Recently there was put into my hands a somewhat remarkable manuscript,—seventeen long narrow sheets of soft paper, pierced with a silken string, and covered with fine Japanese characters. It was a kind of diary, containing the history of a woman's married life, recorded by herself. The writer was dead; and the diary had been found in a small work-box (haribako) which had belonged to her.
The friend who lent me the manuscript gave me leave to translate as much of it as I might think worth publishing. I have gladly availed myself of this unique opportunity to present in English the thoughts and feelings, joys and sorrows, of a simple woman of the people—just as she herself recorded them in the frankest possible way, never dreaming that any foreign eye would read her humble and touching memoir.
But out of respect to her gentle ghost, I have tried to use the manuscript in such a way only as could not cause her the least pain if she were yet in the body, and able to read me. Some parts I have omitted, because I thought them sacred. Also I have left out a few details relating to customs or to local beliefs that the Western reader could scarcely understand, even with the aid of notes. And the names, of course, have been changed. Otherwise I have followed the text as closely as I could,—making no changes of phrase except when the Japanese original could not be adequately interpreted by a literal rendering.
*
In addition to the facts stated or suggested in the diary itself, I could learn but very little of the writer's personal history. She was a woman of the poorest class; and from her own narrative it appears that she remained unmarried until she was nearly thirty. A younger sister had been married several years previously; and the diary does not explain this departure from custom. A small photograph found with the manuscript shows that its author never could have been called good-looking; but the face has a certain pleasing expression of shy gentleness. Her husband was a kozukai,[1] employed in one of the great public offices, chiefly for night duty, at a salary of ten yen per month. In order to help him to meet the expenses of housekeeping, she made cigarettes for a tobacco dealer.
*
The manuscript shows that she must have been at school for some years: she could write the kana very nicely, but she had not learned many Chinese characters,—so that her work resembles the work of a schoolgirl. But it is written without mistakes, and skilfully. The dialect is of Tōkyō,—the common speech of the city people,—full of idiomatic expressions, but entirely free from coarseness.
*
Some one might naturally ask why this poor woman, so much occupied with the constant struggle for mere existence, should have taken the pains to write down what she probably never intended to be read. I would remind such a questioner of the old Japanese teaching that literary composition is the best medicine for sorrow; and I would remind him also of the fact that, even among the poorest classes, poems are still composed upon all occasions of joy or pain. The latter part of the diary was written in lonely hours of illness; and I suppose that she then wrote chiefly in order to keep her thoughts composed at a time when solitude had become dangerous for her. A little before her death, her mind gave way; and these final pages probably represent the last brave struggle of the spirit against the hopeless weakness of the flesh.