Child of Darkness

Michigan Monograph Series in Japanese Studies, Number 18

Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan
''t36
FU:J
Child of Darkness
Yoko and Other Stories
by Furui Yoshikichi
Translated with an Introduction
and Critical Commentaries
by
Donna George Storey
Ann Arbor, Michigan 1997
Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan
1997 The Regents of the University of Michigan
All rights reserved
Yoko Copyright 1970 by Yoshikichi Furui
"Aihara" Copyright 1976 by Yoshikichi Furui
"Ningyo" Copyright 1976 by Yoshikichi Furui
Published by the Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 108 Lane Hall, 204
S. State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1290
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Division
Furui, Yoshikichi, 1937-
Child of darkness : Yoko and other stories I by Furui Yoshikichi ; translated with an
introduction and critical commentaries by Donna George Storey.
viii, 204 p. em.- (Michigan monograph series in Japanese studies; no. 18)
Contents: Yoko- Aihara (Plain of sorrows) - Ningyo (Doll).
ISBN 0-939512-78-5 (cloth: alk. paper).- ISBN 0-939512-79-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Furui, Yoshikichi, 1937- -Translations into English. 2. Furui, Yoshikichi, 1937-
-Criticism and interpretation. I. Storey, Donna IT. Title. ill. Series.
PL850.R74A26 1997
895.6'35--dc21 97-10204
OP
Jacket and cover illustration: Michele Oka Doner (American), Descending Torsos (detail), 1975.
Collection of Elizabeth M. Katz. Photo: Dirk Bakker.
Jacket and cover design: Elisabeth Paymal
This publication meets the ANSI/NISO Standards for Permanence of Paper for Publications
and Documents in Libraries and Archives (239.48-1992).
Printed in the United States of America
Preface
Introduction
TRANSLATIONS
Yoko
The Plain of Sorrows
The Doll
CONTENTS
CRITICAL COMMENTARIES
Yoko: The Self in Process
"The Plain of Sorrows": The Lmdscape of Death
"The Doll": The Power of the Pcist
. -
vii
1
11
99
119
137
177
191
PREFACE
I was first introduced to the work of Furui Yoshikichi through Howard
:Hibbett's translation of "Wedlock" in his anthology, Contemporary Japa-
nese Literature. To date, this has been Furui's only story widely available
in English. This excellent translation captured the richness and subtlety
of Furui' s literary world and inspired me to spend a good part of the last
ten years reading, translating, and analyzing Furui's works. During that
time numerous people have given me assistance, but I owe my greatest
thanks to my dissertation advisor, Makoto Ueda, for his invaluable guid-
ance throughout all of my years at Stanford University and beyond. He
was extremely generous with his advice and encouragement at every stage
of this project. Susan Matisoff and Thomas Hare provided many insight-
ful recommendations on the critical commentaries. I am also indebted to
Harumi Befu for his help in exploring the anthropological background
of images of madness in Japanese literature. Special thanks are due to
Yoko Yoshikawa for her kind assistance in working out confusing pas-
sages in "The Doll." James Hynes's suggestions for polishing the rough
spots of my translation greatly improved the manuscript. The editor of
this series, Bruce Willoughby, was tireless in his support of this project,
and he deserves many thanks for helping make this book a reality. I would
also like to acknowledge the support of Monica George, Elaine Shaw,
and Andrea Shaw. Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to my husband,
James, who cheerfully served as my chief editor and technical consult-
ant. His encouragement and wise counsel enabled me to see this project
through to completion, and it is to him that I dedicate this book.
INTRODUCTION
Yoshikichi and the "Introverted Generation"
Furui Yoshikichi is generally regarded as the most representative writer
of the "introverted generation" (naiko no sedai), a group of Japanese nov-
~ l s t s who made their debut in the early 1970s. The label is particularly
for Furui's work, because it does indeed focus inward, delving
the complacent facade of the lives of ordinary city-dwellers to
the dark, irrational forces within, impulses that link them to
traditional agrarian past. Likewise, beneath the artistry of Furui's
prose, likened by some critics to an oil painting with its dense texture,
lies an implicit critique of contemporary Japanese society and the role of
the individual within it. This critique is no less political for its subtlety.
His stories portray in microcosm the crises of identity and change con-
fronting all of Japanese society during the decades of rapid economic
. growth and affluence.
Furui was born in 1937 in Tokyo. He received a bachelor's de-
gree in German literature from Tokyo University in 1960, and stayed on
to complete a master's degree in 1962 with a thesis on Hermann Brach.
He then taught German literature at Kanazawa University for three years
before taking a job at Rikkyo University in Tokyo in 1965. During his
years as an academic, he published several translations of the novels of
the Austrian writers Hermann Broch and Robert Musil, as well as sev-
eral scholarly articles on Musil, Broch, Navalis, and Nietzsche. Furui him-
self admits the influence of his study of German literature on his own
works/ particularly in his richly textured style and in his concern with
the fragmentation of the self in modern society. In 1966, Furui joined the
.literary coterie known as The Plain Sketch Club (Hakubyo no Kai) and
published his first story, "On Thursday" (Mokuyobi ni), in the coterie's
magazine Hakubyo in 1968. As the number of his stories in major literary
1. Furui Yoshikichi and Ian Levy, "Taidan," Honyaku no sekai 10 (June 1985): 39.
INTRODUCTION 2
magazines increased, Furui decided to resign from his teaching post to
devote himself full time to writing.
2
In 1971 Furui's novella Yoko (Yoko, 1970), the title story of this
collection, was awarded the sixty-fourth Akutagawa Prize, an honor con-
ferred upon new writers of great promise as an official welcome into the
ranks of the literary establishment. The novella's main competition for
the prize was another Furui story, "Wedlock" (Tsumagomi, 1970; trans.,
1979), one of the few Furui works available in English translation. Ac-
cording to Kawabata Yasunari, the senior member of the award commit-
tee, the choice of author was unusually easy; the members were almost
evenly split, however, on which of his two nominated stories to desig-
nate as the winner. Yoko, favored by Kawabata himself, won by a single
vote. This skillful portrayal of a mentally disturbed young woman was
generally acknowledged to mark a new stage in Furui's maturation as a
writer.
3
Akiyama Shun, a literary critic and contemporary of Furui,
chooses in retrospect the year 1970 (not coincidentally the year of Yoko's
publication) as the beginning of a new kind of literature that seriously
questioned those assumptions and perceptions that constitute the "real-
ity" of everyday life.
4
The authors who practiced this new kind of litera-
ture, the naiko no sedai include, besides Furui Yoshikichi, Got6 Meisei,
Ogawa Kunio, Kuroi Senji, Abe Akira, and Kashiwabara Hy6z6. The lit-
erary critic Odagiri Hideo originally coined the term in his essay, "Manshu
no jiken kara yonjunen no bungaku no mondai" (Issues in literature forty
years after the Manchurian incident) (Tokyo shinbun, March 23-24, 1971).
Odagiri expressed dismay that these young writers were turning away
from the overt social and political commentary of the works of the previ-
ous postwar decades and instead focusing on the apparently unremark-
able dramas of everyday life. He lamented their preference for self-ab-
sorption and a frivolous nihilism over a treatment of social reality.
5
His
label caught on, primarily because of a penchant for categorization in
Japanese literary circles. While other critics, such as Ohkubo Norio, rightly
2. Several sources provided similar accounts of the particulars of Furui's life: Iwamoto
Yoshio, "Yoshikichi Furui: Exemplar of the 'Introverted Generation,"' World Litera-
ture Today 62.3 (Summer 1988): 386; Kamiya Tadataka, "Furui Yoshikichi,"
Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kansh/5 38, suppl. (June 1973): 280; and Kawamura Jiro, "Furui
Yoshikichi," in Odagiri Susumu, ed., Nihon bungaku daijiten, vol. 3 (Tokyo: Kodansha,
1977).
3. Kamiya Tadataka, "Yoko," Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kanshii 42, suppl. (January 1977):
154. Also see individual comments by the committee members in Akutagawasho zenshil,
vol. 8 (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjii, 1982), 544-52.
4. Akiyama Shun, "Nichijoteki genjitsu to bungaku no hatten, 1961-1977," in Matsubara
Shin'ichi et al., eds., Sengo Nihon bungakushi-nenpyo (Gendai no bungaku bekkan) (To-
kyo: Kodansha, 1978), 374-76.
5. Ibid., 376.
Introduction 3
the term naiki5 no sedai as nothing more than a convenient cat-
a group of writers who have little in common, 6 most agree that
:,Furui Yoshikichi's work above all embodies qualities that may be de-
. as "introverted."
7
This does not necessarily preclude broader_
0 b:ial significance, however. Karatani Kojin has taken to _s
:rt;dticism from a different angle, arguing that all manifestatwns

ctal protest in Japan are based on the same instability and gna"':,mg
within contemporary life as that portrayed by the apohh-
0 cal" introverts.
8

Akiyama's outline of the chief characteristics of '_"'nters of
. the "introverted generation" provides a very accurate of Fu-
work. First is the mistrust of the intellectual approach to soc1al prob-
: lems, including the self-conscious use of "intellectual'; language. These
writers prefer to capture ordinary lives in ordinary language, or least
that is not burdened with overt political reference. This does
, not necessarily mean that the work is accessible, however, one oft-
cited drawback of this type of literature is its difficulty (nankat).
is the search for the extraordinary, the "unreal" (higenjitsu), and the Irra-
tional that lurk beneath the surface of ordinary life. Third is the focus on
;characters who dwell in the city, cut off from the traditional family struc-
tures associated with rurallife.
9
As we shall see, all of these features are
evident in the three works translated in this collection. Chosen from the
first decade of his published works, these stories provide an
tion to Furui's literary cosmos that explores the of_
and fantasy, tradition and modernity, and the collective and the
Since the publication of Yoko, Furui has continued to publish nov-
els, stories, and essays of complexity and has
his share of Japan's literary pnzes. The two short stones, The
0
Sorrows" (Aihara, 1976) and "The Doll" (Ningyo, 1976),1 show ev1denc_e
of this maturation of Furui's literary craft, both in theme and style. Typi-
cal of works from this later period of his career, both show a greater em-
phasis on coming to terms with aging and death, thus shifting. the focus
from the crises of young adulthood to those of approaching middle age.
Yet, as he did in his early novella Yoko, Furui continues to explore a range
of human experiences on the borderline, not only the boundary between
6. Nakaishi Takashi, "Yoko-Furui Yoshikichi," Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kanshO
38
(May
1973): 82.
7. Iwamoto, "Yoshikichi Furui," 385. . _
8. Ohkubo Norio, "Shosetsu no 1970 nendai," Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kyozaz no kenkyu
17, suppl. (June 1972): 66.
9. Akiyama, "Nichijoteki genjitsu," 376-77. , A'h ,
10. Both stories can be found in Furui Yoshikichi, Aihara (Bungei shunjii, 1977).
1
ara
kk
"N' -"in the Novem-
was first published in the October 1976 issue of Bunga az, mgyo
ber 1976 issue of Taiyo.
INTRODUCTION 4
sanity and madness, but also between life and death. Other major works
include the novel Hijiri (The Sage, 1976), which further explores the am-
biguous realm where the Japanese past and present collide. An injured
mountain climber temporarily takes on the role of the holy man who
disposes of the dead in a remote village, and finds himself drawn into
rituals of defilement and purification that harken back to Japan's most
ancient myths. In the companion novel Sumika (The Dwelling, 1977), the
mountain climber returns to the city with the woman he married from
the village, only to discover that this new environment leads his wife to
madness.
Furui's later stories have a flexible, flowing structure reminis-
cent of the traditional Japanese essay, a tendency that is further devel-
oped in his more recent collections. In Yoru wa ima (Now Is Night,1987)
temporality is fluid, and the line between fiction and personal essay is
blurred as Furui explores his perennial subjects of the nature of conscious-
ness and the flux of identity. Kari ojo denshibun (A Tentative Attempt at a
Tale of Salvation, 1989) juxtaposes elaborate versions of stories from the
Heian period, of the death and rebirth of Buddhist monks in paradise,
with vignettes of modern experience that reveal the irrationality and
humor lurking quietly in everyday life. He continues to explore the ways
in which the literature and culture of premodern Japan inform the con-
temporary world. Furui has now taken his place as one of the established
members of the bundan and serves on the committee that awards the
Akutagawa Prize to the current generation of talented young writers.
Furui' s Literary World: The View from the Margins
As the term "introverted generation" suggests, a common thread runs
through all of Furui's work, and these three stories in particular: a con-
cern with the inner workings of the human mind, the very mechanics of
perception, cognition, and memory through which we create our subjec-
tive reality. Typically, the mental processes of Furui's characters are some-
how distorted by fatigue or illness, calling attention to the smooth and
otherwise invisible means by which the ordinary person derives her iden-
tity and makes sense of the world. The female protagonist in Yi5ko of course
suffers from a mental illness, but her boyfriend is not exactly in a normal
state of mind himself, which may account in part for his attraction to her.
The dying man in "The Plain of Sorrows" takes his mistress along on his
one-week vacation from the "sane" behavior of an upstanding husband
and father, which allows him to attain a final peace. The career woman
in "The Doll" finds that her attempt to establish her independence from
her family results in a loss of her own sense of identity. In fact, at the
heart of each story lies a period of madness for its main characters.
Introduction 5
The "mad" characters are never so irrational as to lose a certain
awareness of their position of difference. In this way, Furui
employ his characters in subtle social critique. The figure of the mad-
. . or madwoman has traditionally been relegated to the margins of
: . society; he or she has been ostracized, hidden away, or ignored.
11
Although attitudes have been slowly changing in recent years, even to-
day mental illness is a secret to be guarded from the outside world.
Nonetheless, what makes the mad character such an economical
ijtlage in literature is the complex relationship he or she maintains with
as both outsider and essential symbol. Relegated to the periph-
the mad character gains a fuller perspective on the center and serves
:as an instructive mirror rather than a passive one by bringing the contra-
dictions of the system into clear focus.
12
Many Japanese writers have also
. the voice of the mad (or at least neurotic) outsider to expose
the hypocrisies of sane society, including Natsume Soseki, Yokomitsu
Riichi, Tanizaki Jun'ichir6, and Akutagawa Ryunosuke, whose Kappa
(1927), is perhaps the best example of the use of the madman's delusions
as social criticism. Indeed, in literature the mad are sometimes philoso-
phers in disguise.
13
Thus, madness can be a form of "superior sanity"
because it signifies the ability to perceive and reject the general illness
inherent in "normal" life.
14
By creating a character who transgresses the
limits of socially acceptable behavior, Furui broadens the range of possi-
bility for what the character can do and think and say, and at the same
time endows that person with a different, and potentially subversive,
perspective on what constitutes the socially acceptable.
Furui always expresses his characters' perspectives in spatial
terms by means of his contrasts between the city and the countryside,
particularly the mountains, and his focus on newly built housing devel-
opments that encroach upon nature. As such, these settings conform to
anthropologist Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's schema of Japanese society,
which is based on the Shinto dichotomy of purity and impurity. The con-
crete manifestations of the pure and impure are expressed in the spatial
idioms of inside and outside, above and below. However, there are two
types of" outside": the clear-cut region of untamed nature or foreign lands,
for example, and the area on the margins of what is pure or "inside." The
outside beyond the margins may be threatening or neutral, but the sym-
11. Emiko Ohnuki;Tierney, Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1984), 60.
12. Roy Porter, A Social History of Madness: The World Through the Eyes of the Insane (New
York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 3.
13. Shoshana Felman, Writing and Madness (Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis), trans. Mar-
tha Noel Evans and Shoshana Felman (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 37.
14. Barbara Hill Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel: Studies in Bronte,
Woolf, Lessing and Atwood (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 8-9.
INTRODUCTION 6
bols of this outer margin are germs, illness, and death. The realm of the
in-between, in particular, forms the locus of impurity.
15
Thus, although
we first encounter the mad Yoko crouching in a ravine deep in the moun-
tains, it is only in the city that her behavior becomes problematic. More
interesting, perhaps, is Furui's creation of a marginal space of madness
within the city in a garbage-strewn empty lot in "The Plain of Sorrows"
or on a deserted train car in "The Doll."
We will find in all three stories in this collection the fundamental
features of Furui's work. His characters are ordinary people, but their
inner dramas take them across the border society constructs around the
ordinary, into the realm of the irrational and the unconscious, a realm
where the extinction of reason is linked to the final extinction of death.
Paradoxically, Furui captures the amorphous mental state in a concrete
setting, exploiting the symbolic power of natural and man-made envi-
ronments. In each story we also see patterns of repetition such as fits,
sleepwalking, and urgent obsessions that suggest a link to an ancient,
I
instinctual past. Furui addresses the issue of individual identity in each
story by destabilizing the concept of a fixed identity. Even age and gen-
der seem mutable characteristics. At points of crisis men take on female
qualities and young women alternate between girlishness and voluptuous
maturity. Finally, in spite of Odagiri Hideo's accusation of apolitical in-
troversion, all of Furui's stories implicitly comment on the costs of mod-
ernization to the individual in contemporary Japanese society. Each story
highlights these themes from a different angle, through a variety of nar-
rative approaches and a range of personal crises. Taken together, how-
ever, the stories provide a well-rounded picture of Furui's complex vision.
Yoko is the story of the relationship between the protagonist,
known simply as "he," and a young woman who lends her name to the
title of the novella. Although Yoko is a common name for girls in Japan,
the unusual Chinese characters Furui chooses to represent his heroine's
name are portentous: this "Yoko" translates as "child of darkness" or
"child of indistinctness," imbuing the character with an aura of gloom
and melancholy for the Japanese reader. Indeed, the reader soon discov-
ers that Yoko's actions and experiences are in keeping with her remark-
able appellation. The couple first meets deep in the mountains when the
young man happens upon Yoko crouching on a rock in a deep ravine,
paralyzed by her acute sensitivity to the fragile equilibrium of the rocks
towering above her. Each action, reaction, and misperception is pains-
takingly portrayed, and this scene soon takes on a symbolic resonance
for the dynamics of their relationship as the couple seems drawn back to
the story of their strange encounter again and again. A ravine deep in
15. Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture, 46-48.
Introduction 7
:.the mountains of the physical interior of Japan becomes an expression of
psychic interior of Yoko herself, whose psychological disorder de-
fines the eerie landscape.
Back in the city, both the young man and the reader find it hard
to. determine what exactly is wrong with Yoko. Her illness seems to defy
a definite medical diagnosis, but instead combines the symptoms of
schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive neurosis, and manic-depression,
leading the reader to look beyond medical labels to the broader signifi-
cance of Yoko's disordered interaction with her society. Her "attacks"
alternate between a hypersensitive reflection of her environment, be it
the bustle of downtown Tokyo or the exuberance of a park in spring, and
a complete withdrawal into self-absorption, as if she is again crouching
paralyzed in the deep ravine of her illness. This shift between too little
sense of self and too much suggests the balance any individual must ne-
gotiate between external demands and internal desires. Yoko's extraor-
dinariness may lie in the fact that she is aware of this tension and recog-
nizes, in her words, that she is always trembling on the borderline, just
like a thin membrane.
Yoko's symptoms also often manifest themselves through her
body, which sometimes appears thin and gawky, like a young girl's, and
sometimes takes on the full, voluptuous quality of a mature woman. Here
Furui situates his heroine on yet another borderline between childhood
and adulthood. Part of Yoko's hesitation to undergo a "cure" involves
her resistance to the mature woman's role as the proper housewife and
mother, a fate to which her older sister has already succumbed. Furui's
novella is, in fact, a story of a young woman's coming of age, a time of
great change when the distinctions between male and female lovers, child
and adult, the madness of the inner self and the sanity of proper social
expectations, are brought into sharpest focus.
"The Plain of Sorrows" explores another kind of borderline of
human experience, that between life and death. This confrontation with
death becomes a common theme in Furui's later works. Cancer, the dis-
ease of middle age, often serves as a catalyst for this profound spiritual
crisis of adulthood. In "The Plain of Sorrows," the narrator's best friend
is diagnosed with lung cancer. Although such news is usually kept from
the terminally ill in Japan, the dying man apparently guesses his fate
and sets about trying to repay a spiritual debt to his dead sister by help-
ing another troubled young woman find a reason to go on living. Like
Yoko's ravine, the "plain of sorrows" of the title is a psychological as
well as physical landscape, representing the portal through which a dy-
ing man passes into the land of the dead. Furui incorporates Buddhist
elements into his story: the dying man suddenly begins to chant Bud-
dhist folksongs of salvation from the late Heian period collection Ryojin
INTRODUCTION 8
hishi5 (Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Beams, ca. 1169); Lord
Amida's paradise of salvation lies to the west, bathed in a purple glow,
much like the horizon of the grassy plain the man is drawn to every night
in his trance. However, juxtaposed with these mythic and spiritual ele-
ments is the reality of urban Japan. The actual plain of sorrows that leads
to the afterlife is nothing more than a rubbish-strewn abandoned lot in
the middle of a new housing development on the outskirts of Tokyo.
Present throughout the story is an undercurrent of tension between
Japan's traditional past and the alienated existence of the city-dweller
living far from his or her ancestral home.
"The Doll" provides yet another view of a crisis in modern life
through a woman's confrontation with madness and death. The protago-
nist is a single woman in her early thirties, a time considered unlucky for
women in traditional lore, and an age when a woman is no longer young
by Japanese standards. When the woman decides to make a final break
from her family in the country by establishing her own family register in
Tokyo, her symbolic act of independence brings about a loss of mental
stability as well. Alone in the big city with only casual affairs and friend-
ships to sustain her, the woman turns to a large antique doll, a gift from
her uncle, for emotional support. Typical of a Furui symbol, the doll is
both a legacy and a burden as well as a focus for the woman's anxieties
about her identity as an individual and a female. In her final breakdown,
the woman finds herself drawn back into her personal past in a conclu-
sion that is both ghostly and humorous.
On one level, Furui's stories deal with nothing more than the or-
dinary human dramas of growing up and growing old, but by probing
farther into the recesses of the mind and memory, he touches upon the
deepest mysteries of human existence. And, as if to balance the somber
themes of madness and death, he also shows a great sensitivity to the
dark humor inherent in everyday life. Although his stories are set in Ja-
pan, the experiences of his characters as they try to make sense of their
fragmented, fast-paced, and routine existence are familiar dilemmas to
readers from any industrialized nation.
TRANSLATIONS
YOKO
Part One
Yoko was sitting alone at the bottom of a deep ravine.
It was almost the middle of October, and before long the first
snow would fall on the mountain peaks.
It was about one in the afternoon when he noticed the dark clouds
gathering in the western sky from his vantage point at the summit of K
Mountain. He hurried down the mountain as if something were driving
him onward and climbed down into the ravine from the ridge. At first
the path headed straight toward 0 Valley, then it continued alongside
the valley, gradually descending through thickets of dark, gloomy brush-
wood. After about an hour and a half he finally reached the bottom of
the ravine. He was not far from the junction of N Valley, and the place
resounded with the heavy thunder of falling water. ,
When he looked up from the bottom of the ravine, the sky was
already shrouded in low clouds. The slopes pressing in on either side
were covered with a luxuriant growth of briars and shrubs. Their black,
thorny branches seemed poised to smother the embers of crimson foli-
age still glowing here and there among the withering leaves in the dim,
enclosed ravine. In the dry riverbed, rocky debris lay in heaps along the
watercourse in hushed silence, giving off a sort of pale, grayish light,
which seeped into the bottom layer of the oppressive darkness. Yoko sat
crouched over on a flat rock illuminated by that gray light, gazing di-
rectly in front of her at a low cairn of stones, which some passing hiker
had apparently built for his amusement.
He should have noticed Yoko much sooner as he made his way
slowly along a riverbed filled with nothing but rocks. In fact, since he
had not seen another human being for nearly five hours, the figure of a
woman sitting alone on a rock should have caught his attention immedi-
ately, from quite a long distance away. Of course, he was rather tired
from the last descent of his three-day solo expedition. As he walked
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 12
through the deep ravine, weighed down with exhaustion, there were times
when the surrounding rocks began to assume the shapes of various hu-
man figures, sealed up in stone. And as his fatigue increased, those fig-
ures began to emerge, warm and alive, from the broken spell of the rocks:
a man prostrate on the ground, a woman in agony embracing her child,
an old matriarch seated in a formal posture. When he saw Yoko as well,
he had continued on his way, thinking that the same sort of hazy vision
was floating before him. Was Yoko's figure lost among his hallucinations?
Was her body so lacking in vitality and spirit?
That wasn't the only reason. When he first caught sight of the
woman, he felt a slight confusion in the brief time it took to stop in his
tracks. In fact, the young man, who was a little over twenty and not yet
fully mature, was often caught up in moments of confusion, even when
he was not standing at the bottom of a ravine. He fixed his eyes on the
figure of the woman. Then he continued walking, murmuring to him-
self, "So, there's a woman in a place like this."
In the next instant, he was distracted by the somehow ominous
sound of the waterfall rumbling down from the steep slope of N Valley
to his left. Accidents sometimes happened in this valley. There were many
cases of hikers who got lost on their way along the ridge leading from N
Summit to this valley. He personally knew of five people who had gotten
lost in this place and had fallen from the slope. After slipping from the
waterfall, one of them had roamed around senselessly for two days be-
fore finding his way down to the place where the two valleys met; he
was finally rescued by a passing party of mountain climbers who found
him stumbling through 0 Valley. Although he had hardly any external
wounds on his face, it was said that his looks had changed so much that
his older brother, who hurried to his side the following day, hadn't rec-
ognized him.
Such thoughts were running through the young man's mind as
he stopped and strained his eyes. The woman's pale profile-and that
alone-leapt into his field of vision from the far bank of the gently slop-
ing riverbed, about twenty meters away.
It came rushing toward him as if it were not a human face, and
yet he was transfixed by a certain uncanny quality about it, of the kind a
human face alone possesses. The instant he stopped moving, however,
the face suddenly ceased to give him any impression at all, and with the
countenance still before him, he was troubled by this absence of impres-
sion, which he had never before experienced when looking at another
human face. He was slowly overcome by a feeling of panic.
A human face would have some kind of expression all the time,
even when no one was there to see it, rather like the odor that naturally
y if k 0 13
emanates from one's body. Yet, this face was floating transparently in the
light of the ravine, as if even its innate expression had been washed away
completely. However, the features did not seem to be swelling up, as one
often saw on the faces of exhausted women deep in the mountains. Eyes,
nose, lips, and narrow jaw-each feature stood out distinctly, each pre-
served its own character so distinctly it was somehow pathetic. The
woman was gazing at a cairn, which was standing in his general direc-
tion, a short distance away. There was no doubt that she was gazing at it,
but he found no perceptive faculty in those eyes. Because of that blank
look, the whole face lacked a unified expression, and the longer she gazed
at the cairn before her, the more her expression seemed to fade, sucked
up by the steadfast existence of the pile of stones. He had never seen her
before, and yet he felt compelled to sift through his memory, as if to draw
forth the image of a faint expression, which was fading farther and far-
ther away. If he eased up just a little in his efforts, that face went beyond
the expressionless; it began to manifest the vacant rigidity of an inani-
mate object.
Each time this happened, he felt a strong urge to prove to him-
self that the thing before him was a human being. His body was poised
to flee but his eyes remained fixed on the woman's profile, and unwit-
tingly he began to probe his own childhood memories. A moment later
he murmured, "Ah, yes, that's the face of a child who's just been crying,
and she's curled up in the corner of the yard, gazing at pebbles." With
this conclusion, he finally relaxed his gaze and looked up and down the
entire body of the woman.
The body was somehow more expressive. The figure was still girl-
ish. With her knapsack still strapped to her back, the woman had set her
narrow hips on the stone as if she were in pain. Her upper body, wrapped
in a flesh-colored parka, was tilted forward. Both arms were folded across
her chest, and her thin elbows were pinned stiffly on either side of her
concave abdomen. As his gazed shifted down, he noticed that she was
tenderly stroking her crisscrossed arms from shoulder to forearm with
the palms of her hands. Her legs in black slacks were pressed together
firmly at the thighs, but, from the knees down, both calves opened loosely
outward as if they didn't quite know what to do. The tips of her caravan
shoes were purposefully digging their way into the gravel. Somehow
the face did not seem to fit the defensive attitude of the body, but was
stretched forward from her stiff posture as if it were surrendering itself
to something. Nevertheless, when he finished surveying her body and
looked back at her face, her expression was not as vacant as when he had
first seen it. Her brow was faintly furrowed and her lips were parted.
The woman had fixed her eyes upon the pile of rocks in front of her as if
T R A N 5 L A T I 0 N 5 14
she were patiently enduring some kind of internal pain. He realized at
last that here was a sick person to be looked after, and, recovering the
self-confident bearing of a young mountain climber, he stepped toward her.
A pebble glanced off his hiking boot and rolled five or six meters
toward her until it lost its momentum and stopped. The woman turned
her face slightly and fixed her vacant stare toward an area a little to the
left of where he was standing. Once again she looked as if she could see
nothing. Then, perhaps because her brief glimpse of him lingered in the
corner of her eye, she looked straight up at him, but rather than actually
gazing at him, she poured her dull look into his chest. He suddenly real-
ized that, without being aware of it, his feet had been moving farther
and farther to the right to maintain his distance from the woman. Her
arms still folded across her chest, she gradually began to twist her upper
body to follow him with her eyes as he was about to disappear behind her.
Yet her gaze never connected with his body: it was too slow to
follow his movements, fell short of the place where he was standing, or
reached too far over his head. He continued to step to the right, but he
was not trying to avoid her completely; rather, he drew a wide arc with
the woman as the pivot. In this way, he was able to climb down to a place
at roughly the same level as she was without significantly reducing the
distance between them. He proceeded to trace a circle around her, his
eyes riveted to the woman twisting her body painfully toward him.
At that moment he suddenly thought of his own figure moving
like a shadow in the dim periphery of the woman's field of vision. Or
rather, he felt as if he had actually seen himself before his very eyes.
Eluding the woman's gaze, he was gradually sinking and drowning with
each step he took into the gray, jagged wilderness of rocky debris. From
a vague feeling of pity he returned her gaze. But he could not seem to fix
his gaze upon her either, and his vision of her faded. Although she was
clearly visible to the eye, her presence did not strike him as strongly as
the rocks around her. He had already decided to turn his back on her and
walkaway.
Then he stopped, stricken by the horrifying premonition that the
rocks all around them were about to manifest their true nature and crash
down into the dry riverbed all at once. Just as the sound of his footsteps
stopped, he felt as if he had abruptly awakened from a dream to find
himself standing forlorn in a wasteland of stone. The next moment he
felt the strain of standing erect, and, at the same time, he became keenly
aware of her gaze enveloping his body. He looked at her again. She was
still holding herself tightly, twisting her hips in her effort to look toward
him. She was like some magically pliant creature on the top of the flat
rock, floating in a rough current of rocky debris. Tilting her head, she
gazed with great concentration into his eyes. He gazed back into those
y 0 k 0 15
eyes. Gaze and gaze were joined together as one. Drawn by that force, he
began to walk straight toward her.
**********
Later, when they didn't know what else to do, the two of them
0ften thought back over these events. Over and over again, they helped
each other describe their strange meeting in bits and pieces.
Yoko told him that from early on she had heard the sound of his
hiking boots as he descended into the ravine. She was able to hear it
quite clearly for a long time, her attention drawn to it, but she was com-
pletely unable to grasp its significance. She explained that it was as if,
immersed in a shallow sleep, she had heard someone knocking repeat-
edly at the front door, but-how could she describe it?-she was some-
how unable to translate it into a coherent thought. It was as if she were
twisting her body in irritation on the bed, and then her mind went blank,
she said. That's what it was like ....
The footsteps drew near and stopped, and it was then for the
first time that she was startled. She sensed out of the corner of her eye
that someone was standing above her, looking steadily down at her pro-
file. She knew there was someone there, but she couldn't tell where he
was standing in the gray wilderness, and so she didn't know where to
turn her head.
"You should have tried turning your head in different directions
so you could see all around you," he said to Yoko at one point.
"If it had been so easy, I wouldn't have been sitting in a place like
that," she laughed.
According to her story, Yoko said she felt that if she had casually
looked up and no one had been there, if no one were standing in the
foreground holding the gray torrent in check for her, then the rocky de-
bris would have come tumbling down upon her in a great avalanche and
she would have been lost.
Since it was before eleven o' dock when Yoko began to climb down
from the top of K Mountain, and she barely stopped at all along the way,
she reckoned she had been sitting on top of the rock for approximately
three hours. She had followed the same path that he had taken and had
descended into the ravine through the dark, gloomy brushwood. When
she stood at the riverbed, she said that she was keenly aware of the pres-
sure bearing down on the ravine. Straining under the weight of the moun-
tains that seemed about to slide down from both sides, the earth of the
riverbed met her footsteps with a resilience substantially different from
that of a mountain ridge or level ground. Every rock, buoyed up by the
force confined in the soil, lay unsteadily, as if floating. The force was not
TRANS L A T I 0 N S 16
confined to the earth; it also flowed over into space as well. The moment
she carne down and stood in the ravine, she felt that same pressure on
her eardrums as she did when diving head first into a pool. Perhaps that
was why the thunder of water echoing from the nearby valley, although
loud, was not particularly oppressive. It was as if she were separated
from it by a thin, stretched membrane. Yoko became aware that she was
walking with her back hunched. Yet she was not particularly tired. She
continued on for a while in that odd position until she came to that flat
rock. She first sat down upon it with the intention of getting her water
bottle from her knapsack.
Just as she sat down, immersing her body in the gray expanse of
rock, Yoko felt the surrounding pressure gradually gathering around her
and she instinctively cowered. Actually, it was not that the weight was
pressing down upon her, but rather that the rocks on the periphery, with
her as their pivot, had become completely still. Here and there in the
ravine were places where the weight of the mountains established an
equilibrium, and she sensed in an instant that she had unwittingly sat
down at one of those points. She was filled with a vague fear that she, a
vulnerable living body, was sitting in such a dangerous place. Then she
felt a new fear, that she was so afraid that she had left herself, trembling
like a helpless, frightened child, among these heavy rocks. For a while
she could not lift her head.
When she finally raised her head and looked around, the state of
her surroundings had changed. All at once, the rocks in the dry riverbed
seemed to be drifting. Each rock was stationary as before, but the very
fact that they were motionless strengthened the impression that they were
drifting. Sometimes, when she was gliding straight down a mountain on
skis, the surrounding landscape, which had been rushing swiftly past on
either side, would suddenly stand still, and all at once the sensation of
speed would feel different. Her whole body would tense up. The force of
the tips of her skis on the quiet surface of the snow, the frenzy of the
piercing wind in her ears-the same feeling of the urgency was lurking
silently within each and every one of the rocks lying around her.
Helplessly, Yoko narrowed her field of vision to the small area of
space directly in front of her and gazed diligently at each rock within it,
trying to arrest the floating feeling. This did indeed stop the flow, but
instead each rock-there was a faraway look in her eyes as she wondered
aloud how to continue, then impatiently began her explanation again in
stiff, awkward words-the vertical thrust of each rock had become strong
and intense while the horizontal thrust was very weak and ineffective.
With the exception of the rock she was sitting on, every rock was ear-
nestly, obstinately intent upon the vertical. If something had tried to settle
on top of them, the rocks would have raised up their corners and shaken
Yoko 17
it off. From the large rock to the small pebble, they all jostled against
. each other as if they were about to fall at any moment. But each stood in
the way of the other, and finally the motion stopped. Their flow arrested
and weighed down, the rocks looked grim. How could this jostling throng
support her body? If she stood up, she would have no choice but to run
away as fast as she could. But she knew that if she tried, her body would
immediately be paralyzed with fear.
Bewildered, Yoko continued to sit on the rock. Soon she felt dis-
tant and detached. It seemed as if quite a long time had passed before
she began to think things over again. However, while she was thinking
about this and that, she no longer seemed to be able to grasp her sense of
herself. Her thoughts drifted in fragments along the jostling throng of
gray and murmured languidly here and there. She herself was scattered
here and there in as many fragments, and then she was nowhere. Thoughts
floated for just an instant in space and were immediately washed away
into the drifting rocks. Then, a moment later, they glided in from a dif-
ferent place and began to murmur in complacent, childlike voices among
the rocks, which had grown silent once again.
Without realizing it, Yoko had been staring at a tower of small
rocks sitting right in front of her. According to her recollection, she was
completely unaware at that time that it was supposed to be a trail marker.
There were eight small round rocks in all, each about the size of her two
fists joined together. They were piled up with no great care, and the tower
leaned to one side as if about to collapse at any moment. She was ab-
sorbed in staring at that vertical, meaningless thing for a long time. How-
ever, the more she looked, the more it became apparent that the stone
tower did not rely upon an accidental equilibrium, but rather that the
force of each rock trying to reach toward the sky was supporting the
tower from within. Little by little each rock began to take on a living
form. As she watched this transformation, her own body was gradually,
relentlessly dissolving into the flow of the riverbed, which spread out-
ward like a fan from the pivotal point of the stone tower. Forlorn and
helpless, Yoko hugged herself tightly. There was still some feeling left in
her body. It was a faraway feeling, as if she were looking down at her
house from the top of a hill.
"It felt just like that ... no, that's not quite right," she said, con-
tradicting herself, leaving him all the more puzzled.
At no other time, she said, was she so clearly aware of her own
existence. Hugging her numbed body, she continued to gaze at the stone
tower. But she was doing more than that. While she was gazing, she was
slowly pouring her own energy into the base of the rocks. As she did so,
each rock began to look increasingly full and rounded from within, and
slowly, in a sort of trance, they began to grow as truly pure life in th
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 18
light of the ravine. Yoko, too, felt as if she were slowly growing along
with the rocks. She felt a profound happiness.
"You say 'profound happiness'?" he asked, startled at her words.
Yoko nodded. He thought he knew what she meant, but he asked again.
"But when I got there, you didn't look at all'happy' or 'fulfilled.
111
Yoko put her hand to her forehead, deep in thought. After a long
pause, she only replied, "Yes, I guess I should say 'pain' rather than 'hap-
piness.' I never want to feel like that again."
While she was looking at the stone tower, Yoko's fear subsided.
She no longer had the helpless feeling that her being was diffusing out
into the rocky riverbed. But, all around her, the rocks of the mountain
and the valley were still lying stubbornly and heavily, sullenly preserv-
ing a taut balance among themselves. Caught in the meshes of that net,
she was unable to move. If she were to attempt to stand up, the balance
of the netting would rupture and these rocks in their stony wrath would
rush down upon her for her carelessness.
To be a human being means to stand up and walk, Yoko thought
to herself. It means to stand up among other things that all have the same
weight as oneself, and to make an arrogant distinction between inside
and outside, or near and far. To be a human being means to form one's
own arbitrary view of reality on that basis, and to walk around in a daze,
balancing a big head upon frail shoulders. But as soon as she made that
distinction between inside and outside, a fear flowed into her and filled
her completely, imparting a somehow animal-like feeling to her whole
being. She would not stand up from this place again. The next time she
would move from this place would be when the rocks of this riverbed
began to crash down all at once. By that time she would have already
turned into one of the rocks, and, feeling nothing, she would tumble down
with the other rocks of the mountains and rivers. She felt her feet gradu-
ally becoming imbedded in the gravel.
At that point, the sound of footsteps drew near and stopped right
above her.
When the noise around her subsided to the sounds of the river,
Yoko started out of her daze, and, in spite of the rigid and unresponsive
posture of her body, she was finally able to tum her face in the approxi-
mate direction of its source. There, standing amid that jostling throng of
rocky debris straining skyward, was a man.
"There's someone there," Yoko thought. But no matter how hard
she gazed at the man's figure, it stood as expressionless as a stake rising
sharply out of the rocky wasteland, and she was unable to perceive it
clearly. The thought that someone was there grazed her consciousness,
evoking no feeling. Yoko was tired and averted her eyes. Then she felt
y 0 k 0 19
her gaze being drawn toward him once more and she looked up. The
. xnoment she did, the man's figure suddenly began to move. Just then ...
Every time her story reached this point, Yoko's expression took
on a tender cruelty. She pressed herself tightly against him, turning only
her face slightly away from his shoulder, and although the light of sym-
pathy shone in her eyes, she began to speak in a dry voice without soft-
ening her words in the least.
... just then, Yoko's eyes seized upon the man's figure for the
first time and put him into focus. He began to walk two or three paces
directly toward her, but he shrank back from the direct line of her gaze
and gradually wandered off toward the left. Neither moving away nor
drawing nearer, he traced a strange arc in the jostling rocks of the river-
bed, occasionally glancing at her briefly out of the corner of his eye. He
walked as if inching across thin ice, curling his long thin back with an
animal sluggishness. His young eyes revealed his apprehension. Yet, as
he walked, the gray stretch of rock came together into a somehow hu-
man landscape, with the man at its center. Yoko stared intently at this
scene, feeling as if an extraordinarily strange thing had come before her
eyes. How he must love himself, she marveled. He loves himself and
because of that he is troubled by apprehension. He loves that apprehen-
sion, too. Because of that, although the man was nothing but a puny ex-
istence looking as if he could be carried away in an instant by the clamor
of rocky debris, he kept clear of her. Yet, when the man walked like this,
the rocks that looked sinister to her gathered kindly around him and
began to bind themselves together with a mild uneasiness. Yoko studied
this scene fixedly for a while. Then, at that overly obvious display of his
self-love and apprehension, she felt the same type of fear as when she
passed a drunk on the road at night, and she cried out inside, "Hey, you!
Stop!" He abruptly stopped and stood perfectly still among the rocks,
his body tensed and poised to flee. But then, he turned toward her as if
in a daze, and approached timidly like a large, cowardly beast with
clouded eyes.
Just as Yoko had observed, he had been troubled by every pos-
sible superstitious thought as he drew closer to the woman seated on the
rock. She sat facing away from him, so in order to look at him as he ap-
proached from behind, she had to twist her upper body from the waist as
far as she could, her arms still folded protectively across her chest. As he
drew closer, she had to arch her back and tilt her head diagonally back-
ward in her effort to watch hiin. But when he reached her side, she sud-
denly grew small, and silently looked up into his face from her rigid
posture. There was something both pathetic and a bit uncanny about that
posture. He slowly circled in front of her, fixing his eyes on her tense,
" I
.,
~
,,
'
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 20
white throat. At the same time, she untwisted her body, brought her arms
down to her sides, and straightened her neck to look up to him. Then she
stood up, and, as if feeling dizzy, she stumbled toward his left shoulder.
"Please take me down to the foot of the mountain," Yoko said to
him in a low, soft voice.
**********
He offered his right arm, and Yoko immediately accepted it, cling-
ing fast to him. Without a word he started off. Yoko stooped forward
slightly and stepped carefully as if she were treading on a quagmire. Her
arm was weightless. Her body floated at his side, faintly warm, and she
matched his pace as if she were being carried along. After the strain, he,
too, was unable to speak.
When they had gone along the riverbed for a while, the valley
gradually closed in from the left. The path began to twist and turn up
along the right face of the desolate surface of the mountain, so narrow
that only one person could pass at a time. He loosened her hand from his
right arm. Yoko crouched down among the rocks and looked up at him
reproachfully. He turned his back on her with apparent indifference and
began to climb onward. When he had climbed about ten meters, he looked
back and jerked his chin as if urging her to follow. Yoko shook her head
silently. But as she began to shake her head once more, she gazed into his
eyes. He flashed her a penetrating look. She slowly straightened and
climbed toward him as if reeled in by his gaze.
This scene was repeated again and again. After continuing for
over an hour, up and down over rather difficult terrain, they finally de-
scended to a suspension bridge, which led into the shrine that served as
a gateway to the shrine at the summit. At the approach to the bridge,
Yoko crouched down on the ground again. It was there that he first spoke
to her.
"If you can't cross this kind of bridge by yourself, you shouldn't
come to the mountains again."
"I won't," Yoko murmured, looking at the ground.
"What's more, when you've lost your confidence, you won't even
be able to walk around by yourself in the city anymore."
Wondering to himself why he had said such cruel things, he un-
fastened the knapsack from the cowering Yoko and, carrying it in one
hand, briskly crossed the bridge. Throwing the two knapsacks down on
the opposite bank, he returned halfway across the bridge. Yoko raised
her head meekly and followed his movements with her eyes. He stood in
the middle of the bridge and, assuming as carefree a posture as he could,
signaled with his eyes, "Come across now!"
y 6 k 0 21
It was a scenario that they had been repeating for some time, so
when Yoko felt his stare, she stood up almost reflexively and began to
cross the bridge with stiff, awkward steps. As she came nearer, he gradu-
ally drew back toward the far bank, still firmly holding her gaze.
When he had lured her about halfway across the bridge, he sud-
denly thought, "Why, she's just like a dog!"
At that very moment, Yoko stopped. She took her eyes away from
him and peeped down between the footboards at the swift torrent about
four meters below. She seemed to have fallen into a daze again. But it
was not as if she were paralyzed. Rather, her body relaxed from its tense,
stooped posture and took on a defiant, almost brazen appearance. Her
back straight, knees slightly bent, she rested her fingertips lightly on the
ropes at either side and gazed dreamily down at the current as if she
were not even aware that he was waiting for her. As she stood on the
suspension bridge, looking down at the rushing water beneath her feet,
the whole bridge began to slide upstream, sending up clouds of spray ....
"Don't look down!" he shouted out instinctively.
Yoko slowly raised her head and gave him a puzzled look. Then
reluctantly, but with an air of abandonment, she began to make her way
across. Now it was his turn to become tense. Keeping his eyes on Yoko,
he slowly retreated and jumped backward onto the bank, where he waited
for her. Crossing to the point where there were only two wooden slats
left to go, Yoko stopped again. This time she was truly unable to move.
"It's okay now," he said, reaching out with both arms from the
bank. A tight, drawn expression, neither laugh nor scowl, came over her
face, and in the next instant she threw her body forward as if she were
hurling a stick and collapsed into his arms. Under the impact of the
weight, he landed upon the ground on his buttocks.
"You sure do crazy things," he said. As he helped the still gasp-
ing Yoko up from the ground, he looked over at the slat where she had
been standing. He was shocked. If he had held out his hand one second
later, she surely would have missed her step and fallen through.
Without even glancing back toward the bridge, she turned her
flushed face into the wind, absorbed in the task of smoothing stray wisps
of hair back into place.
The second time they met was also by chance.
One day near the end of January, more than three months after
their meeting in 0 Valley, he was waiting in a train station when Yoko
came dashing down the crowded stairway toward him.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 22
He was standing at the white line on the platform, waiting for
his train. A train going in the opposite direction had stopped right across
from him on the next track over. Yoko later explained that she'd been
sitting on that train when she spotted him standing there and had run
out onto the platform seconds before the doors closed.
He, too, thought he had caught a brief glimpse of Yoko's face. As
he was looking in through the window at the commotion of passengers
getting on and off the train, he was suddenly reminded of the tiny, blurred
face of the woman he had met in the ravine. However, before he could
get a clear grasp on that memory, the train began to move forward and
the faces of the people inside-all holding on to the hanging straps and
gazing toward him with bored expressions-took on an appearance quite
similar to his own. His attention was vaguely drawn to the emerald green
flow of the train cars sliding out of the station. Just then, the same cur-
rent of emerald green came sliding into the platform from the opposite
direction, and a large train chassis stood in front of his nose, obscuring
the far platform and the fragile memory that had just begun to take shape
in his mind.
A second before, he had seen a childlike figure dashing up the
stairs of that other platform. Soon the figure came running along the over-
pass toward the platform where he was standing; as it flitted past each
window, it flashed dark against the glass tinted red by the setting sun.
He followed the figure that far with his eyes without really giving it a
thought. Then his attention was drawn to the open door in front of him.
The passengers poured out of the train and proceeded toward
the stairway at the same brisk speed, but suddenly they looked up and
slackened their pace as if annoyed. A faint glimmer of curiosity simulta-
neously flickered in the eyes of the men looking up. Their gaze seemed
to follow the high-pitched sound of footsteps dashing recklessly down
the stairs. "So, it's a woman," he thought to himself, as the image of a
woman in high heels, with her skirt immodestly disheveled, flashed into
his head. But feeling he had seen his own curiosity reflected in the eyes
of the men around him, he saw no need to make the effort to turn and see
her for himself. He merely began to walk along with the boarding pas-
sengers, who had begun to shuffle toward the door of the train.
The warning bell signaling the train's departure had already be-
gun to ring. Just then, out of the crowd and confusion, a gentle, some-
how familiar, warmth drew near, directly behind his right arm. He felt
someone place a hand lightly on his elbow, and when he turned around,
a girl in a white coat had just stepped away from his side and was bow-
ing to him politely. He thought he had been mistaken for someone else.
Then the girl looked into his eyes and tilted her flushed face a little to the
right.
y if k 0 23
"I want to thank you, very much, for helping me out the other
" she said in a formal manner. Her voice was thin and a little high-
Even after he had puposely missed his train and found himself
beside the girl along the underground passage from the plat-
form to the station, he still could not free himself of the doubt that this
someone else. Her footsteps sounded completely different. The girl
walking to his right, about one step behind. From time to time he
'saw her pointed shoes out of the corner of his eye. They made a clear,
methodical sound amid the noise and confusion of the crowd. One could
,even say her footsteps had a definite character, and sometimes they went
,,,m,uL<><u the movements impatiently as if bothered by their own distinct-
. At those times, he turned around and looked back at her. Her al-
ed eyes flinched a little under his gaze, but then they sprang
like a small branch to meet his, and she looked into his eyes and
smiled.
Again he picked out each feature of the face of the woman who
}tad been sitting in the ravine: the eyes and nose and lips and lines that
tapered softly toward the narrow jaw. The last time he had seen her, each
:feature had retained its own character in isolation, within the blankness
that vaguely permeated the whole face. But now, each one had found its
iplace and fit together in tense harmony in the beautiful glow that radi-
ated from her small face. However, there was a sense of instability, which
he couldn't place, as if that blankness would immediately take over again
should that glow fail to keep renewing itself. He casually speeded up his
pace and then slowed down. Adjusting to his caprice, the clear footsteps
echoed as methodically as ever through the crowd.
**********
On the day of their first meeting, neither of them had asked a
single question about the other. They barely spoke at all. Their meeting
was a little too unusual for the typical exchange of a young man and
woman who had just become acquainted. Besides, in order to get home
before evening, they had to move on with no time to spare for talking.
They walked purposefully between the mulberry plantations misting over
with a fine rain, sharing the shelter of a vinyl raincoat they held over
their heads. Yoko became a slight warmth under his right arm, faint
enough that he wasn't sure whether she was there or not. Her feet made
no sound, but still she walked capably, adjusting herself to his pace.
An hour later they barely managed to catch the bus. Even on the
bus, they both just stared ahead into the evening darkness, mindful of
the time of the next express train. From the time they got off the bus until
T R A N 5 L A T I 0 N 5 24
they were on board the train, they also had to keep running. Finally, when
they had settled in their seats, and he had bought her a box lunch at the
next station, Yoko said, "Thank you," and smiled shyly. As she ate, she
turned her body toward the window as if to conceal her eating from him.
She ate about one third of the box lunch, and then, as she sipped her tea
and gazed out of the window into the darkness, her head began to nod
drowsily. Sometimes she raised her head with a start and smiled, then
sank back into a doze, a smile still on her lips. Gradually her features
grew somewhat puffy, and she fell soundly asleep. She slept all the way
to the last station. Even when they parted at the station, the only words
they exchanged were, "Are you all right?" "Yes, I'm fine. Thank you very
much." It was only after Yoko had disappeared into the stream of people
that he finally realized that they had never even told each other their
names.
Nothing of Yoko remained but the faint warmth he had grown
accustomed to in his right arm. He felt exactly as if he had whimsically
picked up a cat in the rain and then put it back down again. The con-
sciousness that he had experienced something unusual had faded away
to practically nothing.
Around the time they first met, he himself was not exactly in an
ordinary state of mind either. He still hadn't attended school since sum-
mer vacation; for the most part, he stayed cooped up in the house. At the
worst times, he shut himself up in his own "nursery" for ten days at a
stretch, except for mealtimes, without feeling bored. Perhaps this, too,
was the illness of self-absorption. However, as this harmless illness grew
worse, it brought about an extreme indifference to other things outside
him. That was not all. Ironically, the illness had the tendency to lead him
to a strange indifference toward his present self and his own experience.
On rare occasions, he recalled the incident in that ravine. Then
he felt as if he wanted to go out to school the very next day and tell his
friends about it. There was no doubt that his friends would find the story
interesting. Then, in a roundabout way, the incident would become a
unique experience for him at last. And perhaps he would be able to take
an interest in himself again, precisely because he would continue to have
similar experiences in the future.
However, when he tried to remember the incident in detail, he
invariably carne up against a feeling of discomfort. At times, he had seen
an expression in that woman's eyes that looked as if she somehow pitied
him and was puzzled at his good intentions. Then he was struck by an
inspiration. "She was planning to commit suicide there, wasn't she?" His
memory turned completely upside down, and he felt that he was quietly
watching through her clear eyes the conduct of a young mountaineer,
rough and brimming with self-confidence. He decided that she must have
y i5 k 0 0 25
a young woman, the same age as he, or rather three or four years
Then, at last, his memory was calm.
' ' ~ ' ~ - -
**********
Now, sitting opposite her at a table in a coffee shop, he was no
sure how old she was. On a chair, she held her upper body with
and her hips looked unexpectedly womanly. Clear downy hair grew
on her white arms and swept along her lackluster skin. Her
was somehow ageless, and inexplicably radiated a pallid, lifeless
that made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. He again remembered
idea about suicide. He had his own image of a person, whether man
woman, who would commit suicide. At that moment a person was
to take his own life, his age would be swept away and he would be
in an ashen pallor neither aged nor youthful. ...
"Thanks to you I've recovered now," she said in a thin voice.
"Thanks to me ... " he stammered, unable to grasp the meaning
her words.
"I was ill."
"What was the matter?"
"Acrophobia." The harsh word rang out almost cheerfully from
small, pouting lips.
"Acrophobia? Why would a person with a fear of heights climb
mountains?"
"I didn't know I had acrophobia."
"You'd come all the way down to the ravine and there you finally ... "
"Strange, isn't it?"
"You didn't feel anything on the mountain peak?"
"No, I was perfectly happy."
He drew back slightly, his curiosity suddenly dampened by the
word "happy." She looked down. When there was a break in the conver-
sation, the high pitch of her voice lingered in his ears. It was certainly
not so high that an outsider would remark on it; rather, it should have
been described as a thin, clear voice. But compared to her deep, full voice
in the ravine, it sounded pathetic to his ears. Whether she sensed his
confusion or not, she was looking down and smiling to herself. He no-
that every now and then, she would knit her brow almost imper-
and twist her body slightly toward her left shoulder.
"So, you didn't feel a thing on the top of the mountain," he asked
her, "but the acrophobia hit after you came down into the ravine?" The
between them seemed strange to him, for although this was
effect their first meeting, he was asking all the questions, and about
inner thoughts and feelings, too.
I
I

T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 26
Lost in thought, she gazed over his shoulder at some faraway
place, then answered in a softer voice. "Maybe a ravine is the place where
the sensation of height accumulates. Each rock is packed to the core with
the sensation of height, and it seems like they feel hostility toward any
human being who trespasses there .... "
Now that the uncanny quality of the ravine had been put directly
into words, he reexamined her face with a new interest. She blushed and
said in a nasal voice, "I'm not really sure." Then she stretched, leaning
back in her chair, and began to look all around the shop like a child who
has been brought to an unusual place. Each time her gaze shifted from
one distant point to another, it came back before him and fell on his watch-
ing eyes, and she smiled absently as if approaching from afar. Every time
her profile began to turn toward him, he started to recall the profile of
the woman who had been sitting on the rock, but before he could com-
pletely recapture it, she was squarely facing him and starting to smile in
a friendly way again. He was taken aback by the defenselessness of that
smiling face. But in contrast to the expression on her face, the words she
spoke were more awkward; she seemed to fling them out in confusion
from within her reticence. Because of this, their exchange bore a slight
resemblance to a dialogue between doctor and patient.
"Is acrophobia something that appears so suddenly?"
"I had it a little before I went up into the mountains."
"But you said that was the first time you noticed it, didn't you?"
"Yes, I hadn't realized that it was acrophobia."
"Why not?"
"It's strange. I don't feel it at all when I'm in high places. Actu-
ally, I feel rather lighthearted."
"But wait a minute. Someone who has acrophobia tenses up when
he's standing in a high place, right?"
"Yes. But I feel it when I'm in a flat place. It only happens some-
times, but when it does, I don't know how I'm able to keep standing."
Then her talk suddenly took a strange turn. "If the floor of the room were
bulging out like a lens, it would be hard to stay put, wouldn't it? And
then what if the floor were tilted a little to one side, that would make you
nervous, wouldn't it? I certainly don't want to have a conversation with
someone or drink tea or eat meals in a place like that, so I immediately
walk out to try to find a place that's normal, but wherever I go, the ground
is cockeyed. I want to scream out, 'How can everybody stand to live in a
place like this!' But nobody seems to care and I don't know what to
do .... "
As she talked on, the expression on her face faded, and, para-
doxically, as her words filled with enthusiasm, her voice took on a mono-
tone. It was as if she were sinking gradually into drowsiness while exert-
y 6 k 0 27
ing herself to the utmost to speak from beyond the thin membrane of
sleep. Her eyes and nose and lips lost their coherence and each individual
feature was somehow unrestrained. There was an oddly suggestive qual-
ity about it that made him want to take her into his arms.
"Do you really feel that way?" he asked with concern.
With these words she recovered her genial expression. Running
her hand over her knee, she answered in the voice of a mature woman.
"Yes, well, I'm probably telling a lie. When I'm asked if I really mean
what I say, I feel that the proper answer is 'No.' But I find myself want-
ing to go ahead and say it. Whenever I talk to someone about my illness,
I always end up telling lies."
He was conscious of an undertone in her voice, as if she pitied
him, who knew nothing and had no need to know. Unable to find the
words, he blurted out rudely, "You're not talking about acropho-
bia at all!"
"Yes, you're right. It isn't acrophobia, is it?" she said, contradict-
ing herself graciously. She smiled.
When they left the shop and came back to the underground pas-
sage, she still seemed like a young girl to him, although he already knew
they were the same age. This time she walked two or three paces ahead,
and now that he was able to get a good look at her, he saw that her legs
graceful as she walked. Her whole body was animated by the en-
ergy springing up from her narrow shoes that stepped along as if they
were rapping the concrete, thus making her slender body look more and
more cheerful. However, each time they approached the congestion of a
cross passage or subway entrance, her step became uncertain. Her foot-
steps were no longer audible, and she began to look absently around her.
She looked as if she were trying to make sure of something. In retaliation
for the sense of inferiority she had given him in the shop a few moments
ago, he silently passed her and proceeded on at the same pace. A mo-
ment later, when he had just started to worry about her, the clear sound
of her hurried footsteps approached from behind once more. She passed
him and walked two or three paces ahead, animated with deliberate glee.
Repeating this routine several times, they went through the ticket
gate at the station and walked on for a while. Then she suddenly stopped
and turned around. That gentle warmth drew near his chest, and she
spoke in a high, thin voice.
"Would it be okay if I wait for you next week on this day, at the
same time and place?"
Until that instant, he'd had no plan whatsoever about the future,
as if he thought they would naturally run into each other again once
, they had parted. He was amazed at his own carelessness.
**********
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 28
When the next week came, he no longer remembered when Yoko's
"same time" was. She must have meant the time they had arrived at the
coffee shop, but he hadn't the slightest idea when he had met her the last
time. He was not at all sure what time he had left the house, how long he
had walked around in the streets, and what time he had been standing
on that platform. For the first time in a long while, he tried to retrace the
day's activities one by one. However, all he could do was to narrow down
Yoko's "same time" to three- or four-thirty, a difference of a little over an
hour.
Finally, after taking a number of factors into consideration, he
estimated four o'clock and arrived at the coffee shop a little before four.
Yoko was sitting at a table in the same corner as before, poised at the
edge of her chair, her body bent stiffly forward. She clasped her purse
tightly on top of her knees with both hands, and even though the shop
was heated, she was still wearing her coat. She looked as if she had come
for the purpose of explaining that she had to go back home immediately.
He approached her expecting her to say just that. Yoko heard the sound
of his footsteps from rather far away and looked up. For a moment she
looked blankly into his face, then her eyes lit up. When he sat down across
from her, she took off her coat as if she'd just arrived with him, and she
settled back into the chair and bowed her head in greeting.
The week after that, she was waiting for him in exactly the same
posture. He thought she looked like a country girl who had come to the
city alone and was sitting on a bench in the station, shrinking with fear
because the person who was supposed to meet her had not come.
Watching Yoko slowly twist and turn in her seat as she took her
coat off, he asked, "Why did you have your coat on?"
"I was sort of uncomfortable," she said, frowning from the ap-
parent exertion of pulling her shoulder from her coat. Then, seeing that
he looked dissatisfied with her answer, she said, "Besides, I'm sensitive
to the cold. When I come back home on a cold, windy day, I go straight
into the living room and sit in front of the heater for a while with my coat
on."
He thought of Yoko's house. Seven years ago, she had lost both
of her parents one after the other. Apparently she was now living with
her older sister and her husband in the house their parents had left them.
However, he had not wanted to know about her family. From the begin-
ning they had both avoided the subject of families.
After that, Yoko waited with her coat off. However, she still sat
well forward, practically on the edge of the chair, and the stiff, stooped
posture of her thin body was always exactly the same. When it became
clear that both of them were comfortable with silence, they no longer
spoke much and passed the time offering disconnected phrases to each
y 6 k 0 29
in between long intervals of silence. On rare occasions, their con-
was inspired by some conventional topic, but even at such times,
's voice was thin and somewhat high-pitched, and seemed as if it
were about to disappear at any moment. Even in the middle of a conver-
she had the habit of suddenly swallowing the end of her sentence
sinking into silence with no apparent concern. However, they al-
one another these vagaries, like two fellow convalescents.
Whenever they touched upon the subject of "illness," Yoko's
'""J"'L" became particularly vague. She said over and over that she had
because she had happened to meet him in the mountains. And
she also said that the "illness" had been at its worst during the month
so following her return from the mountains. When he pointed out the
she revised her statement to, "I got better after I met you
the train platform," or, "After I came back from the mountains, I con-
pictured your face in my mind," which hardly qualified as a proper
Then she began to recite again, with tears in her eyes, how very
better she had gotten because of him.
He denied it. "As I've said so many times before, I just brought
down to the foot of the mountain. Even if I hadn't come along, you
.would have come down by yourself a little while later."
"It would have been hopeless. Even if I'd been able to make it
by myself, it still would have been hopeless."
"But surely you would have been all right if you'd made it down
"Thanks to you, I've gotten better."
"I don't remember having cured this 'illness' of yours."
"But it's gotten better. After that everything seemed so tranquil,
easy on the eye, so very beautiful. It was too beautifut too good to be
He had absolutely no idea when she meant by" after that." But in
spite of his uncertainty, he was touched all the same.
**********
One day, he had just come along the underground passage on his
, way to meet her and was about to ascend the narrow stairway that led to
their usual meeting place, when he saw Yoko. She was clutching her hand-
to her chest and walking restlessly back and forth in front of the
ei1tr<:mc:e to the shop on the landing between the two flights of stairs. A
of haze hung about her face and yet her thin body was terribly agi-
He stopped at the bottom of the stairway and watched her. After
wandered around thelanding for a while, she peered into the shop,
her forehead against the light brown glass door.
I
I:
'
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 30
The hostess noticed her from the inside and quickly opened the
door to glare at the profile of this woman who seemed to have no inten-
tion of actually coming inside. Completely unaffected, Yoko peeped
through this new opening in the door into the interior of the dim coffee
shop, stooping a little and craning her neck in every direction. The angry
hostess released the door handle and the door slammed shut practically
in Yoko's face. Yoko straightened, lifted her handbag back to her chest,
and wandered around the landing again for a while. Then she leaned
against the wall, looked down at her feet and waited, motionless.
When he walked up to her, Yoko raised her eyes and all at once
her face was beaming with joy. She took his arm, and looked anxiously
toward the door as if she wanted to tell him there were strange things
going on inside the shop. Supposing that the place must be serving as a
rendezvous for gangsters, he entered the coffee shop first, shielding Yoko
behind him. Looking around, he saw nothing particularly strange, ex-
cept that a middle-aged couple was sitting and talking at the table in the
comer where he and Yoko usually sat.
"What's the matter?" he said as he turned back to her.
Not even trying to hide herself behind him, Yoko stared boldly
at the place where the middle-age couple was sitting. "Our seats are
taken," she said in a plaintive voice.
"Well, aren't there plenty of other seats?"
"I thought we'd miss each other if I didn't sit in the same seat."
"That's ridiculous! You know I'd be able to find you no matter
where you were sitting."
"I know, but there are so many seats and I didn't know which
one I should take .... "
Dumbfounded, he looked around at the empty tables scattered
throughout the spacious coffee shop. Without asking any further ques-
tions, he picked out a place and seated Yoko there. Perhaps because she
felt ashamed to have revealed part of her strange neurosis, she barely
said a word that day. He too didn't know what to say; he just sat in front
of her, silently recalling the incident at the ravine.
When they left the coffee shop about two hours later, he sud-
denly grew tired of repeating the same thing over and over. So instead of
going down to the underground passage as usual, they went up the stair-
way and came out onto the main street, which glowed with neon under
the night sky. Yoko seemed slightly disoriented as they went up, and she
stayed closer to him than usual. He turned off the main street onto a
narrower side street and proceeded to make a tour of the neighborhood,
turning comers at random but deliberately choosing streets with more
pedestrian traffic. The gentle warmth nestled close to his right side amid
the bustling crowd and stayed beside him without making a sound. Ev-
y 0 k 0 31
A .. .,, .. rlhPt'P he went, she followed. This seemed strange to him and he
Yoko automatically halted and looked up at him. Immediately
his left there was a coffee shop that had a somehow depressed air about
in comparison with the other shops on the street.
He pointed to the door of the shop and said, "Next time, let's
at this place."
"Oh, I can't," Y6ko murmured, bringing her hand to her forehead.
"Why not? Well, we won't meet in the evening then-let's make
two in the afternoon. I promise I'll get here first and wait for you," he
said, determined to hold his ground.
Yoko looked at him with reproachful eyes. Then she looked slowly
the neighborhood. Frowning deeply, she studied each one of the
shops and store signs and looked along the street to the left and
counting off the intersecting streets in a thin voice. "That's the main
isn't it?" she asked, cocking her head, and then as if to reassure
herself, "When you turn left there, you get to the station." Finally she
to him with an anxious look on her face and nodded, "Yes, it's
That day, he arrived at the new place earlier than the appointed
Wne to wait for her. He sat at a table close to the entrance, and as he was
.J!VIJAJ-''1". out through the brown-tinted glass at the sidewalk, he saw Yoko
from the direction of the main street, almost exactly at the ap-
. time. She stopped right in front of him, separated only by the
plille of glass, and looked at the shop sign and then the door. She seemed
to. be murmuring the name of the shop to herself over and over again.
Presently her face took on the formal expression of a woman approach-
l;ng a stranger's house, and she walked toward the door, smoothing the
collar of her coat lightly with her left hand. However, when she stood
directly in front of the rectangle of tinted glass and set her eyes on the
large letters of the shop's name in white paint before her, she seemed
to hold her breath a moment and her face looked as if a thin film were
.,,,._ ... u''1". gradually over her features. She leaned back slightly and glanced
over the whole building, then cocked her head and walked away uncer-
tainly. He was about to go after her, but just at that moment, a waiter
with a tray in one hand came over and stood right in front of him, block-
ing his way. So, he sank back into his chair and decided to wait and watch
her.
Before long, Yoko came slowly back along the sidewalk on the
other side of the street. She looked earnestly at the store signs on this
$ide, checking each one and nodding. Her feet seemed to waver right
across from the shop where he was waiting, and she looked as if she
would step off the sidewalk and come over at any moment. But she
walked on.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 32
He knew that he had to call out to her before she disappeared
into the crowd. But the strange thrill of watching her from a hidden place
kept him fixed in his seat. The way she walked did not give the impres-
sion that she would go much farther. He continued gazing intently, tell-
ing himself that of course she would come back, drawn by the familiar
impression of that shop.
As he expected, in a little while Yoko came briskly back down
the first side of the street, walking with apparent purpose. Her profile
looked haggard. In an instant, she had walked right past him. This time
she walked intently as if she had absolutely no connection with his pres-
ence on the other side of the glass. "I wonder what she's looking for?" he
thought as he gazed after her abstractedly. After she had completely dis-
appeared into the crowd, he could imagine that all of his dealings with
her had been nothing but a dream.
After quite a long time he was still looking toward the place where
Yoko had disappeared, when her white face, eyes half-closed, quietly
reached out to him from the crowd, and she approached step by step as if
she were treading cautiously along a suspension bridge. When she came
to the coffee shop, she halted in exactly the same pose and exactly the
same spot where they had stood together that evening the time before.
She slowly looked around, her eyes still half-closed. He finally came to
his senses and got up from his chair. At that very instant, Yoko abruptly
opened her eyes. They seemed to take on the expression of a cat staking
out an alley as she quickly pushed open the door of the shop and came
in. She caught his eye right away, and with a sugary smile on her face,
she heaved a sigh of relief.
"I didn't know which one it was. All of the shops looked the
same." Yoko sank down sideways into the chair across from him. "The
last time I stood there, I was only looking at the shops on the other side,
so I couldn't remember the ones on this side at all."
"Liar!" Although he had half understood what she had said, he
wasn't in the mood for listening. "I was watching you from the inside.
At first you stopped right in front of this shop and then you came up
close to the door, didn't you?"
The expression in her eyes grew hard. A sharpness still lingered
there as her mouth twitched into a confused smile.
He decided to strike once more. "The name has just three letters.
And look, they're written very large in white on brown glass. You must
have heard me repeat that name last time."
Yoko was still smiling. She did not look as if she didn't know how
to answer, rather she was making sure that the answer was not too obvious
to put into words. Then she began to speak in a slightly hoarse voice.
y i5 k 0 33
"It was because I was looking from such a short distance that I
't recognize it. Each letter became a mere symbol and it wasn't easy
to read all three together as a name. To make matters worse, when I fi-
read it, it sounded wrong. After I left the house, I recited that name
over and over to myself on the way. The name that you told me last time."
"I can hardly believe that the same word sounded so different."
"It sounded completely different."
"So how was it different?"
"I felt like I was hearing it for the first time. The whole shop
looked different and I felt as if I'd never seen it before. I couldn't bring
myself to push open the door and come in."
Yoko sighed and looked down. With her hands on her knees and
her shoulders drooping forward, her appearance seemed modest at first,
but the expression on her face, averted diagonally downward, gave him
the sense that she was shut up within herself and would not give an
Her hips suddenly looked full, and the shameless face of a woman
who had just gotten out of bed showed through her stubborn, blank
expression.
"I understand what you're talking about," he finally said. In any
case, he broke the silence with the intention of attacking from a different
direction. However, the moment he nodded and said, "I understand," he
was half dragged into Yoko's feelings, and he began to rebuke her with
great seriousness in a tone of voice he rarely used.
"But even granting for the time being that it sounded completely
different, you knew that it was the same word, didn't you? And if it was
the same word, couldn't you figure out that I'd be waiting for you in a
shop by that name? And if you knew that, even if it still didn't seem like
the right place, you should've opened the door and come in. You use the
telephone every day, don't you? At school you check the numbers on the
classrooms and go in, right? You manage to do the same things without
any trouble."
Yoko lifted her head slowly and looked into his eyes again.
"Yes, but suppose you were standing in front of some shop that
you had no memory of ever having seen or heard about before. You con-
clude only in your head that I'm waiting inside for you, could you come
in on that basis alone? Suppose there's a large building and you are walk-
ing down a long, dark corridor in it. There are doors that all look the
same lined up along either side. Could you go into one just by deciding
in your mind which one I was waiting behind?" There was a sticky qual-
ity in her voice.
"If you had the slightest hunch that this was the right place, you
should have closed your eyes and rushed in. You wouldn't have had such
I
I'
I,
Ji'i
'I
!
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 34
a feeling if it had been the wrong door." This time, it was his voice that
sounded thin and childish.
Yoko thrust aside his words in a damp, clinging voice.
"The reason I didn't come in was precisely because I had a faint,
lingering feeling that this was the right place. If I had opened the door
thinking that this was the place and it was a completely different shop,
what would I do? That would leave me with no choice but to try opening
all of the doors. Don't you agree?"
As she said this, she covered her cheeks with both palms, gather-
ing tight vertical wrinkles on her forehead, and fell silent. He remem-
bered the figure of the woman wandering around from shop to shop in
search of him, and he felt as if he had been burdened with a heavy re-
sponsibility. Again he thought back over the encounter in the ravine.
"Your problem is that you have a bad case of direction-blind-
ness." These altogether meaningless words spilled from his puzzled lips.
As he spoke, Yoko's face lit up. "That's it. I have direction-blind-
ness," she said in a high, thin voice, and she twisted and turned her thin,
girlish body from side to side.
He was taken aback by the change in her. "No, I mean you have
no sense of discrimination," he said, correcting himself nonsensically.
"Yes, no sense of discrimination," said Yoko, grasping joyfully at
the words.
He was surprised to see that the conversation was taking the op-
posite turn from the time they had discussed acrophobia. However, he
could no longer bear the unpleasantness of questioning her in this point-
less way, so he joined in with Yoko's joviality.
"Shall I give you some remedial training?"
"Yes. Put me on a remedial training program. Please do. I can't
go on this way."
Just as he started thinking that he would assign a different coffee
shop for the next time, he had a premonition that the same thing would
happen again, and he sank into a gloomy sadness.
"Inside and outside-there's something weird about it, isn't
there?"
"I want you to help me, like you did at the suspension bridge."
He was only too ready to be moved by these words.
Part Three
From that time on, he came to fear Yoko's illness. As if in reaction
to his fear, her illness confined her once again inside a young girl's stiff
demeanor, and, for a time, the more intimate face of the mature woman
he had seen that day in the coffee shop was not revealed to him.
y if k 0 35
When he thought back to that period of his life, it seemed to him
if Yoko were perpetually romping around him, the clear, sharp sound
her footsteps ringing in his ears, as he lay sprawled listlessly in the
of early spring.
They stopped meeting in gloomy coffee shops and began to take
in various parks around the city in the bright sunshine. Of course,
didn't believe that Yoko would be cured of her illness by strolling in
park. Nevertheless, he sensed that to go to a certain park by making
bus or train connections and then to find her way home without
lost was a far more difficult task for her than to pass the time
across a table from him in a coffee shop. If only in that respect,
to the park seemed likely to have a positive effect on her. It was
March, and since Yoko's women's college was well into spring va-
they met once every three days.
Because she told him that her nerves were in far better condition
the morning, they agreed to meet at an earlier time. They chose a spa-
cious area with an unobstructed view for their meeting place and arranged
.that he would arrive first and be there waiting for her. By the second or
third meeting, the time and place seemed to be settled with no particular
planning. He would be seated on a bench reading a newspaper in a more
or less uncrowded corner of the plaza in front of a particular station be-
tween nine-thirty and ten o'clock, a safe interval after the commuter rush
had subsided. About the time he had finished reading the paper once
through, Yoko would appear at the ticket gate and dash straight through
the crowd toward him without even pausing to check on the location of
the bench.
When she plopped down beside him, he would ask her, "Well,
where shall we go today?" Yoko would go through the list of the names
of the parks one by one like a grade school child being forced to recite a
lesson. In spite of her efforts, she was still unable to choose among them.
He would press her to choose one quickly. Then her voice would grow
weak. She would start to cross names off the list, and, if he let her con-
tinue, a slightly puzzled expression would appear on her face. Then, be-
cause it didn't really matter where they went, he would reluctantly pick
one at random.
"Oh, that's a good place. I wonder why I didn't think of that,"
Yoko would say, twisting her body impatiently.
Then the "preparatory exercises" would begin. He was raised in
the city, so when he heard the name of a place he was easily able to figure
out how to get there, but he would deliberately have Yoko tell him the
way to the park. As she, too, was brought up in the city, she usually knew
the way. But her way of describing it to him was strangely meticulous.
For example, she would say, "Walk along the underground passageway
!
lj
TRANS L A T I 0 N S 36
to track number two," and then, absorbed in thought, "Or maybe it's
track number one." At last she would gravely hand down her decision.
"No, it's track number two, that's right, I'm absolutely certain."
Both track number one and track number two were on the same
platform, but since she had been to that station many times before, there
was no reason for her to be afraid of confusing the left and right sides of
the platform, even if she went there with her eyes closed. All the same,
she would worry over the platform number when it made no difference
whatsoever. After that, although she really had to say no more than," Get
on the train and go to such and such a station," she would begin to count
all the stations along the way. In the case of a transfer station, she would
give painstaking instructions: "Go down the stairs, go out of the ticket
gate and turn right, go about fifty meters to the right, go up the stairs,
and then go right again .... " Thus, she would proceed to trace the entire
route scrupulously, in spite of the fact that such detail would be com-
pletely useless if she made just one mistake in her directions.
However, the part he found most fascinating came next. If her
explanation took her beyond the national train system to the suburban
train lines, and she had been to that place before, Y6ko would count out
every single station along the way. Even if there were more than ten of
them she counted them all the way through to the end. Fixing her gaze
on a point somewhere above the heads of the people bustling in and out
of the station, she would strain her eyes until her small face became ex-
pressionless. Meanwhile, she held both hands out in front of her c:md
folded down one finger at a time as she counted. He would watch her
intently without making any effort to stop her.
When she had finished, he would stand up and say, "Okay, why
don't you take me there?" At this suggestion, she would dash off reck-
lessly, bumping into people and staggering a bit as she plunged into the
crowd around the ticket window. Because he had just been through an
excruciatingly detailed explanation of their trip, he always felt worried
as he watched her go. But his fears were brushed aside by a certain spirit
of determination in her retreating figure, which seemed to say, "Let me
do it!" Occasionally she would even use her elbow to nudge aside a large
man who was blocking the way. He felt a little embarrassed to be stand-
ing there staring after a running woman, so he fixed his eyes on the place
in the crowd where Yoko had disappeared, and, using that point as a
pivot, he traced a wide arc around it and advanced toward the ticket
window. Before long, Yoko would come rushing out of the crowd, her
face flushed, proudly holding in her right hand the tickets she had just
bought. She would run five or six steps toward the bench and then stop.
Seized by a slight panic, her eyes would dart restlessly back and forth in
search of him. It was always the same.
y 0 k 0 37
Until they arrived at their destination, Yoko's slender body re-
d tense. But once they entered the park, and the street noise,
su:tx.Ll""'"'" out by the walls and trees, had receded into a gentle hum en-
"ct4os1ng their small realm of quiet on all sides, Yoko instantly relaxed and
ot::l.:a..u"" cheerful. Every step she took had a carefree buoyancy. Yet even
at a time like this, there was little sense of flowing continuity in the move-
of her body. Rather, each movement was like one in a series of
..... lines. Each time she turned abruptly in a new direction, a rush of
energy filled in the break. And the instant she stopped, a
womanliness quietly flowed into her thin body like a lingering resonance
of her movements. But if she remained still for just a little while longer,
);l.er body suddenly began to grow stiff like a puppet on slackened strings.
may have been aware of this, for she moved around constantly. She
would walk by him at a brisk pace, making her footsteps ring out clear
and sharp, then suddenly turn and glide past him silently, and then in a
tew moments come running back from behind again. While she was
:moving around and around in this way, they were finally able to bandy
words between them with ease. He was even nonchalant about bringing
up topics that were likely to irritate Yoko's nerves. Yoko, too, nimbly
volleyed her replies.
"Do you always count the number of stations even when you go
to school and back?"
"Yes, I do. I can keep track because you're not there to bother me."
"You must be happy when the numbers match exactly every day."
"Yes, I'm terribly happy."
"I'll bet you are. People who can check on something every day
and make sure it's exactly right are few and far between. If I concen-
trated on counting the stations day after day, I'm sure the numbers would
never come out the same."
"Well then, you should come over to my place."
Even as they chatted, Yoko was constantly in motion, now be-
side him, now circling around him.
There was also this kind of strange banter.
"Yoko, where's your room?"
"It's on the second floor."
"No problem going up the stairs?"
"Once out of ten times I crawl up."
"Counting the steps?"
"There are fourteen steps, whether I count them with my feet or
my hands. Sometimes there'll be thirteen. No matter how many times I
count, it comes out thirteen. Then I rest for a minute in the darkness at
the top of the stairs, and when I count again, it's gone back to fourteen.
While I'm resting, I smoke a cigarette in the dark."
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 38
Occasionally, he forgot that there was also a sexual tension at
work between the two of them, and he blurted out suggestive things.
"With your poor sense of direction, when you kiss your boyfriend,
you probably can't tell where the lips are."
"My own lips? Or his lips ... ?"
"Let's experiment-you stretch out your neck from there and try
to touch my lips."
"Try kissing a butterfly in flight."
"One of these days I'll catch you."
"I'll turn to stone." Her tone was innocent on the surface, but
there was a stirring of hatred in her eyes.
When they had gone once around the park and sat down beside
each other on a bench, he was suddenly overtaken by fatigue. Even after
he had started seeing Yoko, he persisted in his habit of shutting himself
up in his room alone. Every night, he lay awake in bed thinking about
nothing in particular until dawn broke. When he heard the milkman
making his rounds and drowsiness finally began to fill his body, which
had been drained by insomnia, the idea that he would have to get up in
a few hours and go out to meet Yoko seemed almost unthinkable. How-
ever, as the drowsiness overtook him, the image of Yoko with her pale,
sad profile, wandering around that same plaza unable to find him, rose
before his eyes to torment him. Having entered that self-centered state of
mind a person reaches when he is about to fall asleep, her existence in
his life felt like a heavy burden. On the days when he came to meet her,
he never got more than three hours of sleep.
Because of his fatigue, the conversation took on a slightly de-
pressing tone.
"Are you always this way? You can't even go someplace you re-
ally want to go to by yourself?"
"I get to school without any trouble."
"Because the route is familiar. Aside from that, what would hap-
pen if you wandered away from that route? For example, you've cer-
tainly thought about stopping at a department store to look around on
your way home."
"Recently I've stopped going out anywhere except to come meet
you, so I don't know."
"Suppose you were to meet a friend from school at a coffee shop?"
"I guess that would be okay."
"So then, why ... ?"
"Why? Because when I think of you waiting for me, I have the
sense that everything around me has become cold and distant, just like it
was the first time I met you, and going to meet you in such a faraway
y 0 k 0 39
seems so very difficult. I already start feeling strange from the time
the house."
"Well, why do you come? Why do you promise to meet me?"
"You're the one who said it, at the bridge, remember? You said,
~ f you can't cross this bridge by yourself, you won't even be able to get
around in the city by yourself any more."'
"That was just then." He brushed aside her words lethargically.
Suddenly his relationship with Yoko seemed like dangerous business. If
):'oko were right, he thought, then the very thing binding her now to her
illness was none other than himself. In that ravine, Yoko had been crouch-
ing in the worst state of her illness. She was exactly like a wild animal
curled up in a cramped place, waiting for her illness to pass away of its
own accord. Then he had come along, and although he should have passed
$ilently on, he stopped and looked at her. They looked at each other. At
that moment, perhaps, the illness, which should have run its natural
course, under the gaze of another person had solidified inside her like a
small stone. He had seen Yoko's illness, and, with his gaze he had drawn
it in closer and closer to him, until he had brought her down to the foot
0f the mountain. Moreover, at the edge of the suspension bridge he had
once again forced the cowering Yoko to stand up, look into his eyes, and
cross the bridge. Because of that, when he was here before her now, when
she felt his glance, the kernel of the illness inside of her began to swell.
However, he mused, the second time they met, wasn't Yoko the one who
had come running down the stairs to him?
Realizing that he had become an inadvertent eyewitness to her
embarrassing illness, his own existence felt burdensome to him, and he
fell silent. Yoko perched on the hard bench beside him. The energy cours-
ing through her was too much for her, and she was continuously making
small movements with some part of her body. Carried away by his mel-
ancholy, he began to feel drowsy. For a while, Yoko romped around him
in her usual way, her footsteps tapping sharply on the pavement, then
she disappeared. A few minutes later, she came running gleefully from
beyond the flower bed. She planted both feet in front of him with a little
hop and said triumphantly, "I went once around the park-alone."
**********
One day, he was seated on a bench near a pond, dozing as usual,
when he noticed a light green blouse, its outlines vivid in the spring sun-
shine, moving slowly along the water's edge on the far bank. As he fol-
lowed it with his eyes, he eventually discerned that the human figure
standing beneath the brilliant noon sun directly across the pond from
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S o 40
him was a woman who had suddenly stopped in passing to look at some-
thing. She looked at him, without moving, for a long, long time. Then he
realized it was Yoko. She had left her coat on the bench beside him, folded
neatly into a square bundle. The warmth of her body still lingered in the
folds of the cloth. The expression on Yoko's face was masked by shadow,
but her motionless body seemed to suggest that she was doubting some-
thing as she gazed steadily at him. Still half asleep, he was only being
gazed at by her, an object without the ability to return that gaze. He now
learned how uneasy it made one feel to be observed by someone else. As
the mere object of observation, his body on the bench was subjugated to
an almost unconscious state of being, like that of an animal intent only
upon its own existence.
"Is that person watching me?" At first she was startled at this
realization, and then a loathing spread through her body. How she longed
to crush the eyes of that offensive observer! He imagined such an im-
pulse taking form within her. Embarrassed that he was just sitting there
doing nothing, he abruptly shifted his heavy, shameless body and rear-
ranged his legs.
Then across the bright expanse of water, Yoko suddenly lifted
her right hand high above her head and called, "Hey!" in a high, thin
voice. For a few moments he stared at her absentmindedly. Then, as the
final echo of her voice trailed off into silence, he finally raised his right
hand from his heavy body in a half-hearted response.
"Hey!" Yoko's voice came from the opposite bank again, a soli-
tary fragment of sound cutting through the silence. He half raised his
hand again. Then the light green blouse began to move smoothly along
the water's edge. Yoko took a few brisk steps, stopped again, and called,
"Hey!", then made an about face, walked a short distance to the left, and
called, "Hey!" Each time a long moment elapsed before he, the focus of
her attention, idly raised his hand, but she walked round and round the
lake without any sign of losing interest.
On another day, while he had been sprawled on the grass of a
river bank, gazing up from the warmth of the ground through the chilly
wind to the brightness of the sky, Yoko had slipped down to the edge of
the river. Squatting down among the rocks scattered abundantly along
the water, she was building a tower by piling one rock on top of another.
A flat rock half buried in the sand served as a foundation, and
five or six rocks of various shapes and gradually decreasing weight had
been placed on top of one another in such a way that the pile tottered to
the left and seemed on the verge of collapse. A rock of twice the circum-
ference of the last was laid on top of the tower so that half of it protruded
out to the right, maintaining a dangerous balance with the rocks below.
y 6 k 0 0 41
That rock served as yet another base for several lightweight rocks piled
on top of it in a casual way, regardless of the order of size or the balance
of shape. Leaning now to the left, now to the right, the wobbly tower
somehow managed to stay upright.
Yoko was just in the process of placing a large rock precariously
on top of the fist-sized stone at the apex, which, because she was squat-
ting down beside it, stood higher than her forehead. From her squatting
she raised her haunches slightly and moved stealthily toward
the apex of the tower, holding the rock above her in both hands. The look
in Yoko's eyes suddenly became determined, and as she placed the rock
on top, she purposely shifted it well to the left of the center of the rock at
the apex. Then quickly pulling her hands away, she crouched tight and
low to the ground and gazed at the tower swaying unsteadily from side
to side. Although each individual rock trembled as if it had just been put
into place, as a whole the tower showed signs of a fresh, vital growth,
full of uncertainty. It reached up toward the sky, and seemed to reach
still further without making a sound.
Feeling as if he had just noticed that Yoko was there, he got up
and went to her side. Then he squatted down beside her and looked at
the tower of rocks. After a moment, he put his hand on her shoulder.
"Come on, let's go home," he suggested and stood up. Yoko didn't
move. Even when he finally pulled her up by the hand, she continued to
scrutinize the stone tower. As he slipped an arm around her waist to lead
her away, a shadow of fear passed across her face. He went over to the
tower. "We can't leave it this way," he said, and he proceeded to take the
rocks down one by one and pile them up below, constructing a low, stable
mountain. Only then did Yoko finally relax her body and walk away from
the river bank.
They usually decided to start for home sometime after two
o'clock. Always, by that time of day, the rays of the sun had weakened,
and a strong, dusty wind had begun to blow against them. Then the en-
ergy suddenly drained from Yoko's body. The tension and impatience of
the morning was gone. Yoko buried her chin in the upturned collar of
her coat and walked into the wind, bending her body slightly forward.
Her footsteps didn't make a sound. Other women here and there on the
street frowned as they walked in that same wind. When the wind came
driving against them, they turned their faces away and shrank back. But
inside their coats plastered against them by the force of the wind, be-
neath the hands that held down blow-away hems, their bodies were freed
from their sense of shame and began to blossom. In contrast, Yoko kept
on walking in the same stooping posture, exposing her expressionless
face to the driving wind, and letting her hair and coat fly about freely as
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 42
if completely unaware that she was facing into the wind. It seemed as if
she were floating, leaving her tired body behind with every step. When
he compared her appearance to that of other women, he instinctively felt
the urge to call out to her: "Hey, I get it now. You lose your sense of
yourself because you ignore the wind around you and what it is doing to
your body. That's why you can't go out alone, even to places where you
want to go."
However, he kept these words to himself and just wrapped his
right arm around her shoulders. He felt as if he were embracing some-
thing as light as air.
**********
It was the end of March when they took their last such walk in a
"nature park" in the middle of the city.
On their way home the time before, he had become irritated with
Yoko walking silently beside him, and, feeling a bit cruel, he suddenly
named the next meeting place without consulting her at all. Then he told
her how to get there in the same painstaking detail that she always used
to give directions, and he ordered her to meet him there on her own. She
looked up at him with reproachful eyes as she listened carefully to his
explanation. But he became concerned when she remained attentive even
after he had finished his explanation, and he asked, "Did you under-
stand what I said?"
"Yes, I know where it is/' said Yoko, nodding. "I've been there
before."
Arriving at the appointed time, he entered the park from a busy
street and walked for a while through the virgin forest, which had flour-
ished all the more for being surrounded by buildings and concrete. He
came to a small, dark pond, which looked as if it had sunken into the
forest floor, and sat down on a bench. Ten minutes after the appointed
time, Yoko still hadn't arrived.
After twenty minutes had gone by and he was wondering why
she hadn't shown up, he realized something that made him very anx-
ious. The layout of the train station he had just come from, including the
location of the stairway and the direction the ticket gate faced, had
changed completely since the time he had been there several years be-
fore. When he had first gotten off the train, he couldn't find the stairway
and was disoriented for an instant, but he quickly took in the fact that
the station was under construction. At the time he had only been im-
pressed at how much nicer the place looked, and he walked up the stairs
without giving a thought to Yoko. When he exited through the ticket gate,
he naturally remembered where he was from his previous trip and started
walking toward the park. But, in this new station, the instructions he
y 0 k 0 43
given Yoko would send her in exactly the opposite direction from
the gate.
Thirty minutes later, Yoko still hadn't arrived. He hoped that she
had remembered the location of the park from the time she had come
here before by herself. Yet he was persistently haunted by the image of
Yoke's face listening with such concentration to his explanation in the
train the other day. As things stood now, Yoko had probably discounted
her own memory and was methodically following the instructions he
given her, making rapid headway in the wrong direction. He had
told her to walk for about fifteen minutes, but, given her nature, she would
probably tell herself that she was slow and would end up walking as fast
as she could for about half an hour. Wondering if he shouldn't go after
her at once, he started to get up from the bench. However, when he
thought of himself staring in wonder at the renovations around him at
the station without a thought of her entering his mind, it somehow seemed
useless to try and catch up with her after such a long time. He sat down
again. Even if he went after her now, he wouldn't find her. More to the
point, ifYoko were wandering around lost somewhere, he mustn't move
from this place. He suspected that she wouldn't be able to get to the park.
But at least she should be able to retrace her steps back to the station by
the same path she had come. Then she could get on the train and go
home. As for himself, he decided to stay where he was until just before
the park closed.
One hour past the appointed time, Yoko still hadn't arrived. He
was surprised when he realized that the two of them hadn't exchanged
addresses or phone numbers. He was aware that he would have no way
of getting in touch with her after this. Surely Yoko was already on the
train home. She was lost in the crowd again.
Nonetheless, he didn't move from the bench. Even if Yoko were
lost, he thought, he had to be in the place where he was supposed to be.
Some time later, Yoko came running through the forest up the
gently sloping path toward him. She circled shakily once around him
under the force of momentum, and then stopped in front of him, breath-
ing hard. Her eyes glittered, and strangely enough she seemed in good
spirits.
"I'm sorry about that," he apologized. "I suppose you got really
Yoko caught her breath, raised her eyebrows, and began to shake
her head vigorously. "I knew right away. I figured out how to get here
immediately." Her voice was so high-pitched that it hurt his ears. Yoko
continued shaking her head back and forth like a goose-neck doll.
"I've been waiting here for more than an hour, you know. Well,
you must have gotten a late start."
TRANSLATIONS 44
"Not at all. I arrived at the station exactly fifteen minutes before
our appointment."
"Oh, well ... then you were wandering around lost for a whole
hour and a half, weren't you?"
"I wasn't lost. I knew how to get here right away. I figured out
how to get here immediately."
Seeing that she was very high strung, he made her sit down on
the bench. They were silent for a while. Yoko continually twisted her
thin body from side to side. She frowned deeply. Then, out of a belated
desire to console her, he spoke.
"So you remembered the way from the last time you came here?"
"The last time I came ... I don't know what you're talking about."
"Did you ask somebody for directions?"
"No, I certainly didn't ask anybody."
"Well then, how did you get here?"
"What do you mean? You told me how to get here, didn't you?"
"But in the directions I gave you, right and left were switched
around."
"Right and left were switched .... " It was apparent that the en-
ergy was draining out of Yoko's body as she murmured these words.
"Damn, I blew it," he silently admonished himself.
A thin film settled over her face, and Yoko seemed to be sinking
right before his eyes into the same state of mind she had been in thirty
minutes or an hour before, when she had been standing bewildered in
some place far away from here. But before long, a burst of irritation ener-
gized her body again.
"Why don't you believe me? Didn't I say I figured out how to get
here right away? I didn't get lost at all. It's just that the train station is a
long way from here. Besides, it didn't take me that much time, did it?
What are you doing, looking at your watch like that?" On her flushed
face, a dark, frowning expression alternated with a girlish innocence sev-
eral times in rapid succession. Then Yoko's eyes flashed, she folded her
arms across her chest in a childlike gesture, and stood up from the bench.
"Well, I'm going once around this park by myself. So you wait
here and see." She started to run off before he had a chance to stop her,
but after she ran about ten meters, she suddenly stopped and hastily
retraced her steps. Scooping up a pile of the gravel at his feet in the palms
of both hands, she muttered peevishly to herself, "I have to leave mark-
ers." The expression on her face was that of a person obsessed. Clench-
ing both fists tightly, she ran off into the grove. The sharp-edged sound
of her footsteps rang out for a while from within the quiet grove, en-
circled by the distant noise of the city, and then they suddenly disappeared.
He sat on the bench and waited. Despite having run off into the
y {j k 0 45
grove so forcefully, Yoko wasn't coming back as quickly as might be ex-
pected. Before long, he felt as if he were being watched from the shad-
ows of the trees, and he concentrated his gaze near the leaves where she
had disappeared. He had a strong suspicion that she was lurking there.
But as he stared, the feeling gradually grew faint, the leaves became
merely leaves, and in their place the solitary figure of Yoko sitting some-
where in the grove floated before his eyes. "Well, should I go look for
her?" he said to himself, and stood up. Just then the sound of footsteps
rang out behind him and Yoko came running along the same path she
had come before, with exactly the same cheerful appearance.
When she came up to him, she circled around him, then put both
hands on his waist and rested her forehead on his back. Breathing hard,
she pushed against him with all her strength. Then she spun him half-
way around, making him face in the direction where she had just run off
a little while ago.
"You go and see for yourself!" she shouted and pushed him for-
ward with an unbelievable force. As he started off unsteadily, he turned
and looked back. Yoko was standing with her right hand on her hip and
her left hand extended straight to the side. "This time, I'll go in this di-
rection. We'll meet here, okay?" she cried, then disappeared into the
thicket to her left.
Whenever he approached a fork in the road, he left the narrower
path and followed the main path into the grove. He was not surprised to
find a pinch of gravel always neatly laid on the outer left-hand corner of
the stone benches located here and there along the path. They had a cer-
tain quality, like a reserved, methodical signal from a distant place.
He made his round quickly, and when he emerged by the pond,
he collided into Yoko, who had just jumped out from the thicket to the
left. She doubled over and screamed with laughter. Then before her laugh-
ter subsided, she ordered him to take another path.
"This time you go that way and I'll go this way."
Without giving him a chance to utter a word, she ran into the
thicket. She was in extremely high spirits. He too ran off as he was told,
hiding the dubious expression on his face from her. He had no choice but
to go along with her game. The moment he stopped to think, Yoko's be-
havior would begin to look altogether too crazy.
In this way, they would run off into the grove in various differ-
ent directions, and although they didn't make a special effort to synchro-
nize their pace, they would meet by the lake at practically the same time.
They repeated the same process over and over again. At length, they dis-
carded their base by the lake and began walking around as they pleased
without deciding where to meet. Every ten minutes or so, their paths
intersected. Yoko would rush out at him from different directions. When
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 46
he reached out his hand to try and grab her, she slipped past him, reveal-
ing a faint dislike within her laughter, and disappeared.
After a while, he found he had gotten into the spirit of her game.
As a result, he felt that he was able determine where Yoko was even when
he couldn't see her, as if her presence were being transmitted through a
single signal that moved constantly around in the grove. On occasion,
every thicket he saw swelled with signs that Yoko was hiding within.
Then these signs suddenly disappeared. The silence of the grove
became hollow. At that moment he had the uneasy feeling that he was no
longer able to get a sense of himself. He began to walk around drowsily.
Not even once did their paths meet.
He walked around that way for a long time, and then he came to
a crossroads in the grove. He saw Yoko coming from the opposite direc-
tion along another path intersecting his on the diagonal. She was stoop-
ing slightly forward as she always did, leaving her own body a little be-
hind. Her footsteps were completely silent.
Thinking vaguely, "Ah, there she is," he drew back behind a tree
trunk and allowed Yoko to pass. Then, without passing through the cross-
roads, he went directly into the bamboo grass thicket and followed her,
stifling the sound of his footsteps within the underbrush. The rustling
sound of the bamboo grass revealed his presence. Even so, Yoko showed
no sign of turning around. He purposely made his footsteps noisier, but
when he realized he would be unable to distract her from her daze, he
jumped out of his hiding place and pursued her swiftly.
As he came out of the grove, he hesitated a moment, feeling some-
where inside like a beast stalking its prey, but he advanced up to Yoko's
side without slackening his pace. Even after he had kept pace beside her
for a while, she still hadn't noticed him and continued walking forward.
Then he wrapped his right arm completely around her and proceeded in
that position for a while longer. Next he brought his right hand around
to her chest and gradually slackened his pace. Yoko advanced another
five or six steps without altering her speed, then, slowly becoming aware
of the force against her chest, raised her head and stopped.
Exposing the white skin of her neck to the wind, she looked up at
him as if she were looking at a person who was far away. He drew his
lips close to those expressionless lips. Her lips neither evaded nor re-
fused, but faded off into a somehow vague expanse of sensation. He be-
gan to embrace her body tightly with his right arm. She put up no resis-
tance. He loosened his hold and drew close to her, until their bodies were
almost touching. He continued to wrap Yoko's body in his arms in just
- that way until her lips took on a hard contour and responded faintly to
his.
y if k 0 47
Part Four
During that time, he, too, rarely had a clear sense of his own body.
When he touched Yoko's body, he now felt very little sexual desire, for if
he did so, he knew their relationship could not endure the confusion of
her feelings. Yet, the moment he touched her, Yoko' s body became even
more distant, an entity even more difficult to grasp than when they were
only looking at each other. And because he was unable to grasp Yoko
. even though their bare skin was touching, his own body sometimes felt
like a distant thing that he must hastily draw back toward himself.
The first time he found himself in this situation was a result of
his irritation toward Yoko's "attacks." After the episode in the grove,
they stopped strolling in the park and met once a week at a coffee shop
in town as they had before. There they got into the habit of spending
about two hours together in the evening, for the most part barely speak-
ing to one another. Since that day in the nature park, Yoko's nerves had
remained stable and she never got lost on her way to meet him. She sat
before him looking exactly the same as she had the last time they had
met in town, as if both the outings in the park, which had only resulted
in provoking her illness, and their kiss in the forest had made no impres-
sion upon her at all. As long as they were sitting across from each other
in the shop, it was uncanny how little things had changed since their last
such meeting.
However, once they went outside together, Yoko now made him
feel anxious about everything around them. She sensed his tension, and
then the movements of her body also became stiff. Before long, they were
both walking through the crowd with silent, stealthy footsteps. He felt
as if he were constantly watching out for Yoko's illness when they were
together. After about thirty minutes of this, he was completely exhausted.
Still, he wasn't used to the idea of sending her home immediately after
they left the coffee shop. Nor did Yoko behave as if she wanted to go
home soon.
When they left the shop, he had no idea what they should do
from there. One by one he recalled the things he had done with girlfriends
before, but every harmless amusement that came to mind seemed risky
with Yoko. So long as he was at her side, she was unable to leave him
and move around comfortably by herself. And as long as she was at his
side, he was unable to watch her walking around alone with any peace
of mind. It seemed to him that while they were both guarding over Yoko' s
illness in this way, they were gradually being shut into an isolated time
and place of their own, like the ravine where they had first met or the
table in that first coffee shop where they always had to sit.
T R A N 5 L A T I 0 N 5 48
One evening, he was in his usual state of tense vigilance over her
condition, when every little thing in his life seemed exceedingly trouble-
some. He felt a sense of wonder, almost a yearning, when he thought
about how freely and comfortably the people around him, and he him-
self when he wasn't with Yoko, spent their time. To a person who was
constantly tensing himself up, a period of time which other people would
barely notice became a bleak void. Although he really was one of those
"other people," he experienced this void firsthand, but only because Yoko
was beside him.
About fifteen minutes before the time when they usually parted,
he suddenly felt he was no longer able to bear Yoko's presence and
stopped in his tracks. She also stopped at almost the same moment. They
both gazed over at the bustle and commotion on the opposite side of the
street, for it so happened that the corner where they stood was a shade
gloomier than its surroundings. Yoko seemed to have sensed his mood
immediately. Stooping slightly, she gazed intently at the movements of
the people on the far corner, her eyes lost in solitary thought beneath her
white, drooping forehead. She sighed, straightened up, and gave him an
uncomfortable smile. Then she spoke in a gentle voice as if to placate
him.
"Take me somewhere for dinner. I'm hungry."
This was the first time he had ever heard Yoko say such words.
In an odd way, they touched him deeply.
**********
When they were sitting at the table in the restaurant, Yoko was
innocently bubbly, like any young girl who had come out to eat with her
boyfriend. They wiped their hands with the hot, scented towels, looked
at the menu, discussed their likes and dislikes, made their selections,
and ordered their food. Yoko appeared to be deriving pleasure from each
of these trifling activities. He, too, felt calm, as if the natural atmosphere
of everyday life was being restored around them with each of her ac-
tions. However, when the food was set before them, and he casually
looked up at her as he brought a forkful of meat to his mouth, Yoko was
gazing at his hands with a stiff expression, her own hands still beneath
the table.
"What's the matter?" he said. Although he recognized her relapse
in one glance, he spoke in a purposely casual tone and continued eating.
Yoko's eyes followed his hands as they manipulated the knife and fork,
unable to tear themselves away from the sight.
"Say, what's the matter?" This time he raised his head and spoke
rather sharply.
y 6 k 0 49
An awkward smile played about Yoko's lips as she tried her best
look calm and collected. In contrast to her smile, her eyes still gazed
at his hands. She answered with especially intentional innocence.
"It looks like you're eating the knife and fork."
Already her voice was tinged with a high, glassy resonance. Yoko
and lowered her eyes as if her nerves had been rubbed the wrong
by her own words. He instinctively looked at the knife and fork in
pis hands. Suddenly he saw the two strange and unsightly instruments
. as they were reflected in Yoko's eyes. Feeling his hands getting heavier,
wanted to make an effort to fashion some kind of compromise, so he
lightly, "Don't joke around! Eat before your food gets cold. After all,
didn't we come here to eat?"
"You're right," she said, looking up at him and nodding. She took
her hands out from under the table as if it were a painful task and placed
them on the table for a moment. Then very slowly she picked up her
knife and fork one at a time and brought them near her plate. She held
her hands naturally and with ease, but she bent her elbows and pressed
both arms inward in front of her. Held thus, the knife and fork looked as
if they had no apparent relation to the food on the plate and jutted con-
spicuously from her white hands, lurchin.g into midair as if the utensils
themselves were torturing her.
"Nobody's looking," he said, furtively glancing around the room
on Yoko' s behalf. Manipulating his fork skillfully, he took several mouth-
fuls of meat in rapid succession.
Nonetheless, Yoko's hands did not move. The tips of her knife
and fork caught the gleam of the fluorescent lights and trembled slightly.
With a faraway look in her eyes, Yoko gazed over his shoulder at the
wall and murmured in a sticky voice, "It's no good ... I can't. It's so
difficult."
He was irritated in spite of himself. She was descending alone
into her own illness right before his eyes. He might have been able to
tolerate that in former days, but not any longer.
"Eat!" he ordered, controlling his voice.
Yoko shut her eyes, opened her mouth slightly, and twisted from
side to side as if a hard object were slowly being pressed against a pain-
ful spot on her body.
"Eat!" he ordered again.
With her arms still pressed inward, she rounded her back and
brought the knife and fork toward the plate so that she was leaning her
whole body forward. Only her hands moved fluidly as she cut the meat
into small dice-shaped bits, and she brought a forkful to her mouth in
this animal-like posture. Her small lips were pursed in an "o" and sud-
denly seemed thick. Then she furtively popped the piece of meat on the
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 50
end of the faintly trembling fork into her mouth. Her cheeks moved dis-
creetly, patiently enduring the embarrassment. Her eyes were fixed on a
stain on the tablecloth a little beyond her plate. Now and then the move-
ment of her cheeks stopped, the skin of her white throat expanded, and
her eyes started to tear. In this way, Yoko dispatched her food bit by bit
into her cowering body, as if she were stoically gauging the pain inside
of her.
Watching Yoko's actions from across the table, he noisily set about
to consume everything on his plate, pretending to have a particularly
healthy appetite, although it had actually vanished long ago. On the one
hand he pitied Yoko, but on the other a feeling of resentment toward her
illness and the shamelessness of her self-absorption began to grow un-
reasonably within him. By the time he had finishedating, Yoko had just
barely eaten one fourth of the food on her plate. She was resting her knife
and fork steadily on the plate and was moving her cheeks slowly. Then
she looked up into his face and, tilting her head slightly, spoke in a voice
wet with saliva. "Please, forgive me," she pleaded.
**********
Two hours later, in a room not far from the restaurant, they lay
side by side in the depths of the twilight, listening to the footsteps of
groups of men and women as they passed just below the window and
then suddenly vanished at some place a little further on. A thin blanket
protected their bodies from the chill of the April night air, but he was
surprised that it never grew warm beneath that blanket. The sheets, too,
were crisp and neat and still preserved the coldness they'd had when
they first touched his bare skin. Lying under the cold sheets and blanket,
he felt his body losing its feeling of existence from within and thinning
to an uncertain outline of a silhouette. In the light of the streetlamps pen-
etrating the curtains, Yoko lay with her pathetic shoulder exposed above
the edge of the blanket. She was gazing at the darkness of the ceiling
with her eyes wide open. Although their bodies were pressed together,
he didn't feel the slightest warmth radiating from her. He became aware
that Yoko was lightly grasping a place around his elbow with the tips of
her fingers. It was exactly the same gesture she made when she suddenly
lost her sense of direction and drew her body close to him as they were
walking through the city.
Yoko had silently followed behind him with small steps as he
left the restaurant and walked on without a word. When he saw her na-
ked body before him, he was surprised by its unexpected fullness. He
felt as if this was fitting repayment for having treated her thus far like a
skinny, neurotic girl. However, at the same time as she revealed the vo-
y i5 k 0 51
luptuousness of her body to him, the expression on her face came tore-
semble even more than usual that of a thin young girl, and she lay down
on the bed indifferently. Her fluttering eyelids and the line of her shoul-
der and arm as she embraced him were young and pathetic. Her bare
chest pressing against him absorbed the warmth of his body but remained
chilly and unresponsive in return. The unpleasant feeling he had experi-
enced when touching her between her awkwardly opened thighs still
lingered within him.
He wanted to make Yoko, who would sometimes stop in the
middle of a busy street, lost in a vacant-eyed daze, become aware of the
sensations of her body, make her conscious of her own self. That initial
wish of his lingered like a pale specter even after his sexual desire
subsided. Yoko's body lay ,heavily by his side without giving off the
slightest warmth. He wondered if Yoko's illness would live on without
being affected by his body at all. Or perhaps, he feared, now that her
illness knew the powerlessness of his body, it might surge forth all the
more strongly. Except for the faint impression of her fingertip clutching
his elbow, her body became distant, difficult to grasp. He could no longer
believe that they had been embracing just a few moments ago. When he
stretched out his hand to touch her waist, he felt fine goose pimples
standing out all over her rigid, wooden body, which seemed to have been
abandoned by her face as she stared fixedly at the ceiling.
"Shall we get dressed?" he asked.
Yoko got up as she was told. Again she unveiled her voluptuous
body from under the blanket. Crouching right in front of him with no
sign of embarrassment, she put on her underwear with the solemn ex-
pression of a child putting away her toys.
**********
They continued to meet at coffee shops and spend their time to-
gether exactly as they had before. Yoko's body and behavior were no
different from their previous meetings. As he sat across from her, he could
not believe that they were a couple who had slept together. As always
there was an unbridgeable gap between them, and they sometimes gazed
at each other in silence, unable to make any deeper contact. From this
time on they frequently talked about their first meeting in the ravine.
Their stories were constantly at odds, and they disagreed with each
other's versions until they could no longer argue. After a long silence,
they began again to relate their experience in minute detail. Yoko gazed
fixedly at his face in silence as he carelessly recounted bits and pieces of
his memory of that time without having really comprehended what she
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 52
had said to him. At those times, her body seemed to him to become more
womanly, even more so than when she lay naked in his arms.
There was one thing about their meetings that was different from
before. Whenever Yoko was even a little late, he immediately envisioned
her wandering around somewhere along the way in one of her anxious
fits, and he could not contain himself. It wasn't from worry. Rather it
was because this vision of Yoko had become intimately connected to his
own shame. Within ten minutes, Yoko timidly pushed open the door of
the coffee shop and came in. Then she stood by the doorway, an utterly
lonely figure, looking around the shop, touching her left hand to her
mouth. After a long while, she finally found him and walked over. When
she reached his side, Yoko drew her hips back a bit and peered into his
face. A vague smile played about her eyes as if she were ashamed of her
own body. He felt a faint dislike for that posture. It was a feeling very
close to self-hatred.
When they went outside, Yoko's body suddenly stiffened. Her
footsteps were unsteady and she clung to his arm. Before, even when she
was in a nervous state, she had only touched his elbow lightly with the
tip of her finger. Sometimes she even had the composure to stand on
tiptoe and look around. But now she leaned her weight on his arm, and,
although she propelled her feet hurriedly forward, they seemed to be
left behind the movement of her body. She kept her face close to his shoul-
der, and her eyes, with a mixture of earnestness and absentmindedness,
were opened wide as if she were looking at the world outside from a
sunken cellar.
To an outsider, perhaps they did indeed look like a young couple
who had just slept together, absorbed in a lingering memory of their ec-
stasy even here in public. It startled him to think of himself .in that way.
Yet, as he looked at the cynical eyes of passersby who glanced casually at
them, he took a hint from the repetition of the same expression on their
faces. He gradually came to feel that he didn't care if he and Yoko turned
into the kind of couple who were reflected in those people's eyes. If that's
what people think we are, then that's what we'll be, this very moment,
he thought, and he began to feel sexual desire for the lifeless body that
was resting its weight so intently on his arm. It was not a direct sexual
desire, but a sexual desire all the more lewd because he had left her body
at his side and half stepped into the realm of fantasy. Besides, it was
mixed in with a bewildered feeling that he was unable to support the
burden ofYoko's body. His steps naturally turned toward the room where
they had gone before.
The same thing happened again. When they were together in the
room alone, everything was exactly like the first time. His body heated
up from irritation rather than desire while Yoko lay beneath him, en-
y 6 k 0 53
twining her arms in his in the same way she did when they walked
through a crowd. However, her expression of anxiety stopped there. Her
body showed no response at all to his irritation but only lay submis-
sively, accepting what he was doing to her. When he rolled over on his
back beside her, his body felt a keen chill beneath the blanket. He longed
to be wrapped up in his clothes as soon as possible. Yoko's naked body
did not seem bothered by that chill but lay impassively by his side. The
thought that this body could not walk around outside without clinging
fast to his arm made him realize once again how difficult it was to shake
Yoko's illness. Rather, what had been shaken was his own sense of the
reality of his body, something he had never doubted before. When he
was heading for home beside Yoko, he had the strange feeling that his
body had become weightless and was being left behind. Then it became
somewhat difficult for him to get a sense of himself and make sure of the
direction he was going in the flow of people. Yoko was clutching with all
her might at the arm of such a man as this. However, as soon as he said
good-bye to Yoko in the station, she suddenly became independent. Drop-
ping her head, she walked straight away as if his existence was of abso-
lutely no importance to her.
One day, as he lay beside Yoko as usual, he finally decided he
could no longer bear another repetition of the same thing. He sighed into
the darkness of the ceiling.
"It looks to me like I don't have it in my power to do anything
for you. If I weren't there beside you, you could probably walk around
by yourself again."
Yoko gazed at the ceiling in silence. The image of her bounding
around in the morning light in the park flashed into his head. And he felt
sorry that he had soiled her body by the incompetence of his own and
had changed it into a heavy, expressionless lump. Out of pity, he got up
and drew near her. Of the cold emptiness of Yoko's body, only the swell-
ing of her left breast and the inward curve of her waist barely touched
his skin. Without drawing any closer, he remained in that unstable posi-
tion and closed his eyes, absorbing their lonely, meager contact.
After a while he heard Yoko emit a low sigh, but, undistracted by
this, he concentrated fully on the feeling of her skin. A sensation, burn-
ing from far away as if it would vanish at any moment, began moving
along his cold skin. His body instinctively stiffened. Then from the dark
chasm of Yoko's body, the delicate, forlorn skin of her belly, the narrow
curve of her rib cage, the coarse touch of her armpit, all came rising one
by one to brush his skin and sink back again as if being thrust up rhyth-
mically by a gentle undulation. Gradually her whole body turned to-
ward him and began to respond to him. Maintaining the respective cold-
ness of their skins, they lay on top of each other without pressing against
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 54
each other. The unpleasant feeling of her loins softened little by little and
melted into the gentle flow of her whole body.
Afterward, for the first time, their bodies generated warmth to-
gether beneath the blanket, and they snuggled and dozed. Before he knew
what was happening, he could hear the gentle, intermittent sound of a
female voice welling up, now far away, now close by, in the humid dark-
ness beyond the blanket. As he listened, the resonance of his recent plea-
sure permeated every corner of the darkness and seemed to echo around
the room. He fell back into a doze.
When he opened his eyes, Yoko was putting on her underwear
with her white back toward him. As she carefully put on each piece of
clothing, one by one, she seemed to be full of tenderness for her own body.
They went outside and walked around for a while in the back
streets, passing several other couples. Suddenly Yoko drew close and
whispered in his ear, "Let's not go back there. Find a different place. Be-
cause voices come from everywhere. Somehow, it doesn't seem like it's
just the two of us."
It was a full woman's voice, masking fatigue with heartiness.
When he looked at her, he saw her smiling in the pale glow of the far-
away streetlights, her face glowing with yet another dim light coming
from within. Her footsteps echoed softly, and only the tip of her finger
was touching his right arm.
**********
It was May. It seemed to him that Yoko's skin had begun to give
off a fragrance. It was not just at night when any fragrance would inten-
sify. In the middle of the day, when Yoko stepped into the shadows from
the sunlight, her fragrance flowed out around her like a gentle wave. At
times, even when they were walking through the streets and Yoko twisted
her upper body to look back at something that had caught her eye, the
pleats of her skirt swayed gently, and he thought that he could distin-
guish that scent from the tumult of the city.
She carried herself more freely now. Her slim legs, which had
put on a little weight, carried the weight of her body naturally and soaked
up the resilience of the ground with every step, transmitting it to her
small, firm breasts. Gone was the impression of drifting along, the jovi-
ality as if she were being jerked by a string from afar, the melancholy as
if she were treading deep into a quagmire with every step. Yoko walked
beside him calmly keeping her eye on everything around her. Sometimes
when he gazed at her, she smiled drowsily in his direction without actu-
ally returning the gaze. Reports of going shopping by herself, going to
see a movie with friends on her way home from school, or going to a
y 6 k 0 55
gallery or a beer hall with a school club gradually became more
t.
**********
Like any young man, he took the words Yoko had whispered to
on the street near the hotel too seriously. They would be unable to
from the shadow of the damp pleasure and pain of countless other
no matter where they might choose to go for their evening en-
With this in mind, he began to look for a place to take Yoko in
daytime, in the middle of a suburban residential area. Fixed in the
of his mind was the memory of an inn, in a place a short distance
from a certain park he and Yoko had visited in March. If he hadn't
... ,.,,.,,."',n the unobtrusive sign, the inn would have been indistinguishable
an old mansion. In sharp contrast with several other houses of as-
tian near the park, the identity of which anyone could tell at a glance,
particular house had not been remodeled. When he tried to imagine
this house had become an inn, he could only come up with various
depressing possibilities, but because the place seemed to have no guests
during the day and the stillness of a vacant house reigned over it, he
.ut:''-u.<:::u. not to think too much about such things.
When they got off the train and exited through the ticket gate, he
walking quickly ahead of Yoko in order not to attract attention. In
the quiet afternoon, the narrow paved street stretched through the resi-
dential quarter straight toward the park. When he turned around along
way, he saw Yoko was walking quietly about a hundred meters be-
The sunlight of early summer poured down onto the gray pave-
_rnent and the whole road shimmered with heat haze. The pale color of
Yoko' s clothing grew bright and expanded in that wavering air. Rippling
faintly up and down, it made her look as if she would evaporate at any
.moment. A fear that he thought had disappeared long ago rekindled in-
side of him. "Please, I hope she can walk along the street without having
a relapse." At the same time, he had a vivid sense of her body within the
pale clothing, a feeling no less intense than when he was actually hold-
ing her in his arms. Then, when he turned his back again and continued
Walking, the distance that separated their two bodies appealed almost
directly to his senses with a strange palpability. He arrived at the room
several steps ahead of her, and while he was waiting for her in the elec-
tric lamplight, that distance between them gradually shrank, still bear-
ing a faintly tangible quality. At long last there were footsteps in the cor-
ridor, and Yoko entered the room, her cheeks slightly flushed. Even when
he turned off the light and they drew close to each other, the tension of
the distance still remained.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 56
Before he could embrace her, Yoko swept past him and escaped
into the deeper darkness of the inner room. He waited a moment. Yoko
was crouching in the corner of the room with her back to him. She got up
when he entered the room. Placing her hands one over the other in an
ambiguous way below her breasts, dragging her hips a little behind, she
gazed up at him as he approached her. As he drew nearer, she relaxed
her shoulders and arms and stretched upward as if she were entrusting
her upper body to the heavens. The slender rays of light flowing in
through the cracks in the shutters diffused the color of the leaves of the
trees just outside the window into a pale green and washed over her
white flesh. She was only standing upright on her tiptoes, yet the strain
filled her whole body from her feet to the gentle slope of her shoulders.
When he saw her like this, he always felt he was standing before a truly
extraordinary being.
Even when she let out a low moan of pleasure, Yoko's skin still
preserved a chill and seemed to draw away from his skin in quiet agony.
Through this chill he took in the feel of the indentation of her collarbone,
the softness of the inside of her arms, the line that flowed from her breasts
to her flanks, and her sharp, jutting pelvic bones. Devoid of sexual pas-
sion, they brushed against his skin point by point as if they were con-
tinually coming down a long road from a distant place to join together
again. He concentrated on the sensation of her body on his skin, point by
point, while feeling something just a little different from sexual excitement.
As he maintained this heightened tactile sense, he sometimes ex-
perienced the feeling that he was being joined in a single line with Yoko's
disturbed senses. For a brief moment, he felt he accurately understood
Yoko's solitary trance as she stood motionless in the street.
... Yoko came down the road, and suddenly she stepped into
another world. She stopped, and the air around her became extraordi-
narily clear. Although they still maintained their natural appearance, each
and every object surrounding her, each and every expression and ges-
ture of the people walking by, grew more and more vivid and distinct.
Then they began to look unnaturally distinct and sharp. This sharpness,
which grew progressively more intense as if it were slowly seeping from
a deep source, captured her senses. Yoko experienced a loneliness that
was almost sensual. Captivated by the excessively clear manifestation of
each and every object, her senses split into innumerable fragments, each
growing clear and lucid, until she was unable to grasp that vague, famil-
iar feeling of coherence. She could not even pin down her sense of her
own being. Yet from within that fragile sense of her own existence, Yoko
gazed intently at the clarity of her surroundings. Although she could
hardly stand up straight, she murmured in a thin, husky voice, "Oh, how
beautiful!" ...
y if k 0 57
The memory of the tension he had felt as he slowly walked
v ~ ~ the stream of rocky debris and gazed into the eyes of the woman
on the rock was revived within him as a terribly urgent desire.
was always an instant when he felt he was perfectly connected by
single thread to the depths ofYoko's illness. However, when he took a
deep breath to try to force his way into Yoko's feelings, the thread was
tangled, confused with sexual desire. Nonetheless, this time he
took pleasure in repeating the same thing over again.
Unable to break out of that pattern, he still remained locked in
desire of a young man without maturing beyond it, although he had
:been to bed with her many times. By contrast, Yoko's flesh preserved its
intact, but she had matured into a woman without his being aware
of it, the illness still harbored inside of her.
One day in bed, Yoko turned toward him and with one cheek
deeply in the pillow asked, "Do you ... like children?" Her eyes
held a gleam that was more syrupy than usual.
At once he thought of pregnancy, and he frowned at the ques-
tion. Seeing this, Yoko spoke again in a reproving tone. "No, that's not it .
. I only asked whether you liked children or not."
Relieved, he gave a young man's typically impudent answer to
such a question.
"Do I like children? Hmm, well, when I see two parents with their
child sitting together in a row in a train or someplace like that, it looks so
I can barely stop myself from laughing. The man sits on one
side of the kid, right? And the woman sits on the other side. Neither of
their faces look at all alike. And yet you can see the faces of both parents
coexisting intact in the face of the kid sitting between them. And so it
looks like a contrived, obvious montage, and yet it's natural. So, this 'natu-
ral' guy is after all a just a joker advertising his misdeeds to the world.
For all that, I really wonder how they dare to show their faces together in
public like that."
A bitter smile played across Yoko's lips, and she slowly turned
her face away. Then she murmured, as if to herself, into the darkness.
"Well, I hate them," she murmured. "When I imagine another person
just like me walking around somewhere, I get goose bumps. I'd want to
lock it up in an underground dungeon."
He wondered why she hadn't merely said, "Yes, I hate children, too."
As they prepared to go home that day, Yoko sat on the floor with
her knees bent to one side before the inn's dirty vanity, giving no indica-
tion that she was aware he had finished dressing and was ready to leave.
The contours of her body had suddenly softened, and she twisted gently
from side to side as she combed her hair over and over again with no
sign of stopping.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 58
Part Five
They were sitting in a coffee shop one day in early July, when he
noticed Yoko staring fixedly across the table at the front of his Oxford
shirt.
"You must be terribly hot dressed like that," she said with the air
of an older woman. "I'll buy you a polo shirt. It'll be much cooler." She
stood up to leave without waiting for his reply.
He was not much in the mood for shopping, and he lagged be-
hind her as she strode into the department store, the look in her eyes
growing more determined as she approached the counter.
He stood a short distance away, watching her as she picked out
his polo shirt. It seemed to him that the expression on her face was far
from that of a young woman trying to buy something for her boyfriend
and enjoying an innocent taste of real-life domesticity. Rather, she had
that hard-to-please expression one sees on women in pursuit of some-
thing of passable quality at a reasonable price for a member of the fam-
ily. It occurred to him that perhaps receiving a personal gift brings two
people closer together than an embrace.
Oblivious to the saleswoman's increasing displeasure, Yoko had
her bring out one polo shirt after another. Even as the woman was in the
midst of enthusiastically pointing out the merits of one article, Yoko
would quickly reach out for another, hold it up to his chest and look him
up and down as if he were a mannequin. Whichever shirt she held up, he
would give the same response, "This one is fine, isn't it?" The saleswoman,
her courteous smile revealing rather than masking her irritation at being
ignored, would also repeat the same phrase, "That one also looks very
nice on you, doesn't it?" Without appearing to notice any of this, Yoko
would concentrate her sharp gaze on the polo shirt against his chest, tilt
her head without comment, and have yet another new one brought out.
Before long, he noticed that the expression in Yoko's eyes was
becoming dull as she began to withdraw into herself. Then he became
aware that her hands, which had been hurriedly grabbing up one shirt
after another, were suddenly moving more slowly. She would pick up a
shirt she had just put down, or drop one immediately after she had just
picked it up, and begin to pull out another kind, repeating such point-
less motions over and over again. The saleswoman was looking at her as
if to say, "What is this woman doing?" Yoko seemed to be sinking into a
daze right before her eyes. Only her lips remained stubbornly pressed
together.
"Maybe we should look around a little more," he said, breaking
in to stop the situation from continuing any further. The saleswoman
took half a step back from the counter and nodded lightly. She was obvi-
y 0 k 0 59
waiting for them to leave. Even then, Yoko didn't stop the cursory
of picking up and putting down polo shirts. But a few moments
she suddenly sighed as if she were unable to go on, gathered up the
scattered on the counter with both hands, and pushed them to-
the saleswoman. "Thank you for your help." Somehow she man-
to say this much in a bright, clear voice, and she began to walk
As he followed along behind, he gave a brief nod of thanks to the
She bowed courteously but could barely restrain a smile.
expression in her eyes seemed to say, "Can't you choose things for
II
Yoko walked quickly straight through the men's department as
had a particular destination in mind. He followed five or six paces
matching his speed to hers. It was just like a scene where a couple
had a sudden disagreement but feel they have to stay together, he
'"u"'"'L with the realization that he had already taken on the role of
- ~ n ' ' ' quite some time ago.
Soon, Yoko's steps became heavy. She slackened her pace as if
had just thought of something or wanted to let him catch up to tell
something. Then, suddenly, with her back still turned to him as if
had forgotten his existence and was all alone, she stopped and
her handbag to her chest with both arms. Next, her handbag
to slip out of her arms along her body. Bending her knees and
her upper body tightly forward in a sort of crouching position,
caught her handbag in the hollow formed by her stomach. She re-
motionless in that posture, pressing her handbag against her
abdomen. Tautly stretched by her inclining upper body, her dress
revealed the curve of her back and hips, and the cloth gathered
in several layers of deep wrinkles running from her waist toward
inside of her hollowed abdomen. Her knees folded under her and
more and more unsteady, as if to show that no matter how tightly
clutched her handbag, it was ready to slip and fall at any moment.
It lasted only a few seconds. Presently, Yoko straightened up,
her handbag back up to her chest, and began to walk forward.
when she had gone five or six steps, she crouched over again
tottered slowly off to the left. Placing her elbow on the left-hand
she gently rested the weight of her body against it and remained
.. ...,.... '"''" Suspecting that her body might continue to slide gradually
along the wall, he switched out of the observer's role and walked
her side, blocking her from public view with his body. Then he brought
... " ""-"' close to Yoko' s ear, pretending that he was peering over the shoul-
of his female companion who was leaning against the wall to look
her handbag.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 60
Her eyes almost closed, Yoko lifted her head and leaned toward
him as if she were pushing her upper body diagonally from her hips,
which dragged behind. Then she breathed a long, shallow sigh. Instinc-
tively, he looked around to make sure that no one was watching them.
He knew he had to do something right away, so he took her by
the elbow and pulled her away from the wall. Yielding her elbow with-
out leaning against him, Yoko lifted her feet slowly, bending her body
slightly forward. Her eyes were opened in a wide stare, her face com-
pletely expressionless. Her tightly pursed lips, which moved as if she
were continuously swallowing saliva, grew red and ripe by some spon-
taneous power, exposing a sort of female sensuality. Now and then Yoko
stopped and turned her head slowly to look around at the people mov-
ing about in the store. In order to make her vacant expression and em-
barrassing posture less conspicuous, he too matched his head movement
to hers and looked around inside the store as if the two of them were
searching for something. As he copied her movements, he felt again that
he was becoming connected to Yoko's illness by a single thread. How-
ever, when he started to walk again, he was surprised by the fact that her
illness had suddenly taken on the weight of a mature woman's body.
He no longer got the impression that her body was fading away
or reverting to the weight of a mere object unable to stand on its own.
Rather, as she walked, her body revealed a female sensuality reminis-
cent of the way she looked when she got into bed, her arms folded across
her chest, her knees slightly pressed together. Again and again Yoko
would stagger and begin to turn in a different direction. When he pulled
her closer, she twisted her body away from his arm toward the bustle
and confusion around them with a vaguely trancelike motion, and a thin,
hoarse sound escaped from deep within her chest. Each time this hap-
pened, his apprehension grew and he couldn't help feeling that Y6ko's
illness was disclosing their secrets to the world. He fought the urge to
walk off into the crowd alone.
After a while, he finally found the stairway and led Yoko down
to the landing. Here, he was unhappy to see, the situation was no better.
The landing connected two stairways, which descended from either side,
and opened out exactly like a stage; from there a wide stairway led down
toward the grocery and the prepared food vendors on the basement floor.
Yoko went to the edge of that stairway and stood looking around va-
cantly at the people moving below. "She certainly picked the most obvi-
ous place," he thought, completely at a loss as to what to do next. Anx-
ious that they should blend into the crowd in the basement without a
moment's delay, he took her by the arm again and pulled her to his side.
As her body was pulled nearer, she nimbly drew her head back and gazed
at him suspiciously, then she twisted her shoulder back and forth, slipped
y 6 k 0 61
of his arm, and, to his astonishment, pushed his chest with both hands
hard as she could.
"Who do you think you are?"
Her sticky murmur reached his ears as he stumbled backward.
......... his balance, he no longer had the energy to do anything more
stood a few steps away keeping an eye on both Yoko and the activity
the shoppers in the basement. Yoko stood with her back arched, her
pushed out, and worse still, her stomach thrust out toward the sales
Standing at the edge of the stairway, exposed to public view, she
the picture of a woman who was pondering where she should go
At the bottom of the stairs, several men here and there paused and
up at her with vaguely dubious expressions, but before a gleam
definite interest flashed into their eyes, they looked down again and
h,.,,,. .,,, along on their respective ways.
Finally, Yoko lowered her eyes modestly to the ground and
to walk down the stairs naturally. Like a servant, he moved
her without a word. When he held out his arm, she took it
protest.
When they had returned to the coffee shop, he asked, "Are you
right now?"
"What are you talking about?" she replied.
"What am I talking about? But wasn't something wrong with you?"
"There wasn't the slightest thing wrong with me."
She sounded surprised. However, when he looked at Yoko now,
was obvious from the way she leaned back comfortably in her chair
slowly sipped her soft drink that she was giving herself up to the
sense of relief after one of her attacks had run its course.
"From now on, you have to be a little careful, okay?"
He didn't want to disturb her peace of mind, and so he thought
to bring this part of the conversation to a close with these words. How-
ever, Yoko turned upon him as if she were protesting her innocence.
"What is it you're talking about? What did I do?"
"It seemed like you couldn't walk by yourself .... "
"Oh, that. I was just feeling a little sick."
This was the first time he had heard Yoko use a commonplace
excuse for her illness.
"There's no need to hide it," he murmured, feeling dispirited.
"My illness has been cured," Yoko replied. Sulking, she looked
down at her plump knees, which were pressed together with ladylike
propriety.
With that, they both fell silent.
From that time on, he decided to keep the time he spent with
Yoko in public places to a minimum. He was frightened by wild fancies:
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 62
perhaps the next time, regardless of the people around them, Yoko's ill-
ness would let out a woman's scream ....
In an effort to stay away from crowds of people, their activities
naturally became limited to the usual place. He was pleased that their
relationship was gradually becoming closed off to the outside world. Even
when he got off at the station in the early afternoon and headed toward
their customary inn, he no longer took such half-hearted precautions as
hurrying along the road ahead of Yoko. He walked slowly through the
heavy summer sunlight with his arm wrapped around her as if she were
a sick person. They walked right in front of the usual inn at the same
steady pace, and then, together, they suddenly took refuge from the sun
in the deep shadows. If they stood immobile in the small garden, even
the people directly behind them were blinded by the difference between
light and shadow and passed on without noticing where the two of them
had gone.
However, when they were alone together in the room, he became
aware of the extent to which the time they had spent outside, tense and
estranged from each other, had up to this point preserved their
lovemaking in a state of sensual purity. When their bodies came together
in the darkness, a fresh, vivid image of Yoko crouching over and press-
ing her handbag to her abdomen in public suddenly appeared before his
eyes and aroused him intensely in a way that was surprisingly not sen-
sual. Her fit that day had a wanton quality, which was liberated from his
self-consciousness of the public eye and flowed into the dark room all at
once. Not only had Yoko's body changed, his own had changed as well.
The rigid intransigence of its former boundaries had disappeared, and
along with that the lucid sensation of bare skin. Thus, they were able to
join their bodies together with greater abandon than ever before. Now a
warm moistness constantly flowed through Yoko's skin, and her body
took on a feminine coyness with each passing day. He rather hoped to
become completely immersed in Yoko's illness with her. However, the
moments when he came in contact with something cold, which seemed
to be the core of her illness, ceased to occur. From that time on, the illness
itself maintained its silence like a stubborn woman.
Instead, Yoko began to speak of her illness with more frequency.
Nestled in the sheets and looking at the ceiling, she would suddenly mur-
mur, "Been feeling funny again lately." When he asked her what was
wrong, she would reply, shaking her head slowly back and forth on the
pillow, "My body feels heavy. I get tired when I stand up and walk."
Even her complaints about her difficulties contained a feeling of weary
self-sufficiency.
She no longer felt as if she was losing a sense of her own body as
she had in the past. Rather, she was too aware of it, and there was noth-
y 6 k 0 63
she could do. Her body was exactly like a heavy rock that had been
to lie undisturbed, she murmured with a sigh. When she was in her
room alone and examined herself attentively, whether it was her chest,
or the area around her hips, her own body had become unbelievably thick.
She didn't mind that, but she was unable to bear the strange feeling that
clung to each and every simple movement she made. For example, when
she put her hand behind her ear to smooth her hair, she sensed some-
where in the movements of her own hand the figure of a plump woman
unconsciously bringing her hand around to scratch an itchy spot on the
nape of her neck while she gossiped about someone. When she picked
up a bowl filled with rice, the hand holding her chopsticks took on the
white plumpness of the grains of rice and began to move hurriedly of its
own accord as if it were somehow deeply embarrassed yet at the same
time quite shameless. The feeling in her hips when she stood up from the
tatami, the feeling in her thighs when she went down the stairs, the feel-
ing of her hollowed abdomen when she bent down to pick something up
from the floor-each and every action took on the feeling of a woman
who already seemed to have a couple of children. Her movements were
slightly delayed and gradually emanated from somewhere inside her
body. But it was not as if her body had become someone else's. Although
she had a real, vivid sense that each feeling and action was her own, she
felt weighed down by a heaviness against which she was powerless, and
she had nowhere to turn ....
"I don't know what to do," she said, choking back her hoarse
voice. The expression on Yoko's face, however, seemed to become more
and more blissful. When he raised his head slightly from the pillow and
looked over at her, she was twisting and turning her body beneath the
towel draped over her breasts.
**********
This same kind of conversation recurred every week. One day
about a month later, he was watching Yoko twist and turn as if she truly
did not know what to do with her heavy body, and he suddenly felt a
desire to ask about her everyday life.
"What do you do all day?"
"I lie down in my room, most of the time." Yoko continued mov-
ing her body, unaware that she was being watched.
Throwing open all of the windows on the second floor, Yoko lay
curled up on the sofa next to the wall, all day long. An entire wall, from
floor to ceiling, was taken up by a bookcase, which was packed full with
her father's old books, despite the fact that nobody read them. It had a
cluttered, untidy look about it and seemed to be leaning its weight to-
T R A N 5 L A T I 0 N 5 64
ward the middle of the room. Her body was heavy, and so was the book-
case against the walt and the desk, and the table, and the chair. It was
difficult to support her own weight, and while she was wondering if it
wouldn't be best for all of them to share the weight among themselves,
she was able to stand up on her own after all. Before, the objects around
her had pressed down upon her with such a strange intensity that she
felt her body was going to disappear in the space between them, and so
she would end up tightly hugging her thin body and cowering down
before the table. This happened once or twice a year. When she crouched
over like this, the uneasy feeling emanating from the depths of her body
was slowly and steadily boiled down, finally enabling her to achieve a
balance with the intensity of the objects around her. Meanwhile, she was
gradually falling into a daze, and except for the anxious feeling that she
mustn't move her body in the slightest, eventually everything dissolved
into drowsiness. In order to minimize the number of objects pressing in
upon her as much as possible, she had drawn the heavy curtains and
made the room dark, but, even in the middle of summer, she didn't sweat
at all. Yet now, even if she opened all the windows and the door between
the rooms and lay down in the cross-breeze, her skin became damp with
perspiration. She no longer had the uneasy feeling that the objects around
her were going to collapse in upon her. The objects were objects, and
each one was painfully absorbed in its own weight. She, too, pressed her
body into the sofa, it was almost embarrassing how engrossed she was
in the simple act of lying there.
"Why is that a problem for you?" he said. "If it's uncomfortabk
you should stand up and just do something to get your body moving."
"But you know ... " Yoko's sticky voice trailed off. "But when I
stand up and try to do something, I get confused. My illness has defi-
nitely gotten better.f\o.d because it's better, I think I must quickly get my
own life in order. Except, welt I don't feel like getting up. I want to lie
around like this forever, if I could."
"Why?"
"Because, when I get up and start walking around, with my body
the way it is, I feel like I'm becoming another person. My slightest ges-
ture is suddenly enveloped by my sister's gesture."
Yoko was talking about the sister, nine years her senior, who was
her only blood relative and guardian. Yoko had told him that her sister
had married five years before and now had two sons, a three year old
and a one year old.
"Wouldn't it be a good thing if you were like your sister?"
He was already vaguely aware of the tension between them from
the indifferent way Yoko spoke about her older sister. But when he
thought of the discrepancy between Yoko crouching in the ravine and
y 6 k 0 65
sister skillfully managing a household, the question slipped out in
spite of himself. . _ . .
"I couldn't stand to be like my Sister/' Yoko murmured qu1etly m
a hoarse, constricted voice, and she looked up toward the ceiling with a
hateful look in her eyes.
It seemed to him that if he gave an ordinary answer, she might
break out in hystericat scornful laughter. Conscious of the awkwardness
of having unintentionally pried into the affairs of someone else's family,
he remained silent. For the first time, he somehow felt guilty that they
were lying here in bed together without having sufficiently questioned
each other about their families.
However, a moment later, Yoko turned around to face him. Rest-
ing her elbows on the sheet, she slowly pulled the towel down off her
white breasts, then suddenly she moved her face close to his with a lust-
ful gleam in her eyes. Although it was dark and there was no one else
around to hear them, she whispered, "A long time ago, my sister was
crazy."
He was conscious that he had instinctively furrowed his brow,
and he turned his face away from her gaze. Although she had certainly
noticed his reaction, Yoko leaned even closer to him, pressed one of her
breasts against his forearm, and wrapped her arm around his neck. So
close that her lips were practically touching his ear, she began to speak.
"She was exactly the same age that I am now. And she ... welt it
took about ten minutes to walk to the train station from our house. But
she couldn't even make it there in thirty minutes, and she'd come back
to the house with eyes as wide as an owl's. And you know, it was a simple
route, she only had to make three turns to get there. When she had to
describe the way to go, she could do it perfectly. But, she said that once
she started out, it would start to feel different from the way it was sup-
posed to as she got farther along, and she'd end up getting lost. She would
tell all of this to my mother, who was still well at the time, and when I
overheard her complaining with this ridiculously serious expression on
her face, I thought I was going to burst out laughing. You see, along the
way there was this tobacconist, okay? It was the first landmark. She'd
come up to it thinking,' Ah, so here's the tobacconist.' But when she was
right in front of it, the shop seemed completely different. Then, she just
couldn't pass it and continue any further, so she had no choice but to go
back to our house and start all over from the beginning. The next time
she would force herself not to look in the direction of the tobacconist
until she walked right in front of it and then she'd quickly look up. But
she said she felt as if she'd never seen that shop before in her life. The
same thing happened over and over again, every morning ... but actu-
ally, she was aware of everything. She was perfectly sane. She was just
'
T R A N 5 L A T I 0 N 5 66
stubborn and selfish, and so she wouldn't be satisfied unless she sub-
jected everything to her own feelings once a day. And to prove it, as long
as someone took her to the station, she went off to school quite calmly
and came back home with no problem at all."
He was dumbfounded. Yoko was supposedly suffering from the
same problem, so where did this cool sense of reality lie hidden within
her? If she was so perceptive about her sister, why wasn't she able to
look at her own illness in the same light? Or perhaps, was it that she did
look at herself in that way and still suffered all the same when an attack
occurred? After she spoke for a while, Yoko drew away and turned over
on her back again.
"Aaah ... "she sighed, and closed her eyes.
However, a moment later, she suddenly raised her head, and, with
a cloying smile on her face, as if she had remembered some very amus-
ing dirty story, she simultaneously drew her face and upper body closer
toward him.
"Soon it was summer vacation. And it was a good thing that she
could avoid going outside, but then she brought those things she was
doing on the street into the house. It was quite a problem for the family,
too. She wasn't able to do anything unless she followed a certain order
even for the most minor thing. You get up in the morning and get dressed,
right? Everybody just unconsciously puts on his clothes in the same or-
der every morning. But she wasn't satisfied unless she checked each piece
of clothing one by one as if she were getting dressed for the very first
time. If she got even the slightest strange feeling when she was button-
ing her buttons, then-what an ordeal!-it was strip down and start all
over again. And even going down the stairs, she always started with her
right foot and walked very carefully, one step at a time as if she was
going to lose her balance. But even then-you know the way your feet
get tangled up when you run down the stairs in a hurry, don't you?-the
rhythm of her feet got messed up like that and she stopped short, lean-
ing forward like she was going to fall on her face. Then she went back up
to the top step and started all over again. It was really strange! Because
although she was so careful when she came down the stairs, she bounded
up the stairs without stopping."
"If she did everything like that, the day would never end," he
said, drawn into Yoko's story before he knew what was happening. It
was as if they were talking about a third person who had no relation to
them.
"But everything has a way of taking care of itself," Yoko said,
naturally continuing her story. "Even though she was methodical, there
was something that was entirely lacking. Although she took thirty min-
utes to get dressed and come downstairs, she'd forget to wash, and she'd
y 0 k 0 67
sit down at the breakfast table just the way she was. Or she'd take over
an hour to get ready to take a bath and then just go to sleep without
actually getting in."
Yoko started laughing softly into his ear. The flat, malicious laugh-
ter continued on into the darkness in spite of the fact that he, lying right
there beside her, was silent. Since her sister was the same age that Yoko
was now, Yoko must have been a girl of twelve. That skinny, sensitive
girl, hiding in the shadows at the foot of the stairs, had peered with her
sharp eyes at the woman standing motionless for so long in the middle
of the stairway. Perhaps those same eyes were still watching this Yoko
from far away ....
Yoko suddenly broke off her laughter. She lowered her voice again
and continued her story.
"After about a month, it finally got to the point where she did
nothing but stay in her room all day long. That's the room I have now.
Even though it was hot, she closed the curtains and lay face down at the
table in the middle of the room without doing anything for hours on
end. She said that the family-my father and my mother and 1-all got
together and conspired to make trouble for her. For example, she said
that while she was sleeping, we would come in and ever so slightly rear-
range her clothes, which were folded so neatly beside her pillow. Or when
she wasn't looking, we would make the waistband of her skirt narrower,
to try to make her think that her waist had gotten bigger. Or we'd shift
the position of all the furniture little by little to make the room feel un-
stable. Once she began talking like this, she wouldn't stop, and if we
tried to reason with her, she'd turn her eyes away like a crazy cat and
then cower down in front of the table again .... "
Yoko's voice was gradually losing its vehemence. While she still
seemed to be complaining about the trouble her sister had caused so long
ago, she also seemed to be trying to appeal to the perversity of her own
illness, and the ends of her words were swallowed up in this ambivalent
sentiment. She stopped talking and was quiet for a while as if she were
wrapped up in the feeling of crouching down in front of the table. Then,
resuming her previous tone, she began to speak again.
"So I had to bring her her meals. When I went into her room, it
was dark, and she was sitting with her chest on the table and her head in
her arms. But her waist and hips were stretched out in an odd way. And,
as if it were a different creature, her rear end was perched on a chair
pushed far away from the table. Even when I put the tray on the table
and called to her, she didn't move at all. Yet, when I carne back about an
hour later, the food was all gone. When she wanted to go to the toilet,
she sneaked down by herself. When we heard the sound of her footsteps,
my mother and I closed the door tightly and didn't make a sound. If we
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 68
showed our faces, there was trouble! She would dash up the stairs at a
terrific speed."
Without knowing what she was doing, Yoko was digging her slen-
der nails into the flesh of his shoulder again and again. .,
"She wouldn't take a bath no matter what. And so because it was
summertime, after about five days the room started to smell. When I went
in with the tray, I thought I was going to be sick. I wanted to get out of
there as fast as possible. So I set the tray down on the nearest corner of
the table, and held my nose as I retreated to the door .... Then, as soon
as I started to leave the room, I always ended up looking over at her to
find out how she could stand that smell. Then something strange hap-
pened. My nose got a little bit used to the smell, and my sister's body
began to look very contented. Crouching down in her own illness, im-
mersed in her own smell. ... That's what I'd call obscene. She was un-
sightly. An animal ... "
As she spoke, Yoko gradually raised her head away from his body,
and in the end, she reared her head above him and glared into the dark
shadows in the corner of the room with crazed eyes. Then, no longer
able to find words, she gasped for a few moments, and then pressed her
face to his neck, as if she were suddenly aroused by the word "obscene"
that she herself had spoken. Touching her lips lightly to his skin, she
whispered, "At that time, she still knew nothing about what the body
is."
The curves ofYoko's body began to flow along his skin. He placed
both hands on her chest and pushed her away as hard as he could.
Until a few moments before, Yoko had been lying with the towel
draped softly over her body, but now, the contours of her body dulled,
she turned over on her back and looked into his eyes timidly. Then, with
a delayed look of surprise, she got up, and fell on her knees on top of the
futon. Pulling up the towel to cover her body from the chest down, she
looked over at him once more.
"Don't reject me," Yoko said in a high, thin voice.
"She's your sister. You shouldn't talk about her illness like that."
"I'm not ill."
He looked at her face as she fervently insisted on something he
couldn't be expected to believe and felt the thoughtlessness of his own
words, but even before that emotion took shape, the words, "Remember
the time in the ravine!" found expression in his eyes. Yoko pressed the
towel tightly against her chest and twisted her body as if in pain.
"I don't want to end up sitting inside that illness. I am always on
the borderline. I tremble like a thin membrane, and that's how I feel that
I'm alive. I don't want to be like my sister."
y 0 k 0 69
"But your sister got better, didn't she? Isn't she a housewife now,
and a mother of two children?"
"I hate that. She's completely forgotten about the past, and she
sees my illness as if it were something repulsive."
"That's all right. It's inevitable that she would forget what it's
like to be ill when she's gotten better."
"It's all the same whether you're crouching down inside your
illness or you're better and have forgotten about it. I hate it."
Yoko sat up tall on top of the futon and dropped the towel over
her knees. With her chest thus exposed, she lowered her head. The line
from her shoulder to her chest was pathetic and reminded him of a child
who was absorbed in misery, oblivious to her own body.
A few weeks later, they decided to stop meeting for a while.
August was drawing to a close. Hoping to catch some summer
vacation time by himself, he immediately set off for an inexpensive lodg-
ing house deep in the mountains. He assembled some books and a set of
mountain climbing gear, and as he boarded the train, he finally did feel
that sense of liberation he had been looking for. However, by the time he
had settled down at the inn, he lost all of his energy to do anything and
spent the whole day in his room, drowsily whiling away the hours be-
tween one mealtime and the next. Now loudly, now softly, the sound of
the mountain stream flowed continuously through his indolent body. As
early dusk fell in the valley, the breeze, gentle now that the vitality of
summer had subsided, was redolent with the delicate fragrance of yel-
lowing grass. Still he dozed on in the corner of his room, his bent knees
casting a shadow on the lightly soiled wall. Sometimes the sound of the
stream filled the valley completely and he would suddenly lose the sense
of flowing movement. Then, in the midst of that silence, the heavy, acute
awareness of one's physical being that Yoko had complained about trans-
ferred to his body.
As the night wore on, he lay wrapped in a thick quilt listening to
the darkness of the valley, his body tranquil in its fatigue, and he thought
of Yoko. Various different images of her came into his head. However,
each immediately dissolved into the sound of the stream, and, at last,
one image remained: Yoko lying in the depths of the gloom of a summer
afternoon, a towel loosely draped over her knees, absorbed in the feeling
of the weight of her body. Yoko's body was anxious to wrap itself around
her illness, and thus to grow into adulthood and regain its composure.
Unless he urged her on with his impatient thoughts and desires, her body
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 70
would neither become thin, like a sensitive young girl, nor assume the
well-rounded appearance of a sexy woman. The conceited hope that he
could cure her illness had long since vanished completely. He didn't want
her illness to move toward convalescence, nor did he want it to grow
worse. Getting better or getting worse, it seemed likely that either one
would destroy Yoko. There was no need for Yoko to feel sad about the
weight of her own body. He, or at least his body, could put up with re-
peating the same thing over and over again with Yoko just as she was
now, and he could even feel joy in it. ...
Before he left, he had given her the address of the inn, and so on
the tenth day a letter arrived from her.
I can't very well lie around forever, and so I'm trying to get up
and get on with my life. When I sit up properly in my chair
during the hot hours of the afternoon, I feel like I am inserting
my body into thin air from the neck up. A human being is a
creature who stands and walks. Someone who does nothing but
lie around is an invalid or an animal. In the evening when the
rays of the sun are not so strong, I go out of the house and
stroll around the neighborhood. I don't lose my way, but scenes
that I should be used to seem a little intense, and I sometimes
frown at myself. In order to walk steadily, I have to imagine
your face in front of me with that funny expression you have
when you don't know what to do.
Yi5ko
A short time after he had finished reading the letter, he realized
that his own face had stiffened into the funny expression Yoko had de-
scribed. It was the same expression he had had when he walked step by
step between the rocks as he and Yoko gazed at each other in the ravine;
it was the same expression he had had as he retreated backward, reeling
Yoko in by her line of vision on the suspension bridge.
From that day on, he lost the equilibrium he had found while
dozing. Afflicted with lethargy during the day and insomnia at night,
his nerves began to feel on edge again. Perhaps he could blame it on the
fact that the weather had changed and rain fell continuously, starting the
same day he received her letter. The chilly autumn dampness of the val-
ley was not comfortable for lying around and napping. He passed the
time leaning against the wall, holding his knees and gazing out the win-
dow at the rain. A winged insect flew up from the near bank, but, beaten
down by the falling rain, it crossed low over the surface of the stream. As
he slowly followed its movements with his eyes, his felt his irritation
Yoko 71
growing. At night, the sound of the rain became one with the sound of
the stream, a low, throbbing sound that flowed into the darkness of the
valley. The image of Yoko rose up within that sound. Yoko had already
gotten up and was slowly advancing her slightly stooped body toward a
funny-looking face floating before her. When the evenness of her pace
was disturbed, her body stiffened and her eyes flashed with stubborn-
ness. Just then, her footsteps suddenly became careless, and she dragged
her unmanageable body drowsily along, with a touch of hysteria in her
eyes. Her sleepwalking figure, constantly shifting between tension and
laxity, floated transparently here and there in the murmuring darkness.
Gazing forward, it walked on for a while, was swept along by the mur-
muring sounds, and disappeared again.
He considered sending Yoko a reply telling her she didn't have
to overdo it. But unable to recall that vision of her during the day, he
could not bring himself to sit down at the desk. At night, Yoko's exist-
ence became a burden that weighed heavily upon his mind. Once again
her pale figure began to hover here and there in the murmuring sounds
of the valley.
He stayed another five days at the inn in the valley. On the sixth
day it was still raining. The following day he had a date to meet Yoko,
and so he took the bus down from the valley of rain to the nearest town
on the train line. He had sent ahead the books and mountain climbing
gear, which had proved so useless, and so, wearing nothing but a wet
raincoat over his clothes, he boarded the diesel train to the neighboring
town as if he were going to do an errand.
The following day, although it did not look like rain, the wind
blowing against his skin felt damp and chilly. Therefore, as he was about
to leave his house, he once more slipped into his raincoat, which he had
hung carelessly in the front hall the evening before. The raincoat was
still damp from the valley and felt excessively cold against his skin. But
since it was more trouble to take it off once he had put it on, he wore it
anyway.
As he waited in front of the shop where they had decided to meet,
Yoko came along, also wearing a white raincoat. The clouds were still
quite high in the sky, and when he looked around at the people on the
street, he realized that they were the only two wearing raincoats. Yoko
emerged slowly from the crowd, and, like a convalescent woman, it was
difficult to tell whether her smile reflected the relief of recovery or the
lingering memory of pain. Her body had returned to its former slender-
ness. However it was no longer the sort of slenderness that seemed to
strain painfully over every part of her body. In the soft contours, there
was the shadow of that physical awareness, which had already spread
out through her body. Fine blood vessels were visible through the pale,
TRANSLATIONS 72
clear skin on the inside of her wrists and her calves. The skin all over her
body had become thin and translucent and looked as if it quietly envel-
oped flesh bathed in fever. Yoko appeared as if she were conscious of the
translucence of her own body and was taking pity on it as she slowly
walked beside him.
Because there was no other place to take her, he automatically
headed for the usual room. Yoko thrust her hands into her raincoat pock-
ets and followed behind, looking down at the ground. But a few minutes
later, she stopped in her tracks in the middle of the sidewalk.
"Let's go to the seashore today," she said in a clear voice.
The word "sea" reminded him of a single, sharp line, a horizon-
tal line, which pierced the warm expanse of his sexual desire. Imagining
the feeling of standing on the beach alone with Yoko, looking up at that
horizontal line, he felt something close to physical pain. It was not the
kind of day when the surface of the sea would sparkle in the sunshine.
Besides, it was past one o'clock, too late to start out for a distant place.
Apprehensive about Yoko's nerves, he asked, "Have you been
out since that day?"
"Today's the first time."
"Don't you think it's better not to overdo it too suddenly? Be-
cause a place like the seashore ... "
"You know, I was thinking the whole time I was in my room alone
that the first thing we should do when you came back was go to the
seashore."
They were innocent words, but there was not the slightest sense
that she was playing up to him. Her tone was that of someone quietly
presenting a well-thought-out resolution. Yoko stood right in the middle
of the busy sidewalk and didn't budge as much as half a step, even when
the people passing by stepped in front of her with annoyed expressions
on their faces.
He felt embarrassed that Yoko would have thought of one thing
the whole time they had been apart. In addition to that, he was ashamed
of himself for simply wanting to make love immediately after he returned,
and he mumbled, "Where should we go? The weather's bad, and it's
late .... "
"That's up to you to decide," Yoko said and began to walk away.
She paid no attention to him. His gait was unsteady from a fear that she
would have another attack because they wouldn't be treading the famil-
iar road that led to the usual room. Rather, she stood up tall and looked
straight ahead as she proceeded on her way, in spite of the fact that she
had no idea where she was going.
**********
y 6 k 0 73
On the long distance train, Yoko sat down in a window seat fac-
ing the direction the train was traveling, and he took the seat across from
her. A woman who looked like a working-class matron in her Sunday
best sat in the seat next to Yoko, and a middle-aged man who looked like
an office worker sat down next to him. Then the departure bell sounded
and the train pulled out of the station.
They had been traveling for only about fifteen minutes when he
began to feel anxious about Yoko's nerves again. Her open, relaxed man-
ner was gone, and for some time now her posture was becoming visibly
tense. Sitting up straight in her seat with both hands on her tightly bent
knees, she gazed at her fingertips without moving in the slightest. She
didn't even let herself rest against the back of the seat or the window.
She must have been trying with all her strength to preserve the balance
of her body by bracing herself in this position, because even the jolting
movements of the train seemed to pass through her body without dis-
turbing it. The train was crowded, and there was even a fairly large num-
ber of passengers standing. In this noisy atmosphere, her figure was oddly
detached from its surroundings, like a child who had been made to sit by
herself in a large, deserted room. The telephone poles and girders flying
past outside the window sent shadows dancing bewilderingly on her
drooping forehead. When the train carne to a steel bridge, the violent
shadows of the steel frame sliced one by one at a diagonal through her
stiffly crouching body. Each time this happened, Yoko's left cheek
twitched faintly. He watched uneasily from only one meter away, not
knowing how to help her. If only she weren't bending her knees so tightly
and would let them relax a little farther forward, he thought, resentful of
Yoko's stubbornness, then their kneecaps would touch, and that single
point of contact would enable them both to relax considerably.
Before long he noticed that the man next to him would occasion-
ally look up from his weekly magazine and glance from Yoko's bowed
head along her hunched, concave chest down to her lap. The look of ap-
praisal in his eyes showed that he was appreciating the modesty of her
figure, and was guessing that she was probably a virgin. In the end the
man would probably get off the train and return to his own life carrying
only the lingering memory of his mild desire. Perhaps that memory would
unconsciously reveal itself in a kindness toward the people around him,
kindness toward his family, for instance. When he got into bed and turned
off the light, perhaps the image of Yoko would flash into his head ....
Exhausted by the constant effort of straining his nerves for Yoko's
sake, the casual attitude of the man next to him suddenly seemed quite
enviable, so he joined ranks with him and looked her up and down with
the same expression he had seen in the man's eyes. However, doing this
made him feel guilty, as if the two of them were violating her, and he
TRANSLATIONS 74
instinctively looked away. Then he imagined himself standing up with-
out a word and getting off the train at the next stop, almost as a sort of
punishment for the two of them for sitting here apart from each other
like this, in spite of the fact that they were actually lovers. He tried to
imagine what it would feel like to stand on the platform and watch the
train recede into the distance, wondering how much farther Yoko would
end up going, sitting in this same position. Yet, it was in him that the
loneliness of abandonment lingered. Tired of keeping watch over her, he
shut his eyes.
When he opened them again, the woman sitting next to Yoko had
begun talking to her in a loud voice. Half turning her bowed head to-
ward the woman, Yoko had fixed her vacant gaze at some point near the
woman's knees, and was trying her best to follow her rapid speech. Each
time she was asked another question, she seemed unable to take in its
meaning right away. She would think hard for several moments with a
helpless-looking expression on her face, and then gave a hurried answer.
She seemed to be making a great effort to grasp each question, even those
that could be answered without really understanding them. Over and
over, she would lapse into a light trance, then hurried on by the woman's
eyes, she would become flustered and answer obediently. Thus, in the
middle of a large crowd of people, she was forced by this stranger to
disclose her age, her school, her address, and all sorts of things about
herself, which she did not easily talk about even with him. The woman
seemed to have taken a liking to this country-girl immaturity. Moreover,
her sympathy was apparently aroused when she heard that Yoko had no
parents. Taking on the tone of a guardian, she began to philosophize about
the meaning of life in a loud voice, working herself up into a state of
deep emotion. Before long she was finding her own jokes amusing and
began to laugh, her wide open mouth revealing prominent gold teeth.
Yoko twisted one cheek as if she were crying, and echoed her laugh sound-
lessly. When the woman had laughed to her heart's content, she stopped
abruptly. Heaving a sigh, her face took on a somehow sorrowful expres-
sion, and she looked out the window. Then suddenly she turned to Yoko
and said, "Well, I sure am hungry. You must be, too."
"Oh, yes." Yoko was trapped into replying.
The woman began rustling through the handbag on her knees.
After a few moments, she pulled out a crumpled paper bag and peeked
inside. "Oh, there's only one. Let's split it," she said. She pulled out a
bean jam bun with her large, reddened hand, broke it in two, and pushed
the half-oozing bean jam into Yoko's hand. Yoko took it instinctively, and
then, with bewildered eyes, she looked at him for the first time.
There was nothing to do but answer with his eyes. "It's okay, go
ahead and eat it."
y {f k 0 75
First Yoko opened her lips slightly, then tore off a bit of the bun,
brought it to her mouth exactly as if she were taking medicine, and pushed
it from her lips into her mouth with her finger. More unsteady than a
three-year-old child, it was cruel just to watch her eat this way. However,
once the bread filled her mouth and her cheeks began to move slowly,
the previous look of uncertainty on her face was transformed, incredibly,
into an expression of sullen obstinacy and took on a womanly quality,
older than her years. Only her eyes gazed furtively into his from within
her shyness at eating something, as if they were trying to stare down his
curiosity. He suddenly realized that this was only the third time he had
seen Yoko eating something. Even when they went to a restaurant to-
gether, perhaps because she remembered the first time they had done
this, Yoko let him eat alone, ordering some kind of drink for herself and
taking tiny sips from the edge of the glass as if she were only wetting her
lips. Feeling sorry for her in this difficult predicament, he looked for a
chance to take the bun from her hand and hide it. But the woman had
started talking to Yoko in great earnest, working her mouth in broad chew-
ing motions, and there was no opportunity to help her. Eventually, Yoko' s
expression as she ate, pained as it was, began distantly to resemble that
of the woman beside her.
When they arrived at the seaside, the sky hung even lower than
it had in the city. Occasionally a slanting beam of sunlight broke through
the turbulent clouds, and a small wedge of brightness opened out among
the waves, but as they stopped to appreciate the scene, it was swallowed
up into the gray expanse once more. The horizon was merely a hazy re-
gion where the dark gray sea merged into the slightly lighter gray of the
sky.
After they got off the train, Yoko was in low spirits, and no mat-
ter what he said, he couldn't get any sort of real answer from her. The
stickiness of the bun still lingered in her voice as she murmured frag-
ments of words. Now and then she would distend her white throat as if
she were swallowing the bittersweet taste, and her eyes would fill with
tears.
They walked along the rock-covered beach beside several small,
twisting inlets. Ignoring his outstretched hand, Yoko took a path closer
to the ocean, stepping cautiously with her narrow shoes on one rock at a
time, choosing varying sizes as she walked along. When she had gone
about ten meters, she stopped and looked out over the vast strand of
rocks stretching out before her. Her face took on an expression of earnest
thought as if the continuation of her journey depended upon which rock
she decided on next. Standing somewhat on tiptoe on the rock, Yoko's
body grew thin from the tension against the gray waves. However, when
her right foot had picked out the next rock and began to step forward,
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 76
her thin body regained its roundness, and a soft shadow flowed from
her chest to her hips and was carried slowly from rock to rock. Every
time she stepped onto a differently shaped rock with a different stride, a
different woman's body would come into being, regardless of the ear-
nest look in her eyes as she stared at the rock at her feet. As he watched
Yoko absorbed in her footsteps, he followed about ten meters diagonally
behind her.
When Yoko was poised on one rock, picking out the next, occa-
sionally the light in the sky would change, and far above her bowed head,
the horizon suddenly became sharper. Then, except for Yoko's body stand-
ing out so clearly and the horizon, both the expanse of water and the
rocky beach became vague and difficult to fathom. He had no other point
of reference with which to determine her location but that single hori-
zontal line, which almost seemed to lie in a different space at some un-
known distance far across the sea. At these times, he became Yoko and
felt the strain of standing up straight and walking through this bleak
wilderness of rocks, exposing her body fully to the vast stretch of sky
and sea. He fervently hoped that she would not look up and notice the
bleakness around her, that she would concentrate on her feet forever.
However, when she turned around to him on the rock and began
to smile, Yoko's being crossed over the distance between them and
wrapped itself around him like a warm, gentle wave. They were only
gazing at each other, but there on the windy beach, his body was over-
come with a rush of longing for her. The gray water rose up smoothly
behind Yoko and came toward him, carrying her along with it. He looked
at Yoko' s chest. She smiled as if in pain and shook her head. Her hair,
shaken free by the slow swaying motion of her head, flowed out toward
him, and the collar of her coat billowed up, enveloped in a warm shadow.
Yoko's face took on an exasperated expression, as if annoyed by the wind
driving against her back, and she twisted her body and thrust out her
abdomen toward him. Even so, she continued to shake her head back
and forth, tenaciously holding this awkward pose, although she seemed
about to lose her balance at any moment.
Rejected, his desire became willful, and he felt as miserable as a
disappointed child. He wanted to be the one to wrap himself around
Yoko's body. He walked toward her, into the wind, and slipped his arm
around the waist of the body standing stiffly with both feet planted on
the rock. Yoko bent her chest bravely into the wind as if to pull herself
free of his arm, and staring wide-eyed toward the horizon, she spoke in a
clear voice.
"We'll have endured all these days apart so far for nothing."
"Isn't it okay if we go back to the way it was?" he whispered,
and felt a pang of fear at the sound of his own voice. But his arm only
y i5 k 0 77
Yoko' s waist more tightly. Still looking off into the distance, Yoko
ly loosened his arm and started walking off alone. As he watched
her walk away, her eyes fixed on her feet as she stepped from one rock to
the next, it struck him that Yoko was resolved to make her way deeper
fUld deeper into her own illness. He felt a faint stirring of distaste.
Yoko would no longer stop.
The path eventually cut through the rocks and came out onto a
sandy beach. Yoko's feet sank into the sand and became somewhat un-
steady. He followed directly behind her, at the usual ten meters, glanc-
ing now and then at the pale, stubborn-looking nape of her neck. The
beach was not very wide, and after a short distance it was cut off by a
narrow river, which flowed in from the mountains. There was no bridge,
and the path followed the watercourse and continued in the direction of
the high bluff, a dark mass just beginning to jut out into the sea on their
right. He could see a car driving on the bluff, its headlights casting small
circles of light into the evening shadows. Yoko stopped at the river and
looked to either side. From behind, her body had the look of someone
standing in a daze. As he slowly approached her, he suddenly felt the
darkness descending upon the sand. Then realizing that he had been
unwittingly stifling the sound of his footsteps, he stopped in his tracks.
Yoko turned around. The expression on her face had changed.
Her eyes, fixed in a wide stare, had a glazed expression, and her lips
were thick and rounded. Her face began to take on a sadly touching wom-
anliness. "So, it's begun," he thought. However, with the two of them
alone like this, cloaked in the vast darkness of the beach, he didn't feel
the slightest sense of panic. His body remained standing upright on the
sand, but inside he crouched down into his own solitary fear, and from
there he gazed out at Yoko. Her pale face floating in the darkness, she
drew close to him. She came right in front of him, dropped her eyes to
the ground, and slipped past him.
After a moment, he followed behind her. Yoko moved her feet
cautiously, as if with every step she were dividing the expanse of sand in
two with the tips of her narrow shoes. Suddenly she started walking
straight back in the direction she had just come. Little by little, she
swerved closer to the sea, and before long she turned directly toward the
dark water and stopped. Then she twisted her body to the left with a
frantic violence of some unknown origin, and started walking off to the
left again.
When he followed, matching his pace with hers, her will to walk
straight across the beach came through to him with painful clarity. Be-
fore long, he realized that Yoko's objective was a long, narrow rock jut-
ting out from the edge of the beach. Every time she twisted away from
the sea, she checked the location of the rock. Then she began walking
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 78
directly toward it. However, because she was only watching her feet as
she walked, and because she was very likely making sure of every little
thing down to the feeling of the sand on the tips of her shoes, her move-
ments sometimes lost continuity, her footsteps lost their orientation, and
she faltered for two or three paces as if she were sulking. Each time this
happened, she was drawn further toward the water. When she headed
toward the sea, Yoko's retreating figure was enveloped in fear. When she
headed toward the left, jerking her body as if to collapse on the sand, her
face was distorted in an ugly way.
Finally unable to bear watching the same thing over and over, he
circled around in front of her as she stood facing the sea. Blocking the
view of the water with his body, he took her chilled body in his arms. For
an instant he thought she was going to knock him away, but then Yoko
relaxed into his arms, and murmured with a sigh, "Oh, you were here."
Slipping his arm around her shoulder, he put the sea behind them and
began walking toward the bluff.
However, when they came to the end of the sandy part of the
beach, Yoko halted, turned and faced the sea again with his arm still
around her, and pointed to the heavy, still horizon.
'Tm going to go over there and come back, so you stay right here,
okay?"
A stubborn will was hidden in the depths of her voice.
As Yoko started walking straight and tall toward the dark sea,
the beach began to look inordinately huge to him. She would proceed
five or six paces and then stop. Then, no matter how many steps she
took, her retreating figure preserved a sharp, vivid outline, and although
it looked as if she would never approach the water line, her figure grew
smaller and smaller in a sort of discontinuous progression. Before long,
her pale figure stood long and thin against the smooth black waves in
front of him. For a long time Yoko looked out at the sea with her back to
him. Then she turned her body slowly toward him and began looking
for him in a distracted way. He raised his hand to let her know where he
was. She looked steadily in his direction for a while, and soon she had
turned her back to the black water and was walking back toward him.
Swaying slightly from side to side with every step, she approached al-
most exactly in a straight line.
From a distance of about twenty meters, he caught Yoko's eye
and gazed steadily at her. She, too, gazed into his eyes and crossed over
the sand to him. But when the distance between them was reduced to
under ten meters, he became aware that although her gaze was pointing
in his direction, it would sometimes move beyond him and look far into
the distance. "She's going to slip past me again," he murmured to him-
y 6 k 0 79
Suddenly, he got a cold feeling. "Now she's going to drift away from
again. See, she's starting to lean to the left," he thought, keeping care-
watch over her every move. Then, to his surprise, Yoko bent over and
to stagger. As she staggered further and further to the left, she
,; ~ ' ' ' ' ' sharply back at him.
After a few moments, she looked away, crossed her arms, and
down. Burying her knees in the sand, she leaned her body for-
ward, low to the ground, and stared intently at the faint light hanging
the surface of the sand as if to see through it. It was a long time
she finally looked up and found his gaze.
Then she said in a voice so hoarse, he could hardly believe it was
"You're observing me, aren't you? Do as you like. But whenever
you look at me, I'll always be looking back at you, too. Because it can't be
one-sided. See, you're being carried away by the sand! While you're star-
ing at me, it looks just like you're drifting further and further away."
He was paralyzed by the look in her eyes.
After quite a long time, Yoko finally looked down and began to
amuse herself by drawing patterns in the sand. He gingerly approached
her, then, crouching down in the sand before her, he slipped both hands
under her arms and lifted her up. After one frantic attempt to struggle
free, Yoko relaxed into his arms and allowed him to help her to her feet.
On the way home, Yoko gave him her phone number for the first
time and asked him to call her in a week. When he asked her what time
he should call, she thought for a moment and said, "In the evening, I
guess." It seemed as if she didn't intend to see him for a while. Nor did
he feel he could get up the energy to see her for some time, either.
When he called one evening a week later, he heard a voice simi-
lar to Yoko' s come softly through the receiver. Recognizing that the voice
was a little different from hers, he said, "Hello, this isS speaking. Is Yoke-
san in?" At the same moment, he experienced an uneasy feeling like a
shudder at the sound of "Yoko-san," for this was the first time he had
ever referred to her in such a formal way. With the expressionless reply,
"Just a moment, please," he heard the receiver being placed on the table
and footsteps ascending a stairway. For a while there was no response,
and occasionally he overheard the sound of child crying and a mother's
Voice reproaching him.
After quite a long interval, suddenly and without warning, a
voice, which sounded as if it were speaking from a hiding place, came
through the receiver. "What is it?" came a suspicious query. It was a voice
that was far less familiar than the first one.
T R A N 5 L A T I 0 N 5 80
"What do you mean, 'What is it?' The other day you said you
wanted me to call you .... " He faltered, upset at her unexpected greeting,
Then the voice grew a little fainter. "What are you doing there?
Go over there!" she shouted in annoyance. The voice grew louder again.
"My sister's two kids are poking their heads out from behind the pillar
and they're looking at me," she complained.
Speaking to Yoko on the telephone for the first time, he was once
again made aware how words alone were ineffectual between them. He
was still worried about her behavior at the seaside and asked, "How have
you been feeling since last time?"
"I'm feeling just fine," she replied in a dejected tone, and fell silent.
Unlike the times when they were face to face, they had no means
of connecting with each other when the conversation broke off. He asked
several awkward questions. Yoko answered with halting, everyday
phrases and didn't seem to be at all bothered by pauses in the conversa
tion. Soon she began to ramble on about her examinations at school, oblivi
ous to the fact that he was quite irritated that she was not letting him
question her further about her condition.
... Since exams started, she had spent all of her time at home in
her room looking at her textbooks and notes, but because she hadn't done
anything for over two months, she couldn't keep anything in her head
no matter how much she read, and she only ran her eyes over the words
again and again, and then the day was over. In the end, she would go to
school with an empty head. Even if she looked at her notes once more in
the classroom before the exam began, they were completely unfamiliar
to her, even though she had written them out herself. In spite of that,
when the exam started she was able to finish the test paper in about thirty
minutes. When she held the paper back and looked at it carefully, the
scrupulously written words were disagreeable, and she wanted to rip it
up and throw it away. If she tried reading it again, she was no longer
able to read what she herself had written. And while she was gazing
vacantly at the paper, the exam ended. Her friends came over and asked,
"How did you answer that question? What about this one?" And then
she was able to answer again. But when she had gone home, finished
studying, and was taking her bath late that night, as she knelt there soap
ing herself, she began to get the feeling that she had written strange things
on her exam. Somehow she just couldn't stop herself from feeling that
way. And then she would end up squatting down with worry near the
tub. She no longer seemed to be able to get a sense of her own body, and
she stayed as she was, half of her body still covered with soap, unable to
move ....
Yoko described herself squatting in the bathroom in exactly the
same indifferent tone as she had used to talk about her exams.
Y 6 k a 81
Finally, unable to get a clear idea of her situation and feeling some
what disappointed, he decided to hang up before the call went on too
long. Even though Yoko's voice didn't sound very happy, she asked him
to call her again the following evemng.
When he called the second time, Yoko's sister answered again.
As a sort of intruder, he listened intently to see if he could pick up either
or coldness in the tone of the lady of the house. However, Yoko's
sister's voice was as expressionless as the first time. Even the interval
between when she said, "Just a moment, please," and the sound of the
receiver being placed on the table was the same, as if it had been pre
cisely measured. Furthermore, what he found truly incomprehensible was
the fact that it always took a terribly long time for Yoko to pick up the
phone. At first he wondered if her room was quite far away from the
telephone, but every night he was definitely able to hear footsteps as
cending the stairs next to the telephone receiver.
On the fourth night he finally became angry at having been kept
waiting so long, and when Yoko picked up the phone he abruptly started
grilling her. "For heaven's sake, where is your room?"
"Where is it?" Yoko murmured, as if a difficult question had un
expectedly been thrust upon her, and she fell silent.
Wondering if he were responsible for bringing on an attack, he
asked again, "Well then, where is the telephone?"
Then Yoko suddenly became quite animated and began to ex
plain the location of the telephone in great detail. "When you come into
the foyer, there's a concrete floor, and when you come up into the house,
there's a four-andahalfmat tatami room. On the right is the door to the
living room, and if you go past it, the hall continues back. ... "
"I don't mean that I want to come find your telephone right now.
Just tell me where the telephone is, that's all."
In spite of these words, he realized on second thought that if she
really wanted to tell someone who was unfamiliar with the house where
the telephone was, there was no other way to explain it. He pitied her for
her inability to abbreviate her explanations. Yoko was silent.
"For example, 'in front of the stairway' or something ... "he said,
helping her out.
Yoko came to life once again and began explaining the rest. "Yes,
when you come into the hall, directly on the right, no, from your stand
point the stairway is on the left, and you go up one, two ... five steps
and you're here."
"The telephone is halfway up the stairs?"
The image of Yoko's slender body standing halfway up the steep
stairway, holding the receiver to her ear took shape in his mind as a very
strange scene. It floated before his eyes.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 82
"No, it's on the landing. It's pretty big. The telephone table is
sitting in the corner. From here the stairway changes direction and goes
up to the second floor. We decided to put the telephone here because in
his last years, my father used to spend a lot of time in his study on the
second floor." Yoko's voice had become somewhat far away. It seemed as
if she had turned her face away from the receiver and was looking up the
stairs.
"So, then where's your room?" he asked, taking advantage of the
opening in the conversation.
"When you go up the stairs, it's on your left. My father's study's
on the right," she answered, her voice still sounding far away.
Without humoring her, he pressed for an answer. "Well then, why
don't you come down right away?"
"Don't I come down right away?"
Again her voice was heavy with a stubborn undertone.
The following day, when he called at eight in the evening, Yoko' s
sister answered the phone again. After she said her usual, "Just a mo-
ment, please," and set down the receiver, there was a pause. Then, far
away, he could hear her voice, full of foreboding, shouting, "Yoko! Yoke-
san!" It sounded as if she had put a hand on Yoko's shoulder and was
shaking her.
Suddenly he heard a shrill cry, "Hey, what are you shouting
about? You should see the awful expression on your face!" Two low, trem-
bling voices hastily exchanged words, immediately followed by the sound
of slippers running down the stairs. The footsteps stopped beside the
telephone. Then, when everything became quiet again, he heard Yoko's
thin voice coming through the receiver, "Hello?"
"What's the matter?" he asked, as if to take that voice in his arms.
"Mmm, there's something I'd like to ask you, Mr. S," a voice re-
plied, vividly evoking a severe, frowning face in his mind.
For an instant, he was confused. That voice brought to mind a
Yoko who had suddenly put distance between them and regarded him
as a stranger. And the way she called him "Mr. S" made him shudder at
the cruelty of her illness.
"It's a very difficult thing to ask, but, as her sister, of course I'm
worried."
When he realized it was her sister's voice, rather than feeling
bewildered, he quickly braced himself to be cross-examined about his
relationship with Yoko. And yet, though he had just prepared himself,
he had the feeling that he would confess everything after all, and, worse
still, he would end up blurting out something conventional like, "I in-
tend to marry Yoko." However, Yoko's sister heaved a deep sigh into the
y {j k 0 83
telephone, then lowered her voice to a whisper, like a gossip suddenly
leaning closer to speak into someone's ear.
"When you go out, have you noticed that Yoko's been acting a
little funny recently?"
"What do you mean by 'recently'?" he responded coolly, with a
question of his own.
"For about the past week."
"Well, we haven't seen each other for ten days, so I really don't
know."
"I see." The voice broke off and it seemed that Yoko's sister was
deep in thought. Then, as if she had suddenly become aware of his exist-
ence, she altered the tone of her voice, and said brightly, "Actually, she's
worn herself out studying for exams. Right now she is a bit neurotic.
Even though she isn't very strong, she's always been unusually persis-
tent in her efforts since she was a small child, and she always ends up
overdoing it. Once she decides to do something, she won't listen to anyone."
Yoko's sister lowered her voice again. Judging from the fact that
he could hear her lowered voice even more clearly, it seemed that she
was speaking with her mouth pressed to the receiver.
"When I go into her room, she glares at me. Like her mortal en-
emy has just come in. Still, in spite of that, she makes me bring her meals
up to her room, and her appetite is surprisingly healthy. And I don't know
why, but ... even though she's a young woman, she's gone without a
bath for five days."
"A young woman ... has gone without a bath ... for five days."
These words alone suggested the most appalling filthiness in the world.
He was shocked at the force of combinations of simple words. Feeling
sorry for Yoko who had been soiled by such words, he thought he was
going to shout out, "What's so terrible about not taking a bath for five
days!"
Just then: "Oh, she's standing over there. Glaring at me with that
awful expression," Yoko' s sister murmured in a husky voice. Then: "Yoko!
What are you doing? It's Mr. S. You have no excuse for keeping him wait-
ing all the time," resounded the polished voice of a mature woman.
At the same time, he could hear the sound of a door slamming.
After a moment, Yoko' s sister resumed the conversation in a familiar tone.
"Mr. S, I'm really very sorry. She saw me talking to you and went back
into her room. She's such an obstinate girl, I don't know what to do.
Could you call back again? I won't answer next time."
He purposely waited four hours and then called again after mid-
night. As he listened to the phone ring, he imagined the sound of the
monotone bell at the other end of the line echoing through the darkness
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 84
of Yoko's house. The sound descended the stairs from the landing and
reverberated within the family's slumber; it ascended the stairs and ex-
panded in a circle within Yoko's murky sense of being as she lay face
down over her desk. Letting dirt accumulate on her white skin, crouch-
ing in the smell of her own body, Yoko would turn a doubtful ear toward
the repetitions of the distant, droning signal. Although his face would be
taking shape in her mind and then dissolving, nonetheless, she would be
listening. Then, she would stand up slowly and come down the stairs at
a crawl.
After quite a long time, the receiver was picked up.
"Is that you ... ?" Yoko said, catching him off guard.
"I hear you've stopped taking baths," he said, likewise dispens-
ing with preliminaries.
"I think it's been five days already. I've discovered there's no need
to take one every day. It's the same as when you go camping in the
mountains."
"But you're probably uncomfortable, aren't you?"
"No matter how dirty my body is, it's not filthy."
"That's true, but if you go on like this, won't you end up just like
your sister?"
"What about my sister?"
"Anyway, take a bath."
"No!"
The vehemence in that voice stirred him up. Unhindered by any
darker urges of longing, his heart became like a thin thread and sought
Yoko's image.
. . . Yoko had turned her back on the space of the clean room and
was crouching in her own dirt. Along with her cry of "No!" she raised
her body. Then the air surrounding her, the naturalness of it, intensified.
Yoko's body was still half-submerged in her own shadow, both knees on
the floor, her back rounded, enduring the intense naturalness around her.
Then she lifted the top half of her body from the shadows into the light,
experiencing pain as she thrust her chest out into space. The tensed line
from her chest to her hips was tormented by its own excessive distinct-
ness. But as she suffered this agony over and over, the contour of her
body gradually softened, and at the same time, the intensity of the light
around her body slowly faded ....
Impulsively, he said to her, "Should I come over to your house
tonight?"
Yoko was silent for a few moments. Then she said, "Come to-
morrow. Around three. I'll be waiting for you. Just like this."
**********
y 0 k 0 85
Perhaps because she had been listening from her bed, Yoko's sis-
ter was prepared for his visit on the following day. A little after three,
when he walked up to the house and pressed the doorbell with polite
reserve, the door was opened before he could ring a second time, and a
face very much like Yoko's peered out through the opening.
"Mr. S, isn't it?" Yoko's sister whispered. "Before you see Yoko,
there's something I'd like to talk to you about." She led him to the livi{lg
room beside the foyer, glancing toward the stairs for signs ofYoko's pres-
ence. He, too, instinctively muffled his footsteps as he followed behind her.
Sitting across from her sister aroused in him the same vague feel-
ing of uneasiness he had felt as he was sitting across from Yoko in the
coffee shop for the first time. Because Yoko had told him that her sister
was the mother of two children, he had envisioned a woman who had
begun to thicken around the hips, but her body looked a little thinner
than Yoko's, and she took painful, shallow breaths beneath her worn-out
dress, exactly as if she were still suffering from the aftereffects of the
summer heat. There was none of that sense of substantiality of a woman's
body, where one might say it was filling out the dress, breathing life into
it. Yet there was no part of her that was not feminine, and there was a
certain quality about her that suggested the physical presence of a pale,
quiet woman. His eyes were drawn to the plentiful growth of transpar-
ent hair, which seemed to be pasted onto the skin of her pale, lackluster
arms. That same kind of hair was growing on Yoko's arms when they
first met. But he didn't remember having seen anything like it on her
arms recently.
Yoko's sister sat at the edge of her chair with both hands on her
knees and her upper body bent rigidly forward. She was looking down .
The two of them were in the same room where Yoko would sit in front of
the heater with her coat on after she came inside on a cold winter's day.
Comparing the Yoko of that time with Yoko as she was now, and Yoko as
she was now with her sister sitting before him, he vaguely pondered over
that which was immersed in time and that which remained unchanged
within Yoko. At the same time he tried to regain a solid grasp on his
image of Yoko, before her sister asked him anything definite.
After starting off with the conventional greeting, "Thank you for
all you've done for my sister," which could only be sarcastic and made
him quite uncomfortable, Yoko's sister at last looked him full in the face
and smiled. Just then she took on the magnanimous air of a woman over
thirty and began talking to him in the sociable tone she would normally
use with a younger man.
"You must have been surprised at the strange things you heard
on the phone last evening. Yoko and I were in the middle of having an
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 86
argument. I'm sure you know all about her stubbornness. Or maybe she
only shows you her good side .... Besides, I'm old enough now that I
should be putting my energy into arguments with my husband, but when
Yoko's stubbornness flares up, I can't help myself .... You know, we're
nine years apart, and with that many years' difference, we were fortu-
nate in that we never fought when we were children. But now as she's
growing up, I've reached the limits of my maturity, and it seems as if the
age difference is gradually getting smaller. In these last few years our
fights have become quite emotional."
He wondered if she hadn't called him here solely for the purpose
of correcting his impression of the telephone call the evening before. It
was a ridiculously candid way of speaking to one's sister's boyfriend,
particularly at a first meeting. She neither tried to ascertain the character
of the young man who had invaded her house, so to speak, nor did she
go through the usual formalities of a first meeting and quickly try to find
out every detail of the background of the young man in question, as the
parents of young women often did. She even seemed to recognize him
openly as her sister's sweetheart the way students did among themselves.
Ignoring the dubious expression on his face, Yoko's sister continued.
"When it's just the two of us, we both go back to the psychologi-
cal age of about twenty. It's too bad that our parents are gone. The year
before I got married, both of our parents passed away one after the other.
So therefore, Yoko ended up avoiding the usual period of rebellion against
her parents, and as for me, well, my married life and my girlhood ended
up flowing together in the same house. How shall I put it? Although our
parents died, it feels all the more as if we're not psychologically inde-
pendent of our parents' house. Usually, I'm taking care of the children,
so I feel like anything but a young girl, but there've been times when I
just happen to run into my sister in the hall or something and I feel like
I'm twenty years old again .... Yes, if I'm twenty, then she should be
eleven, and there should be no reason for us to quarrel, but it's as if both
of us are the same age. We glare at each other as if we were twins."
He was unsettled by the fact that at one stroke, Yoke's sister had
skipped over any number of the customary steps between the formali-
ties of a first meeting and this sort of talk, and was relating things to.him
about her own family, things that should properly belong in a more inti-
mate setting. Had last night's phone call involved him in Yoko's family
to such an extent that there was no need for preliminaries? Or did Yoko's
sister guess his relationship with Yoko and feel that preliminaries were
no longer necessary? However, if that were the case, and even if she had
guessed that he already knew about Yoke's illness and the strange ten-
sion between the two sisters as well, Yoko's sister should be watching
what she was saying. She must know that using such words as "twins"
y 6 k 0 87
far too revealing. An older sister was nothing but an older sister and
not be a guardian, he concluded. He tried to keep himself in a de-
role, rather like an outsider gazing through the keyhole at some-
else's family situation. However, this conclusion forced him to re-
his own previous efforts to try to lead Yoko farther and farther
from her family. He had done so with the intention of relieving her
the burden of that family, which was no doubt one of the roots of her
. , . , ~ u v but now it seemed to him that he had been taking advantage of
s weak position as a young woman who lacked a proper guardian,
and he felt guilty toward her sister as well. Finally noticing his confu-
sion, Yoke's sister turned the conversation back to where they had begun.
"You must have been very surprised."
"No, I'm used to neurosis myself." Having said this, he was an-
gry at his own awkwardness for having purposely gone to the heart of
last night's incident with that discordant word, when Yoko's sister had
gone to the trouble of trying to pass it off as the silliness of a sibling
quarrel. Yoke's sister opened her eyes wide and looked at him as if to
say, "My goodness!"
"Well then, you're a pair of fellow neurotics."
"When it comes to neurosis, I'm the better hand."
He felt he had had this same kind of conversation with Yoko her-
self any number of times. He had probably helped to distract Yoko's ill-
ness with these exact words. Conscious of a weird sense of deja vu, he
touched upon last night's incident again.
"I don't think there's any reason to worry because she hasn't taken
a bath for five days."
Yoko's sister frowned slightly. Then, with a smile on her lips, she
looked out the window and said in a somewhat shrill voice, "In this house-
hold it's always been the custom to take a bath every night. My father
was a fastidious person .... "
Once again, he was strongly aware that he was an intruder in
this house. Not knowing what to do with himself, he slipped into a young
man's foolish self-display.
"Well, when I go camping in the mountains, I sometimes don't
wash for ten days."
"My, how filthy!" Yoke's sister cried out naively like a young
girl, and her eyes twinkled. Then her tone became less reserved and with
a great show of interest, she began to ask one question after another about
his mountain climbing, his university, his major, in short, all the sorts of
questions two college students who had just met would ask each other.
Although he was baffled by the unexpected shift, he was flattered into
talking on about himself by the tactful attentiveness of an older woman.
When he talked about some humorous incident that had occurred when
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 88
he was mountain climbing, she laughed heartily, twisting her slender
body. Then she began to call him by his first name. He was naturally
taken aback by this sudden intimacy, and once again he began to feel
strange that he had been talking on with Yoko's sister without having
informed Yoko herself of his visit. Looking at his watch, he saw that it
was considerably later than the time he had agreed to meet her. Ner-
vously, he appealed to Yoko's sister with his eyes.
At which point, she looked down at her knees and resumed her
former stiff posture. She seemed to be deep in thought for a few mo-
ments, and then she glanced toward the second floor and, in a low voice,
she spoke to the point. "I want to put Yoko in the hospital."
"I don't think that's necessary." His answer was spontaneous.
However, he, too, had lowered his voice. For the first time Yoko's sister
gave him a searching glance. He gazed back, thinking, "I know a lot about
Yoko's illness."
Yoko's sister looked down at her knees again and slowly began
to shake her head. "No, she can't go on this way. The doctor said so,
too." Her face had the same obstinate expression he had seen on Yoko's
face. Yoko's sister continued speaking as if she were shut up in a dark
place, quietly lamenting. "It's best if the patient goes of her own accord.
But pathetically, Yoko doesn't understand that she has an illness. When I
suggest that she go into the hospital, she wrinkles her nose and smiles
scornfully and starts saying that she'll move out of the house if she's
such a bother to me. Then I have nowhere to turn. As the doctor said, in
cases like my sister's, the method of admitting the patient is especially
important. If you force them to go, then a resistance lingers inside of
them and the treatment isn't fully effective. And Yoko is like that, so ...
even if she must be tricked, the person who does it has to be someone
close to her, her confidant. In other words, even if she realizes she is
being tricked, she can trust in that person's love. The doctor says it's
quite different if it happens that way."
It was finally clear to him what Yoko's sister wanted. However,
when she said the word "patient," he sensed the cruelty of one's own
flesh and blood, and he wanted to protect Yoko. At the same time, he felt
bewildered by the irony of a situation where the relationship between
the sisters had unexpectedly intruded into his life, when he was the one
who should have been the intruder. This contradictory feeling led him to
ask in a challenging tone, "Why can't you do it yourself?"
Still looking down, Yoko's sister shook her head slowly. It was
exactly the same gesture she had made just a moment ago. No matter
what he said, or how forcefully he said it, he got the feeling that he would
receive the same, fixed response, and he was a bit daunted.
"We're too much alike. So once we start quarreling, the very fact
y 6 k 0 89
we are so near to each other takes us to the point where it's intoler-
and for a while we just can't get back to normal. Even after the
cause of our quarrel is long since forgotten, the slightest gesture or ex-
is enough to goad each other .... "
He completely comprehended whatYoko's sister was saying. The
".path of argument was closed off from that direction, and, for Yoko' s sake,
"there was no other way but getting right to the point, with words that
revealed his youth.
"Can you really say that she is sick?"
"She is sick."
"But it's not that easy to decide whether someone is sick or healthy
in the mind, is it?"
"She is sick."
"What standard are you using to determine this?"
"There's no question in my mind that she is sick. Because years
ago I, too, was sick."
He started to say, "How can you say that Yoko is now sick and
you are now healthy?" but closed his mouth. The sound of children's
voices, the ones he had heard over the telephone the first night, echoed
in his ears again. He felt the signs of children's presence were strongly
prevalent in the quiet house. His words were fast fading into sophistry.
Certainly viewed from this kind of life, Yoko was sick, and if she was
sick, then she must go into the hospital. But, it was Yoko's sister, the one
who was rooted in that life, who kept stubbornly repeating the same an-
swer with exactly the same expression no matter what he asked her, like
some kind of autistic woman. In the face of such opposition, he felt as if
he were carrying Yoko's "illness" in his arms with nowhere to go. Then
Yoko's sister's face regained a mild expression, and she started speaking
as if she were admonishing a stubborn young man.
"Please convince my sister to go into the hospital. Make her well.
She loves you. After you call, she goes up the stairs as if she's walking on
air. And you love Yoko, too, don't you?"
"Yes, I do love her." He nodded with a sop.r look on his face. He
was speechless with astonishment at the realization that he had been so
easily forced to say in front of Yoko's sister words that he had never once
spoken to Yoko herself. Together they glanced toward the corner of the
ceiling, listening for any sounds from Yoko's room on the floor above.
The clinking noise of two objects hitting against each other came down
through the floorboards.
Yoko's sister stood up, opened the living room door, and, in the
voice of a middle-aged woman, called loudly into the dark hallway,
"Yoko! Mr. Sis here." Then she turned to him and winked significantly
to indicate that he should go upstairs alone.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 90
Part Eight
As he reached the square landing half way up the stairs, he o ~
ticed the telephone was indeed sitting on a table in the corner. From there
he turned and proceeded up the stairway. He immediately felt separated
from the atmosphere below, where Yoko's sister's family lived. His sense
of place was suddenly confused. This was not a house he was visiting for
the first time; rather, he had the feeling that he was walking up a stair-
way he had climbed many times before in a house that he knew well.
When he reached the top of the stairs and slowly opened the door to his
left, an odor more dense than that below passed over his face from the
dim room. The windows along both sides of the fairly large, Western-
style room were hung with heavy curtains. One of them was drawn back
about a third of the way, and the light of the overcast day flowed into the
darkness through the white lace underdrapes. Yoko was sitting at a table
at the edge of that faintly lit area, with her profile toward him and her
head resting between her hands. She wore a pale-colored nightgown, with
a red cardigan draped over her shoulders. When she felt his presence by
the door, she turned toward him and smiled, her head still buried in her
palms. Her face was white and puffy, as if she had just taken a bath.
"How's it going?" The same words escaped from their lips si-
multaneously. Neither of them had the slightest interest receiving an
answer, and he automatically sat down at the table across from her, as if
it were the usual course of things. Moving only their eyes, they looked at
each other curiously.
Her chair was pulled out a bit too far from the table, and Yoko
was perched upon it as if she were only staying a moment. From the hips
up, her body was extended straight forward, and her elbows alone sup-
ported her on the table. It was the same position she had once described
to him when she told him about her sister's illness. However, Yoko's body
did not look as if it were burdened by rigidity or heaviness; rather, it was
dividing its weight between the table and chair with an air of self-suffi-
ciency. Her light blue nightgown was definitely dirty. Her underwear,
which hugged the curves of her body, was visible through the thin mate-
rial, and he could see that this, too, was not pure white. It may have just
been his imagination, but the skin he glimpsed beneath her loosely opened
collar seemed to emanate a muddy light that was darker than usual. Yet
there was no sense of uncleanliness or obscenity. On the contrary, he felt
as if they were both were gazing at a gentle animal that both he and Yoko
knew very well.
"Aren't you awfully uncomfortable in those clothes?"
"Last night, I said I'd wait for you just as I was, didn't I?"
y 6 k 0 91
"How long have you been wearing it?"
"I haven't taken off my nightgown in three days. It feels nice.
The material is exactly the same temperature as my skin."
"What a dirty girl! You smell, you know." As he spoke, he made
point of breathing in a lungful of the dim air. There was definitely a
faint, shameless odor of body fluids oozing from her skin, but as his nose
gradually became accustomed to the smell, it began to assume a fullness.
''It really is the smell of a person secluded in here," he thought, moved
simple and profound emotion. Yoko, too, took a deep breath, her chest
"'""""n v under her nightgown. She smiled and narrowed her eyes languidly.
Without hesitation, he gave away the secret. "You know, your
sister told me I should convince you to go into the hospital."
"If you told me to, I'd go right now."
"What would happen if you went to the hospital?"
"I'd get well."
"What does 'get well' mean?"
"It means that I'd make the people around me feel more
comfortable."
More than just a careless reply, it seemed as if she had reconciled
herself to her illness, and was speaking from a sense of satisfaction at
having decided she could even live with it as she was now, but that later
she had also considered her family's worries and was waiting for events
to run their course. He felt he understood why Yoko hadn't taken a bath
for five days, just as her sister had once done. There was little doubt in
his mind that Yoko was in touch with the source of her illness. Therefore,
knowing that her true being would never change no matter what she
did, or what was done to her, she was sending a signal to her sister down-
stairs that it didn't matter if she was sent to the hospital as a sick person.
With that realization, and Yoko sitting before him in her state of extreme
self-sufficiency, he felt abandoned again, and stretched his body across
the table toward her. Yoko looked at him, tilted her head in her palms for
. a moment, then slowly lowered her hands and drew her lips closer. When
their lips touched, the scent of a child locked up in a dark room-mingled
sweat and tears-was clearly perceptible to him. He opened his eyes
slightly and saw the pores opening one by one on her skin, which seemed
to have grown softer and more pliable.
"You don't have to go to the hospital," he whispered, their lips
still touching.
"You know, really, I can't go on like this," Yoko said, echoing her
sister's words.
"Yes, you can. Don't worry."
"Maybe if I could stay here in this room all the time."
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 92
'Til fix it so that there'll be the same darkness around you as
there is in this room, even when you're walking around in the city."
"Even if you could do that, you could never bring along enough
of this darkness. I'd just have to stay shut up in here."
"You can stay the way you are now on the inside, and only fol-
low along with what ordinary people do on the outside."
"You're a healthy person, so you really don't understand the hor-
ror of a healthy life," Yoko said, and she kissed him intensely as if to
console him. This was the first time she had rejected him with the words,
"you don't understand."
At that moment, they heard her sister's footsteps coming up the
stairs. He started to pull back, but Y6ko brought her face nearer and lis-
tened to the footsteps with her eyes wide open as they kissed. Then she
brought her lips to his ear. "Watch what she does very carefully," she
whispered, and returned to her original position with her head in her
hands.
"Y6ko! I've brought you some tea." The door opened quietly and
Yoko's sister stood beyond the threshold, holding a tray in both hands.
Her jaw set, she glared disapprovingly at Yoko's nightgown. Yoko stared
back calmly from between her hands.
"Well, what kind of outfit is that? You should at least make your-
self up a little bit for your guest. Mr. S won't like you any more." In
contrast to the expression in her eyes, her tone of voice suggested that
she was tolerantly regarding her sister's slovenly behavior, meeting her
boyfriend in her nightgown, as a sort of naive immaturity. He alone was
bewildered by the dimness of the room compared to the light beyond the
threshold, and stood up from his chair.
"We're finished with the courtesies, so please, make yourself at
home Mr. S," Yoko's sister said in a good-humored tone as she came into
the room. At that point, he had already forgotten Y6ko's request that he
observe her actions. However, when her sister had taken two or three
steps across the threshold, his eyes were drawn to her stiff way of walk-
ing, which exhausted his nerves just to watch her. It was exactly the same
way Yoko had walked at the seashore, progressing toward the crashing
waves as if she were dividing the sand with her feet each and every time
she took another step. Supporting the rectangular tray of tea and cake
with both hands, her head bent forward at an abrupt angle from her
straight back, Yoko's sister moved her feet exactly as if she had been for-
bidden to tilt the tray as much as one millimeter. As he watched her,
involuntarily infected by that tension, he noticed a thick kitchen cloth
tucked in her hand under the left side of the tray, which made it all the
harder to balance.
y {f k 0 93
She came over to the table and stood between them, then slowly
leaned forward, keeping her back straight, and lowered the tray toward
the corner closer to Yoko. Sliding her hand between the left corner of the
tray and the table, she looked like she was holding her breath for an in-
stant, as she smoothly pulled the cloth from under the tray and placed it
on the table with such careful precision there was not even a ripple on
the surface of the tea. Then she picked up the folded cloth, stretched out
her right arm, and began to wipe the table along the wood grain from the
far corner. She put all the strength of her arm into her task, but her thin
wrist was bent, and it trembled slightly as it moved slowly and steadily
from left to right. Then, when she had carefully and evenly wiped all the
way to the right side, she brought the cloth back to the left corner, moved
it slightly closer to her, and repeated the same process three more times.
The fourth time, she turned the cloth over and glanced sharply at Yoko's
elbow, which she had not moved out of the way. Leaving an unwiped
square around the spot her sister was occupying, she folded the cloth
again on the fourth time around and finished wiping the near side of the
table with three passes. Next, she turned the cloth over yet again, slid
the tray to the right, and carefully wiped the area underneath. Finally,
she looked up and, with the cloth in one hand, glanced sideways with
evident reluctance at her sister's elbow still resting on the table. Yoko
smiled at him out of the corner of her eyes as he stood beside the table.
Next, Yoko's sister picked up the teacups and cake plates one at
a time in both hands, and, balancing them with scrupulous care, she set
each one in front of them in an orderly fashion. When she finished set-
ting them out, she leaned far back from the table and surveyed the whole
arrangement. She put her hand on Yoko's teacup and moved it a little to
the left. Then she looked up and, without saying anything, tilted her head
to the side. She began to reach out her hand once again, but Yoko shook
her head downward with a jerk. Her sister pulled back her extended hand
as if she were frightened, blushed, and took one step away from the table,
smiling radiantly.
"Please forgive her for wearing these dirty clothes in front of com-
pany. Think of this as a visit to a sick person. Well, enjoy your tea." Yoko's
sister bowed her head deeply and turned her body toward the door. Still
standing, he watched her leave. Her way of walking was somehow dis-
tracted as she approached the door, and, as she started to cross the thresh-
old, a flower vase on the shelf to her right caught her eye. With one hand
she fixed the arrangement of the flowers. With a serious nod in the direc-
tion of the vase, she started to step over the threshold, but, just as she
was about to leave the room, she stopped again in mid-step. As if she
had forgotten the presence of both her guest and her sister, she wrinkled
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 94
her forehead into an expression that made her look hard to please, and
fumbled with the flowers for a while. Finally, as the sound of measured
footsteps slowly receded down the stairs, he returned to the table with a
feeling of relief and sat down. When he looked up, he saw that in the
meantime Yoko had clutched her spoon like a dagger, with a desperate
look in her eyes.
"Just look at this," she said in a high-pitched voice. Triumphantly
rising from her chair, she leaned over the table, with the handle of her
spoon pointed to the bright red strawberry in the exact center of the frost-
ing on her cake. Then keeping his line of vision fixed to the end of the
spoon, she extended that hand in a straight line and pointed to the center
of his teacup from which steam was faintly rising. Then she moved her
hand to the right and pointed to the strawberry on his cake, and finally
she brought her hand back again in a straight line and pointed to her
own cup. As he watched stupidly, unable to figure out what she was
doing, Yoko's eyes flickered and her hand repeated the same motion sev-
eral times like an automaton.
"What's this all about?" he asked nervously, feeling that Yoko
was suddenly about to slip right between his hands into a state of true
madness.
Yoko scolded him, /fDon't look at my face, look at the end of the
spoon! See, here, and here, and here, and here." As she spoke, Yoko made
another circuit with the spoon. Then with a triumphant expression on
her face again, she cried, "See, doesn't it make a perfect rectangle?"
Now that she had mentioned it, he saw that the four points did
indeed precisely connect into a rectangle. On top of that, every side ran
parallel to the sides of the table and accurately managed to inscribe a
rectangle corresponding to the shape of the table. He was not sure whether
he was in awe of the older sister or the younger, and, as if pleading with
her, he said to Yoko, "You shouldn't do such a perverse thing. She prob-
ably did it unconsciously."
"It's because it was unconscious that it's so weird," Yoko said,
looking down and shaking her head emphatically as she vigorously
pushed the plate and cup before her in different directions. After a mo-
ment, she looked up and said with a malicious smile, "You observed what
she just did, didn't you? Shall I tell you what you just saw?" She lowered
her voice and described, in more detail and more intensely than he had
observed, everything her sister had just done. He experienced an emo-
tion close to fear at the coldness in Yoke's eyes. He was overcome by an
impulse to cover those eyes with his hands. But at that moment, he re-
membered that Yoko had been looking at the wall the entire time her
sister had been in the room. Seeing the questioning look on his face, Yoko
replied, "I can tell without even looking because everything is always
Yak o 95
same. When a friend of mine from school comes over once in a while,
when she brings my meals up, it's an exact repetition of what you just
w. She fixes the flowers the same way, too. Those flowers are her beach-
into my territory. Or are they a bridge ... connecting the two sick
At the end, her voice sounded more like a sob, and Yoko covered
face with her hands. But, a few moments later when she took away
hands, she rolled up her eyes and began to rail against her sister.
"No, I'm different from her. She is healthy. Her whole day consists en-
of that kind of repetition. The way she walks down the hall, the
she puts on makeup, the way she cleans the house, the way she eats
. day after day, for the rest of her life ... she keeps at it so seriously,
the least bit of embarrassment .... That's what it means to be
althy. I can't stand it, and I'm going to stay in here. Do you under-
You don't understand, do you? The expression on your face ... "
The moment she said this, he was conscious that at some point
his face had stiffened into a dubious expression. He was reminded of the
incident in the ravine, the incident at the suspension bridge. In this case,
_ ... ' ' ~ he felt he had to calm her down somehow. With this purpose,
began to rattle off his own analysis.
"Everyone has their peculiar habits. Besides, isn't the repetition
of those habits is just one little part of life? No matter how much one
seems to be shut up in those repetitions, the outside world is always
seeking connections by various means, so at any rate those habits are
broken by adapting to circumstances. That's probably what your sister
does. If she didn't, she couldn't manage a horne."
"That's right. The kind of life you're thinking about is something
along those lines. But, no matter how much you live in accordance with
the outside world, isn't there a part of you that remains separate? Every
day, inevitably, isn't there still a time when you're pushed back into your
own unchanging self? And there you're always repeating the same thing
over and over in real earnest. That's what I think life is."
"That's what living is all about, so there's nothing we can do about
it. Or do you hate living?"
"I do hate it. When I watch my sister." Yoko looked down. The
tea and cake suggested the most humiliating repetition among all of those
repetitions that Yoko hated: the repetition of the habit of eating. They sat
before her mockingly. This makes the fourth time, he thought to himself.
However, although finally comprehending the reason why Yoko didn't
like being watched when she was eating, he was at a loss as to what to do
with the tea before them, which was getting cold. There was nothing he
could do about the fact that he was perplexed by such things.
"Well, let's eat," he finally murmured.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 96
Yoko looked up and smiled as if she were confused by the sound
of these simple words. Then she helplessly picked up her fork and began
to cut into the cake from the edge of the frosting.
With her elbows on the table and the hand holding the fork dan-
gling limply from the wrist, she would scoop up a bit of the frosting on
the end of her fork and bring it to her lips. Even for such a tiny amount of
frosting, her pursed lips suddenly thickened and closed tightly around
the end of the fork. Her tongue slowly wriggling behind her closed lips
was visible in her cheeks, and, when that movement stopped, the soft
skin of her throat distended wearily as she swallowed what was in her
mouth. Then she heaved a sigh. She was quietly enduring the embar-
rassment of the repetition, which even a close personal relationship could
not conceal.
Noticing this, he called out to her with his mouth still full of cake,
"I think I can put up with your habits."
"Hmmm ... " Yoko murmured, her fork poised in mid-air. Again
she smiled as if she were distressed by his words or by the slipperiness
of her own voice, and she twisted her body slightly from side to side. It
looked as is she were half suffering from the difficulty of shaking of( her
own self and half coldly immersed in it.
"Right now, I haven't yet grown into my own habits. I'm a sick
person, so I'm only half formed. Being healthy means that you've identi-
fied completely with your own habits, and you don't feel weird repeat-
ing the same thing over and over. So, in that case, habits are exposed
even more plainly than they are for sick people. If I were like that, I won-
der if you could put up with me .... "
"Doesn't every couple put up with each other?"
"That's right, you find a balance by exposing your habits exactly
to the same extent that the other person does. That's the horror of being
healthy."
"If that's the case, we can both become horrible people."
Yoko knit her brow. Conscious of the way he was eating, he grew
awkward. They were both silent, each absorbed in his own embarrass-
ment. As he ate silently, suppressing even his breathing, he felt a sense of
isolation, as if he were slipping down into his own life of blindness while
his eyes alone remained watching himself.
A few moments passed. Using the tip of her fork to poke at the
strawberry, which had emerged from the frosting, Yoko said, "A friend
once said that when she remembered the most insignificant habit of some-
one she loved, that was enough to make her feel happy. But I wasn't able
to understand that sort of thing at all. ... "
Yoko poked at the strawberry, rolling it around and around on
her plate. Then she looked up at him with a pitiful expression, and, gaz-
y {f k 0 97
at him eating, she continued, "But, after I met you, I feel like I've sort
been able to understand the idea of liking someone's peculiar little
"What kind of habit do you mean? I'm a healthy person, so I don't
" he replied, without raising his eyes from the stubborn misery of
't::au,Fo He was not rejecting Yoko's words, rather he felt he had under-
stood the gentleness that she was finally able to hold out to him from her
aversion. Yoko too, did not mistake the intention of his question.
"Let's see ... when you turn and look at me, there's always a
sort of bewildered quality about you. You're watching me as if you're
slightly distanced from yourself, with a subtle, gentle feeling that some-
how corresponds to that distance. And then, suddenly you cling to me.
you don't push through to me, you stay completely still with only
our skin touching .... It's always the same, but it's not the jarring repeti-
tion of an ordinary person."
He pictured himself when he was not doing that. Then here-
called the image of himself while he was beside Yoko and absorbed in
his own solitary uneasiness, unconsciously manifesting the same habit
and repeating it, like an animal. He then thought of Yoko's feelings at
that same time as she lay beside him, knitting her brows slightly and
enduring this. However, he locked this thought up inside, and he inter-
preted the words Yoko had presented to him as they were.
"I don't really come in, I don't really distance myself, I don't re-
ally embrace your illness, I don't really pull you out of your illness ...
because even as a healthy person, I myself have some half-formed quali-
ties, don't I?"
"But that's exactly why I can bear sitting here like this and eating
with you. Now, in front of you, I don't feel embarrassed at all," Yoko
said, and she took the strawberry, which had been pierced through in
every place and was beginning to fall apart, between her fingers and
pushed it into her mouth, moving her red, wet lips as if they were two
separate creatures. Then, suddenly using her hands in a womanly fash-
ion, she pinched the handle of the fork tightly, cut off a large chunk of
cake, and began to eat, making soft noises and focusing her gaze on the
table. As he ate noisily along with her, he intently took in the feeling of
the movements of his own cheeks, and the same dull repetitions of the
same pathetic expression. When they were both absorbed in this same
repetition in the gloom, there was a stronger, darker sense of contact than
when they lay in each other's arms. However, their eyes that watched
each other doing this remained detached from the scene, and they floated
side by side in the darkness expressing sympathy for each other's shame.
He felt that this was a balance that could not withstand a second repetition.
When she'd finished eating, Yoko stood up and looked hesitantly
T R A N 5 L A T I 0 N 5 98
at the table for a few moments. With a swift and merciless movement of
her hand, she stacked her plate and his plate, her own cup and his cup
on top of each other, and set them in the exact center of the table. The cup
on top slanted at an angle into the cup on the bottom, then stabilized
itself with the handle. They looked at each other.
Yoko walked over to the window slowly, as if she were valuing
every moment, and pulled the partially opened thick curtain back over
the lace underdrape. Her pale face floating in the deeper darkness, she
sank down in the sofa against the wall.
Destroying with one effort a balance that could not last, he lay
down beside her and they embraced. Now and again they held their
breath, to see if that balance was still preserved between them, and, finally,
they abandoned themselves completely to the pleasure of its collapse.
When they got up, Yoko smoothed down her hair as she went
over to the window and opened the curtain slightly. She stood in the
amber light, which had spread across the western sky.
"Tomorrow I'm going into the hospital. I think I could get by
without becoming an in-patient. If I made up my mind to do it, it would
be easy to get well. But it's humiliating to be forced to take medicine .... "
Yoko sighed, and stared off into the amber light. '
He walked over, put his arm around her, and gazed at the land-
scape outside with her. The narrow road receded into the distance in a
straight line between the houses, and beyond, the autumn sun, tinged
with deepening shades of red, was just about to set over the sparse tree-
tops. Everything on the ground below was half warmed in amber light,
while deep shadows flowed stickily in the same direction. Standing on
the borderline between the natural and the mysterious, each object was
regaining a hushed tranquility.
"Oh, it's so beautiful. This moment is my peak," Yoko murmured
in a thin, clear voice. She was half talking to herself. To his eyes as well,
all at once everything before him began to take on a look of boundless-
ness, which he would never see again. But he was unable to grasp any-
thing beyond that. As he began to think of going home, Yoko's body,
perhaps from a distaste toward his own, dwindled beneath his arm until
it felt like no more than a faint shadow.
THE PLAIN OF SORROWS
"I was standing on the plain, the wind blowing all around me,"
my friend whispered in a strange voice. "At my age, I should have known
better."
As far as the eye could see, knee-high grasses grew thick and
luxuriant, rippling in the wind like a long wave. My friend walked slowly
forward, the wind at his back. It was night. No, it was not night, the sun
was just beginning to set, and the dark, low-hanging clouds were suf-
fused with a purple glow. Nothing but a ghostly light floated between
earth and sky, like vapor rising from a swamp, and yet the back of his
hand had a faint reddish cast and the blood vessels stood out promi-
nently beneath the skin. His arms hung loosely at his sides, but a certain
stiffness lingered in his right palm, a sensation of having desperately
gripped something, some dangerous weapon. He had flung it away into
the grass a few moments earlier, and then all was silent.
Rain had not yet begun to fall, but his clothes were already damp
on the inside. The ground was darker than the sky. Strange, unknown
objects stirring beneath the grass brushed against his feet, but he ignored
the dreary, somehow morbid sensation against his skin and simply
stepped over them without stumbling or stopping. With each step his
body grew heavier. The wind continued to blow against his back. It would
die down a bit, then pick up once again, so that the grass before him
bowed down one row after another, glittering with a pale white light.
His body, too, became pale and transparent and began to flow along the
plain, one with the swaying grasses; his consciousness dissolved and
spread out across the length and breadth of the field so that even the
memory of his parents or children, even the distinction between himself
and another, all melted away. My friend said he wondered if this was
how the fox spirit felt when she cast off her human form and human
thoughts and bounded away into the grass.
"It must have been a dream." Every time I'd give the same reply,
almost as a reflex. During those seven days, there was no reason to be-
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 100
lieve my friend had really gone to such an overgrown field in the wilder-
ness. Night after night, as we spoke on the phone, it was fairly clear from
the noise in the background that he was calling from a bar. After the
second phone call, his wife got in touch with me to ask if I'd heard from
him. Apparently he hadn't been home for two nights in a row. She told
me that he'd been diagnosed with lung cancer, which had progressed to
the terminal stage all the more quickly because of his youth. Then she
went on to say that she wanted him to do as he pleased under the cir-
cumstances, because he had always been such a forbearing husband. She
didn't mind if he went to the other woman. She just wanted to hear his
voice, even a word would do. She just wanted to say something soothing
and tender to him-his wife said bravely-but she was afraid that if her
husband called her there would no longer be anything for them to talk
about but his illness.
By the third night I was ready for his call, and I immediately
pressed him to tell me the name of the bar he was calling from so I could
meet him, promising I wouldn't say a word to his wife, and that I would
be there as soon as I could. But in the midst of my efforts, my friend's
replies started to take a bizarre turn. First he began to whisper about
having committed some terrible crime, then he suddenly became agi-
tated and began to accuse me of killing someone and forgetting all about
it and going on with my life with no remorse whatsoever. Each time the
phone call ended on a tense note, but then he'd call me again in the middle
of the night and ramble on about nothing in particular in a calm voice.
Then he'd say he was finally at peace, so he would come home soon, and
he asked if I would please let everyone know.
Sometimes he would hum Buddhist folk songs: "Buddha is al-
ways with us, though 'tis sad we see him not .... "*It was during one of
these midnight phone calls that he first talked about standing on the dark,
windy plain. "This time he's really coming home," I thought, and for
some reason I went back to bed filled with a quiet confidence. But near
dawn I opened my eyes, and for a split second I froze in panic. Perhaps
he really had killed someone. Perhaps he had tried to commit double
suicide with a woman but had survived her and was now hanging around
with nowhere to go. This idea came to mind because some ten years be-
fore my friend's younger sister had committed suicide with a man. But
one day later, in the early morning, my friend returned home like a half-
wit and was admitted to the hospital that same day.
Early the following morning I got yet another call from a woman
who said by way of apology that my friend had told her to get in touch
with me first in case of an emergency. Apparently, for the past week she
*Quote from Ryojin hisho (Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Beams).
T h e P l a i n of S o r r o w s 101
bad kept constant watch over my friend, who had been acting very
strangely. Near daybreak the morning before, however, he seemed to have
calmed down, and so she had allowed herself to get some much-needed
sleep, but in that brief time, he had slipped out of her apartment. She
had waited a whole day for his return and was afraid he had committed
suicide. There was a tearful, pleading note in her voice. I informed her
that he had since returned home. "Oh, I see," the woman murmured,
and hung up the phone.
"It must have been a dream," my friend laughed again. "I won't
say I don't remember what I did during those seven days. I can't remem-
ber the details now, but that's all the more reason why I won't shirk my
responsibility. I ran away to her place, then I came running back to my
wife. But it doesn't mean that my love for one has taken away from my
feelings for the other. I can't justify my actions, but I will remember ev-
erything and take responsibility, even if I may not be able to resolve the
problem."
Hearing such words from a man on his deathbed, I instinctively
looked away in embarrassment. Concerning his cancer, my friend said
that on the third day of his hospitalization, he had his wife sit beside his
bed and said to her in an admonishing tone, "Let's stop hiding things
from each other now. We already understand what we must, so there's
nothing more to say. We'll hide nothing in our silence." All the while he
stroked his weeping wife's back. I heard he'd already given his wife a set
of detailed written instructions, mostly involving financial matters, on
what to do after his death. However, in my presence, he spoke only like
a man who was gradually recovering from a long illness.
His hair had hardly changed throughout his twenties and thir-
ties, but now it was suddenly showing white at the roots and seemed
somehow finer and softer than before. The masculine quality had van-
ished from his face, and, now and again, his features took on the quali-
ties of a young girl or an old woman. Still, beneath the weakened mem-
branes, his eyes were filled with a serene courage.
"There really is such a thing as an unlucky age,"* my friend would
murmur. I would start to shrink back from that dangerous topic, but my
friend never faltered in his confident tone of someone recovering from
an illness. "Although it's probably different for each person," he would
concede, and then he would continue to talk at length punctuated with
frequent pauses. Since about a year ago, without warning, his body would
*In Japan, twenty-five, forty-two, and sixty are considered unlucky ages for a man, with
forty-two being the most dangerous year. For a woman, thirty-three is the age of
greatest bad luck; nineteen is also unlucky. During the years before and after the
unlucky ages one is also vulnerable to bad luck-one preventative measure is the
purchase of the appropriate amulet from a Buddhist temple.
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 102
be overcome from time to time by a deep sense of sorrow. It wasn't really
an emotion, it was more physical, like an ache. But he couldn't think of
any reason he should be particularly sad. He was beyond feeling bitter
about anything. And it was quite different from a feeling of depression.
He wondered if it would sound strange to say that his kneecaps were
stifling their sobs and the pit of his stomach was choking back a cry. It
was just like that helpless feeling you get when you knock your shin
against something and hold your breath to bear the pain; it resonates
throughout your whole body, and you almost want to cry in agony. He'd
even wondered half jokingly if his soul weren't trying to escape from his
body, and his body was thus lamenting its own weight.
At first, these attacks occurred once every few days, before long
it was once a day, and finally it was happening several times a day, at
any time or place, even in the middle of a meeting at work or when he
was having dinner with his wife and kids. For an instant, he wanted to
crouch down right where he was, the spasm of sorrow was so intense.
But whenever that happened, he was aware that he was behaving with
almost exaggerated politeness and answering questions in an extremely
proper tone of voice. In this way, he was able to maintain outward ap-
pearances. Hiding his pain was an expression of love, and he would try
to continue to do so. He would keep on hiding it if he had to do it for the
rest of his life. And so, he saw himself talking about the latest complica-
tion at work or answering his children's questions as if it were already a
scene from a distant memory. As he reached toward those sweet memo-
ries, something deep inside his body was slowly sinking farther and far-
ther away. Yet he thought perhaps now, in his present state, he was at his
most dependable as a father in his children's eyes.
He had never woken up at dawn crying, but sometimes, as he
opened his eyes in the pale morning light, he felt as if his whole body
had cried itself out and was finally at rest. He was overcome not by sad-
ness, but rather a feeling close to nostalgia. A desolate wind was blow-
ing from the western horizon. When he was ten years old, he lost his
mother and a crack opened in the horizon. For many years afterward,
when he went to bed each night and when he awoke each morning, he
felt that same wind blowing against his skin. As he grew to manhood,
and his body tossed and turned in the fever of youth, the wind was still
blowing. In the bed next to his slept his sister, who was four years younger.
Troubled by asthma since infancy, her breathing sounded like the music
of a thin flute.
When he was in his twenties, my friend's father breathed his last
after an agonizing illness. Soon afterward his stepmother remarried, but
she, too, died suddenly before she had spent two years in her new house.
The night he heard the news, there was still a break in the western hori-
T h e P I a i n of S o r r o w s 103
but the wind had long since stopped blowing. His sister, who had
committed suicide with a man, was swallowed up into that same void,
and the sound of her familiar cough was heard no more. All was silent.
Within that silence, he married and had children. Because of that silence,
the ordinariness of family life always seemed marvelous somehow, and
thus he never knew the luxury of growing tired of the repetition of ev-
eryday existence.
I found myself thinking, "I'm not so sure about that," but I pushed
these doubts to the back of my mind and maintained my pose of atten-
tive listener. I was more or less familiar with this man's "woman troubles."
He was not the type of man who played around with women. Each time
he became infatuated with a woman, he had her devote herself to him
completely and care for him like a wife who had gone through many
years of good times and bad by his side. But then, after a month or two,
he'd suddenly stop seeing her.
I got phone calls from several of these women. "Do you know
what has happened to him these past few weeks?" they'd ask me, as if I
were my friend's guardian. They were all around thirty, intelligent women
with a slightly melancholy look in their eyes and a smile that seemed to
be instinctively apologizing to those around them. When I told them that
my friend had a long history of ending his affairs without a word of good-
bye, none of them got angry. They would nod sadly, and although it was
obvious to me they felt an attachment to him, strangely enough they never
bothered him afterward. They all bore a certain similarity to his wife.
Although my friend went through countless relationships of this sort, he
not only showed no signs of getting tired of it, he seemed to experience
none of the pain of dividing his affections between two women.
"At the unlucky age, life is even more fragile than during pu-
berty," my friend continued like a man confident of recovery. "It's the
time when the membranes that cover and protect life begin to weaken.
Because the person himself sees that instability as a sign of strength, be-
cause he is unprepared for life to be exposed, he becomes all the more
vulnerable. During those two or three years around the unlucky age, his
life undergoes its final transformation, wraps itself around the core of a
terminal disease and finally moves into harmonious old age."
At this point I found myself completely unable to fathom my
friend's thoughts. Knowing that he was terminally ill, was he speaking
so nonchalantly in front of a healthy person in order to calm his bitter-
ness and fear? Or had he already crossed beyond concern for his own life
and death? Or did his calm exterior belie inner turmoil, had his sense of
reality been stripped from his consciousness along with his fear? With
these thoughts running through my head, I could only gaze at his face
with its confused smile playing lightly over his lips. Once again I was
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 104
struck by the gray in his hair which had so surprised his wife when she
saw her husband standing in the front hall after a seven-day absence.
**********
Soon afterward, I had an opportunity to talk with the woman
who took care of my friend at her apartment during those seven days.
As I had expected, she was an intelligent-looking woman, a little
under thirty, who lived alone in Tokyo, estranged from her family in the
country. Her relationship with my friend had begun two years before,
and for about two months they met almost every week at a hotel or her
apartment. But one day, with absolutely no warning as far as she was
concerned, my friend stopped calling her.
When she tried calling him at work, he'd say, "I'm busy this week
so I'll get in touch with you next week," his voice sounding no different
from when they had still been seeing each other regularly. Because she
was not the type who could pressure someone, and indeed hated the
very idea of making someone feel pressured, she limited herself to a rare
phone call, just so she could hear his voice. She suffered from the fact
that he was avoiding her, even though she hadn't been at all trouble-
some or demanding. It was hard for her to go back to her apartment with
that telephone sitting there. Her life was disrupted, and for a time even
her looks were affected, but surprisingly enough she held no deep re-
sentment against him. Rather, she blamed herself for not understanding
how to have a relationship with a man and for being unable to stay at-
tached to someone she loved.
Things went on this way for over a year, then one night, just as
she was beginning to get over him, my friend called and asked if he could
stop by since he was in the neighborhood. Thirty minutes later, he showed
up at her door looking completely exhausted. "Ah, I can relax here," he
said and settled down beside her. She, too, breathed a deep sigh of relief,
and the events of the past year were completely erased from her mind.
He now began to visit her regularly once a month. He listened to all the
details of her life history. She rarely talked about herself to others, and
she herself was terribly indifferent to her own past. Yet, when he drew
her out, she was able to talk about herself with surprising animation,
and she began to like herself for the same reasons she had hated herself
in the past. He would arrive in the early evening, and when one o'clock
rolled around, he'd quickly gather his things together and go home with
a light and carefree step, carrying himself like a young man.
When he left, she was determined not to feel possessive, and she
went right to bed, with the warm feeling of having him listen to her still
lingering inside. She always awoke the next morning near dawn, and
T h e P l a i n of S o r r o w s 105
she watched the room growing brighter in the morning light, she
aware that the expression on her face was twisted and horrible
a demon's. Yet, when she recalled the caress of his voice, she became
again. He only called once a month, but she still came home early
night just in case. Before, she used to feel a sudden stab of pain,
like a gnawing in her body, when she stood before the silent phone, but
she felt confident and relaxed as she waited for his call.
"There are probably a lot of things I have to sort out, but I am
satisfied with things the way they are. Because I know that at least once
a month he cares about me. I don't hope for anything more, because,
well, I'm afraid of people."
For a brief moment, I was touched by these self-effacing words
of a woman who, though near thirty, still looked good in jeans and was
much younger than her years. Perhaps that was why I felt a creeping
anger toward my friend. As far as I knew, he only had relationships with
this kind of woman, or rather, he changed the women he had relation-
ships with in such a way that any feeling of possessiveness in them would
be completely washed away. At home, he behaved with self-discipline in
front of his children. In particular, since he had become bedridden, he
responded to his sons' precocious display of manliness with a grave
gentleness unhindered by self-consciousness.
"Aren't you just letting him take advantage of you?" Before I
could catch myself, I blurted out these words, which were traitorous to
my friend.
It was hard to determine if she was about to laugh or cry as she
gave this strange response. "He was the one who put himself out for me.
I'm an insensitive woman. I seem to be lacking something in my feelings
toward others. Four years ago, I lived with someone for a while. He soon
became dissatisfied with me, and he suffered so much that it was painful
for me even to look at him. Finally, after he could take it no more, he left.
I thought I had suffered so much, too, that looking back on that experi-
ence would be frightfully painful, but I settled myself into that room we
had rented together. I'm still there. It doesn't matter to me at all."
She told me that it took a lot of coaxing and pleading on her part
to get my friend to accept her invitation to come to her apartment that
first time. Until she was finished preparing their drinks, he usually sat
around looking bored, but one night, after he had been coming several
times, something happened. She had opened the door of a small clothes
closet just a crack and stood with her back blocking his view as she looked
for something inside, when he suddenly told her, "I had a younger sister,
you know." That evening, he haltingly recounted the story of his younger
sister, who at the age of twenty-seven had died together with a married
man, the expression in his eyes detached and distant from start to finish.
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 106
For several months before her suicide, she frequently showed up at her
brother's apartment, fearful of sinking further into a desperate situation.
She didn't bring up the subject herself, rather she did various household
chores for him around the apartment and seemed to be waiting for him
to ask her what was the matter. However, at that time, he was absorbed
in his own life as well, so he continued to ignore all the warning signs
until she finally ended up taking up her own life. The last time he saw
her she said to him, tears spilling down her cheeks, "My relationships
with men have been nothing but a struggle for me." But in spite of her
distress, he said, he merely brushed this aside, telling her, "Well, then,
give it up. Don't make such a big deal about it."
As she listened to his story, she just felt happy that for the first
time he had confided to her the pain in his heart, and even after he had
finished, she kept stroking his hair soothingly as if she were comforting
a child. Even after he left her, she didn't feel that he had gone because of
what had happened that night. Rather, she took comfort in the thought
of that night, as the happiest memory in their two-month relationship.
When she was on her way home late at night, she often told her-
self it had been a mistake to let him come to her room. When she opened
the door, she felt the smell of early morning hanging in the air, and her
own face, frowning and swollen with sleep, slowly turned toward her
from the middle of the room. A woman somehow manages to become
one with her room even when she has been there for only four or five
years. Now, her room was more of herself than she was, and with whom-
ever and whatever she did in the outside world, even if she threw herself
into a river, she would still be safe and alive in here ....
A year later, when he started coming to her apartment again, his
single utterance, "Ah, I can relax here," wiped clean her hatred of her
room. He, too, no longer wore that bored, dissatisfied expression when
he came to her apartment, and he was calm and accommodating to her.
One thing about him was different from before. Once or twice during the
course of the evening, his whole body would stiffen suddenly, quietly.
His body was covered in a faint sheen of sweat, and he seemed to stop
breathing as slow palpitations rolled from his chest to the pit of his stom-
ach. His eyes were half-closed. At times like these, no matter what she
said to him, he only mumbled vague answers, so she moved over beside
him and tirelessly traced letters and pictures with her fingertip on his
large chest, which seemed to grow wider and wider.
One evening, in the middle of all of this, he began to murmur in
a gloomy voice, his half-veiled eyes flickering with a strange light, "Are
we born to make merry, are we born to jest and play?"* Then he immedi-
*Quote from Ryojin hishi5 (Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Beams).
The P I a i n of Sorrows 107
broke into a choking laughter. At the same time, a cold sweat broke
out on his violently palpitating chest.
Afterward, he inevitably spoke of melancholy things in a bright,
sing-song voice.
"Did you know that a quiet sound can surge over you like an
avalanche?" he would say. "Since I was a boy, there have been times when
I was not quite asleep, but not really awake, and I heard the stirring of
the trees in the garden or the sounds of water flowing or the songs of the
insects beneath the porch, or someone's cough. Each one seemed like a
tranquil sound, and yet they all took on a strong sense of urgency. It was
like I was falling down a slope or a locomotive was bearing down on me,
or like someone was yelling, "Fire! Run!" When I moved my arms and
legs under the covers, the rustling sound of cloth would fill my ears and
everybody and everything around me would start rushing around in a
frenzy. The voices of my parents, chatting quietly in the other room, would
sound as if they were struggling with each other in stifling silence. I would
feel as if everything was going to crumble and fall down without making
a sound. And on nights like these, my younger sister was always having
nightmares in the next bed."
Or sometimes he would say, "Have you ever gone through peri-
ods when you have chance encounters time and time again? You're
stooped over, lost in your own thoughts on the street or on the train, and
suddenly, someone calls out your name, someone you haven't seen in
five or ten or fifteen years. The same thing happens over and over. At
first you're amused to think that the world is turning around you, but
soon you start to feel afraid, like your own past is now lining up and
gathering around you. And then, at the same time, people start confus-
ing you for someone else a lot-has that ever happened to you? It's not
that they just call out to you by mistake. They are looking you full in the
face as they come up to you. They stop right in front of you and tilt their
heads waiting for you to recognize them. And at the same time, you're
told by acquaintances that they saw you at such and such a place at such
and such a time and they tried getting your attention, but you seemed to
be in too much of a hurry. Though you assure them it couldn't have been
you, they won't believe you-this kind of thing happens to me over and
over. Why would that be? I wonder if it isn't because the boundaries of
my own individuality have blurred and my face has taken on a kind of
universal quality.
"That quality is probably easier for people from my past to rec-
ognize and thus they feel confident calling out to me. My present ac-
quaintances have told me that they thought they might have mistaken
someone else for me, but when they looked at my face again, they real-
ized it had been me. But in fact they really had been wrong. I hadn't been
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 108
anywhere near the places they said I was. During the time right before
my sister started falling into the abyss with that man, she frequently spoke
of how afraid she was of such things .... "
Or he would tell her, "You know, I've had nightmares in which
nothing moves at all. There would be a landscape, and I didn't know
where it was or why it was there, but I could see no sign of people, and I
wasn't there in the scene either. And yet, I would find myself ready to
break down and cry. Or I would look up at a tree and feel as if I were
disappearing into the thickness of the trunk, and I would groan in my
helplessness. Or at some distant place, there would be one ordinary stone
just lying there that was somehow connected to me. It was a much stron-
ger and heavier presence than I was, and it gradually swallowed me up,
until finally I couldn't breath anymore. A dead branch was trembling in
the winter dusk, and someone somewhere was crying out the same line
of a song over and over in a slow, dull melody, like an idiot, in a voice
redder than the evening sky. Flowers were blooming in the garden; in an
instant they grew larger and then whiter, and then I realized it was the
middle of the night.
"Up until her death, my sister and I never talked about our horne-
town or our parents, but one night, when she was about to go home and
she was in the entrance hall of my apartment bending over to put on her
new shoes, which were a little tight, she said, 'Wasn't there a place called
"The Plain of Sorrows" near our house? Just a little while ago, in a dream,
I went to a dark plain by that name-and remember when our mother
was sick, once she slipped out of bed to the field in the back? Well, I was
crouching down and crying just as she did.'
"I replied, 'There was no such place near our house. You must be
very tired. You must take care of yourself.'
"'I will,' she said. 'But my dream wasn't all bad. I felt as if some-
one was promising to take over for me now that I'd come this far, prom-
ising me I was no longer alone,' she said as she looked into my eyes.
Then she left. I could hear the sound of her thin cough for a long way off
as she made her way home in the winter night."
The woman sighed as she finished recounting this scene, and then
she continued her story, "Recently, we've talked about his dead sister a
great deal. But I listened to him as if he were talking about me, as if he
were showing his love for me. I felt as if he had really gotten me just
right, as if he had been watching me since childhood. So, even when he
talked about his sister, I automatically took it in without once thinking
about what was going on inside his head. I'm a terrible person. I don't
understand what other people feel. He told me that was because I lost
my mother at an early age."
And so that evening, when he suddenly knocked on her door
T h e P 1 a i n of S o r r o w s 109
around midnight and stood there with a glazed expression on his face,
she greeted him with a light, happy air as if she had really been wanting
to see him that very evening. She helped him off with his rain-drenched
coat. While she was in the kitchen fixing drinks, she had a little trouble
breathing from a dry throat, and she coughed a few times. When she
went back to the living room, he was staring at her incredulously, his
whole body emanating a kind of dazed suspicion.
"You didn't die, did you? So you've been living in a place like
this all along? I've been suffering because of you for over ten years," he
said as he grabbed her shoulder, his eyes filling with tears. A shudder
filled the room as if another woman really had quietly come in and taken
her place. As she mechanically stroked his broad back, as if he were a
child rather than a man more than ten years her senior, a thought began
to take shape in her mind: "This man is insane." As this realization
dawned on her, she felt a growing anxiety pulling her down into a seem-
ingly bottomless pit, but that thought was soon replaced by another:
"Now that he's insane, he's belongs to me." And thus, she was bolstered
by a desire for possession welling up inside her for the first time.
Thinking it was probably painful for him to be seen in his condi-
tion, she turned down the lights. She proceeded to undress him and laid
him in bed, where he sniffled, curled up, and fell asleep. She lay down
next to him and fell asleep while massaging his back. A little while later,
she was awakened by a noise and when she opened her eyes, he was just
slipping his arm into his suit jacket. His necktie was also neatly tied. It
was not yet three in the morning. When she asked him where he was
going, he mumbled vacantly, "I'm going back." Having no reply to such
unflappable male composure, given all that had happened between them,
she stayed in bed and watched him go. She noticed his back, radiating
the calm and perfect poise of a man in his prime as he bent over in the
hallway to put on his shoes. Then he casually picked up a woman's um-
brella, which was standing against the wall, and a pair of her galoshes
and walked out the door. She paused for a moment in confusion, then
jumped out of bed, slipped on a raincoat over her nightgown, and ran
after him.
He was not headed toward the railroad crossing as she had feared,
but instead she saw him walking fairly far ahead along the road leading
into a new housing development. He stopped for a moment, then turned
a corner as if he had a specific destination in mind and disappeared from
view.
He kept up a brisk pace, and she soon became winded. When she
finally caught up with him, she was rather short of breath, and because
he seemed to have no idea he was being followed, she didn't bother call-
ing out to him. She thought about coming up beside him, but when she
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 110
caught sight of the women's raingear he was clutching, she thought she
might be mistaken again for a dead person, and this time she herself
would be drawn into the fantasy. So she decided simply to watch over
him from a few paces behind. He went from intersection to intersection
choosing the streets with apparent conviction. He cut through the r o u s ~
ing development, went past fields and older homes set among groves of
trees, and walked right through the courtyard of an apartment complex.
Now and again, he would look from side to side as if trying to jog his
memory, but he showed no signs of tiring. Before long, he started going
around in circles. He would pause on a corner for a long while, deep in
thought, and look up at the second floor windows of the apartment build-
ings. As dawn began to break, he sank down onto a bench in a small
park. She sat down beside him.
"Where did you want to go back to?" she asked, taking the um-
brella and galoshes from his hand.
"I don't know," he said, burying his face in his hands. She was
shocked to see so many new gray hairs mixed in with the black.
He slept soundly in her bed until evening. Crowded out by his
large body, she curled up at the foot of the bed. She was wakened
repeatedly by his terrible groans, and she rocked him in her arms until
his cries subsided. Around five o'clock, she left him sleeping in her room
and went out to the store near the train station. As she hurried back, she
noticed that the window of her apartment had been opened, and she
found him sitting on the bed looking out at the street, his face pale and
expressionless.
As she prepared dinner in the kitchen, he sat on the bed, his eyes
following her every move like a child's. When she placed the dinner trays
on the table, he slowly climbed down from the bed, gazing at them as if
he found it all very strange. Then he began to eat with such voracity, his
body seemed to shudder. He quickly consumed two portions.
"Let's play cards. I'll teach you a new game," he said after din-
ner was over. His words put her in a cheerful mood, and she rushed off
to the stationery store near the train station to buy a deck of cards. They
were absorbed in the game until late into the night. She asked him noth-
ing about his state of mind, his family, or his work. If they could go on
just as they were right now, she didn't want to talk about anything hav-
ing to do with tomorrow. Around midnight he suggested they go out
somewhere for a drink, so she took him to the neighborhood tavern. There
he was vivacious and talkative, and he treated her with easy affection.
At one point, he made a call from the public phone on the premises and
carried on a friendly chat in a loud voice.
That night she slept in his arms. Even as she slept, she felt as if he
were gazing at her and stroking her hair and cheek and throat. When she
The Plain of Sorrows 111
woke, crowded out of bed by the same man who had been so attentive,
was already past nine.
"I always wake up too late when I sleep so soundly," she thought
a wry smile. She picked up the phone and called her office to say
she wouldn't be coming in again that day. The thought crossed her mind
that her office wouldn't let her get away with this forever, and she won-
dered vaguely what his wife would tell the children, but she merely curled
up at the bottom of the bed and went back to sleep. When she opened
her eyes again, it was almost noon, and he was still sleeping. She quietly
went about straightening up the room and then made breakfast, but even
then he didn't wake up. He was sleeping very soundly. Something struck
her as odd, and she glanced down at his shirt and trousers, which he had
thrown against the wall at the foot of the bed. The trousers were soaked
from the knees down. She went to the entry hall and checked the men's
sandals, which she had bought for him the day before with something
close to a sense of resolve that his stay would be an extended one. They,
too, were quite damp. Outside there was no indication that rain had fallen
since the night before.
For the next five days after that, she fell into his routine and was
no longer able to distinguish one day from the next. Every day, from
dawn until dusk, he slept like an animal, sometimes having terrible night-
mares. Then he wolfed down his dinner. Afterward, he looked refreshed
and said things that showed he was sorry for the trouble he was causing
her. A little while later, however, he would start to mope again and make
strange confessions to her.
"To tell the truth, I killed my sister," he would say. He looked so
serious that after a few times she began to believe it and began to feel
vaguely apprehensive about their own relationship. But when she ques-
tioned him further, he would stubbornly recount in detail bits and pieces
of his own life during the time right before her death, when it was obvi-
ous he knew nothing about her plans. When pressed further, he evaded
the question by talking about incidents from his childhood.
Apparently, after their mother died, his sister was doted on by
their paternal grandmother. This grandmother was the type of person
who never missed a day without going to hear a sermon at the temple,
and under her influence, the little girl's way of talking seemed to be im-
bued with temple incense, and even her face took on a somber, gloomy
air. For this reason, she was constantly being teased and bullied by the
other children. After the grandmother died, his sister was perpetually
tagging along after him, and in fact, he was the one who was most cruel
to her. If he was even the slightest bit out of sorts, he would ridicule her
persistently to the point where she could no longer reply. Then, angry at
her for not putting up any resistance, he would finally lose his temper
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 112
and strike out at her in spite of himself. But even under his blows, his
sister never cried out, she only cowered on the ground with tears trick-
ling down her cheeks. When he started to walk away, she would follow
after him again, a few steps behind, with a contrite expression on her face.
One day, on impulse, he pushed her into the river. This time even
she looked at him reproachfully, but as usual she didn't cry out. She could
have reached the bank with little effort, and if she had stood up, the wa-
ter would only have come up to her chest. Instead she let her body float
face up in the current, her lips moving rhythmically in some sort of chant,
until she began to bob up and down in the waves. Horrified, he ran back
and forth along the river bank until he found a good place downstream
to catch her floating body and pull her from the water. His sister sank
down on the grass, her hands clasped in thankful prayer toward him as
she chanted something under her breath. When they got horne, she told
her father that the wind had blown her into the river when she wasn't
paying attention and accepted his scolding without protest. She was only
seven years old at the time.
Nine days before she died, his sister visited his apartment for the
last time. As she was about to leave, she hung her head, turning her pro-
file to him. He stared at her bowed face for a long moment. "You intend
to just accept everything I say," he thought, and again he was filled with
a kind of cruel feeling as he gazed at her thin neck. But in the end, he
said nothing. That night he could hear her lonely cough along the dark
road home for an especially long time. Then suddenly, near the station, it
disappeared as if it had suddenly been swept off the road.
'Trn the one who killed my sister," he repeated.
She nodded, but she implored him not to take so much responsi-
bility, not to torture himself. She even went so far as to say that in the
very process of living you could never tell if something you did or didn't
do, something you said or didn't say, might at any time have the same
result as actually killing someone, so there was nothing you could do. In
the meantime, she ended up taking a closer look at him. His was not at
all the face of a man who was airing a guilty conscience, but rather one
who was possessed by terrible delusions while in a kind of trance.
"You didn't kill anyone," she blurted out in spite of herself, and
then she began to argue with him in earnest. She pointed out each con-
tradiction in his story and mercilessly exposed the confusion between
his fantasy and reality. At that point, he jumped up and started pacing
slowly around the kitchen and living room of the small studio, now and
then glaring at her with hatred in his eyes.
As if she were now engaged in a competition, she sat perfectly
still in the middle of the room, her legs tucked under her in a formal
posture. Every time he murmured, "I killed her," she replied sharply,
The Plain of Sorrows 113
"You did not." She spoke without gentleness or concern, but with a kind
of sanity radiating coldly from within, which in itself seemed to have a
touch of madness. However, after half an hour, her body and mind gradu-
ally began to feel worn out by the man's unflagging energy, and now,
every time she answered, "You did not," she heaved a sigh. Finally, he
came and sat cross-legged before her and put his hands on her shoul-
ders. As he gradually applied more and more pressure, he stared at her,
his eyes flickering like a fire.
"I killed her," he whispered hoarsely.
"Yes, you killed her," she said and slumped against his chest,
completely exhausted.
"Let's die together." He spoke these words only once. She drew
her face back from his chest, and for some reason looked slowly around
the room as if branding each object on her memory. Then she answered
lightly, "All right," and buried her face against his chest again. Except
for the melancholy realization that her room would still be here after she
was gone, she felt no emotion at all.
"Ah yes, you were supposed to live to be older than your mother,
now I remember," he murmured as if nodding, but before long he seemed
to be talking to himself. "This woman is going to live until she comes to
know what it feels like to be older than her mother. She'll become more
of a woman than her mother."
Every night after that, he gently lulled her to sleep. As he stroked
her hair, she quickly fell asleep. Yet even as she slept, she had a persis-
tent feeling that she was being closely watched, that his gaze was travel-
ing from her face to her chest and along her whole body. Once in a while
a cold shudder would run over her skin. Eventually that feeling passed
as well, and then, through the haze of sleep, she was only vaguely aware
that the shadow of a person beside her was at rest. Or rather, she repeat-
edly had a glimpse of a figure like an old man's hunched over at the foot
of the bed, staring absently out the closed window. She saw all of this
without waking. Then that shadow disappeared, and when she opened
her eyes, she glimpsed the back of his pale figure as he was leaving the
apartment.
Until daybreak, the same thing happened so many times that she
carne to know exactly what to do. She was no longer surprised or upset;
still half asleep, she slipped on a robe and followed him out to a little
beyond the front of the apartment building, trailing silently behind him
until he was satisfied. He walked as if he had a particular destination in
mind, but he was much less perseverant than the first night, and he would
come to a standstill after turning at just three intersections.
"Let's go home," she would say, coming up beside him and tak-
ing his arm. As she guided him back, he always had a deeply puzzled
TRANSLATIONS 114
look on his face. When she asked him what he was looking for, he would
tell her he was looking for an apartment. When she asked whose apart-
ment, a worried look would come into his eyes, but he didn't resist her
as she guided him back. However, when they were back in bed, and she
was about to nod off, he got up again and went out. Each time he walked
a shorter distance, so that near dawn, when she stuck her head out the
door, he was still standing in the street right in front of the apartment,
~ o o k i n confused. However, at the same time, the comings and goings
mcreased. She no longer had time to lie down, so she merely sat on the
bed, drowsily watching his restless movements.
When dawn broke, he fell asleep as if breathing a sigh of relief.
Sometimes he let the window open and gazed out at the sunrise, saying,
"Ah, I feel like I've woken from a dream. I've put you to a lot of trouble,
haven't I?"
Sometimes he murmured with tears in his eyes, "I waken gently
with the dawn .... "*She had just gotten to the point where she was think-
ing that things couldn't go on this way any longer and that she should
contact his wife and let her take him to a hospital. When she heard him
utter such words, however, she now felt in her heart that she definitely
wouldn't let him go until he was better, and then she would send him
home as if nothing strange had happened. When his rhythmic breathing
told her he was asleep, she wiped his face and chest with a cool towel,
then lay down beside him and quickly fell asleep herself. Soon, however,
she was pushed out of bed by his sprawling body. He had countless night-
mares and groaned in a deep voice, but she didn't have the energy even
to lift her head from the foot of the bed. She wondered what the neigh-
bors thought when they heard that animal-like cry in broad daylight. ...
It was from her room that he made those nightly phone calls to
me. Right in the middle of their exchange about whether or not he had
killed his sister, he picked up the phone, turned on the radio at high vol-
ume, and blabbered on about having killed someone to the person on the
other end of the line. She watched him uneasily, but she herself was so
confused, she couldn't tell whether this other person took this to be the
words of a madman or not. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, he
would pick up the phone and dial a number again and murmur in a quiet,
earnest voice. Watching from the bed with half-closed eyes, she hoped
that he had finally calmed down, but when he hung up the phone, his
expression grew tense again and he continued his comings and goings
until dawn.
After the fourth day, she was ashamed to have other people see
her thin, ravaged face, and she stopped going out to the store. As a re-
*Quote from Ryojin hisho (Songs that Make the Dust Dance on the Beams).
T h e P I a in of So r r o w s 115
sult, their dinner was a dreary affair of rice and whatever else happened
be in the cupboard. At the same time, his appetite began to decline,
and except for meals and the period between midnight and dawn, he did
nothing but doze on the bed. His night wanderings lost a lot of their
urgency as well. Because she only went as far as his footsteps could be
heard, she no longer even got out of bed as dawn approached, but only
listened for his footsteps to stop and turn back.
On the sixth day, their dinner consisted only of rice and salt. Af-
ter about two in the morning, he fell face down on the bed and didn't
move. "We might sleep here together like this until we die," she thought
as she felt herself being drawn into the sweetness of a full night's sleep,
which she hadn't experienced in a long time. After a long while, the sound
of footsteps moved straight away from the front of the apartment and
disappeared. Wondering if it was only the footsteps of someone passing
by, she groped around beside her, her eyes still closed. The bed was empty.
She was not at all upset. After putting on a robe over her night-
gown and carefully combing her hair, she slipped on some sandals and
went out. She didn't really have any destination in mind, but she was
confident she would soon find him. As if her feet had a mind of their
own, she followed the route he had taken on the very first night, choos-
ing the correct way to turn at each intersection without getting confused.
Although each street looked like the same newly laid road lead-
ing through the same indistinguishable housing development, she was
somehow able to tell if the road would lead her to her destination. She
felt as if she could distinguish the intensity of the smell of each pool of
water or blade of grass around her. In this way, guided by the sixth sense
of the sleepwalker, she proceeded to trace his steps from crossroad to
crossroad, without feeling tired or discouraged. But after some time, she
came upon an overgrown vacant lot, and she had to stop in confusion.
She was sure she had passed by this same place thirty minutes before, a
place not very far from her apartment.
The sixth sense suddenly vanished and the road no longer had a
sense of familiarity. "A road isn't supposed to be like this, is it?" She
sighed over this strange turn of events and began walking on. "You feel
a touch of familiarity, like a long distant memory, even on a road you
come upon for the first time in your life. But these roads are so com-
pletely unfamiliar, I can't go anywhere!" After ten more minutes, she
passed the same empty lot again. This time she made a concerted effort
to choose different roads from before, but she ended up coming back to
the same place even sooner.
Without realizing it, she had been going around in circles, and
once again she felt as if she were in a dream. Before long, as she was
turning at a certain intersection, she saw him crossing another about fifty
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 116
meters ahead of her and then disappear. But she didn't quicken her steps.
It was as if the pace had been somehow preordained. It was obvious that
he was close by and walking around in circles like her. At every corner,
she had the feeling that he had been there just a moment before. Although
they seemed to be pulling each other along by magnetic force, they con-
tinued to miss each other by the slightest distance.
Her intuition that he was walking suddenly went blank. How-
ever, she had not lost touch with him completely. It was as if he were
sitting down somewhere. Soon she had returned to that same vacant lot
wedged between two large, modern-style houses. There was a faint, a l ~
most imperceptible light on the eastern horizon. Thinking she need only
wait a little longer until dawn broke, she squatted down next to a tele-
phone pole.
At that instant, she felt the presence of her dead mother in her
body. She had no recollection of seeing her mother squatting down by
the side of the road at dawn. She had been six years old when her mother
died, so even her mother's face was nothing more than a hazy memory.
And yet this fullness in her hips as she squatted was a sensation she had
never felt before in her life. She remembered that in two years she would
have lived longer than her mother, and remembered the countless times
she had considered dying. She was so happy that one part of her had
now finally begun to merge with her mother that she cried out loud. Even
the sobs sounded vaguely familiar to her.
When she looked up, it was getting light around her. She stood
up and looked at the vacant lot. It was a cramped, dirty plot of land.
Enclosed by barbed wire, it was waiting to be sold at the right price. The
summer grass was tall and thick, but it showed no freshness of early
morning. Piles of concrete rubble and red clay were scattered here and
there. Beneath a fallen-down "Do Not Litter" sign were heaps of dis-
carded electrical appliances and rotting garbage. She was shocked to dis-
cover that she had been drawn back to such an unpleasant place again
and again. Suddenly, a gust of wind blew toward her from somewhere
between the houses, and all of the stalks of grass began to ripple like a
wave. She was beginning to appreciate how the wind gave even this place
the feel of an open country field, when his head rose up from the waving
grass. He was crouched down, staring at her with a puzzled look. His
hair was almost completely gray.
"Come out of there," she called into the wind, beckoning with
her hand.
He made no move to get up, however; he merely gazed at her
intently, his eyes wide as if in fear. At that moment, she did something
that surprised even herself. Pulling open the collar of her robe, she showed
him the swelling of her breasts beneath her pajamas.
The Plain of Sorrows 117
He stood up as if lifted by the wind, hurried through the tall grass,
- - ~ ~ c ' ' over the pile of rubbish, and stepped over the break in the barbed
wire fence, his legs wet with dew. Standing before her, he gently closed
the collar of her robe around her neck and said softly, "You'll catch cold."
At this display of tenderness, she mumbled involuntarily as if in
a trance, "Have I gone crazy, to come to a place like this?"
"No, you're not crazy. I'm the one who's crazy," he replied firmly.
"I'm sorry. I won't do these crazy things anymore. I'm okay now." He
put his arm around her shoulders and started walking in the direction of
her apartment at a steady pace. Then he added, half to himself, "Oh, I
see, then it must have been you who was sobbing," as he guided her
straight back to her apartment without making a single wrong turn.
For the whole day he was extremely kind to her. She was so ex-
hausted, she could not get out of bed, so he cooked some rice gruel for
her lunch and supper and brought it to her in bed on a tray. The rest of
the time, they lay side by side and dozed while the curtains grew light
with the dawn, brightened with the noonday sun, and gradually dark-
ened with the dusk. Late at night, they both found themselves wide awake
from too much sleep. Staring up at the ceiling, they talked about ordi-
nary everyday things. The events of the past several days were too seri-
ous to talk about. In the middle of the night, he stroked her hair as she
fell asleep again, solemnly humming tunes that reminded her of Bud-
dhist pilgrim chants.
The light of the midmorning sun was pouring into the room when
she awoke the next morning. The moment she lifted her head from the
pillow, she knew he had gone home. As she expected, his suit, shirt, tie,
and shoes were nowhere to be seen. She waited a whole day, and the
next morning she became worried that he may have gone off to commit
suicide or something. But all of that was her way of apologizing to her-
self for being too calm. She already knew that he had gone straight back
to his wife and family.
"I'm grateful that he allowed me to share in his suffering. Be-
cause of what he did for me, I made up my mind to live longer than my
mother. Since that night, I often feel my mother in my body. It certainly
should be all right for someone like him, who has already been through
so much, to take just one week in the middle of his life to go crazy and
relax at the place of someone like me. If it had been another woman, it
would have been too intense. I don't mind if he forgets about it. It will be
enough for me if he stops by once in a while as if nothing had happened."
I gazed at her face, unable to hide my embarrassment. She looked
as if she were truly at peace. Somehow, it seemed, my friend had man-
aged to keep only the fact that he was terminally ill from this woman
until the end. After agonizing over what to do, I finally decided to say
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 118
nothing. But at that moment, she noticed my slight frown. Unable to with-
stand her direct stare, I lost control of myself and blurted out the news.
"I see. So then he's dying," she said in an oddly bright voice, a
strange smile on her face. But with her brow still furrowed, her lips grew
pale. As she attempted to smile one more time, she suddenly burst into
tears. "What a terrible thing to do!"
THE DOLL
In the week after she returned from her hometown in the coun-
cradling the doll in her arms, Ikuko was mistaken for someone else
times.
The first time was on Monday evening. She was on her way home
from work, and just as she was being pushed out from the subway train
the platform with the crowd of other commuters, she suddenly heard
a man's voice at her side: "Oh, I thought you were someone else." When
she stepped out on the platform and looked back, sure enough she saw a
man of about thirty standing there with an embarrassed smile, staring at
her as if he couldn't believe his own eyes. In fact, when the train had
pulled into this station, she had been vaguely aware of someone approach-
ing her, making every effort to push aside the other passengers near the
door. She remembered wondering why he'd been in such a hurry. Never-
theless, that night, she simply thought of it as a strange experience, since
she had only noticed she'd been mistaken for someone else after the man
had realized he was wrong.
The second time it happened was on Thursday night, and this
time it was a genuine case of mistaken identity. Ikuko was on her way to
meet someone. As she came up the deserted stairs from the subway onto
the dark street, a man, also around thirty years old, came over from across
the street. He stopped right in front of her and cried out in surprise, "Ms.
Yajima, what are you doing here?"
"You've made a mistake," Ikuko replied. She turned her face di-
rectly to the dumbfounded man. "You have the wrong person." And yet,
she herself was surprised at the note in her voice that seemed to be mak-
ing an excuse or asking pardon. After she walked on for a little while,
she turned back to see the man still standing there, his head tilted to one
side in confusion. She had never before been mistaken for another per-
son by someone looking directly in her face.
On Friday night the person who mistook her for someone else
was a woman who looked a little older than Ikuko, probably around thirty
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 120
years old. She stopped hesitantly, right in the middle of the street,
looked closely at Ikuko's face as she approached. At times it seemed as if
she were about to smile as she waited for Ikuko to smile back in recogni-
tion. In order to prove to the woman that she had mistaken her for some-
one else, Ikuko looked straight into her eyes as she passed. She won-
dered briefly why this sort of unpleasant thing kept happening, but she.
didn't think too much more about it.
Nonetheless, for two or three days afterward, her annoyance at
being mistaken for someone else lingered in her mind. On the following
Wednesday, five days later, her girlfriend of many years mistook some-
one else for Ikuko.
As soon as she saw Ikuko, her girlfriend said, "Didn't you get off
at the Shimo-Kitagawa station around two o'clock last Saturday? I saw
you from inside the train and I was about to call out to you, but I didn't.
Somehow it looked like you were going to meet your lover."
"That's impossible. I've never gotten off at that station."
As Ikuko was trying to correct her friend's mistake, she was sud-
denly overcome by a strange feeling of irritation. In spite of herself, her
voice took on a serious tone and her face grew flushed. For in fact, on
that very day, at that very time, Ikuko had been at her lover's apartment-
though it was on a different railroad line. She had stayed overnight be-
cause she had gotten drunk the night before. She was still naked. And
she was thinking about another man. She felt her mind and body become
more and more empty as if she were punishing herself for having two
lovers. She wanted to go back to her own room right away, where the
doll was waiting. She longed with all her heart to forget about both men,
to regain herself and then fall into a deep sleep. Over and over again she
imagined herself getting up and going out in the rain without even wak-
ing her lover to say good-bye. Yet she lingered in bed, still loathe to lose
the familiar warmth of this relationship, which was almost at an end.
Her friend smiled as if she knew the reason. No matter how much
Ikuko insisted she was mistaken, she refused to believe her. Ikuko tried
to convince herself that since she had been doing the same thing in a
different place anyway, it didn't matter what her friend thought. But then,
she was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of even greater anxiety, and
she was surprised at the words that came from her own lips.
"Are you sure? Was it really me?"
"You don't have to hide anything from me." Her friend looked
embarrassed at first, but when she saw Ikuko's serious expression, she
began to look a bit frightened, and her faced clouded as if it were cov-
ered by a thin film.
"I thought it was you. Then I thought that since you can't always
trust your own eyes, I might be wrong. But when I first saw you today, I
T h e D o I I 121
absolutely sure I was right. Well, it doesn't really matter anyway,
**********
"Please, help me. What's going on here?" Ikuko complained to
doll from her bed after she'd returned home that night. "I've been
for other people four times in a week, and the people who mis-
me looked so incredibly shocked when I told them they were wrong.
who am I anyway? Am I not just me, myself, not just a single person
anymore? Lots of different me's must be walking around out there. You're
a doll, so you understand things like that, don't you?"
The doll looked down at her from the dresser with a smile. She was
twenty inches tall and wore a festive, red, long-sleeved kimono. The
was so charming that Ikuko felt ashamed to put her in such a dreary
. Beneath her bobbed hair, the doll's full-cheeked face looked slightly
. downward, and she was always smiling quietly. But whenever Ikuko asked
her such serious questions, her smile seemed noticeably broader, as if she
were amused. Ikuko, too, found herself laughing out loud.
"I'm sorry. I'm ashamed of myself. I never thought I'd start de-
on you like this." Actually, Ikuko used to think that she didn't
understand people who took great care over something weird like a doll,
displaying it proudly in their rooms. Therefore, she had barely boarded
the bullet train to Tokyo before she was regretting that she had chosen
such a large doll from her uncle's collection to bring back with her.
Ikuko had decided to withdraw from her uncle's family register
in the country and establish her own at her apartment address in Tokyo.
The morning she left his house, her uncle said curtly to her aunt, "Take
Iku to the storehouse and give her a doll that she likes." He tried not to
look at Ikuko.
She was touched by her uncle's thoughtful farewell gesture. She
bowed low with both hands on the tatami and said, "Thank you for tak-
ing care of me for all of these years." She found it hard to say good-bye.
"You know, if you wanted to, your uncle thought he would adopt
you and let you marry from our family," her aunt grumbled as she dusted
off a box and took out a rather small doll. It was the kind of dress-up doll
little girls played with, and it was said to have been in the family since
the late nineteenth century. Ikuko was about to ask if her mother had
also played with this doll, but then she realized that it was impossible
for her aunt to know this since she had married late into the family, so
she took the doll without a word.
Although the doll was right before her eyes, its white face seemed
to emerge ever so slowly in the dim light of the storehouse. By holding
the doll at different angles, various expressions appeared and disappeared
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 122
from her narrow eyes and red mouth. Ikuko imagined that whenever a
young girl dressed the doll in a new kimono made of leftover cloth, the
doll's face would surely overflow with gaiety. The girl's spirits, too, would
become cheerful, and the two would engage in girl talk for hours on end.
In those days, time passed more slowly for girls than today, and they
could somehow manage to linger in their world of dreams until their
mother called from far away. Life was nothing more than slow repeti-
tion. The girl who had played with this dress-up doll had only yesterday
got married, and before long her own daughter played the same game.
Girls knew this instinctively. As they played with dolls, they themselves
became that very repetition.
However, Ikuko wondered if a woman who felt herself getting
old didn't feel a profound hatred toward the doll of her girlhood, so care-
fully stored away. For the doll did not age along with her. In days past,
the doll had accepted the girl's endless dreams. But now, the woman's
life in adulthood was nothing more than a single night's dream to the
doll. When the woman finally died, perhaps then the face of the doll
inside her box would show signs of having woken from that dream.
A doll shouldn't live longer than a girl. Having taken on her
dreams and misfortunes in her stead, the doll should be thrown in the
river or burned or somehow be made to disappear so that the girl
wouldn't suffer.
Ikuko once heard that a doll attracts her master. However, couldn't
there also be a case where the person attracts the doll, then grows to hate
her, then becomes so insanely attached that she seeks to bring the doll with
her in death? Ikuko wondered if her mother, who had died at the age of
thirty, had imagined the white face of the doll from her sickbed ....
"Thank you for the offer, but this doll is too good for me. Be-
sides, I haven't cared much for dolls since I was a child," Ikuko said, and
she put the doll back in the box.
Her aunt made no reply. She placed another fairly large rectan-
gular box in front of Ikuko and slowly opened the lid. Wrapped in Japa-
nese paper, the doll lay face up, filling the entire box. The doll's face was
covered by yet another sheet of yellowed paper, and Ikuko could see
vivid black hair peeping out around it. She looked away. However, the
sound of her aunt's voice caused her to look back again timidly, and she
smiled in spite of herself.
In the dim light seeping through the small windows of the store-
house, a girl with bobbed hair wearing a long-sleeved kimono stood on
the oblong chest. She was looking slightly downward and smiling. Her
face was not white, but flesh-colored. This was not a face that emerged
dimly from the darkness. This doll had a definite existence of her own,
and her charming smile remained the same from whichever angle Ikuko
T h e D o 1 1 123
ed her. Ikuko looked up at the doll as she squatted on the musty
She felt the doll's childish figure in her own thighs and smiled along
the doll. Then, Ikuko began to feel that if she had this doll with her,
would still be loved by someone.
"You seem to like this one," her aunt said, looking at Ikuko. She
a moment and then continued. "Actually, your uncle told me
give this doll to you. It's fairly new, from the mid-1920s, but it's very
le, and if you go to the right place, you could sell it for three hun-
thousand yen. Your uncle might say that he never wants to see you
but he really worries about you living alone. He told me not to tell
how much it was worth, but it would be a shame if you gave it to
one else without knowing its value."
Since her uncle had supported her both materially and spiritu-
in such a nonchalant way, Ikuko felt grateful to him as she left his
On her way to the station it seemed too much trouble to put down
luggage to hail a taxi, so she decided to walk. It began to rain just as
got to the train station, but she could not put up her umbrella be-
e her hands were full, so she had to run awkwardly for cover. By
then the large doll box already felt like a burden to her. Even after she
ran into the station, she had to fumble around trying to buy her ticket
get herself to the train, randomly switching her handbag, her suit-
case, and the doll box from one hand to another. Her nerves were on
edge, as if everything around her bore her some kind of grudge, and she
didn't have time to indulge herself in sentimental feelings of parting.
Occasionally she would drag the doll box along so that the doll's head
was facing downward, but the sound of something sliding around in the
box only made her angry. In the bullet train she put the doll box up on
the luggage rack. Clutching her handbag firmly on her knees, she drifted
into a fitful sleep, troubled by an agonizing stinging sensation all over
her head. Her body was so stiff and tense, she could not think of any-
thing else.
When the train arrived at Tokyo station, she got up and began to
walk toward the door like an imbecile. It wasn't until someone called out
to her that she remembered the doll on the luggage rack. She wondered
how she, who didn't like people, could live with such a big doll, and she
supposed that soon she would dread coming back every night to an apart-
ment that had been taken over by the doll. She wanted to run away and
leave the doll on the train right where it was.
**********
At first, she only placed the doll on top of her dresser out of a
sense of obligation to her uncle for his generosity. In her small room the
doll looked twice as big as it had in the storehouse, and all the more
I
! '
[,
I,
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 124
charming, so that Ikuko felt it didn't really fit. The doll was ..,,..,,, ... uu.
so that it looked directly down onto her bed, and this depressed her some,:.
how. But since she was planning to pack it up and put it under her bed
the following Sunday anyway, she left it where it was and only shifted it
so that the face looked off a little to the left. And now, in spite of those
feelings, Ikuko found herself almost in tears complaining about her life
to this very doll. Even though as a little girl in her uncle's house she had
never played with the doll ...
She had, in fact, decided to establish her own family register long
ago, but when it came down to actually doing it, she had always encoun-
tered some unexpected reason for delay. On the Monday morning after
she got back, she went straight down to city hall and finished the neces-,
sary procedures. Ikuko' smother died when she was nine years old, and
a year later her father married again and moved the family to, a town
some distance away. However, within the year her stepmother was un-
able to cope with her stubbornness, and thus Ikuko was sent to live with
her father's older brother, who was the head of the main household, and
there she stayed. Even in her child's heart she was determined not to
reveal her feelings of weakness and inferiority, and Ikuko became even
more competitive. She would be the first to talk back to her uncle before
any of her cousins, and he sometimes slapped her cheek. Yet because he
didn't have a girl of his own, he loved her like a daughter in spite of her
strong will. At Bon and the New Year, he told her to pay her respects at
her father's house, but he didn't want her to stay overnight there. He
even sent her to a university in Tokyo.
When her father died, her uncle advised her to give up her inher-
itance rights in favor of her half brothers since the assets were few. After
Ikuko graduated from college, she avoided coming home on one pretext
or another. Whenever she did come home, her uncle would yell at her for
turning down a series of arranged marriage proposals, but then, at least
once before she went back to Tokyo, he would make a point of inviting
her out to a bar he frequented after they'd shared an early dinner. He
said that his sons had never enjoyed drinking, and he seemed happy to
spend time with her. For her part, Ikuko was so spoiled by him, she felt
no restraint when they argued-to the amazement of her aunt and cous-
ins. More than once he had shouted, "Get out of my house," to which she
would reply, "Fine. I'm going."
And so it had finally come to this. These past two years her cous-
ins moved out in quick succession to live on their own, and her uncle
had to give up alcohol because of an illness. He suddenly lost patience
with Ikuko, and he warned her that unless she came back home and
married, he would not welcome her in his house again. And yet, in a
way, he was revealing his dependence on her.
T h e D o l I 125
Ikuko thought herself a cold-hearted person, and when the situ-
had reached this stage, she began to feel some reserve toward him
she was not his real daughter after all. The words she spoke to
were affectionate, but she found herself withdrawing from him. Ev-
time her uncle lectured her, he told her that what she was doing in
was not a real life and that she couldn't get by without the help of
. Ikuko would merely hang her head. She knew he was right. And
she decided that she must become truly independent: Before long it
obvious that her uncle had less and less to say to her. Time and time
Ikuko would comfort him with kind words as best she could, then,
a four- or five-day stay, rush back to Tokyo where she could relax at
in her own apartment. Occasionally her uncle would call her long-
as if on impulse, and in a burst of excitement he would reproach
for her ingratitude. Yet even when her uncle broke down and told
he didn't care about her marriage, that he only wanted her to come
home, she refused with a tearful apology. Finally, he told her he
t want to see her anymore.
Realizing that she had alienated him that much, Ikuko was natu-
bewildered, but she had her heart set on confirming her decision to
alone in Tokyo on the official family register. In the process, she dis-
"'"'"'T'Pn that she had never been on her uncle's register; she remained on
register of her father's family, with which she had had no contact
since his death, and she finally had to come to terms with the fact that
she had been a burden to her stepmother and stepbrothers for all this
When she first told her uncle about her desire to establish her own
family register, he took her more seriously than she expected. She thus
began to take the idea more seriously herself.
Ikuko moved to her present apartment a little over a year ago as
a way of finishing off her relationship with a lover. It was located in a
newly developed neighborhood more than thirty minutes farther west
by train than her old apartment. The area somehow seemed desolate to
her, a place she thought she would have a hard time getting used to. For
a while she had difficulty remembering her own address, and she would
have to consult her address book every time she wanted to give it to
someone. She never dreamed she'd actually establish her own register.
She finished filling out the necessary forms at city hall in the morning
and went to work in the afternoon. It was then that the things and people
around her she was accustomed to seeing each day seemed somehow
different. They seemed to be just slightly disengaged from reality. But
she attributed this to her own fatigue. That very evening was the first
time she was mistaken for someone else.
Her sense of reality in general was somewhat more tenuous. She
felt as if the city streets and the figures of people passing by were sepa-
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 126
rated from her awareness by a thin film. Her own actions and gestures
and even her conversations, were somehow detached now from
present self. There were times when she seemed to find herself cautiously
and methodically following the routine of her life she'd established since
she'd come to Tokyo ten years before with a feeling of unease. As she
walked down familiar streets, it suddenly struck her as very odd that
her feet were moving forward rapidly as if they knew their own way.
Then she unintentionally slowed her pace as if to be sure of each step,
and the more she paid attention to her feet, the stronger was the s e n s ~
tion of sleepwalking. And then there were her lovers. For about a year
now Ikuko had been hCJ,ving relationships with two different men, but
up until now she had definitely sensed herself moving into middle age
while turning her affections from one to the other. However, with recent
events, she suddenly could no longer tell the difference between them.
Even when she wasn't with them, she could recall their faces, their hab-
its, the touch of their skin with frightening clarity. Both attracted her equally.
Her body and miJ1ld had come to rest at a point between them,
without any of the usual pain or sense of being separated from one or the
other. She felt a sort of paralysis, as if she were floating suspended be-
yond any kind of relationship, and she gazed doubtfully at their kind
jealousy of each other. They both seemed too good for her.
There were times when her sense of reality was so weak that the
vitality of the words, expressions, and actions of the people around her
became strangely intense and seemed about to surge into her being. Feel-
ing as if she were making pointless apologies, Ikuko would withdraw
while trying to make a rational excuse for her confusion. Then, when she
looked around again, her sense of reality was even weaker. "Ah, this is
happening because I'm afraid of the world," Ikuko sometimes thought.
"No," she thought at other times, "it's because I've started hating the
world and so I'm afraid of myself." She remembered the sensation she
felt deep in her nose when her uncle slapped her face. At that point, she
hated her uncle with all her heart. Her uncle took on all of her hatred.
And so, until now, she had never seriously hated anyone else. Even with
her lovers, the relationships had ended with no hatred on her part.
In the midst of these days spent in a state of detachment from her
own self and the world around her, it was only those moments when she
was mistaken for someone else that this barrier fell away. She felt as if
she had suddenly come to her senses and was looking around. However,
she was not returning to her own self. Rather, it was the sensation of
returning to a realm where distant memories dwelled. She didn't know
her own face. She seemed to have a face that could belong to anybody.
She felt she was looking in the mirror when she looked at the people
around her. Every face looked as if it were somehow taking on the vari-
T h e D o I I 127
features of a doll. She heard a voice in her ear saying, "Look care-
You can surely find the faces of your dead parents among these
that you see." A wind slowly blew through the crowd like a wind
across a dark plain. Although she hadn't gone more than ten
Incredibly, she was actually mistaken for someone else once more,
a fifth time, but then these incidents finally stopped. However, on the
and in the train, the sense that she was being mistaken for some-
else continued to grow stronger. People often looked into her face. In
past, there had been times in her life when men would stare at her a
It happened when she started sleeping with her first lover. It also
pened when she met her other lover and began to fall in love with
Before that, when her relationship with her first lover had come to a
. standstill and she thought he would leave her, men on the street had
looked her up and down with lust in their eyes. lkuko was also in an
excited state. But the men did not try to pick her up. At that time her
relationship with her uncle was strained. For a week after she came back
from her hometown completely exhausted, men would call out to her
timidly on the street, or offer to share their umbrellas on rainy days. They
were invariably young, naive-looking men. Ikuko would smile in em-
barrassment." Are you all right? You're all right, aren't you?" they would
say and then hurry away. She had been walking with her head down,
and to them she must have looked as if she were crying.
However, this time the people who approached her were differ-
ent from before. They were male and female, old and young. Everyone
would look at her with an expression of surprise. With a dullness in their
eyes, they would slowly avert their gaze. Then every one of their faces
would be overcome by a gloomy shadow for a brief moment. It was as if
they were sifting through a faulty memory. Moreover, it seemed to her
that each face had features that somehow resembled each other.
Finally it got to the point where Ikuko could no longer look
around at other passengers on the train home from work, especially as
the car emptied with each stop farther from the city. As she looked in-
tently downward, a single face would take shape vaguely in her mind. It
could have been almost any kind of face-old or young, male or female-
but it did in fact look like one face. While she concentrated on that face,
not quite able to get it in focus, her own face began to lose its distinctive
expression and reveal itself as a meaningless type. She thought that her
own dreary face must now be attracting the attention of strangers with
the same type of face. These people could project whatever face they liked
onto hers. However, she didn't want them to speak to her. If she had
been mistaken for someone else straight on, if someone had smiled in
recognition at her, then she might indeed take on the face they were seek-
T R A N S LA T I 0 N S 128
ing and smile back. In that case, she would no longer let that person get
away when they discovered she was someone else.
Ikuko was completely exhausted when she got back home each
evening. She flopped down on her bed, unable to move for some time.
Fortunately the doll on the dresser had a single distinct face. She cast her
charming smile out onto the world and didn't project her face onto any
other. Ikuko was extremely thankful she hadn't brought back the dress-
up doll. Even in its box, that pale, quiet face would probably demand to
look out and see the reflection of her face in others. Ikuko would be open-
ing and closing the lid of the box all night long.
When Ikuko was finally able to relax and walk around her room,
it occasionally seemed that the doll on the dresser was looking at her
from behind. Sensing that gaze, she turned around, and the smiling face
looking down on the bed took on a mischievous expression. Ikuko caught
her cheerful mood and began to chat freely. When she was tired of talk-
ing, she changed into her night gown and lay down on the bed. The doll
should have been facing slightly toward the window, but every night
Ikuko got the strange feeling the doll had somehow shifted her gaze so
that she was looking straight down on her. Then Ikuko would start com-
plaining to her about the same things.
"Hey, can you please help me? What kind of face do I have? Who
am I? How many of me are there? Where are they all? What does my, I
mean our, true face really look like?"
Her life continued this way for a month. Neither of her lovers
called. Nor did it occur to Ikuko to pick up the phone on her desk to call
them. She wasn't really even aware that she hadn't gotten a single phone
call for all that time.
One evening, Ikuko wanted to look the doll straight in the eyes.
Usually, its gaze was fixed ever so slightly away from the desk She shifted
the doll's body so that it faced more toward the middle of the room, then
got down off of her bed and knelt before it. A smile filled the doll's eyes.
But, an instant later, its gaze wandered slightly. Ikuko slowly moved closer
to the doll. As she did so, the doll's eyes grew deeper as if to suck her in,
the smile on its face grew brighter, and its face took on a clearly bashful
expression. But then the smile vanished, and the doll's face became seri-
ous, gazing beyond Ikuko into the distance. Ikuko drew back and came
nearer again and again, but every time she crossed a certain point, the
doll's expression would become grim.
Ikuko remembered something odd. Her lover had told her that
she had the habit of smiling when he was about to kiss her. Her other
lover told her the same thing. They did not tell her this in the spirit of
intimate friends remarking on each other's little habits. Both of them had
had a chilly, slightly distant expression as they spoke.
T h e D o I I 129
"But when our lips are about to actually touch, your face becomes
really serious," one of them said. "It happened the first time we kissed,
and it's still happening now."
"It's like you've become someone else," the other said. "It looks
like you're opening your eyes just a bit and looking off into the distance."
in fact, neither of them tried to kiss her deeply very often. When
they did, they kissed her so fiercely, she felt as if her lips were going to
swell up.
"Is my face strange-looking?"
Closing her eyes gently, Ikuko thought of the sensation of a man's
lips drawing near, and she tried to imagine her own face as her lovers
saw it. It was a gloomy, wrinkled, tearful face. No, it was not a face. It
was no longer an individual face, it was waiting for a single countenance
to appear. Without a doubt, the moment before a man's lips touched hers,
Ikuko was far away, recalling various faces. Her uncle's face, her par-
ents' faces, her younger brothers' faces, her cousins' faces, the bleary-
eyed face of an old woman someone told her she was related to when she
saw her on the street one day, then again, the face of her mother on her
deathbed, a face that continued to change every moment. All of these
faces overlapped one another and melted into a single face. Then an ex-
pression suddenly appeared on the face: pale, as if from the depths of a
dark room, with eyes closed in agony. When she tried to focus on it, it
grew faint and hazy. The man's lips fearfully pushed hers open, and she
wondered whom he thought he was embracing, who was embracing
her ....
When she opened her eyes, the face of the doll stood out dis-
tinctly before her. Again the expression in its eyes was serious and al-
most stern. It gazed fixedly off into the distance as if it were trying to
direct Ikuko's attention to something. Its gaze sank endlessly toward the
horizon.
"Whatever it is lies far away at the end of your gaze. And that far
away thing is reflected in your eyes, isn't it?"
Ikuko continued to gaze at the doll's face in a kind of stupor until it
was nearly dawn, and then she lay down in bed completely exhausted.
The next evening Ikuko stayed out late drinking with some male
friends. She boarded the second to the last train out of the city, and on
the way a driving rain began to fall. As the train moved further into the
suburbs and the car emptied out, a premonition that something was about
to happen grew stronger and stronger. Long ago, on such a rainy night
as this, she had ridden in a quiet train car with her mother. It was a single-
car train like a street car, and it ran through the pitch dark of fields on
either side. They were returning from a visit to her grandmother's home
on the outskirts of the city. Her mother had been sobbing as they walked
TRANS LA T I 0 N S 130
to the station, and in the train her mother pressed her pale forehead
against the dark window and absentmindedly hummed a song to herself
in a low, hoarse voice. This happened about six months before she died.
Ikuko became aware that a young man seated in the corner was
staring at her with close attention. The train had just pulled away from
the station right before the one where she got off. "It's only one more
station. Please, don't let anything happen," she prayed and shrank down
in her seat, bowing her head and turning her face in the opposite direc-
tion of the man's gaze. At that very moment the man stood up. "Don't
come over, don't come over," Ikuko was screaming inside, but the man
approached with slightly unsteady steps and stopped in front of her.
"Ikuko, Iku-chan!"
She looked up at the sound of his voice and, as if a gaping hole
had been torn in the wall of time, she saw the boyish face of her child-
hood playmate before her breaking into a smile.
"Hiro-chan, it's Hiro-chan, isn't it?" Ikuko cried out. She was so
used to being mistaken for someone else that when she was called by her
real name she felt tears springing to her eyes as if she had finally been
saved. She couldn't remember his last name. He was from a land in her
memory. He lived in the town where she moved with her father and step-
mother. Hiro and Ikuko always played together by themselves. How-
ever, within ten months after she met him, he had been admitted to a
hospital far away, and, soon after, Ikuko's uncle came to take charge of
her, and she went back home with him. They hadn't seen each other for
seventeen years.
"How did you know who I was?"
"You knew me right away, too, didn't you?"
"How did you recognize me?"
"You haven't changed a bit."
Ikuko wanted to hear those words over and over again. How-
ever, the train had pulled up to the platform.
"I get off here."
'Tm getting off, too. You probably don't have an umbrella, do you?"
The two passed through the ticket gate without saying a word,
and, sharing an umbrella, they started off on the road next to the tracks
that led to her apartment. "Why isn't he asking me what I'm doing these
days? Why does he know the way? Does he live here? Has he seen me
around before?" These thoughts began to take shape in her head, but
soon the sound of the pouring rain enveloping them lulled her into feel-
ing nothing except relief that someone had finally recognized her correctly.
As they got close to her apartment, they turned a corner onto a
back street Ikuko had never seen before. Hiro pulled open the ill-fitting
door of a small bar. No other customers were seated at the counter where
T h e D o l l 131
he offered her a seat. He then ordered sake from a hump-backed old
woman sitting in the living room adjacent to the shop. He seemed to be a
regular customer. Ikuko had the vague feeling that she had seen the old
woman's face before.
Even after the sake came and they had had a drink together, Hiro
only smiled at her fondly and didn't seem interested in asking her about
herself. Every time he breathed he made a whistling sound like a flute in
the back of his throat. Suddenly, Ikuko asked him, as if she had only seen
him six months ago, "Hiro-chan, has your asthma gotten better?"
"Ah, yes, for a while it looked hopeless, but I'm feeling much
better now."
"Your father and mother are probably very relieved."
"They're both dead."
"You had a pretty sister, didn't you?"
"She's dead."
It seemed pointless to speak, so Ikuko fell silent. After quite some
time, Hiro smiled cheerfully again.
"Ah, this sake tastes good. Iku-chan, you know you look just like
your mother."
"Oh, my mother. She's still living in that town, but she's actually
only my stepmother, you know."
"I meant your real mother."
"But how would you know? It was because of her death that we
came to live in your town."
"But I know."
"How?"
"I just know."
"How," she murmured to herself, but she was suddenly over-
come with drowsiness. She could hear the sound of the outbound train
passing outside.
"Hiro-chan, where do you live now?"
"All the way at the end of the line, in the mountains."
"That's far, isn't it? The last train has gone already. Do you live
alone?"
"No, there are a lot of people. It's a pretty lively place."
Ikuko felt so sleepy she thought she might doze off. After a while
Hiro stood up, called his farewell into the back room, and hurried Ikuko
out the door. It was still raining outside. They only made two turns be-
fore they ended up right in front of Ikuko's apartment.
"I didn't know these streets existed. Come on up. You can stay
overnight if you like."
"So, my young friend Ikuko lives alone in a place like this?" Hiro
smiled fondly again as he looked around her small room. Ikuko found it
T R A N S L A T I 0 N S 132
surprisingly pleasant to have someone see where she lived. There was
something about him that reminded her of the doll's smiling face. At the
moment this thought formed in her head, Hiro stood right next to the
doll and looked into Ikuko's eyes.
"Iku-chan. Look carefully into this doll's eyes."
As she had the night before, Ikuko knelt down in front of the doll.
into her eyes."
As she did so, a boy's smiling face was superimposed on the doll's
smiling face.
he murmured as he moved his lips closer. "There," he
murmured again and joined his lips to hers. The lips were cold. The smell
of wet grass blew through the room.
"I see now. You came to visit me from far away, didn't you?
11
"Well, I'll be going now. If I press the button on the doorknob as
I go out, the door locks from the inside, right?"
Quite a long time had passed when Ikuko opened her eyes, sens-
ing that the doll's smile had become a voiceless sound that shook the
whole room. She found herself soaking wet, sitting on the edge of her
bed clutching her handbag. The doll's face seemed to be looking down-
ward more than usual. She heard the sound of the last train of the night
passing by.
"He surely died in that hospital seventeen years ago," she
thought, her memory slowly coming back to her. And yet, the vision of
that sake overflowing from the cup was seared into her mind. Though
she had only had whisky with her friends in the city, the feeling of being
drunk on sake was harbored inside of her.
The following morning Ikuko called in sick to her office. It was
remarked that her voice was unusually clear and crisp.
**********
In fact, the previous evening, the husband of Ikuko's friend who
lived in the neighborhood had returned home on the train that arrived
fifteen minutes later, and he saw Ikuko. She was standing under the aw-
ning of a closed sake shop gulping down a glass of sake she had appar-
ently bought from the vending machine. The husband was startled by
her strange-looking, drenched appearance, and he called out to her. "You
have the wrong person," she replied, throwing the sake glass into the
trash can and running off into the rain. Hearing this, Ikuko' s friend
thought she must have been jilted by her lover, and she had a good laugh
over it. The next day, however, she began to feel more and more uneasy
about Ikuko's uncharacteristic behavior. She stopped in at Ikuko's apart-
ment on her way home from her evening shopping, but Ikuko wasn't
T h e D o I I 133
. She then tried calling her several times throughout the night with
answer.
As for Ikuko's own behavior on that day, she recalled everything
clearly with no particular emotion. She had gotten up a little after
in the afternoon and had gone right out in the rain. She went to her
first lover's apartment and asked him to make love to her. Then she asked
if he hadn't come to see her the night before. Before he could an-
swer, she shook her own head in the negative and quickly got dressed
without any concern for his obvious puzzlement. for everything.
I'm going back to my lover from a long time ago," she told him and rushed
out the door.
She ran straight to her other lover's place and repeated the same
scene and spoke the same words as she hurried away. Late that night she
waited on a bench in the station for about an hour, then boarded the
second-to-the-last train. She got off at her stop and wandered around all
the back streets and alleys looking for the bar she had been to the night
before, but she couldn't even find an area that bore the slightest resem-
blance to the one she remembered. When she heard the last train passing
by, she went back to her room. Upon her return, she received impatient
calls from both lovers, but both times she screamed, "You're mistaken.
You have the wrong person," and she hung up the phone.
Before long, her friend came over to her apartment and looked
after her for four days. Like an animal, Ikuko ate and slept and sat curled
up in front of the dresser looking up at the doll, but she showed no inter-
est in doing anything else. She didn't wash her face, comb her hair or
change her clothes. Once her friend took her out for a walk, but she sud-
denly became very animated and stopped people on the street, arbitrarily
asking with a fond tone, "Aren't you so-and-so? You must be my old
friend, so-and-so, right?" Then she would start to rattle on about what
she had been doing lately. It wasn't long before her friend hurried her
back to the apartment.
"You look all worn out. You look exactly like your mother."
When she finally came back to her senses, she saw her uncle stand-
ing with his suitcase in the doorway, backlit by the afternoon sun.
On the third night Ikuko had even refused dinner. At wit's end,
her friend had begged Ikuko to tell her what to do. Apparently, Ikuko
had then murmured, "Call my uncle," and given her his phone number
in the country. Ikuko's uncle came as fast as he could, taking a plane
rather than the train. Just as he had ten years before when he had come
with her to Tokyo to look for a student apartment for her, he slowly looked
around the room with a frown. "This won't do. It's my fault that I didn't
think of it. You can't put such a large doll in such a small room."
CRITICAL COMMENTARIES
YOKO: THE SELF IN PROCESS
Manifestations of Madness
Point of View: The Power of the Gaze
The first sentence of Yo"ko-and the one most consistently quoted by crit-
ics and on book jackets-is set apart from the main text: "Yoko was sit-
ting alone at the bottom of a deep ravine."
1
Indeed, this sentence cap-
tures the essence of the story to follow in a single, evocative image, which
symbolizes the isolation and confinement of Yoko' s illness and also serves
as the catalyst for her meeting with the young male protagonist. Furui
often employs this technique of starting off a work with a single sen-
tence of resonant significance to the story as a whole, most notably in the
contemporaneous story, "Tsumagomi." The sentence also stands alone
because it is the only statement in the novella without a specific point of
view; it precedes the introduction of the young man through whose eyes
we experience most of the story, and is free of any context. This appar-
ently simple statement stands in direct contrast to the detailed and tor-
tuous portrayal in the paragraphs to follow of the young man's appre-
hension of the young woman in the ravine. It is also the first clue, both
stylistically and conceptually, that Yoko is somehow set apart.
Next we are introduced to the as-yet-unnamed male protagonist
2
(he will remain so until the second to the last chapter), gazing at a threat-
ening sky from the top of a mountain. Descending into a gloomy and
oppressive landscape, a place where hikers get inexplicably lost for days
and return changed men, he catches sight of a young woman sitting para-
lyzed on a rock. Furui follows the progress of the young man's changing
1. Furui Yoshikichi, Yoko, Shinch6 bunko edition (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1979), 8. Henceforth,
quotes from the novella will be referenced in the text.
2. It would be misleading to refer to this character as "Mr. S," since this name appears
only at the very end of the novella. So hereafter I will refer to kare as "the protago-
nist." This is not to underplay Yoko's importance, however. I would suggest that the
novella has two protagonists, because it focuses on the relationship of the couple.
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R I E S 138
perceptions of Yoko: first she seems to be nothing more than an halluci-
nation, a trick of physical exhaustion; then he recognizes a human face
amid the gray rocks, but it is devoid of expression and intelligence. Al-
though the woman herself is gazing at a cairn of stones, her eyes possess
"no perceptive faculty" or literally "no power of the gaze" (manazashi no
chikara ga nai) (10). Instead, she takes on "the vacant rigidity of an inani-
mate object" (11). Once he is able to link this strange female figure with a
memory of a sad child, he is able to relax and survey her face and body
from top to bottom. Convinced that she is a sick person who needs his
help, he circles around the young woman, who turns to follow him with
her vacant stare, unable to make eye contact. Suddenly, his perspective
shifts, and he becomes aware of how he must look to the woman as he
eludes her gaze. Regaining his senses, he marvels at the woman's pos-
ture, which is "like some magically pliant creature" (13). Then their gazes
finally meet and lock, and he is drawn toward her by its force.
This opening scene establishes the importance of the male gaze
in delineating the character of Yoko. Unlike the first sentence, where Yoko
stands (or rather sits) as an independent subject, she is what the young
man perceives her to be: first, a projection of his own imagination, then
an inanimate object, then a small weak person to be analyzed and helped,
and finally, momentarily, a magical being with special physical powers.
She is, in short, an embodiment of "mysterious and intransigent Other-
ness"3 in a variety of manifestations. Yoko exists only as she is seen by
the young man, and the preeminence of the visual faculty is apparent in
the frequent use in this section of such words as mitsumeru (to gaze),
shiya (field of vision), manazashi (look). Above all, the male protagonist
retains the power to define and describe.
4
Thus far, the protagonist's vision might only be considered un-
usual in its painstaking attention to detail and subtle shifts of conscious-
ness. Soon, however, Furui undercuts this unitary point of view by intro-
ducing a split in the young man's consciousness, as he imagines himself
as a figure moving in the woman's field of vision and intuits her premo-
nition of the rocks threatening to crash down upon them. Significantly, it
is only when he acknowledges that he is an object of her subjective gaze
as well that their eyes can meet in full human understanding.
This moment of communion serves as a pivot in the narrative.
Furui then shifts the temporal sequence forward so that Yoko is now re-
lating her own detailed perceptions and reactions in the ravine, several
months later, to this same young man, who has become her boyfriend.
Technically, we are hearing Yoko's words through the filter of the pro-
3. Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1979), 19.
4. Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 97.
y 0 k 0 139
tagonist, as an audience, rather than participating directly in her experi-
ence. We are occasionally reminded of this by her comments that she is
not conveying her feelings exactly. Nonetheless, Yoko's descent into the
ravine is now described just as vividly from her point of view. The same
processes of perception, reaction, understanding, and memory are ex-
plored. We learn that she had been aware of the young man as he ap-
proached her-she was not an insensate object-and that he had reminded
her of a timid wild beast circling around her. She was able to sense his
self-love and his fear, just as he had picked up on her dissociation from
her own body. Here, and at other critical points in the narrative, Yoko is
given a voice. Far from being the ultimate outsider, the insane woman
reduced either to silence or raving nonsense, she becomes a subject en-
dowed with the power of the defining gaze. This deliberate shift between
the roles of observer and observed, with rare moments of equal com-
munion, characterizes the narrative structure as a whole.
For the most part, however, it is the protagonist who functions as
the observer throughout the novella. As in the ravine, he later frequently
witnesses her "attacks" of mental illness, which usually consist of repeti-
tive movements, followed by a kind of trancelike paralysis. At these times
he is very much the detached and sane observer. On one occasion, in
chapter two, he watches from a coffee shop while Yoko paces up and
down the street uncertain as to which shop she should enter. He knows
he should go out to put an end to her wanderings, but "the strange thrill
of watching her from a hidden place kept him fixed in his seat" (40).
5
Later, at the department store in chapter five, he stands by as Yoko suf-
fers one of her attacks, realizing "that he had already taken on the role of
observer quite some time ago" (83). Though the protagonist is a careful
and generally sympathetic observer, at times during these episodes he
does feel the combination of pity and revulsion typical of a sane person
judging a mad one. His role of observer serves above all to distance him
from Yoko's bizarre and somehow threatening behavior.
His descriptions of these attacks involve a careful survey of the
changing appearance of every part of her body, especially the eyes, lips,
torso, abdomen, and feet. The voyeuristic implications of this lingering
gaze are not lost on Furui. One day as the young man watches Yoko slip
into a mild attack, he notices that "her eyes and nose and lips lost their
coherence and each individual feature was somehow unrestrained. There
was an oddly suggestive quality about it that made him want to take her
into his arms" (32). Indeed, as the relationship between the two becomes
more intimate, the protagonist's "objective" gaze becomes noticeably
complicated by sexual desire. It is not only his gaze that involves sexual
5. The original Japanese emphasizes the one-way dynamic of observer and observed
(ippoteki ni mitsumeru). He watches her but she doesn't see him.
C R I TIC A L C 0 M MENTA R IE S 140
desire, however. Every time other men look at Yoko, the protagonist iden-
tifies himself with their sexual interest. This happens when Yoko rushes
down the stairs toward him at their second meeting in the city, and again
at the department store. On a train ride to the seashore, he notices an
older man looking at Yoko appraisingly. He imagines that the man is
aroused by her modest, virginal appearance, although she is really in the
throes of an attack:
Exhausted by the constant effort of straining his nerves for
Yoko's sake, the casual attitude of the man next to him sud-
denly seemed quite enviable, so he joined ranks with him and
looked her up and down with the same expression he had seen
in the man's eyes. However, doing this made him feel guilty, as
if the two of them were violating her, and he instinctively looked
away. (105)
Thus, the protagonist himself is aware of the power of his gaze,
that looking becomes an act, a projection of sexual desire. Yoko's Other-
ness as a female is thus hard to distinguish from the Otherness of her
madness as perceived by the protagonist.
For Furui, the gaze not only operates as a strategy of defense to
identify and distance and as a weapon of sexual violation, it may have
an even greater power to influence the Other. In the first chapter, when
the young man and Yoko leave the ravine, they must climb a narrow,
winding path. Whenever Yoko becomes too frightened to make her way
alone, she crouches down on the ground, unable to move. The protago-
nist discovers, however, that if he flashes her a "penetrating look" she
will follow him as if "reeled in by his gaze" (22). Finally, they come to a
rickety wooden suspension bridge. Again, he practically pulls the reluc-
tant Yoko across with the power of his gaze, just in time to save her from
slipping into the water through some broken slats. When Yoko refers to
this event later, she somehow sees him as her savior, a friend who can
draw her out of her madness. He is willing to take on the role of thera-
pist for a while, but when his efforts seem to fail, the power of his gaze in
the ravine and at the bridge takes on another significance:
In that ravine, Yoko had been crouching in the worst state of
her illness. She was exactly like a wild animal curled up in a
cramped place, waiting for her illness to pass away of its own
accord. Then he had come along, and although he should have
passed silently on, he stopped and looked at her. They looked
at each other. At that moment, perhaps, the illness, which should
have run its natural course, under the gaze of another person
had solidified inside her like a small stone. He had seen Yoko's
illness, and with his gaze he had drawn it in closer and closer
to him, until he had brought her down to the foot of the moun-
tain. Moreover, at the edge of the suspension bridge he had
y 0 k 0 141
once again forced the cowering Yoko to stand up, look into his
eyes, and cross the bridge. Because of that, when he was here
before her now, when she felt his glance, the kernel of the ill-
ness inside of her began to swell. (52)
He realizes that his gaze may be "the very thing binding her to
her illness." The fact that Yoko's illness has been seen, and thus defined
by another human being, somehow transforms it and gives it an objec-
tive shape it did not possess before. Although the symbolic significance
of Furui's geography will be discussed in greater detail below, it is im-
portant to note here that the young man's gaze not only witnessed her
illness in the hidden psychological landscape of the interior but also
forced her back into the world of civilization, health, and normality, when
she had not yet been allowed to heal herself, like a wild animal, beyond
its confines. His gaze did not save her from a state of madness, but rather
trapped her within it. The implication is, perhaps, that if Yoko's illness
had remained completely private and hidden from view, it may not have
continued to grow within her. This reminds us of the old question of
whether something really exists if it is not perceived by another. In this
instance, the protagonist may be overestimating the power of his own
gaze.
As we have seen in the episodes in the ravine and on the train,
the protagonist's keen powers of observation also enable him easily to
adopt another's point of view. When he touches Yoko, he is even able to
enter into her disturbed mind and see and feel her world in its excessive,
distorted clarity. Interestingly, the passage where he connects with her
illness "by a single thread" (78) is narrated in the omniscient rather than
limited third person, as if he must maintain enough narrative distance to
tell us what she is experiencing; the narrative structure thus assures that
his identification with her is not complete. He is more successful, though,
atidentifying with the position of the "observed." One day, as he lounges
on the grass in a park and watches Yoko stroll by the pond, he becomes
aware that she is looking at him:
Still half asleep, he was only being gazed at by her, an object
without the ability to return that gaze. He now learned how
uneasy it made one feel to be observed by someone else. As the
mere object of observation, his body on the bench was subju-
gated to an almost unconscious state of being, like that of an
animal intent only upon its own existence. (53-54)
He then imagines Yoko reacting to his observing her. As mentioned above,
the protagonist's ability to empathize with Yoko places her in the subject
position, albeit indirectly-for after all, he might be wrong about her view
of the situation.
CRITICAL C 0 M MENTA R IE S 142
Yet, Yoko is allowed to speak for herself at critical moments. We
might recall that her detailed account of her experience of their meeting
in the ravine was juxtaposed in the first chapter against the protagonist's.
Though on a few occasions she does attempt to describe to her boyfriend
the effect of her illness on her perceptions of the world, for the most part
the narrative viewpoint is his. However, in the midst of one of her "at-
tacks" on a desolate beach in chapter six, Yoko explicitly claims the sta-
tus of subject for herself, without relying on the young man's empathy
in anyway:
"You're observing me, aren't you? Do as you like. But when-
ever you look at me, I'll always be looking back at you, too.
Because it can't be one-sided. See, you're being carried away
by the sand! While you're staring at me, it looks just like you're
drifting further and further away." (113)
This Yoko, with her hoarse voice and strange words, is almost
unrecognizable to him; the look in her eyes has the power to paralyze
him. This passage reminds us that the young man also looks strange from
Yoko's point of view, that their perceptions of each other as Other are
remarkably similar. By turning the tables and allowing Yoko a distinct
point of view in the midst of the most extreme manifestations of her ill-
ness, Furui makes Yoko an intermediary between the unintelligible world
of madness and the articulate world of the sane. Moreover, the alterna-
tion of subject and object between the "sane" boyfriend and the "mad"
young woman ultimately raises the possibility that the borderline be-
tween madness and sanity is neither impenetrable nor clearly drawn,
but can be crossed and recrossed in an instant.
Furui introduces yet another complication in this dynamic in
chapter five, when Yoko begins to tell him of her older sister's experi-
ence with the same illness. She speaks, however, from the viewpoint of
the twelve-year-old girl she was at the time, treating the sister's illness
with a combination of embarrassment, ridicule, and anger. The vague-
ness of the subject in Japanese allows for a certain latitude, for when
Yoko refers to the odd behavior of ana hito (that person) she could be
referring both to her sister and to the sick Other within herself. The young
man is shocked that Yoko could be so perceptive about her sister but
blind to the same symptoms in herself. In this instance, Yoko assumes
the role of sane observer, but at the expense of self-insight. Furui sug-
gests here that the "sane" viewpoint also limits one's perspective on the
madness lurking within oneself.
Furui has stated that in his writing he was interested in portray-
ing how the external influences one's internal reactions, even how it in-
fluences someone who did not appear to be interacting with the external
y 0 k 0 143
world, as well as how the individual's own reactions influence the exter-
nal world.
6
This is indeed what he accomplishes in Yoko. His attention to
the minute details of the interaction between external stimuli and inter-
nal consciousness has led one critic, Nishida Masaru, to refer to the very
style of the novella as that of a shinkeibyosha (neurotic), or, as he qualifies
it diplomatically, a neurotic trying to escape from neurosis or use it as a
strength.
7
The character of Yoko the neurotic is but an incarnation of that
neurotic style.
8
Nishida describes Furui's "neurotic style" as a distortion
of perspective, and as such, one may indeed liken Furui's hypersensitiv-
ity to the external, his preoccupation with the workings of the human
mind, and the sometime confusion between the two, to the sensibility of
the neurotic. Significantly, the neurosis is not limited to Yoko, for it is the
young man's view of her that shapes the story. He himself acknowledges,
half in jest, that "when it comes to neurosis, [he is] the better hand" (126).
He, too, grapples with the interplay of internal and external, splits in
consciousness, and the fluid boundaries of identity. Perhaps it requires
just this kind of sensibility, this kind of complex and self-conscious gaze
to bring a character like Yoko fully to life.
Languages of Illness
Although it is the central focus of the novella, the exact nature of Yoko' s
madness is not immediately apparent to the young man or the reader. In
the second chapter, after the couple begins meeting regularly at coffee
shops in Tokyo, the talk frequently turns to their first encounter in the
ravine and Yoko's "illness" (byoki) at the time. In one scene, the young
man questions Yoko about her illness in a manner that begins to remind
him of a doctor-patient dialogue (31-32). Playing such roles is, in fact, an
extension of the dynamic of male observer and female object that charac-
terizes the major portion of the narrative. In response to his questions,
Yoko initially, and nonsensically, claims that she was suffering from ac-
rophobia in the ravine, but later admits that she feels lighthearted and
happy in high places. Ultimately, both of them agree that her condition
is not acrophobia at all, but they are unable to assign it a convenient
label. The illness is literally unnameable. Indeed, as we shall see below,
the various manifestations of Yoko's illness seem to combine symptoms
of schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive neurosis, and manic-depressive
disorder, thus eluding a ready-made medical diagnosis. By rendering
6. Furui Yoshikichi and Akiyama Shun, "Nanajii nendai no bungaku no kanosei,"
Kokubungaku: kaishaku to kyiizai no kenkyu 17.8 (June 1972): 10.
7. Nishida Masaru, "Furui Yoshikichi to Goto Meisei," Bungakuteki tachiba (January 1972):
54.
8. Ibid., 59.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M ME NT A R IE S 144
Yoko's illness unnameable and forcing the reader to look beyond
mediterpretative process. Thus Yoko's illness becomes a kind of text
within a text.
While Furui's hesitancy to name and categorize Yoko's illness
challenges a reader's hermeneutical faculties, it also fits into the broader
tendency in Japanese society to avoid speaking about mental illness. Rela-
tively mild disturbances such as "acrophobia" can be discussed, but more
serious disorders are not usually acknowledged. They are safely relegated
to the more acceptable euphemism of "neurosis" or distanced even far-
ther into the realm of the unspeakable, that is, beyond language.
Nonetheless, Furui manages to say a great deal about an illness
that has no name, to borrow from Betty Friedan. He does so through his
ability to capture the essence of the abstract in a concrete image.
9
The
illness is thus dramatized rather than diagnosed. Though we are active
interpreters of Yoko's illness, however, we must remember that we are
seeing her illness more or less through the filter of the protagonist's
consciousness and must judge the information we are given about it
accordingly.
Yoko does occasionally speak of her illness, but never without a
clear sense of the limitations of language in accurately representing it.
Her talk always becomes "vague" and "fragmented," and trails off into
silence. She admits, "Whenever I talk to someone about my illness, I al-
ways end up telling lies" (33). In fact, most of our information about
Yoko's illness comes via the young man's visual sense. As discussed
above, Yoko is thoroughly "seen" and surveyed; every change in the ap-
pearance of her body, every nervous tic is carefully noted. In short, Yoko's
illness speaks through her body,
10
in the "organ language," which is a
common form of expressing psychological stress in Japan due to the lack
of cultural affirmation for complaints about mental and interpersonal
problems.
11
Or, as Gian-Paolo Biasin suggests, symptoms of a disease
become signs of a language that must be decoded and interpreted in or-
der to understand the OtherP and this is exactly what I will attempt to
do in the sections that follow. Furui further emphasizes the body's func-
tion as vehicle of communication by enabling the young man to become
connected to Yoko's illness and actually experience what it is like to per-
9. Shimizu Toru, "Sei to shi to sei to: Furui Yoshikichi," in Kagami to erosu to: Dojidai
bungakuron (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1984), 256.
10. Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 43.
11. Margaret Lock, "Protests of a Good Wife and Wise Mother," in Edward Norbeck and
Margaret Lock, eds., Health, Illness, and Medical Care in Japan (Honolulu: University
of Hawaii Press, 1987), 143.
12. Gian-Paolo Biasin, "Disease as Language: The Case of the Writer and the Madman," in
Enid Rhodes Perschel, ed.,Medicine and Literature (New York: Neale Watson Academic
Publications, 1980), 171.
y 0 k 0 145
ceive the world through her distorted senses, when he embraces her na-
ked in bed. It is literally by touching her body that he can "hear" her
illness speak, or later that the illness refuses to communicate and
"maintain[s] its silence like a stubborn woman" (88).
Although I will discuss the significance of particular symptoms
in more detail later, here I will touch upon some of the general charac-
teristics through which Yoko's illness is given shape. Throughout much
of the novella Yoko can function well enough to go to school and meet
her boyfriend in coffee shops, but periodically she experiences acute
manifestations of her illness in the form of "attacks" or "fits" (hossa).
Yoko is suffering from one such attack in the opening scene in the ravine;
the climax of almost every chapter revolves around one of these attacks.
Each one exposes some new aspect of her illness to the protagonist, rather
like a confession. In the aftermath, the intimacy between Yoko and her
boyfriend inevitably deepens. Not surprisingly, during these attacks, the
protagonist often associates Yoko with animal imagery: When he coaxes
her across the suspension bridge, he is reminded of a dog (23); when she
is looking for a new coffee shop, her eyes take on the expression of a cat
(41); in the restaurant, she eats in an "animal-like posture" (68); locked
up in her room, she is likened to a "gentle animal" (132). On two occa-
sions, Yoko herself defines a human being as a creature who stands and
walks, something she is having trouble doing at the time, suggesting that
these attacks somehow render her less than human.
The other common feature is that of repetition. Of course, during
Yoko's attacks, she engages in repetitive motions, but even when she is
not so severely afflicted, her everyday life, and especially her dealings
with the young man, are replete with activities repeated over and over
again in an almost ritualistic fashion. Any disruption in these repetitions,
any new activity, is often the catalyst for another crisis. When seen as
part of a language of illness, these repetitions take on significance as a
message being spoken time and time again. The fact that Yoko repeats
the same message in body language reminds us that there is repetition
involved in the use of any language. Yet, the need to repeat the message
may indicate that no one is able to understand and respond to it.
Yoshio Iwamoto remarks that Furui's male protagonists often
abandon themselves to "patterns of archetypical, instinctual behavior."
13
In Yoko, it is her repetitions into which the protagonist is drawn. Some of
these repetitions, such as the hide-and-seek game in the park, can cer-
tainly be seen as an archetypical courting game. At the same time, Yoko
professes to hate repetition, especially the activities humans must per-
13. Iwamoto Yoshio, "Yoshikichi Furui: Exemplar of the 'Introverted Generation,"' World
Literature Today 62. 3 (Summer 1988): 388.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M ME N T A R IE 5 146
form day in and day out to stay alive, such as eating. Thus, on another
level, she is openly rejecting instinctual needs. Ironically, Yoko's e p e n ~
dence on repetition derives from her attempts to stave off one of her at-
tacks-for example, when she memorizes all of the stops on the train
lines so that she will not find herself in an unfamiliar situation. Here
repetition also becomes a means of control. Yoko endeavors to forestall
change, or at least slow down the changes taking place within and around
her. Her disdain for food may have more to do with her fear of surren-
dering to instinct and the loss of self-control represented by eating. 14
In keeping with Furui' s challenge to the distinctions between sub-
ject and object, inside and out, Yoko's illness finds expression not only
through her body, but through the environment around her. Landscapes
in Yi5ko can be seen as reflections of internal psychological states; these
external projections of the mental in turn impinge upon the conscious-
ness of the figure in the landscape in an intriguing interchange of the
abstract and the concrete. For the definitive example of this dynamic, we
find ourselves returning once again, like Yoko and the young man, to the
incident in the ravine.
As Furui comments in his essay, "Yoko no iru tani" (Yoko's ra-
vine), the ravine where Yoko sits alone is not any particular geographi-
cal ravine but an amalgam of many different ravines/
5
which I would
propose is also informed by many layers of symbolic significance. On
one level, the ravine represents Yoko's mental state: The ravine is set
deep in the mountains, far from civilization. As the protagonist descends
from the mountain peak, he enters this gloomy, eerie world where others
have reportedly lost their bearings and their sanity. Thus, this setting
conforms to Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's schema of Japanese society, wherein
madness exists beyond the margins of society. It is fitting that the pro-
tagonist would encounter the mad Yoko crouching down here in this re-
mote and gloomy environment of her own mental illness, appropriately
banished from human civilization.
We might also recognize an image frequently encountered in
popular conceptions of mental illness in Japan. Margaret Lock notes that
the word "balance" is often invoked in discussions of mental health
14. Yoko's inability to eat in public can be seen as a form of eating disorder, to add to her
many other problems. Psychologist Kim Chernin observes that an eating disorder
such as anorexia nervosa, which is an extreme version of self-starvation, is an effec-
tive way to check one's development, both physical and social. By refusing to eat,
Yoko refuses to allow her body to take on mature contours and avoids participation
in a common social ritual of sharing a meal. See Kim Chernin, The Hungry Self: Women,
Eating and Identity (New York: Times Books, 1985), 21.
15. Furui Yoshikichi, "Yoko no iru tani," in Furui Yoshikichi sakuhin, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Kawade
Shobe, 1983), 31.
y i5 k 0 147
among Japanese housewives, namely with regard to the holistic relation-
. ship between the body and the mind and the human organism and its
environment.
16
Yoko' s ravine is defined by concerns of balance: The rock
upon which she sits is the very spot where the rocks around her preserve
an uneasy equilibrium, and she is thus unable to move because she might
disrupt it. The cairn that fascinates Yoko is also a symbol of a precarious
balance.
On another level, the mountain setting has a different and unique
significance in Furui's imaginative world. In a taidan (published discus-
sion) with Ogawa Kunia, he comments on his frequent choice of moun-
tain settings for his stories. For Furui, feelings and emotions that have
become diffused and scattered in one's day-to-day life in the city become
reintegrated and concentrated when one is hiking deep in the mountains.
17
Indeed, Yoko' s ravine is a place of concentrated forces, a place where the
rocks press down and the earth below radiates its own energy in the form
of a ghostly gray light. The mountainous interior of Japan thus serves as
an appropriate place to dramatize the interior of the Japanese psyche. It
is no mistake, perhaps, that a man who wanders through this landscape
will find a madwoman crouching there. Yet, while the ravine is a place
fraught with danger, it is also a place of transformation and discovery.
In much the same way, Furui sets up spatial metaphors, which
capture the abstract in a palpable form. Iwamoto remarks that in several
of his works, including Yoko, Furui uses a suspension bridge to define a
setting that brings together the mountain wilderness and civilizationY
Both Yoko and the protagonist seem to recognize the importance of the
fact that he guided her across the suspension bridge back into the city, or
into society, with the power of his gaze. The scene at the seashore, on the
contrary, presents a gray, flat landscape where it is impossible to detect
the boundary between sea and sky, and even, at times, the rocky beach.
It is in this setting that Furui allows Yoko to assert that she is observing
the observer protagonist, that subject-object boundaries do indeed blur
into each other. As we will see, examples of the correspondence between
external setting and interior psychology abound. Suffice to say here that,
as the protagonist notes at the end of chapter two, there is indeed some-
thing uncanny about the finely crafted interplay of inside and outside in
the novella (45).
16. Margaret Lock, "Popular Conceptions of Mental Health in Japan," in Geoffrey M. White
and Anthony J. Marsella, eds., Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy (Bos-
ton: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1982), 217, 221-22.
17. Furui Yoshikichi and Ogawa Kunio, "Buntai to seikatsu," Bungei (January 1971): 227.
18. Iwamoto, "Yoshikichi Furui," 386.
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R I E S 148
What's Wrong with Yoko?
The Problematic Self
Furui invites the reader to actively interpret Yoko' s illness and make one'
8
own "diagnosis" based on the symptoms through which it speaks. And
so we might ask ourselves, What is actually wrong with Yoko? We are
already aware of Furui's concern with the workings of human percep-
tion and understanding from his treatment-that is, his
"deconstruction"-of the unitary point of view in the novella. I would
argue that Furui takes his inquiry even further: By examining the appar-
ently extreme and distorted ways in which Yoko interacts with the world
around her, he is exploring the very construction of the Japanese self.
Because Yoko's illness affects her perceptions and thought pro-
cesses, it is inextricably linked to her identity and sense of self through-
out the story. Let us return to the incident in the ravine, which, as usual
serves as the definitive paradigm for the rest of the work. When a k ~
descends into the ravine, she becomes keenly aware of the pressure of
the rocks bearing down upon her, and she sits down, unwittingly at the
very point where the heavy rocks maintain their equilibrium. Yoko' s sen-
sitivity to her surroundings increases to the point where she becomes
distant and detached:
... she no longer seemed to be able to grasp her sense of her-
self. Her thoughts drifted in fragments along the jostling throng
of gray [rocks] and murmured languidly here and there. She
herself was scattered here and there in as many fragments, and
then she was nowhere. (17)
Yoko realizes that she has been staring at the unstable cairn, but this only
serves to intensify the sense of her own body dissolving into the rocks of
the dry riverbed. From the protagonist's point of view, the cairn itself
seems to be sucking in any human expression on her face. Indeed, he
maintains that he did not perceive her as another human being because
her body was somehow lacking in human vitality and spirit (9). When
Yoko takes hold of his arm and follows him down the mountain, her arm
is weightless, nothing more than an sensation of warmth (21-22) beside him.
In other settings Yoko' s appearance and behavior are strongly
influenced by her surroundings. In contrast to the paralysis of the ra-
vine, when she strolls through city parks with her boyfriend in spring,
her body is overflowing with energy, and she is in constant, manic mo-
tion. On the shopping expedition to the department store, she becomes
overwhelmed by the experience of choosing one polo shirt out of dozens
of styles and colors, each of which the smiling saleswoman declares per-
fect. On the train to the beach, she is trapped into a conversation with a
y 0 k 0 149
country matron, and as Yoko attempts to struggle with an oncom-
ing attack, her expression and gestures begin to resemble that of the older
woman beside her. Her fragile identity is particularly emphasized in the
scene at the seashore, where she walks from rock to rock deeper and
deeper into her own illness:
Every time she stepped onto a differently shaped rock with a
different stride, a different woman's body would come into
being, regardless of the earnest look in her eyes as she stared at
the rock at her feet. (108)
The common denominator in all of these examples is a sense of self so
fluid that it is able to transform itself in response to its context. The pro-
tagonist experiences, rather than merely observes, Yoko's heightened
sensitivity to her surroundings when he concentrates on his own tactile
sensation of her skin. He then feels as if he enters into her mind as she
slips into one of her trancelike attacks. Each and every object around her
seems extraordinarily clear:
Yoko came down the road, and suddenly she stepped into an-
other world. She stopped, and the air around her became ex-
traordinarily clear. Although they still maintained their natu-
ral appearance, each and every object surrounding her, each
and every expression and gesture of the people walking by,
grew more and more vivid and distinct. Then they began to
look unnaturally distinct and sharp. This sharpness, which grew
progressively more intense as if it were slowly seeping from a
deep source, captured her senses. Yoko experienced a loneli-
ness that was almost sensual. Captivated by the excessively
clear manifestation of each and every object, her senses split
into innumerable fragments, each growing clear and lucid, un-
til she was unable to grasp that vague, familiar feeling of co-
herence. She could not even pin down her sense of her own
being. Yet from within that fragile sense of her own existence,
Yoko gazed intently at the clarity of her surroundings. Although
she could hardly stand up straight, she murmured in a thin,
husky voice, "Oh, how beautiful!" (78-79)
Incidentally, this description is similar to experiences recorded
by schizophrenics under treatment, when their senses are flooded by the
"brightness and clarity of outline of the things around [them]."
19
More-
over, the schizophrenic's process of perception is characterized by a reli-
ance on a detailed rather than a holistic analysis of a situation; they focus
on a single gesture, for example, rather than upon the integrated impres-
sion of speech, body language, and context.
2
Furui does refer to the frag-
19. Gordon Claridge, Origins of Mental Illness (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 107.
20. Ibid., 146.
C R I TIC A L C 0 M M EN TAR IE S 150
mentation of Yoko's perceptions and to her inability to form a coherent
picture of her surroundings, yet from her point of view (as seen through
the protagonist), it is the objects around her that harbor a deep source of
vitality that "captivates" (hikitsukeru), thus sucking up her sense of her-
self like the rocks in the ravine. Furui ends the passage, however, with
Yoko's exclamation about the beauty of this clear world. Apparently, her
hypersensitivity does have the beneficial effect of honing her aesthetic
sensibility.
Yoko's illness has another side, however, in which the sense of
self is so strong as to be a burden to herself and those around her. While
this aspect of her illness dominates the second half of the novella, there
are hints in the early chapters as well. In the ravine, the sense that she is
dissolving into the floating rocks suddenly ceases, and she feels as if she
is choosing to pour her own energy into the rocks. Then her body, along
with the rocks, begins to feel heavy, immobile, and "sullen" (18). These
hints are also apparent when she becomes angry or frustrated with her
boyfriend. Interestingly enough, Furui characterizes her as "stubborn"
and" shut up within herself"
21
(43) on these occasions, in a manner remi-
niscent of the popular notion of the mentally ill person's stubborn un-
willingness to conform to social expectations. All of her attacks, in fact,
are viewed somewhat resentfully by the boyfriend as a form of "shame-
less self-absorption" (69) or selfishness.
The main shift occurs during Yoko's attack in the department
store. The protagonist is surprised to discover that his impression of her
illness has changed. No longer does her body seem to be fading away or
taking on the dull weight of a mere object; rather, it has taken on the
weight of a mature woman's body. Increasingly, Yoko lies in her room in
a daze, surrounded by her late father's bookshelves and immersed in an
acute awareness of her own body. This indolence is brought on by Yoko' s
desire to stay as she is; unlike earlier attacks where she has no control
over the situation, n ~ she is exerting her will. Finally, she locks herself
in her room for five days without even taking a bath, because she is per-
fectly comfortable as she is. This refusal to bathe is a particularly outra-
geous statement in Japanese society, where the bath is a daily ritual. Yoko' s
act serves as a powerful symbolic refutation not only of the traditional
Shinto emphasis on purity, particularly the purification of the pollution
of menstruation, but also of modern ideals of female neatness and clean-
liness. We might recall that in the first scene of the novella, Yoko's face is
so devoid of expression, it even lacks that innate expression which is
"rather like the odor that naturally emanates from one's body" (10). Ob-
21. In the original, jibun no seiri no naka ni tojikomotte. The word seiri sometimes has physi-
ological or biological connotations that might hint at the correspondence of the fe-
male body and mental illness.
y 6 k 0 151
viously, odor is associated with individual character and presence. In
the final scene, on the other hand, she possesses both in abundance.
These two facets of Yoko's illness are not inconsistent with one
another, however. As noted above, a certain stubbornness and self-ab-
sorption characterize all of her attacks, and her desire to wallow in the
feeling of her own body is intensified by her fear that she is turning into
someone else and losing control of her sense of self. Both are character-
ized by an acute awareness. The difference lies in whether the primary
focus is inward or outward. In fact, it is the coexistence of the two that
points to another common theme throughout the novella that is of par-
ticular importance here: balance. In the ravine, where Yoko's focus shifts
from her surroundings to her body and back again, her deepest impres-
sion is that she sits exactly at a place where a fragile balance is preserved.
This shift between too little sense of self and too much suggests the bal-
ance any individual must negotiate between external demands and in-
ternal desires. It is in such a place that Yoko is more clearly aware of her
own existence than she ever has been before (17). Thus, a strong relation-
ship is clearly established between Yoko's illness and her self-identity.
The protagonist recognizes this as well, on a solitary trip to the moun-
tains. Images of Yoko float through his memory, but
at last, one image remained: Yoko lying in the depths of the gloom
of a summer afternoon, a towel loosely draped over her knees,
absorbed in the feeling of the weight of her body. Yoko's body
was anxious to wrap itself around her illness, and thus to grow
into adulthood and regain its composure. Unless he urged her on
with his impatient thoughts and desires, her body would neither
become thin, like a sensitive young girl, nor assume the well-
rounded appearance of a sexy woman. The conceited hope that
he could cure her illness had long since vanished completely. He
didn't want her illness to move toward convalescence, nor did he
want it to grow worse. Getting better or getting worse, it seemed
likely that either one would destroy Yoko. (99-100)
The locus ofYoko's identity is not the illness itself per se, but the
negotiation between its various manifestations and, above all, the aware-
ness of it. Her illness also coincides with adolescence, a time when the
search for one's individual identity is highlighted. Yoko reveals to her
boyfriend that her sister had once suffered from the same illness but has
since married and carries out the duties of a housewife and mother; yet,
to his surprise Yoko expresses repugnance at the thought that she will
become like her sister. The reason she gives is that her sister has forgot-
ten all about her illness and fully embraces the "normal" life, and that
she now views Yoko's illness as repulsive. "It's all the same whether
you're crouching down inside your illness or you're better and have for-
gotten about it," she declares (98). Yoko does not want to be confined
CRITIC A L C 0 M MENTA R IE S 152
inside her illness, but she does not want to be "cured" and pretend that it
does not exist. Instead she says, "I am always on the borderline. I tremble
like a thin membrane, and that's how I feel that I'm alive" (98). Thus,
Yoko's identity is linked to the precarious balance she consciously main-
tains between her illness and what is regarded as health.
Illness has been associated with the delineation of the self in
Western literature as well. Susan Sontag notes that sickness individual-
izes and sets one apart.
22
On the most fundamental level, then, Yoko's
illness sets her apart from the ordinary, beyond the social context. She is
sitting alone in her ravine. Moreover, she is afflicted with a mental ill-
ness. On the one hand, madness in particular has been associated with a
quest for identity in the works of many authors and therapists alike, most
notably R.D. Laing, who saw psychosis as a search for a lost and divided
self.
23
On the other hand, madness has also been employed as a strategy
to preserve and assert the self in a safe haven far removed from social
pressures.
24
Both of these impulses are evident in Yoko, but this quest for
identity is carried out in the Japanese context and thus touches upon
issues of the construction of the Japanese self.
As we have seen, Yoko alternates between a hypersensitivity to
her environment and complete self-absorption. In a sense, she represents
the embodiment of two different theories of the self in Japanese society:
the contextual self and the private self. Furui's painstaking portrayal of
Yoko's distorted sense of herself draws attention to the means by which
the healthy self is defined. Indeed, as we shall see, Yoko's "illness" may
not be so very unusual after all.
Yoko' s fragile sense of herself in relation to her surroundings can
be seen as an illustration of Kimura Bin's argument that the foundation
for the existence of the Japanese self lies not within the individual, but
between the individual and others, as manifested by social interaction.
For example, even on the basic level of linguistic self-reference, the per-
sonal pronoun one chooses to refer to oneself differs according to the
social context; there is no immutable "I" in the Japanese language. 25 "The
foundation of the self does not lie within but beyond the self, in the space
between self and Other. The Other decides who the self is."26 Thus, it is
22. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 30.
23. Barbara Hill Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics in the Feminist Novel: Studies in Bronte,
Woolf, Lessing and Atwood (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1978), 12.
24. Ibid., 52.
25. Kimura Bin, Hito to hito no aida (Tokyo: Kobund6,1972), 188.
26. Ibid., 226. Furthermore, this interpersonal energy is represented by the concept of ki,
which indicates the workings of the "mind" or self between the individual and oth-
ers. Thus mental illness is referred to as kichigai, or "an irregularity in ki." See Kaga
Otohiko, Bungaku to kyoki (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1971), 119.
y (f k 0 153
the ravine, the bustling city, the lush park, the lonely beach, and the
protagonist's erotic desire that decide who Yoko is. When
dates herself to her surroundings in this way, she is illustrating the self
as a contextual construct when taken to its logical conclusion.
Kimura's analysis and Yoko's behavior demonstrate that the Japa-
nese concept of the contextual self has more in common with the West-
ern definition of the schizophrenic personality: that is, experiencing one's
thoughts, feelings, and actions as under the control of another, external
being.
27
Of course, in spite of the emphasis on self-determination and an
unchanging essential self in the Western tradition, a European or Ameri-
can must also modify his behavior according to the situation. However,
even Kimura acknowledges that his theory does not account for all as-
pects of the self. Some self autonomy is necessary, or the result is
taijinkyofushO (anthropophobia), a neurosis many see as an extreme ex-
aggeration of the sensitivity to social cues inherent in normal interaction
in Japanese society.
28
Kimura thus implicitly acknowledges a limitation
to his other-oriented view of the Japanese self.
Anthropologists Takie Sugiyama Lebra and David Reynolds pro-
pose the existence of another self, which exists in isolation from society.
Lebra suggests that individuality for the Japanese is at the opposite pole
of social involvement. The autonomy of an individual is assured and
protected only in isolation, because there is no "Other" prescribing a cer-
tain social role. Hidden from and denied access to the outside world,
this self may consist of repressed desires and ignored anger/
9
an amal-
gam of the chaotic, dangerous, and shameful, what Lebra refers to as
"emotional anarchism."
30
Reynolds's model, on the other hand, allows
for a kind of isolation within society: The social role is defined by others,
while the "self," the inner world of intentions, dreams, and fantasies,
remains safe and unseen behind the protective screen of prescribed in-
teraction.
31
This hidden self shares a number of important qualities with
the madwoman: They both exist in opposition to social rules, they are
purposely hidden away from others, and they are inexpressible and un-
controllable. As such, the character of Yoko may also function as a sug-
gestive embodiment of this secret inner self, inadvertently exposed to
27. Horacio Fabrega, Jr., "Culture and Psychiatric Illness: Biomedical and Ethnom"!dical
Aspects," in White and Marsella, Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy,
56.
28. David K. Reynolds, Morita Psychotherapy (Berkely: University of California Press, 1976),
122.
29. David K Reynolds, Naikan Psychotherapy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1983), 122.
30. Takie Sugiyama Lebra, Japanese Patterns of Behavior (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1976), 160.
31. Reynolds, Naikan Psychotherapy, 97-98.
C R I TIC A L C 0 M MENTA R IE S 154
the gaze of the passing young mountain climber in the ravine. When sh
violates prescribed rules of interaction during her attacks, this self pushe:
through the protective screen into plain view. In this last scene, she poses
the question quite plainly:
But, no matter how much you live in accordance with the out-
side world, isn't there a part of you that remains separate? Ev-
ery inevitably, isn't there still a time when you're pushed
back mto your own unchanging self? (140)
!'herefore, even when she decides to go into the hospital to be cured, she
1s sure that the core of her illness, this separate self inside of her, will
never change.
The constant tension inherent in the balance between these two
selves, the contextual public self and the essential private self, is usually
invisible in the "normal," "healthy" person. Yoko, however, hovers on
inside and outside, madness and sanity, high-
hghtmg the dehcate negotiation between the individual self and the shift-
ing social definition of that self. It is as if a kind of madness lurks within
and and. in very process of self-definition. Yoko is only un-
usual m that she 1s pamfully aware of it.
Furui's Yoko can thus be seen as an inquiry into the formation of
the se.lf in Japanese society. In so doing, he joins a long line of Japanese
novelists who have grappled with the creation of a full, convincing char-
of an imported literary form, as discussed by Masao
M1yosh1 m h1s early work, Accomplices of Silence. Miyoshi argues that it is
to such a character in the Japanese novel, given the
soctety s hostlhty toward personality and the inner consciousness.32 I
would present the character of Yoko, however, as an example of a new
to deal with this problematic self. Furui cannot single-handedly
w1pe away the cultural and literary context in which he writes but he
can and does draw attention to them by linking the self with
and locating it beyond the boundaries of that oppressive context. Yoko,
and her boyfriend, are then free to do and say and think things that would
be impossible, unspeakable, and unthinkable within the confines of sane
society. In so doing, however, Furui partially complies with traditional
of the self. Madness can be seen as a form of nothingness, a
negation of self. A mad self therefore fits in with the Buddhist tradition
of self-obliteration.
33
But as we have seen, madness radiates inward and
outward, implicating every character and every landscape in the novella.
32. Masao Accomplices of The Modern Japanese Novel (Berkeley: University
of Caltforma Press, 1974; repnnted Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies The Uni-
versity of Michigan, 1996). '
33. Ibid., 81.
y 0 k 0 155
Furui may not transcend the problem, but he clearly dramatizes the dif-
ficulty of defining the individual. This careful articulation of the prob-
lem is certainly an important step.
A Pathogenic Society
If we accept Kimura's idea of the Japanese self as embedded in society,
or at least part of it, then consideration of the "mad" self inevitably leads
to an exploration of the society that defines it. We have already seen how
fluid the boundaries are between internal and external, and between sub-
ject and Other, in Furui's literary cosmos; the boundary between indi-
vidual and society is but a reframing of the same dichotomy Furui chal-
lenges. If the mad self is thus defined by society, then the society that
forms the context is implicated in the madness as well.
The relationship between Yoko and the protagonist unfolds, for
the most part, in a kind of seclusion: the ravine, the park walled off from
the sounds of the city, the time-worn inn where they have their assigna-
tions, and Yoko's dark, gloomy bedroom. Earlier in the novella, how-
ever, they often meet and walk around in the midst of contemporary To-
kyo: train stations, busy shopping streets, and a department store. In these
settings, the protagonist is always afraid that Yoko will have one of her
acute attacks, but he also discovers aspects of her illness that are not ap-
parent in the ravine.
The most remarkable of these is what the young man nonsensi-
cally dubs her "direction-blindness" (44). Yoko is unable to make her
way around the city without much preparation and anxiety. In order to
get anywhere, she must memorize and keep track of all of the stops on
the train line and of all the shops on the street. She is only able to feel
some sense of comfort when she is able to do the same thing-for ex-
ample, to go to the same coffee shop, by the same route, at the same time,
over and over again. She is unwilling to go into a place, even if she rec-
ognizes the name, if it feels unfamiliar to her. This is one symptom of
that part of Yoko's illness that prevents her from feeling the sense of co-
herence and familiarity that allows ordinary people to go about their daily
tasks almost automatically. Naturally, most people assume that a coffee
shop they have glimpsed once on a particular street will be there the
following week, or that the number of steps up to one's bedroom will
remain the same, day after day. In short, part of Yoko's illness is a deep
anxiety about change and unpredictability. She becomes all too easily
confused by the flood of information and activity around her.
Let us step back a moment and consider the environment in which
Yoko so easily loses her way. Tokyo is a huge, ever-changing city. The
system of assigning addresses based on the time when a building was
built rather than its location means that even a perfectly "sane" person
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M EN T A R I E 5 156
might have to ask directions several times before finding a particular
place. Moreover, beginning around the time of the Tokyo Olympics in
1964 and continuing well into the 1980s, Tokyo experienced a boom in
new construction. Old neighborhoods were razed for huge skyscrapers,
and the suburbs reached ever farther out along the train lines. A particu-
lar building might in fact be there one day and gone the next. All of this
suggests that Yoko's worry is not misplaced. In fact, her boyfriend does
unwittingly give her wrong directions to a park because a train station
was under construction and the exits were changed. Yoko's illness merely
allows her to feel more keenly the confusion and anxiety of the individual
living in a society moving and changing at a seemingly uncontrollable
speed.
Is Yoko then a sensitive mirror of a sick society? The idea of a
pathological and pathogenic society has been discussed by psychiatrists
and cultural theorists alike. The ethnopsychiatrist George Devereux sup-
ports the notion of an "ethnic" psychosis or neurosis. In this case, the
fundamental causes and conflicts of mental illness in a patient are present
in the majority of "sane" people as well; they are only more extreme. Or
as Devereux puts it: "the patient is like everyone-but more intensely
so."
34
Yoko's attacks, then, are a somewhat distorted mirror of her soci-
ety. Her addiction to repetition and habit is but an extreme of the routine
existence of the modern city dweller. As she argues in the last chapter, a
healthy person identifies with his or her own habits and carries them out
unconsciously. Yoko's attacks magnify this aspect of normal life. In addi-
tion, her complete identification with her environment during these at-
tacks not only represents a self overly defined by the Other, but trans-
forms her into an embodiment of society with its ritualistic repetitions
and ever-shifting contradictions.
Yoko's illness, then, alters her perceptions, but rather than de-
priving her of human faculties, it may endow her with a superior sensi-
tivity, a means to see what others cannot. For example, the protagonist is
surprised when Yoko is able to capture the uncanny quality of the ravine
in words (31). When he becomes connected to her illness, he sees the
world as she sees it, and he discovers that her perceptions are excessively
clear, sharp, and even beautiful. In the second chapter, Yoko tentatively
presents her situation to her boyfriend:
"If the floor of the room were bulging out like a lens, it would
be hard to stay put, wouldn't it? And then what if the floor
were tilted a little to one side, that would make you nervous,
wouldn't it? I certainly don't want to have a conversation with
34. George Devereux, "Schizophrenia: An Ethnic Psychosis or Schizophrenia without
Tears," in Basic Problems ojEthnopsychiatry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980),
216.
y 6 k 0 157
someone or drink tea or eat meals in a place like that, so I im-
mediately walk out to try to find a place that's normal, but
wherever I go, the ground is cockeyed. I want to scream out,
'How can everybody stand to live in a place like this!' But no-
body seems to care and I don't know what to do .... " (32)
This passage suggests that every place is somehow skewed and distorted.
Yoko is neither able to find a safe and stable place nor a fellow human
being who can share her vision. Her extraordinariness may be consid-
ered not as madness, but as a "saner," superior sanity.
Indeed, beneath the strangeness lurks sense, and even a surpris-
ing perspective on her own condition. This is especially evident in the
final chapter, after Yoko has spent five days in her room. Yoko's sister
has asked the protagonist to convince Yoko to go to the hospital for treat-
ment. Yoko replies:
"If you told me to, I'd go right now."
"What would happen if you went to the hospital?"
"I'd get well."
"What does 'get well' mean?"
"It means that I'd make the people around me feel more
comfortable." (133)
Yoko's insight into what constitutes the construction of the concepts
"health" and "illness" is quite stunningly sane. She understands fully
that society labels as "mad" those who are disruptive and rebellious and
refuse to play by the rules. Through Yoko, Furui is engaging in a subtle
social critique. Society tries to control disturbing and uncontrollable
forces: selfishness, sexuality, the pace of modernization. Yoko's attacks
reveal these forces all too plainly. If they remain hidden inside of her,
behind a screen of "normality/' then these elements can be ignored once
again.
"A Truly Extraordinary Being"
Thus far, I have discussed Yoko's illness as a paradigm for the problem-
atic self and as a mirror of the contradictions and anxieties of contempo-
rary society. One important element that has not yet been considered is
the significance of the male protagonist's involvement with Yoko, for af-
ter all, it is through his eyes that we observe her. Or, in other words,
what attracts him to this decidedly unusual and often difficult woman?
Furui makes it clear that one reason the protagonist is sympa-
thetic to Yoko is because he is not exactly "normal" himself:
Around the time they first met, he himself was not exactly in
an ordinary state of mind either. He still hadn't attended school
since summer vacation; for the most part, he stayed cooped up
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R IE S 158
in the house. At the worst times, he shut himself up in his own
"nursery" for ten days at a stretch, except for mealtimes, with-
out feeling bored. Perhaps this, too, was the illness of self-ab-
sorption. However, as this harmless illness grew worse, it
about an extreme indifference to other things outside
h1m. was not all. Ironically, the illness had the tendency to
lead h1m to a strange indifference toward his present self and
his own experience. (28)
The protagonist's illness, like Yoko's at times, involves too much child-
ish focus on the self and too little involvement with society: Tellingly, he
secludes himself in his "nursery" (kodomobeya). Unlike Yoko, however
his illness leads to apathy and indifference to himself as well. There is
indication of a heightened sensitivity. Perhaps because this lethargic and
repetitive daydreaming in a college student threatens no one, it qualifies
as "harmless," rather like the mild neuroses the Japanese gladly claim in
order to give themselves a touch of individuality and an air of superior
sensitivity.
35
Nonetheless, the protagonist's mild illness does seem to enable
him to identify with Yoko. When the two start meeting at coffee shops,
they don't chat sociably like the typical young couple on a date. Talk is
punctuated by long silences, and sentences trail off unfinished. "How-
ever," the narrator notes, "they allowed one another these vagaries of
whim two fellow convalescents" (36). The protagonist half-jokingly
labels h1mself as a "neurotic" to Yoko's sister, prompting her to dub the
couple "a pair of fellow neurotics" (126). The identification goes deeper
than words; words alone are an ineffective form of communication be-
tween them, as he discovers when he speaks to Yoko on the telephone.
The young man begins to feel what Yoko feels as he allows himself to go
the same ritualistic repetitions on which she thrives. When they
f1rst make love, he loses a clear sense of his own body:
And because he was unable to grasp Y5ko even though their
bare skin was touching, his own body sometimes felt like a dis-
tant thing that he must hastily draw back toward himself. (64)
Later, when her illness has taken on maturity and weight, his feelings
change accordingly. On a solitary trip to the mountains, he lies around
all day again, dreaming drowsily. "In the midst of that silence, the heavy,
acute awareness of one's physical being that Yoko had complained about
transferred over to his body" (99). And, as previously mentioned, he is
sometimes able to connect to Yoko's illness and step into another world
35. William Caudill, "The Culture and Interpersonal Context of Everyday Health and Ill-
in Japan and America," in Charles Leslie, ed., Asian Medical Systems: A Compara-
tive Study (Berkeley: University of California Press), 162.
y 6 k 0 159
of her brilliantly clear perceptions. All in all, Furui's protagonist is some-
how temperamentally suited to his unusual lover, supporting Akiyama
Shun's contention that all Furui characters nurture a neurosis within their
hearts.
36
Just as Yoko trembles like a thin membrane between illness and
health, the protagonist seems to exist close to the borderline. This most
of all is what attracts Yoko to him. In the final chapter in her darkened
bedroom, a place where much truth is told, Yoko explains why she feels
comfortable with him and even likes his peculiar habits. He summarizes:
"I don't really come in, I don't really distance myself, I don't
really embrace your illness, I don't really pull you out of your
illness. _ . because even as a healthy person, I myself have some
half-formed qualities, don't I?" (143-44)
He and Yoko are compatible because they exist in the same in-between
space. This space corresponds to the period of adolescence, when the
self is indeed "half-formed."
The protagonist is linked with Yoko's illness not only
em pathetically, but also in terms of the narrative structure of the novella.
He first meets her in the ravine in the throes of one of her attacks. Later,
in the city, Yoko lets him know that she associates her illness with him.
Sometimes she claims he has cured her, but this "cure" is manifested in
an excessively clear perception of the world around her, which we know
is one of the symptoms of her illness (37). Other times she implies that
her illness has gotten worse after the episode in the mountains, during
which time she had constantly pictured his face in her mind. We might
recall that the protagonist also fears that he binds Yoko to her illness
because he witnessed her attack in the ravine. His gaze then serves to
reactivate the illness. In fact, the narrative is driven by his observations
of the progress of the illness; each new revelation and each new attack
results in greater intimacy between them, which in turn allows him to
discover deeper secrets. His attempts to give her "remedial training" re-
sult instead in their first sexual contact, which then draws him further
into her illness. Gradually, they become enveloped in their own world:
So long as he was at her side, she was unable to leave him and
move around comfortably by herself. And as long as she was at
his side, he was unable to watch her walking around alone with
36. Akiyama Shun, "NichijOteki genjitsu to bungaku no hatten, 1961-1977," in Matsubara
Shin'ichi et al., eds., Sengo Nihon bungakushi-nenpyo (Gendai no bungaku bekkan) (To-
kyo: Kodansha, 1978), 380. Iwamoto also contends that Furui's male characters harken
back to the passive iro-otoko (lover) of traditional Japanese literature, whose main
function is to be empathetic with the women in his life (Iwamoto, "Yoshikichi Furui,"
388).
CRITICAL COMMENTARIES 160
any peace of mind. It seemed to him that while they were both
gu_arding illness in this way, they were gradually
bemg shut mto an Isolated time and place of their own, like the
ravine where they had first met or the table in that first coffee
shop where they always had to sit. (65-66)
The relationship itself increasingly resembles a state of illness, cut off
from the rest of the world. Within this seclusion, the two reveal their
hidden selves to one another. Moreover, there is a strong hint that the
relationship will not continue when Yoko is "cured." By choosing illness
as a dominant image in a story of a romantic relationship and tracing the
development of the illness and love side by side, Furui implies that the
self-enclosed and highly individualized realm two lovers share is a kind
of in itself. Love involves the blurring of physical and spiritual
boundanes between two people, and at times threatens the loss of self to
the Other.
37
Furui describes their relationship in the last scene as a bal-
ance they preserve between them, the same image of balance frequently
used to signify mental health. When they make love, they "abandon them-
selves completely to the pleasure of its collapse" (145) and enter a differ-
ent world where identities merge.
While the protagonist is both sympathetic to Yoko's illness and a
kind of participant in its world, whenever Yoko experiences one of her
acute attacks, he immediately takes on the role of a detached observer
is often and even repulsed by the illness. His attempts
to distance himself from her illness suggest another dynamic at work in
their relationship. Back in the ravine, his first impression of Yoko was
that she was just another of his hallucinations. The second was an almost
nonchalant acceptance of her presence there: "So, there's a woman in a
like this"(:) He then remembers that" a place like this" has a repu-
for changmg people so much that their own families do not recog-
mze them. In fact, the ravine deep in the mountains is a psychological
landscape, identified before as a projection of Yoko's mind. Might it not
at the same time function as a concrete manifestation of the protagonist's
mind? Yoko then becomes both a product of his imagination and the anima,
the female Other inhabiting the male consciousness.
Accordingly, Yoko functions as a projection of all that is threat-
ening and uncontrollable within himsel.
38
It is a familiar dynamic of a
patriarchal society that the female principle is associated with nature,
the body, darkness, and negativity. Here, the female embodies what Lebra
describes as the hidden, secret, and chaotic self. Furui himself has com-
mented that each individual harbors something within himself that is
37. Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics, 32.
38. Patricia Waugh, Feminine Fictions: Revisiting the Postmodern (New York: Routledge 1989)
29. I I
!
I
i
I
y 6 k 0 161
alien or Other. At the beginning of the work, the protagonist is not aware
of this Other, but as the narrative progresses, he rediscovers the Other
within himself. 39 Yoko is the Other that he encounters in the deep ravine
of his own consciousness and comes to know intimately. Each time he
feels what she feels, or sees the world through her eyes, he is recovering
a hidden aspect of himself. Her physical presence and actions sometimes
serve as a mirror of that which he would rather ignore. At one point after
they have slept together, he realizes that when Yoko is late for a meeting
with him, the image of her wandering around in the midst of an attack of
her illness troubles him deeply, not from worry, but because this vision
of her had become "intimately connected to his own shame":
When she reached his side, Yoko drew her hips back a bit and
peered into his face. A vague smile played about her eyes as if
she were ashamed of her own body. He felt a faint dislike for
that posture. It was a feeling very close to self-hatred. (72)
This may explain his anxiousness to keep Yoko out of the public eye as
much as possible. He is, above all, protecting himself. In this reading of
the novella, then, it is the protagonist who is experiencing a form of dis-
sociation, wherein aspects of his psyche are split off from his conscious
awareness40 and function independently as a kind of separate personal-
ity. Yoko is part of him.
As the Other, Yoko has access to the world of the strange and
chaotic. It is also the world of dreams and magic. We have already seen
how Yoko's body is associated with animal images and inanimate ob-
jects, but there are also striking moments when Yoko is not human in a
different way. In the ravine, as Yoko twists her body on the rock to fol-
low the movements of the young man circling around her, she "was like
some magically pliant creature on top of the flat rock floating in a rough
current of rocky debris" (13). This sense of magic only intensifies as the
young man becomes more intimate with her. When they met in the old
inn outside of town for their trysts, he sees her waiting for him in the
room in this way:
Yoko was crouching in the corner of the room with her back to
him. She got up when he entered the room. Placing her hands
one over the other in an ambiguous way below her breasts,
dragging her hips a little behind, she gazed up at him as he
approached her. As he drew nearer, she relaxed her shoulders
and arms and stretched upward as if she were entrusting her
upper body to the heavens. The slender rays of light flowing in
through the cracks in the shutters diffused the color of the leaves
39. Furui and Ogawa, "Buntai to seikatsu," 212.
40. Roger N. Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism (Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1990), 128.
CRITICAL C 0 M M EN TAR I E S 162
of the trees just outside the window into a pale green and
washed over her white flesh. She was only standing upright on
her tiptoes, yet the strain filled her whole body from her feet to
the gentle slope of her shoulders. When he saw her like this, he
always felt he was standing before a truly extraordinary being.
(77-78)
Yoko is not a creature of this world: Her skin is green like the leaves and
the position of her body "ambiguous." Is she protecting herself or offer-
ing herself? Is she rising up toward the transcendent heavens, or is she
being dragged down into the earth? Iwamoto Yoshio characterizes Furui' s
heroines as shamaness-like beings who possess special powers and at
the same time are more in touch with the foundation of human exist-
ence. These same qualities, he observes, also lead them to madness. 41
In "Yoko no iru tani," Furui cites as one inspiration for the story
a newspaper article about a woman lost in the mountains who sat pa-
tiently in one place for days until she was discovered by a rescue party.
As he imagines the feelings of the rescue party approaching the woman,
he writes, "If it were a fairy tale (mukashibanashi), a woman sitting alone
in a ravine would probably be some kind of intermediary (chiikaisha) be-
tween the ordinary and supernatural worlds."
42
Moreover, he maintains
that this opening scene is indeed like a fairy tale in that it is less a prod-
uct of his individual imagination than a collective historical or mythic
story whose power has roots far into the past.
43
Furui thus links his very
modern story to a traditional folk literature, and the story of two con-
temporary individuals to a collective past. Yoko's role as an "extraordi-
nary being" is also clarified in this context. She is the intermediary to
another world for the wanderer in her realm.
In invoking the intermediary between two worlds, Furui recalls
the figure of the shaman, for one of the central abilities of the shaman is
to interact with and control creatures of the spirit world/4 or, in Michael
Harner's more contemporary idiom, to be in contact with an ordinarily
hidden reality.
45
As we have seen, Yoko's madness enables her to tap an
ordinarily hidden reality, and through her the protagonist is able to do
so as well. Other qualities of the shaman are also evident in the experi-
ences of both characters, with some qualifications, of course. First of all,
one discovers one's own shamanistic abilities by being "called" to fulfill
that role and undergoing a painful initiation crisis, which resembles a
kind of madness. If one does not answer the call, one may become incur-
41. Iwamoto, "Yoshikichi Furui," 389.
42. Furui, "Yoko no iru tani," 31.
43. Ibid., 30.
44. Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism, 72.
45. Ibid., 11.
y 6 k 0 163
ably mad.
46
Roger Walsh outlines key features to include in any defini-
tion of the shaman: He or she can enter altered states of consciousness at
will; he or she experiences "journeys" to other realms in these states,
often accompanied by a "spirit guide" from that other world; and finally,
he or she uses these journeys to gain knowledge or power to help others
in the community.
47
Both Yoko and the protagonist are experiencing some
kind of illness, which may be seen as a kind of shamanistic initiation
crisis. However, it is only the male protagonist who is able to enter the
altered state of union with Yoko's illness at will-on occasion. Yoko, then,
would serve as his spirit guide through this strange, extraordinary world.
The knowledge and power that he gains from this journey would be a
realization of the madness within and the arbitrary nature of concepts of
illness and health.
If we take into consideration the specifically Japanese model of
shamanism, the metaphor of the protagonist as shaman and Yoko as spirit
guide is even more fitting. Though shamanism varies in different regions
of Japan as well as across cultures, the most common form of communi-
cation with the spirit world since Heian times involves the combined
efforts of a miko, or medium, and an ascetic, usually a Buddhist priest.
The medium, most often a female, goes into a trance and acts as a pas-
sive vessel through whom the spirits speak.
48
Since early times in Japan,
it was considered easier for women to serve as intermediaries between
this world and the spirit world. An equally crucial role is played by the
ascetic, usually a male, who actively invokes the spirit, questions it, con-
vinces it to stop doing harm (or whatever the problem may be), and then
sends it back to the spirit world.
49
Thus, the female part of the dyad serves
as the direct intermediary to the spirit world. Her body is taken over by
the spirits, and sometimes she suffers from violent fits. In early Japan,
the female shaman usually suffered from an initiatory sickness before
she assumed her powers. Symptoms consisted of loss of appetite, hallu-
cinations, terrifying dreams, headaches, failing eyesight, and dissocia-
tion of personality.
50
The male ascetic was more closely allied with the
human world. It was he who served as the intermediary between this
world and the shamaness, interpreting her babbling and convulsions to
the public.
Yoko and the young man would then constitute a kind of
shamanic dyad, a collaborative team who together can travel to other
46. Ibid., 39.
47. Ibid., 10.
48. Carmen Blacker, The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanism Practices in Japan, 2nd ed. (Lon-
don: George Allen and Unwin, 1986), 22.
49. Ibid., 253.
50. Ibid., 114.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R I E S 164
planes of consciousness. She leads him to a hidden reality through her
illness, and he interprets her behavior into the language of the ordinary
world. Other aspects of Japanese shamanistic beliefs are also evident in
Yoko. The locus of the spirit world is said to be the mountains. 51 The kami
in the mountains, and the suspension bridge the protagonist urged
Yoko to cross actually marked the entry in the sacred space of a Shinto
shrine. The rocky riverbed where Yoko sits in the opening scene sug-
gests the Sa1-no-kawara (Riverbank of Sai), which represents the bound-
ary between the real and the spirit worlds in the shamanistic universe. In
context the cairn of stones Yoko gazes at becomes more than a simple
trall marker: It recalls the well-known folk legend wherein the souls of
dead children must linger on this Riverbank of Sai, piling up stone tow-
ers in offering to the bodhisattva Jizo to expiate their sins and the sins of
their families. 5
2
Furthermore, in some sects, seclusion (komori) in a cave,
temple, or quiet room in one's house is said to confer special powers for
journeying into the spirit world. 5
3
These parallels with shamanism not
only suggest a deeper dynamic in the relationship between the protago-
nist and Yoko, they also situate the realm of Yoke's madness, the ravine
and her darkened room, within traditional Japanese cosmology. In some
ways a very modern story, self-conscious about the creation of subjectiv-
ity, Yoko also harkens back to time-honored folklore, thus suggesting that
the characters' experiences are somehow universal.
Finally, the relationship between the young man and Yoko can
be seen in terms of yet another kind of symbiosis. As an intermediary to
a hidden, magical world, Yoko also serves as an inspiration to the pro-
tagonist. Along with her more burdensome qualities, she brings passion
and interest back into his life. His meeting with her interrupts a long
period of self-imposed isolation, self-absorption, and apathy:
On rare occasions, he recalled the incident in that ravine. Then
he felt as if he wanted to go out to school the very next day and
tell his friends about it. There was no doubt that his friends
would find the story interesting. Then, in a roundabout way,
the incident would become a unique experience for him at last.
And perhaps he would be able to take an interest in himself
51. Ibid., 79.
52. Moreover, in the legend, a demon periodically comes through and smashes the
children's towers, at which point the bodhisattva Jizo appears to comfort the chil-
dren and offer them salvation. To read even further significance into this parallel, we
can see this particular setting as a place of transition, where Yoko the child waits to
be reborn as Yoko the woman. The male protagonist might then take on the role of a
Jizo-like figure who "saves" Yoko, as she suggests in the second chapter. See ibid.,
83; William R. LaFleur, Liquid Life: Abortion and Buddhism in Japan (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1992), 58, 63-64; Iwanami bukkyo jiten, 1989 ed., s.v. "Sainokawara."
53. Blacker, The Catalpa Bow, 98.
y 0 k 0 165
again, precisely because he would continue to have similar ex-
periences in the future. (28)
The meeting with Yoko in the ravine becomes a "story/' and an interest-
ing one to be told to an appreciative audience. The act of rendering this
profound psychological experience into "literature" will endow the pro-
tagonist with the stature of a literary artist. Indeed, as discussed above,
although he is not the narrator in the strictest sense, the story unfolds
through his perceptions and understanding of Yoko; he gives her form
through his gaze and his reactions. We might then say that she takes on
the role of his muse. Indeed, without her, the protagonist has nothing to
tell his friends and apparently little else to do in his life.
One further interpretation of Yoko's madness may involve the
untamed power of creativity itself. The crossing of boundaries between
male and female, inside and outside, mad and sane, mimics the construc-
tion of metaphor, where connections are made between two apparently
different, not to say opposing, entities.
54
The fragmented, overly vivid
view of the world the protagonist taps into through Yoko's illness recalls
the enhanced powers of observation of the literary artist. This model,
however, is fully implicated in the structure of a patriarchal society, for
Yoko needs the protagonist, the narrator, and ultimately the author to
give her definition.
This dynamic takes us beyond the text to a possible broader sig-
nificance of Yoko's madness. Elaine Showalter has remarked how mod-
ernist literary movements in the West see the schizophrenic woman as
an embodiment of linguistic, religious, and sexual breakdown and rebel-
lion. Thus, the madwoman becomes a muse for artists of every type and
speaks "for the revolutionary potential repressed in society at large."
55
If
we see Yoko as Furui's muse as well, it is interseting to note that he
chooses to endow this muse with her own voice. In this way, as we shall
see, he subtly addresses issues of sexuality and gender roles.
Biology and Destiny
I have already noted how Yoko's madness is related to the situation of
the female in patriarchal society as Other, as both observed object and
mysterious intermediary to the secret world of nature. Furui's equation
of madness with the female experience is even more explicit, however,
for the manifestations of Yoko's illness are inextricably linked with her
maturing sexuality. We have seen thus far that an overarching theme of
the novella is that of crossing boundaries or borderlines, and therefore it
54. Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (Boston: Shambhala, 1986), 34.
55. Showalter, The Female Malady, 204-5.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R IE S 166
is not insignificant that Yoko and the protagonist are both situated on
the borderline between childhood and adulthood. There are few obvious
reminders of the fact that the protagonist is a young man in the throes of
maturation into manhood-although it is mentioned in the opening scene
that he often gets "caught up in moments of confusion" (9), and later in
bed his self-absorption in his own sexual gratification is aptly mirrored
by Yoko's cold, wooden body and her lack of response. Yet, Furui hints
that the protagonist's environment is more supportive of his coming-of-
age. In the ravine, "the rocks that looked sinister to her gathered kindly
around him and began to bind themselves together with a mild
uneasiness" (20).
Perhaps because Yoko's illness is speaking through her physical
being, it seems almost to transform her body from that of a child at one
moment to a voluptuous woman the next. Again, her body language
employs the idioms her society has constructed to categorize the female
body: She is either the stiff, skinny, and asexual virgin, or the lax, fleshy,
and sensual temptress. 5
6
The association between Yoko's illness and her
maturation begins, of course, in the ravine. She feels that her body is
dissolving into the rocky riverbed around her, but suddenly, her aware-
ness changes:
At no other time, she said, was she so clearly aware of her
own existence. Hugging her numbed body, she continued to
gaze at the stone tower. But she was doing more than that. While
she was gazing, she was slowly pouring her own energy into
the base of the rocks. As she did so, each rock began to look
increasingly full and rounded from within, and slowly, in a sort
of trance, they began to grow as truly pure life in the light of
the ravine. Yoko, too, felt as if she were slowly growing along
with the rocks. She felt a profound happiness. (17-18)
We are already familiar with the idea that these rocks represent a projec-
tion of Yoko's psychological state. It is significant that her most intense
feelings of happiness, which she later amends to "pain/' occur when both
she and the rocks are undergoing the process of growth. Kajiki Go sug-
gests that the ravine is a womb and that Yoko's hunched posture is an
approximation of the fetal position. Leaving this womb of nature with
the protagonist represents Yoko's rebirth from girlhood to adulthood. 5
7
In fact, she reminds the protagonist of a child who has been crying. The
56. Incidentally, the initiation crisis of the shaman often took place at the onset of adoles-
cence "with life-shattering force, disintegrating the old equilibrium and identity and
demanding the birth of the new" (Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism, 39-40).
57. Kajiki Go, "Furui Yoshikichi no kongensei: Yoko, Tsumagomi wo chiishin ni,"
Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kyozai no kenkya 17, suppl. (June 1972), 124.
y i5 k 0 167
same imagery evokes the shamanistic period of seclusion, or komori, which
can be seen as a period of gestation for the shaman's mystical powers. 5
8
The second time they meet in the city, however, the young man
cannot free himself of the doubt that Yoko is someone else (26), for her
thin, high-pitched voice and sharp, distinct footsteps are quite different
from the deep voice and weightless body of the woman in the ravine. In
general, in the early chapters of the novella, Yoko is described as "child-
like" (25); her illness confines her to "a young girl's stiff demeanor" (45).
Most girlish of all is her behavior in the park as she skips and romps in
constant motion around her boyfriend. Hints of womanliness are evi-
dent, especially when she is described as angry or stubborn, but these
discoveries invariably surprise the protagonist:
When he saw her naked body before him, he was surprised by
its unexpected fullness. He felt as if this was fitting repayment
for having treated her thus far like a skinny, neurotic girl. How-
ever, at the same time she revealed the voluptuousness of her
body to him, the expression on her face came to resemble even
more than usual that of a thin young girl, and she lay down on
the bed indifferently. (70)
Significantly, the manifestations ofYoko's illness begin to change
after she experiences sexual pleasure for the first time. For a while she
seems to be comfortable in her body, and her boyfriend notes that she
now moves calmly and gracefully through the city. This new poise is
undermined once again by her next acute attack in the department store.
There is some consistency between this attack and earlier ones: there-
petitive movements, the positioning of her hips and upper body, and her
disregard for public appearances. However, her body no longer seems to
be diminished. On the contrary, her physical being becomes a caricature
of the words "female sensuality" (onnakusasa) (84). Her lips become swol-
len and red, her hips and breasts fill out her dress voluptuously. It is at
this moment that the protagonist realizes that Yoko's illness has taken on
the weight of a mature woman's body. Next time, he fears, her illness
may go even further in revealing her sexuality to the public by causing
her to let out a woman's scream (87). Yoko's illness thus expresses itself
through changes in her body, but it may also be the case that her "ill-
ness" is those very changes in her body, the process of growing up.
One day, Yoko reveals to her boyfriend that her older sister expe-
rienced precisely the same symptoms and attacks when she was in her
late teens. The sister has since married and had two children, and lives
an apparently normal life as a housewife. In one respect, the fact that
58. Blacker, The Catalpa Bow, 98.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M MEN T A R IE S 168
both sisters suffer from the same illness fits in with the idea, particularly
strong in Japan, that mental illness is hereditary. In another, the two sis-
ters represent different phases of the female life cycle, as it exists on a
continuum: Yoko the child observing her sister's mysterious behavior,
Yoko today overlapping with her sister nine years ago, and the sister
who has apparently been cured, as evidenced by her successful adapta-
tion to her adult role as wife and mother. As such, Yoko's struggle with
her illness takes on a broader meaning, as a symbol of the universal cri-
sis of the female coming of age. Again, Furui transforms the apparently
unusual case of a mentally ill young woman into a symbol of the pre-
dicament of all young women.
In both Japan and the West, adolescence and menopause are con-
sidered to be particularly dangerous times for the well-being of the fe-
male psyche.
59
This may be because "female nature" is defined primarily
by a woman's ability to bear children in a male-dominated society.
60
In
periods of transition, the female role is uncertain and anomalous. In Kajiki
Go's interpretation of the novella, he writes that Furui chose to portray a
woman rather than a man sitting in the natural "womb" of the ravine
because women are closer to nature and, by inference, to their own bio-
logical processes. He also writes that girlhood is closer to nature; Yoko's
maturity into womanhood when she leaves the ravine coincides with her
identification with humanity (ningen) rather than with nature.
61
Kajiki's
statements underline the equation of the female with an unthinking na-
ture and the male with a higher human consciousness, a dichotomy that
privileges the male (and is at work in the narrative structure). They also
inadvertently support the notion that the female in Japanese society can
only be given definition when she can play the two roles considered im-
portant to the patriarchal structure, those of wife and mother. The effects
of hormonal and physical changes are not to be denied, of course, but
perhaps an equally dramatic and stressful aspect of these times of transi-
tion is the change in social expectations. The young woman is now ex-
pected to fulfill her clearly defined role. Moreover, this transition to adult-
hood is all the more traumatic because of the relatively protected up-
bringing children, especially girls, receive in Japan.
62
Conveniently, in conjunction with the maturing of her body,
Yoko's illness seems to be picking up on the social cues around her and
59. Nancy Ross Rosenberger, "Middle-Aged Japanese Women and the Meanings of the
Menopausal Transition" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1984), 223, and
Hasegawa Tadayoshi, "}osei no noiroze," in Ohara Kenjir6, ed., Noiroze (Tokyo:
Shibund6, 1972), 267.
60. Showalter, The Female Malady, 7.
61. Kajiki, "Furui Yoshikichi no Kongensei," 124.
62. Winston Davis, Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1980), 163.
y 6 k 0 169
preparing her for her prescribed future. The feeling of heaviness and thick-
ness in her hips and chest is accompanied by the following symptoms:
For example, when she put her hand behind her ear to smooth
her hair, she sensed somewhere in the movements of her own
hand the figure of a plump woman unconsciously bringing her
hand around to scratch an itchy spot on the nape of her neck
while she gossiped about someone. When she picked up a bowl
filled with rice, the hand holding her chopsticks took on the
white plumpness of the grains of rice and began to move hur-
riedly of its own accord as if it were somehow deeply embar-
rassed yet at the same time quite shameless. The feeling in her
hips when she stood up from the tatami, the feeling in her thighs
when she went down the stairs, the feeling of her hollowed
abdomen when she bent down to pick something up from the
floor-each and every action took on the feeling of a woman
who already seemed to have a couple of children. (89)
Yoko later specifies that this "other person," whose movements super-
impose themselves on her every movement, is her older sister. One de-
finitive symptom of schizophrenia, of course, is the sense that someone
else is controlling you. At first, however, the protagonist is mystified by
Yoko's reluctance to become like her older sister, who is supposedly cured
of the family illness. Becoming like her, he supposes, would represent a
happy ending for Yoko.
When he eventually meets this older sister on his first visit to
Yoko's house, the reality of this "happy ending" is disillusioning. His
first impression of her reminds him of the first time he met Yoko in the
city. Her body is pale and somehow insubstantial, although decidedly
feminine. She takes "painful, shallow breaths" just as if she were "still
suffering from the aftereffects of the summer heat" (123). This rather sickly
physical appearance is eclipsed by her behavior when she serves tea and
cake to Yoko and the young man in Yoko's bedroom. Furui details the
elaborate ritual she follows, not unlike a modernized tea ceremony, in-
volving a predetermined number of steps to the table, a set number of
strokes to wipe the table clean, and the cups and plates precisely set to
form a perfect rectangle. Afterward, Yoko is able to describe this ritual
perfectly, although she had been looking away the whole time. In fact,
this obsessive-compulsive ritual is reminiscent ofYoko's attempts to find
her way around downtown Tokyo. The sister's "cure" is really nothing
more than a redirection of the illness into the socially acceptable female
role of hostess.
Furui thus portrays the life of the "normal" housewife and mother
as a kind of sickness along the lines of Yoko's complex symptoms. The
housewife's duties in taking care of her house and family and keeping
up proper social appearances involve obsessive-compulsive repetitions.
CRITICAL C 0 M MENTA R IE 5 170
Her constant attendance to the needs of others represents the loss of self-
integrity experienced by the schizophrenic. Indeed, as Gilbert and Gubar
in The in the -:ttic, the housewife is always "haunted by
allen but fam1har vmces makmg demands at odds with [her] own inter-
ests."63 This is similar to Yoke's loss of self to the stronger forces of her
environment. Finally, the housewife's restricted, self-absorbed life leads
to paralysis and "housewife autism," to borrow Madoka Yoriko's label
for the neurotic behavior of the overly fastidious Japanese homemaker,64
little different from Yoke's situation as she sits alone in her deep ravine.
In fact, Furui describes the sister several times as shut up inside herself
and unresponsive, actually using the word jiheisho (autistic) (130). The
social situation of women thus has strong parallels to the experience of
madness.
65
If the life of a perfect housewife and mother is in fact a kind of
illness, then Yoko's desire to tremble forever on the borderline between
her madness and sanity must be seen in a different light. Either side of
the boundary represents a loss of something important. If she consents
to be properly socialized to the adult female role, and thus internalize
the male-dominated society's ideal of female behavior, then she loses the
ability for determining her own identity, as well as her status as a subject
who can return the gaze of the observing male, or what might be called
her "authentic self."
66
"Crouching inside her illness" is in many ways
just a distorted mirror image of the housewife role, as illustrated above.
Her difficulty in finding her way around the city alone represents a loss
of autonomy and a loss of a sense of direction, for as a young woman in
63. Gilbert and Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic, 449.
64. According to Madoka Yoriko, author of feminist self-help books and counselor at the
Niko Niko Rikon Koza (Divorce with a Smile Workshop), the same "problem that has
no name" that Betty Fried an described in The Feminine Mystique exists in Japan and is
on the rise. Madoka gave this problem a Japanese name: shufu shi5ki5gun (housewife
syndrome). Madoka provides an exhaustive list of psychological symptoms: listless-
ness, an inability to concentrate, feelings of alienation and isolation, loss of self-con-
fidence, alcohol dependency, and delusions. She writes that these symptoms do in-
deed resemble those of neurosis or depression. The typical medical profile of a neu-
rotic is of a methodical, fastidious, and serious (majime) person who lacks flexibility
and adaptability. Incidentally, this profile also perfectly describes the characteristics
one must take on to be a good housewife performing the same monotonous tasks day
after day. In other words, the housewife role itself is pathogenic, and the housewife
syndrome is "shufu de aru koto" kara kuru yamai (an illness that comes from "being a
housewife"). See Madoka Yoriko, Shufu shako gun (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1988), 265-
68. In fact, she implicitly equates womanhood with mental illness in her outline of
the adult life of a woman, as a series of stressful situations that may easily degener-
ate into "syndromes": for example, "housewife autism" in the thirties, "good-wife-
wise-mother fossilization syndrome" in the forties, and "jealous wife syndrome" in
the fifties. Rosenberger, "Middle-Aged Japanese Women," 350-51.
65. Showalter, The Female Malady, 212.
66. Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics, 119; Waugh, Feminine Fictions, 150.
y 6 k 0 171
Japanese society she literally has nowhere to go. She does have an abun-
dance of meaningless choices, however, such as which coffee shop to
patronize or which polo shirt to buy for her boyfriend. Her inability to
make these choices emphasizes the futility of doing so. The heaviness of
her body leaves her "powerless with nowhere to turn" (89). This illness
is different, though, in that it is hers, not a socially imposed one. Finally,
each option also involves extreme self-absorption and a potential loss of
perspective and balance. By hovering on the borderline, however, Yoko
can retain an intense awareness of both the socializing forces that op-
press her and the individuality her illness confers. Only then, as she her-
self states, can she feel truly alive (98).
Yoko makes a brave attempt to stave off the fate that awaits her
as an adult woman. We get a hint of her feelings in the park when she
banters with her boyfriend:
"With your poor sense of direction, when you kiss your
boyfriend, you probably can't tell where the lips are."
"My own lips? Or his lips ... ?"
"Let's experiment-you stretch out your neck from there
and try to touch my lips."
"Try kissing a butterfly in flight."
"One of these days I'll catch you."
''I'll turn to stone." Her tone of voice was innocent on the
surface, but there was a stirring of hatred in her eyes. (50)
Here Yoko compares herself to a butterfly, a beautiful, free, but short-
lived creature. The loss of freedom of the married woman is prefigured
in her threat to turn to stone when she is caught or trapped by a man.
67
Indeed, she intuits that her fate may be Madoko Yoriko's "good-wife-
wise-mother fossilization syndrome."
In the last chapters of the novella, her rebellion becomes more
focused. The symptoms of her illness now consist of locking herself up
in her room for days on end without even taking a bath. As mentioned
earlier, this refusal to bathe is an extremely radical statement in Japanese
society, where bathing is almost a ritual act of purification. Yoko is also
rebelling against a specific patriarch within that society: the memory of
her dead father, "a fastidious person" (127), who was upset when Yoke's
sister refused to bathe during her illness. When the protagonist learns of
this new turn of events, he instinctively realizes the gravity of her
67. See Annis Pratt's discussion of the "green world" of nature as a refuge for woman, a
natural realm that exists in opposition to patriarchal civilization (Annis Pratt, "The
Novel of Development," in Archetypal Patterns in Women's Fiction [Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1981]). The fantasy of the green world evokes the memory of
a girl's comparative freedom before puberty and allows her a supportive setting in
which to express her desire for an autonomous self.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R IE S 172
nonconformity: "'A young woman ... has gone without a bath ... for
five days.' These words alone suggested the most appalling filthiness in
the world. He was shocked at the force of combinations of simple words"
(120). This act in itself is enough to convince anyone of her madness, for
indeed, in the West as well, women's sanity has always been measured
by her conformity to strict standards of proper grooming and dress.68
H?wever,. Yoko. reminds him that he goes without bathing for days
Without d1sturbmg anyone when he goes mountain-climbing. No matter
how dirty she gets, she maintains, she is not "filthy" (122). She actually
becomes more comfortable with herself, and the young man is surprised
to discover that her body odor is not unpleasant to him. Furui is careful
to note that Yoko' s smell is not offensive. The young man smells "the
scent of a child locked up in a dark room-mingled sweat and tears ... "
(134). This seclusion in her room and her refusal to bathe represent Yoko's
conscious embrace of her unsocialized self, but this self is not threatening
or overpowering. Rather, it is associated with the purity of childhood,
self-centered and unconscious perhaps, but not stinking of worldly
corruption.
But Furui does more than hint at Yoko's feelings about her inevi-
table future in this scene. Her attitude toward her sister, who symbolizes
acceptance of the female role, is nothing if not explicit:
"No, I'm different from her. She is healthy. Her whole day con-
sists entirely of that kind of repetition. The way she walks down
the hall, the way she puts on makeup, the way she cleans the
house, the way she eats .... day after day, for the rest of her life
... she keeps at it so seriously, without the least bit of embar-
rassment .... That's what it means to be healthy. I can't stand
it, and I'm going to stay in here. Do you understand? You don't
understand, do you? The expression on your face ... " (139-40)
Again Furui complicates the definition of madness and sanity, for who
indeed is mad? The perfect housewife who has sealed up her illness un-
der a normal facade, or the young woman who refuses to deny an impor-
tant part of her identity? From this inner sanctum, Yoko is able to articu-
late what she had only expressed through her body before: the signifi-
cance of her own illness as a form of resistance to the madness of society's
demands. In addition, at this stage of her illness, Furui suggests that her
rebellion is by choice, for she states: "If I made up my mind to do it, it
would be easy to get well" (145). Although this recalls the popular no-
tion that mental illness is a result of the patient's stubborn refusal to ex-
68. Elaine Showalter (The Female Malady, 212) explains how doctors in mental asylums in
nineteenth-century England and America associated a female patient's interest in her
appearance with an improvement in her condition.
y 6 k 0 173
ert his or her will to recover,
69
in this context it reinforces the notion that
her own individual world of madness has some positive attractions in
contrast to what she refers to as "the horror of a healthy life" (134).
A Happy Ending?
Yoko does eventually decide to go into the hospital to get well and "make
the people around [her] more comfortable" (133). According to Yoko's
sister, the doctor had said the chance for a successful cure would be much
higher if the patient admitted herself to the hospital of her own free will.
In fact, although the protagonist is charged with the task of convincing
her to go, Yoko makes her decision against his wishes. Thus, from the
standpoint of the healthy sister and the medical establishment, the story
of Yoko's illness has a happy ending. However, resignation rather than
celebration marks the tone of the last scene. The young man is even ac-
tively opposed to the idea of a cure. Why does this happy ending seem to
be anything but happy?
A cure is a definitive ending on many different levels. It signifies
the end of Yoko's illness in its present form. Yoko comments that she
cannot go on as she is now. We might remember that the protagonist
does not want her to get better or worse, and he argues: "You can stay
the way you are now on the inside, and only follow along with what
ordinary people do on the outside." She replies: "You're a healthy per-
son, so you really don't understand the horror of a healthy life" (134).
Here the young man is suggesting that she do as most Japanese do, pre-
serve the hidden self behind a socially defined self. Yoko's illness, how-
ever, consists of a keen awareness of the fragile balance between the two,
and thus she cannot carry on an outwardly normal life, which she is all
too aware is "horrible." Furui does hint that "her true being," "the source
of her illness" (133-34), will remain unchanged inside of her, but it will
be blunted. In addition, the equation of her illness with the female com-
ing of age also means that she cannot go on this way-inevitably she will
pass completely over the borderline into womanhood.
The end of her illness also signifies the end of her superior per-
spective. Furui illustrates this in the final paragraphs of the novella. Yoko
and the young man gaze out over the landscape below from the window
of Yoko's room, that is, from her self-enclosed world:
69. Because human will is seen as the prime agent of success in weathering the vicissi-
tudes of a stressful life, in Japan a mentally ill person is popularly seen as lacking
willpower. Mental illness from neurosis to psychosis is often attributed to an inabil-
ity on the part of the patient to overcome his or her selfishness and to buckle down to
the requirements of proper social behavior. See Reynolds, Morita Psychotherapy, 99.
CRITIC A L C 0 M MENTA R IE S 174
The narrow road receded into the distance in a straight line
between the houses, and beyond, the autumn sun, tinged with
deepening shades of red, was just about to set over the sparse
treetops. Everything on the ground below was half warmed in
amber light, while deep shadows flowed stickily in the same
direction. Standing on the borderline between the natural and
the mysterious, each object was regaining a hushed tranquility.
"Oh, it's so beautiful. This moment is my peak," Yoko
murmured in a thin, clear voice. She was half talking to her-
self. To his eyes as well, all at once everything before him be-
gan to take on a look of boundlessness, which he would never
see again. (145)
Yoko's illness no longer situates her in a deep ravine but endows her
with a sweeping perspective of the light and darkness inherent in all
things. The setting sun enhances this vision and prefigures the darkness
of night. A "cure" will bring an end to the depth of perspective one
achieves while serving as intermediary between the natural and the mys-
terious. It is the moment before her cure in which Yoko finds the culmina-
tion of her existence. By implication, everything else is downhill: In or-
der to get well, she must relinquish her very self, an acute consciousness
of her own identity, and the nature of the world around her. Interest-
ingly enough, any shaman who experiences the call to take on this spiri-
tual role and the accompanying initiatory crisis, but refuses to accept
this challenge, is said to become mad.7 In contemporary Tokyo, as Yoko
discovers, the shaman's connection to hidden reality is too painful, and
there is no longer a social structure by which to validate the shaman's
communication with this other world. By choosing the medical"cure,"
which will dull her sensitivity, Yoko is in fact refusing the call, thus con-
demning herself to another kind of madness: the life of a normal woman.
In the passage quoted above, we might notice that the protago-
nist also possesses a momentarily heightened awareness of the bound-
lessness of the world below. At the same time this boundless vision is
accompanied by a sense of the limitations of time, for he realizes that
this experience, unlike life's daily rituals, can never be repeated. In fact,
as soon as Yoko tells him she will be cured, the young man is overcome
with sadness. He feels abandoned by her "state of extreme self-suffi-
ciency" (134). When she is cured, she won't need him any longer, and the
relationship will end. As we have seen, the relationship is closely linked
to her illness and becomes a kind of illness in itself. By abandoning her
illness, Yoko is abandoning her boyfriend as well. In the final sentence,
her body fades away from his touch until it is a mere shadow, perhaps
from a" distaste" (145) toward him, thus also ending her presence as the
70. Walsh, The Spirit of Shamanism, 48.
y 6 k 0 175
embodiment of his inner Otherness. This, too, fades away, and he is left
alone with nothing but a shadow of the drama that played itself out in-
side his own consciousness. Finally, the cure of Yoko's illness coincides
with the end of the story itself, and with the end of the protagonist's
connection to the passion of love and fresh way of seeing the world that
she brought into his life. Artistic creativity and literary self-expression
subside into a blank page.
Furui has transformed a supposedly positive event, the cure of a
severe mental illness, into a deep loss. Again, he turns the tables on what
seems to be a fairly clear value distinction: sanity should be preferable to
madness. However, Yoko now loses her special powers and her full iden-
tity; the young man loses the woman he loves and his conduit into the
hidden, magical world below the facade of ordinary existence. The im-
age of the cured madwoman as embodied in Yoko's sister is not an ap-
pealing one, supporting the contention of many feminist theorists that
when a woman does conform to her social role and becomes what soci-
ety defines as a "normal woman," this becomes a cause of, rather than a
cure for, mental illness.
71
In this first novella, Furui certainly challenges the validity of so
many distinctions by which a society defines itself. Is it possible that we
can refute Odagiri Hid eo's contention that the writers of the naiko no sedai,
with Furui in the vanguard, are so completely self-absorbed as to be apo-
litical?72 Furui's self-absorption,
73
as we have seen, is a conscious self-
absorption, an inquiry into what self-absorption is through an examina-
tion of the workings of human consciousness and the construction of
subjectivity, in relation to the power of Otherness both without and
within. Odagiri obviously did not see that the personal can be politicaF
4
By constructing Yoko's illness as he does, Furui turns one more distinc-
tion back upon itself: Yoko is not one madwoman, she is every woman
struggling for self-determination in relation to her lover and her family.
Furui's challenge to society is muted, however, so much so that
criticism of Yoko only rarely touches upon this element of the novella.
The novella is classified as a story of ill-fated love
75
rather than a story of
a failed effort of self-assertion, because, perhaps, the experience of the
71. Rigney, Madness and Sexual Politics, 5.
72. Odagiri describes the "introverted generation" as yasunjite jiko no naibu to nichijosei ni
okeru Juan ya higenjitsu no tsuikyii ni botti5 (contented to be absorbed in the pursuit of
the unease and unreality within the self and ordinary life) (Akiyama, "Nichijoteki
genjitsu," 376).
73. Furui describes Yoko's illness as jiko botti5 (69).
74. This one-time slogan of the feminist movement is fairly widely accepted as a truism
and thus is difficult to attribute to one person.
75. Nakaishi Tak.ashi, "roko-Furui Yoshikichi," Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kanshi5 38 (May 1973):
83.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M M EN TAR IE S 176
male protagonist is given primacy over Yoko's. Moreover, by depriving
Yoko of a mother and father, Furui avoids confronting the role of the
family in the socialization of women; only her father's heavy books are a
subtle hint of possible oppressive tendencies. Ultimately, he is unable to
conceive of a future for Yoko wherein she remains "ill." Like the pro-
tagonist in his interview with the sister, the author is able to pose the
question of how one decides who is sick or healthy, but he evidently feels
powerless to follow up his verbal challenge with any action. The sister's
insistence on her ability to distinguish the two, combined with evidence
of the presence of her innocent, normal children, makes the protagonist
feel "as if he were carrying Yoko's 'illness' in his arms with nowhere to
go" (130). The smooth continuity of the social structure represented by
the two children takes precedence over Yoko's right to be different. The
author of her story, too, literally has nowhere to go with it.
Masao Miyoshi writes: "The Japanese Bildungsroman is not so
much about the self's discovery of the self as the self's discipline of itself
into a production model hierarchically classified and blueprinted in de-
tail by society at large."
76
In the end, after leading his readers through
the frightening, chaotic, and sometimes lyrically beautiful world of mad-
ness, Furui falls back upon this model. Yoko's decision to be cured is, in
effect, an acceptance of the fact that she must lose herself in the adult
female social role of housewife and mother, and her illness becomes just
a symbol of the period of uncertain role definition that characterizes ado-
lescence in Japan. This quiet resignation tempers the energetic rebellion
that precedes it. However, the sense of sadness and loss pervading the
strange beauty of the landscape in the final scene suggests that Furui is
succumbing reluctantly to the inevitability of this ending, just as Yoko
and the protagonist resign themselves to a flat, monotonous future with
neither valleys nor peaks.
76. Miyoshi, Accomplices of Silence, xi.
UTHE PLAIN OF SORROWS":
THE LANDSCAPE OF DEATH
Introduction
As we have seen in Yoko, Furui employed the title character's mental
illness as a means to examine how identity itself is constructed. In this
story, the central character is diagnosed with terminal cancer, another
disease of rich metaphorical possibilities, and the confrontation with
death in turn serves as an impetus to examine the meaning of life. Can-
cer is an especially resonant illness in contemporary Japanese literature
for several reasons. The first is simple statistical evidence: In late twenti-
eth-century Japan, roughly one quarter of deaths are attributable to can-
cer,77 which is the primary killer of Japanese from the ages of thirty to
sixty-nine?
8
Second is the fact that cancer, like madness, is regarded as
taboo. Cancer in the family is a liability on the marriage market, and
until recently a diagnosis of cancer was carefully guarded from outsid-
ers and even the patient himself. The literary use of this disease, which is
shrouded in secrecy and silence, is yet another means by which an au-
thor can address the deep-rooted fears and fantasies of the culture. Fi-
nally, in Japan as well as the West, cancer has inherited the title of "Dis-
ease of the Age," and as such is seen to reflect the characteristics of the
time and attitudes toward death and life in general, in spite of the fact
that the disease is seldom discussed openly.
79
This symbolic power of cancer is most notably articulated by
Susan Sontag in her book, Illness as Metaphor. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney fur-
ther confirms the book's value to our discussion by her comment that
the attitudes toward cancer described in Illness as Metaphor show a strik-
ing similarity to those held by most Japanese.
80
According to Sontag, can-
77. David Sanger," A Fear of Cancer Means No Telling," New York Times, 20 January 1989,
p. A4.
78. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture in Contemporary Japan (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1984), 57.
79. Ibid., 69-70.
80. Ibid., 61.
CRITICAL C 0 M MENTA R IE S 178
cer is the disease of an advanced industrialized society. It is associated
with the middle class, urban life, affluence, and material excess.s1 She
points out that rich countries have the highest cancer rates, and. both
Japan and the United States certainly fit the profile on all counts. In con-
trast to her discussion of the nineteenth-century killer, tuberculosis, where
the patient was often seen to be sensitive and artistic-in short, the ideal
Romantic hero-cancer is seen as the disease of the modern antihero, a
passive creature disconnected from his feelings, repressing rage or guilt,
unable to form meaningful relationships with others.
82
An important el-
ement of Sontag's argument is the distinction between the metaphorical
value of a certain disease and the actual medical realities, for indeed,
myths concerning the type of person who suffers from a deadly disease
results in the faulty conclusion that the afflicted are personally, some-
how morally, responsible for their misfortune. However, in literature
where nothing is exempt from use as a symbol or metaphor, the "mys-
tique" surrounding a disease does have a bearing upon its function in a
work of fiction. Contemporary writers such as Furui, who are concerned
with such issues as the fragmentation of society, the alienating influence
of the urban environment, and the deadening of sensibilities through mass
culture and media, find the metaphorical connotations of cancer-the
enemy within us gradually and implacably devouring what is good and
healthy-very fruitful.
In Japan, moreover, the practice of not informing a cancer pa-
tient that he has the disease, common in the 1970s when the story was
written, further exacerbates the passive role he has been assigned.
Ohnuki-Tierney reports that only the most "well-adjusted," well-edu-
cated Japanese express a desire to be informed of a cancer diagnosis; most
Japanese share the opinion general among members of the medical pro-
fession that a patient is better off not knowing, that the average person is
not strong enough to live with the notion of impending death.
83
Even
Emperor Hirohito's diagnosis of cancer was kept secret from the patient
and the public until after his death.
84
However, by withholding this in-
formation, the cancer patient is denied the chance to come to terms with
his own death and his own life. The cancer patient is a passive victim not
only of his disease, but of society's own discomfort with terminal ill-
ness. 55 In literature, however, knowledge of one's death still remains the
more interesting alternative. Thus, it is noteworthy that in "The Plain of
Sorrows" Furui allows the cancer patient to be aware that he is dying.
81. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor, 14.
82. Ibid., 21.
83. Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture, 65.
84. Sanger, "A Fear of Cancer," p. A4.
85. Ohnuki-Tierney, Illness and Culture, 69.
The Plain of Sorrows 179
This knowledge gives meaning and dignity to the character's subsequent
actions throughout the story.
A Multilayered Narrative
"The Plain of Sorrows" is the story of a man who knows he is dying of
lung cancer and finds that he must resolve his guilt over his younger
sister's suicide before he can face his own death. Indeed, until the o s ~ t
of his illness, the man was unable to explore this darker side of his life to
its fullest. Thomas Mann, who also had lung cancer, writes that disease
and genius are of the same currency:" ... something comes out in illness
that is more important and conducive to life and growth than any medi-
cally guaranteed health or sanity ... certain conquests made by the soul
and mind are impossible without disease, madness, crime of the spirit. "86
As we shall see, the protagonist in "The Plain of Sorrows" possesses all
three of Mann's requirements at one time or another throughout the story.
The pain in his body and the knowledge of his impending death lead the
protagonist on a journey of the soul, a journey that passes through mad-
ness and uncovers a crime of the spirit. Cancer in this story allows its
victim the opportunity to confront his death and examine his life.
As in Yoko, the opening line merits careful study because it offers
important clues to the overall theme of the story: '"I was standing on the
plain, the wind blowing all around me,' my friend whispered in a strange
voice. 'At my age, I should have known better.'"
87
After a complete read-
ing of the story, we can see that three important aspects of the story are
incorporated into this single line. First, the narrative structure of the story
is revealed in the frame of the quote: The narrator of the story is report-
ing the utterance of a friend, which sounds odd to him, but at the same
time the friend's voice, quoted in the first person, resonates throughout
the story. Second, the content of his speech introduces the central image
of the story-a windy plain-which plays a complex symbolic role in the
"friend's" personal confrontation with death. Third," At my age I should
have known better" represents another sort of reaction to a certain death,
or in other words, the friend's mature, public response, one that takes
account of others around him and how his odd behavior has affected
them. This may be seen as a shorthand for coming to terms with death, a
rational response that nonetheless rests on the irrational experience that
preceded it. The story that follows is a complex, often ambiguous tale,
86. Quoted in Enid Rhodes Peschel, ed., Medicine and Literature (New York: Neale Watson
Academic Publications, 1980), 148.
87. Furui Yoshikichi, Aihara (Tokyo: Bungeishunju, 1977), 7. Henceforth, quotes from the
story will be referenced in the text.
C R I TIC A L C 0 M M EN T A R I E S 180
riddled with flashbacks and dreams. Nonetheless, this first line serves as
a sort of simplified and condensed version of its overall dynamic.
"The Plain of Sorrows" is so densely constructed, it would be
impossible to touch upon every skillful image and every insight into the
human psyche. Therefore, I have chosen to discuss in general terms the
three aspects of the story that are suggested in this opening line: thenar-
rative structure and the role of the narrator, the image of aihara, or "the
plain of sorrows," and the process by which the protagonist comes to
terms with his death and the important moral dilemmas of his life dur-
ing the seven days he spends sequestered with his mistress.
The narrator of "The Plain of Sorrows" tells the story in the privi-
leged third person; that is, the narrator himself does not directly witness
or participate in the central activities of the story, but as the intimate
friend of the dying protagonist, he is privy to the confidences of the char-
acters who do. More than just a sympathetic listener, the narrator pro-
vides the viewpoint of the careful, sane observer and the outer frame for
deeper and more dramatic levels of the story. He maintains distance from
the symbolic, irrational world represented by the plain of sorrow, and,
thus, he can see the characters and their story with a healthy dose of
common sense, although finally this proves detrimental. Through this
narrator, Furui allows us to participate in the story on two levels: We
may listen to the tale with some distancing skepticism as the narrator
does, or we may participate more directly in the experiences of the dying
man and his mistress.
The first several pages of the dying man's story are shaped pri-
marily through the narrator's secondhand experience. He receives phone
calls in the middle of the night from a friend who describes odd experi-
ences, confesses to terrible crimes, and intones Buddhist chants from the
twelfth-century collection of popular lyrics, the Ryojin hisho. The
narrator's response is typical of a man rooted firmly in the rational world.
"It must have been a dream," he responds in aizuchi, the noncommittal
tone of the Japanese listener affirming his presence rather than express-
ing any active opinion. For the narrator, the world of nighttime dreams
is a common and unthreatening way to categorize this apparently non-
sensical talk. Furthermore, the rowdy sounds of a drinking establishment
in the background reassure him that his friend is most probably drunk.
Thus we see that he endeavors to make sense of this disembodied voice
by providing it with a "reasonable" context that explains away its dis-
turbing and mysterious qualities.
The narrator's outsider status is underlined by the fact that dur-
ing the first part of the story he receives all of his information in frag-
ments by telephone. After a second midnight call, his friend's wife calls
to inform him that her husband has not returned home for two days, and
The P l a in of So r r o w s 181
that he has been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer. The narrator at-
tempts to become more directly involved by offering to meet his friend
in a bar, but he is rebuffed. Finally, his friend relates by telephone his
decision to return home. The next day, the narrator receives yet another
early morning call from a woman who reports she has been caring for
the disturbed man for the past week. For the moment, the narrator merely
tells her that the man has returned to his wife, but thanks to her call he
has now discovered the man's whereabouts during that time. At this point,
we have a sort of synopsis, as it were, of the protagonist's actions, through
the narrator, with only hints of the intense and frightening nature of his
ordeal
The narrator then visits the dying man in the hospital. His friend
is in good spirits and seems to concur with the common-sense opinion
that his experience was probably a dream. Here we see the dying man at
peace with himself, but also extremely aware of his public responsibili-
ties. This is evident in the way he discusses his illness with an interest-
ing blend of frankness and indirection, in keeping with the taboo sur-
rounding cancer. To his wife he presents a set of written instructions on
what to do after his death, thus minimizing the amount of direct discus-
sion of the matter. Then he "admonishes" her tenderly: "Let's stop hid-
ing things from each other now. We already understand what we must,
so there's nothing more to say. We'll hide nothing in our silence" (10).
This apparent paradox of revealing everything through silence enables
him to maintain a calm exterior, for as he later states, he considers hiding
his pain an expression of love.
The man then goes on to discuss his illness with his friend in a
rational tone. Here as well, he describes his symptoms in terms that sug-
gest he has some kind of future, much to the narrator's discomfort and
confusion. When the dying man explains that his life has undergone its
final transformation and will move into a harmonious old age, wrapped
around the core of his terminal disease, it finally becomes clear to the
narrator that the man's hope and serenity are not based on ignorance.
With the explicit mention of "terminal disease," even the narrator can no
longer suppose that the protagonist is deluded about his fate. Rather, his
friend is actually speaking a different language; in his mind the concepts
of life and death and silence and expression seem to blend together. In-
deed, he has even transcended the boundaries of gender, appearing al-
ternately like an old woman, a young girl, and a dependable father. The
narrator retreats into the role of observer and searches for an explana-
tion of such a disinterested attitude toward one's own imminent death:
Knowing that he was terminally ill, was he speaking so
nonchalantly in front of a healthy person in order to calm his
bitterness and fear? Or had he already crossed beyond concern
CRITICAL C 0 M MENTA R IE S 182
for his own life and death? Or did his calm exterior belie inner
turmoil, had his sense of reality been stripped from his con-
sciousness along with his fear? (13)
As the story later confirms, all of these suppositions are accurate to some
degree. The first and the third suggest again that the man is hiding his
own suffering for the sake of others, the fourth supposes a kind of mad-
ness. At this point, the second is perhaps the most fitting: The protago-
nist has indeed gone beyond the reality of the living to a place where he
is i n t i m ~ t with his death. As we soon learn, however, this rationality
was achieved as a result of much suffering.
Furui next gives the narrator and the reader a chance to witness
the protagonist's journey toward this state of calm acceptance, by means
of the account of the woman who was there with him during those seven
days. The woman's intimate confession to a man she has just met, even
though he may be her lover's confidante, seems somewhat contrived.
Soon, however, we are drawn into her story, which forms the dramatic
center of the narrative, dominating the remaining two-thirds of the work.
Her story provides context for the telephone calls the narrator received.
Just as he was puzzled by these strange calls from nowhere, she, too, was
struck by the bizarre behavior of her lover making calls in the middle of
the night. More importantly, her story brings the narrator one step closer
to the dying man's confrontation with death, not only through her obser-
vations, but through her reports of the reminiscences her lover shared
only with her. Thus "The Plain of Sorrows" consists of layers of narra-
tive: the sane confidante who listens, the woman who was an intimate
caretaker, and the dying man himself who speaks through her. As such,
the woman serves as a kind of intermediary, a role the female often plays
in a Furui story. Here she mediates between the two friends. Through
her words, the ordinary experience of one is touched by the extraordi-
nary psychological ordeal of the other.
However, the narrator's reactions to this woman serve to create
a distance between them as well, for she seems to belong to a world of
different rules. In this sense she and her lover are similarly mystifying,
and as such are a fitting couple. The narrator is well aware that over the
years his friend has had short affairs with women who passively accepted
their fate, and his disapproval of his friend's behavior is clear at one point
when, moved by the woman's selflessness, he says to her, "Aren't you
just letting yourself be used by him?" (15). Yet the woman herself does
not seem to think so, and as we shall see later, the relationship performs
a greater service for her-a deeper understanding of herself and the op-
portunity to come to terms with her own mother's death.
The narrator's role as uncomprehending outsider is most clearly
evident in the final scene of the story. The woman has finished her report
T h e P I a in of So r r o w s 183
of the events of those seven days, and it becomes clear that she is un-
aware, at least on the conscious level, that the protagonist is dying. In-
stead the woman thinks that her lover had gone insane for a short while,
but this exposure of his madness to her was an act of the deepest inti-
macy (21). The narrator decides that he will not tell her about the cancer,
but he is unable to control his face under her perceptive gaze, and he
blurts out the news. The woman's reply, "What a terrible thing to do!"
(33) is ambiguous at first, because it is unclear whether it is the narrator
or the lover who has done something terrible. Yet a closer consideration
of the situation suggests that her remark is addressed to the narrator,
who for once has broken out of his role as listener and become directly
involved in the course of events. The narrator feels compelled to tell the
"truth," but there is a discrepancy between his factual truth and the
deeper, psychological truth shared by the woman and her lover. With his
help, the woman finds herself able to draw back from death and serenely
inhabit the world of the living. The knowledge of the imminent death of
the man who helped her would cast a different light on those seven days
and draw her toward death rather than away from it. The protagonist
knew this and thus withheld the information as an expression of his love.
The narrator's awkward injection of "common sense" into her fragile
psychological equilibrium reveals the limitations of this "normal" point
of view, as well as his unbridgeable distance from the world of the two
lovers.
A Mythic Blend of Time and Space
Like Yoko's ravine, the "plain of sorrows" of the title is a psychological
as well as physical landscape, representing the portal through which a
dying man passes into the land of the dead. The protagonist's descrip-
tion of his experience on the plain opens the story, and the image reap-
pears again with any mention of the death of a member of the man's
family. Finally, the climax of his seven days with his mistress takes place
in an actual grassy field. This technique of employing a specific, concrete
place to express a complex psychological state is typical of Furui stories.
The plain of sorrows is a projection of the protagonist's internal confron-
tation with death, but it is also a stage upon which he is able to act out
his psychic drama.
In chronological time, the protagonist relates to his mistress that
he first heard mention of the place called "the plain of sorrows" from his
younger sister not long before she committed suicide:
"Wasn't there a place called 'The Plain of Sorrows' near
our house? Just a little while ago, in a dream, I went to a dark
plain by that name-and remember when our mother was sick,
CRITIC A L C 0 M MENTA R IE S 184
once she slipped out of bed to the field in the back? Well, I was
crouching down and crying just as she did."
[The man] replied, "There was no such place near our
house. You must be very tired. You must take care of yourself."
"I will," she said. "But my dream wasn't all bad. I felt as if
someone was promising to take over for me now that I'd come
this far, promising me I was no longer alone." (19-20)
At that time, ten years before, the protagonist belonged to the world of
the healthy, and he merely regarded his sister as odd. However, by the
time he has been hospitalized for cancer, he is thoroughly familiar with
that dark plain and uses it freely to signify death in his family (11). His
exchange with his sister indicates that his association between death and
the plain blown by the western wind is a revision brought about by his
own intimacy with death, just as she recalled her mother's behavior when
her own death was near. Knowledge of this plain of sorrows comes only
to those with the heightened sensibilities of the dying.
The opening image of the story provides us with the most com-
plete subjective experience of the plain of sorrows. The protagonist is
walking on a vast grassy plain. The lighting is confusing: At first he says
it is night, but then time seems to flow backward into dusk, and nothing
but a bluish, murky light hangs between earth and sky. Above all, this
setting does not follow the laws of the natural world. It is wet without
rain, the ground is brighter than the sky, and the man can feel strange
objects under the grass brushing against his feet. As the wind blows the
grass, it gleams with a pale light. The man's body, too, becomes pale and
transparent and flows with the grass into infinity. The man likens him-
self to a fox spirit who casts off human form and human attachments and
bounds away into the grass (7-8). Thus, death brings the protagonist in
contact with his personal and cultural past, as Furui employs elements
of Japanese folklore and traditional concepts of death and the afterlife
within his own landscape of fresh and modern symbolism.
Of the three stories in this collection, "The Plain of Sorrows"
draws most explicitly from the Japanese past. In Japan's complex hetero-
dox religious tradition, Shinto celebrates life and the natural world, while
Buddhism deals with matters related to death and the afterlife. Thus it is
only natural that the dying protagonist constantly invokes Buddhist im-
ages and ancient superstitions, such as the "unlucky age" (yakudoshi),S8
to the surprise of the friend who knew him in more cynical days. Are-
curring motif is the protagonist's recitation of songs concerning the tran-
sience of life from the late Heian-period Ryojin hisho (Songs to Make the
Dust Dance on the Beams), Emperor Go-Shirakawa's collection of poems
88. Forty-two for men, the age of the protagonist in the story.
The P I a in of So r r o w s 185
and songs of the common people, in an era when Buddhism was rapidly
being popularized by the Pure Land sect. This chanting also harkens back
to his memories of childhood, when his grandmother taught his sister to
intone Buddhist chants in times of distress. In some respects, the windy
plain itself recalls Amida's western paradise as well. The man is being
blown toward the west, which is suffused with a purple glow, the color
traditionally associated with the Pure Land. As his physical form dis-
solves, the man also gives up ego and attachments to attain release from
the suffering of this world, a major goal of the Buddhist faith. Images of
paradise blend neatly with the reference to a staple of Japanese folklore,
the sudden transformation, or rather reversion, of a human being into a
fox spirit. While most fox spirits take the guise of a beautiful woman,
here the man imagines himself in the role of the spouse who will sud-
denly disappear, leaving his human partner with nothing but memories
of a life that was only an illusion.
However, the image of the plain of sorrows has a foundation in a
more ancient Japanese past, extending as far back as the eighth-century
Nihon shoki (Chronicles of Japan). Commissioned by an imperial family
interested in consolidating its power and justifying its reign, Nihon shoki
traces Japanese history back to the age of the gods. The creators of the
Japanese archipelago, Izanagi and Izanami, are parted when Izanami dies
in childbirth. Izanagi follows her to the land of the dead, but is horrified
at the pollution of her putrefying body. He flees and she pursues him in
rage. He is able to block her way at the place that forms the borderline
between the land of the living and the land of the dead, the Level Pass of
Yomi. This is the first instance in Japanese literature where the temporal
transition from life to death was represented on a spatial plane.
89
In his
study of the spatial structure of Japanese myth, Nakanishi Susumu writes
that ancient people "conceived of death as both a spatial and temporal
transition. In the lives of ancient people, time and space often blended to
the point of fusion."
90
Thus death became a journey in both time and
space. Furui's plain of sorrows represents a similar reification of the
confrontation with mortality into a particular place. Yet, at the same time,
by evoking parallels to the mythic past, his character transcends a specific
time, specific place, and individual identity to partake of a universal
experience.
The climax of the story takes place on this mythic plain of sor-
rows, on the last night of the week the man and his mistress spend to-
gether. What brings them to this place is a repetitious, ritualistic dance,
89. Nakanishi Susumu, "The Spatial Structure of Japanese Myth: The Contact Point Be-
tween Life and Death," in Earl Miner, ed., Principles of Classical Japanese Literature
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 106-7.
90. Ibid., 108.
C R IT I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R IE S 186
which fuses time and space by representing the approach to death as a
journey through a city neighborhood. The man is sleepwalking, and he
makes his way without any exercise of conscious will because it is the
progress of his cancer that propels him to this place. The woman, how-
ever, is aware of what she is doing, although she, too, is able to follow
him by instinct. When she sees her lover crossing a street before her, she
finally realizes that the two of them are going around and around with
measured steps on the same circular path. This path, of course, leads to
the plain of sorrows, to a place on the border between life and death. As
we shall see below, the woman was treading that very same path toward
an early death by suicide, a more conscious choice, and also a likely rea-
son that she and the protagonist were drawn together in the first place.
It is significant that when she enters this vacant lot, the woman
suddenly feels her dead mother in her body. Separated from her mother
at the age of six, she has no rational memory of her, but now she cries
with thankfulness that she had finally begun to connect with her mother.
The protagonist, his younger sister, and the woman all feel this connec-
tion with those who have died before them when they enter into this
place. Moreover, the feeling is specifically physical-a way of crouching,
or weeping, a feeling approaching nostalgia that is rather like a physical
ache (11). This emotional union with the dead is thus also expressed in
concrete form.
At this point, myth and modern reality are somewhat at odds.
The actual plain of sorrows is narrow and dirty. It is bounded by barbed
wire and littered with piles of broken concrete and red clay, abandoned
appliances, and organic refuse, in spite of a sign forbidding such dump-
ing. The strange objects under the protagonist's feet in his "dream" now
become someone's discarded junk, and dusk becomes dawn, but the sub-
jective experience described during the midnight phone call and this scene
merge, as we realize that Furui equates the stage for the most profound
human psychological drama with a vacant lot used as a dump while
waiting to be sold, the ultimate marginal urban landscape. Izanami was
stopped at the Level Pass of Yomi, the protagonist's dying mother es-
caped to an agricultural field behind the family house, but the protago-
nist must wander through a sterile development of concrete apartment
buildings to a garbage dump encircled by barbed wire. Present through-
out the story is an undercurrent of tension between Japan's traditional
past and the alienated existence of the city dweller living far from his or
her ancestral home. A man afflicted with cancer, the disease of modern,
urban society, most appropriately confronts his death in such a setting.
In a taidan with Ogawa Kunio, Furui outlined the metaphorical uses of
landscape in his stories: The plain is where modern people conduct their
scattered, diffuse lives; in the mountains one can distill one's experience
The P l a in of So r r o w s 187
and regain the essential elements of human experience.
91
The plain of
sorrows is the place of ultimate diffusion, but, of course, on this level
one can find comfort and liberation as well.
Distillation of a Life
The protagonist's journey to the plain of sorrows changed him irrevoca-
bly and enabled him to come to terms with his own death by attaining a
sort of premature but serene old age. At the borderline of life and death,
the man not only looks forward to a different existence but reflects back-
ward over his personal past. Furui distills this examination of his life
into one particular failing he hopes to redress. Our first hint of the na-
ture of this failing occurs early in the story during one of the phone calls
to the narrator. The agitated protagonist accuses his friend of commit-
ting a terrible crime, but the narrator correctly interprets this accusation
of murder as self-directed. The mistress's tale makes it clear that the man
carried a burden of guilt over his treatment of his younger sister. In their
childhood, he teased her and was even driven on to cruelty by her pas-
sive acceptance of her fate. Teasing in childhood turned to neglect in
adulthood. When his sister attempted to confide her loneliness and de-
spair over her failure to maintain a relationship with a man, he dismissed
her with the cold, common-sense advice to simply give them up for good.
Ten years before the story takes place, his sister committed double
suicide with a married man. From that time on, her brother constantly
sought to atone for his failure to love and care for her enough, first by
marrying a woman like his sister, and then by seeking out mistresses
who resembled her. His relationships with these women had strong fra-
ternal overtones. He was kind and caring, and he taught them to respect
themselves. However, once he had opened up enough to confide to them
that he had a younger sister, the relationship ended. Unable to maintain
meaningful relationships, driven by repressed guilt, the protagonist cer-
tainly fits the profile of the cancer personality as outlined by Sontag. But
just as his nocturnal wanderings finally ended at the plain of sorrows,
this space also marks the fulfillment of his debt to his sister.
Before his illness, the protagonist had avoided probing deeper
into his guilt over his sister's death, and he only seemed comfortable
with a limited confidence: Apparently once he told each mistress about
his sister, the exposure of his guilt was enough to bring the relationship
to an end. However, in the face of imminent death, this unfinished busi-
ness demands a resolution, which comes about during the seven-day
period the protagonist spends in the apartment of the woman who closely
91. Furui and Ogawa, "Buntai to seikatsu," 228.
CRITICAL C 0 M MENTA R IE S 188
resembles his sister-in fact, in a fit of delusion, he seems to regard the
woman as his sister come back to life. Significantly, it is the man's "mad-
ness," or his confusion of his mistress for his sister, that eventually brings
him peace.
It is interesting to note that the protagonist seeks more than ra-
tionalization to excuse his role in his sister's death. At one point, he blurts
out to his lover, "I killed my sister" (24). The woman first takes a rational
approach as she tries to soothe him, but he keeps insisting until, tired
and vanquished, she concurs, "You killed her." It is at this point that the
protagonist suggests that they die together, and she agrees. Here he is
actively creating a situation wherein the woman promises to die in ex-
actly the same way that his sister did-by double suicide with a married
man. He is in fact recreating the situation that led directly to his sister's
death. Somehow, this reenactment brings about a new connection with
his sister and with it an understanding of her motivations: She did not
want to live to be older than her mother was when she died. This insight
enables the protagonist to formulate a course of action to redress his
wrongs. His next utterance reveals that he has separated this woman from
his sister at almost the very moment they had converged into one. "'This
woman will live until she is conscious that she is older than her mother.
She will live even longer than her mother,' he said, now speaking to him-
self" (26). The dying man will soon have the opportunity to save this
woman, and thus symbolically, his sister, from a premature death.
Let us return to the scene on the plain of sorrows on the sixth
night of this period. The woman had followed him to the place where
man and woman meet death and attain reunion with their long-dead rela-
tives. The man is crouching in the vacant lot with a puzzled look on his
face, and he does not respond to her when she beckons to him to come
out. Furui writes: "At that moment, she did something that surprised
herself. Pulling open the collar of her robe, she showed him the swelling
of her breasts under her pajamas." The man gets up immediately as if
blown by the wind, comes over to her and closes her robe, murmuring,
"You mustn't catch cold" (31). From that moment on, he is rational and
completely in control of himself, but most of all he is tender and caring
toward the woman, making her rice gruel and stroking her hair while he
chants songs of the sort his sister probably sang as a child. The following
day, the protagonist completely assumes his responsibilities by return-
ing home to his wife and children.
What was it about the woman's action that startled the man from
his reverie? Why did the wind blow him out from the plain rather than
suck him farther onto it? The answer may lie in the sort of vow he made
that this woman would live-her action not only made her vulnerable to
the chill of the night air, it was also a maternal sign, a reminder of the
T h e P l a i n of S o r r o w s 189
mother figure who seems to draw her daughters onto the plain of sor-
rows. By saving this woman from a premature death, the man is repay-
ing the karmic debt he incurred by ignoring his sister's predicament. With
the conclusion of this critical drama in his life, he can break free from the
repetitive rituals of life and accept his death with calm resignation.
Conclusion
In this story, we see how Furui draws upon his culture's fantasies and
fears about cancer, but ultimately transcends them. Furui's protagonist
suffers from cancer, the disease of the modern age and a symbol of death
itself. True to the realities of Japanese society, the people around him are
uncomfortable discussing the diagnosis of cancer, but the author does
not deprive his character of the knowledge that he is going to die. Rather,
the story explores how the character deals with this knowledge. As we
have seen, a man in intimate contact with death experiences the world
around him in a different way. A terminal disease seems to enhance his
faculties so that he can see, feel and even express an alternate reality,
hence the distance between the healthy narrator and his dying friend.
In keeping with the idea of cancer as the disease of a rich, indus-
trialized society, Furui locates his cancer patient in an urban environ-
ment, an abandoned lot, which serves as a junkyard, or a hospital room
crammed with the paraphernalia of modern technology. However, it is
the Japanese agricultural past and images of unspoiled nature that prom-
ise some way of coming to terms with death. In "The Plain of Sorrows,"
the protagonist hallucinates that he walks toward death across a vast
windy plain, shedding his physical form and psychological attachments
as he goes. Only in this nonurban setting can such profound psychologi-
cal dramas be resolved.
While this setting functions as an implicit critique of the emo-
tional barrenness of urban society, the resolution of the story also serves
as a subtle critique of the fragmentation of the modern world. The pro-
tagonist finally resigns himself to death by finding new connections with
other human beings and by transcending the apparently irreconcilable
boundaries between madness and sanity, the dead and the living. Furui
situates his story on this borderline and then attempts to create a bridge
between the two realms through intermediaries, in this case the dying
man and his mistress, who share their extraordinary experiences with a
narrator rooted in the ordinary. "The Plain of Sorrows" creates a land-
scape, prefigured in the title, where the experience of death is ultimately
defined in terms of connection rather than separation. In spite of the in-
herent gloom of the subject, Furui's stories of cancer transform crisis into
a kind of tranquil completion.
f/THE DOLL": THE POWER OF THE PAST
"The Doll" serves as a fitting conclusion for this collection because it
reiterates Furui's main themes while bringing his attitude toward the
power of the Japanese past in modern life into sharper relief. While
premodern Japan played an important part in "The Plain of Sorrows,"
"The Doll" can be read almost as a cautionary tale of the consequences
of the protagonist's rejection of the traditional family and the traditional
female role. We will recognize elements from the other stories-an or-
phaned girl, a questioning of identity, and a descent into madness-but
in this case each element reflects back to a single cause, the severance of
the individual from the family system. As such, this story may be Furui' s
most conservative commentary on Japanese society. The costs of the loss
of family that we see in this story highlight Furui's less obvious treat-
ment of this issue in the other stories as well.
"Not a Real Life"
"The Doll" opens with the familiar Furui trademark, one sentence that
encapsulates the essential elements of the story. The three major themes
include the hometown in the country, the doll (which functions as a rep-
resentative of home and the past in the city), and the protagonist's prob-
lematic and fluid identity. Also evident is a third-person narration, which
focuses on the thoughts and feelings of the protagonist, Ikuko. With one
significant exception at the end of the work, when "objective" outsiders
provide a different perspective, Furui gives us the inside story of a
woman's mental breakdown; we experience the gradual development of
doubt and paranoia along with her.
The type of character Furui chooses as the protagonist for this
journey into the modern psyche is illuminating. Like the main charac-
ters in the other stories, Ikuko is confronting important transitions in her
social role and her personal life: She exists in an in-between state. First
of all, we learn in the first pages of the story that Ikuko is around thirty,
and indeed those strangers who see something familiar in her seem to be
,,'i
.itf.

'
C R IT I C A L C 0 M MENTA R IE S 192
of a similar age. For the youth culture of the 1960s in the United States,
the age of thirty represented the gateway into a stuffy adulthood, bur-
dened by responsibility. For somewhat different reasons, Furui, too, seems
to set the age of thirty as a significant boundary, a sort of entrance into
early middle age or adulthood proper. Ikuko feels herself "moving into
(female) middle age" (anna no chunen)
92
as she tries to decide between
her two lovers, an anxiety that plagues most unmarried Japanese women
past twenty-five, who have become bargain-priced "Christmas cake."
Indeed, Ikuko's age is significant precisely because she is not yet mar-
ried and comfortably ensconced into the proper roles of wife and mother
along with most of her peers. We might also recall that the early thirties
represent the "unlucky years" for women in Japan, a period that corre-
sponds to the beginning of early middle age for both sexes in that soci-
ety. Thus we see a preference throughout Furui's stories for these am-
biguous moments in the life cycle. Yoko stood poised on the brink of
sexual and social maturity, and both Ikuko and the mistress in "The Plain
of Sorrows" represent another kind of marginality because they remain
single in spite of social pressure. All three are aware they face an uncer-
tain future. Nonetheless, as David Pollack observes, the more "interest-
ing" characters in Japanese fiction are those who have not settled into
one of the established roles in life, because after they do, their lives be-
come static and predictable
93
as they become subsumed into that role.
Furui's women are neither static nor predictable.
Yet he makes it clear that Ikuko is unmarried by choice, not for
lack of opportunity. In fact, she is carrying on two love affairs simulta-
neously, which may not be considered unusual for a man in Japan but
suggests a certain unconventional streak in a woman. Ikuko's affairs,
however, are not of the passionate kind. Rather, they emphasize the un-
committed emotional state that mirrors her social status. She finds both
men attractive, but:
Her body and mind had come to rest at a point between
them, without any of the usual pain or sense of being sepa-
rated from one or the other. She felt a sort of paralysis as if she
were floating suspended beyond any kind of relationship, and
she gazed doubtfully at their kind jealousy of each other. They
both seemed too good for her. (305)
Ikuko obviously has no real emotional investment in either of her lovers
and feels no need to choose one of them in order to establish a more
92. Furui Yoshikichi, "Ningyo," in Furui Yoshikichi sakuhin, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kawade shobo,
1983), 305. Henceforth, quotes from the story will be referenced in the text.
93. David Pollack, Reading Against Culture: Ideology and Narrative in the Japanese Novel
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 113.
The Do 11 193
traditional male-female relationship. She is "suspended beyond" any true
human connection: thus her realization that her lovers' commitment is
an unfair exchange for her detached perspective, or" gaze," that acknowl-
edges their jealousy. Ikuko's objective gaze also allows her to analyze
herself as a" cold -hearted person" (304) who is uncomfortable with other
people.
Ikuko's situation is further delineated by her physical location,
as we might expect in a Furui story. She lives in a tiny, constricted apart-
ment in a "desolate" and "newly developed neighborhood" (304) on the
outskirts of Tokyo, much like her counterpart in "The Plain of Sorrows."
According to her childhood friend, Hiro, the train line that serves this
suburb ends somewhere in the mountainous wilderness. Thus she in-
habits the borderland between city and unspoiled nature, a place where
the past can coexist with the present for a few magic moments of illu-
sion. Because of its uncertain boundaries, this realm is also a place that is
hard to pin down. Ikuko herself has a hard time remembering her ad-
dress, a hard time telling people where she is located. This spatial uncer-
tainty is echoed throughout the story by her difficulty in settling the ques-
tion of who she is as well.
In the broadest sense, Ikuko occupies a socially marginal space,
as a character who resists identification with the traditional female role.
Furui hints that she never liked playing with dolls, an activity associated
with "normal" young girls throughout the ages. Her disposition is cold
and calculating, strong and stubborn, as illustrated in her relationship
with her uncle. Ikuko is able to challenge her uncle's authority far more
effectively than her male cousins, and she also fills a more traditional
male role as her uncle's drinking companion better than they do. In fact,
her uncle treats her more like an equal than he does any other member of
the family. She keeps her distance from marriage, the main source of adult
female legitimacy, several times rejecting her uncle's attempts to arrange
a traditional marriage for her. Finally, and most importantly, she attempts
to solidify her emotional independence by the legal act of leaving her
uncle's guardianship and establishing herself as the head-of-household
of her own residence in Tokyo. Furui suggests that she makes this deci-
sion to refute her uncle's accusation that her life as a working woman in
Tokyo, apparently partially subsidized by money from him-the "help
of others"-is "not a real life" (304). The definition of "real life" (omae ga
Tokyo de yatte iru koto wa seikatsu de wa nai) is at issue here. Ikuko's situa-
tion defies neat categorization, as the examples above illustrate, but does
all of this then constitute an "unreal" existence? By plunging his charac-
ter into a world where her face becomes a shifting mask, a doll becomes
her seer, and a ghost her lover, Furui seems to be answering this ques-
tion in the positive. Ironically, for the strong and rebellious Ikuko, it is
!
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R I E S 194
her bold act of will to legalize her independence that severs her from her
sense of identity and her sense of reality. It is at this point that the story
begins.
The Hometown in the Country
Ikuko's desire for independence, her stubbornness, and her vaguely bo-
hemian single life in the city seem to add up to a portrait of the modern
Japanese woman. However, Furui constructs the story so that most of
what is "real" or essential in Ikuko's consciousness is integrally linked
to her family and her past. With the exception of a few flashbacks, most
of the action of the story takes place in Ikuko' s small apartment, or in the
trains and subway stations most city dwellers frequent daily. The home-
town in the country is nonetheless a steadfast presence in Ikuko's mind.
Many Tokyo residents have families in the country, as the crowded
trains at Bon and the New Year attest, and thus Ikuko is not unusual in
this regard. Yet in other ways, her family situation is not exactly typical.
Her mother died when she was nine; we find the scenario of the mother-
less girl in all the stories in this collection, from Yoko to the mistress and
the younger sister in "The Plain of Sorrows." Ikuko's father remarried,
but her stepmother could not abide the girl's willfulness, and thus Ikuko
went to live with her father's elder brother, who spoiled her like a daugh-
ter but eventually clashed with her over her unconventional lifestyle as
she grew to adulthood. The traditional family is thus distorted for sym-
bolic purposes. The loss of the mother is very significant, especially since
this theme is reiterated throughout Furui's work. It represents a loss of
nurturance and love, a loss of the heart of the family. Modern women do
not have mothers to guide them or to pass on female traditions and mys-
teries. The mother's early death deprives these characters of their right-
ful maternal inheritance, and, indeed, we might see a connection between
this and the characters' reluctance to become mothers themselves.
lkuko's emotional if not legal adoption by her uncle provides an-
other interesting twist. As the eldest brother, her uncle would be the head
of the main branch of the family, or ie, which would take legal and social
precedence over the father's branch. Ikuko's stronger relationship with
her uncle thus emphasizes the importance of the traditional Japanese fam-
ily system, which takes precedence over her ties with her biological fa-
ther. In fact, Ikuko's relationship with her uncle is far more emotionally
charged than those with any other person, including those with either of
her lovers, who remain minor, interchangeable characters:
She remembered the sensation she felt deep in her nose when
her uncle slapped her face. At that point, she hated her uncle
The Do I I 195
with all her heart. Her uncle took on all of her hatred. And so,
until now, she had never seriously hated anyone else. Even with
her lovers, the relationships had ended with no hatred on her
part. (305)
Ikuko moves through her daily life as if she were sleepwalking, and her
encounters with her lovers leave little impression. Yet the memory of her
uncle's violent response to her impudent self-assertion is vivid and "real."
Their bond is forged by anger, familial love, and the gratitude of a lifetime.
Furui further underlines the fact that family ties prevail over ro-
mantic dalliance when Ikuko recalls her lovers' comments on her expres-
sion before they kiss her:
Without a doubt, the moment before a man's lips touched hers,
Ikuko was far away, recalling various faces. Her uncle's face,
her parents' faces, her younger brothers' faces, her cousins'
faces, the bleary-eyed face of an old woman someone told her
she was related to when she saw her on the street one day, then
again, the face of her mother on her deathbed, a face that con-
tinued to change every moment. All of these faces overlapped
one another and melted into a single face. Then an expression
suddenly appeared on the face: pale, as if from the depths of a
dark room, with eyes closed in agony. When she tried to focus
on it, it grew faint and hazy. The man's lips fearfully pushed
hers open, and she wondered whom he thought he was em-
bracing, who was embracing her .... (308)
At the moment of close physical intimacy, Ikuko is drawn back into the
collective as a parade of relatives files before her eyes. Even the hazy
image of a distant relative, the bleary-eyed woman, has more power over
her consciousness than the face of her lover right before her, poised for a
kiss. The face she does eventually see is not her lover's but her own hazy,
pained face. Sexual intimacy involves a blurring of personal boundaries,
but Ikuko is not reaching out to become one with her lover, she is turn-
ing inward to become one with her natal family, a line that stretches back
into the distant past.
This is the powerful legacy that Ikuko attempts to thwart through
her decision to register a household in her own name. Her resolution to
become "truly independent" (304) means she must also reject her uncle's
financial help. Once this decision is final, however, Ikuko immediately
begins to pay a psychological price. She leaves her uncle's house, pre-
sumably for the last time, burdened by an awkwardly large doll box. On
the train home she sleeps fitfully, plagued by a nightmarish stinging sen-
sation all over her scalp. This signifies in physical terms the pain of tear-
ing herself away from her kin.
CRITICAL C 0 M MENTA R IE S 196
When the actual paperwork establishing her residence is accom-
plished the next day, Ikuko's world begins to fall apart. She finds herself
separated by "a thin film" (305) not only from her surroundings but from
her own actions and gestures:
It was then that the things and people around her she was ac-
customed to seeing each day seemed somehow different. They
seemed to be just slightly disengaged from reality. But she at-
tributed this to her own fatigue. That very evening was the first
time she was mistaken for someone else. (305)
The cause-and-effect relationship could not be made more clear. By cut-
ting herself off from her family, Ikuko must face Tokyo as a single indi-
vidual, and this in turn causes her to question what constitutes her self
in its most essential form.
Furui gradually guides his protagonist to a point of fundamental
self-questioning through a series of scenes in which she is mistaken for
someone else or vice versa. This familiar theme also appears in "The Plain
of Sorrows," although the idea of a fluid, multiple self plays a greater
role in "The Doll." In each case, these repeated cases of mistaken iden-
tity occur at a period of crisis for the subjects, a moment when their com-
placency about their daily lives has been overturned. The mistaken strang-
ers thus force the characters to question their own identities.
The first time Ikuko is mistaken for someone else, she can easily
dismiss it as a fluke, particularly because the man who mistook her only
glimpsed her from a distance through a crowd of subway commuters.
With each successive case, however, Furui intensifies the encounter and
varies the details enough to cause Ikuko deepening anxiety. The second
time it happens a man is looking her full in the face as he calls her by a
different name; lkuko cannot escape the realization that her general ap-
pearance at least is shared by another. The third time, it is a woman who
waits for Ikuko to recognize her, and so by broadening the range of mis-
taken strangers to include women as well as men, the sexual element of
approaching someone on the street is discounted. Finally, Ikuko's own
female friend, who should be very familiar with her appearance, mistak-
enly thinks she spots lkuko somewhere in the city when Ikuko herself
knows she was in bed with her lover at that very moment. Each incident
alone might be easily dismissed, but the relentless repetition of such en-
counters, with slight but significant variations, wears away lkuko's sense
of a secure identity. The first encounter barely makes an impression, but
by time she hears her friend's story, even Ikuko is ready to be convinced
that she was somewhere she was not.
Ikuko complains of her anxieties to the doll sitting on her dresser,
clearly sensitive to the significance of her experience:
T h e D o I I 197
"I've been mistaken for other people four times in a week, and
the people who mistook me looked so incredibly shocked when
I told them they were wrong. So, who am I anyway? Am I not
just me, myself, not just a single person anymore? Lots of dif-
ferent me's must be walking around out there. You're a doll, so
you understand things like that, don't you?" (300-301)
What this series of encounters brings about, then is a loss of control over
the self she thought she was defining by means of her break from her
family. It is others, be they strangers or friends, who define Ikuko's iden-
tity, so that other selves may indeed be walking around the city, as long
as someone else sees her face there. Nonetheless, her question, "So then,
who am I anyway?" seems to suggest that the willful lkuko is searching
for some part of herself that is not so defined by others, a part that re-
mains unchanged.
Yet, Furui informs us that it is only when she is mistaken for some-
one else that Ikuko loses her sense of detachment, and that the barrier
that separates her from others falls away. At that point:
She felt as if she had suddenly come to her senses and was look-
ing around. However, she was not returning to her own self.
!\ather, it was the sensation of returning to a realm where dis-
tant memories dwelled. She didn't know her own face. She
seemed to have a face that could belong to anybody. She felt
she was looking in the mirror when she looked at the people
around her. Every face looked as if it were somehow taking on
the various features of a doll. She heard a voice in her ear say-
ing, "Look carefully. You can surely find the faces of your dead
parents among these faces that you see." (305-6)
The first incident that unsettles her sense of self paradoxically becomes a
moment when she feels most aware and alive. It is significant, however,
that it is not "her own self" with which she feels connected, but her past,
her dead parents who dwell beyond the border between life and death,
and even the Japanese community as a whole. It is the loss of "her own
self" that brings a sense of connection and, to some extent, peace. She is
not the only individual with a fluid identity, for she, too, can project her
own face onto others, if she will relinquish the idea of a discrete, indi-
vidual self. Objectively speaking, of course, losing one's sense of self,
searching for the faces of one's dead parents among the people in the
street, and hearing strange voices whispering in one's ear remind us of
Yoko's schizophrenia. Like Yoko's illness, these delusions serve almost
to force lkuko to acknowledge what is "real" in her life, her family, and
her memory, and what is false, namely the illusion of complete indepen-
dence. Once more, the strength of the familial bond is revealed even to
Ikuko's disordered mind.
CRITICAL C 0 M MENTA R IE S 198
The Doll on the Dresser
Ikuko's only confidante during this trying week when she gradually loses
her grasp on reality is a large, pretty doll her uncle gave her as a parting
gift. As the title suggests, this doll serves as a potent symbol in the story,
both as a focus for the protagonist's anxieties and as a calming presence
for her.
The doll is a complex legacy, for it represents a personal family
past and a communal female past. The storehouse where Ikuko's aunt
takes her to choose a doll also harkens back to a time and place where
wealthier families could afford to build a separate, fire-proof building to
preserve their treasures. Thus the storehouse serves as the literal reposi-
tory of family tradition. Because windows were primarily added for ven-
tilation, the lighting is suitably dim when Ikuko examines the dolls, giv-
ing the scene an otherworldly quality. The storehouse is a space sus-
pended in time, a place where dolls can come alive.
Presented with her first choice, a small dress-up doll, Ikuko pon-
ders the nature of the relationship between dolls and girls thoughout the
ages. For the young girl, the doll is sometimes a playmate, sometimes a
surrogate child; her calm, stylized face is the ideal of feminine beauty.
An antique heirloom doll has the added significance of having been
passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter, a repetition that
weaves the very fabric of tradition. In the hazy light of the storeroom,
Ikuko is drawn into the time-worn female pastime of projecting her own
"endless dreams" (301) onto the doll when she considers the ageless quali-
ties of the doll compared to her owner. This of course ties in directly with
her own anxieties about approaching middle age and her mother's death
at thirty. Her realization that a woman's life is nothing more than a single
night's dream to a doll suggests the transcience of human life, a peren-
nial theme in Japanese literature.
We also see in this first encounter with the white-faced antique
doll a foreshadowing of Ikuko's problem with an uncertain identity. The
constantly shifting expressions of the dress-up doll mirror her changing
outfits. It is the beholder who defines the doll, and this unsettles Ikuko,
who herself is searching for a fixed, independent identity. Moreover, dolls
are usually made from molds, and so multiple copies-that is, multiple
selves-exist in unknown places out in the world. Later, when she is con-
stantly mistaken for others, Ikuko, too, will become a kind of dress-up
doll and share the sense of selves splitting off and wandering around
Tokyo.
Ikuko declines the offer of the doll through her typical strategy
for maintaining her distance-a strategy she uses with her lovers as well-
by claiming with dubious modesty that the doll is "too good" for her
The Do II 199
(302). But the better doll is not "too good." When her aunt pulls out the
larger, lifelike doll, Ikuko is entranced. The doll's initial appeal is that
she has "a definite existence of her own" (302), something Ikuko craves
and admires. Then she feels a kind of physical union with the doll, a
recognition of the doll's girlish body in her own. This kind of intimate
connection is rare in Ikuko's life. The most compelling attraction, how-
ever, is that she "began to feel that if she had this doll with her, she would
still be loved by someone" (302). In this way, Ikuko transforms the gift of
an object into the symbol of her uncle's love, a love he has been unable to
express directly in words, but one that reassures her nonetheless. Given
that one of her uncle's primary means of expressing his love is through
financial support, it is appropriate that the doll is also very valuable,
worth thousands of dollars.
Ikuko accepts the doll, but it almost immediately takes on the
more complex qualities of familial love by becoming an awkward bur-
den to carry back to Tokyo. With typical independence, Ikuko chooses to
carry all of her luggage herself, and so the annoyance of transporting her
uncle's gift distracts her from "indulging in sentimental feelings of part-
ing" (303). Back in Tokyo, she discovers that the beautiful antique doll is
far too charming for her cramped, dreary apartment. Here Furui shows
that Ikuko' s decision to continue to display the doll is not sentimental.
Ikuko is not a "doll person" by any means. But soon after she returns
from her uncle's, she begins to regard the doll as a friend with whom she
can share her woes, even to the point of neglecting her lovers. She cer-
tainly projects a humanity onto the doll, just like young girls who play
with their dolls for hours on end in a fantasy world. To Ikuko, the doll
has the ability to smile, look stern or mischievious, or shift her gaze at
will. Her growing intimacy with the doll parallels her estrangement from
the "real world" and her sanity. The protagonist is so caught up in her
meditations on the strangers that project an identity onto her, however,
that she never acknowledges that she herself is projecting her hopes and
fears onto the doll. This is made most plain when the ghostly face of
Hiro becomes one with the doll's.
As suggested above, it is appropriate that Ikuko discuss the is-
sue of individual identity with a doll that would understand the prob-
lems involved. Unsettled by her encounters on the street, Ikuko addresses
the doll:
"Hey, can you please help me? What kind of face do I have?
Who am I? How many of me are there? Where are they all?
What does my, I mean our, true face really look like?" (307)
It is interesting to note that she is intimating that she and the doll share a
"true face." In counterpoint to her attempt to establish an independent
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R I E S 200
legal identity, Ikuko seems to be drawn toward a universal face, without
gender, age, or individuality. This is a doll's face, a face that takes shape
in her mind as she is riding the subway, a face that forms in her mind
before she kisses her lover. She feels her own face losing its distinctive
features and becoming a "meaningless type" (306), that is, a doll's face
lacking a loving owner to endow her with humanity. In this way as well,
the doll serves as a focus for Ikuko's endless fears as well as her endless
dreams.
Another of these fears is Ikuko' s anxiety about death. Furui makes
an implicit connection between dolls, madness, and death by juxtapos-
ing images and memories to suggest that madness and severance from
the family precede death. The link is first suggested rather subtly in the
storehouse when Ikuko wonders if a woman might grow so insanely at-
tached to a doll and so jealous of her immortality that she would seek to
bring the doll with her in death. At the same point in the story she also
wonders if her own mother had imagined the face of the dress-up doll as
she was dying. Later we learn from a vivid memory of her youth that
Ikuko' s mother may have been mentally disturbed before her death. She
was a mother who did not pay attention to her daughter, but rather sang
to herself "in a low, hoarse voice" (308). It may also be significant that
the mother's strange behavior occurred after a visit to her natal home, a
visit somehow so disturbing that she sobbed all the way back to the sta-
tion. Like the mistress in "The Plain of Sorrows," Ikuko seems to be fol-
lowing in her mother's footsteps through madness to an early death.
Ikuko finally grows to believe that the doll holds the unspoken
answer to the unspoken question of her future. One evening, several
weeks after her return, she notices that the doll's gaze seems to be direct-
ing her attention to something in the distance. That something, Ikuko
decides, is reflected in the doll's eyes. The next evening, Furui brings
Ikuko's madness to a climax in an elaborate blend of fantasy and para-
noia. After all, what else could the shiny, lifeless eyes reflect but a dis-
torted image of Ikuko's own face?
"A Land in Her Memory"
The conclusion of "The Doll" brings Ikuko' s past and present together in
a ghost story within in a story that is both chilling and darkly humorous.
As a type of folk literature, the ghost story itself serves as a reminder of
a traditional agrarian past. Thus the visitation of her childhood friend
Hiro can be seen as yet another example of the blending of the personal
past with the communal past of supernatural tale-telling. Furthermore,
ghost stories are often cautionary tales that warn of the eternal conse-
quences of misdeeds, or of the illusory nature of reality, as in the tradi-
T h e D o I I 201
tion of the fox spirit stories. Ikuko's ghostly visitor teaches her that the
past coexists with the present if one only makes the correct turn down a
city street, or takes the commuter train to its final destination.
Furui chooses a commuter train at night as the setting for Ikuko's
meeting with her friend. It is significant that this ordinary trip horne some-
how seems different this night: It reminds her of that strange train ride
with her mother not long before her mother's death. Furui then cleverly
builds upon the growing tension that arises from the series of incidents
of mistaken identity earlier in the story. This takes a final twist when
Ikuko is approached by someone who actually does know her. Both Ikuko
and the reader are used to dealing with her unpleasant encounters with
strangers, and so we share her surprise and relief when she is called by
her real name and she feels "tears springing to her eyes as if she had
finally been saved" (309). Hiro, the young man who recognizes her, is a
childhood friend literally "from a land in her memory" (309). His remark
that Ikuko "hasn't changed a bit" reveals that he can see beyond her thirty-
year-old face to the inner part of her being that has not changed with
time; thus only he has found the essential part of her that is not subject to
the influence of others. This recognition is what finally "saves" the pro-
tagonist from a complete loss of self. Ironically, we later learn that this
person who actually recognizes her, the person who knows her back-
ground and cares for her with the innocent affection of a bond formed in
childhood, is no longer among the living.
Hiro has crossed the border between life and death from the other
direction to visit Ikuko. In keeping with Furui's literary geography, this
ghost dwells in the mountains, at the end of the train line in a remote
region. Even in the city, however, there are apparently neighborhoods
one can tour with the proper ghostly introduction. Hiro takes her to a
bar tended by an old woman Ikuko feels she has seen somewhere before,
no doubt back in her hometown years before. Perhaps she is the "bleary-
eyed" old woman Ikuko sees before her lovers try to kiss her. Once again,
by creating a whole city block from a different time and place near Ikuko' s
apartment for just one night, Furui provides concrete scenery for the
protagonist's inward journey.
Like most ghosts who visit their friends in the world of the liv-
ing, Hiro has more insight into Ikuko's problems with identity and inti-
macy than her worldly friends. First, he recognizes her resemblance to
her real mother, a likeness that extends beyond the physical to include
her fragile mental state. This is a special, intimate knowledge, because
unlike her city friends, Hiro knows how Ikuko fits into a family group.
Second, when he stops by her apartment, Hiro is fondly indulgent when
he sees her small room; as in both of the other stories, this woman's room
is closely linked with her self. Third, Hiro gives the doll a voice. He an-
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R I E S 202
swers the question of what lies at the end of her gaze and reminds us of
Ikuko's reluctance to be intimate with her lovers when he becomes the
doll and invites her to look into his eyes and kiss him. The coldness of
the kiss is the shock that brings Ikuko out of her fantasy. It is also an
intimate taste of death itself.
Immediately after Ikuko awakes from her dream, the narrative
shifts to the omniscient third person, making the reader aware just how
much we have identified with Ikuko thus far. This shift allows us to look
at Ikuko from the outside; it also casts Ikuko's delusion in a rather hu-
morous light. After her unusual adventure, Ikuko steps out of her ordi-
nary routine, much like the dying man in "The Plain of Sorrows," and
calls in sick to work. In contrast to her dreamy fatigue of the night be-
fore, in the morning her voice is "unusually clear and crisp" (311), as if
her madness is indeed a form of superior sanity and self-knowledge. Then
we hear a different version of that night's events from the husband of
Ikuko's friend, a reliably objective source. From his point of view, the
ghostly sake bar becomes a vending machine on the street corner; again
like the protagonist in "The Plain of Sorrows," Ikuko's mind has obvi-
ously transformed an artifact of a consumer society into an eerie room
from a land in her memory. To the friend's husband, Ikuko' s confronta-
tion with her past and with death becomes an overindulgence of alcohol.
The contrast between the "sane" viewpoint and the insider's "mad" ex-
perience is amusing, but the latter is undeniably richer. Furui also em-
ploys the mistaken identity theme yet again: From the outsider's view,
Ikuko is denying to an actual acquaintance that she is herself. Does this
mean then that the earlier cases of mistaken indentity were likewise inci-
dents of Ikuko's refusal to be the person others want her to be? This casts
a vague doubt over her earlier encounters. Perhaps her grasp of reality
was already weak with her first encounter. At the same time, this doubt
draws us closer to the realization that all identity-perhaps even our
own-is fluid.
The point of view shifts again back to a cool-headed Ikuko, some-
time in the future, recalling her actions of those days, and then again to
the friend who takes care of her. First Ikuko remembers how she broke
off relations with both lovers, telling them she was going back to her
lover from long ago, as if she plans to travel to a place where she can
enjoy Hiro's chilly embrace. Following this, Ikuko's behavior reminds us
quite strongly of the dying man's actions in "The Plain of Sorrows." She
doesn't bathe or groom herself, a telling symptom of female mental break-
down she shares with Yoko, and she immerses herself in the game of
mistaken identity, or rather takes on the aggressor's role, by approach-
ing strangers as if they were friends. There is the sense that this ordeal is
the prelude to death, by suicide perhaps. Ikuko retains enough rational-
T h e D o l I 203
ity, however, to tell her friend to call her uncle, thus reaffirming her bond
of dependence on her family.
The uncle rushes to her side and proclaims his diagnosis of the
situation. He too remarks on her resemblance to her mother's haggard-
looking appearance before her death. Then he focuses on the presence of
his gift in the room. In the predictable Furui style, a simple concluding
statement captures a more complex theme. The doll, the symbol of fam-
ily and the evanescence of human life, is too strong a presence for the
small, isolated space that shelters Ikuko. This lack of balance is mirrored
in Ikuko's loss of mental balance, and indeed, we will recall that her real
problems began when she brought the doll back from the country. In keep-
ing with the duty of the head of household, the uncle claims responsibil-
ity for this mistake. At the same time he reclaims Ikuko into his care. He
may also have averted her suicide, a step that has symbolized both the
ultimate act of self-destruction and the ultimate act of self-assertion
throughout Japanese history. For Ikuko it would have meant both the
final severance from her worldly family and her final union with the more
numerous family members in the world beyond. With her uncle's inter-
vention she is saved, but her experiment with independence is at an end.
This basically conservative conclusion might remind us of Yoko' s
decision to "get well" and the dying man's return to his family to dis-
charge his duties as husband and father with courage and grace. Furui's
"mad" characters take a journey through the world of the irrational, but
inevitably return to the community of the "sane." This homecoming is in
keeping with the approach of Japanese psychotherapies, namely Morita
and Naikan therapies, which emphasize the patient's acceptance of
"things as they are" (aru ga mama). A successful recovery is signified by
the patient's ability to adjust his or her prescribed role within society at
large.
94
In this context, it is hard to discount Ikuko's ordeal as a punish-
ment for her resistance to the adult female role as it is defined by her
society. Indeed, ironically, as a result of her search for legal legitimacy as
an adult by becoming her own head-of-household, she is reduced for a
time to a kind of childish obsession with a pretty doll, a childishness she
should have outgrown but for her selfish willfulness. Independence for
her brings a loss of identity and reason; salvation lies in a reintegration
with her family.
Moreover, the past cannot be overturned by an individual's deci-
sion to break away. Everything that is "real" in Ikuko's life is linked with
the past, even if its existence is spiritual rather than material. Her life as
a single working woman in Tokyo resembles sleepwalking; her sense of
94. Margaret Lock, East Asian Medicine in Urban Japan, Comparative Studies of Health
Systems and Medical Care, no. 4 (Berkeley: University of California Press), 224.
C R I T I C A L C 0 M M E N T A R I E S 204
the wealth of material goods around her is hazy. Her final fantasy shows
how important the past remains to her sense of identity, and how much
the past is alive within her, for she realizes that Hiro knows her far better
than either of her lovers. This also reminds us that characters in the other
stories have found themselves, sometimes unwittingly, reverting to un-
conscious rituals and behaviors that derive from a psychological family
legacy. Yoko follows in her sister's footsteps, Ikuko and the mistress find
themselves becoming the mothers they never really knew, and the dying
man is drawn to seek out a gateway to death like his mother and sister
before him, all the while humming Buddhist poetry a thousand years
old. Furui's urban landscapes crisscrossed by train lines may seem at
first to have obliterated Japan's premodern agrarian society, but just as
madness lies close beneath the surface of the ordinary lives of the people
who inhabit this space, tradition, ritual, and family bonds that transcend
death maintain deep roots beneath the concrete, awaiting a time of crisis
to reemerge with new vitality. In spite of certain "progressive" elements
of Furui's social critique, particularly the attention he draws to the con-
straints of the female role, his stories reaffirm the hidden power of tradi-
tion in modern life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Furui Yoshikichi was born in 1937 in Tokyo. He received both a bachelor's
and master's degree in German literature from Tokyo University, and after
graduation he spent several years as a university instructor, publishing trans-
lations of the works of the Austrian writers Hermann Broch and Robert Musil.
By the late 1960s his own work was being widely published in major literary
magazines, and in 1971 his novella YOko (translated as the lead work in this
collection) won the Akutagawa Prize. Furui has also won the Nihon Bungaku
Taisho (1980), the Tanizaki Prize (1983), the Kawabata Yasunari Prize (1988),
and the Yomiuri Prize (1989).
Furui is generally regarded as the leading writer of the naiko no sedai,
"Introverted Generation," a group of Japanese novelists who made their de-
. but in the early 1970s and who focused on the apparently unremarkable dra-
mas of ordinary people, but, in so doing, undertook a search for the extraor-
dinary, the "unreal" and irrational that lurks beneath the surface of everyday
life. Furui' s concern with the inner life, the very mechanics of perception,
cognition, and memory through which we create subjective reality, contin-
ues to be apparent in his later works.
Today, twenty-six years after he won the Akutagawa Prize, Furui
has taken his place as one of the senior members of the literary establishment
and serves on the committee that awards the prize to the current generation
of talented young writers. Yet he remains virtually unknown in the West.
This translation of YOko, Aihara ("The Plain of Sorrows"), and Ningyo ("The
Doll") make the work of this important contemporary writer available to an
English-reading audience.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Donna George Storey received her Ph.D. in Japanese Literature from
Stanford University in 1993 and has been a Visiting Assistant Professor
in Japanese Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1994.
In addition to the present volume, she has translated several articles for
scholarly works and has written the entry on Furui Yoshikichi for the
Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century.