Chapter 6
Memories of Mother 1902-1904

I.

My family had moved into a house just by the entrance to the parade grounds in Nishi-ga-wa, which was the neighborhood next to Onoecho. I was very familiar with the house. A Major Tanioka had lived there, and his son and I had been in the same class in middle school. Tanioka failed the entrance examinations for both the Army Officers School and the cadet school. Giving up the idea of being a soldier, he entered Keio^[1] and I hear that now he is a financial reporter for some newspaper. First Lieutenant Matsushita Yoshio, who later was expelled from school for embracing Socialist ideas, lived in the house behind ours. At that time, of course, he was still a young boy and a friend of my younger brother.

When I entered the front door, I saw a crowd of people, some I knew and some I didn't, milling around weeping. I thought to myself, Mother's dead; she's just died. Stopping someone, I demanded, "Where's my mother?" The woman stared at me wide-eyed for a moment, crying, then without answering she moved away as if to avoid me. I stopped another woman. Again I got the same response.

Giving up and thinking that my mother was probably in an inner room, I followed the first woman into the room directly off the

[1] This well known private school in Tokyo was especially noted for its courses in political economics and commerce.

vestibule. The door between that room and the adjoining sitting room had been left open and the two rooms were filled with seated people. As I entered they all turned and stared at me just as the other two had, their eyes swollen from weeping. "Where's my mother?" I demanded again, and the women broke into loud sobs. No one among them would answer me. I began to feel uneasy and, not knowing what else to do, went back to the vestibule and opened the door into the room beyond. This, I could see, was my mother's room. Her chest of drawers and dressing table were against one wall. But no one was in the room. I stood there in a daze, wondering what could have happened.

At that point another woman came in. I've forgotten her name but she was an army wife who was a close friend of my mother and also a person of whom I was fond. Like the rest, she had eyes swollen from crying but spoke as if scolding me.

"What's happened with you? Did you come ahead?"

I didn't understand what she meant by "ahead" but answered, "No. I've just come from Tokyo."

"Then you didn't go to Niigata?"

"No, I didn't. Is my mother in Niigata?"

"Well, then you haven't heard anything? Oh! ...," she responded, tears streaming down her face.

"Is Mother dead?"

"Yes. She passed away yesterday at the Niigata Hospital. Your family is supposed to be back here very soon."

Hearing this, I suddenly realized—of course, none of my family were at home. At the same moment I thought about the telegram. It was the first one I had ever received. Inside I had read, "MOTHER IN CRITICAL CONDITION—COME AT ONCE " and hadn't looked to see where the sender was. Shocked, I had rushed to borrow train fare from the Okubos across the way and then straight to Ueno Station.

"They're here!" someone called from the other room, and I could hear everyone going to the front door to meet them. The woman brought me out of my daze, saying, "Well, it seems they're back." She started out of the room. I followed behind her. Outside, having just got out of the carriage, stood Father, four or five friends, and the children, all around the coffin.

Later I was told that when I arrived people thought that the whole family had come and came to the front door to greet them. When I entered alone and wandered about asking, "Where's my mother?" they all thought that I had gone out of my mind.

My mother had died of an abscessed ovary, or what is commonly known as abdominal dropsy. Shortly before, in poor health ever since giving birth to her ninth child, she had gone off to spend some time at a hot springs. Right after returning home she had gone to Niigata, explaining that she was going to have surgery. She left in good spirits, saying, "Why, in two weeks I'll be back as good as new again."

"That was the way your mother was. What's more, she said that since Sakae is busy studying for his examinations, we mustn't worry him; and she absolutely refused to let anyone tell you."

The night Mother's body came home I kept the vigil with a woman named Okaka who lived in San-no-cho She had been my mother's hairdresser from the very first day we moved to Shibata. She was more than her hairdresser, having become her very closest confidante. While we sat up she told me the story. And last summer when I secretly visited Shibata after a twenty-year absence in order to prepare this autobiography, the old granny who had once been Okaka was the first person I went to visit.

"It couldn't have been more than three or four days after that, when you received that telegram saying she was dangerously ill. I took all the children along with me to visit, but by then she was already in great pain, don't you know. Giving her shots they managed to keep her living from one hour to the next. Often she would ask, 'Isn't Sakae here yet?' And because the pain was too much even for a strong person such as herself, she would ask us over and over to let her die. Then I would tell her Sakae is on his way and she would nod her head at me and fall quiet. She nodded to say that whatever happened, she was going to wait for you. Again and again she would ask to die quickly, but each time, when I mentioned you she'd nod and become calm."

All night long Okaka just went on repeating this story to me—she was crying and I was crying too. Okaka told me something else as well.

"When your mother left she said to me in a loud voice, 'Okaka, I'll soon be well again and come home.' But actually she had already re-

signed herself. When I went to the house to get the children, to take them with me to see her, I opened the drawers where your mother kept her clothes. Each thing had a curious card pinned to it. When I looked closer, I saw that each card had one of the girls' names—Haru, or Kiku, or Matsue—written on it. It made me angry, don't you know. I thought to myself that if she'd already made up her mind she was going to die, wouldn't it be better not to have bothered to go all the way to Niigata for an operation? I reproached your mother about it—speaking my mind, I did." Okaka went on to say that my mother's death was actually the doctor's fault. She told me about how Mother had pains in the abdomen after surgery; when they cut her open again they found that the stitches had come loose inside and there was a terrible abscess. Everyone was outraged and said that the matter should be taken up with the hospital. Father alone was resigned, his face full of sorrow. "No—what's finished is finished."

The vigil lasted two or three nights. Then, when my grandmother (Mother's mother) arrived from Osaka and my older sister Haru got there, we held the funeral.

I was given a memorial tablet to carry. The procession moved slowly through the busiest street in Shibata—the one that ran from one edge of town almost to the other—until we reached the Bodaiji, the family temple of the former lord of Shibata. Whenever my mother went out during the more than ten years we lived in Shibata she greeted almost everyone she met on the street, speaking the local dialect in her loud voice. Now, not only had large numbers of people come to pay their respects at the funeral but also as we passed through the streets almost all the residents came outdoors to pay their respects. Okaka of San-no-cho still boasts, rocking her uncommonly small body back and forth and wrinkling up her plump face, "I've yet to see a more splendid funeral."

After the ceremony was over, six bearers lifted Mother's coffin and on foot, with my younger brother Nobu alongside, we took it to the cremation site in the hills near Ijimino where I had so often gone to play. There the bearers spread a layer of straw on the ground and gathered pine boughs to pile onto the straw. Then they placed the coffin and put more boughs on top. This done they spread mats in a circle about six

yards away and unpacked boxes of food and several jugs of sake. They would sit there and drink until morning, they said, waiting for the body to be reduced to bones and ashes.

Following their directions, I lit a sheaf of straw and set fire to the bottom layer of straw under the coffin. It burst into flames. The fire soon spread to the pine needles and boughs above. Within those blazing flames I again saw Mother's face, still full and round but much discolored from being made to wait days in the summer heat, as she lay on her side as if asleep in the coffin. It would be unbearable, I thought, if her face, or hand, or foot, should appear as the coffin burned away. Nonetheless I remained staring into the fire.

Then a bearer suddenly drew my brother and me aside and urged us to return home now. It was almost dark and we had been told before coming that we were not to stay too long. The man led us to the foot of the hill and from there we rode home in a carriage.

II.

I had not given Reichan a thought in some time until the day they brought home my mother's body and I saw Reichan standing next to the coffin. She had been with my mother in Niigata during the last few days. That same night, I think it was, she had been persuaded to go home quite late only after everyone said several times that it was senseless for her to keep vigil with the body. One of the women touched me on the shoulder like a conspirator and suggested in a loud voice that I see Reichan home. She was, next to Reichan, the prettiest wife in the regiment: young and married to the first lieutenant who served as a brigade adjutant under my father, the superior adjutant. I had been friendly with her from before. Others joined in urging me to go ahead. I wavered, my heart pounding. Reichan smiled hesitantly and seemed to wait for me to stand up. The other attractive young wife also smiled and watched my face. The smiles of these two lovely young wives stirred me peculiarly.

I quickly got a lantern and left with Reichan. Outside was pitch-dark. Our bodies were so close that they almost touched as we started off. It was the first time I had ever walked so close to her. I forgot everything else, even my mother's death. As we walked on by the dim light of the

lantern we drew even closer. Walking like that, we talked loudly and laughed gaily.

"Oh! Isn't that you, Saito?" Reichan exclaimed.

Suddenly a man in uniform came toward us at a vigorous pace. As we were about to collide with him, Reichan recognized him as Lt. Saito, one of her husband's fellow officers. I also knew Lt. Saito when he was still a probational officer before I entered military school, but he didn't seem to recognize us now.

"Who're you!" he shouted, looking as if he would spring at Reichan.

"Hold it! It's me," I said, stepping forward and shielding Reichan. "It's me."

The lieutenant peered into my face for a moment. "Oh, it's you. I'm sorry. I ... I was just on my way to your house. Please excuse me." His words were more friendly, but as he left he still looked angry.

After we had gone a ways, Reichan looked back over her shoulder and muttered, "Really! That Saito is disgusting. And he reeked of alcohol."

"Still, we were laughing a lot, and in this neighborhood he may have misunderstood." Both Nishi-ga-wa, the street we were on, as well as Okohitomachi, the next one over, were full of brothels patronized by soldiers.

"Well, that's true. But even so, he was very rude!" She was still somewhat indignant but at the same time a little self-conscious.

Neither of us spoke for a while but we went on walking as close together as before, our bodies almost touching.

"You know, Sakae, being married has been awfully hard on me." Reichan broke the silence in a soft voice.

"How so?"

"Father-in-law, he's mean. Mother has been all right so far, but that father—he's been the difficult one. He finds fault with everything, even the way I use chopsticks. Even that wouldn't be so bad, but as soon as I'm out of the house he ransacks my sewing box looking for things. That's really hard to put up with."

"Huh? He does things like that?" I looked at her in surprise. She remained silent, her eyes downcast. Not knowing what else to say, I remained silent also.

We were walking alongside the river where there were few houses and the street seemed lonely. Still very close together, we continued on without speaking until again Reichan broke the silence and asked me about school in Tokyo. I recalled the secret resolution I had made at the end of last year when I promised to become a great man if only for her sake. Yet the thought never occurred to me to mention it to her. Even if I had wanted to talk about it I couldn't have done so. So I just gave answers to her questions until, finally, we arrived in front of her house.

I started to leave, but she urged me to come in for a while. Without thinking, I answered jokingly, "No, your husband is liable to think it strange the way Saito just did."

"Oh, you're terrible, Sakae. All right, goodnight!"

She glared at me with her hand raised as if she would hit me, then hurried into the house.

I returned home in somewhat of a daze.

The next day Reichan came to the house again. She never missed a day while my mother's body remained in the house, and whenever we exchanged glances we completely ignored what had occurred the other evening. As my mother's many friends did, in fact we mourned Mother's death with heavy hearts; yet from the day after the funeral, whenever we were together, it was enough to make us both forget the death. We felt just like children again, chatting and laughing as merrily as we had when we set out that night.

The other pretty wife also came to visit almost every day. Smiling, she would sit with us just listening and watching our expressions. Sometimes she would tease us about what a happy pair we were. My grandmother kept scowling, as if disgusted.

Later I heard that this other pretty wife had been divorced because something improper took place while her husband was away in the Russo-Japanese War. Not long after I heard that, I caught a glimpse of a woman in the Ginza district and was certain it was she. I wonder where she is and what she is doing now.

With the entrance examinations close at hand, I couldn't remain this way in Shibata forever. A week after the funeral I returned to Tokyo.

There I began to study once again, forgetting all about Mother, Reichan, and the other young wife.

III.

The first of October came and I took the entrance examinations of the fifth year at both the Junten Middle School and the Tokyo Middle School (which no longer exists).

I don't know how matters are arranged now, but in that period almost all the private middle schools in Tokyo held entrance examinations for every grade in each school term of the year. Thus their practice was to gather applicants two or three times at the beginning of each term, give them entrance examinations, and collect the examination fees each time. This was the third and last time of the year for both Junten and Tokyo Middle School to take applicants.

Somehow, I thought, I had to enter the one or the other. But the two tests were to be held at almost the same time. I had sufficient confidence in my scholastic abilities, but in order not to run the slightest risk I decided to have someone take the test at the Junten Middle School for me while I took the slightly earlier one at the Tokyo Middle School. Fortunately, I had just the right person. He was a friend of the boy whose family ran my lodging house, a graduate of Waseda Middle School whom I also knew well.

I hated mechanical drawing and there were three problems in it on the test I took at the Tokyo Middle School. Unable to understand them, I failed the test. My stand-in, however, did quite well, answered every question, and passed. So, thanks to him, I entered the fifth-year class at Junten Middle School.

Before I continue in chronological sequence as I have done, I am anxious to tell the rest of the story of Reichan all at once. I feel rather ashamed to go on telling the story of a first love—a love that has a sweetness even more intense than honey—in bits and pieces. So I want to skip ahead of myself a little to recount all at once the whole story of what passed between us from this point on. Since it includes scenes of my relationship with Reichan that took place around the death of her

husband, Sumida, and I think that these contrast with the previous episodes, I want all the more to write them down now.

I had an opportunity to see Reichan on three occasions after the previous episode. The first was hardly worth mentioning. It was some four years later. I had thrown myself completely into the Socialist movement after graduating from the Foreign Language College.^[2] Sakai, Tagawa Daikichiro, the late Yamaji Aizan, and others—that is, the social democrats and the state socialists of that time—had united to form a movement against the increase in streetcar fares. They held a citizens' rally at Hibiya and afterward used the crowd to storm the municipal hall and the offices of the streetcar company.^[3] It was the day before that. At Sakai's home I picked up some handbills for the next day's rally and started to distribute them in the district around Kojimachi San-chome. It was then that I caught a glimpse from across the street of a woman who looked like Reichan. That was all.

Afterward I heard that it had actually been Reichan. Then right after I was arrested at the citizens' rally and was in jail pending trial for the fearful crime called seditious rioting, Reichan went to the place where I had been staying. It was in Shimo-Rokubancho, where I had been living with a woman some twenty years my senior.

The second occasion that I was to see Reichan—I think two or three years had passed—was when I visited her and her husband, Sumida, at the Tokyo Eisei Hospital. I've forgotten why Sumida was in the hospital or how I knew that she would be there with him. As I entered his room, Reichan ran out without a word and disappeared. Sumida, who was having his back massaged, laughed, "Oh, it's you! Reichan ran out

[2] In March 1906 Osugi graduated from the French department of the Tokyo Foreign Language College (Tokyo Gaikokugo Gakko), not to be confused with the French Language School (Furansugo Gakko), which he attended before his mother's death.

[3] In March 1906 the newly formed Japanese Socialist party (Nihon Shakaito) joined forces with other groups to campaign against a proposed fare increase on the Tokyo streetcars. The mass rally mentioned here took place on 15 March at Hibiya Park opposite the Imperial Palace, where (according to one source) 10,000 gathered to hear speeches. The crowd then marched through the streets, waving large red flags with the words "Anarchism" and "Communism," obstructing traffic, and breaking windows, thus giving the police the excuse they wanted to arrest radicals. Osugi was sentenced to two years but, since it was his first offense, was released on probation after three months; on Sakai Toshihiko, see chapter 1 notes 1, 2.

thinking it was some visitor she didn't know." He sent the masseur to call her back. She came in with a very surprised look on her face.

Sumida told me that he had come to Tokyo and joined the military police because he had wanted to study English. He had been sent to some school for military police and was then transferred out of Tokyo. Now he had returned because of his illness. We talked about my having become a Socialist and having been arrested several times. He said it distressed him but since it was part of my personality there was nothing anyone could do. "Yes," Reichan rose to my defense; "it's because he's too able."

I stayed only about thirty minutes. After that meeting I lost track of them for quite some time. Another four or five years passed, and just as I was becoming involved in those complicated love affairs with Kamichika and Ito,^[4] Reichan suddenly reappeared for the third and last time.

I was leading a French conversation group at the Geijutsu Club in Ushigome. One day when I went there and opened the door to the room I was using, I found Reichan sitting all alone on one of the benches. I was very surprised.

"Sumida's lungs have gotten terribly bad, you see, so he had to give up his command of the military police detachment in Kumamoto to come back here. Since then he's been bedridden, and he's heard that your lungs used to be terribly bad too but that now you're cured. He's been saying he'd like very much to see you and talk about your lungs. The doctors keep saying all kinds of things but I don't understand any of it. He's been sick for a long time and just keeps getting weaker and weaker."

She talked on in great detail until it was almost time for my French group to start and several of my pupils had come in. So I said, "Well, in

[4] The public scandal and sensational court trial in 1916 ensured that Osugi's readers would recognize the references to Kamichika Ichiko (1888-1981) and Ito Noe (1895-1925). Both women were prominent in their own right: Kamichika as a journalist who helped found the Bluestocking Society (Seitosha) for women's rights in 1912; Ito as editor of its magazine, Bluestocking , in 1915-1916. Osugi was married to Hori Yasuko when he began simultaneous affairs with Kamichika and Ito. In 1916 Kamichika attacked him with a knife and spent two years in prison for the assault. Over the next six decades Kamichika continued working for feminist causes and was a prominent Socialist member of the House of Representatives in the 1950s and 1960s. Hori divorced Osugi and Ito became his second wife; she died with him in 1923.

that case, I'll come to your house tomorrow," and accompanied her to the front door.

When I went there the next day I could see that Sumida was even worse than I had been told. I had seen several men die of consumption and Sumida had all the symptoms of one who didn't have much longer to live. I thought he couldn't last more than another month. He asked many questions about my condition when I had been bad and the treatment I had received. I answered him in detail. I also encouraged him, saying that he'd be all right. While we talked his coughing became more and more severe, so I turned aside their invitation to stay, thinking it best if I didn't remain any longer. At the appropriate opportunity I took my leave, but only after telling Reichan in private what I had concluded.

I intended after that to visit Sumida frequently but, because I was so busy traveling back and forth hundreds of miles to Onjuku where Ito was staying, I had no free time. While I was still thus tied up, I received word from Reichan that Sumida had died.

I rushed to their house as soon as I heard. There was a large group of men and women around Sumida's body, all of them as if entranced, handing around a large piece of rope that seemed to be a huge rosary and chanting the name of Amida Buddha. Since all the downstairs rooms were crowded with people, Reichan led me directly to the second floor. To this day I never know what to say in the way of condolences to the family of someone recently dead, so I simply bowed silently.

"Well, it was just as you said it would be," she began, her face weary and tear-stained but her voice as animated as ever. "I suppose I shouldn't say this, but I've been resigned to his dying for a long time, and now I feel more worry about what's going to happen to me than grief over his death."

This was unexpected, coming as it did as soon as I arrived.

"I'm not worried financially. I can manage somehow. But with Sumida dead, his relatives have come from all over and I've been going through torture. And they'll go on tormenting me the rest of my life."

Thinking more and more how unexpected this was, I just listened to her go on without making a response.

"As soon as his people get here from his home, they'll ask me why is it I haven't cut my hair yet. People here are already saying that and

there's nothing I can answer. Then they'll see the violin hanging on the wall and someone will take it down saying that a widow has absolutely no need for any instruments. I don't care a bit about such things as cutting my hair; I don't want the violin. But when I ask myself if I could suffer living like a nun the rest of my life—that's what they're after—even I get frightened. I've known a lot of army wives, especially during the Russo-Japanese War, who lost their husbands at the front and immediately cut off their hair. I also know well what happened to them after four or five years. Almost none of them remained respectable widows and that's really crueler than living the life of a nun."

It surprised me that Reichan, whom I had thought of as the typical army wife, could see so clearly through the so-called life of the widow. "Then you mean there's no way you could suffer through that?" I asked, trying to find out just how far her resolve went.

"No, I intend to try to suffer through it. Every day they've all been pressing me to go back to Sumida's village and live like a nun, cutting myself off from the world to raise our one child and look after Sumida's ancestral tablets. Well, I'm going to try. I don't know how far I can suffer through it; but whatever happens I'll go on suffering through as long as I can."

"But you're afraid at some point you won't be able to suffer through it, aren't you. What are you going to do then?"

"Yes. That's what worries me. That's what frightens me. But I'll suffer through whatever happens."

"But what do your own father and mother say?"

"They say they're sorry, they're sorry for me. But once having entered the Sumida family I must do as they say."

"If you're really this determined, then it'll be all right. But after all, it's best as far as possible not to suffer. You should never try to suffer through something once you feel it's going to be utterly impossible no matter how hard you try. That's the worst cause of degradation."

"Then what should I do at the point where I can no longer suffer through?"

"There's absolutely no rationale to your suffering through it. No. In a case like this, cast everything aside and fly away. Flee Tokyo im-

mediately. As long as I'm here, I'll see that you prevail whatever happens."

"Thank you so much, Sakae. I think of you as my one and only real older brother. But I'll suffer through with it, all the way through. And please don't ever forget, Sakae, I really do think of you as my one and only older brother."

I almost took her by the hand but instead departed for a pressing appointment I had promised to keep.

Sumida's funeral was held the next day. I didn't have any formal Japanese dress or kimono to wear and there was nowhere I could borrow one, so I deliberately used these circumstances as an excuse and enjoyed spending the day at Kamichika's place in nearby Azabu.

Several days later, Reichan visited me at my lodgings in Kojimachi. She said she was going to Sumida's home the following day or the one after that. Because she was on her way to visit a relative who lived nearby in Ushigome, it was fortunately possible to stop to see me in secret. Except to repeat in a bit more detail what we had said at her house, there wasn't much more to say. But several times as we talked I had an impulse to take her hand. She had no excuse to prolong her stay, and I also couldn't remain long as it was time for me to leave for the Geijutsu Club. We left my place and went as far as the club building together. There without further ado we wished each other good luck and parted.

IV.

Though no doubt there were many other places like it, the Junten Middle School seemed a strange place. The lower the grade, the fewer the pupils. The fifth-year class in which I was enrolled was divided into three sections with a total of two hundred to two hundred fifty students. The fourth-year class had one hundred fifty in two sections; the third-year, a hundred students and the second-year had only forty-five. No one entered the first- or second-year classes intentionally and the majority entered at the fourth- or fifth-year levels. My fifth-year section included people who had already graduated from such schools as

Waseda and Tetsugakuin (the precursor to Toyo College) and many other specialist schools. They had come here because a middle school diploma was required for some other things.

Some were youths with the faces of prodigies, others older with blank stares; some were self-educated. There were also quite a few hooligans like me who had been expelled from other schools. Many of them had also used stand-ins to pass the entrance examinations.

A friend named Tosaka entered the school along with me. He had been thrown out of the military cadet school in Sendai for some homosexual misconduct about the same time that I had been expelled from the school in Nagoya. I had met him in January of that year—that is, just after I arrived in Tokyo—in the reception room of the cadet school in Ichigaya. He told me that an old friend of mine from Shibata named Tani had entered military school the same term as he had, and that they and yet another fellow had all been expelled together. The four of us quickly became friends. Somewhere we happened to meet a certain Shimada, who too had been expelled from the cadet school in Osaka about the same time for the same reason, and he too became our friend. The locations were different—Nagoya, Sendai, and Osaka—but all five of us had been at military school and all were in the same grade.

We got together and admonished one another, swearing that we would study hard until we redeemed our honor. Thus, in October we all entered the fifth-year class of middle school.

Among us all, Tosaka and I were the closest, either because of how we met or because we both liked literature and often discussed the relative merits of writers such as Koyo and Rohan.^[5] Right after we entered Junten Middle School we rented a room and lived together in the Ikizaka-shita district of Hongo. While we studied hard in school, we both also read a great many novels. There was a fairly good rental library up the hill from our place from which we borrowed books. Before long we had read almost its entire collection.

[5] Ozaki Koyo (1867-1903) and Koda Rohan (1867-1947) were two leading writers of the period.

After a while, our friend Shimada came to the lodging house. He was a well-built fellow with a swarthy complexion, quite vain about his skills in fencing; he thought our constant reading of novels was disgusting. So Tosaka and I decided on a plan. We borrowed a copy of the novel Hotogisu and forced him to read it against his will.^[6] In the beginning he leafed through it looking as if he found it difficult going; but gradually the scowl faded and at the end he was using his ham fists to wipe the tears from his eyes. Tosaka and I, saying "You see," chose something else we thought he would enjoy and presented it to him. But Shimada was entirely taken with Namiroku's novel Five Men ;^[7] he delighted in saying things such as "I'm Kuroda; and you, Osugi, you're like Kura-what's-his-name."

Tosaka and I had long since graduated from the sort of things that Namiroku and Gensai wrote; we were even growing dissatisfied with Koyo and Rohan. So we didn't bother to discuss it with Shimada. Secretly, however, being identified with the character Kurahashi bothered me: Yes, it's true that one side of me is now like Kura-what's-his-name, struggling along, serious and steady-going. But another side of me is like Kuroda, secretly burning with virility. So what good is this pseudovirility of yours going to do you, Shimada? I exclaimed this only to myself. To say, Now, you'll see, gave me strength in my belly.

About that time a student named Tanaka from Nagoya moved into our lodging house. He was a term ahead of us and had been thrown out of the Central Military Cadet School. Then two more came to live there—one a friend of Tosaka and the other of Shimada. These two, however, couldn't stand the dull serious life we led and soon went elsewhere. Another student, also a term ahead of us in school, often visited us as well. His name was Hakoda and he had left his school in Sendai

[6] Hotogisu , the name of a bird and of a very successful novel by Tokutomi Roka (1868-1927) published serially in 1898-1899, was the tragic love story of a naval officer and his young tubercular wife, the divorce forced upon them by his family, and her death.

[7] Tosei no gonin no otoko (Five men of the contemporary world) by Murakami Namiroku (1865-1944), a popular work of the day, related the lives and adventures of five students: Kurahashi takes a job to help support them all; he gives Kuroda a share of the first month's earnings, which Kuroda squanders on drink, presumably demonstrating his devil-may-care attitude.

the year before we had; now he was in higher secondary school. Two or three others a term or so behind us also came to hold discussions about school and a variety of matters.

Thus it seemed that our lodging house had become the central gathering place for almost all the "refugees" from military school. The following year we all finished middle school without incident. Shimada and I entered the Foreign Language College; Tosaka and Tanaka went to study at a fisheries institute, while Tani entered a merchant marine school. All of them have done rather well.

Tani is probably the captain of a N.Y.K. Line ship by now. I've heard that Tanaka became an engineer and works for some prefecture. Quite a while ago I learned that Shimada was teaching German in a regimental officers' mess in some rural area. Tosaka, they say, made a great deal of money in fisheries, becoming a man of such means that he once kept two local geisha in the San-in region. But about ten years ago he went bankrupt and moved to America. Even now, it seems, he is in difficult straits. Hakoda is serving as a public procurator or something in Korea.

In addition to the rental library in Ikizakaya-ue, there was another one in the vicinity of Jimbo-cho that was a favorite of mine. Besides novels, it had books on many different difficult subjects. When I was living in a place in Yarai-cho, I started going there, browsing through the books and borrowing ones on philosophy, religion, and social problems. There were two books that I read over and over: The New Society by Yano Ryukei, which I read while living in Yarai-cho, and Dr. Oka's Lectures on the Theory of Evolution , which I read while at Ikizakashita.^[8]

I have no memory of what impressions The New Society made on me—possibly because I read it too early. But I can still feel the great

[8] Shinshakai by Yano Fumio (1850-1931) was a widely read account of a socialist utopia published in 1902; Yano's earlier novel Keikoku Bidan (Tales of statesmanship) was said to have inspired at least two of Osugi's seniors in the socialist movement, Katayama Sen (1860-1933) and Yamakawa Hitoshi. Oka Asajiro (1868-1914), a Tokyo Imperial University graduate who taught biology at Tokyo Higher Normal School, wrote several popular accounts of evolutionary theory, of which Shinkanron kowa was the best known.

excitement I felt while reading Professor Oka's Lectures on the Theory of Evolution . I seemed to be growing taller as the horizon steadily receded. The world, which until then was entirely unknown to me, was opening up before my eyes with each new page. I was too excited to enjoy Oka's book alone and I urged, almost forced, all my friends to read it. The work awakened in me for the first time an interest in natural science. At the same time, this theory of the change and evolution of all things, calling as it did for reforms in the social system that still had great authority in my mind, made it exceptionally easy for me to join the ranks of those advocating socialism: "There is no single thing that does not undergo change. The old collapses and the new rises up. Who is prospering now? Is it not true that soon they will end buried in the cemetery?"

Yet something was still missing from my life. My mother's dying—that I had almost managed to forget, though doubtless there lingered in my mind an unconscious loneliness for her. And Reichan—I had nearly succeeded in forgetting her the same way. Moreover, having completely abandoned homosexual "love" after many years, I felt lonely in that area as well. For friends I had only my band of warriors dropped from cadet school. To the extent that we were all struggling in the same circumstances, we did not really have relationships in which we could be unreservedly intimate.

Probably in an effort to satisfy this hunger, I often went to visit my relatives in Iigura. It was the home of the wife of my cousin, Yamada Ryonosuke (now a major general and commander of a military police unit). Yamada was then a student at the Military Staff College and lived in a small house in Iigura. I wanted to immerse myself in the intimacy of such relatives as these. I also wanted to soak in the agreeably luxurious life of their mansion. And I wanted to see the smiling faces of the various pretty girls there.

While everyone in the family, male as well as female, was quite good looking, the faces and hearts were cold. I felt this even more once I had been thrown out of military school. One of the girls, two or three years younger than I, had often passed the time and joked with me when I was in cadet school. I even had a secret wish in my heart: if only I already

had my commission ... Now she was very ladylike and just put on airs around me.

Not long before I graduated from Junten Middle School, I began to visit Christian churches here and there. It was chiefly this loneliness that led me to do so, but the need for new and progressive ideas also contributed. I ended up attending the Hongo church of Ebina Danjo.^[9] It was not only the one closest to my lodgings but I liked his sermons best. I do not know whether I was unaware of Ebina's nationalism or whether perhaps it suited the military spirit lingering still in the back of my mind. In any case, I was completely entranced by the preacher's eloquence. His wonderful voice enthralled me whenever, pushing back his grey hair and stroking his long beard, he would thrust up his hands and raise the pitch of his voice, invoking God. And when his voice choked with tears, I joined the other believers in weeping.

The reverend often urged that we receive baptism, saying, "No, it does not matter if you do not yet understand Christianity well—No sooner will you receive baptism than you will immediately understand it well." For a rather long time I hesitated, but finally I was baptized. Thinking that I would be soaked, I had my hair cropped close before receiving the cup of water.

Christianity had considerable influence on me insofar as it encouraged the "serious and steady-going" side of my personality. But the influence did not last long.

V.

Immediately after I passed the entrance examinations for the Foreign Language College, I went to visit my father in Fukushima. Shortly before he had taken the blame for some misconduct by the officer whom he was serving as adjutant and had been transferred from his post as brigade major, relegated to that of regimental adjutant in Fukushima.

[9] Ebina Danjo (1856-1937), pastor of this Japanese Congregational church in the Hongo district of Tokyo between 1897 and 1920, was one of the most influential Christian intellectuals of his day. Although Ebina's nationalism is stressed here, the Hongo church attracted social democrats and moderate reformers who eventually opposed non-Christian radicals like Osugi—see part 5 below.

Afterward Father's elder brother told me the story. Father had argued with the division commander. Father's brigade commander, Hishijima Yoshiteru, had not got along with their division commander—or I should say, the division commander hated Hishijima. As Hishijima's adjutant, Father had to take the side of the brigade commander. Once before Hishijima had been retired because of financial debts. During the Sino-Japanese War he had been reactivated, only to find himself once again deeply in debt. My father, while officially serving as Hishijima's adjutant, was in fact kept busy attempting to put Hishijima's personal finances in order. Several times Hishijima found himself on the verge of being retired again; Father went to Sendai to plead for Hishijima and got into heated discussion with the division commander. Consequently, whenever Hishijima as brigade commander sent in his recommendations for promotion, the division commander always struck out Father's name. Finally Hishijima was retired and the division commander sent his own chief of staff to replace Hishijima. As a result, Father was transferred off to Fukushima.

Much later I heard my father tell someone that Hishijima was reactivated again during the Russo-Japanese War. Then, on several occasions, Hishijima sent sums of 10,000 or 20,000 yen home from the battlefront to his creditors.^[10] By the time he returned he had not only repaid all his debts but had also built up a sizable fortune.

My father's house in Fukushima was right next to the regimental headquarters. It was the smallest and shabbiest house our family had ever lived in. No maids were provided and so my younger sister had been forced to quit school to look after the house and my numerous brothers and sisters.

The thing that shocked me the most, however, was the tremendous change that had taken place in my father. He was still only forty-two or forty-three but had suddenly aged. Now he seemed like an old man long past fifty. And whereas he had always left the management of the household entirely in Mother's hands and we had never so much as heard him

[10] This equaled $5,000 to $10,000 U.S. in this period.

say a word about money matters, now he had joined the money-worshippers.

He had always lived simply, never carrying even pocket money with him—indeed, he had never before known how money was used. Perhaps this is why his stinginess had never shown itself earlier. Perhaps it suddenly materialized after Mother died and he tried to keep track of the details of the family finances.

In any case, he now said that he couldn't possibly manage on his monthly salary combined with the annuity he received from being decorated. He was mystified, he said, as to how Mother had ever managed such a fine life all those years, usually even having something left over every month. This worry about money and raising so many children without a mother was what had aged Father so quickly. Now he suddenly began to appreciate money.

If what Father's elder brother told me later was true, Father got to the point of considering abandoning his military career and finding other employment, even in the business world. Now when Father read the daily newspaper he perused the stock market reports first. He also urged me to read them and even gave me lessons about how to understand them. I began to wonder when he could have learned about such things. Actually he had a tutor who was responsible for this new enthusiasm about business and newspaper columns on the stock market. One day I went with him to visit whoever was the colonel or lieutenant colonel serving as regimental commander. The regimental commander gave the exact same lesson that Father had given me.

I felt pity for my father when I saw how old and tired he had become. But I could not sympathize with his change in thinking; rather I felt contempt. When I heard that his tutor was the regimental commander, I was filled with indignation and scorn at the thought that the whole army had sunk so low.

Thus my homecoming after a long absence turned out not to be a very happy one. After about a month I went back to Tokyo.

I no sooner entered the Foreign Language College than I met disappointment. I had taken two and a half years of French in military school and had been studying for many more months in night classes at the

French Language School. Even though I didn't understand everything, I had been reading books in French. Now I discovered that I was supposed to begin all over again, starting with the alphabet.

Thanks to a Frenchman named Jacques Rey teaching there, after a half-month of this I was allowed to advance to the second-year course as a special student with the promise of graduating as a regular student. But the second-year course didn't amount to much more than the first. It was when I went to this second-year course that I became aware how absurd the teachers were. I was shocked. Teachers who said that they had spent ten or fifteen years in France could not do what a second-year student could do. They had covered their books with penciled notes and gave their lectures by picking out sections to read to us. They were utterly unable to answer if a pupil asked something that they could not find in their books. The only two teachers who knew anything were lazy and rarely came to class; if they did come, they merely lectured us on etiquette. There were numerous instructors but I had almost no contact with any of them.

Only one, Jacques Rey, was really enthusiastic. During his daily two hours he lectured on anything and everything. I decided that just listening to his lectures would be enough and stayed away from the classes with the other teachers as much as possible.

War clouds were steadily gathering between Russia and Japan about this period. A craze of patriotism swept the nation. Even the Yorozu Choho News , which alone had previously maintained an attitude of calm, suddenly changed its tone. Kotoku, Sakai, and Uchimura Kanzo together published a bitter farewell message and left the paper.^[11] Then Kotoku and Sakai founded the weekly paper Commoners News and began to champion the causes of socialism and pacifism.

Until then my contact with these men had been through their newspaper articles and the eloquent speeches that they made at the oc-

[11] Sakai is identified in chapter 1 note 2, Kotoku in chapter 5 note 9. Uchimura (1861-1930) was a very prominent Christian social reformer who first gained fame for his resignation from teaching at the elite First Higher School in a dispute over how to show proper respect toward the emperor. He became a successful author and senior editor of the Yorozu Choho News .

casional meetings in the main hall of the Hongo church. I had never met them personally. Now, however, I decided I wanted to join the ranks of the army they were raising. Kotoku's book The Essence of Socialism had set my brain on fire.^[12]

One cold snowy night I went to Sukiyabashi to visit the Commoners Society for the first time. It was the night for the regular meeting of the Socialist Study Group that was held there every week.

As I entered the vestibule, straight off to the left was a six- or eight-mat room with three or four men; they all seemed to be at ease there. Two of them, a young man and an older man, were arguing intently about something. I said nothing but sat down with my back against the wall a little removed from the rest. The discussion seemed to be about the issue of religion. The older man was sitting cross-legged, resting an elbow on one knee and rubbing his head as he ridiculed his younger adversary and gave vent to what sounded like atheistic remarks. The younger man sat very straight, his hands placed on his knees, his shoulders hunched forward angrily, and his face vivid red as he literally spewed forth a ludicrous orthodoxy. Another older man, who I knew immediately must be Sakai, occasionally interrupted to argue with the younger man, but his remarks were not nearly so pointed as those of the first man.

I was surprised by the eloquence that gushed from the lips of the younger man. But I was even more surprised by the extreme orthodoxy of his argument. I was a Christian just as he was. But I didn't really believe in miracles whereas he, by contrast, believed in the Bible word for word. I believed that God was something within ourselves but he believed that God was above all things, governing them. I wondered how such a person had ever come to socialism. Thus I was more in sympathy with the derision expressed by the man who seemed to be an atheist. This was Katsumi Kesson. The younger man was Yamaguchi Koken.^[13]

[12] This work, Shakaishugi shinzui , was published in 1903.

[13] Katsumi (1860-1925) was another journalist on the newspaper Yorozu Choho . Osugi later sided with radicals like Kotoku and Sakai. Yamaguchi Gizo (1883-1920), also a journalist, remained an active Socialist until his death; see chapter 1 note 1.

Before long some twenty others had assembled and the man I thought must be Sakai spoke to us.

"Since it is snowing and there are many new faces here tonight, let us dispense with the lecture and talk freely among ourselves about such things as how our circumstances led each of us to enter socialism."

We each rose in turn and said something. One man stated, "I am the son of a capitalist. During the Sino-Japanese War there was much talk about Okura's canned goods having stones in them. Those were cans from our place. But we didn't do it; apparently it was done according to Okura's scheme."

Sakai then said, "In that case they were really Okura's canned goods, weren't they? Rather than saying it was done at your place, it would make a better story if you said Okura's did it. So let's make it Okura's, shall we!"

Everyone broke into laughter and agreed: "True! True! It was Okura's!"

The capitalist's son was named Henmi something and he is now the head of the Kenshi Milk Company.

My turn came almost last: "I was raised in a military family and I've been taught in a military school, and I am at the point that I feel I've floated in the lies and absurdity of military life. Therefore I want to devote my life [to the socialist movement ]."^[14]

After everyone had spoken, Sakai arose and gave a stirring address. "Here we have the son of the military; there the son of capitalists; here, the son of one; there, of another. Now our ideas are spreading to all corners of the globe. Thus our movement is becoming the great movement of the world. The day when our ideal society will be here is not far off."

As I heard those words I felt their truth. That night as I returned to my lodgings I experienced a wonderful feeling.

I don't know whether Kotoku was present that night or not. Every week after that, without fail, I attended the meetings of the study group. I also went there on other days, especially after I moved in with Tosaka

[14] The words in brackets were censored in the 1930 Kaizo edition.

and Tanaka in Tsukishima. I would stop in almost daily on my way home from school and spent the rest of the day helping with activities such as addressing mailing wrappers.

VI.

In the Commoners Society were Kotoku, Sakai, Nishikawa Kojiro, and Ishikawa Sanshiro.^[15] Of the four, only Ishikawa did not despise religion. But there were outsiders who supported the society who were enthusiastic Christians like Ishikawa: that is, Abe Isoo and Kinoshita Yoko.^[16] Moreover, the majority of the youths who came were Christians. After all, Christian ideas were the most progressive in the intellectual world of the day. Or, at least, Christianity contained the most numerous elements in rebellion against the ideas of loyalty and patriotism then dominant.

Kotoku and Sakai sneered at and made scathing attacks on religion. They often brought up religious issues at the study group meetings. Nonetheless both Kotoku and Sakai accepted the resolution of the German Social Democratic party, which held that religion was an individual's private concern, and they did not actually interfere with their comrades' religion.

Ishikawa was my senior at the Hongo church. About that time, however, he seemed to lose all interest in church and stopped going entirely. After I began going to the Commoners Society, under its influence I too became increasingly skeptical—first about religious people and then about religion itself. The war between Russia and Japan cleanly severed my ties with religion.

I had believed, as Ebina Danjo taught, that religion had a cosmopolitanism that transcended national boundaries and a libertarianism

[15] Nishikawa Mitsujiro (1876-1940) and Ishikawa Sanshiro (Kyokuzan, 1876-1956) were both important left-wing militants.

[16] Abe (1865-1959) and Kinoshita Naoe (1869-1937) were prominent Christian socialists who opposed the war and who influenced Osugi (see chapter 5 part 3). Abe was a professor at Waseda University, where he also became known as the father of Japanese baseball. Kinoshita, a graduate of Waseda, gained a reputation as a journalist for his 1899-1900 reports on the Ashio Copper pollution case and as a novelist with his 1904 Hi no Hashira (Pillar of fire).

that recognized no temporal authority.^[17] Tolstoy's views on religion, which had come into vogue in intellectual circles at the time, strengthened my beliefs on this. Moreover, after reading about the origins of Christianity in Ebina Danjo's Life of Christ and in The Life of Buddha written by a doctor of Buddhism, I had thought it was as Tolstoy had said: primitive religion—in other words, real religion—was a variety of communist movement attempting to escape the insecurity in society that stems from the gulf between the rich and the poor.

But the attitude that religious individuals took toward the war—especially the attitude of Ebina in whom I believed—thoroughly betrayed my faith. The fact that Ebina's Christianity was one of nationalism and the Japanese spirit was now clearly exposed to my sight. He held prayer meetings for victory. He sang hymns that seemed like military songs. He gave sermons on loyalty and patriotism. And he quoted Christ completely out of context, as in "I came not to bring peace."^[18]

I grew thoroughly disgusted. After several arguments with Ebina and with Kato Yokushi, who had translated a great many of Tolstoy's works, I turned my back on churches once and for all. Simultaneously I came to doubt the principle of nonresistance, the "turn the other cheek" that is an essential quality of religion and that I had begun unconsciously to embrace. Thus I could now embrace pure socialism and the class struggle.

When the war broke out, my father was immediately made a battalion commander in one of the mixed brigades of a reserve division and was dispatched to the Liaotung Peninsula. I went to meet him when his brigade passed through Ueno Station and stayed overnight with him at his inn.

When I saw Father on horseback directing his troops, the first time that he had cut such a heroic figure, the sight almost moved even me to tears. But there was also something ridiculous to me about it when I thought to myself, What is the purpose [of going courageously to

[17] The words in italics are foreign in the original.

[18] See Matt. 10:34, "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth; I came not to send peace, but a sword."

war ]?^[19] Rather than feel sorry for Father, I felt that the scene was ludicrous.

Once we entered the inn my father and the old-timers among the of-ricers in his command went about in high spirits cheerfully telling everyone they met, "This is our last campaign."

Father had very little to say to me that night except "Study hard." It seemed to be enough for him to have me sitting by his side and to see my face.

[19] The words in brackets were censored in the 1930 Kaizo edition.