Kokoro

I always call him “Sensei.” I shall therefore refer to him simply as “Sensei,” and not by his real name. It is not because I consider it more discreet, but it is because I find it more natural that I do so. Whenever the memory of him comes back to me now, I find that I think of him as “Sensei” still. And with pen in hand, I cannot bring myself to write of him in any other way.

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.

“I am a lonely man,” he said again that evening. “And is it not possible that you are also a lonely person? But I am an older man, and I can live with my loneliness, quietly. You are young, and it must be difficult to accept your loneliness. You must sometimes want to fight it.”

“But I am not at all lonely.”

“Youth is the loneliest time of all. Otherwise why should you come so often to my house?”

Sensei continued: “But surely, when you are with me, you cannot rid yourself of your loneliness. I have not it in me to help you forget it. You will have to look elsewhere for the consolation you seek. And soon you will find that you no longer want to visit me.”

“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.”

“Oh no, I don’t think for a moment that I am disliked. There is no reason why I should be. But you see, he seems to be rather weary of the world. Indeed, it would be more correct to say of Sensei that he is weary of people. And seeing that I am one of those creatures that inhabit this world, I can hardly hope to be regarded as an exception.”

But while my chess-loving father failed even to entertain me, Sensei, whose acquaintance I had never sought for amusement’s sake, gave me far greater intellectual satisfaction as a companion. Perhaps I should not have used the word “intellectual,” for it has a cold and impersonal sound. I should perhaps have said “spiritual” instead. Indeed, it would not have seemed to me then an exaggeration to say that Sensei’s strength had entered my body, and that his very life was flowing in my veins. And when I discovered that such were my true feelings towards these two men, I was shocked. For was I not my father’s flesh?

“What they did to me I shall remember so long as I live. But I have never taken my revenge on them. When I think about it, I have done something much worse than that. I have come to hate not only them but the human race in general. That is quite enough, I think.”

“I wonder if you are really being sincere,” he said. “Because of what happened to me, I have come to doubt everybody. In trust, I doubt you too. But for some reason I do not want to doubt you. It may be because you seem so simple. Before I die, I should like to have one friend that I can trust. I wonder if you can be that friend. Are you really sincere?”

“I have been true to you, Sensei,” I said, “unless my whole life has been a lie.” My voice shook as I spoke.

I felt then the helplessness of man, and the vanity of his life.

Inwardly, I compared my father’s unaffected pleasure with the way Sensei had congratulated me that night at the dinner table. And I had greater admiration for Sensei with his secret contempt for such things as university degrees than I had for my father, who seemed to me to value them more than they were worth. I began at last to dislike my father’s naive provincialism.

Thus, in a desperate desire to act, I boarded the Tokyo-bound train. The noise of the engine filled my ears as I sat down in a third-class carriage. At last, I was able to read Sensei’s letter from beginning to end.

I was moved by your decision, albeit discourteous in expression, to grasp something that was alive within my soul. You wished to cut open my heart and see the blood flow. I was then still alive. I did not want to die. That is why I refused you and postponed the granting of your wish to another day. Now, I myself am about to cut open my own heart and drench your face with my blood. And I shall be satisfied if, when my heart stops beating, a new life lodges in your breast.

I believe that words uttered in passion contain a greater living truth than do those which express thoughts rationally conceived. It is blood that moves the body. Words are not meant to stir the air only: they are capable of moving greater things.

I was already a misanthrope when I left home for the last time. That people could not be trusted must have already become a conviction deeply rooted in my system. It was then that I began to think of my uncle, my aunt, and all the other relatives whom I had come to hate as typical of the entire human race. On the Tokyo-bound train, I found myself watching suspiciously my fellow passengers. And when anyone spoke to me, I became even more suspicious. My heart was heavy. I felt as though I had swallowed lead. But my nerves were on edge.

Okusan’s manner towards me gradually changed my own state of mind. I became less shifty and began to feel more relaxed. I suppose the fact that Okusan and the rest of the household took no notice of my suspicious and withdrawn manner gave me great comfort. Since there was nothing in my surroundings that seemed to justify watchfulness, I began to calm down.

But this did not prevent me from becoming more and more suspicious as time went by. Some small incident—I forget what—put the idea into my head that Okusan was forcing her daughter onto me from the same motives as those which prompted my uncle when he wished me to marry his daughter. Okusan, whom I had taken for a kindly person, quickly became a cunning schemer in my eyes. I was filled with disgust.

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.

Then, at the height of summer, Emperor Meiji passed away. I felt as though the spirit of the Meiji era had begun with the Emperor and ended with him. I was overcome with the feeling that I and the others, who had been brought up in that era, were now left behind to live as anachronisms.

My own past, which made me what I am, is part of human experience. Only I can tell it. I do not think that my effort to do so honestly has been entirely purposeless. If my story helps you and others to understand even a part of what we are, I shall be satisfied.