Short Fiction

which connected the head from the body, the former seemed completely severed. As it fell, a great deal of blood gushed from the gaping neck. The police are very puzzled over the curious circumstances of his death, and are now said to be searching for his assailant. Referring to an ancient book entitled Ryosai-Shii, there is an account of a man’s head having fallen from his body in a similar manner. Therefore the circumstances connected with the falling-off of Khashoji’s head cannot be treated as a mere romance, etc., etc.”

After reading the newspaper account of the incident, Mr. Yamakawa who was much struck by the strangeness of the affair, thought for a moment, and then said rather abruptly, “What utter nonsense!”

Major Kimura smiled at the exclamation, and after sucking at his cigar for a moment or two he remarked dryly, “But, all the same it is very interesting, isn’t it? It is only in China where we should hear of such a thing!”

“Yes, I’m hanged if we should ever hear about such a thing happening anywhere else!” Mr. Yamakawa remarked dryly as he knocked off the ashes of his cigar into the ashtray.

“But, listen! It may be more interesting for you to know.⁠ ⁠…” Here the Major stopped short and paused for a moment. Then with a rather cynical expression on his serious face, he added, “I happened to have known this man Khashoji personally.”

“Oh, did you? I’m surprised to hear it. You don’t mean to say that you, a military attaché, have conspired with the newspapers in concocting such a cock-and-bull story, do you?”

“Don’t be stupid, Mr. Yamakawa! After I was wounded in the battle of Teikaton, during the war, this man Khashoji was brought to our field-hospital, and while I was there I often talked to him, merely to get practice in my Chinese conversation. I am almost sure it was the same chap, because he had been badly slashed in the neck. He explained to me that while he was out on some reconnaisance, he encountered a party of our cavalry, and while fighting with them had been wounded in the neck with the stroke of a Japanese sword.”

“Yes, it was rather strange that you knew him. But this paper says that he was rather a rascal⁠—wasn’t it so? If it is true, it might have been better for all concerned if he had died there and then!”

“But,” said the Major, “when he was there he seemed to be a very honest and decent fellow, and was one of the most obedient of our prisoners. Every one of our surgeons liked him, and it is said they favoured him with special treatment. He told us many interesting stories about his life. I can also remember quite clearly the description he gave us of his extraordinary psychological feelings when he fell off his horse after having been wounded. He told us that, as he gazed through the willow-branches from the muddy bank of the river where he was lying, he saw most vividly in the sky, visions of his mother’s skirt, a woman’s foot, and a field of blooming sesame.”

Major Kimura threw away his cigar, and after helping himself to a cup of coffee, his eyes turned to the pink plum-blossoms on the table. He seemed to be meditating. Then he went on.

“He told me that when he saw those visions, he felt heartily ashamed of the life he had been leading hitherto.”

“Yet no sooner did the war end than he became a thorough scoundrel again! It shows that we can put little reliance upon men!” said Mr. Yamakawa, flinging himself back in his chair and stretching his legs. In cynical silence he puffed at his cigar.

“By what you say, do you mean that he acted like a hypocrite?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid I can’t agree with you. I feel sure that what he said at the time was sincerely meant. Also, if I may be permitted to quote the newspaper, when ‘his head suddenly fell,’ perhaps for a moment he saw similar visions again. I should explain his death in this way: As he was drunk he was quite easily knocked down. The suddenness of his fall had opened his old wound, and with the long pigtail hanging from it, his head came off and fell with a thud upon the floor. Perhaps he again beheld his mother’s skirt, a woman’s foot, etc., in a vision. Perhaps for a moment before death he had been gazing beyond the ceiling of the room into a deep blue sky. He might even have been tortured with the pangs of remorse⁠—but this time it was too late.

“When he was first wounded, our military nurses, after having found him unconscious, tended him most kindly and with the greatest care, but during this quarrel later on, his antagonist, knowing his weaknesses, struck and kicked him. During his scuffle the poor man may have repented again, but in falling, his life ended.”

Mr. Yamakawa shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

“You are certainly very imaginative! But tell me, why did he become such a scoundrel after having shown so much sincerity?”

“Of course, because man is an unreliable creature, but in a different sense from what you mean,” Major Kimura answered, lighting another cigar. Then he continued smilingly and with rather an air of pride.

“We should all try to be aware of our own unreliability⁠—but I’m afraid the only people who are at all reliable are those who realise that fact about themselves, otherwise the people who don’t, like Khashoji, who lost his head, can never be certain of not suddenly losing their own heads. I think that we must endeavour in the same way to try and find an inner meaning in what we read in the Chinese newspapers.”

Mōri Sensei

One evening in December, I was walking with a critic friend of mine under the bare willows along the so-called Koshiben Kaidō (Lunch-on-Hip Highway) toward Kanda Bridge. To right and left of