Second Memoir (1/3)

by Osamu Dazai

Along the seashore, like a coastline close to the sea, more than twenty large mountain cherry trees with dark black bark stood in a row. When the new school year began, the mountain cherry trees would sprout soft brown buds and bloom their magnificent flowers against the backdrop of the blue sea. Then, in the season of falling cherry blossoms, the petals would dance down to the sea, ride the waves, and be washed back to the shore. That cherry blossom beach served as the schoolyard for a junior high school in Tohoku. I managed to get admitted without much effort in my entrance exams. The buttons on the school uniform and the emblem on the school cap of that junior high school also featured a cherry blossom design.

My house and the house of a distant relative were very close to that junior high school. That's why my father chose that junior high school by the sea and cherry blossoms for me. I was entrusted to that house, and since the school was close, I was a rather lazy junior high school student who would run to school only after hearing the morning assembly bell. Nevertheless, through my clowning, I gained popularity in class every day.

It was my first time leaving my hometown, but that foreign land seemed much more comfortable to me than my birthplace. Perhaps it was because by then, clowning had become second nature to me, and I no longer struggled as much to deceive people. However, beyond that, isn't there a significant difference in the difficulty of performing between family and strangers, and between one's hometown and a foreign land? For an actor, the most difficult place to perform is a theater in their hometown, and I believe that even the greatest actor would be unable to perform in a room where all their relatives are present. Yet, I continued to perform. And it was quite successful. It was impossible for me, having achieved such success, to fail to perform in a foreign land.

My fear of humans was writhing in the depths of my chest more than ever before, but my acting was truly uninhibited. In the classroom, I always made my classmates laugh, and even the teachers would cover their mouths with their hands and laugh, saying, "This class would be really good if Oba weren't in it." I could even easily make the assignment officer, who would shout like thunder, laugh.

However, just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, thinking I had completely hidden my true identity, I was unexpectedly stabbed in the back. It was by the boy with the weakest body in the class and a pale face. He was a student who, indeed, wore an overcoat that seemed too long, likely a hand-me-down from his parents, was completely incapable academically, and always observed during gymnastics and drills—in other words, a student who seemed like an imbecile. Even I thought there was no need to be wary of someone like him.

That day, during gymnastics, that student (I can't recall his surname now, but I believe his given name was Takeichi) was observing as usual. We were practicing on the horizontal bar. I deliberately put on a solemn face, shouted "Hey!" as I jumped towards the horizontal bar, and ended up flying forward like a long jump, landing with a thud on my backside in the sand. It was all a planned failure. As expected, everyone burst into laughter, and as I got up with a wry smile, dusting the sand off my trousers, Takeichi, who had appeared unnoticed, poked me in the back and whispered in a low voice,

"A trick. A trick."

I was shaken. I never imagined that Takeichi would see through my deliberate failure. I felt as if the world was instantly engulfed in the inferno of hell, and I almost cried out "Whoa!" but desperately suppressed the urge.

In the days that followed, my anxiety and fear persisted. On the surface, I continued to play the sad clown, making everyone laugh, but at unexpected moments, a heavy sigh would escape me. The thought that Takeichi might see through everything I did made a clammy sweat break out on my forehead, and I would frantically look around like a madman. If I could, I wanted to be by Takeichi's side from morning till night, watching him to ensure he wouldn't reveal my secret. I even became desperate enough to think that if I could become his best friend, and if that wasn't possible, then I would have no choice but to pray for his death. However, the thought of actually killing him never crossed my mind. In my life, I had often wished to be killed by someone, but I had never once wished to kill someone else. This was because I believed it would only bring happiness to my terrifying opponent.

To tame him, I first put on a gentle, fawning smile, tilted my head slightly to the left, and lightly put my arm around his small shoulder. Then, in a sweet, coaxing voice, like stroking a cat, I repeatedly invited him to visit my boarding house, but he always remained silent, with a vacant look in his eyes.

One day after school, it was early summer. A sudden evening shower began to fall, making it difficult for students to go home, but since my house was nearby, I was about to dash outside without a care. Then, I saw Takeichi standing dejectedly in the shadow of the shoe locker. I called out, "Let's go, I'll lend you an umbrella," and pulling the hesitant Takeichi by the hand, we ran together through the evening shower. When we arrived home, I asked my aunt to dry our jackets and successfully lured Takeichi into my room on the second floor.

In that house lived an aunt who was over fifty, and a tall, bespectacled older sister of about thirty. This sister had once married but had returned home, and I called her Anesa. Furthermore, there was a younger sister named Set-chan, who had just graduated from girls' school, was short, round-faced, and bore no resemblance to her older sister. They were a family of three, and the shop downstairs had a few stationery and sports items, but their main income came from the rent of the row houses built by the deceased master of the house.

"My ear hurts," Takeichi said, standing. "It started hurting after I got wet in the rain."

When I looked, both of his ears were severely discharging, and pus was about to flow out. "This is bad. It must hurt," I said, feigning great surprise, and then apologized "gently" with a womanly tone, "I'm sorry for dragging you out in the rain." Then I went downstairs to get cotton and alcohol, laid Takeichi down with my lap as a pillow, and meticulously cleaned his ears. Takeichi, as expected, didn't seem to realize this was a wicked scheme of hypocrisy, and while lying on my lap, he innocently complimented me, "You'll definitely be loved by women."

However, this was probably like a terrifying demonic prophecy, even more so than Takeichi himself realized. The words "to fall in love" and "to be loved" felt terribly vulgar and playful, and it seemed that no matter how solemn the occasion, if even a single one of these words appeared, the melancholic atmosphere would crumble. Yet, if one were to use a literary phrase like "the anxiety of being loved" instead of the colloquial "the pain of being loved," it didn't seem to break the melancholic atmosphere, which I found strange.

While Takeichi was having me treat the pus from his ear discharge, he paid me the foolish compliment, "You're someone people fall in love with." At that moment, I merely blushed and smiled, not answering, but in truth, I did have a faint inkling of what he meant. However, to write that I had an inkling when faced with the vulgar atmosphere created by a phrase like "people fall in love with you" would be to show a foolish emotion, almost too absurd even for a young master's line in a rakugo story. It's not as if I had such a frivolous feeling when I thought, "I did have an inkling."

For me, human women were several times more difficult to understand than men. There were more women than men in my family, and I had many female relatives. It would not be an exaggeration to say that I grew up playing almost exclusively with girls, but I truly felt as if I was treading on thin ice when associating with women. I could hardly make sense of them, and sometimes I stepped on a tiger's tail and failed, suffering terrible wounds. Unlike the pain I received from men, these were extremely unpleasant, like internal bleeding, and wounds that were difficult to heal.

Women would draw me in, then push me away. Or, they would scorn me in front of others, and embrace me when no one was around. Women slept so deeply it was as if they were dead, and I wondered if women lived to sleep—I had already gathered various observations about women since my childhood. However, while they seemed to be of the same species, they felt like creatures entirely different from men. These incomprehensible and unpredictable creatures strangely paid attention to me. The words "to be fallen in love with" or "to be liked" were entirely unsuitable for me; "to be paid attention to" might be more appropriate to describe the actual situation.

The woman seemed even more comfortable with clowning than the man. When she clowned, the man couldn't keep laughing forever, and she knew that if she clowned too much with the man, it would fail, so she always made sure to stop at an appropriate point. However, the woman didn't know moderation; she always demanded clowning from herself and would become exhausted responding to the endless encores. Indeed, she laughed a lot. The woman seemed to enjoy pleasure more than the man.

The older and younger sisters of that house, who had taken care of him during middle school, would come to his room on the second floor whenever they had free time, and each time he would be so surprised he'd jump, and he was simply terrified. When he asked, "Studying?" they would smile, say "No," close their books, and then a comical story, not from their hearts, would flow out smoothly: "Today, at school, the geography teacher, Konbou, you know..." and then, "Ha-chan, try on these glasses."

One evening, the younger sister, Set-chan, came to his room to play with Anesa. After making him clown around a lot, they suddenly said something like this:

"Hey, why?"

"Just try them on. Borrow Anesa's glasses."

Set-chan always spoke in a rough, commanding tone. He obediently put on Anesa's glasses. Then, the two burst into laughter.

"Just like him! Just like Lloyd!"

At that time, Harold Lloyd, a foreign film comedian, was popular in Japan. He stood up, raised one hand, and said,

"Everyone!"

"To all my Japanese fans..."

When he tried to greet them, they laughed even harder. After that, whenever a Lloyd movie came to the theater in that town, he would go to see it and secretly study his expressions.

Then, one autumn night, as he was reading a book in bed, Anesa swiftly entered the room like a bird, suddenly collapsed onto his duvet, and began to cry.

“You’re going to help me, right, Hachan? Right? It’s better if we just leave this house together. Help me, help me!”

She continued to cry, screaming intensely. However, it wasn't the first time I had seen such an attitude from a woman, so I wasn't surprised by Anesa's extreme words; rather, I was bored by their triteness. I quietly slipped out of the futon, peeled a persimmon from the desk, and handed a slice of it to Anesa. Anesa then ate the persimmon while sobbing, and

“Do you have any interesting books? Lend me one.”

she said. I chose Soseki's "I Am a Cat" from the bookshelf and handed it to her.

“Thank you for the meal.”

Anesa smiled shyly and left the room. But not just with her, thinking about how women felt about living was more complex, troublesome, and eerie to me than trying to understand the thoughts of an earthworm. However, I knew from childhood experience that when a woman suddenly started crying, if you gave her something sweet, she would eat it and cheer up.

My younger sister, Set-chan, would always bring her friends to her room and make everyone laugh fairly. When her friends left, Set-chan would invariably badmouth them. She would always say, "That girl is a delinquent, so be careful." If that was the case, she shouldn't have brought them over in the first place, but because of it, almost all the visitors to my room ended up being women.

However, Takeichi’s flattery of being “loved” had not yet come true. In other words, I was merely the Harold Lloyd of Tohoku, Japan. It was several years later that Takeichi’s ignorant flattery continued to live on as an ominous prophecy, taking on an inauspicious form.

Takeichi had given himself one more significant gift.

"It's a ghost painting,"

Takeichi explained proudly one day when he came to visit me on the second floor, showing off a color plate illustration he had brought with him.

"Oh?" I thought. At that moment, I felt as if my path was decided. I knew it was nothing more than a self-portrait by Van Gogh. In our boyhood, French Impressionist paintings were very popular in Japan, and the first step in appreciating Western art usually began around this period. Even middle school students in the countryside knew paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Renoir from their photographic reproductions. I, too, had seen many color plates of Van Gogh's work and was interested in the fascinating brushwork and vibrant colors, but I had never once thought of it as a "ghost painting."

"Well then, what about this? Is this a ghost too, I wonder?"

I took a Modigliani art book from the shelf and showed Takeichi a nude figure with skin like burnt red copper.

"That's amazing,"

Takeichi exclaimed, his eyes wide with admiration.

"It's like a horse from hell."

"Is it a ghost after all?"

"I want to paint ghost pictures like this too."

People who fear humans too much, conversely, develop a psychological desire to see even more terrifying specters with their own eyes. The more nervous and easily frightened a person is, the more they pray for a storm to intensify. Ah, this group of painters, having been hurt and threatened by the monster that is humanity, finally came to believe in illusions and saw specters in the natural world in broad daylight. Moreover, they did not try to gloss over it with buffoonery but strove to express what they saw as it was. As Takeichi said, they courageously painted "ghost pictures." I was so excited that tears welled up, feeling that my future comrades were here,

"I'll paint too. I'll paint ghost pictures. I'll paint horses from hell,"

I said to Takeichi, for some reason in a hushed voice.

From elementary school, I loved both drawing and looking at pictures. However, the pictures I drew were not as well-received by others as my writing. Not trusting human words, I felt that writing was merely a clownish greeting. In elementary and junior high school, I tried hard to please my teachers, but it wasn't really very interesting. Only with drawing, separate from manga and such, did I, despite my youth, struggle to express the subject.

In art classes at school, I was fed up with boring examples and my unskilled teachers' drawings, so I had to devise and try various methods of expression myself. When I entered junior high school, I also acquired oil painting supplies, but even when I imitated Impressionist techniques, my paintings remained flat like chiyogami crafts, and I couldn't do anything with them. However, through Takeichi's words, I realized that my approach to painting was wrong. The sweetness and foolishness of trying to express beautiful things as they are. The masters seemed to create beauty subjectively from nothing, and they were interested in ugly things too, immersing themselves in the joy of expression. With the principles of painting I learned from Takeichi in my heart, I began working on a self-portrait, hiding it from female visitors.

The finished painting was so gloomy that even I was surprised. However, I recognized that this was my hidden true self. Although outwardly I laughed cheerfully and made people laugh, I secretly affirmed that I actually harbored such a melancholic heart. Still, I showed that painting to no one but Takeichi. I disliked the idea of my inner self being exposed and being viewed with caution, and it would also be unbearable to have it considered a new kind of clownish humor and made fun of. Therefore, I quickly put the painting away in the back of the closet.

Even during art class at school, I kept my "ghostly technique" a secret and continued to draw beautiful things beautifully with the same mediocre touch as before.

I would readily show Takeichi my easily wounded nerves, and when I confidently showed him this self-portrait, he praised it greatly. I continued to draw two, then three more ghost paintings, and from Takeichi, I received the prophecy, "You will become a great painter."

The prophecy that I would be loved, and the prophecy that I would become a great painter. Having received these two prophecies from Takeichi, I decided to go to Tokyo.

I wanted to enter art school, but my father intended for me to enter high school and become a government official in the future. When this was announced to me, I could not object and vaguely complied. I was told, "Try to take the exam from your fourth year," and since I was tired of the middle school with its cherry blossoms and the sea, I did not advance to the fifth year. Instead, I took the high school entrance exam in Tokyo after completing my fourth year and passed. I immediately began dormitory life, but I was so disgusted by its filth and brutality that I could no longer play the clown. I had a doctor write a diagnosis of pulmonary infiltration, left the dormitory, and moved to my father's villa in Ueno Sakuragi-cho. I simply could not handle group living. The words "the thrill of youth" or "the pride of young people" sent shivers down my spine, and I couldn't keep up with the high school spirit. Both the classroom and the dormitory felt like a cesspool of distorted sexual desires, and my almost perfect clowning was of no use there.

My father only stayed at that house for one or two weeks a month when the Diet was not in session, so when he was away, it was just the old couple who were caretakers and me in that large house. I often skipped school, but I had no desire to sightsee in Tokyo, and in the end, it seemed I would finish without seeing Meiji Jingu Shrine, the statue of Kusunoki Masashige, or the graves of the Forty-Seven Ronin at Sengaku-ji Temple. I spent all day at home reading books and drawing pictures. When my father came to Tokyo, I would hastily go to school every morning, but sometimes I would go to the art studio of Shintaro Yasuda, a Western-style painter in Hongo Sendagi-cho, and practice drawing for three or four hours. After leaving the high school dormitory, even when I attended school classes, I felt as if I were in a special position, like an auditing student, and perhaps it was envy, but I felt a strange sense of indifference, and going to school became increasingly bothersome. Throughout elementary, junior high, and high school, I never understood what school spirit was. I never even tried to memorize the school song.

Eventually, at the art studio, I learned about alcohol, cigarettes, prostitutes, pawnshops, and left-wing ideology from a fellow art student. It was a strange combination, but it was true.

That art student was named Horiki Masao. He was born in downtown Tokyo, was six years older than me, and although he had graduated from a private art school, he attended this art studio to continue his study of Western painting because he didn't have a studio at home.