Hell of Solitude

I heard this story from my mother. She said that she had heard it from my great-uncle. I do not know whether it is true. I merely think, judging from my great-uncle’s own character, that something of the kind could quite plausibly have happened.

My great-uncle was one of those men known as connoisseurs of worldly pleasures, and he had many acquaintances among the artists and writers of the final years of the shogunate: Kawatake Mokuami, Ryūkatei Tanehiko, Zenzai-an Eiki and his associate Tōei, the ninth Danjūrō, Uji Shibun, Miyako Sennaka, Kenkonbō Ryōsai, and others. Mokuami, in particular, modeled his portrayal of Kinokuniya Bunzaemon in Edo Zakura Kiyomizu Seigen on this great-uncle of mine. Nearly fifty years have passed since his death, but because he was once nicknamed “the modern-day Kibun,” there may still be people who have heard his name. His family name was Hosoki, his given name Tōjirō, and his haiku name Kōi; commonly he was known as Tsutō of Yamashiro Quay.

This Tsutō once became acquainted with a Buddhist priest at the Tamaya in Yoshiwara. The man was supposedly the abbot of a certain Zen temple in the vicinity of Hongō, and his name was Zenchō. He too frequented the pleasure quarter and had become the regular patron of a courtesan at the Tamaya named Nishikigi. This was, of course, in the days when priests were forbidden to eat meat or take wives, so in public he never appeared as a monk. Dressed in a yellow Hachijō-silk kimono and a formal black habutae coat bearing a family crest, he passed himself off as a physician. It was with this man that Tsutō happened to become acquainted.

The encounter occurred one night during the Lantern Festival season. Tsutō was upstairs at the Tamaya, returning from the lavatory, when, as he casually made his way along the corridor, he saw a man leaning against the railing and gazing at the moon. He had a shaven head and was a rather short, thin man. By the moonlight Tsutō mistook him for Takeuchi, a quack doctor who often visited the house. As he passed, therefore, he reached out and gave the man’s ear a little tug, intending to laugh when Takeuchi turned around in surprise.

But when he saw the face that turned toward him, it was Tsutō who was startled. Apart from the shaven head, the man bore not the slightest resemblance to Takeuchi. Although his forehead was broad, the space between his eyebrows was tensely contracted. His eyes looked large, perhaps because the flesh had fallen away around them. Even in that light, a large mole on his left cheek was plainly visible. His cheekbones, too, were high. These features entered Tsutō’s vision piecemeal and in a rush.

“Is there something you want?” the shaven-headed man asked in an angry-sounding voice. He also appeared to be somewhat under the influence of liquor.

I neglected to mention that Tsutō was accompanied at the time by a geisha and a professional jester. People of their kind could hardly make Tsutō apologize and then stand silently by. The jester therefore apologized to the guest on Tsutō’s behalf for the careless mistake. Meanwhile, Tsutō took the geisha and hurried back to his own room. Even a great man of the world seems to have found the situation awkward. Once the jester explained the circumstances of the mistake, the shaven-headed man immediately recovered his good humor and burst out laughing. Needless to say, that man was Zenchō.

Afterward, Tsutō had a tray of sweets sent over as an apology. Zenchō, feeling sorry about the incident himself, came in person to thank him. Thus began their friendship. Even so, their friendship seems to have consisted only of meeting upstairs at the Tamaya; apparently, they never visited each other elsewhere. Tsutō never drank so much as a drop, while Zenchō was, if anything, a prodigious drinker. Zenchō was also the more extravagant of the two in his personal possessions. Finally, in his surrender to women, Zenchō was again by far the more excessive. Tsutō himself remarked that one could hardly tell which of them was supposed to be the monk. Tsutō was a large, corpulent, ugly man who wore his forehead shaved to a narrow crescent and carried a silver-chained amulet. In everyday life, it is said, he favored a kimono of almost imperceptibly striped cloth, tied with a plain wooden-colored sash three feet long.

One day, when Tsutō met Zenchō, he found him wearing one of Nishikigi’s ornate outer robes and playing the shamisen. Zenchō was habitually pale, but that day his complexion was especially poor. His eyes were bloodshot. From time to time the slack skin around his mouth twitched. Tsutō immediately suspected that something was troubling him. He hinted that, if even someone like himself might serve as a confidant, he very much wished Zenchō would speak to him. Zenchō, however, apparently had nothing in particular that he wished to disclose. He was merely less talkative than usual and repeatedly allowed the conversation to lapse. Tsutō therefore interpreted his condition as the ennui to which habitués of the pleasure quarters are prone. The ennui afflicting a man who has indulged himself without restraint in drink and women cannot possibly be cured by more drink and women. In this way, the two fell into a more intimate and serious conversation than usual. Then Zenchō, looking as though he had suddenly remembered something, reportedly said the following.

According to Buddhist teaching, there are many varieties of hell, but broadly speaking they may be divided into three: the fundamental hells, the neighboring hells, and the hells of solitude. There is also a passage stating that hell lies five hundred yojanas beneath Jambudvīpa, so from ancient times most hells must have been regarded as existing underground. The hells of solitude alone, however, may suddenly appear anywhere—in the mountains, in the wilderness, beneath a tree, or in the empty air. In other words, the world immediately before one’s eyes becomes, just as it is, the present manifestation of hell’s torments. I fell into this hell two or three years ago. Nothing affords me any lasting interest whatsoever. And so I am always living by pursuing one set of circumstances after another. Naturally, even that does not enable me to escape hell. Yet if I remain amid the same circumstances without changing them, my suffering becomes still worse. Thus I continue to drift from place to place, living in such a way as to forget each day’s anguish as it comes. But if in the end even that becomes unbearable, there will be nothing left for me but to die. In the past, although I suffered, I still hated the thought of dying. But now—

Tsutō did not hear the final words. Zenchō had spoken them softly while once more tuning the shamisen. After that, Zenchō ceased coming to the Tamaya. No one knew what became of this Zen priest who had given himself over so completely to dissipation. On that last day, however, Zenchō left behind in Nishikigi’s room a volume of commentary on the Diamond Sutra. Years later, when Tsutō had fallen on hard times and retired to a quiet life in Samukawa in Shimōsa Province, this commentary was one of the books that always lay upon his desk. On the inside of its cover Tsutō added a haiku of his own composition:

A field of violets— at forty, I begin to notice the dew.

The book no longer survives. Nor, most likely, is there now a single person who remembers the poem.

The story dates from around 1857. My mother seems to have remembered it because the word “hell” appealed to her imagination.

I spend the greater part of each day in my study, and in terms of the life I lead, I inhabit a world entirely unconnected with that of my great-uncle and this Zen priest. As for my interests, neither the popular fiction nor the ukiyo-e prints of the Tokugawa period hold any special fascination for me. Nevertheless, a certain feeling within me is always liable, through the phrase “the hell of solitude,” to pour out my sympathy upon their lives. I have no intention of resisting it. For, in a certain sense, I too am one of those tormented by the hell of solitude.

(February 1916)