Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Nagai Kafu Way of Life

They say - someone said - that there's no friend as loyal as a book.

Sometimes I get really wretched thinking about my position in society and the state of my relations with other human beings. Not that I'm universally reviled or anything like that, but, without wanting to go into detail, I sometimes feel like I've committed a crime for which I can never atone, just by being who I am. At such times it feels like every word I utter and every act I make only serves to dig me deeper into the pit of my shame.

Luckily there's art in this world, and, for me, especially literature.

Recently, someone sent me a little package from Japan containing a book about one of my favourite authors, Nagai Kafu. It is his picture that you see on the right hand side of this screen, in a hat and raincoat, walking along a street away from his favourite cafe in Asakusa, Tokyo. The cafe still stands. It is called Arizona Kitchen, and I have visited there twice on pilgrimage.

The title of the book sent to me is Nagai Kafu to iu Ikikata, which translates roughly as The Nagai Kafu Way of Life. The little wraparound slip tells us:

"Living freely, as you please, in a manner true to yourself! Hints we may pick up from the great author on how to live a stress-free life."

Japan seems to be big on this kind of lifestyle book, and it's kind of amusing that such an ultimate individualist and contrarian as Kafu should become a model for one of them. The author, Matsumoto Hajime, has written a great deal on Kafu, and I think this was probably an angle suggested to him by the publisher.

Anyway, here's what the inside cover says:

"Life becomes more and more enjoyable with age. The name Nagai Kafu brings to mind a man of letters responsible for such peerless works as Pleasures and A Strange Tale From East of the River, which influenced an age. However, the life behind those works, too, is unique; without relying on relatives or in-laws, having no traffic with other writers, vilified as a miser and a womaniser, he lived a full seventy-nine years on his own and in his own way. In his diary, Dyspepsia House Days, which he kept continuously for forty-two years, right up until the day before he died, we find not only the deepest thoughts of Kafu the man, but also a precious record of social and sexual customs that spans the three ages of Meiji, Taisho and Showa."



I've read a little of the book already. Unfortunately, I can't read the whole thing yet because I'm still maintaining my policy of finishing four books before I start any other, so I only dipped into it. I read, though, of how he came by his pen-name. Sent to hospital at the age of fifteen, he fell in love with a nurse there, though he never divulged his feelings to her. Her name was O-hasu, which means 'lotus'. The character 'ka' in 'Kafu' also has a meaning of 'lotus'. In fact, the two characters of 'Kafu' together mean 'lotus-wind'. As Matsumoto Hajime remarks, in this way, Kafu kept alive the memory of his first love throughout his entire life:

"It is said that there are few men who knew as many women in their lives as Kafu, and so it's rather interesting that such a Kafu should employ a pen-name that paid tribute to his first love his whole life. Unfulfilled love, which ends before it begins, is not forgotten. If one has a full chance to enjoy the love of the other, there is always the chance that one will tire of it, or be disappointed. However, if one sets a seal on it before it begins, it remains beautiful."

Anyway, I'm looking forward to reading the whole thing.

It's easy to see why someone might want to write a book about Kafu as a sort of how-to on avoiding stress, because, well, reading Kafu does tend to relieve my stress. Everything in life suddenly becomes of merely aesthetic consideration. Not having read Matsumoto's book, I don't know exactly what lessons he will draw from Kafu's life, but off the top of my head, if there is a lesson to learn, it seems to me it's that Kafu just didn't give much of a damn what other people thought about him. Is that why life becomes more and more enjoyable as he gets older? One of my favourite photos of him shows him towards the end of his life, with a broad grin in which many of the teeth are missing.

I leave you with a quote from Kafu's diary, as translated by Edward Seidensticker:

"It has been four years since I commenced this life of solitude, living in the maid's room and cooking for myself. At first there was a certain novelty in the arrangement. Then, toward the end of last year, the ways of the military government began to grow more arbitrary, and there came a change in the world; and somehow the drab and inconvenient life of the bachelor has come to seem so appropriate to the moods of the days that I would not now find it easy to change. Indeed, my feelings and thoughts are quite beyond description when, on an evening of a sudden autumn rain, I drag my sandals along the cliff, taking care that the frayed thong does not break, and buy onions and radishes in Tanimachi. I am quite drunk with the melancholy poetry of it all. However malicious and arbitrary may be the ways of the government, it cannot keep one's fancies from running free. There will be freedom while there is life."