Pathway to Japanese Literature

—I would like to read a novel like this too.
(Author)

A

Minō Jūrō was the heir to Count Minō Hideki.
He was twenty-eight years old.

One night, when Minō returned home deeply drunk, the house was in an uproar.
Without paying much heed, he walked down the hallway, and when he approached his mother’s parlor, a voice came from inside: “Who’s there?”
It was Mother’s voice.
“It’s me,” he answered clearly and slid open the parlor’s shōji door.
In the room, Mother sat apart alone while five or six servants huddled tightly together in a corner facing her.

“What is it?” Minō asked, remaining standing.

Mother said haltingly,
“You wouldn’t know anything about my paper knife, I suppose.”
“The silver one.”
“It’s gone missing.”

Minō made an unpleasant face.

“I am aware of it. I was the one who took it.”

Without closing the shōji, he staggered down the hallway as he was and entered his own bedroom.
He was terribly drunk.
He merely removed his jacket, threw his body onto the bed with a loud thud, and just like that fell asleep.

He wanted a drink of water and opened his eyes.
Day had dawned.
At his bedside stood a small girl with her head bowed.
Minō remained silent.
The drunkenness from the previous night still lingered unchanged.
Even speaking felt languid.
The girl looked familiar to him.
She was undoubtedly the new maid they had recently hired for their household.
He had not remembered her name.

As he vacantly watched the maid’s demeanor, irritation began to well up within him.

“What are you doing?”
He even felt a tinge of grubbiness.

The girl suddenly lifted her face.
It was deathly pale.
Her cheeks twitched with unnatural tension, distorting their shape.
Though not ugly, there was something pitifully animalistic about her that kindled a faint anger in Minō.

“You fool,” he rebuked pointlessly.

“I,”
The maid hung her head again and said in a trembling voice.
“I had only thought Master Jūrō was a bad person.”
Having said that, she slumped down exhaustedly.

“A paper knife?”
Minō laughed.

The girl silently nodded two or three times.
And then, from beneath her apron, she flashed a glimpse of a small silver paper knife.

“You’re a weirdo for stealing a paper knife.
But if you thought it was beautiful, then there’s no helping it.”

The girl began soundlessly wailing.
Minō felt slightly amused.
He thought it was a fine morning.

“Mother is no good.”
“She buys up Western books she can’t even read properly—just slices open their pages and acts all proud about that little hobby of hers. Quite the indulgence.”
Minō stretched exaggeratedly while remaining lying down.

“No,” the woman sat up and swept back her hair. “The Countess is a splendid person. I can’t stand those who badmouth their own family.”

Minō lumbered up and sat cross-legged on the bed.
He was secretly smiling wryly.

“How old are you?”

“I’m nineteen.”
She answered honestly and lowered her face.
She looked pleased.

“You should leave now.”
Minō thought himself vulgar for having asked the maid her age.

The woman stayed motionless in a sideways sitting position with one hand on the mat.

"I won't tell anyone."
"Just go. Can't you hurry up and get out already?"

The girl wanted that knife more than anything.
She wanted a shining shuriken.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to say, “Please give it to me.”
With the knife she had been clutching so tightly that her palm was drenched in sweat, she threw it down onto the mat with all her might and bolted from the room like a fleeing rabbit.

B

Ogami Teru was a strong-willed girl with a demure smile and supple limbs.
She was born as the eldest daughter of a shamisen craftsman in a certain town in Asakusa.
It had been a fairly successful shop, but when Teru was thirteen, her father’s hands began trembling from heavy drinking, making it impossible for him to work properly. Even when they hired craftsmen, things didn’t go as hoped, and the shop nearly collapsed.
Teru ended up working as a live-in servant at a soba shop in Senju.
She worked in Senju for two years, then spent a short while at a milk hall in Tsukishima, before moving to Yonekyu in Ueno.
She spent three years there.
From her meager wages, she continued sending two or three yen every month without fail to her parents.
At eighteen, she worked as a maid at a Mukojima teahouse, attempted to deceive an elderly Shinkapa actor who frequented the establishment, only to be deceived herself instead, and in her shame swallowed naphthalene to feign death.
After being dismissed from the teahouse, she returned to her family home for the first time in five years.
At her family home, three years earlier they had found a skilled and honest craftsman named Kanzō, entrusted him with the entire shop, and were apparently beginning to recover.
Teru did not have to force herself into service.
Teru began dutifully helping with household chores and practicing sewing.
Teru had one brother.
Unlike Teru, he was a quiet, timid child.
Taught by Kanzō, he applied himself diligently to the shop’s work.
Teru’s elderly parents intended to marry her to this Kanzō and have him serve as their son’s guardian indefinitely.
Both Teru and Kanzō had vaguely sensed their parents’ plan, yet neither found the prospect disagreeable.
She turned nineteen.
Since Teru had now reached marriageable age, her elderly mother suggested she might consider working at a grand household—if not for the wages, then at least to learn proper manners—and Teru, being obedient to her parents’ words, cheerfully agreed, thinking it truly better than idling about at home every day like this.
Through the recommendation of an esteemed retired gentleman—a person of status among the shop’s regular clientele—her place of service was decided.

It was the Minō Count family.

The Minō household was a desolate place.
Teru felt as if she had come to a temple.
On the morning of her second day in service, Teru picked up a notebook in the garden.
It was filled with incomprehensible writings.
It was Minō Jūrō's notebook.

○ Not that. Not this either.

○ Nothing.

○ Do not forget five-yen tip for FN.
A bouquet of roses—white and pale pink would be good.
Wednesday.
The manner of handing it over poses a problem.

○ On Nero’s Loneliness.

○ No matter how kind the greeting from a good person, when I think there’s some ulterior motive behind it, it’s painful, you know.

○ Someone kill me.

○ Henceforth, clothing purchases shall be on installment.
Carry it out.

○ Can’t get serious.

○ Last night, I had my fortune told.
Long life foretold.
Children to be plentiful.

○ Raised to rot.

○ Mozart.
Mozart.

○ I want to die for others’ sake.

○ Try drinking eight cups of coffee.
○ Nothing came of it.

○ Enemy of culture: Radio.
Megaphone.

○ Purchased one bicycle.
No particular use.

○ Handed six hundred yen to Moritaya’s proprietress.
Is debt life's obligation?

○ For a camel to pass through the eye of a needle—that’s impossible.
Can’t be done, I say.

○ How easily I could be disposed of!

○ Duke, marquis, count, viscount, baron.
Duke, marquis, count, viscount, baron.

○ Public bath acceptable.

○Minō Jūrō.
Minō Jūrō.
Minō Jūrō.
Shall I have business cards printed in first-size type?

○H, idiot.
D, imbecile.
The golf cup is a drool catcher.
S, fool.
At least I graduated from school.
U, half-dead.
To be such a miser at that age.
O-kun is good.
Manliness alone.

○ In daytime's fading light, it is things I ponder.

○ Mito Kōmon’s nationwide wanderings—this is my lifelong aspiration.
○ I am terrified of respect.
○ Long live the downfall!
○ Do not forget Pascal.

○ Seventy percent of geishas and prostitutes are said to be mentally ill.
"No wonder things made sense."
○ Someone is watching.

○ I think everyone is a good person.

○ If I eat tobacco, will I die?

○ Sat upright facing the desk and stared intently at a ten-yen bill.
It was a curious thing.

○ Family Hell.

○ The cheaper the liquor, the better its effect.

○ Looked into the mirror and burst out laughing.
After all, this is no face to speak of love.

○ If we trace it back, wild pampas grass from field and mountain.

○ Effort to become an ordinary person.

○ In the end, it was all words.
After all, words.
Everything was words.

○ A promise to give earrings to Ms. KR.

○ A child of man had but a single face.

○ I hate sexual desire.

○ Tomorrow.

As she read on, Teru felt something terribly strange.
Sweeping the garden, she shook her head repeatedly as she thought.
This so-called demonic scripture cast an ill-omened shadow of fate upon Teru’s important body before her marriage.

C

Please laugh at me—every night, every night, I converse only with flowers.
I’ve grown sick of everyone—Your Excellency included.
Even among myriad cherry blossoms, each and every bloom possesses a terrifying degree of individuality.
I am now lying prone on my bed, licking my pencil as I think and think, writing one character at a time until I’m nearly dying from the agony—and there I remain, gazing at the daffodil flower by my pillow.
Beneath the electric lamp stand three daffodil blooms—one facing right, one facing left, and another bowed down—each speaking to me.
The earnest flower facing right says, "I know, I know."
But I must go on living.
The lively flower facing left says, "The world’s just like this anyway."
The slightly wilted flower bowing its head said, "Princess, you don’t amount to even a flower’s worth."
Even the flowers laugh as they gaze upon our fate—we born classicists, historical even in silence, like ornaments in an alcove.
The splendid stone ornament in the alcove, shaped like Mount Fuji, receives nothing but distant words of admiration from people—apparently, it is not meant to be eaten, nor even touched.
No one knows how cold and painful it is for the Mount Fuji ornament, all alone.
It is the height of absurdity.
At the extremity of culture, it seems there always appears uproarious nonsense.
It seems to me that all paths of cultivation lead to aimless uproarious laughter.
Though I may be the most unhealthy woman in this world—a pitch-dark one at that—it is precisely for this reason that I humbly believe I know the highest, truest health: a robust morning free from pretense.

Why must we go on living? As long as we are tormented by that question, we cannot see the morning light.
And thus, what torments us appears to lie entirely in this single question.
Ah, with each sigh, people retreat a hundred steps—or so it goes.
I have recently arrived at one terribly harsh conclusion.
It is my unshakable conclusion that aristocrats are egoists.
No, do not say anything at all.
After all, you are still thinking only of yourself.
You suffer to the point of death solely for the sake of your own appearance.
As you may know, beside my pillow—alongside three daffodil blooms—there sits a small dressing table.
I gaze at the flowers, then peer into this mirror and speak to my beautiful face.
"You are beautiful," I told you.
I love my face.
No—I mourn it.
Confess: Your Excellency too has endured an entirely similar night.
Is it not that all our misfortunes, all our sufferings, well up from here—from within this mirror?
For others—for some utterly trivial blood relative—why can we not perform this reckless act of burying ourselves in mud and being crushed to pieces?
If that could be done.
If only I could do so with unshakable faith.
I keep spouting nothing but pretentious drivel.
Despise me.

I am beyond caring.
I am now writing with flushed cheeks.
I love Your Excellency.

I chewed on the pencil, lost in thought for a long time.
Having written "I love you," should I erase it? But no—this is better left unerased after all.
But then I reconsidered—ah, do as you please, do whatever—yet still I do love Your Excellency.
It must be the inadequacy of words.
This phrase—"I love you"—when put into words, becomes such an artificial, pretentious, frustrating expression. How I loathe words.

Love is—love is an uncontainable cosmic—no, transcendental noumenon.
Any splendid phenomenon remains but an annotation to love’s mere fragment.
Ah, I’ve gone and uttered something cloyingly sweet again.
Laugh at me, please.
Love renders one incompetent.
I have been defeated.

Cultivation, reason, aesthetic sense—these things had driven us, had driven me, into anguish's very depths—no, even deeper still.

Master Jūrō.
For this occasion’s brand-new little lover, I offer my sincerest congratulations.
To that foolish lover who one morning begged through tears—"Laugh at me or kill me if you must, but grant this once-in-a-lifetime request: go see the doctor! I’ve been with a wicked man"—to her I offer my sincerest congratulations.
Forgive me.
I thought it was trivial.
And thus even you, Master Jūrō—exulting over such earnest folly as ‘the earth’s affection’—struck me as wretchedly absurd.
I had turned twenty-five.
Year by year, everyone trooped away from me.
All dissolving into that commoner rabble.
At least this old woman I’d nurture—transient and splendid as fireworks.
Farewell—no, not farewell—a handshake.

Am I permitted this vanity?
You shall most certainly return to me.

Farewell. May you enjoy good health.
KR.

D

On a rainy day, Minō was writing in his study.
Scowling as he wrote, he was writing.

The bohemian poet friend popped his head out from the door.

“Hey, let’s go do something bad. I want to taste a bit more regret.”

Without even turning around,

“Not today.”

“Well, well.”

The poet entered the room.
“You’re not actually planning to die, are you?”

“Listen.
“I’ll read it.”
Minō, remaining seated at his desk, began reading his manuscript aloud in a loud voice.
“Agripaina was born as the younger sister of Caligula, King of Rōma.”
She was a petite woman with jet-black hair, wheat-colored cheeks, and a slender nose.
Her two extremely upturned eyes were cold and clear like mountain lakes.
She preferred to wear pure white dresses.

“Agripaina has no breasts,” whispered the dashing men gathered at court.
She was no beauty.
Yet her demeanor—proud and astute, like May’s fresh verdure, a flowerless purity towering in its clarity—instead bestowed upon one or two refined men of that era a charm verging on madness.

Agrippina was so happy she remained unaware of her own happiness.
Her brother, as a flawless wise king, possessed a fervent resolve—acutely aware of the solitary destiny that came with being Caesar—and never neglected his silent guardianship in the hope of granting his sole sister Agrippina something resembling true human freedom.

Agrippina’s insults toward men were delivered with such naturalness they attained historical grandeur.
The thin-lipped courtiers of that age took this fact as proof of her rare genius, increasingly withholding nothing in their raucous applause.

Agrippina’s misfortune began with the maturation of her body.
Her mockery of men was repaid in full through that marriage.
On the night of the wedding feast, Agrippina—through a drunken whim of her bridegroom—was made to unleash several aged apes he kept, sending the lecherous drunkards attending the banquet into raptures.
The groom’s name was Blazenbart.
He was, by nature, a man who could only know the locus of his life through terror.
Agrippina bit her lip and endured this humiliation.
She secretly swore to God that someday she would make every one of these men before her regret tonight’s insolence.
However, the day of revenge did not come easily.
Blazenbart’s tyranny knew no bounds.
Instead of pleasant caresses, there were beatings that drew blood from the gums.
Instead of tranquil walks by the water, there were chariots charging through billowing dust.

The union born of conflict made modesty's blossom unfold.
Agrippina conceived.
Blazenbart roared with laughter when he learned this truth.
He bore no hidden intent.
It simply struck him as absurdly comical.

Agrippina had nearly abandoned vengeance.
To this child alone she tethered her single fragile thread of hope.
The babe arrived at summer's scorching zenith.
A son.
Soft-skinned and crimson-lipped, a frail wisp of a boy.
They named him Domitius—Nero in his infancy.

Lord Father Blazenbart met the infant for the first time, firmly pinched its soft cheek, declared “Hmm—a queer creature. Hippo has herself a fine toy,” and laughed with belly-shaking mirth.
Hippo was the name of Blazenbart’s favorite lioness.
Agrippina responded with a cold smile on her gaunt postpartum cheeks.
“This child is not yours.”
“This child is surely Hippo’s.”

When that child of Hippo, Nero, turned three in spring, Blazenbart ate a pomegranate seeds and all, was seized by violent stomach pains, and after writhing and thrashing, met his end.
Agrippina, who had been bathing that morning, received definitive news of his death and without a word leaped from the bathhouse. Wrapping her wet naked body in a single white cloth, she passed by the room of her late husband—now breathless in death—and rushed like the wind into the room she entered: Nero’s room.
Clutching three-year-old Nero tightly, she whispered as if groaning, "We're saved, Domitius. We're saved," and with tears and kisses, ruined Nero's flower-like face.

That joy was fleeting.
It was the madness of her real brother, Emperor Caligula.
The gentle emperor of yesterday shouldered overnight the honor of becoming one of Rome’s most notorious tyrants.
Upon the brow that once shone with wisdom were carved deep vertical wrinkles as merciless as dagger strikes; within his narrow, small eyes burned blue flames of suspicion; upon the maidservants’ stifled laughter—faint as a breeze—and the generals’ and soldiers’ overly loud footsteps in the corridors, he imposed unsparingly cruel punishments.
He transformed into a sick dog of gloomy severity—biting without barking.

One night, three soldiers stood silently at Agrippina’s bedside.
One held the death warrant, another held a gem-encrusted poisoned chalice, and another unsheathed a dagger.

“What is the meaning of this?” Agrippina, without losing her dignity, sat up straight and reproached them.
No answer came.

The death warrant was handed over.

She cast a fleeting glance and declared, “There is no reason—none whatsoever—to be sentenced to death.”
“Step aside, you lowly ones.” There was no answer.

“You should remember the reason,” Emperor Caligula declared as he appeared in the doorway.
“This morning you strolled through the garden clutching that wretch Domitius, muttering grievances—‘Domitius, why must we be so wretched?’”
“I heard it all.”
“Don’t feign ignorance.”
“The suspicion of rebellion stands confirmed.”
“Die together with Domitius.”

“You must not kill Domitius.” Agrippina’s desperate protest resounded with the solemnity of a divine oracle. “Domitius is not yours.” “Nor is he mine.” “Domitius is a child of God.” “Domitius is a beautiful child.” “Domitius is a child of Rome.” “You must not kill Domitius.”

The apprehensive Caligula snickered.
"Very well, very well."
"I shall reduce your sentence by one degree."
"Exile to a solitary island."
"See that you cherish Domitius."

Agrippina and Nero were put aboard a ship and exiled to a solitary island in the southern seas.

Days of monotony dragged on.
Nero drank the milk of the island's cows, grew plump, and developed into a fierce, beautiful youth.
Agrippina took Nero by the hand and strolled along the shore of the solitary island, pointed toward the horizon, and said, "Domitius and Rome must surely be over there."
"I want to return to Rome soon. Rome is the finest city in this world," she told him, choking back tears.
Nero was innocently playing with the waves.

At that time, Rōma was in turmoil.
Pale-faced Emperor Caligula stood on the brink of assassination by his own retainers; with no heir to succeed him and left utterly alone in this world, ministers and commoners alike now whispered among themselves with tremulous excitement about who would next ascend the throne.
The successor had been decided.
Caligula’s uncle—Claudius.
He was already past fifty years of age at the time.
In response to the court’s competing factions, they selected an inoffensive individual who would maintain perfect equilibrium.
Claudius was an irreproachably virtuous man who appeared to satisfy these conditions.
He was renowned as Rōma’s foremost collector of seashells.
He also maintained firm convictions regarding the cultivation of black roses.
Even when assuming imperial authority, he felt somehow ill at ease.
He was overcome with diffidence.
He wantonly granted amnesties and pardons.
Particularly regarding Agrippina and Nero—exiled to that solitary island—he found their circumstances dreadful and unbearably pitiable; muttering with flushed cheeks an excuse meant for no one’s ears—“It’s simply too wretched”—he signed their pardon documents.

Agrippina on the solitary island, having received the pardon document, was ecstatic. Like a triumphant queen, she puffed out her chest with pride and cried out, “Domitius! Your time has come!” Then clutching Nero to her, she ran barefoot outside and walked about the desolate rocky shore without a single flower as if dancing, before coming to a halt and sobbing for a long time.

Agrippina had returned to Rome and stretched her limbs luxuriously with the thought that no terrifying people remained—when suddenly she felt a piercing gaze from behind. Claudius’s empress Messalina. Messalina took one look into Agrippina’s eyes and thought: This woman is dangerous. She perceived blazing flames of ambition within them.

Messalina had an heir called Britannicus. He had inherited his father Claudius’s gentle disposition. If Nero’s beauty could be likened to the midsummer sun, Britannicus was an autumn cosmos.

Nero was eleven years old.
Britannicus was nine years old.

A strange event occurred.
When Nero was taking his midday nap, a soft hand unknown to anyone covered his nostrils and mouth with two water-soaked rose leaves, plotting to suffocate him to death.
Agrippina turned pale with rage—

“Wait! Wait!”
The Poet emitted something between a scream and a shout.
“There are limits to human endurance.
Just what exactly is this supposed to be?”

“It’s Nero’s biography.”
“Tyrant Nero.”
“That guy wasn’t such a bad fellow, you know.”
He had unwittingly turned pale.
Minō, noticing his own agitation, forced a sly grin.
“It’s about to get interesting, though.”
“Agrippina raised Nero so carefully—so very carefully—and wanting to elevate him to the throne, used every wicked scheme.”
“In the end, she impersonated Claudius’s empress and poisoned him to death.”
“And then she did even worse things.”
“Thanks to that, Nero ascended to the throne.”
“And then—”

“Nero does bad things too.”
The Poet said calmly.

“No, Agrippina interfered with Nero’s love affair—”

“Hmm… I see.”
The Poet puffing on his cigarette said “Nero thus lost his mother.
‘Mother please forgive me; I am not yours.’
The mother whispered from under a labored breath.
‘Do you hate your mother?’”

Minō said with a look of waning interest, “Well, that’s about it.” He stood up from his chair and paced around the room. “People driven to the edge will surely start devouring their own kin.”

“Stop it. Too old-fashioned. Melodramatic.”
The Poet both loved this modest literary talent of Minō’s and pitied his circumstances of secretly writing such stories alone, yet he resolved to deliberately pretend not to notice Minō’s current reckless new love affair.
“It’s just like a movie plot.”

“Want a drink?”
Minō reached for the whiskey bottle on the desk.

“I wouldn’t dream of refusing.”
The Poet also stood up.

This was fine.

“For the people of Rome.”
The two said in unison and clinked their glasses with a sharp click.
“For the doomed class.
Cheers.”

E

The human heart as well

To be truly believed,

Upon the cross
Unless one climbs
must one not become?

(Ivan Gor)

F

Teru was dismissed.
It was not because her relationship with Minō had been discovered.
The two were adept at deceiving prying eyes.

Teru was dismissed due to her crude demeanor, her utterly rude speech, and her chaotic use of honorifics.

Minō pretended not to know.

Three days later, around nine in the evening, Minō Jūrō stood unsteadily at the shopfront of Teru’s house.

“Is Teru here? I am Minō.”

The one who emerged was a sharp-eyed, lean young man.
It was Kanzō.

“Ah,”
Kanzō stiffened and called toward the back, “Teru!”

“Excuse me.”
With that, Minō left the shopfront and staggered back into the street.
People streamed past in droves.

Breathlessly, Teru came chasing after him.
Clinging to Minō’s body from both sides as she walked alongside him—

“Huh? Why did you come?
I have sticky fingers, you know.
I was driven out, you know.
My house—it’s so filthy. Were you shocked?
But please—don’t mock me, okay?
The folks at home—they’re all kind, you know.
They’re doing their best, you know.
Are you laughing?
Why aren’t you saying anything?”

“You have a fiancé, don’t you?”

“Oh dear—I must look so dreadful like this.”
She muttered in a suddenly aged voice and lowered her face.
“I haven’t even been fixing my hair properly lately.”

“Can’t you break up with that person?”
“I’ll do anything.”
“No matter how painful it is, I’ll endure it.”

Teru did not answer.

“It’s fine, it’s fine.”
Minō quickened his pace as if to flee.
“It’s fine, it’s okay.
Let’s at least promise we won’t die.
Even as I say this, I’m the one who’s really in danger, you know.”

The two walked briskly, staring straight ahead.
They simply walked.
They walked.
They walked a thousand miles.

G

Minō Jūrō married Hisa, the second daughter of businessman Misumi Keizō.
They held a splendid wedding reception at the Imperial Hotel.
Photographs of the bride and groom from that occasion appeared in two or three newspapers.
The eighteen-year-old bride’s figure was as lovely as an evening primrose.

H

Everyone lived happily.