Crackling Mountain and Other Stories Page 12

  Actually, I do sort of have one. It’s a kimono with pale red stripes running both down and across that I bought on the sly during my fashionable days as a high-school student. When I awoke from the spell of fashion, I realized a fellow like me couldn’t wear such a garment. It obviously belonged on a woman.

  I must have been insane. The kimono was so gaudy that words can hardly describe it. Remembering how I used to put on this garment and stroll aimlessly and languidly about, I can only hide my face and groan. I never should have worn it. I can’t stand the sight of that kimono, and I’ve left it in storage a long time now.

  Last autumn I tried to arrange the clothes, blankets, and books I had left in the storehouse. I sold off the useless items and brought the rest back home. My wife was present as I opened the large cloth bundle. Needless to say, I was nervous and embarrassed to reveal before her very eyes how slovenly I had been before our marriage. A filthy yukata had been left in the storehouse unlaundered, and a rolled-up tanzen with a tear in the backside had not been repaired. Nothing that came out of the bundle was presentable. Dirt, mold, garments with strange, gaudy patterns—that’s all there was. This was not the legacy of a solid citizen, and I cringed in self-contempt as I unpacked the bundle.

  “Sheer decadence!” I declared. “But I suppose we can sell the stuff to some rag-picker.”

  “Oh no!” my wife shot back. She inspected each article, ignoring the filth. “Look! This one’s pure wool! Let’s remake it.”

  The serge kimono! I almost fled in horror. What was it doing here? It should have remained in storage. I had picked up the wrong article at some point. Blunderer!

  “I wore it years ago. Rather flashy, wouldn’t you say?”

  I hid my embarrassment and spoke calmly.

  “What luck! You don’t have a single serge kimono, and now you can wear this.”

  I couldn’t. During the ten years in storage, the kimono fabric had turned a strange color, something on the order of bean jelly, while the red stripes had faded to an unhealthy persimmon color. It was an old woman’s kimono, and I turned away from it in disgust.

  This past autumn I leaped out of bed early one morning, knowing that I had to finish a story that very day for a certain publisher. An unfamiliar kimono lay neatly folded alongside my pillow. It proved to be the serge kimono itself, just right for the cool weather already in the air. Washed and re-sewn, the garment was more presentable than before, but there was no mistaking the bean-jelly fabric and the persimmon-colored stripes. With work to be done, however, I couldn’t bother about my appearance. I dressed in silence and started writing without any breakfast. I finished slightly past noon and was just breathing a sigh of relief when an old friend unexpectedly dropped in.

  His timing was perfect. We ate lunch, talked over various matters, and went out for a walk. Only as we were entering the woods at Inokashira Park did I realize how strange I looked. I came to a halt and groaned, “Oh no, I shouldn’t be out like this.”

  My friend stared at me, his brows knit in a worried expression. “What’s the trouble?” he asked. “Is it your stomach . . . ?”

  “No, nothing like that.” I forced a smile. “It’s an odd kimono, don’t you agree?”

  “Well ...” His tone was somber. “It seems a bit flashy.”

  “I bought it ten years ago,” I mentioned, moving forward a step or two. “It seems more suitable for a woman, and the color’s changed too . . .” I couldn’t go any further.

  “Calm down,” my friend counseled, “It’s not so noticeable.”

  “You think so?” I was already feeling better.

  We came out of the woods, descended the stone steps, and strolled around the pond.

  But the thing kept bothering me. I was a big, hirsute fellow, thirty-one years old, with some experience of hardship. Yet here I was wandering through the park in a pair of worn-out geta and a tasteless kimono. A stranger might take me for some filthy neighborhood bum, and friends would become all the more contemptuous of me. There he goes again, they would exclaim, it’s about time he grew up. That’s how misunderstood I’ve been all these years.

  “How about going to Shinjuku?” my friend proposed.

  “Are you kidding? If someone sees me around Shinjuku in this outfit . . .” I shook my head.

  “No one will think the worse of you.”

  “Count me out,” I stubbornly insisted. “Let’s stop at the teahouse instead."

  “I need a real drink. C’mon, let’s get out of here and head for town.”

  “They serve beer at the teahouse.”

  I didn’t feel like heading for town—not in this kimono. Besides, my story needed revision, and that made me uneasy.

  “It’s too chilly at the teahouse,” my companion countered. “I want to relax with a drink.”

  I had heard he was having a bad time of it recently.

  “Well,” I conceded, “Asagaya maybe. But not Shinjuku.”

  “You’ve an interesting place in mind?”

  It wasn’t especially interesting, but the tavern at Asagaya had its advantages. I had been there occasionally, and my credit was good until the next visit whenever I was a bit short. Since they knew me, this strange outfit would not arouse suspicion, either. I needn’t worry about how I looked. After all, the tavern didn’t employ any hostesses.

  Dusk was beginning to settle when we left the train at Asagaya and began to walk down the street. I could hardly bear to see my reflection in the store windows, just like some Han Shan or Sheh Teh in those Zen paintings. Since the kimono was bright red, I remembered how an old man puts on a colorful undergarment to celebrate his eighty-eighth birthday.

  These were difficult times, and there was nothing I could do to help. My writing had gone unrecognized. The last ten years seemed to have passed as one day while I loitered about Asagaya in a pair of worn-out geta. And I was back again today, decked out in the red kimono as well. Always I seemed to be on the losing end.

  “Things don’t change no matter how old you get. I’ve tried my best, and yet . . .” As we walked along, I began to let my grievances against life come tumbling out. “Maybe that’s what writing’s all about,” I went on. “But there’s something wrong with me. Imagine, walking about in an outfit like this one.”

  My friend looked at me sympathetically. “That’s right, you’ve got to dress properly. Now I’ve suffered plenty of setbacks at the office . . .”

  He worked for a company in Fukugawa, but he wasn’t the sort to spend money on clothes.

  “It’s not just how you dress,” I tried to argue. “It goes deeper. I didn’t get the right sort of education. Now take Verlaine’s case,9 for example ...”

  What did Verlaine have to do with my red kimono? An abrupt shift of thought even for me, and I felt quite sheepish about the remark. Whenever I’m feeling down and out, though, I remember Verlaine’s doleful countenance, and it helps. The very weakness of the man gives me the strength to pull myself together and keep going. I firmly believe that true glory can emerge only after the most timid introspection. In any event I want to live on, to have a life bereft of means but filled with pride.

  “Was I stretching things with that Verlaine business?” I asked. “Well, regardless of what I say, this kimono is out of the question.”

  I was at my wits’ end, but my friend merely chuckled as the street lights came on. “Forget it,” he counseled.

  That evening at the tavern I struck my friend in the face—an awful blunder. For this, the kimono was surely to blame. Of late I had disciplined myself to laugh off just about anything, and even violence, up to a certain point at least, did not affect me. But that night I acted. I believe the red kimono was entirely at fault, a good example of the frightening influence clothes can exercise over a man.

  I was so depressed when we entered that I took a seat in the darkest corner, abjectly ignoring the tavern keeper as I drank my saké. My friend, for some reason or other, was in very good spirits. He denounced all a
rtists—ancient and modern, Eastern and Western—and ended up lashing out at the tavern keeper. Now the latter, I knew, had a temper. On one occasion a young fellow had gotten out of hand, just like my friend was doing, and begun to shout at the other patrons. The tavern keeper had suddenly looked stern, as if he were a different person. What’s the matter with you, he had scolded, don’t you realize what the country’s going through? He had then ordered the youngster off the premises, with a warning never to return.

  Tonight it was my friend who was defying this formidable tavern keeper, and I shuddered to think that both of us might be thrown out at any moment. Normally I would have added my own bombast to his, and to hell with the ignominy of getting tossed out of a tavern. But I cringed over my appearance. Pst! Pst! I quietly hissed, keeping an eye on the tavern keeper. Sharper and sharper became my friend’s tongue until we were just one step away from getting kicked out. Then a desperate course of action occurred to me— the precedent of Ataka Barrier and the blow that Benkei delivered to save Yoshitsune’s life. Having made this decision, I slapped my friend twice on the cheek—taking care not to hurt him while making the sharpest possible sound.

  “Calm down! You don’t usually act like this. What’s the matter with you tonight? Calm down!” I shouted loud enough for the tavern keeper to hear and was just sighing with relief that we would not be thrown out when Yoshitsune arose and came at Benkei.

  “What’s the big idea, hitting me like that. You won’t get away with it!” he screamed.

  The plot had gone awry. Poor Benkei stood up, utterly befuddled as he dodged blows left and right, and hoped that someone would come to his rescue.

  Finally the tavern keeper came straight over to where I was and said, “You’re bothering the other customers. Would you mind leaving?”

  But why was he asking me to leave? Come to think of it, I was the one who had started the fracas. And how could someone else realize that I was only playing the role of Benkei and not really chastising anyone? To all appearances I was definitely the aggressor.

  Filled with chagrin, I left my friend drunk and raving in the tavern. Once again, my appearance had failed me. If I had been properly dressed, the tavern keeper would have recognized my character to some extent and he would not have humiliated me like that. Thus did Benkei, now expelled from the tavern and trudging with his shoulders hunched through the Asagaya Quarter, reason to himself. I want a serge kimono, he thought, I want something in which I can stroll about without a care. But I’m so stingy about buying clothes that I’ll have all sorts of trouble from here on out as well.

  Assignment: How about a citizen’s uniform?

  A Poor Man’s Got

  His Pride

  Hin no iji

  “A Poor Man’s Got His Pride” is the first of two translations in this book from Dazai’s retelling of various Japanese tales by the seventeenth-century master of burlesque fiction, Ihara Saikaku. Dazai titled his collection A New Interpretation of “Tales from the Provinces,” in reference to a volume of Saikaku’s own stories. However, Dazai did not confine his attention to this one source, preferring instead to select works for refashioning from the entire range of Saikaku’s shorter fiction. In fact, the only story that does come from Tales from the Provinces is this very one.

  Told with Saikaku’s usual conciseness, the original tale highlights a stark fact about the economy of Japan during the Edo period (1603-1868). The samurai may have been the official leaders of society during these years; however, since their code of life required them to disdain money while their fixed stipends lost value as the economy gradually expanded, many of them became impoverished.

  While providing Dazai with a plot outline, Saikaku’s tale does have a different set of emphases. As in Dazai, Saikaku’s principal character, Harada Naisuke, is a fallen samurai living in poverty in the Shinagawa district of Edo, as Tokyo was then called. As New Year’s Eve approaches, Harada writes to his brother-in-law for money, presumably to help him get through the end of the year, when all debts fall due. When the money arrives, Harada invites his cohorts, fallen samurais like himself, to celebrate. In Saikaku’s story, the drinking that occurs at the party is given much less emphasis than in Dazai’s retelling, the focus in the original tale being on the manipulations that occur with the coins. The guests in Saikaku speak with a collective voice, not one of them being named or singled out in any way. Harada’s wife plays an important role, as she does in Dazai too. But Dazai portrays her more fully than Saikaku, allowing her the final comment on samurai virtue, a comment uttered in Saikaku by an impersonal narrative voice.

  Dazai’s tone throughout the retelling borders on the ironic. The samurai figures in his tale, whether Harada or any of his guests, are initially portrayed as feckless people of ridiculous pretensions. In the end, however, they prove their mettle. Or do they? As happens in certain tales by Saikaku, the samurai characters in Dazai too go to absurd lengths defending their honor. The satire is sometimes quite blunt— for example, the extended passage in which each invited guest is shown patching together an outfit from rags (or from the paper clothing, which was popular at the time) in hopes of living up to his samurai image.

  Dazai ends his tale in an anticlimactic but intriguing way—with Harada’s wife reflecting on the feat her ex-samurai husband has just performed. Perhaps the author is drawing the wife also into the circle of his satire. Or is he instead affirming through the wife that this hard core of samurai discipline remains even after appearances have long been compromised?

  Long ago in Edo, in a thatched hovel near the Wisteria Teahouse at Shinagawa, there lived a huge, middle-aged man named Harada Naisuke. With his thick, fearsome beard and bloodshot eyes, Harada seemed quite menacing. But men of his type are sometimes so intimidated by their own grandeur that they turn into cowards. Despite a magnificent countenance—his eyebrows were bushy and his eyes glaring—Harada was utterly worthless. While fencing with an opponent, he would shut his eyes and let out a weird shriek. Then he’d charge in the wrong direction, shouting “Your match, I concede” as he slammed into the nearest wall. His reputation as “The Wall-banger” got a boost every time this happened.

  On one occasion a young pedlar beguiled Harada with a hard-luck story. Harada started to blubber as the story unfolded, then bought up the fellow’s entire batch of clams. Back home, he got a scolding from his wife, and for the next three days he ate clams— nothing but clams—for breakfast, lunch, and supper. They gave him such painful cramps that he rolled about on the floor clutching his stomach. Opening his Confucian Analects for consolation, he started dozing after the first few words, “Learning is ...”

  Harada abhorred caterpillars. One look and he would let out a scream, his fingers spread apart as he backed away. Easily swayed by flattery, he seemed as if possessed by a fox whenever someone paid him a compliment. After fidgeting for a time, he would race to the pawnshop, trade something for cash, and treat his flatterer to a meal.

  Every New Year’s Eve Harada would drink from early in the morning and pretend that he was going to disembowel himself, all this just to keep the bill collectors at bay. His thatched hovel, incidentally, did not represent an aesthetic preference. No, the house was merely falling apart from age. Harada was indolent and penniless, his life unadorned by either flowers or fruit; he was a samurai without a master, a man who merely embarrassed his relatives.

  Luckily for Harada, two or three of these relatives were rich, and he could turn to them in a pinch. But, since he mostly squandered their largess on drinking, Harada was always in trouble. What were the spring cherry blossoms and the autumn colors to him? Mired in poverty, he was oblivious to such things. After all, one might get by without cherry blossoms or fall foliage, but one surely could not pretend year after year to be unaware of New Year’s Eve. Still, as the year’s end drew near once more, Harada Naisuke imparted a mad look to his eyes and pretended to be crazy. Fumbling his long, unavailing sword, he let out that eerie chuckle—heh, heh—that
made the bill collectors nervous.

  It might be New Year’s Day tomorrow, but Harada didn’t bother to wipe the soot from the ceiling nor to trim his beard. He even left his wafer-thin sleeping quilt lying unfolded on the floor. When he muttered pathetically to the bill collectors—If you want me, come and get me—he seemed feeble and delirious. And afterwards, he again broke into that eerie chuckle.

  Having witnessed this nightmare year after year, Harada’s wife could bear it no longer. She went out the kitchen door and ran all the way to Kanda, where her older brother, a physician named Nakarai Seian, lived in a lane by the Myōjin Shrine. Rushing into the house, she wept over her plight and begged for help. Though exasperated by these constant troubles, Seian still retained his sense of humor. “Every family,” he jested, “has a fool—just to keep it in touch with reality.” Then he wrapped up ten coins and wrote on the cover: Poverty Pills. To Be Taken As Often As Needed.

  His unfortunate sister took the package and returned home. When she showed the Poverty Pills to Harada, he surprised her by frowning instead of rejoicing. Then, in a rasping voice, he came out with the most ridiculous statement ever—“I can’t use this money.”

  His startled wife wondered whether her husband wasn’t truly going mad. But that wasn’t really the problem. It was merely that a ne’er-do-well such as Harada will bungle things whenever good fortune smiles upon him. People like him become fidgety and sheepish at the sudden appearance of fortune. They quibble over this and that, then get angry and drive off the luck that has befallen them.