Vita Sexualis Read online

  "My dear ..."

  It was the voice of a geisha.

  "Well thanks."

  I was about to take the cup from her. All of a sudden the hand of the geisha holding that cup drew back.

  "It's not for you!"

  Her slight glance at me was like a reprimand as she offered the cup to the person across from me to my right. It hadn't been done as a joke. It didn't have even the slightest outward semblance of a joke. The person sitting across from me to the right was a professor. With almost his entire back turned toward the geisha, he had been talking to the person to his right. The crest on the professor's haori of silk gauze was quite visible to me. Finally noticing the geisha's offer, the professor accepted the cup. No matter how absentminded or stupified I might have been, I could never have grabbed a cup of sake which had been offered to somebody else. Never in my wildest dreams had I felt anyone would offer a cup of sake to the crest of a haori!

  From that very moment I felt as if I were completely awake. I felt, for example, as if I were looking at violent waves after I had been flung on the seashore from inside a swirling maelstrom. All the members of the party were mirrored in my eyes with perfect objectivity.

  One professor who in the classroom always had a serious expression on his face was grinning like a Cheshire cat. A geisha who was trying to captivate the graduate sitting beside me was saying, "I say, my name's Boru. I'll be angry if you forget me!" I thought her name was Otama, which means "ball" in Japanese. All the younger apprenticed geisha at the party had stopped serving sake and were happily dancing. No one was watching them. Someone was catching a sake-cup after getting another person to throw it to him. Someone dashed up and thrust himself into the group of apprentice geisha and was dancing with them. One geisha, seeing that her samisen was about to be trampled on, was putting it away in haste and confusion. The geisha who had rebuffed me a short while ago seemed to be the senior geisha, frequently raising her loud voice, bustling about, poking her nose into everyone's business.

  Sitting two or three persons away to the left of me was Kojima. He seemed absentminded. He didn't look much different from the state I had been in before my awakening. A geisha was sitting in front of him. The balance of her well-knit body was perfectly ordered, and her face was equally beautiful. If she had made the borders of her eyes more conspicuous, she would have appeared more like the

  Vesta seen in Western painting. From the moment she had come in to distribute our small dining trays, she had attracted my attention. My ears were so poised I even heard her fellow-geisha call her Koiku. She was making several attempts to engage Kojima in conversation. As for Kojima, he was replying quite reluctantly. Even without trying to listen, I could hear their exchange:

  "What is it, my dear, you like best?"

  "Mashed sweet potatoes with sweetened chestnuts tastes delicious to me."

  His was a serious response. Wasn't that an odd reply from a handsome, rather imposing twenty-three-year-old youth? Certainly among the graduating students at the thank-you party that evening, not one could rival him. Having become this strangely cool-headed, I felt awkward and ridiculous.

  "Oh you do?"

  Koiku's gentle voice trailed behind her as she got up from where she had been kneeling. I was watching the development of this affair with a certain amount of interest. After a while she brought in a fairly large porcelain bowl and put it in front of Kojima. It contained mashed sweet potatoes with sweetened chestnuts.

  Kojima kept eating these until the end of the party. Sitting directly in front of him, Koiku watched each single piece disappear behind Kojima's beautiful lips.

  I left the party early without telling Kojima, hoping, for Koiku's sake, he would eat as much of that mixture as possible and as slowly as possible.

  From what I heard later, Koiku was the most beautiful geisha in Shitaya. And yet all Kojima did was eat the kinton which this beautiful geisha had carried in for him. Now Koiku is the wife of a famous politician belonging to a certain political party.

  ***

  When I was twenty . . .

  In due time my fellow graduates went hunting for jobs, many of them off for the country districts to become teachers. Since my class standing when I graduated was good, it was rumored I might be permitted to study abroad at government expense. However, since it was far from being settled, my father was worried. I wasn't, so lying on my bed in my four-and-a-half mat room in our official residence at Kosuge, I read my books.

  Almost no one dropped in to visit me. Koga became a counselor in some government agency, got married, and lived in his wife's family home from which he went to his office. Even before Koga had found a regular job, Kojima was working in the office of a company in Osaka and so he had left Tokyo. When I went to the train station at Shinbashi to see Kojima off, Koga, who was still a bachelor at the time, whispered to me, "Someone wants to be my wife. Strange, isn't it?" Koga wasn't being modest. Even though he knew a good deal about the ways of the world when compared to Kojima, he still formed a corner of our triple alliance and so he was, as might be expected, quite innocent and naive. I didn't feel Koga's remark the least bit strange.

  I too had an offer of marriage. It was my mother's idea that even if I were permitted to go abroad to study, it would be better for me to marry first. My father had no definite opinion. And so my mother was the one who prevailed on me to marry, but I kept giving her evasive answers. She didn't understand what I had in mind. Though I had an opinion of my own, I didn't want to reveal it to her. Even if I had decided to explain, I felt it would have been extremely difficult to. My mother persisted in asking me to. One day, after finally being driven into a corner, I said something like the following:

  I would, in any event, be married at some time or other. When I did, I would really be troubled if I married someone I didn't like. It would be easy to decide if I liked her or not. However, it would even be hard for the woman to marry a man she didn't like. Perhaps it sounded disrespectful for a son to be saying this to his parent, but I couldn't the least imagine any female liking me once she had seen my face. Of course it wouldn't be impossible for a plain woman who was wise enough to know her plainness to be able to endure me even after she had seen my face. Still, it wasn't necessary to endure me. In such a situation I myself would be glad to do the declining! Then what about marriage in terms of my soul? I didn't think I happened to possess a very palatable soul either, but from my contacts with a great many people up to then, I didn't believe I had to feel that much ashamed of it to have to keep it concealed. If I had to take an examination on my soul, I didn't think I was bound to fail. When I took into account the current customs involved in marriage, though, I realized there was a marriage interview between the parties in terms of looks, but not in terms of souls. In fact, even this interview for examining looks wasn't necessary once the go-between told the other party the information beforehand. The woman herself did not say whether she liked the candidate or not. Only the male had to indicate his likes or dislikes. It was as if the parents of the daughter were selling her while the groom was doing the buying. The daughter was treated as if she were a commodity. If she were set down in Roman law, the word res would be used, the same as our word for slave. I had no interest in going out to buy a beautiful toy.

  This was a rough approximation of what I explained to my mother in order to help her understand my feelings. It was a great disappointment to her that even though I wouldn't fail an exam on my soul, I was likely to fail one on my looks. "I've no recollection," she said as if unable to endure her indignation, "of having brought you into the world a cripple!" I couldn't help feeling embarrassed. Furthermore, my mother would not accept my view of the marriage interview that if it was fair for the man to choose the woman, it was equally fair for the woman to choose the man. According to my mother, that sort of view, in all probability, came from the same source as those advocating equality between the sexes. From early times the daughters of tradesmen had occasionally refused the prosp
ective groom at the marriage interview. But the daughters of samurai married samurai because they were fully confident of the manly and spiritual aspects of these men so that to raise objections about a man's features was hardly to be expected. Even if this custom existed only in Japan, my mother felt that if it resulted in good, it had sufficient justification. But she had once heard an account from my father that even in Europe the king sends his retainers to neighboring countries to have them look for a bride for him. If so, she might as well assume that even in Europe the way a king selected a wife was the same as the method used in Japan. I was somewhat confused by my mother's dragging in an example from Europe and going on and on about it, especially since I was trying as much as possible not to mention European customs.

  I had many more things I wanted to say in defense of my own position, but feeling it improper to contradict my mother, I said nothing further.

  Shortly after this discussion an acquaintance of my father, a Doctor Annaka, came for a visit and recommended a match with a young lady in a titled family whose antecedents went back to a feudal lord. The girl was living in Bancho in the home of an artist named Ichijo. It would be all right for me to see her at any time. As usual, my mother urged me to go.

  Suddenly I had a whim to see her. It was quite incongruous of me to. It wasn't that I really wanted to observe what the young lady looked like—it was that I merely wanted to attempt the experience of going through a marriage interview. It was somewhat irresponsible of me to do this, but it didn't mean I had already made up my mind not to marry any woman. Should I feel inclined to marry this one, I thought, I could easily do it.

  It was about March, the weather still cold. Led by Doctor Annaka, I went to Ichijo's house in Bancho. It was a gloomy dwelling with a black-roofed gate. We were shown into an eight-mat room which seemed to be the artist's den. As I was sitting with Annaka around the brazier chatting with him, the artist came in. About fifty years of age, he seemed unaffected and candid. He talked about painting. After a while his wife appeared with the young girl.

  The husband and wife kept the party lively by bringing up various subjects. They told me to talk as long as I liked, and if I wanted some sake, they would bring some in. I told them I didn't drink. The husband said, "In that case, what can we treat you to for dinner?" and he cocked his head to one side in thought. Because at the time I had been plagued with a tooth which was decaying, I had been living on buckwheat mash. And so I suggested, "If there's a noodle shop in the neighborhood, I'd be glad to have some buckwheat mash." Laughing, the host said, "That's an interesting request." The artist's wife called their maid and gave her the order.

  Sitting quietly to the right of the wife all this time was the young girl, her hands on her knees. She had a full round face, the corners of her eyes somewhat slanted. Looking straight ahead, never looking down, she did not appear to be the least bit timid. There was no definite expression on her face. Yet when she heard me ask for buckwheat mash, she couldn't help breaking into a smile.

  After requesting the dish, I had to admit it was as inferior as Kojima's request for mashed sweet potatoes with sweetened chestnuts, and I laughed inwardly at myself. For a while the conversation flourished on the topic of buckwheat mash. The artist had also eaten it at one time. Once when he was ill, he had consumed it an entire month because he couldn't eat anything heavy. "At that time," the artist's wife said, "I was really disgusted with him," but suddenly realizing her slip of the tongue, she apologized to me.

  I returned home after eating the buckwheat mash. I was seen off at the main entrance by the man and wife and young girl.

  On our way back Annaka pressed me for a definite answer about the girl, but I wasn't able to say anything. That was because I myself didn't know how to reply. I didn't feel she was very beautiful. Still, I did think she was quite nice. Certainly she had charm. I couldn't tell about her real personality, but I felt there wasn't a bit of stubbornness or peevishness in her. She seemed gentle. But when I asked myself if I wanted to marry her, I hadn't the least desire to. In no way did I dislike her. If she had been someone who had no connection to my future and I had to comment on her, I would have said she was the type of person I liked. But I couldn't bring myself to marry her. She was certainly a very nice girl, but such girls could be found anywhere. I wondered why I had to marry just that one in particular from among them. I refuted my argument by thinking that if I felt this way, I would never bring myself to marry anyone. Nevertheless, I still didn't feel like marrying her. I wondered how other young men made their decisions on such occasions. I sus pected that some probably decided under the stimulus of sexual desire. Because I was deficient in this area, I guessed that even if I felt the young lady was quite nice, the deficiency was probably why I didn't want to marry her.

  Seeing I was worried, Annaka said, "I'll come again and inquire." We parted at Kudanzaka.

  When I returned home, my mother was waiting for me. "How was it?" she asked. I hesitated.

  "Well, what did she look like?"

  "Let me see. Her looks were quite decent. Eyes a little slanted. I don't know anything about kimonos, but hers was sort of black with a white neckband under it. She reminded me of the kind of woman who might carry a dagger concealed in her obi to protect her honor."

  The figure of speech I had suddenly come out with pleased my mother very much. My saying the girl seemed likely to be carrying a dagger made my mother feel she was chaste and reliable. Thereupon my mother earnestly recommended her. Annaka also came two or three times for an answer. Yet I couldn't give him anything definite.

  Later the girl became the wife of an official I knew, a man in the Department of the Imperial Household, but about a year after her marriage she died from some illness.

  ***

  Beginning of winter that same year . . .

  There was talk I would finally go abroad to study next year. As usual I idled away my time in our house in Kosuge.

  In Senju we had a poetry-writing group, each member taking turns having the monthly meeting at his house. One day at one of our gatherings I became acquainted with the poet Seiha Miwazaki. He told me he was in charge of writing the poetry column for the Jiyu newspaper and asked me if I wouldn't write something for him, anything I wanted. I begged off. But he kept urging me to. When I asked him if I could write anonymously, he said that would be fine. I agreed on condition he rigidly adhere to his promise.

  After returning home that evening, I lay on my bed wondering what would be good to write, but I couldn't come up with anything. The next day I forgot about it. The following morning, as I was reading the Yomiuri newspaper, which I had subscribed to at home ever since Masao Suzukida became its editor, I came across my name in the paper. They had written that I, Shizuka Kanai, having graduated from the university with honors in philosophy and so on and so forth, would write for the Jiyu. I was startled as I thought back to that previous night. I remembered I had promised to write with the understanding that the other party would keep my name secret. And now that he had not done so, I felt no need to write anything.

  Then Seiha sent me a letter urging me to comply. I replied that since the terms of our agreement had been broken, I wouldn't. Finally Seiha himself came to see me.

  "I'm really sorry about that item in the yomiuri. Please overlook it and write something for us. If you don't, I'll have to eat my words in front of the entire staff!"

  "I see. But after all I said to you, why on earth did you advertise me to the yomiuri?"

  "What makes you think I'm the one who did the shouting?"

  "Then how come my name appeared there?"

  "It's like this. I talked about you at the paper. Of course before I said anything to you, I discussed it at the office. When I mentioned I had met you at the poetry meeting I'd been invited to, the president of the paper was the first to ask me to have you write something for us. Without even hesitating, I guaranteed him you would. Then when I spoke to you, I found you were quite touchy. I talked you int
o it with the eloquence of a Demosthenes. That's why on returning to my office, I reported on my mission so triumphantly. I guess someone on our paper let the Yomiuri in on it. I don't know for sure. I'm willing to bear that crown of thorns. I'll prostrate myself before you. Only please write for us!"

  "Well all right. I'll do it. But I don't understand the way you newspaper people think. My name came out in the papers either because I was the youngest ever to graduate from the university or because I graduated with honors. I suppose they just wanted to let me write something, anything, no matter what. They couldn't care less whether I write skillfully or miserably. What's sensational would probably be sensational anyway. But don't you as a member of the managing staff of a newspaper think that's an awfully shortsighted thing to do? I'm not talking about what's good or bad for me. I'm talking about what's at stake for your newspaper. It's better to let my article appear anonymously without comment. If it's clumsily done, it'll die out in its own way. No matter how clumsy my article may be, I doubt your paper will be that much criticized for letting it appear. And if by chance it's good, your readers might want to know who the writer was. At that time it would be all right to introduce me by name. So if it turns out that some person in your company happened to discover me, then maybe that would be to the credit of your company, wouldn't it? Not that I think things will go this smoothly! Still, I'm speaking this way because I don't believe it's the business of your paper to put any so-and-so on display simply because he's a bachelor of arts!"

  "Yes, you're absolutely right in everything you've said. But that's the same as trying to force the rulers of warring states to set up codes on etiquette and music."