This story in the original Japanese can be found here.
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Shells
One—The Cat
While they were living in the countryside, they decided to get a cat. It was a black cat with a long tail. After they got the cat, they were just happy that their plague of mice was averted.
After just six months, they decided to move to Tōkyō. With the cat, of course. But, when they went to Tōkyō, at some point they realized that the cat was not catching mice as it did before. After some discussion— “What’s wrong with it? Maybe it’s because we’re feeding it meat and fish?” “That’s what R— said the other day! Once a cat has the taste of salt, it gets to where it won’t catch mice anymore.”—they decided to try starving the cat.
But, no matter how long they waited, it didn’t catch a single mouse. As a result the mice ran around in the ceiling every night. They—the wife especially—came to detest laziness. But it was not laziness. While the cat was getting to be noticeably thin, he was scavenging for fish bones and the like in garbage heaps. “So he’s become an urbanite!” the man would say, laughing.
Eventually they decided they would live out in the countryside again. But, as usual, the cat did not catch any mice. Their good graces exhausted, they ordered their strong-willed maid to abandon the cat in the mountains.
Then, one morning in late autumn, he happened upon the cat while he was taking a walk through a grove. The cat was eating a sparrow. He hunched down and tried calling the cat’s name, over and over. But, the cat, its sharp eyes fixed on him, showed no sign of wanting to approach him. It made a crunching noise as it chewed on the sparrow’s bones.
Two—Frogs
A message arrived from a mother at a hot spring to her son. There were sixteen frogs in cherry blossoms, dumplings, and a clay teapot, and a scrawled, rolled up page attached to the teapot’s handle.
It said: “These frogs are all male. The female frogs are forthcoming. This way the male and female frogs are not in the same basket. The females would eat all the males.”
Three—A Woman’s Story
At exactly twelve we left for our field trip to Naoetsu. (My elementary school is in F—, in Shinshū.) That was the first time I saw what is called the sea. Then, I also saw what is called a steamboat. To board the steamboat we had to take a barge from Sanbashi. In Sanbashi, as you might expect, there were great crowds of elementary schoolers from other schools who looked like they were on field trips, making a great deal of noise. It was time for those other students to try and ride the barge. There was a teacher of about twenty-four or five in a black-collared western suit (no, she was not from my school), who abruptly grabbed me in her arms and made me get on the barge. She must have been mistaken, of course. After a little while had passed, this teacher, when my teacher came to pick me up, apologized many times over. “My, you looked just like one of my students.”
When I was picked up and put on the barge how did I feel? Although I was altogether surprised and thought it was scary, I also remember feeling somehow happy.
Four—A Conductor
The fourth block of Ginza. A train conductor appears to mistake a red flag for a green one and suddenly shifts the train. As soon as he realizes his mistake he shouts, “SORRY!” at the top of his lungs. When I heard that voice, I suddenly felt of barracks and parade grounds. I wonder if it was my intuition.
Five—Failure
That man fails in everything he does. Even in the end: he became a bit actor and was a lieutenant in the Shirase Expedition in a play called “South Pole Expedition.” It was, of course, a summer play. He ended up as a penguin walking between icebergs. Eventually, due to the intense heat, he finally fainted and died.
Six— Tōkyōite
A madam went to the general store and ordered a belt for one of her kind geishas. That being completed, the woman in charge of orders, naturally, and the young proprietor could not help but think that it was far too gaudy. So the proprietor decided to take fifty yen off of the two hundred yen belt without saying anything. Despite this, his feelings were understood by the madam.
After she had paid, the madam, unusually, stored the belt in her dresser without showing it to the geisha. But after a little while, the geisha asked, “Ma’am, has it not come yet?” The madam reluctantly showed the geisha the belt, and though she had paid a hundred and fifty yen she said it was two hundred. The madam could then see in the geisha’s face that, as she had feared, the geisha thought it was too showy. But after the geisha had gone away with the belt, the madam decided to send a hundred and twenty yen to her.
Although the geisha heard the hundred and twenty yen, she recognized that that belt had been more expensive. And then, she herself decided to pass it down to her younger sister without trying it on. What is this absurd restraint, you ask? Tōkyōites are the type of people who originally practiced this sort of absurd restraint.
Seven—A Happy Tragedy
She loved him. And he loved her. But in their cowardice neither made their feelings clear to the other.
After that, aside from her, he had a relationship with a woman—let’s call her Three. She felt some animosity, and she had a relationship with a man—let’s call him Four. He then quickly became jealous and tried to steal Four from her. There was no mistaking the fact that her life’s ambition was to have a relationship with him. And yet at that point happily—or perhaps unhappily—she felt feelings for Four. The furthermore happy thing—or perhaps unhappy thing—was that he became trapped in the feeling that, if the situation arose, he could not just coldly break up with Three.
He thought of her sometimes when he was with Three. And whenever she was traveling with Four, listening to the babbling of an unfamiliar stream, she sometimes thought of him…
Eight—True Feelings
A murderer’s words: “I killed the guy. That he would come back as a ghost was so proper it was too proper. But if his corpse had turned up in the way I killed him, there would be nothing to be afraid of. Yet his figure standing there, not the slightest bit different from when he was alive, was frightening. But really, if you’re going to come back as a ghost the least you could do is appear the way you did when you were dead.”
Nine—The Wagon Puller
When I was eleven or twelve, I saw a wagon loaded with empty boxes struggling up a hill, and I try to help out by pushing from the rear. Then, as soon as the man pulling the cart looked at me over the boxes, he shouted, “What gives?!” at me in a harsh tone. Naturally, I could not help but think unpleasantly of the man’s misunderstanding.
After five days had passed since then, the man was again trying to get the wagon up the same hill as before. This time it was stacked with bags of charcoal. I thought, “To hell with him!” and just stood for a while by the side of the road. Then, the shaking of the cart caused one of the bags to tumble off. He set down the poles of the cart and reloaded the charcoal as it was before. He did this without any inclination towards me. But when he bent down in front of the cart, the bag of charcoal on his shoulder, he said, as if to anybody, “Son of a bitch! What kind of asshole is too chickenshit to lend a hand! It’s too early to put down the wagon!” Even since then, towards that man—that wagon puller, his skin leathered and darkened by the sun—I have come to feel some sort of affection.
Ten—A Farmer’s Logic
A farmer in a mountain village was sentenced to three months of hard labor for stealing his neighbor’s cow. Like a changed man he dutifully adhered to the jail’s rules while imprisoned, and he was even called an exemplary prisoner. But when he was released and returned home, he stole that same cow again. The neighbor, enraged, decided to call the police. The local authority quickly apprehended him, and the officer gave him a pompous scolding.
“You haven’t learned a thing!”
Then, with a sour look on his face, the farmer replied.
“I stole that cow and served three months. That being the case, the cow is mine. So I come home and it’s in my neighbor’s pen—typical. (It was fatter than before, and rightly so.) All I did was take it to my pen. Who’s in the wrong here?”
Eleven—Jealousy
“I may appear to be rather jealous. For example, when I stay at an inn, the clerk and the maids all demonstrate proper courtesy. And then when another guest comes, they of course extend those same courtesies to them. When I see this I cannot help but feel a bit of antipathy towards this next guest.” –The person who told me of this bad habit is the most kind and gentlemanly person I know.
Twelve—First Kiss
Since he has become married to her, he has decided to speak frankly about any liaisons that he has had up to now. He anticipated that the result would be a guaranteeing of their happiness. But there was one such instance which he was not open about. When he was eighteen, he kissed an older maid working at some inn. He had no reason to think that he should not tell of this incident. But he thought that perhaps it was such a trifling thing it was fine not to talk about it.
A couple of years later, he suddenly took the opportunity to tell the story to her. Upon hearing this, her face paled, and she said, “You deceived me!” That became the seed of their troubles, like a small thorn. After fighting with her, he could not help but think, over and over, “Was I honest enough? Or was there something deep down that I was not honest about?”
Thirteen—Words Not in the Alphabet Dictionary
When he was studying abroad in Edinburgh, he tried to jump onto a train, fell off, and lost consciousness. But on the way to the hospital he began to speak deliriously in English. Once he had recovered, his friend told him this for no particular reason. Since then, he has been like a changed man; he gained a new conviction in his ability to learn and has since become a renowned scholar of English—that was his life’s goal. But what is interesting to me are the words of his mother while he was away.
“My boy completely understood Japanese when he was studying, so this time he went to the West in order to learn words not in the Japanese alphabet dictionary.”
Fourteen—With Mother and Child
Recently he found out that his mother had become a geisha. He also found out that she had appeared at a restaurant in Beijing’s Lamb Alley. He had the chance to go to Beijing on business, and he decided to go and see her.
When he inquired at the restaurant, he talked with her for an hour, her face not yet heavy with white powder. But he could not stand her empty compliments. There was no doubt it was due to the fact that she felt that he, being methodical, was a killjoy. And also because the madam had kept secret from her that he was coming to visit.
After he had gone, she felt as though the unpleasantness had been lifted. But come the next day, she thought of those feelings between parent and child and felt that her coldness towards him was inexcusable. Before evening came, she commanded a filthy Chinese rickshaw and went to the hotel where he was staying. But unfortunately, he had left the hotel to go to Hankou. She remembered a strange loneliness, and reluctantly got back in the rickshaw, leaving in a cloud of dust, thinking at one point that even though she had pulled out her white hairs they were chasing her.
After sunset, in a railway car from Beijing to Guangzhou, he stared out the window thinking of his mother, smelling of face powder. It was not that he did not feel some sense of longing, seeing her after such a long time. But he was not at all happy to see her with a mouth full of gold teeth.
Fifteen—Rhetoric
A third-class passenger car on the Tōkaidō Line. A man who looks like a carpenter is wearing an emblazoned shirt and is looking at the sea near Ejiri, and he says to his companion: “Would you look at that! The waves look like decorated rice cakes.”
(December 1926)