Island (Part 2)
Part 1 | Project background/introduction | PDF of the original in Chinese
2. Return (continued)
For an entire month afterward, Arishima barely left the house. He was not interested in going down to the village, much less into town. Instead, he wanted to recuperate from his ordeal of the last thirty years, and use this time to catch up on the events that he’d missed and learn all he could about this modern Japan. So he asked Taro to bring home newspapers every day, and also ordered numerous books and magazines for himself through the mail. But in the end, he found the distance between himself and this new world to be too great. He found the contents of the magazines and newspapers to be completely alien and incomprehensible. Often, he could tell from a book’s introduction that the ideas would be all backward and upside down, and on the rare occasions that he finished a book, all he wanted to do was fling it across the room. After all that reading, the only thing that really aroused his interest was his father’s old dust-covered set of classics. With their simple design, sturdy construction, and distinctive smell, he felt an instant sense of comfort when he picked up a volume in his hand. Their contents further elicited a carefree and peaceful feeling — from the first page, he is transported to the days of yore, to bright spring days, to fragrant flowers and singing birds.
Besides reading, he also found his grandfather’s treasured antique inkstone, and would wake up early every morning to practice calligraphy. In the afternoons, he would go to the cemetery to visit his mother’s grave, take a walk in the pine forest, or squat by one of the pools by the stream counting the shrimp in the water. But what gave him the most pleasure was, every day at sunset, taking his samurai sword down from the otherwise bare white wall of his room, and carefully polishing it with a piece of sandpaper and oilcloth Taro brought home from the garage. He would then face the setting sun, grasp the handle of the sword, which seemed perfectly molded to his hand, and reminisce about the interminable yet splendid days on Luban Island.
All told, Arishima found those days to be rather contentful. He had finally returned to his home village, and had no cares or obligations. He could do whatever he wanted and not worry about the future, since he had his thirty years of back pay from the government and was, at fifty five, much healthier than other men his age. There wasn’t anything he could complain about. The only thing that made him uneasy at home was Yoko’s combative disposition and insistence on getting her way, as though everyone else was worthless in her eyes. She treated her husband this way, she treated her mother-in-law this way, and she even treated Arishima, who had only just returned from abroad, this way. The only person she demonstrated any tenderness or affection toward was her daughter Shizuko. Most days, Hideko would prepare a delicious dinner for the family. But some days her rheumatism would act up, and she would not be able to make dinner while also taking care of Shizuko. When Yoko got home on those occasions and saw that dinner wasn’t ready, she would fly into a terrible rage and stare at everyone angrily until Taro rushed into the kitchen to start the fire for her. Dinner those nights were harder to swallow than rocks, so Arishima would just silently go to his room, look out the window at the setting sun, and think about how gentle and demure women of his mother’s generation were.
One evening, the family was sitting at the table eating dinner. Yoko held Shizuko in her lap and fed her while she ate her own dinner. Taro mentioned that his co-worker Fukaya had not been at work for the last three days. He had been busy at home taking care of his three year-old son while also visiting his wife at the hospital, where she was about to give birth. Today, he called the shop to say that his wife had given birth to another boy. Taro said all of this matter-of-factly, and everyone reacted to the news indifferently. However, Yoko immediately tensed-up, and her normally pallid face became even more colorless.
No one said anything for a long time. Finally, Hideko let out a deep sigh and said, “It’s too bad Yoko doesn’t want more kids. Shizuko is almost three. It really wouldn’t hurt to have another child.”
“Wouldn’t hurt?” Yoko replied. “I’d be lucky if I had a son next. Otherwise, you’d just make me keep having one child after another. It’s not like pregnancy and labor are painless!”
“Actually, it wouldn’t have to be a boy. A girl would be fine, too. Just another child to keep Shizuko company.” Taro interjected.
“I’m not doing it! I’m not doing it!” Yoko said, agitated. “Boy, you men are so heartless. You act like carrying and giving birth to a child are no big deal!”
Arishima looked up from the table, with his brow deeply furrowed. He gazed at Yoko for a long while, then finally said very sternly, “Raising children is a woman’s god-given duty, just like defending the country is a man’s god-given duty. If men followed your example in refusing to have children, who would defend the country?”
“The days of having children for the sake of the country are over,” Yoko retorted. “Who’s still doing anything for the sake of the country these days? Everyone is looking out for themselves!”
“Says who?” shouted Arishima, slamming his fist down on the table, “How can anyone’s daughter say someone so impudent to her elders?”
“Why can’t I just say what I think? I married Taro to be his wife. I didn’t marry you all to be your slave!”
This last statement left everyone stunned and speechless. In the silence that followed, they finally noticed Shizuko had been crying this whole time, having been frightened by all the arguing.
“Calm down, will you? Will you stop crying?” Yoko admonished her, to little effect. “Ugh, I told you to calm down!” Yoko shouted, slapping her across the face, which just made her cry even harder.
“Have you lost your mind?” Taro scolded her, “How could you take your anger out on a child?”
“Yes, I’ve lost my mind! With this kind of stress at home, who wouldn’t lose their mind?” Yoko then shoved Shizuko into Taro’s arms, and said, “She’s your child. You take care of her. I’ve lost my mind, so I better go to the insane asylum.”
Yoko ran to her room, slammed the door shut, and started crying. Meanwhile, Shizuko continued to fuss, screaming for her mother. Hideko had no choice but to take Shizuko to her room to calm her down. Taro looked dejected, with his head down, while Arishima sat with his hands on his hips. Both men stared at the half-eaten meal on the table, softly sighing.
Much later, after finally putting Shizuko down to sleep, Hideko came out to clear the table. Arishima was in his room, silently watching the shadows of the trees dancing outside his window. He tapped his finger on the windowsill mindlessly, creating a forlorn, monotonous soundtrack. All evening, Taro was holed up in his and Yoko’s bedroom, murmuring in a low voice, perhaps apologizing, perhaps comforting her. But at one point, Arishima was able to hear part of their conversation:
“Bottom line is that either he’s the interloper, or I’m the interloper. If he doesn’t move out, then I will…” he heard Yoko’s voice say.
“Keep your voice down, will you? Please… keep your voice down.” Taro interjected in a harsh whisper.
An hour later, there was a knock on Arishima’s door. Taro walked in, smiling and trying to act casual. He slowly sat down next to Arishima, scratched his head, and, with some hesitation, said, “Uncle Takeo, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you. Would you be willing to move into the wooden hut in the pine forest temporarily? You know women like Yoko, they get hysterical sometimes, and… tsk… there’s nothing you can really do when they get like that. I’m worried that, if you stayed in the house, you two would just butt heads even more, and it won’t end well. It’d be better if you moved out for a bit, waited for her hysteria to subside, and then move back in.”
Arishima said nothing in response. He simply stood up, took out his suitcase, and started placing his clothes into it. Taro wasn’t sure what to do with himself then. He looked around the room, looking for something he could help with. He spotted the samurai sword hanging on the wall, stood up, and began to take it down. Arishima hurriedly stopped him, saying, “Oh — I’ll get that myself!”
Once he moved into the hut at the edge of the pine forest, Arishima essentially returned to the solitary life he lived on Luban island. He cooked for himself, washed his own clothes, ate by himself, and slept by himself, virtually cut off from the outside world. He never went to the main house, mainly because he couldn’t stand Yoko’s incivility, but also because he couldn’t bear Taro’s submissiveness toward his wife. That said, Hideko did come out to the hut to visit him when Yoko wasn’t around, and would bring him food from the house. Occasionally, on Sundays after a big rain, Taro’s co-workers from the auto shop, Tomita and Ono, would come up to pick mushrooms. They would stop by Arishima’s hut afterward to chat and give him a few mushrooms. Sometimes, when the mood struck them, they would simply borrow Arishima’s wok, and they would all cook and eat the mushrooms right then and there. The truth was, Arishima didn’t much care for Tomita and Ono’s company. They were both uneducated and somewhat crass, particularly Ono, who couldn’t say three sentences without mentioning sex. That said, Arishima never openly expressed his dislike of them.
“Hey, why did you move out here to this hut, anyway?” Tomita asked one day.
Arishima was silent.
“You couldn’t get along with the ‘mistress of the house’, right?” Tomita said, answering his own question. “Not only do we already know this, the whole village knows it. Yoko is quite self-centered, and doesn’t get along with anyone. Even Taro admits it.”
Still Arishima said nothing. After barely talking to anyone for thirty years, he had developed the habit of reacting to everything wordlessly. Whatever feelings he had, he kept to himself, and never uttered a word. Finally, to break the silence, Ono said jokingly, “There’s one good thing about moving to this hut — you can eat mushrooms any time. I heard from Taro that he hasn’t been able to eat matsutakes since he got married. Ai! If one can’t eat matsutakes, how can one keep going?”
This last comment finally elicited a small smile from Arishima’s lips, but the smile vanished just as quickly.
The arrival of autumn brought two straight weeks of rain to Shimotsuki. The raindrops pattered incessantly on the hut’s window panes, like an unending stream of tears. Arishima began to feel depressed. For the first time in his life, he did not know what to do with himself. Every day, besides practicing calligraphy, he would read his books from the Meiji Taisho period or his father’s beautifully printed Compendium of Japanese Literature. He’d already read them three times, but he felt compelled to pick them up and reread them. He was quite bored, and really didn’t feel like reading any more, but there was nothing else to do. He couldn’t even leave the hut to walk around, so the only thing left was to sit cross-legged on the tatami floor of the hut, gazing at the samurai sword hanging on the wall, contemplating what he would do when the rain finally stopped.
The day the rain finally stopped, Arishima waited until the mountain paths were no longer so slippery, and went for a walk around the area. He saw that the stream was so full it almost overflowed its banks, while the matsutakes had pushed their way out of the black soil, their slender and graceful white stems contrasting beautifully against the soil. When he came to the abandoned field by the house, he saw that the weeds had grown even taller and more unruly from the rain, and covered up the footpaths through the field. Arishima bent down and savagely yanked a weed out of the ground. He was surprised to find that the soil was quite loose, and, without much effort, he was able to pull the entire weed out with its root intact. As he watched the grasshoppers leaping in all directions, having been disturbed by the weed’s disappearance, an idea flashed into his mind. “Why don’t I take this opportunity, while the soil is still loose, to clear out all of these weeds?” he thought to himself. “I should restore the property to its former glory!” He smiled, dropped the weed he held in his hand, and went back to the hut to find the hoe he had seen there.
The following Sunday morning, Takeo Arishima went to the field with the hoe, as had become his habit. After days of hard work, the overgrown patch of green had been replaced by an expanse of rich, black soil — it was an edifying and invigorating sight. The land was starting to look the way it did in bygone days.
A little before noon, Taro appeared at the edge of the field. Arishima put down the hoe and watched Taro walk along the newly cleared footpath toward him.
When he reached Arishima, Taro looked around in wonder at the newly-cleared field, then said hesitatingly, “Uncle, Yoko was saying it has been a while since we’ve had you over to the house. Since it’s Sunday and everyone is home, Yoko wanted to invite you over for lunch. It’ll also give us a chance to discuss an important matter.”
Arishima regarded Taro wordlessly. He would’ve been happy to never hear Yoko’s name again, yet, irritatingly, Taro said it twice. Ever since he moved out to the wood hut, Yoko had never once invited him over to eat. There’s no way her invitation today came from a sincere desire to see him — she’s only inviting him over because of whatever she wanted to discuss with him. If she had only invited him to lunch, he would have steadfastly refused. But he couldn’t really refuse to discuss this “important matter” with her, so he grudgingly agreed to go over, as soon as he went back to the hut to put the hoe away, wash his hands, and change his clothes.
Throughout the meal, an air of mystery permeated the house. No one said anything, as though lunch were just an official function that they had to get through. Half-way through the meal, Yoko got up, saying she had to put Shizuko down for her nap. Hideko also left the table, saying she needed to wash the dishes, leaving Taro and Arishima alone at the table. Arishima waited silently for Taro to speak.
“Uncle,” Taro began, scratching his head, “there’s something Yoko wanted me to discuss with you. She was wondering if you would mind not clearing the weeds in the field.”
“Yoko! Yoko! Again, it’s Yoko!” Arishima thought. Finally unable to restrain himself, he leapt up and shouted, “I’m not clearing the field for Yoko — I’m doing it for myself! Never in my life have I seen good farmland so neglected, with weeds allowed to grow so thickly…”
Arishima had more to say to Taro, including an admonishment to stand up to his wife, but before he could continue, Yoko charged out of the bedroom, stood by Taro’s side, and said cooly, “But this land is no longer yours. Twenty years ago, when you didn’t return from the war, Grandmother assumed you had died, so she signed the deed over to Taro.”
Arishima was briefly taken aback by this revelation, but regained his composure and replied calmly, “I don’t care if the land isn’t mine. I just can’t stand looking at the weeds. I’d just like to see grain growing in these fields like in the old days.”
“How much can you sell grain for?” Yoko asked rhetorically, “Nowadays oil is worth far more than grain.”
This comment bewildered Arishima — he couldn’t understand what she was getting at. Finally, Taro explained that in recent years oil had been discovered in the mountains of Akita Prefecture, driving up land prices around Shimotsuke. A few months ago someone had offered to buy the family property, and Taro and Yoko had agreed to sell and move somewhere else. They had just been trying to agree on a price before closing the deal.
“So, you see, Uncle, why bother clearing the weeds? In fact, if you cleared out the weeds and started planting grain, people might think that there isn’t any oil under our land, and that it’s only good for farming. Then who would buy it? They might decide it’s not even worth digging any exploratory wells,” Taro concluded.
Arishima was dumbfounded. His only desire after returning from his thirty-year exile on Luban island was to return to his family lands, to spend his remaining years between the pine forest and the mountain stream, and when he died to be buried next to his ancestors. Now all this has been shattered. He felt at a loss, like a person who is stranded on the open ocean and spots a lifeboat in the distance, struggles his way to the lifeboat, and climbs over the side, only to discover that the lifeboat itself is sinking. He knew Yoko wouldn’t take him with them, so what would he do with himself? Where would he go? He was so distraught he spoke his thoughts out loud without realizing it: “If you leave here, where would I go?”
“Your pocket is full of money, and Japan is so big, where couldn’t you go?” Yoko said acerbically. “Worse comes to worst, you can always go back to that island of yours.”
“Yoko, he is your uncle! How can you speak like that to him?!?”
No one knew how long Hideko had been standing in the kitchen doorway listening, but when she rebuked Yoko, even Yoko realized that she’d overstepped. For the first time anyone could remember, Yoko bore Hideko’s reprimand without protest and wordlessly slunk back to her bedroom.
Arishima walked out of the house back to his hut, feeling devastated. When he got to the hut, he saw Tomita and Ono in the distance. They had come up again to forage for mushrooms. They had their heads down looking for mushrooms, so they didn’t see Arishima, and Arishima didn’t feel like talking to them anyway, so he simply pushed open the door, sat down cross-legged on the tatami floor, and stared dazedly at the samurai sword hanging on the wall.
Quite a while later, the two younger men finally did come to Arishima’s hut and knocked on the door. They didn’t hear any noises inside, so they went around to the other side of the hut. Through the window, they saw Arishima sitting cross-legged on the floor, so they began to knock on the window.
“Hey, Mr. Arishima, it’s us! We picked a lot of matsutakes, and would like to give you some,” Tomita said.
“Go away!” Arishima yelled. His back was toward the window and he didn’t move when he spoke.
“Huh? Mr. Arishima, are you fantasizing about women? That’s the only reason I can think of that you didn’t hear us…” Ono said teasingly.
“Go away!” Arishima yelled again. His back was still toward the window, but now he dropped his head toward his chest.
The two younger men disregarded Arishima’s rebuffs and continued knocking on the window for quite a while. Eventually, though, they saw that Arishima was ignoring them completely, so they stopped. A few moments later, however, Arishima heard singing coming from his door. Tomita and Ono had pressed their lips against the door crack and were singing the imperial anthem, “His Imperial Majesty’s Reign,” off-key and in a mocking voice. This finally became too much for Arishima. He leapt up and drew the samurai sword from its scabbard on the wall with a loud swish, and let out a gut-rending roar, “Yaa!”
He charged out of the door of the hut, only to find that the two men had already run away, scattering their mushrooms behind them, screaming, “He’s mad! He’s mad! He’s gone mad!”
Arishima chased them for a bit, but caught his foot on a root and fell. He rolled twice, but continued to hold the samurai sword firmly in his grip. By the time he got back on his feet, however, there was no sign of the two younger men. Arishima turned around and saw that the tree that had tripped him was a thirty year-old poplar, standing alone among the centuries-old pine trees. He walked up to the poplar and started hacking away at it. One swing of the sword after another, he continued hacking at the trunk, which was so thick he could barely wrap his arms around it, until the tree toppled over with a loud crack. Arishima stuck the sword into the ground, raised both arms high, and in an earth-shaking roar, shouted, “Long live your Imperial Majesty, Emperor Hirohito! May you reign for ten thousand years!”
3. No Return
Not long after, Takeo Arishima abruptly disappeared. No one knows how he left Shimotsuke; only that he had taken his samurai sword with him. Because of that, some speculated that Arishima planned to go to Tokyo and commit seppuku on Nijubashi Bridge by the imperial palace. But a long time passed with no reports of that happening. So some others speculated that Arishima had taken a boat to Hokkaido and was living as a hermit in the forests there. But that was even more difficult to verify.
Much, much later, a Japanese delegation was touring World War Two battle sites throughout the South Pacific, such as Saipan, Guam, and Wake Island, when they unexpectedly came across Takeo Arishima on Luban Island. The delegation found him in the mountains to the north of the island, where he had built a wooden hut. He could often be seen sitting cross-legged on the veranda of his hut in a black kimono, his gaze on the distant north, passing his days in reminiscence.
One member of the delegation had peered through the window of the hut, where he saw, hanging on a bare white wall, the samurai sword that had accompanied Arishima for most of his life. Above the samurai sword hung a banner, on which he had written in vigorous brush-strokes, “Young men dying on the battlefield is as proper as cherry blossoms falling to the ground in spring; what is as redolent, what is as magnificent, what is as poetic…”
