Masao Kume
This short portrait by Ryunosuke Akutagawa presents Masao Kume, also known by the literary name Santē, as a modern romanticist: sentimental, theatrical, self-aware, and yet increasingly strong. Akutagawa’s tone is affectionate but not naïve. He recognizes Kume’s taste for rose-colored illusions, his melancholy poses, and his indulgent nightlife, but he also insists that beneath these traits lies discipline, resilience, and a distinctive artistic bearing. The essay moves between literary praise, personal reminiscence, and gently ironic observation, ending with Kume absent from Tokyo on his honeymoon and represented by a tender haiku. The result is both a character sketch and a meditation on romanticism as a chosen style of living.
......The romanticist of the new age is Santē, Masao Kume. Kume, who sang, “Tears are the twilight of reason, the lamp of feeling”; Kume, who cannot forget the image of a good person even in the cool freshness of pure white grasses and flowers; Kume, who, even while a brightly made-up geisha, fragrant with cosmetics, amiably urges him to drink, laments as an “uninvited guest” -- anyone would speak of the lovableness of such a sensitive, passionate Kume. But what I find especially delightful is Masao Kume as he is in his pitiable yet brave form: one who naturally endures every sorrow.
This Kume is no longer fainthearted. And in his brilliant, faintly bitter smile one sees nothing but the confidence of a great talent, someone who has added discipline to his native gifts. What is more, there is something somehow admirable in the unruffled composure he shows amid the disorder of cups and dishes after a feast. Romanticism, which is always trying to suffuse life with rose-colored light. Conscious of that temptation, and yet not resisting it: for instance, parting from a geisha who has accompanied him halfway, after “exchanging some whispered words,” and, fully aware of the absurdity of it all, saying to each other, “Well then, goodbye,” in a deliberately artificial loud voice, then separating, one toward the main street and the other toward a side street, their figures vanishing together with the sound of their wooden clogs -- even this does not merely arouse a feeling of distaste.
I myself once got drunk with Kume on Manhattan cocktails at a certain restaurant in Hongō and criticized the looseness of his way of life. But when I saw that Kume had somehow acquired the proud bearing of a house and style all his own, I realized that chickens peck rice on land while ducks chase loaches in the water; and beyond the houses sunk in sleep, “among the folds of low dream upon dream, seeing the late, faintly yellow moon rise,” I even felt something that made it hard to leave. Lovable Santē: now he has set out on his honeymoon journey and is not in Tokyo. ............
A mild winter day -- cheek pressed close to cheek, gazing at a small island.
Santē