“Well, I really must be going now,” says Ojii-san. “I’ll be back.”
O-Suzu seems appalled by hiscasual attitude.
“My! You’re leaving already? You nearly freeze to death in the forest searching for O-Teru-san, and now that you’ve finally found her you leave without so much as a gentle word?”
“I’m not one for gentle words.” Ojii-san smiles wryly and climbs to his feet.
“O-Teru-san, he says he’s leaving. Is that all right with you?”
O-Teru smiles and nods.
“What a pair!” O-Suzu says, and laughs. “Well, please come again soon!”
“I will,” Ojii-san says solemnly. He begins to walk out but stops. “Where are we, anyway?”
“In the bamboo forest.”
“Oh? I don’t remember seeing a house like this in the forest.”
“It’s here,” O-Suzu says and exchanges a smile with O-Teru. “But it’s not visible to the average person. We’ll bring you here any time you like. You need only lie face down in the snow at that same entrance to the forest.”
“That’s good to know,” Ojii-san says, and he means it. He steps out on the green-bamboo veranda. O-Suzu leads him back to the pretty little room, and there, lined up in a row, are wicker baskets of various sizes.
“We’re ashamed not to have been able to entertain you after you’ve gone to so much trouble to visit,” O-Suzu says, resuming a more formal tone. “At least allow us to give you a souvenir as a memento of your visit. Please choose whichever of these baskets you’d like.”
“No, thanks. I don’t need anything like that,” Ojii-san mutters irritably, without so much as glancing at the baskets. “Where’s my footwear?”
“Please. I must ask you to take one!” O-Suzu says with a sob in her voice. “If not, O-Teru-san will be angry with me!”
“No she won’t. That child’s not one to get angry. I know. But where’s my footwear? I’m sure I was wearing a pair of dirty old straw boots.”
“Those things? We threw them away. You’ll have to go home barefoot.”
“That’s not very nice.”
“Then take one of these gift baskets with you. Please, I implore you.” O-Suzu presses her little hands together.
Ojii-san forces a grim smile and looks over at the baskets.
“They’re all so big. Too big. I hate carrying things when I walk. Don’t you have anything that would fit in my pocket?”
“Why must you be so difficult?”
“I’ll just leave as I am, then. I’m not going to carry anything.” Ojii-san prepares to hop down from the veranda in his bare feet.
“Wait. Please. I’ll go ask O-Teru-san.”
O-Suzu flies with flapping kimono sleeves back to the inner chamber. Moments later she returns with an ear of rice between her teeth.
“Here you are. This is O-Teru-san’s hairpin. Don’t forget about her. And please come back soon.”
Ojii-san suddenly comes to his senses. He’s lying face down in the snow at the entrance to the bamboo forest. Was it just a dream? But in his right fist is the ear of rice. A ripe ear of rice in midwinter is a rare thing. It emits a rose-like fragrance too—a very nice fragrance. Ojii-san carries the ear home and plops it in his brush holder.
“My! What’s this?” Gimlet-eyed Obaa-san looks up from her sewing.
“Ear of rice,” Ojii-san says in the usual mumble.
“An ear of rice? At this time of year? Where did you find it?”
“I didn’t find it,” he says in a low undertone. He opens a book and begins to read silently.
“There’s something funny going on. All you do these days is walk about in the bamboo forest and then come home with your head in the clouds, and why are you acting so smug today? Bringing that thing back with you and making such a fuss over it, sticking it in your brush stand—you’re hiding something from me, aren’t you? If you didn’t find it, where did it come from? Why not just tell me the truth?”
“I got it at the Sparrows Inn,” Ojii-san snaps.
But the pragmatic Obaa-san is not about to be satisfied with an answer like that. She continues to grill her husband with question after question. Ojii-san, incapable of lying, has no choice but to tell her all about his wondrous experience.
“Good heavens. Are you serious?” Obaa-san says with a disparaging laugh when her husband has finished the story.
Ojii-san isn’t answering any more. He rests his cheek on his hand and pores over the book on his desk.
“Do you really expect me to believe that nonsense? It’s obvious that you’re lying. Recently—yes, ever since around the time your young lady friend came to visit—you’re a different person, always fidgeting and sighing like a lovesick mooncalf. It’s disgraceful—a man your age—and there’s no sense trying to hide it. I can tell! Where does she live? Not in the middle of the bamboo forest, I’m sure of that much. ‘There’s a house deep in the forest inhabited by little ladies who look like life-size dolls’—oh, sure! I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. If it’s true, why don’t you bring back a gift basket next time? You can’t, can you? After all, you made it all up. I might not doubt you if you came home from this ‘marvelous inn’ with one of those big baskets on your shoulders, but to take an old ear of rice and say it’s the doll girl’s hairpin—how do you come up with this rubbish? Confess like a man. I’m not a narrow-minded person. What do I care about a mistress or two?”
“I hate carrying things.”
“Oh, I see. Well, shall I go in your place, then? How would that be? All I have to do is lie face down at the entrance to the forest, correct? I’ll go right now. Or are you afraid it won’t work?”
“You should go.”
“What nerve you have. Telling me I should go, when it’s all a big, transparent lie! All right, then, I’m really going to do it. You’re sure it’s all right with you?”
“Well, you do seem to want that basket...”
“Yes, yes, that’s right—all I care about is the gift. I’m such a greedy person, after all. Ha! I know it’s ridiculous, but here I go! I can’t bear the sight of you sitting there looking so smug. I’ll wipe that holier-than-thou expression from your face. Just wait and see. Lie face down in the snow and you get to go to the Sparrows Inn—ah, ha, ha, ha! It’s ridiculous, but, oh well—I’ll just follow your exact instructions. Don’t try to tell me later that you were only kidding!”
There’s no backing down now. Obaa-san puts away her sewing and wades off into the deep snow of the bamboo forest.
As to what happens next, not even the author knows exactly. At dusk, Obaa-san’s cold body is found face down in the snow with an enormous wicker basket strapped to her back. Apparently the basket was too heavy to get out from under when she awoke, and she froze to death. The basket turns out to be chock-full of sparkling gold coins.
Whether or not it’s because of all that gold, Ojii-san soon enters government service and is eventually promoted to Minister of State. The public refer to him as the “Sparrow Minister” and attribute his success to his long-standing affection for those birds. But whenever Ojii-san is subjected to such flattery, he is said to reply, with only a hint of his famous wry smile, “No, no. I owe it all to my late wife. I put that poor woman through hell.”
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dazai Osamu for being, like, my favorite writer ever; Kita Morio for turning me on to Dazai many years ago; Edward Lipsett for suggesting we do this book and then shepherding it all the way through to completion; Joel Cohn for his terrific introduction and for pointing out a number of embarrassing gaffes and mistranslations; Sakai Akinobu for patiently elucidating passages that had me baffled; Nancy H. Ross for her excellent editing; Mary McCarthy and Fred Walton for their perspicacious critiques of the manuscript; Poe Ballantine (greatest living American novelist) for his advice and encouragement; and YOU, dear reader, for giving this book a chance. I hope you like it. I and I alone am responsible for any and all mistakes and infe
licities.
R.F.M.
Contributors
Ralph F. McCarthy lives in Southern California. He has translated two previous collections of Dazai stories, Self Portraits and Blue Bamboo, as well as a number of novels by Murakami Ryu, including In the Miso Soup and Popular Hits of the Showa Era. His most recent translation is Infinity Net: The Autobiography of Yayoi Kusama.
Joel Cohn is Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and former Chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has translated several works of Japanese literature from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. His translation of Natsume Soseki’s novel Botchan (1906) was co-winner of the 2006 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. He is also the author of Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction (Harvard University Asia Center, 1998).
Copyright information
Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
Translated by Ralph F. McCarthy
Translation copyright © 2011 Ralph F. McCarthy
Introduction copyright © 2011 Kurodahan Press
This edition copyright © 2011 Kurodahan Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Introduction
Prologue
The Stolen Wen
Urashima-san
Click-Clack Mountain
The Sparrow Who Lost Her Tongue
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Copyright information
Osamu Dazai, Otogizōshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu
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