Modern Japanese Stories/The Artist

Seibei to Hyōtan

The Artist

by Shiga Naoya

This is the story of a young boy called Seibei, and his gourds. Later on Seibei gave up gourds, but he soon found something to take their place: he started painting pictures. It was not long before Seibei was as absorbed in his paintings as he once had been in his gourds.

Seibei’s parents knew that he often went out to buy himself gourds. He got them for a few sen and soon had a sizeable collection. When he came home, he would first bore a neat hole in the top of the gourd and extract the seeds. Next he applied tea-leaves to get rid of the unpleasant gourd-smell. He then fetched the saké which he had saved up from the dregs in his father’s cup and carefully polished the surface.

Seibei was passionately interested in gourds. One day as he was strolling along the beach, absorbed in his favourite subject, he was startled by an unusual sight: he caught a glimpse of the bald, elongated head of an old man hurrying out of one of the huts by the beach. “What a splendid gourd!” thought Seibei. The old man disappeared from sight, wagging his bald pink pate. Only then did Seibei realize his mistake and he stood there laughing loudly to himself. He laughed all the way home.

Whenever he passed a grocery, a curio-shop, a confectioner’s or in fact any place that sold gourds, he stood for minutes on end, his eyes glued to the window appraising the precious fruit.

Seibei was twelve years old and still at primary school. After class, instead of playing with the other children, he usually wandered about the town looking for gourds. Then in the evening he would sit cross-legged in the corner of the living-room working on his newly-acquired fruit. When he had finished treating it, he poured in a little saké, inserted a cork stopper which he had fashioned himself, wrapped it in a towel, put this in a tin especially kept for the purpose and finally placed the whole thing in the charcoal footwarmer. Then he went to bed.

As soon as he woke the next morning, he would open the tin and examine the gourd. The skin would be thoroughly damp from the overnight treatment. Seibei would gaze adoringly at his treasure before tying a string round the middle and hanging it in the sun to dry. Then he set out for school.

Seibei lived in a harbour town. Although it was officially a city, one could walk from one end to the other in a matter of twenty minutes. Seibei was always wandering about the streets and had soon come to know every place that sold gourds and to recognize almost every gourd on the market.

He did not care much about the old, gnarled, peculiarly-formed gourds usually favoured by collectors. The type that appealed to Seibei was even and symmetrical.

“That youngster of yours only seems to like the ordinary-looking ones,” said a friend of his father’s who had come to call. He pointed at the boy, who was sitting in the corner busily polishing a plain, round gourd.

“Fancy a lad spending his time playing around like that with gourds!” said his father, giving Seibei a disgusted look.

“See here, Seibei my lad,” said the friend, “there’s no use just collecting lots of those things. It’s not the quantity that counts, you know. What you want to do is to find one or two really unusual ones.”

“I prefer this kind,” said Seibei and let the matter drop.

Seibei’s father and his friend started talking about gourds.

“Remember that Bakin gourd they had at the agricultural show last spring?” said his father. “It was a real beauty, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, I remember. That big, long one….”

As Seibei listened to their conversation, he was laughing inwardly. The Bakin gourd had made quite a stir at the time, but when he had gone to see it (having no idea, of course, who the great poet Bakin might be) he had found it rather a stupid­ looking object and had walked out of the show.

“I didn’t think so much of it,” interrupted Seibei. “It’s just a clumsy great thing.”

His father opened his eyes wide in surprise and anger.

“What’s that?” he shouted. “When you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’d better shut up!”

Seibei did not say another word.

One day when he was walking along an unfamiliar backstreet he came upon an old woman with a fruit-stall. She was selling dried persimmons and oranges; on the shutters of the house behind the stall she had hung a large cluster of gourds.

“Can I have a look?” said Seibei and immediately ran behind the stall and began examining the gourds. Suddenly he caught sight of one which was about five inches long and at first sight looked quite commonplace. Something about it made Seibei’s heart beat faster.

“How much is this one?” he asked, panting out the words.

“Well,” said the old woman, “since you’re just a lad, I’ll let you have it for ten sen.”

“In that case,” said Seibei urgently, “please hold it for me, won’t you? I’ll be right back with the money.”

He dashed home and in no time at all was back at the stall. He bought the gourd and took it home.

From that time on, he was never separated from his new gourd. He even took it along to school and used to polish it under his desk in class-time. It was not long before he was caught at this by one of the teachers, who was particularly incensed because it happened to take place in an ethics class.

This teacher came from another part of Japan and found it most offensive that children should indulge in such effeminate pastimes as collecting gourds. He was for ever expounding the classical code of the samurai and when Kumoemon, the famous Naniwabushi performer, came on tour and recited brave deeds of ancient times, he would attend every single performance though normally he would not deign to set foot in the disreputable amusement area. He never minded having his students sing Naniwabushi ballads, however raucously. Now, when he found Seibei silently polishing his gourd, his voice trembled with fury.

“You’re an idiot!” he shouted. “There’s absolutely no future for a boy like you.” Then and there he confiscated the gourd on which Seibei had spent so many long hours of work. Seibei stared straight ahead and did not cry.

When he got home, Seibel’s face was pale. Without a word, he put his feet on the warmer and sat looking blankly at the wall.

After a while the teacher arrived. As Seibel’s father was not yet home from the carpenter’s shop where he worked, the teacher directed his attack on Seibel’s mother.

“This sort of thing is the responsibility of the family,” he said in a stern voice. “It is the duty of you parents to see that such things don’t happen.” In an agony of embarrassment, Seibel’s mother muttered some apology.

Meanwhile, Seibei was trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible in the corner. Terrified, he glanced up at his vindictive teacher and at the wall directly behind where a whole row of fully-prepared gourds was hanging. What would happen if the teacher caught sight of them?

Trembling inside, he awaited the worst, but at length the man exhausted his rhetoric and stamped angrily out of the house. Seibei heaved a sigh of relief.

Seibei’s mother was sobbing softly. In a querulous whine she began to scold him, and in the midst of this, Seibei’s father returned from his shop. As soon as he heard what had happened, he grabbed his son by the collar and gave him a sound beating. “You’re no good!” he bawled at him. “You’ll never get anywhere in the world, the way you’re carrying on. I’ve a good mind to throw you out into the street where you belong!” The gourds on the wall caught his attention. Without a word, he fetched his hammer and systematically smashed them to pieces one after another. Seibei turned pale but said nothing.

The next day the teacher gave Seibei’s confiscated gourd to an old porter who worked in the school. “Here, take this,” he said, as if handing over some unclean object. The porter took the gourd home with him and hung it on the wall of his small, sooty room.

About two months later the porter, finding himself even more hard-pressed for money than usual, decided to take the gourd to a local curio-shop to see if he could get a few coppers for it. The curio-dealer examined the gourd carefully, then, assuming an uninterested tone, handed it back to the porter saying, “I might give you five yen for it.”

The porter was astounded, but being quite an astute old man, replied coolly, “I certainly wouldn’t part with it for that.” The dealer immediately raised his offer to ten yen, but the porter was still adamant.

In the end the curio-dealer had to pay fifty yen for the gourd. The porter left the shop, delighted at his luck. It wasn’t often that the teachers gave one a free gift equivalent to a year’s wages! He was so clever as not to mention the matter to anyone, and neither Seibei nor the teacher ever heard what had happened to the gourd. Yes, the porter was clever, but he was not clever enough: little did he imagine that this same gourd would be passed on by the curio-dealer to a wealthy collector in the district for 600 yen.

 

Seibei is now engrossed in his pictures. He no longer feels any bitterness either towards the teacher, or towards his father who smashed all his precious gourds to pieces.

Yet gradually his father has begun to scold him for painting pictures.

Shiga Naoya (b. 1883)
This story was first published in 1913
Translated by Ivan Morris