Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

As I looked at the flyer for today’s yuzu bath, I suddenly felt as though spring were approaching. When I passed through the usual bathhouse’s lattice door, there stood the old joiner right before me, wiping his forehead with a damp hand towel as he emerged.

“Sir, Toku has finally died.”

“Mr. Toku… The plasterer Mr. Toku?”

“Yes, I heard he died this morning from that pharmacy student, so I’m planning to go right away. After all, with no relatives to speak of, we all need to come together and handle the arrangements somehow. He was an unlucky man, you know.”

While saying this, the short-tempered old joiner thrust his feet into his geta and hurriedly left.

Around two in the afternoon, the public bathhouse was spacious and bright.
In the narrow garden, a large potted plum tree that appeared to have been bought at a festival looked white through the glass door.

When I undressed and entered the bathing area, the wooden boards of the washing area were dry and pale, and in the bright corner of the bath, only the back of a young man’s head floated above the water.
The crystal-clear new water surged to fill every corner of the bathing area while sliced yuzu drifted lazily upon warm undulating waves.
Illuminated by the midday winter sun leaking through window glass, the strong scent of yellow citrus lingering within steam that wavered like heat haze was pleasant.
As I settled into this agreeable state and began moistening my body, the dark head floating in the corner soon turned sharply around.

“Good afternoon.”

“With the year’s end drawing near, this fine weather is most welcome,” I returned his greeting.

He was a pharmacy student working for a neighborhood physician called Yamaguchi.
Though not particularly acquainted with me, we maintained bathhouse familiarity through exchanging routine pleasantries.
This young man proved to be the “student” mentioned by the old joiner, leading me to surmise that Toku the plasterer had likely been receiving treatment from Dr. Yamaguchi.

“I hear Mr. Toku the plasterer has died,” I said, eventually entering the bath myself and grimacing at the slightly hot water as I asked.

“Yes, around seven this morning…”

“Was he being treated by your doctor?”

“Yes.
It was chronic nephritis.
He started coming to my place for examinations last month, but it seems he had been ill for quite some time before that.
The doctor had said from the start that it was serious, but it suddenly took a turn for the worse around the day before yesterday.”

“I see. That’s so pitiful.”

“It was truly pitiful.”

While parroting back such greetings, the pharmacy student pushed aside the piled-up yuzu and went out to the washing area. Then, arranging numerous small buckets beside the water basin, he buried his bright red, scalded chest and limbs in the white foam of soap. Gazing at this without really seeing, I remained soaking in the bath. From outside came the busy-sounding footsteps of people typical of a December town. The distant sound of lion dance music for the winter solstice also echoed. When I suddenly raised my eyes and peered through the glass window, above the white walls of the neighboring earthen storehouse separated by a narrow alleyway, the winter sky stretched clear and vividly blue, where a single kite floated leisurely as if unaware of the bustling world below. In such situations, it was my habit to grow leisurely in spirit and become somewhat drowsily sleepy, but today, for some reason, I couldn’t settle into that calm. The fact of Mr. Toku’s death was stirring my thoughts in various ways.

“Even so, I wonder how O-Tama is doing.”

From Mr.Toku’s death came thoughts that compelled me to reflect on his sister O-Tama’s tragic circumstances too.

O-Tama belonged to generations of Edo townspeople lineage—I had heard her father was an esteemed master plasterer who held guild leadership rights.
Though I knew not where she had lived before my own family’s relocation to Kōjimachi Motozono-chō when I was young—there she resided at an alleyway corner within our neighborhood’s cramped confines.
My father had constructed and moved into a new single-story house upon vacant land at that alley’s far end.
O-Tama’s home stood two stories tall with latticed windows facing eastward toward the thoroughfare.
Beyond its coarse lattice lay an expansive earthen floor where straw bags packed with plaster and clay storage vessels lay scattered.
The dwelling’s windows faced south into that same alleyway while its adjoining kitchen area was enclosed by wooden fencing curving from south to west.
Within those fences stood both a small shed and a garden barely spanning four or five tsubo—its narrow space overgrown with persimmon trees peach trees and clusters of Japanese aralia pressing heavily upon one another.
All were trees grown disproportionately large for such confined soil.
Though unaware of how their second floor was arranged I could recall from memory that east-facing window never once being opened.

To the north was an employment agency for servants.
For some reason, O-Tama’s house and that employment agency were on terrible terms, with fights never ceasing.

By the time I moved here, O-Tama’s father was already no longer alive.
Mother, her older brother Toku, and O-Tama lived together as a close-knit trio without outsiders.

I did not know Mother’s name, but she appeared to be around fifty years old—fair-skinned, slender, and tall—a woman who seemed to have been what one might call beautiful in her youth.
Toku-san was twenty-four or twenty-five, his facial features and bodily build the spitting image of Mother’s, though as a man he was somewhat small in stature.
By contrast, his younger sister O-Tama—while her eyes and nose resembled her brother’s—was rather a larger woman than he, possessing a flat face and heavy-set frame.
She was around twenty years old, always styling her hair in a ginkgo-leaf chignon and applying a light layer of white powder.

Not only the neighboring employment agency but all the people in the vicinity seemed to harbor rather unfavorable feelings toward O-Tama’s family.
O-Tama and her family also seemed to be making efforts to avoid interactions with the neighborhood and resigning themselves to an isolated existence.
Mother was an extremely fussy person nicknamed “the Plasterer’s Ogre Hag” by our group of children.

Before the lattice of O-Tama’s house stood an old-fashioned rainwater bucket.
If we children gathered around that rainwater bucket—searching for mosquito larvae in summer or poking at ice in winter—Mother would immediately throw open the lattice and snarl, “Who’s making trouble there…?”
On rainy days when the sound of someone’s umbrella scraping against O-Tama’s house siding or fence echoed through the roji alleyway as they passed by，Mother would immediately hurl her standard “Who’s there?”
I too was often scolded by this Mother with a “Who’s there?” on my way to and from school.

Mr. Toku was a taciturn and gloomy man, uncharacteristic of a young craftsman.
In appearance he was a dashing young man, but he never involved himself in neighborhood festivals or such affairs.
Yet despite that, when drinking at home, he would sing *Kiyomoto* ballads and *hauta* folk songs to the accompaniment of Mother and O-Tama’s shamisen.
O-Tama seemed to have the most cheerful disposition in the household; whenever she saw neighbors, she always greeted them with a beaming smile.
However, since Mother and her brother were so eccentric, even O-Tama—in the bloom of youth—seemed to have no close friends; whether strolling through Kōjimachi Avenue’s night stalls or visiting Hirakawa Tenjin’s festival, she always went out walking with Mother.
It seems there were times when they went out together with Mother to plays and vaudeville theaters.

The entire family was particular about cleanliness.
Mother would sweep in front of the lattice many times a day.
O-Tama also diligently did laundry and starching work every day.
And so she never once let her hair become disheveled and unfailingly visited the neighborhood bathhouse every evening.
Mr. Toku would take baths twice daily, in the morning and evening.

Although Mr. Toku himself was not a master craftsman, as a full-fledged craftsman he possessed considerable skill, so he never showed any signs of struggling in life.
O-Tama, too, was always neatly dressed.
According to neighborhood rumors, O-Tama had once married elsewhere and even borne a child, but for some reason had become estranged and returned.
Perhaps because of that, even after three or four years had passed since I came to know O-Tama, there was no sign of her getting married.
O-Tama had gradually passed through the bloom of youth, and only the increasingly noticeable width of her body caught the eye.

Before long—though I don’t know who started it—a rumor arose that O-Tama had a patron.
Of course, no one had actually seen any man resembling a patron coming or going, but there were those who spread rumors as if it were true that O-Tama herself was going to stay at his place.
There were also those who said the patron was a foreigner.
However, none of these claims had any solid evidence.
It seemed this scandalous rumor had reached O-Tama’s family as well, for afterward her demeanor changed completely—she rarely showed herself in public except when going out for shopping.
Even when encountering neighbors, she would forlornly turn her face away and no longer showed the beaming smile she once had.
The sound of the shamisen also ceased entirely.

I seem to recall it was the following year.
At Hie Shrine’s main festival, this neighborhood presented a dancing float.
However, since there were not enough children in the neighborhood to form a dance group, it was decided through someone’s proposal to hire actors from a small theater called Akagiza that was then located in Akagishita, Ushigome.
The actors were all fifteen- or sixteen-year-old children—three of them being Saga and Omuro’s Mitsukuni, Taki Yasha, and Gochūshin—who had been specially selected to perform the Donzuku dance.
That year’s summer had arrived late, and even in mid-June, the young people’s mid-season matching attire appeared slightly chilly.
On the eve of the festival—the fourteenth day—a mist-like fine rain began pattering down on their flower-decorated hats from evening onward.

The dancing float paraded through the neighborhood while getting wet.
The sound of festival music drifted through the air.
Under the float’s eaves swayed peony-like crimson lanterns—whether remembered from some past vision—my lord’s hakama dyed in spring haze—and when Taki Yasha straightened the disheveled thin cords of her costume and slightly arched her chest, the spectators’ umbrellas filling the street like a black tide all swayed at once.

“That’s brilliant!”

“That’s amazing!”

“Well, they’re real actors, after all.”

Such words of praise were whispered here and there.

The people of O-Tama’s house also stood before their lattice door watching this same dancing float, but O-Tama’s Mother grimaced as if utterly pathetic, clicking her tongue while muttering curses under her breath to no one in particular.

“What is this… such vulgar trash…”
“Whether their skills are poor or excellent, it’s the local girls who should dance at festivals.”
“Dragging in some beggar’s theater from god knows where—this isn’t a proper festival at all.”
“Ugh, I hate this, I hate this.”
“I don’t want to live long.”

With these words, Mother slipped back inside. Miss O-Tama and Mr. Toku also followed her in.

“Damn hag, spouting your usual nonsense.”
“If you don’t want to live long, then drop dead already,” a man in a flower-decorated hat jeered.

It wasn’t as if those words had been an actual curse, but from that autumn onward, Mother took to her bed in earnest.
By then, the large persimmons in the garden had gradually begun turning red, and neighborhood brats would sometimes poke bamboo poles over the fence—but Mother no longer had the vigor to bark her trademark “Who’s there?”
And by early November, she had been laid in an unvarnished coffin.
They couldn’t very well pretend not to notice, so five or six neighbors came to see off the funeral.
About ten fellow craftsmen also attended.
The temple was a small one in Yotsuya, but everyone was taken aback by how unexpectedly grand the funeral arrangements turned out.
White glutinous rice and simmered vegetable bento boxes were served to all mourners that day.
On the thirty-fifth day, splendid steamed rice manju and barley manju were distributed throughout the neighborhood with tea.

Since everything had been unexpectedly well handled—partly because the neighbors felt somewhat sorry for them and partly motivated by the loud-mouthed mother’s absence—some people began trying to interact more openly than before; but for some reason, even that did not last long. Within three to six months, the neighbors gradually distanced themselves, and O-Tama and her brother returned to their former state of lonely isolation.

Nevertheless, a meddlesome person went out of their way to kindly propose a marriage prospect to O-Tama, but she refused with a formal set phrase.

“Given how I’ve been called a foreigner’s mistress, I doubt there exists anyone in this world who would accept me.”

Finding no opening to press further, that person retreated.
Chastened by this rebuff, no one thereafter dared propose marriage arrangements.

Had anyone made thorough inquiries, they might have uncovered other events from that time as well, but during my school days I held little interest in such matters and made no particular effort to investigate them.
Concerning the O-Tama household of old, what lingered in my childhood memories amounted to scarcely more than this.

While tugging at one thought after another like this, I had somehow made my way to the washing area and was half-absentmindedly scrubbing my face and limbs. Startled by soap suds stinging my eye, I rinsed my face with water. Then I stepped into the bath and was soaking once more in the yuzu-infused water when the pharmacy student entered behind me. Then he began speaking again.

“That Mr. Toku... well, he ended up dying like some street vagrant.”

“A street vagrant...” I repeated in renewed shock.

“Even as his condition worsened, he kept coming on his own for examinations.”
“This morning too—he left home carrying his medicine bottle, staggering along until he reached that telegraph pole by the barber-shop corner. Leaning against it to rest... then suddenly crumpled to the ground like a broken puppet.”
“The barber rushed him inside and sent word to us immediately—but when Dr.Yamaguchi arrived, he was already gone.”

Having been told this story, I grew increasingly wretched.
I could no longer immerse myself in the carefully prepared yuzu bath with any sense of pleasure.
I hastily wiped myself half-dry and quickly got out of the bath.

II

Even after returning home, thoughts of Mr. Toku and O-Tama lingered in my mind and would not leave.
Especially regarding today’s yuzu bath, there was a particular memory.

After outgrowing the shoulder tucks in my kimono, I had moved downtown and hadn’t returned to my family home in Yamanote for seven or eight years.
When I came back to live there again due to certain circumstances, I was no longer the child of old.

One late evening in December, I went to the public bathhouse.
The management had since changed hands, but it remained fundamentally the same establishment.
I normally avoid night baths, but having attended a banquet elsewhere that day, I returned home late and found myself obliged to visit around eleven at night.
That too was a Winter Solstice yuzu bath, where near closing time in the murky waters, yuzu fruits boiled to disintegration floated repulsively like sodden cotton in the corner.
I entered shrinkingly, my body tensed with distaste.
Swirling steam clouded the gaslight's glow, leaving the late-night bathhouse dimly lit.

——Though knowing full well his lord’s vengeful spirit, he burned with desire to make her his wife; neither gods nor buddhas would he entreat, duty but a loofah-fiber haori——

There was someone singing *Kiyomoto* in a rust-tinged voice.
As for music—being not entirely tone-deaf myself—I found myself astonished at the skillful phrasing.
While listening intently, I peered through the steam toward the source of that voice—it was none other than Mr. Toku.
I had known since childhood that Mr. Toku sang, but it had never occurred to me until now that he possessed such a fine voice.
In a world where *biwa* ballads and *naniwa-bushi* shamelessly clamored through every bathhouse, to hear *Kiyomoto*’s *Kanda Festival*—and from Mr. Toku’s throat at that, whom all regarded as an eccentric—proved entirely unexpected.

Besides me, there were only two who seemed like merchant apprentices inside.
Mr. Toku continued singing, seeming thoroughly content.
As I listened intently, I found myself sinking into a lonely, dark mood.
It began to seem only natural that O-Tama and her brother were now isolated in Motozono-cho.

“Thank you for your patience.”

Mr. Toku, having sung his fill, offered a general greeting to no one in particular and briskly made his way toward the washing area.
Then he quickly wiped himself dry and left the bathhouse.
I too soon followed out.
When I reached the alleyway, Mr. Toku’s house had already closed its storm shutters, with not a glimmer of light leaking out.
Under a night sky that could be called frost-hazed, the feeble light of a pale moon cast a cold glow upon the leaves of the Japanese aralia in the garden.

Since I usually went to the bathhouse while it was still light out, I never had another opportunity to hear Mr. Toku’s singing during that yuzu bath evening.
Then, more than half a year later on a certain summer evening, such a thing happened again.
When I returned from taking the evening air around nine o’clock, a woman’s piercing voice rang out from inside Mr. Toku’s house.
Outside the lattice, passersby and neighborhood children were peeking in.

“What the hell! You bastard!”
“Serves you right!”
“What would peasants like you bastards know?”

Because it seemed to be O-Tama’s voice, I was startled.
I wondered if some sibling quarrel had broken out.
When I asked the greengrocer’s wife cooling herself in front of her shop, she laughed with a face that said this was hardly unusual.

“Yes, the madwoman’s started acting out again. Must’ve gotten worked up from the sudden heat.”
“Miss O-Tama?”
“She’s been strange these five or six years now.”

I involuntarily shuddered.
This was my first time hearing of it.
O-Tama had gone mad at some point while I was away downtown.
Even as I spoke with the greengrocer’s wife, O-Tama kept shouting something incessantly.
Without pausing for breath, she hurled curses—"Outrageous! Bastards!"—in relentless succession.
Mr. Toku’s voice was nowhere to be heard.

When I returned home and told them about it, my family already knew everything.
The fact of O-Tama’s madness was an open secret in the neighborhood, though its cause remained unknown to anyone.
Yet she wasn’t particularly violent; summer or winter, she would sit before the long brazier looking deathly sullen, only to suddenly erupt with a booming voice and begin hurling abuse—"What’s this?! Bastards! Outrageous! Peasants!"—at no one in particular.
Her older brother Mr. Toku too seemed accustomed by now, making no effort to restrain her.
He would leave his deranged sister alone to mind the house and impassively go out to work.
The neighborhood initially felt uneasy too, but eventually grew accustomed until no one paid it any mind anymore.

O-Tama styled her own hair, took her daily bath, and on days when she felt well, would even do needlework.
At such times, there was nothing unusual about her, but once every month or two, she would suddenly flare up and begin shouting those familiar curses: "Bastards! Outrageous!"
Once that was over, she would compose herself as if a fox had dropped its disguise—acting as though nothing had happened.
It wasn’t quite madness—more a kind of hysteria, I thought.
Whether it was madness or hysteria, having a sister end up in that state must have been terribly trying—I felt deep sympathy for Mr. Toku.
Ever since having listened to Kiyomoto in the yuzu bath, I had come to gaze pitifully upon the dark shadow enveloping Mr. Toku’s household.

“Bastard! Outrageous!”

What was O-Tama ranting against? Whom was she cursing?
I pitifully contemplated the fate of these so-called children of Edo—detached from the advancing world, persisting in their meaningless resistance against their surroundings, gradually perishing through natural decline.
The mother who had vehemently denounced the beggars' street theater during festivals died while being called an ogress.
It seemed both Mr. Toku—skilled in Kiyomoto—and O-Tama were treading the same path as their unfortunate mother.
O-Tama in particular struck me as unbearably pitiable.
The mother was an ogress, the daughter a madwoman—I thought this mother and daughter were truly cursed.

Miss O-Tama had not a single friend, but as far as I knew, Mr. Toku had three friends.
One was Mr. Chōzaemon, the landowner, an old man nearing seventy.
Though they didn’t interact particularly closely, both Mr. Toku and O-Tama always bowed politely to this landowner.
For his part, Mr. Chōzaemon would engage in open conversation whenever he saw the siblings.

Another was the owner of a lending bookshop called Uedaya.
Uedaya was a lending bookshop dating back to the Edo period, said to have once thrived by catering to the residential districts throughout Banchō.
Even from when I knew it, it was a large corner shop with an earthen storehouse, its structure appearing at a glance to have a solid foundation.
In my household too, we borrowed various novels and such from there.
The first Hakkenden I ever read was also a book from there.
As printed books gradually became widespread and the old lending bookshops gradually died out, Uedaya too finally gave up, closing its shop around the time of the Sino-Japanese War.
However, since they also owned other rental properties, they transferred the shop to someone else and ended up living in a rented house nearby.
The owner of Uedaya was already over sixty.
Mr. Toku’s brother and sister seemed to occasionally go there to visit.
The other was the old joiner whom I had met earlier at the public bathhouse.
At this joiner’s shop too, I occasionally saw Mr. Toku perched there.

When I surveyed them all laid out like this, there wasn’t a single young person among Mr. Toku’s friends.
Both Mr. Chōzaemon the landowner and the owner of Uedaya were nearly a parent and child’s worth of years apart from Mr. Toku.
The Old Joiner was also fifteen or sixteen years his senior.
Therefore, these elderly friends gradually abandoned the hapless Mr. Toku and departed for another world.
The owner of Uedaya was the first to die.
Mr. Chōzaemon also died.
The only one now remaining was the Old Joiner.

III

After my father died, my family moved to a two-story house on the south side within the same alleyway, and our water inlet came to face directly across from the wooden fence bordering O-Tama’s garden.
The occasions when my family members and Mr. Toku would encounter each other grew more frequent.
Yet neither side exchanged any greetings.
By then, four or five years had already passed since I had heard Mr. Toku perform Kiyomoto.

That autumn brought fierce storms that left water stains from leaks on our walls.
Since it wasn’t major work, we decided to ask someone nearby, and when we promptly sent for Mr. Toku, he came without hesitation.
Though he had lived in the neighborhood for years, this marked the first time my family had requested his services.
It was during this occasion that I first sat face-to-face with Mr. Toku and shared a proper conversation with him.

Mr. Toku appeared to be three or four years past forty.
He was a man with thinning hair, a sallow complexion, piercing eyes, and a sharply pointed chin—visibly high-strung—whose hands and feet seemed incongruously delicate for a craftsman.
Wearing a freshly laundered navy-blue work coat (a traditional garment with simplified radical construction), he sat with formal propriety.
Listening attentively to each repair request from me, Mr. Toku responded courteously and crisply.

“Why does someone like him have such bad relations with the neighbors?”

After Mr. Toku left, everyone in the household was puzzled.
The next day, Mr. Toku came to work early in the morning and worked silently all day.
They were gladdened by the truly earnest manner of his work.
The household’s opinion of him grew increasingly favorable, finding his manner rare among craftsmen of the time.
As it was merely wall repairs, the work was finished in about three days.
When Mr. Toku came to collect payment, he cut many green persimmon branches from the garden and brought them,

"They're too astringent to eat—please use them for flower arrangements instead," he said.
Indeed, the fruits were large but too bitter to eat.
I placed them in the tokonoma alcove's vase.

"How has your sister been faring lately?" I casually inquired.

"Thanks to your kindness, she seems calmer these days—but with that one's temperament, there's no telling when she might flare up again."
"But that one's willful through and through. Rather than suffer in some middling marriage, it might be happier for her to spend her days throwing her weight about at home like that." Mr. Toku laughed mirthlessly.
"Since our mother was just such a person herself, I suppose it all runs in the blood."

As we gradually talked further, it became apparent that Mr. Toku did not particularly consider his sister to be such a burden. He seemed to regard her losing her mind as practically inevitable. Even when she raised her voice in shouting fits or caused disturbances, he didn’t appear to feel any remorse toward the neighbors. However, I could clearly see that Mr. Toku doted on his sister. He said that because he felt sorry for her, he himself had remained single until this age. "But in exchange, I indulged a little in pleasure," he said with a laugh.

This became the connection through which Mr. Toku began conversing with us as well.
Even when encountering each other along the way, he would politely exchange seasonal greetings.

It must have been about half a month after he had come to work at my house when I encountered Mr. Toku at the corner of the neighborhood liquor store one evening as I was returning from Ginza.
Mr. Toku also appeared to be returning from work, wearing his work coat and holding a bundle of susuki grass in his hand.
October days had grown noticeably shorter, and the eaves lantern at the liquor store already held a flame.
The ears of susuki grass that Mr. Toku held appeared faintly white in the twilight.

“Is tonight the Thirteenth Night?” I suddenly recalled and said.

“Well, since it’s considered inauspicious to have only a partial moon viewing.”

Mr. Toku showed me the susuki grass while laughing.
The two of us looked up at the dark sky as if by mutual agreement.
The Thirteenth Night moon hung amidst clouds threatening to veil it in rain.
I walked alongside Mr. Toku with a lonely heart.
Even through lined garments, a desolately chilly autumn wind was gently rustling the white plumes of susuki grass.

When we reached the entrance to the alleyway, O-Tama’s shrill voice resounded from the depths of the house where no lights had yet been lit.

“What the hell—the hell are you saying!”
“Bastard!”
“You moron!”

When I thought that O-Tama had started acting out again, I felt increasingly lonely.
Because it was no longer unusual, there was no one peeking in the dimly lit front.
Mr. Toku silently nodded to me, opened the lattice door, and went in.
The moment the sound of the lattice door opening was heard, the south-facing window swung open from inside.
As I had mentioned before, since the window faced south, I—walking through the alley—found myself diagonally face to face with the woman who had emerged from that window.
The whiteness of the woman’s teeth first seized my eyes—dreadful.

I left home every morning and did not return until evening.
O-Tama rarely went out.
I had heard from my family’s accounts that Ms. O-Tama had grown gaunt like a ghost these days, but I myself had spent the time without any opportunity to directly witness her altered appearance.
It was that night that I first saw it.
Ms. O-Tama’s flat face was thin and sharp as if whittled down, her hair—seemingly styled in a combed bun—swept back without a single strand out of place.
The color of her face was disturbingly white.

“Sir, sir,” O-Tama called out in an intensely youthful voice.

I stopped when summoned.

“Are you wearing Western clothes?”

At that time, as I was wearing Japanese clothes, I silently spread both sleeves like a bat and showed her.
O-Tama bared those white teeth in a sly grin.

“If you wear Western clothes and come parading by, I’ll douse you from head to toe.
You better watch out.”

The window snapped shut.
O-Tama's face vanished.
I hurried home with a feeling as though haunted by something.

At that time, when commuting every day, there were times I would go out wearing Japanese clothes and times I would go out wearing Western clothes.
Ever since receiving that dreadful ultimatum from O-Tama, I had temporarily refrained from wearing Western clothes. But as circumstances made this impossible to maintain indefinitely, on days when I had no choice but to don them, I would steal my footsteps and slip quietly beneath her window.

About a month had passed since then, on a day when cold rain was falling. As I walked past O-Tama’s window with my umbrella tilted against the rain, the window suddenly flew open as if she had been lying in wait, and a ladleful of water came splashing down onto my umbrella. Fortunately, having tilted my umbrella spared me any harm; yet despite wearing Japanese clothes at that moment, I found myself subjected to this unforeseen assault. From then on, I took care to warn both myself and my household members, ensuring we always passed beneath Ms. O-Tama’s window on tiptoe. Even so, sharp rebukes would occasionally pierce through from within.

“You moron!”
“Peasants!”
“I’ll douse you with water!”
“Get a grip!”

It wasn’t just empty threats—water actually came pouring down frequently.
The liquor store’s young errand boy, doused from head to toe in the winter cold, fled weeping.
Neighborhood children resented this; some threw stones at the window.
Ms. O-Tama retaliated by scattering water from within while hurling abuse.
Clashes between stones and water periodically erupted in that narrow alleyway.

Before long, three shaku were pared from Ms. O-Tama’s house along the alley.
This followed negotiations between the landlord and a businessman’s newly arrived mistress—occupying a storehouse-equipped residence at the alley’s end—who demanded sufficient width for rickshaws to pass freely, necessitating the truncation of O-Tama’s house at the entrance.
The one making this selfish demand undoubtedly paid steep rent to the landlord too.
They claimed full responsibility for repair costs to O-Tama’s house.

“If Mr. Chōzaemon were here, I might have something to say—but as things stand now, there’s nothing to be done,” replied Mr. Toku when consulted by the young landlord, surprisingly acquiescing without protest.
“However,” he flatly refused, “not a single penny is needed for repairs.”

One month later, the alleyway widened.
O-Tama’s house became that much gaunt.
That summer was also hot, but O-Tama’s house kept its shutters closed day and night.
As Ms. O-Tama’s violence had grown too fierce, Mr. Toku—to prevent his sister from hurling dangerous objects through the window—nailed fast the shutters facing the alleyway.
O-Tama remained inside, pounding at the window and roaring something unintelligible.

As the heat intensified, O-Tama’s illness also seemed to grow increasingly severe.
By this time, sounds like iron kettles and earthenware teapots being thrown could be heard from inside the house.
At times, she would even dart out barefoot.
The Old Joiner could no longer bear to watch and forcibly persuaded Mr.Toku to have his sister admitted to Sugamo Hospital.
Mr.Toku no longer had the means to cover the hospitalization fees.
However, as regulations prohibited families of those who owned even a single house from receiving charity care, Mr.Toku ultimately had to sell his home.
And so, through the efforts of the Old Joiner, O-Tama was finally sent to Sugamo.
It was an overcast day in early September, and O-Tama vehemently refused to leave this house.
When they finally managed to coax her into the rickshaw, O-Tama refused to have the hood put up.

“Bastard! Outrageous! Peasants! Serves you right!”

O-Tama continued shouting in a loud voice as though cursing everyone in town, haughtily rocked along in the rickshaw.
I stood at the mouth of the roji alleyway and watched her go.
The Old Joiner and Toku followed after the rickshaw.

"My sister has caused you trouble for so long."

After returning from Sugamo, Mr. Toku went around to each neighbor to offer his greetings. Then that very evening, he packed up his household and moved back into the second floor of Uedaya Lending Books where he had once lived. After further renovations were made, a retired pawnbroker moved in afterward. Though nearby, it being a different neighborhood meant I hardly ever saw Mr. Toku after that.

Then another two years passed.
And then, on the day of the yuzu bath, I suddenly heard of Mr. Toku’s death.
Mr. Toku’s end was miserable.
Yet when I consider how Mr. Toku and Ms. O-Tama stubbornly persisted through their long lives—insulting everyone around them as country bumpkins while priding themselves as the only true *Edokko*—their story feels less like mere misery and more tinged with tragic pathos.

The following afternoon, I met the Old Joiner again at the public bathhouse.
The Old Joiner said he had just returned from Mr. Toku’s funeral.

“Toku bastard—wasn’t he a strange one.”
“He seemed downright poor, but when they finally checked his wicker trunk after he died, there were three slightly worn padded jackets for twins, three haori coats, one matching set of meisen silk kimono and haori, three obi sashes, four workman’s happi coats, five yukata robes, and about seventy yen in cash.”
“But then those folks who’d never shown their faces before came crawling from all over—claiming to be nieces and cousins and whatnot—and took every last thing.”
“The world’s made to be heartless, isn’t it.”
“It’s no wonder Toku bastard didn’t associate with those current folks.”

I listened in silence.
Then I asked how Ms. O-Tama was doing lately.

“After going to the hospital, O-Tama’s body grew sturdier by the day—she got as fat as a millstone.”

“How’s her illness?”

“No good.”
“It’ll never get better now, no matter what.”
“Well, she’ll spend her whole life there, I suppose,” the Old Joiner sighed.
“But for her, that might count as happiness.”

“That might be the case.”

The two fell silent and entered the bath.