Beauty in Disarray. Harumi Setouchi

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СКАЧАТЬ immediately reminded Tsuji of the word bluestocking, which had its origin in the salon of Lady Montagu in the fashionable world of eighteeth-century London. Someone had once translated the word bluestocking as aotabi, or Japanese-style blue stocking. The advertisement had declared it the only female literary magazine in Japan. Tsuji felt something fresh and intellectual in the spirit of the women editors who, anticipating the sneers and taunts of the world, had called themselves "bluestockings."

      Tsuji promptly purchased a copy of Seito, which appeared in the bookstores several days later. It was unmistakably a magazine for women's liberation though literature so fresh and bold it was much more than he had anticipated or hoped for. He immediately surmised that its editor Raicho Hiratsuka was Haruko Hiratsuka, who three years earlier in a suicide attempt with Shohei Morita had created quite a stir in the incident labeled "Wandering in the Snow at Shiobara." Tsuji, who was by nature a feminist, believed himself interested in and warmly sympathetic to Haruko Hiratsuka's speech and behavior since that incident three years ago. He also remembered the moment on the last day of August three years ago when he had opened his Asahi and had read on the society page an article under a large headline extending over several columns:

      CULMINATION OF NATURALISM

       GENTLEMAN AND LADY

       SUICIDE ATTEMPT

       LOVER A BACHELOR OF ARTS

       AND NOVELIST

       MISTRESS A GRADUATE OF A

       WOMEN'S COLLEGE

       [omission]

      CAUSE OF THEIR DARING ATTEMPT

      Bachelor of Arts Morita had graduated two years earlier, gained distinction as a talented student, and become well known after publishing a few novels. Though he had a young wife and child at home, he happened to be a colleague of Haruko (written with a different Chinese character) at a certain high school for girls, and so they had become ill-fated lovers, and due to their having the same literary tastes, they had reached a point of inseparable intimacy with one another. On the other hand, it was impossible to live together openly since he had a wife and child, and with real bitterness against their ties in this floating world, they resolved to commit their double suicide. First, Bachelor of Arts Morita, after eliminating his major difficulty by leaving his wife and child in her hometown, departed from Tokyo with Haruko in search of a place where the two could die, but luckily or not, they were unable to find one and were finally apprehended by the police. Though there have been many love-suicides from ancient times, it is actually unprecedented for a man and woman who had received an education at the highest academic institutions to imitate the foolishness of common people. It must be said that it is a news event that represents the ultimate in naturalism and gratification of the passions. And yet was it not madness that when the two lovers were seized by the police at the summit of Obana Pass, the man declared, "My conduct demonstrates the sacredness of love. I have done nothing wrong in the sight of God and man."

      Such was the tone of the article, all newspapers imitating it and violently censuring the "folly" of the two lovers. Yet the chance encounter of these two people was different from the newspaper's account, for they had become acquainted at the Women's Literary Circle sponsored by Choko Ikuta, with Sohei the lecturer and Haruko a member of the audience. Though a talented student of Soseki, Sohei Morita was almost consigned to social oblivion because of this affair, yet it was due to Soseki's kindness that from January the following year Smoke, a confessional I-novel dealing with this event, was published serially in the Asahi. In Sohei's novel, in which he tried to show the truth of the affair so erroneously conveyed by this article and others, the relationship of the two persons remained to the very last platonic. As heroine, Haruko is portrayed as a completely different type from women seen up to that time, a woman aroused by the demands of a modern ego, her excessive self-consciousness of speech and behavior often strange, eccentric. Her abrupt and unexpected conduct in everything took on a fresh charm and made the hero look upon Haruko as an enigmatic, sphinxlike woman.

      In the novel the hero finds himself dragged along by a woman who will never say she loves him, and finally, even while realizing the woman will never love him, he attempts a double suicide with her on a snow-filled mountain. The woman is so overly self-conscious that even before this confrontation with death, she writes a suicide note: "I have carried out the plan of my life. I perish through my own will. No one can interfere with me."

      Smoke resurrected Sohei as a literary figure, but readers found the affair even more incomprehensible, and Soseki himself, all things considered, treated it contemptuously as no more than an idle love story. Haruko Hiratsuka wrote a severe rebuttal of Smoke, but it was almost totally ignored.

      It was through this event that Jun Tsuji recognized in the unknown Haruko Hiratsuka the possibility of a new woman awakened to an ego that had not been seen in any of her sex up to that time, Tsuji cherishing his interest in and sympathy for Haruko, whom he had never met.

      It required little intelligence to know that an unmarried woman so scandalously written up in the newspaper and so thoroughly struck down by the world was already no better than someone put to death by society. Now, however, three years later, that woman, the common butt of a public scandal, had proudly lifted her head to bring forth a splendid magazine. With the unexpected feeling of wanting to applaud her, Tsuji found himself turning over Seito's pages.

      In the table of contents lined up with the name of the well-known writer Akiko Yosano were the names of Shige Mori, wife of Ogai, and Haruko Kunikida, wife of Doppo, and also cited was Toshiko Tamura, who had just made a brilliant debut in January that year by having her work named the best novel in a contest sponsored by the Osaka Mainichi newspaper. Also listed were such unknowns as Ikuko Araki and Kazue Mozume. From Tsuji's point of view all the compositions were immature, all in forms impossible to classify as literary. Nevertheless, he felt in them a tense and passionate sincerity that forcefully moved him:

      Rambling Thoughts

      The day has come when these mountains move.

       Though I say so, no one believes me.

       For only a short while have mountains been dozing.

      In days of old

       Mountains moved, burning in flame.

       Still, this you need not believe.

      All women who have been dozing are now awakened and moving.

      I wish I might write solely in first person singular

       I am a woman

       I wish I might write solely in first person singular

       II

      As might be expected, this opening selection of Akiko Yosano's poem sang out forcefully and unreservedly about the aspirations and dreams of the magazine.

      Though Raicho Hiratsuka's inaugural message, which chanted aloud in soprano-like tones, revealed various logical contradictions in its long passages, it had sufficient charm to arouse in its readers a powerful response:

      In the beginning Woman was the Sun. She was a genuine being.

      Now woman is the Moon. She lives through others and glitters through the mastery of others. She has a pallor like that of the ill.

      Now we must restore our hidden Sun.

      The following day Tsuji gave Noe his copy of Seito. The moment she glanced at Raicho's words, she was passionately impressed:

      I want, СКАЧАТЬ