Written by Dazai Osamu and published in February 1935 as the second part of Retrogression. Translated by A L Raye. First published on Asymptote.
Original text: https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000035/files/260_34634.html
There was no doubt that I’d failed the year, but I was still going to take the exam. The beauty of a worthless effort. I was fascinated by that beauty. This morning I had woken up early, and for the first time in a year I put my arms through my school uniform and walked through those bright iron gates, big and tall and emblazoned with the Imperial Chrysanthemum. I found myself passing under them with some trepidation. Immediately upon entering the grounds there are rows of gingko trees. Ten trees on the right side and another ten trees on the left, all of them giants. When the leaves are in full bloom the road ahead becomes so dim that it’s like a tunnel. Now, though, there isn’t a single leaf. At the end of the boulevard there sat a large, red-bricked building. This was the auditorium. I had only seen the inside of this building once, during the entrance ceremony, and it had given me the impression of a temple. I looked up at the electric clock on the top of the auditorium tower. There was still fifteen minutes left until the exam. Affection filled my eyes as I passed the bronze statue dedicated to the father of a detective fiction novelist and headed down the gentle slope to my right, coming out into the park. Once upon a time this had been the garden of a renowned daimyo. In the pond were common carp, scarlet carp and softshell turtles. Around five or six years ago a pair of cranes were seen frolicing here, and snakes still slither in the grass. Migratory wild geese and ducks also stop to rest their wings in this pond. The whole garden is actually less than 200 tsubo in size, but looks more like 1000 tsubo – an excellent landscaping trick. I sat down on the bamboo grass by the edge of the pond, put my back against the stump of an old oak tree, and stretched both legs out in front of me. Where the path forked lay a line of rocks of various shapes and sizes, beyond which spread the wide open water. The surface of the pond shone white under the cloudy sky and rippled as if tickled by the furrows of tiny waves. After casually crossing my legs, I muttered to myself.
‘I am a thief.’
A line of university students walk along the path in front of me. They pass by in droves, an apparently incessant flow of people. Someday, each will become the pride of his hometown. The cream of the crop. They were all trying to read and memorise the same sentences in their notebooks. I took out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and put one in my mouth, but I was out of matches.
‘Can I get a light?’
I called out to a handsome college boy wrapped in a light green coat. He stopped, and without taking his eyes off his notebook he handed me the gold-tipped cigarette he held in his mouth. I took it and he slowly walked away without pausing. Even at university I was able to find someone who could match me. I lit my own cheap cigarette from the fancy foreign one and then, rising carefully, I threw the gold-tipped cigarette onto the ground with all my might and stomped on it heartily with my heel. After that, I made my way leisurely to the exam hall.
In the examination room there were at least a hundred college students, all of them shrinking to the back of the hall. They were worried that if they sat near the front they wouldn’t be able to write their answers as they pleased. Looking for all the world like a bright young scholar I sat right in the front row and puffed on my cigarette, my fingertips trembling a little. I did not have a notebook to revise under my desk, nor did I have a single friend with whom I could furtively consult.
Eventually, a red-faced professor carrying a bulging satchel came running into the exam hall. This man was Japan’s foremost scholar of French literature. I saw him for the first time today. He cut quite the figure and, in spite of myself, I felt intimidated by his furrowed brows. I’d heard that this man’s students included the number one poet and number one literary critic in Japan. And Japan’s number one novelist, I thought, and secretly felt a warm flush spread over my cheeks. While the professor was scribbling down the problems on the board, the college students behind me were mostly whispering to each other about the Manchurian economic boom instead of their studies. Presently, five or six lines of French appeared on the board. The professor sat slumped in the armchair on the podium and said irritably:
‘You couldn’t fail these questions even if you wanted to!’
The college students laughed awkwardly. I laughed too. The professor then mumbled a few incomprehensible words in French and started writing something at his desk.
I didn’t know any French. No matter the question, I intended to write ‘Flaubert was a spoiled little rich boy.’ For a while I pretended to be deep in thought by closing my eyes slightly, brushing the dandruff from my hair, gazing at the colour of my fingernails and so on. Eventually, I picked up my pen and began to write.
Flaubert was a spoiled little rich boy. It was his protégé, Maupassant, who was the more mature of the two. After all, the beauty of art is ultimately the beauty of service to the people. Flaubert did not comprehend this grim reality, but Maupassant did. In an attempt to make up for the humiliating disgrace which was his debut work, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, Flaubert wasted his entire life. Having been metaphorically torn apart by his critics, every time he finished writing anything – anything at all – regardless of public opinion, the wounds of his humiliation would ache more and more, so keenly and so painfully, that the unfulfilled hollow in his heart spread further and deeper until finally, he died. He was deceived by the illusion of a masterpiece, enchanted by an eternal beauty, carried away by a fever dream and ultimately couldn’t even save himself, let alone any of his kin. Baudelaire in particular was also a spoiled little rich boy. That is all.
I didn’t write ‘Professor, please let me pass the exam!’ or anything like that. I read what I had written twice over and didn’t find any mistakes, so with my coat and hat in my left hand and the single answer sheet in my right, I stood up. The bright little boffin behind me began to panic as a result of this because he had been using me as a shield. Ah! The name of an up-and-coming writer was written on the answer sheet of this adorable, rabbit-like scholar. Even though I felt pity for this anxious, soon-to-be famous writer, still I gave the doddery Professor a knowing bow and submitted my answer. I walked sedately back through the exam hall but as soon as I got through the doors I raced down the stairs so fast I practically tumbled down them.
Escaping outside like a young thief, I felt a strange sadness. What kind of melancholy was this? Where did it come from? Despite these thoughts I straightened my shoulders and strode steadily down the wide gravel road that was sandwiched between rows of gingko trees. It’s just because I’m hungry, I told myself. Tucked in the basement beneath classroom 29 was a large cafeteria. I made my way there.
Hungry students overflowed from the basement cafeteria, forming a long line that trailed like a snake across the ground from the entrance, its tail reaching all the way up to the rows of ginkgo trees. You could get a decent lunch here for just fifteen sen, and the line must have been about 100 metres long.
‘I am a thief. A misanthrope without equal. Never before has the artist become a murderer. Never before has the artist become a thief. You assholes! Bunch of cheap-ass, brainy little bastards!’
Pushing my way roughly through the students thus, I eventually reached the cafeteria entrance. On the door there was a small sign which read:
Today, we are delighted to announce that the cafeteria is celebrating its third full year in business. To honour this occasion we would like to offer you some small tokens of our appreciation.
These tokens of appreciation were special dishes displayed in a glass cabinet beside the entrance: Red prawns nestled in beds of parsley leaves and boiled eggs cut in half with ‘congratulations’ in stylish calligraphy written on them using a blue agar jelly. I made the effort to peek inside the cafeteria and saw the serving girls wearing white aprons threading their way through the forest of black-clad students taking part in the event, slipping through them and gliding around in a fluttering dance. The flags of all nations were strung across the ceiling.
Those fresh flowers that bloom in the basement of the university were the antidote to my restlessness. How lucky I was to come on this wonderful day. Let’s celebrate together! Oh, let’s celebrate together!
Like a falling leaf the thief retreats, swirling outside and slipping into the tail of the giant snake, his figure disappearing in the blink of an eye.
The above story is included in Retrogression, our first publication that follows Dazai’s attempt at the Akutagawa Prize through stories, letters and diary entries. The published version has multiple footnotes with cultural information and references, including recently rediscovered and previously lost poetry Dazai wrote in a Bible during his time in Musashino Hospital.
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