Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Kajii Motojirō

What are winter flies? Flies walking feebly. Flies that don’t flee even when a finger approaches. And just when I think they can’t fly, they do—these flies. Where on earth did they lose that unruliness from summer, that detestable nimbleness? Their color had dulled into murkiness; their wings and bodies were shrunken. Abdomens that had once been taut with filthy viscera had become emaciated like paper twine. In such a state, they crawled about on bedding we hardly noticed, their forms withered and decrepit.

From winter to early spring, people must have seen such flies at least once. Those are winter flies. I am now trying to write a short story inspired by those winter flies that inhabited my room.

1

Winter came, and I began sunbathing. Because it was a hot-spring inn in a valley, sunlight was easily obscured. The valley scenery remained clear within the shade until late morning. Finally, around ten o'clock, the sunlight that had been dammed by the mountains across the valley began glittering through my window. When I opened the window and looked up, the valley sky was busy with glinting specks of horseflies and bees flitting about. Glistening white spider threads swelled into arches, streaming past in countless strands. (On that thread—what a tiny celestial nymph!) A spider was riding on it. (They seemed to carry their own bodies from this bank of the valley to the other in that manner.) Insects. Insects. Even in early winter, their activity wove through the sky. Sunlight began tingeing the oak treetops. Then from those treetops rose something like white water vapor. Was it frost melting? Or melted frost evaporating? No—those too were insects. Particle-like winged insects swarmed in that manner. Then sunlight struck them.

In the wide-open window, while baring my half-naked body, I gazed at the valley’s sky—as lively as an inland bay. Then they came. They came from the ceiling of my room. Feeble in the shade, they revived as though resurrected the moment they descended into the sunlight. They would alight coldly on my shins, mimic raising both legs as if scratching their armpits, rub their forelegs together—then suddenly feebly take flight only to tangle together. Watching them like that, I understood pitifully well how desperately they savored the sunlight. In any case, they only made expressions resembling frolicsome play in the sunlight. Moreover, they never attempted to leave the sunlight as long as the window remained open. They frolicked in the shifting sunlight until it dimmed. Despite the horseflies and bees bustling about so vigorously in the open air outside, they never attempted to fly out there, instead somehow mimicking me—a sickly patient. But what a “will to live” this was! In the sunlight, they never failed to mate. They who were probably not far from withering death!

When I sunbathed, seeing them beside me had become part of my daily routine. I did not kill them out of faint curiosity and a sense of familiarity. Nor did fierce fly-catching spiders come around as they had in summer. It could be said that they were safe from such external threats. However, roughly two of them vanished each day. It was none other than. It was the milk bottle. I would leave my own half-finished milk bottle in the sunlight. Then, every day without fail, one would end up trapped inside, unable to escape. They would climb up the bottle’s interior while dragging the milk clinging to their bodies, but being powerless, they inevitably fell midway. I would sometimes watch this, but around the time I would think, "They’re about to fall now," the flies too would stop moving as if thinking, "Ah, we’re about to fall." And sure enough, they would fall. It was not without cruelty to watch. However, the sentiment to help them did not arise from my weariness. They remained as they were, and the maid took them away. I couldn’t even bring myself to consider putting lids on them for their sake. The next day, another one would enter and repeat the same process.

“The man sunbathing with flies” By now, such images must certainly have taken shape before your eyes. Having written about sunbathing, I would now write another image: “The man who sunbathes while hating the sun.”

This winter marked my second year staying here. I had not come to these mountains by choice. I want to return to the city soon. While wanting to return, I ended up staying through two winters. No matter how much time passed, my 'fatigue' never released me. Every time I pictured the city, my 'fatigue' painted cities brimming with despair. It remains unchanged no matter how much time passes. And the date I had initially resolved to return to the city had long since passed, now not a trace of it remained. Even when I basked in the sun—no, especially when I basked in the sun—I could think of nothing but hating it. Ultimately, it is the sun that will not keep me alive. And yet, with its entrancing illusion of life, the sun tries to deceive me. Oh, my sun. The sun irritated me like slovenly love. Something like a fur coat oppressed me instead like a straitjacket. With a madman's frenzy tearing at it, I desired with all my being that freedom within bitter cold—the freedom that would kill me.

These emotions undoubtedly originated in the physiological changes undergone by the body during sunbathing—the increasingly vigorous blood circulation, the brain gradually numbing in accordance with it—such phenomena as these. The pleasure that alleviated sharp sorrow and soothed the heart with gentle warmth was simultaneously an oppressive discomfort. This discomfort, through an indescribably nihilistic fatigue following sunbathing, defeated the patient. Perhaps it was from this aversion that such hatred within me had been conceived.

However, my hatred was not limited to that alone; it was also formed upon the effects the sun imparted to the scenery—effects perceived through the eyes.

When I was last in the city—it was shortly after the winter solstice—I felt endless yearning for the vanishing traces of sunlight disappearing daily from my window’s view. I gazed at the shadows creeping over the landscape with emotions—regret and vexation—welling up like viscous ink. And driven by an aching desire to glimpse the sunset, I wandered aimlessly through the unfathomable city in frantic circles. Now I no longer harbored such yearning. I do not deny the joyous emotions symbolized by sunlit scenery. That very joy now lacerates me. I detest it.

Across the valley, a cedar forest covered the mountainside. I always felt the sun's deception in that cedar forest. When daylight struck it directly, it appeared merely as a disordered heap of cedar crowns. But when evening came and light shifted to sky-reflected rays, distinct planes of depth emerged. Each tree revealed its inviolable dignity, standing in solemn rows that settled into stillness. Spaces unnoticed by day now took shape in imagination between those ranked treetops. Among evergreen oaks and chinquapins on the valley slope stood a single deciduous tree, bare branches dangling vermilion fruit. By daylight their color hung wearily pale as if dusted with ash. At dusk they sharpened to eye-arresting brilliance. No object inherently possesses one true color. Thus I do not name this deception. Yet direct sunlight distorts—wrenching each hue from its proper harmony with surrounding tones. Nor does it end there. Total reflection occurs. Shade turns cavernous when contrasted with sunlit surfaces. What monstrous disorder! All this conspires to forge sunlit landscapes. Here lies emotional slackening, neural torpor, reason's counterfeit. This constitutes the happiness they symbolize. Just as worldly joy likely takes these very conditions for its foundation.

I had come to wait instead for the evenings that coldly sank the valley—for the solemn decree of twilight that lingers on the earth but briefly. It was the reflected light that descended from the sky after the sun had left the earth, making the puddles on the road glow white. Even if people found no happiness within it, there existed a landscape that cleared my eyes and pierced my heart.

"You vulgar sun!" "Vanish quickly!" "No matter how much you lavish affection on the scenery and rouse those winter flies to life, you alone won't make a fool of me!" "I spit upon your disciples of the plein-air school." "When next I meet him, I'll file a protest with that doctor."

While basking in the sun, my hatred gradually intensified. But what a “will to live” this was! In the sunlight, they never forsook their pleasures. The ones in the bottle perpetually climbed only to fall, climbed only to fall.

Before long, the sun began to dim. It proceeded to hide behind the tall chinquapin tree. The direct rays began to shift into aloof diffracted light. Their shadows and the shadow of my shin began to take on an uncanny vividness. And I, wrapping myself in a padded robe, began to close the glass window.

When afternoon came, I made a habit of reading. They came there again. They clung to the book I was reading, their bodies always caught by the pages I turned. So slow were they to escape. If their sluggishness in fleeing were the only problem—but beneath the slight weight of paper, they had to writhe as though crushed beneath a beam, flipping onto their backs. I had no intention of killing them. So at such times—particularly during meals—their frailty became an inconvenience instead. When they landed on the meal, I had to move the chasing chopsticks with deliberate slowness. Otherwise there was no telling whether they wouldn't end up messily crushed by the tips. But even so, some still got flicked off and fell into the broth.

The last time I saw them was at night, when I was getting into bed. They were all stuck to the ceiling. Motionlessly, they clung as if dead. Even these frail creatures—when frolicking in sunlight—had felt like dead flies revived to play. There were those that lay for days, innards desiccated and dust-caked, yet would casually resurrect to sport about. Or rather, their very aspect permitted—nay demanded—the fancy that such revivals might truly occur. Now they perched thus on the ceiling, utterly still. They appeared truly deceased.

Gazing up at them from my pillow before sleep—these creatures so akin to illusions—the desolate aura of late night would always seep into my chest. The winter-bared valley inn had nights with no other guests besides me. All such rooms had their electric lights turned off. And as the night deepened, it somehow induced a feeling as though lodging among ruins. Within that desolate fantasy, my eyes conjured up a single scene of terrifying vividness. It was a bathhouse by the mountain stream, emitting a sea fragrance late into the night while overflowing with crystal-clear water. And that scene increasingly intensified within me the feeling of ruins.—When I gazed at them on the ceiling, my heart sensed such late-night hours. My heart spread out into the late-night hours. And my room—the sole waking room within it. My room where they perched on the ceiling, perching motionless as if dead, returned to me along with lonely emotions.

The fire in the hibachi began to wane, and the steam that had been moistening the glass window gradually began to disappear from above. I saw melancholic patterns resembling fish roe emerge from within it. It was the water vapor from that first winter—which had similarly vanished like this—that had over time created such patterns. In the corner of the alcove, several medicine bottles lay empty, lightly filmed with dust. What lassitude, what indolence this was! Was it not my sickly gloom that even made winter flies dwell here—flies that likely inhabited no other rooms? When on earth would someone take notice of such things?

When my mind became entangled in such thoughts, I was always afflicted with insomnia.

When sleep eluded me, I would envision warship launch ceremonies. Next, I would recall each poem from the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu one by one and ponder their meanings. And finally, I would fantasize about every conceivable cruel method of suicide, attempting through their accumulation to lure myself into sleep. In a room of the desolate valley inn. In a room where they clung to the ceiling, clinging motionless as if dead. ——

2

That day was a clear, warm day. In the afternoon, I went to the village post office to mail a letter. I was tired. After that, having to descend to the valley and still walk three or four blocks back to my inn felt dreadfully tedious. Just then, a shared bus passed by. When I saw that, I suddenly raised my hand. And then I ended up boarding it.

That bus spoke of itself through a distinctive feature among its kind that traveled the village’s main street. The uniformly forward-gazing eyes of passengers beneath the dark canopy, the mudguards, the hemp ropes binding luggage that spilled even onto the steps—by such ostentatious traits, one could tell at a glance that this was the bus bound to traverse three *ri* uphill and three *ri* downhill over the pass, journeying eleven *ri* to the port at the southern tip of the peninsula. I ended up boarding it. What a mismatched passenger I must have been. I was nothing more than a human who had merely come to the village post office and grown tired.

The sun had already sunk. I had no thoughts. There was only the pleasant shaking of the bus gradually distracting from my fatigue. It was around the time when villagers returned from mountains carrying nets on their backs，and familiar faces repeatedly avoided the bus. Each time，I gradually came to feel interest in “the dangling midst of volition.” And that，in turn，gradually transformed my fatigue into something different and strange. Eventually，I stopped encountering even those villagers. The natural forest revolved. The sunset appeared. The sound of stream grew distant. Aged cedar colonnades stretched on. The cold mountain air seeped in. Like a witch astride her broomstick，the bus carried me into lofty sky. Where on earth was I trying to go? Exiting tunnel at pass，it was already southern part of peninsula. Whether returning to my village or proceeding to next hot spring，it was three-*ri* downhill path. When I arrived there，I finally stopped car. And I descended into twilight mountains.

For what purpose? That my fatigue knew. I felt a grimly gratifying sneer at having abandoned my gutless solitary self in those mountains severed from human dwelling.

Jaybirds startled me by flying out repeatedly from close by. The path wound through dim valley folds; no matter how far I went, no vista opened up. If night were to fall like this—the thought filled my heart with unease. The jaybirds, repeatedly flying out, threatened me with their large forms seen up close as they crept along the fallen leaves of zelkova and oak branches. At last, finally, the valley revealed itself. A distant valley where prime cedars densely cluster like cells! What a colossal valley that was! Within the distant haze hung a waterfall—small, so small—water making no sound nor movement. At the valley bottom, vertiginous in its depth, a sled road built of bundled logs lay coldly, starkly white. The sun had sunk behind the ridge beyond the valley. A stillness like poured water now reigned over this valley. Nothing moved and nothing could be heard. The stillness imparted an even more dreamlike quality to the valley’s view—a view so dreamlike one might doubt its reality.

"What an opulent desolation it would be," I thought, "sitting here like this until nightfall." "At the inn, preparations for dinner were unknowingly waiting. And I don’t know what will become of me tonight."

I visualized the gloomy room I had left behind. There I would invariably suffer from fevers at dinnertime. I crawled into bed, clothes and all. Yet I was still cold. Trembling with chills, my autumn-numbed mind repeatedly conjured images of the bathtub. "How pleasant it would be to soak there." And I became myself walking down the stairs toward the bath. Yet in that imagining I never once removed my clothes. I would plunge into it, clothes and all. In my body—and—there was no support. I sank down bubbling and ended up lying at the bottom like a drowned corpse. It was always that same imagining. And I waited in bed for the chills to recede like the ebb of a tide.—

The surroundings darkened gradually. Leaving behind a watery light after sunset, stars sharpened into clarity within the purified sky. The cigarette’s glow between frozen fingers began staining itself crimson in the evening murk. That ember’s hue stood utterly solitary within desolation’s breadth. Abandoning that glow—no other illumination remained—the valley prepared to drown in dusk. Cold seeped steadily into my flesh. It invaded marrow-deep hollows no common chill could touch, rendering pocket-thrust hands useless. Yet I perceived how darkness and frigidity had at last begun steeling my resolve. Unaware of my own decision, I had committed myself to walk three ri toward the next hot spring. Something resembling swarming despair fed cruel cravings within my heart’s core. Once fatigue mutated thusly, I became its eternal sacrifice until conclusion’s edge. When full night fell and I finally rose, emotions armoring me bore no resemblance to those nurtured under lingering light.

I started walking through the frozen mountain air, cleaving through darkness. My body never warmed even slightly. Still, at times I felt air lightly brushing against my cheeks. At first I thought this might stem from fever or some bodily disturbance wrought by extreme cold. But as I walked on, I realized it likely came from patches of daytime warmth lingering on the path. Then within frozen darkness I began seeing daylight's glow with startling clarity. This lightless void containing not one lamp kindled strange sensations within me. It sufficed to make us civilized folk believe night can only be comprehended beneath artificial light. Despite pitch-black dark I felt everything identical to daytime. The star-strewn sky burned deep blue. Finding my way required no different methods than daylight hours. Day's residual warmth staining the path intensified this illusion further.

Suddenly, a wind-like sound arose from behind me. Into the swiftly flowing light, the pebbles on the road cast shadows like teeth. A car passed by without paying the slightest attention to me as I moved aside. For a while, I stood dazedly still. The car soon rounded the valley’s folds and came into view on the road beyond. But it appeared less like a car moving forward than a great darkness equipped with headlights surging onward. When it vanished like a dream, the surroundings were once more enveloped in cold darkness, and I, famished, trod the road brimming with dark passion.

“What a bitterly despairing landscape this is.” I walked through surroundings that were precisely my fate. This was the very image of my heart, and here I felt none of the deception I experienced in sunlight’s glare. My nerves stretched taut toward the dark path ahead, now thrumming with resolute will. What exquisite pleasure this was! Darkness like a judicial verdict, cold lacerating flesh. It was precisely here that my fatigue tensed agreeably, able to feel a novel thrill. Walk. Walk. “Walk until you collapse.”

I lashed myself with cruel intensity. Walk. Walk. Walk until you kill yourself.

Late that night, I stood my exhausted body before the port’s landing at the southern tip of the peninsula. I was drinking sake. However, the heart remained heavy and was not the least bit intoxicated.

Mingling with the strong scent of the tide, the smells of asphalt and oil thickly pervaded the area. The mooring ropes creaked like a ship’s slumbering breath, and as if to lull it to sleep, the sound of quiet waves lapping against the hull echoed across the dark water.

“Is Mr. ×× not here?!”

A coquettish woman’s voice had been calling from the shore, fracturing the quiet air. From the direction of the hundred-ton steamship that sleepily bore a dim light, an unseen voice answered indistinctly. It was a ponderous bass.

“He’s not here?” “Mr. ××...”

She appeared to be a woman who plied her charms with the shipmen at this port. I listened with detached curiosity to the bass voice in those responses, but heard only the same ambiguities resounding in that dull tone, until at last the woman seemed to relinquish her efforts and vanish.

I was recalling that eventful night while facing the quiet, sleeping port. The mountain path that refused to end no matter how much I walked—though I was certain I’d long passed three ri—and how a power plant began to appear in the valley, followed by two or three lanterns exchanging quiet nocturnal greetings as they trailed along the ravine’s floor; how I convinced myself these were likely lights of villagers heading to the hot spring, that the springs must be near, only to have my hopeful vigor dashed when proven wrong; how I finally reached the springs and warmed my frozen, exhausted limbs in the crowded communal bath amid villagers—that uncanny relief—truly, these experiences were too rich for a single night to bear the name “recollection.” And yet that was not the end of it. Just as I had finally filled my belly and whether my mind was settled or not, my unfulfilled cruel desire commanded me once more to take to the night road. I had to walk to a hot spring about two ri away—a place whose name I was hearing for the first time, with uncertain aim. On that path, I finally lost my way, and as I crouched in despair within the darkness, a late-night car passed by; with great effort, I managed to hail it, and thus ended up altering my plans and coming to this port town. And then where did I go? As if guided by some instinctual sense of smell, I found myself emerging into the row of brothels lining the moat. Sailors who looked as though draped in seaweed had gathered in a group and, while teasing white-painted women, were staggering along. I circled the same path about twice, and finally entered a house. I poured hot sake into my tired body. However, I did not get drunk. The woman who came to pour drinks talked about saury fishing boats. She was a robust, healthy-looking woman who seemed well-suited to a sailor’s build. One of them proposed an indecent act to me. Having paid the money, I asked for the port’s location and ended up going outside.

I gazed at the slowly flickering light of the rotating lighthouse offshore and felt the end of a night that stretched like an ancient scroll. The sound of hulls brushing against each other, the creak of taut mooring ropes, the sleepy ship lights—all lay dark and quiet in intimate seclusion, evoking a tender melancholy. Should I search for an inn somewhere, or return to that woman now? Whichever I chose, my heart—swollen with hatred and fierceness—exhausted itself at this port’s wharf. For a long time I stood there. I stared into the quiet sea’s darkness until something like listless drowsiness began to creep over my mind.—

I put off my return for three days, staying at hot springs near that port. The bright southern sea’s colors and smells felt somehow rough and crude to me. Moreover, the vulgar and dingy view of the plain quickly wearied me. I realized the scenery of my village—where mountains and valleys jostle against each other, leaving no room to rest one’s mind or harbor tranquil hopes—had at some point become ingrained in my very being. And after three days, I returned to my village to seal away my heart.

3 I had to keep my ailing body in bed for many days. Though I myself felt no particular regret, I couldn’t stop dwelling on how gloomy and upset each of my acquaintances would surely become if they heard of such things.

Then one day, I abruptly noticed that not a single fly remained in my room. That fact surprised me enough. I thought: During my absence, when no one had opened the windows to let in sunlight or lit fires to warm the room, they must have died from the cold. That seemed plausible. They had lived by making the byproduct of my quiet existence their condition for survival. And during the time I had escaped my stifling room to berate and torment myself, they had truly perished from cold and hunger. I felt melancholy about that for a while. It was not because I grieved their deaths, but because I felt that I too was subject to some capricious condition that sustains me and will one day kill me. I thought I saw its broad back. That was a new fantasy—one that injured my self-respect. And I felt my life growing ever more layered with gloom from that fantasy.