Blue Bamboo: Japanese Tales of Fantasy

Saburo felt nothing, even when he and Koson attended the boy’s funeral together. It wasn’t until he was ten or eleven that his secret crime began to torment him, and the anguish only resulted in bringing his lies into even fuller and more spectacular bloom. By lying to others, and to himself, he fervently tried to obliterate his crime from reality and from his own heart, and thus, in the course of growing up, he became a walking, talking mass of prevarication.

By the time he reached the age of twenty, Saburo was, to all appearances, a meek and mild young man. When the Festival of the Dead came around, he sought and received the sympathy of people in his neighborhood by reminiscing, with many a melancholy sigh, about his late mother. This though Saburo’s mother had died giving birth to him; he’d never known her and had never even spent any time thinking about her before.

As his skill at lying grew ever more remarkable, Saburo began to ghostwrite letters for two or three of the students who studied under Koson. His specialty was writing parents to ask for money. He would begin with a brief description of the weather and scenery, express an innocent hope that all was well with the beloved and respected parent, then delve right into the matter at hand. Nothing, to Saburo’s mind, could be less effective than to begin with long, drawn-out passages full of groveling flattery and end with a plea for cash. The plea only made the flattery all the more transparent and gave the whole letter an air of sordid insincerity. Better to pluck up one’s courage and get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible. It was also advisable to keep things short and succinct. Like this:

We are about to begin our study of the Book of Songs. If purchased from the local bookseller, the text costs twenty-two yen. Professor Koson, however, having kindly taken into consideration the financial status of his students, has decided to order the books directly from China. The cost comes to fifteen yen, eighty sen per volume. Since passing up this opportunity would mean suffering a substantial loss, I should like to order one of the books from him as soon as possible. Please send fifteen yen, eighty sen posthaste... After getting the request for money out of the way, one should then describe some trifling everyday occurrence. For example: Yesterday, looking out my window, I watched a single hawk doing battle with any number of crows—truly a valiant, soul-stirring sight. Or: The day before yesterday, as I was taking a walk along the banks of the Sumida River, I found the most peculiar little flower. It had small petals, like those of a morning glory, or, rather, quite large petals, you might say, like a sweet pea, and was white, but on the reddish side—such a rare find that I dug it up, roots and all, and replanted it in a pot in my room...

And so on, rambling leisurely along as if one had forgotten all about money, or anything else. The beloved father, reading this letter, would reflect upon the tranquility in his son’s heart and, ashamed of the worldly cares that plagued his own, send off the cash with a smile. Saburo’s letters really did have such an effect. More and more students flocked to him to ask that he write or dictate their correspondence, and when the money arrived they would invite him out on the town and spend every last sen. Before long, Koson’s little school began to prosper. Students from all over Edo, having heard of Saburo’s talent, flocked there in hopes of picking up a few pointers from the young master.

Being in such demand gave Saburo pause. To write or dictate dozens of letters each day was too much trouble. Why not publish? He could compile his methods for putting the touch on one’s parents into a single volume and have hundreds of copies printed up and sold at bookshops. He soon saw t

he flaw in this plan, however: What if the parents should buy and study the book themselves? He could foresee the result easily enough—as could his students, whose fierce opposition helped convince him to abandon the scheme. His desire to publish something had now taken root, however, and finally he decided to pen a novel about life in the pleasure quarters, such books being all the rage in Edo at the time. Written in a mock-serious tone, often opening with words like, “Ho, ho! I humbly submit,” and going on to describe all manner of nasty pranks and underhanded deceptions, works of this sort were the perfect medium for Saburo’s talents. At the age of twenty-two, he published two or three books in this genre under the pen name of Professor Crapulus Blotto, and they sold better than he’d ever dared dream they might.

One day, Saburo discovered his own masterpiece, a volume entitled In Lies Lies the Truth, among the books in his father’s library, and casually asked him about it. “Is Professor Blotto’s novel any good?” Koson made a sour face before answering: “It most certainly isn’t.” Smiling, Saburo told him the truth: “Professor Crapulus Blotto is my nom de plume.” Koson, flustered but determined to feign composure, noisily cleared his throat twice, then a third time, and asked in a hoarse, conspiratorial whisper: “How much did you make on it?”

The masterpiece In Lies Lies the Truth was about the fascinating and comical life of a cynical young man named Master Misanthropos, who, when visiting the pleasure quarters, would pass himself off as an actor or a millionaire or a nobleman on a secret outing. So rich in versatility were Misanthropos’s deceptions that the geisha and the male entertainers never doubted for a moment that he was who he said he was. His ruses were indistinguishable from reality, and in the end even Misanthropos himself ceased to doubt that it was all true—that he had become a millionaire overnight, or had awakened one morning to find himself an actor famous throughout the world. And so he passed a life of pleasure and gaiety, and it was only when he died that he reverted to being the impoverished Master Misanthropos. The novel was, one might say, based on Saburo’s own life story. By the time he’d published it, his skill at lying was almost superhuman; whatever deception he chose to perpetrate was infused with a golden glow of truth. In the presence of Koson he was a meek young man saturated with filial piety, to the students he was someone with unbelievable knowledge about the ways of the world, and at the pleasure quarters he was none other than the great actor Danjuro or the lord of such-and-such a fief or the boss of the so-and-so gang, and in none of these roles was there the slightest hint of anything unnatural or fraudulent.

The following year, Koson died. He left a will that said, in effect: “I’m a liar and a hypocrite. The further my heart strayed from the Great Learnings, the more I preached them. That I was able to live on in spite of this was due only to my love for my son, who never knew his dear mother. Knowing what a failure I was, I wanted somehow to make a success of this poor boy. Alas, it appears that he, too, is destined to fail. To this child of mine I leave my entire fortune—the fifty sen in change that I have accumulated over the past sixty years.” Saburo read the will and paled. Then, with a sickly smile on his lips, he ripped it in two. He ripped the two pieces into four. Then he ripped those into eight. Koson, who had spared his child the rod for fear of working up a costly appetite, who had been less concerned with his son’s renown than with his royalties, and of whom it had been whispered throughout the neighborhood that he kept a jar full of gold buried beneath the house—this Koson had passed quietly on, leaving a measly half a yen behind. This was the lie to end all lies. Saburo felt as if he could smell the unbearable stench of deception’s final, sputtering fart.

He held his father’s funeral at a nearby Nichiren Buddhist temple. Listening intently to the priest’s frenzied beating of the drum, Saburo began to detect within its savage rhythm an uncontrollable fury and anxiety, along with a desperate sort of buffoonery that attempted to disguise those emotions. Surrounded by a dozen or more of Koson’s students, Saburo sat in his formal black kimono, fingering his prayer beads, staring at the edge of the tatami mat some three feet in front of him, and thinking. Lies are the silent farts that emanate from crime. His own lies had had as their starting point the murder he’d committed as a child. His father’s lies had been squeezed out by the guilt that weighed upon him for the great crime of preaching a religion he no longer believed in. One lies to seek a bit of relief from a ponderous, suffocating reality, but the liar, like the drinker, gradually comes to need larger and larger doses. The lies become blacker and more complex, and they mesh and rub together until in the end they shine with the luster of truth. Saburo wasn’t the only one for whom this was the case, apparently. In Lies Lies the Truth. Suddenly remembering this title and feeling the words strike home as if for the first time, he smiled bitterly to himself. It was the very pinnacle of absurdity. Once he’d seen to the proper burial of Koson’s bones, Saburo resolved that from that day on he would lead a life free of lies. Everyone had a secret crime in his past. There was nothing to fear. No reason to feel inferior.

A life free of lies! Ah, but that, too, was, by definition, a lie. To praise good and condemn evil? Another lie. Surely a lie already dwelled in the heart of anyone who sought to make such distinctions and stand in judgment. Every way of life Saburo could think of seemed tainted, and he agonized over the problem night after sleepless night. Finally, however, he discovered an attitude that seemed to offer hope. He would learn to become an idiot, without will or emotion. To live like the wind. Saburo began to base all his daily actions on the astrological predictions in the almanac, and took pleasure only in the dreams he dreamed each night. Some were of fresh green fields in spring, others of lovely young maidens who set his heart to pounding.

Then, one morning as he was eating breakfast alone, a thought occurred to him. He shook his head and slapped his chopsticks down on the tray. He stood up and paced three times around the room, then folded his arms and stepped outside. He’d suddenly grown suspicious of his new pose. Pretending to be without will or emotion—was this not, in fact, the deepest recess of the liar’s hell? How did making a conscious attempt to be an idiot qualify as a life free of lies? The greater his efforts, the thicker the layers of lies had become. To hell with it, then, he thought. All that was left was the world of the unconscious. Though it was well before noon, Saburo set out for a drinking spot.

Parting the rope curtain and entering the place, he saw that, early in the day though it was, two customers were already there. And, wonder of wonders, who might they be but Taro the Wizard and Jirobei the Fighter? Taro was seated at the southeast corner of the table, his smooth, plump cheeks flushed pink from the saké he drank as he twisted and twirled his long, dangling mustache. Jirobei was encamped opposite him, in the northwest corner, and his swollen face gleamed with greasy sweat as he slowly swung his left arm in a wide, sweeping arc to take a drink, then held the cup up to eye level and gazed at it vacantly. Saburo took a seat halfway between them and started right in drinking. The three had never met before, of course. They sized one another up, each of them stealing furtive glances—Taro with his narrow eyes half closed, Jirobei taking a full minute to turn his head to either side, and Saburo with the restless, darting gaze of a hunted animal. Little by little, as the saké gradually did its work, the three of them edged closer together. When their intoxication, which each had struggled to contain, finally erupted, Saburo was the first to speak.

“It seems to me that the fact that we happen to be drinking together like this, at this time of day, means that there’s some sort of bond between us. Especially when you consider where we are: Edo teems with so many people that it’s said if you walk half a block you’re in a different world, yet here we are in the same little shop at the same time of the same day—it’s like a miracle.”

Taro gave a great yawn. “I drink because I like saké. Quit looking at me like that,” he drawled, and raised his neckerchief to mask the lower half of his face.

Jirobei spoke up after slapping the table and leaving a depression four inches long and an inch deep. “You’re right,” he said. “You could call it a bond. I just got out of prison.”

Saburo asked what he’d been in for.

“Well, here’s what happened...” In a barely fathomable murmur, Jirobei proceeded to tell his entire life story. When he finished, a single tear rolled down his cheek and dropped into his saké cup, which he then drained at a gulp.

Saburo pondered the tale for a while and finally said, by way of preamble, that he felt as if they were brothers, then launched into his own story, pausing after every sentence in an effort to prevent so much as a single lie from escaping his lips.

Jirobei, after listening for some time, declared, “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” and promptly fell asleep in his chair. But Taro, who had until then done nothing but yawn in boredom, now opened his narrow eyes as wide as they would go and listened intently.

When the story was finished, Taro languidly removed his neckerchief mask. “You said your name was Saburo? Listen, I understand exactly how you feel. My name’s Taro. I’m from Tsugaru. I came to Edo two years ago, and I’ve been loafing about in places like this ever since. You want to hear my story?”

In his usual sl

eepy tone of voice, Taro related his own experiences, down to the smallest detail. No sooner had he finished than Saburo gave a great shout: “I know! I know just what you mean!”

The shout awoke Jirobei. Opening his cloudy eyes, he turned to Saburo. “What’s all the racket about?” he said.

Saburo was ashamed of his own raptures. Ecstasy is the ultimate lie. He tried to force himself to be calm, but his intoxication wouldn’t permit it. His half-hearted attempt to control himself only provoked the rebelliousness in his soul, and at last he threw all caution to the wind and spat out a lie of enormous proportions. “We three are artists!” he proclaimed, but all it did was further fuel the fire of prevarication. “We’re brothers, we three! Now that we’ve met, not even death can separate us. Our day will come, and soon—I’m certain of it! Listen, I’m a writer. I’m going to write the stories of Taro the Wizard and Jirobei the Fighter and, with your leave, my own story as well, to offer the world three models for living. Who cares what people say?” Now the flames of Saburo the Liar’s lies were burning at maximum intensity. “We’re artists, I tell you! We needn’t bow down to anyone, though he be the noblest and richest prince in the land. For men like us, money carries no more weight than a falling leaf!”

— I —

he members of the family of the famous painter Irie Shinnosuke, who passed away some eight years ago, all seem a bit on the eccentric side. This is not to say that the family is abnormal; it’s possible that their way of life is as it should be and that the rest of us are the abnormal ones, but, in any case, the atmosphere of the Irie home is decidedly different from most. It was this atmosphere that suggested to me the idea for “On Love and Beauty,” a short story I wrote some time ago.

The story opened with descriptions of the five Irie sons and daughters and went on to sketch a certain insignificant little incident. It was a naive, sentimental, and trivial work, to be sure, but one that I nonetheless remain quite fond of, although I must admit that my affection is not so much for the story itself as for the family described therein. I loved that family. I cannot pretend that my depiction of their household conforms precisely to the facts, however. To put it in such overblown terms causes me more than a little embarrassment, but my account included certain elements that fell short of Goethe’s ideals of “poetry and truth.” There are even a few colossal lies mixed in. Most regrettable of all is that, although I wrote about the five brothers and sisters and their kind and sagacious mother, the structure of the story was such that I was forced to take the liberty of omitting the grandmother and grandfather. This, I now realize, was an unwarrantable measure. It would appear that, in the final analysis, one simply can’t give a complete picture of the Irie household without including this venerable couple, and I’d like to say a few words about them now.

First, however, I must make one further disclaimer. What I am about to describe is not the Irie household as it exists today, but as it was four years ago, when I began to scribble the previous story. Things have changed for the family since that time. Marriage, and even death, have intervened. Compared to four years ago, the atmosphere of the household is somewhat gloomier. And it is no longer possible for me to drop by the house for a casual visit, as I once used to do. The five brothers and sisters, and I myself, have gradually grown more adult, more polite, more guarded—have become, in short, “members of society”—and when we do on occasion meet, it’s not the least bit fun. To speak plainly, I no longer have much interest in the Irie family. If I am to write about them, I want to write about them as they were in the past. Having made that much clear...