Pathway to Japanese Literature

I The season was near the winter solstice. From Gyou’s window, he could see the leaves on the trees in the gardens and gateways of the low-lying houses peeling away day by day.

The gongon-goma plants had become like an old woman’s disheveled hair, the last leaves of the cherry trees—beautifully seared by frost—had disappeared, and whenever the zelkova shook itself with a dry rustle in the wind, previously concealed portions of the landscape came into view.

The dawn shrikes had ceased to come as well. And then one day, around the time lead-gray starlings descended in hundreds upon oak trees standing like a folding screen, the frost gradually grew sharper. When winter came, Gyou’s lungs ached. To the plaster at the wellside where dead leaves had settled, the phlegm he spat out during washing shifted from yellow-green to a dull blood color, and at times gleamed with a startlingly vivid crimson. By the time Gyou left his futon in the four-and-a-half-mat rented room on the second floor, the housewives’ morning laundry had long been finished, and the plaster had dried completely. The phlegm that fell on it wouldn’t wash away even when doused with water. Gyou would carry it to the mouth of the clay pipe, pinching it as though handling a goldfish fry. Even when he saw the bloody phlegm, it no longer stirred any reaction in him. But that vividly clear patch of color in the depths of the cold air—for some reason, he always found himself compelled to stare at it intently.

Gyou had completely ceased to feel any enthusiasm for living these days. Each day dragged him along. And his soul—bereft of a place to dwell within—was constantly anxious to escape outward; during daylight hours he would throw open his room’s window and stare at the scenery like a blind man. At night he would listen with a deaf person’s intensity to outdoor noises and the iron kettle’s clangs. Yet even November’s fragile sunlight nearing winter solstice would begin fading outside his window each day—never lingering an hour after he left his bedding. In shaded lowlands below, even his own dwelling’s shadow had been swallowed whole. Seeing this spread ink-black frustration and regret through Gyou’s heart. The patch of sunlight now rested on a gray Western-style wooden house beyond those lowlands—at that hour appearing almost sorrowful as it gazed toward distant horizons where sunsets sank.

The winter sun shone even into the mailbox. Every tiny pebble on the road cast its own shadow, and as he watched, they all seemed to bear an enormous sorrow akin to Egypt’s pyramids. At the Western-style house separated by the lowland, at that hour, rows of pale paulownia trees cast ghostly shadows. Possessing phototropism, Gyou’s pallid tentacles—bean sprout-like—stretched unwittingly toward that gray wooden house, caressing the mysterious shadow stains seeped into it. Every day, he would open his window with an empty heart until that vanished.

The row of oak trees supporting the northern corner of the view danced with steel-like elasticity one day as they shook the wind down. In the transformed lowland, dead leaves rustled, sounding a skeletal dance. At such times, the shadows of the pale paulownia trees looked as though they might vanish at any moment. In that place that could no longer be called a sunny spot, a shadow so faint it might be imagined still lingered. And chased by the wintry wind, it gradually faded into the distance—toward a desert-like world where shadows lived.

After finishing watching it, Gyou began to shut the window with an emotion resembling despair. When he listened to the wintry wind that now did nothing but herald night, at times there came the sound of a glass door collapsing somewhere far off where electricity had yet to reach.

II

Gyou received a letter from Mother. “Ever since we lost Nobuko, Father has aged beyond recognition.” “Since your body isn’t an ordinary one, please take good care of it.” “We don’t want any more hardship beyond this.” “Lately in the middle of the night, I wake up as if startled by something.” “My mind is worried about you.” “No matter how much I try not to think about it, it’s no use.” “I cannot sleep for hours.”

Gyou read it and grew desolate at a certain thought. Beyond the nights when people had slumbered deeply, he and his mother tormented each other with their worries. At such times, how could one definitively say that the ominous pulsation striking his heart did not wake Mother? Gyou’s younger brother had died of spinal tuberculosis. And his sister Nobuko too had died of spinal tuberculosis, passing through landscapes devoid of will. There, many insects gathered around a dying insect, mourning and weeping. And both of them were taken down from the white plaster beds where they had lain for a year before returning to the earth.

"Why would a doctor say something like 'One year now equals ten years later'?" Gyou recalled the strangely disquieting emotion that had welled up within him when he heard those words and pondered.

As if I even had some ideal I must reach in those ten years. Why don't they just say how many years until I die? In Gyou's mind rose landscapes devoid of will that often appeared before him. A tram stop in the town lined with dark, cold stone-built government offices. There, he was waiting for the tram. Should he go home or head to the lively streets? He was wavering. He couldn't make up his mind either way. And no matter how long he waited, the tram never came from either direction. The oppressive shadows of dark buildings, bare rows of trees, a perspective view of sparse streetlights. —At the distant intersection, trams that occasionally passed by like aquariums. The scenery abruptly lost all order. Amidst it all, he felt an intense dissolution of form.

Young Gyou went to drown a mouse caught in a trap in the river. In the transparent water, the mouse scrambled left and right along the wire mesh—it looked as though suspended in air. Eventually, the mouse stopped moving, its nose thrust into one of the mesh openings. White bubbles bubbled from the mouse’s mouth one last time…… Five or six years ago, before the death promised by his illness, Gyou had merely scattered sweet sorrow in his wake as he passed by. And when he finally noticed it, the predilection for gourmet food, comfort, and cowardice—seeped into him through enforced nutrition and rest—had gradually stripped away his will to live. Yet time and again he gathered his resolve and turned back toward life. But his thoughts and actions had begun to resonate with artifice before he knew it, until they lost their fluidity and hardened. And before him, such landscapes would appear.

Many people had shown certain symptoms，followed a certain course，and died. Those same symptoms have appeared in you.

When one of the apostles of modern science first informed Gyou of this, he—who had no right to refuse—found his mind rejecting it solely because of the name he had vaguely detested. He no longer refused it. The white plaster bed was prepared for the several years before he would return to the black earth. There, even tossing and turning would no longer be permitted.

As the night deepened and the sound of the night watchman’s clappers began echoing, Gyou muttered from the depths of his gloomy heart. “Good night, Mother.” The clappers’ sound—its echoes shifting subtly through the area around Gyou’s house with its many slopes and mansions—evoked the path it traveled onward. The faint distant howl of a dog he had mistaken for his lungs’ creaking.—Gyou could see the night watchman. He could see his mother’s sleeping form. In the still deeper depths of his gloomy heart, he muttered again.

"Good night, Mother."

III Gyou opened wide the window of the room he had finished cleaning and was resting on a rattan chaise lounge. Then came a chit-chit cry, and behind the kanamugura hedge, a bush warbler could be seen flitting in and out of sight. "Chit-chit." Gyou lifted his head, imitating the cry with his mouth as he watched the small bird.—He had once kept a canary at his own home.

Beautiful morning sunlight streamed through the leaves. Though confused by the mouth sounds, unlike canaries in such situations, the bush warbler showed no delicate nuances. Plumped by appetite, it looked as if wearing some stiff waistcoat. —When Gyou stopped mimicking, the bird departed without ceremony through the lower branches.

Across the lowland stretched a sunlit garden of some noble overlooking the valley. Upon the yellowed Korean lawn lay a red futon spread out to dry. —Gyou found himself entranced on this morning when he had risen earlier than usual.

After a while, he left the house gate, looking at the roof where leaves had withered brown and the glossy red berries of a vine-like plant lay exposed.

In the windless blue sky, the ginkgo tree that had turned completely yellow quietly folded its shadow and rested. The long wall covered in white glazed bricks perfectly reflected the clear winter air. Beneath it, an old woman carrying a grandchild on her back walked slowly and steadily. Gyou descended the long slope and went to the post office. The post office where sunlight streamed in had its door constantly ringing, and people scattered the fresh morning air. Gyou felt as though he hadn’t encountered such air in a long time.

He slowly climbed the narrow slope. Sasanqua camellias and Japanese aralias bloomed along it. Gyou marveled that butterflies still lingered in December. Where one had flown, sunlight scattered gleaming specks of horseflies bustling through the air. "A senile sort of happiness," he thought, drowsily crouching in a sunny patch. Not far from that warm spot, small children played some game—four- or five-year-old boys and girls.

"They’re probably not watching," Gyou thought as he spat phlegm into a ditch where shallow water flowed. And he approached them. There were girls roughhousing among them. There were boys acting gently among them. Childlike lines were drawn on the path with graphite.—Gyou suddenly thought this was a scene he had seen somewhere before. His heart suddenly wavered. The shaken-awake horsefly flew off into the vast expanse of Gyou’s past—to that radiant December morning.

Gyou’s horsefly had found the sasanqua camellias and the children playing where those petals scattered— It was like that rare morning path when he’d forgotten his writing paper and gone to school, then hurried back home after informing his teacher—all while classes were in session. This was the scene of a sacred hour—one never permitted except through such happenstance. Thinking this, Gyou smiled.

When afternoon came and the sun tilted to its usual angle, this thought made Gyou sad. In the faded photograph from his childhood, a dim sunlight akin to a lingering sunny spot illuminated objects. How could those without hope cherish their memories? Had there been any recent moment when I felt a brightness like this morning’s in the future? And this morning’s idea was nothing more than clear proof that, like Russian nobles (with their morning meal around two in the afternoon), such habits had become ingrained in his life.

——

He descended the long slope again and went to the post office.

“Regarding this morning’s postcard—I’ve changed my mind and decided to cancel it, so please disregard my earlier request.” That morning, he had contemplated spending the winter at a warm coastal area and asked a friend living there to search for a rental house.

He gasped as he climbed back up the slope, feeling intense fatigue. The ginkgo tree that had been quietly folding its shadow in the morning sunlight now had its branches thinned by the winter wind before a day had passed. The dead leaves were brightening the sun-deprived path. He felt a faint attachment to those dead leaves. Gyou returned to the path beside his house. From his house, that sloped path lay situated atop a cliff. The usual scenery he viewed from his room was now being mercilessly battered by the winter wind before his very eyes. In the overcast sky, clouds moved darkly. And below that, Gyou saw that the second floor of a house where electricity had yet to reach already had its doors locked. The door’s wood grain lay completely exposed to the outside. —Moved by some profound emotion, Gyou halted there. Beside him was the room where he lived. Gyou began to gaze at it with a new emotion he had never before felt while looking at it.

The second floor of a house where electric lighting had yet to be installed, yet already had its doors tightly shut—the door’s exposed wood grain suddenly dyed Gyou’s heart with a rootless traveler’s melancholy.

—I have no food. I have nowhere to stay. And though day is drawing to a close, this foreign town has already rejected me.— A gloom, as though it were reality, began to cloud his heart. Once again, such memories—as if they had once existed within his former self—brought forth a kind of dubiously sweet sensation that tormented Gyou. Why do such delusions arise? Why do these delusions sadden me so, and why do they call out to me so intimately? Such things seemed to become dimly clear to Gyou.

The savory smell of roasting meat blended with the scent of evening frost. A man who looked like a carpenter having finished his day's work passed by Gyou, making faint exhaling sounds as he briskly climbed the slope.

"My room is over there." Gyou fixed his gaze on his own room while thinking this. Enveloped in twilight, its form appeared powerless against the void that now spread across the landscape like ether.

The room I loved. The room where I rejoiced to dwell. Inside lay all my belongings—perhaps even the emotions of each day’s life were stored within. Were I to call out from here, I might even sense that ghost opening that window and leaning out. Yet was this not scarcely different from how a discarded inn’s padded robe might eventually conjure the semblance of my own body within it? As I stared at those insensate roof tiles and windowpanes, I gradually came to feel like a passerby. That insensate exterior must remain exactly so even when sheltering someone poised for suicide within. Yet having said this, I could not simply walk away as that earlier fantasy beckoned me.

If only the electricity would come soon. If that window’s polished glass were to let a yellow light seep through, this passerby’s heart might imagine a person content with the life they’d been given inside the room. The power to believe in that happiness might arise. As Gyou walked along the path, the dull, booming... of the pillar clock downstairs reached his ears. Thinking he had heard something strange, his feet trudged heavily down the slope.

IV From street trees to streets themselves—once the wind had swept away all dead leaves, its very sound transformed. When night fell, city asphalt began freezing like pencil-polished lead. On such nights Gyou left his quiet town for Ginza. There resplendent Christmas promotions and year-end sales had commenced.

Whether friends, lovers, or family, almost all the people on the pavement were accompanied by companions. The faces of those without companions held the hope of encountering friends. And for those who truly had money and health, even without companions, this marketplace of material desires had no reason to show them a disapproving face.

"What am I doing coming to Ginza?"

Gyou often thought this when the pavement began to offer nothing but fatigue so soon. Gyou would recall the face of a girl he had once seen on a train during such times. The girl, wearing a modest smile, was hanging from the strap in front of his seat. From her kimono that hung loosely like a padded winter robe, a neck reminiscent of an older sister’s emerged. Her beautiful face made him intuitively grasp her illness at a glance. Porcelain-white skin shadowed by abundant downy hair. Grime around the nostrils.

She must have escaped from her sickbed.

While gazing at the girl's face—at the smile that continuously formed and vanished like ripples—Gyou thought this. What was she wiping away as if blowing her nose? Like a stove from which ashes had been emptied, at such times vivid blood would momentarily flush her face. While holding the image of that girl—whose pitiable charm grew alongside his own fatigue—Gyou found it difficult to spit out his phlegm in Ginza, as if she were the girl from a Grimms' fairy tale from whose mouth a frog would leap each time she spoke.

He had once seen a man spit phlegm at such times. Suddenly, a shabby wooden clog appeared and ground it to pieces. But it was not a clog being worn on someone’s foot. He saw the old man—who had spread a straw mat by the roadside to sell tin tops—finally show anger as he stacked that clog on top of another at the edge of the mat. Did anyone see that? With such feelings, Gyou looked back at the people passing by. But no one seemed to have seen it. The spot where the old man sat was too close to be noticed by passersby. Even without that, the tin tops the old man was selling must have already been trite things even in countryside candy stores. Gyou had never once seen those toys being sold.

"What am I doing coming here?" After buying coffee, butter, bread, and brushes as excuses to himself, he would sometimes purchase expensive French spices while feeling something akin to anger. At other times, he would sit in a corner restaurant until street stalls packed up their wares. In the restaurant—warmed by the stove, livened by a piano trio, with glasses clinking, sidelong glances gleaming, and smiles effervescing—several languid winter flies circled beneath the ceiling. He found himself idly watching even these things.

What did I come here to do? When he went out into the town, the sweeping wind had already thinned the crowd. In the late hours when flyers that people had been handed at dusk were mysteriously blown into a single corner of the town, and spat phlegm froze instantly only to disappear among fallen geta’s metal fittings, he ultimately had to return home. What did I come here to do?

That was nothing more than the lingering vestiges of fascination from his old life within him. Soon I will cease coming. Gyou felt this truth alongside a leaden fatigue.

The nights he perceived in his room stretched endlessly like a hospital corridor—indistinguishable from last night, the night before, or likely even tomorrow night. There, the old life lay halted in death-like air. Thoughts amounted to nothing more than wall plaster filling the bookshelf. The star chart hanging on the wall remained fixed at 3 a.m. on some twentieth day of October, gathering dust. When he went to the toilet late at night, frost like moonlight coated the roof tiles outside the small window. Only when he saw this did his heart brighten with a soft warmth.

When he left the hard bed, a day beginning in the afternoon awaited. Each day saw the slanting winter sun projecting scenes beyond his window like magic lantern slides. That uncanny sunlight gradually revealed how everything was mere illusion—and how precisely through being illusionary things became imbued with spiritual beauty. The loquat tree flowered while orange fruits from a distant sunlit patch stabbed at his vision. Then early winter showers turned to hail that dashed along roof eaves.

The hail struck the black roof tiles one after another, clattering and rolling off. The sound of hail striking the corrugated iron roof. The sound of hail pinging off the thick leaves. The sound vanishing into withered grass. Eventually, the swishing sound of it falling across the town began to reach his ears. And then, breaking through the white winter veil, a crane’s cry arose from a nearby mansion. In such moments, even Gyou’s heart could feel something like a fresh joy. He leaned against the windowsill and thought of ancient times when eccentric artistry had existed. However, applying that to himself was something Gyou could not do.

5

Before he knew it, the winter solstice had passed.

One such day, Gyou went to the pawnshop in the town where he had once lived—a place he had long avoided visiting. He had gone out to pawn his winter coat because the money had come. But when he arrived, it had already been disposed of. “Mr. X, when was that again… let me see.” “Right away.” The young clerk, who had grown quite mature during the time Gyou hadn’t seen him, flipped through the ledger. Gyou began to find the face of the clerk—whose spiel flowed with relative smoothness—strange in appearance. At one moment he seemed to be speaking while concealing intense dislike; at another, he appeared utterly unperturbed. He thought he had never been so confounded in reading people’s expressions. This was the clerk who usually engaged in friendly small talk with him.

Through the clerk’s words, Gyou now vividly recalled—for the first time—the numerous occasions he had received mail from the pawnshop. At the depths of a feeling as if corroded by sulfuric acid, while sensing a bitter smile at what might happen were he to confess such things to this clerk, he too feigned the same indifference as the clerk on his face and, after hearing about the items that had been disposed of along with it, left the shop.

A single emaciated dog, trembling its ugly haunches by the frost-thawed roadside, was trying to defecate. Gyou, feeling something like a perverse impulse gnawing at him, watched the dog’s form with disgust until it finished.

Even during the long train ride home, he kept enduring himself as he verged on collapse. And when he got off the train—the Western-style umbrella he should have had when leaving home—he did not possess it. He reflexively averted his eyes as they tried pointlessly to chase the departing train. Hauling his leaden fatigue, he made his way back along the evening road. That day when he went into town, he had vomited something red; it still clung to the base of a roadside hibiscus. A faint shudder passed through Gyou’s body. At that red stain which, when expelled, he had believed signified nothing more than wrongdoing. ——

The time of evening fever arrived. Cold sweat unpleasantly trickled through the armpits. He sat rigidly still in his room, still dressed in outdoor clothes with hakama unremoved. Suddenly, dagger-like grief pierced him. When he pictured his mother’s occasionally vacant expression—she who had lost loved ones one after another—he began crying quietly. By the time he went downstairs after dinner, his heart had already regained its calmness.

At that moment, a friend called Orita came to visit. He had no appetite. He immediately went upstairs. Orita took down the star chart that had been hanging on the wall and began intently adjusting its markings. “Hey.”

Orita did not respond to that, “How’s this? “Isn’t it grand?” After that, he didn’t try to raise his face. Gyou abruptly swallowed his breath. He could believe how grand a sight it was. “Since my vacation started, I thought I’d come back home, so here I am.”

“So your break’s already started? I won’t be going back this time.” “Why?” “I don’t want to go back.” “From your home...” “I sent a letter saying I won’t go back home.” “Are you going on a trip or something?” “No.” Orita stared sharply into Gyou’s eyes and asked nothing more. But talk of friends’ rumors and school matters gradually filled their conversation.

“At school these days, they’re demolishing the burned ruins of the auditorium.” “Well, the laborers take pickaxes and climb up the burned brick walls of the ruins…” Orita depicted, with gestures, the figures of laborers currently atop the brick wall they were climbing, wielding pickaxes. “They stay up there, pickaxes at the ready, until it’s just one strike away.” “Then they move to a safe spot and give it one good wham.” “Then the big chunk comes crashing down with a thunderous crash.”

“Hmm.” “That’s pretty interesting.” “It’s fascinating.” “That’s why it’s become such a huge attraction.” As they talked, Gyou and the others drank endless cups of tea. But whenever he saw Orita casually drinking tea from his own cup, his mind would wander from the conversation. That obsession grew increasingly heavy upon Gyou. “Are you really okay with using a tuberculosis patient’s cup? Every time I cough, germs go flying everywhere. If you’re truly fine with that, then you must have a poor sense of hygiene. And if you’re just enduring it out of some sense of friendship, then I think that’s nothing more than childish sentimentalism—that’s what I believe.”

After saying it, Gyou wondered why he had said such an unpleasant thing. Orita remained silent, his eyes flashing sharply once. "Has no one come to see you lately?" "No one came for a while." "Do you get bitter when they don't come?" This time, Gyou stayed quiet. Yet somehow, he found this exchange of words strangely comforting. "I don't get bitter. But my way of thinking has changed somewhat these days."

“I see.” Gyou told Orita about the events of that day. “In those moments, I can never remain calm.” “Calmness isn’t unfeeling—to me, it’s emotion.” “Pain.” “But my path in life is to watch—with that calmness—as my own body and life wither away.” “…………” “If my life were to collapse completely, then true calm would come—that’s what I think.” Like a leaf settling on a rock at the water’s depths…

“That’s Jousou.” “……I see. I haven’t come by in a while.” “Such things… But this kind of thinking makes one lonely.” “I think it would be good if you start feeling like moving to a different climate or something.” “Do you intend not to go back even if they tell you to come home for New Year’s?”

“I don’t intend to go back.”

It was an unusually windless, quiet evening. On such nights, there were no fires either. While the two were talking, a small whistle-like sound occasionally rang out from outside. At eleven o'clock, Orita left. Just before leaving, he took two train discount tickets from his wallet,

“Since it’d be a hassle for you to go to the school to get them,” he said and handed them to Gyou.

VI

A letter came from Mother.

"There must be something different about you now. So I’ve arranged for Mr. Tsue, who will be coming up to Tokyo for New Year’s, to visit you. Keep that in mind."

Because you said you wouldn’t return, I sent your spring clothes. This year I had a winter undergarment made and included it—it’s meant to be worn between your kimono and underrobe. You mustn’t wear it against your skin. —— Tsue was the son of Mother’s teacher who had graduated from university and become a doctor. There had been a time when Gyou felt toward him an admiration akin to that for an elder brother.

When Gyou went out for walks nearby lately, he often encountered hallucinations of his mother. Mother! When he thought this only to find it was a stranger’s face, he would think strange things. ——It had shifted so seamlessly. The vision of Mother already sitting in his room flickered before his eyes again, making him turn back toward home. But what came was a letter. And the one who should have come was Tsue. Gyou’s hallucinations ceased.

As he walked through the streets, Gyou felt he had become a delicate level. He noticed his breathing becoming increasingly labored. When he looked back, the road had a steeper incline than he'd realized. He stopped and gasped violently for air, his shoulders heaving. Before that aching mass could sink through his chest, he always had to endure a suffocating moment of helplessness. When it subsided, Gyou resumed walking.

What drove him? It was the sight of the sun sinking toward the distant horizon. His day could no longer endure the winter days that vanished, each and every one, into the gray Western-style wooden house across the lowland. When the scenery outside the window gradually faded into the pallid air, and he became aware that this was no ordinary shadow but one named night, a peculiar restlessness began to stir in his heart.

“Ahh… I want to see a grand sunset.”

He left the house and searched for a place offering a distant prospect. In the year-end town, the rhythmic sound of rice cake pounding resounded. In front of the flower shop, planters arranged with plum blossoms and adonis were lined up. Such genre scenes grew increasingly beautiful as the town began to lose its sense of how and where to return. Paths his feet had never yet tread—there, women polishing rice and children squabbling brought him to a halt. But wherever he sought a vantage point, there were silhouettes of large roofs and treetops clear against the sunset sky. Each time, the hidden form of the sun sinking toward the distant horizon was imprinted on his aching heart.

The air brimming with sunlight hovered not a moment away from the earth. His unfulfilled desire would sometimes climb to high rooftops and imagine a man stretching his hand toward the sky. The tip of the man’s finger was touching that air. ——He imagined hydrogen-filled soap bubbles, as they ascended with the pallid people and the city, suddenly floating up iridescently in that air.

In the clear blue sky, floating clouds burned beautifully one after another. To the unfulfilled embers in Gyou’s heart, too, that fire soon spread.

“Why must such beautiful moments be so fleeting?”

At no time did he feel more ephemeral than in such moments. The burned clouds began turning to lifeless ashes one after another. His feet no longer moved.

“I wonder where on Earth the shadow permeating that sky is cast.” “Unless I go to those clouds, I can no longer catch a glimpse of today’s sun.” A heavy fatigue suddenly pressed down on him. At an unfamiliar street corner in a town he didn’t know, Gyou’s heart would never brighten again.