Iwa ni Hana

Photo of Harada Munenori (1959 - present).

Harada Munenori [原田宗典] is one of the finest humorists in Japan today.

Once upon a time when I was still a university student, I often translated newspaper articles I picked in random from English into Japanese and vice versa, not for homework (though there was a lot of similar exercises for homework too) but for my own practice. One day, it occurred to me that one of the true tests of translation is translating the humour of one language into another, and dry materials like Asahi Shinbun’s editorial Tensei Jingo [天声人語] would probably not cut it. To challenge myself, I asked my profs for recommendations of humorists in contemporary Japan, and Harada Munenori was one of the names that came up.

17-Sai Datta [17歳だった] was the first book by Harada Munenori that I read. It is a collection of articles in which he reminiscences about his happier days as a teenager in the 1970s. I consumed the book mostly on my way to class by bus. I think I laughed aloud so hard, that on more than one occasion other passengers on the bus nearly called for medical assistance.

I have posted below my translation (dated 2005) of one of the articles in that book. The original title is Bungaku Seinen he no Michi [文学青年への道] but to translate it literally as “The Road to Being a Young Man of Literature” sounds somewhat flat in English, and so (with apologies to James Joyce) I translated it as A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man.

I think I will let his writing and sense of humour speak for themselves. Enjoy.

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A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man

by Harada Munenori

The other day, while chatting with N who is a friend of mine from my high school days, I was suddenly told that, ‘So you have become a novelist… When I think back on the other chaps from our high school days, it was Sawayama who wanted to become a novelist more than you did though.’

On hearing this, I meekly nodded. N’s reminiscence was by no means off-the-mark. Just as he said, my closest friends in the latter half of my high school years were all voracious readers and fellows who wrote well and who conducted their young lives in a melodramatic fashion. For example, the aforementioned N was himself the type of high school student who wanted all along to become a novelist, more so than I ever did.

In the latter half of my high school years – or from my second school-term at Akiguchi to be precise – I suddenly took to being a young man of literary aspirations. That was, well, due to a number of reasons.

One of these was that I was, in my own way, a voracious reader to begin with. I read such things as the Shinchou-bungo’s Hundred Volumes or the like with great enthusiasm, and in my middle school years I also wrote something that appeared to be novels, and in great numbers. Of course, nowadays whenever I reread them, I would go ‘ahhh!’ – and spin myself three times in the air and hide myself in a hole, but at the time I was convinced beyond doubt that they were masterpieces. ‘Ha, I do have talent,’ thought I, secretly feeling smug. Therefore, it must have been an indication that somewhere in my head I was already dreaming vaguely of becoming an author.

There was another reason, and that was because I gave up on turning myself into a hooligan. It seems to me that, broadly speaking, there were only four paths for high school students of Okayama at the time to follow. One was to study like mad with the goal of getting into a first-rate university. The second was to take up sports seriously and follow a thorny path of sweat and tears. The third was to drop out of school, dye one’s hair brown and become a hooligan. The fourth was the way of the literary young man in which one reads books quietly and puts on melancholic airs, mouthing such things as, ‘A victim of ennui that I am!’

Anyway, I had tried all four of the above.

First, I tried to study hard, but this I gave up in no time. Because everyone around me did extremely well at school, I was unable to catch up with them, and so I resigned to being moron at school work dejectedly. Then I tried to take up basketball which I started in middle school, and began putting all my energies into my basketball team’s activities. By the way, the strength of basketball teams in Okayama was extremely pitiful when compared to that of Tokyo. When it comes to basketball, players from the north have always been overwhelmingly strong, and this I have experienced firsthand. And because my high school was a prep school, our level was the lowest among the low, the weakest among the weak. As you well know, basketball depends on teamwork, so it was no use even if I did my best. Having lost at every single game, I gave it up for good.

Then there was the third path. I decided to become a hooligan. I have already written about all that in Tokyo Konwaku Nikki published by Kadokawa Books, and shall not repeat myself here – anyway it was a hell of a lot of troubles to be a hooligan. I, who naively believed that being a hooligan meant wearing one’s school uniform in an unseemly way, styling one’s hair after Elvis Prestley’s style and spitting on the ground resoundingly, was completely mistaken.

So, finally there was the fourth path that was left open to me – and I embarked on the path to become a young man devoted to literature. It was a cozy path. After all, the other three paths involved a lot of sweat and effort, and one would get hurt if one got beaten up etc, but to be a young man devoted to literature one had only to read books. Moreover, such a one had the privilege of being seen as intelligent in spite of being a sucker at school. ‘Huh… so that’s it!’ So saying, I devoted myself completely to being a disciple of the belles-lettres.

What did I do, then, in concrete terms? I shall try to talk about this in detail.

A young man of literary aspirations is basically a creature devoted to an aloof ideal, and does not mix with others easily. Creating such things as a ‘literary club’ or reading books at the library with like-minded companions was, in my opinion, an outrage against the path of the true disciple of the written word. And so, at the beginning I stuck to reading books on my own.

Whenever school was out, I would tuck under my arm a sinister-looking book – something like Sakaguchi Ango’s Theory of Decadence – and leave the classroom, lonely as a cloud. Then the important thing was to choose the right location – and I always beat my brains out as to where should I read my book.

If I really wanted to be alone, then it would seem best to just go home and lock myself up in my own room, but then that would make me exceedingly lonely. I wanted to be lonely, but I wanted someone to watch me being lonely. Such a complicated desire is something that belongs to a young man of literary inclinations. I did not want a place where I could be alone, but a place where I could be seen by people from time to time and be alone.

‘Huh… that’s difficult…’ Having beaten my brains out, I decided to choose the trees next to the music room at school. Carrying my bag and my book, I would sit myself under a tree (I think it was a real cherry tree), and begin by striking a melancholic pose. Drooping my face a little and putting my hand up as though my eyes were dazzled by the sun, my eyes would be turned to the right at a forty-five degree angle, and I would let out a deep sigh.

That was the correct melancholic pose for the literary young man. But it would be meaningless to do this if I were alone. It was necessarily to promptly strike this pose whenever someone passed by, because it was a means of conveying to the onlooker that – ‘I am a student of literature! Therefore I am melancholic. Therefore I am a victim of ennui. See? See?’ But if I struck this pose in a place where nobody was around, I might end up actually being melancholic, and that would be bad.

So I, who was a fast learner, mastered this pose in the blink of an eye, and sighed on and on by myself in the trees next to the music room. Of course, my book was open, and I pretended to read it. Seen from the outside I was perhaps just a fool who was reading a book, but I was completely immersed in this little game, thinking to myself, ‘How cool I am…’ I was not concentrating on the book’s content because I wanted someone to see me looking cool – ‘There comes a group of schoolgirls! Look, I am melancholic! Look!’ – and made a great effort to sigh deeply. I was a complete fool.

During the days while this was going on, I came to be really a victim of ennui. Moreover, there were rainy days just as there were windy days. But there was no turning back after having started leafing through my book while sighing to myself endlessly – it had become an article of faith.

So I decided to change the location, and I knew that it had to be indoors and not outdoors.

There were many requirements. First, there should be neither too many nor too little people, and the place should be a little dim. If I could smoke there, then it would be all the easier for me to strike my melancholic pose. Moreover, it should be a nice place where one could have a cup of coffee.

If there were a place that fulfilled all of the requirements above, then it would be a café. Even though such cafes have disappeared and only restaurant-style cafes have been built in their stead, in those days there were many cafes that fit the requirements of young men who were into literature in Okayama.

For example, in a commercial street called Omote-chou, there was a café called White Birch in a hidden alley. It was run by an old couple, and there was always western classical music playing in the background. It was dimly lighted inside, and each table came with a rouged-coloured umbrella-stand. Moreover, it was a long and narrow structure with two floors and two mezzanine floors, and because it was difficult for the owner to be seeing me all the time, I seldom got into trouble even if I smoked wearing a student’s uniform.

‘So this is the feel. And the name White Birch sounds so literary. It’s awesome!’

I was completely satisfied and went to this café often, and read many a book in my melancholic pose.

There was another which, for me, was the café that exercised a huge influence on my life and aesthetics. It was the café in front of the cultural centre that went by the strange name of ‘Irimite’. Although it was a small café that would get crammed with fifteen people, the taste of this café was for me, then a high school student, extremely high-class. It was dark inside, and a spotlight shone on each table. The music in the background was some kind of avant-garde jazz, and I think they played an album called Reeberu from Germany a lot. The interior of the café, the pictures hanging on the walls and the utensils used all reflected the owner’s elegant taste, and I was very much overwhelmed by it all. The owner, M, was a mysterious person with Indian-like facial features, and always sat in the same place reading something like Ebisuteemee, and whenever a customer entered the café, he could stare at the customer as though he were angry at having his reading disturbed. He would disappear behind the counter, and although he did not actually say it, his attitude basically made it clear to the customer that ‘I don’t feel like serving you.’ It was true that a cup of coffee there cost one hundred yen, but, considering the price level back then, it was quite inexpensive. It was a café that M ran for the sake of protecting this nice, cozy place rather than for the sake of doing real business.

When I set foot on this café for the first time, I was so overwhelmed by its elegant atmosphere that I even forgot about my melancholic pose. I remember saying to myself, ‘I won’t be beaten,’ and began to read my book furiously as a way of rebelling against this strange atmosphere. I tried to lay my eyes on the printed words, and the atmosphere of this café was perfect for reading. The dimness and the spotlights, the unobtrusive music…

I was captivated by this café, and hanged around everyday after school, taking three or four hours to drink a cup of coffee. Even though I hanged around the place this way, the owner M never complained. On the contrary, if schoolgirls came bursting in chattering loudly when he was in a foul mood, he would kick them out by muttering in a low voice, ‘Get out of here!’ I remember feeling smug as though I had a warrant of immunity from M as I watched the customers who were thus turned away. (‘Ha-ha, I am allowed to be here!’)

Young men with literary inspirations who affected aloof airs like yours truly were gathered at this café. They were all students of public high schools in this city, and they all carried a book here to read with their utmost concentration. Although we were a little shy with each other at first, we came to talk to each other a little having seen each other’s faces time after time, and became a nameless group before we knew it. Well, I suppose we could be appropriately called something like ‘the Irimite group’.

Beginning with N, whom I mentioned earlier, the high school students whom I came to know there were all devoted readers and excellent writers. Hanging out with this set, and reading whatever books that came my way so that I would not fall behind, I began to pen a few things and finally set foot, for real, on the of path of becoming a literary man.

It would be no exaggeration to say that if it were not for this café, I would not have become the professional writer that I now am. That was the impact I received from Irimite and the high school students who belonged there.

It has been eight years since Irimite went out of business, and even now I feel as though I have lost a home to which I could return.