First Snow on Fuji - Softcover

Kawabata, Yasunari

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1582431051 ISBN 13: 9781582431055

Publisher: Catapult, 2000

Synopsis

The stories of Yasunari Kawabata evoke an unmistakably Japanese atmosphere in their delicacy, understatement, and lyrical description. Like his later works, First Snow on Fuji is concerned with forms of presence and absence, with being, with memory and loss of memory, with not-knowing. Kawabata lets us slide into the lives of people who have been shattered by war, loss, and longing. These stories are beautiful and melancholy, filled with Kawabata’s unerring vision of human psychology. First Snow on Fuji was originally published in Japan in 1958, ten years before Kawabata received the Nobel Prize. Kawabata selected the stories for this collection himself, and the result is a stunning assembly of disparate moods and genres. This new edition is the first to be published in English.

About this title

About the Author

Yasunari Kawabata was a Japanese novelist and short story writer whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

First Snow on Fuji

By Yasunari Kawabata

Counterpoint Press

Copyright © 2000 Yasunari Kawabata
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9781582431055

Chapter One

This
Country,
That
Country

* * *

   1.

Takako read "This Country, That Country"in the Sankei Daily Times a second and evena third time on the eve of Culture Day,which is to say on November second. Thecolumn printed curious and interestingarticles about occurrences abroad, more likestories or seeds of stories than hard news.

    The previous day's edition had given ratherextensive coverage to an announcement made byEngland's Princess Margaret, in which she had saidthat she would not marry Group Captain Townshendafter all. It was only natural that one of thestories in today's "This Country, That Country"should concern the princess's love affair:

    One often comes across mounds of stones in theScottish highlands. In the past, these mounds wereerected in memory of heroes who fell in battle, butnow it's said that lovers who add stones to thesemounds achieve "eternal love." Four years ago, at atime when Princess Margaret and Group CaptainTownshend were both staying in Balmoral, theyplaced a stone on a mound located in the middle ofan overgrown field some three miles outside oftown, swore their love for one another, and by thisact leapt instantly into fame. The princess's loveaffair has now ended.

    There was a picture of the mound at the end ofthe article. Its size could be estimated from the sizeof the people who stood around it?the pile itselfwas almost as tall as a man, and the individual stonesthat formed it were a good deal larger than a person'shead. A few stones were as wide across as a person'sshoulders.

    Of course it was impossible to tell which of thestones the princess and the group captain had placedon the pile, but none looked as though the princesscould have lifted it alone. She and Group CaptainTownshend must have lifted the stone together, andeven so it must have been heavy.

    Gazing at the photograph, Takako tried to imaginethe princess as she would have looked hoisting astone onto the mound with the group captain, butthe image that came was simply an image. Takakofelt no connection to it. Her reading of the articlesin the previous day's paper had left her feeling sorryfor the princess, who had after all been forced bychurch law and by certain customs of the Englishroyal family to abandon her love, but that feelingwas now gone. In some ways yesterday's empathyitself seemed like a foreign story.

    Takako was unable to read one of the other storiesin "This Country, That Country" with so muchdetachment, however. The story described two actualcases of "spouse swapping."

    The first incident had occurred in Sweden. Twomarried couples, the Polsens and the Petersons, livedin adjacent apartments in a single building in Egresund,a town near Stockholm. Mr. Polsen and Mr.Peterson were friends of long standing, and they andtheir wives had grown so close that they lived essentiallyas a single family. Then, on the twenty-ninth(the article ran on November second, so it musthave been October twenty-ninth), the two husbandsswapped wives?or to look at it from the otherpoint of view, the wives swapped husbands. In short,the couples were divorced and remarried simultaneously.Neither the Petersons nor the Polsens are at allworried about the shock they've given the world,and all four of them are getting along as well as ever,it was reported.

    "There are so many marriages that just aren'thappy, where the couple would be better off gettingdivorced," Peterson stated. "There's really nothingstrange about our marrying each other's wives. Inthe end it seemed it'd be better for the children?that'sbasically why we did it."

    The Petersons have one child, the Polsens twoinfants. All three children accompanied their respectivemothers when they moved, each into the apartmentnext door.

    Another swap took place in the United States inthe state of Wisconsin, where on the twenty-eighth(probably the twenty-eighth of October) a spouse-swappingceremony was held. Forty-three-year-oldMr. Pierce and twenty-nine-year-old Mrs. Piercemarried thirty-two-year-old Mrs. Pemis and thirty-two-year-oldMr. Pemis, respectively. The two weddingswere held consecutively, and each couplehelped out at the other's ceremony.

    The couples were interviewed two days later, onthe thirtieth.

    "All of us, our children too?we're all extremelypleased."

    Each family has three children. As in Sweden, thechildren followed their mothers, who were the onesto move, though here too it was hardly a "move" atall: the couples live in facing houses, on oppositesides of the same street.

    The comedy of the (very likely) middle-classspouse-swappers affected Takako more powerfullythan the tragedy of the princess and her mound ofstones because it related directly to her own life.

    Or could it be that the spouse-swappers' story wasthe tragedy, and not the story of the princess's love?After all, the article might not have conveyed thespouse-swappers' true feelings, or maybe they hadn'ttold the reporters what they really felt.

    Was it really possible that the children?livingright next door to their former apartments, acrossthe street from their old houses?would find thefather-swap "a pleasure?" Was it really "better for thechildren?"

    Takako couldn't believe it.

    Spouse-swapping wasn't the kind of thing a personcould do ordinarily, of course?certainly anyonepredisposed to tragedy would have a hard timegoing through with it. To think that all four people,two married couples, had felt the same way?itmust be incredibly rare. Indeed, it was preciselybecause it was so rare that the topic had been takenup as international news in the first place, and whythe Japanese newspaper had chosen the story for"This Country, That Country."

    The eight Swedes and Americans must have beeneither frivolous pleasure-seekers or lawless rebels?itwas inconceivable that they had thought verydeeply about what they were doing?and they musthave exchanged spouses in the spirit of comedy.Takako was sure this was the case.

    Even so, there was no denying that somethingutterly improbable had happened, really happened,twice within the past three or four days?even if ithad happened in distant countries.

    Takako, twenty-nine, was certainly well aware thatthings one might assume to be impossible sometimesdo happen in the world. People can bringthemselves to do anything at all, for any reasonwhatsoever. You can never tell what a person mightdo.

    But she could never do it herself. She neverwould.

    "I suppose all you really need are four peoplewho feel the same way about it?four people out ofan uncountable number?and then it's possible, isn'tit?" she muttered, forcing herself to laugh.

    No, it wasn't amazing. It would cause no very terribleinconvenience, it wasn't a crime. And yet "allyou really need" was not something one could honestlysay.

    Takako decided that it would be best not to showthe article to her husband, Hirata.

    Hirata had skimmed the newspaper before he leftthat morning?it was unlikely that he would lookthrough it again, or that if he did he would happenacross "This Country, That Country." Even supposingthat he did read the column, he'd probably thinkit was just an amusing topic, a nice little snippet of astory. He'd probably be more interested in the storyabout Princess Margaret and Group Captain Townshend,the story of the mound of stones.

    Still, Takako decided to put the newspaper awaysomewhere where he wouldn't see it.

   2.

Impatiently, Takako tried to jam the newspaper thatcontained the story in near the bottom of the stackshe was making in the corner of the closet, but shecouldn't make it go in.

    She pictured herself squatting there, disgracefullyposed, and suddenly found herself besieged by sinfulthoughts.

    Hiding the newspaper was not her only sin.

    Sliding the closet door shut and turning towardthe room, Takako was startled by the vivid shadowof a tree on the paper-paneled door. A brightautumn sun was shining outside.

    She went out into the garden.

    The shadow she had seen was being cast by aholly. The tree was larger than most hollies and wasthe only one in their garden that really looked like atree.

    The holly was speckled with tiny white flowers.Though it was plainly visible from the sitting room,Takako couldn't remember when the flowers hadstarted to bloom. It was strange that she couldn'tremember.

    And now the flowers were falling?the blackearth in the tree's shadow looked white.

    Takako picked up three or four of the small flowersand held them in the palm of her hand. Eachblossom had four round, softly curved petals. Thestamens were long.

    Hirata might have noticed the flowers on theholly, but of course he would know nothing at all ofthe delicate form of the individual blossoms. So farneither Takako nor Hirata had mentioned the flowersthis autumn.

    Hearing the swish of kumazasa bamboo in thegarden of the house next door, Takako called out,"Ricky, Ricky!"

    A brown mutt put its head through a hole in thebottom of the bamboo fence. Takako could see fromthe movements of his head that the dog was vigorouslywagging his tail, but he stayed right where hewas and didn't come through to their garden.

    "Ricky, has Mr. Chiba gone out?"

    Takako spoke so that Chiba would hear if he werehome.

    Chiba had named Ricky after the pro-wrestlerRikidosan, of course?his nickname was "Ricky."

    "I bet Rikidosan would be angry if he foundout," Takako had once said to Chiba.

    "I doubt if he ever will. And even if he did, he'dprobably just take it as a sign of his popularity andlaugh it off. There really aren't many good names fordogs, plus he's a male, and he's a guard dog, so don'tyou think it's right for him to be named after someonestrong? Though once when I was walking intown I heard someone holler out `Ricky, Ricky!'and when I looked it was this little terrier. Well, Ithought, so other people are using it, too?trendypeople."

    "It's a nice name. It has a nice sound."

    "You must have had the same experience yourself.You hear someone call out `Takako' somewhereand you spin around...."

    "Yes. There aren't too many names for women,either."

    "Ricky's neck, the way it's so long ... it kind oflooks like yours. At least I think so."

    "Are you saying that this dog looks like me?"

    Takako thought she might laugh, but she didn't.She wasn't angry?it wasn't that, exactly. But tothink that Chiba had looked at his pet dog's neck,thinking of hers! Her cheeks reddened.

    Takako knew that her neck was slimmer andmore shapely than those of most Japanese women?herfriends had pointed this out to her since thetime she was in grade school. Her neck hadremained beautiful even after her marriage, nevergrowing fleshy or unpleasant to look at. Hirata wasalso aware of the beauty of her neck. He sometimespushed her jaw upward with his forehead and kissedit. Takako was so used to this that it no longer eventickled her.

    Yet whenever young Fujiki brushed her neckwith his lips, Takako felt so ticklish that she leapt upand leaned away, shrieking.

    This difference surprised Takako, even frightenedher. It was hard for her to believe that she respondedto Fujiki the way she did solely as a result of his shyness,the softness with which he touched his lips toher neck.

    "Ricky, come here."

    Takako called the dog again. But he kept standingthere, his head and neck poking through the bamboofence.

    The fence was very old?it had been built beforeTakako's arrival at the house. Thick pieces of bamboohad been split in half and lined up with theirinsides facing the Hiratas' side, a fact that suggestedit was someone from the Chibas' house who hadbuilt it. The akebi vine that had climbed the bambooon the Chibas' side sometimes dropped itsshriveled berries into the Hiratas' garden.

    Chiba had still been single when Takako arrivedas Hirata's bride. He was living with his mother andhis younger sister, and there had been a pretty maid.The sister married and moved out soon after Takakoarrived. Two years later Chiba's mother died.

    The Hiratas were invited to the sister's weddingreception, and they had also attended the mother'sfuneral. And Chiba had been at the Hiratas' weddingreception, although Takako, the bride, had not seenhim.

    Two or three days after the Hiratas returned fromtheir honeymoon?it was a Sunday?Chiba hadcalled down from the second floor of his house,

    "Hirata, Hirata."

    "Yes?"

    Takako walked out into the hall. It was the firsttime she had heard the name "Hirata" called likethat, from a distance, and she'd taken it to refer toherself. It was also the first time she saw her neighbor'sface?Chiba's face.

    Chiba seemed somewhat taken aback to see hercome out.

    "Oh?I'm sorry to be shouting down at you likethat.... I've had a pheasant sent up from the country,and I thought I'd send it over as a wedding present.I mean, if you'd like it.... "

    "Well?yes."

    Then Takako's face became red and she went backinside, making a gesture as if to say, wait a momentplease! There was probably no need for her to askher husband, since Chiba had said he would give itto them, yet ...

    Takako's chest was pounding. Chiba's voice wasringing inside her.

    Hirata was delighted with the message shebrought.

Continues...

Excerpted from First Snow on Fujiby Yasunari Kawabata Copyright © 2000 by Yasunari Kawabata. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Catapult
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1582431051
• ISBN 13: 9781582431055
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248