VI
November 17. An astonishing book might be written about those things in Japanese life which no foreigner can understand. Such a book should include the study of certain rare but terrible results of anger.
As a national rule, the Japanese seldom allow themselves to show anger. Even among the common classes, any serious menace is apt to take the form of a smiling assurance that your favor shall be remembered, and that its recipient is grateful. (Do not suppose, however, that this is ironical, in our sense of the word: it is only euphemistic,—ugly things not being called by their real names.) But this smiling assurance may possibly mean death. When vengeance comes, it comes unexpectedly. Neither distance nor time, within the empire, can offer any obstacles to the avenger who can walk fifty miles a day, whose whole baggage can be tied up in a very small towel, and whose patience is almost infinite. He may choose a knife, but is much more likely to use a sword,—a Japanese sword. This, in Japanese hands, is the deadliest of weapons; and the killing of ten or twelve persons by one angry man may occupy less than a minute. It does not often happen that the murderer thinks of trying to escape. Ancient custom requires that, having taken another life, he should take his own; wherefore to fall into the hands of the police would be to disgrace his name. He has made his preparations beforehand, written his letters, arranged for his funeral, perhaps—as in one appalling instance last year—even chiseled his own tombstone. Having fully accomplished his revenge, he kills himself.
There has just occurred, not far from the city, at the village called Sugikamimura, one of those tragedies which are difficult to understand. The chief actors were, Narumatsu Ichirō, a young shopkeeper; his wife, O-Noto, twenty years of age, to whom he had been married only a year; and O-Noto's maternal uncle, one Sugimoto Ivasaku, a man of violent temper, who had once been in prison. The tragedy was in four acts.
Act I. Scene: Interior of public bathhouse. Sugimoto Nasaku in the bath. Enter Narumatsu Ichirō, who strips, gets into the smoking water without noticing his relative, and cries out,—
"Aa! as if one should be in Jigoku, so hot this water is!"
(The word "Jigoku" signifies the Buddhist hell; but, in common parlance, it also signifies a prison,—this time an unfortunate coincidence.)
Kasaku (terribly angry). "A raw baby, you, to seek a hard quarrel! What do you not like?"
Ichirō (surprised and alarmed, but rallying against the tone of Kasaku). "Nay! What? That I said need not by you be explained. Though I said the water was hot, your help to make it hotter was not asked."
Kasaku (now dangerous). "Though for my own fault, not once, but twice in the hell of prison I had been, what should there be wonderful in it? Either an idiot child or a low scoundrel you must be!"
(Each eyes the other for a spring, but each hesitates, although things no Japanese should suffer himself to say have been said. They are too evenly matched, the old and the young.)
Kasaku (growing cooler as Ichirō becomes angrier). "A child, a raw child, to quarrel with me! What should a baby do with a wife? Your wife is my blood, mine,—the blood of the man from hell! Give her back to my house."
Ichirō (desperately, now fully assured Kasaku is physically the better man). "Return my wife? You say to return her? Right quickly shall she be returned, at once!"
So far everything is clear enough. Then Ichiro hurries home, caresses his wife, assures her of his love, tells her all, and sends her, not to Kasaku's house, but to that of her brother. Two days later, a little after dark, O-Noto is called to the door by her husband, and the two disappear in the night.
Act II. Night scene. House of Kasaku closed: light appears through chinks of sliding shutters. Shadow of a woman approaches. Sound of knocking. Shutters slide back.
Wife of Kasaku (recognizing O-Noto). "Aa! aa! Joyful it is to see you! Deign to enter, and some honorable tea to take."
O-Noto (speaking very sweetly). "Thanks indeed. But where is Kasaku San?"
Wife of Kasaku. "To the other village he has gone, but must soon return. Deign to come in and wait for him."
O-Noto (still more sweetly). "Very great thanks. A little, and I come. But first I must tell my brother."
(Bows, and slips off into the darkness, and becomes a shadow again, which joins another shadow. The two shadows remain motionless.)
Act III. Scene: Bank of a river at night, fringed by pines. Silhouette of the house of Kasaku far away. O-Noto and Ichiro under the trees, Ichirō with a lantern. Both have white towels tightly bound round their heads; their robes are girded well up, and their sleeves caught back with tasuki cords, to leave the arms free. Each carries a long sword.
It is the hour, as the Japanese most expressively say, "when the sound of the river is loudest." There is no other sound but a long occasional humming of wind in the needles of the pines; for it is late autumn, and the frogs are silent. The two shadows do not speak, and the sound of the river grows louder.
Suddenly there is the noise of a plash far off,—somebody crossing the shallow stream; then an echo of wooden sandals,—irregular, staggering,—the footsteps of a drunkard, coming nearer and nearer. The drunkard lifts up his voice: it is Kasaku's voice. He sings,—
"Suita okata ni suirarete;
Ya-ton-ton!"[1]
—a song of love and wine.
Immediately the two shadows start toward the singer at a run,—a noiseless flitting, for their feet are shod with waraji. Kasaku still sings. Suddenly a loose stone turns under him; he wrenches his ankle, and utters a growl of anger. Almost in the same instant a lantern is held close to his face. Perhaps for thirty seconds it remains there. No one speaks. The yellow light shows three strangely inexpressive masks rather than visages. Kasaku sobers at once,—recognizing the faces, remembering the incident of the bathhouse, and seeing the swords. But he is not afraid, and presently bursts into a mocking laugh.
"Hé! hé! The Ichirō pair! And so you take me, too, for a baby? What are you doing with such things in your hands? Let me show you how to use them."
But Ichirō, who has dropped the lantern, suddenly delivers, with the full swing of both hands, a sword-slash that nearly severs Kasaku's right arm from the shoulder; and as the victim staggers, the sword of the woman cleaves through his left shoulder. He falls with one fearful cry, "Hitogoroshi!" which means "murder." But he does not cry again. For ten whole minutes the swords are busy with him. The lantern, still glowing, lights the ghastliness. Two belated pedestrians approach, hear, see, drop their wooden sandals from their feet, and flee back into the darkness without a word. Ichirō and O-Noto sit down by the lantern to take breath, for the work was hard.
The son of Kasaku, a boy of fourteen, comes running to find his father. He has heard the song, then the cry; but he has not yet learned fear. The two suffer him to approach. As he nears O-Noto, the woman seizes him, flings him down, twists his slender arms under her knees, and clutches the sword. But Ichirō, still panting, cries, "No! no! Not the boy! He did us no wrong!" O-Noto releases him. He is too stupefied to move.
She slaps his face terribly, crying, "Go!" He runs,—not daring to shriek.
Ichirō and O-Noto leave the chopped mass, walk to the house of Kasaku, and call loudly. There is no reply;—only the pathetic, crouching silence of women and children waiting death. But they are bidden not to fear. Then Ichirō cries:—
"Honorable funeral prepare! Kasaku by my hand is now dead!"
"And by mine!" shrills O-Noto.
Then the footsteps recede.
Act IV. Scene: Interior of Ichirō's house. Three persons kneeling in the guest-room: Ichirō, his wife, and an aged woman, who is weeping.
Ichirō. "And now, mother, to leave you alone in this world, though you have no other son, is indeed an evil thing. I can only pray your forgiveness. But my uncle will always care for you, and to his house you must go at once, since it is time we two should die. No common, vulgar death shall we have, but an elegant, splendid death,—Rippana! And you must not see it. Now go."
She passes away, with a wail. The doors are solidly barred behind her. All is ready.
O-Noto thrusts the point of the sword into her throat. But she still struggles. With a last kind word Ichiro ends her pain by a stroke that severs the head.
And then?
Then he takes his writing-box, prepares the inkstone, grinds some ink, chooses a good brush, and, on carefully selected paper, composes five poems, of which this is the last:—
"Meido yori
Yu dempō ga
Aru naraba,
Hay aha an chaku
Mōshi okuran."[2]
Then he cuts his own throat perfectly well.
Now, it was clearly shown, during the official investigation of these facts, that Ichirō and his wife had been universally liked, and had been from their childhood noted for amiability.
The scientific problem of the origin of the Japanese has never yet been solved. But sometimes it seems to me that those who argue in favor of a partly Malay origin have some psychological evidence in their favor. Under the submissive sweetness of the gentlest Japanese woman—a sweetness of which the Occidental can scarcely form any idea—there exist possibilities of hardness absolutely inconceivable without ocular evidence. A thousand times she can forgive, can sacrifice herself in a thousand ways unutterably touching: but let one particular soul-nerve be stung, and fire shall forgive sooner than she. Then there may suddenly appear in that frail-seeming woman an incredible courage, an appalling, measured, tireless purpose of honest vengeance. Under all the amazing self-control and patience of the man there exists an adamantine something very dangerous to reach. Touch it wantonly, and there can be no pardon. But resentment is seldom likely to be excited by mere hazard. Motives are keenly judged. An error can be forgiven; deliberate malice never.
In the house of any rich family the guest is likely to be shown some of the heirlooms. Among these are almost sure to be certain articles belonging to those elaborate tea ceremonies peculiar to Japan. A pretty little box, perhaps, will be set before you. Opening it, you see only a beautiful silk bag, closed with a silk running-cord decked with tiny tassels. Very soft and choice the silk is, and elaborately figured. What marvel can be hidden under such a covering? You open the bag, and see within another bag, of a different quality of silk, but very fine. Open that, and lo! a third, which contains a fourth, which contains a fifth, which contains a sixth, which contains a seventh bag, which contains the strangest, roughest, hardest vessel of Chinese clay that you ever beheld. Yet it is not only curious but precious: it may be more than a thousand years old.
Even thus have centuries of the highest social culture wrapped the Japanese character about with many priceless soft coverings of courtesy, of delicacy, of patience, of sweetness, of moral sentiment. But underneath these charming multiple coverings there remains the primitive clay, hard as iron;—kneaded perhaps with all the mettle of the Mongol,—all the dangerous suppleness of the Malay.
[1] The meaning is, "Give to the beloved one a little more [wine]." The "Ya-ton-ton" is only a burden, without exact meaning, like our own "With a hey! and a ho!" etc.
[2] The meaning is about as follows: "If from the Meido it be possible to send letters or telegrams, I shall write and forward news of our speedy safe arrival there."