Seven Japanese Tales Read online

  This phobia of mine is not limited to trains. It can come over me in streetcars, automobiles, theaters — anywhere that movement and color and the noise and bustle of crowds seem to threaten my morbidly excitable nerves. I am subject to an attack at any place and at any time. However, in streetcars and theaters, since I can easily escape, I have never been brought so close to the brink of madness.

  And so it was in early June, when I rode a swaying Kyoto streetcar, that I knew the illness still held me in its grip. In the meantime I had scrupulously avoided trains and given up all thought of returning to Tokyo until I felt sure that my phobia would not recur. I wanted to take my conscription examination, which had to be done before the summer was over, somewhere near Kyoto, at a place I could get to without going by train.

  Unfortunately, I found that I was too late for any of the examination centers in the Kyoto area; but thanks to a friend of mine in Osaka it was arranged for me to go to one in a fishing village on the Osaka-Kobe car line, provided that I transferred my legal residence there two or three days in advance. The examinations in that village were scheduled for the middle of June.

  I was delighted that I could get there by electric car — without even boarding a train, let alone having to go all the way home to Tokyo. And around noon on the twelfth, with my official seal and a copy of our family register (forwarded to me from Tokyo) in my pocket, I set out for the Gojo Street station of the Osaka-Kobe line.

  The midsummer-like sunshine glittered off the dry, dusty Kyoto streets; the clear sky looked poisonously sleek, a smooth expanse of dense indigo blue. I was wearing a silk gauze cloak over a plain unlined kimono, and on the way to the station by ricksha I could feel the sweat ooze like sticky drops of blood from the longish hair at my temples and trickle down my cheeks to soak into my collar. Looking off toward Mount Atago from Gojo Bridge, I saw heat waves billowing in the foothills as if fanned up from the bowels of a blast furnace. The distant fields and woods were obscured by a steamy haze; while in the foreground the tiled roofs and checkered stone walls and the waters of the Kamo River were dyed in such vivid hues, as vivid as fresh paint, that it hurt my eyes to look at them. When I started to get down from the ricksha at the station my kimono skirts clung to my perspiration-drenched legs, binding them so tightly I nearly fell.

  I'll be all right if it's just an electric car — that was what I had told myself, trying to build up a little confidence, but already my nerves were strained by this oppressive heat. After buying a ticket to Osaka I decided to rest until my nerves were calmer, and sagged down on a bench, where I sat staring vacantly at the street like a beggar.

  Car after car of the Osaka-Kobe line — built more solidly than city streetcars, as dark and massive as cages for wild beasts — came up, hooted its whistle, and spewed forth one crowd of passengers in exchange for another, which it immediately swallowed, and retreated toward Osaka. A car arrived every few minutes. Summoning all my courage, I stood up and went as far as the ticket gate — but then my heart beat wildly and my legs refused to carry me any further. I seemed to have been paralyzed by some fearful spell. I tottered back to the bench.

  “Ricksha, sir?”

  “No, I'm waiting for someone,” I told the man. “I'm going to Osaka.” But after getting rid of him I stayed where I was. “I'm going to Osaka,” I had replied, but somehow it rang in my ears as “I'm going to die.” How stunned that ricksha man would have been if I had rolled my eyes and collapsed on the spot — as abruptly as Svidrigailoff did in Crime and Punishment (“If anyone should ask you, say I've gone to America!”) when he clapped a pistol to his forehead and shot himself!

  When I looked at my watch I saw that it was about one o'clock. The village office probably closed at three or four, and I had to register by the end of the day to be eligible for the examination. Otherwise, the kind efforts of my friend would be wasted. On a sudden inspiration, I bought a pocket flask of whiskey from a nearby liquor store. Then I sat down on the bench again, leaned back, and began emptying the flask in little gulps. According to past experience the whiskey would deaden my nerves long enough to let me escape the worst of the terror. I had an almost superstitious faith in it. I thought that if I drank myself into a stupor before boarding the car I might be able to reach Osaka safely.

  Numbness slowly seeped through my heavy body. As I sat there patiently, I was conscious of an insane drunkenness splendidly rotting away my mind and blunting all my senses. Soon I was staring dull-eyed and languid at the bright, noisy thoroughfare, watching the flux of swirling lights and shadows.

  Passers-by at the foot of Gojo Bridge were flushed pink and beaded with sweat, like melting jelly-sculpture. Even beautiful young girls draped in filmy summer garments suffered visibly from the unrelenting heat, their flesh grossly swollen. Perspiration. . . the perspiration of huge throngs of people seemed to exude ceaselessly into the sultry atmosphere, hovering over everything, stickily clinging to walls and surfaces everywhere. It reminded me of a line of decadent verse: “Over the city hangs a mist of sweat. . .”

  Like a wrinkling movie screen, the street seemed to waver back and forth, now warped, now caving in, blurring, doubled. . . The knowledge that I was drunk beyond control was the only thing that emboldened me, that gave me courage.

  Finally I made up my mind to board the next car, and took the precaution of buying another bottle of whiskey. Also, to be ready to cool my head if by any chance I should feel an attack coming on, I bought some cracked ice and wrapped it in my handkerchief.

  Thus armed, I let myself be squeezed and shoved toward the gate by the milling crowd, had my ticket punched, and was just reaching the platform when I found myself once again under the spell. In the presence of that furiously snorting and hooting car, so impatient to go roaring off, my nerves were shattered of their protective glaze of alcohol, and my suddenly clear head jerked up and began to quake and tremble. I was seized by an overpowering terror, as if my mind would crack, as if I might be plunged into a black coma, or into the limbo of madness. Instinctively I fled back to the gate.

  “I'm sorry,” I blurted out to the clerk. “I just had my ticket punched, but I have to wait for a friend, so I'll take the next car.” Pressing the ice pack to my forehead, I battled my way through the opposing current of people and, completely unnerved, bolted out of the station as if pursued by some evil spirit. Sinking down limply on a bench, I finally managed to begin breathing easily again. I felt as if someone were laughing scornfully at me behind my back.

  “It shouldn't have turned out like this,” I told myself. “I thought I was drunk enough to get away with it — what the devil went wrong today? Are my nerves so raw that even whiskey can't deaden them?”

  At last it was two o'clock. If I dawdle any longer I may be too late, I thought. And if I let this chance slip I'll soon have to go back to Tokyo. . . But suppose I write a letter explaining my trouble to the authorities: “Since a train trip will either kill me or drive me mad, I cannot return to Tokyo in time for the examination.” Perhaps they will reply: “Even if it kills you or drives you mad, do not fail to be here in time for the examination.” That would make me feel like forcing myself to take the train, and going back to Tokyo a raving maniac. . . I'd want to charge in on them the day of the examination and make a scene. “You see?” I'd tell them between sobs. “You're so unreasonable I've lost my mind! It's a fact, I'm really out of my mind!” What would the army doctor say then, I wonder? Perhaps he'd compliment me coolly. “That's all right. You did well to come back. You did well to come back even if it meant losing your mind. I admire your sense of duty.”

  Still brimming over with whiskey, I let my thoughts drift from one idiotic notion to another as I sat there laughing to myself, getting angry, raging, or feeling disgusted.

  After considering the situation seriously, I decided I had only three choices: to die, to go mad, or to stay away from Tokyo. If I didn't want to die or go mad I had to conquer my phobia and leave for Osaka immediately.
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br />   But suppose I lost consciousness in the car. . .

  Sighing helplessly, I glowered at an approaching car and got up from the bench. Maybe I should rush off to forget my troubles in a geisha house — or should I stick it out here a little longer and wait till I calm down? The sun will set, gradually night will deepen. If I wait here dumbly until the last car pulls out and then go back to my apartment with nothing accomplished, perhaps I will resign myself to my fate — and feel a certain relief.

  “Well there, T. Where are you off to?”

  It was my friend K. He was wearing a cool-looking summer kimono, with a Panama hat tilted jauntily on the back of his head, shading his clean-cut features and handsome crop of hair.

  Startled, as if some crime of mine had been discovered, I mumbled: “Just to Osaka. . .” and grinned stupidly.

  “Oh, that army physical you mentioned the other day.” K. nodded understandingly. “I'm going as far as Fushimi myself. We can leave together.”

  “Well —”

  “I want you to meet a friend of mine.” K. promptly introduced his companion, who was a doctor: a fair-complexioned, slightly rotund man in his early thirties, with a charming little neatly trimmed mustache.

  “Shall we be on our way? Please go ahead.”

  “Yes, thank you,” I responded, still hesitating. But I let myself be urged toward that ferocious car.

  “Please, please, after you,” K. insisted, almost pushing me aboard.

  “Well, then.” Resolutely I closed my eyes and climbed briskly into the car. No sooner was I inside than I clutched a strap with one hand, lifted my whiskey bottle to my mouth with the other, and took a stiff drink.

  Standing and hanging on to a strap gave me the feeling that I still had some control over my fate.

  “Quite a tippler, aren't you?” said the doctor.

  “No, it's just that I hate trains. I have to get drunk or I can't ride them.” It struck me that my explanation might sound a bit illogical, especially to a doctor.

  With a last hoot from the whistle, the electric car started to move.

  “Am I going to die now?” a voice inside me whispered. This must have been how it felt to be waiting for the guillotine.

  “What do you think, Doctor? Do you think he'll pass the physical?”

  “Let's see. Oh, you'll pass all right. A fine husky fellow like you.”

  Already the Kyoto streets were behind us: speeding by the windows were the fresh young leaves of surburban trees and shrubs, the highway, the low hills outside the city. It was then that a tiny bud of confidence began to unfold within me. Perhaps I would reach Osaka safely after all.

  The Bridge of Dreams

  On reading the last chapter of The Tale of Genji:

  Today when the summer thrush

  Came to sing at Heron's Nest

  I crossed the Bridge of Dreams.

  This poem was written by my mother. But I have had two mothers — the second was a stepmother — and although I am inclined to think my real mother wrote it, I cannot be sure. The reasons for this uncertainty will become clear later: one of them is that both women went by the name of Chinu. I remember hearing as a child that Mother was named after the Bay of Chinu, since she was born nearby at Hamadera, where her family, who were Kyoto people, had a seaside villa. She is listed as Chinu in the official city records. My second mother was also called Chinu from the time she came to our house. She never used her real name, Tsuneko, again. Even my father's letters to her were invariably addressed to “Chinu”; you can't tell by the name which of the two he meant. And the “Bridge of Dreams” poem is simply signed “Chinu.”

  Anyway, I know of no other poems by either woman. I happen to be acquainted with this one because the square slip of wave-patterned paper on which it is written was reverently mounted in a hanging scroll to be kept as a family heirloom. According to my old nurse, who is now in her sixties, this kind of handmade paper was decorated by the ancient “flowing ink” process (that is, by dipping it in water and letting it absorb a swirl of ink) and had to be ordered all the way from Echizen. My mother must have gone to a great deal of trouble to get it. For years I puzzled over the Konoé-style calligraphy of the poem, and the many unusual Chinese characters that even an adult — let alone a child — would find hard to read. No one uses such characters nowadays. I am reminded that we have a set of poem cards which seem to have been written by one of my mothers in that same esoteric style.

  As for the quality of the hand, I am not really able to judge. “They tell me nobody else wrote such a beautiful Konoé style,” my nurse used to say; and to my own amateur taste, for whatever that is worth, it appears to be the work of quite an accomplished calligrapher. But you would expect a woman to choose the slender, graceful style of the Kozei school. It seems odd that she preferred the thick, fleshy Konoé line, with its heavy sprinkling of Chinese characters. Probably that reveals something of her personality.

  When it comes to poetry I am even less qualified to speak, but I hardly think this verse has any special merit. The line “I crossed the Bridge of Dreams” must mean “Today I read 'The Bridge of Dreams' — the last chapter of The Tale of Genji.” Since that is only a short chapter, one that would take very little time to read, no doubt she is saying that today she at last finished the whole of Genji. “Heron's Nest” is the name by which our house has been known ever since my grandfather's time, a name given to it because night herons often alighted in its garden. Even now, herons occasionally come swooping down. Although I have seldom actually seen them, I have often heard their long, strident cry.

  Heron's Nest is on a lane running eastward through the woods below the Shimogamo Shrine in Kyoto. When you go into the woods a little way, with the main building of the shrine on your left, you come to a narrow stone bridge over a stream: our gate is just beyond it. People who live in the neighborhood say that the stream flowing under this bridge is the subject of the famous Poem by Chomei:

  The stony Shallow Stream —

  So pure that even the moon

  Seeks it out to dwell in it.

  But this seems doubtful. Yoshida Togo's gazetteer describes our “Shallow Stream” as “the brook that flows southward, east of the Shimogamo Shrine, into the Kamo River.” Then it adds: “However, the 'Shallow Stream' mentioned in ancient topographical writings was the Kamo River itself, of which the brook in question is merely a tributary having its source in Matsugasaki.” That is probably right, since Chomei is quoted elsewhere as saying that “Shallow Stream” is the old name of the Kamo River. The Kamo is also mentioned by that name in a poem by Jozan, which I will cite later, and the poet's prefatory note explains: “On refusing to cross the Kamo River into Kyoto.” Of course our little stream is no longer especially pure and limpid, but until my childhood it was as clear as Chomei's poem might suggest. I remember that in mid-June, during the ceremony of purification, people bathed in its shallow waters.

  The garden pond at Heron's Nest was linked to this stream by earthen drainage pipes to prevent it from overflowing. Once inside our main gate, with its two thick cedar pillars, you went down a flagstone walk to an inner gate. Dwarf bamboo were planted along both sides of the walk, and a pair of stone figures of Korean court officials (apparently of the Yi Dynasty) stood face to face on either side of it. The inner gate, which was always kept closed, had a roof thatched with cypress bark in an elegant rustic style. Each gate pillar bore a narrow bamboo tablet inscribed with one line of a Chinese couplet:

  Deep in the grove the many birds are gay

  Far from the dust the pine and bamboo are clean.

  But my father said he had no idea whose poem or whose calligraphy it was.

  When you rang the doorbell (the button was beside one of the poem tablets) someone came out to open the gate for you. Then you went along under the shade of a large chestnut tree to the front door; in the main entrance hall, you saw mounted over the transom a piece of calligraphy from the brush of the scholar-poet Rai Sanyo:
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  The hawk soars, the fish dives.

  What gave Heron's Nest its value was its landscape garden of almost an acre; the house itself was low and rambling but not particularly large. There were only some eight rooms, including the maids' room and the smaller entrance hall; but the kitchen was a spacious one big enough for an average restaurant, and there was an artesian well next to the sink. Originally my grandfather lived on Muromachi Street near the Bukko Temple, and used Heron's Nest as his villa. Later, though, he sold the Muromachi Street house and made this his home, adding a sizable storehouse at its norhwest corner. Going back and forth to the storehouse for a scroll or vase was quite inconvenient, since you had to go through the kitchen.

  Our household consisted of seven persons — my parents and me, my nurse Okane, and three maids — and we found the house comfortable enough. Father liked a quiet life. He put in an appearance at his bank now and then, but spent most of his time at home, seldom inviting guests. It seems that my grandfather enjoyed the tea ceremony and led an active social life: he had a fine old teahouse brought in by the side of the pond, and built another small place for entertaining, which he called the Silk-Tree Pavilion, in the southeast corner of the garden. But after his death his prized teahouse and pavilion were no longer used, except as a place to take an afternoon nap or read or practice calligraphy.

  All of my father's love was concentrated on my mother. With this house, this garden, and this wife, he seemed perfectly happy. Sometimes he would have her play the koto for him, and he would listen intently, but that was almost his only amusement at home. A garden of less than an acre seems a little cramped to be called a true landscape garden, but it had been laid out with the greatest care and gave the impression of being far deeper and more secluded than it actually was. When you went through the sliding doors on the other side of the main entrance hall you found yourself in an average-sized room of eight mats, beyond which was a wide, twelve-mat chamber, the largest room in the house. The twelve-mat room was somewhat after the fashion of the Palace style, with a veranda along the eastern and southern sides, enclosed by a formal balustrade. On the south, in order to screen out the sun, the wide eaves were extended by latticework with a luxuriant growth of wild akebia vine hanging out over the pond; the water came lapping up under the vine leaves to the edge of the veranda. If you leaned on the rail and gazed across the pond you saw a waterfall plunging out of a densely wooded hill, its waters flowing under double globeflowers in the spring or begonias in autumn, emerging as a rippling stream for a little way, and then dropping into the pond. Just at the point where the stream entered the pond a bamboo device called a “water mortar” was set up: as soon as the water filled its bamboo tube, which was pivoted off-center, the tube would drop with a hollow clack against a block of wood set below it and the water would run out. Since the tube was supposed to be of fresh green bamboo, with a cleanly cut open end, the gardener had to replace it often. This sort of device is mentioned in a fourteenth-century poem: