The First Notebook

I have lived a life of much shame.

　I have no understanding of what human life is. I was born in the rural countryside of the northeast, and I did not see a train for the first time until I was quite grown up. I walked up and down the station footbridge without any notion at all that it was built to allow passengers to cross over the tracks. I simply thought it existed only to make the station grounds more complex and entertaining and fashionable — like a foreign amusement park. And I thought so for quite a long time. Going up and down the footbridge struck me rather as a refined and elegant pastime — I thought it was one of the most tasteful of all the railway's services. Later, when I discovered it was nothing more than a thoroughly practical staircase for passengers to cross the tracks, I lost interest in it all at once.

　As a child, I saw a picture of a subway in a picture book and thought, again, that it had not been devised out of practical necessity, but simply because riding an underground train was a more unusual and interesting pastime than riding an aboveground one.

　As a child I was sickly and often bedridden, and while lying in bed I looked long and hard at the sheets, the pillowcases, the duvet covers, and thought them utterly uninteresting decoration. When I was nearly twenty I learned they were surprisingly practical items, and felt a dark, sad wonder at human frugality.

　I also did not know what hunger was. No — that is not to say I grew up in a house that never lacked food, clothing, or shelter — not such a ridiculous meaning — but that I simply had no idea whatsoever what the sensation of "hunger" felt like. Strangely enough, even when my stomach was empty I did not notice it myself. In primary school, in middle school, when I came home from school the people around me would make a fuss: "You must be hungry, I know how it feels, being famished when you come home from school is absolutely dreadful, how about some sweet beans? There are castella and bread too" — and so I exercised my habitual talent for flattery, murmured "I'm hungry" and tossed about ten sweet beans into my mouth, but I had not the slightest understanding of what hunger felt like.

　Of course I ate a great deal myself too — but I have almost no memory of eating out of hunger. I ate what seemed rare. I ate what seemed sumptuous. When served food at someone else's house I generally ate it as well, forcing myself if necessary. And the most painful time of day for me as a child was, strangely enough, mealtime at my own home.

　At my family's house in the country, all ten or so family members would set out their individual trays in two facing rows, and I, the youngest, sat of course at the lowest seat, but that dining room was dim, and during lunch, the sight of over ten family members eating silently — just eating in silence — always gave me a chilly feeling. The house was an old-fashioned country home, so the side dishes were mostly the same things every day — there was no hoping for anything unusual or lavish — and so I grew all the more afraid of mealtimes. In that dim room, at the lowest seat, I would convey rice to my mouth in small amounts, force it down, trembling with cold, and would think: why do human beings eat three meals a day? Everyone eats with such solemn faces. It must be something like a ritual — the family gathering three times a day at fixed hours in this dim room, setting out trays in orderly rows, and chewing their rice in silence without wanting to, heads bowed, praying to the spirits that move through the house. I actually thought as much.

　The words "if you don't eat you'll die" sounded to my ears as nothing more than an unpleasant threat. That superstition (which even now strikes me as somewhat of a superstition) always filled me with anxiety and dread. No words were more incomprehensible to me, more obscure, more threatening in their ring, than: "Because human beings die if they don't eat, they must work and eat."

　In short it seems that to this day I understand nothing of human endeavor. The anxiety that my sense of happiness and everyone else's sense of happiness might be entirely at odds — because of that anxiety I tossed and turned and groaned through many nights, and at times I even nearly went mad. Am I happy? From childhood I was very often told by others that I was fortunate, yet always I felt myself in hell, and those who called me fortunate appeared to me incomparably, immeasurably more at ease than I was.

　I sometimes thought I had ten clusters of misfortune inside me, and that even one of them, if borne by a neighbor, would be enough to kill that neighbor.

　That is to say: I do not understand. I have no idea of the nature or degree of other people's suffering. Practical suffering — suffering that can be resolved simply by getting enough to eat — perhaps that is the strongest pain of all, an abominable hell that would blow away my ten misfortunes — I don't know, but even so, how do such people manage to keep going without killing themselves, without going mad, discussing politics, not despairing, not yielding, continuing to fight the battle of daily life? Perhaps they are not in pain? Perhaps they have become completely egoistic and are fully convinced this is perfectly natural, having never doubted themselves once? In that case, how easy it must be — but perhaps all human beings are like that, and perhaps that is precisely the right way? I don't know... Do they sleep soundly at night and feel refreshed in the morning? What dreams do they have? Walking down the street, what do they think about? Money? Surely not only that... I've heard the saying that human beings live to eat, but I've never heard anyone say they live for money — well, but depending on circumstances — no, I don't know that either... The more I think, the less I understand, and the more I am seized by anxiety and fear that I alone am completely different. I can barely converse with those around me. I don't know what to say, or how to say it.

　So I hit upon the idea of the clown.

　It was my last bid for love toward human beings. Though I feared human beings to an extreme degree, I seemingly could not bring myself to abandon them entirely. And so, through this single thread of clownery, I was barely able to remain connected to humanity. On the surface I kept a smile on my face at all times, but inside it was a desperate service — what one might call a crisis of a thousand-to-one odds — performed while sweating cold drops.

　From childhood, even with my own family I had no idea whatsoever how much they suffered, what they thought as they lived — I was simply terrified of them, and unable to endure the awkwardness, I had already become skilled at clowning. In other words, without realizing it, I had become a child who never said a single true thing.

　When I look at photographs taken with the family around that time, everyone else has a serious expression, while I alone have invariably twisted my face into some strange grimace. That too was a kind of sad, childlike clownery.

　I never once talked back to my family when they scolded me. Even the slightest rebuke felt to me as violent as a thunderbolt, and I would become nearly frantic — not talking back, but convincing myself that the rebuke must be the eternal "truth" of humanity, and that since I had no power to live by that truth, perhaps I could no longer live with people at all. So I was incapable of argument or self-defense. When someone spoke ill of me, I would come to feel that I had truly made some terrible mistake, and I always received such attacks in silence, feeling inside a fear that nearly drove me mad.

　Perhaps no one feels good about being criticized or scolded by others, but in the face of an angry person I saw the true nature of an animal more terrifying than a lion, more terrifying than a crocodile or a dragon. Ordinarily they seem to hide that nature, but on some occasion — like a cow lying lazily in a meadow who suddenly swats a horsefly on its belly with its tail — suddenly they reveal the true terrifying nature of humanity through anger. I always felt my hair stand on end in horror, and thinking that this nature too might be one of the qualifications for living as a human being, I felt something close to despair in myself.

　Always trembling with fear before human beings, without an ounce of confidence in my own words or deeds as a human being, keeping my private anguish locked in a small box inside my chest, hiding my melancholy and nervousness, pretending to be nothing but cheerful and carefree — I was gradually perfected as a funny and eccentric clown.

　As long as I made people laugh, they wouldn't mind so much, I thought, that I was outside of what they called "life." At all costs I must not be an obstacle to those human beings. I am nothing, I am wind, I am sky — such thoughts multiplied, and I clowned to make my family laugh, and also performed desperate clowning service even for the manservants and maidservants, who were more incomprehensible and frightening to me than family.

　In summer I walked the corridor wearing a red wool sweater under my light cotton robe, making the whole household laugh. Even my elder brother, who rarely laughed, burst out at the sight and said:

"That doesn't suit you, Yō-chan."

　In a tone that sounded like he found me irresistibly charming. Of course even I am not such a strange person as to actually wear a wool sweater in midsummer without knowing heat from cold. I had put my sister's leggings on my arms and let them peek out from the sleeves of my cotton robe, making it look as if I were wearing a sweater.

　My father was a man with much business in Tokyo, and kept a villa in Ueno Sakuragichō, spending most of the month there. When he came home he would bring an extraordinary quantity of gifts for family members and relatives alike — that was more or less his hobby.

　The night before one of his trips to Tokyo, Father gathered the children in the reception room and went around asking each of them with a smile what kind of gift they would like when he came back, writing down each child's answer in a notebook. It was unusual for Father to be so intimate with the children.

　"And Yōzō?"

　he asked, and I fell silent.

　When asked what I wanted, I suddenly wanted nothing. "It doesn't matter, nothing is going to make me happy anyway" — a thought that flickered through my mind. At the same time, I found it impossible to refuse whatever was given to me by someone else, no matter how little it suited my taste. I could not say I disliked something I disliked, and what I liked I tasted only furtively, as if stealing, and with extreme bitterness, writhing in an unspeakable feeling of fear. In short, I lacked even the capacity to choose between two options. This, I now believe, was one of the character traits that would become a significant cause of what I call my "life of shame" in later years.

　As I stood there in silence, fidgeting, Father made a briefly displeased face and said:

"Books then? In the souvenir stalls at Asakusa there was a little papier-mâché lion mask for the New Year's lion dance, just the right size for a child to put on and play with — do you want that?"

　When he said "do you want that?" I was done for. I couldn't manage any clowning reply at all. The clown had completely failed.

　"Books would be good," said my eldest brother, with a serious face.

　"Is that so," said Father, his face showing his amusement had faded, and he snapped the notebook shut without writing anything.

　What a failure — I had angered Father, and his revenge would surely be terrible. I lay shivering under my quilt that night thinking of some way to undo it, then crept out and went to the reception room, opened the desk drawer where Father had put his notebook, took out the notebook, flipped through the pages to find where the gift requests were entered, licked the pencil in the notebook, wrote "Shishimai," and went back to bed. I had not the slightest desire for that lion dance mask. I would have preferred books, in fact. But I realized that Father had wanted to buy me that lion mask, and, only to go along with his wishes and put him in a better humor, I dared to venture the adventure of sneaking into the reception room in the dead of night.

　And this extraordinary measure of mine was, as I had hoped, rewarded with great success. Not long after, Father came back from Tokyo, and from the children's room I heard him saying loudly to Mother:

　"When I opened my notebook at the toyshop in the souvenir stalls, look, right here it says 'Shishimai.' That's not my handwriting. I thought, hmm, that's strange. Then it hit me — this must be Yōzō's doing. That boy sat there grinning and said nothing when I asked him, but later he must have been desperate for the lion mask. He's a strange fellow, that one. He went ahead and wrote it in without saying a word. If he wanted it that much he should have said so. I was standing right there at the toyshop laughing. Go call Yōzō in here right now."

　Another time I gathered the manservants and maidservants in the Western-style room and had one of the manservants bang the piano keys at random (it was the countryside, but the house had most things one could want) while I danced an Indian dance to the nonsensical tune and made everyone roar with laughter. My second brother took a flash photograph of my Indian dance, and when the photograph came out, a small private part was visible through the gap in my loincloth (which was a cotton furoshiki cloth), and this again sent the whole house into fits of laughter. Perhaps that too could be counted as an unexpected success for me.

　I subscribed to more than ten new monthly magazines for boys every month, and also silently read various other books sent from Tokyo, so I was well acquainted with all sorts of comic scholars and nonsensical characters, and was fairly well versed in ghost stories, rōkugo, rakugo, and Edo comic stories, and never lacked for funny things to say with a straight face and make the people of the house laugh.

　But — ah, school!

　There I was on the verge of being respected. The very idea of being respected was also something that greatly frightened me. Being nearly completely deceived, then seen through by one all-knowing, all-powerful person, and utterly annihilated, made to feel a shame worse than death — that was my definition of the state of "being respected." Even if I deceived people and was "respected," there was always one person who knew, and when that person told the others and they realized they'd been deceived, what would their anger and revenge be like? Even imagining it made my skin crawl.

　I came close to earning the respect of the whole school not so much through being from a wealthy family as through what people vulgarly call being "good at studies." I had been sickly since childhood and often missed a month or two of school, even nearly a whole school year, bedridden — yet when I went to school in a rickshaw after recovering and took the year-end exams, I seemed to do better than anyone in the class. Even when I was well, I hardly studied at all — I spent class hours drawing cartoons in school, and during breaks I explained them to my classmates and made them laugh. In composition I wrote nothing but comic stories, and even when the teacher warned me about it, I didn't stop. I knew the teacher was secretly looking forward to my comic stories. One day I submitted, in my usual way, a composition written in a purposely sad style about a mishap that had happened when I went to Tokyo with Mother (though in truth I had not done it out of childlike innocence — I had done it on purpose, pretending to be naive) about using the spittoon in the train corridor as a toilet. I was confident the teacher would laugh, so I quietly followed him as he headed to the teachers' room. As soon as he left the classroom, the teacher pulled out my composition from among the others, began reading it as he walked down the corridor, and started chuckling, then entered the teachers' room and apparently finished reading, because his face turned bright red and he burst into loud laughter and immediately showed it to the other teachers. I watched all of this and was quite satisfied.

　A mischievous prankster.

　I succeeded in being seen as a mischievous prankster. I succeeded in escaping being respected. My grades in all subjects on my report card were ten points, but my conduct mark alone was seven or six, which was also a source of great laughter for the whole house.

　Yet my true nature was entirely at odds with such prankishness. By that time, I had already been taught sad things by the maids and manservants — violated by them. I now believe that doing such things to a small child is the ugliest, most base and cruel crime a human being can commit. But I bore it. I even felt as though I had observed yet another human characteristic, and I laughed weakly. If I had been in the habit of telling the truth, I might have been able to report their crimes to my father and mother without flinching. But I could not fully understand even my own father and mother. Making an appeal to human beings — that method held not the slightest hope for me. Whether I appealed to Father, or Mother, or a policeman, or the government, in the end I would only be talked down by someone good at getting along in the world, someone whose word the world accepts.

　There would inevitably be one-sidedness in it. In the end, appealing to human beings is useless. I could only go on keeping silent about the truth, enduring, and continuing to clown — that was how I felt.

　Perhaps someone will sneer: "So it's distrust of humanity? When did you become a Christian?" But I don't think distrust of humanity necessarily leads straight to the path of religion. In fact, including the very person sneering at me, human beings live comfortably enough with mutual distrust, without giving a thought to Jehovah or anything of the sort. Even as a child, there was a time when a famous member of some political party my father belonged to came to give a speech in our town, and I was taken by the manservants to listen at the theater. It was packed, and the faces of the people particularly close to Father in our town were all visible, applauding enthusiastically. After the speech ended, the audience scattered home in groups through the snowy night roads, talking bitterly about the meeting. Among them were voices of people particularly close to Father. Father's opening remarks were poor, the famous man's speech was incomprehensible, so said these supposed "comrades" of Father in tones that sounded like angry shouts. And yet those same people stopped by our house, went up to the reception room, and told Father the meeting had been a great success, with expressions of genuine delight. Even the manservants, when Mother asked how the meeting had been, said it was very interesting and thought nothing of it — though the whole way home they had been lamenting to each other that nothing was more boring than a political speech.

　But this is just one small example. The lives of human beings seem filled with instances of mutual deception — both parties are somehow unharmed by it, and they don't even seem to notice they are deceiving each other — genuinely dazzling, pure and bright and cheerful examples of distrust. And yet I have no particular special interest in the fact that people deceive each other. I myself deceive people all day long through my clowning. I have little concern for what morality textbooks call justice. What is incomprehensible to me is the kind of person who, while mutually deceiving each other, lives — or seems confident they can live — in a pure and bright and cheerful manner. Human beings never did reveal this mystery to me. If only I had understood it, I would not have had to fear them so, nor perform such desperate service. I would not have stood in opposition to human life, and would not have had to endure these nightly agonies of hell. That is to say, the reason I never reported even the despicable crimes of the manservants and maidservants to anyone was not out of distrust of humanity, nor certainly for Christian reasons, but because human beings had tightly shut the shell of trust against me, Yōzō. Even my father and mother sometimes showed me something I found incomprehensible.

　And the scent of my loneliness — never telling anyone, never making any appeal — seems to have been picked up instinctively by many women, and may have been one of the factors that led to various entanglements in later years.

　That is to say, to women, I was a man who could keep the secrets of love.