Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (Part 2)

It was after this event that the man began to write novels for the woman.

His whole life changed. He became engrossed in his writing, and stopped going to play mahjong with his friends. His relationships all crumbled. But the biggest change of all was that he stopped showing his drafts to Saitō Shūtarō. This novel was one that he had never before dared to write, and it seemed to him that Saitō would just throw it in the garbage. For the first time, he wrote about the woman. He wrote with reckless abandon, wrote as it came to him.

Whatever he set to paper, the woman would immediately read. Whenever the face of Saitō Shūtarō reared out from the page, the woman would tell him, “You don’t need this.” What’s more, she deftly drew out the kind of writing Saitō had once derided. The Saitō within the man was gradually uprooted; he no longer paid calls to Saitō’s apartment.

Six months passed.

In February, the man received a notification that he had won a prize for best new writer. It had been the woman who had encouraged him to submit an entry, and they rejoiced together hand in hand.

“I knew you’d get it!” she told him. “You’ve got the talent.”

That day was one the man would never forget.

They went into town to celebrate, taking a walk around Shijō Kawaramachi.

Grey clouds covered the sky and scattered snow fell through the chilly February air, but as he moved through the crowds which bustled through the streets the man felt that there was a cheerfulness in the air. He bought some clothes which the woman had been wanting. When he saw the look of delight on her face, he felt happy as well. The couple ate dinner at a restaurant, browsed through a few stores, then went into a cafe. As evening fell, they sipped coffee and talked about the future. The man had continued to write with the woman after entering the contest, so he’d amassed quite a stack of new work. But he was apprehensive, uncertain how long it would be before someone bought this work. Yet the woman said to him with a strange certainty, “You don’t have to worry.”

Her cheeks were ruddy over her red scarf as they walked hand in hand between the tall buildings. The man spotted a mystical ray of light piercing the grey ceiling of clouds. Looking up at it, the woman said, “It’s an angel’s ladder.” As they stared up at the sky together, a flock of birds flew overhead, shimmering silver, through the falling snow.

The couple walked down Sanjō Boulevard towards Karasuma.

Eventually they passed in front of a charming brown apartment building. The area was lit by sunlight from between the clouds. The woman suddenly stopped, looked around vaguely, then stared up at the apartment.

“I feel like it’s time to move,” she said. “Let’s move here. Yes, I’ve decided.”

　　　　　　　＊

After leaving behind the fortress-like building on the Philosopher’s Walk and moving to the apartment in the middle of town, the man’s life took yet another turn.

Doubting that work would come in any time soon, he was rather surprised when editors came flocking to his apartment. He could hardly make sense of it all, and if the woman hadn’t been there to give him advice, he just might have fled, unable to bear the strain.

He stopped going to class entirely, and no longer paid tuition. At any rate there had been little hope of him graduating.

The man set himself to carrying out each of the commissions. The work kept coming in, at an almost frightening rate. Before long the man became used to having work, and gradually he came to believe in himself. But at times, like when he went out on the veranda at nightfall and looked down at the streetlights twinkling below in the darkness on Sanjō Boulevard, he would suddenly grow uneasy. It was as if a wave of homesickness would overtake him, making him feel quite sad. It was the woman who chased away that anxiety.

That spring, the man didn’t see the cherry blossoms.

He sluggishly applied himself to his work. In this manner, the seasons passed.

In the spring of the following year, the woman said that she wanted to move to Tokyo.

It hadn’t been a year since they had moved to this apartment, and the man was reluctant, feeling that he was finally settling into his new life. He didn’t understand why they should move all the way to Tokyo now. “There’s no point in moving,” he argued. “We can always head there if we need to, and I can work here in Kyoto just fine.” The woman shook her head and argued back forcefully. “If you want to realize your dream, you can’t stay here in Kyoto.”

After countless arguments, the man slowly came to think that perhaps she was right after all. It wasn’t that she persuaded him with irrefutable logic. He was simply worn down by her persistence. She had an inflexible will, and the man did not. That was all that decided it.

“You’re going to become even more famous, more accomplished, than you already are. I just know you will,” she assured him.

But there was one thing that bothered the man. The woman always said “your dream”. But the man had never been really sure if it really was his dream, if he was pursuing the goals that she described because he really wanted to.

“Will I really?” he wondered out loud. “Is that really what I want to do?”

“What are you talking about?” the woman laughed. “Have a little faith in yourself!”

“That’s not the problem.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

The man struggled for an answer. As he thought and fumbled with his words, the woman wrapped her arms around him from behind. “It’s alright,” she said. “It’s going to work out. You’ve got the talent.”

In the end the man folded, and they moved.

As he packed and struggled to keep up with his crushing workload, he constantly had in the back of his mind the cherry trees in full bloom. It was already April, and all over Kyoto the cherry trees were blossoming. The man was set on gazing upon the cherry blossoms of the Philosopher’s Walk before he left Kyoto, alone. Though he didn’t know how, he felt that now that he understood a little bit why those cherry trees were so frightening, and so he felt that he had to go.

On the day he was to leave Kyoto, the man snuck out early in the morning without telling the woman to go to the Philosopher’s Walk.

As he rode his bicycle through the still-dim streets, the man was already afraid. Throughout the city cherry trees were blooming. The thought of those blooming flowers made him want to run away. Yet he continued to pedal down Marutamachi Street onto Shirakawa Street, arriving at last at the Philosopher’s Walk.

The tightly packed white flowers bloomed in the pale blue air. The man left his bicycle and entered the empty path beneath the cherry trees. The morning was chilly, but beneath the cherry trees it was so cold that it felt as if the air was frozen. All sound vanished, and it was almost like he was standing in a vacuum. The uncomfortable feeling from long ago returned, sharp and distinct. He came across the bench where the woman had been sitting that long-ago morning, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit there. He couldn’t stop himself from walking on. In the end he was unable to bear it after all, and ran off down beneath that deserted row of cherry trees.

Eventually he came to the front of the old, fortress-like apartment building where he had lived for so long, and caught his breath.

A figure stood in front of the entrance to the neighbouring apartment, looking out at the cherry trees and smoking a cigar. It was Saitō Shūtarō. The man sucked in his breath, overcome by nostalgia. He could no longer remember the last time he had talked to Saitō.

Saitō Shūtarō stared at him as he approached, as if he was looking upon a complete stranger. The man told Saitō that he was going to Tokyo. He spoke of how well his novel writing was going. He went on floridly about his accomplishments, rather in spite of himself, hoping, waiting for Saitō to use that sharp tongue of his to pop his balloon and bring him down to earth. But “Good for you,” was all he said. “Go on then, see how far you can go.”

Not hearing the words he had been expecting, the man kept blathering on. Yet Saitō Shūtarō remained aloof. He seemed to be losing interest in the man. Finally unable to contain himself, the man burst out, “The way you do things, no one will ever read what you write!” No sooner had the words left his lips than the man realized what a foolish thing he had said, but it was too late to unsay it.

When he came to his senses, the famously venom-tongued Saitō Shūtarō was gazing down at him, but said not a word.

“I have work to do,” Saitō said at last, stubbing out his cigar. “Good day to you.”

The man watched as Saitō turned on his heel and returned to his Masterpiece in Progress. Petals fluttered down around him, and he remained there long after Saitō had gone, standing alone beneath the cherry trees.

　　　　　　　＊

After moving to Tokyo, the man became ever busier.

The warm, comfy days he had spent in that apartment surrounded by his collection of knick-knacks seemed no more than a distant memory now. Everything that had happened seemed like a dream: no one, including him, would ever have guessed in the old days that things would turn out like this—no one, that is, except for the woman. When he considered how she had brought all of this about, he was filled with gratitude. All of these dramatic changes, he owed to her.

Everything that happened since his move to Tokyo seemed miraculous to him; to all appearances he was a bona fide rags-to-riches success story. The man published book after book, some of which were even optioned for TV shows and movies. The man became rich. While he was gratified, it felt as though the creations he had dreamed up on his desk were leaving him to scrounge up money from who-knew-where. All of this money that flowed in from places unknown made his life quite comfortable, but also uneasy.

Now he could buy whatever he wished, yet there was nothing that he truly desired. On rare occasions, he would find himself wanting to start buying up a collection of bits and bobs as he had before, but whenever he did, he would remember the scene of the woman sitting in his empty apartment that summer day. Afterwards, the act of going out to collect things would seem tedious to him.

The woman wanted all kinds of things. The man loved seeing the smile on her face when she received something that she wanted, so he would do as she told him and go out with her into town, round all the shops. The woman walked serenely around high-end boutiques which the man hardly dared enter. She picked out objects in those glittering, resplendent stores, so aloof and self-assured, that the man fell more and more in love with her. He did not understand the pleasure of buying beautiful clothes and jewelry, but when he looked at her putting together outfits and adorning herself in all sorts of ways, he could not tear his eyes away.

“There’s still something missing,” she would sometimes mutter to herself as she prepared to go out. To the man what she had seemed more than enough, but the woman could discern precisely what she was missing. He didn’t understand how it worked. It seemed a strange power to him.

The couple moved whenever the woman thought it necessary for the sake of beauty. Each new residence was more gorgeous, more splendid than the last. And each move was preceded by the woman saying, “There’s still something missing.” Eventually the man began to feel as if this was all a pie-in-the-sky exercise, a spiral that would never end. But the woman seemed so full of life, so free as she was doing it, that the man didn’t have the heart to complain. In any case, all he owned was stationery and a few books, so packing up to move posed little difficulty. All he had to do was obey her instructions and help with her move.

If there was one thing that he could not stand, it was the little parties that she would throw at the residence.

She loved to invite acquaintances over, and was always bustling around making preparations. Some of them the man knew, but most of them were strangers. After moving to Tokyo the woman had taken a job at a friend’s jewelry store, where she had met many people. The man didn’t like meeting people he didn’t know, and whenever the woman threw one of her parties he always felt uncomfortable. “You need to be there too. After all, they’re all here to see you,” the woman told him.

“I’m afraid I’d just bore them.”

“All you need to do is be there. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Though he was an accomplished writer, the man was awkward when it came to the quick back-and-forth of conversation, and he would spend those nights wishing that the guests would go home soon. He hated how easily the woman chatted with these slimy, disingenuous people. He also hated being fed clearly insincere compliments when he was already tired and testy.

Sometimes when he found it too much to bear he would escape to the veranda and gaze out at the lights of the city. If he listened, he would sometimes hear amidst the animated chatter the woman’s laughter tinkling like fine china. That laugh seemed like it belonged to another person entirely.

He sometimes asked her to stop inviting people home. “We’re expanding your connections, aren’t we?” she would reply calmly. “It’s for your own good.”

That was true.

The woman was a social butterfly with a silver tongue, who seemingly made friends wherever she went. She could reel anyone in with only the slightest acquaintance, something that the man could not do at all. And what she said was true: the people whom she invited brought in new work for the man.

But honestly speaking, the man wasn’t so eager for more work as to do all this.

What worried him most was that he was losing the ability to write about anything except her. The man had in his mind a mold from which he created all his stories. Every so often, a thought would flicker through his mind: I’ve written this story before. Whenever this happened he would sit blankly at his desk, thinking that he must have been able to write about many more things than this, once. He felt that he used to think more freely. Once he had spoken of this to the woman. “It’s better this way,” she had replied, sounding completely unconcerned. “The things you used to write never would have sold. You just have to put up with it. That’s what work is, after all.”

What she said seemed correct. The man chided himself for being so self-indulgent. Yet however correct the woman may have been, something about them just didn’t sit right with him. Each of her words was like a stone in his belly. The more he swallowed, the more they weighed him down.

When he couldn’t bear it any longer, he would leave the house and not come back for several days.

He would spend that time seeking out old neighbourhoods, just wandering around without a destination in mind. Alleys lined with potted plants; old-fashioned shopping arcades steeped in the aura of decades gone by; small temples and shrines: these were the places that made the man feel at home. And that was because they reminded him of Kyoto. Though he would spend days walking around these places, the man never once thought of going to Kyoto. He felt that if he went there without the woman, he might never come back. In the evenings as he ambled around the old streets that remained in Tokyo, he often dreamt that the dark, narrow alleys led to somewhere in Kyoto. Perhaps this slope led down to the foot of Mt. Yoshida; maybe this little alley led to the Philosopher’s Walk, he would imagine. The cherry trees were in full bloom, and he would stop and stand beneath the flowering boughs.

Whenever he returned home from his days-long sojourns, the woman would always gently welcome him home.

She never remonstrated with him when he brought home little knick-knacks he’d bought on the way. “You must be exhausted, with how busy you’ve been,” she would say, brewing coffee for him. “I’ll put in sugar for you.” Whenever she comforted him, she always put sugar in his coffee, seeming to think that would brighten his mood. She would take time off work, and the two of them would spend all day at home doing nothing at all.

The man felt calmer when he saw her just sitting there beside him. He secretly wished that she could always be like this: kind, comforting, his and his alone. If only she would let me write new novels, he sometimes found himself thinking, with a twinge of guilt.

　　　　　　　＊

Time flowed on.

Both became quite busy, the woman coming to own a store of her own, and the man with his usual writing activities. Sometimes the woman wouldn’t come home until late in the night, and left in the morning before he was awake. There were times that he supposed she was at her shop, but there were other times when he wasn’t sure what she was doing. “You’re just being jealous,” she told him when he voiced his displeasure. “Why don’t you write about it? I’m sure it would be interesting material.”

On occasional days off, the woman would take the man into town. As they walked around, she would talk about whatever came into her mind. She did that to get him to write. He could no longer write about anything except her. All he did was stitch things that happened, things that she talked about, into facsimiles of novels. As he observed her every move and worked out sentences onto the page, he felt as if he was merely her personal biographer. This did not make him happy at all. He felt he had become utterly powerless. The feeling of rapture he had had when he first wrote about her was gone now. “I’m tired of using you,” he protested. But she wouldn’t budge. “There’s nothing wrong with that,” she told him. “Nothing at all.”

She kept herself busy running her business, giving the man ideas, going out for fun, reading his novels with delight. She was quite satisfied with her own life. Her exploits were even featured in magazines, such did she attract the spotlight. She was the woman of the hour, and paired with such a famous novelist one might think that they were the perfect couple. But the man always threw a wrench into the woman’s perfect works.

“I hate who I’ve become. All I do is repeat the same thing over and over!”

“That’s just life. Don’t be such a child. You can’t pretend you’re still a student forever, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You can be so selfish,” she told him. “Throwing tantrums, turning down work, it’s like you’re trying to throw away what we worked so hard to build together. Wasn’t this always your dream?”

“Was it? I thought it was yours.”

“My dream is your dream. And your dream is my dream.”

What she said always seemed correct. The man was keenly aware that he often refused to face reality, which made putting up with it even harder. The woman’s will was so unwavering that he wondered just how high her ambitions went. Every time they had these back-and-forth conversations the man felt as though he was just repeating the same thing over and over, and he grew sick of it.

One spring night, the man attended the wrap party for a TV serial drama. As it was for an adaptation of one of his novels he had no choice but to attend. But feeling out of place amongst the jubilant throng of production staff and cast members, he just sat in a corner. He wondered how many of them had actually read his novel. It wasn’t the idea that some of them hadn’t read it that made him sad. It was the fact that he didn’t care if they had. Before long he couldn’t take it any longer and left the event hall. As he wandered blankly down the street, his editor chased him down and flagged down a taxi.

They both got inside and directed the driver to the man’s home. Headlights streamed by silently outside the window. It was very quiet inside the cab, cut off from the hubbub of town. The man slumped down into the seat, staring blankly at the dazzling lights outside. Suddenly the sadness became too much to bear. Covering his face with both hands he let out a moan.

“Are you feeling alright? Shall I stop the taxi?” his editor asked.

“No, I’m ok.”

The man had no idea where he was. He didn’t know what he should do, or even what he wanted to do. He didn’t know where the woman’s powerful ambition was directed towards. He dimly suspected that it was a hollow ambition, but then again he felt hollow himself.

“The cherry blossoms are blooming. Quite a sight, isn’t it?” murmured the taxi driver.

The man raised his head and looked out the window, to see that the taxi was passing beneath a tunnel of cherry blossoms, illuminated by fiery spotlights from below. It was then that he finally felt that the mystery of the cherry blossoms he hated so much had finally been solved. He decided to go see them.

“Excuse me, I’d like to go somewhere else,” said the man. “Take me to Tokyo Station.”

　　　　　　　＊

Parting from his bewildered editor, the man returned to Kyoto late that night.

Buying sake and food at a convenience store, he strolled towards the Philosopher’s Walk. His fortress-like apartment building he had once lived in was just as he remembered it.

He wanted to visit his old neighbour Saitō Shūtarō in the adjacent building, his erstwhile mentor, but he no longer lived there. Staring at the blank nameplate, he reminisced about the many times he had visited Saitō, enduring insults and scribbling down sentences on paper. He thought about the last time they had seen one another. Now he understood why Saitō had said nothing. But now that he wanted to talk about it, the man he had looked up to was nowhere to be found.

He despondently exited the building and walked to his old apartment, which was just by the building entrance. It was empty. He quietly crept in and sat down on the bare tatami mats. The streetlights on the Philosopher’s Walk shone in through the window. He ate the cold food, drank the sake, and spent the night wrapped up in his coat and in his own thoughts.

When he opened his bleary eyes again there was pale light in the window, and he could hear birds chirping. The room was freezing, and he shivered so violently that his knees knocked together. He threw the window open, and cold, bracing morning air came rushing in. Outside the window the cherry trees were in full bloom. I have to go, he thought.

Suddenly a shadow loomed up in the doorway. It was the woman. She stared straight at him, her eyes puffy. Finally she sat down in front of the open door. “Thank goodness,” she sighed. “I heard from your editor. Why did you abandon me?”

The man didn’t know what to say.

“You’re tired. I’m tired too,” she said. Let’s just take a break from work and stay in Kyoto for a while.”

“That might be a good idea,” the man murmured.

The woman came over to him and sat down on the cold tatami. She placed her hand on his knee and looked up at the opened window. “Why is the window open?” she frowned.

“Because the cherry trees are blooming,” the man replied.

“Shall we go see them?”

Together they left the room.

In the dawn Philosopher’s Walk was as still as it always had been, and the cherry blossoms seemed to go on forever. “Give me a piggyback ride,” the woman suddenly said. The man obliged. The woman placed her cheek onto his shoulder. “You did this for me too, the first time we met,” she said.

“I was just thinking of that,” he said. “You were drunk.”

“I told you to leave me alone.”

“You remember?”

“Of course I do.”

As he walked along silently carrying her on his back, the man felt that the world he had once grasped so firmly had vanished. And try as he might to get it back, he no longer knew where it was anymore. At some point during his time with the woman, he had thoughtlessly let it go. He couldn’t bring himself to say it was her fault, yet on the other hand he didn’t have the courage to bear this loneliness any longer. Neither would opposing the woman’s wishes bring back what he had lost, for the man had no idea what he ought to restore. The only thoughts in his mind were how pathetic he was, and how he wanted to disappear.

Under the blossoming cherry trees, all was quiet in the taut, chilly air. The warmth of the woman on his back faded from his mind. The man and the woman were alone in that long tunnel of cherry trees, but in his mind even they disappeared, leaving only cherry petals fluttering to the ground. The arguments they’d had, the woman’s tinkling laughter, the babbling of throngs of unknown guests—he could hear none of it now. Under the spectacular cherry blossoms, all was desolate, like he’d arrived at the end of the world. At last he realized that this place, the place that he had always feared, was the end of his journey.

The man let the woman off his back. They were in front of the bench where the woman had been sitting alone that spring. She sat down there that same way, looking innocently up at him. “Tell me,” she said. “After we’ve rested a while in Kyoto, will you go back to writing novels again? I want to read something new from you.”

The man shook his head. He had no intention of writing about her again. And if he wasn’t going to write about her, he had nothing else to write about. “What will you do then?” she asked, after he told her this.

“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“But...we’ll still be together, won’t we?”

The man shook his head again.

The woman’s slim neck bent, casting her face downward. A petal fell onto her shining hair in the pale light of dawn. As the man reached out and plucked it off, the woman said in a small voice, “What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” the man told her. “It was me who was wrong.”

　　　　　　　＊

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.

But now, let us turn our attention to the cherry trees of the Philosopher’s Walk.

All is still under the blossoming cherry trees; beneath the unbroken canopy of flowers not a sound can be heard.

Beneath the flowers a man sits alone on a bench. His shoulders are covered with petals, as though he has been there for a long time. It is his first time sitting beneath the blossoming cherry trees alone. He could sit there forever. That is because he has no intention of going back.

A gust of wind sends a whirlwind of petals dancing through the air.

Eventually the throngs will arrive to see the blossoms, and beneath the blossoming cherry trees all will be noise.