The "Estranged Wife" Cycle: Private Life as Literary Act

Shuko's first major work, the four-part "Estranged Wife" cycle (1910-15: Wakaretaru tsuma ni okuru tegami [A letter to my estranged wife]; Shujaku [Tenacious love]; Giwaku [Suspicion]; and Giwaku zokuhen [Suspicion, part 2]), revolves around the narrator-hero Yukioka's vain pursuit of his wife Osuma, who has abandoned him for another man.^[14] The cycle's story time runs from August 1909 to May 1911. Shuko relates events occurring anywhere from several months to several years prior to the telling, but the cycle reads as if those events have only just taken place. Two techniques help achieve a sense of immediacy. First, the epistolary style is used in all but the last story. The hero reports to his estranged wife in a manner suggesting that the events in question are still in progress. In real life, the outcome of Shuko's vain pursuits was no longer in doubt, but the Shuko hero remains in the dark. Letter after letter flows from the pen of a man who clings to the hope of

[13] In Kay Dick, Writers at Work , 157.

[14] Giwaku zokuhen was first published as Aichaku no nagori (Lingering attachment). Names of characters in the cycle vary with the story and with the edition. The narrator's wife in Wakaretaru tsuma ni okuru tegami is called Osuma or Oyuki. Osuma's lover Shinoda also goes by the name Kojima and Yoshida. See the table in NKBT 22:448; and Takemori, “Giwaku no sekai," 15-16 and 31 n. 3. Names tend to be variations and inversions of each other. Thus, the names Yukio ka and Oyuki in the "Wakareta tsuma" cycle. Osuma is the inverse of Masu, the name of Shuko's wife after whom the character is modeled. In a later cycle, Kasahara of Kyuren is called Tahara in Kyuren zokuhen , and so on—all of them manifestations of Shuko's obsession with repetition on a verbal as well as experiential level.

reunion with his wife. Second, narrative time moves backward, erasing the perspective that a telling distanced from the tale potentially generates. Shuko has no interest in coolly assessing events that have receded into a psychologically distant past. Instead, he locates the narrative present at the. height of the hero's emotional experience. His concern is clearly with process, not result.

Wakaretaru tsuma ni okuru tegami (April-July 1910; hereafter abbreviated as Wakareta tsuma ) covers the period from Osuma's disappearance in August 1909 to the end of November. The narrator-hero Yukioka reflects on his past life with Osuma and hopes for her quick return, despite rumors that she now lives with another man. He devotes most of the letter, however, to an account of his rivalry with one Osada (modeled after Masamune Hakucho) over a prostitute with whom he had become intimate in an attempt to overcome his loneliness. Shujaku (April 1913) continues the action from July 1910 to April 1911, describing it as if the hero were writing sometime in 1911 rather than in the year of publication.^[15] Yukioka learns that Osuma may be living with a university student who once shared the same tenement house with them. He then hears that she has become the mistress of a retired businessman. He also learns that Osuma vacationed in Nikko in the summer of 1910 with her beau, whoever he might be, and he determines to track them down. In Giwaku (October 1913), Yukioka travels to Nikko in May 1911, searches through several inn registers in hopes of unearthing a clue to Osuma's whereabouts, and finally locates the inn where she and her beau stayed. He discovers that the latter is indeed the young student, not the elderly patron as he has been led to believe, and regrets that he was so sanguine about Osuma's behavior when the student was living next door to them. Again he relates events as if he were writing soon after the fact. In Giwaku

[15] There is evidence that at least certain portions of the cycle's later stories were written much earlier than their actual publication, which would of course add to the sense of immediacy to the events related. For example, Endo Hideo cites an essay Shuko wrote apparently in reference to a sequel to Giwaku and suggests that Shuko must have written Giwaku zokuhen , or at least some version of it, before Giwaku , published two years earlier. See “Giwaku ton," 82. Nakajima Kunihiko argues that Shuko wrote a significant portion of Utsuriga (1915), a work related to the cycle, in the fall of 1910. See "Chikamatsu Shuko ni okeru sakuhin keiretsu no mondai," 14-15. Shuko's use of a "roving" narrative present, however, demonstrates his interest in immediacy as a technique above and beyond any commitment to emotional authenticity.

zokuhen (November 1915), the hero, writing a first-person narration this time and not a letter, traces Osuma and the student to Oka-yama and finds them after a search through the prefectural register. The story begins with an account of two chance meetings that Yukioka had on the same day with his former wife sometime in 1915. The narrative present gradually shifts back in time, however, to a period immediately following the visit to Okayama in May 1911.

Two other stories are closely related to the cycle: "Yuki no hi" (A snowy day, March 1910) and Utsuriga (Lingering fragrance, June-July 1915; originally titled Keien [Bitter memories]). In "Yuki no hi," which reads as a prologue to the "Estranged wife" cycle, Yukioka and Osuma sit comfortably around the warm kotatsu (a physical manifestation of the hero's smoldering passion) and gaze out their room at the newly fallen snow.

Since it was so warm on retiring to bed, I thought we would be getting rain the next day, but I awoke the next morning to a world blanketed by silver. Flakes like goose down fell silently to the ground.

I feel very relaxed on such days. It is times like these that I feel fortunate to be without work. We closed the front gate and spent the day by ourselves, sitting face to face across the kotatsu . This was our conversation.^[16]

This passage provides us with our first glimpse of the Shuko hero's hermetically sealed emotional world. Content in his idleness and protected by a blanket of insulating snow, Yukioka literally closes the gate on the outside world and revels in his confinement.^[17]

Yukioka prods Osuma into talking about her past and derives a certain masochistic pleasure as she becomes carried away by memories. He hopes thereby to rekindle his waning interest in her,

[16] CSS , 7. All citations of Shuko's works are taken from this edition, except where otherwise noted; they are henceforth inserted in the main body of the text. This edition is used more out of convenience (it is the most comprehensive Shuko anthology now in print) than preference, as it is not always a reliable text. Shuko made considerable revisions of his work whenever it was published. (For an example of how extensive the textual variants of Wakareta tsuma alone are, see NKBT 22:441-43 n. 1.) The MBZ edition of Shuko's works is the more authoritative text, but it unfortunately contains only six stories (the "Estranged Wife" cycle plus "Yuki no hi" and Utsuriga ).

[17] The mood of confinement in "Yuki no hi" is explored in depth by lwagiri Keiichi. See "'Yuki no hi' no teiryu ni aru mono," esp. 81-83, 93.

since for him, jealousy is synonymous with passion. Yet he also fears the pain that it will bring. The conversation Yukioka has with his wife is akin to testy verbal fencing, and the couple's dialogue intersects only tangentially.^[18] Each time Yukioka seeks reassurance about his wife's fidelity, Osuma responds with yet another amorous episode from her past. In the end, Yukioka discovers that no amount of probing into Osuma's past will ignite the spark of jealous passion, and the "conversation" that was not a dialogue comes to a halt.

My heart no longer fluttered with emotion as it used to. Why? Has my love for her cooled? Or have formerly crude, wild passions simply mellowed into a genuine affection? I don't know the answer.

It was still snowing gently outside, and drifts were piling up. "We've had quite a talk, haven't we?" I said with a wide yawn. "How about some eel today?"

"I'd love some."

"I'll go order it," I said, and left the house.

(CSS , 15)

Thus the story ends, with innuendos of emotions as cool as the snow that envelops them. Although the reference to eel, a common erotic symbol in the popular culture, suggests that passion, like the coals under the kotatsu , still smolders unconsciously beneath the surface, the narrator, by leaving the house, breaks his confinement and with it the magical spell that has prevailed throughout.

"Yuki no hi" is typical of stories to follow in that the narrative present is completely at odds with the chronological "facts" of Shuko's life. The hero recounts his conversation with Osuma as if it has just taken place, although Masu has long since left Shuko. Even the author of some of the most demeaning "confessions" in modern Japanese literature feels it necessary to separate life from art. Thus, "Yuki no hi" adumbrates the couple's tumultuous past but is silent about the "sadness, misery, and ... jealousy" that the wife has apparently stirred in the husband. "And what of these things?" Yukioka asks rhetorically. "That is a story I shall not reveal here. In fact, I may never reveal it. It is something better left unsaid. Indeed, I ought never, never to talk about it!" Yukioka then offers a credo for all shishosetsu writers: "Why should I have to earn a living by

[18] See Nakajima Kunihiko, "Yuki no hi no genso," 40.

exposing my private life to the public eye? I have not yet sunk so low as to prostitute myself in order to pay for my next meal" (ibid., 10). To be sure, the shishosetsu writer does expose himself to a greater or lesser extent and earns his living thereby. But Shuko's maintenance of a temporal buffer between his life and work suggests a way for the writer to contain his confessions even as he professes to tell all.

Utsuriga , like Shujaku , is a sequel to Wakareta tsuma . Before we look at it, let us first examine the cycle's inaugural work, which was written in the precedent-setting epistolary style. Yukioka, the narrator-hero, begins as if he were indeed corresponding with his wife, with no thoughts of a wider audience:

My dear,

I suppose that I have no right to use so intimate a term as "my dear" [omae ], now that we have separated. And if what I hear is true—that you have long since remarried and are therefore impossible to win back—then perhaps I should not be writing you at all. Yet I feel that I must, and I cannot help addressing you as I always have. Please let me do so in this letter, at least. I'm afraid there will be trouble if people find out that I have written you—I wouldn't mind, but it might cause you some embarrassment. I needn't tell you, then, to burn or otherwise dispose of this letter after you've finished reading it. I understand that we are practically neighbors, that you live right here in Koishikawa Ward, although I don't know exactly where you're located or what you're doing. I'd like to bring you up to date on my life since your departure. Do hear me out. Much has happened in the seven months since I last saw you.

(CSS , 16)

The opening is nothing less than a manifesto. The hero announces to his ex-wife that he will use the intimate omae in the letter even though he no longer can face to face. He thereby creates the fiction of a relationship that has in fact already been nullified. Shuko begins his story only after firmly setting this fiction in place.^[19]

But the manifesto, and the fiction it embraces, is directed not simply at the writer's ex-wife. Insofar as the "letter" has been published in a magazine, omae loses its status as a private, single-person audience. The fiction of an intimate relationship, then, extends to the broader reading audience as well. We shall see that the

[19] This point is made by Shimada Akio in "Chikamatsu Shuko shiron," 16-17.

"Wakareta tsuma" cycle is in part the result of Shuko's struggle to produce an audience that can correctly read his work: who could be more qualified to interpret his writing than his companion of six years—or anyone who can imaginatively take her place?

Yet although Yukioka addresses his wife directly in Wakareta tsuma , the story as a whole maintains only the barest pretense of a letter. The second-person pronoun appears less and less frequently as the letter progresses, and in one section about two-thirds of the way through, the narrator actually refers to Osuma in the third person (CSS , 57-58). Here, in a bizarre narrative oversight (or is it a sleight of hand?), the letter's "discourse" melts into the fictional "story" right before our eyes—yet another indication of Shuko's awareness, however unconscious, of his larger audience. By the end, all trappings of an epistle have been dropped; there is not even the obligatory closing to complement the perfunctory greeting.

Insofar as the events in Wakareta tsuma are based on personal experience, Shuko could not have been oblivious to how his former wife might react to publications. And yet the "letter" cannot be, as is often claimed, so much literary bait to lure his wife back to him. It has been argued that the story has less artistic than utilitarian intent—that is, Shuko wrote it hoping that Masu would read it, take pity, and eventually return to him.^[20] The argument is based, however, on the story's sequels, which of course get us no closer to the "truth." Shujaku opens with the hero's explanation of why he wrote his first "letter": "I write you once again. Three years have passed since that first long letter.... I didn't write half of what I had intended, however.... I figured that, being the sensitive person you are, you'd take pity on me if I informed you of my plight" (CSS , 75-76). In the opening section of Giwaku , omitted from modern editions, Yukioka takes courage in his ex-wife's past promise to keep an eye on notices in newspaper literary columns and read his works even if they should separate. Yet the expectation of being read by a specific audience does not in itself necessitate writing in

[20] Wada Kingo, Byosha no jidai , 213-15. In an early (1913) essay on Shuko, cited by Wada, Ibukata Toshirô speculates that Shuko chose the title Wakaretaru tsuma ni okuru tegami in hopes that its appearance in Waseda bungaku or in advertisements for the magazine would Catch his estranged wife's eye. See "Bundan no suhinkusu," 151-52.

the epistle form.^[21] Far more likely, Shuko's aim in employing this form was the impact it would have on his primary reading audience—the bundan —which was all too familiar with Shuko's scandalous private life. Shuko was ultimately less concerned with having his ex-wife see the "letter" than in having his bundan audience believe that the story's narrator so wished. If such was the bundan's interpretation, then the "letter" was indeed a success.^[22] Had Shuko truly wished to be reunited with his wife, he would of course have written directly to her in care of her relatives. And even if he were confident that she would see the "letter" in Waseda bungaku , he could not have expected to woo her back with stories of his philandering!

That Shuko published, rather than mailed, his "letter," then, presupposed a wider audience, whose interest transcended the circumstances that generated the writing. As if to emphasize this point, the narrator in Shujaku refers to a letter he published three years earlier, in July 1910, which just happens to correspond to the final installment of Wakareta tsuma (CSS , 76). And to insure that his literary intentions are not lost on his readers, he concludes his letter on the following note: "I plan to write a shosetsu about us soon. I want to leave a permanent record of the bitter-sweet experiences of the past seven years" (CSS , 99). But clearly, Shuko has already done in the "letters" what the narrator hints he will do in some future story: restructure the past into fictional form. The most striking evidence for this is the gap he inserts between narrative and chronological present. Shuko's strategy throughout the cycle is to push the narrative present back in time toward the events in question in order to rob the hero of his hindsight. Reflection is anathema to passion, we quickly learn in Shuko's fiction.

The narrator of Wakareta tsuma , who begins his first installment in the April 1910 issue of Waseda bungaku , writes of events only as recent as November 1909 and in a manner, moreover, that suggests he has no knowledge of events beyond that time. The half-year blank between the fall of 1909 and the spring of 1910 is never filled in. (This period is covered by Utsuriga , which however was not

[21] This is the argument of Iwagiri Keiichi. See “Wakaretaru tsuma ni okuru tegami ron," 11.

[22] The discussion here is indebted to Takahashi Hiromitsu, in his "'Wakareta tsuma' mono o megutte," 103.

published until 1915.) The blank is even longer in Shujaku , which, although published in April 1913, treats events only as recent as April 1911. Yukioka mentions at the story's beginning that three years have elapsed since he wrote his first letter; yet other internal evidence suggests that he is actually writing from the perspective of 1911 (for example, the narrator refers to 1910 as "last year" throughout). In the final paragraph, which is a self-conscious reference to the act of writing this "letter," the narrative present appears to return to 1913; yet we get from it no sense of perspective or knowledge that the passage of two years might be expected to bring. Significantly, Shuko dropped this paragraph when the story first appeared in book form.

The suppression of writing time in favor of a "roving" narrative present serves an important purpose: the hero comes across as a frenzied lover still blinded by his emotions rather than as a dispassionate observer. For Yukioka, Osuma's disappearance is a painfully fresh memory, not a historical event that has receded into the hazy past. In this and many other Shuko stories, the borderline between memory and present reality is blurred to the point of erasure. Remembering becomes an aggressive act of recreation that weaves past into present. When the hero in Shujaku , writing in 1913, learns in the spring of 1911 that Osuma ran off with another man a year earlier, this is his response:

I feel no bitterness toward the man. I would just like to find the house where you two are living. There you would be, gayly dressed and happily absorbed in your house work.... And once I had found you, I would gun you down with a single bullet. And that would be that. Day and night, I lie in bed, the covers pulled over my head, and conjure up the scene. There is a loud bang. Through the cloud of gunsmoke I see your body, collapsed in a frightful posture. I can actually smell the smoke beneath these covers.

(CSS , 99)

What appears to be spontaneous "confession" is in fact a highly complex portrayal of past events as if they were only just unfolding. Almost without our realizing it, the narrative present, which was clearly set in 1913 at the story's beginning, has shifted back two years. To the end, the narrator is in the dark about his former wife's whereabouts and her lover's identity, although the author was of course aware of both. In 1911, the narrative present for most

of the story, the hero discovers that his ex-wife may have been to Nikko with her lover and contemplates a visit there to search for dues. In 1913, the time of writing, Shuko had already been there himself and knew what curious developments ensued. But he was not about to let the reader in on them yet.

Shujaku is not by any stretch of the imagination one of Shuko's best stories, but it contains features more typical of Shuko's writing than the cycle's first text. For one, the remarkable roving narrative present is used here to great effect, as we have seen. The narrative flow appears to duplicate the hero's convoluted thoughts. Second, the motif of frenzied pursuit, which lies dormant in Wakareta tsuma , comes to the fore here.^[23] Third, the story serves as the cycle's main point of reference. Both Giwaku and Giwaku zokuhen contain so many allusions to Shujaku that they are in many ways incomprehensible without a prior reading of the earlier text. The "Estranged Wife" cycle is indeed just that: not a linear series but an entangled cycle of stories that reflect—and more often refract—each other several times over. True, Shuko attempted through revisions and editing (especially in Giwaku ) to give each of the last three texts in the cycle a measure of autonomy.^[24] Yet the stories are so intertwined, the events related in one story so central in importance to the next, that the impact of any single story is lessened considerably when not read together with the rest. The "Estranged Wife" cycle, although it lacks the polish of Durrell's Alexandria Quartet , is also in its own way a palimpsest: the hero's memories of events and people, which appear fleetingly and are then erased in one text, reappear dazzlingly etched in the next.

An example of this erasure and reetching is Shuko's presentation of Osuma's lover in Shujaku and Giwaku , which simultaneously reveals and conceals his identity. The hero in Shujaku reports, in the narrative "present" of 1913, that Osuma has run off with one Shinoda, a university student who lived with them in their rented house before Osuma's disappearance and whom Osuma befriended. Indeed, the narrator's very purpose in taking up his pen

[23] Takahashi Hiromitsu notes that in Wakareta tsuma the abandonment-and-pursuit motif is introduced in the relationship between the prostitute and a former lover. The motif shifts to the main characters in Shujaku and later stories. See "'Wakareta tsuma' mono o megutte," 16-17.

[24] Shuko revised both the beginning and ending of Giwaku no less than three times following its initial appearance. He also made several cuts when the stories first appeared in book form. See Takemori, “Giwaku no sekai," 10-16.

would seem to be none other than to vent his rage against the student. "Had I known then that you were hiding out with that Shinoda, I swear I'd have died" (CSS , 76), he exclaims. And yet, barely a quarter of the way into the story, we hear no more of her lover. After venting his rage, the narrator seems to lose all interest in his rival, becoming lost in memories that propel the narrative present backward. Action and narrative present intersect in May 1911, at which time the narrator is convinced that Osuma lives with an elderly patron, not a student. At the story's end, Yukioka appears no longer in possession of the knowledge that provoked him to write in the first place. In Giwaku , which picks up the action in May 1911, Yukioka searches through inn registers in Nikko for the name of Osuma, who vacationed there during the summer of 1910, and learns to his astonishment that her companion was indeed the student and not the mysterious elderly patron he had imagined. The hero's astonishment is fully conveyed, however, only by a reading of Shujaku , which sets the reader up for this curious twist.

Erasure of another sort occurs in Utsuriga , which describes Yukioka's affair with the prostitute with such single-mindedness that it is easy to forget the narrator's ostensible motive for penning this "letter" to his ex-wife: to win her back. We have noted that Utsuriga and Shujaku are sequels to Wakareta tsuma ; but whereas Shujaku is quite conscious of its status ("I write you once again. Three years have passed since that first long letter"), Utsuriga reads as a direct continuation of Wakareta tsuma , although it was published five years later. Indeed, its opening lines seem to flow right out of the earlier text:

And then I felt a lump growing in my throat, so large that I could choke. But I controlled my emotions and continued in as cheerful manner as possible to explain how I had come into possession of her sash. I acted out the story in front of them [Osada and another acquaintance], using falsetto and a woman's mannerisms.

I left Osada's room soon after that.

Once outside, the feeling of shame I had suppressed in my effort to feign unconcern surged through my chest, wrenching every rib on the way up.

Whereupon, tears of vexation and chagrin streamed down my face. They felt hot against my sunken cheeks, which were chafed by a chilly evening wind.

It is hard to believe that the last three paragraphs quoted above are in fact the beginning of a new story published five years after

the first paragraph.^[25] To say that Wakareta tsuma is "unfinished" or that Utsuriga commences practically in midsentence, however, while true as far as it goes, does not begin to describe Shuko's technique. Comparing the openings of Utsuriga and Shujaku , we see that Shuko viewed Wakareta tsuma as a textual fork in the road from which he could move in two different directions. When read in conjunction with Shujaku , Giwaku , and Giwaku zokuhen, Wakareta tsuma is the tale of a man suffering the loneliness of abandonment. The amicable questioning that Yukioka directs at acquaintances about his ex-wife turns in later stories into frenzied pursuit. When read in conjunction with Utsuriga , however, this same work becomes the prologue to a tale of fierce rivalry between two men for the affections of a prostitute. Each theme is introduced in Wakareta tsuma and then is suppressed in one or the other of the sequels. What is the cycle's first story about , then? Whatever the particular sequel in question chooses to bring up, we must conclude. We see this sort of erasing and doubling back taking place in Shuko's later stories as well. The "Dark Hair" cycle, for example, serves as another textual fork in the road that generates two sequels only tangentially related to each other. Perhaps we should not even call such works "sequels." Shuko is less interested in continuing a tale than amending it. Indeed, for Shuko, the tale is in the amending.

The Shuko hero's foolish pursuit of his ex-wife reaches the height of frenzy in Giwaku (1913), which Masamune Hakucho numbers among the classics of Meiji and Taisho literature.^[26] Unlike Wakareta tsuma and Shujaku , the epistle form is virtually abandoned except for the occasional use of the second person (omae ). The interjectory final particles (yo, ka, kai, da mono , etc.) that punctuate the narrative in the cycle's first two texts and posit a specific audience disappear entirely in Giwaku .^[27] This fact, combined with Shuko's decision in later editions to drop the introductory section that directly addresses omae , suggests a concerted effort to reconstitute his audience.

[25] The part of the citation that follows the end of Wakareta tsuma (CSS , 74) is taken from the original text of Utsuriga , first published as Keien in Shinshosetsu 20 (June 1915): 157. Later editions of Utsuriga begin with the final paragraph in the above citation ("Whereupon tears of vexation...").

[26] "Soho kessaku, Giwaku, “ in Masamune Hakucho zenshu 6:64.

[27] See Tazawa Motohisa, "Hoho no mosaku," 30.

We have already noted certain narrative ploys that underscore Shuko's consciousness of a dual readership, suggesting that Shuko sought an ideal audience that could correctly—perhaps the word is empathetically—interpret his work. The second-person singular omae , who by definition is intimate with the narrator, is of course the perfect choice of interpreters. Thus, we frequently encounter in both Wakareta tsuma and Shujaku phrases like "As you know ..." and "I don't have to tell you ..." as well as other narrative asides by which Shuko maintains the pretense of intimacy while introducing new information necessary to the telling of his story. Shuko must have realized, however, that appealing too strongly to a specific audience, even as a fictional ploy, ran the risk of alienating his wider audience. To note constantly that omae already knows this or that implies his general readership's ignorance; yet to limit the narration to what omae does not already know risks incomprehension.

Shuko's answer to this dilemma, perfected in Giwaku, is a unique method of presentation that offers a means of relating to his wider audience as insiders. Shuko rejects the idea of talking to his reader, even his intimate reader (omae ); he instead talks to himself—with a mind, perhaps, to being overheard. He refuses, moreover, to assume the pose of a narrator who has learned from his experience and then condescends to enlighten his readers. Rather, he treats even his own memories as events in the making. He is no more aware of their significance than we are.

Shuko's refusal to place reader and writer into two separate camps and his strategy of linking them to the same locus of consciousness helps explain why Giwaku begins where it does: at the end of the story, chronologically speaking, namely, the narrator's visit to Nikko in May 1911. Along with the narrator, we learn to our surprise that Shinoda is Osuma's lover. Along with the narrator we search "our" memory (specifically, our earlier reading of Shujaku ) for past evidence of deceit. Yukioka has before him "proof" of adultery in a Nikko inn register. Now he must resort to imagination to make sense out of it. True, his imagination has led him astray before. But in the absence of the culprits themselves, it is his only ally. Shinoda and Osuma appear frequently in Yukioka's recollections, but never once in the narrative present.

In short, all the action in Giwaku , except the initial Nikko epi-

sode, takes place in the narrator's mind. The narrator opens it up to his reader but makes no further concessions. As insiders, we are led to, but never guided through, Yukioka's composite realm of memory and illusion. The function of the opening paragraph takes on crucial significance, then, not as a delineator of time or place—for it is neither—but as a gateway to a world of pure imagination, an abstract world that, in the eyes of one critic,^[28] approaches legend and myth:

It was a depressing, disturbing spring. I conjured up vision after vision of your death at my hands. During the daytime, when it was too light and noisy to concentrate properly, I would burrow under my quilt and imagine your murder and my imprisonment, rewriting the scenario over and over again in my head. No matter where you had gone or whose wife you had become, I was determined to find you out. Day after day was taken up with these stifling thoughts. I did not know how else to spend my time.

(CSS , 100)

Initially, the hero muses from the vantage point of his cavelike quilt about the events of 1911 as if he were recalling experience in a discrete past. But he soon resorts to his familiar strategy of temporal regression. Rejecting the perspective afforded by a writing time two years after the events in question, he pushes the narrative present back to a time conterminous with that "depressing, disturbing spring" in 1911.^[29] A quarter of the way into the text, the two-year gap between initial writing time and story time has been erased. This is perhaps the work's greatest fiction. Shuko creates a world in which there is no fixed present: past, present, and future merge into a fluid continuum of emotion that, in the hero's mind, is real for all time.

Yukioka is elated when he discovers Osuma and Shinoda's names in the inn register, because they are the first "hard evidence" of an indiscretion. We might want to ask, what can he do with it, two years after the fact? Such questions, however, are made irrelevant by a technique that undermines the priority of recent

[28] Takemori, “Giwaku no sekai," 21.

[29] The time configuration in this and other texts in the cycle is easily established, since specific dates appear throughout. In the first page of Giwaku , for example, a police officer responds to the narrator's request to search for his missing wife thus: "Why are you asking us only now, in April 1911, to look for your wife, when she's been missing since the fall of 1909?" (CSS , 100).

perspective on past events. Returning to the Nikko episode in the story's last lines, Yukioka resolves on the train back to Tokyo to head for Okayama, hundreds of miles to the west, where he believes Shinoda and Osuma now to be living. The chase goes on. And as long as it does, the hero's passion continues unabated.

Yukioka's idealized passion is abruptly cooled when he actually finds Osuma. In Shujaku and Giwaku , Yukioka chases after figments with such zeal that emotions for a woman he no longer really loves overwhelm his present indifference toward her. When he finally locates his estranged wife in Giwaku zokuhen , the result can only be anticlimactic. He insists that he does not want to win Osuma back, but merely have his say in front of her and Shinoda.

When she saw me slide open the door and step before her, she went pale and let out a cry....

"Well, come on in," she said, composing herself at last.... "How on earth did you find this place? That Sakata [a middleman who urges Yukioka to part company with Osuma] must have told you. He's a rogue. I thought he'd let the cat out of the bag sooner or later. Please sit over here." She offered me a cushion.

"Sakata's no rogue," I said. "The person who used him is rogue. When you've done wrong, it gets out sooner or later."
Shinoda showed up early that morning. His house was on the very next block.

Even though they had been caught virtually red-handed, the two carried on as if nothing were out of the ordinary. They simply would not admit defeat. But I thought any further queries unnecessary.

(CSS , 279-80).

Osuma's spell on the hero is broken, now that he has seen her in the flesh. Her elusive image as the embodiment of Yukioka's passion is completely overshadowed by her mundane presence. Yukioka has no use for this reality: the two go their separate ways.

The love object in the "Wakareta tsuma" cycle, then, is ultimately a construct of the hero's frenzied imagination. Yukioka lives in a confined world of daydreams and illusion that can only be shattered, as they finally are, by an actual meeting. He revels in wild-goose chases. "Damnit! Where on earth did you run off to, anyway?" the narrator grumbles during the vain search for his wife in Shujaku . "Don't think for a moment I'll give up so easily. The longer you hide, the more I'll look. I've a mind to do nothing else!" (CSS , 91). Indeed, the narrator lives by his promise to "do nothing else" for the duration of the cycle. And since successful searches

and direct confrontations can yield only disillusionment, he actually feels more secure clutching at straws. Who but the Shuko hero would scorn a more direct method of locating his former wife in favor of searching the Nikko inn registers on the chance he might find a clue to her whereabouts two years before!

Even when the hero finds a clue, it only leads to another chase. Yet just as this tale is in the telling, not in the resolving, the hero's life is fulfilled in the searching, not in the finding. Far more important than Yukioka's eventual meeting with Osuma is his dream of seeing her again. And for the Shuko hero, sweet are the dreams that never come true.