Chapter 15 To Yasunari Kawabata

You slandered me in the September issue of Wenyichunqiu. "Previously.——It is true that the work of Daohuaの华 (どうけのはな) has invested a lot of the author's life and literary views, but in my personal opinion, the author's current life is in a mess, which makes it impossible for him to be talented. It’s a pity to play to your heart’s content.” Let's save each other those stupid lies.I read your article on the storefront of the bookstore, which made me very unhappy.From this point of view, it seems that the Akutagawa Award is decided by you alone.This won't be your article.It must be someone you put on the name.And you even worked hard to figure out a way to make it public for everyone to see. "Dao Hua の Hua" was written three years ago, when I was twenty-four years old in the summer.The title I ordered at that time was "Sea".I asked my friends Imaganichi and Ima Uhei to read it. However, compared with the current one, the form is quite simple, and there is no monologue of the man "I" in the text, only focusing on managing the whole story.That autumn, I borrowed Gide's Dostoevsky theory with Akamatsu Tsukisune who lives nearby, which saved me a lot.I cut up the work "Sea" that could even represent my original integrity, put the man "I" in the text and showed up everywhere, and then I boasted to my friends that this is an unprecedented novel in Japan.I also asked my friends Nakamura Jihei, Kubo Ryuichiro, and Mr. Ifuku who lives nearby to read it, and the evaluation was quite good.I was very happy, and processed it again, considered additions and subtractions, re-transcribed it about five times, and then carefully put it away in the paper bag in the drawer.In January of this year, my friend Tan Yixiong said to me after seeing it, this is really a masterpiece!Find a magazine to send it to, and I'll help you find Yasunari Kawabata and ask to have a look.Kawabata will definitely agree with this work.

After that, my novel had reached a bottleneck, and I went on a trip with the so-called self-exile mood.The trip caused a little commotion. I plan to borrow five hundred yuan from my brother, and it doesn't matter how much he scolds me.Then, I went back to Tokyo and wanted to try it again.Under the pressure of my friends, my brother agreed to give me 50 yuan a month for living expenses in the past two or three years.I immediately started looking for an apartment, but soon I developed appendicitis and was admitted to Shinohara Hospital in Asagaya.At that time, the pus had spread to the peritoneum, and the timing was a little late.The day I started to be hospitalized was April 4th of this year. At that time, Takao Nakatani came to visit and talked with me about joining the Japanese romantic school. Let us publish the topic of "Daohua no Hana" for you. "Daohuaの花" was in the hands of Tan Yixiong at the time, I explained my thoughts to him, it would be even better if Tan Yixiong could bring it to Mr. Kawabata. ． ．etc.The incision in my abdomen was painful, and I couldn't move an inch, and then my lungs went wrong, and I lived unconsciously every day.Later I heard from my wife that the doctor told her these things are not responsible for the doctor.I slept in the surgical hospital for a whole month, barely even raising my head.In May, I was transferred to the internal medicine department of Jingdang, Setagaya Ward, and stayed here for another two months.On July 1st, the organization of the hospital was changed, all the staff were replaced, and finally all the patients were driven out of the hospital.As a result of discussions between my brother and his friend Yoshishiro Kita, who owns a suit shop, I was moved to Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, where I lay on a rattan chair all day long, and only took gentle walks in the morning and evening. The doctor would come from Tokyo every week. Visit once.This kind of life lasted for more than two months. At the end of August, I picked up Wenyichunqiu on the storefront of the bookstore, but I saw your article on it. "The author's current life is a mess... blah blah blah." Honestly, I was so angry I couldn't sleep for several nights.

Is it so amazing to live a life of raising birds and enjoying dancing at the same time?I even want to kill you.You are simply vicious.But then I suddenly felt from the bottom of my heart your old-fashioned strong love like Nelly (ネルリ)※.Although you keep saying it's not.No, I shook my head and denied it. Although you pretended to be ruthless, I was burning hot because of your Dostoevsky-style violent and deranged love.However, this is something you will never notice. I didn't mean to outwit you.In your article, I felt the "reality (worldly)" and smelled the anguish of "money relationship".I just wanted to pass them on to a few loyal readers as well.These things must be made known to them.We've also almost begun to wonder if swallowing your breath is a virtue at all.

Thinking of Kikuchi Hiroshi saying "Oh (まあ), this is not bad. It's not bad, it's passable", and the moment when he wiped the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief while smiling all over his face, I couldn't help but smile.He really felt okay.Although Ryunosuke Akutagawa seems a bit pitiful like this, that's how "reality" is.Ishikawa is a down-to-earth person.Here too he makes a number of fairly straightforward efforts. It's just that I really feel sorry.Kawabata Yasunari's lie that pretended to be distressed, but pretended not to be, really made me feel very sorry.It shouldn't be like this.It really shouldn't be like this.You should be more aware of the fact that so-called writers live in "darkness".

※【ネルリ】 Nelly (transliteration), the heroine of Dostoevsky's "Masochistic Crowd (translation)".He lived with his seriously ill mother. After his mother died of illness, he was adopted by the mistress of a prostitute who had taken care of Nelly's mother and daughter, and lived a dark life of being forced to trade with pedophile clients. Later, although she was rescued by the male protagonist in his teens at the time, Nelly was almost crazy because of her past tragic experience and could not believe the other party's kindness at all, and hid her irrepressible first love in the poor and stunted child. Outward until sick and dead.

Russian cannot be transliterated correctly in Japanese katakana, and most translations use the transliteration of "ネルリ-". Dazai himself once used the transliteration of "ネルリ" in his later work collection "Late Years". (The above content is taken from Yasunari Kawabata [unreliable explanation] In the first Akutagawa Awards in Showa 10, Dazai was nominated for two works, namely "Daohua no Hana" and "Retrograde".Among them, "Daohua no Hana", which was affirmed by Haruo Sato, is a work that Dazai attaches great importance to. He has invested a lot of effort in this novel, both in form and content, and his expectations for Akutagawa Appreciation are also placed in this work. superior.However, in the first Akutagawa Award, "Daohua no Hana", who carried Dazai's confidence and expectations, was defeated. Dazai was listed as the second place with "Retrograde" and several other candidates. ".

After the results were announced, Yasunari Kawabata, who served as one of the judges of the Akutagawa Award, published his comments on Dazai's unsuccessful "Doka no Hana" in Bungeishunju. "Life under the author's head ni hate na cloud ありて. ． ． (The author's current life is so smoggy that...)", Dazai, who was in a state of despair, immediately posted an open letter naming Kawabata Yasunari in the next month's literary newsletter, which was this "To Kawabata Yasunari". Dazai mentioned in a letter to Imamanichi earlier that this letter "was written too much, and it might be rejected (quite やったから, あるいは is the opposite...)", but in the end it was adopted up.Needless to say, this open letter immediately became a major event in the literary world, and it must have successfully blown up Yasunari Kawabata.

Before Imakanichi's letter, Dazai also mentioned Akutagawa's defeat in Kodate Zenshiro's letter. "I am very famous, so there is no hope for the Akutagawa Prize in the future" (Akutagawa Prize is for newcomers), "It's just that my name is lined up with the names of those second-rate and third-rate candidates, which is really unpleasant."Akutagawa Sho is listed as the second place candidate, besides Osamu Dazai, there are three people, Shozo Kinomaki, Jun Takami, and Shigeru Tomura.