Short Fiction

It was in those days when people had the virtue of stupidity and life was not yet busy as is today. It was in those happy days when life was so unrestrained that the gentle faces of nobles and young lords were not clouded; that the subjects for laughter for ladies-in-waiting and courtesans were abundant; and that the profession of clowns and buffoons who were paid for their talent of talkativeness, could exist. As the favourite heroines of the dramas and stories, such as Woman-Sadakuro, Woman-Jiraiya and Woman-Narukami, showed, all the beautiful were strong and all the ugly were weak in those days. Everybody, man and woman, contrived to look beautiful till pigments of bright colours were punctured into the naked body. Daring lines and gorgeous colours ran riot on the bodies of people of the day.

Visitors to the gay quarter beyond Umamichi (in Edo) tried to pick up such carriers of kago as had beautiful tattoos. The girls of the Yoshiwara and Tatsumi also loved men who were beautifully tattooed. Not only gamblers and firemen, but merchants and sometimes samurai were tattooed.

Exhibitions of tattooing were often held at Ryogoku, at which the participants, slapping their well-tattooed bodies, bragged of their striking patterns or commented on the works of others.

It was one summer evening just in the fourth year. He was passing in front of the restaurant, Hirasei, of Fukagawa, when he caught sight of the white feet of a girl escaping from under the curtains of a kago. To his keen eyes, human feet presented different expressions just as their faces. And the feet of this girl were a precious gem of flesh for the tattooer. The perfect shape which was seen in all the five delicate toes from the great to the little toe; the colour of the nails which well matched the light pink colour of those shells which people gathered on the shore of Enoshima; the tournure of the ankles which reminded one of the rounded shape of a precious stone; and the dewiness of the skin, which appeared as if fresh water from a mountain brook had constantly washed the feet⁠—the feet of such qualities were, indeed, those which, having fed on the blood of men, would soon conquer their hearts. The owner of these feet must, thought he, be the girl he had long been looking for. Trying hard to quiet his dancing heart, Seikichi stole behind the kago in the hope to see the face of the unknown girl. He followed some distance; but soon lost the sight of the kago.

The vague desire of Seikichi had now turned into a strong love; and the fourth year went by. It was one morning towards the decline of spring in the fifth year. At his residence in Saga Cho, Fukagawa, he was looking at a pot of omoto (Rohdea japonica) on the verandah of bamboos, with a tooth pick in his mouth, when

With these words, Seikichi, taking the girl by the hand as she tried to go home, led her to a room upstairs looking on the water of the Okawa. He then brought out two large scrolls; and unrolled one of them before the girl.

It was a picture showing Mohsi, favourite queen of a Chinese despot, King Chou. The queen was supporting against a balustrade her frail body which could hardly sustain the weight of her golden crown inlaid with emeralds and pearls, with the train of her silken robe trailing halfway down the staircase. The expression of the queen, who was drinking out of a large cup held in her right hand and who was looking at a prisoner about to be executed in the garden; the countenance of the man who was bending his head before the queen, waiting for his last moment with his limbs bound with an iron chain to a metal post, and with his eyes shut⁠—these details were drawn admirably to the point of ghastliness, free from any air of vulgarity such as is often observed in pictures of this kind.

The girl gazed for a moment at the picture; but gradually her eyes began to twinkle and her lips commenced to tremble in spite of herself. Strange to say, her face gradually took on a resemblance of that of the queen in the picture. She found in the picture her own image which had hitherto been unrevealed to her.

The sun shone brightly on the surface of the water, lighting up with a dazzling colour the room of eight mats. The rays of the sun reflected from the surface of the water threw golden shadows of waves which danced on the face of the girl sleeping in peace and on the paper of the shoji. Having closed up the partition of the room, Seikichi, with tattooing implements in his hands, sat for a moment lost in a state of trance. He could now for the first time take in calmly the beautiful features of the girl. He thought he could have sat still in the room for ten years, nay for hundred years, without being sated with observing the sleeping face. As the people of ancient Memphis decorated the fair land of Egypt with pyramids and Sphinx, Seikichi was now about to paint the chaste flesh of a human body with his love.

In the meantime, he placed flat on the back of the girl the point of his brush held between the thumb, ring and little fingers of the left hand; and made punctures with his needle with the right hand, tracing the lines marked by the brush. The young tattooer’s soul seemed to have been dissolved in his ink and permeated into the girl’s flesh. Each drop of Loochoo rouge which was inserted after having been mixed with a liquid, looked like a drop of his blood. Indeed, he saw the colour of his own heart therein.

There intervened a few moments of silence. They had covered about five or six yards in silence when, all of a sudden, a crisp voice snapped, right under his nose, in an unexpected taunt⁠—

“No more words out of your foul mouth, you drunken fool!”

Shinsuké was scarcely given the time to reason out the challenge which was not to be imagined as coming from Santa. For, almost as instantly, the cold point of a blade slashed into his shoulder. A quick twist of the body had saved him from anything serious, he felt. But a sudden paralysis ran over the right half of his neck, and upward, a deadened feeling, as ripped by sharp nails, and half of his face was so deadened in the same side as if it had been snapped off.

“Who’s this? Speak!” shouted Shinsuké, as he strove to steady his tottering feet for a quick run.

“Drunken slob that you can’t know my voice!” retorted the other. “For our Boss, I must have your head, and I’ve brought you here to get it.” The assailant leapt forth to pursue and pounce upon his victim, guided by his voice.

Shinsuké pushed his back against the plastered wall on a house premise, and whirled round the handle of his umbrella in frantic defence.