Pathway to Japanese Literature

The vast sea stretches out before him.

The sand washed up from that sea has piled up like a small hill, forming a natural embankment.
The term "dûn," which originated from Ireland and Scotland and came to be used throughout Europe, refers to such a place as this.

On top of that sand dune, spindly red pines cluster and grow.
The red pines are not very old.

The white-haired master gazing at the sea sat in one room of a small house built by cutting several of these pines and embedding the structure within the pine grove.

This small house, which The Master had built with the sentiment of mimicking a villa during his time of active engagement with society, consisted merely of two rooms and a kitchen.
The room he now occupied was a six-mat living space that commanded an eastern view of the sea.

When seated and looking out, the crags of the sand dune - crisscrossed by pine roots, nearly vertical, their surfaces collapsed into concave sections here and there - revealed only endless waves, yet between this mountain and the sea lay a single river channel and a stretch of sandbar.

The river winds its way to empty into the sea, so beneath the crags fresh water and salt water meet.

In the low area behind the sand dune stand houses sparsely scattered where fishing and agriculture are combined, while atop the sand dune exists only a single house—The Master's.

This sand dune, where legend tells of a fishing boat once hurled by some past storm to catch in the pine grove's treetops, remains shunned by locals who fear to dwell here.

The river is the Isasa River of Kazusa.
The sea is the Pacific Ocean.

As autumn approached, stepping on pristine sand within the mist-hung pine grove, The Master had completed his morning walk and finished the breakfast prepared by the elderly servant Hachijūhachi, now settling into his own living quarters.

The surroundings were hushed; neither human voices nor the barking of dogs could be heard.
Only the quiet, dull, oppressive sound of waves at the morning-calm shore could be heard, resonating like the pulse of heaven and earth.

An orange-yellow sun disk appearing about a foot in diameter emerged from where the water and sky met directly ahead.
Because he was using the horizon as his baseline, the sun seemed to rise steadily upward.

As he watched this, The Master contemplated time.
He contemplated life.
He contemplated death.

“Death is philosophy’s true god who breathes life into it—the guiding god (Musagetes),” said Schopenhauer.
The Master recalled these words and thought it might be acceptable to say so.
However, death cannot be contemplated without contemplating life.
To contemplate death is to contemplate life ceasing to be.

When he examined what various people had written, they generally stated that as old age approached, contemplating death gradually became more pressing.
The Master, upon reflecting on his past experiences, found himself thinking he differed somewhat from such people.

＊ ＊ ＊

It was a time when I was still in my twenties, reacting to all external events with virginal sensibilities while amassing within an unbroken reservoir of strength that had never known defeat.
I was in Berlin.
Wilhelm I—who had shattered the balance of powers and lent solid heft to that barbarism-tinged word "Germany"—still occupied the throne.
Unlike the current Wilhelm II who imposed demonic force from above to suppress dissent, the Social Democratic Party labored gasping beneath a natural weight.
In theaters, Ernst von Wildenbruch staged plays glorifying Hohenzollern ancestors, captivating the hearts of us student youths.

By day he worked among vibrant youths in lecture halls and laboratories.
At times he felt flashes of pride as he nimbly outmaneuvered Europeans who seemed clumsy and ponderous in all matters.
At night he watched plays.
He went to dance halls.
Then he would shift his hours to coffee shops until streetlights cast their lonely glow over carriageways where sweepers began their work - only then wandering home.
There were nights when he didn't return straightaway.

Now he arrived back at the lodging where he lived.
Though called a lodging, it involved opening the large obstructive lock on the entrance door of a grand house with many hearths, then climbing—striking wax matches repeatedly—to the third or fourth floor before finally arriving before the chambre garnie.

A high desk, two or three chairs.
A bed, a chest of drawers, and a dressing table.
There was nothing else besides these.
He lit a fire, took off his clothes, and immediately after extinguishing it, lay down on the bed.

It was during such moments that he felt spiritual loneliness.
Even during times of mental calm, the image of his hometown house would merely rise as a fleeting vision.
He would drift off to sleep while gazing at that vision.
Nostalgia is not among life's deeper pains.

But at times, sleep would not come.
He would rise again, light the fire, and attempt work.
When engrossed in his tasks, he sometimes passed the entire night without diversion.
Even when catching brief sleep after dawn's noises began outside, youth's fatigue could be swiftly shaken off.

At times, the work simply wouldn't cohere.
His nerves grew peculiarly agitated—mind crystalline clear—yet tracing others' thoughts through opened books became intolerably vexing.
His own thoughts began moving autonomously.
Though practicing medicine—natural science at its most exact—staking his life on rigorous scholarship, he found himself sensing an inexplicable spiritual hunger.
He contemplated life itself.
I wondered whether what I did sufficed to fill life's substance.

From the moment I was born until today, what have I been doing? I have been constantly engrossed in academic pursuits as if driven and manipulated by some unseen force. This is what I have believed—that I am building myself up so that I can perform a certain function. That purpose may perhaps be achieved to some extent. However, what I am doing feels like nothing more than an actor performing a role on stage. It feels as if there must be something else existing behind the role being performed. Because I am constantly being manipulated and driven, it feels as though that something has no time to awaken. From the studying child to the studying school student, the studying official, and the studying international student—all are merely those roles. I long to someday wash off this face painted red and black, step down from the stage for a moment, and quietly contemplate what I truly am—to glimpse the true nature of that something behind it all—yet even as I yearn for this, I continue performing role after role, enduring the stage director’s lash on my back. This role cannot be considered life itself. I wonder if what lies behind might not be true life itself. However, that something, while trying desperately to awaken, ends up dozing off again. Lately, when I acutely feel this longing for home—like floating grass carried far away by swaying waves, its motion somehow resonating in roots that aren’t there—it bears no resemblance to the sensation of performing a role on stage. But such feelings—just when they seem about to raise their heads—immediately retreat.

In contrast to that, there were nights when sleep eluded me and I wondered if I would end my life performing roles on stage like this.
Then I would wonder whether this lifetime of mine might prove long or short.
Around that time, one of our fellow international students contracted typhoid fever, was hospitalized, and died.
During breaks between lectures, when I went to visit Charité, they would show him asleep through the glass of the infectious disease ward.
As his fever exceeded forty degrees, they had decided to administer cold baths daily.
Being a medical student myself, I thought cold baths dangerous for Japanese people and even consulted others about it. However, since he was already hospitalized, interfering with their treatment protocols seemed improper—and even had I spoken up, they likely wouldn’t have heeded my opinion—so I resigned myself to observing.
When I went to visit one day, they informed me he had died the previous night.
Seeing the man’s lifeless face moved me profoundly, and it suddenly struck me that I too might contract some illness and perish in such a manner.
Since then, there have been moments when I wonder what would become of me were I to die here in Berlin just as I am.

At such times, I first thought of how my parents waiting back home must be grieving. Then I thought of various people close to me. Among them all was my curly-haired younger brother—who had been so deeply attached to me, who was just barely walking when I left home—and letters came saying that day after day he asked when Big Brother would return. If my younger brother were told that Big Brother would never return, I thought how he would grieve.

Moreover, as an international student, I could not simply die without completing my studies.
When contemplating such matters abstractly, there was only a cold sense of obligation; but when tracing back the circumstances of each individual case—my own included—it began to feel akin to close relatives inflicting upon me the pain of Neigung, an ache born of emotion.

In this way, thoughts of various social bonds—both broad and narrow—ceaselessly clustered and arose, yet ultimately they all converged upon the individual self.
Death was the convergence of threads pulling from all directions; I thought this thing called the self would disappear entirely.

Since childhood I have loved novels, and even after learning foreign languages, I would read foreign novels whenever time allowed.
Every one I read declared that the disappearance of the self constitutes life's greatest and deepest agony.
Yet to me, the mere vanishing of this 'I' does not register as pain.
Were I to die by blade, I imagine feeling physical anguish in that instant; were I to perish through illness or poison, I suppose I would experience suffering matching each malady or drug's nature—suffocation or convulsions.
There exists no pain inherent in the self's dissolution.

Westerners say that not fearing death is a trait of barbarians.
I think I might be what Westerners call barbarians.
As this thought comes, I recall how my parents often admonished me in childhood: having been born into a samurai family, one must be capable of performing seppuku.
I remember thinking there would be physical pain then and resolving that I must endure it.
And thus I think I might indeed be what they call a barbarian.
Yet I cannot accept that Westerners' view represents ultimate truth.

If that is so, does it mean I remain unperturbed by the disappearance of the self? That is not the case.
While this thing called the self exists, it is vexing to lose it without ever having clearly contemplated or understood what it truly is.
It is regrettable.
It is regrettable to have ended up living what Confucian scholars call a life of drunken existence and dreamlike death.
I find it vexing and regrettable, while at the same time acutely feeling the emptiness in my heart.
I feel an inexpressible loneliness.

That becomes anguish.
That becomes pain.

I tasted this pain many times during sleepless nights in Berlin’s garçon logis.
At such times, everything I had done since birth seemed like nothing more than superficial futilities.
I acutely felt that I had been doing nothing more than performing a role on stage.
In such moments, fragments of Buddhist and Christian thought that I had heard from others or read in books ceaselessly rose to my mind, only to vanish immediately.
They vanished without offering any solace.
In such times, I went over all the facts and all the reasoning of natural science I had learned thus far, searching to see if there might be something that offered solace.
But this too was futile.

It was one such night.
Having resolved to try reading philosophy books and unable to wait for dawn, I went to buy Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious.
This marked my first glimpse into what is called philosophy, and as for why I chose Hartmann—it was because in those days, the nineteenth century was said to have brought forth railways and Hartmann’s philosophy alike, with his work being the latest grand system that stirred vehement debate between its proponents and detractors.

What made me feel philosophy's profound depth was the three stages of illusion.
Hartmann established the three stages of illusion to demonstrate the impossibility of making happiness life’s purpose.
In the first stage, humans seek to attain happiness in this world.
Youth, health, friendship, love, honor—enumerating these one by one, he dispels their illusions.
Love too consists mainly of suffering.
Happiness lies in severing sexual desire at its root.
Humans sacrifice this happiness to barely foster the world’s evolution.
In the second stage, happiness is sought in the afterlife.
This requires assuming individual immortality.
However, individual consciousness perishes with death.
The nerve trunk becomes severed there.
In the third stage, happiness is sought in the future of the world process.
This presupposes global development and evolution.
However, no matter how much the world evolves, old age, illness, and hardship persist unabated.
As nerves grow more sensitive, these afflictions are felt all the more acutely.
Suffering intensifies alongside evolution.
Even after experiencing all three stages—the initial, middle, and final—happiness remains eternally unattainable.

In Hartmann's metaphysics, this world had been constructed as well as possible.
However, if one were to ask whether existence was preferable or non-existence was preferable, non-existence was better.
He named the root that brought it into existence as the Unconscious.
Even so, even if one were to deny life, it would be futile because the world would still remain.
Even if present-day mankind were to successfully perish, on some occasion a new mankind would emerge and repeat the same things.
Rather than that, he stated that humanity should affirm life, entrust oneself to the world’s process, willingly endure suffering, and await the world’s salvation.

I shook my head at this conclusion but found myself powerfully drawn to its shattering of illusions. I felt profound sympathy for Disillusion. And upon seeing that Hartmann himself confessed to having written the three stages of illusion after reading and contemplating Max Stirner, I read Stirner. Then, since it was said to be the source of the entire philosophy of the unconscious, I proceeded to read Schopenhauer.

When I read Stirner, I felt that what Hartmann stated with a gentleman’s demeanor was being declared with a ruffian’s bravado. And after destroying all illusions, it left behind the self. In this world, there exists nothing dependable beyond the ego. Pursuing this line of thought further and further, I could not help but arrive at anarchism.

I shuddered.

When I read Schopenhauer, it was Hartmann minus evolution theory.
The world was not merely better off not existing than existing.
It had been constructed as poorly as possible.
The world's creation was a mistake.
The tranquility of nothingness had merely been mistakenly disturbed.
The world has no choice but to return through cognition to nothingness's tranquility.
Each person constitutes an individual error—better nonexistent than existent.
To desire personal immortality means seeking to perpetuate errors infinitely.
Though individuals perish, humankind persists.
This indestructible remnant we broadly name "will," opposing perishable phenomena.
Because will exists, nothingness becomes relative rather than absolute.
This will constitutes Kant's thing-in-itself.
Should one seek individual return to nothingness through suicide—even then humankind remains.
The thing-in-itself endures.
Thus we must live until death claims us.
Hartmann's Unconscious emerged transformed from this very will.

I shook my head all the more.

＊ ＊ ＊

Amidst all this busyness, my three-year study abroad period passed.
While still feeling within my heart the swaying of an unbalanced object, I found myself compelled to leave this cultured land that was so convenient for finding mentors of any kind.
It wasn't only living mentors.
Books for consultation could usually be obtained by simply visiting the university library without distant travels.
Nor was there any nuisance of waiting months after placing orders when purchasing books.
I became obliged to depart such a convenient country.

I longed for my homeland.
As a beautiful, nostalgic land of dreams, my homeland was dear to me.
Yet returning to a country still lacking various essential elements required to truly pursue the academic studies I must undertake—to cultivate new fields within those studies—filled me with regret.
"I dare say 'not yet.'"
A certain German who had long resided in Japan and was said to have thoroughly understood it from its foundations declared that this essential element not only remained lacking at present but would never arise in the lands of the East.
He proclaimed that the Orient lacked the atmosphere to nurture natural science.
Were that indeed true, both the Imperial University and the Institute for Infectious Diseases would perpetually remain mere waystations adopting only the conclusions of European academia.
Such judgments had manifested in works like *Taifun*, which became Europe’s fashionable productions after the war with Russia.
Yet I did not consider the Japanese people such an incompetent race that one must despair of them, so I dared say "not yet."
I had always believed, even then, that the day would surely come when the fruits of scholarship cultivated in Japan would be exported to Europe.

I departed for my homeland of dreams, leaving behind this convenient country with its atmosphere conducive to nurturing natural science.
Of course I had to depart, but I did not depart out of any obligation that one must depart.
When I placed the convenient country on one pan of my desire’s scales and my dream homeland on the other, despite a white, gentle hand that gently tugged at the mourning string attached to convenience’s pan, they decidedly tipped toward dreams.

Because the Siberian Railway had not yet been fully completed, I returned via the Indian Ocean.
Even when making a round trip that takes a single day, the journey out feels long while the return feels short; yet even when traveling for forty or fifty days, this same sensation persists.
During the voyage—which felt lonelier and swifter compared to those hopeful departures for unknown realms in days past—I lay upon a rattan deck chair and pondered what mementos I might bring home in my trunk.

In the subdivisions of natural science, I am not bringing back only conclusions.
I also intend to carry with me the germs that should develop in the future.
However, in the homeland I return to, there is no atmosphere to nurture those germs.
At the very least, there is "not yet."
I worried whether those germs too might simply wither in vain.
And I was assailed by a fatalistisch, dull, gloomy feeling.

And within my trunk there existed no philosophy bearing light to pierce this gloomy darkness.
What existed within it was the pessimistic philosophy of the Schopenhauer and Hartmann school.
It is a philosophy that maintains the phenomenal world would be better not to exist than to exist.
It does not deny evolution.
However, it is evolution aimed at awakening to nothingness.

In Ceylon, I was compelled by a man wearing red checkered cloth wrapped around his head and waist to purchase a beautiful blue-winged bird.
When I returned to the boat carrying the cage, a crew member from the French ship made an odd gesture and declared, “Il ne vivra pas!”
The beautiful blue bird had indeed died by the time the ship reached Yokohama.
That too proved a futile keepsake.

＊ ＊ ＊

I was welcomed by my homeland's people with disappointment.
That was only natural.
For someone like me returning from abroad was an unprecedented occurrence.
Those who had returned from abroad before would arrive with faces shining with hope, take out tools from their trunks, and present some new marvel for all to see.
I did precisely the opposite.

In Tokyo, discussions of urban renewal were flourishing, with Western-style enthusiasts declaring they wanted to build houses akin to what Germans called Wolkenkratzer—found on some numbered street in American cities like A or B.
At that time I said: “Cities being what they are—the more people cram into limited space, the more deaths occur, especially among children—rather than stacking houses vertically where they once stood side by side, it would be better to improve water supply and sewage systems.”
Moreover, a committee had been formed that sought to impose regulations on architecture, aiming to standardize the height of eaves on Tokyo houses to create an orderly aesthetic appearance.
At that time I said: “A town lined up like soldiers on parade isn’t beautiful. If you insist on Westernization, rather than standardizing eaves heights, you should instead make each building adopt entirely different architectural styles one by one, striving to create a beauty of irregularity and asymmetry like Venice’s cityscape.”

There were also discussions about dietary reform.
They wanted to abolish the eating of rice and have people consume large quantities of beef instead.
At that time I said: “Since both rice and fish are highly digestible, Japanese cuisine is best left as it has always been. However, promoting livestock farming and having people eat beef is their own affair.”

When debates over kana orthography reform arose and they tried to make people write things like *koisuchiyōwaganawa*, I said: “No, no—every country has its *Orthographie*. The traditional *kohisutefuwanaha* would still be preferable.”

In such fashion, against every aspect of reform people sought to implement, I advocated the true Mokuami doctrine.
Thus was he driven into the ranks of the conservative party.
Though conservatives returning from abroad later became fashionable through different motives, I may well have been their progenitor.

What became of the natural science I had studied there?
For a year or two after returning, I immersed myself in the Laboratorium, laboring with dogged sincerity to furnish evidential foundations for the true Mokuami doctrine.
To examine matters honestly: a people who had developed satisfactorily over millennia could not possibly be living such irrational lives.
This had been self-evident from the outset.

Now when it came time to advance one step further and attempt new Forschung on new foundations, my status and circumstances cast me out from the workplace.
Natural science, I bid you farewell.

Of course in the field of natural science, there are many capable friends far superior to someone like me who remain behind and strive diligently, so my being cast out constitutes no loss whatsoever to the nation or to humanity.

I only feel sorry for my friends who continue to struggle.
They gasp and labor like divers working under high pressure in places still lacking that vital atmosphere.
As proof of this absence of atmosphere, there still exists no Japanese word for Forschung.
Society does not feel compelled to articulate such concepts clearly.
Not that I take pride in it, but though I left behind coined terms like "achievements" and "academic collaboration" in the natural science community as parting gifts, there remains no concise and clear Japanese equivalent for Forschung.
A vague term like "research" proves practically useless.
Is poring over old texts supposed to count as research?

＊ ＊ ＊

Even after undergoing such experiences, my heart—which chases illusions of the future while disdaining present realities—remained unchanged.
Though life now descends the downhill slope, what shadow do I pursue?

"How might one come to know oneself?
Through mere contemplation, never shall it be achieved.
Yet through action perhaps attained.
Strive to fulfill thy duty.
Soon shalt thou know thy worth.
What constitutes thy duty?
The day's demand."
These were Goethe's words.

Taking the demands of the day as my duty and fulfilling them. This stood precisely opposed to scorning present realities. Why could I never position myself in such a state?

To discharge obligations answering each day's demands required knowing sufficiency. Knowing sufficiency—this I could not do. I remained an eternal malcontent. However I strained, I found myself where I ought not be. However I tried, gray birds refused to appear blue. I wandered lost along the path. I moved through waking dreams. Dreaming while seeking blue birds within dreams themselves. Though I demanded why—no answer came. This stood merely as simple fact. A fact residing within my consciousness.

I continue to descend life's downhill slope as I am.
And I know that death lies at the end of this descent.

However, that death holds no dread.
According to people's theories, the "fear of death" said to swell with advancing age is absent in me.

In my youth, I had moments of acutely feeling that before reaching this destination called death, I must solve the mystery lying before my eyes.
That urgency gradually became less acute.
It gradually faded.
It is not that I cannot see the mystery lying unresolved before me.
Nor is it that I do not believe I ought to solve this visible mystery.
It is simply that I have ceased growing restless in attempting to solve it.

Lately I heard about Philipp Mainländer and read through his philosophy of salvation.

This man acknowledges Hartmann's three stages of illusion.
However, he argues that it is unreasonable to demand one shatter all illusions and then affirm life.
He contends these are all illusions, but since dying proves futile, one cannot be told to pursue illusions.
People at first gazed upon death from afar, then turned their faces away in terror.
Then they drew a large circle around death and walked trembling.
The circle gradually grew smaller, until at last they threw their weary arms around death's neck and met its gaze eye to eye.
And Mainländer says that it is in death's eyes that one finds peace.

Having said that, Mainländer committed suicide at thirty-five.

I have no fear of death and at the same time no 'yearning for death' as described by Mainländer. Without fearing death or longing for it, I descend life's downhill slope.

＊ ＊ ＊

I have come to know that the mystery cannot be solved and no longer grow impatient trying to solve it, yet I cannot abandon it and ignore it entirely.
Detesting social gatherings and lacking what the world calls hobbies—not playing Go, not moving Chinese chess pieces, not striking billiard balls—since leaving the natural science laboratory and no longer holding test tubes in my hands, I have been compelled to read books during intervals of fulfilling my circumstances' daily demands, except on rare occasions when I view paintings or sculptures or listen to music.

In the course of breaking down all human happiness as illusions, Hartmann said something to this effect.
Among things most people consider happiness, there is nothing that does not leave one with lingering discomfort, like the aftereffects of heavy drinking.
He argues that only two things lack this: art and scholarship.
I have precisely nothing left to do outside of these two.
It is not that one calculates profit and loss to avoid lingering discomfort.
All forms of happiness are afflicted with lingering discomfort; none can bring forth true fulfillment.

I read a great many books.
And the types of books I read changed drastically as an inevitable result after leaving my workplace.

Ever since my time in the West, I had subscribed to fifteen or sixteen specialized academic journals such as Archive and Jahresberichte from their inaugural volumes, but once I stopped going to my workplace, there was no longer any need to consult detailed experimental records.
Originally, these periodicals were things purchased by schools and libraries, not by individuals; however, uncertain how much funding the government would allocate to such periodicals and unsure where I might end up working, I had bought and kept thousands of volumes—though from among them, I retained only two or three annual reports most convenient for tracking the evolution and progress of my specialized field, donating all the rest to government schools.

And in their place, I decided to purchase philosophy and literary books.
I read them as time allowed.

However, my manner of reading was no longer like that of a starving man devouring food, as it had been when I first read Hartmann.
I observed what those celebrated in ages past and those celebrated now had to say much like someone standing at a crossroads dispassionately watching the faces of passersby.

Though I observed dispassionately, I stood at the crossroads and often doffed my hat.
There were a great many people deserving respect among both those of the past and those of the present.

I doffed my hat but never thought to leave the crossroads and follow in anyone’s footsteps.
I encountered many teachers but never met a single true master.

I was often misunderstood because of this hat-doffing.
When I first returned after completing my studies in natural science and found myself in a debate about food, I refuted the arguments using the standards of Voit—the authority of that time. A certain senior then asked, “So do you put your faith in Voit?” To which I responded, “Not necessarily—I’m merely using Voit’s fortress to attack the enemy.” For this, I was roundly mocked by that senior.
I had merely doffed my hat to Voit as a temporary authority.
In exactly the same way, when I once weighed in on art criticism and was arguing based on Hartmann’s aesthetics, a certain junior hero declared:
“Hartmann’s aesthetics stem from Hartmann’s philosophy of the unconscious.”
“To argue based on that aesthetics, you must first believe in the philosophy of the unconscious,” he said.
Admittedly, Hartmann had connected his own aesthetics to his own worldview; but even if one were to temporarily sever that chain, his aesthetics were the most complete of their time and moreover rich in original insights.
In matters of aesthetics, I had merely doffed my hat to Hartmann as a temporary authority.
Much later, splendid evidence emerged that his aesthetics could stand independently from Hartmann’s worldview.
You need only open any book by aestheticians that came after Hartmann.
They invariably discuss what they call the modification of beauty.
That concept was created by Hartmann and did not exist before him.
Everyone expounds upon it without so much as uttering the syllable “Ha” from Hartmann’s name—they silence him completely.

Be that as it may, the person standing at the crossroads encountered many teachers but never met a single master. And I came to realize that no matter how skillfully constructed, any metaphysics was equivalent to a lyric poem.

＊ ＊ ＊

To my ears, wearied by metaphysics structured like the harmonic rhythms of Dutch church music, there came at times fragmented melodies of Aphorismen.

My consciousness, which had resisted submitting to Schopenhauer's Quietive that sought to crush the will to life and plunge it into nothingness, was lashed awake from its lethargic slumber.

This was Nietzsche’s philosophy of the Übermensch.

Yet this too proved not sustenance to nourish me, but wine to intoxicate.

I found it exhilarating to regard the passive, altruistic morality of the past as the herd morality of livestock.
I also found it amusing both to dismiss the socialists' cosmopolitan ideal of universal brotherhood as the morality of a foolish crowd rejecting all privileges and to deride anarchists' rampant behavior as dogs barking through European streets.
Yet I could not seriously accept how Cesare Borgia—who discarded reason's covenants and placed authority-seeking will at culture's core while freely wielding poison and daggers for lineage and ego—was upheld as rulers' moral exemplar.
Moreover when examining Hartmann's meticulous ethical theories through my eyes, even their vaunted evaluative innovations had lost much freshness.

And so, what of death?
"Eternal Recurrence" offered no consolation.
I pitied the author’s anguish as he struggled to lay down his pen in Zarathustra’s final stages.

After that, I witnessed trends like Paulsen’s gaining currency too, but holding no sympathy for any form of eclecticism, I refrained from engaging with such intellectual currents.

＊ ＊ ＊

In the knee-high cottage built long ago as a mock villa, there was only a single item, as sparse as a Buddhist monk’s hundred-and-one possessions.

Moreover, the venerable Master had turned wall after wall into shelves, and shelf after shelf into books.

And to the Master, who appeared to have severed all contact with the world, packages of books arrived from the West.
During his lifetime, through the hands of the Notar who administered his modest yet entire assets, the majority of the interest payments were sent to a certain Western bookseller.

Even in old age, The Master possessed vision like that of black people, reading old books as people of the world would visit a cherished deceased person.
People of the world go to the market and meet new people; they read new books in the same manner.

When weary, he walks the sand dune and gazes at the cluster of red pines.
He descends to the sandy beach and gazes at the stormy sea.

He faces the vegetable meal recommended by Hachijūhachi and staves off hunger.

Outside of books, what the venerable Master amused himself with was a small loupe.
He examined small wildflowers plucked from the sand dune.
In addition, there was a Zeiss microscope.
There was a Merz telescope for observing small creatures within droplets of seawater.
He gazed at the stars in the clear night sky.
These were the Master's occasional diversions to recall his memories of natural science.

The venerable Master could not rid himself of that old feeling akin to chasing illusions even after coming to this cottage.
And reflecting on the past, I thought such things.
Those who possess the right to remain discontent with the demands of day are likely none but geniuses.
Were I to stand upon such heights as making great discoveries in natural science or producing grand ideas and works in philosophy or art—wouldn't I too have found contentment in the present?
I was unable to achieve that.
And so I supposed this must be why such feelings cling to me.

The seeds sown in the fields of the mind during one's youth are not easily uprooted.

The venerable Master, observing the vicissitudes in philosophy and literature with a cold eye, simultaneously kept a watchful eye, albeit from a distance, on the laborious work of scientists akin to stacking heavy stones one by one.

Since the old Catholic Brunetière, who once served as editor-in-chief of Revue des Deux Mondes, proclaimed the bankruptcy of science, many years had passed—yet science showed no signs of going bankrupt.

Among all impermanent human creations, one of those with the greatest future was still science, I suppose.

There，the venerable Master once again thought such things.
The diseases that had become humanity’s great calamities could now be prevented and treated through science’s power.
Smallpox was prevented through vaccination.
Using artificially cultured bacteria and serum from inoculated animals，they could prevent typhoid and cure syphilis.
Even a virulent disease like Pest had its pathogens discovered，and preventive measures were now in sight.
The pathogen of leprosy had also been identified.
Even if Tuberculin had not achieved its anticipated efficacy against tuberculosis，there was no lack of clues for prevention.
Even malignant tumors like cancer—now transplantable into animals—might sooner or later yield preventive clues.
Syphilis had now come to be cured by Salvarsan.
I think that Elias Metschnikaff’s optimistic philosophy—like some future-bound hope—might not necessarily prove incapable of indefinitely prolonging human life.

Thus, with the sentiment of an unfulfilled dream—neither fearing death nor longing for it—the venerable Master spent what little remained of his nearly depleted life.

The memories of that venerable Master's past would occasionally, like a long chain, make him survey decades' worth of traces in an instant.
At such times, the venerable Master's piercing eyes would open wide, fixed upon the distant, distant sea and sky.

This is a scrap I abruptly wrote and discarded during such moments.

(March–April 1911 [Meiji 44])