Tayama Katai and His Novel Entitled Futon/Futon/Chapter 2
II
His name was Tokio Takenaka.
Three years ago his wife gave birth to their third child and they were at the stage when the pleasures of their honeymoon had a long time ago subsided. He found no significance in daily happenings in the world, nor did he have the courage to throw himself into his lifework, he had gotten tired of a monotonous daily life--getting up in the morning, reporting to the office, and returning home about four in the afternoon and seeing his wife's face day after day, only to be followed by having supper and going to bed. He tried changing houses but it did not make him any happier than before, talking with his friends did not please him, nor did reading through foreign novels give him any satisfaction. Nay, even the very conditions of nature--the growth of the garden shrubbery, the drops of rain, the bloom and fall of the blossoms--seemed to him to make his humdrum life all the more humdrum, and he was so forlorn he did not know what to do with himself. He keenly felt that he would like, if possible, to make a new love with the young and beautiful woman whom he always saw on the road.
At the age of thirty-four to thirty-five, as a matter of fact, everyone has this type of anguish, and though there are many men around this age, who play with low-grade women, they are after all, hoping only to assuage their loneliness. It is in this age group that there are many men in the world who divorce their wives.
On the way to the office, he encountered every morning a beautiful woman teacher. At that time, he took meeting this woman daily as his only pleasure and gave free rein to his imagination about her. Suppose a love affair materialized, and he took her to a cozy room in nearby Kagurazaka where they could secretly enjoy themselves. . . . What if the two of them took a walk in the suburbs without letting his wife know. . . . No, why stop there, since his wife was, at that time, pregnant, suppose by chance she dies from a difficult delivery, then what if he replaced her with this woman. . . . Would he be able to casually have her as his second wife? He considered such things as he went along.
It was about that time that he received a letter filled with admiration from a girl named Yokoyama Yoshiko who was a student at a girls' school in Kobe; her birthplace was Niimi-Chō, in Bitchū, and she was an admirer of his work. As the pen name of Takenaka Kojō who wrote ornate styled novels was more or less known in society, he had received a fair amount of letters from his admirers in the provinces before. Since many people requested that he improve their compositions or allow them to become his pupils, he could not take care of their individual requests. Therefore, even though he had received the girl's letter he did not send a reply as her letter did not stir his curiosity. However, now that he had received three ardent letters from the same person, even such a person as Tokio could not but take note. She was nineteen years old, but judging by the word phrasing of her letter, her skills of expression were very amazing, and her wish was to engage in literary work as her lifetime vocation after becoming by all means and conditions his pupil. Her handwriting was elegant and it seemed that she was very stylish. He wrote his reply in the above-mentioned upstairs-room of the factory. On that day he left off writing his daily quota of two-pages on geography and sent Yoshiko a letter which was more than two feet in length. In this letter he warned her of the inadvisability of a woman engaging in literary work giving as his reason that a woman should fulfill her physiological duties of motherhood. He also explained in detail about the danger facing an unmarried woman who aspires to work in the literary field and wrote a few abusive words as to her ambitions. After writing the long letter Tokio smiled, thinking that she would abandon her ambition feeling disgusted with him. Searching for a map of Okayama Prefecture, he took it out of his bookcase and investigated the location of Niimi-Chō, Atetsu District, which was located over ten miles from the Sanyō Main Line up the Takahashi River valley. He was surprised to find that a stylish woman such as she was living in this type of remote mountain region; nevertheless, Tokio was somewhat beguiled, and studied in detail the mountains, rivers, and the general topography of the vicinity of her home town.
Well, he thought that she would not reply; but on the contrary, on the fourth day, he unexpectedly received a thick envelope which was even thicker than the previous letters. It was a three-page letter written horizontally in small characters with purple ink on western-style paper which had blue lines. She repeatedly asked him not to give her up as his pupil. She wanted to come to Tokyo and enter an appropriate institute after obtaining her parents' approval. Her honest desire was thoroughly and deligently to study literature. Tokio was deeply moved by the girl's ambitions. Even in Tokyo--even those girls who were graduated from girls' schools failed to appreciate the value of literature, yet the content of her letter indicated that she knew everything about literature which prompted him to decide to form a mentor-pupil relationship; thereupon he immediately sent her his reply.
In this way they became more and more acquainted with each other, and before long Tokio was expecting letters from her. On one occasion wanting to request her photograph he jotted down in small letters in one corner of his letter to send him her photograph, but later he smeared it out with ink. Good looks are essential for a woman. A man ignores an ugly woman, no matter how talented she may be. In his heart Tokio thought that she must be ugly as usually is the case of a woman who wants to study literature. Yet, he hoped that, if possible, she would be a woman of acceptable appearance.
Having obtained permission from her parents, Yoshiko, accompanied by her father, visited Tokio's home in February of the next year; it was just the seventh day after Tokio's third son was born. In the room next to the drawing room, Tokio's wife was still lying in confinement and upon being told by her elder sister, who was staying in their home to help her, that the young pupil was beautiful, Tokio's wife was not a little troubled. Even the elder sister felt some uneasiness wondering what her brother-in-law was doing having such a young and beautiful woman as his pupil. Tokio, facing Yoshiko and father who were seated side by side, talked in great detail concerning the life of literary men and their purposes, and sounded out in advance her father's views on her marital problem. Yoshiko's family was one of the three wealthy families in Niimi-Chō, both of her parents were devout Christians, particularly her mother who was an outstanding devotee and who was said to have once studied at Dōshisha Girls School. Her elder brother had been a professor, since returning from England, of a certain national university. Yoshiko, upon graduating from an elementary school in her home town, went to Kobe, and entered a women's college in that city, where she enjoyed a fashionable campus life. Those girls' schools which were founded on Christianity were liberal in all respects compared with other girls' schools. In those days although girl students were prohibited from reading Makaze-Koikaze ("The Winds of Demons and Love") and Konjiki Yasha ("The Gold Demon") before the Ministry of Education intervened, girls in her school could read any type of novel as long as it was not in their classrooms.[1] Having experienced the benefits of prayer, the enjoyment of Christmas Eve, and the cultivation of ideals in the college chapel, Yoshiko became one of the group who would hide what is base and parade what is beautiful in man. When she came to Kobe she keenly missed her mother and home town, but in no time she forgot all these things and became more interested in enjoying her dormitory life than anything else. Living with a group of girl students who used to tease the cook by pouring soy sauce over the rice and protesting that the cook had failed to prepare delicious pumpkin for them, learning to say one thing and mean another according to the eccentric moods of their elderly house mother, how could they see things as plainly as girls who were reared in their own homes? Before Yoshiko knew it, she had been influenced by these tendencies--to be beautiful, to foster ideals and to be vainglorious--and fully shared all the merits and demerits of the girl students of the Meiji era.
To say the least Tokio's lonely life was changed by the presence of Yoshiko. His present wife had once been his former sweetheart. She had certainly once been his sweetheart, but now Tokio's feelings towards her had changed. For the past four or five years, with the sudden rise in women's education and the establishment of women's colleges, girl students had begun to wear fashionable low pompadour hair styles and long skirts of reddish-brown color, and no girls were bashful when they walked side by side with their boy friends. For Tokio, to be living meekly in this era with a wife who wore the old-fashioned married women's hairdo, who walked like a duck, and knew nothing but obedience and virtue was the most wretched thing of all. Walking on the street, he would meet a man strolling happily in the company of his beautiful and stylish wife; when he visited his friends, he saw their wives joining in with their husbands and enlivening things with an easy flow of conversation; but when Tokio compared these women with his wife, who did not even care to read his novels that were written with a great deal of effort, and was utterly unconcerned about her husband's worries, and felt she had only to raise their children satisfactorily; his soul could not help but scream with loneliness. As was the case with Johannes in Einsame Menschen he began to realize that having a "housewife" was pointless. His loneliness--this lonely situation was broken by Yoshiko. Who could not fail to be moved by such a beautiful and stylish pupil who honored him by calling him "Sensei" "Sensei!"[2] as if he were the greatest person in the world.
For about the first month Yoshiko temporarily stayed at his home. What contrast to his former solitary life it was to have around her gay voice and her charming figure! She helped his wife, who had just recovered from her confinement, by knitting baby socks and mufflers, sewing kimonoes and playing with the children. Tokio felt as he had during his early marriage, and his heart beat excitedly every evening as he drew near his front gate of his house. As he opened the front door, there would be Yoshiko's pleasing smile and her gaily-clad figure. What a contrast--up to now his wife had always slept awkwardly under an absurdly bright electric lamp in a six-mat room with their children, which situation had all the more increased his loneliness. But, now the situation has changed. No matter how late he returned, Yoshiko would be waiting up for him under the lamp, her white hands skillfully moving, and a colorful ball of yarn on her knees. Joyful laughter filled the brushwood-wattle-fenced premises in the residential district of Ushigome.
However, in less than a month, Tokio realized that he could not have this charming pupil stay any longer under his roof. His obedient wife did not dare to complain about Yoshiko, nor did she show her feelings, but she gradually became moody. He noticed a feeling of anxiety creeping into her laughter. Tokio became aware that their problem was being discussed among his wife's relatives.
After serious consideration, Tokio finally decided that Yoshiko was to stay, for a time, with his wife's sister, who was a soldier's widow living on a pension and earning additional money by sewing, and he had Yoshiko commute from that house to a women's college in Kōjimachi.
- ↑ Makaze-Koikaze was written in 1903 by Kosugi Tengai for the Yomiuri Newspaper. Konjiki Yasha was written by Ozaki Kōyō, appearing in serialized form from 1897 to 1903 in the Yomiuri Newspaper. Both authors captured the fancies of young women by their refined styles and ornate illustrations.
- ↑ An honorary title for a teacher.