Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Kuroshima Denji

I

Milky mist began to flow and gather toward the foot of the mountain.

A goose came out of the shed honking as it waddled toward the river's edge. The herd of cows descended the hill path in wild silence. A woman with her head wrapped in a dirty headscarf raised her whip and chased after them. Yufka Village had just awakened from its morning slumber. The sound of hurried hoofbeats echoed through disturbed forest branches. A pebble kicked up by a horseshoe struck a white birch trunk. The horse galloped clear of the woods and emerged on the hill. Astride it rode a man in a sheepskin hat, his shoulders crossed diagonally by a leather bandolier studded with bullet cases.

The horseman, shrouded in mist, could not be clearly discerned. Yet when the horse passed by her side, the woman chasing cows—her head wrapped in a platok—called out warmly.

“Mitya!”

“Natasha.” Leaving behind the rider’s harsh voice, the horse crossed the hill and shot past Natasha like an arrow.

Before long, the forest branches began shaking and rustling once again. And then came the clatter of about ten horses' hooves falling out of step. The partisans who had been pursued by the Japanese military had escaped. In the distance, rifle shots echoed like popping beans. Dmitry Volkov—always called Mitya—rode through a hill where hay stood stacked high, then suddenly wrenched his horse's head rightward and galloped up toward the mountain's base. There stood low-roofed wooden farmhouses clustered irregularly. The horse entered a narrow path between houses. He slackened its pace. Then moved quietly forward, stepping cautiously to avoid kicking aside carts and wood scraps littering the ground. The chestnut young stallion—all taut muscle—having fled at full speed now breathed heavily with exhaustion.

At the fourth or fifth house along the backstreet, in front of a dwelling with a built-in entrance that could hardly be called a proper doorway or veranda, Volkov nimbly dismounted from his horse.

The people had just awakened from sleep. From the chimney plastered with white clay, purple smoke had just begun to rise thinly and faintly.

Volkov released the reins, climbed the flexible plank stairs, and knocked on the door. The woman over thirty wearing a kerchief, who had been watching his arrival from the bedroom window, circled around to the entrance and undid the latch from inside.

"We need to hurry—is the old man here?" “Come in.” The woman nodded confirmation and shifted toward the stacked boxes by the wall, clearing a path for Volkov. “What’s happened? What’s happened?” “Have those damn curs come again?” About a minute later, a portly old man emerged from the doorway—sagging cheeks framed by nine-centimeter-long eyebrows—wearing a changshan coat.

“Vaska’s been killed.”

“Vaska?” “……….” The woman with the kerchief lowered her head, suddenly assuming a restrained, sorrowful expression as she made the sign of the cross. “He was a good lad!…… Poor soul!” The old man made the sign of the cross and descended the pliant stairs. While descending, he kept muttering under his breath, “Poor soul! Poor soul!” The old man removed the saddle and stirrups from the chestnut horse Volkov had abandoned and led it toward the stable.

Volkov passed through the room that served as both dining room and guest parlor and the bedroom, and was led to the inner storeroom. The air hung stagnant there, with dampness and the smell of stored onions and potatoes wafting up through the gaps in the wooden hatch from the cellar beneath the floor. He lowered the rifle from his shoulder, removed his sword, and completely discarded his sheepskin hat, jacket with stars on the sleeves, and riding boots. The woman with the kerchief brought the old man’s peasant clothes from the next room.

Volkov changed into the peasant clothes and hid the military uniform he had been wearing on horseback along with the rifle in the cellar beneath the floor. They brought oat-filled sacks and stacked them atop the wooden cover until no trace of the cellar remained. The sound of gunfire, like popping beans, gradually drew nearer. The partisans who had escaped after Volkov each raced into the village. And then they each scattered to the houses.

II

A village located forty-five versts from Yufka Village—near point C—small, dwarf-like soldiers clad in khaki-colored outer shells were advancing in a skirmish line.

The birches, hazels, and oaks had already begun to change their leaf colors to yellow, red, and russet-brown by early October. Dewdrops were wetting those leaves and the frost-withered weeds like after rain.

The soldiers’ uniforms became drenched through their outer shells by the dew as they advanced stumbling across grasslands and slopes, moisture seeping down to their undershirt sleeves. Though sweating lightly, they found it pleasant at the “Halt!” command to sprawl across the grass and let the cold dew wet their cheeks. The fleeing partisans’ figures were hidden by milky haze. They fired at them haphazardly without aiming. At the sparse forest’s edge on the left flank, Kurimoto’s unit advanced. When soldiers heard “Halt!”, they flung rifles aside to press noses into grass sniffing earth smells or stab bayonet blades into soil scraping away rust.

The blades were used to stab pigs to death or split open the breasts of geese stripped of feathers, letting them rust. No matter how much they wiped the bloodstained blades, rust formed immediately. They would rub and sharpen them with soil. Kurimoto carried a bayonet with a bent blade. He had once fixed it to his rifle and stabbed a man to death. That was when the blade bent. The stabbed man staggered sideways like a beaten dog struck in a vital spot, collapsing with limbs twitching and trembling. He had heard the blade must be pulled out swiftly before living flesh and blood could cling to it. But he only remembered this after his opponent fell and time passed. He didn't feel like he'd killed a person. He'd thought killing someone wasn't something one could do so easily. But in reality, it was just like thrusting steel into unresisting soil. The bayonet on his rifle's tip plunged through the soiled outer garment and undershirt of the brown-bearded man, burying itself in his chest. The man tried grasping the blade with swollen hands to stop it. His mouth beneath curly whiskers moved as if to speak. But without uttering words, before those bloated hands could hold the steel back, it pierced between ribs through lungs and out his back. Kurimoto wondered if this were a dream. Simultaneously he realized he'd done something irreversible. The arms holding his rifle suddenly went limp, strength draining away. The rifle fell along the collapsing body.

After some time, he planted both feet firmly and pulled out the bayonet—it had bent into a V-shape. The bend stubbornly refused to return to its original shape. It remained forever like evidence of murder. “From now on, there’s no telling how many people will end up getting killed by this bayonet.” Kurimoto thought such things. "And there’s no telling when we’ll get killed too."

A voice shouting “Advance!” resounded from the forest on the right.

“Alright, let’s move out!”

The soldier said this while lying prone, urging on the others. “Take it easy.” “What’s this, Yoshikawa? You were hiding and smoking a cigarette? Hand over the rest to me!” Under the birch trees, Kurimoto heard the sergeant saying such things in a laughing voice.

Kurimoto used his rifle as a crutch and stood up. The soldiers advanced across the grass, dragging their boots. They headed out toward the damp, watery area. The grass had grown thick and tall enough to conceal their waist belts. “I can see it! I can see it!”

At that moment, Nagai, advancing along the narrow trampled path to the right, said in a low voice. Nagai, who had a special talent for ensnaring Russian women, spoke in a voice tinged with laughter. Kurimoto looked in the direction Nagai had pointed his rifle.

Shrouded in mist, two wooden farmhouses could faintly be seen on the hillside.

“Here it is. This must be Yufka.”

He thought. But in reality, that place was not Yufka.

The soldiers expected that partisans might be hiding in the hut and that they might suddenly face desperate resistance. At that moment, they tensed up. Yoshida, who was on Kurimoto’s right, leaned his gun barrel against a birch tree and fired at the hut. The gunshot echoed through the fog, and they could feel the bullets pierce through the hut’s stacked logs from where they stood. Yoshida fired three or four more shots. The ones moving through the forest began firing rapidly, as if startled by something.

It was confirmed that no one was hiding inside the hut. The soldiers, who had been spread out in a line, converged on the hut from afar.

The hut still bore traces of human habitation from just two or three hours prior. In the chicken coop under the eaves，feed remained in a wooden box，which had toppled over and lay sideways. The door had been shut tight. The interior was silent and eerie，with nothing visible inside. The soldiers came to the door and once again doubted whether they might face resistance from those lying in wait. They hesitated and came to a halt. If someone would just open the door and go in first，then immediately after，everyone could rush in without hesitation. But there was no one to take the initiative.

“Kurimoto, you go!”

The sergeant who had reprimanded Yoshikawa for smoking said. Kurimoto felt a sort of resentment as he growled, “Fine! I’ll go!” Shoving aside those blocking his path, he approached the door. “All muscle and no spine,” he sneered inwardly at the men around him. His stance settled into readiness.

The interior was dark. The stench of animal grease and a foreigner’s body odor reminiscent of gunny sacks lingered there. Kurimoto thrust open the door forcefully and entered. “No wonder he was first to provoke the Russki.”

Someone whispered from behind. Kurimoto felt that he despised himself for having stabbed a Russian with his bayonet. “What’s so unusual about killing people?! We’ve been trained for two years in [×××] methods to come here and kill people, haven’t we?!” While his resentment grew even stronger, he stomped heavily on the hut’s floor. As he swung the rifle with its fixed bayonet, the table lamp toppled over. On the floorboards, the terrible sound of shattering glass rang out.

The soldiers who had been standing in front of the door pushed and shoved each other so violently they nearly broke the entrance, then all at once came flooding in. They overturned cupboards, tables, beds, and other furniture as they searched every corner of the room. They tried to ××××××××××××××× the unusual items and seemingly valuable things that were there. The villagers, already seasoned by looting experiences, had taken all the valuables and daily necessities they could carry when they fled. The villagers had even tied the chickens’ two legs together and fled with the flapping birds attached to their horses’ saddles. However, it seemed they hadn’t had time to take the freshly laid eggs, as the eggs lay scattered in the nest boxes. Soldiers, upon finding them, hastily snatched up the remaining eggs while making a grab for them and stuffed them into their pockets.

III

At the foot of the mountain, beneath a dilapidated high bell tower and church, about fifty or sixty houses clustered here and there from the base to the valley, sometimes scattered with just two or three standing apart. This was Yufka Village. The village lived quietly and peacefully. The soldiers had finally reached the hill just before entering the village.

They ceased firing, prepared to launch an attack at any moment, and spread out low among the grasses. “These bastards here must have some good stuff.” Nagai’s plundering urge was ignited at the sight of the village. He thought about how even here he could snag Russian women—that possibility.

“Hey, even Russkies have to make a living, you know. You think they’ll just sit back while we swipe all their good stuff?!”

Kurimoto’s voice bristled with displeasure. “Come on, if we don’t do what [××] allows, we’re just wasting our chance.” The expectation that they could seize rare, valuable goods and sate their starved desires—nothing emboldened the soldiers more than this. They were constantly hungry with base desires and lived a hand-to-mouth existence without money. Therefore, they desperately wanted what they themselves lacked. The [×××], who had discerned their circumstances, while making a show of strictness, had in fact turned a blind eye. Stealing even a single fifty-sen silver coin would get you imprisoned. One had to perform penal servitude. That is what soldiers are like back home. Soldiers must be upright and incorruptible. However, that rule was being suspended here. The soldiers, caught up in that [××], threw themselves recklessly into danger with apparent bravery in their desperation to obtain what they desired.

“Maeshima, hand over those earrings to me.” While waiting for orders, the soldiers conned each other with words this time to seize the spoils they had just taken from peasant huts.

“No, Sergeant, sir.”

“How about swapping for my knife?”

Another voice said.

“No way! That thing isn’t even worth ten sen.” “Idiot! How much value does a single earring even have?!” There was a crumbling hut halfway up the sloping hill. There, Kurimoto saw the interpreter speaking to one of the villagers who had approached from the opposite direction. Beside them stood the Company Commander and the Lieutenant. The hoarse, booming voice of a villager—his face blackened and sun-scorched with wrinkles—answering something carried all the way over here. That voice boomed strongly and deeply, as if to drown out the others.

The soldiers who had been fighting over stolen goods fell silent and looked toward the hut. About ten villagers came up from the village to the hill. The Company Commander placed his left hand on his military sword’s guard and glared piercingly at the gathering villagers. The villagers showed not the slightest sign of fearing the Japanese soldiers. The interpreter suggested Partisans had likely taken refuge in this village. He seemed to be asking whether they were unaware of it.

No matter how dyed-in-the-wool the militarists were, they couldn't just slaughter villagers indiscriminately. The Partisans exploited this weakness, disguising themselves as villagers to walk safely and nonchalantly around the troops that had come pursuing them afterward. They observed the weapons the enemy had and studied the soldiers' behavior. Then used these observations to refine their next attack methods. The Company Commander knew this full well. Yet Partisans and villagers remained indistinguishable when wearing identical clothing.

“Fleeing Partisans are such a nuisance—why don’t you just blast them all away with artillery!”

The man who had been strolling around the hut while unabashedly staring at the Company Commander suddenly cut in from the side. He had a sturdy frame with well-developed muscles. Yet his height made him appear lean rather than bulky, giving him the look of an agile individual. To all appearances, he seemed to regard the Japanese soldiers as such a nuisance that he would prefer to obliterate them wholesale with artillery.

This was expressed through a shift to the accusative case.

When the Company Commander heard what it meant from the interpreter, he glared at the man with fierce eyes for a long moment. "The one spouting that kind of crap is harboring Partisans."

The Company Commander said in Japanese. “You’ve got plenty of artillery over there, don’t you?” The man, indifferent to the Company Commander’s fierce glare, asked the interpreter. Once again, the Company Commander fixedly glared at the man. The Lieutenant brought his mouth close to the Company Commander’s ear and whispered something.

The order to attack was issued to the soldiers. The well-built man's expression blazed with hatred and hostility. That never vanished from his large, gleaming eyes.

IV The villagers had experience frequently attacking ××’s dogs.

They attacked. They were repelled. They attacked again. They were repelled again. They sustained injuries. They repeated this cycle. Gradually, their hatred and hostility mounted.

The villagers who had initially invited Japanese soldiers into their parlor to serve them tea were now taking up rifles to snipe those same soldiers from the forest shadows.

Their village had been plundered and destroyed by the dogs.

Volkov was also one of them. Volkov’s village had been ravaged by the dogs about a month prior. He was the village shepherd.

He was in the village when he realized angry Japanese soldiers were approaching, and took the children to flee from home. It happened one evening. He remembered that time vividly. A Japanese soldier had been killed by someone with an axe. That was why the dogs had become enraged. As he fled, he turned back midway through the forest to gaze at the village. The summer-cut dried hay stacked into towering piles had been set ablaze, flames scorching the evening sky a searing crimson. The residual glow reached even the forest, illuminating the path he was taking.

When they saw the flames consuming their homes, the children trembled violently. "What about... Dad..."

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing—just playing with fire.” “Damn it!” He worried about the old man and his sister’s safety. The next morning, when he returned to the village, the old man had been left behind and lay dead in front of the livestock shed. A bayonet had been thrust clean through from chest to back. Those warm eyes that had once cared for livestock like an animal doting on its young in the nest now lay white and wide open, glaring fixedly at something unseen. Natasha, his half-sister, collapsed by the old man’s corpse and wept.

The eldest son tried to prop up and splice the Western cherry tree that had been snapped off at its base. It was something he had dug up from the mountain in spring and planted before the house. The boy worked earnestly, as if joining the broken parts might let it take root again, struggling to keep the leaning tree upright. But it was no use. Pulling out a hoe from beneath the collapsed wall, he went to dig the old man’s grave. Every house in the village had been stripped of anything valuable and smashed apart. Starving livestock with no feed left howled mournfully everywhere.

“Dad, why are you digging a hole here?” “Grandpa’s going to sleep right here.”

At that time, none of the villagers voiced their hatred toward the Japanese.

However, their feelings toward the Japanese had transcended hatred and become hostility. They had begun using the animal name "dog" to describe ×××.

They had been driven by an irrepressible urge to annihilate the dogs who obstructed their survival...… Volkov watched from the window with eyes brimming hatred as soldiers appeared on the hill. The soldiers scattered across the hill crossed over its crest, descended its slope, and entered the village while shouting something jubilant. Then atop the hill appeared another squad bearing machine guns. How many dogs followed behind remained unknown from the village, where forests blocked the horizon. Beyond those woods lay terrain that gradually sloped downward. Yet from the dogs' excessive vigor alone, Volkov sensed that a still more formidable force approached behind them.

The dogs that had entered the village were less an army and more an XX unit. They knocked down the old woman standing in the doorway and forced their way into the house. They had been ordered to search for weapons. "This guy must be hiding a gun." "Hand over your swords!" "Show me the cellar!"

"Damn it! Maybe I should've fled quicker after all."

While listening to the approaching shouts, Volkov thought. “Hand over the guns!” “Hand over your swords!” The soldiers repeated this as they flung open cupboards and desk drawers—places likely to contain valuables made of gold or silver—heedless of whether they broke them. When they saw that there was nothing but junk inside, they slammed it onto the floor in frustration. Nagai raced down into the valley alongside his comrades. A soldier raced straight down the hillside slope dotted with thickets of thief grass—whose blue berries would detach from their stems at the slightest touch and cling to military uniforms—rocky cliffs, and shrub stumps.

They were glad there were no strict laws like those back home here. The absence of accountability for ×××× and ×× gave the soldiers a barbaric thrill. And it made them bold. The order to confiscate weapons scarcely crossed their minds. Their lively faces showed nothing but single-minded focus—snatching up gold dust scavenged from Ze’ya and taking their pleasure with Barsinya’s fair-skinned, voluptuous body.

Nagai charged headlong so as not to fall behind the others. With bayonets fixed, soldiers’ rifles clashed against rifles, swords against swords—clattering and clanging—while rifle butts knocked against other men’s scabbards.

“Kurimoto, what’s with the dawdling! Move it!”

Nagai heard the sergeant roaring from behind. But he did not even try to look back. The lieutenant, trying to direct the soldiers’ attention to the right, ran past Nagai while shouting something earnest and brandishing his unsheathed sword. Yet Nagai couldn’t grasp why. His mind held nothing but indulging in the girl’s voluptuous body. “Medic!”

Someone shouted somewhere. However, he didn’t understand why that was either. And the shout faded into the distance behind them. “Charge!” “Charge!” As he jumped over a small ditch, the lieutenant fell on his backside, wildly swinging his military sword and shouting. The knee of the lieutenant’s military trousers was stained with blood. The soldiers veered left and right and passed through there. The smell of gunpowder hit Nagai’s nose. From the window of a slightly elevated peasant house on the slope right before their eyes, Russians were aiming and shooting at them.

“What’d you come all the way down here for? I’m sick to death of killing people!”

Kurimoto roared with clear resentment toward those who had issued the advance order. But no one said anything.

The soldiers fired at the Russians. The Battalion Commander and the officers nearby stood atop the hill, watching a group of soldiers in khaki uniforms with matching caps alongside a crowd of men in soot-blackened peasant clothes and brimless hoods, women in thin calico dresses, children in short coats, and bareheaded old men swarming and scrambling about the village. Those in khaki smashed doors and knocked down pillars indiscriminately as they encountered them. There were those who struck fleeing peasants' backs with rifle butts from behind. There were those who thrust with bayonets. A scream like someone scalded by boiling water reached them.

“Ah! Ah! Ah!” The young interpreter, fresh out of language school, clenched both hands as if feeling a stabbing pain and shouted: “They’re killing women—bayoneting young women! Battalion Commander, sir—how can you allow this?!” On the pot-bellied Battalion Commander’s face, instead of an answer, only a sneer rose. In the valleys and on the opposite slopes, a man with a brown beard thudded to the ground at the same moment a burst of gunfire erupted here.

“Who will fall next… A woman? A child? —Or perhaps those in khaki uniforms over here!” The interpreter watched the village, fidgeting nervously like a child. —The gunshots rang out one after another, then yet another, crackling incessantly. The Battalion Commander and the officers were tensely engrossed, as if watching a baseball game.

Yufka was famous for Partisans who had attacked foreign armies fleeing there to blend in with peasants. Not only that, but all peasants there were Partisans. That was according to reports from Polish spies.

The spies had sometimes deliberately distorted facts and exaggerated their reports to curry favor with the Japanese military. However, the headquarters staff, who were struggling to ascertain the Partisans’ true identities and whereabouts, were delighted by this exaggerated report—just as the spies had anticipated. They had hoped that Partisans would be as clearly distinguishable from other humans as if they had three hands. The Battalion Commander had been ordered by the commander to clean out the Partisan stronghold.

“But… it seems there aren’t just Partisans here—good-natured, peaceful peasants live here too.”

The interpreter explained the nature of the village's inhabitants when relaying the attack order and said this. The interpreter was a timid, inexperienced man. He couldn’t definitively state that decent peasants lived there. The Battalion Commander took note only that this was Yufka and that extremists were present. He let all other explanations unnecessary to him wash over him. As long as he had been ordered to suppress extremists, he had to use the most ostentatious methods possible to annihilate even those resembling them in the vicinity. In such cases, "ostentatious" was synonymous with cruelty. By eliminating all ambiguities and decisively marking them for eradication, his achievements would stand out all the more conspicuously to headquarters.

The Battalion Commander had thoroughly grasped those nuances. He first ordered the confiscation of weapons. Then, he ordered that the Partisans be taken prisoner. And then... Their dirty peasant clothes and hoods could not simply remain passive, letting weapons be confiscated, [××××], or—being killed. From inside houses where logs were stacked instead of wooden walls, and from behind piled haystacks as well, smoke from gunfire rose. Amidst the previous gunfire, another distinct, deep, and dull gunshot resounded. The villagers had begun resisting and shooting at the Japanese soldiers.

“Just as I thought—they were Partisans. They’ve started resisting.” The adjutant laughed nonchalantly. “Oh! Oh! “This time, Japanese soldiers were killed!” The interpreter shouted in a voice more anguished than before. “They fell. “They fell.” “They fell and were frantically shaking their hands and heads.” “Three were down.” “—One’s an officer.” “He seems to have been hit in the leg.” “Why is the Commander making them do such things!” “Horrible! Horrible!” “Commander, sir—make them stop at once!”

The sound of guns firing wildly grew even more intense. The other company that had been lined up on the hill charged down with a roar, aiming for the swarming mass where khaki uniforms and peasant clothes mingled.

The lieutenant who was not the adjutant dragged the interpreter behind a crumbling hut.

“What are you doing, spouting such nonsense!”

The Lieutenant said irritably to the interpreter. “But isn’t it tragic! “Isn’t it too tragic!” “You’d better watch out so you don’t catch a stray bullet yourself!”

The Lieutenant glared at the interpreter and returned to the Battalion Commander’s side.

The interpreter timidly peered from behind the hut toward where screams, shouts, and gunfire mingled in chaotic cacophony. The sniper cannon mounted on the higher foothill to the right loaded shells into its muzzle and loosed them toward the village. But where those shells landed, how many houses they crushed, how many lives they took—the interpreter could no longer discern. From both the haystack area and the farmhouse—two locations—purple smoke billowed up, enveloping soldiers, villagers, women and children who swarmed and clamored about. Then from another distant spot too, smoke began rising in succession. The soldiers had indeed executed one of the Battalion Commander’s orders.

The village began burning down. Purple and sulfur-yellow smoke hung low over the village. The sniper cannon fired its second and third rounds. It was unclear what they were shooting at; no target remained visible. They kept wildly firing bullets wherever the barrel happened to point.

“Adjutant! Order the platoon to withdraw!”

The Battalion Commander called the Adjutant.

“Then, prepare the machine gun squad for attack!” The infantry that had stormed the village withdrew, then were ordered to surround it this time. It was to catch fleeing Partisans. The village now devoid of khaki uniforms was enveloped in flames and smoke as machine gun fire rained down from above. A horse with its tail burned let out a roaring neigh as it charged frantically across the grassy slope, weaving between fallen bodies.

The screams of women, children, and the elderly mingled with the cries of livestock that had lost their escape route, emerging amidst the crashing of collapsing houses, the piercing crackle of boards scorching in flames, and the thunderous booms of explosions. At a somewhat elevated position with a good view, the soldiers ambushed and shot villagers who had been burned out and were fleeing. The absence of any fear of counterattack made their shooting precise. Gunpowder smoke flared up suddenly from the muzzles of soldiers scattered in this direction. Then the dirty short coats and brimless hats charging toward the encirclement line fell with a clatter, like dolls being knocked over.

“They’re using us for this madness!” Kurimoto thought.

After the brimless hats and jackets that had fallen on the slope, more women and children in dirty short coats and calico indoor clothes continued to emerge breathlessly from beneath the smoke. The gun muzzles were again directed that way. Gunpowder smoke flared up suddenly. The child tumbled over on the grassy slope like a celluloid doll. The dirty jacket leapt about three feet into the air in shock. For about a minute, the soldiers saw the jacket remain frozen, seemingly unable to comprehend what had occurred.

The child hoisted by the jacket did not let out a cry. The child was dead.

"Hey, stop shooting!—Who the hell are we even doing this for?" Kurimoto said irritably. His voice was so loud that even the soldier holding the machine gun turned toward him. "No matter how many peasants you kill, there’s no end to it! Are we really in the position to be taking out those bastards for fun?" He continued. "Even if we do this, we ain’t getting a single damn penny out of it!"

The machine gunner had a brother whose eardrums had been shattered by a lieutenant. Without receiving any compensation, his brother had been discharged and now worked as a tenant farmer. Before enlisting, his brother had gone to Osaka and at great expense mastered stenography. That skill his brother had to abandon because he lost his hearing. The Private First Class thought about it—if even he were to disobey orders here and end up maimed, wounded by bullets, or killed, how devastated his old father would be, the father who despite his advanced age still made a living as a lumberjack. ——He felt as if he could see his senile old father’s face.

But he thought of those fleeing through the smoke in their short coats and calico clothes—that they too had children and parents. They too made their living by tilling fields or raising livestock. The Private First Class thought such things—they too had parents and children who would grieve in the same way. Even if we do this—shooting them and burning their houses—there’s no benefit in it for me at all.

Enveloped in the billowing smoke, more peasants, women, and elderly villagers came into view.

The Private First Class was in charge of setting the machine gun’s aim. He wrenched the machine gun’s muzzle upward as far as it would go. The bullets soared over the heads of peasants and women clambering up the slope. “Fire! The Partisans are breaking through! Fire!”

The officer watching the encirclement line bellowed. From the soldiers’ gun muzzles, bullets continued to roar out. “Fire! The Partisans are swarming out this way!” “Fire! Fire!” The soldiers fired; the gun barrels grew hot from the intense shooting. But the bullets all flew skyward, landing miles ahead. There, stripped of their lethal force, they plummeted into the distant grasslands beyond. It wasn’t just the machine guns—even the infantry rifles around them had their muzzles pointed skyward.

The villagers, rejoicing at having found an escape route, pressed toward the foot of the mountain. They darted past the soldiers, hunched and furtively glancing around like thieves who had botched a theft.

“Hurry up!” Kurimoto said in Russian he had picked up. The villagers scrambled up the steep, pathless mountain.

“Fire!” “Fire!” “Wipe out the Partisans!” “Fire!” “Fire, damn you!”

The officer, driven by impatience, barked at the soldiers. “Yes, sir! Firing!” Again, bullets groaned toward the sky. “Fire! Fire!”

“Yes, sir.” Thick smoke came billowing in. The officers and soldiers had their eyes pierced. The smoke stung their eyes, drawing tears.

5

“This time, I’m getting the Golden Kite Medal!” The Sergeant laughed as he shouldered his rifle and turned back along their path, clapping his comrade’s shoulder. He had stabbed three fleeing Partisans to death before the company commander’s eyes. That deed—the one noticed by the commander—was what fed his confidence. “I’m getting Merit Class Six too.”

The comrade was no less confident.

The medical orderly bandaged the wounded lieutenant’s leg. The lieutenant’s wound was not fatal. Therefore, once the wound healed, he would get a favorable report from the lieutenant to his superiors. The medical orderly had his own kind of confidence in that regard.

They withdrew toward the garrison while savoring a pleasant, blissful mood.

The Battalion Commander dispatched a mounted messenger to headquarters and reported that they had annihilated every last partisan in Yufka. He felt a more vigorous happiness than his subordinates. Behind them in the village, half-burned houses smoldered and hissed, while the crematorium-like stench of burning flesh spread endlessly, chasing after the troops as if to pursue them wherever they went. Yet even this did nothing to diminish the Battalion Commander's inner happiness. “Yufka was indeed a nest of nothing but Partisans, just as His Excellency the Commander ordered—so it is reported.”

The Battalion Commander was recalling the crisp voice of the lively messenger who had repeated the orders before departing.

“Indeed, that’s correct.” He gave a nod. “We’ve annihilated every last one of them.” “Our tactics proved excellent, and both officers and men displayed valiant combat.” “This should eradicate even the seed of Siberian Partisans.” “And that’s that.” “Yes, sir. Should they inquire about our casualties, I shall report only three light injuries.” “Among these, one was an outstanding officer who fought with exceptional bravery.” “So it is reported.”

“Yes, that’s right—excellent!” The Battalion Commander felt satisfied that his voice at that moment had rung out clearly and brightly with a pleasing resonance. In addition to the Order of the Rising Sun he currently held, he would receive the Golden Kite Medal with an annuity attached. Besides his salary, three hundred or five hundred yen would keep flowing in even if he did nothing. Would it be Merit Class Fourth Grade? Or perhaps Fifth? Fourth Grade would mean five hundred yen. Then he would be promoted to lieutenant colonel for meritorious service. ……There was just one thing that displeased him. That there were soldiers who had aimed their rifles skyward and deliberately let the Partisans escape. But if he were to make it public and punish them, his hard-earned meritorious service would come to nothing. Because the responsibility for his insufficient skill in commanding his subordinates would naturally fall upon him. He decided he’d make those insubordinate soldiers pay dearly another time—for now, he’d keep this matter under wraps. That was the clever approach.

“His Excellency will no doubt be extremely pleased that the objective of the subjugation has been achieved.”

The adjutant who had come up from behind said. "His Excellency" referred to the Commander. "Hmm."

The Battalion Commander forgot about the soldiers who had aimed their rifles skyward and grinned, unable to suppress his inner happiness. “Truly, everything went perfectly.” “Yes... Good work.” He wondered again—would it be Merit Class Fourth Grade? Or perhaps Fifth? Maybe I could even land Third Grade. These days, even the Golden Kite Medal has become easier to obtain after all. Then, if he could get an annuity of seven hundred yen—... Suddenly, several gunshots rang out from somewhere, and a bullet whizzed past the tip of his nose with a sharp hiss. He instinctively ducked his head. At that moment, the horse got startled and jumped up. And as if its rump had been whacked hard, it charged forward. The Battalion Commander, while nearly slipping off,

“Oh, oh, oh!” he let out a plaintive cry. “Someone, get over here!” He most likely tried to voice that shout aloud.

The soldiers caught sight of Partisans moving through mountains interspersed with fir and Ezomatsu pines. They immediately scattered into cover among terrain features. The Partisans were firing from within those mountains.

The Partisans seemed clearly gripped by emotional excitement. The bullets flying from that forest came within a hair’s breadth of the soldiers’ bodies, grazing them as they whined.

VI

The Partisans were pursuing the khaki-colored uniforms along the mountain range.

They were those who had escaped from that corner where bullets had been fired skyward—among them was Volkov, whose horse had been burned. The mountains around there were as familiar to the Partisans as the backs of their own hands.

The burning of their village had driven their emotions to extreme intensity. The bullets struck the waists, struck the legs, and struck the backs of the fleeing khaki uniforms. From the disordered ranks fleeing with their short legs dodging almost too fast to see, each time one after another tumbled down onto the grasslands and ridges. Groans not from those who spoke Russian could be heard from where they had fallen.

“Hit.” “Hit.” “There! Got one!”

Each time, from within the forest, voices of jubilation rose. Among them were those who, having fallen, would rise again and limp away. There were those who ran while clutching their wounded hands with their other hands. The Partisans took careful aim from within the forest and fired at them. Their heightened emotions, paradoxically, made their aim more precise.

The khaki uniforms would collapse onto the grass as if their legs had been swept out from under them within ten seconds of someone here squeezing the trigger.

“There! Got another one.” “That guy’s a private.” “Take down the bastard on horseback carrying the long sword!” “We can’t stand that bastard.” “Hell yeah!” “We want that long military sword.” “Take that bastard down too!”

They were growing more cheerful.…………

(October 1928 [Shōwa 3])