REMEMBERING HIS BIRTH

No matter how they explained, no matter how they laughed me away, I could not
but believe I remembered my own birth. Perhaps the basis for my memory was
something I had heard from someone who had been present at the time, or
perhaps it was only my own willful imagination. However that may have been,
there was one thing I was convinced I had seen clearly, with my own eyes. That
was the brim of the basin in which I received my first bath. It was a brand-new
basin, its wooden surface planed to a fresh and silken smoothness; and when I
looked from inside, a ray of light was striking one spot on its brim. The wood
gleamed only in that one spot and seemed to be made of gold. Tongue-tips of
water lapped up waveringly as though they would lick the spot, but never quite
reached it. And, whether because of a reflection or because the ray of light
streamed on into the basin as well, the water beneath that spot on the brim
gleamed softly, and tiny shining waves seemed to be forever bumping their
heads together there. . . .
The strongest disproof of this memory was the fact that I had been born, not in
the daytime, but at nine in the evening: There could have been no streaming
sunlight. Even though teased with a "So then, it must have been an electric
light," without any great difficulty I could still walk into the absurdity of
believing that no matter if it had been midnight, a ray of sunlight had surely been
striking at least that one spot on the basin.

DOMINEERING RUTHLESS GRANDMA

My parents lived on the second floor of the house. On the pretext that it was
hazardous to raise a child on an upper floor, my grandmother snatched me from
my mother's arms on my forty-ninth day. My bed was placed in my
grandmother's sickroom, perpetually closed and stifling with odors of sickness
and old age, and I was raised there beside her sickbed.
When about one year old I fell from the third step of the stairway and injured my
forehead. My grandmother had gone to the theater, and my father's cousins and
my mother were noisily enjoying the respite. My mother had had occasion to
take something up to the second floor. Following her, I had become entangled in
the trailing skirt of her kimono and had fallen.
My grandmother was summoned by telephone from the Kabuki Theater. When
she arrived, my grandfather went out to meet her. She stood in the entryway
without taking her shoes off, leaning on the cane that she carried in her right
hand, and stared fixedly at my grandfather. When she spoke, it was in a strangely
calm tone of voice, as though carving out each word:
"Is he dead?"
"No"

HIS FIRST MEMORY OF SEXUALITY

It was a young man who was coming down toward us, with handsome, ruddy
cheeks and shining eyes, wearing a dirty roll of cloth around his head for a
sweatband. He came down the slope carrying a yoke of night-soil buckets over
one shoulder, balancing their heaviness expertly with his footsteps. He was a
night-soil man, a ladler of excrement. He was dressed as a laborer, wearing split-
toed shoes with rubber soles and black-canvas tops, and dark-blue cotton

trousers of the close-fitting kind called "thigh-pullers."

The scrutiny I gave the youth was unusually close for a child of four. Although I
did not clearly perceive it at the time, for me he represented my first revelation
of a certain power, my first summons by a certain strange and secret voice. It is
significant that this was first manifested to me in the form of a night-soil man:
excrement is a symbol for the earth, and it was doubtlessly the malevolent love
of the Earth Mother that was calling to me. What I mean is that toward his occupation I felt
something like a yearning for a piercing sorrow, a body-wrenching sorrow. His occupation
gave me the feeling of "tragedy" in the most sensuous meaning of the word.

There is another early memory, involving a picture book. Although I learned to

read and write when I was five, I could not yet read the words in the book. So
this memory also must date from the age of four.
I had several picture books about that time, but my fancy was captured,
completely and exclusively, only by this one—and only by one eye-opening
picture in it. I could dream away long and boring afternoons gazing at it, and yet
when anyone came along, I would feel guilty without reason and would turn in a
flurry to a different page. The watchfulness of a sicknurse or a maid vexed me
beyond endurance. I longed for a life that would allow me to gaze at that picture
all the day through. Whenever I turned to that page my heart beat fast. No other
page meant anything to me.
The picture showed a knight mounted on a white horse, holding a sword aloft.
The horse, nostrils flaring, was pawing the ground with powerful forelegs. There
was a beautiful coat of arms on the silver armor the knight was wearing. The
knight's beautiful face peeped through the visor, and he brandished his drawn
sword awesomely in the blue sky, confronting either Death or, at the very least,
some hurtling object full of evil power. I believed he would be killed the next
instant: if I turn the page quickly, surely I can see him being killed. Surely there
is some arrangement whereby, before one knows it, the pictures in a picture book
can be changed into "the next instant." . . .
But one day my sicknurse happened to open the book to that page. While I was
stealing a quick sideways glance at it, she said:
"Does little master know this picture's story?"
"No, I don't."
"This looks like a man, but it's a woman. Honestly. Her name was Joan of Arc.
The story is that she went to war wearing a man's clothes and served her
country."
"A woman . . .?"

I felt as though I had been knocked flat. The person I had thought a he was a she.
If this beautiful knight was a woman and not a man, what was there left? (Even.
today I feel a repugnance, deep rooted and hard to explain, toward women in
male attire.) This was the first "revenge by reality" that I had met in life, and it
seemed a cruel one, particularly upon the sweet fantasies I had cherished
concerning his death. From that day on I turned my back on that picture book. I
would never so much as take it in my hands again. Years later I was to discover a
glorification of the death of a beautiful knight in a verse by Oscar Wilde:

"This looks like a man, but it's a woman. Honestly. Her name was Joan of Arc.
The story is that she went to war wearing a man's clothes and served her
country."
"A woman . . .?"

I felt as though I had been knocked flat. The person I had thought a he was a she.
If this beautiful knight was a woman and not a man, what was there left? (Even.
today I feel a repugnance, deep rooted and hard to explain, toward women in
male attire.) This was the first "revenge by reality" that I had met in life, and it
seemed a cruel one, particularly upon the sweet fantasies I had cherished
concerning his death. From that day on I turned my back on that picture book. I
would never so much as take it in my hands again. Years later I was to discover a
glorification of the death of a beautiful knight in a verse by Oscar Wilde:

The soldiers' odor of sweat—that odor like a sea breeze, like the air, burned to
gold, above the seashore —struck my nostrils and intoxicated me. This was
probably my earliest memory of odors. Needless to say, the odor could not, at
that time, have had any direct relationship with sexual sensations, but it did
gradually and tenaciously arouse within me a sensuous craving for such things as
the destiny of soldiers, the tragic nature of their calling, the distant countries they
would see, the ways they would die. . . .
(ALSO PRINCE AND DRAGON CHILDRENS BOOK)

CROSSDRESSING
From among my mother's kimonos I dragged out the most gorgeous one, the one
with the strongest colors. For a sash I chose an obi on which scarlet roses were
painted in oil, and wrapped it round and round my waist in the manner of a
Turkish pasha. I covered my head with a wrapping-cloth of crepe de Chine. My
cheeks flushed with wild delight when I stood before the mirror and saw that this
improvised headcloth resembled those of the pirates in Treasure Island.
But my work was still far from complete. My every point, down to the very tips
of my fingernails, had to be made worthy of the creation of mystery. I stuck a
hand mirror in my sash and powdered my face lightly. Then I armed myself with
a silver-colored flashlight, an old-fashioned fountain pen of chased metal, and
whatever else struck my eye.
I assumed a solemn air and, dressed like this, rushed into my grandmother's
sitting-room. Unable to suppress my frantic laughter and delight, I ran about the
room crying:
"I'm Tenkatsu! Me, I'm Tenkatsu!"
My grandmother was there sick abed, and also my mother and a visitor and the
maid assigned to the sickroom. But not a single person was visible to my eyes.
My frenzy was focused upon the consciousness that, through my impersonation,
Tenkatsu was being revealed to many eyes. In short, I could see nothing but
myself.
And then I chanced to catch sight of my mother's face. She had turned slightly
pale and was simply sitting there as though absentminded. Our glances met; she
lowered her eyes.I understood. Tears blurred my eyes.
What was it I understood at that moment, or was on the verge of understanding?
Did the motif of later years—that of "remorse as prelude to sin"—show here the
first hint of its beginning? Or was the moment teaching me how grotesque my
isolation would appear to the eyes of love, and at the same time was I learning,
from the reverse side of the lesson, my own incapacity for accepting love? . . .

MODDING PHOTOS:
Coming to understand these matters, I began to seek physical pleasure
consciously, intentionally. The principles of selection and arrangement were
brought into operation. When the composition of a picture in an adventure-story
magazine was found defective, I would first copy it with crayons, and then
correct it to my satisfaction. Then it would become the picture of a young circus
performer dropping to his knees and clutching at a bullet wound in his breast; or
a tight-rope walker who had fallen and split his skull open and now lay dying,
half his face covered with blood. Often at school I would become so preoccupied
with the fear that these bloodthirsty pictures, which I had hidden away in a
drawer of the bookcase at home, might be discovered during my absence that I
would not even hear the teacher's voice. I knew I should have destroyed them
promptly after drawing them, but my toy was so attached to them that I found it
absolutely impossible to do so.

(HE ALSO BUSTS SEVERAL NUTS TO A PAINTING OF A MARTIRISED ST SEBASTIAN)

Kochan's parents enroll him in a strict middle school, although his

parents have him live at home to protect his innocence. He falls in love
with a “delinquent” named Omi and becomes obsessed with him,
particularly his bodily strength and masculinity. After some time, he
realizes that he is jealous of Omi’s body and renounces his love for him,
devoting himself to strengthening his own frail body and achieving ideal
masculinity. Despite this commitment, he becomes sicker, developing
anemia and beginning to create sexual fantasies of cannibalism
and blood.
As Kochan grows older, he begins to realize that he does not experience
the attraction to women his peers do. He tries to find some personal
failing to explain this absence and fixates on his experiences with
women, none of which are sexual or cause him to feel attraction. After
going to university, he befriends a young soldier named Kusano and
eventually forces himself to form an illusory crush on Kusano’s younger
sister Sonoko.
Kochan develops a brief sickness that prevents the army from drafting
him. Instead, he tends to Kusano’s family while his friend is at war,
growing closer to Sonoko during this time. His attempts to develop
attraction for her end in failure. As she begins to take their relationship
more seriously, and as talk of marriage approaches, self-hatred and
frustration consume Kochan. He breaks off their relationship.

After ending their relationship, Kochan drifts. Sonoko marries another

man and Kochan’s sister dies, leaving him alone. He tries to reconnect
with Sonoko, against propriety. On one such dalliance, they go dancing,
but Kochan sees a handsome young delinquent and daydreams about the
latter’s death instead of keeping his focus on Sonoko.