“‘Oh? You found a good prospect?’
“‘It’ll be fine. He’s... He works in a factory. He’s the foreman. I understand that if it weren’t for him, the machines in the factory wouldn’t run at all. He’s a big man... A mountain of a man. Solid as a rock.’
“‘Not like me, eh?’
“‘No. He’s not a scholar. He doesn’t do research or anything. But he’s awfully good at what he does.’
“‘I’m sure you’ll be very happy. Goodbye, then. I’ll just borrow this handkerchief for now.’
“‘Goodbye. Ah! Your sash is coming undone. Here, I’ll tie it for you. Really, there’s no end to looking after you, is there? Give my regards to your wife.’
“‘Sure. If I think of it.’”
The second brother fell silent, then let out a self-deprecating cackle. If his observations seemed strangely sophisticated for one of his youth, this was nothing new.
“I already know how it ends.” The younger daughter smugly continued. “Here’s what happens, I’m quite sure. After the professor parts with the woman, there’s a sudden downpour. No wonder it’s been so humid. The people walking the streets scatter in every direction, like a batch of newborn spiders. It’s like magic, the way they disappear, and the streets of Shinjuku, which were so crowded only moments before, are now silent and empty of everything but the rain splattering in silver explosions on the pavement. The professor takes refuge under the eaves of a flower shop, hunching his shoulders and shrinking into a crouch. From time to time he pulls out the handkerchief and gazes at it for a moment, then hastily stuffs it back into his sleeve.
“It occurs to him to buy some flowers. If he does that and brings them back to his wife, who’s waiting at home, she’s sure to be delighted. Never before in the professor’s life has he purchased flowers. He’s not quite himself today. The radio, the fortune, the ex-wife, the handkerchief—a lot has transpired. Coming to a momentous resolve, he dashes into the flower shop and, though he’s terribly flustered and embarrassed and sweating profusely, somehow summons the courage to buy three large, long-stemmed roses. He’s shocked at how expensive they are. Outside the flower shop, he grabs a taxi and heads straight for home.
“The lantern glows brightly over the front door of his house on the outskirts of town. Home, sweet home. A refuge of warmth and comfort, the one place where everything goes splendidly. As he opens the door, he calls out in a loud voice: ‘I’m home!’ He’s in high spirits. It’s silent inside, but that doesn’t stop him. Bearing the flowers like a torch, he marches through the house and enters his study.
“‘I’m home. Got caught in the rain—what an ordeal! How do you like these? I’m told everything will turn out just as I wish.’
“He’s speaking to a photograph that sits atop his desk. It’s a photo of the woman with whom he has just made a clean break. But, no, not as she is now. It’s a photo taken a decade ago. She wears a beautiful smile.”
Narcissus struck her affected pose again, chin on hand, forefinger against cheek, and gazed about the room as if to say: “Nothing to it.”
“Yes. Well,” the eldest son began with a pedantic air. “I suppose that more or less wraps things up. However...” As the eldest, he had his dignity to maintain. Compared to the other brothers and sisters, he had not been blessed with a very rich imagination and was incompetent at telling stories. He simply lacked talent in that direction. But to be excluded by the others for such a reason would have been unbearable for him. He therefore tended to add something superfluous to the end of each story. “However, you’ve all left out an essential point in the narrative. I refer to the professor’s physical appearance.” It was the best he could do.
“The description of physical appearance is extremely important in a work of fiction. By describing what a character looks like, you bring him alive and remind people of someone close to them, thereby lending intimacy to the tale and involving the audience, so that they cease to be mere passive observers. The way I see it, the elderly professor is a small man—five feet, two inches tall and less than a hundred and ten pounds. As for his face, it is round, with a high, broad, deeply furrowed forehead, thin eyebrows, a small nose, a wide, firm mouth, a white, bushy beard, and silver-rimmed spectacles.” This was nothing less than a description of the eldest son’s revered Ibsen. Such was the trivial nature of his powers of imagination. He appeared to have succeeded, as usual, in adding something that amounted to almost nothing.
With this, at any rate, the story ended, and no sooner had it done so than boredom returned with a vengeance; the brothers and sisters all fell victim to the oppressive sense of bleakness that comes after a small bit of stimulation. An ugly mood hung over the room, stifling small talk; it was as if a single word from any of them might have resulted in blows.
The mother, who’d sat apart from the others throughout, smiling dreamily as her five children revealed their characters one by one in the way they advanced the story, now got quietly to her feet and went to the paper screen door. She slid it open, then gasped and said: “Goodness! There’s a strange old man in a frock coat standing at the gate, staring in.”
All five of the brothers and sisters jumped to their feet, aghast.
Their mother doubled over laughing.
nce upon a time, in Mukojima in Edo, there lived a man with the rather uninteresting name of Mayama Sainosuke. Sainosuke was very poor and still a bachelor at the age of thirty-two. Chrysanthemums were the great love of his life. If told of an excellent strain of chrysanthemum seedlings being grown in some corner of the land, he would go to the most absurd lengths to search them out and purchase a few for his own garden. It’s said that he’d undertake such a mission though it meant a journey of a thousand leagues, which ought to give you some idea of just how far gone he was.
One year in early autumn Sainosuke received word of an extraordinary variety of mums in the town of Numazu in Izu, and no sooner had he heard the news than he changed into his traveling gear and set out with a strange gleam in his eye. He crossed the mountains of Hakone, swept into Numazu, and tramped through the streets until he located and acquired a couple of truly splendid seedlings. After carefully wrapping these treasures in oil-paper, he smiled smugly to himself and headed for home.
As he was crossing back over the mountains of Hakone, with the city of Odawara just coming into view below, Sainosuke became aware of the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves on the road behind him. Euphoric over the purchase of his precious mums, he thought nothing of this at first, but when the animal continued to follow him at the same distance, neither drawing nearer nor falling behind, clopping along with the same leisurely rhythm for five, eight, ten miles, he began to wonder about it, and finally he turned to look back. Not more than twenty paces behind him was an emaciated old horse, upon which sat a youth with strikingly handsome features. He flashed a smile, and Sainosuke, not wanting to appear impolite, returned the smile and stopped to wait for him. The youth rode up, dismounted, and said: “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
“It is a lovely day,” Sainosuke agreed.
And with that they continued walking along side by side, the youth leading his horse by the reins. Looking his companion over, Sainosuke could see that, though clearly not of samurai stock, the lad possessed a certain elegance of bearing; he was neatly dressed and had an easy, confident way about him.
“Headed for Edo?” the youth asked in a disarmingly familiar manner, and Sainosuke responded in kind: “Yep. Going back home.”
“Oh, you live there, then. And where have you been to?”
Small talk between travelers is always the same. In the course of exchanging the usual information, Sainosuke divulged the purpose of his trip to Numazu, and at the mention of chrysanthemums the young man’s eyes lit up.
“You don’t say! It’s always a pleasure to meet someone who loves mums. I know a thing or two about them myself, you see. I must say, though, that it’s not so much the quality of the seedlings as how you care for
them.” He was beginning to describe his own method of cultivation when Sainosuke interrupted him excitedly.
“Well, I can’t agree with you there!” Chrysanthemum fanatic that he was, the topic was one that stimulated his strongest passions. “If you ask me, it’s absolutely vital to have the best seedlings. Let me give you an example,” he said, and proceeded to hold forth at some length, drawing upon the extensive knowledge he’d acquired over the years. The youth didn’t contest Sainosuke’s opinions in so many words, but his occasional muttered interjections of “Oh?” and “H’mm” and so on not only suggested that he disagreed but somehow seemed to hint at an uncommon depth of experience. The more zealously Sainosuke preached, the less confident he felt of himself, and finally, in a voice that was nearly a sob, he said: “Enough! Not another word. Theory will get us nowhere. The only way to convince you I’m right would be to show you the mums in my garden.”
“I suppose that’s true,” the youth said, nodding rather indifferently. Sainosuke, for his part, had worked himself into quite a state. He was so eager to show this young man his chrysanthemums and make him gasp in awe that he was literally trembling.
“All right, then,” he said, throwing all caution to the wind. “What do you say to this: Come with me straight to my house in Edo and see my mums for yourself. One quick look, that’s all I ask.”
The youth laughed. “Unfortunately I’m in no position to oblige you there. As soon as we reach Edo I’ve got to start searching for work.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Sainosuke wasn’t about to take no for an answer now. “You can find a job after you’ve come to my house and rested up. You’ve simply got to see my chrysanthemums.”
“I’m afraid you’re putting me on the spot here.” The youth was no longer smiling. He walked along for some time with his head bowed in thought, then finally looked up and said, in a rather doleful tone of voice: “Allow me to explain. My name’s Tomoto Saburo. My elder sister and I have been living alone in Numazu since our parents died. That was some years ago, but recently my sister took a sudden disliking to the place and began to insist we move to Edo. Finally we disposed of our belongings and, well, here we are, on our way to the city. It’s not as if we have any prospects waiting for us there, however, and I don’t mind telling you that this is far from being a carefree, lighthearted journey. It’s certainly no time to be engaging in some silly argument about chrysanthemums. I shouldn’t have opened my mouth at all, and wouldn’t have, except that I’m partial to mums myself. If you don’t mind, I’d rather just drop the subject. Please forget I ever brought it up. My sister and I have got to be moving along anyway. Perhaps we’ll meet again under more favorable circumstances.”
The youth nodded goodbye and was about to climb back on the horse, but Sainosuke clutched tightly at his sleeve.
“Wait a minute. If that’s how it is, then all the more reason for you to come to my house. What are you so worried about? I’m a poor man myself, but not so destitute that I can’t put you up for a while. Just leave everything to me. You say you’re with your sister? Where is she?”
Turning, Sainosuke noticed for the first time a girl in red traveling attire peeking at him from the other side of the horse. He blushed when their eyes met.
In the end, unable to rebuff his ardent appeal, the two young people agreed to be Sainosuke’s guests at his humble home in Mukojima. When they arrived and saw that the cottage Sainosuke lived in was even more dilapidated than his professions of poverty had led them to imagine, they looked at each other and sighed. Sainosuke, however, merely ushered them straight to his garden, not even pausing to change his clothes, and delivered a long and self-congratulatory presentation on his prized mums. He then showed the pair to a little shed in the rear of the garden and explained that this was where they were to stay. Cramped as the shed was, they could see that it was at least preferable to Sainosuke’s ramshackle cottage, which was so filthy and filled with trash that one hesitated even to step inside.
“Well, Sis, this is a fine state of affairs,” the younger Tomoto whispered as he undid his traveling gear inside the shed. “Prisoners of a madman.”
“He is a bit strange,” the sister replied with a smile. “But he seems harmless enough. I’m sure we’ll be comfortable here. And the garden is certainly spacious. You must plant some nice chrysanthemums for him, to show our appreciation.”
“What? Don’t tell me you want to stay here for any length of time?”
“Why not? I like it here,” she said, her cheeks flushing slightly. The sister was just twenty or so and lovely, with a slender figure and skin as smooth and white as porcelain.
By the following morning, Sainosuke and Saburo were already having the first of many arguments. The lean old horse, which the youth and his sister had taken turns riding all the way from Numazu, had disappeared. They’d left it tethered to a stake in the garden the night before, but when Sainosuke went out to check on his mums first thing in the morning it had vanished, leaving a path of destruction through his flower beds. Sainosuke took one look at the trampled, gnawed, and uprooted plants and flew into a rage. He pounded on the door of the shed.
Saburo opened it at once and said: “What is it? Something wrong?”
“See for yourself. That bandy-legged horse of yours has gone and destroyed my garden. It’s enough to make me want to lie down and die!”
“It is a mess, isn’t it,” said the youth, calmly surveying the damage. “And the horse?”
“Who cares? He’s run off, I guess.”
“But that’s terrible.”
“What are you talking about? A rickety old nag like that!”
“I beg your pardon. That happens to be an extremely clever animal. We must go and find him immediately. The devil take your silly chrysanthemums.”
“What! What did you say?” Sainosuke paled. “Are you belittling my mums?”
It was then that Saburo’s sister stepped out of the shed with a demure smile on her face.
“Saburo,” she said, “apologize to the gentleman. That skinny horse of ours is no great loss. I may not have tethered it properly. But the thing to do now is to fix up the chrysanthemum patch. It’s a perfect chance to express our gratitude for all the kindness we’ve been shown.”
“Oh, so that’s it,” Saburo groaned. “You planned this, didn’t you?”
He heaved a deep sigh but grudgingly began to tend to the damaged plants. Watching him, Sainosuke couldn’t help but marvel: even those mums that were nearly dead from having been trampled or uprooted sprang back to life as the youth replanted them. The roots soaked up moisture from the soil in great draughts, the stems swelled, the buds grew plump and heavy, and the wilted leaves stretched out firm and erect, pulsating with vitality. Sainosuke wasn’t about to let on how astonished he was, however. He was a man who’d spent his whole life growing mums, and he had his pride to maintain.
“Well, do what you can here,” he said as coolly as possible, then strode into his cottage, where he climbed in bed and buried himself beneath the quilt. Soon he was back on his feet, however, peeping out at the garden through a crack in the shutters. Sure enough, all the plants Saburo tended were springing miraculously to life.
That night Saburo came smiling to the cottage.
“Sorry about this morning,” he said. “But, listen, my sister and I were talking things over, and, well, if you’ll pardon my saying so, you don’t seem to be leading a very comfortable life here. We were thinking that if you’d lend me half your garden, I could grow some really first-rate mums for you to sell in the market in Asakusa or somewhere. I’d be happy to do it.”
Sainosuke, whose self-esteem as a grower of chrysanthemums had been severely shaken that morning, was not in the best of moods. Seeing this as a chance to even the score, he twisted his lips in a contemptuous sneer.
“Out of the question,” he said. “Of all the vulgar ideas! And here I thought you were a man of taste and breeding. I’m shocked. To even think of
selling one’s beloved flowers simply to put food on the table! It’s too outrageous for words, a violation of the very spirit of chrysanthemums! To turn a noble-minded pastime into a scheme to make money is, why it’s, it’s obscene, is what it is. I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
Sainosuke spewed out this rebuke in the gruff and guttural tones of a samurai issuing a challenge, and Saburo, understandably enough, took offense. His reply was rather heated.
“Using one’s god-given talent to put food on the table hardly qualifies as greed, and to sneer at me and accuse me of being vulgar for wishing to do so is appallingly wrongheaded. It’s arrogant and childish—the attitude of a spoiled little brat. It’s true that a man shouldn’t be overly covetous of riches, but to take undue pride in one’s poverty is every bit as base and mean.”
“When have I ever boasted of my poverty? Look, my ancestors left me with a small inheritance, and it’s all I’ve ever needed. I want for nothing. And I’ll thank you not to meddle in my affairs.”
Once again their exchange had blossomed into a full-blown row.
“You’re being awfully narrow-minded, you know.”
“Fine. Call me narrow-minded. Call me a spoiled brat. Call me anything you like. I simply prefer to carry on as I always have, sharing the joys and sorrows of life with my mums.”
“All right, all right!” Saburo shrugged and smiled ruefully. “You win. But listen: There’s a small plot of bare ground behind the shed. Would you consider lending that to us for the time being?”
“You must realize by now that I’m not a man who’s attached to worldly possessions. I don’t imagine you’ll find such a tiny plot sufficient to your needs. Half my garden remains unplanted: take all of that if you like. Do with it as you see fit. Allow me to make one thing clear, however: I will not associate with anyone who would grow mums with the intention of offering them for sale. From this day on, I want you to consider me a complete stranger.”