Seven Japanese Tales Read online

  Later that morning, when Shunkin was up, he groped his way to her room. Bowing humbly before her, he said: “I have gone blind. I shall never see your face again as long as I live.”

  All Shunkin replied was: “Really, Sasuke?” She sat there a long while, sunk in thought. Never before or since did Sasuke experience such happiness as during those moments of silence.

  Centuries ago, it is said, the warrior Kagekiyo was so touched by the magnanimity of his arch-enemy Yoritomo that he gave up his desire for revenge, swore never to look on Yoritomo again, and gouged out his own eyes. Though its motive was different, Sasuke's deed was equally heroic. But was that what Shunkin wanted of him? Had her tearful appeal a few days before meant: “Now that I've suffered this calamity, I want you to be blind too”? That is hard to say; yet the words “Really, Sasuke?” had seemed to him to have a quaver of joy.

  As they sat facing each other in silence, Sasuke began to feel the quickening of that sixth sense which only the blind possess, and he could tell that there was nothing but the deepest gratitude in Shunkin's heart. Always before, even while they were making love, they had been separated by the gulf between teacher and pupil. But now Sasuke felt that they were truly united, locked in a tight embrace. Youthful memories of the dark world of the closet where he used to practice came flooding into his mind, but the darkness in which he now found himself seemed completely different. Most blind people can sense the direction from which light is coming; they live in a faintly luminous world, not one of unrelieved blackness. Now Sasuke knew that he had found an inner vision in place of the vision he had lost. Ah, he thought, this is the world my teacher lives in — at last I have reached it! He could no longer clearly distinguish the objects around him, or the way Shunkin herself looked; all he could detect was the pale, blurred image of her bandage-swathed face. But he had no thought of the bandages. It was Shunkin's exquisite white face — as it had looked until only two months ago — that hovered before him in a circle of dim light, like the radiant halo of the Buddha.

  “Did it hurt much, Sasuke?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said, turning his blinded eyes toward the pale, glowing disk that was Shunkin's face. “It was nothing, compared with what you have suffered. I couldn't forgive myself for being asleep when that evil person stole in. It's my duty to stay in the next room every night so that I can protect you — and yet I went unharmed, even though it was my fault that you suffered such pain. I felt I ought to be punished. Day and night I prayed to the spirits of my ancestors, begging for some affliction, since there was no other way for me to atone for my negligence. When I woke up this morning the gods had taken pity on me and I was going blind. Dear Madam! I shall never see how you have changed! All I can see now is the image of your beautiful face — that lovely image that has haunted me for the past thirty years. Please let me go on serving you as I always have. Since I m not used to blindness I'm afraid I won't be able to get around very well, and I'll be unsteady when I wait on you; but still I want to be the one who cares for all your needs.”

  “I admire your courage,” Shunkin replied. “You have made me very happy. I don't know who hated me enough to do this to me, but I must confess that I couldn't stand to have you, of all people, see me as I am now. I am grateful to you for realizing it.”

  “Ah,” Sasuke cried, “blindness is a small price for the joy of hearing you say that! I don't know who could have been so cruel to us, and caused us so much grief; but if he meant to attack me by disfiguring you his wicked scheme has failed. Now that I'm blind, it's as if nothing happened to you. Actually, it's anything but a misfortune for me — I've never had such a stroke of good luck. My heart leaps when I think how I've triumphed over that coward!”

  “Sasuke!”

  And the blind lovers embraced, weeping.

  Shigizawa Teru is the only person who has an intimate knowledge of their life together after they turned their misfortune into a blessing. This year she is seventy, and it was in 1874, when she was only eleven, that she went to live at Shunkin's house as a servant and pupil. Besides studying the samisen under Sasuke, Teru helped the blind couple in many ways, both as a guide and as a kind of link between them. No doubt they needed some third person to assist them in this way, since one was recently blind and the other, though blind since childhood, was a lady accustomed to luxury, who never lifted her hand to the slightest task. They had decided to hire a little girl, with whom they would feel at ease; and from the time she came to them, Teru's honesty and trustworthiness won their confidence completely. She remained in their service for many years. After Shunkin's death Sasuke had her stay on with him until 1890, the year in which he received official rank as a master.

  When Teru first came to Shunkin's house in 1874 Shunkin was already forty-five, on the verge of old age. Nine years had passed since her disfigurement. Teru was told that, for certain reasons, her mistress never showed her face to others, and that she must never try to see it. Shunkin's entire head, except for a little of her nose, was covered by a bluish-gray crepe silk hood.

  Sasuke was forty when he pierced his eyes with the needle. To become blind in middle age must have been difficult enough, and yet he was touchingly solicitous in caring for Shunkin — anticipating her wishes and sparing her every possible inconvenience. Shunkin disliked having anyone else serve her. “Ordinary people are quite unable to take care of me,” she would say. “Sasuke does it best, since he's been with me for years.” She still depended on him to dress, bathe, and massage her, and to escort her to the lavatory.

  As a result, Teru's duties were mainly on behalf of Sasuke; she seldom had occasion to come into physical contact with her mistress. Only at mealtime were her services indispensable. For the rest, she would merely fetch and carry things for Shunkin, or be of indirect use by helping Sasuke. When Shunkin took a bath Teru went with her and Sasuke as far as the bathroom door, then left them alone until she heard Sasuke clap his hands to summon her, by which time Shunkin would already be out of the tub, and wearing her light bath-gown and hood. Meanwhile everything had been done by Sasuke. How would he have gone about it? He must have touched her as sensitively as Shunkin had caressed the trunks of the old plum trees — certainly it was no easy task for him. People wondered how he could put up with all the trouble she caused him, how the two could get along so well. But Sasuke and Shunkin seemed to enjoy the very difficulties, expressing their unspoken love in this way. I suppose we cannot imagine how much pleasure the two sightless lovers took in the world revealed to them by their sense of touch. Perhaps it is no wonder that Sasuke served Shunkin with such devotion, that she delighted in having him serve her, and that they never tired of each other's company.

  In addition, Sasuke taught a great many pupils during the time he could be away from Shunkin, who spent the whole day shut up in her room. She gave him the professional name of Kindai, and turned over all instruction to him: his new name was added (in smaller characters) beside her own on the sign in front of the house. Sasuke's loyalty and gentleness had long since earned him the sympathy of the neighborhood, and more pupils came to him than had ever come to Shunkin. While Sasuke was teaching, Shunkin would stay in her inner room, listening to her nightingales. But whenever she needed his help, even if he was in the midst of a lesson, she would call out: “Sasuke!” and he would stop at once and hurry to her side. For that reason he was anxious to be near her, and insisted on doing all his teaching at home.

  Here I should mention that around this time the fortunes of the Mozuya establishment in Dosho-machi were declining, and Shunkin's monthly allowance often failed to arrive. Except for this, would Sasuke have chosen to teach? Whenever he had a moment free he went to her, and even while busy teaching he must have felt impatient to be at her side. Perhaps Shunkin herself felt lost without him.

  Now that Sasuke had taken over all the teaching and was in effect supporting the household, why did he not become Shunkin's legal husband? Was her pride still the obstacle? According to T
eru, Sasuke told her that Shunkin had become quite dejected, and that it grieved him — he could not bear to think of her as pitiable, someone to feel sorry for. Apparently the blind Sasuke had given himself up to his imperishable ideal. To him, there was only the world of his old memories. If Shunkin had actually changed in character because of her misfortune she would no longer have been Shunkin. He wanted to think of her as the proud, haughty girl of the past; otherwise, the beautiful Shunkin of his imagination would have been destroyed. And so it seems that it was he who had the stronger reason for not wishing to marry.

  Because Sasuke used the real Shunkin to call to mind the Shunkin of his memories, he was careful to observe the proper etiquette between servant and mistress. Indeed, he humbled himself more than ever, serving her with the utmost devotion so that she might soon forget her misery and regain her old self-confidence. Contented with the same bare pittance, with the same coarse food and clothing, he gave all he earned to Shunkin. In addition, among many other economies, he reduced the number of servants who helped him. Yet he saw to it that nothing was lacking for Shunkin's comfort, though he now had to work twice as hard as before his blindness.

  Teru says that some of his pupils felt sorry for him because he looked so shabby, and hinted that he ought to be a little more concerned about his appearance. But Sasuke paid no attention. Also, he insisted that they go on calling him Sasuke, rather than “Master”; but this embarrassed them so much that they tried not to address him at all. Teru, however, with her numerous household duties, could not be so discreet. She always called Sasuke by his name, and called Shunkin “Mistress.”

  It was because of her special relation to them that Sasuke, after Shunkin's death, began to confide in Teru. Occasionally he reminisced about Shunkin with her. Later, when his talent was officially recognized and everyone called him “Master,” he still wanted Teru to use his ordinary name. He would not allow her to be more formal with him.

  Once he said to her: “I suppose people consider blindness a terrible misfortune, but I've never felt that way. On the contrary, it made this world into a paradise, where my mistress and I were alone together. When you lose your sight you become aware of all sorts of things you never noticed before. It was only after I went blind that I realized how beautiful she was. At last I could fully appreciate the softness of her body, the fine texture of her skin, her exquisite voice. . . Why had I never before been so moved by her loveliness? But most of all I was amazed by the sudden revelation of her artistry on the samisen. I'd always said she was a genius, far above my own modest level, but the true measure of her superiority astonished me. How stupid of me not to have realized it earlier, I thought. Even if the gods had offered to give me back my sight, I believe I would have refused. It was because both of us were blind that we experienced a happiness ordinary people never know.”

  Of course one hesitates to take Sasuke too literally. But as far as Shunkin's music is concerned, might not her second calamity have been a turning point in her development? However blessed with talent, she could scarcely have attained the ultimate mastery of her art without tasting the bitterness of life. Shunkin had always been coddled. Though severe in her demands on others, she herself had never known hardship or humiliation. There had been no one to humble her. But then Heaven had subjected her to a cruel ordeal, endangering her life and smashing her stubborn pride.

  I am inclined to think that the destruction of her beauty had its compensations for Shunkin in various ways. Both in love and in art she must have discovered undreamed-of ecstasies. Teru says that Shunkin used to play the samisen for hours on end, while Sasuke sat beside her, his head bowed, listening in rapture. Often the pupils marveled at the subtle tones that filtered to their ears from the inner room, whispering among themselves that this must be no ordinary instrument.

  In those days Shunkin not only played the samisen but spent a great deal of time composing for it. Even at night she would quietly pick out new melodies with her fingertips. Teru remembers two of her songs: “A Nightingale in Spring” and “Snowflakes.” The other day I had her play them for me. They were full of originality, and left no doubt of Shunkin's talent as a composer.

  Shunkin fell ill early in June of 1886. A few days before, she and Sasuke had gone out to the garden and opened the cage of her prized lark, letting it soar up into the sky. While Teru watched, the blind couple stood hand in hand, their faces lifted toward the lark's song that came down to them from far above. Still singing vigorously, the lark soared higher and higher until it was lost in the clouds. It was out of sight for such a long time that Sasuke and Shunkin began to worry. They waited more than an hour, but the lark never returned.

  From that day Shunkin was despondent. Soon she contracted beriberi, and by autumn her condition was serious. She died of a heart attack on the fourteenth of October.

  Besides her lark, Shunkin had been keeping a nightingale which she called Tenko the Third. For years afterward, Sasuke wept when he heard Tenko sing. Often he burned incense before Shunkin's memorial tablet, and took up his koto or samisen to play “A Nightingale in Spring.”

  The song begins with the phrase: “A singing nightingale alights in the hills.” Probably it is Shunkin's finest work, one she put herself into heart and soul. Though not long, it has some very complicated instrumental passages — Shunkin conceived the idea for it while she was listening to Tenko. The melodies of these passages suggest all the poetic associations of the bird's song, as it flies from valley to valley, from branch to branch, tempting one out to enjoy the varied charms of spring. There is the first faint warmth, when the snow deep in the hills — “the frozen tears of nightingales” — begins to melt, and then the rippling of swollen mountain streams, the soughing of pines in the east wind, mists over hill and field, the fragrance of the plum blossom, clouds of cherry trees in bloom. . . Whenever Shunkin played it Tenko sang out joyously, straining its voice to rival the beauty of her samisen.

  Perhaps the song made Tenko yearn for the sunlight and freedom of its native valley. But what memories did it evoke for Sasuke while he played it? For years he had known his ideal Shunkin through sound and touch — did he now fill the void in his life with music? As long as we remember them, we can see the dead in dreams; but for Sasuke, who saw his lover only in dreams even while she was still alive, it may have been hard to realize when the separation came.

  Two boys and a girl were born to Sasuke and Shunkin, besides the child mentioned earlier. The girl died soon after her birth, and both of the boys were adopted in infancy by a farmer in Kawachi. Even after Shunkin's death Sasuke seemed to feel no attachment to them, and made no effort to get them back; nor did his sons want to return to their blind father.

  Thus Sasuke spent his later years without wife or children, and died, attended only by his pupils, on the fourteenth of October (the anniversary of Shunkin's death) in 1907, at the advanced age of eighty-two. I suppose that during the two decades in which he lived alone he created a Shunkin quite remote from the actual woman, yet more and more vivid in his mind.

  It seems that when the priest Gazan of the Tenryu Temple heard the story of Sasuke's self-immolation, he praised him for the Zen spirit with which he changed his whole life in an instant, turning the ugly into the beautiful, and said that it was very nearly the act of a saint. I wonder how many of us would agree with him.

  Terror

  It was early last June while I was in Kyoto that the illness menaced me. Of course I had had attacks in Tokyo, but, what with giving up alcohol, having cold baths and rubdowns, and consuming pills, I seemed to have recovered. Then after coming to Kyoto I began leading an irregular life once more, spending most of my nights in ars and geisha houses, and I found myself slipping into a relapse.

  According to a friend, this ailment of mine — this tormenting, idiotic ailment that I hate to think of even now — is probably a type of neurosis called Eisenbahnkrankheit (railroad phobia). My seizures are nothing like the nausea and vertigo of motion sickn
ess: I suffer the agony of pure terror. The moment I board a train, the moment the whistle shrills and the wheels begin to turn and the cars lurch forward — at that moment the pulse in all my arteries speeds up as if stimulated by strong drink, and blood mounts to the top of my head. A cold sweat stands out on my whole body, my arms and legs begin to shake as if from the ague. I feel that unless I am given emergency treatment all my blood — every drop of it — will rush into that small hard round vessel above my neck, till the cranium itself, like a toy balloon blown up beyond its capacity, will have to explode. And yet the train, with its utter indifference and its tremendous energy, hurtles down the track at full speed. “What's the life of one human being?” it seems to ask. Belching sooty smoke like a volcano and roaring along in its bold, heartless way, it dashes forward relentlessly into jet-black tunnels, over long, rickety steel bridges, across rivers, through meadows, around forests. The passengers, too, seem excessively casual as they read, smoke, steal a nap, or even gaze out of the window at the dizzyingly unreeling scene.

  “Help! I'm dying!” I scream within myself, turning pale and gasping as if in a fatal paroxysm. I run into the lavatory and douse my head with cold water, or grip the window sill and stamp my feet, thrashing around in frantic desperation.

  Intent on bursting out of the train in one way or another, I batter fiercely at the paneling in my compartment, oblivious of my bleeding fists, and rage like a criminal thrown into a cell. At the height of my fit I can hardly keep from opening a door and leaping from the train, or reaching blindly for the emergency cord. Yet somehow I manage to contain myself until the next stop, stumble out, a piteous, wretched sight to behold, and make my way laboriously from the platform to the ticket gate. As soon as I leave the station my pulse calms down with absurd promptness and the shadows of anxiety fall away one by one.