Blue Bamboo: Tales by Dazai Osamu (4 page)

As autumn advanced, all of Sainosuke’s chrysanthemums burst into beautiful bloom. Satisfying as this was, he couldn’t help wondering how his neighbors’ flowers had fared, and finally one day his curiosity got the best of him and he decided to peek over the fence. What he saw left him agog. The other half of the garden was ablaze from end to end with the largest and most spectacular blooms Sainosuke had ever seen. And that wasn’t the only surprise. The shed had been rebuilt and was now a charming and cozy little cottage. This was hardly a sight to soothe Sainosuke’s soul. Not only were his own chrysanthemums no match for Saburo’s, the upstart had gone and built himself an elegant little home. No doubt he’d made a small fortune selling his mums. It was an outrage! Determined to teach the youth a lesson, he scrambled over the fence, his heart wracked with an insufferable mixture of righteous indignation and envy. Close up, Saburo’s mums were even more impressive. The flowers were blooming for all they were worth; each individual petal was extraordinarily long and thick and vibrating with life. Adding insult to injury was the fact that, as Sainosuke soon realized, the plants were none other than the worthless seedlings he’d discarded behind the shed. He let out a gurgle of despair, and just as he did so a voice called to him from behind.

“Welcome! We’ve been waiting for you to drop by.”

Flustered, Sainosuke spun around to see Saburo standing there, grinning at him.

“You win!” he nearly shouted in frustration. “I know when I’m beaten, and I’m man enough to admit it too. Listen, I’m... I’m here to ask you to take me on as your apprentice. Everything that’s passed between us...” He paused to unload a great sigh of relief. “It’s all just water under the bridge. We’ll let bygones be bygones. However, I—”

“Wait. Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say. I’m not a man of your moral fiber. As you’ve probably guessed, I’ve been selling off the chrysanthemums little by little. Please don’t look down on us for that. My sister is always fretting about what you’ll think, but we’re only doing what we need to do to survive. Unlike yourself, we have no inheritance to fall back on—it’s either sell the mums or die of starvation. Please be so indulgent as to overlook that, and let us be friends again.”

The sincerity of Saburo’s plea and the sad droop of his head melted Sainosuke’s heart.

“Don’t be silly,” he said meekly, and bowed. “I’m not worthy of your apology. I feel no enmity toward either of you. Besides, I’m the one who’s asking you be my teacher. If anyone should apologize, it’s me.”

And so they were reconciled, at least for the time being. Sainosuke dismantled the fence in the garden, and the members of the two households resumed relations, although, to be sure, conflicts still arose now and then.

“You must have some secret to raising these mums.”

“Nothing of the sort. I’ve already taught you everything I know. The rest is in the fingertips, but that’s where it gets a bit mysterious. I simply seem to have a certain touch, and since it’s something I’m not really conscious of, I can’t very well teach it to you in words. It’s a genius of sorts, I suppose.”

“Oh, I get it. So you’re a genius and I’m a nincompoop. Right? Not much hope of teaching anything to a nincompoop, right?”

“You needn’t put it like that. Let’s just say that my life depends on getting the best blossoms I can. If they don’t sell, I don’t eat. Perhaps that’s why the flowers grow so large—because I’m driven by necessity. People like you, on the other hand, who grow mums as a hobby, are motivated more by simple curiosity, or the desire to satisfy their pride.”

“Oh, I see. You’re telling me I should sell my mums too, is that it? Do you really think I’d stoop so low? How dare you say such a thing!”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Why must you be this way?”

The relationship, in short, lacked a certain harmony.

As time went by, the Tomotos’ fortune only increased. When the new year came along they hired a team of carpenters and, without so much as consulting Sainosuke, began construction of a sizable mansion that extended from the rear of the garden to within an inch or so of his cottage. Sainosuke had just begun to consider severing relations again when, one day, Saburo came calling with a pensive and serious expression on his face.

“Please accept my sister as your bride,” he said somberly.

Sainosuke could feel his cheeks burning. From the first time he’d laid eyes on the sister he’d been unable to dispel that image of tenderness and purity from his mind. But, true to form, his manly pride now forced him to launch into a queer sort of argument.

“I can’t afford a betrothal gift, and I’m not qualified to take a bride like her anyway. You’re rich people now, you know,” he said, hiding his true feelings behind the sarcasm.

“Not at all. Everything we have is yours. That was how my sister intended it to be from the beginning. And there’s no need to worry about a betrothal gift. All you have to do is move in with us, just as you are. My sister is in love with you.”

Sainosuke shook his head, trying his best to feign composure. “Not interested. I have my own house. You won’t catch me marrying into money. Not that I have anything against your sister, mind you,” he said, and laughed in a way that he hoped sounded cavalier. “But to marry for money is the greatest shame a man can bring upon himself. I refuse. Go back and tell your sister that. And tell her that if she doesn’t mind living in honest poverty, she can come move in with me.”

Thus they parted once again on less than amicable terms. That night, however, along with a gentle breeze, a delicate white butterfly came fluttering into Sainosuke’s room.

“I don’t mind living in honest poverty,” she said with a giggle. Her name was Kié.

For a while the two of them passed their days and nights within the confines of Sainosuke’s ramshackle cottage, but eventually Kié opened a hole in the rear wall and another in the adjoining wall of the Tomoto mansion, allowing her to go freely from one to the other. And, to Sainosuke’s great dismay, she also began to bring along whatever furnishings or utensils she needed.

“This won’t do. That brazier, that vase... all these things are from your house. Don’t you realize how it sullies a man’s honor to use his wife’s possessions? I want you to stop carting this junk over here.”

Kié would only smile when he scolded her like this and continue to bring the things she needed. Sainosuke, who fancied himself a man of incorruptible integrity, finally resorted to purchasing a large ledger in which he wrote: “This is to acknowledge receipt of the following items, to be temporarily retained by the undersigned.” He started trying to list every article Kié had brought from the mansion, but found to his chagrin that there was now nothing in the cottage that didn’t fit that description. Realizing that he might fill any number of ledgers without completing the task, he gave up all hope. He continued to resent what was happening, however, and one night he turned to Kié and said: “Thanks to you I’ve ended up being a kept man. To acquire wealth through marriage is the greatest disgrace a man can suffer. For thirty years I’ve lived in noble, honest poverty, and now it’s all been for nothing, thanks to you and that brother of yours.”

The bitterness in his voice stung Kié’s heart, and she looked at him sadly and said: “It’s all my fault, I suppose. It’s just that I wanted to do everything I could to find some way to repay you for your kindness. I’m afraid I didn’t realize how committed you were to that honest poverty of yours. Let’s do this: We’ll sell all my things, and the new house as well. Then you can take the money and use it any way you like.”

“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped at her. “You think a man like myself would accept your filthy money?”

“Well, then, what is to be done?” There was a sob in Kié’s voice. “Saburo, too, feels a great debt of gratitude to you. That’s why he works so hard to get money by growing the mums and delivering them all over town. What are we to do? We just don’t see eye to eye on this at all, do we?”

“There’s only one thing we can do: separate.” Sainosuke’s own high-minded pronouncements had backed him into a corner, and now he found himself having to utter these painful words, which were nowhere in his heart. “Let the pure live in moral purity and the corrupt in corruption. There’s no other way. I’m not qualified to order anyone else about; I’ll leave this place to you, build a little hut in the corner of the garden, and pass my days enjoying the solitary pleasures of honest poverty.”

It was all quite ridiculous, but once a man has spoken there’s no turning back. First thing the following morning Sainosuke slapped together a little lean-to in the corner of the garden. He moved into this tiny space that night and sat there on his knees, shivering in the cold. After he’d spent a mere two nights enjoying his honest poverty, however, the freezing temperatures began to take their toll, and on the third night he stole back to his cottage and tapped lightly on the rain shutter. It opened a crack and Kié’s fair, smiling face appeared.

“So much for moral purity,” she said with a giggle.

Sainosuke was deeply ashamed. From that night on, not a single obstinate demand would ever again escape his lips.

By the time the cherry trees along the Sumida River began to bloom, construction of the Tomoto mansion was complete. It was now connected to the cottage in such a way that there was no distinction between the two. Sainosuke, however, offered not a word of complaint. He left the household affairs entirely up to Kié and Saburo, and spent his days playing Chinese chess with friends from the neighborhood.

One day the three members of the household set out for the Sumida to view the cherry blossoms. They settled down with their lunch at a suitable spot on the riverbank, and Sainosuke lost no time in breaking out the saké he’d brought and urging Saburo to join him. Kié shot a forbidding glance at her brother, but he calmly accepted a cup.

“Sis,” he said, “it’s all right if I have a drink or two today. We’ve saved up enough now so that you and Sainosuke can take it easy for the rest of your lives, even if I’m not around. I’m tired of growing chrysanthemums.”

And with this mysterious declaration Saburo began guzzling saké at an alarming rate. He was soon thoroughly drunk, and finally he lay down and stretched out on the grass. And then, right before their eyes, his body melted away and disappeared in a puff of smoke, leaving nothing behind but his kimono and sandals. Flabbergasted, Sainosuke snatched up the kimono, only to find, growing out of the earth beneath it, a fresh, bright green chrysanthemum seedling. Now, for the first time, he realized that Saburo and Kié were not mere human beings. But Sainosuke, who by this time had come to truly appreciate the young pair’s wisdom and affection, felt not in the least horrified at the realization. He only grew to love Kié, his poor chrysanthemum fairy, all the more deeply.

When autumn came, Saburo’s seedling, which Sainosuke had replanted in his garden, produced a single blossom. The flower was faintly rouge, like a drinker’s blush, and gave off a light scent of saké. As for Kié, tradition tells us that there was “no change forever.” In other words, she lived as a human being to the end of her days.

uring the reign of Emperor Gofukakusa, in the first year of the Hoji Era, on the twentieth day of the third month, a mermaid washed ashore at Oura in Tsugaru Province. The creature had a full head of long green hair, like strands of seaweed; its face, which bore a sorrowful expression, was that of a beautiful young woman, except for a small crimson cockscomb that adorned the center of its forehead; its upper body was transparent, like crystal, with a slight bluish tinge; its breasts were like two red berries of the nandina bamboo; its lower body resembled that of a fish and was covered with tiny scales like golden flower petals; its tail fin was translucent yellow and in the shape of an enormous ginkgo leaf; and its voice was as clear and resonant as the song of a skylark. This story has been handed down to us as a reminder of the strange and mysterious things to be found in our world, but the fact is that any number of wondrous creatures inhabit the northern seas to this day.

Long ago, in the fiefdom of Matsumae, there lived a samurai named Chudo Konnai, a man of great courage and unquestionable integrity, who served as administrator of the coastal areas. One day in winter, while making the rounds of the beaches of Matsumae, Konnai came to the inlet of Sakegawa, and there at dusk he boarded a ferry with five or six other passengers in hopes of reaching the next port before dark. When they set out, the weather was fair and the waters smooth and placid, which was rare for winter in the north, but as the shore was receding behind them, the seas suddenly grew wild and angry, in spite of the fact that there was still no wind to speak of, and the boat was tossed about like a cork on the waves.

The passengers turned pale with fear and began raising a great commotion: One man cried out the name of the woman he loved, shouting “Farewell! Farewell!” while trembling like a frightened dog; another pulled from his basket a sutra to Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy, raised it to his forehead, oblivious to the fact that he was holding it upside-down, then spread it out and read it aloud in a quavering voice; another grabbed his gourd of saké and guzzled down every last drop, saying that death was one thing but he couldn’t bear the thought of letting good wine go to waste, then dangling before the others the empty gourd, no larger than his hand, and solemnly declaring that, besides, it would make an excellent flotation device; another, for reasons of his own, no doubt, fervently licked the tip of his finger and rubbed the spittle on his forehead; another rummaged anxiously through his purse, counted his money, and, eyeing the other passengers suspiciously, growled that he was missing one
ryo
of gold; and yet another whiled away the moments before an almost certain death by trying to start an argument, claiming that someone had touched his knee. The waves, meanwhile, swelled to even greater size, and soon the boat began to bounce and shudder so violently that everyone fell silent, too terror-stricken even to scream. The captain was the first to succumb. “Have mercy upon us!” he groaned, plopping face down on the deck and lying there as still as a corpse while the others followed suit, collapsing in tears and finally fainting dead away.

Only Chudo Konnai maintained his composure. He sat with his back to the gunwale, his legs crossed and his arms folded, peering silently ahead. Now the sea before him turned a golden hue and began to boil and erupt in bubbles of five distinct colors; the water parted in two rolling, white-capped waves; and from between them there emerged a mermaid, similar in every detail to the ones Konnai had heard tell of in stories, who tossed back her emerald curls with a shake of the head and began to snake toward the boat with astonishing speed, cutting through the water with swift, powerful strokes of her crystalline arms and opening her small red mouth to let out a single, piercing, whistle-like cry.

“Damnable wretch,” Konnai muttered beneath his breath. “Obstruct the waterways, would you?” Furious, he took a small bow from his baggage, invoked the aid of Heaven, and launched an arrow. His aim was true; the arrow lodged in the mermaid’s shoulder, and without so much as a startled cry she sank beneath the waves. And no sooner had she vanished than the troubled waters grew calm again. The setting sun was shining serenely upon the deck and the glassy sea when the captain finally rose to his knees, blinked, rubbed his eyes, simpered moronically, and said: “Well, I’ll be damned. Must’ve been a dream.”

Konnai was not the frivolous sort of samurai who would ever stoop to boasting of his own exploits. He said nothing, but sat back against the gunwale with folded arms and a quiet smile. One by one the other passengers lifted their pallid faces and looked about. One of them burst into a deafening cackle in hopes of hiding his own embarrassment, another shook his empty gourd and began grumbling about having wasted all that good saké without even getting drunk, and the eighty-year-old retired merchant, who moments ago had been trembling uncontrollably and shouting the name of his young mistress back home, was now calmly adjusting the collar of his kimono and instructing the others as to the nature of their ordeal: “Well, that was a frightful experience, what? Obviously we’ve just witnessed what is known as the ‘Dragon’s Ascent,’ a phenomenon often observed in the seas off Etchu and Echizen, particularly during the summer months. It begins with the sudden appearance of a legion of dark clouds that descend toward the water, while the water itself rises to meet the clouds, as if being sucked through a hole in the sky, creating an enormous, whirling, black pillar of water and clouds. And if you gaze intently into that fearsome pillar you will clearly discern the figure of a dragon ascending toward the heavens. So it is written in a book I once read. I am also reminded of another book, in which a man describes setting out from Edo by sea. He relates that as the ship was plying the seas off Okitsu, within sight of the Tokaido Road, a swarm of black clouds swept down upon them. Greatly perturbed, the captain of the ship declared that a dragon was trying to pluck his vessel out of the sea and ordered all those aboard to cut off their hair. The clipped locks were fed into a fire, causing a mighty stench to rise skyward, and, lo and behold, the black, swirling clouds above them scattered and vanished in a twinkling. Were I myself a bit younger, I would not have hesitated to cut off my own hair just now, but unfortunately...” And with that he fell silent and solemnly rubbed his hairless pate. “Oh, is that so?” the sutra-chanter said in a voice dripping with sarcasm, then turned away, muttering that any fool could see it was all the doing of Kannon-sama, piously closed his eyes, and began to chant:
Namu kanze ondai bosatsu
. “Ah! Here it is!” cried another ecstatically, digging the missing gold piece out from the folds of his kimono.

Not a man among them realized that they owed their very lives to Konnai, who merely sat with a half-smile on his face even as the ship at last came swaying gently into harbor and the passengers scrambled ashore, congratulating one another and celebrating with simple-minded whoops and cries.

It was not long after this incident that Chudo Konnai arrived back at Matsumae Castle. Once he’d given a full report on his coastal inspection tour to his superior, Noda Musashi, and the conversation had turned to matters of a more casual and private nature, Konnai offhandedly related, without embellishing the story in the least, all that had transpired in the seas off Sakegawa. Musashi, having long admired Konnai’s honesty of character, did not doubt for a moment that he had in fact encountered such a wondrous creature. “A rare occurrence, indeed, in this day and age!” he exclaimed, slapping his knee. “Let us lose no time in reporting this affair to His Lordship!” Konnai blushed and protested that it was hardly a matter of such importance, but Musashi interrupted him, saying: “Nonsense! It’s an extraordinary feat, the like of which has never been equaled in history. It is a tale that will serve as a great inspiration to the young men of our clan, and spur them on to greater efforts.” He spoke emphatically, leaving no room for argument, and, urging the embarrassed Konnai to hurry, ushered him into the daimyo’s presence.

It so happened that the other ranking retainers were also in attendance at the main hall that day, and when Noda Musashi, still in a state of considerable excitement, asked for their attention and began to recount in full detail the strange adventure that had befallen Konnai during his trip, prefacing his remarks by saying that he was about to describe a feat of unprecedented skill and courage, all present, including the daimyo himself, edged closer and hung on his every word. All, that is, but one—a man by the name of Aosaki Hyakuemon.

This Hyakuemon was the son of one Hyakunojo, who had devoted many years of loyal service to the daimyo as a chief retainer of the Matsumae clan. Upon his father’s death Hyakuemon had inherited the same rank and stipend, in spite of the fact that he had done—and continued to do—nothing whatsoever to earn them, but rather lived a life of idleness and debauchery. So puffed up with pride in his lineage was he, that he held his fellow retainers in contempt and had always refused to marry, declaring whenever the subject arose that he could scarcely permit the daughter of some parvenu to assume the Aosaki name. He was now forty-one, however, and not a samurai in the land would have relinquished his daughter to such a man, though he were to beg on bended knee. Disgruntled by this state of affairs, for which he alone was to blame, Hyakuemon never lost an opportunity to seek retaliation by heaping derision upon other members of the clan. He was universally disliked, not only for his unsavory character but for his physical appearance, which was the very image of a pale blue demon from hell. He stood nearly six feet tall and was extraordinarily thin and bony, with fingers as long and slender as writing-brushes, small and deep-set eyes that flickered with a perverse greenish glow, a great hooked nose, hollow, sunken cheeks, and a perpetual frown of distaste.

Before Musashi had got more than midway through the tale of Konnai’s adventure, this Hyakuemon laughed through his beaklike nose and turned to a young tea-server who sat hunched over timidly in the rear of the hall. ‘Well, Gensai,” he said, “what do you make of this? Is it not rather questionable conduct to impose such a preposterous tale upon His Lordship? There are no monsters in this world, no unexplainable mysteries; the monkey’s face is red, the dog has four feet: so it always has been and so it always will be. A mermaid, no less! Are we here to listen to fairy tales? A grown man, a man of supposed distinction, speaking of sea monsters with red coxcombs—well, I ask you!”

Hyakuemon’s voice grew ever louder and harsher.

“What say you, Gensai? Even supposing these freakish lady-fish, these so-called mermaids, did inhabit the northern seas, to shoot such a creature with a bow and arrow one would need virtually supernatural powers. Your average, mediocre archer would not stand a chance! Birds have wings; fish have fins. To bring down a small bird in flight, or shoot a goldfish as it swims, is not easily done; but to fell a monster with a—what was it, a crystal body?—why, one would need the skill of Raiko, Tsuna, Hachiro, Tawara Toda, and the God of Arms all rolled into one. I speak from experience. The goldfish in my fountain at home—you yourself have seen them, have you not? As you know, they enjoy but a shallow pool in which to flit about, and yet, just the other day, to while away the time, I unleashed some two hundred arrows at them with a child’s bow—two
hundred
arrows—and failed to score a single hit. Let us hope that our Konnai here, finding himself caught in a storm at sea, was not simply so frightened that he let fly his arrow at an old rotting log adrift on the waves!”

Thus Hyakuemon ranted on, ostensibly addressing the mortified young tea-server, who cringed and fidgeted as the man clutched at his sleeve, but speaking loudly enough to make certain the daimyo could hear his snide and calumnious remarks. Finally Noda Musashi, who had long harbored enmity toward Hyakuemon for his arrogant and brazen manner and could now no longer contain his wrath, spun about to face him.

“That is merely your lack of education speaking,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Only someone who possesses nothing but the most superficial knowledge would categorically state that there are no mysteries, no monsters in this world. Japan is a sacred land, the land of the gods; wonders which defy the limits of human understanding are everyday occurrences here. The occasional appearance of marvelous and fantastic beings is only to be expected in a land with more than a thousand leagues of mountains and seashores and three thousand years of history, a land which, I need scarcely add, is by no means to be compared with the piddling fountain in your garden. In ancient times, during the reign of Emperor Nintoku, there lived in Hida a man with two faces, one on either side of his head; during Emperor Temmu’s reign, a bull with twelve horns was raised at a mountain cottage in Tamba; and on the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the fourth year of Keiun, during the reign of Emperor Mommu, a demon with three heads who measured twenty-six feet in height and five feet across arrived on these shores from a foreign land. With precedents such as these, you have no cause to doubt the existence of this mermaid.”