“Secret” by Takehisa Yumeji

1,200 words, 6 minutes’ reading time.

Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934) wrote children’s stories, songs, and poetry, but was first and foremost a classical artist working in oils and traditional Japanese mediums. Born in Okayama, he moved to Tokyo aged 18 to join Waseda Technical School, and was soon taken on by the Yomiuri newspaper as an illustrator. During his life, he traveled extensively in Japan and abroad to the USA. Besides newspaper illustrations, he painted fine art and illustrated books, advertisements, packaging, postcards, and yukata designs. His pop song Evening Primrose was popular nationwide.

In later life, his philosophy that art should be fused with daily life made him a pioneer of graphic art in Japan. His particular art style is considered to have been hugely influential on early shoujo manga.

This story was first published by Nobel Shobo in 1975 in Gifts of Spring, and again by Sakuhinsha in 1996 in Renowned Japanese Writings (volume 69). I got it from Aozora here.

 

Tell me why things in this world are as they are? Whenever you ask this question, the answers people attempt to give are maddeningly boring, without fail. Desks have four legs, same as dogs do. How come dogs can walk, and desks can’t? This is why things that can be answered aren’t interesting in the least.

But by all means, ask questions like, Why was I born? Those who know the reason don’t ask while those who don’t know won’t answer, which is what makes those matters interesting. Mt Fuji is 12,000 feet tall, Niagara Falls is the world’s greatest waterfall—those facts aren’t even slightly amusing. There is so, so much about the world which we still don’t know, not to mention that the knowledge which people in this world, in this universe, have acquired so far is undeniably nil next to what stays beyond us, and everything known is limited to things regarding the tangible world.

In the Realm of Dreams of young women, everything that’s ever communicated is said from heart to heart. Why? Not a single answer to that question would be boring.

Sumi, what have you done? Just look! Your best New Year’s outfit, and its sleeves are filthy! Sumi’s mother went on, folding the offending short sleeves. She was a mother; she was motherly. This was because she wasn’t as young as Sumi. She had been, once, but had long since forgotten all about back then, so it was impossible for her to fathom the feelings of a young girl, nor was she aware that Sumi used her sleeves to wipe away secret tears. Speaking of tears, everyone tends to assume they happen only because of sadness, but in the Realm of Dreams they flow from happiness, sadness, frustration and nostalgia and for no reason at all.

What’s wrong with you? Sumi’s mother never got an answer to that question. Sumi would only smile silently.

Is something wrong? No, nothing, ever. It was a rule of the Realm to smile in silence whenever that question was put, because doing so made the Realm more beautiful, more fun. What answer is safer than a smile? So long as you smile the Realm remains untouched, since only girls may grace it for all eternity.

How old do you think you are? Sumi’s mother put to her resentfully.

It would be easy to reply, Only this old this New Year, while holding up curling fingers. But that was too tedious a way of enlivening things in the Realm, and counting down the days left until one grows old is frowned upon there.

You’re already sixteen this year, Mom continued nonetheless.

Sumi only smiled.

Everything stays secret in the Realm of Dreams, for there’s beauty in that which is kept secret and more secret and more secret again.

Once, Sumi dug a hole among the roots of a plane tree in the schoolyard, and she, S, and A put things they’d chosen into a small box to buy secretly, just the three of them, with no one else knowing. Sumi didn’t know what S had placed int he box, nor what A had hidden in there, and neither of them knew what Sumi had buried. Each day, every time they passed that tree, the three girls would smile.

What are you smiling at? their teacher began to demand.

To disclose anything to their teacher or anyone else would violate the Realm’s rules, so the three just smiled. Their failure to respond inevitably infuriated their teacher, who’d chase them off. The girls laughed whenever that happened.

Once, their PE teacher stood in shade beneath the tree and talked about an expedition in Antarctica. Antarctica holds the secrets of the world, she said, unaware that secrets of the Realm of Dreams lay just beneath her feet.

Those weren’t the only secrets the young girls had. There had secrets in red bookmarks inside diaries and in their black pupils and in their rings on their fingers and even in glances they shared, which the world’s people couldn’t comprehend.

And girls of the Realm find secrets in each and every scattering of petals and each and every birdsong and in the rushing of water and braying of people who laugh like horses and in the way teachers fly into rages like a monkeys and in the sight of people fishing on rainy days whose wide-brimmed hats make them look like mushrooms and in insects crawling on cherry blossoms and in sliding paper doors whose shadows look like birds. They are saddened by willows weighed down by the world, and whenever they hold cowrie shells to their ears they hear the story of the Dragon King whose palace is hidden at the bottom of the sea.

Those who ask, Why do they do this? may not come through the gates of the Realm, and those who seek the best of both worlds can’t linger on its rim nor forge connections with it.

Should you yearn to get to know a girl of the Realm, then please don’t ask them Why? over and over—they’re not the fruit of knowledge. And don’t get angry. Whatever to you ask, they may answer Yes, or maybe No. Whichever answer you get, you mustn’t be disappointed.

King Alfred asked, If that’s so, then to whom do you pledge allegiance? And the girl who answered him, I belong to God’s world, was wise because she was a student who went to school. Perhaps it’s the case that girls of the Realm only ever cry tears of happiness or smile silently, like Echo. By only ever answering as they do, they never speak from where they former selves stood.

Since Ancient Greece, there have been things which young girls are forbidden to speak about. Echo, the nymph, was a girl of the Realm too. When Juno’s husband Jupiter came to see her one day, she talked at length about a range of trivial topics to try to fend off his advances. Juno was nonetheless infuriated and forbid Echo from talking to anyone at all from then on. Not long afterward, a man whom Echo admired dropped by but, being banned from engaging in happiness, Echo couldn’t utter a single word. She only smiled in silence. The poor man grew angry and left; Echo wept.

Everyone knows this story, and it’s the reason the Realm of Dreams—the province of young women—has stayed unknown by nearly all for all time.