The Dark Room | Asian American Bookview

The Dark Room
by Junnosuke Yoshiyuki
Kodansha International, Tokyo and New York, 1975, 170 pp, $6.95
An award-winning erotic novel that depicts a self-centered middle-aged womanizer agonizing on the throes of love.
EXCERPT

he'd had it once, long ago -- the grated bulb of some plant, wrapped in toasted seaweed and deep-fried in oil -- and enjoyed it. She'd thought to try it again, and was still thinking, fifty years later ...
     The essay, by a woman novelist, had struck in my memory. Strange, I thought, how you can have something on your mind to do, but before you do it, fifty long years have slipped by. And yet, I thought again, how often it happens...
     I have a mole under my right eye. "Weeping moles," they're called, or so they told me when I was a kid. Not a very lucky thing to have, I reflected at the time, and gave the matter no further thought.
     "Weeping mole" -- the phrase seems to mean something, but when you think about it you're not at all sure what. I must have been around twenty when that first occurred to me. A book on physiognomy, I reflected, would certainly have something more definite to say on the subject. I'd no particular faith in such works, but at least if I looked it up it would replace uncertainty with a definite shape of some kind. But though I meant to do so, I was still meaning to do so twenty years later.
     The essay about the vegetable reminded me of it. I remembered having soime myself at a tempura retaurant, and reflected rather impatiently that you could, after all, make the dish at home if you wanted to. But then, I still hadn't done anything about my mole, had I?
     A few months later, I was at a meeting when an acquaintence of mine who sports a beard came up and without warning ran a finger round the edge of my ear.
     "I can tell you're not an eldest son."
     "But I am."
     "That's odd. The shape of your ear says you aren't. Did you have an elder brother who died, then?"
     "No, I've no elder brothers or sisters."
     "Well, then, perhaps they got rid of a kid before you were born?"
     "I don't think so. That kind of thing wasnt' so easy, you know, in those days."

     He looked disgruntled.
     "Studying physiognomy?" I asked.
     "That's right."
     "Tell me then -- what does this mole of mine mean?"
     It didn't matter whether the answer was scientific or not. What I wanted, you see, was some definite reply. The bearded friend contemplated my face.
     "Mm, under the right eye .... That's an easy one: your girl will give you trouble."
     "Girl? You mean my daughter?"
     "That's right."
     I was taken aback. I'd been quite sure it would be something about myself.
     "My daughter, eh? When you say 'trouble'?..."
     "Well, like having bad health, or getting mixed up with the wrong kind of man."
     "I see..."
     "Ah, I've got you interested this time! I didn't know you had a daughter, though."
     "I don't," I said. "No kids at all."

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