The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 12 | Issue 44 | Number 2 | Nov 02, 2014

The Two-Sen Copper Coin 二銭銅貨

Kuroshima Denji, Michael Bourdaghs

Kuroshima Denji

Translation and Introduction Michael

Bourdaghs

Introduction

A key voice in Japan’s proletarian literature

movement of the 1920s and 30s, Kuroshima Denji
(1898-1943) is best known for his anti-war
writings. These include a number of short stories
depicting Japan’s participation in the 1918-1922
Siberian Intervention, as well as Militarized Streets
(Busō seru shigai
, 1930), a novel set during Japan’s
1928 military intervention in China.1Militarized
Streets earned the dubious distinction of being
censored by both the wartime Japanese state and
the postwar U.S. Occupation.2

Kuroshima was born and raised in an

impoverished family on Shōdo Island in the
Inland Sea. In 1917 he moved to Tokyo, where he
labored in various capacities to save up money to
allow him to study. He was admitted to the
Waseda Preparatory School in 1919, only to be
drafted into the Japanese army shortly thereafter.
In 1921 his unit was sent to Siberia—providing
Kuroshima with the experiences that became the

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material for his best-known stories. It was also in for a little while before it toppled over. Since
Siberia that the symptoms of tuberculosis, the early childhood, Kenkichi had been the sort to
disease that would eventually take his life, first get obsessed over things. He had polished the top
appeared. He returned to Japan in 1922 and and replaced the slender, wire-like stem it came
made his literary debut in 1925 with the story with using the three-centimeter nail. It spun
“Telegraph” (Denpō). A half year later he better that way, so it was a strong competitor in
published the work translated here.3 top battles. It was already some twelve or
thirteen years since he had used it, but the top
“The Two-Sen Copper Coin” (Nisen dōka)
was still sturdy, shiny black, and it was heavy, as
originally appeared in the January 1926 issue of
if it were made of good hard wood. It was well
Bungei Sensen (Literary Front), an important
oiled and coated with wax. The quality of its
proletarian movement journal. The story depicts
wood and everything else were completely
a tragic incident that befalls an impoverished
different from the sort they sell in stores
farming family. In tone and content, it provides
nowadays.
evidence of Kuroshima’s love of Chekhov. The
story’s imagery repeatedly invokes vicious The top was so heavy that Tōji had trouble
circles, seemingly closed loops that trap its making it spin. He spent half a day trying to
characters: the battling tops, the sumo ring, the make it spin on the floorboard of the doorframe
circuit walked by a cow rigged up to a millstone, without any success.
and of course the coin that provides the story’s
“Ma, buy me a top string,” he begged his mother.
title. The original Japanese language text for the
story is available online at the Aozora Bunko “Ask Pa if it’s okay to buy one.”
website
(http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000037/card64 “He said it’s fine.”

6.html).
His mother was the sort to make a fuss about

-1- everything. In part, this was due to their strained

household budget. Even after it was decided that
It was when spinning tops were all the rage. Tōji they would buy it, she made a point of first
dug up an old top his older brother Kenkichi had looking through the storage room, to make sure
used and gripped the three-centimeter nail that they didn’t have an old string used by
pounded in to form its stem between his left and Kenkichi.
right palms to make it spin. His hands were still
not very strong, so the top only stayed spinning The children of the little riverside hamlet

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gathered in front of the local temple. They mother to buy the new string, he couldn’t help
wound new strings around their new tops and fingering covetously the new tops, brightly
set pairs of tops into battle competitions. The painted red and blue, on display in a wooden
children called this game “Kottsuriko.” They’d box.
wind the string and then pull it back as hard as
As the woman who owned the general store
they could to make their tops spin cleanly. Two
showed her the strings they had in stock, his
children would set theirs spinning at the same
mother scolded, “Hey, Tō-boy, don’t mess
time, each taking turns aiming his at the other
around with the store’s merchandise. Your
child’s top. The game continued until one of the
fingers will smudge it.”
tops toppled over. The one that fell first lost.

“It’s okay, touching won’t hurt them,” the owner

“I’m the only one who has an ugly old black top
said affably
like this. Buy me a new top, too,” Tōji pestered
his mother. There were dozens of strings, all cut to the same
length. But among them was one a foot shorter
“You already got a top and now you want me to
than the rest. When they had measured them all
buy you a new one?” his mother answered.
out to cut them, there wasn’t quite enough left
“But it’s all black….and everyone else’s got a for the last one.
new one!”
“How much?”
Kenkichi, confident that his old top was perfectly
“Ten sen each. But I could let you have the short
fine, chimed in. “Don’t be stupid! This top is
one for eight sen.”
much better.” He also seemed somewhat
reluctant to see his brother be given money to “Eight sen?”
buy a top.
“Yep.”
“Well....” Tōji always believed whatever his older
brother told him. “Well, if that’s the case, the short one will be
fine.”
“You’ll see, this one is much better. Just try it out
in a battle. Nobody’s got a top that can beat this The mother handed over ten sen and received a

one.” two-sen coin in change. She felt pleased, almost

as if she had made a profit of two sen.
With that, Tōji was persuaded to stick with the
old top. But when he went to the store with his When she told Tōji it was time to leave, he was

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once more fiddling with the new tops in the box. pillar, Tōji bent backward and pulled on the
Anyone could see how much he wanted one. But string. After a pause, he spoke in a small voice.
he obediently tagged after his mother when she
“But everyone else is going to see the sumo.”
left, without saying a word about buying a new
one. “Poor folks like us have no business with
anything like that!”
-2-

“Yeah, I know,” said Tōji in a crestfallen voice,

A troupe of sumo wrestlers who toured the
again tugging on the string.
countryside had come to the temple compound
of a neighboring hamlet. All the children went “If you keep pulling on it like that, the string’s
together to see it. Tōji wanted to go, too, but it going to break.
was in the middle of rice harvesting. Not only
that, in the cowshed a cow had been rigged up to “Yeah, well who cares? It’s shorter than everyone

the millstone for grinding grain so it would walk else’s, anyhow.”

round and round the central pillar, and it was his

“It’s not going to stretch if you pull on it—if you
job to keep an eye on it.
keep doing that, you’re going to fall down

“What’s so important ‘bout watching a cow?” backward!”

Tōji complained, which was unlike him. He

“Yeah, but it will stretch, just watch.”
wrapped the top string around the pillar
supporting the barn’s eaves and pulled with both At that moment his father returned.
hands on its end.
“Tō-boy, don’t you start complaining!” he said,
“If that’s what you’re going to be doing, then glaring at Tōji.
why don’t you come out and chase away the
“There, see? Now you got a scolding—you keep
sparrows instead?”
a good eye on that cow!” With that, his mother
“No.” left for the fields.

“Don’t you talk to me like that! What’ll we do if His father filled the funnel above the millstone
the grain doesn’t get milled and the sparrows with wheat and, after watching the obedient cow
come and steal the rice?” his mother demanded plod its way around and around as it glanced at
in a harsh voice. the human faces, he too left.

As if he were engaging in a tug-of-war with the Since his mother bought the string for him, Tōji

4
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had gone out to spin his top with the other kids “I wonder if that Tōji ran off somewhere to play.”
and noticed that his own string was quite a bit
The mother set down her load and went to check
shorter than the others. This bothered him. He
the cow shed—and was stunned by what she
lined the strings up end-to-end to compare them,
saw. “Hey, Ken, come here right away!” her
and his was shorter than all the others. He was
voice quavered.
only six years old. When he competed in
kottsurikowith the big kids who were already in Kenkichi threw down his bundle of rice and
school, he always lost. And with this shorter raced over. Tōji, still clutching the top string in
string, it seemed, he would keep on losing, too. one hand, lay collapsed in the darkness of the
Then he hit on an idea: if he held both ends of the cow shed. His neck was twisted badly, his head
string and pulled, it would stretch until it was the smeared with blood.
same length as everyone else’s, and so now he
was constantly tugging at it. As he watched over The red-brown cow stood motionless, harness

the cow, he wrapped the string around the still on its back, looking at the child. The evening

central pillar, grasped both ends and pulled with sunlight coming through the slatted window

all his might in hopes of getting it to stretch. reflected in the cow’s eyes. One or two flies

Behind him, the cow plodded on, around and hovered near the cow, their wings buzzing….

around.
“Damn it!” Father took the six-foot shoulder pole

-3- they’d used to carry the rice bundles and for

three hours straight flogged the cow. As if
As Kenkichi reaped the rice, the children who’d everything were the cow’s fault.
gone off to watch the sumo returned in a large
group. Along the way they stopped to spin their “You worthless piece of shit!”

tops.
Terrified, the cow ran round and round the shed,

For a time after that, he and his parents trying to escape.

continued harvesting the rice plants. Then, as the

The harness broke and eventually the shoulder
sun sank behind the mountains to the west, one
pole snapped in half.
by one the three of them returned to their house,
each carrying a load. Three years have passed since then.

“Awful quiet over in the cow shed, isn’t it?” Whenever his mother remembers Tōji, she thinks,

“You’re right.” “I should have let him go watch the sumo that

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day. (https://apjjf.org/-Minakami_-Tsutomu/3761)

“If only I hadn’t bought that short top string! He • Wagō Ryōichi Translated and introduced by
tied it to the beam and tried to stretch it and Jeffrey Angles, Pebbles of Poetry: The Tōhoku
when the end slipped out of his hand he got Earthquake and Tsunami
trampled by the cow! If only I hadn’t bought that (https://apjjf.org/-Jeffrey-Angles/3568)
string! All for a lousy two sen!” Even now tears
• Norma Field, Commercial Appetite and
stream down her face….
Human Need: The Accidental and Fated Revival
Michael Bourdaghs is Professor in East Asian of Kobayashi Takiji's Cannery Ship
Languages and Civilizations, University of (https://apjjf.org/-Norma-Field/3058)
Chicago. He is the author of Sayonara Amerika,
• Heather Bowen-Struyk, Proletarian Arts in East
Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop
Asia
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0231158750/?tag=theasi
(https://apjjf.org/-Heather-Bowen_Struyk/2409
pacjo0b-20) (Columbia University Press, 2012;
)
Japanese trans. 2012) and The Dawn That Never
Comes: Shimazaki Tōson and Japanese Nationalism
Notes
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0231129807/?tag
A translation of Militarized Streetsand a number
1
=theasipacjo0b-20) (Columbia University Press,
2003). He is an active translator as well, including of Kuroshima’s short stories are available in

most recently Kojin Karatani, The Structure of Kuroshima Denji, A Flock of Swirling Crows and
, trans. Zeljko Cipris
Other Proletarian Writings
World History: From Modes of Production to Modes
of E x c h a n g e (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005); an
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0822356767/?tag excerpt from that translation

=theasipacjo0b-20) (Duke University Press, 2014). (http://www.japanfocus.org/-Zeljko-Cipris/224

3) is available online. See also Heather Bowen-
Recommended citation: Kuroshima Denji translation
Struyk, “Rival Imagined Communities: Class and
and introduction by Michael Bourdaghs, "The Two-
Nation in Japanese Proletarian Literature,”
Sen Copper Coin",The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol.
14.2 (2006)
positions: east asia cultures critique
12, Issue 44, No. 2, November 3, 2014.
373-404; and Kuroshima Denji, “Siberia Under

Related articles Snow,” trans. Lawrence Rogers, Critical Asian

Studies38:2 (2006), 309-319.
• Minakami Tsutomu Translated by Zeljko
See Jonathan Abel, Redacted: The Archives of
2
Cipris, Daffodils

6
 APJ | JF 12 | 44 | 2

(Berkeley: University For biographical details, see Zeljko Cipris’s

3
Censorship in Transwar Japan
of California Press, 2012), 117-120. “Introduction” in Kuroshima, A Flock of Swirling
, 1-13.
Crows and Other Proletarian Writings