Translator’s Introduction
Girlhood days that won’t return
Flowers that blossomed in dreams
I send each and every one
To you lovely girls
Yoshiya Nobuko (1896–1973) thus offers a dedication to readers of an early book version of her Flower Stories (Hana monogatari, 1916–1924). This version came out in 1920, and she would add to it over time.1 Flower Stories was her first major group of stories published for pay in a magazine after many years as a reader-contributor.2 The long-running series of over fifty stories launched her career as one of the most popular authors of twentieth-century Japan. The collection cemented her place as a progenitor and stylist of Japanese girls' fiction (shôjo shôsetsu), writings for and about the girl or shôjo.
Consumers of contemporary shôjo culture will find much that is familiar in Yoshiya's Flower Stories, including the emotionally charged relationships among girls, the prevalence of flowers (especially roses!), and the school and dormitory settings. These settings evoke a time when girls were under the supervision neither of father figures nor husbands, a time elongated by the expansion of women's education in Yoshiya's lifetime and expressed on the pages of the increasing number of girls' magazines. Flower Stories was itself influenced by a combination of early twentieth-century girls' magazines and authors. Writers such as Frances Hodsgon Burnett (especially The Little Princess) and Louisa May Alcott (including Garlands of Flowers, from which perhaps the title of this story is taken) had been translated into Japanese at this time. Flower Stories and others of its genre drew on these styles to describe an intensely emotional, often beautiful and erotic world for adolescent girls. The suggested readings below have been chosen to provide greater detail about the complexity of this history, and I will make only some brief comments for this introduction.
Although fitting the label "short story," "Yellow Rose" was published in short serialized segments from April to September of 1923 in the girls' magazine Girls' Pictorial (Shôjo gahô), where most of the Flower Stories appeared.3 Such magazines that aimed at the rising number of girl students and readers flourished in the early 1920s, and the pages of Girls' Pictorial swell with stories, letters, and poems that emphasize what they often label shôjo romansu (girls' romance). These letters established emotional connections among girls, some who might share schools or regions, including not only areas of the islands of Japan, but also colonial and expatriate spaces around Asia and beyond. Many never met one another, but expressed their passions and affections on the pages of the magazine.
Yoshiya's own early life was profoundly shaped by the girls' magazines for which she would eventually write. She recalls receiving her first issue of Girls' World (Shôjo sekai): "I was so happy because my older brothers had a subscription to a magazine called Boys' World (Shônen sekai), and I would have to steal it to read whenever they left it unread on a desk. I remember being so happy when I could finally read the girls' version and have it all to myself. Whenever Girls' World was delivered from the bookstore, I would spread it out in my hands and savor every corner of it. Taking great care not to get it the slightest bit dirty, I would neatly pile each issue on my desk and enjoy the way the stack grew higher and higher."4 As the stack grew higher, she joined in and began to enter the magazine's poetry and story contests. Such contributions were central to these magazines: reader submissions from young women like her made up ten to thirty percent of the pages. When she began to publish this new work that received royalties, the narrative style of Flower Stories continued to highlight the image of an all-girl world imagined and sustained by this publication venue, with each story told by what seems to be a female narrator who introduces yet another girl on whom the story focuses.
Another important aspect of these publications was their illustrations. These magazines helped to form and enable the development of commercial art and illustration communities, groups who influenced and helped shape the burgeoning manga industry to come. Girls' culture also helped inspire and promote the creation of the Takarazuka theatre, still alive today, in which all roles are played by young women. In the 1920s, many of the stories made into theatre by Takarazuka appeared on the same pages of the girls' magazine where "Yellow Rose" appeared. Yoshiya herself both attended Takarazuka productions and created special works for the troupe. The manga artist Tezuka Osamu, who occupies such a weighty place in Japanese manga history due to Astro Boy and other works, was a Takarazuka fan himself, and brought its aesthetics to wider manga audiences. The wistful, intelligent look of the girls in these girls' magazine illustrations has remained influential in the girls' manga market, and it is not at all surprising to see Flower Stories reappear in a new manga version in 2014.5 Yoshiya's influence on the overall community of artists of girls' manga is well known, but is especially prominent in the lesbian-themed genre of yuri manga that came into its own in the 1970s.
"Yellow Rose" begins as the protagonist Katsuragi Misao is graduating from what appears to be the Tsuda English Language Academy in Tokyo, and heading off to be an English teacher at an unnamed country town, her goal to avoid getting married. Onto the same train boards a beautiful young woman who carries an armful of the eponymous yellow roses and turns out to be one Urakami Reiko, a pupil in her final year at the school where Katsuragi will teach. The two are brought together once again by a train during a field trip, when coal soot enters Urakami's eye and Katsuragi supervises her treatment at a mountainside clinic. The two spend time together by the sea on summer vacation. After sharing the story of Sappho, they make plans to return to Tokyo and perhaps study abroad in America together, but these plans are thwarted by the demands of an arranged marriage for Urakami. Eventually Katsuragi sets sail to study in America alone, though it seems that distance will never heal her loss of love, as expressed in the message she types at her job in a basement office in Colorado, a line from William Butler Yeats: "For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart."
"Yellow Rose" is from the midpoint of the Flower Stories series, and contains many typical elements, particularly the intense relationship between the two young women and the sad ending (fan letters about Flower Stories almost without exception mention the buckets of tears shed while reading). At the same time, the story digs with particular depth into the possibility of the two women staying together more permanently, even if that possibility is cut off tragically in the end.
The story itself is structured around dramatic moments of coincidence and chance encounters. In reading the story, it is worth focusing on how it deploys moments of meeting, haste, surprise, and ellipsis. As James Fujii and Alisa Freedman have shown in various ways, meeting on the train was a literary trope of the interwar era, and this story is another that dramatizes the potential for chance encounters and intensification of space and time made possible by train travel. These are exploited to bring the two young women together, even as they only highlight the anxieties of separation.6 The two train rides are pivotal moments in "Yellow Rose," providing the girls the first glimpse of each other and then, later, the occasion for them to be alone together for the first time. If Urakami had missed the first train, their relationship would not have happened; the near miss is precisely what draws the attention of Katsuragi and the reader to the lovely girl running to catch the train, her armful of quavering yellow flower blossoms and her heart pounding. Applying the "pressure" on characters that Peter Brooks associates with the melodramatic mode, they also almost miss one another; Urakami is almost "too late," in the timing that Linda Williams has identified as the stuff of melodrama. The two see each other because they are on the same train and because they almost are not.7
Commuting became an important mode of train meetings in Japanese literature, especially after the 1923 Kantô Earthquake, on the eve of which this story finished its serialization, reflecting their rising importance in urbanites' daily lives. But even the earlier influence of long-distance trains on the lives of young women cannot be underestimated. Young women moved to Tokyo in great numbers at this time, to work, study, or aspire to writing professionally, and trains were crucial to that movement. For Yoshiya herself, it was the train that allowed her to move away from Tochigi Prefecture to Tokyo and stay with her brother (later moving to a women's dormitory). This freed her from helping with housework at her parents' house in the countryside. It was in Tokyo that she could network with the writers in the city and other unmarried young women, no doubt finding models for the characters in this story, and Tokyo is also where she would meet her future life partner Monma Chiyo.
One much-quoted passage from this story comes from the paragraph where Katsuragi Misao consents to Urakami Reiko's parents request that she help convince Reiko to get married (though Katsuragi's plea to Urakami itself is elided):
She had a whole array of arguments why it was not a good idea for parents to decide whom their children married. But now, standing before these particular parents, none of those arguments seemed the least bit convincing. Nor did it help that she was all too conscious of the fact that Reiko's refusal to marry was based on nothing other than her own excessive love for the girl. What paltry support that was for one who was trying to make a shield of their love and boldly show it to the world! So it is that the sadness of those who love their own sex and therefore cannot live their lives in the form of a conventional marriage is redoubled by the chagrin of parents-for whom marriage represents the sole pinnacle of womanly achievement-and the opprobrium and scorn of everyone else. Miss Katsuragi lost track of any way to uphold her own position-and so she made her decision.
This scene is quite difficult for the translator as it expresses a moment when Katsuragi's logical, philosophical nature and resolve fail her-she does not know what argument to use, what social structure into which to place her relationship, as it is not possible, "being of the same sex," for it to exist "in the form of a conventional marriage" (sejô na kekkon no kata).8 While from a contemporary perspective one might think that the mother would mind the thickness of her daughter's friendship with her high school teacher, this is utterly uncontroversial and the mother values that "worship" herself. Rather than anything to do with their sexuality or desires, it is the family structure and expectations of marriage that put the mother in a bind (and the mother's own request is tellingly quite fragmented as well). The same confusion Katsuragi displays in this paragraph pervades the whole story. She continually seeks an architecture of and space for thought that might fit her feelings and desires, something that might offer more than "paltry support" of their endeavor.
Yoshiya's Two Virgins in an Attic (Yaneura no nishojo) of a couple years earlier, often thought to be autobiographical in nature, uses more explicitly architectural imagery for the girl who becomes an adult and must move her theory of love into social spaces:
As her girlhood days went by, Akiko held her breath upon reading St. Clara's autobiography and stories of St. Francis, and constructed out of them a deep, deep world of adoration. When she tried to pass from those girlhood days into the realm of adult womanhood, that beautiful illusion was, if not broken, disappearing. And not only was it fading away, but there was no sign of something being built to replace it. Like a demolition with no construction project to follow, her spirit was a cavity holding nothing but tears of anxious gloom. 9
Along with trains, what connects the characters in the story is writing: fragments of poems, letters, and telegrams, like the girls' magazine publication venue of the stories themselves, built connections among the readers, wherever they might be located spatially. Many of these connections are multilingual and international. Not surprisingly, most of the limited scholarship on Flower Stories mentions the direct and indirect references to Sappho in this story, including a fragment as translated by Ueda Bin in the collection Kaichôon and, via the words of essayist and aesthetician Takayama Chogyû, the story of the life of this woman from Lesbos and her love of another woman. The references to Chogyû, whose writings about Sappho she quotes, are also a subtle part of Katsuragi's links to Meiji-era homosocial cultures of two decades earlier and what might be a proto-"Boys' Love" mode.10 Katsuragi uses this memorized Chogyû narrative to communicate by providing a structure or precedent for her feelings and desires. We see her strategizing to formulate her desires and her ideas through extensive reading-of Meiji-era Japanese intellectuals, Yeats, and other European poetry-and to teach those to her new friend in a way she is hesitant to do in the classroom itself (where her lesson-style seems to consist mostly of dictation, and she is uncomfortable with her own teaching). This was not a unique strategy and we find that lyrical poetry and fiction, and more specifically the translated poems found in Ueda Bin's collection, were especially popular among shôjo readers at this time. Already in the 1910s, we can see the magazines that women writers of the day circulated among themselves in Tokyo thronged with names of recognizable cultural figures. Among these were writers like Yeats, along with Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, and Leo Tolstoy, as well as public figures like Swedish feminist Ellen Key, the socialist anarchist thinker Emma Goldman, and the English socialist writer and advocate of free eros Edward Carpenter, to name only a few.11 The original illustrations for "Yellow Rose" by Fukiya Kôji allude to similar images from Aubrey Beardsley's illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salomé.12 Yoshiya herself invoked figures like Edward Carpenter to think about schoolgirl relationships, using what we might now call queer sexology to combat anxieties on the part of women educators. In any case, it seems that for Katsuragi Misao, it is initially the thought of losing access to these rich intertexts that strikes fear in her heart as she sets off on the train, as though in exile from the cultural center of Tokyo. Her decision to study abroad in Boston (home of the "Boston marriage," referring to a relationship between two women who have set up house together) can be read as an attempt to re-immerse herself in this culture, even though her pursuit ends tragically.13
So Katsuragi never finds a framework, but it is clear that the story itself does question the existing frames: "parents choosing marriage partners," the uncle's profiteering view of "study abroad," teaching as a catch-all career for educated women, and even the immigration center that employs Katsuragi but cannot mend her emotional suffering. The moments of coincidence such as those created by the train and chance meetings, their doubled shadows as they stand on the beach, and the near miss in Colorado all provide their own sense of melodramatic structure that allow the reader to feel the utopian possibility of a space for these two girls love, even when there is no space other than in the depths of their own hearts.
While it is not difficult to frame these desires via the flexible contemporary category of "queer," it may be surprising to some readers that to invoke the word "lesbian" for Katsuragi and Urakami's relationship, Flower Stories, or Yoshiya's work and life more generally, has sometimes been controversial.14 I think this is a wonderful question to raise and discuss in a classroom or elsewhere using the story itself, and no translator's introduction can "answer" it. Some angles on this word choice might be helpful. While the term "lesbian" or loan word "rezubian" were not used in these stories or by Yoshiya herself in her lifetime, they are used literally here in reference to Sappho from Lesbos. More broadly, the claim that "lesbian" does not apply in the Japanese context or the prewar Japanese context (both arguments are sometimes made) leans far too much toward cultural essentialism and the false sense that Japan is or was entirely cut off from the rest of the world, including its varied discourses on sexuality. The impression given by "Yellow Rose" and its milieu is rather the opposite: a highly cosmopolitan girls' culture, aware of Sappho as a figure available to express the desire of one girl for another. It is engaged in active exploration of the rich but incomplete solutions posed by the possibilities of western philosophy, emotional poetry, and travel to America as sources for different ways of thinking about the realities and aesthetics of women's lifestyles, desires, and conceptions of love.
If one were to choose to label this story "lesbian" on the basis of some particular sex act, who knows? The reader knows there is an imperative for a "kiss," but it is in quotation marks and unclear who would be kissing whom. Yoshiya uses ellipsis extensively, "with its double meaning of what goes without saying and what has not yet been thought."15 It is noteworthy that her use of punctuation, and ellipses in particular, is one of the most remarked upon aspects of Yoshiya's ornate style. In the translation I have preserved the many dashes and dots because they are so meaningful to the pacing and tension, sexual and otherwise, which pervades the text. We do not know what happens, for example, before the doctor walks back into the room during the field trip. But the mode of writing suggests that there is a desire, and inspires, and productively frustrates, the readers desire to know more. It is often these epistemological gaps in Yoshiya's writing that create a space for curiosity and opening to viewing it as a queer text.16 It is also partly in these spaces that those who came later and wished to engage with Yoshiya to develop what could be called lesbian cultural production have worked.
Meanwhile, Yoshiya's biography certainly allows her to be counted among any list, if we were to make one, of important modern lesbian writers. She was able to stay with her woman partner, Monma Chiyo, whom she met just a few months before "Yellow Rose" began serialization, for the rest of her life, and later adopted her to become Yoshiya Chiyo after Chiyo's own parents died leaving her without family. Yoshiya was also unique among her peers in breaking out of the reader-contributor community to become a commercial success, eventually becoming extremely well off from publishing newspaper and magazine novels. Many of these were adapted to the stage and screen and became long-sellers in book form. It seems likely that the latter enabled the former, with her financial success allowing her more easily to avoid marriage, keep homes in which to live with her partner, and travel abroad together as they did in 1929–30. Of course other women writers also chose not to marry, sometimes supporting a much more bohemian or bare-bones lifestyles, getting by with work in cafes, or finding mutual support within socialist activist communities. Yoshiya was quite moved by the bravery of poet Yanagihara Byakuren (1885–1967), who fled a forced marriage to a rich coal magnate in order to live more freely with her socialist love, an incident that became a huge scandal a couple of years before "Yellow Rose."17 Of course, we cannot know for sure what would have happened had Yoshiya's writing career fallen flat, but we do know that the most common reason for separation in her stories and those of other girls' fiction and reader letters at the time, was pressure to marry at the behest of the family. As Yoshiya's contemporary feminist socialist Yamakawa Kikue (1890–1980) was to argue, one could completely change the ideology about marriage, supporting "love marriage" over arranged marriage, but so long as women had no means of economic independence, there was no fundamental difference.18 Yoshiya's unusual success allowed her a way out, even as she continued to depict in these stories and elsewhere characters who had a more difficult time. In any case, it has been important to readers and artists who allude to Yoshiya to read her life and work in various ways, including seeing her as a "lesbian foresister."19
While I would argue that her biography is completely relevant to reading her fiction, it is also worth pointing out that the rareness of Yoshiya's opportunity to live for most of her life with a same-sex partner might give the impression that her attention to romantic relationships among girls was unusual in 1910s and 1920s girls' magazines. It is true that discomfort did arise among educators of women, in part because of some highly publicized double suicides of girls whose stories were rather like the two here, reluctant to part when one or both were pressured into marriage.20 But as mentioned earlier, such depictions were far more tolerated than equally heated stories of adolescent girls in heterosexual relationships might have been. We see, for example, a young woman send a letter to Girls' Pictorial during the same months as "Yellow Rose" was published: "I wonder if it is a dream!...The girl romance story I submitted was selected, and my parents were so happy for me."21 Meanwhile, a parallel story about a heterosexual romance before marriage would have been as likely to cause a scandal that might make it impossible for her to marry. The themes of girls in love who have to part because of graduation or marriage saturate the pages of Girls' Pictorial. One of my personal favorites is by artist Fukiya Kôji, who also illustrated the original magazine version of "Yellow Rose." It features two young women and a clock, with a poem about the "impending parting" marked by the "solemn movements of the clock's hands."22 Rather than forcing these relationships between the girls into our current view of same-sex relationships as minority identities, it may also be inspiring to consider a moment when romantic relations between girls was one dominant mode of expression. Lauren Berlant writes of the importance in twentieth-century heteronormative culture of "developing spaces of relative gay and lesbian saturation" for "building a less homophobic world."23 So given the terribly delimited spaces for non-heterosexual desires and feelings, however you want to label them, the world of prewar Japanese girls' magazines is certainly appealing and empowering in being so saturated, as norm rather than exception, even if, as with Miss Urakami, their time in those spaces was usually limited indeed.
Contemporary Japanese novelist Takemoto Novala, author of the 2002 novel Kamikaze Girls (Shimotsuma monogatari), refers to this particular story to address the question of "lesbian" identity as well, albeit only to say that "even though" there is explicit reference to Sappho in "Yellow Rose," such prewar shôjo relationships are not "lesbian."24 At first glance, he appears to speak in a rather narrow sense, wishing to distinguish the girl relationships as emotional friendships with "lyrical" qualities. Perhaps such a distinction can be made in terms of the rather narrow, identitarian uses of the term in post-1970s Japan or the United States. But Takemoto goes on to try to expand his own readers' thinking about sexuality by including this possibly of a more queer shôjo sexuality, emphasizing the ways this girl sexuality is multiplicitous, as she seeks to be simultaneously sister, lover, friend, and family member.25 The energies set into play by these characters might end in a number of affective and erotically charged configurations, and the question of labeling its sexuality is best as the beginning of a conversation rather than the end. Rather than leading us towards expected conclusions about cultural or historical specificity, I hope that expanding the audience for this story will further explode these questions and categories in multiple, multilingual, and exploratory ways.
Yellow Rose
I. Queer Bond Between Two Blossoms26
It is twilight, and a certain English Academy has just held its graduation. Groups of threes and fives head home from the ceremony, passing under the rows of cherry trees in Gobancho, near the British Embassy in Tokyo.27 The reception has just ended, and as they walk towards their homes, each girl carries within her a range of emotions.
"Well, those endless school days do eventually come to a close after all! For me the day is today!!" a voice rose up from one of the clusters of girls, its throaty and earnest tone not without a dose of self-derision.
Another voice retorted: "Yes. But Katsuragi, even as you declare your grand farewell to school days, are you not setting out for your new life as Professor?"
"Professor - I love it! It sounds so impressive. But still it is with great sadness that I will be leaving the capital this spring." This mournful voice comes from none other than the person they were calling Katsuragi.
"And where will Professor Katsuragi be relocating?" another asked.
"A place some thousand miles distant from this Eastern Capital of Tokyo, to xxxxx."28 Her thin voice sounded plaintive in tone.
"Ah. So the place must be xxxxx Prefectural Girls School? You speak of xxxxx in the manner you do, but actually it is rather a nice place, isn't it? With a lot of what you might call local color, and a rather poetic feel about it." She spoke as if to console her.
"Oh? So you have been to xxxxx?" Katsuragi inquired earnestly.
"Yes, I went once, if only for a short time. You see, there was a previous graduate from here in Kojimachi named Seki.29 She teaches at X Prefectural Women's School through March, but plans to become one Madame Fujita and resign her position. So the person taking her place must be you. Its awfully funny, but the person named Seki is my aunt! So it was to visit her that I travelled to xxxxx before."
Miss Katsuragi listened, nodding. "Oh, so, Miss Seki is your aunt? So well, I suppose that I shouldn't speak ill of her then?" Of course this was a trick question, behind which lay her real request: "But may I?"
"Oh, I don't mind at all if you do. We come from different generations, that lady and I. I couldn't care less." What an insolent niece!
But still feeling just a bit guilty about it, Katsuragi made a few more short, prefatory remarks before launching into her comments, "Really? Miss Koyama, sorry but may I speak frankly for just a bit? Only if you are certain that you don't mind."
"No, really, please go right ahead." Miss Koyama good-naturedly agreed.
"This is what I think. Since it is my first teaching assignment, it's going to be quite hard to fill Miss Seki's shoes. From the principal on down, people will compare me to her, and find me quite scattered. I expect quite a lot of furrowed brows and glances shot my way as they think about what a truly bad teacher has landed in their midst. For one thing, I have no real qualifications as an educator. And anyway, the word hypocrite does not even begin to describe so many of today's educators. Right in the middle of them will be me, whose very constitution makes it quite difficult to bear any compromise of my ideals. I expect that quick on the heels of my teaching assignment will be none other than a second notice: dismissal! Oh, I think I'm really done for." So declared Miss Katsuragi, following it all up with a loud sigh of resignation that made the whole remark come off as rather light-hearted in the end.
"Ha, ha, ha....It's not something to give up on as easily as you do. Miss Seki is Miss Seki and Miss Katsuragi is Miss Katsuragi. Besides, you may well be able to turn your youth to your advantage," Miss Koyama comforted her.
"But I really have such a broody sort of personality. I am just helpless when it comes to putting on a happy face, and I have no idea how to make an appealing impression on the students. I'm quite sure that my career will end in suffering, a failed instructor." Miss Katsuragi sighed again -
"Ha, ha, ha. It's just like a person whose school nickname is 'the philosopher' to worry so much about becoming a teacher. You really are quite the cynic when it comes to the teaching profession. You really are a funny one..." said another friend, laughing as she clapped her hands together.
This girl Misao, whose family name was Katsuragi, was indeed so prone to reverie by nature as to have earned the nickname "the philosopher." Her jet-black, naturally curly hair, pulled up casually but neatly at the collar, lent her an appropriately dignified look. She had a somewhat long face with pleasant and elegantly prominent cheekbones. The smooth angular line of her jaw was gorgeous. In this heyday of rounded cheeks and complexions enhanced by Old-Rose shades of rouge, this look might seem rather passé. But people who had a more perversely skeptical attitude to trends might be able to feel grateful for a face displaying such a classical, aristocratic shape. And those eyebrows. Today, when the thin, Buddha-like arches made fashionable by the beauticians of Paris have made their way to Japan and compete for attention with Marcel waves and long shawls, these luxuriant and girlish eyebrows pleasantly stretching out horizontally over her eyes were yet another thing for which one could feel grateful. Under the protection of those lovely eyebrows lay her cool pupils that hinted at a heart within that was a fount of emotions but nevertheless gave her face a serene and imperturbable expression. Rather unfortunately, over them shone the glint of a pair of glasses. But in their favor, they were round with delicate frames and, of course, gold-rimmed. Although the effect was not unpleasant, the shadow of her glasses fell near her cheekbones, on skin that was so pale as to make her seem almost unhealthy. And yet as one drew closer to speak to her, the eyes behind the glasses - so beautiful and sad as to be melancholic - softly opened, giving silent voice to the thoughts of this person of so few words and reaching out such that one found oneself drawn even closer to this girl who never gazed directly on the crowds but rather pursued the infinite eternity of space as though beholding a dream, which is how people came to call her "the philosopher."
And so our Miss Katsuragi became a girls' school teacher. Clearly she had no special ambition to become a teacher and held no lofty ideals about the profession. - So why in the world did she end up becoming a teacher? Would this not be a sin against women's education? Anyone could quite fairly press her on this question. But there is a reason we might feel great sympathy for our Miss Katsuragi - her immediate family consisted only of her mother and younger brother, and in the old-fashioned thinking of her uncle and aunt, when she graduated, she was supposed to make one thing a reality: "marriage." Thus it was to seek refuge from marriage, the giant wave threatening to wash over her with its apparent inevitability, that she had submitted an official "Request to Become a Teacher," despite its not really being her true calling. Such was the deliberate reasoning behind setting off for xxxxx, so distant from the city of Tokyo that she had been so used to and that had all the things that Japan's modern life and culture had to offer.
Her classmates called it her "refuge from marriage" -
The day came for Miss Katsuragi to set off for this refuge from marriage, and she stood on the platform for the express train at Tokyo Station. If you were to calculate that one could board a train at Tokyo in the morning and disembark at three in the afternoon, it would indicate rather precisely where said refuge might be found. All of her school friends showed their faces at the station that morning to bid their emotional farewells.
"Please don't go charming all of your students and setting off a Katsuragi fever," one friend chided her. She stuck her head out the train window and gave a wry smile, quite unwitting in her performance of a highly philosophical look. "When I'm that popular with my students, it will be the day Japan and the U.S. go to war!"
"Miss Katsuragi, we shall have our class reunion on the Empress' birthday holiday. You mustn't let anything detain you from coming up to Tokyo for that. Don't worry - when we decide on a place, we will contact you straight away," said the friend who was the alumnae organizer.
"Yes, of course I shall come. I expect to be missing Tokyo quite a bit by then and shall not be able to wait to see all of your faces again. The Empress' birthday, right? I will be sure not to forget to come to Tokyo then!" Miss Katsuragi spoke, anticipation already in her voice. At that very moment, the shrill five-minute warning bell reached her ears - Just then - the bell rang, and along with the rising tension on the platform echoed the sound of hurried footsteps - a redcap came running with a small red leather trunk resting on his shoulder. Behind him ran a refined middle-aged gentleman with a khaki raincoat under his arm - next to him a girl with her black hair pulled back in a pony tail with a maroon velvet bow, a long-sleeved yuzen patterned haori jacket layered over an equally showy outfit - no doubt the gentleman's beloved daughter. Led along by that person (her father, no doubt), she was running towards their compartment, in her left hand a beautiful purse with a tassel decorated with glass beads - and in her right hand, a bouquet of flowers, a faint glimpse of these protruding through a gap in the stark white Western-style paper in which they were wrapped, and looking as if they had just emerged from a greenhouse window still dripping with dew waking from their clean morning slumber - yellow roses! Ah, yellow roses! 30
Inadvertently, Miss Katsuragi too began to stare at this beautiful girl and her entourage, and the crowd standing at the station to see Katsuragi off turned their eyes her way as well.
"You can make it - !" called out the stationmaster.
The redcap lifted the luggage up into the compartment next to Miss Katsuragi's. Having confirmed his ticket number, the gentleman appeared relieved, "Yes, this is it, this is it," he said, helping the girl next to him onto the train. Perhaps because she had been running so fast her little chest beat wildly, sending the profusion of flowers in that single hand all a-tremble, and this quivering of the yellow rose bouquet moved in unison with the fluttering of the girls' sleeves - it was a beautiful scene -
The shrill steam whistle blew - the train started to move.
"Well, goodbye." And so, our Miss Katsuragi said her farewell to the capital for now, and bravely set off on her way.
II. A Flower Petal for a Bookmark
At the start of the new semester in April, Miss Katsuragi stood at the lectern - as an English instructor for xxxxx Prefectural Girls' High School.
A sad fortune for each of my days
Tainted with chalk dust, my gravelly voice
Passes on to them the language of another country,
oh, this wretched profession
She sent poetic verses (?) such as this to her friend Koyama back in Tokyo, already missing her - this was only the second day of teaching.31 Miss Katsuragi, already having had her fill after only two days, felt discouraged as she set off on the third day toward the fourth-year group in the east classroom. The third day was the first time she would be teaching this level of students. An older teacher had warned her, "It is difficult until you get used to it..." but Katsuragi had thought to herself, "I don't think I shall be getting used to this, even in a hundred years!" It was with such trepidation that she opened up the door to the east classroom. So far she had been teaching students in the lower grades, but standing before the highest level in the school made Miss Katsuragi extraordinarily nervous. Unable to bear looking directly at the faces of the students, her eyes wandered, her gaze finally falling on a back corner of the room. Against the wall had been placed one extra student desk. On it was a crude flower vase. And in the vase a flower. A yellow rose - Miss Katsuragi's attention was completely absorbed from the moment it entered her line of sight.
I feel like I have seen that flower somewhere before. - In my twenty-two years of life I have seen many yellow roses, of course, so I can't quite place it. But I am sure it was quite recently, and the flower made a big impression on me...still, I can't remember...but, I can't just sit here thinking about the flower. I need to correct the student who is reading from the textbook right now. When the pupil finished her sight translation of the passage, Miss Katsuragi made the class do a little dictation. Her purpose was to assess their current language proficiency, but the students were taken aback. "This new teacher gives us a test right from the start?" They did as they were told, however, taking out paper, eyes open wide in fear...During the entire time they were writing, Miss Katsuragi stood in that corner of the room - trying to remember why that flower had made such an impression on her but unable to recall - a gentle spring breeze coming in through the window rustled the frail hot-house flower causing the blossom to break apart - one petal, two petals - Miss Katsuragi thought it gorgeous. And then she took one of the petals and placed it in the palm of her hand. The bell rang, and so she collected their dictations. After bowing, the pupils quietly left the classroom one by one. Clutching the bundle of papers, Miss Katsuragi tried to leave the room, and the students opened up a path in the hallway to let her by. The face of one of the students who had stepped aside came into view - Oh, I have seen that person somewhere before, she thought, pausing: that well-rounded face, black hair, alert eyes, plump and full lips, now appearing bashfully in front of her teacher - Oh, yes, that's it! When I was leaving Tokyo Station, that girl who came running down the platform with someone who seemed to be her father - and now come to think of it, that yellow rose in the classroom, was it not the very same one that person was carrying then? Realizing this, Miss Katsuragi looked more closely at the student, who suddenly blushed, looking even more bashful than before. If she smiled a bit she would have dimples - but realizing she could not just stand there looking at the student forever, Miss Katsuragi returned to the faculty room. It was only when she had sat down in front of her own desk that she realized this: the fallen petal from the yellow rose that she had carefully put in the palm of her hand was still there...Oh, how my students would laugh at me, thought Miss Katsuragi, laughing even at herself. But realizing that this petal had stayed with her all the way from the second floor classroom, she could hardly bring herself to throw it away, and she placed it into a book. It was not a textbook, but rather the book she had brought with her to occupy any free moments that might come to her, a collection of lyric poems by William Butler Yeats, and into it as a bookmark, she placed the flower petal. And what a page she opened to by chance! This was the verse - the last line of the poem: "For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart."32 Miss Katsuragi could not help but smile faintly. The pale yellow petal still placed on those words, the book was closed shut.
In May, the whole school took its spring field trip to the area of Mt. ??. The teacher normally in charge of the east classroom was the instructor in that so esteemed area of study, housekeeping and sewing, who had earned the nickname "The Grand Madame." She was an older teacher, born in the Tenpo Era (?), and in view of the care that needed to be taken for her elderly body, she was not to be part of the group chaperoning the outing.33 For this reason, Miss Katsuragi, who did not have a homeroom class of her own, was chosen by the principal to substitute as leader for the group, and to lead (?) the fourth-year students from the east classroom.
Boarding the train in xxxxx City, they went as one party to the town at the foot of Mt. ??. When they got off at ?? station, one of her students rushed up to Miss Katsuragi and said with urgency, "Teacher, something is wrong with Miss Urakami's eye."
"Oh no. What is the matter with it?" she asked.
"A small piece of soot from the coal exhaust flew in through the train window and right into her eye." This was the explanation provided, and then Urakami came along pressing a white handkerchief over her left eye, hanging her head dejectedly. It was she: the girl she had seen with the yellow roses at Tokyo Station.
Miss Katsuragi asked, "Doesn't it hurt terribly?"
"Yes," she nodded weakly. Then the principal and other teachers gathered around.
"The eyes are precious, so we must take her to see a local eye doctor and have the substance removed. Wouldn't that be best? Miss Katsuragi, since you have been so kind as to serve as leader for this group today, won't you take Miss Urakami and accompany her to the eye doctor? We shall go on ahead to our destination, and you may follow and catch up with us later." So spoke the principal. Miss Katsuragi then took Miss Urakami to the ophthalmologist that the stationmaster had recommended as being the most reliable one in town. The other students formed a single-file line and made a lovely sight as they headed out toward their destination.
The ophthalmologist looked at this beautiful girl's eye that had met with such unexpected misfortune during the outing. "Oh my goodness. That was a close call. If it had touched the pupil it could have caused quite serious injury," and, while saying this, he wrapped cotton around his clean finger and quickly removed the offending speck of black soot from her eye. "I am going to treat it with strong medicine now, so I need you to keep your eyes closed for thirty minutes and stay here resting quietly." He had Miss Urakami lie down on the surgical cot that was in one corner of the examination room. Miss Katsuragi sat down in the chair that was near the pillow to wait.
"When the pain in your eye has subsided, you may go home. Until then, please rest," the doctor said and left the room, probably to take care of other matters.
There was no sign of even a single nurse in this small country eye clinic - it was very quiet. "Has the pain eased a bit?" asked Miss Katsuragi sympathetically.
"Thank you so much. It is feeling quite a bit better. And Teacher, I am so sorry. To have this happen right in the middle of the trip! I have been such a nuisance..." The girl on the cot seemed so unaffected and sincere...
"No, please don't be concerned about that sort of thing - Miss Urakami." As she said this Katsuragi could finally look closely at her. On the cot, her thin, delicate figure lay face up, and just below the hem of her hakama were her nicely shaped ankles neatly aligned with perfectly fitting black socks - the layers of her long kimono sleeves spilling over her chest to show off their bold meisen print, while the crimson sleeves from the under-layer commingled with them beautifully.34 The white edge of her collar stood out, cut off partially by her left hand, which reached up diagonally to lightly hold the gauze against her injured eye. The end of her ponytail stretched down below the pillow, and a wisp of stray hair lay on her white forehead; her cool eyes were both gently closed and just her lips moved with her breath like a flower - in the stillness of noon perhaps her closed eyes were seeing a dream...ah, how lovely!
Miss Katsuragi was struck by this beauty. And it also caused her to think, turning her mind towards that memory of the yellow rose, to what one perhaps might call coincidence? Getting on the same train, riding it to xxxxx, and the girl becoming one of my students - Miss Katsuragi found it all rather mysterious. "Miss Urakami, I have this feeling that I met you before coming to this school," she said, speaking of these memories for the first time.
"Um, yes, I know that, um - at Tokyo Station - " the girl answered embarrassedly, her face growing red.
"Oh, so it really was you holding those yellow roses..." Just as Miss Katsuragi had thought, the girl before her was none other than the one she had seen that day.
"Yes, during spring vacation I went with my father to visit my grandmother's home in Tokyo, and we were returning, having received a souvenir of those yellow roses from her greenhouse. We almost missed the train, and I had to run quite quickly - I think you saw me then, didn't you, Teacher? When I had occasion to meet you there in the classroom during our first English class, how awkward I must have seemed - I am embarrassed just thinking of it," said the girl - in a kind, lilting voice.
"You shouldn't feel that way," Miss Katsuragi said laughing, "I was just watching in suspense, hoping that the train wouldn't leave without you!" she said, opening up to her.
"Oh, thank you so much," the girl laughed with her.
Miss Katsuragi replied, "But was it not quite a coincidence that you turned out to be connected with the school –?"
"Yes, indeed - teacher - when the principal introduced you, and I saw what you looked like, I was so surprised...but..." the girl wavered slightly, stammering.
"But...What is it?...But what...?" Katsuragi, agitated by the 'but,' pursued it.
"Um...Um...But..." feeling pressed in this way the girl hesitated even more, mumbling...
"But what?..." Miss Katsuragi asked attentively.
At last, seeming to have worked up its nerve, a charming voice rose from the bed - with a fair degree of diffidence, "But, um, I was pleased too-somehow-pleased..." she broke off there. And, as if in embarrassment, the hand that had held the gauze fell away from her face.
"Oh, don't do that or the gauze will fall off," said Miss Katsuragi kindly, and seeing that the gauze had slipped down from the shy girl's eye, quickly reached out her arm to stop it and the beautiful child's hand touched her own so...
All of a sudden the doctor burst into the room. "How are you doing? How is the pain?"
"Yes, it is much better," replied Miss Katsuragi standing up from the chair.
"Well, then, it is fine for her to go home now." Hearing this the girl sat up and started to prepare to leave.
"Oh, well, earlier I was in such a hurry to treat your eye, I forgot to have you write your name in the clinic logbook." The doctor said, opening up his book and taking out a pen.
"Student of xxxxx City Upper Girls School, Urakami Reiko-" said Miss Katsuragi in her stead.
"Age?"
Miss Katsuragi knew her name from the classroom, but she did not know her age. "How old are you?" she asked the girl.
"Seventeen."
As planned, Miss Katsuragi's friends in Tokyo held a class meeting on the Empress' birthday. Miss Katsuragi was nowhere to be seen, however.
"Hmm. I wonder what happened with that Miss Katsuragi. When she was leaving Tokyo Station, she was so insistent and promised to come to our reunion," complained one of the organizers. "I know. She was grumbling so much about leaving for xxxxx City, and for a time she wrote us letters about being so bored and lonely. But what is going on with her now? Not a word. I wonder what happened?" remarked Miss Koyama, looking puzzled. Just then a telegram addressed to the class party arrived: "Pressing business, can't come."
Looking at this, the classmates passed their unanimous resolution! "We will pick on her about this, when she returns to Tokyo this summer!"
-They may not have known it, but that day, in xxxxx City after the school convocation, Reiko visited Miss Katsuragi's lodgings.
III. Sappho's Pledge
Bell echoing across the water surface
Trembling, vacillating, quickly disappearing
Melting into silence"Return your thoughts to yesterday," or
"Cherish the remains of today," or
"Wait for morning that will always come."
- Thus carries the sound of the bell down to the water at Kiyomigata shore. It must be from the Seikenji Temple bell tower in Okitsu - 35
The bell sound crosses the twilight waters...
Motionless on the beach shadows...two of them
Two shadows paused silently as if to let the sounds of the bell gently embrace them -
Twilight, the moon thinly visible at the yonder edge of the sky - as they neared the shore only the very tips of the breaking waves sported a faint whiteness, like frayed silk tassels. "Miss Reiko...that must be the light from the beacon." This would be Katsuragi.
Two shadows, Katsuragi a head taller, glided lightly together across the surface of the beach, which was not quite sand but rather a mix of small rocks and gravel.
"Hmm - the one at Miho no Matsubara?..." Reiko's voice was imbued with that gentle, girlish sincerity...the voice of one in the spring of life.
"Miho no Matsubara - the place with the pine tree on which the celestial nymph hung her feathered robe."36
"Yes, that's it. Even now those pines surround the shoreline..."
"Oh really? So Reiko, you have been over there - ?" Katsuragi gestured to the Matsubara Peninsula extended in between patches of sea and faintly glimmering in the evening light, and whence shone a single and intermittent thin, red light, disappearing and then glowing again - mysterious light.
"Yes, I was taken there last summer by my father...this year, maybe we can go together, Teacher. You can see boats launching and Mt. Fuji - it is just like a picture by Hiroshige."
"Ah, it must be beautiful - a typical Oriental landscape," Miss Katsuragi said, seeming to agree.
"Teacher, there is also a temple near there called Ryugeji. They say it has Japan's biggest Sago palm tree...." Reiko tried to narrate her memories from last summer.
"Oh, Ryugeji. That's where Takayama Chogyu's grave is, isn't it - ?" Katsuragi said, her voice reflecting her efforts to recall the information.37
"Oh, yes, I believe so. Isn't that the pure white, foreign-style stone grave marker there?"
"He was ill and so came to live near the sea for quite some time...Miss Reiko, have you read him?"
"No..." Reiko responded, staring at Miss Katsuragi's face as she answered, as if to express how much she wanted to read his books, even at this very moment.
"Oh, really? When I was in girls' school, he was all the rage. But I suppose for girls these days he might seem rather old-fashioned - I still remember it so well. And in it there is a fragment of a poem by Sappho - "
"Teacher, who is Sappho?"
"Sappho, Sappho - the Greek woman poet, a brilliant poet! One with a soul of immense beauty...She lived in 700BCE - she has been called the tenth muse, a renowned woman poet - she's really unparalleled in the whole world. I love her beautiful and pure passion! Singing the pure moonlight at dusk, her poem of just three lines, is all that has been translated into Japanese, by the pen of Dr. Ueda Bin.38 We should show so much more appreciation and love for this woman poet - "
"Amazing. I never knew there lived such a wonderful woman poet in ancient times," Reiko's moist eyes sparkled.
"Chogyu writes about Sappho in Records of My Sleeves. I memorized what he wrote about her when I was a girl. Shall I try to recall it for you?"39
"Yes teacher, please teach me those beautiful words." Reiko fixed her warm smile on Miss Katsuragi as she begged her to tell more.
" - Ah, Sappho! Thou art a poet without parallel, with your lute singing sounds that do not reside in this real world, songs that are the voice of heaven. The people of Hellas have included her among the gods of poetry and fêted her at Olympus. But that last fortune was one thou did not have. Sappho was a human child, and as such aspired to fall in love. One not steadfast loved her. She suffered from that untrue love. Most piteously, she did not find the happiness that she had sought among humanity. When she came to love one truly, there was a serpent in that person's heart - this unreliable and cruel world. When she cried it was already too late. Phaon led her astray and Melitta betrayed her. Rather than experiencing the pain of love, she might prefer to end her life sooner. But to her misfortune even her death came too late-"40
Here Miss Katsuragi halted her recitation. Miss Reiko had held her breath while listening and now let forth a sigh.
"Miss Reiko, Sappho was one who loved a beautiful friend of the same sex and was wronged. She came from Eresos on the Island of Lesbos to school in Mytilene. Eventually a lovely girl slave was sold to the area, and Sappho took her in as her own maid and loved her deeply. Betrayed by that girl, Melitta, Sappho, in honor of her own deep passion for this girl, cast herself from the rocks of Lucretius into the deep blue sea, disappearing in the waves - the sad woman poet, Sappho - I, I, love her - "
Miss Katsuragi's expressed a dark passion and shone with tears...
"...Teacher!" Reiko's voice, faint and timorous, barely managed to let escape that one word from her crimson lips, which trembled like flower petals.
At that moment, the trailing echoing of the bell reached them - embraced by the sound of the bell their shadows overlapped -
Bell echoing across the water surface
Trembling, vacillating, quickly disappearing
Melting into silence"Return your thoughts to yesterday," or
"Cherish the remains of today," or
"Wait for morning that will always come."No, no, not that. That's not how it goes.
No bell sounds. "Kiss!"Into the gap before the sound disappears completely.
Fervent thoughts: "Kiss her!"
When summer vacation came, Miss Katsuragi and her student Reiko found their refuge in Okitsu. After the invitation extended by Reiko's parents she stayed on for some days in the Urakamis' second home, finding it difficult to be apart from Reiko. During that period, a certain earnest pledge passed hands between them. When Reiko graduated from the school that fall, she would go to Tokyo with Miss Katsuragi and attend the latter's alma mater in Kojimachi, and having graduated, the two of them would go together to an American college to study. This was the pledge they made for their futures. They swore this with their two pure hearts!
IV. A Tearful Farewell at the Port
Reiko's mother came to visit Miss Katsuragi's lodgings, in early March, just before Reiko's graduation day.41
During the previous summer in Okitsu, she had been invited to their home, so of course they had met one another. But the mother's visit came suddenly this time. "I am sorry to be bothering you when you are so busy, but I have a favor to ask, an important one..."
What could it be? Since it is a "favor" it must have something to do with Reiko's personal life, but what in the world could it be? Miss Katsuragi's heart raced.
"Miss Katsuragi - it is about Reiko. With your support she will be graduating this spring - and if truth be told, there is a longstanding promise - she is our only daughter, and we are to take an adopted bridegroom into our family - and so we want to have the ceremony in early April and put everyone involved at ease. When we spoke to Reiko about this, she immediately responded that she was against marrying this person. Her father and I, and the rest of our family, don't know what to do or say. But were we to break that promise because of her selfishness, we would fail in our obligations to our family. It is because we are so beside ourselves with worry that we thought to approach you, Miss Katsuragi. She worships you more than any god - it is with the hope that you might help win her over and encourage her that I came here so suddenly. I am so sorry for the trouble - but I implore you. We and the entire Urakami family would be deeply grateful if you might speak to the child and convince her." Her mother spoke through tears, bowing repeatedly.
Miss Katsuragi's heart was torn asunder - the evil demons of fate who had perhaps laughed all the while as they committed this atrocity must have been lying in wait for these two maidens traveling along what had just turned without warning into a terrifying path. Until today, who could have predicted what had just happened?
Miss Katsuragi was faint of heart. While on the surface she appeared brave and immune to attack, she ultimately was a weak child - she possessed a spirit weaker and more brittle than any other she knew.
She had a whole array of arguments why it was not a good idea for parents to decide whom their children married. But now, standing before these particular parents, none of those arguments seemed the least bit convincing. Nor did it help that she was all too conscious of the fact that Reiko's refusal to marry was based on nothing other than her own excessive love for the girl. What paltry support that was for one who was trying to make a shield of their love and boldly show it to the world! So it is that the sadness of those who love their own sex and therefore cannot live their lives in the form of a conventional marriage is redoubled by the chagrin of parents-for whom marriage represents the sole pinnacle of womanly achievement-and the opprobrium and scorn of everyone else.
Miss Katsuragi lost track of any way to uphold her own position-and so she made her decision. "I don't know how the conversation will go, but I will speak with Reiko. Please rest assured."
"Oh, thank you so much for agreeing to this so quickly. We are so very grateful and relieved," said her mother, and there were no words with which to reply to her thanks. Miss Katsuragi covered her eyes with her sleeve to hide her own tears.
How did Miss Katsuragi convey these words to Reiko? We don't know! As soon as Reiko's graduation was over, Katsuragi returned to Tokyo.
Reiko's wedding ceremony was in the beginning of April. Soon the many dreams of her maiden years would pass away, and after that night her purity would never return. One sleeve of her bridal kimono emblazoned with a gorgeous pattern - a cluster of yellow roses. How tragic! Who in the world had thought to place this there!?
The month passed, and Miss Katsuragi departed to attend a college in Boston, leaving Yokohama by boat, her high-school friends seeing her off to pray for her success. "Be safe. Get your degree. Write an amazing thesis on the philosophy of religion - " and so on.42 As they spoke, the traveller was distracted perhaps by other thoughts, turning her eyes toward one not there...
Around the autumn of the second year after she set across the ocean to America, all tidings from Miss Katsuragi ceased. Enticed by the heady promise of the phrase "study abroad," the man who acted as her uncle had agreed to assist with her tuition. But over time his anger at her had returned, and there was no one who might provide the sort of concern that a mother or some other blood relative might normally offer.43 Fortunately, Mrs. Seki - the woman who was the grandmother of her friend Koyama from her days in English school - was travelling together with her husband as part of a study tour run by a Christian organization, and she agreed to look into the whereabouts of Miss Katsuragi during her journey. Mrs. Seki put in inquiries with the Consulate and various acquaintances as soon as she arrived in the region, but nothing was known. People from Japan had already made many inquiries to the college, and it was clear that she had withdrawn. But to be certain, Mrs. Seki went in person and was told that Katsuragi was remembered as a quiet, morose Japanese woman. They did not know where she had gone, and Mrs. Seki's last hopes were dashed.
Her journey coming to its end, Mrs. Seki's group was taken on a tour to see an immigration center in Colorado.44 In the dim basement office, which had to be lit by electric light even in the day, sitting before an English-language typewriter was one Japanese woman - some wasting away had only increased the familiarity of this sad profile - it was one and the same as the face of Miss Katsuragi.
Mrs. Seki gasped, but felt unable to break away from the head of the facility and other foreigners giving them the formal tour, and so she could not reveal her surprise and simply passed on by. But before departing the facility, she returned to the basement room to visit the person who seemed so familiar. But just as she was about to say, "Misao?" she saw that the seat was already empty, with no trace of a person left behind. Disappointed, she searched on the table, and found a sheet of paper in the typewriter on which one line had been typed and abandoned. Running her eyes over it, Mrs. Seki read: "For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart."
One line of a poem - Mrs. Seki could not decipher its real significance, or the sources of the sadness that it conveyed.
Still, she visited the immigration center the next day and asked to meet with "the Japanese typist." But when the office manager came out, he appeared downcast and reported, "Last night that typist submitted her resignation by post, and she has not reappeared since."
Mrs. Seki stood in shock. She also realized that there was no mistaking that it had been Miss Katsuragi. Mrs. Seki understood that, confronted by her own unexpected appearance there, Miss Katsuragi had resigned immediately and left the region for another place entirely. Why would someone go to such lengths to hide herself away from the world and from other people? While unable to fathom the reason, she also came to think that to chase after someone who wanted so much to hide herself away might be a sin in itself.
Seeing this, Mrs. Seki swallowed her tears and remained silent as she left America and returned to Japan.
How pitiful! How sad!
And so, the young Miss Katsuragi in whom so many saw gifts that soared over the great thinkers of her day and placed great hopes, abandoned her research, left her kin, and hid all traces of herself, wandering as a refugee in a far-away foreign land. The thoughts behind her movements, along with the secrets hidden in one line of poetry, were a mystery to all - save one. Understanding lay solely in the heart of one sad, beautiful person!
Author
The daughter of a rural government official, Yoshiya Nobuko (1896–1973) began submitting stories and poems to girls magazines in the early twentieth century and went on to become one of Japan's more popular and prolific writers of the modern age. She is often considered one of the founders of modern Japanese girls' (shôjo) culture for her successful writings about schoolgirl life, and also made forays into myriad genres including domestic fiction, historical fiction, war reportage, translation, biography, history, film scripts, and haiku poetry. She had a distinctive look defined in part by her early adoption of western dresses and bobbed hair. Also well known was her lifelong relationship with a woman partner, Monma Chiyo, whom she adopted as Yoshiya Chiyo in the postwar era.
Notes1: The first book edition of some Flower Stories predates "Yellow Rose" but already contains this dedication. Hana monogatari, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Rakuyôdô, 1920). With special thanks to the many who have looked at drafts of this translation, including students in my classes at Boston University, and especially to Lucy North, J. Keith Vincent, Anna Zielinska Elliott, and Samuel Perry, who all provided extensive suggestions on the translation. Cashman Kerr Prince assisted in identifying the Sappho fragment. Susanna Fessler's forthcoming work on Anesaki Masaharu helped to interpret the Chogyû references. Thank you to Yoshiya Yukiko for permission to publish the story and to the Yayoi Museum for permission to use the cover image. Finally I have deep appreciation for Anne McKnight for providing feedback, careful editing, and this forward-looking publication venue.
2: Simultaneously with the Flower Stories, Yoshiya published what she calls "children's fiction" in venues such as the magazine Good Friends (Ryôyû). Her preface to a later edition of Flower Stories states that they were aimed at "girl students" (jogakusei). During the ongoing Flower series, her career begins to take off, with a major turning point being winning the Osaka Mainichi Newspaper fiction contest for To the Ends of the Earth (Chi no hate made, 1920). For Japanese readers, an extensive chronology of Yoshiya's publications and life edited by her partner can be found in Yoshiya Nobuko zenshû, vol. 12 (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1976), 547–577.
3: The final Flower Stories were published in a different magazine, Girls' Companion (Shôjo no tomo). There are just over fifty stories in the series, often taking five volumes when published in book form. As noted by Hiromi Tsuchiya Dollase in "Ribbons Undone," later book editions often exclude a story, "Camellia Sasanqua" (Sazanka), that depicts a community of hisabetsu buraku (historically outcast) residents.
4: "Tôshojidai" in Yoshiya Nobuko zenshû, vol. 12, 408–409.
5: See the Ozawa Mari manga in the Suggested Readings. Unfortunately, "Yellow Rose" is not one of the stories chosen for her volume, but it is nice timing for our two contemporary "translations" to appear in the same year.
6: These meetings are akin to but slightly different from Fujii's spot-on concept of "intimate alienation" in train travel, in that there is a utopic belief that the intimacy will lead to a long-term relationship even if there is the pathos of expected separation.
7: See Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination Balzac, Henry James, Melodrama, and the Mode of Excess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 1–2; and Linda Williams, "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess," in Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, eds. Film Theory and Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 711. The story has the pathos of melodrama as well. By the time "Yellow Rose" was published, readers of Flower Stories expected sad endings, and the frequent use of the Japanese equivalent of pathos, aware, in the story is a clue that there will be a parting.
8: I must acknowledge J. Keith Vincent's collaboration with me on translating this important paragraph.
9: Yoshiya Nobuko zenshû, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1976), 439. Yoshiya said in her essay "If I Were a Man" that she would have liked to be an architect and did have input into the multiple houses she had built once she became wealthy.
10: While I have not found it examined in the Japanese analyses of this story, the references to aesthetic theorist and journalist Takayama Chogyû (1871–1902, commonly referred to by his first name, Chogyû) here are intriguing. Chogyû's writings, including the personal essay mentioned here and his piece about the sound of the bells at Kiyomigata also alluded to in Yoshiya's story, came to be excerpted in girls' school textbooks and thus entered "girl culture." His work was imbued with emotional intensity by his untimely and drawn-out death from tuberculosis. In many ways his essays exhibit an emotional and personal style that had gone out of fashion in the literary establishment but which continued to inform writers like Yoshiya. The excerpt about Sappho is found in a scene of his conversation by the ocean with Anesaki Masaharu, a scholar of the philosophy of religion (Katsuragi's own chosen field). While it seems that academics have not examined this friendship in terms of its homosocial qualities, the conversation about Sappho prefaced by the visit of his friend "like me without a wife at that time" would have shared many of the qualities of Meiji-era homosocial bonds, and I think this not lost on Yoshiya Nobuko. For discussion of the Meiji homosocial relationship in fiction see Vincent, 2012 and Angles, 2011.
11: For example, an advertisement for the journal Future (Mirai) in the Bluestocking (Seitô) spinoff Saffron advertises translations of Yeats and speaks of the narrowness of contemporary Japanese naturalism, while seeking a greater range for "free and natural expression of our spirits." Yoshiya quotes Carpenter in her essay "Loving One Another," which argues for the ethical value of same-sex "friendship-love" among girl students. "Aishiau kotodomo," Shinshôsetsu, January 1921, 79–80.
12: Salomé was well-known and discussed, especially among feminist artists in the 1910s and 1920s, particularly following the 1915 silent film version, also shown in Japan. A second important silent film version staring Alla Nazimova (1879–1945), a figure in lesbian film history, was released from Hollywood just a couple of months before the publication of "Yellow Rose" and was shown in Japan in 1924. Woman author and film critic Osaki Midori also saw these films and wrote extensively about Salomé in her film criticism.
13: For a discussion of Japanese women studying abroad, including in Boston, see Sally Hastings, "Traveling to Learn, Learning to Lead: Japanese Women as American College Students, 1900–1941," in Alisa Freedman, Laura Miller, and Christine Yano, eds. Modern Girls on the Go (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), 193–208. Based on these materials it seems that someone like her would most likely have attended either Wellesley or Simmons College.
14: See, for example, Shamoon
15: Lauren Berlant, Desire/Love (Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2012), 3.
16: Useful and inspiring for opening out this question is Eve Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Also helpful is the use of the category "Sapphic" by Susan Lanser, Sexuality of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).
17: One resource on this famous incident, including references to it in another of the Flower Stories, is Michiko Suzuki, "Shinjû fujin, Newspapers and Celebrity in Taishô Japan," Japan Review 24 (2012): 105–125.
18: Yamakawa Kikue, "Keihintsuki no tokkahin to shite no onna" and "Doguma kara deta yûrei: Takamure shi shinhakken no Marukushugi shakai ni tsuite," Fujin kôron, January and June, 1928.
19: Welker, in Aoyama and Hartley, 164.
20: Suzuki 2006, Pflugfelder, Robertson 1999, and Shamoon provide extensive discussions of these issues.
21: Shôjo gahô, May 1923, 131.
22: Shôjo gahô, May 1923, 2–3.
23: Berlant, 22.
24: Takemoto Novala, Shimotsuma monogatari: yankî-chan to rorîta-chan (Tokyo: Shôgakkan, 2002). Takemoto romanizes his name as Novala, while it is pronounced in Japanese as Nobara, which evokes more like the meaning "wild rose" than his chosen transliteration.
25: See Bergstrom for a brilliant discussion of Takemoto's appropriation of the shôjo and Yoshiya's writing, including the novel Mishin, where Takemoto's character reads Flower Stories.
26: The section headings are from a 1935 anthology edition of the story, Yoshiya Nobuko zenshû, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Shinchôsha, 1935); the first three headings incorporate the titles from the original serialized installments. "Queer bond" (kushiki no enishi) has certain contemporary associations that may cause some readers to pause. "Queer" was not an unusual word to use broadly in the early twentieth century.
27: The school in former Gobanchô in Kôjimachi near the British Embassy is certainly a reference to women's education leader Tsuda Umeko's Joshi Eigaku Juku (1900), which later became Tsuda Juku College, relocating to its current location in western Tokyo in 1931. The location described has become Ichibanchô, and is close to the Hanzômon subway station, just a number of blocks from what would later become one of Yoshiya's homes. Yoshiya was not a student of Tsuda, but knew and lived with many at the YWCA dormitory. Her partner Monma Chiyo was a mathematics instructor at the Kôjimachi Girls' High School in the same neighborhood. Yoshiya met Monma in January 1923, and this story began serialization in March.
28: All orthographic marks, including sets of six ellipses and question marks, are directly from the original except where noted. This "xxxxx" translates "xx" in Japanese. This seems to block for anonymity representing two Chinese characters for the place name, which when Romanized would likely have more syllables and letters. This is a common practice in fiction of this era for both anonymity and preemptory censorship.
29: This would likely be another school in the same neighborhood as their Tokyo English school, perhaps the school at which Monma taught.
30: Beaded purses were at the height of fashion among women students at this time.
31: The narrator uses the question mark in this way, always attached to Katsuragi's view of things and highlighting a sense of ironic, self-derision typical of the "philosopher" main character. They are of a piece with the various quotation marks and other forms of emphasis around key words that highlight the attention to labels and categories among this group of young women, a community within which the third-person narrative voice also seems to reside.
32: William Butler Yeats, "The Lover Tells of the Rose in His Heart" (1892): All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old,/ The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart,/ The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry mould,/ Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart./ The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told;/ I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll apart,/ With the earth and the sky and the water, remade, like a casket of gold/ For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. W.B. Yeats, in Yeats's Poetry, Drama, and Prose: Authoritative Texts, Contexts, Criticism, ed. James Pethica (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), 23-24.
33: 1830–1844. It seems she would be in her late seventies, though the "?" leaves the possibilities open.
34: The hakama indicates the long, dark-colored skirt wrapped around and over kimono and worn by young women students in this period, and still used today as formalwear at graduation ceremonies. Later in the same decade (the 1920s) the sailor suit and skirt now more typical of girls' school uniforms began to be adopted in some schools.
35: The locations are close to one another and rich in poetic imagery. "Kiyomi" and "Seiken" are written with the same kanji characters that suggest clarity and purity of appearance and vision. Kiyomigata refers to the shore area near the Seiken temple near present day Okitsu station. "Kiyomigata" is found in the Shinkokinshû poem 1333: "Hold the vision of the person once seen, Kiyomigata, overflowing tears leave marks in their wake." Through this poem "Kiyomigata" is established as an utamakura, a mode of poetic allusion that establishes a connection between a place and the themes and emotions from earlier poems. Here Yoshiya's story repeatedly alludes to shadows and love that were found in the original love poem and its literary offspring, including the Takayama Chogyû writings she refers to later in this section.
36: The reference is to the story of Hagoromo (Feathered robe), best known as a Noh play. The same play was by this time already familiar to William Butler Yeats. Yone Noguchi wrote about Yeats's love of Noh in Japan and published a prose translation of Hagaromo in 1912. See Yone Noguchi, "Mr. Yeats and the No," Japan Times (November 3, 1907), 6. Miho no Matsubara is on the peninsula that is a short distance across the water from Kiyomigata and looks over Suruga Bay.
37: Takayama Chogyû is famously buried at this temple. Chogyû was known partly for his nationalist writings and writings in aesthetic theory, but also crafted ornately written personal essays. For a sample translation of his aesthetic theory see "Observations on Aesthetic Pleasure" (Bikan ni tsuite no kansatsu), Modern Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader, Michele Marra ed. and trans. (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999), 98–111.
38: The Sappho fragment is included with two others in the extended later edition of Kaichôon, which was an influential Meiji poetry collection by Ueda Bin often quoted by Yoshiya. The Sappho translations appeared first in Ueda's Bungei ronshû and then added to the posthumous extension of Kaichôon from 1926. "Kaichôon igo," Ueda Bin shishû (Tokyo: Daiichi shobô, 1926), 249–251. This corresponds to the Sappho fragment 104a–Voigt. A literal translation of these lines is: "Hesperus, all things you bring, as many as light-bringing Eos scattered, / You bring sheep, you bring goat, you bring child back to mother." These two verses were cited in later antiquity by Demetrius of Phaleron in his treatise, On Style, as an example of anaphora, the repetition of "you bring" (fereis in the ancient Greek) lending passion and grace to these lines.
39: Waga sode no ki (Records of my sleeves) is written in a lyrical and classically-tinged style typical of Chogyû's personal essays, and a style influential on Yoshiya and other girls' fiction writers. It is found in high school textbooks for women from the 1930s, while references to Takayama occur in curricula from at least 1910. See Shin sei joshi kokugo dokuhon kyôjusankôsho, vol. 4, Tokyo Kaiseikan eds. (Tokyo: Tokyo Kaiseikan, 1933). At the time of the essay, Takayama has removed himself to the seaside for convalescence for the lung illness to which he would eventually succumb. His friend, important scholar of philosophy of religion and literature Anesaki Chôfû (Masaharu) (1873–1949), has come to visit, and they read Sappho by the shore at sunset in a scene not dissimilar from this one in Yoshiya's piece. The essay is in the first anthology of Chogyû's work. See Takayama Chogyû, Chogyû zenshû, vol. 5 (Tokyo: Hakubunkan, 1906), 139–156.
40: This paragraph is classically-tinged Japanese from Takayama's text, matching his nearly word for word with the early anthology version cited above. The story of the Phaon and Sappho is considered apocryphal, but in most versions she kills herself after being spurned by Phaon. Such stories are seen by some scholars as an attempt to place Sappho in a heterosexual story, though clearly Yoshiya's story has a different take on the matter.
41: The Japanese academic year runs from April to March, so the summer vacation Urakami Reiko and Katsuragi Misao spend together falls during the middle of Reiko's final year of school.
42: It is notable that Katsuragi, like Anesaki Chôfû who appears in Records of My Sleeves, is going to Boston to study philosophy of religion. Anesaki was in the same field and, after studying in Germany and England, lectured on Japanese religion and culture at Harvard from 1913–1915. His lectures were attended by T.S. Eliot, among others. Meanwhile, it is often noted that Takayama was selected to study abroad but was unable to go due to his illness.
43: His anger is likely due to her initial refusal to find a marriage partner after graduation as mentioned earlier in the story.
44: There were over 2000 Japanese people living in Colorado at the time the story was published. Bill Hosokawa, Colorado's Japanese Americans: From 1886 to the Present (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2005), xiv. Having made extensive inquiries, I find that there are few records of the institutions for immigration in Colorado at this time, but this may have been either an immigration office or a center related to a Japanese Association or the Methodist Church in Denver, both of which had formed at this point.