A Moonflower in Heaven

Author: Yoichi Nakagawa

About: This sad and beautiful love story has been widely read and loved especially by young people in Japan. A young friend of mine once told me that he wished he could marry such a woman as Akiko-san, the heroine of this story, and I have heard young girls express their wish to be loved as was Akiko-san.

This story may seem to resemble “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” but there is this important difference: that while Werther's psychology and character are of various elements and more complex, and his disposition was rather melancholy and pessimistic even before he fell in love with Lotte, here in this story we find love pure and simple from beginning to end. It is the story of love passionate and enduring, concentrated yet unselfish. There are no alien factors, and it does not bore us.

Excerpt:

I was shown upstairs. The city lights of Osaka flickered here and there beyond the sea.

She pointed to call my attention to them. They seemed to be sadly gay and to give a lonely, glimmering light to man's work in the midst of the immense darkness of Nature.

Soon Ren-chan was tied into his little night dress and sent to sleep, and we were left alone.

“It's a wonder you could find this house.”

“I wanted to see you by all means.”

“But I am firmly determined.”

In her eyes tears she could not suppress were glistening, and yet her resolution seemed to be as immovable as before.

“But I took out your letters every night and read all of them from the first to the very last. I could not go to sleep unless I read them and re-read them.”

“Then shall I tear them all up?”

I spoke as if I were trying to follow her own decision. I am that kind of man. My character is such that it likes the fortitude which carries out everything with firm resolution as the motivating power in life.

Then she brought the bundle of letters as if she were enjoying the whole business, and set them down before me. I took them up and in her presence, tore them one after another with more than necessary strength. But I cannot deny that I had some latent desire that by so doing I might still be able to hold her mind. She kept watching me at it fascinated, tears rolling down her cheeks. “At least one, please,” she said in a low voice. But I did not spare even one and destroyed all, carried away by a violent outburst of temper.

And then, because of that new source of excitement, I did not want to go back. She herself must have been afraid of my leaving.

But soon afterwards, as the last car was soon to start, I had to stand up.

“Then—if it must be— ”

“Then, this is our last meeting, isn't it?”

And when I was going down to the stairs from her room, and we stood face to face, I saw her body suddenly twist and writhe, though momentarily, as if by an electric current. Simultaneously I felt the same; I felt something dreadful run through my own self.

Yet I at once turned, and went down the stairs. At that moment we two must have been tautened to leap to each other, regardless of remonstrances of reason. But in the fact that we did not lies the form of our love which has lasted till now.