And then Unaiko read aloud the line she had mentioned a while before, as if she wanted to engrave it onto our hearts.
Sensei: I’d like you to remember something. This is the way I have lived my life.
After a short pause for effect, Unaiko spoke again. “Class, your responses to the questionnaire were excellent,” she announced, to the obvious delight of the authentic students in the audience. “Everything you listed jibes perfectly with the terms the author uses again and again as leitmotifs.”
She went on to explain that among the repeated words, kokoro, meaning “heart” or “the heart of things,” was used most often (forty-two times), followed by the related term kokoro-mochi (translatable as “feelings, mood, or frame of mind”), which popped up twelve times. Not far behind was kakugo (“readiness, resolution, resignation”) with seven appearances. Unaiko pointed out that while all these concepts played an important role in the story, an external event caused Sensei to decide the time had finally come to end his guilt-ridden life. After this explanation, she resumed the dramatic reading in a voice that vibrated with emotion.
Sensei: Then, during the height of the summer, Emperor Meiji passed away. I felt as though the spirit of the Meiji Era that began with the emperor had ended with him as well. I was overcome with the feeling that I and the rest of my generation, who had grown up in that era, were now left behind to live as anachronisms. I shared this epiphany with my wife, but she just laughed and refused to take me seriously. Then she said a curious thing, albeit in jest: “Well then, maybe you should just go ahead and commit junshi, and follow the emperor to the grave.” I had almost forgotten that there was such a word as junshi, but now I turned to my wife and said: “If I did commit junshi, it would be out of loyalty to the spirit of the Meiji Era.”
At that point the first half of the play ended and the lights came up for intermission. This letter is already far too long, so I’ll save the rest of the story to share in the next installment.
6
Dear Kogii,
The second act of the play began with the covering of the five domed skylights by means of a clever mechanical device. Those of us in the audience couldn’t see Unaiko standing on the stage, but the dramatic reading recommenced in the darkness and once again Soseki’s term “black light” flashed across my mind.
Sensei: “Hey!” I called. There was no answer. I called out again, “Hey, K! What’s the matter?” K’s body did not move at all. I stood up and went as far as the doorway. From there, I glanced quickly around his room, which was dimly lit by a single lamp. As soon as I realized what I was seeing, I stood rooted to the spot, unable to move, staring in horror through eyes that seemed to be made of glass. But the initial shock was like a sudden gust of wind, and it only lasted for a moment. “Oh no,” I thought. “This can’t be happening. “ It was then that the great, luminous shadow — almost like a black light — that would irrevocably darken my life, forever, spread out before my mind’s eye. My whole body began to tremble.
When this reading ended, the stage was illuminated by slanting shafts of directional lighting. Because there were motes of dust visibly rising from the entire stage, the angle of the rays was very conspicuous, and they looked to me like a visual echo of the black light I had imagined earlier. The angular rays illuminated two large antique screens that were being pushed forward from the back. The screens bore livid traces of red, obviously made by a thick brush dipped in crimson paint. While this bit of stagecraft didn’t exactly match Soseki’s description, it was clearly meant to represent the projectile bloodstains Sensei saw when he happened upon the scene of his friend’s suicide.
An instant later the shafts of light from above were extinguished and a bunch of high school kids (including some young members of the Caveman Group who were impersonating students) rushed down from the audience onto the stage and dragged the screens off into a dark corner. All the young people who performed the task were boys, but they were soon joined by a number of female students. Then Unaiko, still in character as a high school teacher, separated herself from the crowd of students and stood downstage alone. She began to speak, addressing her remarks to the students who were sharing the stage with her.
“I know I mentioned this earlier, but when I read Kokoro for the first time, I initially thought that it was going to be an educational book. However, I was disappointed to find that there were almost no exchanges between the student (the ‘I’ character) and Sensei that could be described as edifying. However, when I reread the book recently, with a clear agenda in mind, it struck me that it is an educational book after all. In the long letter Sensei leaves behind, he actually asks outright what sort of lessons the young man ought to be learning from Sensei’s experiences. As we’ve already heard, at one point he says: I’d like you to remember something. This is the way I have lived my life. The logical next step, in educational terms, would seem to be a statement phrased in the future tense, don’t you think? Maybe something along the lines of ‘And this is the way I shall die.’
“And now I would like to ask all of you, individually, to put yourselves in the place of the young narrator and think accordingly. Speaking from the point of view of that character, do you feel you’ve learned anything useful from reading this letter from Sensei, which was in effect a message from beyond the grave?”
The students who were standing on the stage proceeded to answer one by one, and I’ll paraphrase some of their replies here from memory. (I got the sense that these lines were derived from the off-the-cuff comments Unaiko had collected from the students during her visiting lectures, but the teenagers spoke the words perfectly, and the lines sounded completely natural.) As you’ll see, the students’ remarks were interspersed with questions and comments from the adults who were onstage with them.
“I don’t think I learned a single thing.”
“I think I might have learned something.”
“Oh? What kind of thing did you learn?”
“Well, a person I respect decides to end his own life, but before doing so he shares his darkest secrets with me — secrets that have already driven him to kill himself by the time I read his letter. So after the person has made this stunning confession and then killed himself, leaving me behind, there must be something to be learned from what he’s shared with me. As the narrator, I would feel as if this is the first time a life lesson has been so vividly seared into my heart, and I wouldn’t be likely to forget it any time soon.”
“But what’s the practical meaning of this unforgettable lesson? You shouldn’t betray your friend and drive him to suicide? Really, who doesn’t know that already? It’s just common sense. I think the situation depicted in this novel is personal and unique, rather than universal.”