Japanese Gothic Tales (12 page)

The poem had originally been written by a beautiful woman who, in her own day, had dominated the world of Heian nobility. She was a person who once borrowed a straw raincoat from a peasant. He later composed a poem for her, and she was so moved by it that she invited him into her palace.

Needless to say, the one who copied this poem in her notebook was the same woman who scribbled the poem about dreaming at midday that he had seen earlier
in the main hall of the temple -
Tamawaki Mio.

Without having to give it much thought, he sensed a strange sort of resonance between Tamawaki's wi
fe and the man who had been liv
ing in the temple hut. Their coming together was a promise they had made to each other in their dreams. The man, knowing the ways of both this world and the one beyond, had allowed himself to entertain a fantasy and then to make that fantasy his reality. As it turned out, it was an act that led him promptly to hell. Unlike him, the woman, half believing and half doubting, had felt compelled to express the turmoil in her heart, as if to say by her words that she would go to him as soon as she knew the truth of the afterlife, and as soon as she could ascertain where his spirit had gone.

Because of her hesitation, she could neither follow him nor keep on living. In spite of herself, she had been terrified of the street minstrel. Thinking he was a messenger from hell, she had started to lose her mind. Her determination to die was obvious proof of how demented she had become. From one point of view, the things the minstrel had talked about—the shop in Kanda, the purple dawn of Tokyo, the young shopkeeper sweeping the streets, and even the vendor's call were perhaps the dawn of her life. And now, finally, the storm had come.

Be that as it may, he still wondered about the "message and what had become of it. It seemed that Tamawaki's wife was trying to use it to divine the existence of the afterlife, and it bothered him thac
thedancers, rather than putting the poem away in a pouch, or sticking it into a sash, or placing it in a sleeve,
had simply tucked it away some
where inside the lion's head and run off. Doing whatever they could for their divine benefactor, for this woman who didn't expect them to dance yet showered them with silver, they accepted the poem as a matter of course and had put it in the most important part of their
costume.

If a bird snatched the poem away, would the woman, believing she would meet her lover in the sky, grow wings and fly away? Hardly. And if a sheep devoured the piece of paper, would the lion dancers ever bother to come back and tell her what had happened?

The wanderer continued to work his hands through the sand. He looked down at the various shells that sifted out and mumbled the lines of the poem once again.

Should I have the chance

to see you again,

I'd search the four seas—

diving deep as the sea tangle.

He still heard no answer from the shells.

If they were able to speak for the great waters, then this colorful blizzard of blossoms strewn over the beach would never cease its whispering. Still, whether scooped from the sand or gathered by small children, the tiny shells were mute.

He threw them away and flopped over onto his side. The sand beneath his hips started to slide away, but there was no danger of being buried. With half-closed eyes, he looked toward the Nakitsuru Cape and, at a place about halfway there, saw the brilliant flickering of sea fire. It was the lion dancers' red costumes.

The two emerged from their clothes. From the cape all the way over to the small cliffs, no one else could be seen. With the play being performed at the station, drawing crowds from town and from the surrounding villages, who was going to be interested in watching a lion dance? Their job was to writhe through the crowds like mosquito larvae, but today would be a day of rest.

Still wearing their gaiters, they walked along the beach, one leading, one following, one moving ahead then falling behind, each carrying his lion's head along the edge of the surf's white line. Finally, the older boy walked away from the water and plopped down on the sand to rest, his straw sandals pointing toward the scattered strands of seaweed glistening like rays of sunlight.

But the smaller lion sprang to life, now charging the waves, now fleeing from them. To the wanderer, it felt more like observing an orphan than watching his own child play. Such a pitiful sight, to be taunted by the waves of the floating world. The lion's head had become enraged and was ferociously fighting back.

Win! This is a battle you must win!

The older one made a pillow of his cape and lay down, propping his knees up like small mountains, while the younger boy took off his sandals and started walking barefoot, playing in the water, skipping sideways along the beach. He stopped to take off his gaiters. He entered the water until he was knee-deep and stood quietly for a moment. Then he went back to the beach and took off his skirt. With his shirt rolled up, he walked in up to his waist and jumped the waves two or three times. Then he hurriedly returned to the beach again, took off all his clothes, and, now completely naked, dove straight into the water. Such admirable courage! Yet it didn't seem as though he knew how to swim. He struggled vigorously, fighting back at the water, which wrapped the child up like lightning, flying right and left as he struck at the waves with his hands and kicked with his feet. The wanderer could see splashes but heard no sound. The lion had become an infant, the white light patting his head and the green waves embracing his chest as if he were some blessed child and heaven and earth were giving him his postpartum bath.

The wanderer suddenly got to his feet and whispered a prayer for the child's safety.

Afterward he heard that the boy's youthful heart had been so overjoyed because of the money they received that he wanted to repay the kindness of that particular stretch of ocean. After playing for a while, he came out of the water and onto the beach. He leaned over the sleeping lion's shoulders, and when his partner awoke and turned over, he grabbed his lion's head and put it on his wet body.

He jumped back into the water and kept swimming until he had gone out much too far, his wake trailing back in two lines that spread in a V over the water. Heading toward Izu Cape, the lion's head became a small dot on the horizon.

Just as the wanderer glanced over at the other boy sitting cross- legged on the beach, he heard the sound of his drum—
ten, ten, ten
! marking the rhythm of the waves. A pattern spread on the oil-like surface of the ocean; and, as the drum sounded, the boy rose up in the water and the lion's head flipped upside down.

The dancing had probably made the boy dizzy. How terrible that Tamawaki Mio's message to her lover in the other world was still inside the lion's head! Suddenly the wanderer lost sight of the young boy. He waited, but the boy didn't come back to the surface.

The drumming stopped, and the older boy on the beach stood up straight. 'Then he started sprinting toward the sandy hillock, straight toward the wanderer. He carried all traces of his haying been on the beach with him—his skirts, his kimono, his leggings, his drum, his sandals. Kicking up the sand as he ran, he continued his escape from
the water.

The waves pounded loosely.

Two or three others from the village came running up, all of them shouting and laughing loudly.

"The fool."

"The stupid idiot."

And when a policeman finally showed up, the wanderer went over to him. "A lion dancer—

"Yes, I know. . .
”

They didn't find the body. It wasn't until the next day, with the low tide at dawn, that they discovered two people on the rocks at Cape Nakitsuru, the exact spot where the man who had stayed at the temple last summer was found. The boy's head was like a jewel pressed against the woman's breast, the red lion's cape still wet and tangled around her white arm. Beautiful and alluring, Tamawaki Mio had finally discovered the destination of the dead.

The wanderer would never forget how they had parted at the embankment, how he had looked back and seen her, holding her purple parasol to the side, her black hair weighing down upon her as she
watched him walk away. As the sand on the beach spread and drew back soundlessly, hollowing out and filling back in, he thought of how the waves must have ravished her. From the sand there appeared only beautiful bones and the color of shells—red of the sun, white of the beach, green of the waves.

Osen and Sokichi

(
Baishoku kamonanban
, 1920)

I'm embarrassed to say that the first thing that caught his eye was the scarlet of her crepe undergarment, bright as flame and dappled with cinnabar. Her skirts weren't folded back but hiked up high and held between her knees, allowing the crepe slip to flow softly down, hugging her white ankles, which were apparently being spared the kimono's unpleasant wetness. On her bare feet, so white they brightened the crimson around them, the woman wore thick, lacquered clogs, fastened with wisteria-colored thongs and splashed with mud. With one thigh twisted inward and feet slightly pigeon-toed, she sat in a corner of the waiting room as the rain continued to fall.

It was late in the afternoon, already past five, but the sky of that spring day was still bright above the platform at Mansei Bridge Station. Willows faintly glowing, cherry trees in bud, yesterday, today. . . just as Tokyo turned so intently toward the height of spring, coming alive with greens and crimsons and pale mists of lavender, the city was suddenly engulfed in a rain too heavy for the season. The land, the people, even the boats on Kanda River were darkened and drenched with the downpour. It wasn't the crimson plum nor the scarlet peach but the flowering quince that suddenly bloomed, as if dripping with blood, startling those who saw it.

Among the surprised was Hata Sokichi, noted surgeon and scholar who, having recently returned to Japan after studying abroad, was working at the University Hospital's department of internal medicine. Noticing the color, he became the protagonist of this story.

He was a man of simple tastes, indifferent to matters of appearance. On his regular commute from Shiba-no-Takanawa to the hospital, it was his custom to take the train as far as Ochanomizu, then to walk the rest of the way. But after five or six days of steady rain, the roads had become seas of mud; and the commuters, dressed in dark suits and wearing leather shoes, looked like badgers sailing mud boats, as "The Legend of Kachikachi" puts it.

Although his fair skin and straight nose made him look more like the rabbit who tricked the badger, Hata Sakichi was no exception. Intimidated by the muddy streets, he had taken the Hongo Street trolley as far as Mansei Bridge, where he skirted the bronze statue, passed beneath the red-brick overpass, then climbed the stone steps. With a minimum of walking, he planned to connect with the Kobu Line, which would take him through the center of the city to his destination.

But a plan is merely a plan. It was a bad time of day to be traveling, and the rain had only made matters worse. Certainly, be had been prepared for a crowd at Mansei Bridge Station, but not for this black mountain of bodies that boiled and shoved around the tracks, pressing ahead as if to witness a fire or a flood. On the right stood the people bound for Nakano, and on the left those for Shinagawa, each side forming walls of two or more deep, even spilling onto the tracks here and there.

The train would soon come. But Sokichi, knowing it would be impossible for everyone to board, shook the rain from his umbrella and, lightly holding it beneath his arm, quickly pulled his leather gloves over his wrists. His eye spotted the less crowded, greenhouse- like area on the platform, and he soon found himself stepping into a waiting room that smelled of rain and warm bodies. His muddy shoes were tiptoeing across the wet floor when he happened to see the startling color. He immediately remembered the large brazier in the middle of the main platform; and, looking away from the undergarment's crimson flame, he began side-stepping his way out.

But there by the doorway, suddenly, red once again.

1

This time it was
only the cap of a station attendant. He stood with his arms folded, leaning back against a pillar, the black mountain of people surrounding him. When Sokichi stuck his head out the door, the sparsely bearded redcap glanced over sullenly and said, "No power on the inbound. Breakdown on the outbound." He spoke mechanically, as if that were all he needed to say. Pressing the back of his neck against the pillar, he had placed himself above the fray.

"You say the power's out?"

"On the inbound. Breakdown on the outbound."

At once a chorus of response: "Oh, no!"

"Damn it all!"

"Just what we needed—"

A young schoolgirl, catching the crowd's frustration, hunched her shoulders and mumbled, "What'll we do now?" Judging from the redcap's repetitious delivery, none of the passengers was hearing the bad news for the first time, however.

Lying below this restless crowd were the railroad tracks, shaded from the daylight, curved like an inlet in this urban sea of mud. "Take your time," they seemed to say. "You might catch a mudfish here." The steel rails were restful and still, yet they laughed coldly and bared their dimly shining teeth against the background of the embankment.

Perhaps we can forgive the redcap for the indifference of his words; but surely we would require the derby-wearing professor, recently returned from abroad and looking quite at home in his three-piece suit, to maintain his composure, though jostled by the crowd.

Sokichi was not a smoker, but he made an about-face to get to the brazier. Looking down at his shoes, he caught another glimpse of the crimson slip that flowed above the drenched earthen floor like a carp leaping into the air. Just then, the woman sitting next to the crimson lady rose from her seat. They were probably traveling together. The one standing was tall, dressed in a Shimada half-coat, her hair done up on her head. She had a long face and distinct features. First they astonished Sokichi, then left him puzzled.

She reminded him of his cousin's wife. Although he was close to his cousin, his schedule of late had prevented them from staying in touch with each other. But he had attended his wedding, and the resemblance of the woman to his cousin's bride was so striking that he couldn't help gasping aloud. Actually, it wasn't the resemblance that startled him, nor that he should meet her in a place like this. It was more the impertinence with which she treated him, letting their eyes meet but then, as if he were a perfect stranger, looking away and out the window at the rainy sky.

She must be someone else. But her height, the unevenness of her hairline, her pale complexion, her light-blue hair ribbons, the comely shape of her hairdo, even the expression of her eyes when she looked up, all reminded him of his cousin's wife. When most women would knit their eyebrows, his cousin's wife had a habit of crinkling her nose, just as the woman was doing now. She was obviously tired from waiting for the train and putting up with the storm; her misery showed in the wrinkles around her mouth. Yes, she was a stranger. Yet Sokichi still had to stop himself from automatically stepping forward and doffing his hat in greeting. Turning away in embarrassment, he found himself looking at the trees around the Kanda Myojin temple, clustered among the misty, cloud-touched roofs of Shitaya and Kanda. The woman with the crimson slip was staring in the same direction.