210th Day. Natsume Soseki
right. You'll be the one to ask him."
"I can't. You do it!"
"I can if you want me to, but it's not really important, is it?"
"Well, no. Let's give up the idea, then."
Kei generously retracts his own suggestion.
The noise made by the farrier, who had paused in his work for the first time, again resounds beneath the clear sky—bang! clang!—aiming, perhaps, to crush under innumerable claps of thunder autumn's arrival in the mountain village.
"When I hear that noise I cannot help feeling homesick for the tofu shop of the old days," says Kei, his arms crossed.
"But has the son of the tofu seller got like that?"
"What do you mean by like that'?"
"There is nothing of the tofu seller about you."
"Tofu seller's son or fishmonger's son—to become what one wants to be, it's enough to want it."
"True. Basically, everything is in the mind."
"It's not only the mind that counts. Who knows how many tofu manufacturers in this world have anything in their heads? That does not prevent them from remaining tofu manufacturers for the whole of their lives! The poor creatures!"
"What does count, then?" Roku innocently asks.
"What counts is—well—to want it."
"Even if one wants them, there are lots of things society does not allow, aren't there?"
"That's why I said 'the poor creatures!' If one is born into an unjust society, it can't be helped. Whether it permits it or not, is of not much importance. The main thing is to want it oneself."
"And what if one wants to be something and still does not become it?"
"Whether or not one becomes it, is not the problem. One has to want it. By wanting it, one causes society to permit it," says Kei in peremptory tones.
"Yes, of course—if everything goes like clockwork! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"But up to now, I've always conducted my life along those lines."
"That is exactly why I said there was nothing of the tofu seller about you."
"Perhaps I am about to become like one. Ha ha ha ha!"
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