This story in the original Japanese can be found here.
***
Ramblings
Because Qin Shi Huang had, for some reason, burned all the books, it said in the newspaper that I had lost my job at the used bookstore in Kanda. When I tried to go to Maru-no-uchi to see the ashes of those books, thinking that a horrible deed had been done, people had swarmed together in a mountain at an intersection in Owari in Ginza, in front of the police box. There, behind the throng, when I tried to take a look on my tiptoes, was an old Chinese woman in front of a police officer, crying out and weeping. Though I say she was Chinese, she was not a modern Chinese. She was clad in classical clothes as if she had stepped out of a painting of Yu Rang by Hirafuku Hyakusui. The officer was pleading with her, but it seemed that not a bit of it reached her ears. Besides, the woman’s crying was not particularly severe, and so off to the side somewhere were two messenger boys, wondering what to do, and having the following conversation:
“That’s the old woman from the Golden Bowl in Maruzen!”
“I wonder why she’s making such a fuss again.”
“Why? Probably because today Qin Shi Huang took all the scholars in Tokyo, threw them into the pond in Hibiya Park, and had them buried alive. So naturally, the Golden Bowl was also buried alive, and that’s why she’s making such a fuss.”
“But there were no scholars in the Golden Bowl, right?”
“No, but they acted like they were quite learned, so in Maruzen it had the nickname ‘The Scholar!’ Even the police thought that they were all university professors and the like, so it was buried alive.”
Then, next to them, a working student from Kokura wearing a hakama said indignantly, “This is outrageous! When we have reached the point where decisions are made for the sake of a name, without bothering to look for the truth…this is the outcome of oppression by the upper classes!”
Also thinking this was violent, I said, “It really is outrageous!” to express my agreement with the student’s indignation. The student probably felt that, in gaining my agreement, he had gained my friendship. When I turned to him, he blurted out, “I’m surprised at the state of all this. Because even in the literary world, where these sort of things should be understood most of all, they try to judge men on the basis of –isms. When the name New Artistry* is brought up, no matter where that name is laid upon people, because of that when you butter them up you butter them up, and when you eliminate them you try to eliminate them. We young ones have to destroy these abominable practices. I let the iron hammer fall from Qin Shi Huang’s carriage at Bo Lang Sha. Sadly that was a failure, but that does not mean that our courage has waned.”
Then the student, beckoning to the crowd, shouted:
“May I have your attention! To safeguard constitutional government, should we not overturn that police box?”
And then from somewhere, a single stone cut diagonally through the air, and with a crash knocked a hole in the window of the police box. When I became aware of that sound, I was still sitting at a table at Café Paulista. The crash sounded like the coffee spoon being dropped from my hand onto the plate. Opposite a rather well-dressed gentleman in a black morning suit, I had been dreaming with my eyes open. When the gentleman saw I had returned from my daydream, he said, “Could you write something for me in the New Year’s edition?”
“I don’t want to write anything then, so no.”
“Don’t be like that, just write me something. Anything. Like, ‘About the New Artistry School.’”
That startled me. Perhaps this gentleman knew about my dream.
“Or how about ‘Old Artistry and New Artistry?’”
“No way. First of all I haven’t a thought about that New Artistry or anything,” I struck back.
“But, you could probably write something.”
“If I write, all I’ll write is what you ask me to write.”
“That’s fine with me, just write it.”
Searching in his pocket, the gentlemen took out some writing paper and a fountain pen. Outside was the sound of an orchestra advertising the end-of-year sales. At the next table some people were debating Kerensky. The smell of coffee, the voices of waiters’ orders, and then the Christmas tree: it was in this lively environment that I scowled and grudgingly accepted the writing paper and fountain pen. There, I wrote these many pages of nonsensical ramblings. And so the baseless and spurious agony is now, instead of in me who wrote this, in the well-dressed gentleman sitting in front of me.
***
There was no date attached to this story. Assuming this is based on a true story, it would probably have been written in his early or middle period, based on his apparently regular work at a newspaper. Which means probably anywhere from 1916-1922 or so.
*Not a whole lot of resources on this one in English. I know I saw it when I was working on my thesis, but I probably did not pay too much attention to it. Here’s some more information.