A Modern Husband

It was when an exhibition on the civilization of the early Meiji period was being held at the museum in Ueno. One cloudy afternoon, I had gone carefully through each room of the exhibition, and at last entered the final room, where prints from that era were displayed. There I noticed a gentleman standing before a glass case, gazing at several old copperplate engravings. He was a tall, slender old man with something of the dandy about him, dressed from head to foot in impeccably pressed black Western clothes and wearing an elegant top hat. The moment I saw him, I realized he was Viscount Honda, to whom I had been introduced four or five days earlier at a certain gathering. Yet although we had only just become acquainted, I already knew well that the viscount disliked society, and so for an instant I could not decide whether I ought to go up and greet him. At that moment Viscount Honda, apparently having heard my footsteps, slowly turned this way; then, as a faint shadow of a smile stirred beneath the lips half hidden by his grizzled beard, he lifted his hat slightly and said, “Ah,” with a gentle bow. Feeling a slight easing in my heart, I returned his bow in silence and moved quietly to his side.

Viscount Honda was one of those men whose handsome looks in middle age still lingered somewhere in the fleshless planes of his face, like the last light of evening. Yet at the same time there lay over that face an air of care and hardship, rare among the aristocracy, casting a meditative shadow from the depths of his mind. I remembered that the other day, just as today, I had found myself looking at the large pearl tiepin that shone with an indolent gleam in the single color of his black attire, as though it were the viscount’s own heart. ...

“What do you think of this copper engraving? A view of the Tsukiji foreign settlement, is it not? Isn’t the composition remarkably skillful? And the handling of light and shade is rather interesting too.”

As he spoke in a low voice, the viscount pointed with the silver handle of his slender cane to the picture inside the glass case. I nodded. Tokyo Bay, engraved with mica-like ripples; steamships flying various flags; Western men and women walking the streets; and pine trees stretching their branches above the foreign-style buildings into the sky, like something out of Hiroshige—there, in both subject matter and technique, was a kind of Japanese-Western eclecticism, showing that beautiful harmony peculiar to the art of early Meiji. That harmony has been lost forever from our art ever since. No—not only from our art, but from the Tokyo in which we live. Nodding again, I said that this view of the Tsukiji settlement was interesting not merely as a copper engraving, but still more touching because it called to mind the age when jinrikisha painted with peonies and Chinese lions, and photographs of geisha with glass panes, all vied with each other in boasting of “civilization and enlightenment.” The viscount listened with the same faint smile; then, quietly moving away from that case, he approached with slow steps the next one beside it, where ukiyo-e by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi were displayed, and said:

“Then look at this Yoshitoshi. It shows Kikugoro in Western clothes and Hanshiro with his hair in the ginkgo-leaf style, acting a tragic scene under the moon, pale as a charcoal ember. When one looks at this, does not that age seem to rise before the eyes even more vividly—that age which was neither quite Edo nor quite Tokyo, as though night and day had been made into one?”

I had also heard a hint of the rumor that Viscount Honda, though now known for his dislike of company, had in those days been celebrated not only in official circles but among private citizens as a gifted man returned from abroad. Therefore, to hear such words from the viscount here, in this almost deserted gallery, surrounded by prints of the time inside their glass cases, seemed, from one point of view, perfectly fitting—indeed almost too fitting. Yet from another point of view that very perfect fitness aroused in me a slight resistance, and I had been intending, as soon as he finished speaking, to pull the conversation away from that era and steer it toward the general development of ukiyo-e. But Viscount Honda, still pointing one by one with the silver handle of his cane at the Yoshitoshi prints, went on in the same unchanging low voice:

“In particular, when I look at prints like these, I feel as if that time of thirty or forty years ago were only yesterday, and even now it seems to me that if I were to open a newspaper, there might be an article in it about a ball at the Rokumeikan. To tell the truth, ever since I entered this gallery, I have not been able to rid myself of the strange notion that the people of that time have all come back to life, and though invisible to our eyes, are walking here and there all around us—and that now and then those ghosts put their mouths to our ears and softly whisper stories of long ago. Especially this Kikugoro in Western dress resembles a friend of mine so strongly that when I stood before that portrait I felt a half-creepy nostalgia, as if I almost wanted to exchange greetings after a long separation. Well then—if you do not mind—shall I tell you about that friend?”

Viscount Honda deliberately averted his eyes and said this in an unsettled tone, as if concerned not to impose on me. I recalled that when I had met the viscount before, the friend who had introduced us had said to him, “This man is a novelist, so if you ever have an interesting story, do tell it to him.” And even apart from that, by this time I too had somehow been drawn in by the viscount’s nostalgic sighing, and felt that, if possible, I would gladly climb into a carriage with him that very moment and drive together into that bustling city of “first-class brick buildings” hidden in the mist of the past. So, bowing, I encouraged him gladly: “Please do.”

“Then let us go over there.”

At the viscount’s words we went to a bench set in the middle of the gallery and sat down together. There was not another person to be seen in the room. All around us the many glass cases stood in the cold light of the overcast sky, quietly displaying old-toned copper engravings and ukiyo-e prints. Resting his chin on the silver handle of his cane, Viscount Honda gazed for a while over the gallery, which seemed like a chamber of his own “memories”; then at length he turned his eyes to me and began to speak in a subdued voice.

“The friend I speak of was a man named Miura Naoki. We happened to become acquainted on the ship by which I was returning from France. He was the same age as I, twenty-five, and like that Kikugoro by Yoshitoshi—fair-skinned, long-faced, his long hair parted in the middle—he looked every inch like civilization in the early Meiji period made flesh. During the long voyage we gradually became intimate, and after our return to Japan we remained so close that scarcely a week passed without our visiting each other.

“Miura’s parents were, I believe, large landowners somewhere around Shitaya, and since both died one after the other about the time he left for France, he, being their only son, must already have been quite a wealthy man in those days. As far as I knew him, he had a most enviable position: apart from going to the No. X Bank just enough to fulfill his formal duties, he was free to spend his days idling with his hands in his sleeves. Before long after coming home, he built a tasteful Western-style study at his family residence near Hyappon-gui in Ryogoku, where they had lived since his parents’ time, and there he lived in considerable luxury.

“Even now, as I speak, the appearance of that room rises before me as vividly as if I were looking at one of those copper engravings over there. French windows facing the Sumida River; a white ceiling edged with gilt; chairs and sofas upholstered in red Morocco leather; a portrait of Napoleon I hanging on the wall; a great ebony bookcase with carved ornament; a marble fireplace with a mirror above it; and atop that, a dwarf pine in a盆栽 pot that had been cherished by his father—all of it had a sort of old newness about it, gaudy to the point of gloom, or, if one sought another description, like the sound of some musical instrument gone slightly out of tune: in short, a study unmistakably of that age. And in surroundings like these, Miura would always establish himself beneath Napoleon I, with a collar of Yuki pongee layered at his neck, reading Hugo’s Orientales or something of the sort; it was a scene that might well have belonged in one of the copper engravings there. Come to think of it, I distinctly remember gazing with a vague sense of novelty at the large white sails that would sometimes pass beyond those French windows, blocking the view.

“Though I say he lived luxuriously, Miura showed no inclination, like other young men of his age, to set foot in pleasure quarters such as Shinbashi or Yanagibashi. He merely shut himself up every day in that newly built study and devoted himself wholly to reading, in a manner more suitable to a gentleman in early retirement than to a banker. No doubt this was partly because his delicate constitution would not permit any dissipation whatsoever; but it was also because his disposition, rather contrary to the somewhat materialistic temper of the age, was more purely idealistic than most, and naturally placed him in circumstances that made him content with solitude. Indeed, the one respect in which Miura—otherwise a model enlightened gentleman—differed in coloring from his age was precisely this idealistic temperament; in that regard he rather resembled one of the political dreamers of an earlier generation.

“The proof of it was something he said when the two of us went one day to see a play somewhere—one of those pieces about the Shinpuren Rebellion. It was, I think, just after the curtain had fallen on the scene of Ono Teppei’s suicide that he suddenly turned to me and asked in all seriousness, ‘Can you sympathize with them?’ Now I, having just returned from abroad and being one of those who detested anything old-fashioned, answered with the utmost coldness, ‘No, not in the least. If men start an uprising merely because the sword prohibition has been issued, then I think it only natural that they destroy themselves.’ At that he shook his head in dissatisfaction and said, ‘Their arguments may have been mistaken. But the way they died for what they believed deserves more than sympathy.’ So I laughed and rejoined, ‘Then do you mean to say that, for the childish dream of restoring the Meiji world to the age of the gods, you would not regret throwing away the one life you have?’ But he still answered in the same earnest tone, ‘Even if it were a childish dream, if one died for what one believed, I should count myself satisfied.’ At the time I took this merely as a bit of talk occasioned by the moment, and paid it little heed. But now, when I look back, I see that already in those words the shadow of his pitiable future fate was crawling about like smoke. That, however, will become clear of itself as the story goes on.

“In any case, Miura carried this attitude into everything. So when it came to marriage, he would say, ‘I have no wish to marry without love,’ and reject without a second thought any number of excellent proposals. Yet the ‘love’ he meant differed from ordinary romantic love; even if some young lady appeared whom he liked quite a great deal, he would say things like, ‘There still seems to be something impure in my feelings,’ and so the matter never progressed as far as marriage. Watching from the side, one could not help growing impatient, and on occasion I even took it upon myself to advise him: ‘If you inspect your feelings from corner to corner that way, then you won’t be able to do even the ordinary acts of daily life. The world never goes according to one’s ideals, so you should resign yourself to that and be content with a fairly suitable candidate.’ But Miura would only gaze at me with pity and say, ‘If that were enough, I would not have stayed single all these years,’ as though I were not worth arguing with. And even if his friends left him alone, his relatives, seeing that he was frail by nature and fearing lest the family line might die out, apparently urged him at least to keep a secondary wife. But Miura, of course, was not a man to lend an ear to such advice. Far from lending an ear, he loathed even the word, and would often laugh, saying to me, ‘Whatever people may say about civilization and enlightenment, in Japan a concubine still flourishes openly.’ So during the two or three years after his return he did nothing but persist patiently in his reading, day after day, with Napoleon I for company; and neither we his friends nor anyone else had the least idea when he would ever achieve his so-called “marriage with love.”

“Then, while matters stood thus, I was assigned for a time to Seoul in Korea on official business. And before even a month had passed after I had settled there, I received the most unexpected news from Miura: a notice of his marriage. You can easily imagine my astonishment. Yet at the same time, when I thought that at last he too had found the object of his love, I could not help smiling. The notice itself was extremely brief, saying only that a match had been arranged with one Katsumi, daughter of a purveyor to the government named Fujii. But from a subsequent letter I learned the following. One day, while out walking, he happened to stop at the Bush Clover Temple in Yanagishima. There, by chance, an antique dealer who did business with his household had come to worship together with Fujii and his daughter; and while they all walked about the temple grounds, he and the young lady somehow came to fall in love at first sight with each other. Since the Bush Clover Temple, in those days, still had a thatched Niomon gate, and Basho’s famous verse monument—‘Delightful too / are those who go on drenched / through the bush clover in rain’—still stood among the hagi, it must indeed have been a stage perfectly suited to such a romantic meeting between a gifted man and a beauty. Yet for Miura, who whenever he went out invariably wore Paris-tailored Western clothes and made it his mission to be enlightened to the last, the manner of his falling in love was so conventional that I, who had already smiled at the marriage notice, felt all the more tickled by it. From this, you will naturally infer that the antique dealer served as matchmaker. That was fortunate, for the matter was settled at once; no sooner had a formal go-between been arranged than the wedding was conducted without a hitch in the course of that same autumn. It goes without saying that the couple were happy together. But what struck me as at once amusing and enviable was that Miura, who had been so coolly scholarly by temperament, began after marriage to show in his letters reporting his circumstances an almost cheerful liveliness, as though he had become another man.

“I still have those letters in my possession, and whenever I read them over, I feel as though I can see his smiling face before me. With childlike delight Miura wrote me patient, detailed accounts of his daily life: that this year he had failed in cultivating morning glories; that a donation had been solicited from him by the Yojoin in Ueno; that the rainy season had mildewed most of his books; that his personal rickshaw man had contracted tetanus; that he had gone to see Western conjuring at the Miyakoza; that there had been a fire in Kuramae—there is no end if I begin listing them all. But what pleased him most, apparently, was that he had commissioned the painter Goseda Yoshiume to make a portrait of his wife. That portrait he hung on the wall of his study in place of the old Napoleon I, and I myself saw it later. It showed Madam Katsumi, her hair done in the sokuhatsu style, wearing a black patterned robe embroidered with gold thread, holding a bouquet of roses and standing before a cheval mirror, painted in profile. But though I was able to see that portrait, I was never able to see again the cheerful Miura of that time. ...”

Having said this, Viscount Honda let escape a faint sigh and fell silent for a while. Listening intently, I could not help fixing anxious eyes upon his face, thinking that perhaps, when the viscount had returned from Seoul, Miura had already died in the meantime. The viscount, however, seemed quickly to perceive my uneasiness, and slowly shaking his head, went on:

“But just because I say this, it does not mean that he died while I was away. No. It only means that when I returned to Japan after about a year, Miura had once more become a composed man—or rather, a man who seemed gloomier than before. This was something I sensed the moment, at Shinbashi Station, I took the hand he had come specially to offer me after our long separation. Or perhaps it would be truer to say not that I sensed it, but that his excessive composure troubled me. In fact, the very first thing I said, the instant I saw his face, was, ‘What is the matter? Are you unwell?’ So strongly was I struck by the change. Yet he seemed rather surprised at my suspicion, and answered that both he and his wife were perfectly healthy. When he said that, it seemed to me plausible enough that in the course of a single year, even though he had made the “marriage with love,” his disposition could hardly have changed so suddenly; so I let it go, laughing and saying, ‘Then it must only have been the light that made your complexion look poor.’ But it still took another two or three months before I ceased to be able to laugh it off—before I became aware of the torment hidden behind that gloomy mask. Before I come to that, however, I ought first to tell you something about his wife’s character.”

"The first time I met Miura’s wife was not long after I had returned from Keijo, when I was invited to his mansion on the banks of the Okawa and enjoyed an evening’s hospitality there. I heard that she was about the same age as Miura, but perhaps because she was small, she certainly looked two or three years younger to anyone’s eyes. She had a round face, thick eyebrows, and a fresh, vivid complexion; that evening she wore a satin sash with some ancient butterfly-and-bird pattern or the like, and, to use the language of those days, she gave altogether a highly refined impression. And yet, compared with the new wife I had imagined as the object of Miura’s love, there was somehow something about her that did not fit that impression. Of course, I say ‘somehow’ because I myself could not clearly explain the reason. Besides, my expectations had often been upset, beginning with the very first time I met Miura, so at the time I merely had that passing thought; it was not as if my heart cooled toward congratulating him on his marriage because of it. On the contrary, as we sat for a while over the meal, gathered around the bright lamplight, his wife’s lively intelligence won my complete admiration. The common saying about a person who answers as soon as spoken to must surely refer to just such manners in conversation. ‘Madam, a woman like you really ought to have been born, not in Japan, but in France.’ In the end I even felt moved to say something like that in all seriousness. Miura, sipping from his cup, cut in teasingly, ‘There, you see? Isn’t that just what I’m always saying?’ But was it really only my imagination that his teasing words rang unpleasantly in my ears for an instant? And was it really only my own malicious fancy that, at that moment, Mrs. Katsumi’s sidelong glance at him, half reproachful, seemed to betray a sensuality that was almost too blatant? At any rate, during that brief exchange I could not help feeling that the whole tenor of their ordinary life together flashed before me like lightning. Looking back now, that was for me the opening curtain of the tragedy of Miura’s life; but of course at the time, for my part as well, no more than the shadow of an uneasiness had just grazed my mind, and after that I went back as before to lively exchanges of cups with Miura. So that night, after literally exhausting every pleasure of the evening and taking my leave of his house, even as the river breeze off the Okawa blew away the pleasant tipsiness I had in my rickshaw, I still secretly congratulated him again and again on having succeeded in what people call ‘a marriage with love.’

"But about a month later—and naturally during that time I had continued to visit back and forth with the couple often enough—one day a doctor friend invited me to the Shintomiza, where Oden Kanabumi was then being performed. There, in a box about the middle of the opposite side, I spotted Miura’s wife. In those days I always took opera glasses with me when I went to the theater, so Mrs. Katsumi, framed in those round lenses, first appeared before me against the vivid red felt spread before her. She had what looked like a rose in her coiffure, and her white double chin rested above a subdued-colored collar. The moment I noticed her face, she too raised those usual seductive eyes and sent a light bow in my direction. So I lowered my glasses and returned the greeting, whereupon, for some reason, Miura’s wife hastily bowed again toward me. Moreover, compared with the first one, this second bow was far more respectful. I then realized that the first greeting had not in fact been directed to me, and I instinctively looked around the surrounding boxes, searching for the person to whom it had been meant. At once I saw, in the box right next to hers, a young man in a flashy striped suit, who must likewise have been intending to identify the recipient of Mrs. Katsumi’s greeting. With a cigarette of some expensive sort in his mouth, he was peering all around in our direction, and our eyes met squarely. There was something disagreeable in his swarthy face that I noticed at once, and as I quickly looked away, I raised my glasses again and idly turned them back to the opposite box. Then I saw that there was another woman seated with Miura’s wife. Narayama, the advocate of women’s rights—surely you have at least heard the name. She was the wife of a lawyer named Narayama, who enjoyed considerable fame at the time, and a woman who loudly championed equality between the sexes, though dubious rumors were always circulating about her. Looking at Mrs. Narayama seated beside Miura’s wife almost in the role of a chaperone, her black crested kimono pulled stiff across the shoulders and gold-rimmed spectacles on her nose, I could not help being assaulted by an ominous foreboding for no reason I could name. And that women’s-rights advocate, with her bony face lightly powdered and her constant fussing over her collar, kept casting meaningful glances in our direction—or rather, more probably, toward the striped suit in the next box. It would be no exaggeration to say that that entire day at the theater was spent less on Kikugoro or Sadanjii on the stage than on watching Miura’s wife, the striped suit, and Narayama’s wife. That is how, even while I sat in a world of lively offstage music and hanging cherry branches, my mind remained wholly detached from such things and tormented instead by imaginings tinged with hateful colors. So when, shortly after the middle act ended, those two ladies disappeared from the opposite box, I felt a genuine relief, as though a weight had dropped from my shoulders. Of course, even after the women were gone, the striped suit remained in the next box, still puffing incessantly on his cigarette and now and then glancing in my direction; but now that two parts of that three-cornered arrangement had vanished, his swarthy face no longer troubled me as much as before.

"This makes me sound horribly suspicious, but that was only because there was something about the young man’s swarthy features that aroused my antipathy. Somehow I felt that between him and me—or perhaps between him and all of us—there had been some lurking hostility from the very beginning. Therefore, when, not even a month later, in Miura’s study overlooking the Okawa, Miura himself introduced the man to me, I could not help feeling a bewilderment close to being faced with a riddle. According to Miura, he was his wife’s cousin and at the time an exceptionally able employee, highly valued for his age, at the XX Spinning Company. Certainly, even while we sat over tea at the same table, exchanging trifling chatter and smoking cigarettes, it was immediately clear to me that he was a very capable fellow. But being capable, of course, is no reason for one’s likes and dislikes to change. Indeed, again and again I appealed to reason, telling myself that, since he was her cousin, there was nothing at all strange in their exchanging greetings at the theater, and I even tried as much as possible to draw closer to him. Yet just as my efforts seemed about to succeed, he would inevitably slurp his tea audibly, or carelessly drop cigarette ash onto the table, or laugh loudly at one of his own jokes—doing something unpleasant that revived my aversion all over again. So when, after about half an hour, he took his leave to attend some company banquet, I could not help rising to my feet and flinging open the French window facing the river, with no thought but to refresh the vulgar air of the room. Miura, meanwhile, sat as usual beneath the forehead of Mrs. Katsumi, who held a bouquet of roses, and said in a mildly reproving tone, ‘You really dislike that fellow, don’t you?’

"‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘He rubs me the wrong way. Still, it is strange that he should be your wife’s cousin.’

"‘Strange? In what sense?’

"‘Only that they seem too different in type.’

"Miura was silent for a while, gazing steadily at the surface of the Okawa, over which the light of evening was already drifting. Then he said abruptly, ‘What do you say—shall we go fishing one of these days?’

"But I was glad above all else to have the subject move away from that cousin of his wife, so I answered at once in good spirits, ‘Very well. If it’s fishing, I’ve more confidence in myself than I do in diplomacy.’

"Miura smiled for the first time and said, ‘More than diplomacy? As for me—well then, perhaps I have more confidence in fishing than in love.’

"‘Then it sounds as though you expect a catch better than your wife.’

"‘If so, that will only give you another chance to envy me.’

"I noticed that underneath Miura’s words there was something that pricked my ears like a needle. But when I looked at him in the deepening dusk, he still wore the same unchanged, cool expression and kept patiently watching the gleam on the water outside the French window.

"‘So when shall we go fishing?’

"‘Any time that suits you.’

"‘Then I’ll write and let you know.’

"With that I slowly left the red Morocco leather chair, silently shook hands with him, and then withdrew alone from that study, so full of the smell of secrets, into the even dimmer corridor outside. Quite unexpectedly, however, in the doorway there stood a dark figure, silent, as though stealing a hearing of what had passed inside. And the moment that figure saw me, it stepped quickly near and said in a soft, alluring voice, ‘Oh, are you leaving already?’ After one suffocating instant, I looked coldly at Mrs. Katsumi, who today too had roses in her hair, bowed without a word, and hurried toward the entrance where my rickshaw was waiting. My feelings at that moment must have been so utterly confused that even I myself could not make sense of them. All I remember is that, even when my rickshaw crossed Ryogoku Bridge, I kept muttering to myself the same name over and over: ‘Delilah.’

"From then on, I began clearly to sense the secret hidden beneath Miura’s melancholy manner. Of course, I need hardly say that the nature of that secret at once branded upon my mind the loathsome two words ‘adultery.’ But if that was so, why did Miura, idealist that he was, not simply carry through a divorce? Was it because, though he suspected adultery, he had no proof? Or perhaps, even if he did have proof, he still loved Mrs. Katsumi enough to hesitate over divorce? While my conjectures grew wilder by turns, I even forgot the promise to go fishing with him, and for something like half a month, though I did write from time to time, I stopped setting foot in his house on the banks of the Okawa, which I had formerly visited so often. Then, after about half a month had passed, I happened unexpectedly upon another incident, and this at last made me decide to fulfill our old promise and, using the chance to face him alone, speak to him directly of the anxieties that were preying on my mind.

"What happened was this. One day, on my way back from the Nakamuraza with that same doctor friend, I happened to fall in with an old newspaper man from the Akebono Shimbun, a man who called himself, I think, Chinchikurin-shujin. Together, through rain that had begun falling at dusk, we went to have a drink at Ikuina in Yanagibashi. There, in an upstairs room, while listening to the distant sound of shamisen that seemed to evoke old Edo and quietly enjoying a few cups, the lively Chinchikurin-shujin, in growing good humor, suddenly began entertaining us with the scandalous history of Mrs. Narayama, tossing in light, deft jokes as he went. He told us that before all this she had been some foreigner’s mistress in Kobe; that for a time she had kept Sanyutei Enkyo as a toy boy; that in those days she was at the height of her glory and wore no fewer than six gold rings; that for the past two or three years she had been so burdened with dishonorable debts she was nearly ruined. Chinchikurin-shujin exposed still other disreputable details of her private conduct, but what cast the darkest shadow over my own mind was the rumor that lately some young married woman had become Mrs. Narayama’s hanger-on and was always seen with her. And more than that, this young wife, together with the women’s-rights advocate, was said to go off from time to time to Suijin and stay there with men in tow. When I heard this, even amid what ought to have been cheerful exchange of cups, the image of Miura—always pensive, even in company—kept obstinately flickering before my eyes, and I found myself unable, even from politeness, to join in the lively laughter. Fortunately, however, the doctor seems to have noticed at once how downcast I was, and by skillfully managing the conversation he steered it before long into a direction entirely unrelated to Mrs. Narayama. I was thus able at last to breathe again and continue responding, at least enough not to spoil the mood of the gathering. Still, that evening seemed fated to go badly for me from beginning to end. When at last, my spirits already ruined by the talk of the women’s-rights advocate, I rose with the other two and was about to get into my rickshaw at the entrance of Ikuina, a two-passenger rickshaw suddenly came hurtling up, its hood shining with rain. And it happened almost at the same instant that I put one foot onto my own rickshaw and the other rickshaw lowered its oilcloth apron and one of its occupants sprang energetically down into the entrance. The moment I saw that figure, I quickly threw myself under my own hood, and even in the instant before the rickshaw man lifted the shafts, driven by a strange excitement, I could not help muttering, ‘It’s him.’ The ‘him’ I meant was none other than the swarthy man in the striped suit who claimed to be Miura’s wife’s cousin. So even as my rickshaw rushed like the wind through the lamp-bright traffic of the Hirokoji, with the rain rattling on the hood overhead, I kept imagining the identity of the other person who had been riding in that two-seater and was seized again and again by dreadful uneasiness. Was it Mrs. Narayama? Or was it perhaps Mrs. Katsumi, with roses in her coiffure? Tormented by this irresolvable doubt, I felt all the more disgusted by my own cowardly impulse to hide in the rickshaw in frantic haste—as if I feared learning the truth. Whether that other person was in fact Miura’s wife or the advocate of women’s rights remains, even now, a riddle I cannot solve."

Viscount Honda drew out a large silk handkerchief from somewhere, blew his nose discreetly, glanced around the exhibition room, already beginning to fill with dusk, and quietly resumed his story.

"In any case, whatever the truth of that matter, what I had heard from Chinchikurin-shujin was reason enough to think not merely twice but three or four times for Miura’s sake. So the very next day I sent him a letter, naming a day when I thought we might go on the promised fishing excursion and take the air a little. His reply came back by return post. Since it would happen to be the night of the sixteenth-day moon, he wrote, rather than fish we should put out on the Okawa at dusk and enjoy the moonrise as well. Naturally I had no particular attachment to the fishing itself, so I at once agreed to his proposal, and on the appointed day, as arranged, I met him at a boat inn in Yanagibashi, and before the moon had yet risen we rowed out onto the Okawa in a narrow river boat."

"The evening view of the Great River in those days may not quite have matched the elegance of earlier ages, but even so it still retained a kind of beauty like something out of an ukiyo-e print. As a matter of fact, when we came out from under Manpachi toward the broad course of the river that day, the railing of Ryogoku Bridge, black as though brushed over with ink, stretched a single dark curved line across the sky of the rippling water, which reflected the faint dusk light of mid-autumn. In the blur already softened by the rising river mist, the shadows of carts and horses passing over the bridge were indistinct, and only the lanterns moving busily back and forth showed up, tiny and red, dotted here and there like little Chinese lantern plants.

Miura: ‘Well? What do you think of this view?’

I: ‘Let me see... if there is one thing, no matter how much one wanted to, that one could never see in the West, this may be it.’

Miura: ‘Then you mean that, when it comes to scenery, you do not mind a little old-fashionedness.’

I: ‘All right, in scenery alone I will admit defeat.’

Miura: ‘But lately I have come to hate this thing they call civilization and enlightenment altogether.’

I: ‘I heard that when the shogunate’s old envoy of amity was seen walking along the boulevard, that foul-mouthed fellow Merimee said to Dumas or someone beside him, “Say, who on earth strapped those Japanese to such absurdly long swords?” If you are not careful, you will be one of the people cut down by Merimee’s poisonous tongue.’

Miura: ‘No, but there is a story better than that. A Chinese named He Ruzhang, who once came here as an envoy, stayed at an inn in Yokohama, and when he saw the Japanese sleeping robe, he is said to have admired it, saying something like, “This is an ancient sleeping garment; in this country the institutions of Xia and Zhou still survive.” So you cannot simply laugh at something just because it is old-fashioned.’

Meanwhile the incoming tide had darkened the river’s surface so suddenly that, startled, I looked around. Before I knew it, the little cormorant-prowed boat carrying us, its oar-beat growing quicker, had already left Ryogoku Bridge behind and was about to come abreast of the black pines of Shubi, dark even to the eye at night. I wanted to steer the conversation as quickly as possible toward the problem of Madam Katsumi, so, seizing upon Miura’s last remark, I cast in a probing sinker at once.

‘If you are so fond of the old ways,’ I said, ‘what about that enlightened wife of yours?’

For a while Miura gazed fixedly, as if he had not heard my question, at the sky over Otakegura, where there was not yet even a hint of moonrise. Then at last he turned his eyes on my face and, in a low but forceful voice, answered crisply, ‘Nothing. I divorced her about a week ago.’

Wasn’t that an astonishing reply? Taken aback by this unexpected answer, I involuntarily gripped the gunwale and asked in a strained voice, ‘Then you knew about it too?’

Still in the same calm tone, Miura countered, as if to make sure, ‘And you—did you know everything?’

I: ‘I do not know whether I knew everything, but I had heard at least about the relation between your wife and Madam Narayama.’

Miura: ‘Then what about the relation between my wife and her cousin?’

I: ‘I had more or less guessed that too.’

Miura: ‘Then there should be nothing more I need say.’

I: ‘But—but when did you first realize there was such a relation?’

Miura: ‘Between my wife and her cousin? About three months after we were married—just before I asked the painter Goseda Yoshiume to do that portrait of her.’

You can easily imagine how much more unexpected this answer was to me.

I: ‘Then why in the world did you tolerate such a thing until today?’

Miura: ‘I did not tolerate it. I affirmed it.’

This third surprising answer stunned me, and for some moments I could only stare blankly at his face. Miura, without the least sign of agitation, went on.

‘Of course, I did not mean that I affirmed their present relation. I mean that I affirmed the relation I then imagined existed between them. You remember that I used to insist on “marriage for love,” do you not? That was not because I wanted to satisfy my selfishness. It was the result of placing love above everything else. So after we married, when I became aware that the affection between us was not pure, I regretted my rashness, and at the same time I pitied my wife, who had to live with a man like me. As you know, I have never had a strong constitution. And besides, however much I might wish to love my wife, she could not possibly love me—indeed, perhaps my so-called love was itself so feeble that it could not stir that much warmth in another person. Therefore, if there was a love between my wife and her cousin purer than the love between my wife and me, I meant to sacrifice myself cleanly for those two childhood companions. If I did not, my claim to place love above everything else would collapse in practice. In fact, that portrait of my wife too—I meant, if it came to that, to leave it in my study as her substitute.’

As he said this, Miura once more turned his eyes toward the sky over the opposite bank. But the sky, as though a black curtain had been let down, hung darkly over the residence of Shiimatsuura, and there was still not the slightest sign of clouds heralding the moonrise. After lighting a cigarette, I prompted him.

‘And then?’

Miura: ‘Not long afterward, I discovered that my wife’s cousin’s love was impure. To speak plainly, I discovered that there was also a sexual affair between that man and Madam Narayama. How I discovered it is something you probably do not especially wish to hear, and I have no desire now to tell. Let it be enough to say that by a highly accidental chance, I myself saw them meeting in secret.’

As I knocked the ash from my cigarette over the side, the memory of that rainy night at Ikina came vividly back into my mind. But Miura, without a pause, continued.

‘For me this was truly the first blow. Since I had lost half the grounds on which I had affirmed their relation, I could no longer look upon their affair with the same kindly eyes as before. I think this happened around the time you returned from Korea. In those days I was tormenting myself every day over the question of how to separate my wife from her cousin. Even if his love was false, I believed that hers must surely be pure. Believing that, I also believed that for my wife’s own happiness I had to intervene in their relation. But they—at least my wife—when she sensed this attitude of mine, seemed to interpret it to mean that until then I had known nothing of their relation, and that only around that time had I at last noticed it, and so had begun to be driven by jealousy. Accordingly, from then on my wife began to keep a hostile watch on me. Indeed, it may even be that at times she exercised toward you the same sort of vigilance she did toward me.’

I: ‘Come to think of it, once your wife was listening at the door while we were talking in your study.’

Miura: ‘Exactly. She was quite the sort of woman who would not hesitate to behave like that.’

For a while we both fell silent and gazed at the dark river. By then our little boat had already passed under the former Omayabashi Bridge and, leaving a faint wake upon the night water, was coming close to the row of trees near Komagata. Then Miura said again in a subdued voice:

‘But I still did not doubt my wife’s sincerity. Therefore the very fact that my feelings did not reach her—not only did not reach her, but rather earned her hatred—tormented me all the more. From the time I met you at Shimbashi after your return, right up to today, I have had to struggle constantly with that torment. But about a week ago, through some mistake by the maid or someone, a piece of mail that ought to have gone into my wife’s hands came instead to my study. At once I thought of her cousin. And then—I opened the letter at last. It turned out to be a love letter addressed to my wife from some other man altogether. In other words, her love for that man too was not pure after all. Naturally this second blow shattered all my ideals with a force far more terrible than the first. But at the same time it is also true that I experienced the melancholy consolation of feeling my responsibility suddenly lightened.’

Just as Miura finished speaking, a dreadfully red sixteenth-night moon began at last to rise, huge, above the warehouses on the opposite bank. I had just been looking at that Yoshitoshi ukiyo-e print and had been reminded of Miura by Kikugoro in Western clothes; it was especially because that red moon resembled the moon in that stage scene. Miura, with his pale complexion, narrow face, and long hair parted in the middle, looked out at such a moonrise, then suddenly let out a long breath and, with a lonely smile in his voice, said:

‘You once used to sneer that even the Shinpuren, who fought staking their lives, were only chasing a childish dream. Then in your eyes, my married life too—’

I: ‘Yes. It may have been a childish dream too. But the enlightenment and civilization we hold up as our goal today—when people look back on it a hundred years from now, will that not also be just the same childish dream?...’"

Just as Viscount Honda had continued his story to this point, we were informed by a guard who had come up beside us that closing time was already near. The viscount and I slowly rose to our feet, cast one more glance over the ukiyo-e prints and copper engravings around us, and quietly stepped out of that dim exhibition room.

As though we ourselves too were some ghosts of the past that had floated out of those glass display cases.

(January, 1919)