Pathway to Japanese Literature

Sea

Crossing the sea，people believed there was something beyond.
An island，a continent，a new world.
Yet the sea was but a single vast and boundless view.
They gazed upon scenery infinite，elusive—monotonous and quick to weary.

From this sea’s impression came swift fatigue.
In waves’ ebb and flow’s repetition rose life’s tedious routine.
And lying on sunlit dunes while watching waves，
in some heart’s corner bloomed void-like dissatisfaction’s sting.

The sea reflects the fatigue of life.
Hopes, fantasies, wanderlusts—instead of crossing over the waves—from the severing of the horizon within infinite space, grow endlessly monotonous and erase the mountain shadows where imagination should dwell.
The sea has no folds of fantasy; as far as the eye can see, it is flat, and as long as the midday sun reaches, it illuminates that "reality."
The mind that gazes upon the sea is void-like and insipid.
However, a listless sorrow presses in like the usual sound of the waves.

Crossing the sea, people believed that there was something beyond.
An island, a land, a new world.
But, ah!
If one came to the sea and saw, the sea reflected our fatigue.
The fatigue from life's long, wearisome, meaningless journey emerged all at once in vague form.
People grew gaunt and listless, feeling hearts hollow and desolate, collapsing upon the sand dunes where beach grasses withered.

People, driven by passion—love, wanderlust, romance—often found themselves yearning for the sea.
How the vast, free, and bright impression broadened people's eyes!
However, only an instant.
And from the fatigue of evening, they suddenly aged and returned.

The vast plane of the sea thus corrects human notions.
(Nippon Shijin, June 1926)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Countryside Clock

In the countryside, all people live alongside ancestors.
The elderly, the young, housewives, children—all family members dwell beneath the same thatched roof, living out their days before an aged Buddhist altar decorated with their ancestors' soot-blackened mortuary tablets.

Behind such farmhouses lay a slightly elevated winter-withered burial mound where their family's long history rested alongside numerous bleached bones. Eventually the living family members too would be buried in that same cemetery, dreaming quiet monotonous dreams alongside long-ago great-grandmothers and grandfathers.

In the countryside, all community members were kin bound by bloodlines of distinguished lineage. Those met on roads, those seen tilling fields, the elderly couple in the neighboring house—through blood ties whether distant or close, all villagers interwove as relatives within a sprawling lineage of uncles and aunts linked since antiquity. There everyone belonged to family; within the "house" of ancient history, enduring traditions and conventional bonds, all men and women of the community dwelled alongside ancestral phantoms.

In the countryside，all household clocks had stopped．There，an old pillar clock pointed to an ancient dial from a distant bygone calendar—from when ancestral ghosts were alive．Behold！There remained village shrines as they were in former times，white walls as they were in former times，and nature as it was in former times．And just as their ancestors had formed marital bonds in their great-grandmothers’ distant pasts，so too did such unions exist even then；within tranquil village hedges，the cries of cows and chickens resounded as they had in days of yore．

Truly, in the countryside, there existed but one eternal "time," serenely real alongside nature.
There was no past, no present, and no future.
All life shared the same familial bloodline, living together with their immortal ancestors and a single soul upon the desolate winter cemetery hill.
Day and night, past and present, the same farmer’s life continued infinitely monotonous.
There was no change in that environment.
Just as all their ancestors had done, they used the farm tools their ancestors had held, tilled in the manner their ancestors had cultivated, remained unchanged and the same, and continued onward through the same time.
Change was ruin; it was the decline of rural life.
Because time became severed, its chain was cut from the eternally living existence.
They dwelled by their ancestors’ side and desperately refused to leave the land.
Because if they were to leave the land, there would be no dwelling to call home.
There existed a space there—without expanse, without touch, infinitely real.

In desolate and vast nature, rural life stood isolated.
Marriages, childbirths, funerals—all were conducted within tribal walls, within partitioned time and space.
Villages clustered mournfully at desolate mountain feet, trembling in human loneliness.
When corn leaves rustled noisily under a pitch-black night sky, faint candlelight seeped from dim stables behind farmhouses.
The horse too huddled in that darkness, sleeping alongside its ancestors.
Eternally—eternally—as they had existed since time's distant dawn.
(Daiwa, September 1927 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Slope

A landscape with a slope is strangely romantic, imparting a nostalgic feeling.
When looking at the slope, one feels that beyond that scenery lies another distant horizon as if perceived through separate space.
This is especially true when seen from afar in a perspectival manner.

Why does the slope—the slope as landscape—possess such a particular poetic sentiment?
There is no particular reason.
It is because it cuts the horizon within the landscape into two separate levels.
The slope partitions the different world above from the world below with two separate horizons.
Therefore, by climbing the slope, we imagine a world belonging to another horizon that would open before our eyes, evoking a romantic longing for the unknown.

On a quiet late autumn day, I climbed up a long slope. For a long time now, I had known that slope well. It was in the suburbs of a newly developed area, meandering across a vast hazy expanse like part of some distant dream. Once I had been compelled by poetic adventure to climb that dreamlike slope and behold unknown nature and scenery unfolding atop its cliff edge.

What lay beyond that slope? Finally an irresistible temptation drove me one day to climb that slope path. It was late November - an afternoon steeped in autumn's melancholy. The elongated shadow of the setting sun trailed behind me as I climbed, casting a silhouette like some meditator's shadow-puppet. The landscape lay hushed beneath motionless clouds suspended in sky.

Infinitely long and steeped in fancy, I climbed the slope path. When I finally reached the summit, the view before my eyes suddenly brightened and opened up like the sea. Across a vast plain, autumn grasses—pampas and plume—glowed white amidst the clumps of grass. And here and there across the plain, elegant wooden Western-style houses stood like some sort of watchmen’s huts.

It was an utterly unexpected, extraordinarily vivid landscape. None of my imaginings had ever conceived that beyond this slope lay a plain like the sea. For a moment, I doubted the reality of this view. Because it suddenly and unexpectedly felt like a mirage floating on the sea.

“Hey—!”

For no reason, I raised my voice and called out.
Amidst the vast, hazy plain, I tried to test how far the echo would go.
Then suddenly, the clump of grass ahead rustled in the wind.
A white figure of some sort was concealed there.

Immediately, I saw a moving parasol in the grass.
Two young girls were sitting harmoniously on a stone, bathed in the pale autumn sunlight.

"The girls were thinking of poetry.
I must not disturb their lives.
Because for them, poetry was everything in their lives.
But for me!
'I am not any concept that should be affirmed!'

And then my heart grew dark, and I made to leave that place sorrowfully.
But at that moment, the face of the girl who had turned to look back was imprinted in an instant like a strange flash photograph.
For that girl was the very image of the gentle maiden who had been appearing frequently in my dreams of late—the lover from sorrowful dreams—the silent young lady.
How many times must I have met that person in my dreams?
Always in the desolate fields at dawn, or in the marshlands where pussy willows had withered, we engaged in ephemeral, quiet, wordless trysts."

“Miss!”

Just as I always called out to the girl in my dreams, I tried to call out to the real girl who had suddenly appeared in broad daylight.
Why—for what reason—has the dream come into reality?
A strange, ineffable premonition filled me with happiness extending to an unknown new world.
In truth, that new world and sense of happiness were things I had completely forgotten many, many years in the distant past.

However, reason immediately corrected my hallucination.
Who, not being a sleepwalker, would believe dreams in broad daylight?
While feeling ashamed of the foolish, ridiculous, commonplace illusion, I descended the slope once more.
Indeed—.
I still believe that now.
The scenery beyond the slope is nothing but an eternal 'illusion'.
(『令女界』September 1927 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Ōi Town

Life was a mysterious thing, filled with infinite sorrowful thoughts and yearnings.
From such states of mind, people naturally projected their forms onto nature, seeking their desired places either within reality's environment or in imagined thoughts, thereby dwelling within the very landscapes they inhabited.
To give an example: a certain person sought dwellings in peaceful farmlands and walked amidst scenery dotted with pastures and farms.
Another lived in desolate aurora regions like a solitary penguin, while yet another wandered daily without purpose through crowded city blocks, seeking alleys of clattering gambling dens, laundries, grimy bars and barbershops.
Some people favored bright suburban woods, savoring scents of young tree buds and lumber, while a certain person cherished quiet antique elegance, lingering in Bashō-an's moss-covered garden—resembling a desolate old pond where fish carcasses floated—and perpetually gazed upon its wistful sunlight.

Life is indeed a mysterious thing: filled with infinite sorrowful thoughts and yearnings.
People wander through endless natural regions both in reality and in dreams, seeking that state of mind.
And when visiting the harbor wharf—hearing the booming cry of a steamship while seeing the blue sky shine beyond the lively forest of masts—melancholy's lonely tears naturally begin flowing in the shadows of the human heart.

I moved to Ōi Town in the very heart of winter's cold.
Carrying moving belongings in my hands, bundled together old, worn-out furniture, dirty buckets, a broom, coal scuttles and such, I walked through the muddy winter streets.
The sky had blackened with soot, endless rows of brick factories lining both sides of the street.
The winter sun hung dull and hazy as chimneys belched out thick, bear-like plumes of smoke.

A wife of impoverished appearance walked along the sunlit path, a child bundled in a short coat strapped to her back.
That was my wife - trailing behind her, a thuggish-looking man laden with buckets and bundles followed like a skinny dog.

Ōi Town!

Thus in the bitter midst of winter, our family moved.
In the filthy tenement of a back alley, we trembled from poverty and illness.
In a corner of the garden that resembled a garbage dump, every day we hung waistcloths and diapers to dry.
A bit of sunlight struck them, and they fluttered like small flags.

Ōi Town!

Endlessly desolate factories lined the soot-blackened brick streets where masses of workers trudged in throngs.
In the evening, everyone thought about food and walked along the cluttered backstreets behind the factories where grimy restaurants jostled together.
The windows of every house were clouded with soot, small panes of glass fitted into them.
And the sunlight reflected off them, gleaming darkly with sorrow.

Ōi Town!

That narrow three-way intersection crowded with throngs of impoverished people strangely stirred my imagination.
Before the wretched post office gathered a great crowd of women workers.
Where could they have been sending letters?
And from their yellow passbooks they indiscriminately withdrew coins.

The sky was perpetually filled with soot.
Stalls overlapped upon stalls as a procession of covered wagons advanced along the severely mud-choked road.

Ōi Town!

Railway factory residential district!
From the window of a two-story tenement, the worker's wife shouted.
The husband worked at the station premises, piling up jet-black coal clinkers.
At dusk, that shovel glimmered sadly in the distance.

A fly had settled on the tenement's glass window, buzzing incessantly.
Somewhere in the tenements, a child cried.
Because the wife shouted raucously, the husband too felt sorrowful thoughts.
The laborer wearing the cap, while frantically carrying coal, felt the decline of his livelihood.
After all, he thought of driving out his old lady and dragging in some post-town prostitute instead.

The worker's sorrowful shovel shone in the distant premises.

Life is a strange thing, filled with infinite sorrowful thoughts and yearnings.
People project their thoughts onto nature and dwell within their respective landscapes.

Ōi Town!

In that bustling yet lonely street of chimneys and factories and throngs of workers, I found my dwelling.
Dragging my mud-caked boots, I walked daily through that landscape.
What a fine town this is.
I was walking through a factory back alley when a rat corpse was thrown at me from a second-floor tenement window.
The malicious laborers’ wives all at once thrust their faces from the window and cackled, “Hee hee hee!”
What a delightful occurrence this must be.
From such scenes of life, I can conceive any philosophy.

After all, for a wanderer like me, even if I searched all of Tokyo, there was no place better than Ōi Town.
Soot in the winter sky!
And the people who got off the train were all being sucked into the brick building.
A bumpy and uneven, narrow and filthy crowded town street.
The alleys were always packed with covered wagons.
So when it came to our family, we were always living in poverty.
(First Issue of the annual Poetry and Essays Collection, published May 1928)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Post office

The post office, like ports and stations, is a melancholy bastion of nostalgia that evokes life's distant wanderlust.
The postal clerks busily stamped documents as people crowded around the windows.
Above all, groups of poor women workers clutched daily wage savings passbooks while forming lines and jostling at the windows.
Some people handled money orders; others attempted to send sorrowful telegrams to distant lands.

Always hurried, always bustling, jostled by crowds—O mysterious and melancholy post office!
I liked to come there to write letters and witness life's nostalgia.
A rough-mannered old woman from the countryside stood there, beseeching someone nearby to pen a letter for her.
It was a notification that autumn-lined kimonos and undergarments had been sent by parcel to her daughter living alone in their impoverished rural village.

Post office!
I like seeing that nostalgia.
O young woman embracing life's various sorrows, writing a letter to your hometown in that dimly lit corner of the wall!
The pencil's lead lies broken, the characters smudged and disordered by tears.
What from this life must young girls suffer?
We too, like you all, wear despair's worn-out shoes and drift through life's harbors.
Eternally, eternally, our homeless souls are freezing.

The post office, like ports and stations, is a place that evokes life’s distant wanderlust—the eternal nostalgia of the soul.
(From "Wakakusa," March 1929 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Grave

This is a grave.
In desolate wind and rain, silently and sorrowfully, lonely, exists an eternal clod of earth.

What lies beneath this, beneath the grave?
We cannot conceive of it.
Perhaps a deep hole lies hollowly dug.
And a small amount of material—human bones, teeth, roof tiles—coexists with toads.
There is nothing there.
No life whatsoever, no consciousness, no honor.
Nor is there any existence that could possibly feel that honor.

And yet why are we so sorrowful, unable to bring ourselves to leave before the grave?
We always believe in the "nothingness" that follows death.
Nothing remains.
Our bodies disintegrate and change into other substances.
Thought, nerves, emotions—even the very substance of this conscious self—all vanish into emptiness.
How could today's common sense believe in that old-fashioned superstition—life after death?
We contemplate the afterlife, only to roar with laughter like the wind!

And yet still，why were we so sorrowful，unable to bring ourselves to leave before the grave?
We were unfortunate artists，enduring all adversities．
We endured loneliness，thinking only of the posthumous honor that should remain for posterity．
We thought only of that．
But oh，when a person is buried in a grave，how can they be conscious of themselves?
Everything of ours came to an end entirely．
When posterity came into view，they would lay wreaths upon graves and tens of thousands would praise my masterpieces．
Oh，but!
Who in the grave at that moment could be conscious of their own honor?
We must live．
Even after death，we must still live eternally in the grave．

In desolate wind and rain, eternally silent and desolate, existed a meaningless clod of earth.
What lay beneath this—below the grave?
We did not know.
This was a grave!
A grave!
(From 『新文学準備倶楽部』 June 1929 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Terror of Suicide

Suicide itself was not terrifying.
What made contemplating suicide terrifying was not death's momentary pain, but the irreversible regret arising at the very instant of commitment.
Now from a high-rise building's fifth-floor window, I prepared to jump down.
The will had already been written; all preparations were complete.
Now!
Close your eyes and jump!
And I jumped.
The final foothold left the window at last, and my body hurtled through air.

But at that moment—the instant my foot left the window—a different thought suddenly arose and flashed through my mind like lightning.
At that moment, for the first time, I clearly understood the meaning of life.
What folly I’ve committed!
Never, never should I have chosen death.
The world was bright, and the future shone with hope.
Absolutely, I did not want to die.
I didn't want to die.
But my foot had already left the window, my body plummeting straight down.
Beneath lay hard paving stones.
White concrete.
A bloodied skull!
Inevitable conclusion!

From the terror of this fantasy, I would always turn as pale as a white cloth.
Nothing—nothing—could be more terrifying than this imagining.
Yet one cannot say such a thing could never truly happen.
Were those who had already died by suicide to live again and speak, they would likely recount this experiment.
They are all ghosts filled with regret within their graves.
The thought terrifies me even after hundreds of ponderings; I shudder even within my dreams.

(From 『セルパン』 May 1931 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

How sad the poet’s death!

One day, Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, sinking into hopeless despair, spoke to me about the darkness of death and the meaninglessness of life.
It was not so much a narration as a desperate plea.

“But you are writing works that should endure for posterity.”
“And beyond that, you possess a lofty reputation.”

Suddenly, the words I had spoken intending to comfort him ended up provoking my unfortunate friend and making him genuinely angry.
That timid, bashful man who always stoically hid his emotions changed his expression and said vehemently.

“Works? Reputation?
“What good are those things?!”

In a German insane asylum where the lonely late-life Nietzsche lived being nursed by his sister, he one day gazed at the sky and dredged up memories through his deranged mind to say: "I too wrote a few good books in my day!"
.

That arrogant and insolent Nietzsche.
Nietzsche, who once boastfully declared himself "a genius since the dawn of human history"—how sorrowful these words were, how they stung the eyes with their aching pain.
The words that Nietzsche’s weeping sister would have spoken to comfort her brother were likely the same words I had once spoken to my friend who had previously committed suicide.
And Nietzsche’s reply would have been equally hollow and sorrowful.

“What good are those things?!”
“What good are those things?!”

Yet in another world lived people of a different race than theirs.
The words spoken by Nelson—who had sustained grave injuries in the Battle of Trafalgar and was surrounded by military doctors and staff officers—as he faced death were famous.
“I have fulfilled my duty to my country.”
Bismarck, Hindenburg, Itō Hirobumi, Admiral Tōgō, and others would likely have said to their own hearts while quietly reminiscing about the past on their deathbeds.

“I have done all that I should do.”
And smiling peacefully, they died with satisfaction in their hearts.

Therefore the proverb said:
"How sad when birds die,
How good when people die."
But on our Earth, this was inversely rhymed
And recast in heavily accented words
With deeper anguish:

"How good when people die.
How sad when poets die!"
(From 『行動』 November 1934 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Amidst the Crowd

The crowd is the homeland of the lonely.
Bodorēeru

The freedom of urban life lies in there being no cumbersome interactions between people, and furthermore, in them forming a cheerful crowd against the backdrop of the city.

By noon, I was sitting in a restaurant in town.
The restaurant was bustling and crowded, with every table overflowing with customers.
Young couples, groups of students, and mothers with children were sitting at various tables, talking about their own family matters and daily lives.
Those conversations had no connection to the other people; existing within the crowd, they remained self-contained dialogues belonging solely to their own groups.
And the other people, while sitting facing the same tables yet unrelated to their neighbors' conversations, chattered away with their own compartmentalized talk that belonged solely to their respective worlds.

This cityscape never failed to endlessly delight my heart.
There people existed without interacting with others' domains, yet each individual contributed to forming the overall atmosphere - the atmosphere of the crowd.
What an indifferent, carefree atmosphere filled with blissful oblivion this must have been.

As dusk fell, I sat on a park bench.
Several pairs of young men and women passed before me arm in arm.
Each couple conversed with apparent delight.
Gazing at other couples while being gazed upon in turn, critiquing one another, they layered love's joyful music across their skies through these beautiful accompaniments.

A pair of lovers happened to pass by and sat down beside my chair.
The two were eagerly whispering, laughing and blushing with joy.
Then they stood up and left holding hands.
From the very beginning, they did not even glance in my direction and appeared to be completely unaware of my very existence.

Urban life is a life where completely different people, thinking entirely different thoughts while sitting on a single shared bench, gaze at the same sky without any interaction between them—a life as part of the crowd.
The same city sky spreads over Asakusa Park's benches where vagrants, the unemployed, and aimless individuals sit vacantly side by side, each lost in their own thoughts, rendering the twilight cityscape infinitely forlorn in its poetic charm.

Truly, the freedom of urban life lay in the freedom found amidst the crowd.
The crowd consisted of individual units yet possessed a synthetic will as a whole.
No one interfered with my life or restricted my freedom.
Moreover, within the moving will of the whole, I thought, acted, experienced, and enjoyed alongside people.
For those whose hearts were deeply wearied, those tormented by sorrowful thoughts—especially those who grieved loneliness and those who loved loneliness—for such people, the crowd was indeed the homeland of the heart, the dwelling of love and solace.
With Baudelaire, I too would sing a lonely song.
—The city was my lover.
The crowd was my homeland.
Ah, anywhere and everywhere—wandering through the city's skies, I would walk on with the crowd.
The waves' far side vanished into the horizon; I would flow through the crowd.

(From Shiki February 1935 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Song of Nothingness

I have lost nothing.
And I have lost all.

"Ice Island"

Three o'clock in the afternoon.
In the vast hall, I sat alone drinking beer.
There were no customers outside, not even the shadow of anything moving.
The fireplace burned brightly, and through the thick glass door, late autumn light shone forlornly.
A white concrete floor, a purposeless dining table, numerous thin-legged chairs.

Having come to this desolate beer hall near Ebisu Bridge—what was I waiting for?
Not a lover, nor passion, nor hope, nor good fortune.
I had once been young and desired all things.
Now grown old and weary, I had lost everything.
I wandered city streets seeking a chair of solitude.
At last I understood what I sought.
A glass of cold beer and time free to watch clouds!
From days of old until now—this alone had been my desire.

Once I contemplated the mind.
A will that dreams.
Morality's warmth.
The reed that thinks yet trembles.
Yearning toward infinity.
A prayer to Eros, aching through my veins.
And ah—this they named "spirit"—my recollection lost.
Once I contemplated the body.
Matter and cells woven tight—hungering, breeding, ever crumbling—waging war against stone and dust, breathing like some sea creature cursed with tragic persistence.
Body!
Ah, you too recede—memory's fading silhouette.
I've grown old; desire's fire spent.
A grave awaits—stone, toad, earth's embrace.

In the hall garden grew a paulownia tree, its fallen leaves scattered across the ground.
Beyond the garden enclosed by plank fences, a black figure passed before the vacant lot lined with warehouses.
In the sky, soot hung faintly suspended, while the distant voices of gathering children reached the ear like something from a dream.
In a corner of the vast hollow hall, a small bird occasionally trilled.
Near Ebisu Bridge, three o'clock on a late autumn afternoon.
A pale concrete floor, an unclaimed dining table, numerous chairs with spindly legs.

Ah, God!
There is no way to recover it anymore.
I have lost everything completely.
Yet merely—ah, what delight this must be.
I want to believe that.
I want to believe that I live and "am".
I want to believe that a single "nothingness" exists within me eternally.

God!
Make me believe it.
On my hollow final day.

Now, thus I had lost nothing in the past and have lost nothing in the present.
Like a bereaved soul gazing at the sky, content with my own happiness—today as yesterday—I drink my elegant beer alone.
Nothingness!
Cloud!

Life!

(From Shiki, May 1936 issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Insect

A certain trivial word would sometimes cling to my mind like a caterpillar, maliciously persisting until its meaning was uncovered, tormenting me with relentless obsession.
One afternoon, as I walked through town, the words "reinforced concrete" suddenly floated to my lips.
Why had such words floated into my mind? I had absolutely no idea of the reason.
But within the meaning of those words, there seemed to be mysteriously concealed some phantom-like philosophical riddle beyond common understanding.
It was concealed behind consciousness like a memory from a dream, ethereal and elusive, yet at the same time seemingly graspable right before my eyes.
That agitation when trying to recall something forgotten—when it had come so near yet remained just out of reach.
That gnawing, obsessive agitation—the kind many people experience—haunted me since that time, ceaselessly tormenting me.
Whether at home or out, I constantly thought about it, groping for the mystery of a certain secret image lurking behind this trivial, obvious phrase.
That haunting word was always whispering by my ear.
To make matters worse, it had a strong rhythmic tone and, like a line of poetry once memorized, spitefully refused to be forgotten.
“Tetsu, Kin, Kon,” it rhymed in three syllables, then drew out “Kurīto” at the end.
In trying to unravel its mysterious meaning, I became like a paranoiac.
Clearly, that was nothing other than a single obsessive compulsion.
I had contracted neurasthenia.

One day, while pondering it deeply on a train, I suddenly overheard the conversation of the person next to me.

“Well, you.
That won’t work.
With wooden construction, you see.”

“Hmm... reinforced concrete after all, I suppose.”

The two gentlemen in suits accompanying each other were indeed engineers from somewhere and were discussing construction.
But I could not hear the rest of their conversation.
Only that single word reached my ears.
“Reinforced concrete!”

I felt a shock that nearly made me leap up.
That’s it.
I should ask these people.
They know everything.
Don’t let the opportunity slip.
“Boldly do it,” I urged my heart while steeling myself.

“Um… just a… excuse me…”

I boldly addressed them.

“Um... that... reinforced concrete... right?”
“Uh… that is… right?”
“That is to say… what exactly does it mean?”
“Uh… that is… the meaning of the word… that is to say… its metaphysical meaning… I’m talking about philosophy here… right?…”

My tongue began to stammer strangely, making it impossible to express my intent.
Though I comprehended it perfectly myself, yet I was utterly incapable of explaining it to others.
The gentlemen in the adjacent seats wore astonished expressions and stared directly into my face.
They could make no sense at all of what I was chattering about.
Then they glanced back at their companion, exchanged looks of unease, and abruptly fell completely silent.
I grinned awkwardly to conceal my embarrassment.
When we reached the next station, the two gentlemen hastily rose from their seats and disembarked as though fleeing.

Finally, one day, unable to bear it any longer, I went to my friend's residence.
The moment I entered the room, I fired off my question.

“Reinforced concrete—what’s that about, you?”

While taken aback, my friend stared blankly at my face.
My face was taut like a reef.

“What’s this about, you?”

With a half-laugh, my friend answered.

“Well, you.
It’s when they make the internal framework with steel reinforcement and build the house using concrete, isn’t it?
What’s that got to do with anything?
What on earth?”

“That’s wrong.
“I’m not asking about that.”

“And—” I said with displeasure staining my expression.

“It’s about the meaning.
“What I’m asking about—you see—”
“In other words, that…”
“The meaning of that word… representation… image…”
“In other words—that metaphysical cipher of language.”
“Allegory.”
“That secret... You understand, right?”
“In other words—that concealed puzzle.”
“It’s the real meaning.”
“It’s the real meaning.”

To these words—"the real meaning"—I put particular emphasis into them, repeating them over and over again.

My friend sat completely dumbfounded with their mouth agape like someone deranged, staring fixedly at my face.
I pressed again and again with persistent questioning.
But my friend gave no answer.
They deliberately changed tack instead and tried steering it toward jest.
I grew agitated and furious.
What sort of behavior was this—me being utterly earnest about such a crucial matter while they tried brushing it off with jokes!
No doubt about it—they knew full well.
They must have been feigning ignorance while fully aware of that secret yet determined not to share it with me.
No—not just this friend.
Even that man I once met on the train—the people surrounding me—every last one knew.
They knew yet spitefully refused to tell me.

"Serves you right!"
"These bastards!"

I cursed my friend in my heart, then turned this hostility toward every person within the sphere of my acquaintance.
Why were people being so spiteful toward me?
It felt both incomprehensible and galling.

But then, when I leapt out of my friend's house, completely unexpectedly, the meaning of that haunting phrase suddenly brightened and flashed like an inspiration.

"A bug!"

I involuntarily cried out.
Bug!
The enigmatic meaning that the term "reinforced concrete" secretly represented was in fact nothing more than that simple image.
There was no need to explain here why it was a bug.
Just as for some people the representation of oysters was the female body, so too had it become entirely clear to me.

I laughed brightly, raising my voice.
Then, raising both hands high in the shape of a bird in flight, I dashed out into the town street, shouting joyfully as I ran.

(Bungei, January 1937 Issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

House for Rent Sign

In a desert of the tropics, a single lion was taking a nap.
Stretching its limbs as long as possible, utterly exhausted in a languid manner.
As per the instinctual behavior of all beasts of prey, he would likely continue sleeping in that pose forever—or at least until the prey in his stomach was fully digested.

The equatorial midday.
There was neither wind nor sound.
The time of silence when all existence had perished.

At that moment, the lion suddenly awoke from his slumber.
Then he pricked up his ears, rose to his feet, fixed his gaze with tension, and cautiously assumed a nimble stance for attack.
In the shadow of some distant horizon, he found prey.
The air stirred, and the silence of all existence was shattered.

A traveler—a human wearing a helmet hat and white Western clothes—was watching this scene from somewhere.
He did not utter a single word and silently walked toward the palm tree growing on the sand dune.
On that palm tree—exposed to prolonged wind and rain for a long time—an old wooden sign had been nailed.

(House for Rent Available.
Gas and water included. Good sunlight.)

The man wearing a helmet silently peeled off the wooden sign, put it in his pocket, and walked briskly away until he disappeared toward the horizon.
(Inochi, October 1937 Issue; Shinario Kenkyū, October 1937 Issue)

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"This is the only way!"

When considered after waking, things that are truly absurd and trivial appear in dreams as if they were matters of great import, seeming like significant truths or discoveries.
Once in a dream, I entered a rather tidy little café in town together with several friends.
There was an adorable girl among the waitresses there, with an intelligent-looking face.
Somehow, everyone tried to get on familiar terms with that Metchien and became anxious to win her over for themselves.
There, I came up with a wonderful idea.
In front of the watching girl, I took one sugar cube from the jar.
Then, having fully composed myself, I made a meaningful gesture with an air of great importance and gently dropped it into the black tea.

In the hot, boiling black tea, the sugar dissolved rapidly before our eyes.
And tiny, fine bubbles floated up to the surface of the tea bowl, then gradually gathered around the edges.
At that moment, I took another sugar cube from the jar.
And just as before, putting on airs with an exaggeratedly ceremonious gesture, I gently dropped it into the tea bowl.
(At that moment, I was keenly aware of how brilliantly I executed my movements—more smartly and elegantly than any Parisian dandy—and felt quite pleased with myself.) From the bottom of the tea bowl, bubbles rose once more.
For a while, they clustered together in the center, dancing, then suddenly separated and were drawn to the edges of the tea bowl.
It looked exactly like a well-trained group exercise moving in response to commands.

“How’s that? Isn’t it splendid!” I said.

“Oh! How splendid!”

The girl who had been gazing fixedly said in a tone that could no longer contain her admiration.

“This is true art!
“Oh! How splendid!”
“You.
“What’s your name?”

And gazing at my face, she fluttered her long eyelashes with absolute and supreme reverence and affection.
She earnestly begged me to come again.
She also said she wanted to meet me often and hear all sorts of stories.

I became completely pleased with myself.
And even I was impressed by my own idea.
I found it strange and wondered why I hadn't thought of such a wonderful thing sooner.
If I just did this, I could effortlessly bring any woman under my control.
Nothing had ever made me feel prouder than having conceived this grand invention—something no one had ever known—through my own originality.
Then I turned to my friends, who stood there bewildered, and declared with great pride and triumph.

“When it comes to winning over girls, you see...”
“This method’s the only way, I tell you.”
“This very method.”

Then I awoke from the dream.
And at how utterly ridiculous it all was, I burst out laughing at the absurdity of what I had done.
Yet the words I had uttered—"This method is the only way"—lingered in my ears, unforgotten.

"This method is the only way."

When those words of mine from the dream still reach me even now, I roll about in mirth while contemplating the true nature of a certain "fool" dwelling somewhere within myself.
(Inochi, October 1937 Issue)