Japanese Literature Summaries
日本語

Sweet Beans for Two — Summary and Characters

An Osaka couple who cannot part

Author
Oda Sakunosuke
Published
April 1940
First appeared in
Kaifū
Form
Novel
Genres
  • Psychological
  • Romance
Setting
  • Osaka
Length
30,644 characters
Reading time
About 1 hr 1 min
Orthography
Modern script and kana

About this work

The story that made Oda Sakunosuke's name, published in the magazine Kaifū in 1940. In the back streets of Osaka it follows the common-law life — an attachment neither can break — of Chōko, a capable former geisha, and Ryūkichi, the son of an old shop who is weak-willed and fond of pleasure. Knowing him good for nothing, having left his wife and house, Chōko works herself to the bone, and the two try one business after another and fail at each. Quarrels and poverty repeat, and still they cannot part: all of it wrapped in lively Osaka speech and the smell of food, in a fine portrait of Kansai warmth and ordinary life.

Summary

Chōko, born to Tanekichi, who sells one-sen tempura, and his strong-minded wife O-Tatsu, grows up spirited and warm-hearted, and in time goes out as a geisha. The man she falls for is Ryūkichi, the young master of a cosmetics wholesaler in Semba. Ryūkichi has a wife and a child, but he abandons them and sets up house with her. Mild and well-bred, but spineless, free with money and forever counting on his father's property, he is no support at all. His father treats him as good as disowned, and the headship of the house passes to his sister. Even so Chōko goes out as a geisha and as a hired waitress to keep the useless Ryūkichi, and the two of them work at one business after another — a razor shop, then an oden shop they call the Chōryū. Chōko works hard and knows how to handle customers; Ryūkichi fails her at every point that matters, spends what they earn in the Tobita quarter, and, when things get awkward, drifts out of the house and disappears. She rages, she weeps, she sometimes sits astride him and beats him — and still she cannot leave this good-for-nothing man. When Ryūkichi's father dies he is not recognized as the proper heir, and the two go on with their unsettled life as before. Chōko keeps working, dreaming of the day when they will be husband and wife before the world. Then one day Ryūkichi takes her to the Meoto Zenzai shop in the precincts of the Hōzenji. As two bowls of sweet bean soup are set before each of them, he explains that two small bowls look like more than one heaped one; and Chōko answers that what it means is that two together are better than one alone. For all their quarrels, the two of them, like that sweet soup, are only right as a pair — and the feeling of an Ōsaka couple is drawn with a quiet, rueful humor.

Chapter-by-chapter synopsis

The app covers this work chapter by chapter (full text in the app).

  1. 1. About This Work
  2. 2. Main Characters
  3. 3. Major Supporting Characters
  4. 4. The One-Sen Tempura Shop in Kamishiomachi — Chōko's Girlhood
  5. 5. The Meeting and the Disowning — The Young Master of the Cosmetics Wholesaler
  6. 6. The Elopement and the Earthquake — From Tokyo and Atami Back to Osaka
  7. 7. The Yatona and the Razor Shop — Life in a Rented Upstairs Room
  8. 8. Beatings and Desertion — The Tobita Quarter, and “Put On a Performance”
  9. 9. The Oden Shop Chōryū, and the Fruit Shop
  10. 10. Illness and Death — Tuberculosis of the Kidney, and O-Tatsu's End
  11. 11. The Salon Chōryū — The Father's Death and the Crested Robes
  12. 12. The Ending — The Meoto Zenzai at the Hōzenji
  13. 13. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing

The opening (original text)

The debt collectors were in and out all the year round. At the end of the season it went on practically every day — the soy sauce man, the oil man, the greengrocer, the sardine seller, the dried goods man, the charcoal man, the rice dealer, the landlord and the rest, and every one of them pressing hard. Tanekichi, who fried and sold his one-sen tempura at the mouth of the alley — burdock, lotus root, taro, trefoil, konjac, red pickled ginger, dried squid, sardines — would duck his head the moment he caught sight of a collector and make a show of suddenly kneading his flour.

Sweet Beans for Two by Oda Sakunosuke (Aozora Bunko)

The ending (original text)

Ryūkichi took Chōko to the Meoto Zenzai in the precincts of the Hōzenji. When they ordered the sweet bean soup, two bowls were brought for each of them, in the meaning of husband and wife. Sitting on the checkered matting and sucking it up with a loud noise, Ryūkichi said, "D-d-do you know why they b-bring it here in t-two bowls? You don't, do you?... Two small bowls look as if there's more in them than one heaped-up bowl. That's the clever bit of it, that is." "What it means," said Chōko, "is that two together are better than one alone, isn't it?" — and as she gave her collar a tug her shoulders shook with the movement.

Sweet Beans for Two by Oda Sakunosuke (Aozora Bunko)

Famous passages

“D-do you know why th-this place always brings the sweet bean soup in t-two bowls? Bet you don't. See, this shop was started way back by some jōruri master or other, and he figured two small bowls looks like more than one big one piled high — that was his clever idea.” Chōko said, “I'd say it means two together are better than one alone.”

The closing exchange at the “Meoto Zenzai” (“Sweet Bean Soup for Two”) shop by Hōzenji Temple. Reading the shape of a marriage into the reason a single bowl is served as two, this is the celebrated ending of a novel of ordinary Osaka life.

Read the original

The original Japanese text is available at Aozora Bunko, and the app downloads the same text for its vertical-text reader.

Aozora Bunko library card

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