Immediately in the wake of this first discovery came a second. The topic of their conversation had moved to details of the deceased youth’s daily life and was on the verge of shifting back to general reminiscences when the professor’s fan happened to slip from his hand, falling immediately to the parquet floor. The pace of their exchange naturally being not so intense as to permit no interruption, he leaned forward in his chair to retrieve it.
The fan lay under the table, next to the lady’s split-toed socks, hidden in the house slippers she now wore. And now by chance the professor’s eye caught the handkerchief clutched in the hands that were still resting on her knees. This by itself was, of course, without significance. But in that same instant he also saw that her hands were violently trembling and that, perhaps in a desperate effort to suppress this turbulent manifestation of her inner feelings, she was pulling at the handkerchief so tightly that she seemed close to tearing it. The embroidered edge of this wrinkled piece of silk cloth pinched between her lithe fingers was shaking as though stirred by a light wind. Despite the smile on her face, her entire frame had from the beginning been convulsed with weeping.
The professor picked up the fan and raised his head, but his face bore a very different and most complex expression. Somewhat theatrically overplayed, it reflected pious circumspection at a sight he ought not to have witnessed, mixed with satisfaction at his own awareness of the same.
“I have no children of my own, but I can well understand your anguish.” He said this in a low, emotion-filled voice, throwing his head back with an exaggerated flourish, as though he had just experienced a blinding flash of light.
“I am grateful for your words,” she replied, “but there is nothing that can bring back what has gone.”
She bowed her head slightly, her buoyant face still radiating the same abundant smile.
Two hours later, having taken a bath, finished his evening meal, and nibbled on some after-dinner cherries, the professor settled comfortably into his rattan chair. The drifting twilight of the long summer evening lingered; the glass doors of the broad veranda had been left open, with no sign of falling night. The professor had been reclining there for some time, his legs crossed and his head leaned back against the chair, absently staring in the dim light at the red tassel of the Gifu lantern. In his hand he held the book by Strindberg, but he seemed not to have read another single page of it . . . And such was no wonder: his mind was still preoccupied with the nobility displayed by Madame Nishiyama Atsuko.
Over dinner he had told his wife the entire story and praised the mother of Nishiyama-kun as an exponent of Japanese bushidō among women. His wife, with her great love for Japan and the Japanese people, no doubt lent a sympathetic ear. The professor himself was pleased to note how ardently she was listening. His wife, Madame Nishiyama, and the Gifu lantern . . . It now occurred to him that the three formed a sort of moral and ethical backdrop.
The professor had been immersed in such pleasant retrospection for some indeterminate time when he remembered that he had been asked to write an article for a magazine soliciting contributions to a series entitled “Thoughts for Today’s Youth”; the topic was general morality, the writers being prominent figures from all over Japan. He resolved to respond immediately that he would relate his experience of today.
He paused to scratch his head, using the hand that had held the book he had been neglecting. He now opened it again and looked at the page he had been reading, marked by the woman’s calling card. At that moment the maid came in to light the lantern, so that he had little difficulty making out the finely printed letters. Though no longer in a mood to read, his eye happened to fall on one particular passage. Strindberg had written:
“In my youth, one told a story, perhaps originating in Paris, of Madame Heiberg’s handkerchief and her ‘double plays,’ whereby she tore it, even as she smiled. Such we now call mätzchen . . .”3
The professor laid the book down on his knee. Between the pages, Madame Nishiyama Atsuko’s visiting card was still there, but his thoughts were no longer on her; for that matter, they were no longer on his wife or on Japanese civilization. Something beyond his ken had threatened the tranquil harmony of those three elements. Needless to say, Strindberg’s critical comment on theatrical performance was distinct from the issues of practical morality. There were nonetheless implications in what he had just read that impinged on his après-bain serenity. Bushidō and its Manier . . .
The professor shook his head several times, as though displeased. Then, without raising his head, he once more looked upward to gaze at the bright Gifu lantern and the grasses of autumn painted upon it.
AN ENLIGHTENED HUSBAND
When was it now? On a cloudy afternoon, I had gone to a museum in Ueno to see an exhibition of early Meiji-era culture. I moved methodically from room to room until I came to the final display: engravings dating back to the period. In front of glass-enclosed shelves stood an elderly gentleman looking at worn copper-block etchings. Slender, with an air of fragile elegance about him, he was dressed entirely in black, with neatly creased trousers and a stylish bowler. I immediately recognized him as Viscount Honda, to whom I had been introduced at a gathering some four or five days earlier. I started to approach him but then momentarily hesitated, unable to decide whether to greet him, for I had known from before that his was a personality disinclined to social relations. Then, however, as though having heard my footsteps, he slowly turned toward me, a smile flitting briefly across lips draped with a half-white mustache. “Well, well,” he said gently, slightly lifting his hat. Feeling somewhat relieved, I wordlessly acknowledged the salutation and timidly made my way to him.
In his hollow cheeks there lingered, like the last glimmerings of evening light, traces of the handsome features that had been his in the prime of youth. At the same time, it was a face over which a pensive shadow fell, a reflection, unusual for a man of the aristocracy, of inner suffering. I remembered staring on the day of our first encounter, just as I was doing now, at his large pearl tiepin, a dismal light shining out of a sea of black, as though it were the heart of the viscount himself.
“What do you think of this etching? It is a map of the Tsukiji settlement, is it not? A brilliantly done sketch, wouldn’t you say? The contrast between light and shadow is quite extraordinary.”
He spoke in a soft voice, gesturing with the silver knob of his slender cane toward the enclosed prints. I nodded my head.
Tōkyō Bay engraved with micaceous waves; flag-waving steamships; foreigners, men and women, walking the streets; pine trees à la Hiroshige, their branches reaching toward the sky beyond Occidental-style buildings . . . This eclectic blend of East and West, in both subject and technique, exemplified the beautiful harmony that characterized the art of the early Meiji era, a harmony now forever lost, not only from our art but from everyday life in the capital.
I again nodded my head, remarking that the plan of the Tsukiji settlement interested me both as an etching and for the heightened sense of nostalgia it evoked, recalling “modern enlightenment”: two-seat rickshaws, decorated with a Chinese lion and a peony, competing with glass-plate photographs of geishas . . . Viscount Honda smiled as he listened but even now was stepping quietly from the display and slowly moving on to the next: ukiyoé by Taiso Yoshitoshi.
“Well then, look at this: Kikugorō in Western dress and Hanshirō wearing a ginkgo-leaf-shaped wig, just as they are about to perform a tragic last scene beneath the light of a lantern moon. It recalls the times all the more . . . It appears, does it not, with such vividness, Edo and Tōkyō indistinguishably blended, as though night and day had formed a single era!”
Whatever his current aversion to further social intercourse, I was aware that Viscount Honda, having been sent abroad for study, had earned an oft-lauded reputation, both within the halls of power and among the people, as a man of great talent. As I now stood listening to him in this nearly deserted exhibition room, surrounded by those glass-encased p
rints and etchings, I was thus struck by how fitting his words were—indeed, all too fitting. At the same time, this very feeling engendered within me something of a counter-sentiment, so that I hoped he would end his remarks and allow us to move our discussion from times past to the general development of ukiyoé. But with that same silver knob on his cane he continued to point to one print after another, commenting as ever in a low voice:
“When I find myself looking at such prints, that era of three or four decades ago appears before me as if it were yesterday. It is as if I might open the newspaper and find an article about a ball held at the Rokumeikan. To tell you the truth, ever since entering this display room, I have had the feeling that all of those from that time have come to life again and, though invisible to us, are here walking to and fro . . . And those phantoms sometimes put their mouths to our ears and whisper of days gone by . . . That queer idea continues to haunt me. Particularly as I see Kikugorō in Western clothes, I almost have the impulse to apologize for my long silence, for, you see, he closely resembles a friend of mine. It is a nostalgia mixed with a sense of the macabre. How would it be? . . . If you would not mind terribly, I should like to tell you something about him.”
Viscount Honda spoke in an agitated tone, deliberately looking away from me, as though uncertain of my response. At that moment I remembered that on first meeting him some days before, the acquaintance who had gone to the trouble of introducing us had said, “He is a writer. If you have any sort of interesting story, please relate it to him.”
Even if that had not transpired, I was now so caught up in the viscount’s sighs of longing for things past that I had already wished it possible to ride a horse-drawn carriage with him into lively avenues lined with stylish red-brick buildings, enshrouded in the mists of lost time. I bowed my head and happily agreed to his proposal.
“Ah, well then, let us go over there . . .”
Complying with his suggestion, I followed him to a bench in the middle of the room, where we sat down. We were alone, surrounded only by the glass cases and the rows of antiquated copper-block etchings and ukiyoé, all looking rather forlorn in the cold light of the cloudy sky. The viscount rested his chin on the knob of his cane and gazed about the room, as though surveying a catalog of his own memories. At last, however, he turned toward me and began to speak in a subdued voice.
“My friend’s name was Miura Naoki; I happened to make his acquaintance on the ship that brought me back from France. We were the same age, twenty-five years old at the time. Like Yoshitoshi’s Kikugorō, he was fair-complexioned and slender-faced, his long hair parted in the middle. He was indeed the epitome of early Meiji culture. Over the course of the long voyage we found ourselves on quite friendly terms, and on our return to Japan the bond had become such that we would hardly let a week go by without one of us visiting the other.
“Miura’s parents, it seems, had been large-scale landowners in the Shitaya area. When they died, one after the other, just as he was on his way to France, he would, as their only son, have already become a man of considerable means. By the time I knew him, he was favorably situated, performing a few nominal duties at a certain bank but otherwise enjoying an unbroken life of idle pleasure. Thus, from the moment he returned to Japan, he lived in the mansion he had inherited, located near Hyappongui in Ryōgoku, where, having built an elegant new Western-style study, he basked in luxury.
“Even as I speak, I have that room as vividly before my eyes as one of the etchings over there. The French windows overlooking the Great River, the white ceiling with its gold fringe, the red chairs and sofa covered in morocco, the portrait of Napoleon on the wall, the large, engraved ebony bookcase, and the marble fireplace, on which stood a mirror and his late father’s beloved pine bonsai . . . There was a sense of antique newness about it all, an almost sepulchral splendor. Or, to describe it in another way, it was like a musical instrument that is out of tune—and so very much a library of its time. And when I tell you how Miura was ensconced under the portrait of Napoleon, wearing a kimono suit made of Yūki silk, with double collars and reading Victor Hugo’s Orientales, you will see how the scene was all the more from the copperplate etchings there across the room. Hmm . . . Now that I think of it, I believe I even remember sometimes looking out on passing white sails so immense that they filled the French windows.
“Though Miura lived extravagantly, he was, in contrast to other young men of his age, not the least inclined to venture into the licensed quarters of Shinbashi or Yanagibashi, preferring to shut himself up every day in his newly constructed library, absorbed in reading more suitable to a young retiree than to, let us say, a banker. Of course, such was in part the consequence of his frail health, which permitted no deviation from regular and wholesome habits. It was also, however, a reflection of his character, which, in direct opposition to the materialism of the times, naturally inclined him, with abnormal intensity, toward pure idealism and thus to the acceptance of his solitary existence. Indeed, Miura, otherwise the model of the modern, enlightened gentleman, differed from the mood of the age only in his idealistic disposition, and in that he somewhat resembled the political dreamers of a generation before.
“Let me tell you, for example, of going with him one day to the theater to see a dramatic presentation of the Jinpūren Rebellion. As I recall, the curtain had closed Ōno Teppei’s ritual suicide, when Miura suddenly turned to me and asked, a serious expression on his face: ‘Can you feel sympathy for them?’
“As a proper returnee from study abroad, I was inclined at the time to loathe anything smacking of the discredited past and so icily responded: ‘No, I cannot. It seems to me a matter of course that those who fomented insurrection all because of an ordinance forbidding the wearing of swords should have brought about their own destruction.’
“Miura shook his head with an air of dissatisfaction: ‘Their cause may have been mistaken, but their willingness to die for it deserves sympathy—and more.’
“To this I retorted with a laugh: ‘Well then, would you not begrudge throwing away your one life on the childish dream of turning the Meiji generation back to the Divine Age?’
“Even so, his own reply was both serious and decisive: ‘I could wish for nothing more than to die for a childish dream in which I truly believed.’
“At the time, I paid little heed to his words, taking them to be no more than fragments of ephemeral conversation. I now know on reflection that in them lay, coiled like hidden smoke, the shadow of the piteous fate that awaited him down the years. But I must proceed step-by-step, in the natural sequence of the story.
“In any case, Miura was a man who clung to his principles, even in the matter of marriage. He had no qualms about declining even the most promising offers that came his way, having made clear that he would not wed without amour. Moreover, his was no common understanding of the term, so that even when he met an eligible young lady who quite struck his fancy, it never led to any talk of eventual matrimony, as he would remark to the effect: ‘My feelings are somehow still muddled.’
“Even from my vantage point as a disinterested third party, I found it quite vexing and so for his own good would occasionally resort to meddling: ‘To examine the nooks and crannies of one’s heart, as you do, should make it all but impossible to live a normal life. You must simply resign yourself to a world that does not conform to your ideals and content yourself with a less than perfect match.’
“But Miura would only give me a pitying look and say quite dismissively: ‘If that were so, I should not have endured so many years as a bachelor.’
“Yet though able to ignore a friend’s admonitions, he had also to contend with his relatives, who, mindful of his frail health, could not help being concerned that he might not produce an heir. They had apparently gone so far as to encourage him at the very least to take a concubine.1 Needless to say, Miura was not inclined to give heed to such advice. Indeed, the very word disgusted him, and he would often catch my ear to remark derisiv
ely: ‘For all our talk about modern enlightenment, Japan is still quite openly a land of kept women.’
“Thus, for the first two or three years after his return from France, he devoted himself to reading, with Napoleon as his sole companion. Not even those of us who were his friends could speculate concerning his prospects for a mariage d’amour.
“Meanwhile, I had been dispatched to spend some time on government matters in Korea. I had not been there a month, having just become accustomed to my new quarters in Keijō, when, lo and behold, I received a marriage announcement from Miura.
“You can well imagine my astonishment. Yet I could not but be amused as well as surprised at the thought that he had at last found his heart’s desire.
“The content of the message could not have been simpler: nuptial arrangements had been concluded between Miura Naoki and one Fujii Katsumi, the daughter of a purveyor to the imperial household. According to the letter that followed, he had taken a walk to Hagidera in Yanagishima when he happened to meet an antiquarian who had frequented Miura’s mansion on business. With him on his visit to the temple were a father and daughter. As the four were strolling through the precincts, Miura and the young woman had quite spontaneously fallen in love.
“The gate of the temple in those days still had its straw-thatched roof, and in the middle of the bush clover is even now a stone monument on which Bashō’s famous verse is inscribed:
Gracefully alike:
Traveler and bush clover,
Damp with autumn rain
“Such elegant surroundings were undoubtedly the perfect setting for this juxtaposition of intelligence and beauty. Nevertheless, the idea of Miura having been so smitten—the self-professed epitome of the modern gentleman, who never went out without donning his tailor-made Parisian suit—suggested much too conventional a pattern. Reading the announcement alone had brought a smile to my lips, as though I had been subjected to a veritable tickling.