Pathway to Japanese Literature

She shaded her arm over her forehead and surveyed the cloud formations in the sky. The upper part of her right arm, lightly angled into a rectangle, was sunburned cocoa-brown. From the underside of her arm to beneath the armpit, the skin transitioned abruptly—white and soft like the demarcation between a fish’s back and belly—containing both a lucid, intricate intensity and a tenacious suppleness possessed only by those whose lineages had endured generations drinking this city’s water while rooted in its soil. Her beauty was of a celestial type—slightly rounded jawline framing petal-like lips—yet the shadow cast by her upraised arm darkened the upper half of her face, making those large, downward-slanted eyes gleam with a feral intensity.

The balance between her right fingertips shading her forehead and her left wrist pressed against her hipbone compelled Kohatsu into a masculine stance—the sort only those in professions constantly mindful of weather patterns adopt. Though the flesh around this swimming instructor’s midsection—of average build yet taut—beneath her thin swimsuit still revealed the melancholy of incomplete development, her pelvic structure at the hips swelled slightly wasp-like. Within that form lay both maternal grandeur and unyielding combativeness.

The sky remained stretched taut like a culture dish glass placed over it from above, trapping warm air, while across the entire vicinity, the expanse of blue reeds quivered weakly in places. It was merely a localized wind. The world was a realm of stagnant heat. The Arakawa Waterway first split into two channels from north to southeast, then transformed into a single broad flow beneath Kasai River Bridge, melting the river mouth into the sea.

“What incomprehensible weather this is!”

Kohatsu murmured. Concern hung over whether clear skies or rain would grace the long-distance swimming event scheduled five days hence. When she lowered her gaze westward—as if a dull flame smoldered—the deluge of tiled roofs from the city’s heart assailed her vision. It marshaled its forces along two fronts: one tracing Kiyosuna-dōri, the other Hachiman-dōri, with Sunamachi First District’s gas tanks and Kamiōjima-chō’s standing like fortresses, each sprawling irregularly in three directions. The layered roof tiles of the nearby town seemed to surge forward like leaping waves yet remained fixed in place. And high-rise buildings and factories—shoulder-to-shoulder in clamoring multitudes. Hundreds of chimney streaks smoldering crimson through scorched dust-haze.

Kohatsu raised her left hand from her hip to meet her right arm shading her forehead, deepened the visor-like curve of her hand against the glare, gazed at the late summer heat haze rising like a cultural wildfire—as if apprehending it anew—and released a deep sigh.

Father’s swimming area had been located on the Sumida River bank since his ancestors’ time. It had been driven out again and again by the new culture of the city’s development—relocated to Tatekawa-suji, then to Onagigawa-suji, then to the outskirts’ Yokobori. And finally, it had been driven into this lumber storage area in Sunamura. The traces of their repeated defeats could be painfully counted one after another. But the moment they relocated, Tokyo was demarcated and expanded into Greater Tokyo, and Sunamura too became Sunamachi in Jōtō Ward—undeniably within the city’s boundaries. This barely satisfied his vanity: “Our Seikai-ryu is a swimming style meant for the refined pursuits of city dwellers— “I’ll never let it sink to the countryside.” This had satisfied Father’s vanity. Father dreaded to an extreme degree moving across the waterway to Edogawa Ward—now part of Tokyo—on the opposite bank. The name Kasai made Father—an old Tokyoite—utterly reject any notion of it being part of the city proper. Finally, Father had laid out a last-ditch stand with the Arakawa Waterway as his final escape route and intended to defend to the death the last dojo of Seikai-ryu swimming.

In this manner, the summer swimming area had frequently shifted river courses, but their residence had remained in Koamicho of Nihonbashi Ward until just before this summer. Father, during seasons other than summer, had taken on as his regular occupation the wrapping of fabric bolts and paper. He had a grounding in Japanese and Chinese literature and learned a bit of English. So he would write addresses and invoices, and Father frequently requested catalogs from British textile companies. He would reuse designs from interiors and covers, add his own embellishments, have artists render them, have printers produce them, and fulfill wholesalers’ orders. He also took on copywriting for flyers and advertisements using an assistant.

But the local textile association had progressed. The artists too had progressed. There was no longer any need for middleman wholesalers or an amateur like Father with his perfected designs. Father’s residence-attached office grew more desolate with each passing year. He had managed to hold out for a time, but after dabbling in various ventures, he ended up losing the property—land and all—to others. Before that, he had already lost both the money and tools passed down from his ancestors. Therefore, this summer, under the pretext of night watch duty, the father and daughter pair were staying overnight at the swimming area.

Perceiving in the roof tiles—spread like a gray flame—the ferocity of urban culture relentlessly sweeping away both their swimming area and residence, Kohatsu felt terror that pierced to the marrow of her soul. Yet as she continued gazing, this very ferocity—whose inevitability of her family’s ruin it deepened within her—began paradoxically to feel nostalgic. In the end, she had come to feel that somehow or other, this very ferocity might yet become the force that would save her. Her own anxious nostalgia toward that city’s ferocity seemed to grip even her flesh in paralysis. Compared to this nostalgia, the birdlike physical dalliance she and Kaoru—the son of an underpaid company clerk near the swimming area—had been mutually permitting since last summer seemed absurd, so much so that even recalling it filled her with shame.

In contrast to this, she had come to reassess Kaibara—the fifty-year-old lumber merchant who, out of interest in herself, had allowed Father’s old-fashioned swimming area to remain in this lumber storage canal free of charge, looked after students, rowed the patrol boat, and insinuated himself around her from afar. Had necessity—even partially—transformed into preference? Kohatsu narrowed her eyes at her own heartrending pragmatism.

Anyway—this self who felt not a shred of vengefulness toward city culture’s ferocity, that sworn enemy of Father and myself yet trembled and clung to its brute strength—might I be some delinquent girl afflicted with profoundly inverted sensibilities? But no matter what anyone said, Father’s soul and mine had their mooring nowhere but there—the city—Greater Tokyo’s very heart—so there remained no choice…no alternative……

“Instructor Kohatsu.” “It’s time.” “Please demonstrate the Hishui-style dive.” Having loaded about ten drenched children aboard and rowed the farm boat closer beneath the diving platform, Kaibara the lumber merchant raised his voice loudly. His Hida dialect had acclimated to Tokyo speech without seeming unnatural. “Show everyone the demonstration one more time, then have them do it.” With his corpulent frame befitting a petty tycoon, clad in a swimsuit bearing the same Miyakodori crest as Kohatsu’s, Kaibara had fully assumed the role of the swimming area’s assistant. Kohatsu answered somewhat more smoothly than usual.

“I’ll do it right now. Just wait a little.” But trying to carve out some semblance of composure from the suffocating tension she had felt until now, Kohatsu turned her gaze once more toward the waterway. As she traced her gaze upstream along the waterway’s surface—now rippling with diamond-shaped waves—the boats near the tower-bridge-style large water gate straddling the boundary embankments between Nakagawa-suji and Arakawa-suji hoisted their sails with a tension akin to racing. Kohatsu’s voice was resolute. “I’m certain. There’ll be an evening shower tonight, but from tomorrow onward, the weather should hold for four or five days.”

“Well, that seems about right. The long-distance swimming event should proceed smoothly then.”

After extending his palm to test the wind’s pulse, Kaibara nodded in agreement. When she removed the Seikai-ryu swimsuit—a surcoat-style garment roughly sewn with thick cords at shoulders and sides for ventilation—Kohatsu’s vigorous body clad in a clinging black swimshirt was laid bare. In her posture during such duties could be seen an inhuman perfection like ivory carving wrought with meticulous care—not a stitch out of place. The beauty of serene stillness found only in human corpses resided in this girl’s living flesh. Kohatsu stepped lithely onto the diving platform’s edge with both legs planted firm, extended hands forward to shoulder height, and measured her breath with chest expanded. The sun sinking slightly left before her eyes had its rot-stained daytime debris blown away by wind—now lay round and hollow like a flesh-pink tray.

In the reed beds that had begun rustling ceaselessly, sections struck by multiple wind gusts lay flattened, and one could see the rising tide—now studded with countless bubbles—lapping against their bases in the calm aftermath. According to Seikai-ryu protocol, the Hishui-style dive consists of three movements: first, upon the preparatory command, rising to the edge of the diving platform to adjust one’s posture and extend both arms forward. The second movement was drawing both hands back to assume the diving posture; the instant of leaping out constituted the third—three movements in total. Now Kohatsu silently began the "one" movement, but immediately reconsidered and, starting mid-process, called out "two" as she assumed the diving posture.

That was indeed the agile yet elegant posture of a kingfisher peering at fish shadows from atop a stake. And now, from Kohatsu’s body—which until this moment had appeared sculptural—an alluring aura began to shimmer forth like a lunar halo, carving open within the natural fringes of the surrounding environment a single locus of unnatural, artificial vivid allure. In the blink of an eye, Kohatsu shouted “Three!” and lightly lifted her body, hovering in midair through some mysterious buoyant force. There, even as her posture inverted before their eyes, she bent both legs backward like a rudder, thrust her hands forward, kept her torso supplely arched, and plunged into the water with scarcely a sound.

Blinking as if dazzled, Kaibara watched every movement of the instructor. “The form is exquisite.” He let out an involuntary exclamation and stared with ravenous intensity at the water’s surface—now dimming slightly about three feet above—as if ready to sink his teeth into it. Kohatsu—who, driven by her single-minded desire to return to the city’s heart, had come to scorn her dreamlike first love with Kaoru and pin her hopes on the fifty-year-old man’s worldly capabilities—even in her unconscious demonstration of the Hishui-style dive, had set a trap of seduction for Kaibara. Kohatsu—who had been made to study new dance from childhood and moved in revue star circles—could effortlessly translate the cloying essence of coquetry into modern, buoyant allure and subtly weave it into the classical Seikai-ryu diving forms. As her entire body plunged into the tepid water with a swift rush—transformed into a single unified force—and as every inch of her skin began to be caressed by the heavy yet free, supple yet dense liquid, Kohatsu forgot everything and began to revel in the dolphin’s joy. Kohatsu once described to Ms. Toyomura—her sole close friend since girls’ school days and a literary scholar—the absurd joy of the aquatic world in fragmentary, experiential words. Then her friend introduced an apt literary expression related to that emotion.

If you call it a cushion, then everything is cushions.

If you call it a feather quilt, then everything is feather quilts. But in the water—dissolved and free— Something even better—love. Leaping unbroken, rending with talons— Shall I rend and claw—love. And so the dolphin narrows its eyes. Never come ashore for life. This, it seems, was a rough translation of a fragment from a Greek mock-epic poem. Her father Keizō had drawn a similar meaning from Lao-Zhuang thought and would always explain it to Kohatsu as "the realm of chaos undivided."

When the pressure of water against her eyelids lessened, Kohatsu opened her eyes underwater. From her childhood, her father Keizō—who had intended to mold his only daughter into a swimming prodigy—had employed rather severe methods of discipline. He would place small stones at the bottom of a large water-filled tub and make young Kohatsu retrieve them with her mouth; submerge into the Sumida River’s depths with Kohatsu clinging to his back, then release her there to surface alone—in short, he doubled down on family traditions to discipline Kohatsu, stripping water of its terror and instilling intimacy through these methods.

The underwater world was relatively bright. Retaining a depth of frosted-glass hue, it was neither cheerful nor gloomy. It was a real world stripped of its essential nature. If you spoke of dawn, it was eternal dawn; if you spoke of dusk, it was a world of eternal dusk. A world that had once exposed the life force of land to death, tanned away its actual influence, and dissolved everything into illusion. Just as all colors and forms, upon entering the water, were uniformly reborn, so too did human morality there lose its volatility and controllability. It was, so to speak, a world where good and evil had fused together. In that place, the stubbornness, sorrow, and obsessions of Kohatsu—the city girl bound by old-fashioned hyper-sensitivity of conscience—were stripped of their essence, and in their stead arose the simple, unruly freedom possessed by fish, shellfish, and turtles. Kohatsu twisted and twisted her supple torso through the water, reveling in the sensation’s utter softness.

As Kohatsu scooped water upward from the excavated vertical hole beneath the diving platform toward the muddy shallows, soil that had crumbled from gaps in the embankment wall formed an irregular slope, its shadow stretching across the water’s bottom—a dim vision that came hazily into view.

This entire area had an abundance of algae and ancient reed roots, giving it the feel of a dense jungle. Five or six thick old pilings for mooring lumber—rotted and replaced time and again—appeared hazily like primordial stone pillars.

Grabbing onto one of the pillars, a pale figure thrashed through the water. It was Kaoru. Kaoru stood much larger in frame than Kohatsu. His jaw and cheeks were cleanly chiseled, forming a face of sculpted beauty. Kohatsu abruptly seized Kaoru’s neck and shoulders, pressing small white teeth against her faintly purple lips. Kaoru stayed silent as she drew breath from him—kicking rhythmically while swimming compliantly—but soon revealed anguish when his lungs proved no match for hers underwater. Then came wild flailing through the water. At last he thrashed with desperate abandon. Kohatsu managed him with the expertise of one versed in rescuing drowning swimmers—keeping his grasping limbs at bay while still extracting another drop of vitality from this youthful being’s allure.

Keizō returned from his house-hunting trip, and in the rain-fresh swimming area, father and daughter began their dinner alone. The rental house would become essential the moment the swimming grounds closed in another half-month, but Keizō found it difficult to locate one matching their circumstances. His heart still clung to central Shitamachi, and he appeared to search daily in that direction. The father’s distinguished face—now bearing a sparse beard grown during his absence—seemed strangely distorted by excitement chafed raw against urban grime and exhaustion. Perhaps traces of his favorite Western liquor—downed hastily somewhere—still lingered in his veins.

The city-bred gourmet father and daughter had each evening’s meal specially delivered from places like Isetan and other restaurants in the Suzaki area. The young man delivering tiered boxes by bicycle would grumble about the long journey, but through Kohatsu’s beauty and the tips her father provided, he had recently become pliant—now even cracking some newly practiced jokes as he warmed bowls of soup over a corner brazier to just the right temperature, arranged the meal for immediate eating, and departed.

“I’d sooner drop dead than eat such wretched fare.” This was Keizō’s customary denunciation when meals lacked savor—cursing the food upon their tray—but in these days when such outbursts risked becoming the bitter reality of their circumstances, he found himself restraining his habitual tirades. Father and daughter approached each night’s meal with the solemnity of a “Last Supper,” exchanging few words. They had always been sparing with speech. Keizō above all avoided voicing emotions outright. To the elders of old Tokyo, such expressions reeked of sarcasm—they had long since abandoned any sincere urge for emotional disclosure. For conveying feelings, they relied instead on irony or veiled symbolic language.

“With no neighbors around to nitpick about makeup mishaps, it must feel refreshingly uncluttered.” This was both the sole apology from a father who had dragged his own daughter down into ruin and a gesture of consideration. Kohatsu was not entirely unaware of her father’s feelings, but she found his stubborn refusal to concede defeat bitterly distasteful. Tonight, once again bringing up the story of the abyss from the lofty Chinese classic Liezi, her father camouflaged his feelings toward his daughter.

“An abyss has nine properties.” “Still water lying perfectly stagnant—that too is an abyss.” “A place where flowing water pools for a time—that too is an abyss.” “Water that wells up from the bottom, richly accumulates, and then flows out again—that too is an abyss.” “Water that drips and falls is received by an abyss—”

The father had roughly organized the various conditions under which abysses accept water into nine categories— “This we call the theory of Nine Abysses—water may arrive through countless transformations, yet only one abyss receives it all.” “Attain this abyss’s selfless state, and no matter how the world shifts or schemes to steer us, you’ll float undisturbed.” “In our Seikai-ryu—” “Corpse-water floats unsinking—” “—so it’s said. That’s the breaststroke’s essence.”

“That—is it some kind of brother to the Chaos Undivided you’re always going on about, Father?” Kohatsu mocked Father while using a toothpick after the meal. That she delighted in mocking others yet loathed being mocked herself was the very nature of an urban satirist—a temperament her father found all the more galling now that its embodiment was his own daughter. He remained silent for a while, but found himself devoid of the vigor to conjure a retort, “They’re not brethren or anything of the sort—they’re entirely one and the same.” he said in a low voice, mustering every ounce of his strength. It was rare for Keizō to speak this earnestly to his daughter. Driven to extremity, he had no choice but to speak this earnestly. Perhaps because of that, he suddenly adopted an uncomfortable, aged expression and quietly wiped his sweat.

The father extended the light bulb’s cord and went beneath the swimming area. For a while, he seemed to be rustling about there.

“The dusk thickens nicely.” “Perhaps I’ll go bead fishing.”

With that, he loaded the tools onto the farm boat and rowed away. Kohatsu watched her father’s departing figure with a pitiful, fleeting emotion, but ultimately felt something resentful. Then, as a precaution while staying alone, she locked the entrance as usual, turned off the light, crawled into the mosquito net, and placed the mint-filled water pistol—used to scare off any potential intruders—by her pillow. When Kohatsu lay down and relaxed her body, the mint in the pistol emitted a pungent smell. When the pungent mint permeated her eyes and nose, Kohatsu was already quietly crying. Truly, they were a pitiable father and daughter—obsessed with the city to their detriment. Because of this, Father was aging disgracefully through frustration, while she—from her first love—was basely transforming into a fifty-year-old man… In the darkness, even as her own self-interest stared wide-eyed, one part of Kohatsu’s mind recalled the sensation of Kaoru’s youthful flesh experienced underwater that day…….

After a short while, Kohatsu rose again. She opened the back window to check on Father’s condition. The post-rain night world dissolved ample moisture into deep ink-black hues, its glossy coolness abundant. Around the hunched diving platform at ebb tide, the backs of young mullets occasionally darting about glinted in the starlight. Father was in the reeds not too far away, burning a lantern as he engaged in bead fishing. He threaded annelids from the sandbar onto a string in large numbers, dangling them into the water like a rosary. The small eels dwelling among the reed roots would latch onto it; he would gently lift the ring, lure the reluctant eels still nibbling upward close to the surface, and swiftly scoop them up with a hand net from the side. Annelids seemed like ugly remnants among insects, and even eels—weren’t they fish left behind by culture and time’s currents? Declining humans used declining insects as bait to catch declining fish for their amusement. That lamplight—what a pitiable scene it was. Once, this method of eel-catching had been nothing more than a pastime for Father, but now it was a desperate side business.

“I caught a bit too much last night, you know. “It’s become quite a nuisance.” While speaking in this grandiose manner, Father handed the catch to the eel broker. Pitying them as a father and child brought low, Kohatsu felt sorrow toward herself for having already calculated in her mind the volume of Father’s catch that night.

The western sky resembled a vast reflective surface where the dazzling elements of the city’s nightscape danced, clashed, and shattered. Particularly in areas of intense revelry, neon signs clustered here and there layered even stronger outlines of light into the luminous expanse. Moreover, across this night sky, flashes of light—bizarre in quality as though erupting from the earth’s depths—would intermittently flare. Like the turn of a koto string they flickered eerily; as gravely as the final judgment at the world’s end, they transformed the entire nightscape instantaneously into a hellish visage only to return it in the next moment to its original state of revelry. It was nothing. It was merely light from nearby Joto Tram poles sparking against power lines, but as Kohatsu watched—yes, she thought—let all pleasures unrelated to her vanish in a single flash. At that moment came the rumble of a hired car gliding in from nowhere; it seemed to have stopped on the main street.

The sturdy man’s footsteps ascended toward the swimming area.

“Who is it?”

Kaibara stopped in the dim light with a somewhat sheepish demeanor.

“It’s me.” “It’s grown rather late, but let us go dancing in town.” “Won’t you come out?”

“Why didn’t you come up the back ladder?”

“Well, couldn’t risk getting peppermint water shot into my eyes with that pistol now, could I?” Kohatsu twisted off the light bulb and prepared to go out. She took out a kimono from the chest of drawers and approached the Rococo-style half-length mirror tied with rope to a roughly hewn cypress pillar. Using this mirror with its intricately carved frame—one of the few remnants preserved from their lost Nihonbashi residence—to apply makeup filled Kohatsu with loneliness. Aware once more of Kaibara waiting outside, she felt Kaoru’s presence seep slowly into her flesh. But that was merely physical. At least for now, she had to think of it that way. I must not crumble. I must live everything through water’s essence. All that comes toward me—devour it, make it nourishment—I must become a formidable fish.

Kohatsu abruptly succumbed to indolence and held the light bulb close to her made-up face.

“How’s this?” she showed to Kaibara, who was peering through the window’s reed screen.

“That’s splendid indeed. Let’s go. I’ve obtained permission from the Old Master.” Kohatsu turned off the light, glanced back at her father’s lantern in the sandbar, then slipped out of the swimming area with Kaibara. Since Kaibara had taken Kohatsu out dancing seven or eight times throughout the summer, he had come to know her modest favorite foods. Crossing Kiyosu Bridge with its elegantly structured iron framework in the early evening, eating chilled shiratama dumplings with a bitter blue aroma amidst Ningyocho’s charming lights, and making their way through one or two small dance halls in Tokyo’s eastern downtown area—Kaibara simply danced as her partner.

In the dance halls of this district, the children of local shopkeepers came to dance, having removed their aprons. When Kohatsu occasionally partnered with somewhat familiar faces, "Oh, oh, thank you very much." they expressed gratitude with feudalistic hand-rubbing as if addressing customers. Kohatsu found this touching and endured the sawdust-scented sweat as she danced for them.

Occasionally, they even ventured as far as the Ginza area. Then they would enter establishments of standing this time—places like the New Grand, Fūgetsudō, and Monami. Taking a seat near the lodge-style area, this girl devoured heavy, luxurious meat dishes—unusually rich for supper. Kaibara showed no surprise at this, accepting Kohatsu as a girl of such contradictory inclinations and taking her to both worlds.

When the moon hung over the high-rise buildings of Nihonbashi-dori, Kaibara, unusually that night, took Kohatsu into a restaurant overlooking the canal at Shinkawa-gashi.

“A teahouse?” Kohatsu, knowing full well it was a respectable restaurant, deliberately played obtuse and asked Kaibara. Kaibara betrayed no flicker of reaction. “I wouldn’t take a young lady instructor to such a place,” he said.

“But is it really all right to be out this late?” “Oh, it’s nothing—just a place where I’ve invested some funds, so I have certain liberties here.” Cool dishes were arrayed five or six in number, and as the famished Kohatsu unhesitatingly raised her chopsticks, Kaibara sipped from a small bottle of beer with great care. He began sporadically bringing up rumors about her father. “Well, with our Old Master as he is, any recovery of his fortunes seems quite uncertain.” “In business, one must tighten down on impulsive notions that rush ahead while prodding sluggish thoughts clinging to stagnation to keep pace with the times.” “This part requires a bit of finesse.” “However, the Old Master possesses only these two extremes while innately lacking the measured considerations in between.” “This way, it’s like a net with a hole in its center—profits just slip right through.” Kaibara’s tone suggested that while he bore no particular resentment toward her father, he held no interest in him either.

“I don’t know anything about this, but have you been looking after my father financially even lately?”

“No, I won’t give the Old Master a single penny anymore. “Since he knows full well he’ll just squander it. “Moreover, even the Old Master surely hasn’t forgotten how much trouble he’s still causing after I once provided a guarantor’s seal—he hasn’t brought up anything since then.” Kaibara, his thick wrists—those of a former palace carpenter—stained with sweat he tried to keep from soaking into his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves with force, faced the electric fan, and continued sporadically chewing the appetizer beans.

Kohatsu finished eating for a spell, then surveyed the refined summer dining room—so quintessentially Tokyo restaurant-like—while circling her gaze about, “Have you indulged in worldly pleasures?” she abruptly asked Kaibara, though what association prompted this remained unclear. “When young, I did indulge.” “But since taking my current wife, I’ve joined the Fukuzawa sect—become Kenzō, you see.” “Having loads of money must be amusing.” “Once I began thinking I must somehow use it effectively, it stopped being amusing at all.”

“I see.”

Kohatsu had already finished eating even the course-ending melon, and was scooping up the pale blue juice pooled in its rind with the tip of her small spoon.

At that sudden moment, Kaibara and Kohatsu locked eyes in a probing exchange.

“Is there something you wanted to discuss tonight?”

Kohatsu’s obligatory question tightened Kohatsu’s features. Kohatsu had always appeared graceful. That very dignity made Kaibara face her squarely. Kaibara, without flinching, “Since these are the words of a man of considerable age, I ask that you listen seriously.” “This was discussed with my wife as well—now that we’ve managed to establish ourselves, albeit modestly, we desire a child of good quality and breeding.” “We have one at home, but to put it bluntly, they’re no good.” “In a profession that handles people, I can tell immediately.” “Bloodlines cannot be disputed.” “For generations back, splendid blood has surely been flowing, and that manifests in the descendants, you see.”

“This has been discussed with my wife as well,” Kaibara reiterated in a ritualistic exchange,

“Instructor Kohatsu.” “In this world, even women of the educated class may have to rely on others due to financial circumstances.” “I have absolutely no intention of treating you as a plaything.” “I wish to have the bloodline you possess infused—just slightly—into my family’s newly established lineage here.” Kaibara’s flat-featured face showed a slight protrusion in both jaws, revealing a cunning countenance like that of a man seizing profit. But this too soon blurred into vagueness, settling instead into a simple, timid expression as he awkwardly averted his gaze.

Kohatsu paid no heed to Kaibara’s demeanor and instead became lost in thought over his words. If he desired her charm，she would even give that. If he desired her body，she would even give that. Assuming there was a soul—if he desired that，she would even give it. If it was a means for her to return to the heart of this city，she would cast aside every sacrifice. But what of this fifty-year-old former palace carpenter’s ludicrous proposition?

“Mr. Kaibara—instead of saying you want a child, why don’t you just come out and say you want me?” “Ah.” “I see.” “But I thought that would be too rude.” Kohatsu looked straight at the face Kaibara had finally turned properly toward her and spoke in a melancholic voice.

“So you told that transparently false, clichéd lie about wanting me to bear a child?” “I don’t think this world cares about rudeness or shame anymore.” “It’s because they clung to such things that Tokyoites have been steadily overtaken by country folk.” “We must desperately take back the city.” Kohatsu kept speaking with a piercing gaze. “For that, we’ll make any transaction necessary.”

A few tears fell from Kohatsu’s sharp eyes. Kaibara shrank back in abject discomfort. Kohatsu wiped the tears. And this time she spoke in a slightly gentle voice. “But Mr. Kaibara, please let everything wait until after the long-distance swimming event, okay?” “I know exactly how you phrase things.”

Clear weather lasted for two or three days. Upstream must have seen considerable rainfall, for the canal’s surface swelled with an intensified ochre hue. The tower-gate-style water gate of the Nakagawa Waterway’s embankment snapped firmly shut. The lumber storage canal housing the swimming area and the reed-covered shoals along its banks all swelled with abundant water. With an ordinary expression, Kaibara came to help at the swimming area daily. He prevented his lumber from washing away and secured stones to the diving platform’s anchors. While pretending not to look, he still kept careful watch over Kohatsu’s movements.

On the fourth day, Kohatsu took Kaoru—who had come—to a mound within reed-covered shoals slightly removed from the surroundings. The two of them lay side by side on the sand in swimsuits, basking in the shell-drying breeze. Kohatsu said reproachfully to Kaoru, “You—if I don’t instigate everything… Are you cunning, or just spineless? Which is it?” While the core of Kohatsu’s words radiated a piercing seriousness, her hands moved with a somewhat playful manner as she poured sand into the groove of Kaoru’s spine with a swift motion.

“There, there.” “I’m suffering today.” Kaoru tried to brush it away with his elbow, but Kohatsu paid no mind and patted smooth the sand she’d poured into the groove of his back with repeated strikes of her palm,

“You don’t look like you’re suffering at all.” “The other day, in the water with you… it swelled up this much.” Kaoru carefully presented the darkened corner of his lip with great care. “Oh? So you’re angry about that?” “No—you’re too strong.” “I can’t bring myself to say something half-hearted.” The scorching sun’s rays blazing down and the searing heat of the mound’s hot sand against her belly clamped Kohatsu’s body from above and below, plunging her into the indescribable sweetness of agony. Kohatsu chanted, “Clank-clunk, hiss-slide, clank-clunk, hiss-slide.” As she chanted this, she once again rested her round face atop her folded elbows, assuming a drowsy demeanor.

“What are you talking about?” “The mechanical belt’s sound.” Precisely at the point forming a triangle between the swimming area, the mound, and Kaibara’s lumber processing factory, one could see the machinery sitting idle. “Screech—slice-slice-slice-slice-slice.” “This is the sound of a mechanical saw cutting wood.”

“Stop fooling around, now now.” “This is a serious discussion.” “I know.” “You know?” “About what?” “You’ll just end up being bought by Kaibara anyway, won’t you?” “Who would go where?”

“I know.” “Everyone.”

“Who said such a thing?” “No one says it. But I’m a man who understands that much.” Kaoru wiped his tears with arms as alluring as a woman’s. Kohatsu leaned her head against Kaoru’s upper body—thickly beaded with sweat like gold dust—and took his hand. Pity washed over her, then came an odd comfort—Kaoru’s voice, having just declared “I’m a man,” carried a motherly reliability that felt like some primordial male voice bestowed upon her since antiquity. Tears of joy welled up.

“Forgive me?”

“There’s no forgiving or not forgiving to begin with.” “Kaoru, come with me.” “Let’s brazenly fall in love right in the heart of Tokyo, okay?” Kohatsu’s tears flowed along the back of Kaoru’s hand and seeped into the hot sand from between his fingers. Kaoru had been squinting at it as though it were something cool, gazing in rapt fascination, when suddenly his voice dropped into a deep, masculine bass. “Well, Mr. Kaibara’s a decent man—he might even intend to look after Instructor Kohatsu and me while turning a blind eye.” “But I hate it.” “No matter how much of a fresh middle school graduate I am, I can’t become such a spineless coward.”

“Then what should I do?” “I just can’t do it. Starting next month I’ve got to take over as clerk at some rundown energy company in the outskirts instead of that destitute old man—and you’re someone who needs to live in luxury right in the heart of Tokyo.” The matter at the restaurant after returning from the dance—that Mr. Kaibara had gone last night to confide in his friend Kaoru’s father about the nearly finalized arrangement to take Kohatsu under his care—was something Kaoru finally disclosed to her.

Kaoru’s feeble, passive resignation instead turned his face a pallid white beneath the blazing sun. “It’s not like it’s anything decisive…” Kohatsu said, but the trailing end of her words grew distant, as though spoken by someone else. Until today, Kohatsu had been agonizing over how to disclose her arrangement with Kaibara to Kaoru. Moreover, even she herself had been tormented by a mind still unable to fully resolve her arrangement with Kaibara—but when Kaoru broached the subject first, Kohatsu’s heart instead began settling into profound stillness. And within this state of mind—gradually slipping into an uncritical detachment akin to collapse—a cool, slender boundary eventually glimmered into view. The tales of the Nine Abysses she’d heard from her father; her friend’s translated Greek rhapsodies—the world of chaos undivided lurking beneath water… *It doesn’t matter*… Kohatsu imagined the coolness that would come after washing everything away. The tears on Kohatsu’s tear-stained face dried, and the rustling of distant reed leaves whispered in her ears. Kohatsu grew sleepy once again.

Kaoru stood up from lying prone. From the shallow fold of his hip-baring swimsuit, beautiful sand trickled out as he began walking in the figure of a well-built youth. Kohatsu gazed up at this for a time as though witnessing a daylight marvel. She was suddenly assailed by a sorrow that felt like being hurled to the ground. Kohatsu was struck by a sensation as though the single mistaken attachment to her own flesh had been torn away, carried off to a world from which there could be no return.

Kohatsu also hurriedly stood up. Kohatsu chased after Kaoru and wrapped her arms tightly around his.

“Kaoru—but Kaoru—you must come to the long-distance swim event.” “Let’s both swim our hardest.” “If that’s how we must part, then let’s part that way.” “Yeah.” “You must come—promise me you’ll come.” “Yeah, yeah.” And now, watching Kaoru wilt and retreat sluggishly into the distance, Kohatsu found herself overwhelmed with sorrow.

Kohatsu sat back down on the sandy ground and watched Kaoru’s retreating figure. Into the windless, hushed reed bed, Kaoru’s figure vanished from sight.

Kohatsu could not sleep. The suddenly thickening atmospheric pressure left her breathless and muggy; perhaps too it was from all the tossing and turning—but a sorrowful vitality that refused to let her keep still kept prodding her awake from within, rousing her drowsiness again and again. Beside her, her father’s alcohol-laden snoring caught in his throat, making him seem distressed. The asthma that had once subsided during Father’s middle age had recently begun to resurface. The recent climatic abnormalities seemed particularly agonizing tonight. It seemed he wouldn’t even be able to attend tomorrow’s long-distance swimming event… But to Kohatsu, such things mattered not at all; she found herself worrying about how to broach the issue with Kaibara looming after the long-distance swim event with Father. Even as the painful feelings toward Kaoru lingered, whenever she looked at Father, she had to consider his feelings as well... Kohatsu felt the weight of emotional exhaustion bearing down on her alone, impossible to shoulder. Father imagined his daughter as a mystical maiden—how would he reconcile the instincts of the patriarchal head of an old family seeking to satisfy his idolatrous desires when confronting the issue with Kaibara? His own daughter was a superhuman swimming genius. This pride had been both Father’s lifelong ideal and his sole undertaking. For this reason, Father had endured hardships without remarrying after Mother’s death—yet if he were to learn that Kaibara, whom he derided as a countryman behind closed doors, now demanded her as his mistress, and that she even had a romantic entanglement with Kaoru, his last vestiges of pride and hope would be stripped away entirely.

It wasn’t something to be carelessly disclosed… Yet Kohatsu had often witnessed cases in downtown districts where weak-willed city dwellers, once flipped, transformed into deliberate hypocrites. Hadn’t Kaibara anticipated this very outcome to feel reassured about Father? It wasn’t impossible that Father—unexpectedly brittle—might tumble into that same snare. Did I want Father to tumble there? Was there truly no path for us two to survive except through desiring this…?

Water bugs scuttled noisily across the floor beyond the mosquito net. Had a field mouse crawled up along the pillar? Kohatsu drove them away by striking the floor two or three times with a fan. At the sound, Father—still groggy and unsummoned—responded with a vacant "Huh?" and turned over. Pitiable father—and pitiable daughter. Kohatsu gently readjusted the thin futon her father had kicked off back over his chest. As Kohatsu lay wide-eyed in the darkness, she found herself stroking her own body with both hands. She began contemplating this flesh of hers—inclined toward particular predilections. She recalled how even as a child she had detested sweets, refusing to eat anything but salted rice crackers. She had come to wonder whether her very body harbored a predisposition that could endure no contact beyond strictly defined parameters. I don't believe I love Kaoru so deeply in my heart. Yet why did parting from his physical form grieve me so? Though I found more pragmatic reliability in Kaibara—a man weathered by life's struggles—than in simple, unremarkable Kaoru, these days it had grown painfully clear how my flesh alone rebelled ever more fiercely.

I rather hate my own body—while frantically trying to satisfy one side’s desire for livelihood, it rebels against that method (being bought by Kaibara). The body that had tormented me with contradictions and selfishness now filled me with loathing.—This body... this me... If only it would all just disappear... Kohatsu savagely twisted a single spot on her own body like a child. Whether from pain or shame, tears resembling something like resentment streamed down. She twisted again… twisted again… Then her thoughts began unraveling as her mind sank effortlessly into darkness’s depths.

Kohatsu woke early in the morning. The sky was a murky yellow, and the atmospheric pressure hung even heavier than the night before. The skin beneath the single layer of nightwear was faintly cold.

“Autumn has come too early—or has it?”

Kohatsu muttered to herself and peered out the window.

It was mist.

As she watched closely, the mist gradually thickened into an ash-white pallor from the water's surface. The nearby reed bed lay collapsed in disarray under the weight of heavy dew. Today was the day of the Seikai-ryu Swimming Area’s long-distance swimming event. Kohatsu felt heavy-hearted. Her body felt somehow weary as well. However, since the elderly master—her father—had suffered severe dizziness after breakfast and could not enter the water, Instructor Kohatsu was decided upon as the leader.

Around ten o'clock, the mist transformed into rain mist. A listless rain began to fall, drop by drop.

Kohatsu was attending to the students who had gathered little by little with an absent expression, but the sight of Kaibara—acting in an assistant capacity—going off to prepare the patrol boat with an unperturbed face stirred a peculiar sense of resistance within her, making her grow unnaturally cheerful.

“Everyone.” “It’s all right.” “It’ll clear up any moment now, you'll see.”

When Kohatsu waved a small red flag and strode ahead, the group of students—whose gathering had been hindered by the rain—started cheering even more boisterously than during their usual large assemblies.

Kaoru joined them partway through. The long-distance swimming event group walked along the wet road to the banks of Kasai River. From there, they would slip into the canal waters and descend toward the sea while being guarded by boats. Kohatsu was first to enter the water. The male and female students formed two lines and followed behind. In each line, skilled swimmers holding small marker flags swam at the front. Though much of the water's murkiness had cleared, grass leaves and wood fragments still flowed mingled with bubbles. Having chosen a spring tide day, the current inevitably carried the small swimming contingent out to sea on the ebb tide's momentum.

The two banks, faintly visible through the mist, were their sole anchor. Right behind Kohatsu swam Kaibara clutching a marker flag. Kaoru would periodically surge to her flank. He moved through the water soundlessly. Today’s long-distance swim promised rank promotions for every student who completed the course without boarding support boats. They advanced eagerly, chanting “Heave-ho! Heave-ho!” with each stroke. Ahead, a flock of white birds that had been drowsing on the water’s surface beat their wings skyward. When an impetuous student switched to front crawl mid-formation, Kaibara roared his disapproval.

“You’ll wear yourself out—don’t switch to front crawl!” As they grazed past the reed beds on the estuary’s western side, through a gap in the mist, the city’s sewage treatment plant came into view. By the time they reached this point, the tide had receded considerably, and when the taller children stretched their legs, their toes now and then brushed against the sandy bottom.

Kohatsu turned back and said, “Come on—from here onward, everyone switch to the pull-through stroke!” Eventually the group swam from the fan-shaped estuary into a boundless expanse of water and space. Kohatsu swam onward, separating from the others until she began to feel utterly alone—whether advancing or retreating, she was merely moving her limbs through infinity. That Kohatsu swam so recklessly stemmed from her agitation. At first, her heart would race whenever Kaoru’s form appeared by her side. But as that sensation intermingled with Kaibara’s loud voice calling out to her, the dual assault gradually grew more repugnant. When this resentment-like excitement began exhausting both mind and body, even glimpsing Kaoru’s physique became an oppressive burden. Kaibara’s shouting too had turned grating. Kohatsu started swimming wildly now. She swam without sparing a thought even for the student group trailing behind her. And as she did so—a peculiar resolve took root within her.

Cast off all that is petty—become a newborn human fresh from the womb. If what confronts me is fate—press to its very roots; if circumstance—corner it to its indivisible seed: let me duel without pretense. To undertake this challenge,I must never set a purpose. Never calculate. Stake my entire being like dice and cast it all away. From there,a life sturdy enough to rise again will surely be found. Now hold nothing back. Now discard everything I possess—cast away every last thing—.

Chaos undivided………… Chaos undivided………… The world Kohatsu strove to enter was Chaos undivided—beyond waves of endless turbid whiteness. “Swim until I reach… on and on… endlessly… Don’t let anyone follow.”

Though she didn’t voice it aloud, Kohatsu raised her head among the swelling waves and noticed two men following behind in the surging water. Kaoru kept silent, slicing through with pull-through strokes; Kaibara bellowed desperately between his own frantic strokes. “Idiot… How far are you going… Idiot, lunatic… Kohatsu… Instructor… Instructor Kohatsu… Idiot… Idiot…” They were in the very heart of a wind-lashed sea where rain fell in driving sheets. By now, not even the shadow of a single pursuer remained visible in the churning waves behind Kohatsu. Tears streaming from ash-gray rapture, she drove onward with pull-through strokes through infinite turbid waves—onward without end.

(September 1936)