With absolutely no thought of any kind in my head, I returned to
my room, and found it dusted clean and tidied up carefully. Then I
recalled last night’s apparition, and felt an irresistible curiosity
to look into the closet. I went up to it and opened the paper screen.
I found inside an under-sized chest of drawers, with a woman’s obi
draping down its side, suggesting that somebody had carried away in
haste some clothes on the cabinet. One end of the obi was in a layer of
folded kimono of feminine colour. Some books on shelves occupied one
corner of the closet, one of the Zen(21) priest Haku-un’s works, and
the classical Isemono-gatari, standing out conspicuously among them.
Giving myself no reason, I resumed my seat on the cushion at the low
teak wood table, which served as my desk. On the table was my sketch
book, carefully placed in the centre, with a pencil between its leaves.
I took up the book, wondering how the things I wrote in dreams would
look in the morning.
“Kaidono tsuyuo furu-u-ya monogurui.”
Somebody wrote this under it: “Kaidono tsuyuo furu-u-ya asa-garasu.”(j)
Scribbled in pencil, the style of writing was not as clear as it might
be; I thought it too stiff for a woman’s hand but too flaccid for a
man’s. Anyway, it was another surprise to me. I went on reading the
next piece:
“Hanano kage onnano kageno oborokana.”(jk)
This had under it: “Hanano kage, onnano kageo kasanekeri.”(k) The third
piece:
“Shoichi-i onnami bakete oborozuki,” was revised beneath into:
“On-zoshi onnani bakete oborozuki.”♦(l) Were they meant to be
imitations, or corrections, or a vindication? Was the party a fool, or
was it an attempt to fool? I gave a puzzling shake to my head.
♦ missing footnote tag added “(l)”
“Later” she said, I told myself. She might put in her appearance, when
the meal was brought in, and I might get some light, then. What time
could it be? I looked at my watch, and it was past 11 o’clock. Such a
long sleep I had, I thought. To do with only two meals would at this
rate be good for my stomach!
I pushed open a paper screen on the right side of my room, and looked
out for a sign of last night’s phantasy. What I took for an
aronia was indeed a tree of that name in blossom; but the garden was
smaller than I fancied. The whole place was grown over with dark-green
moss, apparently so nice to walk on, and almost burying five or six
stepping stones. On the left a red-barked pine tree, growing out from
between rocks, some way up the slope of a mountain, stood slantingly
overhanging. A little behind the aronia was a thicket and still further
beyond, a grove of tall bamboos, scraping the sunny Spring sky. View to
the right was shut out by a ridge of roof; but judging from topography,
I should say the ground descended in a slow gradient towards the
bath-house.
The mountain had at its foot a hillock and the hillock was surrounded
by a belt of level land, about half a mile wide. This belt glided on
the outer side into the bottom of the sea, and rose sharply again forty
miles away, forming the islet Maya of thirteen miles in circumference.
This was the geography of Nakoi. The spa-hotel is built at the foot of
the hill, with its back terraced as closely as possible against its
steep side, taking in half of its craggy slope for the scenic effect
of its garden. The building is two-storeyed in front; but only one
at the rear, and sitting at the edge of my verandah, the heels touched
the ♦velvety moss. It was no wonder, I had thought last night, that the
house was a strangely planned one, with so many steps to go up and
down, and up and down.
♦ “velvetty” replaced with “velvety”
I now opened the window in the left flank. A natural hollow, a couple
of yards, both ways, in a big rock, had turned into a pool of water,
one does not know how long since, and was reflecting calmly in it
a wild cherry tree in bloom, while a bunch or two of giant-leaved
creeping bamboos decked a corner of the rock. Yonder a hedge of what
looked like box-thorns fenced in the garden. A road from the beach
sloping upward, for climbing the hill, seemed to pass outside the
hedge, and passers talking could be heard now again. Off the other edge
of the road, orange trees covered the ground that fell Southward, the
♦declivity ending in a great bamboo jungle, that flared white. I learned
for the first time, then, that the bamboo leaves shine like silver,
when looked at from a distance. Above the jungle, the hill on the other
side abounded in pine trees, and five or six stone steps were clearly
visible between their red trunks. Probably a temple stood on the
hill.
♦ “declevity” replaced with “declivity”
I went out into the verandah and found that it turned square with its
railing. An upstairs room across an inner court in the front section
of the building filled up space, which should, as I judged from its
bearings, give a view of the sea. It was jolly that leaning against the
railing, I was upstairs as high. The bath tank being situated in the
basement, and from the standpoint of taking a bath I might be said to
be living on the third floor.
The house is quite large; but the living quarters and kitchen apart,
shutters were down in nearly all the rooms, except the up-stairs one in
the front section, another next to mine by turning to the right along
the verandah, and my own, of course. Evidently I was the only guest
stopping there. The rain-doors were all closed; but judging from the
look of things I might wager pretty safely that once they opened those
doors they would not go to the trouble of shutting them again, even
at night. One ♦might even suspect they did not bother themselves about
locking the entrance door. I should say, an ideal place for an unhuman
sojourn.
♦ “night” replaced with “might”
It was almost noon by my watch, and I was beginning to feel
somewhat empty. But there was no sign of any tiffin forthcoming.
Imagining myself a wanderer in the familiar line of poetry, “Void the
mountain, not a soul seen,” I thought I might do without a meal or so
cheerfully. I felt too lazy to paint. As for the poetry, I have been
living it, and it appeared to me decidedly unwise to try to compose
one. I have brought with me a few books tied into my tripod; but even
that I felt in no mood to untie and read. Lying with the shadow of
flowers on the verandah, with my back basking in warm sunshine of
Spring, I was in the height of worldly delectation. I shall fall off
if I thought and a motion was dangerous. If I could help it, I did not
want even to breathe, I felt like remaining immobile for a fortnight or
so, like a plant growing out of the floor matting.
Presently I heard somebody walking along the passage, and then coming
up-stairs. As the footsteps neared, I judged there were two. No sooner
had they stopped outside my room than one of them went back the way
he or she came, without a word. The karakami opened and I expected to
greet her of this morning. I felt as if I had missed something, when I
saw that it was only the young maid of last night.
“Sorry, Danna-sama, we kept you waiting.” So saying the girl placed
a portable dinner table before me, with not a word of reference to
the missing breakfast. On the table was a dish of broiled fish with
something green, and a lacquered bowl, which, on taking off the cover,
revealed a clear soup with some young ferns and some red and white
shrimps. The colours of shrimps, were so lovely that I kept looking at
them a while.
“You don’t like that, Danna-sama,” asks the girl.
“Yes, I am going to take it,” I said; but in my mind I was loath to eat
so charming a thing. I remembered reading in a book, that taking some
salad into his dish, and looking at, Turner said to one sitting next
to him at dinner, that its colour was refreshing and was the one he
used. I wished very much that I could have let Turner see the shrimps
and the ferns. In my opinion, there is nothing beautiful in colour in
Western dishes, excepting perhaps salad and radishes. I cannot, of
course, say anything from the nutritious point of view, but I must say
that theirs is very uncivilized from the artist’s point of view. On
the contrary the Japanese dishes are all superbly beautiful, be it the
soup, the pastry or the sliced raw fish. You may come away without
taking a single chopstickful of things set before you, but you may
consider yourself fully repaid for having been at a tea-house, from the
point of view of having feasted your eyes.
“There is a young lady, here?” I asked the girl, as I put down the soup
bowl.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who is she?”
“She is the young Mistress.”
“Is there any elder Mistress besides her?”
“She died last year.”
“And the master?”
“He lives here, and the lady is his daughter.”
“That young lady?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are there any other guests?”
“No, sir.”
“Only myself, then?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What does the young Mistress do every day?”
“Sewing....”
“And?”
“She plays samisen.”(19)
How unexpected! However quite interesting and so:
“What else?” I asked.
“She goes to the temple,” answers the girl.
Unexpected again. The samisen playing and the temple going are
decidedly a curious conglomeration.
“Does she go there to worship?”
“She goes there to see the Osho-sama.”(20)
“Does the Osho-san take lessons in samisen?”
“No, sir.”
“What does she go there for?”
“She goes there to see Daitetsu-sama.”
It dawned on me that Daitetsu must be the priest who wrote the framed
calligraphy on the wall. Judging from its wording Daitetsu must be a Zen
priest, and Haku-un’s book in the closet must belong to him.
♦ “caligraph” replaced with “calligraphy”
“Is this a living room for any one of the family?”
“Yes, sir; the Mistress lives here.”
“Is that so? Well, then, she had been here till I came in, last night?”
“Yes.”
“I am sorry, I have robbed her of her room. And what does she go to see
Daitetsu-san for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Anything else?”
“Many other things.”
“What many other things?”
“I don’t know.”
This put an end to my catechism, and also to my tiffin. The girl took
away the little table. As she pulled open the wall-papered screen, I
saw through the opening the young woman of butterfly coiffeur, resting
her chin in her hands that were supported by arms which had their
elbows on the railing of the up-stairs verandah, overlooking a inner
court shrubbery. The “butterfly” was gazing downward with the pose
of a modernised goddess of mercy. In contrast to how she struck me
this morning, she was serenely calm. Looking downward as she was, I
could not tell how her eyes were moving. I could only wonder if any
change had come into her expression. An ancient says that nothing
speaks better for a person than his pupils. He is right. How can a
man conceal? There is, indeed, no organ in human body so alive as the
eye. Two real butterflies flew upward twirling around each other from
under the railing, on which the human butterfly was leaning quietly.
It was just at this juncture that the girl opened the fusuma(22)
of my room, and the noise made the woman yonder lift her eyes from the
butterflies, and direct them toward me. Her eyes shot through the space
like a shaft of rays, and hit me between my own. My heart throbbed; but
the same moment the girl closed the screen. The momentary spell broke
and I returned to the noon tide of balmy Spring.
I again stretched myself full length on the matted floor, and soon I
was reciting:
“Sadder than the moon’s lost light,
Lost is the kindling of dawn,
To travellers journeying on,
The shutting of thy fair face from my sight.”
Supposing I was in love with the “butterfly” and felt deeply the flash
of joy or the pang of a sudden parting like the one I just had, at the
very moment when I was dying to meet her, I should have unquestionably
poetised in a strain something like the above. Furthermore, I may have
added,
“Might I look on thee in death,
With bliss I would yield my breath.”
these two lines. Fortunately, I had long since left behind me the
common glamour of love and amour, and could not feel pangs of this
kind, even if I would. Nevertheless, the poetical significance of the
event that had just happened was well brought out in the six lines. Not
that there was any such heart’s anguish between the “butterfly” and
myself. I felt it highly entertaining to think of our present relations
in the light of these verses. Nor was it unpleasant to interpret the
meaning of these lines as reflecting our present condition. There
was, indeed, an invisibly thin line of cause and effect, binding us
together, making real, at least, part of the conditions sung in these
lines. The thread of cause and effect occasions no worry when as thin
as this. Besides, it is no ordinary thread, but is like the rainbow
spanning the sky; like the haze screening ♦horizon; and like the
spider-web sparkling with dew. It may break at any moment if wanted
to be broken; but it is exquisitely beautiful while it remains and is
seen. But what if the thread should, all of a sudden, grow thick and
stout as a halyard? No fear: I am an artist and she is not of a common
kind.
♦ “horison” replaced with “horizon”
Suddenly the fusuma opened again, and I rolled my body round to look
that way. There was standing in the opening, the “butterfly,”
the other end of cause and effect, holding up in her hand a celadon
porcelain bowl on a tray.
“Lying down again? It must have been annoying to you to be disturbed so
often, last night, ho, ho, ho,” she laughed. She betrayed not the least
sign of having been impressed with fear or of fearing, still less with
a bashful feeling. The only thing was, she got the start of me.
“Thank you, this morning,” I said my thanks again. This was the third
time I made acknowledgment for the ♦dishabille, and each time it
consisted of the two words “Thank you.”
♦ “dishabile” replaced with “dishabille”
I made a move to sit up; but she was quicker; she had sat down on the
matting close to where I was lying:
“Oh, please don’t stir. You can talk as you are, Sensei.”(23)
I thought her quite convincing and only changed my pose so far as to
lie on my belly, with my chin on the ends of two arms, planted in on
the tatami-mat.
“I have come to make tea for you, Sensei, thinking you must be tired of
doing nothing.”
“Thank you.” I said it again. I saw, in the sea-green cake-bowl she
brought, some isinglass paste “yokan.” I love yokan. Not that I am
eager to eat it, but to me it appeals decidedly as an objet d’art, with
its fine, smooth surface, that glistens semi-transparently as the light
strikes it. Especially pleasant-looking is the one of light-green,
with its lustre and its appearance of being wrought with marble and
gyoku-stone. In a celadon bowl, it looks as if just born out of it.
It makes me feel like putting out my hand and feeling it. No Western
cake, that I know of, produces such delicious impression as the yokan.
Cream is agreeably soft in colour, but there is something heavy and
thick about it, while jelly with all its look of a precious stone,
trembles so that it is devoid of the weightiness of the yokan. It is
an insuperable abomination when it comes to a tower of flour, milk and
sugar.
“Oh, very nice.”
“Gembey has just brought it back from the town. I hope it is good
enough for your taste.”
Gembey must have stopped overnight in the town, I thought; but I made
no answer. It made no difference to me where the thing was got or by
whom. The thing being beautiful, I should be content with thinking that
it is beautiful.
“This celadon bowl is exquisite in shape and superb in tint. It
makes a worthy match to the yokan.”
The woman smiled a smile that betrayed a shadow of contempt playing
about her mouth. It was probable that she thought I was jesting. If
that is the case, my words, I must confess, fully deserved contumely.
When a witless fellow tries to be jocular, he generally lands himself
on a sorry exhibition of this kind.
“Is this Chinese?”
“I have no idea.” The celadon had no place in her eyes.
“Somehow it appears Chinese to me.” I looked at its base by holding up
the bowl.
“Do you take interest in things of that sort, Sensei? Would you like to
see more?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Father is very fond of bric-a-brac and has quite a collection. I shall
tell father about you, and let him invite you to a cup of tea.”
Tea? The word called up before me a picture I am not very enthusiastic
about. In fact it made me shrink back. I am persuaded that there is
no refined idler that so unwarrantably puts on airs as the frothing
tea imbiber. He almost suffocatingly narrows the wide world of poetry
and does things most self-importantly, most over-studiedly
and most hair-splittingly. He drinks of foamy froth in altogether
unnecessarily abject humility, and finds himself in the seventh
heaven of joy. Such is the tea man. If there be any pleasure and
interest in this intricate tangle of rules, then the denizens of the
regimental barracks at Azabu must have joys and pleasures knocking
about their nose. The “right-turn!” and “march-on!” lads must be all
great tea men. Pshaw! They—the so-called tea-men—are, to tell the
truth, merchants, tradesmen, and the like; with no real taste-culture,
who have no idea of what makes nature-loving refinement, and swallow
mechanically the tea-rules adopted since the days of the great
tea-master, Rikyu, of three centuries ago, and delude themselves into
being men of refinement. Theirs is a trick to make fools of real men of
nature-loving refinement.
“Tea? You mean the tea drinking ceremony?”
“No, Sensei; but tea with no ceremony, which you need not drink if you
don’t wish to, take a cup or even two.”
“If that is the kind, then, I may just as well.”
“Father is very fond of showing his collection.”
“Must I praise them to the skies?”
“Well, Sensei, he is growing old and compliments gladden him.”
“I may go about it lightly then.”
“You may be generous into the bargain.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha. Pardon my observing that you do not speak the
country-side language.”
“Not in language, but in person, you mean?”
“In personality it is better for one to be of the countryside.”
“Then I may give myself airs?”
“But you have lived in Tokyo?”
“Yes, I have been there, and also in Kyoto. I am a bird of passage and
I have been in many places.”
“Which do you like best, here or the capital?”
“It is all the same to me.”
“You feel more at home in a quiet place like this, don’t you?”
“At home, or not at home, the life in this world depends all upon how
you train your mind. It would be of no use to move into a land of
mosquitoes, when you got sick of the country of fleas.”
“It would be all well if you emigrated into a country, where there were
neither mosquitoes nor fleas?”
“If there be any such country, just show it to me, please Sensei. Show
it to me now,” says the woman earnestly.
“If you wish, I certainly will.” I took out my sketch book and let my
brush spin out a woman on horse back, looking up to a mountain cherry
blossom—just an imaginary impression. A work of the instant, it hardly
made a picture, but to give an idea. I speedily finished it and said:
“Now get in here, there is neither flea nor mosquito in this land,”
putting it under her nose. Will she be seized by a surprise or by
bashfulness? To judge by her looks, I felt sure that embarrassment
would be the last thing she would allow to overtake her. I watched her
for the moment.
“What a cramped up world! It is all width. You are fond of a place like
this? You must be a regular crab.” Thus she got herself out, and I
laughed out aloud:
“Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
A sweet warbler that had come near the eve of the house, broke its note
in the middle of its song and hopped to a tree a little way off. We
purposely stopped our talk and listened in silence; but the little
throat that lost its tune would not recover it easily.
“You met Gembey on the mountain, yesterday, Sensei?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“You made a detour to see the ‘five elements’ tomb of the Maid of
Nagara?”
“Even like the dew drop, that when autumn comes lodges trembling on
grass, must I roll off to die.” The woman recited the lines, just the
words only, with no tune or intonation. I did not know what for, but
volunteered the information:
“I heard that song at the tea stall.”
“The old woman told you then. Long ago she was with us as our servant
here, before I....” Here she looked at me, and I pretended to know
nothing.
“It was when I was young. I used to tell her the story of Nagarano
Otome, every time she called on us after leaving here. The song was
very difficult for her to remember. But hearing if told her so often,
she finally got everything by heart.”
“That accounts for it; I thought she knew a very literary sort of thing
for a woman of her station—however that song is a sad one.”
“Sad, do you think? If I were that maiden, I would have never sung like
that. In the first place, what good will it serve to throw yourself
into a river and die?”
“None whatever. What would you have done?”
“What would I have done? Why it is easy enough. I would have made
sweethearts of both Sasada Otoko and Sasabe Otoko.”
“Both?”
“Yes, yes.”
“You are great.”
“Not great at all; but only natural.”
“Now I see, you can thus get along without flying into the land of
fleas or the land of mosquitoes?”
“You see, you can live on without feeling like a crab?”
“Hoh ho-ke-kyo,” the warbler recovered its note, which it had almost
lost, and vindicated the fact with loudness that was wholly unexpected.
Once recovered, the song seemed to flow out of its own accord, as the
bird held down its head, quivered its swelling throat, opened its mouth
as wide as it could, and kept on:
“Hoh ho-ke-kyo. Hoh hokke-kyo....”
The bird went on without stopping, and the woman took the trouble to
tell me:
“That is the real poetry.”