KOKORO - Soseki E-Book

Naatsume Soseki

• Herausgeber: Lebooks Editora
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 355

Beschreibung

Natsume Soseki (1867–1916) é um dos escritores japoneses mais queridos em sua terra natal e o mais traduzido e estudado no mundo. Soseki foi o principal artista de sua geração, considerado o mais representativo intelectual de seu tempo. Pode-se dizer que sua importância na literatura japonesa equivale a importância de um Machado de Assis para a literatura brasileira. Sua obra-prima Coração "Kokoro" é um romance que capta as mudanças de mentalidade no Japão durante um período de rápida modernização no fim do século XIX. Transcorrendo em Tóquio em torno de 1910, esse romance em três partes descreve a relação entre um homem jovem, o narrador, e um senhor que ele chama de Sensei. Este é assolado por um estigma em seu passado, que paira sobre todo o romance. Na descrição do mal-estar de Sensei, o romance, além de um testemunho da rápida modernização do Japão, é também um exame de uma sensação torturada de fracasso e responsabilidade. Natsume, que criou a forma do romance em primeira pessoa, é, sem dúvida alguma, um dos maiores escritores da literatura japonesa.

Leseprobe

Natsume Soseki

KOKORO

Original Title:

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PART I - SENSEI AND I

PART II - MY PARENTS AND I

PART III - SENSEI’S TESTAMENT

INTRODUCTION

Natsume Soseki

1867-1916

Natsume Soseki (1867–1916) is one of Japan's most beloved writers in his homeland and the most translated and studied worldwide. Soseki was the leading artist of his generation, considered the most representative intellectual of his time.

To draw parallels, the importance of Soseki's artistic contribution to his country is compared to that of Machado de Assis for Brazil, Mark Twain for the United States, and Charles Dickens for the United Kingdom.

His life practically coincided with the Meiji Era (1868–1912). The period began with the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of imperial power. It was then that Edo, where Soseki was born, officially became the Japanese capital and was renamed Tokyo. It was mainly during this time that Japan began its process of modernization (in Western terms), opening its ports to the world and Western culture.

Natsume claimed to owe little to native literary tradition. However, despite its modernity, his novels have a delicate lyricism that is exclusively Japanese. Through him, the modern realistic novel, which had essentially been a foreign literary genre, took root in Japan.

About the work:

"Kokoro" is a novel that captures the changes in mentality in Japan during a period of rapid modernization at the end of the 19th century. Set in Tokyo around 1910, this three-part novel describes the relationship between a young man, the narrator, and a gentleman he calls Sensei. The latter is plagued by a stigma from his past, which hangs over the entire novel.

Parts one and two revolve around the deaths of the narrator's father and Sensei's friend, and their frequent visits to the cemetery where they are buried. The narrator worries about Sensei's secret, and his anxiety increases. One day, a letter arrives from Sensei confessing guilt in a tragic love triangle and his conflicting sensations. He is torn between morality and possessiveness, intellect and emotion, death and life. He suffers from not being able to understand his kokoro (heart or soul) and that of others.

In describing Sensei's malaise, the novel, in addition to being a testimony to Japan's rapid modernization, is also an examination of a tortured sense of failure and responsibility. Natsume, who created the form of the first-person novel, is one of the greatest writers of modern Japanese literature.

Other Works:

"I Am a Cat," 1905

"Botchan," 1906

"Sanshiro," 1908

"And Then," 1909

"The Gate," 1910

KOKORO

PART I - SENSEI AND I

CHAPTER 1

I always called him Sensei and so I shall do in these pages, rather than reveal his name. It is not that I wish to shield him from public scrutiny — simply that it feels more natural. “Sensei” springs to my lips whenever I summon memories of this man and I write of him now with the same reverence and respect. It would also feel wrong to use some conventional initial to substitute for his name and thereby distance him.

I first met Sensei in Kamakura,{i} in the days when I was still a young student. A friend had gone there during summer vacation for sea bathing and urged me to join him, so I set about organizing enough money to cover the trip. This took me two or three days. Less than three days after I arrived, my friend received a sudden telegram from home demanding that he return. His mother was ill, it seemed.

He did not believe it. For some time his parents had been trying to force him into an unwanted marriage. By present-day standards he was far too young for marriage and besides he did not care for the girl in question. That was why he had chosen not to return home for the vacation, as he normally would have but to go off to a local seaside resort to enjoy himself.

He showed me the telegram and asked what I thought he should do. I did not know what to advise. But if his mother really was ill, he clearly should go home, so in the end he decided to leave. Having come to Kamakura to be with my friend, I now found myself alone.

I could stay or go as I pleased, since some time still remained before classes began again, so I decided to stay where I was for the moment. My friend, who was from a prosperous family in the Chugoku region, did not lack for money. But he was a student and young, so in fact his standard of living was actually much like my own and I was spared the trouble of having to find a cheaper inn for myself after he left.

The inn he had chosen was somewhere in an out-of-the-way district of Kamakura. To get to any of the fashionable spots — the billiard rooms and ice cream parlors and such things — I had to take a lengthy walk through the rice fields. A rickshaw ride would cost me a full twenty sen. Still, a number of new summer houses stood in the area and it was right next to the beach, making it wonderfully handy for sea bathing.

Each day I went down to the shore for a swim, making my way among soot-blackened old thatched country houses. An astonishing number of men and women always thronged the beach, city folk down from Tokyo to escape the summer heat. Sometimes the crowd was so thick that the water was a tightly packed mass of black heads, as in some public bathhouse. Knowing no one, I enjoyed my time alone amid this merry scene, lying on the sand and leaping about up to my knees in the waves.

It was here in this throng of people that I first came upon Sensei. In those days two little stalls on the beach provided drinks and changing rooms and for no particular reason I took to frequenting one of them. Unlike the owners of the grand summer houses in the Hase area, we users of this beach had no private bathing huts, so communal changing rooms were essential. People drank tea and relaxed here or left their hats and sun umbrellas in safekeeping; after they bathed, they would wash themselves down at the stall and attendants would rinse their bathing suits for them. I owned no bathing clothes but I left my belongings at the stall whenever I went into the water, to avoid having anything stolen.

CHAPTER 2

When I first set eyes on Sensei there, he had just taken off his clothes and was about to go in for a swim, while I had just emerged from the water and was drying off in the sea breeze. A number of black heads were moving around between us, obstructing my view of him and under normal circumstances I probably would not have noticed him. But he instantly caught my attention, despite the crowd and my own distracted state of mind, because he was with a Westerner.

The Westerner’s marvelously white skin had struck me as soon as I came in. He had casually tossed his kimono robe onto the nearby bench and then, clad only in a pair of drawers such as we Japanese wear, stood gazing out toward the sea, arms folded.

This intrigued me. Two days earlier I had gone up to Yuigahama beach and spent a long time watching the Westerners bathing. I had settled myself on a low dune very close to the rear entrance of a hotel frequented by foreigners and seen a number of men emerge to bathe. Unlike this Westerner, however, they all wore clothing that covered their torso, arms and legs. The women were even more modest. Most wore red or blue rubber caps that bobbed prettily about among the waves.

Because I had so recently observed all that, the sight of this Westerner standing there in front of everyone wearing only a pair of trunks struck me as quite remarkable.

He turned and spoke a few words to the Japanese man beside him, who had bent over to pick up a small towel that had fallen on the sand. His companion then wrapped the towel about his head and set off toward the sea. This man was Sensei.

Out of nothing more than curiosity, my eyes followed the two figures as they walked side by side down to the water. Stepping straight into the waves, they made their way through the boisterous crowd gathered in the shallows close to shore and when they reached a relatively open stretch of water, both began to swim. They swam on out to sea until their heads looked small in the distance. Then they turned around and swam straight back to the beach. Returning to the stall, they toweled themselves down without rinsing at the well, put on their clothes and promptly headed off together for some unknown destination.

After they left, I sat down on the bench and smoked a cigarette. I wondered idly about Sensei. I felt sure I had seen his face before somewhere but for the life of me I could not recall where or when.

I was at loose ends and needing to amuse myself, so the following day I went back to the stall at the hour when I had seen Sensei. Sure enough, there he was again. This time he came along wearing a straw hat and the Westerner was not with him. He removed his spectacles and set them on the bench, then wrapped a small towel around his head and set off briskly down the beach.

As I watched him make his way through the crowd at the edge and start to swim, I had a sudden urge to follow him. In I strode, the water splashing high around me and when I reached a reasonable depth, I set my sights on him and began to swim. I did not reach him, however. Rather than return the way he had come, as he did the previous day, Sensei had swum in an arc back to the beach.

I too swam back and as I emerged from the water and entered the stall, shaking the drops from my hands, he passed me on his way out, already neatly dressed.

CHAPTER 3

The next day I went to the beach at the same hour yet again and again I saw Sensei there. I did the same the day after but never found an opportunity to speak to him or even to greet him. Besides, Sensei’s demeanor was rather forbidding. He would arrive at the same time each day, with an unapproachable air and depart just as punctually and aloofly. He seemed quite indifferent to the noisy throng that surrounded him. The Westerner who had been with him that first day never reappeared. Sensei was always alone.

Finally my chance came. Sensei had as usual come striding back from his swim. He was about to don the kimono that lay as usual on the bench, when he found that it had somehow gotten covered in sand. As he turned away and quickly shook it out, I saw his spectacles, which had been lying on the bench beneath it, slip through a crack between the boards and fall to the ground. Sensei put on the robe and wrapped the sash around his waist. Then, evidently noticing that his spectacles were missing, he quickly began to search for them. In a moment I had ducked down, thrust my hand under the bench and retrieved them from the ground.

“Thank you,” he said as he took them.

The next day I followed Sensei into the sea and swam after him. I had gone about two hundred yards when he suddenly stopped swimming and turned to speak to me. We two were the only beings afloat on that blue expanse of water for a considerable distance. As far as the eye could see, strong sunlight blazed down upon sea and mountains.

As I danced wildly in place there in the water, I felt my muscles flood with a sensation of freedom and delight. Sensei, meanwhile, ceased to move and lay floating tranquilly on his back. I followed his example and felt the sky’s azure strike me full in the face, as if plunging its glittering shafts of color deep behind my eyes.

“Isn’t this good!” I cried.

After a little while Sensei righted himself in the water and suggested we go back. Being physically quite strong, I would have liked to stay longer but I instantly and happily agreed. The two of us swam back to the beach the way we had come.

From this point on, Sensei and I were friends. Yet I still had no idea where he was staying. On the afternoon of the third day since our swim, he suddenly turned to me when we met at the stall. “Are you planning to stay here a while longer?” he asked.

I had not thought about it and had no ready answer. “I don’t really know,” I responded simply.

But the grin on Sensei’s face made me suddenly awkward and I found myself asking, “What about you, Sensei?” This was when I first began to call him by that name.

That evening I called on him at his lodgings. I say “lodgings,” but I discovered it was no ordinary place — he was staying in a villa in the spacious grounds of a temple. Those who shared the place, I also discovered, were not related to him.

Noticing how he grimaced wryly when I persisted in calling him “Sensei,” I excused myself with the explanation that this was a habit of mine when addressing my elders. I asked him about the Westerner he had been with. The man was quite eccentric, he said, adding that he was no longer in Kamakura. He told me a lot of other things about him, then remarked that it was odd that he, who had few social contacts even with his fellow Japanese, should have become friends with such a person.

At the end of our conversation I told him that I felt I knew him from somewhere but could not remember where. Young as I was, I hoped that he might share my feeling and was anticipating his answer. But after a thoughtful pause, he said, “I can’t say I recall your face. Perhaps you’re remembering somebody else.” His words produced in me a strange disappointment.

CHAPTER 4

At the end of the month I returned to Tokyo. Sensei had left the summer resort long since. When we parted, I had asked him, “Would you mind if I visited you from time to time?” “Yes, do,” he replied simply. By this time I felt we were on quite familiar terms and had expected a warmer response. This unsatisfactory reply rather wounded my self-confidence.

Sensei frequently disappointed me in this way. He seemed at times to realize it and at other times to be quite oblivious. Despite all the fleeting shocks of disappointment, however, I felt no desire to part ways with him. On the contrary, whenever some unexpected terseness of his shook me, my impulse was to press forward with the friendship. It seemed to me that if I did so, my yearning for the possibilities of all he had to offer would someday be fulfilled. Certainly I was young. Yet the youthful candor that drew me to him was not evident in my other relationships.

I had no idea why I should feel this way toward Sensei alone. Now, when he is dead, I understand at last. He had never disliked me and the occasional curt greetings and aloofness were not expressions of displeasure intended to keep me at bay. I pity him now, for I realize that he was in fact sending a warning, to someone who was attempting to grow close to him, signaling that he was unworthy of such intimacy. For all his unresponsiveness to others’ affection, I now see, it was not them he despised but himself.

Needless to say, I returned to Tokyo fully intending to visit Sensei. Classes would not resume for another two weeks, so I planned to visit him during that time. However, within two or three days of my arrival in Tokyo, my feelings began to shift and blur. The city’s vibrant atmosphere, reviving as it did all my stimulating memories, swept away thoughts of Kamakura. Seeing my fellow students in the street gave me a thrill of excited anticipation for the coming academic year. For a while I forgot about Sensei.

Classes started and a month or so later I slumped back into normalcy. I wandered the streets in vague discontentment or cast my eyes around my room, aware of some indefinable lack. The thought of Sensei came into my mind once more. I wanted to see him again, I realized.

The first time I went to his house, he was not home. The second time was the following Sunday, I remember. It was a beautiful day, with the sort of sky that feels as if it is penetrating your very soul. Once again Sensei was out. I distinctly remembered him saying in Kamakura that he was almost always at home. In fact, he had said, he quite disliked going out. Having now found him absent both times I called, I remembered these words and somewhere inside me an inexplicable resentment registered.

Instead of turning to go, I lingered at the front door, gazing at the maid who had delivered the message. She recognized me and remembered giving Sensei my card last time, so she left me waiting while she retreated inside.

Then a lady whom I took to be Sensei’s wife appeared. I was struck by her beauty.

She courteously explained where Sensei had gone. On this day every month, she told me, his habit was to visit the cemetery at Zoshigaya and offer flowers at one of the graves. “He only went out a bare ten minutes or so ago,” she added sympathetically.

I thanked her and left. I walked a hundred yards or so toward the bustling town, then felt a sudden urge to take a detour by way of Zoshigaya myself. I might even come across Sensei there, I thought. I swung around and set off.

CHAPTER 5

I passed a field of rice seedlings on my right, then turned into the graveyard. I was walking down its broad maple-lined central avenue when I saw someone who could be Sensei emerging from the teahouse at the far end. I went on toward the figure until I could make out the sunlight flashing on the rim of his spectacles. “Sensei!” I called abruptly.

He halted and stared at me.

“How . . . ? How . . . ?”

The repeated word hung strangely in the hushed midday air. I found myself suddenly unable to reply.

“Did you follow me here? How . . . ?”

He seemed quite calm. His voice was quiet. But a shadow seemed to cloud his face.

I explained how I came to be there.

“Did my wife tell you whose grave I’ve come to visit?”

“No, she didn’t mention that.”

“I see. Yes, she wouldn’t have any reason to, after all. She had only just met you. There’d be no need to tell you anything.”

He seemed finally satisfied but I was puzzled by what he had said.

Sensei and I walked together among the graves to the exit. One of the tombstones was inscribed with a foreign name, “Isabella So-and-so.” Another, evidently belonging to a Christian, read “Rogin, Servant of God.” Next to it stood a stupa with a quotation from the sutras: “Buddhahood is innate to all beings.” Another gravestone bore the title “Minister Plenipotentiary.” I paused at one small grave whose name I could make no sense of and asked Sensei about it. “I think that’s intended to spell the name Andrei,” he replied with a wry little smile.

I found humor and irony in this great variety of humanity displayed in the names on the tombstones but I gathered that he did not. As I chattered on about the graves, pointing out this round tombstone or that tall thin marble pillar, he listened in silence. Finally he said, “You haven’t seriously thought about the reality of death yet, have you?”

I fell silent. Sensei did not speak again.

At the end of the cemetery a great ginkgo tree stood blocking the sky. “It will look lovely before long,” Sensei remarked, looking up at it. “This tree turns a beautiful color in autumn. The ground is buried deep in golden leaves when they fall.” Every month when he came here, I discovered, he made a point of passing under this tree.

Some distance away a man had been smoothing the rough earth of a new grave; he paused on his hoe and watched us. We turned left and soon were back on the street.

I had nowhere in particular to go, so I continued to walk beside him. He spoke less than usual. It did not make me feel awkward, however and I strolled along easily beside him.

“Are you going straight home?” I asked.

“Yes, there’s nowhere else I need to go.”

We fell silent again and walked south down the hill.

“Is your family grave there?” I asked a little later, breaking the silence.

“No.”

“Whose grave is it? Is it some relation?”

“No.”

Sensei said no more and I decided not to pursue the conversation. About a hundred yards on, however, he abruptly broke the silence. “A friend of mine is buried there.”

“You visit a friend’s grave every month?”

“That’s right.”

This was all he told me that day.

CHAPTER 6

I visited Sensei quite often thereafter. He was always at home when I called. And the more I saw of him, the sooner I wanted to visit him again.

Yet Sensei’s manner toward me never really changed, from the day we first exchanged words to the time when our friendship was well established. He was always quiet, sometimes almost forlorn. From the outset he seemed to me strangely unapproachable, yet I felt compelled to find a way to get close to him.

Perhaps no one else would have had this response — others might have dismissed it as folly, an impulse of youth. Yet I feel a certain happy pride in the insight I showed, for later events served to justify my intuition. Sensei was a man who could, indeed must love, yet he was unable to open his arms and accept into his heart another who sought to enter.

He was, as I have said, always quiet and composed, even serene. Yet from time to time an odd shadow would cross his face, like the sudden dark passage of a bird across a window, although it was no sooner there than gone again. The first time I noticed it was when I called out to him in the graveyard at Zoshigaya. For a strange instant the warm pulse of my blood faltered a little. It was only a momentary miss of a beat, however and in no time my heart recovered its usual resilient pulse and I proceeded to forget what I had seen.

One evening just at the end of autumn’s warm weather, I was unexpectedly reminded of it again.

As I was talking to Sensei, I was for some reason suddenly reminded of the great ginkgo tree that he had pointed out to me. A mental calculation told me that his next visit to the grave was three days away. My classes would finish at noon that day, so I would have the afternoon free.

I turned to Sensei. “I wonder if that ginkgo tree at Zoshigaya has lost its leaves by now.”

“It won’t be quite bare yet, I should think.” He looked at me, his eyes staying on me for a long moment.

I quickly went on. “Would you mind if I go with you next time? I’d enjoy walking around the area with you.”

“I go to visit a grave, you know, not to take a walk.”

“But wouldn’t it be nice to go for a walk while you’re about it?”

Sensei did not reply at first, then said finally, “My sole purpose in going is to visit the grave.” Clearly, he wanted to impress on me the distinction between a grave visit and a mere walk. It occurred to me that he might be making an excuse not to have me along. His tone seemed oddly petulant.

I felt an urge to press my case. “Well, let me come along anyway and visit the grave too. I’ll pay respects with you.” In truth, I couldn’t really see the distinction between visiting someone’s grave and taking a walk.

Sensei’s brow darkened a little and a strange light shone in his eyes. Was it annoyance or dislike or fear that I saw hovering there? Instantly, I had a vivid recollection of that shadow on his face when I had called out to him at Zoshigaya. This expression was identical.

“I have,” Sensei began. “I have a particular reason that I cannot explain to you for wanting to visit that grave alone. I never even take my wife.”

CHAPTER 7

It all struck me as very odd. But my intention in visiting him was not to study or analyze Sensei, so I let it pass. In retrospect, I particularly treasure my memory of that response to Sensei. Because of it, I think, I was able to achieve the real human intimacy with him that I later did. If I had chosen to turn the cool and analytical eye of curiosity on Sensei’s heart, it would inexorably have snapped the bond of sympathy between us. At the time, of course, I was too young to be aware of any of this. Perhaps that is precisely where its true value lies. If I had made the mistake of responding less than guilelessly, who knows what might have befallen our relationship? I shudder to think of it. The scrutiny of an analytical eye was something Sensei always particularly dreaded.

It became my established habit to call on Sensei twice or even three times a month. One day he unexpectedly turned to me and asked, “What makes you come to see someone like me so often?”

“Well, no particular reason, really. Am I a nuisance, Sensei?”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Indeed my visits didn’t seem to annoy him. I was aware that he had a very narrow range of social contacts. He had also mentioned that only two or three of his old school friends were living in Tokyo. Occasionally, a fellow student from his hometown would be there when I called but none of them seemed to me as close to him as I.

“I’m a lonely man,” Sensei said, “so I’m happy that you come to visit. That’s why I asked why you come so often.”

“Why are you lonely?” I asked in return.

Sensei did not reply. He just looked at me and said, “How old are you?”

I could make no sense of this exchange and went home that day puzzled. Four days later, however, I was back at his house again.

He burst out laughing as soon as he emerged and saw me. “You’re here again, eh?”

“Yes,” I said, laughing too.

If anyone else had said this to me, I would surely have felt offended. But coming from Sensei, the words made me positively happy.

“I’m a lonely man,” he repeated that evening. “I’m lonely but I’m guessing you may be a lonely man yourself. I’m older, so I can withstand loneliness without needing to take action but for you it’s different — you’re young. I sense that you have the urge to do, to act. You want to pit yourself against something . . .”

“I’m not at all lonely.”

“No time is as lonely as youth. Why else should you visit me so often?”

Here was the same question again.

“But even when you’re with me,” he went on, “you probably still feel somehow lonely. I don’t have the strength, you see, to really take on your loneliness and eradicate it for you. In time, you’ll need to reach out toward someone else. Sooner or later your feet will no longer feel inclined to take you here.” Sensei smiled forlornly as he spoke.

CHAPTER 8

Fortunately Sensei’s prophecy was not fulfilled. Inexperienced as I was, I could not grasp even the most obvious significance of his words and continued to visit as usual. Before long I found myself occasionally dining there, which naturally put me in the position of talking to his wife.

Like other men, I was not indifferent to women. Being young, however, I had so far had little opportunity to have much to do with girls. Perhaps for this reason, my response to the opposite sex was limited to a keen interest in the unknown women I passed in the street. When I first saw Sensei’s wife at the door, she had struck me as beautiful and every time we met thereafter I thought so again. Otherwise I found nothing really to say about her.

That is not to say that she wasn’t special in any way. Rather, she had no opportunity to reveal her particular qualities to me. I treated her as a kind of appendage to Sensei and she welcomed me as the young student who visited her husband. Sensei was our sole connection. That is why her beauty is the single impression I remember of her from those early days.

One day when I visited, I was given sake. His wife emerged to serve it to me. Sensei was more jovial than usual. “You must have a cup too,” he pressed her, offering the little sake cup from which he had drunk.

“Oh no, I . . . ,” she began, then rather unwillingly accepted the cup. I half-filled it for her and she lifted it to her lips, a pretty frown creasing her forehead.

The following conversation then took place between them.

“This is most unusual,” she remarked. “You almost never encourage me to drink.”

“That’s because you don’t enjoy it. But it’s good to have the occasional drink, you know. It puts you in good spirits.”

“It doesn’t at all. All it does is make me feel terrible. But a bit of sake seems to make you wonderfully cheerful.”

“Sometimes it does, yes. But not always.”

“What about this evening?”

“This evening I feel fine.”

“You should have a little every evening from now on.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Go on, do. Then you won’t feel so melancholy.”

The two of them lived there with only a maid for company and I generally found the house hushed and silent when I arrived. I never heard loud laughter or raised voices. It sometimes felt as if Sensei and I were the only people in the house.

“It would be nice if we had children, you know,” she said, turning to me.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I replied. But I felt no stir of sympathy at her words. I was too young to have children of my own and regarded them as no more than noisy pests.

“Shall I adopt one for you?” said Sensei.

“Oh dear me, an adopted child . . . she said, turning to me again.

“We’ll never have one, you know,” Sensei said.

She was silent, so I spoke instead. “Why not?”

“Divine punishment,” he answered and gave a loud laugh.

CHAPTER 9

Sensei and his wife had a good relationship, as far as I could tell. I was not really in a position to judge, of course, since I had never lived under the same roof with them. Still, if he happened to need something while we were in the living room together, it was often his wife rather than the maid whom he asked to fetch it. “Hey, Shizu!” he would call, turning toward the door and calling her by name. The words had a gentle ring, I thought. And on those occasions when I stayed for a meal and she joined us, I gained a clearer picture of their relationship.

Sensei would sometimes take her out to a concert or the theater. I also recall two or three occasions when they went off for a week’s vacation together. I still have a postcard they sent from the hot springs resort at Hakone and I received a letter from their visit to Nikko, with an autumn leaf enclosed.

Such was my general impression of them as a couple. Only one incident disturbed it. One day when I arrived at the house and was on the point of announcing myself at the door as was my custom, I overheard voices coming from the living room. As I listened, it became evident that this was no normal conversation but an argument. The living room was right next to the entrance hall and I was close enough to get a clear sense of the general tone, if not the words. I soon understood that the male voice that rose from time to time was Sensei’s. The other one was lower and it was unclear whose it was but it felt like his wife’s. She seemed to be crying. I hesitated briefly in the entrance hall, unsure what to do, then made up my mind and went home again.

Back at my lodgings, a strange anxiety gripped me. I tried reading but found I could not concentrate. About an hour later Sensei arrived below my window and called up to me. Surprised, I opened it and he suggested I come down for a walk. I checked the watch I had tucked into my sash when I set off earlier and saw that it was past eight. I was still dressed in my visiting clothes, so I went straight out to meet him.

That evening we drank beer together. As a rule Sensei did not drink much. If a certain amount of alcohol failed to produce the desired effect, he was disinclined to experiment by drinking more.

“This isn’t working today,” he remarked with a wry smile.

“You can’t cheer up?” I asked sympathetically.

I still felt disturbed by the argument I had heard. It produced a sharp pain in me, like a fishbone stuck in my throat. I couldn’t decide whether to confess to Sensei that I had overheard it and my indecision made me unusually fidgety.

Sensei was the first to speak about the matter. “You’re not yourself tonight, are you?” he said. “I’m feeling rather out of sorts too, actually. You noticed that?”

I could not reply.

“As a matter of fact, I had a bit of a quarrel with my wife earlier. I got stupidly upset by it.”

“Why . . . ?” I could not bring myself to say the word “quarrel.”

“My wife misunderstands me. I tell her so but she won’t believe me. I’m afraid I lost my temper with her.”

“How does she misunderstand you?”

Sensei made no attempt to respond to this. “If I was the sort of person she thinks I am,” he said, “I wouldn’t be suffering like this.”

But I was unable to imagine how Sensei was suffering.

CHAPTER 10

We walked back in silence. Then after quite some time, Sensei spoke.

“I’ve done wrong. I left home angry and my wife will be worrying about me. Women are to be pitied, you know. My wife has not a soul except me to turn to.”

He paused and then seeming to expect no response from me, he went on. “But putting it that way makes her husband sound like the strong one, which is rather a joke. You, now — how do you see me, I wonder. Do I strike you as strong or as weak?”

“Somewhere in between,” I replied.

Sensei seemed a little startled. He fell silent again and walked on without speaking further.

The route back to Sensei’s house passed very near my lodgings. But when we reached that point, it did not feel right to part with him. “Shall I see you to your house?” I asked.

He raised a quick defensive hand. “It’s late. Off you go. I must be off too, for my wife’s sake.”

“For my wife’s sake” — these words warmed my heart. Thanks to them, I slept in peace that night and they stayed with me for a long time to come.

They told me that the trouble between Sensei and his wife was nothing serious. And I felt it safe to conclude, from my subsequent constant comings and goings at the house, that such quarrels were actually rare.

Indeed, Sensei once confided to me, “I have only ever known one woman in my life. No one besides my wife has really ever appealed to me as a woman. And likewise for her, I am the only man. Given this, we should be the happiest of couples.”

I no longer remember the context in which he said this, so I cannot really explain why he should have made such a confession and to me. But I do remember that he spoke earnestly and seemed calm. The only thing that struck me as strange was that final phrase, we should be the happiest of couples. Why did he say “should be”? Why not say simply that they were? This alone disturbed me.

Even more puzzling was the somehow forceful tone in which he spoke the words. Sensei had every reason to be happy but was he in fact? I wondered. I could not repress my doubt. But it lasted only a moment, then was buried.

Sometime later I stopped by when Sensei happened to be out and I had a chance to talk directly with his wife. Sensei had gone to Shinbashi station to see off a friend who was sailing abroad that day from Yokohama. Customarily, those taking a ship from Yokohama would set off on the boat-train from Shinbashi at eight-thirty in the morning. I had arranged with Sensei to stop by that morning at nine, as I wanted his opinion on a certain book. Once there, I learned of his last-minute decision to see off his friend, as a gesture of thanks for the trouble he had taken to pay Sensei a special farewell visit the day before. Sensei had left instructions that he would soon be back, so I was to stay there and await his return. And so it came about that, as I waited in the living room, his wife and I talked.

CHAPTER 11

By this time I was a university student and felt myself to be far more adult than when I had first begun to visit Sensei. I was also quite friendly with his wife and now chatted easily and unself-consciously with her about this and that. This conversation was light and incidental, containing nothing remarkable and I have forgotten what we spoke of. Just one thing struck me but before I proceed, I should explain a little.

I had known from the beginning that Sensei was a university graduate but only after I returned to Tokyo had I discovered that he had no occupation, that he lived what could be called an idle life. How he could do it was a puzzle to me.

Sensei’s name was quite unknown in the world. I seemed to be the only person who was in a position to really respect him for his learning and ideas. This fact always troubled me. He would never discuss the matter, simply saying, “There’s no point in someone like me opening his mouth in public.” This struck me as ridiculously humble.

I also sensed behind his words a contemptuous attitude to the world at large. Indeed, Sensei would occasionally make a surprisingly harsh remark, dismissing some old school friend who was now in a prominent position. I didn’t hesitate to point out how inconsistent he was being. I was not just being contrary — I genuinely regretted the way the world ignored this admirable man.

At such times Sensei would respond leadenly, “It can’t be helped,

I’m afraid. I simply don’t have any right to put myself forward.” As he spoke, an indefinable expression — whether it was despair or bitterness or grief I could not tell — was vividly etched on his features. Whatever it may have been, it was strong enough to dumbfound me. I lost all courage to speak further.

As his wife and I talked that morning, the topic shifted naturally from Sensei to this question. “Why is it that Sensei always sits at home, studying and thinking, instead of finding a worthy position in the world?” I asked.

“It’s no use — he hates that sort of thing.”

“You mean he realizes how trivial it is?”

“Realizes . . . well, I’m a woman, so I don’t really know about such things but that doesn’t seem to be it to me. I think he wants to do something but somehow, he just can’t manage to. It makes me sad for him.”

“But he’s perfectly healthy, isn’t he?”

“He’s fine, yes. There’s nothing the matter with him.”

“So why doesn’t he do something?”

“I don’t understand it either. If I understood, I wouldn’t worry about him as I do. As it is, all I can do is feel sorry for him.”

Her tone was deeply sympathetic, yet a little smile played at the corners of her mouth.

To an observer, I would have appeared to be more concerned than she. I sat silently, my face troubled.

Then she spoke again, as if suddenly recalling something. “He wasn’t at all like this when he was young, you know. He was very different. He’s changed completely.”

“What do you mean by ‘when he was young’?” I asked.

“When he was a student.”

“Have you known him since his student days, then?”

She blushed slightly.

CHAPTER 12

Sensei’s wife was a Tokyo woman. Both she and he had told me so. “Actually,” she added half-jokingly, “I’m not a pure-blood.” Her mother had been born in Tokyo’s Ichigaya district, back when the city was still called Edo but her father had come from the provinces, Tottori or somewhere of the sort. Sensei, for his part, came from a very different part of Japan, Niigata Prefecture. Clearly, if she had known him in his student days it was not because they shared a hometown. But since she blushed at my question and seemed disinclined to say more, I did not press the subject further.

Between our first meeting and his death, I came to know Sensei’s ideas and feelings on all sorts of subjects but I learned almost nothing about the circumstances surrounding his marriage. Sometimes I interpreted this reticence charitably, choosing to believe that Sensei, as an older man, would prefer to be discreet on a private matter of the heart. At other times, however, I saw the question in a less positive light and felt that Sensei and his wife shared the older generation’s timorous aversion to open, honest discussion of these delicate subjects. Both of my interpretations were of course mere speculations and both were premised on the assumption that a splendid romance lay behind their marriage.

This assumption was not far wrong but I was able to imagine only part of the story of their love. I could not know that behind the beautiful romance lay a terrible tragedy. Moreover, Sensei’s wife had absolutely no way of understanding how devastating this tragedy had been for him. To this day she knows nothing of it. Sensei died without revealing anything to her. He chose to destroy his life before her happiness could be destroyed.

I will say nothing of that tragedy yet. As for their romance, which was in a sense born of this dreadful thing, neither of them told me anything. In her case, it was simply discretion. Sensei had deeper reasons for his silence.

One memory stands out for me. One spring day when the cherries were in full bloom, Sensei and I went to see the blossoms in Ueno. Amid the crowd were a lovely young couple, snuggled close together as they walked under the flowering trees. In this public place, such a sight tended to attract more attention than the blossoms.

“I’d say they’re a newly married couple,” said Sensei.

“They look as if they get on just fine together,” I remarked a little snidely.

Sensei’s face remained stony and he set off walking away from the couple. When they were hidden from our view, he spoke. “Have you ever been in love?” I had not, I replied.

“Wouldn’t you like to be?”

I did not answer.

“I don’t imagine that you wouldn’t.”

“No.”

“You were mocking that couple just now. I think that mockery contained unhappiness at wanting love but not finding it.”

“Is that how it sounded to you?”

“It is. A man who knows the satisfactions of love would speak of them more warmly. But, you know . . . love is also a sin. Do you understand?”

Astonished, I made no reply.

CHAPTER 13

People thronged all around us and every face was happy. At last we made our way through them and arrived in a wooded area that had neither blossoms nor crowds, where we could resume the conversation.