“I’m going to paint too. I’m going to paint pictures of ghosts and devils and horses out of hell.” My voice as I spoke these words to Takeichi was lowered to a barely audible whisper, why I don’t know.
Ever since elementary school days I enjoyed drawing and looking at pictures. But my pictures failed to win the reputation among my fellow students that my comic stories did. I have never had the least trust in the opinions of human beings, and my stories represented to me nothing more than the clown’s gesture of greeting to his audience; they enraptured all of my teachers but for me they were devoid of the slightest interest. Only to my paintings, to the depiction of the object (my cartoons were something else again) did I devote any real efforts of my original though childish style. The copybooks for drawing we
used at school were dreary; the teacher’s pictures were incredibly inept; and I was obliged to experiment for myself entirely without direction, using every method of expression which came to me. I owned a set of oil paints and brushes from the time I entered high school. I sought to model my techniques on those of the Impressionist School, but my pictures remained flat as paper cutouts, and seemed to offer no promise of ever developing into anything. But Takeichi’s words made me aware that my mental attitude towards painting had been completely mistaken. What superficiality—and what stupidity—there is in trying to depict in a pretty manner things which one has thought pretty. The masters through their subjective perceptions created beauty out of trivialities. They did not hide their interest even in things which were nauseatingly ugly, but soaked themselves in the pleasure of depicting them. In other words, they seemed not to rely in the least on the misconceptions of others. Now that I had been initiated by Takeichi into these root secrets of the art of painting, I began to do a few self-portraits, taking care that they not be seen by my female visitors.
The pictures I drew were so heart-rending as to stupefy even myself. Here was the true self I had so desperately hidden. I had smiled cheerfully; I had made others laugh; but this was the harrowing reality. I secretly affirmed this self, was sure that there was no escape from it, but naturally I did not show my pictures to anyone except Takeichi. I disliked the thought that I might suddenly be subjected to their suspicious vigilance, when once the nightmarish reality under the clowning was detected. On the other hand, I was equally afraid that they might not recognize my true self when they saw it, but imagine that it was just some new twist to my clowning—occasion for additional snickers. This would have been most painful of all. I therefore hid the pictures in the back of my cupboard.
In school drawing classes I also kept secret my “ghost-style” techniques and continued to paint as before in the conventional idiom of pretty things.
To Takeichi (and to him alone) I could display my easily wounded sensibilities, and I did not hesitate now to show him my self-portraits. He was very enthusiastic, and I painted two or three more, plus a picture of a ghost, earning from Takeichi the prediction, “You’ll be a great painter some day.”
Not long afterwards I went up to Tokyo. On my forehead were imprinted the two prophecies uttered by half-wit Takeichi: that I would be “fallen for,” and that I would become a great painter.
I wanted to enter an art school, but my father put me into college, intending eventually to make a civil servant out of me. This was the sentence passed on me and I, who have never been able to answer back, dumbly obeyed. At my father’s suggestion I took the college entrance examinations a year early and I passed. By this time I was really quite weary of my high school by the sea and the cherry blossoms. Once in Tokyo I immediately began life in a dormitory, but the squalor and violence appalled me. This time I was in no mood for clowning; I got the doctor to certify that my lungs were affected. I left the dormitory and went to live in my father’s town house in Ueno. Communal living had proved quite impossible for me. It gave me chills just to hear such words as “the ardor of youth” or “youthful pride”: I could not by any stretch of the imagination soak myself in “college spirit.” The classrooms and the dormitory seemed like the dumping grounds of distorted sexual desires, and even my virtually perfected antics were of no use there.
When the Diet was not in session my father spent only a week or two of the month at the house. While he was away there would be just three of us in the rather imposing mansion—an elderly couple who looked after the premises and myself. I frequently cut classes, but not because I felt like sightseeing in Tokyo. (It looks as if I shall end my days without ever having seen the Meiji Shrine, the statue of Kusunoki Masashige or the tombs of the Forty-Seven Ronin.) Instead I would spend whole days in the house reading and painting. When my father was in town I set out for school promptly every morning, although sometimes I actually went to an art class given by a painter in Hongo, and practiced sketching for three or four hours at a time with him. Having been able to escape from the college dormitory I felt rather cynically—this may have been my own bias—that I was now in a rather special position. Even if I attended lectures it was more like an auditor than a regular student. Attending classes became all the more tedious. I had gone through elementary and high schools and was now in college without ever having been able to understand what was meant by school spirit. I never even tried to learn the school songs.
Before long a student at the art class was to initiate me into the mysteries of drink, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops and left-wing thought. A strange combination, but it actually happened that way.
This student’s name was Masao Horiki. He had been born in downtown Tokyo, was six years older than myself, and was a graduate of a private art school. Having no atelier at home, he used to attend the art class I frequented, where he was supposedly continuing his study of oil painting.
One day, when we still barely knew each other by sight—we hadn’t as yet exchanged a word—he suddenly said to me, “Can you lend me five yen?” I was so taken aback that I ended up by giving him the money.
“That’s fine!” he said. “Now for some liquor! You’re my guest!”
I couldn’t very well refuse, and I was dragged off to a café near the school. This marked the beginning of our friendship.
“I’ve been noticing you for quite a while. There! That bashful smile—that’s the special mark of the promising artist. Now, as a pledge of our friendship—bottoms up!” He called one of the waitresses to our table. “Isn’t he a handsome boy? You mustn’t fall for him, now. I’m sorry to say it, but ever since he appeared in our art class, I’ve only been the second handsomest.”
Horiki was swarthy, but his features were regular and, most unusual for an art student, he always wore a neat suit and a conservative necktie. His hair was pomaded and parted in the middle.
The surroundings were unfamiliar to me. I kept folding and unfolding my arms nervously, and my smiles now were really bashful. In the course of drinking two or three glasses of beer, however, I began to feel a strange lightness of liberation.
I started, “I’ve been thinking I’d like to enter a real art school . . .”
“Don’t be silly. They’re useless. Schools are all useless. The teachers who immerse themselves in Nature! The teachers who show profound sympathy for Nature!”
I felt not the least respect for his opinions. I was thinking, “He’s a fool and his paintings are rubbish, but he might be a good person for me to go out with.” For the first time in my life I had met a genuine city good-for-nothing. No less than myself, though in a different way, he was entirely removed from the activities of the human beings of the world. We were of one species if only in that we were both disoriented. At the same time there was a basic difference in us: he operated without being conscious of his farcicality or, for that matter, without giving any recognition to the misery of that farcicality.
I despised him as one fit only for amusement, a man with whom I associated for that sole purpose. At times I even felt ashamed of our friendship. But in the end, as the result of going out with him, even Horiki proved too strong for me.
At first, however, I was convinced that Horiki was a nice fellow, an unusually nice fellow, and despite my habitual dread of human beings I relaxed my guard to the extent of thinking that I had found a fine guide to Tokyo. To tell the truth, when I first came to the city, I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theatre for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. Most of all I dreaded paying a bill—my awkwardness when I handed over the money after buying something did not arise from any stinginess, but from excessive tension, excessive embarrassment, excessive uneasiness and apprehension. My eyes would swim in my head, and the whole world grow dark before me, so that I felt half out of my mind. There was no question of bargaining—not only did I often forget to pick up my change, but I quite frequently forgot to take home the things I had purchased. It was quite impossible for me to make my way around Tokyo by myself. I had no choice but to spend whole days at a time lolling about the house.
So I turned my money over to Horiki and the two of us went out together. He was a great bargainer and—this perhaps earned him the ranking of expert in pleasure-seeking—he displayed unusual proficiency in spending minimal sums of money with maximum effect. His talents extended to getting wherever he wanted in the shortest possible time without ever having recourse to taxis: he used by turns, as seemed appropriate, the streetcar, the bus and even steam launches in the river. He gave me a practical education: thus, if we stopped in the morning at a certain restaurant on our way home from a prostitute’s and had a bath with our meal, it was a cheap way of experiencing the sensation of living luxuriously. He also explained that beef with rice or skewered chicken—the sort of dishes you can get at a roadside stand—are cheap but nourishing. He guaranteed that nothing got you drunker quicker than brandy. At any rate, as far as the bill was concerned he never caused me to feel the least anxiety or fear.
Another thing which saved me when with Horiki was that he was completely uninterested in what his listener might be thinking, and could pour forth a continuous stream of nonsensical chatter twenty-four hours a day, in whichever direction the eruption of his “passions” led him. (It may have been that his passions consisted in ignoring the feelings of his listener.) His loquacity ensured that there would be absolutely no danger of our falling into uncomfortable silences when our pleasures had fatigued us. In dealings with other
people I had always been on my guard lest those frightful silences occur, but since I was naturally slow of speech, I could only stave them off by a desperate recourse to clowning. Now, however, that stupid Horiki (quite without realizing it) was playing the part of the clown, and I was under no obligation to make appropriate answers. It sufficed if I merely let the stream of his words flow through my ears and, once in a while, commented with a smile, “Not really!”
I soon came to understand that drink, tobacco and prostitutes were all excellent means of dissipating (even for a few moments) my dread of human beings. I came even to feel that if I had to sell every last possession to obtain these means of escape, it would be well worth it.
I never could think of prostitutes as human beings or even as women. They seemed more like imbeciles or lunatics. But in their arms I felt absolute security. I could sleep soundly. It was pathetic how utterly devoid of greed they really were. And perhaps because they felt for me something like an affinity for their kind, these prostitutes always showed me a natural friendliness which never became oppressive. Friendliness with no ulterior motive, friendliness stripped of high-pressure salesmanship, for someone who might never come again. Some nights I saw these imbecile, lunatic prostitutes with the halo of Mary.
I went to them to escape from my dread of human beings, to seek a mere night of repose, but in the process of diverting myself with these “kindred” prostitutes, I seem to have acquired before I was aware of it a certain offensive atmosphere which clung inseparably to me. This was a quite unexpected by-product of my experience, but gradually it became more manifest, until Horiki pointed it out, to my amazement and consternation. I had, quite objectively speaking, passed through an apprenticeship in women at the hands of prostitutes, and I had of late become quite adept. The severest apprenticeship in women, they say, is with prostitutes, and that makes it the most effective. The odor of the “lady-killer” had come to permeate me, and women (not only prostitutes) instinctively detected it and flocked to me. This obscene and inglorious atmosphere was the “bonus” I received, and it was apparently far more noticeable than the recuperative effects of my apprenticeship.
Horiki informed me of it half as a compliment, I suppose, but it struck a painful chord in me. I remembered now clumsily written letters from bar girls; and the general’s daughter, a girl of twenty, whose house was next to mine, and who every morning when I went to school was always hovering around her gate, all dressed up for no apparent reason; and the waitress at the steak restaurant who, even when I didn’t say a word . . . ; and the girl at the tobacco shop I patronized who always would put in the package of cigarettes she handed me . . .; and the woman in the seat next to mine at the Kabuki Theatre . . . ; and the time when I was drunk and fell asleep on the streetcar in the middle of the night; and that letter burning with passion that came unexpectedly from a girl relative in the country; and the girl, whoever it was, who left a doll—one she had made herself—for me when I was away. With all of them I had been extremely negative and the stories had gone no further, remaining undeveloped fragments. But it was an undeniable fact, and not just some foolish delusion on my part, that there lingered about me an atmosphere which could send women into sentimental reveries. It caused me a bitterness akin to shame to have this pointed out by someone like Horiki; at the same time I suddenly lost all interest in prostitutes.
To show off his “modernity” (I can’t think of any other reason) Horiki also took me one day to a secret Communist meeting. (I don’t remember exactly what it was called—a “Reading Society,” I think.) A secret Communist meeting may have been for Horiki just one more of the sights of Tokyo. I was introduced to the “comrades” and obliged to buy a pamphlet. I then heard a lecture on Marxian economics delivered by an extraordinarily ugly young man, the guest of honor. Everything he said seemed exceedingly obvious, and undoubtedly true, but I felt sure that something more obscure, more frightening lurked in the hearts of human beings. Greed did not cover it, nor did vanity. Nor was it simply a combination of lust and greed. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I felt that there was something inexplicable at the bottom of human society which was not reducible to economics. Terrified as I was by this weird element, I assented to materialism as naturally as water finding its own level. But materialism could not free me from my dread of human beings; I could not feel the joy of hope a man experiences when he opens his eyes on young leaves.