But the newspapers were all agreed that General Nogi had committed junshi, following his lord into death, and then Shizuko had taken her own life, a true samurai wife following her husband into death.
Editorials and opinions, though, did differ as to the meaning and relevance of their deaths. Some judged the incident an international embarrassment for an aspiring modern nation, others that it was an important moral lesson and reminder of traditional values for that same aspiring, modern nation. Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki, the two contemporary Japanese writers Ryūnosuke respected above all others, would be irrevocably affected by the passing of the Emperor, the ending of this era, and by the fact and the manner of the deaths of General Nogi and his wife Shizuko. Ōgai would turn to writing historical fiction, works such as Okitsu Yagoemon, Abe Ichizoku and Sakai Jiken, works fixated on self-sacrifice, and Sōseki would write Kokoro, a work haunted by deaths by suicide.
Ryūnosuke would keep reading all of these accounts, these editorials, opinions and books, and Ryūnosuke would keep staring down at the photographs, the two separate photographs of General Nogi and his wife, the photographs taken on the morning of their deaths, and Ryūnosuke would keep wondering: wondering about the General’s modern Western-style military uniform and his wife’s many-layered jūnihitoe kimono of sombre colours, his body shrunken and lost in his uniform, his face half in humiliation and shadow, her body rigid and noble in her robes, her face full-bold and stark; wondering about the Japanese rooms in their Western mansion; about drinking wine and not sake; the sakaki branches arranged on the table, the framed photographs arranged on the table; his obsession with photographs, with reproduction, his desire to disappear, for extinction; junshi and bunmei kaika, this act of violent tradition in this age of civilised enlightenment, nineteen hundred and twelve, the first year of Taishō.
Photographs of General Nogi, portraits of a Shōgun, were already being displayed in shop windows, adorning the walls of school halls, military academies, factories and offices. Remembered and revered, there was no avoiding them, no escaping him. But Ryūnosuke kept coming back to those photographs, those two separate photographs of General Nogi and his wife, those photographs taken on the morning of their deaths. Ryūnosuke kept staring down at the photographs, and Ryūnosuke kept wondering, would keep staring down at the photographs, and would keep wondering:
Why did he want to have this photograph taken?
And Ryūnosuke refused to mourn.
A pale green moth came and sat upon his shoulder. From outside the window, Ryūnosuke could smell fresh-cut hay, he could hear the oak trees rustling quietly in the evening twilight. In the light of a yellow autumn moon, Ryūnosuke looked up at the clock, at all three clocks.
Ryūnosuke didn’t know what time it was.
Jack the Ripper’s Bedroom
I found your story The Nose very interesting.
Your style is well polished, admirably fitting.
The Nose alone may not attract many readers.
Even if it does, they may let it pass quietly.
But without worrying about it, you must go on.
Go on and produce twenty or thirty stories like this one.
You will soon be incomparable in literary circles.
But ignore the crowd –
the best and only way of keeping your integrity.
Natsume Sōseki, letter to Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, February, 1916
‘There is a part of me wishes they would wipe the place off the map.’
‘Was it really such a terrible time, Sensei,’ asked Ryūnosuke.
Natsume Sōseki closed his eyes, closed his eyes for a long time, and when he opened them, opened them at last, they were red-ringed and damp. ‘I often wonder if I did not die back then, out there, and all of this …’ – he waved his hand across the desk, towards the shelves, at the glass doors, the garden outside – ‘if all of this is not the dream of a dead man …’
He paused, eyes closed again, then said, ‘I know very well the things people say about me, said about my time in London; that I shut myself in my room, that I cried in the dark, that I suffered a nervous breakdown, how I had lost my mind and gone insane.’
He paused again, opened his eyes again, sighed and said, ‘Not that it much matters now, now I have so little time …’
Ryūnosuke and Kume protested, ‘No!’
Sōseki raised his hand, smiled and shook his head, begged their silence. ‘And your ears, if you will and have the time. For now it no longer much matters, I will tell you what happened. Not to bother you with my personal trials, rather to throw a light on that place, those people, their world and our world. At least, a kind of light …’
*
‘It was the first month of the first year of their new century and the fourth month of my new life in their country, and already I was in my third set of lodgings, a boarding house in an area called Camberwell, a wretched slum on the south side of the River Thames.
‘I’ve already written of the situation I found myself in: the poverty of the funding I had been given, the economies I was forced to practise, the pitiful place I was renting, bereft of company and society, starved of conversation and stimulation.’ He paused, he smiled. ‘Or maybe it was just the weather, maybe just the food, but I hated England and desired only a quick return to Japan as soon as I possibly could …
‘But, whatever the reason, it was the worst winter of my life,’ he said, then paused again, then smiled again. ‘Worse even than this one.
‘For then as now, I had problems sleeping, and I was aware my insomnia was only exacerbating my distemper. More than anything, I was tired of myself. So late one afternoon, in that January of 1901, having spent another interminable day reading in my dismal room, I reluctantly decided to venture outside; it was my hope
