Pathway to Japanese Literature

1

It was a muggy summer evening.
In a certain café in the Yamanote district, two young men were talking.
Judging by their conversation, they didn’t seem to be particularly close friends.
Unlike Ginza, in the cramped cafés of Yamanote, lonely customers weren’t quite so free to pass the time gazing at other tables.
Such constraints—and the intimacy born of cramped spaces—often drew them closer to each other.
They too seemed to be such a pair.

One young man, his shoulders betraying beer's influence, propped his elbows on water-ringed tabletops and had been holding forth alone for some time.
In a corner of whitewashed earth floor sat an aged Victor phonograph grinding out worn dance records through sweltering air.

"You see fundamentally—a friend once struck my vital point—claims I was born with wandering homelessness in my bones."
"That friend being a palmist—Western-style—who examined my hand and declared: 'Yours bears Solomon's cross.'"
"Said it meant lifelong rootlessness."
"Not that I believe such things...but how it startled me then."
"So bitterly sad—"

For a brief moment, a tinge of sentimentality appeared beneath the drunkenness on the young man’s face.
He took a gulp of beer and resumed speaking,

“When I stand alone on that cliff top and look at each open window one by one, I always remember that.”
“I alone have lost my roots in society and drift like floating weeds.”
“And I must always stand on that cliff top and do nothing but gaze at people’s windows.”
“This has completely become my fate.”
“I find myself thinking such things.”
“But more than that—what I really want to say is this.”
“In other words, isn’t there something inherent in the view from windows that drives people to such thoughts?”
“I’m saying doesn’t everyone find themselves suddenly tempted by such feelings? What do you think—have you never considered such things?”

The other young man didn’t particularly seem drunk.
He was listening to his companion’s story with a calm expression that suggested he didn’t find it particularly amusing, yet wasn’t entirely uninterested either.
Prompted by his companion to share his thoughts, he had been thinking for a while, but

“Well... I can only recall experiences where I’ve felt quite the opposite.”
“However, your feelings aren’t entirely foreign to me.”
“When I say I felt the opposite—it’s that looking at people through windows made them appear to live in this transient world bearing some fragile fate.”
“That’s how it seemed.”

“Exactly.”
“That’s precisely it.”
“No—that might well be true.”
“I think I’ve felt something akin to that myself.”

The drunken man, in a tone that showed deep admiration for what his companion had said, downed the remaining beer in one gulp.

“That’s right—so you’re quite the window expert yourself! No—actually, I’m telling you, I absolutely adore windows! I always think how delightful it would be if I could always see people’s windows from where I am! And leaving my own window open too—I find it incredibly enjoyable to constantly expose myself to someone’s gaze! Even if I drink this much—how delightful it would be if there were people watching from a bridge or the opposite bank while I drink at some riverside restaurant-like place! ‘How pitiful they must think me’—though I can only utter fragmentary poems—I truly always feel that way!”

“I see, that does sound rather enjoyable somehow.”
"But my, what a peculiar pastime."

“Ah ha ha! No—I did mention earlier that you can see my room’s window from that cliff top, didn’t I? My window sits right by the cliff edge—from inside my room, all that fills the view now is that sheer rock face. I often keep watch on people using the cliff path from there, but it’s not a route many take to begin with. Even when someone does pass through, you’ll never find another soul like me lingering there for hours staring at the town below. Truth be told, a man in my position is the very picture of idleness.”

“Hey, you.”

“Would you stop that record?”

The young man who had been listening turned toward the waitress as she began playing *"Caravan"* again and spoke.
“I absolutely detest that jazz.”
“The mere thought of how much I detest it makes it utterly unbearable.”

Silently, the waitress stopped the phonograph.
She had a bobbed haircut and wore a light summer Western-style outfit.
But there was nothing fresh about it.
Rather, it exuded a grimy exoticism that seemed liable to reek of laboratory mice.
And that somberly corroborated the rumor that the café was frequented by low-class Westerners who lived in large numbers in the neighborhood.

“Hey.”
“Yuri-chan.”
“Yuri-chan.”
“Two more drafts.”

The young man who had been speaking turned toward the waitress with an expression suggesting he was rescuing their regular from a brusque customer. Then immediately:

"Well, you see—there's a desire in my window-gazing hobby that I can hardly tell others about."
"Generally speaking, it's the allure of peeking at people's secrets—but mine goes further. It seems I have this peculiar obsession that ultimately comes down to wanting to see bed scenes, if you catch my drift."
"Not that I've ever actually seen such things, mind you."

“That may be so. I hear those elevated national railway trains often carry such eccentrics.”

“Is that right? Does such a pathological type truly exist? Well, that’s surprising.”

“……Have you ever taken such an interest in windows?”
“……Have you ever taken such an interest in windows—even once?”

The young man’s face gazed fixedly at the other man’s face as he awaited a response.

“Since I’m the one mentioning such maniacs, you may assume I have at least some knowledge of them.”

A faint shadow of displeasure flickered across the young man’s face, but having answered thus, he regained his composure.

“That’s right. No—you see, there’s this one window I look down on from the cliff top with exactly that kind of interest. But I’ve never actually seen it even once. Though in reality, I’m often tricked by it. Ah ha ha ha… Shall I tell you what state I’m in when I lose myself in it? I stare fixedly at that window without taking my eyes off it for ages. Then, because I get so absorbed, my footing grows strangely unsteady. I stagger and truly feel like I might plunge off the cliff. Ha ha! At that point, it’s like I’m half dreaming. Then comes the odd part—at such times, the sound of footsteps approaching along the cliff path would always reach my ears. But I’ve resolved that even if someone really passes by, I won’t let it faze me. Yet those footsteps would creep up stealthily behind me and stop dead right there. That must be what they call a delusion, eh? I can’t shake the feeling that whoever crept up knows my secret. And right then—whether they’ll grab me by the scruff or shove me off the edge—I’m so terrified I can barely breathe. But still I keep watching the window. Well, in those moments, I feel whatever happens is just fine, you know? Though mind you, I’m a hundred percent aware it’s usually just my imagination—yet still I steel myself like that. But always lingering is this thought—what if one time in a hundred, it’s actually real? Strange business, isn’t it?”

“Ah ha ha ha!”

While still exhilarated by his own story yet now wearing an expression that might be described as self-mocking and even demonically challenging, he kept his gaze fixed on the other man’s face.

“How about it? Such talk—but these days, I’ve come to find my own state of mind far more fascinating than actually seeing people’s bed scenes. Because, you see—I’ve come to vaguely realize that the dim window I’m peering into probably isn’t at all what I imagine it to be. And yet, when I focus my mind and stare at it, it comes to feel vividly real. The state of mind in those moments is an indescribable ecstasy. Can such a thing really exist? Ah ha ha ha! What do you say—feel like going there together right now?”

“That may be neither here nor there, but the story does seem to have entered its most compelling phase.”

And the listener called for another beer.

“Well—it’s true we’ve reached the climax.”
“I had gradually entered the climax.”
“Why, you ask? Because for me, at first, the window was merely something vaguely interesting.”
“That gradually made me conscious of this urge to glimpse people’s secrets.”
“Right?”
“Then next, among all secrets, I became interested in those of bed scenes.”
“However, what I thought I had seen gradually began to appear as something entirely different.”
“However, I came to realize that the ecstatic state itself was ultimately everything.”
“Right?”
“No—you see, in reality, that ecstatic state is everything.”
“Ah ha ha ha!”
“Long live the ecstasy of vanities!”
“Let’s prosit to this delightful life!”

The young man had become quite intoxicated.
Violently clashing his glass against the other man’s—which had not joined in the prosit—he downed a fresh glass in one gulp.

While they were having such a conversation, the door opened and two Westerners entered.
As soon as they entered, they sat down at the table next to the young men while casting flirtatious glances toward the waitress.
They neither glanced even once toward the young men nor exchanged looks with each other, but kept their smiles perpetually directed at the woman.

“Welcome, Mr. Pauline and Mr. Shimanov.”

The waitress's face suddenly lit up with an exaggerated expression as she greeted them.
Giggling together, they chattered about something, but the Japanese she used—the kind of uninhibited Japanese typical of Westerners—produced a strange charm when she spoke it, utterly different from when she had been serving the young men.

“I once read a novel like this.”

The young man who had been listening, prompted by the atmosphere brought by the new customers, steered the conversation back to its original course.

“It’s about a certain Japanese man who sets out on a journey to Europe.”
“He continued his long and rather haphazard journey through Britain, France, and Germany, finally arriving in Vienna.”
“And on the night he arrived, he stayed at a hotel. In the middle of the night, he suddenly awoke and then, unable to fall back asleep, gazed out the window into the deep darkness, savoring the mood of his journey.”
The sky was a beautiful starry expanse, beneath which the city of Vienna lay sleeping.
The man had been gazing at the night view for some time when he suddenly noticed a single open window in the darkness.
Inside the room, a white cloth-like mass was illuminated by bright lamplight, and something resembling white smoke rose from it in a thin, straight line.
And as it gradually came into focus, what the man unexpectedly discovered there was a man and woman sprawled wantonly naked upon the bed.
What had appeared as white sheets turned out to be them, and the smoke quietly rising was from the cigar the man was smoking in bed.
As for what the man thought at that moment—“This is truly the venerable Vienna,” and “Now I have finally reached this ancient capital after my long journey”—such feelings welled up deeply within him, it is said.

“And then?”

“And then he quietly closed the window and returned to his own bed to sleep—though this is a novel I read quite some time ago, there’s something strangely unforgettable about it that has stuck in my memory.”

“How nice it must be to be a Westerner.”
“I want to go to Vienna.”
“Ah ha ha!”
“Instead, why don’t you come with me to the cliffside right now?”
“Yes.”

The intoxicated young man was urging his companion with a certain fervor.
However, one of them merely laughed and did not take up the offer.

2

Ikushima (the young man who had been drunk) returned late that night to the house below the cliff where he rented lodgings.
When he opened the door, he felt an indescribable melancholy born of habit.
It was because he recalled the housewife sleeping in that house.
Ikushima had continued a physical relationship devoid of any affection with the widow over forty referred to as “Oba-san.”
The woman, who had lost both her children and her husband, carried a certain resigned calmness about her, and even after such a relationship had arisen, she continued to treat him with the same coldness or kindness as before.
For Ikushima, there was not the slightest need to feign his lack of affection toward her.
He called “Oba-san” and shared the bed.
Afterward, she would immediately return to her own bed.
Ikushima had initially felt a detached simplicity in their relationship.
However, before long, he gradually began to feel an unbearable disgust.
It was that the very cause that had allowed him to find complacency was now rebelling against him.
When he touched her skin, there was no emotion there, and the usual bleached-out feeling never faded.
Even when there was physical release, there was no fulfillment of fantasy.
This fact gradually grew more oppressive, bearing down on his mind.
Before long, even when he ventured out into the bright streets, he couldn’t shake the sensation that a musty odor—like that of a sun-bleached old hand towel—had seeped into his very being.
Unpleasant lines had begun to appear on his features too, and an anxiety that the hell he was sinking into might be detected by anyone’s eyes clung to him incessantly.
And the woman’s resigned composure provoked an intensely irritated disgust.
But where should this resentment toward ‘Oba-san’ be directed?
Even if he were to say he was leaving today, it was perfectly clear that she wouldn’t voice a single complaint.
Then why didn’t he leave?

Ikushima had graduated from a university that spring but still had no job prospects, and while claiming to be busy making arrangements to return to his hometown, he spent each day in listless lethargy.
He no longer felt even the slightest will to lift a finger, as though entranced.
Whatever he thought of doing seemed to pass through parts of his brain cells that weren’t stimulated by will.
In the end, no matter how much time passed, he remained unable to move from that place.—

The housewife had already gone to bed.

Ikushima returned to his room, the stairs creaking beneath him. Then he opened the glass window, replacing the stifling evening air within with cool night air. He remained seated, staring toward the cliff. The cliffside path lay dark, only a single lamp on a utility pole marking its course. As he gazed out, he recalled the young man from tonight’s café conversation—how despite repeated invitations he had refused to go there; how he himself had obsessively sketched maps of the cliff path with paper and pencil; how through it all he had grown convinced that this man too must harbor desires like his own. Unbeknownst to himself, his eyes now searched the darkness for a pale figure, driven by that faint hope of “perhaps.”

His mind became absorbed once more in thoughts of that window he viewed from the cliff top. How passionate and carnal were those half-dreamt, half-real figures of a man and woman he saw within it. And how much passion—how much desire—did he himself feel while gazing at them? The two people in the window seemed to breathe his very breath, and he theirs—he was recalling that moment’s ecstatic intoxication of the mind.

"Compared to that," he kept thinking.

"What about when I'm with her? I turn deathly pale, as if under some evil spell. Even if it were but a tenth of that cliff-top intoxication, why doesn't it return when I'm with her? Could it be that these parts of me are being drained into the window? Could it be that I've become unable to indulge in sexual desire except through such forms? Or perhaps she herself is simply the wrong form for me from the start?"

"But I still have one fantasy left."
"And all that remains is this single fantasy."

Before he knew it, a great many insects had gathered around the lamp stand on the desk.
Seeing this, Ikushima pulled the chain and turned off the lamp.
Even such trivial acts now stirred in him a habitual resistance—a single change that must have occurred in the vista below the cliff briefly flickered through his mind.
When the room darkened, the night air grew particularly cool.
The darkness of the cliff path had also grown distinct.
But within that darkness, still no figures stood.

The one remaining fantasy he had was this: when he shared the bed with the widow, he would suddenly imagine throwing open the room’s window.
Of course he imagined at that moment—someone standing on the cliff path, gazing at their window, discerning their figures, feeling immense stimulation; through that stimulation, he anticipated how an ecstasy might arise within their reality devoid of any emotion.
However, for him, even just the act of opening the window and exposing their figures to the cliff path already held a novel allure.
He imagined the shudder of that moment—like a thin blade grazing his back.
That wasn’t all.
He imagined how much of a rebellion against their ugly reality that was.

"What on earth had I intended to do with that man tonight?"

When Ikushima realized that what his eyes had unconsciously been waiting for in the darkness of the cliff path was the figure of that young man, he suddenly returned to his sober self.

"I was initially overflowing with goodwill toward that man.
That's why I felt like bringing up window talk to discuss.
Yet why can't I shake this feeling that I was trying to make him into a puppet of my own desires?
I'd thought I'd been speaking from a belief filled with goodwill—that what I loved, others must surely love too.
But within that slightly coercive tone, I can't help feeling there had unconsciously been an attempt to rub my own desires against his body—to manufacture someone identical to myself.
And what I'd been waiting for now was that man—stimulated by such desires—ascending the cliff path; what I'd fantasized was opening the window of our ugly reality to expose it to the road atop the cliff.
Could such a thing truly be possible—that the fantasy dwelling solely in my secret heart would proceed to advance its plans methodically with its own will, completely independent of me?
Or could it be that even this self-reflection was part of some meticulously planned scheme—that if his shadow were to appear there now, I would've stuck out my tongue in readiness, thinking 'Now's the time'..."

Ikushima, as if shaking off his increasingly tangled thoughts, turned on the lamp and proceeded to lay out his bedding.

3

Ishida (the young man who had been the listener) one evening directed his stroll toward the cliffside path.
When he stepped from his usual thoroughfare into the path he had been told about for the first time, he felt strange wonder—had such a place truly existed near his home all along?
Originally, that area was terrain abundant with steep slopes, rich in hills and valleys.
In the elevated parts of town, grand houses with imposing gates stood alongside imperial family and aristocratic residences; come nightfall, they flanked a quiet street illuminated by old-fashioned gas lamps.
Amidst deep stands of trees, church spires towered here and there while embassy flags fluttered above villa-style roofs—all visible to the eye.
Yet in that valley section, gloomy damp houses concealed narrow paths unfit for ordinary passersby, persisting only in their gradual decay.

As Ishida walked along that path, he felt a guilty unease—the anxiety that someone might call him out. For along that path, the houses lining the way had their windows conspicuously open. Within them were people stripped to the waist, a grandfather clock chiming, and dreary existences marked by smoldering mosquito coils. Moreover, geckos clung to the eaves lights as if drawn there by routine, and their presence unsettled him. He reached dead-end after dead-end—each time growing more self-conscious about the sound of his own footsteps—until at last he emerged onto the path along the cliff. After walking awhile, the houses gave way and the path grew dark until he arrived at what seemed to be the spot he’d been told about—a place where a single lamp faintly illuminated his feet.

From there he could indeed survey the entire town below the cliff at a glance. Many windows were visible. This unexpected aerial view revealed a town he knew yet had never seen thus. He felt something akin to wanderlust—infused with the heavy scent of wild chrysanthemums permeating the air—tingeing his heart.

At one window, a man in a sweatshirt worked a sewing machine pedal. Seeing numerous pale shapes resembling laundry floating in the darkness atop a roof, he supposed this must be a laundry business. At another window appeared the figure of someone pressing a radio receiver to their ear in rapt attention. Watching this absorbed posture, he even fancied he could hear the radio’s faint sounds within his own ears.

The reason he had said to the drunken young man the previous night—that the figures of people standing or sitting within windows all seemed to live in this fleeting world burdened by some ephemeral fate—was because a scene like the following had risen in his mind.

In front of his rural home ran a highway where there stood a shabby merchant inn; from the street below, one could often see travelers eating their morning meal before departure on the second floor beyond the railing.
For some reason, he had clearly retained one particular scene among them in his mind.
It was a scene where a man in his fifties sat facing a pale-faced boy of about four, both attending to their morning meal.
On that face were gloomily etched the trials of this transient world.
He was moving his chopsticks without saying a word.
And the pale-faced child too ate in silence, shoveling rice from his bowl with unpracticed hands.
He felt the figure of a down-and-out man as he watched this.
He felt the man’s love for his child.
And he couldn’t help feeling that even in his young heart, the child somehow knew of the fate they had to resign themselves to.
Inside the room, things like newspaper supplements could be seen pasted over tears in the sliding doors.

That was a memory from one morning when he had returned to his hometown during a vacation.
He remembered how at that moment he had nearly shed tears.
And even now, while rekindling that memory from the depths of his heart, he gazed at the town spread out beneath him.

What particularly stirred such feelings in him was the window of a row house.
In one window hung a faded mosquito net.
In the adjacent window, a man was vacantly leaning out from the railing.
In the next adjacent window—the one most clearly visible—a Buddhist altar with a lit lamp stood against the wall alongside a chest of drawers and other items.
To Ishida, the walls dividing those rooms appeared ephemeral and sad.
If any of the people living there were to come up to this cliff top and look at those walls, he thought, how fragile and ephemeral their cherished notion of home would seem—such was the thought that arose.

On one side, a single window stood starkly illuminated against the darkness.
Inside, a bald old man could be seen facing a man who appeared to be a guest, with a tobacco tray before him.
When he kept watching for a while, from the corner of what appeared to be a room at the stairway entrance, a woman with her hair arranged in a traditional Japanese style appeared, bearing a tray with what looked like drinks.
Then the space between that room and the cliff suddenly quivered once.
It was because the woman’s figure suddenly blocked that bright electric lamp.
When the woman sat down and offered the tray, a man who appeared to be a guest could be seen bowing repeatedly.

Ishida gazed at the window as if watching a play, but in his heart, the words spoken by the young man the previous night had risen unconsciously. Gradually, the urge to steal glimpses into people’s secrets began surfacing in his consciousness. Then among all secrets, the urge to seek out bed scenes began emerging—

"Perhaps that was true," he thought. "Yet if such a window lay open before me now, rather than feeling lust like that man, might I not instead sense within it what one might call a feeling of poignant transience?"

And he searched for a while for what seemed to be the window the man had described among those visible below the cliff, but there was no such window to be found.
And after some time, he began walking down the path toward the town below the cliff.

4

"He’s come again tonight," Ikushima thought as he gazed from his room below the cliff at the figure emerging in the darkness of the cliffside path.
He had noticed that figure for many nights.
Each time, he thought there could be no mistake that it was the young man he had conversed with at the café, and each time he felt a shudder at the fantasies he was harboring in his heart.

"That figure was conjured by my imagination.
A doppelgänger of mine that has come to stand atop the cliff with the same desire as me.
What a dark fascination lies in this fantasy—that I stand here gazing at my own doppelgänger in the very spot I so love to occupy!
My desire has finally split off from me.
Now there is only shudder and ecstasy left in this room."

One evening, Ishida stood atop the cliff—for what must have been the umpteenth night—gazing down at the town below.

What he had been gazing at were the windows of a single obstetrics and gynecology hospital.
To call it a hospital was generous—it was no grand building, but rather a shabby Western-style house that by day displayed a sign on its roof reading "Pregnant Women Accepted."
Of the roughly ten windows there were, some stood brightly lit while others remained dark and closed.
There were also windows where funnel-shaped lamp covers partitioned light and dark within the rooms.

Ishida found his eyes drawn to one window among them that was unveiling a scene of several people standing around a bed.
He wondered if they were conducting surgery even on such a night.
Yet those people showed no signs of purposeful movement and remained standing motionless around the bed.

After watching for a while, he shifted his gaze and began looking at other windows.
In the laundry shop's second-floor window tonight, the figure of the man working the sewing machine was nowhere to be seen.
Still, a great number of laundry items hung glimmering palely in the darkness.
Most windows remained open as usual for the evening.
The kind of window that the man he had met at the café described still did not appear.
Ishida still felt, somewhere in his heart, a desire to see such a window.
It was not an overt thing, but within his reasons for coming night after night, there was some admixture of that very feeling.

When he casually glanced into a window near the cliff base, he stiffened at a premonition. And when he realized this was unmistakably the very scene he had secretly desired, his heart suddenly quickened its beating. With a feeling that forbade sustained looking, he repeatedly averted his eyes. And when his gaze abruptly turned back toward the hospital from before, his eyes widened at yet another uncanny sight—it was how the figures who had been standing around the bed all moved simultaneously in one instant. That collective motion bore gestures resembling shock. Then a man in Western clothes could be seen bowing to the group. Ishida intuited that what had transpired there meant a human being's death. His heart received a sharp impact all at once. And when his eyes returned to the cliffside window, what lay there remained unchanged in appearance—yet his heart no longer remained as it had been.

It was a solemn emotion that transcended such human joys and sorrows.
It was a sense of impermanence charged with vital force—one that surpassed what he had imagined as "the pathos of things."
He was recalling in his heart the customs of ancient Greece.
The Greeks' custom of carving upon sarcophagi surfaces figures of people engaged in licentious play and pastoral deities coupling with ewes.
—and he thought.

“They do not know.
The people at the hospital window do not know of the window below the cliff.
The people at the window below the cliff do not know of the hospital window.
And that such emotions exist on the cliff top—”