Drifting Clouds — Summary and Characters

About this work

Futabatei Shimei's major novel, published in three parts in June 1887, February 1888 and July–August 1890; the third part broke off in serialization and the work is unfinished. Written at Tsubouchi Shōyō's urging in a style close to spoken Japanese, it is generally called the first fully modern Japanese novel. Through the love and the vacillation of an irresolute young man it sets down, in fine detail, the workings of a mind with a modern interior, and stands as the starting point of modern Japanese literature.

Summary

Characters

• Utsumi Bunzō　An earnest young government clerk who has lost his post. The protagonist, tormented by his love for his cousin Osei
• Osei　Bunzō's cousin. Fickle by nature, she wavers between Bunzō and Honda
• Honda Noboru　Bunzō's friend, who knows how to get on and draws Osei's interest
• Omasa　Osei's mother and Bunzō's aunt

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 Dismissal — A Certain Twenty-Eighth of October
5. 5. The Aunt Turns, and Osei Defends Him
6. 6. The Chrysanthemum Show at Dangozaka
7. 7. “Don't Carry Your Pride Too Far”
8. 8. “I Like Mr. Honda”
9. 9. The Failed Explanation, and the Scene at the Table
10. 10. To Wake Osei — and the Break in the Telling
11. 11. Key Motifs and Foreshadowing

The opening (original text)

Toward three in the afternoon of the twenty-eighth day, with only two days left of the godless tenth month, out from inside the Kanda gate come swarming and crawling, like ants crossing a plank or a scatter of baby spiders, gentlemen every one of whom is concerned about his chin. But look closely and consider, and there are all manner of kinds among them. To begin with the moustaches: the upper-lip moustache, the side whiskers, the beard on the chin, the violently upswept Napoleon, the Bismarck like a pug's muzzle, and besides these the bantam, the badger, and the moustache that is a phantom and may or may not be there — grown thick and thin and every way. After the moustaches, the difference is in dress. With black from head to foot out of the Shirokiya, French leather shoes are the natural match, and the nose hairs of the gentleman so attired are long enough, they say, to fish for dragonflies with. Below these, a Scotch suit whose byword is the wrinkle across the back, with cowhide boots that creak; and since the heels are never without their ornament, trousers of tortoiseshell that trail their tails in the mud — every one of them with a face that has not yet escaped the sufferings of the ready-made. But the owners are pleased enough with themselves: I have a moustache and I have clothes, so what have I to fear — and with that look on their faces they throw back their shoulders like a piece of kindling set alight and go home. Well, how enviable.

Drifting Clouds by Futabatei Shimei (Aozora Bunko)

The ending (original text)

It was four or five days after she had begun her knitting. One evening Bunzō, having some errand, came down from upstairs to go to the inner room, and there was Osei standing at the edge of the veranda with her back to him. Her head was a little bent and she seemed intent on something — her knitting, he supposed. Thinking it a rare enough sight, Bunzō was about to pass behind her without any particular thought when Osei, still facing away, suddenly said, "Not yet?" She had plainly taken him for someone else. But since for weeks he had not exchanged a word with her except in his own imagination, and she had now unexpectedly spoken to him gently, Bunzō was confounded and stopped in spite of himself. Osei, wondering perhaps at getting no answer, turned round — and, coming face to face with Bunzō, gave a start and said "Oh." But startled though she was, she was not put out; she only smiled a little, turned away again, and set to her knitting. Bunzō felt as though he had been drinking; with no idea what he should do, he was simply wandering in a daze in a region almost without thought, when it struck him that Omasa was out today. There would never be a better chance. Should he take the plunge and speak to her? — and before he could settle whether to do it, the paper door of the maid's room slid open, and at the sound Bunzō, without meaning to, darted into the inner room — without meaning to, and hardly even thinking that it would not do to be seen. Listening from the inner room, he heard Onabe come as far as Osei's side and stop a moment, and her voice saying, "Sorry to keep you." Osei made no answer, but seemed to whisper something quickly, and a stifled laugh came through; and then Onabe's voice, out of key, "Really, Utsumi —" "Hush! … he's still —" and then, low but audible, "in there." Onabe lowered her voice too. "Really?" "Really." At this it began to be awkward to stay hidden, and Bunzō came out of the inner room with a look of complete unconcern. Onabe watched his face in some wonder as she bent a little and said, "I'm just going to the bath," and then, remembering something, looked appalled and said in a fluster, "And, er, if the mistress comes back and says she'll have her dinner, I've laid it out and put it in that cupboard, so please — Miss, is that all right now? Well then, I'm off." With a look about the eyes as though she would burst out laughing, Osei glanced past Bunzō's face, tossed the knitting she was holding deftly into the inner room, said something to Onabe, and went out with her, laughing, in high spirits. Mistress and maid though they were, they were near enough in age that the feeling on both sides was that of friends; though this had come about only lately, for before that Osei had held herself high and would hardly speak to a servant. Watching Osei's back as she went out, Bunzō smiled. He had no leisure to wonder how things had changed so; he simply felt somehow glad, and smiled. After that his old fancies raised their heads and grew past holding down, and one groundless thing after another came into his mind, until at last he had persuaded himself that everything of late had been a phantom born of his own suspicion, and that in fact there had never been anything much to worry about. But then, taking hold of himself and thinking it over — that she had humiliated him for no reason; that though she had defied her mother she had somehow come round to doing as she was told; that she had suddenly grown distant with Noboru, with whom she had been so close — it did not seem an ordinary matter after all. And thinking so, he could hardly tell whether he ought to be glad or sorry, and grew uncertain of himself, as though someone far off were beckoning him in mockery; and unable to laugh outright or to weep, his heart wandering between pleasure and displeasure, he walked back and forth on the veranda for a while. But at any rate, if he spoke she would probably listen; so the moment she came back he would try his luck once more, and if she heard him out, so be it, and if she would not hear him, then he would leave his uncle's house for good — so at last he resolved, and for the time being went back upstairs.

Drifting Clouds by Futabatei Shimei (Aozora Bunko)

Famous passages

It was around three in the afternoon of the twenty-eighth, with the tenth month of the old calendar down to its last two days, when out from Kanda Mitsuke there came swarming and seething, like ants smeared over a surface or a scattering brood of baby spiders, a crowd of gentlemen all mindful of their whiskers.

Although this novel is regarded as the pioneer of genbun'itchi prose, its opening is in the celebrated mixed classical-colloquial cadence inherited from Edo gesaku. Likening office workers leaving at the end of the day to ants or a brood of baby spiders, it paints a vivid picture of Meiji Tokyo.

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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