Pathway to Japanese Literature

“Large Ditch”

I had received a company order to sketch the Honjo district and, together with my colleague Mr. O, set out for Honjo after a long absence.
Now, in writing this impressionistic account, titling it “Honjo-Ryogoku” may perhaps not make complete sense.
However, for some reason, though Ryogoku lies within Honjo Ward, it is certain that the air of lands beyond Honjo also lingers here.
After consulting with Mr. O, I settled on using this somewhat streetcar-destination-sign-like title “Honjo-Ryogoku.”—

I lived in Honjo continuously from birth until around twenty years old.
Honjo in the Meiji 20s and 30s was not an industrial zone like today's.
It was a town where a relatively large number of life's dropouts—those worn out by two centuries of Edo civilization—lived.
Therefore, no matter where you walked, there were no streets lined with large shops like those in Nihonbashi or Kyobashi.
If you sought even a slightly lively street within that area, it would likely have been only Motomachi-dori running from Ryogoku to Kamezawa-cho, or perhaps Futatsume-dori stretching from Nino-hashi to Kamezawa-cho.
Of course, beyond those, shops with low tiled roofs must have lined Ishiwara-dori and Hoonji-bashi-dori as well.
However, the vast Otakegura along with daimyo estates such as Lord Date and Lord Tsugaru were still unmistakably casting the shadow of the feudal era over Honjo......

In particular, I lived in Koizumi-cho near "Otakegura."
"Otakegura" had already been transformed into Ryogoku Station and the Army Clothing Depot by my middle school years.
However, during my elementary school days, it remained feudal-era "Otakegura"—still surrounded by the "Large Ditch," with its abundant mixed groves and bamboo thickets.
was.
The "Large Ditch," true to its name, measured at least one and a half ken (approximately 2.7 meters) across.
By the time I knew it, this ditch held nothing but stagnant black mudwater.
(I remember going there to scoop mosquito larvae for my goldfish as if it were yesterday.) Yet before the Meiji Restoration, it must have resembled a moat more than a mere ditch.
My uncle—then in his teens—wore swords too grand for his age as he crouched by this ditch, extending a long fishing rod.
Then came someone who struck his sword with a sharp clang of scabbards.
Of course my uncle turned over his shoulder with a sullen glare.
Within our entire family, none matched this uncle's stubborn pride.
Even then, such an uncle surely possessed courage enough to take up any challenge from certain opponents.
But when he looked—there stood an exceptionally tall samurai wearing long and short swords in vermilion scabbards crossed at his waist.
Moreover, he belonged unmistakably to that Shinsengumi feared by all.
The man walked on past my uncle with a sidelong smirk.
They say my uncle only glanced at him once before fixing his eyes unwaveringly upon his fishing rod's tip.

Even during my elementary school days, whenever I passed by the "Large Ditch," I would recall this uncle's story. The uncle had been a Shintō Munen-ryū swordsman prior to the Meiji Restoration. (The tale of how this uncle ventured on warrior training journeys to Awa and Kazusa provinces and dueled two-sword practitioners also delighted me.) Then around the time of the Meiji Restoration, he had aspired to join Shōgitai. By the time I came to know him, he had become an elderly surveyor with a stooped back. The "Large Ditch" no longer exists in today's Honjo. My uncle too fell ill with esophageal cancer and died in the late Taisho years. To include such matters in a section of my Honjo impressions might perhaps overstep into personal territory. However, when crossing Ryogoku Bridge with Mr. O and gazing at the countless barracks lining the opposite bank of the Great River, I truly could not help being astonished by this violent manifestation of transience. That I should recall my "Large Ditch," and recall too my uncle who once fished there—this was by no means mere coincidence.

Ryogoku

It would not be incorrect to say that Ryogoku’s iron bridge remained unchanged from before the Great Kanto Earthquake. Only part of its iron railing had been replaced with a shabby wooden structure. This iron bridge had been built during my elementary school days. Yet no feelings of nostalgia arose for this comb-shaped iron bridge. I still feel affection and regret for the old Ryogoku Bridge—the narrow wooden Ryogoku Bridge of yore. According to my memory, it spanned further downstream than it does today. I would sometimes cross this bridge and gaze upon the turbulent waters around the Hundred Stakes or the reed-covered sandbars. Needless to say, neither the reeds that once grew thick on those sandbars nor the Hundred Stakes remain today. True to their name, the Hundred Stakes were a disorderly array of countless posts standing in waters near the riverbank. In old plays, this sparsely trafficked riverbank at Hundred Stakes was often used alongside Tada no Yakushi’s stone quarry for scenes of murderous deeds. I do not recall whether I ever walked along this Hundred Stakes riverbank at night. But in mornings I went many times to observe crowds of anglers gathered there. Hearing me speak of this, Mr. O expressed some surprise that fish could still be caught in the Great River. Having never held a fishing rod myself, I do not know what species were caught at Hundred Stakes. Yet when I visited that riverbank at one summer dawn, none of those usual anglers had come there. Instead among the stakes lay a single shaven-headed drowned corpse facedown in water, rocked by waves……

The Monument of Loyalty at the foot of Ryogoku Bridge had also remained unchanged from the past.
The Monument of Loyalty had been inscribed by Marquis Ōyama Iwao, Commander-in-Chief of the Army during the Russo-Japanese War.
The Russo-Japanese War began when I first entered middle school.
I, born in Meiji 25 (1892), naturally have no memory of the Sino-Japanese War.
However, during the Boxer Rebellion, I would go to a print shop called Ohira in Hirokoji (Ryogoku) and occasionally buy lithographed war pictures one at a time.
In those pictures, though Boxer bandits and British soldiers lay fallen, not a single Japanese soldier was depicted as killed.
Even back then, I had thought that at least one Japanese soldier must have died.
However, when the Russo-Japanese War broke out, I believed with every fiber of my being that there was no country as wicked as Russia.
My realism did not develop as I aged. Though this was perhaps also because acquaintances of mine had been drafted.
This acquaintance had become entangled in barbed wire entanglements at the Battle of Nanshan and died in battle.
The term "barbed wire" is something that no one today is unaware of.
However, at the time the Russo-Japanese War broke out, it was one of the new words not found at all in any existing dictionaries.
I gazed at the large Monument of Loyalty and could not help thinking of Japan as it had been twenty years ago.
At the same time, I could not help but feel something akin to an anachronism in the Monument of Loyalty as well.

Behind this Monument of Loyalty, there was supposed to be a playhouse called Ryogoku Theater. Indeed, I remember seeing the brick walls of an uncompleted playhouse even before the earthquake. But now, outside of grimy zinc-roofed barracks, nothing resembling a playhouse was visible. Admittedly, just as I hold no affection for the Ryogoku Iron Bridge, I feel no particular attachment to this brick-built playhouse either. When Ryogoku Bridge was wooden, Komadome Bridge too remained in this area. Not only that, but restaurants such as Iomura-ro and Nishu-ro also lined both sides of Ryogoku Bridge. Besides these, there was Yobei the sushi shop, Suzakiya the eel restaurant, Toyotaya which served not only beef but also wild boar and monkey meat in winter, and then "Bōzu Shamo" located in an alley near Ekoin Temple's main gate—listing them one by one like this makes it clear that most of Honjo's famous eateries seemed to have clustered in this vicinity.

"Fujimi Ferry"

We turned left at the foot of Ryogoku Bridge and walked along the Great River.
The absence of the Hundred Stakes was as I had written before.
Yet Date-sama might still remain.
Since kindergarten days, I had gone to see the kagura at Wairei Shrine within Date-sama's estate.
According to my mother's stories, there was even an incident where I—while being carried on a maid's back and eagerly watching the kagura—had ended up pooping.
But wherever I looked, beyond the zinc-roofed barracks there stood no mansion resembling Date-sama.
In Date-sama's garden, a single osmanthus tree would bloom profusely each autumn.
I had loved that faintly sweet fragrance even in my childish heart.
That osmanthus tree must have of course turned to ashes in the Great Kanto Earthquake.

What unsettled me about this landscape of flux was not merely the absence of Date-sama.
I recalled that the Fujimi Ferry had indeed been in this vicinity.
However, anything resembling a ferry landing hut could not be seen anywhere.
I decided to ask a man around thirty—washing potatoes by the roadside—whether the ferry landing still existed.
But he of course did not know the name "Fujimi Ferry," nor indeed seem aware that any ferry had ever existed there.
The Fujimi Ferry had run from this riverbank to the opposite shore behind Meiji Hospital.
That farther shore had been turned into a canal where ducks from some household would occasionally swim.
Even after entering middle school, I would often cross the Fujimi Ferry to visit a certain relative.
That relative was the wife of someone called "Gorin" from the Sanyū school.
The reason Enchō's son would occasionally visit our house must have been through such family connections.
I also remember finding a nameplate for Imamura Jirō near that house and feeling respect for this renowned stenographer of various kodan tales.—

I had almost never heard kōdan storytelling at yose theaters.
The only kōdan storyteller I knew was Murauchi Kippei of the previous generation.
(Of course, I was not unaware of new-era artists such as Tenyama, Hakusan, or Hakuryū.) Therefore, to learn about kōdan, I mostly relied on Mr. Imamura Jirō’s stenographic records.
However, when it came to rakugo, I would go with my family to listen at places like Hirose in Aioi-cho and the Tachibana residence in Yonezawa-cho (Nihonbashi Ward).
The place I frequented most often was Hirose in Aioi-cho.
However, I unfortunately did not clearly remember what kind of rakugo I had heard.
The only thing I still remember vividly is having seen Yoshida Kunigorō’s puppet theater performances.
Moreover, the puppet theater performances I saw were mostly ghost stories such as Kobata Koheiji and Kasané.
I recently went to Osaka and saw a Bunraku performance for the first time in years.
However, today’s Bunraku does not employ the acrobatic-like stage tricks seen in the puppet theater performances I witnessed long ago.
In Yoshida Kunigorō’s puppet theater performances—for instance, in Seigen’s hermitage scene—the blood-soaked ghost of Seigen would emerge from within when the chanter’s desk split in two.
The Hirose yose theater must have burned down as well.
Mr. Imamura Jiro was also behind Meiji Hospital—to be honest, I am among those who do not even know whether Mr. Imamura Jiro still exists.

Before long, I discovered something that had not changed at all from pre-earthquake—or rather, twenty years prior.
It was a grassy embankment less than three feet high that held back Ryogoku Station’s spur line.
I truly could not help but feel the lament of "The nation perishes, yet mountains and rivers remain" at this grassy embankment.
However, that I felt such lament toward this small grassy embankment was itself pathetic to me.

“Otakegura”

Many of my acquaintances perished in this vicinity due to the Great Kanto Earthquake. Among the nine family members—men and women—of my wife’s relatives, only a son around twenty years old barely managed to survive. He had been standing there holding up a door plank to block the sparks when a whirlwind lifted him up and blew him to the edge of the Yasuda family’s garden pond, where he somehow regained consciousness. Then again, “Ojo-san,” who used to come to my house every day to play, survived with her life intact but similarly went mad for a time. (“Ojo-san was someone who, due to her thinning hair, could never settle anywhere.” She had even taken to smearing bat blood on her head to regrow hair.) Finally, the principal of Koto Elementary School, which I had attended, lost sight in both eyes. Then in the previous year he lost his only son, and in the year of the earthquake, both he and his wife were said to have burned to death. If I too had lived in Honjo, I would probably have been taking refuge in this area from the fire as well. Therefore, I too—and of course my family as well—might have met a tragic end like theirs. While gazing up at the tall brown Honjo Kaikan, I discussed such things with Mr. O.

“However, most people who crossed Ryogoku Bridge probably survived, didn’t they?”

“As for those who crossed Ryogoku Bridge… Well, even so, I hear there were people on Motomachi Street who died from touching fallen high-voltage lines.”

“In any case, I suppose there was no place in all of Tokyo where so many people burned to death as at the Army Clothing Depot.”

All of these various tragedies occurred at the site of the former "Otakegura." The Otakegura of my childhood had remained largely unchanged from before the Meiji Restoration, yet it had already been incorporated into the grounds of the Sobu Railway Company. Because I was friends with the second son of this railway company’s president, I even went to play inside Otakegura, which they did not allow people to enter without permission. As I mentioned before, it was a field—rare for being in the middle of town—with groves of mixed trees and bamboo thickets. Not only that, but even the moat spanned by an old bridge was connected to the Okawa. I would sometimes shoulder an air gun and spend half a day amidst those bamboo thickets and mixed groves. What first taught me—a child raised on ditch planks—the beauty of nature must have been Otakegura. Before graduating from middle school, while skimming through an English translation of *A Sportsman’s Sketches*, I would often recall scenes from Otakegura—the shade of thickets where Arisaema flowers bloomed, the treetops of mixed woods crowned by a large midday moon. Otakegura had, of course, by that time transformed into the stern Army Clothing Depot and Ryogoku Station. But when I consider today in the aftermath of the earthquake—it is no accident that the Chinese sang, "Yet gazing upon Bingzhou, this too is home."

The construction of the Sobu Railway must have begun during my elementary school days.
The Otakegura of earlier times must have been so desolate at night that I could not help but recall the "Seven Mysteries of Honjo."
"Night? No—even in daylight, as I walked through Otakegura, I could not help but believe that somewhere nearby lay the Oiteki Moat and Kataba no Ashi."
I distinctly remember hearing foolish revelry beyond Otakegura on my way to night school and being convinced it must have been tanuki drumming.
That was probably not a terror unique to my elementary school self alone.
Apparently, during the construction of the Sobu Railway, one of the track workers who frequented the area had seen a ghost in the twilight and fainted.

“Okawabata”

Honjo Kaikan was likely built on the site of the Yasuda family’s pre-earthquake residence.
The Yasuda family’s residence had indeed been a Renaissance-style building constructed using granite.
I felt the Meiji era itself in this structure standing amidst lush Japanese chinquapin trees.
Yet the Sesshonshiki-style Honjo Kaikan now hung large posters for something called “Milk Day” before its planted entrance and lined up promotional cars.
The “Japan Swimming Association,” where I went to learn swimming, had been located precisely on this riverbank.
I once discovered in some book that the third shogun Iemitsu had gone to Nihonbashi to learn swimming, and I could not help but feel a sense of past and present verging on absurdity.
Yet even our act of going to the Okawa for swimming lessons would likely strike future generations as incomprehensible.
Indeed, even now Mr. O expressed astonishment: “Did people really swim in this river?”

I discovered something unchanged from the past at this riverbank as well.
It was—alas—a tree whose species I couldn’t quite discern.
But at any rate, it stood there among old planted trees now sprouting new buds.
None of the willow trees I remembered remained today.
Yet this solitary tree must have escaped burning through some twist of fate.
I nearly succumbed to the urge to touch its trunk.
At its roots sat two grandmothers with children in tow—gazing at the Okawa River beneath leaden skies while eating inarizushi and chatting like cherry-blossom picnickers.

Next to Honjo Kaikan stood Dōai Hospital under construction.
The towering iron scaffolds, multi-story concrete walls, and especially the laborers hauling gravel—all these things overwhelmed me.
At the same time, it could not help but impress upon me the sense of "Honjo’s Gateway" now transformed into an industrial zone.
I saw a half-naked laborer alone, his body glistening with sweat as he wielded a shovel, and felt all of Honjo lived as fiercely as this man.

The story of carp streamers fluttering over the houses in this neighborhood dates back to my elementary school days.
Nowadays—everyone must surely recall May Day, Japan’s newer annual event, rather than the May carp streamers.

I would cross the bridge called Mikura Bridge that once stood in this area, and often visit a friend's house that was near Tomotsuna's home.
He too became a naval officer and passed away two or three years ago.
However, what I recalled was not necessarily limited to him alone.
I also recalled the area around his house—a side street where trees were visible between tiled roofs.
Compared to Motomachi Street where I lived, that place had far fewer pedestrians passing through, and the run-down houses stood almost uniformly in rows.
Setting aside for a moment the long-gone days when “Shiinoki Matsuura” existed, one can only say that even Honjo—which Mr. Hakushu Kitahara once sang of as “where bush warblers sang in Edo’s Yokomian”—has now transformed into a “historic Okawabata.”
However much all phenomena may be transient, a metropolis undergoing such ceaseless transformation must be rare even in the world.

We came upon what appeared to be a construction site’s wooden fence. There too, two or three laborers swung their hammers diligently as they chiseled at a large block of granite. Not only that, but even the iron bridge under construction lay spanning a great length over the Okawa River, now muddied to murkiness. I had never heard this bridge’s name, let alone any talk of its construction. The earthquake had destroyed the Fujimi Ferry behind us. But in its place, they were attempting to build a new iron bridge before us.…

“What is this bridge called?”

One of the laborers wearing a straw hat, still wielding his hammer, glanced up at my face and replied with unexpected kindness.

“This one? This is Kuramae Bridge.”

“One-Sen Steamboat.”

We turned back from there and descended to the Yokomian floating pier to board a river steamboat. In the past, these river steamers too were called One-Sen Steamboats. Now the fare was no longer one sen either. However, if one paid five sen, they could go to any district freely. Yet the floating pier with a roof—the earthquake must have turned this very pier into flames that rose to the sky—at first glance remained unchanged from the Meiji era. We sat down on a bench and, while lighting a cigarette, decided to wait for the river steamboat to arrive. “Moss has already grown on the stone wall.” “Though it has been four or five years since the earthquake…”

I had blurted out such things and found myself laughed at by Mr. O.

"It's only natural for moss to grow."

The Okawa River stretched before us, its entire surface churned into muddy murkiness as I'd previously described. The opposite bank where a dredger raised its crane was unmistakably no longer the Shubi no Matsu area nor the old First and Second Moats with their rows of storehouses. Even the boats plying the river now were reduced to small steamers and daruma barges. The Godairikisen, Takasebune, Tenma, Nidashi, Tanefune—all those traditional Japanese vessels great and small must have been swept away by time's relentless current before we noticed. As I spoke with Mr. O, I recalled that Chinese verse: "Day and night, the Yuan and Xiang flow eastward into oblivion." A river coursing through such a metropolis could never maintain the eternal grace of those legendary streams. Our present age was industrializing even the Okawa itself with every passing moment.

However, the people waiting on this floating pier for a river steamboat were generally more conservative than the Okawa River itself. While puffing on a cigarette, I gazed at a man in a striped Tōzan kimono and a woman with her hair in a ginkgo-leaf chignon, unable to shake a feeling akin to contradiction. At the same time, I could not help but feel something akin to nostalgia for having encountered the Meiji era. What came rowing up from downstream was a Godairikisen boat seen after a long time. On the high-sterned Godairikisen, a boatman wearing a headband pushed a sculling oar over ten feet long. Then a woman who appeared to be his wife thrust her pole with no less vigor than her husband. Few things could stir such strangely lyrical feelings within us as these boat-dwelling couples did. While watching this Godairikisen—and while watching the four- or five-year-old boy aboard it—I even found myself feeling somewhat envious of their happiness.

The river steamboat that had passed through Ryogoku Bridge finally pulled alongside the floating pier.
“Sumidamaru No. 30” (?)—I must have ridden this small steamboat many times before.
In any case, it remained unchanged from the Meiji era.
The river steamboat was packed to capacity, with no small number of standing passengers.
We had no choice but to stand by the boat’s side and watch the scenery of both banks bathed in faint sunlight.
Yet we two were not alone in standing by the boat’s side.
Before us stood even a long-bearded old man in a summer coat, likewise positioned at the rail.

The river steamboat quietly began to move.
Then from among the crowd of passengers, a merchant selling picture postcards and magazines suddenly began calling out in a shrill voice, "Pardon the disturbance..."
This too remained unchanged from times past.
If there were any difference at all, it might lie in their inserting phrases like "In this age where everything's all hustle and bustle."
I had never once bought anything from such vendors since my elementary school days.
But peering down at him through the skylight, I suddenly recalled riding a river steamboat with my aunt during those schooldays.

Transfer: "One-Sen Steamboat"

Where had we gone at that time? In any case, my aunt alone had a basket of Chomeiji’s sakura mochi on her lap.

Then, a man and a woman among the passengers, glancing sidelong at our faces, began saying, “Something smells...”
“Yeah, it reeks of shit,” they began saying things like.
To call Chomeiji’s sakura mochi shit-stinking—I still remember how impudently I scorned these two as country bumpkins.
I have not once set foot in Chomeiji Temple since the earthquake.
And then there’s Chomeiji’s sakura mochi—of course, it is certain that their reputation remains as good as in the past.
However, the rustic charm that once resided in its filling and skin had long since vanished.…

The river steamboat passed beneath Kuramae Bridge and proceeded straight toward Umaya Bridge.
From the opposite direction, a river steamboat not much different from ours began approaching, kicking up waves.
But when I saw it pass seven or eight ken away, this vessel had an awning spread over its rear deck and was properly equipped to view both banks of the Okawa River.
Even such old-fashioned steamers could not escape being swept up in our dizzying times.
What came rushing up behind was a motorboat carrying passengers and geisha.
The elderly who remembered roofed boats and waterway inns must have grimaced at this motorboat.
I am no admirer of Edo aesthetics.
Therefore I do not consider motorboats uncouth.
Yet during my elementary days, only the One-Sen Steamboat made waves in the Okawa River.
Or perhaps only those paddle steamers plying the Tone River besides.
Whenever I rode ferryboats, I feared those One-Sen Steamboat waves—how their undulating swell would rock the vessel.
But today's Okawa must bear too many wave-makers to count.

I stood at the ship's edge, gazing out over the mouse-gray river, and remembered that Hiroshige had indeed depicted kappas here. These water imps were said to haunt even Daikonkashi's waterways during the Meiji era—or at least around the time of the Restoration. My mother once told of a widowed gardener on Kanze Shinroji Road who claimed a kappa from Daikonkashi River tickled his armpits while he washed his child's diaper. (That a gardener ever lived on Kanze Shinroji now strikes us as strange enough.) How much more improbable then that Okawa River hosted no small number of kappas. No, it wasn't just kappas either. One of Father's friends had gone night-fishing when something clambered aboard—a soft-shelled turtle with a washbasin-sized carapace, or so he swore. Of course I don't take such tales as literal truth. Yet Meiji-era folk—or those from earlier times—must have possessed such poetic dread of our town's rivers that they could believe they'd witnessed these monsters.

“There probably aren’t any kappa left now.”

“With all this mud and oil flowing everywhere, you see.”
“But there might still be two elderly kappa living around here under this bridge.”

The river steamboat passed beneath Umaya Bridge in the midst of our conversation.
Only under the dim bridge did the waves retain a lingering blueness.
I used to recall the briny scent whenever I rode the ferryboat—no, even when crossing bridges at times.
But the water of the Okawa today holds no scent at all.
If it still had any scent at all, it would only be the stench of mud.…

“That bridge there is the new Komagata Bridge they’re building, isn’t it?”

Mr. O, unfortunately, could not answer my question.
Komagata was mostly called “Komakata” during my elementary school days.
But even that had long since come to be pronounced “Komagata.”
“You are now near Komagata, hototogisu”—the courtesan who composed this poem might have also wished for the clear sound of “Komakata” to resonate with the voice of the hototogisu.
The Chinese said, “Writing is a matter for eternity.”
But that writings too naturally lose their fragrance is no different from the Okawa River’s water.

Yanagishima

We disembarked from the river steamboat and emerged at the foot of Azuma Bridge, where we decided to board an en-taku taxi that happened to be there and head toward Yanagishima.
I have no memory of traveling along this tramway from Azuma Bridge to Yanagishima more than two or three times.
And let alone before the streetcars ran here, I had likely never passed through even once.
Never?—If I had ever passed through even once, it was only during my elementary school days when I attended a funeral at a fairly large temple that stood near Narihira Bridge or somewhere thereabouts.
On our way back from that funeral, I believe I had my father tell me about Honjo before the Meiji Restoration.
Father looked left and right along the road as he spoke, saying things like, "This area was all fields in the old days," and "Cranes used to descend in Lord So-and-so’s rice field out back."
However, among all those stories, the one that moved me most was how before the Meiji Restoration they would place corpses—those who had collapsed dead or hanged themselves—into coffins, wrap those coffins in reed screens, set up a single white lantern, and leave them out in the fields.
I imagined a white paper lantern standing in the grassy plain and felt a beauty that was somehow unsettling.
And when it came to coffins rolling over of their own accord in the dead of night—Honjo of the Meiji era, though lacking in grassy plains, likely still retained here some traces of what was called the atmosphere beyond vermilion seals.
But now, wherever I looked, there were only electric poles and barracks jostling and pushing against each other.
Through the taxi window splattered with mud, I gazed at the streets, feeling nothing but melancholy in this ashura realm where money served as weaponry.

We alighted from the en-taku taxi before Hashimoto and decided to follow the inky black moat water toward Kameido Tenjinsha. The renowned Hashimoto of Yanagishima had now been converted into a restaurant. Though it seemed this house had escaped burning down. Indeed, parts of the old-fashioned house and its neglected garden still remained. But the eaves lantern with "Restaurant" written in green on frosted glass felt utterly ephemeral to me at least. Of course, I was no connoisseur qualified to critique Hashimoto's cuisine. Moreover, I remained uncertain whether I'd ever actually visited Hashimoto at all. Yet it must have been on this Hashimoto's second floor that Fifth Kikugoro first suffered his cerebral hemorrhage.

The Myoken-sama across the moat now stood completely denuded. Then there was also the thoroughfare along the moat—when I read Buson's haiku collection in middle school and encountered the verse "As you depart, willows green, the road long," I could not help recalling the willow trees that once lined this roadway. But the thoroughfare we now walked along was a cramped yet bustling one flanked by Arita Drug and Aiseikan. The recent proliferation of unlicensed prostitutes they spoke of was likely concentrated in the back alleys of this thoroughfare. I remembered the nightscapes of Asakusa Senzoku-cho from when unlicensed prostitutes still abounded. That scene, with lights glowing in every window of the towering Twelve-Story Building, had possessed an almost solemn air. Yet no matter which way one traversed this thoroughfare, not a trace of Baudelairean hues could be found—of this there was no doubt. Even had I been a Decadent poet, I would never have felt compelled to wander such backstreets. However, Saito Ryokuu, that Meiji-era satirist, had discovered in the Twelve-Story Building the very essence of vulgar taste. Then perhaps tomorrow's poets would come to sing their own "Flowers of Evil"—or maybe even "Flowers of Good"—to Arita Drug and Aiseikan.

Hagi Temple Vicinity

While pondering trivial matters, I suddenly looked up at Aiseikan’s bulletin board. Then, what was written there was indeed these words.

"God has created so many people.
‘And therefore lovingly does care for human beings.’"

Of course, birth control advocates—indeed, people of this world—cannot help but smile at such words.
We who suffer from overpopulation cannot regard the existence of so many people as evidence of God’s love.
No—rather, it may even be regarded as evidence of the almighty Lord’s hatred.
However, according to my old friend who teaches elementary students in a Honjo backstreet, at least in that neighborhood, families with more children actually find life easier.
This was because, he said, once any child reached ten or eleven years old, they would each begin earning a day’s wages in their own way.
The person who wrote these words on Aiseikan’s bulletin board may not have known this fact.
But indeed, such words must serve to voice the sentiments of those living in a certain backstreet of Honjo in this world.
It is true that while it is said that the more children there are, the easier life becomes, there remains some doubt as to whether this is actually fortunate for the children themselves.

Then in passing we visited Hagi Temple briefly.
Though supported by buttress poles, Hagi Temple had apparently escaped burning in the Great Kanto Earthquake.
But pitifully few remained—only four or five clumps of bush clover—and the water in the old pond before Naobumi Ochiai-sensei's stone monument had dried up completely parched.
Only the tea house overlooking this ancient pond had grown more desolate than in former days.
As I left Hagi Temple's gate, I recalled my family's ancestral temple that once stood in Sarue, Honjo.
At that temple there had remained not just the graves of Shiba Kōkan and Kobayashi Heihachirō, but also the famous lovers' tomb of Urato Tokijirō.
Of course my knowledge of Shiba Kōkan didn't extend back very far.
Yet Kobayashi Heihachirō—who fought wielding twin swords in his long-sleeved kimono during the loyal retainers' night raid—had been nothing less than a hero to us elementary schoolchildren.
Then there was Urato Tokijirō too—like all Tokyoites, I've been inextricably tied to theater.
Thus I too had revered Urato Tokijirō since my schooldays.
(Though to confess honestly, when I first saw Urato Tokijirō on stage, what stirred feelings of love in me wasn't Urato but rather his bald companion.) This temple—Jigen-ji of the Nichiren sect—had relocated near Somei's cemetery several years before the earthquake.
Their graves must have moved along with the temple to that same plot.
Yet that damp Sarue cemetery still lingers in my memory.
Particularly unforgettable was the sight of scarlet spider lilies blooming vividly before Kobayashi Heihachirō's grave mossed with pale lichen—a vision perhaps unique to Meiji-era Honjo.

The utility pole(?) beyond Hagi Temple showed a painted signpost that read "Shortcut to Kameido Tenjinsha" (亀井戸天神近道). We turned down that side street and walked along a cramped thoroughfare lined with teahouses and cafés. But we could not easily reach Kameido Tenjinsha itself. Then a girl stood by the roadside, brazenly bouncing a rubber ball while fluttering the sleeves of her merino dress.

"How do we get to Kameido Tenjinsha?"

“That way.”

After answering us, the girl added in a voice meant to be overheard:

“Everyone just keeps asking about Tenjinsha, huh.”

I felt a flicker of irritation and glanced back at this precocious girl of about ten.
Yet she kept bouncing her ball without even a sidelong glance (though fully aware of my gaze).
Truly, as the Chinese say, “Observing from that which remains unchanging...”
Nothing ever changes—this much is certain.
I too had shamelessly gone to herbalists in my elementary days, making requests like “Some hanshi paper, please.”

"Kameido Tenjinsha"

We finally reached the back gate of Kameido Tenjinsha through the gate-lined row of teahouses.
There inside the gate stood a man in a summer coat holding forth while peddling small law books to bystanders.
I found myself exasperated by his oratory.
Yet when we pushed through this crowd, next appeared a suited man hawking so-called eye drops made through cutting-edge chemical applications.
This plaza behind Kameido Tenjinsha had not existed during my elementary school years.
But even after its creation, the show tents that sprang up here contained nothing beyond mechanical puppets and karakuri automata.

“This one’s law, that one’s chemistry—quite the pairing.”

“Kameido too must have entered the realm of science.”

While discussing such things, we went to pay a visit to Tenjinsha for the first time in years. Tenjinsha’s worship hall had fortunately remained unchanged from the past. No—the Brush Mound and Stone Ox too remained just as they always were. I recalled how during my elementary school days, I had deposited several old brushes into the Brush Mound. (Though my handwriting shows no sign of improvement, no matter how many years pass.) Then I remembered the pains I took to toss coins onto the Stone Ox’s forehead. The coins used for such occasions weren’t one-sen copper pieces like today’s. Most were five-rin coins or Kanei Tsuho (寛永通宝). And how many years ago had it been that collecting inscribed coins from among those holed mon to make so-called “mon-sen rings” became fashionable? We stopped before the worship hall, removed our hats for a moment, and paid our respects.

“Is the Taiko Bridge still as it was in the old days?”

“Yes—but was it really this small back then?”

“Things that seemed so large in childhood turn out to be surprisingly small later on, don’t they?”

“That might not apply only to the Taiko Bridge.”

We walked under a wisteria trellis dangling short clusters of blossoms, gazing through the tea house’s noren curtains at the pond’s dull glint of water.
This tea house and wisteria trellis too remained unchanged from the past.
Yet I could not help feeling an anachronism at poetry monuments of ancient poets standing beneath trees and along the pond’s edge.
The “elegant pastimes” born in the Edo period had perished with that era itself.
Still, our Meiji era had retained somewhere a vestige of those two centuries’ “elegant pastimes.”
But now before my very eyes—Mr. O grinned slyly, unwittingly revealing this contradiction to me himself.

“They’re selling calcium rice crackers too, aren’t they.”
“Ah, in front of that large poetry monument—even so, papier-mâché turtles are still being sold.”

After exiting Tenjinsha, we discussed eating kudzu mochi at Funabashiya.
But having grown distant from Honjo, even Funabashiya proved difficult for me to locate.
I had no choice but to ask a rustic question to the woman sprinkling water in front of a hardware store.
Then, passing in front of the venereal disease clinic, we finally managed to reach Funabashiya again.
Funabashiya too had renewed its building, but on the whole remained unchanged from the past.
We sat down on the bench and, while gazing at the photographs of the Japanese Alps displayed above the lintel, decided to each have a plate of kudzu mochi.

“It’s so cheap—only ten sen.”

Mr. O was deeply impressed.
However, in my middle school days, kudzu mochi was three sen per plate.
I would eat this kudzu mochi each time on the way back from outings to places like Koto Plum Garden that I took with my friends.
Koto Plum Garden must have perished along with Garyubai.
Kameido, with its rice paddies and hazel trees, possessed a Nanga-style charm precisely because it was such a renowned spot for plum blossoms.
But now, even before Funabashiya, across the wide newly developed thoroughfare, several two-story shops stand side by side...

Kinshibori

I decided to take an en-taku taxi again from the foot of Tenjinbashi Bridge.
No matter where I looked in this neighborhood—I had grown weary of even discussing the changes between past and present.
What met my eye was a half-completed small park.
Or a factory surrounded by a zinc fence.
Or a shabby barracks.
Mr. Saito Mokichi once composed on some occasion: "Can it be that things are left undone?"
But today’s Honjo did not manifest "orderly progress".
What existed there resembled something closer to "leaps of things" born of the Great Kanto Earthquake.
I recalled that there used to be a provisions depot around here in the past, further recalled that this provisions depot had caught fire, and felt that the phrase "like a dewdrop, like a lightning flash" was by no means an exaggeration.

The Third Middle School I attended had also been rebuilt in reinforced concrete.
I attended this middle school for five years.
The school building from that time had likely turned to ashes in the earthquake. However, during my middle school days, it had been a two-story wooden structure painted mouse-gray.
Then around the school building, several poplars swayed gently.
(Because the soil in this area was poor, trees other than poplars grew poorly.) While attending there, I learned not only English and mathematics but also came to experience how pitiful we humans are.
In saying this, I am not speaking ill of my teachers and friends.
When we speak of "we humans," of course I am included among them.
For example, we bullied a certain friend and buried him alive in sand.
There was no particular reason we bullied him.
If we were to cite something resembling a reason, it would simply be his impertinence—or perhaps that he refused to bend himself easily.
Five or six years ago, when I spoke with him about this for the first time in years, I sensed that even this minor incident had cast a dark shadow over his heart.
He now lives as ever in solitude along the banks of the Yangtze River...

Along with such friends of mine, what surfaces in my memory are the teachers who taught us. I have no intention of adding each and every such memory to this "Prosperity Chronicle." However, the one person I wish to sketch here is Yamada-sensei. Yamada-sensei was what they called the kendo instructor at Third Middle School. His swordsmanship likely equaled that of feudal-era masters. One student who trained under him reportedly participated in a Budokai tournament; when he struck his opponent's kote with a bamboo sword, the sheer intensity of his kiai shattered the man's arm in one blow. But what I wish to convey extends beyond his kendo prowess. Yamada-sensei practiced asceticism through fasting while pursuing the path of Taoist immortality. Moreover, he remained convinced that even in Meiji-era Japan there existed genuine sages who had mastered techniques of eternal life. Unlike Yamada-sensei, I unfortunately feel no reverence for such immortals. Yet I've always respected his rigorous discipline. Once he entered the natural history classroom and drank an entire cup of sublimate water mistaking it for ordinary water. Upon discovering this, the natural history teacher panicked and summoned a doctor. No sooner had the physician arrived than he tried to administer an emetic. But when Yamada-sensei understood it was a vomit-inducing agent, he calmly replied:

“Yamada Jirokichi may be past sixty, but I’m not so senile as to vomit in front of others.”
“Please have a car called.”

Yamada-sensei performed some sort of technique and ultimately ended up not consulting a doctor.
I have not heard any rumors about Yamada-sensei from anyone these past three or four years.
That long-faced Yamada-sensei is perhaps already keeping company with the figures from Liexian Zhuan.
However, I remained in the dusty air—the taxi carrying us had crossed Koto Bridge and driven on while I was lost in such thoughts.

Midori-chō, Kamezawa-chō.

Beyond Koto Bridge too, there remained nothing but barracks.
As I gazed through the taxi window at zinc roofs stained red with rust and the grain of painted planks, I found myself recalling the great flood that had surely occurred in Meiji 43 [1910].
Honjo today might suffer fires, but it would likely never again experience floods.
Yet that deluge remains in my memory as having reached the highest water levels.
The evacuation of people from around Koto Bridge to Third Middle School had also taken place during this great flood.
To cross Koto Bridge itself, I had needed to swim through muddy water that had risen completely around me.
……

“It was truly terrible back then.”
“Though of course, in my house at least, the water didn’t reach above the floor.”

“So there were shallow parts too?”

“Midori-chō 2-chōme—I suppose. In that area, it only came up to about knee-level, you see. I went with a friend called S to visit another friend living deep in that back alley. Then S fell into a ditch…”

“Ah—the floodwater must have hidden where the ditches were.”

“Exactly—but S’s knees were still sticking out above the water. Then in an instant—it must’ve been a surprisingly deep ditch—only his head remained above the surface, I imagine. I couldn’t help laughing at the sight.”

The taxi carrying us passed in front of Kotobuki-za as we were engaged in such talk.
Kotobuki-za, with its painted signboard displayed, did not seem to have changed much from the old days.
According to my father's account, this area—from Futatsume-dori onward—was the estate of Lord Tsugaru.
In a certain year before the Meiji Restoration, during New Year’s, my father went across the river to pay his respects and, upon returning as he crossed Ryogoku Bridge, found himself accompanied by a young samurai he did not recognize at all.
He too properly wore the long and short swords at his side and was dressed in formal attire bearing a hawk-feather crest.
While talking with him, my father had unintentionally passed by my house.
Not only that, but when he suddenly became aware of his surroundings, he had rolled into Lord Tsugaru’s ditch.
At the same time, the young samurai had also vanished somewhere.
Father returned to my house still covered in mud.
It is said that at the moment my father’s sword slipped from its scabbard, it stood upside down in the ditch.
It is said that thereafter, the fox that had transformed into a young samurai (my father still believes this samurai was indeed a fox), having been frightened by the gleam of the sword, finally managed to escape.
Whether it was actually a transformed fox or not makes no difference to me.
Every time I was told such stories by my father, I would imagine how desolate old Honjo used to be.

We alighted from the taxi at the corner of Kamezawa-chō and walked along Motomachi-dōri toward Ryōgoku.
The confectionery Judoku-an still seemed to be thriving as it had in the old days.
However, the pawnshop across from it had become Yasuda Bank.
This pawnshop's "Ri-ichan" had also been my elementary school friend.
I remembered how during playtime we would boast to each other about things in our homes.
My friends were not all sons of elderly petty officials like me.
But no one could help being astonished by Ri-ichan’s words.

“In my family’s storehouse, there’s even Ōzutsu Man'emon’s ceremonial belt.”

Ōzutsu was a sumo wrestler who held the rank of yokozuna during our elementary school days—back when Hitachiyama and Umegatani were ōzeki.

Aioi-chō

Honjo Police Station had also, without anyone noticing, become a concrete building.
The police station in my memory was an old red brick structure.
I remember that the police chief’s son was also my friend.
Then there was the umbrella shop next to the police station—does Mr. Kijima from that shop still remember me today?
No—it wasn’t just Mr. Kijima.
I remember all the friends who lived in this neighborhood.
Yet as years passed, those friends must now lead lives completely separate from mine.
Four or five years ago at a muster inspection, I found myself grouped with Mr. Okamoto from Oogamiya Paper.
The Oogamiya Paper I knew remained an old storehouse-style shop unchanged since feudal times.
In that dimly lit store, clerks and apprentices had bustled about busily.
But according to Mr. Okamoto, they’d since restructured the business and were making plans to export paper overseas.

“Has this area completely changed as well?”

“There are still shops that have been here since the old days, but…the restlessness of the whole town, you know.”

I recalled the mud of “Bashamichi” (so named for the rickety carriages that once traveled to Yotsume) where that Oogamiya Paper shop had stood. But even in the Meiji era, several shinise—long-established shops bearing feudal-era shadows like Oogamiya Paper once did—still remained. I remember Uozenshi, the fish shop that had stood on this Bashamichi street. And I remember Dr. Higuchi with his gate-front house. Finally, I remember how this Dr. Higuchi’s neighborhood had housed Shimizu Sadakichi, the pistol-wielding robber. The Meiji era, like all eras, had produced its criminal geniuses. This pistol bandit likely ranked among them alongside Inazuma the Lightning Bandit and Torakichi of the Five-Inch Nails. I couldn’t help feeling romantic fascination with how I’d posed as his masseur to distract police eyes, or turned his house walls into secret panels for ghost-like comings and goings. These criminal geniuses mostly became novel protagonists—then characters in so-called shishi political plays. I’d seen something called “The Great Evil Monk” in these dramas, their blood-drenched scenes leaving me sleepless through nights. Though perhaps this “Great Evil Monk” never truly existed like our pistol bandit had.

We found ourselves passing before the dust-colored Kokugikan at some point. Kokugikan appeared to be hosting an exhibition of a model of Nikko Toshogu Shrine or something similar. The Koto Elementary School I attended had stood exactly there. The great ginkgo tree that still remains extended its branches at the edge of Koto Elementary School's playground—or rather, at the edge of the attached kindergarten's playground. As I had written before, the elementary school principal at that time died in the earthquake. However, I recently met Mr. T, who had remained at the school since those days, and learned that a certain female teacher who taught sewing to the girls had died in a ditch near what was likely the Kyogoku Viscount family's drainage canal. Though her kimono had decayed and her body been reduced to bones, they said her bankbook alone remained intact, allowing them to finally identify her. According to Mr. T, most teachers who taught us were apparently no longer in Honjo. I remember being struck by Hiruma-sensei. Then I remember being hit on the back of the head by Mune-sensei. Then by Haewaka-sensei—though what I recall isn't just corporal punishment. I also remember various comedic incidents occurring within that elementary school. Particularly comical was when my close friend Oshima, sitting properly at his desk, ended up defecating—a comedy among comedies. Yet this Oshima Toshio too—the prodigy of Koto Elementary School who loved flowers and songs—had passed away in his early twenties...

It is probably common knowledge that Ekoin Temple stands next to the Kokugikan.
The so-called honbasho sumo tournaments too, before the Kokugikan was built, had mat-covered huts erected in Ekoin Temple's precincts.
We turned by the side of the Kokugikan to see the renowned Ekoin Temple, ever since the raid by these loyalists.
But even that had completely changed from its former self, just as I had secretly anticipated before coming here.

Ekoin Temple

Today's Ekoin Temple was barracks. However much its zinc roof with gilt crests might warp, the main hall with glass doors could only be called barracks. As we listened to sutra chanting, I nevertheless went to visit the familiar grave of Nezumi Kozo. Before the grave even now were gathered three or four beggars. But such things mattered little. What startled me more was the presence of something called a Fur Seal Memorial Pagoda standing there. Gazing vacantly at this stone monument, I found myself feeling sympathy for Nezumi Kozo's grave beyond it.

Nezumi Kozo Jirokichi’s grave, as the sign indicated, survived even the Great Kanto Earthquake’s fires. The red lanterns, candles, and plaque for Kyokaku Sokzen Koji remained much as they had been before. Yet current precautions extended beyond merely guarding against tombstone damage. A small paper notice reading “Talisman stones available for official requests” now clung neatly to the grave’s front pillar. We turned from this site and pressed deeper into the cemetery—toward Kyoden’s resting place behind the Kokugikan hall.

This cemetery too held nostalgia for me. Time and again, my friends and I would playfully knock over stone pagodas here, only to be chased by temple keepers and monks. To be sure, in those days the trees grew so thickly that it felt less like a graveyard than a field of funerary stupas. But now fierce fire scars marked not only the tombstones but even the iron fences encircling the graves. I turned past the Mizuko-zuka monument and reached Kyoden's grave. Kyoden's resting place remained unchanged from the past, as did Kyoyama's beside it. Only before these graves stood a single young tree—perhaps a persimmon—its spindly branches stretching out while unfurling tender leaves, a pitiful sight indeed.

We exited Ekoin Temple’s main gate and walked toward Ichime Bridge while looking at a shorn rooster that too had become part of the barracks landscape. If my memory holds true, this area around Ichime Bridge still retained some Hiroshige-like pictorial charm even during the Taisho era. But no trace of such scenery remains today. As we retraced our steps along the mercilessly widened road toward Ryogoku, we chanced to pass before Tai-chan’s house.

Tai-chan was the son of a geta shop owner. Even in my elementary school days, I had been somewhat skilled at essay writing. But my essays—or rather, our essays—were mostly what you might call ornate prose.

“White cranes alight upon Fuji’s snow-capped peak; gazing skyward, the moon shines fair—yet black lies my shadow.” This was not my essay. It belonged to one of my elementary school friends who died two or three years prior—Shimizu Masahiko.

Tai-chan alone had crafted vivid colloquial sentences within such compositions—sentences unbound by textbook conventions. This occurred when we received the essay topic “Rainbow.” In my heart, I had been certain my essay would take first place.

Yet the teacher awarded top honors to “Tai-chan”—Kimura Taisuke, son of the geta shop Isejin—and commanded him to read his work aloud. That recitation moved me more profoundly than any other.

I naturally felt thoroughly bested by Tai-chan’s work. Simultaneously, through his “Rainbow,” I distinctly sensed an evening shower sweeping past.

The writings that have stirred me are not few across this land. Yet first among them remains this essay by “Tai-chan.” Fate made me a peddler of words.

If Tai-chan had taken up the pen as I did, readers of *The Great Tokyo Prosperity Chronicle* might have encountered an impressionistic account several degrees more beautiful than this "Honjo-Ryogoku." But what had become of Tai-chan? I stood before the display window lined with rows of geta and quietly shifted my gaze into the shop. Inside sat a woman who appeared to be Tai-chan's mother. Yet Kimura Taisuke himself was nowhere to be seen.…

*Hojoki*

"I went to Honjo today."

"Honjo has completely changed."

"What about our neighborhood? How has it become?"

"What's it become? Well... we sold our house to Mr. Ishii from the fishing rod shop, right?"
"There's just that Mr. Ishii now."
"Ah, and there was a lantern shop too..."

“There was a public bathhouse there too, wasn’t there?”

“There still is a public bathhouse called Tokiwa-yu.”

“Was it called Tokiwa-yu, I wonder?”

“Has the area where I lived changed too, I wonder?”

“The only thing that hasn’t changed is the stone riverbank.”

“What about the big willow that was there?”

“The willows? Of course they burned up.”

“When you were still small, streetcars hadn’t yet started running through there, you know.”

“Even between Ueno and Shinbashi, there was only a horse-drawn railway.—Whenever I hear ‘horse-drawn railway,’ what comes to mind is…”

“You’re talking about when I wet myself, right? I stayed on that packed horse-drawn railway…”

“That’s right—he was wearing red flannel underwear, and…”

“Oh, that Mr. Kobe from the horse-drawn railway company.”
“Mr. Kobe also passed away the other day.”

"I said, 'You mean Mr. Kobe from Tokyo Electric Light?'
'Oh? You know Mr. Kobe?'

'Of course I know him.'
'I even used to know Mr. Okura and others.'

'I said, "Ōkura Kuhachirō..."'

'I too, back then—if only I had—'

'That's more than enough already.'"

“That’s true. If things had gotten even worse that day…” (laughs)

“The area around Hazenoki-baba is beyond recognition now,” I said.

“Katsushika Hokusai once lived there,” replied Father.

“Waridashi had changed too,” I added.

“There were many disreputable lower samurai there,” Mother remarked.

“Even in the time I remember, it somehow felt like that kind of place.”

“What has become of O-Tsuru’s house?”

“O-Tsuru?
“Ah, that daughter of the indigo merchant?”

“Yes, the person Brother liked.”

“I wonder how that house was.”
“I went to see it for Brother’s sake too, you know.”
“Though I had passed by it before.”

“I haven’t been there once since the earthquake year—though I suppose if I did go, I’d be shocked.”

I said, “You’d only be shocked by it—you might not even recognize anything there now.”

“After all, everything’s changed beyond recognition.”
“Back then when evening fell, everyone would crack their gates open just a bit to watch the street—wouldn’t you say?”

“Waiting for Hokai-bushi songs to come back around, you know.”

“There must’ve been bats everywhere in those days.”

I said, “Now even sparrows don’t fly here anymore.”
“I’ve truly felt life’s impermanence… Still, you ought to go see for yourself once.”
“It keeps changing faster by the day.”

“I want to show the children Kameido’s Drum Bridge once.”
“Garyūbai must be gone by now, don’t you think?”

“Yes, that’s long been gone.
“…Well, now I must write ‘I was surprised’ exactly fifteen times.”

“If you just write ‘surprised, surprised,’ that should suffice.”
(laughs)

“What else could I possibly write? If there were anything else to write… Ah, right. Someone has already written it all in this pocketbook――‘In the capital adorned with jewels, where dwellings of noble and common folk stand roof against roof through endless generations—yet if we ask whether this endures, scarce remains any house of old.……Of those seen in antiquity, among twenty or thirty people, barely one or two remain. Those born at morn die by eve, their existence resembling nothing so much as water bubbles. They know not—those who are born and die—whence they come or whither they go.’…”

“What’s that? Isn’t that ‘Ofumi-sama’?”

“This?” I said.
“This is Hojoki.”
“A book written by someone slightly more eminent than myself—a man called Kamo no Chōmei.”

(May of Shōwa 2)