Kokoro Part 13

CHAPTER 66.

By the time I left home, I was already thoroughly disenchanted with the world. My conviction that others could not be trusted had, you might say, penetrated me to the marrow. My despised uncle and aunt and relatives seemed representative of the whole of humanity. Even on the train I found myself glancing warily at my neighbors, and when someone occasionally spoke to me, my mistrust only deepened. I was sunk in depression. At times I felt a suffocating pressure, as if I had swallowed lead. Yet at the same time every nerve was on edge.

This state of mind was largely what had prompted my decision to leave the noisy boardinghouse, I think. True, my financial security meant I could consider living in a place of my own, but my earlier self would never have thought of going to such bother, no matter how much money might be in my pocket.

For some time after my move to Kois.h.i.+kawa, I continued in a highly strung state. I kept glancing furtively about, so much so that I unnerved even myself. Although my mind and eyes were abnormally active, however, my tongue grew less and less inclined to speak. I sat silently at my desk, observing those around me like a cat. Sometimes my keen awareness of them was so intense it shamed me to think of it. All that distinguished me from a thief was that I was stealing nothing, I thought in self-disgust.

You must find all this most peculiar-how on earth did I have energy to spare to feel attracted to Ojsan, to delight in gazing at her clumsy flower arrangements or listen with joy to her inept playing? I can only answer that these were the facts, and as such I must lay them before you. I will leave it up to your clever mind to a.n.a.lyze them, and simply add one thing. I distrusted the human race where money was concerned, but not yet in the realm of love. So despite the obvious contradiction, both states of mind happily coexisted inside me.

I always called the widow by the polite t.i.tle of Okusan, so I shall do the same here. Okusan apparently considered me a quiet, well-behaved person, and she was full of praise for my studious habits. She made no mention of the uneasy glances or the troubled, suspicious air. Perhaps she simply did not notice it, or maybe she was too polite to speak of it; at any event, it never seemed to bother her. Once she even admiringly told me I had a generous heart. I was honest enough to blus.h.i.+ngly deny this, but she insisted. "You only say that because you're not aware of it yourself," she said earnestly.

The fact is, she had not originally planned on having a student as a boarder. When she had asked around the neighborhood if anyone knew of a lodger, she had thought in terms of a government official or the like. I imagine she was envisaging some underpaid fellow who couldn't afford a place of his own. Compared with her impoverished imaginary lodger, I struck her as far more generous in my ways. I guess I was in fact more liberal with my money than someone in more straitened circ.u.mstances would have been. But this was a product of circ.u.mstance rather than any natural generosity, so it was hardly an indication of what kind of person I was. In her woman's way, however, Okusan did her best to view my liberality with money as an expression of my general character.

CHAPTER 67.

Okusan's warm perception of me inevitably started to influence my state of mind. After a while my glances became less mistrustful, and my heart felt more tranquil and settled within me. This new happiness I owed, in effect, to the way Okusan and the rest of the household turned a blind eye on all my wariness and s.h.i.+fty glances. No one reacted nervously to me, and so my own nerves grew steadily calmer.

Perhaps she did indeed find me generous and open-hearted, as she claimed, but Okusan was a wise woman, and her treatment of me may well have been intentional. Or she may simply not have noticed anything odd, since all my nervous activity was largely in my mind and may not have been evident to others.

Gradually, as my inner turmoil subsided, I grew closer to the family. I could now joke with Okusan and her daughter. Sometimes they invited me to have tea with them, and on other evenings I would bring cakes and invite them to join me in my room. My social world had suddenly expanded, I felt. I constantly found my precious study time frittered away on conversation, but oddly, this disruption never bothered me. Okusan was, of course, a lady of leisure. Ojsan not only went to school but had her flower arranging and koto koto study, so she should by rights have been extremely busy. But to my surprise she seemed to have all the time in the world. Whenever the three of us came across one another, we would settle down for a long chat. study, so she should by rights have been extremely busy. But to my surprise she seemed to have all the time in the world. Whenever the three of us came across one another, we would settle down for a long chat.

It was generally Ojsan who arrived to fetch me. She would come via the veranda to stand in front of my room, or else approach through the sitting room and appear at the sliding doors that led to the room next to mine. She would always pause in front of my room. Then she would call my name and say, "Are you studying?"

I was usually sitting staring at some difficult book lying open on the desk in front of me, so no doubt I looked impressively studious. But to tell the truth, I wasn't devoting myself to my books as much as it might seem. Though my eyes were fixed on the page, I was really just waiting for her to come for me. If she failed to appear, I would have to make a move. I would rise to my feet, make my way to her room, and ask the same question-"Are you studying?"

Ojsan occupied a six-mat room beyond the sitting room. Okusan was sometimes in the sitting room, sometimes in her daughter's. Neither had a room she considered exclusively her own. Despite the part.i.tion between them, the two rooms formed a single s.p.a.ce, with mother and daughter moving freely between them. When I stood outside and called, it was always Okusan who answered, "Come on in." Even if Ojsan happened to be there as well, she rarely responded herself.

In time Ojsan developed the occasional habit of coming to my room on some errand and then settling down to talk. Whenever this happened, a strange uneasiness beset my heart. It wasn't simply a nervous response to finding myself alone face-to-face with a young woman. Her presence made me oddly fidgety and ill at ease, and this unnatural behavior distressed me as a self-betrayal. She, however, was entirely at her ease. It was difficult to believe that this unabashed girl and the girl who managed to produce only a timid whisper when practicing her koto koto singing could be the same person. On occasion she stayed so long that her mother called her from the sitting room. "Coming," she would answer, but she continued to sit there. Yet she was far from a mere child-this much my eyes told me clearly. And I could see too that she was behaving in a way that let me know as much. singing could be the same person. On occasion she stayed so long that her mother called her from the sitting room. "Coming," she would answer, but she continued to sit there. Yet she was far from a mere child-this much my eyes told me clearly. And I could see too that she was behaving in a way that let me know as much.

CHAPTER 68.

I would sigh with relief after Ojsan left my room, but I also felt a certain dissatisfaction and regret. Perhaps there was something girlish in me. I imagine a modern youth such as you would certainly think so. But in those days this was the way most of us were.

Okusan rarely left the house, and on the few occasions when she did, she never left me alone with her daughter. I can't judge whether this was intentional. It may be out of place for me to say this, but after careful observation I could only conclude that Okusan wanted to bring us closer, yet at other times she seemed secretly guarded. I had never been in such a situation, and it often made me uncomfortable.

I needed Okusan to make her position clear. Rationally speaking, her att.i.tudes were clearly contradictory. But with the memory of my uncle's deceitfulness still so fresh, I could not repress another suspicion-that one of her two conflicting att.i.tudes must be fake. I was at a loss to decide which was the real one, and I could make no sense of why she behaved so strangely. At times I chose simply to lay the fault entirely at the door of womanhood itself. When it comes down to it, I told myself, she's acting this way because she's a woman, and women are stupid. Whenever my cogitations arrived at a dead end, this answer was the one I reached for.

Yet although I despised women, I could not find it in me to despise Ojsan. Faced with her, my theorizing lost its power. I felt for her a love that was close to pious faith. You may find it odd that I use a specifically religious word to describe my feelings for a young woman, but real love, I firmly believe, is not so different from the religious impulse. Whenever I saw her face, I felt that I myself had become beautiful. At the mere thought of her, I felt elevated by contact with her n.o.bility. If this strange phenomenon we call Love can be said to have two poles, the higher of which is a sense of holiness and the baser the impulse of s.e.xual desire, this love of mine was undoubtedly in the grip of Love's higher realm. Being human, of course, I could not leave my fleshly self behind, yet the eyes that beheld her, the heart that treasured thoughts of her, knew nothing of the reek of the physical.

My love for the daughter grew as my antipathy toward the mother increased, and so the relations.h.i.+p among the three of us ceased to be the simple thing it had once been. This change was largely internal, mind you. On the surface all was the same.

Then some little thing made me begin to wonder if I had misunderstood Okusan. I now revised my idea that one of her two contradictory att.i.tudes toward me and her daughter must be false. They did not inhabit her heart by turns, I decided-they were both there together. Despite the apparent contradiction, I realized, her careful watchfulness did not mean she had forgotten or reconsidered her urge to bring us closer. Her wariness surely sprang from the worrying possibility that we might become more intimate than she considered proper. Her anxiety seemed to me quite unnecessary, since I felt not the slightest physical urge toward her daughter, but I now ceased to think badly of Okusan's motives.

CHAPTER 69.

Piecing together the various bits of evidence, it became clear to me, in a word, that the people of this household trusted me. In fact, I even found proof enough to convince me that this trust had existed from the very beginning. Having come to suspect others, I was oddly moved by this discovery. Were women so much more intuitive than men? I wondered. And did this account for women's tendency to be so easily deceived? In retrospect, these thoughts seem ironic, since I was responding just as irrationally and intuitively to Ojsan. While swearing to myself that I would trust no one, my trust in her was absolute. And yet I found her mother's trust in me peculiar.

I did not talk much about my home and was careful to make no mention of recent events. Just recalling them filled me with distress. I spent as much of our conversations as possible listening to Okusan. But she had other ideas. She was always curious about my home and the situation there, so in the end I revealed everything. When I told her that I had decided never to return, that there was nothing left for me there except the graves of my parents, she seemed deeply moved, and her daughter actually wept. I thought then that it was good to have spoken. It made me happy.

Now that I had told her all, it was abundantly clear that Okusan felt her intuitions confirmed. She began to treat me like some young relative. This did not anger me; indeed, I was pleased by it. But in time my paranoid doubts returned.

It was a tiny thing that sparked my suspicion, but as one insignificant incident was added to another, distrust gradually took root. I began to suspect that Okusan was trying to bring her daughter and me together from the same motives as my uncle. And with this thought what had appeared to be kindness suddenly seemed the actions of a cunning strategist. I brooded on this bitter conviction.

Okusan had always stated that she had wanted a lodger to look after because the house was forlornly unpeopled. This did not seem a lie to me. Having grown close enough to become her confidant, I was now quite sure it was true. On the other hand, she was not particularly wealthy. From the point of view of her own interests, she certainly had nothing to lose by cultivating the relations.h.i.+p.

And so I grew wary again. Still, at times I scoffed at my own foolishness. What use was all my caution about her mother, when I still loved Ojsan as deeply as ever? But no matter how foolish I recognized myself to be, this contradiction was hardly a source of much pain. My real anguish began when it occurred to me that Ojsan might be as devious as her mother. The instant it occurred to me that everything was a result of plotting behind my back, I was racked with agony. This was not mere unhappiness-I was in the grip of utter despair. And yet, at the same time I continued to have unwavering faith in Ojsan. Thus I found myself paralyzed, suspended between conviction and doubt. Both seemed to me at once the product of my imagination and the truth.

CHAPTER 70.

I kept up my attendance at college, but the professors' lectures sounded distant in my ears. It was the same with my own study. My eyes took in the print on the page, yet its meaning vanished like a wisp of smoke before it really penetrated. I grew taciturn. Several friends, misinterpreting this, reported to others that I seemed as if deep in meditation. I made no attempt to correct them; in fact, I was delighted to be provided with this convenient mask. But at times some inner dissatisfaction would produce an outburst of high-spirited romping, astonis.h.i.+ng my friends.

Not many visitors came to the house. The family seemed to have few relatives. Once in a while Ojsan's friends stopped by, but generally they would spend the time talking in such low voices that one could scarcely tell they were in the house. For all my heightened sensitivity, I did not realize that they spoke quietly out of deference to my presence. My own friends who came calling, though hardly rowdy, were not inclined to feel constrained by the presence of others. Thus, where guests were concerned, our roles were essentially reversed-I seemed the master of the house, while Ojsan behaved like a timorous guest.

I write this simply because it is something I recall, not because it bothered me. One thing did bother me, though: one day I heard the startling sound of a male voice coming from somewhere in the house, either the sitting room or Ojsan's room. It was a very quiet voice, unlike that of my own visitors. I had no idea what he was saying, and the more I tried and failed to catch the words, the more it provoked my straining nerves. A strange sense of mounting frustration seized me as I sat in my room. I began by wondering whether he was a relative or only some acquaintance. Then I tried to guess if he was a young man or someone older. I had no way to tell from where I sat. Yet I could not get up and open the door to look. My nerves were not so much trembling as afflicting me with strong waves of painful tension.

Once the man left, I carefully inquired his name. They gave a simple and straightforward answer. Though I made it clear I was still not satisfied, I lacked the courage to ask further. Nor, of course, did I have the right to do so. I had been taught to maintain dignified self-respect, but a blatant greed for information undermined it; both were evident on my face. They laughed. So perturbed was my state that I was unable to judge whether their laughter was scornful or well intentioned. Even once the incident had pa.s.sed, I continued to mull over the thought that they might have been jeering at me.

I was quite free-I could leave college at any time if I chose, go or live anywhere I liked, or marry any girl I wished, without having to consult anyone. Many times I had reached the decision to come right out and ask Okusan if I could marry her daughter. But each time I hesitated, and in the end said nothing. It wasn't that I was afraid of a refusal-I could not imagine how life might change for me if she turned me down, but I could at least steel myself with the thought that a refusal might give me the advantage of a new perspective on the world. No, what irked me was the suspicion that they were luring me on. The thought that I could be innocently playing into their hands filled me with resentful rage. Ever since my uncle's deception, I was determined that come what may I would never again become such easy prey.

CHAPTER 71.

I spent my money on nothing but books. Okusan told me I should get some clothes, and it was true, all I had were the country-woven cotton robes that had been made for me back home. Students in those days never wore anything with silk in it. One of my friends, who came from a wealthy family of Yokohama merchants who did things extravagantly, was once sent an underrobe of fine silk. We all laughed at it. He produced all sorts of shamefaced excuses and tossed it unworn into his trunk, till we gathered around one day and bullied him into wearing it. Unfortunately, the thing became infested with lice. This was a lucky break for my friend, who bundled it up and carried it off on one of his walks, where he threw it into the large ditch in Nezu. I was with him, and I remember standing on the bridge laughing as I watched him. It never crossed my mind that this was a wasteful thing to do. Unfortunately, the thing became infested with lice. This was a lucky break for my friend, who bundled it up and carried it off on one of his walks, where he threw it into the large ditch in Nezu. I was with him, and I remember standing on the bridge laughing as I watched him. It never crossed my mind that this was a wasteful thing to do.

I must have been quite grown-up by then, but I still had not come to understand the need for a set of good clothes. I had the odd idea that I had no need to bother about clothes until I graduated and grew an adult mustache. So my response to Okusan was that I only needed books. Knowing just how many I bought, she asked whether I read them all. I was stuck for an answer; some were dictionaries, but there were quite a few others that I should have read but whose pages were not even cut. Books or clothing, I realized then-it made no difference if the thing went unused. Besides, I wanted to buy Ojsan an obi or some fabric that took her fancy, on the pretext of repaying them for all the kindness I had received. I therefore relented and asked Okusan to purchase the necessary things for me.

She was not prepared to go alone. I must accompany her, she told me, and furthermore her daughter must come too. We students were brought up in a different world from today, remember, and it was not the custom in those days to go around in a girl's company. Being still very much a slave to convention, I was hesitant, but I finally gathered up my courage and we all set off together.

Ojsan was dressed up for the occasion. She had whitened her naturally pale face with copious amounts of powder, and the effect was striking. Pa.s.sersby stared at her. Then their eyes would stray to my face as I walked beside her, which I found disconcerting.

We went to Nihonbas.h.i.+ and bought all we wanted. The process involved a lot of dithering over choices, so it took longer than antic.i.p.ated. Okusan made a point of constantly calling me over to ask my opinion. From time to time she hung a piece of fabric over Ojsan's shoulder and asked me to step back a few paces and see what I thought. I always managed to respond convincingly, declaring that this worked or that did not.

It was dinnertime when we were finally through. Okusan offered to treat me to a meal by way of thanks, and she led us down a narrow side street where I remember there was a vaudeville theater called Kiharadana. Our restaurant was as tiny as the lane. I knew nothing of the local geography, and Okusan's familiarity with it quite surprised me.

We didn't get home until after dark. The next day was a Sunday, and I spent it shut away in my room. On Monday no sooner did I arrive at the university than a cla.s.smate asked me teasingly when I'd gotten myself a wife, and congratulated me on marrying such a beauty. He had evidently caught sight of the three of us on our Nihonbas.h.i.+ excursion.

CHAPTER 72.

When I got home, I told this story to Okusan and Ojsan. Okusan laughed, then looked me in the eye and added, "That must have been awkward for you." I wondered then whether this was how a woman induces a man to talk. Her look certainly gave me reason to think so. Perhaps I should have asked for Ojsan's hand then and there. But my heart was by now deeply ingrained with distrust. I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped and deliberately s.h.i.+fted the direction of the conversation elsewhere.

Carefully avoiding the crucial subject of my own feelings, I probed Okusan on her intentions for her daughter's marriage. She told me frankly that there had already been two or three proposals, but as her daughter was still a young schoolgirl, there was no hurry. Though she did not say as much, she clearly set great store by her daughter's good looks. She even remarked in pa.s.sing that a suitable husband could be found anytime they wished. But as her daughter was an only child, she said, she was not inclined to send her off with just anyone. I got the impression that she was of two minds about whether to adopt a son-in-law as a member of their own household, or let her daughter marry out as a bride.1 I felt I was gaining quite a lot of information as I listened. Effectively, however, I had forfeited my own chance to speak. I couldn't say a word on my own behalf now. At an appropriate point I broke off the conversation and returned to my room.

Ojsan, who had been sitting with us laughing and protesting at my tale, by this time had retreated to a corner with her back turned. As I stood to leave, I turned and saw her there. It is impossible to read the heart of someone who is looking away, and I couldn't guess what she might have been thinking as she listened. She was sitting beside the half-open closet and had taken something from it and laid it on her lap. She now appeared to be gazing intently down at it. In a corner of the open closet, I caught sight of the fabric I had bought her two days before. My own new robe, I saw, lay folded there with hers.

As I was standing wordlessly to leave, Okusan suddenly grew serious. "What's your opinion?" she asked. Confused by the unexpected question, I had to ask what she meant. She wanted to know, she explained, whether I thought an early marriage was a good idea. I said I thought it wise to take things slowly. "I think so too," she replied.

It was at this point in the relations.h.i.+p among the three of us that another man entered the picture, one whose arrival in the household crucially affected my fate. If he had not crossed my path, I doubt that I would need to write this long letter to you now. It was as if I stood there oblivious as the devil brushed by me, unaware that he cast a shadow upon me that would darken my whole life. It was I who brought this man into the house, I must confess. Naturally, I needed Okusan's consent, so I told her his story and asked if he could move in with me. She advised against it but had no convincing argument to offer. For my part, I could see every reason why I must bring him into the household, and so I persisted in following my own judgment and did what I believed was right.

CHAPTER 73.

I will call this friend of mine K. We had been friends since childhood. As you will no doubt realize from this, our native place was a bond between us. K was the son of a Pure Land Buddhist priest-but not the eldest son and heir, I should add, which is how he came to be adopted by a doctor's family. The Hongan subsect had a very powerful presence in my home district, and its priests were better off than others. If the priest had a daughter of marriageable age, for instance, one of his paris.h.i.+oners would help to find her a suitable match, and the wedding expenses would of course not come out of his own pocket. Pure Land temple families were thus generally quite wealthy.

K's home temple was a prosperous one. Even so, the family may not have had the funds to send him to Tokyo for his education. Did they decide to have him adopted into the other family because the other family had the means to educate him? I have no way of knowing. I only know that the doctor's family adopted him while we were still middle-school students. I still remember the surprise I felt when the teacher called the roll one day and I realized K's name had suddenly changed.

His new family was also fairly wealthy, and they paid for him to go to Tokyo for his studies. I left before he did, but he moved into the same dormitory when he arrived. K and I shared a room-in those days it was common for two or three students to study and sleep together in the one room. We lived huddled together like wild animals trapped in a cage, hugging each other and glaring out at the world. Tokyo and its inhabitants frightened us both. There in our little room, however, we spoke with contempt of the world at large.

But we were in earnest, and determined one day to become great. K's willpower was particularly strong. Son of a temple family that he was, he was in the habit of talking in terms of the Buddhist concept of dedicated self-discipline, and his behavior certainly seemed to me to epitomize this ideal. In my heart, I stood in awe of him.

Ever since our middle-school days, K had bewildered me with difficult discussions on religion and philosophy. I do not know whether his father had inspired this interest, or whether the atmosphere peculiar to temple buildings had infected him as a child. In any event, K seemed to me far more monkish than the average monk. His adoptive family had sent him to Tokyo to study medicine. In his stubborn way, however, he had decided before he arrived that he would not become a doctor. I reproached him, pointing out that he was in effect deceiving his adoptive parents, and he brashly agreed that he was. Such deception did not bother him, he said, since it was in the cause of his "chosen path." I doubt if even he understood precisely what he meant by this phrase. I certainly had no idea. But we were young, and this vague abstraction had for us a hallowed ring. Comprehension was beside the point. I could not but admire these lofty sentiments that governed and impelled him. I accepted his argument. I do not know how important my agreement may have been for K, but he would surely have gone his way, stubbornly, regardless of any protest I made.

Child though I still was, however, I was prepared to accept that by going along with him, I would bear some responsibility if problems ever arose. Even if I could not quite summon such resolve at the time, nevertheless I spoke my words of encouragement to him firm in the belief that if in later life I ever had cause to look back on this moment, I would properly acknowledge the degree of responsibility I bore.

CHAPTER 74.

K and I entered the same faculty. He proceeded to pursue his chosen course of study, using the money sent to him, quite unconcerned. I could only interpret this as a mixture of complacent faith that the family would not find out, and a defiant resolve that if they did, he would not care. I was far more concerned than he over the question.

During the first summer vacation he did not go home, choosing instead to rent a room in a temple in the Komagome area1 and study during the break. When I came back in early September, he was holed up in a shabby little temple beside the Great Kannon. He had a small room tucked in beside the main temple building, and he seemed delighted that he had been able to get on with his studies there as planned. I think it was then I realized that he was becoming more and more monastic in lifestyle. A circlet of Buddhist rosary beads adorned his wrist. I asked the reason, and in response he told off a couple of beads with his thumb. I gathered that he counted through them a number of times each day. The meaning of this escaped me. If you count off a circle of beads, you never reach an end. At what point, and with what feelings, would his fingers cease to move those beads? This may be a silly question, but it haunts me. and study during the break. When I came back in early September, he was holed up in a shabby little temple beside the Great Kannon. He had a small room tucked in beside the main temple building, and he seemed delighted that he had been able to get on with his studies there as planned. I think it was then I realized that he was becoming more and more monastic in lifestyle. A circlet of Buddhist rosary beads adorned his wrist. I asked the reason, and in response he told off a couple of beads with his thumb. I gathered that he counted through them a number of times each day. The meaning of this escaped me. If you count off a circle of beads, you never reach an end. At what point, and with what feelings, would his fingers cease to move those beads? This may be a silly question, but it haunts me.

I also saw a Bible in his room, which rather startled me. On numerous occasions in the past he had referred to Buddhist sutras, but we had never discussed the subject of Christianity. I could not resist asking about it. There was no real reason, he replied. He thought it natural to want to read a book that brought such comfort to others. If he had the chance, he added, he would like to read the Koran as well. He seemed particularly interested in the idea of Muhammad spreading the Word "with book or sword."

In the second year he finally gave in to family pressure and went home for the summer. He apparently told them nothing about what he was studying even then, and they did not guess. Having been a student yourself, you will of course be well aware of such things, but the world at large is surprisingly ignorant about student life, school regulations, and so forth. Things that are quite routine for students mean absolutely nothing to outsiders. On the other hand, locked away in our own little world, we are far too inclined to a.s.sume that the world is thoroughly acquainted with everything great and small to do with school. K no doubt understood this ignorance better than I. He returned to college with a nonchalant air. We set off for Tokyo together, and as soon as we were in the train, I asked him how it had gone. Nothing had happened, he told me.

Our third summer vacation was the time when I decided to leave forever the land that held my parents' graves. I urged K to go home that summer, but he resisted. He said he saw no point in going back every year. He clearly planned to spend the summer in Tokyo studying again, so I resignedly set off for home without him. I have already written of the deep turmoil into which my life was thrown by those two months at home. When I met K again in September, I was in the grip of anger, misery, and loneliness.

In fact, his life had undergone an upheaval rather like my own. Unknown to me, he had written a letter to his adoptive parents confessing his deceit. He had intended all along to do so, he said. Perhaps he was hoping that they would react by grudgingly accepting the change, and decide it was too late to argue, so he could have his way. At any rate, it seemed he was not prepared to continue deceiving them once he entered university; no doubt he realized that he would not get away with it much longer.

CHAPTER 75.

His adoptive father was enraged when he read K's letter and immediately sent off a forceful reply to the effect that he could not finance the education of a scoundrel who had so deceived his parents. K showed me the letter. He then showed me the one he had received from his own family, which condemned him in equally strong terms. No doubt an added sense of failed obligation to the other family reinforced their decision to refuse to support him. K was faced with the dilemma of whether to return to his own family or consent to compromise with his adoptive parents to stay on their family register. His immediate problem, however, was how to come up with the money he needed to stay at college.

I asked if he had found a solution, and he replied that he was thinking of taking work teaching at an evening school. Times were far easier back then; it was not as difficult as you might think to find part-time work of this sort. I thought it would see him through very well. But I also bore responsibility in the matter. I had been the one to agree with his decision to ignore his adoptive family's plans for him and tread a path of his own choosing, and I could not now stand idly by. I immediately offered K financial a.s.sistance. He rejected it absolutely. Given who he was, no doubt financial independence gave him far greater satisfaction than the prospect of living under a friend's protection. Now that he was a university student, he declared, he must be man enough to stand on his own two feet. I was not prepared to hurt K's feelings for the sake of satisfying my own sense of responsibility, so I let him have his way and withdrew my offer of a helping hand.

K soon found the kind of job he hoped for, but as you can well imagine for someone with his temperament, he chafed at the amount of precious time it consumed. Still, he pushed fiercely on with his studies, never slackening under the added burden. I worried about his health; iron-willed, he laughed me off and paid no heed to my warnings.

Meanwhile his relations with his adoptive family were growing increasingly difficult. His lack of time meant that he no longer had a chance to talk with me as he used to, so I never learned the details, but I was aware that more and more stood in the way of a resolution. I also knew that someone had stepped in and attempted to mediate. This person wrote to K encouraging him to return, but he refused, having made up his mind that it was absolutely out of the question. This obstinacy-or so it would have struck the other party, although he claimed that it was impossible for him to leave during the school term-seemed to exacerbate the situation. Not only was K hurting the feelings of his adoptive family, he was fueling the ire of his real family as well. Worried, I wrote a letter that attempted to soothe the situation, but it was too late by now for it to have any effect. My letter sank without a word of response. I too grew angry. The situation had always encouraged my sympathy with K, but now I was inclined to take his side regardless of the rights and wrongs of the matter.

Finally, K decided to officially return to his original family's register, which meant that they would have to repay the school fees paid by the other party. His own family, however, responded by was.h.i.+ng their hands of him. To use an outmoded expression, they, as it were, disowned him. Perhaps it was not quite so radical as that, but that was how he understood it. K had no mother, and certain aspects of his character were perhaps the result of his being brought up by a stepmother. If his mother had not died, I feel, this distance between him and his family might never have arisen. His father, of course, was a priest, but his sternness in matters of Confucian moral obligation suggests that there was a lot of the samurai in him.