Kishibe: I brought some notes by Professor Matsumoto. He says this is a seven-character quatrain by the Edo-period Confucian scholar Kan Chazan called “Reading a Book on a Winter’s Night.” Here’s his paraphrase: “Falling snow piles on the mountain cabin, tree shadows turn black./Bells hang silent from the eaves as the night quietly deepens./I put away my scattered books, think back on passages that bothered me./Blue lamplight in my room sways as I see into the minds of the ancients.”
This poem expresses exactly how I have lived. And yet now I understand.
My eyes discern writing of East and West,
My mind embraces regrets old and new.2
All this time I have merely been amusing myself with books while understanding nothing of the anguished truth, the deep emotions, that lie behind the lines penned by the ancients. Finally, even my books, which I have counted as my only friends, have lost patience and ceased speaking to me.
Though surrounded by a mountain of books, I am alone. This is my reward for having failed for so long to take action, yielding to my fear that I might not be able to communicate my feelings. At this rate I will end my days without ever having had a heart-to-heart conversation with anyone, without ever engaging deeply with them, without learning their thoughts and sharing mine. And in the end I am incapable even of truly savoring the joy that books can bring. This is how I have belatedly come to perceive my plight. Yet something within me cries out vehemently,
Nishioka: That’s pretty cool. Is the next one in Chinese, too?2
Kishibe: Yes. It’s from a poem by Natsume Soseki. The professor’s version is “My eyes take in writing of East and West,/My heart embraces regrets old and new.” In other words, “I have learned to read books written in the writing systems of the East and the West, yet my mind is now filled with a melancholy surpassing time and space.”
Nishioka: He’s regretting that he hung back, afraid to convey his feelings for fear she might not understand, yet here he is firing off Chinese poetry. That’s Majime for you.
Kishibe: He might at least have provided some kind of annotation.
Nishioka: Don’t look now, here comes another one!3
“No! This must not be.”
I shall pluck up my courage.
In the world there is nothing to fret over.
White clouds only float and drift.3
Whether I can attain that state of mind, I do not know. It all depends on my efforts and your response.4 If you respond to me, I swear that for the rest of my life I will devote all my strength to engaging in sincere good faith and honesty with the hearts and minds of others, especially you.
Since knowing of your existence, I feel that for the first time I have truly come to life. Until now I have been as good as dead. Though my eyes perused letters of the alphabet and Chinese characters, their meaning eluded me; though I breathed in and out, I was not alive. Kishibe: This is from the end of that same Soseki poem. “People get nowhere by worrying. White clouds naturally fluff up and float.”
Nishioka: You’re kidding, right?
Kishibe: Sorry. That was my own free translation. Anyway, I think he’s saying, “Let’s relax and take things slow and easy.”
Nishioka: That’s up to Kaguya. Whoa. Isn’t he getting a little intimidating here? “It all depends on your response.”4
Kishibe: It’s all right, I think. With all that Chinese poetry flying around, she couldn’t read between the lines, so any tone of intimidation must have gone right by her.
There is the example in the ancient tale of a radiant princess named Kaguya (Shining Night) who descended to Earth from the moon, and indeed from the night I first encountered you I have felt such pain in my chest and found breathing so difficult that it is as if I myself were living on the moon. And yet, I can say that I am truly alive! How strange, how marvelous. You have given me life.
If I had a poetic turn of mind, here I would offer you a poem of my own making, but in the sadness of mediocrity I can only gaze sighing at the radiant moon. Let me instead borrow the celebrated words of an ancient poet.
In the sea of heaven,
cloud waves rise
and the moon boat rows
into the star forest
to be seen no more.5
Does this poem not seem as if it were written just for you? Nishioka: This really is one hell of a love letter.
Kishibe: Next is an eighth-century Japanese poem from the Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves, by Kakinomoto Hitomaro, the great poet of that era.5
Nishioka: This one I can get, even without a paraphrase. It’s kind of like a scene from a science-fiction movie. Notice the way every character she uses to write her name occurs in the text. Way to go, Majime.
Kishibe: You’re right! He’s giving it all he’s got now, isn’t he?
I like this poem. It has a beautiful grandeur and imparts a sense of calm majesty. At the same time it strikes me as lonely, filled with intense yearning for the unobtainable and a keen, penetrating awareness of the trifling nature of one’s own existence. Did people of old live burdened with the same sense of loneliness that I feel? I am enticed into such imaginings. It is a poem overflowing with beauty and power, using the sense of aloneness to tie our hearts to the universe and beyond; to the human heart, surpassing time and space.
As you know, I am engaged in the work of lexicography. I am editing a dictionary to be called The Great Passage.
[omission]6
And so the path of lexicography is extremely steep, and I often feel discouraged. I hasten to add that I am not asking for your cooperation or dedication in the least. I seek no such thing. All I ask would be to walk my path sensing your gaze upon me. And if I might be allowed to do so, I would want nothing more than to watch over you from the shadows 7as you pursue the steep path of cuisine. Nishioka: Hey, what’s with the omission?6I thought this was going to be the whole thing!
Kishibe: The letter’s just too darn long. Really. In the part that got left out, he goes on about how he feels about lexicography and kind of sums up his resume. You really want to read it?
Nishioka: Um, no, come to think of it.
The spring silkworm dies; only then does its thread end.
The candle turns to ash; only then do its tears dry.8
Both lexicography and cuisine are disciplines with no end. Nor is there any end to my longing. I am a silkworm who will continue producing the silken thread of yearning till I die. I will show you that from my candle’s melted wax, fire will rise anew. Have no fear. My feelings are a perpetual motion machine. I am applying for a patent! 9
And yet, you may say, I must need some sort of fuel. Do not worry. Since I am a perpetual motion machine, even without fuel my heart is continually on fire. I guarantee that I will spin on and on until my cocoon of silk grows enormous, bigger than Tokyo Dome. And I speak not only of the fire within my soul but of physical combustion, for I believe that I can survive well on the simplest of diets. I of course am happy to eat fine food when it is available, but I could go for a week eating Nupporo Ichiban ramen noodles morning, noon, and night without any grumbling from either my stomach or my taste buds. I would do my utmost not to impose any burden on you. Nishioka: Now he’s getting scary.7