Looking at a Locomotive
…My kids, they play locomotive. Not a stationary locomotive, of course. They shake their hands, they go “choo-choo-choo,” imitating a locomotive in motion. I assume this is not limited to my own children. So then why do they pretend to be locomotives? It is, of course, because there is some kind of power in a locomotive. Or perhaps because they themselves want to have the violent life of a locomotive. And the possession of this sort of desire is not limited to children. Adults are the same, of course.
But an adult’s locomotive is not a literal locomotive. However, everyone rushing headlong, and along a track at that, is exactly what a locomotive does. This track might be money, or perhaps prestige, or women. But we, whether we are children or adults, have a want to rush along freely, and at the place where we have that want, as a matter of course, we lose freedom. This is not at all paradoxical. It is a fact of a paradoxical life. However, the countless generations within ourselves, and the mores of one era of one country, have never failed to put the brakes on these sorts of desires. And yet these desires have lurked within us since time immemorial…
I stood on a high embankment, watching my children running with a locomotive, and could not help but think of this. Opposite the embankment was another one, and upon it was a somewhat wilted beech tree bent over. The locomotive—No. 3271 was a Mussolini. The tracks the Mussolini was running on were perhaps shining with light. And yet, when I thought of the rusty short stretch of tracks upon which no train can run at the end of any railroad, I thought that nothing can be done to change the fact that the Mussolini, like us, would one day live out its life to the end. Furthermore…
Furthermore, we have a want to go wherever, but at the same time we run along a track. We cannot carelessly overlook this contradiction. What we call tragedy surely begins there. Macbeth, and of course Koharu in The Love Suicides at Amijima are locomotives, naturally, in the end. Koharu, like Macbeth, may not be possessed of a strong disposition. But despite that they charge recklessly forward for the sake of love. (Westerners’ theories of tragedy sadly do not apply here. The creation of tragedy is human life. It is not as though it is a creation of aestheticists.) When these tragedies are transmitted to the eyes of a third party, for all sorts of unclear motives, (The clarity of all these motives may not be desired even by the characters within a tragedy.) they change forward futilely and halt in vain—or perhaps we just see their downfall. Consequently it becomes comedy. That is, comedy is tragedy in which sympathy does not reach a third party. After all, big or small, we are no different from locomotives. I feel for that old locomotive, No. 3236 with the tall chimney. No. 3236, slowly changing positions upon the turntable.
And yet, to what degree did the society of one era of one country, and our ancestors, apply the brakes? I feel that they braked there, and so it is not as though I can feel the engine—the fire blazing with coal—at the same time. We are not we, ourselves. The truth is, like locomotives, we have come to amass a long history. Besides, we are collections of countless pistons and gears. Furthermore, the tracks upon which we are set are not understood by either locomotives or we ourselves. These tracks, unfortunately, must go through tunnels and over bridges. Any sort of liberation is absolutely prohibited for us for the sake of these tracks. This kind of fact may be terrifying. But no matter how much we think about it, it is certainly incontrovertible.
If a locomotive is reliable, it cannot become free. Any conductor driving any train is the act of whimsical gods. But usually, anyway, they do not despair at the fact that they run until they are rusted through. Any locomotive’s surface solemnity must sparkle. Like iron coated with oil…
We are all locomotives. Our jobs are nothing more than spitting smoke and sparks into the sky. The people below the embankment, too, recognize the locomotives on account of that smoke and those sparks. And for an electric train, replace the smoke and sparks for just that echo. Flaubert’s words—“The man is nothing, the job is everything”—have an effect on me because of this. Holy men, artists, social activists…all are on their tracks, where they must inevitable rush on whatever course. They do nothing—save for going faster.
The sense of our selves whenever we see a locomotive may not be restricted to just us. Saitō Ryokuu records the locomotive going over the Hakone mountains as shouting, “I-can-do-it-I-can-do-it.” And yet the locomotive which descends through the Usui Pass must be all the more filled with delight. It always sings cheerily, “Chugga-chugga-choo-choo!” If we make the former the tragic locomotive, than the latter may be the comedic locomotive.
(July 1927)