著者

出原 博明 Hiroaki DEHARA 桃山学院大学文学部

出版者

桃山学院大学総合研究所

雑誌

桃山学院大学人間科学 (ISSN:09170227)

巻号頁・発行日

no.22, pp.31-55, 2001-12

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Detachment is particular to Kyoshi's attitude in telling stories. He hardly ever reveals himself. However, this short story has one scene in which he reveals himself. The scene is that of the red camellias. The story is a love story of 75 year old Kyoshi, the narrator, and 21 year old Eiko. At its early stage the story presents the scene of Kyoshi sitting in the garden of his house, watching the red camelliias in full bloom there. Those red flowers begin to dance in the air around him. He feels as if he were surrounded by young women and loses himself in ecstasy. Suggesting something very erotic, this scene could be evidence of 75 year old Kyoshi still keeping the fire of eros burning in him. He falls in love with Eiko when she calls on him for the first time with one of his disciples. Then he takes up a positive attitude. He produces a number of haiku suggestive of his love for her. He even gives the doll named Tsubakiko to her as a present. Let me compare this story with Yasunari Kawabata's novella The Sound of the Mountain, whose theme is also an old man's love for a young woman. Both stories are set in Kamakura, a few years after the end of World War II. Both Kyoshi and Kawabata were citizens of Kamakura. In Kawabata's story, 62 year old Shingo, the narrator, is shocked to discover a truth by means of thorough psychoanalysis of a very strange dream he had. The truth he digs out is that there are eros and sexual desire latent at the bottom of his love for 20 year old Kikuko, his daughter-in-law. He suffers a lot from this morally. He examines himself minutely in view of his conscience, which Kyoshi never does. Shingo is baffled and feels uneasy about his date with Kikuko. He has qualms of conscience, which Kyoshi would never have in the same situation. Kyoshi has a lot more nerve. He is beyond the weakness and susceptibility of the modern Japanese intelligentsia which Shingo represents. Kyoshi is bolder, stronger-minded, primitivistic, rooted in Nature itself, little influenced by modern Western thought. Kyoshi prefers the red camellia above all, which is symbolic of vitality, the fire of life, something primitive. A hundred haiku of his take the red camellia for their motif. In this story Eiko also makes a haiku: "I fear the naked tree among the cherry blossoms at night." The naked tree seems to symbolize something erotic, which attracts and at the same time scares Eiko, a virgin. She doubtless senses Kyoshi's erotic feelings for her. The things I point out above reveal Kyoshi's character. Kyoshi is quite different from Shingo who is a typical modern Japanese intellectual. He is a sort of sphinx in modern Japan. (With his strong will to live, Kyoshi took care of himself and sustained his reputation as one of the greatest haiku-poets until he died at the age of 85, while Kawabata, Nobel prize winner, committed suicide at the age of 73.)