Pathway to Japanese Literature

The God of Kyogen

When you fast, do not put on a mournful countenance like the hypocrites.

(Matthew 6:16.)

I shall write of my now-deceased revered friend, Kasai Ichi.

Kasai Ichi.
Registered name: Temura Kenzou.
He was born on June 19, Meiji 42 (1909), in Kanagi Town, Kitatsugaru District, Aomori Prefecture.
His deceased father was a member of the House of Peers, Temura Gen'emon.
His mother was Taka.
Kenzou was the sixth son.
After graduating from the same town's elementary school, he entered Aomori Prefectural Aomori Middle School in Taisho 12 (1923).
In Showa 2 (1927), he completed the fourth year at the same school.
In the same year, he entered Hirosaki Higher School's Liberal Arts department.
In Showa 5 (1930), he graduated from the same school.
In the same year, he entered Tokyo Imperial University’s Department of French Literature.
He was a young soldier.
He was so ashamed he could die.
When he closed his eyes, various hairy monsters appeared.
Or so he said.
Laughing, he spoke of solemn matters.
.

It begins with "Kasai Ichi" and ends with "speaks of solemn matters." The several lines of text concluding with this period had been meticulously inscribed with brushstrokes on Japanese paper, character by character, and lay concealed beneath the inkstone box in his study. One might surmise he had commenced writing these lines as a draft resume for himself, yet within penning a line or two, the volcanic smoke of his lifelong vice—that shame—erupted with ferocity akin to Mount Asama, threatening to scorch the heavens themselves, until circumstance compelled that evasive "or so he says" to emerge unbidden, whereupon he twisted it into his vaunted "dragon's head and snake's tail" configuration before casting aside his brush.

I came across these few lines of text immediately after his death; stared at them transfixed; reread them once, twice, picked them up again to scrutinize—but my vision clouded over until finally, waves of sobs rising, I could no longer read a single character. Folded it into quarters and tucked it into my breast pocket I did, though inwardly I felt salt being ground into my scorched heart.

Regret—a sentiment of unfulfilled yearning.
That phrase "young soldier," followed by the anxiety lurking beneath those lines—no, the extreme shame, the oppressive self-consciousness, the faint glimmer of loyalty toward some class—all were as thoroughly commonplace as public bathhouse murals.
I fully intend to find—as many as needed, as many as exist—screams or hoarse whispers about these emotions, expressed far more skillfully than this, among Bando Tsumasaburo's film titles.
As for his casually inserting that line about noble lineage—pure feminine pettiness.
A wretched act indeed.
Yet what tormented me that night until I cried aloud wasn't these slipshod characters.
Through this scribbled scrap, I'd touched irrefutable proof he'd sweated through every limb striving for steady employment until death's brink.
The writer Kasai Ichi—called by some critics with genuine respect or light mockery the God of Lies and Farce Master—left behind a resume draft as his final work.
My eyes don't lie.
His life's wish was simply "to become a proper human being."
What a fool.
He lived spotlessly pure, was a studious youth devoted to friends, possessed exceptional creative skill, even had wealth enough for daily comfort—yet revered salarymen, yearned for them, feared them, groveling obsequiously before every salaryman he knew until it became unbearable to watch.
On crowded morning trains packed with salarymen, he'd grow so guilt-ridden, ashamed, terrified—vision blackening—that he'd flee at the next station, face paper-white and contorted like a gagging man's, tremblingly tell me this—then died soon after.

The death by hanging of Kasai Ichi, an eccentric writer, bloomed in a corner of the tabloid section come mid-spring.
A flurry of speculations arose from all quarters, yet every last one missed the mark.
No one knew.
He had died because he failed the employment exam at Miyako Newspaper Company.

Failure had been clearly and definitively decided.
The couple's monthly living expenses—the ninety-yen check his eldest brother in the countryside had sent the previous night—he had taken out early that morning and was now walking through Ginza in broad daylight, slightly drunk.
The aged and weary Imperial University student, with tattered cuffs, trousers as slender as mosquito shins, and a mouse-colored spring coat draped over his shoulders—strange to say—was the spitting image of Baudelaire in his youth.
Having readjusted his battered hat askew, he was sucked into the entrance of Kabukiza Theater's one-act viewing seats.

On stage, Kikugorō’s Gonhachi wore a green crested formal kimono so dark it seemed to drip, with red leggings; he clapped his hands briskly and muttered, "If the pheasant hadn’t cried, it wouldn’t have been shot." Sobs kept welling up, and he couldn’t muster the courage to keep watching.

During the performance, we kindly ask for your quiet.
Despite thousands upon thousands of people of all sorts being there, Kabukiza Theater was enveloped in profound silence.
He softly descended the stairs and stepped outside.
The streets were lit.
He thought of going to Asakusa.
In Asakusa there existed a cheap eatery called Hisagoya that served wild boar meat.
Four years ago today—if I had made something of myself by now—I would have surely taken her as my bride," he had told the clear-eyed fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl—the newest waitress at that shop who served as an errand runner—to lift her spirits.
The clientele of that eatery consisted of carpenters and day laborers; a square-capped university student being such a rare sight that at this particular establishment alone, no matter when he came, all six waitresses would fuss over him.
When scorned by others—utterly crushed and cast aside—he would sell his books to scrape together about three yen before losing himself in Asakusa's crowds.
He would get quite drunk on that shop's thirteen-sen-a-bottle sake and amuse himself splendidly with the six waitresses.
Among them he had loudly made marital vows to one particularly impoverished-looking girl and—moreover—discreetly sworn three or four lies that brought a smile to her face; thus the girl gradually came to rely on the university student as her pillar of strength.
Then a miracle manifested.
From that night when the girl became certain she was loved, her beauty blossomed remarkably.
From spring through summer three years prior—in less than a hundred days—her hairstyle grew splendid; even her nose seemed slightly more pronounced.
Her forehead and chin and both hands appeared faintly fairer—perhaps her makeup had improved—until she possessed such dignified presence that it would not shame even a university student into madness.
On nights when he had money—over and over—that woman would deceive him until he lost every coin.
Thus he came to deeply realize that being deceived by her was a joyous thing.
The woman kept not a single sen of the money received from the university student for herself—distributing it all among five fellow waitresses—and as she flapped her fan against mosquitoes at her shins when Asakusa Festival approached, she became that eatery's招牌娘.
It was not God's doing.
Human strength had created Venus.

As the girl grew busier, she gradually drifted away from her benefactor, the university student, and once separated, his figure vanished from sight.
For the university student, years of hardship began to set in.

That night, having fled Kabukiza Theater, he drank sake and beer and sake and beer again at Hisagoya for the first time in a full year, spending around twenty fifty-sen silver coins like water.
“Three years ago today,” he said, “I made a clear promise here.”
“I’ve achieved success.”
“Good girl—bring this morning’s newspaper.”
“See? Right here.”
“My photo’s in it.”
“This here’s an ad for my novel.”
“Do I look like I’m pouting?”
“You think so?”
“I meant to smile there...”
“Did you forget our promise?”
“Ah—wait! Wait!”
“This is my thanks for fetching the paper.”
With careless ease he squandered another two or three yen when—suddenly remembering his sister—a ragged sob clogged his nose; he grabbed a thirtyish Shin-nai street performer and offered him sake, but the man misjudged his young patron’s means and demanded whiskey instead.
Oh dear—how brazen! How brazen!
The young customer obligingly let himself be tricked into buying a glass of whiskey before asking what else he might want.
The Shin-nai man finally relaxed—cheek propped on hand—requesting chawanmushi egg custard as his eyes glinted behind dark glasses with thin amusement.
“Now then,” he addressed him.
“You’re no true performer by birth.”
The man carried himself with unwarranted confidence.

Eventually, the young master of a proper pipe shop.
The youngest son of a katsuobushi wholesaler that had endured three generations.
Am I mistaken?
The aforementioned Shin-nai abruptly drew his lightly powdered face close and whispered in a voice hushed to avoid being overheard: “Rice merchant—rice merchant.”
At that moment, Kubota Mantaro appeared.
When seven of the ten electric lights in the establishment had been extinguished and unease crept through the air, a red-nosed merchant past fifty entered with affected solemnity. All the maidservants cried “Oh brother!” in unison and half-rose from their seats.
She stood up, approached him slightly, and said: “Pardon me.”
“Might you be Mr. Kubota?”
“I am one who shall graduate this year from Imperial University’s literature department. Though I’ve managed to sell some manuscripts, I remain largely obscure.”
“I humbly request your guidance hereafter.”
Having made this entreaty with military rigidity, the merchant—having forfeited his chance to wave a hand before his nose and say “You’re mistaken”—seemed to resolve upon mischief: he would impersonate this supposed “Kubota-sensei.”

Hahaha.
Well.
“Take a seat.”

Hah.

--Drinking all the while.

--Hah.

—One.

—Hah.

Thus, stiffening his shoulders like a soldier and sitting down on the offered chair, he found it truly unexpected to have encountered Mr. Kubota in such a place.
"Do you come here every night, Mr. Kubota?"
"The other night, I had the honor of reading your work 'Sen'ninburo,' and indeed it excited me so that I believe I sent you a letter, though I must apologize for the presumption."

That was—you know—utterly mortifying.

I had been inexcusably rude. It was my mistake. Sen'ninburo was Mr. Kasai Zenzo's work.

Absolutely mortifying.

After engaging in increasingly nonsensical exchanges, Mr. Kubota began spouting difficult terms like "spirit," "genre," and "phenomenon," launching into a lecture about the declining reading abilities of young writers. When the thought struck him—*This might actually be Kubota Mantaro*—his drunkenness evaporated all at once. Finding the situation utterly insufferable, he staggered to his feet. "Sir, I must take my leave."
He was about to embark on a journey.
"Yes, until this money runs out," he said, pulling out two or three ten-yen bills from his inner pocket to show them before heading outside.

Aaaah.
Tonight had been truly delightful.
Should he enter the Ōkawa?
Should he throw himself onto the railway tracks?
Should he use chemicals?
Even through the virtuous deeds that gave Shin-nai and the merchant—two men of livelihood—their confidence, there remained no dread of hell.
A quiet passing seemed attainable.
Yet while his body stayed in such condition that he could easily hail an en-taku and return home to Ogikubo, his heart remained dulled, making death quite impossible.
At any rate, he must escape Tokyo—even a single step beyond its bounds.
By all means tonight, he must reach that irreversible point.
How about two yen to Yokohama Honmoku?
If you dislike it, quit.
Two yen settled—agreed.
The car hummed forward, and in its shadowed rear seat, he cried out—ah! ah!—and wept.
The late, revered friend Kasai Ichi mattered not at all.
All these things concerned me alone—Osamu Dazai.
At this juncture, I would employ no further devices.
I would die tomorrow.
Still, regarding my initial design, I shall tell you.
I had schemed to wholly borrow the style of a certain Japanese literary master and let me—Osamu Dazai—speak.

For someone like me with what might be called a loss of self, unless I borrowed another's voice, I could not utter a single word about myself.
If one takes shelter under a great tree—say Ōgai, Rintarō Mori—I would recount the character of his youthful friend Kasai Ichi, that writer who died young, and then set down in writing all that surrounded his death by hanging.
Those old master's notes had been precisely structured to form this novel titled Kyogen no Kami ("The God of Farce"), but ah—none of it mattered anymore.
A strange tone emerged in the prose, and I now dashed forward with sails billowing full in a fair wind.
This was true romantic style.
Forward we march!
A life uncertain of tomorrow.

The car stopped before a certain hotel in Honmoku. Thinking she resembled Napoleon, he found himself led to the woman's bedroom where—upon glancing at the bedside—a photograph of Napoleon stood properly displayed. That everyone must share this perception finally filled him with warmth and gladness.

That night, Napoleon taught me a way to play I hadn't known.

The next morning was rainy.
Opening the window revealed the hotel’s backyard.
Green grass grew thickly, resembling a pasture.
Beyond the grassy field stretched a murky reddish-brown sea crushed beneath the low overcast sky, its heavy body swaying without white crests of waves. Below the window lay a slightly torn white tabi sock discarded on rain-beaten grass. Standing there wearing the woman’s blue-striped work coat over my shoulders, I felt unbearable agony—as if an awl were stabbing then tickling then stabbing again beneath my arms.
“You should see Hakurankai,” suggested Napoleon in her southern-accented voice with last night’s same elegant composure. Visions of bustling international flags flashed through his mind—*Fool!* He’d go to Osaka! To Kyoto too! Nara! Yoshino’s fresh greenery! Kobe! Just as he started to say “Niagara,” he burst into booming laughter.
Rude of me.

“Farewell.” Oh—it was raining.
“Your umbrella.”

I seemed to be liked.
"I’ll buy that umbrella for five yen," I said.
Everyone burst into uproarious laughter.
Ah! I want to stay here and play.
I want to stay and play.
My forehead swam.
Tears seethed.
But I endured.
I had no money.
That morning in the toilet, when I seriously checked, there were two ten-yen bills, one five-yen bill, and two or three yen in coins.
I’d spent sixty or seventy yen in one night, yet had no inkling where or how it went—this was all my life amounted to.
He didn’t want to die feeling meager.
I’ll twist twenty or thirty yen carelessly into my trouser pocket, leave it as is, and die.
"I must economize," I thought for the first time in my life.
Clutching a flower-patterned parasol, he hurried to the station.
He discarded the umbrella in the station waiting room and asked at the information counter how to reach Enoshima.
Having asked this—Ah, so I’d already settled on Enoshima as my death place after all—he nodded honestly, felt a quiet calm descend, and boarded the train exactly as directed.

Receding mountains.
The highway.
A wooden bridge.
Each looked familiar.
So seven years ago too—he had ridden this same train; seven years ago, it seemed he'd been a young soldier then.
Ah.
I'm so ashamed I could die.
On a certain moonless night, I alone had fled.
The five comrades left behind all lost their lives.
I am the child of a major landowner.
There are no exceptions among landowners.
They are all equally your enemies.
I awaited severe punishment as a traitor.
I was waiting for the day I'd be shot dead.
But I was impulsive.
Unable to endure waiting for execution, I resolved to sever my own life first.
I chose shamelessness befitting a declining class—the method of decadence.
It sprang from a heart wanting multitudes to judge me, mock me, revile me.
I attempted love suicide with a married woman.
I was twenty-two.

The woman was nineteen.
In December's bitter midnight cold, she kept her coat on and I retained my mantle as we entered the water.
The woman died.
I confess.
In all this world, I respect only this person—only this petite woman.
I was imprisoned.
The charge bore the curious name of suicide abetment.
The site of our watery descent had been Enoshima.
(Not solely motivated by the reasons previously stated—wishing to disclose other tangled circumstances—I had compiled three pages chronicling that night's memories below. But meeting insurmountable difficulties, I have now excised them entirely.)
Readers—spare your prying and await tomorrow's tale—I emerged from boiling recollections and alighted at Enoshima.

It was a day of fierce winds, and about a hundred soldiers had gathered at the base of the bridge leading to Enoshima, sitting together and eating their lunches uniformly.
If I were to leap into the sea before so many people, it would only result in pointlessly allowing two or three soldiers who pride themselves on their swimming to make a name for themselves.
I gave up after just a glance at the rough gray sea.
I entered Bōfukaku—a restaurant at the bridge's base surrounded by reed screens—and said, "One beer."
While drinking in a lackluster manner—lapping at it like a cat's tongue—he seemed to gaze resentfully at Enoshima, shrouded in yellow dust beyond the raging winds.
He hunched his back, propped his cheek on his hand, and remained still for about thirty minutes.
He truly wished he could just sit there and die.
He had never before thought each and every printed character in the newspaper looked so filthy and vile.
A mouse-gray spring.
A lanky Imperial University student.
He had a habit of hunching his back and propping his cheek absentmindedly.
He ran away from home to commit suicide.
Even if such articles were to appear before my eyes now, I would not bat an eyelid.
The cruel truth was, I had lost even the capacity for shock.
There were no articles about me, but the fact that Mr. Togo’s granddaughter had gone missing after saying she wanted to work and live on her own was reported in a vulgarly distorted manner.
The soldiers trooped into Bōfukaku’s dining hall with such forceful entry that they knocked over my table.
Although neither the glass nor the beer bottle broke, the beer—still more than half remaining in the bottle—spilled out while foaming white.
Two or three waitresses heard the noise and stretched to see the commotion yet maintained expressions of utter normalcy and said nothing.
The sound of the talkie suddenly vanished as if switching to silent film, leaving everything in a hush—a strange sensation like a cat tiptoeing across velvet.
It felt like a premonition of madness. With his mood turning perilous, he nevertheless deliberately rose slowly, had them settle the bill, and went outside.

Suddenly, a violent wind.
The hem of his spring coat was abruptly flipped up, and a handful of small gravel was hurled at his cheek, crackling as it struck.
Tightly shutting my eyes and whispering to myself that I would die tonight, I stood immobilized in the middle of the road for a long time, feeling as though everyone had all gone far away and I was the only one left in the world.

When he opened his eyes, he had completely lost his will; walking like a ghost, he emerged onto the shore.
Jet-black clouds filled the sky; it was dark and low.
As far as he could see, there were no human figures.
A single rotting fishing boat lay discarded on the sandy beach, overturned to reveal its jet-black belly; apart from this, there wasn’t even a stray dog in sight.
I thrust both hands into my trouser pockets, paced restlessly around the same spot endlessly, and with greasy sweat streaming down my face, searched for an adjective to describe the sea before my eyes.
Ah, I want to summon the writer.
The phrase I finally dredged up through writhing effort was: "The sea of Enoshima was bleak."
I sharply turned my back to the sea.
The sea here was shallow; even if I jumped in, it would only get my knees wet.
I did not want to botch it.
Even if I botched it, I had to choose a prudent method that would let me feign ignorance afterward.
I did not want others noticing my failed attempt and enduring the shame of rope marks.
How long did I walk after that?
Over a hundred plans of every hue flared up and vanished like Ryogoku fireworks—flaring and vanishing—and without settling on any of them, I stumbled aboard the Kamakura-bound train.

Tonight, I will die.
I wanted to spend those remaining hours in happiness.
Clunking, clunking—jostled by the painfully slow train, I carried not a single emotional signpost that could be ostentatiously displayed through words: neither dark gloom nor desolation, neither the pinnacle of solitude nor wisdom's limit, neither frenzy nor idiocy's sensation, neither wailing nor smoldering anguish, neither solemnity nor terror, neither punishment nor rage, neither resignation nor autumn's chill, neither peace nor regret, neither contemplation nor calculation, neither love nor salvation.
I was not grave.
In the corner of the train car, trembling from the cold like a lowly commoner and restlessly shifting his eyes—that was all it amounted to.
Along the way, he passed in front of a sanatorium called Seishōen.
Seven years ago in December, on a night with a red moon, the woman died, and I was admitted to this hospital.
I spent about a month there engaging in leisure and attempting to recover my health; though faintly, the life during that month made me aware of the joy of being alive.
The seven years that followed felt to me like fifty years—no, like ten distinct lifetimes—so numerous were the hardships that arose. Each instance of my endurance proved utterly futile, leaving me incapable of living an ordinary life, and so I had come here alone once more with the purpose of dying.
The sanatorium too had been weathered by seven years of wind and rain: the iron gate—once painted pure white like a detached palace—had discolored to mouse-gray; even the roof tiles’ blazing azure that had etched itself ever more vividly into my eyes over those seven years now mottled into bald white patches, repaired here and there with black Japanese tiles, leaving it dirty, unfamiliar—a face utterly alien.
Over seven years, if seen by others, my smile—my very posture—would likely appear even more soiled than this structure.

Hm?
Strange things do happen.
That rock was gone.

“Hey, don’t you think this rock feels like mom?”
“Warm and soft—I really like this rock,” the woman had said while stroking it all over. The flat rock I too had agreed with was gone.
The rock on which they had been playing and frolicking right up until they were about to jump in was gone.
This couldn’t be.
One of these must be a dream.
With a clunk, the train gave a single heavy lurch and entered the woods of an unfamiliar village.
The ironic thing was, I was even in good health that day.
He felt a faint hunger.
He asked Mr. Conductor to let him off at any lively station, and before long—being instructed to disembark there—hurriedly got off at Hase.
The rain wet his cheeks, and he felt purified and happy.

Two grown schoolgirls, unable to leave the station without umbrellas and looking perplexed, nevertheless kept giggling softly as they embraced each other with refined grace in the corner of a three-square-meter waiting room.
If I had had an umbrella at that moment, I might not have died.
A drowning man’s single straw.
Deeply, harshly, he staggered.
I swear.
For your sake, I will grind myself to dust and strive.
I’ll keep living, so please don’t scold me.
But that was all there was to it.
If one does not speak, it is as though one has no sorrow—or so they say.
It seemed the color of my eyes—gazing at the petite one among those two women who laughed with delicately arched eyebrows like bamboo leaves—never came to be understood, despite being filled with a thousand emotions.
With a flick, he turned as lightly as possible and leapt out into the rain.
It didn't go like a swallow.
He nearly slipped and fell.
I wanted to look back.
Stop!
He briskly entered the eatery directly across the street.
In the dimly lit dining room’s wall was embedded an impressively large barber’s mirror, and my face—large-eyed, amiable—was smiling.
Surprisingly, it was a plump and contented face.
Wanting to get drunk as soon as possible, I scattered the beef hot pot while alternately gulping down beer and sake.
You—there was something I couldn’t trivialize.

I drank and drank, but couldn't get drunk.
Believe me, I implore you.
In the mirror, my face floated with an unearthly depth of gentle melancholy; thus in this foul-smelling cheap diner frequented by rickshaw pullers and stable hands—where elegance seemed incongruous—the face of the man who sat alone picking at leeks in his beef hot pot was, I must not laugh, said to resemble Christ himself.
Around noon, I visited the writer Mr. Fukada Kyuya.
Due to a certain distinctly outstanding short story of his, I had wished to speak with him.

Sagami Province, Kamakura, Nikaidō.
I had not forgotten the address either.
Three times I sent long letters, each time receiving cheerful replies from him.
Somehow I had come to decide on my own that this writer liked me exactly as much as I liked him.
The remaining time was scant.
It had to be devoted to matters of happiness.
I resolved my stance without a second’s delay.
At that moment I lacked leisure to devise any greater joy than visiting Mr. Fukada.
The rain had ceased; clouds raced like arrows through gaps revealing pale blue sky scrubbed clean by wind that still blew fiercely—an outlaw rampaging through streets I now strode against vigorously.
I became embarrassingly boyish.
"A swift horse needs good fodder."
Murmuring playfully, I stopped at a tobacco shop for two packs of expensive foreign cigarettes called Camel—pretending delinquency by sneaking puffs then frantically stubbing them out.
A small stooped policeman ambled windblown down the highway’s centerline with hands clasped behind his back.
I asked directions to Nikaidō.
I was perceptive.
This elderly officer proved indeed unforgettable among people.
Repeating instructions in bashful stammers as if to take my hand:
"Oh Nikaidō’s right up ahead."
To this aged weary soul I offered devout thanks before following three precise turns—at the fourth corner finding Fukada Kyuya’s modest nameplate effortlessly.
The residence stood tenfold neater than imagined; muttering “Well well” while smiling unstoppably within.

I climbed the stone steps, knocked precisely on the gate as the characters dictated, and loudly announced my name to the maid who appeared.
How splendid—the master was home.
I softly wiped my forehead's sweat with my right hand's back.
Guided by the maid to the parlor, I deliberately sat with the stiff propriety of a model student, gazed at the garden's perfectly laid lawn, and felt heartened that one could sustain such a lifestyle through writing alone.
As I released an improper sigh of relief—unseemly for one meant to die tonight—and grew mildly flustered, the household's master emerged with windblown hair and a florid countenance exactly matching his photographs as we exchanged initial greetings. Yet he felt no stranger to me, for my friend Kubo-kun—who had abruptly withdrawn from me two springs prior—had once recounted meeting Fukada Kyuya three or four years ago around this season, describing how he maintained a domestic existence wholly unlike any Japanese writer's, so meek it induced scandalous illusions of muttering "that imbecile Fukada Kyuya" while secretly laughing—such was his unbearably benign nature. Now facing him, I too unexpectedly recalled Kubo-kun's fate and that "imbecile Fukada Kyuya," feeling like an impudent stray dog aboard a merchant vessel as I thoroughly lowered my guard.
There remained no need for debate now; all words felt burdensome as we two did nothing but gaze at the garden for an extended while.
Stretching my limbs physically to their fullest extent, I wondered—to whom might I convey this present abundance of mine? Mr. Yasuda Yojuro would likely nod repeatedly through tears.
Contemplating Yasuda's retreating form now made me want to weep,

“Novels have been getting more difficult to write—it’s rather troublesome.”

“Right.”
“But…”

He faltered in speech.
He seemed dissatisfied.
Wilhelm Meister was not a novel written through arduous deliberation, I gently told myself, and understanding this—yes, yes—I felt a quiet, warm emotion.
I suddenly wanted to play shogi and, when I invited him, Fukada Kyuya also began beaming and readily agreed.
I resolved to have the most dignified and leisurely match in all of Japan.
At first I won, but then I became impatient and lost.
I seemed slightly stronger.
Fukada Kyuya was a first-class writer who, in Japan, was the very first to create a "spiritual woman."
I must value this person and Mr. Ibuse Masuji more.

"Let's settle this one-on-one."

While putting the shogi pieces back in their box,

“Let us settle this another day.”

This became Mr. Fukada’s sole regrettable memory regarding Dazai.
“One-on-one.”
“We’ll decide it soon,” he had said—and I too had looked forward to it.

On my way there, I had fully intended to lure Mr. Fukada out for a walk—to indulge in wicked hopes of drinking heavily together while whispering two or three Mephistophelean temptations—yet confronted with this tranquil lifestyle, even my rough breathing felt intrusive. With the ticklish discomfort of balancing a cherry blossom petal on my palm, limbs that should have been fully extended now began to shrivel, growing gradually suffocated until they finally snapped with a dry crack and slumped in dejection.
Without uttering a word, like a tamed leopardess, I simply slipped away quietly.
The garden's peach blossoms in full bloom were seeing me off, and I involuntarily looked back—though I wasn't looking at the flowers.
I was staring at the rope fragment chillingly dangling from that blossoming branch.
Should I pocket that rope?
Standing on the stone steps outside the gate and gazing at the distant horizon, I felt the beauty of the far-off crimson sky seep into my very core—in that moment, I felt utterly desolate and heartrendingly sad.
Should I turn back, pour everything out to Fukada Kyuya, and have us both weep?
Idiot.
Pathetically sentimental.
At the last possible moment, I restrained myself.
I would tie together two laces from my derby shoes.
If too short, there remained the two-shaku cord from my undergarments.
Having resolved this, I strode vigorously like a master thief.
I walked briskly through twilight streets, cutting through the wind.
The faintly white monument marking Saint Nichiren's street preaching site whizzed into view, and before I could comprehend it, the coarse phrase "time grants me no advantage" escaped my lips—Huh?
I muttered in mild surprise before stopping to interrogate myself: Am I dying because seasons defeated me? Surely not—
Receiving a negative answer, I began trudging sluggishly.
If you've confirmed death brings peace, then die without hesitation!
Though guiltless, I pitied these youths—fragile as cupped springwater—who, precisely through their acuity and profound compassion, knew no self-expression beyond severing their lives.
That urging death was good—by no means demonic whispers—I had even prepared an immovable philosophical system to prove this.

And for me that night, death by hanging closely resembled the art of healthy living.
It had been the result of meticulous cost-benefit calculations.
I would die to live fiercely through.
There was no need for debate now.
A clear, perfect mold had been formed for death—straight and single-minded. I would flow swiftly into that mold like molten lead, and that would suffice.
Why had I chosen death by hanging?
It was no imitation of Stavrogin.
No—or perhaps it might have been.
The suicide's contagion proved three times as certain as the Black Death, its ripples spreading tenfold faster than whispers of palace scandals.
As for meticulously ensuring a peaceful end—even coating the rope with soap—I wholeheartedly approved. My medical student nephew claimed hanging held an eighty-seven percent success rate in Japan these past five years; wasn't it said to be nearly painless?
I had failed once with chemicals.
I had failed once by drowning.
Japan's Stavrogin-kun hadn't needed to pace his room agonizing over hanging—he simply chose it.
I had considered lodging at an inn—washing myself, donning their nearly-new yukata, dying cleanly—but realizing my corpse would irreparably damage the building and ruin a modest family of five or six, I reached Kamakura Station's bustling entrance only to pivot sharply back toward the dim path I'd just traversed.
The old woman's radio near the station chased me with announcements: five minutes to eight, evening showers in Taiwan, concluding the "Japan Yoitoko" broadcast.
A road so deserted that lingering invited immediate suspicion.
The wry maxim "Strike while the iron's hot" rose within me—then abrupt memories of two or three relatives sent me veering into a roadside grove as if continuing my path.
A gently sloping hillock where unrelenting wind rattled barren branches intensified the cold.
As night deepened, so too grew my risk of arousing suspicion.
Terrified—utterly terrified—of people, I pressed deeper into the woods.

No matter how far I went, my body wouldn't settle, and soon enough—right before my nose—a red clay cliff of about ten feet loomed heavily.
Looking up, atop that cliff—as if there were a shrine—stood a small torii about my height, with evergreen trees growing thickly. Their dignified air beckoned me. I pushed through pampas grass and wild roses, searching for a path up the cliff, but nothing of the sort could be found. In the end, clawing into the red clay with my nails to climb, I muttered twice: “A bear without the moon’s ring, a bear without the moon’s ring.”
After finally managing to reach the top of the cliff and looking down at what lay below, the sparsely scattered lights of Kamakura’s houses appeared as if I could reach out and touch them.
The bear wandered around searching for a place.
I was neither numbing my brain with drugs nor bolstering myself with alcohol.
In the pants pocket was a little over twenty yen.
I would die with an impeccably ordered will.
Behold.
My intellect would not cloud until one second before I died.
However, I had secretly been concerned about my appearance.
I had wanted the shadow of pristine anguish.
Swaying on a branch as thick as my arm—for an instant, wisteria flowers—I gave up hope, thinking “It’s no good after all.”
Far from anguish—a fool’s face.
Moreover, contrary to rumors, the pain was so excruciating that I inadvertently let out a cry—a cry so loud it echoed through the woods.
“This isn’t easy,” I muttered, and then, loving the sound of my own voice so much, I suddenly couldn’t bear it and began to cry.
In the mind’s eye just before death, they say a kaleidoscope of various flower images should spin round and round like a magic lantern—a lively affair—but for me, it was utterly hopeless.
I futilely thrashed my limbs like a hooked salamander.
As I became utterly confounded by my foolish appearance, even the shoddy writer within me emerged to declare: “Humanity’s most anguished expression lies neither in tears nor white hair—nor even the furrow between one’s brows.
“In moments of greatest anguish, people smile in silence.”
A dying gasp.

It felt as though I was taking a single breath every thirty minutes, if that.
The whine of a mosquito.
But the pain only grew more intense, my mind conversely sharpened, and not even the faintest premonition of losing consciousness stirred.
And so I had no choice but to wait idly by for the moment when my throat's cartilage would collapse.
Ah, what a clumsy way to die I had chosen.
Dostoevsky did not understand the agony of hanging.
I kept my eyes wide open and waited earnestly for my consciousness to fade.
Moreover, I knew my own face at that moment.
It was clearly visible to these eyes.
My entire face was dark purple; pure white foam was blowing from both corners of my mouth.
I had seen a face exactly like this swollen pufferfish visage during a middle school judo match.
The moment I recalled that judo athlete—the one I'd found so absurdly comical back then, thinking *You didn't need to strain until foam sprayed out*—I felt violently insulted, trembled with rage, and screamed *Stop!*
I stretched out my arms and desperately grabbed the branch.
Unintentionally, a bestial roar erupted from the depths of my belly.
A story in which a single foreign cigarette was exchanged for a single human life at the very same price.
In my case, it was precisely that.
I removed the rope and lay there for about an hour, limp as a corpse.
I couldn't move as much as an ant might.
At that moment, I remembered the expensive cigarettes in the pocket and became overwhelmingly ecstatic; as if propelled by a spring, I sat bolt upright.
With trembling fingertips, I tore open the cigarette pack and put one in my mouth.

Right behind me came a distinct rustling—the unmistakable presence of someone.
I felt not an ounce of fear; for some time I simply lost myself in the cigarette, then slowly turned to look behind me—but there was only the small torii bathed in moonlight, floating white as ivory, without even the shadow of a sparrow to be seen.
Ah, I understood.
That presence just now must surely have been Death retreating.
Pity for Death aside—how exquisite cigarettes are.
No need to become a great man. No need to write masterpieces. A beloved cigarette before bed, a smoke after work.
Why conceal it—this shameful yet sweet petit bourgeois life began to feel effortlessly within my grasp. As I pondered that most improper theme for a patina-field phantom-cloud theorist like myself—the purity within vulgarity—my gaze idly sought Fukada Kyuya's house light among those scattered below, wondering was it that one or perhaps this one.

Ah, how unexpected—this "happy ending."
I promptly put down the brush.
The readers too would smile brightly, yet still cautiously, and mutter under their breath in a small voice:

Oh, come on.