The fields opened up hazily on both sides of the train, and the parts that had been harvested had the color of green mold. A few scattered trees, all differing in size and height, grew on the ridges between the rice fields. All the lower branches and leaves had been cut away and straw matting (known in this district as "steam cages") had been wrapped round the slender trunks, so that, as the trees emerged one after another out of the fog, they looked like the ghosts of trees. Once a huge willow tree appeared with striking clarity very close to the train window. In the background was the gray, almost invisible expanse of rice fields; the wet leaves of the willow hung down ponderously and the whole tree was shaking slightly in the mist.
My spirits, which had been so cheerful when I left Kyoto, had now been drawn into memories of dead people. As I recalled Uiko and my father and Tsurukawa, an ineffable tenderness arose within me, and I wondered whether the only human beings whom I was capable of loving were not, in fact, dead people. Be that as it might, how easy dead people were to love compared to those who were still alive!
The third-class carriage was not very crowded. There they sat—the people who were so hard to love-busily puffing away at their cigarettes or peeling tangerines. Next to me sat an old official who belonged to some public organization. He was talking loudly to another man. Both men wore old, shapeless suits, and I noticed a piece of torn striped lining peeping out of one of their sleeves. Once again I was struck by the fact that mediocrity did not wane in the slightest when people grew old. Those wrinkled, sunburned, peasant faces, those voices of theirs rendered husky by drink, could be said to represent the essence of a certain type of mediocrity.
They were discussing whom they should get to make contributions to their public organization. One bald old man sat there with a self-possessed look on his face. He did not join in the conversation, but kept on wiping his hands on a cotton handkerchief, which had originally been white, but which had now turned yellow from countless washings.
"Look at these hands of mine!" he muttered. "They get filthy from the soot while I just sit here. It's really annoying!"
“You wrote a letter to the papers once about the soot, didn't you?” said another man, who now joined in the conversation.
"No," said the bald man. “But it really makes me annoyed—all this soot!"
Though I was not listening, I could not help hearing. Hearing that the Golden Temple and the Silver Temple kept on appearing in the men's conversation. They were all agreed that they should obtain substantial contributions from these two temples. The income of the Silver Temple was only half that of the Golden Temple, yet it was a very considerable amount. The annual income of the Golden Temple, said one of the men by way of example, was probably over five million yen. The actual cost of running the temple on the ordinary lines of a Zen establishment, including the cost of electricity and water, could not exceed two hundred thousand. Well, what happened to the balance? Quite simple! The Superior let the acolytes and the apprentices feed on cold rice while he went out every night by himself and spent the money on geishas in the Gion District. And with all that, the temples were tax-exempt. It was just as if they had extraterritorial rights. Yes, those temples should be dunned mercilessly for contributions!
So their conversation went. When they came to an end, the old bald-headed man, who was still wiping his hands on his handkerchief, said: "It's really annoying!” and this summed things up for everyone. There was not a trace of soot on his hands; they had been thoroughly wiped and polished and they gave forth the luster of an ornamental netsuke carving. Those ready-made hands of his were really more like a pair of gloves than anything else.
It may seem strange, but this was the first time that I had ever come into contact with public criticism. In the Golden Temple we all belonged to the world of priests, and the university, too, was part of that world. It never happened that we exchanged criticisms concerning the temple. Yet this conversation of the old officials did not surprise me in the slightest. Everything that they had said struck me as self-evident. We ate cold rice. The Superior visited the Gion district. All this was quite normal. But what filled me with inexpressible rage was that I myself should be understood by the method of understanding which these old offcials displayed. It was intolerable that I should be understood by their words. For my words were of a different nature. Please do not forget that even when I saw the Superior walking with that Gion geisha I was not overcome by the slightest degree of moral hatred.
For these reasons the conversation of the old officials flew away from my mind, leaving only a faint hatred and a lingering odor of mediocrity. I had no intention of seeking public support for my thoughts. Nor did I intend to provide a frame for my ideas which might make them more comprehensible to the world. As I have said again and again, the fact of not being understood was the very reason for my existence.
The carriage door opened and a vendor appeared with a large basket hanging from his neck. He announced his wares in a hoarse voice. It suddenly occurred to me that I was hungry and I bought one of his box lunches. The meal consisted of green vermicelli in which seaweed had evidently been used instead of rice. The mist had cleared, but there was no brightness in the sky. At the foot of the Tamba mountains I could see the mulberry trees growing on the barren earth, and the houses in which people worked at paper-manufacturing came into sight.
Maizuru Bay. The name moved me now just as it had in the past. I am not quite sure of the reason. Ever since my childhood days in the nearby village of Shiraku, “Maizuru,, had become a sort of generic term for a sea that cannot be seen, and in the end it came to represent an actual foreboding of the sea.
That invisible sea could be clearly seen from the top of Mount Aoba, which rose behind the village of Shiraku. I had climbed that mountain twice’ On the second occasion I had seen the combined squadron, which happened to be anchored in Maizuru Naval Harbor. The ships which rode at anchor in the glittering bay may well have been part of some secret disposition of forces. Everything surrounding this squadron pertained to secrecy and one could hardly help wondering whether the fleet really existed at all. As a result, the combined squadron that I saw in the distance appeared like a flock of majestic black water-birds which one has known by name and so far only seen in photographs. They looked as if they were enjoying a secret swim in the bay, under the watchful eye of one fierce old bird and seemed blissfully unaware that they were being observed.
I was pulled back to the present by the voice of the conductor, who came in and announced the next station, West Maizuru. Among the passengers there was now not a single one of those sailors who in the past had hurriedly put their kit on their shoulders. The only people who were getting ready to leave the train, apart from myself, were a few men who looked like black marketeers.
Everything had changed. It had become a foreign harbor. English-language street signs flourished menacingly at the intersections and American troops were walking about in great numbers. Under the cloudy winter sky a cold, salt-laden breeze blew down the road, which had been built especially wide for military purposes. It had the inorganic smell of rusty iron rather than the waft of a sea breeze. The narrow strip of sea that led like a canal deep into the center of the town, the dead surface of the water, the small American war vessel that lay tied to the shore-there was a sense of peace about it all, to be sure, but an exaggerated policy of hygiene had robbed the port of its former disorderly, physical vigor and made the whole town seem like a sort of hospital.
I did not expect that I should encounter the sea here on any intimate terms, although of course a jeep might come along from behind and push me into the sea for fun. When I think about it now, I realize that the impulse which had made me travel had contained an intimation of the sea; it had not, however, been an artificial harbor sea like the one at Maizuru, but a rough sea that still retained its newborn vigor, like the sea with which I had come into contact during my childhood in my home on Cape Nariu. Yes, it had been the irritable, rough-graine
d sea, always so full of rage, that one finds along the coast of the Sea of Japan.
I therefore decided to go to Yura. In the summer the bcach was crowded with bathers, but at this season it must be deserted and there would be nothing but the sea and the land struggling against each other with dark power. From West Maizuru to Yura was a little over seven miles. My feet vaguely remembered the road.
The road followed the lower part of the bay west from Maizuru, crossed the Miyazu Line at right angles, went over the Takajiri Pass and came out at the Yura River. Then, after crossing Okawa Bridge, it followed the Yura River northward along the west bank. From then on, it simply followed the course of the river and led to the mouth at the sea.
I left the town and began walking along the road. As I walked, my legs became tired and I asked myself: "What shall I find at Yura? What kind of proof do I expect to run into that I exert all this effort? Surely there is nothing there but a stretch of the Sea of Japan and a deserted beach?" But my legs showed no tendency to slow down. I was trying to reach a destination, it did not matter where. The name of the place for which I was headed had not the slightest meaning. I was inspired by courage-by an almost immoral courage-to confront my destination, whatever it might be.
Now and then the soft beams of the sun would glisten fitfully and its gentle rays would shine invitingly through the branches of the great keyaki trees by the side of the road. Yet for some reason I felt that I could not procrastinate. There was no time for me to rest.
Instead of finding a gentle slope that led down to a wide river valley, I suddenly saw the Yura River from a narrow pass in the mountain. The water was blue and, though the river was wide, it flowed along dully under the cloudy sky ana it looked as ir it was crawling along reluctantly towards the sea.
When I reached the west bank of the river, there were no longer any cars or pedestrians on the road. Occasionally I noticed an orange grove by the roadside, but there was not a soul to be seen. As I passed a little hamlet called Kazue, I heard the sound of the grass being pushed aside. It was a dog, and only its face emerged from the grass. The hair at the tip of its nose was black.
I knew that this area was famous for being (according to a rather doubtful tradition) the site of the residence of that ancient squire, Sansho Dayu; but I had no intention of stopping at the place and I passed by without even noticing it. For I was only looking at the river. In the middle of the river was a great island surrounded by bamboo. Although there was not the slightest breeze on the road, the bamboo on the island was prostrating itself before the wind. The island had four or five acres of rice field, which were irrigated by rain water, but I could not see a single farmer. The only person in sight was a man who stood there with his back to me, holding a fishing-line. I had not seen anyone for quite a long time and I felt a certain friendliness for him. It looked as if he was fishing for gray mullet. In that ease, I thought, I could not be very far from the mouth of the river.
Then the great rustling of the bamboo as it prostrated itself in the wind drowned out the sound of the river. What seemed to be a mist rose over the island: it must have been the rain that was starting. The raindrops dyed the desiccated riverbank on the island and, before I knew it, they began to fall on me. As I stood looking at the island and gradually becoming wet, I noticed that there was now no sign of rain over there. The man who was fishing had not changed his position in the slightest from when I had first seen him. Soon the shower passed from where I was standing, too.
At every turning of the road the rushes and the autumn flowers covered my field of vision. But I was soon coming to the place where the mouth of the river would open up before my eyes. For an exceedingly cold sea wind had struck me on the nose. As the Yura River neared its end, it displayed a number of desolate islands. The river water was certainly approaching the sea and already it was being attacked by salt water, but the surface itself became calmer and calmer and showed no portent of what was coming-just like a person who has fainted and who dies without recovering consciousness.
The mouth of the river was unexpectedly narrow. The sea lay there indistinctly mingled with the dark cumuli of clouds, melting into the river, assaulting it. In order to get a tactile perception of this sea, I still had to walk a considerable distance with the wind blowing fiercely on me from across the plains and the rice fields. The wind was drawing its patterns over the entire surface of the sea. It was because of the sea that the wind was thus wasting its violent energy on these deserted fields. And the sea was a sea of vapor that covered this wintry area, a peremptory, dominant, invisible sea.
Beyond the mouth of the river the waves folded onto themselves, layer upon layer, and gradually revealed the extension of the sea's gray surface. An island shaped like a Derby hat floated on the river. This was Kammuri Island, which was preserved as the habitat for the rare omizunagi birds.
I decided to go into one o£ the fields. I looked round. It was a desolate land. At that moment some sort of meaning flashed through my mind. But no sooner was I aware of this flash than it disappeared and I lost the meaning. I stood there for a while, but the icy wind that blew against my body robbed me of all thought. I began walking into the wind. The meager fields merged into stony, barren land. The grass was withered; the only unwithered green was that of some mosslike weeds which clung to the ground, and those weeds, too, had a crushed, shrunken look. Already the earth was mixed with sand.
I heard a dull, quivering sound. Then I heard human voices. It was when I turned my back to the fierce wind and gazed up at the peak of Yuragatake in the back that I heard them.
I looked round for the sight of human beings. A small path led down to the beach along the low cliffs. I knew that work was gradually being carried out to protect those cliffs against the extensive erosion. Concrete pillars lay here and there like white skeletons and there was something curiously fresh about the color of the new concrete against the sand. The dull, quivering sound came from the concrete mixer, which shook the cement as it was poured into the frame. A group of workmen with bright-red noses looked at me curiously as I walked past in my student's uniform. I glanced in their direction. Such was the extent of our human greetings to each other.
The sea subsided conically and abruptly from the beach. As I walked across the granite sand towards the edge of the water, I was seized with joy at the thought that I was without doubt moving step by step toward the single meaning that had flashed through my mind a short time before. The wind was bitterly cold and, since I was not wearing any gloves, my hands were almost frozen, but I did not mind in the slightest.
Yes, this was really the coast of the Sea of Japan! Here was the source of all my unhappiness, of all my gloomy thoughts, the origin of all my ugliness and all my strength. It was a wild sea. The waves surged forward in an almost continuous mass, hardly letting one see the smooth, gray gulfs that lay between one wave and the next. Piled up over the open sea, the great cumuli of clouds revealed a heaviness and, at the same time, a delicacy. For that heavy, undefined accumulation of cloud had for its edging a line as light and cold as that of the most delicate feather, and in its center it enveloped a faint blue sky of whose actual existence one could not be sure. Behind the zinc-colored waters rose the purple-black mountains of the cape. Everything was imbued with agitation and immobility, with a dark, ever-moving force, with the coagulated feeling of metal.
Abruptly I remembered what Kashiwagi had said to me on the day that we first met. It is when one is sitting on a well-mowed lawn on a beautiful spring afternoon, vaguely watching the sun as it shines through the leaves and makes patterns on the grass-it is at such times that cruelty suddenly springs up within us.
Now I was confronting the waves and the rough north wind. There was no beautiful spring afternoon here, no well-mowed lawn. Yet this desolate nature before me was more flattering to my spirits, more intimately linked with my existence, than any lawn on an early spring afternoon. Here I could be self-sufficient. Here I was not threatened by anything.
Was the notion that now occurred to me a cruel notion in Kashiwagi's sense of the word? I do not know, but in any case this notion which suddenly came to life within me revealed the meaning that had flashed through my mind earlier, and it made me shine brightly inside. I still did not try to think it out deeply, but was merely seized by the notion, as though I had been struck by light. Yet that idea, which until then had never once occurred to me, began to grow in strength and size as soon as it was born. Far from containing the idea, I myself was wrapped up in it. And this was the notion that enwrapped me: “I must set fire to the Golden Temple.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
MEANWHILE I continued walking and came to the front of the Tango-Yura Station on the Miyazu Line. When I had come here on the school excursion from the East Maizuru Middle School, we had followed the same course and had taken the train from this station. There was hardly anyone on the road in front of the station and it was easy to tell that this was a place where people depended for their living on the short summer season when visitors came in considerable numbers.
I decided to stay at a little inn where I saw a sign saying: “Yura Hall—Inn for Bathers.” I opened the sliding glass window at the entrance and announced my presence, but there was no reply. There was dust on the steps. The shutters were closed and it was dark inside the house. There was not a soul to be seen.
I went to the back door. There was a simple little garden with some withered chrysanthemums. A bucket stood on a high shelf. This was for the benefit of the summer visitors, who used it as a shower to wash off the sand that was sticking to them when they returned from their swimming.