Pathway to Japanese Literature

Beefsteak and Potatoes

In Shiba-ku Sakurada Hongō-chō, near the moat, there stood a Western-style building that belonged to the Meiji Club—not particularly splendid, but still a fairly decent structure. The building remains to this day; however, with ownership having changed hands, the Meiji Club itself has now vanished.

It was during the time when this club still thrived—on a certain winter's night when，unusually，lights were lit in the second-floor dining room，and from time to time，loud laughter spilled outside．
Originally，this club rarely had people gathering at night；even on ordinary days，the stove smoke rose only during daylight hours．

Yet even though eight o’clock had already struck, the people still showed no signs of dispersing.
Six rickshaws were lined up beside the entrance, but all the pullers seemed to be out back in the midst of their usual dice game.

Then a man—coat collar upturned, derby hat pulled low over his face—suddenly materialized from the pitch darkness and jabbed violently at the doorbell.

The door opened from within,

“Is Takeuchi-san here?” he inquired in a low, grave voice.

“Ah—he is indeed present. And you are… sir?” said the one-eyed, narrow-faced receptionist in a kimono with meticulous politeness.

The business card he presented bore only “Okamoto Seio” in No. 5 type—no title whatsoever.
The receptionist took it, hurried upstairs and left, but soon came back down.

“Please, this way,” he guided. When led upstairs, the hearth blazed so fiercely that the warmth felt stifling.
Three were gathered before the hearth, while the other three had drawn their chairs slightly apart.
Beside them stood a side table bearing a whiskey bottle—some glasses drained to the last drop, others left full—and the group had begun to feel the alcohol’s effects.

The moment he saw Okamoto, Takeuchi stood up and energetically—

“Ah, do take a seat here,” he urged, offering one of the chairs.

Okamoto did not readily take a seat.
When he looked around, five of them were people with whom he had at least some prior acquaintance, but one gentleman—fair-skinned, of medium build, and refined in appearance—was someone he had not yet met.
Takeuchi noticed this,

"Well, you haven’t met this gentleman yet—let me introduce him. This is Mr. Uemura from the Hokkaido Coal Company. Mr. Uemura, this is my longtime friend Mr. Okamoto…"

Before Takeuchi could finish speaking, the gentleman called Uemura interjected in a cheerful tone—

“Ah, our first meeting… I’ve always read your works… I look forward to your continued guidance…”

Okamoto merely said, “Please think nothing of it,” then fell silent.
He leaned back into the chair.

“Well, the rest…” said Watanuki, a short gentleman with jet-black sideburns.

“That’s right!
“Uemura-san, and then?” prompted Iyama, a thin gentleman with squinty eyes and thinning hair.
“Well, now that Mr. Okamoto’s here, it’s suddenly become harder to go on—Ha ha ha ha!” said the coal company gentleman with a bashful laugh.
“What is it?”

Okamoto asked Takeuchi.

"No, it's utterly fascinating! The conversation somehow turned to us discussing our philosophies of life—well do listen! Splendid arguments keep flowing endlessly."

"Oh we've already spewed out most of it! Since you're the genuine article unlike us vulgar materialists—let's hear yours instead, eh gentlemen?"

Uemura tried to retreat.

"No no! First you must conclude your argument!"

"I would very much like to hear it," said Okamoto as he downed a glass of whiskey without even setting it down.

“I imagine my view is likely the polar opposite of yours, Okamoto-san. In essence, ideals and reality don’t align—they never truly align…”

Iyama chimed in rhythmically, “Brr, how chilling!”

“If they indeed do not align, then my ideal is to submit to reality rather than follow ideals.”

“Is that all?” Okamoto growled, gripping his second glass.

“But you see, ideals can’t be eaten after all!” Uemura’s face as he spoke resembled a rabbit’s.

“Ha ha ha ha! It’s not like we’re talking about beefsteak!” Takeuchi roared with laughter, his mouth wide open.

“No, it is beefsteak! In reality, it’s beefsteak—it’s stew!”

“An omelet, huh?!” said Matsuki—the crimson-faced, youngest-looking gentleman in the group, who had been silent and half-asleep until now—deadpan.

“Ha ha ha ha!” The entire group burst into laughter.

“This isn’t a laughing matter,” Uemura pressed with growing insistence, “To put it simply—if you follow ideals, you’d have to eat nothing but potatoes. Depending on how things go, you might end up not even being able to eat potatoes. Gentlemen, which do you prefer—beefsteak or potatoes?”

“Beef’s the way to go!” Matsuki said earnestly in a sleepy voice.

“But potatoes are merely an accompaniment to beefsteak,” declared the gentleman with sideburns triumphantly.

“Exactly!”
“Ideals are nothing but accessories to reality!”
“You can’t have no potatoes at all—but nothing but potatoes would be downright unbearable!”

Having said that, Uemura looked at Okamoto with some satisfaction.

“But isn’t Hokkaido supposed to be famous for potatoes?” Okamoto inquired evenly.

“It’s those potatoes—I had a dreadful time with them! Now, Takeuchi-san here knows this, but though I may not look it, I’m an old Doshisha graduate. Back then, I was an earnest member of the Amen-chanting fellowship—or to put it plainly, a full-fledged Potato Party member!”

“You?” Iyama stared through squinting eyes, his face etched with skepticism.

“Nothing strange about it—I was young then. Though I don’t know your age, Okamoto-san, I graduated Doshisha at twenty-two.”
“Thirteen years past.”
“That Potato Party fervor would’ve impressed you! From school days, just hearing ‘Hokkaido’ set me trembling with longing—I styled myself such a Puritan it became insufferable!”

“What a model Puritan!” interjected Matsuki again, but Uemura silenced him with a jerk of his chin while sipping whiskey.

“When I resolved to abandon this sullied mainland and plunge into Hokkaido’s free wilderness,” Uemura declared, Okamoto stared intently at his face.

“I went about obsessively gathering tales of Hokkaido.”
“Whenever I heard missionaries had returned from there, I’d rush to hear their accounts.”
“But they’d feed me nothing but saccharine lies.”
“Endless prattle about pristine nature! The Ishikari River’s majestic flow! Forests stretching beyond the horizon—it drove me mad!”
“I swallowed every word whole.”
“So I pieced together these fragments into visions… First I’d clear virgin forests with the sweat of my own brow, fell timber, then sow adzuki beans across the scorched earth…”

“I would’ve loved to see that farmer! Ha ha ha ha ha!” Takeuchi burst out laughing.

“No, I actually went there! Now hold on—I’ll get to that part in due course… In time, the farmland would gradually take shape—we’d mainly grow potatoes. As long as we had potatoes, we wouldn’t starve…”

“Look, potatoes have appeared!” interjected Matsuki again.

“There, in the center of the fields, stands a house—its structure utterly crude yet built in an American style at first glance, as if preserved from the New England colonial period. The roof slopes steeply like this, with a single imposing chimney jutting out to one side.”
“How many windows to install—I agonized over that endlessly, you know…”

“And did that house truly get built?” Iyama squinted his bleary eyes again.

“No, this was a fantasy from my Kyoto days! The windows I agonized over… Ah yes—it was when I took that walk to Wakaoji and returned!”

“And then what happened?” Okamoto urged earnestly.

“Then, to the north, I decided to create a section of windbreak forest, striving to preserve as much woodland as possible. Then a crystal-clear stream wound its way out from the right side of this windbreak forest and flowed before the estate. Of course, in this river, ducks and geese would be floating with their purple feathers and pure white backs. A bridge made of a single three-inch-thick plank spans this river. I pondered extensively whether to add a handrail to this or not, but ultimately settled on leaving it unadorned as that seemed more natural… Well, such was the structure, but my imagination wasn’t satisfied with this… When winter comes…”

"If I may interrupt—didn't you get obsessed with the very sound of 'winter'?" asked Okamoto.

Uemura's face took on a startled expression.

“How do you know that? This is fascinating!”
“As expected of you—the Potato Party!”
“When I heard ‘winter,’ I couldn’t resist it! Somehow, I felt that winter was freedom itself!”
“Moreover, I was part of that fervent Amen-saying crowd—the ones who cheered ‘Long live Christmas!’ Come Christmas, it would snow so much you’d grow sick of it—if icicles as thick as poles weren’t hanging from the eaves, it felt like a lie!”
“So for me, rather than Hokkaido’s winter, it was more a sense of winter being Hokkaido itself.”
“Even when listening to stories about Hokkaido, whenever someone said ‘When winter comes…’ like this, my body would shudder like this.”
“And so, even in that imagination of mine—when winter comes, snow would bury the house entirely; at night, red firelight would flicker through the windowpanes; gusts would roar through now and then, sending snow clattering down from the treetops; and in the cowshed, a Holstein cow would low mournfully!”

“You’re a poet!” someone shouted, stamping his shoe on the floor.
This was Kondō—a tall man with a face bearing what might be called a distinctive cast, who had not uttered a word since Okamoto entered this room, having only been nursing whiskey.

“Hey, Okamoto-kun!” he added.

Okamoto merely nodded silently.

“Poet?
“That’s right—I was a poet back then! I devoured that gray Charlotte translation called *‘Mountains Hazy at Dusk’* and even tried writing my own! To today’s modern-style poets, I’d be considered a seasoned predecessor!”

“I’ve written some modern-style poetry too, you know,” said Matsuki, this time with a touch of eagerness.

“What? I’ve composed two or three pieces myself,” said Iyama competitively, his tone earnest.

“Mr. Watanuki, how about you?” asked Takeuchi.

“No—this is rather embarrassing—but as you all know from my utter lack of feminine presence, I had no poetic inclination whatsoever! I adhered strictly to ‘rights and duties.’ How about that? I must seem thoroughly vulgar-boned!” Watanuki stroked his head.

“No, *I’m* the one who should be thoroughly ashamed—but truth be told, I wrote some too! Even had two or three pieces published in some magazine!”
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Ha ha ha ha ha!” The entire group burst out laughing.

“So you’re all old hands at poetry, eh? Ha ha ha ha ha! What a farce!” shouted Watanuki.

“So you all wrote them too? Astonishing! So in those days, everyone was part of the Potato Party!” Uemura wore an expression that radiated immense pride.

“I would like to hear the rest of your story,” Okamoto urged Uemura.

“Exactly—get on with it!” Kondō said almost commandingly.

“Very well! After graduating—after fumbling around Tokyo for about a year—when I resolutely went to Hokkaido… What a fool I was! With that feeling burning inside me—at Ueno Station—when I boarded that train… When the whistle shrieked and wheels began turning—I thrust my head out the window and spat toward Tokyo! And then—this indescribable joy surged up—secretly wiping tears with a handkerchief—truly!”

“Wait a moment—you say you felt like shouting ‘You fool!’... I can’t quite grasp that sentiment. Could you explain what that’s about?” inquired Watanuki of “rights and duties” with earnestness.

“I was talking about those Tokyo bastards! What’s with their disgraceful scramble for fame and profit! You fool! Look at me! That’s the sentiment,” Uemura added in earnest.

“Skipping over the journey—at any rate, I arrived safely in Sapporo, Hokkaido… reached the heartland of potatoes. And without any difficulty, I obtained eighty-one acres of land. Now it begins! We immediately set to work on what they call toiling by the sweat of our brows. To be precise, it was a friend who shared my ideals from the very beginning—he now works at the same company as me, by the way—and together with him, I embarked on this reclamation project. There, Takeuchi-san—you know Kazahara Shintarō, don’t you?…”

“Kazahara-kun!? So that was your potato? Now he’s fattened up like a pig!” Takeuchi also seemed astonished.

“That’s right—now he’s got a devilish face and devours blood-dripping beefsteak in two bites. But Mr. Kazahara—compared to me—was clever from the start, wasn’t he? After barely enduring for about two months, one day he proposed a motion to decisively quit this foolishness. His argument was something like: ‘There’s no need for us to become hermits fighting nature like this—we should rather grapple with society! Beefsteak has more nutrients than potatoes,’ he declared.”

“I strongly opposed him then. ‘If you want to quit, quit! I’ll press on alone even if I have to!’ I insisted.”

“Then Mr. Kazahara snapped, ‘Do as you please! You’ll come to your senses soon enough—ideals are mere fantasies, a fool’s delusion!’ With that parting shot, he stormed off immediately.”

“Left behind, I tried to persevere, but deep down I felt uneasy; still, I endured for about three months after that with one or two tenant farmers.”

“Pretty impressive, eh!”

“You fool!” Kondō said reproachfully.

“Fool? Calling me a fool? That’s too harsh! Looking back now, it was utterly foolish—but at the time, it felt truly grand!”

“You’re a fool through and through! From the start, that wasn’t your style at all—the kind of man who eats nothing but potatoes in Hokkaido! To endure three months without realizing that... You’re nothing but a fool!”

“If I’m a fool, then so be it—but I’ve gradually come to realize what you mean by ‘not my style.’”
“The trouble was, I lacked the quality for potatoes.”
“Then summer passed, and the much-anticipated ‘winter’ gradually approached—its herald being autumn. But right from autumn’s onset, it proved less impressive than I’d imagined: drizzles pattered over dense forests, sunlight felt unnervingly faint, conversation partners were nonexistent, food amounted to a scant handful of rice—each grain practically demanding its price—and those damned potatoes, while my dwelling was a crude hut with tree bark for walls.”

"That was before you'd steeled yourself, wasn't it!" interjected Okamoto.

"There you have it—reality proves better than ideals."
"Though I'd resolved myself, I still found little to admire."
"In the first place, one would simply waste away like that!"

Uemura said and moistened his lips briefly with the cup.

“I never intended to lose weight!”

“Ha ha ha ha ha!” The entire group burst into laughter.

“There I truly pondered—indeed, that bastard Kazahara was right—it was absurd! So I decided to quit. But had I spent that winter there, I’d have died!”

“So what’s your current doctrine now?” Okamoto said in a tone that mingled mockery with seriousness.

“I’m thoroughly done with potatoes, I tell you. These days it’s all pragmatism—earning money, eating well, drinking by the hearth with you gentlemen here, trading wild fancies… And when hunger strikes, we eat beefsteak…”

“Hear, hear—I share the same view! Loyalty to the emperor, patriotism—none of that is incompatible with beefsteak. If they can’t coexist, it’s because one cannot make them coexist—and that one’s a fool!” declared Watanuki with great fervor.

“I’m different!” shouted Kondō, then moved behind the hearth and straddled his chair.
With eyes blazing with intense light, he surveyed those seated around him.

“I am neither a potato partisan nor a beefsteak partisan! Take someone like Uemura-san—he started as a potato idealist only to defect to the beefsteak faction later! Weak-willed and fickle! In short, you’re all poets—poets who’ve fallen into decadence! So here you are, pointlessly twitching your noses to sniff out the stench of scorching beef—what a pitiful sight!”

“Hold on! Before badmouthing others, you ought to first lay out your own convictions.”
“And what corruption are *you* guilty of?” Uemura interjected.

“Corruption?”
“Corruption is just falling from a high place to a low one! I’m fortunate enough to have never been up high in the first place, so I don’t put on such pretentious airs!”
“You ate potatoes out of principle—not preference! That’s why you starved for beefsteak! I eat beefsteak out of preference—so from the start, I never starved, and even now I don’t gobble it down ravenously,……”

“You’re making no sense at all!” Uemura shouted.
Just as Kondō was about to retort immediately, one of the servants briskly approached his side and whispered something into his ear.
Then

“Kondō! Tell them this Kondō isn’t some magnanimous master in any way!” he bellowed.

“What?” asked one of those seated in surprise.

“What? That rickshaw bastard lost at gambling again and wants a loan!… What incoherent drivel!”
“You’re making perfect sense now! You’re all beefsteak partisans—beefsteak ideologues! *My* beef was a preference from the start—no ideology or loofah nonsense about it!”

“I wholeheartedly agree,” someone said in a quiet, weighty voice.

“You agree, don’t you!” Kondō grinned, locking eyes with Okamoto.

“I wholeheartedly agree—wholeheartedly agree that rejecting ideology is the way to go! There’s nothing more foolish in this world than this nonsense they call ‘ideology.’” Okamoto cast his piercing gaze across the seated assembly.

“I’ll gladly accept that theory—I absolutely insist!” Kondō thrust out his square jaw.

“So which are you—beef or potatoes? Eh, potatoes, I suppose?” Uemura prompted Okamoto’s argument with a knowing look.

“I, too, am neither a beefsteak partisan nor a potato partisan—but unlike Mr. Kondō here, I haven’t settled on beefsteak as a preference either. Of course I detest that so-called ‘handmade dish’ of ideology—but even so, I cannot submit to mere preferences like beef or potatoes.”

“Then what *is* it?” Iyama blinked his bleary, earnest eyes.

“It’s nothing really—to abandon metaphor and speak plainly, I cannot uphold any definitive ideal, nor can I conform to worldly ways and satisfy carnal desires to declare my life fulfilled. I cannot—not because I lack resolve, but truthfully, though I wish I could settle on either path, some inexplicable fate has left me clinging to a single mysterious yearning, which prevents me from committing to either.”

“What is this ‘mysterious wish’ you speak of?” Kondō demanded in his usual pressing tone.

“It’s not something I can explain briefly.”

“You’re not seriously making some joke about drinking to a whole-roasted wolf?”

“Nothing of the sort... To tell the truth, I was once infatuated with a certain girl,” Okamoto began solemnly.

“Marvelous! The discussion finally reaches its climax! And then—?” Young Matsuki pulled his chair toward the hearth.

“This may seem abrupt, but to explain my mysterious yearning, I must start here.”
“That girl was remarkably beautiful.”

“Hey! Hey!” Matsuki exclaimed joyfully, as if about to leap up.

“She had a roundish face with a strikingly pale complexion, shoulders shaped like those of a Western woman—ample yet gently sloping flesh—and eyes that held a drowsy quality, not sharply open but steeped in contemplation. If one were to be gazed at intently by those eyes brimming with charm, even the most hardened man would soften.”
“But I succumbed all too easily.”
“When I first saw her, I didn’t think much of it, but by the second or third time, I began to feel strangely drawn, and she started to occupy my thoughts in an odd way.”
“Even so, I still did not think I had fallen in love.”

“One day when I went to that girl’s house, her parents were out—only the maid, that girl herself, and her twelve-year-old sister remained.”
Then the girl, claiming she felt slightly unwell, was sulking and sitting alone in the back room, huddled up, but I remained seated on the veranda edge, listening to her sing in a low voice.
“Miss Ei, when I hear that voice of yours, I can’t help but feel this overwhelming pity,” I blurted out.

“Why must a little sister live in such a world? I don’t understand,” said the girl with utter helplessness in her voice. To me, this rang truer than even the grandest philosophers’ pessimism—there was no need for her to elaborate further for me to grasp what lay unspoken.

“The two of us had swiftly become slaves to love. It was then that I first learned both love’s joys and sorrows—those two months passed entirely like a dream. But if I were to recount a couple of its trivial episodes, well, there was this one thing…”

“One afternoon around five o’clock, I attended a farewell party for a friend and his wife who were departing for the West—my lover also attended, accompanied by her mother.
The gathering was remarkably lively—even the daughter of a count’s family attended—but when it finally concluded around ten at night, I decided to walk from the hotel to the girl’s residence in Shibayama under the beautiful moonlit sky. Strolling along with her mother and her in a group of three, her mother kept lavishing praise on the couple departing for the West while voicing envy—though laced with regret over her own daughter’s excessive worldly inclinations, even insinuating that such tendencies stemmed entirely from the company she kept. As we walked shoulder-to-shoulder, the girl suddenly gripped my hand tightly—I squeezed back—our fleeting rebellion against her mother.”

When we then entered the forest of Yamauchi, the moonlight filtering through the trees cast an azure glow that heightened the scene’s mystique, but her mother walked about five steps ahead of us.
The night had deepened, and with passersby growing scarce, the surroundings fell utterly silent—only the sound of my shoes and the clatter of their geta echoed solemnly. Yet her mother’s earlier remarks lingered heavily in our hearts, leaving both the girl and me wordless, while her mother herself strode on with sudden gravity, maintaining her silence.

When we reached a spot where the forest shadows grew dark, blocking the moonlight, the girl suddenly pressed close to me as if about to embrace me.

“‘You mustn’t let Mother’s words make you abandon Little Sister,’ she whispered—and no sooner had her hand touched my shoulder than something hot pressed against my left cheek, a fragrance surpassing flowers grazing my nostrils.”

When we suddenly emerged into a bright area, the girl’s eyes were filled with tears, her complexion ghastly pale—partly, perhaps, from being bathed in moonlight. At any rate, the moment I saw this, I felt a chill and an indescribable emotion clogged my chest, as though a lead weight were pressing against it.

“That night, after seeing them to the gate and declining when her mother urged me to come up briefly for tea, I set off homeward—yet I felt as if some insoluble riddle had been thrust upon me, one whose solution would lay bare every sorrow of my fate. This was no metaphor; I truly felt this way, and it gnawed at me relentlessly.”
So instead of heading straight back, I wandered through a desolate part of Yamauchi until I found myself atop Maruyama before I knew it. There I sat on a bench and stared fixedly at the sky over Shinagawa Bay for what felt like ages.

The instant the thought—"What if that woman were to die soon?"—flashed like lightning through the darkest depths of my heart, I leapt to my feet unbidden. And then, pacing back and forth in frenzy while staring at the ground, I tried declaring "That could never happen" and "Absolutely not," as if exorcising a demon—yet the demon refused to depart. Each time I halted to fix my gaze upon the earth, the girl’s pallid face materialized vividly before me, her complexion bearing incontrovertible proof of existing beyond this mortal realm.

“At last, I resolved to calm my mind—thinking it best to get a good night’s sleep tonight, fully convinced it was all my delusion—and began descending Maruyama when I encountered yet another event that threw me into disarray. The reason being that when I had gone up, I hadn’t noticed at all—a person was hanging from a tree branch by the roadside. I was shocked—it felt as if I’d been doused with cold water from head to toe—and there I stood rooted to the spot.”

“Even so, mustering my courage to approach, I found it was a woman—though of course I couldn’t see her face… The geta discarded on the road told me she was young… In a complete daze, I descended from Kōyōkan toward Yamauchi and rushed to that police box at the far end to report what had happened…”

“So you’re saying that woman was the girl you loved?” Kondō said coldly.

“In that case, it would have been entirely a novel—but fortunately, it did not become one.”

“When I looked at the newspaper two days later, it said she was nineteen years old—apparently she’d become pregnant by a soldier who had returned to his home country, and in her desperation over what to do with herself, she’d committed suicide. At any rate, I hardly slept at all that night.”

“Yet strangely enough, when I saw her face the next day—unchanged from its usual state—and was greeted by those entrancing eyes holding a smile within them, all the anguish that had gripped my heart since the previous night vanished like mist.”
“Then another month or so passed without incident, filled with nothing but joy and delight…”

“Hmph! This isn’t some shallow melodrama!” Watanuki kicked the floorboards and declared.

“Just be quiet and listen—then,” said Matsuki, his tone turning deathly serious.

“Shall I tell you what happened next? It must’ve gone like this—in the end, that girl let out one little yawn, and with that, your sacred love met its demise. Isn’t that right?” Kondō added with uncharacteristic gravity.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!” Two or three of them burst out laughing.

“No—at least my love was like that,” Kondō added.

“Even you know about something like love?”
This was an uncharacteristic remark from Iyama.

“In the middle of Okamoto-san’s account—but shall I tell my own love story? I can tell it in a minute: how I and a certain girl grew close, how we spent days in a feverish frenzy, how in the third month she let out a single yawn, and how we parted—that’s all there is to it. In short, this is crucial in any romance—women, as creatures, will grow bored without fail after three months. If they’re married, they stay bound together out of sheer resignation. But that’s merely women stifling their yawns to endure each day—don’t you agree?”

“That may be so, but fortunately, mine never reached that point of a yawn. Please listen to the rest.”

“I too, like Uemura-san’s story, suffered from an intense bout of Hokkaido fever back then—to tell the truth, even now I think life there would be preferable.”
“So I too had all sorts of imaginings sketched out—discussing them with my lover was my greatest delight—and yes, I even drew up plans for Uemura-san’s American-style house on large sheets of Western paper with a pencil.”
“But what differed slightly was that I didn’t just want lamplight flickering through the windows on winter nights—I also wanted to fill it with occasional merry laughter and the clear voice of a woman singing hymns,……”

“But I had no partner,” Uemura said pitifully, prompting everyone to burst into laughter.

“Your defection from the Potato Party was partly due to that circumstance, I presume,” said Watanuki.

“No—that’s false! Had you actually secured a partner, Uemura-san, you’d have renounced your principles before ever treading Hokkaido’s soil! Women are fundamentally incapable of upholding Potato Doctrine—congenital Beefsteak Partisans through and through, precisely like myself!”
“Congenital Beefsteak Partisans through and through!”
“This notion of women favoring potatoes is utter falsehood!” Kondō roared.
At this final declaration, the group erupted in laughter anew.

“And so we—” Okamoto began calmly until silence fell upon them.

“They’d settled on Hokkaido as their new home—once our plans matured enough for me to return home first and sell off all family lands entrusted by relatives. With those funds meant for pioneering farmland up north—a ten-day trip stretched unexpectedly into twenty due to relatives’ objections and price disputes.”
“Then came a telegram from her mother—I rushed back without packing only to find her already gone.”

“Dead?” Matsuki shouted.

“Yes—and so all my hopes turned to bubbles and vanished,” Kondō declared in a lecturing tone, interrupting Okamoto mid-sentence.

“Now then—we’re all most grateful to have heard such an intriguing love story. That said—for your sake, Okamoto-san—I celebrate your lover’s death. If ‘celebrate’ seems improper, then I rejoice—secretly rejoice—nay rather rejoice—indeed rejoice! For had that girl not died—I firmly believe the resulting tragedy would have far surpassed even the misery of death itself.”

Up to that point, he had been utterly serious, but whether he himself had grown somewhat amused, he suddenly shifted his tone, lowering his voice with a hint of laughter,

“For women *yawn*… Now among yawns there are several kinds—of these, two are most lamentable and detestable: one is the yawn of life-weariness, the other the yawn of love-weariness. The yawn of life-weariness is the hallmark of men; the yawn of love-weariness is the inborn trait of women. The former is most pitiable; the latter most despicable.”

he reverted to a slightly more serious tone,

“To put it plainly: women almost never grow weary of life itself. Young women may occasionally exhibit such signs—but that arises merely from an aberration born of thirsting for love rather than true disillusionment. Should they fortunately obtain that love, they then appear supremely joyful for several years—truly joyful. Indeed, the full significance of the word ‘joy’ is perhaps entirely encapsulated within the circumstances of such women.”
“But soon they grow weary—that is, weary of love. There can be nothing more troublesome than a woman who has grown weary of love. Though I called this something to be despised, it is in truth more pitiable. Yet men are not like that—they often grow weary of life itself. When such a man encounters love, it is then that he first gains a path forward.”
“Thereupon they come to cast their entire being into love’s fiery crucible.”
“In such circumstances, love becomes a man’s very life.”

Having said that, he turned to look at Okamoto.

“Right? Isn’t that so? What do you think—isn’t my theory insightful?”

“This makes absolutely no sense!” Matsuki shouted.

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! No coherence?”
“To tell the truth, I’m not making much sense either—I just wanted to say it the way I did now.”
“What do you say, Okamoto-san—so I’ve been thinking: you’re neither a Potato Partisan nor a Beefsteak Partisan, but hold a single mysterious wish—it’s that you want to meet that dead girl again, isn’t it?”

“No!” With a single cry, Okamoto rose from his chair.
He was already quite drunk.

“No! First I must declare this single word.”
“If you gentlemen would deign to hear what I call my mysterious wish, then I shall speak.”

“You may not know this, but I must hear it,” Kondō declared, swinging his arm.

Everyone remained silent, watching Okamoto’s face—Matsuki and Takeuchi were solemn, while Watanuki, Iyama, and Uemura wore faint smiles.

“Then I shall cry out once more this single word—‘No!’”

“Indeed—as you have surmised, Kondō-san—I am one of those men who opened a path forward through love.”
“Thus, the girl’s death dealt me a devastating blow—as I stated earlier, it destroyed nearly all my hopes. Were there such a thing as resurrection incense, I would purchase two or three hundred kin of it.”
“Please return the girl to my hands once more.”
“When my single-minded determination reaches this point, I feel I can no longer endure my own existence.”
“I calmly confess—how many times have I wept thinking of that girl.”
“How many times did I call that name and gaze up at the vast sky?”
“Truly, my wish is for that girl to come back to life in this world once more.”

“But this isn’t my mysterious wish.”
“This isn’t my true wish.”
“I still possess a grand wish—a profound wish—a burning wish.”
“Were this single wish granted, I wouldn’t need her resurrection.”
“Even if resurrected and betraying me before my very eyes—I wouldn’t care.”
“Even if she stuck out her crimson tongue and mocked me to my face—I wouldn’t care.”

“Though my wish differs greatly in meaning from ‘If one hears the Way in the morning, one may die content by evening,’ our fundamental sentiments align.”
“Should this wish remain unfulfilled, then even a hundred years of life would hold no value—no joy whatsoever—only torment.”

“Let all others lack this wish—I alone shall pursue it! Though this pursuit leads me to robbery, I’ll harbor no regret. Murder? Arson? Nothing matters! Should a demon guarantee: ‘Give me your wife—I’ll defile her; give me your child—I’ll devour it—then I shall grant your wish,’ I’d leap with joy and surrender wife and child alike!”

“This is getting good! I want to hear this ‘wish’ of yours right now!” Watanuki shouted, tugging at his beard with vigor.

“I will tell you now.
“You gentlemen must be weary of this wavering government we have today—no doubt you hope to blend men like Bismarck, Kabur, Gladstone, and Toyotomi Hideyoshi into a single steel-like government and enact resolute politics. I too truly hold such a wish—yet even this is not my mysterious wish.”

“I want to become a saint! I want to become a noble person! I want to become the very embodiment of compassion! I want to become someone like Christ or Shakyamuni or Confucius! I want to truly become such a person!”
“However, if my mysterious wish is not granted and I were to become such a person, then I would have no desire whatsoever to be a saint or a child of God.”

“Life in the mountains and forests!”
“The moment I utter those words, my blood boils.”
“This very impulse first made me think of Hokkaido.”
“When I take my suburban walks these winter days and see distant snow-capped peaks rimming the horizon beneath clear skies, my blood surges instantly.”
“It becomes unbearable!”
“Yet once my resolve brushes against that wish of mine, all such trifles vanish.”
“Were my wish but granted, I’d willingly become a rickshaw puller in this metropolis’ swirling dust.”

“They prattle about ‘the universe being mysterious’ or ‘life being mysterious’,”
“They make a racket debating ‘What is the primordial source of creation?’”
“Science, philosophy, and religion study and elucidate these matters—they writhe in anguish trying to build foundations of peace upon them! I too want to become a great philosopher! I want to become a scientist with the barefoot zeal of Darwin!”
“Or a great religious leader!”
“But even this isn’t my wish.”
“If my wish goes unfulfilled and I become a great philosopher, I’ll sneer at myself and imprint the character ‘falsehood’ upon my face!”

"What's this? Out with it already—that wish of yours!" Matsuki pressed impatiently.

"I'll tell you—but don't you dare act shocked!"

"Quickly! Quickly!"

Okamoto said calmly,

“My wish is to be astonished.”

“What?! Ridiculous!”

“What nonsense!”

“A rakugo punchline?!”

The others spoke dismissively, but Kondō alone remained silent, seemingly waiting for Okamoto’s explanation.

“There is a verse that goes like this:

Awake, poor troubled sleeper: shake off

thy torpid night-mare dream.”

"In other words, my wish is to shake off this nightmare!"
"I don't understand what you're talking about!" Watanuki muttered.
"It isn't a wish to know the universe's mystery—it's a wish to be astonished by the mysterious universe!"

“It’s becoming more and more like a riddle!” This time, Iyama stroked his face contemplatively.

“It is not a wish to know death’s secret—it is a wish to be astonished by death’s very reality!”

“Then why not just marvel at salmon roe or something? It’s all the same!” Watanuki sneered.

“Faith itself is not my wish—my wish is to be tormented by the universe’s mysteries so profoundly that without faith, I couldn’t find peace even for an instant!”

“Now this is getting more and more incomprehensible!” Matsuki muttered, staring at Okamoto’s face as if trying to bore a hole through it.

“Rather than that, my wish is to gouge out these worn-out, grape-like eyeballs of mine!” Okamoto involuntarily struck the table.

“Delightful, delightful!” Kondō exclaimed involuntarily.

“I do not wish to devour the gall of Luther, who did not yield to the princes’ might at the Diet of Worms—rather, it is that very heart of his, which was astonished by death’s secret itself when he witnessed his nineteen-year-old schoolmate Alexis’ sudden death before his eyes, that I desire.”

“You were told by Watanuki-san: ‘Marvel on your own.’”
“The phrase ‘Marvel on your own’ is an exceedingly amusing one—yet one absolutely cannot marvel on their own.”

“My lover died.”
“She vanished from this world, utterly lost.”
“Because I was completely enslaved by love, when that girl died, my heart was thrown into immense turmoil.”
“Yet my anguish stems from losing the one I loved.”
“I couldn’t bring myself to face death’s cold, unyielding truth.”
“Thus we see nothing controls the human heart like love—yet there exists something that exerts tenfold greater power over it.”

“As they say—it’s the force of habit.”

“Our birth is but asleep and forgetting.”

“This verse captures it perfectly.”
“We are born into this world—from our selfless, innocent childhood onward, we encounter countless things. We see the sun every day, gaze at stars each night—until even this unfathomable universe ceases to be unfathomable.”
“Life and death, all cosmic phenomena—they all degrade into commonplace farces.”
“They pompously declare it ‘philosophy’ and ‘science,’ handling this universe with airs of standing beyond heaven and earth themselves.”

“Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!”

“Exactly as described! Exactly as described!”

“In other words, my wish is to somehow knock off this frost. I want to free myself from the pressure of these antiquated habits and stand in awe of this universe with a sense of wonder. Whether the result be beefsteak-ism or potato-ism, or even becoming a misanthrope who gnaws on this life—I care not at all!”

“I care nothing for results—I refuse to ground causes in falsehoods.”
“I reject building premises upon playful studies rooted in habit.”

“Ah—‘the moonlight is beautiful,’ ‘evenings of flowers,’ ‘nights of stars’—that deluge of poets’ phrases is mere dilettantism.”
“They never behold reality; they see phantoms—phantoms conjured by habituated eyes.”
“Emotional trifles.”
“In philosophy and religion alike—their true essence remains unknown, and by their furthest descendants’ era, all are reduced to husks.”

“Among my acquaintances,” Kondō began, “there was one who said this.”
“‘What am I?’—this fool posed such an absurd question, tormented himself over it, then let out a mocking laugh: ‘No matter how you try, what cannot be known will never be known!’”
“From society’s view, he was right—yet this question was never asked to seek an answer.”
“It is truly the soul’s spontaneous cry—born from acutely feeling how utterly mysterious this self of ours is within heaven and earth.”
“This very question itself is the soul’s earnest voice.”
“To mock it is to confess your soul’s paralysis.”
“My wish is rather to somehow make this question spring from my heart.”
“Yet even when it leaves my lips—it does not come from my heart.”

“Where do I come from? Where do I go?”—these are oft-repeated words, but it is precisely from the hearts of those who cannot help but ask this question despite not wishing to that the spring of religion flows; poetry is the same. Thus, all else is mere play and falsehood.

“Let’s stop this!”
“Futile—utterly futile no matter how much we argue! …Ah, this exhaustion!”
“But one final word—I’d divide humanity into two sorts: those struck by wonder, and those utterly unperturbed…”

“Which camp might I belong to?!” Matsuki laughed through his question.

“Of course I belong to the unfazed—all seven of us here belong to the Heizō types of unfazed!”
“No—among the billions in this world, how many are truly not unfazed? Poets, philosophers, scientists, religious figures, scholars—even politicians—most remain unfazed while spouting logic, putting on enlightened airs, or shedding tears.”
“I had a dream last night.”

“I had a dream about death.”
“While trudging alone down a dark path after death, I couldn’t help but cry out, ‘I can’t believe I’m dead!’”
“It’s true—truly, I did cry out.”

“So I think—a hundred out of a hundred people, even now attending funerals or losing parents or children—they’d still be the sort to cry out at hell’s gate after their own death, ‘I can’t believe I’m dead!’ and get laughed at by demons.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

“They say hiccups stop if someone startles you, but wanting to *seek* surprise when you’re perfectly content eating beefsteak—now that’s a peculiar sort of eccentricity! Ha ha ha ha!” Watanuki clutched his thick belly as he laughed.

“No, I say I want to be startled, but in the end, it’s just empty words! Ha ha ha ha!”
“Just empty words, then? Ah ha ha ha!”
“Just empty words, then? Hee hee hee.”

“Oh, I see!”
“So it’s merely about humbly making a request? Ha ha ha ha!”

“After all, it’s just a pastime! Ha ha ha ha!” Okamoto laughed along, but Kondō detected an indescribable look of pain on his face.