Vita Sexualis (5 page)

When I asked my mother if I might see the dancing, she said I could if I returned early. I hurried into my straw sandals and ran out.

I had often been there before. When I was much smaller, my mother had taken me with her to let me see the dances. It was thought that only the tradespeople participated in public, but because each person danced with his face concealed by a kerchief, many of the sons of samurai went to dance. Among the dancers were men dressed as women. And there were also women dressed as men. Those who did not wear kerchiefs wore paper masks called
hyaku-manako.
In Europe carnivals are held in January, but even though the time of the festivals is different, human beings have quite naturally invented the same kinds of celebrations everywhere. In Europe too they have special dances at harvest time, but I guess masks are not worn.

The crowds form into a circle and dance. Some who have come in their masks merely stand around watching. While they are observing, if they happen to see someone who is quite good in his movements, they are usually able to break into the ring to be next to that person.

While I was watching the dance, I happened to overhear some masked dancers talking to one another. Apparently the two men knew each other.

"Last night you went to Atagoyama, didn't you?"

"What you making that up for?"

"Oh no? Someone said you did."

While they were arguing in this way, another man beside them cut in:

"If you go up there early in the morning, you can find a lot of
stuff
left behind."

A burst of laughter followed. Feeling as if I had touched something dirty, I stopped watching the dance and returned home.

*
*
*

My father took me with him to Tokyo. My mother remained behind. The old woman who always came to our house to help moved in, and they lived together. My mother would join us a little later. I assumed she had to remain until our house was sold.

At Mukojima was an estate that belonged to our former feudal lord. My father and I lived there in a tenement building which had been left vacant. We employed an old lady to cook our meals.

Every morning my father went out, and every evening he returned. He promised to find a school I could attend. Whenever my father left, a married woman about twenty years of age came to our kitchen door and returned with her apron bulging. Our old woman employee was stealing rice, giving it to her daughter to cart off for her. When my mother joined us later, she found out about it and turned the old woman out of the house. I guess I was a very stupid boy.

I had no friends to play with. I knew someone two years younger, the son of a steward, but when he suggested the first day we met that we fish for carp in the artificial pond on the estate, I lost interest and decided to have nothing to do with him. The steward also had two or three daughters, the eldest twelve or thirteen, but when the girls caught sight of me, they pointed at me from the distance, whispering, laughing about something. I found them equally disagreeable.

Sometimes I went into an anteroom in the lord's mansion. Two or three stewards would be waiting there. Usually they were smoking, engaged in small talk. They didn't find me much of a nuisance. So I asked them about various things.

Among the names of places they mentioned most frequently during their discussions were Yoshiwara and Okuyama, the red-light districts. Yoshiwara was the paradise they were always dreaming about. And the grandeur of that paradise was more or less kept sacred by the influence and power of the estate of their master. The stewards lent their master's money at high rates of interest to certain persons in Yoshiwara. It was in this connection apparently that whenever these stewards went there, they were warmly received. So one after another they rambled on about their experiences at Yoshiwara. Even though I listened carefully, I couldn't understand half of what they said. And the half I did understand wasn't the least bit interesting. Once one of these men said to me:

"Next time, should I take you with me? A pretty strumpet will fondle you!"

When he said that, everyone laughed.

Okuyama never entered the conversation without their bringing in the name of a man called Hanno. Almost each one of these stewards had a pockmarked face, a pug nose, and buckteeth, their features leaving much to be desired! Quite unlike any of them, this Hanno was tall, his complexion white, his long pomaded hair parted down to his nape. I didn't know what kind of position he had, but I assumed he was superior in rank to our stewards, perhaps drafting letters or something of the sort. The stewards offered statements like the following:

"If they made as much of a fuss over us as they do Hanno, we'd head straight for Okuyama, but even though we pay to 'draw our bows,' they don't even want to talk to us. We're really a worthless lot!"

To those fellows Hanno was an Adonis. Before long I was to have the chance to see many girls, Aphrodites and Persephones, serve this man.

Once during that time of day when the locusts in the garden gradually become noisier and as I was idling away the hours during my father's absence, a steward called Kuriso shouted out to me:

"Shizu, are you at home? I'm off on an errand. Come on along. I'll take you to Asakusa Kannon, to the temple dedicated to Kannon."

My father had once brought me to see this Kannon. Joyfully I slipped into my wooden clogs and went out with him.

We crossed Azuma Bridge, came out on a road lined with trees, and did our shopping. Then we retraced our steps and strolled leisurely along a street lined with shops on both sides. Holding many toys shaped like tortoises suspended on strings, one fellow kept calling, "Moving turtles! Take whichever one you want, whichever you want!" The neck, tail, and four legs of the toy animal quivered as they moved. Kuriso paused in front of a shop that sold prints. While I was looking at the colored prints of the Satsuma Rebellion, he picked up a book covered with a paper wrapper on display at the front of the shop. "Madam," Kuriso said to the elderly attendant, "are there still some poor souls tricked into buying this kind of thing?" And he laughed.

"Now and then we sell some. Though what's written inside is quite dull." And she laughed too.

"How about selling me the
real
thing?"

"You're joking! These days the police are very strict."

Printed on the cover of this volume wrapped in paper was a woman's face and above it in large letters were the words
A Funny Book.
In the print shops in those days were many such books that dupe the customer. Inside were short stories or something of the sort, the volume deliberately wrapped in paper to make it appear as if it contained something secret. These books were sold to those eager for erotic drawings.

Even though I was only a child, I could roughly understand the meaning behind their words. But what attracted my attention much more than the implications behind their dialogue was the way Kuriso made free use of Tokyo expressions. I wondered why at home he used our dialect when he spoke so well with a Tokyo accent. Of course it was quite natural for people from the same province to communicate in their own dialect. But it seemed to me that Kuriso did not employ these two kinds of speech merely for that reason. I wondered if he was using our provincial speech under the pretense of showing his loyalty to his superiors. I had reached the age in which I could speculate about such matters. Sometimes I felt quite stupid, but then again in some ways I wasn't the least bit innocent.

We climbed the steps to the temple. Eager to learn about everything, I focused my eyes on those deep dark places beyond the black lattice, almost impenetrable even by candlelight. Passing behind old men and women on bended knees, their bodies bent like lobsters as they muttered their incomprehensible prayers, we turned toward the eastern end of the temple and descended the steps, hearing behind us the occasional clink of coins tossed into the offertory boxes.

This section of Tokyo had many beggars. Removed from them was a man displaying drawings made in sands of five colors. In a somewhat wider area a swordplayer was hemmed in by a crowd of spectators. For a while I watched with Kuriso as the man performed. A number of swords were hanging on racks. The lower the rack, the longer the sword. Though the man kept on talking about various things, he did not draw his weapon. Suddenly Kuriso moved off, and without knowing why he had, I followed him. Turning back, I noticed a man collecting money headed toward the place where we had been standing.

We came out on a narrow street lined with archery shops. I was amazed to find in each of these shops a woman whose face was covered with white paint. My father had never taken me to this section. A strange observation occurred to me about the faces of these women. Their faces were not those of ordinary persons. Unlike the faces of women I had seen up to that time, these were a kind of stereotype. If I can express what I felt then with words I might use now, it was that the faces of these women had a congealed expression. This was how I felt as I stared at them. I wondered why their faces were so uniform. When a child is asked to look pleased, his face takes on a strange expression. These women looked exactly like a child under such circumstances. Their eyebrows had been sketched on as high as possible, sometimes even up to the borders of their hair. Their eyes were strained open as wide as possible. Even when they talked or laughed, they tried not to move that part of the face above the nose. I wondered why the faces of these women looked as if they had been prearranged. Though I didn't understand what I was witnessing at that time, I later learned that these faces were for sale. These were the faces of prostitutes.

The women called out in loud voices, most of them saying, "Hey, Master!" Some clearly enunciated, "I say there!" but most only shouted, "Hey!" There were even some who cried out, "Oh, Master in the dark blue
tabi!"
Kuriso wore socks this color.

"Good heavens! It's Mr. Kuriso!"

A remarkably high-pitched voice yelled these words. Kuriso entered the woman's shop and sat down. Since I merely stood where I was, a look of disgust on my face, Kuriso waved me in to take a seat. The woman was round-faced. From between her thin lips when she talked, I could see patches where the blackened dye on her teeth, applied for cosmetic effect, had faded somewhat. She lit the tobacco in the bowl of a long-stemmed metal pipe, and wiping the mouthpiece with her kimono sleeve and without moving that part of her face above her nose, she offered the pipe to Kuriso.

"Why did you wipe it?"

"Well, I didn't want to be rude."

"You don't offer it to anyone except Hanno without wiping it, do you?"

"Oh, even for Master Hanno, I always wipe it in offering it to him."

"That so? You really do
wipe
it for him and
give
it to him?"

They spoke in this way. Their words had two kinds of meaning. Kuriso never considered I would be able to conceive the second meaning behind their words. The woman also treated me as if I were nonexistent. Not that I was complaining however. I found her quite disagreeable. I didn't want to have her talking to me.

Kuriso suggested I try drawing a bow, but I told him I didn't want to.

Before long he left the shop with me. Then passing through Saruwakacho, we crossed the river by ferryboat and returned to the estate at Mukojima.

What follows happened about that time. Among the acquaintances of our stewards was an acupuncturist by the name of Ginbayashi, and sometimes he visited their quarters to talk to them. Though he came to give medical treatment to our master, he was not a native of our province. He was a real Tokyoite. Almost all our stewards were in their thirties, but this man was past forty. In comparison to the stewards he was, I thought, much more intelligent.

One day Ginbayashi offered to take me to the Ginza since he was going there. Finishing his business, he took me to the storyteller's hall near Kyobashi.

Since it was a matinee, there weren't many spectators. In addition to the few elegant wives of merchants who brought their daughters with them, most of the audience consisted of journeymen.

The storyteller was on the stage giving his recital. A lad by the name of Tokusaburo had gone out to play chess. After returning home late at night, he found himself locked out. A girl in the neighborhood was also locked out of her house. She began talking to the boy. When he told her there was nothing for him to do but go to his uncle's house and ask for shelter, the girl pleaded with him to take her along. Paying no attention to her request, the boy walked off without a moment's delay, but the girl followed. The uncle of the boy was a "man about town." It seemed to me that a "man about town" was someone lax in morals. The uncle jumped to the conclusion that his nephew had brought a sweetheart along with him. The uncle presumed the boy was justifying himself in whatever he did because he had been embarrassed. And as for the girl, who was falling in love with the boy, she was thinking everything that had happened was quite providential. That was why the two young persons let themselves be forced upstairs by the uncle. There was bedding on the floor for only one person. Vertically placing along the center of the bed the obi the girl had unbound from her waist and as if dividing in two the territory of Saghalien (though my metaphor is by now an anachronism since I am writing this account long after that historical event), the two persons went to sleep. Opening their eyes after sleeping in one bed, and so on and so on . . .1 was not yet accustomed to the language of Tokyo, so it seemed to me the storyteller was speaking quite rapidly. I had been listening with undivided attention in the same way I had first heard the lecture of a foreigner long after this event, but I happened to notice Ginbayashi watching me, smiling at me.