The Setting Sun

I could relate any number of other unpleasant things about this artist, but after all he doesn’t concern you. Besides, now that I am about to die, I remember also the long acquaintanceship we have had, and I feel so nostalgic for him that my impulse is to go out drinking with him once more. I don’t bear him any hatred. He has many endearing qualities, and I shall say no more of him.

I only would like you to know how excruciating it was for me to spend my time in fruitless yearning for his wife. That is all. But now that you know, there is absolutely no necessity for you to play the busybody by informing anyone of this in the hopes of “winning recognition” of the love your brother bore when he was alive, or any such thing. It is quite sufficient if just you know it and are kind enough to murmur to yourself, “Was that what happened?” And, to voice one more hope, I should be very happy if this shameful confession of mine made at least you, if no one else, understand better the sufferings I have gone through.

Once I dreamed I held hands with his wife, and I knew at once that she had loved me from long before. Even after I waked from my dreams, the warmth of her fingers remained in the palm of my hand. I told myself that I would have to resign myself to that much and nothing more. It was not that I was intimidated by the morality of the thing, but that half-mad, no, virtual maniac of an artist terrified me. As part of my resolve to give her up, I attempted to direct the flames in my breast toward another object and recklessly threw myself into wild orgies with all sorts of women, whichever one happened to be available, so outrageously in fact that even the artist looked disapprovingly at me one night. I wanted somehow to free myself from his wife’s enchantment, to forget it, to have everything over and done with. But it was no use. I am, it would seem, a man who can only love one woman. I can state it quite positively—I have never once felt any of my women friends was beautiful or lovable except her.

Kazuko.

I would like once before I die to write her name.

Suga.

That is her name.

Yesterday I brought a dancer here (a woman of ingrained stupidity) for whom I have not the least affection. I never dreamed when I arrived that I would be dying this morning, although I had as a matter of fact had a premonition that it would certainly not be long before I was dead. The reason why I brought the girl here this morning was that she had begged me to take her on a trip somewhere, and I was so exhausted by my dissipation in Tokyo that I thought it might not be a bad idea to rest here for a couple of days with that stupid woman. I knew it would be rather awkward for you, but the two of us came anyway. When you left for your friend’s place in Tokyo, the thought flashed into my head “If I am going to kill myself, now is the time.”

I always used to think that I would like to die in my room in the house in Nishikata Street. Somehow I was repelled by the thought of dying in some public place and having my corpse handled by the rabble. But the house in Nishikata Street passed into other people’s hands, and I realized that now I had no choice but to die in this house in the country. Even so, when I told myself that you would be the one to find my body and imagined how alarmed this would make you, I felt so hesitant about killing myself that I could not possibly have gone through with it.

And now this chance. You are not here, and instead an extremely dull-witted dancer will be the one to discover my suicide.

Last night we drank together and I put her to bed in the foreign-style room on the second floor. I laid out bedding for myself in the room downstairs where Mama died. Then I began to write this wretched memoir.

Kazuko.

I have no room for hope. Good-bye.

In the last analysis my death is a natural one—man cannot live exclusively for principles. I have one request to make of you, which embarrasses me very much. You remember the hemp kimono of Mother’s which you altered so that I could wear it next summer? Please put it in my coffin. I wanted to wear it.

The night has dawned. I have made you suffer a long time.

Good-bye.

My drunkenness from last night has entirely worn off. I shall die sober.

Once more, good-bye.

Kazuko.

I am, after all, an aristocrat.

CHAPTER EIGHT / VICTIMS

Nightmares.

Everyone is leaving me.

I took care of everything after Naoji’s death. For a month I lived alone in the house in the country.

Th

en I wrote Mr. Uehara what was probably to be my last letter, with a feeling of futility.

It seems that you too have abandoned me. No, it seems rather as though you are gradually forgetting me.

But I am happy. I have become pregnant, as I had hoped. I feel as if I had now lost everything. Nevertheless, the little being within me has become the source of my solitary smiles.

I cannot possibly think of it in terms of a “hideous mistake” or anything of the sort. Recently I have come to understand why such things as war, peace, unions, trade, politics exist in the world. I don’t suppose you know. That’s why you will always be unhappy. I’ll tell you why—it is so that women will give birth to healthy babies.

From the first I never set much stock by your character or your sense of responsibility. The only thing in my mind was to succeed in the adventure of my wholehearted love. Now that my desire has been fulfilled, there is in my heart the stillness of a marsh in a forest.