二

I then began to write this letter. For someone like me, who never normally takes up a pen, it was a heavy anguish that events and thoughts would not flow as I wished. I nearly abandoned this duty I owe to you. Yet no matter how often I tried to stop and lay the brush aside, it came to nothing. Within an hour I would want to write again. From your perspective, this may seem the character of a man who values the discharge of duty. I will not deny it. As you know, I am a solitary man with almost no intercourse with the world; the duty called duty, even if I look to my left, right, front, and back, has taken root in no direction. Whether by design or by nature, I lived a life that pared it down as much as possible. But it is not that I became thus because I am indifferent to duty. Rather, because I am too keen and lack the energy to endure stimulation, I came, as you see, to spend my days in passivity. Therefore, once having promised, not to fulfill it is a most unpleasant feeling. To avoid even this unpleasant feeling toward you, I must take up the brush again.

Moreover, I want to write. Setting duty aside, I want to write my past. My past is my own experience, so it may be called my sole possession. To die without giving it to anyone would, it might be said, be a pity. I feel something of that myself. But rather than give it to one who cannot receive it, I would sooner bury my experience together with my life. Indeed, had there been no man such as you here, my past would have remained my past, and never become, even indirectly, another's knowledge. Among the tens of millions of Japanese, I wish to tell my past to you alone. Because you are earnest. Because you said you wished earnestly to gain living lessons from life itself.

I shall cast upon your head, without reserve, the shadow of a dark human world. But do not fear. Gaze fixedly into the dark, and seize from it what may serve you. My darkness is, of course, ethical darkness. I was a man born ethically. I was a man raised ethically. That ethical thinking may differ considerably from that of the young today. But however mistaken, it is my own. It is not a rented costume borrowed in a pinch. Therefore I think it will be of some reference to you, who are to develop hereafter.

You will remember that you often turned discussions of modern thought to me. You will well understand my attitude toward them. I did not despise your opinions, but they could never reach a degree worthy of respect. Your thinking had no background, and you were too young to possess a past of your own. I smiled at times. You often showed me a dissatisfied face. At last you pressed me to unfold my past before you like a picture scroll. Then, for the first time, I respected you in my heart. Because you showed the resolve to seize, without reserve, some living thing from within me. Because you would split open my heart and sip the warm flowing blood. At that time I still lived. I disliked dying. So I put off to another day and rejected your demand. I am now, with my own hand, breaking my heart, and would dash its blood upon your face. If, when my pulse has stopped, a new life can lodge in your breast, I shall be satisfied.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”