Pathway to Japanese Literature

Prologue: Know the Severity of God's Flames

Suffering was not noble simply because it was great.
Again and again they grew—two hollyhocks straining through the hedge, each vying to outstrip the other in height, stretching spindly until their two or three stunted blooms, once proudly flaunting crimson splendor, now wore faces forgetful of former glory, their blackened petals’ withered creases pitiful to behold. "Into the lofty divine gardens of the ninth heaven I strode—yes, in these straw sandals!—defiling sacred ground yet trembling not, plucking with these very hands blossoms from God’s own bower."
That was not all.
"Why, with these very eyes I even glimpsed God’s splendid sleeping face during His midday nap!" So he proclaimed with the exultant demeanor of a flag-bearing race champion—a swift-footed boy still retaining boyish charm. The onlookers smiled or grimaced indulgently, but one night this child grew strangely deranged after being enamored by Lady Crescent Moon, colder than ice herself. "God and I differ no more than fifty steps to a hundred.
"That day, amidst the midsummer heatwave, God too was clad in an Olympic-patterned yukata with rolled-up sleeves."
No listener refrained from roaring laughter; unexpected, beyond-hope applause and thunderous cheers erupted.
Ah—that aged child upon the dais with bluish-black skin like some emaciated stray, beak protruding from a spindly frame nearing six feet tall—in truth, the haughty spirit of those towering hollyhocks—saw with his eyes and heard with his ears this full hall’s applause, this roaring tide of shouts, yet failed to realize this wondrous phenomenon arose entirely from his buffoonish visage worthy of a comic actor. Quivering his bulbous nose in perfect rapture now, eyes burning ever stranger with fervor: "On this Tanabata festival night I boldly declare—I alone am God!
"God who resides in the ninth heaven does nothing but nap day after day—sheer negligence."
"I once even slipped on tiptoe into his bedchamber and tried quietly placing God’s crown upon this large head of mine."
"Divine punishment? I don’t fear such trifles!"
"Ha ha ha!"
"In fact, I’d rather see that punishment with my own eyes!"

The expected applause did not arise.
Silence fell.

Then came a murmuring tide: “An insolent fool who doesn’t know his place.”
“O God, let this be a dream.”
“Gah!”
“There are rats in this theater, you see.”
“The insolent arrogance of lowborn rabble knowing no restraint even when this excess suffices! O base creature! Ah—that face unfit to be called even a tree frog’s visage!”
In an instant—whizz!
A stone was hurled at the half-mad boy’s nose bridge—and in that moment, truly, his misfortunes began: because he conducted himself solely through pride in his flower’s height, he met such painful consequences.
Art isn’t some flag race.
There! There!
Disgusting.
Nosebleed.
Look well—behold the heartlessness of your flawless short story collection Twilight Years or whatever it’s called—look well!
Exemplar of masterpieces, utterly exposed and wretched—“Please make me a warm bed stuffed with cattail spikes,” I begged you on sleepless nights, standing outside the mosquito net. But cold you must have been, for you vanished after leaving behind two or three great sneezes—or so the story goes.
I’d poured all my life’s passion into this single volume—no moment to heave a sigh of relief—punishment, punishment—divine retribution or civic condemnation? Hardships and misfortunes, love and hate’s vicissitudes—the sin of secretly donning that golden crown before the mirror (who’d ever know?), grinning alone—yet God would not forgive.
You see, God is as unpleasant as a natural winter wind.
Severe and relentless—the divine hand pressed my neck down, submerging me with gurgling force until I crawled along the water’s bottom. At the very moment this child of man neared drowning, those fingers slackened slightly, granting me to float up gently. How gladdening the sunlight! With a deep sigh—“At least let me worship this sun after five years’ absence with proper devotion”—I clasped my hands in prayer. Instantly, pressure returned to my nape. Again—again—for what must have been the five hundred and some-oddth time, I sank down to become a follower of hatchling turtles in the mud.
“Only by abandoning oneself can one find salvation”—so advised those acquainted with hardship. That advice was mistaken.
Once sunk, you sink completely down with a gulp—truly, if there were even one person whose figure emerged after that final plunge, I’d want to worship it.
As I resolved to teach this world’s true evil to my younger, guileless friend and sat up straight, God’s eye already glinted—the Timewatch in His left hand announcing the imminent hour of submersion: “Ah, again—another five years underwater. Shall we meet again?”
God’s booming voice: “Ready!”

"If you long for me, come seek me at the water’s depths—ah, if only I could have spoken one more word—that…"

Audible was nothing but the sound of waves.

First Chant: On a night when owls cry, by the wayside a child was born.

Auspicious beginnings! Now, having composed "First Chant," truly did a miracle manifest—a bean-sized spot no larger than a small nickel coin. The morning sun slipped through a nail hole in still-closed storm shutters to cast its beam precisely upon the character 壱 in this very title. A miracle! A miracle! Let's shake hands! Hooray! How foolish—how shameful! Cease this absurd commotion and begin sacred work! I answered yes yet found directions from a mute woman in withered fields. Asking proved futile; while mocking myself with declarations of solitary travel during this charade, gelatin slowly solidified—not that anything refused direction—but leaning on this dubious cane while performing solo comedy routines (isolated yet feigning comrades), singing and narrating around thorny romance for hundred days like black-eyed kittens stalking canaries with silent paws circling... Rejoice! Last night at last found narrative thread! Drink tea first—then proceed leisurely.

Before the story begins, I must preface one thing—nowhere else but here: I have not laid bare everything within me. This is again a dreadfully trite phrase, yet it constitutes the author’s kindness—an ice fragment the size of Shoukakubou’s shell comes drifting plop-plop, plop-plop across tranquil seas. The seasoned captain swiftly alters course—danger, danger! Collision would mean sinking—for the iceberg’s submerged portion, well... even if its visible peak were but a manjuu hat’s span, its underwater roots hold volume enough for five hippopotamuses.

When you too truly wish to know me, visit my home and dwell with me for a week—denied even sleep—intimately engaging with the grand spectacle of my ceaselessly fluttering tongue. Only then might you barely grasp perhaps one-tenth of Dazai’s capabilities. You may believe these words to be nearly accurate.

To utter a single word is to suffer the cruel, merciless loss of letting two or three thousand others escape.

And so, you may rest assured that all these words of childish bravado above—ill-befitting me—are prophecies heralding my physical demise.

The anxiety that we shall never meet again—my Golgotha, so to speak, which translates to skull—ah, the clear recognition of this desolate mental landscape compelled these aged mutterings.

This is no trifling with "life."

Having already received God’s punishment, I resign myself to this allotted span of shadowed days—now I resent no one, for all is my own sin. Even as I write this novel, living exhaustively through its making feels utterly wearisome, like frost on bamboo grass. Now, at least, I intend these two or three fine works as my meager, fitting tribute to the kind souls who aided me—this being my funerary finery for the journey beyond death. Night after sleepless night, with anguished heart I’ve woven together a single romance; crude though its execution may be, by then I’ll no longer know it.

Sin resides in the moment of birth.

Second Chant: The Law of Diminishing Stages

It gradually sank lower.
Believing itself to be gradually ascending—smugly snapping open a fan to catch a composed breeze—it nevertheless sank ever lower.
After five stages descended, it then swiftly ascended three levels.
All people were the same—completely forgetting they had been demoted five levels, they congratulated each other on advancing three: "Congratulations! Congratulations!" How shameless.
After about ten years passed, one night—oh?
Suspicious—but by then, it was already too late.
He laughed bitterly, muttered "So this is the world," and resigned himself completely.
Such is the world.

Third Chant: Two Travelers

How many times I had earnestly resolved to embark on pilgrimage—who could know? Alone I would journey, inscribing "Two Travelers" in slender script upon my sedge hat—myself and one other companion. This fellow traveler remains unseen, head bowed as they follow silently behind me—a water sprite? A wispy shadow? A red-lipped youth? A forty-year-old madam in mouse-colored Akashi crepe? Or perhaps a soft maiden cleansed head to toe with lemon soap? Though I cannot point and name them, they are gentle—Two Travelers. Had I been free from illness, long ago I might have become that young pilgrim with melodious bell, maintaining at least outward purity: first standing before someone’s garden gate to bid farewell, imbuing even the chirin of the bell with ten million infinite sorrows. Every tree and blade flourishing in that garden would be my final glimpse of this life—thoughts of severance agonizing as I pilgrimaged weeping, departing with autumn winds toward that endless fate of being buried in journey’s soil. All this I understand as clearly as holding it in my hand. And then, before long, I apparently found myself in a faltering love. The name goes unspoken. Unable to even feign having fallen in love—agonizing—unable to be called even a vulgar affair—impropriety. I have just one more thing to confess. I did not fall in love after resolving to go on a pilgrimage. The feelings in my chest—wanting to erase them, erase them—I merely thought of pilgrimage. What I desired was not the whole world. It was not a century of renown. I wanted the trust of a single dandelion flower and the comfort of one chisa leaf—and threw my life away.

Fourth Chant: Please Believe

Tōgō Heihachirō’s mother did not walk by her child’s bedside.
"This child will surely become one who leads hundreds and thousands of people; therefore, she must not allow any disrespect," she thought, and even though he was her own child, she served him with reverence layered upon restraint.
Yet my family’s circumstances differed.
From around age seven or eight, I lived in desolation. Each night in the parlor—with my grandmother presiding, my mother, two or three scattered relatives, and siblings home for seasonal breaks—they would gossip about me in whispers. Once, passing through the corridor outside, I caught fragments of my elder brother’s condescension: “Those who shine too young inevitably falter in middle school and university. Best withhold praise.” Damn them all!
Convinced my parents and siblings conspired to bully seven-year-old me, I grew bitter and abandoned family gatherings, clinging instead to the kitchen’s stone hearth. Winters saw me burying potatoes in ash to roast, sharing them with four or five farmhands.
One day, perhaps unable to endure my solitude any longer, an old maidservant laid her hand on my shoulder and taught me an odd phrase:
“There’s promise here,” she said, “but the training’s too harsh.”

I recall that insomnia had already begun to take root around that time.
My immediate older sister and I were on good terms.
When I was in fourth or fifth grade, during my sister’s twice-yearly summer and winter vacations from girls’ school, her friend—a petite, medium-built bespectacled student named Ms. Kayano—would often come to visit, brought along by my sister.
Her fair-skinned, plump round face with a double chin and long lashes; those pitch-black eyes that always smiled with a playful, clownish glint except when asleep; the way she'd take off her glasses and read magazines while blinking rapidly, nose almost pressed to the pages like a sniffing animal; that bear-cub innocence radiating from her features—I found it all utterly endearing.
She was a full three years older than me.

Long before I had even met you—from a time even earlier than that—I knew your name.
The letter from my sister had contained these words:
"The Plum Group leader Ms. Kayano Aki praised you for never forgetting to send gummies and star-shaped rice cakes with each changing season."
"They say how fortunate I am to have such a kind younger brother—they envy me."
"If only your letters didn’t have those Tsugaru dialect slips and kana mistakes—then your sister could boast to ever so many more friends—"

Back then, you who declared you'd become a painter carried an exquisite camera, walking summer country roads in silence while snapping shot after shot. The subjects you photographed mysteriously matched exactly the scenery I discovered—the summer of the north country resembling the early autumn of the south. When I cast a fleeting sidelong glance at that row of ivy leaves trembling crimson around cedar stumps, your camera's shutter blinked with a click.
Each time, I had to let out a small sigh.
But one day, bitter resentment made me weep.
Back then as now, I remained a mere village boy—Taisho 10, when cameras were still rare novelties—fidgeting shyly yet pleading to let me shoulder your black leather camera case as I accompanied you in your blue yukata and crimson tie-dyed military obi. That day beneath the trees, when I secretly opened the negative plate only to find it uniformly milky white, I shook my head in dissatisfaction but pretended ignorance as I returned it to its sheath. Yet that night’s darkroom descended into pandemonium—the master plate rendered completely black—and we ignorant culprits were swiftly exposed. From that day onward, you never again let me touch your camera case.
If you hadn’t reproached my past failure and had once more silently trusted me to carry it, I would have thrown away my life to protect that plate.
Back then during hide-and-seek, you were “it,” and while waiting for everyone to hide, you buried yourself alone in the Western-style parlor sofa, reading a magazine with apparent boredom—so I too, finding hide-and-seek just as tedious yet obliged to take my turn hiding, chose of all places to conceal myself behind your sofa.
“Ready or not,” my brother called from afar, and you stood up still holding the magazine to begin searching.
Do you know?
You’ve forgotten, I suppose.

Soon everyone was found and they all trooped back to the Western-style parlor. “Osamu’s still missing.”

“No. He’s behind that sofa.”

I emerged from behind the sofa.
Do you know?
she muttered coldly.
"Because I'm the demon, after all."

For twenty years, I have not forgotten the demon.
The other day, I read a newspaper article titled "Mrs. Asada's Three-Stage Leap of Love."
You were a newcomer to the Nika Exhibition.
Professor Arita's—no, I shouldn't say.
Looking back, from that summer when you were sixteen, an ominous wrinkle had already formed between your brows—foretelling today's misfortunes.
"The richer people are, the more they yearn for money, don't they?"
"Because you've never earned money yourself, it's precious—terrifying even—isn't it?"

“Your words—I have not forgotten them.” I must proclaim this openly.

“Ms. Kayano, you were in love with my brother.”

The other night, reading that newspaper article and thinking of your loneliness, I cried alone inside the mosquito net for about three hours.
No stratagems, no schemes—purely for your suffering, I shed tears.
I need not a single sen in reward.

That night, wanting to make you stronger, wanting to inform you that someone believing in your purity existed, wanting you to live with confidence—for those reasons alone—I tried writing to you by uncorking the Kilk ink bottle and faltered.
Fukuda Rando—that man wrote letters like this, page after page, to women.
Love letters without a single variation.

Fifth Chant: A Man of Integrity to the Point of Being Called a Liar

Whenever I walked through town, there came that liar. Beneath sunset clouds crimson as geese bellies—hands thrust idler-style into kimono sleeves, each pressing firm breasts—they leaned against a storehouse's white walls: this cluster of fourteen-, fifteen-, sixteen-year-old girls exchanging glances, nodding in unison, necks shrinking in ticklish embarrassment as they giggled at that liar so laughable he warranted mockery—the most honest soul this world had ever known. That morning, reading in my hometown paper about some family's restaurant doubling as a scandalous inn—one imitating kabuki trapdoors with an electric mechanism where pressing a button made a large bed slide out smoothly—I'd burst out laughing. Clearly good people—perhaps influenced by gangster films or their inner madam—had schemed to secretly cultivate their own wicked bloom; confronted with such damning evidence, they stood absurdly cornered, unable to offer one word in defense. How pathetic. Country villains at least carried charm and reliability. Authentic villains, strangely enough, had living gods and buddhas within them, possessed consciences—they were stalwart souls. Moreover, the hidden truths—without exception—stood as brazen geniuses of injustice; even Buddha found himself outmatched against these titans, muttering behind their backs about unrelated beings.

Sixth Chant: If Told to Bark "Woof," I'll Bark "Woof"

"Omitted.
Please excuse my addressing this matter by letter, but I humbly request your assistance.
For the October issue of our company’s publication *Secret of Secrets*, we wish to feature an engaging piece on what might be called modern student dispositions—content that will make parents sending their children off to study think, 'Ah, that’s exactly how it is.'
Therefore, we would like to select representative schools (Imperial University, Waseda, Keiō, Mejiro Women's University, Tokyo Women's Medical College, etc.) and serialize them monthly.
In accordance with this, we would first like to make next month’s installment about Imperial University, but we wonder if we might request this task of your esteemed self.
Approximately fifteen 400-character manuscript pages, and we would like to request that the content be engaging and realistic.
We would like to request that the deadline be strictly adhered to without fail.
We sincerely apologize for the informality of contacting you by letter, but we earnestly entreat you to graciously accept and undertake the writing.
'Secret of Secrets Editorial Department.'"

“Ah, bats—those creatures betrayed both sides during the ancient Beast-Bird War, reaping great rewards until their scheme was exposed. Now too ashamed to venture out by day, they slink about after sunset with bashful hesitation, yet still fly in such frantic disarray.”
Ah yes, yes—I’d forgotten—indeed, that must be it—no, this has nothing to do with you.
I shall open my heart and confess.
In truth, I find myself scarcely different from a filthy bat, and I am utterly and completely at a loss.
To go on living, I need wine before bread.
I can go three days without food unfazed—instead, I want to buy that eight-yen cane with the lizard face carved into its grip.
The feeling of love-suicide—I have finally come to understand it these days.
The act of walking with bouquets and this notion of love-suicide—both seemed mortifyingly embarrassing through middle school, high school, even university, enough to send cold water down my spine at the mere thought. Yet now I find solace even in a single white flower, while my yearning heart grows faint, the world falling utterly silent as my life threatens to vanish like soundless crumbling sand, leaving me utterly at a loss.
There is no place for this body.
I learned debauched games.
And then, I ran out of money.
Even now—suddenly chasing mosquitoes inside the mosquito net, loneliness as violent as my hometown’s blizzard—I fall alone into an ancient well dozens of fathoms deep, calling and shouting to no ears that hear my panic, moss slimy beneath me, hearing only my own hollow echo’s vacant laughter, clawing with raw nails peeled bloody in futile effort—this wretched solitary hell—I desperately need money.
If told to bark "Woof," I'll bark, "Woof."
I will write it as interestingly as possible, so please give me money at five yen per page.
Five yen - of course, just this once.
Next time, even if it’s fifty sen or five sen, I will comply with your terms—so I earnestly beseech you to entrust me with this once.
Even if I receive five yen per page, I am confident in my stance that I will never cause you loss whatsoever.
I am certain that my humble manuscript will work for you exactly in proportion to the amount of money paid.

4th, Midnight.
Dazai Osamu.”

“In reply,
We have respectfully received your esteemed correspondence dated midnight on the 4th.
While we cannot comply with your request concerning manuscript fees, we earnestly entreat you to begin work on the manuscript without delay.
The standard remuneration is one yen per page.
This concludes our initial response.
Written in haste.
‘Secret of Secrets Editorial Department.’”

"I have respectfully read your letter. They specifically cited 'the fourth, midnight'—how petty. Beneath the letter's full text seethed their barely contained fury. I hadn't asked for five yen out of personal pride. This wasn't greed for myself—the money was meant for shivering strangers without names, or perhaps to bring some joy to that good soul. But now, all arguments were futile. Suddenly whispering: —Very well, I'll write it. Dazai Osamu."

Seventh Chant: My Days, My Dream

--Tokyo Imperial University's Inner Sanctum: Secret of Secrets.--

(Content: Thirty pages.
Full text omitted.)

Eighth Chant: Wrath Is the Supreme Visage of Carnal Desire, and...

“While I was briefly away traveling, I received your manuscripts and frequent letters during my absence; please forgive my discourtesy.”
“However, this manuscript is quite dreadful.”
“No matter how charitably one might view it, that cannot be used.”
“I believe even having you rewrite it would prove futile.”
“To you, that may represent a masterwork, but for us it constitutes nothing but a nuisance—we find it troubling to be charged manuscript fees for such material.”
“Should future opportunity permit us to offer apologies to you, we shall do so; for now, we hereby return the manuscript.”
“In haste.”
“Secret of Secrets Editorial Department.”

On a moonless night of pitch darkness, waves at the lake's heart lapped against the boat's flank—struck by this child's guileless answer about depth ("Well now, five hundred fathoms ain't nothin'!")—I and then a woman stood petrified with terror, feeling as if even the faint cries from hell's depths might reach us, having forgotten even how to die—the cold north wind of that night now whistled fiercely from the corner of this single postcard—this was why I didn't want to return home—my desolate heart overflowing with homelessness across three realms—staggering out, crossing train tracks, wandering through fields and rice paddies until I arrived at a beautiful town I had never seen.

On nights when I had nowhere to go, I would lower my thirty-eight-degree fever to thirty-seven degrees and two or three tenths with aspirin, go to the station, buy a thirty- or forty-sen ticket, wander off to some town whose name I didn’t know, then amble through its dimly lit entertainment district—abruptly stopping to gaze up at the branching form of a lone pine by the roadside—before selling a book from my pocket and entering a moving picture theater.
The wind chimes’ sound at the entrance lingered in my mind; while relieving myself, I gazed out at festival stalls and yukata-clad crowds around carbide lamps—Ah, everyone’s alive—and felt tears rise, though declaring “I was moved” seemed trite. Citizens confess life’s pinnacle emotions through tearful displays while others nod deeply, settling into resigned understanding that pierces to the core—Oh how pitiful—but then what was I to do?
Once daily I wept bitter tears unseen—what was I to do?
That day too I disembarked aimlessly at Ichikawa Station to watch Brother and Sister—a moving picture—gradually growing agitated until sobs breached clenched teeth, threatening eruption until I stumbled from the theater and wept and wept and wept before thinking:
The trampled weakling forbidden resentment—enduring suppression upon suppression—the kicked-aside dregs, some rotten woman’s final protest against God—this pent-up fury made me weep; this mustn’t be forgotten—Moses’ whisper that man’s child must know true wrath thrice in life.

No matter who they are—as long as they live—they must be properly respected and held accountable. All living beings are indispensable cogs in this world; to condemn others while failing to comprehend the dignity and loneliness of those one judges—such a writer stands utterly disqualified. In this world there exists not a single useless thing. Because Rando exists, a certain actress's single-minded love manifests; Kikuchi Kan's magnanimous humanity earns praise; or in the boudoir of Rando's regular ××, a wife's modest white flower of gratitude blooms.

“―I’ve respectfully read your letter, but―my manuscript―is it truly―no good?”

“Yes. We’re afraid it’s no good.”
“This manuscript was written by someone else—this is what we require.”
“Realistically, statistically—in any case, you must read your manuscript again.”
“Then consider it thoroughly.”

"I was a poor writer from the very start.
I knew no other way than to write through bitter tears."

—What became of the suicide over lost love?

―Please lend me train fare.

--…
"I came counting on this—I don't have a single sen. If I return home, it'll be there. I can repay you immediately. Even one yen—even two yen."

"You have no friends in the city?"

"There's an uncle in Akabane."

“Then walk home.”
“What’s this? You’re practically there already. Go around the moat, come out by the General Staff Office to Hibiya, then head to Shinbashi Station—Akabane’s just behind there, isn’t it?”

“I see... Then... Thank you.”

“Well, later. Come visit again sometime.”
“We’ll make it up to you somehow, okay?”

In the end, I couldn’t muster anger—plunging into the scorching city dust, growing dizzy three times, four times, wishing to be struck by a car, recklessly crossing roads as I walked three ri while thinking: all humans are good people. On a night of torrential rain along a muddy suburban road—crawling my way to Ogikubo Post Office to request an urgently needed telegram—I was told they had already closed, seven minutes past the designated time. “The fee will be doubled,” they said. In utter bewilderment, drenched like a waterlogged rat, my entire body burned fiercely from this unexpected humiliation as I spoke in a voice faint as a mosquito’s hum: The exact thirty sen I currently possess—this was my own carelessness. Even when I pleaded, “Please help me somehow,” the emaciated old woman—about thirty years old with protruding yellow teeth—gave no proper reply, muttering “Rules are rules” while clattering her abacus. Overwhelmed, I lost all words and dejectedly took my leave. Through the pouring rain, I thought: Could anything be more absurd? An undeniable villain—in all my twenty-eight years since birth, that clerk alone stood apart; all others were guileless good people much like myself. The rudeness of that editor earlier was merely the appearance born of his complete lack of caution. Writers understand everything and swallow all our suffering; having resolved not to grow angry, they indulge themselves. Does “love curdled into a hundredfold hatred” mean this? So mused I—a pauper without a penny to my name, pleasant-featured—muttering to myself and smiling alone. I love the foolish people of this world.

IX. Ms. Nataria, Let’s Kiss

The day after next—unlike the commoner of yesterday—there again in the Imperial Hotel dining hall: clad in raw hemp mosquito-swatting cloth, ro-weave hakama, white tabi socks—the unmistakable Osamu Dazai.
Mrs. Asada wore thick Lloyd spectacles and a dress in this year's fashionable Olympic Blue—her childhood name being Ms. Kayano.
The two conversed coolly while dining.
Yesterday—my final recourse—though others existed to ask, I borrowed from Ms. Kayano two hundred yen—no, rather twenty ten-yen bills.
At Shiseido Parlor's second-floor booth, before I could finish uttering "two hundred yen," she had already nodded hurriedly thrice or fourfold and swiftly diverted the conversation elsewhere.
Two hours later in that same place—Ms. Kayano handing over twenty germ-ridden crumpled notes as casually as possible while tittering "It's just a salary advance"—her detestable lie; even in such trifling details lay cautious foreshadowing to quench my blazing eyes' fire—this I found sorrowful.
That night through the floral capital's neon forest I darted—weaving between trees, slipping past trunks—only to circle them fruitlessly.
It cannot be used.
However I try, that money cannot be used.
Servile love.
The maid's room held edgeless red-faded tatami reeking of hair oil; from a bamboo trunk's depths emerged shame's implement as crumpled bills seemed arrayed before me like offerings. With dawn came the call.
"An unexpected windfall allows repayment," I declared in bureaucratic tones before adding "at the Imperial Hotel."
I had wanted to craft at least one splendid farewell stage.

That day, under clear skies, after hours of conversation, I took out the money—implying through omission that these were twenty new bills different from last night’s—only to suddenly notice three among them still bore red ink stains in their corners from when I had received them unchanged from this woman the previous evening. Too late now—a prayer as deep as Millet’s Angelus, a plea hidden behind life’s curtain that Ms. Kayano would not notice, would not notice.

“Ms. Kayano, please count them.”
“Let’s do this properly.”
“Awkwardness too—even momentary awkwardness—these are things we absolutely need to keep living.”

She was a woman who understood words at face value. She caught my feelings precisely as they were, gave a slight tight-lipped nod, and counted them with hands that seemed unsure. Seventeen bills. Suddenly tilting her head, she instantly comprehended. The rose had revived. Slowly raising her crimson-flushed face to meet my sly, unperturbed smile, she released a sigh as artless as a girl's—yet still remembered to murmur the clever phrase, "How trying this must be... Thank you," in a small voice. And so we parted. Having spent fifteen thousand yen on tuition, studied, and learned what we did—the insipid decorum, the cruel etiquette—of two people bearing equally fierce unrequited loves yet separating all the same. Ah, truly—rage is carnal desire's supreme visage, et cetera.

“X. I Too Am Suffering”

"Hey—be careful when opening the sliding door," I warned my family one day with a laugh, "you never know when I might appear standing there on the threshold." They said nothing, only stared intently at my face—clearly struck by a blow severe enough to drive them mad, gripped by terror beyond words—until their lips turned bone-white. Still seated, they retreated a foot, then two feet back, finally scrambling all the way to the neighboring six-tatami room where they at last regained some semblance of composure and began to wail soundlessly.
The family’s tension showed no sign of easing from that day onward, and before they knew it, they had done away with all the kimono hanging poles.
Indeed, it was then that I first realized—the way those kimonos had hung draped in a row on the kimono poles was the spitting image of that very figure.
They also wished to remove the three-inch nails driven into all four corners of the room for hanging mosquito nets—and I once caught a glimpse of the originally four-shaku-eight-sun petite woman engaged in desperate struggle, stretching on tiptoe to reach the high nails.

Now, lying sprawled in the rattan chair, I watched the family member weeding the garden—her pure white home dress making her look increasingly like a nurse, I thought with pity.

Our family's unfortunate tendency—without fail, the husbands died young—meant there was a time when four widows gathered under our roof: my great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, and aunt. Above all, my aunt had lost two husbands.

Final Chapter: And so, these days—

Art was originally a boisterous,grand festival.
Pushkin went without saying; Basho,Tolstoy,Gide—all were exceptional journalists.In the fishing boat,I alone wore a straw raincoat—unlike the boatman and others—and had you seen Old Man XX’s incurable quirk? That near-octogenarian youth who never forgot his distinct form? Yet that was precisely right.
Art was fundamentally an excuse for adultery—but enough digressions—was that truly our end with Ms.Kayano?
Ah,in every romance,a vulgar conclusion unafraid of God becomes fated.
The cunning-clever readers would read five or six lines,surreptitiously peek at the final one,and—“Ah,dreadful,dreadful”—release cavernous yawns.
Very well then,I’d forge an unprecedented conclusion of sincerity—one dissolving like scattered clouds and dispersed mist—to make your festering belly-padding seethe and churn.

And then, after that—we did not give up.
In the yellow midday of the Imperial Hotel, we stood up across the table and gazed intently into each other's eyes with unclouded gazes.
Become strong. Become.
A fierce wind—may it strip our clothes, may it shred even our bones!—raged around us two; visible only were each other’s blue masks, all else swallowed by billowing yellow dust.
Resisting this tempest, staggering and stumbling, pushing aside the table—clasping hands, seizing arms, embracing torsos.
We embraced.

The vanguard of the twentieth century prioritized action first.
Sound thoughts trailed obediently in their wake.
Rather than O-Hikari who becomes a nun—love O-Some! Love O-Shichi! Love O-Fune!
First—attempt.
Words shouted loudest morph into “truth”.
When called a fool—roar back “Fool!” twice! Thrice as loud!
Actions over arguments—nothing hindered our marriage.

“This is the romantic tale of our marriage.”
“I tried adding some color and polish when writing it, but if you object to anything, I could make special corrections just for those parts.”

The wife in white responded.

“This is not me.”
She didn’t so much as smile and shook her head decisively.
“There’s no such person.”
“You’re trying to deceive me by using this nonexistent body double.”
“I understand your anguish at being unable to write about that person—but other suffering women exist too.”

That’s why I’d given fair warning from the start.
The name could not be spoken; even the pretense of love could not be shown—painfully—not even curses could give it voice—unfaithfulness—

Ah, deceive, deceive.
Once you deceive, never confess nor repent—not even when facing death.
The secret in your chest—keep it absolutely secret, the pinnacle of cunning—without revealing it to anyone, quietly draw your last breath as it is.
Eventually I'll go to that so-called underworld—no, even there just smile silently—tell no one.
Deceive, deceive, skillfully deceive, out-deceive God, deceive.

Be magnificently deceived.
Unless people are deceived seventy times sevenfold, they cannot grasp even true love's faintest glimmer.
When lies come presented pleasantly to my own self—exquisite and quiet like some magnificent dish heaped high with fruit—accept them silently and rejoice.
The world fares better when made even slightly livelier.
You know this already, don't you?
In rural theaters—if one tentatively offers ten yen to the troupe master in his reed-screened dressing room amidst rapeseed fields dotted with standing mirrors—they'll promptly post on the hanamichi runway in jet-black ink: 'One thousand yen received from Student.'
Create spectacle.
Thus unwittingly has our nation's ancient literary spirit arrived here.

Those words, these words—each crammed haphazardly into notebooks from nearly thirty days past—all delightful souvenirs for you. Yet ill-fated, their tariffs absurdly high, those countless treasures were hurled with a thud into the authorities’ corrugated-roof warehouse painted over in blue, clicked shut under lock and key, left to rot. Ten months passed: cherry blossoms scattering like snowflakes gave way to bush mosquitoes, then salt-spray dragonflies; autumn leaves fell; people cloaked in black mantles wandered December streets—until at last I scraped together funds. Even then, from thirty days’ worth of cargo, only the cheapest trifle—one measly little basket—had its gleaming brass padlock snapped open. And what spilled before your eyes? Ah! Unforeseen—a swarm of tiny thought-crabs! I flailed in panic, chasing this one, grasping at that one, writing a line only to tear it, scribbling a word before shredding it, growing ever more desolate until there I sat in twilight’s corner, pen clutched tight, sniveling away.