A Tale of False Fortunes Read Online Free Page A

(probably a furoshiki ) and a doll. I asked about the professor’s wife and children, but he knew nothing of them. After having mentioned this British philologist to many Japanese and having met only with indifferent reac-tions, the young man seemed rather gratified that I knew something of the professor.
    Naturally, when I heard him speak Dr. Chamberlain’s name, I, too, could not help feeling that it was a strangely coinciden-tal meeting.
    When I completed my purchase and left the shop, the young man followed after me and, pointing to an area beyond the bridge, said: “On the other side of the Mont Blanc Bridge over there is a landing for an excursion boat. I was told that Professor Chamberlain would sit on a bench every day on the water’s edge and look out over the lake there. Even rain never prevented him from coming for a walk with a cane in one hand and an umbrella in the other.”
    Following the young man’s directions, I crossed the Mont Blanc Bridge and walked along the lakefront, turning down a 14 c A Tale of False Fortunes street lined with hotels. The excursion boat was docked at the landing, and I could see several people who looked like tourists descending the wide staircase of the landing in order to board the boat. It was a lightly overcast afternoon toward the end of June, but the air had an autumnal chill about it, and the women of the town all looked warm walking about in thick woolen waistcoats. Here and there were flower beds planted with small blooms in patterns like carpets. The colors of the flowers, like the colors of the townswomen’s clothing, were of a sober tone, mellow and warm, which, combined with the cold impression given by the people’s Nordic features, eloquently bespoke the characteristic harmony and sense of proportion possessed by the Swiss nation. Absent was a sense of the inscrutable charm of frenzied passion or of confusion; instead, an ultimate minia-turization of human happiness seemed to be preserved there more than anywhere else in the world.
    I sat down on the bench closest to the lake, gazing at the graceful, veil-like spray of the tall jet of water from a fountain on the other side and at the outline of the peak of Mont Blanc, dimly visible in the distance. It occurred to me that the color of the waters of Lake Leman and the imposing shape of Mont Blanc before me now were probably not so very different from what the old philologist saw more than twenty years ago as he walked here daily with his cane and sat on a bench on the lake-side. Such musing moved me to reminiscence. I have no way of knowing what has happened to the thousands of books Dr.
    Chamberlain left in Japan in the hopes that they would be used by Japanese. Are they now in a library somewhere, or in a private collection? At any rate, it was then that A Tale of False Fortunes, which may have been one of those books, sprang back to life in my mind. I determined then that when I returned to Japan, I would write it down, comparing what I remember of the story with A Tale of Flowering Fortunes.
    Prologue c 15

    Chapter One c
    If my memory is not mistaken, the opening section of A Tale of False Fortunes consists largely of extracts from chapters of the first volume of A Tale of Flowering Fortunes and chronicles the struggle for power in the regency after the death of Michinaga’s father, Fujiwara no Kaneie. In describing the refinement of the heroine’s life, it was no doubt necessary to portray as its background the tragedy of an aristocratic society caught in the internecine feuds of the age. Those descriptions are taken almost intact from A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, and I, too, shall begin by recounting them. I distinctly recall that A Tale of False Fortunes opened with the following words: During the reign of Emperor Ichijò, there were two consorts. The first of these was Fujiwara no Teishi, the daughter of the Regent Michitaka. Thereafter came Fujiwara no Shòshi, the eldest daughter of the Buddha-Hall