Oda Sakunosuke, Nostalgia

Oda Sakunosuke, Nostalgia

This one astonished me.

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A novelist named Shinkichi is struggling to write a story based on contemporary society, what people would call the "spirit of the times." He groans and wrestles with the manuscript, but no matter what he does, he cannot come up with an ending.

The deadline slips further and further past. If he can mail the manuscript by three o'clock, it will still reach the publisher in Tokyo in time. He has not slept for more than forty hours. He has taken so much Philopon that his left arm has become too hardened to inject anymore. With no choice, he takes the syringe in his unfamiliar left hand and injects himself in the right arm.

Still, no idea comes.

Three o'clock passes.

It's over.

He should just go to sleep and apologize to his editor.

Wait. If he sends it by express mail from the central post office in Osaka, it might still make it. That's right, there is still that possibility. In fact, he has already sent a postcard saying, "I've sent the manuscript. Wait for it to arrive."

He throws off his blanket and forces himself to make one last effort.

At last, he finishes it.

The ending is nothing special. The story has turned out poorly. But at least it is finished. Time to go to Osaka Station.

That is the first part of the story.

Carrying his manuscript, Shinkichi is waiting for a train at his local station, Kiyoshikojin, when he notices a woman in her forties pacing about anxiously. She approaches him and asks,

"Is this station called Kojinguchi?"

He has never heard of such a station.

Clinging to him almost desperately, she explains her situation. She says she received a telegram from her husband telling her to come to Kojinguchi immediately.

A train bound for Osaka arrives, and Shinkichi leaves Kiyoshikojin Station.

In an underground passage at Osaka Station, he sees a vagrant asleep on the floor. Beside him sits a child of five or six, presumably the vagrant's son or daughter, staring blankly into space with wide, vacant eyes.

After mailing the manuscript, Shinkichi returns to Kiyoshikojin Station.

The woman is still there.

She has the same vacant, bewildered eyes as the child he saw earlier.

And Shinkichi realizes that it is not "the state of society" he ought to be writing about.

It is those eyes.

---

That is the entire short story.

And what an extraordinary story it is.

It is a story about discovering humanity.

It is a story in which a novelist discovers the very reason novels exist.

It takes readers behind the scenes and shows them everything, from artistic anguish to the author's most pathetic and inadequate moments.

Anyone who wants to write fiction should read it. Any novelist who keeps publishing mediocre work and has fallen into self-loathing should read it.

This is essential reading.

I have gained a whole new appreciation for Oda Sakunosuke.

Sakaguchi Ango, Dr. Wind

Sakaguchi Ango, Dr. Wind

This is a rather difficult story to explain.

The narrator, "I," is a disciple of Dr. Wind, who has committed suicide. He introduces Dr. Wind's will and accomplishments in a tone suggesting great admiration for his late master. Structurally, that is essentially all there is to the story. In fact, one could say that this is a novel consisting almost entirely of its structure, that is, its narration.

Dr. Wind has an archenemy named Dr. Octopus. At one point, we are told that Dr. Octopus seduces Dr. Wind's Basque wife. Seeking revenge, Dr. Wind breaks into Dr. Octopus's home and steals the wig that conceals his bald head. The theft is a complete success.

The next time the two men meet, however, Dr. Wind is dumbfounded. Dr. Octopus is simply wearing another wig.

Well, it is that sort of nonsense story.

With utter seriousness and in the lofty tone of a highly educated intellectual, the narrator describes the utterly trivial feud between the inscrutable Dr. Wind, whose greatness never becomes remotely clear, and the equally suspicious Dr. Octopus, as though it were one of the decisive conflicts of the century. It is the kind of story that makes the reader chuckle quietly to himself.

And that is basically all there is to it.

Yet readers are free to think.

What did Ango entrust to this farce?

Of course, only Ango himself could answer that question. Fortunately, however, he is already dead. Since we cannot ask him, no one can definitively refute our hypotheses. We are free to imagine whatever we like.

So let me indulge in a bit of speculation.

It seems to me that the very structure of the story, this solemn narration of utter nonsense, is a mirror image of reality itself.

Consider, for example, the two great currents of economic thought: neoliberalism and the command economy. Economists strive with complete seriousness to describe, quantify, and explain the vague and elusive monster called "the economy," yet they never quite manage to get hold of its true substance.

Or consider religion. Some faiths worship a single god, while others posit a multitude of gods. The former occasionally produce fanatics who become aggressive. But is that really something worth killing people over?

Or consider theories of human nature. One school assumes that there is an essential nature called "humanity" that must be understood. Another insists that there is no such essence, that there are only structures.

Or consider how a newspaper company forms a sports team to boost newspaper sales. A regional railway company, meanwhile, builds recreational facilities along its lines in order to increase passenger traffic and establishes a team based there. Those teams compete against one another. Since there are winners and losers, fans passionately support the side they favor.

In every case, people devote their lives to these pursuits and pursue them with utmost seriousness.

Just as Dr. Wind risks everything to steal Dr. Octopus's wig.

Perhaps this is how Ango looked upon the world, with a certain mocking laughter.

And the least trustworthy figure of all is the narrator himself, the "I" who tells the story.

Is that not the world itself?

Sakaguchi Ango is a terrifying genius.

Oda Sakunosuke's "Invitation to a Journey"

Oda Sakunosuke's "Invitation to a Journey"

Scholars estimate that Invitation to a Journey (Tabi e no Izanai) was written around 1943. It is a short story composed when Oda Sakunosuke was about thirty years old, but it was never published during his lifetime. It finally came to light in 1976 when it was included in a collected edition published by Bunsendō.

One possible reason why Invitation to a Journey remained unpublished is that Oda later revised and polished it into another short story, Sisters (Shimai), which appeared in the magazine Reijokai in the same year, 1943. If so, Invitation to a Journey may simply have served as an early draft whose purpose ended once Sisters was completed.

As for the content, it was clearly intended for the readership of a young women's magazine and presents one image of how young women lived during wartime Japan.

The story centers on two orphaned sisters, Kimiko Tanaka and Michiko Tanaka.

Kimiko, the elder sister, is skilled at dressmaking. She works herself to exhaustion, teaching at a sewing school from morning until night, like a worn-out rag. Despite her meager income, she insists on sending her younger sister Michiko to a women's professional college in Tokyo rather than allowing her to enter the workforce immediately after graduating from girls' school.

Since Kimiko lives in Osaka, she must not only pay Michiko's tuition but also send her living expenses. For a poorly paid sewing instructor, this would have been an enormous burden.

The "women's professional college" mentioned in the story refers to what was then called a josen (women's higher professional school). Under Japan's prewar educational system, students who graduated from a middle school or girls' high school generally advanced either to a higher school or to a professional school, and only after that could they proceed to a university.

Before the University Ordinance of 1920, institutions officially recognized as universities were few, largely limited to the Imperial Universities such as Tokyo Imperial University and Kyoto Imperial University. Many prestigious institutions that are universities today were then classified as professional schools.

For example:

• Waseda University (Tokyo Senmon Gakkō)
• Doshisha University (Doshisha Senmon Gakkō)
• Meiji University (Meiji Law School)
• Hosei University (French-Japanese Law School)

Similarly, women's professional schools included:

• Tsuda College (Tsuda English School)
• Japan Women's School (now Japan Women's University)
• Tokyo Women's College
• Tokyo Women's Professional School (now Tokyo Kasei University)
• Kyoritsu Women's Professional School

Although some of these institutions contained the word "university" in their names, they were not universities in the modern sense, but professional schools.

Women's professional schools were generally elevated to university status only after World War II, around 1948 to 1950.

The josen attended by Michiko in the story is a generic institution rather than a specific school. In modern terms, it would be similar to a private women's university, and the financial burden must have been severe.

After somehow completing her studies and graduating, Michiko returns to Osaka. There she finds that Kimiko has ruined her health through years of overwork.

Michiko nurses her devotedly, but despite her efforts, Kimiko dies.

Now utterly alone in the world, Michiko stares at the diploma from her women's college hanging in her shabby apartment. In a moment of bitterness, she even comes to see it as the enemy that robbed her sister of her life.

One day, however, she notices a newspaper advertisement recruiting Japanese-language teachers for service in the South Pacific territories. The position is open to both men and women.

Applicants must be graduates of a university or professional school.

Thanks to Kimiko, and only at the cost of Kimiko's life, Michiko meets that requirement.

She applies for the examination.

During the interview, she is asked why she wants the position. As she tells the story of her sister, tears begin streaming down her face. Somehow, however, she passes the examination.

Then one day, a letter addressed to Kimiko arrives.

It is from a university student in Tokyo named Shosuke Satō.

While attending a higher school in Osaka, he once had Kimiko repair his school uniform. He writes to express his gratitude for that kindness.

He explains that after graduating from university he has been selected as a naval aviation cadet and does not expect to return alive. Believing this may be his last opportunity, he wishes to thank her properly.

He also mentions that a copy of Andersen's The Improvisatore, which he had borrowed from her, was never returned. He asks that she keep it as a memento.

Opening the drawer of Kimiko's writing desk, Michiko finds The Improvisatore carefully wrapped and preserved.

She decides to write to Satō.

In the opening lines of her letter she informs him that her sister has died.

Then she stops.

She tears up the letter.

Starting over, she writes instead in Kimiko's name, sending him a message of encouragement and support.

Later, carrying her sister's ashes with her on the way to depart for the South Pacific, Michiko travels to Tokyo.

At the plaza in front of Tokyo Station she notices a crowd gathered around someone.

Then she hears cries of:

"Three cheers for Shosuke Satō!"

Pushing through the crowd, she makes her way to the front and finally sees his face.

For a moment she thinks of saying,

"I am her younger sister."

But the words never leave her lips.

She swallows them and remains silent.

That is the story.

It is deeply moving.

Kimiko sacrificed everything for her younger sister, who was both more talented and more beautiful than she was. She gave up her youth, her capacity for love, her health, and ultimately even her life.

The story can be read on Aozora Bunko.

I highly recommend giving it a read.

Seicho Matsumoto, Bad Sorts (Warui Yatsura)

Seicho Matsumoto, Bad Sorts (Warui Yatsura)

Seicho Matsumoto is, of course, a giant of socially conscious detective fiction. Yet a closer look at his body of work reveals a remarkable variety: orthodox whodunits, police procedurals, timetable mysteries (travel mysteries), picaresque novels, crime novels, and, naturally, works that fit squarely within the social-problem genre itself.

Among these, Bad Sorts is best described as a crime novel.

The central character is Shinichi Toya, thirty-two years old, tall and rather handsome. His father was a distinguished clinician and a towering figure in academic medicine, as well as the founder of Toya Hospital. After the death of this highly respected father, Shinichi inherits the position of hospital director at a remarkably young age.

Although he is technically an internist, very little of the novel actually depicts him practicing medicine. The important thing is that he is an absolutely dreadful human being. He thinks of no one but himself. The hospital is in financial trouble, running deficits month after month, and payments to pharmaceutical suppliers are five months overdue. Shinichi also has two mistresses.

One is Chise Fujishima, a woman in her forties. She is overweight and runs a clothing business with considerable managerial skill. Money flows through her hands in abundance, though she keeps a firm grip on her purse strings.

The other is Tatsuko Yokotake, in her early thirties. Her husband owns a furniture store but is chronically ill and bedridden. Tatsuko effectively runs the business herself. Though not as wealthy as Chise, she is reasonably well-off. Every day, Tatsuko gives her husband medicine supplied by Shinichi. She believes the medicine to be poison, but in reality Shinichi has merely given her a common cold remedy. He delights in watching her tremble under the guilty conviction that she is poisoning her husband. It is a peculiarly sinister pleasure. Presumably, he also intends eventually to use her supposed crime as leverage once her husband dies of natural causes.

A third woman soon enters the story, and she is crucial.

Her name is Toyo Terashima, around forty years old. She had been Shinichi's father's mistress and is now the head nurse at Toya Hospital. When Shinichi was young, she was the woman who initiated him into adulthood. After his father's death, Toyo and Shinichi maintained a relationship for a while, though it has recently cooled. She is disliked within the hospital because of her gloomy demeanor and authoritarian attitude. Yet she is also the only person capable of criticizing Shinichi to his face.

The crucial point is that all three women love him.

Chise and Tatsuko each desperately want Shinichi for themselves. As a result, they continually pay him large sums of money whenever he demands it. Toyo lacks that sort of wealth and harbors no realistic dreams of marrying him, but she still wants to keep him under her control. It is love, perhaps, but a warped kind.

Why does Shinichi need so much money?

Partly to prop up his failing hospital, but mostly for pleasure. Above all, he is obsessed with antiques. He pours money into plates, bowls, and ceramic jars. He has been collecting since middle school and prides himself on having a finer eye than most antique dealers. Beyond that, he squanders money taking women to expensive restaurants and discreet love hotels. He is a libertine hospital director through and through.

Nor does he evaluate women by their looks or personalities. He judges them by one criterion alone: whether they have money. More importantly, he judges them by whether that money can be spent on him.

There is one more important character: Sakao Shimomizawa, a lawyer. He is poor, unfashionable, and operates out of a shabby office. Women do not find him attractive. Nevertheless, he is forever helping Shinichi out of one predicament after another.

This is the lineup with which the story begins.

Shimomizawa introduces Shinichi to another woman: Takako Makimura, a boutique owner in her twenties. She is also a fashion designer. Beautiful, ambitious, and highly successful for her age, she appears to have amassed a considerable fortune.

Shinichi falls head over heels for her.

Deploying all his usual charms, he sets about seducing her, but she proves difficult to conquer. Again and again he gets tantalizingly close, only to anger her or watch her slip away.

For once, Shinichi becomes serious. He wants a genuine relationship with Takako. He wants to marry her. He consults Shimomizawa, who relays Takako's conditions:

• She wants proof of Shinichi's assets.
• She wants him to clear up his still-existing legal marriage.

Given that Takako herself is wealthy, these are entirely reasonable demands.

The problem is that Shinichi possesses surprisingly little wealth. He inherited the hospital from his father. The property occupies some eight hundred tsubo of land in Nakano, a valuable asset indeed. Yet the buildings are already mortgaged. The land itself is all that remains. Shinichi has carefully avoided touching it, financing his extravagant lifestyle instead through money extracted from the women around him.

Shimomizawa devises a scheme. They will use the land as collateral, borrow money, deposit it in a bank account, and then display the passbook as evidence of wealth. Twenty million yen should suffice. Together with divorce-settlement expenses, they will raise twenty-five million yen on the property.

In today's terms, twenty million yen would probably correspond to something like two to three hundred million yen.

Running parallel to this main storyline is the story of Shinichi's two mistresses.

First comes Tatsuko Yokotake, dutifully dosing her husband every day.

Then, suddenly, the husband dies.

Convinced that she herself has killed him, Tatsuko panics. Shinichi, however, knows perfectly well that cold medicine cannot kill a man. He remains remarkably calm. In fact, he sees opportunity: her husband's assets will now pass to her, making her a more lucrative source of cash.

Things do not work out that way.

Instead of inheriting control of the furniture business, Tatsuko finds that her brothers-in-law reorganize the company as a corporation, leaving her only one minor executive among many. The disappointment may be greatest for Shinichi, who suddenly realizes how much harder it will be to siphon money from her.

Learning that Shinichi's affections are shifting toward another woman, Tatsuko storms into the hospital in a fury. In the chaos, Toyo administers a sedative and kills her by inducing heart failure. Shinichi then signs the death certificate.

Once again, Toyo saves him.

Meanwhile, the scheme involving Takako requires careful timing. If the money borrowed against the land remains outstanding too long, crushing interest charges from the loan sharks will multiply the debt and cost Shinichi the property. He therefore intends to repay the loan quickly with money extracted from Chise Fujishima.

Unlike Tatsuko, Chise is not merely connected to a business; she is the business. Her financial resources are on an entirely different scale.

Both Chise and Shinichi are married, but he has persuaded her that one day they will each leave their spouses and live happily together.

Then matters take an even darker turn.

Chise begins plotting her husband's death.

She arranges a mahjong gathering at her home and engineers a sudden medical emergency. Shinichi is summoned. Rather than bringing an experienced nurse, he takes a trainee. There he administers an unidentified drug to Chise's husband and has the trainee deliver the final injection. Afterward, he has her sign the death certificate.

Toyo immediately grows suspicious.

Why, she wonders, did Shinichi bring a trainee instead of a veteran nurse?

The whole affair is an outrageous high-wire act. Reading it almost feels like watching the film industry operate at its most reckless.

Certain that he can now draw money from Chise, who is bound to him by shared guilt, Shinichi proceeds with the plan to create the appearance of wealth and win Takako.

One imagines his dream was simple enough: secure Takako, squeeze money from Chise, redeem the title deeds from the loan sharks, and then enjoy Takako's fortune indefinitely.

Naturally, things do not go according to plan.

While waiting for Takako at a rendezvous point, Shinichi receives an unwelcome surprise.

Toyo appears.

She had noticed a mistakenly discarded draft of the map enclosed with his letter and tracked him down. Wearing the furious expression of a wrathful demon, she tells him:

"Anyone but Takako. Do not get involved with that woman."

Shinichi cannot allow Takako and Toyo to meet, so he hustles Toyo into his car and drives away. Takako is left waiting alone, but he sees no alternative.

They head west along the Koshu Highway, toward Tama Cemetery...

---

Greed leads to crime, and crime gives birth to further crime.

Bad Sorts is a superb crime novel. For Matsumoto, who is so often identified with social criticism, it is unusual in that no major social problem lies visibly at its core. Instead, the novel relentlessly forces the reader to accompany the idiotic, selfish, and morally bankrupt Shinichi through one disastrous scheme after another. He is infuriating, truly infuriating, yet the novel is immensely entertaining.

And the ending unfolds with breathtaking momentum.

When it arrives, your reaction is likely to be:

"You have got to be kidding me."

Highly recommended.

Kunikida Doppo, The Sorrow of a Painting

Kunikida Doppo, The Sorrow of a Painting

A short piece written in 1902, when Doppo was thirty-one years old.

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(What follows contains the entire plot, including the ending.)

Okamoto, an elementary school boy known for his talent in drawing, also considered himself the best in the school at mathematics and mischievous exploits. Yet in the one thing he loved most, drawing, the praise always went to a classmate named Shimura.

Shimura's only distinction was his artistic ability. In mathematics, in rough-and-tumble boyish adventures, and indeed in every other subject, Okamoto believed Shimura could not hold a candle to him.

Every Monday the students would pin up the pictures they had drawn over the weekend and discuss them in class. At these sessions, the teacher and all the students lavished praise on Shimura's drawings. Okamoto privately felt that his own work was not bad at all, yet somehow it was always Shimura alone who received admiration, as though people pitied him for having nothing else to distinguish him.

One day Okamoto produced what he regarded as the masterpiece of his life: a drawing of a horse's head. He came to the critique session brimming with confidence. Then he saw Shimura's work and was stunned. Instead of an ordinary pencil drawing like everyone else's, Shimura had done a chalk drawing. Moreover, it was a remarkably skillful portrait of Columbus. Faced with it, even Okamoto had no choice but to admit defeat.

He persuaded his parents to let him take lessons in chalk drawing.

One Sunday, carrying his drawing materials and searching for a subject, he was walking along a riverbank when he spotted Shimura sitting in the grass on the embankment, sketching. Quietly settling down behind him, Okamoto decided to make Shimura himself the subject of a drawing. Shimura, meanwhile, was sketching a waterwheel.

When Shimura finished and stood up, he turned around and noticed Okamoto nearby.

"Hello," he said pleasantly.

They began talking about what each of them was drawing, and Okamoto honestly admitted, "I'm drawing you."

In that case, Shimura replied, he would stay exactly where he was until Okamoto finished. And so he remained in the same spot and in the same pose while Okamoto completed his sketch.

Since Okamoto had only just begun learning chalk drawing, the result was nothing worth mentioning. But from that day onward he and Shimura became close friends.

Only the two of them went on from the village elementary school to a middle school in town. Because it was seven ri away, they lived together in a dormitory. They continued their friendship there. Whenever they returned home, they would walk the long mountain road together. Sometimes, inspired by a beautiful scene, they would stop to sketch landscapes or flowers for an hour or two, throwing all their plans into disarray.

For family reasons, Shimura eventually left school and returned home. Okamoto went on to a higher school in Tokyo.

When Okamoto was twenty, he happened to return to his hometown. By then he no longer painted. Seeing some old drawing materials at home, he was reminded of Shimura and decided to visit his friend's house.

There he learned from Shimura's family that three years earlier, at the age of seventeen, Shimura had fallen ill and died.

Okamoto took up his drawing materials and wandered out into the fields. He found himself unable to draw. As he walked, he eventually came upon the riverside where, years before, Shimura had sketched the waterwheel and Okamoto had sketched Shimura. The landscape was as dazzling as it had been on that distant day.

Okamoto wept.

---

That is the story in outline.

But Doppo's distinctive style, stripped so completely of anything superfluous, cannot be conveyed by a summary alone. Trees, seasons, rivers, people, and even human emotions are all rendered as though they were part of a single landscape. The effect is almost magical. I strongly encourage you to read the story itself. It is available on Aozora Bunko.

The story draws the reader irresistibly into the straightforward sincerity of childhood: the burning rivalry between boys, and the way they can become fast friends almost immediately once they actually speak to one another, relating to each other without reserve or calculation.

And then comes the ending.

It hits hard.

You find yourself crying along with Okamoto.

This is truly a short story deserving to be called a gem.

Highly recommended.

Kobayashi Hideo, Modern Painting

Kobayashi Hideo, Modern Painting

Glancing from time to time at the reproductions of the paintings under discussion, one reads Kobayashi's prose, a succession of grand rhetorical flourishes so intoxicating that it is impossible not to be swept along by it. The experience is immensely enjoyable and stimulating. It plants countless seeds of ideas and reflections in the reader's mind. There is no doubt that it constitutes reading of the highest value. If one were to speak of a truly rich reading experience, this book would stand proudly among the very finest.

Yet writing about it is extraordinarily difficult.

As someone whose hobby is introducing books I have read, I found this the most formidable challenge of all. I could not find a coherent structure, a suitable angle, or even a clever phrase with which to begin. Late at night, in the deserted corridors of the company building, I paced heavily back and forth between floors, reading aloud from the complete illustrated edition of Modern Painting. I thought that walking might help stimulate my brain.

.

At the outset, Kobayashi introduces the art criticism of Baudelaire, the poet who accomplished the modernization of poetry. He discusses Baudelaire's panoramic view of the art world, particularly Baudelaire's insight that Manet's realism bears an affinity to the realism of modern poetry.

The book then proceeds to explore the artistic innovations of seven painters: Monet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Renoir, Degas, and Picasso. For Monet, it was the placement of color. For Cézanne, the beauty of color and the first stirrings of abstraction. For Van Gogh, the yellow he obtained at the price of madness. For Gauguin, the sorrowful relativization of Western civilization born from his revulsion toward it. For Renoir, genius coupled with an anti-ideological spirit. For Degas, supreme draftsmanship and the revolution in color that emerged from it. And for the precocious genius Picasso, intuition itself.

The reader is overwhelmed.

The struggles of each of these geniuses are narrated through the passionate pen of Kobayashi. It is dizzying.

In the premodern era, painting was a subordinate object, constrained by authority and serving the interests of its patrons: political rulers, feudal lords, kings, nobles, and the Church.

Modernity brought an age in which painting could exist as painting and painters as painters. Behind this transformation lay numerous artistic innovations, including the discovery of the relationship between light and color and the development of perspective. Through the life-and-death struggles and prodigious achievements of the painters discussed above, painting gradually won the right to exist as nothing more and nothing less than painting itself.

Kobayashi Hideo was a man who cherished independence and self-reliance.

His dislike of various "-isms" stemmed from the fact that they run counter to this spirit. In this respect he was much like Fukuzawa Yukichi, who also regarded independence and self-reliance as the highest of virtues.

Kobayashi rejoices, from the bottom of his heart, that painting as an art form emancipated itself from its former status as a decorative accessory for patrons and achieved genuine independence. We, as viewers, have been granted the freedom to look directly at a painting. We need not concern ourselves with the approval of ecclesiastical authorities or aristocratic patrons standing behind it. We may simply say, "I like it," "I dislike it," "The colors are beautiful," or "It feels alive."

Yet there is a pitfall.

It is the trap of knowledge.

Knowledge can halt the living act of appreciation. It can suspend our emotions and senses in a state of near-death. We say things like, "This whitish, hazy quality is characteristic of Impressionism," or "Van Gogh belongs to Post-Impressionism," or "This painter is renowned for depicting light, and to achieve that effect he uses black in such a sophisticated manner..." If appreciation becomes nothing more than the verification of knowledge, then one is not truly appreciating at all. Kobayashi argues that the sole meaning of art appreciation lies in the moment when the soul of the viewer confronts the soul of the artist, and in the tremors and distortions that arise from that encounter.

The appreciation of painting, indeed of art in general, and even reading itself, is therefore never something to be taken lightly.

.

During his lifetime, Kobayashi strongly urged his editor to include sixty-one specific paintings in the collection. To the astonishment of those involved, all sixty-one were reproduced in the expensive leather-bound edition of The Complete Works of Kobayashi Hideo (Fifth Edition). The Shincho Bunko edition of Modern Painting also reportedly includes all sixty-one works in full color, although this count includes two of Goya's satirical prints, which are themselves almost monochrome.

Takeo Arishima's A Certain Woman

A Certain Woman (Aru Onna) is a novel based on real people. Its heroine was modeled on the woman who had once been married to Doppo Kunikida. Other real-life figures, including Kanzo Uchimura and Takeo Arishima himself, also appear in fictionalized form. Since the characters are given different names in the novel, I will use those fictional names here, with the names of the people they were based on given in parentheses when they first appear.

---

Hayatsuki Yoko (Nobuko Sasaki) falls in love with and marries the journalist Kibe Kokyo (Doppo Kunikida). However, they are ill-suited to one another, and the marriage ends in divorce after only five months. At the time, Yoko is pregnant with Kibe's child. She gives birth to a daughter named Sadako, but entrusts her upbringing to a wet nurse.

The story begins when Sadako is around four years old.

Yoko is waiting in Yokohama to board a ship bound for Seattle, where she plans to marry Kimura Teiichi (Mori Hiroshi), who is trying to establish a business in America. Accompanying her is Kimura's close friend, Koto Yoshikazu (Takeo Arishima), who finds himself constantly at the mercy of Yoko's whims and demands.

Once Yoko finally boards the ship, a man she does not recognize tearfully clings to her and laments her departure overseas. The ship's purser, Kurachi Sankichi (Kanzaburo Takei), deftly handles the situation. Then, after the vessel has already begun to move, he performs an astonishing feat, running along a rope and vaulting back onto the ship like an acrobat in a circus.

Yoko is twenty-five years old and possesses a beauty so striking that even Westerners take notice. She is fully aware of it herself. During the long voyage, a young man named Oka becomes devoted to her and attentively looks after her. The ship's doctor and the aforementioned purser, Kurachi, also grow increasingly close to her.

The central figures in shipboard society are Professor Tagawa, a doctor of law, and his wife. Mrs. Tagawa cannot stand not being the center of attention. Naturally, she is incapable of ignoring a woman as dazzlingly beautiful as Yoko and begins engaging in subtle but intense psychological power plays. Yoko is not the sort to be intimidated by such behavior, but at first she adopts a modest and deferential posture.

As the ship draws closer and closer to the American West Coast, Yoko experiences something akin to what we would now call pre-marital anxiety. Suddenly, her fiancé Kimura begins to seem like an utterly unremarkable man. The person who emerges in his place is Kurachi, the purser, whose combination of rugged masculinity and practical capability proves irresistible. Before long, the two become lovers.

Kurachi already has a wife and children, three daughters, in fact. A member of the ship's crew has become involved with a passenger. Meanwhile, Yoko, despite being engaged, has seduced a married man with a family. On a ship where little happens to relieve the boredom, rumors spread with astonishing speed.

In this state of affairs, the ship arrives in Seattle. Kimura, who has been counting the days until Yoko's arrival, comes to greet her. However, Yoko's heart now belongs entirely to Kurachi. Together with the ship's doctor, Kurachi devises a scheme to portray Yoko as ill. Quarantine regulations, they claim, prevent her from disembarking, and the only option is for her to return to Japan. Through this deception they succeed in destroying the engagement between Kimura and Yoko.

Yoko shrewdly refrains from telling Kimura that she has fallen out of love with him. Instead, she insists that the problem is purely one of health. As a result, Kimura continues to send her the little money he can spare.

Back in Japan, Yoko spends her time with Kurachi at an inn. One day she notices a newspaper carrying sensational accounts of their scandalous affair. The newspaper has close ties to Professor Tagawa, and Yoko suspects that Mrs. Tagawa is behind the coverage.

One night, they quietly slip away from the inn, which is besieged by reporters, and move into a house rented by Kurachi. Yoko summons her two younger sisters, Aiko and Sadayo, and the three begin living together. At first, Kurachi is presented merely as a kind acquaintance who visits from time to time. Once it becomes clear that the sisters already know about the newspaper reports, however, there is no longer any reason for secrecy. The house eventually earns the nickname "The House of Beauties" among the local residents, as the sisters are as beautiful as Yoko herself.

Oka, who had admired Yoko aboard ship and attended to her with the devotion of both a younger brother and a servant, also begins visiting the house. He grows increasingly close to Aiko, or at least that is how it appears to Yoko.

Koto, feeling pity for Kimura, a sincere Christian who continues to love Yoko wholeheartedly, visits the House of Beauties several times and urges Yoko to stop toying with Kimura's affections.

Kurachi, unsurprisingly, can no longer remain employed by the shipping company and drifts into various shady occupations. He never tells Yoko what he is doing. The work involves activities such as selling military secrets to foreign powers. His silence is intended to protect her from any possible consequences. As his work causes him to visit less and less frequently, Yoko begins to feel that his love for her is fading.

Once Yoko reaches this point, things become dangerous.

Negative fantasies begin piling up in her mind. She says cruel things not only to Kurachi but also accuses her sisters and Oka of elaborate conspiracies that exist only in her imagination. It is a kind of self-centered madness, what would once have been called hysteria. Everyone around her suffers terribly as a result.

Eventually, her beloved youngest sister, Sadayo, is struck down with typhoid fever. Yoko herself is also in poor health.

At this point, the story takes a sudden and dramatic turn.

---

That is the story in broad outline.

It is immensely entertaining, but what makes it remarkable is the author's painstaking portrayal of Yoko's increasingly deranged inner life. She is selfish, irrational, and often cruel. Yet Arishima carefully shows that, however distorted her behavior may be, it arises from genuine anguish and impulses that she herself cannot control. For me, Yoko strongly resembles Natsue from Ayako Miura's Freezing Point, though Natsue is a far more reasonable person. The episode involving the youngest sister's typhoid fever also recalls The Makioka Sisters. I do not mean that Jun'ichiro Tanizaki or Ayako Miura plagiarized this novel, but the similarities are striking enough to make one wonder whether they may have taken some inspiration from it.

Although A Certain Woman is a roman à clef, Arishima clearly invented and embellished a great deal. The novel is fascinating not merely as a story but also in the context of the women's movement that sought to improve women's social status. Nobuko Sasaki's mother herself was a prominent activist in that cause. Some critics have therefore interpreted Yoko as a representative of a new type of woman: someone who refused to be merely an appendage to men and instead manipulated the men around her in order to realize her own desires.

Yet that interpretation strikes me as problematic. Yoko's inner world is so self-centered, so lacking in social awareness, and so unconcerned with women's advancement that it is difficult to reconcile with any feminist reading. It seems more plausible to me that Arishima's true motivation was to portray Nobuko Sasaki as a destructive femme fatale who had manipulated his close friend, represented in the novel by Kimura.

Of course, a novel motivated solely by personal resentment would have little literary value. Perhaps recognizing this, Arishima went to great lengths to provide Yoko with a compelling psychological logic of her own, depicting her as a woman driven by overwhelming inner forces that bring suffering both to herself and to everyone around her.

Nobuko Sasaki, the model for Yoko, was reportedly outraged by the novel and intended to confront Arishima in protest. Before she could do so, however, Arishima died in a lovers' double suicide, and her protest was never made.

Turning someone you despise into a fictional character and then mercilessly destroying them on the page: literature of that kind would probably be impossible today.

In that sense as well, this is a valuable and fascinating work.

Ayako Miura's Freezing Point (Hyōten)

Ayako Miura's Freezing Point (Hyōten)

In 1963, to commemorate its 80th anniversary, Asahi Shimbun launched a nationwide novel competition open to both amateurs and professionals, with a grand prize of 10 million yen, an extraordinary sum at the time.

An amateur writer, Ayako Miura (1922-1999), won the contest with Freezing Point.

The novel was serialized in the morning edition of The Asahi Shimbun from December 9, 1964, to November 14, 1965, and published in book form by Asahi Shimbun on November 15, 1965.

It became a huge sensation even while it was still being serialized. Readers reportedly sent in letter after letter pleading, "Please don't let the story end with so-and-so happening!"

Adaptations began almost immediately after the serialization ended.

Japanese adaptations

• TV drama (January-April 1966)
• Film (March 1966)
• TV drama (January-March 1971)
• TV drama (March-June 1981)
• TV drama (April 1981)
• TV drama (April 1989)
• TV drama (July-September 2001)
• TV drama (November 2006)

Overseas adaptations

• Taiwanese film (1966)
• Korean film (1967)
• Korean film (1981)
• Taiwanese TV drama (1988)
• Korean TV drama (1990)
• Korean adaptation (2004-2005)

Even that number of adaptations is astonishing. More remarkably, the final episode of the 1966 television drama reportedly achieved a viewership rating of 42.7%.

This was an era when entire families gathered around a single television set. It is therefore reasonable to imagine that well over half of Japan's population watched Freezing Point.

So what makes Freezing Point such an extraordinary novel?

Let's take a look, without venturing into major spoilers.

---

The Characters Are Amazing!

The cast of characters is simply extraordinary.

There are villains, good-hearted people, troubled souls, and lovable eccentrics. Every single character possesses a vivid presence. No one feels carelessly written. The novel sometimes recalls the greatness of Dostoevsky in the depth and intensity of its characterization.

---

The Story Is Amazing!

The plot never lets up.

Like a classic daytime soap opera, it is packed with twists, revelations, and emotional upheavals. The reader barely has time to breathe.

To think that Miura displayed such storytelling mastery in her debut novel! Readers at the time must have wondered:

"Who on earth is this Ayako Miura?"

---

The Themes Are Amazing!

Adultery, cruelty toward a stepchild, malicious slander, betrayal, sibling affection, the desires of a beautiful older woman, relationships with significant age differences, misunderstandings between men and women...

All the ingredients that make readers eagerly turn pages are present in abundance.

Yet these are merely the mechanisms of the plot.

Beneath the roller-coaster narrative lies a series of profound themes:

• The Christian commandment, "Love your enemies."
• Suicide, a persistent social problem that became increasingly significant during Japan's period of rapid economic growth.
• Discriminatory prejudice, a theme that feels especially relevant today, though it was remarkably prescient when the novel was written.
• Loneliness, one of literature's eternal concerns.

These issues are woven deeply into the story. The characters struggle with them, and the reader is forced to confront them as well.

At times the themes are presented rather directly, but that hardly diminishes their impact.

---

The Story Begins

The setting is Hokkaido in the late 1940s, when postwar Japan was still suffering from severe material shortages.

Keizō Tsujiguchi, a young doctor, runs a hospital in Asahikawa. He has a beautiful young wife, Natsue, a five-year-old son named Tōru, and a three-year-old daughter named Ruriko.

Yasuo Murai, an ophthalmologist working at the hospital, has begun to fall in love with Natsue.

Natsue takes pride in her beauty. She neither encourages Murai's advances nor completely rejects them. Instead, she seems to enjoy watching his affection unfold.

One day, while Keizō and Tōru are away at the movies, Murai visits the Tsujiguchi home.

Unable to suppress his feelings any longer, Murai moves closer to Natsue. In the drawing room, Natsue skillfully toys with him, like a matador teasing a charging bull.

At that moment, three-year-old Ruriko bursts into the room.

"I don't like Dr. Murai!" she shouts.

Demanding attention and wanting someone to play with her, she interrupts the encounter.

In a moment of irritation, Natsue tells her:

"Why don't you go outside and play?"

She treats her child as a nuisance.

That single moment gives birth to a great tragedy.

The next day, Ruriko's body is found.

---

Keizō grieves deeply for his daughter.

At the same time, he begins to suspect that Natsue and Murai were having an affair.

Natsue says nothing about what transpired. She is simply devastated by Ruriko's death.

The child was murdered by a man named Tsuchio Saishi, whose wife had died in childbirth, leaving him with an infant. Crushed by unemployment, sleepless nights, and the difficulty of obtaining milk for the baby, he had descended into near madness.

Saishi commits suicide during police questioning.

News of both the murder and the suicide eventually reaches the Tsujiguchi family.

---

After recovering somewhat from her emotional collapse, Natsue tells Keizō that she wants to raise a baby girl.

Years earlier, when Keizō was a medical student, one of his professors had spoken about the immense difficulty of obeying Christ's command:

"Love your enemies."

The idea had remained with him ever since.

Keizō is a conflicted man. On one hand, he is sincere and idealistic. On the other, he is narrow-minded enough to brood endlessly over what he believes may have been his beloved wife's betrayal.

At this point, pity for Natsue, anger at her carelessness, and resentment over her mysterious encounter with Murai all become tangled together inside him.

He approaches his friend Dr. Takagi, an obstetrician at an infant home, and asks him to arrange the adoption of an orphaned baby.

But not just any baby.

Keizō specifically requests the infant daughter of Saishi, the man who murdered Ruriko.

His plan is grotesquely petty.

He imagines the unsuspecting Natsue lovingly raising the murderer's child. Secretly watching her do so, he intends to savor it as revenge for her suspected infidelity.

What a small-minded man, Keizō!

---

Takagi passionately opposes the idea.

Yet Keizō insists that he wishes to put into practice the teaching, "Love your enemies."

Eventually Takagi relents.

A three-month-old baby girl is brought into the Tsujiguchi household.

The couple names her Yōko.

---

Natsue, knowing nothing of Yōko's origins, devotes herself wholeheartedly to raising the child.

Keizō, meanwhile, who speaks so nobly about loving his enemies, can barely bring himself to hold her.

Yōko grows into an exceptionally kind and capable girl.

She is pretty, athletic, hardworking, intelligent, and never speaks ill of others.

Raised chiefly by Natsue and Tōru, she develops beautifully.

Yet Keizō remains cold toward her.

Seriously, Keizō, that's unbelievably petty.

---

When Yōko is in the first grade, Natsue is cleaning Keizō's study and secretly reads his diary.

She discovers an unfinished letter addressed to Takagi.

In it, Keizō confesses that he cannot bring himself to love Yōko because she is the murderer's child.

In that instant, Natsue learns the entire truth.

And thus begins Yōko's living hell.

---

That's the basic setup.

No wonder newspaper readers across Japan became completely addicted to the story.

And Yōko is such a good child.

Her adoptive parents, on the other hand, are often awful.

The one person who consistently protects her is her older brother Tōru. He is her sole refuge.

To be fair, the adoptive father occasionally behaves like a decent human being, and the adoptive mother does not torment Yōko constantly. The abuse is intermittent, which perversely makes it all the more enduring.

Year after year, the household maintains a cruel equilibrium.

Then Tōru leaves for Hokkaido University in Sapporo.

Suddenly Yōko is left alone with her adoptive parents.

---

Tōru has always loved Yōko as a sister.

As he grows older, however, he discovers that she is adopted. He also learns that she is the murderer's daughter.

Realizing that they are not related by blood and could legally marry, he finds his sibling affection transforming into romantic love.

Yōko, meanwhile, knows none of this.

A profound inner conflict consumes him.

At university, he even attempts to introduce Yōko to Kitahara, a handsome and good-hearted upperclassman.

Though Tōru himself loves her, he tries to step aside for her sake.

But Kitahara immediately falls for the beautiful Yōko.

And Yōko begins to return his feelings.

Standing in their way is none other than Natsue.

She schemes relentlessly against Yōko.

Through manipulation and malicious interference, she drives a wedge between the young couple.

Honestly, Natsue, that's unbelievably petty.

---

And from there, the story accelerates into a torrent of shocking developments.

At this stage, Natsue practically seems demonic.

Freezing Point is truly one of the great classics every Japanese reader should experience.

知らない英単語が出てきたら

大学時代の友人Kと呑んでいた。
Kは出版社の社長をしている。Kは酔っ払って、急に思い出話をし始めた。

大学入試の時の英語である。
2次の英語だ。
共通1次や私大の英語は、用意された選択肢を選べばいいから、なんとかなる。
なんともならないのは2次の英文和訳の問題で、まったく知らない英単語が出てきた時だ。
前後の文脈で類推できるものはもちろん類推する。
接頭語や接尾語から類推できるものももちろん類推する。
そうしたあらゆる類推が効かない単語が、訳すべき英文にあった場合である。

Kは、その単語の和訳が該当する箇所をブランク（空欄）にして、
（文構造や文法は理解していることを示すためにあえて）逐語訳を敢行したという。

英単語の語彙数が少ないのにはK以上だった私は、その意味のわからぬ英単語をカタカナに変えて、
つまりはもうすでに人口に膾炙しているから訳さずともよかろうというような態度で、
しかも逐語訳ではなく、（細かい文法すらわかってなかったからだが）超訳気味の訳にした、といった。

当時は今より18歳人口が多く、過酷な受験戦争状況だった。
予備校業界も猛然と儲かっていた。
そんな戦国時代において、ブランクだらけの逐語訳のKもカタカナ語で細かい文法を無視した訳の私も
合格したのだから、採点基準はどうなっていたのか、40年以上経った今でも知りたいと思ったのだった。

 

Shimazaki Tōson's Before the Dawn

 

Before the Dawn is the story of a man who eagerly awaits the dawn of modernity.

That man is Aoyama Hanzō, the master of the principal inn at Magome, a post station on the Nakasendō highway. He is also the village headman of the area and a scholarly man who considers himself a disciple of Hirata Atsutane, despite having joined the Hirata school after Atsutane's death.

The Hirata school represented the mainstream of Kokugaku (National Learning), inheriting the scholarship of Motoori Norinaga. Since Kokugaku sought to reinterpret Japan's classical heritage in a broad sense, the study of history naturally centered on the deeds of the Emperor. Buddhism was regarded as a foreign import. The movement turned toward reexamining and redefining Shinto. It would not be inaccurate to say that, together with the Mito school, Kokugaku formed one of the intellectual foundations of the sonnō ("Revere the Emperor") ideology that animated the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate.

It was therefore natural that Aoyama Hanzō, devoted to the Emperor, welcomed the end of Tokugawa rule. The hardships of life under the Tokugawa regime undoubtedly strengthened his convictions.

Before the Dawn portrays the era outlined in the chronology below. Although Aoyama Hanzō serves as the central point of view, he is both a member of the Hirata school and the headman of a post station on the Nakasendō. Activists and adherents of the Hirata school frequently pass through Magome, and Hanzō gives them shelter. As a result, he receives information of exceptional freshness and reliability. He is well informed about events unfolding in Edo and Kyoto.

For that reason, although the novel tells the life story of a provincial innkeeper, it also possesses the character of a meticulous history of the Bakumatsu and Meiji Restoration. Incidents such as the Namamugi Incident and the Sakai Incident are described in remarkable detail, even though Hanzō was never present at the scenes. The narrative freely depicts events occurring far beyond the protagonist's immediate experience. For readers with an interest in history, this is irresistible.

Historical Timeline

• 1853 (Kaei 6): Arrival of Commodore Perry's Black Ships
• 1854 (Kaei 7 / Ansei 1): Treaty of Peace and Amity between Japan and the United States
• 1858 (Ansei 5): Harris Treaty (Treaty of Amity and Commerce)
• 1858-1859 (Ansei 5-6): Ansei Purge
• 1860 (Man'en 1): Sakuradamon Incident
• 1862 (Bunkyū 2): Namamugi Incident
• 1863 (Bunkyū 3):
  • Shogun's journey to Kyoto
  • Anglo-Satsuma War
  • Coup of August 18
  • Flight of the Seven Court Nobles
• 1863-1864 (Bunkyū 3-Genji 1): Shimonoseki Campaign
• 1864 (Genji 1):
  • Ikedaya Incident
  • Kinmon Incident
  • First Chōshū Expedition
• 1865 (Keiō 1): Arson attack on the British Legation
• 1866 (Keiō 2):
  • Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance
  • Second Chōshū Expedition
  • Death of Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi
  • Tokugawa Yoshinobu appointed shogun
• 1867 (Keiō 3):
  • Death of Emperor Kōmei
  • Restoration of Imperial Rule submitted by Yoshinobu
  • Imperial Restoration Decree
  • Kogosho Conference
• 1868 (Keiō 4):
  • Battle of Toba-Fushimi
  • Sakai Incident
  • Charter Oath and Five Public Notices
  • Attack on British Minister Harry Parkes
  • Peaceful surrender of Edo Castle
• 1868-1869 (Meiji 1-2): Boshin War
• 1869 (Meiji 2): Return of lands and people to the Emperor
• 1871 (Meiji 4): Abolition of domains and establishment of prefectures
• 1871-1873 (Meiji 4-6): Iwakura Mission
• 1873 (Meiji 6): Seikanron Political Crisis
• 1877 (Meiji 10): Satsuma Rebellion

Yet the Restoration did not bring universal celebration.

The common forests on which mountain communities had long depended were converted into government-owned forests. People could no longer cut timber or gather firewood as they once had, and many fell into hardship. The system of alternate attendance (sankin-kōtai), which had brought money into the region, disappeared. The Owari branch of the Tokugawa family had taken care to protect the livelihoods of the people of Kiso, but the new government showed little such concern.

Hanzō appealed to the prefectural governor about the people's suffering, but his pleas were ignored.

At the same time, Western learning became the rage. Traditional Japanese arts and skills were belittled, while everyone rushed to embrace Western science and commerce.

Paradoxically, scholars of the Hirata school enjoyed great prestige because of their devotion to the Emperor. Many were summoned to serve the new government, and Hanzō too became a civil servant in Tokyo.

Yet he was tormented by doubt.

Some of his colleagues even made jokes at the expense of Motoori Norinaga. Performing monotonous bureaucratic work day after day, Hanzō agonized over a question:

"Is this really what we hoped for?"

He carried with him a folding fan on which he had written a poem:

Unless the holes of the crab are sealed,
even a great embankment will someday crumble.
Can the time of its collapse be far away?

— Hanzō

The poem expressed his anxiety about the age of Meiji.

One day Hanzō heard that Emperor Meiji would be passing by in a carriage. He went out to see the procession. After waiting more than two hours, it finally appeared.

Hanzō threw the fan into the Emperor's carriage.

Then he prostrated himself on the ground.

Needless to say, this caused an enormous scandal. He lost his government position and was reassigned as a Shinto priest at a shrine in Hida.

By this point, however, Hanzō's mind was already beginning to deteriorate.

Eventually he lost his sanity. He began muttering phrases such as, "The enemy is coming." He set fire to a local temple in Magome that his distant ancestors had labored to build. One of his disciples quickly extinguished the flames, preventing a major disaster, but his madness was evident to everyone.

His family confined him to a dark cell-like room.

There he sank deeper into insanity, weakened, and died.

Aoyama Hanzō was an honest and sincere soul. He recognized the contradictions of Tokugawa society and dreamed of its restoration to imperial rule. Yet even after power was returned to the Emperor and imperial government was established, things did not improve. Not only was the political situation disappointing, but Japan's proud culture, traditions, and arts were pushed aside. In their place came an age of shallow frenzy in which everyone pursued nothing but material wealth.

A sincere soul struggles against being swallowed by such a world, but where can it find refuge?

The eminent scholar of English literature and literary critic Kazushi Shinoda selected a list of the "Ten Great Novels of the Twentieth Century," and Before the Dawn was the only Japanese work included. It is a masterpiece of extraordinary scale and ambition, a work that only Shimazaki Tōson could have written.

Aoyama Hanzō, moreover, was modeled on Tōson's own father.

This is a remarkable book that compels readers to think deeply about the meaning and consequences of Japan's modernization.