Sanshiro Read online

  At that point Professor Hirota woke up. He raised his head and looked at Sanshirō. “When did you get here?” he asked. Sanshirō urged him to go back to sleep. In fact, he was not at all bored.

  “No, I’m getting up,” he said, and did so. He started blowing more philosophical smoke. It emerged in shafts in the silence.

  “Thanks for the book. I’m returning it.”

  “Oh, did you read it?”

  “Yes, but I didn’t understand it. To begin with, I don’t understand the title.”

  “Hydriotaphia.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I don’t know myself. I suppose it’s Greek.”

  Sanshirō lost the courage to ask any more. The Professor yawned. “Mmm, I was tired. That was a nice nap. I had an interesting dream.”

  It was about a girl, he said. Sanshirō expected him to go on with the dream, but instead the Professor invited him to the public bath. They went out carrying towels.

  *

  After bathing they mounted a scale in the dressing room and measured their heights. Professor Hirota was five feet seven inches, Sanshirō only five feet five.

  “Maybe you’ll grow some more.”

  “No, that’s it for me. I’ve been the same for three years.”

  “I wonder.”

  The Professor still thought of him as very much a child, it seemed. When they got back to the house, the Professor invited him to stay and chat if he had nothing to do. He opened the door to his study and stepped in. Sanshirō followed. In any case, it was his duty to take care of that one outstanding piece of business.

  “I guess Yojirō hasn’t come home yet,” Sanshirō began.

  “I think he said he’d be late today. He’s been running around a lot on drama business. It’s impossible to tell whether he enjoys helping out or he just likes running around.”

  “He’s a kind person, that’s for sure.”

  “I suppose there’s some kindness in what he aims to do, but his brain is not made for kindness, so he doesn’t do much good with it. At first glance, he seems to know what he’s doing—knows all too well what he’s doing—but in the end he loses track of what he was doing it for, so it all falls apart. I just leave him alone, though, because he won’t change, no matter what I say. He was born into the world to do mischief.”

  Sanshirō felt there must be some way to defend Yojirō, but he was faced now with an unfortunate case in point. He changed the subject. “Did you see the article in the paper?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Was that the first you had heard of all that?”

  “It was.”

  “It must have been a shock.”

  “A shock? Well, I suppose to some extent it was a shock. But I know what life is like, so I don’t shock as easily as a younger man.”

  “It must have been upsetting.”

  “I suppose, to some extent, it was upsetting. But not everyone who has lived in this world as long as I have would accept that article as the truth. So again, I’m not upset as easily as a younger man. Yojirō was spouting a lot of nonsense about setting things straight—he’d ask a friend of his on the newspaper to have the true story printed, he’d find out who sent it in and get even with him, he’d feature a rebuttal in his own magazine—but if you have to go to all that trouble, it would be better not to stick your nose in to begin with.”

  “He did it all for you, Professor. He didn’t mean any harm.”

  “No, of course he didn’t mean any harm. But don’t you see? If a man starts a campaign on my behalf without consulting me, he’s just toying with my existence. Think how much better off you’d be to have your existence ignored. At least your reputation wouldn’t suffer!”

  Sanshirō had no way to respond to this.

  “And that asinine thing he wrote, ‘The Great Darkness’—the paper said you wrote it, but Sasaki tells me it was really him.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Sasaki confessed last night. You’re the one who ought to be upset. Sasaki’s the only man alive who could write such idiocy. I read it. It’s like some big Salvation Army drum, without substance or dignity. You’d think it was written to put people off. It’s calculated from beginning to end. Anyone with a little common sense can see the author has an ulterior motive. No wonder they thought I had a protégé of mine write the thing. When I read it, I could see the newspaper article wasn’t so far-fetched after all.”

  *

  With that, Professor Hirota stopped talking and began to blow the usual smoke from his nose. According to Yojirō, you could tell the Professor’s mood by the way the smoke emerged. When it streamed out thick and straight, his philosophy had attained its ultimate height, and when it crumbled out slowly, he was serene in spirit—which meant there was some danger of his unleashing his wit on you. When the smoke lingered beneath his nose and seemed loath to part from his mustache, he was in a meditative frame of mind, or else he was feeling poetic inspiration. Most terrifying of all were the whirlpools at the nostrils, which meant he was going to drag you over the coals. Since the source of this information was Yojirō, Sanshirō did not take it seriously. But given the nature of the occasion, he carefully noted the forms in which the smoke emerged. He discovered none of the clear-cut types that Yojirō had mentioned. Instead, all of the characteristics seemed to be there at once.

  Several moments went by, during which Sanshirō refrained from speaking, as though intimidated. The Professor began again. “Anyhow, it’s over, so let’s forget about it. Sasaki apologized for everything last night, and I suppose he’s his old self again today, flying around. It won’t do any good to criticize him behind his back. He’s out selling tickets as if nothing had happened. Let’s talk about something more interesting.”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  “I had an interesting dream while I was napping. I suddenly met a girl I’d seen only once before in my life. This may sound like something from a novel, but it will be more fun than talking about newspaper articles.”

  “Yes. What kind of girl?”

  “A pretty little thing, maybe twelve or thirteen. She had a mole on her face.”

  Sanshirō was a bit disappointed when he heard her age.

  “When did you first see her?”

  “Twenty years ago.”

  This, too, came as a surprise.

  “It’s amazing you knew who she was.”

  “This was a dream. You know these things in dreams. And because it was a dream, it didn’t matter that it was mysterious. I was walking through a big forest, I guess, wearing that faded summer suit of mine and that old hat. Ah, I remember—some complicated thoughts were going through my head. The laws of the universe are all unchanging, but all things in the universe governed by the laws inevitably change. Thus, the laws must exist independently of the things. Now that I’m awake, it sounds pretty silly, but in my dream I was walking along in the forest, thinking seriously about this kind of thing, when I suddenly met her. We didn’t walk up to each other; she was standing there, up ahead, very still. She had the same face as before, the same clothing, the same hairdo, and of course the mole. She was still twelve or thirteen, exactly as I had seen her twenty years before. ‘You haven’t changed at all,’ I said to her, and she said, ‘You’re so much older than you were!’ Then I asked her, ‘Why haven’t you changed?’ and she said, ‘Because the year I had this face, the month I wore these clothes, and the day I had my hair like this is my favorite time of all.’ ‘What time is that?’ I asked her. ‘The day we met twenty years ago,’ she said. I wondered to myself, ‘Then why have I aged like this?’ and she told me, ‘Because you wanted to go on changing, moving toward something more and more beautiful.’ Then I said to her, ‘You are a painting,’ and she said, ‘You are a poem.’ ”

  Sanshirō asked, “What happened after that?”

  “After that, you came.”

  “It wasn’t a dream that you saw her twenty years ago, was it? That actually happened.”
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  “Yes, that’s what’s interesting.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  The Professor’s nostrils started smoking again. He stared at the smoke and said nothing for a while. Then he continued.

  *

  “The promulgation of the Constitution took place in 1889, the twenty-second year of Meiji. The Minister of Education, Mori Arinori, was assassinated before he was to leave for the ceremonies.57 You wouldn’t remember. Let’s see, how old are you? Yes, you were still an infant. I was in College. A number of us were ordered to participate in the funeral procession. We left school with rifles on our shoulders, thinking we would be marching to the cemetery. But that wasn’t it. The gym instructor took us over to Takebashiuchi and lined us up along the street. We were supposed to ‘accompany’ the Minister’s coffin to the cemetery by standing there. It amounted to nothing more than watching the funeral go by. I can still remember how cold it was. The soles of our feet hurt from standing still. The fellow next to me kept looking at my nose and saying how red it was. Finally, the procession came, and I guess it was a long one. An endless number of rickshaws and carriages went past us in the cold. In one of them was the little girl. I’m trying to bring back the scene, but it’s too hazy, I can’t form a clear picture of it. I do remember the girl, though. Even she has become less distinct as the years have passed, and now I rarely think of her. Until I saw her in my dream today, I had forgotten all about her. But back then the image was so clear, it was practically burned into my brain. Strange…”

  “And you never saw her again?”

  “No, never.”

  “Then you don’t know anything about her?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Didn’t you try to find out who she was?”

  “No.”

  “And is that why you…” Sanshirō could not go on.

  “Why I what?”

  “Why you never married?”

  The Professor burst out laughing. “I’m hardly such a romantic! I’m a far more prosaic character than you.”

  “But you would have married her if you could have, isn’t that true?”

  “Well…” he said and, after thinking about it, “Yes, I suppose I would have married her.”

  A look of pity crossed Sanshirō’s face. When he saw this, the Professor went on. “If you’re going to say I was forced to remain single because of that, it means the girl turned me into a cripple. But some people are born matrimonial cripples. They are simply incapable of marrying. Others can’t marry for one reason or another.”

  “Are there so many things that prevent people from marrying?”

  The Professor looked at Sanshirō steadily through the smoke.

  “You know that Hamlet didn’t want to marry. Maybe there was only one Hamlet, but there are lots of people like him.”

  “For example…?”

  “For example,” the Professor began and stopped. The smoke was pouring out of him. “For example, let’s suppose there’s a young man. His father died early and he has been raised by his mother. Then his mother falls ill and when she is about to die she tells him to go to a certain man, that this man will take care of him. The son has never met the man, has never even heard of him. He asks his mother what this is all about. She doesn’t say anything. He presses for an answer and in a feeble voice she tells him that the man is his real father. —This is just a story, but suppose there were a son with a mother like that. Don’t you think he would lose all faith in marriage?”

  “There couldn’t be many people like that.”

  “No, not many, but there are some.”

  “You’re not one of them, Professor, are you?”

  The Professor laughed. Then he asked, “Your mother is still living, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your father?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “My own mother died the year after the promulgation of the Constitution.”

  12

  The weather was relatively cold when the Literary Society presented its four nights of drama. The old year was drawing to a close and the new lay just in sight, not quite three weeks away. The men of the marketplace felt the holiday rush; the year-end balancing of the books fell on the heads of the poor. In the midst of this, the drama nights welcomed the more comfortably off, the men of leisure, those who saw no difference between the old year and the new.

  And of these there were many, men and women, mostly young. On the first day, Yojirō proclaimed their great success to Sanshirō and told him to bring Professor Hirota along for the second day’s show. Their tickets were for different performances, Sanshirō objected. Yes, of course, Yojirō answered, but the Professor would never go on his own; Sanshirō must stop by and lure him out. He agreed to do so.

  He went in the evening and found the Professor seated at his low desk on the matted floor, a large book spread open in the glow of the lamp. When Sanshirō invited him out, the Professor smiled faintly and shook his head. It was the sort of thing a little boy might do, but to Sanshirō it seemed typical of a scholar. Perhaps he found a certain dignity in the silent gesture. Sanshirō bent over, looking blankly at the Professor. Hirota felt sorry he had turned him down. “If you’re going, I’ll walk with you as far as the theater.”

  They went out, the Professor wearing a black cape. He seemed to have his arms folded under the cape, but Sanshirō could not be sure. The sky hung low. It was the kind of cold night when the stars are not visible.

  “Looks like rain,” the Professor said.

  “I hope not, for their sake.”

  “Yes, it would be awkward for going in and out of the theater. But Japanese theaters are a bother even when the weather is good: you have to check your shoes at the door. Plus, there’s no ventilation, the place fills up with tobacco smoke, you get a headache—it’s a wonder people stick it out.”

  “Maybe so, but they certainly couldn’t have it outdoors.”

  “Local Shinto dancing is always done outdoors, even in cold weather.”

  That was beside the point, thought Sanshirō, foregoing a reply.

  “To me, outdoors is best. I’d like to see a beautiful play, breathing beautiful air beneath a lovely sky, when it’s neither too hot nor too cold. Then you could have a play as pure and simple as the transparent air.”

  “Your dream would be like that, Professor, if it were made into a play.”

  “Do you know about Greek theater?”

  “Not much. They performed outdoors, didn’t they?”

  “That they did. In broad daylight. It must have been a joy. The seats were natural stone, a theater in the grand manner. I’d like to take old Yojirō there and let him have a look. It would do him good.”

  He was starting in on Yojirō again. Funny, because right about now Yojirō was in his element, racing around inside the cramped theater, ostentatiously lending his assistance to all he deemed in need. And even funnier would be Yojirō’s plaint if Sanshirō showed up without the Professor: “He really didn’t come! I wish he would come and see something like this once in a while. It would do him good. But he never listens to me, damn it!”

  The Professor went on to describe the construction of a Greek theater in detail. Sanshirō learned the meaning of theatron, orchêstra, skênê and proskênion. He learned that, according to some German or other, the theater in Athens could seat 17,000. And that was on the small side. The largest seated 50,000. He learned that there were two kinds of tickets used: ivory and lead. Both were fashioned into something like medallions, with embossed or carved designs. The Professor even knew the price of admission. One day’s performance cost twelve sen, a full three-day program thirty-five sen. Sanshirō was still expressing his admiration for the Professor’s knowledge when they came to the door of the theater.

  The place glowed with electric lights. People were streaming into the entrance. The activity here surpassed even Yojirō’s description.

  “Why not come in, Professor, now that
you’ve walked this far?”

  “No, not me.”

  He went off into the darkness again.

  *

  Sanshirō stood watching the Professor’s receding shadow, but then he saw more rickshaws arriving and their passengers rushing inside as if they resented the time it took to check their shoes. Sanshirō, too, hurried—was in effect pushed—into the theater.

  At the entrance stood four or five men with nothing to do. One in formal dress took his ticket. Sanshirō glanced across the man’s shoulder into the hall. In an instant the space became very broad—and very bright. He almost wanted to shade his eyes as he was led to his seat. Fitting himself into his narrow allotted space, he scanned his surroundings. His eyes danced after the colors that these assembled human beings had brought with them. This was not simply because he kept his eyes moving but because the colors attached to the numberless human beings all moved, moved ceaselessly, each independent of the others, within the great enclosure.

  On stage, the action had already begun. All the characters wore the shoes and headgear of ancient Japanese nobility.58 A long palanquin was carried on. Someone in the middle of the stage forced it to a halt. When the men lowered the palanquin, yet another character emerged from it. He drew his sword and began dueling with the ones who had stopped the palanquin. Sanshirō had no idea what was going on. Yojirō had told him the story, but he had not paid much attention, assuming that it would be clear enough when he saw the play. Now, however, the meaning eluded him. He remembered only the name of the Great Minister Iruka. Which of them could be Iruka? he wondered. Soon he despaired of ever finding out and decided to watch the entire stage as a manifestation of Iruka. After a while the headgear, the boots, the narrow-sleeved robes, even the language began to seem Iruka-esque. In fact, Sanshirō had no very precise idea of who Iruka was to begin with. His study of Japanese history was itself a thing of the distant past, and Iruka, who figured in the most ancient part, he had forgotten entirely. Perhaps he had lived in the reign of Empress Suiko? Though it might just as well have been Emperor Kinmei. It was neither Ōjin nor Shōmu, of that he felt certain. Sanshirō was simply in an Iruka mood. That was quite enough for watching the play, he decided, looking at the vaguely Chinese-style costumes and scenery. The plot, however, he did not understand in the least. Eventually, the curtain fell.