Botchan 1732 Studios

Japanese · Botchan

一

Chapter 1

249 sentences · 24 notes

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  1. 1

    Reckless by inheritance, I've been losing out on things since I was a kid.

    親parent親 · nouncompound with 譲り
    譲りinheritance譲り · nounmodifies 無鉄砲
    の'sの · particleparticle marking 譲り
    無鉄砲reckless無鉄砲 · adjectiveadverbial clause on し
    でbeingだ · auxiliary verbauxiliary of 無鉄砲
    小供child子供 · nounmodifies 時

    小供 is an older Meiji-era spelling of 子供 (child).

    の'sの · particleparticle marking 小供
    時time時 · nounoblique complement of し
    からsinceから · particleparticle marking 時
    損losses損 · nounoblique complement of し
    ばかりonlyばかり · particleparticle marking 損
    しdoingする · verbmain verb of the sentence
    てandて · subordinating conjunctionintroduces the clause of し
    いるhave beenいる · verbpart of the phrase て

  2. Back in primary school I once jumped from the second floor of the schoolhouse and was laid up unable to walk for about a week.

  3. Someone might ask why I did anything so reckless.

  4. There was no deep reason for it.

  5. I was leaning my head out of the new building's second floor when one of my classmates joked that no matter how big I talked, I'd never dare jump from there.

  6. “Chicken!”

  7. It was because he taunted me like that.

  8. When the school janitor carried me home on his back, my father glared at me and said, what kind of fool loses the use of his legs jumping off a mere second floor — so I told him next time I'd jump without losing the use of my legs.

  9. 2

    A relative once gave me a Western-made knife, and I was holding its bright blade up to the sun to show my friends, when one of them said it certainly shone, but it didn't look as if it could cut anything.

  10. Not cut? I swore I could cut anything with it.

  11. So he dared me to cut my own finger, and I said a finger was nothing and sliced diagonally across the back of my right thumb.

  12. Luckily the knife was small and my thumb bone was hard, so the thumb is still attached to my hand to this day.

  13. But the scar will never fade as long as I live.

  14. 3

    Twenty paces east across our garden, on a little rise facing south, there was a small vegetable patch, and right in the middle of it stood a single chestnut tree.

  15. That chestnut tree mattered to me more than my own life.

  16. When the nuts ripened I'd go out the back door first thing in the morning, gather up the fallen ones, and eat them at school.

  17. The west side of the vegetable patch bordered the garden of a pawnshop called Yamashiroya, and that pawnshop had a son named Kantarō, about thirteen or fourteen.

  18. Kantarō, needless to say, was a coward.

  19. Coward though he was, he'd climb over the lattice fence to steal my chestnuts.

  20. One evening I hid behind the wicket gate and finally caught him at it.

  21. With no way to escape, Kantarō threw himself at me with all his might.

  22. He was about two years older than me.

  23. Coward though he was, he was strong.

  24. He rammed his broad skull against my chest and shoved hard, and in the scuffle his head slipped and ended up inside the sleeve of my lined kimono.

  25. With my arm trapped and useless, I flailed it wildly, and Kantarō's head, stuck inside the sleeve, wobbled from side to side.

  26. In the end, in his distress, he bit my upper arm right through the sleeve.

  27. It hurt, so I shoved him against the fence, hooked my leg around his, and threw him down on the other side.

  28. The ground on the Yamashiroya side was a good six feet lower than our vegetable patch.

  29. Kantarō knocked half the lattice fence down and fell headfirst back into his own territory, letting out a groan.

  30. As Kantarō fell, one sleeve of my kimono tore clean off, and my arm was suddenly free.

  31. That night my mother went to Yamashiroya to apologize, and while she was at it, brought the torn-off sleeve back home.

  32. 4

    Besides that I got up to plenty of other mischief.

  33. Once I took Kanekō the carpenter's boy and Kaku the fishmonger's boy along and trampled Mosaku's carrot field.

  34. The carrot shoots hadn't fully come up yet, and straw had been spread over the whole plot, so the three of us wrestled on top of it for half a day straight, and every last carrot got trampled flat.

  35. There was also the time I filled in the well in Furukawa's rice paddy and got hauled over the coals for it.

  36. He'd hollowed out a thick moso-bamboo pipe and buried it deep, so that water welled up out of it and watered the rice all around.

  37. Back then I had no idea what the contraption was for, so I jammed stones and broken sticks tight into the hole, made sure the water had stopped, and went home to eat — and while I was eating, Furukawa came storming in, red in the face.

  38. As I recall, it was settled with a fine of some kind.

  39. 5

    My father never doted on me in the slightest.

  40. My mother favored only my older brother.

  41. This brother of mine had unusually pale skin and loved play-acting female roles from the theater.

  42. Every time he looked at me, my father would say this one will never amount to anything.

  43. So wild, so wild, I worry what will become of him, my mother would say.

  44. Sure enough, I haven't amounted to anything.

  45. Just look at the state I'm in now.

  46. No wonder she worried about what would become of me.

  47. About the only thing I've managed is to stay out of prison.

  48. 6

    Two or three days before my mother died of her illness, I turned a somersault in the kitchen and struck my ribs on the corner of the stove, which hurt terribly.

  49. My mother was furious and said she never wanted to see my face again, so I went and stayed over at a relative's house.

  50. Then word came that she had finally died.

  51. I hadn't thought she would die so soon.

  52. If it was that serious, I thought, I should have behaved a little better, and went home thinking so.

  53. When I got there, my brother told me I was an undutiful son and that it was because of me our mother had died early.

  54. That stung, so I slapped him across the face and got scolded terribly for it.

  55. 7

    After our mother died, the three of us — my father, my brother, and I — lived together.

  56. My father was a man who did nothing at all, and whenever he saw my face, he'd say as if by habit, you're no good, no good.

  57. To this day I don't know what exactly was supposed to be no good.

  58. What a strange father to have had.

  59. My brother, saying he meant to become a businessman, studied English constantly.

  60. He had a womanish temperament to begin with, and a sly streak, so the two of us never got along.

  61. We fought about once every ten days.

  62. Once, playing shogi, he made some cowardly waiting move, and when I got stuck he jeered at me, looking pleased with himself.

  63. I was so angry I flung the rook I was holding straight at his forehead.

  64. It split his brow open and drew a little blood.

  65. My brother went and told our father.

  66. My father announced he was going to disown me.

  67. 8

    By then I'd resigned myself to it and was ready to be disowned just as he said, when Kiyo, the maid who had served us for ten years, tearfully pleaded with my father for me, and at last his anger cooled.

  68. Even so, I never really found my father frightening.

  69. If anything, I felt sorry for Kiyo, the maid.

  70. I gather this maid had once come from a respectable family, but fell on hard times during the collapse of the old order and ended up in service.

  71. So she was already an old woman.

  72. For whatever reason, this old woman doted on me tremendously.

  73. It's a strange thing, really.

  74. Even my mother had given up on me three days before she died — my father was forever at his wit's end with me — the whole neighborhood shunned me as the local troublemaker — and yet this same me, she treasured beyond all reason.

  75. I had already resigned myself to being the kind of person nobody could like, so being treated like a piece of scrap wood by others didn't bother me at all — if anything, it was Kiyo fussing over me like this that struck me as odd.

  76. Now and then, in the kitchen when no one else was around, Kiyo would praise me, saying, you have such a straightforward, fine nature.

  77. But I couldn't make sense of what she meant by it.

  78. If I really had a fine nature, I thought, people besides Kiyo would surely treat me a little better too.

  79. Whenever Kiyo said things like this, I would always answer that I hated flattery.

  80. To which the old woman would say, that's exactly why you have such a fine nature, and gaze happily at my face.

  81. She seemed almost proud, as if she had built me herself with her own hands.

  82. It gave me a slightly uneasy feeling.

  83. 9

    After my mother died, Kiyo doted on me more than ever.

  84. Sometimes, with a child's simple mind, I wondered why she doted on me so.

  85. It seemed pointless to me; I wished she'd just stop.

  86. I felt bad for her, too.

  87. Still, Kiyo went on doting.

  88. Every so often she'd spend her own pocket money to buy me kintsuba or kōbaiyaki sweets.

  89. On cold nights she'd secretly lay in buckwheat flour, and before I knew it she'd bring hot soba-yu to my pillow while I slept.

  90. Sometimes she even bought me nabeyaki udon.

  91. And it wasn't only food.

  92. I got tabi socks for shoes from her too.

  93. I got pencils from her, I got notebooks from her.

  94. This was much later, but there was even a time she lent me as much as three yen.

  95. It wasn't that I'd asked her to lend it to me.

  96. She brought it to my room on her own and said, you must be short on spending money, please use this.

  97. I told her of course I didn't need it, but she insisted I use it, so I borrowed it.

  98. Honestly, I was overjoyed.

  99. I put the three yen in a coin purse, tucked it into my kimono, and went to the privy — and it slipped clean down into the toilet pit.

  100. With no choice, I came shuffling out and told Kiyo what had happened, and she went right off to find a bamboo pole, saying she'd fish it out for me.

  101. After a while I heard splashing at the well, and going to look, found her rinsing the purse in water, its cord hooked on the end of the bamboo pole.

  102. Then she opened it up and checked the one-yen notes inside, and they had turned brown, their patterns nearly worn away.

  103. Kiyo dried them over the brazier and handed them to me, saying this should do.

  104. I sniffed them and said they stank, so she said, well then, hand them over, I'll go exchange them for you — and however she managed it, she came back with three yen in silver coins instead of the notes.

  105. I've forgotten what I ever spent that three yen on.

  106. I said I'd pay her back sometime, and that was the last of it — I never did.

  107. Now, even if I wanted to pay her back tenfold, I can't.

  108. 10

    Whenever Kiyo gave me something, it was always at a moment when neither my father nor my brother was around.

  109. If there's one thing I hate above all, it's profiting on the sly behind other people's backs.

  110. I certainly wasn't on good terms with my brother, but even so I didn't want to take sweets or colored pencils from Kiyo behind his back.

  111. So sometimes I'd ask Kiyo why she gave things to me alone and not to my brother.

  112. And Kiyo would answer coolly, it's fine, your brother has your father buying for him.

  113. That struck me as unfair.

  114. My father was stubborn, but he wasn't the kind of man to play favorites like that.

  115. But I suppose that's how it looked, through Kiyo's eyes.

  116. She must simply have been blinded by affection.

  117. She may have come from a good family once, but she was an uneducated old woman, so there was no helping it.

  118. And it wasn't only this.

  119. Favoritism is a fearsome thing.

  120. Kiyo had convinced herself that I would rise in the world and become someone splendid.

  121. And yet she'd decided all on her own that my brother, for all his studying, was just pale-faced and would never amount to anything useful.

  122. There was no arguing with an old woman like that.

  123. She believed that whoever she liked was bound to become great, and whoever she disliked was bound to come to ruin.

  124. At the time, I myself had no particular idea what I meant to become.

  125. But since Kiyo kept saying I'd become something, I somehow came to think I probably would become something after all.

  126. Looking back on it now, it's absurd.

  127. There was even a time I asked Kiyo what she thought I'd become.

  128. But it seemed she hadn't any particular idea either.

  129. She only said that surely I'd ride around in a rickshaw and build myself a house with a fine entrance hall.

  130. 11

    After that, Kiyo made up her mind that once I had a household of my own and was independent, she'd come live with me.

  131. Please, do take me in, she begged me over and over.

  132. I too somehow got the feeling I really would have a house of my own someday, so I'd answer, sure, I'll take you in.

  133. But this woman had a formidable imagination, and she'd lay out her own plans quite freely — which part of town would you like, Kōjimachi or Azabu, please have a swing put up in the garden, one Western-style room ought to be plenty.

  134. At the time I didn't want a house of any kind at all.

  135. A Western house or a Japanese one, either way I had no use for it, so I always told Kiyo I didn't want any such thing.

  136. To which she'd say, you want for so little, your heart is so pure, and praise me all over again.

  137. No matter what I said, Kiyo always found a way to praise me for it.

  138. 12

    For five or six years after my mother's death, I went on living like this.

  139. Scolded by my father.

  140. Fighting with my brother.

  141. Given sweets by Kiyo, praised now and then.

  142. I had no particular wishes beyond that.

  143. I thought this much was enough.

  144. I supposed other children's lives were, on the whole, much the same.

  145. Only Kiyo, on every occasion, kept insisting you poor thing, how unfortunate you are, so I supposed I must indeed be pitiful and unfortunate.

  146. Beyond that, nothing troubled me in the least.

  147. Except that my father never giving me pocket money did wear me down.

  148. 13

    In the New Year of the sixth year after my mother died, my father too passed away, of a stroke.

  149. That April I graduated from a certain private middle school.

  150. In June my brother graduated from a business school.

  151. My brother had landed a position at the Kyushu branch of some company or other and had to go there.

  152. I still had studies to finish in Tokyo.

  153. My brother announced he would sell the house, settle up our affairs, and set off for his posting.

  154. I answered that he could do as he liked.

  155. I had no intention of depending on my brother anyway.

  156. Even if he did look after me, we'd only fight, and he was bound to have something to say about it sooner or later.

  157. It's precisely because the protection would be so half-hearted that I'd have to bow my head to a brother like that.

  158. I resolved that even delivering milk, I could get by.

  159. My brother then called in a secondhand dealer and sold off our ancestors' old junk for next to nothing.

  160. The house and land he handed over, through someone's brokering, to some wealthy man.

  161. That side of things seems to have brought in a fair sum, but I know nothing of the details.

  162. A month earlier already, until I could decide on some direction for my future, I had taken lodgings in Ogawamachi, Kanda.

  163. Kiyo was terribly sorry to see the house she'd lived in for more than ten years pass into someone else's hands, but since it wasn't hers to keep, there was nothing to be done.

  164. If only you were a little older, you could have inherited this place, she kept saying, over and over.

  165. If getting a little older were all it took to inherit, then I could inherit it just as well now.

  166. But the old woman didn't understand any of that, and believed that if I only grew old enough, my brother's house would come to me.

  167. 14

    My brother and I parted ways like this, but the trouble was what would become of Kiyo.

  168. My brother, of course, was in no position to take her along, and Kiyo herself hadn't the slightest wish to tag after him all the way down to Kyushu — and as for me, I was holed up in a cheap four-and-a-half-mat lodging room, and even that I'd have to give up the moment push came to shove.

  169. There was nothing to be done about it.

  170. I asked Kiyo what she meant to do.

  171. When I asked whether she meant to go into service somewhere, she finally gave a decided answer: until you have a house of your own and take a wife, there's nothing for it — I'll go depend on my nephew.

  172. This nephew was a court clerk who by now got by comfortably enough, and he had already urged her two or three times to come if she liked, but Kiyo had refused, saying she'd rather stay in service in the house she'd grown used to over the years than come to him.

  173. But now, I suppose, she'd decided it was better to depend on her nephew than to change service to some unfamiliar household and go through all that needless awkwardness again.

  174. Even so, she kept telling me to hurry up and get a house, take a wife, and let her come and look after me.

  175. I suppose she was fonder of me, a stranger, than of her own flesh-and-blood nephew.

  176. 15

    Two days before he left for Kyushu, my brother came to my lodgings, handed me six hundred yen, and said, use it however you like — set yourself up in business with it or use it for your schooling — but after this, don't expect anything more from me.

  177. For my brother it was an admirably generous move; I thought I could get along fine without his six hundred yen, but this uncharacteristically clean, no-strings way of handling things pleased me, so I thanked him and accepted it.

  178. He then took out fifty yen more and asked me to pass it on to Kiyo while I was at it, which I agreed to without objection.

  179. Two days later, we parted at Shimbashi Station, and I haven't seen my brother once since.

  180. 16

    I lay in bed thinking over what to do with the six hundred yen.

  181. Going into business would just be a bother and I'd never manage it well, and besides, six hundred yen was hardly enough to run any business worth the name.

  182. Even if I could manage it, as things stood I couldn't stand before people and boast of having had an education, so in the end it would only work against me.

  183. Never mind capital — I'd use it as school money instead and go on studying.

  184. Splitting six hundred yen three ways, at two hundred a year, I could study for three years.

  185. If I worked at it hard for three years, I'd surely come out as something.

  186. Then I turned to thinking which school I'd enter, but by nature I didn't care for any field of study at all.

  187. Languages, literature, that sort of thing especially — no thank you.

  188. As for the new-style poetry, out of twenty lines I couldn't make sense of even one.

  189. If I disliked everything equally anyway, I figured it hardly mattered which I picked, and as luck would have it, passing by the physics school one day I saw a notice recruiting students, so I decided it must be fate, picked up their prospectus, and went straight ahead and enrolled.

  190. Thinking about it now, this too was a blunder born of that same recklessness I inherited from my father.

  191. 17

    For three years I studied about as much as the next fellow, but since I was never especially good at it, it was always more convenient to count my class rank from the bottom.

  192. Yet, strange as it is, when the three years were up I somehow ended up graduating after all.

  193. I found it funny myself, but since there was no reason to complain, I graduated quietly and left it at that.

  194. 18

    Eight days after graduation the principal sent for me, and thinking it must be about something, I went along, and it turned out a certain middle school somewhere in Shikoku needed a mathematics teacher.

  195. The salary was forty yen a month, and the question was whether I'd like to go.

  196. I had studied for three years, but to tell the truth I'd had no notion of becoming a teacher, nor any thought of going out to the countryside.

  197. Then again, I had no other prospect in mind besides teaching, so when the offer came I answered on the spot, all right, I'll go.

  198. This too was the curse of that recklessness inherited from my father.

  199. 19

    Having accepted, I had no choice but to take up the post.

  200. For those three years, cooped up in a four-and-a-half-mat room, I hadn't been scolded even once.

  201. I'd gotten through them without fighting, too.

  202. Of my whole life so far, it was a comparatively easy-going stretch.

  203. But now, as things stood, I'd have to give up even that four-and-a-half-mat room.

  204. Since the day I was born, the only time I'd ever set foot outside Tokyo was a class excursion to Kamakura with my schoolmates.

  205. This time it was nothing so tame as Kamakura.

  206. I had to go a tremendous distance away.

  207. On the map it was a spot by the sea, no bigger than the point of a needle.

  208. It couldn't possibly be much of a place.

  209. What kind of town it was, what kind of people lived there, I had no idea.

  210. Not knowing didn't trouble me.

  211. I felt no anxiety about it.

  212. There was nothing to do but go.

  213. Though I'll admit it was a bit of a nuisance.

  214. 20

    Even after we'd broken up the household, I visited Kiyo now and then.

  215. Kiyo's nephew turned out to be a surprisingly decent fellow.

  216. Whenever I visited, if he happened to be in, he'd fuss over me with all sorts of hospitality.

  217. Kiyo would sit me down in front of her and go on boasting about me to her nephew.

  218. She'd even go around announcing that once I graduated I'd buy a mansion somewhere around Kōjimachi and commute to some government office.

  219. She decided all this on her own and chattered on all on her own, so I sat there red-faced with embarrassment.

  220. And this wasn't once or twice, either.

  221. At times she even brought up how I used to wet the bed as a small child, which I found utterly mortifying.

  222. What the nephew made of Kiyo's boasting, I couldn't say.

  223. But Kiyo, being a woman of the old school, thought of her relationship with me as that of a feudal-era retainer and master.

  224. She seemed to have decided that if I was her master, then I must be her nephew's master too.

  225. Which really put the poor nephew in an awkward spot.

  226. 21

    When it was finally settled and only three days remained before I left, I went to see Kiyo and found her laid up with a cold in her north-facing three-mat room.

  227. The moment she saw I'd come she sat straight up and asked, young master, when will you get a house of your own.

  228. She seemed to believe that money would simply well up in my pocket the instant I graduated.

  229. To go on calling someone so grand and important young master was, by now, downright absurd.

  230. I told her simply that I wouldn't be getting a house for the time being.

  231. When I said I was going off to the countryside, she looked terribly crestfallen and kept smoothing down the loose strands of her salt-and-pepper hair.

  232. She looked so pitiable that I said, ‘I'm going, yes, but I'll be back soon.

  233. I'll surely be back next summer vacation,’ I said to comfort her.

  234. Still, she looked so strange that I asked her, ‘What souvenir shall I bring you back, what do you want,’ and she said, ‘I'd like some Echigo bamboo-leaf candy.’

  235. I'd never even heard of Echigo bamboo-leaf candy.

  236. For one thing, it was in entirely the wrong direction.

  237. When I told her, ‘there doesn't seem to be any bamboo-leaf candy where I'm going,’ she asked back, ‘well then, which direction is it?’

  238. When I said, ‘it's off to the west,’ she asked, ‘is that beyond Hakone, or before it?’

  239. I really didn't know what to do with her.

  240. 22

    On the day I left, she came from early morning and fussed over all sorts of things.

  241. On her way over she'd stopped at a sundries shop and bought tooth powder, a toothpick, and a hand towel, and packed them into my canvas bag.

  242. I told her I didn't need such things, but she wouldn't hear of it.

  243. We rode our rickshaws together to the station, and when we came out onto the platform, she stared hard at my face as I sat boarded on the train, and said, ‘this may be the last time we ever see each other.

  244. Do take good care of yourself,’ she added, in a small voice.

  245. Her eyes were brimming with tears.

  246. I didn't cry.

  247. But I came very close to it.

  248. After the train had gone quite some distance, thinking it safe enough now, I leaned my head out the window and looked back, and there she still was, standing on the platform.

  249. Somehow she looked terribly small.

The particulars

The text
坊っちゃん, Natsume Sōseki. Botchan.
Translation
Public-domain Japanese (Natsume Sōseki, d. 1916; published 1906). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
Reading aloud
Digital narration, directed by 1732 Studios.
Words
Every word of the text, by letter.
Data
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.