When I Feel Most Motivated

I simply like winter, so I like November and December alike. By saying I like them, I mean that when one is in Tokyo, nature around December is pleasant, and so is the look of the town. As for nature being pleasant, I probably feel it all the more because I live out in the suburbs, but from the end of November into the beginning of December, whenever I come home late at night from outside, there hangs in the air an indescribable smell. Whether it is the scent of fallen leaves, or of mist, or of flowers withering, or of fruit rotting, I cannot tell, but at any rate it is a good smell. And when I go to sleep and wake again, the spaces between the trees have opened up. The trees, after their leaves have scattered and fallen, have grown bright and clear between their branches. What is more, shrikes come here. Brown-eared bulbuls come. Sometimes even wagtails come. Around the Otonashi River in Tabata, wagtails always appear in winter. They even make their way into this garden. It is a little disappointing that, unlike in summer, white herons no longer skim across the sky, but I feel there is more than enough to make up for that.

As evening gradually approaches, the town somehow grows tense and bustling. It begins to rustle with activity. That is what I find rather delightful. Lantern-plant lanterns hanging up and bands playing are lively enough and pleasant in their way, but precisely because everything is so lively, what I like is how the dark, lonely parts of town stand out all the more. For example, Sudacho Street may be very crowded and bright, but if you turn a little toward the Kajicho vegetable market, it becomes dark and quiet there. When, by some chance, I find myself walking through such a place, I am reminded of seasonal haiku topics like “nabeyaki” or “fire.” And when the year is really drawing to a close, and I walk through streets where New Year’s pine decorations are already set up, it gives me the pleasant feeling of walking through one of Kubota Mantarō’s novels.

In December I am always in Tokyo, and as for places outside it, I know only such very ordinary ones as Kyoto and Nara. But the first time I went to Kyoto, it was December, and in those days Shichijo Station was smaller than it is now, and streets like Karasuma and Shijo were much narrower than they are today. So the Kyoto I know is only that old-fashioned Kyoto, but while I was staying in that old Kyoto, I remember being caught in passing winter showers two or three times. I especially remember one shower in the Tadasu Woods of Shimogamo: just as the dawn glow appeared, the rain suddenly began, and I recall how exceedingly elegant it seemed. Speaking of winter showers, at about that same time I was caught in one at Kasuga Shrine in Nara, and while waiting for it to clear, I once had kagura music performed. I still remember the grace of it: old-fashioned instruments such as the yamato-goto and the koto were played, and a young shrine maiden in scarlet hakama, small, very small, danced. Of course, in those days Kasuga Shrine too had not yet been repaired as it has now, and the whole place was older and more worn, which was precisely why it was better. I have gone to places like Kyoto and Nara many times, but when I think of winter, it somehow seems that those first memories remain the most vivid.

More recently, I came to live in Kamakura and commute to a school in Yokosuka, and so I had the chance to become familiar with December outside Tokyo as well. Kamakura in those days was especially pleasant if only because there were fewer of the sort of people one finds there in the summer season. In particular, when one is in Kamakura at this time of year, one gets the feeling that Westerners are somehow superior to Japanese when it comes to winter. A Japanese face, somehow so meager, does not seem to gain any distinction by burying its chin in the fur collar of an overcoat. I have heard that among the employees of the Chinese Eastern Railway, the difference in energy between Japanese and Russians becomes especially striking in winter; and when I see Westerners striding about Kamakura at this season, I can well believe it.

As for writing fiction, though, winter seems better than summer; indeed, November and December, or even colder weather still, seem preferable. And not only for the writing itself: for sitting over a brazier and vaguely thinking through the steps that lead up to writing, this time of year seems the best of all. Manuscripts for the New Year issues of the various magazines usually have to be done by the end of November or the beginning of December. While one is writing such things, other people kindly worry that it must be cold and so on, but once one gets going and into full swing, one forgets the brazier almost completely, except for smoking. Besides, at that time of year the sliding doors and paper screens are all tightly shut, and there is a reassuring sense that one’s thoughts and feelings cannot escape from the room; that makes it easy to write. Of course, even if I say it is easy to write then, that does not necessarily mean the finished work turns out in proportion to that ease, so naturally it does not follow that every New Year’s story becomes a masterpiece.

(1917)