I have a deadline set for tomorrow, so I'm thinking up this story to write
tonight. No, I'm not just thinking it up: I have to write it. So, what
should I write? Well, see what follows below.
***
There was once a waitress named Okimi who
worked in a café in Jinbouchou. She could be anywhere from fifteen to
eighteen years old, but she appeared mature for her age. She had fair skin,
bright clear eyes, and a slightly upturned nose—in every feature, she
expressed beauty and elegance. When she stood in front of the café's
player piano, her hair parted in the middle and held up with a forget-me-not
pin, hands resting over her white apron, she looked like she'd jumped
straight out of a Yumeji Takehisa1 painting.
Okimi had many nicknames. "Forget-Me-Not,"
of course, because of her hairpin. "Miss Mary Pickford," because of her
resemblance to an American actress.2 "Sugar Cube," because she was sweet and the café couldn't do without
her. Etc., etc.
Another waitress worked in the same café as
Okimi, an older woman named Omatsu. Comparing her to Okimi would be unfair;
she was in no way her rival. They were as different as white and wheat
bread. Although Okimi and Omatsu both worked as waitresses, Okimi made far
more in tips than Omatsu did. Omatsu could do nothing about this, and her
dissatisfaction slowly grew.
One summer afternoon, a student from a
foreign language school was sitting in Omatsu's section, attempting to light
a cigarette. Unfortunately, the fan on the table next to his was spinning
vigorously, so it always put the flame out before the student could light
his cigarette.
Okimi was passing by the table at just this
time, and managed to block the fan for the student. She stopped to chat and
ask a few questions while he lit up. The student grinned, skin stretching
over his sunburned cheeks as he expressed his thanks.
Omatsu had been detained at the counter,
waiting for a bowl of ice cream to serve the student. She thrust it at Okimi
and said, "Why don't you take it, since you're so bold," in a voice
fuming with jealousy.
Conflicts like this happened several times
a week at the café. Because of this, Okimi rarely spoke to Omatsu. She
always stood in front of the player piano, listening to the
conversations of the students that frequented the café and showing off her
quiet charms. Or maybe she was cursing Omatsu internally where she couldn't
be heard.
Okimi and Omatsu's bad relationship wasn't
solely because of Omatsu's jealousy. Secretly, Okimi despised Omatsu's poor
taste. Since leaving elementary school, Omatsu listened to nothing but soppy
ballads, ate nothing but mitsumame,3 and chased after men. That
was why Okimi didn't like her: of that, she was sure.
What were Okimi's hobbies and interests,
then? Let us leave this bustling café for a moment and take a closer look at
the second floor of a hairdresser's shop at the end of a nearby street. This
was Okimi's rented apartment; she spent nearly all the time she didn't spend
working here.
The apartment was small: one hundred square
feet or so, and the ceiling was low. There was a window, but when Okimi
looked out, all she could see was the tiled roof of the building nearest
hers. She had a desk covered with calico cloth set close to the window. For
the sake of convenience, I shall call this four-legged piece of furniture a
desk, but it was really a tea table masquerading as such. On the desk there
were books in hard Western bindings, none of them new:
The Cuckoo, Fujimara Poetry Collection, The Life of Sumako Matsui, The
American Diary of a Japanese Girl, Carmen,
and
If You Look at the Bottom of the Valley from the Mountaintop.4 In addition to the books, there was a stack of seven or eight
ladies' magazines. Alas, not a single one of my books is on Okimi's
desk.
Next to the desk, on top of a tea chest
whose varnish had peeled off, there was a thin-necked glass vase with an
artificial lily in it. One of its petals was missing. My guess is that if
that petal were still intact, the lily would grace one of the tables in the
café.
On the wall above the tea chest were three
or four frontispieces clipped from magazines, all pinned together. The one
in the middle was Kiyokata Kaburagi's Genroku Woman, and the one below that (much smaller) seemed to be Raphael's
Madonna or something. The clipping above
Genroku Woman was of a sculpture of a different woman made by
Shikai Kitamura.5 The sculpted woman was making eyes at a clipping Beethoven next to
her. Truthfully, Okimi only thought that this clipping showed Beethoven; the
man in the image was the American President Woodrow Wilson, which is really
too bad for poor Shikai Kitamura's masterpiece.
In any case, it would be obvious to anyone
that Okimi lived a life of deep artistic meaning. When she returned from the
café late at night, she sat under the portrait of Beethoven (alias Woodrow
Wilson) and read Fujimara's poetry, gazing periodically at the artificial
lily and indulging in artistic sentimentalism even more profound than the
moonlit shore scene in the Shinpa6 tragedy version of The Cuckoo.
One night in spring when the cherry trees
were blossoming, Okimi sat at her desk almost until the cock's first crow,
writing page after page on pink notepaper. When one finished page fell under
the desk, she didn't notice. It remained there after the sun rose and she
left for the café. The spring breeze blew in through the window and lifted
the sheet of paper downstairs to the hairdresser's, where two mirrors sat
under their saffron cotton slipcovers. The hairdresser knew that Okimi
received love letters and took the sheet of pink paper to be one of those.
Out of curiosity, she decided to read it, and was greatly surprised to find
the handwriting to be Okimi's. Okimi had addressed the letter to a woman,
writing: "My heart feels ready to burst with sorrow when I think about how
you were parted from your dear Takeo." Takeo was the hero of
The Cuckoo. Okimi had stayed up more than half the night writing a
letter of condolence to Namiko, the heroine of the novel.
I have to admit as I write this episode
that I can't help but smile at Okimi's sentimentality, but I smile because
she's sweet, not because I'm mean-spirited.
In addition to the artificial lily, the
Fujimara Poetry Collection, and the photo of Raphael's
Madonna, Okimi's second-floor room contained all the kitchen
implements she needed so that she wouldn't have to eat out. These kitchen
tools represent the hardship of life in Tokyo, where most everything was
prohibitively expensive. Even an impoverished life could reveal a world of
beauty when viewed through a mist of tears. That was how Okimi lived her
life, taking refuge in tears of artistic ecstasy to escape the persecutions
of everyday life. She didn't think about her 6-yen monthly rent or the 70
sen7 it cost for a measure of rice when she was caught up in her sad
daydreams. Carmen had no need to worry about the electric bill; all she
needed to do was keep clicking her castanets. Namiko suffered as she died of
tuberculosis, separated from her beloved by a cruel mother-in-law, but she
never had to scrape up money for her medicine. Okimi's tears were those of
love, shining in the surrounding darkness of human suffering. I can imagine
Okimi all alone at night when the sounds of Tokyo were all faded away,
raising her overflowing eyes to the dim electric lamp and dreaming of the
oleanders of Córdoba and the sea breeze of Namiko's Zushi,8 and then... Oh, enough of that; if I'm not careful I'll jump right
off the deep end into sentimentalism with Okimi without a second thought.
And this is me
talking, the one the critics always chastise for having too little heart and
too much intelligence.
***
Okimi came home from the café late one
winter evening, and at first she sat at her desk and read like usual:
The Life of Matsui Samako or something like it. But before she completed as much as a single page,
she slammed the book down as if it disgusted her. She turned sideways,
leaning against the desk with her chin in her hand, gazing at Woodrow Wil—I
mean Beethoven. Something was bothering her. Was she fired from the café?
Did she get into a fight with Omatsu? Did she have a cavity or a toothache?
No, nothing so mundane as that. Like Namiko and Matsui Samako, Okimi is
suffering from... lovesickness. And who was the object of her tender
affections? Fortunately, Okimi will stay quite still for some time, sitting
at her desk, so we may pay the lucky young man a visit in the
interval.
Okimi's lovesickness was caused by a young—shall we say artist?—named
Tanaka. He wrote poetry, played the violin, did oil painting, acted in
plays, knew the Hundred Poets9 game inside and out, and mastered the biwa, specializing
in the martial music of Satsuma. With so many talents, it was difficult to say
which were hobbies and which were professions. As for Tanaka himself, he had
the attractive features of an actor, hair gleaming like the surface of one
of his oil paintings, voice as gentle as his violin, and the words he spoke
were as carefully chosen as the poetry he memorized. He could woo a woman as
easily as he could snatch up the right card in the Hundred Poets game, and
he skipped out on loans with the same heroism he brought to singing martial
music in time to his Satsuma biwa. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, expensive
tweeds, a deep purple ascot—you get the picture. Tanaka was a well-established type; two or three of
his sort could always be found scowling in the environs of Okimi's café. He
might be found at any bar or café in the university district, or at any
concert given by the YMCA or Music Academy (though only in the cheapest
seats), or at any of the popular art galleries. So if you would like a
clearer picture of Mr. Tanaka, go to one of those places and have a look for
yourself. I refuse to write another word about him. Besides, while I've been
churning out this introduction to Tanaka, Okimi has gotten up from her desk,
opened the shoji screen, and was now staring out at the moonlit
night.
The moonlight shone down upon the tile roof
and into the room upon the artificial lily in its slender glass vase, the
picture of Raphael's Madonna, and Okimi's upturned nose. Okimi didn't
seem to notice the light. She had met Tanaka at the café, of course.
They had promised to spend the next evening together. It was one of Okimi's
two days off in a month, and they'd decided to go to Sabaura and see an
Italian circus together. The date was set for six o'clock; they would meet
at Ogawamachi train station.
Okimi had never gone out alone with a man
before, so when she thought of her date, her heart beat faster from
excitement. To Okimi, Tanaka was like Ali Baba: a man who knew the secret spell to open
the door to a treasure trove. When he cast the spell, what unknown realm of
delight would appear before her? In her heart, she pictured the vision of
this mysterious and unfathomable world, like the sea stirred by the wind, or
the motor of a public bus revving just before the bus departs. There, along
a road covered in blooming roses, countless items were scattered: pearl
rings, false jade belt clips, other treasures precious and not. The gentle
coo of a nightingale echoed from behind a Mitsukoshi department store awning
across the street. In a marble palace, surrounded by the scent of olive
flowers, a dance between Mr. Douglas Fairbanks and Miss Mori Ritsuko10 intensified to a climax...
I believe I have related everything of
importance, but I will add this for Okimi's sake. At times, the shadow of a
dark and ominous cloud passed over all the beautiful visions that Okimi had,
as if threatening her happiness. Okimi must be in love with Tanaka, but
Tanaka considered Okimi's artistic inspirations as something like a
courtesan's affectation. He was Sir Lancelot, who wrote poetry, played the
violin, used oil paints, was an actor, was skilled in singing and playing
cards, and could also play the biwa. Okimi's inexperienced intuition did
not—perhaps could not—always sense the extremely suspicious true nature of this Lancelot. She
knew enough to doubt anything that seemed too good to be true.
Unfortunately for Okimi's intuition, the
shadow of the cloud disappeared as quickly as it appeared. No matter how
grown-up Okimi seemed, she was still a girl of sixteen or seventeen years
old, brimming with heartfelt artistic emotion. She rarely worried about
getting her kimono wet in the rain, so it was no wonder that she didn't
focus her attention on clouds except when she was admiring a painting of the
sunset over the Rhine. Her beautiful visions consumed all of her
attention. A road covered in roses, pearl rings, false jade belt
clips—the rest is as I wrote before, so please re-read that before we move
on.
For a long time, like Saint Geneviève of
Chavannes,11 Okimi stood gazing at the tiled roofs illuminated by the moonlight,
but then she slammed the window screen down and returned to sitting
cross-legged at her desk. What Okimi did from then until six o'clock the
next afternoon, I regret to say that I do not know. As for why I, the
author, do not know—I will be honest about it. It is because I have to finish writing this
story by tonight.
At six o'clock the next afternoon, Okimi
went to the Ogawamachi train station. She was more nervous than usual; it
was a dark evening. She wore a cream-colored shawl over a navy
coat.
When Okimi arrived at the station, Tanaka
was already there, wearing his usual wide-brimmed black hat pulled low over
his eyes. The collar of his striped half-length jacket was turned up and
appeared reddish under the electric lights. His pale face was scrubbed clean
and he smelled faintly of cologne. He carried a thin walking stick with a
nickel-silver handle. It seemed he was taking extra care with his appearance
tonight.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," Okimi said in
a breathy voice, looking up at Tanaka's face.
"You didn't," Tanaka said gallantly. He
smiled a little, then shivered. "Let's walk."
Before Okimi could reply, Tanaka had
already started walking down the busy street under the light of the
streetlamps, heading towards Sudachou. The circus they were going to see was
in Shibaura, so they would have to head to Kandabashi from here if they
wanted to walk there. Okimi knew this and clutched at her shawl, which was
fluttering in the wind. Dust kicked up with every step she and Tanaka
took.
"Excuse me," Okimi called to Tanaka, "but
is this the right way?"
Tanaka looked over his shoulder and said,
"Yep." He kept walking toward Sudachou.
Okimi, resigned, quickly caught up to
Tanaka. They walked under the shade of a stand of willow trees planted along
the road.
Tanaka was a fast walker. He turned to look
at Okimi and said, "I'm sorry, Okimi, but the circus at Shibaura closed
yesterday afternoon. So tonight, let's go to a house I know and have dinner
together."
"All right," Okimi said. Her voice trembled
with fear—or hope.
Tanaka's hand gently grasped
hers.
Okimi thought she heard the song of a
cuckoo bird. At the same time, tears welled up in her eyes, just as they had
when she'd read The Cuckoo. The sights and sounds of the
streets they passed were magical. Ogawacho, Awajicho, and Sudachou were
beautiful to her. The sound of vendors selling New Year's gifts, the
dizzying electric lights, the cedar leaf decorations celebrating Christmas,
the flags of all nations strung up on the windows, the Santa Claus in the
display window, the postcards and calendars lined up in street stalls—everything seemed like it was singing of the joy of love. It was as if the
glorious sights and sounds before her would continue to the ends of the
earth and never end.
The light of the stars overhead was bright,
but not cold: not tonight. The dusty wind that harried the hems of their
coats felt unusually warm, as if spring had returned. Happiness, happiness,
happiness all around.
Before she knew it, Okimi realized that the
two of them had turned down a side street and were now walking down an
alleyway. On the right side of the narrow alley, there was a small
greengrocer's stall lit by gas lamps. The stall was piled high with carrots,
green onions, turnips, arrowroot, burdock, mustard spinach, udo, lotus root,
apples and mandarin oranges. As she passed in front of the stall, Okimi's
gaze fell on a sign standing in the middle of the pile of green onions. The
sign was a candlestick fastened to a strip of bamboo. On the sign, in poorly
written black ink, was written: "One bundle, four sen." It was rare to find
green onions for four sen a bundle. The price was unusually cheap for Tokyo,
where everything was expensive.
As she gazed upon this sign, the real life
problems that lurked in Okimi's mind came to the fore, pushing their way
past her intoxication with art and love. She discarded both without a second
thought. The roses, the rings, the cuckoo, and the Japanese flag all
vanished from her mind in an instant. In their place, the money for rice,
electricity, charcoal, snacks, soy sauce, newspapers, makeup, train
fare—all other living expenses, along with the painful experiences of the past,
swarmed from all directions into Okimi's heart, like fire-catchers gathering
around a fire.
Okimi-san stopped in front of the
greengrocer without thinking. Then, leaving a bewildered Tanaka behind, she
stepped toward the green vegetables sitting in the stall under the lights.
She stretched out her delicate fingers and pointed to a pile of green onions
on which stood a bunch of four-sen notes. In a voice like a song, she said,
"Two bunches of green onions, please."
Tanaka stood in the dusty street in his
black wide-brimmed hat with the collar of his striped jacket turned up
against the cold, alone and dejected. He leaned on his walking stick,
thinking about a house with latticed doors on the outskirts of town. It was
a cheaply built two-story house called the Matsuya. It had electric lights
sticking out from under its eaves and the stone floor was always slightly
wet.
Standing on the street alone, his thoughts
of the Matsuya faded into the background. Okimi approached him, clutching a
four-sen note in her hand. His nose was assaulted by the harsh, eye-watering smell of the green onions
clutched in Okimi's other hand.
This night was not going as he'd imagined
at all.
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting," Okimi
said.
Poor Tanaka stared at Okimi's face with the
most pitiless expression, as if she were a stranger.
Okimi's hair was neatly parted in the
middle, a forget-me-not hairpin securing her updo. Her nose pointed slightly
upwards, and her cream-colored shawl was firmly in place. A delighted smile
danced in her eyes.
Okimi clutched two bunches of green onions
worth eight sen tightly in one hand.
***
I did it! I finished the story! The sun is
coming up; I heard the shrill sound of a rooster crow not long ago. Why do I
feel depressed even though I finished it? Okimi made it back safely to her
room above the hairdresser's that night, but unless she stops waiting on
tables at the café, there's no saying that she won't go out with Tanaka
again. I don't want to think of what might happen then. But what will happen
will happen; no amount of worrying on my part is going to change anything.
All right, that's all, I'm going to stop writing now. Goodbye, Okimi. Go out
again tomorrow night as you did last night, brave and vivacious, to face the
critics!
December 1919
THE END
Translator's Notes
1 This is how I see Okimi. Be careful Googling the
name Yumeji Takehisa--some of the art is pornographic.
https://ukiyo-e.org/image/bm/AN00751934_001_l ↩
2 Mary Pickford: A Canadian actress famous for ingenue roles, she later
became a cutthroat businesswoman. Believe it or not, the comparison of Okimi
to her is foreshadowing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Pickford ↩
3 Mitsumame: Mitsumame is a Japanese dessert made of a mixture of boiled
beans, agar cubes, fruit pieces and syrup. During this time period, it was
marketed specifically to young children. ↩
4 Okimi's books:
The Cuckoo, also called Nami-ko in English, is a Japanese
novel first published by Kenjirō Tokutomi in serialized form between 1898
and 1899. It was republished as a book in 1900 and became a bestseller.
Beginning in 1904, it was also widely translated and read in the United
States and Europe. The story is a tragic melodrama about the family conflict
that ensues when Namiko, a young wife, contracts tuberculosis. Her husband
initially resists his mother's pressure to end the marriage, but when he is
drafted into the First Sino-Japanese War, his mother dissolves their
marriage and Namiko dies. The novel critiques Japanese feudal values,
especially the vulnerable social position of women.
Misao Fujimura (藤村 操, Fujimura Misao, July 20, 1886 – May 22, 1903) was
a Japanese philosophy student and poet, largely remembered due to his
farewell poem. Fujimura was born in Hokkaidō. His grandfather was a former
samurai of the Morioka Domain, and his father relocated to Hokkaidō after
the Meiji Restoration as a director of the forerunner of Hokkaido Bank.
Fujimura graduated from middle school in Sapporo, and then relocated to
Tokyo where he attended a preparatory school for entry into Tokyo Imperial
University. He later traveled to Kegon Falls in Nikko, a famed scenic area,
and wrote his farewell poem directly on the trunk of a tree before
committing suicide.
Sumako Matsui (松井 須磨子, Matsui Sumako, November 1, 1886 – January 5,
1919) was a Japanese actress and singer. Matsui first became famous in 1911
for her portrayal of Nora in A Doll's House. In 1913, after
establishing a theatre troupe with the director Hogetsu Shimamura, she
became an acclaimed actress thanks to her performance in the role of Katusha
in Tolstoy's Resurrection. After her lover died of the Spanish flu on
November 5, 1918, she committed suicide by hanging on January 5, 1919.
The American Diary of a Japanese Girl is the first English-language
novel published in the United States by a Japanese writer. Acquired for
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Monthly Magazine by editor Ellery Sedgwick
in 1901, it appeared in two excerpted installments in November and December
of that year with illustrations by Genjiro Yeto. In 1902, it was published
in book form by the New York firm of Frederick A. Stokes. Marketed as the
authentic diary of an 18-year-old female visitor to the United States named
"Miss Morning Glory" (Asagao), it was in actuality the work of Yone Noguchi
(a man), who wrote it with the editorial assistance of Blanche Partington
and Léonie Gilmour.
Carmen: The salacious French tale of a gypsy that seduces an honest
soldier and a bullfighter, and is killed by the soldier in a jealous
rage.
If You Look at the Bottom of the Valley from the Mountaintop:
The name of a sentimental song from 1870, which is arranged as a poem..↩
5 Okimi's magazine cutouts:
Kiyokata Kaburaki (鏑木 清方, Kaburaki Kiyokata, August 31, 1878 – March 2,
1972) was the art-name of a Nihonga artist and the leading master of the
bijin-ga (beautiful women) painting genre in the Taishō and Shōwa eras. His
legal name was Kaburaki Ken'ichi.
Genroku Woman is sometimes translated as The Orgies of Edo in English. Google at
your own risk.
Shikai Kitamurawas born in Nagano, Japan and studied Japanese sculptural
techniques before going to Paris, France in 1900 to study Western techniques
for two years. He is best known for his sculptures in stone and bronze, and
his marble sculpture of Eve is in the collection of The National Museum of
Modern Art, Tokyo. It is probably the statue of Eve that the text is
referring to. ↩
6 Shinpa (新派) (also rendered shimpa) is a modern form of theater in Japan,
usually featuring melodramatic stories, contrasted with the more traditional
kabuki style. Taking its start in the 1880s, it later spread to
cinema. ↩
7 A sen is a hundreth of a yen. During the time of this story, waitresses in
Toyko were paid about 10 yen per month, so Okimi would almost certainly have
to rely on tips to make ends meet.↩
8 Zushi (逗子市, Zushi-shi) is a city located in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
Zushi is located at the head of Miura Peninsula, facing Sagami Bay on the
Pacific Ocean. The city is built on an alluvial plain formed by the Tagoe
River (田越川) and surrounded by low, steep hills.↩
9 Hundred Poets game: Hyakunin Isshu (百人一首) is a classical
Japanese anthology of one hundred Japanese waka by one hundred poets. The
game (called karuta) is played by matching the poet to the card as it
is read aloud; the first player to find the card wins. ↩
10 Ritsuko Mori (30 October 1890 – 22 July 1961) (森律子 in Japanese, or もり
りつこ in kana) was a Japanese actress. As a woman from a respected family,
her entry into the acting profession was considered disreputable, but her
success improved the opportunities and social standing of professional
actresses in Japan. She and Douglas Fairbanks were never in the same movie;
this is purely Okimi's imagination.↩
11 Saint Geneviève of Chavannes is famous for watching over the city of Paris;
a popular painting from the time period this story is set in shows her keeping watch over the city at night.
https://www.meisterdrucke.us/fine-art-prints/Pierre-Puvis-de-Chavannes/81426/St.-Genevieve-Watches-Over-the-Sleeping-City-of-Paris,-1898.html ↩
.jpg)
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