To the Spring Equinox and Beyond

  His strong point is there, and there at the same time lurks his misfortune. And there too lies my own weakness as well as my happiness. When I'm at a tea ceremony, my mind is quiet. I get a feeling of sabi while twiddling a curio. At other places—storytelling halls, theaters, wrestling matches—-at all these I can put myself into the appropriate frame of mind. I'm so diverted by these interests that quite naturally I reach the point in which I can't help feeling emptied even of my very self. That's why I'm leading such a detached life, forcing my ego to push through. Ichizo, however, is a person who from the very first had nothing but his own ego. To make up for this deficiency—or rather, to curtail his unhappiness—the only possible way that his life should turn is to respond to the external universe instead of perpetually crawling into his inner world. But it is I who have indirectly deprived him of the one and only resource by which he could have made himself happy. The bitterness my relatives hold against me is absolutely justified—so much so that I consider it at least fortunate that Ichizo himself doesn't have anything against me.

  The incident I want to talk about occurred, I believe, about a year ago, when Ichizo had not yet graduated from university. He came over on a day when I was in my study dipping into the history of Japanese flower-arrangement to answer an acquaintance's question on the subject. I was so absorbed in the job that when he greeted me, I merely looked over my shoulder and said hello. But I noticed that his color was quite bad. Worried about it, I went out of my study to look for him as soon as I came to a place in my investigation where I could leave off. As he regards my wife as a friend, I thought he might be talking with her in the sitting room, but he wasn't there. My wife suggested he was in the children's room, so I went down the hallway and opened the door to that room. He was sitting at Sakiko's desk, looking at a photograph of an attractive woman on the front page of a woman's magazine.

  At that moment he looked around at me and informed me that he had just discovered a beautiful woman. "We've been looking at each other for about ten minutes," he said. He added that as long as that face was before him, he forgot the pain in his head and felt an involuntary pleasantness. At once I asked him whose daughter she was and where she lived. Oddly enough, he hadn't even read the name written below her photograph. "That's rather careless," I said. "If the face has attracted you that much, why not fix her name in your mind?" I thought that if the occasion arose, it was not absolutely impossible for him to take her as his wife. But he eyed me as if he were saying, "Why do I need to remember her name and address?"

  The point of this example is that I looked at the photograph from the first as a representation of reality itself, while he merely looked at it as a picture. If somehow the woman's real position, status, education, or character had been added to the photograph in an attempt to transform the portrait on a piece of paper into a living being, he would just as soon have discarded all of it along with the face he had taken such a fancy to. This is where Ichizo and I are fundamentally different from each other.

  A few months before Ichizo graduated from university—I think it was around April last year—I was consulted by his mother about his marriage for a much longer time than ever before. As usual, she expressed the simple yet stubborn desire to have Taguchi's elder daughter as her son's wife. It's my belief that it's not worthy of a man to reason with a woman, so I refrained as best I could from going into difficult arguments, but used plain and simple terms to convince my old-fashioned sister that what she wanted amounted to going against a parent's duty in that it wasn't allowing the person in question the greatest freedom. As you know, my sister is a very gentle woman, but she possesses more than the average amount of that characteristic common to her sex of persistently and untiringly repeating the same opinion whenever the occasion demands it. It wasn't so much that I disliked her persistence as it was that I was moved so strangely by the pathos in her excessive perseverance. This made me willingly accept her request to at least have Ichizo over to talk about it, since, as she said, there was no one else among our relatives he had any respect for.

  I remember it was a Sunday morning four days after my sister's visit that I met Ichizo in this drawing room in order to carry out her request. He'd been having a busy time with his graduation exams just up ahead, but he said with a slight smile as he sat down that it didn't matter to him what the examination results were.

  According to his explanation, the subject of the marriage was a stale one which had been brought up quite often by his mother, its conclusion put off by him time and again. But in inverse proportion to his assertion about the staleness of the topic, his attitude toward the problem seemed to reveal that it had been quite an ordeal for him. The last time she had entreated him, he said, he had asked her to wait until his graduation, after which he would bring the matter to a conclusion. Since he had been summoned by me in spite of the fact that his examinations were not yet finished, he not only showed by his looks that he had been put to some trouble, but he even complained that the old woman's impatience was embarrassing. I too thought he might well be justified in saying that.

  My conjecture was that his putting off a definite answer until his graduation was merely an evasion, that he had judged that Chiyoko's marriage negotiations would in the meantime entwine a more suitable candidate, so that instead of directly disappointing his mother, he would wait for the circumstances in and of themselves to pressure her and dissuade her from her intention. "Isn't that so?" I asked him. He said it was.

  I asked if he didn't have any intention of satisfying his mother's wishes. He replied that he definitely intended to in a great many things, but he had never said he would take Chiyoko as his wife. When I asked if he wasn't refusing her just to be obstinate, he affirmed that that may have been the case. I then asked, to make certain, what he would do if Taguchi agreed to give her to him and if Chiyoko herself consented. He made no response, but merely looked silently at me. When I saw that look on his face, I couldn't bring myself to proceed with our talk. The impression that his look gave me—awe is too exaggerated a word, pity sounds much too doleful—I'm almost at a loss to describe it. It was a peculiar expression suggesting the despair of someone who's been obliged to forever give up his loved one, but with something grim and yet tender added to it.

  A little later he suddenly came out with an unexpected remark, one which must have revealed his state of mind at the moment. "Why am I so disliked by others?" he asked. I was surprised by the untimeliness of his words and by how incongruous it was for him to say such a thing.

  "Why bring up that kind of sentimental complaint?" I demanded, my tone one of rebuke.

  "It's not a complaint. I said it because it's a fact."

  "Well, then, who is it that dislikes you?"

  "You do, for one."

  Again I was surprised. As this was rather odd, I asked a few more questions and gathered that the attitude I had assumed when I had stopped talking because of that peculiar look on his face had apparently been interpreted by him as entirely coming from my own aversion to him. With all the powers at my command I began trying to break down his misunderstanding.

  "Why should I hate you?" I asked. "From the connection we've had since you were a child, you ought to know very well that I don't. Don't be ridiculous!"

  Scolded like that, he continued to look at me without showing the least bit of excitement on his face, but rather, with a still paler countenance. I felt as though I were sitting before a phosphorescent glow.

  "I'm your uncle. Where in this world is there an uncle who hates his own nephew?"

  The moment Ichizo heard my words, his thin lips curved into a lonely smile. I saw behind its loneliness something tinged with deep contempt.

  I confess that Ichizo's head is better than mine when it comes to intelligence. I know that only too well. So when we came in contact with one another, I was always on guard to reveal as little as possible of anything foolish that he might deride. But there were times when with the haughtiness of an elder lookin
g down on a youth I could place full confidence in, I lectured him, attaching importance to some senseless expediency even while knowing how shallow it was. He was too wise to dare so uncivil an action as to take advantage of his superiority in order to put me to shame, but I used to feel mortified at finding myself falling in his estimation on each of these occasions. And this time too I immediately started to mend my words.

  "In this wide world," I began again, "there may be parents and children who are mutual enemies and even husbands and wives who think about murdering one another. But generally speaking, there must exist somewhere an affectionate connection that deserves the name 'brother' or 'uncle and nephew.' You've had a very fine education, and you're quite intelligent as well, and yet in some strange way you have a kind of inferiority complex. That's your major shortcoming. You must definitely correct it. It makes you look disagreeable in the eyes of others."

  "And that's why I say that even you dislike me."

  I didn't know how to respond to that. I felt he had put his finger on my own contradiction, which I hadn't been aware of until that moment. "Just throw it away once and for all, and everything will be all right," I said casually, as though it were the easiest thing to do.

  "Do I have an inferiority complex?" he asked quite calmly.

  "You do," I said without giving much thought to my response.

  "Where does this inferiority complex exist? Please tell me clearly."

  "Where? Well . . . you have it. I wouldn't have said so if you didn't."

  "Supposing I do have such a shortcoming. Where do you suppose it came from?"

  "That's your own problem. It would be a good idea if you thought a little about it yourself."

  "You're so unkind," Ichizo said, his voice desperately sad and serious.

  First of all his tone of voice disconcerted me. Next I shrank from his eyes. They were fixed on me with a look of sad reproach. I couldn't muster up enough courage to say even a word in return.

  "I've been thinking about that problem long before you mentioned it," he went on. "I've been thinking about it because I know it's my own problem without your having to tell me. And I've been thinking about it all by myself because no one had told me about it. I thought about it every day and every night. I thought and thought until my body as well as my mind could no longer continue under the burden of the thought. And still I haven't been able to solve the problem, and so I asked you about it. You declared yourself to be my dear uncle. And you claimed that because you're my uncle, you're kinder to me than other people are. But what you said just now, even though it came from your own lips, sounded to me much more callous than the words of a stranger."

  I saw the tears coming down his cheeks. I assure you that such a scene had never occurred between us in the long acquaintance from his childhood until that day. And, I must admit, I didn't in the least know how to deal with a young man this excited. I could only sit there with my arms folded, bewildered. And he himself was in no position to adjust his words out of any consideration for my attitude.

  "Do I have an inferiority complex? I suppose I do. Even without your telling me, I know I do. Yes, an inferiority complex. I know about it quite well without having to be reminded of it by you. Only I want to know how I've become what I now am. My mother, my aunt Taguchi, and you—all of you know why. I'm the only one who doesn't. I'm the only one who hasn't been told. I asked you because of all the people in the world you're the one I trust most. And yet you've cruelly rejected my request. From here on I'll curse you as my lifelong enemy!"

  Ichizo stood up. In an instant I made a decision and called out to stop him.

  I once heard a lecture by a certain scholar. He analyzed our present civilization in Japan and revealed quite bluntly to his audience why, if we're not destined to become shallow and superficial, we're in for nervous collapse. He argued that when the truth is not known, we desire to know it, but once we do know it, there are not a few cases in which we repent our knowing and envy that earlier time when we lived blissfully ignorant. "That, or something like it," he said, "is my conclusion," and smiling with a kind of resignation, he left the platform. At that time his remarks reminded me of Ichizo, and while I felt it was a sorry thing for any Japanese to have to listen to such bitter truths, it was even more pathetic for a young man like Ichizo to fear trying to take hold of a secret relating to himself and yet again to have to try in spite of the fear. Inwardly I shed tears of compassion for him.

  This account concerns only my relatives and has nothing to do with you, so if it weren't for the past circumstances in which you showed such concern about Ichizo's welfare, I would never confide it to you—but to tell the truth, his sun was already hidden by clouds from the very day he was born.

  As I would declare without hesitation to anyone, I hold to the principle that no secret ever settles down in its natural state until it is set free and fully revealed, so I don't attach as much importance as most people do to such words as "safeguarding the peace" or "maintaining the status quo." Therefore, it seemed a rather strange oversight on my part that until then I had not of my own free will thrown any light on Ichizo's fate, which dated back to the time of his birth. Now that I think about it, it hardly seems to make much sense that I kept it secret until the moment he cursed me. For little had I dreamed that even if fresh air were let in on what had been kept concealed, his relationship with his mother would have been any the worse for it.

  You, who are on such intimate terms with Ichizo, may have understood the fact implied in my words about his sun already being hidden from the day he was born. In a word, Ichizo and his mother aren't related by blood. And to add a word to prevent any misunderstanding: As a stepmother and stepson they are far more closely related than a real mother and son. They are so inseparably bound by nature with threads of affection that they may well despise the mere blood relationship between a parent and a child. Since this binding thread could not be cut asunder even by the edge of an axe wielded by a demon, there could be nothing to fear in disclosing any secret to Ichizo. And yet my sister had always been afraid to. Ichizo too was terrified. They were both in terror, she with the secret held in her hand, he with the expectation that he would be made to take hold of it. At last I took out the reality he had feared and simply brought it into the open for him.

  I don't dare recount to you each and every one of the questions and answers exchanged at the time. From the first, the affair hadn't seemed to me so great an event, and also from the need I had to maintain my cool as best I could, I told the story as though it were, after all, a matter of little importance, but Ichizo, being under extreme tension, took the information as though it were a matter of life and death. To keep the sequence of what I told you before, I'll set down the facts briefly. He was not my sister's child but a housemaid's. Since the incident did not occur in my home and since it happened more than a quarter of a century ago, I haven't been able to ascertain its details. I did hear that when the maid was found to be pregnant by my brother-in-law, my sister dismissed her after giving her a considerable amount of money. She waited until the woman, who had gone back to her home, had given birth to the boy, and then she took charge of him and raised him as her own son. She did this mainly to save her husband's honor, but it must have been partly motivated by a desire to foster the child, since at that time she had been worrying about being unable to have one of her own. As it turned out, as you and all of us relatives have seen, the two of them have gotten along until today as a most loving mother and son, so there would have been no trouble at all had the real situation been confided. From my own viewpoint, they may well feel infinitely more proud than those real parents and children who so frequently in this world fail to get along. For themselves, too, how much more pleasant it would have been to know the real truth and to reflect back on all the affection they had for each other. At least that would be so for me. And so for Ichizo's sake I didn't spare any effort in painting the beauty of this one point.

  "I actually think so
. Therefore, I see no need to hide it. If you have a sound mind, you should think the same as I do, shouldn't you? If you say you can't, it's your feeling of inferiority. Do you understand?"

  "I understand. I understand quite well," Ichizo replied.

  "If you do, good. Let's not talk about it anymore."

  "I'll say no more about it. There'll never be another day when I bother you about it. You were right in saying that I've been putting a warped interpretation on everything. Until you told me, I was terribly afraid, so much so that my flesh cringed. But now that what you've told me has made everything clear, I'm very much relieved. I no longer have anything to fear, not anything. Though I've suddenly become helpless somehow. Lonely. I feel as if I'm standing alone in the world."

  "Still, your mother's what she's always been, you know. I too am what I was. None of us will be any different toward you. Don't get so nervous about it."

  "Nervous or not, I do feel lonely all the same. I can't help it. When I get back home and see my mother's face, I'm sure I'll be in tears. Just imagining those tears now makes me feel unbearably lonely."

  "It's better not to mention any of this to your mother."

  "Of course I won't. If I did, I can't even imagine the pain on her face."

  We sat silently facing each other. To relieve the awkwardness I felt, I knocked the ashes from my pipe into a bamboo pot in the smoking set. Ichizo looked down at the hakama covering his knees. Soon he glanced up with that lonely face of his.

  "I have something else I want to ask you. Would you please hear me out?"

  "I'll tell you anything I know about."

  "Where's my real mother living now?"

  She had died soon after giving birth to him, from some post-natal complication or from a disease, so I had heard. Of this too my memory was too sketchy to give an account detailed enough to appease his hungry eyes. The account I gave him of the last of his real mother's fate ended in a few minutes. With a pitiful look he asked her name. Fortunately, I hadn't forgotten her old-fashioned name— it was Oyumi. He next asked how old she was when she died. Of that detail my knowledge was the least reliable. Finally he asked if I had ever seen her working at his family's house. I told him I had.