Having reconsidered, therefore, I would like now to wrap up this my Fairy Tale Book with just one more story, that of the so-called tongue-cut sparrow. In “The Sparrow Who Lost Her Tongue,” as in “The Stolen Wen” and “Urashima-san” and “Click-Clack Mountain,” none of the characters are Nippon-ichi, which relieves some of the pressure and allows me to invent freely. When it comes to Number One in this sacred country, however—even though it may be in the context of a mere children’s story—there can be no excuse for writing irresponsible nonsense. How mortifying would it be if a foreigner were to read my retelling and think that this was the best Japan had to offer?
I would like, therefore, to repeat this ad nauseam, if necessary: The two old men in “The Stolen Wen” were not Nippon-ichi; nor were Urashima-san or the tanuki in “Click-Clack Mountain.” Only Momotaro is Nippon-ichi, and I didn’t write about him. If the true Nippon-ichi were to appear before you, your eyes would probably be blinded by the radiant light of his countenance. All right? You got that? The characters in this Fairy Tale Book of mine are not Nippon-ichi—or -ni or -san either. Nor are they in any way what you could call representative types. They were born of the doltish misadventures and feeble imagination of an author named Dazai, and as such they’re of very little interest. To evaluate the Japanese on the basis of these characters would be like rowing home complacently after marking the spot on your boat where you dropped your sword overboard, as the old Chinese proverb has it. The Japanese people are precious to me. That goes without saying, but it’s the reason I am not going to describe Momotaro or his adventures, and I believe I have made it abundantly clear that the characters I have described are decidedly not Nippon-ichi.
I have no doubt that you too, dear reader, will applaud my oddly fastidious insistence on this point. Didn’t even Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the Great Unifier, once say, “Nippon-ichi is not I”?
Now then. The protagonist of “The Sparrow Who Lost Her Tongue,” far from being number one in Japan, is possibly the most worthless man in the archipelago. He’s a weakling, for starters. It seems that a physically weak man is of less value to society than even a lame horse. This man is always coughing feebly. His complexion is sallow. He gets up in the morning, dusts the paper-screen door, and sweeps out the room, and that leaves him so exhausted that he spends the rest of the day at his desk, wriggling on his cushion or nodding off and jerking awake until dinnertime, and as soon as he’s finished eating he rolls out his futon and hits the sack. He has been living this pathetic sort of life for the past ten or twelve years. He’s not even forty yet, but for some time now he has styled himself “the Venerable” and demanded that relatives call him Ojii-san.
Perhaps we might think of him as One Who Has Abandoned the World. Those who abandon the world manage to do so only because they happen to have a little money saved up, however. A penniless man, though he may have every intention of leaving the world behind, will find that the world comes chasing after him. This self-styled Ojii-san resides in a humble thatched cottage now, but a look at his past reveals that he is the third son of a wealthy squire and that he betrayed his parents’ hopes by never acquiring a profession but rather living an uneventful and meaningless life, dabbling marginally in this and that and forever either falling ill or recuperating from something. The upshot of all this is that his parents and other relatives have long since given up on him, regarding him as a sickly halfwit and a pain in the neck, but provide him with a small monthly stipend that allows him to abandon the world and still keep the wolf from the door. And though his home is a mere thatched hut, one would have to say he has a pretty sweet life.
People who live pretty sweet lives don’t tend to be of much use to others. That Ojii-san is congenitally frail and infirm would seem to be true enough, but he isn’t so ill as to be bedridden, and surely there must be some sort of work to which he could apply himself if he cared to. But he does nothing. He seems to read a lot of books, but perhaps he immediately forgets what he’s read; at any rate, he never discusses his readings with anyone. He just sits there. His value to society is close to zero, particularly in view of the fact that after more than ten years of marriage he still has no offspring or heir. In other words, he has not fulfilled even a single one of the duties expected of a man in this world.
And what of the wife who has stood by this remarkably unambitious man all these years? One can’t help but be curious about her. But were you to peek through the hedge and catch a glimpse of her puttering about, you would be sorely disappointed. She is a dreary person in every respect. Dark of complexion, she is somewhat goggle-eyed and has large, very wrinkled hands. If you were to see her moving busily through the garden, with those big hands dangling before her and her back slightly bent, you might suppose that she’s older than Ojii-san. But she is exactly thirty-three, which makes this an unlucky year for her, according to the traditional view. She was originally Ojii-san’s housekeeper, though scarcely had she taken charge of his house before she found herself accepting responsibility for his life as well.
“Take off your underclothes and pile them here so I can wash them,” she says in a commanding tone.
“Next time.” Ojii-san, sitting at his desk with his chin on his hand, replies in a scarcely audible voice. He always speaks in what is barely more than a whisper. And he tends to allow the words to die in his mouth before he finishes them, with the result that everything he says comes out sounding like “ooh” or “ah.” Not even his wife, after living with him for more than ten years, can make out what he’s saying, much less anyone else. It may be that, being more or less One Who Has Abandoned the World, he doesn’t care whether others understand him or not. However, let us review: no steady job; no attempt to write or speak about his readings; no children after ten years of marriage; no effort to enunciate clearly or even finish his words. This passive nature of his, whether or not we give it the name “laziness,” beggars description.
“Give me them now. Just look at the collar of your undershirt. It’s shiny with grease.”
“Next time.” Again, the words barely escape his mouth.
“What? What did you say? Speak so I can hear you.”
“Next time,” he says somewhat more intelligibly, his cheek still resting on his hand as he peers gravely at his wife’s face. “Cold today.”
“It’s called winter. It’ll be cold tomorrow and the day after too.” The thirty-three-year-old Obaa-san speaks as if scolding a child. “And who do you think feels the cold more—the one who sits by the fire or the one who’s out at the well doing the wash?”
“Hard to say,” he replies with a hint of a smile. “You’re accustomed to it.”
“I beg your pardon?” Obaa-san scowls. “I wasn’t put on this earth to do laundry!”
“No?” he says, and leaves it at that.
“Off with them,” she says. “Hurry up. You have a fresh set in the closet.”
“I’ll catch cold.”
/> Obaa-san throws up her hands and exits the room in a huff.
Our story takes place in the Tohoku region, outside Sendai, at the foot of Mount Atago, on the edge of a vast bamboo forest overlooking the rushing rapids of the Hirose River. Perhaps the Sendai area has boasted an abundance of sparrows since ancient times; the crest of the famous Daté clan of Sendai depicts two sparrows amid bamboo, and in the play Sendai Hagi, as everyone knows, a sparrow performs a role more vital than even that of the lead actor. Furthermore, when I was on a trip to Sendai last year, a friend of mine who lives there taught me an old local children’s song that went something like
Seagull, seagull
See the sparrow in her cage
When is she a-comin’ out?
It seems that the song isn’t limited to Sendai but rather sung by children all across Japan. However, because of the fact that this version bids us to “see the sparrow in her cage” rather than the more common and less specific “wee bird,” along with the hint of northeastern dialect in the last line, which fits the melody so naturally and scans so effortlessly, I’ve come to wonder if we wouldn’t be justified in going ahead and pinpointing the Sendai region as the source of this particular traditional ditty.
In the bamboo forest surrounding Ojii-san’s thatched hut, in any case, live countless sparrows, and they raise a deafening racket morning and evening. In late autumn of this year, on a morning when crystalline pellets of frost crunch musically underfoot, Ojii-san finds a little sparrow upside down in his garden, flopping about with a broken leg. He picks the bird up and carries her into his room, where he sets her by the fire and brings her some food. Even after the sparrow’s leg is healed, she stays on in Ojii-san’s room, fluttering out to the garden from time to time, or hopping about on the veranda, pecking at the crumbs Ojii-san tosses out to her.
“You filthy thing!” Obaa-san shouts when the sparrow inadvertently poops on the veranda. She chases after the bird, and Ojii-san silently takes some paper from his pocket and cleans up the droppings. As the days go by, the sparrow seems to learn whom she can count on to be kind to her and whom she can’t. When the old woman is home alone she takes refuge in the garden or under the eaves, but as soon as Ojii-san returns she comes flying. She sits atop his head or hops about on his desk or drinks from the inkstone with a tiny gulping sound or hides in the brush stand, interrupting Ojii-san’s studies with her constant games. But Ojii-san, for the most part, ignores her. He does not, like so many bird lovers, give his pet an affected name or speak to it. (“Oh, Rumi, you must be lonely too!”) He displays, rather, absolute indifference to where the sparrow might be or what she might be up to. But from time to time he silently rises, shuffles to the pantry, scoops up a handful of grain, and scatters it on the veranda.
No sooner does Obaa-san exit with the laundry today than the sparrow comes fluttering back from beneath the eaves and lands on the edge of the desk, where Ojii-san sits with his cheek on his hand. Ojii-san looks at the sparrow with no change of expression. But this is where the tragedy begins.
After a pause of some moments, Ojii-san says, “I see,” and sighs heavily. He spreads out a book on his desk. He turns a page, and then another, and then he rests his cheek on his hand again and gazes off into the middle distance. “So she wasn’t born to do laundry. Still dreams of romance, I guess, with a face like that.” He cracks a small, wry smile.
It’s then that the sparrow on his desk begins to speak in human language.