Kokoro

But now, when Sensei is dead, I am beginning to understand. It was not that Sensei disliked me at first. His curt and cold ways were not designed to express dislike of me, but they were meant as a warning to me that I would not want him as a friend. It was because he despised himself that he refused to accept wholeheartedly the intimacy of others. I feel great pity for him.

Some might say that I was foolish and naïve. But even now, I feel a certain pride and happiness in the fact that my intuitive fondness for Sensei was later shown to have not been in vain. A man capable of love or should I say rather a man who was by nature incapable of not loving; but a man who could not wholeheartedly accept the love of another—such a one was Sensei.

“The memory that you once sat at my feet will begin to haunt you and, in bitterness and shame, you will want to degrade me. I do not want your admiration now, because I do not want your insults in the future. I beat with my loneliness now, in order to avoid greater loneliness in the years ahead. You see, loneliness is the price we have to pay for being born in this modern age, so full of freedom, independence, and our own egotistical selves.”

I am sure that if I had spoken to her with a truly repentant heart—as I did always to the spirit of my dead friend—she would have forgiven me. She would have cried, I know, from happiness. That I refused to tell her the truth was not due to selfish calculation on my part. I simply did not wish to taint her whole life with the memory of something that was so ugly. I thought that it would be an unforgivable crime to let fall even the tiniest drop of ink on a pure, spotless thing.

Finally, I became aware of the possibility that K had experienced loneliness as terrible as mine, and wishing to escape quickly from it, had killed himself. Once more, fear gripped my heart. From then on, like a gust of winter wind, the premonition that I was treading the same path as K had done would rush at me from time to time, and chill me to the bone.

Though I had resolved to live as if I were dead, my heart would at times respond to the activity of the outside world, and seem almost to dance with pent-up energy. But as soon as I tried to break my way through the cloud that surrounded me, a frighteningly powerful force would rush upon me from I know not where, and grip my heart tight, until I could not move. A voice would say: “You have no right to anything. Stay where you are.”

I turned to my wife, who had reminded me of its existence, and said: “I will commit junshi if you like; but in my case, it will be through loyalty to the spirit of the Meiji Era.” My remark was meant as a joke, but I did feel that the antiquated word had come to hold a new meaning for me.