Authors: Ogai Mori
Perhaps you may feel my loose, slipshod, leisurely way of writing about these events has no connection to my sexual life, but actually it has. It has a very important connection.
Gradually I got to be on friendly terms with Koga. And through Koga I became friends with Kojima. So a triple alliance came into existence.
Kojima was a most innocent child. His sexual life was a complete zero.
As for Koga, after he drank some sake, he would usually fall into a sound sleep. But about once a month there would be a turbulent day. On those days before stomping out into the corridor he'd say to me, "Tonight I'm going to kick up a storm, so you'd better go quietly to bed." Once, calling up from outside the dorm to someone's room after finding himself locked out and everyone asleep, he broke open the door with his fists. On such nights he would go into Adachi's room, the handsome boy who was in a lower class at the school. There were even occasions on those stormy days when Koga slept away from the dorm. After returning sad and dejected the following day, he would say repentantly, "Last night I acted like a beast!"
Kojima's beast of sexual desire lay slumbering. Koga's sexual beast was chained, but occasionally it was turned loose and ran amuck. Yet in the same way that some present-day gentlemen eagerly try to preserve the tidiness of at least their own homes, he never desecrated his own room. I was lucky to share this sacred room with him.
The three of us, Koga, Kojima, and I, coldly frowned upon the entire dormitory. Whenever we had any free time, the three of us would get together. Those students who reared the beast of sexual desire and usually unleashed it were mercilessly censured before our
triumviri
. And among these, those who went out in white socks late Saturday afternoon were spoken about by us as if they were no longer human. The postponement of my sexual life was due completely to this triple alliance of ours. Now, long afterward, when I think about our group, it seems to me that if Koga had not been a member of our alliance, it would probably have been a dismal anemic one. Fortunately, Koga, despite his occasional stormy days, threw in his lot with us, so even when we included one another in our critical judgments, it was impossible to deprive us of our energetic spirits.
I remember one Saturday in particular. The three of us decided to have a look around Yoshiwara, the red-light district. Koga took charge. We went out in those duck-cloth skirts and dark blue socks, our tall Bohemian clogs clattering along the way. After going over the hills of Ueno, we passed through Negishi and then turned right along Torishinmachi, heading along the ditch toward the entrance to the gay quarters. We swaggered along the width and breadth of Yoshiwara. Calamity befell any of the mashers we happened to meet. Together the three of us burst into laughter on gazing after those white socks as they furtively turned down a sidestreet. After leaving my friends, I took the ferryboat at Imado and proceeded to Mukojima.
*
*
*
During summer vacation that year, as I had done the previous year, I lived with my parents at Mukojima. In those days the custom of a student's going to a spa or the seashore at the height of the summer had not yet been established. The best a student could do was go back home to his parents. As the son of a government official, I could imagine no greater pleasure than returning home to my parents and enjoying myself there.
As usual I played with Eiichi. No longer was his mother around. Rumors circulated about Hanno and Eiichi's mother, and he was dismissed from his position and went back to his hometown. Eiichi's mother was sent back to her home province.
I competed with Eiichi in our exercises of composing essays in the Chinese manner. When we became more interested in it, we wanted to study Chinese composition with a good teacher.
In those days a teacher named Bunen lived at Mukojima. He had built his home where he could command a view of the banks of the Sumida River across a rice field about five acres wide. To the main wing of his two-storied house was an annex whose study looked out on a pond in the garden. The storehouse was loaded with books imported from China, a student supported by the teacher continually going in and out carrying volumes by the armload. I guess the teacher was about forty-two or forty-three. His wife was around thirty, their two or three daughters quite pretty. All of the women lived in the main wing. The teacher lived in his study, which was connected to the main wing by a covered passageway. He was an official editor of government publications, his monthly salary one hundred yen. He had his own private jinrikisha to take him to his office. My father envied him, telling me, "That man is happiness itself!" In those days a monthly salary of one hundred yen brought one happiness.
After asking my father about our plan and receiving his permission, I was able to go to Bunen Sensei's house to have my Chinese compositions corrected. The student-dependent led me into the teacher's study. No matter how long the composition I brought, my teacher took it, saying only, "Let's have a look." He corrected it with a brush dipped in red Chinese ink. He punctuated it one line after another. And while punctuating it, he revised it. The reading and revising were done simultaneously. Whenever he found a key word, though, he always put a good mark by it, and seldom did he break up any harmonious phrases in the composition.
After several visits I happened to meet a girl about sixteen or seventeen serving my teacher dinner, her hair worn in the
shimada
style. After returning home, I said to my mother, "Today I saw my teacher's eldest daughter," but my mother said, "She's the maid." Later I found out the word
maid
had a special meaning.
One day I happened to find a Chinese book tucked away under my teacher's desk. It was
Kinpeibai,
which describes the corruption and debauchery of the Ming dynasty. Though I had read only Bakin's adaptation of this work, I had known the Chinese original was quite different, much more erotic and obscene. It was then that I realized how cunning my supposedly austere and dignified teacher was.
Koga was in one of his ugly moods. I assumed he was ill, but that wasn't it. One day we went out for a walk, and as we were strolling along the edge of a pond, he said, "I'm going to have a look around Nezu today. How about coming with me?"
"If we go back together, it's fine with me."
"Of course we will."
While walking along, Koga told me the object of his exploration of the area. Adachi had become intimate with a popular prostitute working in a house called the Yawataro in Nezu. Since the woman was passionately in love with him and continually summoning him, he had just about abandoned all his classes. Adachi's nightgown and everything else were provided in her room. All the woman's possessions were marked with the combined crests of her family and Adachi's. If she didn't see Adachi for a few days, she became hysterical. No matter how much Koga tried to detain Adachi, the woman's magnetism was so powerful that he was drawn to the Yawataro almost unconsciously. Koga had sent a letter to his friend's parents, who lived in Asakusa, cautioning them about Adachi's misconduct. Koga waited for Adachi's return to the dorm and then asked him, "How did it go?" A look of confusion on his face, Adachi said, "It was terrible today seeing my mother cry. It was pathetic to hear my mother crying, saying she wanted to die. But I've also heard my sweetheart in tears, telling me she wanted to die, and so nothing can be done about anything."
Quite angry while telling me about this situation, Koga had tears in his own eyes. While walking along after listening to him, I said, "It certainly is hard and unjust." Yet even while coming out with these words, I couldn't feel the least bit outraged. Ever present but dormant in my consciousness was that beautiful dream of love. Just after I had read
Ume-goyomi
for the first time, having borrowed it from someone who had borrowed it from the lending library, I became friends with a student majoring in Chinese literature, and he advised me to read
Sentoyowa
. I read
Enzangaishi
. I read
Joshi.
I was envious, burning with jealousy over the naive love affairs between young men and women described in these Chinese books. And because I had not been born handsome, I felt as if those beautiful experiences were ideals beyond my grasp. I experienced constant dissatisfaction, a continual pain in the innermost depths of my mind. And so naturally I couldn't prevent myself from thinking that Adachi was certainly happy, that even though he was undergoing pain, it was probably a sweet pain, not that bitter pain I felt lying dormant in me.
At the same time I also came up with the following thought: Koga's exceedingly simple and pure character was in itself lovable. Still, when I reflected on the underlying basis for his own anguish about Adachi, it didn't seem deserving of the slightest sympathy. Rather, Adachi had extricated himself from an unnatural embrace and had rushed toward the bosom of a natural one. If Koga had told Kojima about this situation, Kojima himself might have shed tears along with him. Of course I felt no greater joy existed than obedience to one's parents. And for the sake of this obedience it was a fine thing to restrain one's sexual desires as much as possible. It was not strange, however, to find that some human beings were unable to. Kojima treated his carnal desires as so much excrement drawn into the bottomless pit. Koga regarded these desires as an outhouse receptacle which occasionally had to be cleaned out. Was it really to my credit that in becoming part of this alliance with these two I had not sought to gratify my sexual desires either? That was quite doubtful. If I had been born handsome like Kojima, I would probably not have been a Kojima. Before the altar of our sacred alliance, I indulged myself in this kind of heretical reflection.
For the first time in my life I crossed the Aizome Bridge as I followed Koga. He entered a small house on the west side and began talking to one of the employees. I stood on the threshold. The house was a restaurant in the licensed quarter. Koga was checking on exactly which days Adachi came to the restaurant. The man was reluctant to answer. After a while Koga came out sad and dejected. We started back without saying anything.
It wasn't long before Adachi was expelled from school. About a year later I heard a rumor that a handsome policeman in a section of Asakusa was quite the gay blade among many nurses and widows, Several years later Koga was at Okuyama in Asakusa and happened to meet a man dressed in a wadded garment made of taffeta, his face sinister, his cheeks hollow. They said that was the miserable end of Adachi, who was being kept by a female acrobat performing in a cheap Okuyama tent show.
*
*
*
At this time I graduated from the English Academy, the preparatory school for helping students enter the university, so I became a university student in the department of literature.
After summer vacation I lived in a boardinghouse. Almost every night I went out with Koga and Kojima to some storyteller's hall. I got into such a bad habit that sometimes I couldn't fall asleep unless I had gone to one of these halls. After I lost interest in professional storytellers, I listened to the comic tales with their special emphasis on wordplay. And after having had my fill of these, I went to hear the female reciters of ballads. On the way back from the hall, we would feel hungry and stop at one of the noodle shops so that occasionally we happened to see some brothel pimps followed by quite a few streetwalkers. Some of those scenes under the street lamps were so scandalous that we instinctively shuddered. Even though the drivers of jinrikishas to the red-light districts told us "It'll be cheap," we never rode in them.
Probably Kojima and I were the only virgins to graduate from the English Academy. And even after entering the department of literature at our university, we kept the moral sanctions of our triumvirate intact so that Kojima and I remained innocent.
That year passed without any further events worth writing about.
That year my father, through the kindness of a friend, became an official in the prison at Kosuge in Tokyo. My father had held a humble post in one government agency, but no position was vacant for him to be promoted to. Officers at the prison had an official residence, so if we lived there, we could rent our house at Mukojima. The monthly pay would also be slightly better. My father decided to make the move to Kosuge. So on Saturdays I went to Kosuge and on Sunday nights I returned to my boardinghouse.
I was still under the moral sway of our triple alliance. Each time I returned to our house at Kosuge on Saturday, I passed through Torishinmachi. On the south side of the street immediately after turning toward Yoshiwara was a shrine surrounded by a stone wall. On the north side was a curio shop. The paper sliding screens of the shop were always half closed. Pasted in a corner of these sliding doors was a rectangular sheet of paper, and on it were the characters for "Akisada," written as if a sign painter had done them. Each time I went to Kosuge on my way there and back, I felt a joy in passing those sliding doors. And once when I saw a girl standing in the open space between the doors, I felt, for about a week, some undefinable satisfaction. When I found the girl wasn't there, I felt, for a week, a vague dissatisfaction.
Probably she wasn't that much of a beauty. Her pinkish face, though, was as fresh as dew that has just emerged, her bright clear eyes with a charm impossible to describe. In her hair, just washed and set in the
shimada
style, was no red ribbon or ornament. During the summer she would have on a cotton kimono in a gay, lively pattern. In winter she was dressed in a kimono of common silk with a replaceable neckband. She always wore a clean apron.