Mori Ogai — The Man Who Wanted to Be Taken Seriously

The Mask with the Big Nose

"I am a foreigner. I am unable to dance."

I'm a foreigner. I can't dance.

The night of March 8, 1886, in the German city of Munich. At a masked ball, a girl in a black mask and a white dress with a green pattern asked a young man from Japan to dance. The young man turned her down with those words.

The young man wore a mask too. It was a mask with a big nose, which he had bought before going in.

Then how about a drink together, the girl said. The two of them sat at a table, ordered drinks, and enjoyed themselves as much as they liked.

On the way home, the young man walked the girl to her door. She told him she lived there with her aunt. By day she worked at a restaurant that served meat, carrying drinks to the tables. Her name was Babette. Please come and visit sometime.

The young man's name was Mori Rintaro. He was twenty-four, an army doctor from Japan. He had come to Germany to study hygiene, and had been there for almost a year and a half. Years later he would write novels under the name Mori Ogai.

This night is recorded in his own diary. It is written in stiff, old-fashioned prose, mixed with Chinese-style phrases.

Two days before the masked ball, Rintaro had heard his country turned into a joke in front of more than three hundred people.

It happened in Dresden, at the yearly celebration of a geographical society.

The speaker was a German scholar named Naumann. He had lived in Japan for a long time, and had even gone home with a medal from the Japanese government. Yet for some reason, Rintaro wrote, he looked very unhappy.

The title of the speech was "Japan." He talked about Japan's land, its way of life, its government and its technology, and mixed in several harsh words. At the very end, Naumann added a joke.

A Japanese man bought a steamship. He had just learned how to sail, and he boarded it proudly and went out to sea. After some months, his home shore came close. But the engineer knew how to start the engine, and did not know how to stop it. The ship wandered around near the coast, waiting for the engine to stop by itself.

"Japanese technology is mostly like this. I hope that one day it will get free of this fault."

Rintaro could not stay calm. But this was a ceremonial speech. He was not allowed to answer back on the spot. His diary says: "My anguish was complete." He worried and worried, it means.

Then Roth, a high-ranking German army doctor, came over and said:

"You look unhappy. Why? As I see it, Naumann's talk shows a hope that Japan will open up and grow. It seems a fair speech to me."

Even a man like Roth knew this little about Japan. Other people must know even less. Thinking so, Rintaro's anger only grew, and nothing he ate or drank had any taste, he wrote.

But then, an unexpected chance came.

Naumann stood up to give a reply, and said this: I lived in the East for a long time, but Buddhism never took hold of me. Because the Buddha says, "Women have no heart." Ladies, I cannot believe that.

Hearing this, Rintaro wrote, he was "surprised, and glad too."

He could not answer a ceremonial speech. But a joke at a drinking party was fair game. Through Roth, he got the chairman's permission, and stood up.

"I am a man of Buddhism. I shall speak as a Buddhist."

I am on the side of Buddhism. I will speak as a Buddhist.

In clumsy German, he began by saying there was something he especially wanted the ladies to hear. According to Mr. Naumann, he went on, Buddhists say that women have no heart. Then the ladies must think I believe so too. I cannot stay silent.

First of all, what is a Buddha? The word means someone who has woken up. In the holy books there are many cases of women who became Buddhas. Women can become people who have woken up. How could anyone who can wake up have no heart?

Everyone, please raise your glasses with me, and drink to the beautiful hearts of the ladies.

A staff doctor named Evers came over with his wife. On behalf of all the ladies, my wife thanks you for your speech, he said. The other army doctors praised the speech too. His diary says: "You can guess how pleased I was."

Roth said, with a smile in his voice:

"Immer verschmitzt!"

Sly as ever.

The next day, the afternoon of March 7, Roth held a farewell party for Rintaro, who was leaving Dresden (the capital of the German state of Saxony). Many guests came, starting with the head of the army hospital and his wife.

At the party, Roth read a poem he had written. In the middle of it his voice broke, and he began to cry and could not stop. Rintaro's diary says he too was crying before he knew it.

As they parted, Roth said:

"I do not see you as I see the other army doctors who came to Saxony. You are truly a good friend to me. Let me know now and then that you are safe, and comfort my heart."

Then he gave Rintaro a letter of introduction to Pettenkofer, a scholar in Munich. That night, Rintaro boarded the train for Munich.

The night his country was made a joke, and he answered back with a joke and everyone praised him. The afternoon he cried with a friend.

The night after that was the masked ball in Munich.

Wearing a mask with a big nose, Rintaro turned down the invitation to dance, because he was a foreigner. And yet he drank with the girl and walked her home.

Please come and visit sometime. He did not visit the house where she had said that. His diary for that night goes on:

"I did not go to call on her. Whether it was true, I have no means to know."

I did not go to see her. So whether any of it was real, I cannot know.

After writing this, the diary goes on: "I returned to my lodging and went to sleep." The room was warm, it says, and the bed was soft.

Two and a half years later, a woman from Germany would cross the sea after him.

Language Lessons

"I go to my language lessons every day."

How are things going? his sister asked. Her brother laughed and answered like that, with a calm face. He looked as if he knew nothing of what others were worrying about, and she really hated that face, his sister Kimiko wrote later.

This was in the autumn of 1888.

On September 8 of that year, Mori Rintaro came back to Japan after four years away. He was twenty-six.

His sister Kimiko had married Koganei Yoshikiyo, a university professor. Rintaro, in Berlin, had sent a telegram to say he agreed to the marriage.

Avoiding the crowd that had come to meet him, Kimiko went ahead to the family house in Senju (a part of Tokyo) and waited with their grandmother, who was minding the house. The grandmother said this, apparently:

"I'm not only glad he is coming home after so long. How I have waited, because I want him to look after Toku."

Toku was Rintaro's younger brother Tokujiro. A task was already waiting for the eldest son to take on when he came home.

Soon the brother came home, with a noisy crowd seeing him off. After greeting their grandmother and mother, he called out to Kimiko, she wrote:

"Well. Congratulations to you. I'm glad for you. Thank Mr. Koganei for coming to the station. Is Toku still a critic as ever? Jun has grown big too."

That very night, Rintaro told their father something.

Kimiko learned of it sixteen days later, early in the morning of September 24. Their mother came from Senju and told her: a woman her brother had grown close to over there had followed him, and was staying at the Seiyoken in Tsukiji (a Western-style hotel in Tokyo). Kimiko wrote that she was amazed, her eyes wide.

Kimiko also wrote down the explanation her brother gave their father. She was just an ordinary acquaintance. He was very bad at handling such people. Among the many students abroad, some enjoyed spreading rumors that his family was rich, and egged her on. She was honest at heart, and took it seriously, and said she would go to Japan.

That night the family talked it over at Senju, and the next day Kimiko's husband Koganei went to the Seiyoken to meet her. Kimiko wrote her name as Elise.

Koganei came back and said this, they say:

"Well, she's a small, pretty woman. She doesn't seem to mean any harm at all. She is so set on it, as if he were a rich man's son. Some people do cruel things."

After that, Koganei went to the Seiyoken every day he could spare, they say. He went to soften Elise's feelings and to explain, in detail, the situation on their side.

I go to my language lessons, her brother had laughed. That was around this time.

In time it was decided that Elise would go home. Koganei brought the travel money and the passport, all prepared, and handed them over, it is said.

On the afternoon of October 16, Koganei went to Tsukiji, met Rintaro and Elise, and went on to Yokohama. At seven the next morning, they say, everyone got into a small boat and saw her off to the ship.

Elise waved a handkerchief from the side of the ship as she left. Her face showed not a trace of sadness, so much that it seemed strange, it is said they told each other on the train home.

What was in the heart of her brother, who stood among the crowd, she did not know. Kimiko wrote that as well.

At that time, another matter had been brought to the family. A marriage.

It was Nishi Amane who brought it. He was the man who had let Rintaro live in his house when Rintaro came to Tokyo at the age of ten. The bride was Akamatsu Toshiko, a daughter of the Akamatsu family and a niece of Nishi's adopted son.

Kimiko answered that it was up to Rintaro himself, and her brother said it depended on their parents. While they passed the question back and forth, the matchmaker's eagerness won out. By December it was nearly settled, and their mother was happy, because she was welcoming a bride into the family for the first time, it is said.

So soon after the Elise business? Kimiko worried. Her husband Koganei is said to have answered:

"That is no problem. It is better to decide quickly."

Rintaro married Toshiko.

And in January 1890, a story by Rintaro appeared in the magazine The Nation's Friend (Kokumin no Tomo).

Its title was "Maihime" ("The Dancing Girl").

A young Japanese studying in Berlin falls in love with a poor dancer. The dancer becomes pregnant. Then a way home to Japan opens for the young man. When she learns of it, she loses her mind. Even so, the young man goes back to Japan and leaves her behind. The one who made his return possible, and arranged for the family left behind, was the young man's friend.

The story ends like this.

"Ah, a good friend such as Aizawa Kenkichi is surely hard to find again in this world. Yet in my mind there remains, even to this day, one point of hatred toward him."

Ah, I will never find another friend as good as Aizawa Kenkichi. But in my head there is still one bit of hatred for him, even today.

The dancer in the story was named Elise.