12—
Self-Caricature
At the higher school in Komaba, the student dormitory was not the only place where its old customs were actively preserved; the "traditions" were faithfully observed inside the classrooms as well. Although students were not supposed to miss more than a third of a year's classes, teachers generally raised no objection if students answered roll calls for their absentee friends—we called it daihen , or "surrogate answering service." Students could decide for themselves whether they wanted to go to classes. And the teachers, for their part, did not have to compromise to please their students. They taught what they believed was worthwhile, and their assumption was that somehow students would absorb the preliminary knowledge about the subject entirely on their own. The physics teacher would not concern himself with the students' aptitude for mathematics, and the German teacher would immediately begin reading and translating the classics after just three months of elementary grammar. Pedagogically, their strategy was analogous to putting a child into a pool and expecting him to learn to swim all by himself.
At that time, Professor Iwamoto, a teacher of philosophy whom Natsume Soseki[*] likened in his novel to a "grand darkness," was using novels by the German romantics to teach us German.[1] He was a scrawny
[1] Iwamoto Tei (1869–1941), known for giving his Ichiko[*] students failing grades, studied philosophy at Tokyo Imperial University and wrote Tetsugaku gairon (General discussion of philosophy, 1944). • Natsume Soseki (1867–1916), a preeminent novelist and literary theorist, a keen cultural critic, and an accomplished kanshi poet, whose novels ranged from light satirical narratives (Wagahai wa neko de aru [I am a cat, 1905–6] and Botchan [1906]) to introspective studies of the self and modern life (Sorekara [Since then, 1909], Mon[The gate, 1910], Kojin[*] [The wayfarer, 1912–13], Kokoro [1914], Michikusa [Grass on the wayside, 1915], and the unfinished Meian [Light and darkness, 1916]). • Iwamoto was said to be a possible model for the middle-aged Hirota sensei in Soseki's[*] novel Sanshiro[*] (1908), which portrays him as a sharp critic of traditional and contemporary culture, a learned and humble man who seeks neither fame nor wealth and is content to live in a "grand darkness."
man with a hunched back, already quite advanced in age. When he walked up the stairs to the classroom on the second floor, he always looked as if he were slowly crawling his way up. Only red lips gave his deeply wrinkled face a liveliness and a strangely sensual impression. He would ask his students to translate a paragraph from a German novel and then correct their mistakes. "Now, that's not right," he would mumble in a hoarse voice. "What you have here is a description of the woman falling in love with the man. Understood?" Because that was all the explanation he was prepared to offer and because all we had to go on was three months of elementary grammar, naturally we could not understand why the passage meant what he said it did. Students were not allowed to ask questions in class, and more than half of us failed our examination.
Our teacher of German composition was Professor Petzold, a longtime resident of Japan known in his own country as a scholar of Buddhist sutras.[2] But we hardly understood anything he said, and, beyond that, we were simply incapable of writing anything that made any sense in German. Out of boredom, we actively engaged our surrogate answering service for his class, and even our stand-ins preferred to read other books under their desks. One time Professor Petzold came down from his podium, snatched the hidden book from one such student, waved it above his head, and shouted furiously. While we could see that a white-haired Westerner was raving with anger, we had absolutely no idea what he was saying. After listening more carefully to his unavailing attempt at communication, we realized that the old professor was speaking a mixture of English, German, and Japanese: "You are nicht erai hito !"—"You people are no good!" Professor Petzold spoke very little Japanese, and we, on the other hand, could understand hardly any
[2] Bruno Petzold (1873–1949) taught German at Ichiko[*] from 1917 to 1943 and was offered a Tendai priesthood in his later years. Among his major works were Buddhist Prophet Nichiren: A Lotus in the Sun (Hokke Janaru[*] , 1978), Die Quintessenz der T'ien-t'ai Lehre: eine komparative Untersuchung (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1982), and Goethe und der Mahayana Buddhismus (Vienna, Octopus, 1982).
German. In addition, we had absolutely no interest in Buddhism. The barriers between us effectively blocked whatever potentially profound influence he might have had on us. I did not think of Professor Petzold again until more than twenty years later when I was explaining Shobo[*] genzo[*] bendowa[*] in German to my students at a university in Munich.[3] If our encounter had taken place twenty years later, the two of us might have been able to have a good discussion on Japanese Buddhism, or we might even have developed a close friendship. But twenty years earlier my intellectual outlook was even less mature than that of the German students who were then listening attentively to my explication.
Professor Katayama Toshihiko, a poet, had chosen as his textbook the German translation of Bergson's Introduction à la métaphysique .[4] "This is just a translation, but the substance is really interesting," he said a little defensively. "If you should have any questions, I suggest that you refer to the French original." However, none of us who had had only three months of German could read French. Yet Professor Katayama was a thoughtful instructor, and the textbook was certainly interesting to the extent that I could understand it. When he explained Bergson and his ideas, Professor Katayama made references to numerous French and German poets and philosophers. Since most of their names were new to me, I had no idea how close or obscure their connections with Bergson were. But as these names were conveyed to us through his slightly reedy and agitated voice, they reverberated with an intoxicating charm, as if they were the names of faraway cities in utopian lands. The speaker's affection for his subject—if one could call it that—was compellingly contagious to his audience. Since the days of the Edo Confucianists with their profound admiration for the Chinese intelligentsia, I wonder if anybody
[3] Bendowa[*] was a major work on Zen by Dogen[*] (1200–53), the mid-Kamakura monk who founded the Soto[*] sect in Japan (see chapter 37, notes 12–13). • From May to July 1964 Kato[*] taught at the University of Munich's East Asia Institute as a visiting professor; he was forty-five.
[4] Katayama Toshihiko (1898–1961), poet, essayist, critic, and translator. Inspired first by Goethe, Rodin, and Maeterlinck and increasingly by Rolland, he translated his Le Jeu de l'amour et de la mort in 1926 and later visited Rolland in Switzerland. Returning to Japan, he published Roman Roran (Romain Rolland, 1937), Kokoro no henreki (Journeys of my heart, 1942), and a translation of Rilke's poems (Riruke shishu[*] , 1942). After the war he supervised the publication of the collected works of Rolland while continuing to publish translations and critical works. His works are collected in Katayama Toshihiko chosakushu[*] , 10 vols. (Misuzu shobo[*] , 1971–72).
else had cherished, or honestly thought he did, the same deep-seated affection for literary figures from a foreign land. In his younger days Professor Katayama had studied in the West, and through his old acquaintance with the sculptor Takata Hiroatsu, he met Romain Rolland, someone he practically worshiped.[5] He was thoroughly familiar with the works of the poets around Rolland, not to mention Rolland's own works. He loved the tonality of Bonnard and the music of the German romantics and, like Rolland himself, abhorred all forms of militarism, including that of his own country.
Professor Katayama lived with his wife and two children in a one-story house in a residential area not far from Ogikubo Station on the Central Line. He spent his days buried in the mountain of books he had collected. One time I visited him at his Ogikubo home with my fellow students Harada Yoshito and Nakamura Shin'ichiro[*] .[6] "Charles Vildrac was here once," Professor Katayama remarked at one point, as if he were relating a matter of great significance in his life. "In those days, there wasn't any other house in this area, and on their way here along the path in the wheat fields, Vildrac and Ozaki Kihachi could hear the trills of the larks.[7] That made Vildrac very happy, and he kept saying how this place could really
[5] Takata Hiroatsu (1900–87), portrait sculptor and translator of Romain Rolland's works, stayed in France from 1931 to 1957 and befriended Alain, Rolland, and Vildrac. His critical works include Furansu to Nihon to (France and Japan, 1950) and Verureenu to Rambo[*] (Valéry and Rimbaud, 1969). For Kato's[*] moving reminiscence about him, see chapter 28.
[6] Harada Yoshito (1918–60) graduated from the Department of German Literature at Tokyo Imperial University, taught at Ichiko[*] from 1948 and at his alma mater from 1950, lectured on Japanese at Hamburg University (1954–56), and became the editor of Hakobune (The Ark), the literary journal for the Matinée Poétique group formed in 1942 by Kato[*] , Nakamura Shin'ichiro, and Fukunaga Takehiko, and others (see chapter 18); Harada's works include Gendai Doitsu bungakuron (Contemporary German literature, 1949), Doitsu bungaku nyumon[*] (Introduction to German literature, 1952), and translations of Kafka's The Trial and The Castle , as well as Gottfried Benn's Double Life . • Nakamura Shin'ichiro (1918–97), novelist, poet, critic, and a prominent literary figure in postwar Japan, whose major works include novels (Shi no kage no moto ni [Under the shadow of death, 1947], Kuchu[*] teien [Garden in midair, 1965], Kumo no yukiki [Movement of clouds, 1966], and Kodoku [Solitude, 1966]) and a critically acclaimed study of the late Tokugawa historian, Confucian scholar, and poet Rai San'yo[*] entitled Rai San'yo[*] to sono jidai (Rai San'yo and His Time, 1971).
[7] Ozaki Kihachi (1892–1974), poet, essayist, translator. Closely connected with the Shirakaba (white birch) school, his art was influenced by Rolland, Vildrac, Hesse, Duhamel, and Rilke. His works are collected in Ozaki Kihachi shibunshu[*] (Poetry and prose writings of Ozaki Kihachi, 10 vols. [Sobunsha[*] , 1958–75]).
be called the countryside." The house that had once stood alone in the wheat fields was by then buried among numerous other small houses in a heavily crowded area, so much so that it was no longer easy to find. Nevertheless, the master of this house was living in a world so far removed from its surroundings that one could perhaps still see it as a sort of solitary structure.
Professor Katayama once wrote about "stars exchanging whispers." The "stars" he referred to were men such as Novalis, Rilke, Nerval, and the old Aldous Huxley. Perhaps they also included Tagore and Vivekananda[*] as well. And from that distant world Vildrac descended to earth and landed at Ogikubo only once and never again. Romain Rolland himself, and Duhamel, Martinet, and René Arcos were just like stars sparkling in the infinite distance. Professor Katayama maintained almost no correspondence with them. The war came and went, and even after channels of communication between Japan and France were reopened, Professor Katayama never attempted to call on his old friends in the land he had once visited.
After the war I lived for a time in the home of the poet René Arcos.[8] "Katayama? Why, of course, I know him very well!" Arcos spoke with a slur, having had too much to drink as usual. "And I've met Takata once. But for some reason, I haven't heard from them since." At that time I did not tell Arcos that in a small house made of wood and paper in a place called Ogikubo in Japan, Katayama had been reading each and every one of his works. Had I done so, Arcos would have been moved to learn about a kindred spirit. But at the same time he would probably have asked me why Katayama had not written if that was indeed the case. It would then have taken me a long time to explain that it was not in spite of but precisely because of the absence of communication between the Japanese poet and his Parisian friend that Katayama was carefully reading every word his friend had written.
Professor Katayama's stars were naturally even farther away from me. I could not even imagine any relationship between their world and mine, a world consisting of Ogikubo's muddy streets, noodle stalls, and drunkards on the midnight Central Line. Yet I was filled with curiosity and probably intellectual vanity as well. As I looked back with deep mortification at the many long hours I had spent reading those ridiculous middle-school textbooks, I dreamed about embarking on a journey
[8] See chapter 26.
to reach out for the world of the stars. As I could not read foreign language books speedily, I decided to read as many translations as I could, at a pace of one volume every three days so that I could finish a hundred volumes within a year. I then put my resolution into practice. Since then, I have acquired the bad habit of taking a book along everywhere I go, and I read whenever I have a little time on my hands. Years later, Arcos once asked me, "Do you have the habit of reading in bed?"
"Yes, I do."
"You should know that in bed, there are two things more important than reading: sleep and love . . . "
I agreed with what he said, though at that time there was no woman in his bed, or in mine.
Indiscriminate reading also leads to imprecise understanding. But my higher school gave me the opportunity to experience close reading in action. Professor Gomi, later the chair of Tokyo Imperial University's Department of Japanese Literature, was still a young man when he taught Japanese classics to Komaba's science students.[9] He endeavored to read the text as accurately as possible, not letting the shortest line or even a single word slip by easily. He had the overpowering dynamism and intensity befitting a young and brilliant scholar. Though I didn't become a specialist in Japanese linguistics or literature, the rigorous academic atmosphere that nurtured future scholars like the linguist Ono[*] Susumu and the literary scholar Koyama Hiroshi made a profound impression on me.[10] When they and Professor Gomi's other disciples gathered to form a reading circle on the Man'yoshu[*] , I immediately joined. I had been familiar with the Man'yoshu since I was a child, but now these young disciples of Professor Gomi taught me for the first time the methodology of interpreting the work as precisely and accurately as possible.
[9] Gomi Tomohide (1908–83) taught at Ichiko[*] and then at Tokyo University from 1949 to 1966. His specialty was classical Japanese literature, the Man'yoshu in particular. Among his major works were Kodai waka (Ancient Japanese poems, 1951), Man'yoshu no sakka to sakuhin (Man'yo[*] poets and their works, 1982) and Man'yoshu kogi[*] (Lectures on Man'yoshu , 3 vols., 1985–86).
[10] Ono Susumu (1919–) was a professor at Toyo[*] Eiwa Jogakuin University and a distinguished scholar of ancient Japanese etymology. Among his major works are Jodai[*] kanazukai no kenkyu[*] (Study of ancient kana orthography, 1953), Nihongo no kigen (The origin of Japanese, 1957), and Nihongo o sakanoboru (Tracing the roots of Japanese, 1974). He was also an editor of Iwanami shoten's Kogo jiten (Dictionary of classical Japanese, 1974). • On Koyama Hiroshi, a distinguished scholar of kyogen[*] , see chapter 37 for more details.
My three years' experience in Komaba took in more than communal living in the dormitory and interactions with some of the teachers. I also frequented the Kabukiza and discovered the Tsukiji Little Theater.[11] It was the age of Uzaemon, Kikugoro[*] , and Kichiemon at the Kabukiza.[12] As I stood in the gallery, I saw how a solitary dance by Kikugoro instantly transformed the huge, lifeless stage into an arena of heightened dramatic tension. The audience then was witnessing none other than the awesome display of a master's art. Uzaemon mesmerized me with his piquant trills, reaching all the way to where I stood in the gallery. And then there were Sukeroku, the gang of five thieves, Yugiri[*] Izaemon, and other memorable roles.[13] I had absolutely no sympathy for the samurai who sacrifices his own child for his lord in a kabuki play. I preferred protagonists like the vagabond gambler or the thief, amorous characters who are tough in
[11] Situated in Tokyo's Ginza district, the Kabukiza ranks with Osaka's Shin Kabukiza as the two great kabuki theaters in eastern and western Japan, respectively. It was built in 1889 and rebuilt in 1951 after its damage by fire in 1921, by earthquake in 1923, and by the Tokyo air raids in 1945. • The Tsukiji Little Theater was built in 1924 by Hijikata Yoshi and Osanai Kaoru as the first modern theater for the performance of shingeki , or "modern drama," in Japan; in 1940 it became the People's New Theater (Kokumin shingekijo[*] ) and was destroyed during the war in 1945.
[12] Ichimura Uzaemon XV (1874–1945) was a kabuki actor in the Taisho[*] and early Showa[*] period whose physical elegance and performing skills made him one of the most prominent nimaime (beau-part) actors in such roles as Sukeroku. He was best remembered for his roles in kizewa-mono (realist plays) with Onoe Baiko[*] VI (1870–1934) in onnagata , or female roles. • Onoe Kikugoro VI (1885–1949) was a celebrated kabuki actor in a line of distinguished performers from the early eighteenth century. He and Nakamura Kichiemon I ushered in the Kikukichi age of kabuki performance; he founded the Nihon Haiyu[*] gakko[*] (school for Japanese actors) in 1930 and was the first kabuki performer to receive posthumously a cultural medal from the Japanese government. • Nakamura Kichiemon I (1886–1954) was a major kabuki actor, especially noted for his roles as tragic characters in jidaimono plays and for joint performances with Kikugoro (Kagatobi [Firemen from Kaga] and Terakoya [Temple school]).
[13] Sukeroku is either the belligerent hero or the common name of the play Sukeroku yukari no Edozakura , the only sewamono (contemporary play) of kabuki theater's Eighteen Famous Plays; in 1713 Ichikawa Danjuro[*] II first took the title role. • "The gang of five thieves" is a common name for the play Aoto zoshihana[*] no nishikie (1862) by Kawatake Mokuami (1816–93), held to be among the most stylishly dazzling kabuki plays; like other shiranami-mono plays, it puts thieves in title roles. • Yugiri Izaemon combines the names of a famous Osaka courtesan and her lover Fujiya Izaemon; they appear as heroine and hero in a number of Chikamatsu Monzaemon's kabuki and joruri[*] plays such as Yugiri[*] nagori no shogatsu[*] and Yugiri Awa no Naruto .
brawls and somehow betray a latent rebelliousness against authority. Perhaps it was because I myself was inexperienced with women, helpless in brawls, and had never taken any action against authority. In any case, when I heard Uzaemon's rendition of Sukeroku's caustic dialogue, I felt a thrill run through my whole body, and I found myself literally breathless with excitement. Perhaps with the exception of Umewaka Manzaburo[*] I's no[*] performance, I never experienced so directly such a powerful and sensual impact from any other dialogue uttered in Japanese.[14] In a way, it was comparable to my childhood fascination with Caruso's voice as it poured forth from Grandfather's old gramophone. What mattered was not the meaning of the dialogue, much less the plot, but the stirring dramatic effect manifesting itself through the actor's voice.
At the Tsukiji Little Theater, on the other hand, the movements and vocalization of the kabuki actor gave way to the substance of the dialogue and the personality, convictions, and psychology of the characters. The Lower Depths, The Cherry Orchard, Northeasterly Winds, Land of Volcanic Ash . . .[15] Anyone can easily find out the details about the shingeki theater during the late 1930s by referring to various source materials. Suffice it to say that during that time, the waves of militarism were gradually encroaching on the steps of the Tsukiji Little Theater. Inside, although the performers and their audience had not quite established a sense of solidarity among themselves, one could nevertheless sense a tacit understanding of their shared defiance of the tides of the time. To me, from the very outset, watching a play represented precisely the sharing of such an experience with the rest of the audience, people who otherwise were total strangers to me. From that time on, going to the theater has become one of my avocations, a part of my life. Later on I traveled to various Western countries and watched their plays. But that came about
[14] Umewaka Manzaburo I (1868–1946), a no performer of the Kanze school who played shite roles and rebuilt the Umewaka school in 1921 but returned to the Kanze school in 1933. On the disputes between these two schools see J. Thomas Rimer, ed., The Blue-Eyed Tarokaja[*] : A Donald Keene Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 234.
[15] Among the plays performed at the Tsukiji Little Theater, along with those by Gorky and Chekhov, were Hokuto[*] no kaze (Northeasterly winds) by Hisaita Eijiro[*] (1898–1976)—a realist drama of the management dilemmas facing the president of a textile company (first performance, 1937)—and Kazanbai chi (Land of volcanic ash) by Kubo Sakae (1900–1958), an accomplished work of socialist realism (first performance, 1938); see David G. Goodman, Land of Volcanic Ash (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Papers, 1986).
because I had already discovered the world of the theater in the Kabukiza and in the Tsukiji Little Theater, not because of any discovery in the West of what a play could accomplish.
What I discovered in the West was not the world of the theater, but the world of painting and sculpture, and quite possibly the world of architecture as well. At that time, my experience with Japanese art included only a few gardens in Kyoto. To begin with, I was not interested in the fusuma-e of the Kano[*] school, and the oil paintings exhibited at Ueno were no more than a display of imitations.[16] Japanese architects had yet to demonstrate their real creative talents, which did not blossom until the postwar period. And above all, there was nothing steadfastly ebullient in Tokyo culture during the interwar years to impel us toward an appreciation of the meaning of the formative arts. True, we did have the Katsura Detached Palace. But the discovery of the villa's significance in the 1930s came not from Tokyo culture but from its Western counterpart, which gave us Bauhaus and Bruno Taut.[17] I, on the other hand, was living under the canopy of Tokyo culture.
I was beginning to develop a great fascination for piano music—influenced less by Professor Katayama, a piano enthusiast, than by two classmates. They were the ones who initiated me into the music of the romantics. Often two or three of us would go to the concerts by Leonid Kreutzer, Hara Chieko, or Iguchi Motonari.[18] I remember how excited we were over Kusama Kazuko's (later Yasukawa Kazuko) stunningly
[16] Fusuma-e is a generic term for paintings executed on Japanese-style sliding screens made of long, thin pieces of wood supporting paper or cloth mounted on both sides. • With official patronage, the Kano school flourished from the Muromachi through the Momoyama to the Edo period; its major painters included Kano Masanobu (1434–1530), Motonobu (1476–1559), Eitoku (1543–90), and Tanyu[*] (1602–74).
[17] Built around 1620 in Kyoto along the Katsura River as a villa for Hachijonomiya[*] Toshihito (1579–1629), a grandson of Emperor Ogimachi[*] , the Katsura Detached Palace exemplifies the sukiya-zukuri style with its three shoin (study) structures, landscape garden, and rustic tea houses dotted around the premises. Charles S. Terry writes that the palace's traditional Japanese architecture "has been widely admired by western architects, who find in its pristine lines, its openness and its lack of unnecessary adornment much that accords with the principles of 20th-century western architecture" (Encyclopaedia Britannica [1972], 12:950. • The German architect Bruno Taut (1880–1938) was highly impressed with Japanese architecture during a visit in 1933–36; his impressions of the villa are in Houses and People of Japan (Sanseido[*] , 1937).
[18] Leonid Kreutzer (1884–1953), a German pianist and conductor who taught at the Tokyo Conservatory (later Tokyo University of Arts) from 1933to 1953. • Hara Chieko (1915–), who graduated in 1932 from the Conservatoire national de la musique in Paris and studied with Lazare Lévy, was runner-up in the third Chopin International Piano Competition in 1937 and the first Japanese pianist to gain an international reputation. • On Iguchi Motonari see chapter 4, note 6.
innovative style in her first concert performance immediately after her return from France.[19] Even after we returned to our dormitory, we rambled on until late at night, slurping noodles as we talked.
Sometimes, out of curiosity, we went to a special coffeeshop just to listen to music we had never heard before. There was a big gramophone and a large collection of phonograph records, and as long as we were willing to wait for our turn after making a request, we could listen to almost any song. There were probably only one or two such shops in Tokyo, and without them, the average student had very little chance of listening to so many different kinds of music. The atmosphere inside the coffeeshop was quite extraordinary. Amidst heavy cigarette smoke, some of the young patrons sitting on small chairs would listen with their eyes closed; others would stare abstractedly into the distance as they listened attentively to the music flowing from the gramophone. Almost nobody talked, and even the waitress who brought our coffee tiptoed quietly.
It is difficult for me to articulate how I felt about the music of the romantics, and about Chopin's piano compositions in particular. But this is certainly due not to any difficulty in recalling the past, but to the difficulty of putting into words an experience I can so vividly recall without doing it injustice. Art is not something words can explain; to me it explains language itself. With truly irresistible power, the music not only stirred but transcended my feelings. It elicited emotions beyond the destructive passion and rapture of Wagner's operas or the limpid exultation of Mozart's piano compositions; it represented something much closer to the heart, something with its own ambience of intimacy, like a private confession. It evoked wide-ranging psychological reactions from anticipation to agitation, from apprehension to passion, from sweet
[19] Yasukawa Kazuko (1922–96; maiden name, Kusama Kazuko), a graduate of the Conservatoire national de la musique in 1937 and a student of Lazare Lévy, won first prize at the International Piano Competition for Women in Paris (1937) and started performing in Japan in 1940. She became a professor at the Tokyo University of Arts in 1952 and won many medals and honors, including the Légion d'honneur.
yearnings to momentary euphoria, as it constantly transformed itself until it finally faded away.
In those days thoughts of death haunted me. In the middle of the night, I would suddenly be seized by the horrifying thought that I and everything around me would vanish without a trace. I would break into a cold sweat, unable to go back to sleep for a long time. This does not mean, however, that I recognized any positive purpose in being alive, and perhaps for that reason I developed an inexplicable attachment to life. And it was from the core of this attachment, or at least not far from it, that an infinitely poignant and delicate melody began to flow forth from the bass chord of its convolution. In any case, through Chopin and the romantics, music began to come into my life. And that was the beginning of my entirely new relationship with music.
As I think back on it, Tokyo in the interwar years was quite an amazing city. Everywhere one turned, one found foreign literature in Japanese translation and reprints of postimpressionist paintings or heard the instrumental music of the German romantics. These imports were enough to make one forget about traditional Japanese culture, but not enough to achieve any real understanding of Western culture. I read many translations of foreign literature; I became acquainted with the names of many French impressionist and postimpressionist painters; and I listened to flawed performances of the music of the romantics through somewhat defective audio equipment. Yet I did not even know that postimpressionist paintings were only a small part of the overall canvas of Western art, or that the works of the romantics hardly represented the totality of Western music. At the same time, I knew virtually nothing about Shintoism[*] , Confucianism, or Buddhism. I was completely ignorant about the system of thinking that had long nourished the spiritual life of the Japanese people. Yet I continued to eat miso, rice, and tofu, the food that had sustained our ancestors. I continued to walk with my high boots or high clogs on the muddy streets long trodden by other Japanese. I abided by the long-cherished conventions of "respectable" behavior and had no close female friend at all. I had both lascivious fantasies and hopelessly romantic yearnings for women—and neither served any constructive purpose when I came face-to-face with a woman, even with a coffeeshop waitress. I was timid, but I had a strong sense of self-respect, and even when I wanted to take the initiative to talk to a woman, I had no idea how to proceed. Since women paid little attention to me, I arrived at an intense sense of inferiority. I was never really con-
scious of the fact that I myself represented a caricature of the cultural conditions of the time. I did notice, however vaguely, something in me that was not original, something only half-baked, something precarious. At the time, it was plainly impossible for me to think of ways to deal with these problems. Later on, the outside world provided me with ready answers. First, there was medicine, and second, the Pacific War. The study of medicine guaranteed the universality of knowledge; the Pacific War severed me from the dubious aspects of Japanese society. The only things left to discover were that society's more solid components.