Ten Nights of Dreams
| Author | Natsume Sōseki |
|---|---|
| Original title | 夢十夜 (Yume jūya) |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Genre | Short Story |
| Publisher | Asahi Shimbun |
|
Publication date
|
1908 |
Ten Nights of Dreams (夢十夜 Yume Jūya?) or Ten Nights' Dreams is a series of short pieces by Natsume Sōseki. It was serialized in the Asahi Shimbun from July 25 to August 5, 1908.
Sōseki writes of ten dreams set in various time periods, including his own time (the Meiji period) and as far back as the "age of the gods," and the Kamakura period. Four of the ten dreams begin with the phrase "This is what I saw in my dream" (こんな夢を見た Konna yume o mita).
The dreamer sits at the bedside of a woman who says she is dying. Because of the warm color in her lips and cheeks, he questions, several times, if she truly is dying. After confirming that she must indeed die, the woman asks a favor. After she dies, he should dig her grave with a large shell, mark it with a fragment of fallen star, and wait at its side a hundred years for her return. The dreamer prepares her grave and buries her as requested. Then he begins his vigil, losing count of the days as years go by. As he begins to wonder if she didn’t deceive him, a slender stem emerges and a white lily blossoms before him. He touches his lips to a dewdrop on the lily and knows in that moment that a hundred years have passed.
The dreamer, who is staying in a temple, returns to his chamber after leaving the high priest’s quarters. He settles himself and reaches under his seating cushion to confirm the presence of a dagger. Then, he reflects on his exchange with the high priest. The priest had scorned him for his years of failure in awakening his mind. No true samurai, the priest had said, would succumb so to failure. The dreamer decides he must take either the priest’s life or his own, that very evening, when the clock strikes the next hour. If he succeeds in awakening his mind, then the priest will pay. If not, then he will die like a samurai, with honor, by his own hand. He struggles mightily to find “nothingness.” His struggle turns to frustration and then to anger. As he struggles without success, the clock strikes the hour.
The dreamer is walking at dusk with a six-year-old child on his back. He believes the child is his own, and he knows that the child is blind and that its head is shaved. However, he does not know when the child lost its sight or why its head is shaved. Despite its blindness, the child seems to know where they are and where they are going. Its voice is childlike, but its words are mature. The dreamer grows ill at ease, and he resolves to abandon the child in the woods up ahead. As they enter the woods, the child directs the dreamer to the base of a cedar tree. The child states that he was killed by the dreamer, in this very place, on a similar night, a hundred years before. The dreamer remembers the night, and at the same moment the child grows heavy as stone.
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