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The following is a translation of an article from the Asahi News

MOS Food Services, Inc., operator of “MOS Burger” chain of fast-food restaurants, will start selling the premium burger “Japanese Burger Takumi Jūdan” from the 16th. Among fast-food hamburger chains this will be the most expensive hamburger in history at 1000 yen ($9.58 US as of March 15th, 2005), including tax. The burger will be a trump card in putting the brakes on the deflationary trend in the price of eating-out. “It’s a daring price, but it has plenty of value,” the developer publicized.

This is the fourth round in the “Takumi” series of burgers, which started selling from August, 2003. The bun is made by an expert craftsman, with Australian beef, tomato, lettuce, bacon, egg, and more. Ten ingredients are piled on to make a 10 centimeter thick bacon and egg hamburger. Making it will take more than 10 minutes from when it is ordered. The meaning “The Best Grade” was also included to create the name “Jūdan,” literally “10th grade.” This new product will be limited to only the approximately 300 recently remodeled “Green MOS” restaurants, and sales will be limited to 10 burgers a day.

A Japanese-style demiglace sauce made from ingredients such as Kinzanji miso is included separately, and you can even eat with a knife and fork. A card with the name of the egg farmer and chef also accompanies the meal.

From the middle of the 1990s a trend of falling prices had continued in the restaurant industry. McDonald’s Japan, the largest hamburger seller in Japan, briefly sold a 59 yen (57 cents US) hamburger which was called “a symbol of deflation.” Reflecting on the pressure to profit in a price competition that had gone to far, MOS has aimed to leave fast-food, and is continuing to remodel existing stores into stores with a premium feel. Remodeled stores have changed the past red sign into green, and have been distinguished by calling them “Green MOS.” Already one fourth of nation-wide stores have been changed.

This is a translation of “The Fifth Night” from Natsume Soseki’s 1908 work of short stories 夢十夜, also known as Yume Juuya, Ten Nights’ Dreams, and Ten Nights of Dream. I will refer to my own translation as Ten Nights and Dreams, to make it more original.

I had this dream.

Probably a very long time ago, I can imagine it being in antiquity near the age of the gods, I was warring. Because our luck went bad and we lost, I was captured, and made to sit in front of the enemy general.

Everyone in that time was tall. And they were all growing long beards. He had on a leather belt with a club-like sword suspended from it. His bow looked like a fat piece of wisteria that had been used as-is. If it wasn’t lacquered, it also hadn’t been polished. It was very austere.

The enemy general was sitting on something that looked like an upside down clay pot. He had pushed the bow into the grass, and his right hand was gripping the middle of it. When I looked at his face, above his nose, his left and right eyebrows were thickly connected. At that time, naturally, there wasn’t anything like a razor.

I couldn’t sit on a chair since I was a prisoner. I sat cross-legged on the grass. I was wearing large straw boots on my feet. The straw boots of this time were very long. When you stood they came up to your knee. At the tops of the boots, bits of straw were left over from the weaving, and they hung down like tassels. They were a decoration, each strand made to move separately when you walked.

The general looked at my face by the campfire and asked if I would live or die. It was the custom of the age to ask every prisoner that. If you answered to live it meant you had surrendered, to die meant you did not surrender. I replied in one word, “Death.” The general pitched his bow, which had been stuck in the grass, behind him, and started to slip out the club-like sword hanging from his waist. The fire, bent by the wind, blew against the sword from the side I opened my right hand like a maple leaf, turned my palm to face the general, and raised it up above my eyes. It was a sign that meant “Wait!” The general placed the thick sword back in the scabbard with a clink.

Even then there was love. I told him that before I die I wanted to see the woman I longed for. The general said he would wait if she came before dawn broke and the birds sang. He said she must be called here before the birds sang. Even if she didn’t come and the birds sang, I would be killed without seeing her.

The general sat and stared at the campfire. I sat with my large straw boots folded together, and waited for her on the grass. The night gradually wore on.

Now and then there was the sound of the fire dying down. Each time it would die down, the seemingly upset flames would start to reach out for the general. Below his jet-black eyebrows, his eyes sparkled. Then, someone would come and throw a bunch of new branches into the fire. After a bit, the fire would crackle. It was a brave sound. It sounded like the snapping back of the darkness.

At this time the woman led out a white horse that had been hitched to a Japanese oak behind our house. She stroked his mane three times and nimbly jumped on his tall back. It was a saddle-less, stirrup-less, bare horse. When she kicked him in the stomach with her long white legs he took off at a full gallop. The far sky looked faintly light, as if someone had attached the campfire to it. The horse aimed for this area of light and flew through the darkness. From his nose, breath like two columns of fire was being expelled while he ran. Nevertheless, she kept on kicking his stomach with her thin legs. The horse was running just as fast as if the sound of his hooves was being played on a flute. Her hair lingered in the darkness like a streamer. Yet she still couldn’t make it to the campfire.

Then, at the side of the pitch black road, a bird suddenly cried cock-a-doodle-doo. The woman turned her body toward the sky, and strongly pulled up on the reins she was gripping in both hands. The horse’s front legs cut into the top of a hard crag.

The rooster crowed out once again, cock-a-doodle-doo.

The woman cried out, and at the same time loosened up on the tight reins. The horse broke both of his knees. Both the rider and horse tumbled directly forward. Below the crag, there was a deep abyss.

The imprint of the horse’s hooves is still left on top of the crag. The thing that impersonated a crying bird is a devil. While the imprint of the hooves was being etched into the rock, the devil was my enemy.

The lovely and talented Moira writes, “Is there any sort of analysis of these [Ten Nights and Dreams] stories? I would be interested in reading some kind of critical analysis.”

Well, it’s a minor work, so it has been more or less ignored, I think. There’s one analysis I know of on the web, in Japanese, at this site we can call Reading Natsume Soseki. I know that doesn’t help you at all, since you can’t read Japanese.

Donald Keene wrote of these stories in Dawn to the West that “most of them are disturbing and difficult for the lay person to analyze…Attempts have been made to analyze the dreams in accordance with Freudian principles, but they have proved elusive, suggesting to some a hatred of the dreamer’s father or his yearning for the ideal woman. One scholar, analyzing the components of the dreams, concluded that Soseki had actually dreamed them, though he may have added to or altered the materials for literary purposes.” (324)

He goes on to write, “It is surely significant that Soseki wrote this exploration of his subconscious soon after his approach to the stream-of-consciousness narration in The Miner; he was attempting to discover the ultimate truth about himself. Ochi Haruo believed that the dominate theme was associated with the Zen koan (riddle), ‘What did your face look like before your father and mother were born?’…The central theme of Ten Nights of Dream is the discovery of the source of one’s existence. In the dream of the third night, the most terrifying of the nightmares, a horrible blind child rides on Soseki’s shoulders and commands him to go to a certain spot where, exactly one hundred years before, he had killed the child, who was his own. The child is at once his descendant and ancestor, and its features are his own, before his parents were born.” (325)

But then I’ve also heard people saying that the third dream represents Soseki’s anxiety about the rapid changes that were taking place during his lifetime, as Japan was transforming from a feudalistic society, to a modern one.

“Soseki did not elucidate his reasons for relating these dreams, but they provide invaluable clues to his subconscious, and even if we disregard this scholarly consideration, they make consistently absorbing reading.” (326)

This book, Ten Nights’ Dream, probably has a very detailed analysis, since the stories probably don’t even take up half of its nearly 80 pages.

I don’t have my own analysis yet.

This is a translation of “The Fourth Night” from Natsume Soseki’s 1908 work of short stories 夢十夜, also known as Yume Juuya, Ten Nights’ Dreams, and Ten Nights of Dream. I will refer to my own translation as Ten Nights and Dreams, to make it more original.

In the middle of the wide dirt floor something like a bench had been placed, and around it small stools had been arranged. The bench shone with a black luster. In the corner, an old man with a small square table set before him was drinking sake alone. His appetizer looked like meat and vegetables boiled in soy sauce.

The old man was becoming quite red thanks to the fine sake. Moreover, his face had a bright complexion, and I couldn’t see anything that even looked like a wrinkle. The only way you could tell he was old was by the full white beard he had grown. As I was a child, I wondered how old he could be. And then the proprietress came in carrying a bucket of water that she had collected from the water pipe out back. While wiping her hands on her apron she asked, “How old are you old fellow?”

The old man swallowed the food he had stuffed in his mouth and gravely stated, “I’ve forgotten.” The proprietress took her now dry hands and stuck it in her thin obi, stood and watched the old man’s face from the side. He gulped down sake in a cup as big as a bowl and blew out a long breath from between his white beard with a sigh. Then the proprietress asked, “Old fellow, where is your home?”

The old man interrupted a long breath and said, “Deep in my belly button.” The proprietress, with her hands stuck in her thin obi, asked again, “Where are you headed?” Once again the old man gulped down hot sake from the cup as big as a bowl, and like before, breathed out a sigh and said, “I’m headed over yonder.”

When the proprietress asked, “Are you going straight there?” the breath the old man expelled passed through the shoji screen, under a willow tree, and headed straight toward the river beach.

The old man went out the front. I left after him. He had a small gourd hanging from his waist. From his shoulder, he had a square box hanging down under his armpit. He was wearing pale yellow fitted trousers and a pale yellow sleeveless coat. Only his socks were yellow. They looked, somehow, like they were made from leather.

The old man went straight until he was under the willow tree. Three or four children were under there. Laughing, he pulled a pale yellow hand towel from his waist. It had been twisted long and thin like paper string. He placed it on the ground, and then he drew a large, round ring around the hand towel. Finally, from the box hanging from his shoulder, he pulled out a candy seller’s flute made of brass.

“Let’s keep looking, let’s keep looking, soon the towel will become a snake,” he repeatedly said.

The children watched the towel determinedly. I also watched.

“Let’s keep looking, let’s keep looking, okay?” he said while he blew on the flute, and he started going round and round the ring. I looked only at the towel. But it didn’t move at all.

The old man whistled on his flute, and over and over he went around the ring. He went around like he was standing on the tips of his straw sandals, like he was walking on his tiptoes, like he was being deferential to the towel. It looked frightening. It also looked interesting.

Before long the old man abruptly stopped playing the flute. He opened the lid of the box hanging from his shoulder, picked up the neck of the towel slightly in his fingers, and threw it in.

“If I put it in, it’ll become a snake inside the box. I’ll show you soon. I’ll show you soon,” he was saying as he started walking straight. He passed under the willow tree and went down to a narrow road. I wanted to see the snake, so I followed him to wherever the road led to. Now and then, the old man said as he walked, “Soon it’ll happen,” and “It’ll become a snake.”

In the end, as he was singing, “Soon it’ll happen, it’ll become a snake, it surely will, my flute will sing,” we finally came to the shore of the river. Since there were no bridges or boats, I thought we might rest here and he would show me the snake in the box. The old man started to splash into the river. At first the water was only as deep as his knees, but then quickly from his waist, up to his chest, he became submerged and harder to see.

But even then, while he was singing, “It’s getting deep, it’s turning night, it’s becoming straight,” he walked straight to wherever. Then his beard, and his face, and his head, and his hood completely disappeared from sight.

I thought the old man would show me the snake when he came up on the opposite shore. He would be standing where the reeds rustled, waiting alone forever. But in the end, the old man never came up.

This is a translation of “The Third Night” from Natsume Soseki’s 1908 work of short stories 夢十夜, also known as Yume Juuya, Ten Nights’ Dreams, and Ten Nights of Dream. I will refer to my own translation as Ten Nights and Dreams, to make it more original.

I had this dream.

I was carrying a child of six on my back. I’m sure it was my child. Only, the strange thing was, before I realized it he was blind with a freshly shaven head. When I asked, “When did you lose your sight?” he replied, “What? Long ago.” There’s no doubt that voice was a child’s, but he spoke like he was an adult. Like an equal.

Green rice paddies were to the left and right. The road was narrow. The fleeting shadows of herons could be seen in the darkness.

“We’ve started toward the rice paddies, haven’t we?” he said on my back.

I turned my face to the rear and asked, “How do you know?”

“Aren’t the herons crying?” he answered.

Sure enough, when he said that, they cried out twice.

Although he was my own child, I became a little frightened. With him on my back I didn’t know what would happen from here on. I wondered if there weren’t some place I could just abandon him. When I looked out into the darkness and I could see a large forest. Just as I started to think “If over there…” a voice going “Hee hee” came from my back.

“What are you laughing at?”

He didn’t answer. All I heard was, “Father, am I heavy?”

“You’re not heavy,” I replied.

“Soon I’ll become heavy.”

I kept quiet and, with the forest as my guide, walked toward it. The road in the rice fields twisted irregularly. We couldn’t exit as easily as I had thought. After a while the path forked. I stood at the split in the road and rested.

The boy said, “There should be a stone standing here.”

Sure enough, an eight inch square stone stood about waist high. Written on the face, “Left Higakubo, Right Hottahara.” I could clearly see those red letters in spite of the darkness. They were like the red color of a newt’s belly.

“Left will be fine,” the boy ordered. When I looked left the forest was starting to cast dark shadows from the sky over our heads. I hesitated a little.

The boy added, “You don’t need to hold back.” Helplessly I started walking toward the forest. I was thinking that the boy seemed to know everything, even though he was blind. When the single road approached the forest, he said on my back, “Being blind is a real inconvenience.”

“But it’s okay, because I’m carrying you.”

“I’m sorry you have to carry me, but to be made a fool of by people won’t do. To be made a fool of by a parent, especially, won’t do.”

Somehow things had become unpleasant. I was thinking how I wanted to hurry to the forest and dispose of him, and I hurried.

“You’ll understand when we get a little farther.—it was just like this night,” he said on my back, like he was speaking to himself.

“What was?” I asked, with intensity in my voice.

“What was? You know, don’t you.” the child answered with a sneer. And then I got this feeling that I did. But clearly I didn’t know. It was just that it felt like it happened on a night like this. It felt like if I just went a little farther, I would know. Knowing would be very difficult, so while I didn’t understand I hurried to dispose of him. I had to feel relief. I hurried.

Rain had been falling for some time. Little by little the road darkened. It was almost like a dream. But this small kid was sticking to my back, and he illuminated my entire past, present and future, shining like a mirror that didn’t miss an ounce of the truth. Yet, he was my child. And he was blind. I couldn’t stand it.

“Here, here. Right at that cedar’s roots.”

I could clearly hear the kid’s voice. Unconsciously I stopped. Without noticing we had entered the forest. Just five feet in front of me was a black mass. Without a doubt, I could see it was the cedar tree the kid had spoke of.

“Father, it was at that cedar’s roots there, wasn’t it.”

Without thinking, I replied, “Yes, it was.”

“I think it was 1809, the year of the Dragon.”

Of course, I was made to think of 1809.

“From today it’s been exactly one hundred years since you killed me.”

As I heard those words, one hundred years ago, the year of the Dragon, on a dark night like this, by the roots of a cedar, the realization that I murdered a blind man abruptly burst into my mind. And as soon as I started to become aware that I was a murderer, the child on my back suddenly grew as heavy as a stone Jizo statue.