Pathway to Japanese Literature

Except for Sun Yat-sen and others born in Guangdong, all notable Chinese revolutionaries—Huang Xing, Cai E, Song Jiaoren, et al.—were natives of Hunan.
This was no doubt due to the influence of men like Zeng Guofan and Zhang Zhidong.
However, to explain that influence, one must also consider the strong-willed nature of Hunan’s people themselves.
During my travels in Hunan, I happened to encounter a minor incident that felt almost like something out of a novel.
This minor incident, perhaps, may also serve to reveal the true character of Hunan’s passionate people.
………

＊ ＊ ＊ ＊ ＊

Around four o'clock in the afternoon on May 16, 1921, the Yuanjiang Maru I was aboard came alongside the dock at Changsha.

I had been leaning against the ship’s railing some minutes before, watching the provincial capital of Hunan gradually draw closer to the port side.
Piled with white walls and tiled roofs beneath a high, clouded mountain sky, Changsha was more shabby than I had expected.
The cramped dock area in particular, with its new red-brick Western houses and willow trees visible here and there, looked scarcely different from Iidagashan.
At the time, I had already grown disillusioned with most cities along the Yangtze, so I had steeled myself to expect nothing in Changsha beyond pigs.
However, this kind of shabbiness must still have given me a feeling close to disappointment.

The Yuanjiang Maru crept toward the dock as though resigned to its fate.
At the same time, the blue waters of the Xiang River grew narrower inch by inch.
Then a grubby Chinese man clutching something like a basket suddenly leapt nimbly from beneath me onto the dock.
It resembled less a human feat than that of a locust.
But in the instant I thought "Ah!", another man bearing a carrying pole splendidly vaulted across the water.
Then two, five, eight—before my eyes, the space below became choked with an endless succession of Chinese men springing onto the dock.
No sooner had I registered this than the ship stood firmly moored before a row of red-brick Western houses and willow trees.

I finally left the railing and began searching for Mr. B of the same Society.
Mr. B, who had been in Changsha for six years, was supposed to come especially today to meet me at the Yuanjiang Maru.
But I could not easily find any figure resembling Mr. B.
Moreover, those going up and down the gangway were all old and young Chinese people.
They pushed and jostled one another, all clamoring something.
Particularly one elderly gentleman, while descending the gangway and looking back, was striking the coolie behind him.
To me, who had come up the Yangtze, this was by no means a rare sight.
But neither was it a sight I felt particularly grateful to the Yangtze for having grown accustomed to.

I gradually grew more irritated and, leaning against the railing once again, surveyed the front and back of the dock where the human tide ebbed and flowed. There was no sign of Mr. B, of course, nor any Japanese people at all. However, I discovered a Chinese beauty under a willow tree with densely clustered branches on the far side of the dock. She was a girlish woman with what looked like a medal hanging at the chest of her light blue summer dress. Perhaps my eyes were drawn to her for that reason alone. But she continued gazing up at the high deck above, a smile playing on her crimson lips, holding aloft a half-opened fan as if signaling to someone.......

“Hey, you.”

I started and turned around.
Behind me stood a Chinese man in a mouse-colored overcoat I hadn’t noticed before，his face brimming with amiability.
I couldn’t quite place him.
But instantly—particularly through his thin eyebrows—I recognized one of my old friends.

“Oh，it’s you.”
“Right—you’re from Hunan，aren’t you?”

“Yeah，I’m practicing here.”

Tan Einen had been among those talented international students who entered Tokyo University’s medical department from First Higher School in my year.

“Are you here to meet someone today?”

“Yeah, someone’s—who do you think?”

“You’re not here to greet me, are you?”

Tan pursed his lips slightly and formed a grin reminiscent of a hyottoko mask.

“But it is your welcome.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. B came down with malaria five or six days ago.”

“So Mr. B asked you to come, then?”

“I would have come even if he hadn’t asked me.”

I recalled his ever-amiable nature from days past.
During our time in the dormitory, Tan had never given anyone a bad impression.
If there had been even the slightest disrepute about him among us, it was precisely because—as our roommate Kikuchi Kan had said—he failed to give anyone what could truly be called a bad impression.…

“But I feel bad imposing on you.”
“Actually, I’ve left all the lodging arrangements entirely up to Mr. B, but…”

“The lodging has been arranged with the Japanese Club.”
“Even half a month or a full month would be no problem.”

“Even a month? Don’t joke about that. I’d be fine with just three nights’ lodging.”

Tan’s face lost its amiability suddenly—less out of surprise than...

“You’re only staying three nights?”

“Well, if I could see bandit executions or something, that’d be something special, but…”

As I gave this response, I fully expected Tan Einen—a man of Changsha—to grimace. However, he simply resumed his amiable expression and replied without the slightest hesitation.

“Well, you should’ve come a week earlier then.”
“You can see a vacant lot over there—”

That was located before a red-brick Western house—exactly where that willow tree with densely clustered branches stood.
But the Chinese beauty from earlier had already vanished from that spot.

“Over there, five people were beheaded all at once the other day, you know.”
“There, where that dog is walking—”

“What a waste.”

“In Japan, you can’t go see executions by decapitation.”

After letting out a loud laugh, Tan seemed to turn serious for a moment, then abruptly shifted the subject.

“Shall we get going then? I’ve already had the car waiting over there.”

＊ ＊ ＊ ＊ ＊

On the afternoon of the 18th, two days later, I followed Tan's insistent recommendation and went out across the Xiang River to Yuelu to visit Lushan Temple and Aiwan Pavilion.

The motorboat carrying us made its way along the Xiang River around two o'clock, keeping to our left the delta known as "Nakanoshima" by the Japanese residents. The crisp, clear May weather brightened the scenery on both banks. Changsha, stretching along our right with its white walls and tiled roofs gleaming, did not appear as gloomy as it had the day before. The delta—with its long stone walls and thickets of citrus trees—lay spread out vividly, here and there offering glimpses of compact Western-style houses and flashes of laundry hung out to dry on ropes between them.

Due to the necessity of giving commands to the young boatman, Tan had stationed himself at the stern of the motorboat.
However, he was talking to me incessantly rather than giving commands.

“That is the Japanese Consulate. ……… Use these opera glasses. ……… To its right is the Nisshin Steamship Company.”

I kept the cigar between my lips, lowered one hand over the side of the boat, and took pleasure in the force of the Xiang River’s current as it occasionally struck my fingertips.
Tan’s words were nothing but a continuous string of noise in my ears.
However, following his indications and turning my gaze to the scenery on both banks was certainly not unpleasant for me.

“This delta is called Tachibana-shū, you know…”

“Ah, a kite is crying.”

“A kite? ……… Yeah, there are plenty of kites.”
“You see, back when there was that war between Zhang Jiyao and Tan Yankai… At that time, countless corpses of Zhang’s subordinates came flowing down this river.”
“Then two or three kites would descend on a single corpse, you see………”

Just as Tan was about to say this, the motorboat we were riding in passed another motorboat at a distance of five or six ken. That was a motorboat carrying two or three exquisitely adorned Chinese beauties in addition to a young man in Chinese clothing. I found myself watching not these Chinese beauties, but rather the motorboat's great wake as it cut through the waves. However, no sooner had Tan caught sight of them mid-sentence than he urgently thrust the opera glasses into my hands, as though encountering a sworn enemy.

“Look at that woman.
The one sitting in the stern.”

Whenever anyone rushed me, I grew all the more obstinate—an inherited stubbornness from my parents.
Not only that, but the wake from that motorboat kept washing against our boat’s side, soaking my hand clear up to the cuff.

“Why?”
“Never mind why—just look at that woman.”
“A beauty?”
“Ah! A beauty! A beauty!”

The motorboat carrying them had already moved about ten ken away.
I finally twisted my body and adjusted the focus of the opera glasses.
At the same time, I suddenly felt the illusion of that boat abruptly recoiling backward.
"That woman," remaining with her face slightly tilted within the circular vista, appeared to be listening to someone’s talk, occasionally letting slip a smile.
Her square-jawed face did not strike me as particularly beautiful except for her large eyes.
However, her bangs and pale yellow summer dress rippling in the river wind were undeniably beautiful even from afar.

“Did you see?”

“Yeah—even down to every lash. But she’s not much of a beauty.”

I faced Tan again—he wore a look of triumph.

“Did something happen to that woman?”

Unlike his usual talkative self, Tan leisurely lit a cigarette before posing a question back to me.

“I did mention this yesterday—that they beheaded about five bandits in that vacant lot before the dock?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“The gang’s leader was called Huang Liuyi—ah, he was executed too.—This one had a rifle in his right hand and a pistol in his left, claiming he could shoot two men at once—a notorious villain even in Hunan, mind you.……”

Tan abruptly launched into a recounting of Huang Liuyi’s life of evil deeds.
His story seemed to be largely a rehash of newspaper articles.
However, fortunately, it was imbued with more romantic color than bloody uniformity.
The story of how he was called “Lord Huang” by his usual smugglers; the story of how he robbed a merchant in Xiangtan of three thousand yuan; the story of how he swam across Lulin Tan with Deputy Leader Fan Aqi—who had taken a bullet to the leg—slung over his shoulder; the story of how he shot down twelve infantrymen on a mountain path in Yuezhou—Tan continued recounting these tales with such fervor that one might think he worshipped Huang Liuyi himself.

“After all, you see, they say that guy committed a hundred and seventeen cases of murder and kidnapping.”

He would sometimes interject such comments into gaps in his narrative.
Of course, as long as I myself suffered no harm, I certainly did not dislike bandits.
However, being made to listen to nothing but these largely indistinguishable tales of valor began to bore me somewhat.

“So what happened to that woman?”

Tan finally grinned and gave a reply that differed little from what I had anticipated.

“That woman was Huang’s mistress.”

I could not bring myself to express astonishment as he had instructed.
However, it felt pitiful to keep holding my cigar while maintaining a sullen expression.

“Hmm, those bandits are a classy bunch.”

“Oh, Huang and his ilk are small fry.
After all, even back in the late Qing era, that bandit Cai fellow was pulling in over ten thousand yuan a month.
This guy had built a grand Western-style mansion right outside Shanghai’s foreign concession.
Not only his wife, but even his concubines…”

“So is that woman a geisha or something?”

“Yeah, a geisha named Gyokuran. Even she used to wield considerable influence when Huang was alive...”

Tan fell silent for a moment as if recalling something, a faint smile playing on his lips.
But soon he flicked away his cigarette and earnestly made his proposal.

“At Yuelu there’s a school called Xiangnan Industrial School. Why don’t we visit that one first?”

“Yeah, seeing it wouldn’t hurt.”

I gave a noncommittal reply.
That was because just yesterday morning, I had gone to visit a girls’ school and had felt unexpectedly intense discomfort from the fiercely anti-Japanese atmosphere there.
However, the boat carrying us paid no heed to my feelings and continued straight toward Yuelu across the same brilliantly sunlit waters, making a wide detour around the tip of Nakanoshima.………

＊ ＊ ＊ ＊ ＊

That same evening, I climbed the staircase of a brothel together with Tan.

The second-floor room we passed through showed almost no discernible difference from those in the brothels of Shanghai or Hankou—not only the table placed at its center but also the chairs, spittoon, and wardrobe.
However, in one corner of this room’s ceiling hung a wire birdcage beside the glass window.
Inside that cage, two squirrels climbed up and down the perch without making a single sound.
It must have been a rare sight alongside the red chintz cloths hung in the windows and doorways.
But to my eyes at least, it was an unsettling sight.

The one who welcomed us into this room was a plump madam.
As soon as Tan saw her, he began speaking eloquently about something.
She too responded to him as smoothly as charm itself.
But not a single word of their conversation was comprehensible to me.
(This was, of course, because I myself had no command of Chinese.)
(However, it seems that Changsha’s dialect is by no means easily comprehensible even to an ear accustomed to Beijing Mandarin.)

After speaking with the madam, Tan sat down opposite me at a large redwood table.
Then, on the letterpress-printed court cards she had brought, he began writing the geishas’ names.
Zhang Xiang’e, Wang Qiaoyun, Ganhou, Zuiyulou, Ai Yuanyuan—all of these were names worthy of heroines in Chinese novels to me, a traveler.

“Shall I call Gyokuran as well?”

I wanted to respond, but as luck would have it, I was lighting a cigarette the madam had offered.
But Tan merely glanced at my face across the table and indifferently wielded his brush.

Then entered a geisha with a rosy-cheeked round face framed by thin gold-rimmed glasses.
She wore a white summer dress adorned with multiple glittering diamonds.
Not only that—she possessed the build of a tennis player or swimmer.
In this appearance of hers, I felt not beauty or ugliness, liking or disliking, but rather an oddly acute contradiction.
She stood truly out of harmony with the room’s atmosphere—and especially with the squirrels in the birdcage.

She acknowledged him with a glance before walking briskly to Tan's side. When seated beside him, she placed a hand on his knee and began speaking in melodious tones. Tan—naturally—responded with satisfied nods of “Yes, yes.”

“This house’s geisha—Lin Dajiao.”

Hearing this, I instinctively recalled Tan’s status as scion of Changsha’s rare wealthy class.

Some ten minutes later, we commenced our Sichuan dinner across the table—mushrooms, chicken, cabbage crowding porcelain plates. Now geishas beyond Lin Dajiao enveloped us completely. Behind them clustered five or six men in peaked caps clutching Chinese fiddles. Occasionally seated geishas would burst into shrill song, lifted by the fiddles’ whine. This held some charm for me. Yet my true interest lay not in Jingdiao arias or Xipi melodies, but in the geisha at my left hand.

The one seated to my left was the Chinese beauty I had barely glimpsed from aboard the Yuenkiang Maru two days prior. She still had a medal hanging on the chest of her light blue summer dress. Yet seen up close, though there was a sickly frailty about her, she lacked any trace of youthful freshness. As I studied her profile, I found myself thinking of a small bulb that had once grown in shaded soil.

“Hey, about the one sitting next to you—”

Tan, his face flushed from aged wine and wearing an amiable smile, suddenly called out to me from across a dish heaped with shrimp.

“That’s Ganhou.”

When I looked at Tan’s face, I somehow lost all inclination to confide in him about what had happened two days prior.

“Her speech is beautiful, isn’t it? Her R sounds are just like a French person’s.”

“Yeah, because she’s Beijing-born.”

The matter we were discussing seemed to have been understood by Ganhou herself.
Indeed, she was darting quick glances at my face while beginning to converse rapidly with Tan.
However, I remained as mute as ever and could do nothing but compare the expressions on their faces, just as I always did.

“Since she’s asking when you came to Changsha—when I reply that you just arrived the day before yesterday—she says she also went to the dock the day before yesterday to meet someone.”

After providing this interpretation, Tan spoke to Ganhou once more.
But she only smiled and shook her head in refusal like a child.

“Hmph, you absolutely refuse to confess.
“I’m asking who you went to meet.…”

Then suddenly, Rin Taikyou gestured at Ganhou with her cigarette and sneered something derisively.
Ganhou appeared unmistakably startled and abruptly pressed her hand against my knee.
Yet no sooner had she managed to smile than she fired back a retort.
I naturally found myself intrigued by this performance—or rather, by the unexpectedly profound hostility lurking beneath their charade.

“Hey, what did she say?”

“She says she isn’t here to meet anyone—she went to meet her Madam. Well, because she—the gentleman here—said it must’ve been to meet some Changsha actor named ××× or something.”
(Unfortunately, I failed to record that particular name in my notes.)

“Madam?”

“When she says ‘Madam,’ she means the Madam in a figurative sense. In other words, she’s the Madam of the house that employs the likes of her and Gyokuran.”

After dismissing my question, Tan gulped down a cup of rice wine and abruptly launched into a torrent of words.
To me, beyond scattered fragments here and there, it remained utterly incomprehensible.
Yet judging by how intently the geishas and Madam listened, it must have been something intriguing.
What’s more, when I noticed them occasionally casting glances my way, it seemed at least partially connected to me.
To observers I maintained composure—cigarette clamped between lips—though irritation began simmering beneath the surface.

“Fool! What are you talking about?”

“What? We were just talking about how we ran into Gyokuran on our way to Yuelu Mountain today.”
“And then…”

Licking his upper lip, Tan added in an even better mood than before.

“And then I was talking about how you want to see an execution by decapitation.”

“What? How boring.”

Even after hearing this explanation, I still did not feel particularly sorry for Gyokuran—who had yet to show her face—or her friend Ganhou. However, when I saw Ganhou’s face, I understood her state of mind quite clearly on an intellectual level. She was shaking her earrings while tying and untying a handkerchief on her knees beneath the table.

“Then is this also boring?”

Tan received a small paper package from the Madam standing behind him and triumphantly unfolded it. Inside that reused paper was wrapped a single strange object—about the size of a rice cracker, desiccated to a chocolate-brown color.

“What is that?”

“This?”
“This is just a biscuit. But... See? I told you about Huang Liuyi earlier—that bandit leader?”
“It’s been soaked in blood from Huang’s severed head.”
“This is something you’d never see in Japan.”

“What would anyone do with such a thing?”

“What do you think? They eat it.”
“People here still believe eating this brings freedom from illness and long life.”

Tan, smiling radiantly, greeted two or three geishas who had just left the table.
But seeing Ganhou start to rise, he began laughing and speaking almost imploringly.
Then he even raised one hand and pointed directly at me.
Ganhou hesitated briefly before forcing another smile and resuming her seat.
Finding her utterly charming, I discreetly took her hand beneath the table to avoid notice.

“Such superstitions are a national disgrace. As a doctor, I’ve been quite vocal about it, you know, but—”

“That’s only because decapitations exist here. In Japan, people swallow charred brains as medicine.”

“No—”

“No—it’s not impossible. I’ve swallowed it myself.”
“Though I was just a child at the time...”
I noticed Gyokuran’s arrival amidst this exchange.
After speaking briefly with the Madam, she took a seat beside Ganhou.

Tan immediately redirected his charm toward Gyokuran, abandoning me mid-conversation.
Indoors, her beauty surpassed what daylight revealed.
Each flash of enamel-bright teeth when she smiled held undeniable brilliance.
Yet those perfectly aligned teeth involuntarily reminded me of squirrels.
The pair still climbed tirelessly in their cage by the calico-draped window—two silken bodies gliding up and down behind glass.

“How about trying a piece of this?”

Tan broke the biscuit and showed it.
The broken edge was the same color.

“Don’t talk nonsense.”

I of course shook my head.
Tan laughed loudly, then turned to offer a piece of the biscuit to Rin Taikyou beside him.
Rin Taikyou frowned slightly and pushed his hand aside at an angle.
He repeated the same routine with several geishas.
But before long—almost imperceptibly—he found himself thrusting a brown fragment before Gyokuran, who sat motionless, her face still fixed in that pleasant expression.

I felt tempted to at least smell that biscuit fragment.

“Hey, show me that too.”

“Yeah, there’s still half left here.”

Tan tossed the remaining fragment over almost like a left-handed person.
I picked up that fragment from between small plates and chopsticks.
But after going to the trouble of picking it up, I suddenly lost any desire to smell it, so I silently let it fall beneath the table.

Then Gyokuran stared at Tan’s face and exchanged a few words with him.
After receiving the biscuit, she began speaking rapidly to the group that had been watching her.

“How about I translate?”

Tan rested his cheek on the table and addressed me with a tongue that was growing increasingly slurred.

“Yeah, go ahead and translate.”

“Alright?
“It’s a verbatim translation, you know.”
“I will gladly savor… my beloved Master Huang’s blood…”

I felt my body tremble.
It was Ganhou's hand, pressing on my knee, that was trembling.

"You all must... like me... your beloved..."

Gyokuran had already begun to bite a piece of biscuit with her beautiful teeth amidst Tan’s words.………

＊ ＊ ＊ ＊ ＊

As per my three-night plan, around five o'clock in the afternoon on May 19, I was leaning against the railing on the deck of the Genkōmaru, just as before. Changsha, with its piled-up white walls and tiled roofs, struck me as somehow eerie. This was undoubtedly due to the influence of the gradually approaching dusk. With a cigar clenched between my teeth, I repeatedly recalled that amiable face of Tan Einen. But for some reason, Tan did not come to see me off.

The Genkōmaru departed Changsha at around seven or seven-thirty.

After finishing my meal, under the dim electric light of the cabin, I began calculating my lodging expenses. In front of me lay a fan, its peach-colored tassels dangling over the edge of a desk less than two feet in length. This fan was something someone had left behind before I came here. While moving my pencil, I occasionally recalled Tan’s face. The reason he tormented Gyokuran was not entirely clear to me. However, my lodging expenses—I still remember—when converted to Japanese currency, came to exactly twelve yen and fifty sen.