河童 English

Preface

This is the story that Patient No. 23 of a certain mental hospital tells to anyone who will listen.

He must be past thirty by now.

Yet at first glance he is a madman of quite youthful appearance.

The experiences of his life thus far -- no, that is of no importance.

He simply sat clutching both knees, glancing now and then out the window, (beyond the barred window, where not even a withered leaf could be seen, a single oak spread its branches against a sky heavy with snow clouds,)

and went on telling this story at great length to the hospital director, Dr. S., and to me.

Not that he made no gestures, either.

When, for instance, he said "I was astonished,"

he would suddenly jerk his face backward....

I have tried to set down his story here with reasonable fidelity.

Should anyone find my transcription unsatisfying, let him go and visit the S. Mental Hospital in ××mura, outside Tokyo.

No. 23, who looks younger than his years, will first bow politely and point to a cushionless chair.

Then, wearing a melancholy smile, he will quietly repeat this same story.

And at the end -- I remember well the look on his face when he had finished telling it to me.

No sooner had he risen at the close than he would begin shaking his fists, bellowing at whoever was near --

"Get out! You scoundrel! You too are nothing but a stupid, jealous, obscene, brazen, conceited, cruel, self-serving animal. Get out! You scoundrel!"

I

It was in the summer of three years ago.

I had shouldered a rucksack like everyone else and set out to climb Mount Hotaka from that hot-spring inn at Kamikochi.

To climb Mount Hotaka, as you know, there is no way but to follow the Azusa River upstream.

Having already climbed not only Mount Hotaka but Mount Yari before, I made my way up the Azusa River valley, wrapped in the morning mist, without a guide.

Up the Azusa River valley wrapped in morning mist -- but that mist showed no sign of ever lifting.

On the contrary, it only grew thicker.

After walking for about an hour, I once thought of turning back to the hot-spring inn at Kamikochi.

But even to turn back to Kamikochi, I would first have to wait for the mist to clear.

And the mist, for its part, only grew steadily thicker by the moment.

"Well then, I'll simply climb on."

So I thought, and pushed my way through the dwarf bamboo, keeping close to the Azusa River valley.

But nothing barred my sight except that same deep mist.

Now and then, it is true, thick beech and fir branches did show through the mist, their green leaves hanging down.

And now and again grazing horses or cattle would suddenly thrust their faces out before me.

But no sooner had I seen them than they vanished again into the billowing mist.

Before long my legs grew weary and my stomach began little by little to empty -- and on top of that, my climbing clothes and blanket, soaked through with mist, were no ordinary weight.

At last I gave up my resolve, and guided by the sound of water pressed among the rocks, decided to go down into the Azusa River valley.

I sat down on a rock at the water's edge and set at once to eating.

Opening a tin of corned beef, gathering dry twigs and lighting a fire -- doing such things, some ten minutes must have passed.

In that time the mist, spiteful as it was in every way, at last began to clear little by little.

Munching on bread, I glanced at my wristwatch.

The time was already past one twenty.

But what startled me more was that some eerie face cast a fleeting shadow across the round glass of my wristwatch.

Startled, I turned around.

And there -- this was, in fact, the very first time I ever laid eyes on a creature called a kappa.

On a rock behind me sat a kappa, exactly as pictured, one hand gripping the trunk of a white birch, the other shading its eyes, peering down at me with curiosity.

Dumbfounded, I stood without moving for a while.

The kappa too seemed startled, for it did not so much as move the hand shading its eyes.

Before long I leapt up and sprang at the kappa on the rock.

At the same instant the kappa fled.

Or rather, no doubt it fled.

In truth, no sooner had it given a light twist of its body than it vanished somewhere in an instant.

More astonished than ever, I looked all around through the dwarf bamboo.

And there the kappa stood poised to run, two or three meters off, looking back at me.

That in itself was nothing strange.

What struck me as unexpected, though, was the color of the kappa's body.

The kappa that had watched me from the rock had been entirely tinged with gray.

Yet now its whole body had turned completely green.

I shouted "Damn you!"

and lunged at the kappa once more.

Naturally the kappa fled.

For some thirty minutes after that I pushed through the dwarf bamboo, leapt over rocks, and pursued the kappa with reckless abandon.

The kappa, for its part, was by no means slower on its feet than a monkey.

Chasing it in a frenzy, I nearly lost sight of it more than once.

Not only that, but I slipped and fell any number of times.

Yet when we came beneath a great horse-chestnut tree spreading its thick branches, a grazing cow happened, fortunately, to plant itself squarely in the kappa's path.

And what is more, it was a bull with thick horns and bloodshot eyes.

At the sight of this bull the kappa gave a sort of shriek and pitched itself headlong into a patch of especially tall dwarf bamboo.

For my part, I too thought, "Got you now,"

and dashed straight in after it.

There must, it seems, have been a hole there that I knew nothing of.

No sooner had my fingertips at last brushed the kappa's slippery back than I went tumbling headlong into a deep darkness.

But even at such a hair's-breadth moment of crisis, the human mind will think of the most preposterous things.

Just as I thought "Oh!"

I found myself recalling that near the hot-spring inn at Kamikochi there was a bridge called the "Kappa Bridge."

That much I recall.

But what happened after that -- I have no memory of it at all.

I only felt something before my eyes like a flash of lightning, and before I knew it I had lost consciousness.

II

When at last I came to my senses, I found myself lying on my back, surrounded by a great crowd of kappas.

Moreover, a kappa wearing pince-nez perched on its thick beak knelt beside me, holding a stethoscope to my chest.

Seeing that I had opened my eyes, this kappa said to me, "Quiet"

with a gesture of its hand, and then called out to some kappa behind it, Quax, quax.

At that, two kappas came walking up from somewhere, carrying a stretcher.

Laid upon this stretcher, I was carried quietly along for some blocks through a crowd of gathered kappas.

The streets lined up on either side of me were no different at all from the Ginza.

Beneath a row of beech trees stood various shops with awnings set out, and along the road between those same trees any number of automobiles went speeding by.

Presently the stretcher bearing me, after turning down a narrow side street, was carried into a certain house.

That house, as I learned afterward, belonged to the kappa in the pince-nez -- the house of a doctor named Chack.

Chack laid me down on a tidy little bed.

Then he made me drink a full cup of some transparent liquid medicine.

I lay stretched out on the bed and let Chack do as he wished.

For indeed my joints ached so badly that my body could scarcely move at all.

Chack made a point of coming to examine me two or three times a day.

And once every three days or so, the kappa I had first caught sight of -- a fisherman named Bag -- also came to visit.

Kappas know far more about us humans than we humans know about kappas.

This is no doubt because kappas capture humans far more often than we humans capture kappas.

"Capture" may not be quite the right word, but we humans have come to the land of the kappas many times even before my own visit.

Not only that, but many have lived out their entire lives in the land of the kappas.

Why should this be, you ask?

Simply because we, not being kappas but humans, enjoy the privilege of eating without working.

In fact, according to Bag, a certain young road laborer who had likewise come to this land by chance once took a female kappa for his wife and lived here until his death.

What is more, that same female kappa was said to be the greatest beauty in the whole land, and was also said to possess a rare talent for deceiving her road-laborer husband.

After about a week had passed, in accordance with the laws of this land, I was designated a "Specially Protected Resident"

and came to live next door to Chack.

My house, small as it was, had been built with considerable elegance.

Of course the civilization of this land is not so very different from that of our own human land -- from that of Japan, at least.

In a corner of the parlor facing the street stood a small piano, and on the wall there also hung a framed etching.

Only the house itself, and the size of the tables and chairs, had all been made to suit a kappa's stature, so that I felt as inconvenienced as if I had been put into a child's room.

Every evening as dusk fell, I would receive Chack and Bag in this room and study the kappa language.

And it was not only the two of them, either.

Everyone took an interest in me as a Specially Protected Resident, so that even Gael, the president of a glass company who had Chack come specially every day to check his blood pressure, made a point of showing his face in this room.

But during the first half month or so, the one who grew closest to me of all was that same fisherman, Bag.

It was the close of a certain sultry, warm day.

I sat facing the fisherman Bag across the table in this room.

Then, for some reason, Bag suddenly fell silent, and widened his already large eyes to stare fixedly at me.

Naturally I found this strange, so, "Quax, Bag, quo quel, quan?"

I said.

Translated into Japanese, this means, "Hey, Bag, what's the matter?"

That's what it means.

But Bag gave no answer.

Not only that, he suddenly stood up, stuck out his tongue with a great smack, and even showed signs of springing at me like a leaping frog.

More unsettled than ever, I quietly rose from my chair and made to bound straight for the doorway in a single leap.

Just then, fortunately, the doctor Chack happened to appear.

"Now then, Bag, what do you think you're doing?"

Chack, still wearing his pince-nez, glared at Bag as he said this.

At that Bag seemed thoroughly cowed, and kept putting a hand to his head as he apologized to Chack thus.

"I really am terribly sorry. The truth is, I found it so amusing to see this gentleman looking so unnerved that I got carried away and played a little trick on him. I do hope the gentleman will forgive me."

III

Before I go on with this story, I must first explain a little about the creature called a kappa.

The kappa is an animal whose very existence is still in doubt.

But since I myself lived among them, there ought to be no room for doubt whatsoever.

As for what sort of animal it is, then -- it has short hair on its head, and webbing between its fingers and toes, much as described in the Suiko Koryaku,

and there is no marked difference from what is written there.

Its height is roughly a bit over or under one meter.

As for weight, according to the doctor Chack, it ranges from twenty to thirty pounds -- though rarely there are giant kappas weighing as much as fifty-odd pounds.

On the crown of its head there is an oval-shaped plate, and this plate seems to grow gradually harder with age.

Indeed, the plate on the elderly Bag felt entirely different to the touch from that on the youthful Chack.

But the strangest thing of all must be the color of a kappa's skin.

Kappas do not have a fixed skin color the way we humans do.

It seems they simply change to whatever color surrounds them -- turning green like grass when among grass, for instance, and turning gray like rock when upon a rock.

This is of course not unique to kappas; chameleons do the same.

Perhaps kappas possess something in their skin tissue not unlike a chameleon's.

When I discovered this fact, I recalled a piece of folklore that kappas of the western provinces are green, while those of the northeast are red.

Not only that, I also recalled how, while chasing after Bag, he had suddenly vanished from sight, I knew not where.

Moreover, kappas seem to carry rather thick fat beneath their skin, for despite the relatively low temperature of this underground land (averaging around fifty degrees Fahrenheit),

they know nothing of what we would call clothing.

Of course, any kappa might well wear spectacles, or carry a pack of cigarettes, or a coin purse.

But since a kappa, like a kangaroo, has a pouch on its belly, it suffers no particular inconvenience in stowing such things away.

What struck me as odd, though, was that they did not even cover their waists.

Once I asked Bag why this custom existed.

At that Bag threw back his head and went on laughing uproariously without end.

And then, "I find it funny that you go around hiding yours,"

he replied.

IV

Little by little I came to learn the everyday language the kappas used.

And along with it, I came to grasp their customs and manners as well.

Among all this, the strangest thing of all was this topsy-turvy habit of theirs: kappas find laughable what we humans take seriously, and take seriously what we humans find laughable.

For instance, we humans take things like justice or humanity quite seriously, but kappas, on hearing of such things, burst out laughing, holding their sides.

In short, their notion of what is comical must be founded on a standard entirely different from our own notion of the comical.

Once I was speaking with the doctor Chack about birth control.

At that Chack opened his mouth wide and laughed so hard his pince-nez nearly fell off.

Naturally I grew angry at this and demanded to know what was so funny.

As I recall, Chack's reply went roughly as follows.

Though some of the finer details may well be mistaken.

After all, at that time I still did not fully understand the language the kappas used.

"Well, it does seem odd to think only of the parents' convenience, doesn't it. It's really rather self-serving, don't you think."

In turn, from our human point of view, there is truly nothing quite so absurd as the way a kappa gives birth.

In fact, some time later I went to Bag's hut to watch his wife give birth.

Kappas, when it comes to giving birth, are just the same as we humans.

They too rely on the help of a doctor or a midwife to bring the child into the world.

But when the time for birth comes, the father, as though placing a telephone call, puts his mouth to the mother's genitals and, "Think carefully and answer me whether you wish to be born into this world or not,"

he asks in a loud voice.

Bag too knelt down and repeated these words over and over.

Then he gargled with some antiseptic liquid medicine that was on the table.

At that, the child in his wife's belly, seeming somewhat hesitant, answered in a small voice as follows.

"I do not wish to be born. To begin with, my father's hereditary taint of mental illness alone is bad enough. And besides, I believe kappa existence itself to be an evil."

On hearing this answer, Bag scratched his head as if embarrassed.

But the midwife who was present at once thrust a thick glass tube into the wife's genitals and injected some liquid.

At that the wife let out a great breath, as though relieved.

At the same time her belly, which had until then been so large, shrank limply away, like a balloon with the hydrogen let out of it.

Given that they can give such answers, it goes without saying that kappa children, no sooner born, can already walk and talk.

According to Chack, there was even a child who, on the twenty-sixth day after birth, gave a lecture on the existence or nonexistence of God.

Though that same child, it seems, died in its second month.

Since I am on the subject of childbirth, let me tell of a large poster I happened to see on a certain street corner in my third month in this land.

Beneath that large poster were drawn some twelve or thirteen kappas, some blowing trumpets, others bearing swords.

And above them was arrayed a full field of the spiral characters kappas use, resembling nothing so much as the mainspring of a watch.

Translated, these spiral characters come out to roughly this meaning.

Here too, some of the finer details may perhaps be mistaken.

But in any case, I had taken down, one by one in my notebook, the words that a kappa student named Lap, who was walking with me at the time, read aloud for me.

CALLING FOR HEREDITARY VOLUNTEERS *

HEALTHY KAPPA MEN AND WOMEN! *

TO STAMP OUT BAD HEREDITY,

MARRY AN UNHEALTHY KAPPA! *

Naturally, even then, I told Lap that no such thing was ever actually done among us.

At this, not only Lap but every kappa within earshot of the poster burst into gales of laughter.

"Never done? But from what you've told me, I should think you people do exactly the same as we do. What do you suppose it means when a young master falls for a maidservant, or a young lady falls for her chauffeur? That's nothing but the unconscious stamping-out of bad heredity, isn't it. And for that matter, compared to that volunteer corps of you humans you told me about the other day -- the one that kills each other off to seize a single railway line -- I daresay our own volunteer corps is a good deal nobler."

Lap said all this quite seriously, and yet his fat belly kept rippling with amusement all the while.

But far from laughing, I hurriedly tried to seize hold of a certain kappa.

For I had noticed, catching me off guard, that this kappa had stolen my fountain pen.

But a kappa's smooth skin makes it no easy thing for us to catch hold of one.

That kappa too, slipping free of my grasp in an instant, fled away at full speed.

his body, thin as a mosquito, staggering as though it might topple over.

V

This kappa Lap looked after me no less kindly than Bag had.

But among all this, what I cannot forget is being introduced to a kappa named Tock.

Tock is a poet among the kappas.

That poets wear their hair long is no different among kappas than among us humans.

I would sometimes go to Tock's house to while away my boredom.

Tock always kept his cramped room lined with potted alpine plants, and lived a thoroughly easygoing life, writing poems and smoking tobacco.

In the corner of that same room there was always a female kappa (Tock being an advocate of free love, he kept no wife of his own)

knitting or doing some such work.

Whenever Tock saw my face, he would always smile and say this.

(Though a kappa's smile is not, it must be said, a particularly pleasant thing to look at.

At least at first I found it rather unsettling.)

"Ah, glad you've come. Do sit down in that chair."

Tock often spoke to me of kappa life and kappa art.

As Tock saw it, there was nothing so absurd as the ordinary life of an ordinary kappa.

Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters -- all of them lived as though the sole pleasure in life were tormenting one another.

The family system in particular was absurd beyond all absurdity.

Once Tock pointed out the window, "Look at that. What sheer absurdity!"

he said, spitting the words out.

In the street outside the window a still-young kappa walked along, gasping for breath, with what looked like his parents and some seven or eight male and female kappas besides hung about his neck.

But I, admiring the young kappa's spirit of self-sacrifice, praised his admirable resolve instead.

"Hmph. You'd qualify as a citizen even in this country of ours.... By the way, are you a socialist?"

Naturally, "qua" -- in the kappa tongue, this word

carries the meaning "indeed" --

was my answer.

"Then I suppose you'd think nothing of sacrificing a single genius for the sake of a hundred mediocrities, without a second thought."

"Then what -ist are you, Tock? Someone told me your creed was anarchism, but...."

"Me? I am a superman." (Literally translated, a super-kappa.)

Tock declared this with great pride.

Tock, being what he was, held distinctive views on art as well.

As Tock believed, art is subject to the rule of nothing whatsoever -- it is art for art's sake -- and it follows that the true artist must, before all else, be a superman who has transcended good and evil altogether.

This, however, was not necessarily Tock's opinion alone.

The other poets in Tock's circle seemed for the most part to share the same view.

In fact I often went along with Tock to visit the Superman Club.

Those who gathered at the Superman Club were poets, novelists, playwrights, critics, painters, musicians, sculptors, and dabblers in the arts.

But every one of them was a superman.

They would always be chatting cheerfully together in the brightly lit salon.

And now and then they would proudly display their supermanly ways to one another.

For instance, a certain sculptor, catching hold of a young kappa amid the potted giant ferns, was busily amusing himself with pederasty.

Also, a certain female novelist stood up on a table and downed sixty glasses of absinthe before our eyes.

Though no sooner had she tumbled off the table on the sixtieth glass than she passed away on the spot.

One fine moonlit night I walked home from the Superman Club arm in arm with the poet Tock.

Tock was unusually downcast, and did not speak a single word.

Presently we passed before a small window with firelight showing through it.

Beyond that window sat what looked like a married pair of kappas, male and female, at the dinner table together with three young kappa children.

At that Tock sighed, and suddenly spoke to me thus.

"I like to think of myself as a superman when it comes to love, but seeing a household like that, I do feel a certain envy all the same."

"But don't you think that's a contradiction, however you look at it?"

But Tock only stood there with his arms folded beneath the moonlight, gazing steadily beyond that small window -- at the peaceful dinner table of those five kappas.

Then, after a while, he answered thus.

"Say what you like, that omelet in there is a good deal more hygienic than love."

VI

In truth, kappa love differs considerably in character from our human love.

The moment a female kappa spots a male kappa she has set her heart on, she stops at nothing to catch him -- the most honest female kappas simply chase the male kappa down with reckless abandon.

I myself once saw a female kappa chasing a male kappa as though she had gone mad.

No, that is not all.

Not only the young female kappa herself, but even her parents and siblings would join in the chase together.

It is the male kappa who is truly to be pitied.

For after fleeing about desperately, even if he is fortunate enough to escape capture, he is bound to take to his bed for two or three months afterward.

Once I was at home reading a collection of Tock's poems.

Just then that student Lap came bursting in.

Lap tumbled into my house, collapsed onto the floor, and said this between gasping breaths.

"Terrible news! I've finally been caught in her embrace!"

I instantly flung aside the poetry collection and bolted the door.

But peering through the keyhole, I saw a short female kappa, her face smeared with sulfur powder, still lurking about the doorway.

From that day Lap lay in my bed for several weeks.

Not only that, but before long Lap's beak rotted through completely and fell off.

It is not, however, that there are no male kappas who chase after female kappas with all their might.

But even then, the truth is that the female kappa maneuvers things so that the male cannot help but give chase.

I too once saw a male kappa chasing a female kappa as though he had gone mad.

Even as she fled, the female kappa would sometimes deliberately stop and glance back, or drop down on all fours to show herself off.

And what is more, once just the right moment came, she would let herself be caught with an air of feigned disappointment, quite easily.

The male kappa I saw lay there for a while, clutching the female kappa, rolling about on the ground.

But when at last he rose to his feet, his face wore an expression of disappointment, or perhaps regret -- in any case something indescribable, and altogether pitiful.

But that case was still not so bad.

There was another case I witnessed, in which a small male kappa was chasing after a female kappa.

The female kappa was, as usual, engaged in her seductive flight.

Just then a large male kappa came walking up from the street beyond, snorting loudly.

The female kappa, chancing to catch sight of this large male kappa, cried, "Help! Please help me! That kappa means to kill me!"

she shrieked in a piercing voice.

Naturally the large male kappa at once seized the small kappa and pinned him down in the middle of the street.

The small kappa clutched at empty air two or three times with his webbed hands, and at last died.

But by that time the female kappa was already grinning and clinging fast to the large kappa's neck.

Every male kappa I knew was, as though by some unspoken agreement, chased by female kappas without exception.

Even Bag, who had a wife and children of his own, was likewise chased.

Not only that, he was caught two or three times as well.

The one exception was a philosopher named Mag (he was the kappa who lived next door to that poet Tock)

who had never once been caught.

This was partly, no doubt, because there were few kappas as ugly as Mag.

But it was also partly because Mag scarcely ever showed his face outside, and stayed at home all the time.

I would sometimes go to Mag's house too, to talk.

Mag always kept a seven-colored stained-glass lantern lit in his dim room, and sat before a tall-legged desk, forever reading nothing but thick books.

Once I discussed kappa love with this same Mag.

"Why doesn't the government crack down harder on female kappas chasing male kappas?"

"Partly it's because there are so few female kappas among the officials. Female kappas are far more jealous by nature than male kappas, you see, so if only there were more female officials, I daresay male kappas would live a good deal freer of pursuit than they do now. Though even that would have its limits. Why, you ask? Because even among fellow officials, the female kappas chase the male ones."

"Then living the way you do must be the happiest lot of all, I suppose."

At that Mag rose from his chair, took both my hands in his, and said this with a sigh.

"You are not one of us kappas, so it's only natural you shouldn't understand. But even I, now and then, feel a certain urge to be chased by one of those terrifying female kappas myself."

VII

I also went to concerts often, together with the poet Tock.

But what I still cannot forget is the concert I attended for the third time.

Though the appearance of the hall itself was not so very different from Japan.

There, in tiered seats rising row upon row, sat three or four hundred male and female kappas, each holding a program, listening with rapt attention.

At this third concert I sat in the very front row together with Tock, Tock's female kappa companion, and the philosopher Mag as well.

When the cello solo had ended, a kappa with oddly narrow eyes climbed casually onto the stage, a score tucked carelessly under his arm.

This kappa, as the program indicated, was the celebrated composer Craback.

As the program indicated -- no, there was no need to consult the program at all.

Craback was a member of the same Superman Club to which Tock belonged, and so I too knew him at least by sight.

"Lied -- Craback"

(Most of the programs in this land, too, were printed in German.)

Amid enthusiastic applause Craback gave us a brief bow, then walked quietly over to the piano.

There, just as casually, he began to play a lied of his own composition.

According to Tock, Craback was a genius without equal, past or present, among all the musicians this land had ever produced.

I was interested not only in Craback's music but also in his lyric poetry, a sideline of his, and so I listened with rapt attention to the great bowed shape of the piano's sound.

Tock and Mag, too, seemed no less entranced than I -- perhaps even more so.

But that beautiful (at least so the other kappas said) female kappa alone sat gripping her program tightly, now and then flicking out her long tongue as though impatient.

According to Mag, this was because she had failed to catch Craback some ten years before, and had held a grudge against the musician ever since.

Craback, pouring his whole soul into it, went on playing the piano as though locked in battle.

Then suddenly, ringing through the hall like a thunderclap, came the cry "Stop the performance!"

was the cry.

Startled by this voice, I turned around without thinking.

The owner of the voice was, unmistakably, a policeman of exceptional height sitting in the very back row. When I turned to look, the policeman remained calmly seated and, in a voice louder than before, roared "Stop the performance!"

once again.

And then --

After that it was utter chaos.

"Police tyranny!"

"Play on, Craback! Play on!"

"Fool!"

"Damn you!"

"Get out of here!"

"Don't give in!"

Amid this rising storm of voices, chairs toppled over, programs went flying, and on top of it all, empty cider bottles, pebbles, and even half-eaten cucumbers came raining down from who knows where.

Dumbfounded, I tried to ask Tock the reason for all this.

But Tock too seemed carried away with excitement, and stood bolt upright on his chair, "Play on, Craback! Play on!"

he kept shrieking.

Not only that, Tock's female kappa companion, having apparently forgotten her hostility toward the man, "Police tyranny!"

was shouting no less loudly than Tock himself.

Left with no choice, I turned to Mag and, "What's going on?"

I asked.

"This? This sort of thing happens all the time in this country. You see, to begin with, paintings and literature...."

Mag, ducking his head slightly each time something came flying past, went on explaining calmly as ever.

"To begin with, paintings and literature can, whatever else, always be understood at a glance for what they represent, and so in this country works of that kind are never banned from sale or exhibition. What we have instead is the banning of performances. Music, you see, is the one art form that even the most morally corrupting piece will mean nothing at all to a kappa without ears."

"But does that policeman have ears?"

"Well, that's a good question. No doubt, listening to that melody just now, it reminded him of the beating of his own heart while lying beside his wife."

Even as we spoke, the uproar only grew more furious by the moment.

Craback remained at the piano, turning to look back at us with haughty defiance.

But however haughty he might be, there was no avoiding the various objects flying at him.

So that, roughly every two or three seconds, his hard-won dignified pose would give way despite himself.

Yet on the whole he still managed to keep up the great musician's air of dignity, his narrow eyes blazing fiercely all the while.

As for me -- naturally, I too had taken Tock as a shield to avoid danger.

But driven by curiosity all the same, I went on eagerly talking with Mag.

"Isn't that kind of censorship rather violent?"

"Not at all -- if anything it's more advanced than the censorship of any other country. Take ×× for instance. In fact, just about a month ago...."

It was just at that moment, as he was saying this,

that an empty bottle unfortunately struck Mag square on the crown of his head, and with a single cry of "quack" (this is merely an interjection) he lost consciousness at once.

VIII

For some strange reason I had a certain fondness for Gael, the president of the glass company.

Gael was a capitalist among capitalists.

There was surely not a single kappa in this whole land with a belly as great as Gael's.

But sitting in his easy chair, flanked by a wife who looked rather like a lychee fruit and children who looked rather like cucumbers, he was the very picture of happiness.

I would sometimes go, in the company of the judge Pep or the doctor Chack, to dine at the Gael household.

I also went about, armed with a letter of introduction from Gael, touring various factories in which Gael and his friends had some interest or another.

Among all these various factories, the one I found most interesting was the factory of a book manufacturing company.

When I entered this factory with a young kappa engineer and beheld the great machines powered by hydroelectricity, I marveled all over again at how far the mechanical industry of the land of kappas had advanced.

They said that the factory produced some seven million volumes of books a year.

But what astonished me was not the number of volumes.

It was that producing so many books required scarcely any labor at all.

For in this land, to make a book, all one had to do was pour paper, ink, and a gray powder into the funnel-shaped mouth of the machine.

Once these raw materials went into the machine, in scarcely five minutes they emerged as countless volumes, in octavo, quarto, and every other format imaginable.

As I watched the various books pouring out like a waterfall, I asked the kappa engineer, who stood there with his chest puffed out proudly, what that gray powder was called.

The engineer, standing before the gleaming black machine, answered rather indifferently as follows.

"This? This is donkey brains. Yes, just dried once and then roughly ground into powder. The market price runs about two or three sen a ton."

Of course this sort of industrial miracle was by no means confined to the book manufacturing company.

The same thing was happening at the painting manufacturing company, and at the music manufacturing company as well.

In fact, according to Gael, in this land an average of seven or eight hundred new kinds of machines were invented every month, and mass production went steadily forward without ever waiting on human -- or rather kappa -- hands.

As a consequence, no fewer than forty or fifty thousand factory workers were laid off each month as well.

And yet, reading the morning newspaper in this land, one never once came across the word "strike."

Finding this strange, I once asked why this should be, on another occasion when Pep and Chack and I were invited to dine at the Gael household.

"Oh, they're all eaten up, you see."

Gael, puffing on his after-dinner cigar, said this in the most offhand manner imaginable.

But what "eaten up"

might mean, I had no idea.

At that Chack, in his pince-nez, seemed to sense my puzzlement, and offered an explanation from the side.

"They're all simply killed off, and their flesh is put to use as food. Take a look at the newspaper here. This month exactly sixty-four thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine workers were laid off, so the price of meat has dropped by that much, you see."

"And the workers are killed without a word of protest?"

"What good would protesting do? There's a Factory Worker Slaughter Law, after all."

This last remark came from Pep, who sat scowling behind a potted bayberry tree.

I felt, naturally, a wave of disgust.

But our host Gael, and Pep and Chack as well, all seemed to take the matter as perfectly natural.

Indeed, Chack laughed and spoke to me in a mocking tone.

"In short, the state simply spares them the trouble of starving to death or committing suicide on their own. It's no more than a whiff of poison gas, so there's hardly any suffering involved at all, you know."

"But to eat their flesh, that's...."

"Don't be absurd. If Mag heard you say that, he'd surely have a good laugh. Don't the daughters of the fourth estate in your own country become prostitutes as well? Getting indignant over the eating of factory workers' flesh is nothing but sentimentalism."

Listening to this exchange, Gael calmly offered me a plate of sandwiches from the nearby table and said this to me with perfect equanimity.

"Well? Won't you have one? This too is factory-worker meat, you know."

I recoiled, of course.

No, that was not all.

Leaving the laughter of Pep and Chack behind me, I fled straight out of the Gael parlor.

It happened to be a stormy night, one on which not even the light of stars could be seen above the rooftops.

Making my way back to my dwelling through that darkness, I retched without ceasing the whole way.

Vomit that showed pale white even in the dark of night.

IX

And yet Gael, the president of the glass company, was without doubt a sociable kappa at heart.

I often went with Gael to the club he belonged to, and passed many a pleasant evening there.

This was partly because that club was a far more comfortable place to be than the Superman Club that Tock belonged to.

And besides, though Gael's talk lacked the depth of the philosopher Mag's, it opened up for me an entirely new world -- a wide world I had never glimpsed before.

Gael would always stir his coffee cup with a spoon of pure gold, chatting away cheerfully on this and that.

I recall one thickly foggy evening when I sat listening to Gael talk, a vase of winter roses set between us.

If I remember correctly, it was a room done up in Secession style, with the walls, chairs, and table all white, trimmed with thin gold edging.

Gael, with a satisfied smile spread across his whole face more than usual, spoke of the Quorax Party cabinet that held power at the time.

The word "Quorax" is merely a meaningless interjection, so "Oh!"

is about the only way to translate it.

But in any case, it was a party that championed, above all else, "the interests of all kappas"

as its platform.

"The one who controls the Quorax Party is the famous statesman Loppe. 'Honesty is the best policy in diplomacy,' Bismarck is supposed to have said. But Loppe extends honesty to domestic politics as well...."

"But surely Loppe's speeches...."

"Now, now, hear me out. Of course every word of those speeches is a lie. But since everyone knows perfectly well they are lies, it comes to much the same thing as honesty in the end, wouldn't you say? To call it simply a lie is nothing but a prejudice peculiar to you humans. We kappas, unlike you.... but never mind that. What I wanted to tell you about was Loppe. Loppe controls the Quorax Party, but the one who controls Loppe in turn is Quiqui, the president of the Pou-Fou newspaper (this word 'Pou-Fou,' too, is merely a meaningless interjection; if one insists on translating it, one can only render it as something like 'Ah!'). But even Quiqui is not entirely his own master. The one who controls Quiqui is none other than the Gael sitting before you now."

"But -- forgive me if this seems rude -- isn't the Pou-Fou newspaper a paper that champions the workers? To say that its president, Quiqui, is under your control seems...."

"The reporters of the Pou-Fou newspaper are, naturally, champions of the workers. But there is no one to control the reporters except Quiqui himself. And Quiqui, in turn, cannot do without the backing of this same Gael."

Gael went on smiling as ever, toying with his pure gold spoon.

Seeing Gael like this, I felt less hatred for Gael himself than a rising sympathy for the reporters of the Pou-Fou newspaper.

At that Gael seemed to sense this sympathy at once from my silence, and, puffing out his great belly, said this.

"Oh, not all the reporters of the Pou-Fou newspaper are champions of the workers either. At the very least, we kappas champion ourselves before we champion anyone else.... But what's more troublesome still is that even I, Gael, am myself under someone else's control. Who do you suppose that might be? Why, my wife. The beautiful Mrs. Gael."

Gael laughed heartily.

"That sounds like happiness itself, if anything."

"In any case, I am satisfied. Though this too is something I can only speak of so freely to you -- to you, since you are not a kappa."

"Then in short, it is Mrs. Gael who controls the Quorax cabinet."

"Well, one could put it that way, I suppose.... But the war of seven years ago, at least, was without doubt started on account of a certain female kappa."

"A war? Has this country had wars too?"

"Indeed we have. And there's no telling when we might have one again in the future. After all, as long as there is a neighboring country...."

It was in fact only then that I learned the land of the kappas was not, after all, isolated from the rest of the world as a nation.

According to Gael's explanation, kappas always treat otters as a hypothetical enemy.

And what is more, otters were said to be armed with military forces every bit as formidable as those of the kappas.

I felt no small interest in this tale of a kappa war fought against the otters.

(For the idea that otters are a formidable enemy of the kappas is, after all, a new fact of which even the author of the Suiko Koryaku

and even Mr. Kunio Yanagita, author of the Sanshimin-danshu,

seem to have remained entirely unaware.)

"Before that war broke out, both nations naturally kept a wary eye on one another without letting down their guard, for the simple reason that each feared the other equally. Then one day, an otter living in this country paid a visit to a certain married pair of kappas. Now, as it happened, that female kappa was planning to kill her husband. He was, you see, quite the dissolute sort. And on top of that, the fact that he was insured with a life insurance policy may well have added something of a temptation."

"Did you know this married couple yourself?"

"Yes -- well, no, I only knew the male kappa. My wife always speaks of him as a wicked sort. But if you ask me, he was less a wicked sort than a lunatic given to no end of persecution delusions, terrified above all of being caught by a female kappa.... At any rate, this female kappa put potassium cyanide into her husband's cup of cocoa. But then, through some mix-up, it was their guest, the otter, who drank it instead. The otter died on the spot, naturally. And then...."

"And then it led to war?"

"Yes -- unfortunately that otter happened to hold a decoration of honor, you see."

"Which side won the war?"

"Our side won, of course. Some three hundred sixty-nine thousand five hundred kappas gave their lives bravely for the cause. But compared to the enemy's losses, that was nothing at all. Nearly every fur one finds in this country these days is otter fur. During that war I myself, besides manufacturing glass, also sent coal cinders to the front."

"What were the coal cinders used for?"

"For provisions, of course. We kappas will eat absolutely anything once we're hungry enough, you know."

"That is -- please don't take offense -- but that must have been for the kappas on the front lines.... In our country that would be quite a scandal, you know."

"In this country too it would certainly count as a scandal. But if I say so myself, no one ever makes a scandal of it that way. As the philosopher Mag likes to say: 'Speak your own evil aloud yourself, and evil will vanish of its own accord.' And besides, it wasn't only profit -- I myself was burning with patriotic fervor at the time, you know."

Just then a waiter of the club came in.

The waiter bowed to Gael, and then said this as though reciting from memory.

"There is a fire next door to your residence, sir."

"F-- fire!"

Gael leapt to his feet in alarm.

I, of course, rose to my feet as well.

But the waiter, quite composed, added the following words.

"It has already been put out, however."

Gael watched the waiter go, his face wearing an expression somewhere between laughter and tears.

Seeing that face, I realized that I had, at some point, come to hate this president of the glass company.

But now Gael stood before me no longer a great capitalist at all, but simply a kappa.

I pulled a winter rose from the vase and placed it in Gael's hand.

"But even if the fire is out, your wife must have had quite a fright. Here, take this home with you."

"Thank you."

Gael clasped my hand.

Then, suddenly grinning, he leaned in and spoke to me in a low voice.

"That house next door happens to be a rental property of mine, you know. At least I'll collect the fire insurance money out of it."

I still remember vividly Gael's smile at that moment -- a smile I could neither despise nor hate.

X

"What's the matter? You seem oddly gloomy today."

It was the day after that fire.

With a cigarette in my mouth, I said this to the student Lap, who sat slumped in a chair in my parlor.

And indeed Lap sat there with his left leg crossed over his right, staring blankly down at the floor, so listless that even his rotted beak seemed invisible.

"Lap, what's the matter?"

I asked again, and,

"Oh, it's nothing, really. It's a silly thing...."

Lap finally raised his head, his voice thick and mournful.

"Today, looking out the window, I muttered without thinking, 'Oh, the dog violets have bloomed.' At that my sister suddenly turned pale and snapped at me, 'Well, I suppose I'm nothing but a dog violet myself, then, aren't I!' And on top of that, my mother, who always dotes on my sister, turned on me too."

"Why would the blooming of dog violets upset your sister so?"

"Well, I suppose she took it to mean something about catching a male kappa. Then my aunt, who's never gotten along with my mother, joined right in on the quarrel, and it turned into a full-blown row. And my father, who's drunk the whole year round, heard the commotion and started striking out at whoever was nearest, without discrimination. As if that weren't enough of a mess, my younger brother took the chance to steal my mother's purse and ran straight off to the cinema or some such. I... I really, I just...."

Lap buried his face in both hands and, without another word, began to weep.

Naturally I felt sympathy for him.

And at the same time, naturally, I recalled the poet Tock's contempt for the family system.

I patted Lap's shoulder and did my best to console him.

"That sort of thing happens everywhere. Come now, take heart."

"But... but if only my beak hadn't rotted too...."

"Well, that's something you'll simply have to accept. Come, let's go pay a visit to Tock's place."

"Tock looks down on me. I haven't the courage to abandon my family the way he has."

"Then let's go to Craback's place."

Since that concert I had become friendly with Craback as well, and so I decided to take Lap along to the great musician's house in any case.

Craback lived a far more luxurious life than Tock did.

Not that he lived the way the capitalist Gael did, mind you.

It was simply that he filled his room with all manner of antiques -- Tanagra figurines and Persian pottery -- amid which stood a Turkish couch, and he was forever playing with his children beneath a portrait of himself.

But today, for some reason, he sat with his arms crossed over his chest, a bitter look on his face.

What is more, scraps of torn paper lay scattered all across the floor at his feet.

Lap too must surely have met Craback before, in the company of the poet Tock.

But he seemed alarmed by the atmosphere in the room, and today he merely bowed politely and sat down in silence in a corner.

"What's the matter, Craback?"

I asked the great musician this almost in place of a greeting.

"What's the matter, you ask? Those idiot critics! They're saying my lyric poems can't hold a candle to Tock's!"

"But you're a musician, after all, so...."

"If that were all, I could stand it. But they're even saying I'm not fit to be called a musician at all, compared to Loque!"

Loque was a musician often compared to Craback.

But since he unfortunately did not belong to the Superman Club, I had never once spoken with him.

Though I had seen his face many times in photographs -- a face with an upturned beak, the sort that looked as though it might have a stubborn streak.

"Loque is a genius too, no doubt. But Loque's music lacks the modern passion that overflows in yours."

"Do you really think so?"

"I do indeed."

At that Craback leapt to his feet, snatched up a Tanagra figurine, and hurled it violently to the floor.

Lap, apparently quite startled, gave a cry and made to flee.

But Craback made a quick gesture toward Lap and me meaning "Don't be alarmed,"

and then said this, coldly, once more.

"That's because you too lack ears, like any ordinary person. I am afraid of Loque...."

"You? Stop putting on this false modesty."

"Who's putting on false modesty? If I were going to put on airs for anyone, I'd do it before the critics, not before you two. I -- Craback -- am a genius. On that point I fear Loque not at all."

"Then what is it you're afraid of?"

"Something whose true nature I cannot fathom -- the star, so to speak, that governs Loque."

"I'm afraid that doesn't quite make sense to me."

"Then let me put it this way, and perhaps you'll understand. Loque is never influenced by me. But I, before I even realize it, find myself influenced by Loque."

"That's simply a matter of your own sensitivity...."

"No, listen to me. It isn't a matter of sensitivity at all. Loque always goes calmly about doing the work that only he can do. But I am forever restless. From Loque's point of view, perhaps the gap between us is a single step. But to me it is a gap of ten miles."

"But your heroic symphony, sir...."

Craback narrowed his already narrow eyes even further and glared at Lap with irritation.

"Be quiet. What could someone like you possibly understand? I know Loque. I know Loque far better than any of those dogs who grovel before him."

"Come now, calm yourself a little."

"If only I could calm myself.... I've always thought this: some power beyond our knowing set Loque before me for the sole purpose of mocking me -- of mocking Craback. The philosopher Mag understands all of this perfectly well, for all that he does nothing but sit reading his musty old books under that stained-glass lantern of his."

"How do you mean?"

"Just look at that book Mag wrote recently, Words of a Fool."

Craback handed me a copy of the book -- or rather, flung it at me.

Then, still with his arms crossed, he snapped this out curtly.

"Well, I'll bid you good day for now."

I decided to head back out into the street once more, together with the thoroughly deflated Lap.

The bustling street was, as ever, lined with all manner of shops beneath the shade of the beech trees.

We walked along in silence, without any particular purpose.

Then who should come walking toward us but the long-haired poet Tock.

On seeing our faces, Tock pulled a handkerchief from the pouch on his belly and wiped his brow again and again.

"Ah, it's been a while. I was just thinking of paying Craback a visit today, after all this time, but...."

Not wanting these two artists to fall into a quarrel, I told Tock, in a roundabout way, how thoroughly ill-tempered Craback had seemed.

"Is that so. Then I'll give it up for today. Craback's nerves have been in a bad state, after all.... I myself have been suffering from insomnia these past two or three weeks."

"Well, how about joining us for a walk instead?"

"No, I'll pass today. Oh!"

No sooner had Tock cried out than he seized my arm tightly.

And before I knew it, cold sweat was pouring down his whole body.

"What's wrong?"

"What's the matter?"

"It's nothing, it's just -- it looked to me as if a green monkey had poked its head out of that automobile window over there."

Somewhat worried, I urged him in any case to let the doctor Chack examine him.

But Tock, whatever we said, showed not the slightest sign of consenting.

What is more, eyeing the two of us with something like suspicion, he even went so far as to say this.

"I am certainly no anarchist. Do be sure not to forget that. Well then, farewell. As for Chack, I'll have nothing to do with him."

We stood there blankly, watching Tock's retreating back.

We -- no, "we"

is not quite right.

For the student Lap, at some point, had planted his legs wide apart in the middle of the street and was peering at the endless stream of automobiles and passersby through the gap between them.

Wondering whether this kappa too had gone mad, I hauled Lap back up in alarm.

"This is no joke. What on earth are you doing?"

But Lap, rubbing his eyes, answered with surprising composure.

"Oh, I was simply so gloomy that I thought I'd try looking at the world upside down. But it turns out to be exactly the same either way."

XI

The following is drawn from several chapters of the philosopher Mag's book, Words of a Fool.

--

*

The fool always believes that everyone but himself is a fool.

*

That we love nature is not entirely unrelated to the fact that nature neither hates us nor is jealous of us.

*

The wisest way to live is to despise the customs of one's age while never once breaking them.

*

The only things we truly wish to boast of are those we do not possess.

*

There is no one who objects to the smashing of idols.

At the same time, there is no one who objects to becoming an idol himself.

But those who can sit calmly upon the pedestal of an idol are the most favored of the gods -- fools, villains, or heroes.

(Craback had left a mark of his claw upon this passage.)

*

The thought we need for living may well have been exhausted three thousand years ago.

All we do is add fresh flame to old firewood.

*

Our peculiar trait is that we habitually transcend our own consciousness.

*

Suppose that happiness carries pain within it, and peace carries tedium within it -- what then?

*

It is harder to defend oneself than to defend another.

Let the doubtful look to the lawyers.

*

Pride, lust, doubt -- for three thousand years, every sin has sprung from these three.

And, in all likelihood, every virtue as well.

*

Reducing material desire does not necessarily bring peace.

To attain peace, we must also reduce spiritual desire.

(Craback had left a mark of his claw upon this passage too.)

*

We are more unfortunate than humans.

Humans have not evolved as far as kappas.

(On reading this passage I could not help laughing aloud.)

*

To do is to be able to do, and to be able to do is to do.

In the end, our life can never escape this circular argument --

that is to say, it remains irrational from beginning to end.

*

After Baudelaire went mad, he expressed his whole view of life in a single word -- the word for a woman's sex.

But it was not necessarily this that revealed the man himself.

Rather it was that, trusting so entirely in his own genius -- a poetic genius sufficient to sustain his life -- he forgot the one word for his own stomach.

(This passage too still bore the mark of Craback's claw.)

*

If we were to live by reason alone, we would naturally have to deny our own existence.

That Voltaire, who made a god of reason, ended his life in happiness merely shows that humans have not evolved as far as kappas.

XII

It was a rather cold afternoon.

I had grown tired of reading Words of a Fool,

and so I went out to pay a visit to the philosopher Mag.

On the corner of a certain lonely street I came upon a kappa, thin as a mosquito, leaning idly against a wall.

And this was, without any doubt, the very kappa who had once stolen my fountain pen.

Thinking, "got you now," I called out to a sturdy policeman who happened to be passing by just then.

"Would you mind questioning that kappa over there for a moment? He stole my fountain pen about a month ago, you see."

The policeman raised the club in his right hand (policemen in this country carry a yew-wood club instead of a sword)

"Hey, you,"

he said, calling out to the kappa.

I half expected that kappa to bolt and run.

But, contrary to my expectations, he walked up to the policeman quite calmly.

What is more, he stood there with his arms crossed, staring back and forth between the policeman's face and mine with an air of sheer defiance.

But the policeman, without showing any anger, took a notebook from the pouch on his belly and set at once to questioning him.

"Your name?"

"Gluck."

"Occupation?"

"Until just two or three days ago I was a mail carrier."

"Very well. Now, according to this man's statement, you stole his fountain pen."

"Yes, I stole it about a month ago."

"What for?"

"I meant it as a toy for my child."

"And that child?"

The policeman fixed a sharp gaze on the kappa for the first time.

"Died a week ago."

"Do you have a death certificate?"

The thin kappa drew a piece of paper from the pouch on his belly.

The policeman glanced over the paper, then suddenly grinned and clapped the kappa on the shoulder.

"Very well. Sorry to have troubled you."

Dumbfounded, I stood staring at the policeman's face.

Meanwhile the thin kappa, muttering something under his breath, turned his back on us and walked away.

At last collecting myself, I asked the policeman this.

"Why didn't you arrest that kappa?"

"That kappa is innocent."

"But he stole my fountain pen...."

"No doubt to use as a toy for his child. But that child is dead now. If you have any doubts about it, you're welcome to look up Article 1285 of the Criminal Code."

With that the policeman went striding off somewhere without another word.

Having no choice, I repeated "Article 1285 of the Criminal Code"

to myself, over and over, as I hurried off to Mag's house.

The philosopher Mag was fond of company.

Indeed, that very day his dim room was already filled with the judge Pep, the doctor Chack, and Gael, the glass company president, all sending up curls of tobacco smoke beneath the seven-colored stained-glass lantern.

That the judge Pep happened to be there was, for me, a stroke of good luck above all.

No sooner had I taken a seat than, instead of looking up Article 1285, I asked Pep about it directly.

"Pep, forgive my rudeness, but does this country not punish criminals at all?"

Pep first blew out a leisurely stream of smoke from his gold-tipped cigarette, then answered rather indifferently.

"Of course we punish them. We even carry out the death penalty, you know."

"But about a month ago, I...."

After telling him the whole story in detail, I asked him about that Article 1285 of the Criminal Code.

"Hmm, that reads as follows. -- 'Whatever crime a person may have committed, once the circumstances that gave rise to that crime have ceased to exist, the offender may no longer be punished for it.' In other words, in your case, that kappa was once a parent, but is no longer a parent now, and so the crime has naturally ceased to exist along with it."

"That seems rather irrational to me."

"Don't be absurd. It is precisely treating a kappa who *was* a parent and a kappa who *is* a parent as one and the same thing that would be irrational. Ah, come to think of it, isn't that exactly how Japanese law treats the matter? That does strike us as rather comical. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh."

Pep tossed away his cigarette, letting out a listless little smirk.

At that Chack, who had little to do with the law, spoke up.

Chack adjusted his pince-nez slightly and asked me this.

"Does Japan have the death penalty too?"

"It does. In Japan it's carried out by hanging."

Feeling something of an antipathy toward Pep's cold detachment, I took the opportunity to fire off a little sarcasm.

"I suppose the death penalty in this country is carried out in a rather more civilized fashion than in Japan?"

"Of course it's civilized."

Pep remained just as composed as ever.

"In this country we don't use hanging or anything of the sort. On rare occasions electricity is used. But usually not even that. We simply tell the criminal the name of his crime, and that is all."

"And a kappa dies from that alone?"

"He does indeed. Our nervous systems, we kappas', are far more delicate than yours, you see."

"And it isn't only for the death penalty. The same method is sometimes used in murder as well --"

Gael, his whole face tinged purple in the light of the stained glass, put on an amiable smile.

"Just the other day I very nearly suffered heart failure myself, after some socialist called me a thief."

"That kind of thing seems to happen more often than one would think. A certain lawyer I knew actually died from it, you know."

I turned to the kappa who had put in this remark -- the philosopher Mag.

Mag, wearing his usual sardonic little smile, went on talking without looking at anyone in particular.

"That kappa was called a frog by someone -- and of course you're already aware, I imagine, that to be called a frog in this country means something like being called subhuman -- and after wondering to himself every single day, am I a frog, am I not a frog, he finally died of it in the end."

"That's suicide, in other words."

"Though the fellow who called him a frog certainly meant to kill him by saying it. Seen through your eyes, I suppose that too would count as...."

It was just at that moment that Mag said this.

Suddenly, from beyond the wall of that room -- unmistakably from the poet Tock's house -- came the sharp report of a pistol, ringing out as though to strike back at the air itself.

XIII

We rushed to Tock's house.

Tock lay on his back among his potted alpine plants, a pistol gripped in his right hand, blood flowing from the plate on his head.

Beside him a female kappa lay with her face buried in Tock's chest, weeping loudly.

I helped the female kappa up (though as a rule I never much cared for touching a kappa's slippery skin)

and asked her,

"What happened?"

"I don't know what happened. He just seemed to be writing something, and then all at once he shot himself in the head. Oh, what am I to do? Qur-r-r-r-r, qur-r-r-r-r --"

(This is the sound of a kappa weeping.)

"Well, Tock was always such a willful fellow, after all."

Gael, president of the glass company, said this to the judge Pep, shaking his head sorrowfully.

But Pep said nothing, and simply lit a fresh gold-tipped cigarette.

Then Chack, who had until then been kneeling and examining Tock's wound, rose with all the bearing of a physician and announced to the five of us.

(One human and four kappas, to be precise.)

"There's nothing to be done. Tock always had a weak stomach, to begin with, which alone made him prone to melancholy."

"You said he was writing something."

The philosopher Mag murmured this to himself, almost as if excusing something, and picked up a sheet of paper from the desk.

We all craned our necks (though I alone was the exception)

to peer over Mag's broad shoulder at the sheet of paper.

"Come, let us rise and go, to the valley that parts us from this earthly world.

Where the crags stand steep and rugged, where the mountain streams run clear,

to the valley fragrant with the blossoms of medicinal herbs."

Mag turned back to us and said this with a wry half-smile.

"This is plagiarized from Goethe's 'Mignon's Song,' you know. So it seems Tock killed himself worn out as a poet too, in the end."

Just then, as it happened, the musician Craback pulled up in his automobile.

Seeing this scene before him, Craback stood at the doorway for a while without moving.

But then he came striding toward us and spoke to Mag as though bellowing at him.

"Is that Tock's will?"

"No, the last poem he wrote."

"A poem?"

Mag, still not the least bit ruffled, handed Tock's manuscript to Craback, whose hair now stood on end.

Craback, paying no attention to anyone around him, began reading the poem intently.

He scarcely even answered Mag's words at all.

"What do you make of Tock's death?"

"Come, let us rise... I too may die at any moment, who knows.... to the valley that parts us from this earthly world...."

"But you were one of Tock's close friends yourself, weren't you?"

"Close friends? Tock was always alone.... to the valley that parts us from this earthly world.... only, Tock was unfortunate.... where the crags stand steep and rugged...."

"Unfortunate?"

"Where the mountain streams run clear.... you are the fortunate ones.... where the crags stand steep and rugged...."

I felt sympathy for the female kappa, whose weeping still had not ceased, and gently drew her by the shoulders over to the sofa in the corner of the room.

There sat a kappa child, two or three years old, laughing without knowing anything of what had happened.

In place of the female kappa, I set about soothing the kappa child instead.

And at some point I felt tears welling up in my own eyes.

That was the only time, before or after, during my whole stay in the land of the kappas, that I ever shed a tear.

"Still, one feels for the family saddled with such a willful kappa."

"After all, he never gave a thought to what came after."

The judge Pep, lighting a fresh cigarette as ever, answered the capitalist Gael.

Then we were all startled by a loud shout from the musician Craback.

Craback, clutching the poem manuscript, called out to no one in particular.

"That's it! I can write a magnificent funeral march out of this!"

With his narrow eyes now blazing, Craback gave Mag's hand a quick squeeze and dashed straight for the door.

By this time, of course, a great crowd of neighboring kappas had already gathered at the doorway of Tock's house, peering curiously inside.

But Craback, shoving these kappas aside to left and right with reckless force, leapt straight into his automobile.

At the same instant the automobile roared off and vanished somewhere in an instant.

"Now, now, stop your gawking in there."

The judge Pep, taking the place of a policeman, pushed the crowd of kappas back and shut the door of Tock's house.

Perhaps because of this, the room fell suddenly still.

Amid this stillness -- amid the smell of Tock's blood mingling with the scent of the alpine flowers -- we discussed what arrangements needed to be made.

But the philosopher Mag alone stood gazing at Tock's corpse, lost in some vacant thought.

I patted Mag's shoulder and, "What are you thinking about?"

I asked.

"About the life of a kappa."

"What about the life of a kappa?"

"Whatever else, in order for us kappas to see out our kappa lives to the end...."

Mag added this in a low voice, seeming somewhat embarrassed.

"In any case, one must believe in some power beyond us kappas ourselves."

XIV

It was this remark of Mag's that first put me in mind of religion.

Being a materialist myself, I had of course never once given serious thought to religion before.

But moved as I was by Tock's death at that moment, I found myself wondering just what the religion of the kappas might be.

I promptly put this question to the student Lap.

"Well, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and the rest are all practiced here. But the most powerful of all, without question, is the Modern Faith. Some call it the Life Faith."

(The translation "Life Faith"

may not be quite accurate.

The original word is Quemoocha.

The "-cha" would correspond to the English suffix "-ism."

As for "quemoo," its root form "quemal" means not simply "to live,"

but rather something closer to "to eat one's meals, to drink one's wine, to engage in intercourse,"

and the like.)

"So this country has churches and temples too, then?"

"Don't be absurd. The great cathedral of the Modern Faith is the largest building in this entire country. Why don't we go have a look at it?"

On a certain overcast, muggy afternoon, Lap proudly took me along to visit this great cathedral.

Sure enough, it was a massive structure, some ten times the size of the Nikolai Cathedral.

What is more, it was a massive structure combining every architectural style into one.

Standing before this great cathedral and gazing up at its tall towers and round domes, I felt something almost unsettling about it.

They truly looked, to my eyes, like countless tentacles stretching up toward the sky.

We stood before the entrance (and compared to that entrance alone, how small we must have looked!)

and for a while gazed up at this rare and extraordinary cathedral, which seemed less like a piece of architecture than some monstrous, unfathomable creature.

The interior of the great cathedral was likewise vast.

Among its Corinthian columns any number of worshippers walked about.

But even they looked exceedingly small, just as we did.

Before long we came across a bent-backed old kappa.

Lap bowed his head slightly to this kappa and addressed him politely.

"Elder, it is a joy above all to see you in such good health."

The other kappa returned the bow and answered just as politely.

"Why, if it isn't Mr. Lap. You too seem as always -- (he trailed off here, no doubt only just then noticing that Lap's beak had rotted away) -- ah, well, in fine health regardless, it would seem. But what brings you here today...."

"Today I've come along to accompany this gentleman here. As you are no doubt aware --"

and Lap went on at great length telling him all about me.

This, it seemed, also served as something of an excuse for how rarely Lap himself came to this great cathedral.

"And so I was hoping you might be willing to show this gentleman around."

The elder smiled magnanimously, first offering me a greeting, then quietly pointing toward the altar at the front.

"Though when I say show you around, there is little I can really do for you. What we the faithful worship is the 'Tree of Life' upon the altar there. As you can see, the Tree of Life bears fruit both gold and green. We call the gold fruit the 'Fruit of Good,' and the green fruit the 'Fruit of Evil'...."

Even in the midst of this explanation, I already found myself growing bored.

For all the elder's careful words, they sounded to me like nothing more than a tired old metaphor.

Naturally I did my best to feign an attentive expression.

But now and then I still let my eyes wander quietly around the interior of the cathedral.

Corinthian columns, Gothic vaults, an Arabesque checkerboard floor, prayer desks in a mock-Secession style -- the harmony these things made together possessed a strangely barbaric sort of beauty.

But what caught my eye above all were the marble busts set in the niches along both sides.

I felt somehow as though I recognized those statues.

Nor was that so strange.

For the bent-backed kappa, having finished his explanation of the Tree of Life,

now led Lap and me over to the niche on the right side and began explaining the bust within it as follows.

"This is one of our saints -- the saint who rebelled against everything, Strindberg. This saint is said, after no end of suffering, to have found salvation at last through Swedenborg's philosophy. But in truth he found no salvation at all. This saint simply believed in the Life Faith, as we do -- or rather, he had no choice but to believe in it. Do read the book this saint left us, called Legends. This saint himself confesses in it that he once attempted suicide."

Feeling somewhat melancholy, I turned my eyes to the next niche.

The bust in the next niche was of a German with a thick mustache.

"This is Nietzsche, poet of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. This saint sought salvation in the superman of his own making. But he too found no salvation, and went mad in the end. Had he not gone mad, he might well never have been counted among the saints at all...."

The elder fell silent for a moment, then led us on to the third niche.

"The third is Tolstoy. This saint practiced more austerities than anyone. Being of noble birth, he could not bear to let the curious public witness his suffering. This saint strove to believe in a Christ he could not, in fact, believe in. Indeed, he even went so far, at times, as to publicly declare that he did believe. But in the end, in his later years, he could no longer endure being such a tragic liar. It is well known that this saint too, from time to time, felt a terror of the beam in his study ceiling. Yet since he is counted among the saints, he did not, of course, take his own life."

The bust in the fourth niche was of one of us Japanese.

Seeing this Japanese face, I felt, after all, a pang of nostalgia.

"This is Kunikida Doppo. A poet who understood perfectly well the feelings of a laborer run over and killed by a train. But surely you need no further explanation than that. Now please look inside the fifth niche --"

"Isn't this Wagner?"

"It is. A revolutionary who was friends with a king. In his later years the saint Wagner even said grace before meals. But naturally he was one of the faithful of the Life Faith rather than of Christianity. According to letters Wagner left behind, there is no telling how many times the suffering of this earthly life drove this saint to the brink of death."

By this time we were already standing before the sixth niche.

"This is a friend of the saint Strindberg. A French painter, once a stockbroker, who took a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old Tahitian girl as his bride in place of the wife with whom he had so many children. This saint carried a sailor's blood in his thick veins. But look at his lips -- you can still see the marks of arsenic, or something of the sort. In the seventh niche is.... but you must be tired by now. Do come this way, please."

I was indeed tired, and so, together with Lap, I followed the elder down an incense-scented corridor into a certain room.

In the corner of that small room, beneath a black statue of Venus, a bunch of wild grapes had been left as an offering.

Having expected an unadorned monastic cell, I found this rather unexpected.

The elder seemed to sense this feeling in my expression, and before offering us chairs, explained as follows, with a somewhat apologetic air.

"Please do not forget that our religion is the Life Faith. Our god -- the teaching of the 'Tree of Life' -- is simply, 'Live abundantly.' ... Mr. Lap, have you shown this gentleman our scripture?"

"No.... to be honest, I myself have scarcely ever read it."

Lap answered honestly, scratching the plate on his head.

But the elder went on speaking, smiling as quietly as ever.

"Then you cannot possibly understand. Our god created this world in the course of a single day. (Though the 'Tree of Life' is called a tree, it is by no means incapable of such feats.) And not only that -- he created the female kappa. The female kappa, out of sheer boredom, then longed for a male kappa. Our god, taking pity on her lament, took the female kappa's own brain and used it to create the male kappa. Our god then bestowed upon these two kappas the blessing: 'Eat, mate, live abundantly.'..."

Amid the elder's words I found myself thinking of the poet Tock.

The poet Tock had, unfortunately, been an atheist just as I was.

It was no wonder that I, not being a kappa myself, knew nothing of the Life Faith.

But Tock, having been born in the land of the kappas, must surely have known of the "Tree of Life"

all along.

Pitying Tock's end, having failed to follow this teaching, I broke in on the elder's words to speak of him.

"Ah, that poor unfortunate poet."

The elder let out a deep sigh on hearing my story.

"What determines our fate is faith, circumstance, and chance, and nothing more. (Though you humans would no doubt add heredity to that list as well.) Poor Mr. Tock simply had the misfortune of possessing no faith."

"Tock must have envied you. In fact, I envy you myself. Lap here is still young, so...."

"If only my beak were in proper shape, I daresay I might be more of an optimist myself."

Hearing us say this, the elder let out another deep sigh.

And all the while his eyes, brimming with tears, stayed fixed upon the black statue of Venus.

"The truth is, I too -- this is a secret of mine, so please do not repeat it to anyone -- the truth is that I too cannot bring myself to believe in our god. But there was a time when my prayers...."

It was just as the elder said this

that the door of the room suddenly flew open, and a large female kappa came bursting in and flung herself straight at the elder.

Naturally we tried to hold this female kappa back.

But in that instant she had already thrown the elder down flat on the floor.

"You old wretch! You've gone and stolen money from my purse again today, to spend on drink!"

Some ten minutes later, all but fleeing outright, we left the elder and his wife behind and made our way down the entrance steps of the great cathedral.

"No wonder that elder can't bring himself to believe in the 'Tree of Life' either, after all that."

After we had walked along in silence for a while, Lap said this to me.

But rather than answer, I found myself turning back, without thinking, to look at the great cathedral once more.

The great cathedral still stretched its tall towers and round domes toward the dull, overcast sky, like countless tentacles.

Trailing behind it all the uncanny air of a mirage seen against a desert sky....

XV

About a week later, I happened to hear a curious tale from the doctor Chack.

It was a story about a ghost appearing at Tock's old house.

By that time the female kappa had already moved off somewhere else, and our poet friend's house had been turned into a photographer's studio.

According to Chack, at this studio, whenever a photograph was taken, Tock's figure would somehow always appear faintly in the background behind the customer.

Chack, being a materialist, did not of course believe in any sort of life after death.

Indeed, even as he told me this story, he wore a rather malicious little smile and, "So it would seem even the soul is a material existence, after all,"

he added, as though offering some sort of commentary.

I myself was not so very different from Chack in disbelieving in ghosts.

But having felt a certain fondness for the poet Tock, I hurried straight to the bookshop and bought up newspapers and magazines carrying articles about Tock's ghost, along with photographs of it.

Sure enough, looking at these photographs, one could see a kappa who did somewhat resemble Tock, appearing faintly behind kappas of every age and sex.

But what astonished me was not so much the photographs of Tock's ghost as the articles about it -- in particular, the report of the Society for Psychical Research concerning Tock's ghost.

I translated that report fairly literally at the time, and so I shall set down the gist of it below.

Anything appearing in parentheses, however, represents my own added commentary. --

Report Concerning the Ghost of the Poet Tock.

(Published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, No. 8274)

Our Society for Psychical Research recently held a special investigative session at No. 251 □□ Street, the former residence of the poet Tock, who took his own life some time ago, now serving as the studio of the photographer ××.

The members present were as follows.

(Names omitted.)

We seventeen members, together with the president of the Society, Mr. Peck, gathered at 10:30 in the morning on September 17th in a room of the aforementioned studio, accompanied by our most trusted medium, Mrs. Hop.

No sooner had Mrs. Hop entered the studio than she at once sensed a psychic atmosphere, her whole body seized with convulsions, and she was moved to vomit on several occasions.

According to the medium, this was because the poet Tock, having so loved his strong tobacco in life, had left a psychic atmosphere likewise laced with nicotine.

We members, together with Mrs. Hop, sat in silence around a round table.

After three minutes and twenty-five seconds, the medium fell into an extremely sudden somnambulistic state, and was thereupon possessed by the spirit of the poet Tock.

We members, in order of age, then began the following exchange with Tock's spirit as it possessed the medium.

Q. Why do you appear as a ghost?

A. In order to learn of my posthumous fame.

Q. Do you -- or do spirits in general -- still desire fame even after death?

A. At least I myself cannot help desiring it.

And yet a certain Japanese poet I once encountered held posthumous fame in contempt.

Q. Do you know the name of this poet?

A. Unfortunately I have forgotten it.

I remember only a single verse of the seventeen-syllable poems he was fond of composing.

Q. What was that verse?

A. "An old pond -- a frog leaps in, the sound of water."

--

Q. Do you consider this verse a fine piece of work?

A. I would not necessarily call it a poor one.

Only, if the word "frog"

were replaced with "kappa,"

it would surely shine with a still more dazzling brilliance.

Q. And what would be the reason for that?

A. Because we kappas feel a burning need to find kappas in every form of art, whatever it may be.

At this point the president, Mr. Peck, reminded us seventeen members that this was a special session of the Society for Psychical Research, and not a poetry discussion group.

Q. What is the life of you spirits like?

A. No different from your own lives.

Q. Then do you regret having taken your own life?

A. Not necessarily.

Should I ever grow weary of my psychic existence, I shall simply take up a pistol once more and *make my own end of it*.

Q. Is it easy to *make one's own end*?

The spirit of Mr. Tock answered this question with another question.

To anyone acquainted with Mr. Tock, this would seem an entirely natural sort of rejoinder.

A. Is it easy to take one's own life?

Q. Is your life eternal?

A. Opinions on our lives are so varied and contradictory as to be unreliable.

Do not forget that among us too there exist various faiths -- Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, and so on.

Q. And what do you yourself believe?

A. I am, as ever, a skeptic.

Q. But surely you at least do not doubt the existence of spirits?

A. I cannot claim the same certainty as the rest of you.

Q. How many friends do you have?

A. My circle of friends spans all ages and places, and surely numbers no fewer than three hundred.

Among the more famous of them I might name Kleist, Mainlander, Weininger....

Q. Are all your friends suicides?

A. Not necessarily.

Montaigne, for one, who defended suicide, is among my most respected friends.

Only, I do not associate with pessimists who never took their own lives -- fellows of the Schopenhauer variety.

Q. Is Schopenhauer well?

A. He is at present engaged in establishing a psychic pessimism, and debating the merits of *making his own end*.

Yet he seems to have found considerable relief upon learning that cholera too is a germ-borne disease.

We members went on, one after another, to ask after the spiritual fortunes of Napoleon, Confucius, Dostoevsky, Darwin, Cleopatra, Buddha, Demosthenes, Dante, Sen no Rikyu, and others.

But Mr. Tock, unfortunately, gave no detailed answers to these, and instead turned the questions back upon various pieces of gossip concerning himself.

Q. What is my posthumous reputation like?

A. One critic called you, "one of the minor poets,"

or so he said.

Q. He must be one of those who bore me a grudge for never sending him a copy of my poetry collection.

Has my complete works been published?

A. Your complete works have been published, though sales appear to be extremely poor.

Q. My complete works shall become the property of all humankind three hundred years from now -- that is, once the copyright has expired.

And what of the lady friend I lived with?

A. She has become the wife of a certain bookseller, Mr. Rack.

Q. She has unfortunately, no doubt, still not learned that Rack's eye is a glass one.

And my child?

A. I hear he is at the national orphanage.

Mr. Tock fell silent for a while, then began a new line of questioning.

Q. What of my house?

A. It has become the studio of a certain photographer.

Q. What has become of my desk?

A. No one knows what has become of it.

Q. In the drawer of my desk I kept a bundle of letters I treasured -- but fortunately this is no concern of you busy gentlemen.

Even now my psychic realm slowly sinks into twilight.

I must take my leave of you all.

Farewell.

Gentlemen.

Farewell.

My good gentlemen.

With these final words Mrs. Hop was once again suddenly roused to consciousness.

We seventeen members hereby swear before heaven that the foregoing exchange is true and accurate.

(We might further note that the fee paid to our trusted Mrs. Hop was calculated according to the daily wage she once earned as an actress.)

XVI

After reading this article, I found myself growing steadily more melancholy about staying in this country, and began to wish somehow to return to our own human land.

But however far and wide I searched, I could not find the hole I had fallen through.

In the course of this, I recalled something the fisherman Bag had once told me -- that there lived, on the outskirts of a certain town in this country, an elderly kappa who passed his days quietly, reading books and playing the flute.

Thinking that this kappa might know some way for me to escape this land, I went straight out to the edge of town.

But when I arrived there, I found, in a decidedly small house, not an elderly kappa at all but a kappa of no more than twelve or thirteen, whose head-plate had not even hardened yet, calmly playing his flute.

Naturally I assumed I must have come to the wrong house.

But just to be sure, I asked his name, and it turned out to be, without any doubt, the very elderly kappa Bag had told me of.

"But you seem to be just a child...."

"You mean you didn't know? By some quirk of fate, I already had white hair when I came out of my mother's belly. And since then I've grown younger and younger, little by little, until I've become the child you see before you now. But if you reckon up the years, counting sixty for the time before I was born, I suppose I must be somewhere around a hundred and fifteen or sixteen by now."

I looked around the room.

Perhaps it was only my imagination, but there seemed to hang, among the plain chairs and table, a certain pure and untroubled happiness.

"You seem to live a rather happier life than other kappas, somehow."

"Well, perhaps that's so. I was old when I was young, and now that I'm old, I've become young. And so, unlike an old man, I have no thirst for greed, and unlike a young one, I am not drowned in lust. In any case, my life may not have been a happy one, but it has surely been a peaceful one."

"I see -- that would indeed make for a peaceful life."

"No, that alone would not have been enough for peace. I was also blessed with a sturdy body, and with property enough to keep me from want my whole life through. But I do think the greatest piece of good fortune of all was simply that I was born already old."

For a while I sat talking with this kappa about Tock's suicide, and about Gael, who was seeing a doctor every single day.

But for some reason the elderly kappa seemed to show little interest in any of what I had to say.

"Then it seems you don't cling to life especially, the way other kappas do?"

The elderly kappa looked at my face and answered quietly, as follows.

"I too, like every other kappa in this land, was asked by my father whether I wished to be born into this world before I ever left my mother's womb."

"But I fell tumbling into this country quite by accident. Please, tell me the way I might get out of it."

"There is only one way out."

"And that is?"

"It is the very same way you came in."

On hearing this answer, my hair stood on end for some reason.

"Unfortunately I can't find that way at all."

The elderly kappa fixed his moist, youthful eyes steadily upon my face.

Then, at last, he rose to his feet, walked over to a corner of the room, and pulled a rope that hung down from the ceiling.

At that a skylight, which I had not noticed until then, swung open.

Through that round skylight, beyond branches of pine and cypress spreading outward, a vast blue sky stretched clear and unclouded.

And more than that, the peak of Mount Yari, shaped like some great arrowhead, rose soaring in the distance.

I leapt for joy, quite literally, like a child seeing an airplane for the first time.

"There, now, go on out that way."

The elderly kappa said this, pointing to the rope from before.

What I had taken all along for a mere rope turned out, in fact, to be a rope ladder.

"Then I'll take my leave through there, if you don't mind."

"Only let me say this beforehand. See that you don't regret going out there."

"Don't worry. I won't have any regrets."

No sooner had I said this than I was already climbing up the rope ladder,

gazing down at the elderly kappa's head-plate, far below me.

XVII

After I returned from the land of the kappas, the smell of human skin left me quite overwhelmed for some time.

Compared to us humans, kappas are truly a clean and tidy sort.

What is more, having grown accustomed to seeing nothing but kappas, I found human heads a rather unsettling sight.

Perhaps you cannot quite understand this yourself.

But setting the eyes and mouth aside, this thing called a nose is enough, somehow, to stir up a strange sense of dread.

Naturally I did everything I could to avoid meeting anyone at all.

But I suppose I gradually grew used to us humans again, for within about half a year I was able to go out anywhere without trouble.

Only, even then, one thing continued to trouble me: in the midst of conversation I would sometimes let a word of the kappa language slip out without meaning to.

"Will you be home tomorrow?"

"Qua."

"What was that?"

"Oh, I mean, yes, I will be."

That was more or less the pattern of things.

But about a year after returning from the land of the kappas, when a certain business venture of mine failed, I.... (When he said this, Dr. S. cautioned him, "Let's not go into that story,"

he warned.

According to the doctor, every time this patient told that particular story, he would grow so violent that even the attendants could not restrain him.)

Well then, let us leave that story aside.

But because of the failure of that certain business venture, I began to long once more to return to the land of the kappas.

Yes, that's right.

It was not that I "wanted to go"

there.

It was that I found myself thinking, "I want to go back,"

there.

For at that time the land of the kappas felt to me like my own true home.

I slipped quietly out of the house and tried to board a train on the Chuo Line.

But there, unluckily, I was caught by a policeman, and in the end I was put into this hospital.

Even after first coming into this hospital, I went on thinking constantly of the land of the kappas.

I wonder how the doctor Chack is getting along.

Perhaps the philosopher Mag is still, as ever, sitting deep in thought beneath that seven-colored stained-glass lantern of his.

And especially my close friend, the student Lap with the rotted beak -- on an afternoon just as overcast as today.

Lost in such reminiscences, I very nearly cried out without meaning to.

For, I know not when, that fisherman kappa Bag had come in and was now standing before me, bowing his head again and again.

After collecting myself once more -- I no longer remember whether I laughed or cried.

But in any case, I am certain that I was deeply moved to be using the kappa tongue again after so long.

"Hey, Bag, what brings you here?"

"Why, I came to pay you a visit, sir. I heard you were unwell, you see."

"How did you come to hear that?"

"I heard it on the radio news."

Bag was grinning with a proud sort of look on his face.

"Even so, how did you manage to get here?"

"Oh, it was nothing at all. The rivers and canals of Tokyo are as good as open streets to a kappa, you know."

Only then did it strike me anew that kappas, like frogs, are amphibious creatures at home in both water and land.

"But there's no river anywhere near here, is there?"

"No, sir, I came up here through the water pipes. And then I opened a fire hydrant just a bit and...."

"Opened a fire hydrant?"

"Have you forgotten, sir? Even among kappas there are mechanics, you know."

After that, I received visits from various kappas every few days.

According to Dr. S., my illness is what is called dementia praecox.

But that doctor Chack (and I'm afraid this must seem terribly rude to you)

used to say that I am not the one suffering from dementia praecox at all -- that it is Dr. S. and the rest of you who suffer from it.

Since even the doctor Chack came to see me, it goes without saying that the student Lap and the philosopher Mag came to visit as well.

But apart from that fisherman Bag, no one comes to visit during the daytime.

When several of them come together, it is always at night -- and always on a moonlit night, at that.

Just last night, in the moonlight, I talked with Gael, the president of the glass company, and with the philosopher Mag.

What is more, I had the musician Craback play me a piece on the violin.

Look there, do you see that bouquet of black lilies on the desk over there?

Craback brought me those as a gift, just last night....

(I turned to look behind me.

But of course there was nothing at all on the desk, no bouquet, nothing.)

And this book here, too, is something the philosopher Mag went out of his way to bring me.

Do have a look at the first poem in it.

No, of course, you couldn't possibly know the kappa language.

Then let me read it for you instead.

This is one volume of Tock's complete works, recently published. --

(He opened an old telephone directory and began reading the following verse aloud.)

-- Among the palm blossoms and the bamboo

Buddha has long since fallen asleep.

Beside the withered fig tree by the roadside

Christ too, it seems, has already died.

And yet we must take our rest

even before the painted backdrop of a stage.

(And if you look behind that same backdrop, is it not nothing but patched and threadbare canvas?) --

But I myself am not so pessimistic as this poet.

So long as the kappas keep coming to see me now and then -- ah, but I nearly forgot to mention something.

You remember my friend, the judge Pep, don't you?

That kappa, after losing his post, truly did go mad.

I understand he is now in a mental hospital in the land of the kappas.

If only Dr. S. would give his permission, I should like to go pay him a visit myself....

(February 11, Showa 2 [1927])