His biggest reason for disliking April, however, was that it was the beginning of the new school year at the university where he was an assistant professor.
The morning of that day he planned to go to the school for the first time in a while. He put on his shoes in the entryway, but what ought to have been comfortable shoes felt stiff and unfamiliar. He turned them over to look; they had been half-soled with new leather. His wife Asako must have taken them to a repairman during the holiday. Takeuchi was reluctant to go to the school in the first place, and this made him want all the more to take the day off. He thought that, just as the shoes didn't suit his feet, the university after the month since the entrance exams had been found not to suit his feelings.
Because Takeuchi was one of what were called "talent" teachers, he had spent the last month quite comfortably, and he had been busy as well. He had gone to the Kagoshima rocket base to write reportage and would drink with a new editor until late at night. It's not that individual incidents were so good; rather, he had tasted the freedom of following a schedule in which each day differed from the day before.
Even so, as soon as he put his feet into the tight shoes, the annoyance of returning to strictly regulated school life weighed on Takeuchi's chest. For a moment he made a bitter face, with his chin propped up on the shoehorn. He would have taken it out on Asako if she had been there, but he could hear her singing, along with the sound of the electric sweeper, from the direction of the living room. Even if he roared in a way that echoed through the neighborhood, Asako would not hear him at such a time.
Students were jammed in front of the university. Although new students, who could be distinguished at a glance by the newness of their badges and uniforms, made up a quarter of the student body, they seemed to constitute more than half of this crowd. In fact, second-year and older students started out later, and those who came to school early in the morning were mostly new students. They did not pass through the gate immediately; the road was flooded with people who seemed to be walking in the upper air, not promptly passing through the gate but looking up at the school building. Takeuchi nearly hit with his car a student who giddily dashed out. The student, unaware that he might injure himself, stood in the center of the gate looking at the school building. He was a pimpled and sincere-looking young man.
Takeuchi parked his car in a stall in the shadows of the school building. The university used the grounds of the old artillery corps. Since they seemed to have been used for garages or vehicle storage in the days of the imperial army, they were used for parking even now. The clapboarding had discolored to a chocolate tone with the grain in raised relief, but it was sound enough and looked like it could be used for decades to come. By way of contrast, the school buildings themselves were said to be ferroconcrete but thanks to economies in building costs they tended to look dilapidated now after only ten years. Their outer walls were painted a cream color, but there were zig-zag cracks ten meters or more in length. The windows, because of their rusting iron frames and the slap-dash painting, could not be opened and closed.
Following along the wall, on which scuff-marks from having been hit by balls stood out like pockmarks, Takeuchi went around to the front of the school building. The sports clubs and cultural clubs had tables lined up and were recruiting the new students. The fencing club, wearing white practice uniforms and masks, were brandishing their flashing swords in a staged exercise, and at the film study club's table a student in dark glasses and a black shirt was chatting with a student in a green corduroy shirt. They believed that film makers dressed that way. He didn't know how long they had been there, but some beautiful female club members had appeared at the table. They were just talking and smiling, but if they spotted a new student stopping in front of their table, they called, "You! You! Just a minute..." and beckoned with their fingers.
A certain professor smiled wryly and said, "Look at that. It's a scene that reminds me of a certain place long ago." But these students, born after the war, wouldn't even recognize the phrase the old professor had used for "a certain place."
Takeuchi didn't have much sympathy for these club activities. They seemed to be just playing at being grown up; their insincere words showed their teeth and only sounded plausible. He couldn't stand that. Aside from the sports clubs, there was a group of clubs that liked to use the terms, "sterile," "existential," "extinction" and "vacuum," and a group that used the terms "battle," "debate," "system" and "maneuver." Holding cheap cigarettes in their stained fingers they energetically sounded these terms without ever tiring. The wave of present-day world politics in which both these groups were deeply interested had not yet come to where they were. That wave washed high above this little university. The club members, like the troops of a small country, showed off their weapons but privately regretted that they had never once used them. The coeds who joined the clubs inclined their ears to these terms as though they were listening to music, and they heatedly pronounced the terms themselves. They deeply inhaled cigarette smoke with their eyes closed, as though it were opium, and exhaled it toward the ceilings of their dusty club rooms.
Takeuchi didn't talk to students of this sort. They quickly became intoxicated on their own jargon, and so engaging them had the same result as trying to help a drunk. They looked down on the sports club members as ignorant. Some in the sports clubs, such as one member of the baseball club who had bad eyes and absolutely could not read a book, made one wonder why on earth they had come to college, but the sports clubs and the cultural clubs were the same in the sense of being self-righteous and playing at being adult. The small size of the university was one factor, but the university had never produced an Olympic team member or professional baseball player, and he had never heard of a jazz musician who came from the jazz study club.
The club tables were arranged in a semicircle with the entrance to the school building at the center, and the cheer squad was closest to the entrance. They stood in two ranks, each member wearing a black student uniform with a square college cap and staring heavenward. It may have been difficult to look down because the collars of the student uniforms were quite high. The flaps of their side pockets were the length of the spine of a book and set at a slant. They stood with legs apart and hands behind their backs, in American style.
In the center of the front rank, a student as bulky as a sumo wrestler, with a bright red face, supported the club flag on his belly. The size of the flag was about four and a half mats,1) and so there was no way one man could hold it up when it flapped in the breeze. Four ropes were attached halfway up the flag staff; these were held by four squad members. Even so, the burden on the flag bearer appeared to be extreme; the club flag flapped in the wind as Takeuchi watched, and the flag bearer closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. His face was covered with perspiration, and when he tried to shake off the perspiration that had gotten into his eyes, his square cap fell to the ground.
Associating the expression on his face with an act that people do alone once a day, Takeuchi blew out involuntarily. The members of the cheer squad, however, all stood like mannequins, unmoving. Their student uniforms had the air of a larger-than-life pre-war European hero, but their remote smartness resembled a photograph of the American army officers' academy.
Reaching the small entrance to his department, he turned over his name plaque and went to his own office on the second floor. It was a room about twenty mats in size, but he shared it with Tanabe, also an assistant professor. It was equipped with bookcases in the space between two desks facing the windows. Near the door way there was a reception set and a cupboard that held such things as a coffee pot.
Tanabe had not come in yet. The office was filled with a sort of musty smell from air that had been shut in for a month. He opened the windows and let in fresh air. His desk was covered with a thin layer of dust. Takeuchi dropped into his chair, put his feet on the desk, and tried to pump up his own spirits by saying, "Well, this is it."
Since he skipped all the ceremonial occasions like graduation, the entrance ceremony, and new student orientation, he wanted to do his teaching just right, but the gloominess he had felt since leaving the house got even worse and he didn't even feel like teaching.
Students who weren't interested in anything except throwing a ball. Students who only knew how to play around with jargon terms. Even if he spoke to them, he doubted he could convey any of his meaning to them.
On the river bank of a blackened metropolis there is a water treatment plant. There the organic and inorganic matter mixed in the polluted water is removed and water that is clean enough to drink flows into the river. The pure water that falls from the pipes forms a clear pool about one mat in size within the black water of the river. Within this small pool, which is like a clump of transparent agar in youkan,2) there live a few small fish who have somehow come from somewhere. They do not swim into the black water. That is because they cannot breathe in the black water.
Takeuchi thought of himself as one of the small fish in that pool. Ishii and Tanabe were also small fish who had made their way into the pool. Tanabe was two years younger than Takeuchi. They differed in the schools they came from and in their experience, but in any case they did the same job at this university.
If one peers through the black water, it can be vaguely seen that several other pools of clear water exist. These are the departments of other faculties. In fact, however, it is a rare thing to swim to the nearby pools. Due to the black water made up of students and the university administrators, if one were to thoughtlessly swim to a neighboring pool, whether one's purpose were practical or academic, one would become strangely polluted and unable to skillfully carry out one's essential business. If Takeuchi was visited by someone from a different department, he had an uneasy feeling that he was being spied on.
"That's good! You're alone, Takeuchi sensei."
When he turned around on hearing the female voice, a coed clutching a notebook had come in. She was Murakoshi Kazuko, and should be a third-year student now. Kazuko pressed her hands together in front of her throat as though applauding and said, "I want to take your seminar, but will you take my application?" She cocked her head and peered at Takeuchi's face.
"If you apply we'll take it. But selection is by examination, so I don't know if everyone who applies will be able to participate in the seminar."
"But I really do want to take yours." Kazuko seemed about to snuggle up to him right then, so Takeuchi stood up and picked up the coffee pot.
"Say, could you make me some coffee?"
Kazuko stood up, so Takeuchi left the coffee to her and returned to the chair he had been in. As a result his separation from her increased to two or three meters. The reason Takeuchi knew her name was her personality. She didn't come to class too often but when she came she would be in the front row and would be too familiar with the instructor. To say her coquetry was like that of bar hostesses would be, perhaps, an insult to the hostesses. Theirs was in an occupational context, polished and fresh.
There were always some coeds like Kazuko. Perhaps because they were lazy and not bright, there was an unattractive shrewdness in the way they made their way in life; it frightened Takeuchi. They were lumps of waste that penetrated his pool of clear water.
When Kazuko had the coffee made, she poured herself a cup without being invited. She grasped the handle of the cup with her little finger extended.
"You know, sensei, I failed Tanabe-sensei's Theory of Social Groups, but couldn't you recommend that he give me the marks for it? Otherwise I won't have enough credits and I won't be able to get into your seminar."
If she asked for the marks directly, almost any instructor would turn her down. In the case of a colleague's course, however, Kazuko must have calculated that there was the possibility of easy acceptance. And her line that she wanted to attend Takeuchi's seminars but would need the marks from Tanabe to do so was a well-thought out approach.
"To tell the truth, I've hoped to take your seminar ever since my first year. Yours are based on real research and are enjoyable. Tanabe-sensei's lectures talk about positivism, but conceptually they are bookish and boring."
Kazuko was playing to Takeuchi's vanity by contrasting him with Tanabe. At about 20, Kazuko must have great confidence in her ability to manipulate middle-aged men. Takeuchi looked at Kazuko with the eye of one looking at the belly of a bitch with its face turned up. A red cardigan, a semi-transparent blouse, a tight skirt, and dark stockings. And a filled-out body.
If Takeuchi recommended that Tanabe give the marks, Tanabe would do so without hesitation. He might, however, laugh and say, "Takeuchi-san, you must have something going on with her."
But even if he said nothing, Tanabe was aware of Kazuko's character and was sure to think something was up. He would be shamed in Tanabe's mind. Did Kazuko think that Takeuchi could not figure that out? Or was she so sure of her feminine charm that she thought he would do as she asked even after making that calculation?
She had insulted Takeuchi. That being the case, it would be all right for him to trifle with her body. How would she reply if he were to ask her, If I have Tanabe give you the marks, will you sleep with me? Obviously Takeuchi wouldn't actually say such a thing, but he enjoyed thinking the words even so. Probably Kazuko was continually being shamed by men in one form or another. And so by now perhaps she could think of her relations with men only in terms of humiliating or being humiliated. Takeuchi thought he could understand the feelings of a university professor who would bring a gift from a student to the classroom, call out the student's name, and reject the gift. But there was no way he could function as an instructor if he were angry at being insulted by a student.
"In any case, I'll have to think about it later. Right now I have to prepare for class." He said this to send Kazuko away.
Toyoura Yukio was aware of being very tired as he passed through the school gate on the day that classes were to begin. On completion of the admissions ceremony his father had returned to their home in Kochi and Yukio was left all alone in his lodging in Tokyo. His family owned some mountain land and made its living by planting and harvesting trees. The business cycle in forestry is far different from agriculture with annual crops. When Yukio went to college, his father got the money from some of the trees planted by his grandfather. He had gone to the high school of a small city near his home. His was a small town with no railway station.
Just being in hectic Tokyo wore Yukio out. To get to the university, he had to take one bus and two trains after leaving his lodging. That was not particularly confusing, but it was nerve-racking. If he didn't have the bus coupon out in time would he be suspected of trying to ride free? Would he miss his station on the train? The constant tension had him exhausted by the time he got to school.
Besides that, for several days prior he had been crowded into large classrooms and made to listen, morning to evening, to matters of school organization, acquiring credits, and how to register. He didn't really understand, but there seemed to be a lot of procedures before taking classes. Every day papers were passed out and taken back, and in the breaks he would line up at the bookstore to buy textbooks.
At the university, even the school buildings were complicated. There were all sorts of large and small classrooms and other rooms whose use was unknown to him, so the arrangement of the classrooms was hard to remember. A new student had given him some ink for his fountain pen one morning but an hour later he did not know where he had gone. A companion he had gone to the cafeteria with and exchanged names with at the noon break was a student in a different department, and their meeting places and schedules were completely different. And so, when they came face to face at the school gate the following day they had become complete strangers again and did not speak to each other. Rather, to have rashly learned a face and name was a nuisance and it took courage to avert their faces.
Was this what a university was? Yukio quickly became weary and disillusioned. He was not, in the first place, one who went to college because he liked to study. But he did not want to spend all his life in the countryside. He wanted to spend several years in a big city, even Tokyo, while he was young and if that went well, to get employment in Tokyo and become a city dweller. If it went badly he could drop out of school, like his father, and return to the family business; in the countryside he would be a man of property and an intellectual and would even be suited to become a member of the town assembly.
Yukio wanted to go to a Tokyo university, but he had no particular plan regarding what university or what department to apply to. He was not good at science but his father thought humanities or liberal arts were useless so he applied to two or three law and economics colleges; the one that accepted him was this university. Of his high school classmates, fewer than ten had gone straight to college,3) and two or three of them had gone to universities less well-known than Yukio's, so for someone with average grades he could be said to have done well. About half his classmates had not been accepted by universities and had become employed or were helping with the work at home.
And so, Yukio was proud to be starting college. Although he was quite tired when he passed through the school gate, he stopped there and looked up at the main school building. The facade of the building, which had lots of glass and was slightly rounded, made him think of a close-up photo of the compound eye of an insect, or a honeycomb. The front of the building was rounded because the fan-shaped large lecture theaters were located there. There was also a windowless tower that was tall and thin, like a poem strip, and a smokestack that looked much the same.
Yukio thought this school building was beautiful. His high school had been reinforced concrete, a rectangular solid of a building with nothing interesting about it. And so in the bookstore Yukio bought picture postcards depicting the school building and the tower and sent them to his favorite teacher and classmates from high school. It was because of his slight vanity that he wrote, on each postcard, "What a trifling place college is!"
As he stood looking up at the school building in this way, a car's horn suddenly honked close to his hip and he jumped. When he looked around there was a cream-colored automobile only two or three inches away and the thin, pale, cruel-looking man in the driver's seat was gripping the steering wheel with a sullen expression.
Yukio bowed, thinking it must be a teacher, but the car took no notice and moved toward him. There was still time before class began, so Yukio slowly walked by the tables advertising and recruiting for the campus clubs. He thought that those like the baseball club and rugby club were not much different from high school, but a golf club seemed unusual. Young men and women who seemed to have been raised in wealthy urban homes gripped clubs as the laughed together.
Yukio had been accepted into college but he had no friends to talk to; he definitely planned to join a club. The golf club, however, clearly seemed to have an atmosphere that was not for him. It was an atmosphere where, even if he were to become an excellent player, not one club member would become close to him.
At the English club an English language tape was being played on a recorder but Yukio couldn't catch a word of it. He tried to approach the literature society because there were a number of unsophisticated looking students there, but he could not understand anything at all that the members were saying to each other. There were pretty coeds in all the clubs and they would attract Yukio, but at the same time they would keep him at a distance. They all felt as hard to approach as the golf club had. He thought an athletic club for men only would be better than a cultural club with pretty coeds who conversed at a high intellectual level.
There was, however, no sport that Yukio was really good at. In high school he had been relatively good at swimming the breaststroke. Perhaps he could become a team member in Tokyo since Tokyo people have no physical strength. While he was looking for the swim club's table he came to the cheer squad.
A huge flag with the university symbol dyed into a purple field was waving. It appeared a wind had come up and the standard bearer and four squad members holding ropes were desperately holding the flag up. It looked just like a huge beast was running off and five youths were trying to hold it back.
The captain shouted a word and the squad members maneuvered a batch of black boards; in an instant a flag stand was assembled. The flag bearer pulled out a white hand towel and wiped the sweat from his face. His face at that moment was as soaked as if he had just come up from a pool. The flag bearer picked up his college cap that had fallen to the ground. This time the hand towel fell and was blown by the wind to Yukio's feet.
When Yukio picked it up and held it out, the flag bearer took it and greeted him with a shout of "yah," smiling to show his white teeth.
"You, join the cheer squad? People, spirit's important. To forge your spirit it's the cheer squad."
"Right. Let me think about it."
"Yeah. You think. When you make up your mind come back here. Ask somebody wearing this badge."
"Right."
Yukio left then, but he had a favorable impression of the flag bearer's white teeth and manly smile. In any case, the flag bearer was the first upperclassman to have bothered to speak to him. Studying was not really Yukio's strong point. He did not dislike sports, but neither did he have an aptitude to stand out. And so the only way to keep up with the smart people in a big city like Tokyo would be to build his spirit.
Having been told that by the flag bearer, Yukio recalled that since the day of the entrance ceremony he had unconsciously but constantly been asking himself, "Are you a loser? Are you a loser?" Since coming to Tokyo he had never asked anyone for directions. That was because he would study the map meticulously before leaving his lodging and look fixedly at the direction signs in stations. If he had his way he would not be outdone by those born and bred in Tokyo. All right, he would become a man of spirit.
As he waited in the classroom, students flowed through the two entrances in one wave after another, like the tide filling up depressions in a beach. When the movement of students stopped, the teacher who had been driving that car came through the entrance.
He wrote Takeuchi Masashige on the blackboard and said, "This is my name." Then, speaking into a microphone, he pointed out how to write the instructor's name and other information on the registration cards. He wrote on the blackboard the names and prices of textbooks and the date they would be available in the bookstore, and he was finished. Less than three minutes had passed since he started.
The platform was immediately surrounded by students holding out cards, like a bowl of humanity. When the students eventually dispersed a pile of petal-like cards remained on the teacher's desk. Yukio waited to hold out his card last. For one thing, it was nearly two hours till his next class and he didn't know how or where to spend the time till then.
While repeatedly pushing his eyeglasses back into place with the middle finger of his left hand, Takeuchi tried to stack up the cards using his more awkward hand. Yukio had time to spare in any case, and so he was about to offer to assist when pleasant smell suddenly tickled the mucous membrane of his nose.
"I'll help you, sensei. I don't have a class right now."
"Ah, Murakoshi? Please."
Yukio looked around and saw a well-made-up coed standing there. To Yukio she looked more like a lady than a coed. It seemed strange that such a lovely person was not an actress but was going to school.
She began to gather cards with her long fingers. The nails were cut in an oval shape and colored the pale red of cherry blossoms. As those fingers moved nimbly as a machine, a fine chain glittered and danced like threads wrapped around her arm.
When he looked, Takeuchi was no longer there. Yukio wanted to assist, but Murakoshi Kazuko completely ignored Yukio's presence and continued to arrange the cards. Yukio went out into the corridor as though he had been driven away. The students who had filled the classroom moments earlier had already gone somewhere; no shape or shadow of them was visible. Every classroom, however, had a teacher explaining something or resounded with a rumble of laughter. Only three lines had been written in his new notebook. He encountered the cheer squad's flag bearer in front of the toilets. He lowered his head and looked a little doubtful, but immediately smiled and said, "Ya, it's you!"
"Please put me in the cheer squad."
"Yeh, okay. But building your spirit will be intense."
"Yes."
"Well then, go to the cheer squad's room next to the gymnasium."
Not having a class or anything else, Yukio was bored. Therefore, even if he didn't understand anything he was happy there was something he had to do and someplace he had to go.
Three youths who could be seen at a glance to be new students were standing uneasily in front of the cheer squad's room. Eventually a thin student with a beard came out of the room.
"One rank facing me, extended interval," he yelled in a low, deep voice.
"Jackets off."
"Arms to side, raise." The final syllable of each command hung in the air like the ringing of a siren. The raised arms of the bearded member did not quaver in the least.
"Understand? The arms are used a lot in cheering directions. If the arm movements are sloppy, the cheering will be sloppy. Cheer squad members will have to keep their arms raised, even for an hour or two hours."
Several minutes passed. Because he had done well at the breast stroke he was confident of the strength of his arms, but fatigue began to creep through Yukio. First he felt weary around the elbows; that moved up his arms moment by moment and attacked his neck muscles from his shoulders. He could hardly feel the muscles near his elbows any longer. At least, the nerve commands to keep his arms horizontal did not reach those muscles. Yukio clenched his teeth as the flag bearer had done earlier. Now it was his neck muscles, and the muscles of his chin and cheeks that were supporting his arms.
"Uh-oh, who told you to lower your arms?" The bearded man yelled without moving and with no change in the color of his face. Although he didn't want to lower his arms, each time Yukio looked at his fingertips they were an inch or two lower, and as his arms came down no amount of effort could restore them to their original height.
"Can't you keep it up?" Another upperclassman screamed in his ear and suddenly slapped both his cheeks. Rather than pain, he sensed two flashes before his eyes. His arms jerked up as if the shock had revived the function of his nerves. Before long, however, his arms sagged again.
"Uh-oh, you're drooping!" Again there were flashes before his eyes. This time his arms rose firmly, if only partially. There are in this world things that cannot be done without beating. That's what Yukio thought. Being beaten wasn't that bad.
Even hearing, "How is it, you?" he could do nothing without being struck. He thought a new world, in which being trained meant being beaten, was opening up to him. Words and will power were meaningless.
"All right. Arms down."
His arms felt unable even to bend at the elbows. His neck muscles hurt from the elbow up, and he rolled his head without thinking.
"Your name?"
"Toyoura Yukio."
"All right, you're allowed to join. The rest of you won't do. Disappear--right now," the beard said. He added, as two or three other upperclassmen were brandishing bamboo swords,4) "If you want to join anyway, we'll test you with bamboo swords."
When the new students had fled, Yukio was permitted to enter the cheer squad's room. On the front was a plaque with the squad rules inscribed in black. Terms like "Japanese spirit," "love of school," "core of the student body," "leadership," and "cultivation of mind and body," caught his eye.
"If you make the squad rules a part of yourself, you will be absolutely obedient to upperclassmen. You understand? To follow upperclassmen is to follow the spirit of the squad."
"Yes."
Yukio, seated on a wooden bench, had grown stiff.
After winding up a one-hour class in five minutes, Takeuchi talked with fourth-year students Sugiyama Shuuichi and Fujieda Hiroko in his research room. It had been arranged that he would guide the two students' graduation theses, but this was to have the two help with third-year students for seminars. It was difficult to put together good seminars unless fourth-year students were used as shills. Rather than excellent students, Sugiyama and Fujieda were students who understood Takeuchi's ways, and they were valuable as someone to consult with, including the selection of third-year students for seminars.
Takeuchi prepared two or three such fourth-year students each year. It helped find them employment and was a bargaining chip of sorts even after graduation. Takeuchi had one of them write a book that was not a best seller but still a good seller, and since then he had come to have an even better hand in bargaining with graduates who had become editors, broadcast directors, key workers in advertising companies, and so on.
This year, however, Takeuchi was not confident that he could find good job openings for Sugiyama and the others. Aside from the largest companies, there was a tendency in the market research, publicity, and mass media fields to hold back from new hiring, and even in a good economy students from Takeuchi's university seldom met the qualifications of the very largest companies. In the case of Fujieda, it had been informally decided she could work at a textile company as someone who was sensitive to popular trends and the tastes of young women. Sugiyama seemed to want a big newspaper, but as Takeuchi saw it, even if it were managed well there would still be a secondary hiring exam to pass.
"Well then, what will your graduation thesis be?" Takeuchi asked as he put the tea on and offered them molasses-coated snacks. Fujieda replied with a hand kerchief pressed beneath her nose.
"I'd like to do employment at home for housewives in apartment blocks. My sister is an office worker's wife and lives in the H Apartments, and a lot of women there do work at home. I went once and she was addressing envelops for publicity pamphlets, I think, and the next time she was embroidering cushions for export. It's not like she'd have a hard time with living expenses without the piecework, but she says things like, 'Today I earned 50 yen,' and psychologically she's happier."
"In other words, women cannot use their surplus time effectively. If that's the case, it's a matter of trading a day for fifty yen. That's like selling the collected works of Goethe for so much a pound at a scrap yard because you can't read German." This was Sugiyama's opinion.
"And that's why. It's like twiddling your thumbs or chewing gum. There's also a sense of 'Next door bought a car, so we should.' In any case, I think this is something different from the piecework in working-class neighborhoods."
"Even if the work is the same, the apartment block madams may work more efficiently than the working class." Sugiyama had injected his view again, but Fujieda didn't glance his way.
"In any case, that's what I'll work on," she said, tight-lipped, and she drank her tea.
"And you, Sugiyama-kun?"
"I think I'll do university cheer squads. I think they are similar in nature to celebrity fan clubs and political party supporters. A star's fan club wants to be involved in the star's words and actions, clothing, and work, and if the fan club disappears that's the end of the star, I believe."
"But isn't the role of the fan club the same as a master's patronage of wrestlers or actors in the old days?"
"Yes, that's right, but the artists in the old days were in a certain class, and today the public provides their support, so in such a society..."
"I understand. I'll read the details in the thesis."
Takeuchi stopped Sugiyama, who was ready to speak with vigor. Then he said, half to himself, "However, that will be difficult." The cheer squad flag he had seen earlier beside the gate came to his mind. Their posture closely resembled that of the American troops who styled themselves protectors of democracy and freedom. And so the situation was that people would be liable to think of the cheer squad as lovable youths brimming with childlike qualities. But Takeuchi, raised in time of war, had a sort of instinctive terror of such organizations. He considered them like, for example, the veterans' organizations before the war.
When the war commenced on the continent Takeuchi, like many other students at the time, criticized the military's oppression. The military known to Takeuchi, however, existed only in the newspapers. If he insisted on counting, there had been an officer deployed to his school, but no matter how he looked at it, the old major who lost his place and became a mere military drill instructor in the school after disarmament was not an oppressive military. He liked fishing and occasionally did say something dashing like the generals in the newspapers, but the major was too old too keep up that sort of overbearing attitude.
Another man, an older cousin of Takeuchi's, had gone from the academy to become a professional soldier, but when he was preparing for the war college examination he got tuberculosis; he spent several years recovering. And so when he saw Takeuchi, who was preparing for high entrance examinations then, he said he had decided to go for an ordinary university and gave up on joining the military.
"My promotion would be delayed and I wasn't confident of my physical strength, so I wanted to put my effort into the French that I'd been good at since my early school days and become a language officer. That way I could join the General Staff and go abroad as a headquarters attache," he said, and asked to be brought an Athenee Francais rulebook.
When thinking about the military the focus is on military personnel, but the military personnel Takeuchi knew could not be thought to differ from the general populace. It was a bewildering memory; he did not know what to detest.
At that time the boy from the sake shop had made a salt delivery and had engaged in a pointless conversation with Takeuchi to the effect that there was nothing as cheap as salt these days. He made a show of understanding the world political situation and Japan's situation at that time.
When he had completely forgotten that incident, his mother had returned from a neighborhood air raid exercise and asked, "What were you arguing with the sake shop man about?" The story was that he had made a speech in front of everyone saying that Takeuchi was unpatriotic and that students like him should be sent to the barracks to have some character pounded into them.
He was a reserve corporal in the Imperial Army, vice chairman of the neighborhood association, and a civil defense cadre. As the goods of the sake shop came to be rationed and the shop was open for fewer and fewer hours, the sake shop man lost the expression of a friendly, working-class merchant. In particular, after spending two years as a soldier over on the continent and being wounded there, he was a completely different person. He became fond of wearing the civil defense uniform, which had silver piping and lots of cherry blossom-shaped marks. In the amount of decoration it brought to mind a military field-grade officer. At first he wore gaiters over his shoes, but he came to prefer black leather boots and khaki riding trousers. He walked around the neighborhood carrying a bamboo riding crop, and yelled if there was no water in the fire prevention tanks or if the fire hooks and beaters were not in their designated places.
"Hey, who's responsible for the fire-fighting reserve?" he would yell, brandishing his crop at housewives who were startled and jumped away. Until four or five years earlier he had walked around holding a hand towel or fan at the Bon festival, bowing to them and saying, "Thanks for your patronage."
Of course, he had not bowed because he was beneath his customers at the sake shop. He did it as a necessity of commerce. Similarly, the reason that he wore the civil defense uniform with its air of a military uniform was almost certainly because the authority of the uniform built his own pride.
And so the housewives were frightened by the power that lay behind the uniform. There was an illusion that when he said it was for the nation, a lone sake shop master became an agent for "the military" holding absolute power and the power of life and death over the citizenry. To Takeuchi, "the military" was a thing that gave this this power to a sake shop man; it was not a simple organization, but something like the fear of power felt by all people including Takeuchi.
It was because of these war-time memories that Takeuchi felt terror of and antipathy for the cheer squad. Takeuchi had a dim sense that what was called a cheer squad did not just support sports teams, but was linked to the core of the university and tugged the student body and the atmosphere at the school in the direction favored by those who managed the university. No, they may not actually have that much power, but it seemed to be the same mechanism as when the sake shop master had controlled all the people of the neighborhood 20 years earlier. To prove that, however, was beyond Takeuchi. Rather, he might be able to prove it if he had the will, but for some reason Takeuchi could not bring himself to do so. That would be jumping into black water outside the pond of pure water in which Takeuchi was swimming. He wanted to live ignoring the black water, if possible.
It may be that the cheer squad was like the war-time civil defense corps and they maintained order at school by means of their wordless pressure. Takeuchi did not want to think so. He dreamed of lectures, and human connections between teachers and students, and the common pursuit of intellectual issues. He wanted to think order at the university could be maintained by such means, but Takeuchi was not confident that the human connections he had built with students were close enough that such a thing could be believed.
There were fewer than ten students like Sugiyama and Fujieda of whom he knew not only their faces and names, but also things like their living conditions and personalities. Almost all the students he taught were utter strangers. He was a teacher and they were students, but when class was over their relationship ended, like the fictional relationships among actors and extras assembled to film a scene in a movie.
However, there was the way of thinking that the school accepted students in order to collect tuition, the students entered school in order to receive a diploma, and the cheer squad exercised authority over the students so that the antagonistic positions of the two would not explode. If that way of thinking was correct, Takeuchi's existence was farcical. He was no more than a Pierrot employed by merchants and gangsters to dance around and soothe the customers.
As far as Takeuchi knew, none of the university people thought that selling diplomas to students constituted a school. He doubted, however, that a university that brought together people of that sort would become, in effect, something like the Greatest Common Factor of the individual members. Rather, those of the Greatest Common Factor would be the first to disappear; the individual gaudy personalities would tangle around like a wisteria vine and consequently would create a grotesque system, Takeuchi thought.
In regard to school facilities, even if there were something that Takeuchi considered an inconvenience, he would not speak up to improve it. That is, he had simply decided that wherever one went, one was certain to run into terms like "the economic difficulties of the schools." Therefore, if accusations of "academic commercialism" were made a student rallies, he felt like he himself was one of the villains who only took and had nothing to give, which he found very perplexing.
Takeuchi did not think the university where he worked was a bad university, or that it was more profit-oriented than ordinary universities. Still, if there were things that should be unacceptable to him, and thus to those who could determine their own individual will, those things had to be tacitly accepted as long as he was involved in the university, an organization that was above individuals. However, when the university was criticized and he had to bear a part of that criticism, he was at a loss as to how to relieve his own conscience.
That said, Takeuchi was not inclined to discover, discuss, and try to resolve various problems as part of the forces of right. That was because Takeuchi was bashful in front of strangers and was embarrassed to do such things and, moreover, he realized he was just one thin, unreliable vine growing in a university that was an arabesque design in which numerous personalities were tangled together.
In any case, Takeuchi was looking away, lost in such thoughts. His expertise was in social research, but he deliberately avoided making private universities and his own university the object of research. For that reason, he could not feel calm about a student he relied on doing the cheer squad as his graduation thesis.
"In any case the cheer squad symbolizes the evil of private universities. They believe that all evil can be counteracted with the term 'love of school.' To criticize the university is contrary to 'love of school.' By colluding with the cheer squad, the university ..."
Takeuchi did not know whether there was any collusion between the university and the cheer squad. Sugiyama, however, spoke as though that were a self-evident fact. If that could be proved, Sugiyama would criticize Takeuchi for remaining placid in the face of such a monstrous thing. No, the criticism would not come from Sugiyama, but from Takeuchi himself.
Takeuchi was not a career teacher. During his part-time job at a publishing house while in graduate school it had been decided to put out a social science collection and Takeuchi had been involved in that, first as a contract worker and then as a regular editor. At the recommendation of professor Saitou, one of the general editors of the collection, he came here to give lectures on public relations and mass media, and before long he had become a full-time teacher. After dragging him to the university, however, professor Saitou had been enticed to a more famous university and Takeuchi remained here alone.
Takeuchi had no desire to "follow Saitou to the afterlife," but the university without Saitou was uncomfortable; to start with, most of the teachers in the social sciences were theoretical social scientists with only Saitou and Takeuchi doing empirical research on social phenomena, and for a time Takeuchi had wondered about returning to journalism. His having become a "talent" teacher was a result of that, but in the end he could not leave the small pool of clear water that was the university.
There had been several reasons for leaving the publishing house. The live of a teacher with lots of free time had great charm. The occasion for leaving, however, was the time he overheard the president of the publishing house speaking to the director of operations. The president was a dog lover, and Takeuchi had laughed aloud when he heard from a colleague that every day before work the president brushed three dogs thousands or tens of thousands of times. He certainly was not making fun of the president; he laughed from a sense of human affection. Personal interests sometimes look strange in the eyes of others, but the interests themselves are not strange. They are part of the humanity of the person with the interests. There are people in the world who, just because they are thin, do the shape-up exercises of wealthy women who are not. There are university people who believe a morning walk is the basis of health.
He felt affection for the competant president who was always concerned with the health of his dog, but one day when he was proofreading the president came into the editorial office with the director. And he said, "What do you think? Can we make a profit putting out books that don't sell?"
Takeuchi, who was still young, was humiliated that his own conscience, sincerity, and love of learning would all be reduced to a bead on the president's abacus. He knew about that abacus. It was a small one, placed on the president's desk between the telephone and the inkstone case; part was blackened by finger stains and part had an amber glow from oil.
At that point Takeuchi made up his mind. His income would drop slightly but he decided to move to the university as professor Saitou had said. But thinking about it now that things had settled, there was no particular difference between the publishing house and the university.
Soon after the start of the new school year department chair Ishii called in Tanabe and Takeuchi. Takeuchi understood why. They had been short one full-time teacher since Saito left, and this was about filling the vacancy. The matter had been pending for some four years. Tanabe followed Ishii's teaching and academic tradition; the two had the same view on succession. One might hear, certainly, that Tanabe and Ishii were trying to join ranks to bring in someone of the same school of thought as themselves and hold Takeuchi down, but that was contrary to facts.
The two wanted to bring in a young empiricist like Takeuchi and at the same time make Takeuchi a professor in order to harmonize the two approaches. Considered superficially, nothing could be better for him. And as far as he knew, there was no sign at all that the two senior colleagues who had that idea had a secret intention of trapping him.
When it came down to accepting that over-optimistic view, however, mankind is always selfish and Takeuchi could not be satisfied. First, Tanabe was younger but his length of service at the university was greater. He also had a long research history, unlike Takeuchi who had come to teaching from journalism. Such a Tanabe had no reason to be happy that Takeuchi would become a professor before him. It would be different if Takeuchi were unequivocably superior to Tanabe as a scholar, but he probably didn't rate Takeuchi that highly. Ishii too had once casually said, "It's because Saitou-san is essentially a journalist," and the world "journalist" carried a more negative connotation than Takeuchi had imagined.
"I know you've washed your feet of journalism, Takeuchi-kun, but it must be terrible--that life."
"Yes. For one thing, you never have three hours to think about a problem."
"I read Simmel5) when I was a student. It took 40 years to pull a step away from that. I was slow to change."
At the time of this conversation, Takeuchi had thought professor Ishii was being as humble as possible and making a concession. But in fact Takeuchi felt strong revulsion toward his way of speaking about journalism with terms like "washed your feet" and "terrible." From the premise that academism was authentic and journalism was a counterfeit, Takeuchi was an admirable person who was able to climb up from the world of the counterfeit to the world of the authentic. Or rather, it was still not authentic, but Ishii was magnanimous enough to recognize it as authentic.
Takeuchi did not think of himself as having "washed his feet" in the sense in which Ishii spoke, and he did not consider his former place of employment a "terrible" place. He believed that his present self and his job were extensions of what they had been then. Because Ishii had taken a magnanimous attitude, however, he thought that to be magnanimous himself was his duty as the junior man. Since Ishii considered him to have climbed up to the world of the authentic, he ought to make a show of recognizing that his former place of employment was a terrible place.
It was natural to suppose that Tanabe, who had been taught by Ishii and then made an assistant professor, had the same way of thinking. Plainly put, he may have thought of Takeuchi as a non-academic "journalist." Tanabe, however, had certainly not made a gesture of that sort, and he had never said anything to students to make light of Takeuchi's survey-based academic method.
For that reason, though, Takeuchi would not take advantage of Tanabe's magnanimity.
He would make, even if not sincerely, the humble statement, "No, people like me may be called social scientists, but we only provide research materials for people like Tanabe-san." Then even if he did think that way, Tanabe would make an earnest denial with words like, "Nonsense! People like me use dated methods." However, Takeuchi sensed in this expression of Tanabe's something like contempt that Tanabe had for the "fashionable" research methods developed in America. Perhaps this was Takeuchi's distorted view. However much Takeuchi tried to persuade himself, he noticed himself deliberately collecting material for antipathy toward Tanabe.
When Tanabe bought a small German car, for example, he showed it to Ishii and Takeuchi. While he fussed with the equipment in a sunny spot on campus, he said, "Like they say, the quality of the metal and the precision of the machinery are far better in European cars, and particularly German cars."
Ishii gazed at the car through narrowed eyes and said, "Well, that's right. American cars look great, but they've got problems all the same."
Takeuchi recalled at that time that both Ishii and Tanabe had German as their first foreign language and studied German socialogy. Takeuchi had received his high school education during the final part of the war, so he had a hard time with German, his second foreign language, but his record included a year of study abroad in America. And so it wasn't that he thought the country of America or its products were so great, but he felt that he himself, rather than Tanabe, was the one qualified to criticize the U.S. Not only that, but the smile that had come to his face when looking at Tanabe's car would stiffen when he thought that Ishii's and Tanabe's unconscious worship of Germany was related to their looking down on Takeuchi.
Even so, it certainly was not the case that Takeuchi hated Ishii and Tanabe. Rather, he was grateful that two people whose way of thinking and academic path differed from Takeuchi's and who were joined by a close-knit relationship did not give the least sign of wanting to use those things to put pressure on Takeuchi. Not only that, the two were always exchanging knowledge and opinions with Takeuchi and there seemed to be a broadening of viewpoints on both sides. Takeuchi supposed there was no other relationship in which colleagues of different natures could live together better. It was not necessarily the case that favorable interpersonal relations like those at Takeuchi's school could be found everywhere just because they were collections of sociologists; he was aware of counter-examples at several other universities. Takeuchi respected Ishii's having built a system in which even an alien like himself could lead a relaxed life. If he took a step outside his own department there were people of a different temperment out there, and the fact that Takeuchi felt he could not contact those people without arming himself in some sense ought to be evidence that he and his colleagues had a good relationship within the department.
In any case, Takeuchi thought there had not been an occasion in which he discussed things with Tanabe or Ishii without their being able to understand each other. Even if they were unable to harmonize their views, he believed it was possible to show authority or deference to the other positions. Even so, discussion of the successor personnel issue had gone nowhere.
If Takeuchi accepted what the two said, became a professor, and brought in a young instructor or assistant professor, the present balance of interpersonal relationships was liable to crumble. For one thing, although it would depend on the qualifications of the young new hire, that might set a spark to relations among the three that could even be considered hypocritical. Even if it didn't come to that, Tanabe would have a reason to openly resent Takeuchi. He might be tempted to say that his tacit acceptance of Takeuchi's promotion was a matter of obligation to his former teacher.
From Ishii's side too, people were liable to say that he had created factions by promoting the younger Tanabe to professor first. No, rather than being concerned with how things looked, he had sought as a supervisor to have an arrangement of personnel that was well-balanced between the theoretical side and the empirical side, in order to be as fair as possible. Needless to say, the school's personnel quota would not permit simultaneous promotion of both men. Two professors, one assistant professor, and two instructors were stipulated, so it would be necessary to promote either Tanabe or Takeuchi in order to add an assistant professor and a replacement instructor.
To be honest, it was not that Takeuchi would not be dissatisfied if Tanabe were made a professor, even though he himself had taken the lead in advocating that. Takeuchi told himself he would have to endure that dissatisfaction in order to maintain a harmonious atmosphere within the department. That Tanabe had the same sort of uneasiness was something Takeuchi realized when the three had discussed the matter the previous autumn.
At that time Takeuchi, who thought it would never end if he kept holding back himself, had blurted out, "What about Maekawa? He went to America right after the war; his age is right between Ishii-sensei and us. So what if we invited him as a professor?"
Tanabe had looked uneasy for a moment but quickly said, "That would be all right. He's a civil servant now but there was a recent story at D University that he's had a hard time as a government official, so why don't we invite him?"
Because Tanabe had given his approval, Takeuchi knew that he didn't really like the plan. Anyone in Tanabe's position would understand that right away. Maekawa would come. In a few years Ishii would retire. The question that arose would again be whether Takeuchi or Tanabe would become a professor. That would be the same question as at present, but the positions of Tanabe and Takeuchi would be reversed. Maekawa was discreet and gentlemanly, like Ishii, and in the best sense he was still good even where he was not skilled. But simply put, when one of the two was made a professor, the other would have to wait another 10 years until Maekawa reached retirement age.
No, Tanabe was not that reluctant to be promoted. Or at least, like Takeuchi, he should not be reluctant. And so he had scowled for an instant, then felt ashamed of his mean calculations and approved Takeuchi's proposal. At the time Ishii had thought about it silently. Or rather than thinking, he had looked at his open hands, joining the fingertips in order starting at the thumbs, as thought he were checking whether both hands were the same size.
After a moment he said, "No, Maekawa-kun is a good man, but I can't approve of putting a new man ahead of you two. I'm proud of our university, and bringing in someone ready-made from the outside might make it look like you two were incompetant."
When Takeuchi went to Ishii's office as requested, Tanabe came too. The topic was of course selection of the new person. As he fiddled with the whiskers below his nose Ishii said, "The views of the three of us are not really aligned and the dean has said that it won't do to remain below strength for years, so allow me to make an arbitrary descision. I've asked Horikawa-kun, who has recently returned from America, to come as an instructor. The two of you will remain as assistant professors for now. It looks like you'll be promoted together when I retire."
Tanabe was the first to respond. "If that's possible I won't complain, but is it okay in terms of personnel strength?"
"Yes. Apparently an exception was requested. The dean joked that the Sociology Department is like Boyi and Shuqi.6) To tell the truth, I was happy to hear that. Is that all right, Takeuchi-kun?"
Takeuchi answered with a smile. That resolution should be satisfactory. This would make two each for the theoretical and empirical approaches. Because he had advocated putting Tanabe first and at the same time feared that, this outcome ought to be considered just what he had hoped for. Somewhere in the corners of his heart, however, there was discontent. Like the small flame of desire that burns at the bottom of one's consciousness when having a perfunctory talk with a beautiful woman, it was nothing to be particularly ashamed of, but it had the power to burn his heart even so.
If the constraints of the personnel table were removed, it would have been good to make both men professors. Tanabe surely thought the same. From Ishii's position, however, it might be that raising Tanabe, his former student, to the same level as himself was out of the question from the start.
When they returned to their office, Tanabe wanted to shake hands with Takeuchi.
"I'm glad. We can go on working without a fistfight or a falling out. I respect you, and it makes me proud to work alongside someone like you."
"Me too. With you here I think the department will work well. I'm grateful. I look forward to your continued help." And so the two sat at their individual desks as though embarrassed. There was a high bookshelf separating them. Takeuchi couldn't help feeling deeply moved. Takeuchi disdained sentimentality and heroic tales, and so he was shy about shaking hands like that. He thought it was as if the two had exchanged blows, in the sense of emotional confusion. It it were an argument, it would be possible to apologize and clear it up later. But in the case of an emotional handshake, there was no way to put it right. Takeuchi felt that dealing with Tanabe would be a heavy burden. He did not dislike him. The inability to curse him or ensnare him was awkward. Energy had built up unnoticed in his heart without being given a chance to explode. This might cause a breech with Tanabe or Ishii in the relatively near future. He felt a premonition that even if things went along without incident for several years, Ishii's retirement would be the occasion for he and Tanabe to become sworn enemies. And at the same time he wondered how heavy a burden he had become for Tanabe and Ishii. Two men were troubled by the one of him. If democratic principles were applied, should not Takeuchi be driven out?
Yukio was taken to a party welcoming new members of the cheer squad. As it turned out, there were 14 first-year squad members; as the first of those selected Yukio represented the first-year students in everything. This representation was certainly not of a nature to raise him above the other first-year students; the things that had to be done by first-year students all became Yukio's job.
"Oi, Toyoura!"
"Yes."
"Is that your name--Toyoura? Take this registration card to the Western Economic History instructor for me."
"Toyoura! The teacups weren't washed right. They smell."
But Yukio didn't mind being worked hard that much. He was happy that some 20 upperclassmen would remember his face and name before long. He went to campus early in the morning to open the room and sweep it. Since he had swept it before going home the night before there wasn't much more to do, but he let in fresh air and sprinkled the floorboards. Eventually squad members came.
"Oi, ashtray. Then some tea."
Yukio liked being busy. Now he did not have that discouraging feeling of knowing no one as he had when he first came to school. If he went all day without speaking he felt as if saliva would stick his mouth closed and he would be unable to open it. But now he knew over 30 people at school. Occasionally an upperclassman would treat him to coffee. Even when class was boring and he would doze off, he had to be alert in the squad room or an upperclassman would thump him. Yukio was an essential person to the cheer squad, even if it was as a waiter. In the classroom, however, he was no more than one of several hundred stones.
The welcome party was hosted by a squad old boy named Fujisawa who was also vice president of the alumni association. It was he who sat with his back against the alcove post in the large hall of an Asakusa beef restaurant. He was a fat man with a bald head like Hotei-sama,7) but he had such a fierce expression that he didn't resemble Hotei-sama in the least. Other squad old boys who had become productive members of society were lined up to his right and left; most of them seemed to be university officials and men who had taken over management of their parents' shops.
The squad captain and other current members stood in front of the line of old boys, forming the other three sides of a square. First the captain said a few words of thanks to open the welcome party. When he finished the squad member called out "Ousu" in unison and prostrated themselves in the direction of the tokonoma. Then the first year students lined up in front of Fujisawa. The captain introduced Yukio first. As he had been instructed in advance, Yukio scooted himself, still in seated position, to a point where he faced Fujisawa directly. Fujisawa didn't seem to hear the captain's introduction, but when the captain said "We request your kind patronage," he held out a large sake dish toward Yukio and the deputy captain poured sake. Yukio returned the cup.
When that was finished, he said "I request your kind patronage" himself and returned to his seat. The new students became full-fledged members of the squad only when they had finished this ceremony one by one. Then Yukio and the others received squad badges, one by one, from the hands of the flag bearer.
Although this was called a welcome party, Yukio's group were just lined up at the back. Only the third and fourth-year students were permitted the trays of food and drink; the second years served as waiters. Even so, after the second-year students received cups of sake they turned red in the face and, as ordered, chanted or did the cheer dance or sang the squad song.
Eventually Fujisawa said "I'm going;" he stood up and tossed a white envelop to the squad captain. The envelop considered funds for food and drink for Yukio and the others, as calculated by an upperclassman before the party began.
Carrying the white envelop, the second-year students led the first-year group to the second floor of a noodle shop near the university. The third and fourth-year students went on to an after-party somewhere with the old boys.
The second-year students were quite drunk from the start. And so they forced liquor on the first years. This seemed not to be a matter of treating them so much as making them drink as a penalty. Yukio came from rural Kochi prefecture and had known the taste of liquor since his high school years, and so he was better off than the first year students who turned green, looked seriously ill, and fell asleep, but he was losing his sense of reality, as though the party were a scene in a dream, and he felt that if he slackened his attention even a little it would crumple and disappear.
"Oi, Toyoura. That's strong sake, isn't it? It's good." Someone had just tapped him on the shoulder. It was the second-year student Kajiya.
"Toyoura. Do you know a coed named Murakoshi?"
Murakoshi... Yukio tried to gather confused, unreachable memories from the corners of his mind. It was somehow extremely troublesome, a job that he couldn't seem to do well.
"I'm not really sure. I don't know her, senpai."
"She's an unusually familiar girl, and wears skirts that give peeps at her thighs."
"Oh. I know her."
The pretty coed who had straightened out the cards in his first class with Takeuchi in the Sociology Department had been named Murakoshi. It was the first coed's name he had learned, but when it was spoken by Kajiya he had a hard time recalling it. It may also have been a name he did not wish to recall in this setting. Or perhaps he was just that drunk.
"Murakoshi-san is someone who helps out Takeuchi-san a lot, I think."
"Oi, listen everyone." Kajiya raised his voice. "I heard it from Toyoura--Murakoshi seems to have attached herself to Takeuchi this year."
"That's a good combination--Takeuchi seems to be the lecherous sort himself."
Everyone was yelling. Kajiya paid no attention and whispered in Yukio's ear.
"Women like that corrupt morals. This is for the dignity of our alma mater. You warn Murakoshi. If you don't I'll thrash you."
Kajiya gave Yukio's back one good thump and walked off swaying, holding a decanter of sake. Yukio tumbled over on the spot. As he tried to fall asleep, he could hear someone's small voice singing in his ear, "You and I are cherry trees blooming in the same season."
Takeuchi went to a newspaper company the morning of that day. There was round-table discussion on the results of a public opinion survey the company had conducted. It was at a strange hour, but that was because one of the participants was leaving on a journey early in the afternoon. While they were chatting afterwards, a reporter he knew said, "Takeuchi-san, they've really done you up," and handed him an evening edition hot off the press. The evening edition smelled of oil and the colors of the ink seemed to glow. What the reporter indicated was a review of an essay Takeuchi had written the previous month. Various things were written, but in short it said that viewed as a sociologist he was not rigorous enough and as an essayist he was too ambiguous.
That was unpleasant. If one tried not to be irresponsible when making statements about phenomena in the real world one became ambiguous. And because there were no statistics at all on the current issue, there was no choice but to use old statistics and data of a similar kind. If that is called a lack of rigor then no one, not just Takeuchi, would be able to speak about political or social issues. The article was written anonymously.
"Who wrote this."
"Well, that's something I can't say. Even though I know," the reporter replied with a grin. There was no ill intent; it had the feeling of someone who had gained a victory at mahjong teasing a gloomy opponent. Takeuchi smiled too.
"But now I'll leave no stone unturned searching for the writer."
"Even so, what do you think--about the way this is written?"
"It's not tall enough to damage the ceiling wiper or short enough to sweep under the veranda. It's a halfway sort of thing. But the truth is that, giant or midget, it's certain to be a handicap in terms of selling the essay."
"Not at all. But I thought your statements in the roundtable just now were a little weak. It seemed like if you'd gone one step further you'd have cut down the opposition."
"I see. The villain in the essay is you."
"Don't be funny. I'm the one who presented the evidence. Blaming the witness who brought in the weapon is ridiculous."
Takeuchi felt quite refreshed during the course of this conversation. He was angry, of course, at being being bad-mouthed, but it felt good that his work would draw an immediate reaction. Had it not taken four or five years at school just to decide on one appointment? He had not heard any poisonous words at all during that period. He had tried to be as impartial as possible, and when he did make a statement any slight deviation from the line of impartiality had been to advocate a position to the advantage of the other side. Saying that Takeuchi's statements at the roundtable discussion did not go one step further was probably an indication of that sort of attitude fostered at the university.
He submitted articles to a university periodical. When he did he would receive a few polite compliments, but that was all. A little later there would be signs of spiteful mutterings being whispered in Takeuchi's vicinity, but those never reached his ears no matter how hard he listened.
However, without question he existed in one more world. Hadn't this reporter been happy to bring the newspaper with the article that would anger Takeuchi? If it had been Tanabe, he might have had the consideration to keep the article from Takeuchi's eyes if possible. This was a world in which it was permissible to express anger and antipathy unvarnished.
"You know, I'm thinking about quitting the school."
"Yes, but if you want to get into mass communications ..."
As he spoke he had meant it as a joke, but as he traveled back from the newspaper company to the university Takeuchi did think it might be better to quit the university. But because he was driving his car, the greater part of his awareness was taken away by the surrounding cars, people, and road conditions. Just a little part of the back of his head was left to think about other things. And that thinking was broken off when, for example, he suddenly stepped on the brakes.
If he didn't have a meeting at the university at 2 that afternoon he would rather drive straight to someplace in Oku-Tama. The new greenery along the upper reaches of the Akigawa would still be beautiful. He could stretch out on a boulder in the riverbed, or drink the cool water. Then he could tear the newspaper containing the insulting article to shreds and scream "You idiot!" until his throat ached. He could find a sandy spot and roll around cursing and pounding the sand with his fist.
But he had to go to the university and attend the meeting looking as if nothing had happened. The topic was written as "campus discipline and maintaining order outside class." It would deal with problems like neighborhood children coming to play and throwing rocks in the swimming pool or breaking windows and, in warm weather, dating couples.
There would be none of these meetings if he quit the university. If he got angry he could write just what he thought. There would be no trifling concerns about upsetting his colleagues or students. Things might not be quite so good economically, but he could relax and live like a human even so. But perhaps he was actually unsuited to that sort of rough life. Was it part of his own basic nature, rather than a practice he had learned in the workplace, that when he wanted to say something he would reconsider it several times and look around at people's faces before speaking without haste?
It was not that he did not understand that either the university or mass communications would be the same in that regard. And if he didn't quit it would be just as well if Tanabe did. However, Takeuchi had grown tired of the work of a teacher.
Since there was still time before the meeting he was going back to his research room first, but in front of his room he found Murakoshi Kazuko arguing with an unknown male student.
"Sensei!" Kazuko called out when she noticed Takeuchi. "This student is saying rude things. Just like a first-year student."
Takeuchi looked at the student. He was a young man with jet-black pupils. Even though Kazuko had accused him, he looked calm and made no effort to escape.
"Your college?"
"Social Sciences."
"That's my place too. Well, come into my office."
Kazuko tried to enter with them, but Takeuchi kept her out of the room. The student sat in a chair as though he were taking an oral exam, and folded his arms.
"Your name?
"Toyoura Yukio.
"What were the rude things you said?"
"I asked her to examine her conscience."
"Conscience? Do you know something about her?"
"No, nothing."
"Isn't that unusual? To ask someone to examine his conscience one should know him and know his bad points."
"I understand that. Her clothes are too flashy."
"Yes. That's true. There certainly are some issues with her clothing. Even I have thought of pointing out certain things. But even if it is something that has an educational purpose when a teacher says it, don't you think it is impolite for as student, especially a low-ranking student like you, to be impolite to an older student?"
"Yes. But I was told to by my seniors."
Only at that moment did Takeuchi notice that Toyoura was in the cheer squad.
"By your seniors do you mean the cheer squad?"
"Who was it that told you?"
"I can't say that."
"Did this senior convey the message to you on someone's command?"
Yukio tipped his head as though he were really trying to remember.
"I don't know that. But I do what I am ordered by my seniors. That's because 'Absolute Obedience Is Our Motto.'"
"Then if your seniors told you to die, would you die?"
"Yes. but our seniors care about us, so I don't think they would order anything unreasonable."
Takeuchi thought of Sugiyama, who would deal with cheeer squads in his graduation thesis. And so he asked Yukio's motive for joining the squad.
"In the end, university life is too tepid. When a senior slaps your cheek it draws out a spicy feeling. If all the students had a tense existence like we do, I think it would be a better school."
Takeuchi laughed without thinking. It was strange that this new student would have the same way of thinking as himself.
Although it was painful to be insulted in the newspaper, it certainly improved his feelings. He thought it was like leaving the clear pool of the university and entering the fierce current of a stream. That is why he wondered about abandoning the stagnant, confining pool to live in the stream. This first-year student also thought the university was boring. He must have loved the sense of resistance in a life of being beaten and yelled at by his seniors.
"Are you in one of my classes?"
"Yes."
"Is it interesting?"
Yukio squirmed and lowered his eyes. "I don't really understand it."
Takeuchi laughed and tapped the student's shoulder. "All right, you can go back. Since you prefer a harsh life, that's fine. But stop pushing your way of doing things onto others."
Yukio was aware from the first that he would be scolded when he was called into Takeuchi's room. At the least he would have to be called ("Oi, Toyoura! Come here a second") back behind the room divider by an older member of the squad and scolded while standing at attention for at least an hour. It was not a rare thing to be hit, but when a senior shouted, as loud as he could, "Understand?" directly into his ear, his eyes watered from the pain. Then he couldn't hear anything for a while, whatever was said to him.
Takeuchi, however, simply asked quietly what he had said to Murakoshi Kazuko and did not become angry or say a word that could be taken as a reprimand. At times he laughed out loud.
"And so, Murakoshi-san asked you what colors were suited to love of the school, or how many centimeters a skirt suited to the dignity of a university student should come from the floor? And how did you answer her?"
"I said it was obvious in light of common sense. Then Murakoshi-san said, 'Do you mean I lack common sense?' "
"Do you think Murakoshi-kun has common sense?"
"I do not."
"Hmm. I more or less agree with that. How about you?"
Yukio considered for a moment. "I think I do. People who think there is something wrong with the way Murakoshi-san dresses all have common sense."
Takeuchi laughed aloud again. Yukio felt uncomfortable and grimaced. It was better to be scolded. It would be better to be yelled at, or hit, or to have his ear shouted into. Those things were like a hammer with which he could forge himself. But to be laughed at and made a fool of seemed like having water splashed on his heart that was burning red-hot.
He felt that Takeuchi was not so much scolding him as asking him this and that in a semi-interested way. He could not lie to a teacher, but even so, he was not inclined to plead his own feelings.
It seemed that Takeuchi was asking most warmly just why he had warned that Kazuko's clothing was too flashy. And so several times he said "Sensei, the truth is ..." or "But ..." and tried to confide what was at the bottom of his own heart, but when he did he ran into the smile that came to Takeuchi's face and the words he had started to say melted away.
His immediate reason for speaking to Kazuko was his having been ordered by Kajiya, but that was not his most important motivation; he had begun to have a stifling interest in Kazuko.
At the start, when he had seen her picking up cards in the Introduction to Sociology chass, he thought that never in his life had he been so close to such a beautiful woman. This was his biggest shock since the time when his home town had been the location for a TV film and he had joined the crowd that watched the leading actress from a spot several tens of meters away. She was wearing a pink costume that was like a thin rubber film, so every time she walked or crouched the outline of her body could be clearly seen in silhouette, which disturbed the feelings of Yukio watching from afar.
But this actress had been too distant in any case. By way of comparison, what Yukio had sensed in regard to Kazuko at that time were only fragmentary things like her long white fingers and red nails and a faint aroma of perfume that was conveyed along with her warm body temperature. Yukio, however, was all the more strongly stimulated because of that. Although he wanted to assemble those parts to create a complete image, there were too many blank parts. The actress he had seen when in high school seemed to be transparent in every regard, but Kazuko seemed to hold his interest because there was too much about her that he did not understand.
Eventually, however, Yukio knew that it was not he alone who was interested in her. The occasion for that was Kajiya's command, and shortly after that he learned from an upperclassman's comment that her nickname was "Bebe-chan."
Because of her dress, her attitude toward teachers, and the way she walked, she was talked about almost daily. Or rather, gossip about her wsa frequently the occasion for upperclassmen in the cheer squad to make rude jokes about her. Because the Kazuko in the stories was depicted as a filthy sow, for a long time Yukio did not realize this was the Muraoka Kazuko that he knew.
When Yukio encountered Kazuko he always remembered to move as though greeting her. But if their eyes met and Yukio started to move his hand to remove his cap, Kazuko looked away. As far as Yukio was aware, she had no close friends. She seemed to enter and leave the department a lot, but she did not appear to be the loose woman the upperclassmen spoke of. If the rumors were true, she would have shown a more familiar look when her eyes met Yukio's, or been surrounded by male students, or laughed elegantly like a queen.
However, Kazuko was always alone in the classroom. Yukio attended the same classes, to the extent that circumstances allowed, but Kazuko always took a seat on the front row where there were few students and waited, with her chin on her hands, until class began. Sometimes a student would approach and start to say something, but she seemed to make only unfriendly replies.
In other words, Yukio thought Kazuko was out of bounds because she was too beautiful, her clothes were too flashy, and her style was too bold. No, even if her clothes had not been what they were, she would have stood out because she was too beautiful. If she had dressed more conservatively she might not be noticed by so many students, in which case no one would make lewd remarks about her body. Even though she was a sincere and excellent coed, she was unfairly embarrassed by many students. Yukio thought that was too bad for her.
Right, then, since he had been commanded by Kajiya, he would admonish her once, at length. It might be that she would accept the warning. No, she might sincerely thank him. And so when Yukio spotted her in the corridor of an unoccupied classroom, he resolved to call out her name.
"Umm, Murakoshi-san."
Kazuko turned her usual cold face towarad Yukio. It was not that he had been unaware of that expression beforehand, but Yukio was unnerved. He had the mistaken impression that because he had been thinking about her for a long time, a more intimate relationship could come about. In reality, however, she didn't even know his name. Still, Yukio went on speaking as deliberately as possible in order to put into words the things he had been thinking the night before.
"You may think that what I have to say is uncalled for, but I really feel sorry for people like you."
Kazuko tried to look as if she were recoiling slightly and then attempted to ignore Yukio, who was still speaking, and walk off.
"Murakoshi-san, because you are dressed in that way ... Everybody spreads rumors about you. A person with common sense, thinking of the honor of the university ..."
Yukio stood blocking her way, and hit her from the side with whatever came to his mind. He suddenly realized that he no longer had anythig to say; he closed his mouth. He gasped for air and made a large movement with his shoulders. It was just then that Takeuchi called to the two.
The ten minutes talking with Takeuchi in the research room was an experience of anger for Yukio, but looking at it afterwards he thought of it instead with a sort of sense of victory in that he had not exposed his own true feelings to Takeuchi; he even had a sense of superiority over Takeuchi. But when he recalled Murakoshi Kazuko his face reddened and he wanted to tear his hair. She had certainly misunderstood the reasons he gave her, he thought, and Yukio was miserable. He had no ill intent and had only criticized her way of dressing. However, he had wanted to say that there are numerous vulgar fellows at the university and it would not be in her interest to become an object of their curiosity. He had spoken of love of school and pride in the university and that was all. When the time had come, these words that he always heard from the upperclassmen filled his mouth and issued from it.
It was painful for him to recall the incident, but encountering her at school was even more painful, in a sense. He wanted to clear up the misunderstanding if there were a chance, but that would not be possible with numerous students around. It was rare for just the two of them to be together as on that occasion.
When Kazuko saw Yukio her beautiful lips twisted into a wry smile. When that happened he had the sense that she remembered his foolishness and had to laugh. Yukio could not bear that wry smile. There was nothing he could do but turn red and turn aside.
One day Kajiya called to Yukio. "Oi, did you talk to Murakoshi?"
"Yes, I did."
"What happened?"
"I was seen by Takeuchi and scolded."
"Idiot! But this Takeuchi's a strange fellow. Maybe he really is up to something with Murakoshi. Maybe he's in the research room researching her nude."
"No, there's no sign of that, though."
"A joke. Next time, since I'm telling you, bring her to outside the squad room. While you're giving her a hard time I'll come out and smooth things over."
What for?"
"To give me an opportunity for a date with her. Don't worry about it. Once I've made friends with her I'll explain everything, and you won't be the villain forever.
"I understand."
He didn't want to play such a disagreeable role. But the commands of his seniors required absolute obedience, and if he as a first-year student were to like a third-year coed he would be laughed to scorn as one who disrupted order in the school. Yukio tried to think of his feelings toward her as a matter of respect for a woman who was his senior. Perhaps she would not date a man like Kajiya. Besides that, Yukio thought, eventually she would understand his feelings and would certainly give him guidance as a responsible older student.
On several occasions Yukio, as Kajiya instructed, waited for her in a stand of trees between the school building and the back gate. Kajiya had said that she sometimes passed that way when leaving school in the evening. But after having to wait a number of times Yukio felt that he didn't want to do anything that he could do, and so he actually felt better when he told Kajiya that she wasn't coming so it would be better to go home. Therefore, one day when he saw Kazuko walking quickly toward the trees, Yukio was conscious of the blood draining from his cheeks.
"Murakoshi-san, I have something to say."
Kazuko stopped still and put her hand to her open mouth as though to suppress a scream when she saw Yukio.
"I have something to say," he repeated, but Yukio was well aware that his voice was trembling pitifully. He could not get started. If he spoke up it would only further deepen the misunderstanding. In no time he had forgotton that he was supposed to take her next to the room where Kajiya was waiting. He felt that he had stopped her in order to clear up the misunderstanding.
"Please listen to my feelings."
Kazuko abruptly turned around and started to run away. It would be impossible to clear up the misunderstanding if she got away now. Moreover, Kazuko would complain to the school that he had ambushed her with impure intentions. He had to stop her somehow.
Yukio ran afetr Kazuko and grabbed her arm. The books and handbag she was carrying fell to the ground. Kazuko shreiked unintelligibly.
"Shut up! Be quiet. I won't do anything."
Yukio tried to close her mouth. His finger was bitten. He shook his finger free and grabbed her throat. He thought that stopping her breath would be a good way to cuiet her down. Kazuko shreiked again. Yukio wrestled her down. He wanted to shut her up by whatever means and then have her take the time to listen to him.
However, Yukio had lost confidence that when he was later questioned by employees of the Student Affairs Office it would be seen as a fact that he had wanted to have a talk and clear up a misunderstanding. He could smell dust and the crushed grass along with Kazuko's cosmetics and the smell of her body. As he was holding Kazuko down, Yukio could no longer understand why he had done such a thing. He was only aware of pinning down her light body.
When he was pulled to his feet by an employee of the Student Affairs Office Yukio suddenly realized not so much what he had done as what he would be thought to have done. It was regret like that when one suddenly realizes, outside the exam room, an error on a test question one thought he had right. Kazuko quickly straightened her soiled clothing, picked up her books, and ran toward the school building without looking back. The employee confiscated his student identification and left after saying, "I'll take charge of this. You will be asked about the circumstances by the dean of students tomorrow, so come to the Student Affairs Office at 10:00."
Yukio wandered back to the cheer squad room. Kajiya was waiting alone.
"What about Murakoshi."
Yukio told what had happened.
"Did you mention me?"
"No. That's because I forgot all about you at the time. This is my personal problem."
Kajiya was silent for a moment and chewed his nails. "Even so, I'll go along tomorrow. I'm responsible. I'll explain everything to the dean, so don't worry."
Kajiya patted Yukio's shoulder as he spoke.
Takeuchi took part in a monthly committee meeting. "Monthly" didn't mean it met on a regular schedule; it met at least one time each month and was monthly in that sense. It investigated the origins and circumstances of such things as complaints from the neighborhood, damage to the school building, and incidents involving students, and made preparatory moves such as drafting recommended disposition prior to submission to the faculty council. Takeuchi's turn on the committee was for six months beginning in April
One day he was summoned along with five or six colleagues; they were told of the incident of Toyoura Yukio attempting to rape Murakoshi Kazuko.
"But I wonder if this is the truth," one of the committee members asked.
"Yes, the victim made that complaint, and Toyoura has confirmed that he had such an intention. I heard screams, and since the faculty council had decided days earlier to establish a patrol after classes I ran to the location. However, a student named Kajiya, a cheer squad member senior to Toyoura, testified that Toyoura had no such intent and only went to get Murakoshi on Kajiya's instructions."
"There are tight bonds within the cheer squad, though, and they cover for each other a lot, so I'm not sure how true that testimony is."
"Kajiya said he is interested in Murakoshi, but Toyoura said he is attracted to her himself. Murakoshi also said that he had forcibly accosted her previously, and that Takeuchi-sensei took note of that."
Saying this, the employee of the Student Affairs Office turned his gaze as if to encourage Takeuchi to speak. Takeuchi explained the situation at that time and added, "Toyoura spoke as though he had been ordered by an older student. That older student may well have been Kajiya. But I didn't get the impression that Toyoura was a bad sort. Rather, an unsophisticated and sincere ..."
Takeuchi recalled Yukio's dark pupils. "An agreeable student, rather. I got the impression, however, that he tends to reposition blame, or that he has a strange pride or sense of mission inferred from a narrow love of school, and that he gets angry about slack students, showy women like Murakoshi, and the overheated atmosphere of the university."
"That's right. I met him this morning and had the same feeling. Toyoura frankly admitted he had done a bad thing and apologized to Murakoshi, and he insisted that Kajiya was completely uninvolved. Unsophisticated and manly, I thought."
Takeuchi's words were backed up by Professor Hayashi, who directed the Student Affairs Office. Professor Kuroda, the committee chairman who had been silent to that point, said, "How about it? If there is anyone who wants further investigation of the facts ..."
No one spoke.
"In that case we'll regard the facts as understood and ask the director of Student Affairs for the recommended disposition."
Professor Hayashi opened a university notebook and spoke as though giving a recitation.
"The direct damage amounts to a button lost from the skirt of Murakoshi Kazuko and stitches torn out in her blouse, but because this is a matter of attempted rape of a woman I think it cannot be handled without punishment. But as Takeuchi-sensei just said, the person in question is an unsophisticated male, and also a minor, so I think that expulsion or compulsory withdrawal would damage his future. Fortunately this person only entered school three months ago, so if he was accepted at a university somewhere next year it would be as if he were a one-year rounin,8) and so, in brief, I think Toyoura should be issued a request to withdraw."
After a moment there were expressions of the view that withdrawal was too harsh or that a one-year suspension would be the same as withdrawal. And then there were statements that it would be really difficult if Murakoshi were to come face-to-face with Toyoura after the incident, and that if the incident became known to other students Toyoura's life would become even more distorted. In the end the conclusion followed the opinion of the director of Student Affairs. When Takeuchi checked his watch it had taken nearly an hour to reach a conclusion. The faculty council would probably deal with the matter in five minutes. When he stood up from his chair along with the other committee members, the director of Student Affairs spoke in a loud voice.
"Oh, I forgot. Since then Murakoshi has dressed more soberly. That, at least, is a good outcome of the incident."
Several of the committee members laughed aloud.
As Takeuchi had supposed, Toyoura's case was resolved in the faculty council in the form of a requested withdrawal. There was no announcement, but he heard from an assistant, just once, a rumor that the offender in a rape case had quit the school. Because Takeuchi had frowned on that occasion, the assistant had thought the topic might be unpleasant to him and had changed the subject.
The reason Takeuchi had frowned was that he had recently become sensitive to the phrase, "quit the school." He had spoken the words to his wife at home once.
"Oi, I think I'll quit the university." When he said this, Takeuchi was washing the car with her. They were to take a family drive early the next morning.
"That's fine," Asako replied very briefly. Perhaps she couldn't hear him over the sound of the water, Takeuchi thought. She may well have misheard "university" as "staying up late," for example, or "smoking."
"It's the university--what I'm quitting."
"That's fine. You're quitting, you said." Asako sounded angry. She seemed to be irritated that he repeated himself rather than that he was quitting.
"I'll make money somehow, but it may be a little less."
"It can't be helped."
What made Takeuchi uneasy was that Asako had assented so simply. He felt like the entire responsibility for the matter was being pushed onto himself.
"It's not that there is anything that could be called a reason, though." Takeuchi gave this explanation as he wrung out a rag and wiped water from the car body.
"You said you got along with everyone, somehow."
"Umm. That's right. There haven't been any fights or disagreements. It's not that I'm dissatisfied with my treatment."
Takeuchi recalled a slight disappointment when he learned neither he nor Tanabe would become professors, but he had quickly pushed that aside.
"More than that, they never complain that I take jobs outside the school and don't study or anything. I have to feel gratitude for such magnanimity."
But was this actually magnanimity? It might be that because of a certain reserve no one ever spoke out but they were making such criticisms of Takeuchi in their hearts. Takeuchi was no longer in active service as a scholar. Even if he adopted a pose of doing research, this was no more than a pretext for the purpose of deceiving himself and others.
"Anyway, if I think about it there's no excuse. But working there is hard."
"I know," Asako said brightly as she changed the water in the bucket.
"How do you know?"
"Because I live with you. Suppose there's a phone call; when I say 'It's from school,' you make a really sour face. When letters come you sort out the ones from the school and read them alone in on the bed. It's like you had a secret woman or something and you were reading a blackmail note from her man."
"But I do the same thing when I read a newspaper with criticism of me, don't I?"
"But then you talk to me right away. You say, 'This idiot has written such and such.' If I soothe you properly you calm down. But you don't say a word about school. That's when you draw inside yourself."
Asako was probably more aware of his feelings than Takeuchi was himself. Takeuchi had not consciously thought that work was disagreeable. If he did think about it, he just considered it a nuisance that he had to go out when he was relaxing at home. But now it looked like there were deeper roots to this.
For a long time Takeuchi had compared his life at school to a pool of clear water in the midst of dark, polluted water, but its cramped closeness had begun to be unbearable.
Professor Ishii had decided on a successor, but it may have been that both he and Tanabe would have thought ill of Ishii if he had dealt with the vacancy as soon as it came about. But because Ishii was only deciding a single successor, he took a long, long time. During that period Takeuchi had ceased to care. Any dissatisfaction with the situation took second place to the feeling that a decision would be better.
However, the process would certainly have gone more smoothly if Takeuchi had not been around. Because of the teacher-student relationship between Ishii and Tanabe, there might be special language between the two of them, and an ease of understanding. Adding Takeuchi to that made talk more complicated.
When Saitou, who had moved to another university now, was present, a sociologist from England named Dawson who corresponded with him had paid a vist. He said he wanted to investigate Japan's system of subcontracting and back-street worshops, so Takeuchi went along with Saito and they walked around the left bank of the Sumidagawa for several days. He always spoke in English, even to Saitou, whenever Dawson was nearby. Even if it was only to consult about lunch, he felt that in English only his gestures were expansive and he couldn't really communicate what was in his heart as he could in Japanese.
"By the way, professor Saitou, it's ten to twelve now, but ..."
"Yes, yes, we should take our lunch. Now, are there any eating places, Takeuchi, that you can recommend to professor Dawson?"
"I recall that there is a restaurant well-known for horsemeat near here."
"That is certainly worth considering. Professor Dawson, ..."
As the conversation went on he became more and more tired of it. He had the sense that Saitou's personality changed and he was talking with a hitherto unknown stranger.
While Saitou was at the university Takeuchi had contact with Saitou alone and had little to do with Ishii and Tanabe. For that reason he had no memory of the form in which he had conversed with those two. But when it was decided that Saitou would leave and he would use the same research room as Tanabe, it was certain he would not be able to have the same sort of conversations as,
"Saitou-san, what about lunch?"
"Right--you pick some place suitable."
Because of the polite speech and the effort to put them each in a position of equality, Takeuchi did not feel that he had made contact with the man called Tanabe, even though they had been together for several years. He had understood from their first meeting that he had a cold, introspective personality, but beyond that he felt an impatience like that when he spoke to someone using a foreign language.
If what Takeuchi felt was correct and he was unable to skillfully convey his views to Tanabe and Ishii, then there was no one at the university with whom he could communicate. He must be the odd man out, Takeuchi thought. He ought to feel sorry for himself being the odd man, but that wasn't it; instead he felt that because of his presence the sociology department was not functioning as it should. If Takeuchi had quit along with Saitou, then Ishii would have been able to consult Tanabe's views and find a successor more smoothly. With Takeuchi not there, some young person serving as a concurrent instructor would have been appointed in his place. Perhaps he had robbed the young person of his chance.
If Takeuchi told Ishii that he wanted to quit, Ishii would probably try to keep him on.
"No, if you quit on me, my sociology department will be crippled. You are without question and essential presence, so ..."
Takeuchi was not one to doubt Ishii's sincerity at such a time, but at the same time it might be that in some corner of his heart Ishii was smiling at Takeuchi, and that Ishii was disgusted by that feeling and wanted to crush it. Perhaps that was disgust, and perhaps the most straightforward human feeling. It might be that when Takeuchi said he would quit Ishii and Tanabe would have to recognize of their ugly feelings. When Takeuchi was gone, because of that the two would be aware of the narrowness of their motivation every time something came up. Without doubt, Takeuchi's presence had an adverse effect on the consciences of the two men.
This was, moreover, something that could be said of Ishii and Tanabe. While Ishii's presence put a certain pressure on Takeuchi's heart, Tanabe was even more oppressive in a different sense. If Ishii were to say he was leaving the school, both Takeuchi and Tanabe would try to have have him reverse his decision somehow, and although that would not be just from perfunctory feelings, both of them would sense somewhere in their hearts an invigoration like that of the disappearance of a neighboring house that was blocking the sunshine on one's own yard.
As for Tanabe, perhaps Ishii and Takeuchi could discover common interests. That he apparently could not exist without putting a heavy burden on others weighed on Takeuchi's heart. It was okay as long as he could fling this heavy burden at others in the form of anger or hatred or contempt, but at school Takeuchi had to put on a front of not feeling the heavy burden, the same as Ishii and Tanabe, and endure it. Because the three made it a sort of rule not to wound each other, the one who quit would become the victim, and at the same time the good person. Takeuche suddenly and happily imagined a scene in which he quit, Ishii and Tanabe were pained in their consciences, and they tried to conceal the fact.
If he had thought that no other livelihood was possible he would have had to endure it, but Takeuchi knew another world. There, something that disgusted one could only be thought of as disgusting. It was not that there was no artificial collusion, but if one did not like it, it was possible to break away in that world.
"You know, I think I could still be a journalist. I'm too old to be an editor, but I think I could get along writing articles." Takeuchi caught Asako's attention once more as he finished cleaning the car and was putting things away.
"If that's what you want to do it can't be helped. You were an editor when we married and the irregularity of life was a bother, but in the middle of that you switched to the university. Life became regular, but at first our income fell and it was strange to have you at home all the time. I don't know if I underestimate people or if you make too much of them, but we'll get by somehow."
"Do you ever feel like your existence is an inconvenience to me, or the kids, or people in general?"
"Never. For one thing, if I weren't around the children wouldn't have anything to eat and you would end up bringing home some worthless woman." Asako laughed as she sprinkled the used water on the shrubbery.
"I suppose so. Depending on how you look at it, I like to stretch myself to live, and you and the kids can get along too. But there is another side to it. If I stretch myself, there are people who get pushed. You live on the money I earn, and so you become subservient."
"I know what you're saying, but the money isn't a problem. We can get by somehow for a year or two even with no income."
Gazing at the region of Asako's belly, which had put on weight lately, Takeuchi felt a sense of both her reliability and her annoying self-confidence.
Sugiyama came to Takeuchi's house one day. He went through to the study and spoke excitedly, without any preliminary greeting, when Takeuchi appeared.
"Sensei, I want to give up doing my graduation thesis on cheer squads." It was clear that he had encountered some obstacle and was upset, but did not seriously intend to drop the topic.
"Do you? I'm thinking about giving up the university."
Sugiyama was silent for a moment, as though taken aback, before speaking.
"All right. Sensei isn't a quitter. But quitting may really be best."
Asako brought tea in. After a swallow of tea Sugiyama seemed to settle down considerably.
"In any case, it's a terrible school. When you start to look into it, it's a quagmire. This was in a novel about a negro, but the story is that this brilliant negro who was studying sociology went crazy while he was investigating the lives of his fellows because they were so terrible."
"I don't think you've gone crazy yet. And if you think about it, 'quagmire' is a little extreme."
"It's almost impossible, though, to investigate it as an actual issue."
Once he calmed down, Sugiyama began to explain the situation to Takeuchi. He had gone to the cheer squad hoping to be shown materials, but there was nothing but a flowery squad history in one volume. It was a conventional history that stated the squad had been formed with the mission of achieving the ideals of the university and had developed year by year until reaching the present.
"It sounds like the history of Japan that we studied during the war," Takeuchi interjected. What Sugiyama wanted to look into was the ties between the cheer squad and the university administration and alumni association, but there was not a word about such things in the squad history. There were only abstract descriptions of situations like a certain trustee helping out the squad at his own expense and squad old boys becoming leaders of the alumni association and developing increased ability to lead the mass of students. And so he had gone to see old boys of the alumni association and asked for memories, journals, or letters from their time in school.
And then he had received a letter with a female signature. The content was innocent enough; it began by saying she was a fan of the university Sugiyama attended, and that she had heard from a friend that he was collecting records of the cheer squad. Perhaps the friend was a student Sugiyama was acquainted with.
The letter went on to say, "There is something I have to tell you. The company president that I'm a secretary for is a former captain of the cheer squad at your university. He's always talking about his schoold days. He's a cheerful and friendly person. If you could visit the company I'd introduce you, so won't you come?"
Up till then Sugiyama had avoided senior members of the squad. He thought they would sound hackneyed. But the girl's letter attracted him. He thought it would be good to hear an evaluation of the present cheer squad from the mouth of a former captain.
It was a printing company the girl worked at. The plant was right next to the reception office, and notice forms for Sugiyama's university were printed there.
Although the letter to Sugiyama had been somewhat familiar, the girl who sent it was strangely stiff and looked rather awkward. Sugiyama thought she might be embarrassed to have written such a letter.
The president was a robust, middle-aged man; he knit his brow on hearing Sugiyama's name. He certainly did not seem to be a cheerful and friendly person. Without removing the cigarette from his mouth he spoke in a low, forced voice.
"What do you think you're trying to do? Cheer squad matters, you know, it's just what's in the squad history. Nothing else is allowed."
Sugiyama realized then that he had fallen into a trap.
"Not at all--I'm just writing a graduation thesis."
"The School of Sociology or Social Sciences Department or whatever is a den of filth. As an old boy of the university, and of the squad, I can't permit this sort of thing. My company gets all the university's print jobs and my employees are all alumni; I need to take care of them."
"Not at all--I just..."
"In any case you'd better think about it. I hear this psychology of yours says sons want to sleep with their mothers. How can that sort of degraded psychology understand the beautiful family relationships of our country? Sociology is the same thing; how could people like you bear to understand something like love for your alma mater? Ridiculous."
"Right."
Sugiyama was terrified and didn't have the courage to argue. He felt that if he replied the wrong way he might not leave the plant without incident. The president pushed a button and summoned the secretary.
"Oi! Call two men from the labor relations section."
Before long two rough looking young men came. The president faced Sugiyama and said, "These are seniors of yours. Thanks to these seniors, our plant hasn't had any strikes at all."
The two offered to shake Sugiyama's hand. Their faces were smiling broadly, but they grasped his hand with menacing force. He barely kept himself from crying out.
When he was released he went straight to Takeuchi's place. On the way his terror gradually turned to anger. When he saw Takeuchi's face he spat out , "Sensei, I want to give up doing my graduation thesis on cheer squads." Sugiyama claimed that the university was full of corruption and the cheer squad was covering it up.
"But there is no proof in what you say," Takeuchi said as if to calm the agitated Sugiyama. "Certainly, in the cheer squad, the bonds between senior and junior members are strong. And so it may be that a lot of former squad members are gathered in one company. And if that company has close relations with the university, that may well be just a matter of human feelings. And the company president who intimidated you may just have a sort of mania; it's too much to assume he put pressure on you at the direction of prominent people in the university. Rather, it should be called an exaggerated sense of self-importance."
"Do you really think so, sensei?"
"Well, man-made institutions all have defects to some degree. But I'm not a prominent person in the university. Even if I discover defects, it's not my job to correct them. And if defects are discovered by someone as powerless as me, nothing will come of it. They say that it leads to trouble if a lowly person gets a jewel,9) but if he has poison, that could cause problems too."
"Of course you'd feel that way as long as you're getting a salary."
"Don't be stupid. Didn't I just say I was quitting the school? But the reason isn't what you think. The university is too good for a worthless person like me."
Sugiyama looked at Takeuchi in surprise. Takeuchi felt that he had suddenly grasped his true reason for wanting to leave the university. "That's right. The university is all fine people. My colleagues, the senior students--they are all people who think only of the welfare of the school and of the students. That's why nothing goes wrong. Any difficulties can be dealt with peacefully and without resistance. Despite that, I'm the one who was born low-class, who wants to finagle and think what lies behind people's words. I'm a thoroughly bad fellow."
Sugiyama had heard what Takeuchi said, but didn't seem to grasp the content.
"In any case, I'll change the topic of my thesis. I'll do student government. I think I'll do the disparity between the western style of organization and the perceptions of Japanese students trying to implement it. In other words..."
After Sugiyama left with tacit approval for the change of topic for his graduation thesis, Takeuchi was uncomfortable that he had seemed to look away when his own student was subjected to unjustified pressure. Perhaps there were dark shadows in the university, as Sugiyama said, and while denying their existence he did believe in them somewhere inside.
Takeuchi, the books in his study still open, took some whisky from a drawer and drank. Soon the print flickered and the statistics and graphs became unreadable.
"Oh! Drinking liquor while you read?" Asako had entered the room.
"Uh. How could I go to school sober? How could I read books without alcohol? That poor student came and I knew they were bad guys but I couldn't do anything."
"So that's why you want to leave the university. You said before that the school would get along fine if you quit. Journalism is alive but the university is a graveyard, you said. That's all excuses. In short, you don't stick with things. That's all. It's not that I particularly oppose you quitting. But the truth is that there's no reason why you have to quit. Since it's you, I don't think you will quit in the end."
Having said this, Asako left the study. Everything was just as she had said. In short, classes would start and going to school wouldn't be such a great nuisance. Thinking about it, Sugiyama wouldn't even have to change the topic of his graduation thesis.
In short, nothing was a problem. When it came to problems, there was just the matter of Murakoshi getting attacked. He wondered what had become of the first-year student who was the culprit. When he finished the whisky, Takeuchi walked down the corridor toward the bedroom.
That night Toyoura Yukio went drinking in a bar district at Kajiya's invitation. He had written out his notification of withdrawal three weeks earlier but had turned it over to Kajiya, who went around to the vice president of the alumni association and other squad old boys lobbying them to settle the matter without withdrawal. But with no further recourse available, Kajiya accompanied by Yukio had taken the notification to the Student Affairs office. The Student Affairs employee had glanced at Yukio's face but accepted the notification as though it were a routine document like a change of address.
"I'm sorry. This all happened because of me," Kajiya repeated this over and over as they drank. But even the vice president of the alumni association said he would manage to do something, so next year he's sure to help you get into some university. But if your entrance exam doesn't cover it then nothing can be done."
Yukio vaguely heard what Kajiya said. He had worked hard to get into this university, and his father had said, "prices have gone up," when he paid the tuition. And so he was sad to leave the school. Moreover, he had written the notification of withdrawal in his father's name, but in fact he had not yet informed his parents. There was something inside that asked how he could explain to his parents; that something inside would not get drunk no matter how much he drank.
He thought there would not be another opportunity to meet Murakoshi Kazuko. For whatever reason, he could not bring her features to mind. What he could remember was that she was wearing a gold chain, as thin as hair, the first time they met. He wanted one more opportunity to apologize to her.
He could not have a grudge against Kajiya or his seniors in the cheer squad. They were all good men. And acting in his behalf, they had gone around to the houses of teachers and requested that the punishment be lightened. Moreover, thinking back now, he felt good about Takeuchi. At the time, his own feelings had not been understood in the least, but he hadn't understood Takeuchi's feelings either. Takeuchi had warned him, though, so he would not do anything wrong. At the time he could only feel antipathy. But now he felt that he understood.
"What's that? Are you crying?" Kajiya pushed in and peered at Yukio's face. Before long Kajiya too was wiping tears away with his fist.
Yukio could not feel that he had been treated badly by Kazuko or anyone else. Even Yukio had not intended to do anything wrong. As far as he was concerned, he had tried to do a good thing. The fact that he was interested in Kazuko, the fact that he tried to warn her, the fact that he joined the cheer squad and tried to demonstrate a love of the school, the fact that he tried to sacrifice his own feelings and act as a go-between for Kajiya's love--none of these were mistakes. But these things had overlapped and things turned out as they did.
He had not intended to do anything wrong, but Yukio thought that in a sense separate from that, he had been an evil entity from the start. There were those dark shadows in himself, the cheer squad, and the university, in Takeuchi and Kazuko, and when a number of the shadows overlap an incident like that day would occur, he thought.
"What will you do, Toyoura? Go back home?"
Yukio shook his head. He wasn't ready to explain to his father yet.
"Work? In Tokyo?"
After thinking awhile Yukio nodded.
"There's a former squad member who has a bar. He's looking for an apprentice bartender, so do you want to go see about that?"
The mention of the old boy's shop provided a distraction. He thought that such a place of employment would be the best for driving out thoughts of school. And perhaps one of the barmaids would be prettier than Murakoshi Kazuko, and nicer to him.
Yukio walked unsteadily, with Kajiya, through the night-time bar district. To his drunken eyes, neon lights were blinking everywhere--above, below, to the right and left--and whirled around him. It was like floating through a neon jungle. Yukio walked clutching Kajiya's arm, and felt that he might well be unable to discover a path to escape from this maze of neon.
3. Straight to college: The major achievement in student life is passing the college entrance exam; those who pass on the first attempt go straight to college, the rest study for another year and try again. Once one has passed and entered, graduation is anticlimactic, so dropping out after a year or two would not mark one as a failure.
4. Bamboo swords. These swords, which make a loud clack when they strike something, were designed for kendo training but are used in other training situations to draw attention to errors. Although a blow could be painful, the intention is to inflict instructive humiliation rather than destructive pain.
5. Simmel. Georg Simmel (1858-1918) was a German philosopher and sociologist who influenced the structuralist approach.
6. Boyi and Shuqi. Among the great men recorded by Sima Qian, Boyi and Shuqi were sons of the king who each refused to take precedence over the other at the beginning of China's Zhou dynasty around 1200 b.c. They became hermits and starved to death.
7. Hotei-sama. Hotei is Budai, one of China's seven lucky gods, easily identified by his bald head, huge belly, and big smile and earlobes. The alcove post is a decorative wooden post that forms one edge of the tokonoma, an alcove in which a flower arrangement or other work of art is displayed, and is the center of attention in a traditional room.
8. Rounin. A student who has finished high school but failed his college entrance exam. The name is taken from masterless samurai who similarly had nowhere to go and nothing to do beyond searching for someone to take them in. The word means "wave person," one who drifts aimlessly, but among students the situation is too common to be really bleak.
9. Jewel. Taken from the Zuo Commentary of China's Spring and Autumn Annals, the full quotation is on the lines of "to be of low station is not a sin, but receiving a treasure will lead to sin" (by stirring up greed). It is used in the sense that unaccustomed fortune will lead to disaster. The quote comes from a Chinese noble who, in 701 b.c., gave a valuable jewel to a disliked older brother in order to lead him to disaster. The noble cited a Zhou dynasty proverb.