Kimono
In "Kimono," Akutagawa Ryunosuke turns a dream into a sharp literary satire. A room full of people criticizing one another's clothing gradually reveals itself as a disguised portrait of writers, critics, schools, and styles. Western suits and traditional kimono become stand-ins for artistic fashions, reputations, and accusations of influence, stagnation, and regression. At the center is a thin, silent man whose suspect yellow robe draws repeated mockery, suggesting both vulnerability and stubborn self-possession. The dream setting lets Akutagawa be playful, indirect, and caustic at once. Beneath the wit lies a serious meditation on literary identity: how an artist is judged, how styles are worn like costumes, and how difficult it is to escape the gaze of rivals and peers. (QA warning)
I had a dream like this.
It seemed to be some kind of restaurant, or something of the sort. In a large tatami room, a great many people were seated, filling it to capacity. All of them, each according to taste, were dressed either in Western clothes or in kimono.
And they were not merely wearing them. They were looking at one another's clothes and offering whatever criticisms they pleased.
"Your frock coat is out of date. Isn't it just a relic of the Naturalist period?"
"That Yuki is a masterpiece. It has an indescribable human warmth."
"Come now, there's no movement of feeling at all in that haori of yours made of omeshi silk."
"Just look at that navy serge suit. It's the very picture of the petty bourgeois."
"Well, now, I must say I'm surprised to see you wearing an obi like a comic storyteller's."
"After all, when you're dressed in Oshima, you really do look like a pampered boy from uptown."
They were saying such things back and forth with great enthusiasm.
Then I noticed, at the very far end of the room, a strange, skinny man. He was wearing a dubious yellow robe with an old-fashioned lacquered crest. It seemed that this garment of his had been the target of attack for some time already. Sure enough, even now, a young critic with long hair declared,
"Your clothes are just idling away as always."
For some reason, that critic was dressed in a white robe like a Dominican friar's. Evidently it was the kind of garment Balzac wore when he worked. Of course, the wearer was nowhere near Balzac's size in height or breadth, so the hem hung down with quite a bit to spare.
But the skinny man merely gave a bitter smile and went on sitting there in silence.
"You can't talk, because you wear the same thing all the time."
This was the verdict flung at him by another young firebrand, dressed in a kimono whose fabric was impossible to identify clearly as either meisen or Oshima. Yet that firebrand's own clothing, too, looked as if he had been wearing it for a very long time; the collar was thick with grime.
Even so, the man in the yellow robe said nothing in reply. From the look of him, he seemed a truly spineless creature.
But the third time, a broad-shouldered man in a coarse-striped suit, grinning to himself, offered a comment that was half sympathetic.
"Why don't you wear the clothes you had on before? Doesn't this mean you've gone backward again? Still, the yellow robe doesn't entirely fail to suit you. Gentlemen, please remember that this man did come out once having changed his clothes. And please take the trouble to spur him on, so that he may change again in the future."
Among the crowd were some who shouted, "Hear, hear!" Others roared angrily, "Go at him harder. None of this mutual back-scratching."
Scratching his head, the skinny man hastily retreated from the room. Then he returned to a shabby two-story house in an out-of-the-way district, a place that looked as though the air scarcely moved through it.
Inside the house, garments of every kind hung upstairs and downstairs as though they were being aired out in the sun. Something glinted there like the scales of a snake; when I looked closer, it turned out to be chain mail and armor for use in wartime.
Settling himself arrogantly among these clothes, the skinny man sat cross-legged and began calmly to smoke.
I feel that he said something then, but unfortunately, now that I have awakened, I cannot remember it. While writing down this dream, like Kikaku, who forgot the final phrase of a dream poem, I cannot help regretting it again and again.