Pathway to Japanese Literature

1. Pig A herd of black-haired pigs were digging up the garbage-filled marsh with their tough snouts.

Hamada’s company was stationed in a Chinese village about one and a half *ri* from the Taoang Railway line. It was early November. When they had departed Fengtian, patches of green grass could still be seen on the plains of Manchuria. Now, without exception, everything had turned the color of withered things.

The Heilongjiang Army’s outpost unit had been observing our movements from beyond the vast desolate wilderness and hills. Our side too kept a watchful eye on them, seeking both the right moment and a pretext to attack. On November 18th, their unit crossed the Chinese Eastern Railway and entered Qiqihar City. The Taoang Railway was completely secured. And they expanded their positions toward the Soviet Union’s border. This was already common knowledge. Now prior to that, for about two weeks the company had been encamped in the Chinese village like vultures eyeing prey.

During that time, the soldiers consciously strove to forget the war and put on a carefree front. Unrelated to the war, they found themselves unbearably compelled to try comical mischief, reckless nonsense, and unrestrained antics—the very acts that would never be permitted in a strictly disciplined army during peacetime.

The dull yellow sun was shining from the distant sky.

On the roof stood a watchtower for monitoring enemy troop movements. Private First Class Hamada, who had climbed up there, found himself gripped by an urge to stir up some mischief. It was past noon. “Hey! A prime bastard’s rootin’ around in that marsh over here!”

And he said to the men loitering below. “What?”

The soldiers below looked up and saw Hamada, his eyes drooping as he peered out from the roof, assuming a lecherous look. “What? A whore?” What they craved most was women. “Not some chick. It’s a pig.” “It’s a pig.” “What? A pig? A pig?—Hmm, even a pig’s fine. Alright, let’s go.” “A pig? A pig?—Hmm, even a pig’s fine. Alright, let’s go.” Their meals consisted mostly of dried goods like *fuki* stalks, and the occasional meat they were allotted came in cans—yet they imagined first and foremost the pungent aroma and flavor of fresh meat from those filthy, unappetizing pigs. And immediately, they planned an amusing game.

Five minutes later, six or seven soldiers, shouldering their rifles, were advancing across the desolate wilderness toward the marshland. The imagined smell of pork was already stimulating their appetites. To such an extent had they been living a life of unfulfilled desires.

They stopped on the withered grass a short distance from the marsh. There, they assumed a kneeling firing position. The black pigs, abandoned by their fleeing owners, were mindlessly scavenging for food in the area. They took aim at them and fired. Shooting at targets that weren’t human—things they were certain to hit—felt truly satisfying. When they pulled the trigger here, they could see a pig collapse over there almost immediately. It was truly amusing. They each took aim at one pig. However, the one pig that recruit Goto had targeted, for some reason, did not fall. It let out a splendid, shrill snarl and began leaping around violently like a spinning top, thrashing frantically all over the place.

“Whoa, that one’s wounded!” They watched for a while as the pig thrashed about like a mad thing. Goto fired another shot. But this time, his aim missed the moving pig. The pig thrashed about once more, even more violently and desperately. Goto fired again. But the bullet missed again. “If this were a human, you wouldn’t be able to watch.” Someone muttered involuntarily. “Even a pig feels disgusting.”

“Ishizuka, Yamaguchi—they got done in like this too.” Superior Private Onishi said. “So… was that really true?”

“It’s true.” “×××××××××××××××××××.” Eventually, they tied the still-warm pig to the center of a log with its hind legs aligned, hoisted it up, and carried it back to the kitchen. From its upside-down-hung mouth, drops of blood trailed like threads before plopping onto the plain of dead grass.

“Didn’t you lot see any Chinese coming here when you went out earlier?”

At the entrance of the lodgings stood the Special Duty Sergeant Major, wearing a sullen, displeased look. “Special Duty Sergeant Major, sir—has something happened?” “Well, you see…”

The Special Duty Sergeant Major watched the blood-dripping pig from the corner of his eye. His lips twisted in distaste. They passed through the entrance. They left the pig in the shadow of the Chinese house’s earthen wall. “Hey Hamada, what’s wrong?”

Onishi, having noticed something was amiss, entered the lodgings and called out to Hamada, who was descending from the watchtower. “Agile Chinese soldiers! Before we knew it, they’d ××ed their way into the lodgings.” “What kind of ××?” “Sergeant Major Toku’s gone and taken it all. If we’re the ones callin’, it ain’t gonna work.”

But after a while, Hamada pulled out a folded object from the mess tin filled with rice. “No matter how they did Ishizuka and Yamaguchi in, there’s still our ×× right here among these Chinese! Cheeky bastards, ain’t they? With so many of us around, they still manage to slip in without anyone noticing, do their little ××, then slip right back out again without a trace. Nimble bastards, aren’t they?”

II Comfort Bags

The thick-walled, low-roofed Chinese house had an ondol heating system inside. Soldiers who hadn’t bathed in twenty days spread their blankets over sorghum-stalk mats and slept there in tangled heaps. One evening, Hamada lay sprawled on his blanket with four or five others, still in uniform. The company officers had become extremely strict after noticing that not only were there ×× among the Chinese items, but even letters from Kikin’s hometown and comfort bags contained hidden ××××.

The ondol conveyed a gentle warmth slowly to their limbs. As the warmth spread, the lice scrambled busily over their skin.

It was already dark.

Five o’clock. —Night fell early in Northern Manchuria. The thick, white, opaque candles distributed by the accounting office stood on the edge of the shelf with two or three drops of wax dripped beneath them. The brutal, desiccated life of men and the uneasy air of the front lines were evident in the stench of gunpowder residue wafting from rifle muzzles propped against walls, and in the mud-caked military uniforms of soldiers torn at the seams. On the gray, tattered wall that seemed to crumble bit by bit were promenade photos of Michiko Oikawa and Hiroko Kawasaki stuck on with rice grains. The officers were pleased that such things provided the soldiers solace from their loneliness.

Past six o’clock, the feeble whinny of the detachment horse and the clattering wagon wheels reverberated through the air. Clomping boots struck the floor tiles. A clamorous ruckus drew near the entrance. Hamada and his comrades—who had been sprawled across their bedding—lifted their heads. The ten-odd men who’d trekked one and a half *ri* along the railway to collect rations and comfort bags had finally returned.

The lodgings suddenly came alive. “Hey—where’s the mail?”

Wearing cold-weather caps, thermal undergarments, and gloves, the rounded members of the receiving party opened the door and entered—whereupon those who had been waiting immediately asked this first.

“Nothing.” “What happened?” “They’re holed up near Fengtian.” “Why?” “Forced to strip bare for inspections.” “Bastards! They won’t even let us read our old man’s letters straight!” “Even our fathers’ letters—they ain’t lettin’ us have ’em as-is!”

But the comfort bags were distributed three per person. Even though they knew the bags contained nothing but loincloths, hand towels, and soap, they still found themselves newly intrigued by the contents. What could be inside? That anticipation delighted them. It stirred new anticipation like a lottery draw.

Of course, by now they had grown so accustomed to the comfort bags that they could discern their contents just by the appearance of the white cloth sacks. They disliked ones that were too swollen, ones that were too bulky. In those bulky ones, you could be sure they’d crammed in nothing but useless junk.

Again, it was hand towels, loincloths, and tooth powder. They grabbed them out and shook them open in the air. They had been expecting things other than those. And from between them, folded scraps of paper fluttered down onto the sorghum-stalk mat.

“Blegh!”

One of them, who had been cutting open a bag under the candlelight on the shelf, suddenly shouted "Tonkyou".

“What? What?” All at once, everyone’s attention focused in that direction. “Wait, wait! What’s this?” He quickly spread out the scrap of paper by the candle and flipped it over. “Is it ××?” “No. It’s a child’s letter written by a school teacher!” “Tch!”

At that moment, the door creaked, and the sound of spurs and a military sword clanging rang out. Everyone fell silent at once and turned their eyes toward one person. The ones who appeared were the battalion adjutant and a newspaper correspondent in a quilted coat with a fur scarf around his neck. “Even in frigid Manchuria, our soldiers are quartered in such warm rooms...” “Ah, I see.” Before agreeing with the adjutant’s explanation, the correspondent was first appalled by the unfamiliar filth inside the room. But he quickly hid his disgust and, scanning the room and soldiers sharply, asked, “Wasn’t this company the first to cross the Nen River?”

“Yes, that’s correct.” “Were there any interesting stories from that time?”

The correspondent kept scanning the soldiers. The soldiers exchanged glances and stayed silent. The correspondent asked about the freshly opened comfort bags, their contents, and what was written in the children's letters. The soldiers still just traded looks with each other. "Damn it! They're tryin' to use us as fuckin' material for their stories!" "'Stead o' paintin' us as some special breed, they shoulda told us what's goin' on back home first!"

After the journalist took a photo and left the room, they all started spouting off. "Ain't our pops and ma back in Kikkin kickin' the bucket for all we know? We don't give a damn about that!"

Three: The Outpost

The iron studs of the military boots clinked against the frozen earth.

Sergeant Fukayama led seven soldiers as they marched from the village into the wilderness in full military gear. This was the reconnaissance unit. They were heading out to the outpost line. Hamada and Onishi were among them. They were advancing about one ri—roughly four kilometers—ahead of the main force. Trees stood scattered here and there, only occasionally seen. There were no mountains either. Gentle hills spread across the land alongside marshes and fields still holding sorghum stubble. They pressed through this terrain. Before long, the village housing their main force vanished behind an ochre-colored hill. Loneliness, unease, and anxiety crept over them unnoticed. Yet they clung to stubborn pride, refusing to let these feelings surface in their expressions or words.

They knew perfectly well that every Chinese soldier had been forcibly conscripted from coolies and peasants at gunpoint by warlords. These were either peasants like themselves or else laborers. They received almost no wages. Yet the cruelty of bandits and horse thieves they’d heard about still clung stubbornly to their minds—how those brigands would flee when outmatched but grow emboldened to unleash utter brutality when advantaged. Such stories intimidated these eight men. The farther they moved from the main force, the more their fear intensified, until they felt truly alone.

The wilderness of Northern Manchuria stretched endlessly. A solitary house came into view in the desolate expanse ahead. With a map in one hand and groping his way forward, Sergeant Fukayama now understood he had reached the ordered location. Here and there lay remains of trenches dug by the Heilongjiang Army. There too, all the ground was frozen. They entered an abandoned hut, taking shelter from the cold, and decided to conduct reconnaissance of the enemy's movements from there.

The hut was constructed by piling up earth. The roof had sorghum stalks laid across the attic, with a thin layer of soil spread evenly over them. The door had been removed. Inside were no floor, shelves, or stool—not a single piece of wood remained. There were only a relatively new piece of straw mat and traces of a campfire. It had probably been looted by someone. “Oh, oh! There’s still another house over there.”

Having finished inspecting the interior and exited outside, Onishi turned around and shouted. It stood in an ochre-colored ditch less than fifty meters away, its earthen hue blending seamlessly into the surroundings as natural camouflage. "We should check that one out too." Hamada took the lead and tried to advance resolutely. At that moment, a figure in a Zhongshan suit abruptly poked his head out from the ochre-colored house. “Ah! Chinese soldiers!”

The blood in his heart surged instantly, making him reflexively tighten his grip on his rifle. For a split second, he wavered between opening fire immediately or assessing the situation. The other seven men stood rooted like poles, staring at the solitary Zhongshan-suited figure. If the Chinese soldiers were alone, eliminating them would’ve been simple work. But if ten men with a machine gun lurked inside—or if gunfire drew a large force from nearby—there was no guarantee our side wouldn’t be wiped out. That single ri distance had severed their dependence on the main force. From Sergeant Fukayama down to rookie Private Goto, they all felt more acutely than ever that they were just eight men alone.

The Zhongshan-suited figure grinned vacantly when he saw them. Then another one poked his head out from behind. He too grinned with the same vacant, relaxed expression. "What the hell? They’re damn well laughing!"

The tension that had them poised to open fire at any moment eased. They couldn’t afford to drop their guard. Yet they resolved to keep watching the situation unchanged for now. Neither side sent messengers to their rear headquarters nor began shooting, and so the day passed. But their unease remained. For Hamada and his comrades, that night became a strange, restless, oppressive mystery – a sleepless stretch of hours that left them frayed until dawn.

The next day too, the Zhongshan-suited soldiers remained inside that house. When our side showed their faces, the other side would show theirs from the window too. And just like yesterday, they flashed vacant, foolish grins. Yet we found ourselves unable to retaliate against this with anger. Before we knew it, we'd broken into foolish grins ourselves. This strange standoff persisted for some time. In the afternoon, we ate rice cooked in mess tins and sliced into ham that Yoshida—a former cook—had prepared from pork using a can opener knife. Hamada wrapped the leftovers in a fresh hand towel and tossed it toward the Chinese soldiers.

“Here’s some good stuff for ya!” he shouted in Chinese.

“Hell yeah!” The other side replied.

When the piece of ham wrapped in a hand towel fell midway toward the Chinese soldiers' house, three of them tumbled out all at once and gleefully scooped it up while hurling curses. This time they showed something wrapped in tattered cloth. “Here comes the booze!” They shouted from across no-man’s-land. “What’s that?” The Chinese they spoke came too fast for our men to catch. But during their confusion,the cloth-wrapped bundle sliced through wind currents and thudded before Hamada. Inside lay a bottle of sorghum liquor.

Sergeant Fukayama did not welcome this. When Hamada removed the bottle’s stopper,

“There’s poison in there!” he said with a look heavy with insinuation.

“No way that’s true.” “I’ll test the damn poison myself.” From beside him, Onishi reached out.

“No, I’ll do it.” Hamada took the lead and gulped down a mouthful. Then, he passed the bottle to Onishi. Onishi tasted it, “Nah! There’s no damn poison in here—it’s proper liquor!” He clicked his tongue in approval. The liquor was drunk straight from the bottle and passed from mouth to mouth among the eight men. When he saw the soldiers savoring it with such delight, even Sergeant Fukayama finally reached out. And in the end, he got drunk. The rims of his eyes turned red.

By the next night, anxiety no longer assailed them. They lit a bonfire with dead trees and sorghum stalks they had gathered from the vicinity. At times like these, the one who always became the center of their casual conversations was Onishi—a foundry worker who used to make iron kettles, a flat-nosed, bold man. Onishi repeated the story of his old mother and sister back home being driven out by their landlord. “Even if I came all the way to Manchuria,” he said, “they’re tellin’ me I ain’t helpin’ my family one bit—gotta cough up rent or we can’t even keep a roof over our heads.” “They’re spoutin’ all that ‘for the sake of ×’ crap—sendin’ us to invade China or fight Russia, they’ll pack us off to get slaughtered—but when it comes to takin’ from us? They ain’t lettin’ a single penny slip by. Gougin’ us dry.”

“Yeah, damn right!” “No matter how much dividends Mantetsu pays out, they ain’t givin’ us stockless bastards a single penny, I tell ya.”

Sergeant Fukayama, who had been instructed by the Special Duty Sergeant Major to keep an eye on the soldiers’ ideological leanings as well, tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Enough, enough. Enough of that,” he said reproachfully. “We ain’t tellin’ any lies. We’re just tellin’ it like it is.” Onishi paid no mind to the ××.

For them, who had left the main unit, there was no distinction between × and ×. There was no need to fear. Even as ××, before ×× they were worth nothing more than a single human life. And ×× could be used whenever they wanted. By past nine o'clock, the firewood had run out. Hamada invited Goto, the new recruit, to collect the deadwood he had spotted during the day. “We’ll bring rifles in case something happens, so you come empty-handed, okay?” Hamada said to Goto. “On days when you’re carrying rifles, you won’t have to haul a single piece of firewood.”

“You sure about this? Just the two of you?” “Just the two of you?” Onishi looked uneasy. “Yeah, we’re fine.” But Kawai, the strong-armed man who had worked on a bonito fishing boat, immediately stood up with just his bayonet.

The three men stepped out of the hut. The wilderness, blanketed in frost, was pure white under the moon. The frozen ground was freezing over still further. As the three men walked, it crunched under their boots with each step.

As Hamada straightened up from gathering deadwood beside a ditch about a hundred meters ahead, he spotted across the ditch—on a slightly elevated stretch of plain—a herd of twenty or thirty calf-sized animals clustered together, sniffing noisily as they watched the three men.

“Hey—Mongolian dogs!”

He shouted before he could stop himself.

As the new recruit Goto flung down the bundle of deadwood he’d gathered and began to lift his head—before it was fully raised—the pack of dogs charged at the three men like an assaulting infantry unit, barking ferociously. Hamada immediately grabbed his rifle. Kawai and Goto drew their bayonets. The Mongolian dogs—large as calves and ferocious—howled savagely as they advanced, pressing their bodies to the ground. They didn’t just charge head-on—they probed for openings from the right, left, and behind. And aiming for armpits and throats, they lunged. Until then, Hamada had repeatedly witnessed Chinese soldiers abandoned on the battlefield being devoured by Mongolian dogs. It was a miserable scene reminiscent of primal times.

He continued firing as quickly as possible and retreated toward the hut. But the dogs had also cut off their retreat. Under the hazy white moon, what had initially appeared as twenty or thirty dogs turned out to be fifty or sixty when they took stock of their surroundings. Regretting their lack of rifles, Kawai and Goto fended off the dogs with their bayonets wherever they could reach. But the dogs surged forward one after another, too many to repel. It was a ferocity that would not cease until they had devoured them all. At that moment, Hamada heard a gunshot—not from his own rifle, but a different one. It was not the report of a Type 38 infantry rifle. When he looked, four or five dark figures from near the Chinese soldiers' hut were likewise firing continuously at the Mongolian dogs.

The six men who had remained in the hut peered outside through the shadow of the torn reed screen hung over the window. The ferocious dogs had surrounded even the hut from a distance, writhing and howling like a wave. In the moonlight, they could see only their eyes glinting sharply. Immediately, they grabbed their rifles. And then they burst out of the hut. The pack of dogs did not retreat in the least. When a dog would attempt to attack the humans and be struck down by bullets, another dog would immediately trample over its corpse and charge forward savagely. They could not help but feel the tension of having encountered a powerful enemy they could not defeat.

The chaotic intermingling of dogs and humans in fierce combat continued for some time. The gunfire was not only the roar of rifles wielded by Japanese soldiers but also intermittently mingled with the distinctly different reports of other firearms.

Hamada and the others, who had nearly been devoured by the Mongolian dogs, raced headlong toward where their comrades had appeared, faces bright with relief. “Hey! Thank you—we’re saved!”

“…” Something not Japanese reverberated. Suddenly, when he peered through the moonlight, he saw it was the Chinese soldier who had given them liquor during the day.

“Thank you! “Thank you!” He kept repeating.

Then, for a full ten minutes more, the shooting at the dogs continued. The pack of dogs moved alongside their black shadows cast on the white frost, and under the blurred moon, it sometimes became impossible to distinguish which was dog and which was shadow. The Chinese soldiers relentlessly pursued the pack of dogs, just as they would have when fighting alongside them against a common enemy. By now, they no longer shot at each other.

Three days later, on November 17th, the Japanese military simultaneously began advancing across the entire front.

The company they belonged to advanced as well. And soon they reached the hut at the outpost line. The Company Commander discovered that the scouting team he had dispatched to the outpost were chatting amiably with the ×× sentries, sharing rice cooked in mess tins, receiving millet buns from them, and had completely become comrades—and turned crimson red. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

The Company Commander suddenly barked. “Who the hell is that?! Kill that bastard! Capture him!” Contrary to expectations that his subordinates would immediately seize their rifles and rise to atone for their negligence in obeying orders, expressions of bitter resentment flickered across their faces. “Shoot! Kill ××!” But at that moment, Superior Private Onishi and Private First Class Hamada—having grabbed their rifles—released the safety catches and immediately took aim at ×××××××××× and pulled their triggers.