Natsume Soseki’s “Arriving in Kyoto One Evening”

Arriving in Kyoto One Evening

京に着ける夕

By Natsume Sōseki

April 1907

Translated by Sarah Frederick, Boston University (sfred@bu.edu)

The train careened through some hundred leagues of spring at the speed of a streaking comet before depositing me upon the Shichijō platform in Kyōto. At the thin cold click of my heels on the hard floor, the black thing belched a shower of sparks from its black throat and rumbled off into the dark land beyond.

However you look at it, there is something lonely about Kyoto. The fields of Makudzu, the river Kamo, the mountains Hie, Atago, and Kurama –all are the same fields, rivers and mountains they have always been. Bounded by these ancient fields, rivers, and mountains, running south from Ichijō, Nijō, and Sanjō all the way to Kujō and Jūjō, the city itself is the same as it ever was. You might count those numbered streets all the way up to 100 or live for a thousand years, but Kyoto would still be as lonely as ever. I was lonely too, and cold. But having been so precipitously disembarked into this cold spring evening, I had to make my way through this desolate capital from south to north – to the northernmost edge in fact – where the city, the houses, and finally even the lights, faded away.

“It’s far!” said my host Kanō Kōkichi from the rickshaw behind me. My old friend Suga Torao who is living with him called from the vehicle up front, “Very far!” I shivered as I got into the rickshaw between theirs. Departing Tokyo, I never imagined there could be a place as cold as this in all Japan. Until yesterday, the heat generated from bumping up against the city crowds made the blood course through my body with such overheated intensity that it tested the very capacity of my arteries, drenching my whole body in sweat. Tokyo is intense! To pass from that heavy urban stimulation into this ancient capital made me feel like a stone sizzling in the dog days’ sun suddenly cast into the depths of a pond where the sun’s rays do not penetrate. As the heat departed my body with a whooshing sound, I worried it would send tremors through the quiet Kyoto night.

Three rickshaws pull northward via their long shafts – one carrying Kanō (my host who had told me “It’s far!”), one with Suga (my friend, now a Buddhist, who had rejoined “Very far!”), and one more carrying shivering old me. They forge their way further and further north maneuvering through the thin, narrow streets, making their presence known to the quiet night by the ringing of their bells… That ringing of the bells obstructed to the right and left by the narrowness of the street was sent high up into the sky, kankararan, kankararan. When hit by a stone a duller kakaran. Not a gloomy sound. But definitely a cold one. Wind blew in from the north.

Pitch-black houses close in on us from both sides, marking the boundaries of the narrow street. Every single door shut tight. Here and there I see large Odawara paper lanterns hanging from the eaves with the word zenzai, Kyoto sweet red bean soup. Under these deserted eaves zenzai dyes the lanterns red as though in anticipation. But waiting for whom? There is not a soul in sight. As the spring night reaches its depths and even the flow of the Kamo River seems to die away into the darkness, perhaps the ghost of the Kammu Emperor will be coming to dine?

Historically speaking, it is doubtful that “zenzai” would have colored these eaves in the era of Emperor Kammu. And yet zenzai cannot be separated from Kyoto. Given that they are inseparable, Kyoto, having its 1000 years of history, must also have that zenzai with its own legacy. Whether the Emperor Kammu partook of zenzai in ancient times or not I really have no idea. But zenzai, Kyoto, and I, each have our pasts and those pasts are bound up tightly with our destinies.

The first time I came to Kyoto was fifteen or sixteen years ago. That time I came with Masaoka Shiki. The two of us had arrived at the Hiiragiya Inn on Fuyacho, and then set out for some sightseeing in the Kyoto evening. The first things that caught my eye were those same large, red zenzai paper lanterns. I had thought to myself, “Ah, now this is Kyoto!” That impression remains steady now in 1907. Zenzai is Kyoto, Kyoto is zenzai: that was my first impression and shall be my last. Shiki died. To this day, I have never eaten zenzai. To be honest, I am not sure what it is. Is it the sweet bean broth they call o-shiruko in Tokyo? Or just plain boiled adzuki beans? But like a bolt of lightning, those crude, red letters deliver to my mind, empty though it may be of any knowledge of zenzai’s ingredients, a flash of Kyoto memories… Even so, Shiki is dead. Like a gourd, he has shriveled up and died, even while those lanterns still sway there in the darkness of the eaves. As we traverse Kyoto from south to north, my neck scrunches down, shrinking from the cold.

The rickshaw clatters along swiftly, rousing as it goes the dead emperor’s spirit. The fellow in front rides along in silence. And my host in back shows no sign of speaking to me. So the drivers just keep us on course along the long, narrow streets. They were right. It really is far. So far that I could not help be chilled to the bone by the wind. So far that I was reduced to shivers. When I was thrust off the train so abruptly, Suga had picked up my umbrella and lap blanket for me, and now was holding on to them for me still. I hardly needed the umbrella as long as it didn’t rain tonight. But with that blanket taken from me just when I was coldest, I started to wonder if it had not been quite a waste to splurge 22 yen 50 sen on it。

When I came to Kyoto with Shiki, it was not cold like this. I remember walking in a place crowded with local shoppers, he in serge and I in my flannel uniform. Shiki stepped away and came back having bought sour oranges somewhere. He handed one to me, saying “Here, try this.” I peeled it, tore off a section, and while I continued to gnaw away on it, we started to wander aimlessly, eventually entering a single little lane just six feet wide. Each door of the houses along the street was ajar about one foot. I heard a voice coming out of one of these gaps, “Hello there…” At first I took it for a coincidence, but as I made my way along the street and encountered each gap, I heard a chorus of voices coming at me from all sides. I walked along largely ignoring this until a hand reached out to grab me while addressing me rather more aggressively than the others. I looked back at Shiki quizzically. “Geishas!” he answered. While continuing to chomp away on my orange, I tried to estimate the precise width of the street, and then, as some sort of funambulist, walk along the neutral zone right in the center. I gauged that it would be far too easy for a hand to reach out and grab the rear-end of my uniform. Shiki was laughing then. Now too, he would be laughing at me, shivering away, all because my new lap blanket had been snatched away at the train station. But a dead man can’t laugh, and even if his chilled friend might be here longing for his laughter, that conversation is going nowhere.

Near the river we jogged to the left, passing by the approach to one long bridge and then crossing over another, the white eddies faintly visible below. We initially made our way through some uneven rows of thatched houses. Just as I felt the yokes of the rickshaw turn to the side as though indicating our arrival, I saw that we had stopped precisely at the edge of a circle of light thrown from paper lanterns lighting up enormous trees, each four or five arms’ length in circumference. We had come all this way, crossing that whole cold town, only to arrive what seemed to be an even colder destination. When I lifted my gaze to the distant sky, the view was at first obstructed by the branches, but then at the moment the chilling vernal breeze that struck the innermost part of the palm of my hand seemed to become one with the light from the stars above, I disembarked, wondering where in the world I would be sleeping that night.

Weaving through the stand of giant trees and then around them and back in the same direction from which we had come, I glimpsed light coming from an entryway. Oh, so there was really a house here!

Mr. Noaki waiting at the entry has his head shaved like a monk. The Christian poking his head out from the kitchen has a monk cut too. Kanō is a philosopher. Suga is a disciple of Kōsen Oshō. Their house is out here in the middle of a forest with a bamboo grove behind. And this shivering guest who has just arrived can’t take the cold.

Fifteen or sixteen years have passed since I came with Shiki and realized zenzai and Kyoto were one and the same. Borne by the light of a full summer moon we made a pilgrimage to Kiyomizu Temple. Swept up in some romantic notions about the hazy colors of the moonlit sky, we cast our eyes absentmindedly into the distance, letting ourselves be intoxicated by the headiness of our gentle illusions that were as so many dreams to be discovered in the points of red light below. The buttons on our uniforms had been made of brass, but those days it was gold on the rise. Awakening to the realization that brass was only brass, we threw away our uniforms and jumped fully naked into society. Shiki vomited blood and became a newspaperman, and I hitched up my robes and absconded to Shikoku. Our mutual worlds were thrown into turmoil. And Shiki had turned to bones. Now those bones were starting to decay. Shiki would never have imagined that today, as his bones sat decomposing, Sōseki would have quit teaching and tried to become a newspaperman himself. If Shiki heard that Sōseki quit and then ran off to freezing cold Kyoto for a vacation, he would probably bring up the time that we hiked around Maruyama. And he would certainly be surprised to hear that I became a newspaperman, and now was way out here with a philosopher and various men old and young with their heads shaved like monks who had sequestered themselves away in the middle of the Tadasu Forest in Shimogamo. Bemused to think that I had finally lost my senses completely, he would smile coldly. Shiki was a man who liked his smiles on the cool side.

The younger monk said, “Please go ahead and take a bath.” Apparently Kanô and Suga were unable to stand seeing me go on shivering any longer, “Really, please go ahead.” Plunging my whole body into that bath drawn from the crystal clear water of the Kamo River sent a jolt straight into roots of my teeth. In all of human history, there cannot be many who have found themselves shivering away in a hot bath. I got out, and the young monk said, “Sir, please get some rest,” bringing me a quilted jacket with sleeves to wear as he led me to the twelve mat tatami room where I would sleep. When I asked if it was made of gunnai silk from Yamanashi, he told me it was futo’ori, a thick silk weave. “We had it made for you, sir.” Hearing that this was mine to keep was reassuring. Though aware I could not reciprocate this kind deed, I could at least get myself in bed, if guiltily, without worry that my covers would be snatched away.

I was pleased to feel drowsiness coming on, but despite the two thick layers above me and the two futon mats below, the harsh wind of Tadasu Forest still found me. Cold in the car, cold in the bath, and even cold when snuggled up in this nice bedding they had arranged for me – unbelievable. Kyoto seems to be a place where pajamas are not even made with warm sleeves – this city seems to go out of its way to make a person cold.

In the middle of the night, an 18th-century rosewood clock placed on the stepped shelves near my pillow rang out with a sound like ivory chopsticks striking a silver bowl. As it penetrated right into my dream, my eyes opened with a start, and even when the ringing had ceased, it still resonated in my head. But in stages the sound grew slowly faint, more distant, gently absorbing into me as it passed from the surface of my ear to into my inner ear, from my inner ear to my brain, and into the depths of my heart, sinking down into someplace tethered to my heart but still unable keep up with it, so that it finally slipped loose, heading off to some far off land. The cool sound of the bell had reverberated through my flesh, entered my heart, and before setting off toward some secluded realm of the infinite, rendered my body and soul as pure as a bowl of ice, and as chill to the touch as a bowl filled with snow. I grew colder inside that thick silk bed-garment.

At the red of dawn, the cry of a crow from the top of a zelkova tree interrupted my dreams once again. This crow did not call out with the usual “caw.” A “kya-kei, kuu” was its twisted cry. And it seemed not any normal crow, flying in the shape of a frown, but with its beak wide open, forming the characters へく. Perhaps the Kamo Shrine Gods had imparted it with their divine will to send another shiver through this lost soul.

Separated from my thick bed garment and trembling with cold yet again, I opened the window. The gentle mist of fine rain that had saturated the Tadasu Forest, now worked its way into this forlorn twelve-mat Tadasu Forest room that is now my home, wrapping me in ever more layers of cold.

Spring coldness
Appearing before the shrine,
A crane from my dream