Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

A milk-colored mist began to flow and gather at the base of the mountain. A goose that had come out of the hut honked noisily as it waddled toward the riverbank. The herd of cows descended the hill path roughly without bellowing. A woman with her head wrapped in a dirty platok raised her whip and chased after them from behind. Yufka Village had just barely awoken from its morning slumber. Rustling the tree branches in the forest, the hurried clatter of hooves echoed. A pebble kicked by a horseshoe collided with the trunk of a white birch. The horse galloped through the forest and appeared on the hill. On it rode a man wearing a sheepskin hat, with a belt holding bullet cases slung diagonally across both shoulders in a cross shape.

The man on horseback was enveloped in the mist, making his facial features indistinguishable. However, the woman chasing the cows with her head wrapped in a platok called out in an affectionate voice when the horse passed by her side.

“Micha!”

“Natalia.” Leaving behind the rider’s rough voice, the horse crossed the hill and shot past Natalia like an arrow. After a while, the tree branches in the forest began to shake and rustle again. Then came the sound of hooves—about ten horses approaching with disordered steps. The partisans pursued by Japanese forces had escaped. In the distance, rifle fire crackled like popping beans. Dmitry Volkov—always called Micha—galloped over the hill to where hay stood stacked high, then suddenly turned his horse’s head rightward and raced up toward the mountain’s base. There clustered low-roofed wooden peasant houses. The horse entered the narrow path between dwellings. He eased its pace. Moving quietly, he advanced with care not to kick aside scattered carts and wood fragments. The muscular chestnut horse, having fled at full speed, now breathed heavily in exhaustion.

At the fourth or fifth house down the backstreet—one with an entrance that could hardly be called a proper entrance or a veranda—Volkov nimbly dismounted from his horse. The people had just awakened from sleep. From the chimney plastered with white clay, a thin, faint purple smoke had just begun to rise. Volkov let go of the reins, climbed the creaking wooden stairs, and knocked on the door.

The woman in her thirties wearing a yubukka, who had been watching his arrival from the bedroom window, circled around to the entrance and undid the latch from inside. “Hurry—is the old man here?”

“Come in.” The woman nodded to signal that he was there，shifted her body aside toward where a box was placed，and cleared a path for Volkov to pass. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” “Have those damn dogs come again?”

After about a minute had passed, a portly old man with sagging cheeks and eyebrows grown long to about three inches emerged at the entrance wearing a chanchanko coat.

“Washika was killed.” “Washika?” “....”

The woman wearing a yubukka lowered her head, suddenly assuming a modest, sorrowful expression as she made the sign of the cross.

“He was such a fine young man!……So pitiful, it was!”

The old man made the sign of the cross and descended the creaking stairs. As he descended, he continued muttering under his breath, “So pitiful, it was! So pitiful, it was!” The old man removed the chestnut horse’s saddle and stirrups that Volkov had abandoned and led them toward the stable. Volkov passed through the room that served as both dining area and guest room and the bedroom, and was led to a back storage room. The air hung stagnant, moisture and the smell of stored onions and potatoes from the underground storage seeping up through gaps in the wooden floorboards. He took down the gun from his shoulder, removed the sword, and discarded entirely the sheepskin hat, jacket with stars on its sleeves, and riding boots. The woman wearing a yubukka 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 his gun, in the underground storage beneath the floor. They brought bags filled with oats and piled them on top of the wooden cover, making it impossible to tell there was an underground storage. The sound of gunfire, like popping beans, gradually drew closer. The partisans who had escaped after Volkov each rushed into the village. And then, they each scattered to the houses.

II

A settlement four or five versts from Yufka Village—near C—small, dwarf-like soldiers clad in khaki-colored outer layers were advancing in a skirmish line.

The birches, hazels, and oaks had already begun to change their leaf colors to yellow, red, and brown by early October. The dew soaked those leaves and the frost-withered weeds as thoroughly as after a rain. The soldiers’ uniforms—clambering across grasslands and slopes—were drenched through their outer garments by the dew, down to the sleeves of their undergarments. Though sweating lightly, they found it pleasant at the “Halt!” command to sprawl on the grass and press their cheeks into the cold dew.

The figures of the fleeing partisans were obscured by the milky-colored mist and could not be seen. They fired at them carelessly, without taking aim.

At the edge of the sparse forest on the left flank, the squad to which Kurimoto belonged was advancing. When the soldiers heard the "Halt!" command, they threw their rifles aside, pressed their noses into the grass to smell it, or thrust their blades into the soil to scrape off rust. The swords had been used to stab pigs to death and to split the chests of geese stripped naked of their feathers, leaving them rusted. Even when they wiped the bloodstained swords, no matter how much they wiped, rust would come immediately. They would rub and sharpen them with soil.

Kurimoto had a sword with a bent blade. He had fixed a bayonet to his rifle and stabbed a man to death. At that moment, the bayonet bent. The stabbed man, struck in a vital spot, staggered unsteadily like a dog felled in one blow before crumpling sideways, limbs twitching as he fell. He had heard that if you didn’t yank the bayonet out immediately after stabbing, the living flesh and blood would cling to it, making it impossible to remove. But he only remembered this some time after the man had fallen. He didn’t feel like he’d killed a person. He’d always thought taking a human life wasn’t something you could do so easily. Yet in reality, it had been no different from thrusting a blade into featureless earth. The bayonet fixed to his rifle pierced through the grimy coat and undergarment of the brown-curly-bearded man, plunging into his chest in one motion. The man grabbed at the blade with his swollen hand, trying to grip it. Simultaneously, his mouth—framed by that curly beard—twitched as if trying to speak. But without uttering a word, before those bloated fingers could secure their hold, the blade slid between his ribs, pierced through his lung, and emerged from his back. Kurimoto wondered if this was a dream. At the same time, he realized he’d done something irreversible. The arms holding his gun suddenly went limp, all strength draining away. The rifle fell along with the collapsing man’s body.

After a moment, he planted both feet and pulled out the bayonet—it was bent into a V-shape. The bend stubbornly refused to straighten back to its original shape. It lingered on and on like evidence of his crime. “There’s no telling how many more people would be killed by this bayonet from now on.” Kurimoto found himself thinking such things. “There’s no telling when we’d be killed too.”

From the forest on the right, a voice echoed, “Advance!” “Alright, move out!” The soldier, still lying down, urged the others as he said such things. “Take it easy.” “What’s this—Yoshikawa, you were hiding to smoke? Hand over the rest to me!”

Under a birch tree, Kurimoto could hear the sergeant saying such things with a laugh.

Kurimoto stood up, using his rifle as a staff. The soldiers advanced across the grass, dragging their boots. They went out toward the damp, watery area. The grass had grown long and thick enough to hide their waist belts. “I can see it! I can see it!” At that moment, Nagai, who was advancing along the narrow, well-trodden path on the right, said in a low voice. Nagai, who had a particular talent for picking up Russian women, spoke in a voice that held a hint of laughter. Kurimoto looked in the direction where Nagai had pointed his gun.

Shrouded in mist, two wooden farmhouses dimly came into view on the hillside.

“Here it is.” “This must be Yufka.” He thought so. But in reality, that place was not Yufka. The soldiers expected that partisans might be hiding in the hut and that they might face a sudden, 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 gunfire echoed through the mist, and they could sense the bullet piercing through the hut’s stacked logs to the other side. Yoshida fired three or four more shots.

Those moving through the forest began firing rapidly, as if startled by something.

They 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 as recently as two or three hours prior. In the chicken coop under the eaves, feed had been left in a wooden box, which had toppled over and lay sideways. The door had been shut tight. The interior was silent, eerily so, and nothing could be seen inside. The soldiers came to the door and once again doubted whether they might face resistance from someone hiding. They hesitated and stopped. If someone would just open the door and go in first, then everyone else could immediately rush in without fear. But there was no one to take the lead.

“Kurimoto—you go.” The sergeant who had reprimanded Yoshikawa for smoking said. Kurimoto, feeling something like resentment,

“Hmph, I’ll go!”

With that, he pushed through the men blocking his way and approached the door. They’re all bluster and no backbone. He thought scornfully of those around him. His stance steadied. The inside of the door was dark. There lingered the stench of animal grease and hemp sacks—the body odor of foreigners. Kurimoto forcefully thrust open the door and went in. “There’s a reason he was first to pick fights with Russkies.”

Someone in the back whispered. Kurimoto felt that he despised himself for having stabbed a Russian with his bayonet.

“What’s so unusual about killing people?! We’ve been drilled for two years in ××× methods—we came here to kill people, didn’t we?!” As his resentment intensified, he stomped violently on the hut’s floorboards. When he swung the bayonet-fixed rifle, the table lamp toppled over. A terrible shattering noise erupted across the floor as the glass broke.

The soldiers who had been standing at the door now came rushing in all at once, pushing and shoving each other so violently that the entrance nearly gave way. They overturned cupboards, tables, beds, and rifled through every corner of the room. They tried to [×××××××××××××××] any unusual or seemingly valuable items they found there. The peasants, already hardened by looting experiences, had taken as much as they could carry of valuables and necessities when they fled. The peasants had even tied the chickens—binding both legs of each frantically flapping bird together—and fastened them to their horses’ saddles before galloping off. But having no chance to take the freshly laid eggs, eggs lay scattered in the nest box. When the soldiers found them, they hurriedly scooped up the abandoned eggs into their pockets under the pretense of plundering.

3 At the foot of the mountain, beneath a desolate high bell tower and church, fifty or sixty houses clustered here and there from the foothills down to the valley—occasionally two or three stood scattered apart. This was Yufka village. The village existed quietly and peacefully.

The soldiers finally reached the hill just before entering the village. They stopped firing, prepared to shift to an attack at any moment, and spread out low in the grass cover. “These bastards here must have some pretty good stuff.” Nagai, upon seeing the village, felt his urge to plunder stirred. He was thinking that he could snag Russian women there too—that’s what occupied his mind. “Hey, no matter how much they’re Russkies, they’ve got to make a living too! You think they’ll just sit still while all their good stuff gets stolen?!” “Let them have all their good stuff stolen?! Not a chance!”

Kurimoto’s voice bristled with irritation. “Ah well—if ×× permits it, you’d be a fool not to take advantage.” The prospect of seizing rare valuables and sating their starved cravings—nothing emboldened the soldiers more than this. They lived perpetually hungry—for lust, for money—in a hand-to-mouth existence. That’s why they desperately coveted what they lacked. The ×××, seeing through their plight, barked strictures publicly while privately overlooking transgressions. Steal even a single fifty-sen silver coin? You’d face imprisonment. Be condemned to penal labor. Such was military justice back home. Soldiers were meant to uphold spotless integrity. Yet here, those constraints had been cast aside. Lured by that ××, the soldiers threw themselves recklessly into danger—all to grasp what they craved.

“Maeshima—hand those earrings over to me.”

While waiting for orders, the soldiers now tried to swindle each other with words over the spoils they had just taken from the peasant hut.

“I must decline, Sergeant.” “How about trading for my knife?”

Another voice said. “No.” “That thing’s not even worth ten sen.” “Idiot! What value does a single earring even have!” Midway up the sloping hill stood a half-collapsed hut. There, Kurimoto saw the interpreter speaking to one of the peasants who had come from the opposite direction. Next to them stood the battalion commander and the lieutenant. The hoarse, booming voice of a peasant—his face sun-darkened, scorched and wrinkled—could be heard answering something from over here. The voice resounded so powerfully and deeply that it seemed to drown out all others.

The soldiers who had been fighting over the looted items fell silent and looked toward the hut. About ten peasants ascended from the village to the hill. The battalion commander placed his left hand on his sword guard and glared around at the gathering peasants with fierce eyes. The peasants showed not the slightest sign of fear toward the Japanese soldiers. The interpreter suggested that partisans had likely taken refuge in this village. He seemed to be asking whether they were unaware of that.

Even hardcore militarists couldn’t simply slaughter peasants indiscriminately. The partisans exploited this weakness—disguising themselves as villagers, they nonchalantly walked right past the pursuing troops. They studied the weapons and observed the soldiers’ behavior. Then used this intel to plan their next ambush. The battalion commander was well aware of this tactic. But with partisans and peasants dressed identically, there was no way to tell them apart.

“Those fleeing partisans are such a nuisance—why don’t we just blast them all to hell with cannons?” The man who had been loitering near the hut while unabashedly staring at the battalion commander’s face suddenly cut in from the side. He had a solid bone structure and considerable flesh on his frame. Yet his tall stature made him appear lean rather than bulky, suggesting agility. To all appearances, he seemed to regard Japanese soldiers as nothing but bothersome pests he wished to exterminate entirely with cannon fire.

That had been phrased by switching the accusative case. When the battalion commander heard its meaning from the interpreter, he glared at the man with piercing, fierce eyes for a long moment. “The bastard spouting such nonsense is sheltering partisans.” The battalion commander said in Japanese.

“You’ve got plenty of cannons over there, don’t you?” The man, indifferent to the Battalion Commander’s fierce eyes, asked the interpreter. Once again, the Battalion Commander fixed the man with an intense glare. The lieutenant brought his mouth to the battalion commander’s ear and whispered something.

The order to attack was issued to the soldiers.

The sturdy-framed man’s expression burned with hatred and hostility. It never faded from those large eyes that continued to shine indefinitely.

IV

The peasants had often attacked the ×× 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 intensified. The peasants who had once invited Japanese soldiers into their parlor and treated them to tea were now armed with rifles and sniping at 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 had been the village’s shepherd. He was in the village, and when he realized the angry Japanese soldiers were approaching, he took the children and fled from home.

It happened one evening. He remembered that time vividly. A single Japanese soldier had been killed with an axe by someone. That was what made the dogs become enraged. As he fled, he turned back from the forest to gaze at the village. The hay cut in summer and piled high had been burned, and the flames were scorching the evening sky crimson. The afterglow reached even the forest, brightening the path he was taking.

When they saw the fire burning down houses, the children trembled violently. “What about... Dad...?” “It’s nothing, it’s nothing—they’re just playing with fire.” “Damn it!” He worried about his father and sister’s fate. The next morning, when they 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 through from his chest to his back. Those warm eyes that had once cherished the livestock as animals dote on their young in the nest were now white, wide open as if glaring at something, and unmoving. His half-sister Natalia collapsed over the old man’s corpse and wept.

The eldest son tried to prop up the Western cherry tree that had been broken at the base and graft it back together. That was something the eldest son had dug up from the mountain in spring and planted in front of the house. The child, as if grafting it would make it take root, earnestly tried to prop up the cherry tree that was about to fall. But it was no use.

Pulling out a hoe from under the destroyed wall, he went to dig the old man’s grave. Every house in the village had been plundered of anything of noticeable value and smashed to pieces. The livestock, starved due to lack of feed, howled mournfully all around.

“Dad, what are you digging a hole here for?” “Grandpa’s gonna sleep right here.”

At that time, none of the villagers voiced their hatred toward the Japanese. However, their feelings toward the Japanese had surpassed hatred and become hostility. They began using the animal name “dog” to describe XXX.

They had been driven by an irrepressible urge to annihilate the dogs that hindered their survival.…………

Volkov was watching from the window with eyes filled with hatred as soldiers appeared on the hill.

The soldiers scattered across the hill traversed it, descended, and entered the village, shouting joyfully. After that, another squad armed with machine guns appeared atop the hill once more.

Just how many dogs were coming behind them was impossible to tell from the village, as the horizon was blocked by the forest. Beyond the forest, the terrain gradually sloped downward. However, from the dogs’ excessively high morale, Volkov inferred and sensed that an even more powerful unit was coming behind them.

The dogs that had entered the village were less of an army and more of an XX unit. They pushed 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 firearm.” “Hand over your sword!” “Show us the underground storage!” “Damn it! This time too—maybe we should get outta here quick.”

While listening to the approaching shouts, Volkov thought.

“Hand over your gun!” “Hand over your sword!” The soldiers, repeating this, flung open cabinets and desk drawers that seemed likely to contain appliances made of valuable gold or silver, heedless of breaking them. When they saw that only junk was inside, they slammed it onto the floor in irritation. Nagai, along with his comrades, charged down into the valley. The soldiers charged straight down the hillside slope dotted with thickets of thief grass—whose blue berries would detach at a touch and cling to their uniforms—rocky cliffs, and shrub stumps.

They rejoiced that here, unlike in their home country, there existed no strict laws. The lack of accountability and ×××× gave the soldiers a barbaric pleasure. And it made them brave. The fact that they had been ordered to confiscate weapons was scarcely on their minds. Their lively, cheerful expressions contained nothing but thoughts of seizing the placer gold they had gathered from the Zeya and indulging in Barshinya—that woman with her fair-skinned, voluptuous body.

Nagai charged straight ahead so as not to fall behind the others. With bayonets fixed, the soldiers’ rifles clashed against rifles, swords against swords—clattering—and bedplates knocked up the scabbards of others. “Kurimoto! What are you dawdling for?!” “Advance already!” Nagai heard the sergeant shouting from behind. But he did not even try to look back. The second lieutenant tried to direct the soldiers’ attention to the right—shouting something earnest while brandishing his unsheathed military sword—as he raced past Nagai. Yet Nagai did not understand why that was. His head held nothing but visions of indulging in that young woman’s voluptuous body.

“Medic!” Somewhere, someone shouted. But he didn’t understand why that had happened either. And the shout receded into the distance behind them. “Charge! Charge!”

As he jumped over a small ditch, the second lieutenant fell on his rear and wildly swung his military sword while shouting. The knee of the second lieutenant’s military trousers was stained with blood. The soldiers veered left and right and passed through. The acrid smell of gunpowder assaulted Nagai’s nostrils.

From the window of a small elevated peasant house on the slope right before his eyes, Russians were taking aim and firing in this direction. “What reason did you have coming down to a place like this? I’m sick and tired of killing people!” Kurimoto snarled with open resentment toward whoever had issued the advance order.

But no one said a word.

The soldiers fired at the Russians. The Battalion Commander and nearby officers stood atop the hill, watching as a group of soldiers in khaki uniforms and matching military caps—alongside villagers in grime-blackened peasant clothes with brimless hoods, women in thin calico dresses, children in short coats, and bareheaded old people—swarmed through the village in disarray. The khaki-clad ones smashed down doors and toppled pillars indiscriminately. Some struck fleeing peasants’ backs with rifle butts from behind. Some stabbed with swords. Screams like those scalded by boiling water rang out.

“Agh! Agh! Agh!” The young interpreter, fresh out of language school, clenched both hands as if struck by a stabbing pain and shouted: “They’re killing women—stabbing a young woman to death! Battalion Commander, sir, how can you allow this?!” On the pot-bellied Battalion Commander’s face appeared only a sneer in place of an answer. In the valley and on the opposite slope, a man with a brown beard collapsed at the same moment smoke from a sudden ignition rose on this side.

Who would fall next… women or children? Or would it be our own khaki uniforms here!

The interpreter, trembling like a child, was looking toward the village. The gunfire crackled and popped—one shot after another, again and again—echoing relentlessly.

The Battalion Commander and the officers were tensely engrossed, as if watching a baseball game.

Yufka was notorious for partisans who would attack foreign armies and then flee there to disguise themselves as peasants. Not only that, but every last peasant there was a partisan. According to Polish spies’ reports, that was indeed the case. The spies had deliberately twisted facts and submitted exaggerated accounts to ingratiate themselves with the Japanese military. Yet the headquarters staff—who had been struggling to identify the partisans’ true nature and locations—rejoiced at this inflated report just as the spies anticipated. They wished partisans could be as clearly distinguishable from ordinary people as if they had three hands.

The Battalion Commander had been ordered by the commander to cleanse the partisan den. “...However, it seems that not only partisans but also peaceful, good-natured peasants live there.” When issuing the attack order, the interpreter explained the nature of the village’s inhabitants and said this. The interpreter was a timid, inexperienced man. He couldn’t bring himself to state clearly that good peasants lived there. The Battalion Commander took note only of the fact that this was Yufka and that extremists were present there. Everything else—all explanations unnecessary to him—he let flow past his ears.

As long as they had been ordered to suppress the extremists, they had to use the most ostentatious methods possible to annihilate not only them but anyone resembling them in the vicinity. In such cases, “ostentatious” was synonymous with “cruel.” If they left no ambiguities unresolved, decisively marked them all for elimination, and thoroughly purged them, their achievements would stand out even more prominently and be recognized by headquarters.

The Battalion Commander grasped the gist of such matters thoroughly. He first ordered the confiscation of weapons. Then he ordered that the partisans be taken prisoner. And then... The soiled peasant clothes and hoods could not simply resign themselves to having their weapons confiscated, being ××××, or—being killed. From inside houses built with logs stacked instead of wooden walls and from behind heaped haystacks too, smoke from gunfire rose. Amidst the ongoing gunfire, another distinct kind of gunfire—thick and dull—rang out. The peasants had begun resisting and firing at the Japanese soldiers.

“As expected—they were partisans after all. They’ve finally begun resisting.”

The adjutant laughed nonchalantly.

“Oh! Oh! “This time—Japanese soldiers are being cut down!” The interpreter cried out in a voice more anguished than before. “They’re falling.” “They fell.” “They’ve fallen and are frantically waving their hands and shaking their heads.”

“Three of our men were taken down.” “One was an officer.” “He seems to have been hit in the leg.” “Why does the Commander make them do such things!” “It’s tragic! It’s tragic!” “Commander, sir—put a stop to this 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 toward the chaotic mingling of khaki uniforms and peasant clothes squirming below.

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

“What are you saying—you fool?!” The lieutenant said irritably to the interpreter. “But this is tragic!” “Isn’t this too tragic!”

“You’d better watch yourself so you don’t get hit by a stray bullet!” The lieutenant glared at the interpreter and returned to the Battalion Commander’s side. From behind the hut, the interpreter timidly peered toward where screams, shouts, and gunfire clashed in chaotic cacophony. The sniper cannon mounted on the elevated slope to the right loaded a shell into its muzzle and blasted toward the village.

But where that shell had landed, how many houses it had destroyed, how many people it had killed—the interpreter could no longer tell. From where hay was stacked and from peasant houses—two locations—purple smoke rose, enveloping soldiers, peasants, women, and children swarming and clamoring about. Then from another distant place too, smoke began to rise. The soldiers had carried out one of the Battalion Commander’s orders.

The village began to be burned down. Purple and sulfur-yellow smoke lingered heavily over the village. From the sniper cannon, they fired the second and third shots. What were they firing at? The target was nowhere to be seen. They were indiscriminately blasting shells in whatever direction the cannon was pointed.

“Adjutant—order the company to withdraw!” The Battalion Commander called the Adjutant.

“Then, prepare the machine gun unit for attack!” The infantry that had stormed the village were ordered to withdraw and surround it this time—to catch the fleeing partisans. Now stripped of khaki uniforms, the village lay enveloped in flames and smoke as machine gun fire poured down like rain from above. A horse with its singed tail roared a neigh and raced madly across the grassy slope, threading between fallen bodies.

The screams of women, children, and the elderly—mingling with the cries of livestock that had lost all escape—rose through the collapsing houses, the jarring crackle of planks charring in flames, and the roaring explosions. At a somewhat elevated position with a clear view, the soldiers lay in wait and fired at the peasants fleeing after being burned out. The absence of any fear of counterattack made the soldiers’ shooting accurate. Gunpowder smoke burst upward from the scattered soldiers’ gun muzzles here. Then, the dirty short coats and brimless hats that came running toward the encirclement line fell there with a burst, like dolls being knocked over.

“They’re using us for this madness!” Kurimoto thought. From behind the brimless hats and jackets that had fallen on the slope, other women and children in dirty short coats and calico house clothes emerged breathlessly from beneath the smoke. The gun muzzles were again aimed in that direction. Gunpowder smoke burst upward. A child tumbled over on the grassy slope like a celluloid doll. The dirty jacket—startled—leapt about three feet into the air. For about a minute, the jacket seemed unable to comprehend what had happened—a sight visible to the soldiers.

The child lifted in 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. So loud was his voice that even the machine gunners turned toward him. “No matter how many peasants you kill, there’s no end to it.” “Are we supposed to be killing them by choice?!” He continued. “Even if we do this, we’re not getting a single penny’s gain out of it!”

The machine gunner had a brother whose eardrums had been ruptured by a lieutenant. Without receiving any compensation, his brother had been discharged and was now working as a tenant farmer. Before enlisting, the brother had gone to Osaka and spent money to acquire stenography. His brother had to abandon that because he had become unable to hear. The Private First Class thought—if here he too were to disobey his superior officer’s orders and become disabled, or get wounded by a bullet, or killed—how disappointed his father would be, that old man who still made his living felling trees in the mountains despite his advanced age. He felt as if he could see the face of his senile old man.

But he thought of those in short coats and calico fleeing through the smoke—that they too had children and parents. They too eked out a living, either 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 did such things—shot them and burned their houses—there was no benefit at all for me. While engulfed in billowing smoke, peasants, women, and old people came once more.

The Private First Class was responsible for adjusting the machine gun's aim. He twisted the muzzle toward the sky as far as it would go. The bullets flew over the heads of peasants and women scrambling up the slope.

“Fire! The partisans are escaping—fire!” The officer watching the encirclement line bellowed. From the soldiers’ gun muzzles, bullets continued to roar out. “Fire! The partisans are swarming this way!” “Fire! Fire!” The soldiers fired; the gun barrels grew hot from the excessively fierce shooting. Yet every bullet soared skyward toward a point one ri ahead. There, having lost their killing force, they fell onto distant grasslands beyond. Not just the machine guns—even the infantry rifles surrounding them had their muzzles pointed at the sky.

The peasants, rejoicing that they had found an escape route, pressed forward toward the foot of the mountain.

They ran past the soldiers, shortening their necks and furtively glancing around like thieves who had failed to steal anything.

“Hurry up and go!”

Kurimoto said in the Russian he had picked up. The peasants climbed the steep, pathless mountain. “Fire!” “Fire!” “Wipe out the partisans completely!” “Fire!” “Fire, damn it!”

The officer, seized by impatience, barked at the soldiers. “Yes, sir. Firing.”

Once again, the bullets roared toward the sky.

“Fire! Fire!” “Yes, sir.”

Thick smoke came flowing in. The officer and soldiers had their eyes pierced. The smoke was so thick it brought tears to their eyes.

5

“This time for sure, I’ll get the Golden Kite Medal.”

Shouldering his rifle and turning back along the path he had come, the sergeant patted his colleague’s shoulder and laughed. He stabbed to death three partisans attempting to flee in front of the company commander. That was the confidence he had—the confidence that had caught the company commander’s eye.

“I’m getting sixth-class merit too.” The colleague had no less confidence in that.

The nurse bandaged the wounded lieutenant’s leg. The lieutenant’s wound was not a fatal one. So once the wound healed, he could get a favorable report from the lieutenant to his superior. The nurse had that kind of confidence in his own way as a nurse. They withdrew toward the garrison while savoring their pleasant, blissful mood. The battalion commander dispatched a mounted messenger to headquarters and reported they had annihilated every last partisan in Yufka. He felt a happiness brimming with more vigor than his subordinates. In the village behind them, houses still smoldered with hissing sputters while the crematorium-like stench of burning human flesh spread endlessly and chased after the troops. But even that did not hinder the Battalion Commander’s inner happiness.

“Yufka was indeed a nest teeming with partisans, just as Your Excellency commanded—so he said.” The commander recalled the brisk voice of the lively messenger repeating the orders before setting out.

“Hmm, exactly.” He gave a nod. “We’ve annihilated every last one of them. Our tactics were sound, and the officers and soldiers fought bravely. With this, the seed of Siberian partisans will be exhausted. And that’s that.” “Yes. If asked, ‘What were our army’s casualties?’ we are to say there were only three minor injuries. Among them, one was an excellent officer who fought very bravely. We are to say.”

“Hmm, yes, that’s correct. Excellent!”

The Battalion Commander felt satisfied that his own voice at that moment had been clear and resonant, carrying a pleasing tone.

In addition to the Order of the Rising Sun he currently held, he would receive the Golden Kite Medal with its attached pension. On top of his salary, three hundred or five hundred yen would keep flowing in even if he did nothing. Would it be Fourth Class Merit, or perhaps Fifth Class? If fourth class, that meant five hundred yen. Then, based on his military merits, he would be promoted to lieutenant colonel. ……There was just one thing that displeased him. It was the fact that some soldiers had pointed their rifles skyward and deliberately let partisans escape. But if he were to expose and punish this publicly, his hard-earned meritorious service would be undone. After all, responsibility for insufficient command ability would naturally fall on him. He resolved to make those insubordinate soldiers pay dearly another time while keeping things concealed for now. That was the wiser approach.

“Your Excellency must also be extremely pleased that the objective of the subjugation has been achieved.” The adjutant who had come up from behind said. Your Excellency referred to the commander. “Hmm.” The Battalion Commander forgot about the soldiers who had pointed their rifles skyward and, unable to suppress his inner happiness, grinned. “Truly, it went perfectly.” “Hmm… You’ve done well.”

He wondered again whether it would be Fourth Class Merit or perhaps Fifth Class. Perhaps he might even get Third Class. These days, even the Golden Kite Medal had become easier to obtain. If that were the case, he would receive a pension of 700 yen...

Suddenly, from somewhere, several gunshots rang out, and a bullet whizzed past the tip of his nose with a sharp hum. He instinctively flinched. At that moment, the horse—startled—reared up. And as if its rump had been struck hard, it bolted forward. The battalion commander, slipping and nearly falling off,

“Woah! Woah! Woah!” he let out a sorrowful voice.

“Someone come here!” He likely tried to voice that shout aloud.

In the mountains to the left, where fir and Ezomatsu pines grew, the soldiers caught sight of partisans moving among them. They immediately scattered into the cover of terrain features.

The partisans had been firing from within those mountains. The partisans clearly seemed to be gripped by emotional excitement. The bullets flying from that forest came so close they could have parted a single hair, grazing soldiers’ bodies as they whizzed by.

VI

The partisans were pursuing the khaki-colored military uniforms along the mountain paths.

They were those who had escaped from that corner where shots had been fired skyward—among them was Volkov, his horse burned away. These mountains were terrain the partisans knew like their own palms. The torching of their village had whipped their emotions into fierce intensity. Bullets struck waists, legs, and backs of fleeing khaki uniforms. From disordered ranks scrambling with legs too short to see clearly dodging, one after another went tumbling down onto grasslands and ridges. Groans not in Russian rose from where they fell.

“Got one!” “Got one!” “There! Got one dog!” Each time, from within the forest, voices of jubilation rose.

Among them were those who, having fallen, rose again and limped away. There were those who ran on while clutching their wounded hand with the other. At them, the partisans fired from within the forest, taking careful aim. Their heightened emotions only sharpened their marksmanship. When a trigger was pulled here, a khaki-clad soldier would collapse onto the grass within ten seconds, as if his legs had been swept out from under him. “There! Got another dog.”

“He’s just a soldier, huh? Take down the bastard with the long military sword on his horse! We can’t stand that bastard.” “Alright!” “We want that long military sword. Take that bastard down too!”

They were growing more and more exhilarated.…………

(October 1928)