Pumpkin

Good lord, it’s a world where even a pumpkin can kill a man. Shocking, isn’t it? To look at him, you’d never imagine he could do anything so outrageous. What, an actual pumpkin? Don’t be ridiculous. Pumpkin was only his nickname. They called him Ichibei the Pumpkin. In Yoshiwara he was one of the lowest of the low, or rather, a taikomochi who scarcely even counted.

If you have to ask that, then you’ve never seen him. That’s a pity. By now he’s probably wearing red robes, so even if you wanted to, you couldn’t just go and see him. He was a little runt, like Issun-boshi, and on top of that he wore a frock coat with a scarlet velvet vest, so he really cut a figure. And perched on that broad, bowl-shaped head of his was a little topknot, done up in some stylish Yuhei-yakko fashion or other. So any customer meeting him for the first time would be utterly taken aback. Then Pumpkin would tap that broad head with his fan and say, “Well, what do you think? A taikomochi of the New Technique School has a certain charm now and then, doesn’t he?” A bad joke, that was.

And speaking of jokes, Pumpkin didn’t have a single accomplishment you could call a real accomplishment. All he did was buttonhole customers and pun at them to his heart’s content. And it wasn’t even as if he had the wit to make you say, “One can’t toss off jokes like that on the spur of the moment.” No, his humor never rose to that level, which made it all rather thin and painful. Still, the customers were customers; if he managed, however clumsily, to come out with something that sounded like a joke, they would all laugh like fools. They were the sort who were delighted beyond measure simply to think they understood a joke.

At first, I suppose that was what sustained him. Even after I came to know him, he was still inordinately pleased with himself and kept clowning on. But even Pumpkin couldn’t go on joking every hour of the day. Sometimes he would turn serious and say something in earnest. Yet the customers were convinced Pumpkin was always joking, so no matter how serious he was, they would still clutch their bellies and laugh. Lately, when I looked at him, I began to feel that more and more keenly. You see, for all appearances, he was a surprisingly sensitive fellow. He might wear a frock coat and scarlet velvet vest, and tap his Yuhei-yakko head with a fan, but that didn’t mean everything he said was always a joke. When he spoke seriously, he really was speaking seriously; for all we know, he may even have spoken more seriously than his customers ever did. At least, that’s what I think. So from his point of view, he must long have felt something like, “It’s you lot who are ridiculous for laughing.” And this latest business of his, in the end, may have been nothing more than that resentment swelling to a breaking point.

It is probably true, just as the newspapers reported, that Pumpkin had fallen for an oiran named Usugumo Tayu. And no doubt that nouveau riche fellow Naramo had fallen for the same tayu as well. But even for him, a mere rivalry in love would hardly be enough to make him commit murder. What stung him more, I think, was that not a single person believed him when he said he loved Usugumo Tayu. The rich upstart customer certainly didn’t believe it, and Usugumo Tayu herself never dreamed it could be so. To be sure, pitiable as that was, you can’t say it was unreasonable. She was one of the foremost courtesans in Naka-no-cho, while he was Pumpkin, a stunted little half-man. Ask anyone, before things came to this. Even I would have thought it a lie. That was what tormented him. Above all, it seems he took to heart the fact that the very woman he loved, Usugumo Tayu, did not believe him. That, more than anything, is why he killed.

Apparently that very night, drunk as usual, he went sidling up to Usugumo Tayu and said something about how she ought to marry him. Tayu, of course, took it for the same old joke and did nothing but laugh, paying him no mind. It would have been one thing if she had left it at that, but somehow or other she happened to say, “Ichibei, if you mean to fall in love with me, then love me with your life at stake.” That must have struck him like a flash. And to make matters worse, Naramo then chimed in from behind, “In that case, you and I are rivals. We ought to fight it out to the death this very minute,” and laughed. The moment could not have been worse. Up to then Pumpkin had been capering about, but all at once he sat up straight with a changed expression. And then, what do you think he did? He fixed those bleary, drunken eyes and began doing Hamlet in imitation. And in English, they say. That’s what makes it astounding.

Everyone there was dumbfounded. Of course they were. Among those present, whether Yusen or Chobei, not one knew a word of English. Even Kikaku might lecture on The Narrow Road to the Deep North, but if Hamlet came up he probably had never so much as heard the name. Only one man there understood it: the rich customer. Having been to America and worked there washing dishes or something of the sort, he was the kind of man who found Japanese theater dull and fancied himself a patron of some comic-opera actress, Miss So-and-so. But naturally he took it for a joke as well, so even when Pumpkin, making strange gestures and seizing hold of Usugumo Tayu, declaimed, “You go not till I set you up a glass / Where you may see the inmost part of you,” or something of the kind, the fellow only kept laughing his head off. Up to that point, well, that was all right. But as the speech, like Hamlet’s on the stage, went on and Pumpkin came pressing closer and closer to Tayu, ill luck being what it is, Naramo, cheerful with drink and repeating something he had half learned somewhere, suddenly cried out in imitation of Polonius, “What, ho! help! help! help!” The moment Pumpkin heard that, his face turned like a dead man’s, and in a voice that sounded almost choked off he shouted, “How, now! A rat? Dead for a ducat, dead!” No sooner had he said it than he snatched the short sword in its sharkskin scabbard lying beside Naramo and drove it straight into the man’s chest. If he had been the real Polonius, that would have been the moment to say, “Oh! I am slain.” But the blade was sharp, and it struck a vital spot, so the customer gave one grunt and died on the spot. They say the blood that poured out was something terrible.

“Look at that. I don’t talk nothing but nonsense, either.” That is what Pumpkin said as he flung the short sword away. Blood must have spattered on him, but his vest was scarlet velvet, so it did not show much. Whether he had killed a man or not, he still looked the same stunted little creature as ever, Ichibei the Pumpkin, wearing a frock coat over a Yuhei-yakko hairstyle. Yet to the people there, he must have looked like a different man. No, not just looked it. He had become a different man altogether. That is why, when they took him into custody and led him down from the second floor of the teahouse, he was wearing over the hands bound with rope a dazzlingly beautiful outer robe embroidered with paulownia and phoenixes. Whose robe was it, you ask? Why, Usugumo Tayu’s, of course.

Ever since then, Yoshiwara has been full of talk about him. At any rate, this should show you how dangerous it is to assume everything is a joke. Whether a thing is said with a laugh or without one, anything said in earnest is earnest all the same.

(February, 1918)