Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Willows had been planted… Within a particularly lush part of those willows was a well where clear water sprang forth.
…At the post office on the main street’s four-way intersection, he received the modest money order sent from Tokyo, wrapped it in three folds, and promptly tucked it into his pocket.

Though spring had passed, in mid-May—when the days of early summer grew long—the post office at midday was quiet.
At the counters and every window, not a single other person had gathered.
But the money order could not be obtained quickly.

The processing was excruciatingly slow,

“What is the amount in question?”
“Who is the sender in question?”
“Are you yourself the intended recipient?”

…The clerk droned on in that drawn-out, conspicuously Tokyo-inflected manner… As observed from the receiving window, he was a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five—wearing no haori over his Kokura hakama trousers, clad in a Kurume-style splashed-pattern lined kimono with a white undershirt fastened at the wrists. His plump arms were rolled up to his shoulders in a manner suggesting frantic activity, yet for all that apparent busyness, his actions made no progress.
Contrary to his bustling appearance, he comported himself with leisurely calmness; that somewhat authoritative air about him suggested he was a descendant of the local samurai class.
And there it was—that upward-inflected “is it?” prattled out with a rising tone, occasionally peering down with a scrutinizing glare—an attitude that seemed to say, “Don’t look down on me as some country bumpkin,” all laid bare through the window.
The postal clerk could rest assured—the recipient, Tate Oriji, was also a commoner of this land.

Now, having descended the post office’s stone steps, he found himself standing at a spacious crossroads.

“Now then—where should I go?”

He could go wherever he pleased—or he didn’t have to go anywhere at all. He could return as he was to his cousin’s house where he was staying during this visit home, but he had just left there moments ago. If he were to turn back immediately, they would likely think he had forgotten something… He had already paid his respects at his family’s ancestral graves yesterday, and on the way back had visited the park he’d longed to see after so long.

“The gathering’s tomorrow,” his cousin had said earlier, “and I’ll make your favorite dishes for dinner.” At present, there was nothing requiring his attention. In all his years and days, he couldn’t recall ever feeling this unburdened. If someone offered to carry him piggyback right now—so be it. The sensation was so carefree it bordered on weightlessness.

As for the climate—it had passed beyond mere warmth; though were the sun to blaze down now, midday would surely turn scorching. Yet with a thin veil of clouds hanging over the nearby mountains, there lingered a fluffy and weightless warmth—like silk floss laid out to dry in sunlight.
A soft wind brushed through willow leaves untouched by midday shade.……Beneath those willows, no rickshaws sped past, and foot traffic was sparse—a scene that in the capital might evoke a hazy night emerging from obscurity, yet here in this town, it counted as bustling activity.
Kites cried in midair near the castle ruins, while the scent of spring sardines being grilled at that very moment drifted through the air.

He could go eat a meal; he could have some coffee and sweets; he could drink tea at a teahouse somewhere—none of that was particularly necessary.
Well, wearing a lined kimono and haori kept him light on his feet, his new clogs were fresh, and he had the money order—might as well lend out a bit of cash.
“No—enough of this jesting…”

That’s it!
I must go to Komoto’s place—the moment this thought struck me，my once-limber limbs tautened sharply，and my body stiffened all the way up to my hat.

For some reason, the surroundings came into view.

Mentioning the surname Komoto might lead one to think he was a student—an old friend from Oriji’s hometown—but he wasn’t.
This was Hirakichi… though calling him Hira-san got the point across faster.
He was a craftsman in the same workshop as Oriji’s late father.

From here, it was already close. At the end of this willow-lined street stood a deep blue mountain. Heading toward it for about two blocks—passing the castle’s main gate on the right and turning left into a town with orderly rows of houses—he was supposed to be living neatly somewhere around the middle.

There was no particular reason to visit the man, yet there existed a decade-old memory compelling him to do so... Well, he would keep it concealed a while longer.

Now that he was actually going there, he tried to calm his restlessness—as if being chased from behind—and set off at a leisurely pace, yet for a man of just thirty years of age, the tumult in his chest was... So this current carefreeness was like the sea that had swiftly stilled itself in preparation for rising waves.

II

This street was quite far from the town where he was born, so among the houses lining both sides, no familiar faces could be seen.
Still, there were things he would vividly recall at every turn.
In the middle of the street stood a single inn that doubled as a restaurant.
Once, when the newly appointed prefectural governor from Tokyo made his arrival there, he had stood beneath the eaves across the street and observed how they had hung tiered curtains over the facing entrance, placed a brand-new ladle in a water bucket, ceremoniously piled sand, and laid out fresh straw mats from the gate.
The farmer from across the way, in passing before this,

“Ah!” he exclaimed, leaning forward as he went off.
…His grandeur was such that in later years, when he would stay at an inn of repute—identified by some telephone number—during his visits to Tokyo for regional governors’ conferences, none could have dreamed this man of stature venturing into the capital with onion breath was the same figure.

Though it felt like a dream again—now that he looked where show booths with curtains drawn tight had once stood around glass windows—it had become a bread shop. When summer arrived, those booths would be set up in the night market.
Monkey shows, giant snakes, bears, blind men smeared in ink—(this sumo ring lay dark beneath the stars)—Western magic acts clustered in one corner where lizard tail flowers had sprouted—he recalled how conspicuously the Spider Man exhibit had stood along the main street.

A yellow face—protruding forehead, oversized head, snub-nosed—stretched to twice an adult’s length before abruptly truncating at about a foot; atop its rice-bucket-shaped head perched a chonmage topknot, yet there was nothing resembling human stature. A figure with growths stretching from chin to toenails, clad in gaudy gold garments—*here he comes*—resembling a middle-aged man a magician might pluck from a box with his thumb. This was the signboard: at the front of the hut, inside a small palanquin that looked fit for a mouse’s wedding procession, he slumped listlessly. With each snort—*huff huff*—his bulging forehead rippled with earthworm-like ridges as he darted his eyes about, gauging the jostling crowd… The barker’s spiel heralded his entrance,

“Master Tayū! Master Tayū!” someone called out, and inside the palanquin, he sharply raised the skylight panel,

“Right away—to it.”

he crooned in an affected voice, jerked his chin upward, and straightened his collar.
With that motion—exuding a weasel-like musk—his jerky steps seemed to traverse a spider’s web, and Oriji remembered how the hip guard, thin as a wooden splint, had looked absurdly perched in the nape hollow beneath the large skylight.

The moment it stepped onto the stage, the curtain fluttered down.
At that moment, turning to look at the crowd gathered at the entrance,

“Hmph,” it said, widening its eyes and flicking out a crimson tongue that seemed to dangle from the crown of its head. Seeing this, Oriji shuddered and fled home beneath a moon veiled in clouds.

It couldn’t be human.
Was it a bird? A beast? Or perhaps a ground spider? When he asked……Oriji’s grandmother, then around sixty years old,

“That’s… the Lord Village Head of Futamatazaka Slope.”

This Futamatazaka Slope lay deep in the mountains, with no shortage of eerie legends. Though crossing it provided a shortcut to the neighboring province, the locals regarded Futamatazaka Slope as a natural checkpoint marking the boundary of the human world.

From this area, pines crowning the peaks blocked all view of its form. At the driest vantage point, when he retreated toward the town’s edge, the mountain’s shape came into sharp relief through clouds that seemed to veil a sea beyond the nearby ranges……

It had been just two or three days prior when, having returned for the first time since the railway had been established, he stepped out of the station and beheld his hometown—sooner than his eyes could take in the stone-weighted roofs or crimson-painted pillars, his gaze fixed first upon that mountain, leaving him standing dazed and motionless for a moment.

Having hired a rickshaw to head toward his cousin’s town, before anything else—

“What is that mountain?”

“Futamatazaka,” answered the rickshaw driver.

Oriji had grown up in this province, but as a child he had never gone to the unused town’s edge—so he had only heard its name by reputation. Even beneath the clear May sky, that mountain stood dark.

III

At that time, he had gazed up at Futamatazaka without a second thought, but now, passing by the old hut, the notion that the Spider Daimyo served as village head struck him with an eerie resonance in his chest.

Still, in that Spider Daimyo’s troupe, there were about three dwarfish women—thick of torso, short of leg, their hair styled like caterpillars with crimson waistcloths wrapped around them. When they had finished their performance dance and went to bathe at the town’s public bath before bed, they would hang both hands on the edge of the tub and plunge sideways into the water with a splash. And it was said they would swim bubbling in the hot water.

Now that he thought of it, the bathhouse was still there. Yet the curtain he once remembered—depicting Fujiwara no Hidesato poised with bow and arrow at the center of a vortex resembling crimson-black clouds, encircled by a giant centipede with eyes gleaming in vivid yellow paint—had been replaced by a plain one divided into “Men” and “Women” above, bearing “Willow Bath” in white lettering. The willow marking the gate seemed to droop alongside it, while an utter stillness hung in the windless air.

Pedestrian traffic had almost entirely ceased.

But from somewhere indistinct—deep beyond the glass door of the bathhouse where willows cast shadows—came sudden heavy splashes, as if water had been violently stirred...

To Oriji, standing frozen, the sound reached his ears like a distant echo from Futamatazaka.
Oriji’s grandmother had taught him about those dwarf women from the sideshow:

“Those girls—they were abducted by the Spider Village Head and made into his wives.”

It was likely because she’d told him such old tales.
Ah—beneath the hazy sky hanging low, the town within view appeared shallow as if floating upward, but the mountains of home ran deep.

And speaking of mountains—he recalled how across a single road that darkly divided the town’s bustling shops and their glaringly bright ends, a faintly hazy gray shadow seemed to ripple through the night as if escaping the interwoven mesh of hundreds of lanterns. Before sparse figures stood the Deroren Monk atop his makeshift platform at the corner of the earthen wall, chanting sutra-like tales—his long hair parted across his forehead, clattering his staff while rasping in a briny voice:

“……And so Princess Matsu,” [the Deroren Monk chanted], “Ōya Tarō Mitsukuni’s beloved wife, captured in Princess Taki Yasha’s mountain stronghold, was subjected to pine-needle smoke torture by the bandits—strung up from a tree branch, her arms twisted behind her back to the sky, her hair cascading upside down as she choked and wept.”
It was said that her husband Mitsukuni would soon arrive to rescue her—tomorrow night—but when the next night came and went without change, Princess Matsu’s voice gradually grew hoarse.

"My husband—Lord Mitsukuni—save me!" she pleaded, yet his warrior’s training had left his feet too slow.

On the third night, he had only just reached the foot of Kosato Mountain.

Even as a child, Tate Oriji had been curious since morning—so much so that even inside his mosquito net, the faint smoke of mosquito-repellent incense seemed to reach him—and thus he went again the following night to listen. A grubby disciple in an old summer kimono with torn knees dangled a loose fist at his chest—Yajirō—then thrust out one hand with a gesture like clawing at someone’s chin to demand coins. When Oriji placed what little allowance he carried into that black-nailed palm, the disciple’s eyes widened before grinning with yellowed teeth and reaching to stroke his body. Flustered, Oriji retreated—only for a large raindrop to plop onto his neck.

Suddenly, a torrential downpour began, so he turned pale and dashed home—though it was seven or eight chō to his house, one can imagine how utterly drenched he must have been.

For the next two nights or so, the parents kept him indoors after checking the sky.

Now, if it cleared up, would it truly clear up?
On a gleaming moonlit night, when he dashed out like a horse freed from its reins, the Deroren’s platform had already vanished without a trace. Through the cracks in the earthen wall where a single curtain had been drawn back, the moon cast its pallid light.

Dazed, he stood at the crossroads, resenting last night’s rain, and gazed up at the sky—it stretched clear and radiant, the Milky Way casting a bridge of jewels from the nearby mountain’s edge onto the rooftops below.
Above it, a cloud-like female figure—pure white in form, her lapis lazuli translucence outlined in pale gold, her obi tied in a drooping knot—faced away as she stood abruptly and glided across the moon before vanishing.……Lost in thought yet walking onward, Oriji arrived at that very crossroads.

IV

The bathhouse had the post office at its back.

He thought he saw the phantom of a woman passing through clouds in the moonlit sky near this crossroads—from above the rooftops, over the castle’s main gate forest, a single pure white cloud drifted through the uniformly overcast gloom, for the season when the Milky Way would appear was drawing near…… Gazing at it, he felt as though witnessing scenes from his childhood before his eyes; it seemed like a dream, or perhaps a view glimpsed when peeking out from among horsetail plants during a past life as a rabbit.
Wait—no, I want to be a rabbit.
The tanuki of Futamatazaka Slope were feared.

No—indeed, even these trivial thoughts and recollections welled up as he approached Kohoku’s house; unbeknownst to others, he sought to divert his self-reproaching heart toward matters outside himself.

Now, from this crossroads, turning straight onto Ōtesuji Avenue toward a certain...town where Oriji’s home once stood, Kohoku’s house lay about a block away.

Though it was a town with eaves lining both sides, only on the side opposite Kohoku’s stood a gaping hollow where a house should have been—now a communal water reservoir for the neighborhood, where even the once-sturdy stone pavement had become a great ditch of crystalline green.

From the ditch on the opposite side, a sardine wriggled out; from this side’s ditch, a sardine wriggled out—the chattering of these must have originated from this reservoir, he thought to himself alone on his way back from the summer night market.

Among the same early chatterings, there was one called "Teakettle Raincoat." To think that this left corner of the ditch was a raincoat shop—how amusing... Even now, a persimmon-tanned curtain hung there. As two or three people passed by—one of them walking past him, glancing back, then setting off again with a brisk gait—Oriji lowered his hat’s brim but fixed his eyes past the ditch toward Kohoku’s shop. He stopped here again and hesitated for a moment.

Through the glass door set within the wooden lattice of the shop, he could make out the work tools, but neither the apprentice’s apron nor Hirakichi’s short coat was visible.

Crossing his arms to pull both haori sleeves firmly up to his chest, he gathered his strength and strode briskly forward.

Stepping from the eaves directly into the earthen-floored entryway, he slid open the shop door sideways while—

“Excuse me.”

“Yes, yes.”

With a casual reply, the woman emerged briskly from the tearoom—round-faced and fair-skinned, her thick hair parted at the center and tied into a bun slightly darkened with soot, her features doll-like and antiquated. Though not without charm, she wore an indigo-sleeved overgarment fastened loosely at the chest with pale blue cords, embodying the diligent demeanor of a wife.
What struck him slightly was that, while this manner of dress was merely the local custom around these households—nothing anyone would find suspicious—she had only just hidden her knees beneath a tucked-up kimono and apron on the tatami, halted her feet still clad in bath clogs at the threshold between the tearoom and shopfront, and adopted a stance primed for rapid speech.

“Where have you graced us from, and what business brings you here?”

Her words rang utterly hollow, as if rehearsed by rote. Though courteous in tone, her bow carried no trace of genuine connection.

“It’s me—Tate. It’s been a while.”

“Have you forgotten? You must remember,” he thought, turning his face toward her—and her eyes, though large and dark, lacked vitality like painted doll’s eyes as they swept over him and fixed an intent stare.

“Ah,” she uttered, slumping limply to her knees. Arching her chest as if struck and putting on a surprised air, “Why… you?” She rose lightly to her feet, her flustered demeanor baring her thick calves as she spun around, turned her back, and shuffled away with scraping steps toward the rear, “Goodness! Mr. Tate’s Ori-san is here!” “Goodness!” “Wait a moment… Mr. Tate’s Ori-san is here.” “What? Mr. Tate’s.” “It’s Ori-san.” “Well, well.” Hirakichi’s voice came from the kitchen. Clattering—the sound of geta against the earthen floor.

V

“Well now, do come in! My—why you!”

Once again returning to the shop entrance, the wife stood to greet him.

“Well then, excuse me.”

“Please come this way,” Hirakichi exclaimed loudly, his face breaking into a broad smile as he rushed from the kitchen toward the far end of the visible space beyond the tearoom, vigorously wiping his wet hands on his wide work apron.

“All the way—right this way,” he continued, bringing out a zabuton cushion to the center and adjusting it toward the tokonoma alcove before spinning around in one fluid motion.

“Please don’t trouble yourself!” she said as she hurried through the tearoom and kitchen, crossed over two sliding-door partitions, passed before the polished large cupboard where the rickety staircase to the second floor hung loosely, and—bumping into him—clattered backward toward the shop.

Across the long brazier in that tearoom sat two elderly people facing each other. Ah, they still appeared to be in good health. The one sitting across the brazier—her form cold over ashes scarce of embers, withered lower than the iron kettle—must have been over seventy. This was the wife’s mother; though an age gap exceeding fifty years seemed improbable, it was because the wife had been the youngest among many daughters. There sat a woman of about fifty with her back turned: clad in a black hemp-cloth haori, her small chignon secured by a tortoiseshell hairpin, prayer beads looped around her wrist—she who had once been the eldest daughter.

They must have come for a visit after a long absence.
This old woman must have married into another family and now be involved with the son she bore there.
The son, too, was engaged in the same trade—kiseru pipes and kanzashi hairpins.

But there was something disagreeable about this old woman. For some reason—compounded by a childhood memory that felt almost like resentment—the moment he saw her, something surged within him. As she raised her plump, sallow face devoid of eyebrows to glare up at him from beneath her forehead, Oriji met that gaze with a piercing stare. Then, feigning ignorance, he moved past her toward the rear.

“Namu Amida Butsu.”

As the elderly man chanted in a groaning manner, the old woman pressed down her head,

“Namu Amida Butsu,” came a youthful voice.

“Well now, how unexpected—what brings you here so soon?” Hirakichi remained half-risen, fidgeting restlessly without settling into a seat.

“Are you busy?” said Oriji, disregarding and pulling the chintz-patterned zabuton cushion closer.

“Hahaha, I’m just busy with my hobbies... though truth be told, I’ve got plenty of free time. Been lazing about showing off my knife skills as a cook, you see.”
“Yes, Ori-san, they’ve been catching sardines down at the shore these past two or three days.” As he spoke, Hirakichi sat so close to the edge of the veranda he nearly spilled over, picked up a bit of dust from there, twisted his neck to examine it, tossed it into the earthen floor—then seized his own hand firmly and began massaging its fingers.

“When did you arrive here?”

“Two or three days ago.”

“It’s been roughly fourteen or fifteen years, hasn’t it?”

“Time flies, doesn’t it?”

“Even if time flies so quickly, Ori-san—as you can see—I’ve become an old man now.”
“Even if we passed each other on the street like this, you probably wouldn’t recognize me.”

“No, not a bit changed—still as spirited as ever.”

“Oh my!”

With an arm thrust upward as if breaking through the ceiling, she struck her forehead,

“Oh! I’m overwhelmed.”
“Tokyo-honed flattery cuts deep.”
“Do spare me your polished compliments.”

She flicked her apron aside, propped her elbows on her knees, and sat upright with military precision.

“What nonsense are you spouting now?” Oriji lit a hand-rolled cigarette against the brazier’s embers, his downward gaze softening into a wry smile.
His features remained stern yet carried unexpected warmth.

“This poor excuse for tea—I’ll brew fresh leaves at once—but please, have a cup while you wait.”

And the wife slipped halfway out from the tearoom.

“Well now, if you’re going to call me such a spirited man, I simply must treat you to a proper meal.”

"Oh! Your—your lap," she said, distractedly failing to catch Hirakichi's words, as Oriji brushed the ash from the cigarette butt that had fallen onto his knee—her eyelids flushed with a start.

Six

“Well now, given how much time has passed, I truly have no excuse for my prolonged absence.”
“No, no—truly now, there may be days when crows don’t caw, but never a day when people don’t talk about you, huh?”

“Yes,” said the wife, her complexion so desolate it seemed only crows were cawing. But Oriji did not think he was the subject of any rumors.

Hirakichi pressed on,

“Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.”
“In my line of work—being someone who’s had little to do with schooling—even simple seasonal greetings become impossible to write. So rather than stamping a formal seal, matters grow all the more cumbersome. I can’t offer any proper excuse.”

“Well now, please take your time—why don’t you stay at our humble abode tonight?”

Smoothly stroking his knee with his fingertips and putting on an air of composure, he presented this as a settled matter—a gesture performed out of necessity.

“This is no joke.” Oriji blurted out involuntarily, repelled by the bitterness of Hirakichi’s all-too-transparent flattery.
Perhaps those words had been a bit too harsh,

“Huh?” he said, as if asking him to repeat himself, but a faint smile immediately played on his lips.

“Ah, I see. Your wife must be growing impatient waiting for you.”

“This is no jest.”

And this time, he smiled calmly,

“As if such a thing exists.”

“What do you mean by ‘such a thing’?”

“You still haven’t taken a wife, I see.”

The wife leaned her chest forward and placed her hands on the tatami.

Oriji forcefully stubbed out his rolled cigarette and,

“Why would I have one?”

“Ori-san.”

Hirakichi shook his closely cropped head and fixed his gaze.

“You’re still saying such things, I see.
“As if you’d ever take one!”
“What do you plan to do, going your whole life without one? ……And here I must step in for your late father and give you a proper lecture.”
“Starting with that time during the evening drink—you were made to look particularly overwhelmed, weren’t you?”
“Let’s get that one done with.”

and with one hand knocked lightly on his knee,

“It’s fine to drink while you listen—no, eat your meal while you listen.
Well now—what’s taking so long? Hurry with the sake!”

“It’s already warmed, sir.” The wife began to rise, adjusting her tucked-up hem.

Oriji remained silent, wondering whether it was the drink’s influence or something he needed to say.

“The vinegared dish… Put that thing I prepared earlier in the mortar into a bowl with two small plates. Got it? You can’t eat unless your hands are clean,” he said. “……Though I’ve gotten used to proper cuisine from the capital now. Country cooking won’t suit my palate anymore—wouldn’t touch a bite, no, not a single bite.”

Having settled this unilaterally, he drove his fidgeting wife toward the kitchen while—

“Ori-san, the sardine vinegared dish—as you know, this has a taste not found elsewhere.”
“Hey, hurry up.”

Ah, for a moment.
While the room remained free of sardines' lingering scent，there was something I had to say……

“Um, Hira-san.”

Oriji adopted a youthful tone.
“In this house—you know, the colored woodblock prints that someone bought from my family—were they here, right?”
“Hah, the colored woodblock prints,” he said, narrowing his eyes and raising them upward as if gazing into the distant past.
“We were struggling at home… Though we’re still just as poor now.”
And Oriji sharply crossed his arms.
“Since I couldn’t afford the textbooks I needed for school, Grandmother made the difficult decision to sell Mother’s commemorative woodblock prints to an antique bookseller—and Hira-san bought them back and kept them stored away.”
“It’s about those colored woodblock prints.”

On a dark evening of drizzling clouds, when a meager dinner of water herbs had barely concluded—even before the chopsticks were laid down—Oriji began to plead persistently that he absolutely needed those four black-bound volumes titled *Newly Compiled Physics Textbook*.
It wasn’t that he couldn’t attend school without it.
For the subjects, copying into notebooks what the teachers wrote and taught on the blackboard was sufficient, but he couldn’t help wanting it because everyone else had one.
The list price at that time was eighty *sen*—he remembered.

Seven

That evening, Father did not drink even a single gō of sake, and under a Western-style lamp with a reddish-black flame—its cracked chimney patched with paper and its shade sooty—he did not immediately rise to the workshop beyond the long brazier after clearing the meal tray. With one hand tucked into the breast of his pale green haori, its sleeves patched and black collar frayed, he sat knee raised, cheek propped against it, supporting his elongated, pensive face in heavy silence.

Father saw no way forward, so

“But I need it!” he blurted out, scuttling across the wooden floor to the vast, cold kitchen—where frost glinted in the far corner… Grandmother, a tiny white-haired figure without even a headscarf, clattered plates and bowls with icy precision.

“Hey… buy it for me.”

Without waiting for her reply, Oriji clung to her sleeve.
The water rushed loudly.
Mice darted around the cracked trash bin beneath the flowing stream, while a small oil lamp glowed faintly within its spiderwebbed shroud…

“Hey, please buy it for me! I’ll even make do with just pickled plums in my lunchbox.”

Grandmother looked at his face and remained silent for a while,

“Oh, I’ll find a way to manage it.”

Leaving the washed bowls as they were, she wiped her hands over and over with her apron, retraced her steps from the icy wooden floor back to the shop’s tatami area, weakly knelt before the brazier, and turned to look back at the father—still hunched over, facing away.

“Please, go ahead and do as you must.”

“I see.”

“It’s nothing else—let that child be happy too.”

“In that case, Mother, I appreciate your trouble.”

“Oh, it’s nothing—you.”

She entered the storeroom and brought out a cloth-wrapped bundle from the cupboard—the colored woodblock prints themselves, over two hundred works by Kunisada. During times of airing out pests, the Doll Festival, or autumn’s long nights, they had displayed three thousand familiar sisters, dashing figures of Shitaya, and elegant beauties of Fukagawa in abundance.

Grandmother placed it down,

“Would you like to take a look?” she said to Father.

“No, I won’t look.”

He turned his face away.

Grandmother tied the knot she had started to untie and adjusted her collar slightly. Holding it under the sleeves of her narrow-collared haori, she moved from the wooden floor at the shop’s edge toward the earthen floor, pausing in the dimness—

“Poor, poor Sisters.”
“Even if I leave your care, don’t let yourselves be bought by the spider man. Don’t go to Futamatazaka.”

she whispered urgently.
Even in his childish mind, Oriji thought those prints were being sold to exchange them for money.
……The Sisters—their familiar faces painted in bold crimson, pale violet, and snow-white skin—glided through the gate into the dark night……and suddenly, he felt a pang of loneliness.
But crimson and white powder meant nothing now—there, lined up before his eyes, leapt the four black-bound volumes of the *Newly Compiled Physics Textbook*.

“Wait a moment, Ori.”

A low, rumbling sound came from the aged pivot door.

In the kitchen—with a booming clatter—the mice scurried wildly as if across a desolate plain.

When Grandmother turned back from the eaves and took the oil-paper umbrella to set out again,

“Oh, could you please turn off the kitchen lamp?”

And with a clatter, the gate shut.

The clatter of geta echoed—*How far would they go?*—as the drizzle swept through with a rustle.
Ah—led by Grandmother, the long-sleeved kimonos and tucked sleeves adjusting their hems, the trailing skirts, the glinting tortoiseshell combs and trembling silver hairpins—their pure white calves exposed, phantom-like as tomozome-dyed flowers—appeared hazily through the shutters’ gaps: a procession trudging barefoot through the rural town’s mountain-shadowed dark night, squelching without rain gear.

That too was the authority of science.
Using the physics textbook as leverage, dazzling his young eyes, he pried and pried and drove out those beautiful sisters—the form of those black covers, in hindsight, must have been demonic.

The kitchen lamp burned like the distant, solitary house of the Okuyama family.

Peering through the window above that wall—buffeted by wind and rain, its hair rustling wildly—a face like nothing but the ribs of a fan appeared… In the neighboring vacant lot, the palm tree stood eerily silent that night, devoid of its usual vigor.

The mice, too, quieted their sounds in desolation…

VIII

The sliding door separating the kitchen and this upper threshold bore a reed screen hung in keeping with local custom—torn, frayed, and layered with years of soot beyond reach, evoking the ancient Sōma Inner Court palace.

In the shadow, with a distant light flickering behind her, a woman in a pale, hazy blue garment pressed herself against the wooden door and stood lingering, intently watching the retreating figure of the grandmother who had just left.

At a glance, young Oriji stood small and dazed, beholding this figure not of this world, yet showing no surprise.

The pure white, noble face that had turned toward the child vanished like snow—and with a creak-creak-creak, the pulley of the inner well, which partitioned the kitchen in a hexagonal wooden frame, sounded. But immediately, a small dish clattered. At the sink’s edge, a pale blue headscarf flickered intermittently like thick moonlight piercing through untimely clouds; loose strands of black hair cascaded down as a profile—straight-nosed and faintly visible—emerged, and a white cloth fluttered away.

“Ori.”

Father called.

“Yes.”

He clattered out and clung to the grass-green haori that until then had remained in the same spot, as still as a painting.

“Ah, you answer like Mother.”
“Uncanny—that voice just now.”

and gathered him into his lap.
Clinging to his chest,

“Mother is in the kitchen.”

“What?!” Father jerked upright.

“Help Grandma.”

Father continued to hold him tightly,

“Ori, what will you learn by buying this book?”

“Ah, the teacher said if I read all the physics books, I’ll know where Mother is.
So I wanted it quickly because she’s in the kitchen—you don’t have to buy it anymore.
……Come here, Father.”

When he pulled Father’s hand—though reluctant—Father trudged with hollow steps on the tatami and stepped out into the wooden-floored area.

The sound of mice scurrying grew louder than those footsteps; the palm fronds rustled into view through the latticework, but there was no trace of the headscarf there.

Oriji burst into tears.

Father trembled violently as he stood there, rubbing his back.

The sound of the rain rose sharply.

“Oh, it’s cold—really coming down hard!”

The one who entered the gate in a lively voice was none other than Hirakichi’s Hira-san now standing before them.

He hung the umbrella with a clatter and snuffed out the lantern—the scent of candle wax rose as the fragrance of the household Buddhist altar filled the air.

“Ah!
“Quite a scene here—what happened, Pops?
“Where’d your grandmother go?”

And when Father explained the whole story—

“I’ll cover the cost—what a waste.”
“It’s not worth parting with them for just seven or eight kan.”
“Even if a bookstore might buy them for several kan, first I said that for now, you just need that physics book here—right? That’s all that matters.”
“If their offer’s at rock bottom, we’ll buy them back.”
“……If they’re paying too much, we’ll call it off, right?”
“Anyway, for now, just let me cover the cost here.”
“……There we go, there we go—started, started! That’s my old self for you.”
“What obligation could there be to let such a matter go unsettled? Hmm, you.”

“and boldly putting on a student act,”

“So if you’re not satisfied with that arrangement, then entrust them to me.”
“As for me—well, I don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind, but if you insist on being dissatisfied with merely having me cover the cost temporarily, then I suppose I could hold onto them until the funds become available.”
“There, that settles it.”
“……Pray grant me at least a faint smile.”
“You—but really, when it comes to this, isn’t it better not to make children study things like academics?”
“Nonsense. Now that Ori here’s eleven, he can handle clattering bellows.”
“It’ll add two or three sen to our income.”
“That way, you’ll have small sums surfacing right away.”
“…Truth be told, even my little sister’s trying to arrange a second wife for this household, but if we artisans go through the trouble of buying books for children, no one’ll marry into a family with such prospects.”
“Look, Grandma’s taking care of her grandson and you, doing laundry in this freezing cold.”

“My sister always says, ‘What a pitiful old woman,’ you know.”……he said then.

――That sister had come to the long brazier in the next room.

——

Nine

Just then, Grandmother returned without uttering a word—not even greeting Hirakichi first—

“Here,” she said, producing the book.

Oriji flew to the lion’s seat and settled with forceful urgency.
He dove into the newly acquired text from above, nearly pitching forward as he did so.
The black cover bore intricate damask patterns and a luster—beautiful as the jet-black velvet wings of a butterfly… When opened, characters glittered and rippled like a slender stream, while an indescribably intense fragrance permeated eyes and mouth. Diagrams of machinery within loomed like iron shields before the lamp’s glow, their glass components shining with phosphorescent light.

According to Grandmother’s account, the bookseller had started pricing those colored woodblock prints at fifty sen but ultimately refused to go beyond seventy-five sen.
He wouldn’t budge past that amount.
The physics book she wanted cost eighty sen.
Desperate to buy it immediately and see her grandson’s delighted face yet unsure how to proceed, she sat at the shop’s edge—white hair dampened by drizzle—when the proprietor said, “Well then, Granny, how about this?”
Here was a used copy in stock—just volume one—its cover bearing faint creases from a bamboo spatula pressed long ago.
He knocked five sen off the list price and neatly aligned its edges.
“Take this to your grandson,” he concluded.
Kunisada’s prints—some two hundred sheets in all—were thus barely traded for these four volumes of secondhand books.

Hirakichi sprang into motion. Without uttering a word, he produced a one-yen coin.

"Ori, this is your mother's keepsake," he said. "Go with Grandmother—you'll carry them back yourself this time."

"Aye."

As he rose clutching all four volumes,

"The path is treacherous—don't let them fall and get soiled," Grandmother cautioned. "Bring just one tome. You may cradle it while you sleep tonight."

Grandmother smiled faintly too, retrieving her daughter-in-law’s memento. Though eager for this second outing, Oriji was led by the hand, leaving behind the remaining three sibling volumes neatly aligned at Father’s knees. As they stepped out, he peeked furtively into the kitchen—the light seemed to extinguish itself like a palm frond……and in the true dark, nothing remained visible.

The rain let up slightly.

Oriji walked the night path, utterly engrossed in sniffing the book’s scent.

The antique bookstore was one he had passed earlier that day on his way to Hirakichi’s house—he believed it stood four or five shops before that bathhouse.
As they reached the crossroads, Grandmother closed her tattered umbrella, and the moon emerged with a pale blue glow, as though sweeping away a lid.
The mountain’s form stood starkly white and clear, like bones laid bare, while clouds shaped like rabbits raced across the sky.

Oriji, recalling the woman on the Milky Way he had once glimpsed as if in a fleeting vision during the night stalls, felt his heart surge with courage—those many elder sisters who had just now been trudgingly driven off to hell were surely being saved and ascending straight to heaven.

He rushed ahead and reached the familiar door of the antique bookstore, but both the shop and its large doors were shut.
The cold was bitter, the rain fell intermittently, and the town lay silent without a single light to be seen.

“Have they already gone to bed?”

Grandmother bustled about,

“Please, open up. Please.”

Grandmother knocked hesitantly on the shop door.

Above the skylight came a heavy clatter,

“What?”

a deep voice said.
From the box-like partition door emerged the antique bookseller’s square face—thick eyebrows drawn close, cheeks puffed, mouth downturned in a へ shape, with a sparse beard clinging from the ridges of his nostrils down to his chin.
……This face and the frustration of that time—Oriji could not forget them no matter what.

“The prints have already been sold to someone,” he said.

“If it’s someone from Mishikoshi, please tell me where I can go to ask for them,” Grandmother said, but [he] was a man who occasionally peered in—though he wasn’t from around here.
“Since he’s a courier bound for Echigo, his legs are swift.”
“By now, that courier’s probably crossed halfway up Futamatazaka,” he jeered, propping his cheek against the small window and sneering.

They were prints of beauties—quickly sold through connections as refined as their subjects.
The proprietor had only just returned when—there at the lamplit shop counter, that chirimen kimono strewn about and obi tugged open at the collar to inspect [the prints]—a towering man arrived briskly: traveler’s hat askew, straw mat tucked underarm, leggings bound tight, straw sandals clacking. Glaring sharply as he passed, he abruptly named a price, bought them outright, then tightened his sash with a snap—“Can’t let these get wet”—before striding off into the rain and vanishing……

“Understood, Granny?” he said.

Ten

Unable to give up, Grandmother uttered a few words—and in the end,

“Senile old hag, get out of here!”

He said and slammed the door shut with a heavy thud.

On their way back, Grandmother rubbed her eyes.
Oriji’s hand clutching the book had turned cold as ice.
At that moment, he slipped half the book’s edge into his coat pocket, pressed his chin down to secure it, and slumped dejectedly—just as the naniwabushi ballad from the crossroads began its tale…

“Lord Himematsu, oh!”

[The voice] echoed from the darkness.—Oriji imagined, as if witnessing it firsthand, the many elder sisters said to have been bought away by the courier—dangling like sun-dried persimmons from tree branches, lifted and lowered, tormented on Futamatazaka Slope.

And sure enough, the physics textbook in the breast pocket emitted a pungent fragrance—and at that very moment, the smell of smoldering pine needles began to rise.

Of course, it was just an excuse—a courier transformed by a fox? Would such a thing pass through town these days? Taking advantage of their vulnerable position to buy them out cheaply—and now begrudging tenfold profits lost—the tanuki spouted whatever he pleased.
Took them on—Hirakichi did.

These were the nishiki-e that Hira-san had gone to claim at the antique bookstore, settling in to buy them back for their family.

Yet even during his father’s lifetime, whenever circumstances allowed, the matter would resurface; later, from Tokyo, Oriji sent repeated inquiries, pressing to retrieve them—but with matters splintering and unraveling unresolved, each pursuit ended in one-sided exchanges that led nowhere.

Today, he resolved to settle it without fail.

When he broached the matter—as expected—Hirakichi stared at the ceiling with a dozing expression, first feigning absent-mindedness before finally mustering a look of belated awareness.

“Ah, those Edo prints... Sixteen, seventeen years now—nearly two decades. Been so long, I wonder if they’re even still here.”

Without even waiting to hear…

“There’s no way they’re gone—I specifically asked you to keep them safe!...” Yet somehow these prints—like a living lover with a storied past, like a karmic bond that would not easily fall into his hands—were what he had fretted over even in his sleep, what had made him square his shoulders before entering this house. Faced with Hirakichi’s evasions, Oriji now burned with restless agitation.

Hirakichi leaned back as though the matter were unrelated,
“Hey there.”
At the cupboard, he called—with a chin gesture—to his wife preparing meals.
“You wouldn’t know.”
“You’ve probably forgotten too—well, well—those Edo prints… were they even in the storehouse?”
“Yes, sir. Shall I fetch them?” the wife replied clearly.
“Thank you, Okoto-san.”
He called her name familiarly for the first time and turned sharply—and there, through the pale blue noren curtain patterned with waves, she flushed swiftly again, her demeanor faintly reminiscent of one of those figures from the colored woodblock prints……

“One for you.”
Then, adjusting the tray, she took the sake bottle.
Things change indeed—back when she was just seven or eight or nine years old, during the Doll Festival when her mother was still alive, seated before the peach and cherry blossom tiered stand draped in scarlet felt, lined up at a small lacquered tray with lacquered bowls no larger than sake cups, sharing clam soup—this girl, whose face then was like a molded confection save for her flower-patterned kimono, already had the habit of sitting with a rounded back slightly hunched, and even now remains unchanged in that regard—yet how transformed she had become.

Hirakichi was already over fifty, while his wife was just past twenty—by two or perhaps three years at most.
After the death of Hirakichi’s previous wife—who had been like an elder sister—a bud not yet visited by birds, fourteen or fifteen years old, was scattered by a midnight storm.
At first she had seemed like a granddaughter, but gradually she came to resemble a daughter, then a younger sister—in such ways her likeness shifted, and her role as a wife appeared pitifully evident.

This one too must have been snatched by a courier and seized by Hirakichi’s hands—another one of those prints.

No—no matter what, he had to act quickly—Hirakichi straightened up once more, but at his wife’s reply, he made a bitter face and glared sideways.

“But what the hell is this? What’s that? I mean—those prints were just supposed to be on loan!”
“I do get demands for ’em, but… well, y’see, this here…”
“They still haven’t been returned as they are—that’s right.”
“Ah, exactly.”

[Nodding repeatedly to himself,]

“Well, Ori-san—no—I mean, about those Edo prints… The whole neighborhood and relatives sing their praises! When I go to Hirakichi’s place, they make such a fuss—‘We’d sooner see the Edo prints than the main pillar of the house!’—and the more they come, the more they gather. I tell you, there hasn’t been a single moment of peace since.”

As he muttered something about the storehouse—his lips moving…

“Well, I mean, you could say they’re my belongings, but—so to speak, Ori-san—it’s complicated.”
“Since those are practically items entrusted by you, with frequent handling, they naturally tend to get stained with fingerprints and wear—and if I refuse to show them, it’ll start a fight… what a bother.”
“So first off, I’ve kept ’em hidden away in another storehouse—like they were on loan or entrusted to me.”
“But that—”

And then, glaring sharply over his jutting brow at his wife’s rigid face,

“At the storehouse owner’s house—well, I… let’s just say there’s been some financial misconduct on my part, so I can’t show my face there for now. But I’ll get them back eventually.”
“I will get them back, mind you—but it’s… well, a money matter, you see.”

“Moreover, Ori-san—their value has shot up lately, you know.”
“The woodblock prints… Even a single one—or a messy pile of two hundred from back then—they’re all treasures.”
“Precious to you, and precious to me too.”
“‘Price be damned,’ they tell me—‘just name it!’—over and over. But sell them? Me?”
“I won’t.”
“Forgive my boldness, but Hirakichi doesn’t sell.”
“They’re entrusted goods—how could I ever let them go?”

But given the circumstances he had just outlined… there was no telling how it would unfold.

“Now now, eat your meal while it’s hot.”
“Take your time.”
“Well now—look here—where’s the grilled dish?”
“Ugh, nothing but foolish vinegared dishes.”
“I’ll have you know—a whole fish is proper with sake.”
“Nothing but vinegared slop—no, a woman who stirs up these slimy messes.”
“Heh heh heh, grill some sardines—it’s the thought that counts. Sardines, I say.”

The wife—appearing to want to speak yet fidgeting with her knees while stealing glances at Hirakichi’s forehead—resembled that performer woman who would leap sideways into the bath with a splash.
This one too must have had even her appearance transformed after being acquired by Hirakichi.

She sat up straight,

“You…”

She made a resentful, pitiful face.

He widened his eyes fiercely, his face stern,

“Look here,” he said.

But he seemed to be urging her about the sardines.

“They’re on the grill now.”

From the adjacent tea room came the hoarse voice of the wife’s elder sister.

“Namu Amida Butsu.”

...the old woman chanted.
...this—a voice pierced his ears: “Himematsu-dono ga e.”... From within the chanting arose a sizzling sound of fat rendering, and a fishy stench welled up thickly.
This stench, he suddenly thought, resembled that black cover.
But rather, the elder sister’s disheveled black hair—swaying and smoke-darkened by pine needles in the bandits’ hands—flickered before his eyes.
Oriji flared up.

“Hirakichi—let’s settle this through payment.”
“Leave off about those sardines.”