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Recently there was put into my hands a somewhat remarkable
manuscript,--seventeen long narrow sheets of soft paper, pierced with a
silken string, and covered with fine Japanese characters. It was a kind
of diary, containing the history of a woman's married life, recorded by
herself. The writer was dead; and the diary had been found in a small
work-box (_haribako_) which had belonged to her.
The friend who lent me the manuscript gave me leave to translate as
much of it as I might think worth publishing. I have gladly availed
myself of this unique opportunity to present in English the thoughts
and feelings, joys and sorrows, of a simple woman of the people--just
as she herself recorded them in the frankest possible way, never
dreaming that any foreign eye would read her humble and touching memoir.
But out of respect to her gentle ghost, I have tried to use the
manuscript in such a way only as could not cause her the least pain
if she were yet in the body, and able to read me. Some parts I have
omitted, because I thought them sacred. Also I have left out a few
details relating to customs or to local beliefs that the Western
reader could scarcely understand, even with the aid of notes. And the
names, of course, have been changed. Otherwise I have followed the
text as closely as I could,--making no changes of phrase except when
the Japanese original could not be adequately interpreted by a literal
rendering.
In addition to the facts stated or suggested in the diary itself, I
could learn but very little of the writer's personal history. She was
a woman of the poorest class; and from her own narrative it appears
that she remained unmarried until she was nearly thirty. A younger
sister had been married several years previously; and the diary does
not explain this departure from custom. A small photograph found with
the manuscript shows that its author never could have been called
good-looking; but the face has a certain pleasing expression of shy
gentleness. Her husband was a _kozukai_,[1] employed in one of the
great public offices, chiefly for night duty, at a salary of ten yen
per month. In order to help him to meet the expenses of housekeeping,
she made cigarettes for a tobacco dealer.
The manuscript shows that she must have been at school for some years:
she could write the _kana_ very nicely, but she had not learned
many Chinese characters,--so that her work resembles the work of a
schoolgirl. But it is written without mistakes, and skilfully. The
dialect is of Tōkyō,--the common speech of the city people,--full of
idiomatic expressions, but entirely free from coarseness.
Some one might naturally ask why this poor woman, so much occupied with
the constant struggle for mere existence, should have taken the pains
to write down what she probably never intended to be read. I would
remind such a questioner of the old Japanese teaching that literary
composition is the best medicine for sorrow; and I would remind him
also of the fact that, even among the poorest classes, poems are still
composed upon all occasions of joy or pain. The latter part of the
diary was written in lonely hours of illness; and I suppose that she
then wrote chiefly in order to keep her thoughts composed at a time
when solitude had become dangerous for her. A little before her death,
her mind gave way; and these final pages probably represent the last
brave struggle of the spirit against the hopeless weakness of the flesh.
I found that the manuscript was inscribed, on the outside sheet, with
the title, _Mukashi-hanashi_: "A Story of Old Times." According to
circumstances, the word _mukashi_ may signify either "long ago," in
reference to past centuries, or "old times," in reference to one's own
past life. The latter is the obvious meaning in the present case.
_Mukashi-Banashi_
On the evening of the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month of the
twenty-eighth year of Meiji [1895]? man of the opposite house came and
asked:--
"As for the eldest daughter of this family, is it agreeable that she be
disposed of in marriage?"