Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (Part 1)

Original story by Sakaguchi Angō (1906-1955)

A fantastical portrayal of a terrifying beauty capable of overpowering even the most brutal bandit.

There are many places in Kyoto famous for their cherry trees.

The tunnel of cherry trees at Keage Incline is well known, and during cherry blossom season Maruyama Park becomes a sea of humanity. One hardly need mention the cherry willows at Heian Jingū which Tanizaki Junichirō wrote of in The Makioka Sisters. The trees which line the Kamo River near the Kamo Bridge are a popular spot for students to throw cherry blossom viewing parties.

Let us consider the cherry trees of the Philosopher’s Walk.

The Philosopher’s Walk is a path lined with trees which follows the canals of Lake Biwa from Nanzenji to Ginkakuji. It is so named because long ago, there lived nearby a distinguished professor who would amble along here deep in thought. Of course, it may not necessarily be the case that the thoughts going through the professor’s head were strictly about philosophy. Even a professor will from time to time give himself to licentious fantasies, or be prompted by the rumblings of an empty stomach to ponder what is for dinner.

But what if that professor was strolling along the Philosopher’s Walk in the pre-dawn hours of spring? All is still under the blossoming cherry trees; beneath the unbroken canopy of flowers not a sound can be heard. As he passed through that scene, perhaps the distinguished professor would forget all thoughts of philosophy and lust and his empty stomach, and quicken his steps, trembling in fear.

Remove humans from beneath the cherry trees, and the scene becomes a frightening one.

People gather beneath the boughs of the cherry trees, thoughtlessly cry out, “How beautiful! How beautiful!”, hold banquets and leave the surroundings strewn with the remnants of their festivities. Perhaps this is because they cannot bear the terror of a forest of cherry trees without humans. By eating delicious foods and drinking until they vomit, they can forget that terror.

When the cherry trees on the Philosopher’s Walk bloom, droves of people come to see the flowers, the gaiety rivalling that of the Gion Festival. Spectators munching on _yatsuhashi _throng the Philosopher’s Walk, the scent of cinnamon filling the air as they cry out joyously at the sight of innumerable cherry blossom petals floating down through the air. At night young couples walk hand in hand, through the white petals falling through the darkness. Not for a moment til the break of dawn are the cherry trees devoid of human presence. It is as if the sightseers gather in their multitudes to hide away the terror of that cold, silent forest of cherry trees.

　　　　　　　＊

Along the Philosopher’s Walk is a large concrete apartment building.

It was erected about thirty years ago; according to some it still retains the smell of the student protests of that earlier age, and is well known for bearing an aura of gloom. There are always birds perching on the rooftop water tank; clothes which more resembled old rags dangling from drying racks which protrude from the windows; and at night, the bare lightbulbs that flicker in the hallways only make the scene more eerie. The massive gingko tree that towered beside it casts the building in shadow. In autumn, the residents of the building crawl around on their hands and knees under the tree, gathering up wrinkled orange gingko nuts, and eat them until they make themselves sick. On top of its creepy appearance, there always seemed to be something rotting in it.

In the room adjacent to the front entrance, there lived a fellow whose expression was always as gloomy as the building in which he resided. He had lived there for nearly three years, ever since he learned about the place from the university co-op association.

He was just another college ne’er-do-well, all but swept aside and forgotten by the world. He would attend classes only occasionally, and study only as the mood struck him; the money which he earned working at a small bookstore on Shirakawa Street would disappear almost as soon as he had earned it.

The man enjoyed buying anime DVDs and old books, as well as cheap odds and ends from the flea market. In the three years that he had lived there, the man had filled his 4½ tatami room with shining DVDs, smudged books with difficult titles, and unsettling bits and bobs. Surrounding himself with these things was the man’s life, the man’s dream, the man’s everything. There was a large ceramic frog whose wide open mouth was stuffed with old Science Ninja Team Gatchaman DVDs, and behind a heavy curtain was a large television.

What pleased the man more than anything else was sitting in his room for days on end and writing novels. He had always written good prose, but when it came to writing full novels it was a different story, and the tales which he produced were always dreadfully dull. None of his friends thought that his writing was interesting, and Saitō Shūtarō, whom he revered as his mentor, mocked him as talentless, but the man did not give up. The reason was that when he sat in the midst of his odd collection of belongings, hushed his breathing, and let the words flow from his pen, he would occasionally be overcome by an almost overpowering happiness. He always wished that those moments could go on forever.

Neither was there a shortage of things for him to write about.

“It feels like I’ve got the whole world in the palm of my hand,” he once said to his mahjong friends.

Some might have called it a solitary life, but to him it was a precious existence he wouldn’t have traded for anything. Wherever he looked in his room, there was nothing he saw that wasn’t worth talking about, there was nothing that wasn’t beautiful. It was a universe unto itself. In order to preserve this little universe, the man always cooked his own meals to save on eating out, and rather than paying for a cell phone made do with the pink pay phone by the entrance to the building.

The man thought nothing of going a week without speaking to a solitary soul, but even he was loath to go see the cherry blossoms at dawn alone.

The window of his room faced out onto the Philosopher’s Walk, and he needed only open it to see the rows of cherry trees. In spring he would sometimes open the window for fresh air, only to have a flurry of flower petals dance on the wind into his room. During this season, he avoided looking out his window at times of day when there were few people about.

He had acquired this dislike of blossoming cherry trees during the spring of his freshman year.

One day in April, he woke up early in the morning, goosebumps on his skin. The room was still bare as he had only just moved in. Not wanting to go back to sleep, he decided to take a walk to Nanzenji. And so he left the apartment and strolled down the Philosopher’s Walk, where the cherry trees were in full bloom.

Being in the shadow of Higashiyama, the Philosopher’s Walk was still dark, and there was no one else on the path. The air was chilly and taut, and in front of the man, delicate, snow-white blossoms continued on as far as the eye could see. As he went along, a strange feeling came over him. He stopped and turned around, only to find that the cherry blossoms stretched on endlessly behind him as well. The unnerving beauty of those innumerable petals was almost like the clashing of a cymbal in the man’s mind. But in reality, all was silent, as if time itself had stopped. Standing there unmoving, the man stared fixedly at the row of cherry trees. All of a sudden, he became terribly afraid. Unable to bear being beneath those trees a moment longer, he fled the Philosopher’s Walk out onto Shirakawa Street.

From then on, the man would occasionally think about those blossoming cherry trees.

What had that strange feeling been? It was not that he rued the falling blossoms, yet being under flowering cherry trees by himself made the man feel strange and uncomfortable. He thought nothing of going to flower viewing parties. What made him afraid were those seemingly frozen, glorious cherry trees he had seen that morning all alone.

“Maybe it’s a repressed childhood memory,” the man mused, though he never came up with a satisfactory explanation.

Perhaps one day he would go sit under the blossoming cherry trees and think about this mystery. He often thought about solving the mystery of the cause of that uncomfortable feeling, but in truth he didn’t really want to find out.

And so the spring of the man’s fourth year in college came around.

　　　　　　　＊

One evening, the man picked up his pen to write a novel.

When next he looked up from the page, the faint light of dawn shone through the gaps between his dusty blinds. He pulled up the blinds and cracked open the window, letting cold air come rushing in. The cherry trees along the Philosopher’s Walk were in full bloom. He could have gone to sleep again, but suddenly the man thought of how he had been avoiding the blossoming cherry trees all this time. He rarely left his bed this early in the morning, but if he let this chance slip away, another year would pass without him seeing the cherry blossoms alone. This thought vexed him for some reason, and so he made up his mind to go out.

As might be expected, the Philosopher’s Walk was devoid of people at this hour; the only presence was that of the silent cherry blossoms. That uncomfortable feeling welled up again, but the man continued to walk resolutely through that tunnel of flowers. Eventually he fancied that he could hear a great wailing sound coming from right by his ear that grew until it was almost too much to bear. It felt as though no matter how far he walked, the cherry trees continued on forever.

That was when he met her.

She was wrapped in a pure white coat, sitting on a stone bench at the edge of the canal. Her swan-like neck was bent down, her head drooping, and she looked as if she were asleep.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

The woman gave a small moan. She seemed to be drunk. Though it was spring, it was still quite cold. If she were to fall asleep here, she might even die. It was fortunate that she had survived so far.

“If you fall asleep here, you’re going to die.”

“I’m fine. Leave me alone,” she said, looking up at him. The man was taken aback. Perhaps it was only because they were surrounded by the unsettling whiteness of the cherry blossoms, but the woman’s face was so perfectly smooth that she looked almost like a porcelain doll. “Leave me alone,” she slurred, her eyes unfocused, before her head drooped down again. The man looked at the white nape of her neck.

Even more determined now not to give up, the man continued to insist, until at last he got the woman to stand. She didn’t seem capable of walking on her own, so the man lifted her onto his back and began to walk. Her limp body weighed on his back, and walking back up the Philosopher’s Walk to his apartment was no easy task. Ordinarily the man wasn’t the type of person who would do such a thing, but for some reason he felt strangely compelled.

The woman obediently came into the apartment and drank tea in the man’s room. She couldn’t be bothered enough to refuse. Her black hair was tangled, but she couldn’t be bothered enough to fix that, either. Warming his hands by the heater, the man stared at the woman. She was looking around wordlessly at the refuse that was piled up around the room. Reaching out and taking a Shigaraki-ware ceramic tanuki and placing it in her lap, she began to stroke it, looking strangely pleased.

After a while, the woman slumped down to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut and fell asleep.

The man watched her sleeping visage for a time. Having woken up in the middle of the night, he too began to feel drowsiness overtake him, and still leaning against the wall, dozed off.

When he opened his eyes again, the sun was high in the sky, and the woman had vanished as if she had never been there at all.

　　　　　　　＊

The one person whom the man respected was Saitō Shūtarō, who lived in the neighbouring wooden apartment building. He had met Saitō by chance at a mahjong tournament to which he had been invited by an acquaintance from his university department.

He had never come across such an eccentric person in his life. Saitō was the very epitome of a college ne’er-do-well. His tongue was a venomous barb, and there was hardly a being in this world whom he did not disdain. Because the man was such a meek, ordinary human being, he looked up to Saitō, and often wished to be more like him. But such a demon was Saitō that when he learned how the man respected him, he only mocked him all the more.

As they played mahjong late into the night, Saitō’s tongue grew ever more venomous.

Glaring at the man, Saitō said, “You claim to respect me. What exactly is it that you hope to gain by saying so? There’s nothing so dull as a person who respects someone. Keep your distance from me. And stop being misled by false idols which may be smashed by a hammer!”

The man scribbled down each of Saitō’s words assiduously. Though this was all just a ripoff of Nietzsche, the fact that it was Saitō who was quoting these words gave them tremendous importance in the man’s mind.

Saitō was famous for writing an ongoing work which he had never allowed anyone to read. The man also longed to read it, but Saitō would never allow this. From fragments of Saitō’s sayings the man reconstructed in his mind this phantom epic, and though he had never read a word of it was awestruck all the same. The reason the man wrote his novels so fastidiously was that he believed by undergoing this arduous training he could one day become like Saitō Shūtarō, the only lodestar the man had ever had in his life.

Each time he finished a novel, the man would call upon Saitō Shūtarō’s boarding house and beg him to read it. The bilious Saito was always loath to agree, and the man would have to bow and scrape and offer gifts of food and tobacco before he would say yes. As he read he would slash the manuscript to pieces with a red pen before returning it. Seeing this the man would fall into a nearly suicidal despondency, but oddly enough he actually enjoyed that distress, seeing it as a noble kind of suffering. Reviewing the manuscript in his own room would have been too painful, so he would put it in his bag and go out to a cafe, or the campus library, and spend around half a day inscribing each of Saitō’s crimson pearls of wisdom into his brain. The man considered it a form of training.

One Sunday afternoon, around the time when the blossoms had largely fallen from the cherry trees, the man was sitting in a cafe on Shirakawa Street, glaring at a manuscript which he had received back from Saitō.

A woman sat down at the table beside him. He glanced over, and realized that it was the same woman he had met underneath the cherry blossoms. She was with a man who appeared to be her boyfriend, but their conversation was listless, and she frequently yawned with boredom. The man assumed that she didn’t remember him. But to his surprise, when she finally noticed him she stood up and walked over.

“Mind if I join you?”

She sat down across from him. The man glanced over at her boyfriend only to see that he was glaring at him balefully. Quailing, the man waited just long enough for her to thank him for helping her, then urged her to quickly return to her table. But she just pursed her lips and refused to get up. Peering at the manuscript on the table, her face lit up. “Is this a novel?” she asked. “I love reading novels!”

Her eyes scanned the page, and after a moment she pointed to a sentence which Saitō Shūtarō had bisected in red ink. “Why would you delete this? I think it’s good,” she declared.

“You do?”

The man was taken aback. This was the first time anyone had complimented his writing.

“These corrections are terrible. They take out all the good parts.”

Picking up a pen which lay on the table, she drew a big X over Saitō Shūtarō’s long-winded criticisms, laughing breezily once she was done.

“Hey!” the woman’s boyfriend called threateningly, tired of waiting.

“Okay, okay,” said the woman, getting up and returning to her table. Eventually the couple left the cafe, the woman’s boyfriend almost pushing her out the door. But after she was gone, the man couldn’t get the ring of her laughter out of his head.

After that, the man would occasionally see her around campus, or out and about in town.

She was usually with someone else, so they rarely spoke to one another. But every time she noticed him, the woman would always nod her head and smile. And each time after he nodded back and they had passed each other by, the man would wonder what he would do if he could never see her face again. Before he knew it, he’d begun to look forward to each meeting. Each time they met, her expression seemed a little kinder, though he told himself it was his imagination. The man refused to allow himself to have hope for things such as romance.

One day after class, he worked his shift at the bookstore on Shirakawa Street. After organizing the receipts he closed up shop, and by the time he reached the path toward Ginkakuji it was late at night. A dark rain was falling, and the reflections of the streetlights glimmered on the slick asphalt. There was no one around. Passing the Ginkakuji police box, he arrived at the Philosopher’s Walk, where all was still.

Suddenly, in the midst of the sound of the rain pelting down on his umbrella, he heard the voices of a man and a woman.

A lone streetlight stood in front of him, illuminating the new leaves on the cherry trees. Beneath it stood a couple facing each other, having a furious row, with the man holding an umbrella over the woman. From the looks of it he was ready to cry, while the woman only stared at the rain that fell into the canal, seemingly bored. Her long, rain-dampened hair was plastered to her white porcelain cheeks. The man realized that it was her.

Feeling uncomfortable, the man hid his face under his umbrella and quickened his steps.

A few steps after he had passed them, he heard the woman’s footsteps running towards him. He turned around, just in time to see her jumping underneath his umbrella, soaked.

After that, the other man who had been arguing with the woman approached, and as to what happened after the man wasn’t entirely too sure. After exchanging just a few words, he abruptly found himself shoving the other man into the canal. His opponent stood there in the dark water, looking utterly lost. The petals which still floated in the canal clung to his body, making him look like a beast made of cherry blossoms.

The woman took the man’s hand and ran off.

The two dashed through the rain all the way to the man’s apartment, which towered up in the darkness like a fortress. Running into the entranceway they stifled their breathing, looking into each other’s faces beneath the lightbulb, listening to the rain that fell outside. There was no sign of pursuit. With her hair drenched by the rain, there was a childlike innocence to the woman. The man stared at her transfixed, and when she noticed him she stared back, her own eyes filled with surprise.

After a moment she took out a handkerchief and wiped the man’s face off, unable to hold back her giggling.

　　　　　　　＊

The man and the woman began to live with each other at the end of the Gion Festival, a happening which sent shockwaves through his very small circle of friends.

It had come completely out of the blue, and it all seemed so odd. When you considered the certainty with which they knew he had lived his life, it just didn’t make any sense. At least my life is more meaningful than his, they had all been sure, and the shock and dismay which they now felt was considerable. The man’s miraculous comeback shook them to their core.

“This cannot stand!” some of them even went so far as to declare. “It violates the laws of thermodynamics!”“

“You don’t think he kidnapped her, do you?”

Though they all were very concerned, their worries were apparently unfounded.

They interrogated the man thoroughly, trying to discover the truth behind this miracle.

But no matter how they pried, they were unable to extract a clear answer from him. This was hardly surprising, for the man himself had no idea how this state of affairs had come about. Of course, he believed himself to be smitten with her, and whenever he saw her sitting in his room reading the things he had written, he was filled with a contentment he had never felt before. But as to why she would content herself with this, the man was unsure. All he was sure of was that he was in love with her.

The woman would whisper as she embraced him, “Your dream will come true. You’re going to become a famous novelist.”

Whenever he heard those words, an indescribable feeling would come over him. So this is what it’s like to feel confident in yourself, the man marveled. Does Saitō Shūtarō always walk around feeling like this? It felt like for the first time in his life he’d met someone who believed in him. Because of that, the thought of losing her terrified him.

When they first began to live together, the man thought of moving. But the woman told him there was no need for that yet. Instead, the man sold all of his anime DVDs. This gave him enough money to buy an air conditioner, as well as making his room just a little more spacious. The man also quit smoking.

That summer he watched her living comfortably in his room, hardly daring to believe she was real. Her voice was so soft, so enchanting. Her movements were so elegant that the man was bewitched. Whenever he picked up one of the many objects which were crammed in his room, she would listen raptly, her eyes sparkling. The man wished that moments like that would last forever.

But even he was dimly aware that her actions were driven by a resolute purpose. What that purpose was he did not know, but it was frighteningly firm, and he was just only conscious of the fact that no matter what he did it he could not change it. Whenever he bumped up against this immovable bedrock he would feel as though he had awakened from a dream, and in those moments the woman’s face looked like that of a complete stranger.

At the end of August, the man and the woman had a huge fight.

It was about Saitō Shūtarō.

The man still held Saitō Shūtarō in high esteem, and even after he had the woman to compliment his novels, it remained his custom whenever he wrote something to first go to see Saitō to get his opinion. This displeased the woman. She was of the opinion that Saitō only ruined everything that was good about the man’s writing. She also did not like how Saitō would haughtily belittle him. But the man refused to hear a word against Saitō, which infuriated the woman more and more. She began to talk in an obnoxiously polite tone like she was a saleswoman dealing with an annoying customer, and all the emotion vanished from her face. Not only did she badmouth Saitō, but she began to speak ill of his other friends as well. The blood rushed to his head, and he stormed out of the apartment.

As luck would have it, that night he was planning to attend the Ichijōji Cup, a mahjong tournament that was being held at an acquaintance’s residence. His friends were all taken aback when he showed up, looking surlier than they had ever seen him. “Quite the spat,” said Saitō Shūtarō, when he arrived fashionably late. “I could hear you two going at it from my apartment.”

His friends yawned when they heard that, not pursuing the matter any further.

“Just a lovers’ quarrel, then?”

“Bo-ring.”

The man smiled bitterly. But after passing the night there, he began to feel a terrible sense of unease.

As he rode his bike back from Ichijōji under the summer sun, he felt a pressing need to hurry. He returned to his apartment building covered in sweat and went inside, only to find the door to his room thrown wide open. When he looked inside he was rooted to the spot with shock.

The woman was sitting inside.

Dazzling light filled the room. The windowblinds were gone, and the sunlight of late summer lanced directly into the room. The blinds weren’t the only things that were missing. The carved wooden decorations, the ceramic pottery, the glasswork, the artwork, most of his old books—everything that he had spent the last three years painstakingly accumulating was gone. Without that collection, his room was as stark and dreary as a jail cell. The woman sat there in that bare room leaning up against his empty bookshelves, lazily fanning herself with a round uchiwa. He could see beads of sweat on her collarbone. The woman smiled at him as he stood there wordlessly, and told him, “I did a little cleaning. Someone graciously agreed to take it away for me.” She patted the tatami mat. “Come here,” she said softly. “Sit beside me.”

Despite the fact that she had just thrown away all of the man’s treasured belongings, that was all she said. She simply sat there indolently, gazing slackly into a corner of the room. Though it was summer the man felt a chill, as if the surroundings were frozen. They were both facing each other, yet it felt as though there was no one in the room at all. This seems familiar, the man thought to himself. I felt something similar before, once. But what was it? _Ah, yes, that’s what it was. _The man suddenly made a sudden, surprising realization.

Under the blossoming cherry trees. This was just like what he felt when he passed beneath them.

A shiver went through his body.

The woman stared at him blankly from within that empty room. The man sat down in front of the door as the strength left his body. He sat there, and said nothing. Because at that moment, he truly felt that he loved her.