Vita Sexualis Read Online Free PDF Page B

between the thighs of the dancing girls merely to find themselves disappointed in seeing only glittering gold threads woven through silk gauze.
    * * *

Autumn of that year . . .
    My province was one in which the Bon Festival dancing was quite popular. As the Feast of Lanterns drew near according to the lunar calendar, a rumor was circulating the dancing was to be prohibited that year. But the prefectural governor, who had been born in another district, thought it a bad policy to oppose our custom, so he looked the other way and let it pass.
    The center of our town was only two or three blocks from my house. A dancing platform had been erected there, and in the evening the music accompanying the dances could be heard all the way to our house.
    When I asked my mother if I might see the dancing, she said I could if I returned early. I hurried into my straw sandals and ran out.
    I had often been there before. When I was much smaller, my mother had taken me with her to let me see the dances. It was thought that only the tradespeople participated in public, but because each person danced with his face concealed by a kerchief, many of the sons of samurai went to dance. Among the dancers were men dressed as women. And there were also women dressed as men. Those who did not wear kerchiefs wore paper masks called hyaku-manako. In Europe carnivals are held in January, but even though the time of the festivals is different, human beings have quite naturally invented the same kinds of celebrations everywhere. In Europe too they have special dances at harvest time, but I guess masks are not worn.
    The crowds form into a circle and dance. Some who have come in their masks merely stand around watching. While they are observing, if they happen to see someone who is quite good in his movements, they are usually able to break into the ring to be next to that person.
    While I was watching the dance, I happened to overhear some masked dancers talking to one another. Apparently the two men knew each other.
    "Last night you went to Atagoyama, didn't you?"
    "What you making that up for?"
    "Oh no? Someone said you did."
    While they were arguing in this way, another man beside them cut in:
    "If you go up there early in the morning, you can find a lot of stuff left behind."
    A burst of laughter followed. Feeling as if I had touched something dirty, I stopped watching the dance and returned home.
    * * *

When I was eleven . . .
    My father took me with him to Tokyo. My mother remained behind. The old woman who always came to our house to help moved in, and they lived together. My mother would join us a little later. I assumed she had to remain until our house was sold.
    At Mukojima was an estate that belonged to our former feudal lord. My father and I lived there in a tenement building which had been left vacant. We employed an old lady to cook our meals.
    Every morning my father went out, and every evening he returned. He promised to find a school I could attend. Whenever my father left, a married woman about twenty years of age came to our kitchen door and returned with her apron bulging. Our old woman employee was stealing rice, giving it to her daughter to cart off for her. When my mother joined us later, she found out about it and turned the old woman out of the house. I guess I was a very stupid boy.
    I had no friends to play with. I knew someone two years younger, the son of a steward, but when he suggested the first day we met that we fish for carp in the artificial pond on the estate, I lost interest and decided to have nothing to do with him. The steward also had two or three daughters, the eldest twelve or thirteen, but when the girls caught sight of me, they pointed at me from the distance, whispering, laughing about something. I found them equally disagreeable.
    Sometimes I went into an anteroom in the lord's mansion. Two or three stewards would be waiting there. Usually they were smoking, engaged in small talk. They didn't find me much of a