Pathway to Japanese Literature

Woof.

One winter evening, Yasuyoshi was gnawing on a greasy piece of toast on the second floor of a dingy restaurant.
In front of his table stood a cracked white wall.
Diagonally beside it was pasted a long, narrow sign that read: "Hot ('Warm') Sandwiches Available."
(One of his colleagues had earnestly puzzled over this, reading it as “Relievingly Warm Sandwiches.”) To the left was a descending staircase; to the right, immediately adjacent, stood a glass window.
He gnawed on his toast while occasionally gazing blankly out the window.
Outside the window, across the street, hung a zinc-roofed secondhand shop displaying blue workmen’s jackets and khaki-colored coats.

That evening, an English meeting was scheduled to begin at six-thirty at the school.
Having an obligation to attend, and since he did not live in this town, he had no choice but to remain in such a place until six-thirty after school, whether he liked it or not.
If I recall correctly, there was a poem by Mr. Taki Aika—my apologies if I’ve misremembered.
——“Having come all this way only to gnaw on a shit-like beefsteak—oh wife, oh wife, how I miss you!”
Every time he came there, he would invariably recall this poem.
Of course, the wife he should have been longing for the most was one he had not yet taken.
However, gazing at the secondhand shop’s wares, gnawing on his greasy toast, and seeing the sign for “Hot ('Warm') Sandwiches,” the words “Oh wife, oh wife, how I miss you!” would rise unbidden to his lips.

Yasuyoshi had also noticed two young naval officers drinking beer behind him some time ago.
One of them was the Accounting Officer from the same school, whose face he recognized.
Unfamiliar with naval officers, he did not know this man’s name.
No—it wasn’t just the name.
He didn’t even know whether he was ensign-level or lieutenant junior grade.
The only thing he knew was that when receiving his monthly salary, it passed through this person’s hands.
He knew nothing about the other one.
Whenever they refilled their beer, the two used words like “Hey!” or “Oi!”
Even so, the waitress didn’t make a disagreeable face and diligently went up and down the stairs while holding cups in both hands.
Yet even when Yasuyoshi ordered a cup of black tea at his table, she never readily brought it.
This wasn’t unique to here.
It was the same at any café or restaurant in this town.

The two were drinking beer and talking loudly about something.
Of course, Yasuyoshi had not been listening to their conversation.
But what suddenly startled him were the words: “Bark like a dog.”
He did not like dogs.
He was one who took pleasure in listing literary figures such as Goethe and Strindberg among those who disliked dogs.
Therefore, when he heard these words, he imagined a large Western dog—the kind often kept in such places.
At the same time, he felt an eeriness at the thought that it might be lurking behind him.

He quietly glanced behind him.
But there, he saw neither good fortune nor anything resembling a dog.
The only thing there was the Accounting Officer looking out the window and smirking.
Yasuyoshi surmised that the dog was probably under the window.
But he somehow felt strange.
Then the Accounting Officer said again, “Bark like a dog. Hey, bark like a dog!”
Yasuyoshi twisted his body slightly and peered down at the window below.
First to enter his view was an unlit eaves lantern that doubled as an advertisement for Masamune something-or-other.
Then there was a rolled-up sunshade.
Then there was a leather strap left forgotten to dry on the rainwater barrel for beer kegs.
And then there was a puddle in the street.
Then—whatever else there might have been—he saw no sign of a dog anywhere.
Instead, he saw a twelve- or thirteen-year-old beggar standing shivering, gazing up at the second-floor window.

“Bark like a dog!”
“Won’t you bark?!”

The Accounting Officer called out once more.
Those words seemed to possess some power that dominated the beggar’s heart.
The beggar, almost like a sleepwalker, his eyes still fixed upward, took a step or two closer to the window below.
Yasuyoshi had finally discovered the malicious prank of the Accounting Officer.
A prank?—Or perhaps it wasn’t a prank after all.
If not a prank, then it was an experiment.
To what extent will humans sacrifice their own dignity for the sake of their stomachs?
—an experiment concerning that very question.
According to Yasuyoshi’s own thinking, this was by no means a matter that required conducting an experiment as if it were something novel now.
Esau cast away his birthright for roasted meat, and Yasuyoshi became a teacher for bread.
Seeing such facts should suffice.
But that experimental psychologist would hardly feel his research curiosity satisfied with something as trivial as this.
In that case, it was De gustibus non est disputandum—what he had taught his students that very day.
There’s no accounting for taste.
If you want to conduct your experiment, then by all means, go ahead and try.
—While thinking this, Yasuyoshi gazed at the beggar below the window.

The Accounting Officer remained silent for a while.
Then the beggar, appearing unsettled, began looking around the street in both directions.
He had no particular objection to imitating a dog, but he must have been daunted by the eyes of those around him.
But before those unfocused eyes could steady themselves, the Accounting Officer stuck his red face out the window and this time waved something.

“Bark like a dog.
“Bark, and I’ll give you this.”

The beggar’s face seemed to flare up with greed for an instant.

Yasuyoshi sometimes felt a romantic interest in beggars.
But he had never once felt pity or sympathy.
If there were those who claimed to feel such things, he believed they were either fools or liars.
However, now, when he saw that child beggar with his neck slightly tilted back and eyes shining, he felt a slight pang of pity.
However, this "slight" was a slight without pretense.
Rather than finding the beggar pitiable, Yasuyoshi loved the Rembrandt-esque effect in his appearance.

“Won’t you bark?”
“Hey, bark ‘woof’!”

The beggar grimaced.

“Woof.”
The voice was indeed faint.
“Louder.”
“Woof. Woof.”
The beggar finally barked twice.
No sooner had he thought this than a navel orange fell outside the window.—There’s no need to write what happened next.
The beggar, of course, lunged for the orange, and the Accounting Officer, of course, laughed.

Then, after about a week had passed, Yasuyoshi once again went to the accounting department on payday to collect his salary.
That Accounting Officer was busily opening ledgers over there and spreading out documents here.
When he saw Yasuyoshi’s face, the Accounting Officer said flatly, “Your salary, I presume.”
Yasuyoshi also replied curtly, “Yes.”
However, whether because he was busy or not, the Accounting Officer did not readily hand over the monthly salary.
Not only that, but in the end, he turned his military-uniformed backside toward Yasuyoshi and kept clacking away at the abacus endlessly.

“Accounting Officer.”

After being kept waiting for some time, Yasuyoshi spoke imploringly.
The Accounting Officer turned over his shoulder toward him.
His lips were clearly about to utter the words, “Right away.”
However, before that could happen, he continued with a carefully prepared phrase.

“Accounting Officer.
Shall I say ‘woof’?
Hmm? Accounting Officer.”

According to Yasuyoshi’s own conviction, his voice at that moment was gentler than an angel’s.

Westerners

At this school, two Westerners had come to teach conversation and English composition.
One was an Englishman named Mr. Townsend, and the other was an American named Mr. Stallet.

Mr. Townsend was a bald-headed, good-natured old man who spoke Japanese well.
By nature, Western teachers—no matter how philistine they may be—never cease to prattle on about Shakespeare and Goethe.
However, fortunately, Mr. Townsend did not claim to understand even the first thing about literature.
“If someone ever brings up Wordsworth,” he would say, “I don’t understand poetry at all.
“And where exactly is the merit in Wordsworth?” he said.

Yasuyoshi lived in the same summer resort as this Mr. Townsend, so he took the same train when commuting to school.
The train ride took roughly thirty minutes.
The two of them would sit in the train car with Glasgow pipes clenched between their teeth, exchanging talk of tobacco, school matters, and ghost stories.
For though Mr. Townsend was a theosophist who had no interest in Hamlet itself, he showed keen interest in the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
However, whenever the conversation turned to magic, alchemy, or occult sciences, he would shake his head and pipe together with a mournful air and say, “The door to mystery isn’t as hard to open as common folk imagine.
Rather, its terror lies in how stubbornly it resists closing once opened.
It’s best not to meddle with such things,” he would conclude.

The other Mr. Stallet was a much younger dandy.
In winter, he would come wrapped in a dark green overcoat with a red scarf and such.
Compared to Mr. Townsend, this man seemed to occasionally glance at new books as well.
In fact, he had even once delivered a grand lecture titled "Recent American Novelists" at the school's English society.
According to that lecture, the great American novelists of late were said to be Robert Louis Stevenson or O. Henry!

Though Mr. Stallet was not at the same summer resort, he too lived in a town along the railway line, so they frequently shared the train.
Yasuyoshi could scarcely remember what conversations he had had with him.
The sole recollection that remained was of waiting before the waiting room hearth for a train.
Yasuyoshi had spoken of teaching's tedium through half-suppressed yawns.
Then Mr. Stallet—that man of virile demeanor behind rimless spectacles—pulled a faintly peculiar expression as he,

“Becoming a teacher isn’t merely a profession—rather, I believe it should be called a divine calling. You know, Socrates and Plato are two great teachers… etc.”

That Robert Louis Stevenson was a Yankee or whatever posed no issue. But to claim Socrates and Plato had been mere teachers—Yasuyoshi resolved from that moment to show Mr. Stallet nothing but scrupulous courtesy.

Lunch break

――A Certain Fantasy――

Yasuyoshi left the second-floor cafeteria.
After lunch, civilian instructors would typically enter the adjacent smoking room.
Today he chose not to go there and instead descended the stairs leading to the garden.
Then from below came a non-commissioned officer bounding up three steps at a time like a locust.
Upon seeing him, the man abruptly snapped into a rigid salute.
No sooner had he done so than he vaulted over Yasuyoshi’s head.
He acknowledged the empty air with a perfunctory nod and continued his leisurely descent down the stairs.

In the garden, among podocarps and torreya trees, magnolias were blooming.
The magnolias somehow did not turn their painstakingly grown blossoms toward the sunny south.
Yet the kobushi magnolias, though similar in appearance, unfailingly oriented their flowers southward.
Yasuyoshi lit a cigarette while blessing the individuality of the magnolias.
At that moment, like a stone being dropped, a wagtail fluttered down.
The wagtail was no stranger to him.
The wagging of that small tail served as a guiding signal for him.

“This way! This way! Not that way! This way! This way!”

He walked along the graveled path exactly as the wagtail directed.
But whatever the wagtail was thinking，it suddenly leaped up into the sky again.
Instead，a single tall engineer soldier came walking down the path toward him.
Yasuyoshi felt a sense of recognition in this engineer soldier’s face.
The engineer soldier also saluted，then briskly passed by him.
He continued to wonder who it was while blowing out cigarette smoke.
Two steps，three steps，five steps—on the tenth step，Yasuyoshi made a discovery.
That is Paul Gauguin.
Or perhaps he is the reincarnation of Gauguin.
He will surely exchange his shovel for a paintbrush before long.
And then，in the end，he is shot from behind by a mad friend.
It’s pitiful，but there’s nothing to be done.

Yasuyoshi finally emerged onto the plaza in front of the entrance along the path.
There stood two captured cannons, lined up among the pines and bamboo grass.
When he pressed his ear lightly to the cannon’s barrel, he heard something like the sound of breath passing through.
The cannon might also yawn.
He sat down beneath the cannon.
Then he lit his second cigarette.
By the gravel around the carriage house, a single lizard now glittered.
Once a human’s leg is severed, they cannot produce another.
However, when the lizard’s tail is severed, it immediately produces another.
Yasuyoshi, cigarette still in mouth, thought that the lizard was surely more Lamarckian than Lamarck himself.
But as he kept watching, the lizard transformed into a streak of heavy oil spilled across the gravel.

Yasuyoshi finally stood up.
Following along the painted school building and cutting through the garden once more, he emerged onto the sports ground facing the sea.
On the red clay tennis courts, several military instructors were eagerly competing in matches.
The air above the court ceaselessly split with sharp cracks.
Simultaneously, pale white lines shot out to either side of the net.
That was not the ball flying.
They were uncorking invisible champagne.
The gods in white shirts were savoring that champagne with evident relish.
Yasuyoshi, while praising the gods, this time made his way to the school building’s back garden.

In the back garden, there were many roses.
However, not a single bloom had opened yet.
As he walked there, he discovered a caterpillar on a rose branch that extended over the path. Then he found another crawling on a neighboring leaf.
The caterpillars nodded repeatedly at each other, seemingly discussing something about him.
Yasuyoshi decided to quietly eavesdrop.

“When will this instructor become a butterfly?” said the first caterpillar. “Since our great-great-grandfathers’ time, we’ve done nothing but crawl on the ground.”

The second caterpillar responded: “Perhaps humans don’t become butterflies.”

“No—they do become them,” insisted the first caterpillar. “Look—some are flying over there right now.”

“True enough,” conceded the second caterpillar. “But what ugliness! It seems they lack even an aesthetic sense.”

Yasuyoshi shielded his forehead with his hand and looked up at the airplane that had come overhead.

There, a devil disguised as a colleague came walking over, looking rather cheerful.
The devil who once taught alchemy now instructed students in applied chemistry.
The devil, grinning slyly, addressed Yasuyoshi as follows.

“Hey, want to keep me company tonight?”

Yasuyoshi vividly sensed two lines from Faust within the devil’s smile.
—“All theory is gray, but green is the golden tree of life!”

After parting with the devil, he moved his shoes into the school building.
The classroom was completely empty.
When he peeked in passing, there was a single geometry diagram left drawn on one of the classroom blackboards.
When the geometry diagram realized he had peeked at it, it must have thought it would be erased.
Stretching and shrinking rapidly,

“I’m needed for the next class,” it said.

Yasuyoshi climbed back up the stairs he had descended and entered the language and mathematics instructors’ office.
In the instructors’ office there was no one but the bald-headed Mr. Townsend.
Moreover, the old teacher was whistling repeatedly to dispel boredom while trying out a solo dance.
Yasuyoshi gave a slight wry smile and went to wash his hands at the washstand.
At that moment when he glanced in the mirror, he was astonished to find Mr. Townsend had somehow transformed into a beautiful youth while Yasuyoshi himself had become a white-haired old man with a bent back.

Shame.

Before entering the classroom, Yasuyoshi always reviewed his textbooks.
This wasn’t merely out of a sense of duty—that he couldn’t act carelessly because he was receiving a monthly salary.
In the textbooks, given the school’s naval orientation, numerous nautical terms appeared.
If he didn’t thoroughly check them beforehand, he was liable to make outrageous mistranslations.
For instance, you might think "Cat’s paw" refers to a cat’s foot, but it turns out to be something like a breeze.

One time, he was teaching his second-year students a certain short piece—also about navigation—whose title escapes mention.
It was a work of appallingly bad writing.
Even when winds howled through masts and waves battered hatches, neither wind nor wave ever lifted from the printed page.
While making the students translate and read aloud, he himself grew bored first.
At such times more than any other, he felt driven by an urge to hold forth on ideological issues or current affairs with his pupils.
Fundamentally, teachers are beings who crave to impart something beyond their subject matter.
Morals, tastes, views on life—call them what you will.
In any case, they want to teach something closer to their own hearts than textbooks or blackboards.
Yet unfortunately, students are beings who desire to learn nothing beyond their curriculum.
No—it wasn’t that they didn’t want to learn.
They were beings who utterly abhorred being taught anything.
Yasuyoshi held this conviction, so here too—thoroughly bored though he was—he could do nothing but press on with the translation exercise.

However, even when not bored, listening to the students’ translations and meticulously correcting errors was quite a hassle for Yasuyoshi.
After passing about thirty minutes of the one-hour class period, he finally had the translation stopped.
Instead, this time he himself began reading each section aloud and translating them.
The voyage described in the textbook remained as tedious as ever.
At the same time, his manner of teaching was no less excruciatingly tedious.
He advanced like a sailing ship crossing a windless zone—overlooking verb tenses, mistaking relative pronouns, plodding forward with great difficulty.

When he suddenly realized, the portion he had prepared now consisted of merely four or five lines remaining.
Once past that point lay a perilous stormy sea filled with unseen reefs of nautical terminology.
He glanced sidelong at the clock.
A full twenty minutes still remained until the break bugle.
He translated the four or five prepared lines as meticulously as possible.
Yet when he finished translating and looked again, the clock's hands had advanced only three minutes during that time.

Yasuyoshi found himself in dire straits.
In this situation, the only way out was to respond to the students’ questions.
If there was still time left after that, he would simply declare an early dismissal.
He tried to open his mouth with “Any questions—” while setting down his textbook.
As he did so, he suddenly turned bright red.
Why did he turn so red?
—That was something even he himself could not explain.
After all, he was someone who wouldn’t think twice about tormenting students, yet at that moment alone, he turned bright red.
The students, of course knowing nothing, were fixedly staring at his face.
He looked at the clock again.
Then—no sooner had he picked up the textbook than he began frantically reading ahead.

The voyage in the textbook might have remained tedious even after that.

However, his manner of teaching—Yasuyoshi was still convinced—was something far more intense than a sailing ship battling a typhoon.

The Brave Guard

Whether it was late autumn or early winter—that part of his memory remains unclear.
At any rate, it was the season when he wore an overcoat for his commute to school.

When Yasuyoshi took his seat at the lunch table, a young military officer sitting next to him recounted a recent extraordinary incident.
Just two or three nights prior, in the dead of night, two or three metal thieves had moored their boat behind the school.
The guard on night patrol who discovered them attempted to single-handedly arrest the intruders.
However, after a fierce struggle, he found himself thrown into the sea instead.
Soaked through like a drowned rat, the guard finally managed to claw his way back ashore.
Of course, by that time, the thieves' boat had already vanished into the offshore darkness.

“There’s this guard named Ohura, you see.
“He got himself into a ridiculous situation, you know.”

The military officer, his cheeks bulging with bread, laughed with a pained expression.

Yasuyoshi knew Ohura too.
Several guards took turns stationed at the gate-side guardhouse.
Moreover, regardless of whether they were military or civilian instructors, the guards were required to perform a hand salute whenever they saw faculty members coming or going.
Yasuyoshi disliked both receiving salutes and returning them, so he made a habit of quickening his pace when passing the guardhouse to deny them the chance to salute.
But this guard named Ohura alone refused to be outmaneuvered.
He remained seated in the main guardhouse, his eyes perpetually trained on the area five or six yards inside and outside the gate.
Thus whenever Yasuyoshi’s shadow came into view—even before he drew near—Ohura had already snapped into a perfect salute posture.
Faced with this inevitability, Yasuyoshi could only accept it as his fate.
He finally resigned himself.
No—it went beyond resignation.
Lately, no sooner would Yasuyoshi catch sight of Ohura than he would whip off his cap first, like a rabbit spotting a rattlesnake.

Now, he had apparently been thrown into the sea by the thieves after all.
Yasuyoshi felt a flicker of sympathy, yet still found himself unable to suppress a laugh.

Then, five or six days later, Yasuyoshi chanced upon Ohura in the station waiting room.
Ohura, catching sight of Yasuyoshi’s face, snapped to attention despite the setting and saluted him with undiminished rigidity.
Yasuyoshi distinctly felt he could see the guardhouse entrance looming behind him.

“You, the other day—”

After a prolonged silence, Yasuyoshi began to speak.

“Yes, I failed to apprehend the thieves, and—”

“You had a terrible time of it, didn’t you?”

“Fortunately, I managed to avoid injury, but—”

Ohura wore a wry smile and continued speaking as if mocking himself.

“Well, if I’d really tried to catch them, I could’ve grabbed at least one.”
“But even if I had caught one, that would have been the end of it, and—”

“What do you mean by ‘that’s the end of it’?”

“There are no provisions for bonuses or anything like that.”
“In such cases, there’s no explicit provision in the guard rules about what would happen, so—”

“Even if you die in the line of duty?”

“Even if I have to die in the line of duty.”

Yasuyoshi glanced briefly at Ohura.
According to Ohura’s own words, he had not necessarily charged into the fray like a brave warrior ready to stake his life.
Having factored in the bonus calculation, he had let slip the thieves he should have apprehended.
However—while taking out a cigarette—Yasuyoshi nodded as cheerfully as he could manage.

“I see. In that case, that’s utterly ridiculous—so taking risks only leads to loss?”

Ohura said something like “Hah.”
Yet he seemed oddly cheerful.

“But if they actually paid bonuses—”

Yasuyoshi said somewhat gloomily.

"But if they actually paid bonuses, would anyone take the risk?"
"That too is somewhat questionable, isn't it?"

Ohura remained silent this time.
But when Yasuyoshi put a cigarette in his mouth, he suddenly struck his own match and held the flame out before him.
Yasuyoshi transferred the crimson-flaring flame to his cigarette tip while biting back an involuntary smile that threatened to betray him.

"Thank you."

"Oh, it was nothing."

Ohura returned the matchbox to his pocket with a casual remark.
Yet Yasuyoshi still believed he had seen through this brave guard's secret.
That single match flame hadn't been struck solely for Yasuyoshi's sake.
Indeed, it had been struck for the gods who silently observed Ohura's bushido in the unseen realms.

(April, Taishō 12)