Pathway to Japanese Literature

The uncovered two-wheeled carriage carrying a middle-aged gentleman and a young woman vanished from the cultivated lands of the highland region into the depths of the dark primeval forest.
Fujisawa—the wolf-like gaunt landowner of these cultivated lands—was returning toward Sapporo accompanied by Chiyoe, the most beautiful woman in the settlement.

When the larch forest ended, the road lay buried under fallen leaves that hid every patch of bare ground.
Dense clusters of deciduous broadleaf trees grew on both sides—Japanese beech and Itaya maple, Saitonoki and Ōnara oak intermingled with large-leaf katsura.
The carriage bounced and jolted across this leafy carpet.
From above came yellow leaves fluttering down through shafts of afternoon sunlight.
Dark brown tree trunks wore bright red ivy like bloodstained bandages.
And through gaps in the yellow and crimson foliage peered bleached treetops—dead Todomatsu pines covering the slope like exposed bones beneath their blue-black canopy.

“Hyah!”
“Hut!”

Each time the carriage driver urged the horses onward, the carriage creaked and groaned as it advanced over waves of fallen leaves—sinking and rolling, rising and rolling along its path.

In the shade of the undergrowth within the larch forest, a young farmer who had been holding his breath for over an hour waiting for the carriage to approach stood up at the sound of the driver urging the horses. While holding his hunting rifle at the ready, he hid behind a large Japanese beech tree and peered toward the road. The middle-aged gentleman had wrapped his arm in his Western suit around the young woman’s back and was whispering gently to her. The young woman nodded quietly with a slight smile. The young farmer felt all the blood in his body surge up at once.

From the shadow of the tree, the young farmer aimed his rifle’s muzzle—loaded with a five-momme bullet—at the carriage.
His heart continued to beat violently without ceasing.
And while he was taking aim, the carriage lurched heavily, creaking and groaning as it changed direction.
At the same time, the dense trees concealed the carriage.
The entire ground was covered in fallen leaves, making it impossible to discern where the path lay.
The carriage driver chose spots where the trees stood far apart and no bear bamboo grass grew, each time steering the horses in a new direction.
Each time, as if by chance, the carriage would swerve and escape the rifle’s muzzle.
Evading and hiding, evading and taking shelter in the shadows of trees.

While repeating similar failures time and again, the young farmer held his hunting rifle at the ready, aiming at the carriage as he chased after it.
The carriage, bathed in crimson and yellow fallen leaves that glittered as they scattered in the afternoon sun, rumbled as it wove its way through the trees.
The young man would flit like a rabbit from one large tree’s shadow to another, then aim his rifle muzzle at the carriage from there.

Suddenly, a mountain shower swept in.
The depths of the deep forest suddenly grew dim.
The people on the carriage hurriedly raised their umbrellas.
The shower passed stealthily over the primeval forest.
As nature’s serene music faded into the distance, the depths of the deep forest grew bright once more.
From the lofty cobalt-blue sky, the sun shone in obliquely.
In the bright sunbeams, water vapor tangled murkily.
The sea of fallen leaves began to glitter fiercely.

By now, the road had traversed the one-and-a-half-*ri* width of the primeval forest and was approaching the railway-line village.
The opportunity took a sudden turn there.
The young farmer carried his rifle and dashed through the bear bamboo grass toward the front of the carriage.
Then, from the shadow of the trees, he set his aim on the road and waited for the carriage.

“There!
“Hut!”

The sound of the carriage driver urging his horses rang out, and the creaking noise of the carriage body drew near.
Before long, the horse’s head emerged from the shadow of the trees, and its torso moved from right to left across his line of sight.
The young farmer, his chest pounding violently, clung to his hunting rifle as he placed his finger on the trigger.
About thirty seconds!
And then, a figure appeared from left to right.
It was an Ainu man.

The young farmer opened his eyes wide in astonishment, let out a sigh of relief, and planted his hunting rifle at his feet.
The Ainu man stood there blocking the young farmer’s line of sight, watching the rare carriage travelers until they disappeared.
The chance rolled away with the carriage from the primeval forest toward the village.

*

Yūgo clutched the hunting rifle in his right hand and crashed back through the crackling bear bamboo thicket.
His head buzzed with adrenaline while his legs hung numb and useless beneath him.
He staggered like a drunkard fighting gravity.
His throat burned with thirst.
Yūgo found himself stumbling toward the mountain stream that cut through the primeval forest near their fields.
He jerked his head about like a spooked animal—lurching forward in bursts, then freezing mid-step—a marionette with its strings tangled.

The experience of having let the opportunity slip away was one that Yūgo—burning with extreme jealousy and driven by vengeance—wanted to grind between his front teeth. He was unbearably disappointed and frustrated. Yet he couldn't help feeling the Ainu man had saved his future from his own reckless scheme. But the fire of Yūgo's vengeance remained unquenched. He strove to devise the most cunning of ruthless methods.

Along the banks of that clear mountain stream flowing into the Urahoro River lay several half-rotted large trees.
Yūgo found it troublesome to step over the large trees, so he used his hunting rifle as a staff and sidled from one tree to another.
He jumped down to the riverbed and gulped water.

“Yūgo!”

He looked up in surprise.
He wiped his wet lips with his palm while opening his eyes wide to scan his surroundings.

“Where have you been? Looking pale and carrying a rifle like that…”

Old Man Sahē of the same cultivated land was smiling on the opposite bank.

“A bear showed up. I wanted its hide, so I chased after it, but…”

“A bear? Wasn’t it a doe?”

Old Man Sahē said this with a smile and rowed across the river carrying a fish basket.

“Well, whatever the case, don’t go doing anything reckless that’ll ruin yourself. I get how you feel, but…”

“I’m telling you, it really was a bear!”

While overwhelmed by tearful emotion at Old Man Sahē’s comforting words, Yūgo retorted as if defying them.

“You don’t gotta lie to me.—Even if you do lie, it ain’t necessarily bad.”
“But you can’t go spouting lies that can’t see their own future.”
“They call me the village’s biggest liar, but I ain’t never told a lie that couldn’t glimpse tomorrow.”
“Folks who can’t see the future ain’t fit to tell proper lies neither.—But bear or doe, they ain’t ridin’ off in no carriage.”

Yūgo quietly lowered his eyes, which had been fixed on Old Man Sahē’s face.
At the same time, his complexion turned deathly pale.

“There’s no need to worry.
If you’ve got that much guts and resolve, I’ll put more thought into helpin’ you.—You don’t know the real truth ’bout how your old man got killed. Believin’ all them village lies, you think settlin’ your own grudge is all that matters…”

“What was really behind all those lies?”

Yūgo stared intently at Old Man Sahē’s face once more.
Old Man Sahē—infamous as Liar Sahē—had a habit of twisting the corners of his mouth whenever he told a lie.
However, that very twisting of his mouth served to give his stories greater veracity.
But today, Old Man Sahē spoke without twisting the corners of his mouth.

“But y’see, to get that across, I gotta start from the beginnin’ of the cultivated land… Well, let’s get a fire goin’ while we’re at it… It’s turned damn cold…”

Yūgo propped the hunting rifle against a large fallen tree and walked through the autumn rain-soaked fallen leaves, searching for dead branches.

*

Yūgo’s father, Okamoto Goryō, had returned to his hometown after a long absence, accompanied by his young, beautiful wife—whom he had met in Tokyo—and his small son Yūgo. Having moved from Tokyo to Sapporo, where they worked as reporters for a minor newspaper and sometimes composed poetry, their flamboyant clothing and lifestyle drew bitter resentment from the village farmers.

“Dressed like that—where d’you think he’d been livin’, eh? What’d he even do out there?”
“That quarrelsome brute with his thick arms—couldn’t have been up to nothin’ decent.”

However, that malicious talk was the envious words of farmers gasping for breath in a life of endless hardships.

It was shortly after the war with Russia had ended, and Japan’s rural areas were generally impoverished.
Their village appeared to be especially devastated.
The farmers whose breadwinners had been drafted into the war were unable to fully cultivate the land they had previously held, so they came to feel their own land as a burden instead.
Not only that, but at a time when they increasingly needed cash, having no means of income, they considered mortgaging their land to borrow money temporarily.
They would convert the period without breadwinners into cash and then buy back the land into their own hands when the breadwinners returned.
There was no sweeter deal than this.
They relinquished their land for a pittance.—However, even when the war finally ended and their breadwinners returned, they could not reclaim those fields as their own.
The borrowed money accrued interest upon interest, and the land claimed tenant fees.
Exhaustion suddenly assailed the rural villages.

It was then that Okamoto Goryō returned with a splendid story.
The story was that his acquaintance possessed a vast tract of land—1.5 million tsubo (approximately 1,239 acres)—in Hokkaido that he was willing to offer free of charge.
However, it had been received from the Hokkaido Government Office under the condition that it be developed within ten years; although people from over twenty families had been cultivating it, they were struggling to fully clear the land, so if they did not complete the reclamation within the remaining three years, it would be confiscated by the government office.
But that would be a waste.
Would anyone be willing to cultivate it?
He would provide the land as something reclaimed by the Hokkaido Government Office and was willing to lend food provisions during cultivation.
It was said that Fujisawa, the landowner there, had stated this could be repaid gradually each year once the cultivated land began turning a profit.
And Goryō argued that even if those who produced food could no longer eat, switching to other occupations would only result in even less food.
Therefore, the rural unemployed should go to cultivated land as much as possible and produce their own food.
In that sense, he said he intended to go alone but asked if there was anyone who would join him.

Okamoto’s story about cultivating new land generated tremendous popularity among the villagers who had to work the fields.
The malicious talk about him suddenly transformed into praise.

“That man really does have something remarkable about him.”
“I wish he’d take me along too.”

Thus, there as well, a group of migrant settlers numbering close to twenty families had been formed.

*

They migrated to Hokkaido in late spring.
The primeval forest of the highland region was already adorned with darkened pale purple new buds, but it was still too cold for camping out.
However, the nearly twenty cultivated huts already established were all far too small to have any room to spare for others.
They burned dead trees in the deep forest near the cultivated land and spent the night there.
And from the next day, they began building huts each as they pleased.

The area selected for cultivation was a virgin land surrounded by primeval forest.
It was a section of wild field measuring thirty chō in width and about fifty chō in length.
Amid thickets of withered bush clover, miscanthus, and wild roses—intermingled with great decayed trees that had lived out their lifespans—healthy large-leaved oaks dotted the area in patches.
And here and there, the primeval forest zones jutted into the wild field like capes.

Their primitive life began there.
With the deep forest at their backs, they aligned the entrances of their huts to face south.
When the sun rose, the men would go out to the field and dig up tree roots while the women broke apart clods of earth; when the sun set, they would return to their huts and sleep.
Under terms requiring repayment in annual installments after four or five years, only a small amount of rice, miso, and salt was loaned from the landowner—everything else remained entirely self-sufficient.
They first sowed buckwheat and cultivated millet.
Next came corn, potatoes, and pumpkins; then adzuki beans, two types of soybeans (white and black), barley, and wheat—and as the land became more fertile, they gradually diversified their crops.
But reaching that point had been grueling.

“If we’re gonna work our arms off like this—eating food fit for horses, wearing rags like beggars—we could’ve lived no worse back in our hometown…”

The young women said this to each other and wept.

“What the hell’re you yammerin’ about?”
“You think beggarin’s allowed back home?”
“Beggars gotta go beg in other lands, don’t they?”
“We came here meanin’ to be beggars ourselves!”
“We’re here to claim land!”
“Ain’t gonna get none wearin’ anything better’n proper rags!”

Sahē said this and made everyone laugh.

Everyone would be energized by the promise of receiving land, but when three or four years passed in a self-sufficient life where they couldn’t even make a single garment as they had when first migrating, their clothes became worse than rags.
During their snowed-in winter seclusion when they couldn’t work, subsisting solely on potatoes and pumpkins meant that by springtime, their faces had already taken on a fruit-like yellow hue, losing all traces of human complexion.

“If we’re working ourselves to the bone like this, even back home, we could’ve bought a tan or two of land ourselves without needing anyone to give it to us.”

In this way, even the men would say.

“Spouting nothing but nonsense—you lot don’t know the difference in value between land you’ve bought and made your own, and land you’re cultivating like this to make your own.”
“Land you’ve bought is just someone else’s property becoming your own, ain’t it?”
“Cultivation—you see, for every bit you cultivate, the world’s land multiplies.”
“It’s work that expands the world’s cultivated land.”
“Cultivation, you see…”

Sahē’s stories of this sort often left everyone both impressed and laughing.
Above all, Goryō’s wife—that is, Yūgo’s mother—delighted in Sahē’s stories of that sort.
Yet it was also Yūgo’s mother who was most severely tormented by homesickness.
In Sahē’s view, he told lies and spouted nonsense to make everyone forget their loneliness and free them from homesickness—but this very act had over time established him as the settlement’s foremost master liar.
However, Sahē still did not stop telling lies.

Truly, from our side, only two or three people would go to the village with a small station about twice a month to fetch rice, miso, and salt, while from the other side, the postal deliveryman came only once every two weeks at most.
Not even police officers made their rounds.
And when autumn came, bears would emerge one after another from within the primeval forest.
The cultivated land erupted into a great commotion.
All members of their nearly forty families would shout, scream, and fight against the bears.
Their unity had never been marshaled into action with such earnestness as at this time.
Apart from that—it was a primeval forest with almost no contact beyond its boundaries.
A world where one couldn’t survive without lies, nonsense, and love.

*

For three years, they frantically dug up the cultivated land.
They grew only buckwheat, potatoes, pumpkins, and such—just enough to supplement the food loaned by the landowner and barely stave off their hunger—and poured all other labor into cultivation.
It was an effort to completely make that land their own.
In short, it was a three-year endeavor to strip the skin from the virgin land.

In any case, when the initial cultivation was finally completed, the landowner Fujisawa made his first appearance there.
And he built a wooden office near their huts.
Fujisawa, who had until now been running a teahouse-restaurant hybrid business in Sapporo, declared that for his health’s sake he would reside there only from summer through autumn. He aimed to position himself between the migrant settlers and urbanites—selling off the settlement’s harvests on their behalf, procuring necessary supplies for them—and thereby manage their sales, purchases, and bartering.
Simultaneously, he demanded repayment of his food loans through grains from their cultivated land while planning to spend summers and autumns there raising poultry and cultivating gardens.

From around that time, police officers began to occasionally make their way through the primeval forest and come around from the direction of the village. It was a police officer rumored to be terribly afraid of caterpillars.

It was a certain midsummer day.
The people of the cultivated land were engaged in road maintenance on the path that ran from before the office through the primeval forest to the village.
And just as their group was resting at the entrance to the primeval forest, there came around the young police officer said to fear caterpillars.
Baring their skin while smoking tobacco and conversing together, they hurriedly slipped into their garments with flustered haste and wordlessly bowed deeply.
Then they sat back down there.

The young police officer gave a slight nod and, smiling, walked toward Sahē.
Then the police officer said.

“So, you’re the one they call Sahē?”

“Yes, I am Sahē, sir…”

Sahē stood up and turned surprised eyes toward the officer. He twitched the corner of his mouth and smiled.

“You’re rumored to be this settlement’s master liar—how about showing me one of your famous performances right here in front of me? Your reputation—there’s no one in Urahoro who hasn’t heard of it. Hey, try telling one of those lies right here in front of me.”

“Why, sir—why only in your presence would I…”

Sahē twisted the corner of his mouth into an ingratiating smile as he spoke.

“What difference does whose presence you’re in make?”
“Come on, give it a try.”
“That famous skill of yours…”

“I do spin all kinds of harmless lies, but…before you, sir…With others, perhaps, but…”

“If I say it’s fine, then you must stop lying to others altogether.”
“But I don’t mind you trying to show off your skills here before me.”

Everyone exchanged glances and quietly watched Sahē being put through the wringer.

“Please, sir, I beg your pardon…”

Sahē fled behind the police officer.
The police officer smiled and lit a cigarette.

“Whoa!”

Suddenly, Sahē shouted.
From behind the police officer, Sahē retreated about one ken in a great panic.
His face was tense with an expression of surprise.
Everyone looked at Sahē in unison.
Sahē glared and directed his gaze at the police officer’s back.
The young police officer looked suspicious.

“What’s wrong?
Sahē!”

“It’s a caterpillar!”
“A huge one!”

Sahē widened his eyes and twisted the corner of his mouth.

“A caterpillar?
Where?
Where is it?”

“It’s on your back, sir!
I’ve never seen such a terrifying caterpillar before. What kinda caterpillar is this?”

Sahē stared at the police officer’s back while cautiously approaching.

“What? On my back? Get it off! Get it off!”

The young police officer turned his back toward Sahē.

“I’m too scared to remove such a terrifying caterpillar.”
“Take off yer clothes, sir.”

“Don’t say that—just hurry up and get it off! Quick!”

“Sir, take off yer clothes, the clothes…”

Someone nearby tried to circle around behind him, but the police officer frantically stripped off his uniform.

“Where is it?”
“Hmm, Sahē—there’s nothing here at all, is there?”

The young police officer said while trying to find the caterpillar on his clothes.

“This, sir, is about where my lie begins…”

Everyone suppressed laughter threatening to burst from their mouths and exchanged reserved smiles.
The police officer turned bright red.
He was far too young to laugh it off with a “Well, I’ve been had!”
He was far too inflexible.

*

Cultivating the cleared land was no easy task.
The young, untamed soil seemed ready to revert to its former state at any moment.
Driven by the single-minded belief that making the land wholly theirs would solve everything, the settlers found their freshly stripped fields—no sooner had they finished tilling one plot—already reclaimed by bear bamboo grass, wild brambles, and miscanthus as they worked on another.
The autumn harvest they reaped from those grasses was scarcely enough to feed them during the first year or two.

However, Fujisawa the landowner could no longer endure the slow progress of the cultivated land.
He conveyed his feelings even to Okamoto Goryō, the representative of the immigrant settlers.

“Now, Mr. Okamoto.”
“Now that the reclamation work has been completed, don’t you think it’s about time we had those food provisions returned?”

Cowardly Fujisawa spoke calmly and in a consultative tone.

“You can’t be serious.”
“Everyone’s working half-starved as it is.”
“Well, I suppose you’ll have to endure it another two or three years.”

Okamoto was stubborn and knew nothing of negotiation.

“But you see, even with interest rates practically at zero—if I keep lending like this forever—*I* won’t last either.”
“If only we could hurry along just one—”

“Say that now, Mr. Fujisawa, and you’ll get yourself killed.”
“They’ve only just caught their breath… The original deal was repayment’d start once the fields yielded grain… There’s some harvest now, sure—but not enough to fill their own bellies…”

“Well, it’s not like I’m asking you to force anything back right this instant.”

Fujisawa directed an ingratiating smile at Okamoto Goryō’s displeased expression as he said this and fled the scene.

However, Fujisawa the landowner could not bring himself to give up merely at that.
The following year, he stealthily made his rounds among the immigrant settlers while avoiding Goryō.
They decided to repay little by little despite their hardships.
Goryō later heard about this and became furious.

“Mr. Fujisawa.”
“That’s going too far, don’t you think?”
“For another year or two—couldn’t you have waited?”
“Just what did you promise me in the first place?”

Goryō went out to the office and confronted the landowner.

“Now, Mr. Okamoto, let’s remain calm… I’m by no means insisting on forcing anything—it’s just that I happened to mention it in passing during our initial discussions, saying we’d proceed if possible, and things somehow worked out successfully… So for this occasion, please… calmly overlook it.”

With these words, the landowner fled from Goryō’s sharp interrogation and eyes blazing with indignation.

Yet Fujisawa—like a spring compressed under restraint—would spring back to his former self when released, soon forgetting that moment’s terror.
When the loaned provisions began returning steadily, he brought a new proposition to Okamoto Goryō.

“Now, Mr. Okamoto.”
“Taxes are now being levied on this land too, you see.”
“If we could just... collect some tenant farming fees...”

In the middle of speaking, Fujisawa looked at Goryō’s face.
Goryō continued staring at Fujisawa’s face with glinting eyes without uttering a word.
And Goryō clamped down on his lower lip.

“Now, Mr. Okamoto, it’s not that I’m insisting on anything unreasonable, you understand.”
“Well, you see—”

“What exactly did you promise me from the beginning?”

Goryō spoke in a thick, rust-coated voice that verged on shouting.
Yet for humans steeped in greed, old promises held no weight when new hungers demanded satisfaction.
They were the kind who’d cast aside self-respect, morality, love—even their own lives—should circumstance demand it.

“The prior arrangement was precisely that—a prior arrangement.”
“However—”

“Didn’t you say you’d give it to the people who cultivated it, pretending it had been seized by the Hokkaido Government? Even we—if we’d meant to cultivate that land through such hardships without taking it from you—could’ve claimed as much as we wanted. You only got that land because you wanted to skip the red tape—land you couldn’t farm yourself, land they’d have taken from you anyway—wasn’t that it?”

“But those procedures, you see… they cost a fair bit of money—”

“I’ll cover the money used for procedures.”
“However, when it comes to tenant fees, I won’t pay a single grain or even a sen.”
“The land you’re currently using only became yours because we cultivated it.”
“Isn’t it more than enough that you’ve claimed such a vast tract of land? Even if it’s registered in your name as property—if you hadn’t cultivated it into farmland, it never would’ve become yours.”
“Even the Hokkaido Government meant to give it to those who cultivated it…”

“Enough. Enough. It’s my fault for showing greed, so I’ll relinquish everything to all of you. Please purchase the rights at whatever price suits your fancy.”

Fujisawa said this and flashed another ingratiating smile.

“When you have the money.”
“However, we want those rights transferred to us quickly.”
“It’s only natural.”

“Certainly.”
“Certainly.”
“We could do that even tomorrow.”

As he spoke these words, Fujisawa felt his long-cherished plans crumbling away because of Okamoto Goryō.

＊

After making the rounds of the settlement’s huts, Fujisawa crushed the fallen leaves underfoot and returned to the office. He took a seat at the table by the window. Then he began working the abacus—once collection began, at seventy sen per *tan* across seven hundred fifty *chōbu*, 750×7 would total five thousand two hundred fifty yen. Next came farm tool loans for nineteen households—19×5 made ninety-five yen. And then there were those who had borrowed food provisions...

Suddenly, beyond the glass window came the hard clatter of military boots.
Fujisawa kept his hand on the abacus and turned his gaze toward the footsteps.
Beyond the half-open glass window, someone came walking briskly in this direction.
Broad shoulders slanting upward.
A woolen hood pulled low over the eyes.
In the twilight, a black mustache emerged distinctly.

Okamoto Goryō!
Fujisawa felt a thunderous wave of dizziness.
He stood up while reaching toward the side of the table.
The cowardly heart suddenly began to clamor.
Because of that bastard, everything would be completely ruined again!
Fujisawa took up the hunting rifle from beside the table and immediately aimed it at his violently pounding chest.
And he thrust the muzzle out the window.

“Hey!
Stop this foolishness!”

Goryō shouted while pressing his right arm against his face.
At the same time, the sound of a gunshot rang out.
Goryō staggered and fell with a thud.

Fujisawa took a fur coat from the corner of the room and went out.
With trembling hands, he put the fur coat on Goryō, who was feebly stirring.
Then he sighed.
Yet his entire body kept shaking.
He went back into the room, grabbed fire tongs, and went out again.
To fashion a matching hole in the coat over the chest wound.
When he hurled the tongs into the thicket, a farmhand approached at the gunshot's report.

“Hey! Go to the police box and come back. Hurry. Go to the police box and bring the police officer here. Make it quick!”

Fujisawa shouted in a frenzied panic.
The young man, driven by the voice, immediately broke into a run.
At that moment, Sahē arrived.

“Ah, I’ve done something terrible.”
“I’ve done something terrible!”
“Ah, ah…”

Fujisawa let out a sigh as he spoke.

“What’s happened here? There was the sound of a gunshot, wasn’t there?”

Sahē said that and crouched down.

“Ah! Isn’t that Mr. Okamoto?”

Shouting, Sahē jumped back. And stared holes into Fujisawa’s face.

“Well, you see—Mr. Okamoto apparently took my fur coat from where I wasn’t around and went out wearing it.”
“I didn’t notice that either, you see.”
“Just then, I was thinking—it’s about that time of year when the bears start coming out again.”
“Just then, Mr. Okamoto came here wearing this fur coat… Anyway, I’ve done something terrible.”
“Ah, ah…”

Fujisawa continued sighing.
Sahē was able to discern from Fujisawa’s story a secret plan for the future.
Sahē, however, continued to remain silent, believing he should not say anything until the police officer arrived.

A considerable amount of time passed before the police officer arrived.
Before long, from the surrounding huts, people began gathering one by one, two by two, and noisily surrounded Goryō’s corpse.
Before long, a bonfire was started.
At Goryō’s house—the farthest point from there—they were supposed to keep the news from reaching, but before anyone knew it, his wife had caught wind of it and emerged.
Yūgo, his son, had reached that sensitive age of adolescence by then, but he did not come running there.
His composed mother had entrusted him to a neighbor to prevent him from witnessing the scene.
And Goryō’s wife was quietly weeping in the dimness behind the crowd.

“We came all the way from Tokyo to end up like this… What are we supposed to do now… The children can’t even work yet…”

After saying this, Yūgo’s Mother was sobbing.

“Mrs. Okamoto. Please do not worry about this matter. The responsibility lies with me. Please do not trouble yourself over this. I will bear full responsibility.”

Yet there was no reason her heart should find peace from such words. Her once-calm composure had been violently upended, leaving her in a frenzied state where she longed to rend everything apart. She kept weeping without cease.

When the police officer arrived, night had fully fallen. Standing beside the bonfire’s glow, the officer interrogated Fujisawa. Fujisawa reiterated the same explanation he had given Sahē.

“So was your relationship with this man such that he would borrow and wear your coat without permission?”

“Yes.”
“He was a friend of mine for over ten years.”

“So it’s entirely negligence then?”

“But I won’t feel settled unless I’m punished.”

While these words were being exchanged, Sahē walked over to Goryō’s wife, who was sobbing quietly.

“Was he wearing that fur coat when he left the house?”

In a low voice, Sahē tried asking.

“He left in the morning and hadn’t come back since…”

She did not doubt Fujisawa in the least.
She accepted his outward appearance exactly as it was.
Sahē returned to where the police officer was.

“Anyway, it wasn’t so dark you couldn’t tell a bear from a man.”

Sahē thus inserted words into their conversation.

“Hey! You shut up. I can’t have you spreading half-baked lies here right now.”

The police officer glared at Sahē and said.

“No, no—it was after it had gotten completely dark…”

“Very well. Then you must come to the police box tonight—I’ll need to take you to headquarters with me. Take this coat.”

“Sir, please take me along as a witness.”

Sahē pleaded while bowing his head—a gesture he seldom made. He had meant to reveal Fujisawa’s secret scheme that he’d seen through.

“A witness?”
“If we make you a witness, who knows what lies you’d spew?”
“I can’t have a master liar testifying.”

“Then how about someone else…”

“Does someone who’s turned themselves in need a witness? That can wait until later.—Now come on—take that fur coat.”

The police officer urged Fujisawa and left the place.

*

Fujisawa’s charge was negligent homicide.
It ended with a fine.
And Yūgo and his mother—the bereaved family of Goryō—were taken into Fujisawa’s custody.

“No, you needn’t trouble yourself—I will return to Tokyo.”
“Once I’m back in Tokyo, I should be able to make a living somehow.”

Thus spoke Goryō’s wife.
However, Fujisawa had been cultivating the land himself using five or six farmhands even before that, so he needed a woman to cook for them and tend to his personal needs.
Up until then, a farm woman had been coming from the cultivation hut to handle those tasks, but he said he wanted Goryō’s wife to take on that role.

“Unless you do that for me, I simply won’t feel satisfied.”
“The wages will be twice what they’ve been up to now.”

Because Fujisawa insisted on this, his mother moved from the cultivation hut to the office while taking Yūgo with her.
At the same time, Fujisawa withdrew to Sapporo.

She passed a desolate winter filled with days of stifled sobs.

The following spring.
Fujisawa came out to the cultivated land earlier than usual.
And throughout that summer, Yūgo’s mother had to live with Fujisawa in the office.
Of course, Yūgo was also with them, but the five or six farmhands had been living in another building all along.

Fujisawa, for some reason, was acting extremely frenetically that year.
He threw himself into everything with vigor.
When autumn came, he began strictly collecting the food expenses he had loaned out.
And he proposed that from this year onward, they would finally begin collecting tenant farming fees as well, and set about putting it into practice.

“The tenant farming fees, huh? Wasn’t this land supposed to be ours once we cultivated it?”

Sahē said in the tone of an exasperated man.

“This is no joke. This land required capital investment, you know.”

“So we were supposed to get it directly from the Hokkaido Government and cultivate it ourselves, huh? By now, it would’ve been ours…”

Sahē tried saying this, but it was already too late for such realizations.

Fujisawa had spent two summers living with Yūgo’s mother at that office, but when the first snow came and it was finally time to withdraw to Sapporo for the year, he took her with him and returned.—Later rumors had it that Fujisawa, having recently lost his wife and lacking any children, had taken her as his second wife.

Yūgo was thrown into the ranks of the farmhands starting in the summer of the following year.
And Fujisawa’s vigorous actions accelerated with increasing momentum.
The collection of tenant farming fees was strictly enforced.
Nor did he ever relent in collecting the loaned expenses during cultivation.
The group of migrant settlers, poorer than any others, found in their dark and wretched days that their children did nothing but multiply.

At that time, there were three beautiful girls in the cultivated land.
Oito.
Osen.
Chiyoe.
The three were taken to Sapporo one after another over five years, all in the same manner.—First, they were hired as cooks from the fields to the office.
The wages were remarkably good.
Through her work alone, her family was sufficiently sustained.
On top of being fed at the office, even after paying the tenant farming fees and borrowed cultivation expenses, her wages still had something left over.
So those poor parents, though they pitied their daughters, showed no discontent on their faces.—However, the young men who had found bright, vibrant meaning in their lives through loving those girls right before their eyes could not be calmed by this.
They stormed out of the cultivated land.
And Kōkichi, who had been Oito’s partner, was working as a station attendant at a small station near Urahoro.
Osen’s partner Heiroku went to Ikeda and became a carriage driver.
Just as Sahē and the others thought they worked themselves to starvation only for their harvest to be taken away, so too did the young men think all beautiful things were taken away, leaving behind only the ugly and defiled.

*

“Spineless bastards, I tell ya.
“Kōkichi and Heiroku too.
“If those bastards had half your guts, we all wouldn’t be stuck in this mess by now…”

Old Man Sahē continued speaking leisurely as he smoldered his tobacco.

“You really do take after your old man, Yūgo.
“That boldness of yours…”

“It ain’t guts.
“I just can’t take it no more.”

Having said this, Yūgo crouched down by the campfire and restacked the dead branches.
White smoke rose.
From the deep canopy, fallen leaves scattered down.
A wind began to blow.

“Right, right.”
“That’s why you’re doing it.”
“All at once—avenge your father’s death, save everyone in the settlement, and settle your own grudge too…”

“Ah, I’ll damn well do it!”

Yūgo stroked the hunting rifle on his lap as he said this.

“On top of that—you’ll even get to live with your mother again.”
“Right? Isn’t that right?”

“That inhuman mother—I don’t give a damn about her.”

“No—but here’s the thing: you’ve got to talk to your mother and get her to make this cultivated land ours. Otherwise we’re done for.”
“That’s the part I need you to handle.”

“But do things in this world really go that smoothly?”
“Once I take him down, I’m prepared to die myself.”

“So you see, if you shoot someone in a carriage, they won’t call it a bear attack. Listen. You’ve got to think that part through real careful-like.”

Fallen leaves scattered again in a flurry.
White smoke drifted sideways.
The wind picked up in force.
And within the primeval forest, the evening dusk was quietly drawing near.

*

To the cultivated land that year as well, the early winter when bears emerge was drawing near.

It was a pitch-black night.
It was still early in the night.
From the wooden huts scattered across the cultivated land, the faint afterglow of lamplight from night work leaked uniformly from each one.
Even after ten-odd years had passed, they still had to continue their night work within those initial makeshift huts.
The weather-beaten cabin, unchanged for ten-odd years, had split wall planks through which wind howled and snow blew in.
The roof was rotten and rain leaked through.
However, they had to lead a bleak, hopeless existence in a future devoid of light where their initial dreams had been betrayed.

Against the backdrop of the primeval forest, the office stood slightly removed from the settlers' huts scattered here and there.
A barn, a stable, and the building where the farmhands slept stood darkly lined up beside it.
Bright light streamed out from the office.
Okin, who was soon to be taken to Sapporo, was sewing.

The office light went out.
Okin went to sleep as well.

“Bear! Bear!”

A young voice suddenly shouted.
In the darkness, a figure moved.

“Bear! Watch out for the stable!”

Torchlight emerged from settler huts.
Footsteps clashed together.
The dogs began to bark.

“Bear! Bear!”

A kerosene can started clanging.
The sound of wooden clappers being beaten.
The sound of buckets being struck.
The people shouted to one another.

“Bear! Bear!”

“It’s heading for the office!”

Torches rushed toward the office from all directions.
Dark figures streamed after them.
The dogs barked at one another.
The kerosene can clanged, the wooden clappers resounded, and the bucket rang.
The people shouted to one another.
The entire cultivated land quaked and roared.

“Bear! Bear!”

“A bear, you say?”

Into the dim torchlight emerged Fujisawa the landowner from the office.
A gunshot rang out.
Fujisawa groaned, staggered, and collapsed with a thud.

“Whoa! This ain’t no bear—it’s Mr. Fujisawa, I tell ya.”

Old Man Sahē said as he approached Fujisawa, who lay collapsed and groaning.

“Zenzo, you go to the police station with someone.”
“When a bear showed up and we were chasing it around, Mr. Fujisawa suddenly appeared there—so I mistook him for the bear and shot him by accident—that’s what you’ll say.”
“Got it?”
“It was a case of mistaken identity with the bear.”
“Make sure you explain that part properly!”

“If they ask who shot him?”

“Oh, tell them I’m the one who shot him.”

Yūgo said haughtily, using his hunting rifle as a staff.

“Yūgo, you haven’t been to Sapporo, have you?”
“Tell them I’m the one who shot him.”

With these words, Sahē wrested the hunting rifle from Yūgo.
The two young men ran off toward the police station.

“This evil bear’s finally been put down.”

“What kind of nonsense is that?
“Hey, let’s build a fire already.”

Bonfire materials were piled up.
Deadwood was added from above.
The bonfire raised its flames high into the darkness.
The people noisily surrounded it.
The dogs continued barking without cease from afar.

—Showa 4 (1929), Bungei Kurabu April Issue—