トカトントンTokatonton — The Distant Hammer

Contents

1. A Letter from a Troubled AdmirerA twenty-six-year-old man from Aomori writes to an author he admires. After working in a Yokohama munitions factory and serving four years in the army, he returned at the surrender to find his family's house burned down, and he now works at his uncle's post office in a coastal village. He has long wanted to write but never knew what to say; this time, he says, he has an urgent matter to raise.
2. A Hammer Breaks the SpellA young man writes to a novelist for advice about a strange affliction. On the day of Japan's surrender, a young lieutenant urges the soldiers to fight on and die, and the narrator feels ready to die too, until the faint sound of a hammer from behind the barracks drains all feeling from him. Ever since, whenever he is moved or inspired, the *tokatonton* returns and leaves him hollow, as it did one evening at the public bath when he was about to finish a long account of his army days.
3. Paintings, Banknotes, and the Hammer AgainFinding his novel manuscript ridiculous, the narrator stops writing, uses the pages as tissue paper, and turns to reading and art, admiring Ogata Kōrin and Kenzan. He begins to take pride in diligent work at the post office and labours furiously during the currency switch. On the last morning of the rush, just as he feels proud and satisfied, he hears a faint, distant *tokatonton*. Everything suddenly seems absurd, he goes back to bed, and afterwards he becomes a listless, ordinary clerk.
4. A Secret Love at the Post OfficeThe narrator tells his uncle, the postmaster, that he may have nervous exhaustion, and the uncle blames it on reading difficult books. The narrator then confesses that he has fallen into a one-sided love with Tokita Hanae, a young maid at the village inn. The women clerks at the post office gossip that she has loose morals, but he notes that the locals speak well of no evacuee at all. She deposits money every week, and each time he stamps her passbook his heart races.
5. Banknotes and a Whispered InvitationThe narrator, a post-office clerk, suffers over Hanae's regular deposits, fearing that the villagers are ruining her with money, and longs to tell her never to become anyone's plaything. One day in mid-May, while making her deposit at his window, she quietly asks him to meet her at the bridge at five. He goes, and the two walk to the beach, where she sits down between two fishing boats.
6. A Secret on the Beach, Then HammeringOn the beach, Hanae tells the narrator that the savings she deposits belong to the innkeeper's wife and begs him to keep it secret. Just as he is overcome with love for her, real hammering sounds from a nearby shed, and all his feeling drains away; he leaves coldly and stops caring about her. He then explains his long-held disgust with politics, including how he skipped the April election, until a workers' demonstration in Aomori seemed to prove him wrong.
7. Red Flags and a Pointless RaceWatching the workers' demonstration, the narrator is moved to tears and feels he has at last found true freedom and the path he should follow, until the distant tokatonton sounds and the feeling vanishes. That summer a coastal relay race passes his post office, and the sight of an exhausted runner collapsing moves him strangely. He sees the race as an effort that wins no reward and serves no purpose, a passion of nothingness that matches his own emptiness.
8. The Hammer Never Stops, and a ReplyThe narrator says the tokatonton now cuts into everything he tries, from playing catch and reading the new constitution to drinking and thinking about suicide. He begs the writer to explain the sound, then admits that much of his letter may be lies, though the tokatonton is real. The writer answers curtly that the narrator's suffering is affected, that true thought needs courage, and that if he could feel Jesus's words in Matthew like a thunderclap, the sound he hears would stop.

Before you read

• Learn the letter conventions first. 拝啓 opens and 敬具 closes the young man's letter. 拝復 opens the writer's reply and 不尽 closes it. The shift from long polite rambling to a terse reply is part of the meaning.
• Watch for the narrator's verbal tic そうしてそれから ("and then, and after that"). It strings episodes together in long, loosely joined sentences. Read each one by finding where each clause ends with て or し, and don't expect tight logic.
• Expect a shift in register in the dialogue. The uncle speaks in older rural-male speech (俺, のう, わからん for わからない). Hanae speaks softly with わ and のよ. The lieutenant gives short military commands.
• Many of the grammar points express the narrator's doubt and inner struggle: 〜のではなかろうか ("might it not be that…"), 〜か知れない, 〜ような気がする, 〜て仕方が無い ("can't help…"), 〜まい and 〜をさえ. Spotting them shows how much he hedges, which matters when he later admits the letter may contain lies.
• Learn some post-office vocabulary before Parts 3 to 5, such as 郵便局, 窓口 (counter), 貯金 (savings) and 通帳 (passbook). Hanae's weekly deposits and the currency-switch rush both happen at the narrator's counter.

Words to know

The most useful words from the notes across the story.

Plot summary

About the author

Dazai Osamu (太宰治) was the pen name of Tsushima Shūji, born into a wealthy landowning family in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan. He studied French literature at Tokyo Imperial University but did not graduate, devoting himself instead to writing. He is best known for the novels The Setting Sun (斜陽) and No Longer Human (人間失格), which draw heavily on his own troubled life. Much of his work is dark and confessional. Keep Running, Melos shows a brighter, more straightforwardly heroic side of his writing. He died by suicide in 1948.

More stories by Dazai Osamu →