The First Modern Japanese: The Life of Ishikawa Takuboku 9780231542234

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
1. Takuboku, Modern Poet
2. Takuboku in Tokyo
3. Takuboku the Schoolteacher
4. Exile to Hokkaido
5. Hakodate and Sapporo
6. Takuboku in Otaru
7. A Winter in Kushiro
8. Poetry or Prose?
9. Takuboku Joins the Asahi
10. The Romaji Diary
11. The Sorrow of Takuboku and Setsuko
12. Failure and Success
13. Takuboku on Poetry
14. The High Treason Trial
15. The Last Days
16. Takuboku’s Life After Death
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The First Modern

j a pa n e se

asia perspectives: history, society, and culture

Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

asia per spectives: history, societ y, and culture

A series of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University Carol Gluck, Editor Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II, by Yoshimi Yoshiaki, trans. Suzanne O’Brien The World Turned Upside Down: Medieval Japanese Society, by Pierre François Souyri, trans. Kathe Roth Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion: The Creation of the Soul of Japan, by Donald Keene Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: The Story of a Woman, Sex, and Moral Values in Modern Japan, by William Johnston Lhasa: Streets with Memories, by Robert Barnett Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan, 1793–1841, by Donald Keene The Modern Murasaki: Writing by Women of Meiji Japan, ed. and trans. Rebecca L. Copeland and Melek Ortabasi So Lovely a Country Will Never Perish: Wartime Diaries of Japanese Writers, by Donald Keene Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop, by Michael K. Bourdaghs The Winter Sun Shines In: A Life of Masaoka Shiki, by Donald Keene Manchu Princess, Japanese Spy: The Story of Kawashima Yoshiko, the Cross-Dressing Spy Who Commanded Her Own Army, by Phyllis Birnbaum Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts: From Kishida Ryūsei to Miyazaki Hayao, by Michael Lucken, trans. Francesca Simkin

Donald keene

The First Modern

j a pa n e se 

Th e L i f e o f i s h i k awa ta k u b o k u

Columbia University Press

new york

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2016 Donald Keene All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Keene, Donald, author. Title: The first modern Japanese : the life of Ishikawa Takuboku / Donald Keene. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2016. | Series: Asia perspectives: history, society, and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015050684 | ISBN 9780231179720 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ishikawa, Takuboku, 1885 or 1886–1912. | Poets, Japanese—20th century— Biography. Classification: LCC PL809.s5 Z72755 2016 | DDC 895.61/4—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050684

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 cover image: Courtesy of Kushiro Public Library and Shinchosha cover design: Chang Jae Lee

To my son Asazō, who has made the last years of my life the happiest.

contents 1. Takuboku, Modern Poet 1 2. Takuboku in Tokyo 19 3. Takuboku the Schoolteacher 35 4. Exile to Hokkaidō

45

5. Hakodate and Sapporo 58 6. Takuboku in Otaru 71 7. A Winter in Kushiro 84 8. Poetry or Prose? 102 9. Takuboku Joins the Asahi 121 10. The Romaji Diary

136

11. The Sorrows of Takuboku and Setsuko 153 12. Failure and Success 163 13. Takuboku on Poetry 175 14. The High Treason Trial 187 15. The Last Days 201 16. Takuboku’s Life After Death 214

notes bibliography index

223 261 267

The First Modern

j a pa n e se

1 takuboku, modern poet

I

shikawa Takuboku (1886–1912) probably ranks as the most beloved poet of the tanka, a form of poetry composed by innumerable Japanese poets for well over a thousand years. Takuboku’s tanka stand out less for their beauty than for their individuality; his poems are as surprising today as they were for the first readers. His poems borrowed from no one but managed always to transmit the striking freshness of his thoughts and experiences. Countless poets before him had conveyed in the thirty-one syllables of the tanka such subjects as their perceptions of the changes brought by the seasons or the yearning evoked by the poet’s love. Takuboku’s poems seldom touched on these familiar subjects, but he had no intention of destroying the traditions of the tanka with his originality. Instead, he clung to composing his poems in thirtyone syllables, just as other tanka poets had done for two thousand years. And although his essays often urge poets to write in the language of the day, his tanka were always written in the classical Japanese language, even when he described the thoughts of an unmistakably modern man. He rather resembled the French modernist poets who, though determined

2—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

to wreck the old poetry, continued to use rhyme and traditional forms like the sonnet.1 The tanka was often beautiful in its imagery and rich in overtones that gave depth, despite the few syllables available to the poet. The language permitted to the poets consisted of a vocabulary that had been established centuries earlier by members of the court in order to maintain elegance of diction, but it limited the subjects. Tanka poets borrowed openly from the poetry of their predecessors; indeed, a poem without reference to the past was not praised. Tanka poets, with no thought of startling, hoped that their variations on familiar themes would be admired for the delicate shifts of older poems or a barely hinted freshness of expression. The sameness of subjects in the collections of tanka does not apply to the dozen great tanka poets whose poems are unforgettable, even when the subjects are conventional. Although the rise of linked verse in the fourteenth century and of haiku in the seventeenth century gave poets greater freedom of subject and language, they did not eliminate or greatly change tanka. Not until late in the nineteenth century was there a serious call to reject the heritage of the past and create poetry suitable to men of the enlightened Meiji era. The poems of Masaoka Shiki (1867–1902), the leader of this new movement, were rarely about the beauty of cherry blossoms or colored autumn leaves and the other lovely but exhausted subjects of poetry. Instead he described in his poems what he had perceived and felt, without worrying whether they might seem unpoetic to readers of traditional poetry. Shiki’s insistence on writing his poems in modern Japanese resulted in bringing tanka and haiku into the new age and saved both forms from being demolished by the European influences that swept over Japanese poets beginning in the 1880s. This in itself did not make Shiki a modern poet. He rarely revealed, as a modern poet usually does, his deepest emotions, and he seldom referred to himself in the first person. His best-known tanka sequence

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–3

requires an understanding of unspoken background poems: Shiki did not reveal that he wrote these poems when he was almost completely paralyzed from an illness that eventually killed him. Unlike Shiki, Takuboku was a truly modern poet. About sixty years ago, Kōsaka Masaaki, a professor of philosophy at Kyoto University, told me he was convinced that Takuboku was the first modern Japanese. This statement lingered in my memory, though at the time I did not know Takuboku’s work well enough to understand what made him “modern.”2 Although it is difficult to name the qualities that make a poet appear modern, Takuboku’s poems make their modernity clear without needing further explanation. Here are a few examples: ware ni nishi tomo no futari yo hitori wa shini hitori wa rō wo idete ima yamu

two friends just like me: one dead one, out of jail now sick3

Surely no earlier tanka poet ever wrote a poem that included a dead man, a man released from prison, and still another who was sick; and Takuboku resembled all of them: arano yuku kisha no gotoku ni kono nayami tokidoki ware no kokoro wo tōru

like a train through the wilderness every so often this torment travels across my mind4

This poem likens the torment flashing through Takuboku’s mind to a train that is momentarily visible as it rushes through a wilderness. Surely no one before Takuboku had used such a simile:

4—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

hō ni tsutau namida no kobosu ichiaku no suna wo shimeshishi hito wo wasurezu

never forget that man, tears running down his face a handful of sand held out to show me.5

The word “sand” occurs in all of the first ten poems of A Handful of Sand, Takuboku’s most celebrated collection. This poem suggests the passing of time, like sand in an hourglass. Even though Takuboku does not tell us what he felt on seeing the weeping man, he makes us feel almost unbearable sympathy. Takuboku believed that the tanka was the ideal form for a poem. Disagreeing with the poets of his day who, under European influence, found the tanka’s brevity an obstacle to their expression, he insisted that the shortness allows the poet to write a poem the moment an inspiration comes into his head. The brevity of the tanka keeps the poet from exaggerating his emotions, as there is no second stanza repeating what has already been expressed. Takuboku sometimes used modern Japanese when he wrote poems that were not tanka, but all his tanka were in the classical language. Although this sometimes makes them difficult to understand, especially today when the classics are no longer an important part of Japanese education, Takuboku did not hesitate to use unusual characters or obsolete meanings. But even when a poem is difficult to parse, the general meaning can usually be sensed. When we read Takuboku’s poems and diaries today, we are likely to forget that he died a century ago, because even though Japan changed enormously during this time, no gap separates Takuboku from ourselves. We may be startled at times by his candor, especially in his diaries where he reveals even his faults more openly than do most writers today. The following passage from his Romaji Diary (1909) illustrates his modernity: “Why did I decide to keep this diary in roman letters? Why? I love

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–5

my wife, and it’s precisely because I love her that I don’t want her to read this diary. No, that’s a lie! It’s true that I love her, and it’s true that I don’t want her to read the diary, but the two facts are not necessarily related.”6 Although less widely read than his poetry, Takuboku’s diaries are his most unforgettable works. Because they were written day by day and were not rewritten at a later date, they inevitably contain passages of only ephemeral interest, but hardly a page is without literary interest. Takuboku did not hesitate to show himself naked even when his actions were plainly foolish or deplorable. He did not keep the diaries with possible readers in mind, nor was he making a confession. He occasionally did use material from his diaries in his works of fiction, but never long passages or successfully. The diaries must have taken considerable time to write each night, and they were Takuboku’s most precious possession. When he had lost everything else, he saved his diaries. Then, when he realized he might die before long, he ordered a friend to burn them after his death, but he never attempted to burn them himself. He also ordered his wife, Setsuko, to burn his diaries after he died, but fortunately she did not. When Takuboku died in 1912, he was not well known to the public, but in the years since then, more than a thousand books and monographs have been devoted to his life and writings. He is now recognized as a major figure of modern Japanese literature. Takuboku was born in the tiny village of Hinoto in Iwate Prefecture. He is usually thought to have been born in 1886, but some scholars, based on a memorandum in Takuboku’s hand and the recollections of an elder sister, insist that he was born in 1885.7 His father, Ishikawa Ittei (1850–1927), was the priest of the Sōtō Zen temple in Hinoto, but Takuboku never referred to Hinoto as his birthplace. Even after monuments had been erected at other sites where he had lived, there was none in Hinoto until 1955. The existing monument bears an inscription written by Takuboku’s close friend from his school days, Kindaichi Kyōsuke (1882–1971). He

6—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

was the first to declare that biographers were mistaken to believe that Takuboku was born in Shibutami, the village he frequently described as his home.8 A probable reason why Takuboku was reluctant to mention Hinoto was uncovered about twenty years after his death. His father had left Hinoto under a cloud after the villagers accused him of having usurped money sent by the sect’s main temple as a gift for indigent parishioners. Ittei was accused of using the money to make loans on which he charged interest. He was also accused of having sold trees belonging to the temple and using the proceeds to buy valuables that he took with him to his next post. Saitō Saburō, who visited Hinoto in the 1950s, reported that some elderly villagers were still indignant over Ittei’s offenses and that their dislike extended to Takuboku, his son. It is difficult now to judge whether or not Ittei was guilty of these allegations, but even his biographer admitted that he was “loose” with money. He suggested, too, that Takuboku had inherited this trait from his father.9 Takuboku’s birth certificate did not identify him as Ittei’s son but as Kudō Hajime, the illegitimate son of Kudō Katsu (1847–1912), his mother. Although Buddhist priests, celibate in accordance with the rules of most sects, were given permission by the government in 1872 to marry, disapproval and even contempt of married priests lingered among parishioners. At the time of Takuboku’s birth, Ittei, who had taken the Zen tonsure at the age of ten, held the lowly position of priest of a minor temple. Still young and unsure of his future, he may have decided, in the interest of keeping his job, to conceal the marriage, even though this effectively branded his children as illegitimate. Two older sisters of Takuboku were accordingly registered at birth as fatherless.10 Then in 1887, the superior of the Hōtokuji, a Zen temple in the more prosperous village of Shibutami, suddenly died, leaving only children too young to succeed him. Ittei was appointed as his successor, a promotion arranged by Katsurahara Taigetsu (1826–1910), the Zen priest

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–7

under whom Ittei had been ordained and whose sister Ittei had secretly married. Some parishioners felt that Ittei was too young and inexperienced for an important temple. Others felt sorry for the family of the previous superior who, forced to leave the temple, had been reduced to poverty. Ittei’s bookishness and his fondness for composing poetry also displeased the parishioners. Takuboku, still an infant, was carried from Hinoto to Shibutami. In 1892 Ittei, perhaps emboldened by his new authority, revealed that he was married and bestowed the family name Ishikawa on his wife and their children, despite pretending that the children were adopted and not his own. Ittei’s confession of marriage may have strengthened the opposition. Some parishioners accused him of being less interested in their welfare than in rebuilding the temple, which had been severely damaged in a fire. Before long, there was gossip that Ittei was making private use of temple funds, though he strongly denied any wrongdoing. Most parishioners accepted his solemn declaration of innocence, but the dispute between Ittei’s adherents and opponents smoldered for years. Takuboku entered school at the age of five. Although he was registered as Kudō Hajime, a year later his name was changed to Ishikawa Hajime. The Shibutami Elementary School had been founded as the result of a government proclamation, issued in 1872, requiring every child in Japan to attend school for at least four years from the age of six (five by Western count). Of course, schools had existed before this order was given, but the schools attended by the children of commoners taught little beyond basic reading and writing, along with enough arithmetic to enable a shopkeeper to keep his accounts. For boys of the samurai class, there were academies where they spent much of their time pondering Confucian thought. This knowledge of classical Chinese, essential to the study of Confucian writings, came to be a mark of a man’s samurai background. With the opening of Japan to foreign countries after the Meiji Restoration of 1868, it became evident to the government that Confucian

8—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

wisdom alone would not enable the Japanese to obtain a place in the modern world. At the outset of his reign, the young emperor promised that knowledge would be sought throughout the world “to strengthen the foundations of imperial rule.” The Rescript on Education of 1872 materialized this promise with the decision to build schools throughout the country where children, regardless of class, would be taught science, geography, English, and other untraditional subjects. By Takuboku’s time, some fifteen years later, even schools in remote parts of the country were providing elementary education comparable to that offered in advanced countries of the West. This great diffusion of education enabled Takuboku to acquire the knowledge that would enrich his poetry and his life, and it is astonishing that he learned so much so quickly. The elementary school that Takuboku first attended was within the grounds of the Hōtokuji, the temple where he lived. In the haste to provide classrooms where the new learning could be taught, Buddhist temples (the largest available buildings) were often turned into schoolhouses. At first, Takuboku did poorly in his studies. Perhaps an inborn resistance to conformity and a love of the outdoors kept him from obeying school discipline. But his marks gradually improved, and by the time he graduated, he stood at the head of his class. In fact, Takuboku’s marks were so much superior to those of his classmates that they spoke of him as a genius, an epithet that clung to him for the rest of his life. Occasionally he even referred to himself as a genius, but he grew increasingly aware of the bitter contrast between the bright future expected of a child prodigy and the life he would be forced to lead. He expressed the contradiction in these terms: sono kami no shindō no na no kanashisa yo furusato ni kite naku wa sono koto

The sadness of it! To have had the reputation of a prodigy— That’s what makes me weep when I come back home.

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–9

Takuboku’s boyhood years in Shibutami, however, were happy for the most part. He was worshipped by his mother and had many friends, but his happiness came less from people than from the mountains and fields. He was a “child of nature,” as his sister Mitsuko described him.11 He often recalled the pleasures of his boyhood: kanikaku ni Shibutami mura wa koishikari omoide no yama omoide no kawa

One thing and another Make me yearn for Shibutami Village The mountains I remember, The river I recall.

He remembered with nostalgia the songs of the Shibutami birds: kankodori Shibutami mura no sansō wo meguru hayashi akatsuki natsukashi

The cries of cuckoos— How they bring back memories Of a mountain hut, Surrounded by woods: Daybreak in Shibutami Village.

He particularly enjoyed the sounds of woodpeckers in the trees around the Hōtokuji. In 1902, when he was sixteen, he published a sonnet on the woodpecker, experimenting with a foreign poetic form. Indeed, Takuboku was so captivated by woodpeckers that he took Takuboku as his poetic name (gagō) from the two characters used in writing “woodpecker.”12 He was once asked why he had abandoned an earlier, more poetic, name in favor of “woodpecker,” a bird not celebrated by Japanese poets for its appearance or song. He replied, Outside my window is a dark wooded place. From its depths, irrespective of the season, I can always hear the sound of woodpeckers steadily pecking at the bark of the trees. The sound, from the

10—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

heart of the forest, continues at all hours, a soft drumming like an echo from ancient times, a most endearing sound. It cures my spring ailments, whether I am resting on a pillow with a headache or reciting poetry to beguile tedium, or even when I am reading something about my beloved Wagner.13 The sound comforts me day and night, and when I hear it, whenever that may be, I feel an overwhelming desire to compose poetry—a pure joy that spurts up inside me, a pleasure that blots out the tedium of writing. That’s why I took Woodpecker for my name.14 Long after he left Shibutami and the woodpeckers, Takuboku continued to express nostalgia for this village, though his longest unbroken stay was only from 1887 to 1903. His attachment grew as he increasingly sensed that his years in Shibutami were likely to be the happiest of his life. The poems about his boyhood are his most cheerful: Yoru nete mo kuchibue fukinu kuchibue wa jūgo no ware no uta shi arikeri even whistled in my sleep— in fact, at 15 whistles were my poems15 Takuboku’s family in Shibutami consisted of his parents, himself, and Mitsuko, his younger sister (1888–1968), whose recollections of Takuboku are filled with complaints about the unkindness and even cruelty with which Takuboku treated her. She obviously resented her mother’s greater affection for her brother. Takuboku seldom wrote about his boyhood relations with his parents, but his poems suggested that he and his father were not close:

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–11

oya to ko to hanarebanare no kokoro mote shizuka ni mukau kimazuki ya na zo father and son minds apart face to face in awkward silence why—?16 chichi to ware mugon no mama ni aki no yonaka narabite ikishi furusato no michi

My father and I Not saying a single word, Walked side by side Late one autumn night along A road through the village.17

kanashiki wa wa ga chichi! kyō mo shinbun yomiakite, koari to asoberi

How sad—my father, today again, Bored with reading the newspaper, Is toying in the garden With little ants.18

Despite the distance between them, Ittei was pleased to have a son, though he seems not to have hoped that Takuboku would succeed him as a Zen priest. Takuboku, living in a temple, often heard his father’s prayers, but he does not mention receiving any instruction in Zen teachings or even learning the importance of worshipping the Buddha. Before long, he was calling himself an atheist.19 It is possible, however, that his father was unintentionally responsible for Takuboku’s awakening to poetry. Ittei was a tanka poet of the old school who left close to four thousand poems.20 He also subscribed  to  several poetry magazines, quite unusual for a rural priest. Takuboku may have first thought of writing poems after getting a

12—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

glimpse of the magazines or else his father’s poetry, but no childhood poems survive. Probably the person Takuboku loved most in the world was his mother, though his diary never directly expresses love or even gratitude. His mother came from a better family than his father did, and she had done well in elementary school, but her education stopped after her marriage. At the time that Takuboku wrote his longest account of his mother (in the Romaji Diary), she was all but illiterate. He quoted a letter she had sent describing how much the family needed money. Begging him for even one yen, she wrote, “If we don’t get an answer from you, we’re finished.” Takuboku commented, My mother’s letter, full of shaky, misspelled kana. I don’t suppose anyone but myself could read this letter. I’ve been told that when Mother was a pupil at the Senboku Street School in Morioka, she was the brightest in the class. But in the forty years of married life with my father, I doubt that she ever wrote a letter. The first letter from her was in the summer of the year before last. . . . Today was the fifth I have received since coming to Tokyo. There are fewer mistakes than at first, and the characters are better formed. How sad—a letter from my mother.21 Based on the number of times Takuboku mentions his parents in his diaries, Saitō Saburō concluded that Takuboku loved his mother at least seven times as much as his father.22 But Miyazaki Ikuu (1885–1962), who played a major role in Takuboku’s life, found something “unhealthy” in the relations between Takuboku and his mother, though he did not elaborate. He was unfavorably impressed when he met her in 1908: His mother looked like an old harpy. She was extremely small and painfully bent. Seated, she looked no bigger than a girl, but her features were regular. Her forehead was prominent, like Takuboku’s.

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–13

Her pale face was gourd shaped, the nose and the mouth average. Her most attractive feature was her white hair. I thought, looking at her face, that she might have been pretty when she was young, but whenever anything displeased her, she revealed in her expression an unyielding nature I didn’t like.23 Despite her tiny size, his mother never hesitated to voice her likes and dislikes, but she was devoted above all to keeping Takuboku happy. This concern probably went back to Takuboku’s infancy. He was sickly at birth, and his mother was so afraid of losing her only son that she permitted him to do whatever he pleased, fearful that scolding him might cause a tantrum or even death. Mitsuko characterized her mother’s affection for Takuboku as “blind love.” She recalled that in order to strengthen Takuboku, her mother fed him delicacies that no one else was allowed to eat. She never complained, no matter how mischievously Takuboku engaged in pranks. His father was somewhat more severe, and on one occasion, he scolded Takuboku harshly. The boy shrank with fear at this unexpected show of parental authority, but Mitsuko confessed she was overjoyed to see her brother punished. She admitted that she hated him because he kept calling her stupid and hitting her.24 Mitsuko envied Takuboku, who, as an only son, was at liberty to do as he pleased. Her parents did nothing to protect Mitsuko from Takuboku’s willfulness. He was always well dressed, but if whenever she asked her parents for something to wear, they would give her clothes that he had discarded. She wrote these unpleasant recollections of Takuboku after his death but insisted she did so not in order to reveal how her brother had made her suffer but to rebut books about Takuboku that blamed his misfortunes on the heartlessness of society. Mitsuko was convinced that Takuboku’s unhappiness stemmed from an aristocratic egoism fostered by his mother: “People nowadays forget that my brother was a spoiled son at home and an aristocrat in the village. It is true that the Ishikawa

14—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

family later was forced to scatter in all directions, but I would like readers to consider objectively how much his troubles were due to my brother’s aristocratic tendencies.”25 “Aristocratic” is an unexpected adjective to apply to a man whose life was largely spent in poverty, but Mitsuko’s memories were of Takuboku’s youth when, as the son of a priest. he flaunted his superiority to other villagers, treating them as unworthy of his attention. Mitsuko was in fact so upset by his arrogance that she attended a missionary school and became a Christian, as if to be as unlike her brother as possible. A late poem by Takuboku called attention to their religious opposition: kirisuto wo hito nari to ieba, imōto no me ga, kanashiku mo, ware wo awarenu

When I said Christ was a man My sister, eyes full of grief Took pity on me.26

Mitsuko’s anger toward her brother occasionally yielded to affection, but bitterness taints most of what she wrote. Perhaps she did not exaggerate her grief, as Takuboku, too, recognized the unfairness of their parents’ treatment of Mitsuko: haha ware wo utazu tsumi naki imōto wo uchite koraseshi hi mo arishi kana

I remember days When my mother, not spanking me, Struck and punished My younger sister, Though she hadn’t done a thing.27

Mitsuko admitted that Takuboku sometimes showed concern about her education: “My brother often said he intended to make me into a novelist and urged me to understand thoroughly whatever I read. It was at this time that I first heard the names of Ueda Bin and Natsume Sōseki.”28

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–15

It also occasionally occurred to Takuboku that although his parents were severe with Mitsuko, they had been excessively permissive with him: tada hitori no otoko no ko naru ware wa kaku sodateri chichi haha mo kanashikaruran

Because I was an only son This is how I grew up—I can imagine How unhappy I must have made Father and Mother.29

Takuboku’s first schooling was at the Ordinary Elementary School in Shibutami. Four years at such a school was the entire education most children in the village received, but after graduating in April 1895, Takuboku went on to the Higher Elementary School in Morioka, the largest town nearby. He graduated from this school in 1898 with the highest marks in all three branches—classwork, deportment, and examinations. He applied for admission to the Morioka Middle School and was accepted at the age of twelve, ranking tenth highest of 128 applications. His firstyear marks were good but not remarkable. Takuboku began to compose tanka while in middle school, already able to write classical Japanese. He seems to have had no difficulty learning the old vocabulary and grammar and came to revel in obscure characters. Then Takuboku’s marks began to drop during his second year of middle school, and they continued to fall every year afterward. Although his diary does not mention the cause of the decline, biographers generally attribute it to his awakening to his future: having decided he would be a writer, he lost interest in classroom study. The decline, however, may have had a more direct cause. In 1899, Takuboku, then thirteen years old, met Horiai Setsuko, a girl of the same age. Photographs of her make it evident that she was not beautiful; she certainly does not look like a “white lily,” the affectionate name by which Takuboku called her, but she was intelligent and may have had a sexual appeal. Before long, the passionate Takuboku fell in love with

16—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

Setsuko, and she, equally attracted to him, became a frequent visitor at Takuboku’s house, usually on the pretext of seeing Mitsuko.30 In March 1901, a student strike erupted at the Morioka Middle School. It began with hostility between two groups of English teachers. The first were veteran teachers from the region who had learned their English entirely from books. They typically pronounced “the girl” as za gururu. The contesting group consisted of young teachers, mostly from Tokyo, who had learned correct English pronunciations from native speakers. The old guard, fearing they would be displaced, tormented the newcomers. The mild-mannered principal was unable to end either the hostility between the two factions or the students’ complaints about the inadequate teaching of English. The school alumni, seeking a solution, appointed Tomita Koichirō (1859–1945) as head of the literature department. Tomita was a distinguished educator, known as the “Pestalozzi of Iwate,” but his strictness angered the students, and he soon left the school. A strike ensued that lasted for three weeks until the governor of the prefecture intervened. Takuboku, always rebellious, enjoyed the excitement of the strike and was sorry when it ended: sutoraiki omoiidete mo ima wa haya wa ga chi odorazu hisoka ni sabishi 31

Even when I think back to the strike, My blood no longer dances; I feel a furtive loneliness.

At first, Takuboku disliked Tomita, but as he got to know him better, his enmity gradually turned to admiration and he wrote about him worshipfully in a newspaper serial devoted to Tomita that he published in 1909.32 After the governor ended the strike, Takuboku once again was bored with school but diverted himself by reading extensively. He recalled, “For the first time in my life, I began to read works of literature, and from then on I was completely captivated. My classroom appearances became

T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t —–17

rarer than ever, a tendency that persists to this day.”33 Reading literary works was not only interesting but convinced him he must become a writer. Classes seemed less and less relevant to his future work. As the result of the strike, there was a shake-up of the school faculty, and no one was left to teach English. At Takuboku’s suggestion, in 1901 some students formed a group they called the Union Society, a name derived from the textbook of English literature that the society’s members used. They met each week to discuss not only literature but also politics and religion. This first taste of intellectual discussion was probably the most important benefit Takuboku gained from the strike. As he wrote in his diary, “If anyone should ask what consolations I have in life, I would at once reply, ‘On my right a white lily and on my left my friends in the Union Society.’”34 The “white lily” was, as mentioned earlier, Setsuko. Although they had been eager to marry since they were seventeen, both families resisted. Setsuko’s well-to-do family was not pleased to have their daughter marry the son of a village priest. Takuboku’s mother thought that Setsuko did not seem like a proper Japanese girl, as she was too forward in her affection for Takuboku. Despite their frustration with their parents’ opposition, the lovers continued to meet. Takuboku nearly botched his chances of marrying Setsuko. On July 15, 1902, he was caught cheating on a final exam in mathematics. He had arranged with a friend in the adjacent row to pass him answers to the questions. Takuboku had been caught cheating before, in March of that year. At that time, he was treated leniently, punished by no more than a reprimand, but as a second offender, he was suspended. Cheating on exams was so common in Japanese schools that it was usually treated as a minor offense, but the new principal, who had taken office after the strike, was under orders from the governor to reform the students’ morals. He persuaded the faculty to punish Takuboku severely. On September 2, Takuboku was informed that his scholastic record had been carefully examined. It showed that he had attended classes for only 104 hours of the required 207 hours of classwork. He was given

18—–T a k u b o k u , M o d e r n P o e t

no credits for some courses and had failed others. In the midst of this condemnation, Takuboku received unexpected good news. Word came from the editor of Myōjō, the leading poetry magazine, that it was planning to publish one of his poems. This news reassured Takuboku, and rather than suffer the humiliation of expulsion, on October 27 he asked permission to withdraw from the school, citing “family problems.” Permission was granted at once. Takuboku, like the hero of a Balzac novel, decided to head for the capital to make his fortune. He left Shibutami and, on the following morning in Morioka, had a tearful farewell with Setsuko. At five o’clock on October 30, 1903, seen off by Setsuko and the Union Society members, Takuboku boarded a train for Tokyo. He had no money and no plans for what he would do in the capital, only a vague hope of meeting the leading poets and enormous self-confidence.

2 takuboku in tokyo

T

akuboku arrived at Ueno Station in Tokyo on the morning of November 1, 1902. He took a rickshaw to the house of a friend with whom he spent his first day in the metropolis. The next day, with the friend’s help, he found a pleasant room and bought a desk and a bookcase, all the furniture he needed. Ready by his third day in Tokyo to enjoy the cultural life of the city, he visited an exhibition of Japanese art in Ueno Park. His reactions to the exhibition are in his diary: The curse of Japanese painters is that they choose timeworn subjects and depict them lifelessly. Of all the works on exhibition, only the two or three that utilized Western techniques in making Japanese paintings were worth a second glance. . . . In addition to the paintings, there were thousands of other works of art on display. The only ones that were worth looking at were a plaster statue of a nude woman by Yakushiji Gyōun and a silver statuette (I forget the artist’s name) of a high-ranking officer on a horse shooting an arrow.1

20—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

Such assured judgments on the exhibition suggest that Takuboku had acquired familiarity with art in Shibutami or Morioka, but nowhere in his diaries does he mention works of art or books about painting. His confidence in his own tastes had already become absolute and seemed to extend to every field. His judgment on first seeing Tokyo was far from the awe normally displayed by young men from the country. Indeed, perhaps the most striking feature of Takuboku’s account of his initial reactions to Tokyo is his lack of surprise. Except for a short visit earlier that year to Otaru in Hokkaidō, where he unsuccessfully attempted to borrow money from his brother-in-law for the trip to Tokyo, he had never been outside northeastern Japan. But once in Tokyo, he seems to have been determined not to be surprised by anything. He would not allow anyone to think that he was a boy from the backwoods. In part his assurance may have stemmed from his correspondence with the celebrated poet Yosano Tekkan (1873–1935) after being informed that his poem would appear in Myōjo, the magazine that Tekkan published. This proof of his talent gave Takuboku the confidence of belonging in the world of poetry; he was qualified to meet even wellknown poets like Tekkan. On November 4, he received a letter from Tekkan announcing that his wife, Akiko, had just given birth. Nowhere in his reply to the letter or in his diary did Takuboku express pleasure at having heard from Tekkan, and he offered no congratulations on the birth of the baby.2 Perhaps he felt liberated from old-fashioned politeness. Takuboku was, of course, happy to be in the capital, but apart from a vague desire to meet other poets, he had not given much attention to how he would spend his time there. On November 4, he met Nomura Kodō (1882–1963), who had been a year ahead of him at Morioka Middle School and was now a student at the First High School. Nomura, urging Takuboku to complete his education, accompanied him to several middle schools, but none had an opening for a fifth-year student. Next, Takuboku visited an English-language school and registered as a student

T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o —–21

but never attended classes.3 He spent his days mainly in his room composing tanka and writing letters. His chief amusement seems to have been looking at photographs, probably of Setsuko. It did not take long, however, before he began to miss the fresh breezes of Shibutami, so unlike the smelly winds in Tokyo that blew dust into every corner. The coating of white powder carried by the winds made him imagine that the buildings in Tokyo were white skeletons. Takuboku worried about how living in Tokyo could affect young men like himself: They say that going to Tokyo will make any man decadent. It’s the truth. If an innocent young man suddenly finds himself on the dusty streets of the capital, the first things he notices are the splendid roadways, the electric lights, the signboards, the horse carriages, the elegantly dressed women. Is there even one of them who, standing in the midst of all this, can escape being moved deep in his heart a little? Tokyo is a great place for play. It’s also a great place for study.4 Takuboku did not study much during his first week. He visited art galleries and recorded in his diary his generally uncomplimentary impressions. He also spent hours mooning over his beloved “white lily,” but much of the time he was lonely and bored. He composed a barrage of tanka and sent them to Tekkan, without getting a response. On November 9, however, Tekkan invited him to a meeting of poets at his house. Takuboku was pleased to discover that despite his youth, he could hold his own in conversations with senior poets. Today, most of them have been forgotten or rank as “minor poets,” but Iwano Hōmei (1873–1920), who later became an important novelist, was then a poet and may have had an influence on Takuboku’s tanka, especially the division of the poems into lines of irregular lengths. Takuboku made sarcastic comments about most of the poets present at the party, though he said little about Tekkan, his host, except that

22—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

he was friendlier than expected.5 When the party ended, Takuboku reminded himself that nothing was more sacred than such gatherings, where poets, forgetting their daily concerns, exchanged thoughts on the essence of poetry. On the following day, Takuboku paid a visit to the “Hall of Poetry” (Shidō), the poetic name of the Yosano residence. He seems not to have hesitated to appear without an invitation. Perhaps he felt that his attendance at the party had qualified him as a member of Tekkan’s circle. As he wrote in his diary, After I had seated myself and waited a few minutes in the sublime presence of Madame Akiko, Tekkan entered, a smile on his face. The eight-mat room was filled with autumnal brightness, and in the garden, red and white chrysanthemums in elegant vases were at their peak. The conversation opened with recollections of the party on the previous day but became more interesting and memorable as new topics emerged. As we went on talking in this manner, it occurred to me that there was absolutely no reason why I couldn’t be accepted into his [Tekkan’s] world.6 In his capacity as a senior poet, Tekkan favored Takuboku with a series of admonitions. For example, he told him that it was unbefitting for a gentleman of letters to sell his poetry or prose, hoping to live off the proceeds. Poems originate in the world of ideals and should not be converted into the means of making a living: “Next, he informed me that the tanka is without doubt the most orthodox form of poetry but that poets of the future must not refuse to search for new forms of modern poetry. Next, he opined that only after a man, in the course of some great conflict, has experienced innumerable crises during which he has been bravely triumphant or bravely defeated, can he be called a poet.” Tekkan concluded by warning Takuboku, “Your poetry is too ambitious. Japanese poets are so eager to remain famous that if they ever succeed

T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o —–23

in winning celebrity, however hollow, they are so afraid of losing it that they stop writing. It’s true of every one of my friends.”7 Takuboku, clearly bored with the lecture, commented, “This is only the second time I’ve talked with him face-to-face, and I am still in no position to analyze his character, but I believe that the most pertinent thing people say about him is that he has a lively mind and is very energetic. With respect to his faults, I had best not say anything as yet. I might be mistaken.” Although Takuboku benefited over the years from Tekkan’s kindness, he never seems to have liked or respected him. Years later (in 1910) he wrote in the Romaji Diary, “Needless to say, I don’t think of Yosano as an elder brother or a father. He is simply a person who has helped me. . . . We both are writers, but I somehow feel we are traveling on different paths.”8 He added, “Sometimes I do think of Akiko as an elder sister. The two of them are quite different.” Takuboku’s worship of Akiko began when as a middle-school student, he read her book of poetry, Midaregami, and was overwhelmed.9 Indeed, he never wavered in his admiration for either her poetry (which he imitated in his early works) or her character. After recording more about their conversation during the visit, he added, “Anyone who looks at her and says this or that about her features is no friend of mine. Everything in her exudes magnificently a refinement of soul that no ordinary person can approach. Her complexion is pale, no doubt because barely ten days have passed since she gave birth, but this only makes her dignity all the more profound.”10 On November 11, a money order arrived from Yamamoto Senzaburō, his brother-in-law in Otaru. Takuboku immediately used the money to buy secondhand books, including Charles and Mary Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, and Robert Inglis’s Gleanings from the English Poets. This was an extravagance, typical of Takuboku’s “looseness” with money, but he read at least parts of most of the books. He spent the next day reading the Lambs’ retelling of Romeo

24—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

and Juliet. Perhaps he chose this among Shakespeare’s plays because the story, like his own, described lovers who, because of family opposition, could not marry. Three days later, he had moved on to Byron and quoted passages from Childe Harold. On November 17, he visited Maruzen, Tokyo’s chief foreign-book store, where he bought Hamlet and a selection of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Although he wrote nothing about his impressions of these books, after reading Mori Ōgai’s Sokkyō shijin (a translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Improvisatore), he commented, “It effortlessly captured my heart. What a marvelous writer!”11 Works in Japanese were no doubt easier for him to appreciate than those in foreign languages, but three days later, when he sold virtually all his books, he kept those written in English. On November 21, Takuboku bought an English translation of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman. This gloomy example of Ibsen’s late period had reached Japan intact, though extracts of his more popular plays had been available as far back as 1893. Takuboku was so impressed by what he called “a dramatic poem in prose” that he set about translating John Gabriel Borkman himself. There are repeated mentions in Takuboku’s diary of days spent working on this translation, but he apparently never completed it. His diary for 1903 was either lost or not written, and without a diary or letters, there is no way of knowing what happened to many of Takuboku’s early works.12 Takuboku also read translations of Russian and German novels, but English was the only foreign-language literature he could read in the original. His diary often contains lines or stanzas from English-language poems that had moved him. In November 1902, for example, he quoted the stanza from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage that includes, “I love not man the less, but nature more.”13 Although his interpretation of this line is more or less correct, it is followed in his diary not with an expression of his love of nature, as we might expect, but with reflections on love and

T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o —–25

marriage. Takuboku declared that marriage was not simply a man and a woman living together; it was a physical union stemming from the union of their hearts. He followed this aphorism with a bizarre metaphor: “Truly, marriage is a unique Joint Fleet on the sea-lane of human life.”14 When he quoted his favorite line from Childe Harold, he gave it the title “Solitude,” no doubt because his solitary yearning for Setsuko, even more than his love of nature, filled his mind. Everything inspired him to write of love and marriage, and he even copied a line by Byron fifty or sixty times in his notebook.15 The importance of English literature to Takuboku is described in Mori Hajime’s three-hundred-page study, Takuboku’s Thought and English Literature. According to Mori, the most important subject in the middle schools of Takuboku’s time was English, more so even than mathematics, Confucianism, or Japanese learning.16 Although Takuboku’s grades declined precipitously during his last years in middle school, he was so determined to learn English that he persuaded his friends in the Union Society to join with him in reading English texts far more difficult than those taught at school. This study undoubtedly helped make Takuboku proficient in English, but the marks he received in English were barely passing, no doubt because he failed to attend the classes in which English grammar was taught in the traditional manner. In the absence of a diary for 1903,17 one must turn to Takuboku’s letters for a description of how he passed his time in Tokyo, but the letters are disappointing. He wrote hardly a page between New Year’s Day and February 26, when he left Tokyo for home in Shibutami. He did not reveal in his diary why he left Tokyo, but accounts by friends who visited him at the time recalled that he was extremely depressed. He was living in a cramped, dirty room, and worst of all, the editorial job he had counted on had failed to materialize. He felt that his stay in Tokyo had been a failure, and depression may have brought on illness. In fact, he was in such poor mental and physical condition that, giving up his usual silence, he wrote to his parents about his sickness.

26—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

His father is often described in Takuboku’s poems as remote and severe, quite unlike his gentle mother: chichi no goto aki wa ikameshi haha no goto aki wa natsukashi ie motanu ko ni

To the son without a home Autumn is severe as a father, As loving as a mother.

On this occasion, however, Ittei showed his love for his son by traveling to Tokyo and bringing him back to Shibutami. Ittei had no money to pay for the journey and, unable to borrow any, in desperation sold chestnut trees in the temple garden without waiting for the parishioners’ consent. His action was later cited as a reason for dismissing him as the priest of the temple, though he made amends by planting a hundred saplings in place of the trees.18 Ittei and Takuboku left Tokyo for home on February 27. On March 19, Takuboku wrote a letter revealing his illness to a friend who had invited him to a poetry gathering and explaining why he could not attend: Thank you for urging me to attend your party, even though I am a good-for-nothing whose only talent is making unfavorable comments on the works of others. It would give me pleasure to attend the party and listen to everybody read their poetry, attempting all the while to polish my poisonous tongue; but my days are spent doing nothing but swallowing bitter medicines, grimacing, and gnawing lumps of sugar to get the medicine down. I hope you can guess how this makes me feel.19 The letter goes on to relate gossip about mutual friends and life in Shibutami, only to abruptly shift back to his illness: “Sick and depressed, unable to bear my thoughts, my mind travels on a pitch-black road. That

T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o —–27

goes without saying. But my illness is definitely not fatal. I feel the affection of my parents, who are doing everything they can to cure me as soon as possible. I obediently swallow the medicine. It’s incredibly bitter, so bitter it brings tears to my eyes.” The letter then moves to an entirely different subject, the poet’s ability to transform any subject into a work of art. He gives as an example Wordsworth’s description of Rydal Mount, a mere clump of trees that the poet made magnificent by his description, and he claims that this kind of “Heaven sent Genius” (he uses the English words) deserves worship. English poetry was never far from Takuboku’s thoughts. Takuboku’s next surviving letter was written three months later. Devoted mainly to a poetic description of a walk through Shibutami village at twilight through the early-summer flowers, it also contains something new: Takuboku mentions that he has listened to an organ. The organ in the Shibutami school was a pump organ or harmonium, a small, simple instrument that by no means resembles a pipe organ but was adequate for teaching music to children. Takuboku was entranced by the sound of the music. His awakening to Western music occurred in 1903 when he heard music by Wagner (including the “March” and the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” from Tannhäuser) while in Tokyo, most likely in a church. His interest in Wagner grew during his period of recuperation and was stimulated by the essays he read about Wagner published in 1902 by Anesaki Chōfū (1873–1949), a philosopher whom Takuboku admired. In fact, these essays may have shifted Takuboku’s interest from Wagner the composer of Tannhäuser to Wagner the philosophical genius. In a letter dated July 27, 1903, Takuboku cites four biographies of Wagner in English that he was thinking of buying, but he seems to have had enough money to buy only one, Charles A. Lidgey’s Wagner.20 Even before he started reading it, he began on May 31, 1903, to publish “Wagner’s Thought,” a seven-part serial that appeared in the Iwate nippō, the region’s leading newspaper.21

28—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

The essay opens with a description of Wagner’s grave. Although he had died more than twenty years earlier and was now no more than whitened bones, his works nonetheless remain at the core of European music. Wagner was not simply an artist but a great man, an unprecedented model for others to emulate, a prophet who, envisioning the ultimate state of humankind, left teachings for all to study. Takuboku promised to treat at a later time the question of whether the “music drama,” as conceived by Wagner, was the greatest of the arts; but he was already certain that Wagner was sublime as an artist. Takuboku laid down eight points he intended to discuss in his essay. They included such wide-ranging themes as Wagner and the nineteenth century, the ideals of culture, the origins of philosophy and individualism, and the world united by love but made no reference to Wagner’s music. Takuboku had begun to admire Wagner not so much as a musician than as a man who never swerved in his beliefs, even when he was forced into exile. Apart from reading English translations of the texts of Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, Takuboku knew little about Wagner’s writings, though he revered him as a poet and repeatedly resolved to study German, mainly in order to read Wagner’s poetry in the original. Perhaps because Takuboku had so few opportunities to hear Wagner’s music, he came to believe it was not essential to discuss music in his study of Wagner. Even when Nomura Kodō, who became the father of musical criticism in Japan, insisted that it was impossible to understand Wagner unless one were familiar with his music, Takuboku replied, “Yes, Wagner was a composer, but in Germany he is known as the supreme dramatic poet. My admiration for Wagner is as a writer of literature.” He insisted on this opinion, ignoring Kodō’s efforts to interest him in Wagner’s music.22 All the same, Takuboku was musically inclined and taught himself to play the flute, the violin, and the harmonium. Although his diary reveals little about the works he preferred, he often mentions playing music, usually

T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o —–29

just for himself. He also learned to read Western musical notation and borrowed scores from friends and even invented a musical notation of his own. Takuboku wrote that although he was deeply moved by the “Pilgrims’ Chorus” from Tannhäuser, Wagner’s lofty ideals were the essential part of his reverence. It is not clear how much he knew about Wagner’s political ideals, but it is unlikely that he agreed with Lidgey’s conservative summary: “What, then, was his standpoint? Not what one would expect to find in an ordinary revolutionist, not the sort of vapouring in which the typical Socialist or Anarchist delights—but a firm declaration in Monarchy as the ideal principle of government, a faith in God to discover the right law. These were the tenets of Wagner the Revolutionist!”23 Takuboku, who had socialist tendencies, did not include this passage in his translation of Lidgey. Even though his summaries of the plots of Lohengrin and Tannhäuser are fairly accurate, he derived so little from Lidgey that he might as well have never bought the book. It has been suggested that Takuboku’s increase of interest in revolutionary politics stemmed from a desire to emulate Wagner, who had participated in the Dresden revolution of 1849, but even Lidgey admitted that Wagner’s part in the revolution “does not appear to have been very considerable.”24 By the time politics had become a vital part of Takuboku’s life, he no longer referred to Wagner; he had found other heroes. The high point of Takuboku’s worship of Wagner was his publication of “Wagner’s Thought” in 1903. Kondō Norihiko, the author of a scholarly study of this essay, considered it one of Takuboku’s most important works, a grand panorama of the thought of a brilliant man far ahead of his time.25 It was indeed an extraordinary achievement for a boy of seventeen. Today, the interest in “Wagner’s Thought” does not stem from Takuboku’s worship of Wagner but from the essay’s importance as Takuboku’s first sustained work of criticism. It incidentally reveals that

30—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

early in the twentieth century, a boy educated in rural Japan had the confidence that he could write about the place of Wagner in intellectual history. Furthermore, Takuboku wrote “Wagner’s Thought” in modern Japanese, not in the classical language of most of his early prose. Perhaps he hoped this would make it easier for readers to understand, but one wonders how many readers of the Iwate nippō made their way through the essay’s complicated expressions. Despite publishing seven installments of the essay, Takuboku never completed it, noting that illness had kept him from writing considerably more.26 About six months after the last installment appeared, Takuboku resumed writing about Wagner, this time not in a newspaper but in his diary. His entry for July 23, 1904, opens with a description of a wild night of drinking and his late return home. His drunken state, however, did not prevent him from pursuing his study of Wagner. Takuboku was fascinated by the German folktales and myths on which Wagner’s operas were based, but he concluded that it was the dominance of love that gave Wagner’s works their magnificence. Wagner had not only absorbed the thought of Nietzsche and Tolstoy but added the vital element of love, making him their equal as a philosopher.27 By the time Takuboku had written his last homage to Wagner, he had succeeded in obtaining the consent of Setsuko’s parents to their marriage. The date of the wedding is uncertain, as it depends on how one defines a wedding. On May 12, 1905, Takuboku’s father registered Setsuko as a member of the Ishikawa family, and gifts were exchanged. This is usually interpreted as constituting a marriage, even though there was no religious blessing, no drinking of saké, no gathering of guests, or any other feature of a Japanese wedding. An elaborate party to celebrate the wedding was planned for May 29 by members of the Union Society, and the ceremony itself was scheduled for May 30. But Takuboku failed to attend any of these events and did not join his bride until June 2.

T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o —–31

Takuboku’s behavior at this time is unfathomable. Without consulting either his fiancée or his family, he decided that the wedding must take place in Tokyo and rented a house in Komagome for this purpose.28 Both his and her parents, however, insisted that they be married in Morioka. Although they urged Takuboku to go there as soon as possible, he sent a reply to the friend who was acting as a go-between: “The fact is, if I marry Setsuko, I will have to kill a certain woman. I love that woman.” This may have been a joke, but it baffled his friend. In fact, Takuboku’s reluctance to return to Morioka was not caused by an obligation to commit murder but by a lack of train fare. He showed no sign of leaving Tokyo until friends got together the ten yen needed for the train. Takuboku then bought a ticket, but on the way to Morioka, he left the train at Sendai, telling his friends that he wanted to visit the poet Doi Bansui, who lived there. Even though Takuboku was an admirer of Bansui’s poetry, this was surely not a suitable time for a visit. Nonetheless, he managed to get a letter of introduction to Bansui who, it turned out, happened to have read some of Takuboku’s poetry. After telling his wife that Takuboku was a genius who at twenty had published a book of poetry,29 she, impressed, prepared a meal for him and politely asked if he was visiting Sendai. He replied that he was waiting in Sendai for the publisher of his book to send the royalties due to him, adding that the bill at the inn had become considerable. Mrs. Doi felt sorry for him. Takuboku visited Mrs. Doi again when Bansui was not at home. He showed her a note written in pencil on a scrap of coarse paper and said it was a letter from his sister informing him that their mother was dying. Takuboku said he had no money to go to his mother and comfort her in her last moments. He asked Mrs. Doi to lend him fifteen yen, the sum he was owed by the publisher. She wept out of pity and gave him the money. In fact, the publisher was under no obligation to pay Takuboku anything; the letter was not written by his sister; and his mother was not dying.

32—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

Expecting that he would hurry to his mother’s sickbed, Mrs. Doi went to his room to make sure he had not forgotten anything in his haste. She was astonished to find him still at the inn, drinking with friends. The hotel bill had been charged to Bansui. The forgiving Mrs. Doi pointed out that the room had not cost her husband much, as it had no electricity or even a flashlight.30 The next day, accompanied by two escorts, Takuboku left Sendai for Morioka but managed once again to slip off the train and return to Sendai. The next day, his escorts were absolutely determined to deposit him in Morioka, but he eluded them again. When the train reached Morioka, Takuboku’s bride and sister were on the station platform waiting for him, but Takuboku could not be found. The wedding celebration was held as planned on May 30. The wedding gifts, the bridal dress, the bedding, and the rest of Setsuko’s trousseau were delivered, and the feast was ready, but there still was no Takuboku. After a long period of waiting, the ceremony took place without him. Setsuko, though she had no groom, was surprisingly calm, but her family was distraught and never forgave him. Takuboku left Sendai on May 29 and could have reached Morioka in time for the celebration but instead took the train beyond Morioka to the next station. From there, he sent a friend a postcard stating that he was still alive and would go to Morioka in a couple of days. Many in the wedding party urged Setsuko to call off the marriage, but she refused, sure that Takuboku loved her. When Takuboku arrived in Morioka on June 4, he saw Setsuko for the first time in weeks. A small house had been rented for the newlyweds, which they would share with his parents, sister, and (in a different room) the owners of the house. Takuboku never explained why he had not attended his wedding. His dislike for arrangements that other people made may have caused him to shun the rites that were likely to accompany a wedding. Or he may have enjoyed the thought of doing the unexpected. Or maybe he sud-

T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o —–33

denly doubted whether he really wanted to get married; marriage would curb a man whose most conspicuous demand of life was freedom. Five years later, he wrote in the Romaji Diary, “My trouble comes entirely from the mistaken institution of marriage. Marriage! What an idiotic institution!”31 Perhaps to Takuboku’s surprise, he enjoyed life with Setsuko in their tiny room in Morioka. Takuboku’s main literary activity in 1905 had been the publication on May 3 of his first book, Akogare (Yearning), a collection of poetry. This work, though graced with a preface by the eminent poet and critic Ueda Bin (1871–1916) and initially well received, has since been neglected by most Takuboku scholars, who see it as an imitation of Yosano  Akiko. Moreover, when the book is praised, it is usually not for its contents but for its being an astonishing feat for a nineteen-year-old. The language of the poems is marked by archaisms and unusual characters that sometimes make the poems seem like demonstrations of how much this young autodidact had learned and enhanced his reputation of being a genius. In later years, Takuboku himself disavowed Akogare, and then the nail in its coffin was driven in by Hinatsu Kōnosuke (1890–1971), an influential critic of Meiji and Taishō poetry, who dismissed the collection as “no more than the imitative verse of a precocious young man.”32 This judgment has since been generally accepted, although some critics praise the richness of Takuboku’s language and the effectiveness of his images.33 The poems in Akogare are shi, the style of verse that Takuboku had first studied, but after Akogare was published, he stopped writing them until late in his career. Early in 1905, the Zen authorities, bowing to the criticism voiced by Ittei’s enemies in Shibutami, decided that he had misused the money given to the needy by the central temple and dismissed him as the priest of the Hōtokuji. Their decision proved to be a disaster. The family would no longer have a house to live in, and they had been deprived of their

34—–T a k u b o k u i n T o k y o

sole source of income. The family left the temple in March 1905. At first, they lived elsewhere in Shibutami, but after Takuboku’s marriage in May, his parents and Mitsuko lived together with the bridal couple in the house in Morioka. Because the two rooms the family occupied were too small for five people, the family scattered. The father, reluctant to become a burden on Takuboku, took refuge in Noheji, in the temple of Katsurahara Taigetsu, his teacher, where he waited to be recalled to the Hōtokuji. He had reason to hope that his supporters in Shibutami would invite him back, even though it might take a long time. Takuboku’s mother rented a small room in the house of an acquaintance in Shibutami. Mitsuko was sent to a missionary school and eventually to Otaru, where she stayed with her older sister. Takuboku and Setsuko remained in the house in Morioka. Takuboku did not spend his time in moping, instead becoming the editor of a new magazine, Shōtenchi, in September 1905,34 believing that this magazine would bring him the success he craved.

3 takuboku the schoolteacher

T

akuboku called his 1906 diary the “Shibutami Diary” because it is largely set in Shibutami, his furusato (hometown). It opens on March 4 of that year with an explanation of why he had failed during the previous year to keep a diary: he had been too busy looking for possible jobs: Yesterday I ended nine months of living in Morioka, and today a new life begins for me in Shibutami, the place I came from. . . . Returning here was the work of fate: I was refused my request for a passport and, for this reason, had no choice but to give up my plan to travel abroad. I had wanted also to take my army physical examination in the countryside. In addition, things had reached a point that I could no longer endure seeing my family living in squalor. I wanted to hide in some quiet place where I could write without interference. These various reasons, though totally different in nature, were all in my mind. But why, if I wanted to get away

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from Morioka, did I choose this, of all backwater towns? I can explain it in one word—Shibutami is my furusato.1 Before finding work, Takuboku had seriously considered moving to America. As far back as February 1904, he had written to Kawamura Tetsurō, a classmate at the Morioka Middle School who was then living in Oakland, California, and had received answers.2 But the correspondence seems not to have been preserved, so we can only guess at the contents. Probably Takuboku had asked Kawamura’s advice about moving to the United States, and Kawamura had encouraged him. Takuboku no doubt hoped that in California, the fabled land of plenty, he would find a solution to the poverty to which he and his family seemed doomed after his father was dismissed from the Hōtokuji. Besides hoping to save the family, Takuboku was attracted to America for another reason. On January 21, 1894, he had written Noguchi Yonejirō (1875–1947), a Japanese whose poetry had become popular in the United States. His letter expressed admiration for Noguchi’s book From the Eastern Sea, which he had read in the Japanese translation published by a local newspaper. Although Noguchi seems not to have answered the letter, in April 1906 Takuboku noted in his diary that Noguchi’s Ayame kai, a society of Japanese, American, and English poets, had published the first issue of a literary journal. It occurred to Takuboku that if he went to California, he might be able to join Noguchi’s society; but when his request for a passport was refused, he gave up his hope of traveling abroad. Takuboku had no choice, therefore, but to make his career in Japan. The failure to obtain a passport had not, fortunately, made him despondent. He opined in his diary that he had little competition as a Japanese poet. “Apart from Ueda [Bin] and Susukida [Kyūkin], there is not one Japanese poet worth reading.”3 As for modern poets like Iwano Hōmei, “they should be ashamed to publish the stuff they write.” Takuboku was almost equally harsh in his judgments of the leading novelists: “I have read most of the recently published fiction. Natsume

T a k u b o k u t h e S c h o o l t e a c h e r —–37

Sōseki and Shimazaki Tōson are writers of some achievement, but they are the only ones of consequence. The rest are hopeless. Natsume Sōseki has unusual literary gifts, but one wouldn’t call him great. Hakai [The Broken Commandment] is certainly an outstanding book, but Tōson is no genius.”4 Takuboku then decided to devote his literary efforts to writing novels rather than poetry, perhaps because novels would bring in money, since a pittance was all one could expect for poetry. Moreover, he decided that novels were easier to write than poems, that “everything is usable in a novel.” In July 1906, Takuboku began writing what would become his best-known short story, “Kumo wa tensai de aru” (The Cloud Is a Genius), the account of a passionate young man whose revolutionary idealism is frustrated by the stupid or evil people surrounding him at the school where he teaches. Takuboku was sure that when completed, this work would be recognized as unprecedented in both theme and structure. The unhappy hero of this story was Takuboku himself, and the events described were based on his experiences as a substitute teacher. He was confident that unlike the realistic fiction then in vogue, his work would be notable for its ideas and would show the effects of his readings in Schopenhauer and other philosophers. As he had mentioned in his summary of 1905, the second reason for his decision to return to Shibutami was his intention of taking his army physical examination in the countryside rather than in a city. He did not explain his reason, but perhaps (like Mishima Yukio a half century later) he calculated that if he were examined in the countryside alongside robust farmers, his frailty would be more conspicuous than if he were examined among city dwellers and that his skinniness might exempt him from conscription as unfit for military duty. Takuboku’s wish to escape conscription did not arise from opposition to the coming war with Russia. In fact, as tension between Japan and Russia mounted in January 1904, he declared in his diary, “War cannot be averted. And since it is inevitable, I hope that a great people will rise

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to the occasion as soon as possible.”5 On learning of the attack by the Japanese fleet on Port Arthur, the sinking of Russian warships, and the death of the Russian commanding officer, he was beside himself with joy.6 Although his enthusiasm for the war gradually waned, he remained eager to escape conscription, mainly because he had not fully recovered from his severe illness and did not feel strong enough to serve in the military. In the essay he wrote in 1911, “On the Russo-Japanese War,” he described how excited he had been by Tolstoy’s “Bethink Yourselves!” an antiwar tract he had read in English translation in August 1904. But even though Takuboku had been impressed by Tolstoy’s hatred of war, it did not alter his conviction that the Russo-Japanese War was necessary.7 Reading Russian literature, however, gradually changed Takuboku’s political beliefs. Although he was well aware of poverty in Japan, it was reading Gorky that awakened him to the idea of downtrodden masses. He showed an increasing interest in socialism but denied he was a socialist: “I value the rights of the individual too highly to become a socialist. But I also have too much sympathy for others, and have shed too many tears, to be an egoist. I call myself an individualist, using my own meaning of the term.”8 He was inspired by Tolstoy to look forward to a future society in which men, having abandoned their greedy ambitions, no longer resorted to violence; they would be united under the sky of equality.9 Takuboku’s physical examination took place on April 21, 1906. Although by this time the Russo-Japanese War had ended, the army was still looking for recruits, and even a weakling might be called up. Typically, the army clung to the traditional military practice of “hurry up and wait,” so in order to arrive in time for his examination, Takuboku had to get up at 3:30. He boarded a train at 6:00 and at 7:30 reached the temple where the examination was conducted. His turn to be examined did not come until 1:00. The official report on his health was brief: “Height: 5 feet 2.2 inches. Muscles feeble. Class 3. Exempt from conscription.” He noted in his diary: “I had expected this, but it came

T a k u b o k u t h e S c h o o l t e a c h e r —–39

as a relief. Those like myself who were pronounced unfit for duty were in high spirits, but those who were ruled fit for service were surprisingly gloomy. It’s a sign of a new trend.”10 Takuboku had detected in the reluctance of men to be enlisted the disillusionment that followed victory in the Russo-Japanese War. Takuboku’s main literary activity in 1905 had been founding the literary magazine Shōtenchi with the financial help of a writer whose sole distinction was his money. Creating a magazine turned out to be more work than the inexperienced Takuboku had foreseen. He had to search for suitable manuscripts and, when he found any, to edit them. The work was exhausting, and his continuing illness caused repeated delays in publication. When the first issue of the magazine finally appeared, however, it was praised for its dazzling array of contributors. Takuboku was so pleased with the reception that he became wildly enthusiastic about future sales. He predicted in a letter to Kindaichi Kyōsuke that one day a Shōtenchi ship would ply between San Francisco and Yokohama carrying 300,000 copies of the magazine between the two ports. Even though Takuboku spent much time planning the second issue,11 it never appeared because its sponsor had backed out. Takuboku thus went from exhilaration to despair. He was now responsible for providing food and shelter for the five members of his family and was not sure his scrawny arms were equal to the burden. As he wrote to a friend, “Doing battle with the devil of a sickness inside me is not very pleasant as an occupation.”12 Those who worked with him on the magazine, dubious that Takuboku would be able to keep it going, left Morioka. Overwhelmed by the work he was now doing alone, he was forced to suspend publication. Nonetheless, he still felt certain that “as long as life was left him, Shōtenchi would survive,” but the first issue was the only one to appear. Succor for Takuboku and his family finally came in February 1906 from an unexpected source. His father-in-law, Horiai Chūsō, apparently taking pity on his daughter, if not his son-in-law, used his political

40—–T a k u b o k u t h e S c h o o l t e a c h e r

connections to arrange for Takuboku a one-year appointment as a substitute teacher at the elementary school from which he had graduated. The salary was a bare eight yen a month, not enough to sustain five people; but Takuboku wrote that he was truly happy to be working in the world of culture: it was an ideal life, and the salary was secondary.13 The tone of his diary became cheerful. Again he mentions playing the violin and the harmonium, and a new self-confidence is revealed in his stinging criticisms of other people’s writing. Most important, he was happy to be teaching children. He wrote, I have now discovered a new kind of existence that has completely freed me from all discontent, depression, and unhappiness. It is the sacred teacher’s platform. It goes without saying that I am extremely happy. The one thing that worries me is whether I will be forced, as stated in the contact, to leave the teacher’s platform when the year is up. I shout my happiness with tears in my eyes. This has been a great discovery. Up to now, people have said of me that I was destructive. I am now obliged to recognize the justice of this reputation. And I have learned that the one thing I can do is to create things of the spirit. Isn’t this a great discovery?14 He felt a new sense of responsibility when in the classroom: “As I stood before the pupils, my heart was filled with a kind of emotion I could not control, an awe at the thought that I, like a god, would henceforth have complete control of the hearts of these innocent fifty or so boys and girls. I felt an emotion of piety ripple through the veins of my whole body, as if I were standing before something holy.”15 The sense of awe at the heavy responsibility of his work mingled with his gratitude to be a teacher. Even when he hurt his leg so badly that he could not stand, he attended classes every day: “It’s because the pupils are so lovable. Ah, this joy is a treasure I owe to the gods. I look up to heaven and voice my thanks to them.”

T a k u b o k u t h e S c h o o l t e a c h e r —–41

Takuboku particularly enjoyed teaching English and claimed that he could teach elementary-school pupils in two days what his middleschool teachers took two weeks to teach. He could sense that his words were sinking deep into his pupils’ hearts and doubted that a teacher with less intelligence than himself could experience such joy. He was, by his own standards, an ideal teacher. “I am the best substitute teacher in Japan,” he proclaimed. Although he had not abandoned poetry, he wrote comparatively little, convinced that only a poet could truly be a teacher, and poetry permeated his teaching. As a result, “the children do whatever I tell them,” he proudly announced. He experimented with methods he had devised for teaching the three basic subjects—deportment, arithmetic and composition. Even the bad boys who had been problems responded to his teaching.16 At this point, there is a gap of eighty days in his diary. Takuboku later summarized the unremarkable events that had occurred, with special emphasis on his happiness as a teacher, despite his poverty. Spring in Shibutami was lovely but, he confessed, problems had arisen. He was repeatedly made aware of some of the villagers’ hostility,17 which he blamed on jealousy originating in the days when he was acclaimed as a child prodigy and acted like one. Even though more than ten years had passed since then, they had tried to keep him from entering the town when they heard he was returning to Shibutami. After he started teaching, their resistance grew all but frenzied. He also had supporters. The bitterness of the quarrels between the two factions reminded Takuboku of the conflict between the royalists and the revolutionaries in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century.18 Although he considered moving with his family to Tokyo, he decided that life there was not for him. The one advantage of being in the city was the variety of books that were easily available, but a gravelike spiritual death always haunted Tokyo. No, it was better to remain in the countryside for the time being and to prepare for the great revolution. This was perhaps Takuboku’s

42—–T a k u b o k u t h e S c h o o l t e a c h e r

first declaration of revolutionary intent, though the enemy he planned to eradicate was probably not the government but the vindictive, unforgiving people of Shibutami. In September, Takuboku received a postcard from the public prosecutor of Morioka ordering him to appear in court for questioning. He suspected a plot by his enemies but remained quite calm, reasoning that he had done nothing wrong. He added, “I thought that if there were law that punished people for being innocent, I would gladly go to prison.”19 He was soon cleared of suspicion but was indignant that his enemies thought that Ishikawa Takuboku was capable of robbery. He exclaimed, “My furusato! The mountains, rivers, landscapes will always and forever be my intimate friends, my lovers, my teachers. But why should the people of my furusato continue to refuse to accept me? I heave great sighs. And I have thought of leaving this village as soon as possible.”20 He blamed the unfriendly treatment he had received on his poverty, adding, “Ordinary and poor people are always badly treated. Apart from the constitution, we’re still in the feudal era.”21 His love of his furusato, despite the vexations, kept him from leaving. He enjoyed the many small pleasures of Shibutami. In summer, at the time of the Bon Festival, he danced until dawn five nights in a row to the beat of drums, in the light of the moon and flaming torches.22 In the countryside, the Bon Festival, despite being a remembrance of the dead, was the happiest time of the year. All the same, Takuboku seems to have become restive in his life as a village schoolmaster. In March 1907, he published an article for the Morioka Middle School magazine that included this passage: I may be leaving my honorable position of substitute teacher in the not too distant future and returning to my cosmopolitan friends. Once I do so, I will describe the hundred or perhaps thousand confused thoughts I have whirling in my mind and turn them into essays or novels or plays or poetry. And I really would like, once in

T a k u b o k u t h e S c h o o l t e a c h e r —–43

my life, to become a teacher of Western history in a middle school somewhere and to write a history of the West in many volumes or, depending on the circumstances, to become an actor. . . . But in the end, I expect to return home and be a substitute teacher in the woods. I hope to be known when I die that I was the best substitute teacher in Japan.23 Beginning in October, Takuboku began reading poetry to his pupils. About twenty boys and girls gathered every evening at his house after school. It was a strain to give these sessions after a full day of teaching. Furthermore, he sometimes was exhausted because he rose every morning earlier than his pupils in order to prepare for classes, and he went to bed late every night. Even so, he believed that reading poetry aloud was good for children in a town with little culture.24 Originally, he was assigned only second-year pupils, but as a reward for his success as a teacher, he was asked to teach, in addition, history, geography, and composition to the upper grades. Far from complaining about the new load, Takuboku wrote with satisfaction, “I’m getting to be quite a success as a substitute teacher.”25 At the end of December, he had a pleasant surprise: he would shortly become a father. “I’ll have to behave more like a father,” he happily commented. Another welcome surprise was to discover in the December issue of Myōjō his short story “Sōretsu” (Funeral Procession), some twenty pages long, his first work of fiction to be printed. The next day, he had a postcard from Kindaichi Kyōsuke praising “Sōretsu.” He had read it five times and was at a loss for adequate words: “As for the second half, I do not hesitate to praise it higher than Kyōka or Sōseki, though perhaps you are annoyed to be compared with such men.”26 December was Takuboku’s month of good fortune. Even with this literary success, Takuboku continued to think of himself mainly as a teacher. He was sure he was a great one and thanked heaven for giving him the opportunity to be an educator. As he wrote,

44—–T a k u b o k u t h e S c h o o l t e a c h e r

“I am convinced that the children who are taught by me are the happiest children in all Japan. Moreover, while teaching such children, I am obtaining from them a kind of lesson greater than what I teach; I am sure I must be the luckiest man in the world.”27 At times, Takuboku’s teachings must have surprised his pupils. He asked himself, “What kind of people am I making of my pupils when I teach them that Russia, which lost the war, is a greater country than Japan, which won it?28 This is very dangerous for a substitute teacher in Shibutami.”29 He did not state his reasons for believing that Russia was better than Japan. Takuboku’s love for Setsuko remained unchanging and passionate: “Setsuko, my only Setsuko in the whole world, I am thinking of you and our times together. Tonight, all alone, under a lamp on a night of gently falling snow, I have been weeping until my eyes hurt. Setsuko, I truly love you!!!30 . . . Some say marriage is the grave of love. Let them say it, but we were lovers before and we are still lovers now. Our love will last until death.”31 Their first child, a girl they named Kyōko,32 was born on December 29, 1906.

4 e xile to hokkaidō

T

akuboku awoke early on the morning of January 1, 1907. He was in high spirits. It had snowed earlier in the morning, but gradually the snow petered out and the day became warmer. Like everyone else in Japan, he had become a year older on New Year’s Day, so he considered himself today to be twenty-two, though he was only twentyone by Western count. He listed the ages of members of his family: his father was now fifty-eight; his mother, sixty-one; his wife, Setsuko, twenty-two; his sister Mitsuko, twenty; and his daughter, Kyōko, four days old. Takuboku was especially pleased that rising early had enabled him to be the first in Shibutami to welcome the 2,567th year since the founding of Japan by the emperor Jinmu. He enjoyed breakfast with his family, though it was extremely simple (daikon soup and a slice of dried trout); they could not afford more elaborate New Year’s dishes. Conversation during the meal was mainly about the baby, whom Takuboku had yet to see. He wrote, “As my aged mother said, ‘Now that you’re a father, you can’t go on being so irresponsible.’”1

46—–E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō

A group of pupils called to ask Takuboku to accompany them to the school. They passed together under the traditional pine boughs and worshipped the four directions: I sang “Kimi ga yo” with my students.2 Something solemn came into my voice at the thought that at schools throughout Japan, millions of fathers, just like me, must be singing the anthem this morning. My chest suddenly swelled, and I all but wept. The grandeur of His Majesty’s virtue goes beyond the good or bad of ordinary people. It is impertinent of me to make such comments, but His Holy Majesty Mutsuhito is truly the greatest emperor of all time. Just to hear the name of this Supreme Majesty is always enough to make me straighten my clothes in awe. The greatest good fortune of my life was to have been born during the reign of His Majesty and to be one of His children. From the bottom of my heart I pray, the sincerity of my prayer visible in my tears, that His reign will last a thousand ages until pebbles on the seashore turn into cliffs and are covered with moss. However, if, as some suppose, the splendor of His sacred virtue is shared by the mass of his subjects, and every part of Meiji culture is to be praised and to be proud of, this is quite as big a mistake as supposing a fish is a variety of bird. There is only one way a person can live as a human being: it is by enjoying freedom of thought.3 When Takuboku returned home from the school, he found there a former classmate who had come to celebrate New Year with the family. Ten or more years ago, when she and he attended the Shibutami school, there had been more than twenty children in their class, but after the obligatory four years, only the two of them had continued their education. Most of their former classmates were, by now, fathers or mothers. Some had enlisted in the army during the war with Russia and left their bones in Manchuria. Others held dreary jobs as clerks in the village of-

E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō —–47

fice, and still others, those who broke the law, had spent time in jail. The majority had become farmers. But regardless of the dissimilarity in their lives, all were headed for the same place, the grave.4 This was a negative conclusion with which to end his reflections on a day that began with joy over the New Year and his worship of Emperor Meiji. But the next day’s newspaper, with none of Takuboku’s gloom, brimmed with a display of optimism and self-congratulation. The editors, looking back over the past forty years, praised the sacred reign during which so much had been achieved in so little time. One reporter declared that if the Japanese could maintain the spirit of the New Year, there would be no need for armaments, strikes would never occur, socialism would cease to exist, and everything else that was undesirable would disappear; it would be an ideal world. Takuboku’s comment was the single word “interesting.”5 Classes resumed on January 8 after the New Year’s vacation. Takuboku never forgot that he would lose his job in a few months when his contract came to an end, but his enthusiasm for teaching was undiminished. He wrote, “I thank Heaven with my tears. Heartfelt joy made me shed tears before I knew it. Becoming a teacher has truly been a gift from Heaven.”6 His gratitude to Heaven for providing him with work that gave him such pleasure abruptly switched in his diary to a quite different subject: Today in the third hour, the history class, I stood in the dimly lit classroom before the sixty upper-grade boys and girls and stated my intention to root out the recent, increasingly bad, tendency that has spread among them. I said, “I could, if I wished, point out, right now, what each of you has done and rebuke you appropriately, but instead I will give you a few hours to reflect. If you are able to repent from the heart over what you have done, I order you to come to me today and confess everything.”7 This does not sound like Takuboku, certainly not like the benign teacher who so loved his pupils. Instead of offering thanks to Heaven for the

48—–E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō

happiness of being a teacher, he suddenly and harshly reproached his angelic pupils for their conduct. Perhaps he had suspected for some time that some pupils were guilty of improper behavior but had turned a blind eye. He wrote in his diary, Yesterday, I sent for several senior-class pupils and interrogated them. This morning they looked at me as if I were a sky full of lightning, and they were afraid of being struck by me at any moment. When I questioned them, they uttered not a word, but I heard the sound of sobbing. A wave of affection for them rose within me. “I do not judge your crime, but I tell you never to do it again.”8 All the same, I was absolutely determined to exterminate the bad tendency even if it meant making victims of several beloved pupils. This is not a matter of one school’s reputation; success or failure in dealing with this matter will deeply and permanently affect the whole direction of society.9 He continued: “Beautiful, lovable children came to me one after another to confess, their eyes full of tears, their voices shaking. They earnestly confessed in almost comic detail every bad deed they could remember. Lifting their pious, wet eyes, they intently begged me to forgive them. Ah, what had made me decide that these children, purer than snow, were guilty of a crime?”10 Takuboku cited the case of a boy of twelve, outstanding in his studies and deportment, the president of his class, who had accidentally got involved with a woman friend. When questioned, he hardly said a word, as if unable to look his teacher in the face. That evening, when Takuboku was returning home from school, the boy ran after him. As soon as he caught up with Takuboku, his remorse exploded in a waterfall of tears. He confessed, “Teacher, I have been bad.”11 Takuboku expressed satisfaction over his efforts to elicit the truth from his pupils. That night, in bed, he wept profusely, joy and gratitude overflowing in his breast. He silently prayed before he finally fell asleep.12

E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō —–49

The next day a girl, who had been unable to see Takuboku on the previous day, appeared and solemnly swore never to sin again. Takuboku commented, “It was actually more inspiring to hear this child confess her sin than if she had never sinned. I shamefully wept, remembering the spirit of Christianity. I wept, thinking there was no treasure in the world greater than the truth.”13 He assured those who had confessed that they were purer than ever before. No one would blame them, and they would not be punished: “Beloved brothers, never again do anything you know is bad.”14 Once he had delivered his sermon, he again found his pupils so lovable he wanted to eat them. He concluded by saying that he hoped that when his contract expired, he would be allowed to teach again at the same school.15 This episode is colored by a puritanical strictness quite unexpected in Takuboku. The quotation from the Bible in Takuboku’s diary, his mention of the spirit of Christianity, and the prayers he said before going to bed suggest the influence of Christianity, if not a conversion. But in her recollections of Takuboku, Mitsuko insisted that he was not only totally materialistic but deeply prejudiced against Christians.16 His quotation from the Bible may have reflected Takuboku’s dissatisfaction with the egoism characteristic of naturalism, the prevalent literary movement of the time. He believed that naturalist writers were concerned only with themselves and their unhappiness, but Takuboku could not forget the suffering of humanity. Though his sister termed him a materialist, he read the Bible and perhaps other Christian books for their message of spiritual love, but he was embarrassed to mention this to her. Instead, he mocked her Christian beliefs and revealed his readings of Christian works only to his diary. Although his belief in socialism in later years may have stemmed from similar roots, he did not keep it a secret. It may be wondered why, having been raised in a Zen temple, he did not found a solution to his spiritual problems in Buddhism. Takuboku does not explain why he never mentions Buddhism in his diary. He may have rejected it as a boring relic of the past; Christianity, by comparison, seemed fresh and even revolutionary.

50—–E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō

On January 10, the day after he questioned his students, he demonstrated that he was still eager to improve their education. He added to his heavy teaching burden a new class in English conversation; but from then until March, his diary contains hardly a word about his pupils and has many gaps. Perhaps he was ill or simply did not feel like writing, but the seeming loss of interest in his pupils—up to this time the joy of his daily life—suggests that something had diverted his attention. In fact, he was having difficulties with the principal of the school, though the diary does not describe them. Later events make it clear that they held opposing views on what it meant to be a teacher. Takuboku was so enthusiastic about teaching that he had created new classes, but the principal, instead of thanking him for this generosity, saddled Takuboku with additional teaching, as if to punish him. Taluboku’s diary now described his time teaching in Shibutami as “a lonely year in a lonely village.”17 His life had become a battle between his love of nature in Shibutami and the hostile human surroundings. Although he did not identify the enemies against whom he would test his strength, the most obvious was the principal. Serving under a man who was despised by the faculty as an incompetent drunkard may have dampened Takuboku’s joy as a teacher. When the faculty initiated a strike against the principal, Takuboku was in the vanguard. Takuboku was worried at the same time by an even more serious concern: it was not certain that his father would be reinstated as priest of the Hōtokuji. The Zen authorities who had driven Ittei from the temple had decided that the punishment had been excessive. They were now willing for him to return to his post as priest of the Hōtokuji, provided that this decision was sanctioned by the villagers. It was extremely important to Takuboku that his father be restored to the temple. For more than a year, Takuboku had lived on a miserably inadequate salary. Soon the year of teaching would come to an end, as stipulated in the contract, and he would be out of work. His income from published poems was negligible, and he had already borrowed

E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō —–51

more money than he could ever pay back. Only the hope that his father’s return to the Hōtokuji gave Takuboku the strength to endure the hardships of his life. It seemed likely that Ittei would be reinstated in the Hōtokuji, but if the villagers voted against the decision, Takuboku and his family would have no place to live and no hope for the future. Most of Shibutami’s inhabitants probably favored Ittei’s return. They were impressed by his success in rebuilding the temple, which had been little more than a burned-out ruin when he became the priest. At first they disliked him for his obsession with building a new temple and his lack of interest in the villagers’ other needs. Ittei’s seeming aloofness and devotion to scholarship also made him seem cold to the parishioners, but after the temple had been rebuilt, the villagers recognized the value of his efforts. But Takuboku knew that Ittei had enemies in the village who would do their utmost to prevent him from returning. Their dislike for Takuboku also remained. On one occasion, he was assaulted by village bullies, still irritated by the air of superiority Takuboku had displayed in his youth. They had hated especially his long hair and fancy clothes, and their resolve to take revenge on Takuboku for not dressing like themselves made them even worse enemies than the principal. The fate of the temple and the approaching loss of his job weighed on Takuboku, but he found consolation in recalling what a good teacher he had been. As he wrote, “Whether at school or at home, I was truly a serious elder brother to the pupils. I was their friend. And I watched over them day after day to make sure they never reverted to their former bad habits. Deep in my heart, I felt extremely happy.”18 His friends had highly praised “Sōretsu” (Funeral Procession), but just as his term as a substitute teacher was coming to an end, he received a wounding letter from Yosano Tekkan that made him feel that he was a failure as a novelist. After informing him that the critics had discovered many faults in “Sōretsu,” Tekkan added, “I suggest it would be to your advantage to take to heart their criticism and recognize your faults.”19

52—–E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō

Criticism from Tekkan, an experienced editor, seemed proof of failure. But Tekkan’s letter concluded, “Please send me whatever poems you write this spring.”20 He evidently considered Takuboku a poet who was wasting his time writing novels, for which he had no talent. Takuboku was so torn with worries that he did not compose a single poem that spring. His anxiety reached its lowest point on March 5, 1908. He wrote, Today was one of the most unforgettable in my family’s history. I was awakened early this morning by Mother’s voice calling to me. She said Father had disappeared. Hardly knowing what I was doing, I let out a howl and burst into tears. It wasn’t simply that Father was no longer here. No doubt some evil spirit of poverty had thrown him bodily from this house. It took me a while before I felt strong enough to get out of bed. Father had taken with him his priest’s robes, his Buddhist books, and some personal things. Mother said that when she awoke this morning at first cock-call, he was still sleeping in his bed. He probably left the house very early in the morning. There was no clue to where he had gone. I decided first of all to send a letter to Noheji to ask if they knew what had happened to him, but all morning long I felt incapable of speaking or writing. After almost a year of struggle to regain the Hōtokuji, Father had finally received a mortal blow. The village had voted against his return. The thread of hope has been snapped. As for me, though I exhausted myself with teaching, all the village gave me in return was a lousy eight yen a month. The whole family has been pushed under the claws of the evil demon called poverty. Father made up his mind not to depend on us any longer for his food, though he ate very little. This was what he decided to do. At the thought, I wept over and over. At four this afternoon, Setsuko and Kyōko, along with Mother, came back from Morioka. I hadn’t seen my wife for more than a

E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō —–53

hundred days, and it’s been more than sixty days since Kyōko was born. Now, for the first time, I held my child in my arms. I wondered what she felt. March 5 was the day that I, a man twenty-two years old, had his father run away from home. I understood him for the first time in my life.21 Ittei had run away once before, albeit without greatly worrying his family, who accepted his disappearance as typical of his secretive, rather eccentric character. But this time it was obvious he was sacrificing himself to spare his family the cost of keeping him alive. He had lost hope. Takuboku’s diary contains no entries from March 5 to March 20, resuming with his account of graduation day at the school. Although his contract with the school had ended, Takuboku was much involved with the ceremonies and played the violin. Another ten days went by without diary entries, but on April 1 Takuboku wrote that the village officials had urged him to remain at the school. They assured him that all his colleagues were eager for him to stay and begged him to withdraw the letter of resignation he had sent to the principal. But Takuboku replied that he had not been joking when he wrote to the principal22 and did not explain his refusal to accept an offer that should have overjoyed him. The next page in the diary bears the title “Account of the Strike.” Five lines relate with telegraphic brevity his description of the strike.23 The events have also been reconstructed from the memories of those who participated.24 Takuboku apparently informed the principal, Endō Tadashi, that he was dissatisfied with the way the school was being run and urged him to resign. When Endō refused, Takuboku announced he would no longer teach at the school. A meeting of villagers was called to discuss the dispute. Takuboku probably did not much care what the villagers decided, as he had made up his mind to leave the school. He had made up his mind to devote himself to his real profession, writing poetry. He had spent too much time to educating the young, a secondary profession. Therefore, he led the strike not so much because he hoped

54—–E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō

for a victory as because he remembered with nostalgia the excitement of the strike at Morioka Middle School. Even though the strikers succeeded in getting rid of the disliked principal, Takuboku was fired as well. The strike marked his farewell to Shibutami. He never again returned to his furusato, though nostalgia for its beauty would recur in his poetry. He predicted that historians of the future would consider his greatest distinction to be the year and two months he spent teaching in Shibutami,25 but his stay had ended with rejection and brutality from bullies: ishi wo mote owaruru gotoku furusato wo ideshi kanashimi kiyuru toki nashi

The grief of leaving my furusato, All but chased with stones, Will never melt away.26

With the loss of the temple and his job, Takuboku realized that there was not enough money available for the family to live together. They would have to separate, relying on the kindness of people in various places. He decided where each member of the family would go and spent the weeks after his dismissal preparing for their departure. He sold his bedding and everything else he could pawn, retaining only a few books and unfinished manuscripts. The money he received from the pawnbroker paid for Mitsuko’s journey to Otaru, where she would say with her elder sister, Tora, and her husband. She and Takuboku would travel as far as Hakodate together, and then she would continue on to Otaru. He would stay for the time being in Hakodate. They would travel together because it was assumed that Takuboku needed a woman to accompany him. (Meiji men were incapable of eating or cleaning a house without female assistance.) Mitsuko was chosen rather than Setsuko, even though her relationship with Takuboku had never been good, presumably because Setsuko was still weak from childbirth. Setsuko and the baby would live with her family in Morioka. Takuboku’s mother would remain in Shibutami with a friend. Finally, Takuboku assumed, his father

E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō —–55

would somehow make his way to the Jōkōji, the temple in Noheji where he had taken refuge in the past. The family would thus be scattered in all directions. “I thought this happened only in novels,” Takuboku wrote in his diary.27 Although Takuboku’s diary does not mention it, his decision to remain in Hakodate after seeing off Mitsuko to Otaru was in response to an invitation by a group of poets there. A new poetry magazine, called Beni magoyashi,28 had been founded in Hakodate, and Takuboku, who had read it by chance, had sent the editor a postcard introducing himself and stating his qualifications. He said that he had been the publisher of Shōtenchi but of late had been recuperating from illness in his hometown. He did not mention his teaching but enclosed a long poem as a sample of his work. The poem much impressed the editors of the Beni magoyashi, delighted that their little magazine had attracted the attention of a recognized poet, and they were excited by the possibility that he might come to Hakodate. He would be a great asset: they had no experience publishing a magazine, and Takuboku not only had published poems in Myōjō but was an experienced editor as well. They invited him to Hakodate, and Takuboku accepted at once. He kept the invitation a secret, even from his diary.29 On May 4, he and Mitsuko left their house in Shibutami. Takuboku was in low spirits at the thought of leaving his furusato. Although the day was warm, he felt a deep chill in his bones. His depressed mood persisted after they boarded the train for Aomori, but he could not help but marvel at the loveliness of the scenery, visible from the train window. His account of the journey, despite the turmoil in his mind, contains some of Takuboku’s most beautiful prose. They reached the Aomori port that night and immediately boarded the ship Mutsu maru. By the time Takuboku woke the next morning in his third-class bunk, the ship, having left Aomori behind, was heading for the mouth of the Tsugaru channel. As soon as the ship entered the channel, it was shaken by heavy waves, and most of the passengers soon became

56—–E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō

seasick. Mitsuko, deathly pale, threw up several times. Takuboku, probably for the first time in his life, showed his sister brotherly tenderness. He comforted her as a girl who was seasick and apprehensive on her first long journey. Takuboku did not expect the excitement that his arrival in Hakodate evoked. Beni magoyashi,30 the magazine that had invited him, had been founded in October 1906 when a group of amateur tanka poets in Hakodate, unhappy over the lack of culture in Hokkaidō, decided to raise the cultural level by publishing a literary magazine. The first issue, though hardly more than a pamphlet, had quickly sold out, but a copy that managed to reach Takuboku had led to the invitation to Hakodate.31 On the day of his arrival, the Hakodate poets assembled at the station. Because none of them knew more of Takuboku’s appearance than a blurred photograph, they carefully examined each passenger who disembarked from the ship, but none one of them looked like a poet. The welcomers returned home disappointed, only to receive a note from Takuboku that he was waiting for them at the railway station restaurant. They found him there, busily writing a long poem about Hakodate.32 Word of Takuboku’s arrival quickly got around Hakodate, and the Beni magoyashi office was soon filled with flowers. The warmth and respect offered to Takuboku overwhelmed him, especially after the rebuff he had suffered in Shibutami, but his first days in Hakodate are unclear because his diary does not begin until May 11. On that day, he was informed that the Beni magoyashi poets had found a temporary job for him at the Hakodate Chamber of Commerce. Even though this may have come as an unpleasant surprise to Takuboku, he soon learned that for all their enthusiasm, the Beni magoyashi poets could not pay him a salary. The Chamber of Commerce was certainly a new world for Takuboku, and it did not take him long to decide that his associates were emptyheaded prigs. His accounts of the people he met are humorous, a quality long missing from his diary.

E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō —–57

The work was tedious, mainly looking up tax returns, but on the first night he was asked by the Beni magoyashi poets to join in a poetry session. He protested that he had not written a poem for two years, but in the end he yielded and composed until two in the morning.33 This brought him such joy that the next day the Chamber of Commerce office even seemed enjoyable—especially the odor of a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Although he did not realize it, he was beginning to return to the world of books and poetry.

5 hakodate and sapporo

T

akuboku did not keep a diary between May 5 and September 6, 1907, but later summarized the events of the unrecorded months in an account he called “A Summer in Hakodate.” It opens with a description of the welcome given to him by members of the Bokushukusha.1 They had not only invited him to Hakodate but also given him a place to live. A tanka immortalizes Aoyagi (Green Willow) Street, where he had lived: Hakodate no Aoyagi-chō koso kanashikere tomo no koiuta yaguruma no hana

How I miss Green Willow Street in Hakodate! The love letters of my friends, The blue of cornflowers.2

Takuboku felt, as probably never before, that he was among friends, men who shared his love of poetry and even let him read their love letters. He briefly described some of these poets, beginning with Matsuoka

H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o —–59

Rodō (1882–1947), the first to get in touch with Takuboku and invite him to Hakodate. Matsuoka lived in the same building on Aoyagi Street and even cooked meals for Takuboku. He worked at a courthouse during the day but, in his spare time, was an enthusiastic and prolific poet,3 passionately eager to bring culture to Hokkaidō. Takuboku was glad to join in this effort, though he had doubts concerning Matsuoka’s poetic competence. Among Takuboku’s new colleagues, he felt closest to Iwasaki Hakugei (1886–1914), a post office employee of the same age. Iwasaki’s uncomplicated nature appealed to Takuboku, perhaps because it was so unlike his own. Barely mentioned in his diary was another member of the Bokushukusha, Miyazaki Ikuu (1885–1962), who before long became Takuboku’s most important friend. Miyazaki was so impressed by Takuboku that he referred to him as “a peacock among a flock of chickens.” For Takuboku, the member of the Bokushukusha who stood out most was Ōshima Tsuneo (Rujin, 1877–1941), the oldest and most intellectual of the group. Ōshima, the first editor of Beni magoyashi,4 was, like Takuboku, a great admirer of Wagner; his summary of the plot of Der Fliegender Holländer had been published in Myōjō in 1906. Although their shared interest in Wagner brought them together, Takuboku was most taken with Ōshima’s character, as revealed in this poem: toru ni toranu otoko to omoe to iu gotoku yama ni iriniki kami no gotoki tomo

He hid himself in the mountains As if to make others think he was a man of no consequence But my friend turned into a god.5

Takuboku began writing for Beni magoyashi immediately after landing in Hakodate. He so impressed the members that he was chosen to be Ōshima Rujin’s successor when he resigned as editor.6 Despite the

60—–H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o

improvements Takuboku made in the appearance of the magazine, which attracted new readers, there still was not enough money for the Bokushukusha to pay Takuboku a living wage. Then, after he had worked twenty days at the Chamber of Commerce, a more suitable job was found for him, as a substitute teacher at the Yayoi School, reputedly the best in Hakodate. The salary was twelve yen, somewhat better than the eight yen he had earned in Shibutami but scarcely sufficient for a man with a family. Takuboku was nevertheless so eager to be reunited with his wife and daughter that he did not stop to consider whether or not the salary was sufficient to pay the additional expense. Setsuko and Kyōko arrived in Hakodate on July 11. Takuboku was popular with the teachers at the Yayoi School, who were delighted to have a published poet in their midst, but he seems not to have attempted to develop warm relations with his pupils, as he had in Shibutami. None of his Hakodate students later remembered him. His first class was on June 12, 1907. Soon afterward, he met Tachibana Chieko (1889–1922), one of the women teachers at the school. Takuboku customarily disposed of most of these women with remarks like “She’s fat as a pig with the eyes of a bear,” but he described Chieko, a girl of eighteen, as “a fawn lily who stands perfectly erect.”7 Indeed, he was so touched by her youthful innocence that he wrote, “Chieko! What a lovely name! The way she walks—so graceful, so airy, so very much the young woman! The clarity of her voice! The two of us have talked together only twice. The first time was in Principal Ōtake’s house when I went there with my letter of resignation. The other time was at her place in Yachigashira when I brought her a copy of my Akogare.”8 He seems to have fallen in love with her, but her innocence seemed inviolable and he never hinted at his love. Once, when they walked together on Ōmori Beach, he had an opportunity to confess his feeling but somehow could not get out the words. Unable to think of anything suitable to say, he confined his conversation to impersonal matters. A poem suggests his failure:

H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o —–61

hō no samuki ryūri no tabi no hito toshite

A man with his cheeks bitter cold, On a journey in an uncertain country— michi tou hodo no koto iishi no mi All he could ask was, “Which is the road?” 9

He later regretted his forbearance: kano toki ni iisobiretaru kotoba wa ima mo mune ni nokoredo

Even now the words I failed to say at the time Still linger in my breast.10

His unspoken love for Chieko can be found in another poem: hiyayaka ni kiyoki nameishi ni haru no shizuka ni teru wa kakaru omoi naran

I wonder if such love Is like spring light shining softly On cool, pure marble.11

Chieko remained enshrined as his untouchable muse. Takuboku’s association with her lasted for only the weeks that he waited for Setsuko to join him in Hakodate, but his friends were aware that she was special  to  him. As Miyazaki Ikuu wrote, “Whenever I talked about Hakodate  to Takuboku, he would invariably mention that he missed Tachibana Chieko.”12 Takuboku often told another friend, “It was while teaching at the school that I first knew what it was to be a happy man.”13 Takuboku actually saw very little of Chieko because his work as the editor of Beni magoyashi took up so much of his time. In fact, the work became so demanding that in July he stopped teaching.14 Thanks to his imagination and publishing experience, he had been able to make the magazine the best in Hokkaidō. Iwasaki Hakugei recalled how, before Takuboku became the editor, the staff had struggled ineffectually to create an artistic magazine, but “he stimulated us into outdoing ourselves.

62—–H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o

We began soliciting manuscripts of every kind and did what we could to increase the circulation. We wrote on such topics as the ‘dirtiest street in Hakodate’ and ‘conversations with a beggar.’”15 On August 2, Takuboku traveled by ship from Hakodate to Noheji. His diary notes that he went first class but not how he managed to pay for this extravagance; most likely, he “borrowed” from the well-to-do Miyazaki Ikuu. Takuboku went to Noheji because he had learned that his mother had gone there to see her husband, and he decided to take her back with him to Hakodate.16 Takuboku’s mother at first lived in his apartment on Aoyagi Street, but the family soon moved to a larger place. Even with the extra room, it was crowded, but the baby made it seem cheerful. A few days after they had settled in their new quarters, Mitsuko suddenly appeared from Otaru. She said she had beriberi and needed a change of air, but probably she was bored living with the elder sister she hardly knew. The apartment was now jammed, with four adults and a child squeezed into two small rooms. As Takuboku observed, “The house has certainly become lively, but I am unable to do a thing. Both rooms are crowded. The genius loves solitude. I, too, am unable to write without a room of my own.”17 Although his first Hakodate diary ends at this point, he added, on an unspecified date, a summary of events that occurred in July. Takuboku did not resume writing in his diary until August 18, the day on which he was hired by the newspaper Hakodate nichinichi shinbun to write a weekly poetry column. He would also serve as a roving reporter. His first column was published on the day he joined the newspaper. His diary then has another gap until August 25 when he wrote a second column, this one about Ibsen. That evening, feeling somewhat tired, he went to bed early, about nine. At ten-thirty, a fire broke out in the Higashiyama District of Hakodate. The fire, fanned by the strong wind blowing down from the mountains, burned two-thirds of the city during the six hours before daybreak. The offices of both the magazine and the newspaper where Takuboku

H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o —–63

worked were consumed in the fire. Although his house on Aoyagi Street escaped the fire, it was feared that it might still spread. On August 27, Takuboku wrote a long description of the fire, among his most vivid writing, though cold-blooded in the pleasure he expresses at the sight of burning houses and in his indifference to the loss of lives: The city was a scene of extreme disaster. On one street after another, I saw the fire still burning, in this place and that. Yellow smoke covered the sky above the whole city, so dense you couldn’t even see the sun. There were corpses of people, corpses of dogs, corpses of cats, all burned black like charred pumpkins, piled one on top of another. Ten thousand houses must have burned to the ground. Clouds gone mad, winds gone mad, people gone mad, policemen gone mad. . . . And above the mad clouds, a mad god, delighted by the commotion from the world below him and himself mad, probably performed a mad dance. The spectacle of the great fire in the night is so vivid in my mind I can’t think of words adequate to describe it. The fire flowed like some huge flood over the streets. Sparks fell in the millions and billions of red threads, like evening showers. The whole city was one immense fire. No, it was a mad noise. Looking down from a high point, I clapped my hands and screamed with joy. What I saw was not the merciless flames burning the houses of tens of thousands of people but a pitch-black hand waving over a wall of fire a mile long, the flag of a tremendously heroic revolution. That night I was truly ecstatic. No, ecstatic is not the right word. I had forgotten everything and had bowed my head before the grandeur of the fire. Deep down in my heart, I felt not a trace of worry about the safety of my family. The crumbling of great mansions and lofty structures that had cost millions of yen to build did not arouse even the slightest regret as I watched it. I screamed my joy from the heart, in the loudest voice I could

64—–H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o

produce. This remained my frame of mind even when, on the way home, I helped some people who had been hurt and guided them with my hands to safety. It was three in the morning when I got back home. There were only women in the house, and they were in a dreadful panic at seeing all the neighbors making preparations to escape. So I danced for them a Bon dance. I danced a Shibutami Bon dance. And once I had got everyone laughing in this way, I decided we should look for a safe place in the pine grove behind the park. We carried with us almost all the remaining furniture. However, there was no need to make such a dash for safety. By the time it was faintly light the next morning, it was clear that the fire would not reach the house on Aoyagi Street. . . . As far as Hakodate is concerned, the Great Fire was a fundamental revolution. Hakodate burned to the ground along with all the innumerable sins of the past. Now a new era that requires new buildings has begun. I thought I should lift a glass and toast it.18 Takuboku’s attitude may remind one of Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s in 1923 when a powerful earthquake struck Yokohama and Tokyo. He was at some distance from the city on a bus that swerved dangerously on the shaking ground. At first he worried about his family in Yokohama, but “at almost the same instant joy welled up inside me at the thought, ‘How marvelous! Tokyo will become a decent place now.’” Unlike Takuboku, Tanizaki did not hope that the earthquake would bring about a revolution; rather, all he craved was a modernization of the outmoded city and an increase in recreational facilities. In his rejoicing over the expected changes, Tanizaki did not consider the suffering caused by the earthquake or the lives that had been lost; he dreamed only of “the excitement at night of a great city with all the amusements of Paris or New York, a city where the nightlife never ends.”19 Tokyo was eventually rebuilt after the earthquake, more or less along the lines Tanizaki desired, but by this time his tastes had changed and he chose to live not in the

H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o —–65

sparkling lights of a modern city but in the Kansai, the region where the earthquake had least damaged the old culture. In time, though, he would glorify the traditional architecture whose destruction had at first so delighted him. Takuboku, a rebel to the end, never regretted the loss of buildings in Hakodate. His house may have escaped the flames, but he suffered an almost equally painful loss. As he wrote in his diary, “The manuscript of my first novel, Omokage, had been left at the Hakodate nichinichi shinbun,  and it, together with the manuscript I had written for the eighth issue of Beni magoyashi, were turned into ashes. The magazine died with Hakodate. The revival of the magazine here is not likely for the next couple of years.”20 The earthquake brought an end to Takuboku’s hectic but pleasurable life in Hakodate. Although he would miss the city, he had no choice but to go elsewhere for work. In his diary entry for August 27 he wrote, “Mukai21 arrived today from Sapporo. He told me about writers who have made up their minds to move to Sapporo. They hope to start again there.”22 Mukai took Takuboku’s credentials along with him when he returned to Sapporo, hoping to find a job for him. At first, Takuboku had hesitated to join the refugee writers in Sapporo. He had heard that the Yayoi School, though damaged, had not been completely destroyed, and it occurred to him that he had never formally resigned as a teacher. He might be able to go back to teaching. The salary was meager but better than nothing. He then visited the principal and was told that he was still a teacher at the school. The principal asked Takuboku to help put in order the records that had been damaged or misplaced in the fire. This, however, would be the limit of his activity at the school, and Takuboku never taught again. On September 7, Takuboku wrote in his diary that he had met some Bokushukusha friends and composed poetry with them all night long. At first, he had protested that he had not composed a tanka in two years, but he was persuaded to join the others, marking the beginning

66—–H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o

of Takuboku’s return to poetry.23 Although the poems he composed that night with the help of drink were not judged worthy of preservation, Takuboku enjoyed his return to his métier. Two days later, having resolved to be a poet, not a schoolteacher, he wrote, “In a few days I shall leave Hakodate. I will have lived here somewhat more than 120 days. That’s not very long to live in a place, but many interesting things happened during this time. When I arrived here, I didn’t know a soul, but I was able to make lots of friends. When I depart from Hakodate, I will leave behind many friends.”24 His farewell to Hakodate, as given in the diary, was by no means sentimental. It included not only recollections of the friendships he had formed but also a bitter denunciation of Matsuoka, the first person he had met in Hakodate. He recalled a discussion with friends about his former colleague: That night we exchanged our real feelings about Matsuoka, everything we had kept hidden inside ourselves, not hiding a thing. We cursed him with everything we had. We, naked babes that we were, had been no match for a lying monster of this kind. He was unlucky in his birth. That made us sorry for him, but in the end he proved to be a rotten louse without a single redeeming feature. Such was our conclusion that night.25 What had Matsuoka done to arouse such contempt? Even though Takuboku seems to have restrained his repugnance until the end of his stay in Hakodate, he perhaps had disliked Matsuoka from the beginning, even while he was living in his apartment and eating his food. But probably the hatred started with Takuboku’s discovery that Matsuoka, always so puritanical in his behavior that he denied the importance of love, was having an affair with a geisha.26 Matsuoka begged Takuboku to keep it a secret, and Takuboku did, but from that time on, he had only contempt

H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o —–67

for the impostor. His denunciation of Matsuoka was excessive, but Takuboku, despite his own generally uninhibited behavior, had a puritanical streak already revealed in the way he treated delinquent pupils at the Shibutami school. Indeed, this may have occasioned the disgust he expressed for a man who pretended to be absolutely pure. On September 8, Takuboku wrote to Mukai, “I’ve decided to go to Sapporo. I plan to leave my wife in Otaru at my sister’s place for the time being. I’d be grateful if you would send me a telegram saying, ‘Everything arranged. Salary 30 yen. Come at once. Regards to Matsuoka.’”27 On September 10, there was a farewell party for Takuboku with much drinking. A letter arrived from Matsuoka in Sapporo, saying he expected to return to Hakodate and urging Takuboku not to move to Sapporo. The guests at the party exchanged grim smiles over Matsuoka’s unawareness of having fallen out of grace with the members of the late Beni magoyashi. On September 11, Takuboku officially submitted his resignation to the Yayoi School principal and felt the happiness of having regained his freedom. He was seen off at the railway station by his wife, his sister Mitsuko, and several former members of the Bokushukusha. When he could no longer see the lights of Hakodate, he gave way to uncontrollable tears. He thought that he would never again see Hakodate. On September 15, Takuboku arrived in Sapporo. Delighted with the city, he wrote, Sapporo is an overgrown village, a city of trees, a city of autumn winds. It has the air of a city where there have been many quiet love affairs. The streets are broad, the people few, and, in the shade of the numerous trees, everyone walks slowly. The avenues of acacia cast intriguing shadows; a coldness in the blowing wind turns over the poplar leaves. The water that washes the morning glories bites coldly into the flesh; if one takes a sip, it has no sweetness. Autumn is gradually deepening in Sapporo.28

68—–H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o

With its broad, straight streets and avenues of exotic trees—acacias and poplars—Sapporo was like a foreign city, but with the charm and stillness of the countryside. It was a place where poets might live. Unfortunately, Takuboku had few occasions to praise Sapporo. It rained virtually every day he was there, and his job at a newspaper was disappointing and disagreeable. His worst day in Sapporo was September 20. That night, lying in bed, he was overcome with longing for Hakodate. He tried not to weep, but the tears flowed. He realized that he had not sufficiently investigated the job in Sapporo. In the fake telegram he had declared that his salary would be thirty yen, but in fact it was a meager fifteen yen. The newspaper he worked for had only six pages, and its daily circulation was a mere six thousand. He spent every afternoon from two until eight in the newspaper office, sharing the work of proofreading with a man he described as the ugliest in the world. The man always wore the same filthy padded kimono, and when he spoke in his feeble voice about the prostitutes he had bought, Takuboku found him both comic and too pitiful to describe in words.29 One night, perhaps by way of distraction from the time spent with the other proofreader, Takuboku attended a Christian church service. The sermon was on the Prodigal Son, and Takuboku wrote that he was stirred by the lesson. Because he had time on his hands in the mornings, he decided to study German. Of course, German was the language of his beloved Wagner, but above all it was the language of culture, and nothing was missing more in his life than culture. In his leisure, Takuboku wrote an article about the autumn wind and submitted it to the editorial staff on September 17.30 The next day, his article was featured on the front page, and Takuboku was informed that a poetry column had been created; he would write for it for every day. This good news did not seem to cheer him, though, perhaps because an increase in salary was not mentioned. He was struck by the realization that his present work was a mistake. His lifework should be literature. Why

H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o —–69

had he wandered away from it? Why had he worried so much about his chances of making a living from writing? As long as he could earn enough money to keep eating, he should be satisfied and devote himself entirely to literature. Nothing else would give meaning to his life or was worthy as a goal: “In the past I worried so much about making a living that I lost sight of my destiny. That was a mistake. I must devote my every effort to writing. It doesn’t matter even if I am a miserable proofreader. It doesn’t matter if I can’t eat rice—potatoes will be fine. I’ll write down this new vow and send it immediately to my wife in Otaru.”31 A letter arrived at that moment from the kindly principal of the Yayoi School, who still believed Takuboku was earning the salary of thirty yen stated in the false telegram. Calling Takuboku “a lucky boy,” he sent him a money order for four yen, twenty-seven sen, for the days he worked at the school. Takuboku thought in self-mockery, “He thinks I’m lucky, but I haven’t got enough money to go to the public bath or to pay the postage on a letter. I’ve been saved by the money order sent by his big helping hand. I only hope I don’t lose my self-respect.”32 September 20 was the first sunny day since Takuboku had arrived in Sapporo. On the following day, he met Oguni Rodō, an old acquaintance.33 They had a long conversation: “Oguni talked about socialism. I have always sneered at what they call socialism, but what Oguni said was both intelligent and liberal. In one sense, I couldn’t help but agree with him. We decided at the end of our conversation that socialism is something of fundamental importance that arises from inevitable requirements. Oguni is a man on my side. Tonight was extremely enjoyable.”34 On September 23, ten days after arriving in Sapporo, he met a newspaper man from Otaru who had heard from Oguni about Takuboku’s exceptional qualifications. He made Takuboku a firm offer of a job at the Otaru nippō with a salary of twenty yen. He would work as a roving reporter. Takuboku decided on the spot to leave Sapporo. Otaru was the biggest and richest city in Hokkaidō, and the Otaru nippō had

70—–H a k o d a t e a n d S a p p o r o

been founded by Yamagata Yūzaburō (1860–1924), the wonder child of Hokkaidō’s business enterprise. The first issue was to appear on October 15. On September 24, Takuboku sent a telegram to Setsuko in Otaru telling her to not to leave for Sapporo, as she had planned. The next day, he sent word to his close friends, including Miyazaki Ikuu and Yosano Tekkan, that he was changing jobs and accepting a post at the Otaru nippō. On September 27, he boarded a train for Otaru, drunk from his farewell party. He reached Otaru later that day and went directly to the house of his elder sister, Tora, where he found his mother, Setsuko, and Mitsuko. Takuboku’s greatest pleasure was seeing Kyōko again, writing in his diary that her face made him forget about Hakodate and Sapporo.

6 takuboku in otaru

O

n October 1, 1907, Takuboku attended the first editorial conference of the newspaper Otaru nippō and reported in his diary that he had more to say than anyone else at the meeting.1 It is strange that a young man of twenty-one, the lowest in rank of those present, should have been so outspoken. Perhaps the experience of having briefly worked at newspapers in Hakodate and Sapporo gave him, unlike the others, the confidence of a professional journalist. He says nothing about the nature of his remarks but mentions by name various dignitaries he met on this occasion, including the financier Yamagata Yūzaburō and Shiraishi Yoshirō (1861–1915), the president of the company and a veteran politician who was simultaneously president of the Hokkaidō parliament. Takuboku was impressed that Yamagata, revered as a genius of international finance, had traveled all the way from Hakodate just to celebrate the inauguration of the newspaper. The day after the conference, Takuboku borrowed an advance on his salary to move his belongings from the railway station to his new home. He also bought a lamp and a hibachi. With these items, he had all the

72—–T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u

furnishings necessary for the two six-mat rooms in which he, his mother, his wife, and baby Kyōko would live. (Mitsuko had been left with her older sister.) Takuboku thought that the apartment was rather better than expected, but the bare rooms could hardly have appeared attractive even to him, though he had a wealth of experience of poor lodgings. He discovered also a fortune-teller’s studio on the other side of a sliding door. The seer, he learned, was a specialist in the divination of names.2 Takuboku decided he had no choice but to forget his memories of Hakodate and Sapporo and enjoy life in Otaru.3 Takuboku’s initial impression of Otaru was its bustle, quite unlike easygoing Hakodate or Sapporo: “Sapporo might be said to be a capital; Otaru is best described as a market.”4 Otaru, a town where people transacted business in loud voices, did not in the least resemble his furusato, another reason for Takuboku’s dislike of it. It is true that he had been all but bodily thrown out of Shibutami, but it remained his home and, as such, would inspire poems for the rest of his life. The harsh voices of the Otaru merchants may have been unsuited to poetry, but they inspired a few poems by Takuboku, including kanashiki wa Otaru no machi yo utau koto naki hitobito no koe no arasa yo5 sorry place the streets of Otaru— unsinging people and their gravelly voices6 At first, Takuboku was unable to see much of Otaru because the incessant rain had made mud of the streets. “The worst streets in the whole world are probably those in Otaru,” he complained. Nonetheless,

T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u —–73

he managed to make his way through the rain and mud to the newspaper office, where he met members of the staff, including the editor in chief, Iwaizumi Kōdō, for whom he instantly felt a dislike. He later explained that the main cause of his antipathy was Iwaizumi’s eyebrows, which looked like caterpillars, an insect he abhorred. Although this was probably a joke, something about the man repelled him from the start.7 Takuboku received a quite different impression of another editor, Noguchi Ujō (1882–1945), who, he soon learned, detested Iwaizumi even more intensely than he did. This shared reaction solidified Takuboku’s first feeling of having found a soul mate, the feeling that he had known Ujō for a dozen years. Later, Ujō gained fame as the lyricist of popular collections of folk and children’s songs, but at this time he was more or less a vagabond, drifting from place to place in Hokkaidō, taking jobs with any newspaper that would employ him. Both Ujō and Takuboku were assigned to the “human-interest” section of the newly created Otaru nippō. They got along so well that they made plans to publish a magazine together.8 The evening of October 5 brought a memorable development in their friendship. Takuboku joined Ujō in a meal. While they ate, Takuboku learned from Ujō the (false) gossip circulating in the company to the effect that Iwaizumi had served three prison sentences. This and other unpleasant tales about Iwaizumi induced Takuboku to announce that it was impossible to take orders from such a man. He announced, “Sooner or later we’ll get rid of him and reestablish the company on republican lines.”9 Noguchi also revealed to Takuboku various unattractive facts about himself. During the Russo-Japanese War, he had presented the government with 500,000 yen (a huge sum at the time) in an unsuccessful attempt to buy himself a barony. Ever since this fiasco, he had known only failure. Despite his meek appearance and readiness to bow his head before the least consequential persons, he admitted that he was in fact a born troublemaker. As Noguchi explained, “I’m incapable of doing anything

74—–T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u

for the good, but when it comes to the bad, I succeed in whatever I try, no matter what,” to which Takuboku commented, “He’s a dangerous man, a product of the times, but we share a taste for rebelling against society, and that’s why I consider him a warrior on my side.”10 Ujō was the first friend to share Takuboku’s resolve to turn the world upside down. On October 6, Takuboku visited his neighbor the fortune-teller to ask for divinations of the names of local dignitaries. This would be a feature in the first issue of the Otaru nippō. Despite feeling uneasy in the fortune-teller’s establishment, Takuboku visited it again on October 17, this time to have his own fortune told. He was dismayed to be informed that he would die at fifty-five.11 It was still raining on October 7, and Takuboku had yet to see Otaru, but an article he wrote, “My First Glimpses of Otaru,” much impressed his superiors. Ujō passed on the news that the president of the newspaper shared their admiration.12 The president, Shiraishi Yoshirō, had joined the newspaper in the hope of advancing his political career, but he proved to be unexpectedly devoted to good writing. This, in years to come, resulted in his repeated acts of kindness to Takuboku. Ujō added that Iwaizumi had promised to give Takuboku a promotion as a reward for his outstanding article. Takuboku wrote in elation, “I have a great future in this company,”13 seemingly having forgotten his resolve to promote a revolution. Takuboku’s satisfaction with his job, however, also spelled the end of the “plot” to eliminate Iwaizumi. By this time, Takuboku had become so confident that anything he wrote would be praised that he risked destroying his reputation. He even published as his own composition an article pasted together from articles written by other newsmen. It took Takuboku time to realize he had committed plagiarism, as he regarded it as normal as cheating on an examination. Hence his first reaction was, “Being a newspaper reporter is a sinful profession!”14 October 15, a sunny day, seemed to augur well for the first issue of the Otaru nippō. The event was heralded by a brass band that paraded

T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u —–75

through the streets, followed by the citywide delivery of the newspaper, which boasted an impressive eighteen pages.15 That day, Takuboku and others of the staff were invited to a celebratory dinner, at which the future of the newspaper was acclaimed by all. However, an entry in Takuboku’s diary of two days earlier indicated that a rift had opened between himself and Ujō: “I was shocked by the unseemly behavior of Noguchi’s wife and his unprincipled conduct. I felt unbearably sorry for them.”16 The diary gives no indication of the “unseemly behavior” of Noguchi’s wife or of what in Noguchi’s conduct had shocked Takuboku. Had the wife offered herself to Takuboku? In any case, it appears that Takuboku’s relations with Ujō had reached a breaking point. On October 16, three days after writing this diary entry, Takuboku had become openly hostile to Ujō. denouncing his erstwhile soul mate in these terms: Today I realized something astounding. Up until today we shared a dislike of the editor in chief, Iwaizumi, and we were secretly trying to launch a movement to get him expelled from the newspaper, but this plan was entirely Noguchi’s doing. He, a “poet,” won us over to his schemes with clever words and succeeded in alienating us from the editor. Taking both sides, he continued to deceive us until it became absolutely clear that he intended to derive the maximum profit from both. . . . “Is there anyone who has escaped being tricked by his bows and his honeyed words?” Now that I know that I have been deceived, my hair stands up in rage, high enough to hit the sky. He, with his bad poetry, curried favor with his seniors and, with their help, was able to gain something of a reputation—he became the naughty child of the literary world. And now he is betraying us, hoping to satisfy his greed. To call him a poet is an overstatement.17 On October 17, Takuboku and two of his friends confronted Noguchi Ujō and three of his friends. Takuboku commented afterward, “Noguchi

76—–T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u

gets more and more hateful.” On the following day, Ujō expressed his apologies to Takuboku. He looked so miserable that Takuboku decided to forgive him.18 Noguchi Ujō was fired on October 31 for having plotted against Iwaizumi. The next day, Takuboku was named Ujō’s successor as head of the human-interest section, and his salary was raised to twenty-five yen.19 The company was so impressed by Takuboku’s writing that his involvement in Ujō’s plot was soon forgotten, and instead of a reprimand, he got a promotion. On November 16, however, Iwaizumi was suddenly removed from his post. Takuboku was informed of this welcome development by a telegram from his friend Sawada Shintarō (1882–1954), who had been offered the position of editor in chief as Iwaizumi’s successor.20 Takuboku, delighted by this victory over a man he had not liked, felt sadistic joy thinking of Iwaizumi going to his office one morning as usual, only to discover that he had been transferred to a remote outpost. The improvement in Takuboku’s salary after Iwaizumi’s departure made life somewhat easier for him and his family. He even paid back a few of the loans that he had received from the newspaper. But he was still desperately short of money, and it was fairly clear he would never be rid of all his debts, but at least Takuboku was happy in his work. Every day, the newspaper carried an article he had written.21 Although most of his articles were unpretentious essays, he also wrote reviews of new books and, when an event moved him, editorial comments. One pleasant surprise was a visit from Miyazaki Ikuu on October 12. Takuboku wrote, “Words can’t express my joy on meeting him again. We drank beer and fell asleep together. I took to calling him ‘brother.’”22 Miyazaki became Takuboku’s most generous backer, again and again providing Takuboku and his family with needed money. Their friendship lasted almost to the end of Takuboku’s life. Takuboku’s diaries between October and December 1907 make difficult reading. Many entries were probably written at some later date after

T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u —–77

Takuboku’s memories of the facts had become confused. In addition, the printed texts of these diaries are exceedingly unhelpful, as they do not bother even to notice gaps.23 Moreover, Takuboku’s random selection of events in this diary contrasts with the literary skill of other diaries, but he does not explain what made him change his style. The mist covering Takuboku’s life dissipated on December 11 with the description of a visit to Sapporo, where he met his old acquaintance Oguni Rodō (1877–1952). They were delighted to discover how many ideas they had in common. Oguni blamed the lagging circulation of the Otaru nippō on its failure to meet its readers’ needs. He felt that Hokkaidō merited a better newspaper and hoped that Takuboku would join him in founding one.24 However, Takuboku was so excited by the thought of working with Sawada, the new editor in chief, that he decided to remain with the Otaru nippō. He was determined to make it into a first-rate newspaper.25 Takuboku hurried back to Otaru from Sapporo. But no sooner did he enter the newspaper office than he became involved in an argument, and then a fight, with Kobayashi Torakichi (1879–1952), the business manager of the Otaru nippō. The cause of the argument is not clear, but in his memoir of Takuboku, Sawada guessed that Kobayashi was annoyed by Takuboku’s repeated absences from his desk and his frequent visits to Sapporo. In addition, members of the Otaru nippō’s staff suspected that he was negotiating with a Sapporo newspaper for a better job. Sawada saw Takuboku immediately after the fight between the two men. Kobayashi, a brute, had beaten and kicked the feeble Takuboku, bruising his arms and causing swellings on his prominent forehead. Takuboku was shaking all over and kept shouting—in between bouts of gasping—that he was leaving the newspaper. Sawada took him to a dispensary for emergency treatment. The next day, Sawada called on Shiraishi, the president of the company, and described Kobayashi’s violent attack on Takuboku. Shiraishi seemed undisturbed, as if quarrels between employees were so routine

78—–T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u

that they were of no importance. He let several days go by without consoling Takuboku. Angered by his apparent indifference, Takuboku went to the president’s office and threw at Shiraishi his statement of resignation. He left the room with the air of a conquering hero.26 Takuboku specialists have suggested that Kobayashi belonged to the faction of employees who sided with Iwaizumi and were incensed by his sudden dismissal, which they blamed on Takuboku. Even though Takuboku recorded the fight in his diary, he did not give the cause. Of course, he did not portray himself as a small, skinny man attacked by a massive opponent; his pride did not allow him to show self-pity. All he wrote in the diary was his decision to leave his job.27 Takuboku’s anger after the fight did not soon abate. Colleagues on the newspaper staff urged him to reconsider his resignation, but they could not shake his resolution. Shiraishi, whose seeming indifference had so upset Takuboku, was surprised by the intensity of his resentment and, reluctant to lose an excellent reporter, did not accept Takuboku’s resignation for several weeks. Takuboku’s resolve to have no further contact with the Otaru nippō was an act of suicidal pride. His rage at the seeming coldness of Shiraishi, whom he had thought of as a lifetime friend, was such that he did not consider the terrible effects of losing the best job he would ever hold. He had been respected throughout the company and had been treated with unusual kindness by the president. He was certain to be promoted. He and his family, though they had little money, were happy to be living together after months of being scattered. Takuboku’s grand gesture, probably intended to prove his superiority to Shiraishi, a man incapable of appreciating his genius, brought only suffering on himself and his family. In time, even he would speak of his willfulness (wagamama). On December 22, Sawada published an announcement that Takuboku was no longer an employee of the Otaru nippō. He wrote in terms of regret and affection, recalling a friendship with Takuboku that went back

T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u —–79

to the days they were fellow members of the Bokushukusha in Hakodate. He had followed in Takuboku’s footsteps, trailing after him, and wrote the same kind of reportage. He had expected their connections to last for their lifetimes, but Takuboku would be leaving Otaru after less than a month and they would be separated. Sawada declared that what he most admired in Takuboku was his refusal to tolerate mediocrity. He wrote, “There are unlucky geniuses in this world!” Then, addressing Takuboku, he urged him not to be reckless but to devote himself increasingly to his writing: “This is what I would like to say, in all humility, to my brother, Takuboku.”28 Takuboku, having nowhere else to go, remained in Otaru, without a job or money. Friends came to his house to discuss serious literary questions such as the possibility of literature existing without nationalism. These discussions led to no conclusions and brought Takuboku no income, but they may have saved him from unending brooding over the mistake he had made. On December 24, Takuboku, trying to make the best of his situation, wrote that having been liberated from the tedium of office work, it was his duty to write a critical history of the world in all its aspects, based on the premise that the first period of the world’s development had ended. This study was not brought to fruition, but he remembered it occasionally. He wrote some poems, but they did not please him, and he was too despondent to improve them. He was waiting for some miraculous development that would rescue him from the unhappy effects of his moment of wagamama. He was now virtually penniless. He spent December 3 waiting for the Otaru nippō employee who was to come with the pay for the days he had worked before resigning. But the man failed to appear, and Takuboku had no choice but to go to the newspaper office for the first time since the fight, though it went against the grain. He was given pay for twenty days of work, less the amount he owed the newspaper. The eight yen he received was all the money he and his family

80—–T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u

would have to celebrate the New Year.29 An isolated sentence in the diary says: “I could not bear to look at my old mother’s face.”30 He may have sensed that his mother was recalling New Year celebrations of the past, contrasting them with their present misery. The following day, Takuboku’s wife pawned her last obi. Takuboku borrowed three yen to pay bill collectors, using his mother’s and his own clothing as security for the loan. He wrote, “The last day of the year—it would have been better if it hadn’t come, but it came.”31 He began a new diary on January 1, 1908. According to Japanese counting, he was now twenty-two. After continuing for about a week, the diary suddenly breaks off and is followed by three pages of tanka. These, the first poems he had composed in months, though not typical of his work, signaled that he was about to be a poet again. They are followed by a separate diary for 1908, which also starts on January 1. Takuboku rose early on New Year’s Day. His house had none of the customary decorations—pine boughs at the door or festoons of paper hung in the house—but the family ate zōni for breakfast. On January 3, Takuboku attended a socialist meeting. Although the first speeches bored him, he was deeply impressed by the speech by Nishikawa Kōjirō (1876–1940), whose frayed Western clothes made him looked like a common laborer and who spoke in a loud, plebeian voice. Takuboku wrote, “What he said gave me a good feeling. Even the police officer in attendance seemed to be listening closely.”32 On the way home, he told friends that socialism was a part of his thought, which may have been the first time he made a declaration of association with the political belief that later became central to his thought.33 The second diary for 1908 is better written than the first. Perhaps Takuboku, deciding that the first version lacked literary interest, hoped it might be published if he wrote in a more literary style. In the past he had attempted to transform sections of his diaries into short stories, but none had been successful.34

T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u —–81

The second diary for 1908 has a description of New Year’s Day that is typical of Takuboku’s humor and his bitterness: A new year has arrived. Nothing has changed in the slightest since yesterday, whether in heaven or on earth or in the snow that stretches as far as the eye can see. Nor, for that matter, in the horses pulling snow plows, nor in the cats and birds, nor in the icicles dangling from every house. Only human beings have enormously changed. Yesterday they rushed about as if engaged on countless errands, an uneasy look in their averted eyes, walking as if on the way to a funeral, but today the same people, dressed in cloaks of Nanako silk and Sendaihira trousers, wear calm faces that suggest they have no worldly uncertainty. Clutching dozens of calling cards in their left hands, they circle from house to house, bowing their heads at every front door. If they can be so agreeable to everyone they meet today, why were they incapable yesterday of even a smile? They are slaves of calendars that they themselves have created. If the calendar says it’s December 31, they act as if they fear they won’t last until the next day; they act as if they will be punished by the gods and buddhas if they do anything so unseemly as to smile. But the next morning it’s New Year’s Day. The sun rises as usual in the east, poor people are still cold and hungry, but today even the wife of a charcoal dealer will powder her face, though New Year’s drinks may redden it. It doesn’t take much learning to realize that this world is the acme of the idiotic. It goes beyond stupidity to idiocy.35 During the early part of January, while waiting for a job to materialize, Takuboku began to show renewed interest in modern literature. He read works of fiction and described in his diary some gossip he had heard about Yosano Akiko.36 Although the diaries he wrote in Shibutami

82—–T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u

and Hokkaidō had not mentioned Akiko, this interest in gossip suggests he was again turning toward the literary world. He began to yearn for Tokyo, forgetting the sickness and despair of his last days in the capital, but there was no possibility of returning now. He next considered Kushiro, a remote and undeveloped part of Hokkaidō, where, he heard, a Diet member was planning to start a newspaper. Kushiro had a population of barely ten thousand and, from all accounts, was a town utterly without culture. If the newspaper materialized, it would be no more than a local sheet,37 but Takuboku was intrigued by the possibility of starting a newspaper from scratch. He wrote in his diary, The region of Kushiro can hardly be described as thriving, but for this very reason, if I use every particle of my energy, I may find congenial work and make a start. I wonder if there is any kind of practical work for which I am suited. (It’s difficult to find any, considering my character or, one might say, my vocation.) However, I feel sure that in the end my hope of finding “freedom,” wherever it may be and under what conditions, will not prove delusory.38 At least the boredom of life in Kushiro might provide him with the leisure to write. The long-awaited relief from misery came on January 10, 1908. A letter arrived, not from the Diet member who had spoken of founding a newspaper in Kushiro, but from Shiraishi, offering him a job at the Kushiro shinbun. Shiraishi, now president of this newspaper (as well as the Otaru nippō), also sent ten yen as advance payment for Takuboku’s first article. Takuboku was overjoyed: “Suddenly the whole world had become bright. Everything that was cold and hateful seemed to have been warmed, as young men and women are warmed by their hearts.”39 Takuboku met Shiraishi on January 13, noting that “this was the first time since last December, when I had my fit of willfulness and resigned

T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u —–83

from the Nippō, that I’ve seen the president.” Shiraishi greeted him with evident joy, saying, “I wasn’t satisfied to let your career end just because of one self-indulgent incident.” He was eager to bring Takuboku back to journalism. Indeed, for some time he had considered inviting him to Kushiro but had hesitated because Kushiro was very cold and Takuboku had an old mother and a small child who might not be able to endure the climate. They decided that Takuboku and Shiraishi would together leave Otaru for Kushiro on January 16. They also decided that in view of the hardships of living in Kushiro, Takuboku would leave his family in Otaru. It was true that Kushiro had a population of only ten thousand and that the Kushiro shinbun was a mere six pages long, but as Shiraishi explained, there were plans to make it bigger. Takuboku felt it was his duty to help make it a success. Their departure from Otaru took place on January 19. Takuboku wrote, When I got up this morning, the rickshaw man was already there, pulling his sled. After gulping down breakfast, I directed the driver to take me to the station. My wife saw me off, with Kyōko on her back, but we missed the nine o’clock train because Mr. Shiraishi was late. My wife went home; there was no point in her waiting. I somehow didn’t feel like leaving Otaru. No, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave Otaru—I didn’t want to be separated from my family.40 Takuboku and Shiraishi left Otaru on the 11:30 train as snow began falling.

7 a winter in kushiro

J

ust before leaving Otaru for Kushiro, Takuboku read the latest issue of the literary magazine Hototogisu. He said nothing about the contents, and neither here nor elsewhere in his diary did he mention the poetry or the even name of Masaoka Shiki, the guiding spirit of the magazine. This is surprising: Shiki, the poet who saved haiku and tanka as viable poetic forms by bringing them into the modern world, should have been of considerable interest to Takuboku. Perhaps he thought of Shiki’s revolutionary changes as accomplished victories that needed no further consideration; all the same, the act of reading Hototogisu may have stirred Takuboku into writing again. On January 17, he started a short story, “Milk Bottles” (Gyūnyū bin), his first work of fiction in two years. Takuboku left for Kushiro on January 19, 1908. On the eve of his departure, he sent a letter to his old friend Ōshima Tsuneo, the former head of the Bokushukusha, in which he described unabashedly the willful act that had cost him his job in Otaru and ruined him financially, but also how he had been saved by Shiraishi, a gentleman whom he revered. At first, he had hesitated to accept Shiraishi’s offer of a job in Kushiro, at

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the remote other side of Hokkaidō, but he had no other prospect of employment and could not refuse this kindness. He planned to accompany Shiraishi to Kushiro.1 On the way, Shiraishi stopped briefly at Sapporo, but Takuboku continued on to Iwamizawa, where he visited his sister Tora and had dinner at her house. He mentions in his diary that they drank frozen beer melted on the stove, a typical drink in this frigid part of Hokkaidō. After spending a night in Iwamizawa, he left for Asahikawa. During his short stay at his sister’s house, he wrote the first section of the essay “Travel in the Snow” (Setchūkō).2 Takuboku praised Asahigawa as “a little Sapporo.” He was impressed especially by the straight streets illuminated by hundreds of rows of lamps. He wrote the second part of “Travel in the Snow” in Asahigawa. The next morning at 6:30, he and Shiraishi (who had caught up with him) took the train for Kushiro, not arriving until 9:30 at night. Takuboku’s poem on first seeing Kushiro town was not enthusiastic: saihate no eki ni oritachi yuki akari sabishiki machi ni ayumiiriniki

I got off at the last station on the line And in the light of the snow Walked into a lonely town.3

Although Takuboku did not expect to like Kushiro, his diary reveals that when he saw the numerous foreign ships in the harbor and crossed the long bridge over the Kushiro River, he was agreeably struck by the town’s vitality. Shiraishi introduced him to the leading citizens, and their openhearted welcome made him feel he had entered a different world from Otaru. The gloom that had enveloped him ever since he made his fatal mistake dissipated. He was impressed, too, when he saw the brick building of the Kushiro shinbun, recently constructed and rising proudly above the humble wooden structures of the rest of the town. He was especially pleased to

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discover that Shiraishi intended to keep the promise he had made in Otaru: even though Takuboku was to be nominally no more than the head of the newspaper’s human-affairs section, he would in fact be the chief editor. He was free to alter the makeup of the newspaper in whatever way he thought appropriate, and he would be in charge of all editorial matters. Shiraishi’s only order to Takuboku was to make the newspaper as good as possible.4 Takuboku, grateful for this generous treatment, threw himself into his work. The great drawback of life in Kushiro was the piercing cold. When Takuboku awoke after his first night’s sleep, he discovered that his breath had whitened the top of the bedding. The temperature was −20°F. His first day of work at the Kushiro shinbun began on a morning so cold that his soap dish stuck to his hand and he had trouble pulling it away.5 Mention of the cold appears innumerable times in Takuboku’s Kushiro diary. It was almost as cold indoors as it was in the street. His room was fairly big, an improvement over his Otaru lodgings, but for heating he had only a brazier, around which he wrapped his arms for warmth. It was so cold that unless he kept a fire burning under his desk, the ink turned to ice. When he lifted his brush from the inkwell onto the paper, the tip of the brush became so stiff that he could not write.6 On January 24, an indescribably cold day, Shiraishi invited Takuboku and three senior officials of the newspaper to a party in Takuboku’s honor at the Kibōrō, the most elegant restaurant in Kushiro. The three seniors optimistically described to Takuboku the goals of the newspaper and the likelihood that it would soon increase in size from four to six pages. They assured him that the rival newspaper in Kushiro, the Hokutō shinpō, was not a serious threat: its reporters were inferior, and the publisher was always short of money. During the dinner, Takuboku first encountered two of Kushiro’s geishas. Geishas, whether dancers, singers, or prostitutes, would play a major role in his life in Kushiro; he met one or more almost every day and slept with some of them.7 His diary contains no trace of embarrassment

A W i n t e r i n K u s h i r o —–87

that he, a married man, had such relations, as they were normal in Kushiro. Geishas made life bearable for men living in a frigid, dreary town. On January 26, Takuboku made the acquaintance of a quite different group of Kushiro women. Shiraishi asked him to attend the New Year’s Convivial Gathering of the Kushiro Branch of the Patriotic Women’s Society.8 On the previous day, Shiraishi had presented Takuboku with a silver-plated watch and five yen as a reward for the recent improvement in the quality of the newspaper. No doubt he hoped that this sign of appreciation would induce Takuboku to remain in Kushiro.9 Shiraishi did not reveal why he sent Takuboku to a gathering of upper-class ladies. Perhaps he thought that the brilliant Takuboku would persuade these educated women that the Kushiro shinbun was not simply a gossip sheet but a cultural journal worthy of their attention. It was to have a poetry column that Takuboku would edit, a rarity in a town devoid of literary activity. Takuboku made such a favorable impression on the ladies that they asked him for a lecture. He gave one entitled “Women of the New Era,” to which some forty women listened.10 Takuboku’s views on what distinguished modern women from those of the past may have surprised them with his strong belief in the equality of the sexes. The talk opened with a quotation from Hamlet: “Frailty, thy name is woman!” In response to these words, Takuboku replied that women in the England of Shakespeare’s day undoubtedly accepted frailty as a desirable quality in a well-behaved woman but that this was no longer true. The ladies of the society had most likely had heard the telegraph reports from London about the suffragettes who had surrounded the prime minister’s residence and attempted to break in. They were stopped by policemen, and several were arrested after fiercely resisting.11 Their bold act showed how determined the women of England had become, despite Shakespeare’s declaration that they were frail. Violence was, of course, impermissible, but such an event revealed what a startling change had occurred as the result of the changed times. It served as proof that women, despite being

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considered in the past to be frail, had finally demanded an improvement in their status. Takuboku went on to relate how this worldwide change had influenced Japanese women: There’s no need to look to foreign countries for examples of change. The women of our country formerly lived their lives buried deep in the women’s quarters. Day and night they were fettered by the negative education deemed appropriate for women, and they had no opportunity to participate in community life. How about the women in Japan today? Are they not, together with the men, industriously polishing their intellectual powers and cultivating their physical strength? Women already compare favorably with men in the active part they play in community life. What will be the lasting result of this change? It is not easy to predict, but in our time we have already seen the many social improvements that are the work of women’s hands. Takuboku praised the Patriotic Women’s Society for its contributions during the terrible war with the Russians four years earlier, when some women had risked their lives at the front, supporting and encouraging the soldiers. What a difference between them and the Japanese women of earlier times! “Home”12 is a lovely word, but in a sense, for ladies of the past, it meant a place of polite confinement. Ladies of today are surely pleased to be known by the fine title “Empresses of the Home.” They have left their cages and can fly into fields, where they not only have contact with other people and display skill in peaceful occupations but also are individuals who insist on their freedom to marry whomever they choose.13 They will soon acquire political rights. We must not suppose that this new phenomenon is a

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temporary, transitional, or else lamentable trend in the culture. The trend is demanded by the times and deeply rooted. Its foundation is none other than the self-awakening of women and the realization of the obvious truth that women, no less than men, are human beings. In any case, from now on, women will not be content, as they were in the past, with the place in society of a frail creature. Just how far this trend will spread is a most important and interesting question. A hint is provided by the play A Doll’s House. Ibsen, the giant of northern Europe, gave a first glimpse of what the morality of a modern woman will be like.14 Takuboku was addressing women of the privileged class, not farmers’ wives, but his speech was published the next day in the Kushiro shinbun, reaching and encouraging other women. Although the equality of men and women is not a frequent theme in Takuboku’s writings, his rejection of outmoded traditions was typical of him as a rebel. Shiraishi, increasingly aware of Takuboku’s great value to the newspaper, on January 28 begged him to remain as long as possible in Kushiro. He promised to send for Takuboku’s family in the spring and to find a house for them. Takuboku, who in his short time in Kushiro had come to enjoy life in the town, decided to stay. In a letter dated February 8 to Miyazaki Ikuu, he explained what had attracted him to Kushiro: It’s not a place like Sapporo or Otaru, where a poor man like myself, even if he keeps working his hardest until he drops dead of exhaustion, will have nothing to show for it. In Kushiro, though it’s a little cold, the newspaper I work for will be expanded by May to six pages, and I, as His Excellency the Editor in Chief, will have some influence. Once I gain the confidence of the town and the newspaper, I ought to be able, in twelve years, to acquire a house. If I can, I will put aside money and, after twenty-three

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years, move to Tokyo. Then I’ll be able to publish my works at my own expense. Even if it’s only on a small scale, it’s the best way to be sure I can write what I please.15 In his diary of the previous day, however, Takuboku wrote that he missed having compatible people with whom to talk. He wrote, “Ever since becoming a citizen of Kushiro, I have somehow felt very much cut off from the world of human beings.”16 Optimism and pessimism alternated in his diary. He was busy in both his office and the town. On February 2, the newspaper company celebrated the completion of its new building. A banquet was held at the Kibōrō, at which fourteen geishas entertained the seventy guests. Takuboku, charged with arranging the seating, profited by the opportunity to become acquainted with the distinguished guests. On February 7, he again visited the Kibōrō. Even though it was freezing cold outside, the restaurant was warm, and Koshizu, a geisha, laughing charmingly at the customers’ jokes, played the samisen, and sang. Takuboku got drunk and did not return to his apartment until 12:30 in the morning. The tune of the “Trumpet Song,” part of the entertainment, echoed in his head, preventing him from sleeping.17 His cheerful mood lasted for only two days. On February 4, he received a letter from his father in Noheji saying that his family in Otaru was complaining of not having received money for forty days. The father was indignant, as he had sent the family fifteen yen in January and eighteen more yen just the day before, and what with the money from selling the furniture, they must be spending more than forty yen a month. He intended to write a severe letter to them.18 This charge of reckless spending would have been more appropriately directed at Takuboku. Although he never stated how much he paid to be entertained by geishas, it was certainly beyond his means. On February 7, he pawned the silver watch that Shiraishi had given him, perhaps

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to pay for Koshizu’s laughter at the Kibōrō.19 On February 9, he attended a play. But he left after three acts and took Koshizu to a restaurant, returning home at midnight. Koshizu was probably Takuboku’s first lover among the geishas of Kushiro. February 11, the day on which the first emperor founded the Japanese Empire, was celebrated as a national holiday. Takuboku wrote, This is the anniversary of the day on which the chief of a highly belligerent tribe called the Yamato assumed the rank of emperor and called himself Jinmu tennō. His tribe attacked the Ezo tribe, which had territory extending eastward from Kyūshū to Yamato. The Yamato were victorious and succeeded in occupying the central island of Japan. Today is the anniversary of the day that the chief of the Yamato tribe announced he was to be known as Emperor Jinmu.20 This irreverent account of the founding of the Japanese Empire might have resulted in imprisonment if the police had read Takuboku’s diary, but regardless of the possible danger, he enjoyed making fun of patriots who mouthed old legends as evidence of Japanese superiority. Takuboku’s account of ancient Japanese history was followed by a list of things that had recently irritated him. The one agreeable event he mentioned was meeting at the Kibōrō the beautiful geisha Ichiko, celebrated for her charm. This girl of sixteen, often likened to a flower in the bud, was dressed in an ordinary kimono instead of a geisha’s robes. This may be why Takuboku did not approach her; just seeing her made him tremble with pleasure.21 He would meet her often in days to come, but they seem not to have had intimate relations. Takuboku’s dinner this day was a chicken stew. After finishing the meal, he realized it was still too early to go to the theater. Accordingly, he wrote,

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I spent a while in the Kibōrō.22 My usual room, number 5, has a flaming red curtain and was well heated. Koshizu was occupied elsewhere, so I sent for Sukeroku, but she didn’t give me the least pleasure. The maid, whose name is Oei-san, is an aristocraticlooking beauty, quite a rarity in these surroundings. . . . I made an overture to the maid, “How about us going to see a play?” But she was busy because tonight there’s to be a Kushiro Social Gathering.23 He had dinner with another reporter, Uesugi Shōnan. Takuboku saw Uesugi again the following day. Despite his hangover from the preceding night, Takuboku perked up at dinner, at which the two men discussed Buddhism and human life. The more they pondered such subjects, the more stupid human beings seemed: “So our conclusion was that rather than worry about such things, it’s best to search for the pleasures of human life—drinking and singing. Whereupon the two of us marched to the Kibōrō.”24 Night after night, Takuboku went to the Kibōrō, often in the company of Uesugi. They nicknamed room number 5 the “Newspaper Room.” The diary that Takuboku kept at this time tells us more about his nighttime activities than his work as a reporter. The entry for February 15 is typical: “I generally go to bed late every night and don’t get up until after ten, but this morning, feeling a cold coming on, I didn’t get up until eleven.” He makes no mention of reading or composing poetry, but occasionally he attended the theater and even acted in plays performed by reporters from the two Kushiro newspapers.25 Takuboku was evidently popular with the ladies; some took the lead in establishing a relationship with him, one so persistently that she became a nuisance. On February 29, he summed up his time in Kushiro in these terms: It’s been forty days since I came to Kushiro. I’ve done quite a lot for the newspaper but haven’t once held a book in my hand. This

A W i n t e r i n K u s h i r o —–93

month’s magazines remain untouched, in the same state as they arrived. The one thing I’ve learned here, for the first time in my life, is how to drink. My face used to turn red when I drank even two small cups of saké, but in a bare forty days I have learned to drink like a man. It’s also been since coming to Kushiro that I’ve first become intimate with so-called geishas. This somehow sends a lonely shadow into my heart, but there was nothing else I could do. In any case, even though I’ve had only a short stay here, there’s nobody in Kushiro who doesn’t know me. My success as a newspaperman has been steady and without setbacks. People in Kushiro think of Ishikawa Takuboku as a terrific reporter, and if I happen to go into some drinking establishment and let loose a song, I’m lionized by the geishas. I go to bed at three and wake at ten. However, the reality of this life, devoid of any mask of respectability, is approaching its end.26 Takuboku justified his dissolute life as unavoidable for a reporter whose work on the newspaper required him to associate with many people. Furthermore, Kushiro offered little amusement apart from drinking places and brothels, and Takuboku became a conspicuous figure in both. The last sentence suggests, however, that he was wearying of his present way of life. A day earlier, he had received a letter from Setsuko in Otaru, who wrote about feeling a “second love” for Takuboku. He then wrote in his diary, “For no particular reason, I felt sad. I wanted to go to my beloved, faithful wife’s side as soon as possible. I thought of asking her to come here. I wanted to see Kyōko’s face. I went to my office and had a boy send a money order for fifteen yen to Otaru. Today was the kind of day when, for no reason, I somehow get depressed. I didn’t feel like doing editorial work. My mind was clouded.”27 Even if he really had reached the point of saturation with the pleasures of Kushiro and desired to return to his wife, Takuboku went on drinking heavily. He became involved with Koyakko (1890–1965), the geisha who

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figures most prominently in his diary. He noted on the night of March 10 that Koyakko had become extremely drunk. The next day, he received a long letter from her regretting that they had separated the previous night without getting anywhere. “All I could feel was the strange palpitation in my heart,” she wrote, adding, “We’ve met only three or four times. Why do I feel such longing?” On March 11, a snowstorm raged all day, cutting off all communications except for telegrams. Trains throughout Hokkaidō were stalled, unable to get through the snow. That afternoon, Takuboku had trouble even getting back home from the office. He wrote Koyakko a long letter, concluding with the admonition that she must not fall in love with him. He probably was fond of her, but he had decided to give her up in order to save his marriage. Even though it was normal for married men to amuse themselves with geishas, falling in love with one of them would threaten the man’s marriage and could lead to the breakup of his family. Takuboku had become afraid that Koyakko wanted a more serious relationship with him than he wanted.28 On March 17, Takuboku received a copy of the newest issue of Myōjō and a letter from Yosano Tekkan asking him to be the judge of a tanka competition. Takuboku wrote nothing about his reaction to this possibility of returning to the world of poetry, but soon afterward, more than twenty poems arrived from Tekkan. Because Takuboku evaluated them, he evidently had agreed to Tekkan’s request. On March 24, he completed selecting the superior poems and mailed them to Tekkan, along with a letter describing his life of drink in Kushiro and his affair with Koyakko.29 Even after he decided to break up with Koyakko, he often thought of her longingly, though his diary describes nights spent with other geishas. On March 23, a particularly gloomy day, he wrote, “A leaden, undefined, cold, disagreeable feeling presses down on my whole spirit. Every so often, a similar darkness starts moving about my chest. I think how delightful it would be to vomit three quarts of fresh blood and die. Looking at Koyakko’s photograph gave [me only] bitter consolation.”30

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That night, the proprietress who ran the Kibōrō, eager to end Koyakko’s relationship with Takuboku, arranged with two geishas to get Takuboku as drunk as possible. Koyakko was one of the proprietress’s most valuable geishas, and she wanted to replace Takuboku with a client who could pay generously for Koyakko’s services. This would be better for herself and for Koyakko. The two geishas, sworn to secrecy, followed orders and saw to it that Takuboku consumed a large amount of liquor, albeit probably not the refined saké normally served in a good restaurant like the Kibōrō, but an unrefined, especially intoxicating, saké. By the time Takuboku left the restaurant, drunkenness had spread throughout his body, and his head was reeling. It hurt him without pause, every second, but he managed to stagger home, mumbling incessantly, “Don’t try making a fool of me!” Once back in his room, he lay down and, pressing his aching head, released a waterfall of tears on his pillow.31 The next day, he suffered an unbearable hangover. Word came from Koyakko saying that she could not see him that day. This, though he did not realize it, more or less marked the end of their affair. He spent some days in bed, unable or unwilling to return to work. On March 25, still lying under blankets, he attempted to explain in his diary his reasons for not returning to his job: Ishikawa Takuboku has a temperament that makes it impossible to fit in with Kushiro, and especially with the Kushiro shinbun. What makes the senior officers of the company so jealous of those below them, the younger men? It’s stupid, stupid. Yesterday the new mechanical printer arrived in the harbor aboard the Unkai maru. In two weeks’ time, the newspaper will be steadily expanded. But who’s been put in charge of working it? It can’t be done by some old fogy of an editor in chief. But there’s no chance they’ll ask me. No, that sort of thing’s not worth talking about. No matter how you look at it, there’s no harmony between me and Kushiro. Takuboku is too good a reporter to be in Kushiro. He can write.

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He’s young and manly. His manliness is his worst fault, the one that keeps him from becoming like Kushiro.32 Takuboku’s reasons for discontent with the Kushiro shinbun are unconvincing, and in his anger, he seemed to have forgotten Shiraishi’s many kindnesses. He was concealing even from himself his real reason for his discontent—disgust with life in Kushiro and the desire to return to poetry. He does not mention it in his diary, but he had started writing poetry that would appear in magazines and bring him his first fame. In fact, 1908 would be his most productive year, the time he wrote much of his most brilliant poetry.33 Even though his affair with Koyakko was essentially over, he would remember her in thirteen poems written after his return to Tokyo. They included34 Koyakko to iu onna no yawarakaki mimitaba nado mo wasuregatari

It’s hard to forget The soft ear lobes and all the rest Of the woman called Koyakko.

dashinuke no onna no warai A sudden laugh from the woman mi ni shimiki Pierced my body kuriya no sake no kōru mayonaka Late at night in the kitchen as the saké froze into ice. yori soite shinya no yuki no naka ni tatsu onna no mete no atatakasa kana

waga ei ni kokoro itamete

Close together, We stood in the late-night snow— The warmth of the woman’s right hand!35 There was a woman who stopped singing

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utawazaru onna arishi ga ika ni nareru ya

Out of worry over my drunkenness— I wonder what happened to her.

By chance, we know what happened to Koyakko after she and Takuboku separated.36 In 1909, Noguchi Ujō, again on good terms with Takuboku, was sent as a reporter to cover the visit to Hokkaidō of the crown prince (the future Emperor Taishō). At the welcome reception for the prince, Koyakko happened to serve saké to Ujō. As they briefly talked, the subject of Takuboku came up. She said that she had not heard from him since he left Kushiro but had heard that he was in Tokyo. She broke off the conversation in order to return to a guest’s table and play the samisen. That evening, Ujō found in his hotel a note from Koyakko asking him to visit her. The first thing he noticed in her modest house was a poem by Takuboku tacked to the wall. Although he could not remember the exact wording, it said something to the effect that there was no woman he missed as much as Koyakko.37 She described to Ujō the difficulties of her affair with Takuboku. The proprietress of the Kibōrō insisted that Takuboku pay the set fees for the time he spent with a geisha, but he did not have enough money. At first he managed somehow, but before long Koyakko was paying for her own services. In fact, she spent so much time with him that other customers taunted her, calling “Ishikawa, Ishikawa” when she entered their rooms. She also had heard that Takuboku had a mother, wife, and child in Otaru who were hard put for money and that he had quarreled with Shiraishi. She said she was continuing to work as a geisha in order to pay her debts and raise her daughter, the child of a former patron. Even though separating from Takuboku was probably best for both of them, she missed him. Takuboku had lost not only Koyakko but all his other friends in Kushiro. His worst loss was that of Shiraishi, angry with Takuboku for not

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having returned to work. Another former friend, Hikage Ryokushi, the editor in chief of the Kushiro shinbun, angered him as well by publishing an article describing Takuboku’s relations with Koyakko. If even a colleague could betray him, the sooner he left Kushiro, the better. He sensed the day of departure was approaching.38 Takuboku determinedly set about cutting ties with the town. His diary is filled with resentment directed at those in the newspaper company who expected him to return to work when he was suffering from “complaint fever,” a disease of his invention. On March 28, a telegram came from Shiraishi asking simply, “Hasn’t your illness got any better?”39 Takuboku’s reaction to the telegram was to take three steps in order to cool his anger. He then made up his mind that he absolutely must leave Kushiro. He sent for Yokoyama Jōtō,40 a reporter from the rival Hokutō shinpō, and proposed that they go somewhere together. Apart from living in the same boarding house, the two men had little in common, but Takuboku couldn’t thinking of anyone else who would be willing to escape with him from Kushiro. Even as they discussed their plans, Koyakko suddenly appeared. She had learned that Takuboku was leaving Kushiro and tried to dissuade him. She said, “Leaving may be good as far as you’re concerned, but not for me. I have to stay behind.” She asked him to remain for even one more month, saying that she had started making an elbow rest for him and that the recent photograph of herself she intended to be a memento was not ready yet. He was not moved. Becoming resigned at the end, she said she was sure they would meet again. She begged him to write to her wherever he went. She was desperate, but her pleading succeeded only in exhausting Takuboku. He promised to visit her the next afternoon at her house. They said good-bye that evening.41 The next morning, Takuboku had visitors and started drinking early. Several cups of saké later, quite drunk, he wrote, Takuboku is a bird of the forest. He moves with the wind to the tops of the trees. At heart I am a cosmopolitan, ready to travel

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to distant shores, riding the wind. I, a white cloud, do not know whither I may drift. When I came to Kushiro, the bitter coldness penetrated my bones, and the snow was piled on the roads. Now I am about to leave Kushiro. A breath of spring warmth is already creeping up my sleeve, but the drifts of snow still lie deep on the streets. I am somewhat moved emotionally. Such are my farewell words.42 On March 29, Takuboku felt ill from a sickness more severe than his usual “complaint fever,” and he wondered whether it was caused by his not having left his bed for so long. He had never felt in such a miserable state, but he went, as promised, to meet Koyakko. She bored him with her personal problems and with many photographs, some taken before she became a geisha, and others of members of her family. He felt depressed and unable to say a word. He remained with Koyakko until evening, depressed from beginning to end. That night, he had trouble sleeping and felt that dying would not be a bad solution to his problems. The next day, his colleague Hikage paid a visit. He remarked, “Your coloring is bad. You ought to see a doctor.”43 After giving Takuboku an introduction to a doctor, he added, “If you have anything to complain about me, come out with it now.” Probably he knew Takuboku had been annoyed by the article about Koyakko. Takuboku answered, “I have no complaints about you, but I have plenty about this telegram. I can tolerate just so much insult.” He showed Hikage the telegram he had received from Shiraishi.44 Soon afterward a doctor arrived. He said he had no cure for complaint fever but, after examining Takuboku with a stethoscope, decided that he was suffering from nervous prostration. He asked Takuboku if he could think of a cause. Takuboku took this diagnosis as a joke, but it may have been correct. The doctor gave him some sleeping pills, which Takuboku recognized from having taken them before. That night, in a bad mood, he cursed all doctors, declaring that the more doctors there were, the more sicknesses were created. He gave his proof: nothing in

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works of history states that Emperor Jinmu ever had a cold or that Amaterasu suffered from dysentery. Even though he was aware that he had a fever and should go to bed early, he continued talking with Yokoyama until midnight. Telling him that he wanted to go to Russia, Takuboku related the story of Maryanna in Tolstoy’s The Cossacks.45 His conversation skipped from subject to subject, ending with the exclamation, “People don’t seem to realize my departure is approaching right before their eyes!!” On April 2, 1908, Takuboku noticed a newspaper advertisement for the Sakatagawa maru sailing that evening for Hakodate and Niigata. He made up his mind immediately—he would go to Hakodate.46 He found out the fare from the shipping company. The day before, he had sent a letter to the head of the Kushiro Hospital asking for a loan. The doctor kindly lent him fifteen yen, to be repaid by April 7 or 8. Did he really expect Takuboku to return the money? Once Takuboku had the fare for the voyage, he wrote to Koyakko that he was leaving Kushiro that night.47 Next, he informed the Kushiro shinbun that he was going to Hakodate for family reasons. Koyakko sent a farewell gift of five yen. Takuboku used it to return money he owed for the rent of his room. Finally, he sent a telegram to Setsuko, informing her that he was leaving Kushiro that night. The departure of the Sakatagawa maru was postponed to the next morning, giving Takuboku a last chance to spend another night drinking with his friends. He wrote, “I’ve never tasted such delicious saké.”48 No doubt the prospect of leaving Kushiro lent it a special flavor. The next day, April 3, was the anniversary of Emperor Jinmu. The sky was cloudless, but the sea was rough. White waves rose in the harbor. Takuboku boarded a lighter that managed only after two or three unsuccessful attempts to pass over the towering waves and reach the Sakatagawa maru. Takuboku’s first impression of this sailing ship was its filthiness, no doubt because of its cargo of coal. Takuboku’s cabin had tatami on the

A W i n t e r i n K u s h i r o —–101

floor and a semicircle chair, the only furnishings, but there were windows on both sides. He noted in his diary, “The rocking of the ship gave me an uncomfortable feeling. I ate breakfast as usual, but afterward lay down.”49 Despite this bout of seasickness, his prevailing emotion was joy and excitement at having gained his freedom. Takuboku probably had forgotten the unpaid bills he left with Koyakko. She asked Shiraishi to help pay them, but furious over Takuboku’s ingratitude, he refused to help. Just before he left, Takuboku wrote a note to Koyakko, saying that he intended to return to Iwate, his native prefecture, where he would be able to make a fortune. She doubted he would succeed but heard no more from him. She told Ujō, “I can only suppose he has forgotten Kushiro and me.”50

8 poetry or prose?

T

o his surprise, Takuboku enjoyed the voyage aboard the coal ship despite the filth and the constant rocking of the waves. Not only was he enchanted by the sea, but each hour that passed took him farther from the people and problems that had tormented him in Kushiro. He had realized at last that drink, women, and local popularity could not fill the emptiness of a life without literature. In Kushiro, beginning in January 1908, he had published a few poems in the Kushiro shinbun, but he was convinced that his one chance of success as a writer was as a novelist. He did not bother to include in his diary the poems he dashed off so easily; he seemed not to consider them worthy of preservation. Although critics generally ignore the surviving early poems or rate them as no more than practice pieces, they were nonetheless the foundation for the poems that brought him his reputation. Takuboku may have written poems during the voyage aboard ship, but he did not begin to write his mature poems, the works for which he is acclaimed, until after he left Hokkaidō. On April 7, he arrived in Hakodate, his first sight of the city since the Great Fire. He was met

P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–103

by Miyazaki Ikuu, who had saved Takuboku’s family from starvation while they waited for Takuboku to invite them to Kushiro. They were, of course, eager after the long separation to spend as much time as possible with Takuboku, but two days after he arrived in Hakodate, Miyazaki urged him to move on to Tokyo, the one place in Japan where a writer might find work. Miyazaki seemed sure that Takuboku would be able to find a corner in the Tokyo literary world. Takuboku raised no objection to the suggestion that he abandon his family; in fact, he desired nothing more than to return to Tokyo. Fortunately, the plan was Miyazaki’s, not his own, so the family had no choice but to agree with their benefactor. Takuboku would have found it difficult to tell his family so soon after they had been reunited that he intended to leave them. Miyazaki may not have been motivated solely by a desire to advance his friend’s career. He seems to have grown so fond of Setsuko that he married her sister, as her substitute, but Takuboku was not worried about Miyazaki’s interest in Setsuko. Miyazaki was not only Takuboku’s closest friend but also his most generous benefactor. They drew up a plan. Takuboku’s family would move from Otaru to Hakodate, where Miyazaki lived and therefore could help them most easily. On April 9, the rest of the preparations were settled: Takuboku would travel alone to Tokyo and live there for two or three months, sufficient time to establish himself as a writer.1 His family would remain in Hakodate under Miyazaki’s protection but be reunited with Takuboku as soon as he achieved success.2 On April 13, Miyazaki gave Takuboku enough money to escort his family to Hakodate. Takuboku spent all together six days in Otaru making arrangements, but his diary is a matter-of-fact account of how he spent his time with his family, with not even conventional statements of pleasure on being with his wife and daughter. The one warm touch was his pleasure in seeing that Kyōko had begun to walk. On April 19, Takuboku and his family traveled to Hakodate. They discovered on their

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arrival that the house where they would live was equipped with everything the family might need, “from rice to miso.”3 Miyazaki wanted to make sure they would be comfortable. Five days later, Takuboku said farewell to his family and, with Miyazaki’s help, bought passage on a ship to Yokohama. He wrote in his diary, I have left my old mother, my wife, and child in Hakodate. No words can suffice to express how grateful I am to my friend for his generosity. I hope I shall begin a new, creative life. No, it’s my only chance of a decent future! This thought brought on the tears. Ah, it looks as if I, Ishikawa Takuboku, still don’t know how to make my way in the world. I slept in the third-class cabin, curled up like a dog.4 Takuboku reached Yokohama on April 27. He immediately sent a telegram to Yosano Tekkan5 informing him that he would call the next day. After the long Hokkaidō winter, the green of the trees and plants in the surroundings so excited Takuboku that he wanted to leap and shout. He wrote, “My eyes sucked in all the green they could see; my soul was sucked in by the green. Soon a gentle green rain began to fall.”6 He confessed, however, that he felt rather uneasy in a big city after years in country towns. Takuboku went as planned to the Yosanos’ home. At first glance, the study he had often visited three years earlier looked unchanged. The desk, the bookcase, and the cushions were exactly the same. Then he noticed that there were no obviously new books in the bookcase, a sign perhaps that Tekkan could not afford them. Next he was struck by a bigger change—this one in Tekkan’s appearance. He had visibly aged during the past three years. He was dressed in a kimono with a shockingly coarse, splashed tortoise-shell pattern. His underwear peeped out at least two inches under the hem of the kimono. His equally unattractive jacket looked as if it had been bleached for years in a secondhandclothes store.7

P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–105

Takuboku wrote, One thing surprised me quite a bit—an electric light was shining. Yosano explained that it cost only one yen a month and was in fact economical. I thought it simply didn’t go with the tastes of the people who live in this four-and-a-half mat room. It occurred to me that this incongruity would eventually reveal itself in his poetry. The two contrasting styles of life are unlikely to be blended until the day arrives when fresh sprouts emerge from the poet’s head. I felt that harmony was unlikely to be achieved in a matter of days.8 Takuboku’s diary continued, Mr. Yosano is in charge of the expanded and revised edition of his late teacher Mr. Ochiai’s9 posthumous work, Kotoba no Izumi.10 Even tonight he was busy with proofreading. He said, “I received payment for this work two years ago.” I noticed then the proofs of the first twelve pages of Myōjō, fresh from the printer, and asked Mr. Yosano if he would be on time to meet the publication deadline on the first. He answered, “No, it’ll be five or six days late. The manuscripts are not all completed. Last month, and this month too, only 950 copies were printed, but the cost of printing has gone up 20 percent. Paper’s also gone up. On top of that, recently there have been manuscripts for which I simply had to pay. I’m losing more than thirty yen every month. . . . Anybody else would have long since shut down the magazine.”11 Tekkan then shifted to a discussion of recent novels. His criticisms ran on at such length that Takuboku was hardly able to get in a word. Tekkan praised Natsume Sōseki at length, but he denounced Shimazaki Tōson’s novel Haru (Spring), then being serialized in the Asahi shinbun. He declared, “There’s nothing as stupid as the naturalists.” He mentioned

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that Akiko was planning to write a couple of novels and that he himself was thinking of writing a novel next year. That would be after he saw the example of the failure of Shimazaki’s novel.12 Discouraged by the drop in Myōjō sales, husband and wife were ready to abandon poetry and write novels. Takuboku commented, “I lacked the courage to listen to any more. In such mediocrity, a tragedy is hidden sadder than spilling blood. . . . Even if old age makes people lose their nerve, I never expected to hear from the poet who wrote ‘Poem on Leaving Japan’13 anything so lacking in self-assertion.” Takuboku had long since ceased to admire Tekkan’s poems, but he was still a major figure in the literary world, and Takuboku felt obliged to listen to his speeches and pretend to be interested. In the same way, he also asked Tekkan to correct his poems, though he thought that Tekkan could now understand only half of them.14 Asking him for corrections was a courtesy that Takuboku owed a senior who had helped him, even though Tekkan could no longer help him. He wrote bluntly, “My poems were all worse after Mr. Yosano corrected them than they were beforehand. He had twisted my emotions into a sham. I suppose it can’t be helped, considering our standards are different, but it gave me rather a bad feeling.”15 On April 29, Takuboku found more congenial company: he met his old friend from middle-school days, Kindaichi Kyōsuke. For the first time, they conversed in standard Tokyo language instead of the Iwate dialect they had always used before, a sign that they had become Tokyoites. Kindaichi looked prosperous: he was dressed in a newly tailored Western suit, and his hair was parted Western style. Takuboku, as usual, wore a kimono. Although their appearances were quite dissimilar, it had no effect on their friendship. They talked until two in the morning. Takuboku went on living in the Yosanos’ house despite his mixed feelings about Tekkan and the abundance of Yosano children. On May 2, when Tekkan was out on an errand, Takuboku had a chance to speak

P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–107

more freely with Akiko. She was no more reassuring than Tekkan about the fate of Myōjō. She said she planned to end its publication with the hundredth issue in October of this year. Although this was a painful decision, the loss of money was continuing to mount. Ever since its founding in 1900, Myōjō had been recognized as the most important outlet for new poetry. Acceptance of a poem by Myōjō had encouraged young poets like Takuboku, and Tekkan had been a valiant fighter, acting as a bulwark protecting the new poetry from its enemies. However, the preferences of the young poets had shifted, and Myōjō had come to seem old-fashioned to the new generation. Now all that kept the Yosanos’ New Poetry Society from going under was the income from Akiko’s writings. Myōjō was completely under her control, and Tekkan was now like a hired editor who was given things to do because of his past achievements.16 That evening, Takuboku attended a poetry party at Mori Ōgai’s house. Ōgai is not remembered today as a poet, and it is rather difficult to envisage the surgeon general of the Japanese army joining young men in a poetry competition, but he regularly held such gatherings, inviting the best young poets to participate. Tekkan had introduced Takuboku to Ōgai. At first Takuboku was intimidated by Ōgai’s dark complexion, splendid mustache, and robust physique. He wrote, “Anyone seeing him would certainly say ‘he looks the part’ when informed he was the surgeon general of the Japanese army.”17 Despite his imposing appearance, Ōgai not only sponsored poetry competitions but also enjoyed composing poems himself. The guests that evening included the noted scholar Sasaki Nobutsuna, as well as poets such as Itō Sachio, Yoshii Isamu, Kitahara Hakushū, Tekkan, and Takuboku, all well known. The rules of the contest this evening required each poet to compose five haiku containing the words. tsuno (horn), nigu (escape), toru (take), kabe (wall), and naku (scream). Points were awarded to those who displayed the greatest skill in fitting these totally unrelated words into a plausible poem. Ōgai, who received

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fifteen points, was declared the victor. Takuboku, Tekkan, and Yoshii each won thirteen points, but the outstanding tanka poet of Shiki’s school, Itō Sachio, received only four points. Takuboku felt especially sorry for Sasaki Nobutsuna, a professor and scholar of classical poetry, who was awarded only five points. Ōgai jokingly said that he probably received the most points because he had provided the dinner. As the guests were leaving, he commented that he enjoyed Ishikawa’s poems most of all.18 On May 4, Takuboku left the Yosano house, where he had been a guest since he arrived in Tokyo. He moved to the boarding house where Kindaichi was living. When Takuboku opened the window in his room, he could see, close enough to touch, stalks of green bamboo and a young ginkgo tree. The scene gave him the happiness of being surrounded by green. Best of all, he was relieved not to be in someone else’s house; he would sleep in his own bed in Tokyo. Living in the same building, Takuboku naturally saw much of Kindaichi and was happy to be with his old friend. He wrote in his diary, “In the whole world, there’s only one man like Kindaichi. A man with the most gentle temperament. A man with the cleanest feelings. A man so endearing I can’t imagine there can be two such persons existing in the world. I thought that if I were a woman, I would surely be in love with him.”19 The proximity of this old friend seemed to have revived the creative strength that he rarely used when writing newspaper copy. He felt this strength returning hour by hour. But what kind of writing should he choose? He had not composed poetry seriously in years, but his gifts remained exceptional, as Ōgai’s comment had indicated, but Takuboku knew how little money poems brought. Poets were generally not paid at all; the honor of seeing their poem in a famous poetry magazine was usually enough to satisfy them. Tekkan complained when he had to pay for the poems published in Myōjō. Glory was not enough for Takuboku, however. He desperately needed money to feed his family, so he decided he had no choice but to

P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–109

write novels, the only kind of writing that brought in serious money. But what kind of novels should he write? Realistic or romantic? He approved of naturalism, the reigning school of the time, but insisted he was not a naturalist. Although he predicted that symbolist art would eventually triumph,20 he never wrote in a symbolist manner. Literary considerations, in fact, had little relevance in Takuboku’s mind when he sat down on May 8 to begin writing his first short story, “Kikuchi-kun.” His style as a writer of prose was that of an improviser who allows his story to tell itself, without much thought given to the structure, the characters, the ending, or any other element of the short story. His subject tended to be himself, whether recalled in autobiographical recollections or in his impressions of people he had known. Takuboku described his difficulties when he wrote “Kikuchi-kun.” He said he had many things he wished to write about but could not decide whether to write a short story. He tended toward writing a novel, but it occurred to him that he might die of starvation before he finished the book. He decided it would be better to write something in a hurry that would pay his rent bill. He had no choice but to write a short story and described how he set about writing his first one: With some difficulty, I stayed at my writing from about two in the afternoon to twelve at night. I barely managed to write the first three pages of the short story “Kikuchi-kun,” but even as I was writing, all kinds of extraneous things kept distracting me. I got up and walked around the not very big room many dozen times. I scratched out what I had written and rewrote the rewrite. In the end, I rewrote the whole thing. My head was too overflowing with fantasies to depict reality.21 He had special trouble writing dialogue, especially that of women. Despite forcing himself to persevere, on May 12 he had still written only three pages and decided to stop writing for the day. That evening, when he read what he written of “Kikuchi-kun,” he found it unbearably bad: “It

110—–P o e t r y o r P r o s e ?

was like peeling the skin from my face and looking at it in a mirror. There was no connection between one phrase and the next. It was absolutely devoid of interest. The phrases were stuck together arbitrarily, like a string around a bundle. I felt like burning the whole thing. But on thinking it over, I decided that the problem was exhaustion and went to bed.”22 The next day, he reread the manuscript of “Kikuchi-kun,” this time finding to his delight that it conveyed exactly what he had wished to say. He wondered why it had seemed so hopeless the night before. His biggest problem, he decided, was his tendency to keep elaborating sidelights of the story: At first I intended to write only about Kikuchi-kun, but somewhere along the way, I felt I should describe his relationship with O-yoshi. I now plan, as of today, to describe, as the background for his life in Kushiro, the relationship that grew up between the author and Kikuchi-kun—in other words, the central theme will be the development of the mutual relations between one man and another. When I began the story, I thought it would be forty pages or so, but at this rate it looks as if it will be more than a hundred.23 “Kikuchi-kun” was originally intended to be the story of an unfortunate journalist named Kikuchi whom Takuboku had known in Kushiro. But as he wrote, he lost interest in Kikuchi, and the story was instead padded with materials derived from Takuboku’s diary. “Kikuchi-kun” opens: It was toward the end of January, the coldest time of the year, when I took a job at a Kushiro newspaper. Every morning the temperature rose and fell between minus 20 and minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. It was less than a hundred yards from the train station to my room, but in the cold of the night winds, the scarf wrapped around my chin would turn a pure white from the damp emitted by my breath.24

P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–111

Apart from minor changes, almost every word of this passage was taken directly from his diary. The rival newspaper, the Kushiro mainichi shinbun, where Kikuchi was employed, is given a bit of attention only when Takuboku recalled that Kikuchi was supposed to be the main subject; but every page contains descriptions of events derived directly from Takuboku’s life in Kushiro. Sometimes he did not even change the names of people he knew. Finally, deciding that “Kikuchi-kun” needed a complete overhaul, Takuboku abandoned the manuscript without reaching the conclusion and began writing four unrelated short stories, which he submitted to magazines. They were rejected and never printed during his lifetime. Hoping to find in foreign literature a way to escape the limitations of autobiography, Takuboku read Turgenev’s novel On the Eve. After reading the first pages, he exclaimed, “What characters! How the style brings the characters to life, so vividly one can all but see them! I threw down the book and scratched my head. I thought, ‘There’s something wicked in the pen of a genius.’” The next day, still reading On the Eve, he wrote that the hot passion of Insarov and Elena was driving him insane. It made him race around his room. He wrote a note that he dropped into Kindaichi’s room accusing that guy Turgenev of trying to drive him mad. The worried Kindaichi hurried to Takuboku’s room. Takuboku, acting as if he had gone out of his head, shouted that Turgenev was a bastard. He announced that this year he would, without fail, write something rivaling On the Eve. Later, after he finished reading the novel, he declared that Turgenev was the greatest writer of the nineteenth century and said of himself, “I’m just an ambitious twerp living in a rooming house on Kikusaka Street, jealous of the whole world.”25 Having made this admission, he took courage from the thought that although Turgenev was dead, he, Takuboku, was still alive. He added, “His novels are too novelistic. If what Turgenev wrote is what the novel should be, I will write something that’s not a novel. I hereby annul the promise I made last night to become his rival. He’s too old to be my rival, too

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clever a storyteller. His ideas are rather out of date. I must write my own novels.”26 He followed these opinions of Turgenev with diagrams comparing the lives of the heroes in traditional novels with those in modern novels. The big difference between the two was that the hero of the modern novel, though he has many love affairs, is in the end unsuccessful in his love; if he marries, it makes matters more complicated. Such diagrams did not help Takuboku write a successful novel. Takuboku’s consternation on reading Japanese translations of the great Europeans was shared by many Japanese writers. They took pride in The Tale of Genji as the first novel written anywhere in the world,27 but they had to admit that the novels of the Meiji period lacked the characterization with which Turgenev (and other European authors) described the heroes of their novels. Although Takuboku had resolved to challenge Turgenev, he soon realized that his knowledge of human beings was not sufficient. He was remarkably precocious but too young and inexperienced to challenge the European novelists. Takuboku sought solace by dismissing Turgenev as a writer of the past. He, a modern man, would write about the present. Unfortunately, his world was too small, too far from the center, to possess the complexity that marked the great European novels. If turned into a novel, his love affair with the geisha Koyakko would probably would resemble a jōruri (puppet play) rather than a modern novel. Takuboku’s diaries were probably his finest prose, but they were unknown during his lifetime. Although he repeatedly read his diaries, they generally made him miserable when he realized how much happier he had been in the past. Reading five or ten lines of the diary could make him unbearably unhappy: I threw down the diary and shut my eyes. Could anything be sadder? I wept as I read. Weeping, I read still more. Thinking I could not go on in this way, I got up and sat in front of my desk. My mind

P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–113

at once became a blank. I threw down my pen and, this time leaning to one side, read the diary. I spent the whole day, until it got dark, repeating this process. I have a body and a mind, but I don’t know what to do with them now. That’s the present me! I spend too much time toying with the idea of death. Even if I resolve not to listen to death’s whispering, sooner or later I hear its gentle voice behind my ears. I haven’t made any real preparations for suicide, but it’s only when I hear death whispering that somehow my heart is comforted.28 He quoted Shakespeare, “To be or not to be,”29 and on one particularly bad day, he considered throwing himself in front of a train.30 Takuboku’s depression was caused by the failures of the stories he hoped would enable him to make a living. Poverty seemed to be his fate. At times, he was so short of money that he could not buy even one cigarette. On another occasion when he couldn’t buy a cigarette, he managed to stave off his craving until he could no longer stand it. He begged a friend for money. The friend was equally impoverished. Takuboku returned to his room in despair but was at once rescued: a publisher had sent him eleven three-yen stamps as additional royalties for a poem. Takuboku at once converted the stamps into cigarettes. Seeing the smoke slowly curling up brought him infinite pleasure.31 Three days later, he sold his last book, an English–Japanese dictionary, in order to pay for streetcar fares and more cigarettes.32 Late in May, he had word from Hakodate that Kyōko was ill. A doctor who was consulted diagnosed the cause of her fever as the emergence of a molar. Not satisfied with the diagnosis, the family summoned another doctor. The second doctor diagnosed a cerebral illness.33 Takuboku, informed by telegram, wanted desperately to rush to Kyōko’s side, but he had no money. Worry over Kyōko caused him to see a ghost. He wrote, “Last night, after writing in my diary, I fell asleep with fragments of two unfinished poems floating in my head. At six-thirty I was dreaming when

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my eyes opened for no reason. A figure dressed in a white kimono was standing by my pillow.”34 The figure was not a ghost, however, but an acquaintance, a woman on an early-morning walk who thought she would wake Takuboku. Nonetheless, he was sure that the ghost had awakened him to warn him that Kyōko was in danger of dying.35 After getting out of bed, he found a urgent letter from Miyazaki saying that Kyōko now had a high fever and was in a coma. Takuboku felt his head turn to ice. He pushed a letter into Kindaichi’s room with the fragments of a poem he heard in his dream. The poem tells of a father who visits the grave of his dead child. Takuboku assured Kindaichi that Kyōko would not die, but he remained awake until three, writing eight poems. The first, “The Little Grave,” based on the fragments of poems from his dream, relates his fear that Kyōko might die. This prose poem opens: He has come home again, to his furusato, to the shade of an old chestnut tree.— Beneath it, a child is sleeping. She has not seen the flowers Her father has offered for twenty years.36 Although the poem does not relate directly to Kyōko, as Takuboku composed it he felt a hole being drilled into his chest. He sent to Yosano seven of the eight poems he composed that day, but not the one on the little grave.37 On June 16, he sent seventy more poems to Sasaki Nobutsuna, signing them Kudō Hajime, his name at birth.38 He may have thought that he had experienced a new birth. Kyōko recovered from her illness, and almost every week, Takuboku resumed his visits to poetry gatherings. Even though the competition poems were seldom printed or even written down, this did not bother Takuboku, as he could easily produce any number of new ones. On the night of June 23, he began to compose poems as soon as he got into bed.

P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–115

Inspiration mounted with each minute. He composed poems through the night. The next morning when he counted them, he discovered that he had composed more than 120 poems that night. During the five days beginning on June 23, he wrote 260 more poems,39 of which he sent 100 to Yosano.40 Even though his short stories had been rejected, the July issue of Myōjō carried 114 of the 260 poems he had submitted, including some of his most famous.41 This success naturally pleased Takuboku, but they brought in so little income that he remained dependent on Kindaichi’s generosity for his rooming bill and food. On June 27, he asked himself, “Should I kill myself, go back to the country, or continue my battle? . . . That was all I could think about that night. When will the day come when I can spend even one day in peace? Will there ever be such a day?”42 On July 16, a poetry contest was held at the Yosanos’ house. Even though it was the middle of summer, all Takuboku had to wear was a padded winter kimono. He looked pitiful, but his poems were judged the best.43 Poetry had become a reason for living, though he still was impoverished. Consolation of a different kind was brought by letters he received from two women, admirers of his poetry. The first was from Sugawara Yoshiko, a woman in Kyūshū whom he would never meet. Their correspondence began with a picture postcard from Yoshiko. Takuboku wrote in his diary simply that he had received a card. It was then followed by a letter from Yoshiko. The despondent Takuboku was not cheered by the correspondence. His diary that day barely mentions the letter and instead is devoted to meditations on death. Yoshiko’s long letter on July 6 was of greater interest, in which she described her lifelong love for poetry and expressed regret that she was an only child. If she had siblings who could look after her parents, she would rush to Tokyo and become Takuboku’s disciple. That night, he dreamed of Yoshiko and could think of nothing else.44 He wrote, “I didn’t feel like working on my novel, and when I tried reading a book, I got through only five or six lines before

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I fell into daydreams. Finally, I picked up my pen and wrote her a letter. It was two o’clock when I put down my pen. I wrote mostly about poetry and included eight poems.”45 Takuboku’s diary entry for July 7 states merely that he sent Yoshiko a letter, but the letter (which survives) was long and passionate. It opens with scholarly concern over the decline of the art of poetry in Japan. He cites as proof the small number of poets who now attend the poetry gatherings at Mori Ōgai’s house. He worries about the scarcity of women poets. Even Yosano Akiko has passed her prime. He suggests that Yoshiko join his group. It is affiliated with Myōjō and might help her with her poems. He corrected the poems she sent.46 The letter then became conspicuously more romantic: You, my beloved one, why should we be unable to see each other? Of late, night after night, my head on my pillow, I always ask myself, “Why can’t we meet and tell each other what is in our hearts? Why, when I love you so, can I not have the joy of holding your hand, your warm hand? Why can’t I smell the perfume of your sable hair and kiss your burning lips? And why, when I am burning like fire, body, and soul, why can’t I be intoxicated by the dream of embracing forever the soft, jewel-like skin of your body and burying my head in your breasts?”47 The poems included with the letters have a similar flavor, as the following may suggest: machi machi shi sono hito koto wo kikietaru sono hi ni koso shinu bekarikere

A day when I’ve heard you say the simple thing, That you miss me so much, That’s the kind of day when I should have died.48

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Takuboku repeatedly begged Yoshiko for a photograph. When at last she sent one, he commented briefly in his diary, “Letter and photograph from Tsukushi.49 Slanting eyes and a rather big mouth. Definitely not a beauty.”50 Even though Takuboku’s passion for Yoshiko evaporated instantaneously, he did not discard her, realizing from her letters and poems that she was someone with whom he could discuss poetry. Later, after he became an editor of Myōjō, he arranged for four of her poems to be published in the magazine, a distinction for an unknown poet. And from time to time, he continued to send her letters about poetry.51 His second “affair” occurred later that year. It began with a letter from a poet named Hirayama Yoshiko, who introduced herself as Sugawara Yoshiko’s friend. She was twenty-four and single. She sent Takuboku some of her poems for his correction,52 and he immediately asked for a photograph.53 On December 1, he sent her a letter, mainly thirteen poems about love, and on December 5 he wrote to say that the photograph of her beautiful smiling face adorned his desk. He wrote, “I think you are incredibly beautiful. I would like to have a chat with someone like you under bright electric lights. If we went hand in hand into town, passersby would all turn back to look at the two of us. Then you, laughing lightly, would turn to look at me. —That’s my fantasy.”54 This affair disintegrated when Sugawara Yoshiko informed him that Hirayama Yoshiko was in fact a man named Hirayama Yoshitarō. Takuboku sent a reply: Thank you for telling me about Hirayama-san. I gather from your letter there are unpleasant rumors about her. I dismiss the incident with a laugh. To tell the truth, when she sent me that big, gaudy photograph, it arrived when some friends happened to be visiting me, and they, in the uncouth way of young men, made criticisms and guesses of various kinds, asking what sort of person she was.55

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Despite his disappointment with the two women, Takuboku’s mental state was gradually improving. No doubt as the result of the numerous appearances of his poems in magazines and newspapers, he was becoming known in the literary world. He was asked by the newspaper Ōsaka shinpō to write a novel for serialization. On October 22, he wrote to Miyazaki reporting this news but did not express happiness about this long desired, badly needed, commission.56 Now that this opportunity had come, Takuboku may have felt uncertain that he could write a long novel. His letter, however, also mentions something very welcome, the money that the novel would bring, and he hoped that in two or three months it would enable his family to join him in Tokyo.57 On October 24, Takuboku learned that Setsuko had been appointed as a substitute teacher in an elementary school, with a salary of twelve yen. Although he was ashamed that his wife was obliged to work, her salary would pay for the family’s food, at least until they came to Tokyo. It was advisable not to depend on Miyazaki for everything.58 The last issue of Myōjō appeared on November 6, 1908. Takuboku wrote in his diary, “Alas, Myōjō published its final number today. For nine years, it was the leader in the world of poetry, and I myself, as one of the combatants, fought alongside Yosano in his battle against society. His words of farewell at the head of the last issue of the magazine were soaked with tears.”59 Myōjō had failed in part because several outstanding poets had left the group but mainly because of the increasing popularity of realism in poetry, in opposition to the romanticism that typified Myōjō. Those poets who remained faithful to the Myōjō traditions almost immediately set about making plans for a new magazine, to be called Subaru.60At first, there was no permanent editor; members took turns running the magazine. With the second issue, however, Takuboku, who had been chosen from the start as the head of the poetry section, became the magazine’s general editor.

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Subaru immediately attracted the best writers of the period. It included not just poetry but works of fiction and plays as well. Preparations for the new magazine kept Takuboku frantically busy, and he also had to write each day another episode of his novel for the newspaper. In December, he wrote to Sugawara Yoshiko, apologizing for long silence, Every day I must write an episode of my newspaper serial. To make matters worse, the printers are so busy in December that I went without sleep the night before last. I had to edit the manuscript of the January issue of Subaru in time for it to reach the printers by yesterday. . . . Subaru will be sold not in bookstores but directly from the publisher. And I probably will become officially the editor and publisher.61 He sent Hirayama Yoshiko the same news on December 5. Not yet aware that Miss Hirayama was a man, he also sent some romantic poems to him/her.62 Takuboku had originally intended to use as the core of his newspaper serial an unpublished story titled “Shizuko no hi” (The Sorrows of Shizuko).63 The use of an existing manuscript was intended to make it easier to write the serial, but after two months struggling with “The Sorrows of Shizuko,” he realized that the story was unsuitable for a serial. He suspended work on the newspaper novel and did not attempt again to write a serial novel until October. He soon decided that his new manuscript was boring and childish. He would have to change the words in the plot, enhance it with complications, and generally modify the work beyond recognition. These changes then made the original title unsuitable, and settling on a more suitable one took him several nights of mulling. He finally chose Chōei (Shadow of a Bird).64 He began writing the next day, October 13, and continued until the end of December. The serial appeared from November to the end of December, but it was published

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not in the Ōsaka shinpō,65 which had originally requested a serial, but in the Tōkyō mainichi shinbun. All together, fifty-nine installments were published, nine more than anticipated. Even with the addition, the novel was not completed, however. Takuboku was not happy with Chōei. As early as the second installment, he was perplexed and wrote in apparent despair: “I spent the whole day revising the third part of episode 2 but, in the end, did not feel satisfied. I tried making a detailed outline of the whole work, but it didn’t stick together.”66 By this time, Takuboku had given up hope of writing a book on the scale of the great European novels. Instead, he chose to write something much less ambitious, the story of the Kanaya family, whom he had known in Shibutami. On June 11, 1908, Kanaya Kōichi had paid an unexpected call, during which he and Takuboku had had a conversation in pure Shibutami dialect,67 reawakening his memories. By the time of Kanaya’s next visit, on October 14, Takuboku had started writing Chōei. Although the novel is about the Kanaya family, Takuboku wrote, “Of course, I did not portray the people exactly as they were, and some things are fictitious.”68 In preparation for writing, Takuboku made inquiries about recent changes in Shibutami, especially in the language spoken. Chōei could have developed into a novel about the way the people of a small town in the mountains responded to modernization, but Takuboku’s novel has no such grandeur of scale, though it contains some interesting vignettes of village life. He seems to have lost interest in Chōei even while he was writing. The work enjoyed no success as a newspaper serial and was not published in book form until after his death. Takuboku was not desolated, however, by the failure of Chōei, as 1908 was the year he established himself as Japan’s most brilliant tanka poet. Even though the poor reception of Chōei was a disappointment, Takuboku was about to become the editor and also the publisher of the most important literary journal in Japan.

9 takuboku joins the asahi

T

akuboku’s New Year’s Day of 1909 was not marked by festivities. That morning was Takuboku’s twenty-fourth birthday, but the event went unnoticed in the bleak room of his boarding house. Tokyo was crowded with people in their finest attire, calling at friends’ houses or exchanging greetings in the streets, but Takuboku, not having any member of his family in Tokyo with whom to celebrate, felt like a lonely outcast. The only thing indicating that he was aware of the holiday was the letter he wrote to his mother. Although the letter has been lost, it probably included the prediction he made in his diary that day—that the coming year would be the most important of his life, the year in which he established the foundation for his whole life. He was right in this prediction. He included in the letter to his mother a New Year gift of two yen, all he could afford.1 That afternoon, Takuboku went to the Yosanos’ home to offer his greetings. He drank a cup of spiced saké and ate some New Year’s delicacies, but the atmosphere was not cheerful. Yosano, still brooding over the death of Myōjō, was pessimistic about the future of Subaru, about

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to appear this month. The conversation of the guests, members of the literary world, was mainly gossip about the new magazine. Takuboku left early to attend a gathering at the house of Hiraide Shū (1878–1914), a lawyer and poet who would soon become an important person in his life. Here, too, the chief subject of conversation was the forthcoming publication of Subaru; it was to be published from Hiraide’s house. Takuboku left about eight, and spent the rest of New Year’s Day playing cards with Kindaichi. In his diary, he described the boredom of the holiday: “I didn’t do a thing today. Maybe because I hadn’t had enough sleep, the whole day seemed somehow dull and depressing.”2 This was not an auspicious beginning for a year that, he had predicted, would be his most important. The next day was not much better. Hirano Banri, a friend of Yosano’s, opposed Takuboku’s suggestion that the monthly editor of Subaru have sole responsibility for the contents of the issue. The poet Yoshii Isamu (1886–1960) paid a visit. He showed up drunk and full of gossip on two subjects—the initial issue of Subaru and his mistress’s pregnancy. Takuboku wrote in his diary, “I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t respond to his stupid, self-important chatter.”3 During a conversation with Kindaichi later that day, Takuboku discussed his argument with Hirano. He observed, “I’ve always been hard on Hirano. I’ve repeatedly said the worst of him. But tonight it dawned on me that such disputes were childish. They were stupid. I shouldn’t waste my brain in this way over Subaru. It’s only a magazine. I’m an author!”4 He spoke as if he were no longer excited by the prospect of creating a new magazine that would be better even than Myōjō. He had lost his temper because his opinion had not been followed, and he blamed Hirano’s attitude on a general contempt for himself among members of the staff of the new magazine. He quoted in his diary part of a letter he had sent to Yoshii: “I will not let anyone look down on me. No! I am myself and I intend to look down on those people. Ha, ha!”

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He also wrote in his diary, “For a long time, a very long time, I, for some reason, suffered a loss of confidence, but lately I have regained it. Subaru was not a useless experience for me. Thanks to Subaru, I had the opportunity to compare myself man to man with these people, though previously I had thought of myself as someone destined to be left out in the cold.”5 He spoke of his relations with Subaru in the past tense as if he had broken with the nascent magazine. When Hirano visited him the next day, he so irritated Takuboku that he accused Hirano of having no understanding of literature or life. He declared he would no longer be intimidated by Hirano’s loud yapping.6 In the midst of what might have developed into a fistfight, the postman arrived with a New Year’s letter from Setsuko, explaining that after paying the rent, she was left with only five rin.7 Takuboku detected a note of bitterness in her words; no doubt she had been disappointed by his failure to send New Year money. He wrote in his diary, “It put me in a bad mood. Yes, it was my duty to send money to her. The question was whether or not I was in a position to send anything. Anyway, today’s New Year letter should reach Hakodate soon. I imagine my beloved wife and aged mother will be somewhat relieved when they discover what is enclosed.”8 Judging from his diary, Takuboku seldom worried about his family in Hakodate. It must have occurred to him occasionally that his mother and wife were hard up for money, but at such times he probably reassured himself with the belief that the generous Miyazaki would not let them starve. Takuboku was in a better mood a few days later. The members of Subaru, perhaps in an effort to convince the disgruntled Takuboku that they respected him, bestowed on him the titular rank of publisher of Subaru. They also decided to adopt his proposal that the editor of an issue be given complete control of its contents. Hirano had given up his

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plan to devote a section of Subaru to teaching beginners how to improve their poetry. Takuboku uttered a cry of triumph, “I’ve won!”9 Hirano was mollified by being chosen as the first editor of Subaru. Takuboku was the second. Despite his youth, his limited formal education, and his failure as a writer of fiction, Takuboku’s prominence within the Subaru group was proof of how highly his poetry had come to be regarded. At competitions, his poems always stood out for their individuality, and he associated with the other poets as an equal. He praised a few of his rivals, notably Kitahara Hakushū (1907–1973), and went drinking with others like Yoshii Isamu, though he had come to have contempt for this second son of a count, calling him a man without an idea in his head.10 Takuboku seemed at last to be on the path to success, though he remained unable to write stories that magazines might buy. At the usual poetry competition held at Mori Ōgai’s house on January 9, 1909, Takuboku’s poems received the highest number of points. Even though this undoubtedly pleased him, the next day, without stating his reasons, he wrote in his diary that he intended to sever his ties with all his friends, especially those who had been benefactors. To account for this new attitude, he started writing “Sokubaku” (Fetters), a story intended to demonstrate the undesirability of having friends. After scribbling a few pages of “Fetters,” he turned to his diary and wrote on January 10, Fetters! Fetters of friendship! Why have I been unable to write the truth about them? I have made my decision. I must destroy the fetters! At present the three people I consider my closest friends are Miyazaki, Mr. and Mrs. Yosano, and Kindaichi.11 It’s hard to speak impersonally of any of them, but Kindaichi, if only because he lives in the same boarding house as myself, is the most difficult to write about. My mind is made up. I must get rid of the fetters of friendship and

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direct myself entirely to my writing. As a first step in this process, as the preface to the novel of my whole life, I must demolish the person who is hardest to demolish. For this reason, I will begin “Fetters” with my relationship with Kindaichi, whom I shall describe without sympathy and as penetratingly as possible. Later on that evening, I knew for the first time the agony of the true writer, what an agony it is to confess the truth. The pain was unexpectedly, yes, unexpectedly strong. When Kindaichi, who had been busy with a visitor all day, stopped in briefly about eleven, I told him what I was thinking of writing. I saw on his face a displeasure and uneasiness he could not express in words, and I thought, “Unless I can carry out this resolution, I’ll never be a writer!” That’s how far I went in my thoughts. I felt a pain that all but made my chest writhe. Trying to be serious is truly painful, something to be pitied. I ground my teeth. I wanted to yank out my hair. Ah, the fetters of friendship! I have committed myself to the profound pain of a cruel resolution. I managed to write about two and a half pages by three-thirty in the morning. I must carry this work to a successful completion.12 “Fetters” is by no means a ruthless exposé of his friends. Takuboku opens his discussion with praise for Kindaichi, referring to him as a bachelor of arts, twenty-eight years old, known among his acquaintances as a man who never speaks badly behind another person’s back, a man known for his gentleness: Kindaichi himself is not very pleased with this reputation because it sounds as if he lacks masculinity, but he gives the impression of a man who is gentle, kind, indisposed to dispute with people, serious in everything. He is popular with his seniors, and even his voice is soft as a woman’s, as the maids at the lodging house, who have barely met him two or three times, report. Of late, seeing that

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eight out of every ten of his friends have sported a beard, he has secretly bought a patent medicine for growing hair that he never fails to apply morning and night. He has carefully removed the label, and even when the bottle, with its light brown liquid, is placed on his desk, nobody notices it.13 This was criticism of a kind, suggesting that the scholarly Kindaichi was secretly attempting to look fashionable, but it hardly constituted an attempt to smash the “fetters” binding Takuboku to Kindaichi; he appears to be simply teasing his friend for trying to sprout a beard. Kindaichi, who lacked Takuboku’s sense of humor, interpreted the story as a violation of secrets that should not be passed beyond friends. He wrote angrily, The model for “Fetters” is clearly myself. The author, with no show of reserve, exposes my weaknesses, my ugliness, my lack of modesty. His criticism was so severe as to make me feel I must take stock of myself. Maybe his advice is correct, but being a young man, there are private matters about which I felt ashamed, secrets I have never told anyone except Takuboku, such as my daily application under my nose of a hair-growing ointment.14 Kindaichi was stunned by Takuboku’s announcement of his intention of ending their long friendship. He could not think of himself as a mere “fetter” impeding Takuboku’s career as a writer. They had been friends since boyhood days, and it was Kindaichi’s unwavering affection for Takuboku that made him continue to help him financially, even though he himself was far from affluent. But Kindaichi, mild mannered as always, did not rebuke Takuboku after reading “Fetters.” In time, he seemed to have forgotten he had been labeled as a “fetter.” Or perhaps he dismissed the charge as the momentary madness of a friend who, like other geniuses, did not always act in

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accordance with socially acceptable manners. In any case, Takuboku soon abandoned his decision to break the ties of friendship and shifted to a much less agonizing project, a description of everything he had experienced since coming to Tokyo.15 Takuboku never apologized to Kindaichi for the distress he had caused. Instead, he wrote in his diary that he regretted having spoken too frankly to Kindaichi about his desire to free himself of the “fetters.” He wrote on January 20, “If one has friends, one definitely should not tell them everything, all the way to the core. When friends get so close that they can see through one another, the relationship becomes messy. Never show others your hidden depths. If you’ve already shown them, break with the friend without delay—though that’s not easy.”16 Despite this bout of misanthropy, before long Takuboku had reconciled with Kindaichi and never again called him a “fetter.” Nonetheless, he wrote about Kindaichi unflatteringly in the Romaji Diary: “Kindaichi is jealous. There’s no denying he’s also a weakling. It goes without saying that there are two faces to his character. One of my friend’s faces is soft spoken, good-natured, gentle, extremely considerate, but at the same time he is extremely jealous and weak, an effeminate man with something like a streak of vanity.”17 Kindaichi did not see this description of himself until after Takuboku’s death, but he must have been almost equally pained when Takuboku told him that his study of the Ainu language, Kindaichi’s most important scholarly achievement, was of no use to anyone. Kindaichi felt as if he had been kicked.18 Even though Takuboku did not succeed in breaking the “fetters” tying him to his friends, he believed that as an author, he was obliged to tell the truth about his friends and himself, however disagreeable this might be. On January 20, Takuboku mentioned in his diary that he was planning to publish in Subaru a novel called Sokuseki (Footprints), an absolutely frank account of his life as a teacher at the Shibutami Elementary School. He spent five days feverishly writing the manuscript, convinced

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that what he was doing was unique. On January 26, he wrote, “My novel might be called a ‘maiden work’—it’s so unlike anything I’ve written before. In it I have set down the truth, as far as possible.”19 When, however, the first episode of Footprints appeared in Subaru, readers were far from being struck by the uniqueness of Takuboku’s “maiden work,” complaining instead that it was a rehashing of material he had used years earlier in “The Cloud Is a Genius.” Footprints was given a particularly devastating review by a critic who asserted that such writers as Kinoshita Mokutarō20 and Yosano Akiko were more up to date than Takuboku.21 Hurt by the harsh mockery of a work he felt was totally new, Takuboku abandoned Footprints unfinished.22 He seemed to have failed as a novelist. Yet Takuboku was right in predicting that he was about to enter his most brilliant period as a writer of both poetry and prose. In April 1909, he wrote the Rōmaji nikki (Diary in Roman Letters), a work without precedent in Japanese literature, and in 1910 he published Ichiaku no suna (A Handful of Sand), his first and best collection of tanka. In the dedication to A Handful of Sand, Takuboku acknowledged his indebtedness to Kindaichi and Miyazaki, his closest friends and most persistent “fetters.”23 The dedication in the printed volume was not the same, however, as the dedication in the manuscript, in which Takuboku stated that he was offering his first collection of tanka24 to Kindaichi, who ever since 1907 had repeatedly saved him from starvation, and to Miyazaki, who had saved his family from the same fate.25 Instead, the printed dedication thanked the two friends for their generosity and their incomparable understanding of his poetry, but it made no mention of their rescue of Takuboku and his family from starvation.26 Takuboku may have felt embarrassed to tell his readers how dependent he had been on the charity of his two friends. His poverty was, of course, no secret. It was apparent even from the ragged state of his clothes, and everyone in the literary world knew how often he had borrowed money that was never paid back. For years, ever since he left Kushiro, his only income had been the pittance he received when news-

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papers or magazines printed his poems. Not until he got a steady job with the Asahi shinbun did he have a regular salary, but even then he continued to rely on “loans” and pawnbrokers. When he had a little money, he spent it mainly on Asakusa’s movie theaters and brothels. A bigger expense may have been books. Takuboku seldom mentions borrowing books from libraries or friends, but we know that he read many; he must have spent more on books than his diary reveals. Usually he sold the books a few days after buying them, at a considerable loss.27 Another possible cause of his poverty would normally have been whatever money he sent to his family as the eldest son, but judging from his diaries, he did not often carry out this duty. The cost of the rent for his room in the boarding house was probably Takuboku’s biggest expense, for if he failed to pay it, he was likely to be evicted. Even though Kindaichi helped pay the rent, Takuboku was almost always in need of help. He could think of only two ways of making money—by either writing stories for magazines or finding someone willing to publish Chōei in book form. Even though he tried to obtain money from these sources, all his stories (with one exception) were rejected by the magazines. He sent Chōei to a publisher, but for two months got no response. When at last he was granted an appointment, the publisher kept him waiting for two hours, then returned the manuscript without comment.28 Takuboku became desperate about his lack of employment, asking, “Why am I the only person in the world without a job?” He finally mustered the courage to write a confidential letter to Satō Hokkō (1865– 1914),29 the chief editor of the Tokyo Asahi shinbun, asking him, as someone who had attended the Morioka Middle School, if there were a possibility of a job. On a separate page, he listed the newspapers for which he had written articles and enclosed a copy of Subaru. Before sending the letter, he showed it to Kindaichi, who gave a groan that suggested he thought it unlikely it would lead to a job.30 To Takuboku’s surprise, however, Satō agreed to grant him an interview. It took place on February 7,

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1909, in Satō’s office. Takuboku learned that he not only had attended the same middle school but also, like himself, had worked for local newspapers. These similarities probably helped create a friendly atmosphere during the interview. Although Satō did not immediately offer him a position, Takuboku, sensing that the interview had gone well, was all smiles as he left Satō’s office. He felt certain that he would get the job. There was, however, a catch. Satō informed Takuboku that if he were hired, it would be as a proofreader. After years as a reporter, Takuboku had no desire to slip back into being a mere proofreader, but he told himself that working for a famous newspaper would solve his financial problems. Takuboku also received good news from another source on February 8. The publisher Shun’yōdō had bought his “Byōin no mado” (The Hospital Room) for twenty-two yen, seventy-five sen,31 probably because it had been warmly recommended by Mori Ōgai, who was always eager to help Takuboku. The company accepted the story and paid Takuboku immediately, though it was not printed until after his death. Takuboku was delighted to have at last sold a story. He and Kitahara Hakushū celebrated in Asakusa, where they got drunk and sent for geishas. By the next morning, only six yen were left of the Shun’yōdō payment. On February 24, the long-awaited letter from Satō Ikkō arrived. Takuboku ripped open the envelope and eagerly read the contents. Satō asked if Takuboku was willing to accept a job as a proofreader at the Tokyo office of the Asahi shinbun. The salary would be a maximum of thirty yen monthly, including night duty. Takuboku would have preferred other work, but he immediately accepted the offer. When Kitahara Hakushū heard the good news, he treated Takuboku to some black beer. Takuboku returned home in a mellow state that night and wrote, “After ten months of darkness, the beer tonight tasted delicious.”32 On February 25, Takuboku visited Satō at the Asahi shinbun office and was told that he was to begin work on March 1 and that his hours

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would be every day from one to six in the afternoon. After a long period of unemployment, even being a proofreader gave Takuboku pleasure, and he threw himself into his work.33 He sent postcards to the Yosanos and his family in Hakodate informing them of the welcome change in his life.34 On February 25, he received yet another pleasant surprise, a money order for twenty yen arrived from Tsubo Jinko, whom he had loved and deserted in Kushiro, where he had known her as Koyakko. Two days later, on February 27, a letter came from Miyazaki containing a message from Takuboku’s mother. Reading it made Takuboku feel as if his heart had been encased in “lead, icy lead.”35 Hearing that Takuboku had found a steady job, his mother had declared her intention to find a way of going, by herself, to Tokyo in March. Not having the money to pay for her travel or a place for her to live, Takuboku cried out, “Ah, mother! Beloved wife! Kyōko!”36 He may have inferred from his mother’s plan to travel alone that she and Setsuko were on bad terms, but he could hardly invite his mother to Tokyo and leave his wife and daughter behind in Hakodate. The entry in the diary immediately following Takuboku’s learning of his mother’s resolution describes a visit to a bookstore where he was fascinated by a copy of Oscar Wilde’s Art and Morality.37 He decided to use the money he had received from Koyakko to buy the book. He explained, “I haven’t bought a book in years. Pitiable me! Pitiable recklessness!”38 One can understand his interest in Wilde, but it is curious that he expressed so little gratitude to Koyakko, apart from a bare “thank-you” in his telegram. He was not ashamed to admit to his diary that the twenty yen that Koyakko had sent, probably extracted from her wages, was spent on a book and a drunken evening. Only forty-five sen were left. Once Takuboku took up his job at the Asahi shinbun on March 1, he tried to look like a typical employee. He had calling cards printed and bought fifty streetcar tickets. He planned to study German on the streetcar, so as not to waste time going to and from work. He swore to cut

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down on his consumption of tobacco. He was proud to be working in the massive Asahi shinbun building and was dazzled by the busy atmosphere, especially the noise of the newspapermen talking on the telephones. Takuboku’s first day of proofreading ended earlier than expected, and he left for home at five. He took a streetcar, had dinner with Kindaichi, and went to the public bath. This typical routine suggests that he really had metamorphosed into a model employee, but the old Takuboku lingered on; he borrowed a watch from his friend Namiki Takeo and then pawned it for eight yen, which he used for drinking and paying back a previous loan.39 From time to time, he would remember the watch gathering dust in the pawnbroker’s shop. The good-natured Namiki waited until April 26 to ask Takuboku to return his watch. Takuboku, unable to raise the money he would need to redeem the watch, experienced an unusually intense bout of depression. He wrote in the Romaji Diary, “This morning, as never before, I was torn by the crucial question of death. Should I go to the office today or not. . . . No, the real question is whether I should kill myself or not.”40 His diary does not make clear whether he ever got the watch out of hock. The good-natured Namiki first agreed to a postponement but later, in the interest of friendship, apparently forgot about the watch.41 Although Takuboku described several periods of uncertainty whether to live or die, his years at the Asahi shinbun on the whole were enjoyable and fruitful. He even came to like proofreading: kokoro yoki tsukare naru kana iki mo tsukazu shigoto wo shitaru nochi no kono tsukare

What a good feeling of fatigue! This fatigue after finishing my job Without taking a breath.42

His good spirits while at the Asahi owed much to Satō Ikkō, who watched over Takuboku like an elder brother. When Takuboku ran out of money, Satō let him borrow from his future salary or lent him

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money from his own pocket. He was so eager for Takuboku to become widely recognized as a poet that he allowed him to publish poetry and essays in the rival Tokyo Mainichi shinbun.43 Satō was also pleased with Takuboku’s interest in literature, and when he asked to take a day off to study or write, Satō readily gave his permission. Among the works Takuboku read at this time, he was especially impressed by Mori Ōgai’s “Hannichi” (Half a Day), published in the third issue of Subaru. He commented, “It’s not a great work, of course, but it is terrifying. To think he could write in such a manner about his own family, his wife!”44 Ōgai’s truthfulness in portraying family secrets may have suggested to Takuboku the desirability of writing a work about himself that similarly was the unadulterated truth.45 Takuboku’s diary for the first months of 1909, when he first worked for the Asahi shinbun, reveals little about his work. He may have considered the work of a proofreader insufficiently interesting to describe in a diary, but he was equally silent on such matters as whether or not to move his family to Tokyo. The diary most mysteriously says nothing about when and where he wrote his poetry, though this was the time when he was writing some of his finest tanka. Takuboku now thought of himself as a Tokyoite, though his poems do not suggest he felt any pride to be living in the capital. Instead, he thought mainly about Shibutami. Listening to the sound of night rain brought back the silence of Shibutami when he still was living in his father’s temple. He wrote, “I recalled days when I walked along the streets of Shibutami, dark at night because there was only one street lamp, carrying an umbrella, not a worry in my head.”46 Takuboku’s daily life resembled that of a Tokyo native, but nostalgia for the lost Shibutami or Hakodate appeared more often in his poems. He was still tempted by the mirage of success as a novelist. Whenever an idea for a story struck him, he did not hesitate to ask Satō for a sick leave. Sometimes he really was sick, but his leaves were usually not passed in a hospital bed but at his desk where he was attempting to write a story.

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At other times, he requested a day off simply because he was bored with his work at the office. As he wrote in the Romaji Diary on April 17, “I took off work today, thinking I would definitely write something—no, it was because I wanted to take the day off that I decided to spend the day writing.”47 A poem of 1911 recalls such a day: tochū nite futo ki ga kawari, tsutomesaki yamite, kyō mo kashi wo mayoeri.

On the way I suddenly changed my mind, Gave up going to my office, and today too Wandered the riverbank.48

He sometimes failed to appear in the Asahi office for as long as four or five days in a row, but even when he spent the entire time writing, he rarely completed a story. Some “stories” consisted of nothing more than a page or two; others rambled on until inspiration deserted him. Members of the Asahi staff grumbled about Takuboku’s frequent absences, but he was protected by Satō, who was convinced that Takuboku was an exceptional person whom he definitely wished to keep at the Asahi. On June 15, 1909, Takuboku left the room in the boarding house where he had lived ever since September 6, 1908. He moved into an apartment that Kindaichi had found for him, two rooms on the second floor of a barbershop on Yumi Street.49 Miyazaki sent fifteen yen to enable Takuboku to pay the rent. On June 10, Takuboku had received letters from Miyazaki and Setsuko announcing that that they were in Morioka and had seen members of Setsuko’s family. Takuboku thought, “It’s finally happened!”50 This was how he expressed his realization that his wife would soon appear in Tokyo.

T a k u b o k u J o i n s t h e A s a h i —–135

Takuboku still owed one hundred yen in back payments for the rent of his room in the boarding house, but Kindaichi, acting as his guarantor, promised that the money would be paid in monthly installments.51 Takuboku finally sent word to his family, asking them to come to Tokyo on June 16. He would meet them at the railway station that day and go with them from the station to their new house. He spent the night of June 15, his last in the boarding house, in Kindaichi’s room.52 They said good-bye the next day with strange feelings of separation. They had lived in nearby rooms for almost a whole year. Before dawn on June 16, he and Kindaichi were on the platform of the Ueno railway station in Tokyo to greet the members of Takuboku’s family. Takuboku’s diary says not one word indicating that he was glad to see his family.53

10 the r o maji diary

T

akuboku’s diary for April 3, 1909,1 included two letters he wrote in rōmaji (roman letters), a form of writing entirely different from the combination of characters and kana normally employed in writing Japanese. He gave no reason for this change. The first letter reads, “Kitahara’s aunt paid a visit. She gave me a copy of Jashūmon [The Heretics], Kitahara’s new collection. I didn’t go to work today, not having the money to pay the streetcar fare. It’s a beautiful, individual book. Kitahara is a lucky man!2 I suddenly felt like composing a poem.”3 This early example of Takuboku’s romanized Japanese was little more than proof that he was able to write Japanese in the European alphabet. Perhaps he had begun weeks or even months earlier to practice writing the letters of the alphabet, but the earliest table of roman equivalents for the sounds of Japanese does not appear in the Romaji Diary until April 12. His second letter in roman, written on April 6, already shows improvement in writing the unfamiliar script. It is a moving expression of Takuboku’s admiration for Kitahara Hakushū’s poem “Jashūmon hi-

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kyoku” (Secret Song of the Heretics), which he had just finished reading. Perhaps he used this unusual way of writing Japanese as a response to Hakushū’s exotic title for his collection, Jashūmon. Before long, Takuboku discovered that roman letters had uses other than surprising friends. For example, they could be used to prevent other people from reading one’s diary or other secret writings. Although Takuboku’s early examples were not intended as secrets, his letter to Hakushū is somewhat difficult to understand, but not because of the poetic expression: “Jashūmon has two features that are absolutely new and individual. The first is the wealth of associations that radiate from the word Jashūmon. The second is the flood of fresh sensations and emotions that overflow from your poetry. The former is the most essential element in understanding Hakushū, the poet. The latter should be the groundwork of every poem you write from now on.”4 The word “Jashūmon” was probably first used by Japanese of the sixteenth or seventeenth century as an epithet shouted at Christian heretics who had entered their country, but Hakushū’s use of this forgotten word imparted distant overtones, summoning up the past of three hundred years earlier and conveying the allure of the colors and odors of the forbidden religion brought to Japan by the Southern Barbarians (Portuguese). Takuboku’s admiration for this poem was surprising. He had frequently declared that he was an atheist, and his writings revealed no interest in religion, least of all in the mysteries of the Catholic Church; but he had been dazzled by the beauty of the language and the images of Hakushū’s poem. He may also have been affected by his reading of Oscar Wilde. On February 27, a little more than a month before he read Hakushū’s poem, Takuboku had purchased a copy of Wilde’s Art and Morality. Interest in Wilde was not unusual among Japanese intellectuals of the time, and Takuboku knew something about him. In a letter to Miyazaki dated March  2, he wrote how it happened that despite his perpetual

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lack of money and his vow to avoid extravagance, he had succumbed to buying an expensive book by Wilde. He had heard that he was unique among recent British poets in his avocation of a philosophy colored by a fin-de-siècle atmosphere. The purple cover of the book and the leather binding with the letters stamped in gold on the spine magically affected Takuboku, rather like the smell of the Encylopaedia Britannica at the Chamber of Commerce in Hakodate. He felt compelled to buy the book, forgetting his hungry family in Hakodate and the money he owed for rent and other unpaid debts. Although he read Wilde’s book in a few days and soon sold it, he may have been seriously affected by Wilde’s declaration that the “morality” of art depended on whether or not it was well expressed.5 This statement was behind Takuboku’s decision to write a work that was truly artistic, though it was subject to being attacked as immoral. Wilde had written, “A fresh mode of Beauty is absolutely distasteful to the public, and whenever it appears it gets so angry and bewildered that it always uses two stupid expressions—one is that the work of art is grossly unintelligible; the other, that this work is grossly immoral.”6 Takuboku admired “Secret Song of the Heretics” because Hakushū, in the interest of beauty, had dared to be called unintelligible and immoral. His poem begins: I believe in the heretical teachings of the degenerate age, the witchcraft of the Christian God. The captains of the black ships, the wondrous land of the Red Hairs, The scarlet glass, the sharp-scented carnations. The calico, arrack and vinho tinto of the Southern Barbarians; The blue-eyed Dominicans chanting the liturgy who tell me even in dreams Of the God of the forbidden faith, or of the blood-stained Cross . . .7 Takuboku did not attempt in his poetry to imitate Hakushū’s baroque language, but reading Wilde may have given him the courage to describe

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behavior that, though considered immoral by society, might be fashioned by the poet into a work of artistry. Takuboku was by no means the first to use roman for writing texts in Japanese. In 1592, the Jesuit Mission Press in Amagusa had printed books in Japanese that were entirely in roman letters. These books were intended to serve as texts for teaching the Japanese language to Portuguese missionaries. The first work published in roman letters was Heike monogatari, a classic chosen probably because its expression, though beautiful, was not too distant from contemporary Japanese. It also provided missionaries with some knowledge of an important period of Japanese history. The use of the alphabet made it comparatively easy for the foreigners to learn the language, as they were freed from the burden of learning characters and kana. Although the terms of European grammar used to explain Japanese grammar were generally irrelevant, they, too, helped reassure the missionaries that Japanese, having rules similar to those of the European languages, could be learned. In 1593, Aesop’s Fables was freely translated into Japanese and printed in roman letters, perhaps in the hope that young missionaries studying Japanese would enjoy a textbook that was amusing as well as instructive.8 But the writing of Japanese did not last long. As a result of the persecution of Christians in the seventeenth century, the Jesuit Mission Press was forced to move from Japan, and by order of the government, virtually all the surviving Christian books were destroyed. In any case, so few copies of these books had been printed that their existence was unknown to most Japanese of the time and exercised almost no influence in the development of printing in Japan or in the use of roman letters.9 Aesop’s Fables alone escaped the destruction of other books published by the Jesuit Mission Press. It was acceptable because it did not preach Christian doctrine. It even enjoyed a second life as a popular Japanese work with the title Isoho monogatari. Between 1604 and 1608, the Portuguese Jesuit Joaõ Rodrigues (1561?– 1633) compiled Arte da lingua de Japan, a Japanese grammar containing

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numerous examples of Japanese, including poems printed in roman. The following tanka by Mansei Sami is from the Man’yōshū: Yononacano nanini tatoyen asaboraque Coguiyugu fueno, atono uranami10 ( yo no naka no / nani ni tatoen / asaborake / kogiinishi fune no / ato no uranami) The sounds of the Japanese words were approximated with letters of the  alphabet given in Portuguese pronunciations. For example, Heike (the normal romanization today) was rendered as Feique because Portuguese lacked an aspirate h or a k.11 The opening of Japan to Europeans in the nineteenth century, after more than two hundred years of seclusion from the West, created a need for the romanization of Japanese in order to help foreigners recognize at least the names of towns or people. By this time, the Portuguese romanization was obsolete, and because English was now the prevailing language of commerce and English speakers were the most numerous of the foreigners, it seemed best to represent the sounds of Japanese, especially the consonants, with roman letters based on their English pronunciations. The most widely adopted system was named Hepburn after its innovator, the American missionary James Curtis Hepburn, who invented it in 1867, mainly for foreigners. Two years later, the Japanese created a romanization of their own that more closely followed the kana spelling of the words. In 1905, a variation of this system, called Nippon-shiki ( Japanese style), was officially chosen as the standard romanization by the Japanese government, but foreigners have continued to prefer the Hepburn romanization.12 At first, Takuboku used Nippon-shiki in his Romaji Diary but later shifted to Hepburn. It is possible that his use of rōmaji was influenced

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by the poetry of the Rōmaji kai, a group of poets who in 1901 began to publish romanized tanka in the Iwate nippō, a newspaper that Takuboku regularly read, but he makes no allusion to the group or their poems. Takuboku did offer one explanation of why he wrote the work in roman. I have already quoted this short passage: “Why did I decide to keep this diary in roman letters? Why? I love my wife, and it’s precisely because I love her that I don’t want her to read this diary. No, that’s a lie! It’s true that I love her, and it’s true that I don’t want her to read this, but the two facts are not necessarily related.”13 Takuboku’s admission that he does not wish his wife to read the diary implies that if he wrote his diary in roman letters, she would not be able read it. It is hard to believe, though, that Setsuko was helpless at reading roman letters. Her formal education was about the same as Takuboku’s, and she had been a substitute teacher of English. Her knowledge of roman letters was probably sufficient to read at least short statements, though like most Japanese today, she may have had almost as much difficulty deciphering the roman letters as reading a foreign language.14 No doubt Takuboku hoped she would find reading the diary so exhaustive that she would give up. Takuboku’s hope that Setsuko would be unable to read the Romaji Diary indicates that even before he wrote the first page, he knew his diary would contain material displeasing to her. The Romaji Diary would certainly not to be a diary of the usual variety—a record of the events of successive days, along with the author’s reactions to what had occurred. Instead, it was written much more like a work of literature.15 Takuboku seems to have planned how the sections would begin and end and how highlights would enhance the text. His manuscript of the Romaji Diary was written on notably good paper in beautifully clear penmanship, without a blotted or changed word. It suggests that although he asked on his deathbed that his diaries be burned, he had made a copy clear enough for others to read easily. This does not mean that the Romaji Diary was fictitious; it was true but molded into a work of literature.16

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The Romaji Diary is not an independent work but is part of Takuboku’s diary for 1909. The early part of the diary for this year, written before the Romaji Diary, is in normal Japanese writing. The Romaji Diary proper begins in April, just when the cherry blossoms are about to bloom. A visitor, an old man from the lending library, calls on Takuboku. During the course of their conversation, he tells Takuboku, “Spring, you know, is poison as far as we are concerned. Lending books is finished. My customers would rather go for a walk than read a book, and I can’t say I blame them.” Despite the likely loss of business, the old man is happy as he predicts that the cherry trees everywhere in Tokyo will burst into bloom that very day. The lighthearted mood continues the following day with one of the most amusing episodes in Takuboku’s diaries. It takes place on a street car when Takuboku is on his way back from work. He relates a conversation with a friend: On the way back from the office, on the streetcar, I met Hinosawa, an engineer. He is a real dandy. When he sat down in his newly tailored Western clothes next to me in a padded kimono with torn sleeves, I felt I had to say something sarcastic. “Have you been to see the cherry blossoms?” “No, I haven’t the time to look at cherry blossoms.” “Is that so? That’s fine,” I said. What I said was extremely commonplace. It was something anyone could have said. I made that commonplace remark to that commonplace man because I thought it made for wonderful irony. Of course, there was no fear of Hinosawa’s understanding my meaning; he is absolutely placid. That’s what made it amusing. There were two old women seated opposite us. “I dislike the old women of Tokyo,” I said. “Why’s that?” “It gives me a bad feeling just to look at them. It really does. There’s nothing grandmotherly about them, like the ones in the country.” Just then one of the old women glared at me from behind her glasses. The people around

T h e R o m a j i D i a r y —–143

us were also staring in my direction. I felt somehow pleased. “Is that so?” asked Hinosawa in as soft a voice as possible.17 Takuboku, too, is happy that spring has come. For some reason, he decided to learn the roman alphabet, but even while he is studying the letters and their sounds, his mind wanders: From time to time, as I was making this list, memories of my mother and my wife on the other side of the Tsugaru strait floated up every so often, taking possession of my mind. I thought, “Spring has come. It’s April. Spring! Spring! The cherry blossoms are opening. It’s already a year since I came to Tokyo.  .  .  .” And I still haven’t succeeded in thinking up preparations for bringing my family here and looking after them. Lately, I don’t know how many times a day, this enigma has kept going back and forth inside me—that’s my biggest question.18 A bit later in the diary the question recurs, “It’s spring. I thought of my wife and sweet little Kyōko. I told them I would definitely send for them by April, but I still haven’t. No, I can’t.”19 At times, he missed his family, especially his daughter Kyōko. The grief he expresses over being separated from his family may be touching, but one cannot forget how short his stay was with his family in Otaru and how eagerly he had left, alone, for Tokyo. Of course, Tokyo was the best place for a writer to earn money, but the need for money may not have been his only reason for his swift departure from his family. Takuboku had written in his explanation of why he chose to write his diary in roman letters that he loved his wife, but eight days later in his diary he asked himself, Does my need for Setsuko arise simply out of sexual desire? No! No! My love for her has cooled. That is a fact, a not surprising

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fact—regrettable but inevitable.  .  .  . My love has cooled; I have stopped singing a song that I used to enjoy—but the song itself is [still] pleasurable. I am sure it will be pleasurable no matter how long. I have become tired of singing just that one song. It’s not that the song doesn’t please me anymore. Setsuko is truly a good woman. Is there in all the world another such good, gentle, sensible woman? I can’t imagine having a better wife than Setsuko. I have yearned for other women, but I have never wanted to sleep with any woman except Setsuko, though I have thought I’d like to try. Sometimes when I was actually sleeping with Setsuko, I have had such thoughts.20 Takuboku craved independence even more than the love of his wife and family. Although his praise for Setsuko was probably sincere, he repeatedly denounced the institution of marriage, blaming his difficulties on the loss of freedom it caused: “Am I a weakling then? No, my trouble comes entirely from the mistaken institution of marriage. Husband and wife! What an idiotic institution! What’s to be done about it?”21 He continued, “Why must I be tied down because of parents, a wife, or a child? Why must they be victimized because of me? But that, naturally, is quite apart from the fact that I love my parents, Setsuko, and Kyōko.”22 Although he mentions in the Romaji Diary that he had slept with many prostitutes while in Tokyo, he probably was not promiscuous during the first years of his marriage. Only after moving to Tokyo did visits to the cheap brothels in Asakusa become an element in his life. The only woman (apart from his wife) whom he had loved and mentioned by name was Tachibana Chieko, but she seemed so innocent that he could not express his feelings. In Kushiro, he had affairs with geishas and was loved by one, Koyakko, but he felt relieved when they parted. It was in place of love that he regularly bought prostitutes. In the Romaji Diary he wrote,

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Whenever I have had a little money, I have without hesitation gone, filled with the voice of lust, to those narrow dirty streets. Since last autumn, I have gone thirteen or fourteen times, and I have bought about ten prostitutes—Mitsu, Masa, Kiyo, Mine, Tsuyu, Hana, Aki. . . . I have forgotten the names of some of them. What I wanted was a warm, soft, absolutely white body: a pleasure in which my body and mind would melt. But those women, the rather old ones and the ones of sixteen who were still children, had all slept with hundreds or thousands of men. There is no luster to their faces, their skin is cold and rough, they are so used to men that they feel no excitement. All it amounts to is that for a little while they hire out their private parts to men and receive a pittance in exchange. Without even bothering to undo their sashes, they say, “All right,” lie down just as they are, without the slightest embarrassment, and spread open their thighs. It doesn’t make the least difference to them if anyone on the other side of the partition can hear them. All it amounts to is an excretory process that has been done with thousands of men. There is no other pleasure.23 One can hardly imagine a less appealing description of sexual intercourse. Sometimes while Takuboku was lying with prostitutes, he had grotesque and shocking visions; on one occasion, when he held a prostitute in his arms, he craved stronger excitement and envisaged splitting apart her vagina. Takuboku’s descriptions reveal every detail of his actions and thoughts. The immense power of the writing, though its realism may shock, enables this diary to rank as a work of art according to Oscar Wilde’s definition. Takuboku’s account of his experiences in Asakusa’s brothels are the most widely known sections of the Romaji Diary, but it was not in order to boast of his exploits that he kept the diary. Rather, he seemed to be acting out of a despair that drove him from woman to

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woman. His most violent act of sexual behavior terminates with the cry, “Men have the right to kill women as cruelly as they please!”24 These words are immediately followed by an account of his despair and a hint that he was thinking of suicide: It is no longer possible for me to go off somewhere where there is nobody else, but nothing short of this could satisfy me. I can’t stand the agony of human life, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Everything is a shackle and a heavy responsibility. What’s the best thing for me to do? Hamlet said, To be or not to be? But in the present world, the question of death has become more complicated than in Hamlet’s time. . . . Ilya’s25 plan was the greatest any human being could conceive. He tried to escape from human life, no, he did escape, and then with all the strength he possessed, he rushed from life—from this life of ours—into a limitless path of darkness. He dashed his head against a stone wall and died.26 Takuboku was worn out by the failures he had suffered, some selfimposed. He says he yearns for peace of mind but thinks the only way to achieve is through sickness or death: “For a long time, this desire has been lurking in my head. Sickness! This word, which other people hate, sounds as nostalgic to me as the name of the mountain in the village where I grew up. A free life, released from all responsibilities! Sickness is the only way we have to obtain peace of mind.”27 One of his longest poems voices the prayer that he will be stricken with illness. It opens: For just a week, even three days will be fine, God, if you exist, aah, God! I have just one wish, that you somehow Will break me down a little, anywhere in my body. It doesn’t matter if it hurts, make me sick. Oh, make me sick!28

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He added second thoughts to the poem: Death! Death! This is My one and only wish. Aah! Aah, will you really kill me? Please wait, Merciful God, wait a little!29 He never tired of analyzing himself. Although he branded himself as a weakling, he wanted to kill everyone he knew, starting with his closest friends.30 He insisted that he was an individualist and preferred to be alone, maintaining that time spent with other people was time wasted.31 If invited to the Yosanos’ house, he would go but would treat it as a tedious duty. If Akiko suggested that they sit up all night composing poetry, a proposition that in the past would have delighted him, he would leave for home, giving some “silly excuse.” In hopes of finding peace of mind, he envied people who had become insane. He commented, “I’m too healthy in mind and body.”32 He was convinced that his career as a writer had ended (he did not rate tanka as writing). He wrote, “I must once again give serious consideration to my inability to write a novel and to the certainty that there is no hope in my future.”33 Takuboku’s main literary pleasure was reading old pornographic novels supplied by the man from the lending library: “What a stupid thing to have done! Last night I spent until about three copying into my notebook the Tokugawa-period pornographic book Misty Night in the Blossoms. —Yes, that’s exactly what I did. I couldn’t resist the desire to enjoy this intense pleasure.” He didn’t go to the office that afternoon, instead spending the time busily copying the rest of Misty Night in the Blossoms.34 The same night, he went into Kindaichi’s room, and after drawing faces on his chest and twisting his face in various weird expressions, he took out a knife and acted like the murderer in a play. Kindaichi, his face pale, ran out of the room. Takuboku realized that he had come close to committing a horrible act. He was sure of it. Later, when the two were together again, they were dismayed by what had occurred, but it made

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Takuboku sure that he was not afraid to commit suicide.35 What did he do that night? He read Misty Night in the Blossoms as a substitute for visiting a brothel. Earlier in the diary, Takuboku had characterized himself as “I am a weakling, a weakling with a marvelous sword inferior to none.”36 He had always supposed that his sword—his writing—was a valuable possession, but now he asked, “Is it possible that anything done by a human being can be admirable? The human being itself is neither admirable or valuable.”37 “Then, what am I seeking? Fame? No, it’s not that. Success? No, not that either. Love? No. Knowledge? No. Then money perhaps? Yes, money. Not as an end, but as a means. What I am searching for, from the bottom of my heart, is peace of mind.”38 He wanted to do only what he wanted, go wherever he felt like going, satisfy all his own desires. “Yes, I want to do exactly as I please.”39 This attitude had been characteristic of Takuboku since boyhood. At this point he proclaimed, “I positively will give up my literary career.” But if he gave up literature, what would he do? “Death’s the only answer” was the reply.40 He offered himself counsel on how to conduct his life during the time remaining before his death: “Do not be loved by others, do not accept their charity, do not promise anything. Do nothing that entails asking forgiveness. Never talk to anyone about yourself. Always wear a mask. Always be ready for a fight—to be able to hit the next man on the head at any time. Don’t forget that when you make friends with someone, you’re sooner or later sure to break with him.”41 On April 25, an entirely new note appears in the diary. The entry opens, At present there is only one thing that interests me. It’s going to the office and spending two or three hours there reading proof without so much as pausing to take a breath. If my hands are not carrying something, my head feels somehow vacant, and my only thought is the slowness with which time is passing. . . . I wonder

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if I am not losing interest in everything. In other words, I feel rejected by everything [I have been lost from everything].42 What if I should ever succumb to this feeling! Takuboku seems to have become indifferent to the world; only the mechanical correction of proof retains his attention. But once he leaves his office, he does not spend his time moping in a deserted house. In his diary later on the same day, he describes a visit with Kindaichi to the Yoshiwara, the red-light district fabled for its beautiful women and sumptuous furnishings. This was Takuboku’s first visit, no doubt because he had never had enough money to visit these elegant brothels. It was surprising that he was with Kindaichi, as Takuboku had always been irritated by the straitlaced Kindaichi’s refusal to buy prostitutes or take advantage of available chamber maids. But now they listened together to the clock of the Kadoebi, the most celebrated house of the Yoshiwara, as it struck ten. Takuboku attempted to persuade Kindaichi to abandon his rigid morality and give way to the glamour of the Yoshiwara. He described the place in tantalizing language and detail, as if he lived there, though this was his first visit. Kindaichi observed that he would have no reason to go to the Yoshiwara once he got married, but Takuboku urged Kindaichi to go often even after he was married. The two men left without meeting any of the courtesans. Two days later, after a dismal session with a prostitute who gave him no pleasure, Takuboku decided that “from now on I definitely will not waste money and time on women.”43 This resolution did not last long. A few days later, on May 1, he was frantic because he still had not paid his friend Namiki for the watch he had borrowed and pawned. If he used his salary to pay the pawnbroker for the watch, he would not be able to pay the rent. At a loss for what to do, without realizing where he was going, he found himself on the familiar road to Asakusa, telling himself, “You mustn’t go!” But before he knew it, he was there. Someone pulled his sleeve into a doorway, and

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he yielded. An old woman guided him to a dark, narrow alley lined on both sides by houses with closed doors. He felt as if he were on the way to the broken-down back of the world. The old woman opened a door and led him to a filthy room where a girl was waiting. She rather resembled Koyakko, though she was much younger, perhaps seventeen. Her name was Hanako. Takuboku described in his diary the most satisfying sexual experience of his life: It was a strange evening. I have slept with women any number of times, but I’ve always felt as if something was urging me on, and I have felt uneasy. I’ve made fun of myself. Never before had I experienced a night that made me shut my eyes in ecstasy. Never before had I had such an elevated feeling. I didn’t think about anything. I simply gave myself to the ecstasy. I felt as if my whole body was being warmed by the heat of the woman’s skin. And the act of sex itself, which of late had left me with unpleasant feelings, this evening took place twice, both with pleasure. And they left no disagreeable feelings afterward.44 The reader who has shared Takuboku’s miseries and his loss of interest in the world may read with relief that he at last had some pleasure. It may even have made Takuboku forget that before long, Hanako would be an exhausted, prematurely aged prostitute like those he had often patronized. Takuboku’s hours of ecstasy brought no lasting change in his depression. On May 4, he wrote, “Today, too, I stayed at home. I spent the whole day with my pen gripped in my hand. I wrote ‘A Day in Prison’ but dropped it. Wrote ‘Recollections’ but didn’t finish. Wrote ‘An Interesting  Man?’ but didn’t finish that either. Wrote ‘Recollections of Childhood’ but dropped it. That’s how my mind was oscillating. In the end I threw down my pen. I went to bed early. Needless to say, I couldn’t sleep.”45

T h e R o m a j i D i a r y —–151

This inability to write stories initiated one of Takuboku’s worst spells of depression. On April 13, he described what he had gone through: A blackness of immense despair at times darkened my eyes. I did my best at least to keep the thought of suicide from coming closer. One night, while I was wondering what I should do, suddenly everything went pitch black before my eyes. It wouldn’t have done me any good to go to the office. It was shut and nobody there could help me. I thought I would cut my chest with the razor I borrowed from Kindaichi and, using the wound as a pretext, get a leave from the office for a month, during which I could think over everything about myself. I decided to slash myself under my left nipple, but it hurt so much I couldn’t cut even so much as a gash. All I did was make two or three shallow scratches. Kindaichi, in alarm, grabbed the razor. He forcibly dragged me out and, after first pawning his inverness [cape], took me to the usual tempura shop. We drank. We laughed. Then, about twelve, we went back home. But my head was heavy. I felt that if I turned off the light, frightening things would loom before my eyes.46 Even after recovering from this nightmare, Takuboku was spiritually shattered. He wrote, “I no longer have any confidence in myself, nothing to look forward to. I am aware of being pursued from morning to night by agitation and uneasiness. I have no sense of assurance. What is going to become of me? A useless key that doesn’t fit any lock. That’s it exactly! No matter where one takes it, there’s no chance of finding a hole where the key will fit smoothly!”47 The last part of the Romaji Diary contains many repetitions of the bleak statement “Didn’t do anything today.” He received word from Miyazaki on April 26 that he would send the family to Tokyo in June and pay the traveling expenses.48 Takuboku expressed no gratitude for this generous gift and made no plans to receive his family.

152—–T h e R o m a j i D i a r y

The diary becomes even more spotty in May. Days are skipped or run together. The entry covering the period from May 8 to May 12 begins, “What have I done these last three days? All I’ve done is to demonstrate my inability to break out of my present situation, no matter how frantically I try.”49 On May 31, he wrote, “During the last two weeks I have done almost nothing. I have not been going to the office.” The last entry is labeled in capitals “TWENTY DAYS,” followed by the bracketed subtitle, “Account of the Move to the Second Floor of a Barber Shop.” The final words in the Romaji Diary are “On the morning of the sixteenth, before the break of day, I, along with Kindaichi and Iwamoto, were on the platform of the Ueno station. The train was one hour late.” Reading the Romaji Diary, we are likely to feel admiration for its truth and affection for the writer who, despite his faults, is so close to us. Takuboku’s difficulties may have been caused by willfulness more than by the times or simple bad luck, but in the end we accept his failings as inevitable in a poet who is a genius. He was unhappy because he was unsuccessful as a novelist. He probably did realize, though, that he had written one masterpiece of prose, the Romaji Diary.

11 the sorrows of takuboku and setsuko

T

he Romaji Diary breaks off in June 1909, and there are no entries for the remainder of the year. Pages of description may have existed but were deliberately destroyed or are today hidden in some private collection. Whatever the reason, Takuboku’s diary is a blank from June 1909 until April 1, 1910. The most notable event of this period for Takuboku was the reunion of his family (except Mitsuko) in Tokyo after the move on June 16, 1909, to a two-room apartment above a barbershop. Takuboku’s diary for April 1, 1910, opens typically with “borrowed in advance my monthly salary of twenty-five yen.” This is followed immediately by the description of an enjoyable excursion, a rarity for the Ishikawas. Takuboku wrote in his diary, “We took the streetcar to Asakusa, where we saw the Kannon Temple and the illuminated movie theater reflected in the pond. Later on, we watched the movie from the second floor of the theater. It was already eleven by the time we got back home.”1 The visit to Asakusa suggests that the family was living in somewhat more comfortable circumstances than in recent years. Takuboku’s mother, not feeling well, did not join the excursion, but his father happily

154—–T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o

attended. He had left his usual retreat in Noheji and had been in Tokyo for the past hundred or so days, enjoying the sights. Not long before the excursion, Takuboku had taken his father to a performance of jōruri. He had enjoyed it so much that Takuboku then arranged for the family to visit Asakusa, expecting that his father would be thrilled by the amusements for which it was famous. But Takuboku’s diary indicates that he was rather disappointed by his father’s lack of enthusiasm. He wrote, For someone to have lived so long that he has fallen behind the times, this is definitely not an occasion for rejoicing. The fate of old people during the Meiji era, a time when our culture is changing so rapidly, is particularly pathetic. The old people are unhappy, but so are the children. I don’t know who is more miserable—a parent who doesn’t feel what his children feel or a child who derides things that give its parents pleasure. Perhaps an old person can enjoy novelties only if he can endure surprises.2 We can infer from these observations that the father had not much appreciated the modern wonders of Asakusa,3 but in any case, Takuboku and his father rarely enjoyed the same pleasures. The one time that Takuboku showed a son’s sympathy for the lonely, taciturn old man was when he had disappeared for a second time. Takuboku was far closer to his mother, but as Miyazaki correctly intuited on first meeting her, this doting mother was capable of displaying a strong and sometimes unpleasant insistence when her wishes were not obeyed. The first months spent on Yumi Street would be among the most agreeable of Takuboku’s life in Tokyo, but on October 2, 1909, there was a crisis. Setsuko, after first informing Takuboku’s mother that she was taking Kyōko to worship at the Tenjin Shrine, went instead to a hospital to have her medicine refilled. Then from the hospital, she took Kyōko to her own parents’ house in Morioka and failed to return home that day. Takuboku found a note she had left for him: “I feel unhappy that you, a

T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o —–155

filial son, because of me, must go against your mother’s wishes. I’m going away, though this sacrifice runs counter to my love. Please carry out fully the duties you owe your mother.”4 Under the pretext of respect for filial piety, the letter concealed Setsuko’s real reason for running away from home: she could no longer abide living with a mother-in-law who had disliked her from their first meeting. After Takuboku married Setsuko, the old woman became unrelenting in her demands, treating her daughter-in-law like a kitchen servant. In July 1909, Setsuko had sent to a Hakodate newspaper a series of nine poems describing her life as a menial. The first line of each poem is “Soaking wet with sweat.”5 Setsuko wrote in a letter to Miyazaki dated August 27, 1908, “Though she’s Takuboku’s mother, I hate her. She is such an inconsiderate, illtempered old woman that she upsets even Takuboku and Mitsuko. I can’t reveal what I suffer, not even to my parents or my husband. As a matter of fact, you, my elder brother, are the only person kind enough to listen to my grievances.”6 On August 21, Takuboku wrote a series of seventeen poems that directly refer to the two women’s hostility, including neko wo kawaba sono neko ga mata arasoi no tane to namuran kanashiki waga ie

If I bought a cat, The cat would surely cause another fight. Mine is an unhappy home.7

tokegataki fuwa no aida ni mi wo shoshite, hitori kanashiku kyō mo ikareri

Unsolvable Discord, and me in between, Alone and sad, another day of rage.8

Although he was aware of the unfriendly relations between the two women, Takuboku never realized that Setsuko found her mother-in-law

156—–T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o

so intolerable that she would leave home. Dislike of her mother-in-law was probably Setsuko’s main reason for running away, but she also felt obliged to go to Morioka to help her sister Fukiko prepare for her marriage to Miyazaki. When Takuboku discovered that Setsuko had left him, his first reaction was to rush to Kindaichi’s house, where he sobbed over having lost his wife. With tears streaming down his face, he cried, “I can’t live even one day without her. Please send her a letter somehow, telling her to come back soon. If it’ll help, you can say I’m stupid; you can call me an idiot. Say anything you please.”9 Kindaichi wrote a long letter and sent it to Setsuko. Takuboku, unable to wait for the answer, also dashed off a letter of his own, begging her to come home. He said he forgave her running away. He had stopped going to work and was spending his nights and days drinking saké, bewailing his unhappiness. Even after a week had passed, Setsuko had not yet returned. The unhappy Takuboku told Kindaichi, “Another day has begun for me without a word from her. I can’t stand the feeling that never leaves me for a moment, that I am facing an icy cold wall.” On the morning of October 26, however, Setsuko left Morioka and returned to Tokyo. She evidently had made up her mind to resume her life with Takuboku but had resolved that no matter how her mother-in-law might abuse her, she would respond with an air of indifference. Kindaichi had accidentally become a witness to the tense relationship between the two women. He had paid a visit to their house intending to see Takuboku, only to be told that he was not at home. When Kindaichi started to leave, Takuboku’s mother insisted that he stay. While Setsuko served tea, the mother, judging that Kindaichi would make a good listener to her woes, recounted everything that annoyed her, beginning with Takuboku’s cruelty and then shifting to Setsuko’s acts of disobedience. Kindaichi had no wish to hear these complaints, but he could not stop her. Setsuko, even as she listened to the many examples of her mis-

T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o —–157

behavior recited by her mother-in-law, sat motionless as a marble statue, not uttering a word.10 That day, after Takuboku returned from work, he and his wife strolled through the woods in Ueno and visited an art show together.11 Setsuko no doubt interpreted this kindness as a reward for having come back home. Kindaichi wrote a second version of his account of Setsuko’s disappearance that adds harrowing scenes to the narration. He related that after the letters he and Takuboku had written to Setsuko failed to have an effect, Takuboku asked Kindaichi to live in the same house with him, saying that it was unbearably lonely without his wife and child. Kindaichi agreed. As soon as he entered the house, Takuboku insisted on showing him his diary, pointing out passages he wanted him to read. Kindaichi first read Takuboku’s angry words to his mother: “Setsuko ran away because you tormented her. I want you to go and bring her back!” Next came the command, “Get me some saké. I can’t sleep without saké.”12 Kindaichi continued to read Takuboku’s account of his mother’s response to his command: It was already past midnight, but my tone was so demanding that Mother trembled with fear, and her aged feet shook beneath her as she tottered her way down the pitch-black stairs and out of the house. I could hear from the distance the sound of banging on the door of the saké shop, but the shop did not open. Then I could hear Mother’s voice weeping. Still the shop did not open. Finally giving up, she went to another, more distant, saké shop. I could hear knocking on the door and a voice that sounded like she was weeping. I didn’t do a thing even as I listened to the weeping. When Mother at last returned with the saké, I, who usually can’t drink much saké, gulped it down. At this point, Takuboku cursed himself with such violence that it was painful to hear. Kindaichi recounted his reaction:

158—–T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o

As I read the diary, I wept a stream of tears, but I was also struck with admiration. I thought, “This is better than a work of fiction. Better than a novel.” This thought came to me because when we were living in the same boarding house, he had written stories like “The Hospital Window” and “My Friend Kikuchi,” both of them artificial and unbelievable to the reader because they were not about himself. I urged him now, “Write about what happened. Don’t waste a minute.” All Takuboku answered was, “It was too awful. I can’t write about it yet. I can’t write it.”13 The diary that Kindaichi read no longer exists. Perhaps Takuboku found it so painful that he destroyed it.14 But Kindaichi was right: Takuboku had been wasting his time on conventional stories. If he had been able to describe the night’s events with the passion of the Romaji Diary, it would have resulted in an unforgettable work of literature. Despite his affairs with other women and the fading of his love for Setsuko, Takuboku was still deeply attached to her. He was ready to forgive her escape from home, though many husbands of the Meiji period would have found her action unforgivable. His fear of losing his wife had made him heartless to his mother because he now realized that she was the cause of Setsuko’s disappearance. The cruel order that his ailing mother fetch saké for him at midnight was not entirely out of character, recalling how as a child, he had asked his mother in the middle of the night to make a cake he felt like eating. The strangest part of Takuboku’s behavior at this time was his insisting that Kindaichi read his diary, as he had kept the diary a secret from everyone. Kindaichi was the only person Takuboku ever asked to read his diary. He seemed to have wanted him, his oldest friend, to see the shame of which he was capable. Takuboku and Kindaichi saw little of each other in 1910. In April, Takuboku, along with Setsuko and Kyōko, had visited Kindaichi at his new house, but he does not appear elsewhere in the 1910 diary except

T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o —–159

in the brief letters that they occasionally exchanged. This has led some scholars to conclude that the two men were no longer friends, perhaps because of differences in their politics. Kindaichi explained the break of their friendship in prosaic terms: “I had just married, had a new house, and my work kept me unbelievably busy. Without realizing it, I allowed my relationship with Takuboku to lapse.”15 Takuboku was annoyed with Kindaichi for not sending him so much as a postcard to say he had received a copy of A Handful of Sand, nor had he thanked Takuboku for praising him in the dedication as someone who understood his poems. Takuboku was so irritated by what he deemed a lack of courtesy that he declared his relationship with Kindaichi had ended.16 Kindaichi’s failure to thank Takuboku may have stemmed from his disappointment that Takuboku had not retained the original dedication, in which he thanked Kindaichi for saving his family from starvation; Takuboku no longer seemed grateful for the help he had received. Their friendship would not be restored until about a year before Takuboku’s death. After the shock of Setsuko’s escape from home, Takuboku tried to make their life more enjoyable when she returned, but it was almost impossible. He was supporting a family of four adults and a child on a salary of twenty-five yen. He also was obliged to pay five yen every month for back rent on his former apartment. Although Takuboku had taken night jobs to increase his income, his additional jobs resulted in less time  for him to be at home with his wife. There was little to distract her, and they ate poorly. Associates at the Asahi shinbun wrote that Takuboku looked sickly and undernourished. He did not speak often with his colleagues and probably had little to tell Setsuko about his work at the office. He seemed to have lost his charm; there seemed to be nothing left of the old Takuboku. As Imai Yasuko wrote, “Takuboku had changed not only in thought and attitude toward life but in his personality.”17

160—–T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o

Overwork led to frequent colds and bouts of fever. Takuboku wrote to Miyazaki that he had given up reading and had turned his back on his friends. He worked in a daze from morning to night, as if with his eyes shut. When sitting in a streetcar, his thoughts tended to be about the pitiful condition of human life.18 Takuboku’s 1910 diary is very short, restricted to the month of April, but it was a time when his literary activity, seldom mentioned in the diary, became more noticeable. He was now publishing poetry regularly in both the Asahi shinbun and the Tokyo Mainichi shinbun. “Michi” (The Road) was his first story to appear in a magazine other than Subaru. In May and June, he wrote a story, “Warera no ichidan to kare” (Our Gang and the Other Guy), that became comparatively popular.19 This story, however, was his last work of fiction. He had not lost the desire to write but was too exhausted and too often unsuccessful to try again. His late stories, though sometimes of interest, are generally pedestrian in style, and the characters are not memorable. The brilliance that still shone in his poetry and diaries was missing. Disappointment over the failure of his fiction made him turn to poetry, though until then he had avoided the realm in which he was a genius. Takuboku’s daily gloom affected Setsuko. On June 19, 1909, she wrote, “I hate Tokyo,” a phrase she would repeat in letters, each meaning that she was unhappy living with Takuboku. Her declaration of hatred for Tokyo was sometimes followed by recollections of her pleasure when Miyazaki escorted her to Tokyo. They had had so much to talk about that they chatted on the train the whole night long. On July 5, she wrote to her sister Fukiko, who was by then engaged to Miyazaki:20 “Ever since coming to Tokyo, I have not had one day without a headache. (In Morioka I also had headaches, but there were things to divert me.) Now I have nothing to distract me. At night he [Takuboku] will say, ‘Let’s go to Asakusa, or how about the Ginza?’ but my headache is definitely not going to be cured by such deceit.”

T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o —–161

Setsuko was bored. If Takuboku had free time at night, he spent it writing criticism or the poems later included in A Handful of Sand. Once in a while, he made an effort to amuse her by going out because there was nothing cheerful to be found at home. She worried about her health, writing, “I lack vitality and am terribly thin. I feel sleepy all the time, but my eyes are always open and I can’t sleep. I must have nervous prostration.”21 She described in her letters the places in her body where she felt pain. She mentioned a persistent cough as well but did not suspect that this was the start of the illness that would take her life. Although Setsuko stopped mentioning Takuboku by name in her letters, she often referred to Miyazaki, always with praise and a suggestion of envy of her sister Fukiko, who was to marry him: “Fukiko-san, you are lucky. You are really fortunate. There’s not another man who can compare with Mr. Miyazaki.”22 One might suppose the presence at home of her daughter, Kyōko, would be a source of pleasure and comfort, but as Setsuko wrote to her sisters, “I suppose you think of Kyōko as a lovable child. I appreciate the thought, but she is unbearably headstrong. If I tell her that she’s making so much racket that I can’t write this letter, all she does is show me a sour face.”23 At the end of December 1909, Setsuko wrote to Fukiko about her cough and the pains in her chest. She predicted that although there would be joyful celebrations elsewhere, the new year would not bring her any happiness. She thought of her mother in Morioka, though she seldom wrote her because “in the daytime Kyōko is so noisy, and at night I can’t think of what to say. Today, fortunately, Kyōko has a cold, and she’s taking an afternoon nap.”24 Setsuko had praise for no one except Miyazaki, the only person who sympathized with an unhappy woman. She was always aware of her illness: “Every day, every single day I feel bad.” The compiler of Setsuko’s letters was her younger brother,25 who may have deleted some of them in order to preserve her reputation. But even

162—–T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o

his book reveals that Setsuko was far more complicated than one would gather from Kindaichi’s glorifying “The Chastity of Setsuko, Takuboku’s Wife: A Life Spent in Self-Sacrifice.”26 There is no evidence that Setsuko was not a faithful wife, even though Mitsuko wrote that Setsuko had boasted of her many lovers.27 Mitsuko was an unreliable witness, but all the same, Takuboku and Setsuko’s marriage was in danger.

12 Failure and Success

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akuboku’s gloomiest period may have been when he wrote the essay “Garasu mado” (Glass Windows), published in June 1910. In this work, he related how despair had made him doubt not only his own work but even literature itself. Imai Yasuko, one of the few critics to emphasize the critical importance of this short work, believed that “Glass Windows” marked a vital turning point in Takuboku’s career.1 Ever since he first became aware that he was fated to be a writer, he had shown respect for literature, though he believed that poetry was only secondary to fiction in importance. In “Glass Windows,” however, he expressed derision for all varieties of literature. At one time, he had believed that naturalism was the essential philosophy and that literature was more admirable and valuable, but he had come to doubt that anything created by a human being could be either admirable or valuable.2 In his diary entry of April 4, 1910, he probably was referring to “Glass Windows” when he announced, “I wrote an essay cursing literary superstitions.”3 Although he did not cite the name of the essay or the nature of the superstitions he had cursed, the essay he referred to was likely “ Glass Windows” and

164—–F a i l u r e a n d S u c c e s s

the curse was against the ideals of the naturalist school. He had written in the Romaji Diary, It cannot be denied that naturalism was the philosophy we at first sought out with the greatest eagerness, but before we knew it, we had discovered its logical contradictions. Then, when we had surmounted these contradictions and moved forward, the sword we held in our hands was no longer the sword of naturalism. I, for one, am no longer able to content myself with an attitude of impersonality. The writer must be a critic. Or a planner for mankind.4 But naturalism, which to other people was the literature of indifference, typified by the many accounts by authors of their unhappiness, remained the dominant form of novel. Unhappy over naturalism and his lack of success as a novelist, Takuboku reluctantly made up his mind to shift the center of his literary activity from fiction to the tanka. This had the effect of leading him back to his first literary interest and eventually brought him far greater fame than his prose, but it did not at first bring him happiness.5 Takuboku was well aware how difficult it was to succeed as a poet. At the beginning of “Glass Windows,” he related the indignities he had suffered because of the general ignorance of poetry. At first he had avoided possible conflicts by not showing his works to others. He offered no encouragement to poets younger than himself. His first reaction, before he even looked at a younger poet’s work, was pity and contempt or even hatred. He had come to think that it would benefit the world if a great hole were dug in the ground into which would-be poets could be buried. Imai wondered if Takuboku ever seriously hoped that composing tanka could be a lifetime occupation.6 Although Takuboku dismissed the possibility that a person could live on poetry, he refused to write naturalist novels, though he could not deny the power of naturalism. He concluded, “It is no exaggeration to say that naturalism has taken complete hegemony over literary circles.”7

F a i l u r e a n d S u c c e s s —–165

After reading an issue of a magazine devoted to naturalist fiction, he wrote in his diary, “I felt thoroughly disgusted with the stories. I read and read, and in the end, all that was left was a feeling of emptiness.”8 At times, Takuboku was coarse in his contempt for naturalist writing: “Literature itself is already on the point of becoming something divorced from real human life. It’s turning into something like masturbation. The authors are like entrepreneurs who plan a project without any executive competence, encouraging opportunity, or financial backing.”9 He shifted his discussion at this point to the subject of why Japanese are not proud to be known as authors: “The late Futabatei, though he was a born author, disliked it when people called him a ‘writer.’ I recall Dr. Tsubouchi saying on some occasion that Futabatei’s attitude was caused by the lack in present-day Japan of the awareness that literature had enough value and influence to make it worthy of a man’s devotion for his lifetime.”10 Takuboku believed that he understood Futabatei, telling Kindaichi Kyōsuke, “I have the feeling that I am the only one who knows what in Futabatei’s soul induced him to go to Russia. It was not for the sake of studying Russian literature that he went. . . . It was  the ideas that kept him living in Russia, but because he died abroad, he has been completely forgotten. I regret his death as if it were my own.”11 Takuboku did not elucidate what he meant by “ideas.” He may have been impressed by Futabatei’s social concerns, notably his efforts (under the influence of socialism) to help the poor, but above all, he was affected by Futabatei’s novels and his translations of Turgenev, though they were not primarily about social justice. As a proofreader, Takuboku was given the job of verifying that every word in the new edition of Futabatei’s Complete Works conformed exactly to the first editions. This was time-consuming and tedious, but it was also a privilege. Takuboku was profoundly upset to learn on April 15, 1909, that Futabatei had died aboard ship on his way back to Japan from Russia. That night, a difference of opinion concerning Futabatei imperiled Takuboku and Kindaichi’s friendship. Takuboku wrote in his diary,

166—–F a i l u r e a n d S u c c e s s

About eleven I went to Kindaichi’s room and talked with him about Futabatei’s death. My friend said he couldn’t understand why Futabatei had disliked literature and being called a literary man. This unfortunate friend of mine does not understand the deep yearning and anguish of human life. I could not tolerate his attitude. I returned to my room wrapped in loneliness. In the final analysis, it is impossible to understand another person completely. Communication between person and person can only be on the surface. The friend who supposes he and you know everything about each other in the end will prove unable to understand the grief and suffering at the bottom of the other man’s heart. Hopeless despair at this realization! We are two entities, one man and another man! So thinking, I can visualize what Futabatei was thinking when he died.12 Takuboku’s first break with Kindaichi had come, as described earlier, when he decided that in order to achieve independence as an author, he must destroy Kindaichi, who was a “fetter” impeding his freedom. Kindaichi had been hurt by what he thought was the malice he detected in Takuboku’s story “Fetters,” but eventually they reconciled. Even though Takuboku never apologized for calling Kindaichi a “fetter,” he had no choice but to concede how much he depended on his friend. On February 15, 1909, another crisis had threatened their friendship. Late that morning, a man from the main office of the Asahi shinbun had appeared at his apartment and forced Takuboku to listen to a harangue that lasted until eleven that night. No doubt the man was a superior at the newspaper whom Takuboku could not order to go away, but he was enraged to have been forced to waste a whole day by someone he found loathsome. Late that night, he went to Kindaichi’s room to tell him what he had suffered. He reported, “I really felt helpless as the man kept on talking.”13 The next sentence in his diary is “I no longer can be in heart-to-heart contact with Kindaichi.” Something seems to be missing

F a i l u r e a n d S u c c e s s —–167

from the diary. Had Kindaichi failed to express sufficient sympathy for Takuboku for the wasted day? Something had gone so wrong between the two friends that Takuboku believed Kindaichi’s lack of understanding had made intimate friendship with him impossible. This clash, too, was, in time, forgotten, but it may have caused Takuboku to think that the time had come for him to leave the boarding house where they both lived. Takuboku describes in “Glass Windows” the dreary life he led during the next year or so. He never felt any satisfaction even when he saw the pile of papers on his desk at the Asahi shinbun that proved how much work he had accomplished. On his way back home each day at the usual time, he tried to think of something to do when he got there. If there was something that urgently needed mending, he would return home happily, but sometimes he could not think of anything to mend. He expressed one wish: “I would like, once in my life, to keep working without interruption from morning to night, with no breaks for talking or thinking, and then to drop dead suddenly.”14 The dream of becoming an automaton often occurred to him while he was on the streetcar. The essay finishes with “I would like to go to the mountains. I would like to go to the ocean. I would like to go to a country where I don’t know anyone and mingle with people who speak a language I don’t know a word of. . . . This done, I will ridicule, as much as I please, the infinite ugliness and the infinite pathos of the creature called myself.”15 One may wonder what made Takuboku feel such self-hatred, such a desire to flee from his life, but it cannot be doubted that these were real emotions, unlike the melancholy he had depicted in the romantic poems of his youth. Why was Takuboku unhappy? He had at last found a steady job working for a major newspaper. His boss was a man who treated him with unusual kindness. His position, it is true, was the lowly one of a proofreader, but he enjoyed the work, at least for a time. After a long period of separation, he and his family were now together. His salary,

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though insufficient for him and the family to live in comfort, was no worse than that earned by most other newspaper employees. His literary life showed signs of improvement; he had sold a work of fiction, “The Road.” In September, the Asahi shinbun founded a new cultural department, the Poetry Corner, with Takuboku as the chief arbiter of the poems that merited being published. Anyone unaware of Takuboku’s tormented state of mind might have envied him, but “Glass Windows” is nonetheless the work of an unhappy man. Takuboku’s obvious unhappiness while in the house on Yumi Street could not help but depress Setsuko as well, but she still loved him. Her letter to Miyazaki of August 27, 1908, had stated most of her feelings at this time. Although she felt confident that Takuboku would become a great poet, she still feared that he might not succeed. She added, “I recall that in all ages, there has always been a splendid woman behind every celebrated man. I am not so presumptuous as to say that I am splendid, but I know that Takuboku has extraordinary talent, and I pray to the gods that he will develop it to the full. So if anyone says I am a victim or anything similar, it makes me feel unspeakably sad.” She recited the hardships she had suffered at her mother-in-law’s hands but insisted, The love of my husband is the staff of my life. If this love did not pervade our household, I could not go on living a single day. I have succeeded in receiving his love, which is stronger than the slander and the obstacles of the world, but now I cannot help but weep a great deal. . . . But this is because I feel sure Takuboku knows my heart. If he should misunderstand me, it would be the greatest tragedy of all.16 But her belief in his love seems to have begun to weaken. On April 12, 1909, Takuboku at last bestirred himself and took a selection of 255 of his tanka to the publishing company Shun’yōdō. He left his manuscript with a clerk.17 The publisher wasted no time in sending word that it was not interested in the book.18

F a i l u r e a n d S u c c e s s —–169

Takuboku had hit the low point of his life, physically and mentally. It was an honor to be chosen to edit Futabatei’s works, but he was also expected to continue performing his regular duties as a proofreader. The strain exhausted him. At the end of April, discussing the situation with his wife, he exclaimed, “This has been a terrible month!”19 Despite the heavy burden of work at the newspaper and his poor health, Takuboku went on composing tanka. More than 80 percent of the tanka he submitted to Shun’yōdō were written between 1908 and 1910.20 At some point, he asked Shibukawa Genji, the city editor of the Asahi, if he would look at a few of his poems. Shibukawa agreed, and they met in March 1909 after Shibukawa had read some of them. According to Shibukawa’s recollections, Takuboku said very little, perhaps because he was tense in the presence of a superior, but above all, he feared what Shibukawa might say. Takuboku’s appearance did not impress Shibukawa. Although he was still only twenty-four years old, the swagger of his Shibutami days had totally disappeared. He looked sickly and feeble, signs of a poor constitution.21 Fatigue and inadequate food had aged the good looks of the Takuboku in the famous photographs. Shibukawa had been running the newspaper’s poetry column but had considered discontinuing it because the works submitted by aspiring poets were so uninspired. Struck on first reading by the freshness and individuality of Takuboku’s poems, he decided he would make a trial publication of Takuboku’s poems in the Asahi shinbun, two or three poems at a time.22 Takuboku wrote in his diary of April 2, “Mr. Shibukawa was enthusiastic about the poems of mine that appeared last month in the Asahi. He said he would do his best for the poems and urged me to think of composing more.” Although written in Tokyo, the poems were mainly set in Shibutami and Hokkaidō, places with special memories for Takuboku. He chose 551 poems from the more than 1,000 tanka he had composed during the past few years.23 He gave the book the title A Handful of Sand, probably because sand is mentioned in the first ten poems of the collection.

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He sold the book to the publisher Tōundō on October 4, 1910, the same day his first son was born. Takuboku sent a brief letter to a friend informing him of the good news: “At two o’clock this morning Setsuko gave birth to a baby boy. The birth was extremely easy, and mother and baby are both doing well, so please don’t worry. The nurse at the University Hospital was astonished by how big the baby is.”24 The baby was named Shin’ichi, the birth name of Satō Hokkō.25 Despite Takuboku’s joyful words, Shin’ichi was sickly even at birth and gradually grew weaker. He died on October 28. Takuboku wrote to Mitsuko that day: My first son, Shin’ichi, has died. Last night, when I came back from my job at a little past twelve, I arrived two minutes after his pulse had stopped beating. His body was still warm. I sent for a doctor and had him give injections, but they were of no help. Shin’ichi’s eyes saw the light of this world for only twenty-four days, then closed them forever. The funeral will be held on the twenty-ninth at one in the afternoon at the Ryōgenji in Asakusa.26 Takuboku naturally was grieved by the death of his only son but not completely shattered by sorrow, perhaps because he had seen the baby grow steadily weaker by the day during the three weeks of his life. Takuboku wrote in his diary without little emotion: “The money I received for A Handful of Dust was spent on hospital bills for the sick child. The proofs of the book arrived the night he was cremated.”27 The eight tanka Takuboku wrote on the death of Shin’ichi are the last poems in A Handful of Dust. The final one is kanashikumo yo akuru made wa nokoriinu iki kireshi ko no hada no nukumori

Heartbreaking— The warmth in the skin of a child who breathed his last Lingering until the break of day.

F a i l u r e a n d S u c c e s s —–171

Takuboku’s sorrow did not prevent him from carefully overlooking the production of A Handful of Sand. He gave instructions to the artist concerning the colors to be used on the cover and drew diagrams showing where the title and the author’s name should be placed and the size of the lettering.28 He wanted A Handful of Sand to be as elegant as the European books he had coveted, a book unlike any previously produced in Japan. The pages were facing, with two poems on each. Each tanka was printed in three lines, though it was customary to print a tanka in a single line.29 On October 4, 1910, he delivered the manuscript to Tōundō and received twenty yen. Five hundred copies were printed. The publication date was December 1. A Handful of Sand opens with an introduction by Shibukawa written under an assumed name. Despite writing in a humorous manner, his comments make it clear that he considered Takuboku to be a remarkable poet. He quoted eleven poems from A Handful of Sand, for the most part not those an anthologist would choose. His introduction, though it could not be called illuminating, was the pioneer study of A Handful of Sand. Shibukawa’s introduction is followed by Takuboku’s brief dedication, which says of Miyazaki and Kindaichi, I dedicate the collection to these two men. I feel as if I’ve already displayed everything to them. For this reason, I feel confident that they will understand more than anyone else every one of the poems I composed. I would like also to offer this book to the soul of my late son Shin’ichi. I delivered the manuscript of this collection of poems to the publisher on the morning you were born. The fee paid for the poems was used for your medicine. I examined the sample copy of the book the night that you were cremated. Many poems in A Handful of Sand are moving on the first reading, one reason why the collection is recognized as a classic. Read carefully,

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however, multiple meanings can be discovered even in poems that are seemingly easy to understand. The first poem of the collection is typical of Takuboku’s combination of simplicity and hidden meanings: tōkai no kojima no iso no shirasuna ni ware nakinurete kani ni tawamuru

On the white sand of a shore Of a little island in the eastern sea Soaked in tears, I play with a crab.

Scholars of Takuboku’s poetry have interpreted the “little island” as referring to Japan. Read with this meaning, the poem acquires greater depth, but the average reader is likely to accept the “little island” as one visible from the shore, and perhaps that, too, was Takuboku’s meaning. Other readers may wonder why the island is said to be in the “eastern sea,” even though the poem is written about a shore on the northern island Hokkaidō. Takuboku did not say why he specified the “eastern sea”; perhaps it was because the sound of tōkai (eastern sea) fitted the music of the poem better than the names of the three other directions.30 Regardless of these and other meanings that might be uncovered from the poem, it is magically effective in its evocation of Takuboku on a lonely beach. Many poems in A Handful of Sand are captivating because of their unexpected similes: yogaretaru tabi haku toki no kimi waruki omoi ni nitaru omoide mo ari

give me the creeps some memories like putting on dirty socks31

The parallel of dirty socks and old memories is both humorous and touching. Only Takuboku could have written this poem.

F a i l u r e a n d S u c c e s s —–173

tawamure ni haha wo seoite sono amari karuki ni nakite sanpo ayumazu

kidding around carried my mother piggy-back I stopped dead, and cried. she’s so light32

Takuboku felt a shock when he discovered the lightness of his mother, which can be felt even by a reader whose mother is not emaciated. nani ka nashi ni feels like atama no naka ni gake arite there’s a cliff higoto ni tsuchi no kuzuru gotoshi in my head crumbling day by day 33 This moving simile captures a feeling that Takuboku well knew. These and many other poems make A Handful of Dust Takuboku’s most celebrated work. It is a gem of Japanese literature, and its appeal will last as long as Japanese poetry is read. It did not take long for the uniqueness of A Handful of Sand to be recognized by discerning readers. Takuboku’s letter of January 9, 1911, to his old friend Segawa Fukashi (1885–1948) mentions the reviews of A Handful of Dust that he has seen. All were highly favorable. Takuboku wrote, The Iwate mainichi and the Iwate nippō have been delivered, and I have read them. Morioka has changed a lot.34 Okayama [Gishichi] is now the general editor of the Mainichi, and for three days running he published reviews of my recent book of poetry. . . . You probably don’t know it, but Hokkaidō is my second home. I expect that my recent book will sell better there than anywhere else. One newspaper in Hakodate, without my asking, gave it [my book] a double-size, striking advertisement inside the general news and

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ran it for two weeks. More than twenty other reviews have appeared, and they haven’t stopped coming. Probably no book of poetry has ever received such long reviews. Another newspaper, also in Hakodate, gave the book more than ten reviews. Newspapers in Otaru, Sapporo, and Kushiro have reviews signed by the writers.35 Takuboku doubted he would be able to reply to all the letters he received. Takuboku related in the same letter his grief over Shin’ichi’s death, but the overall tone is one of jubilance over his book’s success. His long string of misfortunes seems to have come to an end. Takuboku does not mention the number of copies of his book that had been sold, nor does he reveal that as a result of his book’s success, the Asahi shinbun had raised his monthly salary. But he does say, with evident pleasure, that he had received requests for manuscripts from three magazines (including the prestigious Waseda bungaku). On the heels of despair, success had come, but it did not much relieve the poverty that continued to afflict Takuboku and his family. His readers were enthusiastic, but there were not many of them until long after his death.

13 takuboku on poetry

W

ith the success of A Handful of Sand, Takuboku became a recognized poet. He also, with essays on modern poetry that were published by the Mainichi shinbun in October 1909, made his debut as a critic of poetry. In the following year, the Asahi shinbun chose him as the head of its newly formed Poetry Circle. This recognition by the two most esteemed Japanese newspapers was a sign of his increasing importance in the world of Japanese poetry. Up until this time, he had valued the tanka so little that he had never thought of relating why he happened to become a poet or his views of other people’s poetry. Takuboku’s first attempts to express his opinions were in the Mainichi shinbun essays, followed in the same month by an important critical work in seven installments. This collection was officially known as Yumi-machi yori (From Yumi Street), a reference to where Takuboku lived, but he preferred the alternative title, Kuraubeki shi (Poems to Eat).1 Takuboku borrowed this curious name from an advertisement for beer that he had noticed in a streetcar. He explained this title in terms of his belief that a poem must have both feet on the ground; it should not be considered

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a delicacy served at a feast but something eaten every day, like beer or pickles at the end of a meal.2 Takuboku’s remarks on poetry in Poems to Eat refer mainly to the shi, an almost forgotten form. A shi might roughly be described as a Japanese poem that is neither a tanka nor a haiku. It could be of any length, and the lines were not necessarily in the five and seven syllables of the tanka. It was a kind of free verse, but it had developed techniques that shi poets obeyed, notably the tendency to enhance the images by exaggerating them. Takuboku gave these examples: Looking back on what I went through when I was still writing shi, I should like to mention one thing: I had to absorb very tedious techniques before I could call myself a poet. For example, if I saw or visualized a tree about six feet tall standing on a bit of vacant land with the sun shining on it, my poem would portray the vacant land as a broad plane, the tree as a lofty tree, the sun as the morning or evening sun. And, if that wasn’t enough, I, the observer of the tree, would be transformed into a poet, a wanderer, or a melancholy youth. If I didn’t do so, the effect would not be in accord with the prevailing mood of the shi, and I would not be satisfied. Two or three years went by in this manner. Just when I had at last become adept at using the techniques of poetic composition, I began to think that they were a nuisance. I should have had more confidence now that I had mastered the techniques, but I was unable to write a thing, Instead, something strange happened. I was able to compose poetry only when I was in a mood of selfcontempt or when I was under the stress of some practical problem, such as the deadline of a magazine. I wrote shi quite well at the end of the month.3 I composed shi from the time I was seventeen or eighteen until I reached twenty-three. During these years I did nothing but

T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y —–177

write shi from morning to night, obsessed by a yearning for something—I didn’t know what it was. The shi I composed occasionally got printed. Apart from a feeling of yearning, my poems had no content. . . . The shi at this time were utterly conventional and sentimental and consisted of fantasies and children’s songs, together with feeble religious elements.4 Takuboku did not reveal why he had chosen to study shi rather than tanka, by far the most esteemed form of Japanese poetry. His earliest poems may in fact have been imitations of the tanka in the Kokinshū, which he adored as a boy, or perhaps were imitations of his father’s orthodox tanka. Probably he chose the shi because it was free from the many hampering rules of the tanka; it was typical of Takuboku to choose freedom. However, his study of shi did not make him cease composing tanka. It was as easy for him to write a tanka as to breathe. Indeed, he looked down on the tanka because it was so easy, and he gradually learned that even the shi had certain techniques. But he continued to write shi, probably because their relative freedom suited his mood. Takuboku’s first book of poetry, Akogare (Yearning), a collection of shi, was published in May 1905 when he was nineteen. Although some critics praised the poems’ emotions or rich vocabulary, most scorned their extravagance. This criticism so disappointed Takuboku that he decided to write no more shi. He described his decision in these terms: Fickle praise, such as being called a “poet” or a “genius,” can easily turn the head of a young man, but at some point it stopped intoxicating me. A feeling of emptiness, like the end of a love affair, never left me—not only when I thought of myself or when I met poets who were my seniors, but when I read their poems. That was my unhappiness at the time. And it was just then that my process of fantasizing in order to create a poem began to invade

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my attitudes toward everything. I became incapable of thinking without fantasizing.5 The advice that Takuboku offered to poets in Poems to Eat was intended to guide them in composing shi, but by this time, he had lost interest in shi and rejected them in favor of the tanka. Poems to Eat describes, in the form of an autobiography, the misery he experienced when he gave up the shi: its freedom had proved to be illusory. Takuboku opened his account with a description of his period of despair. He recounted his life as a shi poet as a journey carrying a wax candle that, like the days of youth, melted until nothing was left. He was rescued from this gloom by the discovery that people thought that something in his tanka was worth preserving.6 However, far from feeling satisfied with his effortless gift for composing tanka, Takuboku felt certain that success as a writer could come only from writing fiction. He never quite resigned himself to being unlikely ever to write successful story. He lacked the ability to invent characters; the people in many of his stories tended to be based on recollections of the teachers at the school where he taught. He had nothing interesting to say about them, but his poetry is full of memorable characters who had never before appeared in Japanese poetry. The events and emotions in Poems to Eat are neither dated nor in chronological order. He does not give us enough information to understand the cause of his fall into self-contempt, but we feel that he is telling the truth when he says, I lost all interest in reading other people’s poetry. I felt as if I had plunged deep into a life in which I kept my eyes shut. . . . Before I knew it, poetry and I had become strangers. I happened to meet a man who had read the poems I wrote years ago and we talked about the old days, but as he talked, his words aroused unpleasant feelings, rather like hearing a friend refer to a woman we both had

T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y —–179

known in the days when we went whoring together. The taste of life had changed me to this degree.7 Takuboku wrote that his career as a poet of shi ended at the age of twenty-three. This would have been in 1908, the year he traveled from Otaru to Kushiro to take a newspaper job. He had hesitated to go to Kushiro, a bleak town at the other end of Hokkaidō, but he realized that he had no choice. He left for Kushiro in January 1908, leaving his wife and child in Otaru. During the long journey across Hokkaidō, he wrote a series of thirty tanka relating his experiences from the time he left his house in Otaru until his arrival in Kushiro.8 These poems, among his best, would be incorporated into A Handful of Sand. Travel and solitude seem to have shaken him from his bout of depression, though the first poem of the sequence evokes the pain of departing from his family: ko wo oite yuki no fukiiru teishaba ni ware miokurishi tsuma no mayu kana

The child on her back In the station where snow is blowing in The eyebrows of my wife, who came to see me off.

Takuboku happened to notice his wife’s eyebrows as she stood shivering in the cold of the railway station, her little daughter on her back. Grief was often conveyed in poetry through the appearance of a person’s eyes, but the mention of Setsuko’s eyebrows freshly conveys the coldness and loneliness of at the moment of departure. The tanka written during the journey do not constitute a single poem but were thoughts that crossed his mind as the train sped through the wilderness. The second poem in the series is about Kobayashi Torakichi, the man with whom Takuboku had the fight that led to his now being on a train for Kushiro. Takuboku must have cursed himself a thousand times for the willful valor that got him into a disaster:

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teki toshite nikumishi tomo to yaya nagaku te woba nigiriki wakare to iu ni

The friend I hated as an enemy Shook my hand rather a long time It was by way of farewell.

The two men had hated each other ever since the fight, but for a moment, Kobayashi may have felt sorry that he had sent Takuboku away. The third poem in the series describes Takuboku’s last glimpse of Setsuko; he leaves the train window quickly so as not to prolong her grief over his parting: yurugi izuru kisha no mado yori hitosaki ni kao wo hikishi mo makezaran tame mizure furu ishikari no no kisha ni yomishi tsugeenefu no monogatari kana

As the train pulled out, I moved my face Before anyone else from the window Lest she be overcome. I remember now as sleet falls Across the Ishikari Plain The novel by Turgenev I read on a train.

Seeing the falling sleet over the bleak plain reminded Takuboku of a work by Turgenev, perhaps one about a man sent into exile in Siberia. Kushiro was his Siberia. In the fifth poem, Takuboku thinks of the reactions of the people in Otaru when they learn of his exile. He knows he will receive no sympathy: waga sareru nochi no uwasa wo omoiyaru tabide wa kanashi shi ni yuku goto

The thought of their gossip, once they Hear I’ve gone, makes the journey sadder, Like going to my death.

T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y —–181

Kushiro proved to be more agreeable than Takuboku had expected, but after a few months there, he was eager to return to Tokyo. Once back in Tokyo, he learned about a movement among poets to bring thought and literature together. Takuboku may have interpreted “thought” here in terms of socialist revolution, but the members of the movement probably had in mind nothing more revolutionary than bringing poetry into the present day by writing in the colloquial. At first, Takuboku was not much impressed by the movement; he continued as always to write tanka in classical Japanese, never supposing that this relic from the past was an obstacle to modernity. The many difficulties in Takuboku’s life made him sympathetic to the spirit of the new movement. He learned from the members that poems need not be about beauty or love; the misery of poverty or even occurrences of no significance might also be suitable subjects for poetry. Takuboku wrote, The works of the new poets, in both content and form, swept away long-established conventions. They sought freedom, and I, of course, had no reason to doubt their determination to devote their every effort to using contemporary language in their poems and striving for novelty. In my heart I thought, “Of course, this must be done!” However, I did not feel like expressing this feeling to others. What I said instead was something along the lines of “but poetry has to have restrictions. Poems written with absolute freedom inevitably become exactly the same as prose.”9 My personal experiences did not permit me to hope for anything in the future of poetry. Once in a while, when I happened to read a magazine with poems written by members of the new movement, I secretly rejoiced to see how clumsy they were. Takuboku’s thoughts are puzzling. Considering that he had gladly joined the new movement and agreed with poets who advocated changes in poetry, why did he rejoice that poems by members of the new movement

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were clumsy? And if he believed that everyday language was the best for poetry, why did he insist that rules were essential? One may get the impression that Takuboku, for all his modernity, still believed that a poem must be written in the thirty-one syllables of the tanka. On many occasions, Takuboku insisted that poetry must be written in the language spoken by contemporary people; accordingly, he declared that a poem written in the fortieth year of Meiji (1907) must be in the language of that particular year. Despite this conviction, Takuboku continued to write in bungo (classical Japanese), a dead language that no one had spoken for centuries. He explained this contradiction in terms of the different feelings a poet may convey through the style of Japanese he uses, regardless of the content. The poet should feel at liberty to use either bungo or the colloquial language, whichever his knowledge and tastes dictate. Even if he composes two poems that express similar sentiments, the effect will be quite dissimilar if he uses bungo in one and the colloquial language in the other. The poet should be free to use whichever language suits his purpose. Takuboku did not explain, however, why he never wrote a tanka in modern Japanese. We may guess that the main reason was the ease with which he could compose in the classical language and the love he felt for the old words. Bungo was also more economical in its expression than the colloquial language was, a matter of importance when the poet has only thirty-one syllables at his disposal. Takuboku had no patience for poets who used bungo simply because they supposed it was more elegant than the spoken language. Their poems were something like expensive decorations, but they considered that this made them superior to, or at least different from, ordinary human beings. Takuboku disliked anything artistic in poetry, and he had contempt for poets who imitated the mannerisms of European poetry when they composed Japanese poems. In Poems to Eat, Takuboku recalled, “The mild-mannered old man who accompanied me to the Kushiro newspaper office introduced me with the words, ‘He’s a shintaishi poet.’10 I have never been so brutally

T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y —–183

insulted by a well-meaning man as I was at that moment.” Takuboku does not specify what in the old politician’s words had insulted him, but presumably he was annoyed at being associated with the symbolism, rhyme, and other features typical of the shintaishi.11 Toward the end of Poems to Eat, Takuboku put forward several propositions.12 First of all, he denied that the poet was a special species of human being. He had no objection if a poet called another person who wrote poems a poet, but he thought it inexcusable for a man to call himself a poet: Perhaps calling it inexcusable is too strong, but I say this because anyone who thinks he’s a poet will ruin whatever he writes. . . . We don’t need such self-assurance. A poet needs only three qualities. First, he must be a human being. Second, he must be a human being. Third, he must be a human being. Finally, he must truly be a person who possesses everything that an ordinary man possesses.13 Next, Takuboku discussed what a poem should be: “A poem must not be ‘poetic.’ It must be a strict report of the changes in a person’s emotional life. (There probably is a more appropriate term.) It must be an honest diary. It therefore must be fragmental. It should not be consistent.”14 His insistence that a poem be fragmental was an unusual demand, but not mentioning everything meant in a poem was the secret of Takuboku’s tanka. He wrote little about how he set about composing his tanka but mentioned that on one occasion he had written, without stopping, four hundred or five hundred poems.15 Takuboku had more to say about composing tanka after he read “A Personal View of the Collapse of the Tanka” (Tanka metsubō shiron) by Onoe Saishū (1876–1957), an essay that appeared in October 1910. Saishū claimed in his article that the tanka had reached a dead end. Tanka poets were now producing strings of related tanka, as many as a hundred at a

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time. A tanka was no longer being read and analyzed by itself but as a part of a longer whole. This fashion stemmed from the feeling of contemporary poets that thirty-one syllables were inadequate for expressing complicated emotions. The death of the tanka was further made inevitable by the retention of bungo, a dead language incapable of describing contemporary perceptions.16 Saishū’s article created a sensation in poetry circles. Takuboku immediately decided to write a response in which he would present his own views on the tanka. He published this short work in the November issue of the magazine Sōsaku under the title “Ichi riko shugisha to yūjin to no taiwa” (Dialogue Between a Devotee of Egoism and His Friend). Far from denouncing Saishū’s prophecy of the death of the tanka, Takuboku agreed with almost all his assertions. The work is in the form of a conversation between the two friends, A (Takuboku) and B (Onoe Saishū). All but the last pages of the conversation are unrelated to poetry, though this was supposed to be the subject of their dialogue. The reader may wonder why Takuboku took the trouble to record such matters as how he had managed to travel first class on a ship with a third-class ticket, but he last few pages are relevant to poetry. Takuboku asked Saishū if he had predicted the end of the tanka because his own tanka had reached a stalemate. Saishū humorously then asked whether Takuboku had arranged their meeting because his poetry had reached a stalemate.17 Takuboku answered, probably without a smile, “Yes, and not only my tanka. This is a time when everything is at a standstill.” Takuboku, however, defended the tanka, even when it was strung into chains, a feature of composition at the time. Saishū questioned, “Is that your way of saying that the tanka is eternal and will never perish?” t akuboku : I don’t like the word “eternal. ” s aishū : Then let’s forget eternal. Do you think that the tanka still has a long life ahead of it?

T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y —–185

t akuboku : It’ll have a long life. People long thought that human life was fifty years, but plenty of people now go on for eighty years. The same is true of the tanka. But someday it will die.18 They agreed that the Japanese language must become one, the colloquial, instead of the present combination of bungo and modern Japanese. Saishū pointed out that poets had already lost the skill of creating rhythms in alternating five and seven syllables. Takuboku went further: “Five and seven syllables may stretch to seven and eight, and still be a tanka. . . . I’ve always composed in bungo, so it would be no problem to keep doing it, but if I tried using strictly contemporary words, my poems may not be reduced to thirty-one syllables. If I can’t do this, the language may be contemporary, but it will confuse me.” This was about as close as Takuboku came to justifying the use of the classical language in his tanka. The last two pages of the dialogue contain the most famous and moving part of the conversation. Takuboku remarked, People say that the tanka form is inconvenient because it’s so short, but I’ve always found it convenient, ever since I was a child. In fact, its shortness is precisely what makes it convenient. Isn’t that the case? People, no matter who they are, tend to forget things right after they occur, or even if they don’t forget them for a time, they lack the carryover to put them into words, and they end up never expressing them in their whole lifetime. We are constantly being subjected to innumerable sensations, one after another, from inside and outside ourselves. Most people look down on such sensations; even if they don’t go so far as to feel contempt for them, they let the sensations escape with hardly a show of interest. But anybody who loves life cannot despise such moments. . . . Although a sensation may last only a second, it is a second of life that will not return again during one’s life. I believe these moments are to be cherished. I do not want to let them escape. The most convenient

186—–T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y

way to express these experiences is with the tanka, which, being short, does not require much trouble or time. It’s really convenient. One of the few blessings we Japanese enjoy is having this poetic form called the tanka.19 After a pause, Takuboku added, “I write tanka because I love life.” After another pause, he continued, “I write tanka because they are more to be loved than anything else.” After still another pause, he said, “But even the tanka will perish—not because of any reason, but because of a collapse from within.” After that he observed, “But I am far from thinking that it would be better if it perished any sooner.” Saishū got in a word at this point, trying to restore the humorous tone of the conversation, “It’s a good thing to love one’s life. You write tanka because you love life. I eat delicious food because of my love for life. They’re much the same thing.” Takuboku’s reply, after another pause, was not a continuation of Saishū’s humor. He stated in earnest, “But to tell the truth, I don’t want to force myself to compose poetry.” After more interruptions from Saishū, Takuboku concluded with “I never thought, from the very beginning, that I was likely to devote my whole life to the tanka. [Pause] Is there anything to which I could devote my whole life? [Pause] I love myself, but I don’t much trust myself either.”20

14 The High Treason Trial

T

akuboku’s diary contains no entries during most of the period between June 1909 and January 1911, so the main sources of information about his life during this period are the letters he sent to friends. Although these letters are often of interest, they reveal relatively little about the events of his daily life—for example, his relationship with his wife. Of course, it is possible to infer from a letter in which Takuboku declares his overpowering desire to be left alone that his wife’s company gave him no pleasure.1 In addition, the love letters he sent to two women he never met were indications of yearning for women other than his wife. Fortunately for students of Takuboku, his diary resumes on January 3, 1911, enabling us to see his daily life as before. The diary entry for this particular day, however, was devoted not to his private life but to the most memorable event of the period, the arrest and trial of Kōtoku Shūsui (1871–1911), who was charged with having plotted to kill Emperor Meiji. For several years, various radical groups had multiplied in Japan. The most extremist, the Social Revolutionary Party, had declared that “the means whereby the revolution can be founded is the bomb.”2 In 1907, a

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leaflet was prepared by the Japanese members of this party in California, which closed with the warning to Emperor Meiji: “Mutsuhito, poor Mutsuhito! Your life is almost at an end. The bombs are all around you and are on the point of exploding. It is good-bye for you.”3 The leaflet found its way to Japan, where it created a sensation. The discovery of bomb-making equipment on May 25, 1910, gave the authorities grounds for cracking down on known anarchists and other revolutionaries. Hundreds of anarchists were taken into custody, and twentysix were charged with plotting to kill the emperor. Kōtoku was a journalist by profession, but in 1904 he and Sakai Toshihiko (1871–1933) had made the first translation into Japanese of The Communist Manifesto. The book was banned, and the translators were imprisoned for five months. When Kōtoku sailed in 1906 to America, then a hotbed of radical groups, he took with him Peter Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist. Although Kōtoku called himself a nihilist, in his “Letter from San Francisco,” he quoted Kropotkin in deploring the common connection of nihilism with terrorism: “To confuse Nihilism with terrorism is as wrong as to confuse a philosophical movement like Stoicism or Positivism with a political movement.”4 Nevertheless, while in America, Kōtoku’s politics shifted from Marxian socialism to radical anarchism. The trial of the twenty-six defendants, begun in December 1910, was known as the High Treason Trial. The foregone conclusion of this judicial procedure, which was not open to the public and (by order of the government) not reported in the press, was that some or all of the defendants would be found guilty. Takuboku’s friends believed that most of the accused were innocent, but the account in Takuboku’s diary of a New Year’s visit to the Yosanos’ house indicates that he was dismayed by the atmosphere engulfing the gathering: the Yosanos and most of their friends seemed to hope that the defendants would be severely punished. Later that day, Takuboku visited Hiraide Shū (1875–1914), whom he had known as a Myōjō poet and a founding member of Subaru.5 Hiraide,

T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l —–189

now working mainly as a lawyer, informed Takuboku of developments in the anarchists’ trial. Hiraide observed that if he were the presiding judge, he would sentence Kanno Suga and three other defendants to death for plotting to kill the emperor, and he would condemn Kōtoku and another man to life in prison.6 A less important man would receive a sentence of five years in prison for the lesser crime of lèse-majesté. He would acquit all the remaining defendants.7 At Takuboku’s request, Hiraide lent him the statement that Kōtoku had written while in prison. Takuboku did not comment in his diary on Hiraide’s opinions of the punishments appropriate for the defendants, but in a letter he expressed the opinion that four of the defendants were guilty but that the rest should be punished for nothing more serious than sedition.8 Hiraide’s severe judgments for the defendants may surprise those who know his name mainly as the lawyer who passionately attempted to save Kōtoku. At this stage of the trial, he evidently believed that Kōtoku was guilty of a major crime; otherwise, he would not have considered it proper for him to be sentenced to the severe punishment of life in prison. But the fact that he lent to Takuboku the “letter of vindication” that Kōtoku had written in prison suggests that Hiraide was not fully convinced of Kōtoku’s guilt and wished to hear Takuboku’s opinion, though he was aware that he was said to be a socialist. On January 5, Takuboku made a copy of Kōtoku’s “letter of vindication.”9 He also briefly noted the two main issues in the letter—Kōtoku’s refutation of the misunderstanding concerning anarchism and his protestation of the illegality of the prosecutor’s examination. Kōtoku insisted that he was not the kind of man who would ever dare to do anything so reckless as the deed described in the indictment. Perhaps the most interesting part of Kōtoku’s letter was his denial of the common association of anarchism with pistols and assassinations. There indeed had been assassinations, but was this not true of all the other political parties? Kōtoku believed that anarchism was a philosophy much like Daoism. Once the current system of government had

190—–T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l

been replaced, anarchism would have for its goal the creation of a society that was governed by morality and benevolence.10 Takuboku was so impressed by Kōtoku’s letter that he declared that he reminded him of Saigō Takamori!11 It is not clear what similarities he found between these two men, but perhaps he thought of both Saigō and Kōtoku as heroes who followed their conscience even when this involved acting in a manner prohibited by the government. In May 1911, Takuboku wrote a Japanese version of Kōtoku’s “letter of vindication.” It is in part a translation of Kōtoku’s text but in addition contains notes and commentary written by Takuboku. Then in June 1911, angered by what Takuboku was convinced had been a perversion of justice in the trial, he also wrote eight poems (shi),12 with the overall title of Yobuko to kuchibue (Flute and Whistle). Quite unlike his earlier shi, they make no mention of his emotions but call for action, especially from young people. One of them, “After Endless Discussion,”13 begins, We have read, we have fought arguments, But the shining light in our eyes Is no match for that of the Russian youths of fifty years ago. We discuss what we must do, But not one man, his hand clenched in a fist, bangs on his desk And loudly shouts V NAROD!14 This may have encouraged young Japanese men to support a revolution, but as a poem it is excessively blunt, it lacking the overtones one expects from Takuboku. He undoubtedly was aware of this, but his aim was not to create a memorable poem but to stimulate young men into joining “with the people.” The poem is in the form of stanzas of six lines each, suggesting that Takuboku had wished to give a poetic form to the usually free shi. Apart from its significance to Takuboku’s development as a poet, the poem indicates that he, no longer satisfied with being a

T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l —–191

“fellow traveler” of the revolution, was eager to reveal in his poetry his socialist and possibly anarchist convictions. Some months earlier, on January 9, 1911, Takuboku had written his friend Segawa Fukashi, “I have hesitated to call myself a socialist, but I no longer hesitate. Socialism is not the ultimate ideal. The ultimate of socialist thought is nothing other than anarchism. When I first read Kropotkin’s works, I was knocked for a loop: there is no philosophy so vast, so deep, so certain, and so necessary.”15 Later in January, Takuboku met Toki Zenmaro (1885–1980),16 the son of a Buddhist priest who, as a youth, had been attracted to poetry. In 1910, Toki had published the collection of tanka titled NAKIWARAI (Laughter Among Tears). The roman letters in capitals, the title, and the forms of the poems were unprecedented, signifying that a new kind of poetry had been created. Each tanka in the book was in three lines in roman capitals.17 Takuboku’s review of Toki’s book was favorable and included a long sentence that began “Few of his poems resemble tanka— his rejection of tanka-like poems and of technically clever, ingenious, or overwrought poems, the kind of poetry that kept the tanka from developing as other forms of literature have developed, was a remarkable phenomenon that, in the last year or two, has shaken the center of the world of poetry.”18 The two men first met in January 1911 and were pleased to discover that they both had grown up in temples and were now working for a newspaper. Even more important was the similarity of their political views. In fact, they got along so well that they decided to found a magazine, but after a great many delays, mainly caused by financial difficulties, Takuboku urged Toki to abandon the project. Toki reluctantly agreed, but this disappointment did not affect their friendship, which lasted for the rest of Takuboku’s life. Takuboku’s diary entry for February 24, 1911, mentions that he had stayed up until eleven that night writing about Kōtoku, who, together with eleven others of the accused, had been executed the previous day.

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This had come as a great shock, but despite his admiration for Kōtoku, Takuboku’s subsequent diaries hardly mention his name or the High Treason Trial. This does not signify a change in Takuboku’s political views, however. He continued to read works by Kropotkin, but major events in his life distracted his attention from the lost cause of Kōtoku. The birth of Takuboku’s first son and, on the same day, the signing of a contract to publish A Handful of Sand were soon followed by Shin’ichi’s death and immediately afterward by the successful publication of Takuboku’s book. Affecting Takuboku’s life even more than these events was his sudden, severe illness, which made it impossible for him to write and made him suspend all his political activities. Takuboku first mentioned his illness in his diary entry for January 29, 1911, in which he described a swelling that made his abdomen hurt when he sat. Although he managed to get to his office the next day, it was with great pain. On February 1, he went to the University Hospital for a physical examination. The doctor who examined him declared after one look, “This is very serious.” He told Takuboku that he had chronic pleurisy and urged him to enter the hospital as soon as possible. The doctor estimated it would take at least three months for him to recover. Takuboku was hospitalized the same day.19 Less than a year earlier, in the Romaji Diary, he had prayed to be stricken with illness: For just a week, even three days will be fine, God, if you exist, aah God! I have just one wish, that you somehow Will break me down a little, anywhere in my body. It doesn’t matter if it hurts, make me sick. Oh, make me sick!20 Takuboku’s wish had been granted, but it did not bring the peaceful sleep he hoped for. Alone at night, the silence of the hospital did not en-

T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l —–193

able him to sleep soundly; instead, it made him miss the familiar noises of his apartment over the barber shop, even though he had always found them irritating.21 On February 7, he had an operation. He wrote in his diary that a hole was drilled in his abdomen through which water was drained. The operation was successful and relieved him of the pain that for a week had tormented him whenever he moved his body. The worst part of life in the hospital was the tedium, relieved only by occasional visits or letters. On the day after Takuboku entered the hospital, a man came from the Asahi shinbun with an advance payment of Takuboku’s salary, arranged by his benefactor Satō Hokkō. Then on February 3, Setsuko paid him a visit. Her admirers state that she visited Takuboku every day he spent in the hospital, proof that her love was unchanged despite their altercations, but Setsuko’s name hardly appears in Takuboku’s diary between February 26 and May 30, 1911.22 It is possible that she visited but that he neglected to mention this in his diary. It also is possible that she decided after his first weeks in the hospital that he had recovered sufficiently not to need her visits. Takuboku left the hospital on March 15 after forty days and returned home, where he and Setsuko resumed living together, though his diary does not mention her.23 Takuboku’s most faithful visitor while he was in the hospital was Toki Zenmaro, who brought him newspapers and magazines and a copy of Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist. Occasionally, an unexpected visitor cheered Takuboku. On March 10, Kindaichi suddenly appeared and stayed with Takuboku for a long time.24 The icy wall separating them seemed to have melted. While in the hospital, Takuboku passed the time by studying German, reading Gorky and Kropotkin, and occasionally composing tanka, but sometimes his high fever kept him from doing anything. On March 11, Satō Hokkō visited Takuboku with eighty yen, the combined gift from members of the Asahi shinbun.

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Although Takuboku’s illness gradually lessened, he still occasionally suffered from bouts of fever. Not until April 7 did he feel well enough to accompany Toki and Maruya Kiichi (1887–1974)25 on an excursion to his beloved Asakusa. To his surprise, he discovered that he could no longer stand its hustle and bustle and wanted to escape as quickly as possible. Illness may have changed his tastes.26 Takuboku returned to the hospital on April 10 for his first X-ray, which revealed that his right lung was still infected. On April 25, a return of his fever made him wonder why, in the forty days since he left the hospital, he had still not been completely cured. Unable to write, his only source of money was the advance payment on his salary he received from the Asahi shinbun. He was terrified at the thought he would have to return this indebtedness when he returned to his job.27 Returning to his studies, he remembered reading the English version of Tolstoy’s “Bethink Yourselves!” which the Times of London had published in an English translation on July 17, 1904. It had been telegraphed to Tokyo, where it was translated into Japanese by Kōtoku Shūsui and Sakai Toshihiko and was published in early August in the Heimin shinbun, a socialist weekly newspaper. Takuboku states in his diary that he had not waited for the Japanese translation but had read the English version.28 Now he recalled, The first time I came in contact with this essay was actually with a copy of the English text in the magazine Jidai shichō. At the time I was nineteen and had only a weak grasp of the English language. Needless to say, only the bare outlines of the sense of the text barely entered my brain. This meant that all I could obtain from the directness, severity, and daring of the words, flashing everywhere like stars, was that occasional shock that startled me. I thought, “He lives up to his reputation, but his ideas are unworkable.” This was the criticism I offered at the time. And having so proclaimed, I completely forgot every word of Tolstoy. Without thinking, I approved of the war and became a patriotic Japanese.29

T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l —–195

In April and May 1911, Takuboku wrote the essay “Nichiro sensō ron” (On the Russo-Japanese War). It opens with a description of two events of unusual importance that had taken place on the same day: Leo Tolstoy’s astonishing article appeared in the London Times on June 27, 1904, the same that day the Emperor Meiji30 bestowed an imperial rescript on Admiral Tōgō [Heihachirō], the commander of the joint fleet, in recognition of his success in the glorious attack at Port Arthur. On the following day, Japanese forces succeeded in occupying a dividing ridge in Manchuria. Telegraph wires that had been crammed with all the unfortunate events that had befallen Japanese forces on land and sea were now filled, day after day, with accounts of victories far greater than the Japanese military had expected and astonishing the world.31 Tolstoy’s call for peace was at first forgotten in the glorification of wartime success that swept the country. After days of bad news, the victories of the Japanese navy and army had astonished everyone, but the telegram that transmitted Tolstoy’s article proved to have a more lasting effect, powerfully stirring the emotions of many people. The Japanese translation was published in the Heimin shinbun in its entirety on August 7, and reprints of the newspaper article were later published as booklets. The Heimin shinbun also printed an essay commenting on the Tolstoy article. Takuboku wrote, “No doubt printing the essay was truly a necessity for a newspaper that is socialist in its politics.”32 The reporters who wrote the essay, unable to conceal their joy, proclaimed, “Reading Tolstoy’s article, we felt almost as if we were listening to the sages or the prophets of old.”33 At a time when the people, carried away by their excitement over the victory, were shouting and rushing about like madmen, these reporters continued to protect the solitary bastion of pacifism, albeit fighting a difficult cause. Takuboku noted that not everyone welcomed Tolstoy’s pacifism. Many opined that even if pacifism were appropriate for the Russians, it

196—–T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l

would never work for the Japanese. The Heimin shinbun, shifting its position, accused Tolstoy of not having planned sufficiently. An unidentified patriot pointed out, “That old man thinks that our country is the same as Russia. We are sad because he doesn’t know enough about conditions in this country, and that makes him speak ill of Japan.”34 One might expect Takuboku to have supported Tolstoy’s pacifism, but at the conclusion of his essay, he noted without comment that the Japanese navy was preparing for a war, this time with America. Takuboku seemed to have accepted this possibility. He did not regret that the great Russian writer was no longer in this world but stated instead, “I am still by no means a believer in Tolstoy’s ideas. I can only say of the old gentleman’s thesis, ‘It’s magnificent, but it won’t work.’ But this statement has an entirely different significance from what it had for me seven years ago. The old man was seventy-seven when he wrote his essay.”35 Takuboku did not indicate why he was so sure that Tolstoy’s “thesis” would not work. His mention of Tolstoy’s age suggests he had concluded that pacifism was a philosophy confined to the old. His conclusion was a sign of his ambivalence: Takuboku dreamed of an anarchist world of freedom, but he nonetheless loved his country. He admired Tolstoy but, as a Japanese, rejected him.36 Takuboku’s opinions of Nagai Kafū show a similar ambivalence. Although he praised Kafū as a novelist, he condemned his lack of patriotism. In discussing Kafū’s “Diary of Someone Recently Returned to Japan,” Takuboku wrote, At first I could not help but assent at certain places in the text where Kafū wrote sneeringly about Japan. It reflected my own lack of satisfaction with contemporary Japanese culture. However, once I had finished reading his story, I felt unusually disappointed—no, it would be more accurate to say that I couldn’t overcome my feeling of extreme dislike of the story. To put it in a word, Kafū’s unpatriotic ideas resulted from his infatuation with

T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l —–197

Europe and America. He spent years in France and enjoyed the life of Paris. That’s why he didn’t hesitate to disdain and ridicule every aspect of the nature and people of Japan.37 Takuboku may have felt uneasy about his rejection of Tolstoy, and his article on the Russo-Japanese War was not published during his lifetime. In the summer of 1911,38 a few months after writing this essay, Takuboku, leaning on a cane, made his way to Kindaichi’s house, a considerable distance from his own.39 The only account of this visit was brought to life by Kindaichi, who described it in a lecture he gave in 1919 on the seventh anniversary of Takuboku’s death. He revealed that he and Takuboku had had a dramatic meeting the year before Takuboku died: Ishikawa’s illness was having a temporary respite. I think it was in the late summer or early autumn of 1911. He came all the way to my house, leaning on a stick. This was probably the last visit he made to anyone in this world. In surprise, I welcomed him at the front door. He stood there a moment, looking less like Ishikawa than the ghost of Ishikawa. Although his face was emaciated, he greeted me with a smile in an extremely happy manner. He made his way upstairs and sat himself down in my study. He seemed a little short of breath, but once he got accustomed to his surroundings, he was once again the old Ishikawa, though a more cheerful Ishikawa than usual. While making his greetings, he said in nostalgic tones, “Today I really felt like seeing you, and that’s why I’ve come here, all of a sudden. I came because I wanted to let you know, as soon as I could, of the truly unbearable happiness I feel. I’ve caused you a lot of worry, thanks to my ideas, but now you should be relieved. I have reached a turning point in my thoughts.”40 Kindaichi parenthetically added, “It is not clear which things he said came first and which came afterward. In any case, here is the gist of the

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words. We spoke in the ordinary language in which two men would talk, with a few honorifics thrown in.”41 Takuboku resumed, “I’ve decided the world would be better off if it remained unchanged. I now see clearly that the thinking of Kōtoku and his followers contained serious mistakes.”42 Takuboku said he had not settled on a definitive name for his new political philosophy, but as a temporary expedient he had chosen socialistic imperialism (shakaishugiteki teikokushugi), though people might laugh at the combination of the antithetic terms. Takuboku proposed this name and others that were equally unfamiliar in the course of the conversation. They have indeed been ridiculed by most experts, who refuse to take them seriously. The words, however, were not intended by Takuboku to be a joke; they were the keys to his conversation with Kindaichi. It should be noted that the name Takuboku gave to his new philosophy could never have been invented by Kindaichi; they prove that the meeting had actually taken place. A letter that Takuboku sent to Segawa had included a similar term; he wrote that the practical man must believe in either socialism or else “national socialism” (kokka shakaishugi),43 an equally unusual pairing. The main reason for not believing Kindaichi’s account of Takuboku’s visit is that in none of his subsequent writings does Takuboku renounce socialism or anarchism. The works of Takuboku’s last years, with the exception of some poems without political content, are socialistic. Moreover, nothing in Takuboku’s diaries sustains Kindaichi’s testimony that Takuboku’s political convictions had shifted. The absence of witnesses during the meeting has also made scholars question the truth of Kindaichi’s account, though no one calls this eminent scholar a liar. Still others think it inconceivable that Takuboku, who had broken off his relationship with Kindaichi, would have chosen him to give notice of the great change in his life. The letter that Takuboku sent to Hiraide Shū on January 22, 1911, however, contains a passage indicating that Takuboku had shifted his politi-

T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l —–199

cal stance from anarchist to advocate of parliamentarian socialism: “For a long time I have dreamed of creating a magazine advocating a unicameral system, ordinary elections,44 and international peace. However, with the strength and funds I now possess, this is doomed to be no more than a dream.”45 A belief in elections and the need for change in the Diet do not resemble the violence favored by anarchists. Moreover, the goal of international peace that Takuboku advocated was more typical of parliamentary socialism than of anarchism. The chief reason for believing Kindaichi’s account is his eminence and the respect he commands. He never broke with Takuboku and had no reason, nine years after Takuboku’s death, to invent a tale about an imaginary visit. Kindaichi did not share Takuboku’s attraction to socialism, but in any case, politics had played little part in their long relationship. Furthermore, during his account of the visit, Kindaichi commented that he had no knowledge of politics, and this was probably true. If he worried about Takuboku’s involvement with anarchists, it was because he, like many Japanese, thought they were assassins. This was not an entirely false belief. Kōtoku admitted that the anarchists had carried out assassinations, and many Japanese knew that in 1901 the American president William McKinley had been assassinated by an anarchist. It therefore must have come as a relief to Kindaichi when Takuboku told him that he no longer accepted the ideas of dangerous lawbreakers. It is possible that after talking with Kindaichi, Takuboku reverted to anarchism or some combination of political ideas. Scholars do not often point out the inconsistencies in his ideas, probably out of admiration for the great poet, but they are not hard to find. The most convincing interpretation of the visit by a Takuboku specialist is that of Imai Yasuko: Toward the end of this month [ June], when Takuboku visited Kindaichi for the last time, he apparently told him that he had become aware of mistakes in socialism and said that he had now reached a position of socialistic imperialism. In my opinion, he

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had become aware that in a society that showed not the slightest sign of changing, he had no role to play. Although he still accepted the correctness of socialism, he hoped somehow to lead an unobtrusive life. Or perhaps in the depths of his conscience, he was already anticipating his death.46 Socialistic imperialism seems a self-contradiction, but it embraces Takuboku’s two major desires, that anarchism, if achieved, would bring the absolute freedom he craved and imperialism would protect the Japan he loved.

15 the l ast days

S

erious trouble had erupted between Takuboku and Setsuko on June 3, 1911. A letter addressed to Setsuko arrived that morning just as she was about to head for the pawnshop. On returning home, she informed Takuboku that a letter had arrived from her sister Takako, urging her to pay a visit to their old home in Morioka. Takako had enclosed in the letter five yen for the train fare. Setsuko said she still had the money but had somehow lost the letter. She asked Takuboku what answer she should send to Takako. She added that she had heard that her father, who had recently been appointed to a senior post, intended to sell the house in Morioka and move to Hakodate. Probably Takako thought Setsuko would wish to have a last look at the house where she had lived as a girl. Takuboku was reluctant to consent to this suggestion. He remembered all too well that two years earlier Setsuko had surreptitiously left home with Kyōko and gone off to the house in Morioka. Unable to restrain his doubts about the letter, he replied, “If you go back to your old home, go by yourself. You’re not to take Kyōko.”1

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On June 4, Setsuko, pleading with Takuboku to show greater trust in her, begged him to allow Kyōko to travel with her. Takuboku refused again and again until he lost his temper and cried, “If that’s what you’ve decided on, I’ll disown your rights as Kyōko’s mother. If you go with Kyōko, you should take it for granted you won’t be able to come back here for the rest of your life.”2 Setsuko then confessed that she had lied about having received a letter from Takako; as a matter of fact, she had borrowed the five yen from a friend. She revealed that her reason for wanting to go to Morioka was because she hoped to get a share of the money raised by the sale of her father’s house so she could use it to find a better place in Tokyo for Takuboku and the family to live in.3 After hearing Setsuko’s admission that she had lied to him, Takuboku was in no mood to forgive further deception from his wife. He shouted, “I tell you we’re divorced!” Setsuko, however, showed no sign of leaving the house. Although Takuboku did not attempt to force her, he wrote in his diary, “Our marriage is now nothing more than a formality.”4 On June 5, Takako, unaware of the quarrel, attempted by telegram to persuade Setsuko to return immediately to Morioka. By way of an answer, Takuboku sent a letter to Takako forbidding her henceforth to communicate directly with Setsuko. On June 6, Takako sent another telegram, to which the enraged Takuboku replied that if Setsuko’s family tried to use their parental rights with respect to his wife, it would be proof that the two families were as incompatible as ice and charcoal, and he would demand a divorce.5 Faced with the likelihood that Takuboku really would divorce her if she persisted, Setsuko abandoned her attempt to visit her old home. She and Takuboku went on living in the apartment on Yumi Street, together with Takuboku’s mother and father, Kyōko, and sometimes Mitsuko. On July 28, Setsuko, who had not been feeling well, underwent a medical examination. She was diagnosed as suffering from tuberculosis and also was informed that it was contagious. She took to her bed and,

T h e L a s t D a y s —–203

for months afterward, hardly left it. Takuboku’s aged mother was left to cook for the entire family and take care of other household duties. On August 7, the family moved from Yumi Street to an apartment that Miyazaki had found for them in Koishigawa. Even though the new apartment was considerably larger than their former home, Takuboku could not endure seeing his old mother trudging upstairs and downstairs, doing all of Setsuko’s work. He sent a telegram to Mitsuko, then studying in Hokkaidō with a British missionary lady, asking her to come to Tokyo and relieve their mother from doing the household chores. She accepted at once and arrived in Tokyo on August 10. On September 3, Takuboku’s father disappeared for a third time, taking with him four kimonos; a hat; cigarettes; one yen, fifty sen of Mitsuko’s money; and fifty sen from the household funds. In his diary for May 3, Takuboku had mentioned that after losing his temper, his father had hit his mother. He therefore may have escaped to Hokkaidō out of aversion to sharing the same room with his wife. Afterward, he went to live with his daughter Tora. He never saw his wife again and did not attend her funeral. Perhaps the greatest shock of Takuboku’s life came on September 10, 1911.6 According to Mitsuko, Takuboku had been in bed with a fever for several days. When the mail was delivered that day, Setsuko (whose illness had somewhat improved) was not in the house, and Mitsuko was in the kitchen. Normally, one or the other of the women would have picked up letters that had come for Takuboku and taken them to his room, but neither noticed that the mail had been delivered. Tamura Ine, Takuboku’s niece, who was helping with the housework,7 happened to see that a letter had arrived. Even though it was addressed to Setsuko, Ine delivered it to Takuboku, the master of the house. Soon afterward, Mitsuko, still in the kitchen, heard Takuboku cry in his high-pitched voice, “What a disgusting letter!” She rushed to Takuboku and found him writhing with anger. He had pulled a money order from the envelope and was ripping it into shreds.

204—–T h e L a s t D a y s

The only clue to the sender was the words “from the Biei Plain” on the envelope. Biei, an army base in central Hokkaidō, was the headquarters of the Seventh Division. Takuboku immediately remembered that Miyazaki Ikuu was stationed in Biei, doing military duty. He had no doubt sent the letter. Takuboku showed Mitsuko the letter. It began, “Please have a photograph taken, showing just yourself, and send it to me.” Although there was more to the letter than this request, Takuboku refused to let Mitsuko read anything more. She recalled, “He was so overcome with fury that he wouldn’t let me come any closer to him.”8 Soon afterward, Setsuko returned home, unaware of Takuboku’s anger. He called her to his bedside, then abruptly thrust the letter in her face, snarling in a shaking voice, “How about it—would you like to have a picture taken of just yourself?” In the next breath he announced, “This is your last day here. We’re divorcing, so take your medicine and go back home to Morioka! You’d better not try to take Kyōko with you. Go back home, all by yourself!”9 Takuboku followed these commands with words muttered in tears, “I always trusted him, never suspecting a thing. What happened to the friendship we shared for so many years? Just think—I accepted all the help he offered, not realizing . . .” Takuboku’s mother, in the next room listening to Takuboku’s voice, raised a clamor of weeping and sobbing, not only out of sympathy for Takuboku, but also out of worry that Setsuko might be driven from home while she was still sick. Mitsuko wrote that she was initially stunned by the furor unleashed by Takuboku’s anger, but when she thought back on conversations she had had with Setsuko, she began to think that Takuboku’s rage may have been justified. In the books about Takuboku that she later wrote, she related how Setsuko had boasted of love affairs.10 In fact, Setsuko was so ready to gossip about her lovers that Mitsuko supposed Takuboku must

T h e L a s t D a y s —–205

have had some inkling of her infidelity, but he had never doubted her chastity. He was thunderstruck by the letter, seemingly proof that Setsuko had been unfaithful. Even though Takuboku had slept with many other women, most of them geishas or prostitutes, such affairs were considered at the time as little more than passing pleasures and were not unexpected for lonely men living in remote places like Kushiro. Violation of chastity by a woman was quite another matter, however, a crime so serious that the offender might be punished with death. Takuboku had never supposed Setsuko was guilty of any offense worse than her unauthorized visit to her parents’ house. Now he suddenly was confronted by evidence that Setsuko had a lover and that her lover was his best friend. It is not surprising that he nearly went out of his mind. If the letter had been signed, it may not have been so provocative, but the anonymity seemed to Takuboku proof of Setsuko’s disloyalty. Confronted with the letter, Setsuko could do nothing but weep and beg Takuboku’s pardon, again and again. Takuboku, paying no attention to her pleas, sent a long, registered, letter to Setsuko’s father, presumably a bill of divorcement. He ordered Mitsuko to post it at once. He also wrote a letter to Miyazaki in Biei renouncing his friendship. These letters not only deprived him of his wife but also cut off his contacts with his bosom friend who was now his sole source of income. Setsuko’s weeping and incessant appeals for mercy went on for so long that it seemed they would never end, but that evening she suddenly disappeared. When she emerged from the bathroom, everyone was startled to see that she had shaved her head. Mitsuko rebuked her, “You shouldn’t have done that.” But Setsuko replied, “No, I had to do it, to prove my apologies were sincere. I really am sorry to have caused him to worry. I’m sure, Mitsuko, you can understand how I feel.”11 Mitsuko remarked that if she, instead of Ine, had discovered the letter, Takuboku would never have read it; but Setsuko shook off this attempt at comfort, saying that “the same thing happened with Mr. I. and

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other men too, including . . .” She seemed proud to have had lovers, even though the affairs often had an unpleasant ending. All her lovers were friends of Takuboku.12 Setsuko’s love for Miyazaki may have persisted even after she uttered her cries of remorse. Ine believed that Takuboku’s wrath reached its peak when he noticed a photograph of Miyazaki that Setsuko had hidden inside her obi and had accidentally dropped to the floor. He asked Setsuko, “Do you still feel that way about him?”13 When Ine told Mitsuko about this new blow to Takuboku’s self-respect, Mitsuko maintained that she was sure this really happened; proof could be found in Takuboku’s diary and in Kindaichi’s chronology of Takuboku. Although existing versions of Takuboku’s diary and Kindaichi’s chronology do not mention the photograph, perhaps, as Mitsuko suggested, pages relating to the incident had been torn from both works.14 Takuboku remained in a bad mood but allowed Setsuko to remain in his house. He tended to ignore her. If he needed something, he would send for Mitsuko or Ine, never Setsuko, but there were no further outbursts of fury. By the time Mitsuko left for school on September 14, Takuboku and Setsuko’s relationship seemed, at least to outsiders, much like that of an average married couple.15 Not one word in Takuboku’s diary for September or October 1911 reveals his discovery of his wife’s betrayal or his anger with Miyazaki.16 There is no mention even of the letter from Biei. Takuboku’s silence is baffling, but perhaps he had resigned himself to his fate and found no reason to tell anyone else.17 At no point in the diary did he explain why he had broken with Miyazaki. Even Mitsuko was reluctant to reveal Setsuko’s infidelity, waiting twelve years after Takuboku’s death to reveal what had happened. She followed her first disclosure with several books in which she repetitiously uncovered her knowledge of Setsuko’s misdoings, especially the “unfortunate event,” as she called it.18 It is tempting to regard Mitsuko’s account of Setsuko and the “unfortunate event” as an exaggeration or even an invention, or perhaps

T h e L a s t D a y s —–207

Mitsuko’s revenge for the years during which Takuboku made fun of her and her religion, but we have little choice but to believe her. Virtually nothing was written by anyone else about “what happened,” and Mitsuko’s account is consistent. Although many Takuboku scholars deny or ignore Mitsuko’s description of Setsuko’s betrayal, it is clear that something of great magnitude had made Takuboku break off his relationship with his closest and most generous friend. Indeed, this “unfortunate event” so jarred him spiritually that it ended his literary career. Although Takuboku managed to write some poems and essays, most of them published posthumously, apart from his diaries what he did write added little to his literary importance. When asked if Mitsuko had been telling the truth when she disclosed his relationship with Setsuko, Miyazaki either insisted that their affection was purely “platonic” or completely refused to discuss the matter, saying that Mitsuko’s gossip already had harmed quite enough people.19 His own wife, Fukiko, may have been one of those harmed, as Miyazaki had written his love letter to Setsuko less than two years after marrying Fukiko. Probably Miyazaki persuaded her not to believe the rumors. The letter from Biei did not destroy their marriage, but according to Mitsuko, Takuboku often expressed sympathy for Fukiko, saying that she, too, was a victim.20 Professor Kuwabara Takeo, a noted admirer of Takuboku, called his relationship with Miyazaki a rare example of friendship in Japanese history.21 This judgment has been repeated in many books, but Takuboku’s hatred of Miyazaki extended even to the city of Hakodate, where Miyazaki lived. Takuboku forbade Setsuko to set foot in Hakodate, even though this was where her parents and sisters lived. Moreover, he forced her to swear that she would never visit Hakodate even after he died. Ironically, Hakodate was the city where Takuboku had been happiest; he spoke of it as his second home.22 In a letter to Miyazaki, he wrote, “The only time I have ever felt the love of the sea was during the ninety days I lived on Aoyagi Street in Hakodate.”23 The sand that appears in

208—–T h e L a s t D a y s

his celebrated poems was the sand of Hakodate. But the break with Miyazaki obliterated all longing for the past. Takuboku’s diary for 1912, the year of his death, was written from only the New Year to February 20. By this time, he was so short of money that he could not afford to buy the necessary medicines for his family. He continued to read Kropotkin, but books gave him little comfort. His notion of a revolution became personal more than political. The first entry in Takuboku’s diary entry for 1912 opens, There has never been a New Year celebrated with less feeling of a new year than this one. It might be more appropriate to say this new year lacks the energy to rise to the excitement of a New Year’s Day. . . . This morning, while I was still asleep, a dozen or so New Year’s cards arrived, but I could not summon the energy to stick out my hand and examine them. In honor of the New Year, for the first time in months we hid in a closet the bedding usually left lying all day on the floor.24 Ever since the thirtieth, I have had a temperature rising to 38 degrees [100.4°F]. I managed somehow to keep going for two days, but today I was done for. The first thing I did, early this morning, was to make a sarcastic comment about the zōni soup not tasting very good. Then this evening, when the kid made a rumpus about something, I told myself I shouldn’t scold her because it was New Year’s, but she got on my nerves, so I slapped her on the cheek rather hard and made her cry.25 This was no way to treat a child of five, and Takuboku knew it, but in the misery of his fever, he could not control what he did. The most Takuboku-like aspect of the diary of 1912 is the truthfulness that compels him to describe in detail his despondent behavior during the days that the Japanese enjoy as the happiest of the year. On January 2, he decided he absolutely had to write something so that he could pay for the medicines needed by the sick people in his fam-

T h e L a s t D a y s —–209

ily, but he could not think of any subject of interest. On January 4, he had his first visitor of the year. The next day, Toki Zenmaro paid a visit. Although they had little to talk about, being with Toki was comforting because he shared Takuboku’s opinions. Takuboku’s relationship with Setsuko was less enjoyable. As he wrote on January 7, I had to spend yesterday and then again today in such an unspeakably disagreeable mood that I can’t help moaning over my misery. Of late my wife’s appearance has been rather depressing. She doesn’t comb her hair, she wears an unbecoming bathrobe over an old padded kimono, her face is completely devoid of expression or life. On top of this, from time to time she barks out thunderous coughs. Whenever I catch sight of her ugly appearance, I feel an unutterable dark rage, and a helpless sense of self-abandonment creeps over me.26 Sometimes Takuboku’s fever rose so high that for a week at a time he could not write in his diary. On January 19, his fever rose to 100.4 degrees. Everyone in the apartment, including Kyōko, was now ill. “My house is a house of sick people,” he said to Setsuko.”27 Takuboku’s suffering had yet to come to an end. At times, his mother was racked by coughing that robbed her of all willpower or pride. She probably had caught the disease from Setsuko, who earlier had been warned it was contagious. Takuboku brutally told her, “You haven’t stepped out of the house since last June. Probably this means that everybody in the house is going to die of your sickness. I’m resigned to it.”28 His mother’s coughing continued to get worse. On January 21, her every cough was red with blood. Takuboku could not afford to buy the medicine she needed, but he comforted her, promising, “Tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, I’ll make a little money, so please hold on until then.”29 But there was no way for him to make money. His friends,

210—–T h e L a s t D a y s

themselves indigent, sometimes chipped in small sums of cash. Members of the Asahi shinbun sent larger amounts of money. A friend borrowed ten yen from Natsume Sōseki’s wife, someone he hardly knew, because he knew of no one else who might give money to Takuboku. Some people were unexpectedly kind, but when Takuboku wrote to his older sister Tora and her husband asking for money, their icy reply indicated that they did not believe their mother really had tuberculosis.30 His mother’s and his wife’s repeated coughing got on Takuboku’s nerves. One night when she was putting Kyōko to sleep, Setsuko let fly some shattering coughs. Takuboku ordered her to go to bed. She lay down, at which Takuboku asked, “If I buy some medicine, will you or won’t you take it?” She answered that she herself would buy the medicine, the next day. He ended with “Your coughing is driving me crazy.”31 Even though Takuboku’s diary contains hardly a comforting word for Setsuko, on June 14, 1912, two months after Takuboku’s death, Setsuko gave birth to a second daughter. She named the infant Fusae.32 The birth of a child was proof that Takuboku and Setsuko slept together almost to the end, even without love. The last entry in Takuboku’s diary, written on February 20, 1912, notes, It is now twelve days since I stopped keeping my diary. During this time I have suffered from a high fever every single day. My temperature went up to 39 degrees [102.2°F], and when I took the medicine, the sweat came pouring out and that exhausted me so much that if I stood up and walked, my knees shook. In the meantime, my money gets scantier and scantier. The cost of Mother’s medicine and my own are, on average, a little less than forty sen a day. The remade kimono and the undergarments I redeemed from the pawnbroker remained in my house just one night before I sent them back to the pawnbroker. Once that money’s gone, my wife’s obi will meet the same fate. The doctor was not willing to wait until the end of the month for payment for the medicine. Although

T h e L a s t D a y s —–211

my mother’s condition of late seems somewhat better, her appetite has diminished.33 Takuboku’s mother died on March 7. A poem that he wrote two years earlier suggests his feelings at this time: mō omae no shintei wo yoku mitodoketa to, yume ni haha kite naite yukishi kana

“At last I can plainly understand The depth of your heart,” Mother said in my dream And, weeping, went away.34

Takuboku lived for a little more than a month after his mother’s death. Kindaichi described how, very early on the morning of April 13, a rickshaw came to his house.35 Setsuko got out and told him, “ ‘He’s been in a coma ever since last night. Whenever he wakes—it’s happened a couple of times—he says, “Send for Kindaichi.” That’s why I waited until daybreak and came here to get you as early as I could. . . .’ I [Kindaichi] went into the house. No sooner did I open the door than a hoarse, low voice, a voice as insubstantial as the wind, called out ‘tanomu!’”36 Kindaichi fell on his knees and wept, unable to speak. Takuboku’s eyes and mouth remained shut. A little later, the poet Wakayama Bokusui (1885–1928) joined the others in the room. Wakayama was not an old friend of Takuboku—they first met only in 1911 when Takuboku was in the hospital37—but he was an early and enthusiastic admirer of Takuboku’s poetry38 and did much to get it published. When he entered the room, Setsuko called out several times to Takuboku that Wakayama had come. Takuboku opened his eyes and said, “I know.” After they waited another thirty or forty minutes, Takuboku seemed more alert. Wakayama recalled, “He became capable of saying things. Of course, his words were in scraps and hard to understand, but he seemed to be fully cognizant, and we conversed on four or five subjects.”39

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Takuboku’s first words to Wakayama were to thank him for his part in getting Kanashiki gangu (Sad Toys) published and for the royalty he had received two days earlier. Setsuko was much relieved to hear him speak, and Kindaichi thought that if Takuboku could keep it up, he would be all right for the time being. He decided to meet his class, scheduled for this hour. Takuboku urged him to go. At this point, Setsuko left Takuboku’s side for the first time. Wakayama wrote, A few minutes later Takuboku’s condition once again changed completely. His lips remained as they were while he was speaking, but gradually the pupils of his eyes became peculiar. In alarm, I called to his wife who appeared together with his aged father, who had come from Hokkaidō on learning of his son’s condition. He had been hiding in the next room ever since my arrival. At their request, I ran to the post office to send a telegram saying that Takuboku’s condition was critical. He was still in a coma when I got back. His wife and the others were pouring medicine mouth to mouth and moistening his lips. They called him by name. I suddenly noticed that his six-year-old daughter was not there, so I went outside to look for her. I came back with the girl in my arms. She had been playing with fallen cherry-blossom petals by the front door. By the time I got back with her in my arms, the old father and the wife were embracing Takuboku by turns. They were weeping and moaning in low voices. The old father, looking at me, sat up straight and said, ‘There’s no hope left. This seems to be his last.” Then, taking in his hands the clock at his side, he muttered, “Half-past nine, is it?” It was exactly thirty minutes after nine.40 When Kindaichi returned from his class, he saw that Takuboku was lying with his head to the north, a folding screen turned upside down, and a white cloth covering his face.41 In the room where Takuboku had died, Setsuko and Wakayama were with Takuboku’s father.42

T h e L a s t D a y s —–213

The cremation took place on April 14. On April 15, preparations for the burial service were made by Satō Hokkō, Kindaichi Kyōsuke, Wakayama Bakusui, and Toki Zenmaro, as well as Takuboku’s father. The ceremony was held at the Tōkōji, the temple in Asakusa where Takuboku’s mother had been buried a few weeks earlier. The presiding priest was an elder brother of Toki Zenmaro. At Setsuko’s request, Takuboku’s ashes were later moved to Hakodate. The imposing gravestone and statuary that now stand on a beach in Hakodate were erected in 1926, a gift from Miyazaki Ikuu.

16 takuboku’s life after death

A

lthough Takuboku had often spoken of what he planned to do as soon as he recovered, his tuberculosis showed no signs of relenting. His mother’s death then brought on a sudden rise in Takuboku’s temperature, his grief making his illness worse. He lived for only a month after his mother’s death. His love for her is expressed in a recollection that is both unusual and typical of Takuboku: kusuri nomu koto wo wasurete, hisashiburi ni, haha ni shikarareshi wo ureshi to omoeru

Forgetting to drink the medicine For the first time in a while I recalled how happy it made me to be scolded by Mother.

Like his mother, Takuboku died of tuberculosis. Both had probably been infected by Setsuko, the first to catch the illness. As early as March 31, a newspaper reported that Takuboku was dangerously ill.1 When his death actually came on April 13, newspapers and literary magazines lamented the loss of this young genius. The mourners at his

T a k u b o k u ’ s L i f e A f t e r D e a t h —–215

funeral included such celebrities as Natsume Sōseki, Sasaki Nobutsuna, Kitahara Hakushū, and Kindaichi Kyōsuke, but they numbered barely forty or fifty people, very few considering that the funerals of quite ordinary people regularly attracted great crowds of mourners.2 Apart from a relatively small number of poets, Takuboku was still little known. Twenty years later, his life and work would become the subject of many books and articles and his poems would be read at schools, but he died in loneliness. At the time of his death, one literary journal predicted that Takuboku’s name might be remembered by people who had read his poems but that others would forget even his name.3 Yosano Akiko wrote a poem regretting that the public was likely to forget that such a man had existed, and she promised she would keep him in her memory.4 Despite the praise A Handful of Sand had received, Takuboku was a good deal less famous than Akiko.5 At the time of Takuboku’s death, many of his writings had yet to be published. Some consisted of hardly more than the first paragraphs of a story or the names of the characters in a work that he had discarded. Many poems, composed impromptu, had disappeared forever or lingered only in the memories of the friends who had heard them at a drunken gathering. Only years later would his fiction, criticism, and diaries be discussed, but even though some of the poems are difficult for the average reader to understand, they are seldom elucidated. News of Takuboku’s death brought him some celebrity because it made him resemble a figure from romantic poetry—the poet who dies young. But there were few reprints of his poems. The first important collection of his works (in five volumes) did not appear until 1928, sixteen years after his death.6 During the next few years, a few collections of Takuboku’s poetry appeared, and in 1942 some of his diaries were published. Then, immediately after the end of the Pacific War, there was a startling rise of interest in Takuboku’s works; in 1946 alone, fifteen collections of his poems were published. The freedom that Takuboku had insisted

216—–T a k u b o k u ’ s L i f e A f t e r D e a t h

on in his writing may have especially attracted readers enjoying the end of militarism and censorship. After 1947, collections of Takuboku’s poetry and studies of his poetry and biography became numerous. Some very important works were printed posthumously. The best known is Kanashiki gangu (Sad Toys), a collection of 195 tanka published in June 1912, two months after Takuboku’s death. Sad Toys is not rated as highly as A Handful of Sand, though it contains some of Takuboku’s most moving poems. The background—the poet’s sickness—gives pathos to the “sad toys.” The collection opens with iki sureba mune no uchi nite naru oto ari kogarashi yori sabishiki sono oto!

chest moans when I breathe— worse than the winter wind that sound7

Others have a touch of Takuboku’s humor: ayamachite chawan wo kowashi, mono wo kowasu kimochi no yosa wo kesa mo omoeru

accidentally broke a teacup— reminds me how good it feels to break things8

The pain and solitude of the sickroom are sometimes unbearable: me sameba, karada itakute Wake up ugokarezu Can’t move nakitaku narite tome akuru wo matsu Ache all over— Wanting to cry I wait out the night.9

T a k u b o k u ’ s L i f e A f t e r D e a t h —–217

A collection of poetry written in a hospital ward inevitably contains poems about sickness, doctors, nurses, and the patient in the next bed. Days went by with no changes in the daily routine except for the occasional visitor. There was nothing to look at, rarely anyone with whom to sympathize or even to scold. Takuboku rarely looked back at his happier past; there is little of the nostalgia of A Handful of Sand. Life in the hospital was so incompatible with composing poetry that he finally stopped altogether. He read books by Kropotkin, but they seem not to have helped him forget the tedium of the hospital. Kropotkin may, however, have been the source of a rare moment of humor: [rōdōsha] [kakumei] nado to iu kotoba wo kikiobietaru gosai no ko kana

“Worker,” “Revolution,” and such like words Wherever did she pick them up? My five-year-old daughter.

Takuboku composed the poems in this collection mainly early in 1911 when he was seriously ill. Most of the poems describe what he saw and felt while lying in a hospital bed. Although many of the Sad Toys poems are marked by Takuboku’s deft perceptions, there is some sameness in the collection as a whole. Takuboku was not satisfied with Sad Toys, but although he promised many times that he would improve the poems when he recovered, he remained too weakened by his illness to carry out the necessary editorial work. His publisher, tired of waiting, insisted that he present a manuscript without delay. Fearing that if he missed this opportunity, Sad Toys would not appear at all, Takuboku asked Toki Zenmaro to edit the poems. Toki, with much hesitation to change even a word, made a copy of Takuboku’s manuscript. He gave the following account of a heartbreaking experience:

218—–T a k u b o k u ’ s L i f e A f t e r D e a t h

Ishikawa has died. This happened at 9:30 in the morning of April 13, 1912. What follows took place some four or five days earlier. He no longer had any money, but he wanted me to find some way of getting his collection of poetry published. I went at once to Tōundō, and finally an arrangement was reached. I can’t forget how I felt on the streetcar with the money for his book in my pocket.10 I doubt I shall forget it as long as I live. Ishikawa was extremely pleased. His eyes glimmered from under the ice bags placed on his head, and he nodded several times. After a while he said, “I won’t have to deliver the manuscript immediately, will I? There are places I must correct. When I’m a bit stronger, I’ll put them in shape.” His voice was hoarse and hard to understand. Toki said, “Yes, that would be best, but I’ve promised Tōundō to deliver the manuscript right away.” Takuboku replied only, “Is that so?” For a while he shut his eyes, not saying anything. Finally, he looked up a little and said to his wife, standing by his pillow, “Bring me the notebook from over there—the gray one.” I thought at that moment how terribly thin he had become. Ishikawa asked Setsuko, “About how many poems does it contain?” She answered, “Four poems on each page and about fifty pages. That makes, all together, two hundred poems.” Ishikawa took from her hand the medium-size notebook. It was bound in gray paper that looked as if was made of wool. He opened the notebook here and there and said to me, “Take this. I leave everything to your discretion.” He gave me the notebook. Then Ishikawa, speaking with difficulty but with a smile, related all he planned to do when he recovered. When I had already started to open the front door, he called to me again. Standing by the front door, I asked him what

T a k u b o k u ’ s L i f e A f t e r D e a t h —–219

I could do for him. He said, “From now on, I’m counting on you.” This was the last thing Ishikawa ever said to me.11 Toki wrote that he was overwhelmed by the responsibility of editing the collection. He could see that it needed rewriting, and he tried to make the text follow as closely as possible what was written in Takuboku’s notebook—the order of the poems, the punctuation, the lineation, the places where characters were missing. The first two poems of the collection were later discovered on unattached pieces of paper, and Toki placed them at the head of the work. Other pages lacked a poem, which he managed to find elsewhere. Toki wished that he could consult the poet, but now, of course, it was impossible. One problem for Toki was caused by Takuboku’s failure to give the collection a title. Toki thought of calling it “Poems Composed Since November 1910, After A Handful of Sand.” Takuboku had written these words on the first page, but the publisher objected to a title that might cause people to mistake the new book for an earlier collection. In the end, Toki used as a title the last words in Takuboku’s essay “Uta no urouro” (All Kinds of Poems)12—“Poems are my sad toys.” Takuboku left few possessions. His belongings, with the exception of his diaries, were soon disposed of. Although he had not allowed even his wife to read the diaries and no one but Takuboku knew their full contents, rumors soon circulated that the diaries contained passages likely to harm the reputations not only of Takuboku but also of others mentioned in the diary. Kindaichi Kyōsuke, the one person Takuboku had permitted to read a section of his diary, wrote that Takuboku had often told him, “I’m leaving my diaries to you. If, when you read them, you find they contain anything objectionable, please burn them, but if they contain nothing that might harm to anyone, you needn’t burn them.”13 Kindaichi assumed that he would receive the diaries after Takuboku’s death, but Takuboku left his books and manuscripts not to Kindaichi

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but to Toki Zenmaro, who in turn gave them to Setsuko. She took them with her when she moved to Hakodate. It was in order to be with her family that she moved there, though this violated her promise to Takuboku. It has often been alleged that Setsuko tore out pages of the diaries that displeased her, but this has yet to be proved. Because Setsuko was ill for most of the time she was in Hakodate, she probably was not well enough to read the diary carefully. Shortly before Setsuko’s death, Okada Kenzō, the librarian of the Hakodate Library, visited her and asked for her assistance in keeping Takuboku’s works in Hakodate. He stressed that Hakodate was the city with which Takuboku had the closest connections and promised to create an archive in which Takuboku’s works would be collected and safely deposited. He and other friends of Takuboku had already organized the Hakodate Takuboku Society. Its first meeting took place on April 13, 1913, the first anniversary of Takuboku’s death. Setsuko died soon afterward. Just before her death, she left the Takuboku manuscripts in her possession to her brother-in-law, Miyazaki Ikuu, for deposit in the Hakodate Library. Although she had initially left the diaries to her father, Horiai Chūsō, he turned over all but one of the diaries to Miyazaki. He explained that the exception was based on Setsuko’s request that one volume of the diaries be left with the Ishikawa family.14 Okada displayed extraordinary foresight in devoting so much effort to the memory of Takuboku, a poet hardly known even in Hakodate. He gradually won the support of people in Hakodate by insisting that Takuboku had had important connections with the city, even though he, in fact, had spent only four months there. Before her death, Setsuko gave to the archive such writings of Takuboku as the manuscripts of unfinished works and his notebooks. She told Miyazaki that Takuboku had ordered her to burn the diaries but that her love for him had kept her from obeying this command. The dia-

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ries were in her possession until her death on May 5, 1913. Miyazaki, who inherited the diaries from Setsuko, presented them to the city of Hakodate in 1927.15 From the start, there was opposition to preserving the diaries. Maruya Kiichi, a friend of Takuboku’s, claimed that he had asked him on three occasions to burn the diaries after his death. In the early 1920s, therefore, Maruya resolved to burn the diaries himself, and he did not waver in this resolution when he learned that Okada Kenzō planned to keep the diaries in the library. Okada tried to reassure Maruya by restricting their availability to the public for thirty-five years after Takuboku’s death, but twice in 1926 Maruya sent long letters to Okada restating Takuboku’s wishes and requesting that all of his diaries in the custody of the library be given to Kyōko.16 He pointed out that Takuboku had told him, “When I’m dead, I suppose some damned fools may say that my diaries should be published, but don’t let them. Once I’m dead, please burn all my diaries.”17 Maruya was one of Takuboku’s few friends during his last years, and what we know about him suggests that he was probably telling the truth. It is also clear from Setsuko’s statement that Takuboku wished to have his diaries destroyed.18 This wish was eventually accepted even by the Takuboku Society, but Okada, speaking as both an individual and a librarian responsible for his professional duties, was absolutely opposed to burning any of Takuboku’s works, maintaining that “he would fight to the death to save the diaries.”19 This courageous attitude ended Maruya’s attempt to destroy the diaries. The resolve of one man saved Takuboku’s masterpiece. Okada Kenzō should be worshipped as the patron saint of librarians. Takuboku’s diaries are the Hakodate Library’s greatest treasure. Takuboku followed a thousand-year Japanese tradition of using a diary not merely to note the weather or the happenings on a certain day, but to record of a writer’s intellectual and emotional life. He gave us in

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his diaries the portrait of a man who was absolutely individual yet, by some miracle, strikes us as being one of us. He is rightly called the “first modern Japanese.” Takuboku’s works are read less today than they were thirty years ago, when he was clearly Japan’s most popular poet. He still is popular, but many young Japanese have lost interest in works of literature that are unlikely to appear in university entrance examinations. Television and other instantly digestible entertainments have also taken the place of books. Even though the Japanese are known as a nation of readers, books are being robbed of their importance. Perhaps the best chance for a revival of the Takuboku’s great popularity is the human need for change. One hopes that the boredom and meaningless games that people play on subway trains will eventually drive them to seek great music and the humanity of Takuboku’s poetry. It takes more effort to read and understand a poem by Takuboku than the words of a hip-hop song, but the pleasures of fast food are limited and quickly become boring. Ishikawa Takuboku’s poetry sometimes is difficult, but reading his poems, his criticism, and his diaries is not simply a way to kill time; they bring to us an extraordinary man, at times shameless but always absorbing, and, in the end, difficult to forget.

notes

The abbreviation ITZ is used for Ishikawa Takuboku zenshū (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1993). 1. Takuboku, Modern Poet 1. According to Peter Gay, “One particularly striking fact in this subversive literature was that much of the time its authors poured their poetic passion into traditional vessels, heady new wine into old bottles” (Modernism: The Lure of Heresy from Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond [New York: Norton, 2007], 49–50). 2. I have not found the remark about Takuboku’s modernity in Professor Kōsaka’s great study, Meiji shisōshi, but he gives considerable attention to Takuboku and brilliantly describes his shifts of philosophy. 3. Takuboku: Poems to Eat, trans. Carl Sesar (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966), 50. The modern language of this and other translations by Sesar may suggest that he has “jazzed up” the text, but his translations are faithful to Takuboku’s original in both meaning and tone. Note that the format of Sesar’s translations (the lines beginning with either a lowercase or a capital

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letter, sometimes no period at the end of the poem, and, for some poems, the English translation following the Japanese instead of placed side by side) is reproduced here exactly as in his book, as Sesar considers this format to be part of the poem. 4. Ibid., 99. 5. Ibid., 27. 6. Ishikawa Takuboku, “The Romaji Diary,” trans. Donald Keene, in Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day, ed. Donald Keene (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 212. 7. Saitō Saburō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1956), 19–20. Most scholars accept the date 1886 given on Takuboku’s birth certificate. Saitō, however, suggested that because Takuboku at birth was frail, his parents feared he was likely to die and did not report his birth until he showed signs of improvement. 8. Kindaichi Kyōsuke, “Bannen no Ishikawa Takuboku,” in ITZ 8:53. 9. Takamatsu Tetsushirō admits that Ittei was “loose” in financial matters, in Takuboku no chichi Ittei to Noheji-machi (Aomori: Bungei kyōkai, 2006), 27. 10. The eldest daughter (married name Tamura Sada, 1876–1906) figured little in Takuboku’s life but helped arrange his marriage. The second daughter (married name Yamamoto Tora, 1878–1945) was the wife of a railroad employee who became the stationmaster of Otaru Central Station. At various times, the Yamamoto family offered refuge to members of the Ishikawa family, and Ittei spent his last years at their house. 11. Miura Mitsuko, “Osanaki hi no ani Takuboku,” in ITZ 8:20. 12. The Japanese word for “woodpecker” is kitsutsuki, written with the characters 啄木鳥, the first two of which Takuboku used for his gagō. 13. Takuboku was more impressed with Richard Wagner’s heroic life than with his music. He wrote several times about Wagner, notably the essay “Waguneru no shisō” (1903), in ITZ 4:15–23. 14. “Mudairoku,” in ITZ 4:25. 15. Takuboku: Poems to Eat, trans. Sesar, 64. 16. Ibid., 48.

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17. ITZ 1:220. 18. Ibid. 19. As far back as 1904, when Takuboku was eighteen, he wrote, “I am not a Buddhist” (ITZ 5:31). 20. A generous selection of his poetry is given by his daughter Miura Mitsuko in Ani Takuboku no omoide (Tokyo: Rironsha, 1973), 215–27. 21. Takuboku, “Romaji Diary,” 226; text in ITZ 5:77. 22. Saitō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo, 85. 23. Miyazaki Ikuu, Hakodate no suna (Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1960), 137–38. 24. Miura, “Osanaki hi no ani Takuboku,” 24. 25. Ibid. 26. ITZ 1:102. 27. Quoted in Miura, Ani Takuboku no omoide, 32. 28. Miura, “Osanaki hi no ani Takuboku,” 26. Ueda Bin and Natsume Sōseki were outstanding literary figures of the time, so Mitsuko’s ignorance of their names was a sign of an unliterary education. 29. Takuboku kashū, Iwanami bunko (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1988), 235. 30. Miura, Ani Takuboku no omoide, 32. According to Mitsuko, Setsuko would stay as long as three days, though she had little to talk about with Mitsuko, the supposed object of her visit. 31. Takuboku kashū, 55. 32. The series is called Hyakkai tsūshin, and the section devoted to Tomita is in ITZ 4:205. 33. Ibid. 34. Diary entry, November 14, 1902, in ITZ 5:20.

2. Takuboku in Tokyo 1. ITZ 5:9. Yakushiji Gyōin was a disciple of Takamura Kōun (1883–1934), a distinguished sculptor and the father of the famous sculptor and poet Takamura Kōtarō. 2. Ibid.

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3. Ibid. 4. ITZ 5:13. 5. Ibid., 16. 6. Ibid., 17–18. 7. Ibid., 18. 8. Donald Keene, introduction to Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day, ed. Donald Keene (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 24. 9. Yosano Akiko, Midaregami (Disordered Hair), Myōjō, November 1901. 10. ITZ 5:17. 11. Ibid., 24. 12. Mori Ōgai’s translation of Ibsen’s play was the first production of the Free Theater in 1909. It was very popular, especially with young people, because of their mistake in interpreting the play as a call for the liberation of the young. See Donald Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era: Poetry, Drama, Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 429. 13. ITZ 5:21. Takuboku, however, referred to the poem as Byron’s “Solitude.” See also Mori Hajime, Takuboku no shisō to eibungaku (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1982), 15, 228–29. 14. ITZ 5:21. 15. ITZ 4:106. 16. Mori, Takuboku no shisō to eibungaku, 16. 17. He was ill at the time and also preparing to write about Wagner. 18. Most of the accounts of Ittei’s trip to see his son in Tokyo do not describe how he managed to obtain funds for the journey. This account is based on the recollections of Miura Mitsuko, Ani Yakuboku no omoide (Tokyo: Rironsha, 1973), 40, but it may not be true. Mitsuko was so devoted to her father that she may have made the unpermitted sale of the trees seem like an act of fatherly love. 19. ITZ 7:25–26. The friend was Kobayashi Shigeo (1886–1952), a medical doctor who wrote poetry. 20. Kondō Norihiko, Ishikawa Takuboku to Meiji no Nihon (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1994), 189–206.

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21. ITZ 4:15–16. 22. Nomura Kodō, “Ishikawa Takuboku,” in Menkai shazetsu: kodō tai araebisu (Tokyo: Kengensha, 1951), 34. 23. Charles E. Lidgey, Wagner, 3rd ed. (London: Dent, 1904). 24. Ibid., 35. 25. Kondō, Ishikawa Takuboku to Meiji no Nihon, 182. 26. ITZ 5:333. 27. ITZ 5:57–59. 28. Komagome was known for its mosquitoes. Takuboku wrote to a friend that in order for Setsuko to be fit as the bride of an easygoing man like Takuboku, she must be bitten by a Komagome mosquito. See Horiai Ryōsuke, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1974), 55. 29. A reference to Akogare. 30. Doi Yae’s account was published in the Kahoku shinpō, a Sendai newspaper, on May 5, 1936, and is reprinted in Aizawa Genshichi, Takuboku to Sendai (Sendai: Hōbundō, 1976), 33–37. 31. ITZ 6:54; Ishikawa Takuboku, “The Romaji Diary,” trans. Donald Keene, in Modern Japanese Literature, ed. Keene, 212. 32. See kaisetsu by Odagiri Hideo in ITZ 2:474. 33. See, for example, Odagiri Hideo, “Shijin toshite no Takuboku,” in Nihon no kindaishi, ed. Nihon kindai bungakkan (Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1967). 34. For more information about Shōtenshi, see chapter 3.

3. Takuboku the Schoolteacher 1. ITZ 5:63. The word furusato can be translated as “hometown,” but it has special, warm connotations for Japanese. I shall use it when it seems appropriate. 2. ITZ 5:43, 50, 51. 3. Ibid., 101. 4. Ibid., 102. Hakai by Shimazaki Tōson has been translated into English by Kenneth Strong as The Broken Commandment (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1995). It is one of the major works of Meiji literature.

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5. ITZ 5:37. 6. Ibid., 43. However, Admiral Oskar Victorovich Stark did not die at Port Arthur. Evidently, Takuboku heard a false rumor. 7. For an excellent study of the effects in Japan of Tolstoy’s essay, see Janine Beichman, “The Prophet and the Poet: Leo Tolstoy and Yosano Akiko,” Asiatic Society of Japan, 5th ser., 5 (2013). 8. ITZ 5:78–79. 9. Ibid., 79. 10. Ibid., 96–97; ITZ 7:96. 11. ITZ 7:96. 12. Ibid., 98. 13. ITZ 5:94. 14. Ibid., 98. 15. Ibid., 95. 16. Ibid., 99. 17. Ibid., 100. 18. Ibid., 101. 19. Ibid., 106. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 111. 23. ITZ 4:110. I recommend reading the extraordinary essay “Rinchūsho,” in Ishikawa Takuboku, Chikuma Nihon bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1993). 24. ITZ 5:113. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 116–17. Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939) and Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916) were major writers of the time whose reputation has not suffered with time. 27. Ibid., 118. 28. In “Rinchūsho,” Takuboku was somewhat less assertive on the same subject. He wrote, “Is the culture of the country that won the war superior to that of the country that lost the war? This question would take at least several

4 . E x i l e t o H o k k a i d ō —–229

hundreds of pages of manuscript to explain in detail” (ITZ 4:102–3). Although he left it to his readers’ judgment, he believed that Japanese wore modern culture like a garment, whereas Russians had it deep in their vitals. He admitted that Japan had more liberty than Russia, but he quoted Ibsen’s remarks that “Russian peasants were the only people in the world who had true freedom”! (Ishikawa Takuboku, 225–27). 29. In August 1904, Takuboku published “Makarafu teitoku tsuitō” (Mourning for Admiral Makarov), a long poem expressing his sympathy for the admiral who had gone down with his ship during the Japanese surprise attack on Port Arthur. See ITZ 2:36–39. Takuboku may also have been influenced by Tolstoy’s attack on war as murder in his “Bethink Yourself!” 30. ITZ 5:119. 31. Ibid. 32. Kyōko’s name was taken from Kindaichi Kyōsuke’s.

4. Exile to Hokkaidō 1. ITZ 5:129. 2. “Kimi ga yo,” the Japanese national anthem since the Meiji period, was originally a poem in the Kokinshū in praise of the emperor, expressing the hope that his reign would last until pebbles became boulders and were covered in moss. While singing the anthem, Takuboku’s thoughts naturally turned to the emperor. 3. ITZ 5:130. 4. Ibid., 130–31. 5. Ibid., 131. 6. Ibid., 136. 7. Ibid. 8. John 8:11. 9. ITZ 5:136. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid.

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12. Ibid., 137. 13. Ibid., 138. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Miura Mitsuko, Ani Takuboku no omoide (Tokyo: Rironsha, 1973), 131– 32, 171. 17. ITZ 5:144. 18. Ibid., 143. 19. Ibid., 140. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 145. 22. Ibid., 147. 23. Ibid., 148. 24. The most detailed account of the strike is Saitō Saburō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1956), 73–86. In the 1950s, Saitō interviewed students of Takuboku who had taken part in the strike. 25. ITZ 5:150. 26. ITZ 1:34. 27. ITZ 5:150. 28. Beni magoyashi (the magazine) was the name of a flower. The hard-to-read name given to the magazine was typical of its members’ “artistic” tastes. 29. Saitō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo, 87. 30. The umagoyashi is the medic, a member of the clover family. The magazine was named after the red medic (beni umagoyashi). The on (音) reading of the characters for umagayoshi is bokushuku, and this was the name by which the Bokushukusha, the publisher of the magazine, was known. 31. Passages relating to the Bokushukusha are largely from Saitō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo, 87ff. See also Mera Taku, Takuboku to Bokushukusha no dōjintachi (Tokyo: Musashino shobō, 1995). 32. Saitō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo, 90. 33. ITZ 5:153.

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5. Hakodate and Sapporo 1. Bokushuku (an alternative reading of the name of the umagoyashi) is a flower resembling the clover and is pictured on the cover of the magazine. It was typical of the “arty” group to choose a name written with obscure characters that ordinary people could not read. 2. I have followed the interpretation of the poem in Iwaki Yukinori, Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985), 171–72. Kanashii normally means “sad,” but Takuboku used the earlier meaning of “extremely moving.” The poem does not refer to Takuboku’s sadness at being separated from his family but recalls his happy life. “Cornflowers” indicates that the season was autumn. 3. Matsuoka was the first of the Bokushukusha to have a poem published in Myōjō, which ended up publishing forty-nine of his tanka. Some three hundred of his poems also appeared in various other magazines, with his poems placed at the head of the poetry section in the first issue of Beni magoyashi. Examples of Matsuoka’s poetry may be found in Mera Taku, Takuboku to Bokushukusha no dōjintachi (Tokyo: Musashino shobō, 1995), 73–95. 4. The first issue of Beni magoyashi appeared in 1907, the year after the Bokushukusha was founded. The name was a shortened form of beni umagoshi (red medic). 5. For commentary on the poem, see Iwaki, Takuboku kashū, 176. Ōshima was a teacher at a girls’ school at the time Takuboku arrived in Hakodate, but a love affair with a student caused the breakup of his marriage. He went into a remote mountain retreat to repent. Takuboku was impressed by Ōshima’s resolve, worthy of a Christian. See also Mera, Takuboku, 147–57. 6. Ōshima relinquished the post of editor. See Mera, Takuboku, 12. 7. Diary entry, September 3, 1907, in ITZ 5:159. 8. ITZ 6:61, 126; diary entry, April 9, 1909, in Rōmaji nikki. 9. Iwaki, Takuboku kashū, 224. 10. Ibid., 226.

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11. Ibid., 225. 12. Miyazai Ikuu, Hakodate no suna (Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1960), 24. 13. The friend was Sawada Shintarō. Quoted in Saitō Saburō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1956), 96. 14. Resigning during the summer vacation was not permitted, which was why Takuboku was still a teacher. See ITZ 5:158. 15. Quoted in Saitō, Takuboku bungaku sanpo, 91–92. 16. Ittei may not have felt free to leave the temple. Taigetsu, now seventyfour years old, depended on him to manage temple affairs. See Takamatsu Tesshirō, Takuboku no chichi: Ittei to Noheji-machi (Aomori: Bungei kyōkai, 2006), 61. 17. ITZ 5:156. 18. Ibid., 157. 19. Quoted in Donald Keene, Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era: Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 750; text in Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Tanizaki Jun’ichirō zenshū (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1983), 21:13. 20. ITZ 5:157. 21. Mukai Eitarō (1881–1944) had been a poet in Hakodate (where he met Takuboku). He was now working at the Hokkaidō Government Office in Sapporo. 22. ITZ 5:157. It is not clear to whom Mukai was referring. They may have been former Bokushukusha members. 23. Miyazaki, Hakodate no suna, 12. Miyazaki was present on this occasion. 24. ITZ 5:161. 25. Ibid., 162. On September 12, Takuboku expressed more poignantly his regret at leaving Hakodate: “My friends are like my flesh and blood. Now, I am about to leave Hakodate, so rich in memories. A sad feeling of separation, so hard to express in words, spurts from the depths of my heart like a fountain” (163). 26. Takuboku’s first mention of his dislike of Matsuoka occurs in the diary entry for September 1, 1907: “Tonight I met Iwasaki at his house. He spoke about

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God and declared Matsuoka was a hateful liar. That confirmed my own opinion.” Iwasaki resented Matsuoka’s air of being the most important member of the group. Takuboku was disillusioned with Matsuoka, who claimed to be a devout Christian but was having an affair. His insincerity enraged Takuboku. See Mera, Takuboku, 84. 27. ITZ 7:142. The false telegram promised a job with a salary so much bigger than his pay as a teacher that Takuboku felt sure that when the principal saw the telegram, he would not refuse his request. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., 165. 30. ITZ 4:115–16. 31. ITZ 5:166. 32. Ibid. 33. Rodō, a newspaper reporter, had met Takuboku through Mukai. When Takuboku lost his job at the Hakodate nichinichi shinbun because of the fire, Rodō invited Takuboku to join the Hokumon shinpō, where he was employed. They later worked together at the Otaru nippō, and when Takuboku moved to the Kushiro shinbun, Rodō followed him. He later joined the Miyako shinbun and remained with it for most of his career. He maintained liberal views but never became prominent in politics. 34. ITZ 5:167.

6. Takuboku in Otaru 1. ITZ 5:170. According to Noguchi Ujō, Takuboku’s eloquence quite overpowered all who heard him. See Hokuto Rosō, Noguchi Ujō ga Ishikawa Takuboku wo mitomenakatta wake (Tokyo: e bukkurando, 2011), 130. 2. Japanese consider that the number of strokes used in writing a name affects that person’s future, so specialists reveal which names have an auspicious number of strokes. 3. ITZ 5:169. 4. Ibid., 170.

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5. Iwaki Yukinori, Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985), 186. Iwaki called attention to Takuboku’s diary entry for December 27, 1907, in which the journalist Saitō Taiken praised the “unsinging Otaru people” (ITZ 5:178). “Unsinging” (utawazaru) suggests that they have no poetry. 6. Takuboku: Poems to Eat, trans. Carl Sesar (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966), 69. 7. ITZ 4:140. This statement is found in “Kanashiki omoide,” an article by Takuboku published in September 1908 describing his relations with Ujō. See ibid., 138–41. 8. ITZ 5:171. 9. Ibid. Ujō later insisted that though he disliked Iwaizumi, it had never occurred to him to join Takuboku’s attempt to overthrow the administration of the company. This was untrue. For Ujō’s version, see Hokuto, Noguchi Ujō ga Ishikawa Takuboku wo mitomenakatta wake, 135. According to Takuboku’s account, written a year later, while strolling through the “bad quarter” of Otaru, he and Ujō conceived a plot against the chief editor, but when he heard Ujō’s plan of establishing a republican administration, he thought it “extremely childish” (ITZ 4:140–41). 10. ITZ 5:171. Mothers who had taught their children to sing Ujō’s sentimental songs would have been shocked by his descriptions of his character. 11. Ibid., 174. 12. Ibid., 172. The meaning is unclear. Did Shiraishi support the two men’s opposition to Iwaizumi, or was he simply impressed by their work? 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 173. 15. Shidai Ryūzō, ed., Ishikawa Takuboku jiten (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1970), 330. Takuboku wrote that he considered Shiraishi an inseparable friend. In a letter dated October 14, Takuboku also wrote, “Nobody in the company stands higher than myself. It’s almost unbelievable how completely President Shiraishi trusts me” (ITZ 7:158).

6 . T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u —–235

16. ITZ 7:173. 17. Ibid., 174. 18. Ibid. 19. ITZ 5:175. 20. Sawada Shintarō, “Takuboku sange,” Chūō kōron, May 1938, 391. Iwaki Yukinori states that it was generally believed that Shiraishi fired Iwaizumi at Takuboku’s suggestion, a rumor that upset the newspaper staff, in Takuboku hyōden (Tokyo: Gakutōsha, 1981), 335. 21. The articles published in Otaru are in ITZ 8:355–465. 22. ITZ 5:173. 23. Gaps occur from October 19 to 21 and from October 25 to 29, as well as from November 2 to 7 and from December 7 to 15. 24. Sawada, “Takuboku sange,” 394. The Otaru nippō ceased publication in April 1908. 25. Ibid., 391. 26. This account is derived entirely from ibid., 395. I have not found confirmation elsewhere. Takuboku’s diary says simply, “Have not gone to office since 13. Submitted recognition to president” (ITZ 5:176). 27. Ibid. 28. This statement, published in Otaru nippō, is quoted in Iwaki, Takuboku hyōden, 335. 29. ITZ 5:178. 30. Ibid. 31. The last day of the year was dreaded because bills and debts had to be paid at that time. 32. ITZ 5:184. 33. Ibid. 34. For a discussion by Iwaki Yukinori of texts by Takuboku that contained “novelizations” of sections from his diaries, see ITZ 6:392–403. “Rinchū nikki” (in the same volume) is the longest of these works. It was based on Takuboku’s second diary of 1908, edited by Hiraide Shū and published in

236—–6 . T a k u b o k u i n O t a r u

December 1912. For an example of the different styles of the diary and the short story, see Donald Keene, “Takuboku no nikki to geijutsu,” in Nihon no bungaku, ed. Donald Keene (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1963), 171. 35. ITZ 5:191. 36. According to the story “Meeting Again” (Saikai) by Mizuno Yōshū (1883– 1947), before her marriage, Akiko had a flirtation with Mizuno, a minor tanka poet, which enraged Tekkan. Although Mizuno changed the names of the characters in his story, Tekkan was certain that every word was the truth. See ITZ 5:193–95. My thanks to Jeannine Beichman for having read the entire manuscript and provided me with valuable corrections. 37. Ibid., 205. 38. Ibid., 177. 39. Ibid., 202, written on December 26, 1907. 40. Ibid., 210.

7. A Winter in Kushiro 1. ITZ 7:167. He wrote a much longer letter to Kindaichi on January 30, describing his life ever since beginning to teach in Shibutami. In it, he also mentioned his interest in the Ainu language. See ITZ 8:171. Kindaichi became the great expert on the Ainu language. 2. The text of the two sections of the work are in ITZ 8:466–70. The first describes his departure from Otaru, much as in his diary, followed by a brief stop in Sapporo (“city of poets”) and then the train journey in the snow to Iwamizawa. The second part is mainly about Asahikawa. He notes that “the Ainu name for Asahigawa is chūbetsu; chū means ‘daybreak’ and betsu means ‘river.’ The name means ‘the river that rises from the east, like the rising sun’” (470). This was one of Takuboku’s signs of interest in the original habitants of Hokkaidō. 3. Ibid., 207. The poem was first printed in Subaru in January 1910. 4. Sawada Shintarō, “Takuboku sange,” Chūō kōron, May 1938, 261. 5. ITZ 5:211. 6. Ibid., 212.

7 . A W i n t e r i n K u s h i r o —–237

7. Geishas, then as now, were called to restaurants to entertain men with songs and dances. They otherwise gave pleasure by laughing at customers’ jokes, filling their cups when the saké ran low, and lighting men’s cigarettes. Above all, they brought a pretty face to a room otherwise likely to be filled with middle-aged businessmen. 8. The Aikoku fujin kai was founded in 1900, at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, to look after the families of soldiers killed in the fighting. It reached a membership of 460,000 women in 1905 during the Russo-Japanese War. At first, the members were mainly from the upper class, but later any woman could join. 9. Takuboku so wrote in his diary (ITZ 5:212) and in letters to friends, but Satō Kuniji, a director of the company, insisted that he gave Takuboku the watch, the first Takuboku ever owned. He thought that a reporter should possess one. See Sawada, “Takuboku sange,” 262. 10. “Shinjidai no fujin,” in ITZ 8:470–72. 11. On March 9, 1906, thirty suffragettes visited 10 Downing Street and asked to speak with the prime minister. They were refused an audience, but several continued to insist on voicing their demands and were arrested. 12. Takuboku uses the English word. 13. As opposed to marriages arranged by parents, regardless of the woman’s wishes. 14. ITZ 8:470–71. A Doll’s House was first translated into Japanese by Takayasu Gekkō in 1901. 15. ITZ 7:175–76. 16. ITZ 5:214–15. 17. Ibid., 214. The “Rappabushi” was a song popular in the late Meiji era. It included a chorus that imitated the trumpet calls of the Russo-Japanese War. 18. Ibid., 213–14. On February 11, Takuboku’s father sent a letter taking back his previous complaints about the family’s extravagance. See ibid., 217. 19. ITZ 7:174. 20. ITZ 5:217. 21. Her photograph is in ibid., 190. (It was pasted into Takuboku’s diary.)

238—–7 . A W i n t e r i n K u s h i r o

22. The Kibōrō was the best restaurant in Kushiro, but the context suggests it also had rooms where customers and “geishas” met privately. 23. ITZ 5:217. 24. Ibid., 218. 25. Ibid., 219–20. 26. Ibid., 225. 27. Ibid., 224. 28. In Chikamatsu’s play The Love Suicides at Amijima, Jihei, though determined to keep his wife, falls in love with a prostitute. The consequences are disastrous. Takuboku may have feared that he would suffer Jihei’s fate. 29. ITZ 5:239. 30. Ibid., 238. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 239. 33. He composed 1,576 poems in 1908, far more than any other year. Ikeda Isao described the “poetry explosion” in Ishikawa Takuboku nyūmon (Tokyo: Sakura shuppan, 2014), 36. Shimizu Unosuke is helpful in arranging the poems in order of composition in Hennen Ishikawa Takuboku zenkashū (Tokyo: Tanka shinbun, 1986). The poems composed in 1908 begin on page 73. 34. The following poems are given with commentary in Iwaki Yukinori, Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985), 211–13. They were originally published in 1910, the year after Takuboku left Kushiro. 35. The background of this poem is in Takuboku’s diary entry for March 20, 1908: “About half-past twelve Koyakko got up, saying she was seeing off a customer. . . . She was wearing high geta, and the snow-covered road was difficult for walking. Hand-in- hand we walked as far as the beach” (ITZ 5:234). 36. Noguchi Ujō’s account of his meeting with Koyakko is found in “Ishikawa Takuboku to Koyakko,” in Teihon: Noguchi Ujō (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1986), 6:329–36. 37. I have not found a poem with similar wording in Takuboku’s collected poems. It probably was never published.

8 . P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–239

38. ITZ 5:240. 39. Ibid. The telegram aroused Takuboku’s anger because no sympathy was expressed for his illness. Shiraishi’s words were brief to the point of rudeness. 40. Yokoyama appears several times in the diary as a helper to Takuboku who performs chores for him. 41. ITZ 5:241. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 242. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 243. 46. Ibid., 244. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 245. 49. Ibid. 50. Noguchi, Teihon, 6:334.

8. Poetry or Prose? 1. ITZ 5:247–48. 2. The logical conclusion—that after two or three months, Takuboku would rejoin his family—is not stated but probably was understood. 3. ITZ 5:249. 4. Ibid., 250. 5. Yosano abandoned the gagō Tekkan in 1905 and instead used his real name, Yosano Hiroshi. Takuboku usually referred to him as Mr. Yosano, a neutral term. Throughout this book, I have called him Yosano Tekkan, the name by which he is best known as a poet. 6. ITZ 5:255. 7. Ibid., 256. 8. Ibid. 9. Ochiai Naobumi (1861–1903) was the first distinctively new poet of the Meiji period. His chief importance, however, was as the encourager of younger

240—–8 . P o e t r y o r P r o s e ?

poets like Tekkan. His posthumous work, Kotoba no izumi, was a kind of dictionary of poetic language. 10. The work was many times revised, but I have not seen Tekkan’s version. 11. ITZ 5:256. 12. Ibid. 13. “Nihon wo saru no uta” was one of the poems written by Tekkan when he left for Korea in 1895 to teach Japanese in a Seoul school. Like some of Tekkan’s other poems of this period, it was so patriotic and masculine that Tekkan came to be known as Tiger Tekkan. 14. ITZ 5:289. 15. Ibid., 300. 16. Ibid., 259. 17. Ibid., 260. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 262. 20. Ibid., 263. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 265. 23. Ibid., 266. The “pages” that Takuboku mentioned were Japanese manuscript paper, each page containing space for four hundred characters. 24. ITZ 3:105. 25. ITZ 5:271. 26. Ibid. 27. Beginning on September 17, 1908, Takuboku read a good deal of Genji monogatari. He does not say if this was for the first time and makes no comments on his reactions to reading the work. See ibid., 337–42. This was when he was writing Chōei, so he may have been searching for a Japanese novel to use as his model. 28. Ibid., 305. Earlier (on June 27), he wrote of wishing to die. His mother, wife, daughter, and sister were living on the charity of Miyazaki in Hakodate. What was he to do? Without Miyazaki’s help, he couldn’t pay the rent. On August 2, he again read old diaries. This time, though, they brought not

8 . P o e t r y o r P r o s e ? —–241

thoughts of death but nostalgia for people he had known in Hakodate and Sapporo (314). 29. Ibid., 289. 30. Ibid., 311. He had not read Anna Karenina. 31. Ibid., 308. 32. Ibid., 310. 33. Ibid., 272. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. The full text is in ITZ 2:442. 37. Ibid., 273, 284. He received a money order of five yen from Yosano on August 4, probably as compensation for the use of his poems in Myōjō. 38. His name before his father “adopted” him into the Ishikawa family. Sixty poems were published in the June 1908 issue of Kokoro no hana under the name Kudō Hajime. See ITZ 5:291–92. The texts of the poems are in ITZ 1:163–65. 39. Ikeda Isao, Ishikawa Takuboku nyūmon (Tokyo: Sakura shuppan, 2014), 37. 40. ITZ 5:287. 41. His most famous poem, which opens “Tōkai no kotō,” was written on the morning of June 24, 1908. It was published in the July issue of Myōjō. See Iwaki Yukinori, Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985), 9. 42. ITZ 5:288. 43. Ibid., 303. 44. Ibid., 296. 45. Ibid. The full text of the letter to Sugawara Yoshiko is in ITZ 7:223–26. Of the eight poems in this letter, several also appear in letters that Takuboku sent to another correspondent, Odajima Koshū (a man). See ibid., 223–24. 46. Ibid., 220–23. 47. Ibid., 249. 48. Ibid., 163. Shimizu Unosuke, Hennen Ishikawa Takuboku zenkashū (Tokyo: Tanka shinbun, 1986), 198. This, like other poems in Takuboku’s letters, does not appear in most “complete” collections of Takuboku poems. 49. Poetic name for Kyūshū.

242—–8 . P o e t r y o r P r o s e ?

50. Diary entry, October 2, 1908, in ITZ 5:342. 51. See, especially, his letters of March 2, 1909 (ITZ 7:268–71) and June 29, 1908 (220–22). He wrote mainly about poetry and books that he had been reading, 52. ITZ 5:363. 53. ITZ 7:261. 54. Ibid., 263–64. 55. Ibid., 268. 56. A friend, Kurihara Kojō, the editor of the Tokyo Mainichi shinbun, was instrumental in persuading that newspaper to publish Chōei. 57. ITZ 7:248. 58. Ibid., 352–53. 59. Ibid., 359. 60. Meaning “The Pleiades” and named after La Pléiade, a magazine founded by Maurice Maeterlinck. 61. ITZ 7:262. Takuboku was mistaken in stating that he would be both editor and publisher of the first issue, as initially the editorship changed with each issue. 62. Ibid., 263. 63. In a letter to Iwasaki Tadashi dated August 22, he wrote that he had been asked by the Ōsaka shinpō to write a serial in fifty episodes. He would receive one yen for each episode. See ibid., 246. 64. ITZ 5:347–48. 65. The Osaka newspaper probably got tired of waiting for Takuboku’s manuscript. 66. ITZ 5:357, written on November 1. 67. Ibid., 281. 68. Ibid., 348.

9. Takuboku Joins the Asahi 1. ITZ 6:5. 2. Ibid.

9 . T a k u b o k u J o i n s t h e A s a h i —–243

3. Ibid., 6. 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid., 7. 6. Ibid. 7. A rin was one-tenth of a sen. The five-rin coin was the smallest unit of currency. 8. ITZ 6:7. 9. Ibid., 10. 10. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1993), 13:85–86. He says that Takuboku was charmed and even overwhelmed by Yoshii when both were young disciples of the Yosanos at the Shinshisha, but Takuboku came to despise Yoshii’s irresponsibility. 11. He seems to have considered the Yosanos as one person. 12. ITZ 6:12. 13. Ibid., 270. 14. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:87. Kindaichi was embarrassed to be caught using an ointment to promote the growth of a mustache, then a fashion among gentlemen. 15. ITZ 6:13. He did not write this work. 16. Ibid., 18. 17. Ibid., 59. Nevertheless, when Takuboku was in despair, he turned to Kindaichi. See, for example, ITZ 6:89, where Takuboku, worried about his debts, asked to spend the night in Kindaichi’s room. 18. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:86. 19. ITZ 6:21. 20. The pen name of Ōta Masao (1885–1945), a novelist and poet. 21. For an excerpt of the review by Nakamura Seikō (1884–1974), published in the March 1909 issue of Waseda bungaku, see ITZ 3:464. After reading the part of Footprints that appeared in the February issue of Subaru, Nakamura wrote that it was quite all right if the hero of a story believed that he was extremely important but that this attitude was intolerable if the author had the same opinion of himself. (The hero is described as an ideal substitute

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teacher, firm but loving with his pupils, ready to teach an extraordinary number of hours; in other words, he is Takuboku.) 22. For Takuboku’s reactions to Nakamura’s criticism of Footprints, see Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:300–301. 23. ITZ 1:5. 24. He had published poems that are shi, rather than tanka, in Akogare and elsewhere. 25. ITZ 8:54. 26. ITZ 1:5. 27. Takuboku does not state where he obtained the books he read. His diary at this time mentions reading D’Annunzio, Maeterlinck, Mérimée, Tennyson, Dante, Turgenev, Gorky, and Julius Bab—mainly in English translations. He never mentions borrowing a book from a library. He may have borrowed from friends or sympathetic booksellers but probably bought most of the books. 28. ITZ 6:41. 29. A brief biography of Satō Ikkō is in Ishikawa Takuboku jiten, ed. Shidai Ryūzō (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1970), 311. There is considerably more about him in Ōta Aito, Ishikawa Takuboku to “Asahi shinbun” (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1996), esp. 81ff. Satō received the name Shin’ichi at birth, and Ikkō was the artistic name he took from the name of a river in his native Morioka. 30. Takuboku showed the letter to Kindaichi before sending it to the Asahi. Kindaichi gives a reproduction of the letter in Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:301. He also supplies details of Takuboku’s interview with Satō. 31. For an account of how Takuboku came to write this story, see ITZ 5:269, and ITZ 3:456–57, with the text in ITZ 3:71–105. Takuboku stated that it was based on the life of the hapless Satō Isen, a reporter he knew in Kushiro. 32. ITZ 6:30–31. 33. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:304. 34. ITZ 6:31. 35. Ibid.

9 . T a k u b o k u J o i n s t h e A s a h i —–245

36. Ibid. According to Kindaichi, Takuboku attempted in his letters to dissuade his mother from coming to Tokyo. See Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:104. 37. Art and Morality was not a book by Oscar Wilde but a collection of letters that Wilde wrote in defense of his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The letters eventually were published as Art and Morality: A Defence of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” ed. Stuart Mason (London: Jacobs, 1908). It is odd that Takuboku should have bought this rare book, rather than a masterpiece by Wilde. 38. ITZ 6:32. 39. Ibid., 33. 40. Ibid., 99. 41. Ibid., 111. Their friendship was not harmed by Takuboku’s failure to return the watch. 42. Iwaki Yukinori, Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985), 43. The poem was written on April 11, 1909. 43. He began contributing poems to the Mainichi beginning in March 1910, and from then on he wrote about as many poems for the Mainichi as for the Asahi. See Shimizu Unosuke, Hennen Ishikawa Takuboku zenkashū (Tokyo: Tanka shinbun, 1986), 211ff. Satō, an avid reader of the major newspapers, undoubtedly saw the poems Takuboku published in the Mainichi. 44. ITZ 6:35. 45. A rather similar intention of telling the truth about her life, different from the lives of people in old novels, inspired the author of Kagerō nikki. 46. ITZ 6:37. 47. Ibid., 83. 48. Iwaki, Takuboku kashū, 294. The poem was first published in Kanashiki gangu. 49. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 231, dated June 1909. 50. ITZ 6:173. He undoubtedly interpreted their departure from Hakodate as a sign that the family was about to leave for Tokyo. 51. Ibid.

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52. Ibid. 53. Ibid., 180. The description of the arrival of the family in Tokyo is taken from the summary of events of April 1909 that Takuboku wrote in lieu of a true diary.

10. The Romaji Diary 1. Rōmaji was not given a name by Takuboku; he labeled it simply “1909 Diary.” 2. He calls Kitahara “lucky” because he belongs to a rich family and can devote himself to poetry. 3. ITZ 6:42. 4. Ibid., 44. 5. Oscar Wilde, Art and Morality: A Defence of “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” ed. Stuart Mason (London: Jacobs, 1908). The book is in the form of adverse criticism of Wilde’s novel The Portrait of Dorian Gray, together with Wilde’s responses. 6. Ibid., 7. 7. For a complete translation of the poem, see “Modern Poetry; I,” in Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day, ed. Donald Keene (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 204–5. 8. For a well-written account of the Jesuit Mission Press, see David Chibbett, The History of Japanese Printing and Illustration (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1977), 61–67. A complete list of books published by this press is given on 4–5. 9. Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Boston: Brill, 1997), 126–27. 10. Michael Cooper, Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China (New York: Weatherhill, 1973), 230. The poem is translated in A Waka Anthology, vol. 1, The Gem-Glistening Cup, trans. Edwin A. Cranston (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 140–41: yo no naka wo

To what

nani ni tatoemu

Shall I compare the world?

1 0 . T h e R o m a j i D i a r y —–247

wake asaborake

It is like the

kagiinishi fune no

Vanishing behind a boat

ato naki gotoshi

That has rowed away at dawn.

The final line of Rodrigues’s version is not found elsewhere. 11. A striking example was xi for shi. 12. A typical complaint of foreigners about the Nippon-shiki romanization was “Why do editors insist on romanization that no English-speaking reader will be able to pronounce?” 13. ITZ 6:54. 14. Japanese books that give the Romaji Diary in the original roman letters almost always append a “translation” in standard Japanese writing, evidence of the difficulty that Japanese have in deciphering roman letters. 15. Ikeda Isao, a Takuboku specialist, believed that the Romaji Diary should be read as “literature” rather than as a diary. 16. Ikeda Isao, Ishikawa Takuboku: soni sanbun to shisō (Tokyo: Sekai shisōsha, 2008), 67–70. 17. ITZ 6:56–57. 18. Ibid., 53–54. 19. Ibid., 55. The theme of separation from his family appears at the beginning of the diary, which closes with the family reunion. 20. Ibid., 79. 21. Ibid., 54. 22. Ibid., 80. 23. Ibid., 66. 24. Ibid., 67. 25. Ilya is a character in Gorky’s story “The Three of Them.” 26. ITZ 6:67–68. 27. Ibid., 68. 28. Ibid. 29. For more of the English translation of this poem, see Ishikawa Takuboku, “The Romaji Diary,” trans. Donald Keene, in Modern Japanese Literature, ed. Keene, 221–22.

248—–1 0 . T h e R o m a j i D i a r y

30. ITZ 6:64. 31. Ibid., 71. 32. Ibid., 130. 33. Ibid., 82. 34. Ibid., 82–83. 35. Ibid., 83. 36. Ibid., 65. 37. Ibid., 63. 38. Ibid., 64. 39. Ibid., 74. 40. Ibid., 85. 41. Ibid., 74–75. 42. Ibid., 96. The quotation in brackets is in Takuboku’s English. 43. Ibid., 103. 44. Ibid., 108. 45. Ibid., 111. 46. Ibid., 113. 47. Ibid., 114. 48. Ibid., 100. 49. Ibid., 113.

11. The Sorrows of Takuboku and Setsuko 1. ITZ 6:177. 2. Ibid. 3. However, according to Kindaichi, Takuboku wept to see how much his father was enjoying himself. See Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1993), 13:234. 4. Ibid., 231–32. 5. Ibid., 231. 6. Letter, August 27, 1908, in Horiai Ryōsuke, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1974), 293. In Hakodate, Setsuko had begun to call Miyazaki

1 1 . T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o —–249

niisan (older brother) and continued to use this appellation even after Miyazaki married her sister. 7. ITZ 1:219. 8. Ibid. 9. Horiai, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko, 257. 10. Ibid., 259–60. 11. Ibid., 231–32. There is no corroborating material in other sources. 12. Ibid., 258. 13. Ibid., 257–58. 14. Ibid., 261–62. Kindaichi lists months and even years for which no diary exists. 15. Ibid., 438. 16. This statement, which Kindaichi claims (Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:438) Takuboku made at the New Year in 1911, is not in Takuboku’s diary or in letters of this period. Takuboku mentions in his summary of 1911 his estrangement from Kindaichi. See ITZ 6:226. 17. Imai Yasuko, Ishikawa Takuboku ron (Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 1974), 287. 18. Ibid., 288. Letter, sent on March 13, in ITZ 7:295–96. 19. Written in May and June 1910 but not published until September and October 1912 in the Yomiuri shinbun. 20. Miyazaki tried three times to obtain Takuboku’s consent to his request to marry Mitsuko. But Takuboku declined, saying that he would not give Mitsuko to a friend, an indication of his poor opinion of his sister. He suggested that instead, Miyazaki marry one of Setsuko’s sisters. Miyazaki, apparently determined to maintain a family connection with Takuboku, chose Fukiko, the older of the two sisters. 21. Horiai, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko, 297. 22. Ibid., 298. 23. Ibid. The most complete account of Kyōko I have seen is in Yoshida Koyō, Takuboku hakken (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1966). It is entirely favorable. 24. Horiai, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko, 306. 25. Ibid.

250—–1 1 . T h e S o r r o w s o f T a k u b o k u a n d S e t s u k o

26. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:251–62. This article does not live up to its title and contains little that he had not already written, but his picture of a selfsacrificing martyr is impressive. 27. Kosakai Sumi, Ani Takuboku ni somuite Mitsuko Ruten (Tokyo: Shūeisho, 1986), 182.

12. Failure and Success 1. See, especially, Imai Yasuko, “Takuboku ni okeru uta no wakare,” in ITZ 8:292–303. 2. ITZ 6:62. 3. Ibid., 179. 4. Ibid., 63. 5. Imai, “Takuboku ni okeru uta no wakare,” 292–95. 6. Ibid., 292. 7. ITZ 4:253. 8. Diary entry, April 6, 1910, in ITZ 6:179. 9. ITZ 4:253. 10. Ibid. Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859–1935) was an outstanding critic, dramatist, and translator of Shakespeare. 11. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1993), 13:307. 12. ITZ 6:115, in Rōmaji nikki. 13. Diary entry, February 15, 1909, in ibid., 28. 14. ITZ 4:255. 15. Ibid. 16. Horiai Ryōsuke, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1974), 294. 17. ITZ 6:180. Takuboku mentioned in a letter of April 12 to Miyazaki that he had taken his poems to Shun’yōdō. He added humorously that he expected to receive fifteen ryō for the manuscript. See ITZ 7:297. Takuboku also wrote that the tanka poet Kaneko Kun’en (1876–1951) was willing to publish the collection free of charge. Takuboku did not respond to this offer. See ITZ 7:297; and Shidai Ryūzō, ed., Ishikawa Takuboku jiten (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1970), 273.

1 3 . T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y —–251

18. This refusal came several days after Takuboku submitted the manuscript. 19. ITZ 6:181. 20. For a list of the origins of the poems in this book, see Kondō Norihiko, Kaidai to Ichiaku no suna (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha 2008), 314–16. 21. Shidai, ed., Ishikawa Takuboku jiten, 315. 22. Ibid. 23. ITZ 1:6, statement in Takuboku’s preface. 24. ITZ 7:303. A similar letter to Mitsuji was sent at the same time. 25. Satō was named Shin’ichi at birth but was usually known as Hokkō, his gagō. 26. ITZ 7:311. 27. ITZ 6:225–26. 28. ITZ 7:312. 29. Some scholars believe that Takuboku’s style was influenced by the poems of a group of Iwate poets, but I have not been able to consult their poetry. The style resembles that of the poems by Toki Zenmaro, but Takuboku probably developed his style independently. 30. For example, the double consonants in hokkai (northern sea) create a harsher sound than the prolonged ō in tōkai. 31. Takuboku: Poems to Eat, trans. Carl Sesar (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966), 77. 32. Ibid., 33. 33. Ibid., 56. 34. Both the two newspapers were published in Morioka. The inhabitants of Morioka had not always been friendly to Takuboku. 35. ITZ 7:324–25.

13. Takuboku on Poetry 1. The title is often pronounced Kuubeki shi, but Takuboku apparently preferred Kuraubeki shi, another reading of the characters. See ITZ 4:214. 2. Ibid., 215. 3. Debts were customarily paid at the end of the month, so it was normally a time of anxiety, not of writing poetry.

252—–1 3 . T a k u b o k u o n P o e t r y

4. ITZ 4:219–11. 5. Ibid., 211. 6. Ibid., 214. 7. Ibid., 212. 8. The texts of the poems and commentary are in Iwaki Yukinori, Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985), 196–98. I have followed Iwaki’s lineation of the poems; they are not in Takuboku’s usual three lines. 9. ITZ 4:213. 10. Shintaishi (new-style poems) were affected by European poetry. 11. ITZ 4:216. 12. Ibid., 216–17. 13. Ibid., 217. 14. Ibid., 218. 15. Ibid., 214. 16. Imai Yasuko, Ishikawa Takuboku ron (Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 1974), 311. 17. ITZ 4:287. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 288–89. Translation slightly modified from Takuboku: Poems to Eat, trans. Carl Sesar (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966), 17. 20. ITZ 4:288–89.

14. The High Treason Trial 1. Letter, June 13, 1910, in ITZ 6:300. 2. John Crump, The Anarchist Movement in Japan, 1906–1996 (Anarchist Communist Editions, pamphlet no. 8, and Pirate Press, autumn 1966), 3. Takuboku wrote in a letter dated February 6, 1911, that after failing in his attempts to build a rational life (gōriteki seikatsu) for himself, he had, without knowing it, become a social revolutionist. He did not give a date. See ITZ 7:341. 3. Supplement to Suzuki Mosaburō, Zaibei shakaishugisha museifu shugisha enkaku, quoted in Crump, Anarchist Movement in Japan, 6. I have examined this huge, extremely untidy book without finding the quotation.

1 4 . T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l —–253

4. Ishikawa Takuboku shū, comp. Odagiri Hideo, Meiji bungaku zenshū 52 (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1970), 280. For the Kropotkin text in full, see ITZ 4:360. 5. Hiraide was trained as a lawyer, but he was also a recognized poet. 6. The other man, Ōishi Seinosuke (1869–1911), was a medical doctor, trained in Oregon, who, after returning to Japan, associated with Kōtoku and Sakai Toshihiko. He was arrested and tried as a member of the group that intended to kill the emperor. 7. Diary entry, January 3, 1911, in ITZ 6:185. 8. Letter to Ōshima Tsuneo, in ITZ 7:342. 9. Chinbensho, the word Takuboku uses in his diary, is translated here as “letter of vindication.” In books written in English, it is also called “declaration on being arrested.” The English text given in ITZ 4:338 is named “A Letter from Prison.” 10. ITZ 4:340. 11. ITZ 6:185. Takuboku wrote literally, “Kōtoku and Saigō! It was like this sort of thing.” 12. There were eight poems in the original Yobuko to kuchibue, but another poem, composed in the same week in June, was found and added in 1939. The history of the publication of the collection is complicated. See Takuboku shishū, ed. Ōoka Makoto (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991), 177–78. 13. The phrase “endless discussions” came from the English translation of Kropotkin’s Memoirs of a Revolutionist, according to “Ishikawa Takuboku,” in Ishikawa Takuboku, ed. Imai Yasuko and Ueda Hiroshi, Kanshō Nihon bungaku zenshū (Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1982), 70–71. The text translated here is from Takuboku shishū, ed. Ōoka, 135–37. The text, given in ITZ 2:409, begins with what seems to be another poem. 14. The command in Russian means something like “Go to the People!” It was the slogan of Russian students who in 1874 attempted to persuade farmers to join them in a revolution See Shidai Ryūzō, ed., Ishikawa Takuboku jiten (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1970), 184. The slogan was derived from a phrase by Kropotkin.

254—–1 4 . T h e H i g h T r e a s o n T r i a l

15. ITZ 7:325–26. 16. He was also known as Aika, his literary name. 17. It has often been stated that Takuboku imitated Toki in writing a tanka in three lines, but before reading Toki’s poetry, Takuboku had expressed a dislike of writing tanka in one line. See ITZ 6:283–84. 18. Ibid., 259. 19. Ibid., 193–94. 20. Complete translation of the poem is in Ishikawa Takuboku, “The Romaji Diary,” trans. Donald Keene, in Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day, ed. Donald Keene (New York: Grove Press, 1994), 221–22. 21. ITZ 6:194. 22. He mentions that on May 1, she brought the advance of his monthly salary from Asahi shinbun. See ibid., 202. 23. On April 27, Setsuko bought tulips and freesia. 24. ITZ 6:204. 25. Maruya was an economist with whom Takuboku became friendly in 1910. Although he argued with Takuboku on political matters, they were close friends during the last years of Takuboku’s life. See Shidai, ed., Ishikawa Takuboku jiten, 421. 26. ITZ 6:207. 27. Ibid., 210. On March 22, he mentioned pawning his cloak, giving as the cause of his unhappiness “Money!” 28. Ibid. 29. ITZ 4:337–38. For another translation, see Janine Beichman, “The Prophet and the Poet: Leo Tolstoy and Yosano Akiko,” Asiatic Society of Japan, 5th ser., 5 (2013): 64. 30. He calls Meiji kōtei, a title normally used for foreign rulers, instead of the usual tennō. 31. ITZ 4:335. 32. Ibid. The sentence can be read as simple fact, but the conclusion of the essay suggests that Takuboku was being sarcastic.

1 5 . T h e L a s t D a y s —–255

33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 337. 35. Ibid., 338. 36. Nakayama Kazuko, “Takuboku no nashonarisumu,” in Ishikawa Takuboku, ed. Imai and Ueda. 37. ITZ 4:194; also described in “Hyakkai tsūshin” (1909), in ITZ 4:184. 38. Kindaichi could not accurately remember the month. In the chronology he prepared, he said the meeting was in July or earlier. See Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1992), 13:239. Elsewhere, he said it was late summer. Takuboku’s diary of this period was lost or destroyed. 39. Kindaichi said that the distance was 8 chō, a little more than a half mile. 40. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:111. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. Takuboku’s utterances are given in the form of unconnected statements separated by brackets. Sometimes they are interrupted by such words as “he said.” I have linked the sentences and omitted the connecting words, except in the case of Kindaichi’s remarks. 43. ITZ 7:326. 44. Election by universal suffrage, regardless of position, education, sex, and other qualifications. A movement to achieve this freedom began in the late 1890s, but it was not fully achieved until after 1945. 45. ITZ 7:331–32. 46. Ishikawa Takuboku, ed. Imai and Ueda, 24.

15. The Last Days 1. ITZ 6:214. Obviously, he was afraid that if Setsuko took Kyōko with her, she would not return. 2. Ibid. 3. They were required to leave the apartment on Yumi Street and were looking for another place to live.

256—–1 5 . T h e L a s t D a y s

4. ITZ 6:214. 5. Ibid., 215. 6. “About September 10” is the date given in Miura Mitsuko, Ani Takuboku no omoide (Tokyo: Rironsha, 1973), 116. In neither Iwaki’s nor Kindaichi’s chronicle of Takuboku is mention made of Setsuko and Miyazaki’s affair. Iwaki Yukinori states that at the beginning of September, family “trouble” caused Takuboku to sever his relationship with Miyazaki, in Takuboku hyōden (Tokyo: Gakutōsha, 1976), 343. Takuboku’s last letter to Miyazaki is dated August 31, 1911, and Setsuko’s last letter to her sister Fukiko, Miyazaki’s wife, is dated September 27, 1910. See Horiai Ryōsuke, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1974), 309. Some letters were lost. 7. Tamura Ine was the daughter of Takuboku’s oldest sister, Tamura Sada, who had died in 1906. 8. Miura, Ani Takuboku no omoide, 117. Most of the description of the letter is from this source. 9. Ibid., 118. 10. For Setsuko’s proud memories of her love affairs, see ibid., 119. There is no indication of how deeply she was involved with the men whom she names as lovers. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 125. Ine’s comments were quoted by Mitsuko from an unnamed source. The writing is vague, but Ine apparently was present when Takuboku found the photograph of Miyazaki that had been hidden in Setsuko’s obi. 14. Ibid., 122. 15. Ibid., 120. 16. Mitsuko says that the pages describing the “unfortunate event” were torn from the diary. She also states that Takuboku’s 1911 diary, which includes the incident, was given by Setsuko to her family and was not with the rest of the diary in the Hakodate Library. See ibid., 122. 17. In a letter to a friend dated June 13, 1910, Takuboku wrote, “The guy called Fate is definitely not an enemy to be dreaded. That really seems to be true.

1 5 . T h e L a s t D a y s —–257

They say that if you look at him with a cold face, he will show you a cold face, but if all you do is smile, he will return an amiable smile” (ITZ 7:300–301). 18. Mitsuko first published her special knowledge of what happened between Setsuko and Miyazaki in the Kyūshū Nichinichi shinbun of April 1924. She followed this with books giving more information. 19. Horiai, who wrote a biography of his sister Setsuko, asked Miyazaki about the letter. Miyazaki admitted that he had written to Setsuko from Biei but said that the letter was signed and that its contents were similar to one sent by the Horiai family to Takuboku in June when it broke off relations with him. The letter expressed sympathy for the unfortunate Setsuko. Takuboku’s anger was explained as having been caused by the overly affectionate expression in Miyazaki’s letter to Setsuko. See Horiai, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko, 163. 20. Miura, Ani Takuboku no omoide, 126. It is often stated that Miyazaki married Fukiko because she looked like her sister Setsuko. See, for example, Horiai, Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko, 162. 21. Kuwabara Takeo, kaisetsu to Rōmaji nikki, ed. Kuwabara Takeo, Iwanami bunko (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1981), 249. 22. ITZ 7:326. 23. Letter, June 13, 1910, in ibid., 300. 24. A Japanese-style house has no bed. Bedding is removed from the floor or tatami each morning and placed out of sight so that the room can be used for other purposes. Takuboku’s family had been very sloppy. 25. ITZ 6:235. 26. Ibid., 238. 27. Ibid., 241. 28. Ibid. Takuboku, his mother, and Setsuko all had tuberculosis. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 247. 31. Ibid., 239. 32. Her name was taken from the old name of her birthplace in Chiba Prefecture. She died in 1930, aged eighteen. For more on Fusae, see Yoshida Koyō, Takuboku hakken (Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1966), 203–20.

258—–1 5 . T h e L a s t D a y s

33. ITZ 6:247. 34. Poem and commentary in Iwaki Yukinori, Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985), 345. It is poem 104 in Kanashiki gangu. 35. This and the remainder of Kindaichi’s recollections of Takuboku’s last hours are from Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1993), 13:323–25. 36. “Do me a favor” or perhaps “I’m counting on you.” Takuboku is asking Kindaichi to look after him after he is dead. 37. Diary entry, February 3, 1911, in ITZ 6:194. 38. As early as December 12, 1910, he wrote an advertisement praising A Handful of Sand in the Tokyo Asahi as a collection rich with suggestion and Takuboku as a poet totally free from restraint. The February 1911 issue of Sōsaku, a tanka magazine associated with Wakayama, contained poetry by Takuboku. 39. Wakayama Bokusui zuihitsu shū, Kōdansha bungei bunko (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000), 290–91. 40. Ibid., 291. 41. All three are indications of death. See Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū, 13:324. 42. He had been staying in Muroran at his daughter Tora’s house and would return there after the funeral. Tora gave her father the train fare to travel to Tokyo.

16. Takuboku’s Life After Death 1. Imai Yasuko, Ishikawa Takuboku ron (Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 1974), 426. The announcement of Takuboku’s death in the Yomiuri shinbun was in small print. 2. Ibid., 427. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 428. 5. Ibid., 426–30. 6. A brief description of the contents of Ishikawa Takuboku zenshū, ed. Yoshida Koyō supervised by Toki Zenmaro and Kindaichi Kyōsuke (Tokyo: Kaizōsha, 1931–1939), is in Shidai Ryūzō, ed., Ishikawa Takuboku jiten (Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1970), 502.

1 6 . T a k u b o k u ’ s L i f e A f t e r D e a t h —–259

7. Takuboku: Poems to Eat, trans. Carl Sesar (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966), 91. This is the first tanka of Kanashiki gangu. 8. Ibid., 111. 9. Ibid., 119. 10. The amount given for the work was twenty yen, a very small sum even at that time. 11. ITZ 1:103–4. 12. ITZ 4:300. 13. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū (Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1993), 13:343. 14. The Ishikawa family at this time consisted of Kyōko and her husband, Masao, who, after they were married, took the surname Ishikawa. He became the head of the Ishikawa family and a scholar of Takuboku’s life and works. 15. ITZ 5:406. 16. Ibid., 408. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid.

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My main source was Ishikawa Takuboku zenshū, 8 vols. (Chikuma shobō, 1993). This series is listed in the bibliography and notes as ITZ. Abe Tatsuo. Shinpen Takuboku to Ikuu. Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1976. ——. Takuboku to Hakodate. Sapporo: Buyara shinsho, 1966. Aizawa Genshichi. Ishikawa Takuboku to Sendai. Sendai: Hōbundō, 1976. ——. Takuboku to Torai Shikō. Sendai: Hōbundō, 1987. Beichman, Janine. “The Prophet and the Poet: Leo Tolstoy and Yosano Akiko.” Asiatic Society of Japan, 5th ser., 5 (2013). Chibbett, David. The History of Japanese Printing and Illustration. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1977. Cooper, Michael. Rodrigues the Interpreter: An Early Jesuit in Japan and China. New York: Weatherhill, 1973. Cranston, Edwin A., trans. A Waka Anthology. 2 vols. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993, 2006. Crump, John. The Anarchist Movement in Japan, 1906–1966. Anarchist Communist Editions, pamphlet no. 8, and Pirate Press, autumn 1966.

262—–b i b l i o g r a p h y

Hokuto Rosō. Noguchi Ujō ga Ishikawa Takuboku wo mitomenakatta wake. Tokyo: e bukkurando, 2011. Horiai Ryōsuke. Takuboku no tsuma Setsuko. Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1974. Ikeda Isao. Ishikawa Takuboku: soni sanbun to shisō. Tokyo: Sekai shisōsha, 2008. ——. Ishikawa Takuboku kokusaisei e no shiza. Tokyo: Ōfūsha, 2006. ——. Ishikawa Takuboku nyūmon. Tokyo: Sakura shuppansha, 2014. ——. Takuboku atarashiki ashita no kōsatsu. Tokyo: Shin Nippon shuppansha, 2012. ——. Takuboku nikki wo yomu. Tokyo: Shin Nippon shuppansha, 2011. Imai Yasuko. Ishikawa Takuboko ron. Tokyo: Hanawa shobō, 1974. ——. “Takuboku ni okeru uta no wakare.” ITZ 8. Ishikawa Masao. Teihon Ishikawa Takuboku zenkashū. Tokyo: Kawade shobō, 1964. Ishikawa Takuboku. Ishikawa Takuboku. Chikuma Nihon bungaku zenshū. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1993. ——. Ishikawa Takuboku. Edited by Imai Yasuko and Ueda Hiroshi. Kanshō Nihon bungaku zenshū. Tokyo: Kadokawa, 1982. ——. Ishikawa Takuboku. Shinchō Nihon bungaku arubamu. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1984. ——. Ishikawa Takuboku shū. Compiled by Odagiri Hideo. Meiji bungaku zenshū 52. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1970. ——. Ishikawa Takuboku zenshū. Edited by Yoshida Koyō. Supervised by Toki Zenmaro and Kindaichi Kyōsuke. Tokyo: Kaizōsha, 1931–1939. ——. “Romaji Diary” and “Sad Toys.” Translated by Sanford Goldstein and Seishi Shimada. Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1985. ——. Rōmaji nikki. Edited by Kuwabara Takeo. Iwanami bunko. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1981. ——. Takuboku: Poems to Eat. Translated by Carl Sesar. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1966. ——. Takuboku kashū. Iwanami bunko. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1988. ——. Takuboku shishū. Edited by Ōoka Makoto. Iwanami bunko. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1991.

b i b l i o g r a p h y —–263

Iwaki Yukinori. Ishikawa Takuboku. Tokyo: Yūseisha, 1969. ——. Takuboku hyōden. Tokyo: Gakutōsha, 1976. ——. Takuboku kashū zenka hyōshaku. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1985. Keene, Donald. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era: Fiction. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ——. Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era: Poetry, Drama, Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. ——, ed. Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day. New York: Grove Press, 1994. ——. “Takuboku no nikki to geijutsu.” In Nihon no bungaku, edited by Donald Keene. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1963. Kindaichi Kyōsuke. Ishikawa Takuboku. Tokyo: Bunkyōkaku, 1934. ——. Kindaichi Kyōsuke zenshū. 15 vols. Tokyo: Sanseidō, 1992–1993. Kirkup, James, trans., and A. R. Davis, ed. Modern Japanese Poetry. Asian and Pacific Writing 9. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1978. Kondō Norihiko. Ishikawa Takuboku to Meiji no Nihon. Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1994. ——. Kaidai to “Ichiaku no suna.” Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 2008. Kornicki, Peter. The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000. Kōsaka Masaaki. Meiji shisō shi. Vol. 1. Kyōto tetsugaku sensho. Kyoto: Tōeisha, 1999. Kosakai Sumi. Ani Takuboku ni somuite Mitsuko Ruten. Tokyo: Shūeisho, 1986. Kubota Masafumi, ed. Shinten Takuboku kashū. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2013. Lidgey, Charles A. Wagner. 3rd ed. London: Dent, 1904. Mera Taku. Hibiki de tanoshimu “Ichiaku no suna.” Tokyo: Sakura shuppansha, 2014. ——. Takuboku to Bokushukusha no dōjintachi. Tokyo: Musashino shobō, 1995. Miura Mitsuko. Ani Takuboku no omoide. Tokyo: Rironsha, 1973. ——. Kanashiki oni Takuboku. Kindai sakka kenkyū sōsho. Reprint. Tokyo: Hatsune shobō, 1990. ——. “Osanaki hi no ani Takuboku.” ITZ 8.

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Miyamoto Kichiji. Takuboku no uta to sono moderu. Tokyo: Sōjusha, 1953. Miyazaki Ikuu. Hakodate no suna. Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1960. Mori Hajime. Takuboku no shisō to eibungaku. Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1982. Mori Yoshimasa. Takuboku furusatobito no majiwari. Morioka: Konmyunitei, 2014. Nihon no bungaku 15 (sections on Takuboku). Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1967. Noguchi Ujō. Teihon: Noguchi Ujō. Vol. 6. Tokyo: Miraisha, 1986. Nomura Kodō. Menkai shazetsu: kodō tai araebisu. Tokyo: Kengensha, 1951. Odagiri Hideo. “Shijin toshite no Takuboku.” In Nihon no Kindaishi, edited by Nihon kindai bungakkan. Tokyo: Yomiuri shinbunsha, 1967. Ōta Aito. Ishikawa Takuboku to “Asahi shinbun.” Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1996. Ōta Noboru. Yosano Hiroshi Akiko ronkō: Hiroshi no saiki Akiko no tenbun. Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 2013. ——. Yosano Kan Akiko ronkō. Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 2013. Oyamada Yasuhiro. Takuboku uta no fūkei: ishibumi de tadoru sokuseki. Morioka: Iwate nippō sha, 2013. Saitō Saburō. Takuboku bungaku sanpo. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1956. Sakai Sumi. Ani Takuboku ni somukite Mitsuko Ryūten. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1986. Sawada Shintarō. “Takuboku sange.” Chūō kōron, May 1938. Shakai bunkō, comp. Zaibei shakaishugisha: museifushugisha enkaku. Tokyo: Kashi shobō, 1964. Shidai Ryūzō, ed. Ishikawa Takuboku jiten. Tokyo: Meiji shoin, 1970. “Shimazaki Tōson.” Nihon no shiika. Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1967. Shimizu Unosuke. Hennen Ishikawa Takuboku zenkashū. Tokyo: Tanka shinbun, 1986. Takamatsu Tesshirō. Takuboku no chichi: Ittei to Noheji-machi. Aomori: Bungei kyōkai, 2006. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. Tanizaki Jun’ichirō zenshū. Vol. 21. Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1983. Ueda, Makoto. Modern Japanese Poets and the Nature of Literature. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1983.

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Usuda Noboru. Ishikawa Takuboku to taigyaku jiken. Tokyo: Shin Nihon shuppansha, 1990. Wakayama Bokusui. Wakayama Bokusui zuihitsu shū. Kōdansha bungei bunko. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2000. Wilde, Oscar. Art and Morality: A Defence of “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Edited by Stuart Mason. London: Jacobs, 1908. Yamamoto Reiko. Haikei Tokuboku sama. Morioka: Kumagai insatsu, 2007. Yamashita Taeko. Takuboku to Ikuu. Tokyo: Michitani, 2010. Yoshida Koyō. Takuboku hakken. Tokyo: Yōyōsha, 1966. Yūza Shōgo. Namida wa omoki mono ni shi aru kana. Tokyo: Sakura shuppansha, 2010.

inde x

Aesop’s Fables (Isoho monogatari), 139 “After Endless Discussion” (Takuboku), 190 Ainu language, 127, 236nn.1–2 Akogare (Yearning; Takuboku), 33, 60, 177 “All Kinds of Poems” (Uta no urouro; Takuboku), 219 anarchism, 188, 189–90, 191, 196, 198, 199, 200 Andersen, Hans Christian, 24 Anesaki Chōfū, 27 Aoyagi (Green Willow) Street (Hakodate), 58–59, 62, 63, 64, 207 Art and Morality (Wilde), 131, 137–38, 245n.37, 246n.5 Arte da lingua de Japan (Rodrigues), 139–40 Asahi shinbun (newspaper): poetry in, 160, 168, 169, 174, 175; Takuboku

at, 129–35, 136, 148–49, 155, 159, 166, 167, 169; and Takuboku’s illness, 193, 194, 210 Asahigawa (Hokkaidō), 85 Asakusa district (Tokyo), 129, 130, 153–54, 194; brothels in, 144–45, 149–50; burial in, 213 Ayame kai (society of poets), 36 Beni magoyashi (magazine), 55–57, 59–62, 65, 67, 231n.3 “Bethink Yourselves!” (Tolstoy), 38, 194–96, 229n.29 Bokushukusha (society of poets), 58, 59–60, 65, 67, 79, 84, 230n.30, 231n.1 Broken Commandment, The (Hakai; Shimazaki Tōson), 37, 227n.4 Buddhism, 8, 91, 225n.19; and father, 5, 6–7, 11, 33–34; and Takuboku, 11, 49

268—–i n d e x

“Byōin no mado” (The Hospital Room; Takuboku), 130 Byron, Lord, 23, 24, 25 “Chastity of Setsuko, Takuboku’s Wife, The” (Kindaichi Kyōsuke), 162 Chikamatsu Monzaemon, 238n.28 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (Byron), 23, 24, 25 Chinese language, classical, 7 Chōei (Shadow of a Bird; Takuboku), 119–20, 129, 240n.27, 242n.56 Christianity, 138, 139, 231n.5, 233n.26; and Takuboku, 14, 49, 68, 137 “Cloud Is a Genius, The” (Kumo wa tensai de aru; Takuboku), 37, 128 Communist Manifesto, The (Marx), 188 Confucianism, 7–8, 25 Cossacks, The (Tolstoy), 100 Der Fliegender Holländer (The Flying Dutchman; Wagner), 59 “Dialogue Between a Devotee of Egoism and His Friend” (Ichi riko shugisha to yūjin to no taiwa; Takuboku), 184–86 diaries (Takuboku): on Christianity, 49; on family, 12, 55, 103, 123, 133, 135, 143, 153, 221, 247n.19; and fiction, 5, 80, 110–12, 235n.34; on friendship, 23, 124–25, 127; gaps in, 24, 25, 35, 41, 50, 53, 56, 58, 62, 153, 187, 235n.23, 249n.14; on Hakodate, 56, 58, 62, 66, 221, 240n.28; on High Treason Trial, 187–88, 192; on illnesses, 25, 193, 208, 209, 210–11; and Kindaichi Kyōsuke,

108, 157, 158, 219–20; on Kushiro, 85, 86–87, 90, 94, 98; on money, 131–32; on music, 28, 40; on naturalism, 163–64; on Otaru, 70, 75, 76–77, 78; and poems, 102, 133, 160, 238n.35; on politics, 198; on poverty, 80–81; prediction in, 121; preservation of, 219–22, 256n.16; prose of, 5, 112–13; publication of, 207, 215; on school years, 15, 17; and Setsuko, 4–5, 17, 33, 143, 202, 206, 220, 221; on Shibutami, 35–36, 38, 41–43, 53, 55, 81; on Subaru, 123; on teaching, 47–50, 53; on Tokyo, 19, 21, 24; on Wagner, 30; on war, 37; on women, 22–23, 94, 116, 117; on Yosano Tekkan, 104–5. See also Romaji Diary “Diary of Someone Recently Returned to Japan” (Nagai Kafū), 196–97 divination, 72, 74, 233n.2 Doi Bansui, 31–32 Doi Yae, 227n.30 Doll’s House, A (Ibsen), 89 Endō Tadashi, 53 England, 87–88 English language: literature in, 23–25, 27, 87, 113; and rōmaji, 140; and Takuboku, 20, 24, 41, 50; teaching of, 16, 41, 50; translations into, 24, 28, 194, 244n.27 essays, 1, 42, 76, 85, 163, 167, 219; on poetry, 175, 183, 184–86; publication of Takuboku’s, 133, 207, 215; by Tolstoy, 38, 194–97, 229n.29; on Wagner, 27–30

i n d e x —–269

“Fetters” (Sokubaku; Takuboku), 124–25, 166 fiction: and diaries, 5, 80, 110–12, 235n.34; Takuboku’s attempts at, 109–10, 118, 119, 124, 127–29, 133, 134, 147, 150–51, 152, 160, 164, 178, 215. See also novels; short stories Flute and Whistle (Yobuko to kuchibue; Takuboku), 190, 253n.12 Footprints (Sokuseki; Takuboku), 127–28, 243n.21 France, 41, 197 French poetry, modernist, 1–2 friendship, 23, 124–27, 148, 158–59, 160 From the Eastern Sea (Noguchi Yonejirō), 36 From Yumi Street (Yumi-machi yori; Takuboku), 175 “Funeral Procession” (Sōretsu; Takuboku), 43, 51 Futabatei Shimei, 165–66, 169 “Garasu mado” (Glass Windows; Takuboku), 163–64, 167, 168 geishas, 66, 86–87, 90, 93, 130, 144, 205, 237n.7. See also Koyakko Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji; Murasaki Shikibu), 112, 240n.27 German language, 28, 68, 131, 193; literature in, 24. See also Wagner, Richard Gleanings from the English Poets (Inglis), 23 Gorky, Maxim, 38, 146, 193, 244n.27, 247n.25 “Gyūnyū bin” (Milk Bottles; Takuboku), 84

haiku, 2, 84, 107–8, 176 Hakai (The Broken Commandment; Shimazaki Tōson), 37, 227n.4 Hakodate (Hokkaidō), 55–57, 68, 72, 213; Aoyagi (Green Willow) Street in, 58–59, 62, 63, 64, 207; in diaries, 56, 58, 62, 66, 221, 240n.28; family in, 60, 62, 103–4; fire in, 62–65; nostalgia for, 133, 207–8, 232n.25, 241n.28; poetry gatherings in, 57, 65–66; and Setsuko, 60, 67, 104, 207, 220; and Takuboku’s poems, 173–74; visits to, 100, 102–3 Hakodate nichinichi shinbun (newspaper), 62, 65, 233n.33 Hakodate Takuboku Society, 220 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 87, 146 Handful of Sand, A (Ichiaku no suna; Takuboku), 4, 128, 159, 161, 169–75, 179, 215–17, 258n.38; reviews of, 173–74; and Shin’ichi, 170–71, 174, 192 “Hannichi” (Half a Day; Mori Ōgai), 133 Haru (Spring; Shimazaki Tōson), 105, 106 Heike monogatari (The Tales of the Heike), 139 Heimin shinbun (newspaper), 194, 195, 196 Hepburn, James Curtis, 140 Heretics, The (Jashūmon; Kitahara Hakushū), 136–37 High Treason Trial, 187–92 Hikage Ryokushi, 98, 99 Hinatsu Kōnosuke, 33

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Hinoto (Iwate), 5–6, 7 Hiraide Shū, 122, 188–89, 198 Hirano Banri, 122, 123, 124 Hirayama Yoshiko (Yoshitarō), 117–18, 119 Hokkaidō, 45–57, 85, 169, 172. See also Hakodate; Kushiro; Sapporo Hokumon shinpō (newspaper), 233n.33 Hokutō shinpō (newspaper), 86, 98 Horiai Chūsō (father-in-law), 39, 201, 220 Horiai Fukiko (sister-in-law), 156, 160, 161, 207, 249n.20, 256n.6, 257n.20 Horiai Setsuko (wife), 25, 100, 218; affairs of, 203–7; conflicts with, 158–59, 201–2, 209; courtship of, 15–18; death of, 220; and diaries, 4–5, 17, 33, 141, 143, 202, 206, 220, 221; disappearence and return of, 154–62; and Hakodate, 60, 67, 104, 207, 220; illness of, 202–3, 214; and Kindaichi Kyōsuke, 155–58, 162, 206; and Kushiro, 93; letters from, 93, 123, 134, 154–55, 160–62, 168; letters to, 156, 157; marriage to, 30–34; and Miyazaki Ikuu, 103, 155, 160, 161, 168, 204–7, 256n.6, 257nn.18–19; and mother-in-law, 155–57, 168, 201–2, 203, 204; in Otaru, 70, 72, 83, 179; poetry about, 179, 180; poetry by, 155; and poverty, 54, 80, 201, 210; sister-in-law on, 162, 203–7, 225n.30, 257n.18; on Takuboku, 168–69; Takuboku on, 44, 45, 52–53, 143–44, 187; and Takuboku’s death, 211–12; and Takuboku’s illness, 193; as teacher, 118; and Tokyo, 21, 131, 134, 160–62

Horiai Takako (sister-in-law), 201, 202 “Hospital Room, The” (Byōin no mado; Takuboku), 130 “Hospital Window, The” (Takuboku), 158 Hōtokuji (Zen temple), 6, 8, 9, 33–34, 36, 50–51 Hototogisu (magazine), 84 Ibsen, Henrik, 24, 62, 89, 226n.12, 229n.28 “Ichi riko shugisha to yūjin to no taiwa” (Dialogue Between a Devotee of Egoism and His Friend; Takuboku), 184–86 Ichiaku no suna (A Handful of Sand; Takuboku), 4, 128, 159, 161, 169–75, 179, 215–17, 258n.38; reviews of, 173–74; and Shin’ichi, 170–71, 174, 192 Ichiko (geisha), 91 Imai Yasuko, 159, 163, 164, 199 Improvisatore, The (Andersen), 24 Inglis, Robert, 23 Ishikawa Fusae (daughter), 210, 257n.32 Ishikawa Ittei (father), 10–11, 45, 202, 224n.10; and Buddhism, 5, 6–7, 11, 33–34; disappearence of, 52–53, 203; and Hōtokuji, 6–7, 33–34, 36, 50–51, 52; letters from, 90, 237n.18; at Noheji, 34, 52, 54–55, 62, 232n.16; and Takuboku’s death, 212, 213; and Takuboku’s illness, 26; tanka of, 11, 177; in Tokyo, 153–54, 226n.18, 248n.3, 258n.42 Ishikawa Katsu (mother). See Kudō Katsu

i n d e x —–271

Ishikawa Kyōko (daughter), 158, 249n.23, 259n.14; birth of, 44; and diaries, 221; in Hakodate, 60, 104; illnesses of, 113–14, 209; and marital conflicts, 154, 201–2, 204; name of, 229n.32; in Otaru, 70, 72, 83, 179; Setsuko on, 161; Takuboku on, 45, 52–53, 93, 103, 143, 144; and Takuboku’s death, 212; in Tokyo, 131 Ishikawa Masao (son-in-law), 259n.14 Ishikawa Mitsuko (sister). See Miura Mitsuko Ishikawa Sada (sister). See Tamura Sada Ishikawa Shin’ichi (son), 170–71, 174, 192 Ishikawa Takuboku: as art critic, 19–20, 29; atheism of, 11, 137; birth of, 5–6, 224n.7; childhood of, 13–14, 15; death of, 211–13, 214; depression of, 146–49, 151, 167–68, 178–79; education of, 7–8, 15–18; and family, 131, 157, 167–68; illnesses of, 25–27, 30, 38, 39, 55, 98, 99, 133–34, 146–47, 192–94, 209, 216–17; influences on, 11–12, 21, 22, 140–41, 229n.29; military exemption of, 37, 38–39; modernity of, 3–5; names of, 6, 9, 114, 224n.12, 233n.2, 241n.38; plagiarism by, 74; as poetry critic, 175–86; and poetry vs. fiction, 108–9, 113–15, 124, 127–28, 160; posthumous popularity of, 215–16; poverty of, 113, 115, 128–29, 130, 137–38, 153, 169, 174, 254n.27; puritanism of, 66–67; suicidal thoughts of, 113, 132, 146–47, 148, 151, 240n.28; as teacher, 40–44, 47–49, 50, 60; translations

by, 24, 29, 190; translations of poems of, 223n.3 Ishikawa Tora (sister). See Yamamoto Tora Itō Sachio, 107–8 Iwaizumi Kōdō, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 234n.9, 234n.12, 235n.20 Iwaki Yukinori, 235n.20, 256n.6 Iwano Hōmei, 21, 36 Iwasaki Hakugei, 59, 61–62, 232n.26 Iwate mainichi (newspaper), 173 Iwate nippō (newspaper), 27, 30, 141, 173 Izumi Kyōka, 43, 228n.26 Japanese language: classical (bungo), 1–2, 4, 15, 181–82, 184; vs. colloquial, 181–82, 185; modern, 2, 4, 30; in rōmaji, 139–40; Shibutami dialect of, 120; Tokyo vs. Iwate dialects of, 106; translations into, 24, 29, 36, 112, 139, 165, 188, 190, 194, 195, 226n.12, 237n.14, 250n.10 Jashūmon (The Heretics; Kitahara Hakushū), 136–37 “Jashūmon hikyoku” (Secret Song of the Heretics; Kitahara Hakushū), 136–37 Jesuit Mission Press, 139 Jidai shichō (magazine), 194 Jinmu (emperor of Japan), 45, 91, 100 John Gabriel Borkman (Ibsen), 24 jōruri (puppet plays), 112, 154 Kanashiki gangu (Sad Toys; Takuboku), 212, 216–17 Kanaya Kōichi, 120 Kaneko Kun’en, 250n.17

272—–i n d e x

Kanno Suga, 189 Katsurahara Taigetsu, 6, 34, 232n.16 Kawamura Tetsurō, 36 Kibōrō (restaurant; Kushiro), 86, 90–92, 95, 97, 238n.22 “Kikuchi-kun” (My Friend Kikuchi; Takuboku), 109–10, 158 Kindaichi Kyōsuke, 229n.32, 243n.14; and Ainu language, 127, 236nn.1–2; break with, 124–27, 158–59, 165–67, 249n.16; and diaries, 108, 157, 158, 219–20; help from, 115, 128, 129, 134, 135, 151, 243n.17; last visit to, 197–98, 199; letters to, 39, 114, 159, 236n.1; and prostitutes, 149; and Setsuko, 155–58, 162, 206; on Takuboku, 5–6, 43; Takuboku on, 108, 127, 171; and Takuboku’s death, 211–12, 213, 215; and Takuboku’s depression, 147–48, 151, 243n.17; and Takuboku’s illness, 193; in Tokyo, 106, 108, 111, 114, 122, 132, 152 Kinoshita Mokutarō, 128 Kitahara Hakushū, 107–8, 124, 130, 136–37, 215 Kobayashi Shigeo, 226n.19 Kobayashi Torakichi, 77–78, 179–80 Kokinshū, 177, 229n.2 Kokoro no hana (magazine), 241n.38 Kondō Norihiko, 29 Kōsaka Masaaki, 3 Koshizu (geisha), 90, 91 Kotoba no Izumi (Ochiai Naobumi), 105, 239n.9 Kōtoku Shūsui, 187–89, 191–92, 194, 198, 199, 253n.6; “letter of vindication” of, 189–90, 253n.9

Koyakko (Tsubo Jinko; geisha), 93–101, 112, 131, 144, 150, 238n.35 Kropotkin, Peter, 188, 191–93, 208, 217, 253n.13 Kudō Katsu (mother), 6, 9–10, 34, 45, 52, 121; death of, 211, 213, 214; in Hakodate, 62, 104; illness of, 209–10; Miyazaki Ikuu on, 12–13; in Otaru, 70, 72; and poverty, 12, 80, 123; and Setsuko, 155–57, 168, 201–2, 203, 204; Takuboku on, 12, 143, 173; and Takuboku’s illness, 26; in Tokyo, 131, 153, 154, 245n.36 “Kumo wa tensai de aru” (The Cloud Is a Genius; Takuboku), 37, 128 Kuraubeki shi (Poems to Eat; Takuboku), 175–76, 178, 182–83, 251n.1 Kurihara Kojō, 242n.56 Kushiro (Hokkaidō), 82–83, 84–101, 181, 205; poetry in, 96, 102; in Takuboku’s stories, 111; visit to, 179–80 Kushiro mainichi shinbun (newspaper), 111 Kushiro shinbun (newspaper), 82–87, 89, 93, 95–96, 98, 100, 102, 233n.33 Kuwabara Takeo, 207 Lamb, Charles and Mary, 23–24 “Letter from San Francisco” (Kōtoku Shūsui), 188 letters: faked, 31, 201–2; from father, 90, 237n.18; from friends, 20, 51–52, 58, 67, 94; on jobs, 82, 129–30; from Miyazaki Ikuu, 114, 131, 134, 203–5, 206, 207; from mother, 12; from Setsuko, 93, 123, 134, 154–55, 160–62, 168; from women, 94, 115

i n d e x —–273

from takuboku: to friends, 36, 84, 122, 137, 170, 173–74, 187; on High Treason Trial, 189; to Horiai Takako, 202; on illness, 26–27; to Kindaichi Kyōsuke, 39, 114, 159, 236n.1; to Koyakko, 94; on Kushiro, 89–90; to Miyazaki Ikuu, 89, 118, 137–38, 160, 205, 207; on money, 100, 118; to mother, 121; on music, 27; on politics, 198–99; in rōmaji, 136–37; to Setsuko, 156, 157; on Tokyo, 25; to women, 116, 117–18, 187 Lidgey, Charles A., 27, 29 literature: English, 23–25, 27, 87, 113; German, 24; love in, 112; modern, 81; Russian, 24, 38, 111–12; and Takuboku, 25, 163. See also novels; plays; poetry; short stories; specific works and authors “Little Grave, The” (Takuboku), 114 Lohengrin (Wagner), 28, 29 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 24 Love Suicides at Amijima (Chikamatsu), 238n.28 Mainichi shinbun (newspaper), 133, 160, 175, 242n.56, 245n.43 “Makarafu teitoku tsuitō” (Mourning for Admiral Makarov; Takuboku), 229n.29 Mansei Sami, 140 Man’yōshū, 140 marriage, 24–25, 30–34, 44, 144 Maruya Kiichi, 194, 221, 254n.25 Masaoka Shiki, 2–3, 84, 108 Matsuoka Rodō, 58–59, 66–67, 231n.3, 232n.26

McKinley, William, 199 “Meeting Again” (Saikai; Mizuno Yōshū), 236n.36 Meiji Emperor (Mutsuhito), 46, 47, 187–88, 189, 195 Meiji Restoration (1868), 7 Memoirs of a Revolutionist (Kropotkin), 188, 193, 253n.13 “Michi” (The Road; Takuboku), 160, 168 Midaregami (Yosano Akiko), 23 “Milk Bottles” (Gyūnyū bin; Takuboku), 84 Mishima Yukio, 37 Misty Night in the Blossoms, 147–48 Miura Mitsuko (sister), 15, 16, 45, 153, 202; Christianity of, 49; on father, 226n.18; in Hakodate, 62, 67; and Miyazaki Ikuu, 249n.20; and mother, 155; in Otaru, 34, 54, 55, 62, 70, 72; on Setsuko, 162, 203–7, 225n.30, 257n.18; and Setsuko’s illness, 203; on Takuboku, 9, 10, 13–14 Miyako shinbun (newspaper), 233n.33 Miyazaki Ikuu, 213; break with, 124, 205; and diaries, 220, 221; in Hakodate, 59, 61, 62, 70; help from, 76, 103–4, 123, 128, 134, 151, 240n.28; and Horiai Fukiko, 155, 156, 160, 161, 249n.20; letters from, 114, 131, 134, 203–5, 206, 207; letters to, 89, 118, 137–38, 160, 205, 207; and Setsuko, 103, 155, 160, 161, 168, 204–7, 256n.6, 257nn.18–19; Takuboku on, 171; on Takuboku’s mother, 12–13 Mizuno Yōshū, 236n.36 Mori Hajime, 25

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Mori Ōgai, 24, 107–8, 124, 130, 133, 226n.12 Morioka (Iwate), 173, 201, 202, 204, 251n.34 Morioka Middle School, 15–18, 129; strike at, 16–17, 54 “Mourning for Admiral Makarov” (Makarafu teitoku tsuitō; Takuboku), 229n.29 Mukai Eitarō, 65, 67, 232n.21 music, 27–29, 39; Western, 27, 29 “My First Glimpses of Otaru” (Takuboku), 74 “My Friend Kikuchi” (Kikuchi-kun; Takuboku), 109–10, 158 Myōjō (magazine), 59, 94, 116, 117, 231n.3, 241n.37, 241n.41; failure of, 105–6, 107, 118, 121; poems in, 18, 20, 55, 115; short story in, 43; and Subaru, 122, 188 Nagai Kafū, 196–97 Nakamura Seikō, 243n.21 NAKIWARAI (Laughter Among Tears; Toki Zenmaro), 191 Namiki Takeo, 132, 149 national socialism (kokka shakaishugi), 198 nationalism, 79 Natsume Sōseki, 14, 36–37, 43, 105, 210, 215, 225n.28, 228n.26 naturalism, 49, 105, 109, 163–64 New Poetry Society, 107 New Year’s Day, 45–47, 80–81, 121–22, 123, 208 “Nichiro sensō ron” (On the RussoJapanese War; Takuboku), 38, 195

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 30 nihilism, 188 Nippon-shiki romanization, 140, 247n.12 Nishikawa Kōjirō, 80 Noguchi Ujō, 73–76, 97, 101, 234n.9 Noguchi Yonejirō, 36 Noheji (temple), 34, 52, 54–55, 62, 154, 232n.16 Nomura Kodō, 20, 28 novels, 105–6; from diaries, 235n.34; naturalist, 164–65; serialized, 118, 119; Takuboku’s attempts at, 37, 109, 118, 119, 127–28, 133, 147, 152, 164 Ochiai Naobumi, 105, 239n.9 Odajima Koshū, 241n.45 Oguni Rodō, 69, 77, 233n.33 Ōishi Seinosuke, 253n.6 Okada Kenzō, 220, 221 Okayama Gishichi, 173 Omokage (Takuboku), 65 On the Eve (Turgenev), 111–12 “On the Russo-Japanese War” (Nichiro sensō ron; Takuboku), 38, 195 Onoe Saishū, 183–86 Ōsaka shinpō (newspaper), 118, 120 Ōshima Tsuneo (Rujin), 59, 84, 231n.5 Ōta Masao (Kinoshita Makutarō), 243n.20 Otaru (Hokkaidō), 23, 67, 103; vs. Kushiro, 85; Miura Mitsuko in, 34, 54, 55, 62, 70, 72; Takuboku in, 20, 69–70, 71–83; Takuboku’s departure from, 179, 180–81 Otaru nippō (newspaper), 69–70, 71, 73–75, 77–79, 233n.33

i n d e x —–275

“Our Gang and the Other Guy” (Warera no ichidan to kare; Takuboku), 160 Patriotic Women’s Society (Aikoku fujin kai; Kushiro), 87–88, 237n.8 “Personal View of the Collapse of the Tanka, A” (Tanka metsubō shiron; Onoe Saishū), 183 Picture of Dorian Gray, The (Wilde), 245n.37 plays, 92, 119; by Ibsen, 24, 62, 89, 226n.12, 229n.28; by Shakespeare, 23–24, 87, 113. See also jōruri “Poem on Leaving Japan” (Yosano Tekkan), 106 Poems to Eat (Kuraubeki shi; Takuboku), 175–76, 178, 182–83, 251n.1 poetry: in Asahi shinbun, 160, 168, 169, 174, 175; competitions of, 94, 107, 114, 115, 124; essays on, 175, 183, 184–86; vs. fiction, 108–9, 113–15, 124, 127–28, 160; income from, 22, 50, 174; linked-verse, 2; new-style (shintaishi), 182–83, 252n.10; publication of Takuboku’s, 18, 20, 55, 115, 160, 169, 174, 215; in rōmaji, 140, 141; by Setsuko, 155; shi-style, 33, 175–79, 190; sonnets, 2, 9; in Subaru, 119; Takuboku on, 163, 175–86; and Takuboku’s diaries, 102, 133, 160, 238n.35; and Takuboku’s students, 43; Western, 1–2, 182; by Yosano Tekkan, 94, 106. See also tanka poetry; specific authors and works

gatherings, 26, 124; in Hakodate, 57, 65–66; and Mori Ōgai, 107–8, 116; in Tokyo, 21–22, 114, 116 politics, revolutionary, 37, 41–42, 208, 252n.2; anarchist, 188, 189–91, 196, 198–200; and High Treason Trial, 190–91; and Noguchi Ujō, 74; and Wagner, 29. See also socialism Portuguese language, 139–40 prostitutes, 144–45, 149–50 realism, 37, 118, 145–46 Rescript on Education (1872), 8 “Rinchūsho” (Takuboku), 228n.23, 228n.28 “Road, The” (Michi; Takuboku), 160, 168 Rodrigues, Joaõ, 139 Romaji Diary (Rōmaji nikki; Takuboku), 128, 134, 136–52, 153, 192; on Kindaichi Kyōsuke, 127; as literature, 141, 152, 158; on marriage, 33, 144; on naturalism, 164; realism of, 145–46; on Setsuko, 4–5, 141, 143–44; on suicide, 132, 146, 148, 151; on women, 12, 142–46, 149–50 Rōmaji kai (society of poets), 141 romanization (rōmaji), 136–40, 191, 247n.12 romanticism, 118 Russia, 44, 100, 165, 196, 229n.28, 253n.14 Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), 37–38, 39, 46, 88, 194–95, 197, 237n.8 Sad Toys (Kanashiki gangu; Takuboku), 212, 216–17

276—–i n d e x

Saigō Takamori, 190 “Saikai” (Meeting Again; Mizuno Yōshū), 236n.36 Saitō Saburō, 6, 12 Saitō Taiken, 234n.5 Sakai Toshihiko, 188, 194, 253n.6 Sapporo (Hokkaido), 65, 67–68, 72, 77, 241n.28 Sasaki Nobutsuna, 107–8, 114, 215 Satō Hokkō (Ikkō), 129–30, 170, 213, 244n.29, 245n.43, 251n.25; help from, 132–33, 134, 193 Satō Isen, 244n.31 Satō Kuniji, 237n.9 Sawada Shintarō, 76, 77, 78–79, 232n.13 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 37 “Secret Song of the Heretics” ( Jashūmon hikyoku; Kitahara Hakushū), 136–37 Segawa Fukashi, 173, 191, 198 “Setchūkō” (Travel in the Snow; Takuboku), 85 Shadow of a Bird (Chōei; Takuboku), 119–20, 129, 240n.27, 242n.56 Shakespeare, William, 23–24, 87, 113 shi poetry, 33, 175–79, 190 Shibukawa Genji, 169, 171 Shibutami (Iwate), 20; conflicts in, 33–34, 50–51; dialect of, 120; nostalgia for, 21, 72, 133, 169; Takuboku in, 6–10, 25–26, 27, 35–44; teacher’s strike in, 53–54 “Shibutami Diary” (Takuboku), 35 Shibutami Elementary School, 7–8, 40, 67, 127 Shimazaki Tōson, 37, 105, 106, 227n.4

shintaishi (new-style) poetry, 182–83, 252n.10 Shiraishi Yoshirō, 71, 74, 90, 101, 234n.15, 235n.20, 239n.39; and Kushiro shinbun, 82–83, 84–87, 89; Takuboku’s break with, 96–99; and Takuboku’s resignation, 77–78 “Shizuko no hi” (The Sorrows of Shizuko; Takuboku), 119 short stories (Takuboku), 37, 84, 128, 166, 168; and diaries, 80, 124–25; and novels, 119; publication of, 130, 160; Takuboku’s attempts at, 109–10, 129, 134, 150–51, 158, 178 Shōtenchi (magazine), 34, 39, 55 Shun’yōdō (publisher), 130, 168, 169, 250n.17 Social Revolutionary Party, 187 socialism, 47, 165, 194; vs. anarchism, 188; national, 198; parliamentarian, 199; and Takuboku, 49, 69, 80, 181, 188, 189, 191, 199, 200; and Tolstoy, 38, 195–96 socialistic imperialism (shakaishugiteki teikokushugi), 198, 199–200 Sokkyō shijin (Mori Ōgai, trans.; The Improvisatore; Andersen), 24 “Sokubaku” (Fetters; Takuboku), 124–25, 166 Sokuseki (Footprints; Takuboku), 127–28, 243n.21 sonnets, 2, 9 “Sōretsu” (Funeral Procession; Takuboku), 43, 51 “Sorrows of Shizuko, The” (Shizuko no hi; Takuboku), 119 Sōsaku (magazine), 184

i n d e x —–277

Spring (Haru; Shimazaki Tōson), 105, 106 Stark, Oskar Victorovich, 228n.6 Subaru (magazine), 118–19, 121–24, 129, 133, 160, 188, 242n.60; Footprints in, 127–28, 243n.21; and Myōjō, 122, 188 Sugawara Yoshiko, 115–17, 119 “Summer in Hakodate, A” (Takuboku), 58 Susukida Kyūkin, 36 symbolism, 109 Tachibana Chieko, 60–61, 144 Taishō (emperor of Japan), 97 Takamura Kōun, 225n.1 Takuboku’s Thought and English Literature (Mori Hajime), 25 Tale of Genji, The (Genji monogatari; Murasaki Shikibu), 112, 240n.27 Tales from Shakespeare (Lamb), 23–24 Tales of the Heike, The (Heike monogatari), 139 Tamura Ine, 203, 205, 206, 256n.7 Tamura Sada (sister), 224n.10, 256n.7 Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, 64–65 “Tanka metsubō shiron” (A Personal View of the Collapse of the Tanka; Onoe Saishū), 183 tanka poetry: in classical Japanese, 181–82, 184; competitions in, 94; conventions for, 181–82; by father, 11, 177; influences on Takuboku’s, 11–12, 21, 22; lines of, 254n.17; modern, 84; vs. shi, 176, 177, 178; and Takuboku, 1, 80, 128, 164, 168, 169, 193; Takuboku on, 4, 175–86, 183; by Toki Zenmaro, 191

Tannhäuser (Wagner), 27, 28, 29 Tōgō Heihachirō (admiral), 195 Toki Zenmaro, 191, 194, 209, 213, 251n.29, 254n.17; and diaries, 220; as editor, 217–19; and Takuboku’s illness, 193 Tokyo, 31, 82, 90; earthquake in (1923), 64–65; family in, 131, 135, 143, 151–54, 226n.18, 245n.36, 248n.3, 258n.42; Kindaichi Kyōsuke in, 106, 108, 111, 114, 122, 132, 152; poetry gatherings in, 21–22, 114, 116; and Setsuko, 21, 131, 134, 160–62; Takuboku in, 18, 19–25, 103, 104–20, 181; Yoshiwara district in, 149. See also Asakusa district Tōkyō mainichi shinbun (newspaper), 120 Tolstoy, Leo, 30, 38, 100, 194, 195–96, 197 Tomita Koichirō, 16 Tōundō (publisher), 170, 171, 218 “Travel in the Snow” (Setchūkō; Takuboku), 85 Tsubouchi Shōyō, 165, 250n.10 Turgenev, Ivan, 111–12, 165, 180, 244n.27 Ueda Bin, 14, 33, 36, 225n.28 Uesugi Shōnan, 91 Union Society, 17, 18, 25, 30 United States, 36, 188, 196–97, 199 “Uta no urouro” (All Kinds of Poems; Takuboku), 219 Wagner (Lidgey), 27 Wagner, Richard, 10, 27–30, 59, 68, 224n.13

278—–i n d e x

“Wagner’s Thought” (Takuboku), 27–30 Wakayama Bokusui, 211–12, 213 “Warera no ichidan to kare” (Our Gang and the Other Guy; Takuboku), 160 Waseda bungaku (magazine), 174 West, 4, 106, 197; and art, 19; and poetry, 1–2, 182; and rōmaji, 140. See also specific countries Wilde, Oscar, 131, 137–39, 145, 245n.37, 246n.5 women: affairs with, 93–101, 112, 131, 144, 150, 158, 238n.35; dialogue of, 109; of England, 87–88; letters to and from, 94, 115, 116, 117–18, 187; in novels, 109; as poets, 116; Takuboku on, 22–23, 87–88, 94, 116, 117, 142–46, 149–50, 187. See also geishas; prostitutes “Women of the New Era” (Takuboku), 87–88 Wordsworth, William, 27 Yakushiji Gyōun, 19, 225n.1 Yamagata Yūzaburō, 70, 71

Yamamoto Senzaburō, 23 Yamamoto Tora (sister), 54, 70, 85, 203, 210, 224n.10, 258n.42 Yayoi School (Hakodate), 60, 65, 67, 69 Yearning (Akogare; Takuboku), 33, 60, 177 Yobuko to kuchibue (Flute and Whistle; Takuboku), 190, 253n.12 Yokoyama Jōtō, 98, 100, 239n.40 Yosano Akiko, 20, 81–82, 131, 188, 236n.36, 243nn.10–11; friendship with, 22, 23, 124, 147; and Myōjō, 106, 107; as poet, 116; and Takuboku’s work, 33, 128, 215 Yosano Tekkan, 70, 114–15, 131, 236n.36, 240n.13, 243nn.10–11; criticism from, 51–52; friendship with, 20, 21–23, 124; and High Treason Trial, 188; and Myōjō, 107, 108, 118, 121; names of, 239n.5; poetry of, 94, 106; in poverty, 104–5 Yoshii Isamu, 107–8, 122, 124, 243n.10 Yumi-machi yori (From Yumi Street; Takuboku), 175