Leftover Things (Nokosaretaru Mono 残されたるもの)

CHAPTER 5 Leftover Things (Nokosaretaru mono 残されたるもの)

“Leftover Things” appeared in Chūō kōron 中央公論 (Central forum) in September 1937.1 Like “A Past Tale,” this story is set in Japan and shows how divided Japanese society actually was during this time. Whereas in “A Past Tale” the disparity is over political ideology, in “Leftover Things” it is over economics and social class. As the title suggests, this story is about those who have been forgotten by Japanese society. The motif of the dead father as a metaphor for the failure of a patriarchal society to protect its people appears here, as in so many of Tamura’s works of fiction. In this story Tamura also seems to be ques- tioning the price of political idealism. How much should one sacrifice one’s own family for the good of an ideal? This is a question that is also raised by Miyamoto Yuriko 宮本百合子 (1899–1951) in her short story “Koiwai no ikka” こいわいの一家 (The Family Koiwai, 1934), and by Sata Ineko 佐多稲子 (1904–1998) in her novel Kurenai くれない (Crimson, 1936). Maruoka Hideko, in her memoir about her time with Tamura, compares “Leftover Things” to Maxim Gorky’s (1868–1936) play The Lower Depths (1902).2 She writes:

“Leftover Things” is a work that expresses the social issues of Japanese society on which Tamura’s eyes were fixated. She depicts the awakening of a young boy who shouts to his friend who has been carted off to an orphanage, “I’m going to cream that adult!” The young boy in Tamura’s story must live among petty thieves, vagrants, prostitutes, and with a wid- owed mother who has lost all her spirit, just like the lost characters described in Gorky’s “The Lower Depths.” The young boys in Tamura’s story do not mean to commit serious crimes, but unable to do anything else, they are left with no choice but to engage in petty thievery.3

1 Satō Toshiko, “Nokosaretaru mono,” Chūō kōron 52, no. 9 (September 1937): 88–119. 2 Gorky’s play The Lower Depths, which is subtitled Scenes from Russian Life, is about a group of impoverished Russians living in a derelict lodging house near the Volga. There have been several movies made of this play, including one made by Kurosawa Akira in 1957, entitled in Japanese Donzoko どん底 (The lower depths). 3 Maruoka Hideko, Tamura to watashi, 170.

Another work that comes to mind is Higuchi Ichiyō’s (1872–1896) “Takekurabe” たけくらべ (Comparing heights), published in 1895,4 which is also about young children trying to survive in Tokyo’s impoverished Yoshiwara district. The adults are not primary actors in this story. They are like the Bunraku pup- peteers who dress in black to be invisible from the stage, but are present to manipulate their puppets. Similarly, the parents in “Comparing Heights” manipulate their children from behind the scenes in the plot of the story, caus- ing the children to play out the sexism and class-consciousness of their parents on each other. Similar to the young boy in “Leftover Things,” who decides he will cream the adults who have created such a nasty world, the narrator of “Comparing Heights” laments, “In such a world, how are the children to escape being influenced?”5 ∵

Leftover Things (Chūō kōron, September 1937)

Chapter One Soap bubbles danced above the shut eyelids. As some scattered, others formed rings around him. “It’s just like cellophane,” Komakichi said to no one in particular. The soap bubbles were delicate. They sparkled like quartz. The soap bubbles seemed to frolic and dance. The small ones chased the bigger ones. But one small bubble swelled up like a big toy balloon, and then floated away like dew. “They are pretty, aren’t they?” Komakichi did not know whether the bubbles were ones he was blowing himself or ones his friend Tatsuo was blowing. Suddenly he saw the smiling face of his mother, Yōko.

4 Although I translate the title of Higuchi Ichiyō’s story “Takekurabe” as “Comparing Heights,” other translations of the story use a different title. Robert Lyons Danly translated the title as “Child’s Play,” and I am using his English translation as the source for my excerpt below. See Higuchi Ichiyō, “Child’s Play,” in In the Shade of Spring Leaves: The Life of Higuchi Ichiyō, with Nine of Her Best Short Stories, translated and edited by Robert Lyons Danly (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 254–87. The actual Japanese, however, means “comparing heights.” Edward Seidensticker also translated “Takekurabe”; his translation of the title is “Growing Up,” and his story appears in Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology, edited by Donald Keene (New York: Grove Press, 1956), 70–110. 5 Higuchi Ichiyō, “Child’s Play,” trans. Robert Danly, in In the Shade of Spring Leaves, 255.