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Authors: Ryûnosuke Akutagawa
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rain-covered canopy glistening. I had one foot on the running board when, almost exactly at that moment, I saw the oilcloth hood of the other rickshaw raised and someone bounding out in the direction of the entrance. Glimpsing the figure, I threw myself into the safety of the canopy. As the puller lifted the shafts, I felt strangely agitated and involuntarily muttered: â That one!â It could be no other than the dark-complexioned, stripe-suited cousin of Miuraâs wife. Thus, as I sped along the illuminated boulevard of Hirok Å ji, the rain streaming from the canopy, I was pursued by dread anxiety at the thought of who might have been his fellow passenger. Might it have been Madame Narayamaâor Madame Katsumi, a rose in her hair?
âEven as I agonized over the irresolvable uncertainty of my suspicions, I was fearful of solutionâand angered at my own cowardice in having hurriedly jumped into the rickshaw to conceal my identity. To this day, the question of which woman it had been remains for me an enigma.â
Viscount Honda drew out a large handkerchief and, discreetly blowing his nose, looked round again at the contents of the display cases, now bathed in evening light, before quietly resuming his story.
âOf course, I earnestly thought all these matters, particularly what I had heard from Chinchikurin-shujin, to be of extreme interest to Miura, and so the next day immediately sent a letter to him, offering him a date for our fishing jaunt. He immediately replied, saying that as the day would be the sixteenth day in the lunar calendar, we might instead go out in a boat on the river at twilight and view the moon. I had, needless to say, no particularly strong desire to go fishing and so readily consented to his proposal. On the appointed day, we met at the boathouse in Yanagibashi and, before the moon was up, rowed out toward the Great River in an open, flat-bottomed barque.
âEven in those days, the view of the water in the evening may not have been worthy of comparison with the elegance of the more distant past, but something of the beauty that one sees in old woodblock prints remained. When on that evening too we rowed downstream past Manpachi and entered the Great River, we could see the parapet of Ry Å goku Bridge, arching above the waves that flickered in the faint mid-autumn twilight and against the sky, as though an immense black Chinese ink stroke had been brushed across it. The silhouettes of the traffic, horses and carriages soon faded into the vaporous mist, and now all that could be seen were the dots of reddish light from the passengersâ lanterns, rapidly passing to and fro in the darkness like small winter cherries.
ââWell, what do you think of it?â asked Miura.
ââI think one would look in vain for such a view anywhere in Europe,â I replied.
ââAh, then you apparently see no harm in enjoying a bit of the discredited past when it comes to scenery.â
ââYes, when it comes to scenery, I concede.â
ââI must say that recently I have grown quite weary of all that is called modern enlightenment.â
ââIf youâre not careful, you too will be stung by M é rim é eâs acerbic tongue. You must remember how that sneering rogue allegedly said to Dumas or someone, standing next to him, when a delegate from the shogunate was walking down the boulevard in Paris: âTell me, who could have bound the Japanese to such an absurdly long sword?â â
ââYes, but I prefer the story of H é Rú Zh Ä ng, who, during his stay in Japan as a diplomat, expressed admiration for the sleepwear he saw in a Yokohama hotel: âHere in this country are relics of the Xia and Zhou dynasties!â No, there is nothing that one may ridicule simply on the grounds that it is a thing of the past.â
âSurprised at the suddenly deepening of the darkness as the tide rose,
âEven as I agonized over the irresolvable uncertainty of my suspicions, I was fearful of solutionâand angered at my own cowardice in having hurriedly jumped into the rickshaw to conceal my identity. To this day, the question of which woman it had been remains for me an enigma.â
Viscount Honda drew out a large handkerchief and, discreetly blowing his nose, looked round again at the contents of the display cases, now bathed in evening light, before quietly resuming his story.
âOf course, I earnestly thought all these matters, particularly what I had heard from Chinchikurin-shujin, to be of extreme interest to Miura, and so the next day immediately sent a letter to him, offering him a date for our fishing jaunt. He immediately replied, saying that as the day would be the sixteenth day in the lunar calendar, we might instead go out in a boat on the river at twilight and view the moon. I had, needless to say, no particularly strong desire to go fishing and so readily consented to his proposal. On the appointed day, we met at the boathouse in Yanagibashi and, before the moon was up, rowed out toward the Great River in an open, flat-bottomed barque.
âEven in those days, the view of the water in the evening may not have been worthy of comparison with the elegance of the more distant past, but something of the beauty that one sees in old woodblock prints remained. When on that evening too we rowed downstream past Manpachi and entered the Great River, we could see the parapet of Ry Å goku Bridge, arching above the waves that flickered in the faint mid-autumn twilight and against the sky, as though an immense black Chinese ink stroke had been brushed across it. The silhouettes of the traffic, horses and carriages soon faded into the vaporous mist, and now all that could be seen were the dots of reddish light from the passengersâ lanterns, rapidly passing to and fro in the darkness like small winter cherries.
ââWell, what do you think of it?â asked Miura.
ââI think one would look in vain for such a view anywhere in Europe,â I replied.
ââAh, then you apparently see no harm in enjoying a bit of the discredited past when it comes to scenery.â
ââYes, when it comes to scenery, I concede.â
ââI must say that recently I have grown quite weary of all that is called modern enlightenment.â
ââIf youâre not careful, you too will be stung by M é rim é eâs acerbic tongue. You must remember how that sneering rogue allegedly said to Dumas or someone, standing next to him, when a delegate from the shogunate was walking down the boulevard in Paris: âTell me, who could have bound the Japanese to such an absurdly long sword?â â
ââYes, but I prefer the story of H é Rú Zh Ä ng, who, during his stay in Japan as a diplomat, expressed admiration for the sleepwear he saw in a Yokohama hotel: âHere in this country are relics of the Xia and Zhou dynasties!â No, there is nothing that one may ridicule simply on the grounds that it is a thing of the past.â
âSurprised at the suddenly deepening of the darkness as the tide rose,
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