Mandarins (4 page)

“I am, as you see, a barbarian, with not the slightest notion of refinement. Yet whenever I enter that library of his, I get some sort of inkling of what it's like to live the artistic life. For one thing, an old scroll hangs in the alcove—and the flower vases are always full. There are shelves of books in Japanese and, next to these, shelves of books in Western languages. To top it off, next to an elegant desk, he sometimes displays a
shamisen
. And then, of course, there is Wakatsuki himself, cutting a dashingly sophisticated figure, as though having
stepped forth from some sort of up-to-date
ukiyo
é
print. Yesterday too he was wearing a strange garment, and when I asked him about it, what do you think he called it? A
chanpa
! Now I can lay claim to a wide circle of friends, but I don't suppose there is anyone other than Wakatsuki who wears such a thing . . . Anyway, that certainly typifies his entire way of living.

“As we were filling each other's cups before dining, he told about Koen. She had, it appeared, another lover, but that was, he said, not particularly surprising. No, but the man in question, it turned out, was a lowly ballad recitation apprentice.

“Hearing this, my friends, you will find it impossible not to laugh at Koen's folly. At the time, not even a bitter smile would have passed my own face.

“You will, of course, not be aware of it, but Koen over the last three years has benefited greatly from what Wakatsuki has done for her. He provided not only for her mother but also for her younger sister. He saw to it that she was trained in reading and writing, in the traditional performing arts, and in whatever happened to strike her fancy. Koen had been granted a dancing name by one of the masters. She is also said to be preeminent among Yanagibashi geisha for the
nagauta
. She can compose
hokku
and is a skillful
kana
calligrapher in the Chikage style. And that is again thanks to Wakatsuki . . . As I knew all this, I could not help feeling, I am sure more than any of you, utterly dumbfounded by the absurdity of it all.

“Wakatsuki told me that he had given no great thought to the breaking of ties with the woman. And yet he said that he had spared no effort in supporting her education and shown understanding for whatever it was she wished to do. He had sought to train her as a woman of broad interests and tastes . . . Such had been his hopes, and now they had been dashed. If she had to take up with a man, it
should hardly be a balladeer. If even after all manner of devotion to performance art, a person's fundamental character has not improved, it is truly a loathsome thing . . .

“Wakatsuki went on to say that over the last half year, the woman had also become prone to hysterical fits. For a time, she would exclaim—‘Today I have played the
shamisen
for the last time!'—or some such and then burst into childish tears. And when again he asked why she was weeping, she would argue quite irrationally that he did not love her and that that was why he was having her trained in music and dancing. At such times, she gave no indication of hearing anything he had to say but instead would merely bitterly and endlessly accuse him of heartlessness. Eventually, of course, such paroxysms would cease, the entire episode made a laughing matter.

“Wakatsuki also said that he had heard that Koen's lover, the ballad singer, was an unmanageable ruffian. When a waitress in a chicken-brochette restaurant with whom he had a liaison took up with someone new, he seems to have got himself into quite a scuffle with the woman, causing her considerable injury. Wakatsuki had also heard various ugly rumors about the man: that he had been involved in a failed double-suicide pact, that he had eloped with the daughter of an arts teacher . . . What possible discernment on Koen's part, he asked, could be seen in her willingness to become involved with someone like this . . .?

“As I have said, I could not help feeling disgusted at Koen's dissolute conduct. And yet as I listened to Wakatsuki, I felt a growing sympathy for her. Of course, it may well be that in him she had a patron of a sophistication that is quite rare in today's world. And yet did he not himself admit that separating from her was of no consequence to him? Even if we assume that in saying so he was endeavoring to spare himself humiliation, it is clear that he felt no fierce passion for her.
Now ‘fierce' is the word to describe the balladeer, who, out of sheer odium for the heartlessness of a woman, inflicted serious bodily injury on her. Putting myself in Koen's place, I think it perfectly natural that she would fall for the vulgar but passionate balladeer over the cultured but phlegmatic Wakatsuki. The fact that he had her trained in all the arts is evidence that he had no love for her. In all of this, I saw something more than hysteria: between the two, I detected a chasmic difference in perception.

“Yet I do not intend to bestow for her sake my blessing on the liaison with the balladeer. No one can say whether or not she will achieve happiness . . . But if unhappiness is the result, then the curse should fall not on the other man but rather on Seigai the Sophisticate for driving her into his arms.

“Now Wakatsuki, like the men of the world he personifies, may, as individuals, be charming and lovable. They understand Bash
ō
; they understand Tolstoy. They understand Ike no Taiga and Mushanok
ō
ji Saneatsu. They understand Karl Marx. Yet what is the result? Of fierce love, the joy of fierce creativity, or fierce moral passion they are ignorant. All in all, they know nothing of the sheer intensity of spirit that can render this world sublime. And if they are marked by a mortal wound, they surely also contain a pernicious poison. One of its properties is direct, enabling it to transform ordinary human beings into sophisticates; another works by way of reaction, making them all the more common. Someone such as Koen is a case in point, is she not?

“As we know from time immemorial, thirst will drive one to drink even from muddy water. That is to say, if Koen had not been in Wakatsuki's milieu, she might not have wound up with the balladeer.

“If, on the other hand, she finds happiness . . . Well now, I suppose to the extent that she has her new lover in place of Wakatsuki, she has already found it. What was it that Fujii said just now? We all find
ourselves riding the same merry-go-round of life and, at some moment as we turn, encounter ‘happiness,' only to have it pass us by in the very moment that we reach out for it. If such is truly our desire, we should jump off . . . Koen has, as it were, dared to do just that. Such fierce joy and sorrow is something that the likes of Wakatsuki and other men of the world do not know. As I contemplate life's value, I shall willingly spit on one hundred Wakatsukis, even as I honor and revere a single Koen.

“What say you all to that?”

Wada's tipsy eyes shone round the silent room, but Fujii at some point had put his head down on the table and was now blissfully and soundly asleep.

 

Hasegawa Kinz
ō
, professor in the Faculty of Law at T
ō
ky
ō
Imperial University, was sitting in a rattan chair on the veranda, reading Strindberg's
Dramaturgy
. Such might come as something of a surprise to readers when informed of the professor's specialized field of research: colonial policy. He was, however, renowned as an educator as well as a scholar, and so to the extent that leisure allowed, he took it upon himself at least to glance through works which though not immediately useful to his discipline were nonetheless in some way relevant to the thoughts and feelings of today's students. Being at the time the headmaster of a higher professional school, he had even endeavored to peruse Oscar Wilde's
De Profundis
and
Intentions
, his sole motivation being their popularity among his pupils.

Thus, there would really have been no cause for astonishment in seeing him absorbed in the world of modern European plays and actors. Indeed, among his charges there were not only those who
wrote commentaries on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Maeterlinck but even some passionately seeking to follow in the footsteps of these up-to-date dramatists and to devote themselves to the theater.

Whenever the professor finished a chapter, each filled with penetrating insights, he would put the book with its yellow cloth cover down on his lap and throw a desultory glance at the Gifu lantern that hung on the veranda. Curiously, his mind would then wander from Strindberg to his wife, with whom he had gone to buy it.

The professor had studied in America, where he had first met her; naturally enough, she was an American. Yet she, no less than he, was enamored of Japan and of the Japanese people. She was particularly attached to Japan's exquisitely wrought handicrafts. It would thus seem reasonable to assume that the lantern was more a reflection of his wife's taste than of his own.

Such moments invariably set him to thinking—about his wife and about the lantern as representative of Japanese civilization. It was his belief that for all the considerable material progress made over the preceding half century, there had been almost nothing that one could truly call spiritual advancement. Indeed, in some sense there had been degeneration. It was thus, he thought, urgently incumbent upon the nation's contemporary thinkers to consider a remedy. He had further concluded that such could only lie in traditional
bushid
ō
. This should not, he insisted, be viewed as simply the moral code of a blinkered island people. On the contrary, it contained elements that were consistent with the spirit of Christianity in the nations of the West. If
bushid
ō
could provide a beacon for contemporary Japanese thought, it would not only contribute to Japan's spiritual culture; it would also facilitate greater understanding between Western peoples and the Japanese and thereby promote the cause of international peace . . . In this respect, he often imagined himself becoming a bridge between
East and West. To such a scholar, it was in no way unpleasant to bear in mind that his wife, the lantern, and the Japanese civilization were all quite in harmony with one another.

As he repeatedly savored his satisfaction, it slowly dawned on Professor Hasegawa that even as he was reading, his attention was indeed straying from Strindberg. Feeling somewhat annoyed at this, he shook his head and again single-mindedly fixed his eyes on the fine print before him. Just where he had left off, he found this passage:

Professor Hasegawa was by nature indifferent to the arts, especially to drama. He had not even been to the Japanese theater more times than he could readily count. A student of his had once written a story in which Baik
ō
was mentioned. Yet for all the erudition of which the professor boasted, the name was quite unknown to him. When the opportunity arose, he took the student aside and asked him: “Who is this Baik
ō
?”

The young man, dressed in a pleated
hakama
, replied courteously.

“Baik
ō
? Why, he is currently playing the role of Misao in the tenth act of the
Taik
ō
ki
at the Marunouchi Imperial Theater.”

Understandably then, the professor had utterly no opinion concerning the pithy criticisms that Strindberg had contributed to the discussion of dramaturgy. His interest was limited to mental associations with those few theater pieces he had seen while studying abroad. He was, so to speak, hardly different from those secondary-school English teachers who read the scripts of George Bernard Shaw for the
sole purpose of finding idiomatic expressions. Yet an interest, however imperfect, is still an interest.

Readers will readily imagine the length of that early summer afternoon when told that the Gifu lantern suspended from the ceiling on the veranda was still unlit and that Professor Hasegawa Kinz
ō
was still sitting in his rattan chair, reading Strindberg. This should by no means suggest that he was suffering from boredom. Any reader inclined to think so would be willfully assigning an all too cynical interpretation to the writer's intentions.

In any case, the professor was obliged to abandon his reading when the maid interrupted his refined pursuits by announcing a visitor. However long the day, it would seem that a professor's work is never done.

Professor Hasegawa laid his book down and glanced at the small calling card the maid had brought. Imprinted on ivory paper was the name Nishiyama Atsuko. She appeared to be no one he had met before, but as he associated with a wide range of people, he took the precaution, as he got up, of searching his mental name register. Even so, he could not picture a face to match a single entry. Uneasily, he placed the card between the pages of Strindberg's
Dramaturgy
as a provisional bookmarker, placed the volume on his chair, straightened his summer kimono of Meisen silk, and glanced once more at the Gifu lantern, now directly in front of his nose.

Now it is certainly the general rule that the host who keeps his guest waiting feels greater impatience than the waiting guest. Moreover, it hardly needs to be said that Professor Hasegawa was at all times conscientious, even on this day in regard to a woman visitor he did not know.