geb.txt

system, decision procedure, working inside/outside the system. 
manipulation, and the elusive concept, "form". 
recursively enumerable sets and recursive sets. 
functions, physical theories, computer programs, and others. 
however, that these melodies are "the same", in a peculiar sense. 
intelligence to "absolute" meaning is postulated. 
to preserve truth-and in particular the question 
with the Dialogue by Lewis Carroll. 
holism and reductionism, which is soon taken up in the Ant Fugue. 
intermediate levels exist-or indeed whether any exist. 
understood, in some objective sense, by an outsider?" 
determining whether they are "beautiful" or not. 
problem of Turing, and Tarski's Truth Theorem. 
"Questions and Speculations" on Al and minds in general. 
tying Godel, Escher, and Bach together once again. 
Forkel, one of Bach's earliest biographers, tells the story 
made a formal Dialogue between the King and the Apologist. 
[Musical Offering], and dedicated it to the Inventor.' 
something of the flavor of Bach's apology for his appearance. 2 
Your Majesty's most august Royal grace to 
Frederick, which he reported as follows: 
claim that he, in turn, was even greater. The King 
in five parts, and finally in eight parts.' 
eight-part fugue is really beyond human capability. 
because it is very melodious and sweet, almost dance- 
the theme seems to shrink or to expand). 
the Musical Offering is no exception. (For a simple example of 
counterpoint. It is itself one large intellectual fugue, in 
1972. Escher was the creator of some of the 
FIGURE 5. Waterfall, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1961). 
Tonos". The similarity of vision is 
(stairs) % It is indeed true that there is an inherent 
Hands. Print Gallery dates from 1956.) 
which he seems to be inviting his viewers to enter. 
anyway. So here is a paraphrase in more normal English: 
All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory 
working out of this one beautiful spark of intuition. 
but Godel realized that there was more here than meets the eye. 
and also as statements about statements of number theory. 
sentence G should more properly be written in English as: 
the real world. How could there be many differ 
clarifying what one means by "proof. 
intuition with formalized, or axiomatized, reasoning systems. 
and those which are not, such 
sets. Intuitively, this is not the way we imagine sets. 
paradox or Grelling's paradox. For people whose 
mentions "this book", which should only be mentionable in a 
would be the most blatant possible violation of it! 
theory, you know something is wrong. 
at least as far as they applied to mathematics. 
whatsoever, following the methods of Russell and Whitehead? 
world during the first thirty years of this century. 
were not, in modern parlance, programmable. 
of the pages of the Pickwick Papers, 
the first to battle noise pollution. 
and Babbage died a bitterly disappointed man. 
computation, and the psychology of intelligence. 
These same years saw the theory of computers develop by leaps and 
both by the new machines, and by their unexpected limitations. 
essential abilities for intelligence are certainly: 
to respond to situations very flexibly; 
to take advantage of fortuitous circumstances; 
to make sense out of ambiguous or contradictory messages; 
to recognize the relative importance of different elements of a 
inflexible machines how to be flexible. 
behavior, however? Certainly there must be rules on all sorts of 
in the multilevel sense described above. 
this book to give some perspective on the battle. 
Chapters. The purpose of this structure is to allow me to 
ranged from complete identity of passages on the one hand to the 
resulting patterns were often symmetrical, but by no means 
while in the course of study one may discover unending sub 
somehow of a print by my favourite artists M.C. Escher. 
TORTOISE: That is Zeno' s flag 
drew? Something is wrong about the flag, I can tell. 
impossible. But it is beautiful anyway, is it not? 
ACHILLES: Oh, yes, there is no doubt of its beauty. 
see) and the reason we are here is to have a footrace. 
TORTOISE: You might give me a head start. 
ACHILLES: It would have to be a huge one. 
Master Zeno. As you say it is very simple indeed. 
TORTOISE: Zen Koan? Zen Master? What do you mean? 
it's soft fabric. And the ring cut out of it is waving, too! 
(At this moment, Zeno happens by.) 
Zeno: Hallo! Hulloo! What's up? What's new? 
ACHILLES: This fellow must be playing the fool. 
us your thoughts on this matter. 
few, I promise you - in his eccentric theories. 
and he mentioned especially your paradoxes. 
reached the spot where the Tortoise started. 
flash, Achilles covers that distance too. 
and therefore Achilles can NEVER catch up with the Tortoise. 
And yes, I can't quite make out what's wrong with it 
Zeno: Isn't it a teaser? It's my favourite paradox. 
waving down here, at the far end of the runway? 
ACHILLES: The impossible one, based on an Escher print? 
head start of, well, I don't know - 
Tortoise, will you position yourself ten rods upwind? 
( The Tortoise moves ten rods closer to the flag) 
Zeno: On your mark! Get set! Go! 
have worked with formal systems before. 
What I mean by this is shown below, in a few examples. 
the MlU-system never contain "x" "s"! 
string with U in place of III. 
From UMIIIMU, you could make UMUMU. 
From MII11, you could make MIU (also MUI). 
From IIMII, you can't get anywhere using this rule. 
(The three I's have to be consecutive.) 
RULE IV: If UU occurs inside one of your strings, you can drop it. 
puzzle asks whether MU is a theorem of the MlU-system. 
these types v appear in the book. 
a proof that theorems of the MlU-system must all begin with M. 
do it itself, although any person would pick up the 
computer had no ability whatsoever to exit from that system. 
for the M) is allowed by rule II. So the second sheet might 
way of approaching thing. More about this in a few Chapters. 
make no difference if you lengthen and shorten till kingdom come. 
violate the spirit of the word. 
possible way the genie might go about it 
three new theorems: MIIU, MIUIU, MIIII. 
five new theorems: MIIIIU, MIIUIIU, MIUIUIUIU, MIIIIIIII, MUI. 
MIUIUIUIU MIIUIIU MIIIIU MIIIIIIII MUI MIU 
Now we state the proposed "theoremhood-test": 
When you have a decision procedure, then you have a very concrete 
is a "litmus test" for theoremhood! 
a decision procedure, but the latter may not. 
was still totally unclear whether MU is, or is not, a theorem. 
What the Tortoise Said to Achilles 
proved that the thing couldn't be done?" 
distances were constantly DIMINISHING; and so-" 
several times round the world, by this time!" 
"Proceed! And speak SLOWLY, please! SHORTHAND isn't invented yet!" 
order to refer to them conveniently, let's call them A, B, and Z: 
(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other. 
(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other. 
any one who accepts A and B as true, MUST accept Z as true?" 
"Undoubtedly! The youngest child in a High School-as soon as High 
SEQUENCE as a VALID one, I suppose?" 
but I DON'T accept the Hypothetical'?" 
"Certainly there might. HE, also, had better take to football." 
logical necessity to accept Z as true?" 
me, logically, to accept Z as true." 
"A tortoise playing football would be-" Achilles was beginning. 
point. Let's have Z first, and football afterwards!" 
"Let's call it C," said the Tortoise. 
(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true." 
"That is my present position," said the Tortoise. 
"Then I must ask you to accept C." 
What else have you got in it?" 
ALL!" (Achilles shuddered.) "Now write as I dictate: 
(A) Things that are equal to the same are equal to each other. 
(C) If A and B are true, Z must be true. 
(Z) The two sides of this Triangle are equal to each other." 
accept A and B and C, you MUST accept Z. 
true. You can't dispute THAT, I imagine?" 
and B and C, and STILL not accept Z, mightn't I?" 
(D) If A and B and C are true, Z must be true. 
Have you entered that in your note -book?" 
and D, OF COURSE you accept Z." 
C and D. Suppose I STILL refused to accept Z?" 
Tortoise. "So enter it in your book, please. We will call it 
(E) If A and B and C and D are true, Z must be true. 
Turtle never made, and allow yourself to be re-named A KILL-EASE!" 
rules, or do they noft That problem is the problem of this book. 
they are of interest to mathematicians and logicians. 
-the letters p, q, and the hyphen. 
string composed of p's, q's, and hyphens. 
it is called an axiom schema. 
The pq-system has only one rule of production: 
If ~p — q- turns out to be a theorem, then so will ~p — q~. 
alone, o string such as ~p~p~p— q . 
hyphen-groups should add up, in length, to the third 
offspring. This shows why the addition criterion is correct. 
shortening rules that gives formal systems a certain fascination.. 
theorems as they are generated. Here is how it is done: 
(la) Throw the simplest possible axiom (-p-q~) into the bucket. 
(2a) Throw the second-simplest axiom into the bucket. 
(3 a) Throw the third-simplest axiom into the bucket. 
This symbol-word correspondence has a name: interpretation. 
q) just as much as any interpreted theorem. 
language is a very important one, however. It is this: 
of the pq-system. Consider the following association: 
which are well-formed, but which are not theorems. 
theorem whether or not we connect it with addition. 
gears of a device like a cash register. 
operates deterministically, which is an open question. 
many of the people who give that answer have actually at 
offer as proof a few marks on paper, such as are shown below: 
you don't-but in the latter case, a proof won't help you a bit. 
"language" and "dialect" are themselves fuzzy. 
practical things to numbers as formal things. Once you have 
can't be a multiple of A" (because it leaves 1 over, when you 
And thus ends the demonstration of the infinitude of the primes. 
label "true and what statements to label "false". 
towards the formalization of number theory. 
when the systems involved are very different from each other.) 
the level of our thinking abilities, by using some formal system. 
The telephone rings; Achilles picks it up. 
Achilles: Oh, hello, Mr. T. How are you? 
Achilles: How long did you hold it in that position? 
twisted that way for so long? 
FIGURE 14. Mosaic II, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1957). 
Achilles: Oh, well, it's all the same to me. 
Bach uses a single violin to create a piece with such interest. 
Achilles: I see. Have you tried counting sheep? 
reality he was just trying to think up complex word puzzles? 
But I'm still in the dark on your "ADAC" puzzle. 
Achilles:: Yes, t see all the black animals. 
to do with the "AD AC" puzzle? 
Achilles: You want to come over now? But I thought- 
Achilles: I'd love to play them for you. 
Achilles: You've invented a theory about them? 
the harpsichord part, then, and had it published a s well. 
Those sonatas seem to work very indeed as they are. 
Achilles: Right. Well, I'll see you shortly. 
(1) reading and recognizing any of a finite set of symbols; 
(2) writing down any symbol belonging to that set; 
(3) copying any of those symbols from one place to another; 
(4) erasing any of those symbols; 
(5) checking to see whether one symbol is the same as another; 
(6) keeping and using a list of previously generated theorems. 
system in which primes are distinguished from composite numbers? 
AXIOM SCHEMA: xt-qx is an axiom, whenever x is a hyphen string. 
x ty qz is an old theorem. Then, xty-qzx is a ne' theorem. 
Below is the derivation of the theorem — t — q 
the middle, you apply the rule of inference nine times in a row. 
Cx, which characterize compost, numbers, as follows: 
mechanically and happily, never questioning; them! 
you from mixing up arithmetical facts with typographical theorems. 
(by rule of inference, using line (1) as the old theorem) 
(by rule of inference, using line (2) as the old theorem) 
proposing a rule of the following kind: 
left out of a list which is positively defined. 
sudden, you will see seven letters appear in this .. 
In more "technical" terminology, this becomes: 
Figure", is shown in Figure 17. If you read both black and white, 
FIGURE 17. FIGURE-FIGURE Figure, by Scott E. Kim (1975). 
(1) as the negative space to the white regions; 
(1) as the negative space to the set of all TNT-theorems; 
But this hope will be dashed, because: 
(1) inside the set of all nontheorems are found some truths 
pictorial representation of the situation (Fig. 18). 
Needless to say, Bach didn't stop at this level of complexity... 
Recursively Enumerable Sets vs. Recursive Sets 
role of negative space is played by strings with a 
me, and continues to astonish me even today. It is a fact that: 
the positive space (set of theorems) of any formal system. 
There exist recursively enumerable sets which are not recursive. 
It follows from the above result that: 
along the way. This amounts to 
time will get included you just wait a little longer. 
to leave it with some intuitive fluidity. 
characterize the following set of integers (or its negative space) 
1 3 7 12 18 26 35 45 56 69... 
How is this sequence like the FIGURE -FIGURE Figure? 
Primes as Figure Rather than Ground 
AXIOM SCHEMA: xy D N Dx where x and y are hyphen-strings. 
RULE: If x D N Dy is a theorem, then so is x D N Dx y. 
If you use the rule twice, you can generate this theorem: 
What goes wrong if you try to produce it? 
done, but there is a trick to it. Think about it if you want. 
RULE: If -D N D z is a theorem, so is z D F-. 
RULE: If z-DFz is a theorem, then Pz- is a theorem. 
Oh-let's not forget that 2 is prime! 
Achilles has come to visit his friend and jogging companion, the 
records. What sort of music do you enjoy? 
Achilles: Tell me, what kind of music is that? 
Achilles: Exactly what I was thinking. 
Crab-have you met him, by the way?-paid m» a visit. 
much about him, I've never met him 
Perhaps we could meet at random in the park on day ... 
about your weird "music to smash phone graphs by", weren't you? 
Achilles: Naturally, I suppose you disagreed. 
called "I Cannot Be Played on Record Player 1". 
Achilles: Rather unusual. Was it a present for the Crab? 
record was utterly destroyed also, needless to say. 
would make it vibrate and break. 
salesman had told him, after all. 
less than Perfect, and could not reproduce every possible sound. 
coincidence that your record had those very sounds on it ... 
on Record Player based on the construction of the new model. 
Achilles: So what happened this time? 
model up would fill the bill, and having twice the money, h e— 
would destroy it. In that way, he would avoid your trick. 
breaking sound, which is of coup impossible. 
considerably more sophisticated than an ordinary record player. 
Achilles: Let me guess how: Did it have no of cotton? Or 
Omega attempt to play the record. 
Incompleteness Theorem backwards and forwards, do you? 
Achilles: Know WHOSE Theorem backwards and forwards? I've 
more, but really I am growing quite sleepy. 
Achilles: Didn't have the foggiest. What an agreeable coincidence! 
Tortoise: Pray tell, who is it? 
hardly a soul knows it-a: this goblet is the last piece he blew. 
inestimable. But how are you sure of its maker 
his name actually constitutes a melody, then 
are so many clever ways of hiding things in music .. . 
Poems which conceal messages that way are called "acrostics". 
Achilles: A dial-a-logician? That's a new one on me. 
backwards, is exactly the same as the original? 
A-B-but upside down? You must be pulling my leg. 
the last Contrapunctus, and here's the last theme ... 
stood, only moments before. And then ... dead silence. 
medium, which carries it from the objects to the ear. 
explicit meaning is simply the story 
(1) Isomorphism between arbitrary groove patterns and air 
(2) Isomorphism between graph vibrations, arbitrary air 
cause its indirect self-destruction. [Drawing by the author. 
Level One: Goblets and records which backfire; 
to get him in the end. Seen this 
Phonograph <= =>axiomatic system for number theory 
low-fidelity phonograph <= =>"weak" axiomatic system 
high-fidelity phonograph <= =>"strong" axiomatic system 
"Perfect" phonograph" <= => complete system for number theory' 
Blueprint" of phonograph <= => axioms and rules of formal system 
record <= => string of the formal system 
playable record<= => theorem of the axiomatic system 
unplayable record <= =>nontheorem of the axiomatic system 
sound <= =>true statement of number theory 
reproducible sound <= => 'interpreted theorem of the system 
unreproducible sound <= => true statement which isn't a theorem: 
song title <= =>implicit meaning of Godel's string: 
"I Cannot Be Played "I Cannot Be Derived 
on Record Player X" in Formal System X" 
. until the last Contrapunctus . 
A most puzzling fact about Godel's method of proof is that he uses 
least that is a "romantic" way to view the situation. 
Axiom SCHEMA II: If x is a hyphen-string, then xp-qx is an axiom. 
very well retain their "meaning while others change. 
elements, or could it have structural weaknesses? 
the hopes that we will abide by that 
FIGURE 21. Tower of Babel, by M. C. Escher (woodcut, 1928). 
stories. The first four postulates are rather terse and elegant: 
(1) A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points. 
radius and one end point as center. 
(4) All right angles are congruent. 
The fifth, however, did not share their grace: 
title Euclid Freed of Every Flaw, and then expired. 
same year, the great French mathematician 
postulate, very much along the lines of Saccheri. 
the manner of violets coming to light in early spring. 
having found several deep results in non-Euclidean geometry. 
theorems. The symbol q is especially interesting, 
POINT, so two POINTS determine a LINE. 
they occur, rather than explicitly, in a definition. 
interpretations-it is up to the observer to look for them. 
The Tortoise always beats Zeno at chess 
Zeno always beats Egbert at chess. 
Egbert always beats the Tortoise at chess. 
merely that they come out compatible with one another. 
The Tortoise was invented by Zeno. 
Egbert was invented by the Tortoise. 
imaginable world, instead of the one we live in. But this is 
football would be an anomaly, of course. 
Embedding of One Formal System In Another 
Layers of Stability in Visual Perception 
FIGURE 22. Relativity, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1953). 
for the undefined terms, resulting in a com 
Is Mathematics the Same in Every Conceivable World? 
there would have to be exactly on parallel line ... 
Is Number Theory the Same In All Conceivable Worlds? 
say on it after going through Godel's Theorem in detail. 
passive meanings. Where consistency is the property 
which can be expressed as well-formed strings of the system, are 
use our new phrase-provable within the system. 
would wish them do-namely tell us everything about number theory. 
How an Interpretation May Make or Break Completeness 
Tortoise: This is my favorite ride. One seems to move so far, and 
Achilles: You certainly are exuberant today. 
Achilles: Don't tell me you believe in fortune-telling! 
flying our way. In fact it's almost directly above us now. 
coming so close we could practically grab it 
Tortoise: Can you make out what the note says? 
Achilles: All I can say is you've got a pretty fiendish laugh. 
Achilles: Good grief-I wonder what he means by that! 
Tortoise pie! My favorite kind of pie! (Exit.) 
Achilles: Oh, boy-popcorn! I'm going to munch my head off! 
think about food at a time like this? 
Made Easy; Concerto for Tapdancer and Orchestra ... Hmmm. 
dodecahedron and the open drawing pad? 
and you could take that of Achilles. 
Achilles: I'm game. Here goes nothing . . . 
(They begin reading "Djinn and Tonic".) 
his favorite artist, M. C. Escher.) 
Tortoise: These are wonderful prints, Achilles. 
consistent worlds, when juxtaposed, make a completely inconsistent 
but I wouldn't want to live there. 
Tortoise: I beg your pardon, but weren't we just agreeing that in 
this Escher picture, an inconsistent world is portrayed? 
picture. You can't visit that world. 
Achilles: What on earth is pushing-potion? 
drunk by someone looking at a picture, "pushes" him right into the 
world of that picture. People who aren't aware of the powers of 
you need only take a swallow of popping-tonic, and presto! You're 
back in the rea. world, exactly where you were before you pushed 
popping-tonic without having previously pushed yourself into a 
one has heard from him since. 
pushed right along with you into the picture you're looking at. 
have already entered, and take another swig of pushing-potion? 
you down inside a picture, and a pop undoes that. 
not just testing the limits of my gullibility? 
{Reaches into his lapel pocket, and pulls out two rather large 
around.) If you're willing, we can try them. What do you say? 
Achilles: Well, I guess, ahm, maybe, ahm ... 
the world of Escher's Convex and Concavel 
you, with your experience, manage the operation. 
both he and Achilles lift their glasses to their lips.) 
FIGURE 23. Convex and Concave, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1955). 
Achilles: That's an exceedingly strange taste. 
Tortoise: One gets used to it. 
(The gondolier pays no attention to this request.) 
Enters the sinister "Tunnel of Love"; just ahead of us. 
here. Say, how do you know so much about this place, anyway? Have 
They're all connected behind the frames, you know. Once you're in 
one, you can get to any other one. 
Oh, look at those two cute lizards! 
They are the vicious guardians of that magic copper lamp hanging 
Tortoise: It's a foolhardy venture, my friend. I wouldn't risk it. 
Achilles: I'm going to try just once. 
(He stealthily approaches the lamp, making sure not to awaken the 
Achilles: Oh, Mr. T, how can I repay them? 
in the town below, there's a place where they make an incomparable 
cup of espresso. Invite them for a cup of espresso! Achilles: That 
sip their drinks, Achilles remembers he has the lamp with him.) 
magic about it? Tortoise: Oh, you know, just the usual-a genie. 
Tortoise: Right. What did you expect? Pennies fry heaven? 
wished this would happen to me ... 
part of my Lamp, the opportunity to have any three of your wishes 
Achilles: How stupefying! Don't you think so, Mr. T? 
Tortoise: I surely do. Go ahead, Achilles, take the first wish. 
nested) tales)-I wish that I had a HUNDRED wishes, instead of just 
Tortoise: Maybe now you'll find out the answer. 
Genie: I am sorry, Achilles, but I don't grant metawishes. 
Achilles: I wish you'd tell me what a "meta-wish" is! 
either. Achilles: Whaaat? I don't follow you at all. 
Tortoise: Why don't you rephrase your last request, Achilles? 
Achilles: What do you mean? Why should I? 
information, why don't you just ask a question? 
to grant meta-wishes. It is only within my purview to grant plain 
at the Copacabana. You know-simple things like that. But meta- 
wishes I cannot grant. GOD won't permit me to. 
That seems like such a puny thing compared to the others you 
and make your three wishes? Or at least make one of them. I don't 
have all I time in the world, you know ... 
I do about this. This'll just take one moment 
smaller letters, so as to cover the same area.) 
Genie: This is my Meta-Lamp ... 
Meta-Genie: I am the Meta-Genie. You summoned me, 0 Genie? What is 
Genie: This is my Meta-Meta-Lamp. . . 
Meta-Meta-Genie: I am the MetaM eta-Genie. You summoned me, 
0 Meta-Genie? What is your wish? 
on wishes, for the duration of one Typeless Wish. Could you please 
Meta-Meta-Genie: I'll have to send it through Channels, of course. 
One quarter of a moment, please. 
(And, twice as quickly as the Meta-Genie did, this MetaMeta- 
Genie removes from the folds of his robe an object which looks 
just like the gold MetaLamp, except that it is made of ...) 
( ... swirls back into the MetaM eta-Meta-Lamp, which the Meta- 
Meta-Genie then folds back into his robe, half as quickly as the 
Your wish is granted, 0 MetaGenie. 
Meta-Genie: Thank you, 0 Djinn, and GOD. 
back into the Meta-Meta-Lamp, which the Meta-Genie then folds back 
into her robe, half as quickly as the Meta-Meta-Genie did.) 
Your wish is granted, 0 Genie. 
Genie: Thank you, 0 Djinn, and GOD. 
(And the Meta-Genie, as all the higher ones before her, 
half as quickly as the M Genie did.) 
Achilles: Thank you, 0 Djinn, and GOD. 
as many "meta"'s as you wish-even infinitely many (if wish). 
Before I make my wish, would you mind telling me who-or what- 
The word "Djinn" is used designate Genies, Meta-Genies, Meta-Meta- 
Gen etc. It is a Typeless word. 
everybody knew about them. \ see, "GOD" stands for "GOD Over 
Djinn"-which can be expanded as "GOD Over Djinn, O, Djinn"-and 
that can, in turn, be expanded to "G( Over Djinn, Over Djinn, Over 
Genie: Of course not. You can never totally expand GOD. 
Meta-Genie, "I have a sped wish to make of you, 0 Djinn, and of 
Djinns over her. 'I recursive acronym method accomplishes this qL 
naturally. You see, when the Meta-Genie received my request, she 
then had to pass it upwards to I GOD. So she forwarded a similar 
why GOD is a recursive acronym. GOD is not some ultimate djinn; 
GOD is the tower of djinns above any given djinn. 
djinns above him or her, and no two djinns share that set. 
fancy themselves somehow closer to GOD. What blasphemy! 
Achilles: By gum, it must have taken genies to invent GOD. 
Tortoise: I don't think I'm agnostic. Maybe I'm metaagnostic. 
Achilles: Whaaat? I don't follow you at all. 
not being granted. You see, the chances are infinitesimal, that a 
garbling will occur at any PARTICULAR link in the chain-but when 
you put an infinite number of them in a row, it becomes virtually 
are very sparsely distributed in the chain. 
is it? Achilles: I wish my wish would not be granted! 
Achilles: What on earth does that cryptic comment mean? 
Tortoise: It refers to the Typeless Wish Achilles made. 
Achilles: But he hadn't yet made it. 
Tortoise: Yes, he had. He said, "I wish my wish would not be 
granted", and the Genie took THAT to be his wish. 
Achilles: Oh, my! That sounds ominous. 
(The footsteps stop; then they turn around and fade away.) 
Achilles: Hey! What happened? Where is my Genie: lamp? My cup of 
espresso? What happened to young friends from the Convex and 
Concave worlds? What are all those little lizards doing hi 
Achilles: What on earth does that cryptic comment mean? 
Tortoise: I refer to the Typeless Wish you made. 
Achilles: But I hadn't yet made it. 
Tortoise: Yes, you had. You said, "I wish my wish would not be 
granted", and the Genie took THAT to be your wish. 
Achilles: Oh, my! That sounds ominous. 
Tortoise; It spells PARADOX. For that Typeless wish to be 
Tortoise: No. The System crashed. Achilles: What does that mean? 
Tortoise: It means that you and I, Achilles, were suddenly and 
instantaneously transported to Tumbolia. Achilles: To where? 
bulbs. It's a sort of waiting room, where dormant software waits 
for its host hardware to come back up. No telling how long the 
System was down, and we were in Tumbolia. It could have been 
is. But I do know that I didn't get to make my wishes! I want my 
you should thank your lucky stars that we're back at all. Things 
could have come out a lot worse. But I have no idea where we 
an Escher picture with lizards before it went down. That's 
table, next to the cycle of lizards? 
The System was very kind to us, in giving us back our popping- 
wonder what they are. {He picks up the smaller one, which is 
open to a random page.) This looks like a moderately 
Achilles: Oh, really? What is its title? 
Place in Sundry Parts of the Globe. It sounds like an interesting 
FIGURE 24. Reptiles, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1943). 
take any chances with t popping-tonic-one of the lizards might 
knock it off the table, so I'm going to get it right now! 
rolling toward towards-the stairwell! Quick-before it falls! 
which he has in his hands.) Achilles: Well, You can read it if you 
want, but as for I'm not going to take any chances with t popping- 
Tortoise (muttering): Eh? This story looks fascinating. 
Achilles: Mr. T, Mr. T, help! Help catch the tonic-flask! 
Tortoise: What's all the fuss about? 
Oh no! What can we do? Mr. Tortoise-aren't you alarmed? We're 
thing to do! We'll have to go down one story! 
Tortoise: Go down one story? My pleasure. Won't you join me? 
once, finally stays, taking the role of the Tortoise.) 
of them? You can hold it out in front of you so that you don't 
path is curving gently to the left as we walk? Tortoise: Very 
day again. I wish I'd never listened to you, when you suggested I 
swallow some of that "DRINK ME" stuff. 
not a once have I ever regretted it. Relax and enjoy being small. 
Achilles: Being small? What is it you've done to me, Mr. T? 
Achilles: Have you made me shrink? So that this labyrinth we're 
in is actually some teeny thing that someone could STEP on? 
FIGURE 25. Cretan Labyrinth (Italian engraving; School of 
Finiguerra). [From N Matthews, Mazes and Labyrinths: Their 
History and Development (New York: Dover Publications, 1970). 
Harmonic Labyrinth of the dreaded Majotaur? 
it, waiting innocent victims to get lost in its fears complexity. 
Then, when they wander and dazed into the center, he laughs and 
laughs at them-so hard, that he laughs them to death! 
Tortoise: But it's only a myth. Courage, Achilles. 
(And the dauntless pair trudge on.) 
But the corrugations have different sizes. 
the corrugations, strange noises echo up and down the long curved 
Achilles: Oh, just me, rubbing my walking stick against the wall. 
Tortoise: Whew! I thought for a moment it was the bellowing of the 
ferocious Majotaur! Achilles: I thought you said it was all a 
Tortoise: Of course it is. Nothing to be afraid of. 
walking. As he does so, some musical sounds are heard, coming from 
the point where his stick is scraping the wall.) 
Tortoise: Uh-oh. I have a bad feeling, Achilles. 
What makes you change your mind all of a sudden? Tortoise: Do 
Hey! Put that back! I want to hear the end of this piece! 
(Confused, Achilles obeys, and the music resumes.) 
Your stick scraping against the strange shapes in the wall acts 
like a needle running down the groove, allowing us to hear the 
be in such intimate contact with music before? 
when I am smaller than a flea, Mr. Tortoise? 
about being small. Especially not when faced with the awful 
Achilles: Horrors! Are you telling me 
Tortoise: I'm afraid so, Achilles. The music gave it away. 
Achilles: How could it do that? 
I immediately realized that the grooves we're walking through 
could only be Little Harmonic Labyrinth, one of Bach's er known 
organ pieces. It is so named cause of its dizzyingly frequent 
tonality, as C major, which is the key of this o; 
Tortoise: That's right. As the piece develops ambiguous chords and 
melodies are t which lead away from the tonic. Little by little, 
tension builds up-you feel at creasing desire to return home, to 
had waiting my whole life to hear the ton 
Tortoise: Exactly. The composer has uses knowledge of harmonic 
manipulate your emotions, and to build up hopes in you to hear 
Achilles: But you were going to tell me about modulations. 
"modulate" partway through a piece, which means that he sets up 
a temporary goal other than resolution into the tonic. 
shifts the harmonic tension somehow so that I actually desire to 
the back of your mind you retain the longing to hit that original 
goal-in this case, C major. And when the subsidiary goal is 
upward-swooping chords which mark the end of this Little 
Tortoise: No, Achilles, this isn't the end. It's merely 
of relief! That's some resolution! Gee! 
is a disgrace to the world of music. Achilles: What do you mean? 
modulated from C into G, setting up a secondary goal of hearing 
G. This means that you experience two tensions at once-waiting 
for resolution into G, but also keeping in mind that ultimate 
desire -to resolve triumphantly into C Major. 
Achilles: Why should you have to keep any 
thing in mind when listening to a piece of music? Is music only an 
music is not. And most of the time your ear or br the 
"calculation" for you, and lets your emotions know what they 
want to hear, don't have to think about it consciously in this 
piece, Bach was playing tricks hoping to lead you astray. And in 
Achilles: Are you telling me that I responded to a resolution in a 
Achilles: It still sounded like an ending to me 
It was deliberately contrived to sound like an ending but if you 
follow the harmonic progression carefully, you will see that it is 
in the wrong key. Apparently not just you but this miserable 
record company fell for the same trick-and they truncated the 
Achilles: What a dirty trick Bach played 
Majotaur is in cahoots with Bach, And if you don't watch out, he 
i laugh you to death-and perhaps n with you! 
grooves, and escape on the outside record before the Evil 
gressions which occur when time versed. 
Tortoise: That's a very good question. 
Suddenly t is a slight gasp, and then a "thud".) 
help you out. We've got to move fast! 
Achilles: Careful, Mr. T-I don't want You to fall in here, too ... 
Tortoise: Don't fret, Achilles. Everything will be all — 
(Suddenly, there is a slight gasp, and then a "thud".) 
Achilles: Mr. T-you fell in, too! Are you all right? 
Tortoise: Only my pride is hurt-otherwise I'm fine. 
Achilles: Now we're in a pretty pickle, aren't we? 
(Suddenly, a giant, booming laugh is heard, alarmingly close to 
Tortoise: Watch out, Achilles! This is no laughing matter. 
Majotaur: Hee hee hee! Ho ho! Haw haw haw! 
Achilles: I'm starting to feel weak, Mr. T ... 
Tortoise: Try to pay no attention to his laugh, 
Achilles: I'll do my best. If only my stomach weren't empty! 
popcorn around here? Achilles: I smell it, too. Where is it coming 
Yes, indeed-it seems to be a bowl of popcorn! 
Achilles: Oh, boy-popcorn! I'm going to munch my head off! 
Tortoise: I didn't say a thing. You must be hearing things. 
Achilles: Go-golly! I hope not. Well, let's dig in! 
(And the two Jriends begin muncnai popcorn (or pushcorn?)-and t 
once POP! I guess it was popcorn; all.) 
Tortoise: What an amusing story. Did you en 
pit or r Achilles-he wanted to be full-sized again 
For some reason, burning. And nothing would taste bett drink of 
places people very crazy over it. At the turn of the century the 
Schonberg food factory stopped ma] and started making cereal 
instead. You cai the uproar that caused. 
Those lizards on the you see anything funny about them? 
Tortoise: Umm ... not particularly. What do you see of such great 
Achilles: Don't you see it? They're emerging flat picture without 
drinking any pop] How are they able to do that? 
Tortoise: Oh, didn't I tell you? You can ge picture by moving 
perpendicularly to it you have no popping-tonic. The little li 
learned to climb UP when they want to ge two-dimensional 
Tortoise: Follow me, then, up this way. 
house! This is YOUR house, Mr. Tortoise 
Tortoise: Well, so it is-and am I glad for that! I wasn't looking 
and doubt if I could have made it. 
Tortoise: I'll say! This certainly is a piece of Good Fortune! 
relation should be clear by the end of this Chapter. 
recursion in its most precise form 
■V. 1 1 1 1 1 r — htiittr 
(7?Bt** and 1 f.V.vd t'f / L * ] 
tension-for example a resolution into the pseudotonic — 
awaiting their dire fates at the knife of Monsieur Goodfortune. 
back into D, and letting us return to G once more. 
listeners, we don't have very reliable deep stacks. 
co construct "milk", or "big red blue green sneezes", etc. 
ORNATE NOUN; RELATIVE PRONOUN; FANCY NOUN; VERB. 
new one nothing were unusual. So we shall do the same. 
choose the lower pat] ORNATE NOUN; PREPOSITION; FANCY NOUN. That 
FANCY NOUN, with the result that the phrase 
"the strange bagels that the purple cow without horns gobbled" 
random, an infinite regress of that sort will not happen. 
proceed into the very small RTN, 
FIGURE 28. The FANCY NOUN RTN with one node recursively expanded 
infinite diagram, even when an RTN calls itself. 
right-hand edge is the famous sequence of Fibonacci numbers. 
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 
Bonacci", or "Fibonacci" for short. These numbers are best 
FIGURE 29. (a) Diagram G, unexpanded. (c) Diagram H, unexpanded 
(b) Diagram G, expanded once. (d) Diagram H, expanded once 
FIGURE 30. Diagram G, further expanded and with numbered nodes. 
defined recursively by the pair of formulas 
FIBO(n) = FIBO(n- 1) + FIBO(n-2) for n > 2 
We could represent this pair of formulas in an RTN (see Fig. 31). 
FIGURE 31. An RTN for Fibonacci numbers. 
don't need to keep track of a stack. 
defined with one more nesting than G — 
H(n) = n - H(H(H(n - 1 ))) for n > 0 
corresponds precisely to the recursive algebraic definitions. 
They are quite elegant and simple. 
following recursive definition of a function: 
Q(n) = Q(n - Q(n- 1)) + Q(n - Q(n-2)) for n > 2 
to make the new value! The first 17 Q-numbers run as follows: 
1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 10, 9, 10, ... . 
5 + 6 = 11 how far to move to the left 
ephemeral to exist. Its definition sounds too circular. 
completely different sequence, known as the Lucas sequence: 
1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29, 47, 76, 123,... 
values of x, it is continuous. 
Recursion at the Lowest Level of Matter 
and they are purely hypothetical creations; they don't exist. 
Invention. A physicist would draw a picture like this: 
may even nest them, as shown below: 
would be ferociously hard to calculate. 
realized in nature. For instance, the one be impossible: 
electron propagates from A to B, 
own virtual cloud, and so on ad infinitum. 
called g-factor of the muon) to nine decimal places -- correctly! 
particularly after it has practiced with INT. 
FIGURE 36. Fish and Scales, by M. C. Escher (woodcut, 1959). 
that even a tiny section of an 
FIGURE 37. Butterflies, by M. C. Escher (wood-engraving, 1950). 
When are two things the same? 
"same" thing happening on several differ- 
Programming and Recursion: Modularity, Loops, Procedures 
knitting or crocheting-in which very small loops are 
follow the alternate pathway — the non-recursive evaluation. 
just one more piece of evidence for the rather recursive 
probably lies at the heart of intelligence. 
two, at the best Chinese restaurant in town. 
Achilles: You wield a mean chopstick, Mr. T. 
we just sit here and talk a little while? 
Tortoise: I'd love to talk while we drink our tea. Waiter! 
Could we have our bill, please, and some more tea? 
Japanese poetry than you do. Have you ever read any haiku? 
Tortoise: I'm afraid not. What is a haiku? 
Tortoise: Hmm ... That's an evocative statement. 
Thank you, waiter. Care for more tea, Achilles? 
chew.) Hey! What's this funny thing inside? A piece of paper? 
of your fortune. What does the rest say? 
Achilles: Let's see what your fortune says, Mr. Tortoise. 
messages which we run across ... 
him a lot since you told me of your peculiar phonograph-battle. 
silly songs, so quaint and reminiscent of bygone eras. 
Tortoise: As a matter of fact, it has exactly one record. 
Tortoise: No, it's just a regular jukebox-style record. 
of a jukebox is it that has only a single song? 
Tortoise: Who said anything about a single song, Achilles? 
one song out of this crazy contraption? 
buttons B-l, then C-3 then B-10-all just at random. 
C-H, which I believe you remember. 
Achilles: Could I ever forget it? 
position, so that C-3 could be slid into position. 
Achilles: Now don't tell me that C-3 played another song? 
Achilles: That's a totally different melody! 
him in one of my books on haiku. 
4'33" on a jukebox. It might afford some relief! 
coded inside a single record at once? 
Tortoise: Precisely. What about C-A-G-E, now? 
It's very much like the other one, isn't it? 
add their own interpretations to that code? 
to hear a third song, when record player B-l swiveled into place. 
expand the melodic range in a curious way. 
The interval pattern in semitones was: 
When Is One Thing Not Always the Same? 
simplicity with which intelligence can be described. 
feel you are putting in n information than you are pulling out. 
similarity between its physical characteristics and its genotype. 
instructions must be cc somehow in the structure of the DNA. 
"revelation" in this context is due to 
inherent the record, for several reasons: 
(the music) to an arbitrary degree of accuracy; 
DNA and the Necessity of Chemical Context 
has certainly lost its context. How much meaning does it carry? 
Levels of Understanding of a Message 
mechanism for translation of the record is a machine which 
get deciphered in a way which we would consider successful. 
contrary, it supplies meaning concealed inside itself. 
at that time-and it would have come 
-w^wsis i iaiEfl^iiuttfls»i)w*trT'3 ri .'jii:if=«tii; - 
FIGURE 39. The Rosetta Stone [courtesy of the British Museum. 
the extent that it acts upon intelligence in a predictable way. 
decoding mechanism for the inner message. 
the outer message, the inner message would be reconstructible. 
his book is given by this quote: 
description. See Figure 40 for some good examples.) 
luflvnuixjupruj-jsu Iv In mo tun am 
i-Ji,-"*/^ qa» it si_as»®. ,3*1 >,«•.,>>» 
Washington Square Press, 1960), pp. 73 (Tamil), 82 (Thai). 
effortless. It is as if it just gets pumped in. 
and messages do get understood. How come? 
Meaning Is Intrinsic If Intelligence Is Natural 
the inherent, though implicit, meaning of "A-5". 
could we ever realize that such beings existed? 
would serve to lessen the feeling of having 
second plaque, containing more dots, as follows. 
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34. 
be inferred by intelligence from the genotype alone. 
instance, the "short genotype" (1,3) would yield the phenotype 
1, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29, 47,... 
information necessary for the revelation of the phenotype. 
experiment, perhaps the DNA's meaning would finally emerge. 
shaking himself dry, when who but Achilles walks by. 
meadows. They're so green at this time of year. 
to try to snare me in one of your wicked traps of log Mr. T. 
things have nothing-nothing whatsoever-to do with logic! 
Achilles: Well, didn't you just tell me Tortoise: I did. 
reality don't necessarily match; that — 
certainly contradicts what you said before! 
Tortoise: Yes, I guess you did. 
so steeped in contradiction it's impossible to argue with you! 
contradictory one, and there are no two ways about it. 
to point out a contradiction? Go ahead-try it out. 
one thing and denies it at the same time. 
Tortoise: Well, you didn't give ONE sentence. You gave TWO. 
Achilles: Yes-two sentences that contradict each other! 
single sentence. Then you told me that you 
inconsistent it is. From the outside, however plain as day. 
"Politicians lie" is true, wouldn't you? 
Achilles: But you-you combined the two-in such a silly way! 
Achilles: You should have used the word "and", not "in". 
sounding Principles. None of that for me today, plea 
only the most innocent of motivations. 
Tortoise: That's what everyone believes of himself... 
Achilles: Oh, I'm so sorry I started all this. 
err again, in my quest for Truth. 
Alphabet and First Rule of the Propositional Calculus 
The first rule of this system that I will reveal is the following: 
is important to define a subset of all strings, namely the 
For example, all of the following are well-formed: 
understood as restricted to well formed strings 
call it that is quite simple. 
of the fantasy, having learned from it that out. 
If x were a theorem, y would be a theorem. 
those lines of a derivation which take place in fantasies. 
inquiring, "What if it were?") We make the following fantasy: 
~~~P outcome (by double tilde rule) 
If P were a theorem, so would ~~P be one. 
Here is another derivation using the fantasy rule: 
recursively, we present the following derivation: 
P carry-over of P into inner fantasy 
] pop out of inner fantasy, regain outer fantasy 
] pop out of outer fantasy, reach real world! 
The Converse of the Fantasy Rule 
theorem, and that its first "clause" is also a theorem. 
The Intended Interpretation of the Symbols 
<xvy> is "either x or y-or both". 
This mind is Buddha, and this mind is not Buddha. 
then it is not the case that this mind is not Buddha. 
If this mind is Buddha and this flax weighs three pounds, 
then this flax weighs three pounds and this mind is Buddha. 
then, if this flax weighs three pounds, 
then this mind is Buddha and this flax weighs three pounds. 
Rounding Out the List of Rules 
rules is listed below, including the three new ones. 
JOINING RULE: If x and y are theorems, then < xAy> is a theorem. 
CONTRAPOSITIVE RULE: <xuy> and <~yzD~x> are interchangeable 
DE MORGAN'S RULE: <~xA~y> and ~< xvy> are interchangeable. 
SWITCHEROO RULE: <xvy> and <~xzjy> are interchangeable. 
examples - which is why I only give a couple. 
If you are studying it, then you are far from the Way 
If you are close to the Way, then you are not studying it. 
one could deny that it is a Zensible conclusion to draw. 
take the theorem <Pz> — P>: 
This new theorem, when interpreted, says: 
Either this mind is Buddha, or this mind is not Buddha 
Here is a fantasy to answer that question. 
Do you see my side well? How is the Zen side? 
Is There a Decision Procedure for Theorems? 
would tell us that the set of theorems of the 
Do We Know the System Is Consistent? 
think that some rule must be wrong. Show me which one. 
Prudence: Of course-in fact both MI and MIU are theorems. 
you to think that '-' should be interpreted as not'? 
interpretation for "a' is "and, etc. 
definers all the simple words in terms of complicated ones... 
reasoning forever. There comes a point where faith takes over. 
proof that a proof in some system is correct. Of course, 
Tortoise: Oh! You mean: ««AaB>=3Z>a<AaB»=dZ>, : don't you? 
rules of inference. For instance, there is a De Morgan's Rule: 
all. Therefore, there is a drawback to using such shortcuts. 
make shortcuts in the top level. 
language of the formal system and its metalanguage (English). 
Reflections on the Strengths and Weaknesses of the System 
sophisticated number-theoretical reasoning can be done. 
which makes them almost impossible to grasp. 
Thus, the Propositional Calculus should be thought of as part of a 
Here is a fantasy with this string as its premise: 
Now this theorem has a very strange semi-interpretation: 
of life-and mathematics is no exception. When in times past, a 
system, and that would block the derivation of the «Pa~P >z>Q> 
FIGURE 42. "Crab Canon", by M. C. Escher (-1965) 
Achilles and the Tortoise happen upon each other 
in the park one day while strolling. 
you're looking in very fine fettle these days, I must say. 
Tortoise: Not at all. Here, care for one of my cigars? 
markedly inferior taste, don't you think? 
taste. De gustibus non est disputandum. 
Achilles: To be precise, one has no frets. 
Tortoise: Oh, well, it's all the same to me. 
pointing to a rather prominent black eye.) 
(And he disappears as suddenly as he arrived.) 
Achilles: Oh, well, it's all the same to me. 
Tortoise: To be precise, one has no frets. 
taste. Disputandum non est de gustibus. 
FIGURE 43. Here is a short section one of the Crab's 
Genes, turning round and round. When the two DNA 
strands are raveled and laid out side by side, they 
Notice that they are the same, only one forwards while 
the other goes backwards This is the defining 
property of the form called "crab canon " in music. It 
is reminiscent of, though a little different from 
palindrome, which is a sentence that reads the same 
backwards and forwards ,In molecular biology, 
such segments of DNA are called "palindromes "-a 
slight misnomer, since "crab canon " would be more 
accurate. Not only is this DNA segment crab- 
canonical-but moreover its base sequence codes for 
markedly inferior taste, don't you think? 
Achilles: Not at all. Here, care for one of my cigars? 
Achilles: So nice to run into you. 
The Crab Canon and Indirect Self-Reference 
has to look at the form, as well as the content, of the Dialogue. 
What We Want to Be Able to Express in TNT 
Some typical sentences of N-number theory-are: 
(3) 1729 is a sum of two cubes. 
(4) No sum of two positive cubes is itself a cube. 
(5) There are infinitely many prime numbers. 
in terms of what seem to be more elementary notions. 
(2) There does not exist a number b, such that b times b equals 2. 
times a equals b times b times b plus c times c times c. 
(6') There exists a number e such that 2 times e equals 6. 
there exists a number b, such that 
we did in the pq-system. Here is notation for natural numbers: 
decipher complex formulas. But for now we'll be luxurious. 
remarks go for the string SSSO. 
simple sentences into the notation of TNT: 
2 plus 3 equals 4: (SSO+SSSO)=SSSSO 
2 plus 2 is not equal to 3 : ~(SSO+SSO)=SSSO 
If 1 equals 0, then 0 equals 1 : <SO=0 JO=SO> 
do-not have that property, such as this one 
There exists a number b such that b plus 1 equals 2. 
Clearly this is true. In the second instance, you get the sentence 
For all numbers b, b plus 1 equals 2. 
sentences are translated into TNT-notation as follows: 
— 3b:(b-b)=SSO (closed; a sentence of TNT) 
"is a sentence without a subject" 
"improvised a six -part fugue on demand" 
might not possess. One could as well stick on a "dummy 
and-so" as its subject. For instance, 
property which the number e might have. 
the sides of the equation in the opposite order: 
two existential quantifiers, one after the other, as follows: 
3b:3c:SSSSSS SSSSSO=(((b • b) • b)+((c • c) • c)) 
((SO -SO) • SO))=(((b «b) -b)+((c • c) -c)) 
easiest way to do this is by negating the formula 
3b:3c:SSSSSSSO=(((Sb • Sb) • Sb)+((Sc • Sc) -Sc)) 
b and c such that ...".) Thus we get: 
-3b:3c:SSSSSSSO=(((Sb • Sb) • Sb)+((Sc -Sc) -Sc)) 
3b:3c:((a -a) -a)=(((Sb -Sb) • Sb)+((Sc -Sc) -Sc)) 
¥a:-3b:3c:((a -a) • a)=(((Sb • Sb) • Sb) +((Sc -Sc) -Sc)) 
An equally good translation would be this: 
be written SSc. Now, our translation is extremely concise: 
There exists a number which is greater than d and which is prime. 
That's the translation of sentence 5 ! 
move leftwards again, and do the same.) 
How to Distinguish True from False? 
A numeral preceded by S is also a numeral. 
Examples: 0 SO S50 SSSO SSSSO SSSSSO 
by a prime is also a variable. 
All numerals and variables are terms. 
A term preceded by S is also a term. 
If s and t are terms, then so are (s+ t) and (s • t). 
Examples: 0 b SSa' (SO • (SSO+c)) S(Sa • (Sb • Sc)) 
TERMS may be divided into two categories: 
(1) DEFINITE terms. These contain no variables. 
(2) INDEFINITE terms. These contain variables. 
rules tell how to make complete well-formed formulas. 
If s and t are terms, then s = t is an atom. 
four free variables in the last example. 
A well-formed formula preceded by a tilde is well-formed. 
free or quantified) does not change under negation. 
The quantification status of a variable doesn't change here. 
OPEN FORMULAS contain at least one free variable. 
Examples: — c=c b=b <¥b:b=bn — c=c> 
CLOSED FORMULAS (SENTENCES) contain no free variables. 
the last one into an open formed formula. 
All natural numbers are equal to 4. 
There is no natural number which equals its own square. 
Different natural numbers have different successors. 
If 1 equals 0, then every number is odd. 
happy" interpretations were for the pq-system's symbols. 
The Five Axioms and First Rules of TNT 
which can be derived in the same way as <Pv-P> was derived. 
Before we give more rules, let us give the five axioms of TNT: 
particular with its relation to addition. 
supposed to represent. The five Peano postulates: 
(2) Every djinn has a mesa (which is also a djinn). 
numbers; all the rest is the work of man." 
New Rules of TNT: Specification and Generalization 
we wish. Here is such a rule: 
wherever it occurs, by one the same term. 
derived from Axiom 1 , by specification: 
ways. Here is the exact statement of the rule: 
free. Then ¥u:x is a theorem. 
appeared free in the fantasy's premise.) 
next two rules tell how to handle existential quantifiers. 
For example, let us apply this rule to Axiom 1 : 
good that they can be turned into each other with ease. 
prime". The name of this rule is self-explanatory: 
Let us apply the rule to —as usual— Axiom 1 : 
SYMMETRY: If r = s is a theorem, then so is s = r. 
TRANSITIVITY: If r = s and s = t are theorems, then so is r = t. 
ADD S: If r = t is a theorem, then Sr = St is a theorem. 
DROP S: If Sr = St is a theorem, then r = t is a theorem. 
wrong with it? Can you fix it up? 
knowledge is invaluable in guiding the route of a derivation. 
Why Specification and Generalization Are Restricted 
violated. Look at the disastrous results they produce: 
is the first disaster. The other one is via faulty specification. 
So now you can see why those restrictions are needed. 
numerals 0, SO, SSO, and s have been stuffed in): 
middle and right-] groups of hyphens grew simultaneously.) 
so is the universally quantified string which summarizes them. 
Thus this is not a rule that can be stuck i any formal system. 
the universally quantified summarizing string is not a theorem. 
Incidentally, the negation of the above summarizing string 
(O-Inconsistency Is Not the Same as Inconsistency 
to try to repair the w-incompleteness of TNT. 
theorem. Then you know that GOD will get the message! 
(7) (0+Sb)=S(0+b) carry over line 3 
The premise is (0+b)=b; the outcome is (0+Sb)=Sb. 
formula in which the variable a is free by the following notation: 
then ¥u: X{u} is also a theorem. 
rule of induction, to deduce what we wanted. 
¥a:(0+a)=a is no longer an undecidable string of TNT.. 
( 1 7) <¥d: (d+5c)=(Sd+c)3¥d: (d+SSc)=(Sd+Sc)> 
(28) ¥c:^d:(d+Sc)=(Sd+c) induction (lines 1 8,27) 
[S can be slipped back and forth in an addition] 
[If d commutes with every c, then Sd does too. 
[Therefore, every d commutes with every c] 
important intermediate stages are often called "lemmas". 
more like doing conventional number theory. 
Number Theorists Go out of Business 
doubt in our minds, and a proof would help to dispel that doubt. 
about number theory won 't be 
itself. And so circularity is inevitable. 
Genetic Code, and are now drinking some tea at Achilles' home. 
Achilles: I have something terrible to confess, Mr. T. 
matter. Just think of the infinite regress THAT leads to ! 
Tortoise: I find them quite appealing. 
Achilles: Did I never tell you that I am studying Zen Buddhism? 
Tortoise: Heavens, how did you come upon that? 
one! Enlightenment is not for novices like you, Mr. T! 
even be tempted to become a student of it, like me. 
Tortoise: Now what in the world does that mean? 
Achilles: You have to know the history of Zen to understand that. 
Tortoise: Would you tell me a little of the history of Zen, then? 
get mixed up in this business. 
one of the principal religions in Japan. 
Tortoise: Who is this Okanisama, the "seventh patriarch"? 
plurality, change, and motion are mere illusions of the senses. 
intellectualize about Zen, to study it rigorously? 
Tortoise: Oh, it all begins to sound so clear now. 
Tortoise: I would like to hear a koan or two. 
Tortoise: Whatever that is. So tell me -what did Joshu reply? 
koans, Achilles? I would like to hear some more. 
which one is genuine, and which one is a fraud. 
Achilles: All right. One of the alleged koans goes like this: 
A monk asked Baso: "What is Buddha?" 
Baso said: "This mind is Buddha." 
Tortoise: How does it run? Achilles: Like this: 
A monk asked Baso: "What is Buddha?" 
Baso said: "This mind is not Buddha." 
you're not supposed to just "like" koans. 
Tortoise: Very well, then-I don't like it. 
information by changing your way of looking at it. 
Achilles: That's what my master has discovered. 
They are rather dif kinds of entities. 
Tortoise: What do the geometric symbols look like? 
Tortoise: Some ribo? Is that a kind of ritual anointment? 
shape, when folded up. Tortoise: What is it made of? 
translation of the koan into a string. 
"Enlightenment 'Yond Enlighten] stands for "EYE"? 
on the m~ name, and copy him in other ways. 
enlightened master of all, the Great Tutor? 
Achilles: Let me tell you a koan about an imitator. 
Achilles: Maybe there's something to your Tortoise-Zen. 
Bodhidharma come from India into China? 
Achilles: He replied, "That oak tree in the garden." 
Can any folded string be read in such a way as to yield a koan? 
Achilles: Well, in a way. However .. . 
think I'll unask the question. Is that all right? 
Does that mean you begin with a string and m koan? 
Achilles: Sometimes-but some weirder things can happen. 
a koan. Some strings, when read out Ion way, only give nonsense. 
Tortoise: Isn't that just another name for koans? 
Achilles: You clearly don't have the true spirit of Zen yet. 
Tortoise: Do you always get stories, at least? 
sentences. But once in a while you get seems to be a koan. 
Tortoise: It only SEEMS to be one? 
Achilles: Well, it might be fraudulent, you see. 
distinguish phony koans from the genuine article? 
if the strip Buddha-nature or not. 
Tortoise: But how do you do THAT? 
tell if it had Buddha-nature or not. 
making innumerably many strings, all of whit Buddha-nature. 
Achilles: Why would you want to do that? 
Tortoise: Oh, I just thought it might be useful. 
have Buddha-nature than things that DO! 
between a finger on each hand. :) 
Tortoise: What are the other four legal starting positions? 
strings all have Buddha-nature. Tortoise: Of course. 
configuration of the string draped over your hands. 
you've just made? Would it be genuine? 
Tortoise: Do you know what the koan is? 
phonetic alphabet for koan, until he has nearly a napkinful.) 
Tortoise: Terrific. Now let's hear it. 
do, if I followed the Rules from the Art of Zen Strings, right? 
.Achilles: No, any old order will do. 
Achilles: By no means. Any number of steps is fine. 
This is it — no Buddha-nature here. 
Buddha-nature. It's a rule of thumb which my master taught me. 
Tortoise: I gathered as much, from Joshu's 'MU. I wonder ... 
when turned int via the Geometric Code? 
Achilles: I'd be glad to show you. 
You see, here is the difference. 
between them: it's that one of them has a little knot on its end! 
Tortoise: Aha! Now I understand why your master is suspicious. 
has Buddha-nature-and neither koan is genuine! 
Achilles: Why, certainly. Here you are. 
Tortoise gives a sharp tug, and suddenly both knots disappear!) 
Tortoise: I wanted to get rid of that knot. 
Tortoise: Tumbolia, of course. That's the Law of Double Nodulation 
Ahem. Are you ready to hear w you have wrought? 
Tortoise: I'm willing if you're willing. 
Achilles: All right. It goes like this: 
grasped the loop between his feet and 
Tortoise: Well, ah ... you've got a point there. But please go on! 
monk. At that moment, the monk was enlightened. 
Tortoise: I'd rather be twice-enlightened, personally. 
koan which describes the very origin of the Art of Zen Strings! 
Tortoise: Oh, that would almost be too good to have Buddha-nature. 
is YOUR string, Mr. T! Or is Tortoise: Certainly not. 
back to tie an extra knot in it. 
Achilles: It's strange, to say the least. 
Tortoise: Do you suppose my koan is genuine? 
Achilles: Wait just a moment ... 
Tortoise: Or that my string has Buddha-nature? 
quote the words of another old Zen master, Kyogen. 
or at least that no words can capture truth. 
FIGURE 46. Three Worlds by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1955) 
When the screen is rolled up the great sky opens, 
Yet the sky is not attuned to Zen. 
It is best to forget the great sky 
And to retire from every wind. 
Or then again, there is this one 
he cannot say such a word of Zen, he should turn back to his tail. 
If the buffalo runs, he will fall into the trench; 
If he returns, he will be butchered. 
level. For instance, consider this :3 
"What is it?" asked the monk. 
FIGURE 47. Dewdrop, by M. C. Escher (mezzotint, 1948). 
Nansen was too kind and lost his treasure. 
Even though the mountain becomes the sea, 
FIGURE 48. Another World, by M. C. Escher (wood-engraving, 1947). 
Here is another koan which aims to break the mind of logic:' 
of mind should I train myself, so as to find it?" 
truth, so you cannot train yourself for it." 
"Oh, how can you lie like this?" asked Doko. 
"I cannot understand myself," said the master. 
enlightenment an uphill struggle, to say the least. 
Here is a koan which demonstrates the struggle against words: 
FIGURE 49. Day and Night, by M. C. Escher (woodcut, 1938). 
words. Now say quickly what it is. 
He gave an order of life or death. 
Even Buddhas and patriarchs cannot escape this attack. 
the first, and Eno is the sixth.) 
clearly: "It cannot be expressed with words and it cannot 
Joshu asked the teacher Nansen, "What is the true Way?" 
don't study it, how can I know it?" 
FIGURE 50. Rind, by M. C. Escher (wood-engraving, 1955). 
ism. Perhaps the following koan offers such a glimpse 7 
The chief monk said: "No one can call it a wooden shoe." 
smiled and said: "The chief monk loses." And Isan became the 
came naturally to Zen Master Unmon: 8 
"Because you are thinking of yourself." 
"What about you: do you see it?" 
eyes are clouded," said the master. 
"When there is neither T nor 'You', can one see it?" 
borderlines between himself and the outside world? 
being read . . . That is how I understand Bassui's message. 
very much in the spirit of Nansen: 10 
Buddhism?" Tozan answered, "It is not Buddha." 
FIGURE 51. Puddle, by M. C. Escher (woodcut, 1952). 
mountain and bring it to me. Then I will tell you." 
character? Perhaps one with two hemispheres. 
FIGURE 52. Rippled Surface, by M. C. Escher (lino-cut, 1950). 
FIGURE 53. Three Spheres II, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1946), 
many others, who in turn are mirrored in yet others, and so on. 
each category of particle; in the case of people, 
might cascade arbitrarily far, un~ bottomed out. 
had a dream. He knows about it but he cannot tell i 
his own playground. I will tell you how to d this with this koan: 
We made two crucial observations in Chapter I: 
how it changed mathematicians' view of their own discipline. 
I. If xl is a theorem, so is xIU. 
II. If Mx is a theorem, so is Mxx. 
III. In any theorem, III can be replaced by U. 
IV. UU can be dropped from any theorem. 
Mumon Shows Us How to Solve the MU-puzzle 
part." But why should it matter to have one eye? 
that the I-count can never be any multiple of 3. 
it began with one. The same holds for rule II, which doubles the 
But this is the key to the MU-puzzle! Here is what we know: 
(1) The I-count begins at 1 (not a multiple of 3); 
(2) Two of the rules do not affect the I-count at all; (3) 
to create a multiple of 3 unless given one initially. 
Seeing Things Both Typographically and Arithmetically 
which corresponds to typographical rule I: 
theorem can be made, by appending "0' to the right of that 1'. 
it can be viewed either as a series of typographical opera- 
any natural number which is less than 10 m 
RULE 1: If we have made 10m + 1, then we can make 10 x (10m + 1) 
Example: Going from line 4 to line 5. Here, m = 30. 
Example: Going from line 1 to line 2, where both m and n equal 1 . 
arithmetical system which we might call the 310-system 
as well as additions, subtractions, and so forth. 
the study of all formal systems-into number theory. 
processes in one single, compact system. 
Is MU a theorem of the MlU-system? 
it, TNT is now capable of speaking "in code" about the MlU-system. 
we would have to seek the answer to a new question: 
Firstly, it has the one which was given before: 
MU is a theorem of the MlU-system. 
This state of affairs comes about because of two facts: 
Fact 2. Statements of number theory can be translated into TNT. 
code are, by Fact 2, just symbols of TNT. 
decoding mechanism. The message is identified with its meaning. 
Decoded in the more familiar way, MUMON bears the message: 
familiar mechanism MUMON bears the message 
MU is a theorem of the MlU-system. 
Number of the Beast for the Mysterious 
ends in 2 * these three pairs 
'a' is a "graph" of the sequence 1-6-1 
V is a "graph" of the sequence 6-1-6 
' 6 "implies" 3 and 3, in some sense . 
opposite to a; also a "graph" of 6-2-6 
special number, as on Bell system (411, 
is Axiom 1 in the two notations, the old below the new: 
coincide with our colons, setting them off for "easy" legibility. 
Here is the Rule of Detachment, in the new notation: 
-¥ a : : ¥ a ' : (oc + 5oc' ) = s ( cc + a ') 
typographical operation which it now legitimizes. 
because all of the rules are already arithmetical! 
TNT-Numbers: A Recursively Enumerable Set of Numbers 
Looked at this way, the preceding derivation of the theorem 
some odd way, and then combine the results into a new TNT-number 
is actually extremely similar to the 
doubt on your part that it is quite analogous here. 
For example, we know from the preceding derivation that 
hand, presumably 123,666,1 1 1,666 is not a TNT-number. 
string would express the complementary notion 
123,666,1 1 1,666 is not a TNT-number. 
would be a second-level meaning of this string, which is: 
S0=0 is not a theorem of TNT. 
Logic, and depicting it in a two-step diagram: 
second meaning as a statement about TNT. 
G: A String Which Talks about Itself in Code 
record?" That is a tricky matter. 
fact t those vibrations are musical sounds!) 
G's Existence Is What Causes TNT's Incompleteness 
Is G a theorem of TNT, or not? 
We will make our usual assumption: that TNT incorporates valid 
statement is true, TNT says neither yes nor no. 
G: "I am not a theorem (of TNT)." 
~G: "My negation is a theorem (of TNT)." 
on it (or one too few, however you want to look at it). 
This is the most serious question of all. 
having been made, the four of them settle down to tea. 
kind of you. But you shouldn't have. 
Achilles: Surely. Best wishes, Mr. Crab. I hope you enjoy it. 
Anteater: I wonder what it could be. 
heard before-except, of course, when Bach played it. 
Crab: When Bach played it? What do you mean, exactly? 
what these records in fact are. 
Tortoise: Oh, you go ahead and tell him, Achilles. 
you've provoked my interest, I must hear about it. 
heard of Fermat's infamous "Last Theorem"? 
Diophantus, and came across a page containing the equation 
FIGURE 54. Mobius Strip II, by M. C. Escher (woodcut, 1963). 
wrote in the margin the following notorious comment: 
which, unfortunately, this margin is too small to contain. 
Crab: Oh my gracious! That is a revolutionary discovery. 
Fermat's equation? I'm especially curious about the value of n. 
practical use to which my result immediately led. 
Crab: Why, that sounds next to impossible! 
by the eardrum to the fibers in the cochlea. 
has to do with my new records. 
in positive integers, with n > 2. 
there exists at least one solution to the equation 
imagine why no one had ever found the result before. 
how can I ever thank the two of you? 
underlies both of them, binding them together very strongly. 
complex levels of weird, exquisite harmony. 
beauty and the many unexpected' surprises which they conceal. 
Achilles: And now? Is that thrill all gone? 
that there are always new surprises whit hadn't noticed before. 
Achilles: Occurrences of the theme which you had overlooked? 
makes me sad that this stage cot not last forever and ever. 
Achilles: Oh, really? Such as what? 
itself, and I can feel thrilled again. 
wait for chance circumstance trigger it. 
seasoned fugue-listeners might help me learning .. . 
with the print called Cube with Magic Ribbons, by M. Escher? 
which one can perceive the bubbles. 
Anteater: Just as when you look at the magic bands, eh? 
make yourself function ways at once. 
collection of independent parts, all of which harmonize. 
which applies to many kit structures built up from lower levels. 
applicability, in situations other than fugue-listening? 
across this magnificent illustration facing the page of the fugue. 
to the Tortoise, who peers at it rather intently.) 
fugue: as a whole, or as the sum of its parts?" 
TTortoise: Listen carefully, and you will! 
(The prelude ends. There is a moment of silence; and ... 
you're a human, a dog, a computer, or a television set. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
confidently trounce the best chess programs of this day. 
no better than the novices in reconstructing such random boards. 
"smells" the promising paths, and takes them immediately. 
think on a higher level; the strategy has just been to use brute 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
television screens, printed pages, or painting 
overlapping language to describe ourselves on all of those levels. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
the chunk's internal structure or to take it into account. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 294 
ADD the word pointed to in the instruction, to a register. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
PRINT the word pointed to in the instruction, as letters. 
JUMP to the word pointed to in the instruction. 
broken by such instructions as the JUMP instruction, and others. 
It must be mentioned, however, that computer programming was 
exhilaration as the pioneers of modern computers ever do .. . 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
do with an assembly language program? 
program. We have two modes of describing what the CPU is doing. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
level language by a single item-a chunk. 
Aside from standard chunks-the newly discovered components out of 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
it are intertwined: they occur simultaneously. 
language and the machine which is executing it. 
language, thus taking full advantage of the already ac- 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
concepts is presented in Figure 58. 
he can use language to acquire new language. 
its page number and position on the page (publisher-dependent). 
by the solid lines. Moreover, since 
are originally written in a language 
also. The wavy lines indicate that aa 
compiler can be written in assembly 
Levels on Which to Describe Running Programs 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
a program grinding to a halt: 
"Execution of the program stopped in location 111 00 10101110111" 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
indeed, and I shall only hint at them by the following analogy. 
caused by emergencies or other unexpected occurrences; and so on. 
Cushioning the User and Protecting the System 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
communication is far less rigidly constrained than human-machine 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
With "rubbery" languages of that type, there would seem to be two 
mainly for their speed and reliability. 
correct some misprints or grammatical errors, 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
directions and perspectives by their very nature. 
the drive towards languages of ever higher levels. 
A "stratified" picture of Al is shown in Figure 59, -with machine 
not think that, with so few layers, intelligent programs 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
programs, one needs to build up a series 
of levels of hardware and software, so 
that one is spared the agonT of seeing 
everything only on the lowest level. 
Descriptions of a single process on 
different levels will sound verb different 
from each other, only the top one being 
comprehensible to us. [Adapted from P. 
The Paranoid and the Operating System 
to English sentences typed to t by a human. 
could know' nothing about the operating system it was running 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
artificial intelligence than exists at the present time. 
The Border between Software and Hardware 
not fix itself when it breaks ... 
sequences of instructions, and the physical machines which carry 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
We humans also have "software" and "hardware" aspects, and the 
hardware-and 'et, we can control how we think. 
brain is a main goal of this book. 
on the machine language level. Obviously it is way beyond human 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
why the weather is as it is?" 
despite their being internal to a composite object. 
Some systems studied in physics offer a contrast to the relatively 
usually described as being "a collection of protons and 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
electrons in certain solids, at extremely low temperatures. 
proper conditions, all the current-carrying polar 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
which are explained by an understanding of the levels below. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
The Trade-off between Chunking and Determinism 
"Computers Can Only Do What You Tell Them to Do" 
Now these ideas can be applied as well to computer programs as to 
spared conscious awareness of the digestive processes it triggers 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
Systems which are made up of "reliable" subsystems only-that is, 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
sense it is independent of the lower level. 
synthesize new concepts, if they were to discover this law. 
It is a visible consequence of the overall system organization-an 
body and only manifests itself in the act of the print itself. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation. 
Levels of Description, and Computer Systems 
FIGURE 60. [Drawing by the author.) 
.... then, one by one, the four voices of the fugue chime in.) 
message of this picture is "MU", not "HOLISM"! 
tell me if the the picture doesn't say what I said it says! 
message of this picture is "HOLISM", not "REDUCTIONISM"! 
the message of this picture, and that much is certain. 
then see if the picture doesn't say what I said it says. 
two parts, I don't know, but I know what I see, and what I see is 
are composed of, other letters. In the left-hand piece, 
you mean by the strange expression "transcending the question". 
consciousness experienced by an ant colony arises from. 
which both holistic and reductionistic explanations fit. 
have seen as far as Mr. Tortoise, for once. 
then tell me if the picture doesn't say what I said it says. 
more about ant colonies, from a reductionistic point of view? 
way into the understanding of ant colonies. 
being an expert on ant colonies! 
colony by the technique of surgical removal. 
bad, Achilles, that you weren't here last week, when Dr. 
just one of her many endearing quirks. 
have you over to meet her last week. 
Achilles: How is it possible that— 
Tortoise: How is it possible that— 
lovely stretto which just occurred in this Bach fugue. 
pick them out myself, without their having to be pointed out. 
amount of ant consumption to improve the overall health of 
ants running around at random looking for food and making a nest. 
the forest, and hearing an ant colony answer back. 
as can be. They couldn't converse to save their little thoraxes! 
if Aunt Hillary can entertain you for hours with witty banter. 
which can emerge from that chaos. 
a group of neurons firing in order to make another neuron fire? 
it all inside out, so that it sounds as though "I" am just 
Anteater-what do you make of this similarity? 
Achilles: When there aren't enough ants to keep the thing rolling? 
rise to very complex consequences on a larger scale. 
the world, or to talk about it! 
unless you go through several layers of structure. 
practically nothing towards, the upkeep of the nest, and then — 
nursing of the young. It is even they who do most of the fighting. 
soldiers; the soldiers are just lazy fatheads. 
ranks! I'd knock some sense into those fatheads! 
to the random bombardment from all sides. 
to-ing and fro-ing of ants inside the colony 
with the present circumstances facing the colony. 
Tortoise: Could you give an example? 
added a "piece of knowledge" to the colony. 
how the caste distribution can encode many pieces of knowledge. 
there really is something for them to do. 
somewhere in between the single-ant level and the colony level. 
level teams which is to say, signals-and below them, ants. 
Achilles: Why do signals deserve their suggestive name? 
them strewn, high and dry, on the shore. 
where ants of that type were needed in the first place. 
decompose? How does it know it has arrived? 
signal is formed, there is no awareness on its part that it 
Achilles: So everything depends on the caste distribution, eh? 
guide of the teams inside the colony? 
to an external heat source. I don't suppose you 
now seems that you would deny that she can talk or think at all. 
necessary, and drain all these systems of meaning, too. 
together forming an orderly pattern, almost like-like 
Achilles: Yes-that's it! An ant fugue! 
"ant fugue"? I know how hard it is for me 
Tortoise: Not for me, thank you. 
Achilles: -to track a single voice 
Anteater: I'd like some, too, Mr. Crab 
Achilles: — in a musical fugue- 
FIGURE 61. "Ant Fugue", by M. C. Escher (woodcut, 1953). 
Anteater: -if it isn't too much trouble 
Achilles: . -when all of them 
Crab: Not at all. Four cups of tea 
such a picture in a convincing way 
until its dissolution, always consist of the same set of ants? 
pieces of information about the world. 
essentially the same underlying sets of levels. 
of, at bottom, just a bunch of ants running around? 
onto an ant colony, but not onto the brain of a mere ant. 
scale event, such as a pattern of neural firings. 
Thank you for bringing out that subtle point. 
Achilles: What does a symbol do that a signal couldn't do? 
are PASSIVE, symbols and signals are ACTIVE. 
symbols, under what conditions, and so forth. 
leaves out seemingly- the most important feature -the ants. 
mention of its fundamental building blocks. 
Achilles: The Pickwick Papers- will that do? 
you read it letter by letter. 
time, those concepts are as they were the preceding time. 
Achilles: All right-but what about ant colonies? 
instead of passive words-hut the idea carries over. 
perceive nothing more than a rearrangement of ants. 
read in the MU-picture— or at least THREE of us did .. . 
and the trend of our conversation. 
Achilles: Do you think it's just coincidence? 
lower-level teams, all the way down to ants. 
symbols are themselves active? Who is the agent? 
agent. One can give a name to the 
her symbols; and you are similar, Achilles. 
can fully understand it, but I will give it some thought. 
thinking about the symbols in your brain. 
perceive an ant colony at the symbol level? 
Achilles: Really? That must be an amazing experience. 
Achilles: I have never seen nor read any brain either, however. 
brain directly at the symbol level? 
consciousness requires a large degree of self-consciousness. 
without perceiving the lower levels "HOLISM" and "REDUCTIONISM". 
relation whatever to the lower levels! 
another level, which all of us missed! 
Tortoise: Speak for yourself, Dr. Anteater. 
And none of us suspected it in the least. 
was it a purposeful act carried out by some creator? 
Crab: How could one ever decide that? 
there was one of those in the prelude? 
Achilles: I guess I must have missed it. 
couple of them coming up, towards the end of this fugue. 
Achilles: But do tell me, what is an organ point? 
create thoughts which are about themselves. 
supreme irony, in fact-that they missed it. 
Crab: You are right, Mr. T-that was a lovely organ point. 
Crab: Tell me, does Aunt Hillary live in an anthill? 
rather sumptuously, compared to many other colonies. 
Tortoise: See for yourself. (Passes the score over to the Crab.) 
the last three letters shrink again. Anteater: May I see it? 
mathematiciant by vocation, but a musiciant by avocation. 
Achilles: How very versantile of him! 
up a new organization. And thus was Aunt Hillary born. 
MORE than the sum, mind you just that particular KIND of sum. 
new order, and come up with a new theorem. 
Sebastiant was extremely gifted in music. 
Have you heard of Fourmi's infamous "Well-Tested Conjecture"? 
Di of Antus, and came across a page containing the equation 
then wrote in the margin the following notorious comment: 
scene. It was he who found the proof that cleared Fourmi's name. 
Tortoise: What sort of music did Sebastiant do? 
at all, but merely blustered about it. 
Achilles: What was the nature of this magnum opus? 
each of the major and minor keys. 
Crab: Not to mention composing one! 
he wrote before his tragic demise were: 
I have composed a truly marvelous fugue. In it, I have added 
together the power of 24 keys, and the power of 24 themes; I 
came up with a fugue with the power of 24 voices. Unfortunately, 
this margin is too narrow to contain it. 
Achilles: Oh, that is unbearably tragic. 
appealing! (Shows it to the Crab.) 
FIGURE 64. [Drawing by the author.] 
from left to right. (Returns it to the Tortoise.) 
Prelude, Ant Fugue; now we develop the ideas more deeply. 
formal systems as models for how the brain might manipulate ideas? 
typographical symbols. In the brain, the rules 
entities, and the rules are in our heads. 
The person whose book I sent to a friend in Poland a while back. 
making you exclaim, Oh-you're that person!" 
or chop one description into separate pieces, and so on. 
her as an unsafe driver because of the strength of 
in no way be tied down to real events or things. 
output channel is its cell body, where "decisions" are made. 
Machinery of the Brain (New York:"- McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 6. 
to about a thousand times per second. 
it turns out, only the roughest mapping can 
York: Vintage, 1966), p. 50. ] 
return in this Chapter and the next. 
Localization of Brain Processes: An Enigma 
Steven Rose describes Lashley's trials and tribulations this way: 
the only conclusion was that memory was not possible at all.' 
neurons. What Penfield found was that stimulation of certain 
neurons located at different stages along the pathway. 
neuron unaffected; they will continue to fire at cruising speed. 
(a) Complex cell (area 1 7) . (h) Hypercomplex cell complex cell 
Etmiap Crj.„„*.i f*>ir,*r»K he ffrtmn uimhb neurons. 
FIGURE 67. Responses to patterns by certain sample neurons. 
unique pattern-somewhat like a fingerprint or a signature. 
division of the brain, but rather in a more microscopic analysis. 
you to say "Hello, Granny." So a funneling process must take 
how many buttons there are on her blouse, etc. 
which is associated with the concepts-the funks-in the scene. 
Do they extend into the lower regions of the brain, such as the 
Can a single neuron belong to more than one such complex? 
To how many such complexes can a single neuron belong? 
By how many neurons can such complexes overlap? 
Are these complexes pretty much the same for everybody? 
Are corresponding ones found in corresponding places in different 
Do they overlap in the same way in everybody's brain? 
occurring. However, it is not clear that this must be so. 
single individual could not pass to another.' 
It is not such a bad image, the brain as an ant colony! 
for an entire story? Or for a 
of various symbols by other symbols. 
example, look at the list below: 
(4) the May 18 edition of the Chronicle 
(5) my copy of the May 18 edition of the Chronicle 
(6) my copy of the May 18 edition of the Chronicle as 
it was when I first picked it up (as contrasted with 
my copy as it was a few days later: in my fireplace, 
The most specific event can serve as a general example 
The Splitting-off of Instances from Classes 
relations), and are called default options. In any 
guesses which are supplied by the "stereotype", or class symbol. 
a class symbol around which could start rotating new satellites- 
information, enabling the new symbols so to become autonomous. 
The Difficulty of Disentangling Symbols from Each Other 
responsible for mental images of various degrees of specificity: 
(3) activation of a single instance symbol: 
brain is trickier than one might guess. 
then it must have also been a dormant symbol in 
than that to pin down a brain state on the symbol level. 
overlapping symbols is shown in Figure 68.) 
Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 230] 
Mechanical Man, from which I quote: 
the case, and may never be the case. 
which it can trigger are the right kind. 
the symbols, as well as of their component neurons.) 
richness springs, are deeply grounded in reality. 
are deeply cloaked mysteries-inaccessible pieces of knowledge. 
laws of biology, psychology, sociology, and so 
octopus has eight tentacles falls mainly on the declarative side. 
are stored. But there is no reason 
being aware of how it is done. 
more or less vivid and real-seeming. Anger can cause us to 
state of being ready to be said. 
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave. 
Es brillig war. Die schlichten Toven 
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 
((Garde -toi du Jaseroque, mon fits! 
La gueule qui mord; la griffe qui prend! 
He took his vorpal sword in hand: 
Long time the manxome foe he sought 
So rested he by the Tumtum tree, 
Son glaive vorpal en main, it va 
T-a la recherche du fauve manscant; 
Er griff sein vorpals Schwertchen zu, 
Er suchte lang das manchsam' Ding; 
And, as in uffish thought he stood, 
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame. 
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, 
Vient siblant par le bois tullegeais, 
Als stand er tief in Andacht auf, 
Durch turgen Wald mit Wiffek kam 
One, two! One, two! And through and through 
He left it dead, and with its head 
Un deux, un deux, par le milieu, 
La bete defaite, avec sa tete, 
Eins, Zwei! Eins, Zwei! Und durch and durch 
Da blieb es todt! Er, Kopf in Hand, 
"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
Viens a mon coeur, fils rayonnais! 
))Und schlugst Du ja den Jammerwoch? 
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave. 
Es brillig war. Die schlichten Toven 
Can Minds Be Mapped onto Each Other? 
what it is that is invariant about all butterflies, 
English% Yet a wealth of meaning comes through. 
others do. It would seem an obvious conclu 
repertoire of symbols, and (2) the triggering patterns of symbols 
language may be remote in another. 
English tense would have been better? 
French? Figure it out for yourself. 
the brains of all the readers of these three poems. 
Structure of the Union"-your own personal "ASU". 
which you designed, but a regular road atlas of the USA. 
found in both Montanas. So the local-global 
from one place to another very fluently. 
How Much Do Language and Culture Channel Thought? 
minor routes can be described with reference to them. 
an alien quality transmitted by the unusual choice of words. 
then, it is important to remember that 
dreams, passing thoughts, beliefs, and pieces of knowledge? 
stock routes, used in everyday voyages. 
realities we have experienced, no matter how 
the ASU's of our minds. Locally, they make sense-but globally ... 
several translation problems, on several different levels. 
decided that all Russian novels were very weird. 
advantage of our modern scholarship, writing 
computer could not ferret it out, if sufficiently well programmed. 
comes from conscious analysis of every part of the memory dump. 
know whether we can ever understand ourselves. 
kinds of troubles we will run up against. 
description of the selection of routes. 
logically. For we would then be compelled to look for an 
to give a "nonsoulist" explanation of where consciousness arises. 
since I will be trying to imagine how he visualizes the area. 
subsystem without much loss of fidelity. 
symbol', and is not a qualitative change. 
relevant to what we have just been discussing: 
knows that he knows it, and so on, as long as we care to pose the 
complete, and has no Achilles' heel. 
hold good of it, then it is no longer a 
machine within the meaning of the act .3 
and fleetingly in this odd passage. 
a little number theory does wonders for my troubled psyche. 
Achilles: In that case, by all means, do! 
Achilles: Was the local composer up to the challenge? 
Tortoise. Perhaps he saw it in a museum, and took a fancy to it. 
Achilles: Are you suggesting he absconded with it? 
than to the distinguished Count's name. 
Achilles: What else is unusual about the Goldberg Variations? 
apart. Ten canons, all told. And 
discovery of fourteen previously unknown days in November? 
1742? Hmm ... That number rings a bell. 
number with that property. Let's see 
Tortoise: Perhaps there is no regularity to be discerned. 
Tortoise: You seem quite convinced of it. 
(except 4) can be written as a sum of two odd primes? 
mathematical amateur put forth this very question in a 
Achilles: But please don't let me distract you from your story. 
without charm. Achilles: In that case, by all means, do! 
two odd primes." Now what was that fellow's name? 
Tortoise: Hmm ... No, that sounds too long. 
Achilles: Could it have been "Silberescher"? 
... But let us get back to 1742. 
fancy of many, and became known as the "Goldbach Conjecture". 
Achilles: Has it ever been proven correct? 
odd-can be represented as the sum of not more than 300,000 primes. 
Achilles: What a strange result. Of what good is it? 
so-a sum of 300,000 primes (or fewer) will always suffice. 
sufficiently large odd numbers have the Vinigradov properties 
Achilles: Very well-but what does "sufficiently large" mean? 
primes to represent it has been located. 
adding back the prime number 3. 
product of at most two primes." 
Tortoise: Perhaps there is no regularity to be discerned. 
should be called a "Goldbach Variation". 
Tortoise property. Of course, it may have both. 
Which one would you pick to work on? 
between 2 and 1 trillion, right? 
some cases, it might stop on the first step. 
just may never give an answer. 
Achilles: Couldn't the search only end if the answer were yes% 
guaranteed to terminate-and yet there MIGHT exist such a search. 
no guarantee that that "meta-search" would terminate, either. 
"HOLE, not just of the number 1 trillion. 
29, and so forth, doesn't it? 
a bundle to the number 29, saying merely, "29 is prime" 
Achilles: Maybe so, but it feels like just one fact to me. 
number system into a unit, and label the unit "primeness of 29" 
give a finite proof for that truth. And that is ridiculous. 
integral part of the beauty and harmony? 
FIGURE 71. Order and Chaos, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1950). 
search, both of which are guaranteed to terminate. 
known. You begin with a number-would you care to pick one? 
Achilles: Is 15 wondrous, or unwondrous? Let's see: 
obviously a property of the entire number system. 
prime" or "gold is valuable" - both statements attribute to 
of wondrousness which is guaranteed to terminate. 
Achilles: Oh, how exciting! What is it called? 
Gold have to do with each other? Tortoise: It seems clear to me. 
Tortoise: Perhaps you would prefer Copper, Silver, Baboons? 
throw readers off by making them SEARCH for the ending. 
Achilles: A funny thing to want to do. How is it done? 
glance, or from the feel of the book. 
the physical end of the book? 
ending comes. It'll just blend right into the padding. 
for I found the idea rather appealing. 
can't say how long it will be before the test terminates. 
Tortoise: Very well-but what does "sufficiently assiduous" mean? 
can incorporate it in his Dialogue. 
Achilles: I would be highly honored. 
of the night, just for my benefit. I assure you that 
Tortoise: Oh, don't be silly, Achilles. 
( The Tortoise moseys over to Achilles ' dresser.) 
Tortoise. You don't mean this very gold Asian box, do you? 
mathematicians' names engraved on the top? What a curious list: 
Goldbach Conjecture, and its Variation. Good night. 
Who could be knocking at this ungodly hour, Achilles? 
behind the dresser, in case there's any funny business. 
(Two burly policemen walk in, wearing shiny badges.) 
this afternoon. Achilles: Heavens to Betsy! 
his very gold Asian box, and trembling.) 
of him, and the Very Asian Gold Box! 
transportable back to our thoughts about consciousness. 
more than hint at the fascination of this subject. 
criterion for calling a system "sufficiently powerful". 
Chapters, so as to provide a bit better motivation. 
Finding Order by Choosing the Right Filter 
because they have lengthening and shortening rules, which can 
SALVIATI Suppose I give you two sequences of numbers, such as 
1, -1/3, +1/5, -1/7, +1/9, -1/11, +1/13, -1/15, ... 
SALVIATI And for the second sequence? 
SIMPLICIO That would be easy. It must be +1/17. 
has to do with abstraction and reality. 
code a former message may be devoid of meaning. 
Primordial Steps of the Language BlooP 
Some steps which we might consider primordial are: 
determining if two numbers are equal; 
determining the larger (smaller) of two numbers. 
Here is how you would express this in a BlooP program: 
enough that it makes sense without too much 
hold any natural number, no matter how big. 
and the proper thing will happen. 
motions, which were themselves learned as compounds of earlier 
test, the default option for OUTPUT is not 0, of course, but NO. 
LOOP AT MOST MINUS [N,2] TIMES: 
IF REMAINDER [N,CELL(0)] = 0, THEN: 
BlooP Programs Contain Chains of Procedures 
which would yield an answer of 512. 
FACTORIAL [N] = NI (the factorial of N) 
REMAINDER [M,N] = the remainder upon dividing M by N 
PI-DIGIT [N] = the Nth digit of pi, after the decimal point 
FIBO [N] = the Nth Fibonacci number 
PRIME-BEYOND [N[ = the lowest prime beyond N 
to itself: 28 = 1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14) 
PRIME? [N] = YES if N is prime, otherwise NO. 
PERFECT? [N] = YES if N is perfect, otherwise NO. 
TRIVIAL? [A,B,C,N] = YES if A"+B" = C n is correct; otherwise NO. 
FERMAT? [N] = YES if A"+B" = CN is satisfied by some positive 
values of A, B, C; otherwise NO. 
(e.g., MIU- WELL-FORMED? [310] = YES, 
TNT-THEOREM? [N] = YES if N, seen as a TNT-string, is a theorem, 
(e.g., FALSE? [6661 1 1666] = NO, 
FALSE? [2236661 1 1666] = YES, 
explorations, so they highly merit your scrutiny. 
much stronger notion. It means that 
(1) All true instances of the predicate are theorems; 
(2) All false instances are nontheorems. 
competition of systems which can do number theory. 
Primitive Recursive Predicates Are Represented in TNT 
whose truth or falsity can be decided by a 
Are There Functions Which Are Not Primitive Recursive? 
spot. Similar remarks could be made about the Tortoise property. 
method, discovered by Georg Cantor, the founder of set theory. 
Pool B, Index Numbers, and Blue Programs 
final procedure in the chain.) What is left? 
Let us call these special BlooP programs Blue Programs. 
What we would like to do now is to assign an unambiguous index 
is to list them in order of length: the shortest possible. Blue 
number). The very first Blue Program would be this one: 
unique and definite index number. This is the crucial idea. 
calculates the cube of its input parameter: 
Here is the definition of Bluediag ~N]: 
Equation (1) ... Bluediag [N] = 1 + Blueprogram{#N} [N] 
Equation (2) ... Bluediag [N] = Blueprogram{# X} [N] 
Bluediag [ X] = 1 + Blueprogram{# X} [ X] 
But if we substitute into equation (2) instead, we get: 
Bluediag [ X] = Blueprogram{# X} [ X] 
calculable within a predictable number of steps. 
shall not trace out the relations in detail. 
from 0 is 9). Then our number d will be: 
Now, because of the way we constructed it, 
d's 1st digit is not the same as the 1st digit of r(l); 
d's 2nd digit is not the same as the 2nd digit of r(2); 
d's 3rd digit is not the same as the 3rd digit of r(3); 
In other words, d is not in the list! 
What Does a Diagonal Argument Prove? 
The Insidious Repeatability of the Diagonal Argument 
apparent in the next two Chapters. 
program halts and gives the answer NO. 
nonanswer bears a strange resemblance to Joshu's nonanswer "MU". 
always terminate, and moreover with the answer YES each time. 
-would get the Godel number partially shown below: 
Hoare and Allison, mentioned in the Bibliography. 
program TORTOISE at all — we just inspect it. 
A Termination Tester Would Be Magical 
Buddha-nature on the string instead. As 
Pool F, Index Numbers, and Green Programs 
Greendiag [N] = 1 + Greenprogram{#N} [N] 
The Termination Tester Gives Us Red Programs 
nonterminators, so that in the end we are left with: 
the diagonal argument will go through. We define 
Reddiag [N] = 1 + Redprogram(#N} [N] 
power by "unshackling" it, as we did BlooP. 
then, are three related ways to state the CT-Thesis: 
(1) What is human-computable is machine-computable. 
(2) What is machine-computable is FlooP-computable. 
(3) What is human-computable is FlooP-computable 
notions we have been dealing with. 
"primitive recursive". Now FlooP computable functions can be di- 
Tortoise: Did you catch what that thing was? 
Achilles: Well, the whole call went like this: 
falsehood when preceded by its quotation! 
Achilles: Exactly how it struck me. 
Tortoise: Perhaps there was some meaning to that seeming madness. 
Tortoise: Where are you taking me, Achilles? 
Achilles: We can just step inside right here. Follow me. 
FIGURE 74. Above and Below, by M.C. Escher (lithograph 1947). 
Achilles. How much further do we have to go? 
these stairs, why don't you walk on the underside? 
Tortoise {gingerly shifting himself about): Am I doing it right? 
Should I head upstairs or downstairs, now? 
the staircase, that means go DOWN, on mine it means UP. 
Achilles: I don't know, but it works ... 
Now just undo the maneuver, Mr. T. Here-let me help you up. 
Tortoise: Thanks. It was a little easier getting back up. 
(And they step out onto the roof, overlooking the town.) 
Achilles: You do? Would you tell me about it? 
quotation" has a slightly haunting quality about it? 
Tortoise: Can you imagine something preceded by its quotation? 
Here would be Chairman Mao, preceded by his quotation. 
The word "philosopher" has five letters. 
Tortoise: Let me explain. Suppose I were to say to you, 
Achilles: All right. Would this be correct? 
"'PLOP' IS NOT THE TITLE OF ANY BOOK. SO FAR AS I KNOW" 
•PLOP' IS NOT THE TITLE OF ANY BOOK, SO FAR AS I KNOW. 
"IS NOT THE TITLE OF ANY BOOK, SO FAR AS I KNOW" 
IS NOT THE TITLE OF ANY BOOK, SO FAR AS I KNOW. 
Tortoise: You see, you have made a sentence. 
as I know", and quite a silly one too. 
Achilles: Because it's so pointless. Here's another one for you: 
Now what does that mean? Honestly, what a silly game. 
Achilles: "Quine"? What sort of word is that? 
Tortoise: A five-letter word, if I'm not in error. 
answer. However, I'd be perfectly willing to go and 
"IS A SENTENCE FRAGMENT" IS A SENTENCE FRAGMENT. 
Achilles: A king without a subject would be — 
Achilles: I'm to quine that phrase, am I? All right 
"IS A KING WITH NO SUBJECT" IS A KING WITH NO SUBJECT. 
Tortoise: All right just one more. Try this one: 
"WHEN QUINED, YIELDS A TORTOISE'S LOVE SONG" 
Achilles: That should be easy ... I'd say the quining gives this: 
"WHEN QUINED, YIELDS A TORTOISE'S LOVE SONG" 
WHEN QUINED, YIELDS A TORTOISE'S LOVE SONG 
sentence is talking about itself! Do you see that? 
Tortoise: What do you mean? Sentences can't talk. 
remember what quining is all about. 
it talks about itself without having to come right out and say so! 
up a sentence-I'll call it "Sentence P"-with a blank in it. 
" WHEN QUINED, YIELDS A TORTOISE'S LOVE SONG". 
is produced by an act of quining. 
to keep them fresh", then Sentence Q would have to be 
"IS WRITTEN ON OLD JARS OF MUSTARD TO KEEP THEM FRESH" 
IS WRITTEN ON OLD JARS OF MUSTARD TO KEEP THEM FRESH. 
: "WHEN QUINED, YIELDS A TORTOISE'S LOVE SONG". 
be too highbrow for my modest mind. 
"WHEN QUINED, YIELDS A TORTOISE'S LOVE-SONG" 
WHEN QUINED, YIELDS A TORTOISE'S LOVE-SONG. 
P points back to itself. But you see, the self-reference is a 
"IS COMPOSED OF FIVE WORDS" IS COMPOSED OF FIVE WORDS. 
course, that phrase is PART of the sentence ... 
wouldn't that qualify as self-reference, too? 
falsehood when preceded by its quotation"? 
"YIELDS FALSEHOOD WHEN PRECEDED BY ITS QUOTATION" 
YIELDS FALSEHOOD WHEN PRECEDED BY ITS QUOTATION. 
jailed for saying things like that! 
Tortoise: I wonder ... Well, shall we go downstairs now? 
step outside right here. Follow me. 
like just the same courtyard they first came into.) 
The Two Ideas of the "Oyster" 
traceable, in essence, to the Cantor diagonal method. 
particular way. Here is the idea: 
pairs, and look at MlU-proof-pairs. Their definition is parallel: 
because m is the Godel number of the MlU-derivation 
which is which? (Incidentally, here is where 
notation, and making some routine examinations to see 
rules of inference from earlier lines in the alleged derivation. 
legitimate derivation; otherwise it is a phony derivation. 
sensed, that I am about to assert 
theoretical property: that of being a theorem-number. To 
... And Is Therefore Represented in TNT 
over to the corresponding arithmetical notions. 
(in fact, 666,1 1 1,666 of them) 
(1) 0=0 is not a theorem of TNT. 
(2) -0=0 is a theorem of TNT. 
(3) -0=0 is not a theorem of TNT. 
(6) META-META-JOSHU is a theorem of TNT 
(7) META-META- ME IA -JOSHU is a theorem of TNT 
example 6 does the same for meta-meta-meta-TNT, etc. 
Substitution Leads to the Second Idea 
replacement of all free variables by a specific numeral 
abbreviate that TNT - formula by the following notation 
make a TNT-sentence which is "about itself". 
free variable. The following one will do: 
statement — as you can see for yourself. 
When you arithmoquine, you are of course performing a special case 
arithmoquining inside TNT, we would use the formula 
invent an abbreviation for the above formula: 
What the above formula says, in English, is: 
a' is the arithmoquinification of a" 
can speak quite easily about arithmoquining inside TNT. 
"uncle" has a Godel number, of course, which we'll call 'u' 
u = 223,333,262,636,333,262,163,636,212, ... ,161, ... ,213 
beside the point, in any case. 
numeral for u everywhere. This gives us: 
questions we must answer without delay. They are 
(1) What Is G's Godel number? 
(2) What is the interpretation of G? 
pair. and (2) a' is the arithmoquinification of u." 
is happening? G is saying this: 
"The formula whose Godel number is the arithmoquinification 
of u is not a theorem of TNT." 
whence we can make the ultimate translation of G; as 
-3a:3a': <TORTOISE-PAIR{a,a' }.TENTH-POWER{SSO/a ", a' J> 
literal translation into English is then: 
and (2) a' is the tenth power of 2." 
"There is no number a that forms a Tortoise-pair with 1024" 
which can be further boiled down to: 
"1024 does not have the Tortoise property." 
the number described as the arithmoquinification of a". 
the Epimenides paradox due to Quine. Here is a map: 
definite term) into an open formula 
suDStituting tne oouei numoer or a 
substituting the Godel number of an 
open formula into the formula itself 
the number a (the Godel number 
by substituting a into the uncle, i.e., 
formulas of the form <Pv— P> are theorems. 
Recall that this was a great philosophical dilemma of 
to the human problem of self-knowledge. 
theorems. We can write them own easily enough: 
--3a': <TNT-PROOF- PAIR,0/a,a'} ARITHMOQUINE;SSS ... SSSO/a" a*I> 
-3a': <TNT-PROOF-PAIR{SSO/a,a'} ARITHMOQUINEI5SS ... SSSO/a", a'}> 
What does each one assert? Their translations, one by one, are: 
that shows why TNT is w-incomplete. 
Two Different Ways to Plug Up the Hole 
adding the negation of G as a new axiom. 
the nature of the natural numbers'? 
they violate all reasonable and commonsensical notions. 
family we just finished discussing. To put it bluntly, -G says: 
"There exists some number which forms a TNT-proof-pair with the 
specifies the structure of a proof of (7-no bigger, no smaller. 
Supernatural Theorems Have Infinitely Long Derivations. 
falsity, but all natural theorems still assert truths. 
then, non-Euclidean geometry is also a disorienting subject. In 
system within which they are used. 
for physicists that different and "rival" geometries should exist. 
Bifurcations in Number Theory, and Bankers 
Bifurcations in Number Theory, and Metamathematicians 
mentioned, in role (2) it is used. 
inconsistent. This is a queer thought, but it is conceivable. 
Hilbert's Tenth Problem and the Tortoise 
coefficients and exponents is set to 0. For instance, 
a 123,666,l 1 1,666 + ^123,.666,l 11,666 c 123,666, 111,666 _ q 
button with the words "Today is my Birthday!" 
Achilles: Yes, yes! Yes it is, today is my birthday! 
Cantata has double meaning. However, I shan't tell you my age. 
Achilles: Yes, yes, it would be. Today is my birthday. 
the foregoing sentences, that today is in fact your birthday. 
well as I, could have answered 'yes' each time. 
Achilles: What? That I Ask for no present? 
Achilles: Yes, of course it is. 
so kind as to counsel me on that matter, Achilles? 
yes-answers ro + 3, ro + 4, and so on. 
me to deduce that today is your birthday. 
Answer Schemas 3ro 2 and 4ro 2 . Beyond them there 
Achilles: And then w 03 ™, and co 030303 ', 
don't we just leave this Answer Schema nameless? 
know exactly what kind we should have ... 
vulnerable to the arguments of last Chapter. 
"I Cannot Be Proven in Formal System TNT" 
the Godel number of this string." 
to see our new system succumb, 
I Cannot Be Proven in Formal System TNT+G. 
formula which we abbreviate in an obvious manner. 
with an "uncle", just as before: 
"There is no number a that forms a TNT +G-proof-pair 
"I Cannot Be Proven in Formal System TNT+G." 
that there are all sorts of bifurcations in number theory: 
"I cannot be proven in formal system X" 
complicated notion as TNT+G. -proof-pairs inside TNT+Go: 
enough to foresee its own embeddability inside number theory. 
some list L, you do the following: 
(la) Take list L, and construct its diagonal number d. 
(lb) Throw d somewhere into list L, making a new list L+d. 
(2a) Take list L +d, and construct its diagonal number d'. 
(2b) Throw d' somewhere into list L+d, making a new list L+d+d'. 
player becomes capable of being shaken to pieces. 
reference method, depends on three basic conditions: 
phonograph but a refrigerator or some other kind of object.) 
on the drawing board, only partially designed.) 
incomplete, because Godel's construction is applicable. 
Rigid internal codes entirely rule computers and robots; ergo ... 
Computers are isomorphic to formal systems. Now .. . 
number theory as well as we can, so. . . . 
It is vulnerable to the Godelian "hook", which implies that ... 
to do, but which we can do. So we are smarter. 
to Godel's theorem, the mind always has the last word. 
program as a third major component, Lucas explains: 
mind can always go one better.' 
head through one of the holes and his tail through the others 5 
dragon cannot step out of his two-dimensional space, and cannot 
FIGURE 76. Dragon, by M. C. Escher (wood-engraving, 1952). 
two — it becomes vulnerable to being cut and folded again. 
there are systems which lie far beyond his ability to Godelize. 
encountered. Thus a new name must be applied ad hoc. 
There Is No Recursive Rule for Naming Ordinals. 
There is no recursively related notation-system which gives a 
be able to ay records which would cause it to break. 
womansee," womanreplies the woman, and womanwalks away .. . 
could be embodied in a computer program. 
"Can God make a stone so heavy that he can't lift it?" 
pleasure in consuming the product he had been advertising. 
keeping the faith of the auditor alive. 
has no choice. But what, then, of fairness or "equal time"? 
Achilles has been invited to the Crab's home. 
the paintings I have are by him. He's my favorite artist. 
Magritte remind me of works by MY favorite artist, M. C. Escher. 
of them have a sense of the graceful line. 
Crab: It would be fascinating to compare the two in detail. 
FIGURE 77. The Shadows, by Rene Magritte (1966). 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
Crab: You mean a normal pipe with a tiny tree in front of it! 
I was smelling pipe smoke! Can you imagine how silly I felt? 
He begins packing in a new wad of tobacco.) 
Achilles: A copper lining! You don't say! 
Achilles: No, thank you. I only smoke cigars now and then. 
painting, featuring a bicycle mounted upon a lit cigar.) 
Achilles: Uhh-no thank you, not now. 
undoubtedly know of Old Bach's predilection for pipe smoking? 
FIGURE 78. State of Grace, by Rene Magritte (1959). 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
wife, Anna Magdalena, and it is called 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker' 
Whene'er I take my pipe and stuff it 
And smoke to pass the time away, 
My thoughts, as I sit there and puff it, 
Dwell on a picture sad and gray: 
Like me, this pipe so fragrant burning 
Is made of naught but earth and clay; 
To earth I too shall be returning. 
It falls and, ere I'd think to say, 
It breaks in two before my eyes; 
In store for me a like fate lies. 
No stain the pipe's hue yet cloth darken; 
It remains white. Thus do I know 
That when to death's call I must harken 
My body, too, all pale will grow. 
To black beneath the sod 'twill turn, 
Likewise the pipe, if oft it burn. 
Or when the pipe is fairly glowing, 
The smoke off into thin air going, 
Till naught but ash is left to see. 
Man's fame likewise away will burn 
How oft it happens when one's smoking: 
The stopper's missing from its shelf, 
And one goes with one's finger poking 
Into the bowl and burns oneself. 
If in the pipe such pain cloth dwell, 
How hot must be the pains of hell. 
Thus o'er my pipe, in contemplation 
Of such things, I can constantly 
On land, on sea, at home, abroad 
I smoke my pipe and worship God. 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
A charming philosophy, is it not? 
Achilles: Indeed. Old Bach was a turner of phrases quite pleasin'. 
A turner of phrases quite pleasin', 
Had a penchant for trick'ry and teasin'. 
What I mean is, without why or wherefore. 
evolved between you and Mr. T some time ago? 
possession of an invincible phonograph — one with a 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
itself in such a way that it would not be destroyed. 
Achilles: Yes, but what consequences did that have. 
he knew would never change-the disassembly reassembly subunit. 
Achilles: Oh, I see ... Very sneaky. 
Achilles: Upon my soul! You must have felt devastated. 
fugues, Zen Buddhism, and heaven knows what else. 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
Achilles: What is the Tobacco Mosaic Virus? What are ribosomes? 
cigarette-like objects that cause a disease in tobacco plants. 
in one form and convert it into a message in another form. 
Achilles: Something like a teeny tape recorder or phonograph? 
Achilles: That was one of his droller lines, I take it. 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
and puffs several billows of smoke into the air.) 
Achilles: Well, what does "spontaneous self-assembly" mean, then? 
pieces just come together, and presto !-they stick. 
Achilles: A hefty bill to fill. 
Achilles: Don't tell me that once again ... 
Achilles: There, there, Mr. Crab, don't take it too badly. 
lining. Pray tell, what was that? 
"Perfection" in phonographs, and decided that I might do better 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
only play a few particular records. 
the sacrifice of being able to reproduce every possible sound, eh? 
Achilles: Yes, I can see what you mean. 
me to enjoy my recorded music. 
represent your accomplishments to date along those lines? 
Crab: You promise you won't reveal my strategy to Mr. T, now? 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
Achilles: Is that what that bright green Hash was for? 
on- all in silence. Nothing had been played yet. 
Achilles: And smash your marvelous machine to smithereens? 
Theorem forwards and backwards, do you? 
Achilles: Terrific! May I try it out? 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
FIGURE 80. The Fair Captive, by Rene Magritte (1947). 
screen on which the flames are-or were-displayed.) 
seems to be a strange long corridor. Yet I'm certainly not 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
(k) The galaxy has burned itselj out, and become — 
(I) A "pulsating petal pattern", caught in the middle 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
Crab: Look more carefully, Achilles. Do you really see a corridor? 
which is the screen itself, with 
Crab: What do you mean by "self-engulfing", Achilles? 
of self-engulfing. It's a "failed self-engulfing". 
you could fix it up again ... 
Achilles: Oh, nothing just muttering to myself. 
kaleidoscopic flower-like shapes, and other assorted patterns ...) 
Crab: You seem to be having a grand time. 
idea can produce! (He glances back at the screen, and a look of 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
Crab: What precisely do you mean by that? 
Achilles: There! I've created a TOTAL self-engulfing! 
the inside of the television, and 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
FIGURE 82. The Air and the Song, by Rene Magritte (1964). 
Crab: Thank you. I had it specially done-it's a gold lining. 
Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco Smoker 
(1) This sentence contains five words. 
(2) This sentence is meaningless because it is self-referential. 
(4) This sentence is false. (Epimenides paradox) 
entertain infinitely long sentences, such as: 
I processing required tor understanding J water 
DEFINE PROCEDURE "ENIUQ" [TEMPLATE]: PRINT [TEMPLATE, LEFT- 
['DEFINE PROCEDURE "ENIUQ" [TEMPLATE]: PRINT [TEMPLATE, LEFT- 
the string DOUBLE-BUBBLE, then performing ENIUQ on it would yield: 
"yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" 
yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation. 
lines of the program above-that is, the value of 
a self-ref. I will use those terms occasionally from here on. 
was). Then a teeny self-rep would be this: 
where the verb "to quine" is assumed to be known: 
"yields falsehood when quined" yields falsehood when quined 
play a song whose lyrics go this way: 
Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon, 
All I want is 1 1-U, and music, music, music. 
enjoy thinking about how to write such a program in 
all, so the program can't be counted as a self-rep. 
curious version of the Quine version of the Epimenides self-ref: 
involves a transposition of the theme into another key. 
A Program That Prints Out Its Own Godel Number 
tight that we can consider them to be identical. 
world to discuss the English language. 
is still there, and the Dialogue is still a self-ref. 
in a dialect of its original language. 
question concerning self-reps. That is the obverse 
after all, is also a program); 
for those processes centered on the celebrated Central Dogma of 
to the unit they are operating on at any given moment. 
Here's a sample enzyme, consisting of three operations: 
(2) Move one unit to the right. 
(3) Insert a T (to the immediate right of this unit). 
done its complete duty: it has transformed ACA into CAT. 
Let's see some more examples. Here is another enzyme: 
(1) Search for the nearest pyrimidine to the right of this unit. 
(3) Search for the nearest purine to the right of this unit. 
(4) Cut the strand here (viz., to the right of the present unit). 
means searching for the nearest C or T. 
with the Tortoise, and the Crab with his Genes. 
enzyme also happens to like to start at A): 
The last step is to cut the strand. This will yield two pieces: 
in fact our end product is a set of three strands: 
strand becomes legible. If the "switch" command is 
enzyme just detaches itself from the strand, and its job is done. 
space must he inserted into the complementary strand. 
There are fifteen types of command, listed below: 
insert A to the right of this unit 
insert C to the right of this unit 
insert G to the right of this unit 
insert T to the right of this unit 
search for the nearest pyrimidine to the right 
search for the nearest purine to the right 
search for the nearest pyrimidine to the left 
search for the nearest purine to the left 
us write down an arbitrary enzyme: 
rpu - inc - cop - myr - tnyl - swi - lpu - int 
enzyme) skip over TCC and land on A. 
Our final product is thus two strands: 
The old one is of course gone. 
acting on MI to make MIU didn't destroy MI 
Typogenetic Code is shown in Figure 87. 
FIGURE 87. The Typogenetic Code, by 
which each duplet in a strand codes for one 
of fifteen "amino acids'- (or a punctuation 
enzyme very straightforwardly. For example, the strand 
breaks up into duplets as follows: 
rpy - ina - rpu - mvr - int - mvl - cut - swi - cop. 
(Note that the leftover A contributes nothing.) 
FIGURE 88. The tertiary structure of a typoenzyme. 
segment determines the binding-preference, as shown in Figure 89. 
signals the end of the code for an enzyme. 
AA in it. For example, the strand 
on the daughter strands; and the 
among the strands which are present at some point, there 
Dogma of the M/£/-system looks this way: 
Strange Loops, TNT, and Real Genetics 
bases which occur in DNA nucleotides are: 
nucleotide by nucleotide (see Fig. 92). It is the bases 
of coiling, for it is a consequence of the base-pairing. 
Biosynthesis (Menlo Park, Calif: W. A. Benjamin, 1972) 
structure get from the nucleus to the ribosomes' 
its mRNA-mate might look something like this: 
henceforth not make a sharp distinction. 
process of translation is at the very heart of 
Typogenetic Code, except that here, three consecutive bases (or 
protein comes out of the ribosome amino acid by amino acid. 
for one of twenty amino acids (or a punctuation mark). 
which takes as input the primary structure of a protein, 
is another great problem of contemporary molecular biology. 
faith that such an explanation exists in principle. 
ribosomes in their production of proteins. When a new 
fine imitation he gives of three-dimensionality. 
ability to act as powerful chemical machines. 
Levels of Structure and Meaning in Proteins and Music 
which nevertheless form a tight "organic" whole. 
compared to the four levels of the MU-picture (Fig. 60) in 
FIGURE 97. A polyribosome. A single 
strand of mRNA passes through one ribo- 
some after another, like one tape passing 
through several tape recorders in a row. 
The result is a set of growing proteins in 
various stages of completion: the analogue 
to a musical canon produced by the 
producing identical proteins, staggered in time (see Fig. 97). 
Chemical Basis of Life, p. 271] 
every cell of your body during every second of every day ... 
Which Came First-The Ribosome or the Protein? 
of mRNA which they take as input, and along which they move. 
the enzyme and in fact rendering it inactive. 
and copy them and repair them and destroy them .. . 
Need for a Sufficiently Strong Support System 
mRNA to be made from DNA, and (2) some ribosomes. 
strands are complementary. This involves two steps: 
(1) unravel the two strands from each other; 
(2) mate" a new strand to each of the two new single strands. 
the DNA itself, which will carry out these two steps. 
there are now two copies of it. 
Comparison of DNA's Self-Rep Method with Quining 
The DNA, to them, is just a template without meaning or interest. 
examining the following typical section of the DNA of Felis catus: 
different levels of decoding. DNA can be read as a sequence of: 
Compare it with the Genetic Code (Fig. 94). 
Strange Loops in the Central Dogmap 
levels. We will explore this idea in greater detail in Chapter XX. 
question to think about before reading ahead. 
The Central Dogmap and the Contracrostipuntus 
Cell for which there exists at 
least one DNA strand which it 
molecular biologists (to whom it is likely quite obvious): 
(or the DNA), and thus result in the non-reproduction of that DNA 
species of virus enters a cell by some surreptitious 
Chemical Basis of Life, p. 230.1 
phage commits "rape" on a tiny scale. 
The Chemical Basis of Life, p. 230.] 
0 min. Injection of viral DNA. 
5 min. Replication of viral DNA begins. 
way "f the T4 virus has three principal 
benches leading independently to the for- 
mation of heads, tails, and tail fibers, which 
lm con >l»ne to form complete virus parti- 
««. [From Hanawall and Haynes, Th 
Chemical Basis of Life, p. 237.} 
13 min. First complete replica of T4 invader is produced. 
the synthesis of proteins. But if the host cell has some special 
that case, woe to all unlabeled invaders! 
Reproduced in Cells of Type X". 
Now by arithmoquining this very uncle, you get a Henkin sentence: 
3a:3a':<TNT-PROOF-PAIR{a,a'} A ARITHMOQUINE{SSS ... SSSO/a",a'}> M 
not obvious; but we will accept this curious fact without proof. 
a recipe for its own derivation. 
only viruses, but also some organelles-such as ribosomes-assemble 
need to give instructions as to how to assemble themselves. 
their host cells in putting copies of themselves together. 
parts; it is not concentrated in some single place. 
reality, in the strange, surreal world of the cell. 
"turn off production of various proteins. 
operon is that a whole series of genes is 
regulate their own rates of synthesis. 
different organs of the body of a human being. 
are tremendously different from each other. 
mode, it does not self-rep, but instead calculates the number 
and adds it to a running total. 
1 -1/3 +1/5 -117 +1/9 -1/11 +1/13 -1/15 + .. . 
the value of a famous mathematical constant. 
processor, and does not replicate those. 
contains the definition of its own higher-level language. 
these biomolecules. What we have seen is that nature feels quite 
which is usually at the forefront of computer language design. 
Achilles: Man oh man! If a crab 
Or maybe even three times as smart as any crab alive. Or perhaps 
Tortoise: My soul! How you magnify the Crab! 
Achilles: Well, I just happen to be an admirer of his ... 
Achilles: I don't believe so. Who sent it? 
heard of before-a Mr. Najunamar, I believe. 
Achilles: Could be worse, I suppose. 
FIGURE 104. Castrovalva, by'M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1930). 
Achilles: 1729! Did you say 1729? Crab: Yes-why do you ask? 
you'll take to Mr. Tortoise's tomorrow morning? 
Tortoise: Achilles has a wonderful intuition for these things. 
have been 5'ou, Mr. T, who received the letter! 
matter how true or false it is. 
Crab: As have all generations of Crabs. 
Crab: I don't understand. What statement of number theory? 
which one might use in a formalized version of number theory. 
you like to hear any other tunes? 
Achilles: By all means. Have you some others? 
Achilles peers at it, while the Crab plays it.) 
more like number theory to me. 
Crab: Not in the least. Have you got it with you? 
((SSSO . SSSO) +(SSSSO. SSSSO))=(SSSSSO. SSSSSO) 
Crab: Why, that's quite nice, Achilles. I enjoy strange rhythms. 
Achilles: What's strange about the rhythms in that piece? 
to be. Let me try my hand at another one. (jots down a line.) 
Crab: Hmmm ... Isn't that just a copy of my earlier piece? 
Crab: Oh, yes. Of course. (He plays it, and looks very stern.) 
Achilles: I do hope you didn't dislike my piece! 
little twist to .a piece, you know. 
beyond which it cannot be improved, 
minor respect, the two are identical. 
transcends explanation by any mere set of rules. 
that something similar applies to the concept of Truth, as well? 
Crab: Without doubt. Truth and Beauty are as interrelated as-as 
Achilles: As interrelated as, say, mathematics and music? 
you be willing to serve as my mentor, 
Y ou really want me to play that-that-that whatever-it-is? 
(So the Crab plays it, with evident difficulty.) 
hopes that you will feel better about my musical sensitivities. 
Crab: Well, all right. Write it down and I'll give it a chance. 
Ya:Vb:<(a -a) =(SSO -(b > b))Da=0> 
Achilles: I kind of thought you might like it. 
Achilles: Yes, that's true. That would be a fine title. 
the time, for never before had anyone realized that there are 
what this has to do with the price of tea in China. 
driver this morning had on his radio. It went like this. 
Could you whistle the last few bars again? 
The Crab then plays it himself.) 
The Crab and Tortoise study it with interest.) 
Tortoise: Is it another beautiful piece, Mr. C, in your opinion? 
before I can tell how much I like it. 
Crab: Whew! That was a close call! 
Achilles? Achilles: Oh, yes. Prime teas, in fact. 
long steep trail back to my house, on the other side of this hill. 
Achilles: You mean this is a big bluff? 
Achilles: I see. Well, I'll have to remember that. 
(And the Crab heads off down his side of the hill.) 
smart as any crab alive. Or he might even be five 
the input of signals which impinge on it. 
from a strong mathematics background, and 
the way it happens must depend on the memory of similar patterns.' 
"The other day I read in the paper that the— 
rather, that you had at least one eye then." 
How can they emerge from an underlying formal system? 
metamathematics with which Achilles is familiar: 
from false statements of number theory. 
The first version sounds very innocent-in fact almost pointless: 
problems can be solved only by doing mathematics. 
Turing Thesis is about. We can give a revision: 
CHURCH-TURING THESIS, STANDARD VERSION: Suppose there is a 
CHURCH-TURING THESIS, PUBLIC-PROCESSES VERSION: Suppose there 
answers as the sentient beings' method does. 
covering letter which friends helped him express 
thieves or humbugs of such incredible skill 
a result which, he would insist, had just come to 
special power. The first one is related by Hardy: 
It turns out that the answer for fourth powers is: 
635318657 = 134 + 1334 = 1584 + 594 
number in three distinct ways as a sum of two cubes: 
r 3 + 3 = u 3 + v 3 = x 3 + y 3 
Or, one can use three different cubes: 
u3 + v3 + w 3 = x 3 + y 3 + z 3 , 
r 4 +s 4 + t 4 =u 4 +v 4 + w 4 =x 4 + v 4 + z 4 
The other anecdote is taken from a biography of Ramanujan by his 
MAHALANOBIS (in a joking way): Now here is a problem for you. 
MAHALANOBIS: Did you get the solution in a flash? 
answer came to my mind. It was just as simple as this.' 
Hardy, as Ramanujan's closest co-worker, was often asked after 
to Ramanujan's thinking style. Here is one comment which he gave: 
Version, you know it for all mathematicians. 
Then Hardy compares Ramanujan with calculating prodigies: 
naturally quick and has the habit of computations 
professor and the loss might have been greater than the gain. 8 
The Isomorphism Version of the Church-Turing Thesis 
CHURCH-TURING THESIS, ISOMORPHISM VERSION: Suppose there is a 
between the steps being carried out in both computer and brain. 
bold version is the one which we now shall discuss. 
onto each other on an appropriately abstract level. 
Representation of Knowledge about the Real World 
Processes That Are Not So Skimmable 
understand a book on the letter level.) 
from properties of a lower one. 
thought; that calls for higher levels of organization. 
CHURCH-TURING THESIS, MICROSCOPIC VERSION: The behavior of the 
of the eventual possibility of realizing Artificial Intelligence. 
Intelligence, natural intelligence, and the real world. 
Parallel Progress in Al and Brain Simulation? 
of human consciousness you want to simulate. 
the copying of brain must go is at present completely unclear. 
Beauty, the Crab, and the Soul 
(2) Is perception of beauty a brain process? 
convenience allows you to waffle even more. 
inherently possible only for humans, not for mere machines. 
CHURCH-TURING THESIS, THEODORE ROSZAK VERSION: Computers are 
ridiculous. So is science in general. 
Irrational and Rational Can Coexist on Different Levels 
The presence of meaning on a given 
barely qualify for the title of a model for the mind. 10 
intelligence-however great or small it may be-does not lie. 
the matter of consistency, he writes 
strongest version of the Church- Turing Thesis: 
simulated by a computer program whose underlying language is of 
AI THESIS: As the intelligence of machines evolves, its underlying 
formula G becomes as vicious as the Epimenides paradox. 
hardest one to find any justification for. 
"The formula whose Godel number is a expresses a truth." 
Godel number of a false statement." 
Our minds contain interpreters which accept 
meaning which will remain hidden arbitrarily long. 
Meaning Derives from Connections to Cognitive Structures 
mechanism which does the pulling-out of meaning. (By "inter 
also obviously implicit in the tablet itself. 
Different levels of interpreter probably could be invoked in every 
The Neural Substrate of the Epimenides Paradox 
simply cannot be both true and false. 
incompatible events to occur in a brain. 
happens that SHRDLU is just dying for someone to try out the newly 
1. Eta Oin: pick up a big red block. [Refer to Fig. 110. 
and moving the green one away. 
2. Eta Oin: grasp the pyramid. 
SHRDLU: I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHICH PYRAMID YOU MEAN. 
Language, (New York: Academic Press, 1972), p. 8.1 
using deduction to decide which block it is holding. 
SHRDLU: BY "IT", I ASSUME YOU MEAN THE BLOCK WHICH IS TALLER 
Eta Oin: what does the box contain? 
SHRDLU: THE BLUE PYRAMID AND THE BLUE BLOCK. 
Eta Oin: what is the pyramid supported by? 
Eta Oin: how many blocks are not in the box? 
clauses or noun groups (such as "no boxes"). 
9. Eta Oin: can the table pick up blocks? 
10. Eta Oin: can a pyramid be supported by a block? 
1 1 . Eta Oin: can a pyramid support a pyramid? 
though these ultimately define its capabilities . 
12. Eta Oin: stack up two pyramids. 
Dr. Tony Earrwig: SHRDLU tries and fails. 
13. Eta Oin: the blue pyramid is mine. 
15. Eta Oin: do i own the box? 
16. Eta Oin: do i own anything in the box? 
SHRDLU: YES, TWO THINGS: THE BLUE BLOCK AND PYRAMID. 
pyramid? [Refer to Fig. 1 12. 
18. Eta Oin: which cube is sitting on the table? 
SHRDLU: THE LARGE GREEN ONE WHICH SUPPORTS THE RED 
pronouns in answers to make the discourse more natural. 
19. Eta Oin: is there a large block behind a pyramid? 
SHRDLU: YES, THREE OF THEM: A LARGE RED ONE, A LARGE GREEN 
block", so this means "a small block". SHRDLU: OK, 
21. Eta Oin: put the littlest pyramid on top of it. 
the pyramids to carry out the action. 
22. Eta Oin: how many things are on top of green cubes? 
SHRDLU: I'M NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN BY "ON TOP OF" IN THE 
PHRASE "ON TOP OF GREEN CUBES" 
track of the various forms of irregular verbs like "have" . 
24. Eta Oin: when did you pick it up? 
SHRDLU: WHILE I WAS STACKING UP THE RED CUBE, A LARGE RED 
understand questions like this and the following ones. 
SHRDLU has some understanding of its own motives. 
26. Eta Oin: why did you do that? 
SHRDLU: TO CLEAN OFF THE RED CUBE. 
27. Eta Oin: why did you clear off that cube? 
PUT IT ON A LARGE GREEN CUBE. 
28. Eta Oin: why did you do that? 
SHRDLU: TO STACK UP THE RED CUBE, A LARGE RED BLOCK, AND A 
29. Eta Oin: why did you do that? 
SHRDLU.' BECAUSE YOU ASKED ME TO. 
30. Eta Oin: how did you do it? 
SHRDLU: BY PUTTING A LARGE RED BLOCK ON THE TABLE; THEN 
LETTING GO OF IT; THEN PUTTING A LARGE GREEN CUBE ON IT; 
THEN LETTING GO OF THAT CUBE; THEN PUTTING THE RED CUBE 
ON THAT CUBE; THEN LETTING GO OF THAT CUBE. 
of clauses like "before you started to clean it off ". 
33. Eta Oin: there were five blocks to the left of the box then. 
SHRDLU: NO, ONLY FOUR OF THEM: THE RED CUBE, TWO LARGE 
GREEN CUBES, AND A LARGE RED BLOCK. 
statements about these to see whether it agrees or disagrees. 
34. Eta Oin: put the blue pyramid on the block in the box. 
SHRDLU: SORRY, I DON'T KNOW THE WORD "STEEPLE". 
38. Eta Oin: are there any steeples now? 
and the tall red pyramid are stacked up to fit the description. 
40. Eta Oin: call the biggest block "superblock". 
Dr. Tony Earrwig: You can also give objects names. 
41. Eta Oin: have you picked up superblock since we began? 
42. Eta Oin: why did you drop it? 
SHRDLU: BY "IT", I ASSUME YOU MEAN THE SUPERBLOCK. I CAN'T 
question " which presupposes things which aren 't true. 
43. Eta Oin: is there anything to the right of the red pyramid? 
SHRDLU: YES, FOUR THINGS: THE BOX, THE RED CUBE, THE BLUE 
PYRAMID AND THE BLOCK NAMED SUPERBLOCK. 
SHRDLU the capability to carry out special sorts of parsing for 
IN 1950, ALAN TURING wrote a most 
Intelligence" and appeared in the journal 
Mind.' I will say some things about that 
article, but I would like to precede them 
with some remarks about Turing the 
Alan Mathison Turing was born in 
London in 1912. He was a child full of 
where his interests in machinery and 
resulted in his famous paper on 
invented the theory of Turing machines 
the halting problem; it was published in 
1937. In the 1940's, his interests turned 
from the theory of computing machines 
to the actual building of real computers. 
and a staunch defender of Artificial In- 
FIGURE 113. Alan Turing, after a 
(Cambridge, U. K.:W. Heffer & Sons, 
one of the true pioneers in the field of computer science. 
interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus: 
C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair? 
These questions replace our original, "Can machines think?" 2 
A. Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry. 
A. (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621. 
is your move. What do you play? 
A. (After a pause of 15 seconds) R-R8 mate. 
machine, a variety of explanations are possible. Here are some: 
Turing goes on to point out that 
penalize a man for losing in a race against an airplane.' 
we need not be troubled by this objection. 
Once the test has been proposed and discussed, Turing remarks: 
yourself, and figuring out your own responses. 
or to machines. Hence no animal or machine can think. 
it but know that it had written it. No mechanism 
what it wants." [A quote from a certain Professor Jefferson.] 
Mr. Pickwick reminded you of Christmas? Witness: In a way. 
day, rather than a special one like Christmas. 
writing machine was able to answer like this in the viva voce!" 
behaviour of the nervous system with a discrete state system. 
interrogator can ask such questions as "What suit 
Parry: I don't understand your motives. 
Doctor: Why don't you understand my motives? 
Doctor: Why do you say that just now? 
Parry: That's just the way it is. 
Doctor: Suppose that's just the way it were not. 
Doctor: I am not sure I understand you fully. 
Parry: You harp on the same questions too much. 
Doctor: What does that similarity suggest to you? 
Doctor: Do you wish that you did get I? 
Parry: It's about time you showed some interest in my feelings. 
Doctor: Oh? I showed some interest in your feelings? 
Reason, just that happens. He writes: 
explanations, that the machine really understood them. 10 
learning a great deal, and it is an exciting period. 
it Tesler's Theorem. "AI is whatever hasn't been done vet." 
direct (dictionary look-up with some word rearrangement) 
indirect (via some intermediary internal language) 
proving theorems in various parts, of mathematics 
recognition of individual hand-printed characters drawn 
from a small class (e.g., numerals) 
reading text in variable fonts reading passages in handwriting 
reading Chinese or Japanese printed characters 
reading Chinese or Japanese handwritten characters 
decomposition of a scene into separate objects 
identification of separate objects in a scene 
recognition of objects portrayed in sketches by people 
putting together whole words and sentences 
making paraphrases of longer pieces of text 
using knowledge of the real world in order to understand passages 
creating original thoughts or works of art 
constructing proofs in one domain of mathematics based on 
heuristics, or rules of thumb, which pertain to 
"flattened" rules-but that is an immense task. 
slightly so that S approximated D 
the much simpler and more efficient static evaluation function. 
from improvements in the other in a recursive way. 
checkers, and that seems to close the book on that. 
in spewing forth digits of n. 
geometry-the so-called "pons asinorum", or "bridge of asses". 
FIGURE 114. Pons Asinorum Proof (found 
by Pappus [-300 A.D. J and Gelernter's 
program [—1960 A.D. ]). Problem: To show 
that the base angles of an isosceles triangle 
are equal. Solution: As the triangle is 
isosceles, AP and AP' are of equal length. 
Therefore triangles PAP' and PAP are 
particular, the two base angles are equal. 
the program as the (just plain) author. 
"Johnny", as it began. In Mathews' own words, this is 
would undoubtedly have been a better choice." 
composer, even though the over-all structure 
machine with which it was set. 
creature behind the scenes, somewhere off stage. 
question recently raged in the pages of Science magazine. 
most circumstances, the driving force behind such pieces is a 
prove to be tricky- which is just Zeno's point, of course. 
FIGURE 115. Zeno's endless goal tree, for getting from A to B. 
gate. These dogs realize that what on first 
the distance between you and your goal is very small. 
The I-Mode and the M-Mode Again 
something like heading for the gate to get your MU-bone. 
between the M-mode and the I-mode in creative thought. 
number of heuristics, and also some special tricks. 
The Crux of Al: Representation of Knowledge 
DNA and Proteins Help Give Some Perspective 
Representing Knowledge in a Logical Formalism 
forms of comparisons to be carried out rather naturally. 
to pull something out of storage. 
From Computer Haiku to an RTN-Grammar 
come to this project in a rather interest- 
The worthy machine ought not always paste the astronomer. 
The lucky girl which can always quack will never sure quack. 
it was being achieved by the serf. 
from track to track by a myriad neural shunting-engines ... 
The words were empty formal symbols, as empty 
Splendour of Islamic Calligraphy (New York: Rizzoli, 1976). 
Many were false, many were nonsense. 
A SMALL YOUNG MASTER WANTED A SMALL WHITE GNARLED 
BOWL. "HOW CAN WE LEARN AND UNDERSTAND WITHOUT STUDY" 
THE YOUNG MASTER ASKED A LARGE CONFUSED MASTER. THE 
CONFUSED MASTER WALKED FROM A BROWN HARD MOUNTAIN TO A 
WHITE SOFT MOUNTAIN WITH A SMALL RED STONY BOWL. THE 
CONFUSED MASTER SAW A RED SOFT HUT.THE CONFUSED MASTER 
WANTED THE HUT. "WHY DID BODHIDHARMA COME INTO CHINA?" 
ASKED A LARGE ENLIGHTENED STUDENT. "THE PEACHES ARE 
LARGE", THE STUDENT ANSWERED THE CONFUSED MASTER.w "HOW 
CAN WE LEARN AND UNDERSTAND WITHOUT STUDY?" THE 
CONFUSED MASTER ASKED A LARGE OLD MASTER. THE OLD MASTER 
WALKED FROM A WHITE STONY G0025. THE OLD MASTER GOT LOST. 
any programming formalism, so if musical meaning is captur- 
thought-not just a grammar of music. 
intuitively that there is "nothing there"? 
FIGURE 117. Mental Arithmetic, by Rene Magritte (1931). 
(1) understand questions in English about the situation; 
(2) give answers in English to questions about the situation; 
(3) understand requests in English to manipulate the blocks; 
(5) understand what it had done, and for what reasons; 
(6) describe its actions and their reasons, in English. 
compare it to looking at an orchard from a "natural" angle. 
created is then executed to achieve the desired effect." 
word as far as PLANNER is concerned. 
Let us listen to further comments from Winograd on SHRDLU: 
Among the examples which Winograd cites is the following: 
writing a program which can fully handle the top five words 
section 1 1 of the previous Dialogue). 
one over the other has major consequences. 
And now, a few more words from Winograd: 
deductive processes and ask questions about the real world. As an 
pyramid". It will then go on to find "on the block 
Here are some final comments on SHRDLU by Winograd. 
and EQUIDIMENSIONAL-all parts of the sys 
Language (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973), p. 172. 
in advance to look only at that particular object. 
looking something like what is below: 
object name or VARIABLE (indicated by the prefix 
SHRDLU would be freed up, to work on new tasks. 
should carry out what part of a task. 
Tortoise and his friend the Sloth are still awaited. 
(The Sloth and Tortoise dismount and come in.) 
Sloth: It's built by a company that also makes teeter- teeters. 
Achilles: I see, I see. What is that knob on it? 
Achilles: Aha! And how many speeds does it have? 
how much I enjoyed hearing your orchestra perform last night. 
Sloth: Thank you. Well, do tell me about the concert. 
Sloth: The famous Job and Sebastian? 
marvelous piano concerto for two left hands. The 
Achilles: Who is playing today, Mr. Crab? 
Achilles: I'm rooting for Home Team. I always do. 
antipodes, the more I root for it. 
wouldn't want to visit them. They're so far away. 
Tortoise: That's my kind of place. 
Crab: It's game time. I think I'll turn on the TV. 
football stadium a ears in bright vivid color on the screen.) 
That was Mool in on the tackle for Home Team. 
side, surprising Flampson, and just about tackle him! 
yard loss on a triple reverse! 
Sloth: I love it! A sensational play! 
It's third down and 10, and they badly need a first down.) 
could've run all the way to the end zone for a touchdown! 
Let's watch the subjunctive instant replay. 
(And on the screen the same lineup appears as before.) 
hypothetical a little way out, you know. 
Crab: Not particularly, if you have a Subjunc-TV. 
Achilles: Is that one grade below a junk TV? 
particularly good for football games and such. I just got mine. 
Achilles: Why does it have so many knobs and fancy dials? 
this talk of "broadcasting in the subjunctive mode" is about. 
Tortoise: I could devour a few. 
a long high one away. It's coming down near Tedzilliger 
what these different knobs do. (Spins a few at random.) 
that's the way the ball bounces. 
Achilles: What do you think of THAT, Mr. Sloth? 
Crab: So how do you three find my Subjunc-TV? 
That's a contradiction in terms. How preposterous! 
(The Crab twiddles two knobs, and steps back.) 
Announcer: There are four away, and — 
Sloth: Bah! You might as well transport this game to the Moon. 
a quarter-mile from where it was released.) 
Announcer: And now let's watch the subjunctive instant replay. 
were played in four spatial dimensions. 
Achilles: Can you do this on any TV? 
circuit which is quite difficult to make. 
can handle ANYTHING you throw at them. 
concept-slippers. Let's get on with the game! 
Achilles: Where did you get this Subjunc-TV, Mr. Crab? 
some crazy impulse grabbed me, and I bought one ticket. 
Achilles: What about you Mr. Sloth? 
Sloth: I admit, I bought one, just to humor old Crab. 
Crab: I was flabbergasted at my good fortune. 
didn't win it at all. Achilles: He ALMOST won, though ... 
my number was far closer than His, but you can't fight City Hall. 
circumstances just been ever so slightly different ... 
Kennedy was skipper of the PT 109.) 
lies in the mind, not in the external facts. 
What slips naturally and what doesn't-and why? 
might never have been painted. 1 
The New The New Yorker commented: 
us know deep down what is "sensible" to slip, and what is "silly": 
see a window onto a world of possibilities. 
and categorize their perceptions of the world. 
Steiner, who, in his book After Babel, has written: 
fundamental to the dynamics of human feeling... . 
Finally, Steiner sings a counterfactual hymn to counterfactuality: 
possibilities beyond the treadmill of organic decay and death . 
imagine a world in which the very notion of 
when watching a football game on TV). 
there may be several different drawer slots that need to be 
subframes). This can go on, recursively. 
too disrupted, or creating too much disruption, in the process. 
in, but loosely bound, drawer in each of its 
difficult problems of frame theory to 
one hundred-is shown in Figure 119. 
Park, N.,J.: Hayden Book Co., Spartan Books, 1970).] 
The problem is "How do Class I boxes differ from Class II boxes?" 
boxes. They will typically use simple descriptors such as 
Also, definite and indefinite numerical descriptors can be used: 
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... many, few, etc. 
More complicated descriptors may be built up, such as 
further to the right of, less close to, almost parallel to, etc. 
one large shape and two small shapes 
one curved shape and two straight-edged shapes 
a circle with the same kind of shape on the inside and outside. 
original drawing, but would be able to recognize drawings 
anybody into thinking it was by Mozart. 
a circle with three rectangular intrusions. 
trick, then, is to devise explicit rules that say how to 
make tentative descriptions for each box; 
finding out what makes the two Classes differ. 
other is the idea of Sam-a "sameness detector". 
template is tentatively restructured to be this: 
And a description of box II-A of the same BP might be 
pull out some English sentences from this diagram. 
three little o's in interior: equilateral triangle 
three little o's in exterior: equilateral triangle 
the net is shown; it codes for the ideas that 
A closed curve has an interior and an exterior. 
understanding of the drawings in the boxes. 
the right answer in it. In BP 33 (Fig. 124), one might at first 
slightly, to slip into variations which may be correct. 
Nothing should be absolutely rigid. On 
concept of "line train"-a tricky proposition, to say the least. 
disliking it. (This begins to sound rather complex, doesn't it?) 
template for meta-descriptions have? Perhaps these, among others: 
(template-less) description might look like this: 
vertical line segment mounted on the horizontal line segment 
vertical line segment mounted on the horizontal line segment 
vertical line segment mounted on the horizontal line segment 
concepts used: vertical-horizontal, line segment, mounted on 
via the method of metadescriptions, as the mark of Class II. 
Now you might object that in this case, resorting to the method of 
are involved than the preprocessor knows about. 
filtering is required to solve problem BP 58 (Fig. 128). 
box-say one with as few objects in it as possible. It can be 
Science and the World of Bongard Problems 
sought, templates are made, unmade, and remade; 
FIGURE 130. Bongard problems 70-71. [From M. Bongard, Pattern 
lower the level, the smaller the jumps 
Connections to Other Types of Thought 
we do. So I believe that the skill of solving Bongard 
lighting change, distance change, angle change, etc.) 
actors can be arbitrarily long and complex. 
premature, but it is an optimistic way of looking at things. 
message passing that exists in the cell. 
some precise instant when a fusion takes place? 
DNA. And the same goes for "recombinant symbols". 
was a crab canon in the Musical Offering. At that time, I had just 
the "dramatic line" level would be most appropriate. 
FIGURE 131. A schematic diagram of the Dialogue Crab Canon. 
pleasing unity of Godel, Escher, and Bach. 
genotype coding for a phenotype: the 
that of the abstract notion of a crab canon: 
a structure having two parts which do the same thing, 
onto that of "dialogue" involved several auxiliary mappings; in 
a plural thing made singular and re-pluralized wrongly. 
to be mapped at a high level of abstraction. 
portly, and most are quite inflated!) 
Many other representations for the same object exist, such as 
one: this is the forced match. 
finding a match which I found appealing. 
split second that you do this? 
symbol are dislodged and other parts remain. 
creators, then the approach to creativity has begun. 
analogy is like a ninth-chord-wide but dissonant. 
Picking up Patterns on All Levels 
recognizing patterns: it had no sense of over and overview. 
fluid, despite, the coarse grain of its components. 
joke which illustrates the open-endedness of real-life situations: 
A man took a ride in an airplane. 
Fortunately, he had a parachute on. 
Fortunately, there was a haystack below him. 
Unfortunately, there was a pitchfork sticking out of it. 
airplane, exit, parachute, falling, etc., etc. 
Or consider this tiny yet poignant story: 
and burst. Margie cried and cried.' 
unwilling, for various reasons, to take this sort of point 
We'll come back to this question in the next Chapter. 
this point, for there is so far to go! 
Question: Will a computer program ever write beautiful music? 
Question: Will emotions be explicitly programmed into a machine? 
which is solely responsible for it, however! 
Question: Will a thinking computer be able to add fast? 
"I think; therefore I have no access 
calculator alone-don't throw in the intelligence! 
Question: Will there be chess programs that can beat anyone? 
Question: Will Al programs ever become "superintelligent"? 
then. Won't there be any differences? 
are when we have made an intelligent program? 
This time, we find Achilles and the Tortoise visiting 
the dwelling of their new friend, the Sloth. 
Achilles: Shall I tell you of my droll footrace with Mr. T? 
Sloth: You caught up, didn't you? 
Sloth: The gap kept getting shorter and shorter, so you could. 
Tortoise: Please don't. It sounds very flat. 
piano. I'm not sure I dare. Sloth: You should try. 
(Achilles sits down and starts playing a simple tune.) 
Tortoise: You can't play the piano, Achilles. You shouldn't try. 
ever thought up something so cockeyed as that? 
Tortoise: That's so characteristic of sloths. They hang from 
he appropriate for playing inverted melodies such 
Sloth: That's not so characteristic of sloths. 
carried it off very skillfully. What's your opinion, Mr. T? 
for that combination of voices. Wouldn't you agree, Mr. Sloth? 
Tortoise: Out of gas. So long! {Trudges wearily out the door.) 
"SAT", you could never guess what they stand for. 
French fries! Too bad Mr. T won't be here to share them. 
IN THE CHAPTER before last, I 
which can beat its designer. In light of 
that, it is interesting to hear how Samuel 
himself feels about the issue of 
extracts are taken from a rebuttal by 
Samuel, written in 1960, to an article by 
It is my conviction that machines 
sense implied by Wiener in his 
thesis that "machines can and do 
of their designers, and that in 
A machine is not a genie, it does 
not work by magic, it does not 
possess a will, and, Wiener to the 
has not been put in, barring, of 
machine seems to manifest are the 
abstraction, just as Wiener does, in 
which the program will not only 
but will also modify the rules 
which are used in their derivation, 
or in which it will modify the ways 
in which it modifies the rules, and 
and cannot [italics are his do any 
of these things until it has been 
instructed as to how to proceed. 
There is and logically there must 
and elaboration in this process of 
carrying out man's wishes and (ii) 
machine of a will of its own. To 
believe in magic or to believe that 
the existence of man's will is an 
illusion and that man's actions are 
This reminds me of the Lewis Carroll 
try to explain why. Samuel bases his 
(or will) on the notion that any 
Carroll's Tortoise argues that no step of 
reasoning, no matter how simple, can be 
done without invoking some rule on a 
higher level to justify the step in 
also a step of reasoning, one must resort 
to a yet higher-level rule, and so on. 
with the Tortoise's argument, and I 
with Samuel's argument. To show how 
the fallacies are analogous, I now shall 
as is well known, God helps those who 
helps all those, and only those, who don't 
help themselves. Does the Devil help 
people, because as is plain to 
anyone, we do manage to carry out 
many steps of reasoning, all the 
operate without need of rules: we 
other hand, as an argument against 
depend on rules explicitly, and so 
it couldn't get off the ground 
unless it had metarules telling it 
apply its metarules, and so on. We 
may conclude that the ability to 
reason can never be mechanized. It 
anything without having a rule telling it 
to do so. In fact, machines get around the 
Tortoise's silly objections as easily as 
people do, and moreover for exactly the 
same reason: both machines and people 
are made of hardware which runs all by 
itself, according to the laws of physics. 
There is no need to rely on "rules that 
permit you to apply the rules", because 
"meta"'s in front-are embedded in the 
Samuel's point, if I may caricature it, is 
No computer ever "wants" to do 
Only if it could program itself 
would it have its own sense of 
In his argument, Samuel reconstructs the 
by "to want". He implies that behind any 
mechanization of desire, there has to be 
either an infinite regress or worse, a 
closed loop. If this is why computers 
have no will of their own, what about 
people? The same criterion would imply 
What is wrong with this Devil's advocate 
point of view? It is obviously the 
assumption that a machine cannot do 
and chose his own wants (as well 
as choosing to choose his own 
wants, etc.), he cannot be said to 
It makes you pause to think where your 
sense of having a will comes from. 
Unless you are a soulist, you'll probably 
say that it comes from your brain-a piece 
of hardware which you did not design or 
choose. And yet that doesn't diminish 
your sense that you want certain things, 
and not others. You aren't a "self- 
would be), but you still do have a sense 
of desires, and it springs from the 
wills despite the fact that no magic 
memory from out of nowhere (a "self- 
wills for much the same reason as you 
structure on many levels of hardware 
argument doesn't say anything about the 
machines, after all. (And indeed, will 
Right after the Two-Part Invention, I 
wrote that a central issue of this book 
would be: "Do words and thoughts 
follow formal rules?" One major thrust 
of the book has been to point out the 
I have tried to show why the ultimate 
answer to the question is, "Yes-provided 
that you go down to the lowest level-the 
up a concept which I want to pursue. It is 
this: When we humans think, we 
certainly do change our own mental 
rules, and we change the rules that 
change the rules, and on and on-but 
these are, so to speak, "software rules". 
However, the rules at bottom do not 
change. Neurons run in the same simple 
way the whole time. You can't "think" 
nonneural way, although you can make 
your mind change style or subject of 
thought. Like Achilles in the Prelude, 
Ant Fugue, you have access to your 
thoughts but not to your neurons. 
Software rules on various levels can 
change; hardware rules cannot-in fact, to 
their rigidity is due the software's 
flexibility! Not a paradox at all, but a 
hardware is what I wish to pursue in this 
final Chapter, developing it into a set of 
variations on a theme. Some of the 
variations may seem to be quite far- 
fetched, but I hope that by the time I 
close the loop by returning to brains, 
consciousness, you will have found an 
invariant core in all the variations. 
My main aim in this Chapter is to 
communicate some of the images which 
help me to visualize how consciousness 
rises out of the jungle of neurons; to 
these intuitions are valuable and may 
perhaps help others a 14tle to come to 
clearer formulations of their own images 
of what makes minds run. I could not 
hope for more than that my own mind's 
blurry images of minds and images 
should catalyze the formation of sharper 
images of minds and images in other 
A first variation, then, concerns games in 
which on your turn, you may modify the 
rules. Think of chess. Clearly the rules 
stay the same, just the board position 
changes on each move. But let's invent a 
variation in which, on your turn, you can 
either make a move or change the rules. 
But how? At liberty? Can you turn it into 
be pointless. There must be some 
might allow you to redefine the knight's 
move. Instead of being l-and-then-2, it 
could be m-and-then-n where m and n 
are arbitrary natural numbers; and on 
your turn you could change either m or n 
by plus or minus l.-So it could go from 
1-2 to 1-3 to 0-3 to 0-4 to 0-5 to 1-5 to 2- 
5 ... Then there could be rules about 
redefining the bishop's moves, and the 
other pieces' moves as well. There could 
be rules about adding new squares, or 
Now we have two layers of rules: 
those which tell how to move pieces, and 
those which tell how to change the rules. 
So we have rules and metarules. The 
metametarules by which we can change 
the metarules. It is not so obvious how to 
do this. The reason it is easy to 
formulate rules for moving pieces is that 
pieces move in a formalized space: the 
checkerboard. If you can devise a simple 
formal notation for expressing rules and 
metarules, then to manipulate them will 
be like manipulating strings formally, or 
even like manipulating chess pieces. To 
carry things to their logical extreme, you 
could even express rules and metarules 
as positions on auxiliary chess boards. 
Then an arbitrary chess position could be 
read as a game, or as a set of rules, or as 
a set of metarules, etc., depending on 
which interpretation you place on it. Of 
course, both players would have to agree 
Now we can have any number of 
adjacent chess boards: one for the game, 
one for rules, one for metarules, one for 
metametarules, and so on, as far as you 
care to carry it. On your turn, you may 
make a move on any one of the chess 
boards except the top-level one, using 
the rules which apply (they come from 
the next chess board up in the hierarchy). 
quite disoriented by the fact that almost 
chess board can't be changed, because 
you don't have rules telling how to 
change it. It is inviolate. There is more 
that is inviolate: the conventions by 
interpreted, the agreement to take turns, 
the agreement that each person may 
change one chess board each turn-and 
you will find more if you examine the 
Now it is possible to go considerably 
further in removing the pillars by which 
orientation is achieved. One step at a 
time. .. We begin by collapsing the 
whole array of boards into a single 
board. What is meant by this? There will 
be two ways of interpreting the board: 
(1) as pieces to be moved; (2) as rules 
for moving the pieces. On your turn, you 
rules! Thus, the rules constantly change 
for that matter, of real genetics. The 
What was once a nice clean hierarchical 
setup has become a Strange Loop, Or 
the rules, the rules determine the moves, 
round and round the mulberry bush ... 
There are still different levels, but the 
Now, part of what was inviolate 
has been made changeable. But there is 
still plenty that is inviolate. Just as 
you and your opponent by which you 
interpret the board as a collection of 
rules. There is the agreement to take 
that the notion of different levels has 
survived, in an unexpected way. There is 
an Inviolate level-let's call it the I-level- 
reside; there is also a Tangled level-the 
resides. So these two levels are still 
happens on the T-level, but the T-level 
does not and cannot affect the I-level. 
No matter that the T-level itself is a 
Tangled Hierarchy-it is still governed by 
a set of conventions outside of itself. 
And that is the important point. 
As you have no doubt imagined, 
there is nothing to stop us from doing the 
level and the T-level by making the 
subject to revision, according to the 
position on the chess board. But in order 
to carry out such a "supertangling", 
you'd have to agree with your opponent 
the two levels-and the act of doing so 
would create a new level, a new sort of 
inviolate level on top of the 
"supertangled" level (or underneath it, if 
you prefer). And this could continue 
going on and on. In fact, the 'jumps" 
which are being made are very similar to 
improvements on TNT. Each time you 
think you have reached the end, there is 
some new variation on the theme of 
jumping out of the system which 
requires a kind of creativity to spot. 
But I am not interested in pursuing the 
strange topic of the ever more abstruse 
tanglings which can arise in self- 
modifying chess. The point of this has 
been to show, in a somewhat graphic 
way, how in any system there is always 
unassailable by the rules on other levels, 
no matter how tangled their interaction 
may be among themselves. An amusing 
riddle from Chapter IV illustrates this 
same idea in a slightly different context. 
Perhaps it will catch you off guard: 
world of Z, T, and E, and should be represented as being so. 
of a hand drawing it. And so on. 
FIGURE 135. Drawing Hands, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1948). 
A Neural Tangle Supporting a Symbol Tangle 
hundreds of billions of axons, joining them all together. 
so there is no sense of strangeness. 
minds use spatial imagery with a sort of mental topology. 
by forgetting the existence of Escher. For 
data. The LISP interpreter itself is shielded from changes. 
would be so unexpected, so Tangled-so Strange! 
is to forces which seem less well defined by 
would search for laws governing anarchical societies. 
exploitation-a great area for selffulfilling prophecies. 
Tangles Involving Science and the Occult 
of A?' To show that, you need meta- 
its own search for knowledge and understanding. 
Introspection and Insanity: A Godelian Problem 
which assert their own consistency are inconsistent ... 
Can We Understand Our Own" Minds or Brains? 
limitative Theorems does apply, so my self-understanding 
contradictions, and how can I ever understand that? 
trying to deal with it just leads nowhere. 
and I will die, but the world will go on without me." 
by the dichotomy between subject and object, or observer 
Symbol vs. Object in Modern Music and Art 
but in either case drained of all symbolic value. 
around the stage and through obstacles, like a battering ram. 
more influential members were Dali, Magritte, de Chirico, Tanguy. 
FIGURE 137. Common Sense, by Rene Magritte (1945-46). 
FIGURE 138. The Two Mysteries, by Rene Magritte (1966). 
fact, a still life with nonstandard subject matter. 
of the painting self-destructs in a most Godelian way. 
FIGURE 139. Smoke Signal. [Drawing by the author.'] 
FIGURE 140. Pipe Dream. [Drawing by the author.] 
"ism". Being a suffix without a prefix, it suggests an ideology 
FIGURE 141. The Human Condition I, by Rene Magritte (1933). 
Undecidability Is Inseparable from a High-Level Viewpoint 
Consciousness as an Intrinsically High-Level Phenomenon 
Strange Loops as the Crux of Consciousness 
Tangled Hierarchy of mentality, just as in the Central Dogmap. 
Brain, and Humanist Values", from which I quote a little here: 
the emergence of the living cell.' 
the idea that symbols are the high-level entities to 
relationship between symbols, the self-symbol, and free will. 
the program runs down precisely the same channels each time. 
it was the first time around? 
awareness here-and no sense of free will. 
outcome, it makes no difference that the symbols are present. 
A Godel Vortex Where All Levels Cross 
a high-level description of the process which takes place when the 
FIGURE 142. Print Gallery, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1956). 
that is why Godel is so deeply woven into the fabric of my book. 
An Escher Vortex Where All Levels Cross 
FIGURE 143. Abstract diagram ofM. C. Escher's Print Gallery. 
representing the top half alone (Fig. 144). 
Print Gallery, such as that in Figure 145. 
FIGURE 145. Further collapse of Figure 143. 
FIGURE 146. Another way of collapsing Figure 143. 
compounding three distinct senses of "in". 
certainly not see, such as Escher's 
A Bach Vortex Where All Levels Cross 
six steps, as is shown in Figure 147. It is too . 
forms a true closed loop when Shepard tones are used. 
original, literal sense of the word.' 
woven into an Eternal Golden Braid. 
and then, a little scornfully, flicks it off. 
(Enter the Tortoise, carrying his violin.) 
moment there keeps me fit for fiddling. 
(Enter the Crab, carrying his flute.) 
Achilles, there is no music purer than the Musical Offering. 
Tortoise: Shall we sit down and play? 
equipment, which you have in here? 
Achilles: Do they have a special name? 
end of a book I came across recently. 
towards the end; so perhaps it's forgivable. 
pronouncement on the free will question. 
to every normal person at one time or another. 
series of Dialogues in a book. 
Crab: That's just what I had hoped. But he's always late. 
consistent with your being a character in a Dialogue. 
Crab: Oh, don't worry about offending me. 
thought of formulating the facts so concisely. 
Tortoise: Precisely-in literature. But where in real life? 
that's not enough to convince me that I'm a character in a 
Dialogue. Do you have any other arguments? 
conversation and babbled something funny and then left. 
there was a time symmetry to our encounter. 
Achilles: Oh, well, it's all the same to me. 
Tortoise: Fiddle' It makes a big difference, you know. 
how your conversation with Mr. T ran that day? 
"Good day, Mr. T". Is that right 
Crab: I just happen to have a transcript right here ... 
Achilles reads it, he begins to squirm and fidget noticeable.) 
Crab: Oh, here you are!' I thought you'd never arrive! 
Achilles: Who are you? I've never seen you before. 
the three of you are characters. 
Achilles: Pleased to meet you. My name is Achilles, and 
Author: Of course! You were the Crab in the Crab Canon. 
Author: You can put it that way if you want, Achilles. 
Achilles: Fictitious? I don't see anything fictitious about it! 
reached the top-or what you'd always taken to be the top! 
Achilles: I object to being likened to a mere hiccup! 
myself am but a hiccup in some higher author's brain. 
hard bones. You can't deny that' 
the background there is heard a Junn- soft oscillating sound.) 
Tortoise: Excuse me, but what was that strange electronic gurgle= 
show him in immediately, of course. 
INST. IMP. (ACAD. MORAL.) PARIS CORR., ACAD. AMER. ART. ET SC. 
BOSTON, REG. OECON. BORCSS., PHYS. HISI. NAT. GENEV., ACAD. REG. 
MONAC, HAFN., MASSIL., ET DIVION., SOCIUS., ACAD. IMP., ET REG. 
PETROP., NEAP., BRUX., PATAV., GEORG. FLOREN, LYNCEI ROM., MCT., 
honor of a visit-but this is a totally unexpected surprise. 
Achilles: Does he play a musical instrument? 
that we give him a ten-canon salute. 
order of performance, and hand it to him as he comes in! 
and today my wish is at last fulfilled. 
Bach, that organist and composer with no rival. 
the slightest knowledge by means of hearsay. 
Babbage: Very pleased to make your acquaintance, I'm sure. 
lets his fingers run over the keyboard.) 
A most pleasant touch. Crab: I am glad you like it. 
Tortoise: Do you do any graphics, Mr. Babbage? Babbage: I can try. 
seems an inexhaustible mine of beauty. 
Tortoise: I think that is because they are all growing in size. 
Babbage: The name sounds familiar; kindly refresh my memory. 
Tell me-did you have any specific kind of intelligence in mind? 
to play a reasonable game of chess. 
And this Theme is my favorite. 
smart-stupids, and begins to type away.) 
two names seems more apt in this 
Crab: Hmm ... very elegant, I must say. Do I play Black or White? 
Tortoise: I don't want to play either. You two play. 
Babbage: Perhaps we should let you play alone. 
rest of you can amuse yourselves for a short while. 
and I know you enjoy electronics ... 
Tortoise: I should be delighted, Mr. C. 
Tortoise: I'll give it a whirl. 
Crab: A fine idea. You'll find everything you need in the kitchen. 
chess match, while the Author goes off to find Achilles.) 
grounds for praise, in this case 
acting smart-stupids. What have you found, Mr. T? 
what's the story with our coffee? 
Tortoise: Well, what was the outcome of the chess match? 
for the first time in history! 
FIGURE 149. Verbum, by M. C. Escher (lithograph, 1942). 
Babbage: I am eager to hear your idea. 
FIGURE 150. The Crab's Guest: BABBAGE, C. 
intelligence is sixfold that of myself! 
him that such an idea is a contradiction in terms! 
us go over to my most advanced smart-stupid. 
stupid, and everyone appears a little relieved.) 
Peering out at them is a human face.) 
Achilles: But I'm sure I saw it happen the way I described. 
Turing: You see how confused Charles Babbage is? 
belligerent and argumentative than I'd expected. 
belligerent and argumentative than I'd expected. 
having invented it all on his own! 
'round-as your very own test will soon reveal. 
Turing: My test. Please, consider it YOURS. 
Babbage: MY test? Nay, consider it YOURS. 
Achilles: Who will do the interrogation? 
SONNET ON THE SUBJECT OF THE FORTH BRIDGE. 
Screen X: THERE ONCE WAS A LISPER FROM FORTH 
WHO WANTED TO GO TO THE NORTH. 
AND THE BRIDGE O'ER THE FIRTH, 
Screen Y: THAT'S NO SONNET; THAT'S A MERE LIMERICK. I WOULD NEVER 
Screen X: WELL, I NEVER WAS ANY GOOD AT POETRY, YOU KNOW. 
Screen Y: IT DOESN'T TAKE MUCH SKILL IN POETRY TO KNOW THE 
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LIMERICK AND A SONNET. 
Screen X: WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT? HERE I WRITE A THREE PART 
CHESS-FUGUE FOR YOU, AND YOU ASK ME IF I PLAY CHESS? 
Screen Y: I'M SICK OF CHESS. LET'S TALK ABOUT POETRY. 
Tortoise: IN THE FIRST LINE OF YOUR SONNET WHICH READS, "SHALL. I 
COMPARE THEE TO A SUMMER'S DAY", WOULD NOT "A SPRING DAY" DO 
Screen X: I'D MUCH SOONER BE COMPARED TO A HICCUP, FRANKLY, EVEN 
Tortoise: HOW ABOUT "A WINTER'S DAY"? THAT WOULD SCAN ALL RIGHT. 
Screen Y: NO WAY. I LIKE "HICCUP" FAR BETTER. SPEAKING OF WHICH, I 
KNOW A GREAT CURE FOR THE HICCUPS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR IT? 
Crab: What sort of a book is it that you've written? 
Author: I have a copy right here. Would you like to look at it? 
(The two of them sit down together, with Achilles nearby.) 
might look at the Prelude, Ant Fugue. 
Crab: How do you do a fugue in a Dialogue? 
they can branch off into freer conversation. 
Author: That is the exact spirit of my Dialogues. 
write a fugue without them. Do you use any of those? 
employs verbal versions of both inversion and augmentation. 
Achilles: I find that comment a little elusive, frankly. 
Author: Don't worry, Achilles-one day you'll understand it. 
then the Tortoise makes a comment about it. 
the form and content of what he's reading. 
on the isomorphism set up by Godel numbering. 
same form. Godel should have just thought up LISP, and then 
itself, the proof of his Theorem would have been so much simpler! 
Achilles: How come you talk so much about indirect self-reference? 
Author: Quite simple-indirect self-reference is my favorite topic. 
"tonic"-that is to say, the original topic. 
(Flips through the manuscript, halting at the last Dialogue.) 
Crab: It does? What kinds of things do you have me say? 
can't. But you have the feeling of doing it freely, don't 
Dialogue in your book also a fugue? 
Offering-and also by the story of the Musical Offering. 
improvised an entire three-part ricercar on the spot, as I recall. 
incompatible with knowing how one does it. 
form the Bach piece it's based on? 
thins out to three voices only. I imitate that in the 
Crab: And how do you represent the King's Theme in your Dialogue? 
Crab: Compose Ever Greater Artificial Brains (By And By). 
Crab: I simply HAD to. He knows. 
that involve, if you can summarize it? 
to know how to combine those three. They seem an 
FIGURE 151. The Crab's Theme: C-Eb-G-Ab-B-B-A-B. 
Tortoise: A harmonious triad, I'd say. 
Babbage: A major triad, I'd say. 
Turing: A minor triad, I'd say. 
of hierarchical systems and the Crab's Theme. 
Achilles: That sounds most promising. Can we begin tonight? 
Musical Offering. What do you say to that? 
Crab: I could get along very well with such a program. 
school turned to the Russo-Japanese War, Kiyoaki
Matsugae asked his closest friend, Shigekuni Honda,
how much he could remember about it. Shigekuni’s
memories were vague—he just barely recalled having
been taken once to the front gate to watch a torchlight
procession. The year the war ended they had both
been eleven, and it seemed to Kiyoaki that they
should be able to remember it a little more accurately.
Their classmates who talked so knowingly about the
war were for the most part merely embellishing hazy
memories with tidbits they had picked up from grown-
ups.
Two members of the Matsugae family, Kiyoaki’s
uncles, had been killed. His grandmother still received
a pension from the government, thanks to these two
sons she had lost, but she never used the money; she
left the envelopes unopened on the ledge of the
household shrine. Perhaps that was why the
photograph which impressed Kiyoaki most out of the
entire collection of war photographs in the house was
one entitled “Vicinity of Tokuri Temple: Memorial
Services for the War Dead” and dated June 26, 1904,
the thirty-seventh year of the Meiji era. This
photograph, printed in sepia ink, was quite unlike the
usual cluttered mementos of the war. It had been
composed with an artist’s eye for structure: it really
made it seem as if the thousands of soldiers who
were present were arranged deliberately, like figures
in a painting, to focus the entire attention of the viewer
on the tall cenotaph of unpainted wood in their midst.
In the distance, mountains sloped gently in the haze,
rising in easy stages to the left of the picture, away
from the broad plain at their foot; to the right, they
merged in the distance with scattered clumps of
trees, vanishing into the yellow dust of the horizon.
And here, instead of mountains, there was a row of
trees growing taller as the eye moved to the right; a
yellow sky showed through the gaps between them.
Six very tall trees stood at graceful intervals in the
foreground, each placed so as to complement the
overall harmony of the landscape. It was impossible to
tell what kind they were, but their heavy top branches
seemed to bend in the wind with a tragic grandeur.
The distant expanse of plains glowed faintly; this
side of the mountains, the vegetation lay flat and
desolate. At the center of the picture, minute, stood
the plain wooden cenotaph and the altar with flowers
lying on it, its white cloth twisted by the wind.
For the rest you saw nothing but soldiers,
thousands of them. In the foreground, they were turned
away from the camera to reveal the white sunshields
hanging from their caps and the diagonal leather
straps across their backs. They had not formed up in
neat ranks, but were clustered in groups, heads
drooping. A mere handful in the lower left corner had
half-turned their dark faces toward the camera, like
figures in a Renaissance painting. Farther behind
them, a host of soldiers stretched away in an
immense semicircle to the ends of the plain, so many
men that it was quite impossible to tell one from
another, and more were grouped far away among the
trees.
The figures of these soldiers, in both foreground
and rear, were bathed in a strange half-light that
outlined leggings and boots and picked out the curves
of bent shoulders and the napes of necks. This light
charged the entire picture with an indescribable
sense of grief.
From these men, there emanated a tangible
emotion that broke in a wave against the small white
altar, the flowers, the cenotaph in their midst. From
this enormous mass stretching to the edge of the
plain, a single thought, beyond all power of human
expression, bore down like a great, heavy ring of iron
on the center.
Both its age and its sepia ink tinged the
photograph with an atmosphere of infinite poignance.
∗
Kiyoaki was eighteen. Nothing in the household
where he had been born would account for his being
so sensitive, so prone to melancholy. One would have
been hard pressed to find, in that rambling house built
on high ground near Shibuya, anyone who in any way
shared his sensibilities. It was an old samurai family,
but Kiyoaki’s father, Marquis Matsugae, embarrassed
by the humble position his forebears had occupied as
recently as the end of the shogunate fifty years before,
had sent the boy, still a very small child, to be brought
up in the household of a court nobleman. Had he not
done so, Kiyoaki would probably not have developed
into so sensitive a young man.
Marquis Matsugae’s residence occupied a large
tract of land beyond Shibuya, on the outskirts of
Tokyo. The many buildings spread out over a hundred
acres, their roofs rising in an exciting counterpoise.
The main house was of Japanese architecture, but in
the corner of the park stood an imposing Western-
style house designed by an Englishman. It was said to
be one of four residences in Japan—Marshal
Oyama’s was the first—that one might enter without
removing one’s outdoor shoes.
In the middle of the park a large pond spread out
against the backdrop of a hill covered with maples.
The pond was big enough to boat on; it had an island
in the middle, water lilies in flower, and even water
shields that could be picked for the kitchen. The
drawing-room of the main house faced the pond, as
did the banqueting room of the Western house.
Some two hundred stone lanterns were scattered at
random along the banks and on the island, which also
boasted three cranes made out of cast-iron, two
stretching their long necks to the sky and the other
with its head bent low.
Water sprang from its source at the crest of the
maple hill and descended the slopes in several falls;
the stream then passed beneath a stone bridge and
dropped into a pool that was shaded by red rocks
from the island of Sado, before flowing into the pond
at a spot where, in season, a patch of lovely irises
bloomed. The pond was stocked both with carp and
winter crucian. Twice a year, the Marquis allowed
schoolchildren to come there on picnics.
When Kiyoaki was a child, the servants had
frightened him with stories about the snapping turtles.
Long ago, when his grandfather was ill, a friend had
presented him with a hundred of these turtles in the
hope that their meat would rebuild his strength.
Released into the pond, they had bred rapidly. Once a
snapping turtle got your finger in its beak, the servants
told Kiyoaki, that was the end of it.
There were several pavilions used for the tea
ceremony and also a large billiard room. Behind the
main house, wild yams grew thick in the grounds, and
there was a grove of cypresses planted by Kiyoaki’s
grandfather, and intersected by two paths. One led to
the rear gate; the other climbed a small hill to the
plateau at its top where a shrine stood at one corner
of a wide expanse of grass. This was where his
grandfather and two uncles were enshrined. The
steps, lanterns, and torii, all stone, were traditional,
but on either side of the steps, in place of the usual
lion-dogs, a pair of cannon shells from the Russo-
Japanese War had been painted white and set in the
ground. Somewhat lower down there was a shrine to
Inari, the harvest god, behind a magnificent trellis of
wisteria. The anniversary of his grandfather’s death
fell at the end of May; thus the wisteria was always in
full glory when the family gathered here for the
services, and the women would stand in its shade to
avoid the glare of the sun. Their white faces,
powdered even more meticulously than usual for the
occasion, were dappled in violet, as though some
exquisite shadow of death had fallen across their
cheeks.
The women. No one could count exactly the
multitude of women who lived in the Matsugae
mansion. Kiyoaki’s grandmother, of course, took
precedence over them all, though she preferred to live
in retirement at some distance from the main house,
with eight maids to attend to her needs. Every
morning, rain or shine, Kiyoaki’s mother would finish
dressing and go at once with two maids in attendance
to pay her respects to the old lady. And every day the
old lady would scrutinize her daughter-in-law’s
appearance.
“That hairstyle isn’t very becoming. Why not try
doing it in the high-collar way tomorrow? I’m sure it
would look better on you,” she would say, her eyes
narrowed lovingly. But when the hair was arranged the
Western way next morning, the old lady would
comment: “Really, Tsujiko, a high-collar hair-do simply
doesn’t suit an old-fashioned Japanese beauty like
you. Please try the Marumage style tomorrow.” And
so, for as long as Kiyoaki could remember, his
mother’s coiffure had been perpetually changing.
The hairdressers and their apprentices were in
constant attendance. Not only did his mother’s hair
demand their services but they had to look after more
than forty maids. However, they had shown concern
for the hair of a male member of the household on
only one occasion. This was when Kiyoaki was in his
first year at the middle school attached to Peers
School. The honor had fallen to him of being selected
to act as a page in the New Year’s festivities at the
Imperial Palace.
“I know the people at school want you to look like a
little monk,” said one of the hairdressers, “but that
shaved head just won’t look right with your fine
costume today.”
“But they’ll scold me if my hair is long.”
“All right, all right,” said the hairdresser. “Let me
see what I can do to improve it. You’ll be wearing a
hat in any case, but I think we can arrange things so
that even when you take it off, you’ll outshine all the
other young gentlemen.”
So he said, but Kiyoaki at thirteen had had his
head clipped so closely that it looked blue. When the
hairdresser parted his hair, the comb hurt, and the
hair oil stung his skin. For all the hairdresser’s
vaunted skill, the head reflected in the mirror looked
no different from any boy’s, yet at the banquet Kiyoaki
was praised for his extraordinary beauty.
The Emperor Meiji himself had once honored the
Matsugae residence with his presence. To entertain
his Imperial Majesty, an exhibition of sumo wrestling
had been staged beneath a huge gingko tree, around
which a space had been curtained off. The Emperor
watched from a balcony on the second floor of the
Western house. Kiyoaki confided to the hairdresser
that on that occasion he had been permitted to
appear before the Emperor, and His Majesty had
deigned to pat him on the head. That had taken place
four years ago, but it nevertheless was possible that
the Emperor might remember the head of a mere
page at the New Year’s festivities.
“Really?” exclaimed the hairdresser, overwhelmed.
“Young master, you mean to say you were caressed
by the Emperor himself!” So saying, he slid backward
across the tatami floor, clapping his hands in genuine
reverence at the child.
The costume of a page attending a lady of the court
consisted of matching blue velvet jacket and trousers,
the latter reaching to just below the knees. Down
either side of the jacket was a row of four large white
fluffy pompons and more were attached to the cuffs
and the trousers. The page wore a sword at his waist,
and the shoes on his white-stockinged feet were
fastened with black enamel buttons. A white silk tie
was knotted in the center of his broad lace collar, and
a tricorn hat, adorned with a large feather, hung down
his back on a silk cord. Each New Year, about twenty
sons of the nobility with outstanding school records
were selected to take turns—in fours—bearing the
train of the Empress, or in pairs to carry the train of an
imperial princess during the three days of festivities.
Kiyoaki carried the train of the Empress once and did
the same for the Princess Kasuga. When it was his
turn to bear the Empress’s train she had proceeded
with solemn dignity down corridors fragrant with the
musky incense lit by the palace attendants, and he
had stood in attendance behind her during the
audience. She was a woman of great elegance and
intelligence, but by then she was already elderly, close
to sixty. Princess Kasuga, however, was not much
more than thirty. Beautiful, elegant, imposing, she was
like a flower at its moment of perfection.
Even now, Kiyoaki could remember less about the
rather sober train favored by the Empress than about
the Princess’s broad sweep of white ermine, with its
scattered black spots and its border of pearls. The
Empress’s train had four loops for the pages’ hands,
and the Princess’s two. Kiyoaki and the others had
been so exhaustively drilled that they had no trouble in
holding firm while advancing at a steady pace.
Princess Kasuga’s hair had the blackness and
sheen of fine lacquer. Seen from behind, her
elaborate coiffure seemed to dissolve into the rich
white skin-textures of the nape of her neck, leaving
single strands against her bare shoulders whose faint
sheen was set off by her décolleté.
She held herself erect, and walked straight ahead
with a firm step, betraying no tremor to her
trainbearers, but in Kiyoaki’s eyes that great fan of
white fur seemed to glow and fade to the sound of
music, like a snow-covered peak first hidden, then
exposed by a fluid pattern of clouds. At that moment,
for the first time in his life, he was struck by the full
force of womanly beauty—a dazzling burst of
elegance that made his senses reel.
Princess Kasuga’s lavish use of French perfume
extended to her train, and its fragrance overpowered
the musky odor of incense. Some way down the
corridor, Kiyoaki stumbled for a moment, inadvertently
tugging at the train. The Princess turned her head
slightly, and, as a sign that she was not at all annoyed,
smiled gently at the youthful offender. Her gesture
went unnoticed; body perfectly erect in that fractional
turn, she had allowed Kiyoaki a glimpse of a corner of
her mouth. At that moment, a single wisp of hair
slipped over her clear white cheek, and out of the fine-
drawn corner of an eye a smile flashed in a spark of
black fire. But the pure line of her nose did not move.
It was as if nothing had happened . . . this fleeting
angle of the Princess’s face—too slight to be called a
profile—made Kiyoaki feel as if he had seen a
rainbow flicker for a bare instant through a prism of
pure crystal.
His father, Marquis Matsugae, watched his son’s
part in the festivities, absorbing the boy’s brilliant
appearance in his beautiful ceremonial costume, and
savoring the complacency of a man who sees a
lifelong dream fulfilled. This triumph dispelled
completely his lingering fears of still seeming an
imposter, for all his attempts to establish himself as
someone fit to receive the Emperor in his own home.
For now, in the person of his own son, the Marquis
had seen the ultimate fusion of the aristocratic and the
samurai traditions, a perfect congruence between the
old court nobles and the new nobility.
But as the ceremony continued, the Marquis’s
gratification at the praise people had lavished on the
boy’s looks changed to feelings of discomfort. At
thirteen, Kiyoaki was altogether too handsome.
Putting aside natural affection for his own son, the
Marquis could not help noticing that he stood out even
in comparison with the other pages. His pale cheeks
flushed crimson when he was excited, his brows were
sharply defined and his wide eyes, still childishly
earnest, were framed by long lashes. They were dark
and had a seductive glint in them. And so the Marquis
was roused by the flood of compliments to take note
of the exceptional beauty of his son and heir, and he
sensed something disquieting in it. He was touched
by an uneasy premonition. But Marquis Matsugae
was an extremely optimistic man, and he shook off his
discomfiture as soon as the ceremony was over.
Similar apprehensions were more persistent in the
mind of young Iinuma, who had come to live in the
Matsugae household as a boy of seventeen the year
before Kiyoaki’s service as a page. Iinuma had been
recommended as Kiyoaki’s personal tutor by the
middle school of his village in Kagoshima, and he had
been sent to the Matsugaes with testimonies to his
mental and physical abilities. The present Marquis’s
father was revered as a fierce and powerful god in
Kagoshima, and Iinuma had visualized life in the
Matsugae household entirely in terms of what he had
heard at home or at school about the exploits of the
former Marquis. In his year with them, however, their
luxurious way of life had disrupted this expectation
and  had  wounded  his  youthfully  puritanical
sensibilities.
He could shut his eyes to other things, but not to
Kiyoaki, who was his personal responsibility.
Everything about Kiyoaki—his looks, his delicacy, his
sensitivity, his turn of mind, his interests—grated on
Iinuma. And everything about the Marquis and
Marquise’s attitude toward their son’s education was
equally distressing. “I’ll never raise a son of mine that
way, not even if I am made a Marquis. What weight do
you suppose the Marquis gives to his own father’s
tenets?”
The Marquis was punctilious in observing the
annual rites for his father, but almost never spoke of
him. At first, Iinuma used to dream that the Marquis
would talk more often about his father and that his
reminiscences might reveal something of the affection
in which he held his father’s memory, but in the course
of the year such hopes flickered and died.
The night that Kiyoaki returned home after
performing his duties as an imperial page, the
Marquis and his wife gave a private family dinner to
celebrate the occasion. When the time came for
Kiyoaki to hurry off to bed, Iinuma helped him to his
room. The thirteen-year-old boy’s cheeks were
flushed with the wine that his father, half as a joke, had
forced upon him. He burrowed into the silken quilts
and let his head fall back on the pillow, his breath
warm and heavy. The tracery of blue veins under his
close-cropped hair throbbed around his earlobes,
and the skin was so extraordinarily transparent that
one could almost see the fragile mechanism inside.
Even in the half-light of the room, his lips were red.
And the sounds of breathing that came from this boy,
who looked as though he had never experienced
anguish, seemed to be the mocking echo of a sad
folksong.
Iinuma looked down at his face, at the sensitive
darting eyes with their long lashes—the eyes of an
otter—and he knew that it was hopeless to expect him
to swear the enthusiastic oaths of loyalty to the
Emperor that a night like this would have invoked in
any normal young Japanese boy striving toward
manhood, who had been privileged to carry out so
glorious a task.
Kiyoaki’s eyes were now wide open as he lay on
his back staring at the ceiling, and they were filled
with tears. And when this glistening gaze turned on
him, Iinuma’s distaste deepened. But this made it all
the more imperative for him to believe in his own
loyalty. When Kiyoaki apparently felt too warm, he
pulled his bare arms, slightly flushed, out from under
the quilt and started to fold them behind his head;
Iinuma admonished him and pulled shut the loose
collar of his nightgown: “You’ll catch cold. You ought to
go to sleep now.”
“Iinuma, you know . . . I made a blunder today. If you
promise not to tell Father or Mother, I’ll say what it
was.”
“What was it?”
“Today, when I was carrying the Princess’s train, I
stumbled a little. But the Princess just smiled and
forgave me.”
Iinuma was repelled by these frivolous words, by
the absence of any sense of responsibility, by the
tearful look of rapture in those eyes, by everything.
2
I T WAS HARDLY SURPRISING ,
then, that by the time Kiyoaki turned eighteen, his
preoccupations had served to isolate him more and
more from his surroundings. He had grown apart from
more than just his family. The teachers at the Peers
School had instilled in their pupils the supremely
noble example of the principal, General Nogi, who
had committed suicide to follow his Emperor in death;
and ever since they had started to emphasize the
significance of his act, suggesting that their
educational tradition would have been the poorer had
the General died on a sickbed, an atmosphere of
Spartan simplicity had come to permeate the school.
Kiyoaki, who had an aversion to anything smacking of
militarism, had come to loathe school for this reason.
His only friend was his classmate Shigekuni
Honda. There were of course many others who would
have been delighted to be friends with Kiyoaki, but he
didn’t  like  the  youthful  coarseness  of  his
contemporaries; he shunned their rough, coltish ways
and was further repelled by their crude sentimentality
when they mindlessly roared out the school song.
Kiyoaki was drawn only to Honda, with his quiet,
composed, rational temperament, unusual in a boy of
his age. Even so the two had little in common in
appearance or temperament.
Honda seemed older than he was. Though his
features were quite ordinary, he tended to assume a
somewhat pompous air. He was interested in
studying law, and was gifted with keen intuition, but it
was a power he tended to disguise. To look at him
was to believe that he was indifferent to sensual
pleasures, but there were times when he seemed
fired by some deep passion; at these moments,
Honda—who always kept his mouth firmly shut, as he
kept his somewhat near-sighted eyes severely
narrowed and his brows in a frown—was to be caught
with a hint of parted lips in his expression.
Kiyoaki and Honda were perhaps as different in
their makeup as the flower and the leaf of a single
plant. Kiyoaki was incapable of hiding his true nature,
and he was defenseless against society’s power to
inflict pain. His still unawakened sensuality lay
dormant within him, unprotected as a puppy in a
March rain, body shivering, eyes and nose pelted with
water. Honda, on the other hand, had quite early in life
grasped where danger lay, choosing to shelter from
all storms, whatever their attraction.
Despite this, however, they were remarkably close
friends. Not content to see each other in school, they
would also spend Sundays together at one or the
other of their homes. And because the Matsugae
estate had more to offer in the way of walks and other
amusements, Honda usually came to Kiyoaki’s
house.
One October Sunday in 1912, the first year of the
Taisho era, on an afternoon when the maple leaves
were almost in their prime, Honda arrived in Kiyoaki’s
room to suggest that they go boating on the pond.
Had this been a year like any other, there would have
been a growing number of visitors coming to admire
the maple leaves, but as the Matsugaes had been in
mourning since the Emperor’s death the previous
summer, they had suspended normal social activities.
An extraordinary stillness lay over the park.
“Well, if you want to. The boat will take three. We’ll
get Iinuma to row us.”
“Why do we need anybody to row us? I’ll row,” said
Honda, remembering the dour expression of the
young man who had just needlessly escorted him with
silent but relentless obsequiousness to Kiyoaki’s
room.
Kiyoaki smiled. “You don’t like him, do you,
Honda?”
“It’s not that I don’t like him. It’s just that, for all the
time I’ve known him, I still can’t tell what’s going on
inside his head.”
“He’s been here six years, so I take him for granted
now, like the air I breathe. We certainly don’t see eye
to eye, but he’s devoted to me all the same. He’s
loyal, he studies hard, you can depend on him.”
Kiyoaki’s room was on the second floor facing the
pond. It had originally been in Japanese style, but had
been redecorated to look Western, with a carpet and
Western furniture. Honda sat down on the windowsill.
Looking over his shoulder, he took in the whole
sweep of the pond, the island and the hill of maples
beyond. The water lay smooth in the afternoon sun.
Just below him, he could see the boats moored in a
small inlet.
At the same time, he was mulling over his friend’s
lack of enthusiasm. Kiyoaki never took the lead,
though sometimes he would join in with an air of utter
boredom only to enjoy himself in his own way. The
role of exhorter and leader, then, always fell to Honda
if the pair were to do anything at all.
“You can see the boats, can’t you?” said Kiyoaki.
“Yes, of course I can,” Honda replied, glancing
dubiously behind him.
∗
What did Kiyoaki mean by his question? If one
were forced to hazard a guess, it would be that he
was trying to say that he had no interest in anything at
all. He thought of himself as a thorn, a small,
poisonous thorn jabbed into the workmanlike hand of
his family. And this was his fate simply because he
had acquired a little elegance. A mere fifty years
before, the Matsugaes had been a sturdy, upright
samurai family, no more, eking out a frugal existence
in the provinces. But in a brief span of time, their
fortunes had soared. By Kiyoaki’s time, the first
traces of refinement were threatening to take hold on
a family that, unlike the court nobility, had enjoyed
centuries of immunity to the virus of elegance. And
Kiyoaki, like an ant that senses the approaching
flood, was experiencing the first intimations of his
family’s rapid collapse.
His elegance was the thorn. And he was well aware
that his aversion to coarseness, his delight in
refinement, were futile; he was a plant without roots.
Without meaning to undermine his family, without
wanting to violate its traditions, he was condemned to
do so by his very nature. And this poison would stunt
his own life as it destroyed his family. The handsome
young man felt that this futility typified his existence.
His conviction of having no purpose in life other
than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the
ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his
beautiful white hands would never be soiled or
calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent
on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed
valid to him was to live for the emotions—gratuitous
and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling
and flaring without direction or purpose.
At the moment nothing interested him. Boating? His
father had thought the little green and white boat he
had imported from abroad to be stylish. As far as his
father was concerned the boat was culture; culture
made tangible. But what of it? Who cared about a
boat?
Honda, with his inborn intuition, understood
Kiyoaki’s sudden silence. Although they were the
same age, Honda was more mature. He was, in fact,
a young man who wanted to lead a constructive life,
and he had made up his mind about his future role.
With Kiyoaki, however, he always took care to seem
less sensitive and subtle than he was. For he knew
that his friend was quite receptive to his careful
displays of obtuseness—the only bait that seemed to
draw a rise from Kiyoaki. And this streak of deception
ran through their whole friendship.
“It would do you good to get some exercise,” said
Honda brusquely. “I know that you can’t have been
reading all that much, but you look as if you’d read
your way through a library.”
Kiyoaki smiled by way of reply. Honda was right. It
was not his books that had drained him of energy but
his dreams. A whole library wouldn’t have exhausted
him as much as his constant dreaming night after
night.
The very night before, he had dreamed of his own
coffin, made of unpainted wood. It stood in the middle
of an empty room with large windows, and outside,
the pre-dawn darkness was shading to a deep blue; it
was filled with the sound of birdsong. A young woman
clung to the coffin, her long black hair trailing from her
drooping head, her slender shoulders wracked with
sobs. He wanted to see her face but could make out
no more than her pale, graceful forehead with its
delicate peak of black hair. The coffin was half
covered with a leopard-skin bordered in pearls. The
first muted glow of the dawn flickered on the row of
jewels. Instead of funeral incense, a scent of Western
perfume hung over the room with the fragrance of sun-
ripened fruit. Kiyoaki seemed to be watching this from
a great height, though he was convinced that his body
lay inside the coffin. But sure as he was, he still felt the
need to see it there by way of confirmation. However,
like a mosquito in the morning light, his wings lost all
power and ceased beating in mid-air; he was utterly
incapable of looking inside the nailed-down coffin lid.
And then, as his frustration grew more and more
intense, he woke up. Kiyoaki took out his secret
journal and wrote all this down.
∗
Finally, the two of them went down to the landing
and unfastened the mooring rope. The calm surface
of the water reflected the flaming scarlet maples
beginning to turn on the hill beyond. As they stepped
into the boat, its wild rocking evoked in Kiyoaki his
favorite feelings about the precariousness of life. At
that instant, his inner thoughts seemed to describe a
wide arc, clearly reflected in the fresh white trim of the
boat. His spirits rose.
Honda pushed against the stone landing with an
oar and maneuvered the boat out into the water. As
the prow shivered the brilliant scarlet surface of the
water, the smooth ripples heightened Kiyoaki’s sense
of liberation. The dark water seemed to speak in a
deep, solemn voice. “My eighteenth autumn, this day,
this afternoon, this moment: never to come again,” he
thought, “something already slipping irrevocably
away.”
“Shall we take a look at the island?”
“What’s the fun in that? There’s nothing to see.”
“Don’t be a kill-joy. Come on, let’s go and look,”
Honda urged. His voice sounded deep in his chest as
he rowed with a lively vigor that suited his years.
As Kiyoaki stared fixedly down into the pond, he
heard the faint sound of the waterfall far away on the
other side of the island; he could not see a great deal
because of the cloudy water and the red of the
maples reflected in it. There were carp swimming
down there, he knew, and at the very bottom snapping
turtles lurked in the shelter of the rocks. His childhood
fears flared for a moment, then died.
The hot sun struck the backs of their close-shaven
necks. It was a peaceful, uneventful, glorious Sunday
afternoon. Yet Kiyoaki remained convinced that at the
bottom of this world, which was like a leather bag
filled with water, there was a little hole, and it seemed
to him that he could hear time leaking from it, drop by
drop.
They reached the island at a spot where a single
maple stood among the pines, and climbed the stone
steps to the grassy clearing at the top with the three
iron cranes. The boys sat down at the feet of the pair
that were stretching their necks upward in an eternal,
mute cry, then lay back on the grass to stare up at the
late autumn sky. The rough grass pricked through the
backs of their kimonos, making Kiyoaki rather
uncomfortable. It gave Honda, however, the sensation
of having to endure an exquisitely refreshing pain that
was fragmented and spread out under his back. Out
of the corners of their eyes, they could see the two
cranes, weathered by wind and rain and soiled by
chalky-white bird droppings. The birds’ supple, curved
necks, stretched against the sky, moved slowly with
the rhythm of the shifting clouds.
“It’s a beautiful day. In all our lives, we may not have
many like this—so perfect,” said Honda, stirred by
some premonition.
“Are you talking about happiness?” asked Kiyoaki.
“I  don’t  remember  saying  anything  about
happiness.”
“Well, that’s all right then. I’d be much too scared to
say the things you do. I don’t have that kind of
courage.”
“I’m convinced that the trouble with you is, you’re
horribly greedy. Greedy men are apt to seem
miserable. Look, what more could you want than a
day like this?”
“Something definite. What it might be, I’ve no idea,”
the young man answered wearily, as handsome as he
was indecisive. Fond as he was of his friend, there
were times when Kiyoaki found Honda’s keenly
analytic mind and his confident turns of phrase—the
very image of youthful promise—a severe trial to his
capricious nature.
All at once, he rolled over on his stomach on the
grass and raised his head, staring across the water at
a spot some distance away, in the direction of the
garden that fronted the drawing room of the main
house. Stepping-stones set in white sand led from it
to the edge of the pond, which was intricately
scalloped with small inlets crossed by a network of
stone bridges. He had noticed a group of women
there.
3
H E TAPPED H ONDA on the
shoulder and pointed in that direction. Honda raised
his head and peered across the water until he too
spotted the women. And so they stared from their
hiding place like two young snipers. His mother went
for her daily walk whenever the mood struck her; but
her company was not confined to her personal maids
today; two guests, one old and one young, were
walking just behind her. All except the young girl were
wearing kimonos of muted, quiet colors. And although
she was in pale blue, the material was richly
embroidered. As she crossed the white sand to walk
along the water’s edge, it shone pale and silky like the
sky at daybreak. The women’s laughter, carrying on
the autumn air, betrayed her uncertain footing on the
irregular stepping-stones, but it rang too pure and
sounded a little artificial. It always irritated Kiyoaki to
hear the women of the household laughing like that,
but he was well aware of the effect it had on Honda,
who had a glint in his eye like a rooster alerted to the
clucking of hens. The brittle stalks of dry autumn grass
bent under their chests.
Kiyoaki felt sure that the girl in the pale-blue kimono
would never laugh that way. In a great flurry of
merriment, his mother’s maids were leading their
mistress and the guests hand-in-hand from the edge
of the pond to the hill of maples along a path
deliberately complicated by a maze of stone bridges
that threaded to and fro across the inlets. Kiyoaki and
Honda soon lost sight of them behind the tall grass in
which they lay.
“You certainly have a lot of women around your
house. We have nothing but men,” said Honda,
putting a good face on his interest, which was keen
enough to make him get up and move to the other
side of the island. Here, from the shelter of the pines,
he was able to follow the awkward progress of the
women. To the left of him, a hollow in the slope held
the first four of the nine waterfalls. The stream then
followed the curve of the hill and finally splashed down
in front of it into the pool below the red Sado rocks.
The women were now making their way below these
last falls, testing their footing on the stepping-stones.
The maple leaves here were especially beautiful, so
thick as to blot out the white ribbon of the falls and
stain the water at the edge of the pond a deep scarlet.
The maids were leading the young woman in the
aquamarine kimono across the stepping-stones, her
head bent forward, and even at that distance the white
of the nape of her neck was visible to Kiyoaki. It made
him think of Princess Kasuga and her creamy white
neck, something that was never far from his mind.
After the path crossed below the falls, it leveled out
for a time, following the waterline as the shore began
to come toward the island. Kiyoaki had followed the
women’s progress with concentration. But now he
caught sight of the profile of the woman in the
aquamarine kimono and recognized Satoko. His
fantasies were shattered. Why hadn’t he recognized
her earlier? Probably his whim that the beautiful girl
should be a total stranger.
Now that she had destroyed his illusion, there was
no point in remaining hidden. Brushing the burrs from
his kimono, Kiyoaki got to his feet and parted the
lower branches of the pines that had been his cover.
“Hello,” he called.
This sudden cheerfulness took Honda by surprise,
and he craned his neck for a better look. Aware that
Kiyoaki’s high spirits were by now a reflex response
to the interruption of his dreams, Honda did not mind
his friend seizing the initiative.
“Who is it?”
“Oh, it’s Satoko. Did I never show you her picture?”
answered Kiyoaki, speaking her name with cool
indifference. Satoko, the girl on the shore, was
certainly a beauty. Kiyoaki, however, seemed
determined to ignore this. For he knew that Satoko
was in love with him.
This instinctive rejection of anyone who showed him
affection, this need to react with cold disdain, were a
failing of Kiyoaki’s that no one could have known
better than Honda, who saw this pride as a kind of
tumor that had taken hold of Kiyoaki when he was no
more than thirteen and had first had to endure people
making a fuss over his looks. Like a silvery bloom of
mold, it would spread at the slightest touch.
Perhaps, in fact, the dangerous attraction that
Kiyoaki’s friendship held for Honda was rooted in the
same impulse. So many others had attempted to
befriend Kiyoaki, only to be rewarded for their pains
with his mockery and contempt. In challenging
Kiyoaki’s caustic reserve, Honda alone had been
skilled enough to escape disaster. Perhaps he was
mistaken, but he wondered if his own acute dislike for
Kiyoaki’s gloom-faced tutor sprang from the latter’s
expression of perpetual defeat.
Although Honda had never met Satoko, Kiyoaki’s
stories were full of her. The Ayakura family, one of
twenty-eight among the nobility that bore the lofty rank
of Urin, was descended from an ancestor named
Namba Yorisuke, a skilled player of  kemari , the
version of football popular at the Imperial Court in the
time of the Fujiwaras. The head of the family was
appointed a chamberlain of the Imperial Court when it
established residence in Tokyo at the time of the Meiji
Restoration. The Ayakuras moved to the city and lived
in a mansion in Azabu formerly occupied by one of
the retainers of the shogun. The family excelled in the
sport of  kemari and in composing  waka. And since
the Emperor had seen fit to honor the family’s young
heir with a court rank of “fifth degree, junior grade,”
even the post of Grand Councillor of State now
seemed within reach.
Marquis Matsugae, who was conscious of his own
family’s lack of polish and who hoped to give the next
generation at least a touch of elegance, had entrusted
the infant Kiyoaki to the Ayakuras after obtaining his
own father’s consent. And so Kiyoaki had been
raised in the atmosphere of the court nobility with
Satoko, who was two years older and lavished
affection on him; until he went to school, she was his
only companion and friend. Count Ayakura himself, a
warm and personable man who still retained his soft
Kyoto accent, taught the young Kiyoaki calligraphy
and  waka. The family would play  sugoroku , an ancient
form of backgammon, far into the night, as was the
custom in the Heian era, and the lucky winners would
receive traditional prizes, among them candies
molded like gifts from the Empress.
Moreover, Count Ayakura arranged for Kiyoaki to
continue his early cultural training by going to the
palace each New Year to attend the Imperial Poetry
Reading Ceremony, in which he himself figured
prominently. At first, Kiyoaki had seen this as a chore,
but as he grew older, his participation in these
elegant and ancient rituals came to hold a certain
charm for him.
Satoko was now twenty. And thumbing through
Kiyoaki’s picture album, one could see the changes
as she grew to maturity, from when she was a child
with her cheek pressed affectionately to Kiyoaki’s
until the previous May, when she had taken part in the
Matsugae Omiyasama festival. At twenty she had
passed the stage that was popularly supposed to
mark a girl’s greatest beauty, but she was still
unmarried.
“So that’s Satoko. And the other one, the woman in
the gray tunic everyone’s making such a fuss over,
who’s she?”
“Her? Oh yes; that’s Satoko’s great-aunt, the
Abbess of Gesshu. I didn’t recognize her at first
because of that curious hood.”
Her Reverence the Abbess was indeed an
unexpected guest. This was her first visit to the
Matsugaes, hence the conducted tour of the garden—
something that Kiyoaki’s mother would not have
undertaken just for Satoko but was quite happy to do
for the Abbess. Her great-aunt’s visit to Tokyo being
such a rarity, Satoko had no doubt brought her to see
the maple leaves. The Abbess had taken great
delight in Kiyoaki when he first came to the Ayakuras,
but he could not remember that far back. Later, when
he was in middle school and the Abbess had paid a
visit to Tokyo, he had been invited to the Ayakuras,
but he had had the opportunity to do no more than pay
his respects. Even so, the Abbess’s pale face with its
air of quiet dignity and the calm authority in her voice
had made a lasting impression on him.
Kiyoaki’s voice had brought the group on the shore
to an abrupt halt. Startled, they looked toward the
island as if pirates had risen before their very eyes
from the tall grass beside the decorative iron cranes.
Pulling a small fan from her obi, Kiyoaki’s mother
pointed toward the Abbess to indicate that a
respectful  greeting  was  expected.  Kiyoaki,
accordingly, made a deep bow from where he stood
on the island. Honda quickly followed suit, and Her
Reverence acknowledged them both. His mother then
opened her fan and waved it imperiously, its golden
sheen suddenly giving off scarlet reflections. Kiyoaki
urged Honda to hurry up, knowing that they must
come back from the island at once.
“Satoko never misses a chance to come here.
She’s taking advantage of her great-aunt,” grumbled
Kiyoaki with a show of bad temper, while helping
Honda by hurrying to cast off the boat. Honda,
however, viewed Kiyoaki’s haste and his grumbling
with some skepticism. The way Kiyoaki had lost
patience  with  Honda’s  steady,  methodical
movements and had seized the rough rope in his own
unseasoned white hands to try to help with the
unpleasant task of unknotting it was enough to raise
doubts about the Abbess being the cause of his
eagerness.
As Honda rowed back to the shore, Kiyoaki looked
dizzy, his face picking up a red flush from the
reflection of the maple leaves floating on the water.
He nervously avoided Honda’s eyes in an attempt to
deny his vulnerability to Satoko. For each moment
brought him closer to the young woman who knew
altogether too much about him, about his childhood,
even about his body’s most intimate details, and to
whom he seemed tied by almost overwhelming bonds
of emotion.
“Why, Mr. Honda! What a good oarsman you are!”
said Kiyoaki’s mother admiringly when they reached
the shore. Her pale, classic face had a persistently
melancholy cast, even when she laughed. Yet her
expression was a façade rather than a true indication
of her deeper emotions. She was in fact almost
invariably insensitive. She had raised Kiyoaki to
tolerate his father’s dissipation and boorish energy,
but she was quite incapable of grasping the
complexities of her son’s nature.
Satoko’s eyes were riveted on Kiyoaki from the
moment he stepped out of the boot. Strong and calm,
affectionate from time to time, they invariably
unnerved Kiyoaki. He felt, not without reason, that he
could read criticism in their glance.
“Her Reverence has honored us with a visit today,
and we shall shortly have the pleasure of listening to
her speak. But first we wanted to show her the maple
leaves. Then you gave us such a fright by that rude
shout of yours. What were you doing on the island in
the first place?”
“Oh, just watching the sky,” Kiyoaki replied, being
as enigmatic to his mother as possible.
“Watching the sky? And what’s there to see in the
sky?”
His mother was quite unembarrassed about her
failure to grasp the intangible, which struck him as her
sole admirable characteristic. He found it comical that
she could adopt such a pious expression for the
Abbess’s sermons. The Abbess maintained her role
of  guest  throughout  this  exchange,  smiling
unassumingly. And he would not look at Satoko, who
gazed steadily at the thick, glossy, tousled black hair
that brushed his smooth cheeks.
The group now started up the steep path, admiring
the maples as they went and amusing themselves by
trying to identify the birds singing in the branches
above their heads. However much the two young men
tried to check their stride, they inevitably drew ahead
to walk some distance in front of the women around
the Abbess. Honda took advantage of this to discuss
Satoko for the first time, and admire her beauty.
“You think so?” Kiyoaki replied, well aware that
although Honda’s finding Satoko unattractive would
have been a severe blow to his pride, he must make
a show of cold indifference. He was firmly convinced
that any young woman in Satoko’s relationship to him
would have to be beautiful, whether he chose to
acknowledge her or not.
At last their climb ended at the bridge below the
topmost waterfall, and they stood looking up toward
its rim. Just as his mother was savoring the
compliments of the Abbess, whose first view of the
falls this was, Kiyoaki made an ominous discovery
which cut across the mood of the day.
“What’s that? At the top there, what’s damming the
water like that?”
His mother responded at once. Using her fan to
shade her eyes from the bright sunlight that shone
through the branches, she peered upward. The
landscape artist had painstakingly built up walls of
rock on either side of the rim to ensure a graceful fall
of water, and could never have intended the flow to be
diverted so awkwardly at the middle of the crest. A
mere rock wedged up there could never have caused
such a disruption in the flow.
“I wonder what can be the matter. Something
seems to have lodged itself up there,” his mother said
to the Abbess, openly puzzled.
The Abbess, though she seemed to be aware that
something was wrong, said nothing and smiled as
before. If anyone was to speak out clearly, regardless
of the effect, it would have to be Kiyoaki. But he held
back, fearing the impact of his words on the happy
mood of the group. He realized that everyone must
have recognized what it was by now.
“Isn’t it a black dog? With its head hanging down?”
said Satoko quite plainly. And the ladies gasped as if
they were noticing the dog for the first time.
Kiyoaki’s pride was hurt. Satoko, with a boldness
that might be construed as unfeminine, had pointed
out the dog’s corpse, ignoring its ominous
implications. She had adopted a suitably pleasant
and straightforward tone of voice, which bore witness
to her elegant upbringing; she had the freshness of
ripe fruit in a crystal bowl. Kiyoaki was ashamed of
his hesitation, and felt cowed by Satoko’s capacity for
directness.
His mother issued some quick orders to the maids,
who left at once to look for the negligent gardeners.
But her profuse apologies to the Abbess for such an
unseemly spectacle were cut short by Her Reverence,
who made a compassionate proposal that was totally
unexpected.
“My presence here would seem to be providential. If
you will bury the dog under a mound, I’ll offer a prayer
for it.”
The dog had probably been mortally sick or
wounded when it came to the stream to drink, and
had fallen in. The force of the current had wedged its
corpse into the cleft of rocks at the top of the falls.
Satoko’s courage had excited Honda’s admiration,
but at the same time he felt oppressed by the sight of
the dog hanging dead in the falls under a bright sky
only faintly flecked with cloud. The dog’s black fur
glistened in the clear spray, its white teeth shining in
the gaping, dark red, cavernous jaws.
Everyone adjusted quickly to the shift in attention
from the red maple leaves to the dog’s burial. And the
maids in attendance suddenly livened up, becoming
almost frivolous. They had all crossed the bridge and
were resting in the arbor designed as a vantage point
from which to view the falls when the gardener came
rushing up, babbling every cliché of apology in his
repertoire. Only then did he climb the steep,
treacherous rock face to remove the dripping black
body and bury it in a suitable spot.
“I’m going to pick some flowers. Kiyo, won’t you
help?” asked Satoko, effectively ruling out any
assistance from the maids.
“What kind of flowers would one pick for a dog?”
Kiyoaki countered, his obvious reluctance drawing a
burst of laughter from the women.
Meanwhile the Abbess removed her drab tunic to
reveal the purple habit beneath and the small stole
that hung around her neck. She had a presence that
radiated grace to those around her, her brightness
dissipating the atmosphere of illomen.
“Goodness, the dog is blessed to have Your
Reverence offering a requiem for it. Surely it will be
reborn as a human being,” said Kiyoaki’s mother with
a smile.
Satoko did not bother to wait for Kiyoaki, but
started up the hill path, stooping now and then to pick
a late-flowering gentian that she had spotted. Kiyoaki
found nothing better than a few withered camomiles.
Each time she bent to pick a flower, Satoko’s
aquamarine kimono was an inadequate disguise for
the roundness of her hips, surprisingly generous on
such a slim figure. All at once Kiyoaki felt unsettled,
his mind a remote lake of clear water suddenly
clouded by a disturbance deep below its surface.
After picking the gentians necessary to complete
her bouquet, Satoko suddenly straightened up and
stopped abruptly in Kiyoaki’s path, while he did his
best to look elsewhere. Her finely shaped nose and
huge bright eyes, which he had never yet dared to
look into directly, now confronted his vision at
uncomfortably close range, a threatening phantom.
“Kiyo, what would you do if all of a sudden I weren’t
here any more?” Satoko asked, her words coming in
a rushed whisper.
4
T HIS WAS A LONG-STANDING
trick of Satoko’s for disconcerting people. Perhaps
she achieved her effects without conscious effort, but
she never allowed the slightest hint of mischief into
her tone to put her victim at ease. Her voice would be
heavy with pathos at such times, as though confiding
the gravest of secrets.
Although he should have been inured to this by now,
Kiyoaki could not help asking: “Not here any more?
Why?”
Despite all his efforts to indicate a studied
disinterest, Kiyoaki’s reply betrayed his uneasiness. It
was what Satoko wanted.
“I can’t tell you why,” she answered, deftly dropping
ink into the clear waters of Kiyoaki’s heart. She gave
him no time to erect his defenses.
He glared at her. It had always been like this. Which
was why he hated her. Without the slightest warning
she could plunge him into nameless anxieties. And
the drop of ink spread, dull and gray, clouding
everything in his heart that had been pellucid only a
moment ago.
Satoko was still watching him intently, and her eyes,
which had been sad, suddenly twinkled.
On their return, Kiyoaki’s bad temper surprised
everyone and gave the women of the Matsugae
household something to gossip about.
∗
Kiyoaki was so capricious that he tended to
exacerbate the very worries that gnawed at him. Had
it been applied to love affairs, his stubborn
persistence would have been that of almost any young
man. But in his case it was different. Perhaps this was
why Satoko deliberately sowed the seeds of dark and
thorny flowers, rather than brightly colored ones,
knowing what an unhealthy fascination they held for
Kiyoaki. Indeed he had always been fertile ground for
such seeds. He indulged himself, to the exclusion of
all else, in the cultivation of his anxiety.
Satoko had caught his interest. Although a willing
prisoner of his discontent, he was still angry with
Satoko, who always had a ready supply of fresh
ambiguities and riddles to disconcert him. And he
was also angered by his own indecision when faced
with finding a solution to her teasing.
When he and Honda had been resting in the grass
on the island, he had indeed said that he was looking
for “something absolutely definite.” What it was he
didn’t know, but whenever this bright certainty
seemed to shine within his grasp, the fluttering
sleeves of Satoko’s aquamarine kimono interposed
themselves, trapping him once again in the
quicksands of indecision. Though he had sensed
something definite, a flash of intuition, distant,
unattainable, he chose to believe that Satoko was the
barrier that prevented him from taking a single step
toward it.
It was even more galling to have to admit that his
very pride, by definition, cut him off from all possible
means of dealing with Satoko’s riddles and the
anxiety they provoked. If, for example, he were now to
ask someone: “What does Satoko mean about not
being here any more?” it would only betray the depth
of his interest in her. “What could I do,” he thought. “No
matter what I did to convince them I wasn’t interested
in Satoko but only in an abstract anxiety of my own,
nobody would believe me.” A multitude of such
thoughts raced through his head.
Ordinarily  a  bore,  school  under  these
circumstances offered Kiyoaki some relief. He always
spent his lunch hours with Honda, even though
Honda’s conversation had taken a somewhat tedious
turn of late. On the day of the Abbess’s visit, Honda
had accompanied the others to the main house. And
there Her Reverence had addressed them with a
sermon that had completely seized his imagination.
Now he couldn’t wait to assault Kiyoaki’s inattentive
ears with his own exegesis of each point.
It was curious that while the sermon had left the
dreamy Kiyoaki quite indifferent, it struck rationalistic
Honda with the force of cogency.
The Gesshu Temple on the outskirts of Nara was a
convent, quite a rarity in Hosso Buddhism. The gist of
the sermon had strongly appealed to Honda, and the
Abbess had been careful to introduce her listeners to
the doctrine of Yuishiki
∗ by using simple examples of no sophistication at
all.
“Then there was the parable that Her Reverence
said came to her when she saw the dog’s body
hanging over the falls,” said Honda, thoroughly caught
up in himself. “I don’t think there’s any doubt whatever
that her use of it shows how fond she is of your family.
And then her way of telling it—court phrases blending
with old-fashioned Kyoto dialect. It’s an elusive
language that is filled with all sorts of subtle nuances.
It certainly did a great deal to heighten the impact.
“You remember that the story is set in Tang China.
A man named Yuan Hsaio was on his way to the
famous Mount Kaoyu to study the teachings of
Buddha. When night fell, he happened to be beside a
cemetery, so he lay down to sleep among the burial
mounds. Then in the middle of the night he awoke with
a terrible thirst. Stretching out his hand, he scooped
up some water from a hole by his side. As he dozed
off again, he thought to himself that never had water
tasted so pure, so fresh and cold. But when morning
came, he saw what he had drunk from in the dark.
Incredible though it seemed, what had tasted so
delicious was water that had collected in a human
skull. He retched and was sick. Yet this experience
taught something to Yuan Hsaio. He realized that as
long as conscious desire is at work, it will permit
distinctions to exist. But if one can suppress it, these
distinctions dissolve and one can be as content with a
skull as with anything else.
“But what interests me is this: once Yuan Hsaio had
been thus enlightened, could he drink that water
again, secure in the knowledge that it was pure and
delicious? And don’t you think that the same would
hold true for chastity? If a boy is naïve, of course, he
can worship a prostitute in all innocence. But once he
realizes that his woman is a slut, and that he has been
living an illusion that merely serves to reflect the
image of his own purity, will he be able to love this
woman in the same way again? If he can, don’t you
think that would be marvelous? To take your own ideal
and bend the world to it like that. Wouldn’t that be a
remarkable force? It would be like holding the secret
key to life right there in your hand, wouldn’t it?”
Honda’s sexual innocence was matched by
Kiyoaki’s, who was therefore unable to refute his
strange ideal. Nevertheless, being headstrong, he felt
that he was different from Honda, that he already had
the key to existence within his grasp as a sort of
birthright. He did not know what gave him this
confidence. Ominously handsome and a dreamer, so
arrogant yet so much a prey to anxiety, he was certain
that somehow he was the youthful repository of a
peerless treasure. Because at times he seemed to
wear a quite physical radiance, he bore himself with
the pride of a man marked down by a rare disease,
even though he suffered neither aches nor painful
swellings.
Kiyoaki knew nothing about the history of Gesshu
Temple and saw no need to remedy this lack. Honda
by contrast, who had no personal ties with it at all, had
taken the trouble to do some research in the library.
Gesshu, he discovered, was a comparatively new
temple, built at the beginning of the eighteenth
century. A daughter of the Emperor Higashiyama,
wishing to observe a period of mourning for her
father, who had died in the prime of life, devoted
herself to the worship of Kannon, the Goddess of
Mercy, at the Kiomizu Temple. She soon came to be
deeply impressed by the commentaries of an old
priest from the Joju Temple on the Hosso concept of
existence, and consequently she became a fervent
convert to this sect. After her ritual tonsuring, she
declined to accept one of the benefices reserved for
imperial princesses, deciding instead to found a new
temple, one whose nuns would devote themselves to
study of the scriptures. And it still preserved its unique
place as a convent of the Hosso sect. Satoko’s
greataunt, however, though an aristocrat, had the
distinction of being the first abbess who was not an
imperial princess.
Honda suddenly turned on Kiyoaki.
“Matsugae! What’s the matter with you these days?
You haven’t paid the slightest attention to anything I’ve
said, have you?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” Kiyoaki replied defensively,
for once caught off guard. His beautiful clear eyes
looked back at his friend. If Honda thought him
insolent, it did not bother Kiyoaki in the least. What he
feared was that his friend should become aware of
his agony of mind. He knew that if he gave Honda the
least encouragement in this direction, there would
soon be nothing at all about him that Honda did not
know. As this would be an unforgivable violation, he
would have lost his only friend.
Honda was immediately alert to Kiyoaki’s tension.
He knew that to retain Kiyoaki’s affection he must
check the unthinking roughness that friendship
ordinarily permitted. He had to treat him as warily as
one would a freshly painted wall, on which the
slightest careless touch would leave an indelible
fingerprint. Should the circumstances demand it, he
would have to go so far as to pretend not to notice
Kiyoaki’s mortal agony. Especially if such assumed
obtuseness served to point up the elegance that
would surely characterize Kiyoaki’s ultimate suffering.
At such moments, Honda could even love Kiyoaki
for the look of mute appeal in his eyes. Their beautiful
gaze seemed to hold a plea: leave things as they are,
as gloriously undefined as the line of the seashore.
For the first time in their relationship—a protracted,
warily transacted negotiation in the coin of friendship
—Kiyoaki’s composure was about to shatter; he was
pleading. Honda was thus transformed into an
aesthetic observer. Those who considered Kiyoaki
and Honda to be friends were not mistaken, for as it
stood, their relationship gave to each of them exactly
what he desired.
5
O NE EVENING about ten days
later, Marquis Matsugae happened to return home
unusually early and so Kiyoaki had dinner with both
his parents, something that happened very rarely.
Since the Marquis was fond of Western food, dinner
was served in the small dining room of the Western-
style house, and he himself had gone down to the
wine cellar to choose the wine. He had taken Kiyoaki
with him and had gone to great lengths to expound on
the characteristics of the various wines cradled in the
shelves that filled the cellar. His father had gone on to
explain what wine went with which foods, what wine
should be served only on the occasion of the visit of a
member of the Imperial Family, and so on, beaming
all the while. The Marquis never seemed as happy as
when dispensing useless knowledge of this kind.
While they were sipping their aperitifs, his mother,
who had been driven to Yokohama two days before
by her young coachman, described the shopping
expedition as if it were an event of great significance.
“I was simply astounded at the way people stared
at my Western clothes, and in Yokohama of all
places! Some dirty little children actually ran after the
carriage shouting, ‘Foreign lady! Foreign lady!’”
His father ventured something to the effect that he
was thinking of taking Kiyoaki with him to the
launching of the warship  Hie , but he spoke as though
it were a foregone conclusion that his son would not
be interested.
At this point, both parents were at a loss for viable
topics of conversation and began to flounder, their
discomfiture evident even to Kiyoaki. Somehow,
however, they finally happened upon the congenial
subject of Kiyoaki’s Otachimachi, the divination ritual
that had taken place three years before when he was
fifteen.
This ancient ceremony fell on the seventeenth of
August according to the lunar calendar. A large
wooden basin filled with water was placed in the
garden to catch the reflection of the moon, and
appropriate offerings were made. If the sky was
overcast on this August night of his fifteenth year, bad
fortune was expected to dog the boy who stood
before the basin, for the rest of his life.
As his parents talked, the scene came back to
Kiyoaki vividly. Flanked by his parents and dressed in
his  hakama , a divided skirt, and kimono blazoned
with the family crest, he had stood in the middle of the
dew-drenched lawn, the new basin filled with water
before him, and a chorus of chirping insects ringing in
his ears.
The trees that encircled the now-darkened garden,
the tiled roofs of the mansion itself beyond, even the
maple hill—the reflection of all this, and more, had
been fixed in jagged outline, compressed into the
circle of water that was defined by the rim of the
basin. That rim of blond cyprus wood had become a
frontier where this world ended and another began.
Since this ceremony during his fifteenth year was to
determine his lifetime fortune, Kiyoaki felt as though
his very soul, naked, had been set there on the wet
grass. The wooden sides of the basin expressed his
outer self; the disk of water, which they in turn defined,
expressed his inner.
Everyone was silent, so the sounds of insects
throughout the garden filled his ears as never before.
He gazed earnestly into the basin. The water within
was dark at first, shadowed by clouds as thick as
clustered seaweed. A moment later the seaweed
seemed to wave and he thought he had seen a faint
glow suffuse the water, but then it faded. He could not
remember how long he had waited after that. Then all
of a sudden the black water in the basin, which had
seemed impenetrably obscure, cleared, and there
directly in its center shone a tiny image of the full
moon.
Everyone broke into exclamations of pleasure, and
his mother, rigid all this time, was greatly relieved and
began to wave her fan to drive away the mosquitos
swarming around her skirt.
“Oh, I’m so glad! Now the boy will have a fortunate
life, won’t he?” she said.
Then Kiyoaki was congratulated by everyone
present.
But still he felt a certain dread. He could not bring
himself to look up into the sky at the moon itself, the
origin of the image in the water. Rather he kept
looking down into the basin and into the water
contained by its curved sides, the reflection of his
innermost self, into which the moon, like a golden
shell, had sunk so deep. For at that moment he had
captured the celestial. It sparkled like a golden
butterfly trapped in the meshes of his soul.
Yet, he thought, were these meshes fine enough to
hold it? Once caught, would the butterfly not slip out
soon and fly away? Even at fifteen he feared its loss.
His character was already formed, and each of his
triumphs would bring this fear in its wake. Having
gained the moon, how much then would he dread life
in a world without it. The oppression of such fear!
Even if this moon aroused nothing but hatred in him.
For even in the triviality of a single playing card
missing from a deck, the world’s order is inevitably
turned awry. And for someone like Kiyoaki, the
smallest incongruity took on the proportions of a
watch deprived of one cogwheel. The order of his
universe collapsed and he found himself trapped in
terrifying darkness. The lost playing card, of no value
in itself, would, in his eyes, assume the significance of
a crown over which rival claimants were locked in a
struggle that would plunge the world into crisis. His
sensibility was thus at the mercy of every unforeseen
occurrence, however trivial, and he had no defenses
at hand.
As he thought back to his Otachimachi, that night of
August 17 three years before, he suddenly shuddered
with the realization that Satoko had somehow
impinged on his thoughts.
At that moment, to Kiyoaki’s relief, the butler
entered in his cool  hakama with a rustle of Sendai
silk to announce that dinner was ready. Kiyoaki and
his parents went into the dining room, each to sit in
front of a place set with fine English china decorated
with the family crest. Since early childhood Kiyoaki
had had to endure the tedium of his father’s lessons in
Western table manners. As it was, his mother had
never become accustomed to the Western way of
eating and his father still behaved with the ostentation
of a man eager to seem at home abroad, so he was
the only one who ate naturally and at ease.
When the soup course arrived, his mother lost no
time in raising a new topic in her calm voice.
“Really, Satoko can be very trying. Only this
morning I discovered that the Ayakuras sent a
messenger with her refusal. And for a time she gave
everyone the distinct impression that she had
decided to accept.”
“She’s twenty already, isn’t she?” his father replied.
“If she continues to be so demanding, she may find
herself left an old maid. I’ve been worried about her
myself, but what can one do?”
Kiyoaki was all ears as his father went on casually.
“I wonder what’s the matter with her? Or did they think
he was too much beneath her? No matter how noble a
family the Ayakuras once were, their present fortunes
hardly allow them to turn down a young man like that,
with a bright future ahead of him in the Ministry of the
Interior. They should have been glad of him, shouldn’t
they, without bothering about what kind of family he
came from?”
“That’s exactly how I feel. And that’s why I’m
disinclined to do anything more to help her.”
“Well now, we owe them a great deal because of
what they did for Kiyoaki. I feel obliged to do all I can
to help them build up their family fortunes again. But
what could we do to find a suitor whom she’d
accept?”
“I wonder if such a man exists?”
As he listened, Kiyoaki’s spirits rose. His riddle
was solved. “Kiyo, what would you do if suddenly I
weren’t here any more?” Satoko had asked. She had
simply been referring to the offer of marriage then
pending. At the time she had been inclined to accept
but had dropped her hint out of concern for Kiyoaki’s
reaction. Now, ten days later, it would appear from his
mother that she had formally refused. And her reason
for doing this was clear to him. She had done so
because she was in love with Kiyoaki.
And with that the clouds faded from his horizon. He
was no longer beset by anxieties. The water in the
glass was clear once again. For ten days he had
been excluded from the small, peaceful sanctuary that
was his only refuge. But now he could return to it and
breathe easy.
Kiyoaki was enjoying a rare moment of acute
happiness, a happiness that without question sprang
from his regaining his clarity of vision. The card that
had been deliberately concealed had reappeared in
his hand. The deck was complete. And so once more
it became a mere pack of cards. His happiness
shone clear and unmarred. For a moment at least,
Kiyoaki had succeeded in breaking the grip of his
emotions.
The Marquis and Marquise Matsugae, however,
were still looking at one another across the table, their
insensitivity blinding them even to something as
obvious as their son’s sudden rush of happiness. The
Marquis confronted the classic melancholy of his
wife’s face, and she, in turn, the coarseness of his.
Features proper to a man of action had become
blurred by the ravages of indolent living that spread
beneath his skin.
Despite the seemingly erratic course charted in his
parents’ conversation, Kiyoaki had always been
aware of adherence to a definite ritual; it was as set
as the Shinto ceremony of offering the gods a branch
of the sacred sakaki tree, a ceremony in which each
syllable of the incantation is meticulously pronounced
and each lustrous branch carefully selected.
Kiyoaki had observed the ritual countless times
since early childhood. No burning crises. No storms of
passion. His mother knew exactly what was coming
next. The Marquis knew that his wife knew. Their
expressions blank, innocent of foreknowledge, they
glided downstream like twigs hand in hand on clear
waters mirroring blue sky and clouds, to take the
inevitable plunge over the crest of the falls.
Just as predictably, the Marquis left his after-dinner
coffee unfinished and turned to his son. “Now,
Kiyoaki, what do you say to a game of billiards?”
“Well, then, please excuse me,” said the Marquise.
Kiyoaki was so happy tonight, however, that this
kind of charade did not grate on him in the least. His
mother returned to the main house and he went with
his father into the billiard room. With its English-style
oak paneling, its portrait of Kiyoaki’s grandfather, and
its large map done in oils depicting the naval battles
of the Russo-Japanese War, this room was much
admired by visitors. One of the disciples of Sir John
Millais, famous for his portrait of Gladstone, had done
the huge likeness of Kiyoaki’s grandfather during his
stay in Japan. And now his grandfather’s figure
loomed in ceremonial attire from the shadows.
The composition was simple, but the artist had
evinced a high degree of skill in his judicious blending
of idealization and realistic sternness to achieve a
likeness that expressed not only the indomitable air
expected of a Restoration peer but also those more
personal traits dear to his family, down to the warts on
his cheek. According to household custom, whenever
a new maid came from the ancestral province of
Kagoshima, she was taken before the portrait to pay
reverence. Some hours before his grandfather’s
death, though the billiard room was empty and it was
unlikely that the picture cord could have become so
worn, the portrait fell to the floor with a crash that
echoed throughout the house.
The room contained three billiard tables covered
with layers of Italian marble. Though the three-ball
game had been introduced at the time of the war with
China, no one ever played it in the Matsugae billiard
room; Kiyoaki and his father used four. The butler had
already placed the red and white balls on the table in
proper order and now he handed a cue to both the
Marquis and his son. Kiyoaki looked down at the
surface of the table as he rubbed the tip of his cue
with the Italian chalk of compressed volcanic ash. The
red and white ivory balls lay motionless on the green
baize, each casting a round shadow like a shellfish
making a hesitant foray into the open. They stirred not
the slightest interest in him. He had the sensation of
standing alone on an unknown street at the height of
the day and suddenly finding himself face to face with
these odd shapes devoid of all meaning.
The Marquis was always made uneasy by the
boredom on his son’s handsome face. Happy as
Kiyoaki felt tonight, his eyes remained dull. “Did you
know,” said his father, hitting on a subject of
conversation, “that two Siamese princes are coming
to Japan to Peers School.”
“No.”
“Since they’ll be in your class, we might have them
staying here with us for a few days. I’ve mentioned it
at the Foreign Ministry. It’s a country that’s made
great strides recently. They’ve abolished slavery and
they’re building railroads and so on. Be sure to keep
that in mind when you deal with them.”
His father lined up his shot. Kiyoaki stood behind
him and watched him crouch like a fat leopard
twisting his cue with a show of fierceness. Kiyoaki
could not suppress a sudden smile. His sense of
happiness and the image of a mysterious tropic land
fused in his mind with a soft click as appealing to him
as the contact of the red and white ivory balls on the
table. And then his elation, which had been as
abstract as pure crystal, suddenly took on the green
extravagance of the tropical jungle.
The Marquis was an expert at billiards, and Kiyoaki
was never a match for him. After each had taken the
first five shots, his father turned abruptly from the table
with the suggestion Kiyoaki had long been expecting.
“I think I’ll take a little stroll. What would you say to
that?”
Kiyoaki did not answer. His father then made a
totally unexpected proposal: “You can come just as far
as the gate, can’t you? The way you used to when you
were a child.”
Startled, Kiyoaki turned dark, flashing eyes on his
father. In any event, the Marquis had scored a point
over his son for surprise.
His father’s mistress was installed in one of the
houses just outside the gate. European families
rented the other two. Each house had its own back
gate in the fence that separated it from the Matsugae
estate. The European children were free to make use
of this opportunity and played every day in the
grounds of the estate. The only gate with a lock on it—
and this was covered with rust—was the gate behind
his mistress’s house.
From the front door of the main house to the front
gate was half a mile. When Kiyoaki was a child, his
father would take him by the hand and walk with him
as far as the gate en route to his mistress’s. There
they would separate, and a servant would bring
Kiyoaki back.
When his father went out on business, he invariably
used the carriage. When he left the house on foot,
therefore, his destination was obvious to everyone.
Accompanying his father on these occasions had
always been painful for Kiyoaki. While some naïve
instinct of boyhood urged him to hold his father back
for his mother’s sake, the realization of his own
helplessness stirred bitter frustration in him. His
mother of course was not at all pleased at Kiyoaki’s
accompanying her husband on these evening strolls.
But the more she resented it, the more her husband
persisted in taking Kiyoaki by the hand. Kiyoaki had
been quick to detect his father’s covert desire to
make him an accomplice in his mother’s betrayal.
This walk, however, on a cold November night, was
something quite new. As his father put on the
overcoat proffered by the butler, Kiyoaki left the
billiard room to fetch the uniform coat with metal
buttons that he wore at school. As always, the butler
was waiting at the door with the usual present
wrapped in purple crepe; then he followed his master
at the customary distance of ten paces.
The moon was bright, and the wind moaned
through the branches of the trees. Although his father
did not trouble to glance back at the wraithlike figure
of Yamada the steward, Kiyoaki was concerned
enough to look over his shoulder more than once.
Without so much as a cape over his  hakama ,
Yamada came along behind, swaying slightly on his
unsteady legs, his hands, white-gloved as always,
cradling the package in its purple wrapper. His
glasses had a frosty sparkle in the moonlight. Kiyoaki
wondered at this man, loyal beyond a doubt, allowing
almost nothing to pass his lips. How many passions
lay spent within his body like a tangle of rusted
springs? Far more than the jovial, extrovert Marquis,
his reserved and seemingly indifferent son was
capable of detecting depth of feeling in others.
The hooting of the owls and the wind in the trees
reminded Kiyoaki, still wine-flushed, of the branches
blowing in the photograph of the memorial service. As
they walked through the bleak, wintry night, his father
was anticipating the moist warmth and intimacy of the
rosy flesh that awaited him, while his son’s thoughts
turned toward death.
As the Marquis went along elated by the wine and
scattering pebbles with the tip of his walking stick, he
suddenly turned to Kiyoaki: “You’re not much of one
for having a good time, are you? I couldn’t tell you how
many women I’d had at your age. Look here, suppose
I take you with me next time? I’ll see that there are
plenty of geishas there and for once you can kick up
your heels. And bring along some friends of yours
from school if you want.”
“No, thank you.”
Kiyoaki shuddered as he blurted this out. He felt his
feet suddenly glued to the ground. At this one remark
of his father’s, his elation shattered, like a vase
striking the floor.
“What’s the matter?”
“Please will you excuse me? Good night.”
Kiyoaki turned on his heel and walked rapidly back
past the dimly lit entrance of the Western house in the
direction of the main residence whose distant lights,
burning at the front door, gleamed faintly through the
trees.
Kiyoaki was unable to sleep that night. But it was
no thought of his mother or his father that troubled
him. On the contrary, he was absorbed in revenging
himself on Satoko. “She has been cruel enough to
lure me into a petty trap. For ten days she let me
suffer. She had just one thing in mind: to keep me in
agony. I can’t let her get away with it. But then I’m no
match for her when it comes to inventing ways of
torturing people. What can I do? What would be best
would be to convince her that I have no more respect
for female dignity than my father has. If only I could say
or write something absolutely outrageous to her that
would strike home. But my trouble is that I’m always at
a disadvantage since I’m not bold enough to let
people know bluntly how I really feel. It wouldn’t be
enough to tell her that she doesn’t interest me in the
least. That would still leave her plenty of room to
scheme. I have to insult her. I have to humiliate her so
completely that she’ll never come back for more.
That’s what I have to do. For the first time in her life,
I’m going to make her sorry for what she’s done.”
Despite all this, Kiyoaki’s resolutions were feeble.
No specific plan had yet occurred to him.
A pair of threefold screens stood on either side of
his bed, each decorated with poems of Han Shan. At
the foot of the bed, a carved jade parrot looked down
from its perch on a sandalwood display shelf. Kiyoaki
had little interest in anything as currently fashionable
as a Rodin or a Cézanne. His tastes were rather
conservative. Sleepless, he stared at the parrot.
Every detail of its clouded green jade, even down to
the fine carving of the wing feathers, seemed to glow
more clearly. Thus the figure of the bird appeared to
hover, disembodied, in the dark, a phantom image
that made Kiyoaki uneasy. Realizing that the
phenomenon was caused by a stray shaft of
moonlight coming in through the window, he pulled the
curtain all the way open in an abrupt movement. The
moon was high in the sky, and its light spilled over the
bed.
It was dazzling enough to suggest frivolity rather
than solemnity. He thought of the cold gleaming silk of
Satoko’s kimono. With unearthly clarity he saw her
eyes there in the moon, those splendid large eyes
which he had seen so disconcertingly close to his
own. The wind had died.
The burning heat of Kiyoaki’s body could not be
explained by the mere warmth of the room, and
something like fever seemed to tingle in his earlobes.
He threw off the blanket and opened the collar of his
nightgown. The fire still burned and seethed under his
skin, and he felt that he would find no relief until he
took off his nightgown and bared his body to the cold
moonlight. Finally, wearied by his thoughts, he rolled
over on his stomach and lay with his face buried in his
pillow, his naked back to the moon and the hot blood
still throbbing in his temples.
And so he lay, the moonlight washing over the
incomparable smooth white of his back, its brilliance
highlighting the graceful lines of his body to reveal the
subtle but pervasive hint of firm masculinity that made
it clear that this was the flesh not of a woman but of a
still immature young man.
The moon shone with dazzling brightness on
Kiyoaki’s left side, where the pale flesh pulsed softly
in rhythm with his heartbeat. Here there were three
small, almost invisible moles. And much as the three
stars in Orion’s belt fade in strong moonlight, so too
these three small moles were almost blotted out by its
rays.
6
I N 1910, His Highness King
Rahma VI had succeeded his late father, Rahma V, to
the throne of Siam. One of the princes now coming to
study in Japan was his younger brother, Prince
Pattanadid, whose titular name was Praong Chao.
His companion, eighteen like himself and also his
best friend, was his cousin Prince Kridsada, a
grandson of King Rahma IV, whose titular name was
Mon Chao. Prince Pattanadid nicknamed him “Kri.”
But Prince Kridsada, in deference to Pattanadid’s
place in the succession, addressed him more
respectfully as “Chao P.”
Both princes were fervently devout Buddhists. But
they not only dressed for the most part like young
English gentlemen, they also spoke the language with
perfect fluency. Indeed it was precisely because the
new king had been concerned about their becoming
too Westernized that he had decided upon Japan for
their university studies. Neither of the princes had
raised any objections, despite one unfortunate aspect
to it. Leaving Siam entailed the separation of Chao P.
and Kri’s younger sister.
The love of these two young people for each other
was the delight of the court, since their engagement at
the end of Chao P.’s studies was a foregone
conclusion and their future was secure in every way.
Yet when he sailed, Chao P.’s grief was so intense as
to give rise to alarm in a country whose customs did
not favor such direct expressions of feeling.
The sea voyage and his cousin’s sympathy had
helped considerably to alleviate the young prince’s
distress, and when they arrived for a stay at the
Matsugaes’, Kiyoaki found their swarthy faces alight
with happiness.
The princes were free to follow the school routine
as they liked until the winter holidays began. Though
they were to start attending classes in January, it was
decided that they would not be officially enrolled until
the new term began in the spring, by which time they
would have had the chance to acclimatize and also to
study the language intensively.
While they were at the Matsugaes’, the princes
were to occupy two adjoining guest rooms on the
second floor of the Western-style house, which had
been equipped with a steam-heating system
imported from Chicago. The period before dinner with
the assembled Matsugae family was awkward for
Kiyoaki and his guests, but when the three young men
were left to themselves after the meal, stiff formality
suddenly eased as the princes began to show
Kiyoaki photographs of the golden temples and exotic
scenery of Bangkok. Kiyoaki noticed that Prince
Kridsada was no younger than his cousin and yet still
retained a certain childish capriciousness, but he
warmed to Prince Pattanadid in whom he sensed a
dreamy nature like his own.
One of the photographs was a general view of the
monastery of Wat-Po, famous for its huge sculpture of
the reclining Buddha. Since a skilled artist had
applied delicate tinting to the photo, it was almost like
having the temple itself before one’s eyes. Palm trees
were blowing gracefully, every detail of their clustered
leaves carefully etched in color against a background
of tropical sky whose vivid blue contrasted sharply
with the sheer white of the clouds. The monastery
buildings were incomparable; they overwhelmed the
spectator with a brilliant sunburst of gold, scarlet, and
white. Two golden warrior gods stood guard on either
side of a scarlet gate outlined in gold. Delicately
carved golden bas-relief climbed the temple’s white
walls and columns to form a kind of frieze at the top.
Then there was the roof with its array of pinnacles,
each one also covered with intricate bas-relief of gold
and scarlet; from the treasure house in their midst, the
gleaming spires of the triple tower soared up into the
bright blue of the sky.
The princes were delighted with Kiyoaki’s look of
unfeigned admiration. Then Prince Pattanadid began
to speak; there was a distant look in his fine, wide,
sloping eyes, whose keen glance contrasted strongly
with his soft, round face.
“This temple is special for me. On the voyage here
to Japan, I often dreamed about it. Its golden roofs
seemed to float up out of the night sea. The ship kept
on moving, and even by the time the entire temple
was visible, it was still a long way off from me. Having
risen from the waves, it glistened under the stars the
way the light of the new moon shines across the
surface of the water. Standing on the deck of the ship,
I put my hands together and bowed in reverence
toward it. As happens in dreams, although it was night
and the temple was so far away, I could make out the
smallest details of the gold and scarlet decoration.
“I told Kri about this dream and said that the temple
seemed to be following us to Japan. But he laughed
at me and said that what was following me to Japan
was not the temple but the memory of something else.
He made me angry at the time, but now I’m inclined to
agree with him. For everything sacred has the
substance of dreams and memories, and so we
experience the miracle of what is separated from us
by time or distance suddenly being made tangible.
Dreams, memories, the sacred—they are all alike in
that they are beyond our grasp. Once we are even
marginally separated from what we can touch, the
object is sanctified; it acquires the beauty of the
unattainable, the quality of the miraculous. Everything,
really, has this quality of sacredness, but we can
desecrate it at a touch. How strange man is! His
touch defiles and yet he contains the source of
miracles.”
“He certainly puts it in a difficult, roundabout way,”
said Prince Kridsada, breaking in, “but what he’s
really thinking about is the girl he loves back in
Bangkok. Chao P., show Kiyoaki her picture.”
Prince Pattanadid flushed, but his dark skin hid the
rush of blood to his cheeks. Seeing his guest’s
discomfiture, Kiyoaki turned the conversation back to
their previous topic.
“Do you often dream like that?” he asked. “I keep a
diary record of my dreams.” Chao P.’s eyes flashed
with interest as he replied: “I wish my Japanese were
good enough to let me read it.”
Kiyoaki realized that even though he was having to
speak in English, he had just succeeded in conveying
to Chao P. his fascination with dreams, something he
had never dared reveal even to Honda. He felt himself
liking Chao P. more and more. From then on,
however, the conversation lagged, and Kiyoaki,
noticing the mischievous twinkle in Prince Kridsada’s
eyes, suddenly realized the difficulty: he had not
insisted on seeing the picture, which was what Chao
P. had wanted him to do.
“Please show me the photo of the dream that
followed you from Siam,” he hastened to ask.
“Do you mean the temple or the girl?” Kridsada
interjected, as playful as ever. And although Chao P.
scolded him for his frivolous bad manners, he was
unrepentant. When his cousin finally took out the
photograph, he thrust out his hand eagerly to point.
“Princess Chantrapa is my younger sister. Her
name means ‘moonlight.’ But we usually call her Ying
Chan.”
Looking at the picture, Kiyoaki was rather
disappointed to see a much plainer young girl than he
had imagined. She wore Western clothes, a dress of
white lace. Her hair was tied with a white ribbon and
she wore a pearl necklace. She looked modest and
unsophisticated. Any student at Peers might well be
carrying a picture of a girl like her. The beautiful,
waving fall of her hair to her shoulders showed signs
of care. But the rather strong brows over wide, timid
eyes, the lips slightly parted like the petals of an
exotic flower before the rains come—her features all
gave the unmistakable impression of girlish
innocence unconscious of its own beauty. Of course
that had its charm, but much like a young nestling
quite oblivious of its power to fly, she was too
passively content.
“Compared with this girl,” Kiyoaki thought, “Satoko
is a hundred, a thousand times more of a woman.
And isn’t that why she is often so hateful to me—
because she is so much a woman? Besides, she’s
far more beautiful than this girl. And she knows how
beautiful she is. There’s nothing she doesn’t know,
unfortunately, including how immature I am.”
Chao P., seeing how Kiyoaki was staring at the
picture of his sweetheart and perhaps feeling slightly
alarmed that he might be too attracted to her,
suddenly reached out his fineboned, amber-skinned
hand and retrieved it. As he did so, Kiyoaki’s eye was
caught by a flash of green, and for the first time he
noticed Chao P.’s beautiful ring. Its stone was a rich,
square-cut emerald. On either side of it, the fierce
beasts’ heads of a pair of yaksha, the warrior gods,
had been finely etched in gold. All in all, it was an
immense ring of such quality that for Kiyoaki to have
overlooked it until now was proof of how little he was
inclined to take notice of others.
“I was born in May. It’s my birthstone,” Prince
Pattanadid explained, slightly embarrassed again.
“Ying Chan gave it to me as a farewell present.”
“But if you wore something as magnificent as that at
Peers, I’m afraid they’d order you to stop,” warned
Kiyoaki.
Taken aback by this, the two princes began to
confer earnestly in their native language, but quickly
realizing their inadvertent rudeness, they switched
back to English for Kiyoaki’s sake. Kiyoaki told them
that he would speak to his father about making
arrangements for them to have a safety deposit at the
bank. After this had been settled and the atmosphere
had warmed still further, Prince Kridsada brought out
a small photograph of his own sweetheart. And then
both princes urged Kiyoaki to do the same.
“In Japan we are not accustomed to exchanging
pictures,” he said hastily, under the spur of youthful
vanity. “But I’ll certainly introduce her to you very
soon.” He did not have the courage to show them the
pictures of Satoko that filled the album he had kept
from early childhood.
It suddenly dawned on Kiyoaki that although his
good looks had excited praise and admiration all his
life, he had nearly reached the age of eighteen in the
gloomy confines of the family estate without a single
female friend other than Satoko.
And Satoko was as much an enemy as anything
else; she was far from being the ideal of womanhood,
sweetness and affection incarnate, that the two
princes would admire. Kiyoaki felt his anger rising
against the many frustrations that hemmed him in.
What his somewhat tipsy father had said to him on
that “evening stroll”—though his tone had been very
kind—now seemed in retrospect to contain a veiled
scorn.
The very things that his sense of dignity had made
him ignore up to now had suddenly gained the power
to humiliate him. Everything about these lively young
princes from the tropics—their brown skin, the
flashing virility in their eyes, their long, slender, amber
fingers, already so experienced in caresses—all this
seemed to taunt Kiyoaki: “What? At your age, not
even a single love affair?”
Feeling his poise evaporating, Kiyoaki, with his last
reserves of aloofness and elegance, hurriedly said,
“I’ll introduce her to you very soon.” But how was he to
arrange matters? How to show off Satoko’s beauty
before his foreign friends? For the very day before,
after a long hesitation, Kiyoaki had finally sent a wildly
insulting letter to Satoko.
Every phrase in that letter, a letter whose
premeditated insults he had worked and reworked
with the most painstaking care, was still vivid in his
mind. He had begun by writing: “I am very sorry to say
that your effrontery toward me compels me to write
this letter.” And from that curt opening, he had gone
on:
When I think how often you have presented
me with these senseless riddles, withholding
any clues in order to make them seem more
serious than they really are, numbness
strikes this hand of mine holding its writing
brush until it withers me. I have no doubt that
your emotional whims have driven you to do
this to me. There has been no gentleness in
your  method,  obviously  no  affection
whatever, not a trace of friendship. There
are deep-seated motivations in your
despicable behavior to which you are blind,
but which are driving you toward a goal that
is only too obvious. But decency forbids me
to say anything further.
But all your efforts and schemes have now
become a mere froth on the waves. For I,
unhappy though I once was, I have now
passed one of life’s milestones, a transition
for which I owe you some debt of gratitude,
however indirect. My father invited me to go
with him on one of his excursions to the Gay
Quarters, and now I’ve crossed a barrier that
every man must cross. To put it bluntly, I
spent the night with a geisha my father had
chosen for me. Nothing but one of those
exercises in pleasure that society sanctions
for men.
Fortunately enough, a single night was
sufficient to bring about a complete change
in me. My previous concepts of women were
shattered. I learned to see a girl as nothing
but a plump, lascivious little animal, a
contemptible playmate. This is the wonderful
revelation to be found in my father’s kind of
society. And having had no sympathy for his
attitude toward women until that night, I now
endorse it completely. Every fiber in my
body tells me that I am my father’s son.
Perhaps at this point you may feel that I
am to be congratulated on having finally
outgrown the dead old-fashioned views of
the Meiji era in favor of more enlightened
ones. And perhaps you are smiling
contemptuously, secure in the knowledge
that my lust for paid women will only serve to
enhance my esteem for pure ladies like
yourself. No! Let me disabuse you of any
such notion. Since that night (enlightenment
being exactly what it says) I have broken
through all these standards into territory
where there are no restraints. Geisha or
princess, virgin or prostitute, factory girl or
artist—there is no distinction whatever.
Every woman without exception is a liar and
“nothing but a plump, lascivious little animal.”
All the rest is makeup and costumes. And I
must say that I see you as being just like all
the others. Please believe that gentle Kiyo,
whom you considered so sweet, so
innocent, so malleable, is gone forever.
The two princes must have been somewhat taken
aback when Kiyoaki said an abrupt good night and
hurried out of their room fairly early in the evening,
although he smilingly observed all the usual
proprieties expected of a gentleman, such as
checking that their bedding was correctly laid out,
inquiring after any further needs, and finally
withdrawing with the ritual courtesies.
“Why is it that at times like this, there is never
anyone to rely on,” Kiyoaki muttered to himself as he
fled through the long corridor that led back to the main
house from the Western one. He thought of Honda,
but his exacting standards of friendship made him
dismiss that possibility.
The night wind howled at the windows of the
passageway with its line of dim lanterns stretching
into the distance. Suddenly afraid that someone might
see him and wonder at his running and being out of
breath like this, he stopped, and as he rested his
elbows on the ornamental window frame and
pretended to stare out into the garden, he tried
desperately to put his thoughts in order. Unlike
dreams, reality was not so easy to manipulate. He
had to conceive a plan. It could not be anything vague
and uncertain; it had to be as firmly compact as a pill,
and with as sure and immediate a result. He was
oppressed by a sense of his own weakness, and after
the warmth of the room he had just left, the cold
corridor made him shiver.
He pressed his forehead to the wind-buffeted glass
and peered out into the garden. There was no moon
tonight. The island and the maple hill beyond formed
one mass in the darkness. In the faint glow of the
corridor lamps he could make out the surface of the
pond ruffled by the wind. He suddenly imagined that
the snapping turtles had reared their heads out of the
water and were looking toward him. The thought
made him shudder.
As he returned to the main house and was about to
climb the stairs to his room, he encountered his tutor
Iinuma, and looked at him very coldly.
“Have Their Highnesses already retired for the
night, sir?”
“Yes.”
“The young master is about to retire too?”
“I have some studying to do.”
Iinuma was twenty-three and in his final year of night
school. In fact, he had probably just returned from
class since he was carrying some books under one
arm. To be young and in his prime seemed to have no
other effect on him than to deepen his look of
characteristic melancholy. His huge dark bulk
unnerved Kiyoaki.
When the boy returned to his room, he did not
bother to light the stove, but began to pace about
anxiously, tossing up plan after plan after plan.
“Whatever I do, I must do it quickly,” he thought. “Is it
too late already? Somehow, in the very near future I
have to introduce a girl to the princes as being on the
fondest terms with me, when I have just sent her this
letter. And furthermore, I have to do it in a way that
won’t cause gossip.”
The evening paper, which he had no time to read,
lay on the chair. For no good reason, Kiyoaki picked
it up and opened it. An announcement for a Kabuki
play at the Imperial Theater caught his eye, and
suddenly his heart began to thump.
“That’s it. I’ll take the princes to the Imperial
Theater. And as for that letter, it can’t have arrived
already since I sent it only yesterday. There’s still
hope. My parents won’t allow Satoko to go to a play
with me, but if we met by accident, there’d be nothing
wrong with that.”
Kiyoaki rushed out of the room and down the stairs
to the room beside the front entrance where the
telephone was. Before he went in, however, he looked
cautiously in the direction of Iinuma’s room, which was
emitting streaks of light. He must be studying.
Kiyoaki picked up the receiver and gave the
operator the number. His heart was pounding; his
customary ennui had been swept away.
“Hello, is this the Ayakura residence? Please may I
speak to Miss Satoko?” Kiyoaki asked, after the
familiar voice of an old woman had answered. From
distant Azabu, her voice expressed a certain
displeasure, though remaining agonizingly polite.
“It’s young Master Matsugae, I believe? I’m terribly
sorry, but it’s so late, I’m afraid.”
“Has Miss Satoko gone to bed?”
“Well, no, I don’t believe she has retired yet.”
After Kiyoaki persisted, Satoko finally came to the
phone. The sound of her warm, clear voice cheered
him immensely.
“Kiyo, what in the world do you want at this time of
night?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I sent you a letter yesterday.
Now I must ask you something. When it comes,
please, whatever you do, don’t open it. Please
promise me that you’ll throw it right into the fire.”
“Well really, Kiyo, I don’t know what you’re talking
about . . .” Something in Satoko’s apparently calm
voice told Kiyoaki that she had started to weave her
usual net of ambiguities. And her voice on this cold
winter night was as warm and ripe as an apricot in
June. He said impatiently, “I know you don’t. So just
please listen and promise. When my letter comes,
throw it in the fire right away without opening it,
please?”
“I see.”
“Do you promise?”
“Very well.”
“And now there’s something else I want to ask
you . . .”
“This certainly seems to be the night for requests,
doesn’t it, Kiyo?”
“Could you do this for me: get tickets to the play at
the Imperial Theater for the day after tomorrow for
yourself and your maid.”
“A play . . . !”
The abrupt silence at the other end made Kiyoaki
afraid that Satoko might refuse, but then he realized
that, in his haste, there was something he had
forgotten.  Given  the  Ayakuras’  present
circumstances, the price of a pair of tickets, at two
yen fifty sen apiece, would represent quite an
extravagance.
“No, wait, excuse me. I’ll have the tickets sent to
you. If your seats are next to ours, people might talk,
but I’ll arrange it so that they are somewhere nearby.
I’m going with the two princes from Siam, by the way.”
“How kind of you, Kiyo! Tadeshina will be delighted,
I’m sure. I’d love to go,” said Satoko, making no effort
to conceal her pleasure.
7
T HE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL ,
Kiyoaki asked Honda to join him and the Siamese
princes at the Imperial Theater the following night;
Honda was pleased, and accepted at once, although
not without a vague sense of awkwardness. Kiyoaki,
of course, did not choose to tell his friend the part of
the plan that provided for the chance encounter with
Satoko.
At home that evening during dinner, Honda told his
parents about Kiyoaki’s invitation. His father had
some reservations about the theater, but felt that he
should not restrict the freedom of an eighteen-year-
old in matters of this sort.
His father was a justice of the Supreme Court. He
saw to it that an atmosphere of decorum reigned in
his household. The family lived in a large mansion in
Hongo with many rooms, some of which were
decorated in the oppressive Western style popular in
the Meiji era. Among his servants were a number of
students, and books were to be found everywhere.
They filled the library and study and even lined the
hallways, in an expanse of brown leather and gold
lettering.
His mother, too, was the opposite of frivolous. She
held office in the Women’s Patriotic League, and she
was rather pained that her son should have struck up
a close friendship with the son of Marquise Matsugae,
a lady who had no taste for such worthwhile activities.
Aside from this, however, Shigekuni Honda’s school
record, his diligence, his health, and his unfailing
good manners were a source of constant pride to his
mother, and she never tired of singing his praises to
other people.
Everything in the Honda household, down to the
most trivial utensil, had to meet exacting standards.
Starting with the bonsai in the front entrance, the
screen behind it with the painted Chinese ideogram
for harmony, the cigarette case and ashtrays laid out
in the drawing room, the tasseled tablecloth, and
ending with the rice bin in the kitchen, the towel rack
in the toilet, the pen holders in the study, and even the
various paperweights in the study—each item was
perfection of its kind.
And this same care extended to the conversation of
the household. In the homes of Honda’s friends, one
or two old people could always be counted on to
come up with absurd stories. In all seriousness, for
example, they might recall the night when two moons
had appeared at the window, one of them a badger in
disguise who immediately resumed his normal shape
on being roundly abused, and lumbered away. And
there would always be an appreciative audience. But
in his own home, a severe glance from his father
would make it clear even to the oldest of the maids
that to indulge in such ignorant nonsense was out of
the question.
In his youth, his father had spent some years
studying law in Germany, and he revered the German
respect for logic.
When Shigekuni Honda compared his own home
with Kiyoaki’s, one aspect of the contrast particularly
amused him. Although the Matsugaes seemed to
lead a Westernized life and although their house was
filled with objects from abroad, the atmosphere of
their home was strikingly and traditionally Japanese.
In his own household, on the other hand, the day-today
life-style might be Japanese, but the atmosphere had
much that was Western in spirit. And then his father’s
regard for the education of his student houseboys
was in marked contrast to Marquis Matsugae’s
attitude toward his.
As usual, once he had finished his homework,
which tonight was French, his second foreign
language, Honda turned to some law digests. These
were written in German, French, and English, and he
had had to order them through the Maruzen
bookstore. He read these every night in anticipation
of the future demands of college work, and also, more
significantly, because he had a natural bent to trace
everything to its source. Lately, he had begun to lose
interest in the European natural law that had
exercised such a fascination on him. From the day of
the Abbess of Gesshu’s sermon, he had become
more and more aware of such a system’s
inadequacies.
He realized, however, that although natural law had
been comparatively neglected in recent years, no
other system of thought displayed such a capacity for
survival: it had flourished in different forms suited to
each of the many epochs in two thousand years of
history—from its apparent origins in Socrates and its
powerful influence on the formulation of law in the
Roman era through the medium of Aristotle’s writings,
to its intricate development and codification during
the Christian Middle Ages and its renewed popularity
in the Renaissance; this indeed reached such a peak
that the period could be called the Age of Natural
Law. In all probability, it was this recurrent philosophy
that preserved the traditional European faith in the
power of reason. Still, Honda could not help thinking
that despite its tenacity, two thousand years of its
strong, bright, Apollonian humanism had barely
sufficed to hold off the assaults of darkness and
barbarism.
Nor was the assault limited to these forces.
Another, more blinding light had also threatened it,
since natural law had to rigidly exclude the very
possibility of a concept of existence based on
romantic and irrational nationalism.
However that might be, Honda did not necessarily
cling to the historical school of law, which was
influenced by nineteenth-century romanticism, nor to
the ethnic school. The Japan of the Meiji era, indeed,
needed a nationalistic type of law, one that had its
roots in the philosophy of the historical school. But
Honda’s concerns were quite different. He had first
been intent on isolating the essential principle behind
all law, a principle which he felt must exist. And this
was why the concept of natural law had fascinated
him for a time. But now he was more concerned to
define the outer limits of natural law, which were
inadvertently pointed up by its claims to universality.
He enjoyed giving his imagination free rein in this
direction. If the law, he thought, was to do away with
the restrictions that natural law and philosophy had
imposed upon man’s vision of the world since ancient
times, and break through to a more universal principle
(granted that such exists) would it not reach a stage
where the law itself, as we know it, would cease to
exist?
This was, of course, the kind of dangerous thinking
that appealed to youth. And given Honda’s
circumstances, with the geometrical structure of
Roman law towering so formidably in the background
to cast its shadow over the modern operative law that
he was now studying, it was no wonder that he found
its orthodoxy rather tedious; from time to time, he
therefore put aside the legal codes of Meiji Japan, so
scrupulously based on Western models, and turned
his eyes in another direction—to the broader and
more ancient legal traditions of Asia.
In his present skeptical mood, a French translation
by Delongchamps of the Laws of Manu, which had
arrived from Maruzen at an opportune moment,
contained much that he found strongly appealing.
The Laws of Manu, probably compiled over the
period from 200  B.C. to 200  A.D., were the foundation
of Indian law. And among faithful Hindus, it maintained
its authority as a legal code right up to the present.
Within its twelve chapters and 2,684 articles were
gathered an immense body of precepts drawn from
religion, custom, ethics, and law. It ranged from the
origin of the cosmos to the penalties for robbery and
the rules for dividing an inheritance. It was imbued
with an Asian philosophy in which all things were
somehow one, in remarkable contrast to the natural
law and world view of Christianity, with its passion for
making distinctions based on a neatly corresponding
macrocosm and microcosm.
However, the right of action in Roman law
embodied a principle that contradicted the modern
concept of rights. Just as Roman law held that rights
lapse when there is no possibility of redress, so too
the Laws of Manu, according to the procedural rules
in force in the great courts of the rajahs and Brahmins,
restricted the suits that might be brought to trial to
cases of nonpayment of debts and some eighteen
others.
Honda was fascinated by the uniquely vivid style of
the Laws. Even details as prosaic as court procedure
were couched in colorful metaphors and similes.
During the conduct of a trial, for example, the rajah
was to determine the truth and falsehood of the matter
before him “just as the hunter searches out the lair of
the wounded deer by following the trail of blood.” And
in the enumeration of his duties, the rajah was
admonished to dispense favors on his people “as
Indra lets fall the life-giving rain of April.” Honda read
right to the very end, including the final chapter, which
dealt with arcane matters that defied classification
either as laws or as proclamations.
The imperative postulated in Western law was
inevitably based on man’s power of reason. The Laws
of Manu, however, were rooted in a cosmic law that
was impervious to reason—the doctrine of the
transmigration of souls. This was set out in the Laws
as a matter of course:
“Deeds proceed from the body, speech, and the
mind, and result in either good or evil.”
“In this world, the soul in conjunction with the body
performs three kinds of act: good, indifferent, and
evil.”
“That which proceeds from a man’s soul shall
shape his soul; that which proceeds from his speech
shall shape his speech, and deeds that proceed from
his body shall shape his body.”
“He who sins in body shall be a tree or grass in the
next life, he who sins in speech shall be a bird or a
beast, and he who sins in soul shall be reborn at the
lowest level of caste.”
“The man who retains a proper guard over his
speech, his mind, and his body with regard to all living
things—the man who bridles his lust and his anger—
shall achieve fulfillment. Total liberation shall be his.”
“It is fitting that every man should employ his
inherent wisdom to discern how the fate of his soul
depends on his adherence or nonadherence to the
law and that he should exert himself wholeheartedly in
the faithful observance of the law.”
Here, just as in the natural law, to observe the law
and to do good deeds were taken as being the same
thing. But here the law was based upon the principle
of the transmigration of souls, a doctrine that short-
circuited normal rational inquiry. And rather than
making an appeal to human reason, the Laws
seemed to play on the threat of retribution. And thus
as a doctrine of law, it placed somewhat less trust in
human nature than did the Roman law with its reliance
on the powers of reason.
Honda had no desire to spend his time mulling over
the problem like this, or to steep himself in the
wisdom of the ancients. Being a law student, he was
inclined to support the establishment of law, but he
was persistently troubled by doubts and misgivings
about the operative system that was his subject. His
struggles with its painfully intricate and tangled
structure had taught him that a broader view was
sometimes necessary; this was to be found not only in
natural law, with its apotheosis of reason that was at
the heart of operative law, but also in the seminal
wisdom of the Laws of Manu. From this vantage point,
he could enjoy two worlds—the clear blue of midday
or the star-filled night.
The study of law was certainly a strange discipline.
It was a net with mesh so fine as to catch the most
trivial incidents of daily life, yet its vast extension in
time and space encompassed even the eternal
movements of the sun and stars. No fisherman
seeking to increase his catch could be more greedy
than the student of law.
Lost for so long in his reading and oblivious to the
passage of time, Honda at last realized with some
anxiety that he had better go to bed if he was not to
look exhausted when he met Kiyoaki at the Imperial
Theater the next night. When he thought of his friend,
so handsome and so hard to fathom, and then
considered how unlikely it was that his own future
would be anything but ordinary and predictable, he
could not suppress a slight shudder. He idly turned
over in his mind the triumphs with which his
classmates so proudly regaled him, such as using a
rolled-up cushion to play rugby in a Gion teahouse
with a flock of young geishas.
Then he thought of an episode in his own home this
spring that would have been insignificant in a more
worldly environment but which set off immense
reverberations in the Honda household. A memorial
service to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his
grandmother’s death had been held at the temple in
Nippori where the family remains were buried, and
afterwards the immediate family relatives had shared
their hospitality. Shigekuni’s second cousin Fusako
was both the youngest of the guests, and the prettiest
and most vivacious. In the staid Honda household, her
loud peals of laughter caused a few raised eyebrows.
Despite the day’s religious overtones, the
awareness of death was not enough to hinder the
contented babble of conversation among relatives
who had not seen one another for so long. And so
they talked, touching on the dead grandmother from
time to time, perhaps, but much more concerned with
telling one another about the children who were the
pride of each family.
The thirty-odd guests wandered about the house
from room to room, astonished at finding themselves
confronted with books at every turn. A few of them
asked to see Shigekuni’s study and poked around his
desk for a time, then they left one by one, until Fusako
alone remained with him.
The two of them sat down on a leather couch by the
wall. Shigekuni was wearing his school uniform, and
Fusako a formal purple kimono. Once they became
aware that they had been left alone, they became
rather awkward with each other, and Fusako’s peals
of laughter ceased.
Shigekuni was wondering whether it would be the
right thing to show Fusako a picture album or
something like that, but unfortunately he had nothing of
the sort at hand. To make matters worse, Fusako
suddenly seemed displeased. Until now, he had not
been particularly attracted to her, with her excess of
physical energy, her loud, interminable laugh, her
habit of teasing him although he was a year older than
she, and her constant flurry of activity. Admittedly she
had the warm bloom of a midsummer flower, but
Shigekuni had already come to a private decision: he
would rather not have a woman like her for his wife.
“I’m tired, you know. How about you, Shige, aren’t
you?”
Before he could reply, she seemed to fold at the
waist and fall toward him in her wide obi, like a wall
suddenly collapsing. An instant later, her head was
snuggled in his lap, and he found himself
contemplating the warm fragrant weight across his
knees.
He was totally at a loss. He looked down at the
supple burden settled in his lap and things remained
that way for what seemed a very long time. He felt
powerless to move even a muscle, and Fusako, too,
once she had so contentedly buried her head in the
blue serge of her cousin’s uniform, gave no sign that
she ever intended to remove it.
But then the door suddenly opened to reveal his
mother and an aunt and uncle. His mother paled, and
Shigekuni’s heart gave a thump. Fusako, however,
merely looked slowly in the direction of the
newcomers, and then oh so languidly raised her head.
“I’m so very tired. And I have a headache too.”
“My goodness, we can’t have that. Shall I get you
something for it?”
Not for nothing did his mother hold office in the
Women’s Patriotic League, as she stepped into the
breach as a volunteer nurse.
“No, thank you, I don’t believe it’s that serious.”
This episode added considerable spice to his
relatives’ conversation, and although it fortunately did
not reach his father’s ears, his mother took him
severely to task for it. And as for Fusako, despite
being his cousin, she was never invited to the house
again. Honda, however, would never forget those few
brief moments when her warm weight lay heavy in his
lap.
And although he had supported her whole upper
body in its kimono and obi, it was the subtly complex
beauty of her head and hair that had most attracted
him. Its luxuriant mass had pressed against him with
the clinging heaviness of smoldering incense. The
blue serge of his trousers could not conceal its
constant, penetrating warmth. It was like the heat of a
distant fire—what caused it, he wondered. It had
radiated from her as if from coals in a fine china vase.
It implied that her affection for him was somehow
excessive. And hadn’t the pressure of her head been
a stinging reproof as well?
And then there were Fusako’s eyes. While her
cheek was on his lap, he had been able to look down
into her wide, dark eyes. They were small and
vulnerable, as glistening as raindrops, like dancing
butterflies momentarily at rest. The flutter of her long
lashes was the flutter of their wings, which were as
beautifully speckled as the pupils of her eyes.
So insincere, so close to him yet so indifferent, so
ready to dart away—he had never seen such eyes
that roamed ceaselessly in discontent. First focused,
then vacant, they were as unsettled as the bubble in a
spirit level.
But she was not flirting. Her look conveyed even
less than it had when she was chattering gaily a few
minutes before. Her eyes seemed to express nothing
more significant than the headstrong passion that
surged in her. The unnerving force of such sweetness
and fragrance sprang from something far more
elemental than a desire for flirtation.
What, then, was the pervasive mood of those
moments of physical contact which had seemed to
stretch into an eternity?
8
T HE MAIN PRODUCTION at the
Imperial Theater from the middle of November to the
tenth of December was not a popular modern piece
involving actresses, but two Kabuki plays featuring
such masters of the craft as Baiko and Kojiro. Kiyoaki
had picked the classical theater because he felt that
this kind of entertainment would have more appeal for
his foreign guests. But as he didn’t know much about
Kabuki, he was unfamiliar with that evening’s two
offerings,  The Rise and Fall of the Taira and  Lion
Dance. And so he persuaded Honda to spend his
lunch hour in the library looking up the plays in order to
explain them to the princes beforehand.
The two princes were inclined to bring no more than
idle curiosity to bear on foreign plays. Kiyoaki had
introduced them to Honda, who had come home from
school with him. And now, after dinner, he noticed that
they were not paying much attention to his friend’s
English summary of the evening’s plays.
In such circumstances, Honda’s loyalty and utter
solemnity moved Kiyoaki to both guilt and pity.
Certainly none of the theater party that night was much
concerned with the plays themselves. Kiyoaki, for
one, was preoccupied; Satoko might have read the
letter after all and hence might break her promise to
come.
The butler came in to announce that the carriage
was waiting. The horses neighed and their breath
flared white from their nostrils, to swirl up into the
black, wintry sky. Kiyoaki enjoyed seeing horses
proudly displaying their strength in winter, when their
usual musky smell was fainter and their hooves rang
clearly on the frozen ground. On a warm spring day, a
galloping horse was only too clearly a sweating
animal of flesh and blood. But a horse racing through
a snowstorm became one with the very elements;
wrapped in the whirling blast of the north wind, the
beast embodied the icy breath of winter.
Kiyoaki liked riding in a carriage, especially when
he was oppressed by some concern or other. For the
bouncing would jolt him out of the dogged, steady
rhythm of his worry. The tails arching away from bare
rumps close to the carriage, the manes trailing wildly
in the wind, the saliva falling in a gleaming ribbon from
the gnashing teeth—Kiyoaki liked to savor the
contrast between the animals’ brute strength and the
elegant fittings in the interior of the carriage.
Kiyoaki and Honda wore overcoats over their
school uniforms. The princes, though they themselves
were huddled in immense, fur-collared overcoats,
shivered miserably.
“We’re not used to the cold,” said Prince
Pattanadid, an unhappy look in his eye. “Some
cousins of ours studied in Switzerland, and they
warned us that it was cold. But no one said anything
about how cold Japan was.”
“But you’ll get used to it in no time,” said Honda to
console them; they were already on good terms
despite their short acquaintance.
Since it was December, the season for the
traditional end-of-year sales, the streets were bright
with advertising banners and crowded with shoppers
in heavy cloaks, all of which prompted the princes to
ask what festival was being celebrated.
For the past two days or more, the faces of both
Prince Pattanadid and even the heedless and
irrepressible Kridsada had become more and more
downcast, an unmistakable proof of homesickness.
Naturally they were careful not to be too open about
this, as they did not wish to affront Kiyoaki’s
hospitality. Yet he knew that their thoughts were
elsewhere, adrift on some broad ocean. But he was
pleased by it, for to him the idea of human emotions
remaining steadfast and inextricably anchored in the
body,  in  the  here-and-now,  was  unbearably
oppressive.
As they were passing Hibiya Park and approaching
the moat of the Imperial Palace, the three-storied
white theater loomed up ahead in the early darkness
of the winter evening.
When they entered the theater, the new play that
came first on the program was already in progress.
Kiyoaki picked out Satoko where she sat beside her
old servant, Tadeshina. Their seats were two or three
rows behind and somewhat to one side of the young
men. Seeing her there and catching the hint of a
flashing smile, Kiyoaki was ready to forgive her
everything.
During the rest of the first play, while two rival
generals of the Kamakura era marshaled their forces
against each other on stage, Kiyoaki watched as
though in a daze. Everything on stage paled before
his self-esteem, now that he was delivered from any
threat to it.
“Tonight Satoko is more beautiful than ever,” he
thought. “She has taken extra care over her toilette.
She’s come looking just as I hoped she would.”
Kiyoaki was delighted with the way things had
turned out. He congratulated himself over and over
again as he sat there secure in his contentment,
unable to turn and look in Satoko’s direction but
basking in the warmth of her beauty so close at hand.
He could not wish for anything more.
What he had wanted of her tonight was a beautiful
presence, a demand that he had never previously
made on her. On reflection, he realized that he had
not been accustomed to thinking of Satoko in terms of
beauty. Though he had never exactly considered her
as a confirmed enemy, she was nevertheless like fine
silk disguising a sharp needle, or rich brocade that
hid an abrasive underside. Above all, she was the
woman who loved him without having bothered to
consult him at all in the matter. This Kiyoaki could not
bear. Not for him the meek acceptance of favors
granted. He had always firmly shuttered his heart
against the rising sun, for fear that a single ray of its
harsh, overcritical brilliance might pierce through.
The intermission came. Everything went off
naturally. First Kiyoaki turned to Honda and
whispered to him that by a remarkable coincidence,
Satoko was there. And although the look in his
friend’s eye, after a quick glance backward, left no
doubt that he knew that something more than chance
was at work, this, surprisingly enough, did not shake
Kiyoaki’s complacency in the least. For Honda’s look
was eloquent proof of Kiyoaki’s concept of friendship,
which never demanded an excess of honesty.
There was a bustle of talk and movement as
everyone went out into the lobby. Kiyoaki and his
friends strolled under the chandeliers to meet Satoko
and her maid in front of a window that looked out over
the castle moat and the ancient stone walls of the
shogun’s castle. His ears burning with unaccustomed
excitement, he introduced Satoko to the two princes.
Realizing how inappropriate cold formality would be,
he observed all etiquette, but put on the same show of
naïve enthusiasm he had displayed when he had first
mentioned Satoko to the princes.
He knew that the expansive surge of emotion, the
liberating power of his newly won sense of security,
enabled him to adopt an alien maturity. Abandoning
his characteristic melancholy, he reveled in his
freedom. For Kiyoaki knew that he was not at all in
love with Satoko.
Tadeshina had retired to the shelter of a pillar with
all sorts of deprecating gestures. Judging from the
tightness of the embroidered plum-colored collar of
her kimono, one would gather that she had decided to
treat these foreigners with circumspection. Her
attitude pleased Kiyoaki, who was thus spared her
high-pitched acknowledgment of his introduction.
Although the two princes were delighted to be in the
company of such a beautiful woman, Chao P. was not
too involved to notice the remarkable alteration in
Kiyoaki’s manner when he introduced Satoko. Never
imagining that Kiyoaki was in fact modeling himself
on his own boyish earnestness, the prince began to
feel a real fondness for Kiyoaki, believing that for the
first time he was seeing him behave as a young man
should.
Honda, in the meantime, was lost in admiration for
Satoko, who, although she did not speak a word of
English, maintained exactly the right degree of poise
before the two princes. Surrounded as she was with
four young men, and wearing an elaborate formal
kimono, she nevertheless carried herself without the
least sign of constraint; her beauty and elegance were
self-evident.
As Kiyoaki translated for the two princes, who were
taking turns at plying Satoko with questions, she
smiled at him as if to seek his approval. It was a smile
that seemed to imply much more than the
circumstances demanded. Kiyoaki became uneasy.
“She’s read the letter,” he thought. But no, if she
had read the letter, she would not be behaving like
this toward him tonight. In fact, she would not have
come at all. Surely she could not have received the
letter before he telephoned. But there was no way of
knowing whether or not she had read it after his call. It
would be pointless to confront her with a direct
question because she would be quick to deny it. But
still, he grew angry with himself for not daring to do it.
Trying to sound as casual as possible, he did his
best to discover if there were not some note in her
voice that differed from the cheerful warmth of two
nights before, or some suggestive change in her
expression. Once more the clarity of his self-
possession was becoming blurred.
Her nose was as well molded as that of an ivory
doll, without being so sharply defined as to give her a
haughty profile. And her face seemed to glow and fall
into soft shadow; alternating with the quick, vivacious
movement of her eyes. Alertness of eye is usually
considered a vulgar trait in women, but Satoko had a
way of delivering her sidelong glances that was
irresistibly charming. Her smile followed close upon
her words, as her glance did upon her smile—the
graceful sequence heightening the bewitching
elegance of her expression. Her lips, although
somewhat  thin,  concealed  a  subtle  inner
voluptuousness. When she laughed, she was always
quick to hide the sparkle of her teeth with the slender,
delicate fingers of one hand, but not before the young
men had noticed a white brilliance that rivaled that of
the chandeliers above.
As Kiyoaki translated the extravagant compliments
of the princes for Satoko, he noticed a blush
spreading to her earlobes. Almost hidden by her hair,
they were shaped with the fluid grace of raindrops,
and however hard he peered at them, he was unable
to decide whether they owed their heightened color to
some cosmetic or to embarrassment.
One thing about Satoko, however, transcended all
artifice. This was the force of her bright eyes. It
unnerved him as it always did. He felt pierced by its
uncanny keenness; its power sprang from her very
essence.
The bell rang to announce the beginning of  The
Rise and Fall of the Taira , and the audience began
to file back to their seats.
“She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve seen since my
arrival in Japan. How lucky you are!” said Chao P. in
a low voice as he and Kiyoaki walked down the aisle.
Judging by the look in his eyes, one could gather that
he had recovered from his attack of homesickness.
9
K IYOAKI’S TUTOR IINUMA had
come to realize that the six years and more that he
had spent in service to the Matsugae household had
not only blighted the hopes of his youth but had
dissipated the consequent indignation he had felt at
first. When he brooded over his frustrating
circumstances, he did so with a chill resentment quite
different from the hot anger he had once felt. Of
course the atmosphere of the Matsugae household,
so unfamiliar to him, had had much to do with the
changes in him. From the very beginning, however,
the main source of contagion had been Kiyoaki, now
eighteen years old.
The boy would be nineteen this coming year. If
Iinuma could only see to it that he graduated from
Peers with good marks and then that he was entered
in the law school of Tokyo Imperial University when
the autumn of his twenty-first year came round, he
would be able to feel that his own responsibility had
been properly discharged. However, for some reason
that Iinuma could not fathom, Marquis Matsugae had
never seen fit to take his son to task over his school
record. And as things stood now, there seemed little
chance of Kiyoaki’s studying law at Tokyo University.
After graduating from Peers, there seemed to be no
other course open to him but to take advantage of his
privileges as a member of the nobility and enter either
Kyoto or Tohoku Imperial University without having to
take an entrance examination. Kiyoaki’s performance
at school had been indifferent; he put no effort into his
studies, nor did he compensate for this at all by trying
to shine at athletics instead. Had he been an
outstanding student, Iinuma could have shared in the
glory, giving his friends and relatives in Kagoshima
cause to be proud. But by now, Iinuma could only
dimly recall the fervent hopes he had once
entertained. And besides, he realized bitterly, no
matter how far short of the mark Kiyoaki fell, he was
still assured of a seat in the House of Peers.
The friendship between Kiyoaki and Honda was
another source of irritation. Honda was close to the
top of his class, but he made no attempt to influence
his friend for the good, despite Kiyoaki’s regard for
him; quite the reverse, in fact. He behaved, in Iinuma’s
eyes, like an uncritical admirer, blind to Kiyoaki’s
every shortcoming.
Jealousy, of course, played its part in Iinuma’s
resentment. Being a friend and classmate, Honda
was in a position to accept Kiyoaki as he was,
whereas for Iinuma, he was an eternal monument to
his own failure.
Kiyoaki’s looks, his elegance, his diffidence, his
complexity, his disinclination for any exertion, his
languid dreaminess, his magnificent body, his
delicate skin, his long lashes over those dreaming
eyes—all of Kiyoaki’s attributes conspired to betray
Iinuma’s hopes with a careless, elegant grace of their
own. Iinuma saw his young master as a constant,
mocking reproach.
So bitter a frustration, a sense of failure so gnawing
in its intensity, can, over a long period, be transmuted
into a kind of religious fervor directed at its cause.
Iinuma became enraged at anyone who tried to slight
Kiyoaki. By a sort of confused intuition of which he
himself was unaware, he grasped something of the
nature of Kiyoaki’s almost impenetrable isolation.
Kiyoaki’s determination, in turn, to keep his distance
from Iinuma, doubtless sprang from the fact that he
perceived all too clearly the nature of his tutor’s
burning fanaticism.
Of all the retinue in the Matsugae household, only
Iinuma was possessed by this fervor, something
intangible yet quite apparent as soon as one looked
into his eyes. One day, a guest asked: “Excuse me,
but that houseboy of yours isn’t a socialist, is he?” The
Marquis and his wife could not help bursting into
laughter at this, for they were well aware of Iinuma’s
background, his present behavior, and, above all, the
zeal with which day in, day out, he performed his
devotions at the “Omiyasama” shrine. It was
customary for this taciturn young man, who had no
words to waste on anyone, to go to the family shrine
early each morning; there he poured out his heart to
Marquis Matsugae’s renowned father, whom he had
never known in his lifetime. In the early days, his pleas
were shot through with a radical anger, but as he grew
older, they began to be shaped by a pervasive
discontent that now had spread to envelop every
aspect of his world.
He was the first to rise every morning. He washed
his face and rinsed out his mouth, then putting on his
indigo-striped kimono and his  Okura hakama , he set
off in the direction of the shrine.
He walked along the path that led past the maids’
quarters at the rear of the main house and through the
grove of Japanese cypresses. In cold weather, like
this morning’s, the frost tortured the dirt of the path
into tiny spiral mounds; when these were crushed by
the blunt impact of Iinuma’s wooden clogs, they
shattered into pure, glittering fragments. The morning
sun, lying bright and gauzy over the withered brown
and green leaves that still clung to the cypresses,
shone on his frosty breath rising in the winter air. He
felt utterly purified. Incessant birdsong filled the pale
blue morning sky. However, despite the stimulation of
the cold air briskly striking his bare skin under his
open-necked kimono, something wrung his heart with
bitter regret: “If only the young master would come
with me, just once!”
He had never succeeded in communicating this
vigorous, masculine sense of well-being to Kiyoaki.
No one could hold him responsible for this failure. To
force the boy to accompany him on these morning
walks was out of the question, yet Iinuma continued to
blame himself. In six years he had not been able to
persuade Kiyoaki to participate even once in this
“virtuous practice.”
On the flat crest of the small hill, trees gave way to a
fairly broad clearing of grass, now brown and dry,
through which a gravel path led to the shrine. As
Iinuma gazed at it and the full force of the morning sun
struck the granite torii in front of it and the two cannon
shells to either side of its stone steps, a feeling of
self-possession came over him. Here in the dawn, he
found a bracing air of purity, free from the stifling
luxury penetrating the Matsugae household. He felt as
if he were breathing in a new coffin of fresh white
wood. Since early childhood, all that he had been
taught to revere as honorable and beautiful was to be
found, as far as the Matsugaes were concerned, in
the proximity of death.
After Iinuma had climbed the steps and taken up
his position before the shrine, he saw a small bird, a
glimpse of dark red breast, as it hopped about the
branches of a sakaki, rustling the gleaming leaves.
Then, with a piercing cry, it flew away. A flycatcher, he
thought.
He pressed his palms together and, as always,
invoked  Kiyoaki’s  grandfather  as  “Reverend
Ancestor.” Then in silence he began to pray: “Why is
our era one of decadence? Why does the world
despise vigor and youth and worthy ambitions and
single-mindedness? You once cut men down with
your sword, you were wounded by the swords of
others, you endured the most terrible dangers—all to
found a new Japan. And finally, having achieved high
office and esteemed by everyone, you died, the
greatest hero in a heroic age. Why can we not
recapture the glory of your era? How long must this
age of the effete and the contemptible endure? Or is
the worst still to come? Men think only of money and
women. Men have forgotten everything that should be
becoming to a man. That great and shining age of
gods and heroes passed away with the Meiji
Emperor. Will we ever see its like again? A time
when the strength of youth will unstintingly give of itself
once more?
“In the present day—when places called cafés are
springing up everywhere, drawing in thousands of idle
people with money to squander, when male and
female students behave so shockingly in streetcars
that it has become necessary to segregate them—
men have lost all trace of that fervor that drove their
ancestors to accept the most frightening challenges.
Now they are good for nothing but to flutter their
effeminate hands like dry, fragile leaves shaken by
the merest puff of air.
“Why all this? How did such an age come about, an
age which has defiled everything that once was
sacred. Alas, Reverend Ancestor, your own grandson,
whom I serve, is in every way a child of this decadent
era, and I am powerless to do anything about it.
Should I die to atone for my failure? Or have things
taken their course according to some great design of
yours?”
Oblivious to the cold in the fervor of his devotions,
Iinuma stood there, a virile figure with his matted
chest showing through his open kimono. In truth, he
secretly regretted that his body did not correspond to
the purity of his zeal. On the other hand, Kiyoaki,
whose body he saw as a sacred vessel, lacked the
single-minded purity required of all true men.
Then suddenly, at the height of his ardent
outpouring, as he was getting warmer and warmer
despite the chill morning air swirling under the skirt of
his  hakama , he began to feel sexually aroused. He
immediately snatched a broom from its place under
the floor and began to sweep out the shrine in a frenzy
of energy.
10
S HORTLY AFTER the new year,
Iinuma was called to Kiyoaki’s room. There he found
the old lady, Tadeshina, whom he knew to be
Satoko’s maid.
Satoko herself had already been to the Matsugae
house to exchange New Year’s greetings, and today,
finding occasion to bring some traditional Kyoto bran
mash as her own New Year’s present, Tadeshina had
made her way inconspicuously to Kiyoaki’s room.
Though Iinuma was aware who Tadeshina was, this
was the first time he had ever been brought together
with her intentionally, and the reason for it was not yet
clear to him.
The New Year was always lavishly celebrated in the
Matsugae household. Some twenty or more people
came from Kagoshima, and after going to the
residence of the traditional head of the clan to pay
their respects, they were entertained at the
Matsugaes’. The New Year’s dinners, cooked in the
Hoshigaoka style and served in the black-beamed
main hall, were famous, largely because of such
desserts as ice cream and melon, which were
delicacies almost never tasted by country people.
This year, however, because the period of mourning
for the Meiji Emperor was not yet over, no more than
three guests came up from Kagoshima; among them,
the principal of Iinuma’s middle school, a gentleman
who had the honor of having known Kiyoaki’s
grandfather.
Marquis Matsugae had established a certain ritual
with the old teacher. As Iinuma waited on him at the
banquet, the Marquis would speak graciously to the
old man: “Iinuma has done well here.” This year, too,
the formula had been invoked, and the principal had
murmured the usual politely deprecating words, as
predictably as someone stamping his seal on a
routine document. But this year, perhaps because
there was only a handful of guests present, the
ceremony struck Iinuma as being insincere, a
perfunctory formality.
Of course Iinuma had never presented himself to
any of the illustrious ladies who came to call on the
Marquise, so he was taken aback at being confronted
in his young master’s study by a New Year’s guest
who happened to be a woman, however elderly.
Tadeshina wore a black kimono patterned with
crests, and though she sat upright in her chair with
extreme propriety, the whiskey that Kiyoaki had urged
on her had evidently taken some effect. Beneath her
graying hair, gathered neatly into a knot and still
unruffled, the skin on her forehead glowed through the
layer of white makeup with a shade of snow-covered
plum blossom.
After acknowledging Iinuma with a brief glance, she
returned to the story she had been telling about Prince
Saionji.
“According to what everyone said, the Prince
enjoyed tobacco and alcohol from the age of five
onward. Samurai families are always so concerned to
bring their children up impeccably. But in noble
families—I think you know what I mean, young master
—parents never discipline their children from the
moment they’re born; wouldn’t you agree? For after
all, their children receive the court rank of fifth degree
at birth, which qualifies them to become retainers of
His Imperial Majesty, and so out of reverence to the
Emperor, their parents don’t dare to be harsh with
them. And in a court nobleman’s house, nobody says
anything about his Imperial Majesty that isn’t
absolutely prudent. Just as nobody belonging even to
the household of a lord would ever dare to gossip
openly about their master. And that’s the way it is.
And my mistress too has this same deep reverence
for His Imperial Majesty. But of course it doesn’t
extend to foreign lords.” This last was Tadeshina’s
ironic jab at the hospitality extended to the Siamese
princes by the Matsugaes. Then she hastened to
make some amends: “But then, thanks of course to
your great kindness, I was privileged to see a play
again after I don’t know how long. I felt that it gave me
a new lease on life.”
Kiyoaki let Tadeshina ramble on as she liked. In
asking her to come to his study, he had had
something quite definite in mind. He wanted to be
free of the nagging doubt that had pursued him ever
since that night. And so now, after plying Tadeshina
with more whiskey, he asked her abruptly if Satoko
had in fact taken his letter and thrown it unopened into
the fire as requested.
Her answer came more readily than he might have
expected: “Oh that! The young lady spoke to me
immediately after her telephone conversation with
you. So when the letter came next day, I took it and
burned it unopened. Everything was taken care of.
You need not worry about it at all.”
On hearing this, Kiyoaki felt like a man who has
struggled for hours through tangled undergrowth and
at last fights his way into the open. A multitude of
delightful prospects unfolded before his eyes.
Satoko’s not having read the letter did two things: not
only did it restore things to their former balance, but
Kiyoaki was now happily confident that he had
opened up a whole new perspective on life.
Satoko had already made an overture whose
implications were dazzling. Her annual New Year’s
visit to exchange greetings fell on a day traditionally
set aside by the Marquis for the children of his
relatives. They would gather at his house, their ages
ranging from three to twenty. And on this one day he
would don the role of loving father, listening kindly to
what each of them had to say and giving counsel
when called upon to do so. This year, Satoko had
brought some children out to see the horses.
Kiyoaki led them to the stable where the
Matsugaes kept their four horses. It was decorated for
the holidays with the twisted rope traditional in Shinto
observance. The horses, with their powerful, smooth-
muscled bodies, suddenly rearing back or kicking
their hooves against the boards, struck Kiyoaki as
having a pulsating life appropriate to the New Year.
The children were enthralled. They asked the groom
for each horse’s name. Then, taking aim at the huge
yellow teeth, they hurled salvos of squashed pieces of
crumbling candy they had been clutching in their fists.
The high-strung beasts glared sidelong at their
tormentors with bloodshot eyes. This delighted the
children even more since these baleful looks were
proof that the horses regarded them as adults.
Satoko, however, was frightened by the saliva
streaming from the horses’ gaping mouths, and
withdrew to the shelter of an evergreen some
distance away. Kiyoaki walked over to join her,
leaving the children to the groom.
Her eyes were showing the effects of the spiced
saké that was traditional at New Year celebrations.
What she said, therefore—to the accompaniment of
the children’s shouts of joy—might have been
attributed to this stimulus. At any rate, as Kiyoaki
came to her side, she looked at him far from demurely
and began to speak with a lilt of excitement in her
voice.
“I was so happy that night, you know. You
introduced me as though I were your fiancée. I’m sure
Their Highnesses were quite surprised that I should
be so old. But do you know how I felt then? If I had had
to die at that very moment, I would have had no
regrets. My happiness lies in your hands. Be careful
with it, won’t you? I’ve never been so happy at a New
Year as I am now. I never looked forward so much to
what the year may bring.”
Kiyoaki did not know what to say. “Why are you
telling me all this?” he asked finally, in a strained
voice.
“Oh, Kiyo, when I’m very happy, my words come
tumbling out like the doves they release at a
launching, flying up through a burst of confetti. Kiyo,
you’ll understand soon enough.” To make matters
worse, Satoko had ended on that phrase calculated
to irritate Kiyoaki: “You’ll understand soon enough.”
“How proud and self-satisfied she is!” thought
Kiyoaki. “So much older and wiser.”
All this had taken place some days before. And
now today, after Tadeshina’s account of the fate of the
letter, Kiyoaki lost his lingering misgivings, now
confident that he was embarking on a New Year
under the most favorable auspices. He would be rid of
the melancholy dreams that had plagued his nights.
He was determined that from now on his dreams
would be happy. His manner would never fail to be
open, and since he would be free of depression and
worry, he would try to communicate his own well-being
to everyone. But dispensing goodwill to mankind is a
hazardous business at best, and one that demands a
considerable degree of maturity and wisdom.
Nevertheless, Kiyoaki was driven by an extraordinary
sense of urgency.
Whatever his sense of mission, however, he had
not called Iinuma to his room solely out of the warm
desire to dispel his tutor’s gloom and see his face
transformed with happiness.
The saké he had drunk combined with something
else to provoke Kiyoaki to rashness. Tadeshina,
despite her selfabashing manner and excruciating
courtesy, had a certain air about her that put one in
mind of the proprietress of a brothel, albeit one with
an ancient and honorable reputation. An unmistakable
distilled sensuality seemed to cling to the very
wrinkles of her face. And having her so close at hand
aroused Kiyoaki’s natural willfulness.
“As far as schoolwork goes, Iinuma has taught me
all sorts of things,” said Kiyoaki, deliberately directing
his remarks exclusively at Tadeshina. “Still, there are
a number of things he didn’t teach me. Actually, the
truth is that there are many things that Iinuma doesn’t
know. And it’s just because of this that from now on
you, Tadeshina, will have to become a teacher to
Iinuma, you see.”
“Really now, young master, whatever do you mean
by behaving like this,” said Tadeshina with heavy
deference. “This gentleman here is already a
university student. And an ignorant old soul like
myself . . .”
“Exactly. Because what I am talking about has
nothing to do with what’s learned in school.”
“Tch, tch, making such fun of an old woman!”
And so the exchange continued, still excluding
Iinuma. Since Kiyoaki had not indicated that he might
take a seat, he continued to stand, looking out over
the pond. The day was overcast, and a flock of ducks
swam near the island, from which the dark green
crowns of the pines rose, cold and forbidding. The
rough brown grass that covered the island reminded
Iinuma of a farmer’s straw raincoat.
Finally, at a word from Kiyoaki, Iinuma sat down
stiffly in a chair. Until then, Kiyoaki had not appeared
to notice him standing by the door, which seemed
extremely odd to him. Perhaps, he thought, his master
was making a show of his authority in front of
Tadeshina. If so, it was something new in Kiyoaki,
which pleased him.
“Well now, Iinuma, let’s see. Tadeshina here has
just been gossiping with our maids. And just by
chance she happened to hear . . .”
“Young master, please! Don’t.” Waving her arms in
a show of frantic distress, Tadeshina tried to stop
him, but to no avail.
“She happened to hear that the maids are
convinced that when you go to the shrine every
morning, you have more on your mind than mere
devotion.”
“More on my mind, master?” Iinuma’s face muscles
tightened and his clenched hands resting in his lap
began to tremble.
“Please, young master,” wailed Tadeshina, “don’t
go into it with him.” She slumped back in her chair like
a carelessly dropped porcelain doll, but despite her
manifestations of acute distress, there was a faint but
unmistakable gleam in her deep-set eyes. And the
lines around her mouth, with its badly fitting false
teeth, were slack, witnesses to past sensuality.
“To reach the shrine, you have to pass the rear wing
of the house, don’t you? Which means, of course, that
you walk right past the windows of the maids’
quarters. And on your way every morning, you’ve also
been exchanging looks with Miné. And finally, just the
other day, you slipped her a note through the lattice.
Or so they say. Is it true or isn’t it?”
Before Kiyoaki had finished, Iinuma was on his
feet. His pale face was contorted in rigid desperation
as he struggled to control himself. It was as though a
white heat were building within him, ready to explode
into a terrible inferno. Kiyoaki was delighted by the
look on his face, which was transformed from the dull
phlegmatic expression he was used to. Though
Iinuma was obviously in agony, to Kiyoaki his face,
contorted into an ugly mask, was happy.
“If the master will be good enough to excuse me
now . . . ,” said Iinuma, making a rapid turn toward the
door. But before he could take another step,
Tadeshina lunged from her chair to stop him with an
alacrity that astounded Kiyoaki. In an instant she had
changed from a decrepit old woman to a leopard
making its kill.
“You mustn’t go! Don’t you see what will happen to
me if you do that? I’ve served the Ayakuras for forty
years, but if they find out that I’m to blame for
somebody being dismissed by the Matsugaes
because of an indiscretion on my part, they’ll do the
same to me. Please have a little pity on me. You’ve to
think what will happen. Do you understand what I’m
saying? Young people are so rash! But what can we
do about it? It’s one of the attractions of youth.”
And so Tadeshina clung to Iinuma’s sleeve and
spoke simply, and to the point, gently remonstrating,
with the authority that comes with age.
Her manner of assured confidence had been
perfected over the course of years, during which time
she had convinced herself that she was indispensable
to the running of the world. Her face was now
composed again, and radiated the confidence of
someone accustomed to supervising the smooth
management of events from behind the scenes. In the
middle of some solemn ceremony a kimono might
tear at the seam with dismaying suddenness;
someone might forget his copy of the speech of
congratulation he had so painstakingly composed;
Tadeshina’s confidence was born of her proven ability
to handle these and a thousand other crises with
unflurried efficiency. Things that to most people were
shattering bolts from the blue, to her were all in a
day’s work. And so, by her ready skill in warding off
threats of sudden catastrophe, she had repeatedly
vindicated her role in life. This tranquil old lady knew
that nothing in human affairs could be counted on to
turn out precisely as intended. A solitary swallow
flitting across a cloudless blue sky might well be the
harbinger of a surprise storm. Thus Tadeshina, with
constant reserves of experience, need have no
misgivings as to her worth.
Iinuma had plenty of time to reflect later, but very
often a man’s whole life alters course because of a
moment’s hesitation. That instant is like a fold made
down the middle of a sheet of paper. In it, the
underside becomes upmost, and what was once
visible is hidden forever.
Standing there in the door of Kiyoaki’s study, with
Tadeshina clutching him, Iinuma experienced such a
moment, and with it the matter was settled. Young and
callow as he was, uncertainty cut into him the way a
shark’s fin cuts through the surface of the water. Had
Miné laughed at his note and showed it to everyone?
Or had it come to light some other way, causing her
great shame? He desperately wanted to know.
Kiyoaki studied him as he sat down again. He had
won a victory that gave him little cause for pride. He
gave up all hope of extending his benevolence to
Iinuma. There was nothing else to do but to give free
reign to his own sense of happiness, he felt, and to
work out the details as he went along. He had a new
sense of power, and felt able to behave with the
refinement of maturity.
“I didn’t bring this matter up to cause you distress or
to subject you to ridicule. Don’t you see that
Tadeshina and I are trying to work out the plan that is
best for you? I’m not going to say a word to my father,
and I’ll make sure that it doesn’t reach his ears from
any other quarter. As for our immediate course of
action, I’m sure that Tadeshina’s vast knowledge and
experience in these matters will be a great help, won’t
it, Tadeshina? True, Miné is one of the prettiest of the
housemaids, and that presents a bit of a problem. But
you just leave things to me.”
Iinuma’s eyes glittered like those of a spy caught in
a trap; he hung on Kiyoaki’s every word, afraid to utter
a sound. When he tried to penetrate the substance of
Kiyoaki’s words, he seemed to release in himself a
surging flood of anxieties. On the other hand, when he
sat there passively, Kiyoaki’s words seemed to bore
into his very soul.
Iinuma had never seen so authoritative an
expression on the face of the younger man, who
continued to speak with a magnanimity that was quite
out of character. His great hope, of course, had been
that Kiyoaki would some day acquire a mature poise
such as this. But he had never dreamed that this
would happen under circumstances like these. In
losing to Kiyoaki the way he had—was it not his own
lust that had defeated him, he wondered. And after his
brief hesitation of a moment ago—had he not felt that
his shameful pursuit of pleasure had now become
inextricably bound up with loyalty and service to his
master? That was the trap that they had laid for him
so cleverly. However, even in his present depths of
unbearable humiliation, a small, golden door had
been opened for him in fulfillment of their unspoken
bargain.
After Kiyoaki had finished, Tadeshina spoke up in
tones as smooth as a peeled scallion. “It’s exactly the
way the young master says it is. He has a wisdom far
beyond his years.”
Iinuma had always considered Kiyoaki’s wisdom to
be quite the opposite, but now he listened to
Tadeshina without surprise.
“And now, in return, Iinuma,” said Kiyoaki once
again, “you must stop lecturing me and join forces
with Tadeshina to give me some help. If you do, I’ll do
the same for your romance. We three could become
quite friendly.”
11
K IYOAKI TOOK UP the diary he
kept of his dreams again, and wrote:
Even though I haven’t known the Siamese
princes very long, I dreamed about Siam
recently. I was sitting on a splendid chair in
the middle of a room. I seemed to be held
there, unable to move. Throughout the
dream, I felt as if I had a headache. And this
was because I was wearing a tall, pointed
gold crown set with all sorts of precious
stones. Above my head, a huge flock of
peacocks were perched on a maze of
beams just under the roof. And from time to
time white droppings fell on my crown.
Outside the sun was scorching. It was
beating down in a desolate garden run wild.
Everything was still, except for the faint
droning of flies and the occasional thud of
the peacocks’ feet on the beams above or
sometimes the rustling of their wings. The
garden was surrounded by a high stone wall,
but there were large openings like windows
let into it. And through these I could see the
trunks of palm trees and, behind them, piled-
up white clouds, dazzling and unmoving.
Then I looked down at my hand and saw
that I was wearing an emerald ring. This, of
course, was Chao P.’s, but somehow it had
been placed on my finger. The design was
certainly the same—the two weird faces of
the guardian gods, the yaksha, carved into
the gold on either side of the stone.
I stared at the ring glinting in the sun
pouring in from outside, my eyes held by a
pure, flawless white light that sparkled like
frost crystals in the center of the emerald.
And as I did so, I became aware of the face
of a woman, young and beautiful, which had
gradually formed within it. I turned around,
thinking that it was the reflection of someone
behind me, but there was no one there. Now
the face in the emerald moved slightly and
its expression changed. Where it had been
serious, it was now smiling. At that moment,
the back of my hand began to itch as one of
the swarm of flies hovering above me settled
on it. Annoyed, I shook my hand to get rid of
it and then looked at the ring again. But the
woman’s face had vanished. And then, as I
began to feel an indescribable sense of
bitterness and loss, I woke up . . .
Kiyoaki never took the trouble to add a personal
interpretation to these accounts of his dreams. He did
his best to recall exactly what had taken place, and he
set it down as fully as possible, recording happy
dreams or ominous ones just as they were. Perhaps
this unwillingness to acknowledge specific meanings
in dreams, and this compulsion for exact description
pointed to some deep misgivings of Kiyoaki’s
concerning life itself. Compared to the emotional
instability he experienced when awake, his dream
world seemed far more authentic. He could never be
certain that these day-to-day emotions were part of
his true self, but he knew that the Kiyoaki of his
dreams, at least, was real. The former resisted all
attempts at definition, whereas the latter had a
recognizable form and character. Nor did Kiyoaki use
his journal to pour out his discontent with the irritations
of the world around him. Here, on the contrary, for the
first time in his life, immediate reality corresponded
exactly to his wishes.
Iinuma, his resistance utterly crushed, had become
blindly obedient to his master. Together with
Tadeshina, he frequently served as go-between to
arrange meetings for Kiyoaki and Satoko. This sort of
devotion was enough to satisfy Kiyoaki and,
furthermore, made him wonder if such a thing as
friendship was really so important. And in the
meantime, without being wholly aware of it, he was
growing apart from Honda. This saddened Honda, but
he had always been keenly aware that he was only a
marginal necessity in Kiyoaki’s life. He thus knew that
their relationship had lacked an element vital to
friendship. The time he would have spent in idleness
with Kiyoaki, therefore, he now spent on his books.
Besides his study of law in German, French, and
English, he read widely in literature and philosophy.
And although he did not follow the great Christian
leader, Kanzo Uchimura, he read and admired
Carlyle’s  Sartor Resartus .
One snowy morning, as Kiyoaki was about to leave
for school, Iinuma came to his study with conspicuous
caution. His melancholy expression and bearing had
not undergone any change, but his present
obsequiousness robbed them of their power to annoy
Kiyoaki.
He had, he said, just received a phone call from
Tadeshina. The message was simply this: Satoko
was so delighted by the snow that she would like
Kiyoaki not to go to school, and come for a rickshaw
ride through the snow with her instead.
No one had ever made so startlingly capricious a
request of Kiyoaki. Ready for school, he stood with
his book bag in his hand, appalled, and stared at
Iinuma.
“What’s this? Miss Satoko really suggested
something like that?”
“Yes, sir. I heard it directly from Miss Tadeshina.
There can be no mistake.”
Curiously enough, as he confirmed this, Iinuma
seemed more like his former independent self, and
he looked ready to lecture Kiyoaki if challenged about
it.
Kiyoaki gave a quick glance over his shoulder at
the garden, where snow was falling. This time,
Satoko’s forceful methods did not wound his pride.
On the contrary, he felt a sense of relief, as though her
scalpel had skillfully cut out a malignant tumor of
arrogance. Since the surgery was over before he
knew it, this bypassing of his own wishes gave him a
kind of keen pleasure. “I’ll do just as she wants,” he
said, gazing out thoughtfully at the thickly falling snow.
Although it was not yet deep, it had already turned the
island and the maple hill beyond to a shining white.
“All right, telephone the school for me. Tell them I’ve
caught a cold and will be absent today. Make certain
that no word of this reaches Mother or Father. Then
go to the rickshaw stand and hire a large one pulled
by two men. Make sure the men can be trusted. I’ll
walk there.”
“In this snow?”
Iinuma watched as his young master’s face flushed
crimson. Since Kiyoaki had his back to the window
which looked out onto the storm, his face was in
shadow, but his blush was no less apparent. This
young man whom he had helped to raise was not at
all inclined to heroism, yet he was startled to catch
himself applauding the fiery glint in Kiyoaki’s eyes,
whatever his purpose. Once, Iinuma had had nothing
but contempt for his young master and his ways, but
whatever Kiyoaki was up to now, and however self-
indulgent he might be, there seemed to be a hidden
determination in him that had never shown itself
before.
12
T HE A YAKURA RESIDENCE in
Azabu was an old feudal mansion, and on either side
of the wide main gate, the latticed windows of guard
posts protruded from the wall. Now a household with
very few visitors, however, there was no sign that the
posts had been manned recently. The snow had not
blotted out the massed ridges of the roof tiles, but
rather seemed to have molded itself faithfully to each
of them as it fell.
A dark figure holding an umbrella, Tadeshina
apparently, stood in front of the small door beside the
gate, but as Kiyoaki’s rickshaw approached, she
vanished abruptly. As it drew up and he sat before the
gate, Kiyoaki stared through it, seeing nothing in the
garden through the snow.
Finally, protected by Tadeshina’s half-open
umbrella, Satoko appeared in the gateway wearing a
purple robe, and as she bent her head before
stepping out, her hands together at her breast,
Kiyoaki felt his chest tighten at this sudden apparition
of extravagant beauty, as though a billowing cloud of
purple had burst out of the tiny gate into the falling
snow.
Helped by Tadeshina and the rickshaw men,
Satoko seemed to float up to meet Kiyoaki as he
leaned over to push back the rickshaw hood, but
when he suddenly faced her bright, warm smile and
the whirl of snowflakes clinging to her hair and the
collar of her robe, he was startled, as if he had been
assailed by something nebulous in the torpor of his
dreams. The sudden lurching of the light vehicle as
Satoko climbed up doubtless strengthened this
impression, as did the tumbled purple folds of her
robe lying heaped beside him, and her heady
perfume, whose fragrance seemed to draw the very
snowflakes that swirled in, making them strike against
his cold cheeks. As Satoko got into the rickshaw, her
momentum carried her cheek close to Kiyoaki’s for a
second, and when she pulled her head back,
disconcerted, to straighten up, Kiyoaki was caught by
the supple strength of her neck. It made him think of
the smooth, white neck of a swan.
“What’s got into you all of a sudden?” he asked,
trying desperately to keep his voice steady.
“Mother and Father took the train to Kyoto last
night. One of our relatives is seriously ill. I was left all
by myself, and I began to think how very much I would
like to see you, Kiyo. After thinking about it all night, I
saw the snow this morning, and then more than
anything else in the world I wanted to go riding through
the snow with you. I’ve never done anything so
impulsive in all my life. You’ll forgive me, won’t you,
Kiyo?” Satoko spoke rather breathlessly in a child’s
voice that was quite unlike her.
They had already started to move. Their ears rang
with the shouts of the two rickshaw men, one of whom
was pushing, the other pulling. The snow had
splashed into patterns that turned from white to yellow
in the confinement of the tiny front window of the
enclosed cab. In the interior, the light flickered dimly in
time to the constant swaying.
Kiyoaki had brought a green tartan blanket that now
covered their legs. Since those forgotten days of
childhood, this was the first time that they had ever
been so close together, but Kiyoaki was distracted by
the pale light flooding through the cracks in the bonnet
of the rickshaw that narrowed and widened as a
stream of snow filtered through them, by the snow
itself turning to water on the green blanket, by the loud
rustle of the snow pelting down on the hood as if onto
dry banana leaves.
“Go wherever you like. Take us anywhere you can
go,” said Kiyoaki in answer to the rickshaw man. He
knew that Satoko’s mood was his own.
As the men raised the poles, ready to start, both of
them sat back in their seats, their bodies slightly
tensed. As yet, neither of them had even attempted to
hold hands. Yet the inevitable contact of their knees
under the blanket was like a spark flaring secretly
under the snow.
Kiyoaki’s gnawing doubt persisted: had Satoko
really not read the letter? “Tadeshina denied it so
emphatically she can’t have,” he thought. “But in that
case, is Satoko just playing with me now, in the
conviction that I am completely inexperienced with
women? How could I tolerate such an insult? I was so
anxious for her not to read the letter, but now I wish
she had, because then to meet me in this insane way
on such a snowy morning could mean only one thing:
she’d be throwing down the gauntlet to a man of the
world. And there’d be advantages for me in that. The
only problem is that I am in fact inexperienced and I
suppose there’s no way to hide it.”
Kiyoaki’s thoughts twisted and turned as he sat in
the small, dark, square confines of the swaying
rickshaw. Since he would not look at Satoko, there
was nothing else to do but stare out at the snow,
flashing brightly through the narrow window of yellow
celluloid. Finally, however, he put his hand under the
blanket, where Satoko’s was waiting, already in
possession of the one warm, narrow refuge available.
One of the snowflakes blew in and lodged itself on
Kiyoaki’s eyebrow. It made Satoko cry out, and
without thinking, Kiyoaki turned toward her as he felt a
cold trickle on his eyelid. She closed her eyes
abruptly. Kiyoaki stared at the face with its closed
lids; only the subdued crimson of her lips glowed in
the shadows, and because of the swaying of the
rickshaw, her features, like a flower held between
trembling fingertips, were softly blurred.
Kiyoaki’s heart thumped violently. He felt as if he
were being choked by the high, tight collar of his
uniform jacket. Never had he been confronted with
anything as inscrutable as Satoko’s white face, eyes
closed, quietly waiting. Beneath the blanket, he felt
her grip on his hand tighten slightly. He realized that
she was telling him something, and so, despite his
terrible sense of vulnerability, he felt that something
gentle but irresistible was drawing him on. He
pressed a kiss on her lips.
A moment later, the shaking of the rickshaw was
about to force their lips apart, but Kiyoaki instinctively
resisted the movement, until his whole body seemed
to balance on that kiss, and he had the sensation that
a huge, invisible, perfumed fan was slowly unfolding
where their lips met.
At that instant, although totally engrossed, he was
still keenly aware of his own good looks. Satoko’s
beauty and his: he saw that it was precisely this fine
correspondence between the two that dissolved all
constraint and allowed them to flow together, merging
as easily as measures of quicksilver. All that was
divisive and frustrating sprang from something alien
to beauty. Kiyoaki now realized that a fanatical
insistence on total independence was a disease, not
of the flesh but of the mind.
Once his anxiety had been erased and he felt
increasingly sure of the girl who was the source of his
happiness,  their  kiss  became  increasingly,
passionately intense; Satoko’s lips were growing
more pliant, and then just as he began to fear that his
very essence might be melted and drawn into the
sweet fragrance of her mouth, his fingertips stirred
with the desire to touch her flesh. He pulled his hand
out from under the blanket and passed it around her
shoulders to hold her chin. He felt the small, fragile
bones of a woman’s jaw with his fingertips and so
gained a renewed awareness of a physical presence
quite outside his own. This realization, however, only
intensified the passion of his kiss.
Satoko had begun to cry, as he realized when her
tears wet his own cheeks. He felt a surge of pride,
which owed nothing to his recent mood of altruism,
the complacent desire to benefit mankind that had
seized him; and in the same way, Satoko’s manner
had lost all trace of her former condescension, so like
that of a critical older sister. As he moved his hands
over her body, touching first her earlobe, then her
breast, the softness under his fingers excited him.
This must be the true nature of caresses, he thought.
At last his sensuality, given to drifting away like a
rising mist, had settled upon something tangible. His
mind was now filled with nothing but his own joy. And
this, for Kiyoaki, was the height of abandon.
The moment when a kiss ends—it was like
awakening reluctantly from sleep, struggling drowsily
against the glare of the morning sun as it struck their
eyelids, as they yearned to hold on to the fragment of
unconsciousness left to them. That is the moment
when sleep is sweetest.
When their lips parted, an ominous silence seemed
to fall, as though the birds had suddenly stopped their
attractive song. They looked away from each other
and stared fixedly into space. The movement of the
rickshaw, however, saved the silence from becoming
too oppressive. At least they could feel part of some
other activity.
Kiyoaki dropped his eyes. Beneath the bottom of
the green blanket, the toe of a woman’s white  tabi
edged out timidly, like a nervous white mouse
peeping out of its grassy burrow. It was already
covered with a light dusting of snow. He felt his
cheeks burning, and so he reached over as
spontaneously as a child to touch her cheek, pleased
to discover the same warmth in her. It was like a tiny
promise of summer.
“I’ll open it up.”
She nodded. He reached out and unfastened the
front flap of the cab. The layer of snow that had
collected on it to form a momentary square of solid
white crumbled away without a sound.
The rickshaw men, noticing movement inside the
cab, suddenly stooped.
“No, no! Keep going!” Kiyoaki shouted. Spurred on
by the young man’s tone, they broke into a trot again.
“Keep going! And as fast as you can!”
The cab glided through the snow, the rickshaw men
giving cries of encouragement to each other.
“Somebody might see,” said Satoko, sitting back in
the seat, unwilling to show her eyes still wet with tears.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The decisive ring in his own voice took Kiyoaki by
surprise. Suddenly he understood. What he really
wanted to do was to challenge the world.
As he looked up, the sky above seemed to be a
fury of boiling white. The snow was now lashing down
right on their faces. If they opened their mouths, it lay
on their tongues. To be buried in such a drift . . . it
seemed like heaven.
“Now there’s snow in here,” she said dreamily.
Apparently, she meant that it had melted in a trickle
from her neck to her breast. There was nothing
anarchic in the falling snow, however: it fell with the
steady solemnity of an ordered ritual. He felt his
cheeks grow cold, and gradually became aware that
his heart was fading within him.
By now the rickshaw had climbed to the top of a hill
in the fashionable Kasumi section of Azabu. The
edge of the slope was skirted by a field that allowed a
clear view of the parade ground and barracks of the
Azabu Third Regiment below. On the white expanse
of parade ground, there was not one soldier to be
seen. Suddenly Kiyoaki had the illusion of seeing a
huge mass of troops drawn up, just as in the familiar
picture of the memorial ceremony near Tokuri Temple
for the fallen of the Russo-Japanese War. With bowed
heads, thousands of soldiers stood in groups around
a white wood cenotaph and an altar covered with
white cloths that were blowing in the wind. This scene
differed from the photo only insofar as the soldiers’
shoulders were covered with snow and the visors of
their caps had turned white. The moment he saw
these phantoms, Kiyoaki understood that they had all
died in battle. The thousands of troops below had
massed not only to pray for fallen comrades, but to
mourn their own lives as well.
In a moment, the phantoms were gone. Behind a
curtain of snow, scene after scene swept past them.
The thick straw-colored ropes that supported the
pines on the steep side of the Outer Moat bore a
dangerous weight of snow. And behind the tight-shut
windows of the small houses, the lamps were burning
faintly although it was mid-morning.
“Close it,” said Satoko.
Kiyoaki shut the front flap, and they found
themselves once more in the familiar half-light. The
mood of ecstasy, however, was not to be so easily
recaptured. Kiyoaki as usual was prey to misgivings.
“I wonder how she felt when I was kissing her,” he
thought. “She’s probably angry about the way I did it.
She knows that I get too carried away, that I was all
wrapped up in myself—just like a child. And it’s true. I
couldn’t think about anything except how wonderful it
felt to me.”
Then Satoko’s voice broke into his thoughts.
“Shouldn’t we go home?” she said, her voice
altogether too composed.
“There she goes,” he thought, “leading me by the
nose again.” But even as he grumbled to himself, he
knew that he was letting pass by the moment when he
had the chance to change things. He could say: “No,
let’s not go back.” But to do that was to reach out and
pick up the dice. And his unskilled hand would have
frozen at the very touch of them. He was not ready.
13
H E WENT HOME and concocted
a story about leaving school early because of a
sudden chill. His mother rushed up to his room to take
his temperature. In the midst of this commotion,
Iinuma appeared to say that Honda was on the phone.
Kiyoaki had the greatest difficulty in persuading his
mother not to take the call in his place, and when he
had finally won his point and had gone downstairs to
the phone, he was wrapped in a cashmere blanket, at
his mother’s insistence.
“It’s all very simple: the story is that I did go to
school today but came home early. No one here
knows anything different. My cold?” Made uneasy by
the glass door at his back, he continued in a low,
muffled voice. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll be at school
tomorrow, and we can talk about it then. Don’t start
telephoning just because I wasn’t at school—you do
exaggerate!”
When Honda rang off, he was shaking with anger at
Kiyoaki’s icy response to his expressions of concern,
but there was more to it than his unfriendly tone or his
rudeness. Honda had never once put Kiyoaki in the
position of having to share a secret.
Once he had recovered himself, however, he began
to think: “To telephone just because he wasn’t at
school today—that’s not very like me.” And indeed,
something more than friendly concern had driven him
to telephone so hurriedly. When rushing across the
snow-covered schoolyard to the administration office
at recess to make the call, he had been driven by a
feeling of foreboding that he could not pin down.
Kiyoaki’s desk had been empty all morning.
Looking at it, Honda experienced the sense of dread
of a man whose worst fears are confirmed. The old
desk, with its scars under the new varnish, reflected
the direct glare of the snow through the window. It
made him think of an upright coffin draped in white,
the kind used to bury ancient warriors in a sitting
position.
His gloom persisted even after he had got home.
Then there was a phone call; it was Iinuma with a
message from Kiyoaki: he was sorry about the way
he had spoken to Honda. If he sent a rickshaw to
Honda’s house tonight, would he please come to visit
him? Iinuma’s heavy, sepulchral tone depressed him
still further. He curtly refused, saying that they could
discuss things when Kiyoaki was well enough to go
back to school.
When Iinuma delivered this message, Kiyoaki felt
the discomfort of real sickness. Afterwards, he called
Iinuma to his room late that night, but instead of
ordering him to do something, he surprised Iinuma by
unburdening himself of his vexations.
“Satoko causes nothing but trouble. It’s true what
they say, isn’t it? A woman will destroy the friendship
of men. If Satoko hadn’t behaved so willfully this
morning, I wouldn’t have given Honda such cause for
anger.”
During the night it stopped snowing, and the next
day was clear and pleasant. Prevailing over his
mother and the rest of the household, Kiyoaki left for
school. He intended to get there before Honda and be
the first to say good morning. But as the sun rose in
the sky, the dazzling splendor of this winter morning
worked a change of mood. He was affected by a
deep, insuppressible happiness that transformed him.
Later, when Honda came into the classroom and
returned his smile with a nonchalant one of his own,
Kiyoaki in a sudden about-face abandoned his
intention to tell him everything about the day before.
Honda had managed a smile, but no words. After
putting his book bag down on his desk, he leaned on
the windowsill for a few moments and looked out at
the snow. Then after a quick glance at his watch that
presumably told him there were still thirty minutes to
spare before class, he turned without a word and
walked out. Kiyoaki felt impelled to follow him.
A number of small flowerbeds were laid out
geometrically along the side of the school, a two-story
wooden structure. In their midst was an arbor. Not far
beyond the edge of the beds the ground dropped
away sharply, and a small path led down the slope to
a pond surrounded by a grove of trees. Kiyoaki was
reasonably sure that Honda would not go down to the
pond, since the melting snow would make walking
extremely difficult. Just as he had guessed, Honda
stopped in the arbor, brushed the snow off one of the
benches and sat down. Kiyoaki, threading his way
through the drifts in the flower garden, walked up to
him.
“Why are you following me?” asked Honda,
squinting into the brilliant light as he looked up.
“I behaved very badly yesterday,” Kiyoaki
apologized smoothly.
“Never mind. Your cold was just an excuse, wasn’t
it?”
“Yes.”
Copying Honda, Kiyoaki brushed some snow off
the bench and then sat down beside him. Because of
the glare, the two of them had to squint painfully to
look at each other, which greatly reduced the
emotional charge in the atmosphere. The pond below
was hidden from view, although they only had to stand
up to see it through the snow-laden tree branches.
They were surrounded by the sound of trickling water,
proof that the mounds of snow on the school roof, on
the arbor, and on the trees were now melting. The
frozen crust that covered the flowerbeds had
collapsed here and there, leaving coarse, layered
chips of ice that glittered like split granite.
Honda expected Kiyoaki to divulge some
portentous secret and yet he didn’t want to admit to
himself that he was curious, which almost made him
hope that Kiyoaki would say nothing at all. Any
confidence  that  smacked  even  remotely  of
condescension would be bitterly distasteful.
It was Honda, then, who spoke first, wishing only to
find a subject that had no bearing on the issue
between them.
“You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about personality
lately. Take the times we live in, this school, this
society—I feel alien to them all. At least I would like to
think I did. And the same can be said for you too.”
“Yes, of course,” Kiyoaki replied, his tone as
uninterested and aloof as ever, yet with a sweetness
that was very much in character.
“But let me ask you this: what happens after a
hundred years? Without us having any say in the
matter, all our ideas will be lumped together under the
heading, ‘The Thought of the Age.’ Take the history of
art, for example: it proves my point irrefutably, whether
you like it or not. Each period has its own style, and
no artist living in a particular era can completely
transcend that era’s style, whatever his individual out-
look.”
“Does our age have its style too?”
“I think I’d be more inclined to say that the style of
the Meiji era is still dying. But how would I know? To
live in the midst of an era is to be oblivious to its style.
You and I, you see, must be immersed in some style
of living or other, but we’re like goldfish swimming
around in a bowl without ever noticing it. Take
yourself: yours is a world of feeling. You appear
different from most people. And you yourself are quite
sure that you have never allowed your personality to
be compromised. However, there is absolutely no
way of proving that. The testimony of your
contemporaries has no value whatever. Who knows?
It may just be that your world of feeling represents the
style of this era in its purest form. But then again,
there’s no way of knowing.”
“Well, then, who does decide?”
“Time. Time is what matters. As time goes by, you
and I will be carried inexorably into the mainstream of
our period, even though we’re unaware of what it is.
And later, when they say that young men in the early
Taisho era thought, dressed, talked, in such and such
a way, they’ll be talking about you and me. We’ll all be
lumped together. You detest that bunch on the  kendo
team, don’t you? You despise them?”
“Yes,” Kiyoaki said, uncomfortably aware that the
cold was beginning to penetrate the seat of his
trousers, but gazing nevertheless at some green
camellia leaves beside the frame of the arbor. Freshly
bared by the melting snow, they were gleaming
brightly. “Yes, I not only dislike them, I despise them.”
Taking his perfunctory reply in his stride, Honda
went on: “All right, then, just imagine this if you can. In
a few decades, people will see you and the people
you despise as one and the same, a single entity.
Your slow-witted friends—with their sentimentality,
their vicious narrow-mindedness that condemns as
effeminate anyone who’ is not like themselves, their
harassment of the underclassmen, their fanatical
worship of General Nogi, the frame of mind that lets
them draw such incredible satisfaction from sweeping
the ground every morning around the sakaki planted
by the Meiji Emperor—you with all your sensitivity will
be seen cheek-by-jowl with these people when they
stop to think about our times in years to come. You
see, this is the easiest way to establish the essence
of our era—to take the lowest common denominator.
Once the churning water has settled to a calm
surface, you can see the rainbow oil slick floating
there. And that’s the way it will be. After we’re all
dead, it will be easy to analyze us and isolate our
basic elements for everyone to see. And of course
this essence, the thought that is the foundation of our
era, will be considered quite benighted a hundred
years from now. And you and I have no way of
escaping the verdict, no way to prove that we didn’t
share the discredited views of our contemporaries.
And what standard will history apply to that outlook?
What do you think? The thoughts of the geniuses of
our age? Of great men? Not at all. Those who come
after us and decide what was in our minds will adopt
the criterion of the uncritical thought patterns of your
friends on the  kendo team. In other words, they’ll
seize upon the most primitive and popular credos of
our day. You see every era has always been
characterized solely in terms of such idiocies.”
Kiyoaki was not sure where this was taking Honda,
but as he listened, a germ of thought began to grow in
his mind. By now several of their classmates were to
be seen at the open windows of their second-floor
classroom. The windows of the other rooms were
shut, reflecting the glare of the morning sun and the
brilliant blue of the sky. A familiar morning scene.
When he thought of the events of the previous day, the
morning of the snowstorm, he felt as if he had been
drawn unwillingly from a dark world of sensuous
excitement into the clear, bright courts of reason.
“Well, that’s history,” he said. He was embarrassed
by the immaturity of his remarks in contrast to
Honda’s, but he was finally making an effort to come
to grips with the other’s thought. “In other words, no
matter what we think, or hope for, or feel—all that has
not the slightest bearing on the course of history? Is
that what you mean?”
“That’s it exactly. Europeans believe that a man like
Napoleon can impose his will on history. We
Japanese think the same of the men like your
grandfather and his contemporaries who brought
about the Meiji Restoration. But is that really true?
Does history ever obey the will of men? Looking at
you always makes me ponder that question. You’re
not a great man and you’re not a genius either. But,
nonetheless, you have one characteristic that sets you
quite apart: you have no trace whatever of willpower.
And so I am always fascinated to think of you in
relation to history.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
“No, not a bit. I’m thinking in terms of unconscious
participation in history. For example, let’s say that I
have will-power—”
“You certainly have.”
“Say that I want to alter the course of history. I
devote all my energies and resources to this end. I
use every ounce of strength I possess to bend history
to my will. Say I possess the prestige and authority so
necessary to bring this about. None of this would
ensure that history proceeded according to my
wishes. Then, on the other hand, perhaps a hundred,
two hundred, even three hundred years later, history
might veer abruptly to take a course that was
consonant with my vision and ideals—and this without
my having had anything whatever to do with it.
Perhaps society would assume a form that was the
exact replica of my dreams of a hundred or two
hundred years before; history, enjoying the new glory
that had been my vision, would smile at me with cool
condescension and mock my ambition. And people
would say: ‘Well, that’s history.’”
“But there is such a thing as the time being ripe for
everything, isn’t there?” asked Kiyoaki. “Your vision’s
time would finally have come, that’s all. Maybe it
wouldn’t even take as long as a hundred years;
maybe thirty or fifty. That sort of thing often happens.
And perhaps even after your death, your will would
serve as an invisible guideline, unknown to anyone,
that would help bring about what you wanted to
accomplish in your lifetime. Maybe if someone like
you had never lived, history would never have taken
such a turn, no matter how long it lasted.”
Even though such cold, uncongenial abstractions
were a struggle for him, Kiyoaki felt stirred by a
certain warmth, an excitement that he knew he had
Honda to thank for. He was reluctant to acknowledge
satisfaction from such a source. But as he looked
around the white-carpeted school grounds, with the
bare branches of the trees casting shadows over the
snow-covered flowerbeds, and the clear sound of
trickling water in his ears, he knew he was happy that
Honda had started this discussion. Even though he
must have known that he was still engrossed in the
memory of the happiness and fascination of the day
before, Honda had chosen to ignore it, a decision that
seemed appropriate to the purity of the snow around
them. At that moment, some of it slid off the roof,
baring a few square feet of wet tile, gleaming black.
“And so,” continued Honda, “if society turned out as
I wanted it to after a hundred years, you’d call that an
accomplishment?”
“It must be.”
“Whose accomplishment?”
“That of your will.”
“You’re joking. I’d be dead. As I just told you, all this
came about without my having had anything to do with
it.”
“Well, can’t you say that it’s the accomplishment of
the will of history then?”
“So history has a will, eh? It’s always dangerous to
try to personify history. As far as I’m concerned,
history has no will of its own and, furthermore, it hasn’t
the least concern for mine either. So if there is no will
whatever involved in the process, you can’t talk about
accomplishments.  And  all  the  socalled
accomplishments of history prove it. They’re no
sooner achieved than they begin to crumble away.
History is a record of destruction. One must always
make room for the next ephemeral crystal. For history,
to build and to destroy are one and the same thing.
“I am fully aware of all this. Although I understand it, I
cannot be like you and stop being a man of
determination. I suppose it’s probably a compulsion in
my character. No one can say for certain, but I will say
this much: any will has as its essence the desire to
influence history. I’m not saying that human desires
affect history, only that they try to. Then, too, some
forms of will are bound up with destiny, even though
this concept is anathema to the will.
“But in the long run, all human will is doomed to
frustration. It’s a matter of course that things turn out
contrary to your intentions. And what conclusion does
a Westerner draw from this? He says: ‘My will was the
sole rational force involved. Failure came about by
chance.’
“To speak of chance is to negate the possibility of
any law of cause and effect. Chance is the one final
irrationality acceptable to the free will.
“Without the concept of chance, you see, the
Western philosophy of free will could never have
arisen. Chance is the crucial refuge of the will. And
without it the very thought of gambling would be
inconceivable, just as the Westerner has no other way
of rationalizing the repeated setbacks and frustrations
that he must endure. I think that this concept of
chance, of a gamble, is the very substance of the God
of Europeans, and so they have a deity whose
characteristics are derived from that refuge so vital to
free will, namely chance—the only sort of God who
would inspire the freedom of human will.
“But what would happen if we were to deny the
existence of chance completely? What would happen
if—no matter what the victory or the defeat—you had
to exclude utterly all possible role of chance in it? In
that case, you’d be destroying all refuge of free will.
Do away with chance and you undermine the props
under the concept of the will.
“Picture a scene like this: it’s a square at midday.
The will is standing there all alone. He pretends that
he is remaining upright by virtue of his own strength,
and hence he goes on deceiving himself. The sun
beats down. No trees, no grass. Nothing whatever in
the huge square to keep him company but his own
shadow. At that moment, a thundering voice comes
down from the cloudless sky above: ‘Chance is dead.
There’s no such thing as chance. Hear me, Will: you
have lost your advocate forever.’ And with that, the
Will feels his substance begin to crumble and
dissolve. His flesh rots and falls away. In an instant his
skeleton is laid bare, a thin liquid spurts from it, and
the bones themselves lose their solidity and begin to
disintegrate. The Will still stands with his feet planted
firmly on the ground, but this final effort is futile. For at
that very moment, the bright, glaring sky is rent apart
with a terrible roar, and the God of Inevitability stares
down through the chasm.
“But I cannot help trying to conjure up an odious
face for this dreadful God, and this weakness is
doubtless due to my own bent toward voluntarism. For
if Chance ceases to exist, then Will becomes
meaningless—no more significant than a speck of
rust on the huge chain of cause and effect that we only
glimpse from time to time. Then there’s only one way
to participate in history, and that’s to have no will at all
—to function solely as a shining, beautiful atom,
eternal and unchanging. No one should look for any
other meaning in human existence.
“You are not likely to see things this way. I wouldn’t
expect you to subscribe to such a philosophy. The
only things you do put any faith in—and that without
much thought—are your own good looks, your
changing moods, your individuality and—not your
fixed character, but on the contrary, your very lack of it.
Am I right?”
Kiyoaki could not manage an answer. For want of
anything better, he smiled, knowing that Honda was
not trying to insult him.
“And that for me is the greatest riddle,” said Honda,
sighing so earnestly that it seemed almost comical.
His breath became a frosty cloud that hovered for a
second in the clear morning air, and seemed to
Kiyoaki to be a secret manifestation of Honda’s
concern for him. Deep down inside him, his sense of
happiness intensified.
The bell rang to announce the beginning of classes,
and the two young men stood up. Just then, someone
scooped up some of the snow piled on the second
floor window ledges and threw down a snowball. It
struck the path at their feet, in a burst of sparkling
fragments.
14
K IYOAKI’S  FATHER had
entrusted him with the key to the library. This was in a
corner of the north side of the main house, and it was
one room of the Matsugaes that received scant
attention. The Marquis was not the man to devote
much time to books. But here were gathered the
Chinese classics that had belonged to Kiyoaki’s
grandfather, the Western books that the Marquis had
ordered from Maruzen out of the desire to appear
intellectual, and many others received as gifts. When
Kiyoaki started high school, his father had handed
over the key with the pomposity of one conferring the
guardianship of a treasure trove of wisdom. Thus he
alone was privileged to go there whenever he liked.
Among the books in the library least likely to excite
the Marquis’s interest were many collections of
Japanese classics and children’s books. Prior to
publication, each of their publishers had requested a
brief recommendation from the Marquis together with
a photograph of him in formal dress, and then in
exchange for this privilege to print “Recommended by
His Excellency Marquis Matsugae” in gilt letters on the
binding of each book, they presented him with the
collections.
Kiyoaki himself was not inclined to make frequent
use of the library. He preferred his own reveries to
books. For Iinuma, however, who was given the key
once a month by Kiyoaki so that he could clean the
room, the library was the most hallowed place in the
house, sanctified as it was by the Chinese classics
dear to Kiyoaki’s grandfather. When he spoke of it, he
never referred to it merely as the library. It was always
“His Late Excellency’s Library,” and when he
pronounced those words, his voice was choked with
emotion.
On the evening after Kiyoaki had become
reconciled with Honda, he called his tutor to his room
just as Iinuma was about to leave for his night classes,
and dropped the library key into his hand without a
word. There was a set day for the monthly cleaning.
Furthermore, this was a job that Iinuma never did at
night. What, he wondered, was the reason for giving
him the key now, on the wrong day and in the evening
at that? It lay on the palm of his thick, blunt hand, blue
and metallic like a dragonfly with its wings torn off.
Afterwards Iinuma would recall this moment time
and again. How torn and naked the key seemed, like
a ravaged body as it lay in his palm. He stood for
some time trying to decide what it meant, but he could
not. When Kiyoaki finally did explain, he seethed with
anger directed not so much at his master as at
himself for being at his mercy.
“Yesterday morning I didn’t go to school and you
stood by me. Tonight it’s my turn to help you. Go out
just as if you were leaving for school. Then go round to
the back and come in by the door opposite the library.
That key will open the room and you can wait inside.
But don’t turn on the light. And the safest course would
be to lock the door from the inside.
“Tadeshina has given Miné full instructions. She’ll
telephone here with a message for her, asking when
Miss Satoko’s sachet will be finished. That will be the
signal. Miné is skilled at such delicate work and
people are always asking her to do something like
this. Miss Satoko herself asked her to make a gold
brocade sachet. So such a phone call won’t arouse
the least suspicion.
“Once Miné receives the message, she’ll wait for
the time when you’re supposed to leave for school
and then she’ll go to the library and knock lightly on
the door, hoping that you’ll open it for her. And since
it’ll be just after dinner, when everyone is bustling
around, no one will miss her for thirty or forty minutes.
“Tadeshina believes that for you two to meet
outside instead would be too dangerous and hard to
arrange. There would have to be all sorts of pretexts
for a maid to go out alone without everyone having
something to say about it.
“At any rate, I took the liberty of deciding the matter
without consulting you. Tadeshina is going to call
Miné tonight. And so you must go to the library. If you
don’t, Miné will be terribly upset.”
As he stood listening, a bear at bay, Iinuma’s hand
shook so violently that he almost dropped the key.
∗
The library was very cold. The heavy curtains of
gold thread let in a little light from the lanterns burning
in the garden behind the house, but not enough to
allow one to decipher the titles of the books. The
room was filled with the smell of mildew, like the odor
hanging over the banks of a clogged canal in winter.
The darkness was no obstacle to Iinuma. He had
memorized the place of almost every book in the
library. Works such as the writings of Han Fei-tzu,  The
Testimony of Seiken , and  The Eighteen Histories
lined the shelves, including a Japanese-bound edition
of the  Commentaries on the Four Classics which
had lost its protective cover. This was a book that
Kiyoaki’s grandfather had thumbed so often that its
binding was worn out.
One day when Iinuma was turning over the pages of
one of the books he was dusting, a poem by Kayo
Honen had caught his eye. It was in a collection of
famous Japanese and Chinese works, and Iinuma
had carefully memorized the place. The title was
“Song of a Noble Heart.” One verse of it was
particularly consoling as he performed his duties of
cleaning the library:
Though now I sweep a little room
I will not do so forever
Can Kyushu hold my ambition?
Can flocks of chattering sparrows
Share the eagle’s solitary path?
Iinuma now understood. Knowing his deep
reverence for “His Late Excellency’s Library,” Kiyoaki
had deliberately chosen it for this tryst. There could be
no doubt about it. When he had been explaining the
plan that he had so considerately arranged, the cold
satisfaction in his manner was proof enough that he
grasped all its implications. He wanted events to take
their course so that Iinuma himself would commit
sacrilege in the place he worshipped.
When he thought about it, there had been a silent
menace in Kiyoaki ever since he had been a beautiful
child. A delight in sacrilege. And when Iinuma had
thus defiled what was so precious to him, Kiyoaki
would be as delighted as if he had taken a piece of
raw meat and rolled it up in a sacred Shinto pendant.
In legendary times, the savage god Susano, the
brother of the Sun Goddess, had found satisfaction in
the same way.
Ever since Iinuma had lost himself to a woman,
Kiyoaki’s power over him had grown immensely.
Furthermore—and to Iinuma the injustice of it was
baffling—the world would always accept Kiyoaki’s
pleasures as charming and natural, whereas it would
condemn his own with unflagging severity as sordid,
not to say sinful. As he brooded over this, Iinuma’s
self-loathing steadily deepened.
From the ceiling of the library came the rustle of
scurrying rats, and an occasional muffled squeal.
When he had done the cleaning the previous month,
he had spread plenty of poisoned chestnuts up there,
but apparently to no avail. Suddenly he shuddered,
remembering what he most wanted to forget.
Every time he saw Mine’s face, no matter how he
tried to suppress it, the same evil thought stirred in his
mind. Even now, as her warm body was coming to
meet him in the evening darkness, this thought stood
between them. It concerned something that Kiyoaki
probably knew already, but since he had never
mentioned it to him, Iinuma himself, without forgetting
about it for a moment, had kept quiet about it.
Actually, it was a rather open secret, which made
Iinuma’s distress increasingly hard to bear. He was
tormented by it, as if a pack of rats were swarming
over him in all their filth. The Marquis had slept with
Miné and still occasionally did. His imagination was
triggered by the rats above—their bloodshot eyes,
their loathsome bodies. . . .
The cold was biting. No matter how brave a figure
Iinuma cut when he went out to perform his daily
devotions, he shook now as the cold struck his back
and crept through him until it covered his skin like an
icy compress. Miné had probably been delayed until
there was an opportunity to leave the table without
attracting attention.
As he waited, his desire grew, sharp and insistent.
Then a mass of disagreeable feelings combined with
the piercing chill and the smell of decay to assault his
already taut nerves. He had a sinking sensation as
though the foul waters of a drainage ditch were rising
against his legs, soiling his fine silk  hakama. “Is this
my way of finding pleasure?” he thought—a man of
twenty-four, capable of great bravery and ripe for the
highest honors.
There was a light knock at the door. Iinuma reacted
with such speed that he crashed painfully into a
bookcase. Finally, however, he managed to turn the
key in the lock. Miné turned slightly and slipped
through the doorway. When Iinuma had turned the lock
behind her, he took her by the shoulders and
propelled her unceremoniously toward the back of the
library. Whatever the reason, his mind was fixed on
the dirty gray snow he had seen shoveled into piles
along the outside wall of the library on his way there.
Though he had no time or inclination to speculate
about this, he was consumed with the need to violate
Miné in the corner that was closest to the dirty snow.
Driven to savagery by his fantasies, he was brutal
with the girl. The more he pitied her, the crueler he
became. And when in the midst of it all he realized
that his viciousness was a passion to revenge himself
on Kiyoaki, he was overcome by an indescribable
misery. Since time was short and silence imperative,
Miné let Iinuma have his way without offering any
resistance. But the meekness of her submission only
tormented Iinuma the more, for her gentle manner
bespoke a quiet understanding of himself as
someone very similar to her.
Still, this was by no means the only reason for her
gentle compliance. Miné was cheerfully promiscuous.
And for her the total awkwardness of his manner—his
attempt to intimidate her by his silence, his clumsy,
fumbling hands—proved the reality of his desire. She
never dreamed that he might be pitying her.
Lying there in the dark, Miné suddenly felt the cold
like a sword thrust under the spread skirt of her
kimono. Looking up through the gloom, she saw
shelves laden with books, each tucked into its case,
the gold of its title dulled by the passage of time. They
seemed to be pressing in on her from all sides.
Speed was essential. Tadeshina had briefed her
down to the last detail so that she would be clear on
every point, and all that was required of her in this
brief moment was to act without hesitation. She saw
her role in life as that of someone who was ready to
give her body freely to soothe and comfort. This was
enough for her. And her small ripe body, with its firm
flesh and smooth, flawless skin, was pleased to give
satisfaction.
It would be no exaggeration to say that she was
fond of Iinuma. Whenever she was desired, Miné had
a wonderful knack of discovering the good points in
her suitor. She had never joined the other maids in
their contemptuous mockery of Iinuma, and so his
virility, so long harassed and ridiculed, at last
received its due in her woman’s heart.
She suddenly had a vision of a temple holiday in all
its gaudy festivity: the acetylene lights with their glare
and acrid smell, the balloons and pinwheels, the gaily-
colored candies. . . .
She opened her eyes in the darkness.
“What are you staring at?” asked Iinuma in irritation.
The rats were scurrying around in the ceiling again.
Their movements were almost soundless, and yet
they held a note of desperate urgency. They seemed
to be rushing frantically through their dark domain in a
frenzy that dashed them from one end of it to the
other.
15
A LL THE MAIL that was
delivered to the Matsugae household was handled
according to a fixed ritual: the steward Yamada took
charge of it and stacked it neatly on a gold-lacquered
tray engraved with the family crest. This was then
borne into the presence of the Marquis and Marquise.
Since Satoko was aware of this procedure, she had
taken the precaution of entrusting her note to
Tadeshina, who, in turn, was to give it to Iinuma.
So it was that Iinuma, in the middle of studying for
his final examinations, took the time first to meet
Tadeshina and then to hand over Satoko’s love letter
to Kiyoaki.
Though the morning after that snowstorm
was clear and bright, I just couldn’t help
thinking about what had happened the day
before. In my heart it seemed as if the snow
had not stopped, but was falling still. And the
snowflakes seemed to merge into the form
of Kiyo’s face. How I wished that I could live
somewhere where the snow fell every day of
the year so that I would never stop thinking of
you, Kiyo.
If we were living in Heian times, you would
have composed a poem for me, wouldn’t
you? And I would have had to offer one of my
own in reply. I am shocked to think that
although I have been learning  waka since my
childhood, at a time like this I can’t set down
a single poem to express my feelings. Is it
because I lack the talent?
Why do you believe that I’m so happy?
Just because I have found someone who is
kind enough not to be upset by whatever I
say or do, no matter how capricious? That
would be the same as thinking that I enjoy
treating Kiyo however I choose—and
nothing could cause me greater pain than to
know that you believe this.
No, what really makes me happy is your
gentleness. You were able to see through
that whim of mine the other day. You could
see how desperate I secretly felt. And
without a word of reproach you came with
me on that ride through the snow and you
fulfilled the dream that I had buried deep
inside me with so much embarrassment.
That is what I mean by your gentleness.
Kiyo, even now, remembering what
happened, I feel my body tremble with joy
and shame. Here in Japan, we think of the
spirit of snow as a woman—the snow fairy.
But I remember that in Western fairy tales I
read it’s always a handsome young man.
And so I think of Kiyo as the spirit of snow,
so masculine in your uniform. I think of you
as overwhelming me. To feel myself dissolve
into your beauty and freeze to death in the
snow—no fate could be sweeter.
At the end, Satoko had written: “Please be kind
enough not to forget to throw this letter into the fire.”
Up to this final line, the style was smooth and
graceful, for Satoko never expressed herself other
than with elegance. Nevertheless, Kiyoaki was
startled by the sensuous vigor that seemed to flare up
here and there.
After he had read it, his immediate reaction was
that it was the kind of letter that ought to transport a
man into ecstasy. On reflection, however, it seemed
more of a textbook exercise from Satoko’s classes in
the art of elegance. He felt she wanted to teach him
that elegance overrides any question of indecency.
If the two of them had really fallen in love that snowy
morning, how could they bear to let a day pass without
meeting, if only for a moment or two? What could be
more natural? Yet Kiyoaki was not inclined to follow
his impulses in such a way. Oddly enough, living only
for one’s emotions, like a flag obedient to the breeze,
demands a way of life that makes one balk at the
natural course of events, for this implies being
altogether subservient to nature. The life of the
emotions detests all constraints, whatever their origin,
and thus, ironically enough, is apt eventually to fetter
its own instinctive sense of freedom.
Kiyoaki delayed seeing Satoko again, though not
to practice self-denial. Still less was he guided by a
profound knowledge of the subtleties of emotion
which are only open to those already experienced in
love. His behavior was simply the result of his
imperfect grasp of the art of elegance, and was still
so immature, almost bordering on vanity, that he
envied Satoko her serene freedom, wantonness
even, and was made to feel inferior.
Just as a stream returns to its normal course after a
flood, Kiyoaki’s predilection for suffering began to
reassert itself. His dreamy nature could be as
demanding as it was capricious, so much so, in fact,
that he was angered and frustrated at the lack of
obstacles to his love. The meddlesome assistance of
Tadeshina and Iinuma provided a ready target, and
he came to view their maneuvers as inimical to the
purity of his feelings.
His pride was hurt when he realized that this was all
he had to rely on as the fierce pain and agony of love
spun their coil. Such pain ought to be fit material for
weaving a magnificent tapestry, but Kiyoaki had only
a tiny domestic loom with nothing but pure white
thread at his disposal.
“Where are they leading me,” he wondered, “at this
very moment when I am gradually, genuinely, falling in
love?”
But even as he decided that what he felt was love,
his contrary nature was asserting itself once more.
For any ordinary young man, the memory of
Satoko’s kiss would have been enough to lift him into
ecstasies of joy and satisfaction. But for this young
man, for whom complacency was already too
common a condition, it was a memory that caused
greater heartache with every passing day.
No matter what else might be true, the happiness
he had felt at that moment had the brilliant fire of a rich
jewel. There was no doubt about that. It was engraved
on his memory. In the midst of a formless, colorless
snowy desert, with his emotions in turmoil, not
knowing how he had embarked on this journey or how
it should end, the warm glow of that jewel had been
like a compass point.
His sense of discrepancy between the memory of
that happiness and his present heartache grew
steadily, and its effect on him deepened; he finally
lapsed into the black melancholy that had been so
congenial before. The kiss ceased to be anything
more than another reminder of Satoko’s humiliating
mockery.
He decided to write a reply to her letter as chill as
he could make it. He tore up several sheets of
stationery in the attempt, making a fresh start each
time. When he had finally composed what he thought
was the ultimate in unfeeling billets-doux and put
down his writing brush, he suddenly became aware of
the extent of his achievement. Without intending to, he
had hit upon the style of a man of great worldly
experience, having built on the letter of accusation he
had once sent her. This time the very thought of such
outright deception was so painful that he began yet
another letter. In it, without any attempt at qualification,
he conveyed the joy of experiencing a kiss for the first
time. It was filled with boyish passion. He closed his
eyes as he slipped it into an envelope and ran the tip
of his tongue over the flap. The glue tasted vaguely
sweet, like medicine.
16
T HE M ATSUGAE ESTATE was
most famous for its autumn display of maple leaves,
but its cherry blossoms were also the object of much
admiration. Cherry trees were scattered among the
pines in the long rows of trees that flanked the drive to
the main gate for more than half a mile. The best view
was from the second-floor balcony of the Western-
style house. Standing there, one could take in all the
cherry blossoms on the Matsugae estate in a single
sweeping glance; some bloomed along the drive,
several trees stood among the huge gingko trees in
the front garden, some ringed the small grassy knoll
where Kiyoaki’s Otachimachi ritual had taken place,
and a few grew on the maple hill beyond the pond.
Many  discriminating  viewers  preferred  this
arrangement to an overwhelming display of massed
blossoms in the middle of a garden.
From spring to early summer, the three principal
events in the Matsugae household were the Doll
Festival in March, the cherry blossom viewing in April,
and the Shinto festival in May. But since the
prescribed year of mourning following the death of His
Imperial Highness had not yet elapsed, it was
decided that this year the March and April festivals
would be curtailed to strictly family observances—
much to the disappointment of the women in the
house. For throughout the winter, as happened every
year, all sorts of rumors had been filtering down from
the quarters of the senior staff about plans for the Doll
Festival and the blossom viewing—such as the story
that a troupe of professional entertainers would be
brought in. The house was always full of such tales,
the kind of speculation that gave a thrill to simple
souls accustomed to making a great deal out of the
arrival of springtime. To have their expectations
blighted in this way seemed like a blight on spring
itself.
The full Kagoshima-style celebration of the Doll
Festival at the Matsugaes’ was renowned; thanks to
appreciative foreign visitors invited in years gone by,
it was now famous abroad as well, so much so in fact
that every year, a large number of Americans and
Europeans who were in Japan at the festival time
would use whatever influence they had to try to obtain
invitations.
The pale cheeks of the two ivory dolls representing
the Emperor and Empress shone cold in the early
spring light, despite the gleam of the surrounding
candles and the reflection from the scarlet carpet
beneath. The Emperor doll was dressed in the
splendid ceremonial robes of a Shinto high priest,
and the Empress in the extravagantly rich Heian court
costume. Despite the bulk of their countless skirts,
their gowns dipped gracefully at the back to reveal the
pale translucence of the napes of their necks. The
scarlet carpet covered the entire floor of the huge
main reception room. Countless wooden balls inside
richly embroidered cloth hung down from the beamed
ceiling, and bas-relief pictures of various kinds of
popular dolls covered the walls. An old woman named
Tsuru, famed for her skill at this sort of picture, came
to  Tokyo  every  February  to  throw  herself
wholeheartedly into the preparations; her pet refrain
was a mumbled “as madam wishes.”
Even though this year’s Doll Festival lacked the
usual gaiety, the women were nevertheless cheered
by the prospect of the cherry blossom season; it
would not be observed publicly, but it would still be
celebrated with considerably more festivity than they
had first been led to believe. This hope was
warranted by a communication from His Highness
Prince Toin announcing that he would deign to be
present, though in a private capacity.
This had also cheered the Marquis immensely. He
was happiest in the midst of extravagance and
ostentation, and the restraints of polite society
weighed heavily on his outgoing nature. If the
Emperor’s cousin himself saw fit to take a lax view of
the observation of mourning, then no one would dare
cast aspersions on the Marquis’s own sense of what
morality required.
Since His Highness Haruhisa Toin had been the
Emperor’s personal representative at the coronation
of Rahma VI and so was personally known to the royal
family of Siam, the Marquis decided that it would be
proper to include the two young princes in the
invitations.
Years before in Paris, during the Olympic Games of
1900, the Marquis had become rather intimate with
the Prince while rendering him valued service as a
guide to the night life of the city. Even now the Prince
was fond of recalling those days with references that
only the Marquis understood. “Matsugae,” he would
say, “remember that place with the fountain that
gushed champagne? That was a night to remember!”
April the sixth was the day set for the formal viewing
of the cherry blossoms, and as soon as the rather
subdued observance of the Doll Festival was over,
the tempo of life in the household quickened as
preparations got underway.
Kiyoaki, however, did nothing at all during his
spring vacation. His parents urged him to take a trip
somewhere, but even though he did not see Satoko
very often, he was not in the mood to leave Tokyo
while she was there.
As spring came gradually, day by day, despite the
sharp cold, Kiyoaki struggled with a series of
unsettling premonitions. Finally, when his ennui
became overpowering, he decided to do something
he did only rarely; he paid a visit to his grandmother’s
house on the estate. She seemed unable to shake off
a lifetime’s habit of treating him like an infant, and
this, together with her fondness for cataloguing his
mother’s faults, was reason enough for his reluctance
to visit her. Ever since the death of his grandfather,
his grandmother, with her masculine shoulders and
no-nonsense face, had turned her back on the world
completely, and ate little but a handful of rice a day, as
though living in anticipation of the death she hoped
was soon to come. As it turned out, however, she
thrived on this diet.
When people came from Kagoshima to visit her,
she talked to them in the dialect of her home region,
indifferent to what others might think. With Kiyoaki
and his mother, though, she spoke in the Tokyo
manner, however stiffly and awkwardly. Furthermore,
since she had none of the nasal tone of Tokyo
speech, the strong parade-ground quality of her voice
was all the more apparent. He was convinced that she
carefully preserved her Kagoshima accent as an
implicit condemnation of the easy fluency of his own
Tokyo inflections.
“So, Prince Toin is coming to see the blossoms,
eh?” she said without preamble as he entered; she
was warming her legs in the  kotatsu .
“Yes, that’s what they say.”
“I’m not going. Your mother asked me, but I prefer
being here out of everybody’s way.”
Then, showing concern over his idleness, she went
on to ask him if he didn’t feel inclined to take up judo
or fencing. There had once been an exercise hall on
the estate, but it had been torn down to make way for
the Western house. She made the sarcastic comment
that its destruction had marked the beginning of the
decline of the family. This was one opinion, however,
that was congenial to his own way of thinking. He
liked the word “decline.”
“If your two uncles were alive, your father wouldn’t
be carrying on the way he does. As far as I’m
concerned, this being on familiar terms with the
Imperial Family and pouring out money on
entertainment is just a big show. Whenever I think of
my two sons dead in the war without ever having
known what luxury was, I feel I don’t want to have
anything more to do with your father and the rest of
them—floating through life and thinking of nothing but
having a good time. And as for the pension I receive
for my two boys, that’s why I put it up there on the shelf
beside the household altar without ever touching it. It
seems to me that His Imperial Majesty gave it to me
for the sake of my sons and the blood they shed so
gallantly. It would be wrong ever to use it.”
His grandmother enjoyed delivering herself of little
sermons like this, but the truth was that the Marquis
was unstintingly generous in granting whatever she
wished, be it clothes, food, spending money, or
servants. Kiyoaki often wondered if perhaps she was
acutely ashamed of her rural origins and so was trying
to avoid any kind of Western social life.
Still, whenever he visited her and only then, he felt
that he was escaping from himself and from the
artificial environment that suffocated him. He enjoyed
the contact with a person who was so close to him but
who still retained the earthy vigor of his ancestors. It
was a pleasure of a rather ironic sort.
Everything about his grandmother was in physical
harmony with his image of her character: her hands
were large and her fingers blunt; the lines of her face
seemed to have been laid there with the firm, sure
strokes of a writing brush, and her lips were set with
firm resolution. Once in a while, however, she was
willing to allow a lighter note to creep into her
conversations with him. Now, for example, she tapped
her grandson’s knee under the low table that covered
the foot-warmer and teased him: “Whenever you
come here, you know, my women get flustered and I
don’t know what to do with them. To me, I’m afraid,
you’re still a little boy with a wet nose, but I suppose
that these girls see things differently.”
Kiyoaki looked up at the faded photograph of his
two uncles in uniform on the wall. Their military dress
seemed to him to preclude any possible bond
between them and himself. The war had ended a
mere eight years before, yet the gap between them
seemed immeasurable.
“I’ll never shed real blood. I’ll never wound anything
but hearts,” he boasted to himself, although not
without a slight sense of misgiving.
Outside, the sun shone on the shoji screen. The
small room bathed him in cozy warmth, making him
feel as if he were wrapped in a huge, opaque cocoon
of glowing white. He felt as if he were basking
luxuriously in the direct sunlight. His grandmother
began to doze. In the silence of the room, he became
aware of the ticking of the huge old-fashioned clock.
His grandmother’s head tipped forward slightly. Her
forehead jutted out sharply under the line of her short
hair which she wore bound and sprinkled with a black
powder dye. He noticed the healthy sheen of her skin.
More than half a century ago, he thought, the hot
Kagoshima sun must have burned her brown each
summer of her youth, and even now she seemed to
have retained its mark.
He was daydreaming, and his thoughts, moving like
the sea, gradually turned from the rhythm of the waves
to that of the long, slow passage of time, and hence to
the inevitability of growing old—and he suddenly
caught his breath. He had never looked forward to the
wisdom and other vaunted benefits of old age. Would
he be able to die young—and if possible free of all
pain? A graceful death—as a richly patterned kimono,
thrown carelessly across a polished table, slides
unobtrusively down into the darkness of the floor
beneath. A death marked by elegance.
The thought of dying suddenly spurred him with a
desire to see Satoko, if only for a moment.
He telephoned Tadeshina and then hurriedly left the
house. There was no doubt that Satoko was full of life
and beauty, as he himself was—these two facts
seemed to be a strange twist of fortune, something to
seize and cling to in time of danger.
Following Tadeshina’s scheme, Satoko pretended
to go out for a stroll and met Kiyoaki at a small Shinto
shrine not far from her home. The first thing she did
was to thank him for the invitation to the cherry
blossom festival. She obviously thought that he had
persuaded the Marquis to issue it. This was, in fact,
the first he had heard of the matter, but with his usual
deviousness, he did not disabuse her of the idea, and
accepted her thanks in a vague, noncommittal way.
17
A FTER  A  PROLONGED
STRUGGLE ,  Marquis  Matsugae  succeeded  in
compiling a severely curtailed guest list for the
blossom festival. His criterion was to invite the
number of suitable guests most appropriate to the
occasion, as the banquet that concluded it would be
graced by the august presence of the Imperial Prince
and his wife. Besides Satoko and her parents, Count
and Countess Ayakura, he therefore included only the
two Siamese princes and Baron Shinkawa and his
wife, who were frequent visitors and great friends of
the Matsugaes. The Baron was the head of the
Shinkawa  zaibatsu. His whole way of life was
modeled on that of the complete English gentleman,
whom he copied with scrupulous attention to detail.
The Baroness, for her part, was on intimate terms with
such people as the noted feminist Raicho Hiratsuka
and her circle, and was also a patron of the Women of
Tomorow. She could thus be relied upon to add a
touch of color to the gathering.
Prince Toin and his wife were to arrive at three in
the afternoon and be shown around the garden after a
short rest in one of the reception rooms of the main
house. They would then be entertained until five
o’clock at a garden party by some geishas, who
would go on to perform a selection of cherry blossom
dances from the Genroku era.
Just before sunset, the imperial couple were to
retire to the Western-style house for aperitifs. After the
banquet itself, there would be a final entertainment: a
projectionist had been hired to show a new foreign
film. Such was the program devised by the Marquis
with the help of Yamada, his steward, after pondering
the varied tastes of his guests.
Trying to settle the choice of films gave the Marquis
some agonizing moments. There was the one from
Pathé featuring Gabrielle Robin, the famous star of
the Comédie Française, that was indisputably a
masterpiece. The Marquis rejected it, however,
fearing that it might destroy the mood of the blossom
viewing, created with such care. At the beginning of
March the Electric Theater in Asakusa had begun to
show films made in the West, the first of which,
Paradise Lost , had already become wildly popular.
But it would hardly do to present a film that was
readily available in a place like that. Then there was
another film, a German melodrama filled with violent
action, but that could hardly be expected to score a
success with the Princess and the other ladies in
waiting. The Marquis finally decided that the choice
most likely to please his guests was an English five-
reeler based on a Dickens novel. The film might be
rather gloomy, but it did have a certain refinement, its
appeal was fairly wide, and the English captions
would help all his guests.
But what if it rained? In that case, the large
reception room in the main house would not offer a
sufficiently varied array of blossoms, and the only
suitable alternative would be to hold the viewing on
the second floor of the Western-style house.
Afterwards, the geishas could also perform their
dances there, and the aperitifs and the formal
banquet would follow as planned.
The  preparations  got  underway  with  the
construction of a temporary stage at a spot near the
pond, just at the foot of the grassy hill. If the weather
turned out to be fine, the Prince and his party would
undoubtedly make a full tour of the estate in order not
to miss any of the blossoms. The traditional red and
white curtains that must be extended along his route
were far larger than those required by more ordinary
events. The work of decking the interior of the
Western-style house with cherry blossoms and
decorating its banqueting table to suggest a rural
spring scene demanded all the attentions of a large
group of helpers. Finally, on the day before the party,
the hairdressers and their assistants were driven into
a frenzy of activity.
Happily, April 6 was clear, even if the sunshine left
something to be desired. It came and went, and there
was even a chill in the morning air.
An unused room in the main house was set aside
as a changing room for the geishas and was filled
with all the available mirrors. His curiosity aroused,
Kiyoaki went there to take a look for himself, but the
maid in charge quickly chased him away. His
imagination, however, was caught by the room,
scoured and swept in preparation for the women who
were soon to come. Screens were set up, pillows
scattered everywhere, and mirrors glinted through
their brightly colored covers of printed Yuzen muslin.
At the moment there wasn’t the faintest hint of the
scent of cosmetics in the air. But within no more than
half an hour, there would be a transformation; the
place would be filled with lovely voices as the women
gathered about the mirrors, donning and shedding
their costumes with unflurried self-possession.
Kiyoaki found the prospect fascinating. He was
caught up by the seductive magic of the occasion,
which did not emanate from the rough stage that had
just been built in the garden, but rather was
concentrated here in this room with its promise of
intoxicating fragrance soon to come.
As the Siamese princes had very little concept of
time, Kiyoaki had asked them to come as soon as
lunch was over. They arrived at about one thirty. He
invited them up to his study for the moment, startled to
see that they were wearing their school uniforms.
“Is that beautiful girl of yours coming?” Prince
Kridsada asked loudly in English before they were
through the door.
Prince Pattanadid, always gently reserved, was
affronted; he scolded his cousin for his unthinking
rudeness and apologized to Kiyoaki in halting
Japanese.
Kiyoaki assured them that she would come, but he
caused surprised glances by asking that they refrain
from speaking about him and Satoko in front of either
the imperial guests or the Matsugaes and Ayakuras.
The princes had apparently assumed that the
relationship was common knowledge.
By now the two princes were showing no sign of
their former homesickness, and they seemed to have
settled into the rhythm of life in Japan. In their school
uniforms, they struck Kiyoaki as being almost
indistinguishable from his other classmates. Prince
Kridsada, who was a gifted mimic, did an imitation of
the dean that was good enough to make Chao P. and
Kiyoaki laugh out loud.
Chao P. walked over to the window and looked out
over the grounds of the estate at a scene quite
different from what one saw on ordinary days. The red
and white curtain that wound through it was waving in
the wind.
“From now on it must surely get warmer,” he said
forlornly, his voice filled with longing for the hot
summer sun.
Kiyoaki was quite taken with this touch of
melancholy. He stood up and was about to walk over
to the window himself, but as he rose, Chao P. gave a
sudden, boyish cry that aroused his cousin and
brought him out of his chair.
“There she is!” he exclaimed, slipping into English.
“There’s the beautiful lady we mustn’t mention today.”
And indeed it was Satoko, unmistakable in her
long-sleeved kimono as she came along the path
beside the pond toward the main house with her
parents beside her. Even at a distance, Kiyoaki could
see that the kimono was a beautiful cherry-blossom
pink, its pattern reminiscent of the fresh green
profusion of a spring meadow. As she turned her
head momentarily, pointing out the island, he caught a
glimpse of her profile, the delicate pallor of her cheek
set off by her shining black hair.
No red and white curtains had been hung on the
island. It was still too early to see the first tinges of
spring green, but the curtains that marked the twisting
path up the maple hill beyond cast wavering
reflections on the surface of the water, their colors
putting Kiyoaki in mind of striped cookies. Although
the window was shut, he felt that he could hear
Satoko’s warm, bright voice.
Two young Siamese and a Japanese . . . they
stood in a trio at the window, each catching his
breath. How strange, thought Kiyoaki. When he was
with the two young princes, was it that he found their
passionate natures so infectious that he could believe
himself to be the same, and feel able to show it
openly? At this moment he could tell himself without a
qualm: “I love her. I’m madly in love with her.”
Six years before, he had had all too brief a glimpse
of the Imperial Princess Kasuga’s beautiful profile as
she turned to glance back at him; it had filled his heart
with a hopeless and lingering yearning, but now as
Satoko left the pond, she turned her face toward the
main house with a graceful movement of the head,
and although she was not looking directly at his
window, Kiyoaki suddenly felt liberated from that
former obsession. In one moment, he had
experienced something that surpassed it. Six years
later, he now felt that he had recaptured a fragment of
time, sparkling and crystalline, from a different
perspective. As he watched Satoko walking in the
pale watery spring sunshine, she suddenly laughed,
and as she did so, he saw her raise her arm in a fluid
movement, hiding her mouth behind the graceful curve
of her white hand. Her slim body seemed to vibrate
like a superb stringed instrument.
18
B ARON SHINKAWA and his wife
were uniquely matched as a couple: absentminded
detachment was here quite literally wedded to frenzy.
The Baron took not the slightest notice of anything his
wife said or did, while the Baroness, oblivious to her
effect on others, kept up a ceaseless outpouring of
words. This was their customary behavior, whether at
home or in public. Despite his abstracted manner, the
Baron was perfectly capable on occasion of
mercilessly nailing a person’s character with a single,
incisive, pithy observation, on which, however, he
never deigned to elaborate. His wife, on the other
hand, no matter what torrent of words she might
expend on that same individual, never succeeded in
bringing him to life.
They owned a Rolls Royce, the second ever
purchased in Japan; it was a distinction they
treasured as evidence of their social position. It was
the Baron’s custom to don a silk smoking jacket after
dinner and, thus attired, to spend the rest of the
evening ignoring his wife’s inexhaustible flood of
chatter.
At the Baroness’s invitation, Raicho Hiratsuka’s
circle met at the Shinkawa residence once a month,
calling themselves the Heavenly Fire Group after a
famous poem by Lady Sanunochigami. However,
since it invariably rained on the appointed day, the
newspapers amused themselves by referring to them
as the Rainy Day Club. Any sort of serious thought
was beyond the Baroness, who was amazed at the
intellectual awakening among Japanese women. She
observed it with the same excited curiosity that might
have been aroused in her by hens laying eggs of
some novel shape—pyramids, for instance.
The Shinkawas were both irritated and flattered by
the Matsugaes’ invitation to the blossom viewing.
Irritated because they realized how bored they would
be. Flattered because it would give them an
opportunity to display their authentically European
manners in public. The Shinkawas were an old and
wealthy merchant family, and while it was, of course,
essential  to  maintain  the  mutually  profitable
relationship established with the men from Satsuma
and Choshu who had risen to such power within the
government, the Baron and his wife held them in
secret contempt because of their peasant origins.
This was an attitude inherited from their parents, and
one that was at the very heart of their newly acquired
but unshakable elegance.
“Well, now that the Marquis has invited Prince Toin
to his house,” the Baron remarked, “perhaps he’ll
organize a brass band to greet him. That family views
the visit of an imperial prince as a sort of theatrical
event.”
“We just have to keep our enlightened views to
ourselves, I’m afraid,” was his wife’s reply. “I think that
it’s rather chic to remain au courant as we do without
seeming to, don’t you think so? In fact it’s rather
amusing, don’t you agree, to mix unobtrusively with
old-fashioned people like them. For example, I think
it’s frightfully amusing the way Marquis Matsugae is
so obsequious in front of Prince Toin at one moment
and then tries to behave as though they were old
friends the next. But I wonder what I should wear?
We’ll be leaving early in the afternoon, so I imagine it
wouldn’t quite do to go in formal evening dress. When
all is said and done, I suppose a kimono would be the
wisest. Perhaps I should hurry and put in an order at
Kitaide in Kyoto and have something made up,
perhaps in that lovely blossoms-by-firelight pattern?
But for some reason I never look well in a Suso
pattern. I’m never sure if it’s just me who thinks that
the Suso pattern looks frightful on me and that it’s
really just the thing, or whether other people also think
it looks frightful. So I just don’t know what to do—but
what do you think I should do?”
On the day itself, the Shinkawas received a note
from the Matsugaes. They were respectfully
requested to arrive some time before the time set for
the imperial couple’s arrival, and although they chose
with cool deliberation to make their appearance five
or six minutes after the time the Toinnomiyas were
expected, they were chagrined to discover that they
were still early. The Marquis had apparently allowed
for such maneuvers. This display of country manners
ruffled the Baron.
“Perhaps His Imperial Highness’s horses had a
stroke on the way,” he observed by way of a greeting.
But no matter how biting the Baron’s sarcasm, his
speech was mumbled and his expression blank in
true English fashion, so that no one heard him.
A dispatch from the distant main gate announced
the appearance of the imperial carriage, and the host
and his party immediately took up their positions at
the entrance of the main house to welcome the
Prince.
His carriage was splattered here and there with
spring mud as the horses, the gravel spurting under
their hooves, trotted up under the pine tree that stood
in the drive in front of the house. They snorted irritably
and tossed their heads, and for a moment their flying
gray manes made Kiyoaki think of the seething crest
of a huge wave about to break on the shore. At the
same instant, the imperial chrysanthemum on the
door blurred in a whirlpool of gold and then was still
as the carriage came to a halt.
Prince Toin’s fine gray moustache was well set off
by a black derby. The Princess, following her
husband, walked into the entranceway, crossing the
threshold onto the white carpeting that had been
spread over the floors of the main house that morning
to obviate the necessity of changing into slippers. The
imperial couple naturally gave a brief nod before
entering the house, but the formal ritual of welcome
was to be enacted in the reception room.
As the Princess passed him, Kiyoaki’s eye was
caught by the black tips of her shoes flashing beneath
the frilly white material of her skirt. They were like
pods of seaweed, he thought, bobbing in a rippling
eddy. The elegance of it so fascinated him that he
was even more reluctant to look up at her face, which
was beginning to show signs of age.
In the reception room, Marquis Matsugae
presented the other guests to the Toinnomiyas. The
only person who was new to them was Satoko.
“What have you been up to, Ayakura,” the Prince
chided her father, “hiding such a beautiful young lady
from me?”
Kiyoaki, standing to one side, was seized by a
slight shudder that he could not explain. He felt that
Satoko had suddenly been transformed into a rare
work of art on public display.
Since the Prince was so close to the court of Siam,
the two princes had been presented to him
immediately on arrival in Japan. He now chatted with
them familiarly, asking whether or not they liked their
fellow students at Peers. Chao P. smiled brightly, his
reply the very model of dutiful courtesy: “They all help
to make things easier for us in every way; it’s as if
we’d been friends for years. We lack for nothing.”
Since the princes had hardly ever appeared at
school until now and apparently had no friends at all
there, except for himself, Kiyoaki found this
enthusiastic testimony very funny.
Baron Shinkawa liked to think of his sensibility as
being of polished silver. Its luster shone unmarred in
the congenial atmosphere of his own home, but no
sooner was he plunged into the vulgar intercourse of
the outside world than its carefully burnished surface
began to tarnish. To suffer a single encounter such as
this was enough to cast a light film over it.
Under the direction of the Marquis, the guests now
went outside, on the heels of the Prince and Princess,
to see the blossoms. Being Japanese, however, the
couples did not permit themselves to mingle freely;
each wife remained behind her husband. Baron
Shinkawa had already fallen into a fit of abstraction
that was noticeable to the others. Nevertheless, as
soon as he and his wife had put a suitable distance
between themselves and the other guests, he roused
himself to remark to her: “When the Marquis was
studying in Europe, he took to foreign ways. Before
that he kept his mistress in the same house as his
wife, but afterwards he installed her in a rented house
just outside the front gate, which is about half a mile
from the house. That amounts to, say, one half-mile of
Westernization. It’s what I believe is called six of one,
half a dozen of the other.”
“To be enlightened at all,” replied his wife,
launching out, “one must be enlightened all the way.
Half measures just won’t do. If the household is really
to be run on European lines, then whether it’s a matter
of replying to a formal invitation or merely going out
for a short evening stroll, husband and wife should do
it together as we do, regardless of what others say.
Oh, look over there! See how the hill’s reflected in the
pond, with two or three cherry trees and the red and
white curtain? Isn’t it pretty? And do you like my
kimono? Looking at what the other ladies are
wearing, I’d say that mine has the most elaborate, the
boldest, the most enlightened pattern here. And so
how gorgeous it would look to someone on the other
side who saw it reflected in the water, don’t you think?
Oh, how frustrating! Why can’t I be on both sides of
the pond at once? One is so frightfully limited, isn’t
one, don’t you think?”
Pairing each husband with his own wife was an
exquisitely refined torture that the Baron endured with
cheerful equanimity. It was, after all, one that he
preferred and had, in fact, pioneered. He looked on it
as the kind of ordeal that might well become general
practice in advanced civilization a hundred years
hence. The Baron was not the kind of man to desire a
passionate rapport with life, and he was ready to
welcome any form of behavior that precluded this,
however unendurable or tedious it might be to lesser
men; he accepted his lot with the noblesse oblige of
an English sophistication.
When the guests finally reached the top of the hill,
from which they were to view the entertainment, they
were greeted by the Yanagibashi geishas, already
disguised as the traditional characters of the Genroku
cherry blossom dances. Thus they found themselves
mingling with the samurai in his padded costume, the
female Robin Hood, the clown, the blind minstrel, the
flower seller, the carpenter, the seller of woodcuts, the
young hero, the town and the village maidens, the
haiku master, and all the others. Prince Toin was
gracious enough to be amused, letting the Marquis at
his side see his smile of pleasure, and the Siamese
princes gleefully thumped Kiyoaki on the shoulder.
Since his father and mother were busy entertaining
the Prince and Princess respectively, Kiyoaki was left
more or less alone with the two Siamese boys; he
had enough to do fending off the geishas who
clustered around him while he looked after the
princes, who were still awkward in Japanese, and had
little chance to worry about Satoko.
“Young master,” said the old geisha who played the
poet, “won’t you please come and visit us soon? So
many of the girls have fallen head over heels in love
with you today; must they go unrequited?”
The young geishas and even the ones who took
masculine roles wore a light touch of rouge around the
eyes, which gave their laughing faces a slightly
drunken cast. Though the growing chill in the air told
Kiyoaki that evening was drawing on, he nevertheless
had the feeling of being sheltered from the real night
wind, surrounded by a folding screen of silk,
embroidery, and white powdered skin.
He wondered how these women could laugh and
play as happily as if they were bathing in water
warmed to their liking. He observed them closely—the
way they gestured as they told stories, the way they all
nodded alike, as though each had a finely wrought
gold hinge in her smooth white neck, the way they
allowed themselves to be teased, letting mock anger
flash for an instant in their eyes without ceasing to
smile, the way they instantly assumed a grave
expression to complement a guest’s sudden
sententious turn, their fleeting air of cold detachment
as they adjusted their hair with a touch of the hand—
and of all these many devices, the one that interested
him most was their manner of letting their eyes rove
incessantly. Without being aware of what he was
doing, he was comparing it with Satoko’s
characteristic habit of casting sidelong glances. The
geishas’ eyes were certainly cheerful and alive, their
only expression of independence, but Kiyoaki found
them distasteful nevertheless. They darted here and
there as aimlessly as buzzing flies, quite in contrast
with their expressions. They had none of Satoko’s
delicate coordination, a gift that comes only with a
sure sense of elegance.
Now as she stood talking with the Prince, Kiyoaki
watched her profile. Her face was lit with a faint glow
from the setting sun, and as he looked on from the
other side of the group, he thought of a crystal
sparkling far away, the faint note of a koto, a distant
mountain valley—all alike imbued with that peculiar
charm of the inaccessible. As the background of trees
and sky gradually darkened, moreover, her profile
became still more brightly etched, like Mount Fuji’s
silhouette, caught by the setting sun.
In the meantime, Baron Shinkawa and Count
Ayakura were exchanging laconic observations quite
unhindered  by  the  attendant  geisha  whose
ministrations they accepted with cool indifference.
The lawn beneath their feet was thickly scattered with
blossoms, and one of these petals, to the fascination
of the Baron, was clinging to the polished toe of one
of the Count’s shoes as they gleamed in the rays of
the setting sun. They were small enough to be
women’s shoes, he thought. And indeed, as the Count
stood there holding a glass of saké, his hand seemed
so small and white as to be doll-like. The Baron,
faced with such manifest evidence of noble breeding
in elegant decline, experienced a pang of jealousy.
However, the Baron was convinced that the interplay
of  his  own  carefully  nurtured  “English”
absentmindedness with what was a natural condition
of beaming abstraction in the Count imparted a
quality to their conversation that no other pair could
possibly match.
“As to animals,” said the Count unexpectedly,
“whatever one says, I maintain that the rodent family
has a certain charm about it.”
“The rodent family . . .?” replied the Baron, not
getting the drift at all.
“Rabbits, marmots, squirrels, and the like.”
“You have pets of that sort, sir?”
“No, sir, not at all. Too much of an odor. It would be
all over the house.”
“Ah, I see. Very charming, but you wouldn’t have
them in the house, is that it?”
“Well, sir, in the first place, they seem to have been
ignored by the poets, d’you see. And what has no
place in a poem has no place in my house. That’s my
family rule.”
“I see.”
“No, I don’t keep them as pets. But they’re such
fuzzy, timid little creatures that I can’t help thinking
there’s no more charming animal.”
“Yes, Count, I quite agree.”
“Actually, sir, every charming creature, no matter
what sort, seems to have a strong odor.”
“Yes, indeed, sir. I believe one might say so.”
“They tell me, Baron, that you spent a good deal of
time in London.”
“Yes, and in London at tea time the hostess makes
a great point of asking everyone: ‘Milk or tea first?’
Though it all comes to the same in the end, tea and
milk mixed together in the cup, the English place
enormous importance on one’s preference as to
which should be poured in first. With them it seems to
be an affair of greater gravity than the latest
government crisis.”
“Very interesting. Very interesting indeed, sir.”
They gave the geisha no chance to contribute a
single word, nor, despite the day’s theme, did they
seem to have the slightest interest in cherry
blossoms.
Marquise Matsugae was talking with Princess Toin,
who was extremely fond of  nagauta and also played
the samisen with great skill. Beside them stood the
old geisha who was the best singer in Yanagibashi,
contributing her share to the conversation. The
Marquise was telling them how, some time before, at
a relative’s engagement party, she had played “The
Green of the Pines” on the piano to the
accompaniment of a koto and samisen, an ensemble,
she said, that all the guests found charming. The
Princess followed the story with keen interest and
exclaimed how much she regretted not having been
there to take part herself.
Marquis Matsugae’s loud laugh rang out frequently.
Prince Toin, on the other hand, was pleased to laugh
now and then, but he did so with due moderation,
putting a hand to his handsomely trimmed moustache.
The old geisha who played the blind minstrel
whispered something in the Marquis’s ear, and he
immediately called out to his guests in his hearty
voice. “Well now, it’s time for the cherry blossom
dances. Will you please be kind enough to move over
close to the stage.”
This sort of announcement, in fact, belonged to the
steward Yamada’s sphere of authority. Shocked at
having his master snatch his role from him without
warning, the old man now blinked rapidly behind his
spectacles. This reaction, which he concealed from
everyone, was customary when he had to put up with
the unexpected.
Yamada would never lay a finger on anything
belonging to the Marquis, and he expected his master
to show a like discretion toward him in return. There
was, for example, an incident that had occurred the
previous fall. The children of the foreigners who lived
in the houses outside the gate had gathered some
acorns while playing on the grounds of the estate.
Yamada’s children had come out to join them, but
when the foreign children had offered them a share of
the acorns, they had refused in horror. Their father
had warned them severely against touching anything
that belonged to the master. The foreign children
misunderstood their reaction, however, and later the
father of one of them came to Yamada to complain.
When he thus learned what had happened, he
summoned his solemn, pinch-faced children with their
mouths turned down in perpetual obsequious respect
and praised them highly for their behavior.
As he thought about this, he rushed forward with
pathetic determination into the midst of the guests,
the skirts of his  hakama flapping about his unsteady
legs, and directed them feverishly toward the stage.
Just at this moment, from behind the red and white
curtain that was stretched in a semicircle at the back
of the stage, there came the sharp crack of the two
sounding sticks that announced the start of the
program; the report cut through the evening air and
seemed to make the fresh sawdust that was
scattered over the boards dance for an instant.
19
K IYOAKI AND S ATOKO had no
chance to be alone until there was a brief interval after
the dance, just as darkness was finally beginning to
settle. This was the time allotted for the guests to
move toward the Western-style house where the
banquet was to be held. The geishas mingled with the
guests once more to hear high praise for their
performance while everyone drank freely. It was that
strange moment, poised on the edge of evening,
when lights are still unnecessary, when even in the
midst of a convivial gathering, one may be caught by
a vague intimation of precariousness.
Kiyoaki deliberately glanced back in Satoko’s
direction and saw that she was being careful to follow
him at a discreet distance. At a point where the path
leading down from the hill came to a fork—one branch
leading toward the pond, the other toward the front
gate—there was an opening in the red and white
curtain. A big cherry tree stood here, its trunk thick
enough to give some protection from prying eyes.
Kiyoaki stepped through the curtain and waited
behind the tree. Before Satoko could join him,
however, she was caught up in a group of court
ladies, Princess Toin’s attendants, as they came from
the pond on their way back from a tour of the maple
hill. Since Kiyoaki could not come out of hiding at this
moment, there was nothing for him to do but wait in
the shelter of the tree until Satoko was able to find a
pretext for escape.
Left to himself, Kiyoaki looked up at the tree above
him and for the first time that day gave some thought
to the cherry blossoms. They hung in huge clusters
from the black austerity of the branches like a mass of
white seashells spread over a reef. The evening wind
made the curtains billow along the path, and when it
caught the tips of the branches, they bent gracefully in
a rustle of blossoms. Then the great, widespread
branches themselves began to sway with an easy
grandeur under their weight of white. The pallor of the
flowers was tinged here and there by pink clusters of
buds. And with almost invisible subtlety, the star-
shaped center of each blossom was marked with pink
in tiny, sharp strokes, like the stitches holding a button
in place.
The sky had darkened, and the outline of the clouds
began to blur as they merged into it, and the
blossoms themselves, already turned into a single
mass, began to lose their distinctive coloring for a
shade that was almost indistinguishable from that of
the evening sky. As he watched, the black of the tree
trunk and branches seemed to grow steadily heavier
and more somber.
With every minute, every second that passed, the
cherry blossoms sank into deeper, darker intimacy
with the evening sky. Kiyoaki was plunged into
feelings of foreboding.
Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the
curtain swell once more in the wind, but it was Satoko
brushing against it as she slipped through the
opening. He took her hand, cold to his touch from the
chill of the night breeze.
She resisted him and glanced anxiously about
when he tried to kiss her, but since she was also
trying to protect her kimono from the dust-streaked
moss on the tree trunk, he was able to embrace her
with ease.
“This is breaking my heart. Please let me go, Kiyo.”
Satoko kept her voice low, afraid that others might
hear. Kiyoaki was angered by her self-control, for he
had set his heart on nothing less than an ecstatic,
supreme consummation at that moment, there
beneath the blossoms. The rising moan of the night
wind had made him more and more uneasy, and now
he was driven in desperation to seize one sure
moment of happiness for them both, to the exclusion
of all else. Hence his frustration when he discovered
that her thoughts were obviously turned elsewhere. He
was like a husband so jealous that he insists his wife
have the very dreams he has.
Satoko had never looked more beautiful than now
as she closed her eyes, still struggling in his arms. But
although there was no feature, no contour that marred
the delicacy of her face, it was nonetheless imprinted
with a subtle, fleeting cast of willfulness. The corners
of her lips were slightly up-turned. He anxiously tried
to make out whether she was smiling or crying, but
her face was already deep in shadow, an omen of the
darkness almost upon them. He looked down at her
ear, half-hidden by her hair. With its tinge of pink and
its fine curve, the wonder of it made him think of a
delicate coral recess that might appear in a dream,
containing a tiny, beautifully carved Buddha. There
was something mysterious about the hollow of her
ear, now fading in the darkness. Was it there that her
heart was hidden, he wondered, or was it concealed
behind her slightly thin lips and sparkling teeth.
With a sense of nagging frustration, he wondered
how he could ever penetrate Satoko’s defenses. Then
suddenly, as though she could no longer bear his
look, she thrust her face forward and kissed him. One
of his arms was around her waist. He felt a warmth
that insinuated itself through his fingertips resting on
her hip and that reminded him somehow of the sweet,
sultry atmosphere of a greenhouse whose flowers
were dying.
There was a scent to it that struck his nostrils and
gave him a delightful sensation of being smothered in
it. Although she had not said a word, he was in the
grip of his own images, and was quite convinced that
he was on the verge of a moment of peerless beauty.
She pulled her mouth away, but this left the huge
mass of her hair pressed against the front of his
uniform jacket. Gazing over her head at the cherry
trees some distance beyond the curtain as they
became edged with silver, his head reeled from the
perfume  of  her  hair  oil,  which  became
indistinguishable from the scent of the blossoms
themselves; they stood out against the last light of the
sun like thick, shaggy white wool, but their powdery
color, shading almost to silver-gray, could not
altogether blot out a faint, and to Kiyoaki ill-omened,
pink. It made him think of an undertaker’s cosmetics.
In the midst of this, he suddenly realized that tears
were pouring down her cheeks. Afflicted by the spirit
of pure research, he was prompted to try to identify
these as tears either of joy or of grief, but she was too
quick for him.
She shook herself free, and then without even
pausing to wipe her eyes, she glared at him, her
manner completely changed, and lashed out with
stinging words that held no trace of compassion:
“You’re just a child, Kiyo! A mere child! You don’t
understand a thing. You don’t even try to understand.
Why did I hold back so much? How I wish I had taught
you what you know about love. You’ve got such a high
opinion of yourself, don’t you? But the truth is, Kiyo,
you’re no more than a baby. Oh, if only I had realized
it! If only I had tried harder to help you! Now it’s too
late.”
After this outburst, she vanished back through the
curtain, leaving the young man, utterly shattered, to his
own devices.
What had happened? With unerring accuracy, she
had marshaled just those words that were calculated
to wound him most deeply, like arrows aimed at his
weakest points. She had tipped them with a poison
distilled from the misgivings that preyed on him most.
He should have stopped to reflect on the extraordinary
efficacy of this poison. He should have tried to decide
just why such a crystallization of pure malice had
occurred.
But his heart was thumping in his chest, and his
hands shook. Bitter anger so overwhelmed him that
he was close to tears. He could not be objective and
coolly analyze the emotion that wracked him. Worse
yet, he had to rejoin the guests. And later in the
evening there would be no escape; he would have to
make pleasant conversation as though nothing were
troubling him. He could imagine no task that he felt
less fit to perform.
20
A S  FOR  THE  BANQUET ,
everything went off as planned and was brought to a
successful conclusion without any slips being
apparent to the guests. The Marquis’s rude optimism
was proof against all subtleties of misgiving. He
himself was well satisfied, and he never dreamed that
any of his guests might possibly feel otherwise. It was
at such moments that his wife’s dazzling worth was
brought home to him, as their subsequent
conversation revealed.
“The Prince and Princess seem to have had a
good time from beginning to end, wouldn’t you say?”
the Marquis began. “I think they went home quite
happy, don’t you?”
“That goes without saying,” replied the Marquise.
“Didn’t His Highness the Prince deign to remark that
he had not spent so delightful a day since the
Emperor died?”
“That’s not the best way he could have phrased it,
but I know what he meant. But still—to go from mid-
afternoon until late at night—don’t you think it might
have been too tiring for some of them?”
“No, no, not at all. You arranged things so cleverly,
with a variety of diversions following one after the
other, that it all flowed wonderfully well. I don’t believe
that our guests had a moment to spare in which they
could have become weary.”
“There wasn’t anybody asleep during the film?”
“Oh, no. They were all watching wide-eyed from
beginning to end and following with the keenest
interest.”
“But, you know, that Satoko is a tenderhearted girl. I
did think the pictures were quite emotional, but she
was the only one sufficiently moved to cry.”
Satoko had, in fact, been crying uncontrollably
throughout the show. The Marquis had noticed her
tears when the lights were lit.
Kiyoaki made his way up to his room, worn out. He
was wide awake, and sleep became impossible. He
opened the window and imagined that the snapping
turtles were gathering together just at that moment,
lifting their metallic green heads above the dark
surface of the pond to peer in his direction. Finally he
rang the bell that summoned Iinuma, who since
graduating from night school was always home in the
evening.
On stepping into the room, Iinuma needed no more
than a single glance to realize that anger and
frustration were contorting the face of the young
master. In recent weeks he had gradually developed a
certain skill in reading facial expressions, a talent that
until recently had been totally beyond him. He had
become especially adept with Kiyoaki, with whom he
had daily contact and whose expressions reminded
him of the whirling fragments of colored glass that
settled into continually changing patterns within a
kaleidoscope.
As a result, his disposition and outlook began to
alter. Not so long ago, the sight of his young master’s
face drawn in this way by anxiety and grief would have
filled him with loathing for what he would have judged
to be Kiyoaki’s sluggish indolence. But now he was
able to see it as a refinement.
Joy and exuberance did not, in fact, suit Kiyoaki.
His beauty had a melancholy cast and so appeared
most attractive when he was under the stress of anger
or grief, and together with these there was always a
forlorn suggestion of the spoiled child as a kind of
shadow image. At times like this his pale cheeks
became still whiter, his beautiful eyes bloodshot, his
finely arched eyebrows were twisted into a frown, and
his whole spirit seemed to waver as though his inner
world were shattered. He seemed desperately to
need something to cling to. And so the hint of
sweetness lingered in the midst of his desolation, like
the echo of a song over a barren waste.
Since Kiyoaki said nothing, Iinuma sat down on the
chair he had made a habit of using recently even
when Kiyoaki did not offer it to him. Then he reached
out and began to read the banquet menu, which
Kiyoaki had thrown down on the table. The dishes
listed constituted a feast such as Iinuma knew he
would never taste, no matter how many decades he
might serve the Matsugaes.
The Evening Banquet of the Cherry Blossom Festival
April 6, 1913
The Second Year of the Taisho Era
SOUP
Turtle Soup  Finely chopped turtle meat floating in
broth
Chicken Soup  Broth with thin slices of chicken
ENTREES
Poached Trout  Prepared in white wine and milk
Roast Fillet of Beef  Prepared with steamed
mushrooms
Roast Quail  Stuffed with mushrooms
Broiled Fillet of Mutton  Garnished with celery
Pâté de Foie Gras  Served with assortment of cold
fowl and sliced pineapple in iced wine
Roast Gamecock  Stuffed with mushrooms
INDIVIDUAL SALADS
VEGETABLES
Asparagus Green Beans
Prepared with Cheese
DESSERTS
French Custard Petits Fours
Ice Cream  A choice of flavors
While Iinuma read the menu, Kiyoaki kept staring at
him, one expression succeeding another on his face.
One moment his eyes seemed full of contempt, the
next brimming with pathetic appeal. He was irritated
that Iinuma should sit there with insensitive deference
just waiting for him to break the silence. If only Iinuma
had been capable of forgetting the master-retainer
had been capable of forgetting the master-retainer
relationship at that moment, and had put his hand on
Kiyoaki’s shoulder like an elder brother, how easily he
could have started to talk.
He had no idea that the young man who sat in front
of him was different from the Iinuma to whom he was
accustomed. What he did not realize was that the
Iinuma who had once been obsessed with the rough
suppression of his own passions had now developed
a gentle forbearance toward him, and, inexperienced
as he was, had taken his first tentative steps into the
world of subtle emotions.
“I can hardly imagine that you have the least idea
what’s on my mind,” Kiyoaki said at last. “Miss
Satoko insulted me terribly. She spoke to me as if I
were a mere child. And she as much as said that in
everything up to now I’ve behaved like a foolish little
boy. No, in fact she said it in so many words. She
came at me with everything that would hurt me most,
as though she had had it all carefully planned. I just
don’t understand how she could have brought herself
to do it. Now I realize that the ride that snowy morning
—which was her idea—now I know that I was nothing
more than a toy she felt like playing with.” Kiyoaki
paused for a moment. “But you had no inkling at all of
how things really stood? Tadeshina, for example,
didn’t say anything at all that sounded suspicious?”
Iinuma thought for a while before answering.
“Well, no, sir. I haven’t heard anything.” But his
awkward pause clung to Kiyoaki’s nerves like a vine.
“You’re lying. You do know something.”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
Finally, however, under the pressure of Kiyoaki’s
questions, Iinuma poured out what he had been
determined not to reveal. Being able to sense a
man’s mood is one thing, but to gauge his probable
reaction is quite another. He did not realize that his
words would strike Kiyoaki with the force of an axe.
“This is what Miné told me, sir. I’m the only one she
told, and I promised faithfully not to breathe a word of
it to anyone else. But since it concerns the young
master, I think it’s best that I tell it. It was on the day of
the New Year’s family party, when Miss Ayakura was
here at the house. It’s the day your father the Marquis
is kind enough to invite all your relatives’ children here
to entertain them, talk to them and listen to their
problems, as you know. And so it came about that
your father the Marquis asked Miss Ayakura in a
joking way if she didn’t have any problems she
wanted to discuss with him.
“She answered, also apparently as a joke: ‘Yes, as
a matter of fact I have a very serious matter I want to
discuss with you, Marquis Matsugae. I wonder if I
might inquire about your views on education.’
“At this point I must tell you, sir, that this entire
incident was related to Miné by the Marquis as—well,
a so-called bedtime story”—these two words cost
Iinuma inexpressible pain—“and so he told it to her in
detail, like a bedtime story, laughing a great deal as
he did so. And so she told it to me just as he said it
happened. At any rate, Miss Ayakura had caught the
interest of your father the Marquis, and he asked: ‘My
views on education, you say?’
“And then Miss Ayakura said: ‘Well, according to
what I’ve heard from Kiyo, his father seems to be a
great advocate of the empirical approach. He told me
that you treated him to a guided tour of the world of
geishas so that he could learn how best to conduct
himself there. And Kiyo seems to be very happy with
the results, feeling that he’s now quite a man. But
really, Marquis Matsugae, is it true that you champion
the empirical method even at the expense of
morality?’
“I understand that the lady asked this awkward
question with her usual effortless ease. He himself
burst out laughing and then answered: ‘What a difficult
question! That’s just the sort of thing these moral
reform groups ask in their petitions to the Diet. Well, if
what Kiyoaki said were true, I could muster something
in my defense. But the truth is this: Kiyo himself
rejected just that very educational opportunity. As you
know, he’s a late bloomer—he’s so fastidious, it’s
hard to believe he’s my son. Certainly I asked him to
come with me, but I hardly had time to open my mouth
before he bristled and stalked off in a high dudgeon.
But how amusing! Even though that’s what actually
happened, he’s made up a story so as to have
something to boast to you about. However, I’m pained
to think that I’ve raised a boy who would mention the
red-light district to an aristocrat, no matter how close
friends they are. I’ll call him in now and let him know
how proud I am of his behavior. It might persuade him
to go out and have a fling at a geisha house.’
“But Miss Ayakura pleaded with your father the
Marquis and finally convinced him to give up such a
rash idea. And she also made him promise to forget
what she had told him. And so he refrained from
mentioning it to anyone else out of respect for his
word. But he finally told Miné, laughing all the time and
obviously very amused by the whole thing. But he
gave her a strict warning not to say a word to anyone.
Miné is a woman, of course, and so she couldn’t keep
it to herself; she finally told just me. I realized that the
young master’s honor was involved, so I threatened
her in no uncertain terms, saying that if this story went
any further, I would break off with her at once. She
was so shaken by the way I said this that I don’t think
there’s any danger of the tale spreading.”
As he listened to this account, Kiyoaki became
even paler. He was like a man who has been groping
wildly in thick fog, striking his head on one obstacle
after another, until the fog suddenly lifts about him to
reveal a line of white marble columns. The amorphous
worry that had enveloped him now assumed a shape
that was perfectly clear.
Despite her denial, Satoko had read his letter after
all. It had of course dismayed her somewhat, but when
she found out at the New Year’s family party from the
Marquis himself that it was a lie, she became ecstatic
and exhilarated over her “happiest New Year.” Now
he understood why she had opened her heart to him
so passionately and so suddenly at the stable that
day. And finally, her confidence at its highest, she had
thus been sufficiently emboldened to invite him to go
for that ride through the February snow.
This revelation did not explain Satoko’s tears today
nor the severe tongue-lashing she had given him. But
it was abundantly clear to him that she was a liar from
first to last, that she’d been laughing at him secretly
from beginning to end. No matter how one might try to
defend her, it was undeniable that she had taken a
sadistic pleasure in his discomfiture.
“On the one hand,” he thought bitterly, “she accuses
me of behaving like a child and on the other, how
obvious it is that she has been behaving as though
she wants me to remain that way forever. How shrewd
she is! She gives the appearance of being a woman
who needs to be dependent at the very moment when
she’s up to one of her unscrupulous tricks. She
pretended to worship me, but she was really baby-
nursing.”
Overcome as he was by resentment, he did not
pause to reflect that it was his letter that had begun
everything, that it was his lie that had initiated the train
of events. All he could see was that his every
misfortune sprang from Satoko’s treachery.
She had wounded his pride at a stage in his life—
the painful transition between boyhood and manhood
—when nothing was more precious to him. Though
the affair itself would seem trifling to an adult—as his
father’s laughter had so clearly demonstrated—it was
a trifle that nevertheless bore upon his self-esteem,
and for Kiyoaki at nineteen, nothing was more
delicate nor more vulnerable. Whether she realized
this or not, she had trampled on it with an incredible
lack of sensitivity. He felt sick with disgrace.
Iinuma watched his white face in the lengthening
silence with compassion, but he didn’t realize how
punishing a blow he had just delivered. This
handsome boy had never missed an opportunity to
discomfit him, and now, without the least trace of
revenge in his intentions, he had crushed Kiyoaki.
Furthermore, he had never felt anything so close to
affection for him as at this moment, watching him
sitting with his head bowed.
His thoughts took a still gentler, more affectionate
turn: he would help Kiyoaki up and over to his bed. If
the boy began to cry, he too would cry in sympathy.
But when Kiyoaki raised his head, his features were
hard and set. There was no trace of tears. His cold,
piercing glance banished all Iinuma’s fantasies.
“All right,” he said. “You may go now. I’m going to
bed.”
He got to his feet by himself and pushed Iinuma
toward the door.
21
T HE NEXT DAY Tadeshina
telephoned repeatedly, but Kiyoaki would not go to
the phone. She then asked to speak to Iinuma and
told him that Miss Satoko wanted at all costs to speak
directly with the young master and would Iinuma
please convey this to him. Kiyoaki, however, had
given him strict instructions, and so he could not act
as a mediator. Finally, after a number of calls, Satoko
herself telephoned Iinuma. The result, however, was
the same: his unqualified refusal.
The calls kept up for some days, causing no little
stir among the housemaids. Kiyoaki’s response did
not vary. At last Tadeshina came in person.
Iinuma received her at a dark side entrance. He sat
on his heels on the entrance platform, every fold of his
cotton  hakama in place, determined not to let
Tadeshina one step into the house.
“The young master is absent and so is unable to
welcome you.”
“I don’t believe that’s altogether true. However, if
you insist that it is, would you please call Mr.
Yamada.”
“Even if you were to see Mr. Yamada, I’m afraid that
it would make no difference. The young master will not
see you.”
“All right then, if that’s the way you feel. I’ll just take
the liberty of coming in uninvited and I’ll discuss the
matter directly with the young master himself.”
“You are, of course, quite free to enter as you like.
But he has locked himself in his room, and there is no
way of gaining access to him. And then, I presume
that your errand is of a rather confidential nature. If you
were to disclose it to Yamada, it might give rise to
some talk within the house and eventually come to the
ears of His Excellency the Marquis. However, if that
prospect does not unduly concern you . . .”
Tadeshina said nothing. As she glared with loathing
at Iinuma, she noticed how clearly his pimples stood
out, even in the gloom of the entranceway. She herself
stood against the background of a bright spring day,
the pale green tips of the pine branches flashing in the
sunlight. Her old face, its wrinkles barely subdued by
their covering layer of white powder, reminded him of
a figure painted on crepe. Malice glinted sharply from
her eyes sunk deep in their nests of folded skin.
“Thank you very much. I presume that even though
you are only following the orders of the young master
himself, you must be prepared to take the
consequences of addressing yourself to me in such a
fashion. Up until now, I have been exercising my
ingenuity to some considerable extent on your behalf
as well. It would not be wise to depend on it too much
from now on. Please be kind enough to convey my
respects to the young master.”
Some four or five days later, a thick letter came
from Satoko. Usually Tadeshina gave letters for
Kiyoaki directly to Iinuma, so as to circumvent
Yamada; but this time the letter was placed upon a
gold lacquer tray with the family crest and delivered
openly by Yamada to Kiyoaki’s room.
Kiyoaki was at pains to call Iinuma to his room and
show him the unopened letter. Then he told him to
open the window. In his presence he put the letter into
the fire of his hibachi. Iinuma watched his white hand
darting about in the hibachi contained in paulownia
wood, avoiding the small tongues of flame that flared
up from time to time, stirring up the fire whenever the
weight of the letter threatened to choke it. Iinuma had
the feeling that a refined form of crime was being
committed before his eyes. Had he helped, he was
sure that the thing could have been done more
efficiently, but he did not offer to, fearing a refusal.
Kiyoaki had called him there to be a witness.
Kiyoaki could not avoid the smoke that rose from
the smoldering paper, and a tear rolled down his
cheek. Iinuma had once hoped that hard discipline
and tears would help Kiyoaki to achieve a suitable
attitude to life. Now he sat looking at the tears that
graced Kiyoaki’s cheeks, reddened by the fire, tears
that owed nothing whatever to any efforts of his. Why
was it, he wondered, that he always felt helpless in
Kiyoaki’s presence?
∗
One day about a week later, when his father came
home unusually early, Kiyoaki dined for the first time
in several weeks with both his parents in the
Japanese reception room of the main house.
“How time passes!” the Marquis said exuberantly.
“Next year you will receive the fifth degree, junior
grade. And once you have it, I’ll have all the servants
address you that way.”
Kiyoaki dreaded his majority, which was looming
over him in the coming year. Possibly Satoko’s faint
influence was at the heart of his weary disinterest at
the age of nineteen in the prospect of achieving adult
status. He had left behind the childhood disposition
that makes a boy count the time remaining to New
Year on his fingertips and burn with impatience to
grow to manhood. He heard his father’s words in a
cold and somber mood.
The meal proceeded according to fixed ritual: his
mother with her mask of classic melancholy and her
never-failing gentility, his father with his red face and
deliberately cheerful scorn for the niceties. Still, being
perceptive, he was quick to notice something that
surprised him: his parents’ eyes met once, though not
so that anyone could say they were exchanging
glances. There seemed to be nothing more afoot than
the usual silent conspiracy between the couple. As
Kiyoaki looked into his mother’s face, her expression
wavered slightly, and she stumbled for a second over
her words.
“Now . . . Kiyoaki . . . there’s something I’d like to
ask you which may not be altogether pleasant.
Though it would be making far too much of things to
call it unpleasant. But I would like to know how you feel
about it.”
“What is it?”
“Well, the fact is that Miss Satoko has received
another wedding proposal. And this time the
circumstances are extremely complex and delicate. If
it proceeds much further, there can be no question of
a free and easy refusal being permissible. As always,
Miss Satoko is disinclined to let anyone know how
she really feels, but this time I doubt if she would feel
like giving an outright refusal as she has done in the
past. And then her parents are also disposed in favor.
So now let’s say something about you. You and Miss
Satoko have been fond of each other ever since you
were babies. About her getting married, you have
nothing to say against it? All you have to do now is
just to tell us how you feel. For if you have an
objection, I think it would be most helpful if your father
knew the exact reason.”
Kiyoaki answered expressionlessly and without
hesitation, without even pausing in the use of his
chopsticks. “I have no objection at all. It’s something
that doesn’t concern me in the least.”
A brief silence followed, after which the Marquis
spoke in a tone that indicated how unruffled his good
mood was. “Well now, at this point it’s still possible to
go back. If just for the sake of argument we were to
suppose that you might feel yourself involved
somehow, even to the smallest degree, what would
you say to that?”
“I feel no involvement whatever.”
“I said it was for the sake of argument, didn’t I? But
if that’s the case, well and good. We have a long-
standing obligation to that family, and therefore I
intend to do all I can to help in this matter and to spare
no expense in bringing it to a suitably happy
conclusion. Well, at any rate, that’s the way things
stand. Next month is the Omiyasama festival, but if
things keep progressing at this rate, I imagine that
Satoko is going to find herself rather busy and won’t
be able to take part in it this year.”
“In that case, perhaps it would be a good idea not
to go to the trouble of inviting her.”
“Well, this is a surprise,” the Marquis exclaimed
with a loud laugh. “I had no idea that you were at each
others’ throats.”
And the laugh was the end of the discussion.
In the final analysis Kiyoaki was a mystery to his
parents. His emotional reactions were quite different
from theirs. As often as they had tried to fathom what
he was thinking, they had always been frustrated in
their efforts. And so they eventually gave up. With
regard to the present matter, they even bore the
Ayakuras some resentment for having educated their
son, although they themselves had entrusted them
with him. They wondered if the courtly elegance that
they had both yearned for did not, after all, consist in
precisely the kind of fluctuating moods that made their
son so difficult to understand. From a distance, such
elegance had an undeniable attraction, but when they
were confronted with it in the person of their own son,
the effect was an enigma.
The Marquis and Marquise, whatever their
intrigues, wore their emotions like clothes that were
dyed in the vivid primary colors of the tropics.
Kiyoaki’s emotions, however, were as subtly complex
as the layer upon layer of color in the dresses of the
court ladies; they were constantly merging—the drab
brown of an autumn leaf shading into crimson, the
crimson dissolving into the green of bambo grass. His
father was exhausted by the mere attempt at solving
the riddle of his son’s moods. He was exhausted by
the mere sight of his handsome son’s bored
indifference and his cold silences. He searched the
memories of his own youth, but he could not recall any
torment that had given rise to the kind of instability
that ruled his son. Kiyoaki was like a lake whose clear
waters reveal the very pebbles on its bed at one
moment, only to cloud over the next in a sudden
squall.
After a few moments, the Marquis spoke to Kiyoaki
again: “By the way, I’ve been thinking of letting Iinuma
go fairly soon.”
“Why’s that?” Kiyoaki asked, looking genuinely
surprised for the first time that evening. This really
was unexpected.
“Well, he’s been very faithful to you for a long time
now, but you’ll be grown up next year. And then he’s
graduated from college, so I think this is a good time.
There’s also a more specific reason. A rather
unpleasant rumor about him has come to my
attention.”
“What sort of rumor?”
“That his conduct within the house has been a bit
irregular. Not to mince words, it seems that he’s been
carrying on with one of the maids, Miné. In the old
days it would have been a matter of my having to cut
him down with my own sword.”
As she listened to her husband’s words, the
Marquise’s calm reserve was admirable. In every
aspect of this matter, she would be her husband’s
staunch ally.
“From whom did you hear this rumor, Father?”
Kiyoaki persisted.
“That’s irrelevant.”
Kiyoaki had an immediate vision of Tadeshina’s
face.
“Yes, in the old days I would have had to cut him
down. But times have changed. And then he came
here with a fine recommendation from the people in
Kagoshima, and I know his old middle-school
principal, who comes up here to give us New Year
greetings. It’s best to let him go without creating any
kind of stir that would damage his future prospects.
Not only that, but I want to handle it tactfully, so as to
make things easy for him. I’ll send Miné off on her own
too. And then if they’re both still in the mood and want
to marry, well and good. I’m willing to find work for
him. The main thing is to get him out of the house, so
it would be best to handle it in a way that will give him
no cause for resentment. That’s the best thing. After
all, he served you faithfully for such a long time, and
we have no complaints about him in that regard.”
“How compassionate you are! And so generous!”
the Marquise exclaimed.
Kiyoaki passed Iinuma in the corridor that night but
said nothing to him.
As he lay with his head on his pillow, his head was
a whirling mass of images. He was faced with the
stark realization that from now on he would be alone.
He had no friend but Honda, and he had told Honda
nothing about his immediate problem.
He had a dream, and in the midst of it, the thought
came to him that he would never be able to record it
in his journal. The events were far too complex and
irrational for that.
All sorts of faces appeared in it. The snow-covered
parade ground of the Third Regiment seemed to be
spread out before him. There stood Honda, dressed
as an officer. Then he thought he saw a flock of
peacocks settle suddenly on the snow. He saw
Satoko. She wore a jeweled necklace, and on either
side of her stood the two Siamese princes holding a
golden crown that they were about to place on her
head. In another corner, Iinuma and Tadeshina were
having a heated argument. Then he saw their
entangled bodies go rolling over the edge and down
into a vast, gaping chasm. Miné came riding up in a
carriage and his mother and father came out to meet
her with obsequious smiles. Then he himself seemed
to be sailing on a pitching raft over a vast ocean. “I’m
too involved in my dream-world,” he thought while still
in the middle of this one. “They’ve spilled over into
reality. They’re a flood that’s sweeping me away.”
22
P RINCE HARUNORI , the third
son of His Imperial Highness Prince Toin, had
recently attained his twenty-fifth birthday and a
generalcy in the Imperial Horse Guards. He had a
magnanimous, sturdy nature, and on him rested most
of his father’s hopes. To select a bride for such a
paragon, his father did not require anyone’s
mediation, and so a vast array of candidates had
been brought directly to the young man’s attention.
None of these, however, had struck his imperial fancy.
Thus the years went by, and just when his imperial
parents were at their wits’ end, Marquis Matsugae
took a chance and invited them to the cherry blossom
celebration at his estate. There Satoko Ayakura was
casually presented to them. The imperial couple were
quite taken with her, and when the Ayakuras later
received a confidential request for a photograph, they
hastily obeyed by sending a picture of her in a formal
kimono. When Prince Harunori’s parents showed it to
him, he did not make his usual derogatory remarks,
but stared at it for some considerable time. Satoko’s
advanced age of twenty-one became a matter of no
consequence.
Marquis Matsugae was well aware of the debt he
owed the Ayakuras for having taken care of Kiyoaki
as a child and he had long been anxious to do
something to help the Count’s family regain
something of its former grandeur. The best way to
achieve this, short of a marriage into the Emperor’s
immediate family, would be a marriage that united the
Ayakuras with one of the princes, and the flawless
lineage of the Ayakuras as a noble Urin family
precluded any question of status being an obstacle.
What the Ayakuras did lack, however, was the
financial means for the incredible expenses they
would incur in their new position. These ranged from a
huge dowry to the money that would have to be
disbursed regularly for the traditional seasonal gifts to
all the retainers of the imperial household, an
appalling sum to consider. The Marquis, nevertheless,
was prepared to underwrite the cost in all particulars.
With cool composure, Satoko watched the bustle
as these events went on around her. There was very
little sun in April that year, and as one dark day gave
way to another beneath the overcast sky, the fresh
imprint of spring faded, to be replaced by the signs of
approaching summer. Satoko looked out over the
wide, neglected garden from a bay window of her
austere room in the handsome, old-fashioned
mansion that now retained its pretensions only in its
imposing gate. She saw how the camellia blossoms
had already fallen and new buds were pushing out
from the thick dark clusters of leaves. The intricate
tracery of branches and pointed leaves of the
pomegranate, bristling with thorns, also showed
reddish buds that were straining to burst. All the new
buds grew vertical, so that the entire garden seemed
to be standing on tiptoe and stretching upward to
reach the sky. Indeed, every day seemed to bring it
closer to its goal.
Tadeshina was deeply concerned that Satoko had
become so subdued and that she should so often
appear lost in thought. On the other hand, she listened
attentively to all her mother and father had to say and
followed their wishes as a quiet brook its banks. She
now accepted everything with a faint smile, and there
was no trace of her former willfulness. But behind the
screen of gentle compliance, Satoko was hiding an
indifference as vast as the gray April sky.
One day early in May, Satoko was invited to tea at
the summer villa of Their Imperial Highnesses, Prince
and Princess Toin. Ordinarily, an invitation should
have come from the Matsugaes by this time of year to
attend their Omiyasama festival, but although all her
hopes were now centered on it, it did not come. In its
place, an official of the Prince’s household appeared
bearing the invitation to tea, handed it casually to a
steward of the Ayakuras, and departed.
Despite the semblance of complete naturalness
that attended this and similar incidents, they were in
fact carefully plotted in the deepest secrecy, and
though her parents said little, they were supporting the
conspirators in their attempt to ensnare Satoko in the
complex spell that was stealthily being woven around
her.
The Count and Countess, of course, were also
invited to tea at the Toinnomiya villa. Since it seemed
that to go in a carriage sent by the Prince with all its
appropriate trappings would be to create too much of
a spectacle, the Ayakuras decided they would rather
ride in one kindly lent by Marquis Matsugae. The villa,
built just a few years before, toward the end of the
Meiji era, stood on the outskirts of Yokohama. Had
their purpose been different, a trip of this sort would
have had the happy, carefree spirit of an all-too-
infrequent family outing in the country.
For the first time in many days, the weather was
pleasant, a good omen cheerfully noted by the Count
and his wife. Since Boys’ Day was approaching,
nearly every house they passed along the way had
hoisted its cloth or paper carps, one for each son, and
they were flapping vigorously in the stiff south breeze.
They ranged in size from huge black carp to tiny red
ones that looked like goldfish. If five or more were
hanging from the same staff, they seemed to bunch
awkwardly together, unable to swim freely in the
wind’s powerful current. When the carriage passed
one farmhouse on the edge of the mountains, the
school of carp above the roof was so vast that the
Count was moved to raise a white forefinger to count
them from the window. There were ten in all.
“My, what a vigorous sort of fellow!” said the Count
with a smile. To Satoko, this remark smacked of a
vulgar humor uncharacteristic of her father.
The trees along the way bore evidence of a
remarkable surge of growth with their clusters of new
leaves and branches. The mountains were a mass of
green that ranged from a near yellow to a dark tone
verging on black. The bright young maple leaves
stood out especially against the general outpouring of
green that made the whole countryside glitter.
“Oh, a bit of dust . . .,” the Countess exclaimed,
gazing at Satoko’s cheek. But just as she reached out
with her handkerchief to wipe it off, Satoko drew
quickly away and the speck of dust vanished. It was
then that her mother realized that the dust on her
daughter’s cheek had been no more than a shadow
cast by a spot on the window. Satoko gave a wan
smile; she didn’t find her mother’s mistake particularly
amusing. She disliked being given a special
inspection today, as if she were a bolt of silk intended
as a gift.
The windows had been kept shut in case the
breeze rumpled Satoko’s hair, and the interior of the
carriage had become unpleasantly hot as a result. As
it rocked unceasingly and the green of the mountains
flashed up in reflections from the flooded rice paddies
beside the road, Satoko could not remember what
she was looking forward to with such yearning. On the
one hand, she was letting a rash caprice sweep her
with appalling boldness into a course of action from
which there would be no turning back. On the other,
she was waiting for something to intervene. For the
moment there was still time. There was still time. Up
until the very last instant, a letter of pardon might
come—or so she hoped. And then again, she
despised the very thought of hope.
The Toinnomiya villa, a palatial Western-style
house, stood on a high cliff overlooking the sea.
Stairs carved out of marble led up to its front
entrance. As a groom took charge of the horses, the
Ayakuras descended from the carriage and
exchanged admiring remarks about the view of the
harbor below, which was filled with all sorts of ships.
Tea was served on a wide porch that faced south,
looking down over the water. It was decorated with a
number of luxuriant tropical plants, and on either side
of the door that opened onto it hung a pair of giant
curving tusks, a gift from the royal court of Siam.
Here the imperial couple welcomed their guests
and cordially offered them chairs. The tea was, of
course, in the English manner, complete with small,
thin sandwiches, some cookies and biscuits—all
neatly arranged on a tea table furnished with
silverware  engraved  with  the  imperial
chrysanthemum.
The Princess remarked how delightful the recent
cherry blossom festival at the Matsugaes had been
and then, by and by, her conversation turned to
mahjong and  nagauta .
“At home we still think of Satoko as a child, and we
haven’t let her play mahjong yet,” said the Count,
wanting to save his silent daughter embarrassment.
“Oh, don’t tell me!” the Princess laughed graciously.
“We sometimes spend a whole day playing nothing
else, when we have time.”
Satoko could no longer bring up a topic such as the
old-fashioned  sugoroku and its set of twelve black
and white pieces, with which they often played.
Prince Toin was relaxed and informal today in a
European suit. Calling the Count over to the window
beside him, he pointed down to the ships below and
displayed his knowledge of things nautical as if he
were instructing a child: that was an English freighter,
that was a ship with a flush deck, that one was a
French freighter, see the shelter deck on the one over
there, and so on.
Judging by the atmosphere, one might well
conclude that the imperial couple were making rather
anxious efforts to hit upon some topic congenial to
their guests. Anything at all that sparked a mutual
interest—be it sports or wine or anything else—would
suffice. Count Ayakura, however, received whatever
subject came up with earnest but benign passivity. As
for Satoko, she had never been so conscious as she
was this afternoon of the uselessness of the elegance
bred in her by her father’s example. Sometimes the
Count had a way of foolishly coming out with a stylish
joke that had nothing to do with the conversation at
hand, but today he was obviously restraining himself.
After some time, Prince Toin glanced at the clock
and made a casual remark, as if something had just
occurred to him.
“By a happy coincidence, Harunori will be coming
home on leave from his regiment today. Though he’s
my own son, he has the look about him of a rough sort
of fellow. But please don’t be upset by it. He’s truly
quite gentle beneath it all.”
Soon after he said this, the sound of servants
scurrying about at the front entrance heralded the
arrival of the young prince.
A few moments later, sword clattering, boots
squeaking, the martial figure of His Imperial Highness
Prince Harunori appeared on the porch. He greeted
his father with a military salute, and the immediate
impression he gave Satoko was one of empty dignity.
But how obvious the paternal pride of Prince Toin was
in this display of military pomp, and how evident the
young prince’s conviction that he was fulfilling every
detail of his father’s projected image of him. The truth
was that his two older brothers were, in fact, quite
different. Unusually effeminate and sickly, they had
been the despair of their imperial father.
Today, however, a touch of embarrassment at
being confronted for the first time with Satoko’s
beauty may perhaps have had some effect on Prince
Harunori’s subsequent behavior. At any rate, neither
when she was presented to him nor at any time
thereafter did he look at her directly.
Though the young prince was not particularly tall, he
had an impressive physique. He moved briskly at all
times, with an air of importance and decision that lent
him a gravity extraordinary in one so young—all of
which his father watched, complacent and happy, his
eyes  narrowed  with  pleasure.  This  paternal
satisfaction, however, was giving rise to a growing
impression among many that Prince Toin himself
concealed a certain weakness of will beneath that
grand and impressive exterior.
As for hobbies, His Imperial Highness Prince
Harunori was devoted to his record collection of
Western music. This seemed to be the one subject on
which he had opinions of his own. When his mother
asked: “Would you play something for us, Harunori?”
he was quick to agree and to turn toward the
reception room, where the phonograph stood.
As he did so, Satoko could not resist raising her
eyes to watch him. He covered the distance to the
door with long strides, his brilliantly polished black
boots sparkling in the sunshine that was pouring in
through the porch windows. They were so dazzling
that she imagined she could even see patches of the
sky itself reflected in them like fragments of blue
porcelain. She closed her eyes and waited for the
music to begin. She felt the first stirrings of ominous
premonition, and the faint sound of the phonograph
needle falling into place echoed like thunder in her
ears.
Afterwards, the young prince contributed little to the
casual conversation that followed the musical
interlude. As evening approached, the Ayakuras took
leave of their hosts.
A week later, the steward of Prince Toin’s
household came to the Ayakura residence and had a
long, detailed discussion with the Count. The upshot
was a decision to begin the formal proceedings for
obtaining the Emperor’s permission for the wedding.
Satoko herself was shown the document, which read:
To His Excellency the Minister of the
Imperial Household: Herein is a humble plea
with reference to negotiations concerning a
marriage between:
His Imperial Highness Prince Harunori Toin
and Satoko, the daughter of His Excellency
Count Korebumi Ayakura, Second Degree,
Junior Grade; Bearer of the Order of Merit,
Third Class;
That a petition as to whether such
negotiations may proceed in accordance
with the Imperial Pleasure may be
vouchsafed to be brought before the
Imperial Throne.
Offered upon this 12th Day of the Fifth
Month of the Era of Taisho.
Saburo Yamauchi
Steward of the Household of
His Imperial Highness Prince Toin
Three days later a response came from the
Minister of the Imperial Household:
To the Steward of the Household of
His Imperial Highness Prince Toin:
Relative to the disposition presented to the
Officials  of  the  Imperial  Household
concerning the marriage of His Imperial
Highness Prince Harunori Toin and Satoko,
the daughter of His Excellency Count
Korebumi Ayakura, Second Degree, Junior
Grade; Bearer of the Order of Merit, Third
Class;
it is herein acknowledged that a petition
destined for presentation to the Imperial
Throne whereby such negotiations may
proceed with the Imperial Pleasure has
been duly and properly entered.
Given this 15th Day of the Fifth Month of
the Era of Taisho.
The Minister of the Imperial
Household
And so with the preliminary formalities observed,
the petition for imperial sanction could be presented
to the Emperor at any time.
23
K IYOAKI WAS NOW in his senior
year at Peers. He was to begin his university studies
in the coming fall, and there were those in his class
who had been busy preparing for the entrance
examinations for more than eighteen months. Honda,
however, betrayed no such concern, a fact which
pleased Kiyoaki.
The spirit of General Nogi lived on in the
compulsory dormitory regime at Peers, but its harsh
rules did, nonetheless, contain allowances for those
whose health was not up to the demands made on
them. Students such as Honda and Kiyoaki, whose
families kept them out of the dormitories as a matter
of policy, were provided with suitable medical
certificates from their doctors. Honda’s convenient
ailment was put down as valvular heart disease and
Kiyoaki’s as chronic bronchial catarrh. Their
nonexistent illnesses were the source of much
amusement, with Honda pretending to be choking for
breath and Kiyoaki putting on a hacking cough.
There was no real need for pretense, because no
one believed they were sick. However, the
noncommissioned officers in the military science
department, all veterans of the Russo-Japanese War,
vented their hostility by making a point of treating
them like invalids. Then during drill period, the
sergeants were fond of interspersing their rhetoric
with oblique digs at the shirkers, asking what use they
would be in the service of their country if they were too
feeble to live under the dormitory regime, and other
such questions.
Kiyoaki felt deep sympathy for the Siamese princes
when he heard that they were to be put in the
dormitory. He often visited them in their quarters and
brought small presents. They felt very close to him,
and so they took turns pouring out their complaints,
lamenting in particular the restrictions on their
freedom of movement. The other dormitory students,
moreover, being rowdy and insensitive, were not the
sort to make friends with them.
Though Honda had been neglected by Kiyoaki for
quite some time, he welcomed him nonchalantly when
he came dancing back to him, bold as a sparrow. It
was as if he had completely forgotten his recent
disregard of Honda. With the start of the new school
term, he seemed to have changed character, now full
of forced gaiety, or so it appeared to Honda.
Naturally, he made no comment on this, and Kiyoaki
himself, just as naturally, provided no explanation.
Kiyoaki was able to congratulate himself for at least
one piece of wisdom—he had never let his friend
know his innermost feelings. This now spared him any
worry that he might appear to have let a woman
manipulate him like a foolish child. He realized that
this made him feel secure enough to behave with
carefree good humor toward Honda. To him, the
ultimate proof of his friendship was his desire to avoid
disillusioning Honda and to feel easy and
unconcerned in his presence—and this desire should
more than make up for his countless moments of
reserve.
He was so cheerful, in fact, that he surprised even
himself. At about this time, his parents had begun to
talk quite openly and matter-of-factly about the course
of  negotiations  between  the  Ayakuras  and
Toinnomiyas. They seemed to take great amusement
in recounting incidents such as how “even that
headstrong girl” became so tense that she could not
say a word during the carefully arranged meeting with
the young prince. Kiyoaki, of course, had no reason to
suspect what grief the incident had caused Satoko.
Those who lack imagination have no choice but to
base their conclusions on the reality they see around
them. But on the other hand, those who are
imaginative have a tendency to build fortified castles
they have designed themselves, and to seal off every
window in them. And so it was with Kiyoaki.
“Well, once the imperial sanction is received, that
should settle everything,” said his mother.
Somehow he was moved by her words, especially
the phrase “imperial sanction.” It made him think of a
darkened corridor, long and wide, and at the end a
door fastened with a small but impregnable padlock
of solid gold. And suddenly, with a noise like the
grinding of teeth, it opened of its own accord, a
metallic rasp echoing clearly in his ears.
He was full of self-satisfaction that he could remain
so calm while his mother and father discussed such
matters. He had triumphed over his own rage and
despair and so was relishing a sense of immortality. “I
never dreamed that I could be so resilient,” he
thought, never more confident in his life.
Once he had been convinced that his parents’
unfeeling coarseness was something totally alien to
him, but now he took pleasure in the thought that he
had not escaped his origins after all. He belonged not
among the victims but among the victors.
He drew an exquisite pleasure from the thought that
day by day Satoko’s existence would recede further
and further from his mind until it would finally pass
beyond recall. Those who set a votive lantern afloat on
the evening tide stand on the shore and watch its light
growing fainter over the dark surface of the water as
they pray that their offering may travel as far as
possible and so attain the maximum grace for the
dead. In the same way, Kiyoaki looked upon the
receding memory of Satoko as the surest vindication
of his own strength.
Now there was nobody left in the world who was
privy to his innermost feelings. No further obstacle
would prevent him from disguising his emotions. The
devoted servants, ever at his elbow, with their
customary words: “Please leave everything to us. We
know just how the young master feels,” had been
removed. Not only was he happy to be free of that
master conspirator, Tadeshina, but also of Iinuma,
whose loyalty had become so intense as to threaten
him with suffocation. The last of his irritants was gone.
As for his father’s dismissal of Iinuma, however
kindly done, he rationalized his own indifference with
the argument that Iinuma had brought it upon himself.
He made his self-satisfaction complete with the vow,
faithfully kept, thanks to Tadeshina, never to mention
to his father what had happened. And so he had
brought everything to a successful conclusion out of
his acuity and coldness of heart.
The day came for Iinuma’s departure. When he
went to Kiyoaki’s room for his formal farewell, he was
crying. Kiyoaki could not accept even such grief for
what it was. The thought that Iinuma was emphasizing
his fervently exclusive loyalty to him gave him no
pleasure.
Inarticulate as ever, Iinuma merely stood there
crying. By his very silence he was trying to tell Kiyoaki
something. Their relationship had lasted some seven
years, beginning in the spring when Kiyoaki was
twelve. Since his recollection of his thoughts and
feelings at that age were rather vague, he had the
general impression that Iinuma had always been there
beside him. If his boyhood and youth cast a shadow,
that shadow was Iinuma, in his sweaty, dark blue,
splashed-patterned kimono. The relentlessness of his
discontent, his rancor, his negative attitude to life, had
all weighed heavily on Kiyoaki, try as he might to feign
immunity. On the other hand, however, the dark woe in
Iinuma’s eyes had served to warn him against those
very same attitudes in himself, although they were
normal enough in youth. Iinuma’s particular demons
had tormented him with manifest violence, and the
more he wanted his young master to emulate him, the
more Kiyoaki had shied off in the opposite direction,
a predictable turn of events.
Psychologically, Kiyoaki had probably taken the
first step toward today’s parting when he had broken
the power that had dominated him for so long and
turned Iinuma into his confidant. Their mutual
understanding was probably too deep for master and
retainer.
As Iinuma stood before him with bowed head, the
chest hair escaping from the neck of his blue kimono
glistened faintly, caught in a ray of the evening sun.
Kiyoaki stared gloomily at this matted tangle,
depressed at the realization of what a distastefully
coarse and heavy vessel Iinuma’s flesh made for his
overpowering spirit of loyalty. It was, in fact, a direct
physical affront. Even the glow on Iinuma’s rough-
skinned, pimpled cheeks, mottled and unhealthy as it
was, had something shameless about it that seemed
to taunt Kiyoaki with Miné’s devotion—Miné who was
leaving with Iinuma, ready to share his fate. Nothing
could be more insulting: the young master betrayed by
a woman and left to grieve; the retainer believing in a
woman’s fidelity and going off triumphant. Iinuma,
moreover, was quite secure in the conviction that
today’s farewell had come about in the line of duty—a
presumption that Kiyoaki found galling.
However, deciding that noblesse oblige was the
best course, he spoke humanely, if curtly.
“So then, once you’re on your own, I presume you’ll
marry Miné?”
“Yes, sir. Since your father was gracious enough to
suggest it, that’s exactly what I shall do.”
“Well, let me know the date. I must send you a
present.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“Once you have a permanent home, send me a
note with your address. Who knows, perhaps I might
come and see you some time.”
“I cannot imagine anything that would give me
greater pleasure than a visit from the young master.
But wherever I live, it will be too small and dirty to be a
fit place to receive you.”
“Don’t worry about that.”
“How gracious of you to say so . . .”
And Iinuma began to cry again. He pulled a piece
of coarse tissue paper from his kimono and blew his
nose.
During this exchange Kiyoaki had chosen his every
word with care and an eye to its suitability for the
occasion before smoothly giving voice to it. He made
it patently clear that in a situation such as this, the
emptiest words were those that aroused the strongest
emotions. He professed to live for sentiment alone,
but circumstances now compelled him to learn the
politics of the intellect. This was an education that he
would apply to his own life with profit from time to
time. He was learning to use sentiment as a
protective armor and how best to polish it.
Devoid of worry or annoyance, free of all anxiety,
Kiyoaki at nineteen liked to see himself as a cold and
supremely capable young man. He felt that he was
now past some watershed in the course of his life.
After Iinuma had gone, he stood at the open
window gazing down at the beautiful reflection of the
maple hill, with its fresh green mantle of new leaves,
as it floated on the water of the pond. Close to the
window itself, the foliage of the zelkova was so thick
that he had to lean out in order to see the place at the
bottom of the hill where the last of the nine waterfalls
plunged into its pool. All around the edge of the pond,
the surface was covered with clusters of pale green
water shields. The yellow water lilies had not yet
flowered, but in the angles of the stone bridge that
zigzagged a path close to the main reception room,
irises were pushing their purple and white blossoms
out from sharp-pointed clusters of green leaves.
His eye was caught by the iridescent back of a
beetle that had been standing on the windowsill but
was now advancing steadily into his room. Two
reddish purple stripes ran the length of its brilliant oval
shell of green and gold. Now it waved its antennae
cautiously as it began to inch its way forward on its
tiny hacksaw legs, which reminded Kiyoaki of
minuscule jeweler’s blades. In the midst of time’s
dissolving whirlpool, how absurd that this tiny dot of
richly concentrated brilliance should endure in a
secure world of its own. As he watched, he gradually
became fascinated. Little by little the beetle kept
edging its glittering body closer to him as if its
pointless progress were a lesson that when traversing
a world of unceasing flux, the only thing of importance
was to radiate beauty. Suppose he were to assess
his protective armor of sentiment in such terms. Was
it aesthetically as naturally striking as that of this
beetle? And was it tough enough to be as good a
shield as the beetle’s?
At that moment, he almost persuaded himself that
all its surroundings—leafy trees, blue sky, clouds, tiled
roofs—were there purely to serve this beetle which in
itself was the very hub, the very nucleus of the
universe.
∗
The atmosphere of the Omiyasama festival was not
the same as in previous years. For one thing, Iinuma
was gone; every year, long before the day of the
festival, he had thrown himself into the task of
cleaning up and had done the arranging of the altar
and chairs all by himself. Now it had all fallen to
Yamada, and was the more unwelcome for being
without precedent. Furthermore, it was work more
befitting a younger man.
In addition, Satoko had not been invited. There was
thus the sense that someone was missing from the
group of relatives customarily present, but more
significant than that—for Satoko was not really a
relative after all—none of the women there was
remotely as beautiful as she.
The gods themselves seemed to view the altered
circumstances with displeasure. Midway through the
ceremony, the sky darkened and thunder rumbled in
the distance. The women, who had been following the
priest’s prayers, were thrown into a fluster, worried
that they might be caught in a shower. Fortunately,
however, when the time came for the young
priestesses in their scarlet  hakama to distribute the
sacred offerings of wine to everyone, the sky
lightened again. As the women bowed their heads,
the bright sunshine on the napes of their necks drew
beads of sweat despite the heavy coating of white
powder. At that moment, the clusters of wisteria
blossoms on the trellis cast deep shadows that fell
like a benediction on those in the back rows.
Had Iinuma been present, the atmosphere of this
year’s festival would doubtless have angered him,
since each year brought less reverence and mourning
for Kiyoaki’s grandfather. He now seemed to have
been relegated to a vanished era, especially since
the death of the Meiji Emperor himself. And so he had
become a distant god who had no connection at all
with the modern world. True, his widow, Kiyoaki’s
grandmother, took part in the ceremony, as did a
number of other old people; their tears, however,
seemed to have dried up long ago.
Each year as the painfully long ceremony went on,
the women’s whispering grew steadily louder. The
Marquis did not go out of his way to manifest
disapproval. He himself was finding the observance
more tedious year by year, and he was hopeful of
finding some way of making it a bit more cheerful and
less depressing for himself. During the ritual, his eye
was drawn to a young priestess whose pronounced
Okinawan features were all the more striking under
her heavy white makeup. As she held the earthenware
vessel filled with sacred wine, he was fascinated by
the reflection of her bold dark eyes on the surface of
the liquid. As soon as the ceremony was over, he
rushed over to his cousin, who was not only an
admiral but also a drinker of no small fame, and
apparently made a vulgar joke about the priestess, for
the admiral’s laugh was so loud and crude that it drew
a number of stares. The Marquise, however, knowing
how appropriate her mask of classic melancholy was
to today’s affair, did not alter her expression in the
slightest.
Kiyoaki meanwhile was otherwise occupied. The
women of the household, the whole vast array of them,
many of whom he did not even know by name, were
crowded together in the luxuriant shade of the late
spring wisteria. They were whispering among
themselves, their air of reverence vanishing with each
passing moment. Their faces were expressionless,
empty even of sadness as they stood dutifully
grouped according to their instructions, waiting until
they could disband once more, and full of heavy,
sluggish reluctance. The sultry atmosphere that
surrounded these women with white faces as blank as
the moon at midday had a profound effect on Kiyoaki.
Beyond a doubt, much of it had to do with their scent,
from which there was no excluding Satoko herself.
And this was something that even the Shinto priest,
armed with the sacred sakaki branch with its weight
of glossy dark green leaves and its string of white
paper pendants, would have been hard put to
exorcise.
24
K IYOAKI DREW COMFORT from
the peace of mind that comes with loss. In his heart,
he always preferred the actuality of loss to the fear of
it.
He had lost Satoko. And with that he was content.
For by now he had learned how to quiet even his
subsequent resentment. Every show of feeling was
now governed with a marvelous economy. If a candle
has burned brilliantly but now stands alone in the dark
with its flame extinguished, it need no longer fear that
its substance will dissolve into hot wax. For the first
time in his life, Kiyoaki came to realize the healing
powers of solitude.
∗
The rainy season had begun. Kiyoaki, like a
recuperating invalid who cannot resist endangering
his health despite his fears, began to test his
emotional  stability  by  deliberately  provoking
memories of Satoko. He would open his album to
look at the old pictures. He saw himself as an infant,
standing next to Satoko beneath the pagoda tree on
the Ayakura estate. Both of them were wrapped in
children’s white pinafores, but he took satisfaction in
having been taller than she even at that early age.
Count Ayakura, who was a superb calligrapher, had
taken great pains to instruct the two children
according to Tadamichi Fujuwara’s Hossho Temple
school of writing. Sometimes, when they tired of their
usual exercises, he had rekindled their interest by
letting them take turns copying verses from the Okura
One Hundred Poets card game onto a scroll.
Kiyoaki had written a verse by Shigeyuki
Minamoto:
I feel the wind’s keen force
As waves break over rocks
Worn down by loneliness
I dream of days gone by.
Below it Satoko had written a verse by Yoshinobu
Onakatomi:
When day gives way to night
And guards kindle fires
The thoughts of other times
Come alive within me.
The childishness of his handwriting was apparent at
a glance. But Satoko’s was flowing and precise, so
much so that the brush hardly seemed to have been
wielded by a little girl. In fact he rarely opened this
scroll simply because he did not relish being
confronted with the unhappy evidence of how much
Satoko, two years older than he, had surpassed him
even then. Now, however, as he studied the writing
with a measure of objectivity, he felt that his own
scrawl had a boyish vigor that made a pleasing
contrast with the refined elegance of Satoko’s
smooth, flowing script.
But there was more to it than that. The very thought
of himself that day boldly setting down the tips of his
writing brushes, heavy with ink, against the fine, gold-
flecked paper of the scroll, was enough to evoke the
entire scene with the force of vivid immediacy. At that
time, Satoko’s long, thick black hair was cut straight
across at the brow. As she bent over the scroll, she
kept the handle of the writing brush tight in her slim,
delicate fingers, concentrating with such passion that
she was oblivious to the mass of hair that poured
down her shoulders in a jet-black cascade, nearly
flooding the scroll itself. Her small, white teeth bit
ruthlessly into her lower lip, and although she was just
a little girl, her nose was already well formed in her
profile that stood out with sweet determination against
the torrent of falling hair. Kiyoaki watched as if in a
dream. Then there was the ink that smelled dark and
solemn, and the sound made by the tip of the brush as
it raced over the surface of the scroll, like the wind
rustling through bamboo grass. And finally, there was
the sea—the well of the inkstone was the sea, and
above it rose the hill with the strange name. This sea
fell away so sharply from its shore that it gave not so
much as a glimpse of its shallow bed. The still black
sea, without a single wave, a sea spangled with gold
powder fallen from the ink stick, always made him
think of the rays of the moon fragmented on the night
sea of eternity.
“I can even enjoy memories of my past and it
doesn’t bother me at all,” he thought in silent boast.
Satoko did not even appear in his dreams. If he
caught a glimpse of a figure in his sleep that seemed
to resemble her, the woman quickly turned her back
and disappeared. But then the scene was most often
a broad crossroads at midday, totally deserted.
∗
One day at school, Prince Pattanadid asked
Kiyoaki a favor. Would he please return the ring that
Marquis Matsugae had put in a deposit box for him?
General rumor had it that the two princes had not
made a very favorable impression at school. The
language barrier presented an understandable
obstacle to their studies, but more than that, there
could be nothing resembling friendly banter between
them and their fellow students, who became impatient
with the princes and as a result kept them at a
respectful distance. Furthermore, being simple and
boorish, their classmates were apparently quite put
off by the smiles that the princes produced on all
occasions.
It had been the foreign minister’s idea that they live
in the student dormitory, a decision, Kiyoaki heard,
that had created considerable anxiety for the
dormitory prefect since his was the responsibility for
deciding upon the specific arrangements made for
them. He gave them their own room, furnished with
the best beds available, as befitted royalty. Then he
made every effort to promote good relations between
them and the other students, but as the days went by,
the princes tended to isolate themselves more and
more in their own little castle, frequently missing
exercises like reveille and group calisthenics. The
estrangement between them and the others thus grew
still more pronounced.
There was good reason for this. The preparatory
period of less than six months following their arrival
was inadequate for the princes to have learned
Japanese, even if they had applied themselves far
more seriously than they had done. And then, even in
the English classes, where their ability should have
shown to advantage, the system of translating from
English into Japanese and from Japanese into
English thoroughly confused them.
Since Marquis Matsugae had arranged to have
Pattanadid’s ring placed in his personal vault at the
Itsu Bank, Kiyoaki had to return home to get his
father’s seal before going to the bank to reclaim the
ring. It was nearly evening before he returned to Peers
and went to the princes’ room.
It was a typical “dry” day in the midst of the rainy
season, overcast and humid, a day that was perfectly
attuned to the frustration of the two princes, who were
longing for the sparkling summer weather that was still
beyond reach, though it seemed close enough. The
dormitory itself, a rough-frame one-story building
surrounded by trees, seemed to be sealed in a gloom
all its own.
The shouts coming from the direction of the
athletics field indicated that rugby practice was still in
full swing. Kiyoaki hated the idealistic cries that rose
from those young throats. His classmates’ rough-and-
ready relationships, their untried humanism, their
constant jokes and puns, their never-faltering
reverence for the talent of Rodin and the perfection of
Cézanne—they were no more than the modern
equivalent of the old traditional shouts of  kendo. And
so, hoarse in voice and reeking of youth like green
paulownia leaves, they went about wearing their
arrogance much as the ancient courtiers wore their
tall caps.
Life for the two princes was extremely difficult,
having to swim in the midst of this riptide of old and
new. When Kiyoaki thought about this, he rose above
his own preoccupations and now was able, out of a
new generosity, to sympathize with them. He walked
down a dark, rough-finished corridor of the dormitory
toward the princes’ room at the end of it, selected with
such care. Stopping in front of a battered old door, on
which hung a wooden rectangle with their names on it,
he knocked lightly.
The princes were overjoyed to see him, as though
he had come as a savior. He had always felt much
closer to the serious and somewhat dreamy
Pattanadid—Chao  P.—but  in  recent  months
Kridsada too, once so frivolous and carefree, had
become subdued. The two of them now spent much of
their time here in their room, whispering to each other
in their native language.
The room, bare of all decoration, was furnished
austerely with two beds, two desks, and two
cupboards for their clothing. The building itself was
redolent of the barracks atmosphere so prized by
General Nogi. The blank white expanse of wall above
the paneling, however, was relieved by a small shelf
holding a golden Buddha, before which the princes
performed their worship morning and evening. The
altar lent a hint of the exotic to the room. Wrinkled,
rain-spotted muslin curtains hung at the window.
Now with the approach of darkness, the smiling
princes’ teeth gleamed white against their dark skin
and deep tans. They offered Kiyoaki a seat on the
edge of one of the beds and then eagerly asked to
see the ring.
Its brilliant green emerald, guarded on either side
by the fierce beasts’ heads of the yaksha, glowed
richly in complete contrast to the atmosphere of the
room.
With an exclamation of happiness, Chao P. took
the ring and slipped it onto his dark, slender finger.
Thin and supple, on a hand that seemed created for
caresses, it made Kiyoaki think of a warm tropical
moonbeam stretching a slender finger through a
crack in the door and striking a mosaic floor.
“Now Ying Chan has finally returned to my touch,”
Chao P. said, heaving a melancholy sigh.
In months gone by, such a reaction would have
provoked Prince Kridsada to make fun of his cousin,
but now he searched through the drawer of his clothes
cupboard and took out a picture of his sister which he
had carefully hidden between layers of shirts.
“In this school,” he said, nearly in tears, “even if you
tell them it’s a picture of your own sister, they make
jokes about you if you put it out on your desk. That’s
why we hide Ying Chan’s picture in here.”
Chao P. was soon able to explain to Kiyoaki that no
letter from Princess Ying Chan had come for more
than two months. He had made inquiries about this at
the Siamese legation but had not yet received a
satisfactory answer. Moreover, the princess’s brother
Prince Kridsada himself had had no word about her. If
something had happened to her, if she had fallen ill,
he would normally have been informed by telegram.
Chao P.’s imagination was exacerbated by the
thought of what her family might be hiding even from
her brother. It might well be that she was being
pushed into another marriage, one that held greater
political advantage. The very idea was enough to
plunge him into gloom. Tomorrow, he thought, there
might be a letter, but even if there were, what
unhappiness might it not contain? With such thoughts
preying on his mind, he was in no state to study.
Since he had no other consolation, all he could think
of was the return of the ring that had been a parting
present from the princess, and all his intensity of
longing became focused on its emerald, which shone
with the brilliant green of the jungle at first light.
It now seemed that Choa P. had become oblivious
to Kiyoaki as he stretched out his finger that bore the
emerald ring and rested it on the desk beside the
picture of Ying Chan that Prince Kridsada had placed
there. He seemed to be about to make an effort of will
that would not only dissolve the barriers of time and
space but merge two separate lives into one.
When Prince Kridsada turned on the light that hung
from the ceiling, the picture glass caught the reflection
of the emerald on Chao P.’s finger, and a square of
vivid green glowed on the white lace of the princess’s
bodice.
“Look at that—how does it strike you?” Chao P.
asked in English, in a bemused tone of voice.
“Doesn’t it seem as though her heart were a green
flame? Perhaps it’s the cold green heart of a small
green snake, with a minute flaw in it, the kind of small
green snake that slithers from branch to branch in the
jungle, passing itself off as a vine. What’s more,
perhaps when she gave me the ring with such a
gentle, loving expression, she wanted me to draw
such a meaning from it some day.”
“No, Chao P. That’s utter nonsense,” Prince
Kridsada cut in sharply.
“Don’t be angry, Kri. I don’t mean to insult your
sister for a moment. All I’m trying to do is find words
for the strangeness of a lover’s existence. Let me put
it this way: although she is here in this picture, it
shows her only as she was at a certain moment in the
past. But I feel that here in this emerald she gave me
when we parted is her soul, just as she is now at this
moment. In my mind, the emerald and the picture—
her body and her soul—were separated. But look
now: the two are reunited.
“Even when we’re with someone we love, we’re
foolish enough to think of her body and soul as being
separate. Although I am apart from her now, I may be
in a much better position than I was to appreciate the
structure of the single crystal that is Ying Chan.
Separation is painful, but so is its opposite. And if
being together brings joy, then it is only proper that
separation should do the same in its own way.
“But what do you think, Matsugae? As for me, I’ve
always wanted to know the secret that enables love to
evade the bonds of time and space as if by magic. To
stand before the person we love is not the same as
loving her true self, for we are only apt to regard her
physical beauty as the indispensable mode of her
existence. When time and space intervene, it is
possible to be deceived by both, but on the other
hand, it is equally possible to draw twice as close to
her real self.”
Kiyoaki had no idea how profound the prince’s
philosophizing was intended to be, but he listened
intently. Many of his words did, in fact, strike home. As
for Satoko, Kiyoaki believed that he had now indeed
drawn that much closer to her real self. He saw quite
clearly that what he had loved had not been the real
Satoko. But what proof did he have of that? Wasn’t he
liable to be deceived twice over? And wasn’t the
Satoko he loved once again the real Satoko after all?
He shook his head slightly, almost unconsciously.
Then suddenly he remembered the dream in which
the face of a strangely beautiful girl had suddenly
appeared in Chao P.’s emerald ring. Who was that
woman? Satoko? Ying Chan, whom he had never
seen? Someone else perhaps?
“Well anyway, will it ever be summer?” Prince
Kridsada said sadly, gazing out of the window at the
grove of trees surrounding the dormitory.
The three boys could see the lights burning in the
other dormitory buildings as they flickered through the
trees, and they also heard shouting and loud
conversation coming from various directions. It was
time for the dining room to open for the evening meal.
One student making his way along the path through
the grove was burlesquing an ancient song, to the
raucous laughter of his companions. The princes’
eyes widened as though in fear that at any moment
monsters of the mountains or rivers would appear out
of the darkness.
Kiyoaki’s return of the ring on this occasion was to
lead to an unpleasant incident.
∗
A few days later, there was a telephone call from
Tadeshina. The maid informed Kiyoaki, but he did not
go to the phone. Another call came next day. He did
not accept that one either.
The calls unsettled him to some extent, but he fell
back on his established rule: he put Satoko out of his
mind and concentrated on the anger Tadeshina’s
rudeness provoked in him. All he had to do was to
think about the cunning, lying old woman who had
deceived him outrageously time and time again, and
his consequent fury was strong enough to outweigh
any slight misgivings he might have had about not
going to the phone.
Three days passed. It was well into the rainy
season, and it poured without let-up. When Kiyoaki
came back from school, Yamada came up to him
carrying a lacquered tray and respectfully presented a
letter that lay face down upon it. Glancing at it, he was
startled to see that Tadeshina had brazenly put her
own name on it. The thick, oversized envelope had
been carefully sealed, and to go by the feel of it, so
was the letter inside. He felt afraid that if left to himself
he might not be able to restrain himself from opening
the letter. So, steeling himself to act deliberately, he
tore it to shreds intentionally in front of Yamada and
then ordered him to dispose of what was left of it. He
knew that if he threw it into the wastebasket in his own
room, he would be tempted to take it out and
reassemble the fragments. Yamada’s eyes flickered
with surprise behind his glasses, but he said not a
word.
A few more days passed. The matter of the torn-up
letter began to weigh on Kiyoaki and his reaction took
the form of anger. This was more than mere irritation
that a supposedly trivial letter should have such power
to unsettle him. What was agonizing was the
realization, impossible to ignore, that he now
regretted the decision not to open it. At first he had
been able to regard the letter’s destruction as proof of
his strength of will, but in retrospect he was now beset
by the feeling that on the contrary he had acted out of
sheer cowardice.
When he had torn up that thick, plain white
envelope, his fingers had encountered stiff resistance,
as though the letter had perhaps been written on
paper reinforced with tough linen fiber. But it was not
the paper’s composition that mattered. He now
realized that had it not been for his burst of willpower,
it would have been impossible for him to tear it up.
Why should he have been afraid? He had no desire to
become painfully involved with Satoko again. He
hated the very thought of being re-enveloped in that
fragrant haze of anxiety that she could conjure at will,
especially now that he had finally achieved command
over himself again. But despite all this, when he had
been ripping up that thick letter, he had had the
feeling that he was tearing a gash in Satoko’s skin
with its soft white glow.
On his way back from school one torrid Saturday
afternoon during an unseasonal break in the wet
weather, he noticed a hum of activity at the entrance
of the main house. The grooms had prepared one of
the carriages and were now loading it with a bulky
package whose purple silk wrapping immediately
identified it as a present. The horses were twitching
their ears, and bright streams of saliva dropped from
their mouth as they gaped to reveal yellowed teeth. In
the hot sunlight their dark coats glistened as if
smeared with grease, and their throbbing veins stood
out on their necks beneath the fine, thick coats.
Just as he was about to go up the steps into the
house, his mother appeared dressed in bulky
ceremonial robes marked with the family crest.
“Hello,” he said.
“Oh, welcome home. I’m just on my way to the
Ayakuras to extend our congratulations.”
“Congratulations for what?”
Since his mother disliked discussing important
matters in front of the servants, she did not answer at
once but drew Kiyoaki over to a dark corner of the
wide entrance next to an umbrella stand before
beginning to speak in a low voice.
“This morning the imperial sanction was graciously
granted at last. Would you like to go with me?”
Before her son replied, the Marquise noticed that
her words had caused a flash of grim pleasure in his
eyes. Naturally she did not have time to reflect what it
meant. Furthermore, her next words there by the
doorway were eloquent proof of how little she had
derived from that moment.
“After all, a joyful event is a joyful event,” she said,
her mask of classic melancholy on her face. “So no
matter how badly you are at odds with her, the only
correct thing to do on such an occasion is to be polite
and offer your congratulations.”
“Please send my regards. I’m not going to go.”
He stood at the entrance and watched his mother
leave. The horses’ hooves scattered the gravel with a
noise like a sudden squall, and the gold crest of the
Matsugaes on the carriage seemed to quiver in the
air as it flashed through the pines that stood in front of
the house as the vehicle disappeared. Their mistress
had gone, and Kiyoaki could sense the consequent
relaxation of the servants. The tension in their muscles
dissolved with a fall like a noiseless snowslide.
He turned back toward the house, so empty without
either master or mistress. The servants, their eyes
cast down, stood waiting for him to enter. At that
moment, he was certain that he was holding the
seeds of a problem immense enough to fill the vast
emptiness of the building. Without bothering to glance
at the servants, he went inside and hurried down the
corridor, anxious not to waste a single moment
reaching his room where he could seal himself off
from the rest of the world.
His heart was beating with a strange excitement,
and he was feverishly hot. The solemn words
“imperial sanction” seemed suspended before his
eyes. The imperial sanction had been graciously
granted. Tadeshina’s repeated phone calls, the bulky
letter—they must have represented a last, desperate
flurry before it came. Their object had clearly been to
obtain his forgiveness, to be relieved of a feeling of
guilt.
All that day, he let his imagination run loose. He
was oblivious of the outside world. The clear, calm
mirror of his soul had now been shattered. There was
a turmoil in his heart that churned with the force of a
tropical storm. He was now shaken by a violent
passion that bore no trace of the melancholy that had
been such a part of its feeble precursors. But what
emotion now had him in its grip? It must be called
delight. But it was a delight so irrational, so
passionate, that it was almost unearthly.
If one were to ask what was its cause, the only
possible answer would be that it sprang from an
impossibility, a sheer impossibility. Just as the string
of a koto cut by a sharp blade yields with an abrupt,
poignant note, so the tie that bound him to Satoko
had been cut by the shining blade of the imperial
sanction. In the midst of his wavering inconsistency,
this was something that he had dreamed of and
hoped for in secret ever since he had begun to grow
out of boyhood.
To be more precise, the dream had begun to form
in the moment when he had looked up from Princess
Kasuga’s train and had been dazzled by the nape of
her white neck with its peerless beauty, forever
unattainable. That instant certainly foreshadowed
today’s fulfillment of his hopes. Absolute impossibility
—Kiyoaki himself had helped to bring it about by
single-mindedly shaping events to the pattern of his
every caprice, his every twist of feeling.
But what kind of joy was it? Something in it
obsessed him; there was something sinister,
ominously threatening about it. Long ago he had
resolved to recognize his emotions as his only
guiding truth and to live his life accordingly, even if this
meant a deliberate aimlessness. That principle had
now brought him to his present sinister feelings of joy,
which seemed to be the brink of a racing, plunging
whirlpool. There seemed to be nothing left but to throw
himself into it.
He thought back once again to himself and Satoko
all those years before, copying verses from the
Hundred Poets during their writing exercises. He bent
over the scroll trying to inhale a trace of Satoko’s
fragrance that might have remained from that day
fourteen years earlier. As he did so, he caught a scent
of incense that was not far removed from mildew,
something faint and so distant that still evoked such a
powerful nostalgia that he felt he had laid bare the
very source of all his emotion, so aimless and at the
same time so impetuous.
Each piece of the Empress’s confection, the prize
for winning at  sugoroku , had been molded in the form
of the imperial crest. Whenever his small teeth had
bitten into a crimson chrysanthemum, the color of its
petals had intensified before melting away, and at the
touch of his tongue, the delicately etched lines of a
cool white chrysanthemum had blurred and dissolved
into a sweet liquid. Everything came back to him—the
dark rooms of the Ayakura mansion, the court
screens brought from Kyoto with their pattern of
autumn flowers, the solemn stillness of the nights,
Satoko’s mouth opening in a slight yawn half-hidden
behind her sweep of black hair—everything came
back just as he had experienced it then, in all its lonely
elegance. But he realized that he was now slowly
admitting one idea that he had never dared entertain
before.
25
S OMETHING SOUNDED within
Kiyoaki like a trumpet call:  I love Satoko . And no
matter how he viewed this feeling he was unable to
fault its validity, even though he had never
experienced anything like it before.
Then a further revelation released the flood of
desire he had pent up for so long: elegance
disregards prohibitions, even the most severe. His
sexual impulses, so diffident until now, had been
lacking just such a powerful impulse. It had taken so
much time and effort to find his role in life.
“Now at last, I’m sure that I do love Satoko,” he told
himself. And the impossibility of fulfilling that love was
proof enough that he was right in his conviction.
He could not stay still. He rose from his chair and
then sat down again. His thoughts had always been
preponderantly melancholy and anxious, but now he
was swept by a surge of youthful energy. He felt that
everything previous had been mere delusion. He had
allowed his sensitivity and melancholy to dominate,
smother him.
Opening the window, he took a deep breath as he
stood looking out at the pond, whose surface glinted
in the bright sunshine. He smelled the strong fresh
odor of the zelkovas. In the midst of the clouds that
were massed to one side of the maple hill, he noticed
a hint of brightness that told him summer had come at
last. His cheeks were hot and his eyes bright. He had
become a new person. Whatever this might hold in
store, he was at least nineteen years old.
26
H E GAVE HIMSELF over to
passionate daydreams while he waited impatiently for
his mother to return from the Ayakuras. Her presence
there did not fit in with his plans at all. Finally he could
wait no longer, and took off his school uniform,
dressing in a Satsuma splashed-pattern kimono and
hakama. Then he called one of the servants and told
him to have a rickshaw waiting for him.
Following his plan, he left the rickshaw at Aoyama,
6-chome, which was the terminus for the streetcar that
went to Roppongi. He boarded it and rode to the end
of the line. Around the corner from Roppongi, at the
turn to Toriizaka, were three huge zelkova trees, the
remainder of the six that had given the Roppongi or
Six Trees district its name. Beneath them, just as in
old times before there were streetcars in Tokyo, a big
placard with “Rickshaw Stand” scrawled on it was
fastened to a post, and rickshaw men in conical
wicker hats, short jackets, and blue trousers were
gathered waiting for customers.
Kiyoaki called one of them, immediately handed
him an exorbitant tip and told him to take him at once
to the Ayakura mansion, which was no more than a
few minutes away on foot. The old-fashioned Ayakura
gate would not admit the Matsugaes’ English
carriage, and so if it were still waiting outside with the
gate open, he would know that his mother was still
there. However, if it were gone and the gate closed,
he could safely assume that she had already fulfilled
her ceremonial obligations and left.
When the rickshaw passed the gate, he saw that it
was shut and in the road in front he recognized the
marks left by a carriage.
He instructed the rickshaw man to take him back to
the top of Toriizaka. Once there he sent him back on
foot for Tadeshina while he himself remained behind,
making use of the cover provided by the rickshaw.
As it turned out, he had a long wait. Through an
opening in the side of the rickshaw, he watched the
setting rays of summer sun flood the new leaves
clustered at the tips of the branches. It seemed to be
slowly submerging them in liquid brilliance. A giant
horse chestnut towered above the red brick wall that
ran along the edge of the slope of Toriizaka. Its very
topmost leaves made him think of a white bird’s nest
decorated with a loosely woven crown of white flowers
tipped with pink. Then all at once he was thinking of
that snowy morning in February, and for no obvious
reason he was shaken by a violent wave of
excitement. But nevertheless, his intention was not to
force an immediate meeting with Satoko, for since
passion had now found a definite course, he was no
longer vulnerable to each new onrush of emotion.
Tadeshina came out of a side entrance, followed by
the rickshaw man. When she reached the rickshaw,
Kiyoaki pushed back its top to reveal his face and so
startled her that she could only stand there gaping up
at him. He reached down, seized her hand and jerked
her up into the rickshaw.
“I’ve something to tell you. Let’s go somewhere we
can talk safely.”
“But, master . . . this is such a shock! The Marquise
your mother took her leave just a few minutes ago.
Then tonight we’re preparing for an informal
celebration . . . I’m really so busy.”
“Never mind. Hurry up and tell the boy where to go.”
Since Kiyoaki kept a firm grip on her hand, she had
no choice but to comply.
“Go toward Kasumicho,” she told the rickshaw man.
“Near Number Three there’s a road going downhill
that turns toward the main gate of the Third Regiment
barracks. Please take us just to the bottom of the
slope.”
The rickshaw lurched forward and Tadeshina
stared straight ahead with desperate concentration,
nervously smoothing back a stray hair. This was the
first time he had been so close to this old woman with
her thick mask of white powder, and the experience
was far from pleasant. Yet he could not help but notice
that she was even tinier than he had imagined, hardly
more than a dwarf in fact. Buffeted by the shaking
rickshaw, she kept up a mumbled stream of protest
that he could only barely understand.
“It’s too late, too late . . . no matter what, it’s just too
late.” And then: “If only you’d sent one word of
answer . . . before this happened. Oh why . . . ?”
Kiyoaki said nothing and so she finally said
something about their destination just before they got
there: “A distant relative of mine runs an inn for
soldiers near here. It’s not a very presentable place
but an annex is always available, and it will permit me
to hear whatever the young master wishes to say in
confidence.”
Tomorrow was Sunday, when Roppongi would be
transformed suddenly into a bustling garrison district,
its streets full of khaki-uniformed soldiers, many out
strolling with their visiting families. But it was still
Saturday afternoon, and this transformation was yet to
take place. As the rickshaw carried him along through
the streets toward Tadeshina’s destination, he had
the feeling that on that snowy morning too, he and
Satoko had passed first this spot, then another. Just
as he became convinced that he remembered the
slope they were following, Tadeshina told the man to
stop.
They were in front of an inn at the foot of the slope.
Its main wing was two stories high, and although it
had neither gate nor entranceway, it was surrounded
by a good-sized garden enclosed by a broad fence.
Standing outside this fence, Tadeshina glanced up
at the second floor of the rough wooden structure. It
showed no sign of life. The six glass doors facing the
front were shut, and none of the interior was visible.
The low-quality panes in the latticed doors mirrored
the evening sky in their own warped fashion, even
catching the reflection of a carpenter working on an
adjacent roof and distorting his image as though it
were lying across water. The sky itself bore a watery
image as seen there, tinged with the melancholy of a
lake at evening time.
“It would of course be awkward if the soldiers were
back—but only officers take rooms here,” Tadeshina
said as she pushed open a close-worked lattice door
beside which there hung a plaque of the Goddess of
Children. She then called out to announce their
presence.
A tall, white-haired man who was on the verge of
old age appeared.
“Ah, Miss Tadeshina! Please come in,” he said in a
somewhat squeaky voice.
“Is the annex available?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
The three of them went down the back hallway to
the rear of the inn and entered a small room perhaps
ten feet square, the kind often used for assignations.
“I can’t stay very long, though,” said Tadeshina.
“Besides, being alone like this with such a handsome
young man, I don’t know what people would say.”
Suddenly  she  was  speaking  casually  and
coquettishly, addressing herself to both Kiyoaki and
the old innkeeper.
The room was suspiciously tidy. A small scroll
suitable for a tea ceremony room hung in a little
alcove, and there was even a sliding Genji screen.
The atmosphere was quite different from what one
would have expected from the exterior, that of a
cheap inn frequented by the army.
“What then do you so kindly wish to communicate to
me?” Tadeshina asked as soon as the innkeeper
withdrew. When Kiyoaki did not answer, she repeated
her question, making no further effort to hide her
irritation.
“What is this all about? And why choose today of all
days . . . ?”
“Because it’s so appropriate. I want you to arrange
a meeting between me and Satoko.”
“What do you mean, young master? It’s too late.
After what’s happened, how can you ask such a
thing? From now on, there’s nothing more to be done.
Everything must be subordinated to the Emperor’s
pleasure. And now this—after all those phone calls
and the letters I sent! You didn’t see fit to give us any
reply whatever. And today you make a request like
this! It’s not a joking matter.”
“Just remember this: everything that happened was
your fault,” said Kiyoaki with as much dignity as he
could muster, staring at the veins that throbbed under
the white powder caking Tadeshina’s forehead.
Angrily he accused her of having allowed Satoko to
read his letter and then to lie about it brazenly, and
also of having spread malicious gossip that had lost
him his faithful retainer Iinuma. Tadeshina finally
contrived to burst into tears, and apologized abjectly
on her knees.
She then pulled some tissue paper from the sleeve
of her kimono and began to wipe her eyes, rubbing
away the white powder around them to reveal the pink
web of wrinkles over her cheekbones, unmistakable
proof of mortality. There was hardly any difference in
texture between that wrinkled skin and the crumpled,
rouge-smeared piece of tissue. Finally, staring into
thin air, she began to talk.
“It’s true. It’s all my fault. I know that no amount of
apology can make up for what I have done. But I
should apologize more to my mistress than to you.
Tadeshina’s grievous failure was not communicating
to the young master exactly how Miss Satoko felt.
Everything that I had planned so carefully, thinking it
for the best, has failed terribly. Please be kind enough
to bear with me for a moment, young master. Imagine
Miss Satoko’s distress when she read your letter. And
think what effort of courage it cost her not to show any
sign of it when she met you. And then, after she had
decided to take my advice and put a direct question
to His Excellency your father, imagine how profoundly
relieved she was to learn the truth from him at the
family New Year’s party. And after that, morning,
noon, and night, she thought of nothing but the young
master, until finally she went so far as to issue that
invitation to ride through the snow that morning,
whatever embarrassment it cost her as a woman. For
some time after that, she was happy every day and
even whispered your name at night in her sleep. But
then she realized that through the kindness of His
Excellency the Marquis, she was going to receive a
proposal from the Imperial Family itself, and though
she was counting on your courageous decision and
had staked all her hopes on it, you didn’t say a word,
young master, and just let things go on. Miss Satoko’s
anxiety and suffering became unspeakable. Finally,
when the granting of the imperial sanction was
becoming imminent, she said that as a last hope, she
wanted to tell the young master how she felt. Despite
all my pleas, she decided to write a letter under my
name. But now that hope too is dead. Miss Satoko
was just coming to consider it all as a thing of the
past. And so your demand today is a piece of cruelty.
As you know, my mistress was brought up since
childhood to revere the wishes of His Imperial Majesty
the Emperor. We cannot expect her to go back on her
word now. It’s too late . . . simply too late. If your anger
is unappeased, hit Tadeshina, kick her—do whatever
is necessary to quiet your heart. But there’s no other
solution—it’s just too late.”
Listening to Tadeshina’s speech, a thrill of joy went
through him like a knife. Yet at the same time he felt
somehow that he knew it all already, that he was
hearing things repeated that were quite clear to him in
his heart. He was now finding himself possessed of
an acute wisdom he had never suspected before.
Thus armed, he felt strong enough to overcome all
that the world had to offer in the way of obstacles. His
eyes were full of the fire of youth. “She read the letter I
begged her to destroy,” he said to himself, “so why
shouldn’t I resurrect the letter of hers that I destroyed?”
He stared wordlessly and fixedly at the little old lady
with the white-powdered face. Once more she
dabbed her reddened eyes with a piece of tissue
paper. The room was growing steadily darker with the
onset of evening. Her hunched shoulders seemed so
frail that he was sure that if he grasped them
suddenly, the bones would give way with a hollow
crack.
“It’s not too late.”
“But it is.”
“No it isn’t. I wonder what would happen if I were to
show Miss Satoko’s last letter to the Prince’s family?
Especially when one considers that it was written after
the formal request for imperial sanction.”
At these words the blood suddenly drained from
Tadeshina’s face.
Neither said anything for a long time. It was no
longer the rays of the setting sun but light from the
second-floor rooms of the main wing that lit up the
window. The lodgers were returning and there was an
occasional flash of khaki uniform at a window.
Outside the fence a beancurd-seller sounded his
bugle. The evening air was characterized by the mild
warmth, like flannel, of the few summer days that
come before the final end to the rainy season.
From  time  to  time,  Tadeshina  whispered
something to herself which Kiyoaki heard only in
snatches: “This is why I tried to stop her . . . this is why
I said not to do it.” She was evidently muttering about
having opposed Satoko’s writing of that final letter.
He maintained his silence, with increasing
confidence that he held the winning hand. A wild
animal seemed to be gradually if invisibly rearing its
head within him.
“Very well then,” said Tadeshina. “I will arrange just
one meeting. And now the young master will, I trust,
be kind enough to return the letter.”
“Splendid. But a meeting of itself is not enough,” he
answered. “I want the two of us to be alone together—
without your being there. And as for the letter, I’ll return
that afterwards.”
27
T HREE DAYS WENT BY . The rain
did not cease. After class, Kiyoaki went to the
boarding house in Kasumicho, hiding his school
uniform under a raincoat. He had received a
message from Tadeshina that today would be
Satoko’s sole opportunity to escape from the house,
since both her parents would be away.
Even after being shown to the back room in the
boarding house by the innkeeper, Kiyoaki felt hesitant
about removing his raincoat. Noticing this as he
poured out his tea, the old owner reassured him:
“Please feel quite comfortable, sir. There’s no cause
for concern with someone like me who has renounced
the world.”
The innkeeper left him. He looked around the room
and noticed that a bamboo blind was now covering
the window through which he had looked up at the
second floor of the main wing last time. The windows
had been shut to keep out the rain, and a damp,
oppressive heat filled the room. When he idly opened
a lacquered box on the desk, its inside was covered
with drops of moisture.
He knew that Satoko had arrived when he heard
the rustle of clothing and the sound of whispers
coming from the other side of the Genji sliding door.
The panel opened and Tadeshina made him a
deep bow. Then without saying a word, she let Satoko
into the room and quickly shut the panel again. Before
it slid back into place, her upturned eyes momentarily
flashed white in the sultry midday gloom of the hallway
like a squid.
Satoko sat down on the tatami floor in front of
Kiyoaki, her knees primly together. Her head was
bent and she hid her face with a handkerchief, letting
the other hand rest on the floor. Her body was turned
sideways, so that the nape of her neck shone white
like a small lake that one sometimes comes upon in
the mountains.
He sat facing her in silence, feeling as though they
were both submerged in the rain falling on the roof.
He could hardly believe that the moment had finally
come.
Satoko was bereft of words, and he himself had
brought her to this. It had been his most fervent hope
to see her reduced to this state, robbed of the power
given her by her greater age to drop those little
homilies she had been so fond of, capable of nothing
but silent tears. At this moment she held an irresistible
attraction for him, in her kimono the color of white
wisteria, but it was not merely that of a rich prize finally
within his grasp; it was the lure of the forbidden, the
utterly unattainable, the proscribed. He wanted her
this way and no other. And she herself, on the other
hand, had always wanted to keep him off balance by
playing games. How things had changed now! She
could have chosen this beautiful, sacred, inviolable
position at any time, but she had always preferred the
false role of elder sister, cherishing him with that
affectionate condescension he so hated.
Now he realized why he had objected so strongly
when his father had proposed to give him an
introduction to the pleasures that the women of
Yoshiwara had to offer. Just as one can discern the
stirrings of a dark green chrysalis inside a cocoon, he
had always foreseen the gradual distillation of some
ineffably sacred essence in Satoko. And he could
give his purity to that essence alone. From that
moment on, a dawn of unimaginable brilliance would
begin to flood the world of black, inchoate melancholy
in which he had imprisoned himself.
The elegance he had absorbed from his infancy
under Count Ayakura’s tutelage now became a silken
cord in his hands, a noose for his innocence and
Satoko’s sanctity. Now at last he had found a valid
use for the shining rope whose purpose had puzzled
him for so long.
He was sure that he loved Satoko. And so he
edged forward on his knees and grasped her by the
shoulders. He felt them tense in resistance. This firm
rebuff to his fingers delighted him. It was resistance
on the grand scale, a ritual of resistance with cosmic
significance. The soft shoulders that aroused such
desire in him were opposing him with a force that
drew on the weight of imperial sanction. For this very
reason it had the remarkable power to drive him mad,
making his fingertips ache with feverish desire. Her
fragrant, jet-black hair, carefully dressed and piled
lightly above her forehead, had a full-bodied gloss;
glimpsed so briefly at close range, it made him think
of being lost in a forest on a bright, moonlit night.
He put his face close to one wet cheek that had
escaped the protection of her handkerchief. Still
wordless, she began to shake her head in an attempt
to ward him off, but her struggles were so mechanical
that he knew they were not heartfelt, but imposed from
outside. He pushed aside the handkerchief and tried
to kiss her, but whereas her lips had been willing on
that snowy February morning, they resisted fiercely
now, and finally she ducked her head and, like a
sleeping fledgling, froze with her chin burrowed in the
neck of her kimono.
The drumming of the rain grew louder. Maintaining
his grip on her, he paused to assess the strength of
her defenses. Her kimono, its neckband embroidered
with a design of summer thistles, was chastely
gathered at the throat, revealing a tiny triangle of skin.
Her wide, tight-wrapped obi was cold and hard to the
touch, like the door barring entrance to a sanctuary,
and in the center there gleamed a golden clip like the
ornamented head of a spike in a pillar of a temple
courtyard. Nevertheless, her body gave off the warm
scent of flesh. Passing through the inner sleeve
openings at her shoulders, it escaped from the wide
kimono sleeves, a warm breeze against his cheek.
He took one hand away from her back and gripped
her chin firmly. It fitted there as smoothly as a small,
rounded ivory chessman. Her nose was wet with
tears, and her delicate nostrils flared. He was thus
able to kiss her properly.
Suddenly she seemed consumed by a mysterious
fire, much as the flame in a stove burns more fiercely
when the door is open. Both her hands were now free,
and she pressed them against Kiyoaki’s cheeks,
pushing hard against him, but her lips remained on
his, even though she tried to thrust him away. As a
result of her resistance, however, her lips, with an
incredible, liquid smoothness that intoxicated him,
kept twisting one way, then the other against his own.
The firm edge of her resolve was melting away like a
lump of sugar in hot tea, and now a wonderfully sweet
dissolution had begun.
He had no idea whatever of how to unfasten a
woman’s obi. Its tightly fastened flared bow at her
back defied the efforts of his fingers. But as he
groped blindly, trying to undo it by force, she reached
behind her and while giving every sign that she was
trying desperately to check his fumbling efforts, she
subtly guided them in a more profitable direction.
Their fingers lay tangled for a few moments in its
folds, and then as its clip suddenly fell away, the obi
uncoiled in a rustle of silk and sprang away from her
body as though it had a life of its own. It was the
beginning of a confused riot of uncontrollable
movements. Her entire kimono swirled in revolt as he
tore frantically at the folds of silk that bound her
breasts, rebuffed at every turn by a whole network of
straps that tightened as others came loose. But then
right before his eyes, he saw the tiny, well-guarded
triangle of white below her throat spread into a rich
and fragrant expanse of skin.
She did not actually utter a word of protest. There
was nothing to prove whether it was silent resistance
or silent seduction. She seemed to be drawing him on
at the same time as she was fighting him off. He
sensed, however, that the strength underlying his
assault upon her sacred inviolability was not wholly his
own.
What was its source, then? As he looked at her
face, it gradually flooded crimson, and her desire was
unmistakable. He had one hand under her back to
support her, and felt her lean on it more strongly,
though with shy subtlety, until, as if giving up all hope
of resistance, she fell back on the floor.
He parted the skirts of her kimono and began
pushing aside the printed silk of her Yuzen underskirts
in a dazzling tangle of fretted patterns and brilliant
phoenixes soaring above stylized cloud formations. A
distant vision of her thighs wrapped in fold after fold of
silk drew him on as he fought his way through more
and more layers of the clouds. Some secret hidden
core was cunningly maintaining the complex
arrangements with which he was struggling, and the
key to it kept eluding him as his breath grew harsher
and more irregular.
Finally, however, he was drawing closer to her
body, slowly lowering himself onto her thighs, which
had the faint sheen of a pale dawn horizon, when she
raised her hands and gently helped him; this intended
kindness ruined the moment, for at the instant when
he merged with the dawn, whether he was touching
her or not, it all ended abruptly.
∗
The two lay side by side on the tatami floor staring
up at the ceiling. The rain had become torrential again
and was beating on the roof. The pounding of their
hearts had scarcely subsided. Kiyoaki felt an
exaltation that overrode not only his momentary
exhaustion but even the realization that something
had come to an end. However, a lingering sense of
shared regret still hung over them, as palpable as the
shadows now gradually forming in the darkening
room. He thought he heard the faint sound of an old
woman clearing her throat on the other side of the
Genji panel. As he was about to sit up, however,
Satoko reached over to stop him with a gentle grasp
of his shoulder.
And then, without a word, she dispelled every
vestige of regret. He was delighted to follow her lead.
From that moment on, there was nothing he could not
forgive her.
He was young; his desire quickly revived, and this
time she was receptive and everything went smoothly.
Under her sure, feminine guidance, he sensed that for
the first time every barrier was gone and that he had
found himself in a rich new world. In the heat of the
room he had already stripped off the last of his
clothes and now he felt the immediacy of flesh on
flesh, firm but yielding, with the resistance of water
and clinging plants to the advancing prow of a boat.
He saw that there was no trace of distress in her face.
She was even smiling faintly but this gave him no
misgivings now. His heart was completely at rest.
∗
Afterwards, he took her, rumpled, in his arms and
pressed his cheek against hers, feeling the wetness
of fresh tears. He knew that they were tears of joy, but
still, nothing could better convey in silence their mutual
consciousness of having committed unpardonable sin
than her tears quietly rolling down his cheek as well as
her own. For Kiyoaki, however, this sense of sin
increased his already rising courage.
“Here,” she said, picking up his shirt, “it won’t do for
you to catch cold.”
Just as he was about to snatch it roughly from her,
she checked him for a moment, and pressed the shirt
to her face with a deep breath. When she handed it to
him, it was wet with tears.
When he had put on his school uniform and finished
dressing, he was startled by the sudden sound of her
clapping her hands. Then, after a significant pause,
the Genji panel slid open a fraction and Tadeshina’s
head appeared.
“Did you call me, Miss Satoko?”
Satoko nodded and with a quick glance indicated
her obi, which lay on the floor in a tangle around her.
Tadeshina slid the door shut behind her and edged
across the tatami floor to Satoko without looking in
Kiyoaki’s direction. She helped her mistress to dress
and fastened her obi. Then she brought over the
mirror from a corner of the room and began to
arrange Satoko’s hair. Meanwhile Kiyoaki was in
acute embarrassment, at a loss as to what he should
do; so while the two women performed their long-
drawn-out ritual in the nowlighted room, he felt quite
superfluous.
When everything was finally in order, Satoko, more
beautiful than ever, sat with drooping head.
“I’m afraid, young master, that we have to go now,”
the old woman began. “The promise I made has been
kept. From now on, please, I beg you, try to forget
Miss Satoko. And now if you would be so kind, would
you please return the letter as you promised?”
Kiyoaki sat cross-legged in silence. He did not
answer.
“As you promised, would you please return the
letter?” Tadeshina asked again.
Kiyoaki remained silent, as if he were deaf. He was
staring at Satoko, who sat calmly without a single hair
out of place and her beautiful kimono in perfect order.
All at once she raised her eyes. They met Kiyoaki’s. A
brilliant piercing flash passed between them and in
that instant he knew just how she felt.
“I’m not returning the letter. Because I want to meet
her again, just like this,” he said, drawing on his
newfound courage.
“Young master!” Tadeshina made no attempt to
hide her anger. “What do you think will happen? Only
a spoiled child would say such a thing! You know what
terrible things will come about, don’t you? It’s not just
Tadeshina who will be destroyed.”
Then Satoko stopped her, her voice so composed,
so otherworldly, that the sound of it sent a chill down
his spine.
“It’s all right, Tadeshina. Until Master Kiyo wishes to
return the letter, there’s nothing we can do but agree
to keep meeting him. There’s no other way to save
both you and me—that is, if you intend to save me
too.”
28
K IYOAKI’S VISIT to his house to
confide in him in such detail was so rare an event that
Honda not only asked his mother to invite his guest to
stay for dinner but even went so far as to forego the
work for the entrance examinations that normally
occupied his entire evening. The mere prospect of
Kiyoaki’s arrival somehow charged the sedate
atmosphere of the house with expectancy.
Throughout the day the sun, engulfed in cloud, had
shone like white gold and now in the evening the sultry
heat it had left behind was not appreciably
diminished. As they sat talking, the two young men
wore light summer kimonos with a Kasuri pattern.
Honda had had some sort of premonition about
Kiyoaki’s visit, but it had by no means prepared him
for what was to come. As soon as Kiyoaki began to
speak, Honda was startled to realize that the young
man sitting beside him on the old leather couch along
the wall of the reception room was someone radically
different from the Kiyoaki he had known before. He
had never seen eyes flash so openly. They were
unmistakably the eyes of a worldly adult, but Honda
had a lingering regret for the melancholy look and the
downcast eyes that he had grown used to in his
friend.
Despite this, however, he was delighted that
Kiyoaki had chosen to confide in him without
reservation what was a secret of the gravest
consequence. Honda had been hoping for a gesture
like this for a long time, and it had come about without
the slightest urging on his part. On reflection, he
realized that Kiyoaki had kept his secrets even from
his friend, as long as they had concerned nothing but
his own inner struggles, but now that it was a matter of
reputation and serious wrongdoing, he had poured it
all out in an impetuous flood of words. Considering
the gravity of the confession and the limitless trust it
implied, Kiyoaki could hardly have given him greater
cause for happiness. As he studied his friend, he
found Kiyoaki noticeably matured, and some of the
beauty that had belonged to the face of an irresolute
young boy was gone from his features. They now
shone with the determination of the passionate young
lover, and his words and gestures were free of any
hint of reluctance and uncertainty.
He was the very image of a man proud of his
conquest. As he told his story to Honda, his cheeks
glowed with color, his teeth gleamed, and his voice
was firm and clear, although he paused shyly at times
and there was a new gallantry evident even in the set
of his eyebrows. Almost nothing seemed more alien
to him than introspection, or so it struck Honda,
whether because the tale came so abruptly to an end
or because of the incoherence of his outpourings.
“Listening to you, the oddest thing came to my mind
—why, I don’t know,” said Honda. “One day, when we
were talking—I’m not sure when it was—you asked
me if I remembered anything about the Russo-
Japanese War. And then afterwards, when we were
at your house, you showed me a collection of war
photographs. And I remember you telling me that the
one you liked best had written under it ‘Vicinity of
Tokuri Temple: Memorial Services for the War
Dead’—a strange picture, in which all the soldiers
looked as if they had been assembled like actors in a
huge pageant. At the time it struck me as being an
odd preference for you since you had so little taste for
anything that smacked of military life.
“But at any rate, as I was listening just now, the
memory of that dusty plain in the picture came to my
mind and somehow seemed to fuse with your
beautiful love story.”
Honda had managed to surprise himself. He was
startled not only by the obscurity of what he had said
and the fervor with which he had said it, but also by
the admiration he felt for Kiyoaki’s wanton disregard
of commandment and precept—he, Honda, who had
long ago decided to become a man of the law!
Two servants entered with small tables on which
their dinners had been placed. His mother had
arranged things like this so that the two could eat and
talk as friends without any constraint. A saké bottle
stood on either table, and Honda offered him some.
“Mother was rather worried. She didn’t know how
well you’d take to the food we serve, seeing as you’re
accustomed to such luxuries,” he remarked, turning
the conversation to something more commonplace.
He was happy to see Kiyoaki starting to eat as
though, in fact, he found the food much to his liking.
So for a little while the two young men stopped talking
and gave themselves over to the healthy pleasures of
eating.
∗
Enjoying the further brief silence that usually follows
a good meal, Honda asked himself why, after hearing
his classmate confess to so romantic an exploit, he
had felt so happy about it, without a twinge of jealousy
or envy. He was refreshed by it the way a lakeside
garden is imperceptibly steeped in moisture during
the rainy season.
“Well then, what do you intend to do?” he asked,
breaking the silence.
“I don’t have the least idea. I’m slow off the mark,
but once I get started, I’m not the type to stop halfway.”
Honda stared at him wide-eyed. He had never
dreamed that he would ever hear Kiyoaki say
something like this.
“You mean you want to marry Miss Satoko?”
“That’s out of the question. The sanction has
already been granted.”
“But you’ve already violated the sanction. Why can’t
you marry her then? Couldn’t the two of you run away
—go abroad and get married there?”
“You just don’t understand,” he answered. Then he
lapsed into silence, and for the very first time that day,
Honda noticed a trace of the old melancholy in the
lines that suddenly appeared between his eyebrows.
Perhaps he had been expecting as much, but now
that he had seen it, he felt a slight uneasiness cast a
shadow over his own mood of exhilaration. As he sat
staring at his friend’s handsome profile, whose fine
and delicate lines would defeat all but the most skilled
artist, he wondered just what it was that Kiyoaki
hoped to get from life. He felt a shudder pass through
him.
Kiyoaki picked up his strawberries, got up from the
couch and sat down in front of the scrupulously tidy
desk where Honda worked. He propped his elbows
on its austere surface and casually began to swing
the swivel chair from side to side. As he did so, he put
his weight on his elbows and restlessly eased the
posture of his head and torso, his bare chest showing
at the neck of his loose-fitting kimono. Then, after
arming himself with a toothpick, he began lightly
spearing the strawberries one by one and popping
them into his mouth. It was a display of relaxed bad
manners that showed how glad he was to escape the
strict decorum of his own home. He spilled some
sugar, which dropped down onto his light-skinned
chest, but he brushed it off with no sign of
embarrassment.
“You’re going to attract ants, you know,” said
Honda, laughing through a mouthful of strawberries.
Kiyoaki’s delicate eyelids, usually too pale, were
now diffused with color, thanks to the saké he had
drunk. As he kept turning the swivel chair from side to
side, his bare flushed forearms still propped on the
desk, he happened to move too far in one direction,
and his body was oddly twisted. It was just as if he
had suddenly been stricken by some vague pain of
which he himself was unaware.
There was no mistaking the faraway look in those
eyes beneath their fine, graceful brows, but Honda
was well aware that their flashing glance was not
directed toward the future. Unlike his usual self, he
had a cruel desire to inflict his growing uneasiness on
his friend—an urgent impulse to pretend to raise his
own hand to destroy Kiyoaki’s all-too-recent sense of
happiness.
“Well, what  are you going to do? Have you even
thought about what will come of this?”
Kiyoaki raised his eyes and looked at him steadily.
Honda had never seen a gaze of such burning
eagerness and yet such gloom.
“Why must I think about it?”
“Because all those people around you and Miss
Satoko are moving slowly but inexorably toward a
dénouement. You don’t think the two of you can hover
forever in mid-air like two dragonflies making love?”
“I know we can’t,” Kiyoaki replied, breaking off the
exchange and casually glancing elsewhere. He gave
himself over to an examination of the shadows in the
various nooks and crannies of the room, such as the
intricate patterns beneath the bookcases and the
ones beside the wicker wastepaper basket—those
elusive little shadows that crept into Honda’s plain
and functional study night after night, insidious as
human emotions, to lurk wherever they could find
cover.
As Honda watched him, he was struck by the
prominence of his graceful eyebrows. They were like
shadows themselves, bent into elegant bows. They
seemed to be an embodiment of an emotion, yet
nevertheless had force enough to check its
expression. He imagined them guarding the dark,
brooding eyes beneath, loyally following their master’s
glance wherever it went, like zealous servants with
impeccable training.
Honda decided to come out directly with something
that had been taking form in a corner of his mind.
“A bit earlier,” he began, “I said something very
odd. I mean about thinking of the picture from the
Russo-Japanese War while you were telling me about
you and Miss Satoko. I wondered why that came to
me, and now that I’ve given it a little more thought, I
have an answer. The age of glorious wars ended with
the Meiji era. Today, all the stories of past wars have
sunk to the level of those edifying accounts we hear
from middle-aged noncoms in the military science
department or the boasts of farmers around a hot
stove. There isn’t much chance now to die on the
battlefield.
“But now that old wars are finished, a new kind of
war has just begun; this is the era for the war of
emotion. The kind of war no one can see, only feel—a
war, therefore, that the dull and insensitive won’t even
notice. But it’s begun in earnest. The young men who
have been chosen to wage it have already begun to
fight. And you’re one of them—there’s no doubt about
that.
“And just as in the old wars, there will be casualties
in the war of emotion, I think. It’s the fate of our age—
and you’re one of our representatives. So what about
it then? You’re fully resolved to die in this new war—
am I right?”
Kiyoaki’s only answer was a flickering smile. At that
moment a strong breeze, heavy with the rain’s
dampness, found its way in through the window and,
in passing, cooled their foreheads, which were
covered with a light film of sweat. Honda was
perplexed at Kiyoaki’s silence. Was his answer so
obvious that no reply was necessary? Or had his
words really struck a responsive chord in his friend,
while his way of putting them had been so extravagant
that there was no way for him to answer frankly? He
thought that it had to be one or the other.
29
T HREE DAYS LATER , when two
canceled classes gave Honda a free afternoon, he
went to watch the district court in session,
accompanied by a law student who was one of the
family houseboys. It had been raining since morning.
Honda’s father was a justice of the Supreme Court
and, even within his own family, was a strict observer
of principles. He was greatly pleased by the promise
shown by his nineteen-year-old son, who had applied
himself to the law even before entering college. His
father thus felt confident enough to conclude that his
son would eventually succeed him. Up to this year, the
office of judge had been for life, but the previous April
a large-scale reform of the juridical system had been
put into effect. As a result, more than two hundred
judges had been laid off or requested to hand in their
resignations. Justice Honda, wanting to show his
solidarity with his unfortunate old friends, had offered
his own resignation, but it had not been accepted.
The experience, however, seemed to have marked
a turning point in his views on life, which, in their turn,
affected what had been a rather formal relationship
with his son. From then on, he brought to it a warmth
of generosity that resembled the affection shown by a
high official to the subordinate he has selected to
succeed him. Honda himself was determined to work
harder than ever at his studies to try to be worthy of
such unprecedented favor.
One result of his father’s changed views was that
he permitted his son to attend court sessions even
though he was not yet an adult. He did not, of course,
go so far as to let him come into his own court, but he
gave him permission to watch whatever civil or
criminal cases he liked, as long as he was
accompanied by the young retainer who was also a
law student.
His father explained to Shigekuni that since all his
familiarity with the law came from books, it would be
extremely valuable for him to come in contact with the
actual process of law in Japan and to experience it at
a practical level. Justice Honda had more than this in
mind, however. Truth to tell, his main concern was to
expose his still sensitive, nineteen-year-old son to
those elements of human existence that were
dredged up in all their shockingly sordid reality in
criminal court. He wanted to see what Shigekuni was
able to draw from such experience.
It was a dangerous sort of education. Still, when the
Justice considered the greater danger of allowing a
young man to form his character out of an assimilation
from careless popular behavior, cheap entertainment
and so on, from whatever might please or appeal to
his immature taste, he felt confident of the advantages
of this educational experiment. There was a good
chance that it would at least make Shigekuni acutely
aware of the stern and watchful eye of the law. He
would see all the amorphous, steaming, filthy detritus
of human passions processed right then and there
according to the impersonal recipes of the law.
Standing by in such a kitchen should teach Shigekuni
a great deal about technique.
Honda hurried through the dark corridors of the
courthouse on his way to the 8th District Criminal
Court, a route lit only by the faint light that filtered
through the rain soaking the ravaged grass of the
quadrangle. The pervasive atmosphere of this
building had absorbed the raw essence of the
criminal spirit; the place struck him as being
altogether too sinister for the palace of reason it was
supposed to be.
His depression still clung to him after he and his
companion had taken their seats in the courtroom. He
glanced at the highly strung law student who had
conducted him here with such anxious haste and was
now engrossed in the case book he had brought with
him, as though he had completely forgotten his
master’s son. Then he turned the same listless gaze
on the still empty judge’s bench, the public
prosecutor’s desk, the witness stand, the defense
attorney’s desk, and so on. Such universal emptiness
struck him as being expressive of his own spiritual
state on this damp, humid afternoon.
So young and so lethargic! As though he had been
born to sit and stare like this. Ever since Kiyoaki had
confided in him, Shigekuni, who would have been
bright and confident, as befitted such an able young
man, had undergone a change. Or rather, the
friendship between him and Kiyoaki had undergone a
strange reversal. For years, each of them had been
extremely careful to intrude in no way on the personal
life of the other. But now, just three days before,
Kiyoaki had suddenly come to him and, like a newly
cured patient transmitting his disease to someone
else, had passed on to his friend the virus of
introspection. It had taken hold so readily that
Honda’s disposition now seemed a far better host to
it than Kiyoaki’s. The first major symptom of the
disease was a vague sense of apprehension.
What was Kiyoaki to do, he wondered. Was it right
for himself, as Kiyoaki’s friend, to do nothing more
than sit by idly and let things take their course?
While he waited for the court session to begin at
one thirty, he sat engrossed in the reflections
provoked by his anxiety, his mind far from the
hearings that he had come to attend.
“If I were really to act as a true friend,” he thought,
“wouldn’t it be best to persuade him to try and forget
Miss Satoko? Up until now I thought it best as his
friend to pretend not to notice even if he were in his
death agonies, out of respect for that elegance of his.
But now that he’s told me everything as he did the
other day, shouldn’t I interfere, as I have the right to do
in an ordinary friendship, and do my best to save him
from the clear danger that’s threatening him?
Moreover, I shouldn’t hold back even if it makes him
so resentful that he breaks our friendship. In ten or
twenty years, he’ll understand why I did it. And even if
he never understands, it should make no difference to
me.
“There’s no doubt that he’s heading straight for
tragedy. It will be beautiful, of course, but should he
throw his whole life away as a sacrificial offering to
such a fleeting beauty—like a bird in flight glimpsed
from a window?
“I know what I have to do. From now on I’ve got to
put aside all the niceties and behave like an
insensitive and imperceptive friend. And whether he
likes it or not, I’ve got to do something to pour cold
water on that raging passion of his. I’ve got to use
every ounce of my strength to prevent him from
fulfilling his destiny.”
∗
This feverish rush of thoughts made Honda’s head
ache with the effort they cost. He no longer felt able to
sit there patiently and wait for the start of the hearings,
in which he had lost all interest. He wanted to leave at
once, rush to Kiyoaki’s house and pour out every
argument at his command to persuade him to change
his mind. And the frustration of realizing that this was
impossible caused a new upsurge of anxiety that
increased his discomfiture.
He glanced around and noticed that all the seats
had been filled. Now he understood why the houseboy
had brought him here so early. Among those present
were young men who looked like law students, drab
middle-aged men and women, and newspaper
reporters with armbands who were coming and going
with a great show of urgency. He watched as those
who had been drawn by nothing more than base
curiosity hid their interest behind masks of sober
propriety, stroking their moustaches and passing the
time with a genteel wave of a fan or using the long
nails of their little fingers to dig sulfur-colored deposits
out of their ears. It was an instructive sight, and one
that, more than anything seen previously, opened his
eyes to the moral ugliness of the belief that “Oh, I’m in
no danger of ever committing a sin.” Whatever the
future might hold, he was determined never to fall prey
to that kind of attitude.
The windows were shut against the rain, and they
admitted a dull, flat light that lay over all the spectators
indifferently like a coat of gray dust; only the shiny
black visors of the guards’ caps were exempt from it.
The entrance of the defendant set up a flurry of
comment. Flanked by two guards and dressed in a
blue prison uniform, she made her way to the dock.
He tried to get a look at her as she passed, but there
was so much jostling and neck-craning going on
among the spectators that he could do little more than
catch a glimpse of plump white cheeks with
conspicuous dimples. Then after she had entered the
dock, all he could see was that her hair was pulled
back in the cylindrical bun worn by female prisoners.
Although she hunched forward respectfully, he noticed
that there was a little sign of nervous strain in the way
her plump shoulders were set beneath her uniform.
The defense lawyer had already come in, and now
everyone was waiting for the public prosecutor and
the judge himself.
“Just take a look at her, young master. Would you
think she’s a murderess?” said the young law student,
whispering in his ear. “It’s true what they say about not
being able to tell a book by its cover.”
∗
The court ritual began with the presiding judge
putting the usual questions to the accused about
name, address, age, and social status. The
courtroom was so hushed that Honda imagined he
could hear the busy swish of the recorder’s writing
brush.
“Two-five, Nihonbashi Ward, Tokyo City. A
commoner. Tomi Masuda,” the woman replied in a
voice that was clear and steady but so low that the
crowd of spectators pricked up their ears and leaned
forward as one, afraid of missing something when the
testimony reached matters that were crucial. The
responses came smoothly enough until the accused
came to her age, and there, whether intentionally or
not, she hesitated. Then, after the urgings of her
lawyer, she shook herself and said in a louder voice:
“I’m thirty-one.”
At that moment, she turned her head toward her
lawyer and Honda caught a glimpse of her profile, her
eyes wide and clear and a few stray hairs brushing
her cheek.
The spectators stared at this small woman in
fascination, as if she might perhaps have the
translucent body of a silkworm that had somehow
excreted a thread of inconceivable complexity and
evil. Her slightest movement made them imagine the
sweatmarks on the armpits of her uniform, her nipples
tight with fear, the line of her buttocks, rather too full,
dull, and a little cold. This body had spun threads
without number until they were finally wrapping her in a
sinister cocoon. For the spectators, there had to be a
peculiarly intimate correspondence between her body
and her crime. They would be dissatisfied with
anything less. For the average man, driven as he is by
lurid fantasies, there is almost nothing more
deliciously titillating than the contemplation, from a
safe distance, of evil laid out in its cause and effect.
Had the woman been thin, her very thinness would
have embodied this for them. But since she was
plump, her plumpness served just as well. And so,
satisfied that she was nothing less than evil incarnate,
they eagerly exercised their harmless powers of
imagination, fastening with delight on every detail
down to the very beads of sweat that they were sure
covered her breasts.
Honda’s scruples would not let him follow the
thoughts of the crowd, although these were quite clear
to him, despite his youth; he focused his entire
attention on the testimony of the defendant as she
answered the judge’s questions. Her account was
now getting to the matter at issue.
Her way of telling things was tedious and confused,
but it was clear enough that the chain of events
leading up to this crime of passion had unfolded
relentlessly in a manner that must lead inevitably to
tragedy.
“When did you start living with Matsukichi Hijikata?”
“I . . . it was last year, Your Honor. I remember it very
well. June the fifth.”
Her retentive memory made the spectators laugh,
but the guards quieted them at once.
Tomi Masuda was a waitress who had become
enamored of a cook named Matsukichi Hijikata, who
worked at the same restaurant. The man was a
widower who had only recently lost his wife. Spurred
by affection, she had begun to take care of him, and
the previous year they had started to live together.
Hijikata, however, gave no sign that he wanted to
make the arrangement official, and in fact after they
had set up housekeeping, he became more and more
energetic in his pursuit of other women. Then toward
the end of the previous year, he had taken up with a
maid who worked at an inn called Kishimoto in the
same Hama district. Though Hidé, the maid, was only
twenty, there was little she did not know about men.
As a result, Hijikata’s nights away from home became
more and more frequent. Finally, this spring, Tomi had
gone to confront Hidé and plead with her to leave her
man alone. Hidé had treated her with contempt, and
Tomi unable to control her rage, had killed her.
It was, in brief, a triangle that ended in violence, a
common affair of the streets with no particularly
distinguishing feature. Yet under the close scrutiny of
the court hearing, many undoubtedly authentic and
totally unpredictable elements came to light.
The woman had found herself with a fatherless
child, now eight years old, who had been left in the
care of relatives in her home village, but she had
asked them to send him to Tokyo so that he would
have the benefit of a better school system. But
although she had hoped to use the boy as an
inducement to Hijikata to settle down, Tomi, even as a
mother, had already embarked on the course that
would force her to become a murderess.
And now her testimony came to the events of that
night.
“No, Your Honor. If only Hidé had not been there
that night, everything would have been all right. I know
that this whole thing just wouldn’t have happened. If
only she had had a cold or something that night and
had been in bed when I went to the Kishimoto to see
her, everything would have been all right too.
“The knife I used was the one Matsukichi uses to
cut  sashimi. He’s a man who takes real pride in his
work and he has all kinds of good knives. ‘To me
these are like a samurai’s sword,’ he keeps saying,
and he never lets any of the women at work touch
them but always sharpens them carefully himself. But
about the time I started to get jealous of Hidé, he hid
them all away somewhere, thinking it was dangerous.
“When I realized the way his mind was working, it
made me angry. After that I used to make jokes about
it, pretending to threaten him. I’d say: ‘I don’t need any
of your knives. There’re plenty of others around I can
lay my hands on, you know.’ Then one day after
Matsukichi hadn’t been home for a long time, I was
cleaning out a closet, and all of a sudden I came
across a package with all his knives in it in a place
you’d never expect. And what surprised me most,
Your Honor, was that almost all of them were covered
with rust. When I saw that rust, I just knew how much
he’d got himself involved with Hidé, and I started to
shake with one of the knives right there in my hand.
But just then my boy came home from school, and I
gradually calmed down. Then I thought to myself that
maybe if I took his favorite knife, the one he uses to
cut  sashimi , to be sharpened, Matsukichi would
appreciate it—trying to make myself think I was a real
wife. I wrapped it up in a cloth, and then when I was
going out, my boy asked me where I was off to and I
told him I had a little errand to run and I’d be right back
and he should be a good boy and watch the house.
And then he said: ‘I don’t care if you never come
back. Then I can go back to my school back home.’
This gave me such a shock and when I stopped to
ask him what he meant, I found out the children in the
neighborhood were making fun of him and saying:
‘Your old man couldn’t stand your mother’s nagging,
and he ran out on her.’ This is something the children
probably picked up from hearing their parents
gossiping about us. And so now here was my boy
wanting to get away from a mother who’s been turned
into a laughing stock and go back to his foster
parents in the country. Suddenly I got so angry and
before I knew it, I’d hit him across the face. As I
rushed out of the house, I could hear him crying
behind me.”
According to the testimony that followed, Tomi was
not thinking about Hidé at this moment, but was
hurrying through the streets with one thing only on her
mind: to get the knife sharpened so that she would
feel better. The knife sharpener had a great deal of
other work to do, but she would not be turned away.
After she had waited for over an hour, he finally
sharpened it for her. When she left his shop, she had
not felt at all like going back home, and finally had
turned almost involuntarily in the direction of the
Kishimoto Inn.
Shortly beforehand, Hidé had returned to the
Kishimoto after enjoying a wild night with Matsukichi
and had been lectured by the innkeeper’s wife for
leaving work. She had gone to the woman and
apologized tearfully, just as Matsukichi had instructed.
It was only a few minutes after this was over that Tomi
arrived at the inn and asked to speak to Hidé for a
moment outside. Hidé came out to see her and was
surprisingly cordial. She had just changed into a
stylish working kimono, and as she walked along the
street with Tomi, her loose clogs scraped languidly
along the ground in the manner affected by affluent
prostitutes.
“I made a promise to the boss just now. From now
on I’m going to have nothing more to do with men, I
told her,” she said.
Tomi felt a rush of happiness when she heard this,
but next moment Hidé, smiling brightly, robbed her
words of all significance with a further remark: “But I
don’t know if I can hold out even for three days.”
Making a great effort at self-control, Tomi then
offered to treat her to a drink at a nearby  sushi shop
on the bank of the Sumida River. Once they had
begun to drink, Tomi did her best to talk to her as
though she were addressing her elder sister, but Hidé
refused to be drawn; her only reaction was an ironic
smile. And finally, when she was probably driven to
melodramatic extremes by the saké, Tomi lowered
her head in supplication, but the younger woman
turned away in brusque contempt. They had been
there for over an hour by this time, and it was dark
outside. Hidé got up to go, saying that the manager
would be angry at her again unless she returned
immediately.
After they left the  sushi shop, Tomi claimed that she
did not know why they wandered into a badly lit vacant
lot in Hama that lay by the river. She said that perhaps
when she tugged at Hidé’s kimono, trying to get her to
stay and talk, Hidé had happened to begin walking in
this direction as she pulled herself free. At any rate,
Tomi denied any intention of having led her that way in
order to kill her.
After walking for a short time, Tomi began to argue
again, but Hidé only laughed. As she did so, her even
teeth flashed white, although there was no more than
a glint of light on the surface of the Sumida to relieve
the darkness that engulfed the two of them.
“It’s no use you keeping on like this,” Hidé replied at
last. “No wonder Matsukichi got so fed up with you.”
This, according to Tomi, was the decisive moment,
as she went on to describe her reactions.
“When I heard that, the blood rushed to my head. I
don’t know how to describe it exactly . . . right then I
felt like a baby crying desperately in the dark, waving
its arms and legs because it had no words to say it
wanted something—or because it was hurting
somewhere. And then I started to swing my own arms
about, and somehow they loosened the cloth, got hold
of the knife, and while they were still waving it around,
Hidé’s body bumped into it in the dark—that’s the only
way I can say it.”
Her words had been so intense that the crowd in
the courtroom, and Honda with them, could clearly
see the phantom baby miserably waving its arms and
legs.
After she had finished, Tomi Masuda covered her
face with her hands and sobbed. Her shoulders under
the prison uniform seemed the more pathetic for
being plump. The mood of the spectators now
seemed to be shifting gradually from undisguised
curiosity to something else.
The rain was still falling outside the windows and
veiled the courtroom in a bleak light which seemed to
focus on Tomi Masuda. She stood there as though
she were the sole representative of all the complex
passions of man, living, breathing, grieving, and
crying out in pain. She alone was endowed with the
privilege of emotion. Until a few moments before, the
spectators had seen nothing but a plump, perspiring
thirty-one-year-old woman. But now with bated breath
and staring eyes, they were looking at a human being
wracked by her feelings, writhing like a fish carved up
alive for the dinner table.
She had absolutely no protection from their gaze.
The crime that she had once committed in darkness
had now taken possession of her to reveal itself
before the eyes of them all. For it was the vivid
character of the crime itself, rather than any
consideration of good intentions or moral scruples,
that she had impressed with such cogent force upon
the spectators. Tomi Masuda’s self-revelation far
surpassed the possible accomplishment of even the
most skilled of actresses, who, after all, would have
revealed no more than she had intended. It amounted
to facing the whole world and turning it into one giant
audience. Her lawyer, who stood beside her, seemed
too shabby to have any capacity to help. She stood
there, a short, plump figure, with nothing to mitigate
her drabness—no combs in her hair, no jewelry, no
fine kimono to catch a man’s eye—but the fact of
being a criminal was enough to make them see her
as a woman.
“If we had the jury system here in Japan, this is the
kind of case where they might let her get away with it,”
said the law student, whispering in Shigekuni’s ear
again. “What can you do with a glib woman like that?”
Shigekuni sat thinking. Once passion was set in
motion according to its own laws, then it was
irresistible. This was a theory that would never be
accepted by modern law, which took it as self-evident
that conscience and reason ruled man.
Then his thoughts turned to more personal things.
Although he had come to watch this trial as a
thoroughly disinterested spectator, he was now
fascinated. At the same time, however, it had made
him realize something else: he would never plunge
into the kind of molten red-hot passion that had come
gushing out of Tomi Masuda.
Outside, the overcast sky had brightened further
and the rain had slackened into brief, scattered
showers. The raindrops coating the window shone
eerily in the sunshine.
He hoped that his reason would always be like that
sunlight. But a part of him was drawn irresistibly to the
darkness of human passion. This blackness was a
fascination, no more. And Kiyoaki, too, was a
fascination that seemed to come surging up to shake
the very fabric of life, but that instead of being life-
giving, carried the seeds of a fateful end.
It was in this mood, then, that Honda decided not to
interfere with Kiyoaki for the time being.
30
A S THE SUMMER VACATION grew
closer, something happened that disturbed the
atmosphere at Peers. Prince Pattanadid lost his
emerald ring. The affair became very serious when it
became generally known that Prince Kridsada had
protested in anger that the ring had been stolen. More
than anything else, Prince Pattanadid wanted the
matter to be settled as quietly as possible, and he
rebuked his cousin for his rudeness. Nevertheless, it
was evident that in his heart, he, too, believed it to
have been stolen.
Prince Kridsada’s angry charge provoked a
predictable response from the school administration.
They said that such a thing as theft was unthinkable at
Peers. The ensuing turmoil was eventually to reach
such proportions that the princes, more and more
homesick, were finally to decide that they wanted to
return to Siam. The chain of events that was to put
them on a collision course with the school began
when the dormitory prefect, trying to be as helpful as
possible, asked them to give him an account of the
events immediately preceding the disappearance of
the ring.
As he continued to question them, their stories
began to differ. They both agreed that they had gone
for a walk on campus in the early evening, returned to
the dormitory for dinner, and then discovered the loss
of the ring when they went back to their room
afterwards. Prince Kridsada claimed that his cousin
had worn the ring during the walk and then left it in the
room before dinner, contending, therefore, that it must
have been stolen during dinner. But Prince Pattandid
himself was not so sure on this point, as was evident
from the vagueness of his testimony. He was sure that
had worn the ring when he went out for the walk but
confessed that he could not remember whether or not
he had left it in his room during the meal.
This, of course, was crucial to deciding whether the
ring had been stolen or lost. Then, when the prefect
asked about where they had been on their walk, he
discovered that the two princes, drawn by the
pleasant evening, had gone through the fence
surrounding the Reviewing Mound and had lain down
for a while on the grass at the top, an act forbidden by
school rules. It was not until the next day, a muggy
afternoon with intermittent showers, that the prefect
heard their account of what had happened.
Nevertheless, he decided that there was only one
thing to be done, and he asked the princes to come
with him at once so that all three of them could make
a thorough search of the top of the mound.
The Reviewing Mound was in a corner of the drill
field. Though it was small and undistinguished, the
Emperor Meiji had once deigned to review a student
parade from its flat, grassy top. And so it had
afterwards been made into a memorial of the event,
with several of the sakaki trees sacred to Shintoism
planted at the top, one of them by the Emperor
himself. It was considered the most venerable place
at Peers, second only to the sanctuary where
Emperor Meiji had planted a sakaki.
Accompanied by the prefect, the two princes
passed through the fence again, this time in broad
daylight, and climbed to the top of the mound. The
grass had been soaked by the drizzle, and the task
they faced of searching roughly two hundred square
yards of the mound’s surface was obviously not going
to be an easy one. Since it did not seem adequate to
search merely the spot where they had lain down, the
prefect decided that they should divide the area into
three, with each of them scouring a section. And so
with the rain, now increasing somewhat, falling on
their backs, they picked through the grass, blade by
blade.
Prince Kridsada made little effort to hide his
reluctance, and carried out his task with a certain
amount of grumbling. Prince Pattanadid, however,
being good-natured, began his search more willingly,
recognizing that it did, after all, concern his own ring.
He started at the bottom of the slope in his section
and worked his way upwards with great precision.
He had never taken so close a look at each blade
of grass. For nothing less than the most painstaking
care would do, because despite the ring’s gold
setting, its large emerald would be next to invisible in
the grass. The drizzle became raindrops on the back
of his neck, finally slid under his tight collar and rolled
down his back, a sensation that aroused a yearning
for the warm monsoons of Siam. The light green at
the roots of the grass gave the illusion that a ray of
sunshine had broken through, but the sky remained
overcast. Here and there, there were small white
wildflowers in the grass, their heads drooping under
the weight of the rain, but the powdery whiteness of
their petals remained as bright as ever. Once Prince
Pattanadid’s eye was caught by a bright glittering
spot under a sawtooth leaf of a tall weed. Sure that his
ring could not have lodged there, he nevertheless
turned the leaf over to find a small, brilliantly colored
beetle clinging to the underside to escape the rain.
Peering at the grass at such close range made it
loom up under his nose, immense and green,
reminding him of the jungles of his homeland in the
rainy season. With his eyes thus fixed on the grass,
he could imagine the gathering cumulus clouds
shining with such white intensity, the sky a deep azure
blue in one quarter but dark and threatening in
another, and he could even hear the violent rumble of
thunder.
It was not really the ring that made him willing to
expend such painful effort. He wore himself out
searching through the grass that defied his exertions
for the sake of recovering the image of Princess
Chan, however slight the hope of success. He was
near to tears.
A group of students on their way to the gymnasium
walked by carrying umbrellas and wearing their
sweaters draped over the shoulders of their gym
uniforms. Seeing the activity on the mound, they
stopped to watch.
A rumor about the lost ring had already spread
through the school, but since the students considered
it effeminate for a man to wear a ring, there were few
who felt the least sympathy or concern for its loss or
for the frantic search. They grasped its purpose, of
course, as soon as they saw the two princes working
their way through the wet grass on hands and knees.
Prince Kridsada’s charge of theft had obviously
reached their ears and now they seized the chance to
express their resentment by hurling bitter taunts at the
two princes. But when they caught sight of the prefect
getting to his feet to look in their direction, they were
taken aback. When he requested them quietly to join
the hunt, they fell silent, turned their backs, and
scattered in all directions.
The two princes and the prefect, each working from
a different direction, had almost met up in the center
of the mound, and so there was no escaping the
realization that all their efforts were likely to prove in
vain. The showers were now over, and some late
afternoon sunshine had broken through the clouds.
The wet grass sparkled as it caught the low-slanting
rays, and the shadows cast by the leaves made
complex patterns on its surface.
Prince Pattanadid thought he saw the unmistakable
glint of an emerald in one clump of grass, but when he
plunged his wet hands into it, he found nothing but a
faint, unsteady gleam, blurred by the dirt, no more
than a tangle of wet grass, glowing golden at the
roots, with no resemblance at all to the ring.
∗
Afterwards, Kiyoaki heard the story of the futile
hunt. The prefect had certainly given evidence of
goodwill by helping as much as he could, but there
was no denying that the search had been an
unnecessary humiliation for the two princes. Not too
surprisingly, they chose to make an issue of it and so
furnished themselves with a good excuse to pack
their bags and move to the Imperial Hotel. They
confessed to Kiyoaki that they had decided to return
to Siam as soon as they could.
When he heard this news from his son, Marquis
Matsugae was most distressed. He realized that to
allow the two princes to return home in their present
mood was to leave them permanently scarred. For the
rest of their lives their attitude to Japan would be
tinged by bitter memories. At first he tried to mitigate
the antagonism that existed between them and the
school, but he found that the princes’ attitude had
hardened to such an extent that there was little hope
of any successful mediation at present. He therefore
bided his time for the moment, having decided that
the first thing was to persuade the princes not to go
home, and then to work out the best plan for softening
their hostility.
Meanwhile the summer vacation was almost on
them. After conferring with Kiyoaki, the Marquis
decided to invite the princes to the family villa on the
seashore once the vacation had begun. Kiyoaki was
to go with them.
31
T HE M ARQUIS HAD ALREADY
given Kiyoaki permission to invite Honda to the villa,
and so, on the first day after school ended, the four
young men boarded a train at Tokyo station.
Whenever the Marquis himself went to the
Kamakura villa, there had to be a huge delegation,
led by the major and the chief of police, at the station
to greet him with the appropriate honors. Moreover,
white sand was hauled up from the beach and
scattered along the road from Kamakura station to
the villa at Hasé. However, since the Marquis had told
the town council that he wanted the four young men to
be treated as mere students without any welcome
committee whatever, despite the princes’ status, they
were able to get into rickshaws at the station and
enjoy the ride to the villa in privacy.
The narrow winding road was overhung with
branches heavy with greenery. As they neared the top
of a steep hill, they saw the stone gate of the villa
come into view, its name carved in Chinese
characters on the right-hand pillar. It was called
Chung-nan, from the title of a poem by the Tang poet
Wang Wei.
The estate attached to this Japanese Chung-nan
covered more than eight acres, taking up an entire
wooded ravine that opened onto the beach. Kiyoaki’s
grandfather had once built a simple reed-thatched
cottage there, but after it was destroyed by fire some
years previously, his father had immediately seized
the opportunity to put up a substantial summer home
with twelve guest rooms, of combined Japanese and
Western design. The garden, however, which spread
out from the terrace on the south side of the house,
had been landscaped entirely in the Western style.
From this same terrace, one could see the island of
Oshima, its volcano glowing at night like a distant
bonfire. A walk of no more than five or six minutes
through the garden brought one to the Yuigahama
beach. In fact the Marquis, with the aid of binoculars,
could sit on the terrace and watch the Marquise
frolicking in the surf, an incidental diversion that
amused him greatly. There was a narrow field of
vegetables between the garden and the beach,
however, and in order to suppress this element of
discord, a line of pines had been planted along the
southern edge of the garden. Once these trees were
fully grown, they would destroy the uninterrupted view
from the garden to the sea, and the Marquis would no
longer be able to amuse himself with his binoculars.
On clear summer days, the beauty of the villa’s
setting was at its peak. The ravine spread out like a
fan with the house at its apex, its two ridges bounding
the garden on either side: the right-hand one ended in
a promontory called Cape Inamuragazaki, and the
left-hand one pointed to the island of Iijima.
The sweeping view was unobstructed and made
one feel that all it encompassed—sky, land, and the
sea embraced by the capes—was part of the
Matsugae domain. No images obtruded on its
sovereignty save those of the fantastically billowing
clouds, the occasional bird, and the ships that passed
by far out in the offing. In summer, when the cloud
formations were at their peak, the whole thing
seemed to be transformed into a huge theater, with
the villa for the spectators and the smooth expanse of
the bay becoming the vast stage on which the clouds
performed their extravagant ballets.
The outside terrace was floored in heavy teak, laid
out in checkers. The architect had been against
exposing a wooden floor to the ravages of the
weather, but he yielded when the Marquis reminded
him sharply that the decks of ships were made of
wood. From the vantage point of this terrace, Kiyoaki
had spent whole days last summer carefully observing
each subtle nuance of the shifting clouds. The sunlight
became awsome as it shone on the cumulus clouds,
towering up over the offing like huge masses of
whipped cream, and penetrated their deep, curving
hollows. While the areas that lay in shadow resisted
the probing sun, its bright rays threw the rugged force
of their sculptured outlines into relief. In his
imagination, the parts cut off from direct light were
totally different in character from those that were
dazzlingly exposed. They slumbered on uneventfully,
while in contrast their brilliant counterparts fiercely
enacted a swiftly unfolding drama of tragic
proportions. But there was no place for the human
element, and so both slumber and tragedy came to
the same thing, an idle game at best.
If he gazed fixedly at the clouds, he noticed no
alteration, but if he looked away for a moment, he
found that they had changed. Without his realizing it,
their heroic mane became ruffled like hair disheveled
in sleep. And as long as he kept his eyes on it, this
new disorder persisted in just the same slow-moving
way.
What had disintegrated? One moment their brilliant
white shapes dominated the sky, and the next, they
dissolved into something trivial, an enervated banality.
Yet their dissolution was a kind of liberation. For as
he watched, their scattered remnants gradually
reformed and as they did so, they cast strange
shadows over the garden as if an army were
marshaling its forces in the sky above. Its might first
overshadowed the beach and the vegetable field, and
then, moving up toward the house, it overran the
southern border of the garden. The vivid colors of the
leaves and flowers that covered the garden slope, laid
out in imitation of Shugakuin Palace, glowed like a
mosaic in the dazzling sunlight—maples, sakakis, tea
shrubs, dwarf cedars, daphnes, azaleas, camellias,
pines, box trees, Chinese black pines, and all the
others—and then suddenly it was all in shadow; even
the cicada’s song was hushed, as though in
mourning.
The sunsets were especially beautiful. He imagined
that as each one approached, every cloud knew in
advance what color it would take on—scarlet, purple,
orange, light green, or something else—and then,
under the strain of the moment, that it paled just
before turning to its new shade.
∗
“What a beautiful garden! I had no idea that
summer in Japan could be so glorious,” Chao P. said,
bright-eyed.
As the two brown-skinned princes stood on the
terrace flooded with sunlight, Kiyoaki could not
imagine anyone seeming more at home there. Today,
their bleak mood was clearly gone.
Although he and Honda both thought the sunshine
excessive for their taste, to the princes it was no more
than pleasantly warm and exactly as they liked it. They
stood on the terrace soaking it up as though they
could not get enough of its heat.
“After you have washed and rested a little,” Kiyoaki
said to them, “I’ll show you around the garden.”
“Why bother to rest? Aren’t we all four young and
energetic?” Kridsada replied.
More than anything else, Kiyoaki thought, more than
Princess Chan, the emerald ring, their friends, their
school, perhaps what the princes had needed had
been sunshine. It seemed that summer had the power
to heal all frustrations, soothe every grief, restore their
lost happiness.
As he was ruminating in this way about the torrid
heat of Siam which he had never experienced, he
noticed in himself too a certain intoxication with the
summer that had burst on them so suddenly. He heard
the cicadas singing in the garden. The coolness of
reason had evaporated like cool sweat from his brow.
The four of them stepped down from the terrace
and gathered around an old sundial that stood in the
middle of the wide lawn around it.
The legend “1716 Passing Shades” was carved in
English on its face. Its upright bronze needle was a
fantastic arabesque of a bird with its outstretched
neck pointing directly at the Roman numeral twelve,
just between the markers that designated northwest
and northeast. The shadow it cast was drawing close
to three o’clock.
As Honda rubbed his finger against the letter S in
the inscription, he thought of asking the princes in
which direction was Siam, but he decided not to take
the needless risk of arousing their homesickness
again. At the same time, without meaning to, he
shifted his position slightly and blocked out the sun so
that his own shadow overwhelmed the one that was
about to mark three o’clock.
“That’s it. That’s the secret,” said Chao P. when he
saw what Honda had done. “If you did that all day,
time would have to stop. When I get back home, I’m
going to have a sundial set up in the garden. And then
on days when I’m very, very happy, I’ll have a servant
stand next to it from morning to night and cover it with
his shadow. I’ll stop time passing.”
“But he’ll die of sunstroke,” said Honda, stepping
aside to let the fierce sunlight restore the hour to the
dial.
“No, no,” replied Kridsada, “our servants can stand
all day in the sun, and it doesn’t trouble them in the
least. And the sun at home is probably at least three
times as strong as this.”
The princes’ skin, so richly brown and warm in the
sunlight, captured Kiyoaki’s imagination. He felt that
such skin must surely seal within itself a cool
darkness that constantly refreshed these young men,
like a luxuriant shade tree.
∗
He had only to make a casual reference to the
enjoyment to be had from the walking trails in the
mountains behind the villa; and immediately nothing
would do but for all four of them to set out at once to
explore, before Honda could wipe away the sweat
brought on by the heat of the garden. Honda,
moreover, was amazed at the sight of the once-
indolent Kiyoaki taking the lead in this enterprise with
such energy.
Despite his misgivings, however, when they had
made their way up as far as the ridge, they were met
by a delightfully cool sea breeze blowing through the
shady pine forest, which made them forget the sweat
of the climb as they enjoyed a panoramic view of the
Yuigahama beach.
Kiyoaki led them along the narrow trail that followed
the line of the ridge, and as they tramped
energetically over last year’s fallen leaves and
crashed through the ferns and bamboo grass that
nearly choked the path, they felt all the energy of
youth. Then all at once, Kiyoaki stopped and pointed
to the northwest.
“Look over there,” he called to them. “This is the
only place from which you can see it.”
A collection of shabby, nondescript houses stood in
a valley that stretched out below, but towering above
and beyond them, the four young men caught sight of
the figure of the Great Buddha of Kamakura.
Everything about the image of this Buddha, from his
rounded shoulders to the very folds of his robe, was
on a grand scale. The face was in profile, and the
chest partially visible as it protruded somewhat
beyond the graceful lines of the sleeve that flowed
smoothly down from the shoulder. The bright sunlight
beat upon the glinting bronze of the rounded shoulder
and struck brilliant lights from the broad bronze chest.
It was already approaching sunset, and the rays
caught the bronze snails coiled like hair on the Lord
Buddha’s head, and each stood out in relief. The long
earlobe seemed to hang like dried fruit on a tropical
tree.
The princes startled Honda and Kiyoaki by falling to
their knees as soon as they saw the statue. With no
thought for their freshly creased white linen trousers,
they knelt unhesitatingly on the wet, moldering leaves
that covered the path and pressed their palms
together in reverence toward the distant figure bathed
in summer sunlight.
The other two were irreverent enough to exchange
a quick glance. Faith such as this was so removed
from their experience that they had never even thought
of it ever touching their lives. Not that they felt the least
inclination to mock the princes’ exemplary devotion.
But they felt that these two young men, whom they had
come to regard as students much like themselves,
had suddenly flown away into a world whose ideals
and faith were quite alien to them.
32
T HE WALK IN THE MOUNTAINS
behind the house was followed by a complete tour of
the garden. All this exertion taxed their energy, so that
the four of them were finally quite happy to rest for a
while in the living room of the villa. There they enjoyed
the sea breeze from the terrace while they sipped
lemonade brought from Yokohama and cooled in the
villa’s well. They were soon ready to set off again,
however. This time they gave in to the impulse for a
quick swim before sunset and hurried to their rooms
to dress for the occasion according to their individual
taste. Kiyoaki and Honda put on the red loincloths
used for swimming at Peers, and over them they
threw the thin cotton tunics decorated with feather-
stitching that completed the uniform. Then they put on
straw hats and would have been on their way to the
beach if they had not been delayed by the two
princes. When these two finally appeared, they were
dressed in striped English bathing suits that showed
their brown shoulders to advantage.
Kiyoaki and Honda had been friends for a long
time, but Kiyoaki had never before invited him to the
family villa during the summer, though he came once
in the fall to gather chestnuts. This was therefore the
first time that he had gone swimming with Kiyoaki
since they both were boys together at the school villa
at Katasé beach, when their present intimacy had
hardly begun.
The four of them plunged impetuously down the
garden slope, broke through the border of young
pines, and dashed across the narrow vegetable field
onto the beach.
Here Honda and Kiyoaki paused to perform the
prescribed pre-swimming calisthenics, a formality that
made the two princes double up with laughter.
Perhaps this was a mild form of retaliation against the
two Japanese for not having joined them in kneeling
to the distant Great Buddha. In the eyes of the
princes, this modern, totally self-centered penance
was the funniest thing in the world.
However, the very nature of their laughter showed
that they were feeling more at ease than ever before;
not for a long time had they looked so cheerful. After
they had enjoyed themselves in the water to their
hearts’ content, Kiyoaki felt that he could forget about
playing host for a while; the princes paired off to talk
in their own language, and he and Honda talked
Japanese until all four fell asleep on the beach.
The setting sun was blurred by a thin film of cloud. It
had lost much of its earlier heat, but this was a
pleasant time to lie in it, especially for someone
whose skin was as white as Kiyoaki’s. Dressed only
in his red loincloth, he threw his wet body down on the
sand and lay face up, his eyes shut.
To his left, Honda sat cross-legged in the sand
staring out at the waters of the bay. Though the sea
was calm, its rolling waves fascinated him. As he
watched, the crest of the sea seemed to be level with
his eyes. How strange, he thought, that it should come
to an abrupt end and give way to the land right in front
of him.
He kept pouring dry sand from one palm to the
other. When he had spilled a good part of it in the
process, he reached down automatically and began
again with a fresh handful, his thoughts completely
taken up with the sea.
It ended a few feet from where he sat. The sea,
broad and vast, with all its mighty force, ended right
there before his eyes. Be it the edge of time or space,
there is nothing so awe-inspiring as a border. To be
here at this place with his three companions, at this
marvelous border between land and sea, struck him
as being very similar to being alive as one age was
ending and another beginning, like being part of a
great moment in history. And then too the tide of their
own era, in which he and Kiyoaki lived, also had to
have an appointed time to ebb, a shore on which to
break, a limit beyond which it could not go.
The sea ended right there before his eyes. As he
watched the final surge of each wave as it drained
into the sand, the final thrust of mighty power that had
come down through countless centuries, he was
struck by the pathos of it all. At that very point, a grand
pan-oceanic enterprise that spanned the world went
awry and ended in annihilation.
But still, he thought, this final frustration was a
gentle, soothing one. A small, lacy frill, the wave’s last
farewell, escaped from disintegration at the last
moment before merging into the glistening wet sand
as the wave itself withdrew, and vanished into the
sea.
Starting a good way out in the offing at a point
where the whitecaps thinned out, the incoming waves
went through four or five stages, each of which was
visible at any given moment—a swelling, a cresting, a
breaking, the dissolution of its force and an ebbing—
a constantly recurring process.
The breaking wave let out an angry roar as it
showed its smooth, dark green belly. The roar tailed
off to a cry and the cry to a whisper. The charging line
of huge white stallions yielded place to a line of
smaller ones until the furious horses gradually
disappeared altogether, leaving nothing but those last
imprints of pounding hooves on the beach.
Two remnants, streaming in from left and right,
collided roughly, spread like a fan, and sank into the
bright mirror of the sand’s surface. At that moment,
the reflection in the mirror came to life, catching the
next white-crested wave just as it was about to come
crashing down, a sharp vertical image that sparkled
like a row of icicles.
Beyond the ebb, where other waves kept rolling in
one after the other, none of them formed smooth white
crests. They charged at full power again and again,
aiming for their goal with determination. But when
Honda looked out to sea in the distance he could not
escape the feeling that the apparent strength of these
waves that beat upon the shore was really no more
than a diluted, weakened, final dispersion.
The farther out one looked, the darker the color of
the water, until it finally became a deep blue-green. It
was as if the innocuous ingredients of the offshore
water became more and more condensed by the
increasing pressure of the water as it got deeper, its
green intensified over and over again to produce an
eternal blue-green substance, pure and impenetrable
as fine jade, that extended to the horizon. Though the
sea might seem vast and deep, this substance was
the very stuff of the ocean. Something that was
crystallized into blue beyond the shallow, frivolous
overlapping of the waves—that was the sea.
∗
His staring and his thoughts were at length enough
to tire both his eyes and his mind, and he turned to
look at Kiyoaki, who was assuredly sound asleep by
now. The light skin on his handsome graceful body
seemed all the whiter in contrast to the red loincloth
that was all he had on. Just above the loincloth, on his
pale stomach that rose and fell lightly with his
breathing, there had lodged some sand, now dry, and
some tiny fragments of seashell. Since he had raised
his left arm to put it behind his head, his left side, that
ordinarily was hidden, lay revealed to Honda, and
behind the left nipple, which made him think of a tiny
cherry-blossom bud, a cluster of three small black
moles caught his eyes. There was something odd
about them, he felt. Why should Kiyoaki’s flesh be
marked like that? Though they had been friends for so
long, he had never seen them before, and now they
embarrassed him too much for him to keep looking at
them, as though Kiyoaki had abruptly confessed to a
secret better left untold. But when he closed his eyes,
he saw the three black moles come into focus against
his eyelids, as clear as the shapes of three distant
birds flying across the evening sky, so brilliantly lit up
by the setting sun. In his imagination he saw them
draw closer, turn into birds with flapping wings, and
then pass overhead.
When he opened his eyes again, a light sound was
coming from Kiyoaki’s well-formed nose, and his
teeth glistened wet and pure white through his slightly
parted lips. Despite himself, Honda’s eyes fell on the
moles on Kiyoaki’s side again. This time he thought
that they looked like some grains of sand that had
embedded themselves in his white skin.
The dry area of the beach ended right at their feet,
and here and there the waves had splashed up
beyond their usual limit and left contracted patterns of
wet sand behind them, a sort of bas-relief that
preserved the trace of the wave. Stones, shells, and
withered leaves were embedded here too, for all the
world like ancient fossils, and the smallest pebble
among them was backed by its own rivulet of wet
sand to prove how it had fought the receding wave.
And there were more than stones, shells, and
withered leaves. Tangles of brown algae, fragments
of wood, pieces of straw, and even orange peelings
had been cast up and lay fixed in the sand. He thought
it possible that some fine wet grains might also have
worked their way up into the white skin that stretched
taut over Kiyoaki’s side.
Since he found this idea very disturbing, he tried to
think of some way to brush the grains away without
waking Kiyoaki. But as he continued to watch, he
realized that the black marks were moving in such a
free and natural way with the rise and fall of his chest
that they could not be foreign matter. They were part
of him and so could be nothing other than the black
moles he had first taken them to be.
He felt that they were a kind of betrayal of Kiyoaki’s
physical elegance.
Perhaps Kiyoaki sensed the intensity of his gaze,
because he suddenly opened his eyes, catching
Honda’s stare directly. And then he raised his head
and began to speak abruptly, as if to prevent his
flustered friend from escaping him.
“Would you do something for me?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t really come here to play nursemaid to the
princes. That’s a good excuse, but actually I want to
give everyone the impression that I’m not in Tokyo.
Do you see what I mean?”
“I had guessed that you were thinking something of
the sort.”
“What I want to do is to leave you and the princes
here sometimes and go back there without anyone
knowing. I can’t go for as much as three days without
her. So it will be up to you to smooth things over with
the princes while I’m gone and also to have a good
story ready just on the off chance that someone
telephones from Tokyo. Tonight I’m going to go third-
class on the last train and I’ll be back on the first one
tomorrow morning. So will you do it for me?”
“I’ll do it,” said Honda emphatically.
Delighted at his friend’s firm agreement, Kiyoaki
reached up to shake his hand before he spoke again.
“I suppose your father will be attending the state
funeral for Prince Arisugawa.”
“Yes, I think so.”
“It was good of the Prince to die when he did. As I
heard just yesterday, the Toinnomiyas have no choice
but to postpone the betrothal ceremony for a while.”
This remark reminded Honda that Kiyoaki’s love for
Satoko was inextricably bound up with the interests of
the nation as a whole, and the danger of it sent a
shiver through him.
At this point their conversation was interrupted by
the two princes who came running over in such
enthusiastic haste that they almost fell over each
other. Kridsada spoke first, struggling both to regain
his breath and to express himself in his scanty
Japanese.
“Do you know what Chao P. and I were talking
about just now?” he asked. “We were discussing the
transmigration of souls.”
33
W HEN THEY HEARD THIS , the
two young Japanese spontaneously glanced at each
other, an instinctive reaction whose significance was
lost on Kridsada, who was an impetuous sort, not
given to gauging his listeners’ expressions. Chao P.,
on the other hand, had learned a great deal from six
months of dealing with the tensions brought on by
living in a foreign environment. And now, although his
skin was too dark to betray anything as obvious as a
blush, he was clearly hesitant about continuing such a
conversation. Nevertheless, he did so, using his fluent
English, perhaps because he wished to appear
sophisticated.
“You see, when Kri and I were children, we used to
hear all sorts of stories from the  Jataka Sutra. Our
nurses would tell us how even the Lord Buddha
underwent many rebirths while he was still a
bodhisattva—as a golden swan, a quail, a monkey, a
great stag, and so on. So we were speculating just
now as to what we might have been in our previous
existences. However, I’m afraid that we didn’t agree
at all. He maintained that he had been a deer and I a
monkey. And I insisted that it was just the other way
around: he was the monkey and I the deer. But what
do you say? We’ll leave it to you.”
Whichever way they answered, they ran the risk of
offending somebody, so they just smiled, hoping that
would serve as a reply. Then Kiyoaki, wanting to turn
the conversation to other matters, said that he knew
nothing about the  Jataka Sutra and he wondered if
the princes would be kind enough to tell him and
Honda one of the stories from it.
“We’d be glad to,” said Chao P. “There’s the one
about the golden swan, for example. It took place
when the Lord Gautama was a bodhisattva, during his
second reincarnation. As you know, a bodhisattva is
someone who voluntarily travels the road of
mortification and suffering before entering into the full
enlightenment of buddhahood. And in his previous
existence the Lord Gautama himself was a
bodhisattva. The austerities they practice are the
works of  paramita , one’s good deeds to others, by
means of which one crosses from this sphere to the
sphere of total enlightenment. As a bodhisattva,
Buddha is said to have lavished abundant grace on
mankind. He was reincarnated in many guises and
there are all sorts of stories about the good works he
performed.
“For example, in very ancient times, he was born to
a Brahmin family. He married a woman of another
Brahmin family and after having three daughters by
her, he died, forcing his bereaved wife and daughters
to make their home with strangers.
“But after his death as a Brahmin, the bodhisattva
took on another life in the womb of a golden swan.
And he carried within him the knowledge that would in
due course make him fully aware of his previous
existence. And so the bodhisattva grew into an adult
swan, covered in gold feathers and unrivaled in
beauty. When he glided over the water, he glowed like
the rising full moon. And when he flew through the
forest, the very leaves that he brushed looked like a
golden basket. And when he rested on a branch, it
seemed as though the tree had borne some fabulous
golden fruit.
“The swan came to realize that he had been a man
in his previous existence and also that his wife and
children were compelled to live with strangers, eking
out their existence by doing whatever work they could
find.
“‘Any one of my feathers,’ he said to himself one
day, ‘could be hammered out into a sheet of gold and
sold. And so, from time to time, I’ll give a feather to my
poor companions whom I’ve left behind to lead such
hard lives in the world of men.’
“And so the swan appeared at the window of the
house where his wife and daughters of times gone by
were living. And when he saw how wretched their
condition was, he was overcome with pity.
“Meanwhile, his wife and daughters were amazed
at the sight of the glittering figure of the swan on their
window ledge.
“‘What a beautiful bird!’ they cried. ‘Where have you
come from?’
“‘I was once your husband and father. After I died, I
came to life again in the womb of a golden swan. And
now I have come to change your poor lives into ones
of happiness and plenty.’
“So saying, the swan dropped one of its feathers
and flew off. Afterwards he came back at regular
intervals and left a feather in the same way, and soon
life had greatly improved for the mother and her three
daughters.
“One day, however, the mother spoke to the girls.
“‘We can’t trust that swan,’ she said to them. ‘Even
if he’s really your father, who knows if he might stop
coming here one day? So next time he comes, let’s
pluck every one of his feathers.’
“‘Mother, how cruel!’ said the girls, very much
opposed to this.
“Nevertheless, the next time the swan appeared at
the window, the greedy woman pounced on him, took
him in both hands, and plucked out every single one
of his feathers. But strangely enough, each gold
feather turned as white as a heron feather as she
pulled it out. Still undaunted, his former wife then took
the helpless swan and thrust him into a large empty
container and fed him while she waited doggedly for
his golden feathers to grow again. But when the
feathers did appear, they were ordinary white ones.
And once they had grown, he flew off and his shape
grew smaller and smaller in the sky until it became a
white dot lost in the clouds, never to be seen again.
“And that was one of the stories that our nurses
used to tell us from the  Jataka Sutra .”
Honda and Kiyoaki were surprised to find that
many of the fairy tales that had been told to them were
very similar to the prince’s story. The conversation
then turned into a discussion of reincarnation itself
and whether or not it was credible as a doctrine.
Since Kiyoaki and Honda had never talked about
anything like this before, they were naturally
somewhat perplexed. Kiyoaki glanced at Honda with
a questioning look in his eyes. Usually headstrong, he
always began to look forlorn whenever abstract
discussions took place. His look now urged Honda to
do something, as if he were prodding him lightly with
silver spurs.
“If there is such a thing as reincarnation,” Honda
began, betraying a certain eagerness, “I’d be very
much in favor of it if it were the kind in your story, with
the man himself being aware of his previous
existence. But if it’s a case of a man’s personality
coming to an end and his self-awareness being lost
so that there’s absolutely no trace of them in his next
life, and if a completely new personality and a totally
different self-awareness come into being, well, in that
case I think that various reincarnations extending over
a period of time are no more significantly linked to
one another than the lives of all the individuals who
happen to be alive at the same given moment. In
other words, I feel that in such a case the concept of
reincarnation would be practically meaningless.
Something has to be passed on in transmigration, but
I don’t see how we can take any number of separate
and distinct existences, each with its own self-
awareness, and bracket them together as one,
claiming that a single consciousness unites them.
Right now, each one of us has no memory at all of
even a single previous existence. And so it’s obvious
that it would be pointless to try to produce any proof of
transmigration. There’s only one way that it could be
proved: if we had a self-awareness so independent
that it could stand aside from both this life and
previous lives and view them objectively. But as it is,
each man’s consciousness is limited to the past, the
present, or the future of that single life. In the midst of
the turmoil of history, each one of us builds his own
little shelter of self-awareness and we can never leave
it. Buddhism seems to hold out a middle way, but I
have my doubts: is this middle way an organic
concept which a human being is capable of
grasping?
“But to go back just a bit. . . . Granted that all human
concepts are mere illusion, in order to distinguish the
various illusions arising from other reincarnations
from the illusion of the present reincarnation of that
same life, you must nevertheless be able to observe
them all from a thoroughly independent viewpoint. It’s
only when one stands aside in this way that the reality
of reincarnation would be apparent. But when one is
in the midst of a reincarnated existence oneself, the
whole must remain an eternal riddle. Moreover, since
this independent standpoint is probably what is called
full enlightenment, only the man who has transcended
reincarnation can grasp its reality. And wouldn’t it then
be a case of finally understanding it at a time when it
was no longer relevant?
“There is an abundance of death in our lives. We
never lack reminders—funerals, cemeteries, withered
commemorative bouquets, memories of the dead,
deaths of friends, and then the anticipation of our own
death. Who knows? Perhaps in their own way the
dead make a great deal of life. Perhaps they’re
always looking in our direction from their own land—at
our towns, our schools, the smokestacks of our
factories, at each of us who has passed one by one
back from death into the land of the living.
“What I want to say is that perhaps reincarnation is
nothing more than a concept that reverses the way
that we, the living, ordinarily view death, a concept
that expresses life as seen from the viewpoint of the
dead. Do you see?”
“But how is it,” replied Chao P. quietly, “that certain
thoughts and ideals are transmitted to the world after
a man’s death?”
“That’s a different problem from reincarnation,”
Honda said emphatically, with a trace of the
impatience to which intelligent young men are
susceptible showing in his voice.
“Why is it different?” asked Chao P. in the same
gentle tone. “It seems that you are willing to admit that
the same sense of self-awareness might inhabit
various bodies successively over a period of time.
Why then do you object so strongly to differing senses
of self-awareness inhabiting the same body over a
similar period of time?”
“The same body for a cat and a human being?
According to what you said before, it was a matter of
becoming a man, a swan, a quail, a deer, and so on.”
“Yes, according to the concept of reincarnation, the
same body. Even though the flesh itself might differ.
As long as the same illusion persists, there is no
difficulty in calling it the same body. However, rather
than do that, perhaps it would be better to call it the
same vital current.
“I lost that emerald ring that was so rich in
memories for me. It wasn’t a living thing, of course,
and so it won’t be reborn. But still, the loss of
something is significant, and I think that loss is the
necessary source of a new manifestation. Some night
I might see my emerald ring appear as a green star
somewhere in the sky.”
The prince abruptly abandoned the problem,
apparently overcome with sadness.
“Chao P., maybe the ring was actually a living thing
that underwent a secret transformation,” Kridsada
responded with earnest naïveté, “and then it ran off
somewhere on legs of its own.”
“Then, round about now it might be reborn as
someone as beautiful as Princess Chan,” Chao P.
said, now completely absorbed in thinking about his
loved one. “People keep telling me in their letters that
she’s well, but why don’t I hear anything at all from her
herself? Perhaps they’re all trying to protect me from
something.”
Honda, meantime, had ignored the prince’s last
words, as he was lost in thought about the strange
paradox that Chao P. had brought up a few minutes
earlier. One could certainly think of a man not in terms
of a body but as a single vital current. And this would
allow one to grasp the concept of existence as
dynamic and on-going, rather than as static. Just as
he had said, there was no difference between a
single consciousness possessing various vital
currents in succession, and a single vital current
animating various consciousnesses in succession.
For life and self-awareness would fuse into a whole.
And if one were then to extrapolate this theory of the
unity of life and self-awareness, the whole sea of life
with its infinity of currents—the whole vast process of
transmigration called  Samsara in Sanskrit—would be
possessed by a single consciousness.
While Honda organized his ideas, the beach had
gradually been growing darker, and Kiyoaki became
absorbed in building a sand temple with Kridsada.
The sand did not lend itself to molding the tall pointed
towers and the upswept roof-corner tiling that
distinguished  Siamese  temples.  Nevertheless
Kridsada skillfully added wet sand and built up the
slender peaks, and carefully molded up the corners of
the roof as if he were drawing a woman’s dark,
slender fingers from her sleeve. They curved out into
the air for an instant, and then as soon as they dried
out, the black sand-fingers twisted convulsively,
crumbled, and fell down.
Honda and Chao P. stopped talking to watch the
others playing with the sand in childlike glee. Their
sand temple needed lanterns. All the care they had
lavished on the fine detail of the facade and the tall
windows now went for nothing, for darkness had
already reduced the temple to a small, dim outline
silhouetted against the white foam of the breakers,
which seemed to reflect what lingering light there was,
much as the last flickers of life show in the eyes of a
dying man.
Unnoticed, the sky over their heads had become
filled with stars, dominated by the brilliance of the
Milky Way. Honda did not know much about them, but
even he could make out the Weaver Maid and her
lover the Herd Boy, separated by the broad stream of
the Milky Way, and also the Northern Cross of the
Swan constellation, which stretched its huge wings in
flight as it acted as go-between for the two lovers.
The roar of the waves seemed to have grown much
louder than it had been during the day. The beach and
the water had each been part of their own sphere in
daylight, but now they seemed to have merged under
cover of darkness. The inconceivable array of stars
above overwhelmed the four young men. To be
surrounded by such majestic massive power was like
being shut up within a vast koto.
Indeed, it was precisely that. They themselves were
like four grains of sand that had somehow found their
way into its base, an enormous world of darkness,
outside which all was light. Above them were
stretched thirteen strings from one end to the other.
And fingers of a whiteness that was beyond words
were touching these strings, making the koto come
alive with the grand and solemn music of the spheres,
its immense vibrations shaking the four grains of sand
within.
A breeze came in off the night sea. The salty
fragrance of the tide and the smell of seaweed thrown
up on the beach made their bodies tingle with
emotion, bare to the cool night air. The sea breeze,
heavy with the smell of salt, coiled against their naked
flesh, but made them burn rather than shiver.
“Well, it’s time we went back,” said Kiyoaki
abruptly.
It was meant, of course, as a reminder that it was
time for them to get ready for dinner. Honda, however,
knew that Kiyoaki’s mind was fixed on the departure
of the last train for Tokyo.
34
K IYOAKI MADE SECRET TRIPS to
Tokyo at least once every three days, and on his
return, he would give Honda all the details of what had
gone on. The Toinnomiyas had indeed postponed the
betrothal ceremony, but that by no means meant that
there was any significant obstacle to Satoko’s
marriage to the young prince. She was, in fact, often
invited to their home, and the Prince’s father, His
Imperial Highness himself, had started treating her
with cordial affection.
Kiyoaki was not at all satisfied with the way things
stood. Now he was thinking of having Satoko down to
Kamakura to spend the night at the villa, and he
asked Honda if he had any idea about how to carry
out such a dangerous plan. But on even the most
cursory reflection, one grave difficulty after another
was brought to light.
One hot sultry night, as Kiyoaki was settling into an
uneasy sleep, he began to dream. It was quite unlike
his previous experiences. If one flounders in the
shallows of sleep, wading where the water is tepid
and full of all sorts of flotsam that has come in from
deeper water to pile up with the land debris in a
tangled heap, one is liable to slash one’s feet.
Kiyoaki was standing in the middle of a road that
led through open fields. For some reason he was
wearing a white cotton kimono and matching
hakama , a costume he had never worn, and he was
armed with a hunting rifle. The land around him was
rolling country, but it was not deserted. He could see a
cluster of farmhouses up ahead, and a cyclist passed
him on the road. A strange, somber light permeated
the entire scene. It was no brighter than the final
traces of daylight, and was so diffuse that it could
more easily have sprung from the ground rather than
the sky, for the grass in the rolling fields gave off a
green glow from its very roots and bathed the bicycle
in a hazy silver gleam as it vanished into the distance.
He looked down and saw that even the thick thongs of
his clogs and the veins of his bare feet stood out with
brilliant, uncanny clarity.
At that moment, the light filmed over and a huge
flight of birds appeared in the sky. When they reached
a point above his head, filling the air with their
squawking cries, he aimed his rifle upward and pulled
the trigger. He did not fire in cold blood. It was rather
that he was seized by an unfathomable anger and
grief, and he fired, aiming not so much at the birds as
at the great blue eye of the sky itself.
The whole flock plummeted earthward in a single
mass, a tornado of screams and blood that linked
heaven and earth. Countless shrieking birds, their
blood spurting out, tumbled down in an unending
stream, gathered into one thick column that formed
the cone of the whirlwind. The cascade of blood and
fury never slackened.
As he watched, the whirlwind suddenly solidified
before his eyes and became a giant tree that
stretched to the heavens. Its trunk was a forbidding
rust color, devoid of leaves or branches. As soon as
this giant tree took shape and the screaming died
away, the same somber glow that had lit up the fields
before the storm spread out over them once more.
Down the road appeared a new silver bicycle without
a rider and made its way unsteadily toward him.
He was proud to have been the one to sweep away
the obstacle that had blocked the light of the sun.
But then in the distance he saw a group coming his
way along the road. They were all dressed in white
just as he was. They checked their solemn, measured
advance a few yards away. He saw that each of them
carried a shining sakaki branch in his hand.
They pointed their branches toward him and began
to wave them in the rite of purification, the rustle of
leaves echoing clearly in his ears. As they did so, he
was startled to recognize the face of his former
retainer Iinuma in their midst. Iinuma himself spoke to
him.
“You are heedless and intractable. You have proved
it beyond all question.”
He looked down at his chest when Iinuma spoke. A
necklace of crescent-shaped stones, dark maroon
and purple, now hung around his neck. The stones
were cold and as they touched his skin they sent a
chill through his body. His chest felt like a flat, heavy
rock.
Then the white-clad group pointed to the tree, and
when he looked at it, he saw that the massive trunk of
dead birds was now covered with branches, all of
which were laden with glossy green leaves. The whole
tree was a vivid green, down to its lowest branches.
Then he woke up.
Since the dream had been so extraordinary, he
reached out to open his dream journal, which he had
neglected for some time now. He began to write,
trying to record the events as accurately and as
objectively as he could. Even now that he was awake,
however, he was torn by the fierceness and
antagonism of the dream. He felt as if he had just
returned from battle.
∗
Kiyoaki’s problem was to bring Satoko from Tokyo
in the dead of night and get her home again by dawn.
A carriage was no good. Nor was the train. A
rickshaw would be quite out of the question.
Somehow he had to get the use of a car.
Obviously it could not be one belonging to anyone
who knew the Matsugaes. And, even more important,
anyone in the Ayakuras’ circle had to be ruled out.
And the car would have to be driven by someone
completely ignorant of the situation and the people
involved.
The villa area was large enough, but precautions
still had to be taken to avoid a chance meeting
between Satoko and the princes. Kiyoaki and Honda
had no idea whether or not the princes were aware of
the circumstances of her engagement, but even if they
were not, a meeting could only lead to disaster.
Without the least experience in such things, Honda
had to find a way through these difficulties somehow.
For he had promised Kiyoaki to see to it that Satoko
would be able to come down from Tokyo and return in
safety.
As he began to size up the problem, he thought of a
friend of his named Itsui, the eldest son of a wealthy
commercial family. Since Itsui was the only one in his
class at Peers who had his own car to use as he
liked, Honda had no choice but to go up to Tokyo to
visit him in Kojimachi and ask if he would lend him the
Ford and a driver for a night.
High-living Itsui, whose career at Peers continually
veered toward the shoals of academic shipwreck,
was astounded. That the class genius, who was
notorious for his sobriety and application moreover,
should come to him with such a request! When he had
recovered a little, he decided to make the most of the
opportunity, and so with no more arrogance than
befitted the occasion, he said that if Honda would tell
him honestly why he wanted the car, he might be
willing to lend it to him.
With that, Honda began to stutter through the
confession he had concocted for the loutish Itsui’s
benefit, and as he did so, was conscious of an
unaccustomed and pleasurable sensation. This was
provoked by the rapt expression of total belief on
Itsui’s face; he obviously took Honda’s stumbling
manner not as an indication of an outright lie, but as
testimony to his classmate’s brooding sense of
shame.
A man may be hard to persuade by rational
argument while he is easily swayed by a display of
passion, even if it is feigned. Honda was amused at
the spectacle, but his amusement was tinged with
disgust. He wondered if Kiyoaki had used him in
much the same way as he was using Itsui.
“Well, you are turning out to be altogether different
from what I imagined. I never thought I’d see this side
of you. But you’re still being secretive. Won’t you at
least tell me her name?”
“Fusako,” said Honda, spontaneously coming up
with the name of the second cousin he hadn’t seen in
months.
“I see. So Matsugae is going to provide a place to
spend the night and I’m going to provide the car. And
in return, when the exams come round, you’ll
remember old Itsui, won’t you?” he said, bowing his
head in mock supplication that was still meant in
earnest.
The light of friendship shone in his eyes. Despite
Honda’s awesome brain, Itsui now felt on a par with
him in many respects. He was vindicated in his
unimaginative view of human nature.
“After all, people are all alike,” he said, summing it
up, his voice expressing the fact that he felt at one
with the world, which was exactly the state of mind
Honda had been intent on inducing from the
beginning.
And so, thanks to Kiyoaki, Honda could soon
expect to enjoy a romantic reputation that any boy of
nineteen would envy. All in all, this transaction would
benefit each of them: Kiyoaki, Honda, and also Itsui.
Itsui’s car was a 1912 Ford, the newest model. It
was one of the first equipped with a self-starter, the
recent invention that had eliminated the nuisance of
the chauffeur having to get out each time it happened
to stall. It was the ordinary Model T, with a two-speed
transmission, painted black with a crimson line
around the doors. The driver’s seat was open and the
rear enclosed, an arrangement that seemed to
preserve something of the air of a carriage. A
speaking tube in the back seat led to a trumpet-
shaped device next to the driver’s ear. A rack
fastened onto the roof, besides holding a spare tire,
could also carry baggage. The car seemed altogether
capable of making a long journey.
Mori, the driver, had been the Itsuis’ coachman and
had learned his new trade from a master driver. He
had pointedly arranged for the man to accompany him
to the police station to get his license. Every time Mori
ran into a difficult question on the written examination,
he went into the lobby to consult with his master
before returning to the examination room to continue.
Honda went to Itsui’s house very late at night to
borrow the car. In order to conceal Satoko’s
background from Mori as much as he could, he had
him park the car near a boarding house for military
officers where they waited until Satoko and
Tadeshina appeared according to plan, arriving
inconspicuously in a rickshaw. Kiyoaki had hoped that
Tadeshina would not make the trip to Kamakura, but
she could not possibly come even if she wanted to, for
it was up to her to stay behind and pretend that
Satoko spent the night fast asleep in her room, a task
of crucial importance. Her face betrayed her worry.
She cautioned Satoko at great length before finally
surrendering her to Honda’s care.
“I’ll call you Fusako in front of the chauffeur,” he
whispered in her ear.
Mori started the Ford with a blast that shattered the
midnight silence of the residential neighborhood.
Satoko’s calm and resolution surprised Honda.
She was in Western clothes, and the white dress she
had chosen seemed to enhance her air of quiet
determination.
∗
Riding through the night like this in the company of
the woman claimed by a friend was an odd
experience for Honda. There he sat as the car
bounced over the rough road, friendship personified,
while the scent of Satoko’s perfume wafted around
him in the summer night.
She belonged to another man. Her very femininity,
moreover, seemed to be mocking him. The
unprecedented trust that Kiyoaki had shown in him
made him more sharply aware than ever before of the
cold, subtle poison that permeated their relationship.
His friend’s contempt and trust were as closely linked
as a fine leather glove and the hand inside it. But
Kiyoaki had an aura about him that made Honda
forgive him.
The only way he could cope with contempt of this
sort was to hold onto a belief in his own nobility, and
this he did with moderation rather than with the blind
traditionalism of so many young men. This meant that
he would never come to think of himself as ugly, as
Iinuma did. For if this ever happened, there would be
nothing left but for him to become Kiyoaki’s slave.
Although the breeze blowing in through the window
naturally ruffled her hair, Satoko maintained her poise
throughout the trip. Kiyoaki’s name had become a
sort of taboo word between them, quite of its own
accord. And the name “Fusako” served as a mild,
fictional term of endearment.
∗
The return trip was quite different. “Oh, there’s
something I forgot to tell Kiyo,” she said soon after
they had left the villa. But if they turned back, there
would be no hope of her getting home before the early
summer dawn.
“Could I tell him for you?” Honda asked.
“Well . . .” Satoko hesitated. Then she seemed to
make up her mind, and gave him the message:
“Please tell him this: Tadeshina talked with Yamada,
the Matsugaes’ steward, some time ago, and she’s
found out that Kiyo was telling a lie. She discovered
that he actually tore up the letter he was pretending
still to have a long time ago in Yamada’s presence.
But . . . tell him not to worry about it. Tadeshina has
resigned herself to everything. She said she would
keep her eyes shut. Would you please pass that on to
Kiyo?”
Honda memorized it as she spoke, and didn’t ask
any questions about its cryptic meaning. From then
on, impressed perhaps by his good manners, she
became very talkative.
“You’ve done all this for his sake, haven’t you, Mr.
Honda? Kiyo should think himself the luckiest man in
the world to have a friend like you. You see, we
women have no real friends at all.”
Satoko’s eyes still burned with passion, but her
coiffure was in perfect order, with not a hair out of
place. When he did not reply, she bent her head, and
after a time, spoke in a subdued voice.
“But Mr. Honda . . . I know what you must think of
me . . . What else am I but a slut?”
“Don’t talk like that,” he replied with considerable
force. He certainly had not been thinking of her with
such contempt, but even so, her words had
accidentally hit a nerve with uncanny accuracy.
He had gone without a night’s sleep to be loyal and
fulfill the duty with which he had been entrusted, of
bringing Satoko down from Tokyo, turning her over to
Kiyoaki, and now taking charge of her again to get
her back. But his real source of pride was in keeping
himself emotionally uninvolved. Nothing good would
come of that sort of thing. It was a gravely dangerous
situation, for which he was sufficiently responsible
already.
When he had stood watching Kiyoaki take Satoko
by the hand and run down through the shadows of the
moonlit garden to the beach, he had felt that he too
was sinning by helping them. But if it was sin, it was
also indescribably beautiful; a recurrent image of
loveliness running away from him and disappearing.
“You’re right,” said Satoko. “I shouldn’t talk like that
at all. I can’t think of what I’ve done as being
something nasty. Why is that? Kiyo and I have
committed a terrible sin, but I still don’t feel defiled in
any way. In fact I feel as if I’d been purified. You know,
when I saw those pines by the beach tonight, I knew
that I’d never see them again no matter how long I
lived. And when I heard the sound of the breeze that
blew through them, I knew that I’d never hear that
again as long as I lived. But every moment I was there
felt so pure that now I have no regrets about anything
at all.”
As she spoke, she tried to convey something to
Honda, some essence of everything that happened
between her and her lover during their meetings, each
of which had felt like the final one—she longed to
throw discretion aside and try to make Honda
understand by telling him how on this last night, in the
midst of such a tranquil, natural setting, she and
Kiyoaki had soared to dazzling heights that were
almost terrifying. But it was the kind of experience—
like death, like the glow of a jewel, like the beauty of a
sunset—that is almost impossible to convey to others.
∗
Kiyoaki and Satoko wandered over the beach,
trying to avoid the uncomfortably dazzling brightness
of the moon. Now, in the middle of the night, there was
no trace of human life along the deserted shore, apart
from a beached fishing boat, whose tall prow cast a
black shadow on the sand. Because of the brilliant
moonlight all around, it seemed to offer a reassuring
darkness. The moon’s rays washed over the boat,
making its planks glisten like bleached bones. When
Kiyoaki rested his hand against the side for a
moment, his skin seemed to become translucent in
the moonlight.
They embraced immediately in the shadow of the
boat as the sea breeze swirled around them. She
hardly ever wore Western clothes, and now hated the
glaring white of her dress. Forgetting the whiteness of
her skin, she had only one thought: to tear the dress
off as quickly as possible and hide herself in the
darkness.
No one was likely to see them, but the rays of
moonlight, infinitely fragmented over the surface of the
sea, were like millions of eyes. She gazed up at the
clouds suspended in the sky and the stars that
seemed to graze their edges. She could feel
Kiyoaki’s small, firm nipples touching hers, brushing
against them playfully, then finally pressing against
them, pushing down into the rich abundance of her
breasts. It was a touch far more intimate than a kiss,
something like the playful caress of a young animal.
An intense sweetness hovered on the edge of her
awareness. The unexpected familiarity when the very
edges, the extremities of their bodies brushed
together made her think of the stars sparkling among
the clouds, even though her eyes were closed.
From there it was a direct path to a joy as profound
as the sea. But even as she felt herself dissolving
gradually into the darkness, she felt afraid that this
was nothing more than a shadow that was dependent
in turn on the fishing boat beside them. They were not
lying in the protection of a solid structure or a rocky
ridge, but of something fortuitous, that in a few brief
hours might be far out to sea. Had the boat not
happened to be beached there at that moment, its
heavy shadow would have been no more real than a
ghost. She was afraid that this huge old fishing boat
might begin to slide noiselessly across the sand even
now and plunge into the water and sail away. To
follow its shadow, to remain forever within it, she
herself would have to become the sea. And at that
moment, in a single great surge, she did.
Everything that framed the two of them—the moonlit
sky, the sparkling water, the breeze that blew across
the sandy beach to rustle the pines at its edge—all
these boded destruction. Just beyond the merest
flicker of time there boomed a monstrous roar of
negation. Its message was carried in the sound of the
pines. She felt that she and Kiyoaki were hemmed in,
observed, guarded by an unforgiving spirit, just as a
single drop of balm that has fallen into a bowl of water
has nothing to sustain it but the water itself. This water
was black, vast, silent, and the single drop of balm
floated in a world of total isolation.
That “No!” was all-embracing. Was it a creature of
the night—or the approaching dawn? To them it
seemed incomprehensible. But even though it
hovered threateningly over them from moment to
moment, it had not yet struck at them directly.
They both sat up. Their heads were just out of the
shadow now and the sinking moon shone directly into
their faces. She felt that it was somehow the emblem
of their transgression, fixed there so bright and full
and conspicuous in the sky.
The beach was still deserted. They stood up to
fetch their clothes, which they had placed in the
bottom of the boat. Each of them stared at the other,
at the remnant of darkness that was the black area
just below their white bellies so brilliantly lit by the
moon. Although it lasted only for a moment, they
gazed with intense concentration.
When they had dressed, Kiyoaki sat dangling his
legs over the edge of the boat.
“You know,” he said, “if we had everyone’s
blessing, we would probably never dare to do what
we’ve done.”
“You are awful, Kiyo. So that’s what you really
want!” she replied in mock affront. Their banter was
affectionate enough, but it had an indefinably gritty
taste. They sensed that the irrevocable end of their
happiness was not far away. She was still sitting in
the sand, hiding in the shadow of the boat. His foot,
shining in the moonlight, hung in the air in front of her.
She reached out, took it in her hand, and kissed his
toes.
∗
“I suppose it’s un-called-for—my telling you all this.
But you see, there’s no one else I could even think of
telling. I know that I’m doing something terrible. But
please don’t say anything against it, because I do
realize that it will come to an end sometime. But until
then, I want to live each day as it comes. Because
there’s nothing else to be done.”
“Then you are quite prepared for whatever may
happen?” Honda asked, his voice unable to conceal
the deep pity he felt.
“Yes, I’m quite ready.”
“Matsugae is too, I think.”
“That’s why it’s not at all right for him to involve you
so deeply in our problems.”
Honda suddenly felt an unaccountable desire to
understand this woman. It was his subtle form of
revenge. If she intended to assign him the role of truly
understanding friend, rather than one of mere
compassionate supporter, then he would have the
right to know everything. But it was a formidable
challenge to try to understand her—this graceful
woman overflowing with love, who was sitting by his
side with her heart elsewhere. Nevertheless, his bent
for logical inquiry began to gain the upper hand.
The car jounced a great deal, and tended to throw
the two of them together, but she protected herself so
skillfully that their knees never so much as brushed, a
display of agility that reminded him of a pet squirrel
making its exercise wheel whir. He was slightly
annoyed. If Kiyoaki were beside her, he thought, she
would not be so nimble.
“You just said that you were prepared for anything,
didn’t you?” he asked, not looking at her. “Well then, I
wonder how that acceptance of the consequences
squares with the realization that it will have to end
some day. When it does end, won’t it be too late to
make a decision about the consequences? Or
alternatively,  will  your  acceptance  of  the
consequences somehow gradually bring about the
end, of itself? I know I’m asking you a cruel question.”
“I’m glad you did,” she replied calmly.
Despite himself, he glanced at her earnestly. Her
profile was beautifully composed, and showed no
sign of distress. While he was looking at her, she
suddenly shut her eyes, and the long lashes of her left
eye cast a still longer shadow over her cheek in the
dim light of the roof lamp. The trees and shrubbery
glided past in the pre-dawn darkness like black
clouds swirling about the car.
Mori, the driver, kept his reliable back to them,
wholly intent on his driving. The thick sliding glass
behind him was shut. Unless they went out of their way
to put their mouths close to the speaking tube, there
was no chance that he would overhear.
“You say that I’m the one who should be able to end
it some day. And as you’re Kiyo’s best friend, you
have the right to say it. If I can’t end it and stay alive,
then dying . . .”
She might have wanted to startle Honda into
interrupting with a command to stop saying such
things, but he doggedly kept silence and waited for
her to continue.
“. . . but the moment will come sometime—and that
time is not too far off. And when it does—I can
promise you right now—I shan’t shrink from it. I’ve
known supreme happiness, and I’m not greedy
enough to want what I have to go on forever. Every
dream ends. Wouldn’t it be foolish, knowing that
nothing lasts forever, to insist that one has a right to
do something that does? I’ve nothing in common with
these ‘new women.’ But . . . if eternity existed, it would
be this moment. And perhaps you, Mr. Honda, will
come round to seeing it this way some day.”
Honda was at last beginning to understand why
Kiyoaki had once been so terribly in awe of Satoko.
“You said that it wasn’t right of Matsugae to involve
me in your problems. Why not?”
“You’re a young man who set himself worthwhile
goals. It’s wrong to get you entangled with us. Kiyo
has no right at all to do it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t think of me as such a saint.
You’re unlikely to find a more grimly moral family than
mine. But despite that, I have already done something
that makes me an accomplice in sin.”
“Don’t say that. It’s not true,” she broke in angrily.
“This is our sin, Kiyo’s and mine . . . and nobody
else’s.”
Of course she only meant to convey that she
wanted to protect him, but her words had a cold,
proud glitter that could not tolerate the intrusion of a
third party. In her own mind, she had fashioned their
sin into a tiny, brilliant, crystal palace in which she and
Kiyoaki could live free from the world around them. A
crystal palace so tiny that it would balance on the
palm of one’s hand, so tiny that no one else could fit
in. Transformed for a fleetingly brief instant, she and
Kiyoaki had been able to enter it and now they were
spending their last few moments there, observed with
extraordinary clarity in all their minute detail by
someone standing just outside.
She suddenly leaned forward with bent head. He
reached over to support her and his hand brushed
against her hair.
“Excuse me,” she apologized, “but I think I just felt
some sand in my shoe, even though I was so careful.
Tadeshina doesn’t look after my shoes, and so if I
took them off at home with sand left in them that I
didn’t notice, I’d be afraid of what some startled maid
might blurt out.”
He had no idea how to behave while a woman was
inspecting her shoes, so he turned away and began
to look out of the window with intense concentration.
They had already reached the outskirts of Tokyo.
The night sky had turned to a vivid dark blue. The
dawn showed the clouds spread low over the roofs of
the houses. Though he wanted to get her home as
soon as possible, he still felt regret that the morning
light would put an end to what was probably the most
extraordinary night of his life. Behind him he heard the
sound—so faint that he thought he must be imagining
it at first—of Satoko pouring the sand from the shoe
she had taken off. To Honda, it sounded like the most
enchanting hourglass in the world.
35
T HE S IAMESE PRINCES were
thoroughly enjoying themselves at Chung-nan Villa.
One evening shortly before dinner the four young men
had rattan chairs brought out and placed on the lawn
so that they could enjoy the cool evening breeze
before eating. The princes chatted in their native
language, Kiyoaki was lost in his own thoughts, and
Honda had a book open on his lap.
“Would you like some twist?” asked Kridsada in
Japanese, walking over to Honda and Kiyoaki holding
out a pack of gold-tipped Westminster cigarettes. The
princes had been quick enough in picking up “twist,”
the slang word for cigarettes at Peers. The school
rules forbade smoking, but the authorities allowed the
upperclassmen a certain amount of laxity, provided
they did not go so far as to smoke openly. The boiler
room in the basement had thus become a haven for
smokers and was known as “the Twist Room.”
Even now, as the four of them puffed on their
cigarettes beneath the open sky without fear of being
observed, they sensed the lingering, secret pleasure
that went with smoking in the Twist Room. The smell
of coal dust that filled the boiler room, eyes flashing
white in the gloom as their classmates kept careful
watch, the deep, luxurious puffs of smoke, the
recurring restless glow of the red tips—these and
many other impressions now enriched the fine flavor
of their English cigarettes.
Kiyoaki turned away from the others, and as he
watched the smoke trailing away into the sky, he saw
how the cloud formations out over the ocean were
beginning to dissolve, their clear outlines now blurred
and tinged with a pale gold. At once he thought of
Satoko. Her image, her scent, were mingled with so
many things. There was no alteration of nature,
however slight, that did not bring her to mind. If the
breeze suddenly dropped and the warm atmosphere
of the summer evening pressed in on him, he felt
Satoko brush naked against his own nakedness.
Even the gradually deepening shadow cast on the
lawn by the dense green foliage of the silk tree held a
hint of her.
As for Honda, he could never be quite at ease
unless there were books within easy reach. Among
those now at hand was a book he had been lent in
secret by one of the student houseboys, a book
proscribed by the government. Entitled  Nationalism
and Authentic Socialism , it had been written by a
young man named Terujiro Kita, who at twenty-three
was looked upon as the Japanese Otto Weininger.
However, it was rather too colorful in its presentation
of an extremist position, and this aroused caution in
Honda’s calm and reasonable mind. It was not that he
had any particular dislike of radical political thought.
But never having been really angry himself, he tended
to view violent anger in others as some terrible,
infectious disease. To encounter it in their books was
intellectually stimulating, but this kind of pleasure gave
him a guilty conscience.
In order to be prepared for any further discussions
on reincarnation with the princes, he had stopped off
at his own home that morning after accompanying
Satoko back to Tokyo and had borrowed a book from
his father’s library,  A Summary of Buddhist Thought
by Tadanobu Saito. Here for the first time he was
treated to a fascinating account of the varied origins
of the doctrine of Karma, and he was reminded of the
Laws of Manu which had so absorbed him at the
beginning of the winter. But at that time his
examination ambitions had forced him to postpone a
more thorough study of Saito’s book.
This and several others were spread out on the
arms of his rattan chair. After dipping at random into
one or another of them, Honda looked up at last from
the one that was now open on his lap, his slightly
short-sighted eyes narrowed a little. He turned to look
at the sharp slope that marked the western border of
the garden. Though the sky was still bright, the slope
was in deep shadow, and the heavy growth of trees
and shrubbery on the ridge stood out blackly against
the white glare of the sky. However, the light was
breaking through here and there like silver thread
skillfully woven into an otherwise dark tapestry.
Behind the trees, the western sky was like a sheet of
isinglass. The bright summer day had been a gaudy
scroll which was tapering off into blankness.
The young men savored the delicious hint of guilt
that added spice to their cigarettes, as a swarm of
mosquitos towered up in one corner of the sunset
garden. They felt the golden heaviness that comes
from a day of swimming, their skin still warm from the
midday sun. . . . Though Honda sat there in silence, he
felt that the day would be counted as one of the
happiest of their youth.
The princes seemed to feel similarly content. They
were obviously pretending to take no notice of
Kiyoaki’s amorous pursuits. On the other hand,
Kiyoaki and Honda both chose to ignore the princes’
lighthearted forays among the fishermen’s daughters
along the beach, though Kiyoaki was careful to follow
them up with suitable sums of compensation to the
girls’ fathers. And so, under the protective eye of the
Great Buddha, whom the princes worshipped every
morning on top of the ridge, summer waned in
languorous beauty.
∗
Kridsada was the first to notice the servant who
came down onto the lawn from the terrace bearing a
letter on the gleaming silver tray that he doubtless
spent most of his free time polishing, lamenting the
while that he had so few occasions to use it at the
villa, compared with the house in Shibuya.
Kridsada jumped up to meet him and took the
letter. Then, when he saw that it was a personal letter
to Chao P. from his mother the Queen Dowager, he
walked over to where Chao P. was sitting and
presented it to him facetiously with a deferential
flourish.
Kiyoaki and Honda had, of course, noticed this
piece of by-play, but they restrained their curiosity and
sat waiting for the princes to come over to them in a
rush of nostalgic happiness. As Chao P. took the
thick letter from its envelope, they heard the crinkle of
paper, and white stationery flashed like the feathers of
an arrow winging through the darkness. Then
suddenly they were on their feet staring at Chao P.,
who had let out an agonized cry and collapsed in a
faint.
Kridsada stood looking down at his cousin with
astonishment on his face as Kiyoaki and Honda
rushed over to help. Then he bent over to pick up the
letter, which had fallen on the grass, and had just
started to read when he burst into tears, throwing
himself to the ground. The two young Japanese could
understand nothing of what Kridsada was sobbing to
himself in a rush of Siamese, and since the letter,
which Honda now picked up, was in the same
language, it furnished no clues either, apart from the
glittering golden seal of the royal family of Siam at the
top, with its intricate design of pagodas, fabulous
beasts, roses, swords, scepters and other devices
grouped around three white elephants.
Chao P. regained consciousness while he was
being carried back to his bedroom by servants, but he
was obviously still dazed. Kridsada trailed after him,
still moaning.
Though they were ignorant of the facts, it was
obvious to Kiyoaki and Honda that some terrible
news had arrived. Chao P. lay silent, his head on his
pillow and his eyes, as cloudy as two pearls, staring
up at the ceiling. The expression on his swarthy face
grew less and less discernible by the minute as the
room grew rapidly darker. After some time, it was
Kridsada who was finally able to explain in English.
“Princess Chan is dead. Chao P.’s love, my
sister. . . . If I had been told first, I could have watched
for a chance to tell him in a way that would spare him
such a shock, but I suppose his mother, the Queen
Dowager, was more afraid of upsetting me and so
wrote to Chao P. If so, she miscalculated. But then
she may have had a deeper concern . . . to strengthen
his courage by making him confront his sorrow head-
on.”
This was more judicious than anything they usually
heard from Kridsada. The princes’ violent grief, as
powerful as a tropical cloudburst, affected Kiyoaki
and Honda profoundly. But they sensed that after the
thunder, the lightning, and the rain, their grief would be
a wet and glistening jungle that would recover all the
more quickly and luxuriantly.
Dinner that evening was brought to the princes’
room, but they did not touch their food. Some time
later, however, Kridsada evidently recalled the duties
of politeness to one’s host, and called Kiyoaki and
Honda back to their room to translate the entire letter
into English.
Princess Chan had, in fact, fallen ill in the spring,
and though she was too sick to write, she had
pleaded with everyone not to tell her brother and
cousin. Her lovely white hand grew more and more
emaciated until she could no longer move it. It lay
there as cold and still as a single moonbeam coming
in through a window.
The English doctor in charge tried everything he
knew, but he could not prevent the relentless paralysis
of her whole body. Finally it became a great strain for
her even to speak. But in order perhaps to leave
Chao P. with the image of her in full health as she was
when they parted, she repeatedly insisted to everyone
that nothing should be said about her illness. It
reduced them to tears.
The Queen Dowager went to see her very often,
and she could never help crying when she saw the
young princess. When Her Majesty was informed of
Chan’s death, she restrained the others and said
immediately: “I myself will tell Pattanadid.”
“What I have to tell you is very sad,” the letter
began.
Please bear it as bravely as you can. Your
beloved Chantrapa has died. Later I will tell
you just how much her thoughts were of you
at the end. As your mother, what I most want
to convey to you right away is that you must
resign yourself to all this as the will of the
Lord Buddha. I pray that you will always be
mindful of your princely dignity and accept
this tragic news with good bearing. How well
I know what your feelings must be on
learning of this away in a foreign land, and
how I regret that I am not at your side to
comfort you as a mother should. But now
where Kridsada is concerned, please
behave as an elder brother and tell him of
his sister’s death with the deepest
solicitude. I have given you the tragic news
like this without warning only because I
believe that you have sufficient fortitude not
to give way to grief. And then do please take
consolation at least that the Princess had
thoughts for you alone until she breathed her
last. No doubt you regret not having been
there when she died, but you must make
every effort to appreciate how she felt in
wanting you to preserve forever in your heart
the image you had of her as a girl in the
bloom of youth . . .
Chao P. lay listening intently until Kridsada had
translated the very last word. Then he sat up in bed
and turned to Kiyoaki.
“I’m rather embarrassed,” he began. “I neglected
my mother’s admonition, and just collapsed. But do
please try to understand.
“What I’ve been struggling with these past few
hours is not the riddle of Princess Chan’s death. In the
period that began with her illness and lasted until her
death—no, that lasted in these twenty days since the
moment of her death—I have of course been in
constant anxiety. But even so, having no idea of the
truth, I lived calmly enough in a false world through all
that time. That’s the riddle.
“I clearly saw the bright sea and the shining beach
just as they were. Why wasn’t I able to see the subtle
change that had occurred deep in the substance of
the universe? The world was constantly and
imperceptibly changing, just like wine inside a bottle.
And I’m like a man who sees no farther than the dark
red liquid glowing warmly inside the glass. Why did it
never occur to me to taste it, if only once a day, and
try to gauge if some small change had taken place.
The soft morning breeze, the rustling trees, the flutter
of birds’ wings and the sound of their calls—all these
were constantly in my eyes and ears. But I merely took
them all to be an embodiment of the joy of being alive,
the beautiful essence of life itself. It never occurred to
me that under the surface something was changing
day by day. If I had stopped one morning to taste the
world and so discovered that it had subtly altered on
my tongue . . . oh, if only I had done that, then it
couldn’t have escaped me that this world had
suddenly become a world without Princess Chan.”
As he said this, his voice gradually became choked
and his words were muffled in tears.
Leaving him in Kridsada’s care, they returned to
their own room. They found, however, that they were in
no mood for sleep.
“The princes will want to go back to Siam as soon
as they can. Whatever the others may say, they
certainly won’t feel like going on studying here,”
Honda said as soon as the two of them were alone.
“Yes, I’m sure they’ll go home,” Kiyoaki answered
gloomily. The prince’s grief had evidently had a deep
effect on him, and he was sunk in a mood of vague
foreboding. “And after they’ve gone, you and I won’t
have any good reason to stay here just by ourselves,”
he went on, almost to himself. “Or perhaps Mother
and Father will be coming down, and then it’ll be a
matter of spending the summer with them. Whatever
happens, our happy summer is over.”
Although Honda was well aware that a man in love
has no room in his heart for anything but his feelings
and loses even his ability to sympathize with the
sorrows of others, he could imagine no heart more
naturally suited than Kiyoaki’s to be such a vessel of
pure passion, cold and tough as tempered glass.
∗
A week later, the two princes began their
homeward journey on an English ship, and Kiyoaki
and Honda went to Yokohama to see them off. Since
it was in the middle of the summer vacation, none of
the princes’ other classmates were on hand. In
deference to his close ties with Siam, however,
Prince Toin sent his steward to represent him.
Kiyoaki greeted the man coolly, exchanging no more
than a word or two.
As the huge cargo-passenger liner pulled away
from the pier, the trailing streamers parted and were
carried away by the wind. The two princes stood on
the fantail to one side of the Union Jack snapping in
the  breeze,  and  waved  their  handkerchiefs
unceasingly.
Long after the ship was far out into the channel and
all the other well-wishers had gone, Kiyoaki stayed
on, despite the torrid heat of the afternoon sun that
beat down on the pier, until Honda could not help
urging him to leave. Kiyoaki was not parting with the
two princes from Siam. He felt, rather, that it was his
youth, or the most glorious part of it, that was about to
vanish below the horizon.
36
W HEN AUTUMN CAME , classes
started once more, and meetings between Kiyoaki
and Satoko became more and more restricted.
Tadeshina had to take the most extreme precautions
to enable them to go walking together in the early
evening without being discovered.
They had to be careful to avoid even the
lamplighters who still made their rounds in that one
part of Toriizaka. With their tight-collared uniforms
they carried long poles which they thrust under the
protective mantle of each streetlight into the gas jet
below. By the time this hurried ceremony was
completed daily at dusk, the streets of the
neighborhood were emptied of passersby. It was
therefore a time when Kiyoaki and Satoko could walk
through the crooked back lanes in comparative
security. The chorus of insects grew louder at this
hour, but the lights in the windows were not unduly
bright. Many houses had no gates to separate them
from the street, and the two of them could even hear
the footsteps of a returning husband and then the
noise of a door being shut.
“Everything will be over in a month or two. The
Toinnomiyas will certainly not be willing to delay the
betrothal ceremony longer than that,” Satoko said
rather mildly, as if she were talking about someone
else. “Every night when I go to bed, I think: it will end
tomorrow,  something  irrevocable  will  happen
tomorrow. And then, strangely enough, I sleep
peacefully. That’s just what we’re doing now—
something that can’t be undone.”
“Well, suppose even after the engagement
ceremony . . .”
“Kiyo, what are you saying? If we increase our sins
any more than we have, your gentle spirit will be
crushed. Instead of thinking of things like that, I would
rather keep counting how many times I will still be able
to see you.”
“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you? In due
course, you’re going to forget everything, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Though I don’t yet know just how I’ll be able to
do it. The path we’re taking is not a road, Kiyo, it’s a
pier, and it ends someplace where the sea begins. It
can’t be helped.”
That was indeed the first time they had talked about
the end. And confronted by it, they felt no more
responsibility than a pair of children. They had no
plans in mind, nothing to fall back on, no solution, no
plan of action—and they felt that all this testified to the
purity of their intentions. Still, once they had
mentioned the final separation, the idea clung to their
minds like rust.
Had they embarked on all this without considering
the end? Or had they begun their affair precisely
because they had thought about its end? Kiyoaki did
not know. He thought that if the two of them were
suddenly charred to ashes by a bolt of lightning, well
and good. But what was he to do if no dreadful
punishment fell from the skies and things remained as
they were? It made him uneasy. “If that were the
case,” he wondered, “would I be able to go on loving
Satoko just as passionately as I do now?”
It was the first time that he had experienced an
anxiety of this sort. It made him take Satoko by the
hand. But when she linked her fingers with his in
response, he was irritated and tightened his grip with
almost paralyzing force. She did not let out the
smallest cry of pain. He maintained his hold with the
same force, and when the light of a stray beam from a
distant second-story window showed him a trace of
tears in her eyes, he felt a black satisfaction.
This, he knew, was further proof of the hidden,
savage essence of the elegance he had cultivated for
so long. Surely the simplest solution was for them to
die together, but he felt that something far more
agonizing was called for. The taboo that they were
violating even now with every fleeting moment of this
secret meeting, and that was growing more
formidable with each violation, fascinated Kiyoaki and
drove him on, like the peal of a distant, forever
unattainable golden bell. The more he sinned, the
more the sense of sin eluded him. And the end? How
could things end otherwise than in a gross deception,
he thought with a shudder.
“It seems that you don’t much enjoy walking with me
like this,” she said in her usual clear and untroubled
tones. “I am drinking in every passing moment of
happiness, but . . . you seem to have had enough of
it.”
“It’s just that I’ve come to love you too much. And
happiness is something I’ve left far behind me,” he
answered gravely. Even as he uttered this
rationalization, he realized that he need no longer
worry about any trace of childishness in the way he
spoke.
The lane they were in was now approaching
Roppongi and its clustered shops. A faded flag
bearing the character for ice hung in front of an ice
house with closed shutters, a forlorn sight on this
street echoing with the cries of insects. When they
had gone a little farther, they came to a window that
spilled light into their path. The shop belonged to a
dealer in musical instruments named Tabé, who,
according to his sign, was accredited to the band of
the Azabu Regiment. He was apparently working late
on some sort of urgent order.
They skirted the pool of light, but even so a dazzling
glare of brass from the window lit up the corners of
their eyes for a moment. A line of new bugles hung
there, and they flashed with a brilliance more suited to
a midsummer parade ground under the extravagance
of the lights above them. From inside the shop came
the sudden, melancholy note of a bugle, a single,
experimental blast that ceased as soon as it was
heard. It struck Kiyoaki’s ears like the prelude of
doom.
“Please turn back. There’ll be too many people up
ahead,” Tadeshina whispered to Kiyoaki. She had
slipped up close behind them unnoticed.
37
T HE T OINNOMIYAS made no
attempt to intrude on the course of Satoko’s life.
Prince Harunori was taken up with his military duties,
and no one else among those concerned troubled to
arrange a meeting between the Prince and Satoko,
nor did Prince Harunori himself give any sign that he
wanted one. All this, however, by no means implied
that the Toinnomiyas were treating her coolly. In terms
of the progression of such betrothals, everything was
going smoothly. Those around the Prince believed
that frequent meetings between the two young people
whose marriage was a foregone conclusion could
yield no profit and might well engender some mishap.
In  the  meantime,  there  were  those
accomplishments expected of a young lady who was
about to become a princess. Had she been the
daughter of a family whose quality might be even
slightly in question, she would have had to undergo a
varied course of training that conceded little to any
previous education. But the tradition of good breeding
maintained in Count Ayakura’s household was so
strong that a daughter of his could rise with ease to
the status of princess. Such elegance had become so
much a part of Satoko that she could, whenever she
wished, compose poems worthy of a princess, write
in a hand suitable for a princess, arrange flowers as
befitted a princess. There would have been no
obstacle to her becoming a princess at any time after
her twelfth birthday.
Count Ayakura and his wife, however, were both
concerned about three accomplishments that so far
had not been featured in her education. They were
therefore anxious that she should familiarize herself
with them as soon as possible. These were singing
nagauta and playing mahjong, of which Princess Toin
was so fond, and listening to European records, the
favorite diversion of Prince Harunori himself. After the
Count had explained the situation to him, Marquis
Matsugae immediately arranged to have a  nagauta
master come and give lessons to Satoko, and he also
had a German gramophone delivered to the
Ayakuras, together with all the available records.
Finding an instructor for something like mahjong,
however, presented him with a harder task. Though
he himself was an avid player of English-style
billiards, he was nevertheless scandalized that a
noble family of such exalted rank could take pleasure
in so plebeian a game as mahjong.
It so happened that the proprietress of the geisha
house in Yanagibashi and her oldest geisha were
both skilled mahjong players. And so the Marquis
arranged for them to pay frequent visits to the
Ayakura residence and make a foursome with
Tadeshina to introduce Satoko to the game. He
himself, of course, paid the extra fee for the trips they
made.
One would expect that this foursome, including two
professionals, would have brought an unaccustomed
touch of frivolity to the austere atmosphere of the
Ayakura household. Tadeshina, however, was
immovable in her opposition. She pretended that it
was an affront to her dignity, but she was in fact
terrified that the keen eyes of these two women of the
world would uncover Satoko’s secret. And even if this
did not happen, these mahjong games would
nevertheless offer the occasion for Marquis Matsugae
to plant paid spies in the Ayakura residence.
The proprietress and the old geisha lost no time in
interpreting Tadeshina’s unyielding arrogance as a
calculated insult, and their reaction took less than
three days to reach the ears of the Marquis. He bided
his time, and at the first favorable opportunity, gently
reproved Count Ayakura.
“Indeed it’s most admirable that a faithful old
servant of yours should value your family dignity so
highly, but surely in this case the whole object is to
cater to the pleasure of the Prince’s family, so some
degree of forbearance may be in order. And then
these Yanagibashi women look upon this as a
glorious opportunity to be of service, and so, busy as
they are, they’re willing to take the time to come.”
The Count conveyed all this to Tadeshina, putting
her in an extremely awkward position.
Satoko and the two women had in fact met before.
On the day of the cherry blossom garden party, the
proprietress had been in charge behind the scenes
and the old geisha had played the part of the haiku
master. When they had come for the first mahjong
session, the proprietress had delivered a speech of
congratulation to the Count and Countess on the
engagement and had also brought an extravagant
present:
“What a beautiful lady your daughter is! And as she
is possessed of the gracious dignity of a born
princess, how pleased you must be at this betrothal.
The memory of your permitting us to be associated
with it will remain with us forever, and we will pass it
on from generation to generation—in the utmost
secrecy of course.”
After this commendable expression of their
esteem,  however,  the  proprietress  and  her
companion had not been quite up to maintaining the
proper veneer when they retired to another room and
sat down at the mahjong table with Tadeshina and
Satoko. The eyes so overflowing with damp devotion
to Satoko would, from time to time, run dry, exposing
the shoals of criticism beneath. Tadeshina was
distastefully conscious of the same look turned upon
her and her old-fashioned silver obi clip. But still more
disturbing than that was an incident that occurred at
the very beginning.
“I wonder how Marquis Matsugae’s young son is?”
the old geisha remarked offhandedly as she shuffled
the mahjong tiles. “I don’t believe I ever saw a better-
looking young gentleman.”
Thereupon, with remarkable skill the proprietress
casually turned the conversation to other things. She
might have done this merely to chide her companion
for introducing an unsuitable topic, but the exchange
had set Tadeshina’s nerves on edge.
In accordance with her advice, Satoko tried to say
as little as possible. But overconcentration on
guarding her inner thoughts in front of these two
women, who were unsurpassed in their skill at
interpreting the subtleties of a woman’s outward
behavior, gave rise to another danger. If she showed
herself to be too subdued, this might start a
scandalous rumor that she seemed unhappy about
her coming marriage. To conceal her feelings was to
risk betrayal by her behavior, and to dissemble in her
behavior was to risk revealing her feelings.
As a result, Tadeshina was compelled to draw on
all of her considerable tactical ability to put an end
once and for all to the mahjong sessions.
“I’m simply astounded,” she said to the Count, “that
His Excellency Marquis Matsugae should deign to
accept the slanders of these two women at face
value. They say that I’m to blame for Miss Satoko’s
lack of enthusiasm. If they did not do so, her
indifference would otherwise be blamed on them. I’m
sure that was why they said I was haughty with them.
However much it conforms with the wishes of His
Excellency the Marquis, having women of that
profession coming and going here in the master’s
house is a disgrace. Furthermore, Miss Satoko has
already learned the rudiments of mahjong. And so if
she only plays after her marriage to be sociable, and
always loses, it will make her very appealing. I would
therefore be very opposed to any further lessons, and
if Marquis Matsugae will not desist, then I will request
that Tadeshina be dismissed from the master’s
service.”
Count Ayakura had little choice but to bow to an
ultimatum delivered with such force.
The moment she had learned from the steward
Yamada that Kiyoaki had lied about Satoko’s letter,
Tadeshina had found herself at a fork in the road. She
had the choice either of becoming Kiyoaki’s enemy or
of doing whatever he and Satoko wanted her to do, in
full awareness of the consequences. And she had
chosen the latter course.
Although her main motive in this was a genuine
affection for Satoko, she was at the same time afraid
that keeping the lovers apart could drive Satoko to
suicide. She had decided that the best course was to
guard their secret and let them do as they liked,
waiting until the affair ended of its own accord. And in
the meantime, she would exert herself to the utmost to
maintain secrecy.
She prided herself on knowing all there was to
know about the workings of passion. A firm advocate,
moreover, of the philosophy that what is unknown
does not exist, she did not think of herself as
betraying either her master the Count or the
Toinnomiyas or anyone at all. She was able to help
along this love affair and be the lovers’ ally, just as if
she were conducting an experiment in chemistry, and
at the same time she could deny its existence by
covering up any betraying details. She knew very well
that she had charted a dangerous course, but she
believed that she had been born into this world to fulfill
the role of savior of every critical situation. And she
could thus lay a wealth of obligations on others that
would eventually force them in turn to do exactly as
she wished.
She was intent on making the meetings as frequent
as possible to hasten the wane of their passion, but
she failed to perceive that her own passions had
become involved. This had nothing to do with revenge
on Kiyoaki for his cruel behavior. True enough, she
was waiting for the day when he would tell her that he
wanted to leave Satoko and would she please gently
read the funeral rites for him. And when that
happened, she would remind him forcefully of how
ardent his now cooled desires had once been. But
she already only half-believed in this dream. And if it
did come true, how agonizing for Satoko.
Why was it that this self-possessed old woman,
who should have followed her philosophy that nothing
in this world was safe by putting her own self-
preservation first, let it prompt her instead to throw
aside all thoughts of safety? How could she have
brought herself to use this very philosophy as a
pretext for adventure? In some unguarded moment,
she had, in fact, submitted to a joy that defied rational
analysis. To be the means of uniting two young
people of such beauty, to watch their hopeless love
burn more and more passionately—bit by bit she
gave way to an agony of delight that ignored every
single danger.
Thus possessed, she felt that there was something
so sacred about the physical union of two beautiful
young people that it could be judged only by
extraordinary criteria. The way their eyes flashed
when they met, the way they throbbed as they drew
close—this was a fire to warm Tadeshina’s frozen
heart. For her own sake, she wanted to keep its glow
from dying. Each time before they met, their cheeks
were pale and sunken with melancholy, but as soon
as they saw each other, their faces began to shine as
brightly as glossy heads of barley in a June field. For
Tadeshina that moment was a miracle, no less than
the lame walking or the blind restored to sight.
Her actual role, of course, was to protect Satoko
from all evil. But something that flamed like this was
not evil; something that was transformed into poetry
was not evil—surely this tenet subtly permeated the
ancient tradition of elegance in the Ayakura family?
And yet Tadeshina was waiting patiently for
something to happen. In some ways she was like a
woman who has let her pet bird fly free to forage and
now waits for a chance to recapture it and return it to
its cage, but there was something in that expectation
that reeked of blood and doom. Every day she
scrupulously applied the thick white makeup affected
by the court ladies of long ago. She hid the nests of
wrinkles under her eyes with white powder and those
around her lips with vivid Kyoto rouge. And while she
was doing this, she avoided studying her face in the
mirror, and stared somberly, questioningly, into space
instead. The brilliance of the high autumn sky seemed
to condense into clear, bright drops in her eyes, but in
their depths one could see a desperate thirst for the
future. Then, in order to give her makeup a final
inspection, she would pick up a pair of old-fashioned
spectacles, which she ordinarily avoided wearing,
and put them on, hooking the slender metal side
pieces over her ears. As she did so, their pointed
ends pricked her earlobes, white with makeup,
making them burn.
∗
At the beginning of October the Toinnomiyas sent
the prescribed notification that the betrothal ceremony
was to take place in December, and attached to this
was an informal listing of the presents: five rolls of
dress material, two barrels of refined saké, and one
carton of fresh sea bream. The last two items were, of
course, readily available, but as for the dress
material, Marquis Matsugae himself had undertaken
to arrange for that. He sent a long telegram to the Itsui
Corporation’s London office to have the finest English
cloth specially ordered and sent at once.
One morning when Tadeshina went to wake
Satoko, she noticed that her face was drained of
color when she roused her. Then Satoko pushed her
hand aside, got out of bed and rushed into the
hallway. She had barely reached the washroom
before she vomited, slightly soiling the sleeve of her
nightgown. Tadeshina helped her back into the
bedroom and made certain that the door was shut.
Some ten or more chickens were kept in the back
yard of the house, and their clucking and crowing
pierced the shoji screens as they began to lighten
each morning, announcing the beginning of a new day
to the Ayakura household. Nor did the chorus cease
once the sun was high. In the midst of this crowing,
Satoko laid her face back on her pillow and shut her
eyes.
“Please listen,” said Tadeshina, her mouth close to
Satoko’s ear. “It wouldn’t do to mention this to anyone.
Please don’t give your nightgown to the maid to wash
under any circumstances. I’ll take care of it myself, so
that nobody will know. And from now on, I’ll make all
the arrangements for your food. I’ll see to it that you
eat only what agrees with you so that your maid won’t
suspect a thing. What I’m telling you is only for your
own good. So it will be best to do exactly as I say.”
Satoko agreed uncertainly as a single tear rolled
down her lovely face.
Tadeshina was filled with delight. First of all, she
was the only one to have received this initial sign. And
then, the moment it occurred, something had dawned
on her: this was just what she had been waiting for.
Now Satoko was in her hands!
All things considered, Tadeshina was far more at
home in the area of life represented by Satoko’s
present condition than in the realm of passion. Just as
she had been prompt to notice and advise Satoko
years before when she began to menstruate, so now
she showed herself a practiced specialist in all things
physical. By contrast, Countess Ayakura, who
maintained only a nodding acquaintance with the
everyday, learned that her daughter had begun to
menstruate a full two years later, and only then from
Tadeshina.
Tadeshina, who had never failed to note Satoko’s
every physical sign, intensified her vigilance after that
first morning sickness. And once she recognized the
signs one by one—the way Satoko put on her
makeup, the way she frowned as though anticipating
another bout of nausea from a distance, her
capricious appetite, the vague heaviness in her
movements—she unhesitatingly made her decision.
“It’s not healthy to stay indoors all the time like this.
Let’s go for a walk,” she said to Satoko.
This was usually the hint that a meeting with Kiyoaki
had been arranged, but since the sun was still high in
the sky, Satoko was somewhat puzzled and looked
up questioningly. Tadeshina’s customary expression
was gone, replaced by a look of stern aloofness. She
was well aware that she held a matter of honor in her
hands that was of national concern.
As they went out through the rear yard, Countess
Ayakura was standing there, her arms clasped to her
breast, watching one of the maids feeding the
chickens. The bright autumn sun picked out the shiny
feathers of the clustering birds and struck the wash
hanging out to dry, turning it into a pageant of
whiteness. As Satoko walked along, trusting
Tadeshina to clear a path through the chickens, she
nodded politely to her mother. She noticed the
strutting legs thrusting out so abruptly from their
feathers, and for the first time in her life she thought of
these creatures as being hostile—a natural enmity
born of the antagonism of species. It was a dire
feeling. A few loose, white feathers floated toward the
ground. Tadeshina greeted Satoko’s mother.
“I’m just taking Miss Satoko for a little walk.”
“A walk? Well, thank you for your trouble,” the
Countess answered. But since her daughter’s
wedding was drawing closer by the day, she seemed,
naturally enough, to be feeling rather nervous. On the
other hand, she was becoming more and more polite
and reserved toward her daughter. As was customary
in the families of court nobles, she never uttered a
single word of criticism to her, as she was already like
a member of the Imperial Family.
∗
The two of them walked through the streets of
Ryudo until they came to a small shrine surrounded by
a granite wall and dedicated to the Sun Goddess.
They entered its narrow precincts, deserted now that
the autumn festivals were over, and after bowing
before the inner shrine draped with purple curtains,
Tadeshina led the way to the rear of the little pavilion
used for sacred dances.
“Is Kiyo coming here?” Satoko asked hesitantly.
For some reason, she found herself intimidated by
Tadeshina’s manner today.
“No, he won’t be coming. Today there’s something
I’d like to ask you, Miss Satoko, and that’s why we’ve
come here. We needn’t worry that anyone will
overhear us.”
Three or four huge rocks had been placed to one
side of the pavilion for the convenience of anyone who
might want to sit down and watch the ritual dances.
Tadeshina now took off her  haori , folded it, and
placed it on the moss-covered surface of one of them.
“Here, now you won’t catch a chill,” she said, as
Satoko sat down.
“Well now, young mistress,” she said formally, “I
know that I have no need to remind you now, but you
are, of course, well aware that loyalty to the Emperor
must take absolute precedence. It’s a foolish kind of
sermon for someone like Tadeshina to make to Miss
Satoko Ayakura, whose family has been blessed
down the centuries with the imperial favor for twenty-
seven generations. But even leaving all that aside,
once a marriage is proposed and ratified by imperial
sanction, there is no question of having second
thoughts. And to spurn it is to spurn the beneficence
of His Imperial Majesty. In all the world, there is no sin
more terrible than this.”
Tadeshina went on to a detailed explanation.
Despite what she had to say, she was by no means
blaming her for anything that had already occurred.
For she herself had been equally guilty. Furthermore,
whatever escaped the notice of the public need not
be agonized over and considered as a sin. However,
she insisted, there had to be a limit somewhere, and
now that Satoko had become pregnant, the time had
come to put an end to it. She had been a silent
observer up to now, but with matters in their present
state, she felt that it would not do to let things slide
and permit this love affair to go on and on. So now
was the time to muster her determination. She had to
make it clear to Kiyoaki that they must part. And she
was to do everything according to Tadeshina’s
instructions. And thus, making each of her points in
their proper sequence, and deliberately excluding
every emotional consideration, she said what she had
to say.
Thinking that this was enough to convince Satoko
and that she would obey, Tadeshina cut short her
lecture and, with a neatly folded handkerchief, dabbed
lightly at the sweat that had gathered on her brow.
Rational as her argument had been, she had
spoken with a sadly sympathetic expression and a
hint of tears in her voice. This girl was dearer to her
than a daughter, but she was aware that her sorrow
was not genuine. She was conscious of a barrier
between her sorrow and her love. Since her affection
for Satoko was so great, she hoped that the girl would
share the unfathomable and frightening joy that lurked
in her own terrible resolve. To wash oneself clean of
one sin that was so permeated with sacrilege, one
must commit another. In the end, the two would cancel
each other out, as if neither had ever existed. One
must merge one form of darkness with another, and
then wait for the darkness to be tinged with the
rosiness of the fateful dawn to come. And above all,
maintain secrecy.
Since Satoko was still silent, Tadeshina began to
feel uneasy and asked: “You’ll do everything just as I
say, won’t you? How do you feel about it?”
Satoko’s expression was blank. She gave no sign
that Tadeshina’s words had startled her. The truth was
that her stilted remarks had held no meaning for her
whatsoever.
“But what am I to do?” she replied. “You must be
specific.”
Tadeshina looked around her before replying,
satisfying herself that the faint sound of the gong that
hung before the shrine had been caused by a gust of
wind and not by a chance worshipper. The halfhearted
chirping of a cricket came from beneath the wooden
floor of the pavilion.
“You must get rid of the baby—as soon as
possible.”
Satoko caught her breath.
“What do you mean? They’ll send me to prison.”
“Don’t talk like that. Please leave it to me. Even
supposing that it did somehow leak out, it would be
impossible for the police to punish either you or me.
Your wedding has already been arranged. Once the
betrothal gift is presented in December, things will be
all the safer. Because in matters like this, the police
understand. However, Miss Satoko, this is what I want
you to realize: if you dillydally and everyone can see
that you’re pregnant, of course His Imperial Highness
and the rest of the world as well would never be able
to forgive you. The engagement would be broken off
without delay, His Excellency your father would have
to hide himself from the eyes of the world, and Master
Kiyoaki would also be in a terrible situation. To put it
frankly, his future hopes as well as those of the
Matsugae family would be so threatened that there
would be no course for them but to pretend that he
was in no way involved. And so everything would then
be lost where you are concerned. Would you want that
to happen? There’s only one thing you can do now.”
“If it did come out somehow, even supposing that
the police said nothing, the Toinnomiyas might still
hear something about it. Then how would I be able to
show myself at the wedding? And afterwards, how
would I dare go on serving the Prince? Tell me that?”
“There is absolutely no need to get upset over
what’s only a rumor. As for what the Toinnomiyas
think, that will depend entirely on you. So if you
behave at all times like a chaste and beautiful
princess, that’s what they’ll take you for. The rumors
and the rest—they’ll be forgotten in no time.”
“Then you can assure me that there’s no chance I’ll
be punished, that I’d go to prison?”
“Let me try to explain it this way, so that you will
understand. First of all, the police have the greatest
reverence for the nobility. And so there is not the
slightest possibility of their allowing something like
this to become public. If you’re still worried, we could
always ask Marquis Matsugae for his kind
assistance. His Excellency has a great deal of
influence and he can accomplish anything. After all, it
would be to cover up for the young master.”
Satoko cried out sharply: “No! You’re not to do that.
That’s something I shall not allow. You’re not under
any circumstances to ask either the Marquis or Kiyo
for help. I’d be completely disgraced if you did.”
“Well . . . I only mentioned it as a mere possibility.
But secondly, even in strictly legal terms, I am
determined to shield you. We would make it a matter
of you having done as I said without any idea of what
scheme I had in mind, of breathing in the anesthetie
without realizing what it was, and so becoming
helpless. And if we did that, no matter how public a
matter it became, it would end with me bearing the
punishment.”
“So you say that whatever happens, then, I shan’t
go to prison?”
“You can rest assured about that.”
However, her reply brought no look of relief to
Satoko’s face. “I want to go to prison,” she said.
Tadeshina’s tenseness dissolved as she burst out
laughing.
“You sound like a little girl. Why do you say that?”
“I wonder how women prisoners have to dress.
What would Kiyo do if he saw me like that . . . would
he still love me or not? I’d like to know.”
As she made this absurd remark, her eyes, far from
being filled with tears, flashed with such fierce
satisfaction that Tadeshina shivered.
However great the difference in status between
these two women, there was no denying that they
shared the same strength and courage. Whether for
deception or for truth’s sake, there could never be a
more severe demand on their joint bravery than now.
Tadeshina felt that she and Satoko were matched
like a boat advancing against the current and the
current itself, so well matched that the boat was held
immobile for a time, bound together with it from
moment to moment in impatient intimacy. At this
instant, moreover, the two of them felt the same joy. It
had the sound of the beating wings of a flock of birds
fleeing overhead before an approaching storm. Their
violent emotion, though it had something of sorrow, of
fear, of anxiety, was different from all of these and
could be called by no other name than joy.
“Well, at any rate, you’ll do as I say, won’t you?”
Tadeshina asked, watching Satoko’s pale cheeks
flush under the autumn sun.
“I want you to say nothing at all about this to Kiyo,”
Satoko replied. “About my condition, I mean. Whether
or not I do just as you say, don’t worry. Without
bringing anyone else into it, I’ll talk everything over
with you, and eventually I’ll decide what’s best.”
Her words already held the dignity of a princess.
38
K IYOAKI WAS HAVING DINNER
with his father and mother in early October when he
learned that the betrothal ceremony would at last take
place in December. His parents displayed the
keenest interest in the etiquette for this occasion and
vied with each other to show how much they knew
about ancient court rites and observances.
“Count Ayakura will have to prepare a chamber of
state for the Prince’s steward when he comes,” his
mother remarked. “Which room do you suppose it will
be?”
“Well, since everyone will stand for the ceremony, a
grand Western-style room would be nice, if they had
one. As it is, they’ll have to spread cloth on the floor of
the drawing room and in the corridor leading to it from
the entrance, to receive the steward. He will come in a
carriage with two attendants, and Ayakura will have to
be ready with the letter of acceptance, written on fine,
thick crepe paper, in an envelope of the same paper
and tied with two ropes of twisted paper knotted
together. The steward will be dressed in ceremonial
robes and so when Ayakura makes the acceptance
speech, he too will have to wear the uniform of a
count. But he’s an expert on all these little details and
there’s no need for me to say anything. Only when
money becomes a problem, that’s when I can be of
help.”
Kiyoaki was deeply shaken, and spent a restless
night. He imagined that he could hear the dull clank of
chains dragging across the floor, coming closer and
closer to imprison his love. Now he felt none of the
exhilarating energy that had fired him when the
imperial sanction was granted. What had so aroused
him then, the idea of utter impossibility, had appeared
to him like an exquisite piece of white porcelain. But
now it was covered with a network of hair-fine cracks.
And so in place of the wild joy that had flowed from his
sense of resolution at that time, he now felt the
sadness of a man who watches the dying of a
season.
Had he given up, then, he asked himself. No, he
had not. But nevertheless he felt that while the force of
the imperial sanction had served to throw him and
Satoko wildly into each other’s arms, this official
announcement of the betrothal ceremony had the
power to tear them apart, despite the fact that it was
no more than the extension of the first. Dealing with
the other had been extremely simple: he had had to
do no more than follow his desires. But how was he to
cope with this new force? He had no idea.
The next day, using his customary method of
contacting Tadeshina, he phoned the owner of the
officers’ boarding house and told him to tell
Tadeshina that he wanted to see Satoko as soon as
possible. Since he could not expect any answer
before evening, he dutifully went to school, but the
lectures he heard that day made no impression on
him. After classes were over and he was able to
phone the inn from a place close to the school, the
innkeeper conveyed Tadeshina’s answer. The
situation being what it was, Kiyoaki must surely
realize that for the present there seemed to be no
possibility of arranging a meeting for at least ten
days. As soon as an opportunity arose, however,
Tadeshina would inform him at once. And so would he
please wait until then?
Those ten days were spent in an agony of
impatience. He felt that he was now suffering for his
behavior in the past, especially for the time when he
had showed such coldness to Satoko.
Autumn became more and more evident. It was still
a little early for the maples to have reached their full
color, though the leaves of the cherry trees had
already turned a smoldering scarlet and begun to fall.
He was in no mood to seek out the company of
friends, but to spend the days alone was trying.
Sundays were especially difficult, the thought, as he
stood looking out over the pond, whose surface
reflected the moving clouds. Then he gazed blankly
toward the distant waterfall and wondered why the
water that flowed unceasingly down its nine levels
never ran dry. How strange that this smooth continuity
should never be broken! He felt it to be like an image
of his emotions.
He was oppressed by a mood of empty frustration
that made him feel both feverish and chilled. It was as
though he were afflicted with a disease that turned his
movements sluggish and heavy, but nevertheless
made him feel restless. He roamed alone through the
huge family estate, and turned onto the path that led
through the grove of Japanese cypresses to the back
of the house. He passed by the old gardener hard at
work digging up wild potatoes with yellowed leaves.
Blue sky was showing through the cypress
branches, and a drop of yesterday’s rain fell from
them to strike his forehead. He suddenly felt that he
had received a message of devastating clarity, as if
this raindrop were gouging a furrow down his brow. It
rescued him from the anxiety he thought he had left
behind him, forgotten. He was only waiting, and
nothing was happening. It seemed as if he were
standing at a crossroads, where his doubts and
misgivings were parading to the hollow beat of a
multitude of footsteps. He was so tense that he
became oblivious to even his own beauty.
The ten days passed. Tadeshina kept her promise.
But the meeting was hedged about with so many
restrictions that it tore his heart.
Satoko was going to the Mitsukoshi department
store to order new kimonos for the wedding. Her
mother was to have gone with her, but since she was
in bed with a slight cold, Tadeshina would accompany
her alone. They were to meet at the store, but not
under the eyes of the salesclerks, which wouldn’t do.
So Kiyoaki was to be waiting at the entrance
decorated with the lion’s statue at three o’clock. When
Satoko and Tadeshina came out, he was to pretend
to ignore them, but follow them at a distance. Finally,
when they had entered a small bean-soup restaurant
nearby, where they were unlikely to be seen, he could
follow and speak to her for a short time. In the
meantime, their rickshaw man, waiting at the front
entrance of Mitsukoshi’s, would think they were still
inside.
He left school early, and at three o’clock he was
waiting in the crowd of shoppers at the entrance of
Mitsukoshi’s, wearing a raincoat over his uniform so
that it concealed even his collar insignia. He had put
his cap inside his bag. Satoko came out, cast an
unhappy but burning glance at him, and walked down
the street with Tadeshina. Doing as he was directed,
he followed and sat down with them in a corner of the
almost deserted restaurant.
Satoko and Tadeshina seemed to be somewhat
vexed with one another. He noticed that Satoko’s
makeup was not as becoming as usual, and he
realized that she was using it to make herself look
healthy at all costs. Her voice, moreover, sounded
dulled, and her hair had lost its luster. He felt that he
was looking at a fine painting whose colors, once
brilliant, were fading horribly before his very eyes.
What he had spent ten days praying to see in an
agony of expectation had undergone a subtle change.
“Can we meet tonight?” he asked impetuously, but
even as he did so, he sensed that the answer would
be no.
“Please don’t be so unreasonable.”
“Why am I being unreasonable?”
His words were aggressive enough, but his heart
was empty. Her head was drooping and her eyes
were now filled with tears. Tadeshina, fearful that the
other customers would notice, took out a white
handkerchief and shook Satoko by the shoulder. Her
gesture struck Kiyoaki as harsh, and he glared at her
angrily.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she retorted,
her words full of rudeness. “Don’t you realize, young
master, that I’ve been driving myself frantic for you
and Miss Satoko? And not just you, young master—
Miss Satoko, you don’t understand what I’ve been
through either. It would be better if old people like me
had already departed this earth.”
A waiter had placed three bowls of red bean soup
on the table in front of them, but nobody touched them.
A bit of hot bean paste clung to the edge of the small
lacquer cover on one of them like a daub of slowly
hardening mud.
Their time together was short. The two parted with
no more than a vague promise to meet again in ten
days.
That night his agony of mind raged unchecked. He
wondered if Satoko would ever agree to meet him at
night again, and felt rejected by the whole world. Now
that he was plunged in despair, he could no longer
doubt his love for her.
When he had seen her tears today, he saw that she
belonged to him wholeheartedly. But at the same time
he understood that a mere rapport no longer had the
strength to sustain them.
What he was experiencing now was genuine
emotion. When he compared this to the various
sentiments of love that had once occupied his
imagination, he knew that this was something crude
and blunt, violent and sinister, an emotion that was
altogether far removed from elegance. It was hardly
the stuff that poems are made of. For the first time in
his life, he accepted raw ugliness as indeed being
part of him.
After a sleepless night, he went to school next day
with his face pale and haggard. Honda noticed this at
once and questioned him; his eyes filled with tears in
response to his friend’s shy kind-heartedness.
“This is what’s the matter: Satoko’s not going to
sleep with me any more, I think.”
Honda’s face flushed with virginal consternation.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s because the betrothal ceremony’s finally been
arranged for December.”
“And so she feels she can no longer . . . ?”
“That seems to be it precisely.”
Honda could think of nothing to say to console his
friend. This was a situation outside his range of
experience, and he was saddened to think that he
had nothing to offer but his usual generalizations.
Even if it were futile, he would have to climb to a
vantage point in place of his friend, survey the lay of
the land, and then offer a psychological analysis.
“That time when she was with you at Kamakura,
didn’t you say that you happened to get a feeling that
you might tire of her someday?”
“But that was only for an instant.”
“Perhaps she’s only putting you off like this
because she wants you to love her more fiercely and
more deeply.”
For once, however, Honda had miscalculated in
attempting to make use of Kiyoaki’s delusions of
vanity as a means to console him. For he had not the
slightest interest in his own attractiveness any more,
nor even in Satoko’s love for him.
He was only concerned with when and where the
two of them could meet without anxiety, as freely as
they liked, regardless of anyone else. And he feared
that by now it could only happen in some place
beyond this world, and only when this world had been
destroyed. The vital issue was not feeling but
circumstance. In his weary, desperate, bloodshot
eyes there was a vision of a world thrown into chaos
for their sake.
“If only there were a great earthquake! If so, then I
could rescue her. Or a major war would do just as
well. If it broke out, what couldn’t I do then! . . . But no,
what I’m after is something that will shake the whole
country to its foundations.”
“And who is going to bring about this great event of
yours?” asked Honda, looking at this elegant young
man with pity in his eyes. He knew that irony and a
touch of scorn were now the best means of
strengthening his friend. “Why don’t you give it a try
yourself?”
Kiyoaki made no attempt to hide his distress. A
young man obsessed with love had no time for such
things. But there was more than that in his expression.
Honda felt a shiver of fascination when he saw the
destructive gleam momentarily kindled in Kiyoaki’s
eyes by his taunt.
It was as if a pack of wolves went raging through
the darkness of a sacred precinct. The malevolence
fell short of realization: it escaped the notice of
Kiyoaki himself: it was born and died in his eyes—but
for an instant they flashed with the image of a savage
destroyer.
“How am I going to break out?” Kiyoaki muttered as
if to himself. “Would power do it? Or money?”
Honda thought it more than a little ridiculous for the
son of Marquis Matsugae to be talking in these terms.
“Well, as far as power goes, what are your
prospects?” he asked coldly.
“I’ll do everything I can to acquire some. But still,
that takes time.”
“There has never been the slightest chance that
either power or money would be of any use. You’re
not forgetting, are you? From the very beginning
you’ve been bewitched by  impossibility —something
which is outside the scope of authority and money.
You were drawn in precisely because the whole thing
was impossible. Am I wrong? And if it were to
become possible now, would it have any value for
you?”
“But it did once become possible.”
“You saw an illusion of possibility. You saw the
rainbow. What else do you want now?”
“What else . . . ?”
Kiyoaki faltered and his words came to a stop.
Beyond this interruption spread a vast great void,
unfathomable to Honda. He shuddered.
“These words we exchange,” he thought, “they’re
like a mass of building blocks lying scattered over a
construction site in the dead of the night. With the
immense, starry sky spread out about them and its
awful pressure of silence, what else can they do but
be mute?”
The two of them were talking at the end of the first
period of the school day as they walked along the
path that led through the grove surrounding Chiarai
Pond. Since the second period was almost upon
them, they now turned and retraced their steps. A vast
variety of objects had come to rest on the path
underfoot as it wound its way through the autumn
woods—tangled heaps of wet, brown leaves, their
skeletons conspicuous, acorns, green chestnuts, split
open and rotting, cigarette butts. Then in the midst of
all this, Honda saw something that made him stop
and stare at the ground. It was a whitish, crumpled
lump of fur, sickly white. By the time he had
recognized it as the body of a young mole, Kiyoaki
had also stopped and squatted down to study it in
silence as it lay in the sunlight filtering down through
the branches overhead. The dead animal was lying on
its back, and the whiteness that had caught Honda’s
attention was the fur of its belly. The rest of its body
was a sleek, velvet black. Mud was worked into the
lines of its tiny, intricately formed white paws, proof of
strenuous digging. As it was lying on its back, they
could see its pointed beaklike mouth. Its death rictus
revealed the soft, pink interior of its mouth behind the
two delicate incisors.
At the same moment the two young men thought of
the black dog whose dead body had hung over the
edge of the waterfall on the Matsugae estate until sent
on its way with altogether unexpected funereal
solemnity.
Kiyoaki picked the young mole up by its almost
hairless tail and laid it gently in his palm. It was
already rather shriveled, and so there was nothing
distasteful about it. What was disturbing, however,
was that this wretched little animal was condemned to
labor blindly and without purpose. The very care and
delicacy that had gone into the shaping of its tiny
paws were odious.
Kiyoaki took the animal by the tail again as he
stood up. At this point the path passed close to the
pond, and he casually turned and threw the animal
into the water.
“Why did you do that?” demanded Honda, frowning
at his friend’s offhandedness. This rough behavior,
typical of a student, allowed him to read at a glance
the depth of his friend’s desolation.
39
S EVEN DAYS PASSED , then
eight, but there was still no word from Tadeshina.
After ten days Kiyoaki telephoned the innkeeper in
Roppongi and was told that Tadeshina was
apparently ill and confined to her bed. More days went
by. Then when the innkeeper told him that she was still
ill, his suspicions were aroused.
Hounded by wild desperation, he went to Azabu
alone one night and walked aimlessly around the
streets near the Ayakura mansion. When he passed
underneath the light of the gas lamps in Toriizaka, he
stretched out his hands. He was shaken to see how
pale their backs looked, for he remembered once
hearing that invalids near to death look at their hands
constantly.
The gate in front of the Ayakura mansion was shut
fast. The faint light above it was scarcely enough to
read even the lettering of the weather-beaten
nameplate that loomed up out of the darkness. This
house was always poorly lit. He knew that there would
be no chance of seeing a light in Satoko’s room from
the street.
He looked at the latticed windows of the empty
lodges that flanked the gate. He remembered how he
and Satoko had stolen in there as children, and
become frightened by the gloom and smell of mold in
the deserted rooms. Yearning for the sunlight outside,
they had rushed to the windows and grasped the
wooden latticework covered with dust. The same
layer of dust was still there. The leaves of the trees
around the house opposite had been so lush and
green that it must have happened in May. Close-
worked as the lattice was, it had not shut out this
greenery, perhaps because the two young faces
peering through it were so small. Just then, a man
selling seedlings had gone by, and the two of them,
giggling to themselves, had mimicked him as he cried
“Morning glories, eggplants,” comically dragging out
the syllables.
He had learned much in this house. The smell of ink
used in calligraphy invariably had melancholy
associations for him. Melancholy, in fact, was
inseparably bound up with the elegance that had
become part of him. All of the beautiful things that the
Count had shown him—sutras copied in gold on
purple scrolls, screens with the autumn flower design
favored in the imperial palaces in Kyoto—must have
emitted a bright ray of carnal desire, he now realized,
but in the Ayakura mansion the smell of ink and mold
had lain heavy on everything. But now, within these
walls that shut him out tonight, that elegance and
seductive brilliance had come to life again after the
lapse of many years. And he was completely cut off
from it.
A faint light went out on the second floor of the
house, which was fairly visible from the street.
Perhaps Count and Countess Ayakura had gone to
sleep. The Count had always gone to bed early.
Maybe Satoko was still lying awake. But her light
could not be seen. He walked along the wall until he
came to the rear gate. There, without thinking, he
stretched out his hand to push the cracked and
yellowed doorbell, but then drew back.
Stricken with shame at his cowardice, he turned
and went home.
More days passed, a terrible period of dead calm.
Then still more days. He went to school, but only as a
means of somehow getting through each day. When
he came home, he gave no thought to his studies.
All around him at school were constant reminders
that many of his classmates, Honda among them,
were totally absorbed in preparations for the next
spring’s university entrance examination. It was no
more difficult to recognize the behavior of those who
were planning to take the easier route of entering
schools that did not have entrance requirements.
These students were zealously pursuing their favorite
sports. Since he had nothing in common with either
camp, Kiyoaki became more and more lonely. If
someone spoke to him, he often did not answer, and
so his classmates began to be rather unfriendly.
One day when he returned from school, he found
Yamada the steward waiting for him at the
entranceway.
“His Excellency came home early today, and he
expressed a desire to play billiards with the young
master. He now awaits him in the billiard room,”
Yamada announced.
Kiyoaki felt his heart beat faster as he heard this
altogether extraordinary summons. True, the Marquis
did sometimes feel the whim to have Kiyoaki’s
partnership in a game of billiards, but this was
customarily restricted to the mellow period after
dinner when the Marquis still savored the effects of
the wine he had been drinking.
If his father were seized by such a mood while it
was still no more than mid-afternoon, he must, Kiyoaki
thought, be either in exceptionally good or
exceptionally bad spirits.
He hardly ever entered the billiard room during the
day. He pushed open the heavy door and walked in.
The sun was shining in through the west windows, its
rays slightly distorted by the glass. When he saw how
the oak paneling gleamed in the sunlight, he had the
feeling that he had entered this room for the first time.
The Marquis, cue in hand and face pressed close
to the baize, was in the act of taking aim at a white
ball. The fingers of his left hand, cradling the tip of his
cue, made Kiyoaki think of the bridge under a koto
string.
“Shut the door,” said the Marquis to Kiyoaki, who
had stopped just inside the half-opened door, still in
his school uniform. His father’s features were tinged
by reflections from the green surface of the billiard
table so close to his face, so Kiyoaki found it difficult
to gauge his expression.
“Read that. It’s Tadeshina’s farewell,” said the
Marquis, straightening up at last and using the tip of
his cue to indicate an envelope that was lying on a
small table by the window.
“Is she dead?” asked Kiyoaki, feeling his hand
shake as he picked up the envelope.
“No, she’s not dead. She’s recovering. She’s not
dead—which makes the whole thing that much more
disgraceful.” As he answered, the Marquis appeared
to be making an effort not to march over to where his
son was standing.
Kiyoaki hesitated.
“Hurry up and read it!” For the first time, there was a
cutting edge to the Marquis’s voice.
He unrolled the long sheet of paper on which
Tadeshina had written what was intended as her
deathbed testimony, and began to read, still standing
in front of the window.
When the time comes for Your Excellency
to deign to take forbearing note of this letter,
I would beg you to think of Tadeshina who
writes it as one who has already departed
this world. But before I cut the slender thread
that binds this wretched creature to life—the
just reward for what I contritely acknowledge
to be my heinous and sinful deeds—I am
writing this in anxious haste both to confess
the gravity of my sins and to offer a dying
plea to Your Excellency.
The truth of the matter is that it has
recently become evident that, due to
Tadeshina’s negligence in her entrusted
duties, Miss Satoko Ayakura is pregnant.
Being overcome with dread when I learned
of this, I endeavored to persuade her that
something must be done about her condition
at once, but try as I might, my words were of
no avail. Realizing that the matter would
become more crucial as time went by, I went
to Count Ayakura on my own initiative and
told him everything in full detail. But my
master did no more than say ‘What am I to
do? What am I to do?’ and he did not deign
to give the least indication of his intention to
take definite action. Finally, knowing full well
that it would become more difficult to settle
this matter as each month passed, and that
it might become a grave affair of state, it
became clear that Tadeshina, whose
disloyalty was the source of all this
tribulation, now had no other course open to
her but to sacrifice herself and to cast
herself in supplication at the feet of Your
Excellency.
I fear that this will anger Your Excellency,
but since this matter of Miss Ayakura’s
pregnancy may be something that could be
termed ‘within the family’ please, please, I
beg of Your Excellency that you bring to it
your gracious wisdom and discretion.
Please have pity on an old woman hurrying
toward death, and deign to intercede in this
matter of my mistress. This I beg of you from
the shadow of the grave.
Humbly yours.
When he had finished reading the letter, Kiyoaki
suppressed the momentary rush of cowardly relief that
he had not been named in it, and hoped that his look
would not express a dishonest denial to his father.
Nevertheless, he noticed that his lips were dry and his
temples were throbbing feverishly.
“Did you read it?” asked the Marquis. “Did you read
the part that says she requests my gracious wisdom
and discretion because this is a matter ‘within the
family’? No matter how close we’ve been to the
Ayakuras, one would hardly describe anything
between us as a ‘family matter.’ But Tadeshina dared
to put that on paper. If you can possibly make a case
for yourself, go ahead and make it. Say it right here
before the portrait of your grandfather! If I happen to
be wrong, I’ll apologize. As your father, I have every
reason in the world not to want to make such
conjectures. Beyond any doubt it’s a detestable thing,
a detestable conjecture.”
His frivolous hedonist of a father had never been
capable of inspiring such awe in Kiyoaki before. Nor
had he ever seemed possessed of such dignity.
Irritably striking the palm of one hand with his billiard
cue, the Marquis stood flanked by the portrait of his
father and the painting of the Battle of Tsushima. This
huge oil painting, which showed the vanguard of the
Japanese fleet deploying before the Russians in the
Sea of Japan, was more than half taken up with the
massive, dark green billows of the ocean. Kiyoaki
was accustomed to seeing it only at night, and the
meager  lamplight  had  prevented  him  from
appreciating the fine detail of the waves, which
merged at night into the dark irregular shadows that
covered the wall. But now in daytime, he saw how the
somber blue of the waves towered up in the
foreground with ponderous force, while in the distance
a lighter green blended in to brighten the dark water,
and here and there foaming white crests topped the
waves. And then the trailing wakes of the
maneuvering squadron spread out with smooth
uniformity over the surface of this turbulent northern
sea with terrible impact. The line of the Japanese
main fleet heading farther out to sea was painted
horizontally on the canvas, with its plumes of smoke
drifting to the right against a sky whose chilly blue
contained a touch of pale green as befitted a northern
May.
In contrast, the portrait of Kiyoaki’s grandfather in
ceremonial robes was imbued with a human warmth,
despite his evident sternness. Even now he did not
seem to be chiding Kiyoaki, but rather admonishing
him with both dignity and affection. He felt that he
could confess anything at all to this portrait of his
ancestor. Here in front of his grandfather—the face
with the heavy eyelids, the cheeks with their warts, the
thick lower lip—he had the exultant feeling that his
indecisiveness was being cured, if only temporarily.
“There’s nothing for me to say. It is as you
suppose,” he said, speaking the words without even
dropping his eyes. “It’s my child.”
Despite the Marquis’s threatening pose, his actual
mood on finding himself caught up in such a situation
was one of desperate confusion. Handling such things
had never been his strong point. So now, although the
stage was set for him to proceed to a stinging rebuke,
he instead began to mutter to himself.
“Once wasn’t enough for old Tadeshina,” he
muttered. “She had to have a second little secret for
me. Well and good the first time—nothing but a
naughty houseboy. But this time it had to do with no
less than the son of a marquis. And yet she could not
even kill herself off successfully. Intriguing old bitch!”
The Marquis had always eluded life’s more subtle
problems with a hearty burst of laughter, and now that
one had cropped up calling for indignation, he was
nonplussed. This beefy, red-faced man differed
strikingly from his own father in that he was vain
enough to try not to appear harsh and unfeeling to
others, including his own son. He was thus anxious to
prevent his anger from appearing as old-fashioned
wrath, but his consequent bewilderment made him
feel that the sustaining forces of unreason were
draining away. At the same time, there was an
advantage in anger: it made him quite incapable of
reflection.
His father’s momentary hesitation gave him
courage. Like pure water spurting from a cleft in a
rock, words came out of this young man’s mouth as
the most natural and spontaneous he would ever utter:
“However that may be, Satoko is mine.”
“Yours, did you say? Say that again, would you?
Yours, did you say?” demanded the Marquis, happy to
have his son relieve him of the task of giving vent to
his outrage. Now, his heart at peace, he could air his
rage blindly. “How dare you speak like this now!
When it first became a probability that Satoko might
become engaged to Prince Toin, didn’t I try to ensure
that you had no objection? Didn’t I say to you, ‘At this
stage things can still be reversed. If your feelings are
at all involved, tell me?’”
The Marquis tried to alternate between scorn and
conciliation, but in his fury he botched the attempt.
Moving along the edge of the billiard table, he came
so close that Kiyoaki could see his hand trembling
around the cue it held. For the first time, he felt a touch
of fear.
“And what did you say then? Eh? What did you
say? ‘I’m not at all involved’—that’s how you
answered me. That certainly amounted to a man’s
word, didn’t it? But are you a man, I wonder? I
regretted raising you in such a soft and easy way, but I
never realized you’d turn out like this. To lay hands on
someone betrothed to an imperial prince after the
Emperor himself has sanctioned the marriage! To go
so far as to make her pregnant! To stain your family
honor! To throw mud in your father’s face! Could there
be any disloyalty, any breach of filial piety worse than
this? If it were in times gone by, I as your father would
have had to cut my belly open and die in atonement to
the Emperor. You’ve behaved like an animal. You’ve
done something that’s rotten through and through. Do
you hear me? Just what do you have to say for
yourself, Kiyoaki? You won’t answer me? You’ll still
defy me, will you?”
The instant that he perceived the panting urgency in
his father’s words, Kiyoaki dodged to one side to
avoid the brandished billiard cue, but he nevertheless
caught a solid blow across the back. His father
followed that up at once with another that numbed the
arm that had tried to protect his back. And as he
frantically sought his only escape, the library door, a
third blow, meant for his head, missed its target and
struck across the bridge of the nose. At this point
Kiyoaki collided with a chair in his path and stumbled
to the floor, grasping the arm of the chair as he did so
to break his fall. As the blood began to spurt from his
nose, his father finally held off with his cue.
Each blow must have provoked a sharp cry from
Kiyoaki, and now the library door opened to reveal his
grandmother and mother in the doorway. The
Marquise stood trembling behind her mother-in-law
as her husband, still grasping his cue and panting
heavily, went rigid.
“What’s this?” asked his grandmother.
With that, Marquis Matsugae seemed to notice his
mother’s presence for the first time, though it was
clear from his expression that he found it hard to
believe she was actually standing in the doorway. Far
less was he capable of guessing how she had got
there: that his wife, grasping the drift of events, had
probably gone to fetch her. His mother’s setting foot
outside her retreat was by no means an everyday
occurrence.
“Kiyoaki has been a disgrace. You’ll understand if
you read Tadeshina’s farewell on the table there.”
“Did Tadeshina kill herself?”
“The letter came in the mail. Then I phoned the
Ayakuras to find out . . .”
“And what did you find out?” asked his mother, now
seated in a chair beside the small table as she slowly
pulled out of her obi the black velvet case that
contained the glasses she wore to boost her failing
sight. She carefully opened the purselike case.
As the Marquise stood watching her mother-in-law
she suddenly realized why she had not yet spared so
much as a glance for her grandson. It was a sign of
her determination to cope with the Marquis single-
handed. Sensing this, she rushed in relief to Kiyoaki’s
side. He had already taken out his handkerchief and
was holding it to his bloody nose. The wound hardly
seemed to be grave.
“And what did you find out?” repeated the
Marquis’s mother, unrolling the scroll.
Her son felt that something inside him was already
crumbling.
“I phoned and inquired about Tadeshina. They
caught her in time and she’s recovering. And then the
Count asked me suspiciously how I happened to
know about it. Apparently he didn’t know about her
letter. She took an overdose of sleeping pills and I
warned the Count that he had to prevent any word of it
leaking out. But since, all things considered, my son
was at fault, I could not possibly put all the blame on
the Count. So the whole conversation became
thoroughly pointless. We have to meet as soon as
possible to talk it over, I told him, but . . . At any rate,
one thing at least is clear; unless I come to a decision
myself, nothing at all will be done.”
“Very true. Very true indeed,” said the old lady
absentmindedly as she ran her eyes over the letter.
Oddly enough, her unsophisticated country vigor—
the heavy forehead glowing with health, the blunt,
powerful lines of the face, the skin still ruddy with the
hot sun of a generation gone by, the bobbed hair
dyed a simple, glossy black—her every trait
harmonized perfectly with the Victorian setting of the
billiard room.
“Well, it doesn’t seem that Kiyoaki is mentioned
anywhere here by name, does it?”
“Please, that part about ‘within the family.’ One
glance should be enough to tell you it’s an insinuation.
But, whatever else, I heard it from his own lips. He
confessed that it was his child. In other words, you’re
on your way to becoming a great-grandmother,
Mother, and of an illegitimate child at that.”
“Perhaps Kiyoaki is protecting someone and his
confession is false.”
“You’ll say anything at all, won’t you, Mother?
Please go ahead and ask Kiyoaki yourself.”
She turned to Kiyoaki at last and spoke to him
affectionately, as if he were a child of five or six.
“Listen, Kiyoaki. Look at me straight, now. Look
Granny straight in the eye and answer my question.
Then you can’t tell fibs. Now, what your father said—is
it the truth?”
Kiyoaki turned toward her, mastering the pain he
still felt in his back and clutching the now blood-
soaked handkerchief to his nose, which was still
bleeding. With tears in his eyes and careless streaks
of blood clinging to the tip of his prominent nose, he
seemed pathetically young, like a wet-nosed puppy.
“It’s true,” he said quickly in nasal tones,
immediately seizing the fresh handkerchief proferred
by his mother and clapping it to his face.
His grandmother then made a speech that seemed
to echo the hoofbeats of horses galloping free, a
speech that eloquently tore to shreds the conventional
niceties.
“Getting the betrothed of the Imperial Prince
pregnant! Now there’s an achievement! How many of
these simpering lads nowadays are capable of
anything like that? No doubt about it—Kiyoaki’s a true
grandson of my husband’s. You won’t regret it even if
you are jailed for it. At least they surely won’t execute
you,” she said, obviously enjoying herself. The stern
lines around her mouth were gone now, and she
seemed aglow with a lively satisfaction, as if she had
banished decades of stifling gloom, dispersing at a
single stroke the enervating pall that had hung over
the house ever since the present Marquis had
become its master. Nor was she laying the blame on
her son alone. She was speaking now in retaliation
against all those others, too, who surrounded her in
her old age, and whose treacherous power she could
sense closing in to crush her. Her voice came
echoing gaily out of another era, one of upheavals, a
violent era forgotten by this generation, in which fear
of imprisonment and death held no one in check, an
era in which the threat of both was part of the texture
of everyday life. She belonged to a generation of
women who had thought nothing of washing their
dinner plates in a river while corpses went floating
past. That was life! And now, how remarkable that this
grandson, who seemed so effete at first glance,
should have revived the spirit of that age before her
very eyes.
The old lady stared off into space, a look of almost
drunken satisfaction on her face. The Marquis and
Marquise stared at it in shocked silence—the face of
an old woman too stern, too full of rough country
beauty to be presented to the public as the matriarch
of the Marquis’s household.
“Mother, what are you saying?” said the Marquis
weakly, finally shaking himself out of his stupor. “This
could mean the ruin of the House of Matsugae—and
it’s also a terrible affront to Father.”
“That’s very true,” she replied at once. “And so what
you’ve got to think about now is not punishing Kiyoaki
but how best to protect the House of Matsugae. The
nation is important, of course, but we must think of the
family too. After all, we’re not like the Ayakuras, who
have enjoyed the imperial favor for more than twenty-
seven generations, are we now? So what do you think
must be done?”
“Well, we have no choice but to go through with it as
if nothing had happened, right up to the betrothal
ceremony and the marriage.”
“That’s all very fine and clear, but something has to
be done about Satoko’s baby as quickly as possible.
And if it’s done anywhere near Tokyo and the
newspapers somehow find out, then you’ll have a fine
mess. Don’t you have anything practical to suggest?”
“Osaka would be the place,” replied the Marquis,
after a moment’s thought. “Dr. Mori would do it for us
in the strictest secrecy. And I’ll make it worth his while.
But Satoko will have to have some plausible reason
for going to Osaka.”
“The Ayakuras have all sorts of relatives down
there. So wouldn’t it be a perfect chance to send
Satoko down to visit them and tell them in person
about her engagement?”
“But if she has to visit a number of relatives and
they notice her condition . . . that wouldn’t do at all. But
wait. I have it. How about having her go to Gesshu
Temple in Nara to pay her final respects to the
Abbess before her marriage? Wouldn’t that be best?
It’s a temple that’s always been closely associated
with the Imperial Family, and so it would only be
proper to show the Abbess this honor. All things
considered, it would be perfectly natural. The Abbess
has been fond of her ever since she was a little girl.
So first she goes to Osaka to receive the attentions of
Dr. Mori. Then she rests for a day or two, then she
goes to Nara. That would be best. And her mother
should go with her, I suppose. . . .”
“Not just her mother. That wouldn’t do,” said the old
lady sternly. “Count Ayakura’s wife can’t be expected
to have our interests at heart. Someone from here has
to go along with them and look after the girl both
before and after Dr. Mori’s treatment. And it has to be
a woman. So . . . ,” she pondered and then turned to
Kiyoaki’s mother: “Tsujiko, you go.”
“Very well.”
“And you’ve got to keep your eyes open all the time.
You don’t have to go to Nara with her. But once you’ve
seen that the crucial thing is done, come back to
Tokyo as quick as you can to give us a full report.”
“I understand.”
“Mother’s right,” said the Marquis. “Do just as she
says. I’ll talk to the Count and we’ll decide what day
she’s to leave. Everything will have to be done so that
no one gets the least hint of what’s going on.”
Kiyoaki felt that he had become part of the
background and that his life and love for Satoko were
being treated as things already terminated. Before his
very eyes, his father and mother and grandmother
seemed to be carefully planning the funeral, quite
unconcerned that the corpse could hear every word.
Even before his funeral, something seemed already
to have been buried. And so on the one hand he was
like an attenuated corpse and, on the other, a
severely scolded child who had no one to turn to.
Everything was thus proceeding smoothly to an
altogether satisfactory conclusion, although the
person most intimately concerned had no role in it
and the wishes of the Ayakuras themselves were
being ignored. Even his grandmother, who just a
moment before had been speaking so daringly, now
seemed to be basking in the pleasures of coping with
a family crisis. Her character was essentially different
from his, with its delicacy, and while she was
endowed with the intelligence to perceive the savage
nobility that lay at the root of his dishonorable
behavior, once family honor was at stake, this same
intelligence enabled her to put aside her admiration
and adroitly conceal any such noble manifestations.
This faculty, one might well suppose, she owed not to
the summer sun that beat down on Kagoshima Bay
but to the tutoring of her husband, Kiyoaki’s
grandfather.
The Marquis looked directly at Kiyoaki for the first
time since he had aimed his billiard cue at him.
“From now on, you are confined to this house, and
you are to fulfill your duties as a student. All your
energy is to go into studying for the examinations. Do
you quite understand? I shall say nothing further about
this matter. This is the turning point: either you will
become a man or you will not. As for Satoko, I need
hardly say that you are not to see her again.”
“In the old days, they called it house arrest, you
know,” said his grandmother. “If you get tired of
studying sometimes, come over and see Granny.”
And then it dawned on Kiyoaki that his father could
never disown him now—he was much too afraid of
what the world would say.
40
C OUNT A YAKURA  WAS a
hopeless coward in the face of such things as injury,
sickness, and death. There was quite a disturbance
on the morning that Tadeshina did not get up. The
suicide note left on her pillow was brought to the
Countess at once, and when she in turn handed it
over to her husband, he opened it at fingertips’ length,
as if it were germ-ridden. It turned out to be nothing
more than a simple farewell note apologizing for the
many defects that had marred her service to the
Count and Countess, and to Satoko, and thanking
them for their never-failing benevolence, the sort of
note that could fall into any hands at all and still not
excite suspicion.
The Countess sent for the doctor at once. The
Count, of course, did not go to see for himself, but
was content to receive a full report from his wife
afterwards.
“She took more than a hundred and twenty sleeping
pills. She hasn’t recovered consciousness yet, but the
doctor told me what she’d done. My goodness, she
was flailing her arms and legs and her body was
convulsed like a bow—what a commotion! No one
knew where the old woman could find such strength.
But then, all of us held her down together and there
was the injection and then the doctor pumped out her
stomach—that was frightful and I tried not to look. And
the doctor finally assured me that she was going to
live. How wonderful to have such expertise! Before we
said anything at all, he sniffed her breath and said:
‘Ah, a smell of garlic. It must be Calmotin tablets.’ He
knew right away.”
“Did he say how long it would take her to recover?”
“Yes, he was kind enough to tell me that she would
have to rest for at least ten days.”
“Be sure that nothing of this becomes known
outside the house. You’ll have to warn the women to
keep their mouths shut and we’ll have to speak to the
doctor too. How is Satoko taking this?”
“She’s shut herself in her room. She won’t even go
and see Tadeshina. In her present condition I think it
might not be good for her to visit Tadeshina right now.
And then, she hasn’t said a word to her since
Tadeshina raised that matter with us, so she probably
feels disinclined to rush in to see her. The best thing
would be to leave Satoko alone.”
Five days before, Tadeshina, at her wit’s end, had
broken the news of Satoko’s pregnancy to the Count
and Countess, but instead of flying into a rage and
subjecting her to the expected torrent of rebukes, the
Count had in fact reacted so listlessly that she had
been driven in desperation to write the letter to
Marquis Matsugae and then to take an overdose of
sleeping pills.
Satoko had persisted in rejecting Tadeshina’s
advice. Although the danger was growing more acute
with each day that passed, she not only ordered
Tadeshina to say nothing to anyone, but she gave no
slightest indication that she herself was ever going to
come to a decision. And so, unable to bear this any
longer, Tadeshina had betrayed her mistress by
telling her secret to her mother and father. But the
Count and Countess—perhaps because the news
was such a stunning blow—had shown no more
perturbation than if the news had been of a cat
running off with one of the chickens in the backyard.
The day after she told him, and the day after that
too, Tadeshina happened to cross paths with the
Count, but he gave no sign of being concerned about
the problem. He was, in fact, profoundly shaken. But
since the problem was at once too vast to deal with
on his own and too embarrassing to discuss with
others, he made every effort to put it out of his mind.
He and his wife had agreed to say nothing to
Satoko until they were ready to take some kind of
action. Satoko, however, whose perceptions were
now at their keenest, subjected Tadeshina to a cross-
examination and so found out what had happened.
And with that, she shut herself in her room and would
have no more to do with her, and an uncanny silence
fell over the house. Tadeshina stopped receiving any
communications from the outside world, telling the
servants to say that she was sick.
The Count avoided the problem even with his wife.
He was fully aware of the fearful nature of the
circumstances and of the necessity for immediate
action, but he continued to procrastinate nonetheless.
This did not mean that he believed in miracles either.
Count Ayakura’s paralysis did have a sort of
refinement. Although one could hardly deny that his
chronic indecisiveness involved a certain skepticism
about the value of any decision at all, he was by no
means a skeptic in the ordinary sense of the word.
Even though he was plunged in meditation from
morning to night, he was loath to direct his immense
emotional reserves toward a single conclusion.
Meditation had a great deal in common with  kemari ,
the traditional sport of the Ayakuras. No matter how
high one kicked the ball, it would obviously come
down to earth again at once. Even if his illustrious
ancestor Namba Munetate could excite cries of
admiration when he picked up the white deerskin ball
by its thongs of purple leather and kicked it to such
incredible heights that it topped the ninety-foot roof of
the imperial residence itself, it must inevitably fall
back again into the garden.
Since all the solutions left something to be desired
in terms of good taste, it was better to wait for
someone else to make the unpleasant decision.
Someone else’s foot would have to stretch out to
intercept the falling ball. Even if one kicked the ball
oneself, it was quite possible that it might be seized
by some unexpected whim of its own as it reached
the high point of its arc, and come sailing down in a
new and unpredictable trajectory.
The specter of ruin never rose before the Count. If it
was not a grave crisis to have the fiancée of an
imperial prince, whose engagement had been
sanctioned by the Emperor himself, carrying another
man’s offspring in her womb, then the world would
never know a grave crisis. Still, the descending ball
would not inevitably be his to kick; surely someone
else’s turn to cope with it would come. The Count was
never one to be long vexed by worries, and as an
inevitable consequence, his worries always ended up
by vexing others.
And then it happened that on the day after the
tumult of Tadeshina’s attempt on her life, the
telephone call came from Marquis Matsugae.
∗
That the Marquis should have known what had
happened despite all efforts to hush it up was simply
incredible to the Count. He would not have been
surprised to learn that there was an informer in his
household. But since his prime suspect, Tadeshina
herself, had been unconscious throughout the
previous day, all his most likely speculations were left
with the ground cut out from under them.
Having heard from his wife that Tadeshina was
recovering at a good rate, that she could talk and that
her appetite had even returned, the Count therefore
summoned up his extreme reserves of courage and
decided to visit the sickroom all by himself.
“You needn’t come with me. I’ll go and see her on
my own. Perhaps the woman will be more inclined to
tell the truth that way,” he told his wife.
“But the room is in a terrible state, and if you visit
her without warning, she’ll be upset. I’ll go and tell her
first, and help her to get herself ready.”
“As you wish.”
The Count had to endure a two-hour wait. When the
patient heard the news from the Countess, she
immediately began to apply her makeup.
She had been granted the exceptional privilege of
a room in the main house, but it was no more than
four and a half mats large, and never caught the sun.
When her bedding was laid out, it occupied almost
the whole floor. The Count had never been in there
before.
Finally, a servant came to escort him to the room. A
chair for him had been placed on the tatami floor and
Tadeshina’s bedding had been put away. Dressed in
a sleeved coverlet and with her elbows supported on
a pile of pillows on her lap, Tadeshina bowed in
reverence as the master entered. As she did so, her
forehead seemed to press down on the pillows in
front of her, but he noticed that, perfect as her bow
was, she overcame her weakness sufficiently to
preserve a slight gap between her forehead and the
pillows. She was concerned about her makeup, that
smooth expanse of thick, congealed white that
extended right up to her scrupulously groomed
hairline.
“Well, you’ve had quite an ordeal,” the Count
began, after sitting down. “But you pulled through, and
that’s the main thing. You shouldn’t worry us so.”
Although he found nothing awkward in looking down
at her from his position in the chair, he felt that for
some reason neither his voice nor his meaning was
reaching her.
“How unworthy I am to receive Your Excellency’s
visit! I am altogether in a state of dread. Never can I
express adequately the deep shame that I feel . . .”
Her head still bowed, she seemed to be dabbing
her eyes with the tissue paper she had pulled from her
sleeve, but he realized that in so doing she was again
being careful to preserve her makeup.
“According to the doctor, ten days rest and you’ll be
your old self again. So just relax and take a good long
rest.”
“Oh thank you so much, Your Excellency. I am
covered with shame, having failed so miserably in
trying to die.”
As the Count looked down at the old woman
cowering in her russet chrysanthemum-patterned
bedjacket, he sensed the offensive aura that
surrounds someone who has gone down the road of
death only to turn back. He smelled the breath of
defilement that clung to everything in the small room,
even to its cabinet and drawers, and he grew more
and more uneasy. The very care and skill that had
gone into the application of the liquid white makeup
on the nape of her neck, still visible as she bowed her
head, and that had arranged her coiffure so that not a
single hair straggled out of place, only served to
intensify his indefinable sense of fear.
“Actually,” he said, putting the question as casually
as he could, “I was rather taken aback to receive a
telephone call from Marquis Matsugae today. He
already knew what had happened. And so I thought I
might ask you if you did not have some explanation
for it.”
But there are questions that answer themselves as
soon as they are formulated. The words had hardly
passed his lips before the answer came to him with
startling suddenness, just as she raised her head.
The old court-style makeup covering her face was
thicker than ever. She had painted her lips a bright
red that covered even their innermost edge. Not
content merely to subdue her wrinkles with makeup,
she had applied layer upon layer of white to create a
smooth surface which did not, however, blend into her
skin, roughened by her recent ordeal. The effect was
as if the makeup were clinging to her skin as though
the pores had sprouted a white mold. The Count
furtively looked away before he started to speak
again.
“You wrote to the Marquis beforehand, didn’t you?”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” she answered, her head still
raised, her voice quite steady. “I really intended to die,
and so I wrote to him begging him to do what was
necessary after I was gone.”
“You told him everything in that letter?”
“No, sir.”
“There are things you left out?”
“Yes, Your Excellency, there are many things I left
out,” she replied, now cheerful.
41
A LTHOUGH THE C OUNT HAD no
very clear-cut idea of anything he might wish to keep
from Marquis Matsugae, he had only to hear
Tadeshina mention her omissions to feel suddenly
uneasy.
“And the things you left out—what were they?”
“What does the master mean? I answered Your
Excellency as I did, simply because you were pleased
to ask me if I had told the Marquis  everything in the
letter. There must be something on the master’s mind
to make him ask such a question.”
“This is no time to talk in riddles. I’ve come here
alone like this because I thought we could talk freely
without regard for others. So it would be as well if you
said clearly what you meant.”
“There are many, many things I did not discuss in
that letter. Among them is the matter that the master
was pleased to confide to me some eight years ago
at Kitazaki’s. I intended to die with that sealed in my
heart.”
“Kitazaki’s?”
The Count shuddered as he heard that name, which
rang like doom in his ears. He now understood what
Tadeshina had been hinting at, and as he did so his
anxiety deepened. He felt driven to tear away any
vestige of doubt.
“What did I say at Kitazaki’s?”
“It was an evening during the rainy season. The
master can hardly have forgotten. Miss Satoko,
though she was slowly growing up to be a young lady,
was still only thirteen. Marquis Matsugae came here
that day to pay one of his rare visits. And when he
was leaving, the master’s mood seemed to be not
what it should be. And so he went to Kitazaki’s house
for a little recreation. And that night he was pleased to
tell me something.”
The Count was fully aware of the drift of
Tadeshina’s remarks. She intended to forge a
weapon from his words that night and to make her
own dereliction entirely his responsibility. He suddenly
doubted that she had ever really intended to kill
herself.
Her eyes now regarded him from the heavily
powdered face above the pile of pillows like two
loopholes cut into the white walls of a fortress. The
darkness behind that wall was teeming with things
from the past and out of it could come flying an arrow,
aimed at him as he stood exposed in the bright light
outside.
“Why do you bring that up now? It was something I
said as a joke.”
“Was it really?”
Suddenly those loophole eyes seemed to narrow
still further. He had the feeling that darkness itself in all
its intensity was pointed at him. Then she went on, her
voice heavy, “But still . . . that night, at Kitazaki’s
house. . . .”
Kitazaki, Kitazaki—that name, bound up with
memories the Count had been trying to ignore, came
to the lips of this sly old woman again and again.
Though eight years had passed since he last set foot
there, every detail of the house now sprang vividly to
mind once again. The inn stood at the foot of a slope,
and although it had no gate nor entranceway to speak
of, it was surrounded by quite a large garden with a
wooden fence. The gloomy, damp front hall, a spot
favored by slugs and snails, had been preempted by
four or five pairs of black boots. Even their blotched,
yellowish brown leather linings, greasy and moldy with
sweat, now flashed before his eyes, as did the broad-
striped name-tabs that hung out of them. That night
the sound of rude and boisterous singing had greeted
him at the front door. The Russo-Japanese War was
at its height, and the quartering of soldiers was a
respectable and sure source of income. It had given
the inn a reputable appearance along with the smell of
a stable. As he was led to a room at the rear, he
walked along the corridor as if passing through a
quarantine ward, fearful even that his sleeve might
brush against a pillar along the way. He had a
profound aversion to human sweat and all that related
to it.
On that night in the rainy season eight years ago,
the Count had been unable to regain his usual
composure after ushering out his guest the Marquis.
And that was the moment that Tadeshina, shrewdly
gauging her master’s mood from his expression, had
chosen to speak.
“Kitazaki tells me that something very amusing has
come his way and that he would like nothing better
than to offer it to the master for his enjoyment. Would
the master not consider going there tonight, just for a
little recreation?”
Since she was free to do such things as “visiting
her relatives” once Satoko had gone to bed, there
was no obstacle to her going out and then meeting
the Count at a prearranged spot.
Kitazaki received the Count with extreme
obsequiousness and served him saké, then left the
room to return carrying an old scroll which he laid
deferentially on the table.
“It is indeed noisy here tonight,” he said
apologetically. “Somebody is about to leave for the
front, and is having a farewell party. It’s terribly hot, but
perhaps it would be well to close the rain shutters,
Your Excellency.”
Kitazaki meant that by so doing, the din that
echoed from the second floor of the main wing would
be somewhat lessened. The Count agreed and he
closed the shutters. However, the falling rain
immediately seemed to sound more insistently on
every side, caging him into the room. The brilliant
color of the Genji sliding door gave it a kind of
suffocating, panting sensuality, as though the room
itself were a picture rolled up within a forbidden scroll.
Sitting opposite the Count, Kitazaki reached
respectfully across the table with his wrinkled but
honest-looking old hands and unfastened the purple
cord that bound the scroll. Then he began to unroll it
for the Count, revealing first the pretentious inscription
at the top. It was a koan:
Chao Chu went to a nun one day to say, “Do
you have it? Do you have it?” And when the
nun in turn raised her fists at him, Chao Chu
went on his Way at once, declaring: “Shallow
water affords poor anchorage.”
The oppressive heat of that night! Its sultry torpor,
only aggravated by the breeze stirred at his back by
Tadeshina’s fan, seemed to the Count to equal that of
a rice-steaming basket. The saké had begun to take
effect; the Count heard the drumming of the rain
outside as if it were striking the back of his skull; the
world outside was lost in innocent thoughts of victory
in war. And thus the Count sat looking down at the
erotic scroll. Suddenly Kitazaki’s hands flashed
through the air to clap together on a mosquito. He
apologized at once for the disturbance of the noise,
and the Count caught a glimpse of the tiny black
smudge of crushed mosquito in his dry white palm,
together with a red smear of blood, an unclean image
that unsettled him. Why had the mosquito not bitten
him? Was he really so well protected from everything?
The first picture on the scroll was that of an abbot in
a brown robe and a young widow seated facing each
other in front of a screen. The style was that of haiku
illustrations, done with a light, humorous touch. The
face of the abbot was drawn in caricature to look like
a large penis.
In the next picture the abbot sprang upon the young
widow without warning, intent on raping her, and
although she was putting up a fight, her kimono was
already in disarray. In the next they were locked in a
naked embrace and the woman’s expression was
now blissfully relaxed. The abbot’s penis was like the
twisted root of a giant pine, and his brown tongue
stuck out in great delight. In accordance with this
artistic tradition, the young widow’s feet and toes
were painted with Chinese white, and curved sharply
inward. Tremors ran the length of her white, clinging
thighs and ended finally at her toes, as though the
tension there embodied her straining effort to hold
back the flood of ecstasy that was about to gush out
into eternity. The woman’s exertions were altogether
admirable, thought the Count.
On the other side of the screen, meantime, a
number of novice monks were standing on a wooden
drum and a writing table, and boosting one another
onto their shoulders, desperately keen to see what
was going on behind the screen while simultaneously
engaged in a comic struggle to keep down those
parts of their anatomy that had already swollen to
massive proportions. Finally the screen fell over. And
as the stark-naked woman attempted to cover herself
and escape, and the abbot lay exhausted with no
strength left to reprimand the novices, a scene of total
disorder began to unfold.
The monks’ penises were drawn to appear nearly
as long as their owners were tall, the usual
proportions being inadequate for the artist to convey
the magnitude of their burden of lust. As they set upon
the woman, the face of each of them was a comic
study in indescribable anguish, and they staggered
about under the weight of their own erections.
After such punishing toil, the woman’s entire body
turned deathly pale and she died. Her soul flew out of
her and took refuge in the branches of a willow tree
blown by the wind. And there she became a vengeful
ghost, her face drawn in the image of a vulva.
At this point, the scroll lost whatever humor it had
once had, and became permeated with fearful gloom.
Not one but many ghosts, all similar, assaulted the
men, hair streaming wildly, crimson lips gaping.
Fleeing in panic, the men were no match for the
phantoms, who swarmed over them in a whirlwind,
tearing out their penises as well as the abbot’s with
their powerful jaws.
The final scene was by the seashore. The
emasculated men lay naked on the beach, howling
desperately, while a boat weighed down with their
mutilated penises was just setting sail on a dark sea.
The ghosts crowded the deck, hair streaming in the
wind, pale hands waving derisively, their vaginal faces
mocking the wretched cries of their victims on the
shore. The prow of the boat, too, was carved in the
form of a vulva, and as it pointed toward deep water,
a tuft of hair clinging to it waved in the sea breeze.
∗
When he finally looked up from the scroll, the Count
felt inexplicably depressed. The saké, far from
soothing him, had only increased his feelings of
apprehension. But he had Kitazaki bring more of it,
and drank it in silence. His mind was still filled with the
vivid image of the woman in the scroll, her toes bent
inward. The lewd whiteness of her painted legs still
flashed before his eyes.
What he did next could only have been due to the
languid heat of that night in the rainy season and to
his own disgust. Fourteen years before that wet
evening, when his wife had been pregnant with
Satoko, he had favored Tadeshina with his attentions.
Since even then she had been past forty, this had
been an extraordinary whim, and did not last long.
Fourteen years later, with Tadeshina well into her
fifties, he never dreamed that anything of the sort
would happen again. At any rate, because of what
took place this time, he was never to set foot across
the threshold of Kitazaki’s inn again.
Events and circumstances—the Marquis’s visit, the
crushing blow to his pride, the rainy night, the isolated
rear parlor of Kitazaki’s house, the saké, the sinister
pornography—all  crowded  in  on  the  Count,
intensifying his mood of resentment and (it could
hardly have been otherwise) inflaming him with a
desire to debase himself, which drove him to do what
he did. Tadeshina’s response, devoid of any
reproach, set the seal on his feelings of self-loathing.
“This woman,” he thought, “she’ll wait fourteen,
twenty, a hundred years—it makes no difference to
her. And no matter when she hears the voice of her
master, she’ll never be caught unawares.”
Through circumstances which had been none of his
doing, he was driven by his seething resentment to
plunge into a dark wood where the ghost from the
pornographic scroll was lying in wait for him.
Moreover, Tadeshina’s unruffled composure, her
deferential flirting, the evident pride she took in her
exhaustive knowledge of sexual technique, all worked
on him just as coercively as they had fourteen years
earlier.
Perhaps there had been some collusion between
her and Kitazaki who left the room and did not return.
Afterwards, in the darkness, shut in by the pervasive
sound of falling rain, neither of them spoke. Then the
soldiers’ voices broke through once more, and this
time the Count clearly heard the words of their song:
To the battlefield
Torn with steel and fire,
The fate of the nation’s defense
Falls on you.
Forward, brave comrades!
Forward, Imperial Army!
The Count suddenly became a child again. He felt
the need to unburden himself of the anger that was
devouring him, and he gave Tadeshina a detailed
account of something that belonged to a sphere from
which servants were excluded. For he felt that his
anger was not merely his alone, but rather an emotion
that incorporated the wrath of his ancestors.
Marquis Matsugae had paid a visit that day. And
when Satoko had come into the room to pay her
respects, he had stroked her bobbed hair. And then
perhaps under the influence of the sake he had drunk,
he spoke abruptly in front of the child: “What a
beautiful little princess you have become! When you
grow up, you will be so beautiful that nobody will find
words to describe you. And as for finding a
handsome husband, you just leave that to Uncle, and
don’t worry about a thing. If you trust Uncle completely,
I’ll get you a bridegroom without equal anywhere in the
world. Your father won’t have a thing to worry about. I’ll
line up a trousseau on golden satin for you when you
become a bride. What a long, long, proud procession
that will be!—such as has never been seen in all the
generations of Ayakuras.”
The Countess had given the slightest of frowns at
that moment, but the Count had merely smiled.
Instead of smiling in the face of humiliation, his
ancestors would have revealed just enough of their
elegance, and struck back. But these days—when, for
example, the ancestral game of  kemari was no more
than a memory—there were no means left to dazzle
the vulgar. And when such men as this imposter,
overflowing with goodwill and innocent of any intention
to wound a genuine aristocrat, offered their unwitting
insults, there was nothing to do but laugh vaguely.
However, there was a faintly mysterious element
lingering in the smile that came to the lips of the
cultured when confronted with the new ascendancy of
money and power.
The Count had remained silent for a while after
telling Tadeshina all this. If elegance was to have its
revenge, he was thinking, how was it to be
accomplished? Wasn’t there a revenge proper to
court nobles, like the revenge in which incense was
inserted into the flowing sleeve of a court robe and
allowed to burn slowly to a fine ash while showing
hardly a trace of flame? A revenge such as this, that
would leave a subtle, fragrant poison permeating the
material, so that its potency would remain
undiminished down the years?
At last the Count turned to Tadeshina and said: “I
am going to ask you, long in advance, to do
something. When Satoko grows up, I am afraid that
everything will go exactly according to Matsugae’s
wishes, and so he will be the one to arrange a
marriage for her. But when he’s done that, before the
marriage takes place, I want you to guide her into bed
with some man she likes, a man who knows how to
keep his mouth shut. I don’t care about his social
position—just so long as she is fond of him. I have no
intention of handing Satoko over as a chaste virgin to
any bridegroom for whom I have Matsugae’s
benevolence to thank. And so I’ll give Matsugae’s
nose a twist without his knowing a thing about it. But
nobody is to know about this, and you’re not to consult
me about it. It’s something you must do just as if it
were a sin committed on your initiative alone. And
there’s one more aspect to it: since you are the
equivalent of a master of arts in all sexual matters, it’s
not asking too much, is it, for you to instruct Satoko
thoroughly in two rather different accomplishments?
The first is to make a man think he’s taking a girl as a
virgin when he’s not. And the second, on the contrary,
is to make him think that she’s already lost her
virginity when in fact she has not.”
“You need say no more, master,” Tadeshina
replied, her voice betraying no sign of hesitation or
dismay. “There are such effective techniques with
regard to both that there is no danger of arousing the
suspicions of even the most experienced and libertine
gentlemen. And so I will take great pains to educate
Miss Satoko in them. However, might I be permitted
to wonder what the Marquis has in mind as concerns
the second of these?”
“So that the person who makes a conquest of
someone else’s bride before the wedding doesn’t
become too exultant about it. If he knows that she’s a
virgin, he may become presumptuous about his
conquest, and that just won’t do. And so I’m entrusting
you with this as well.”
“Everything  is  quite  understood,”  answered
Tadeshina. Instead of a simple “As the master
wishes,” she undertook her appointed task with a
grave and formal agreement.
∗
And Tadeshina was now alluding to what had
happened that night eight years before. The Count
was only too aware of what she wanted to say. But at
the same time, he was quite sure that the significance
of the unforeseen course of events after she had
accepted her commission could not have been lost on
a  woman  of  Tadeshina’s  shrewdness.  The
prospective bridegroom had turned out to be a prince
of the Imperial Family, and although credit was due to
the Marquis, a marriage as fortunate as this would
mean the resurgence of the House of Ayakura. In
short, the circumstances were very different from
those he had envisaged eight years before when he
had given Tadeshina his instructions in a burning
rage. If, despite all this, she had carried out her task in
scrupulous accordance with that ancient promise, the
reason must lie in her own desire to do so.
Furthermore, the secret had already been spilled to
Marquis Matsugae.
Was it possible that she had taken aim against the
House of Matsugae out of some grand design,
intending to bring down a disaster that would achieve
the revenge the Count’s own timidity and listlessness
had put beyond his reach? Or was it that her revenge
was directed not at the Matsugaes but at none other
than the Count himself? Whatever he did, he was at a
disadvantage—he could not afford to let her tell the
Marquis that bedtime story of eight years before.
He felt it best to say nothing. What was done was
done. And as for the Marquis knowing about it, he had
to be prepared for a more or less severe rebuke on
that score. Still, he reflected, the Marquis would use
his immense influence to devise some ploy that would
save the situation. Now was the time to entrust the
whole matter to somebody else.
About one thing, however, he was quite certain:
Tadeshina’s state of mind. However much she
professed her guilt, she was in fact quite disinclined
to beg forgiveness for what she had done. There she
sat, the old woman who had tried to kill herself, still
indifferent to his pardon, the russet coverlet about her
shoulders, the white makeup clinging to her face as
thickly as if she were a cricket that had tumbled into a
box of powder. And tiny as her figure was, it somehow
seemed to fill the whole wide world with melancholy.
He suddenly noticed that this room was the same
size as the rear parlor of Kitazaki’s inn. All at once he
could hear the rustling murmur of the rain and, quite
out of season, the stifling heat that brings decay
struck his cheek as it had done before.
She raised her whitened face once more to say
something. Her dry, wrinkled lips were slightly parted
and the wet, red cavern of her mouth gleamed in the
light of the electric bulb as brightly as the deep scarlet
of her court lip rouge.
He could guess what she was about to say. Wasn’t
what she had done the result, just as she herself had
said, of the events of that night eight years before?
And hadn’t she done it for no other reason than to
give the Count a forcible reminder of what had
occurred that night, since he had never again shown
the slightest interest in her?
Suddenly he felt the urge to ask the sort of ruthless
question of which only a child is capable.
“Well, happily your life was saved . . . but did you
honestly mean to kill yourself?”
He thought that she might either become angry or
burst into tears, but instead she merely laughed
politely.
“Well now, if the master had deigned to say to me,
‘Kill yourself,’ perhaps I would really have been in the
mood to die. And if he should so order me even now, I
would try once more. Eight years from now, however,
the master might naturally enough have forgotten what
he had said, once again.”
42
W HEN M ARQUIS M ATSUGAE
met with Count Ayakura, he was taken aback to see
how little concern the Count evinced at the course of
events. But when the Count readily agreed to the
proposal he had so strongly urged, high spirits
returned. The Count assured him that everything
would be done just as he wished. He was immensely
heartened, he said, to hear that the Marquise herself
would accompany Satoko to Osaka. And as for being
able to entrust everything to Dr. Mori in the strictest
confidence, this was an undreamed-of blessing.
Everything would be carried out in accordance with
the Matsugaes’ instructions, and he therefore begged
that the Marquis be so gracious as to continue his
kind efforts on behalf of the Ayakuras. Such was the
tenor of his reply.
The Ayakuras had but one, extremely modest
request, which the Marquis could hardly help but
grant. This was that Satoko and Kiyoaki be allowed to
see each other just before she left for Osaka. There
was of course no question of permitting them to be
alone together. But if they could meet face to face for
a brief moment with their parents at hand, that would
satisfy the Ayakuras. And if this request could be
granted, the Ayakuras would give every assurance
that Satoko would never be allowed to see Kiyoaki
again. The request originated with Satoko herself,
but,  as  the  Count  explained  with  some
embarrassment, he and his wife felt that it would be
best to grant her this much.
The circumstance of the Marquise accompanying
Satoko to Osaka could now be utilized to give the
meeting with Kiyoaki an uncontrived appearance.
Nothing would be more natural than a son coming to
the station to see his mother off, and at such a time no
one would have any cause to look askance if Kiyoaki
exchanged a word or two with Satoko.
With matters thus concluded, the Marquis, at the
suggestion of his wife, secretly summoned Dr. Mori to
Tokyo, even though he was fully occupied with his
Osaka practice. The doctor stayed with the
Matsugaes for a week prior to Satoko’s departure on
November 14, always in reserve in case she should
need him. For if a message came from the Ayakuras,
he was ready to rush over there at once. It was the
danger of a miscarriage, looming from moment to
moment, that made these precautions necessary. If
such a thing did occur, Dr. Mori himself would have to
attend to it and in such a way that no word would
escape. Furthermore, he was to be on hand during
the long and extremely perilous train trip to Osaka,
traveling inconspicuously in another car.
A renowned obstetrician thus surrendered his
freedom and put himself at the beck and call of the
Matsugaes and Ayakuras, something that only the
Marquis’s money could have achieved. And if things
progressed as he hoped, the trip to Osaka would
itself greatly contribute to keeping the truth hidden
from the world. For who would imagine a pregnant
woman undertaking any venture such as a train
journey?
Although Dr. Mori wore suits tailored in England
and was the very model of a Western gentleman, he
was a stumpy little man, and there was something
about his face that put one in mind of a clerk. Before
he examined each of his patients, he spread a fresh
layer of high-quality paper over the pillow for her, and
would carelessly crumple it up and throw it away
afterwards, a practice that enhanced his reputation.
He was flawlessly polite and his smile never waned.
He had numerous patients among women of the
upper class. His skill was unsurpassed and his mouth
as tight as an oyster.
He enjoyed talking about the weather, and apart
from this, there seemed to be no topic capable of
capturing his interest. However, he was able to
muster enough charm for his patients merely by
remarking how terribly hot it was today or that it was
getting warmer after each shower. He was skilled in
Chinese poetry and had expressed his impressions
of London in twenty Chinese poems in the seven-line
form, which he had published privately under the title
London Poems. He wore a huge, three-carat
diamond ring, and before examining a patient he
would screw up his face ostentatiously and pull off the
ring with apparent difficulty, throwing it brusquely on
whatever table was close at hand. However, no one
ever noticed him forgetting to pick it up again. His stiff
moustache had the subdued luster of a fern after rain.
It was incumbent on the Ayakuras to accompany
Satoko to the Toinnomiya residence so that she could
pay her respects before her trip to Osaka. Since a trip
by carriage would increase the risks involved,
Marquis  Matsugae  furnished  them  with  an
automobile. Moreover, Dr. Mori accompanied them
disguised as a butler, sitting up beside the driver and
wearing an old suit of Yamada’s. By a stroke of good
fortune, the young prince himself was away on
maneuvers. Satoko was able to greet Princess Toin
just inside the entranceway and then withdraw. The
perilous expedition was thus completed without
mishap.
Though the Toinnomiyas planned to dispatch a
household official to the station to see Satoko off on
November 14, the Ayakuras politely declined this
favor. Everything was going exactly according to
Marquis Matsugae’s plan. The Ayakuras would meet
Marquise Matsugae and her son at the Shimbashi
station. Dr. Mori was to board a third-class carriage
without so much as a glance in their direction. Since
the purpose of the trip was supposedly the perfectly
laudable one of paying a farewell visit to the Abbess
of Gesshu, the Marquis did not hesitate to reserve the
entire observation car for the Ayakuras and his wife.
This belonged to a special express bound for
Shimonoseki which left Shimbashi station at nine
thirty in the morning and arrived at Osaka eleven
hours and fifteen minutes later.
Shimbashi station, designed by an American
architect, had been built in 1872 at the beginning of
the Meiji era. It had a timber frame, but its walls were
of dark, speckled stone cut from quarries on the Izu
Peninsula. Now, on this clear, bright November
morning, the sunshine sharply etched the shadows
cast by the projecting cornice onto their austere
surface. Marquise Matsugae, rather tense at the
prospect of setting out on a trip from which she would
have to return on her own, arrived at the station having
said hardly a word on the way either to Yamada, who
was carrying her baggage with his usual deference,
or to Kiyoaki. The three of them climbed the long flight
of stone steps that led to the platform.
The train had not yet pulled in. The slanting rays of
the morning sun poured down on the broad platform
and the tracks to either side of it, and motes of dust
stirred in the brilliant air. The Marquise was in such a
state of anxiety about the trip that confronted her that
she heaved deep sighs at frequent intervals.
“I don’t see them yet, I wonder if something has
happened?” she said from time to time, but she could
get no response from Yamada but a reverent and
meaningless “Ah!” Although she had known what to
expect, she could not refrain from her question.
Kiyoaki realized how disturbed his mother was, but
being in no mood to alleviate her distress, he stood
some distance away. He felt faint, and his stiff posture
was expressive of the effort he was making to keep a
grip on himself. It seemed as if he might topple over
still rigid like a statue, cast in one piece but lacking
any vital strength to sustain it. The air on the platform
was chilly but he threw out his chest under his braided
uniform jacket. The bleak distress of waiting seemed
to have frozen him to the marrow.
The train backed into the station with ponderous
dignity while the sun streaked the tops of the cars with
brilliant ribbons and flashed from the rail at the rear of
the observation car. Just at this moment, the
Marquise picked out Dr. Mori by his neat moustache,
in the midst of a group waiting some way down the
platform. She felt a measure of relief. It had been
agreed that, barring some emergency, the doctor
would keep to himself throughout the trip to Osaka.
The three of them climbed into the observation car,
Yamada carrying the Marquise’s luggage. While she
was giving Yamada further instructions, Kiyoaki
stared out of the window at the platform. He was
watching Countess Ayakura and Satoko approaching
through the crowd. Satoko was wearing a rainbow
shawl wrapped around her shoulders. When she
reached the bright flood of sunlight that poured past
the edge of the platform roof, her expressionless face
looked as white as curds.
His heart beat wildly both with distress and joy. And
as he watched her, with her mother at her side,
drawing steadily closer but moving at a slow and
measured pace, he was taken for a moment with the
fancy that he was the bridegroom waiting there to
receive his bride. And the solemn ceremonial march,
like a cumulative weariness that settled over him
particle by particle, stirred a joy that was painfully
intense and left him quite enervated.
Countess Ayakura stepped up into the car, and,
leaving the servant to carry Satoko’s luggage, offered
her apologies for being late. Kiyoaki’s mother
naturally greeted her with the utmost courtesy, but a
certain contraction still visible in her forehead gave
adequate expression to the haughty displeasure she
felt.
Satoko covered her mouth with her rainbow shawl
and kept herself hidden behind her mother. She
exchanged the normal greetings with Kiyoaki and
then, urged by the Marquise, sat down promptly in one
of the deep scarlet upholstered chairs which furnished
the car.
Kiyoaki then realized why she had arrived so late.
She must have delayed her arrival at the station for no
other reason than to shorten, even by a fraction, the
length of their parting. In the light of this November
morning, clear as bitter medicine, they would have no
time to say anything to each other. While their
mothers were talking, he stared down at her as she
sat with bowed head, and in so doing, he began to be
concerned about the rising intensity of passion that
must be evident in his gaze. His whole heart was in it,
but he feared that, like too powerful sunlight, it might
scorch Satoko’s fragile pallor. The forces at work
within him, the emotion he wanted to communicate,
had to have subtlety and grace, and he realized how
crude a shape his passion had given it. He now felt
something that had never touched him before, and he
wanted to beg her forgiveness.
As for her body, now covered by her kimono, he
knew all there was to know about it, even its tiniest
recesses. He knew where her white flesh would first
flush crimson with embarrassment, where it would
yield, where it would throb with the wingbeat of a
snared swan. He knew where it would express joy and
where it would express sorrow. Because he knew it in
its totality, it seemed to give off a faint glow which
could be sensed even through her kimono. But now
something he didn’t recognize within that body, deep
within her very heart, which she seemed to be
protecting with the flowing sleeves of her kimono, was
pushing its way into life. His nineteen-year-old
imagination could not deal with a phenomenon such
as that of a child, something that, however intimately
bound up with dark, hot blood and flesh, seemed
altogether metaphysical.
But even so, the only thing of his that had entered
Satoko and become part of her had to be a child.
Soon, however, this part would be torn from her and
their flesh would become separate once again. And
since he had no means whatever of preventing this,
there was nothing to do but stand by and let it happen.
In a way the child involved here was Kiyoaki himself,
for he was still lacking in the power to act
independently. He trembled with the bereft loneliness
and bitter frustration of a child forced to stay at home
as a punishment for a misdeed while the rest of the
family went happily off on a picnic.
She raised her eyes and stared vacantly out of the
window on the platform side of the train. She seemed
entirely absorbed in the vision of what would be cast
out from her and he was sure that there was no hope
he would ever be reflected in them again.
A piercing whistle sounded a warning. She stood
up. It seemed to him that her action was a decisive
effort that had demanded all her strength. Her anxious
mother reached out and seized her arm.
“The train’s about to leave. You’ll have to get off,”
Satoko said to him. Her voice sounded almost
cheerful, but it was a trifle shrill.
Inevitably there ensued a hurried conversation
between him and his mother, consisting of the usual
admonitions and good wishes exchanged between
mother and son before she goes off, leaving him
behind. He wondered at the skill he was able to bring
to supporting his role in this little skit.
When he had finally freed himself from his mother,
he turned to the Countess and quickly ran through the
correct formulas of farewell with her. Then, as though
nothing could be more casual, he said to Satoko,
“Well, take care of yourself now.” At that moment he
felt able to lend lightness to his words, and this was
reflected in an impulse to put out his hand and lay it on
her shoulder. But at the next moment, his arm seemed
stricken with paralysis and hung useless at his side,
for he had met her gaze in its full intensity.
Her large, beautiful eyes were certainly wet with
tears, but tears quite different from those he had been
dreading up to now. They were something living that
was being cut to pieces. Her eyes held the terrible
glance of a drowning man, and he could not bear this
gaze. Her lovely long eyelashes spread wide, like a
plant bursting into flower.
“You too, Kiyo. Good-bye,” she said in one breath,
her tone quite proper.
He fled from the train as if pursued, just as the
stationmaster, wearing a short sword at the belt of his
black five-button jacket, raised his hand in signal.
Once more the conductor’s whistle sounded. Although
restrained by Yamada’s presence beside him, he
called her name in his heart again and again. The line
of cars gave a brief shudder and then, like a length of
yarn being unwound from a spool, the train began to
move. In a few brief moments the observation car and
its rear railing were far away, and neither Satoko nor
the two mothers had shown themselves. The trailing
smoke that poured over the platform testified to the
power unleashed in the train’s departure. Its acrid
smell filled the untimely darkness that it had left
behind.
43
O N THE MORNING after two
days in Osaka, Marquise Matsugae left the inn where
she was staying and went to the nearest post office to
send a personal telegram. Her husband had given her
strict instructions that she was not to delegate this
task to anyone. This being the first time in her life that
she had entered a post office, she was thoroughly
flustered, although in the midst of her confusion she
somehow happened to recall a princess, recently
deceased, who was convinced that money was filthy
and passed her life without ever laying hand on it. But
willy-nilly, she sent a telegram couched in the wording
agreed  on  with  her  husband:  “Visit  safely
accomplished.”
She felt a surge of relief sweep through her as if a
heavy burden had slipped from her shoulders. She
returned to the inn to pay her bill and then went to
Osaka station, where Countess Ayakura was waiting
to see her off on her solitary return trip to Tokyo. In
order to pay her these respects, the Countess had
momentarily slipped away from Satoko’s bedside in
the hospital.
Satoko had entered Dr. Mori’s private clinic under
an assumed name, in conformity with the doctor’s
insistence on two or three days of complete rest. The
Countess had been with her constantly, but although
her physical condition was excellent, she had not said
a word to her mother since the operation, an attitude
that pained the Countess deeply.
Since the comfortable stay in the hospital was
prescribed merely as a precautionary measure, when
Dr. Mori gave his permission for her to leave, she was
quite fit to move about, almost as if in perfect health.
Now, with her morning sickness a thing of the past,
she should have become more buoyant both
physically and mentally, but she obstinately held to her
silence.
According to the plan arranged for them, they were
to go to Gesshu Temple next for Satoko’s farewell
visit to the Abbess. They would stay there one night
and return to Tokyo the next morning.
In the middle of November 18, then, the two of them
got off a Sakurai Line train at Obitoké station. It was a
warm and beautiful autumn afternoon, and despite her
uneasiness over her taciturn daughter, the Countess
felt more at rest.
Since she had wanted to avoid putting the old nuns
to any inconvenience, she had not informed the
convent of their time of arrival. Now, however, though
she had asked a station attendant to call two
rickshaws for them, there was still no sign of them.
While they were waiting, the Countess, who had a
fondness for exploring unfamiliar places, went for a
stroll in the quiet vicinity of the station, leaving her
daughter to her own reflections in the first class
waiting-room. Just outside, she came across a
signboard directing visitors to the Obitoké Temple
nearby.
O BITOKÉ T EMPLE OF M T . K OYASU .
The Bodhisattva Obitoké Koyasu Jizo is
revered here. Japan’s most ancient and
hallowed place of prayer for obtaining the
favor of children and their safe birth.
Sanctified by the imperial prayers of the
Emperors Montoku and Seiwa and the
Empress Somedono.
She felt it just as well that these words had escaped
Satoko’s eye. To lessen the chance of her daughter
seeing the signboard, she would have to let the
rickshaw pull in deep under the station roof and help
her in. It seemed to her that the words were
unexpected drops of blood tainting this lovely scenery
underneath so brilliant a November sky.
Obitoké station had a well beside it, and white walls
under a tiled roof. Opposite it stood an old-fashioned
house surrounded by a roofed-in mud wall and
boasting an imposing storehouse at the back.
Although the white storehouse and mud wall made the
bright sunlight dance, an eerie silence hung over the
scene. The road surface was gray with thawing mud
and glinted with traces of frost, which made for difficult
walking. However, her eye was caught by an attractive
splash of yellow in the distance. This lay at the
approach to a small bridge; it crossed the railway line
at a spot where the tall bare trees that bordered the
track in ascending ranks came to an end, although
they seemed to file on into infinity. So she gathered
up her skirts and began to make her way up a slight
gradient in the direction of this diversion.
As it turned out, the bridge approach had been
decorated with flowerpots of trailing chrysanthemums.
Any number of them were dotted about haphazardly in
the shelter of a pale green willow that stood beside
the path leading onto the bridge. Though it served its
purpose as an overpass, it was unpretentious, made
of wood, and seemed barely larger than a saddle.
Some checkered quilts, hung out to air, were draped
over its railing, soaking up the sun and fluffed out as
they swung gracefully in the breeze. In the yard of a
house close by, diapers were drying in the sun and a
length of red material was stretched out and secured
by clothespins. The dried persimmons that lined the
eaves still had a luster like the glow of sunset. And
there was no one to be seen anywhere.
Far down the road, she caught sight of the swaying
black hoods of two rickshaws coming in her direction.
She hurried back to the station to tell Satoko.
∗
Because the weather was so pleasant, she had the
men lower the rickshaw hoods. They left the town and
its two or three inns behind them and traveled for a
time along a road bordered with rice paddies. If one
looked up carefully at the mountains, one could pick
out Gesshu Temple at the very heart of them.
Some distance farther on, the road was lined with
persimmon trees, whose branches, although bare of
almost all their leaves, were heavy with fruit. All the
rice fields looked festive, decked all over with a maze
of drying racks.
The Countess, in the first rickshaw, turned around
from time to time to look back at her daughter. Satoko
had folded her shawl and laid it in her lap. When her
mother saw that she was looking around her as
though she were enjoying the scenery, she felt
somewhat relieved.
As the road entered the mountains, the pace of the
rickshaw men slowed down. Both of them were old
men, and their legs were evidently not what they had
been. However, there was no reason to hurry. On the
contrary, thought the Countess, she and Satoko were
fortunate to be able to have such a leisurely view of
the countryside.
They were approaching the outer stone gate of
Gesshu, and once they had passed through it, the
scenery became limited to the gently sloping path
itself, a broad expanse of pale blue sky partially
obscured by the tall, white-bearded grass along the
path, and a low range of mountains far in the distance.
The rickshaw men finally stopped for a rest, and as
they talked and wiped away their sweat, the Countess
raised her voice to carry over theirs and called back
to Satoko: “You’d better take your fill of the scenery
from here to the convent. People like me can come
here at any time, but you will soon be in a position
where you won’t be able to go on outings so easily.”
Her daughter did not reply, but she gave a slow
smile and nodded her head slightly.
The rickshaws moved on again, and the path
continued to slope upwards, which slowed the pace
still further. After they had entered the convent
grounds, however, the trees on either side of them
grew denser, lessening the heat of the sun.
The Countess’s ears still echoed faintly with the
autumn midday humming of the insects she had been
listening to while the rickshaw men were having their
rest. But then the persimmon trees that had begun to
appear on the left-hand side of the road caught her
eye and enchanted her with their clear, glowing fruit.
Flashing in the sunlight, some of the persimmons that
weighed down each branch were casting lacquered
shadows on the others. One tree was rich with
orange-red fruit which, unlike flowers, resisted the
wind and left only the dry leaves to stir. Its mass of
ripe fruit was thus spread out against the sky as if
fixed firmly to the spot against a field of blue.
“I don’t see any maple leaves at all. I wonder why,”
she called back to Satoko, nearly shrieking with the
effort but not drawing any response.
Even scrub maples were scarce along the road.
There was little to catch the eye now but the green of
radish fields to the west and bamboo thickets to the
east. The radish fields were covered with a thick
growth of leaves that filtered the sunshine into subtly
complex patterns. Then they gave way to a line of tea
bushes separated from the road by a marsh. Red-
berried vines of magnolia covered this tea hedge,
and beyond appeared the still waters of a larger
marsh. A little farther on, the road darkened abruptly
as the rickshaws passed into the shade of some
ancient cedars. The sun spilled down in flecks of light
on the bamboo grass beneath the trees, and one tall,
isolated stalk flashed with a singular intensity.
She felt a sudden chill in the air. Turning again
toward the rickshaw behind her, she mimed the
clutching of her shawl about her shoulders. Although
she hardly dared hope for a response, when she
glanced backward a few minutes later, she caught the
iridescent colors of Satoko’s shawl in the corner of
her eye, fluttering in the breeze. Although her daughter
still had no inclination to talk, the Countess could at
least take consolation in her obedience.
Once the rickshaws had passed through a black-
painted gate, the scenery around them took on the
more formal aspect of a garden, as might be
expected of the immediate surroundings of the
convent. Its red maple leaves—the first she had seen
along the way—caught the Countess by surprise, and
she gasped with admiration.
There was nothing gaudily charming about the
colors of these maples here within the black gate.
Their deep scarlet was a shade that was blended only
in the depths of the mountains, a color that seemed to
speak to the Countess of sins as yet unpurged. She
suddenly felt a chill edge of anxiety cut into her, and
thought of Satoko in the rickshaw behind.
The screen of slender pines and cedars that
formed a backdrop to the maples was not thick
enough to shut out the broad, bright expanse of sky.
Its brilliance flooded through them, striking the maples
from behind and turning their extended red-leaved
branches to scattered clouds caught in the radiance
of the morning sun. As she looked up at the sky from
beneath the branches, she admired the subtly
delicate way the leaves were interwoven, and
imagined that she was seeing the heavens through a
tracery of deep scarlet.
Finally the rickshaws stopped and the Countess
and Satoko stepped down in front of a Tang Dynasty
gate, behind which was a stone-paved lane and the
main entrance to the convent of Gesshu.
44
A  FULL YEAR HAD GONE BY
since Satoko and her mother had last paid their
respects to the Abbess on the occasion of her trip to
Tokyo. And now, as they waited in a large parlor, the
senior nun assured them that Her Reverence had
been delighted at the prospect of this visit. She was
still speaking as the Abbess herself entered, the
junior nun leading her by the hand.
After the Countess had imparted the news of
Satoko’s engagement, Her Reverence congratulated
her, saying, “The next time you are kind enough to
honor us with a visit, it will not do for you to be lodged
anywhere but in the pavilion.” The pavilion was a villa
in the convent grounds reserved for members of the
Imperial Family.
Now that she was here at Gesshu, Satoko could not
very well keep silent any longer, and she answered,
however briefly, whenever she was spoken to. Her
withdrawal might have been taken for mere shyness.
The Abbess, of course, being a woman of immense
discretion, gave no sign that she noticed anything
amiss.
“A man in the village who cultivates them brings
some every year,” said the Abbess in response to the
Countess’s  lavish  praise  of  the  potted
chrysanthemums that were standing in rows in the
courtyard. “He gives us such a lecture about them.”
Then she made the senior nun repeat the
chrysanthemum enthusiast’s explanations—this was a
crimson single-fold chrysanthemum, bred to blossom
in a pattern of parallel stripes; this a yellow tubular
chrysanthemum bred in the same way, and so on.
Finally Her Reverence herself led Satoko and her
mother into the drawing room.
“Our maples seem to be late in turning this year,”
she said after the senior nun had pulled open the
sliding door to reveal the beauty of the inner garden,
with its simulated mountains and its now fading grass.
It contained several huge maple trees that were
crowned with red, but as one looked down at the
lower branches, this paled to an orange that gave way
to a yellow that finally merged into a light green. The
red at the very top was dark, with a quality suggestive
of congealed blood. The sasanquas had already
begun to bloom. And in one corner of the garden, the
smooth curve of a dry branch of crape myrtle added a
beautiful touch of luster.
They returned to the parlor, and while Her
Reverence and the Countess engaged in polite
conversation, the short autumn day drew to a close.
Dinner was a festive affair, complete with the rice
and red beans reserved for holidays, and the two
nuns did their best to enliven the company, but nothing
seemed able to lighten the mood of the evening.
“This is the day of the fire kindling at the Imperial
Palace,” said the Abbess. The fire kindling was a
court observance built around the kindling of a huge
flame in a hibachi while a court lady stood in front of it
chanting an incantation. The senior nun, who had
seen it during her years of service at the palace,
chanted it from memory.
It was an ancient ritual that took place in the
presence of the Emperor on the eighteenth of
November. After a flame was struck in the hibachi and
soared almost to the ceiling, a court lady, swathed in
white ceremonial robes, would begin the chant with
the words: “Upwards! Upwards! Let the holy flame be
kindled! If these tangerines and these  manju should
please you . . .” The tangerines and bean-jam
dumplings were then thrown onto the fire, heated
through, and then offered to the Emperor.
One might well feel that the nun’s reenactment of so
solemn an observance was bordering on the
sacrilegious, but the Abbess realized that the old
woman’s sole intention was to provide some badly
needed cheer, and she did not utter a word of reproof.
Night came early at Gesshu. By five in the evening,
the front gate was already bolted. Shortly after dinner,
the nuns retired to their sleeping quarters, and the
Countess and her daughter were led to their room.
They would stay until the following mid-afternoon,
allowing for a leisurely farewell. Then they were to
board a night train that evening for Tokyo.
The Countess had intended to reprimand Satoko
once they were alone together for having let her
sadness affect her good manners during the day. But
after some reflection on her state of mind after the
Osaka experience, she decided against it and went
to bed without a word to her daughter.
Even in the unrelieved darkness of the night, the
sliding door’s paper paneling loomed white and
insistently mournful in the guest parlor of Gesshu. It
was as if the frost air of the cold November night had
penetrated the thin skin of the paper. The Countess
could easily distinguish the paper patterns of sixteen-
petal chrysanthemums and white clouds that
decorated the door catches. Up in the direction of the
darkened  ceiling,  metal  rosettes  of  six
chrysanthemums grouped around kikkyo blossoms
masked each of the pegs, accentuating the blackness
around them. Outside there was no wind at all, with
not even the sound of a breeze stirring in the pines to
be heard. Nevertheless, one was distinctly aware of
the expanse of forest and mountain.
The Countess was overcome with a sense of relief.
Whatever the cost, she and her daughter had faithfully
carried out the painful duty that was their lot, and now
she felt that everything would be calm and serene.
And so, despite her consciousness that her daughter
was tossing and turning beside her, she soon fell
asleep.
When she opened her eyes, Satoko was no longer
at her side. Stretching out her hand in the pre-dawn
darkness, she came upon her daughter’s nightgown
neatly folded on top of the quilt. Anxiety surged
through her, but she told herself that Satoko had
merely gone to the lavatory, and she determined to do
nothing for a few moments. But although she tried to
wait, her chest was tight with a dull coldness and she
got up to make sure. The lavatory was empty. There
was no sign of anyone else about. The sky was now
tinged with an uncertain blue.
Just then she heard the sound of movement coming
from the kitchen. A few moments later, an early-rising
serving maid, startled at the Countess’s sudden
appearance, went down on her knees.
“Have you seen Satoko?” she asked her, but the
maid was terrified and could do nothing but shake her
head frantically, nor would she budge an inch to help
in the search.
After this, however, while the Countess was pacing
the convent passages in aimless desperation, she
happened to meet the junior nun. The nun was startled
at her news and began at once to guide her in her
search.
At the far end of a connecting corridor, the flickering
glow of candles came from the main hall of worship. It
was hardly likely that a nun would already be at her
devotions at this hour of the morning.
Two burning candles traced with the flower-wheel
pattern were illuminating the image of Buddha before
which Satoko was sitting. Seeing her daughter from
the rear, the Countess did not recognize her for some
moments. For Satoko had cropped short her hair.
She had placed the shorn strands on the sutra stand,
as though in offering, and, beads in hand, was lost in
prayer.
Her mother’s first reaction was relief at finding her
daughter alive. She then realized that until that
moment she had been certain that Satoko was dead.
“You’ve cut off your hair,” she cried as she
embraced her.
“Yes, Mother. There was nothing else to do,”
Satoko answered, finally looking her mother directly in
the eye. The small, wavering candle flames flickered
in her pupils, but the whites of her eyes already held
the brilliance of the dawn. Never had the Countess
seen so fearful a daybreak as she now saw mirrored
in her daughter’s gaze. And the same white glow,
growing stronger by the minute, shone in each of the
crystal beads of the string wrapped around her
fingers. Like a force of will so intense that it
transcends mere willing, the dawn light seemed to
flow with equal force from every one of the cold
crystals.
The junior nun hurried off to break the news to her
senior. And then, having completed her report, she
withdrew, leaving it to the senior nun to conduct
Countess Ayakura and her daughter to the Abbess.
“Your Reverence, have you arisen yet?” she called
from outside the door of the Abbess’s quarters.
“Yes.”
“Please forgive us.”
The old nun then slid open the door to reveal the
Abbess sitting upright on her quilted mattress. The
Countess began haltingly.
“What has happened, Your Reverence, is that
Satoko, just now, in the chapel, cut off her hair.”
The Abbess gazed out into the corridor as her eyes
absorbed the change that Satoko had worked on
herself. But her features betrayed no sign of surprise.
“Well, well. I was wondering if things might not turn
out something like this,” she said. After a pause, as if
a new thought had just struck her, she went on to say
that as the circumstances appeared to be rather
involved, she thought it best for the Countess to be
kind enough to leave her daughter alone with her so
that she and Satoko could have a heart-to-heart talk.
The Countess and the senior nun acquiesced, and
withdrew.
The nun, left alone with Countess Ayakura, did her
best to entertain her, but the Countess was so
distraught that she could not eat a bite of breakfast.
The nun could well imagine her distress and was
unable to think of any topic of conversation that might
divert her. A long time passed before a summons
finally came from the Abbess’s quarters. And there, in
Satoko’s presence, the Abbess informed the
Countess of a piece of news of shattering
significance: since there was no mistaking the
genuineness of Satoko’s desire to renounce the
world, Gesshu Temple would receive her as a novice.
For most of the morning so far, the Countess’s
mind had been wholly involved in concocting a variety
of stopgap measures. She could not doubt that
Satoko’s decision was firm. And then some months
or even half a year would be required to restore her
daughter’s hair to normal, but if only she could be
dissuaded from taking the tonsure, these months
could be accounted for a period of convalescence
from some illness incurred during the trip, and the
Ayakuras could thus obtain a postponement of the
betrothal ceremony. Then the persuasive powers of
her father and Marquis Matsugae could be brought to
bear on her in the interval, and perhaps she could be
induced to change her mind.
And now, hearing the Abbess’s words, her
determination, far from weakening, became all the
more set. The usual procedure, when one was to be
accepted as a novice, was to undergo a year of
ascetic discipline before receiving the tonsure at the
formal induction ceremony. Whatever else, the
restoration of Satoko’s ravaged hair was of prime
importance. Then, in the event that she could be
persuaded fairly soon to reject her vocation . . . the
Countess’s mind was filled with marvelous ploys: if
events quickly took a favorable turn, perhaps Satoko
could get through the betrothal ceremony safely with
the help of a carefully made wig.
Countess Ayakura came to her decision: for the
present, her only course was to leave Satoko here
and return to Tokyo as quickly as possible to work out
a plan of action.
“I appreciate the sentiments expressed by Your
Reverence,” she said in reply. “However, not only has
this come up suddenly in the midst of a journey, but it
is also a matter that involves disturbing the Imperial
Family. I therefore think it best to beg your indulgence
to return temporarily to Tokyo to consult my husband
before coming back here. And in the meantime I will
entrust Satoko to your care.”
Satoko heard her mother out without so much as a
raised eyebrow. The Countess was now afraid even
to speak to her own daughter.
45
U PON HIS WIFE’S RETURN , when
Count  Ayakura  learned  of  this  astonishing
development, he let an entire week pass without
doing anything at all, a procrastination that was to
provoke the wrath of Marquis Matsugae.
The Matsugae household was resting secure in the
assumption that Satoko had already returned to
Tokyo and that due notice of this had been conveyed
to Prince Toin’s family. A miscalculation of this sort
was out of character for the Marquis, but once his wife
had come back from Osaka and told him that his
meticulous planning had been carried out without a
hitch, complacency got the upper hand, and he felt
assured of a successful conclusion.
Count Ayakura’s  abstraction  persisted.  He
believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to
acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt
that taking naps was much more beneficial than
confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the
future might seem, he learned from the game of
kemari that the ball must always come down. There
was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along
with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily
committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the
Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.
Just let matters slide. How much better to accept
each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to
stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision.
However grave the matter at hand might be, if one
neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself
would begin to affect the situation, and someone else
would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s
version of political theory.
Once back at the side of such a husband, the
Countess became daily less concerned with the
anxiety that had oppressed her at Gesshu. In the
present circumstances, it was lucky that Tadeshina
was away and unable to act blindly on one of her rash
impulses. The Count had been kind enough to send
her off for a leisurely convalescence at the hot springs
of Yugawara.
After a week, however, there was a phone call from
Marquis Matsugae, and even Count Ayakura could no
longer keep the matter secret. The Marquis was
temporarily struck dumb when he heard the Count tell
him that as a matter of fact Satoko had not yet
returned and he felt the stirrings of all sorts of nasty
premonitions.
The Marquis and his wife lost no time in paying a
visit to the Ayakuras. At first the Count offered one
vague response after another as he was questioned.
And then when the truth finally came out, the Marquis
was so furious that he struck the table in front of him
with his fist.
∗
So it came about that this ten-mat parlor awkwardly
redone to become the sole Western-style room in the
mansion became the scene for the first occasion in
their long acquaintance that these two couples
confronted each other stripped of all niceties. The
women averted their eyes and each from time to time
stole a look at her husband. Though the two men
faced each other, Count Ayakura tended to hang his
head. His hands, resting on the table, were small and
white, the hands of a doll in a puppet play. In contrast,
despite his essential weakness, the Marquis’s
coarse, florid features could have served as a Noh
mask of the angry devil with the fiercely contorted
eyebrows. Even in the eyes of the wives, the Count
appeared to have no chance.
As it turned out, the Marquis’s anger swept all
before it for a time. But even while he was letting
himself rage, he began to feel a little embarrassed
over his display of self-righteousness. For after all, his
own position in this affair was safe from first to last.
Moreover, he could hardly have been matched with a
weaker, more pitiful antagonist than the one who now
confronted him. The Count’s color was unhealthy. As
he sat there in silence, an expression, part sorrow,
part dismay, came over his face, which seemed to be
carved out of yellow ivory, the features delicately
chiseled and quite composed. The crinkled eyelids
emphasized the deep-set cast of the habitually
downcast eyes as well as their melancholy. The
Marquis had the feeling, not for the first time, that they
were women’s eyes.
Count Ayakura’s languid reticence, his manner of
slumping casually in his chair, clearly bespoke the
graceful elegance of ancient tradition—something
that was nowhere to be found in the Marquis’s
pedigree—now displayed at its most deeply injured. It
had something of the soiled plumage of a dead bird,
a creature that had once sung beautifully but whose
flesh was tasteless and so inedible after all.
“It’s quite unbelievable! A positively wretched thing
to happen. What apologies could we offer to the
Emperor, to the entire nation?” the Marquis
declaimed heedlessly, intent on letting his anger
sweep along on a stream of orotund syllables but
aware that its supporting lifeline might snap at any
minute. Anger was useless against the Count, who
was neither acquainted with logic nor remotely
inclined to initiate any course of action. Worse still,
the Marquis gradually came to realize that the more
enraged he became, the more the force of his
passion was turned relentlessly back against itself.
He could not believe that the Count had plotted just
such a result from the very beginning. But nonetheless
he now saw with painful clarity that the Count had
been able to use his endemic listlessness to forge so
impregnable a position that, however monumental the
catastrophe, the blame for it would come to rest not
on himself but on his ally.
After all, it was the Marquis who had asked the
Count to give his son an upbringing that would imbue
him with a sense of elegance. It was undoubtedly the
desires of the flesh in Kiyoaki that had brought on this
misfortune, and one might well argue that this was the
consequence of the subtle poison that had begun to
infect his spirit after his arrival in the Ayakura
household as an infant. But the ultimate instigator of
this was none other than the Marquis himself.
Furthermore, in this latest twist of the crisis, it was the
Marquis who had insisted on sending Satoko down to
Osaka without any forethought that something like this
might occur. Everything thus conspired to turn the
force of the Marquis’s wrath against himself.
Finally worn out by his exertions and unnerved by
his growing anxiety, the Marquis held his tongue. The
ensuing silence lengthened and grew more profound
until it seemed as if the four of them had gathered in
this room to practice group meditation. The noonday
clucking of the chickens came from the yard behind
the house. Each time the early winter wind blew
through the trees outside, the pine needles that stirred
at the slightest touch flashed brightly. There was no
sound of human activity from anywhere else in the
house, and the silence seemed to be in deference to
the eerie atmosphere in the parlor.
The Countess finally broke the spell.
“It was my negligence that caused this. There is no
way that I can apologize sufficiently to you, Marquis
Matsugae. However, things being as they are,
wouldn’t it be best to try and make Satoko change her
mind as soon as possible and have the betrothal
ceremony take place as planned?”
“But what about her hair?” was the Marquis’s
immediate retort.
“Well, as to that, if we are quick and arrange to
have a wig made, it would mislead the public eye for
a while . . .”
“A wig!” the Marquis exclaimed, breaking in before
the Countess had finished with a slightly shrill note of
joy in his voice. “I never thought of that.”
“Yes, of course,” said his wife, chiming in at once.
“We never thought of that.”
And from then on, as the others were infected with
the Marquis’s enthusiasm, the wig was all they could
talk about. For the first time, laughter was heard in the
parlor as the four of them competed to pounce first on
this bright idea as if it were a scrap of meat.
Not all of them, however, placed the same degree
of faith in the Countess’s novel idea. The Count, for
one, did not trust its efficacy. The Marquis may well
have shared his skepticism, but he was capable of
feigning belief with dignity. And the Count himself
hastened to profit by his example.
“Even if the young prince gets a bit suspicious
about Satoko’s hair,” said the Marquis, lowering his
voice to a forced whisper while he laughed, “he’s
certainly not going to touch it to see for himself.”
An atmosphere of cordiality pervaded the room,
however fragile the fiction that sustained it. For the
fiction supplied them with that tangible element so
vital at this moment. No one considered Satoko’s
soul; it was her hair alone that pertained to the
national interest.
The Marquis’s father had dedicated all of his fierce
strength and passion to the cause of the imperial
restoration. His mortification would have been bitter
had he known that the glory he had earned for the
family name would one day depend on a woman’s
wig. This sort of intricate and shady maneuvering was
hardly the forte of the House of Matsugae. It was, in
fact, far more characteristic of the Ayakuras. But the
present Marquis, instead of leaving elegantly refined
deceptions to the Ayakuras, who were bred to that
kind of thing, had become fascinated by it, and so the
House of Matsugae was now compelled to share an
unaccustomed burden.
The truth of the matter was that this wig as yet only
existed in their imaginations and was totally irrelevant
to  Satoko’s  intentions.  However,  once  they
succeeded in dressing her in a wig, they would be
able to construct a flawless picture from the pieces of
a shattered jigsaw puzzle. Everything thus seemed to
depend on the wig, and the Marquis gave himself
over to the project with enthusiasm.
Each of the foursome in the parlor contributed
wholeheartedly to the discussion of the nonexistent
hairpiece. Satoko would have to wear one dressed in
a long, straight hairstyle for the betrothal ceremony,
but for everyday use, a wig done in the Western
fashion would be necessary. And since there was no
telling when someone might catch sight of her, she
must not take it off even when she took a bath. And
each of them began to use his or her imagination to
picture this wig with which they had already decided
to crown her: abundant, jet-black hair, even more
glossy than her own. Such sovereign power would be
hers despite herself, the grandeur of a towering,
gracefully arranged coiffure radiating a dark
fascination moreover that would imbue the flat
brightness of midday with something of the essence
of night. Each of the four was well enough aware that
it would be no simple matter to achieve this—that
beneath this peerless wig there would be a face
marked with unhappiness, but no one was willing to
dwell for long on this aspect of the problem.
“This time I would appreciate it greatly if you
yourself, Count, went down there to impress upon your
daughter how firmly your mind is made up. Countess,
I’m so sorry that you must go to the trouble of a
second trip, but I’ll arrange for my wife to accompany
you again. Of course, I, too, should really go.
However . . .” Here, the Marquis, who was sensitive to
appearances, faltered slightly. “If I should go, you see,
it might well make people wonder. So I’ll stay here. I
would like the whole trip to be accomplished in the
greatest secrecy this time. As far as my wife’s
absence is concerned, we can let it be known that
she’s ill. And in the meantime here in Tokyo, let me
look around and I’ll hire the best craftsman available
to make us a fine wig without anyone being the wiser.
If a newspaper reporter should get wind of it, we’d
have a pretty situation on our hands. But just you leave
that question to me.”
46
K IYOAKI WAS SURPRISED to see
his mother once again getting ready for a trip.
However, she refused to tell him either the destination
or the purpose of her journey, saying only that he was
not to mention it outside the house. He sensed that
something alarming was afoot and that it had to do
with Satoko, but with Yamada constantly at his side to
keep an eye on him, there was no way he could find
out any more.
When the Ayakuras and Marquise Matsugae
arrived at Gesshu Temple, they were met with an
appalling state of affairs. Satoko had already
received the tonsure.
∗
The circumstances that had led so rapidly to her
renunciation of the world were as follows. When the
Abbess had heard the entire story from Satoko that
first morning, she had known at once that she must
allow the girl to become a nun. Keenly aware that
each of her predecessors at Gesshu had been an
imperial princess, she felt bound to revere the
Emperor above all else. And so she had come to the
decision that she had to allow Satoko to enter even if
this involved a temporary thwarting of the imperial will.
She had concluded that, given the circumstances,
there was no other way to discharge her loyalty to the
Emperor. She had happened to uncover a plot
directed at him, and she could not allow it to proceed
unchecked. She was not one to countenance a
breach of loyalty, no matter how elegant the cunning
that disguised it.
Thus it was that the normally so discreet and gentle
Abbess of Gesshu made up her mind, determined to
give in neither to the force of authority nor the threat of
coercion. Even if all the world should be ranged
against her, even if she were forced to ignore a
particular imperial decree, she would persist in what
she had to do—to be a silent guard of the sacred
person of His Majesty.
Her resolve had a profound effect on Satoko, who
became all the more determined to turn her back on
the world. She had not expected the Abbess to grant
her request so readily. She had had an encounter with
the Lord Buddha, and the Abbess, her eye as keen
as a crane’s, had immediately discerned the firmness
of the girl’s decision.
Although it was customary for a novice to undergo a
year of ascetic discipline before her formal induction
as a nun, both Satoko and the Abbess felt that in the
present circumstances this period should be
dispensed with. But the Abbess could not bring
herself to disregard the Ayakuras so completely as to
allow Satoko to take the tonsure before the Countess
returned from Tokyo. Moreover, there was the matter
of Kiyoaki. Would it not be wise, she thought, to allow
him and Satoko to bid each other a long farewell
before she sacrificed what hair she had spared so
far?
Satoko could hardly endure the delay. She came to
the Abbess every day and, like a child teasing her
mother to give her candy, begged to be allowed to
take the tonsure. Finally, the Abbess found herself
prepared to yield.
“If I were to allow you to take the tonsure,” she
asked Satoko, “you would never be allowed to see
Kiyoaki again. That wouldn’t trouble you?”
“No.”
“Well, once you make the decision not to see him
ever again in this world and so advance to initiation,
any later regrets would indeed be bitter ones.”
“I will have no regrets. In this world I shall never set
eyes on him again. As for parting, we’ve had farewells
enough. So please . . .”
Her voice as she replied was clear and firm.
“Very well. Tomorrow morning, then, I will preside at
the tonsure ceremony,” the Abbess replied, allowing
one more day of grace.
Countess Ayakura did not return in the interval.
From that first morning at Gesshu, Satoko had
plunged herself, of her own volition, into the
disciplined routine of convent life. The distinctive
character of Hosso Buddhism was in placing greater
emphasis on the cultivation of the mind than the
practice of religious austerities. Gesshu Temple,
furthermore, was traditionally dedicated to praying for
the welfare of the whole nation, and there were no
households registered with it as parishioners.
Sometimes the Abbess would observe with gentle
humor that the “Grace of tears” was something never
encountered in Hosso Buddhism, thus underlining the
contrast with the more recently arisen Amida cult of
Pure Land Buddhism, with its great stress on ecstatic
prayers of gratitude.
Then, too, in Mahayana Buddhism in general, there
were no precepts to speak of. But for the rules of its
monastic life the precepts of Hinayana Buddhism
were often borrowed. In convents such as Gesshu,
however, the rule was the “Precepts of a Bodhisattva”
contained in the  Brahamajala Sutra. Its forty-eight
prohibitions began with ten major injunctions against
such sins as the taking of life, stealing, excess of any
sort, and lying, and it concluded with an
admonishment  against  destroying  Buddhist
teachings.
Far more severe than any commandment, however,
was the monastic training. In the brief time she had
been at Gesshu, Satoko had already memorized both
the “Sutra of the Enlightened Heart” and the “Thirty
Verses” expounding the doctrine of  Yuishiki. Each
morning she got up early to sweep and dust the main
hall of worship before the Abbess came for her
morning devotions, in the course of which she then
had an opportunity to practice the chanting of the
sutras. She was no longer treated as a guest, and the
senior nun, whom the Abbess had placed in charge of
her, was now a changed woman in her severity of
manner.
On the morning of the initiation ceremony, she
carefully performed the prescribed ablutions before
putting on the black robes of a nun. In the hall of
worship, she sat with her string of beads wrapped
around her hands, which she held clasped together in
front of her. After the Abbess herself had first taken
the razor and begun the tonsuring, the old nun in
charge of her took over. And as she shaved steadily
with a skilled hand, the Abbess began to chant the
“Sutra of the Enlightened Heart,” accompanied by the
junior nun.
When she had consummated the works of
perfection,
The Five Aggregates of living being became
as
Things  void  before  the  Bohdisattva
Kannon’s eyes,
And stricken from her was the yoke of
human suffering.
Satoko, too, took up the chant, her eyes closed.
And as she did so, her body became like a boat that
is gradually lightened of all its cargo and freed of its
anchor, and she felt herself being swept along on the
deep swelling wave of chanting voices.
She kept her eyes shut. The main hall had the
penetrating chill of an ice house. and so, although she
herself was floating free, she imagined a vast
expanse of pure ice gripping all the world about her.
Suddenly the cry of a shrike came from the garden
outside, and a crack raced across this icy plane with
the swiftness of a jagged steak of lightning. But it
sealed itself almost at once, and the ice became
whole once more.
She felt the razor working its way with scrupulous
care across her scalp. Sometimes she imagined the
frenetic gnawing of a mouse’s tiny white incisors,
sometimes the placid grinding of the molars of a
horse or cow.
As lock after lock fell away, she felt her scalp begin
to tingle with a refreshing coolness that was quite new
to her. The razor was shearing off the black hair that
had separated her from the world for so long, sultry
and heavy with its sorry burden of desire; but her
scalp was now being laid bare to a realm of purity
whose chill freshness had not been violated by any
man’s hand. As the expanse of shaved head
broadened, she began to feel the skin coming more
and more alive, just as if a cool solution of menthol
was spreading over it.
She imagined that the chill must be like the surface
of the moon, directly exposed to the vastness of the
universe. The world she had known was falling away
with each strand. And as it did so, she became
infinitely removed from it.
In one sense, it seemed as though her hair were
being harvested. Shorn black clumps, still saturated
with the stifling brilliance of the summer sun, piled up
on the floor around her. But it was a worthless crop,
for the very instant that the luxuriant black handfuls
ceased to be hers, the beauty of life went out of them,
leaving only an ugly remnant. Something that had
once been an intimate part of her, an aesthetic
element of her innermost being, was now being
relentlessly thrown aside. As irrevocable as the
amputation of a limb, the ties that bound her to the
world of transience were being severed.
When her scalp at last shone with a bluish glint, the
Abbess addressed her gently.
“The most crucial renunciation is the one that
comes after formal renunciation. I have the utmost
trust in your present resolution. From this day on, if
you seek constantly to purify your heart in the
austerities of our life, I have no doubt that one day you
will become the glory of our sisterhood.”
∗
This was how Satoko’s premature tonsuring came
about. Neither Countess Ayakura nor Marquise
Matsugae, however, was prepared to give up, no
matter how shattered they were by Satoko’s
transformation. After all, there remained the wig, a
potent weapon still held in reserve.
47
C OUNT A YAKURA  ALONE
among the three visitors maintained an appearance
of affability from first to last. He engaged the Abbess
and Satoko in casual, unhurried conversation about
the world in general, and at no time gave the slightest
hint that he might want Satoko to change her mind.
A telegram arrived every day from Marquis
Matsugae demanding a report on the situation to
date. Finally the Countess broke down and wept as
she pleaded with her daughter, but this gained her
nothing, and so on the third day after their arrival, the
Countess and the Marquise left for Tokyo, putting all
their trust in the Count, who remained at Gesshu. The
strain had worked such ravages in the Countess that
she took to her bed as soon as she returned home.
As for the Count, he spent a week at Gesshu doing
nothing at all. He was afraid to return to Tokyo. Since
he had made no attempt whatever to persuade
Satoko to return to secular life, the Abbess relaxed
her guard and gave him and his daughter the chance
to be alone together. The senior nun, however, kept a
casual eye on them from a distance.
The two of them sat facing each other in silence on
a veranda that caught some share of the winter
sunshine. Beyond the dry tree branches, some
scattered clouds reemphasized the blue of the sky. A
flycatcher called timidly from a crape myrtle. They had
been sitting without a word for a long time. Finally
Count Ayakura spoke, with a hint of an ingratiating
smile.
“I won’t be able to mix much in society from now on,
because of you.”
“Be kind enough to forgive me,” Satoko answered
calmly, without a trace of emotion.
“My, you have all sorts of birds in this garden,
haven’t you?” he said after a few moments.
“Yes, we have all sorts.”
“I took a little stroll around this morning. By the time
the persimmons here are ripe enough to fall, it looks
as though the birds have already been at them. There
seems to be no one to pick them up.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what happens.”
“I should think we’ll have some snow before too
long,” he added, but there was no answer. And so the
two of them sat in silence, gazing down at the garden.
The following morning Count Ayakura finally left
Gesshu. And when he confronted Marquis Matsugae
in Tokyo, having failed completely in his mission, he
found that the Marquis was no longer angry.
It was already December 4, which left a mere week
until the betrothal ceremony. The Marquis secretly
summoned  the  superintendent-general  of  the
metropolitan police to the Matsugae residence. His
plan was to invoke the power of the police to effect
Satoko’s forcible removal from the convent.
The superintendent-general sent a confidential
order to the Nara police. Since this was a matter of
setting foot in a convent whose Abbess was
traditionally an imperial princess, however, the Nara
police were afraid of incurring the wrath of the
Imperial Household Ministry. As long as the temple
was receiving assistance from imperial funds—be it
only a thousand yen a year—the slightest violation of
its autonomy was unthinkable. The superintendent-
general himself therefore went down to Nara in
private, accompanied by a trusted subordinate in
civilian clothes. The Abbess did not show the slightest
sign of alarm when the senior nun handed her his
card.
After spending an hour chatting with the Abbess
over tea, he finally had to withdraw, yielding to the
force of her massive dignity.
The Marquis had played the last card in his hand,
and had come to the realization that there was nothing
else to do but to request the Toinnomiyas to accept
Satoko’s withdrawal from the proposed marriage. In
recent weeks, Prince Toin had sent an official to the
Ayakuras several times, and was concerned over
their strange behavior.
The Marquis summoned the Count to his home and
told him that they had no choice but to accept the
situation. Then he outlined the strategy they were to
follow. They would present the Toinnomiyas with a
certificate signed by a reputable doctor testifying that
Satoko had been stricken by a severe nervous
breakdown. The shared responsibility of preserving
this secret might unite the Toinnomiyas with the
Ayakuras and Matsugaes in mutual trust, and this
might soften the Prince’s anger. As for the general
public, all that need be done was to spread the rumor
that the Toinnomiyas had released a curt, vaguely
worded statement that the engagement was at an end
and that Satoko had turned her back on the world and
fled to a convent. As a result of this inversion of cause
and effect, the Toinnomiyas, although obliged to
some extent to play the villain, would nonetheless
maintain face and prestige. And the Ayakuras, while
incurring a measure of shame, would nevertheless
benefit from public sympathy.
It would never do, however, to let things get out of
hand. If that were to happen, altogether too much
sympathy would accrue to the Ayakuras, and the
Toinnomiyas, faced with the stirrings of unjustified
hostility, would be compelled to clarify matters, and so
have to make public Satoko’s medical certificate. It
was essential to present the story to the newspaper
reporters without making too much cause and effect
out of the Toinnomiyas’ breaking of the engagement
and Satoko’s becoming a nun. They must be
presented  as  separate  events—but  their
chronological sequence would have to be reversed.
The reporters themselves, however, would hardly be
content with such an explanation. Should this be the
case, a bare hint would be dropped to them that there
was indeed a causal relationship but the families
involved requested that they refrain from disclosing
this.
As soon as he obtained Count Ayakura’s
agreement to this plan, the Marquis immediately put
in a call to Dr. Ozu, the director of the Ozu Mental
Clinic, and requested that he come to the Matsugae
residence at once to conduct an examination in the
strictest secrecy. The clinic had an excellent
reputation for protecting the privacy of its eminent
patients when emergencies of this sort arose. Dr. Ozu
took a long time to arrive, however, and in the interval
the Marquis was no longer able to hide his irritation
from the Count, who was forced to wait for the doctor
with him. But since it would have been improper in the
circumstances to send a car from the Matsugae
residence, the Marquis could do nothing but grit his
teeth.
When the doctor arrived, he was brought to the
small second-floor parlor of the Western-style house,
where a fire was burning brightly in the fireplace. The
Marquis introduced himself and the Count in turn and
offered the doctor a cigar.
“And where would you like me to examine the
patient?” asked Dr. Ozu. The Marquis and the Count
exchanged glances.
“Well,” the Marquis replied, “the truth of the matter is
that the patient isn’t here at the moment.”
As soon as he learned that he was being asked
then and there to sign a medical certificate for a
patient he had never set eyes on, the doctor went red
with anger. What particularly provoked him was the
look that he was sure he had caught in the Marquis’s
eyes: a flicker of presumption that his signature would
indeed be forthcoming.
“What’s the meaning of this preposterous request?”
he demanded. “Do you by any chance take me for
one of your society doctors who can be bought and
paid for?”
“Believe me, Doctor,” the Marquis replied, “we have
by no means mistaken you for a gentleman of that
sort.” He took his cigar out of his mouth and began to
pace the room. Then, gazing across at the doctor and
noting how his plump, healthy ruddy cheeks were
quivering in the firelight, he addressed him in a deep,
solemn tone: “As for this medical certificate, it is
something that is essential to the continued tranquillity
of His Sacred Majesty.”
∗
When the Marquis had the signed certificate in his
hand, he at once requested a meeting with Prince
Toin at his earliest convenience, and went next night
to the Prince’s residence.
Fortunately enough, the young prince was away
again on regimental maneuvers. Since the Marquis
had specifically requested an audience with Prince
Haruhisa, the Princess was not at her husband’s side
when he greeted the Marquis.
Prince Toin seemed to be in a jovial mood as he
urged a fine French wine on his guest and spoke of
this and that, not forgetting to declare once again how
fine the entertainment had been at the blossom
festival the previous spring. Quite some time had
passed since the two had had a chance to talk
together like this, and the Marquis again recalled the
experiences they had shared during the Paris
Olympics of 1900 and went on to entertain the Prince
with a variety of anecdotes about their well-
remembered cabaret at the champagne fountain. It
seemed as if neither had a care in the world.
Nevertheless the Marquis was well aware that
beneath the Prince’s dignified and unruffled
composure, he was in fact waiting with anxiety and
misgiving to hear what he had to tell him. The Prince
had not said a word about the betrothal ceremony,
now only a few days distant. Like sunlight falling on a
sparse grove of trees, the lamplight on the handsome
gray moustache revealed a fleeting expression of
uneasiness which from time to time contorted the
mouth beneath.
“Well now, as regards my intruding on you here
tonight . . . ,” the Marquis said, broaching the crucial
topic in a deliberately frivolous tone, as agile as a bird
that darts straight to its nest after flying around for a
time with careless ease. “I have the unpleasant task of
imparting some unfortunate news that is not at all
easy to express. Ayakura’s daughter has gone out of
her mind.”
“What?” The Prince’s eyes opened wide with
shock.
“Ayakura, being the sort of fellow he is, kept it
completely hidden. Without even consulting me, he
put Satoko into a convent, hoping to avoid a scandal,
and yet up until now he hasn’t been able to summon
enough courage to inform Your Highness of what has
happened.”
“Why, this is incredible! Waiting until now!”
The Prince pressed his lips firmly together, and the
edges of his moustache dipped downward. He stared
for some moments at the pointed toes of his shoes
glinting in the light cast by the fireplace.
“This is a medical certificate signed by Dr. Ozu.
Indeed, as you see, it’s dated a month ago, but
Ayakura didn’t show it to me. All this is due to my
failure to keep a sharp eye on everything, and there is
no way for me adequately to express my sorrow . . .”
“If she’s ill, she’s ill. It can’t be helped. But why didn’t
he tell me about it earlier? And so that’s what the trip
to the Kansai was about! Now that you mention it,
when they were here to pay their respects before
leaving, her color wasn’t good at all, and Princess
Toin was concerned about it.”
“Her mind hasn’t been right since last September,
and she’s been doing all sorts of odd things, they say,
until finally her behavior was brought to my attention.”
“Well, that’s how the situation stands; nothing can
be done about it,” said the Prince. “I’ll go to the palace
early tomorrow to express my apologies to the
Emperor. I wonder how His Majesty will take it? You’ll
let me take this certificate, then, won’t you? I’ll have to
show it to him.”
Prince Toin’s exquisite breeding was evident in that
he said not one word about young Prince Harunori.
As for the Marquis, he kept his shrewd eyes fixed
throughout the interview on each shift of expression in
the Prince’s face. In it, he had seen dark threatening
waves rise and fall and rise again. And after he had
watched the process for some time, he felt his own
anxiety receding. The moment of greatest danger had
passed.
The Prince summoned his wife, and after the three
of them had gone well into the night discussing the
best plan to follow, Marquis Matsugae finally took his
leave.
∗
The following morning, Prince Harunori happened
to return from maneuvers just at the awkward moment
when his father was about to leave for the Imperial
Palace. Prince Toin took his son aside and broke the
news to him. There was no trace of emotion on his
young, sturdy face as he replied that he would behave
entirely according to his father’s wishes in the matter.
And so, far from being resentful, the young man
showed no signs even of being perturbed at the
course of events.
Since he was tired after the all-night maneuvers, he
went to bed as soon as he had seen his father off. His
mother, however, feeling sure that he would be unable
to sleep after such news, came to his room.
As he raised his eyes to her, she noticed that they
were slightly bloodshot from lack of sleep, but his look
was as direct and unflinching as ever.
“So it was just last night,” he said to her, “that
Marquis Matsugae came to tell us about it.”
“Yes, just last night.”
“You know, Mother, I just happened to think of
something that took place a long time ago, when I
was a lieutenant at the palace. I told you about it then,
didn’t I? Anyway, I was going for an audience with the
Emperor and I happened to run into Marshal
Yamagata in the corridor. I’ll never forget it, Mother. It
was the corridor that ran along the side of the front
reception room. The Marshal was just coming from an
audience, I think. As usual, he was wearing that
uniform overcoat with the wide lapels, the peak of his
cap was down over his eyes, and his hands were
sticking in his pockets as if he didn’t give a damn
about anybody. He was coming toward me down that
dark corridor with his sword almost dragging at his
side. I instantly stepped aside, stood to attention and
saluted him. He glanced at me quickly from under the
peak of his cap with those eyes that never smiled.
Surely, Mother, Marshal Yamagata must have known
who I was. But he turned his head away abruptly,
looking annoyed, threw back his shoulders inside that
overcoat at the same time, and swaggered away
down the corridor without so much as returning my
salute. Now why, Mother, do you suppose I happened
to remember that just now?”
∗
An article in next day’s paper informed the general
public that they were going to be deprived of the
festivities they had been anticipating with such
pleasure. There would be no betrothal ceremony. The
engagement had been dissolved “because of
circumstances in the family of His Imperial Majesty
Prince Harunori.” And so it came about that Kiyoaki,
who had been told nothing at all about recent events,
finally learned what had happened from a newspaper.
48
A FTER  THE  BROKEN
ENGAGEMENT became known, the family watched over
Kiyoaki even more closely, and the steward Yamada
accompanied him even to school. His classmates,
having no inkling of the circumstances, did not know
what to make of such solicitude, ordinarily shown only
to the youngest of the grade-school boys.
Furthermore, his father and mother no longer uttered
a word about the affair in his presence, and everyone
else in the household behaved in front of him as
though nothing had happened.
Society, however, was agog. Kiyoaki was
surprised to find that even the sons of the most
prestigious families at Peers were so much in the
dark over this event that some of them asked him, of
all people, what he thought of the affair.
“Everybody’s so sympathetic toward the Ayakuras,
but do you know what I think?” one student
demanded. “I think that this is going to undermine
people’s reverence for the Imperial Family. Isn’t
everybody saying that they found out later that this
Miss Ayakura wasn’t quite right in her mind? But I
want to know why this only came out right now.”
While Kiyoaki was wondering how best to answer,
Honda, who was standing beside him, stepped into
the breach.
“Even if someone is sick, there’s no way of knowing
until the symptoms appear, is there? Why don’t you
stop gossiping like a schoolgirl?”
But this kind of appeal to masculinity was
ineffective at Peers. To begin with, Honda’s family did
not have the status to qualify him as a person in the
know, who could provide a plausible ending to this
sort of exchange. In order to qualify as a person in the
know, one had to be able to say something like: “She
happens to be my cousin,” or perhaps, “He is the son
of my uncle’s mistress.” A boy such as this had to
show that he was proud to have faint blood ties to
crime and scandal, and yet at the same time parade
his own noble aloofness intact. And so with a slight
curl to his lip, he would drop enough of a hint to
indicate that, unlike the rumormongering rabble, he
had access to behind-the-scenes information. At this
school, mere boys of fifteen or sixteen were apt to put
on airs and say: “It’s given the Home Minister quite a
headache, you know. He called up late last night to
talk to Father about it”; or again: “Everyone thinks that
the Home Minister is laid up with a cold, but the truth
is that he was in such a hurry to get to an imperial
audience that he missed the step getting out of his
carriage and sprained his ankle.”
Strangely enough, Kiyoaki’s habitual secretiveness
seemed to have worked to his advantage in this
business. For other than Honda, none of his
classmates had any idea of his relations with Satoko,
nor was anyone aware of Marquis Matsugae’s role in
the matter. There was, however, a son of the ancient
court nobility who was related to the Ayakuras and
vehemently insisted that someone as beautiful and
gifted as Satoko could not possibly have gone mad;
but all he provoked were scornful smiles from his
classmates, who thought him simply anxious to
defend his own kind.
All of this caused Kiyoaki constant pain. In
comparison  with  Satoko’s  public  humiliation,
however, he did not even have a slighting remark to
contend with. And however acute his private agony, it
was, after all, the torment of a coward.
Whenever this business came up with his
classmates or he heard Satoko’s name on their lips,
he would look out of the window of the second-floor
classroom as though absorbed in the view of the
distant mountains, now wholly in the grip of winter,
their snow-covered slopes sparkling in the clear
morning air. He would imagine Satoko herself, now
remote and unapproachable, presenting a similar
purity to the world at large, without a word in her own
defense. The brightness, distant yet almost painful,
was visible to Kiyoaki alone. Its flawlessness struck
him to the heart. By accepting everything—sin,
shame, the imputation of madness—she had
absolved herself. But what of him?
There were times when he wanted to shout out his
guilt at the top of his voice. But then her terrible self-
sacrifice would be in vain. Would it really be an act of
courage to nullify that for the sake of quieting his
conscience? Or did true courage demand rather that
he silently endure his present existence as a virtual
prisoner? It was too complex an evaluation for him.
But at any rate, to continue as he was, despite the
worsening pain, in other words to submit to the will of
his parents and the whole household, was to persist in
a course of action that was becoming more and more
difficult.
There had been a time when idleness and
melancholy seemed to be the intrinsic elements of life
as he wanted it to be. How had he happened to lose
his capacity for such enjoyment, his ability to luxuriate
in it without ever getting bored? It was gone, as
unnoticed as an umbrella forgotten at someone’s
house.
Now he needed something to hope for if he was to
endure idleness and melancholy. And since there was
nothing even remotely encouraging about his
situation, he began to construct a hope of his own.
“The rumor about her insanity is too incredible even
to bother discussing,” he thought. “I just don’t believe
it. So why couldn’t it be true that her running away
from the world and becoming a nun is only a trick?
Maybe she staged this daring comedy just to gain
time and get out of that marriage—for my sake, in
other words. If it’s true, then we must unite to keep
perfect silence, even though such a distance
separates us. That accounts for her not even writing
me so much as a note. It’s obvious! What else could
her silence mean?”
If Kiyoaki had truly understood her character, he
would have known immediately that his fiction was an
impossibility. After all, wasn’t the image of a
domineering Satoko no more than an illusion he had
created out of his own timidity? If so, then she was
perhaps no more substantial than a flake of snow that
had melted in his arms. His eyes had been fixed on
one single aspect of the truth. So much so, that now
he almost believed in the eternal validity of the
pretense in whose shadow this truth had found a
precarious existence. Thus his hope made him a prey
to self-deception.
It was a hope tinged with baseness. For if he had
really surrendered to the vision of her beauty, he could
not have left any room for hope. Without his noticing it,
his coldly glittering heart had begun to melt with pity
and tenderness, like ice under the rays of the setting
sun. He felt the urge to be gentle with people. And he
began to take a closer look at the world about him.
There was a student at Peers, the son of a marquis
whose family lineage was extremely ancient, who had
been nicknamed “the Monster.” Rumor had it that he
was a leper, but since it was unthinkable that a leper
would be allowed to attend classes, it could only be
that he had some other disease, which was not
contagious. Half his hair had fallen out. His
complexion was ashen and his skin lackluster. His
back was hunched. No one knew what his eyes were
like because he kept them well covered with the peak
of his school cap which he had special permission to
wear even in the classroom. He sniveled constantly,
and made a noise like water at a low boil. As he
never talked to anyone, he would take a book during
recess and walk to the far edge of the lawn in front of
the school before he sat down to read it.
Kiyoaki too, of course, had never had anything at all
to do with this student, who, besides everything else,
was in a different course. Even though their fathers
were nobles of the same rank, Kiyoaki seemed to
embody beauty more than any other boy in the school,
whereas the other was like the chosen emissary of
ugliness and sinister shadow.
Although the dry grass in the corner of the lawn that
was the Monster’s chosen spot caught more than its
fair share of sun on this particular early winter day,
everyone else avoided it. When Kiyoaki came up and
sat down beside him, he shut his book and went
tense as he prepared to flee, as he always did. Only
the muffled sound of his sniveling, like the steady
dragging of a light chain, broke the silence.
“What’s that you’re always reading?” asked the
Marquis’s son who was beautiful.
“Nothing . . . ,” replied the Marquis’s son who was
ugly. He thrust the book behind him, but not before
Kiyoaki’s eye caught the name Leopardi printed on
the spine. The gilt lettering cast a faint reflection that
flashed over the dry grass and was gone.
Since the Monster was not disposed to talk,
Kiyoaki edged away from him without getting up, then
stretched out his legs and lay on his side, supporting
himself on one elbow and ignoring the numerous
blades of dry grass now clinging to his woolen
uniform. Still directly opposite him, the Monster sat
huddled in obvious distress, shutting the book that he
had once more spread out in front of him. Kiyoaki felt
that he was looking at a caricature of his own misery,
and his gentleness began to give way to indignation.
As the unseasonably warm sun continued its
prodigality regardless, Kiyoaki saw the ugly figure of
the Marquis’s son begin to undergo a gradual
transformation.  His  crumpled  legs  cautiously
stretched out as he lay down on the grass and
propped himself on his elbow opposite Kiyoaki. His
form became Kiyoaki’s own, down to the very angle of
the head and the set of the shoulders. They had
become as like as a pair of lion-dogs guarding a
temple gate. Beneath the lowered brim of his cap, the
other’s lips, though not exactly smiling, at least gave a
hint that their owner was in a cheerful mood.
And so the two Marquis’s sons, one ugly, one
beautiful, made a pair. The Monster had handled
Kiyoaki’s whim of pity and solicitude by showing
neither gratitude nor resentment but by calling on his
profound  self-awareness,  the  mirror-image  of
Kiyoaki’s own, and by so doing, he had acquired a
form that was somehow a match for Kiyoaki’s. If one
disregarded their faces, the two of them presented a
remarkable symmetry there on the warm, dry grass,
from the braid that trimmed their jackets to the cuffs of
their trousers.
Kiyoaki’s attempt to penetrate the other’s reserve
could hardly have been rebuffed more completely, yet
with greater gentleness. He felt enveloped in the
warmth and kindness that had accompanied it.
From the nearby archery range came the twang of
a bowstring—a sound that made him think of the cold
bite of the winter wind—followed by the dull thud of the
arrow striking home as if the target were a slack-
tuned drum.
His own heart seemed to him to be much like an
arrow stripped of the flashing white feathers that gave
it direction.
49
W HEN SCHOOL ENDED for the
winter vacation, the studious among Kiyoaki’s
classmates devoted themselves to studying for the
pre-graduation exams, but the mere prospect of
opening a book filled him with horror. No more than a
third of his class, including Honda, intended to go on
after the spring graduation to sit for the university
entrance exams that were held in the summer. Most of
them intended to use their privilege as graduates of
Peers to receive dispensation from the entrance
examinations and either apply to those departments
of Tokyo Imperial University that were always under-
subscribed, or perhaps enter one of the other imperial
universities, such as Kyoto or Tohoku. Kiyoaki too,
regardless of what his father might think, would
probably follow the line of least resistance. If he
entered Kyoto University, he would be that much
closer to Satoko’s convent.
For the present, therefore, he was free to drift in
privileged idleness. There were two heavy snowfalls
in December, but he was in no mood to feel boyish
glee at the sight of the snow-covered grounds that
greeted him one morning. He pushed aside the
curtain of the window beside his bed and looked out
with indifference at the winter scene, the island now a
patch of brilliant white in the middle of the pond. He
did not stir from his bed for hours. At other times an
idea would strike him and his eyes would flash at the
prospect of getting back at Yamada, who supervised
him even while he was walking around the estate. He
chose a night when a particularly gusty north wind was
raging, and went for a brisk climb up the maple hill.
Yamada, flashlight in hand and neck buried in the
collar of his overcoat, had to come striding after him
despite his feebleness. The creaking of the branches,
the crying of the owl, the treacherous footing
underneath—everything filled him with delight as he
felt himself moving onward and upward as irresistibly
as a devouring flame. With each step he imagined
himself crushing the darkness beneath his heel as if it
were something soft and alive. At the crest of the hill,
the brilliant, star-filled winter sky was spread wide.
∗
Just before the year’s end, a gentleman came to
the Matsugae residence to call the Marquis’s
attention to a newspaper article written by Iinuma. The
Marquis was enraged at this evidence of his disloyalty
to the family.
The paper had a small circulation and was the
organ of a right-wing group. The Marquis protested
that it was the kind of muckraking sheet whose
practice was to extort money from those in high
society under the threat of exposing some scandal or
another. It would have been quite something else if
Iinuma had degraded himself to the extent of coming
to ask for money before publishing the article. But to
go ahead and write such a thing without even
attempting this was nothing less than an open and
provocative breach of his obligations.
Under a heading with a decidedly patriotic flavor,
“A Disloyal and Unfilial Marquis,” the burden of the
indictment was as follows: the man intimately involved
behind the scenes in the present affair of the broken
engagement was, in fact, Marquis Matsugae. Any
marriage involving a member of the Imperial Family
had to be subjected to close scrutiny in accordance
with the provisions of the Imperial Household Code
because such a marriage, no matter how remote the
possibility, might affect the imperial succession.
These then were the grave circumstances under
which Marquis Matsugae had taken it upon himself to
sponsor the daughter of an ancient family, a girl
whose mental instability he claimed to have been
unaware of at the time, going so far as to obtain an
imperial sanction for her marriage, only to have his
plans fall through, almost on the eve of the betrothal
ceremony. Despite all this, however, simply by being
lucky enough to have succeeded in keeping his name
out of the affair, Marquis Matsugae today was going
tranquilly about his business, thus displaying not only
a brazen disloyalty to His Majesty the Emperor, but
also a lack of reverence toward his own father, one of
the pillars of the Meiji Restoration.
If the article provoked the Marquis to fury, it aroused
misgivings in his son. He noticed at once that Iinuma
had made a point of appending his name and
address to it and also that, although he was fully
aware of what had happened between Kiyoaki and
Satoko, he had written as though he really believed
Satoko had had a nervous breakdown. Up to then,
Kiyoaki had had no idea where he was living. And
now the thought struck him that Iinuma had written this
in the knowledge that he would incur the stigma of
someone dead to all sense of obligation, because he
had wanted Kiyoaki to read it at all costs and know
where he was, without seeming to inform him directly.
At any rate, he was sure that the article contained a
hidden message that was aimed at him alone: Don’t
be like your father.
All at once, he felt a rush of nostalgia at the thought
of Iinuma. To have his awkward devotion once more,
to mock it playfully—he could think of nothing that
would cheer him more in his present mood. However,
to try to see him now while his father’s anger was at
its peak, would be to court further reprisals, and his
sense of nostalgia was not strong enough to make
him want to run that risk.
On the other hand, he knew that arranging a
meeting with Tadeshina would be far less dangerous.
Ever since the old woman’s thwarted suicide,
however, he could only think of her with indescribable
disgust. To judge by her having betrayed him to his
father in her farewell letter, he was convinced that
some twist of character made her derive a peculiar
pleasure from betraying all those without exception
whom she had brought together. He had come to
realize that she was like those people who would tend
their gardens scrupulously just for the pleasure of
tearing up their flowers once they had bloomed.
His father almost never spoke to him. And his
mother, not wishing to cross her husband, tried her
best to leave her son alone.
The reality at the heart of his father’s anger was
worry and fear. He hired a private policeman to stand
guard at the front gate, and had two more posted at
the rear. The old year ended, however, with neither
private threat nor the rise of public antagonism to
confront the Matsugaes. Iinuma’s disclosure had
apparently failed to set off any repercussions in
official circles.
It was customary for the two foreign families who
rented from the Matsugaes to send over invitations for
Christmas Eve. But since to gratify one family would
be to disappoint the other, the Marquis made it a
practice to accept neither invitation, but rather to send
over presents for each family’s children. This year,
however, feeling that he might find something to divert
him in the holiday mood of a foreign household,
Kiyoaki asked his mother if she would intercede with
his father to let him go. But the Marquis would not
hear of it.
The reason he gave was not the usual one of being
unwilling to disappoint one family or the other. Instead
he said that it was beneath the dignity of the son of
the nobility to accept an invitation from a tenant family.
One of the implications in this was clear enough to
Kiyoaki: his father still had little faith in his son’s ability
to maintain his dignity.
The Matsugae household was in a flurry of activity
during the last days of the year, as the traditional
massive house-cleaning that preceded the New
Year’s holidays could not be completed in a single
day. Kiyoaki had nothing to do. The feeling that the
year was ending was a knife in his heart—this year
above all years—for it would never come again. In
these last, waning days, he had come to realize that
this year had seen the peak of his life.
He left the house and all its bustle behind him and
walked alone toward the pond, in the mood to go
rowing. Yamada came hurrying after him with an offer
of company that was harshly rebuffed.
As the prow of the boat pushed through dry reeds
and broken remains of lotus leaves, a small flock of
wild ducks took to the air. In the midst of their frantic
flapping, he saw their small, flat bellies flash for a
second in the clear winter air with not a drop of water
to mar the silken sheen of their feathers. A reflected
gleam raced crookedly across the tangled reeds.
He looked down at the cold image of clouds and
blue sky reflected in the surface of the water, and
wondered at the sluggish ripples stirred by his oars.
As the reflection broke up, the dark, muddy water
seemed to be telling him something quite alien to the
crystalline clouds and winter sky.
He rested his oars and looked toward the main
reception room of the house, watching the servants
busy at work as if they were actors scurrying about on
a distant stage. The waterfall had not frozen, but its
sound was muffled and discordant. His view of its
lower reaches was blocked by the island, but farther
up, on the north side of the maple hill, the bare tree
branches revealed the dirty remnants of snow on the
banks of the stream.
He finally steered his boat into the tiny island inlet,
fastened it to a stake, and made his way up to the
faded green pines that crowned the knoll. As he
looked at the three metal cranes, the beaks of the two
that had outstretched necks seemed like a pair of
blunt arrowheads aimed at the December sky.
He threw himself down at once on the dry brown
grass warmed by the heat of the sun, and lay there,
face up, knowing that he was completely alone,
secure from every eye. Then as he sensed the numb
chill that came from rowing in the fingers that cradled
his head, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a wild
rush of misery that he had been able to fend off while
he was in the presence of other people.
“This year was mine—and now it’s gone,” he cried
out to himself. “It’s gone! Just like a cloud dissolving.”
The words poured out of him, cruel and unrestrained,
lashing him, intensifying his agony. Never before had
he given way to such wildness. “Everything has turned
sour, I’ll never be carried away with joy again. There’s
a terrible clarity dominating everything. As though the
world were made of crystal so that you only have to
flick part of it with your fingernail for a tiny shudder to
run through it all. . . . And then the loneliness—it’s
something that burns. Like hot thick soup you can’t
bear inside your mouth unless you blow on it again
and again. And there it is, always in front of me. In its
heavy white bowl of thick china, dirty and dull as an
old pillow. Who is it that keeps forcing it on me?
“I’ve been left all alone. I’m burning with desire. I
hate what’s happened to me. I’m lost and I don’t know
where I’m going. What my heart wants it can’t have . . .
my little private joys, rationalizations, self-deceptions
—all gone! All I have left is a flame of longing for times
gone by, for what I’ve lost. Growing old for nothing. I’m
left with a terrible emptiness. What can life offer me
but bitterness? Alone in my room . . . alone all through
the nights . . . cut off from the world and from everyone
in it by my own despair. And if I cry out, who is there to
hear me? And all the while my public self is as
graceful as ever. A hollow nobility—that’s what’s left of
me.”
A huge flock of crows was perched in the bare
branches of the maples on the hill. He listened to their
discordant shrieks and to the beating of wings as they
flew overhead toward the low hill where Omiyasama
was enshrined.
50
E ARLY IN THE NEW YEAR it was
customary for the Imperial Poetry Recitation to be
held at the palace. Ever since Kiyoaki was fifteen,
Count Ayakura had sent him an invitation each year
without fail, a kind of abiding token of the training in
elegance he had once received from the Count. And
this year too, though one would hardly have been
surprised if it had been otherwise, an invitation came
as usual through the Imperial Household Ministry. The
Count was going to assume his role as an imperial
lector once again, unhindered by any shameful
scruples, and it was clearly he who had arranged
Kiyoaki’s invitation.
When he showed his father the invitation, the
Marquis frowned at the sight of the Count’s signature
among those of the four lectors. He was seeing
elegance in a new light: it confronted him with tenacity
and impudence.
“Since it’s a regular event, you’d better go,” he said
at last. “If you didn’t this year, it might start people
talking about some rift between the Ayakuras and us.
In essence, we are not supposed to have any
connection with them where that affair is concerned.”
Year by year the poetry ceremony had grown on
Kiyoaki, and he had come to appreciate it greatly. At
no other time did the dignity of Count Ayakura’s
bearing show to such advantage as it did on these
occasions, nor could Kiyoaki imagine any role more
suited to him. Now of course, the sight of the Count
would be a painful one, but even so he felt that he
wanted to see him. He felt the desire to take a steady
look at the shattered fragments of a poem that had
once been alive inside him too, until he had grown
weary of looking. He thought that if he attended, the
image of Satoko would fill his mind.
He no longer believed himself to be a thorn of
elegance jabbed into the sturdy fingers of the
Matsugaes. But he had not changed to the point of
thinking that he actually was one of those fingers
either. Only the elegance that had been so conscious
a part of him had withered. His heart had become
desolate. Nowhere in himself could he find the kind of
graceful sorrow that inspires poems. He was empty
now, his soul a desert swept by parching winds. He
had never felt more estranged from elegance and
from beauty as well.
Yet perhaps all this was essential to his attaining
true beauty—this inner emptiness, this loss of all joy,
even this utter inability to believe that the oppressive
weight of each moment was something real, that his
pain, at least, was something that was his. The
symptoms of a man afflicted by true beauty are much
like those of leprosy.
Since he no longer looked in the mirror, he had no
way of knowing that the sad and haggard cast of his
features had evolved into the classical expression of
youth pining away for love.
One evening when he was eating dinner at a table
laid for him alone, the maid set down a small
wineglass beside his plate, with cut-glass sides that
were darkened by the crimson liquid they contained.
Without bothering to ask the girl, he presumed it to be
wine and drained the glass without hesitation. But
then a strange sensation, a thick, slippery aftertaste
lingered on his tongue.
“What was this?”
“The blood of a snapping turtle, sir,” the maid
answered. “I was ordered not to tell you unless you
asked what it was. It was the cook, sir. He said that he
wanted to make the young master fit and healthy
again. So he caught a turtle from the pond and
prepared it for you.”
As he felt the unpleasantly smooth liquid sliding
down his throat, he remembered the story the
servants had so often used to frighten him when he
was a child. Once again he saw the disturbing picture
he had formed at that time of a snapping turtle raising
its head like a sinister ghost from the dark waters of
the pond, its eyes fixed on him, a creature that usually
lay buried in the warm mud on the bottom, but never
failed to force its way up to the surface time and
again, pushing through the hostile weeds of dreams
that conquered time, to fix its eyes on him at every
stage of his life. But now, suddenly, the spell was
broken. Death had overtaken the turtle, and he had
just drunk its blood without knowing it. And with that, a
whole era seemed suddenly at an end. Inside him, the
terror was being docilely transformed into this
unfamiliar energy that was coursing through him with a
force whose intensity he could only guess.
∗
The order of procedure each year at the Imperial
Poetry Recitation was to read the selections
according to the status of the writer, beginning with
poems written by those of lower rank. With these first
poems, the lector began by reading the poet’s brief
words of introduction, and then gave his office and
rank. With the later poems, however, the lector first
gave office and rank and then immediately began to
recite the poem itself.
Among those who functioned as imperial lectors,
Count Ayakura held the honored position of chief.
Once more today both their Imperial Majesties and
His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince graced him
with their attention as the clear tones and beautifully
modulated voice sounded through the chamber.
No tremor of guilt blurred its clarity. On the contrary,
it was so brilliant as to stir sadness in the hearts of his
audience. As he read each poem, the languid
cadence of his words kept the pace of a Shinto
priest’s gleaming black-shod feet climbing, one by
one, the stone steps of a shrine bathed in the strange
warmth of the winter sun. It was a voice whose tone
was neither masculine nor feminine.
Not a single cough marred the silence of the
audience. But although his voice was supreme in the
palace chamber, it was never sensual, nor called
attention to itself at the expense of the poem itself.
What poured smoothly from his throat was the very
essence of elegance, impervious to shame, and its
paradoxical blend of joy and pathos flowed through
the room like the rolling mist in a picture scroll.
Up to now, each of the poems had been repeated
only once, but when the Count concluded the Crown
Prince’s poem with the formula, “Such being the most
eminent composition of His Majesty the Heir to the
Imperial Throne,” he went on to recite it twice more.
The Empress’s poem was recited three times. The
Count read the first verse, and then from the second
verse on, all four lectors recited it in unison. With the
exception of the Emperor himself, the rest of the
Imperial Family, including the Crown Prince, and of
course everyone else in the audience, stood up to
listen.
This year, Her Imperial Majesty had composed a
poem of exceptional grace and nobility. As he stood
listening to it, Kiyoaki stole a glance at Count
Ayakura, who was standing some distance from him.
He noticed how the paper bearing the poem rested
folded in the Count’s small, white hand, so like a
woman’s. The fine tissue was a light plum color.
Although an affair that involved the Count and that
had shaken the whole country was barely concluded,
Kiyoaki was not surprised to hear no trace of a
nervous quiver in his voice, much less the deep
sorrow of a father whose only daughter has been lost
to the world. The voice went on, clear, beautiful, never
strident, performing exactly what had been entrusted
to it. Let a thousand years go by, the Count would still
be serving his Emperor as he served him now, like
the rarest of songbirds.
The Imperial Poetry Recitation came to its climax at
last. It was the moment for the reading of the poem of
His Imperial Majesty himself.
Count Ayakura made his way reverently into the
immediate vicinity of the Emperor and gravely took
the imperial composition, which had been placed on
the cover of an inkstone case in the traditional
manner, and raised it to the level of his forehead. He
then recited it five times.
As he read, the purity of his voice became, if
anything, more pronounced, until he came at last to
the end of the fifth recitation and concluded with the
words “Such being the most august composition of
His Sacred Majesty.”
Kiyoaki, meantime, glanced up fearfully at the
Emperor’s face, his imagination quickened by the
memory of the late Emperor’s having patted him on
the head when he was a boy. His Majesty seemed to
be rather more frail than his imperial father had been,
and although he was listening to the reading of his
own composition, his face showed no sign of
complacency, but retained an icy composure. Kiyoaki
suddenly shook in fear at the totally improbable notion
that His Imperial Majesty was in fact suppressing an
anger that was directed at him.
“I’ve dared to betray His Majesty. There’s nothing to
do but to die.”
He held fast to that one thought as he stood there,
the atmosphere around him heavy with the rich
fragrance of incense, feeling as though he might
collapse at any moment. A thrill ran through him, but
whether of joy or dread he could not tell.
51
I T WAS F EBRUARY . With the
pre-graduation exams looming over them, all
Kiyoaki’s classmates were now wholly caught up in
their work. And he, who was indifferent to anything of
the sort, stood more aloof than ever. Honda was
certainly willing to help him with the preparation for his
tests, but he held back, feeling that Kiyoaki would
have none of it. He knew only too well how Kiyoaki
reserved his keenest displeasure for any excessive
show of friendship.
One day, just at this time, the Marquis suddenly
presented his son with the suggestion of entering
Merton College, Oxford. His admission could be
arranged with no great difficulty, especially since the
Marquis was on good terms with the dean of this
famous institution founded in the thirteenth century, but
in order to qualify, Kiyoaki would at least have to get
through the final exams at Peers. The Marquis had, in
fact, been painfully aware that Kiyoaki was becoming
more pale and haggard by the day, and he had finally
devised this means of saving his son, who was to
attain a court rank of at least fifth degree, junior grade,
before long. Since the plan of salvation was so
unexpected, Kiyoaki’s interest was certainly aroused.
He therefore decided that he would give every
appearance of being delighted with his father’s
proposal for the present.
Prior to this, he had cherished a moderate sort of
desire to see something of the West. But now that his
whole existence was focused on a single object, a
tiny, exquisitely beautiful part of Japan, he could look
at the map of the world spread out before him, and be
filled with a sense of crudity, not only by the vast array
of foreign countries, but even by the red-painted
image of his own, curving like a shrimp against the
flank of Asia. His Japan was light green, a country
without shape, full of a pathos, as pervasive as rising
mist.
His father bought a huge new map and had it hung
on the wall in the billiard room. His intention was
obviously to arouse great thoughts in Kiyoaki.
However, its flat, lifeless seas failed to excite him.
What came to his mind instead was the memory of a
night sea like a huge, black beast with a living
warmth, a pulse of its own, and blood that cried out—
the sea at Kamakura, whose awesome rumbling had
tormented him to the limit of endurance on a summer
night.
Though he had mentioned it to no one, he had
recently been troubled with frequent headaches and
dizzy spells. He slept less each night. As he lay in
bed, he told himself that the next day would surely
bring a letter from Satoko. She would set a time and
place for them to meet so that they could run away
together. He would find her in some small, unfamiliar
town, perhaps on a corner in front of an old-fashioned
storehouse converted into a bank. She would run up
to him and he would take her in his arms and hold her
as he had been longing to do. Over and over again,
he visualized the scene down to its last detail. But the
image he cherished in this way was formed in a
mirror backed with thin, brittle foil that was easily torn
away to reveal nothing but a dismal blankness. His
tears soaked his pillow and he called her name again
and again through the night in helpless frustration.
As he did so, there were moments when her image
was suddenly there beside him, somewhere between
dream and reality. His dreams ceased to tell stories
objective enough to be recorded in his journal. Hope
and despair, dream and reality, now came together to
cancel each other out, the border between them as
vague as the shoreline against which the rolling
waves break without cease. There for an instant, on
the surface of the water that lapped back over the
smooth sand, he saw the reflection of her face. Never
had she seemed more lovely nor more grief-stricken.
And when he put his lips close to this face that
glimmered like the evening star, it vanished.
A frantic desire to break out of his plight grew more
intense every day. Although everything had one single
message for him—be it every hour, every morning,
every noon and night, or the sky, the trees, the clouds
and wind all telling him to give her up—he was still
tormented by uncertainty. He felt a desperate need to
lay hands on one thing at least that was sure and
certain, to hear no more than a single word from her
own lips, if he could only know that it was true. And if a
word was too much to ask, he would be satisfied with
just a glimpse of her face. He could no longer endure
his racking anxiety.
In the meantime, the storm of rumors had quickly
subsided. People did not take long to forget even so
unprecedented and inexplicable an affair as an
engagement sanctioned by imperial decree being
broken on the very eve of the betrothal ceremony,
especially since a naval bribery scandal had recently
come to light to attract their indignation.
He made up his mind to leave home. Since his
parents were on their guard, however, they had
stopped giving him any allowance, and so he didn’t
have so much as a sen of his own.
Honda was taken aback when Kiyoaki approached
him for money. In accordance with his father’s ideas,
he had been given a bank account of his own, which
he was free to manage as he saw fit. He now
withdrew the entire amount and gave it to Kiyoaki
without asking a single question about what he
intended to do with it.
It was the morning of the twenty-first of February
when Honda brought the money to school and handed
it over to his friend. The sky was bright and clear, but
the morning air was bitterly cold.
“You’ve about twenty minutes left before class,”
said Kiyoaki after taking the money. His voice
sounded a little timid. “Won’t you come along and see
me off?”
“Where are you going?” asked the startled Honda.
He knew that Yamada must be standing guard at the
front gate.
“That way,” Kiyoaki answered, smiling and pointing
toward the woods.
Honda was pleased to see his friend showing signs
of energy for the first time in months, but no healthy
glow had returned to his face. On the contrary, his
gaunt features were pale and strained, making Honda
think of a thin sheet of ice in early spring.
“Do you feel all right?”
“I think I have a cold. Otherwise I’m fine,” Kiyoaki
replied, leading the way cheerfully along the path that
ran through the woods.
It had been a long time since Honda had seen him
walking so briskly. Moreover, he had a good idea
where his steps were leading, but said nothing. They
passed a marsh whose icy surface, laced with
intricate designs of frozen driftwood, dully reflected
the slanting rays of the morning sun. And then, leaving
the wood and its chattering birds behind, they came
to the eastern edge of the school property.
They were now at the top of a slope, across the
bottom of which stretched a line of factories. Strands
of barbed wire had been carelessly strung along here
in place of a fence, and the neighborhood children
often slipped through the breaks into the campus.
Beyond the wire, the grassy hill extended as far as the
road, where a rough wooden fence had been put up
over a low stone wall.
At this point the two of them came to a halt. Off to
the right was a streetcar line. Directly below, the sun
glinted from the jagged slate factory roofs as they
caught the force of its morning rays. The motley
collection of machines gathered under these roofs,
already running at full throttle, set up a dull roar like the
sea. The smokestacks stretched bleakly toward the
sky. The smoke that poured from them left a shadow
that crawled over the tops of the factories and shut out
the sun from the washing that was hung out beside a
row of hovels. But there were also some houses with
makeshift shelves hung from the roof to display a
number of bonsai. Here and there, one saw constant
flashes of light. Once it was the reflection from a pair
of pliers on the hip of an electrician climbing a pole.
Another time it was the eerie glow of a flame seen
through the windows of a chemical plant. In one
factory, when the roar of machines ceased, there
arose the sustained din of hammers beating on steel
plating.
Far away, there was the clear sun. Below, skirting
the school property, ran the road over which Kiyoaki
was about to escape. The shadows of the small
houses that lined it were etched upon its dusty white
surface. A man was riding a dull, rusted bicycle past a
group of children who were kicking a stone about.
“Well, I’ll be seeing you,” said Kiyoaki.
These were clearly words of farewell. They were
graven on Honda’s mind: for once, Kiyoaki had come
up with a cheerful expression typical of a young man.
Kiyoaki had even left his book bag in the
classroom. All he had on was his uniform and his
overcoat trimmed with two rows of brass buttons and
the cherry-blossom insignia running down the front of
it. He had stylishly spread the collar open, exposing
the tight, navy-style collar of his jacket, together with
the strip of white celluloid inside it, pressed against
his young throat as he now smiled at Honda, his face
shadowed by the peak of his cap. Then still smiling,
he turned and, bending apart some broken strands of
wire with his gloved hands, climbed through the
barrier.
∗
His disappearance was immediately reported to
his parents, who were thoroughly upset. Once again,
however, it was his grandmother’s decisiveness that
restored order.
“Don’t you see the way it is? He’s happy about
going to school in England. And since he intends to
go, he wants to see Satoko first and say good-bye to
her. But since you wouldn’t have let him do it if he’d
told you about it first, he’s gone down there without
telling you. Is there any other likely explanation?”
“But surely Satoko won’t see him.”
“If that’s what happens, he’ll give up and come
home. Kiyoaki’s a young man. You’ve got to let him
have his head until he gets this out of his system. It’s
because you tried to keep too close a rein on him that
this sort of thing had to happen.”
“But Mother! After what’s happened the precautions
we took were only to be expected.”
“All right, and this was only to be expected too.”
“That’s as may be, but it will be just terrible if this
gets out. What I’ll do is get in touch with the
superintendent-general at once and have him start a
search in absolute secrecy.”
“A search! Why a search? You already know where
he’s going.”
“But unless he’s caught and brought back . . .”
“You’ll regret it!” the old woman shouted, her eyes
burning with anger. “He might do something really
terrible this time. It’s quite all right for safety’s sake to
have the police look into things quietly. If they let us
know just where he is as soon as they find out, that will
be useful. But since we know perfectly well where he’s
going and why, they’re to keep their distance, and
they must absolutely not let him suspect anything.
Right now the boy is to be left completely free, and not
to be interfered with. Everything must be done quietly.
We must get through this without turning it into a big
drama. That’s what’s essential. If there’s any blunder
now, the results could be disastrous. That’s what I
want you to understand.”
∗
The night of February 21, Kiyoaki stayed at a hotel
in Osaka. The next morning he paid his bill and took a
Sakurai Line train to Obitoké, where he rented a room
at a merchant’s inn called the Kuzonoya. No sooner
had he done this than he hired a rickshaw to go to
Gesshu. He hurried the rickshaw man through the
temple gate and up the slope that led to the Tang front
entrance, where he got out. Confronted by a blank
expanse of tightly shut sliding door, he called out. The
convent janitor appeared, asked him his name and
business, and then left him standing there. After a
short wait, the next to appear was the senior nun. And
she, without even allowing him to step up into the front
hallway, rebuffed him by saying with thinly veiled
displeasure that Her Reverence the Abbess would not
see him and that furthermore it would be unthinkable
for a novice to be permitted to do so. Since he had
more or less expected this reception, he did not press
the issue, but left then and there and returned to the
inn.
He deferred his hopes to the next day, and when he
thought over his initial failure in solitude, he concluded
that it was due to his presumption in taking the
rickshaw right up to the very entrance of the convent.
He had been driven to it by his anxiety and haste, of
course, but since seeing Satoko again was a kind of
supplication, he decided that he should have got out
at the gate and walked from there, whether the nuns
took note of this show of devotion or not. He had
better do some kind of penance.
His room at the inn was dirty, the food was
tasteless, and the night cold. But the thought of
Satoko now nearby gave him a feeling of deep
contentment. That night, for the first time in months, he
slept soundly.
The next day was the twenty-third; he felt more
energetic and went to the convent twice—once in the
morning and again in the afternoon—leaving the
rickshaw at the gate and climbing the long sloping
path as a pilgrim would. However, his reception was
no warmer than the day before. On the ride back, he
began to cough, and felt a slight pain deep inside his
chest. He decided against using the hot bath at the
inn.
His dinner that night proved to be of a quality wholly
unexpected at a country inn of this sort. Furthermore,
not only had everyone’s behavior toward him
markedly improved but despite his protests, he had
been moved into the best room the inn had to offer.
When he demanded an explanation from the maid,
she tried to put him off. Finally, however, when he
became angry with her, the mystery was solved. She
told him that while he had been out that day, a local
policeman had come and questioned the innkeeper
closely about him. The policeman then said that
Kiyoaki was from an extremely exalted family. He was
therefore to be treated with the utmost deference, but
on no account was he to learn of the policeman’s visit.
Furthermore, should he move out of the inn, the police
were to be informed immediately. Kiyoaki felt a rush
of fear. He realized that he had no time to lose.
When he got up next morning, the twenty-fourth of
February, he felt very much out of sorts. His head was
stuffy and he was listless. Nevertheless, his mind was
made up. If he was ever to see Satoko again, he had
to commit all his strength to the penance he must
undergo, whatever hardship it entailed. In this mood
he set out from the inn, and, without hiring a rickshaw,
started on the more than two miles to Gesshu.
Fortunately it was a beautiful morning. The road itself,
however, was none too easy. Moreover his cough
grew worse as he walked, and he had a sensation in
his chest like the settling of metallic dust. A severe fit
of coughing overtook him at the very entrance to
Gesshu. The expression on the face of the senior nun
who met him remained unaltered as she refused his
request in precisely the same terms.
The next day, the twenty-fifth, he began to have
chills and fever. Although he realized that it was
unwise to go out, he hired a rickshaw once more and
went to the convent, only to be rebuffed just as before.
His hope at last began to fail. Hindered by the fever
that clouded his mind, he tried to evaluate the
situation, but no feasible course of action occurred to
him. Finally, he told the clerk at the inn to send a
telegram: “Please come at once. Am at the Kuzonoya
in Obitoké on Sakurai Line. Not a word to my parents.
Kiyoaki Matsugae.”
This done, he passed an uncomfortable night
before waking groggily on the morning of the twenty-
sixth.
52
I T WAS A MORNING when light
flakes of snow danced in the brisk wind that swept
over the plain of Yamato. They seemed too fragile
even for spring snow, but were rather more
reminiscent of a swarm of summer insects. When the
sky remained overcast, they disappeared against the
clouds. Only when the sun shone through did one
become aware of the powdery, swirling snow. The
cold in the air was worse than it would have been on a
day of heavy snow.
As he lay with his head on his pillow, he considered
how he could prove his ultimate devotion to Satoko.
The night before he had at last decided to appeal to
Honda for help, and he was sure that his friend would
come today without fail. With Honda to sustain him,
perhaps he might be able to soften the Abbess’s
unyielding attitude. But before that there was one
thing he had to do. He had to try it. All by himself, with
no one’s help, he had to demonstrate the purity of his
devotion. On looking back, he realized that up to now
he had not even once had the opportunity of proving
this devotion to Satoko. Or perhaps, he thought, his
cowardice had made him flee any such opportunity
until now.
Today, there was only one thing for him to do. To go
out, ill as he was, to risk worse illness, was a
significantly  great  penance.  Devotion  so
overwhelming might stir a response from Satoko, or
then again it might not. Whatever the result, even if
there were not the faintest hope of her being moved,
he had now reached a state of mind where he would
have no peace until he had done this thing, done it as
a penance that he demanded of himself. He had
begun his journey completely obsessed by a single
thought: to have even a single glimpse of her face. In
the meantime, however, his heart had formed another
resolution of its own, that overrode his intentions and
desires.
The only force to counter this wayward urge in his
heart was his body itself. He was in the grip of an
aching fever. A heavy gold thread had been strung
through every part of it, embroidering his flesh with
pain and heat. The strength had gone out of him. If he
lifted his arm, the pale skin immediately turned blue
and cold, and the arm itself became as heavy as a full
bucket in a well. His cough seemed to come from
deeper and deeper in his chest, like the constant
rumble of distant thunder on a darkened horizon. His
body balked at his demands, weak and enervated to
the very fingertips under the assault of the burning
fever that shot through him.
He called Satoko’s name more and more
desperately. The empty hours dragged by. This
morning, for the first time, the servants at the inn
realized that he was ill. They warmed his room and
anxiously set about doing all they could to make him
comfortable, but he stubbornly refused to allow them
either to treat him themselves or call a doctor.
Finally in the afternoon, he told the maid to hire a
rickshaw for him. She hesitated, and went to tell the
innkeeper. When the man came up to his room and
tried to persuade him to stay indoors, he struggled to
his feet, got into his uniform and put on his overcoat
without help, to put on a show of health. A rickshaw
came. He set out in it, his legs wrapped in a blanket
that the inn maids had thrust in after him. Despite its
protection, however, he was attacked by the terrible
force of the cold.
His eye was caught by the stray snowflakes swirling
in through the openings left by the black canvas
rickshaw cover. Suddenly the vivid memory of the ride
through the snow with Satoko just a year before came
to him, and his chest tightened with emotion and a
grating pain.
He could no longer cower in the gloom inside the
swaying rickshaw, doing nothing but trying to endure
the pain in his head. He loosened the front flap of the
bonnet and then pulled his muffler up over his mouth
and nose and looked out at the passing scenery, his
eyes watering with fever. He wanted to rid his mind of
any image that would drive his thoughts back upon the
pain that racked him.
The rickshaw had already passed out of the narrow
lanes of Obitoké. Powdered snow fell on the fields
and paddies to either side of the flat road that led
directly to where Gesshu stood among the mountains
shrouded in cloud. It fell on the rice shocks left in the
paddies, on the withered mulberry leaves, on the
blurred green of the pak-choi leaves that separated
the rice and mulberry fields, on the rust-colored reeds
and bulrushes on the marshes. It kept falling
noiselessly, but was not enough to cover the ground.
Even the flakes that fell on his blanket vanished
without leaving obvious drops of moisture.
He saw the flat white of the sky grow gradually
brighter until a pale sun at last shone through the
clouds. The falling snow blended into this new
brightness more and more, until it was like a fine
white ash floating in the air.
All along the road, the tall, dry grass swayed in the
light wind, its feathery plumes having a faint glint of
silver in the cold sunlight. Just beyond the fields, the
foothills were shrouded in gray, but in the distance
was a corner of clear blue sky and the snow-capped
mountains were dazzling white.
As he gazed out at the scenery around him, his
ears ringing with fever, he felt that he was really in
touch with external reality for the first time in long
months. The world around him was absolutely still.
The swaying of the rickshaw and the heaviness of his
eyelids may well have confused what he saw out
there, but whatever the incidental distortion, this was a
clear enough confrontation. And since he had been
floundering about for so long in a chaotic darkness of
sorrow and worry, the experience struck him with all
the force of novelty. Wherever he looked, moreover,
there was no sign of human life.
The rickshaw was already getting close to the thick
growth of bamboo that covered the mountainside and
surrounded Gesshu itself. Up ahead, towering over
the bamboos, stood the pines that lined the road as it
began its upward climb inside the gate. When he saw
the austere stone gate posts at the end of the winding
length of road that led out of the fields, he was
convulsed by a spasm of poignant fear.
“If I go in through the gate in the rickshaw,” he told
himself, “and then the four hundred or so yards up to
the front door—if I ride all the way, I have the feeling
that they won’t let me see Satoko today either. Maybe
things have changed a little since last time. Maybe the
old nun took my part with the Abbess, and now she’s
relented a bit. And then if they see that I’ve walked up
through the snow, she might let me see Satoko, if only
for a moment. But if I ride all the way, that could make
a bad impression on them and provoke an instinctive
reaction against me. Then the Abbess might decide
never to let me see Satoko. All my efforts should bring
about some change of heart in them. It’s like a fan
made with hundreds of thin, delicate slats held
together by a single rivet. If I’m at all careless, the rivet
will come loose, and the whole thing will fall apart. And
then, if I rode all the way to the front door and wasn’t
able to see Satoko, I’d feel it was my fault. I’d tell
myself it was because I was insincere. I’d know in my
heart that if only I had got out of the rickshaw and
walked, no matter how weak I felt, then such sincerity
—even if she was unaware of it—would have affected
her, and she would have seen me. That’s it then.
There’s no reason to have such regrets. I have no
other choice but to risk my life if I want to see her. To
me, she’s the essence of beauty. And it’s only that
which has brought me this far.”
He himself no longer knew whether his reasoning
was ordered or wildly disturbed by fever. He told the
rickshaw man to stop at the gate. Then after getting
out and telling him to wait there, he began to walk up
the slope. The sun was coming through again, and the
snowflakes danced in its pale rays. From the bamboo
groves on either side of him he heard a chirping that
sounded like a lark. Green moss grew on the trunks of
the bare cherry trees that were scattered among the
pines along the roadside. A single plum tree bloomed
white in the midst of the bamboos.
Having come this way six times in the last five days,
it would seem that there was nothing left to catch him
unawares. But as he began to make his way upward
from where he had left the rickshaw, with unsteady
legs and stumbling feet, he looked around him and
the world took on a mournful clarity in his fevered
eyes. The scenery that had become familiar in recent
days now had a strange novelty about it that was
almost unnerving. And at every moment, sharp-
pointed silver arrows of cold shot through his spine.
The  ferns  along  the  road,  the  red-berried
spearflowers, the pine needles rustling in the wind, the
bamboos with their green trunks and yellowed leaves,
the abundance of tall dry grass, the road itself, rutted
and white with frost as it passed through the midst of
it all—Kiyoaki’s eyes followed everything until it finally
merged into the black shadow that lay across the
road ahead as it rose through a grove of cedars.
Surrounded by unbroken silence and utter clarity was
a world untouched by blemish of any kind. And at its
center, so inexpressibly poignant, at its innermost
heart, he knew, was Satoko herself, her figure as
quiet and still as an exquisite gold statue. But could
such a still and perfect world, which eschewed all
intimacy, really bear any relation to the familiar world
he knew?
His breath grew harsh as he walked. Stopping to
rest, he sat down on a large rock beside the road,
only to be struck to the bone immediately by its
intense chill, as though his layers of clothing could do
nothing to hinder it. He coughed deeply, and as he did
so, he saw that the handkerchief he held over his
mouth was covered with rusty phlegm.
After his fit had gradually subsided, he looked up
dizzily at the distant snow-covered mountain peaks
that rose up beyond the sparse growth of trees. As his
eyes were filled with tears from his coughing spell, his
blurred vision seemed to heighten the sparkle of the
snow. At that instant a memory of his thirteenth
birthday came back to him. He was an imperial page
once more, looking up at Princess Kasuga ahead of
him as he held her train. The snowy peaks before his
eyes today were the very image of the white that had
dazzled him that day—the pure color of the nape of
her neck under the lustrous black of her hair. That had
been the moment in his life when a divine female
beauty had first moved him to adoration.
The sun disappeared once more. Gradually the
snow came down more heavily. He took off his glove
and caught some flakes in one hand. His palm was
hot with fever, and they melted before his eyes as
soon as they touched it. How well he had looked after
his beautifully shaped hand, he reflected—it had
never been dirtied, never known a blister. He had
used it, but only in emotion.
Finally he got to his feet and started walking again,
wondering whether he would be able to plod through
the snow and reach the temple. By the time he had
climbed as far as the cedar grove, the wind had
grown much worse and its harsh whine throbbed in
his ears. The cedars thinned to reveal a small pond,
its chill surface a froth of ripples under the leaden
winter sky. Once past the pond, the gloomy darkness
of the thick old cedars closed in on him again, their
branches deflecting the force of the pelting snow.
By now he had but one objective: to keep putting
one foot in front of the other. All his recollections of the
past had crumbled away. He now knew that the future
would only reveal itself at this pace, foot by foot, yard
by yard, as he painfully struggled forward.
He went through the black gate without realizing it,
and when he looked up, he saw the Tang entrance
itself in front of him. Snow clung to the row of
chrysanthemum tiles that formed its eaves.
Collapsing in front of the sliding door, he broke into
such a violent fit of coughing that there was no need to
call out.
The senior nun opened the door and immediately
began to rub his back to relieve his spasm. In a kind
of trance, he had the indescribably blissful feeling that
Satoko had come, that her hands were now caressing
him.
The old nun did not refuse him at once today as she
had before. Instead she left him there after a few
moments and went back inside. He waited for a long
time, feeling the minutes stretch out interminably. And
as he waited, a mist seemed to cloud his sight. His
pain, his joyful hope, both dissolved gradually into a
single vague state of consciousness.
He heard women’s voices in a flurry of
conversation. Then silence again. More time passed.
When the door slid open once more, the senior nun
was alone.
“I’m sorry. Your request for a meeting cannot be
granted. No matter how many times you come here,
sir, I shall be forced to give you the same answer. I will
arrange for a servant of the convent to accompany
you, so please be kind enough to leave.”
Helped by the janitor, who was fortunately a strong
man, he went back down the road to where his
rickshaw was waiting.
53
H ONDA ARRIVED AT THE INN in
Obitoké late on the night of February 26. As soon as
he saw how critical Kiyoaki’s condition was, he was
all for taking him back to Tokyo at once, but his friend
would not hear of it. He discovered that the local
doctor who had been summoned earlier in the
evening had said that the symptoms indicated
pneumonia.
Kiyoaki pleaded with him desperately. He wanted
his friend to go to Gesshu next day, to talk to the
Abbess, make every effort to soften her attitude.
Since Honda was not involved, his words might
perhaps have some effect on Her Reverence. And if
she should relent, he wanted Honda to take him up to
the temple.
Honda resisted for a time, but finally gave in,
agreeing to delay their departure by one day. At all
costs he would try to obtain an interview with the
Abbess next day and do all he could on Kiyoaki’s
behalf. But he made his friend promise faithfully that if
she should still refuse, he would go back to Tokyo with
him immediately. Honda stayed up all that night,
changing the wet dressings on Kiyoaki’s chest. By the
light of the dim lamp in the room, he saw that his skin,
white as it was, now had a slight tinge of red from the
dressings that covered it.
The final exams were only three days away. He had
had every reason to expect his parents to be
opposed to his making any trip at all right now. But
when he had shown Kiyoaki’s telegram to his father,
surprisingly he had told him to go ahead, without
asking any further details. And his mother had quite
agreed. Justice Honda had once been ready to
sacrifice his career for the sake of his old colleagues
who were being forced to retire because the system
of life tenure was being abolished. Now he intended
to teach his son the value of friendship. During the
train ride to Osaka, Honda had worked intently, and
even now, as he held watch at Kiyoaki’s bedside, he
had his logic notebook open beside him.
In one circle of pale yellow light the lamp above
them caught the ultimate symbols of two diametrically
opposed worlds to which these young men had given
themselves. One of them lay critically ill for the sake of
love. The other was preparing himself for the grave
demands of reality.
Kiyoaki, half asleep, was swimming in a chaotic
sea of passion, seaweed clutching at his legs. Honda
was dreaming of the world as a creation securely
based on a foundation of order and reason. And so
throughout a bitter night in early spring, in the room of
an old country inn, these two young men’s heads were
close together under the light, one coolly rational, one
burning with fever, each in turn finally bound by the
rhythm of his own particular world.
In all their friendship, Honda had never been more
aware than he was now of the utter impossibility of
seeing into Kiyoaki’s thoughts. He lay in front of him,
but his spirit was off racing somewhere else.
Sometimes he would deliriously call Satoko’s name,
and his cheeks would flood with color. His face lost its
haggard look and instead seemed more than
normally healthy. His skin glowed as if it were fine
ivory with a fire inside it. But Honda knew that there
was no way for him to reach that essence. Here
before him, he thought, was passion in its truest
sense. The kind of thing that would never take
possession of him. But more than that, he thought,
wasn’t it true that no passion whatever would succeed
in sweeping him away? For he realized that his nature
seemed to be lacking in the quality that made this
possible. It would never assent to such an invasion.
His affection for his friend was deep, he was willing
enough to weep when required—but as for feelings,
he was lacking in something there. Why did he
instinctively channel all his energies into the
maintaining of a suitable inner and outer decorum?
Why, unlike Kiyoaki, had he been somehow unable to
open his soul to the four great inchoate elements of
fire, wind, water, and earth?
His eyes returned to the notebook in front of him
and his own neat, precise handwriting.
Aristotle’s  formal  logic  dominated
European thought until almost the end of the
Middle Ages. This is divided into two
periods, the first of which is called “Old
Logic.” The works expounded were the
“Theses” and the “Categories” from the
Organon . The second is called “New Logic.”
It may be said that this period received its
initial impetus from the complete Latin
translation  of  the  Organon which was
finished by the middle of the twelfth
century . . .
He could not help thinking that these words, like
inscriptions cut into stone exposed to the weather,
would fall from his mind, flake by flake.
54
H ONDA HAD HEARD that the
convent day began early, so he shook himself out of a
brief doze just as dawn was breaking. After a hasty
breakfast, he told the maid to hire a rickshaw and got
ready to leave.
Kiyoaki looked up at him from his bed, tears in his
eyes. All he could manage was a look of entreaty as
he lay with his head on the pillow, but it pierced
Honda like a knife. Up until that moment, his intention
had been to make a perfunctory visit to Gesshu and
then get his gravely ill friend back to Tokyo as quickly
as he could. But once he had seen the look in
Kiyoaki’s eyes, he knew that whatever the cost, he
had to make every effort to effect a meeting between
his friend and Satoko.
Fortunately it was a warm springlike morning,
perhaps a good omen. As his rickshaw approached
the convent entrance, he noticed that a man who was
sweeping there took one look at him from a distance,
abruptly put down his broom and rushed inside. His
school uniform, which was the same as Kiyoaki’s,
must have put the man on guard, he thought, making
him hurry in to sound the warning. The nun who
appeared at the door had an expression of forbidding
determination even before he could say who he was.
“Excuse me, Sister. My name is Honda. I am sorry
to intrude, but I have come all the way from Tokyo
because of this matter of Kiyoaki Matsugae. I would
be extremely grateful if the Reverend Abbess would
consent to see me.”
“Please wait for a few moments,” the nun replied.
He stood there for a long time on the front step, and
then while he was involved in turning over in his mind
the various counter-arguments to be used in the event
of a refusal, the same nun surprised him by coming
back and conducting him to a parlor inside. Hope,
however faint, began to stir in him.
In the parlor he was again left to himself for a long
time. The song of warblers came from the inner
garden, though the sliding door was fully shut and he
had no view. In the shadows he could just make out
the intricate paper crest design of cloud-and-
chrysanthemum on each door catch. The flower
arrangement in the  tokonoma alcove combined rape
blossoms and peach buds. The bright yellow flowers
seemed to pulse with the vigor of the spring
countryside, and the dull bark and pale green leaves
of the peach branch brought out the beauty of its
swelling buds. The sliding doors were plain white, but
he noticed a folding screen by the wall that seemed to
be something precious, and he walked over to it.
He inspected it in detail. It was a screen depicting
scenes of each of the twelve months of the year, done
predominantly in the style of the Kano school, but
enriched with the vivid colors that were traditionally
Yamato.
The flow of the seasons began with spring at the
right-hand edge of the screen. Courtiers enjoyed
themselves in a garden beneath pines and white plum
trees. A mass of golden cloud hid all but a fraction of
a pavilion surrounded by a cypress hedge. A little to
the left, young colts of various colors frolicked about.
The pond in the garden at some point became a
paddy and here young girls were at work planting rice
shoots. A small waterfall burst from the golden cloud
and tumbled down in two stages into another pond.
The green shade of the grass at the water’s edge
bespoke the arrival of summer. Courtiers were
hanging white paper pendants for the Midsummer
Purification on the trees and bushes round the pond,
with minor officials and crimson-robed servants in
attendance. Deer were grazing contentedly in the
garden of a shrine, and a white horse was being led
out through its red torii gate. Imperial guards, bows
slung over their shoulders, were busy making
preparations for a festival procession. And the red
maple leaves already reflected in the pond foretold
the chill of winter that would soon take its toll. Then a
bit farther on, still more courtiers were setting out on a
day’s falconry in gold-tinted snow. The sky too was
golden, shining through the snowy branches of a
bamboo grove. A white dog was in baying pursuit of a
partridge with a touch of red at its neck; it streaked
through the dry reeds like an arrow and escaped up
into the winter sky. The hawks at the courtiers’ wrists
kept their arrogant eyes riveted on the fleeing
partridge.
He returned to his place after a leisurely
examination of the Tsukinami screen, but there was
still no sign of the Abbess.
The nun returned, knelt down, and served him with
tea and cake. She told him that the Abbess would be
with him in just a few minutes, and asked him to make
himself comfortable while he waited.
A small box decorated with a picture relief lay on
the table. It must have been a product of the convent,
and furthermore, there was something unskilled about
its workmanship that made him wonder if Satoko’s
inexperienced hand had been at work on it. The
paper glued to the sides and the padded picture
mounted on the lid were both highly colored after the
taste of the old Imperial Court, lavish and oppressively
gaudy. In the picture, a boy was chasing a butterfly. As
he raced after the red-and-purple-winged insect, his
face, his satiny white skin and his plump nakedness
all suggested the sensuous grace of a court doll. After
his ride through the dark, early spring fields and up
the mountain through the still desolate woods, he felt
that here in this shadowy parlor at Gesshu he had
finally experienced the heavy, syrupy sweetness that
was the essence of womanhood.
He heard the rustle of clothing, and then Her
Reverence herself came in through the doorway,
leaning on the arm of the senior nun. He stood up
straight, but was unable to control the beating of his
heart.
The Abbess must certainly have been advanced in
years, but the small features in the clear-skinned face
above the austere purple robe seemed to be carved
out of fine yellow boxwood and showed no trace of
age. They had a warm expression as she now sat
down opposite him. The old nun took a seat to one
side.
“So, they tell me that you have come all the way
from Tokyo?”
“Yes, Your Reverence.” He had difficulty in getting
his words out in front of her.
“This gentleman says that he is a school friend of
Mr. Matsugae,” said the old nun by way of
contribution.
“Ah yes!” said the Abbess. “To tell the truth, we
have been feeling so sorry for the Marquis’s son.
However . . .”
“Matsugae has a terrible fever. He’s in bed back at
the inn. I received a telegram from him and I came
down here as quickly as I could. Today I’ve come here
in his place to make the request he asked me to
make.” At last Honda found himself able to talk freely.
This, he thought, was most probably the way a
young lawyer felt when he stood before the court.
Regardless of the mood of the judges, he must plunge
ahead, wholly intent on his plea and concerned only
with the vindication of his client.
He told the Abbess of his friendship with Kiyoaki,
he described his illness, and made it clear to her that
Kiyoaki was risking his life for the sake of even the
briefest of meetings with Satoko. He did not hesitate
to say that if all this came to a tragic end, Gesshu
itself would not be free of cause for remorse. He grew
hotter and hotter as his fervent words poured out, and
although the room was rather cold, he felt his ears and
forehead burning.
As might be expected, his speech seemed to move
the Abbess and the senior nun but they both remained
silent.
“And then I do wish you would be kind enough to try
to understand my own position. I lent my friend money
because he told me he needed it. And that’s what he
used to come down here. Now he’s fallen ill. I feel
responsible to his parents for all this. And furthermore,
as you must be thinking yourselves, the proper thing
for me to do is obviously to get him back to Tokyo as
soon as possible. I also realize that it’s the only
sensible solution. But I haven’t done it. Instead,
without even daring to contemplate how upset his
parents are going to be with me, I’ve come to you now
like this to beg you to grant Matsugae’s request. I’m
doing it because after seeing the look of desperate
hope in his eyes, I do not feel that I have any other
choice. If Your Reverence could only see that look, I’m
sure that you too would be moved. As for me, I can’t
help but believe that it’s far more important now to
grant him what he wants than to worry about his
illness. It’s a frightening thing to say, but I somehow
feel that he’s not going to recover. So I am really
giving you his dying request. Would letting him see
Satoko for just a moment or two be quite outside the
scope of the Lord Buddha’s compassion? Won’t you
please permit it?”
Her Reverence still did not answer. Although he
was completely wrought up, he stopped there, afraid
that if he said anything further his words would only
make it less likely that the Abbess would change her
mind. The chilly room was hushed. The light that
filtered through the pure white paper of the latticework
doors made Honda think of a thin mist.
At that moment he thought he heard something. It
was not by any means so close as to be in the next
room, but close enough, coming perhaps from a
corner of the hallway or from the next room but one. It
sounded like a muffled laugh, as faint as the opening
of a plum blossom. But then after a moment’s
reflection, he was sure that unless his ears had
deceived him, the sound that had carried to him
through the chill convent atmosphere on this spring
morning was not a muffled laugh, as he had thought,
but a young woman’s stifled sob. It did not have the
weight of a woman fighting down her tears. What he
had heard, as dark and faint as the sound of a cut
bowstring, was the trailing echo of a hidden sob. But
then he began to wonder if it was no more than a
momentary quirk of his imagination.
“Ah,” said the Abbess, breaking her silence at last,
“no doubt you think me unduly severe. You may feel
that I am the one who is using every means to keep
these two apart. However, surely it may well be that
some superhuman agency is at work here. It began
when Satoko herself made a vow before the Lord
Buddha. She swore never to meet this man again in
this world. I therefore think that the Lord Buddha in his
wisdom is making sure that she does not. But for the
young master, what a tragedy it is.”
“Despite everything then, Your Reverence will not
give permission?”
“No.”
Her voice had an inexpressible dignity, and he felt
quite powerless to answer her. The simple  no
seemed powerful enough to tear apart the very sky
like fragile silk.
After that, seeing his deep distress, the Abbess’s
beautiful voice began to direct an exalted monologue
at him. Although he was by no means eager to leave
and have to face Kiyoaki’s dejection, his distress
prevented him from paying more than half-hearted
attention to what she was saying.
The Abbess referred to the net of Indra. Indra was
an Indian God, and once he cast his net, every man,
every living thing without exception was inextricably
caught in its meshes. And so it was that all creatures
in existence were inescapably bound by it.
Indra’s net symbolized the Chain of Causation or, in
S a n s k r i t ,  pratitya-samutpada.  Yuishiki
(Vijñaptimãtrata or Consciousness), the fundamental
doctrine of the Hosso Sect, to which Gesshu
belonged, was celebrated in  The Thirty Verses of
Yuishiki , the canonical text attributed to Vasubandhu,
whom the sect regarded as its founder. According to
the Verses,  Alaya is the origin of the Chain of
Causation. This was a Sanskrit word that denoted a
storehouse. For within the  Alaya were contained the
karmic “seeds” that held the consequential effects of
all deeds, both good and evil.
Deeper within man than the first six forms of
consciousness—sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch,
and mind, with which sentient beings are endowed—
there was a seventh called  Mana or self-awareness.
But  Alaya , the ultimate form of consciousness lay
deeper yet.
Just as  The Thirty Verses expressed it, “Like unto
a violent torrent, ever flowing, ever changing,” this
eighth form of awareness, like a raging river, changed
incessantly, never ceasing to flow onward. In constant
flux,  Alaya is the source of all sentient beings and the
sum of all effects on them.
Asanga, the co-founder along with Vasubandhu of
the Yuishiki school, in a doctrinal work called  The
Providence of the Greater Vehicle , evolved, on the
basis of the eternally mutative nature of  Alaya , a
unique theory of the Chain of Causation in terms of
time. It dealt with the interaction of the  Alaya
consciousness and the Law of Defilement that gave
rise to what was termed “the ever-recurring cycle of
annihilation and renewal of causality.” According to
the doctrine of  Yuishiki , “awareness only,” each of the
various dharmas, which were actually nothing other
than consciousness, far from enjoying permanence,
existed purely for the moment. And once the instant
was past, they were annihilated. At the present
moment, the  Alaya consciousness and the Law of
Defilement exist simultaneously, and their interaction
gives rise to the causality of the present moment.
Once this moment is past, both  Alaya and the Law of
Defilement are annihilated, but with the next moment,
both are reborn, and both once again interact to give
rise to a new causality. Beings in existence thus are
annihilated from moment to moment, and this gives
rise to time. The process whereby time is
engendered by this moment-to-moment annihilation
may be likened to a row of dots and a line.
∗
As the minutes passed, Honda gradually found
himself being drawn into the Abbess’s profound
doctrinal exposition. But his present circumstances
prevented any stirring of his instinctive spirit of
rational inquiry. The sudden burst of complex
Buddhist terminology put him off, and then there were
many difficult points over which he had doubts.
Karma, he thought, should operate eternally, a
process without beginning, that by its nature
contained within itself elements of time. It seemed
contradictory to him that, on the contrary, time was to
be understood as arising from the dissolution and
regeneration of each present moment’s causality.
His various misgivings thus prevented him from
giving wholeheartedly respectful attention to Her
Reverence’s learned discourse. The old nun also
irritated him with her interjections. At appropriate
intervals, she would chime in with “How very true!” . . .
“Indeed, just so!” . . . “How could it be otherwise?” and
the like. So he contented himself by memorizing the
titles of  The Thirty Verses and  The Providence of the
Greater Vehicle and thought that he could look into
them when he had the leisure and then come back
here to ask questions. Given his present mood, then,
he did not realize from what perspective and with
what clarity the Abbess’s words were illuminating
Kiyoaki’s fate as well as his own, though on the face
of it they might seem remote and irrelevant. It was just
the same way that the moon, at its zenith, subtly lights
up the dark waters of a lake.
He murmured a polite farewell and took his leave of
Gesshu as quickly as he could.
55
D URING THE TRAIN RIDE back
to Tokyo, Kiyoaki’s all too evident pain was a
constant source of distress to Honda. He put aside
his books entirely, his sole concern now to get his
friend home as soon as possible. As he looked down
at Kiyoaki lying gravely ill on his berth, being carried
back to Tokyo without having achieved the meeting
he had so desired, he felt a gnawing regret. He was
now wondering if it had really been the act of a friend
to give him that money.
Kiyoaki had fallen into a doze. Honda, on the other
hand, was more alert than ever, despite having gone
without sleep for so long. He allowed a multitude of
thoughts to come and go unchecked. Among these,
the memory of the Abbess’s sermons on two
occasions came to him, each with an entirely different
effect. In the autumn of the previous year, he had
heard his first sermon from her, the parable of
drinking the water from the skull. He had taken that
principle and made a parable of his own from it, one
dealing with human love. And he had concluded by
thinking that it would unquestionably be wonderful if a
man could really make the substance of the world truly
conform to that of his innermost heart. Later, in the
course of his legal studies, he had given considerable
thought to the doctrine of reincarnation as expressed
in the Laws of Manu. And this morning, he had heard
the Abbess speak again. He now felt as though the
only key to the riddle that had been vexing him had
dangled momentarily on a cord before his eyes,
swinging back and forth with so many confusing
jumps and twists that the riddle itself seemed to have
become all the more complex.
The train was due at Shimbashi Station at six in the
morning. The night was already well advanced. The
heavy breathing of the passengers mingled with the
rumble of the wheels. He would stay awake until
dawn, watching Kiyoaki in the lower berth directly
opposite him. He had left the curtains open so that he
would know at once if there was any change at all in
Kiyoaki’s condition, and now he stared out of the
window at the fields clothed in darkness.
Though the train was racing through the night, the
darkness was so thick and the sky so overcast that
the fields and mountains beyond were almost blotted
out, leaving nearly nothing to mark the forward
progress of the train. From time to time, a tiny flash of
light or the brief glow of a lantern tore a brilliant rent in
the curtain of blackness, but these could not provide
any orientation. It was not the train that made this
rumbling noise, Honda mused. It was something else.
Something that enveloped this little thing as it made
its insignificant way through the night. The roaring
issued from the massive darkness itself.
While Honda had been hurriedly packing to leave
the inn at Obitoké, Kiyoaki had obtained a few sheets
of cheap stationery from the innkeeper and had
written a note which he had then given to Honda,
asking him to deliver it to his mother the Marquise.
Honda had placed it carefully in the inside pocket of
his jacket. Now, for want of anything better to do, he
took it out and read it by the poor light of the bulb
hanging from the roof of the car.
It was written in pencil, and the hand was unsteady,
quite unlike Kiyoaki. He had never drawn his figures
with much grace, but there had always been an
abundantly vigorous touch to them:
Dear Mother,
There is something that I would like
you to give Honda for me. The
dream journal in my desk. He’d like
it. And since nobody else would
want to read it, please see that he
gets it.
Kiyoaki
Honda could see that he had used his last reserves of
strength to write this as a kind of will. But if it really
had been that, he should surely have included a word
or two for his mother herself, instead of addressing
her in this curt and businesslike fashion.
A groan came from the opposite berth. He quickly
put away the note and was beside Kiyoaki in a flash,
looking down at his face.
“What is it?”
“My chest hurts. It feels as if I’m being stabbed
here.”
Kiyoaki’s breathing was harsh. His words came in
spurts. Honda, not knowing what else to do, gently
began to massage the lower left side of his chest, the
spot where he said the pain was most intense. But in
the faint light, he saw that his friend’s face was still
contorted.
Despite the contortions, however, it was beautiful.
Intense suffering had imbued it with an extraordinary
character, carving lines into it that gave it the austere
dignity of a bronze mask. The beautiful eyes were
filled with tears. Above them, however, the eyebrows
were tightly puckered, and the masculine force they
conveyed made a striking contrast with the pathos of
the flashing dark, wet pupils. As he fought the pain,
his finely chiseled nose jutted upward as if he were
trying to probe the darkness around him, and his lips,
parched with fever, were drawn back to reveal the
palely gleaming mother-of-pearl of his teeth.
Finally, the racking pain seemed to subside.
“You’re asleep? Good. It’s what you need,” said
Honda. He wondered about the tortured look he had
seen on his friend’s face just a moment before. Hadn’t
it in fact been an expression of intense joy, the kind to
be found nowhere but at the extremity of human
existence? Perhaps Kiyoaki had seen something,
and Honda envied him that, an emotion that in turn
stirred an odd shame and self-reproach in him.
He shook his head slightly. He had begun to feel
the numbing weight of grief. Deep within him, as
subtly and persistently as the spinning of a silkworm’s
thread, an emotion had gradually taken shape. Its
significance eluded him, and he was disturbed by it.
Then Kiyoaki, who seemed to have dozed off for a
moment, suddenly opened his eyes wide and
reached for Honda’s hand. He grasped it tightly as he
spoke.
“Just now I had a dream. I’ll see you again. I know it.
Beneath the falls.”
His dream, Honda thought, had taken him to the
park around his father’s house. And there, the most
vivid of all the images must have been the falls,
tumbling down from the crest of the hill in its nine
stages.
Two days after his return to Tokyo, Kiyoaki
Matsugae died at the age of twenty.