Translation from Japanese by
Jeffrey Angles
[translator’s
note. Inagaki Taruho (1900-1977)
was a real modernist dandy who started writing wild, experimental, whimsical
stories in the 1920s that blur the boundaries of prose and poetry. Although
Taruho did not write what one traditionally thinks about when one imagines
"poetry," his short-short stories are sometimes classified as poetry.
His most famous collection is called 1001 Second Stories, which is a
collection of funny, little contes that describe the surreal hijinks one
might find in the earliest animation that was, not coincidentally, being
produced right around the same time. (J.A.)]
The Man in the Moon
I was listening to the strains of a
guitar leaking through a yellow window in a painting of a night landscape when I heard a spring pop loose in a clock
and a huge automatized diorama of
Mr. Moon began to rise in the distance
It stopped about one meter above the
ground and a man wearing an opera
hat jumped nimbly down Whoa! As I was watching he lit a cigarette and started down the street-lined
street I followed him The trees cast such interesting silhouettes
on the street that all of my
attention was taken up by the shadows
when I realized the man walking right of me had vanished I pricked up my ears but I didn’t hear anything remotely
resembling the sound of someone’s footsteps
I came back to the place where I had started and discovered that the moon had at some
point risen high in the sky and the
pinwheels were flitting as they spun in the quiet nighttime breeze
Eavesdropping in the Shadows of a Warehouse One Night
“Mr. Moon’s out tonight”
“That guy’s made of tin”
“What? Made of tin you say?”
“Well mister I guarantee he’s nickel-plated at the
very least”
(That was all I overheard)
Une mémoire
A gentle spring moon was hanging in
the middle of the sky The forests
and hills and rivers were misty and blue
and off the distance the backbone of a rocky mountain glittered faintly
The moonlight rained silently down
upon the entire scene From far, far
off in the distance came the sounds of a flute Ton-koro-piii-piii It seemed so forlorn so filled with nostalgia The sound was so faint that it was hard to know if one was
really hearing it or not I pricked
up my ears It seemed someone was
singing The voice seemed full of
blame full of grief but I had no idea what it was saying
Ton-koro-piii… piii….
The notes of the flute made the moonlight come raining down all
the more
And then from somewhere I heard a voice
whisper “It was probably on a night like this…”
Surprised I asked back “Huh? What are you talking about?”
But there was no response For a while the moonlight simply
continued to rain down as if
nothing had happened
But then I heard the whisper again coming from nowhere in particular This time it sounded a little peeved as if it were giving up as if it were sad
“It was probably on a night like this…”
Flustered I piped up again “Huh? What happened?”
But the voice made no attempt to
answer
Silence
I noticed a rock by my shoe and
picked it up but before I could
hurl it into the distance I let it
fall from my hand as if I were
overcome with disappointment
Under the blue moonlit sky the mountains hills and forests were as
misty as a dream
Ton-koro-pii… pii…
Un énigme
——onamoonliteveningabutterflyturnedintoadragonfly
——Huh?
——didthedragonflyblowitsnose?
——What’s
that again?
——didyoucatchafishintissuepaper?
——What?
What’re you saying?
——thereisvalueinnotunderstanding
Une chanson d’enfants
Full of Mr. Moon
Full of the light of Mr. Moon
So full so full of the light of Mr.
Moon…
C’est rien d’autre que ça
According to Mr. A it’s really quite
serious How should I put it? It’s really quite astounding That’s it in a nutshell
The Time I Cut Off a Black Cat’s Tail
One evening I caught a black cat and cut its tail off
with sheers Snip! It turned into a
puff of yellow smoke and overhead I
heard a voice cry out in pain! I
opened the window and saw a comet
missing its tail escape
The Time I Stopped the Rain with a Bullet
When I opened the window it was
still raining I put the bullets in
my pistol took aim at the center of
the pitch-black sky and pulled the trigger
I heard a scream and
immediately the Stars and Stripes unfurled overhead and began to flutter
Moonlight Moonshiners
One night not long before dawn I heard some voices on the balcony I peeked through the keyhole and saw two or three dark shadows turning
some sort of machine Earlier I had
noticed an article in the newspaper about a gang who snuck onto people’s
balconies in the middle of the night
when the moon was high and used a
certain secret contraption recently invented in London to make moonshine out of moonlight I
put my automatic pistol against the keyhole and shot POW,
POW, POW, POW, POW… The bullets
struck the roofs and the road below the balcony and I heard the sound of
breaking glass
I opened the door thinking I would
jump out onto the balcony when
something rushed in like a gust of wind beside me It blew me off my feet When I regained my composure and went
onto the balcony there was no one
there A single bottle was perched at
the edge of the roof so I picked it
up and held it to the light There
was something that looked like water inside
I tried shaking it and the cork popped off all on its own POP! The sound resonated through the still
night air A great deal of vapor rose
from the mouth of the bottle and right
before my eyes it melted away to become part of the moonlight…
I kept watching until everything in
the bottle was gone And that was
all other than the fact that the
moon seemed a bit paler than usual
The Time I Lost Myself
Last night when I hopped off the streetcar in front of
the Metropolitan I dropped myself
I still remember lighting my
cigarette in front of a movie poster
jumping onto the streetcar as it turned the corner watching the twinkling lamps and the
crowds from the window and inhaling
the perfume of the lady seated across the aisle All of these things and more are still
clear in my memory but when I hopped
off the streetcar I realized I was
no longer there
Did You Really Make it to the Moon?
A’s question:
Did you really make it to the moon?
B’s answer:
What? Are you crazy?
The Men Who Raised the Moon
Late one evening I was leaning on a
bench in the park when I heard some
voices in the trees behind me
“You’re late”
“Let’s do this as quick as we can”
I heard the clank-clank of a pulley
and a reddish moon rose in the east
“OK!”
And with that the moon stopped I heard the sound of gears turning and the moon began to slowly move I dashed into the trees but the only thing on the sandy path was
the falling moonlight and the only
sound was that of the treetops stirring in the nighttime breeze
The Moonman
The moon had risen over a nightscape
worthy of a Hofmannsthal poem when a man popped out of the moon and started walking around the hills the ponds and the tree-lined boulevards before going back into the moon which had traced a large arc overhead as
it descended Right then I heard a slam! I had also just come back from a stroll
and shut the door behind me and that
was when I realized the moonman was really me
The Black Comet Club
No one was sure who had suggested
establishing it or when but within
two or three months it had become a terrific club and although nothing specific really went
wrong after two or three more months
it had disbanded
Upon further investigation it was revealed that the club was the
work of a black comet that had passed through the vicinity of earth right at
the same time As the comet
approached the club grew and as the comet retreated the club died away And that is why it came to be known as
THE BLACK COMET CLUB
The Time My Friend Turned into Mr. Moon
One night I was taking a walk with a friend and badmouthing Mr. Moon My friend was entirely silent so I asked “Say
don’t you agree with me?”
I turned sideways to look at
him and saw that he was Mr.
Moon I took to my heels to get away but Mr. Moon
chased after me He pushed me down as
I was turning a corner then he
tripped over me and left while I
lay flat as a board on the asphalt
I was still lying there when Professor Keine quickly asserted
this theory about my late-night misfortunes
“Whatever you might say about
this one must conclude that the moon
was triangular The reason is
simple after he tripped and left he left behind these marks”
Before continuing the professor pointed out a series of marks
left by sharp corners that had dug into the asphalt
“The triangle was spinning at an
incredible speed so fast he probably
appeared round to you”
As the professor explained this to
the people around me he lifted me
off the sidewalk but it wasn’t me
at all only the cardboard cut-out of
a human being
The Person who Spoke as if He Had Seen It Firsthand
“Do you think that the moon the stars and all those other things really
exist?” A certain person asked me one night
I nodded “Sure I do”
“You’ve been tricked the heavens are really black
cardboard and the moon and stars are
just tin knick-knacks someone has pasted up there”
I asked “Then how do you account for their
movement?”
“You see that’s the trick it’s all mechanical”
Having said that he burst into peals
of laughter and I realized that no
one was there “My goodness!” I thought
As I looked up I saw a rope ladder sliding up into the starry heavens
Le braquer
One evening I was crossing an intersection when Mr. Moon abruptly shoved a pistol
into my side
When I put my hands in the air Mr. Moon fished around in the bottom of
my pocket pulled out a gold coin
and went on his way Earlier in the evening
I had seen that same gold coin stuck to the top of a tower on the roof of a
department store and I had gone to
great pains to get up there and pull it off
Of course, the gold coin was none other than Mr. Moon himself
La cérémonie de mariage
The yellow moon had risen into the
highest branches of the fir tree
when a constant stream of automobiles and horse-drawn carriages started
circling the lawn then stopped at
the front entrance which had been decorated with garlands of flowers
In the grand hall brightly
illuminated by gas lamps a waiter
wearing a gold-threaded embroidered jacket was bustling about Meanwhile slender shoes decorated with
white ribbons and enameled shoes
that had been shined until they sparkled moved over the linoleum which was as
reflective as a mirror
Eventually a silver bell rang and from the shade of a palm tree appeared a young duke and his doll-like
bride
A man in black read some sacred
verses
The young duke took his bride’s hand
and
POOF!
She
disappeared
And a shriveled up rubber balloon
fell to the floor
The Man Who Looked Just Like Me
One evening when the stars and
crescent moon were suspended in the sky with string I walked down a narrow road lined with
poplar trees until I reached the
end There I found the perfectly
square house of someone who looked just like me
It was a dead ringer for my
house Thinking how strange it was I
tried the front door I went up to
the second story like I owned the place
and sat back in a chair There
I found someone else there reading a book with his back to me
“Bon soir!” My loud greeting surprised him He stood up and turned around to
look and lo and behold we were one and the same person
Why I Sobered Up
One
night I was walking along singing a
song when I fell into a well
HELP! HELP! I cried out Someone lowered a rope to me and I crawled out of the mouth of the
bottle of brandy I’d just finished drinking
and that had been dangling from my hand
The Black Box
One
evening the pale moonlight was flowing down through the city streets when a gentleman burst into Sherlock
Holmes’ office to see him
“I
want you to open this” he said
He
held a small but strong black box covered with seemingly significant jewels in the shape
of an arabesque Holmes pulled out a
ring of keys and tried them one by one
but none of them fit Holmes
took out a second ring of keys but
to no avail What do you think he did
next? Take out another set of
keys or use some other tool? I don’t really know but in any case around 1:30 in the
morning the little box sprung open
“What the heck? It’s empty” said Holmes
The gentlemen responded “That’s right nothing in it at all”
How Three Saturns Were Formed
Rumor
had it that Saturn had gone to drink at the bar on the corner so I went to go look but only found a plain old human
being Let me explain how that guy
turned into Saturn It was because he
had a habit of talking big and running
circles around people with his stories
I told him the guy who had blown things out of proportion and was
talking circles around people was
the real Saturn He was the one who
made up the story that Saturn would be coming But then the man at the bar responded You’re the one who is Saturn since you tried to make a joke by talking
circles around such a boring story and blowing the whole thing out of
proportion
Why Did He Take Up Smoking?
One young man said “Mr. Moon is triangular”
To which a boy asked “What do you mean?”
“If you blow a smoke ring like this
and look through it Mr. Moon is
unmistakably shaped like a triangle”
With this answer the young
man took a long drag on the cigarette in his fingertips and—puff, puff—blew a couple of
smoke rings from his mouth The pale
bluish light of the moon flowed down into them There was no one else in the room to
disturb them They flipped the switch
to turn off the lamp on the table
and the young man blew several more white fluffy rings into the air The pale moonlight headed in their
direction disappeared into the rings as if it was being sucked in Meanwhile the young man looked through
the rings at the moon then he blew
another so he could look again He
kept this up and before long the
moon began to look more and more triangular to him According to the young man’s logic it didn’t really matter much if the moon looked like a triangle or
not Blowing smoke rings toward the
moonlight in a darkened room and the moon being a triangle were one and the same thing Did the boy actually believe this could
happen in real life or even in theory?
I don’t really have the answer
because I’m not the young man in question—but in any case the young man smoked five cigarettes one
after the other so that he could
blow smoke rings to show the boy but
the all of those experiments ended in failure The next day the young man put a small
cardboard box inside his pocket and
went to a deserted place so he could practice blowing smoke rings Three months went by with the moon coming
out every night but by that time the
boy had become a smoker who carried a silver cigarette case where ever he
went Finally the boy understood I heard about it directly from his own
lips No doubt he was able to blow
perfect smoke rings by that point But
how did that affect the way that he saw the moon? I haven’t heard anything about that
aspect of the story I don’t really
have to ask though The real question
for both me and the young man was “Why did he pick up smoking?” After all, we’re the type of people who
are naturally curious about such things and nothing else
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