Blue Bamboo: Tales by Dazai Osamu

Author:Dazai, Osamu [Dazai, Osamu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kurodahan Press
Published: 2013-06-05T00:00:00+00:00

TARO THE WIZARD

nce upon a time, in the village of Kanagi in Tsugaru Province, there lived a country squire by the name of Kuwagata Sosuke. Sosuke was forty-nine before he was blessed with his first child, a son whom he named Taro. No sooner had Taro come into the world than he spread his jaws in a yawn, the prodigious size of which so tormented Sosuke that when relatives came to offer their congratulations he was unable even to look them in the eye. Sosuke’s fears were soon to prove warranted. Upon waking in the morning, Taro never crawled eagerly out of bed but would lie there with his eyes closed for an extra hour or two, pretending to be asleep; held in the folds of his mother’s kimono, he wouldn’t bother to seek out her breast but would merely let his mouth hang open and wearily wait for the nipple to brush against his lips; and when he was given a swivel-necked papier-mâché tiger with which to amuse himself, he made no effort to play with the toy but only gazed listlessly at its comically bobbing head. He was, in short, a child whose nature it was to despise any sort of unnecessary exertion. And yet, when he was three years old, Taro was responsible for a little incident that lent his name considerable notoriety among the people of the village. It was by no means an incident of the sort that gets written up in newspapers; you may rest assured, therefore, that it really happened. Taro went for a walk... and just kept walking.

It was a night in early spring. Taro slipped silently from his mother’s embrace, tumbled out of bed, rolled to the dirt floor of the entrance hall, and continued rolling, right out the door. Once outside, he climbed to his feet. Sosuke and his wife, meanwhile, slept on unaware.

A mist-blurred full moon hung low in the sky, just inches above Taro’s forehead. Barefoot and dressed in an underkimono with a killifish motif and a padded cotton vest with a pattern of arrowhead roots, he headed east along the horsedung-littered road. He walked with his sleepy eyes half-closed, breathing in short, hurried little huffs and puffs.

The next morning the village was in an uproar. Taro had been found sleeping innocently in the middle of an apple orchard on Rolling Springs Mountain, more than two miles from the village. Rolling Springs Mountain was shaped like a half-melted block of ice. The peak consisted of three softly curved undulations, and the western side formed a gentle slope that resembled water flowing. The reason Taro had ended up atop a three-hundred-foot mountain wasn’t clear. There was no doubt that he’d gone alone. But no one could figure out why.

He was discovered by a young woman who’d been out gathering ferns. She placed him in her basket and carried him, gently rocking from side to side, back to the village. Those villagers who came up to peer into the basket,

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