Vita Sexualis by Ōgai Mori Read Free Book Online Page A

tolerated our association. Before long he was grabbing my hand. He even pressed his cheek against mine. It was annoying, unbearable. I had no genius as an Urning, as a sodomite. Yet even though I found it unpleasant to stop in on my way home, I had to out of force of habit due to our acquaintance. One day when I called on him, I discovered the bed prepared. His behavior was much more importunate than it had ever been before. The blood rushed to his head, his face turned red. Finally he said to me, "Please get in bed and sleep with me if only for a second!"
    "I don't want to."
    "You shouldn't talk that way. Come on!"
    He grabbed my hand. The more passionate he became, the greater became my dislike and fear.
    "I don't want to. I'm going home."
    While we were arguing in this way, a voice called out from the room next door.
    "Is it hopeless?"
    "Yes."
    "Then I'll help you."
    He rushed out from his room into the corridor. Clattering open the tattered sliding door to the room, he burst in. He was a rough guy, and from the first I had not wanted to associate with him. At least, though, he acted the way he looked; the one who had lured me into that room was the real hypocrite.
    "If he won't listen to what an upperclassman tells him, let's teach him a lesson by blanketing him!"
    His hands moved simultaneously with these words. My head was covered with the bedding. I was desperately trying to push it aside. They were pinning me down from above. Because of the row we were making, a few students came to have a look. I heard someone say, "Cut it out! Stop it!" The hands pressing down on me slackened a bit. Finally I managed to spring up and flee from the room. At that moment, though, I made off with a bundle of books and a bottle of ink, flattering myself I had been quick and shrewd. After that I never went into the dorm.
    In those days every Saturday I would leave Professor Azuma's house to spend the night with my father at Mukojima, returning Sunday evening. At the time, my father was a minor official in one of the ministries. I told him what had happened at the dorm. I expected he would be quite surprised, but he wasn't in the least.
    "Yes. There are fellows like that. From now on be careful."
    My father was very calm as he said these words. So I realized this was one of the hardships I had to undergo in life.
    * * *

When I was thirteen . . .
    The previous year my mother came over from our district and joined us.
    I gave up German, which I had been studying since the first of the year, and entered the Tokyo English Academy. The change was due partly to the revision of the educational system by the Ministry of Education, partly to my having pleaded with my father to let me study philosophy. Though I felt I had wasted time and energy in studying German for the short interval after my arrival in Tokyo, I found it quite helpful afterwards.
    I lived in the school dormitory. Though the youngest students were about sixteen or seventeen, most were in their twenties. Almost all the students wore the hakama, the formal skirt made of duck cloth, and they also wore dark blue tabi. Unless they tucked up their kimono sleeves to their shoulders, they were thought effeminate.
    Permission was granted to the owner of a lending library to trade in the dormitory. I was one of his regular customers. I read Bakin. I read Kyoden. When I found someone had taken out Shunsui and was reading him, I even borrowed that book "secondhand" from him and read it. As I was reading Umegoyomi, I experienced for the first time in my life an impression of how good it would feel if I had been the hero Tanjiro and someone like Ocho had loved and respected me. At the same time I felt I would never be loved by a woman, for I was ugly, and even among those students who wore such plain, inexpensive clothing as the duck-cloth hakama and dark blue socks were boys with white complexions and fine-cut features. Ever since those days I have secretly been obsessed with this awareness