Sanshiro Read online

  Sanshirō was disappointed to find that the ladies’ seats were separate from the rest and unapproachable for ordinary human beings; also, that there were a lot of important-looking men here in frock coats, which made him appear less impressive than he might have wished. Ogawa Sanshirō, youth of the new age, had shrunk a little in stature. He did not fail to survey the ladies’ section, however, through the spaces between the men. His view from the side was not a good one, but the sight was lovely nonetheless. All of the ladies were decked out for the occasion and, viewed from a distance, all had beautiful faces. But this meant that no one stood out as more beautiful than anyone else. The whole had its beauty as a whole, a beauty by which women subdue men, not by which one woman outdoes another. This, too, came as a disappointment to Sanshirō. But if he looked closely, he thought, Mineko and Yoshiko should be there. He discovered them eventually in the front row next to the fence.

  *

  Now that he knew where to look, Sanshirō was enjoying the satisfaction of having accomplished this much when five or six men flew before his eyes. It was the end of the 200-meter race. The finish line was directly in front of Mineko and Yoshiko—just under their noses, in fact—and in watching them Sanshirō could not avoid having these young gladiators enter his field of vision. Soon the five or six increased to twelve or thirteen, all of them out of breath. Sanshirō compared the attitude of these students with his own, and the difference shocked him. Whatever possessed them to go galloping along like that? But the ladies were watching with great enthusiasm, and Mineko and Yoshiko more so than any. Sanshirō suddenly wanted to start galloping.

  The man who had just won the race was standing in purple shorts, facing the women’s section. Sanshirō took a good look at him and thought he resembled the student who had spoken at the gathering last night. Anyone as tall as that would naturally come in first. The timer wrote “25.74 seconds” on the blackboard. When he was done, he threw the chalk down and turned toward the stands. It was Nonomiya. He wore a black frock coat with an official’s badge on the chest. Sanshirō had never seen him so handsomely dressed. Nonomiya took out a handkerchief and slapped it two or three times against his sleeve, then left the blackboard and cut across the lawn to where Mineko and Yoshiko were sitting. Leaning over the low fence, he stretched his neck into the ladies’ section and started talking. Mineko stood up and walked over to him. They seemed to be talking back and forth across the fence. Mineko suddenly turned around, smiling delightedly. From his distant vantage point, Sanshirō kept close watch on the two of them. Next, Yoshiko stood and approached the fence. Now the two had become three. On the lawn, the shot put competition was starting.

  Probably nothing required as much strength as putting the shot. Neither was there anything else that, in proportion to the strength it required, was such a bore. All it involved was, literally, putting the shot. It had nothing to do with skill. Standing by the fence, Nonomiya glanced at the proceedings and smiled. Then it seemed to have occurred to him that he could be obstructing the view; he left the fence and retreated to the lawn. The two women returned to their seats. The shot was being put every now and then. Sanshirō had almost no idea how far the things were supposed to go. He felt stupid, but he went on standing there nevertheless. Finally, the event seemed to have been concluded. Nonomiya wrote “11.38 meters” on the blackboard.

  There was another running event, then the broad jump, and next the hammer throw. With the beginning of the hammer throw, Sanshirō’s patience gave out. People should go ahead and hold all the athletic meets they liked. They simply shouldn’t expect other people to watch them. Convinced that these female spectators’ ardor was terribly misplaced, Sanshirō slipped away from the playing field and came out to the artificial hill behind the seats. A cloth partition stood in his way. Retracing his steps, he turned right and walked a short distance along a gravel-topped area where he encountered a few others who had escaped from the meet. Some were finely dressed ladies. He turned right again and climbed a path to the top of a steep rise. Where the path gave out, there was a large boulder. He sat down on it and looked at the pond beneath the rock wall. The crowd let out a roar in the playing field below.

  Sanshirō spent a blank five minutes sitting atop the boulder. Soon he felt the urge to move again and stood, pivoting on the balls of his feet. Through the pale red maple leaves at the skirt of the hill, he caught a glimpse of Mineko and Yoshiko walking by.

  *

  Sanshirō stood at the top, looking down at the two of them. They emerged from the network of branches to an open, sunny patch. If he said nothing, they would pass him by. Perhaps he ought to shout? But they were too far away. He took several swift paces down the grassy hillside, and one of them happened to glance in his direction. This brought him to a halt. He did not like the idea of ingratiating himself with them. He was still somewhat annoyed about the track meet.

  “Oh! Look who’s there!” Yoshiko exclaimed, smiling. This young woman could be depended upon, it seemed, to greet the most commonplace sight with eyes full of wonder. It was not hard to imagine, though, that she would encounter the extraordinary with a look of fulfilled expectations. And so there was not the slightest discomfort in meeting her; the mood was always relaxed. Standing there, it occurred to him that this was due entirely to those big, always moist, black eyes of hers.

  Mineko also came to a halt. She looked at Sanshirō, but today for once her eyes were not trying to tell him anything. She might as well have been looking up at a tall tree. In his heart, Sanshirō felt he had seen a lamp go out. He went on standing where he was. Mineko, too, remained still.

  “Why aren’t you at the track meet?” Yoshiko asked from below.

  “I was there until a minute ago, but I got bored and came here.” Yoshiko turned to look at Mineko, but Mineko’s expression did not change. “How come you two left? I saw how fascinated you were,” he said, too loudly to conceal a hint of reproach. Mineko smiled a little now for the first time. The meaning of her smile was not clear to Sanshirō. He moved two paces closer to them. “Are you going home now?” Neither of them answered him. He took two more steps in their direction. “Are you going somewhere?”

  “Well, just…” Mineko said softly. He could not hear her clearly. Finally he came the rest of the way down the hill until he was standing in front of them. He simply stood there, however, without pressing for a destination. The crowd let out a roar in the field.

  “It’s the high jump!” Yoshiko said. “I wonder how high that one was?”

  Mineko gave only another little smile. Sanshirō, too, remained silent. He had no intention of remarking on the high jump.

  Mineko asked, “Is there something interesting up there?”

  Atop the hill there was only the boulder and the rock wall. She should know there was nothing interesting up there.

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Oh?” she answered, as though there were some doubt in her mind.

  “Let’s go up and see,” Yoshiko suggested eagerly.

  “Haven’t you been here before?” Mineko asked, unmoved.

  “Oh, come on!”

  Yoshiko went up first, and the others followed. Stepping to the edge of the grass, Yoshiko turned and said with some exaggeration, “It’s a sheer cliff!” adding, “It’s just the kind of place Sappho could have jumped from, don’t you think?”

  Mineko and Sanshirō laughed aloud, but Sanshirō had no idea what kind of place Sappho had jumped from.

  “Why don’t you try it too?” Mineko said.

  “Me? Maybe I should. The water’s so dirty, though.”

  She came away from the edge, and the two began to discuss their errand.

  “Are you going to go?” Mineko asked.

  “Yes, are you?”

  “I don’t know, what do you think?”

  “Do whatever you like. Why don’t I go alone? You can wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  “I wonder…”

  They could not seem to mak
e up their minds. What was it? Sanshirō asked. Yoshiko explained that she was going to pay a courtesy call to the nurse who had taken care of her in the hospital, as long as it was so near. In Mineko’s case no obligation was involved, but she had been thinking about visiting a nurse, too, someone she had become friendly with that summer when a relative was sick.

  *

  Finally Yoshiko, in her fresh, uncomplicated way, announced that she would be back soon and stepped swiftly down the hill. There was no need to stop her, no reason to go along; the other two simply remained—or, more precisely, were left—behind.

  Sanshirō sat down on the boulder again. Mineko was standing. The surface of the muddy pond caught the autumn sun like a mirror. In the pond was a little island with only two trees on it. The green branches of the pine and the pale red of the maple intertwined nicely, as in a miniature tray-garden. Beyond the island, the dense growth of trees on the far side of the pond shone with a dark luster. Mineko pointed toward the shadowy place.

  “Do you know what kind of tree that is?”

  “That is an oak tree.”

  Mineko laughed. “So you remember!”

  “Is it the nurse I saw you with that day—the one you were going to see just now?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s not the same one as Yoshiko’s, is she?”

  “No, she’s the one who said, ‘This is an oak tree.’ ”

  Now it was Sanshirō’s turn to laugh. “Right over there is where you were standing with her, holding a fan.”

  The hill on which they stood jutted into the pond and rose to a considerable height above it. A smaller hill that was in no way connected with this one ran along the bank to the right. From here they could see large pine trees, a corner of “The Mansion,” a part of the cloth partition behind the spectators’ section of the playing field, and beyond it a smooth stretch of grass.

  “Remember how hot it was that day? The hospital was unbearable. I had to go outside for a while. And what were you doing down there?”

  “It was the heat. I had just met Sōhachi for the first time. Then I came out and stayed over there for a while in a kind of daze. I don’t know, I was feeling a little discouraged.”

  “From meeting Sōhachi?”

  “No, that’s not it,” he began, looking at Mineko. Then he changed the subject. “Speaking of Sōhachi, he’s working hard today, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he’s even wearing a frock coat. It must be a terrible nuisance for him. The meet goes on all day long.”

  “Yes, but he looks pretty pleased with himself.”

  “Sōhachi? Really, Sanshirō!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he is certainly not the kind of man to be pleased with himself as the timer of a track meet.”

  Sanshirō changed the subject again. “He came over to say something to you before, didn’t he?”

  “At the field?”

  “Yes, by the fence,” he said, but he wanted to take the question back.

  “Yes,” she answered and looked steadily at him. Her lower lip began to draw down in a smile, which Sanshirō found too much to endure. He was going to say something to divert the conversation again when Mineko said, “You still haven’t answered my postcard.”

  Embarrassed, he replied, “I will.”

  Mineko did not say “Please do” or anything else to encourage him. “Do you know the painter Haraguchi?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “What about him?”

  “Oh, nothing. He was at the meet today, sketching everyone. Sōhachi came over to warn us that we had better be careful or Haraguchi would draw caricatures of us.”

  Mineko sat down next to Sanshirō. He felt like an awful blockhead.

  “Won’t Yoshiko be going home with her brother after the meet?”

  “She couldn’t if she wanted to. She lives with me now. Since yesterday.”

  *

  Sanshirō now heard for the first time that Nonomiya’s mother had gone home to the country. They had decided that, when that happened, they would move out of the Ōkubo house, Nonomiya would find a room, and Yoshiko would attend school from Mineko’s house for the time being.

  It was the ease with which Nonomiya had taken this step that surprised Sanshirō the most. If he was going to be so casual about living in a room again, he should not have had a house to begin with. What had he done with all the pans, the rice pot, the buckets, the other household articles? Sanshirō’s imagination led him to these irrelevancies, which he decided to keep to himself. Nonomiya’s reversion from head of a household to an almost pure student lifestyle was equivalent to his having taken one step back from the family system, and it also gave Sanshirō the personal advantage of shifting his immediate cares to a somewhat greater distance. On the other hand, Yoshiko had gone to live with Mineko… Sōhachi and Yoshiko were the kind of brother and sister who had to be seeing each other constantly… As their visits continued, the relationship between Nonomiya and Mineko would gradually take on a new character… and then who was to say when the time would come for Nonomiya to end the rooming-house life a second time and forever?

  Sanshirō carried on his conversation with Mineko while painting this dubious picture of the future in his head. The strain of presenting a normal exterior was beginning to prove painful when, fortunately, Yoshiko came back. The two women talked about going to the track meet again, but this autumn day was swiftly drawing to a close, the sun’s decline bringing with it a gradual increase in the chill of the open air. They decided to go home.

  Sanshirō thought he would take his leave and return to his rooming house alone, but the three of them moved off together, talking, which gave him no clear opportunity to say goodbye. He felt as if they were pulling him along, and he was perfectly happy to be pulled along. He stuck with them, skirting the edge of the pond, moving past the library toward the Red Gate, which lay in the wrong direction. Nearing the gate, he said to Yoshiko, “I hear your brother has taken a room.”

  “Yes, he finally did it—fobbing his poor sister off on Mineko. Isn’t he terrible?” She said this as though she wanted Sanshirō’s sympathy.

  He was about to answer when Mineko spoke up in praise of Nonomiya. “A man like Sōhachi is beyond our understanding. He’s so far above us, thinking about great things…”

  Yoshiko listened in silence.

  It was all for the sake of research that academics had to keep aloof from life’s annoying trivia and content themselves with as uncomplicated an existence as possible, Mineko continued. Finally, it was a mark of greatness that a man like Nonomiya, whose work was known even in foreign countries, should be living in an ordinary student rooming house. The shabbier the rooming house, the more he was to be respected.

  Sanshirō left his two companions at the Red Gate. As he turned his steps toward Oiwake, he started thinking.—Mineko was right. The difference between Nonomiya and himself was enormous. He had just arrived from the country. He had just entered the University. He possessed no learning, no discrimination to speak of. It was only natural that he could not command the same respect from Mineko as Nonomiya did. Come to think of it, she might even be laughing at him. When he had said before that he had come to the hill because the track meet bored him, she had asked with a straight face if there was something interesting up there. He had not noticed it then, but she might have been deliberately toying with him. Now, reviewing one by one the things she had said to him, the way she had acted toward him until today, he realized that everything could be given a negative interpretation. Right there in the middle of the street, he blushed scarlet and hung his head. Looking up again, he found Yojirō coming toward him with the student who had spoken at last night’s dinner. Yojirō nodded once to him and said nothing. The student removed his hat and bowed.

  “Glad you came yesterday. How are things? Don’t surrender yourself, now.” He laughed and walked on with Yojirō.

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  Yojirō had not been home since yesterday, the old servant woman told Sanshirō in hushed tones. He stood at the kitchen door, thinking, until it finally occurred to her to invite him in. The Professor was in his study, she said, her hands busily washing dishes as she spoke. The Professor must have just finished eating dinner.

  Sanshirō went through the sitting room to the hall and down to the Professor’s study. The door was open. “Come in here,” the Professor barked. Sanshirō crossed the threshold. The Professor was at his desk, his long back hiding his work. Sanshirō knelt on the matted floor by the doorway.

  “You must be busy studying,” he said politely. The Professor twisted himself around, the shadow of his mustache indistinct and shaggy. Sanshirō thought he looked like the portrait of someone he had seen in a printed photograph.

  “Oh, it’s you. I thought it was Yojirō. Sorry.” He left his seat. On the desk were a writing brush and paper. So he had been writing.

  Yojirō had told him once that the Professor often worked on a certain manuscript but that it was something the author alone could understand. “I hope he can turn it into a magnum opus during his lifetime, but if he dies first it’ll just be a pile of scrap paper,” he had said with a sigh.

  “I can leave if you’re busy. It’s nothing special.”

  “No, I’m not busy enough to send you away. This is nothing special, either. I don’t have to finish it now.”

  Sanshirō could not find anything to say for the moment. He thought to himself how good it would be to see things as the Professor saw them; studying would be so easy then.

  “Actually, I came to see Yojirō,” he said at last.

  “Oh, of course. I guess he’s been out since yesterday. He wanders off like that now and then. I wish he wouldn’t.”

  “Did something come up?”

  “Nothing ever just ‘comes up’ with Yojirō. He makes them come up. It’s a rare sort of idiocy.”