The scarlet gang of asakusa pdf

The Sound of Footsteps X

Kawabata Yasunari

Recent scholarship in Japanese modanizumu has steadily revealed a modernist Kawabata that complements, if not rivals, his reputation as the Nobel Prize laureate known for his intensely aesthetic and poetic mod- ern fiction. In fact, the modernist Kawabata has always asserted a clear presence in his works and literary roles. Not only was he among the core writers in literary movements such as the Shinkankaku (New Sensation) School and the Shinkō geijutsu (New Art) School as well as a founding member of the magazines Shin shichō (New Thought) and Bungei jidai (Literary Age), his wide spectrum of fiction, from The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa (1929–30) to Snow Country (1935–37, 1947) and Senbatsuru (1949–51, trans. Thousand Cranes, 1958), consistently experiments with a non-linear, elliptical narrative that often incorporates cinematic effects and elements of ero-guro-nansensu.

“The Sound of Footsteps” was published in June 1925, a year after Kawabata, Yokomitsu, and a few other writers founded the magazine Bungei jidai. The critic Chiba Kameo (1878–1935) described their works as a “nuanced art form that relies on implicit meaning and symbolism to allow a glimpse into the existence and meaning of an inner life through a deliberately narrow aperture,” and coined the term “Shinkankaku-ha”1 for

“Ningen no ashioto,” by Kawabata Yasunari (1899–1972), 1925. Translated by Angela Yiu. The translation is based on Modan toshi bungaku IV: Tokai no gensō, edited by Unno Hiroshi, Kawamoto Saburō, and Suzuki Sadami (Heibonsha, 1990), 68–73. This story is also in Kawabata Yasunari zenshū (Shinchōsha, 1981), vol. 1, 66–70.

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The Sound of Footsteps 63

that form of expression. The “narrow aperture” in this story is an ampu- tee’s obsession with the image of the leg and foot (both called ashi in Japa- nese) and the sound of footsteps, and how that obsession creates internal and external landscapes that are as evocative as they are disorienting and disturbing. In many of his works, Kawabata appears to be drawn to the heightened senses of the physically and mentally challenged, and through them he has created an entire world of new sensations and perceptions, as the term Shinkankaku suggests.

The brevity of this story prefigures his lifelong creation of over a hundred tenohira shōsetsu (palm-of-hand stories), each no longer than 2,800 words (seven pages of Japanese-style manuscript paper) and con- taining images that often quietly startle the senses. The playfulness and provocative nature of these short pieces no doubt stem from a long poetic tradition of tanka and haikai, but their proliferation in the modernist period may also be traced to the influence of French conté, compositions marked by intensity and brevity, introduced to Japan around 1923 by the writer Okada Saburō (1890–1954) after his Paris sojourn. “The Sound of Foot- steps” is representative of the conté experimentation—intensely beautiful, strangely grotesque, and capable of creating a protean spatial dimension based on hallucination and aural reality.

This story was first published in June 1925, in the magazine Josei (1922–28, Women).

X

He left the hospital where the paulownia flowers were in bloom.The doors on the second floor of the coffee shop opened up to the terrace. The waiter’s uniforms were crisp and white.

Refreshing coolness penetrated his left palm, placed casually on the marble top of the terrace table. Putting his face in the palm of his right hand, he rested his elbow on the banister and gazed upon each of the passersby below, as if to suck them up with his eyes. Buoyed by young, lively electric light, the pedestrians traced lighthearted steps on the pave- ment. The terrace was so low that he could have rapped the passersby on the head with his walking stick.

“The change of the seasons feels completely different in the city and the country—don’t you think so, my dear? Country folk would never feel

Co py ri gh t @ 20 13 . Un iv er si ty o f Ha wa ii P re ss .

Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.

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64 kawabata yasunari

early summer in electric light. There it’s always nature—the vegetation and trees—that colors the seasons. But in the city it’s the people. People create early summer just by sauntering down the street, don’t they? In the city, early summer belongs to the people.”

“Hmm, an early summer belonging to the people—of course,” he answered his wife, and remembered the fragrance of the paulownia flow- ers outside the window of the hospital room. Whenever he closed his eyes, he would drown in the hallucinatory sea of legs and feet that filled his head. The cells in his encephalon would all turn into foot-shaped bugs and crawl all over his world . . .

The bashful, smiling feet of a woman stepping over something. Cold, stiffened feet after the final twitch at the threshold of death. The legs dangling on the belly of an emaciated horse with scrawny quarters. Flabby, fat feet, like discarded whale grease, that sometimes tensed up in tremendous strength. The straightened legs of a beggar who stood upright at night even though he dragged himself around on his knees during the day. The neatly paired feet of an infant born between the legs of its mother. Tired feet of salaried workers trudging between work and home. Legs crossing the shallows and drawing the feel of cold, clean water in from ankle to calf. Feet searching for love, taking steps sharp as the folds on the trim legs of pressed trousers. The feet of a young girl whose toes only yesterday pointed outward but now settle grace- fully together—quite a surprise. Swaggering feet taking big strides as though saddled with a pocketful of gold. The feet of a weathered and disillusioned woman who wore a smile on her face and scorn on her heels. Sweaty feet liberated from socks, breathing in the cool air after a day in town. Beautiful feet that danced with resignation on stage, last night’s sins becoming today’s regrets. A man’s feet in a coffee shop tapping out the rhythm of a song about leaving a woman behind. Feet that sink with heaviness when sad and bounce lightly when happy. The legs and feet of sportsmen, poets, usurers, ladies, female swimmers, elementary school pupils. Legs, feet, legs—and most of all, his wife’s legs and feet.

Afflicted with an illness in the joint of his knee from winter to spring, he was forced to have his right leg amputated. His one missing leg gave him foot hallucinations in the hospital bed as he dreamed long-

Co py ri gh t @ 20 13 . Un iv er si ty o f Ha wa ii P re ss .

Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.

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The Sound of Footsteps 65

ingly of the coffee shop terrace, built like a pair of spectacles gazing upon the cheerful thoroughfare below. More than anything, he yearned to gaze at the healthy feet of passersby crisscrossing one another, and to listen to the sound of footsteps as their feet touched the ground.

“I never appreciated the real wonder of early summer until I lost a leg. I do wish to leave the hospital by early summer and visit the coffee shop,” he said, looking at the white magnolias.

“Come to think about it, the time of year when human feet are most beautiful is early summer. That’s when people walk around the city with the most verve, the most grace. You’ve got to leave the hospital before the magnolias scatter.”

From the terrace, he peered down intently at the passersby as though each of them were a lover.

“Even the breeze feels new.” “It’s the change of the season, dear. Even this fresh hairdo looks a bit

dusty today—not to mention my undergarments!” “I don’t care about those things. It’s legs and feet that I care about.

People’s feet in early summer!” “Shall I walk down there and show you mine?” “That’s not what you promised. When I had my leg amputated in

the hospital, you said the two of us would walk with three legs as one person.”

“And early summer, the most beautiful of the seasons, would make you happy?”

“Quiet! I can’t hear the footsteps!” He strained his ears solemnly to make out the precious sounds of

human footsteps amidst the noise of the night city. Then he closed his eyes. The sound of passing footsteps fell upon his soul like rain on a lake. His tired face brightened with a nuanced expression of pleasure.

That look of happiness, however, was short-lived. His color paled and he opened his eyes strangely.

“Don’t you see? Everyone is crippled. There isn’t a single balanced pair of feet in the footsteps I hear.”

“Oh dear, is that so? Maybe you’re right—people only have a heart on one side, right?”

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Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.

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66 kawabata yasunari

“But when the footsteps sound wrong, you can’t just blame it on the human feet. When you listen carefully, you can hear the illness of the soul. The sound you hear is the body woefully promising the earth a funeral to bury the soul . . .”

“I suppose so. But you could say that about anything depending on the way you think. You’re too sensitive.”

“Just listen! The footsteps of the city are sick. Everyone is crippled like me. I came here to enjoy the feeling of being around healthy legs and feet, having lost one of mine, not to discover yet another human illness, to plant a new seed of depression. Oh, how I must rid myself of this depression! We must go to the country. The human soul and body might be in better health there. I might even be able to hear the sound of wholesome footsteps.”

“No, that won’t do! Why don’t you go to the zoo and listen to the footsteps of the animals!”

“The zoo, indeed! Perhaps you’re right. The feet of animals and wings of birds are healthy and their sounds might just be beautiful and well-balanced.”

“Oh dear, listen to yourself! I was just joking.” “Human souls have been ill ever since we started walking on two

feet. Maybe there’s no way to avoid the crippled sound of footsteps.” So, looking like a crippled soul, he stepped into the car with his arti-

ficial leg, assisted by his wife. The sound of the tires hobbled along, as if the illness of her spirit were crying out to him. Along the road, electric lights dusted the young blooms of early summer.

Notes

1. “Shinkankaku-ha no tanjō” in Seiki, 1914, quoted in Zadankai Shōwa bun- gakushi, vol. 1, edited by Inoue Hisashi and Komori Yōichi (Shūeisha, 2003), 451.

Co py ri gh t @ 20 13 . Un iv er si ty o f Ha wa ii P re ss .

Al l ri gh ts r es er ve d. M ay n ot b e re pr od uc ed i n an y fo rm w it ho ut p er mi ss io n fr om t he p ub li sh er , ex ce pt f ai r us es p er mi tt ed u nd er U .S . or a pp li ca bl e co py ri gh t la w.

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