Beneath the Cherry Trees
There are bodies buried beneath the cherry trees. Oh yes, you can take my
word for it. How otherwise do you think the blossom could bloom so splendidly?
For two or three days it’s been disturbing me, that incredible beauty. But now
at last I’ve got it. There are bodies buried beneath the cherry trees. You mark
my word!
Why, each night on my way home, should the one thing of all things that
comes into my mind, like an all-seeing eye, be a trivial gutless thing such as a
safety-razor blade? You said you didn’t know, and I don’t know myself either,
but I’m sure the two cases are the same.
The flowers on any tree, when they’re in full bloom, you how, spread about
them a kind of air of mystery. As a child’s top, spinning, clarifies into
perfect stillness, as a skilled musical performance invariably conjures up its
own illusion, so they carry the spell-invoking aura of procreation at white
heat. A strange, alive beauty which never fails to make its mark on men’s
minds.
Yet it’s just that that made me so desperately miserable yesterday and the
day before. Somehow, I couldn’t believe in the beauty. It only made me uneasy,
depressed, and empty. Now at last, though, I know.
Just try imagining that each of these cherry trees, with its riotous mass
of blossom, has a corpse buried beneath it. Then you’ll realize what was making
me so uneasy.
The bodies of horses, say―or cats and dogs, or human beings.
All putrid, crawling with maggots, and stinking intolerably. Yet, at the
same time, dripping with a clear, crystalline liquid...... The roots of the
cherry trees fold them in an insatiable, octopus-like embrace, and a collection
of fine tendrils-like the feelers of a
sea-anemone suck up the fluid.
What can be responsible for such petals, for such pistils and stamens? I
seem to see the crystalline fluid, drawn up by the tendrils, advancing
dreamlike in quiet columns through the veins of the trees.
Come, what are you pulling such a face for? Isn’t it rather a pretty piece
of clairvoyance? For my part, I find, at last, that I can look the blossom
straight in the eye. I am freed from the mystery that disturbed me so much
yesterday and the day before.
Two or three days ago, I came down into this valley and went along it
picking my way from one rock to another. Among the spray, now here, now there,
I could see the gossamer-winged mayflies being born, Aphrodite-like, from the
water, and fluttering up towards the sky above the valley. It’s up there, you
know, that they celebrate their pretty little betrothals.
Walking on a little, though, I came across something odd, something in the
water left by the stream in a pool on its dried-up bed. An unexpected
irridescence, like floating petroleum, covered its surface. What do you think
it was? The corpses of dead mayflies! Their wings, overlapping, covered the
entire surface, that and uncurling, giving off an oily irridescence. Their
graveyard after the laying of their eggs!
When I saw it, something seemed to pierce through to my heart; I
experienced the cruel joy of the ghoul breaking open a grave to enjoy the
corpse within.
to pierce through to my heart; I experienced the cruel joy of the ghoul
breaking open a grave to enjoy the corpse within.
Nothing in this valley pleases me.
The nightingales and the tits, the young buds on the trees clouding the bright
sunlight bright green-by themselves, they are no more than blurred images. What
I need is the tragic note. Only when the balance is there do the images come
into focus. My mind is a demon thirsty for melancholy: only perfect melancholy
can give it peace.
So you wipe your armpits. A cold sweat, perhaps? I’m the
same, you know. But there’s really nothing unpleasant about it. Just think of
it as sticky, like semen.
Then we shall be quite perfectly melancholy.
Oh, those bodies buried beneath the trees!
Those bodies, inexplicable, born of who knows what flight
of the fancy―they are one, by now, with the trees, and however I shake my head they
show no sign of separating again.
The moment has come when I feel I can drink to the
blossom, drink on equal terms with the villagers, carousing there beneath the
cherry trees.
Translated by John Bester
KAJII Motojiro (1901-1932) was born in Osaka. Upon
completing of middle school in that city he went to the third High School in
Kyoto where he majored in science. Although he had planned to become an
engineer, he became interested in literature and was influenced by the humanism
of Tolstoy and Christa in socialism. In 1924 he began studying English
literature at Tokyo University and along with Tonomura Shigeru
(novelist,1902-1961) and Kitagawa Fuyuhiko (poet,1900-1990) he began publishing
the literary magazine Aozora, in which he published such things as “Lemon”
and In a Castletown (Shiro no aru machi ni te). In 1926 he had to
interrupt his studies at Tokyo University due to tuberculosis and moved to
Yugashima to convalesce. Here he became acquainted with Kawabata Yasunari
(novelist,1899-1972). In 1928 he published his Beneath the Cherry Trees (Sakurano
ki no shita ni wa) in the magazine Poetry and Poetics (Shi to Shiron).
In this work one can detect a wild poetic vision influenced by Baudelaire.
Later on, under the influence of Marxism, he planed to go and live among the
day laborers of Tokyo, but was unable to because of illness. He then returned
to his birthplace in Osaka and his writings at that time, such as his Scroll
of Darkness (Yami no e-maki) and Mating (Kobi), reveal a mood of
darkness. Soon after completing his last work The Carefree Patient(
Nonki na kanja), he died in 1932. All
in all, his writing, without remaining formalistic, maintains an uniquely fresh
sensitivity and, backed up by an accurate observation and keen ability to
criticize, displays a new literary style. During his lifetime he was unknown in
literary circles, but eventually his talent was recognized after his death.
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Beneath the Cherry Trees is a prose poem.Though short in length, as a work with a unique treatment of dualistic beauty and ugliness, embossing both qualities onto the same photograph, so to speak, it can be regarded as the jewel of Kajii’s opus.The English translation of Beneath the Cherry Trees was published in 1964 by the Japan P.E.N. Club. (From The Japan P.E.N. News No.12,7-8 1964)
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The
Japan P.E.N. Club, in order to preserve them in an archive of modern Japanese
culture, is digitizing the English translations of literary works as they
appeared in The Japan P.E.N. News (irregular publication dates, July
1958-September 1971) and will publish them at irregular dates online in the
Digital Library - International Edition.
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