Seven Japanese Tales Read online

  “My mistress asked me to deliver this cloak, and she wondered if you would be so good as to decorate its lining,” the girl said. She untied a saffron-colored cloth parcel and took out a woman's silk cloak (wrapped in a sheet of thick paper bearing a portrait of the actor Tojaku) and a letter.

  The letter repeated his friend's request and went on to say that its bearer would soon begin a career as a geisha under her protection. She hoped that, while not forgetting old ties, he would also extend his patronage to this girl.

  “I thought I had never seen you before,” said Seikichi, scrutinizing her intently. She seemed only fifteen or sixteen, but her face had a strangely ripe beauty, a look of experience, as if she had already spent years in the gay quarter and had fascinated innumerable men. Her beauty mirrored the dreams of the generations of glamorous men and women who had lived and died in this vast capital, where the nation's sins and wealth were concentrated.

  Seikichi had her sit on the veranda, and he studied her delicate feet, which were bare except for elegant straw sandals. “You left the Hirasei by palanquin one night last July, did you not?” he inquired.

  “I suppose so,” she replied, smiling at the odd question. “My father was still alive then, and he often took me there.”

  “I have waited five years for you. This is the first time I have seen your face, but I remember your foot. . . Come in for a moment, I have something to show you.”

  She had risen to leave, but he took her by the hand and led her upstairs to his studio overlooking the broad river. Then he brought out two picture scrolls and unrolled one of them before her.

  It was a painting of a Chinese princess, the favorite of the cruel Emperor Chou of the Shang Dynasty. She was leaning on a balustrade in a languorous pose, the long skirt of her figured brocade robe trailing halfway down a flight of stairs, her slender body barely able to support the weight of her gold crown studded with coral and lapis lazuli. In her right hand she held a large wine cup, tilting it to her lips as she gazed down at a man who was about to be tortured in the garden below. He was chained hand and foot to a hollow copper pillar in which a fire would be lighted. Both the princess and her victim — his head bowed before her, his eyes closed, ready to meet his fate — were portrayed with terrifying vividness.

  As the girl stared at this bizarre picture her lips trembled and her eyes began to sparkle. Gradually her face took on a curious resemblance to that of the princess. In the picture she discovered her secret self.

  “Your own feelings are revealed here,” Seikichi told her with pleasure as he watched her face.

  “Why are you showing me this horrible thing?” the girl asked, looking up at him. She had turned pale.

  “The woman is yourself. Her blood flows in your veins.” Then he spread out the other scroll.

  This was a painting called “The Victims.” In the middle of it a young woman stood leaning against the trunk of a cherry tree: she was gloating over a heap of men's corpses lying at her feet. Little birds fluttered about her, singing in triumph; her eyes radiated pride and joy. Was it a battlefield or a garden in spring? In this picture the girl felt that she had found something long hidden in the darkness of her own heart.

  “This painting shows your future,” Seikichi said, pointing to the woman under the cherry tree — the very image of the young girl. “All these men will ruin their lives for you.”

  “Please, I beg of you to put it away!” She turned her back as if to escape its tantalizing lure and prostrated herself before him, trembling. At last she spoke again. “Yes, I admit that you are right about me — I am like that woman. . . So please, please take it away.”

  “Don't talk like a coward,” Seikichi told her, with his malicious smile. “Look at it more closely. You won't be squeamish long.”

  But the girl refused to lift her head. Still prostrate, her face buried in her sleeves, she repeated over and over that she was afraid and wanted to leave.

  “No, you must stay — I will make you a real beauty,” he said, moving closer to her. Under his kimono was a vial of anesthetic which he had obtained some time ago from a Dutch physician.

  The morning sun glittered on the river, setting the eight-mat studio ablaze with light. Rays reflected from the water sketched rippling golden waves on the paper sliding screens and on the face of the girl, who was fast asleep. Seikichi had closed the doors and taken up his tattooing instruments, but for a while he only sat there entranced, savoring to the full her uncanny beauty. He thought that he would never tire of contemplating her serene masklike face. Just as the ancient Egyptians had embellished their magnificent land with pyramids and sphinxes, he was about to embellish the pure skin of this girl.

  Presently he raised the brush which was gripped between the thumb and last two fingers of his left hand, applied its tip to the girl's back, and, with the needle which he held in his right hand, began pricking out a design. He felt his spirit dissolve into the charcoal-black ink that stained her skin. Each drop of Ryukyu cinnabar that he mixed with alcohol and thrust in was a drop of his lifeblood. He saw in his pigments the hues of his own passions.

  Soon it was afternoon, and then the tranquil spring day drew toward its close. But Seikichi never paused in his work, nor was the girl's sleep broken. When a servant came from the geisha house to inquire about her, Seikichi turned him away, saying that she had left long ago. And hours later, when the moon hung over the mansion across the river, bathing the houses along the bank in a dreamlike radiance, the tattoo was not yet half done. Seikichi worked on by candlelight.

  Even to insert a single drop of color was no easy task. At every thrust of his needle Seikichi gave a heavy sigh and felt as if he had stabbed his own heart. Little by little the tattoo marks began to take on the form of a huge black-widow spider; and by the time the night sky was paling into dawn this weird, malevolent creature had stretched its eight legs to embrace the whole of the girl's back.

  In the full light of the spring dawn boats were being rowed up and down the river, their oars creaking in the morning quiet; roof tiles glistened in the sun, and the haze began to thin out over white sails swelling in the early breeze. Finally Seikichi put down his brush and looked at the tattooed spider. This work of art had been the supreme effort of his life. Now that he had finished it his heart was drained of emotion.

  The two figures remained still for some time. Then Seikichi's low, hoarse voice echoed quaveringly from the walls of the room:

  “To make you truly beautiful I have poured my soul into this tattoo. Today there is no woman in Japan to compare with you. Your old fears are gone. All men will be your victims.”

  As if in response to these words a faint moan came from the girl's lips. Slowly she began to recover her senses. With each shuddering breath, the spider's legs stirred as if they were alive.

  “You must be suffering. The spider has you in its clutches.”

  At this she opened her eyes slightly, in a dull stare. Her gaze steadily brightened, as the moon brightens in the evening, until it shone dazzlingly into his face.

  “Let me see the tattoo,” she said, speaking as if in a dream but with an edge of authority to her voice. “Giving me your soul must have made me very beautiful.”

  “First you must bathe to bring out the colors,” whispered Seikichi compassionately. “I am afraid it will hurt, but be brave a little longer.”

  “I can bear anything for the sake of beauty.” Despite the pain that was coursing through her body, she smiled.

  “How the water stings!. . . Leave me alone — wait in the other room! I hate to have a man see me suffer like this!”

  As she left the tub, too weak to dry herself, the girl pushed aside the sympathetic hand Seikichi offered her, and sank to the floor in agony, moaning as if in a nightmare. Her disheveled hair hung over her face in a wild tangle. The white soles of her feet were reflected in the mirror behind her.

  Seikichi was amazed at the change that had come over the timid, yielding girl of yesterd
ay, but he did as he was told and went to wait in his studio. About an hour later she came back, carefully dressed, her damp, sleekly combed hair hanging down over her shoulders. Leaning on the veranda rail, she looked up into the faintly hazy sky. Her eyes were brilliant; there was not a trace of pain in them.

  “I wish to give you these pictures too,” said Seikichi, placing the scrolls before her. “Take them and go.”

  “All my old fears have been swept away — and you are my first victim!” She darted a glance at him as bright as a sword. A song of triumph was ringing in her ears.

  “Let me see your tattoo once more,” Seikichi begged.

  Silently the girl nodded and slipped the kimono off her shoulders. Just then her resplendently tattooed back caught a ray of sunlight and the spider was wreathed in flames.

  The Thief

  It was years ago, at the school where I was preparing for Tokyo Imperial University.

  My dormitory roommates and I used to spend a lot of time at what we called “candlelight study” (there was very little studying to it), and one night, long after lights-out, the four of us were doing just that, huddled around a candle talking on and on.

  I recall that we were having one of our confused, heated arguments about love — a problem of great concern to us in those days. Then, by a natural course of development, the conversation turned to the subject of crime: we found ourselves talking about such things as swindling, theft, and murder.

  “Of all crimes, the one we're most likely to commit is murder.” It was Higuchi, the son of a well-known professor, who declared this. “But I don't believe I'd ever steal — I just couldn't do it. I think I could be friends with any other kind of person, but a thief seems to belong to a different species.” A shadow of distaste darkened his handsome features. Somehow that frown emphasized his good looks.

  “I hear there's been a rash of stealing in the dormitory lately.” This time it was Hirata who spoke. “Isn't that so?” he asked, turning to Nakamura, our other roommate.

  “Yes, and they say it's one of the students.”

  “How do they know?” I asked.

  “Well, I haven't heard all the details —” Nakamura dropped his voice to a confidential whisper. “But it's happened so often it must be an inside job.”

  “Not only that,” Higuchi put in, “one of the fellows in the north wing was just going into his room the other day when somebody pushed the door open from the inside, caught him with a hard slap in the face, and ran away down the hall. He chased after him, but by the time he got to the bottom of the stairs the other one was out of sight. Back in his room, he found his trunk and bookshelves in a mess, which proves it was the thief.”

  “Did he see his face?”

  “No, it all happened too fast, but he says he looked like one of us, the way he was dressed. Apparently he ran down the hall with his coat pulled up over his head — the one thing sure is that his coat had a wisteria crest.”

  “A wisteria crest?” said Hirata. “You can't prove anything by that.” Maybe it was only my imagination, but I thought he flashed a suspicious look at me. At the same moment I felt that I instinctively made a wry face, since my own family crest is a wisteria design. It was only by chance that I wasn't wearing my crested coat that night.

  “If he's one of us it won't be easy to catch him. Nobody wants to believe there's a thief among us.” I was trying to get over my embarrassment because of that moment of weakness.

  “No, they'll get him in a couple of days,” Higuchi said emphatically. His eyes were sparkling. “This is a secret, but they say he usually steals things in the dressing room of the bathhouse, and for two or three days now the proctors have been keeping watch. They hide overhead and look down through a little hole.”

  “Oh? Who told you that?” Nakamura asked.

  “One of the proctors. But don't go around talking about it.”

  “If you know so much, the thief probably knows it too!” said Hirata, looking disgusted.

  Here I must explain that Hirata and I were not on very good terms. In fact, by that time we barely tolerated each other. I say “we,” but it was Hirata who had taken a strong dislike to me. According to a friend of mine, he once remarked scornfully that I wasn't what everyone seemed to think I was, that he'd had a chance to see through me. And again: “I'm sick of him. He'll never be a friend of mine. It's only out of pity that I have anything to do with him.”

  He only said such things behind my back; I never heard them from him directly, though it was obvious that he loathed me. But it wasn't in my nature to demand an explanation. “If there's something wrong with me he ought to say so,” I told myself. “If he doesn't have the kindness to tell me what it is, or if he thinks I'm not worth bothering with, then I won't think of him as a friend either.” I felt a little lonely when I thought of his contempt for me, but I didn't really worry about it.

  Hirata had an admirable physique and was the very type of masculinity that our school prides itself on, while I was skinny and pale and high-strung. There was something basically incompatible about us: I had to resign myself to the fact that we lived in separate worlds. Furthermore, Hirata was a judo expert of high rank, and displayed his muscles as if to say: “Watch out, or I'll give you a thrashing!” Perhaps it seemed cowardly of me to take such a meek attitude toward him, and no doubt I was afraid of his physical strength; but fortunately I was quite indifferent to matters of trivial pride or prestige. “I don't care how contemptuous the other fellow is; as long as I can go on believing in myself I don't need to feel bitter toward him.” That was how I made up my mind, and so I was able to match Hirata's arrogance with my own cool magnanimity. I even told one of the other boys: “I can't help it if Hirata doesn't understand me, but I appreciate his good points anyway.” And I actually believed it. I never considered myself a coward. I was even rather conceited, thinking I must be a person of noble character to be able to praise Hirata from the bottom of my heart.

  “A wisteria crest?” That night, when Hirata cast his sudden glance at me, the malicious look in his eyes set my nerves on edge. What could that look possibly mean? Did he know that my family crest was wisteria? Or did I take it that way simply because of my own private feelings? If Hirata suspected me, how was I to handle the situation? Perhaps I should laugh good-naturedly and say: “Then I'm under suspicion too, because I have the same crest.” If the others laughed along with me, I'd be all right. But suppose one of them, say Hirata, only began looking grimmer and grimmer — what then? When I visualized that scene I couldn't very well speak out impulsively.

  It sounds foolish to worry about such a thing, but during that brief silence all sorts of thoughts raced through my mind. “In this kind of situation what difference is there, really, between an innocent man and an actual criminal?” By then I felt that I was experiencing a criminal's anxiety and isolation. Until a moment ago I had been one of their friends, one of the elite of our famous school. But now, if only in my own mind, I was an outcast. It was absurd, but I suffered from my inability to confide in them. I was uneasy about Hirata's slightest mood — Hirata who was supposed to be my equal.

  “A thief seems to belong to a different species.” Higuchi had probably said this casually enough, but now his words echoed ominously in my mind.

  “A thief belongs to a different species. . .” A thief! What a detestable name to be called! I suppose what makes a thief different from other men is not so much his criminal act itself as his effort to hide it at all costs, the strain of trying to put it out of his mind, the dark fears that he can never confess. And now I was becoming enshrouded by that darkness. I was trying not to believe that I was under suspicion; I was worrying about fears that I could not admit to my closest friend. Of course it must have been because Higuchi trusted me that he told us what he'd heard from the proctor. “Don't go around talking about it,” he had said, and I was glad. But why should I feel glad? I thought. After all, Higuchi has never suspected me. Somehow I began to wonder ab
out his motive for telling us.

  It also struck me that if even the most virtuous person has criminal tendencies, maybe I wasn't the only one who imagined the possibility of being a thief. Maybe the others were experiencing a little of the same discomfort, the same clarion. If so, then Higuchi, who had been singled out by the proctor to share his secret, must have felt very proud. Among the four of us it was he who was most trusted, he who was thought least likely to belong to that “other species.” And if he won that trust because he came from a wealthy family and was the son of a famous professor, then I could hardly avoid envying him. Just as his social status improved his moral character, so my own background — I was acutely conscious of being a scholarship student, the son of a poor farmer — debased mine. For me to feel a kind of awe in his presence had nothing to do with whether of not I was a thief. We did belong to different species. I felt that the more he trusted me, with his frank, open attitude, the more the gulf between us deepened. The more friendly we tried to be, joking with each other in apparent intimacy, gossiping and laughing together, the more the distance between us increased. There was nothing I could do about it.

  For a long time afterward I worried about whether or not I ought to wear that coat of mine with the “wisteria crest.” Perhaps if I wore it around nonchalantly no one would pay any attention. But suppose they looked at me as much as to say: “Ah, he's wearing it!” Some would suspect me, or try to suppress their doubts of me, or feel sorry for me because I was under suspicion. If I became embarrassed and uneasy not only with Hirata and Higuchi but with all the students, and if I then felt obliged to put my coat away, that would seem even more sinister. What I dreaded was not the bare fact of being suspect, but all the unpleasant emotions that would be stirred up in others. If I were to cause doubt in other people's minds I would create a barrier between myself and those who had always been my friends. Even theft itself was not as ugly as the suspicions that would be aroused by it. No one would want to think of me as a thief: as long as it hadn't been proved, they'd want to go on associating with me as freely as ever, forcing themselves to trust me. Otherwise, what would friendship mean? Thief or not, I might be guilty of a worse sin than stealing from a friend: the sin of spoiling a friendship. Sowing seeds of doubt about myself was criminal. It was worse than stealing. If I were a prudent, clever thief — no, I mustn't put it that way — if I were a thief with the least bit of conscience and consideration for other people, I'd try to keep my friendships untarnished, try to be open with my friends, treat them with a sincerity and warmth that I need never be ashamed of, while carrying out my thefts in secrecy. Perhaps I'd be what people call “a brazen thief,” but if you look at it from the thief's point of view, it's the most honest attitude to take. “It's true that I steal, but it's equally true that I value my friends,” such a man would say. “That is typical of a thief, that's why he belongs to a different species.” Anyhow, when I started thinking that way, I couldn't help becoming more and more aware of the distance between me and my friends. Before I knew it I felt like a full-fledged thief.