Posted on Sunday, 04/27/25.

What follows is the first page or so of Osamu Dazai’s (太宰治) short story ‘Villon’s wife’, or 「ヴィヨンの妻」 (1947). I read Keene’s translation (in an anthology printed in the 50s I bought in Berkeley) in a café in 高円寺 (COFFEE コーラル) on Saturday, which by some serendipity is located perhaps fifteen minutes by foot from the story’s setting around 中野駅 (one stop down the 中央線). The reputation of this part of the city is basically unchanged since then; it is also near the home of ナカタさん in 海辺のカフカ.

It made me remember finishing ‘Prozac Nation’ in Faro Cafe, a half-block from the then-shuttered Cafe Pamplona——how I spied its floor’s black-and-white checkers on walking home, described to me just before by the ghost of Elizabeth Wurtzel. The cafe in 中野 has perhaps been around since the 1970s, I would guess, and is run by a frail woman with silver hair who has memory problems but a calm demeanor.

Later that afternoon I looked for the original story in a used bookstore, which wasn’t hard to find, picking up a comparatively pristine, small paperback printed in 1995 (in truth a collection of his short stories for which this is the title piece). I translated without referring to the Keene version, mostly out of curiosity, though I am sure my having read his version once means my choices were not totally my own. The sentences of the original are long and crammed with commas; even by my pitiful efforts here I can get some sense of the frustration and obsession that must plague the kind of people who do this work. I mean to read a book one of these days on the cadre of men (e.g., Keene and Seidensticker) who translated Japanese literature from the late 1940s through the 1980s Only after, it must be noted, translating masses of ‘stultifyingly inconsequential’ information.: most of them knew each other, many were taught by Japanese-Americans in the 1930s who were later incarcerated, and some wrote invective on Japan later in life.

Original text

あわただしく、玄関を開ける音が聞こえて、私はその音で、眼を覚ましましたが、それは泥酔「でいすい」, lit. ‘muddy drunk’.の夫の、深夜の帰宅に決まっているのでございますから、そのまま黙って寝ていました。

夫は、隣の部屋に電気をつけ、はあっはあっOnomatopoeic ‘haah, haah’ for heavy breathing.、とすさまじく荒い呼吸をしながら、机の引き出しや本箱の引出しを開けて掻き回し。何やら捜している様子でしたが、やがて、どたりと畳に腰を下ろして坐ったような物音が聞こえまして、あとはただ、はあっはあっという荒い呼吸ばかりで、何をしている事やら、私が寝たまま、「おかえりなさいまし。ご飯は、おすみですか？お戸棚に、おむすびがございますけど」

と申しますと、「やあ、ありがとう」といつになく優しい返事をいたしまして、「坊やはどうです。熱は、まだありますか？」と尋ねます。

これも珍しいことでございました。坊やは、来年は四つになるのですが、栄養不足のせいか、または夫の酒毒のせいか、病毒のせいか、よその二つの子供よりも小さいくらいで、歩く足許さえおぼつかなく、言葉もウマウマとか,イヤイヤとかを言えるくらいが関の山で、脳が悪いのではないかとも思われ、私はこの子供を銭湯に連れて行き裸にして抱き上げて、あんまり小さく醜く痩せているので、寂しくなって、大勢の人の前で泣いてしまったことさございました。そうしてこの子は、しょっちゅう、お腹を壊したり、熱を出したり、夫は殆ど家に落ち着いている事は無く、子供の事など何と思っているのやら、坊やが熱を出しまして、と私が言っても、あ、そう、お医者に連れて行ったらいいでしょう、と言って、忙しげに二重廻しを羽織りってSpecifically a coat with a mantle, i.e., amusingly basically exactly the one Dazai is pictured in here.どこかへ出掛けてしまいます。お医者に連れて行きたくっても、お金も何もないのですから、私は坊やに添寝して、坊やの頭を黙って撫でてやっているより他は無いのでございます。

けれどもその夜はどういうわけか、いやに優しく、坊やの熱はどうだ、など珍しく尋ねてくださって、私は嬉しいよりも、なんだか恐ろしい予感で、脊筋が寒くなりました「せすじ」, here using the unusual「脊」, lit. the spine’s sinews.。

Personal translation

Awoken by the sound of the front door being yanked open, I realized it was my piss-drunk husband sneaking back in the middle of the night again, so I stayed where I was.

He fumbled over in the next room, turning a lamp on, panting coarsely; against his heavy breathing I heard him rummage through drawer after drawer of the desk, the dresser. Whatever he was searching for, at the end of it all came a sound like he had flopped down on the tatami and, wondering what he was up to, listening to his panting, I called out from where I was, “Have you eaten?—I left some rice balls in the cupboard,” to which he said, “Thank you,” unusually gently, and then, “How is the boy’s fever?”

This was also unusual. The boy had just turned four but, either by malnutrition, or his father’s alcoholism, or some illness, he was smaller than most two-year-olds, could barely walk, and basically only said ‘yum-yum’ and ‘yuck-yuck’, such that I wondered sometimes if he wasn’t retarded——when I took him to the public bath once, holding him, naked, and saw what an ugly and stunted thing he was, and how sad it all seemed, even in front of all the people there I burst into tears. He is always having stomach-aches and fevers, and my husband is home so rarely I don’t even know what he thinks; when I told him once the boy had a fever he said I ought to take him to a doctor then put on his coat and ran off again. As much as I want to, there’s no money, so I sleep next to him and, with nothing else to do, quietly stroke his head.

So that night, with his seeming so unusually kind, with his asking about the boy’s fever and all of that, rather than relieving me it felt like a presentiment of something awful, and made my spine go cold.

Keene’s translation

I was awakened by the sound of the front door being flung open, but I did not get out of bed. I knew it could only be my husband, returning dead drunk in the middle of the night.

He switched on the light in the next room and, breathing heavily, managed to rummage through the drawers of the table and the bookcase, searching for something. After a few minutes there was a noise that sounded as if he had flopped down on the floor. Then I could hear only his panting. Wondering what he might be up to I called to him from where I lay. “Have you had supper yet? There’s some cold rice in the cupboard.”

“Thank you,” he answered in an unowontedly gentle tone. “How is the boy? Does he still have a fever?”

This was also unusual. The boy is four this year, but whether because of malnutrition, or his father’s alcoholism, or sickness, he is actually smaller than most two-year-olds. He is not even sure on his feet, and as for talking, it’s all he can do to say ‘yum-yum’ or ‘ugh.’ Sometimes I wonder if he is not feeble-minded. Once, when I took him to the public bath and held him in my arms after undressing him, he looked so small and pitifully scrawny that my heart sank, and I burst into tears in front of everybody. The boy is always having upset stomachs or fevers, but my husband also never spends any time at home, and I wonder what if anything he thinks about the child. If I mention to him that the boy has a fever, he says, “You ought to take him to a doctor,” Then he throws on his coat and goes off somewhere. I would like to take the boy to the doctor, but I haven’t the money. There is nothing I can do but lie beside him and stroke his head.

But that night, for whatever reason, my husband was strangely gentle, and for once asked me about the boy’s fever. It didn’t make me happy. I felt instead a kind of premonition of something terrible, and cold chills ran up and down my spine.

A panel ripped from ‘Ed the Happy Clown’ (1989) by Chester Brown. On another read-through it’s a pretty well-formed story about equanimity in the face of miserable circumstances.