For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you a short story by Okamoto Kanoko, one of several notable feminist writers who flourished in Japan’s prewar period. In “An Autumn Evening’s Tale,” translated from the Japanese by Elena Paulsen, when a family pauses on their journey back to their hometown, the parents take it as an opportunity to reveal a long-held secret. As they recount their pasts with a mixture of nostalgia and resignation, their children begin to question the underpinnings of their seemingly conventional lives. Okamoto’s equally elegant and playful tale unravels notions of gender, identity, and love against a backdrop of familial pressures and societal expectations. In doing so, she presents a vision for living true to a fluid self which is sparklingly radical even today.
A middle-aged father and mother went on a trip with their son and daughter, who were in their early twenties.
They took lodgings at almost exactly the halfway point of their trip, a quiet hotel in a lakeside town. It was somewhere between the capital city of that country and the countryside village they had come from, a distance of one hundred and fifty leagues.
I say “of that country”—but is it Japan or a foreign country, in the present or the past? What will the author decide? But really it doesn’t matter whether it happened in Japan or elsewhere, recently or long ago. The fact of this story, the truth of it, rides upon the craft of the author without a care for those details, and the truth is what I would like to convey to the reader. But it’s hard on anyone who might try their hand at illustrating this story, as they haven’t a clue whether to draw black eyes or blue, curly or long, straight hair. Actually it need not even be humans, it could be grass or trees or wildlife or flowers. Anything at all is fine, so long as it corresponds to the feeling that arises when reading this story. With that said, surely the skill and sensitivity of an artist is such that even with no further instructions the illustrator will be able to convey the essence of the story and have it ring true—so, with your permission, I will go ahead and begin.
The season was autumn. The harsh evening wind had completely died down, leaving the quiet atmosphere from before what little foliage remained was jostled by the wind. The moon, bright but not too bright, came into view on the peak of the night-time mountain. From the hotel window only the edge of the lake was visible. Yet the complete serene clarity of that edge was enough to give an impression of jade-like translucence to the whole vast surface, soothing the eyes of the four members of the family. Served in the many dinner plates that the waitstaff set upon the table were fresh, fragrant fish only just taken from the waters of the lake. Here and there amongst the plates were figs picked from the surrounding mountains, the ripe flesh of the fruit seeming fit to burst, barely covered by the glossy skin. The fruits were placed in large bowls and carried out together with strong, aromatic tea.
—— Father. Tonight we should tell the truth about ourselves to the children, don’t you think?
—— Yes, let’s, was Father’s answer.
—— Oh yes, please, Mother! It’s been four or five years already since you promised you would.
—— You said you’d tell us once we reached our twenties, didn’t you? We’re twenty and nineteen now, your son is only one year short, said the daughter.
—— Well, we’ve lots of figs to eat still, and the tea is hot. Once the moon is halfway behind the edge of the mountain, we’ll tell you.
Father said this in a clipped tone, and Mother, who had spoken first out of excitement, looked slightly embarrassed and blushed. She may be my own mother, but even I think she’s beautiful and sweet, thought the daughter, gazing at her.
Father and Mother were not originally from the village in the countryside. In fact, they were born in the very capital they were heading for tomorrow, after spending the night resting at this lakeside shore famous for its beautiful scenery.
It is not so very strange, nor is it difficult, for people born in the capital to move to a distant village, raise a son and daughter there, and become members of the community. However, the path by which Father and Mother came to do so, the circumstances behind it, were different from those of most people.
It was a closely guarded secret…is what I would like to say. But after all, one hundred and fifty leagues is no small distance, and so naturally did Father and Mother integrate into village life that, never mind anyone else who might have suspected, Father and Mother themselves seemed almost to have forgotten their own origins. No doubt their many years of village life separated them from the past, as if it had happened to someone else.
Long ago, around forty years ago, Father and Mother were born in a neighborhood at the edge of the capital to two women who were terribly good friends. Sadly, both women became widows one after the other while still expecting. The reason for this was that almost all the men who were of age went off to fight in a great war that broke out in that country. Their husbands were among the soldiers, and both were killed in battle in almost no time at all. The two widows grew even closer, relied on each other, encouraged each other, and eventually came to consult with each other over every little thing, no matter how small.
Among the things they consulted over, there was one topic in particular that was strange. To wit, they decided that the mother of Father would raise Father, who was a boy, as a girl, and that the mother of Mother would raise Mother, who was a girl, as a boy. I’m sure you’ve heard expressions like “she bore a child like a precious jewel” and the like, but the fact of the matter is that a newborn baby is red and wrinkled, so that it is not easy to discern whether it is a boy or a girl. The people who knew whether the baby was truly a boy or a girl at the time that it was born were few. In the meantime, the mothers moved often from one neighborhood to the next, staying with friends whose residences were in the capital.
I don’t know what happened when they had to register the births with the authorities, but in any case, by around the time that the two children were learning to call themselves by their own names, they were already accustomed to the appearance and lifestyle to which they had been raised—in other words, Mother was comfortable with being called by a boy’s name, and Father by what was fitting for a girl. Since they moved so often from one place to the next, their neighbors naturally did not suspect a thing, so they treated Father as a little girl and regarded Mother as a boy. Both their mothers were women accomplished in etiquette, and raised their children accordingly to have good manners, so while the two children did play around and pull the occasional prank, there was none of the physical violence that is often typical of children. As Mother and Father grew older, their mothers remained on intimate terms and tried to find places near each other even as they moved from one neighborhood to the next, in order to bring their lives closer together. Their unconventional project of raising their children with the girl switched to a boy and the boy to a girl succeeded with no difficulty. They did not find this strange at all, perhaps due to the fact that they did not feel any particular pride in it. In the end, even as the two of them continued to isolate themselves from others and grow closer, they did not congratulate each other on their success. If anything, it was as if they themselves had by degrees forgotten that they were raising a son as a girl and a daughter as a boy.
However, in the meantime the girl-turned-boy was coming to show signs of womanhood. Her mother now at last grew flustered enough to make a fuss, and went to consult with the mother of the boy. After discussing the matter, they decided to disclose to each child that they were a boy raised as a girl and a girl raised as a boy. However, their reason for doing so—in other words, the reason they had raised the boy as a girl and the girl as a boy—that, they did not really explain. Whether it was by design or simple indifference, the children were unmoved and did not ask any follow-up questions. In this world, there are people who will dig in their heels and hound someone even over a much smaller issue, but at the same time there is also a bland type of person who carelessly sweeps everything under the rug, even when it is of enormous consequence. Shall we say that on the surface, the parents as well as their children came under the latter category. Another interpretation might be that, since their parents explained so weighty an issue as lightly as if it were someone else’s concern, to the children, who after all had grown completely used to their own flawed reality, it too sounded like someone else’s problem.
Be that as it may, I am sure there are readers who are wondering, never mind the children, why did the author have those mothers raise their children that way? Truth be told, the author is at pains to explain it as well. Well, whatever the reason, isn’t there occasionally something unfathomable and mysterious that arises from the feelings of intimacy between women? If you think of it that way…After all, there are times, aren’t there, when even an extremely absurd superstition sounds authoritative and works on you, no?
Anyway, long habit is a strange thing. The truth that the parents revealed to their children remained a secret kept among the parents, their children, and no one else. Afterwards, the previous custom of raising the girl as a boy and the boy as a girl continued as if there were nothing odd about it. Since even the people affected continued on as always, the reader need hardly be surprised that in the eyes of the world they continued to truly be a boy and a girl, as their appearances suggested.
—— I wonder what kind of a woman Father was, back when he was a woman?
It was not Brother, listening until now to the details of the story with deep, solemn attention, who dared this question, but his younger sister. To which not Father but Mother responded.
—— He was beautiful. A charming and well-mannered young lady.
Earlier it had been requested of Mother by Father that she intercede.
—— You know everything there is to know about me. Please talk to the children in my place.
The same Father described in such terms turned his face glancingly towards his two children. The stubble of Father’s goatee glittered in the flickering firelight, and he quietly breathed out a cloud of tobacco smoke.
—— When Father was sixteen years old, his mother moved to a certain neighborhood in a certain city and opened a sundries shop. Though it had little capital at first, his mother was a terribly clever woman and decorated it with things like vivid artificial flowers, which with skillful lighting looked just like the real thing. People were also drawn in by the smell of cooking food, and occasionally there were customers whose tastes were not what one might expect.
—— Haha, I see that you’re setting up the story of the young lady of S— household.
Father butted in. His manner was somewhat nostalgic and droll, but the interruption was welcome, as it gave Mother a bit of a breather.
—— At the age of sixteen or seventeen, Father had to drop out of school to help out in the shop, but since, after all, his true nature was a man’s, his ambition was to study architecture. Even while helping out in the shop, he would study by reading books in the back room, and whenever he had a free moment he wandered around the neighborhood to look at the famous buildings. Luckily no one took notice of Father studying architecture in this manner. They only thought of Father as a charming daughter helping out in the store, and valued him accordingly.
—— When does the young lady of S— household show up?
—— My, my, all in good time. One day, around the time that charming young daughter, your Father, had been working at the store for half a year already, someone in a palanquin accompanied by two or three maidservants came to the neighborhood to do some shopping. At that time, she happened to enter the shop, and that was the beginning…Well, the young lady must have liked something in the shop, because she began to come by often. Perhaps what she liked was that the shop had such a nice atmosphere, like a hideout on the moon, or perhaps it was the delicious smell of cooking food, but she said afterward that what she liked best about the store was actually Father’s charming maidenly form.
—— Of course, there’s no way she would have known that Father was a boy turned girl, right?
Brother asked in a tone that seemed mature for his age.
—— Yes, of course not, she had no idea. But she liked Father, so her favor was genuine.
—— Was the young lady beautiful, Mother?
Mother answered her daughter’s question looking slightly troubled.
—— She certainly was beautiful, wasn’t she, Father? A beautiful young lady.
—— Yes, a beautiful young lady.
For some reason, Father’s cheeks were slightly pink.
—— Well at any rate, it turns out that Father was desperately liked by this young lady, who begged him to join S— household. At first he was reluctant to become her companion and give up the architectural studies he had worked so hard on. But when he thought about how S— household was wealthy and highly regarded even in the capital, he realized that there must be architecturally superb villas and bowers on that huge estate, to say nothing of the main manor. And it wasn’t easy to gain access to view the interiors of such buildings. So, with the intention of being her companion for the time being while also examining those grand structures, he agreed. However, since that would mean abandoning the lonely mother of a single-parent household, his one condition was that he be allowed to return home on bath day to see his mother, the mansion being in the neighborhood. Father’s reluctance to get into the bath out in the open or in an unfamiliar place was also a factor, as one might expect of a male woman. Thereafter the days and months of half a year flew by, and by the time Father arrived at his eighteenth spring, his feelings had become very, very difficult to bear…
Mother’s words faltered. The son and daughter sat a little stiffer and looked between Father and Mother.
—— Essentially. Well. It’s a little difficult to say, but your father grew terribly infatuated with the young lady. Not only was she beautiful, but the longer he was by her side, given how quick-witted she was, and her kindly, sentimental personality, I’m sure it was only natural for it to have happened—. At this point, if Father had been a man like any other, he would have confessed his feelings. But Father, who despite his birth status had always lived as a woman, could hardly say that kind of thing to the young lady, and as he agonized over this, another unfortunate situation developed. The young lady of S— household had an older brother. His age was around twenty. This person took your father in female dress entirely for a woman, and at some point grew very taken with him. Furthermore, this older brother was the precious firstborn son of S— household, and because he was in love to the point of growing sick it was certainly a problem that could not easily be dismissed. One day, his feelings were revealed to Father through the young lady. Father ruminated on his own sad love, thinking of the feelings of the older brother whose love could only be hopeless while he stared hard at the face of the young lady, who spoke knowing nothing, and his tears flowed.
—— And, what happened in the end?
The son and daughter were old enough to understand the delicacy of the situation. Little wonder that they earnestly followed up on what had happened.
—— In the end, Father resigned from S— household….In order to gain some distance from the young lady, the object of his disappointed love, as well as to remove from the manor himself, the object of the son’s disappointed love…
—— Did Father return home right away?
It was the sort of thing a daughter would ask.
—— No. He came to me, to your mother’s place.
—— I’ll tell the rest.
Father’s voice was familiar, his son and daughter had heard it for the past twenty years. But, having imagined him in the form of a maiden the whole long while that their mother was talking, when Father suddenly spoke in a man’s voice, both daughter and son had a strange feeling, though it was only for an instant, as if their father had suddenly taken on the form of an enchanting shape-shifter and slipped into a male disguise.
—— Can the two of you imagine what kind of man Mother was at the time?
—— No, not at all.
The son was entirely captivated by the story, his eyes wide open in curiosity over the anticipated extraordinary events yet to come.
—— Mother was a real looker. However, she had yet to become entangled in affairs of the heart. Which is not to say she did not have problems of a different kind. While she had a woman’s reserved temperament, Mother was truly outstanding in horse riding and other martial arts. Consider how, as you know, Mother is admired as a skillful farmer among the people of the village, and how even now your kind, beautiful mother is still in great shape.
—— Hohohoho….
It was Mother’s bouncy, pretty laugh. Son and daughter were pulled back from the fantasy of their mother’s gallant, manly form into which they had been drawn.
—— It’s not a laughing matter, Mother…we mustn’t get off track with this story.
—— Yes.
Mother once more listened seriously.
—— Mother’s mother, even more than Father’s mother, was a hard worker with a speculative spirit, so she started a textile factory. While small, it did quite well, but to start she had to borrow capital. The person who lent it to her was an elderly gentleman toward whom Mother later felt indebted. Having said that, it’s not at all like this elderly gentleman was a bad person. Back in the day he had been a warrior with a penchant for adventure, but his true nature was virtuous. It’s more like mother and child took on the obligation from their own side, and then later found that they couldn’t extricate themselves. It would have been easy to get out of repaying the obligation. How to put it, it was like being caught in a trap of one’s own making. That is to say, the better one knows the inner workings of a trap, the harder it is to summon the strength necessary to escape said trap, unlike if one were caught in a trap of unfamiliar construction. Incidentally, to that elderly gentleman, there was something uniquely delicate under the surface, aside from Mother’s martial qualities. In other words, you could say that he perceived that there was more to her than just a talent for the military arts. Hahahaha…(Oops, this time I laughed.) But given that her true nature was that of a woman, well, it’s rather to be expected. It was the delicate interior that was true, and the external facade of military prowess that was artificial. In the same way that your old man was a charming young lady, Mother also had to make her way through the world as a man despite being born as a woman, so naturally she equipped herself with camouflage appropriate to that condition. Both the interior and the exterior were generated accordingly. That is what drew the old gentleman’s eye. He wanted to debut Mother’s dashing young form at a stadium where every year a contest to break wild horses was held. If she began now and studied horsemanship intensely for one or two years, then surely a horseman of her calibre had good prospects of becoming the grand prize winner. That being the case, his heartfelt wish was to introduce her to the world as his favored ward. He was purehearted but an extreme egoist, as such people tend to be. But then, even if he made her his favored ward, he would hardly drag her to his house and selfishly force her to abandon her mother. The elderly gentleman had a small, sweet daughter. What he proposed was to eventually give the daughter to Mother as her wife, and then he would adopt Mother as his son-in-law.
—— Well, that seems downright ideal.
—— Really, do you think so? That’s right, for her part there was no reason to turn down the deal, so you can see how she and her mother had no choice but to happily accept. After all, the conditions were entirely appropriate to Mother’s exterior, there was nothing that the woman on the interior could do. But no matter how much she liked martial arts or how skilled she was at horse riding, to participate in a wild horse-taming contest the likes of which made the whole country tremble…It was hardly a given that she had either the necessary background or the physical endurance to reach that level. Parent and child were at a deadlock. But the old gentleman’s request wasn’t forceful, nor was it a command in order to repay their obligation. It was entirely the heartfelt wish of an elderly man for his remaining years, requested earnestly with an entreating attitude. Rather than pressuring them, he said only that he would wait. At this point, they felt driven into a corner.
—— That’s when you escaped from S— household and found her, isn’t it, Father?
—— That’s right. Seems like the audience has become the storyteller. Thank you for listening so enthusiastically, haha…(oops, laughed again). And so, for the first time, two people who until then had not thought their lot in life particularly odd complained to each other about their misfortune. Once we began to lament our circumstances, we became aware of how topsy-turvy our fates were, and it made us endlessly sad. Having said that, even at that point, the two of us did not feel like complaining to our mothers. That’s right, no matter how keenly we felt the injustice of our backwards destinies, it seemed that if we confronted our mothers we might blame them, the authors of our fate, so instead we went out of our way to avoid them. You might call us weak-willed, but rather than that, well, let’s say it was kindly meant. I had run away from S— household, but I realized that if I went to my mother’s place, it would be too easy to confront her there. So rather than do that, I freed myself from the possibility. The one person who truly understood my lot was not my own parent, but Mother, who like me had had her gender switched around. It didn’t even occur to me not to go to Mother’s place.
From this point forward let’s have the author talk again, since Father seems tired from all the talking. Father and Mother decided to make plans to disappear from the city. For both of them it was truly sad to leave behind their mothers, but since the situation was urgent it couldn’t be helped. If they continued to wander around the capital as they were, the unnatural pair might by degrees become suspect in the eyes of others. They might even end up putting their mothers in a difficult position as a result. And so, leaving behind a carefully written note to reassure their mothers, they put the city behind them and began their aimless wanderings. Of course, it was a matter of some months before Father and Mother arrived at the countryside village where they settled down to live. It goes without saying that in the meantime, the two of them changed their outward appearance so that their sex as man and woman was entirely restored. When and where did the two of them exchange vows?…That was the course of nature, just like water flowing downstream, surely there is no need to discuss such a natural conclusion—although it’s true that when the two of them left the capital, no particular feelings of attraction as man and woman existed between them.
While this trip to the capital was a family vacation, it was not only a family vacation. Father and Mother’s delight at their restoration had become a source of strength. In the village they had become model hardworking, law-abiding citizens, and while they weren’t rich, they had saved up enough money to return to the capital to live. The children, too, they hoped to educate in the capital if possible. Once they were in the capital, if the prospects seemed good they would end their life in the countryside and become residents of the capital instead. But before that there was something that Father and Mother had to do, namely, to go around visiting acquaintances of old. First, of course, was S— household, then the plan was to stop by the home of the old gentleman who had hoped to make Mother his son-in-law (or, since he had likely passed away by this time, his daughter). And then they would reveal the truth that there had been such-and-such circumstances twenty years ago. Even if the atmosphere was awkward at first, they would hopefully be able to clear up the ill feeling that remained between them and be on good terms again. If, from there, a feeling of being at home in the city were to rise up as Father and Mother hoped, well, your author cannot say for sure at this point in time what would happen as a result. As a general rule, people do tend to think back to their hometowns as they approach a certain age.
I should have mentioned this earlier, but after Father and Mother’s departure, it seems their mothers inferred what had happened, and so the two of them called on each other even more than before and in the end moved in together, one looking after the other until her death. Shortly thereafter, the other passed from this life without any discomfort. This fact was known to Father and Mother, but at the time they were still in hiding in the countryside. The two of them lamented and mourned in their hearts, but the years and months continued to pass, and with time their sadness gradually dissipated. Since they no longer had to show consideration for their mothers, the two of them were now returning to their hometown in order to embark upon the adventure of revealing their true natures.
The moon sank. The night grew deeper. The author, too, grows tired of recounting this tale. Before long, the four members of the family each went to their respective beds, and soon they breathed in and out in tranquil sleep.
Translated from the Japanese by Elena Paulsen
Okamoto Kanoko was born on March 1, 1889, in present-day Minato, Tokyo. In her youth she had personal connections to such luminaries of modern Japanese literature as Tanizaki Jun’ichirō, Hiratsuka Raichō, and Yosano Akiko, who encouraged her ambitions as a poet. In 1911 she became one of the initial contributors to Japan’s first feminist magazine, Seitō (Bluestocking). She was active as a poet for close to two decades before turning her hand to fiction in 1929. During that time, she also became a devout practitioner of Buddhism. Today she is equally highly regarded for her skill as a poet, a novelist, and a Buddhist scholar. She died in 1939 of a brain hemorrhage.
Elena Paulsen was born in Peshawar, Pakistan, to a German mother and American father. Her childhood was spent in Tajikistan, although she has since lived in Wisconsin, Kansas, Minnesota, Germany, and Japan, where she currently resides while pursuing a PhD in modern Japanese history. Her ambition is to translate works from the canon of prewar woman writers in order to bring them to a wider readership outside of Japan. To that end, she is currently working on a translation of Hanamonogatari (Flower Tales), a short story collection by Yoshiya Nobuko. “An Autumn Evening’s Tale” is her first published translation.
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Read more from the Asymptote blog:
- Translation Tuesday: “The Diary” by Edogawa Ranpo
- Translation Tuesday: “The Thief” by Osamu Dazai
- Translation Tuesday: Two Poems by Hagiwara Sakutaro