like to introduce you to my friends.”
Their long argument abruptly subsided with these last words. Kazu was moved. The pure and unadulterated sentiments of such a man stirred an almost ostentatious joy within her. “Very well,” she said, “we’ll do as you say. But how would it be if after the trip I invited everybody to the Setsugoan by way of thanks for having been allowed to go along?”
“That’s a good idea,” Noguchi agreed without visible enthusiasm.
The party assembled at Tokyo Station on the morning of the twelfth before boarding the express train which was to depart at nine. Kazu was surprised to notice how young Noguchi looked. This was perhaps natural, considering that three of the five men present were over seventy.
Kazu had taken great pains with her clothes for the journey, which would mark, as it were, the first public announcement of her relations with Noguchi. She had the idea of dyeing some element of the name Yuken Noguchi into the design of her kimono. The only character of his name which lent itself to pictorial representation was No , or “meadow.”
Kazu had begun her preparations well before the departure. After much thought she had decided that even if nobody else caught onto the meaning of a pattern connected with Noguchi’s name, it would be sufficient if she alone understood. She ordered a kimono dyed with a pattern of white horse-tails and dandelions on a black slubbed crepe, the plants shaded with gold paint, to suggest a spring “meadow.” She wore a sash of light green striped silk, easy to fold and suitable therefore for a journey, and a sash clasp with a cloud ring pattern. Her plain gray cloak, patterned in narrowing vertical stripes, had a lining of grape purple. Her greatest ingenuity was devoted to the lining.
The white-haired octogenarian, a distinguished figure who deserved his reputation as the trail blazer among Japanese journalists, was treated with the utmost deference by the others. He was a Doctor of Laws, and moreover had published numerous translations of English literature. A cynic in the English manner, this old bachelor favored every form of social reform except for the anti-prostitution laws. He was one of the rare people who called Noguchi by a diminutive. The retired industrialist was an eccentric haiku poet by avocation, and the financial critic could be counted on for an unending flow of malicious gossip.
The old gentlemen were all congenial, neither ignoring Kazu nor making any obvious attempts to ingratiate themselves. The journey to Nara passed agreeably. The financial expert successively characterized different figures of the world of politics and finance as fools, blockheads, scoundrels, opportunists, mental incompetents, lunatics, wolves in sheep’s clothing, smart alecks, misers without equals in history, cases of hardened arteries, simpletons, and epileptics. The conversation then turned to haiku.
“I can only look at haiku as a Westerner might,” said the aged journalist. After a moment’s pause for effect he continued, drawing on his encyclopedic memory, “There’s a story in the Chats on Haiku by Torahiko Terada about a young German physicist who came to Japan on a holiday and fell in love with everything Japanese. One day he proudly announced to his Japanese friends ‘I’ve composed a haiku,’ and showed it to them. This is what he wrote:
In Kamakura
Everywhere I went I saw
Lots and lots of cranes.
“To be sure, his haiku had the regulation five, seven, and five syllables, but it wasn’t precisely poetic. My haikus are not a whole lot different from his. Here’s one I thought up while listening just now to our friend here.
Our politicians
And financial tycoons too—
Fools the lot of them.”
Everybody laughed, though if the same joke had come from the mouth of a young man nobody would have cracked a smile. When the conversation got onto the subject of haiku, Kazu became uneasy about the design on the lining of her
Their long argument abruptly subsided with these last words. Kazu was moved. The pure and unadulterated sentiments of such a man stirred an almost ostentatious joy within her. “Very well,” she said, “we’ll do as you say. But how would it be if after the trip I invited everybody to the Setsugoan by way of thanks for having been allowed to go along?”
“That’s a good idea,” Noguchi agreed without visible enthusiasm.
The party assembled at Tokyo Station on the morning of the twelfth before boarding the express train which was to depart at nine. Kazu was surprised to notice how young Noguchi looked. This was perhaps natural, considering that three of the five men present were over seventy.
Kazu had taken great pains with her clothes for the journey, which would mark, as it were, the first public announcement of her relations with Noguchi. She had the idea of dyeing some element of the name Yuken Noguchi into the design of her kimono. The only character of his name which lent itself to pictorial representation was No , or “meadow.”
Kazu had begun her preparations well before the departure. After much thought she had decided that even if nobody else caught onto the meaning of a pattern connected with Noguchi’s name, it would be sufficient if she alone understood. She ordered a kimono dyed with a pattern of white horse-tails and dandelions on a black slubbed crepe, the plants shaded with gold paint, to suggest a spring “meadow.” She wore a sash of light green striped silk, easy to fold and suitable therefore for a journey, and a sash clasp with a cloud ring pattern. Her plain gray cloak, patterned in narrowing vertical stripes, had a lining of grape purple. Her greatest ingenuity was devoted to the lining.
The white-haired octogenarian, a distinguished figure who deserved his reputation as the trail blazer among Japanese journalists, was treated with the utmost deference by the others. He was a Doctor of Laws, and moreover had published numerous translations of English literature. A cynic in the English manner, this old bachelor favored every form of social reform except for the anti-prostitution laws. He was one of the rare people who called Noguchi by a diminutive. The retired industrialist was an eccentric haiku poet by avocation, and the financial critic could be counted on for an unending flow of malicious gossip.
The old gentlemen were all congenial, neither ignoring Kazu nor making any obvious attempts to ingratiate themselves. The journey to Nara passed agreeably. The financial expert successively characterized different figures of the world of politics and finance as fools, blockheads, scoundrels, opportunists, mental incompetents, lunatics, wolves in sheep’s clothing, smart alecks, misers without equals in history, cases of hardened arteries, simpletons, and epileptics. The conversation then turned to haiku.
“I can only look at haiku as a Westerner might,” said the aged journalist. After a moment’s pause for effect he continued, drawing on his encyclopedic memory, “There’s a story in the Chats on Haiku by Torahiko Terada about a young German physicist who came to Japan on a holiday and fell in love with everything Japanese. One day he proudly announced to his Japanese friends ‘I’ve composed a haiku,’ and showed it to them. This is what he wrote:
In Kamakura
Everywhere I went I saw
Lots and lots of cranes.
“To be sure, his haiku had the regulation five, seven, and five syllables, but it wasn’t precisely poetic. My haikus are not a whole lot different from his. Here’s one I thought up while listening just now to our friend here.
Our politicians
And financial tycoons too—
Fools the lot of them.”
Everybody laughed, though if the same joke had come from the mouth of a young man nobody would have cracked a smile. When the conversation got onto the subject of haiku, Kazu became uneasy about the design on the lining of her
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