夢十夜 English

The First Night

I had a dream like this.

As I sat by her pillow with my arms folded, the woman lying on her back said in a quiet voice that she was going to die now.

She had spread her long hair over the pillow and laid her softly contoured, oval face amid it.

Beneath her pure white cheeks a warm tinge of blood showed just enough, and her lips were, of course, red.

She looked nothing at all like someone about to die.

Yet the woman said clearly, in her quiet voice, that she was going to die now.

I too felt certain that she would indeed die.

So I leaned over and peered down at her, asking, "Is that so — are you really going to die?"

"Indeed I am," she said, and opened her eyes wide.

They were large, moist eyes, and within the long lashes that framed them, all was a single expanse of pure black.

Deep within those jet-black pupils, my own figure floated, vivid and clear.

Gazing at the lustrous depth of those dark eyes, so clear they seemed transparent, I thought: how could she die, with eyes like these?

So I brought my mouth close to her pillow and gently asked again, "You're not really going to die, are you? You'll be all right, won't you?"

The woman, her black eyes held open drowsily, answered again in that quiet voice, "But I am going to die — there's nothing to be done about it."

"Then can you see my face?" I asked earnestly. "Can I see it? Why, look — there it is, reflected right there," she said, and smiled at me.

I said nothing, and drew my face back from the pillow.

Folding my arms, I thought: must she really die, after all?

After a while, the woman spoke again, saying this.

"When I die, bury me. Dig the grave with a large pearl shell. And place a fragment of a star that has fallen from the sky as my gravestone. And wait beside my grave. For I will come to see you again."

I asked when she would come to see me.

"The sun will rise. And then the sun will set. And then it will rise again, and then it will set again. — While the red sun falls from east to west, from east to west, — will you be able to wait?"

I nodded without speaking.

The woman raised her quiet tone a degree, and said,

"Wait for a hundred years."

she said in a resolute voice.

"For a hundred years, sit beside my grave and wait for me. I will surely come to see you."

I simply answered that I would wait.

Then my own figure, which had shown so vividly within her black pupils, began to blur and dissolve.

Just as still water stirs and disturbs the reflection upon it, it seemed to flow away, and then the woman's eyes closed with a snap.

From between her long lashes, a tear ran down her cheek. —

She was already dead.

I then went down into the garden and dug a hole with the pearl shell.

The pearl shell had a large, smooth, sharp-edged rim.

Each time I scooped up the earth, moonlight caught the underside of the shell and made it glitter.

There was also the smell of damp earth.

After a while, the hole was dug.

I laid the woman inside it.

And then I gently covered her with the soft earth from above.

Each time I covered her, moonlight caught the underside of the pearl shell.

Then I went and gathered up the fallen fragment of the star, and laid it lightly upon the earth.

The star fragment was round.

I supposed that in its long fall through the sky, its edges had worn away and it had grown smooth.

As I lifted it up and set it upon the earth, my chest and hands grew a little warm.

I sat down upon the moss.

Thinking that I would now sit and wait like this for a hundred years, I folded my arms and gazed at the round gravestone.

Before long, just as the woman had said, the sun rose in the east.

It was a great red sun.

And again just as she had said, it soon fell in the west.

It sank away, red as ever, with a slow, looming motion.

One, I counted.

After a while, the crimson sun rose sluggishly again.

And then, in silence, it sank away.

Two, I counted again.

Counting on in this way, one and two, I lost track of how many red suns I had seen.

Count as I might, count as I might, I could never finish counting all the red suns that passed above my head.

And still the hundred years had not come.

At last, gazing at the moss-grown round stone, I began to wonder whether the woman had deceived me.

Just then, from beneath the stone, a green stem grew up slanting toward me.

Even as I watched it lengthen, it rose until it stopped just at the level of my chest.

And then, at the tip of the slender swaying stem, a long, narrow bud that had been tilting its head slightly opened its petals with a soft fullness.

A pure white lily, right beneath my nose, gave off a fragrance so strong it seemed to pierce to the very bone.

Just then a drop of dew fell from far above with a soft plop, and the flower swayed unsteadily under its own weight.

I stretched my neck forward and kissed the white petals, dripping with cold dew.

As I drew my face away from the lily, I happened to glance up at the distant sky, and saw the morning star, just one, twinkling there.

"The hundred years had already come."

It was only then that I realized it, for the first time.

The Second Night

I had a dream like this.

Withdrawing from the priest's chamber, I made my way along the corridor back to my own room, where an andon lamp burned dimly.

As I set one knee on the cushion and stirred up the wick, a flower-like clot of snuff dropped with a soft plop onto the vermilion-lacquered stand.

At the same moment, the room brightened all at once.

The painting on the sliding doors was by the hand of Buson.

Black willows were painted in shifting shades near and far, and a fisherman, looking cold, passes along the embankment with his sedge hat tilted.

In the alcove hung a scroll of Monju upon the sea.

The half-burnt incense still gave off its scent in the dark corner.

Being a large temple, it lay hushed and still, with no sign of anyone about.

The round shadow of the andon lamp, cast upon the black ceiling, seemed to come alive the instant I looked up at it.

Still kneeling with one knee raised, I lifted the cushion with my left hand and thrust my right hand beneath it, and there it was, exactly where I expected.

Reassured that it was there, I set the cushion back as it had been and sat down heavily upon it.

You are a samurai.

If you are a samurai, there is no reason you cannot attain enlightenment, the priest had said.

Seeing how you fail to attain it after all this time, he said, perhaps you are no samurai after all.

You are the dregs of humanity, he said.

Ha, you're angry now, he said, and laughed.

If it galls you, then bring me proof that you have attained it, he said, and turned abruptly away.

Outrageous.

Before the clock standing in the alcove of the next hall strikes the next hour, I will surely show him that I have attained enlightenment.

Once I have attained it, I will enter his room again tonight.

And I will exchange the priest's head for my enlightenment.

If I do not attain it, I cannot take the priest's life.

I must attain it, no matter what.

I am a samurai.

If I cannot attain it, I will take my own life.

A samurai, once shamed, cannot go on living.

I will die cleanly.

As I thought this, my hand crept unconsciously beneath the cushion again.

And I drew out the short sword with its vermilion sheath.

Gripping the hilt firmly, I flung the red sheath aside, and the cold blade flashed all at once in the dark room.

Something terrible seemed to slip away from my hand with a cold, hissing rush.

And it all gathered at the tip of the blade, concentrating a murderous intent into a single point.

I saw this sharp blade, cruelly narrowed down to the point of a needle, tapering inevitably to its nine-and-a-half-sun tip, and I suddenly wanted to plunge it in at once.

The blood in my body seemed to flow toward my right wrist, and the hilt I gripped grew slick and sticky.

My lips trembled.

I sheathed the short sword and drew it close to my right side, and then sat in full lotus posture. —

Joshu said: Mu.

What is Mu?

That damned priest, I ground my teeth.

I clenched my back teeth so hard that hot breath came rasping harshly through my nose.

My temples throbbed painfully, drawn taut.

I opened my eyes twice as wide as usual.

The hanging scroll was visible.

The andon lamp was visible.

The tatami was visible.

The priest's kettle-bald head was vividly visible.

I could even hear the sound of his broad mouth gaping open in mockery.

What an outrageous priest.

I must have that kettle-head for a trophy, no matter what.

I will attain enlightenment.

Mu, Mu, I repeated at the root of my tongue.

Even as I told myself it was Mu, still the smell of incense reached me.

What, incense — how dare it.

I suddenly clenched my fist and struck my own head as hard as I could bear.

And I ground my back teeth together.

Sweat broke out from both armpits.

My back grew stiff as a rod.

The joints of my knees suddenly began to ache.

I thought, what would it matter even if my knees broke?

And yet it hurt.

It was agony.

Mu would not come.

Just as I thought it was coming, the pain returned at once.

I grew furious.

I felt bitter and wronged.

Terribly mortified.

Tears fell in a steady trickle.

I wanted to hurl my whole body against some great boulder at a single stroke, and shatter my bones and flesh to bits.

Even so, I bore it and sat perfectly still.

I held within my chest something unbearably painful, and endured it.

That painful thing lifted every muscle in my body from below, straining to burst out through my very pores, and yet everywhere was sealed shut, and it was a state of utter, merciless cruelty, as if there were no outlet at all.

Before long my head began to feel strange.

The andon lamp, Buson's painting, the tatami, the staggered shelves — they seemed at once to exist and not exist, to be absent and yet present.

And yet Mu did not manifest itself in the least.

I seemed merely to be sitting there, half-heartedly.

Just then, all at once, the clock in the next room began to strike, Chin.

I started.

My right hand went at once to the short sword.

The clock struck a second time, Chin.

The Third Night

I had a dream like this.

I was carrying a six-year-old child on my back.

It was certainly my own child.

Only, strangely, its eyes had gone blind at some point without my noticing, and it had become a shaven-headed, blue-scalped boy.

When I asked when its eyes had gone blind, it answered, why, long ago.

The voice was certainly a child's voice, but the manner of speech was entirely that of an adult.

And what is more, it spoke to me as an equal.

On either side lay green rice fields.

The path was narrow.

The shadow of a heron would now and then cross the darkness.

"We've come to the rice fields, haven't we,"

it said from my back.

"How can you tell,"

I asked, turning my face partway back, and it said,

"Because the herons are calling, aren't they,"

it answered.

And sure enough, a heron cried out, twice.

Even though it was my own child, I began to feel a little afraid.

Carrying a thing like this on my back, there was no telling what might happen from here on.

Wondering whether there might be somewhere to abandon it, I looked ahead and saw a great forest in the darkness.

The moment I thought that there would do, from my back came,

"Heh."

came the sound.

"What are you laughing at?"

The child gave no answer.

Only,

"Father, am I heavy?"

it asked.

"Not heavy at all,"

I answered, and

"You'll find me heavy soon enough,"

it said.

I walked on in silence, heading toward the forest.

The path through the fields wound about irregularly, and I could not make my way out as easily as I wished.

After a while it forked in two.

I stood at the fork and rested a moment.

"There should be a stone standing here,"

the boy said.

Sure enough, an eight-sun-square stone stood there, about waist-high.

On its face was written: left to Higakubo, right to Hottahara.

Though it was dark, the red characters were plainly visible.

The red of the characters was the color of a newt's belly.

"Left would be best, wouldn't it,"

the boy commanded.

Looking left, I saw that the forest from before was casting its dark shadow down from the high sky onto our heads.

I hesitated for a moment.

"You needn't hold back,"

the boy said again.

I had no choice but to start walking toward the forest.

Thinking to myself how strange it was that, blind as it was, it knew everything, I drew nearer to the forest along the single path, when from my back came, "Being blind really is inconvenient, isn't it,"

it said.

"That's why I'm carrying you, isn't that enough?"

"I'm grateful to be carried, but it's no good being made a fool of by people. It's no good even being made a fool of by one's own parent."

Somehow I grew disgusted.

I hurried on, meaning to reach the forest quickly and abandon it there.

"You'll understand if you go a little further. — It was a night just like this, wasn't it,"

it said from my back, as if to itself.

"What was?"

I asked, my voice edged with unease.

"What was, you ask? You know perfectly well,"

the child answered mockingly.

Then I began to feel as though I did indeed know.

But it was not clear to me.

It merely seemed that it had been a night like this.

And it seemed that if I went a little further, I would understand.

It seemed that understanding would be terrible, and that I must abandon it quickly, before I understood, and set my mind at ease.

I quickened my pace all the more.

The rain had been falling since some time before.

The path grew darker and darker.

I was almost beside myself.

Only, clinging to my back was the small boy, and that boy shone like a mirror illuminating my entire past, present, and future, letting not the smallest fact escape.

And what is more, it was my own child.

And it was blind.

I could bear it no longer.

"Here, here. Right there, at the root of that cedar."

In the rain, the boy's voice sounded perfectly clear.

I stopped without meaning to.

Somehow I had already entered the forest.

The black shape about a ken ahead did indeed look, just as the boy said, like a cedar tree.

"Father, it was at the root of that cedar, wasn't it."

"Yes, that's right,"

I answered, before I could stop myself.

"It was the Year of the Dragon, Bunka five, wasn't it."

Indeed, it did seem to be the Year of the Dragon, Bunka five.

"It was exactly a hundred years ago from now that you killed me, wasn't it."

The moment I heard these words, the realization rose up suddenly in my mind that a hundred years ago, in the Year of the Dragon, Bunka five, on just such a dark night as this, I had killed a blind man at the root of this very cedar.

The instant I realized, for the first time, that I had been a murderer, the child on my back suddenly grew as heavy as a stone Jizo.

The Fourth Night

In the middle of a broad earthen-floored room stood something like a cooling bench, with small stools set around it.

The bench had a black, gleaming sheen.

In one corner, an old man sat alone with a square tray before him, drinking sake.

His accompaniment to the drink seemed to be simmered vegetables.

The old man had turned quite red from the sake.

What's more, his whole face was glossy and smooth, without anything you could call a wrinkle anywhere.

Only, since he had let his white beard grow out to its fullest, one could tell at least that he was old.

Child though I was, I wondered just how old this old man might be.

Just then a woman, who had come from the bamboo water-pipe out back with a bucket of water, wiped her hands on her apron and asked,

"How old are you, old man?"

she asked.

The old man swallowed the mouthful of simmered vegetables he had been chewing, and said,

"I've forgotten how old I am,"

unruffled.

The woman, having wiped her hands, tucked them into her narrow sash and stood looking sideways at the old man's face.

The old man drank his sake down in one draught from something as large as a rice bowl, and then let out a long breath from between his white whiskers with a puff.

Then the woman asked,

"Where is your home, old man?"

she asked.

The old man cut his long breath short partway, and said,

"Deep inside my navel,"

he said.

The woman, her hands still thrust into her narrow sash, asked,

"Where are you going?"

she asked again.

Then the old man once again drank down the hot sake in one draught from that bowl-like vessel, let out the same long breath as before with a puff, and said,

"I'm going over there,"

he said.

"Straight there?"

the woman asked, and just then the breath he puffed out passed straight through the paper screen, beneath the willow, and away toward the riverbank.

The old man went out to the street.

I followed after him.

A small gourd hung from the old man's waist.

A square box hung from his shoulder, dangling beneath his arm.

He wore pale indigo leggings, and a pale indigo sleeveless jacket.

Only his tabi socks were yellow.

They looked somehow like tabi made of leather.

The old man went straight to the willow tree.

Beneath the willow were three or four children.

The old man, laughing, drew a pale indigo hand towel from his waist.

He twisted it into a long, thin rope, like a wick-cord.

And he laid it down in the middle of the ground.

Then, around the towel, he drew a large round ring.

At last, from the box slung over his shoulder, he took out a brass candy-seller's flute.

"Watch now — this towel is about to turn into a snake. Watch closely, watch closely,"

he repeated.

The children stared at the towel with all their might.

I watched too.

"Watch closely, watch closely, ready?"

he said, and blew the flute, beginning to circle round and round the ring.

I kept my eyes fixed on the towel.

But the towel did not move in the least.

The old man went on piping his flute.

And circled round the ring again and again.

He circled as though tiptoeing in his straw sandals, as though creeping stealthily, as though showing deference to the towel.

It looked almost frightening.

It also looked amusing.

Presently the old man stopped the flute abruptly.

And he opened the mouth of the box slung over his shoulder, pinched the towel by its neck, and tossed it in with a soft plop.

"Leave it like this, and it will turn into a snake inside the box. I'll show you soon, I'll show you soon,"

he said, and began walking straight ahead.

He passed beneath the willow and went straight on down the narrow path.

Wanting to see the snake, I followed him along the narrow path, wherever it led.

The old man would say now and then, "It's becoming now,"

or "It's becoming a snake,"

as he walked along.

At last, he began to sing,

"It's becoming now, becoming a snake,

surely becoming, the flute is playing,"

and so singing, at last he came out onto the riverbank.

Since there was no bridge and no boat, I thought he would rest here and show us the snake in the box, but instead the old man began wading straight into the river.

At first the water was only knee-deep, but gradually it rose past his waist, and toward his chest, until he grew hard to see.

Even so, the old man sang,

"It's growing deep, becoming night,

growing straight,"

and singing on, he walked straight ahead, on and on.

And then his beard, his face, his head, his headcloth — all vanished from sight completely.

I thought that the old man would show us the snake once he climbed up on the far bank, so I stood alone where the reeds rustled, and waited, and waited.

But the old man never did come up again.

The Fifth Night

I had a dream like this.

It was, it seemed, some very ancient time, near the age of the gods, when I had gone to war and, through bad fortune, been defeated, and was taken alive and brought before the enemy general.

The people of that age were all tall of stature.

And they all wore long beards.

They wore leather belts, from which hung swords like straight rods.

Their bows looked as though made simply from thick wisteria vines, used just as they were.

Neither lacquered nor polished.

They were of the plainest, most rustic make.

The enemy general gripped the middle of his bow in his right hand, planted it on the grass, and sat upon something like an overturned sake jar.

Looking at his face, I saw that above his nose, his brows met in a single thick line.

In that age, of course, there was no such thing as a razor.

Being a captive, I could not sit upon anything.

I sat cross-legged upon the grass.

On my feet I wore large straw boots.

The straw boots of that age were deep ones.

When I stood, they reached up to my kneecaps.

At their edges, some of the straw was left unwoven and hung down like a tassel, so that it swayed loosely with each step, serving as an ornament.

The general looked at my face by the light of the bonfire and asked whether I would die or live.

This was the custom of the time; every captive, without exception, was asked this once.

To answer that one would live meant surrender; to say one would die meant refusal to submit.

I answered in a single word: I will die.

The general flung aside the bow he had planted in the grass, and began to draw, with a smooth motion, the rod-like sword hanging at his waist.

The bonfire, swaying in the wind, cast its light sideways across it.

I spread my right hand open like a maple leaf, turned my palm toward the general, and raised it above my eyes.

It was a signal meaning: wait.

The general slid the thick sword back into its sheath with a clack.

Even in that age, there was love.

I said that before I died, I wished to see, just once, the woman I loved.

The general said he would wait until dawn broke and the cock crowed.

The woman would have to be summoned here before the cock crowed.

If the cock crowed and the woman had not come, I would be killed without seeing her.

The general remained seated, gazing at the bonfire.

I sat upon the grass, my great straw boots crossed beneath me, waiting for the woman.

The night grew steadily later.

Now and then came the sound of the bonfire collapsing.

Each time it collapsed, the flames surged toward the general as if in a fluster.

Beneath his jet-black brows, the general's eyes gleamed and glittered.

Then someone would come and throw a great many fresh branches into the fire.

After a while the fire would crackle.

It was a bold sound, as if pushing back the darkness itself.

At this moment, the woman led out a white horse that had been tied to an oak tree behind her house.

She stroked its mane three times and leapt lightly onto its tall back.

It was a bare horse, without saddle or stirrups.

Kicking its round belly with her long white legs, she sent the horse dashing off at full speed.

Someone had added fresh wood to the bonfire, so that the distant sky showed faintly bright.

The horse flew through the darkness, aiming straight for that brightness.

It flew on, breathing out from its nostrils two pillars of fiery breath.

Still the woman kept kicking the horse's belly ceaselessly with her slender legs.

The horse flew on so fast that the sound of its hooves seemed to ring out in midair.

The woman's hair streamed out behind her in the darkness like a windsock's tail.

And still she could not reach the place where the bonfire burned.

Then, beside the pitch-black road, a cock's cry suddenly rang out — cock-a-doodle-doo.

The woman flung her body backward and hauled hard on the reins gripped in both hands.

The horse dug its forehooves sharply into the hard rock.

Cock-a-doodle-doo, the cock crowed once more.

The woman cried out, and let go of the tightened reins all at once.

The horse's forelegs both buckled.

Together with its rider it pitched forward, straight ahead.

Below the rock was a deep pool.

The hoofprints remain on the rock to this day.

The one who mimicked the cock's crow was Amanojaku.

For as long as these hoofprints remain cut into the rock, Amanojaku is my enemy.

The Sixth Night

There was word that Unkei was carving the Nio at the Sanmon gate of Gokoku Temple, so I went to see for myself while out on a walk, and found that a great crowd had already gathered ahead of me, buzzing with opinions.

Some five or six ken before the gate stood a great red pine, its trunk leaning aslant to hide the tiled roof of the gate, and stretching up into the distant blue sky.

The green of the pine and the vermilion of the gate set each other off splendidly.

And besides, the pine stood in just the right place.

It slanted away from the left edge of the gate so as not to obstruct the view, growing wider as it rose, until it thrust out over the roof itself — there was something antique about it.

It might almost have belonged to the Kamakura era.

And yet everyone watching was, like myself, a person of the Meiji era.

Among them, rickshaw men were the most numerous.

No doubt they were standing about because they were bored, waiting for fares at the corner.

"It's a big one, isn't it,"

someone was saying.

"It must take a lot more effort than making a person,"

someone else was saying.

And then again, "Well now, so that's a Nio. Do they still carve Nio these days? Is that so. I always figured all the Nio were just old ones,"

said one man.

"He does look powerful. They say, you know, that from ancient times, for sheer strength, there's never been anyone as strong as Nio. Stronger even than Yamato Takeru, they say,"

another man remarked, striking up conversation.

This man had his hem tucked up and wore no hat.

He looked like a decidedly uneducated fellow.

Unkei, paying not the slightest heed to the opinions of the onlookers, went on working his chisel and mallet.

He did not so much as glance around.

Perched high up, he carved steadily away at the area around the Nio's face.

Unkei wore something like a small eboshi cap on his head, and had the great sleeves of what might have been a suo robe tied back at his shoulders.

The whole appearance was thoroughly old-fashioned.

It seemed entirely out of keeping with the chattering onlookers.

I wondered how it was that Unkei should still be alive at this late date.

Thinking what a strange thing this was, I nonetheless went on standing there watching.

But Unkei himself seemed to feel nothing strange or curious about it at all, and simply went on carving with all his might.

A young man, who had been looking up and watching this manner of his, turned toward me and said,

"That's Unkei for you. He doesn't even see us. His whole bearing says that in all the world there is nothing but the Nio and himself. Magnificent."

and began to praise him.

I found these words interesting.

So I glanced at the young man for a moment, and without missing a beat he added,

"Just look at the way he handles that chisel and mallet. He has attained the wondrous realm of perfect freedom."

he said.

Unkei had just carved out a thick eyebrow sideways to the height of a sun, and no sooner had he turned the chisel's edge upright than he brought the mallet down at a slant from above.

He shaved the hard wood in a single stroke, and just as a thick wood-shaving flew off with the ring of the mallet, the flared side of a flaring, wrathful nostril suddenly rose up into relief.

The way he drove the blade in was utterly fearless.

And he seemed to harbor not the slightest doubt.

"How can he use the chisel so carelessly, and yet get an eyebrow and nose to come out just as he wants them?"

I said, half to myself, so struck with admiration was I.

Then the young man from before said,

"No, no — he isn't making the eyebrow and nose with the chisel. Eyebrows and a nose exactly like that are already buried in the wood, and he's merely digging them out with the force of chisel and mallet. It's just like digging a stone out of the earth, so there's no possibility of a mistake."

he said.

It was only then that it first occurred to me that carving might indeed be such a thing.

If that were really so, I thought, then anyone could do it.

So I suddenly wanted to try carving a Nio myself, and I stopped watching and hurried straight home.

I took a chisel and a hammer from the toolbox and went out back, where I found piled up a great many convenient lengths of oak, felled in the recent storm and sawn up by a woodcutter with an eye to using it for firewood.

I chose the largest piece and set to carving it energetically, but unfortunately no Nio was to be found.

In the next piece too, my luck was bad, and I could not dig one out.

Nor was there a Nio in the third.

I carved into the piled firewood one piece after another, but not one of them held a Nio hidden within.

In the end I came to understand that Meiji wood, quite simply, has no Nio buried in it at all.

And with that, I understood, more or less, the reason Unkei is still alive today.

The Seventh Night

Somehow I found myself aboard a great ship.

This ship, without a moment's pause day or night, kept belching black smoke and cutting through the waves as it went.

The noise was tremendous.

But where it was bound, no one knew.

Only, from beneath the waves, a sun like a red-hot poker would rise.

Just when it seemed to hang for a while directly above the tall mast, before I knew it, it had overtaken the great ship and gone on ahead.

And then at last, with a hiss like a red-hot poker plunged in water, it sank again beneath the waves.

Each time this happened, the blue waves far off in the distance would boil up in a color of sappanwood red.

Then the ship, with its tremendous noise, would chase after it.

But it never once caught up.

Once, I caught hold of one of the ship's crew and asked him.

"Is this ship going west?"

The man looked at me with a puzzled expression for a while, and then said,

"Why do you ask?"

he asked in return.

"Because it seems to be chasing the sun as it falls."

The man laughed heartily.

And walked off toward the other side.

"The sun that goes west — does it end in the east? Is that really true? The sun that rises in the east — is its home in the west? Is that true too? My body drifts upon the waves, a pillow of oars. Let it flow, let it flow."

someone was chanting.

Going to the bow, I found a great many sailors gathered together, hauling in a thick hawser.

I grew very forlorn.

There was no telling when I might set foot on land again.

And I had no idea where we were bound.

The one certain thing was that we went on belching black smoke and cutting through the waves.

The waves were exceedingly vast.

They looked endlessly blue.

At times they turned purple.

Only around the moving ship was there always a churning of pure white foam.

I felt very forlorn indeed.

I thought that rather than remain aboard such a ship, I might as well throw myself into the sea and die.

There were a great many fellow passengers.

Most of them appeared to be foreigners.

But they had all sorts of faces.

Once, when the sky clouded over and the ship rolled, a woman leaned against the rail, weeping without pause.

The handkerchief with which she wiped her eyes showed white.

Yet on her body she wore a Western dress patterned like chintz.

Seeing this woman, I realized that I was not the only one who was sad.

One evening, when I had gone out on deck and was gazing alone at the stars, a foreigner came up and asked whether I knew astronomy.

I was so weary of everything that I was even thinking of dying.

There was no need for me to know astronomy.

I said nothing.

Then the foreigner told me about the seven stars at the crown of Taurus.

And he said that the stars and the sea were all things made by God.

Finally he asked me whether I believed in God.

I looked up at the sky and said nothing.

Once, when I went into the saloon, a young woman in gaudy dress sat with her back to me, playing the piano.

Beside her stood a tall, fine-looking man, singing a song.

His mouth looked enormously wide.

But the two of them seemed utterly unconcerned with anything beyond themselves.

They seemed to have forgotten even that they were aboard a ship.

I grew more and more weary of it all.

At last I resolved to die.

So one evening, when there was no one about, I made up my mind and leapt into the sea.

But — the very instant my feet left the deck and my ties to the ship were cut, I suddenly found myself loath to lose my life.

From the bottom of my heart I thought I should never have done it.

But it was already too late.

Whether I liked it or not, I had to go into the sea.

The ship, it seemed, had been built very high, for although my body had left it, my feet did not easily reach the water.

But there was nothing for me to catch hold of, so I drew nearer and nearer to the water regardless.

No matter how I drew up my legs, it came closer still.

The color of the water was black.

Meanwhile the ship, belching its black smoke as ever, passed on and away.

I realized, for the first time, that even a ship whose destination I did not know was better than not being aboard it at all, and yet I was unable to make any use of that realization, and, carrying within me an infinite regret and terror, I fell quietly toward the black waves.

The Eighth Night

When I stepped over the threshold of the barbershop, three or four men in white robes, clustered together, all called out at once, Welcome.

Standing in the middle and looking about, I found it a square room.

Windows opened on two sides, and mirrors hung on the remaining two.

Counting the mirrors, I found there were six.

I came before one of them and sat myself down.

At that my seat gave a soft, plump sound.

It was a chair made to sit remarkably comfortably.

My face was reflected splendidly in the mirror.

Behind my face I could see the window.

And beyond that, at an angle, the lattice of the cashier's booth.

There was no one inside the lattice.

Through the window I could see clearly, from the waist up, the people passing along the street.

Shotaro went by, with a woman on his arm.

At some point Shotaro had bought himself a Panama hat and was wearing it.

As for the woman, when he had come by her, I couldn't say.

It was hard to tell, just at a glance.

Both of them looked thoroughly pleased with themselves.

Just as I was trying to get a good look at the woman's face, they had already passed out of sight.

A tofu seller went by, blowing his horn.

With the horn pressed to his mouth, his cheek was swollen as though stung by a bee.

He passed on by still swollen like that, and it worried me terribly.

I felt as if he would go on being stung by that bee for the rest of his life.

A geisha appeared.

She had not yet done her makeup.

The base of her shimada coiffure had come loose, and her head looked somehow untidy.

Her face, too, looked drowsy and unkempt.

Her complexion was so poor it was almost pitiable.

She bowed and said something like, well now, but whoever she was addressing simply would not appear within the mirror.

Then a large man in a white robe came up behind me, and, holding scissors and a comb, began studying my head.

Twisting my thin mustache, I asked whether it would amount to anything.

The man in white said nothing at all, and simply tapped my head lightly with the amber comb he held.

"Well now — and my head too, come to think of it — will it amount to anything?"

I asked the man in white.

The man in white again gave no answer, and began snipping his scissors with a brisk clicking sound.

I meant to keep my eyes wide open and catch every single reflection in the mirror, but each time the scissors clicked, black hairs came flying, and it grew so alarming that at last I shut my eyes.

Then the man in white said this.

"Did the master happen to see the goldfish seller out front?"

I said I had not.

The man in white said no more, and went on snipping his scissors busily.

Then suddenly someone cried out in a loud voice, Watch out.

I started and opened my eyes, and beneath the white man's sleeve I saw the wheel of a bicycle.

I saw the shafts of a rickshaw.

And just then the man in white pressed my head firmly between both hands and turned it sharply to the side.

The bicycle and the rickshaw vanished from view entirely.

The scissors clicked on.

Presently the man in white came around to my side and began cutting the hair around my ear.

Since the hair no longer flew toward the front, I felt reassured and opened my eyes.

The cry of millet-cake, cakes, cakes, sounded right there close by.

He was deliberately striking a small pestle against the mortar, keeping time as he pounded the rice cakes.

I had only seen a millet-cake seller as a child, so I wanted a glimpse of him now.

But the millet-cake seller never once appeared within the mirror.

Only the sound of the pounding rice cake could be heard.

I strained my eyes to their fullest, peering as if to look into the very corner of the mirror.

And there, within the cashier's lattice, a woman was now sitting, though I had not seen her come.

She was a large-framed woman with dark skin and thick eyebrows, her hair done up in an icho-gaeshi knot, wearing an unlined kimono with a black satin half-collar, and, sitting with one knee raised, was counting bills.

The bills appeared to be ten-yen notes.

With her long lashes lowered and her thin lips pressed together, she was counting the bills with all her concentration, and her reckoning was astonishingly quick.

And yet the count of the bills showed no sign of ever coming to an end, no matter how far it went.

What lay upon her knee was, at most, a hundred bills or so, and yet however long she counted, it remained a hundred bills.

I stared, dumbfounded, at this woman's face and at the ten-yen notes.

Then, close by my ear, the man in white said loudly, "Let's wash it now,"

he said.

Since it was a convenient moment, no sooner had I risen from the chair than I turned to look back at the cashier's lattice.

But within the lattice, neither the woman nor the bills nor anything else was to be seen.

When I paid the fare and stepped out to the street, there on the left of the doorway stood some five oval tubs shaped like koban coins, filled with a great many goldfish — red ones, mottled ones, thin ones, plump ones.

And the goldfish seller sat behind them.

He remained perfectly still, resting his chin on his hand, gazing fixedly at the goldfish arranged before him.

He paid almost no attention to the bustling activity of the street.

I stood for a while watching this goldfish seller.

But the whole time I watched, the goldfish seller never moved in the least.

The Ninth Night

The world had begun, somehow, to grow restless.

It seemed as though war might break out at any moment.

One had the feeling that horses burned out of their stables ran wild, saddleless, around the estate day and night, and that foot soldiers, jostling in a great crush, chased after them day and night as well.

And yet within the house it was hushed and still.

In the house lived a young mother and her three-year-old child.

The father had gone off somewhere.

It was in the middle of a moonless night that the father had gone off.

He put on straw sandals upon the matted floor, put on a black hood, and went out by the kitchen door.

At that moment the light of the paper lantern the mother held cast a long, thin beam into the dark night, lighting up the old cypress standing just before the hedge.

The father never came back after that.

Every day the mother would ask the three-year-old child, "Where is Father?"

she would ask.

The child said nothing at all.

After a while it began to answer, "Over there,"

it came to answer.

When the mother asked, "When will he come home,"

the child would still say, "Over there,"

and laugh as it answered.

At such times the mother would laugh too.

And she would repeat, again and again, the words "He'll be home soon,"

teaching them to the child.

But the child learned only the words "Soon,"

and nothing more.

Sometimes, when asked, "Where is Father,"

the child would answer, "Soon,"

instead.

When night came and the surrounding houses fell silent, the mother would retie her sash, tuck a short sword in a sharkskin sheath into it, tie the child to her back with a narrow sash-cord, and slip quietly out through the wicket gate.

The mother always wore straw sandals.

The child, listening to the sound of those sandals, would sometimes fall asleep on the mother's back.

Going west down through the district of walled estates, and descending the long, gently sloping hill to its end, one comes to a great ginkgo tree.

Turning right at this ginkgo as a landmark, some one cho further in stands a stone torii gate.

With rice fields on one side and nothing but bamboo grass on the other, the path leads to the torii, and passing beneath it brings one into a dark grove of cedars.

From there, following the paving stones some twenty ken, one comes up short at the foot of the steps of an old worship hall.

Above the offertory box, weathered to a mouse gray, hangs the rope of a great bell, and if one looks by daylight, beside that bell hangs a plaque reading Hachiman Shrine.

The character for hachi, "eight," is written in a curious script, shaped like two doves facing one another.

There are various other plaques besides.

Most of them record a golden target pierced by some member of the clan, together with the name of the archer who pierced it.

Occasionally there is one dedicating a sword.

Once through the torii, an owl is always calling somewhere in the tops of the cedars.

And the sound of cold-rice sandals goes pat, pat, pat.

When it stops before the worship hall, the mother first rings the bell, and at once crouches down to clap her hands in prayer.

Usually, at this moment, the owl suddenly falls silent.

Then the mother prays with all her heart, undistracted, for her husband's safety.

It is the mother's conviction, single-minded and unwavering, that since her husband is a samurai, if she makes this desperate plea to Hachiman, the god of bow and arrow, there is surely no reason it should go unheard.

The child would often wake at the sound of the bell, and finding everything pitch dark all around, would sometimes suddenly burst into tears on her back.

At such times the mother, murmuring some prayer under her breath, would sway her back to try to soothe it.

Sometimes this would succeed, and it would stop crying.

And sometimes it would only cry all the more fiercely.

Either way, the mother would not easily rise.

Having prayed through the whole of it once for her husband's safety, she would then untie the narrow sash, slide the child from her back around to the front, and, holding it in both arms, climb up into the worship hall, saying, "There's a good child, wait just a little while,"

and she would always press her cheek firmly against the child's.

Then she would lengthen the narrow sash, bind the child with it, and tie one end fast to the railing of the worship hall.

After that she would come back down the steps and walk the hundred-fold pilgrimage, back and forth over the twenty ken of paving stones.

The child, tied fast in the worship hall, would crawl about the wide veranda in the darkness, as far as the length of the sash allowed.

On such nights, it was, for the mother, an unusually easy one.

But when the bound child began to wail and wail, the mother could not remain calm.

Her feet on the hundred-fold pilgrimage grew very quick.

Her breath came in ragged gasps.

When there was nothing else for it, she would climb back up to the worship hall midway, soothe the child in every way she could, and then start the hundred-fold pilgrimage over again.

And so, night after night, while the mother fretted and worried herself sleepless, the father had, in fact, long since been killed by masterless samurai.

It was this sad story that I heard, in my dream, from the mother's own lips.

The Tenth Night

Ken-san came to tell me that Shotaro, who had been carried off by a woman, had wandered back home on the evening of the seventh day, and had suddenly come down with a fever and taken to his bed all at once.

Shotaro was the handsomest man in the neighborhood, and an extremely good and honest fellow.

He had just one indulgence.

Wearing his Panama hat, when evening came he would sit himself down at the front of the fruit shop and gaze at the faces of the women passing by.

And he would go on marveling at them endlessly.

Beyond that, he had no particular characteristics worth mentioning.

When few women passed, he would look not at the street but at the fruit instead.

There was all manner of fruit.

Water peaches, apples, loquats, bananas, all arranged handsomely in baskets, set out in two rows so they could be carried off at once as get-well gifts.

Shotaro would look at these baskets and remark how beautiful they were.

He always said that if he were ever to go into business, it would have to be a fruit shop.

And yet he himself simply wandered about idly in his Panama hat.

He would sometimes appraise a summer orange, remarking how fine its color was.

But he had never once paid money to buy fruit.

Nor, of course, did he ever eat it for free.

He only ever praised the color.

One evening a woman suddenly appeared, standing before the shop.

She looked to be a person of some standing, dressed splendidly.

The color of her kimono pleased Shotaro enormously.

And what is more, Shotaro was tremendously struck by the woman's face.

So he took off his precious Panama hat and made her a polite bow, and the woman pointed to the largest of the fruit baskets, saying she would like that one, so Shotaro at once took up the basket and handed it to her.

The woman lifted it for a moment to test its weight, and remarked how terribly heavy it was.

Shotaro, being by nature an idle man and, moreover, a thoroughly obliging one, said that in that case he would carry it to her house, and left the fruit shop together with the woman.

He never came back after that.

Even for Shotaro, this was altogether too carefree.

His relatives and friends had begun to make a fuss, saying this was surely no ordinary matter, when on the evening of the seventh day he wandered back home.

A great many people crowded around him at once, asking, Sho-san, where on earth have you been, and Shotaro answered that he had ridden a streetcar up into the mountains.

It must, by all accounts, have been a very long streetcar ride.

According to what Shotaro said, the moment he got off the streetcar he found himself out on a plain.

It was an exceedingly broad plain, and wherever one looked, nothing grew but green grass.

Walking across the grass together with the woman, he suddenly came out at the top of a sheer cliff.

At that point the woman said to Shotaro, Just try jumping in from here.

Peering down, he could see the cliff face, but not the bottom.

Shotaro again took off his Panama hat and declined again and again.

Then the woman asked whether it would be all right if, should he not resolve to jump, he were licked by pigs instead.

Shotaro detested pigs, and detested Kumoemon just as much.

But thinking that nothing was worth more than his life, he still held off from jumping.

Just then a pig came up, snorting.

Shotaro, having no choice, struck the pig on the snout with the slender areca-wood walking stick he carried.

The pig gave a grunt, tumbled right over, and fell away down the cliff.

Just as Shotaro drew a breath of relief, another pig came up to rub its great snout against him.

Shotaro, having no choice, raised his walking stick again.

The pig grunted and tumbled headfirst down into the pit below, just as before.

Then yet another appeared.

At this, Shotaro happened to look up and glance across, and saw that from the far edge of the green grass plain, tens of thousands of pigs beyond counting were coming on in a herd, straight as an arrow, snorting as they came, aimed directly at Shotaro where he stood atop the cliff.

Shotaro was utterly dismayed.

But there was nothing for it, so he went on striking the snout of each approaching pig, one after another, carefully, with his areca-wood walking stick.

Strangely enough, the moment the stick so much as touched a pig's snout, it would tumble right over and fall to the bottom of the ravine.

Peering down, he saw a whole procession of upended pigs falling away down the bottomless cliff.

Thinking how many pigs he himself had already sent falling into the ravine, Shotaro grew frightened of himself.

But still the pigs kept coming, one after another.

They came on with the force of a black cloud sprouted legs, trampling through the green grass, snorting on in an inexhaustible stream.

Shotaro, summoning up desperate courage, went on striking the pigs' snouts for seven days and six nights.

But at last his strength and spirit gave out entirely, his arm grew as weak and limp as konjac, and in the end he was licked by a pig.

And he collapsed there atop the cliff.

Ken-san, having told Shotaro's story this far, said that this was why it was no good to go on staring at women so much.

I thought this was quite reasonable.

But Ken-san also said that he wanted Shotaro's Panama hat for himself.

Shotaro probably won't survive.

The Panama, no doubt, will be Ken-san's.