a season in purgatory (5)

I have been focusing on 'One Day in Spring', my favourite story by Kyoka, but it is in 'The Holy Man of Mount Koya' that his recurrent themes, and, in particular, his morbid misogyny and truncated eroticism are more explicitly aestheticized. Images of a dangerous, violent, deadly nature recur and are inextricably associated with the woman who seduces and tempts the hero. She personifies throughout the regressive, atavistic, bestial element in woman's 'nature'—taking men, ensnaring them, and, once tired of them, turning the hopeless creatures into animals.

The ultimate symbol of the male's sense of fear and need for female nurturing, she is invariably encountered in the water, her privileged milieu. And it is here that the mendicant, on the verge of yielding to temptation and giving up his ascetic life, withdraws in hesitation and fear.

Once again, in the climactic scene of the tale, he does not take her into his arms but sees the woman being ravished by the dark, turbulent waters. 

Once again, violence and death prevail—and, with them, the failure of love in passivity.

*       *       *

To tell the truth, ever since I had left her earlier that morning this single idea dominated my thoughts. No snakes spanned my path, and I encountered no leech-filled forest. Still, though the way might continue to be hard, bringing tribulation to my body and soul, I realized that my pilgrimage was senseless. My dreams of someday donning a purple surplice and living in a final monastery meant nothing to me. And to be called a living Buddha by others and to be thronged with crowds of worshippers could only turn my stomach with the stench of humanity. . . .

After the woman put the idiot [husband] to sleep, she came back out to my room. She told me that rather than going back to a life of self-denial, I ought to stay by her side in the cottage by the river, there where the summer is cool and the winter mild. Had I given in to her for that reason alone, you'd probably say that I had been bewitched by her beauty. But in my own defense let me say that I truly felt sorry for her. How would it be to live in that isolated mountain cottage as the idiot's bed partner, not able to communicate, feeling you were slowly forgetting how to talk?

That morning when she said goodbye in the dawning light, I was reluctant to leaver her. She regretted never being able to see me again, spending the rest of her life in such a place. She also said that should I ever see white peach petals flowing upon a stream, however small, I would know that she had thrown herself into a river and was being torn apart bit by bit. She was dejected, but her kindness never failed. She told me to follow the river, that it would lead me to the next village. The water dancing and tumbling over a waterfall would be my sign that houses were nearby. Pointing out the road, she saw me off, walking along with me until her cottage had disappeared behind us.

Though we would never walk hand in hand as man and wife, I kept thinking I could still be her companion, there to comfort her morning and night. I would prepare the firewood and she would do the cooking. I would gather nuts and she would shell them. We would work together, I on the veranda and she inside, talking to each other, laughing together. The two of us would go to the river. She would take off her clothes and stand beside me. Her breath upon my back, delicate fragrance of her petals. For that  I would gladly lose my life!

Staring at the waterfall, I tortured myself with these thoughts. Even now when I think back on it, I break out in a cold sweat. I was totally exhausted, both physically and spiritually. I had set off at a fast pace and my legs had grown weary. Even if I was returning to the civilized world, I knew that the best I could expect was some old crone with bad breath offering me a cup of tea. I could care less about making it to the village, and so I sat down on a rock and looked over the edge at the waterfall. Afterward, I learned it was called the Husband and Wife Falls. . . .

The smaller stream was trying to leap over the rock and cling to the larger flow, but the jutting stone separated them cleanly, preventing even a single drop from making it to the other side. The waterfall, thrown about and tormented, was weary and gaunt, its sound like sobbing or someone's anguished cries.  This was the sad yet gentle wife.

The husband, by contrast, fell powerfully, pulverizing the rocks below and penetrating the earth. It pained me to see the two fall separately, divided by that rock. The brokenhearted wife was like a beautiful woman clinging to someone, sobbing and trembling. As I watched from the safety of the bank, I started to shake and my flesh began to dance. When I remember how I had bathed with the woman in the headwaters of this stream, my imagination pictured her inside the falling water, now being swept under, now rising again, her skin disintegrating and scattering like flower petals amid a thousand unruly streams of water. I gasped at the sight, and immediately she was whole again—the same face, body, breasts, arms, and legs, rising and sinking, suddenly dismembered, them appearing again. Unable to bear the sight, I felt myself plunging headlong into the fall and taking the water into my embrace. Returning to my senses, I heard the earthshaking roar of the husband, calling to the mountain spirits and roaring on its way. With such strength, why wasn't he trying to rescue her? I would save her! No matter what the cost.

--Izumi Kyoka, ‘The Holy Man of Mount Koya’ (1900), from Japanese Gothic Tales, trans. Charles Shiro Inouye (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996), pp. 62-65.

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