I was in love with Christianity – above all, I loved Catholicism.
Even today, in my memory, I have a vivid image –
of the Japanese Temple of the Holy Mother in Nagasaki.
But I was nothing but a crow,
pecking through seeds already sown,
by Hakushū Kitahara and Mokutarō Kinoshita.
‘Man of the West’, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 1927
In nineteen hundred and nineteen, in the eighth year of Taishō, I am waiting; waiting for the morning with open eyes, for the house to wake and rise, waiting for the smell of miso soup, for the taste of oatmeal, milk and boiled eggs, waiting for the touch of newsprint, to read the news of the price of rice, always the price of rice, the price of rice and …
JAPAN’S LAST EFFORT ON RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Will Ask Powers to Make Declaration Separate from Covenant, Recognising Principle of Equality
ADOPT DRASTIC STEPS IN KOREA
Situation Grows Worse – Tokyo Decides on Stern Measures
THE DEVASTATION IN YOKOHAMA
3,700 Buildings Burnt, 20,000 Are Homeless, 50,000,000 Yen Loss
EARTHQUAKE IN TOKYO
An earthquake was felt in Tokyo at 9:53 o’clock yesterday, lasting about two minutes. The centre was off the coast of Kinkazan, 120 miles from Tokyo.
PERSONAL AND LOCAL
Mr Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, 27, and Mr Kan Kikuchi, 31, the esteemed men of letters, will leave Tokyo this morning, Sunday 4th May, for Nagasaki and are expected to return later this month.
… waiting to shave, to wash and to dress, to put on my coat and pick up my hat, to stand in the genkan, to put on my shoes and pick up my cases, to say goodbye to my family and wife, and leave this house, to leave my house, the taxi waiting, to cross the city, to get to the station, to stand on the platform, to wait on the platform, to wait for Kikuchi, to meet Kikuchi, to board the train, the Super Express, to leave this city, this city behind, for Tokyo to fade, to fade and to vanish, to speed and to speed, through this land, to watch the cities come and go, their factories and chimneys to pass us by – Yokohama, Nagoya, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Okayama, Hiroshima, Ogōri, on to Shimonoseki, to cross the Tsushima Strait by ferry to Mojikō, then on through Kokura on to Hakata – station to station through station to station, I’m waiting, I am waiting; waiting to see the sun on the bay, the rhombus kites soar in the sky, swallows dart over roofs, ducks sail under bridges, bananas and mikans piled up by the roads, the Holy Mother Temple high on the hill, so high on the hill, so tall in the sky, waiting to climb, to climb that hill, to follow in the steps, the steps of the masters, of Mokutarō and Hakushū, those steps of the masters in the steps of the Master, and the songs they sang, O the songs they sang, waiting to hear, to hear those songs, waiting to sing, to sing those songs, to hear and to sing those songs, myself …
I believe in the heretical teachings of a degenerate age,
the witchcraft of the Christian God,
The captains of the black ships, the marvellous land of the Red Hairs,
The scarlet glass, the sharp-scented carnation,
The calico, arrack and vinho tinto of the Southern Barbarians:
The blue-eyed Dominicans chanting the liturgy who tell me even in dreams
Of the God of the forbidden faith, or of the blood-stained Cross,
The cunning device that makes a mustard seed as big as an apple,
The strange collapsible spyglass that looks even at Paradise.
They build their houses of stone, the white blood of marble
Overflows in crystal bowls; when night falls, they say, it bursts into flame.
That beautiful electric dream is mixed with the incense of velvet
Reflecting the bird and beasts of the world of the moon.
I have heard their cosmetics are squeezed from the flowers of poisonous plants,
And the images of Mary are painted with oil from rotted stones;
The blue letters ranged sideways in Latin or Portuguese
Are filled with a beautiful sad music of Heaven.
Oh, vouchsafe unto us, sainted padres of delusion,
Though our hundred years be shortened to an instant, though we die on the bloody cross,
It will not matter; we beg for the Secret, that strange dream of crimson: Jesus, we pray this day,
bodies and souls caught in the incense of longing.
… ‘Jashūmon Hikyoku’, the ‘Secret Song of the Heretics’; to hear it myself, to sing it myself and believe it myself, to believe it myself, a man of the East at this gate to the West, this tapestry of East and West, this ‘Little Rome’, my ‘Little Rome’, my Nagasaki; for my Nagasaki, I am waiting …
*
Tokutarō Nagami was waiting in the genkan of his family’s large house in Nagasaki. He was anxious and he was nervous, and he had been waiting a long time. His guests were supposed to have left Tokyo on April 30th, arriving on the first of May. However, they had been delayed and had not left Tokyo until yesterday, May 4th. Furthermore, adding to his anxiety, adding to his nerves, he had never met his guests before. Their visit had been arranged through an elder mutual acquaintance, Kōichirō Kondō, and so he knew his guests only by reputation, and by their works.
In the genkan, Tokutarō Nagami sighed and looked at his watch again: it was almost six o’clock. He knew he should have gone to the station, he knew he should have met their train. However, Mr Akutagawa had been so apologetic for the delay, for the inconvenience they were causing, so determined not to put him to any further trouble, and insistent that they would take a taxi from the station to his house. Yet still there was no sign of them. He knew he should have met their train, he knew …
Now Nagami heard the sound of an automobile, its brakes and its doors. He called for the servants, he opened the doors to the genkan and he went down the garden path to the gate
