entertainment arranged for a revelry held the same night at the Spring Palace in the eastern hills, the scene at the baths was on such a small scale that it hardly remains in memory at all. The entertainment that night involved a variety of works of art composed of live human beings. We were shown, for example, beyond sumptuous brocade curtains, a woman said to be the queen of this palace, reclining on a bed supported by four men serving as columns.

From all this I believe the reader will have gained a general idea of what sort of thing Okamura’s so-called “art” was. In conclusion I should like merely to jot down an extremely simple sketch of his last days; of how, about ten days later, at the moment he had achieved the very pin- nacle of pleasure, he suddenly died.

Despite the exceptional health Okamura had enjoyed, one might very well have thought that he foresaw his imminent demise. “I have already exhausted all my resources. I cannot maintain this level of extrav- agance for even another six months,” he said. And he was indulging in certain self-destructive habits, such as drinking and smoking.

During the ten days I was visiting, he changed clothes every eve- ning, socializing with me in a variety of strange persona. Around then, he was fond of the stage costumes designed by the Russian Léon Bakst.64 So he would dress up, now as the Spirit of the Rose, now in the guise of a Faun, now as a character in Carnaval.65

Eventually he grew weary of simply changing clothes, and trans- formed himself into the native in Schéhérazade, dyeing his entire body

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jet-black.66 On the evening of the tenth day, he devoted exceptional care to the selection of a large number of beautiful men and women, whom he then costumed as arhats and bodhisattvas, or else made up to look like demons and ogres. Finally he plastered his entire body with gold leaf, assumed the noble mien of a tathagata67—and thereupon commenced to toss back copious amounts of liquor and to dance like a madman.

Exhausted by revelries lasting well into the night, the partygo- ers collapsed in disarray along the palace’s verandahs, and against pil- lars, and onto chaises longues, the entire company sinking into a sleep of oblivion until day broke on the morrow. At last opening their eyes, they discovered Okamura’s body on a table in the center of the room: still golden; cold as ice. According to a physician in the estate’s employ, Okamura had died because the gold leaf, apparently, had clogged all the pores of his skin.

Bodhisattvas, arhats, demons, ogres: all knelt alike at the feet of this golden body; tears flowed. The scene was like a scroll painting of the recumbent Buddha entering Nirvana. One wondered whether, even in death, Okamura was not offering up his body in the service of his personal art. I had never seen such an exquisitely beautiful human corpse. I had never seen such a brilliant—such a solemn—human death, uncrossed by any shades of Sorrow.68

Okamura was certainly a fortunate man. I say that because he devoted all his strength, all his body, to his personal art. And further- more because he achieved sufficient success. There are undoubtedly many people in the world with greater means than his, and many with greater learning. But it is fair to say that there is none who has, so ear- nestly and so single-mindedly, charged through to execute such personal art. He and I differed on many points, in our views about art; but ulti- mately, one must recognize that his work did indeed constitute great art. This art of his may have been a fleeting phantom—with his death, it has surely vanished from the earth. But he was a great genius, a great and indeed peerless artist.

The meaningless extravagances of a Ki-Bun or a Nara-Mo69 lead later ages to celebrate their names as paragons of wealth. So there is even

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more reason for Okamura’s name to be remembered forever. But consid- ering the life that he led, will the world ever appreciate him as an artist?

Notes

1. For Lessing’s Laokoon see note 19 below. See also “The Domain of Arn- heim” (1847) and “Landor Cottage” (1849) by Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849); À Rebours (Against the Grain, 1884) by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848–1907); The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). For an example of the later influence of Tanizaki’s tale in Japan, see Panoramatō kidan (1926), by Edogawa Rampo (1894–1965), translated by Elaine Gerbert as Strange Tale of Panorama Island (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013).

2. “Kaisetsu” by Mishima Yukio in Tanizaki Jun’ichirō shū (Shinchō Nihon bungaku, vol. 6) (Shinchōsha, 1970), 1037–47.

3. Friends from childhood. For autobiographical elements in the narrator’s relationship with Okamura (family fortunes, academic and sartorial conscious- ness, Tokyo locale, etc.) see Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Yōshō jidai (Childhood Years, 1955–56).

4. None of my clothes were cotton. The narrator’s implication is that all of his clothes were silk.

5. Mitsui or Iwasaki fortunes. Representing, respectively, old money and new money, and constituting two of the largest personal fortunes in Japan at the time, derived from the business groupings that later became known as the Mitsui and Mitsubishi zaibatsu.

6. Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) wrote both a short story and a putative travel journal with the same title, Sur l’eau (On the Water; On the River; Afloat). Both works had an impact in Japan; this reference is prob- ably to the short story, which was much translated and anthologized worldwide, including two Japanese translations prior to 1914. Literary giant Mori Ōgai (1862–1922) commented, in Shinbi shinsetsu (On the New Aesthetics, 1899), on the pleasurable rhythms of Maupassant’s prose in general. Before 1914, at least privately, author and noted Francophile Nagai Kafū (1879–1959) praised specif- ically the musicality of Maupassant’s writing in Sur l’eau among other short sto- ries. In 1913, Kafū published his own translation into Japanese of a portion of the “travel journal” Sur l’eau. Author/critic Tayama Katai (1872–1930), a prime mover in the Naturalist literary movement, extolled the psychological realism and other features of this “travel-journal” Sur l’eau, in various writings starting in 1911.

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7. “Like a bird in flight.” This refers to the last line of the poem Jiangshang kanshan (Viewing the Mountains from the River) by Su Shi, also known as Su Dongbo (1037–1101), a Song dynasty official, poet, painter, and calligrapher.

8. Two thousand yen in stock certificates. Equivalent to perhaps three or four years’ salary of a young government employee around 1900.

9. First Higher School. The “higher schools” of imperial Japan were feed- ers into the universities, and normally offered three years of instruction. Only one in seven or eight applicants was admitted, and the first year was roughly the equivalent of today’s first year of university.

10. Tōzan. A sophisticated cotton textile made of thin threads woven into thin striped patterns, often featuring reddish colors and indigo.

11. Yūki aesthetic. Textiles produced in Yūki, in the northern Kantō area, were known for their thin but strong weaves of pongee silk ( yūki tsumugi) or cot- ton, originally dyed with indigo.

12. Bakumatsu period. The final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate at the end of the Edo period (1600–1867): roughly the 1850s and 1860s.

13. Keichō to Genroku eras. The Keichō era (1596–1615) marked the tur- bulent beginnings of the Tokugawa Shogunate; the Genroku era (1688–1704) was a time of prosperity, peace, and possibility; together they stand (here) for the first third or so of the Edō period.

14. Komon ground and kokumochi circles. Komon is an overall ground pat- tern of identical small figures scattered over an expanse of cloth. Kokumochi are blank circles.

15. Setta slippers. Outdoor footwear made of bamboo leaf with leather soles.

16. Kihachijō. A silk textile dyed with kariyasu, a reed or grass (Miscanthus tinctorius) that produces a yellow dye, and patterned with black or dark brown stripes or lattices.

17. Hakata-weave obi. The style of obi (kimono sash) here is a kakuobi, a type of men’s obi for relatively informal wear. Hakata weave is known for its firm- ness, and for a shiny, bumpy surface deriving from a thin warp and a thicker weft.

18. Cheap Reclam editions. The German publisher Reclam, founded in 1828, launched its standardized-format, color-coded Universal-Bibliothek in 1867, following a liberalization of copyright laws. They focused initially on clas- sic works of the national literature.

19. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) published this classic of mod- ern aesthetic theory and art appreciation in 1766 as Laokoon: Oder über die Gren- zen der Malerei und Poesie (Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry). For the sculpture that gives this book its title, see note 26. In Japan, intellectuals

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knew about Lessing’s Laokoon at least as early as an 1889 journal article by the writer/critic Ishibashi Ningetsu (1865–1926).

20. “Aber müsste . . . des ersten legen.” Okamura quotes the German text. An English translation roughly contemporary to Okamura reads as follows: “But if the sphere of my bodily eyes, so long as I enjoy them, must needs also be that of my inner eye, I would consider the loss of them a gain indeed, inasmuch [as] I should thereby be freed from this limitation.” From Chapter 14 of Laokoon in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (trans. E. C. Beasley et al.), Laokoon and How the Ancients Represented Death (London: G. Bell and Sons, Ltd., 1914), 88.

21. “Achilles ergrimmt . . . ein Mensch.” Okamura quotes the German text. It is rendered into English by Beasley et al. as follows: “Achilles is angered, and, without adding a word, strikes him so heavily between the cheek and the ear that his teeth and blood and life issue together from his mouth. It is too hor- rible! The passionate and murderous Achilles becomes more hateful to me than the malicious and snarling Thersites . . . for I feel that Thersites is my kinsman also, a human being.” See Lessing (trans. E. C. Beasley et al.), ibid., Chapter 23, 135. Lessing is referring to the epic Posthomerica (or Paralipomena of Homer) of Quintus Calaber (Quintus Smyrnaeus), a fourth-century Greek poet, which takes up where Homer’s Iliad leaves off.

22. The most “artistic” of all the arts is music. Cf. Walter Pater in “The School of Giorgione” (1877), an essay included in the third edition of his The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1888): “music being the typical or ide- ally consummate art. . . . All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music . . .” [italicized in the quoted text]; etc. In William E. Buckler (ed.), Walter Pater: Three Major Texts (The Renaissance, Appreciations, and Imaginary Portraits) (New York: New York University Press, 1986), 156–58.

23. “In its coexisting compositions . . . makes use of it.” Here, Okamura orally translates Lessing into Japanese. This version is by E. C. Beasley et al. Lao- koon and How the Ancients Represented Death (1914), Chapter 16, 91–92.

24. The Death of Sappho. François-Auguste-René Rodin (1840–1917) executed this sculpture of two women for his La porte de l’Enfer (The Gates of Hell, 1880–ca. 1890), also titling it, as an independent work, Les metamorpho- ses d’Ovide (Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” ca. 1884), but its subject of lesbian love was daring for its time and place, and how to present it was problematic. It was exhibited independently, mostly in marble, under various titles, including Child and Young Woman, Damned Women, Les fleurs du mal, Voluptuousness, Young Girl and Death, Satyresses, and The Death of Sappho.

25. “Wenn Laokoon . . . schon tot.” Okamura quotes the German text. It is rendered into English by Beasley et al., as follows: “Thus, if Laokoon sighs, the

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imagination can hear him shriek; but if he shrieks, it can neither rise a step higher above nor descend a step below this representation, without seeing him in a condition which, as it will be more endurable, becomes less interesting. It either hears him merely moaning, or sees him already dead.” See Lessing (trans. E. C. Beasley et al.), Laokoon and How the Ancients Represented Death, Chapter 3, 20.

26. The Greek sculpture of Laokoon. Perhaps in fact a Roman copy, the Lao- coön Group (also referred to as Laocoön and His Sons), discovered in 1506, has been attributed to Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydorus of Rhodes, in the first century BC. Even the celebrated “original” Rhodian work itself may be a copy of a much earlier sculpture. Since Okamura is referring to, and quoting, Lessing, the old-fashioned Germanic spelling of “Laokoon” is used throughout the present translation of Tanizaki’s story.

27. Kōyō, Ichiyō, and Shiki. The pen names of three famous authors of the preceding generation: Ozaki Kōyō (1869–1903), Higuchi Ichiyō (1872–1896), Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902).

28. Toyokuni . . . Lautrec. Utagawa Toyokuni (1769–1825) was a late-Edo woodblock print artist who made his name with book illustrations and became famous for his portraits of beautiful women and kabuki actors. Henri Toulouse- Lautrec (1864–1901) was a post-impressionist French painter and lithograph artist, whose artistic interests included notably the demimonde of Montmartre, the circus (see his Circus Portfolio suite of crayon drawings), and Japanese wood- block prints.

29. Guiseppe Chiarini, leader of the Royal Italian Circus, an illustrious international troupe that toured Japan in 1886 and 1889, made such a hit that for some time thereafter charine (the approximate pronunciation in Japanese) became synonymous with “circus” in Japan.

30. Conception of art. Okamura’s language in his preceding aphorisms is notably spiced with English words, accompanied by kanji indicating their mean- ing: cuisine, esthetics, spiritual, sensual.

31. Several dozen leagues. One Japanese league (ri) = 3.92 km (about 2.5 miles).

32. Sixteen acres. The Japanese text has 20,000 tsubo; one tsubo is about 3.3 m2.

33. Dragon-head/Cormorant-neck. Pairs of small boats used for ceremo- nies and other festivities held on inland waters during the Heian and Kamakura periods (ninth to fourteenth centuries), practices derived from imperial China. Musicians and dancers aboard the boats entertained members of the Court. One boat with a dragon-head prow (dragons were said to be strong swimmers) was

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matched with one decorated with the head (or “neck”) of the geki, an imaginary bird similar to a cormorant and said to be a strong flyer.

34. Mountain breeze. A literal translation of the Japanese name of a flower conventionally rendered in English as “the Japanese rose.” Bright yellow or golden in color.

35. Peach orchard. An allusion to the classical Chinese utopian prose “Peach Blossom Spring” (Tao Hua Yuan Ji) by Tao Yuanming, also known as Tao Qian (372?–427).

36. Nanga or “Southern Painting,” also called Bunjinga or “Literati Paint- ing.” A late-Edo Japanese school of painting based loosely on an appreciation of the landscapes and other works of Chinese scholar-artists of especially the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties (thirteenth to nineteenth centuries).

37. Journey to the Grotto of the Immortals. This is the Youxianku, an early Tang dynasty work by Zhang Wencheng (Zhang Zhuo; ca. 660–ca. 740). The tale recounts the amorous exploits of a traveler offered shelter in a cave.

38. Fujiwara-era fishing pavilion. This was typical of the shinden-zukuri style of architecture and landscaping developed for mansion-estates and pal- aces of the Heian period (794–1185), during most of which the Fujiwara family dominated the court.

39. Phoenix Hall of Byōdō-in. The main hall of a Buddhist temple at Uji, near Kyoto, dedicated to Amida Buddha and also containing two statues of Chi- nese phoenixes. The temple, with its famous garden and pond, is patterned on the palaces pictured in sutra illustrations of the Pure Land, which themselves were inspired by actual Chinese palaces.

40. Epang Palace. Okamura refers to the E-fang gong fu (Epang Palace Ode) by Du Mu (803–852), a Tang dynasty Chinese poet. Construction of the palace (possibly the largest building in the world at the time, though perhaps never completed) began in 212 BC under the First Emperor of China’s Qin dynasty.

41. Kirin. The Chinese qilin, a mythical beast with some attributes of a giraffe.

42. Eternal Idol. Rodin’s L’Éternelle idole (The Eternal Idol, ca. 1890–93) portrays a nude man and woman; the woman is letting the man kiss her on her torso. Based on figures intended for inclusion in Rodin’s Gates of Hell project, this work is part of a sculptural “conversation” between the sculptor and his pupil/lover Camille Claudel (1864–1943), which included also Rodin’s Le baiser (The Kiss) and Claudel’s L’Abandon (Surrender).

43. Almost all the famous ones. Tanizaki’s own sources for his descriptions of Western artwork are not entirely known, but among them he apparently con- sulted the November 1910 issue of the literary journal Shirakaba (White Birch)

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that was dedicated to Rodin. See the notes to “Une Mort Dorée” (trans. Cécile Sakai) in Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Oeuvres, vol. 1, Collection Bibliothèque de la Plé- iade, no. 434 (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 1644 (p. 122, n. 3).

44. Urashima Tarō or Rip Van Winkle. The basic story line of the Japanese legend of Urashima Tarō tells of a lad who is taken to an undersea paradise unaf- fected by the passage of time. He lives there with the princess of that realm for just a few years before returning to his home village, which is now several centuries into the future. He, however, is still young in body and mind—until he opens a box the princess had given him, instructing him never to open it. The iconic story by Washington Irving (1783–1859), actually an Americanization of a German folktale, was first published in 1819.

45. Centaur carrying a goddess. Not yet identified. Various famous sculp- tural treatments of this general theme, such as The Abduction of Hippodamia by Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse (1824–1887)—which may also have been worked on by his then-pupil Rodin—or Nessus and Deianira by Francesco Fanelli (ca. 1590–1653), or works by Giambologna (Giovanni di Bologna; 1529–1608) and by Giambologna’s disciples Adrian de Vries and Pietro Tacca, do not correspond exactly to what Tanizaki’s narrator reports having seen.

46. Wakakusayama. Literally “Freshgrass Mountain,” this set of three rounded hills constitutes a mountain near Nara, known for a yearly ritual burn- ing of its groundcover.

47. Michelangelo’s Bound Slave. More commonly called The Rebellious Slave (which would negate the narrator’s interpretation). An unfinished work begun in 1513, the dynamic contrapposto of this proto-Mannerist figura serpentinata (serpentine figure) shows the influence of the discovery of the Laocoön group in 1506.

48. Apollo of Piombino . . . Apollo of Pompeii . . . Doryphorus. The Apollo of Piombino, a bronze statuette, is itself apparently a Roman forgery or pastiche of the first century BC. The “Apollo of Pompeii, at Naples,” may refer to a bronze at the National Museum in Naples, or to a statue at the city’s Temple of Apollo. The famous Doryphorus (Spear Bearer) by Polykleitos (more commonly spelled “Polyclitus” in English), dating to 450–445 BC, was a bronze known to later ages only through Roman marble copies and through Polykleitos’ own illustrations in his Kanon, a seminal treatise on aesthetic principles regarding proportion, equilibrium, and rhythm in the sculptural representation of the human form.

49. Man with a Broken Nose. Rodin created L’Homme au nez cassé around 1863; a marble of it was carved by Léon Fourquet in 1874–75.

50. Woman’s Head. Probably Rodin’s Tête de jeune femme, a marble dat- ing from around 1865. Other candidates would be his La Pensée (Thought, ca. 1895), which was a sculptural portrait of Camille Claudel, and any of several

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dozen masks of the Japanese actress/dancer Hanako done by Rodin between 1908 and 1911.

51. Weeping Woman. Probably one of two Gates of Hell studies by Rodin, reworked separately under the title La Pleureuse (Crying Girl, ca. 1885), also called in English Head of Grief and Mask of Crying Girl.

52. Agony. Apparently Rodin’s Tête de la douleur (Sorrow or Head of Sor- row, 1881–82, 1903–4, etc.), titled alternatively (in English) Agony or Anxiety. Modified versions of this head, which was cast and exhibited as an independent work of art, were also used in two groupings in Rodin’s Gates of Hell project: as the head of one of Count Ugolino’s sons (see note 53), and as the head of Paolo, from the legend of the doomed love of Paolo and Francesca, as told by Dante. Another version was prepared for a proposed monument to Joan of Arc. The facial expression may also have been inspired by Rodin’s examination of the Lao- coön group during a visit to the Vatican Museums in 1875.

53. Count Ugolino. The gruesome but contested history of Count Ugolino, who was imprisoned with his two sons for treason in 1289, was taken up by Dante in the Inferno and dramatized by the sculptor Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux in Ugolin et ses fils (Ugolino and His Sons, 1861), a piece influenced by the Laocoön and well known to Rodin. Rodin then created an even more celebrated relief- sculpture in his own Ugolin et ses fils (1881–82), later reworked and exhibited as an independent bronze grouping. See also note 52.

54. Victor Hugo. Rodin’s Monument à Victor Hugo (Monument to Victor Hugo, 1890), a bronze featuring Hugo seated, one arm outstretched, on a rock, in exile on the Isle of Guernsey. It was originally intended for the Panthéon but was finally unveiled in the gardens of the Palais Royal in 1909.

55. Satyr and Nymph. An alternative title for a notably erotic work Rodin preferred to call the Minotaure (Minotaur, ca. 1886); it was also exhibited under the titles Faun and Woman, Faun and Nymph, and Jupiter and Taurus.

56. Despair. Although Tanizaki describes this as a statue of a man, the famous Rodin works with this title is a seated female nude clutching her left foot. Rodin executed four or five studies on this theme in 1890, in connection with his Gates of Hell project, and at least one version as late as 1914.

57. Eternal Spring. Rodin’s sculpture, titled L’Eternel Printemps, but some- times referred to as simply Le Printemps (“Spring” or “Springtime,” ca. 1881; scaled down in 1899–1919).

58. Publius Vergilius Maro (70–19 BC), better known in English as Vergil or Virgil. The reference is to Dante’s account, in the Divine Comedy, of being guided by Virgil through Hell and Purgatory.

59. A Jakuchū painting of flowers and fowl. Itō Jakuchū (1716–1800) was a Kyoto-based painter whose studies of the natural world, birds in particular, are

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notable for their stunningly realistic detail and wildly imaginative composition and technique.

60. The painting La Source (The Spring, 1820–56) by Jean Auguste Domi- nic Ingres (1780–1867), shows a standing figure of a wood nymph holding an inverted water urn. Okamura’s realization of this neoclassical, statuesque, painted subject as a tableau vivant in a rock niche may have been inspired by the floral setting in which the actual painting was ensconced by its first owner, Count Duchâtel.

61. The Sleeping Venus (also Dresden Venus, ca. 1510) by Il Giorgione (Gior- gio Barbarelli, ca. 1470–ca. 1510). This was the first reclining nude, as principal subject of a large painting, in European art.

62. Lucas Cranach’s Nymph. The studio of Lucas Cranach (the Elder, 1472– 1553) turned out at least fourteen paintings with such titles as Nymph of the Spring or Nymph Reclining at Fountain in which the nymph is resting on what often appears to be her own crumpled red garment.

63. The Pond of Hell. Not yet identified. Possibly an exaggerated reference to Cocytus, the frozen lake filled with sinners, described in Cantos XXXI–XXXIV of Dante’s Inferno (early fourteenth century) and illustrated most famously by Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510), John Flaxman (1755–1826), and Gustave Doré (1832–1883).

64. Lev Samoylovich Rosenberg (1866–1924), who took the professional name Léon Bakst, was an artist who designed sets, costumes, etc., for many of Sergei (“Serge”) Diaghilev’s prewar Ballets Russes productions.

65. Spirit of the Rose . . . Faun . . . Carnaval. Early productions of the Ballets Russes, with costumes designed by Léon Bakst: Le Spectre de la rose (1911); L’après-midi d’un faune (1912); Carnaval (1910).

66. Schéhérazade. Another Ballets Russes production designed by Léon Bakst. The première, in 1910, co-starred Vaslav Nijinsky as “The Golden Slave,” foremost among the male blackmoors participating in an orgy within the Per- sian Sultan’s harem. Nijinsky’s body paint may actually have been a dark blue.

67. Arhats and bodhisattvas . . . tathagata. Arhats (“enlightened” saints) and bodhisattvas (“compassionate” future buddhas) are said to represent the ideals of (respectively) the Hinayana and Mahayana traditions of Buddhism. A tathagata is an enlightened one who has achieved perfection.

68. Sorrow. A common subject for sculptures of that era. Possibly another reference to Rodin’s Head of Sorrow (Tête de la douleur), or to his Mask of Sorrow (see note 52 above). One Rodin work titled simply Sorrow (La Douleur) is of a woman’s backside. Another famous Sorrow (La Douleur, 1890), by Jean Escoula (1851–1911), shows the influence of both Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and Rodin.

69. A Ki-Bun or a Nara-Mo. Kinokuniya Bunzaemon (1669–1734) was a

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wealthy merchant whose rise to fame and fortune (especially in commodities, including tangerines and lumber), and whose luxurious lifestyle, served even during his lifetime as grist for literary mills of all sorts. Naraya Mozaemon (1655?–1714?) was often compared to Kinokuniya Bunzaemon for his own wealth (made largely in construction) and extravagance.

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Figure 4. “Wonder Island” (Fushigi na shima), by Sakaguchi Kyōhei (ink on paper, 2305 x 3449 mm), September 2009.

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Wonder Island X

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke

This story is a light satire modeled on Gulliver’s Travels and Alice in Wonderland, and in many ways serves as a draft version of Akutagawa’s famous Kappa (1927). Not only is the titular Wonder Island a fantastical spatial double to Kappaland—the strange hill in the former an inversion of the hollow in the latter—its attempt to engage in social and political satire through descriptions of encounters with imaginary and improbable crea- tures precipitated the spatial imagination and narrative strategy of Kappa. Both stories are about utopia/dsytopia that dissolves quickly into night- mares, and “Wonder Island” is more entertaining because the strange creatures and people in the dream are less menacing, and the awakening is relatively timely and gentle.

Perhaps in reaction to the general atmosphere of a leftist and pro- letarian conscious bundan that pigeon-holed his work as “bourgeois,” Akutagawa read a fair amount of socialist works and criticism in 19241 when he wrote “Wonder Island.” His integration of social and political criti- cism in his works inevitably demands an imaginary spatial dimension that departs radically from daily life, as they draw from a range of literary sources as well as myths and legends. Akutagawa’s political consciousness is rooted in a metaphorical space that changes the ways one perceives the material space of reality.

“Wonder Island” was first published in the magazine Zuihitsu, vol.

“Fushigi na shima,” by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (1892–1927), 1924. Translated by Dan O’Neill. This translation is based on Akutagawa Ryūnosuke zenshū (Iwanami shoten, 1996), vol. 10, 205–17.

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2, no. 1 (January 1924) and later collected in the seventh volume of short stories by Akutagawa, titled Kōjakufū (Sparrow Wind) (Shinchōsha, 1924). According to Chinese legends, fish transform into sparrows when the southeasterly wind blows across the ocean in the fifth month of the lunar calendar. The protean nature of things inherent in the title no doubt expresses Akutagawa’s modernist impulse in the collection.

I was sitting idly on the long rattan chair, daydreaming. I could see the ship rail in front of me, so I seemed to be on the deck. Beyond the rail- ing, something like flying fish flickered in the gray waves. But why was I here? Strange, I couldn’t recall at all why I got on this ship. Was I traveling with someone? Was I alone? That, too, remained just as hazy.

Speaking of haziness—perhaps because of the fog descending over the horizon—what lay beyond the waves was entirely indistinct. Still lying on the rattan chair, I wanted to see what was hiding behind the misty murkiness. As I looked, the silhouette of an island sprang into view, as if I had willed it into existence. A mountain rose from the mid- dle of island, bestowing the silhouette a cone-shaped outline. Except for this, I was unable to see anything else clearly. Once glimpsed, I wanted to see it again, but the silhouette remained faint. This time, it seemed, my willpower proved futile.

Just then, I heard someone laughing to my right. “It’s not working, is it?” he laughed. “It seems your willpower has

failed you.” He chuckled again. An old man, who looked to be British, was sitting on the deck chair

to my right. His wrinkled face did not detract from his good looks. His manner of dress, however, was dated, styled after the eighteenth century, like a figure in a Hogarth painting. He had on what might be described as a “cocked hat” with silver trimming, an embroidered waistcoat, and knee breeches. On top of all this, what cascaded down to his shoulders was not his own natural hair, but a curly, hemp-colored hairpiece dusted with powder. I was so astonished I forgot to respond.

“Please use my telescope. You should be able to see more clearly.” With a sinister smile, he handed me an antique telescope. It looked

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like something right out of a museum, something from a distant time and place.

“Oh. Thank you,” I said in English, without thinking. The old man continued to speak nonchalantly in polished Japanese,

pointing to the island’s silhouette. From the cuff of his outstretched sleeve, a stream of lace poured out like froth.

“That island is called Sussanrap. How do you spell it? S-U-S-S-A-N- R-A-P. It’s certainly worth seeing. The ship will be anchored there for five to six days. By all means, you should tour the island. There’s a university and a temple. And market day is a sight to behold as countless numbers of people from all the nearby islands will be gathered there . . .”

As the old man spoke, I looked through the telescope. What appeared in the lens must have been the seaside town of the island. I could see rows of tidy houses, and could even sense the wind swaying the tree branches along the shore. I could see the looming temple tower. There was not a trace of fog or mist. I could see everything with singular clarity. Deeply impressed, I shifted the telescope to peer above the town and then, I almost let out a gasp.

Through the lens, I saw a mountain resembling Fuji soaring into a cloudless sky. This was not in itself a particularly strange sight, but as far as the eye could see, the mountain was lush with vegetables. Cabbages, tomatoes, leeks, onions, daikon radishes, turnips, carrots, burdock roots, pumpkins, winter squash, cucumbers, potatoes, lotus roots, arrowheads, gingers, honeworts. It was absolutely covered in a wide array of vegeta- bles. Covered? Well, no, not exactly. It was a veritable pile, an astonishing pyramid of vegetables.

“What . . . what is all that?” With the telescope still in my hands, I turned to the old man on

my right. He was no longer there. There was nothing but a discarded newspaper on the long rattan chair. Caught by surprise, I must have felt faint, perhaps overwhelmed by a fit of cerebral anemia. Suddenly, I found myself sinking into a strange state of suffocating unconsciousness.

“How was it? Did you take a look around?” The old man sat down next to me with an eerie smile. We must have been in a hotel salon. It was an unnecessarily large

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room arranged with Vienna Secession period furniture. There was no sign of anyone else. The lift in the back of the salon was going up and down, but not a single guest came out of it. The hotel seemed to have fallen on hard times.

I was sitting on a wicker sofa in the salon, smoking a premium Havana cigar. The vine hanging directly above me must have belonged to a potted squash. I could see yellow blossoms under the large leaves covering the pot.

“Yes, I took a quick tour.” I replied. “Would you care for a cigar?” The old man shook his head slightly like a child and took out an

antique snuffbox made of ivory. It, too, looked like something I had once seen on display in a museum. An old man like this would no longer exist in the West, not to mention Japan. Even the cosmopolitan writer Satō Haruo would be enthralled by such a figure if I were to introduce them.

I spoke to the old man. “When I walked a little outside of the town, all I could see were endless fields of vegetables.”

“Yes, most people on Sussanrap Island are farmers, men and women alike.”

“Is there that much demand?” “They sell their crops to the neighboring islands, but of course not

everything gets sold. What remains is set aside in a pile. You must have seen it from the ship—all 20,000 feet of it, didn’t you?”

“They made that out of what was not sold? That pyramid of vegetables?”

At that moment, I could only stare at the old man’s face and blink in disbelief. But he continued to smile to himself, as if amused.

“Yes, those were the leftover vegetables. It took only three years to amass that tremendous pile. If they had collected them from the begin- ning, the entire Pacific Ocean would be filled with their unsold vegeta- bles. Even so, the people of Sussanrap continue to grow their vegetables night and day. They are hard at work even as we speak,” he said, laughing.

The old man laughed so hard that he was almost in pain. He took out a jasmine-scented handkerchief. His was no ordinary laugh, but a sinister laugh that mocked the folly of humankind.

Frowning, I turned to a new topic. “When does the market open?” “It starts up at the beginning of every month, but that is only true

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for the regular markets. The huge special markets take place three times a year, in January, April, and September. January is the busiest month.”

“There must be a lot of excitement before the major ones.” “Without a doubt,” he said. “Everyone is scrambling to harvest their

vegetables in time for the big markets. They’re busy applying phosphate fertilizers and oil drippings, putting plants in greenhouses, running elec- tricity through them. They put everything into their vegetables. In fact, some try so hard to speed up the growing process that they end up killing the vegetables they had cared for so much.”

“Ah speaking of which,” I said, “I saw a thin man today running around the fields with a crazed look in his eyes muttering, ‘I’m not going to make it! I’m not going to make it!’ ”

“That’s no surprise. The big New Year’s market will be upon us soon. Every merchant in the city must be frantic.”

“What do you mean by merchants?” I asked. “The merchants who trade in vegetables. The merchants buy the veg-

etables that the country folk grow in the fields and, in turn, they sell the vegetables to others from the nearby islands. Such is the order of things.”

“I see. He must have been a merchant—that fat man I saw, the one clutching a black bag, grumbling, ‘Oh no! Oh no!’ ” Then I asked, “So, which vegetables sell the best?”

“That is up to God. Who can really say which ones. It’s different from year to year, and no one really knows why it changes.”

“But if the vegetables are of good quality, they should sell, shouldn’t they?”

“Well, customarily, the cripples are the ones who decide whether the vegetables are good or bad . . . ,” he began.

“Why on earth would that decision be left to cripples?” “Well,” he explained, “cripples cannot physically go into the fields,

let alone tend vegetables. Transcending self-interest, they alone can dis- cern the real quality of the vegetables. And they can do so with complete fairness. As the Japanese proverb goes, those who observe can see the game better than those who are playing in it.”

“Ah, he must have been a cripple, then, the bearded blind man I saw caressing a taro root covered in dirt. I heard him proclaim, ‘the color of

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this vegetable is beyond description. It’s like the color of a rose blended with the color of the sky.’ ”

“Yes, I’m sure,” the old man said. “The blind ones have, of course, quite refined sensitivities. They are superb judges. But the ideal judge would be an incomparable cripple who has no sensory faculties whatsoever: a cripple who cannot see, hear, or smell, a cripple without arms or legs, and without teeth or tongue. If such a cripple existed, he would be a peerless arbiter ele- gantiarum.2 For the most part, the cripples that are in high demand today meet the general qualifications to judge vegetables—all except for one drawback: they can still smell. I have heard that some have tried pouring melted rubber into their noses, but they could still smell, however faintly.”

“By the way, what happens to the vegetables judged by a cripple?” I asked.

“Oddly enough, the judgment doesn’t really matter. Even if a cripple says a certain vegetable is bad, it will sell as long as it is popular.”

“Well, then, doesn’t it all depend on merchants’ whims?” I asked. “The merchants only buy vegetables they think will sell, whether or

not the vegetables are deemed good . . .” I interrupted him. “Wait a minute, please. If that’s the case, then we

must question the value of the cripples’ judgments.” “Well, the people who grow the vegetables certainly question the

cripples’ judgments. But when you ask them about the quality of their veg- etables, their answers are always vague. Some farmers would say that the value of a vegetable is determined by nutrition. Others would say that it’s all about taste. If this were all there was to it, everything would be simple . . .”

“Hmmm. So, it gets more complicated?” “Those who champion nutrition and those who champion taste are

further divided into different camps. For example, some believe vegeta- bles that do not have vitamins are not nutritious. Then, others think the fat content makes vegetables nutritious. Of those who champion taste, some think all carrots taste awful, and others think nothing tastes better than daikon radishes . . .”

“All right, you are saying there are two standards—nutrition and taste—and that within these standards, there are variations. Do I have it right?” I asked.

“Yes, but there is still more. Some people consider color as the basis

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for measuring quality. Just as one learns in an introductory course on aesthetics, colors can be grouped into warm or cold. For some people, warm-colored vegetables of red or yellow will always win high marks. Cold-colored vegetables of blue or green will be considered inferior. After all, these people have a motto: ‘When it comes to vegetables, tomatoes are the supreme. Give us tomatoes, or give us death!’ ”

“I see. I do remember a burly farmer stripped down to his undershirt making that kind of speech in front of a pile of his own vegetables,” I said.

“Precisely.” The old man responded. “Those warm-colored vegeta- bles are called ‘Proletarian vegetables.’ ”

“But I could see only cucumbers and melons.” “Well, that’s because he must be color-blind. He is the only one who

thinks his mound is full of red vegetables.” “What about the cold-colored vegetables?” “Well, there are those who argue that if it’s not cold-colored, it’s

not a vegetable. These people might sneer at the others, but they would never give speeches. Deep down, they hate warm-colored vegetables just as much as their counterparts hate the cold-colored ones.”

“Do you mean they are too cowardly to speak up?” I asked. “It’s not that they are reluctant to express themselves. They are

physically incapable. Often, alcohol or syphilis has rotted their tongues.” “Ah. I must have seen one of them, then. I saw, standing beyond the

burly farmer, a clever-looking man in tailored pants, hard at work har- vesting his pumpkins, muttering in disgust, ‘Speeches, again!’ ”

“He must have been picking the unripe green squashes. Those cold- colored ones are called ‘Bourgeoisie vegetables.’ ”

“So, in the end, what happens? What do the vegetable farmers think?” I wondered.

“According to the farmer, a good vegetable is one that resembles whatever he grew himself. A bad vegetable is anything that looks differ- ent. That much is certain.”

“There is a university here, correct? I have heard of university pro- fessors lecturing on the study of vegetables. I would think it would be easy for them to help distinguish the good from the bad,” I said.

“When it comes to the vegetables of Sussanrap Island, the university professors cannot even tell the difference between a pea and a fava bean.

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In their lectures, they only talk about vegetables that existed before the first century.”

“Well then, the vegetables they talk about, where would they have come from?”

“Oh, vegetables from England, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia. I’ve heard that the most popular lectures are about Russian vegetables. You should drop in at the university. The last time I went, a professor wearing pince-nez showed us an old cucumber preserved in alcohol. He spoke eloquently and with passion: ‘Look at the cucumbers of Sussanrap Island. How very green they are. But the great Russian cucumber is not such a pale color. As you can see, it has a deep and complex hue, just like human life itself. Ah, the great Russian cucumber . . .’ I was so moved by the lecture that I lay prostrate in bed for two weeks.”

“Certainly, it is just as you have said. The only conclusion we can draw is that when it comes to a vegetable’s market value, it’s in the hands of the gods,” I remarked.

“Yes, there’s no other way to think about it. Actually, the people on this island believe in the Babburabbuveda.”

“What is this Bubblubba or whatever you call it?” “It’s pronounced Babburabbuveda, but they spell it B-A-B-R-A-B-B-

A-D-A.3 You haven’t seen it? In the middle of the temple?” “Oh, that big statue of a lizard with a pig’s head?” I said. “That’s not a lizard. It is the Chameleon who reigns over the world.

Didn’t you see the large group of people bowing before the statue today? They were chanting prayers to implore that their vegetables sell well. According to recent newspaper reports, department stores in New York only begin preparing for the upcoming season after receiving the divina- tion from the Chameleon. Some have gone so far as to say that the people of the world will one day turn away from Jehovah and Allah, and embrace the Chameleon in worship,” he told me.

“There were many vegetables piled up in front of the altar in the temple too . . .”

“Those are religious offerings of the type of vegetables that sold well last year. They are sacrificed to the Chameleon of Sussanrap Island.”

“But Japan still has not . . .” I began. “Please, excuse me. Someone seems to be calling you,” the old man said.

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I listened intently and it seemed that, indeed, someone was call- ing out for me. It was the muffled voice of my nephew who was suffer- ing from a stuffy nose caused by sinusitis. I stood up reluctantly and extended my hand to the old man.

“Well then, I think I should be going,” I said. “Oh? Please come again for a chat. This is who I am.” After shaking my hand, the old man calmly took out his calling card.

Boldly printed in the middle of the card was his name: Lemuel Gulliver! In spite of myself, I stared open-mouthed at his face. An eternal sardonic smile was etched on the old man’s handsome face, framed by his flaxen- colored hair. At that very moment, his face transformed into the mischie- vous face of my fifteen-year-old nephew.

“Hey, wake up. Your manuscript. They said someone has come for your manuscript.”

He shook me. I seemed to have fallen asleep for about half an hour while I was sitting with my legs under the kotatsu. On the table on top of the heater was a novel I had been reading, Gulliver’s Travels.

“Someone is here for a manuscript? What manuscript?” I asked. “The one for the magazine Zuihitsu,”4 he said. “Zuihitsu?” Without realizing that I was speaking aloud, I muttered to myself, “I

suppose even plants like stitchwort have buyers at the vegetable markets of Sussanrap Island.”

Notes

1. Zadankai Shōwa bungakushi, edited by Inoue Hisashi and Komori Yoichi (Shūeisha, 2003), vol. 1, 166.

2. An arbiter of good taste. Natsume Sōseki used that term with reference to Daisuke in Sorekara, Natsume Sōseki zenshū, vol. 4 (Iwanami shoten, [1956], 1975), 562.

3. Akatagawa’s BABRABBADA is one of those romaji visual gibberish typical of 1920s modernist prose. The name of the Chameleon may also be an oblique allusion to the island of Glubbdubdrib in Gulliver’s Travels, a magic island Gulliver visited before he traveled to Japan.

4. Zuihitsu was a literary magazine published between 1923 and 1924. It was established by Makino Shin’ichi, and Akutagawa had been contributing to the magazine since its first issue, including this story.

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Figure 5. “A Record of Nonchalant” (Nonsharan kiroku) (ink on paper, 2305 x 3449 mm), November 2007.

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211

A Record of Nonchalant X

Satō Haruo

In 1927, in an essay titled “The Terror of the Metropolis” (Tokai no kyōfu), Satō Haruo wrote, “Utopia is a state that many have depicted since days of old. I feel like writing a piece about its inversion.”1 The resulting story is the absurdist and futurological “A Record of Nonchalant,” referring to the eponymous city in which the story was set.

Satō experiments with the construction of a science-fiction-type dys- topian world before the concept and the terms to express it gained accep- tance in modern Japanese literature. Placed in the narrative upheavals of his time, the story responds to proletarian literature, mass fiction, and modernist expressions, all of which were jostling for a place in the 1920s and 1930s literary scene. Capturing a time when narrative modes were undergoing dramatic transformation because of the changed relationship between the production, distribution and consumption of literature, Satō uses the modernist idiom to construct a dystopia in which art becomes a mere commodity.

Sato’s vertical society in the future City of Nonchalant evokes the image of a cylindrical, well-like structure consisting of several hundred levels divided into three broad layers: an Underground (chika) deep in the earth, a Basement (chikai) that appears to be part of the high-rise, and a high-rise structure Aboveground (chijō). Each layer is further subdivided

“Nonsharan kiroku” by Satō Haruo (1892–1964), 1929. Translated by Angela Yiu. This translation is based on “Nonsharan kiroku,” in Modan toshi bungaku 4: Toshi no gensō, edited by Kawamoto Saburo, Suzuki Sadami, and Unno Hiroshi (Tokyo: Hei- bonsha, 1990), 271–306. The story is also collected in Teihon Satō Haruo zenshū, vol. 7 (Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1998), 49–68.

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212 satō haruo

into countless levels, and each level is connected to the social class of its inhabitants. The Underground is inhabited by an underclass of humans subsisting on gas while the world Aboveground is peopled by mindless bourgeois enslaved to fashion. Any attempt to challenge the stratification is punishable by memory erasure, voice muting, or death.

While many of Satō’s works fall into the conventional and perhaps by now outdated category of introspective “pure literature,” “Nonchalant” clearly was a response to mass literature. The 1920s witnessed the devel- opment of Japanese science fiction and detective fiction that sought to appeal to a broad readership. These were promoted and widely distrib- uted by the popular magazines Shin seinen (New Youth, est. 1920) and Kagaku gahō (Scientific Pictorial, est. 1927). These include Shiro Masa- yuki’s Jamaika-shi no jikken (1928, The Experiment of Mr. Jamaica), Hira- bayashi Hatsunosuke’s Jinzō ningen (1928, The Artificial Human Being), and Edogawa Ranpo’s Oshie to tabi suru otoko (1929; trans. The Man Traveling with the Brocade Portrait, 2008).

Maeda Ai’s analysis of the space of confinement in Gokusha no yūtopia (1981; trans. Utopia of the Prisonhouse, 2004) illuminates the reading of urban planning in the city of Nonchalant. He points out the uncanny resem- blance between the blueprints of Meiji prison reform and urban planning. The combined aim and function of confinement, liberation, hygiene, and surveillance in the sketch of a cross-shaped Japanese prison with radiating cells and a central guardhouse by Ohara Shigeya in 1872 (2004, 38) echoes Baron Haussman’s design, under Napoleon III (r. 1852–70), to reconstruct the center of Paris to ease traffic by cutting out winding alleys and creat- ing “the Paris cross” (la croisée de Paris) formed by the north–south and east–west boulevards.2 Furthermore, the urban planning of Shinkyō (now Changchun), capital of the puppet state of Manchuria under imperial Japa- nese rule (1932–45), also followed this design and was known as “Paris of the East.” This design is duplicated with a variation in Satō’s city of Nonchalant, in the upward thrust of the vertiginous city, the pencil-sharp roads resembling a mechanical drawing, and the central plaza from which all boulevards radiate. Fantastical though it appears in the text, the inter- connection between the vision to expand and control in “Nonchalant” and Japan’s imperial urban design is not lost on the reader.

This story was first published in the magazine Kaizo (January 1929).

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A Record of Nonchalant 213

1. Charity Day

The deep end of society—the pit of the world. This kind of language is no longer just an abstract expression. As a material fact it was repro- duced word for word. Three hundred meters underground, this was the residential area (if you can call it that!) in the lowest stratum of human society.

He woke up one morning here several days after arriving. It was strange that one could tell it was morning in such a place. The radio began its incessant blasting, bright and clear. But what need was there for such a thing to survive! One needed air. And sunlight. Edible gas could come later. (About ten centuries ago, a certain writer prophesized the misery of such lives in a work called The Premature Burial,3 even though I have no idea what the story is about. I also heard that in the same period, a certain poet left the dying words “More light!”4 They were most likely the precursors of the literature of the social outcast.) Even though there was no chance for sunlight to penetrate this depth, air and edible gas were purchasable if you inserted the smallest silver coins, one each, into the respective automatic meters. However, he did not even own a copper coin, not to mention any silver ones. He didn’t even know how he could obtain such things. He had yet to fully apprehend the ways of life in this society, having only been thrown in here quite recently. Moreover, no matter how much he tried to call out, he could not emit a single sound (despite the fact that the radio was loud and clear—another ponderous matter). There was no way for him to ask a question of anyone. Writ- ten words were probably useless here, since no doubt very few people could read. Even if they could, there was no light to allow for writing and reading.

He wanted air and light. If he had been brought up here, he might have been able to adjust to the environment, but to him this was all a drastic change. He knew he would die if he were to continue with this way of life beyond thirty hours. Compared to his current state, he now real- ized how happy he had been in that secret world where he used to live. Yet the old man who built that secret, happy world—probably his only friend ever in life—what had happened to him afterward? He was wor-

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214 satō haruo

ried about him. He was listening to the radio because he had nothing else to do, but he was also hoping that perhaps by chance he might be able to hear some news about the old man.

The fact that he had lost his voice was enough to make him resent- ful of the sounds reverberating in this space, but the incessant radio broadcast grated on his nerves. It insisted on talking about every single thing that had happened in the world the previous day. Nobody had pur- posely set up the device to actually listen to it, but the sound penetrated this level like darkness. The radio blared the news of the day, deemed an essential element of social education, while all broadcasts related to entertainment were gradually erased starting at Level 10 Underground so that nothing filtered through to the lowest residential level. The ratio- nale was that the dissemination of social ethics was deemed necessary, but entertainment was considered frivolous. In fact, on the pretext that providing equal enjoyment to all types of people would dilute the appeal, quality, and quantity of entertainment, a tremendous amount of effort was invested into completely preventing entertainment broadcasts from reaching the underclass, and, as a result, the radio broadcast he was lis- tening to contained nothing of interest. For example, the news relayed a story about a certain city representative who had been sued for refus- ing to accept bribes. According to this man, he turned down the bribes because he felt guilty for profiting from a bill that would disadvantage the citizens. The prosecutors argued that his action went against the cus- toms of society and constituted an insult to the special privilege of the representatives. Those sympathetic to the man insisted that the defen- dant receive consultation for his mental state, etc. None of these inter- ested him in the least. The radio broadcast concluded with this kind of report without a word on the penalty of the old man who reared him.

But, at the end of the broadcast, incredible words reached his ears: “Today, in celebration of the first anniversary of XXXX (he had no

idea what that was about), a special charity event will be held. Members of the upper class will sacrifice half a day of their walking privilege and provide access to the automobile cum strolling circle for those of the lower stratum of society who are deprived of air and sunlight. All modes of ground transportation will be shut down temporarily this afternoon

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so that the non-vehicle-possessing classes can use the roads without the least sense of danger . . .”

Upon hearing that, he gave out a groan. It wasn’t only him; cries of joy rose all around him, the shouts of men living in the cubicles (neither houses nor rooms) next to his, completely drowning out the sound of the radio.

He decided to crawl up right away. (He could not stand up. The ceil- ing was only a meter high, and anything beyond that was considered a luxury in these residences.) Here and there he sensed people straighten- ing and crawling up, and before he knew, he found himself pressed among the crushing crowd of people crawling and clamoring their way up.

2. Aboveground

It was a gigantic cylinder thrusting up to the sky. A circle of dazzling brightness shone from above, yet by no means did the light reach the bottom, which remained pitch black. The bright upper region was above- ground. To reach it, one had to climb up an enormous toy-like spiral stairwell in the center that wound round and round upward toward the light. (This was the only passage from the pits of society to aboveground. Beyond a certain level, a three-dimensional track spiraled upward to allow the same vehicles to change from automobiles on the road into ele- vators in buildings and orbiting flying machines in space. But this trans- portational system extended only to the fifteenth level underground, as connecting to anything below that was considered unnecessary. Thus the subterranean underclass had to rely on the spiral stairwell for mobility).

Looking up made his head reel. Yes, in fact, countless people had collapsed on the way up and received “proper treatment” to facilitate traffic. (“Proper treatment” referred to the speedy disposal of corpses; facilities for such purposes, according to historians, developed from the architecture of casinos in the medieval kingdom of Monaco.)5 It was no surprise that people who normally had little access to sunlight, air, edible and drinking gas would faint as they looked up at this dizzying structure while being squeezed on all sides by the crush of the crowd.

Much as he was tempted to do so, he avoided looking up another

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time and concentrated on the people pushing around him as he waited his turn to climb upstairs. Either because they were muted like him or simply seized with excitement, no one from his part of the world uttered a single word. The silence of the crowd was chilling.

His turn came around and he received the guard’s permission to climb up. Two or three steps up he heard the person behind him whisper, “Oh, just a tiny glimmer is enough to make me want to live . . .”

Thinking it rare to hear human words, he looked down and realized the words had indeed come from the person immediately behind him. However, in the next instant, the hapless fellow slipped down the stairs before catching a single ray of light and received his “proper treatment.” That fellow had probably taken a false step out of excitement. He trem- bled lightly, gripped the handle of the stairwell with renewed firmness, and took each step ever so carefully.

At a furious speed, people fell clear through the air, many of them no doubt stripped of their strength as they climbed. Their screams echoed throughout the cylinder. One after another they fell headlong off the outer edge of the stairwell, howling. Thankfully, for some reason they always fell off the outer edge, never inward to block the stairwell. Fallen bodies were a common sight, and there appeared to be an automatic mechanism for the speedy disposal of bodies on the rim of the bottom of the stairwell. (It was as he thought. Moreover, the number of fallen bodies was tallied clearly on an automatic indicator. Indeed, no civilized country could neglect thorough statistics.)

In the beginning his legs trembled whenever he saw a person fall, which put him too in danger of tumbling down, but eventually he grew accustomed to it. Thinking that he had nearly made it, he looked up just to realize that he was not even one-third of the way up. He let out an unconscious sigh, and, wondering if he could make it safely aboveground in this debilitating state of exhaustion, nearly lost his foothold . . .

3. His Early Life

(I suppose you want to know if he made it aboveground, breaking out in greasy sweat on his forehead as he climbed the spiral stairway. Well, he’ll

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have to, don’t you think? Or else the story wouldn’t be going anywhere, would it? As he struggles his way up through this monotonous—but nerve-racking—life-or-death battle, let’s take a look at his past.) At least half of the story of his early life was obscure to him. This wasn’t anything strange at all. The habit of remembering one’s experience out of respect for the individual simply didn’t exist in a place like this. On top of that, he was just too young to remember anything.

One day, he opened his eyes to a glaring bright light. He felt com- plete comfort, more pleasant than he had ever experienced before. Around him lay what appeared to be five or six adults. There was an old man who was up and crouching by his pillow.

What struck him as most pleasant was the flow of a liquid—one that gave him an entirely new sensation—into his mouth. (Not having imbibed anything apart from drinkable gas, he had no idea what water was until that very day.) Every inch of the place was flooded with light. As he talked to the unfamiliar old man, he began to understand bit by bit the reasons behind the sudden transformation. According to the old man, he had attempted suicide on the road—anyone hit by a vehicle was categori- cally considered a suicide—and as a casualty of suicide, he received the “proper treatment” of being transported by the traffic control vehicle to the underground disposal area.

“I was also one of those,” said the old man. “You see, in today’s world, people who walk in areas besides the toll walking roads instead of using transportation are considered voluntary suicides. I suppose there’s a reason for that—on the road where I found you, there was no way you could’ve avoided getting hit by a car, no matter how careful you were. So all those people who risk walking out there are “suicidal cases,” pre- meditated or not. These so-called suicides come here every day, but of course many of them have just passed out the way you did. I always do my darndest to revive them, but they never do make a full recovery because they were all weak and exhausted to begin with. See, I’ve tried to revive all these people here, but they’re all goners.”

As he spoke, the old man carried him to a corner and put a pipe of familiar edible gas into his mouth. Then the old man picked up the others one by one and tossed them down a chute. Every time, he could hear a

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deafening drone from below, as though something was being sucked into a vacuum. Apparently, those who looked asleep were in fact already dead.

This old man was truly amazing in many ways. First, it was impos- sible to know why he was living here all by himself. Furthermore, he seemed to know everything. These are their exchanges:

“Was it completely dark where you came from?” “No, it was kind of dim, with some faint light.” “Ever seen a woman?” “Sir, what’s a ‘woman’?” “If you don’t know what that is, you haven’t seen one. That means

you probably don’t know your mother. What’s a ‘woman’?—well, no woman lives below Level 10 Underground. They’ve got special work to do. And what level are you from? Were you sucking air from a pipe every day?”

“Not every day, only once in a while—it was really delicious.” “I see. If I put two and two together, you’re probably from somewhere

around Level 30 Underground. Save for Levels 1 to 19 Above ground, there’s no place I don’t know. Ha, ha, ha, ha!” For some reason, the old man broke into a big, long laugh. “Well, despite all that, I’ve no doubt you’re actually of decent birth. Birth tax, you know, is astronomical. It’s hard to imagine that anyone living below Basement Level 20 can afford to pay. You see, we live in a world where people below a certain social class are forced to pay a social tax to give up a child. Abandoning a child to Level 30 Underground costs a pretty penny of social tax. If your mother could afford that, you see, it means you’re actually of decent birth . . .”

The old man told him many other things, most of which he could not understand. For several years after that, the old man became a foster parent for him and reared him with love. As he matured, he slowly came to understand what kind of person the old man was: a man who created a world unknown to others, isolated in a hidden corner of the world that sat on the opening to the underground chamber where the corpses of fallen drifters and suicides were dumped. According to the old man him- self, he was someone who dreamed of a new world among dead bodies. The lonely flute music of this exiled Pan whined sadly in a place like this. Essentially, the old man believed that humans possessed a spirit. How- ever, the spirit he believed in could never be found inside a human body,

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no matter how skilled the anatomist. The reason for his exile from all levels of society, then, had to do with his insistence on something that the eye could not see. He was banished from one level to another in this stratified society of several hundred social class levels. In today’s soci- ety, none of the classes could comprehend his behavior, so no one would bother to have anything to do with him. He thought somewhere outside this planet—perhaps on Mars—a society built upon a different kind of civilization would understand his thinking, and his enthusiasm for devis- ing ways to communicate with the distant planet never waned.

“I was originally a historian, and I’ve always been interested in the ancient times of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That was quite an interesting age. Back then, a new kind of alchemy was in vogue. They thought if they turned the world on its head like a solid object, life would be resplendent everywhere, and everything would turn to gold. That made the world unstable. In the end, after a whole lot of turmoil and confusion, they finally turned it upside down and left it that way. As things settled into place, the new world that came about is the one you see today. To me, the interesting thing about the twentieth century was the fact that the highly developed state of the world at the time bears an amazing resem- blance to our world today. I presented my research when I was still young, living in Level 20 Aboveground, and what do you think happened? I was promptly banished from the world of scholars there. Since then, whatever I said, people would turn away as though they didn’t hear me. Eventually, I was forced to abandon even Basement Level 20. In another presentation, after explaining that sunlight and air were vital to human health regard- less of the stratum to which one belonged, I argued that since the ancients enjoyed sunlight and air more or less equally, our contemporary civiliza- tion was truly cursed compared to the past. That was enough to drive me out of Basement Level 21. People shut me out for not following contem- porary common sense and for sticking to my own opinions on everything, like some kind of genius.” The old man laughed out loud. “You’re still a child, so you won’t understand. In time, I’ll share my thoughts.”

In this way, the old man talked about himself on occasion, some- times using the opportunity as a means to educate the boy. At night, the old man worked on building a small machine. Were there sufficient room

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to set up an antenna, it would be able to serve as a radio to communicate with Mars, but, heaving sighs of regret that this secret underground cave provided no room for that, the old man continued to bury himself in his research.

The little haven where the two dwelled had access to sunlight, fresh air, food, and water. Even the temperature was comfortable. The old man never talked about these things. At first the boy was amazed and thank- ful, but gradually came to accept these things as basic human rights.

All of a sudden, one day several people—not the usual corpses but living humans—invaded this secret place. They were the police. Appar- ently, a meter had shown that for over ten years, sunlight, air, edible gas, and precious drinking water had been leaking out somewhere, and an investigation showed that the leak had originally been enough to sustain one person. But for several years now the meter indicated the amount of consumption for exactly two people; after the government examined the area of consumption by tiny grids, the police were able to zoom in and crack down on this place. The police tied up the old man and the boy and locked them up as unprecedented daredevils. (The man whom the boy thought was a wizard turned out to be a thief.) It was clear that the boy was incapable of committing a crime of such sophisticated scien- tific means, so the old man assumed full responsibility and the boy was released immediately. Before he was released, the judge asked the boy if he would prefer memory erasure or voice muting. After contemplating this difficult question for a long while, the boy chose voice muting, since he did not want to forget the dignity and kindness of the old man. The judge gave him a glass of tasteless and colorless liquid. His tongue froze the moment he drank it, and the police banished him to the lowest stra- tum underground.

He had not heard a word since about the old man who had been just like a father to him.

4. Strange Sights Aboveground

The high-rises on both sides of the street, seen in perspective, appeared as though they were about to meet at one point and collapse inward at

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any moment. Just as the two vertical lines reached upward, the two on the ground stretched forward, so the two parallel lines on both sides also threatened to extend all the way until they met in a single point. This hard, cold landscape, drawn in the form of a gigantic, three-dimensional mechanical drawing, was crisscrossed here and there by lines that cre- ated many absurdly irregular shapes big and small, splashed in virulent red and blue. It looked as though extremely powerful lightning bolts of various colors had smashed on to the enormous surfaces of the build- ings and left fragments of colors in the remaining scars. Superimposed on each of these headache-inducing colors were various words written in another lurid shade to achieve a most nauseating effect. The meanings were impossible to guess, let alone put together rationally. In one corner was the strangest arithmetic calculation: “Several thousand yen for just one yen!”6 In another larger patch was a bizarre declaration that he could not fathom. It said:

Purchasing the crudest merchandise in our store and swaggering as

a new rich is a duty that all citizens who value social justice must not

forget! That’s because our products provide the smoothest formula

for a blend of ignorant bliss and non-reflexivity. Oh, the venerable

and great spirit of vulgarity! Ministers and officers and doctors of

philosophy all praise and stand by our exquisite formula.

There wasn’t a single phrase that he didn’t find strange and incomprehensible.

At first, confronting the strange sights the very moment he crawled his way aboveground, he was seized by a physical terror in reaction to the jostle of sharp intersecting lines and jarring colors. But after reading the strange writing on the wall, he was overcome by the anxiety of hav- ing gone mad. Hoping to find solace in looking up at the sky, he realized the narrow slit of sky in between the high-rises had lost its color in the sickening gaudiness of the buildings and gave off just a muted glow. Hav- ing bent backward to strain his gaze overhead, he felt a wave of dizziness come over him and nearly collapsed.

He found himself mixed in with the crowd, moving along in an

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unknown direction. The street resembled a deep ditch, and the crowd drifted at the bottom like mud and debris in the receding tide. They tried desperately to run to a place where they could bask in the sunlight, which they heard was beneficial to health, but were so exhausted that all they could do was drag their feet. The bodies of those who died on the way remained trapped in the crowd, swept along by those barely alive. No longer able to tell one thing from another, our protagonist drifted with the crowd with closed eyes and a drooping head to avoid the assault from the irrational and incomprehensible messages on the walls. He had entirely forgotten where he was going, and had no idea of how long he would be walking. He thought he would simply drift along the street until he died.

Suddenly, startled by the shouts of the crowd, he opened his eyes. In front of him was a huge circle with an extraordinary color in the center. It must have been where the sun hit the surface directly. For some inex- plicable reason he felt a pang of hunger. All paths seemed to meet at one point in the center of the circle like spokes on a wheel, and dark crowds gushed from the deep, narrow trenches between the high-rises toward the sunlit circle. (Were they all seized with hunger?)

In an instant, the circle was filled with people. His body was drenched in sunlight. The midday sun was high in the

sky. He scooped a handful of sunlight and tasted it. It was delicious. His whole body warmed from the inside, making him feel tipsy. Here, too, many people collapsed and died, either blinded by the sun or poisoned by a heretofore unknown pleasure. Yet in their intoxication, they died singing praise to the sun.

A beetle-like airplane appeared overhead and the crowd buzzed with excitement. The plane swooped low and looked as though it was going to land, but the members of the crowd would not budge from their hard- won spot, despite their anxiety. Instead of landing, the plane made a slow pass above the crowd, scattering countless pieces of paper, and disap- peared once again into the distance. He picked up a sheet that caught the sunlight as it flitted down his shoulder. The heading said,

ARE YOU REALLY HAPPY? It looked like a propaganda flyer.

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5. The Good News of Salvation

It was no doubt the most breathtaking flyer that had ever met his eyes. First, it argued forcefully for the benefits of a happy botanical life.

The line of argument went as follows: first, plants were a species that never had to worry about any lack of air, sunshine, or other nutrients. Second, the sacred species of plants had abandoned this earth two or three centuries ago (they had already shown signs of doing so several hundred years ago), and there was no longer any trace of them. Finally, there were only three major differences that separated botanical life from human life. The first was the form, the second was the faculty of speech, and the third was the potential for volitional locomotion; there was noth- ing beyond that. In terms of life span, botanical life was, in principle, infi- nite, so it was impossible for human life to measure up to that. As for the superior form of plants, most ancient literature testified to that. Thus the only remaining problems were the faculty of speech and the free will for physical exercise. The flyer concluded the first part with the words, “On that point we invite your careful reflection.”

It was comical to think that the writer of this flyer was imagining that the social outcasts of the pit of society would enjoy physical exercise out of their free will in cubicles that measured one meter high, two-thirds of a meter wide, and one and a half meters long.

Still, as he wondered about the need to convince people of the hap- piness of botanical life by comparing plants with humans, he noticed that the flyer took an abrupt turn in persuasion:

An abundance of sunlight, fresh air, and an endless bounty of nutri-

ents! Throw in infinite life! Make the choice today—transform into

botanical life and enjoy true happiness! By turning into a plant, you

can both offset the effects of the human population explosion and

also convert the gaseous matter you exhale into something essential

to human respiration . . .

There were details at the end of the flyer explaining that a certain medical doctor had invented a simple and absolutely painless operational

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procedure to transform humans into plants. The government had appar- ently earmarked this project as the first priority of this year’s charity day and ordered the doctor to transform volunteers into botanical life. The final item of the detailed explanation said, “Moreover, many noble ladies will be at the site of the operation, and the recipients of the operations will have the honor of being a spectacle for our gracious guests.”

When the crowd finally finished reading the flyer, they were all mur- muring and whispering to one another. There were sighs of wonder. (It was hard to tell which part particularly touched them.) He read the flyer again and again. Then, for some reason, he decided to volunteer to turn into a plant. It was not so much that he wanted to become a plant—he simply didn’t want to die. He knew that if he remained in his human form, he would die within the next ten hours or so. Could dead men exer- cise, anyway? Hadn’t he already lost that ability completely, the way he had lost speech?

Others around him said to one another, “This botanical life doesn’t sound that bad! No idea if I’ll be happy like it says here, but it can’t be worse than the miserable lot we’ve got ourselves now, so it can’t go wrong.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Four o’clock. That was the time when those who did not want to

turn into plants had to leave. Most people, however, did not budge. About a hundred officers came to organize the people and loaded them onto several huge vehicles. After cruising along the newly lit streets for a while, the vehicle rose into space and started gliding away at full speed. An officer gave the following warning to the people:

Pay attention to these words as we transport you to the lab. The

success rate of this experiment is 90 percent, so one cannot say it

is perfect. From time to time, the subject turns into a life form that

straddles the line between animal and plant life. But it can’t be worse

than your current miserable and meaningless state of being, so rest

assured that you will certainly attain happiness as the flyer pro-

claims. One aspect of the operation that is yet to be perfected is that

the same procedure may not always produce the same form of target

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plant life. This seems to be closely connected with the nature of the

subjects under operation. That’s something you should know. If pos-

sible, we, too, want to turn you into the kind of plant that you wish

to become. To make that easier, here’s a card for each of you. None of

you has the luxury of a name, so keep in mind that the number on the

card is your identification in the lab. Fill out all the items on the card.

He was No. 1928.

6. Turning into a Plant, At Last!

They were led up and down the bowels of the large building and finally packed into a dark, cramped room. His mind began to grow faint. (He was already under the influence of drugs in preparation for the transfor- mative procedure.)

For some reason the first one to be summoned was, in fact, No. 1928, and he was led outside into the light. He stood there, surrounded by rows of seats arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, with each row ris- ing in incremental steps. It was filled with people. (The place resembled the Colosseum.) As he was being led in, a stately looking man was stand- ing on a podium making a speech: “. . . Not only is this kind of operation greatly beneficial to our societal policy, it also appeals to our taste for things strange and magical. Thus we have invited you all to this spectacle, and will auction the botanical products that are good enough to be kept as pets. Thank you for your kind patronage!”

The crowd seemed to be cheering, but it all sounded very remote to him. When the man descended from the podium, another man appeared. This second man began to introduce No. 1928, who was about to undergo the operation, to the audience.

“You can read for yourself what was written on the card!” the speaker said, turning around. The handwriting on the card, enlarged and clear, floated in space in the midday brightness. The man continued, “The data on the card contained the most outstanding characteristics of all the applicants, so we have chosen him as our first patient for the pro- cedure. I suppose it is hard for all of you to comprehend what was written

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in the application. First of all, No. 1928, like all social outcasts, has no knowledge whatsoever of his name and age, so we estimated him to be about fifteen years old. Under the item ‘What is your wish?’ were written the most fascinating, inscrutable words: ‘To be loved.’ We in fact could not fully comprehend this statement, and, according to linguists, these words were in use into the twentieth century and have since become obsolete. It remains a puzzle as to why the boy knew such words, but it is a well-known fact that the underclass has access to a shockingly vulgar form of language that lies far beyond the reaches of our imagination. In any case, the study of vulgar tongues revived from dead languages is out- side the realm of our expertise. Apparently, the original meaning of the word ‘love’ was confined to the field of psychology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after which it became a medical issue. Simply put, it refers to a pathological numbness that accompanies a weakness of the heart, and patients apparently tend to experience a state of intoxication which, in certain cases—when the effect is particularly violent—can be life threatening. This contagious disease was extremely prevalent in the earlier stages of human society, and there were even artificial means to bring about the symptoms of this disease. I am sure all of you, like me, are indeed curious about what kind of plant life someone with a wish like that would turn into. Under the item ‘What is your most pleasur- able experience?’ was the answer, ‘Dreaming of being held by something resembling a warm, sweet-smelling, and fair human being.’ This phrase also escapes our analytical powers, but as the chances for the underclass to actually behold a woman are at best slim to none, we surmise that the human form implies a woman, and that this boy’s response most likely refers to a dream of being held by the opposite sex.”

Here and there the women leaked sweet giggles. Hearing the sweet sounds momentarily kindled the flame of human feeling in No. 1928. He looked around in the direction of the laughter. The audience was filled with human forms that until now he had neither noticed nor seen. They belonged to the type that he occasionally saw in his dreams—women. He lowered his eyes in embarrassment, while the surgeon paid no heed and began to strip him. After being given an injection in his lower back, he was led to an even higher platform. In the audience, the women pointed

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their opera glasses at him. He lowered his head even further. The round platform began to spin. Just as he felt it starting to accelerate, it came to a sudden stop. He was led down the platform again. The moment he thought his feet touched the ground, he felt as though he were sucked into the earth, his drooping head sinking right into his chest.

“What if this is all some sort of con-game and I’ve ended up dead?” Yet in the next instant he sensed the cool fresh air and breathed

deeply and happily. The sense of shame and suffering had dissipated entirely. His arms had turned stiff and green, and his fingers were gradu- ally becoming flat and transforming into flapping sheaths. It was not just his arms—his entire body had turned green, and the metamorphosis that had occurred in his fingers occurred in other parts of his body, as well. In fact, over half of his body appeared to be pulled into the ground as he shrank to nearly one-third of his original height. Most terrifying of all, his vanishing head was no mere sensation but a fact. He had no idea where his powers of sight came from, but he could see his surroundings many times more clearly than before. “Doctor, it’s a smashing success!” said the assistant, to which the doctor nodded in silence. Hearing that calmed him. Another doctor edged over to his side, and after examin- ing him for a while, determined that he had become “a botanical form belonging to the rose family.” He had no knowledge of what the “rose family” was, but he sensed happiness welling up inside him.

Meanwhile, the second patient to undergo the operation appeared. He was summoned as an extra number. The moment the rose saw the extra, he called out at the top of his voice. As it turned out, the extra was none other than the old man who had reared him in the under- ground world. His voice was only audible to himself, so no one paid him any attention. Realizing that humans didn’t comprehend the language of plants, he gave up screaming and simply allowed the waves of emo- tion to reverberate silently inside. The old man had been forced to trans- form into a plant in lieu of a death sentence. For that reason, he was not allowed to narrate his wish, and was given a special injection that differed from the ordinary intravenous medicine. He was to be trans- formed into the most pathetic state of botanical life—the lowliest and most miniscule moss tucked away in the most unwholesome habitat, one

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without any chance of being exposed to the sun. That would be the bot- tom rung in the botanical world—such was the declaration. The poor old man raised no objection and showed no sign of sadness or despair, but simply let the surgeon do as he pleased. He was stripped, placed on the revolving platform and lowered to the ground. At that moment, the rose was overcome with a violent wave of anxiety. He sensed the ground, which held the lower half of his body, begin to swell in undulating waves. The rose was not the only one surprised; the spectators arose at once in fits of screaming and tears, and the surgeon abandoned his authoritative front and sat there dumbfounded. Amidst all the commotion, a strange creature spread its roots as it shook the earth and raised its arms into the sky. From those arms and the rest of its body branched new arms; in an instant several thousand arms sprang forth, with flames of drip- ping green burning from its numerous fingers as they continued to reach astounding heights. The gigantic monster summoned wind that rustled the fresh leaves, casting reverberations far and wide. The sound of the leaves could only be interpreted as a great laughter in plant language. (It had been a long time since the rose heard such hearty laughter from his foster father, and hearing it quelled his fears.)

What happened after this great incident remains unknown, as the rose was removed to a different place shortly thereafter.

7. The Window of Happiness

The rose instinctively recognized her to be a woman of the upper middle class. He sensed a surge of gladness as she wrapped her arms around the flowerpot, and his field of vision was completely obscured as she lifted him into her arms. (Though he couldn’t see, he could feel everything.) He glided, flew, and rose with her movements. It all felt like a dream, which pleased him, except for the unpleasant high and low pitched sounds that the vehicle incessantly produced. It was not until he became a plant that he realized that the human world was inundated with noise. (As a mat- ter of fact, if one couldn’t appreciate the sound of scraping and grinding, then there was no way of understanding the music of this age. Nothing is considered more profound than the perverse pleasure of setting one’s

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teeth on edge! The rose just had no idea that his vehicle was in fact play- ing music.)

The motion came to a stop. Placed on a table and stripped of his cover, the rose was exposed to the glaring light. He flushed a crimson hue as he remembered the way the ladies turned their opera glasses on him when he was stripped for the operation to transform him into a rose. The young woman who had carried him to this place was accompanied by a man. They both looked down at him as they talked.

“What a smart purchase—how did the auction go?” “You can’t really call that an auction—I was the only buyer.” “It was that unpopular? Well, then it won’t be much publicity for us.” “Don’t worry about that—everyone will find this oddball interest-

ing. It’s just that it’s pretty useless, so no one was interested in buying. And it’s rather extravagant to care for—I guess it requires at least thirty minutes of sunshine every day.”

This conversation hurt the rose’s pride. That night, the rose was placed outside the window. He had no idea

how many floors he was aboveground, but looking down made him trem- ble. The window was connected to the young woman’s living room. In the depth of the night, an incredibly beautiful young man came to visit her. It was amazing—he simply crept in from seemingly nowhere. They made no attempt to lower their voices as they talked and engaged in vari- ous activities. The rose was too abashed to watch them directly, so it’s nearly impossible for me to convey to others what he saw. The young man stayed for about an hour and vanished without a trace. The high and low pitched creaking sounds leaked in, and the night appeared brighter than broad daylight. There was a huge band of light in the sky, a searchlight, it seemed, with the words “Nonchalant City” written on it. (Could that be the destination of the spatial railroad? The words blinked in alternating red and green.) The rose could not sleep at all because of the glare and the noise. Just as the noise started to subside and the glare dim, lulling him to rare, precious sleep, the rose realized it was daybreak and had no choice but to wake up as the morning sun shone bright. Sunlight it was, but it did not reach him directly. It was apparently reflected on the window through the manipulation of several mirrors. Still, it was useful in nurturing his

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red bud. But that lasted no more than thirty minutes. (The rose didn’t realize until much later that the sunlight was purchased specifically for him.) Sitting on the now sunless windowsill, he thought about the past and the transformations in his situation. They did say he would serve as some form of advertisement, but a vague anxiety crept over him as he wondered what kind of shop it could be. Not being able to sleep at night was another bother. However, wasn’t he many times more fortunate now than when he was human? Right. As he thought about his lot, he couldn’t help but feel his current dissatisfaction was a waste of energy. The rose was unaware that in the span of just one night, he had been baptized into the surroundings of this social class and had begun to expect more.

The rose was carried from the window and placed inside a huge glass case. Around him many flowers were severed at the neck and placed hap- hazardly in a dish. He reasoned that he must be in the show window of a flower shop. The window proclaimed, “No one can live on gas alone,” legible only as mirror writing from inside. Passersby stood in front of the shop window and pointed at him with curiosity. They seemed to be say- ing something, but he couldn’t hear anything through the glass barrier. He was pleased that people stopped to look at him, and the shop owner appeared to be even gladder. Overcome by excessive boredom, he started to watch those who stopped to watch him. It was the first time for him to look closely at people belonging to this social class. They resembled one another so closely that it was hard to tell them apart. As far as outfits were concerned, the only difference was between men and women, as those of the same sex wore an identical style that looked like some kind of uni- form. However, in a matter of two or three days, he realized his observa- tions had been mistaken. (He suddenly remembered something that the old man told him when they were living in a separate realm unknown to the underground inhabitants.) Although it was true that everyone wore the same outfits, the style changed uniformly each day according to the latest fashion, and the evening radio news announced the fashion for the following day. Day-old fashion would be downgraded to the fashion one level below. People would sell clothes that they had used for only one day to the social level below them, and change into new clothes—well, strictly speaking, day-old used clothes—from the level above. The government

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charged a fashion tax, and the Ministry of Fashion had a monopoly on the used-clothing industry. They claimed that this plan was drawn up with the economy in mind, so that the lower the social class, the cheaper the price of clothing. However, the fact was that the government-monopo- lized used-clothing stores drew in huge revenues every day. People were dominated by fashion. Those who did not follow fashion, or those consid- ered incapable of keeping up with it, were exiled from society for violating social norms. Thus, cursed by this system of fashion, many people were downgraded along with the clothes they wore to a lower level, a tragedy that repeated itself countless times each day.

Speaking of tragedy, it appeared that the shop with the rose in the window was not a flower shop but a confectionery. There was no short- age of customers. Strangely, the woman shopkeeper always asked her customers a question as soon as they stepped into the shop: “Would you like a tragedy or a comedy?” Depending on what the customers ordered, she would produce the respective boxes for them to select. The rose had no idea what it was all about, but that was not the only thing that con- founded him. He could not tell, no matter how he strived to understand, how the two women and one man in the shop were related. In the end, he decided the man was probably the owner and master of the house, one of the women was his daughter, and the other one was a sales lady. Another curiosity was a man who unfailingly came to visit the daughter once a week at night. His visits seemed to be furtive, but it also seemed that he was openly her husband. (The rose was not aware of the fact that the man was in fact an electronic illusion created through a combination of images, sounds, and tactile sensations, a device recently promoted by the government as a reliable means of population control.) The rose had an aversion to married women, so he preferred the saleslady to the daugh- ter. He was drawn to her consideration in taking him out to the window or placing him in the showcase. He was, after all, a lonesome fellow.

8. The Apex of Art

The two women of the house sat facing a desk next to the window and peered into a book. “How lovely!” “Oh, isn’t that wonderful!” they

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exclaimed incessantly as they gazed at the material. The rose intuitively thought they were reading a book of poetry and was pleased and relieved that art existed even in this altogether incomprehensible society. Steal- ing a glance at the little book with horizontal writing, he found to his sur- prise that it was a volume consisting of collected patterns of fake paper money. Yet after the women perused it lovingly and closed the book, he noticed the title on the cover: Collected Works of Modern Literary Art, Vol. 8. With the book sitting between them, they engaged in a kind of literary debate that made their cheeks flushed and their eyes sparkle. It seemed that one favored Realism, and the other Romanticism. One claimed that modest hundred-yen bills suggested a greater feeling of immediacy, while the other argued in favor of larger bills in the order of ten-thousand yen for their ability to enhance one’s imagination and strengthen one’s vital- ity. To that, the disciple of Realism said she was not against works fea- turing bills of large amounts, but she thought it would appear vacuous if artists who handled large bills could not convey the solemn authority associated with the concept of a million yen.

Literary art containing printed words that expressed the themes of modern life—“how to make money,” “if I were a millionaire”—had already been rendered obsolete over a century ago. Today, all journals, books, or one-yen collected works treated the same themes by a more effective and direct means, which was nearly always in the form of a col- lection of the patterns of fake paper money. (Incidentally, the book that the two women were perusing was one of those, and the ad “Several Mil- lion Yen for One Yen” referred also to books featuring patterns of fake money.) Works that disturbed people with their excessive vividness were deemed injurious to public morals and consequently banned. People would gaze dreamily at these patterns and sense deeply a life of richness and fulfillment. They would also acquire a sense of purpose and meaning. Seduced by various delusions, they would feel bright and positive about life. People would call this form of expression the art of the spirit, as dis- tinguished from the art of the senses.

Before long the rose learned that the shop was neither a flower shop nor a confectionery but a salon for artists of the Kankan Sensation School of Art.7 Further, the owner was no doubt a rather authoritative

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figure in the art world, a man who devoted himself to securing a place for the art of the senses when it was temporarily forced out by the art of the spirit. The rose heard the oft-repeated lecture that he gave to junior artists who visited his salon:

“No one these days is going to go for just colors and smell, no matter how strong you try to make them. Only in the past were people satisfied with such things. This rose here, for example (the rose felt insulted to be pointed at)—it’s comical that the ancients would derive pleasure from looking at a stupid thing like that. Yet to go from a flower like that to the idea of consuming it was, I admit, a stroke of genius. It’s true that humans cannot satisfy the sense of taste on gas alone. That’s because deep down inside us, we have a strong desire to chew on something solid. To hit on this point and to devise a means to associate taste with the colors and smell of a solid was undeniably a great step forward. However, art products that relied on the suggestions of colors and smell, no dif- ferent from what they called ‘sweets’ in ancient times, could only satisfy the tastes of women and children and failed to meet the needs of the general public. Indeed, who could possibly continue to derive pleasure from such things! As a result, the general art trends made an unfortunate transition toward the art of the spirit, embracing the notion that the ungraspable and intangible contained a greater profundity. That school of art did make some progressive steps for a while. It was able to capture rather skillfully the vogue of the time by exposing the viewers directly to the emotions connected with paper money and letting them imagine its uses. You can’t beat that kind of simplicity and directness.

“But our job in contemporary art, as you have all so kindly acknowl- edged, is to create strong physical stimulants in the form of edible solids. Once someone bites into our products, there’s no stopping the laugh- ter or the tears. If we push things to the limit, we can even arouse the excruciating sensation of a near-death experience. But while we evoke the rare sensation of dying, we also ensure that one doesn’t really have to worry about actually dying, since the whole thing is meant to be no more than an artistic effect. It’s no exaggeration to say that thanks to me, people can experience numerous physical sensations at will depend- ing on what they feel like at a given moment. A common vulgar practice

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is to apply vague stimulation to the sympathetic nerve and the vagus nerve. What we do, instead, is to distill the element of literature into an art form that embodies colors, forms, and the sense of taste. Our art is different from the facile genre of paper money design. Ours is an integra- tion of all kinds of traditional art. In fact, I have always found it strange that until now artists of every kind have consistently rejected the idea of incorporating pharmacology into art. After all, the merits of alcohol in deriving artistic inspiration have been well documented since ancient times, and the methodical use of opium and cocaine for artistic purposes was well known in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, despite the fact that it was an age swaddled in superstition. You might even call it an age of enlightenment for pharmacology, even though people back then were blind to it. That’s because people were trapped under the foolish misconception that art was something metaphysical. Let me assign you a task—are you ready?—find a way to make people like us experience, if only briefly, all the strange, bizarre sensations that the underclass can feel, just as though we have turned into one of their lot. If we give the elite of society a taste of this wild and curious wish, it’ll be a smash hit, no doubt about it!”

The rose could not understand anything that he eavesdropped on, but he felt strangely angry—his inability to comprehend what he saw and heard chiseled away at his initial sense of contentment. But he had become accustomed to the noise and glare and was able to sleep well. The sun was growing warmer by the day. His only happiness was to doze off in the sunlight. But in his dream, his companion of the same species, ever so lush, started talking to him.

“Do you know what the moon is?” “Do you know what stars are?” “Do you know what a rainbow is?” “Do you know birds—nightingales?” “Do you know the fragrance of the dark earth?” “The murmuring of the spring?” “The night dew?” “The kiss of a young girl?” He couldn’t answer a single question. When he asked who the inter-

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locutor was, the response was, “I am your ancestor. A rose from the nine- teenth century.” The ancestor began to tell him about the lives of flowers in those days. The rose shuddered when he woke from the dream. The sun was down, and he was moved back to the glass case. The air inside was oppressively dull. People disliked the delightful summer heat and blended a number of liters of cool air from the Alpine peaks. Thinking of his ancestor’s words in his dream, he looked around and realized he was a prisoner. The same dream came to him daily in those thirty minutes that he was placed in the sun, as though to deride the reality that greeted him after his awakening. His flowers all wilted after an incomplete attempt at blooming. Ah, the sick rose!

9. A New Terror

One day, a group of women scrambled into the shop in great excitement. Apologizing profusely for being out of stock, the owner and the salesladies sent the many enthusiastic customers away. Then they hastily shuttered the shop and hung out a sign that said “Closed Today.” The shopkeepers, particularly the owner, were cast into a state of anxiety and left to mope. The rose could not grasp the meaning of this strange scene, but he tried to patch together a picture from what he heard. Apparently a mysterious and frightening disease had broken out in the city, and young women were dying instantaneously for unidentifiable reasons. Within half a day, some nine hundred people had already perished. As this bizarre rumor spread, many wanted to have a firsthand taste of this strong and new terror as soon as possible, which explained the rush of these clamorous women to the artist’s shop for a simulant. However, much as the owner of the shop was known to be a producer of physical sensations, he did not have the means to realistically simulate this new and bizarre sensation. He closed the shop to prevent a plunge in his reputation, but, considering the fact that this strange disease had just begun to spread, the customers were certainly making unreasonable demands.

Night fell, and the rose was sleeping outside the window. He sud- denly heard the sound of someone sighing nearby, and shortly thereafter words in a plant language, mixed with a human accent:

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“We’ve been duped.” The rose looked around and couldn’t see anything. “Who is it that’s talking to me?” A voice answered from the wall nearby. “Who are you?” “I belong to the rose family.” “Then you’re one of those who were transformed the other day.” “That’s right.” “Well, are you happy?” The rose was about to say no when he decided to hold back. “Well, what about you?” “You go first.” “Me? I’m not unhappy.” The rose sounded ambivalent. He figured

the other party was one of those transformed fellows, and he didn’t want to confess his own unhappiness.

“Well, you can’t say we’re unhappy. There’s air and sunlight. And even though they said plants can’t talk, I can express myself pretty well. I can even fly.”

“You can fly? You’re a plant and you can fly?” “Sure,” the voice spit the words in bitterness. “I’m malformed.” “Where on earth are you?” “I’m stuck to the wall.” The rose for the first time recalled the crowd in the circle and had a

chance to find out what happened to the other people that day. Appar- ently, only the rose and the oak tree—his foster father who was meant to be executed—were transformed into real plants. The others were turned into something resembling fleshy leaves. Until yesterday, they had been surviving as parasites on the oak tree.

“What happened to the oak tree? He was like a father to me.” “Too bad for him—he was chopped down from the root.” “Why?” The rose cried out in sorrow and disbelief. “I have no idea. He was always complaining that the air aboveground

was bad—the earth was paved hard and cold, and the lights at night were so bright that he couldn’t see the stars. Still, he would laugh from time to time when he heard voices from the stars. But then people came and

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started digging out the earth around his roots. When they realized they couldn’t dig him out, they started cutting him down at the roots. You can do whatever you want to me, he said—I will continue to sprout new shoots. He kept on saying that, but they cut him down. It was a horrible electric saw. We’re the ones who got the worst of it. Many of us were sur- viving on the nutrients he sucked up from the ground. Oh, what unbear- able thirst! I’ve decided to suck human blood. I’m parched! I want to feel the skin of those ‘noble ladies’ I saw when I got transformed. Hee! Hee! Hee! Hee!”

His hideous laughter sounded human-like. The night deepened, and the rose could not sleep. He thought inces-

santly about the man who had turned into a great oak tree—the old man in the underground cave whom he had been unable to recall for such a long time. He was overwhelmed by loneliness at the realization that he was no more than a plant in this world. Day broke, bringing the morning sun. Just then, a round leaf about two and half centimeters in diameter fluttered to where he was and attached itself to the side of his flower plot.

“Let me rest here for a moment!” This freakish fragment of a plant had suction cups that latched on

to the pot. The rose was half asleep and dreamed his usual dream in the sun—a flood of sunlight, youth, a gentle breeze, nightingales singing, the moon and stars and sun appearing together in the sky, a rainbow crisscrossed with fluttering butterflies, a murmuring fountain where the thirsty could drink, a young girl (the sales girl in the shop) kissing him in the form of a rose in full bloom. Suddenly the dream vanished. As the sun ducked behind the clouds, the woman came by his window to place him in the jail of a glass display case, just as she did every day. The rose was fully awake by now. He remembered the incredible blood-sucking leaf from last night and tried in haste to recall words in the human lan- guage to warn her of the danger, but it was already too late. Caught by surprise, she dropped to the floor. Her right nipple, completely exposed according to the fashion of that day, was entirely gouged out, and her whole body slowly turned purple. The potted rose, flung skyward as the woman collapsed in shock, tumbled out of the window. As he fell with the force of the howling wind, screaming, he realized in a flash that there

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was no point in subsisting in such a world, and, in that instant, he lost his senses . . .

Notes

1. Satō Haruo, Teihon Satō Haruo zenshū, vol. 19, 239–240. 2. Maeda, Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity, edited by James

Fujii (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), 41. 3. This refers to Edgar Allen Poe’s (1809–1849) “The Premature Burial”

(1844). Since “A Record of Nonchalant” is supposed to take place ten centuries after Poe’s story, the time of Satō’s futuristic society is calculated to be in the twenty-ninth century.

4. The reference to “More light!” is likely a reference to the purported last words of German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who is said to have uttered “More light” (Mehr Licht) on his deathbed, abbreviated version of “Open the second shutter, so that more light can come in.” This may be more legend than truth, but it is likely the source for Satō’s reference. See “Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von,” in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 473. I am indebted to the anonymous ref- eree for this reference.

5. Monaco is known for its elaborately constructed casinos. Satō is most likely referring to the Monte Carlo Casino, which includes a gambling facility, a theater, and an opera and ballet house. It was built by the architect Charles Gar- nier, and its construction began in 1858. The reference to “medieval Monaco” is relative to the time of the future City of Nonchalant.

6. This most likely is a satirical reference to the enpon (one-yen book). In 1926, the publisher Kaizōsha began selling Gendai Nihonbungaku zenshū (The Complete Works of Modern Japanese Literature) at one yen per volume, and other publishers followed suit with multivolume collected works, generating the enpon boom in early Shōwa.

7. Kankan-ha. Satō uses the characters kan 官 (sensual, erotic) and kan 感 (feeling) for the combination of the “Kankan school.” In Jisen Satō Haruo zenshū, vol. 4 (1957), it was changed to Kankaku-ha 官覚派, and in Satō Haruo zenshū, vol. 7 (1968) it was changed to Kankaku-ha 感覚派. In Teihon Satō Haruo zenshū, vol. 7 (1998) it was printed as Kankan-ha 官感派. Satō is most likely poking fun at the Shinkankaku-ha (School of New Sensation) founded in 1924 by writers asso- ciated with the magazine Bungei jidai, including Kawabata Yasunari, Yokomitsu Riichi, and Inagaki Taruho. The Shinkankaku-ha rejects realism in orthodox novels and emphasizes the subjective perception of feelings, sensations, and the

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sense of modernity in writing. William Tyler in Modanizumu: Modernist Fiction in Japan 1913–1938 quoted Ryūtanji Yū’s coining of the term atarashii kankan— a “new sense-sense” or “new feel-feel”—in “Modanizumu bungaku-ron” (1930, “On Modanizumu in Literature”). Tyler suggested that the term involved play on the French word cancan (Modanizumu, 6). It is likely that Ryūtanji was aware of Satō’s invention of the Kankan-ha in this story.

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240

Hell in a Bottle X Yumeno Kyūsaku

In the Hakata area in Kyūshū, yumeno kyūsaku refers to a aimless dreamer in the local dialect, a term that Sugiyama Taidō adopted as his pen name when his Nationalist father Shigemaru used that to deride his writing.1 He was born in Fukuoka prefecture in Kyūshū and attended Keiō University for two years (1911–13), after which he worked as a farmer, a monk, and a reporter for the Kyūshū Nippō newspaper. In 1926, he debuted as a writer with the submission “Ayakashi no tsuzumi” (1926, The Eerie Hand Drum) to the magazine Shin seinen (New Youth), a story that won the second prize in the fiction competition.

Yumeno Kyūsaku is known for his science fiction, mystery, and fan- tasy. His representative work is Dogura magura (1935), a magnum opus that took him ten years to write and features an amnesiac experiencing “a sort of hell inside the brain” (nōzui no jigoku)2 in a mental hospital where he becomes implicated in a series of past crimes that may or may not have anything to do with him. The first-person sustained soliloquy and the use of the epistolary form are trademarks of Yumeno’s style, both of which he uses with sophistication in “Hell in a Bottle.” In addition to that, Yumeno is fascinated with enclosed and contained space: a solitary cell in an insane asylum, a desert island, a letter inscribed with abject desire and

“Binzume no jigoku,” by Yumeno Kyūsaku (1889–1936), 1928. Translated by Angela Yiu. This translation is based on Yumeno Kyūsaku, Binzume no jigoku, in Binzume no jigoku (Kawakado bunko, [1975], 2009), 5–20. This story is also collected in Yumeno Kyūsaku zenshū, edited by Nakajima Kōtarō and Tanigawa Ken’ichi (San’ichi shobō, 1969–70), vol. 1, 108–14.

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Hell in a Bottle 241

suffering tucked in a bottle like a genie or a fetus in a womb.3 His stories feature a space sealed off from the rest of the world physically and tem- porally, a world governed by its own rules in every aspect and challenges conventional understanding of normality. “Hell in a Bottle” portrays the eerie perfection of that world when the internal rules work, in contrast to the grotesque and unsalvageable breakdown of that world when it comes in contact with external reality. The beauty and abundance of the tropical desert island where the shipwrecked brother and sister mature physically to commit incest is both Eden and Hell, utopia and dystopia, while the well-nourished, lustrous bodies of the siblings tormented by a dark guilt are a microcosm of that duality that embodies endless creative energy and self-destructive force.

Another distinctive feature is Yumeno’s manipulation of time inver- sion in the narrative. Since that particular narrative strategy necessitates the disclosure of the ending at the beginning, Yumeno breaks away from the conventional mode of suspense and mystery and shifts the focus of his story to creating a vortex of anxiety and tragic romance that escalate in power as the narrative unfolds. This technique of foretelling the ending is also used in postwar modernist works, such as Dazai Osamu’s Ningen shikkaku (1928; No Longer Human, 1959) and Abe Kōbō’s Suna no onna (1962; The Woman in the Dunes, 1967).

In this particular work, Yumeno uses three distinct writing styles for the four letters that make up the entire story. The first letter (in order of appearance in the text) is in bureaucratic Chinese-style (kanbunchō) that looks dense with kanji, while the second and third letters consist of a mix- ture of romantic Japanese prose and church and biblical language, since the only reference the brother has for his writing is a copy of the Bible. Finally, the last letter is extremely short and almost entirely in katakana, written and signed in the childish hands of the young shipwrecked siblings. Typographically and visually, the story resembles a collage of different writing styles, a response to developments in modernist visual art in Japan and other parts of the world.

This story was published in the magazine Ryōki (Curiosity Hunter, vol. 1, no. 5), October 1928. The Japanese title is known as “Binzume no jigoku” or “Binzume jigoku.”

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242 yumeno kyūsaku

Oceanic Research Institute

___________, 19__

Dear Sir,

We hope this letter finds you prosperous and

well. In response to your request to advise

all villagers to report found beer bottles

sealed with red wax in connection to tidal

current research, we would like to inform

you that recently three beer bottles sealed

with resin were discovered on the southern

shore of this island, as you will find under

separate cover in the form of a small package.

The aforementioned items were discovered in

locations half a mile to over a mile apart,

buried in sand or trapped in cracks among

rocks. They appear to have drifted here

quite some time ago. We regret to inform you

that the bottles contained no trace of any

official postcard similar to the type you had

mentioned, but only scraps of what resembled

pages from a notebook. Thus we were unable

to identify the time and date they drifted

ashore, as requested. However, as they may

serve some purpose for your investigation, we

have taken the liberty to deliver the three

bottles, sealed in the condition they were

found, at our expense. We trust that you will

receive them safely, and we are honored to be

of service to you.

Yours very respectfully,

Village Office of _________ Island

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Hell in a Bottle 243

Contents of Bottle One

Dear Father, Mother, and all those who have come to save us, At long last, a ship has finally come to our rescue on this remote island. The large ship with twin stacks lowered two boats onto the raging

waves. Mixed in with the onlookers on board the ship are the forms of our dear Father and Mother for whom we have longed night and day. And, oh! They are waving white handkerchiefs at us.

Father and Mother must have come to our rescue after reading the letter in the first beer bottle we threw into the ocean.

White smoke billowed out of the vessel, and the sound of the whis- tle was loud and clear, seemingly proclaiming, “We’re here to save you!” The sound startled the birds and insects on this little island and sent them flying off faraway into the sea.

Yet to us, the sound was more fearful than the trumpets of the Last Judgment. It was as though heaven and earth split into two, the gleam of the eyes of God and the fire of hell flashing before our eyes.

Oh, my hands are trembling, my heart choked with anxiety, . . . I can barely write. My vision is blurred with tears.

The two of us will climb up the cliff that directly faces the ship and, holding each other tight in plain view of Father, Mother, and the sailors who have come to save us, we will plunge straight into the depths of the pool to die. The sharks there will no doubt tear us up in an instant. And the people in the boat will spot the beer bottle with this letter inside and retrieve it.

Oh, dear Father, dear Mother. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. We beg you to abandon us and think not of us as your beloved children.

To those of you who have come all the way from your faraway home to save us, we are so very sorry for what we are going to do. Please, we beg you to forgive us. Have mercy on us for our tragic fate, which compels us to die just as our joyful return to the human world—to the bosoms of our loving Father and Mother—arrives.

We cannot atone for our sins without being punished, body and soul, as retribution for the grave and terrible trespasses the two of us committed on this remote island.

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Do forgive us for not confessing any further. We were mad and wor- thy only to be food for sharks . . .

Oh, Farewell!

From the piteous two Forsaken by God and man

Contents of Bottle Two

Oh, inscrutable and all-seeing God. Shall no other way besides death deliver us from this predicament? I cannot count the times I have climbed up this steep cliff we called

“God’s Footrest” all alone to peer into the bottomless pool below where two or three sharks always swim in playful rounds. Oh, how many times have I thought of throwing myself down there! Yet every time these thoughts rose in me, poor Ayako came to my mind, and, heaving a soul- wrenching sigh, I would climb back down the craggy rocks. I know for certain that if I were to die, Ayako will throw herself in after me.

How many years has it been since Ayako and I drifted to this remote little island, after being tossed about by the raging waves with the nurse and her husband, the captain of the boat, and the sailors? Here, the summer is endless, with neither Christmas nor the New Year to mark time, but I sense that ten years must have passed.

All we had with us at that time were a pencil, a knife, a notebook, a magnifying glass, three beer bottles filled with water, and a small Bible.

Yet we were happy. On this lush and green island, except for the occasional appear-

ance of large ants, not a single bird, beast, or insect came to trouble us. At the time, I was eleven, and Ayako had just turned seven. There was an overflowing abundance of food for us. We found ourselves among mynas, parrots, birds of paradise that we had only seen in picture books, as well as fantastical butterflies of which we had neither seen nor heard. All year-round, delicious coconuts, pineapples, bananas, gorgeous flora in bright red and purple, fragrant herbs and grasses, birds’ eggs big and

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Hell in a Bottle 245

small were everywhere to be found. A stick was all we needed to catch as many birds and fish as we wanted.

After we had gathered sufficient food, we arranged some dried grass on driftwood and used the magnifying glass to light a fire. Then we cooked and ate.

In time, we discovered a pure, clear spring that appeared during low tide between the cape and the crags on the east side of the island, so we built a little hut using the wreckage of the boat on the beach and paved it with soft dried grass. That was where Ayako and I slept. Right next to the hut, on the side of the crag, we bored a square-like cavity with old nails from the boat and made that into a storage space. Our outer and inner clothing ended up torn and tattered by the rain, wind, and the edges of the rocks, so we would go about naked like real barbarians. Nevertheless, morning and night, we never missed a day climbing up to God’s Footrest to read the Bible and pray for Father and Mother.

The two of us wrote a letter to Father and Mother and inserted it carefully into a beer bottle, sealed it tight with resin, and after kissing it over and over again, we cast it into the ocean. The bottle was carried by the currents that circle the island all the way out to sea, never to return again. To create a marker for rescue, we erected a tall pole at the highest point of God’s Footrest, and continued to replenish it with fresh green leaves to make it visible.

Sometimes we bickered, as children always do, but always made peace immediately and played school or some such games. I always had Ayako play the pupil and used the Bible to teach her how to read and write. The two of us came to think of the Bible as God, Father, Mother, and Teacher all rolled into one and treasured it far more than the magnifying glass and the beer bottles, placing it on the topmost shelf in the cavity in the rock. We were truly happy and peaceful. This island was like heaven to us.

Despite our blissful, idyllic life alone on this remote island, what made me think that the fearsome demon had stolen in upon us?

Yet I was dead certain that the demon had indeed crept in between us and taken us unawares.

When it began I could not tell, but as the days and months went by, it

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became obvious to my eyes that Ayako’s body had acquired a voluptuous beauty that was nothing short of miraculous. Sometimes she sparkled like a flower sprite, and at other times she lured like a demon . . . when I saw her, I felt confused and stricken with a mysterious sadness.

“Brother . . .” When she called me and flew toward me, her eyes twinkling with

innocence, I felt a rousing deep within my heart, the likes of which I had never experienced before. Every time she called, my heart trembled with fear, as though condemned to wallow in the anxiety of total destruction.

Yet in time, Ayako too began to behave differently. Like me, she had turned into a completely different person. She would gaze at me deeply with her lovely, teary eyes. She looked as though she were ashamed to touch my body, as doing so would fill her with a great sadness.

We stopped fighting. Instead of quarreling, we both looked melan- cholic, and at times let out quiet sighs, born of the fact that our solitary existence on this remote island had become a source of unspeakable pain, pleasure, and intense loneliness for us. Not only that, but whenever we looked at each other, our eyes would fill with the growing darkness of a deathly gloom. Then all of a sudden we would be startled back to our senses as a thunderous roar—a warning from God or a cruel joke from the demon, I could not tell—ripped through our hearts. This happened many times a day.

Even though we knew precisely how each other felt, we dared not breathe a word to each other, fearing the punishment of God. What if the boat of salvation came AFTER we let it happen . . . we remained silent, troubled by the same thought deep in our hearts.

One quiet, clear afternoon, as we stretched out on the sandy beach after filling ourselves with cooked sea turtle eggs, gazing at the flowing white clouds faraway on the horizon, Ayako turned to me suddenly and said, “Brother, if one of us were to die of illness—what shall the other one do?”

Ayako turned bright red, and from her downcast eyes, great drops of tears fell unceasingly on the hot sand. I saw an unspeakably sad smile on her face.

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I had no idea what my expression looked like at that moment. I simply could not breathe—my heart thumped as though it was about to burst, and I stood there without a word, stricken dumb. Quietly I left Ayako by herself and climbed up to God’s Footrest, prostrating myself and tearing my hair.

“Oh, Father, who art in heaven! Ayako knows not what she does. That is why she said what she said to me. Please, I beg thee not to punish that virgin. Forever and ever, keep her pure and clean. Have mercy on me too . . .

“And yet, my Lord, whatever shall I do! How can I deliver myself from that torture! The fact that I live is an immeasurable sin against Ayako. But if I die, I will cast her into even deeper sorrow and suffering. Oh, my Lord and my God, whatever shall I do . . .

“Oh merciful Lord . . . “Here I am, sand in my hair, prostrate on the cliff before thee. If my

wish to die serves to execute thy divine will, I implore thee to strike out my life this very moment with a bolt of blazing lightning. Oh, inscrutable and all-seeing God! Hallowed be thy name! May a sign appear on earth for thy unworthy servant . . .”

But the Lord gave not a single sign. White clouds drifted like strands of silk in the azure sky. Below the cliff, sharks swam playfully among the swirls of pure white waves in the cobalt water, flashing their tails and fins from time to time.

Gazing deep into that clear and fathomless blue pool, my eyes began to trace endless circles, and my head began to spin. Faltering and stum- bling, I nearly fell into the foamy waves that crashed against the rocks, but I pulled myself together and stopped at the edge of the cliff. Before I knew what I was doing, I sprang up to the highest point of the cliff, and, without a moment’s hesitation, tore down the pole with the wilted coconut leaves that stood at the apex and hurled it all the way down to the bottomless pool.

“We’re safe. Now even the rescue boat will just sail by without noticing.”

I laughed aloud in great scorn and ran down the cliff at tremendous speed into our little shed like a lone wolf forsaken by its pack. I picked

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up the Bible opened to the Book of Songs, set it on top of the embers left from cooking turtle eggs, threw in a pile of dried grass and fanned up the blaze. Then, with all the strength and desperation that my voice could summon, I called Ayako’s name as I dashed out to the beach in search of her . . .

When I caught sight of her, she was kneeling on a huge rock on a cape that jutted far out into the sea, her face lifted toward the sky as though she was praying.

I stumbled two or three steps backward. The divine beauty of a virgin, swathed in the blood-red glow of the setting sun, kneeling on a purple rock among the raging waves . . .

Entirely unaware of the rising tides that brought seaweed drift- ing to her knees, she prayed undistracted as golden waves washed up to her . . . oh, the nobility of that form, the dazzling beauty of it all . . .

My body stiffened like a rock, and, for a moment, I stared vacantly without a thought. But all of a sudden, Ayako’s intention became clear to me, and I jumped up in a flash. Running like a madman, I slid down the rock covered with seashells, sustaining numerous cuts, and climbed up to the rock on the cape. Ayako was flailing, crying and screaming like a crazed woman as I carried her tightly in my arms down the cape, our bod- ies covered with blood. It took a tremendous effort to return to where the little shed was.

Yet our little shed no longer existed. Along with the Bible and dried grass, it had turned into white smoke and disappeared far beyond into the blue sky.

And then, the two of us—our bodies and souls—were cast out into the murky depths of darkness, left to wail and regret our lot day and night. Not only were we incapable of holding each other tight to comfort and encourage ourselves, and to pray and mourn for our loss, we could not even lie down together to sleep.

That must have been the punishment for having burnt the Bible. At night, the light of the stars, the sound of the waves, the hum-

ming of insects, the rustling of leaves, the sound of nuts falling from

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trees, each and everything whispered the words of the Bible and closed in on us with an ever tightening grip. Lying there paralyzed and sleepless with fear, we felt as though they had come to peer into our hearts writh- ing in the agony of separation. It was truly frightening.

When daybreak came after a long, long night, a long, long day lay in waiting for us. The bright sun that shone on this island, the singing par- rots, the dancing birds of paradise, the beetles, moths, coconuts, pine- apples, the colors of flowers, the fragrance of grass, the sea, clouds, wind, rainbow, each and everything became entangled with Ayako’s dazzling figure and suffocating fragrance, and twirled around me in a whirlpool of blinding brilliance until I thought it might attack and kill me. In the midst of all that, Ayako’s sorrowful eyes, betraying the same torment, gazed at me steadily with the sadness of the Lord in one and the smile of the demon in the other.

My pencil is near its end, so I can’t go on writing for long. Having encountered such torture and oppression, we still pray

to seal our sincere, god-fearing hearts into this bottle and toss it into the sea.

Before we yield to the temptation of the demon . . . At least while our bodies are still pure . . .

Dear God . . . As we endure this great suffering, our flesh becomes richer and suppler by the day, and without succumbing to even a single illness, we continue to enjoy good health and beauty, surrounded and nourished by the clean air, water, abundant food, and the beautiful, delightful flow- ers and birds on this island . . .

Oh, what horrible suffering! This island of bliss is now nothing less than hell.

My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me . . . Why can’t you simply destroy the two of us . . .

Taro

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Contents of Bottle Three

Father, Mother. The two of us are good and getting along on this island. Please come to rescue us right away.

Ichikawa Taro ichikawa ayako

Notes

1. Yumeno Kyūsaku’s son, Sugiyama Tatsumaru, related this episode in an essay about his father, “Yumeno Kyūsaku no shōgai” (Yumeno Kyūsaku’s life) in Yumeno Kyūsaku no sekai, edited by Nishihara Kazumi (Chūsekisha, 1991), 212–45, esp. 230–31.

2. “Nozui no jigoku” is Yumeno’s explanation of the title Dogura magura, a term used by Dr. Wakabayashi of the mental asylum in the story. See Dogura magura in Yumeno Kyūsaku zenshū (1969–70), vol. 4, 54.

3. In the opening song of Dogura magura, Yumeno writes, “Fetus, fetus, why are you leaping? Is it because you know your mother’s heart that you are terrified?”

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Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.

———. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken Books, [1968], 1985.

Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature (1955). Trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [1982], 1989.

Brooker, Peter, and Andrew Thacker, eds. Geographies of Modernism: Literatures, Cultures, Spaces. London: Routledge, 2005.

Buckler, William E., ed. Walter Pater: Three Major Texts (The Renaissance, Appre- ciations, and Imaginary Portraits). New York: New York University Press, 1986.

Chiba Kameo. “Shinkankaku-ha no tanjô.” Seiki, November 1924. Cowling, Elizabeth. Picasso: Style and Meaning. London: Phaidon, 2002. de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Trans. Steven Randall. Berke-

ley: University of California Press, 1984. Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics, vol. 16, no. 1 (Spring 1986),

22–27. Gardner, William O. Advertising Tower: Japanese Modernism and Modernity in the

1920s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Golley, Gregory. When Our Eyes No Longer See: Realism, Science, Ecology in Japa-

nese Literary Modernism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Hammer, Joshua. Yokohama Burning: The Deadly 1923 Earthquake and the Fire

that Helped Forge the Path to World War II. New York: Free Press, 2006.

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Hanna, Julian. Key Concepts in Modernist Literature. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Inoue Hisashi and Komori Yōichi, eds. Zadankai Shōwa bungakushi. Shūeisha,

2003. Isoda Kōichi. Shisō to shite no Tōkyō: Kindai bungakuron nōto. Kokubunsha, 1978. Itagaki Takaho, ed. Kikai geijutsuron (1930). Mayuni shobō, 1991. Kanno Akimasa. Yūutsu no bungakushi. Kodansha, 2009. Kawabata Yasunari. Gendai sakka no bunshō wo ronzu. In Kawabata zenshū, vol.

32, 9–19. Shinchōsha, 1982. ———. Shinshin sakka no shinkeikō kaisetsu. In Kawabata zenshū, vol. 30, 172–

83. Shinchōsha, 1982. Kobayashi Hideo. Literature of the Lost Home: Kobayashi Hideo, Literary Criticism

1924–1939. Trans. and ed. Paul Anderer. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space (1974). Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Lewis, Pericles. The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Lippit, Seiji M. Topographies of Japanese Modernism. New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press, 2002.

Maeda Ai. Text and the City: Essays on Japanese Modernity. Ed. James Fujii. Dur- ham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

———. Toshi kūkan no naka no bungaku. Chikuma shobō, 1982. Marcus, Marvin. Reflections in a Glass Door: Memory and Melancholy in the Personal

Writings of Natsume Sōseki. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009. Matthews, Steven, ed. Modernism: A Sourcebook. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Mac-

millan, 2008. Natsume Sōseki. “Buncho.” Trans. Angela Yiu. Michigan Quarterly Review, vol.

40, no. 3 (Summer 2001), 484–500. Nicholls, Peter. Modernisms: A Literary Guide (2nd ed.). Basingstoke, UK: Pal-

grave Macmillan, [1995], 2009. Nishihara Kazumi, ed. Yumeno Kyūsaku no sekai. Chūsekisha, 1991. Oda Sakunosuke. Stories of Osaka Life. Trans. Burton Watson. New York: Weath-

erhill, 1994. Sas, Miryam. “Subject, City, Machine.” In Histories of the Future, edited by Daniel

Rosenberg and Susan Harding. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Satō Haruo. “Bungei jihyō.” In Satō Haruo zenshū, vol. 20, 35–91. Kyoto: Rinsen

shoten, 1999.

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———. The Sick Rose: A Pastoral Elegy. Trans. Francis B. Tenny. Honolulu: Uni- versity of Hawai‘i Press, 1993.

Silverberg, Miriam. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense: The Mass Culture of Japanese Mod- ern Times. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador USA, [1973], 1977. Thacker, Andrew. Moving through Modernity: Space and Geography in Modernism.

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versity of Hawai‘i Press, 2008. Yiu, Angela. “A New Map of Hell: Satō Haruo’s Dystopian Fiction.” Japan Forum,

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———. “Time.” In Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day, edited by Donald Keene. New York: Grove Press, 1956.

Yumeno Kyūsaku. Dogura magura. In Yumeno Kyūsaku zenshū, vol. 4. San’ichi shobō, 1969–70.

Selected Stories

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke. Fushigi na shima (Wonder Island). In Akutagawa Ryū no- suke zenshū. Iwanami shoten, 1996.

Hori Tatsuo. Suizokukan (Aquarium). In Modan toshi bungaku I: Modan Tōkyō annai, edited by Kawamoto Saburo et al. Heibonsha, 1989.

Inagaki Taruho. Tentai shikōshō (Astromania). In Inagaki Taruho zenshū 2. Chi- kuma shobō, 2000.

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Kawabata Yasunari. Ningen no ashioto (The Sound of Footsteps). In Modan toshi bungaku IV: Tokai no gensō, edited by Kawamoto Saburo et al. Heibonsha, 1990.

Nakajima Atsushi. Junsa no iru fūkei (Landscape with an Officer). In Chikuma Nihonbungaku 012: Nakajima Atsushi. Chikuma shobō, 2008.

Natsume Sōseki. Hen na oto (A Strange Sound). In Natsume Sōseki zenshū 8. Iwa- nami shoten, [1966], 1975.

Ryūtanji Yū. Peibumento snappu (Pavement Snapshots). In Modan toshi bungaku I: Modan Tōkyō annai, edited by Kawamoto Saburo et al. Heibonsha, 1989.

Satō Haruo. Nonsharan kiroku (A Record of Nonchalant). In Teihon Satō Haruo zenshū 8. Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 1998–2001.

Tamura Taijirō. Keitai (Configuration). In Modan toshi bungaku IV: Tokai no gensō, edited by Kawamoto Saburo et al. Heibonsha, 1990.

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. Konjiki no shi (A Golden Death). In Tanizaki Jun’ichirō zenshū 2, 464–99. Chūō kōronsha, 1937.

Uno Kōji. Yaneura no hōgakushi (The Law Student in the Garret). In Uno Kōji zenshū 1. Chūō kōronsha, 1972.

Yokomitsu Riichi. Machi no soko (The Underside of Town). In Yokomitsu Riichi zenshū 2. Kawade shobō shinsha, 1981.

Yumeno Kyūsaku. Binzume no jigoku (Hell in a Bottle). In Binzume no jigoku. Kawakado bunko, [1975], 2009.

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About the Contributors

Jeffrey Angles is an Associate Professor of Japanese and translation studies at Western Michigan University. He is the author of Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishōnen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature (University of Min- nesota Press, 2011) and translator of Killing Kanoko: Selected Poems of Hiromi Itō (Action Press, 2009), Forest of Eyes: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako (University of California Press, 2010), and numerous other works of modernist and contem- porary writing. His translation projects have earned the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature (2009), the Acad- emy of American Poets’ Harold Morton Landon Translation Award (2011), the PEN Club of America Translation Grant (2008), and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant (2008).

Alisa Freedman is an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University of Oregon. Her interdisciplinary work investigates how the city shapes culture, psychology, and gender roles. Her major publications include Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Road and Rails (Stanford University Press, 2011), an annotated translation of Kawabata Yasunari’s The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (University of California Press, 2005), and a co-edited volume on Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press, 2012). She has published articles on Japanese modernism, youth culture, humor as critique, nerd culture, and the intersections of literature and digital media, along with translations of Japanese novels and short stories.

Elaine Gerbert is an Associate Professor at the University of Kansas. Her research interests include the role of play in Japanese culture and the nexus of visual and literary culture in the Taishō period. Her translations of Uno Kōji’s Kura no Naka and Yamagoi in Love of Mountains: Two Stories by Uno Kōji (1997) were awarded the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for Translation of Japanese Literature. She also translated Uno’s Kareki no aru fūkei (The Columbia

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256 Contributors

Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From Restoration to Occupation, 1868– 1945) and Edogawa Ranpo’s Panoramatō kidan (Strange Tale of Panorama Island, University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013). She received the George Z. Bereday Award for Outstanding Scholarship for research published in Comparative Education Review in 1993.

Kyoko Kurita is Professor of Japanese at Pomona College. Her research interests lie mainly in the literature and literary movements of the Meiji period. She has published articles in Japanese (Bungaku, 1998 and 2005) and in English (Har- vard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 2000 and 2007) on Kōda Rohan and on the genre of literature called mirai-ki (records of the future) by authors of the Meiji period, both famous and forgotten. With James Lipson she has also co-translated Kōda Rohan’s early masterpiece Fūryūbutsu (The Icon of Liberty, 1889).

James Lipson, a professional translator, copywriter, and producer, is the founder of Metaphoria, Ltd. of Los Angeles and Tokyo. Among his other co-translations with Kyoko Kurita are half a dozen short stories from Matsumoto Seichō’s collec- tion, Inka no kazari (Hidden Flowers, 1979), published by the Matsumoto Seichō Memorial Museum in 2008, and Kōda Rohan’s novella Fūryūbutsu (1889), pub- lished as “The Icon of Liberty” in The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, vol. 1 (2005).

Dan O’Neill is an Associate Professor in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at University of California, Berkeley. He completed his Ph.D. from Yale University in Japanese Literature in 2002. His research interests include the novel in comparative perspective, global modernisms, and critical theory. Recent publications include a study of Mori Ōgai and the bildungsroman (Japan Forum, 2006), and an analysis of Natsume Sōseki’s theory of tragic pleasure (Dis- course, 2008).

Sakaguchi Kyōhei (artist) received his Bachelor’s degree in Architecture in 2001 from the School of Science and Engineering at Waseda University, Japan. He is the author of several books, including Zero Yen House (Little More, 2004) and Zero kara hajimeru toshigata shuryō saishū seikatsu (Urban Hunting and Gather- ing Lifestyle Starting from Zero; Ōta shuppan, 2010). His artwork and recent publications can be viewed at the following website: http://www.0yenhouse .com/index.html

Stephen Snyder is Kawashima Professor of Japanese Studies in the Depart- ment of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College. He is the author of Fictions of

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Contributors 257

Desire: Narrative Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafu and has translated works by Oe Kenzaburo, Ogawa Yoko, Nagai Kafu, Murakami Ryu, and Yu Miri, among oth- ers. His translation of Kirino Natsuo’s OUT was a finalist for the Edgar Award for best mystery novel in 2004. His translation of Tsuji Kunio’s Azuchi Okanki (The Signore) won the 1990 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Transla- tion of Japanese Literature. Ogawa’s Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales will appear in his translation from Picador in 2013.

Dennis Washburn is the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor in Asian Stud- ies, Dartmouth College. He has published monographs on Japanese literature (The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction and Translating Mount Fuji: Mod- ern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity), edited several volumes (includ- ing Word and Image in Japanese Cinema and Converting Cultures), and translated several novels, including Shanghai by Yokomitsu Riichi and Temple of the Wild Geese by Mizukami Tsutomu, for which he won the Japan-U.S. Friendship Com- mission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. His translation of Tsu- shima Yūko’s Laughing Wolf was published in November 2011 by the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.

Angela Yiu is Professor of Literature in the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Sophia University, Japan. She is the author of Chaos and Order in the Works of Natsume Sōseki (1998). She is the guest editor of the Japan Forum special issue “Tokyo and Beyond” that examines urban representation in modern Japanese literature. Recent publication relevant to the anthology includes “A New Map of Hell: Satō Haruo’s Dystopian Fiction” (Japan Forum, vol. 21, no. 1, 2009). Her research interests include literary utopias and dystopias, modernism, and urban space and literature.

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259

Index

Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, 3, 9, 10, 30; works: Kappa, 19; Kōjakufū (Spar- row Wind), 202; Ōkawa no mizu (The Water of Sumida), 20; “Wonder Island,” 19–20, 200 fig. 4, 201–2, 202–9; Yabu no naka (In a Grove), 3; Yūyūsō (A Cottage in Ruin), 20

“Aquarium.” See under Hori Tatsuo: works Asakusa, 12, 15, 109–10, 142n.19. See

also Hori Tatsuo: works: “Aquarium”; Ryūtanji Yū: works: “Pavement Snapshots”

“Astromania.” See under Inagaki Taruho: works

Bungei jidai (Literary Age), 10, 62, 101

Cézanne, 15, 101 cinematic, 62, 70–71, 84n.8; cinematog-

rapher, 69; cinematography, 14. See also film

colonial. See under space “Configuration.” See under Tamura

Taijirō: works conté, 63, 71 cubism, 2, 3, 11, 15, 101–2; George

Braque, 2, 14, 101; Marcel Duch- amp, 3; Pablo Picasso, 3, 4, 101

dadaism, 6, 14, 101 dame otoko (ineffectual men), 38

detective fiction, 9, 212 double, 31, 109; doppelganger, 31 dystopia. See under utopia

Edogawa Ranpo, works: Panoramatō kidan (Strange Tale of Panorama Island), 18, 191n.1; Yaneura no sanposha (The Wanderer in the Attic), 13, 29

ero-guro-nansensu (erotic grotesque nonsense), 13, 21, 24n.14, 62, 109, 142n.17; street nonsense, 123

film, 10, 71, 84n.7, 124. See also cinematic

flaneur, 5, 15, 26n.20, 50 futurism, 11, 14, 86–87, 101; “Manifesto

in Futurism,” 86

geometric shape, 15, 101–2 “A Golden Death.” See under Tanizaki

Jun’ichirō: works Gulliver’s Travels. See under Swift, Jona-

than, works

Hagiwara Kyōjirō, 6 Hayashi Fumiko, 6 “Hell in a Bottle.” See under Yumeno

Kyūsaku: works heterotopia. See under utopia Hori Tatsuo, 12; image, 108 fig. 3; works:

“Aquarium,” 15, 108 fig. 3, 109–10,

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260 Index

110–22; Kaze tachinu (The Wind Rises), 109; Utuskushii mura (Beauti- ful Village), 109

Huxley, Aldous, 20

Inagaki Taruho, 9, 238n.7; works: “Astro- mania,” 14, 68 fig. 2, 69–71, 71–84; Issen ichi-byō monogatari (One Thousand and One Second Stories), 69–70

Itagaki Takaho, 86–87

jōruri, 38

Kagaku gaho, 16, 212. See also science fiction

Kaizō magazine, 123, 212 Kajii Motojirō, 9; works: “Scenes of the

Mind,” 13, 29, 50–51, 51–61 Kawabata Yasunari, 6, 8, 11, 21, 30,

110, 125, 238n.7; works: Asakusa kurenaidan (The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa), 11, 12, 109, 125; “Gendai sakka no bunsho wo ronzu” (A Criti- cal Discussion of the Writings of Contemporary Authors), 11, 24n.11; Kurutta ichipeiji (Page of Madness), 10; Senbatsuru (Thousand Cranes), 62; “Shinshin sakka no shinkeikō kaisetsu” (An Explication of the New Tendencies in New Writers), 11, 24n.12; “The Sound of Footsteps,” 13, 29, 62–63, 63–66; Yukiguni (Snow Country), 11

keitai (configuration/form/gestalt), 85–88

kokutai (national polity), 85 Korea, 143–45, 145–57. See also under

space: colonial

“Landscape with an Officer.” See under Nakajima Atsushi: works

“The Law Student in the Garret.” See under Uno Kōji: works

Le Corbusier, 86, 99n.7 linear chronology, 2

machine, 12, 86; art of the, 86, 98n.1; flying, 69–70, 86–87, 99nn.8–10; mechanization, 86; Restaurant “La Machine,” 98n.5

Maeda Ai. See under spatial theory: critics Marinetti, Tommaso Fillippo, 86. See also

futurism Masaoka Shiki, 30 mass literature (taishū bungaku), 1, 20,

22, 211 Mishima Yukio, 161–62 Miyazawa Kenji, 6 mobo moga, 15 Modern Tokyo Rondo, 110, 124–25,

142n.17 modernism, global, 2, 5, 7, 8, 23; critical

works on Japanese, 6–7; critical works on Western, 5–6; Japanese modernist poets, 9; rejects mimetic function of art, 2, 12; Western writ- ers in: Joseph Conrad, 5; T. S. Eliot, 4, 5, 30; James Joyce, 4, 5; Franz Kafka, 30, 31; Ezra Pound, 5; Rainer Maria Rilke, 30, 109; Virginia Woolf, 5, 30

Nakajima Atsushi, 9; on Korea, 143–45; on Micronesia, 143; works: “Land- scape with an Officer,” 16, 143–45, 145–57; Li Ling, 143; Pūru no soba de (By the Pool), 143; Sangetsuki (Tiger Poet), 143; Toragari (Tiger Hunt), 143

Natsume Sōseki, 8, 9, 29–31; works: Bunchō, 29; Gyōretsu (The Proces- sion), 29; Sorekara (And Then), 209; “A Strange Sound,” 13, 28 fig. 1, 29–31, 31–36

Oda Sakunosuke, works: Meoto zensai (Hurray for Marriage, or Sweet Beans for Two), 38

Okada Saburō, 63

“Pavement Snapshots.” See under Ryūtanji Yū: works

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Index 261

photography, 15–16, 124. See also Son- tag, Susan

proletarian, 1, 11, 102, 15, 19, 125, 201, 207, 211; Rōba (proletarian maga- zine), 12

pure literature, 212

“A Record of Nonchalant.” See under Satō Haruo: works

rittai-ha (cubism), 2; rittai dokusho (three- dimensional reading), 5. See also cubism

rubi, 124 ryōki (curiosities), 124; Ryōki magazine

(Curiosity Hunter), 241 Ryūtanji Yū, 8, 10, 12, 110, 142n.17,

238n.7; works: Horen miyako (Capi- tal of the Imperial Carriage), 125; “Pavement Snapshots,” 15, 123–25, 125–42

Sakaguchi Kyōhei, ix–x, 4, images: “Aquarium,” 108; “Astromania,” 68; “A Record of Nonchalant,” 210; “A Strange Sound,” 28; “Wonder Island,” 200

Satō Haruo, 8, 9, 21; on bunmei hihyōka (critic of civilization), 3–4; works: Den’en no yūutsu (The Sick Rose), 21, 29; “A Record of Nonchalant,” 20–21, 210 fig. 5, 211–12, 213–39; Supein inu no ie (House of a Spanish Dog), 21; Tokai no kyūfu (The Terror of the Metropolis, 211; Tokai no yūutsu (Gloom in the City), 21, 29; Utsukushiki machi (Beautiful Town), 21

“Scenes of the Mind.” See under Kajii Motojirō: works

science fiction, 9, 10, 14, 16, 20, 21, 84n.8, 211; Japanese, 21, 212

Shin geijutsuron shisutemu (New Art Theory System), 86

Shin seinen, 16, 212, 240 Shinkankaku (New Sensation) School, 1,

10, 20, 62, 101, 238n.7

Shinkankaku-ha eiga renmei (New Sensa- tion School Film Association), 10

Shinkō geijutsu (New Art) School, 1, 10, 62, 124, 142n.17

Shinkō geijutsu-ha kurabu (The New Art Club), 12

Sontag, Susan, On Photography, 15–16 sound, 9, 29–31, 62–63; aural reality, 63;

sonic reality, 31 “The Sound of Footsteps.” See under

Kawabata Yasunari: works space, 7; colonial, 1, 7, 9, 14, 16, 20,

144–145; death’s, 5, 14, 25n.18, 29–31; dystopian, 1, 10, 21; interior, 12–13, 29–30; mapping of, 15, 102; urban, 1, 14, 21, 29, 123; utopian, 1, 10. See also utopia

spatial theory, 5; critics: Gaston Bach- elard, 5, 13, 24n.15; Walter Benja- min, 5, 15, 26nn.20–21; Maurice Blanchot, 5, 14, 25n.18, 31; Michel de Certeau, 5, 15, 25n.19; Michel Foucault, 5, 22; David Harvey, 5, 14, 25n.17; Martin Heidegger, 5; Isoda Kōichi, 5; Henri Lefebvre, 5, 13–14, 16, 24n.16; Maeda Ai, 5, 17, 212

“A Strange Sound.” See under Natsume Sōseki: works

Swift, Jonathan, works: Gulliver’s Travels, 19, 209

taishū bungaku. See mass literature Tamura Taijirō, 8, nikutai bungaku (litera-

ture of the flesh/carnal literature), 9, 85; works: “Configuration,” 14, 85–88, 88–100; Nikutai no akuma (Demon of the flesh), 85; Nikutai no mon (Gate of Flesh), 85

Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, 8, 9, 10, 21, 161–62; works: “A Golden Death,” 17–19, 162–99; In’ei raisan (In Praise of Shadow), 17; Tōkyō o Omou (Think- ing of Tokyo), 17; Yōshō jidai (Child- hood Years), 191

Thacker, Andrew, 7, 23, 25n.17

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262 Index

three-dimensional, 2, 4, 8, 21, 52; on reading, 3, 7

time, 3–4, 8; time-space, 5, 6, 10; tem- poral configuration, 7; temporal disjunction, 88

Tyler, William, xii, 5, 7, 70–71, 238n.7

“The Underside of Town.” See under Yokomitsu Riichi: works

Uno Kōji, 9; jōsetsu (rambling) style, 9, 38; works: Kura no naka (In the Storehouse), 37; “The Law Student in the Garret,” 13, 29, 37–38, 39–49

utopia, 1, 5, 10, 16, 17, 23, 161, 211, 241; dystopia; 1, 5, 16, 17, 20, 211, 241; heterotopia, 1, 5, 22. See also space

“Wonder Island.” See under Akutagawa Ryūnosuke: works

Yokomitsu Riichi, 3, 11, 21, 238n.7; works: Jikan (Time), 12; “Keishiki shugi bungaku ronsō” (Formalism Debate), 11; Kikai (Machine), 12; “Shinkankaku-ron” (On New Sensa- tion), 3, 11, 101; “The Underside of Town,” 15, 101–2, 103–7

Yoshiyuki Eisuke, 10, 110, 136, 142n.17 Yumeno Kyūsaku, 9; works: Ayakashi no

tsuzumi (The Eerie Hand Drum), 240; Dogura magura, 240; “Hell in a Bottle,” 21–22, 240–41, 242–57

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Production Notes for Yiu / Three-Dimensional Reading Jacket design by Mardee Melton

Interior design and composition by Wanda China with display type in Chaparral Pro and text in Chaparral Pro and Meiryo

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