Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Setting Sun

1

In the morning, in the dining room, Mother sipped a spoonful of soup smoothly,

“Ah.”

Mother let out a faint cry.

“A hair?”

I wondered if something unpleasant had gotten into the soup.

“No.”

Mother, as if nothing had happened, once again lightly let a spoonful of soup flow into her mouth, composedly turned her face to the side, sent her gaze toward the fully bloomed mountain cherry blossoms outside the kitchen window, and keeping her face thus turned, once again lightly slipped another spoonful of soup between her small lips.
The description "lightly" was, in Mother’s case, by no means an exaggeration.
The way Mother partook of her meals was entirely different from the dining etiquette featured in women’s magazines.
There was a time when my younger brother Naoshi, while drinking sake, said this to me, his sister.

“Having a peerage doesn’t automatically make someone nobility, you know. There are truly noble people who possess what’s called heavenly virtue even without peerage, while those like us who cling to titles alone aren’t nobility—we’re closer to outcasts. Take someone like Iwashima” (here he mentioned his classmate, a count) “—that guy’s even more vulgar than the solicitors’ bosses in Shinjuku’s brothels, don’t you think? The other day at Yanai’s brother’s wedding—Yanai being another of my classmates, the second son of a viscount—that bastard showed up in a damn tuxedo. What’s the point of wearing a tuxedo there? Well, never mind that. But during his table speech, when he used that preposterous word ‘gozaimasuru,’ it made me gag. Putting on airs is a vulgar pretense entirely unrelated to true elegance. Signs reading ‘High-Class Boarding Houses’ used to be common around Hongo, but in truth, most of these so-called aristocrats are nothing more than high-class beggars. True nobles would never put on such clumsy airs as that Iwashima. Even in our family, I suppose Mama’s the only real noble left. She’s the real thing. There’s just no keeping up with her.”

When it came to how we took our soup, we would bow slightly over the plate, hold the spoon sideways to scoop it up, and bring it to our mouths while keeping the spoon horizontal. But Mother lightly placed her left fingers on the table's edge without leaning forward, lifted her face upright, scooped the soup sideways with barely a glance at the plate, then carried the spoon like a swallow—so lightly and deftly—positioning it perpendicular to her mouth to let the soup flow from the spoon's tip between her lips. All the while glancing about with apparent detachment, she fluttered the spoon like tiny wings, never spilling a drop nor making the slightest sound of sipping or clinking against the dish. It might not have been what they call formally proper etiquette, but to my eyes it looked utterly charming—the very image of authenticity. In truth, liquids do taste surprisingly better when drunk by letting them flow into one's mouth like that. Yet being what Naoshi calls a high-class beggar, I couldn't handle my spoon with Mother's effortless grace. Resignedly, I bowed over my plate and ate in that dreary formal manner deemed proper etiquette.

Not limited to soup, Mother’s way of partaking meals deviated considerably from etiquette. When meat was served, she briskly cut it all into small pieces with a knife and fork, then discarded the knife, switched the fork to her right hand, and speared each piece to eat slowly with evident enjoyment. Moreover, when we labored to separate meat from bone on dishes like chicken without clattering our plates, Mother would calmly pinch the bony part with her fingertips, lift it up, and serenely detach flesh from bone using only her mouth. Even such barbaric gestures looked not only charming but strangely erotic when Mother performed them—truly, the real thing was different. Not only with bone-in chicken, but Mother occasionally even picked up ham or sausage from lunch dishes with her fingertips to eat them.

“Do you know why rice balls taste so good? It’s because they’re molded through human hands.”
“That comes from being shaped by fingers gripping tight.”

There was also a time when she said.

There are times when I too think eating with one’s hands must taste wonderful, but someone like me—a high-class beggar—knows that clumsily imitating such things would only paint the very picture of a real beggar, so I restrain myself.

Even my younger brother Naoshi has said, "I can’t hold a candle to Mama," but I too find it truly difficult to imitate Mother and sometimes feel something akin to despair.
One evening in early autumn under a fine moonlit sky in the inner garden of our Nishikata-cho home, Mother and I sat together in the pavilion by the pond to view the moon. As we laughed and debated how a fox’s wedding procession might differ from a mouse’s in their bridal preparations, Mother suddenly stood and stepped into the thicket of bush clovers beside the pavilion before emerging through white blossoms—her face glowing even whiter against them—and smiled faintly.

“Kazuko, can you guess what Mother is doing right now?”

Mother said.

"You’re picking flowers."

When I replied, she let out a small laugh,

"I was peeing."

Mother said.

I was astonished that she hadn’t squatted at all, yet there was a genuinely charming quality to it that someone like me could never hope to emulate.

Though I’d digressed far from this morning’s soup, I recently read in a book that noblewomen of the Louis court would urinate nonchalantly in palace gardens or hallway corners, and learning of their artless innocence—so utterly charming—I came to think my mother might be the last of such true noblewomen.

Now, this morning, when Mother took a spoonful of soup and let out a small “Ah,” I asked, “A hair?”
When I asked, she answered, “No.”

“Was it perhaps too salty?”

The morning’s soup was something I made like potage by straining canned green peas that had recently been rationed from America. Since I never had confidence in my cooking, even after Mother said no, I still anxiously asked.

“You did it very well.”

Mother said this earnestly, finished her soup, then picked up the nori-wrapped rice ball with her hand to eat.

Ever since childhood, I’ve never found breakfast appetizing—my stomach doesn’t growl until around ten o’clock—and even then, though I somehow managed to finish the soup, eating felt so tedious that I placed the rice ball on my plate, stabbed it with chopsticks, mushed it into a mess, then picked up a fragment with my chopsticks. Holding them perpendicular to my mouth like Mother’s spoon when she takes her soup, I pushed the morsel in as if feeding a little bird, slowly nibbling away. Meanwhile, Mother had already finished her entire meal, risen quietly, leaned her back against the sunlit wall, and stood watching my dining habits in silence,

“Kazuko dear, you’re still not quite there yet.”
“You must learn to make breakfast taste most exquisite.”

Mother said.

“What about Mother?”
“Does it taste good?”

“Of course I do.
“I’m not a sick person.”

“Kazuko isn’t sick either.”

“No, no.”

Mother smiled sadly and shook her head.

Five years ago, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis and took to my bed, but I know now that was merely a capricious illness.
But Mother’s recent illness—that very illness—was truly a worrisome, sorrowful one.
Yet Mother worries about nothing but me.

“Ah,” I said.

“What?”

This time, Mother asked in return.

When our eyes met and we felt we had completely understood each other, I gave a soft chuckle, and Mother smiled back tenderly.

That strange, faint cry of "Ah" comes when one is overcome by unbearable shame.
Suddenly—vividly—the memory of my divorce six years ago rose in my chest with such intensity that before I knew it, I had let slip that "Ah." But what of Mother’s case?
Surely Mother couldn’t have a shameful past like mine—no, but then again, could there be something?

“Mother, you must have remembered something just now too, right? What was it?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“About me?”

“No.”

“About Naoshi?”

“Yes.”

She began to say, then tilted her head,

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Mother said.

My younger brother Naoshi had been conscripted midway through university and sent to a southern island, but we lost all contact—even after the war ended, his whereabouts remained unknown. Mother said she had resigned herself to never seeing Naoshi again, but I had never once made such a "resolution"—I kept believing we would surely meet again.

"I thought I'd resigned myself to it," she said, "but tasting this delicious soup made me think of Naoshi until it became unbearable."
"I should have treated him better."

From around the time Naoshi entered high school, he became unusually obsessed with literature and began living a life almost like a delinquent’s—it was impossible to know how much trouble he caused Mother.
Yet with every spoonful she sipped, Mother would think of Naoshi and let out a faint “Ah.”
I shoved rice into my mouth, my eyes growing hot.

“It’s all right.
“Naoshi will be all right.
“A villain like Naoshi doesn’t die so easily.
“Those who die are always the quiet, beautiful, kind ones.
“Even if you beat Naoshi with a stick, he won’t die.”

Mother laughed,
“Then does that mean Kazuko will be the one to die young?”

Mother teased me.

“Oh, why would you say that? As for me, I’m a villainous old highbrow—I’ll make it to eighty just fine.”

“Is that so? Then Mother will be all right until ninety.”

“Yes.”

I started to say but hesitated.
Villains live long.
Beautiful people die early.
Mother is beautiful.
But I want her to live a long life.
I was utterly flustered.

“You’re being mean!”

The moment I said it, my lower lip began to quiver uncontrollably, and tears overflowed from my eyes and fell.

Perhaps I should tell about the snake.
Four or five days before that afternoon, neighborhood children had found about ten snake eggs in the bamboo thicket along our garden fence.

The children,

“They’re viper eggs!”

they insisted.
Since I thought that if ten vipers were born in that bamboo thicket, we wouldn’t even be able to step carelessly into the garden,
“Let’s burn them.”
When I said this, the children leapt up joyfully and followed behind me.
Near the bamboo thicket, we piled up leaves and brushwood, lit them ablaze, and threw the eggs one by one into the fire.
The eggs refused to burn.
Even when the children heaped more leaves and twigs over the flames to strengthen them, the eggs showed no sign of catching fire.

The daughter from the lower farm stood outside the fence,

“What are you doing?”

she asked with a laugh.

“We’re burning viper eggs.
If vipers come out, it’s scary, you know.”

“How big are they?”

“They’re about the size of quail eggs and pure white.”

“Then they’re just ordinary snake eggs.”
“They’re not viper eggs.”
“Raw eggs don’t burn easily, you know.”

The farmer’s daughter laughed as if thoroughly amused and left.

I had been burning the fire for about thirty minutes, but since the eggs simply wouldn’t catch fire, I made the children retrieve them from the flames and bury them under the plum tree, then gathered small stones to make a grave marker.

“Now, everyone—pray.”

When I squatted down and pressed my hands together in prayer, the children also quietly squatted behind me and seemed to do the same.

After parting with the children and slowly climbing the stone steps alone, I found Mother standing in the shade of the wisteria trellis at the top of the steps,

“What a pitiful thing to do.”

Mother said.

“I thought it was a viper, but it was just a snake.”
“Still, I gave it a proper burial, so there’s no harm done.”

Even so, I wondered if Mother seeing this had been ill-advised.

Though Mother was by no means superstitious, ever since Father had passed away at our home in Nishikata-cho ten years ago, she had been terribly afraid of snakes.
Just before Father’s passing, Mother saw a thin black string lying by his pillow and casually tried to pick it up—only to find it was a snake.
It slithered away smoothly, emerged into the corridor, and then vanished without a trace. Only Mother and Uncle Wada had witnessed it; they exchanged glances but restrained themselves into silence, unwilling to disturb the solemnity of the deathbed chamber.
We too had been present at the scene yet knew absolutely nothing about that snake.

However, on the evening of Father’s passing, I myself witnessed snakes climbing every tree around the garden pond.
Now that I’m a twenty-nine-year-old granny, I had already turned nineteen when Father died ten years prior.
Being no longer a child even then, my memory of that day remains clear even now—when I walked to the pond to gather flowers for the altar, paused by the azaleas at water’s edge, and suddenly noticed a small snake coiled around a branch tip.
Startled, I moved to pluck a kerria blossom instead, only to find another snake coiled there too.
On the osmanthus beside it—the young maple, clematis, wisteria, cherry—every tree bore coiled snakes.
Yet they didn’t strike me as fearsome.
I simply imagined them mourning Father’s death like myself, emerging from their holes to honor his spirit.
When I quietly told Mother about the snakes, she remained calm—tilting her head pensively—but said nothing at all.

However, it remained true that these two snake incidents had instilled in Mother not just dislike but something closer to reverential fear—an awestruck dread that transformed snakes into objects of terror rather than mere pests.

When Mother found out about the burned eggs and I realized she must have perceived some dire omen in it, I too suddenly felt the horror of what I'd done. An endless anxiety gripped me—could this bring some cursed retribution upon her? The worry consumed me for days afterward. Yet that very morning at breakfast, I'd foolishly let slip that wretched phrase about beautiful people dying young. With no way to take it back, I dissolved into tears. As I cleared the dishes afterward, it seemed a vile little serpent had coiled itself around my heart—one that might steal away Mother's remaining years. The disgust of it choked me beyond bearing.

And then, on that day, I saw a snake in the garden.
It was such a calm, pleasant day that after finishing my kitchen work, I carried a wicker chair out to the lawn in the garden, intending to knit there. But when I took the chair down to the garden, I found a snake coiled by the bamboo grass near the garden stones.
Oh, how awful.
I merely thought that and did not ponder it further, taking the wicker chair back up to the veranda. Placing the chair there, I sat down and began my knitting.
In the afternoon, thinking to retrieve Marie Laurencin’s art book from the collection stored deep within the small shrine at the corner of the garden, I went down to the garden and found a snake crawling slowly, ever so slowly across the lawn.
It was the same snake as from that morning.
It was a slender, elegant snake.
I thought it was a female snake.
She calmly crossed the lawn to the shade of the wild rose, then stopped, raised her head, and quivered her slender flame-like tongue.
And then she glanced around as if surveying her surroundings, but after a while lowered her head and crouched down listlessly.
Even at that moment I could think only of how beautiful the snake was. Eventually I went to the shrine to retrieve the art book, and on my return glanced furtively at where the snake had been—but it was gone.

In the late afternoon, while I was having tea with Mother in the Chinese-style room and gazing out at the garden, the snake from that morning slowly reappeared on the stone of the third step of the staircase.

Mother also spotted it,

“That snake...?”

No sooner had she spoken than she stood up, rushed over to me, took my hand, and stood frozen in place.
At her words, I too suddenly realized,
"The mother of the eggs?"
I blurted out.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Mother’s voice was hoarse.

We held hands, held our breath, and silently watched the snake.
The snake that had been crouching listlessly on the stone began to move again with a staggering motion, then feebly crossed the stone steps and slipped into the Japanese irises.

“It’s been walking around the garden since this morning.”

When I said this in a small voice, Mother let out a sigh and slumped down into her chair,

“You see? It’s searching for its eggs. Poor thing.”
Mother said in a somber voice.
I let out a soft, helpless laugh.

The setting sun struck Mother’s face, making her eyes appear to gleam with a bluish light. Her face, faintly tinged with what seemed like anger, was so beautiful it made one want to leap toward her.
And then I thought: Ah—Mother’s face bore an uncanny resemblance to that sorrowful snake from earlier.
And then I felt—though why I cannot say—that this coiled and lumpish viper dwelling in my chest might one day devour this beautiful mother snake steeped in profound sorrow.

I placed my hand on Mother’s soft, delicate shoulder and writhed involuntarily for reasons I couldn’t comprehend.

We abandoned our home in Nishikata-cho, Tokyo, and moved to this slightly Chinese-style villa in Izu at the beginning of December in the year Japan surrendered unconditionally.
After Father passed away, our family’s finances had been entirely managed by Mother’s younger brother—now her only living relative—Uncle Wada. However, with the war’s end and society’s transformation, Uncle Wada declared that it was no longer feasible: we must sell the house, dismiss all the servants, and purchase a modest country home where Mother and I could live freely. Mother, who understood even less about financial matters than her children, seems to have simply entrusted everything to Uncle Wada’s judgment, acquiescing with a resigned, “Then I leave it all to you.”

At the end of November, an express letter arrived from Uncle stating that Viscount Kawata’s villa along the Sunzu Railway line was listed for sale—the house stood on elevated ground with fine views and included about 100 *tsubo* of farmland. The area was renowned for plum blossoms, warm in winter and cool in summer, which he felt would surely please them once they lived there. As he deemed it necessary for them to meet directly with the seller to discuss terms, he requested they come to his office in Ginza the following day.

“Will you go, Mother?”

When I asked,

“But I had already entrusted it to him,”

she said with an unbearably forlorn laugh.

The next day, Mother went out a little past noon after requesting the company of our former driver, Mr. Matsuyama, and returned around eight in the evening escorted by him.

“I’ve decided.”

She entered Kazuko’s room, placed her hands on the desk, slumped into the chair, and uttered those words.

“Decided? What have you decided?”

“Everything.”

“But—”

I froze in shock,

“How could you decide without even seeing what kind of house—”

Mother propped an elbow on the desk, pressed a hand lightly to her forehead, and sighed faintly,

“Because Uncle Wada says it’s a good place. I feel I could just close my eyes like this and move there without another thought.”

Having said that, she raised her face and smiled faintly.
That face was slightly haggard, yet beautiful.

“I suppose so.”

And I too, yielding to the beauty of Mother’s unwavering trust in Uncle Wada, nodded in agreement,

“In that case, I’ll close my eyes too.”

We both laughed aloud, but after our laughter subsided, we were left with a terrible loneliness.

After that, every day, movers came to the house, and preparations for the move began.
Uncle Wada also came and made all the necessary arrangements to sell off what needed to be sold.
I was kept busy sorting clothes with the maid Okiyo and burning junk in the garden, but Mother neither helped with the organizing nor gave any instructions, instead lingering aimlessly in her room day after day.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to go to Izu anymore?”

Even when I pressed her resolutely with slightly sharper questions,

“No.”

she would only answer with a vacant expression.

About ten days later, the preparations were completed.

In the evening, as Okiyo and I burned scraps of paper and straw in the garden, Mother came out from her room too, stood on the veranda, and silently watched our bonfire.
A cold ash-gray west wind blew, smoke crawled low across the ground, and when I suddenly looked up at Mother’s face, I was startled to see her complexion worse than I had ever seen before,

“Mother! Your complexion looks terrible!”

When I shouted this, Mother smiled faintly,

“It’s nothing.”

With that, she said, and softly retreated into her room.

That night, since the futons had already been packed away, Okiyo slept on the sofa in the second-floor Western-style room, while Mother and I laid out a set of futons borrowed from the neighbors in Mother’s room and slept there together.

Mother let out an “Oh?”
In a voice so aged and feeble it made me catch my breath,
“It’s because Kazuko is here. Because Kazuko stays with me that I can go to Izu. Because she stays with me.”
“Because Kazuko stays with me.”
she said something unforeseen.

I froze,

“What if Kazuko weren’t here?”

I blurted out.

Mother suddenly began to cry,

“It would be better for me to die.”
“In this house where Father died, I too want to die.”

She spoke in fragmented phrases, then wept with increasing violence.

Never before had Mother uttered such vulnerable words to me, nor had I ever witnessed her cry so desperately. Through Father’s passing, my marriage and return home pregnant, the stillbirth at the hospital, my subsequent illness, even Naoshi’s misdeeds—through all these trials, she had never revealed such frailty. For ten years since Father’s death, she had remained unchanged from his lifetime—the same serene, gentle Mother. We had grown up indulged in that complacent warmth.

But now Mother’s funds were exhausted. Every last coin had been spent unreservedly for Naoshi and me. Thus we were forced to abandon our long-cherished home and begin a meager existence with just the two of us in Izu’s tiny mountain villa.

Had Mother been a shrewish miser—scolding us while hoarding secret savings—no upheaval could have driven her to this death-wishing despair. Ah! To lose all wealth—what terrifying, wretched, hopeless hell! This first true understanding filled my chest until I lay rigid on my back, too anguished for tears yet unable to move—a stone effigy of life’s solemnity.

The next day, Mother’s complexion remained poor, and she still seemed to be lingering about, wishing to stay in this house even a little longer. However, when Uncle Wada arrived and informed us that almost all the luggage had already been sent off and that we were to depart for Izu today, Mother reluctantly put on a coat, silently nodded in farewell to Okiyo and the others who had come to see us off, and left the house in Nishikata-cho with Uncle Wada and me—the three of us.

The train was relatively empty, and all three of us were able to find seats.
In the train car, Uncle Wada was in extremely high spirits, humming tunes to himself, but Mother’s complexion remained poor; she kept her head bowed and seemed terribly cold.
At Mishima we transferred to the Sunzu Railway, alighted at Izu-Nagaoka, then rode a bus for about fifteen minutes before heading up a gentle mountain slope until we reached a small village where a Chinese-style villa stood somewhat elaborately built at its edge.

“Mother, it’s a nicer place than I expected.”

I said breathlessly.

“It is.”

Mother too stood before the villa’s entrance and momentarily showed a happy glint in her eyes.

“First off, the air’s fresh.
“It’s pure air.”

Uncle Wada declared proudly.

“Truly.”

Mother smiled and,

“It’s sweet.
“The air here tastes sweet.”

Mother said.

Then all three of us laughed.

When we entered the entrance hall, the luggage from Tokyo had already arrived, filling every space from the entrance to the rooms.

“Next comes the view from the sitting room—it’s quite fine.”

Uncle Wada buoyantly pulled us along to the sitting room and made us sit down.

It was around three in the afternoon. The winter sun fell gently upon the garden lawn where stone steps descended to a small pond. Plum trees stood clustered nearby; below the garden spread mandarin orange fields crossed by a village road that gave way to rice paddies beyond. Farther still stretched pine woods through which glimmered sea—from where I sat in this sitting room, its horizon seemed poised at breast level where it might brush my skin.

“What a gentle landscape.”

Mother said listlessly.

“Could it be the air? The sunlight here feels completely different from Tokyo’s—it’s like the light’s been sifted through silk.”

I said this exuberantly.

There was a ten-mat room and a six-mat room, then a Chinese-style parlor, a three-mat entrance hall with another three-mat space by the bathhouse, plus a dining room and kitchen. Upstairs sat one Western-style guest room with a large bed—that was all we had. But even when Naoshi returned to make three of us instead of two, I didn’t think it would feel cramped at all.

Uncle Wada went to negotiate meals at what was said to be the only inn in this village, then spread out the delivered boxed lunch in the sitting room and drank the whiskey he had brought along, recounting with great cheer stories of past misadventures with Viscount Kawata—the former owner of this villa—during their time in China; but Mother merely touched her chopsticks to the boxed meal, and by the time dusk began to settle,

“Let me rest like this for a while.”

She said in a small voice.

I took out a futon from the luggage and had her lie down, then growing terribly worried, searched through the luggage for a thermometer. When I took her temperature, it was thirty-nine degrees.

Uncle too seemed startled and went out to find a doctor as far as the lower village.

“Mother!”

Even when I called out to Mother, she merely dozed fitfully.

I gripped Mother’s small hand and sobbed.
Mother was so pitiful, so pitiful—no, the two of us were so pitiful, so pitiful—I cried and cried, but couldn’t stop.
While crying, I truly thought I wanted to die like this with Mother.
We no longer needed anything.
I thought our lives had already ended when we left the house in Nishikata-cho.

About two hours later, Uncle Wada returned with the village doctor.
The village doctor appeared to be quite advanced in years and was wearing hakama trousers of Sendai silk with white tabi socks.

After the examination was completed,

“It may develop into pneumonia.”
“But even if it does develop into pneumonia, there is no need for concern.”

With that vague reassurance, he administered an injection and departed.

The next day, Mother’s fever still had not subsided.
Uncle Wada handed me 2,000 yen, instructing me to send a telegram to Tokyo should hospitalization become necessary, then returned to the capital that same day.

I took out the bare minimum of necessary cooking utensils from our luggage and made porridge to offer Mother.
Still lying down, Mother ate three spoonfuls before shaking her head.

A little before noon, the doctor from the lower village appeared again. This time he wasn’t wearing hakama trousers but still had on his white tabi socks.

“It would be better to be hospitalized...”

When I suggested,

“No, there should be no need for that. Today I will administer a strong injection—your fever should subside.”

With that, he gave his usual vague reply—administered what he called that strong injection—and departed.

However, whether that strong injection had worked wonders or not, past noon that day Mother’s face turned bright red and she began sweating profusely. When changing her nightclothes, she laughed—

“He may be a renowned doctor.”

The fever had dropped to thirty-seven degrees.
I was glad and ran to the village’s only inn, asked the innkeeper’s wife to spare me about ten eggs, then promptly soft-boiled them and served them to Mother.
Mother ate three soft-boiled eggs and about half a bowl of porridge.

The following day, the village’s renowned doctor visited again wearing white tabi socks. When I expressed gratitude for yesterday’s strong injection, he nodded deeply with an expression that seemed to say effectiveness was only natural, conducted his examination with care, then turned to face me.

“Her Ladyship is no longer ill.”
“Since that is the case, from now on Her Ladyship may eat anything she likes and do anything she pleases—it will be perfectly acceptable.”

Once again, he phrased things in such an odd manner that I had to struggle not to burst out laughing.

After seeing the doctor to the entrance, when I returned to the sitting room, Mother was sitting on the floor cushion,

“He’s truly an excellent doctor.”
“I’m no longer ill.”

she said with a blissful expression, murmuring as if to herself.

“Mother, shall I open the shoji?”
“It’s snowing, you know.”

Large peony-like snowflakes had begun to fall, floating down gently.
I opened the shoji, sat down beside Mother, and gazed at the snow of Izu through the glass door.

“I’m no longer ill.”

And Mother said again, as if murmuring to herself,

"Sitting here like this makes everything before feel like a dream."
"In truth," she continued softly—though whether aloud or inwardly was unclear—"when moving day approached... I came utterly loathe coming here."
"I wanted only more days at our Nishikata-chō home—a single hour more."
"When boarding that train... my heart burned so for Tokyo at dusk..."
Her voice sharpened suddenly: "This isn’t ordinary sickness."
"The Lord struck me dead once—then remade me wholly new."

From then until today, our life together at the villa—just the two of us—continued, all in all, peacefully and without incident.
The villagers were also kind to us.
We had moved here last December, and from then until today in April, aside from preparing meals, we spent most days knitting on the veranda, reading books in the Chinese-style room, or drinking tea—living a life almost entirely removed from the world.
In February, the plum blossoms bloomed, and the entire village was buried in plum flowers.
And even when March came, there were many calm, windless days, so the plum blossoms in full bloom did not wane in the slightest and continued to bloom beautifully until the end of March.
Morning, noon, evening, night—the plum blossoms were breathtakingly beautiful.
And when we opened the glass door of the veranda, the scent of flowers would always flow smoothly into the room.
By late March, when evening came, the wind would inevitably rise. As I arranged bowls in the twilight-filled dining room, plum petals blew in through the window, landing in the bowls and becoming damp.
When April arrived, Mother and I would sit on the veranda knitting, and our conversations mostly revolved around plans for cultivating the fields.
Mother also said she wanted to help.
Ah, writing this now, it did seem as though we had died once and been resurrected as different people, just as Mother once said. Yet in the end, can humans ever achieve a resurrection like that of the Lord?
Though Mother had spoken those words, still with every spoonful of soup she sips, she remembers Naoshi and cries out, "Ah!"
And my past scars, in truth, have not healed in the slightest.

Ah, I want to write everything clearly without hiding a single thing.
There are even times when I secretly think all this villa's tranquility is nothing but a facade.
Even if this was meant to be our brief respite from God—Mother and I—I can't shake the feeling some ominous shadow has already begun creeping into this peace.
Mother feigns happiness while weakening daily, while this viper nests in my chest—fattening itself at Mother's expense, swelling relentlessly despite my efforts to contain it. Ah, if only this were mere seasonal melancholy! Lately I find this existence unbearable.
Burning those snake eggs—such vulgar acts must have been outbursts of my frayed nerves.
All I do is deepen Mother's grief and drain her vitality.

When I wrote "love," I couldn’t write any further.

Two

After the incident with the snake eggs, about ten days passed with ominous events continuing to occur, further deepening Mother’s sorrow and sapping her vitality.

I was the one who had started the fire.

I started the fire.
That such a dreadful thing would occur in my lifetime—not once from my earliest days until now had I ever even dreamed of it.

Was I such a so-called “princess” that I couldn’t even recognize something as obvious as the fact that carelessness with fire leads to a blaze?

When I got up in the middle of the night to use the restroom and reached the folding screen by the entranceway, I noticed an unusual brightness coming from the bathhouse area. Peering inside without particular concern, I saw the glass-paned door glowing crimson while a crackling sound reached my ears. Breaking into a half-run, I hurried to open the bathhouse’s low entry door and stepped out barefoot—only to find the stack of firewood beside the bathing furnace engulfed in roaring flames.

I raced to the farmhouse adjoining our garden through the lower field and began pounding on its door with all my strength,

“Mr. Nakai! Please wake up, there’s a fire!”

I shouted.

Mr. Nakai had apparently already been asleep, but—

“Yes, I’ll come right away,” he replied, and as I pleaded, “Please hurry! Please!”, he came rushing out of his house still wearing his yukata nightclothes.

As the two of us ran back to the fire and began drawing water from the pond with buckets, Mother’s cry of “Ah!” reached us from the direction of the sitting room’s corridor.
I threw down the bucket and climbed up from the garden to the corridor,

“Mother, don’t worry. It’s alright. Please rest.”

I caught Mother as she began to collapse, led her to her bed and laid her down, then rushed back to the fire. This time, I drew water from the bath and passed it to Mr.Nakai, who threw it onto the pile of firewood—but the flames were too fierce, and such efforts seemed hopeless.

“Fire!”
“Fire!”
“The villa’s on fire!”

Voices rose from below, and four or five villagers immediately broke through the fence and came rushing in.
They formed a bucket relay with water from the irrigation channel beneath the fence, extinguishing the flames within two or three minutes.
The fire had nearly reached the bathhouse roof.

Just as I thought “Thank goodness,” I froze in shock upon realizing the fire’s cause.
It truly struck me then for the first time—this commotion had begun because I’d placed embers I believed extinguished next to the firewood pile after removing them from the bath furnace that evening.
Standing paralyzed with the urge to cry, I heard Mrs. Nishiyama from the house beyond the fence declare loudly, “The bathhouse is completely charred! All from careless handling of the furnace fire!”

Village Headman Fujita, Officer Ninomiya, Fire Chief Ouchi, and others arrived, and Mr. Fujita, with his usual gentle smile,

“You must have been startled. What happened?” inquired.

“It was my fault. The firewood I thought I’d extinguished...” I started to say, but I was so miserable that tears welled up, and I just hung my head in silence.

At that moment, I thought I might be taken by the police and become a criminal. Barefoot and still in my nightclothes, I suddenly felt ashamed of my disheveled appearance and profoundly thought I had fallen into ruin.

“Understood. And your mother?” Mr. Fujita said quietly in a caring tone.

“She’s resting in the sitting room. She was terribly shocked, and…”

“Well, now…” The young Officer Ninomiya also said consolingly, “At least the house itself didn’t catch fire.”

Then, at that moment, Mr. Nakai from the farmhouse below arrived, having changed into proper attire and returned.

“Oh, it’s nothing—just a bit of firewood caught fire,” he said breathlessly, covering for my foolish mistake. “It didn’t even turn into a proper blaze.”

“I see,” replied Mr. Fujita. “Understood.”

Village Headman Fujita nodded repeatedly two or three times, then was consulting something in a low voice with Officer Ninomiya when—

“Well then, we’ll be going. Please give my regards to your mother.”

With that, he departed together with Fire Chief Ouchi and the others.

Only Officer Ninomiya remained behind, then approached right before me in a voice as soft as breath itself,

“In that case, I won’t be filing an official report about tonight’s matter.”

“he said.”

When Officer Ninomiya had left, Mr. Nakai from the farmhouse below—
“What did Officer Ninomiya say?”

Mr.Nakai asked in a truly concerned, tense voice.
“He said he won’t file a report.”

When I answered, there were still people from the neighborhood by the fence who seemed to have heard my response; saying "I see, that’s good, that’s good," they trooped away.

Mr. Nakai also bid me goodnight and left, leaving me alone standing vacantly by the pile of burned firewood. When I looked up at the sky with tears in my eyes, it already held the signs of approaching dawn.

In the bathhouse, I washed my hands, feet, and face. Feeling somehow apprehensive about meeting Mother, I dawdled in the bathhouse’s three-tatami room by fixing my hair, then went to the kitchen and spent time pointlessly tidying dishes until night had fully given way to dawn.

When dawn broke and I went to the sitting room, softly muffling my footsteps, Mother had already changed her clothes and was sitting exhausted in the Chinese-style room.
When she saw me, Mother smiled gently, but her face was startlingly pale.

I did not laugh, remained silent, and stood behind Mother’s chair.

After a while, Mother said, “It was nothing at all. It’s just firewood meant to be burned.”

I suddenly felt cheerful and let out a soft chuckle. I recalled the Biblical proverb from Proverbs—“A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver”—and deeply thanked God for my happiness in having such a gentle Mother. Last night’s events belonged to last night. Resolving not to dwell on it any longer, I gazed at the morning sea of Izu through the glass doors of the Chinese-style room, standing behind Mother until her quiet breathing and mine fell perfectly into sync.

After finishing a light breakfast, I had just begun tidying the pile of burned firewood when Mrs. Saki—proprietress of the sole inn in the village—

“What happened?”
“What happened?”
“Now I’ve just heard about it—my goodness, what on earth occurred last night?”

As she said this, she came running through the garden’s latticed gate at a trot, and tears glistened in her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

I apologized in a small voice.

“There’s no need for apologies. Rather than that, Miss—what about the police?”

“He said it’s fine.”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

Mrs. Saki beamed with genuine delight.

I consulted with Mrs. Saki about what form of thanks and apology would be appropriate to convey to the villagers.
Mrs. Saki said that money would be best after all, and then instructed me on which households I should visit to apologize.

“But if you’d rather not make the rounds alone, I can come along with you.”

“Would it be better if I went alone?”

“Can you go alone? Well then, it’s better if you go alone.”

“I’ll go alone.”

After that, Mrs. Saki helped a little with tidying up the burned remains.

When the cleanup was finished, I got money from Mother, wrapped each hundred-yen bill in Mino paper, and wrote "Apology" on every package.

First, I went to the village office. Since Village Headman Fujita was out, I handed the paper-wrapped package to the girl at the reception desk,

“I deeply apologize for last night’s incident.
I’ll be more careful from now on—please forgive me.
Please give my regards to the Village Headman.”

I offered my apologies.

Then I went to Fire Chief Mr. Ōuchi’s house. Mr. Ōuchi emerged at the entrance, looked at me, and gave me a silent smile tinged with sorrow. Suddenly overwhelmed by tears I could not explain, I barely managed to utter,

“I’m sorry about last night.”

I hurriedly took my leave. As I walked homeward, tears streamed down until my face was ruined. Returning home once more, I washed my face in the washroom and reapplied my makeup. Just as I was fastening my shoes in the entranceway to depart again—Mother emerged.

“Are you still going out somewhere?” Mother said.

“Yes, I’m about to leave now,” I answered without looking up.

I answered without raising my face.

“You’ve had a hard time, dear.”

Mother said quietly.

Drawing strength from Mother’s affection, this time I managed to complete all my rounds without shedding a single tear.

When I went to the district head’s house, he was out, and his son’s wife came to greet me—but upon seeing me, she herself ended up tearing up instead. Then at the police officer’s place, Officer Ninomiya reassured me with a “It’s alright, it’s alright,” and everyone proved so kindhearted; afterward, I made rounds to the neighboring homes where I was met with sympathy and comfort from all.
However, only the wife of Mr.Nishiyama from our former home—though she was already a woman in her forties—gave me a stern scolding.

“You must be more careful from now on.”
“I don’t know if you’re some prince or what, but I’ve been watching your little game of make-believe living on tenterhooks all this time.”
“It’s like you’re two children living on your own—it’s a wonder you haven’t started a fire before now.”
“You must truly be careful from now on.”
“Even last night—if the wind had been strong then, the entire village would have burned down!”

This Mrs. Nishiyama’s wife was the one who had loudly declared outside the fence, “The bathhouse was completely burned!” and “It was negligence with the stove fire!”—even though Mr. Nakai from the lower farm had rushed before the Village Headman and Officer Ninomiya to defend us by insisting it hadn’t even become a proper blaze.
Yet I sensed truth in Mrs. Nishiyama’s wife’s scolding.
I truly thought she was right.
I bore no resentment toward her whatsoever.
Mother had joked, “It’s just firewood meant for burning,” to comfort me, but had the wind been strong that night, this entire village might have burned down—exactly as Mrs. Nishiyama’s wife said.
Had that happened, even my death would have been insufficient apology.
Were I to die, Mother would not survive either, and it would stain our late Father’s name.
Though princes and nobility no longer exist, if we must perish regardless, I want us to perish splendidly.
To die apologizing for a fire—such a wretched death would leave me incomplete even in demise.
At any rate, I must grow stronger.

Starting the next day, I devoted myself to the farm work.
The daughter of Mr. Nakai from the lower farm occasionally assisted me.
Ever since disgracing myself by starting that fire, I felt as though the blood in my body had taken on a slightly darker hue. Before this incident, a spiteful viper had dwelled in my breast; now that even my blood’s color seemed altered, I increasingly sensed myself becoming a wild country girl. Even when sitting on the veranda knitting with Mother, I felt strangely constrained and suffocated—it was far more comfortable to go out to the fields and dig up soil.

Physical labor—is that what this is called?
This wasn’t the first time I had done this kind of strenuous work.
During the war, I had been conscripted and even made to perform yoitomake labor.
The tabi work shoes I wore in the fields now were ones distributed by the military back then.
It was then that I first tried wearing what they called tabi work shoes—they were astonishingly comfortable. When I walked around the garden in them, I felt I truly understood how birds and beasts must feel treading barefoot on the earth. My heart swelled with such joy it nearly ached.
Of all my wartime memories, that solitary moment alone held any joy.
When I thought back on it now, the war seemed such a trifling thing.

Last year, nothing happened.

The year before last, there was nothing.

The year before that as well, there was nothing.

Such an interesting poem had appeared in a certain newspaper right after the war ended, but truly—even now when I try to recall it—while feeling various things must have happened, I still sense it was all as though nothing had occurred.
I detest both speaking of wartime memories and hearing them discussed.
Though multitudes perished, it remains trite and tedious.
Yet perhaps I’m still being selfish?
The sole memory that doesn’t feel trite is when I was conscripted into labor—wearing those tabi work shoes, made to do yoitomake.
I endured much unpleasantness then, but thanks to that yoitomake work my body grew sturdy; even now I sometimes think if life grows truly desperate again, I could survive by returning to yoitomake labor.

Around the time the war situation was growing truly hopeless, a man wearing something resembling a military uniform came to our house in Nishikatamachi and handed me a conscription notice and a document detailing my assigned work schedule.
When I looked at the work schedule, I realized I would have to commute deep into the mountains of Tachikawa every other day starting the very next day, and before I knew it, tears were streaming from my eyes.

“Can’t someone go in my place?”

The tears wouldn’t stop, and I ended up sobbing.

“The military has conscripted you, so you must go yourself.”

And the man answered firmly.

I resolved to go.

The following day was rainy, and we were made to line up at the base of Mount Tachikawa, where first an officer delivered a lecture.

“The war will certainly be won,”

he began,

“The war will certainly be won, but if you all don’t follow military orders to the letter, operations will be compromised and we’ll meet Okinawa’s fate.”
“Carry out every task exactly as instructed.”
“And stay alert—there may be spies infiltrating these mountains.”
“From this day forward, you’ll work inside military positions alongside soldiers. Never breathe a word about what you see there.”

“Be sure to carry out exactly the tasks you’ve been assigned,” he said.

Rain hung like mist over the mountains as nearly five hundred members—men and women mixed together—stood drenched while listening to his words. Among them were National School boys and girls too, their faces red and tear-streaked from the cold. The rain soaked through my raincoat into my outer garment until even my underclothes were thoroughly drenched.

That day I carried baskets from dawn till dusk. On the train home, tears kept flowing no matter how I tried to stop them—but next time came the yoitomake tug-of-war. And that work turned out to be the most interesting of all for me.

After going to the mountains two or three times, the boys from the national school began to stare at me oddly. One day, as I was carrying baskets, two or three male students passed by me, and then one of them—
“That guy—is he a spy?”
Hearing him whisper this, I was startled.
Why would they say such a thing?

I asked the young woman walking beside me as we carried baskets.

“Because you look like a foreigner.”

She answered earnestly.

“Do you think I’m a spy too?”

“No.”

This time she answered with a slight laugh.

“I am Japanese.”

After saying that, even to myself my own words seemed like ridiculous nonsense, and I giggled softly to myself.

On a certain fine day, as I was carrying logs with the men since morning, the young officer on monitoring duty frowned, pointed at me,

“Hey, you.
You, come over here.”

With that, he briskly walked off toward the pine grove. As I followed behind, my heart pounding with anxiety and fear, we came upon freshly sawn planks stacked deep within the woods. The officer stopped before them and turned sharply to face me.

“It must be hard for you every day.”
“Just for today, please keep watch over this lumber.”

He grinned, showing his white teeth.

“Do I stand here?”

“Since this place is cool and quiet, why don’t you take a nap on these planks? If you get bored, this might be something to read.”

With that, he took out a small paperback from his coat pocket and sheepishly tossed it onto the planks.

“Please keep reading even something like this.”

The paperback had “Troika” written on it.

I picked up the paperback,

“Thank you very much. There’s someone in my family who loves books—he’s gone to the South now, though.”

When I said this, he seemed to have misheard,

“Ah, I see.
“So he’s your husband.”
“It’s hell down south.”

he said solemnly, shaking his head,

“In any case, let’s have you stand guard here today. I’ll bring your lunch later myself, so take your time and rest.”

With those words, he turned and hurried back.

I sat on the lumber, read the paperback, and when I was about halfway through, that officer came clomping over in his boots,

“I’ve brought your lunchbox.”
“You must be lonely here all by yourself.”

With that, he placed the lunchbox on the grassland and hurried back again.

After finishing my lunch, I climbed onto the lumber pile, lay down to read the book, and having finished it all, began dozing into an afternoon nap.
I awoke a little past three in the afternoon.
Suddenly it struck me that I might have seen that young officer somewhere before, but try as I might to recall, I couldn't remember.
I climbed down from the lumber and was smoothing my hair when I heard boots clomping toward me again,

“Oh, thank you for your hard work today.”
“You may go home now.”

I ran over to the officer, held out the paperback, and tried to thank him, but no words came. Silently, I looked up at his face. When our eyes met, tears began streaming from mine.
Then, tears glistened in the officer’s eyes as well.

We parted in silence, but after that, the young officer never once showed his face where we were working. On that day, I had managed to play for just a single day, but from then on, I continued with the grueling labor every other day in the mountains of Tachikawa.
Mother had been constantly worrying about my health, but I had instead grown stronger; I now secretly held confidence even in manual labor and had become a woman who felt no particular hardship in fieldwork.

Though I say I hate both speaking of and hearing about the war, I ended up recounting my so-called "precious experiences," but in truth, within my war memories there was barely anything worth telling—just about this much—and the rest was as if, like that poem once said,

Last year, there was nothing.
The year before last, there was nothing.
The year before that too, there was nothing.
It’s as if I want to say—so absurdly—that all that clings to me is this single pair of tabi work shoes, such is the futility.

Though I’d digressed into idle talk starting from these tabi work shoes—wearing what might be called the war’s sole memento—I went out to the field nearly every day to distract myself from quiet anxieties and agitations deep in my heart. Yet Mother appeared visibly weaker with each passing day these days.

Snake eggs.

Fire.

Since that time, Mother became noticeably more sickly.
And as for me, on the contrary, I felt as though I was gradually becoming a crude and vulgar woman.
Somehow, I couldn't help feeling as though I was sucking away Mother's vitality and growing fat from it.

Even during the fire, Mother had joked, "It's just firewood for burning," and after that never spoke another word about the incident—instead treating me with even greater kindness. Yet I'm certain the shock she suffered internally was ten times stronger than my own.
Since that fire, Mother would occasionally groan in the middle of the night, and on nights with strong winds, she pretended to go to the bathroom and slipped out of bed multiple times late at night to patrol the entire house.
Her complexion always lacked vitality, and there were days when even walking seemed a struggle for her.
Mother had previously said she wanted to help with the fields, but even after I urged her not to, she carried five or six large bucketfuls of water from the well to the garden. The next day, she complained her shoulders were so stiff she could hardly breathe and stayed in bed all day. After that incident, she seemed to have resigned herself to giving up fieldwork entirely. Now, even when she occasionally came out to the garden, she merely watched me work in silence.

“They say people who love summer flowers die in summer, but I wonder if it’s true.”

Today as well, Mother was intently watching me work in the fields when she suddenly said such a thing.
I silently watered the eggplants.
Ah, now that I think of it, it’s already early summer.

“I do so love mimosa blossoms, yet there’s not a single one here in this garden.”

Mother said quietly once again.

“There are plenty of oleanders here.”

I said in a deliberately curt tone.

“I can’t abide those.”
“I do like most summer flowers, but those are simply too gaudy.”

“I’d choose roses.”
“But since they bloom through all four seasons, would someone who loves roses have to die in spring, die in summer, die in autumn, die in winter—revising their death four times over?”

The two of them laughed.

“Why don’t we rest a little?”

Mother continued laughing and said,

“Today there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Kazuko.”

“What? If it’s talk about dying, I won’t hear a word of it!”

I followed Mother and sat beside her on the bench beneath the wisteria trellis.
The wisteria blossoms had already fallen, and soft afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaves to pool on our knees, staining them green.

“There’s something I’ve wanted you to hear for some time now—I thought we should speak of it when we both felt agreeable, so I’d waited until today for the chance.”
“It’s hardly good news anyway.”
“But today I somehow feel I can speak plainly about it—so please bear with me and listen through to the end.”
“The truth is—Naoshi is alive.”

I stiffened.

“Five or six days ago we had word from Uncle Wada—a gentleman formerly employed at his company recently returned from the South and came to pay respects. During their reminiscing it emerged this man had by chance served in Naoshi’s unit—and so we learned Naoshi remains safe and will likely return soon.”
“But—there’s one unpleasant detail.”
“According to this gentleman’s account—Naoshi seems to have fallen into rather severe opium addiction...”

“Again!”

I grimaced as if I’d tasted something bitter.
During his high school years, Naoshi had imitated a certain novelist and become addicted to opium, incurring an appalling debt at the pharmacy that took Mother two full years to repay entirely.

“Yes.
“He seemed to have started again.”
“But since he wouldn’t be permitted to return until that was cured, that gentleman said he would surely come back once cured.”
“In Uncle’s letter, he wrote that even if Naoshi returned cured, we couldn’t immediately put someone with that disposition to work. In Tokyo’s current chaos, even sane people ended up feeling half-mad—if a half-sick man only just recovered from addiction were to work there, he’d slip into borderline madness and who knew what he might do. So when Naoshi came back, we should take him straight to this Izu villa, keep him secluded, and have him convalesce here for now. That’s one thing.”
“And then, listen, Kazuko—Uncle had another instruction for us.”
“According to Uncle, we’d already run out of money entirely.”
“Due to things like the freezing of deposits and property taxes, Uncle said it had become too troublesome for him to send us money as he used to.”
“So you see, if Naoshi came back and the three of us—Mother, Naoshi, and I—lived together idly, Uncle would have to go through great hardship to manage our living expenses. That’s why he said you must either find a marriage prospect for yourself now or a household to enter service—one or the other.”

“When you say ‘entering service,’ do you mean becoming a maid?”

“No, Uncle said… well, you know, that one in Komaba—”

and mentioned the name of a certain prince,

“Since that prince shares blood ties with us and you could serve as both tutor to his princess and enter service there,” she said, “Uncle assures me you wouldn’t have to feel so lonely or constrained.”

“Couldn’t there be some other occupation?”

“He said other occupations would be impossible for you.”

“Why is it impossible? Tell me, why is it impossible?”

Mother only smiled sadly and gave no answer.

“No! I—that kind of talk—”

I thought I had let slip something I shouldn’t have. But I couldn’t stop.

“Me, wearing these tabi work shoes—wearing these tabi work shoes—”

When I said that, tears welled up, and I burst into sobs. Raising my face, wiping away tears with the back of my hand while facing Mother—No, I mustn’t, I mustn’t—the words kept spilling out one after another as if unconscious, utterly divorced from my body.

“Didn’t you say once?”
“Didn’t you say that because Kazuko is here—because Kazuko stays by your side—you could bear living in Izu?”
“Didn’t you say you’d die if I weren’t here?”
“That’s why—that’s exactly why—I wanted to stay right by your side without going anywhere, wearing these tabi work shoes, thinking only of growing vegetables for you! But now that you hear Naoshi’s returning, you suddenly push me aside and tell me to become some prince’s maid—it’s too cruel! Too cruel!”

Even as I thought I was blurting out terrible things, the words kept flowing uncontrollably, as if they were a living thing of their own.

“If we become poor and run out of money, couldn’t we just sell our kimonos? Couldn’t we just sell this house? There’s nothing I can’t do! I could even become a female clerk at this village office—I could become anything! If they won’t take me at the village office, I’ll become a ditcher! Being poor isn’t anything to fear! If only Mother had cherished me, I had resolved to stay by Mother’s side my whole life—but Mother loves Naoshi more than me. I’m leaving. I will leave. After all, I’ve never gotten along with Naoshi from the start—if the three of us lived together, we’d only make each other miserable. I’ve already spent so long living alone with Mother—there’s nothing left for me to regret. From now on, let Naoshi live with you undisturbed as mother and son—then he can be filial to his heart’s content.”

I’d had enough. I had grown sick of this life we’d been living.

“I’m leaving.”
“Today—right now—I’m leaving.”
“I have a place to go.”

I stood.

“Kazuko!”

Mother said sternly, and with a dignity I had never before seen her display, she rose smoothly to her feet and faced me, appearing slightly taller than I in that moment.

I wanted to say “I’m sorry” at once, but somehow the words refused to come out—instead, something entirely different escaped my lips.

“You deceived me.”
“Mother deceived me.”
“You were using me until Naoshi came.”
“I’m Mother’s maid.”
“Now that I’ve served my purpose, you tell me to go serve at the prince’s next.”

A sob burst out, and I stood there crying my heart out.

“You are such a fool.”

Mother’s voice, spoken low, trembled with anger.

I raised my face,

“That’s right—I’m a fool.”
“Because I’m a fool, I get deceived.”
“Because I’m a fool, I get treated as a nuisance.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if I weren’t here?”
“What is poverty?”
“What even is money?”
“I don’t get it.”
“Love—Mother’s love—that’s the only thing I’ve ever believed in and lived by.”

And again, I blurted out some foolish, unnecessary thing.

Mother abruptly turned her face away.
Mother was crying.
I said, “I’m sorry,” and thought of clinging to Mother, but faintly concerned that my hands were soiled from fieldwork, I grew unnaturally stiff.

“Wouldn’t it be better if I just weren’t here?”
“I’m leaving.”
“I have a place to go.”

I spat out those words and broke into a run toward the bathhouse. Sobbing convulsively, I washed my face and limbs, then went to my room. As I changed into Western clothes, another loud wail escaped me and I collapsed weeping. Needing to pour out every last drop of sorrow, I raced up to the second-floor Western-style room, threw myself onto the bed, and dragged the blanket over my head. I cried so violently I thought my body might wither away, until gradually my consciousness began slipping. Then bit by bit arose an unbearable longing—to see a certain face, to hear a certain voice—until I felt a peculiar sensation, as if enduring searing moxa cautery on both soles of my feet.

Near evening, Mother quietly entered the second-floor Western-style room, turned on the electric light with a click, and then approached the bed,

“Kazuko.”

and called out very gently.

“Yes.”

I got up, sat on the bed, brushed back my hair with both hands, looked at Mother’s face, and let out a soft laugh.

Mother also smiled faintly, then sank deep into the sofa beneath the window,

“For the first time in my life, I’ve defied Uncle Wada’s instructions… I just wrote him a reply.”
“I wrote, ‘Please leave my children’s affairs to me.’”
“Kazuko, let’s sell our kimonos.”
“Let’s sell them off one after another, spend lavishly, and live in luxury.”
“I won’t have you doing fieldwork anymore.”
“What’s wrong with buying expensive vegetables?”
“Daily work like that is too much for you.”

The truth was, even I was beginning to find the daily fieldwork a bit arduous.
The reason I had wailed like a madwoman earlier was that exhaustion from fieldwork and sorrow had gotten tangled up, making everything hateful and unbearable.

I remained on the bed, looking down in silence.

“Kazuko.”

“Yes.”

“Where is this place you have to go?”

I became aware that I had flushed red up to the nape of my neck.

“Mr. Hosoda?”

I remained silent.

Mother let out a deep sigh,

“May I speak of the past?”

“Please do.”

I said in a low voice.

“When you left the Yamaki household and returned to our Nishikata-cho residence, I don’t think I said anything to reproach you—though I did say just one thing: ‘I’ve been betrayed by you.’ Didn’t I say that?”
“Do you remember?”
“Then you started crying… I did feel bad about using such a harsh word as ‘betrayed,’ but…”

But at that time, when Mother said those words to me, I felt somehow grateful and cried tears of joy.

"What I meant when I said I'd been betrayed—it wasn't about you leaving the Yamaki household."
"It was when Mr.Yamaki told me, 'The truth is Kazuko was involved with Hosoda.'"
"When I heard that, I truly felt the blood drain from my face."
"Because Mr.Hosoda had already had a wife and children for years—no matter how deeply you cared for him, nothing could be done about it..."

“To say we were lovers—how cruel.”
“It was simply Mr. Yamaki making groundless assumptions.”

“Is that so?”
“You aren’t… still clinging to feelings for that Mr. Hosoda, are you?”
“Where is this place you must go?”

“It’s nowhere like Mr. Hosoda’s.”

“Oh?”
“Then where?”

“Mother, I’ve been thinking lately—what truly distinguishes humans from other animals? Language, wisdom, reason, social order—even if there are differences in degree, don’t all animals possess these in some form?
They might even have faith too.
Humans boast about being the paragon of all creatures, but don’t they seem fundamentally no different from other animals?
But Mother—there’s one thing.
You wouldn’t understand.
Something absolutely absent in other living beings, existing only in humans.
It’s what we call secrets.
What do you think?”

Mother’s face became slightly flushed as she smiled beautifully,

“Ah，if only those secrets of yours could bear good fruit.”
“Mother prays every morning to Father to make you happy.”

Suddenly, a memory floated into my heart—Father and I drove to Nasuno, got out partway, and the autumn fields of that time came back to me. Bush clover, pinks, gentians, and patrinia—autumn flowers—were in bloom. The wild grapes were still unripe.

Then Father and I rode a motorboat on Lake Biwa; I leapt into the water; small fish that dwelled in the algae brushed against my legs; at the lake’s bottom, the shadow of my legs was cast sharply and moved about—this scene floated into my heart with no connection to what came before or after, then vanished.

I slid down from the bed, clung to Mother’s lap, and for the first time,

“Mother, I’m sorry about earlier.”
I was able to say.

When I think back, those days were when the last embers of our happiness still glowed. Then Naoshi returned from the south, and our true hell began.

Three

A desolation so intense—no matter what, utterly unable to go on living any longer.
Was this what they called anxiety? Painful waves crashed against my chest—exactly like white clouds scudding hurriedly across skies cleared of evening showers—constricting and then releasing my heart. My pulse faltered, breath grew thin. A murky darkness clouded my vision as all strength drained from my fingertips. I could no longer continue my knitting.

The rain had fallen incessantly in a dreary manner these days, making everything feel laborious. Today I brought out the wicker chair to the engawa of the tatami room and found myself motivated to resume knitting the sweater I had started this past spring only to abandon.
With the pale peony-colored yarn that seemed faded, I intended to add cobalt blue yarn and make a sweater.
This pale peony-colored yarn was the very same that Mother had used to knit my scarf twenty years earlier, when I still attended elementary school.
The scarf’s end formed a hood, and when I put it on and peered into the mirror, I looked like a little goblin.
Moreover, its color differed completely from my classmates’ scarves, making me detest it beyond measure.
A wealthy classmate from Kansai praised me in an adult-like tone—“What a lovely scarf”—but this only deepened my shame. From that day onward, I never wore it again, leaving it discarded for years.
This spring, under the pretense of reviving forgotten items, I began unraveling it for my sweater, but finding this faded hue displeasing, cast it aside again. Today in utter idleness, I suddenly retrieved it and slowly resumed knitting.
Yet as I knitted, I noticed this pale peony yarn and gray rainy sky blending together, creating an indescribably soft and mild hue.
I hadn’t known.
I hadn’t known the crucial truth that clothing must harmonize with the sky’s color.
How beautiful harmony was—how splendid! I felt somewhat astonished, left dazed.
It seemed mysterious how the gray rainy sky and pale peony yarn invigorated each other when combined.
The yarn in my hands suddenly felt warmly alive, while the cold rainy sky took on a velvet softness.
This reminded me of Monet’s painting of a temple shrouded in mist.
Through this yarn’s color, I felt I had finally understood “harmony.”
The proof of a good child.
Mother had known all along how beautifully this pale peony would harmonize with winter’s snowy skies when she deliberately chose it—yet foolish child that I was, hating it so—she never forced it upon me, allowing me my preferences.
Mother who waited twenty years without explanation until I truly understood this color’s beauty.
As I deeply recognized her goodness, unbearable terror welled in my chest—the fear that Naoshi and I were tormenting this wonderful mother, distressing and weakening her until we might kill her. The more these thoughts churned, the more dreadful visions arose—nothing but terrible prospects ahead—until anxiety overwhelmed me beyond endurance. Strength left my fingertips. I laid the knitting needles on my knees, heaved a great sigh, tilted my face upward and closed my eyes.

“Mother.”

I said without thinking.

Mother was leaning against the desk in the corner of the tatami room, reading a book, but—

“Yes?”

Mother replied inquiringly.

I faltered, then deliberately raised my voice,

“The roses have finally bloomed.”
“Mother, did you know?”
“I just noticed.”
“They’ve finally bloomed.”

The roses before the tatami room’s engawa.
They were the roses Uncle Wada had brought back long ago from France or England—I can’t quite recall—and which he had transplanted into this mountain villa’s garden two or three months prior.
I had known since morning that one had finally opened, but to hide my embarrassment, I made a show of noticing it just now with exaggerated excitement.
The flower was a deep purple, bearing both poised pride and strength.

“I knew.”

Mother said quietly,

“To you, such things seem very significant.”

“I suppose that’s possible. Do you think I’m pitiful?”

“No, I was merely saying you have such tendencies. You like pasting Lunael’s pictures on kitchen matchboxes and trying to make handkerchiefs for dolls—that sort of thing. And even when you speak of the garden roses, listening to you makes it sound as though you’re talking about living people.”

“It’s because I don’t have children.”

Words I had never expected came out of my mouth.
Having blurted it out, I startled myself and sat fidgeting with the knitting on my lap in awkward discomfort when—

—Because I’m twenty-nine.

The man’s voice saying those words seemed to reach me through a ticklish buzz like over the telephone, and my cheeks burned with shame as if on fire.

Mother said nothing and returned to reading her book.
Mother had been wearing a gauze mask since some time ago, and perhaps because of that, she had grown increasingly silent of late.
That mask had been worn in accordance with Naoshi’s instructions.
Naoshi had returned from a southern island about ten days prior with a blue-black face.

Without any warning, on a summer evening, he entered the garden from the back gate,

“Wow, this is awful. This house is tasteless. Rairaiken. Put up a sign that says ‘Shumai available.’”

That was Naoshi’s greeting when we first met face to face.

From two or three days prior, Mother had been suffering from a tongue ailment and had taken to bed.
She said that while the tip of her tongue showed no visible changes, moving it caused unbearable pain, and she could only manage thin rice gruel for meals. Shouldn’t we have the doctor examine her?
Even when I said that, she shook her head,
“I would be laughed at.”

she said with a bitter smile.
I had applied Lugol’s solution for her, but there seemed to be no effect at all, and I was strangely irritated.

Just then, Naoshi returned home.

Naoshi sat at Mother’s bedside, said “I’m home,” and bowed. He immediately stood up, looked around the small house, and I followed behind him,

“So? Has Mother changed?”

“She’s changed, changed completely. She’s become so haggard. It’d be better if she just died. In this world we’re in now, Mama couldn’t possibly go on living. It’s too pitiful—I can’t bear to look.”

“What about me?”

“You’ve turned shabby. You’ve got a face that’s seen two or three men’s worth of living. The alcohol?”

“I’m drinking tonight!”

I went to the only inn in this village and tried asking the proprietress, Osaki-san, to spare a little alcohol since my brother had returned home, but she said they were unfortunately out of stock at the moment. When I relayed this to Naoshi back home, his face took on an expression I’d never seen before—like that of a complete stranger—and he spat out, “Tch, that’s what happens when you’re bad at negotiating,” then asked me where the inn was located. He shoved his feet into garden clogs, rushed outside, and never returned home no matter how long I waited.

I prepared baked apples that Naoshi used to love along with some egg dishes, replaced the dining room’s light bulb with a brighter one, and waited for quite some time when Osaki-san popped her face out from the kitchen entrance,

“Hello? Hello?”
“Are you all right?”
“He’s been drinking shochu though.”

Widening her characteristic carp-like round eyes even more intensely, she reported in a hushed tone, as though disclosing some critical affair.

“Shochu...”
“You mean methyl alcohol?”

“No, it’s not methyl.”

“Even if he drinks it, it won’t make him sick?”

“Well, no, but...”

“Please let him drink.”

Osaki-san nodded as if swallowing her objections and left.

I went to Mother’s place and,

“He’s drinking at Osaki-san’s place, I hear.”

When I told her this, Mother pursed her lips slightly and smiled wryly,

“I see.”
“I wonder if he’s stopped the opium.”
“You must finish your meal.”
“Then tonight, the three of us will sleep in this room.”
“With Naoshi’s futon in the middle.”

I felt like crying.

Late into the night, Naoshi returned home with heavy footsteps.
The three of us slept together under a single mosquito net in the drawing room.

“Why don’t you tell Mother about the southern regions?”

As I said while lying down,

“Nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“I’ve forgotten everything.”
“When I arrived in Japan and boarded a train, from the train window, the rice paddies looked incredibly beautiful.”
“That’s all.”
“Turn off the light.”
“I can’t sleep.”

I turned off the light.
Summer moonlight flooded the mosquito net like a deluge.

The next morning, Naoshi lay prone on his bedding, smoking a cigarette while gazing toward the distant sea,

“Your tongue hurts, you say?”

He said this in a tone suggesting he’d only just noticed Mother’s poor condition.

Mother merely smiled faintly.

“That’s definitely psychological.”
“You sleep with your mouth open at night.”
“How slovenly.”
“Wear a mask.”
“Soak gauze in Rivanol solution and put it inside.”

I burst out laughing when I heard this,

“What do you call that therapy?”

“It’s called aesthetic therapy.”

“But Mother would surely hate something like a mask.”

Mother had always detested putting anything on her face—not just masks, but eyepatches or glasses as well.

“Oh, Mother.
“Will you wear the mask?”

When I asked,

“I will do so.”

Mother had answered so seriously and softly that I was startled. It seemed she was intent on believing and following whatever Naoshi said.

After breakfast, following Naoshi’s instructions exactly as he had given them earlier, I soaked gauze in Rivanol solution to make a mask and brought it to Mother’s room. She accepted it without a word and, still lying in bed, docilely fastened the mask’s strings around both ears. The sight of her like this—truly resembling nothing so much as a young girl now—struck me as unbearably sad.

In the early afternoon, Naoshi changed into a suit, saying he had to meet friends in Tokyo and his literary mentor, received two thousand yen from Mother, and departed for Tokyo.
Although nearly ten days had passed since then, Naoshi had not returned.
And so Mother wore the mask every day and waited for Naoshi.

“Rivanol really is wonderful medicine, isn’t it?
When I wear this mask, the tongue pain vanishes completely.”

She said this with a laugh, but I couldn't help feeling Mother was lying.
She said she was fine now and was up and about, but her appetite still seemed poor, her words had grown noticeably fewer, and I couldn't stop worrying. The more I wondered what on earth Naoshi was doing in Tokyo—no doubt carousing around the city with that novelist Mr. Uehara, caught in Tokyo's whirlpool of madness—the more it pained me, until I blurted out something absurd to Mother about the roses or declared out of nowhere, 'It's because we have no children,' only to feel myself sinking deeper into despair.

“Ah.”

Having said that, I stood up, but with nowhere to go and nothing to occupy myself, I staggered up the stairs and went into the Western-style room on the second floor.

This room was meant to become Naoshi’s, and four or five days earlier I had consulted with Mother and asked Mr. Nakai from the farmhouse below to help carry over Naoshi’s wardrobe, desk, bookcase, and five or six wooden crates packed full of his books and notebooks—in short, everything that had been in Naoshi’s room at our old house in Nishikata-cho. We decided that once Naoshi returned from Tokyo, we would arrange the wardrobe, bookcase, and other items according to his preferences, but until then it seemed best to leave everything haphazardly piled here. Now the room was so cluttered there was barely space to step, and as I stood amidst the chaos, I absently picked up one of Naoshi’s notebooks from a crate at my feet. On its cover was written:

Evening Face Journal

was inscribed, and within its pages were scrawled all manner of writings such as the following.
It appeared to be a journal from that time when Naoshi had been suffering from drug addiction.

A burning-to-death feeling.
Even in agony, you cannot cry out a single word of pain—this unprecedented, unfathomable aura of hell that has existed since time began, without parallel in human history. Don’t you dare gloss over it.

Ideology?
Lies.
Principle?
Lies. Ideals?
Lies.
Order? Lies.
Sincerity?
Truth?
Purity?
All lies.
The wisterias of Ushijima are said to be a thousand years old, those of Kumano several hundred years, and even their flower clusters—I hear the former’s reach up to nine shaku in length, the latter’s over five—yet my heart stirs only for those blossoms.

Those too are children of man.
They are alive.

Logic is, so to speak, love for logic.
It is not love for living human beings.

Money and women.
Logic blushes bashfully and scurries away.

Dr. Faust’s brave substantiation that a single virgin’s smile holds more worth than all such academic fields—histories, philosophies, educations, religions, laws, politics, economies, societies.

Scholarship is another name for vanity.
Humanity’s endeavor to cease being human.

I could swear it even to Goethe.
I can write skillfully no matter what.
A flawlessly structured novel—just the right dose of humor, sorrow that scorches readers’ eyes, or else solemn dignity that makes one straighten one’s collar—some perfect masterpiece. If you recited it aloud, wouldn’t it sound like film narration? How mortifying! You think I could write such tripe?
To begin with, this stingy mentality of aiming for masterpieces—it’s pathetic, I tell you.
To read a novel and straighten one’s collar as if moved—that’s the act of a madman.
In that case, they might as well not bother with ceremonial robes at all.
The finer the work, the less affected it appears.
I deliberately botched a short story, writing it clumsily and falling on my backside while scratching my head as I fled—all just to see a genuinely joyful smile from my friend’s heart.
Ah, what a look of pure joy on my friend’s face at that moment!

A scene devoid of literary flourish or human presence—I blow a toy trumpet for your amusement. Behold Japan’s greatest fool! You’re still the better one, I assure you. Long may you thrive!
The love that makes one wish such things—what on earth is this?

My friend remarked with a knowing look, "That’s his bad habit—what a waste."
They remain unaware of being loved.

Could there exist a human being who isn’t a delinquent?

A hollow feeling.

I want money.

Otherwise,

Dying naturally in one's sleep!

I owed the pharmacy nearly a thousand yen.
Today I secretly brought the pawnshop clerk home, led him to my room, and told him: "If there's anything pawn-worthy here, take it—I need money urgently." Without even glancing around properly, he blurted: "Stop this—these aren't your belongings to begin with."
"Fine! Then take only what I've bought with my own pocket money!" I declared boldly. But among the junk I scrambled together, not a single item qualified as collateral.

First came a plaster cast of a single hand.
This was Venus' right hand.
A hand resembling a dahlia blossom - pure white and solitary - resting motionless upon its stand.
Yet when examined closely through my eyes that day: here lay captured Venus' naked form exposed to male gazes - her startled inhalation swirling with modesty's tempest; pitiable bare flesh tinged faint crimson; unblemished heat flushing her body as she contorted into this pose - such breath-arresting shame of her unveiled form expressed through this slender white hand lacking fingerprints or palm lines until my own chest tightened with anguish.
But this was what they called impractical junk.
The pawnshop clerk valued it at fifty sen.

The rest—a large map of Paris’s outskirts, a celluloid top with a diameter nearing one foot, a custom pen nib that could write lines finer than thread—were all things I’d bought thinking they were hidden treasures, but the clerk laughed and said, “I’ll take my leave now.”
I stopped him with a “Wait!”, ultimately making the clerk carry a mountain of books again and receiving five yen in return.
The books on my shelves consisted almost entirely of cheap paperback editions, and since they’d all been acquired from secondhand bookstores, their pawn value naturally ended up being so low.

Trying to settle a thousand-yen debt—five yen was all I managed.
In this world, my true worth amounts to something like this.
This is no joke.

Decadent?
But I can't keep living unless I do this.
To those who criticize me with such words—die!
I'd rather have someone tell me to die!
What a relief.
Yet people hardly ever say 'Die!'
They never actually utter it.
Stingy, overcautious hypocrites—the lot of you!

Justice?
The essence of so-called class struggle doesn't lie in such things.
Humanitarianism?
Don't be ridiculous.
I know all about it.
It's about crushing others for your own happiness.
It means killing.
Die!
If that's not a declaration, then what is?
No more deception!

But even in our own class, there's not one decent soul.
Idiots. Ghosts. Misers. Rabid dogs. Braggarts. Mr. High-and-Mighty up there pissing down from the clouds.

Die!
Even to bestow the word "Die!" would be too generous.

War.
Japan’s war is half-assed.

I refuse to die tangled up in half-assed messes.
I’d rather die alone!

When people lie, they invariably wear serious faces.
The solemnity of today's leaders.
Pfft!

I want to keep company with those who don't seek others' respect.

Yet those decent souls won't even deign to associate with me.

When I affected precocity, people whispered I was precocious.
When I feigned laziness, people murmured I was lazy.
When I pretended I couldn't write novels, people concluded I couldn't.
When I acted the liar, people branded me a liar.
When I played at wealth, people took me for rich.
When I put on coldness, people called me heartless.
But when I truly suffered and let slip a groan, people accused me of pretending pain.

It was all wrong.

In the end—wasn’t suicide my only remaining path?

When I realized that even enduring such agony would culminate in nothing but suicide, I let out a wail and wept.

On a spring morning—so it was said—the dawn sun had fallen upon plum branches bearing two or three fully opened blossoms, and from one such branch a young Heidelberg student hung lifeless, his slender form suspended in finality.

“Mama! Please scold me!”

“In what manner?”

“You coward!
”

“Is that so?
You coward... Can we be done now?”

Mama had an incomparable goodness about her.
When I thought of Mama, I wanted to cry.
I had to die to apologize to Mama.

Forgive me.
Now, just once—forgive me.

Years upon years—

Blindness remains.

Crane chick

A life taking shape

Alas, even getting fat (New Year’s trial piece)

Morphine Atromol Narcopon Pantopon Pavinal Panopin Atropine

What is pride? What is pride?

Human beings—no, rather, men—can’t they live without thinking things like (I am superior) or (I have good qualities)?

I dislike people, and people dislike me.

A battle of wits.

Solemnity equals idiocy.

Anyway, since we're alive, we must be running some sort of scam.

A loan request letter.

"Send a reply.

Please send a reply.

And make sure it's good news.

I'm here alone, groaning as I imagine every possible humiliation."

I'm not acting.
I'm not doing that at all.

I beg you.

I feel like dying of shame.

It's no exaggeration.

Day after day, waiting for your reply, I shake uncontrollably day and night.

Don't make me eat sand.

The sound of stifled laughter seeped through the walls; in the dead of night, I writhed beneath my bedding.

Don't force me to endure shame.

“Sister!”

Having read that far, I closed the Evening Face Journal, returned it to the wooden box, then walked to the window, flung it wide open, and gazed down at the garden shrouded in white rain as I thought of those days.

It had already been six years since then.
Naoshi's drug addiction became the cause of my divorce—no, I mustn't say that. Even without Naoshi's drug addiction, my divorce would have occurred through some other trigger eventually—no, rather, I feel it was something that had been predetermined since the moment I was born.
Naoshi, struggling to pay the pharmacy, would often beg me for money.
Having just married into the Yamaki household, I had no financial freedom to speak of, and the idea of secretly diverting money from my husband's family to support my brother back home seemed terribly improper. So I consulted with Oseki-san, the nursemaid who had accompanied me from my parents' house, and sold my bracelets, necklaces, and dresses.
My brother sent me a letter asking for money, saying he was too ashamed and anguished to meet me face-to-face or even speak to me on the phone, so I should instruct Oseki-san to deliver the funds to Uehara Jiro—a novelist living in the Kayano Apartments in Kyōbashi’s X-chōme district whose name I surely knew—at his apartment. He wrote that while Mr. Uehara had a reputation as a disreputable man, he was nothing of the sort, so I could safely send the money there; Mr. Uehara would immediately notify him by phone, so I must follow these instructions precisely. He swore he didn’t want Mama to discover his addiction this time—that he intended to cure it without her knowledge. If I sent him money now, he’d pay off all his debts to the pharmacy, retreat to our villa in Shiobara, and return home healthy; once the pharmacy debts were settled, he’d quit drugs entirely from that day forward—he swore to God, begging me to believe him and keep it secret from Mama by using Oseki-san to deliver the money to Mr. Uehara at Kayano Apartments. I followed his instructions, having Oseki-san discreetly take the money to Mr. Uehara’s apartment, but my brother’s vows were always lies—he never went to Shiobara, his addiction only worsened, and his letters pleading for money took on a tone of near-screaming desperation. Though I suspected deception each time he made those heartrending vows to quit drugs—so pitiful they made me want to look away—I’d end up having Oseki-san sell brooches and such to send more money to Mr. Uehara’s apartment.

“What kind of person is Mr. Uehara?”

“He’s small-statured with a poor complexion and an unfriendly demeanor,” Oseki-san replied.

“But he hardly ever comes to the apartment.”
“Usually only his wife and their six- or seven-year-old daughter are there.”
“Though his wife isn’t particularly beautiful, she seems kind and capable.”
“I could safely entrust the money to her.”

Back then, I was such a scatterbrained, carefree person compared to my present self—no, not even comparable, like an entirely different person—yet even so, being asked for increasingly large sums of money one after another became unbearable, until one day after returning from a Noh performance, I dismissed the car in Ginza and walked alone to visit the Kayano Apartments in Kyobashi.

Mr. Uehara was alone in his room reading a newspaper.
He wore a striped lined kimono with a navy-blue kasuri haori over it, giving me a strange first impression—like an elderly person yet young, like some bizarre creature I’d never seen before.

"My wife went out with the child to collect rations," he said in a nasal voice that kept breaking off.
He appeared to have mistaken me for one of his wife’s acquaintances.
When I told him I was Naoshi’s sister, Mr. Uehara snorted derisively.
A chill ran through me.

“Shall we go?”

With that, he threw on his double-layered coat, pulled new geta from the clog box and put them on, then strode briskly ahead down the apartment corridor.

Outside was early winter dusk.
The wind cut cold.
It carried the chill of a river breeze sweeping up from the Sumida.
Mr. Uehara walked silently toward Tsukiji, his right shoulder slightly hitched as though bracing against the wind.
I broke into a trot to keep pace with him.

They entered the basement of a building behind Tokyo Theater.
Four or five groups of customers sat around tables in a long, narrow room of about twenty tatami mats, drinking sake in hushed silence.

Mr. Uehara drank sake from a glass.
Then he procured another glass for me and offered me sake.
I drank two glasses from it but felt nothing.

Mr. Uehara drank sake, smoked tobacco, and remained silent all the while.
I too remained silent.
Though this was my first time coming to such a place, I felt perfectly calm and in good spirits.

“You should try drinking alcohol.”

“Huh?”

“No—your brother.
He should switch to alcohol.
I was once a drug addict myself. People find that unsettling—alcohol’s really no different, but they’re surprisingly tolerant of drinkers.
Let’s make your brother an alcoholic instead. What do you say?”

“I once saw a drunkard.
On New Year’s Day when I was about to go out, our driver’s acquaintance lay snoring in the passenger seat with a face red as a demon.
When I cried out in surprise, the driver said ‘He’s a drunk—nothing to be done,’ then hauled him out over his shoulder.
He hung limp as boneless meat yet kept muttering nonsense. That was my first real drunkard—I found it rather amusing.”

“I’m a drinker too.”

“Oh, but you’re different, aren’t you?”

“You’re a drinker too.”

“That’s not true at all. I have seen a drinker before, you know. You’re not at all like that!”

Mr. Uehara laughed cheerfully for the first time,

“In that case, your brother might not become a true drinker, but he should at least take to drinking.”
“Let’s go.”
“Would you be troubled if it gets late?”

“No, it’s no trouble at all.”

“Nah—truth is, I’m the one suffocatin’ here.”
“Hey, sister!”
“Bill!”

“Is it terribly expensive?”
“If it’s manageable, I do have some funds...”

“Right.”
“Then you’re payin’.”

“It might not be sufficient.”

I peered into my bag and informed Mr. Uehara of the amount.

“With this much, we could hit two-three more joints.”
“Makin’ a fool of me.”

Mr. Uehara grimaced and remarked, then laughed.

“Would you like to go somewhere else to drink again?”

When I asked this, he shook his head solemnly,

“Nah, that’s enough. I’ll get you a taxi—go on home.”

We climbed up the dark basement stairs.
Mr. Uehara, who was climbing one step ahead, turned toward me midway up the steps and quickly kissed me.
I received it with my lips tightly closed.

I didn’t particularly like Mr. Uehara at all, yet from that moment on, that “secret” came into being within me.
With a clattering sound, Mr. Uehara ran up the stairs, and in a strange, transparent mood, I slowly climbed them. When we stepped outside, the river breeze felt wonderfully pleasant on my cheeks.

Mr. Uehara hailed a taxi for us, and we parted in silence.

While being jostled in the car, I felt as though the world had suddenly spread out like the sea.

“I have a lover.”

One day, after being scolded by my husband and feeling desolate, I abruptly said it.

"I know."
"It's Hosoda, isn't it?"
"Can you really not resolve to end this?"

I kept silent.

That matter came to be raised between us whenever any awkwardness arose in our marriage.
"This is beyond repair," I thought.
Like when I'd mis-cut dress fabric—once that cloth became impossible to piece together, I had to discard it entirely and start afresh with new material.

“Surely… that child in your belly isn’t…”

One night when my husband said this to me, I was so terrified that I trembled uncontrollably. Looking back now, both my husband and I were so young. I did not know romantic love. Love—even that—I did not understand. I became utterly obsessed with Mr. Hosoda’s paintings—going around declaring to everyone how meaningless marriage would be unless one wedded a man of such refined taste, imagining what an exquisitely beautiful daily life I might lead as his wife. This only bred misunderstandings, yet still I kept proclaiming my fondness for Mr. Hosoda without shame, never retracting my words though I understood neither love nor romance. Matters grew increasingly tangled until even the little life sleeping in my womb became subject to my husband’s suspicions. Though no one ever directly mentioned divorce, gradually the atmosphere around me turned icy. In the end, I returned to Mother’s house with my attendant Osaki-san, where the baby was stillborn, I fell gravely ill, and so my ties with Yamaki were severed completely.

Naoshi seemed to feel some sort of responsibility for my divorce; he wailed, “I’ll die!” and cried so violently his face appeared to rot away.
When I asked my brother how much he owed the pharmacy, the figure was horrifying.
What’s more, we later learned he hadn’t been able to bring himself to state the true amount and had lied.
The actual total discovered afterward came to nearly triple what he’d told me that day.

"I met Mr. Uehara. He’s such a good person."

Why don't I go drinking with Mr. Uehara from now on? Alcohol isn't cheap. If it's just money for alcohol, I'll give it to you anytime. Don't worry about the pharmacy payments either. It'll work out somehow.

The fact that I had met Mr. Uehara and called him a good person seemed to greatly please my brother, and that night, he took money from me and promptly went to visit Mr. Uehara.

Addiction—indeed, it might be a mental illness.
When I praised Mr. Uehara and borrowed his books from my brother to read, remarking what an admirable man he was, Naoshi would retort, "What would you know about it, Sis?" Yet he seemed delighted as he handed me another of Mr. Uehara’s works, urging, "Here, try reading this one." Before long, I found myself seriously engrossed in Mr. Uehara’s novels. The two of us would discuss all manner of rumors about him, and Naoshi began swaggering off to visit Mr. Uehara nearly every night, gradually transitioning to alcohol as per Mr. Uehara’s apparent plan.
When I secretly consulted Mother about repaying the pharmacy debt, she covered her face with one hand and remained motionless for some time. Eventually lifting her face with a lonely smile, she said, “There’s nothing to be done but think of a way. Though it might take years, let’s repay it little by little each month.”

It had been six years since then.

Evening faces.
Ah, my brother must be suffering too.
With his path blocked, he still hadn't figured out what to do or how to proceed.
He was just drinking himself to death every day, I supposed.

What if he were to abandon all pretense and become a proper delinquent?
Then perhaps he might finally find some relief.

"Is there anyone who isn't a delinquent?" was written in that notebook—but when stated that way, I too am a delinquent, Uncle is a delinquent, even Mother starts to seem like a delinquent. Could it be that delinquency is actually tenderness itself?

IV

I wavered endlessly over whether to write this letter or not.
But this morning, when I suddenly recalled Jesus' words—"Be innocent as doves yet wise as serpents"—a strange energy arose within me, and I resolved to send you this letter.

I am Naoshi's elder sister.
Have you forgotten me?
If you have forgotten, please try to remember.

Naoshi recently visited you again and seems to have caused significant trouble—for this I sincerely apologize.
(Though truthfully, Naoshi's matters are his own concern—it feels rather nonsensical for me to offer apologies on his behalf.) Today I write not regarding Naoshi, but to make a personal request.
Having heard from Naoshi about your apartment fire in Kyobashi and subsequent relocation to your current residence in Tokyo's outskirts, I earnestly considered visiting your home directly. However, Mother's condition has worsened again recently, and I find myself utterly unable to leave her unattended for a journey to the capital. Thus I have determined to convey my request through this letter.

There is something I wish to consult you about.

This matter I bring before you may appear thoroughly deceitful, defiling—even a vicious crime when judged by the standards of traditional “Women’s Learning”—but I, no—we cannot endure living as we are any longer. Therefore, I implore you—whom my brother Naoshi esteems above all others in this world—to hear my unfeigned heart and grant me your direction.

I find my current life unbearable.
It’s not a matter of preference or distaste—if things continue this way, we three—mother and children—cannot go on living.

Yesterday too, feeling wretched with my body feverish and breath stifled, when I was at a loss with myself, a little past noon, the daughter from the lower farm came through the rain bearing rice on her back.
From my side, I handed over the promised clothing as agreed.
The girl sat facing me in the dining room sipping tea, then said in a thoroughly matter-of-fact tone,

“How long do you think you can keep living by selling your things?”

Osaki-san said.

“Half a year, maybe a year or so.”

I answered.
And then, covering about half my face with my right hand,

“I'm sleepy. So sleepy I can't bear it.”

I said.

“You're tired.
“It's neurasthenia making you sleepy.”

“I suppose you're right.”

Tears welled up as the words "realism" and "romanticism" abruptly rose in my mind.
Realism eludes me.
When I wondered whether I could keep living this way, icy tremors coursed through my limbs.
Mother remains half an invalid, alternating between bed and chair, while my brother—as you know—suffers grave sickness of spirit; when here, he dutifully frequents the combined inn and restaurant nearby to drink shochu, every third day departing for Tokyo with money from our sold garments.
Yet my anguish springs not from these things.
What truly terrifies me is foreseeing my own life within this daily existence—rotting while rooted like banana leaves that decay without falling.
This I find utterly unbearable.
Therefore I resolve to flee my present life—even should it mean betraying the "Women’s University" precepts.

Therefore, I wish to consult with you.

I want to make a clear declaration to Mother and brother now.
I have been in love with a certain person for some time now, and I want to state plainly that I intend to live as that person's lover in the future.
That person is certainly someone you should know.
The initials of that person's name are M.C.
For some time now, whenever something painful happened, I have felt like perishing from longing to rush to M.C.'s side.

M.C., like you, has a wife and children. He also appears to have female friends more beautiful and younger than I am. Yet I feel there is no path for me to live except by going to M.C. Though I have never met Mrs. M.C., she seems to be a truly kind and good person. When I think of her, I consider myself a dreadful woman. But my present life feels even more dreadful than that, and I cannot cease relying on M.C. With the guilelessness of a dove and the wisdom of a serpent, I wish to fulfill my love. Yet surely neither Mother nor my brother nor anyone in society will approve of me. What do you think? When I consider that ultimately I must think and act alone, tears come—for this is the first such experience of my life. Is there truly no way to accomplish this difficult thing with everyone’s blessing? Like struggling with an impossibly tangled algebra factorization problem, I concentrate my thoughts until I sense there must be some single point where everything could unravel cleanly and beautifully, then suddenly find myself growing almost giddy with cheerfulness.

But when it comes to M.C.—how does he regard me? When I think of that, I lose heart completely. To put it plainly, I would be imposing myself—how should I put it—not exactly as an imposed wife, but perhaps as an imposed lover, something of that sort. So if M.C. absolutely refuses me, that will be the end of it. Therefore, I beg you. Please—could you try asking that person yourself? One day six years ago, a faint, delicate rainbow formed in my heart—it was neither love nor romance, yet as years passed, that rainbow intensified in color and vividness, and I have never once lost sight of it. The rainbow that appears in the sky after a sudden shower will soon vanish without a trace, but the rainbow that forms in one’s heart does not seem to disappear. Please try asking that person. What did that person truly think of me? Could it be that he thought of it as nothing more than a rainbow in the sky after rain? And that it has long since disappeared?

If that is the case, then I too must erase my rainbow.
But unless my life fades first, the rainbow in my heart shows no sign of vanishing.
I pray for your reply.

Mr. Uehara Jiro (My Chekhov.
My Chekhov.
M.C.)

I have been gradually putting on weight lately.
Rather than becoming an animal-like woman, I think I have become more human.
This summer, I read only one of Lawrence’s novels.

Since there has been no reply, I am writing to you again.
You must have seen through every last one of those cunning, serpentine ploys filling my previous letter.
Truly, I poured every ounce of guile into each line of that missive.
In the end, you likely concluded it was merely a plea for financial assistance—that I wanted you to support my livelihood.
While I won't deny that aspect, were I simply seeking a patron for myself—with all due respect—I wouldn't have chosen to approach you specifically.
There must be countless elderly gentlemen of means who'd gladly shower me with affection.
Indeed, just recently there came something resembling an absurd marriage proposal.
The gentleman in question—you may know his name—was a bachelor over sixty, purportedly a member of the Art Academy or some such institution, a celebrated master who journeyed to this mountain villa seeking my hand.
This Master had resided near our home in Nishikata-cho, and through neighborhood connections we'd occasionally cross paths.
I remember one autumn evening when Mother and I were passing his house by automobile—he stood alone by his gate in vacant contemplation, and when Mother inclined her head slightly from the car window, his stern slate-colored face flushed suddenly crimson, brighter than autumn maples.

“Could it be love?”

I exclaimed playfully.

“You’re the one he likes, aren’t you?”

But Mother calmly replied,

“No, a distinguished person,”

as if muttering to herself.
Respecting artists appeared to be a tradition in our family.

Having lost his wife some years prior, the Master—through Uncle Wada and a member of the imperial family who shared his passion for Noh theater—made a formal proposal to Mother. She then suggested, “Why don’t you give your response directly to the Master yourself, Kazuko, just as you’ve been thinking?”
she said, and without needing to think deeply—as I found the idea disagreeable—I was able to write out smoothly, without any difficulty, that I currently had no intention of marriage.

“Is it all right if I refuse?”

“Of course… I too thought it was an impossible proposition.”

At that time, the Master had been staying at his villa in Karuizawa, so when I sent my refusal there, then on the very next day—with our letters crossing paths—the Master himself appeared at this mountain villa, stating he had stopped by while en route to work at the Izu hot springs, completely unaware of my reply and arriving quite unexpectedly.
Artists, it seems, no matter how old they get, remain prone to such childlike whims.

Since Mother was unwell, I attended to him and served tea in the Chinese-style room,

“I believe my letter of refusal should have reached Karuizawa by now,”
“though I did give it careful consideration.”

I said.

“I see,”

he replied hurriedly, wiping his sweat,

“But please reconsider this once more thoroughly.”
“I may not be able to provide what you might call spiritual happiness, but in its place, I can grant you every material comfort imaginable.”
“This much I can state unequivocally.”
“Well—to speak plainly—”

“This ‘happiness’ you mention—I’m afraid I don’t grasp it.”
“Forgive my impertinence in saying so.”
“In Chekhov’s letters to his wife, he wrote: ‘Give me a child—give birth to our child,’ did he not?”
“And in Nietzsche’s essays—or some such—there were passages about women made for bearing children.”
“I want a child.”
“Happiness means nothing to me.”
“Money I do need—but only enough to raise my child. That would suffice.”

The Master gave a strange laugh.

"You are quite an unusual person," he said. "Someone who tells anyone exactly what you think. When I'm with someone like you, new inspiration might come dancing down into my work."

he said something slightly pretentious, unbecoming for his age.
If I could truly use my influence to rejuvenate the work of such a great artist, I thought that too would surely give my life purpose—but try as I might, I could not envision myself being embraced by the Master.

“Is it all right if I have no love in my heart?”

When I asked with a slight laugh, the Master replied earnestly,

“That’s perfectly acceptable for a woman,” he said. “Women can remain vague.”

“But someone like me still can’t contemplate marriage without love in my heart. I’m already an adult, you know. Next year I’ll be thirty.”

As I said this, I felt an urge to cover my mouth.

Thirty.
In women, a maidenly scent lingers until twenty-nine.
Yet the words from that French novel I once read—that by thirty, a woman’s body loses every trace of maidenly scent—suddenly returned to me, and I was overcome with unbearable loneliness. When I looked outside, the sea under the midday sun glittered harshly like shards of broken glass.
When I had read that novel long ago, I accepted its claim with casual composure.
I felt nostalgic for those days when I calmly believed a woman’s life ended at thirty.
As bracelets, necklaces, dresses, and obi each vanished from around my body, the maidenly scent of my flesh must have gradually faded away.
A poor middle-aged woman.
Oh, how I hated this.
But even in a middle-aged woman’s life, there still remained a woman’s existence after all.
Lately, I had come to understand that.
I remembered how the British woman teacher said this to me at nineteen when returning to England.

“You must not fall in love.”
“If you fall in love, you will become unhappy.”
“If you must fall in love, wait until you are much older.”
“Wait until you are thirty.”

But even after being told that, I simply stared blankly.
What might happen after turning thirty—such things lay completely beyond my powers of imagination back then.

“I’ve heard rumors that you’re planning to sell this villa.”

The Master said abruptly with a spiteful look.

I laughed.

“I’m sorry. I was reminded of The Cherry Orchard. You’re the one who’s going to buy it, aren’t you?”

The Master, sensitive enough to have perceived her implication, twisted his mouth in anger and fell silent.

It was indeed true that there had been talk of selling this house for 500,000 new yen as a residence for a certain prince, but that came to nothing, and the Master must have heard about it through those rumors.
But appearing thoroughly displeased at being perceived by us as some Lopakhin from *The Cherry Orchard*, he then exchanged a few pleasantries and took his leave.

What I seek from you now is not Lopakhin.
That I can state clearly.
Just accept this imposition from a middle-aged woman.

The first time I met you was already some six years past.
At that time, I knew nothing of what manner of man you were.
I simply thought of you as my brother’s teacher—and a rather disreputable one at that.
We drank sake together from a glass, and then you made some slight advance, did you not?
Yet I remained unperturbed.
I merely felt an odd lightness come over me.
You were neither liked nor disliked by me—it meant nothing at all.

Gradually, to humor my brother, I borrowed your works from him and read them—sometimes finding them interesting, sometimes not—never becoming an ardent reader. Yet over six years, without my noticing when it began, your presence had seeped into my heart like mist.
That night, what we did on the basement stairs suddenly came back to me with vivid clarity, and somehow it felt like an event so momentous it could decide my fate. When I thought that you were the one who did it—that this might be love—I felt utterly desolate and helpless, sobbing quietly alone.
You are completely different from other men.
I am not in love with a writer like Nina from *The Seagull*.
I do not yearn for novelists or anything like that.
If you were to think of me as some literary maiden, I too would be at a loss.
I want your baby.

If we had met and married long ago when you were still unattached and I hadn't yet gone to Yamaki, perhaps I wouldn't be suffering like this now—but I've resigned myself to never marrying you. To displace your wife would feel like vile brutality, something I cannot abide. I could become your mistress—(how I loathe this word! Yet even if I call it 'lover,' in common parlance it amounts to mistress regardless, so I'll speak plainly)—that I could endure. But they say the life of an ordinary mistress proves terribly trying. People claim mistresses get cast aside once their purpose expires. When men near sixty, they all return to their lawful wives—so I've heard the old retainer from Nishikatamachi and our wet nurse agree one must never become a mistress. Yet that concerns society's common sort—our situation feels different somehow. What matters most to you remains your work, I believe. And should you care for me, our harmony would surely aid your endeavors too. Then your wife might come to accept us. It sounds like strained logic, perhaps, but I find no flaw in this reasoning.

The problem lay solely in your response. Did you love me, hate me, or feel nothing at all? Though your answer terrified me, I had to ask. In my previous letter I wrote of being a self-proclaimed mistress, and in this one too mentioned a middle-aged woman imposing herself—but upon reflection realized that without your reply, I lacked any means to impose myself at all. I would simply waste away alone, growing gaunt in my daze. Without some word from you, there was nothing I could do.

It has just now occurred to me—though you write of amorous adventures in your novels and are rumored to be quite the scoundrel, in truth you must be a man of common sense.
I simply don't understand this thing called common sense.
I believe that as long as one can do what they like, that constitutes a good life.
I want to bear your baby.
I don’t want to bear anyone else’s baby, no matter what happens.
Therefore, I am consulting you.
If you have understood, please send your reply.
Please inform me clearly of your feelings.

The rain stopped and the wind began to blow.
It was now three o'clock in the afternoon.
I would go receive the first-grade sake ration - six gō.
I put two bottles of rum into a bag, placed this letter in my chest pocket, and in about ten minutes would head down to the village.
This alcohol I would not let my brother drink.
Kazuko would drink it.
Every night I drank a glassful.
Alcohol is truly meant to be drunk from a glass.

Won't you come here?

Mr. M.C.

It rained again today.
A misty rain so fine it was almost invisible kept falling.
Day after day I stayed indoors waiting for your reply, yet today finally came with no word from you.
What in the world were you thinking?
In my previous letter—had writing about that Master been a mistake?
Did you perhaps think that by mentioning such a marriage proposal, I was trying to provoke some competitive spirit in you?
But that marriage proposal had ended there and then.
Just now, I discussed that matter with Mother and laughed.
Mother had recently complained of pain at her tongue's tip, tried aesthetic therapy on Naoshi's recommendation, and through this treatment her tongue pain had subsided—she had been somewhat better these days.

A moment ago, as I stood on the veranda watching the misty rain swirl and blow away while thinking about your feelings,

“I’ve boiled the milk. Come here.”

Mother called from the direction of the dining room.

“It’s cold, so I made it extra hot.”

We drank steaming hot milk in the dining room while discussing the Master from the other day.

“That person and I—we’re fundamentally unsuited for each other, don’t you think?”

Mother calmly replied,

“You two don’t suit each other.”

“I’m so selfish, and I don’t dislike artists, and what’s more, that person seems to have a substantial income—so marrying someone like that would be wonderful, I think. But it’s no good.”

Mother laughed and said,
“Kazuko, you’re such a naughty child. Even though you’re so hopeless, the other day you were chatting away so pleasantly with that person about all sorts of things. I don’t understand your feelings.”

“Oh, but it was interesting, you know.”
“I wanted to talk about so many more things.”
“I have no sense of propriety, I suppose.”

“No, you’re being too clingy. Kazuko the Clinger.”
“Kazuko the Clinger.”

Mother was in very good spirits today.

She looked at my hair, which I had styled in an updo for the first time yesterday,

“An updo suits people with thin hair best.”
“Yours is too magnificent—it makes me want to place a small golden crown on it.”
“A failure.”

“Kazuko is disappointed.”
“But Mother, didn’t you once say my neck was white and beautiful, and that I should try not to hide it?”

"You remember that of all things."

"I never forget even the slightest praise I've received. It's happier to remember."

“The other day, that person must have praised you in various ways too, didn’t they?”

“That’s right,” I said. “So I ended up clinging on.”
“When we’re together, that spiritual inspiration—ah, it overwhelms me.”
“I don’t dislike artists, but those who put on airs like saints are completely unbearable.”

“What sort of person is Naoshi’s mentor?”

A chill ran through me.

“I don’t really know, but since he’s Naoshi’s teacher after all, he seems to be a certified delinquent.”

“Certified?”

And Mother murmured with a delighted look in her eyes,

“What an amusing phrase.”
“If they’re certified delinquents, doesn’t that make them safer?”
“It’s almost as adorable as a kitten wearing a bell around its neck.”
“It’s the uncertified delinquents who frighten me.”

“Do you think so?”

So happy, so happy that my body felt as if it were dissolving into smoke and being drawn up into the sky.
Do you understand?
Why was I happy?
If you don't understand...I'll hit you.

“Won’t you truly come visit us here just once? Having me tell Naoshi to bring you would feel awkward and unnatural, so you could pretend to drop by on a tipsy impulse—it would be acceptable to come with Naoshi as your guide, but please try to come alone when he’s away on business in Tokyo. If Naoshi’s here, he’ll whisk you away, and I know you’ll both just end up drinking shochu at Osaki-san’s place and never return. In our family, we’ve always favored artists through the generations. The painter Korin once stayed long at our Kyoto house, leaving beautiful paintings on the fusuma doors. So Mother would surely welcome your visit. You’d likely stay in the Western-style room upstairs. Please make sure to turn off the lights. Then I’d climb the dark stairs holding a small candle—would that be wrong? Too soon, isn’t it.”

I like delinquents.
And not just any—certified ones.
I want to become a certified delinquent myself.
I feel there's no other way for me to live.
You're Japan's number one certified delinquent, aren't you?
When I heard from my brother how everyone's been viciously attacking you lately—calling you filthy, disgusting—I came to like you even more.
Given who you are, I'm sure you have all sorts of entanglements, but eventually you'll come to love only me.
For some reason, I can't help believing this.
Then you could live with me and work happily every day.
Since childhood, people have always told me, "Being with you makes troubles disappear."
I've never once been disliked by anyone.
Everyone's always said I'm a good girl.
So there's absolutely no reason you could dislike me either.

We need only meet.
Now I require neither your reply nor anything else.
How I long to see you.
Were I to visit your Tokyo residence myself, that would surely be the simplest way for us to meet—but with Mother being practically an invalid and myself serving as her full-time nurse and maid combined, it simply cannot be done.
I implore you.
Please come here.
I want but a single glimpse of you.
Then everything will become clear when we meet.
Look upon the faint wrinkles framing my mouth.
Look upon these furrows of century-spanning sorrow.
My face should communicate the thoughts in my breast to you more plainly than any words of mine ever could.

In my first letter to you, I wrote of the rainbow arching across my chest—but that rainbow bears no resemblance to fireflies' delicate glimmer or stars' noble radiance.
Had those feelings remained faint and distant, I might have suffered less and gradually forgotten you.
The rainbow in my breast is a bridge of flames.
This sensation burns my chest until it chars.
Even a drug addict's desperation when their supply runs dry could not match this agony.
Though certain I'm neither mistaken nor wicked, I sometimes shudder at the thought that I might be preparing some colossal idiocy.
There are moments when I reflect that I may be going mad—many such moments.
Yet even I make calm plans at times.
Please come here once—truly.
Any time would suit.
I shall wait forever without leaving.
Believe me.

Let us meet once more—then if it displeases you, say so clearly.
This flame in my chest—since you lit it, you must put it out.
Alone, I haven't the strength to extinguish it.
If we meet—if we meet—I'll find salvation.
Had this been the age of the Manyoshu or The Tale of Genji, what I ask would be commonplace—yet now...
My wish:
To become your kept woman and bear your child.

If anyone should mock this letter, they mock women's struggle to survive.
They mock women's very lives.
I can no longer endure this harbor's stagnant, suffocating air—even through storms outside, I must raise my sails.
Sails at rest grow inevitably foul.
Those who mock me are all sails lying stagnant.
They achieve nothing.

Troublesome woman.
Yet I'm the one suffering most from this.
It's nonsense for bystanders untouched by this pain to criticize while letting their sails droop in ugly idleness.
I won't have you carelessly labeling me with this or that ideology.
I have no ideology.
I've never once acted based on philosophies or any such things.

I know those called respectable in society are all liars and frauds.
I place no faith in society.
Only those branded delinquents stand with me.
Branded delinquents.
I'd gladly hang upon that very cross to die.
Even if all condemn me, I can still retort:
"Aren't you all more dangerous delinquents without labels?"

Do you understand now?

There is no reason in love.
I have spoken too much of logical-sounding things.
It may have been nothing more than parroting my brother’s words.
I am simply waiting for you to come.
I want to see you again.
That is all.

I waited.
Ah—human life contains joy and anger and sorrow and hatred—all manner of emotions—yet these occupy but one percent of our existence. For the remaining ninety-nine percent, do we not merely live in waiting?
With heart-pounding anticipation I had waited for happiness’s footsteps to echo through the hallway—only to find emptiness.
Ah—human life proves too wretched.
This reality where all think it better never to have been born.
Thus each day from dawn till dusk I fleetingly wait—for something.
Too wretched.
That I was born—ah! How I long to rejoice in life itself—in humanity—in this world!

Can’t we push aside the morality that obstructs us?

M.C. (It’s not the initials of My Chekhov.
I am not in love with a writer.
My Child)

V

This summer I sent three letters to a certain man, but received no reply.
However I considered it, there seemed no other way for me to live—so I wrote down everything in my heart across three letters and mailed them with the feeling of leaping from a cliff's edge into raging waves. Yet no matter how long I waited, no reply came.
When I discreetly asked my brother Naoshi about that person's condition, it appeared nothing about him had changed—he still roamed about drinking nightly, writing ever more immoral works that drew scorn from society's upstanding adults. He advised Naoshi to start a publishing venture, and as I listened to my brother speak grandly of how that person and two or three other novelists would serve as advisors while someone provided capital, not a trace of my presence seemed to linger about the one I loved. More than shame, I felt this world was some strange creature entirely unlike what I'd imagined—I stood abandoned in a twilight autumn wilderness where no answer came however I screamed, overwhelmed by a desolation I'd never known.
Is this what they call heartbreak?
As I stand rooted in this wasteland until night falls completely, wondering if freezing to death in the dew is my only fate, a tearless wail surges through my shoulders and chest in violent waves until I can scarcely breathe.

At this point, I resolved that come what may, I must go to Tokyo and meet Mr. Uehara—my sails were already hoisted and I had ventured beyond the harbor, so I couldn’t remain anchored; I had to go all the way—but the very moment I secretly began preparing for my journey, Mother’s condition took an ominous turn.

One night, Mother had a terrible coughing fit, and when I took her temperature, it was thirty-nine degrees.

"It must be because it was cold today."
"It will be better by tomorrow."

Mother said this between coughs in a small voice, but to me it didn’t seem like an ordinary cough at all, so I resolved that come tomorrow I would have the doctor from the village below come no matter what.

The next morning, Mother’s fever had dropped to thirty-seven degrees and her cough had subsided considerably. Nevertheless, I went to the village doctor’s place and explained that Mother had recently grown noticeably weaker, that her fever had returned the previous evening, and that her cough seemed different from an ordinary cold’s—then requested his examination.

The doctor said, "Then I shall call on you later. These are a gift from someone," and took out three pears from the cupboard in the corner of the parlor and gave them to me.
And then, a little past noon, he came for the examination dressed in a white hemp garment and summer haori.
As was his custom, he performed auscultation and percussion with meticulous care for a long while, then turned squarely toward me,

“There is no need for concern,” he said. “If she takes the medicine properly, she will recover.”

I found myself strangely amused and struggled to hold back my laughter,

“What do you think about giving an injection?”

When I asked this, he replied seriously,

“There is no need for that.”
“It is a cold. If she rests quietly, it should pass before long.”

Dr. Miyake said.

However, Mother’s fever did not go down even after a week had passed.
The cough had subsided, but her fever was around 37.7 degrees in the morning and rose to 39 degrees by evening.
The doctor had been resting since the next day due to an upset stomach, so I went to receive the medicine and informed the nurse that Mother’s condition was not improving, but even when they conveyed this to Dr. Miyake, he replied that it was just a common cold and there was no need for concern, providing liquid and powdered medicine.

Naoshi was still away on his usual business trip to Tokyo and had not returned for over ten days.
Alone and overwhelmed by anxiety, I wrote a postcard to Uncle Wada informing him of Mother’s changed condition.

On the tenth day of her fever, the village doctor finally said his stomach had settled and came to examine her.

Dr. Miyake performed percussion on Mother’s chest with a carefully attentive expression,

“I see, I see.”

he exclaimed, then turned squarely toward me again,

“We have identified the cause of your fever.”
“There is infiltration in the left lung.”
“But there is no need for concern.”
“The fever will likely persist for some time, but if you remain quiet, there is nothing to worry about.”

Dr. Miyake said.

Is that so? I wondered, yet clinging like a drowning person to straws, I felt some measure of relief at the village doctor's diagnosis.

After the doctor had left,

“That’s good news, Mother? Just a little infiltration is something most people have, you know. If you keep your spirits strong, it’ll heal without any trouble at all. It was this summer’s wretched weather that did it. I hate summer. Kazuko hates summer flowers too.”

Mother closed her eyes and smiled,

“They say people who love summer flowers die in summer, so I thought I might die around this summer, but then Naoshi came home, and I’ve lingered on living into autumn.”

The realization that even someone like Naoshi had become Mother’s sole pillar of hope was unbearable.

“Even so, since summer has already passed, Mother’s dangerous period must have crossed its peak.”
“Mother, the bush clover in the garden is blooming.”
“And golden lace, great burnet, balloon flowers, pampas grass, and silver grass.”
“The garden has become an autumn garden.”
“When October comes, your fever will surely subside.”

I prayed for this.
If only this sweltering September—this stubborn remnant of summer—would hurry and pass.
Once the chrysanthemums bloomed and those mild Indian summer days stretched on, Mother’s fever would surely break, she’d regain her strength, I’d meet him again, and my plans might blossom as gloriously as giant chrysanthemums.
Ah, let October come swiftly—let Mother’s fever finally subside.

About a week after I sent a postcard to Uncle Wada, through his arrangements, Dr.Miyake—the elderly gentleman who had once served as an imperial physician—came from Tokyo with a nurse to examine Mother.

Since Dr.Miyake had been acquainted with our late father, Mother appeared very pleased.
Moreover, this elderly gentleman had always been ill-mannered with rough speech, which seemed to please Mother, and that day they set aside the examination to engross themselves in casual conversation.
When I made some pudding in the kitchen and brought it to the sitting room, it seemed the examination had already concluded in the meantime, and the elderly gentleman was sitting on a rattan chair in the corridor of the sitting room, his stethoscope carelessly slung over his shoulder like a necklace,

“Even someone like me goes into food stalls for stand-up udon eating. There’s no such thing as good or bad taste.”

He continued talking about mundane topics in a carefree manner.
Mother too gazed at the ceiling with an unconcerned expression as she listened to his story.
It was nothing after all, I thought with relief.

“How did it go? The village doctor mentioned there was infiltration in the left side of the chest, but…?”

Then I suddenly felt energized and asked Dr.Miyake, whereupon the elderly doctor replied nonchalantly,

“Oh, it’s nothing serious.”

he said lightly.

"Oh, that's wonderful, Mother."

And smiling genuinely, I called out to Mother,

"He says it's nothing serious."

At that moment, Dr.Miyake abruptly stood up from the rattan chair and headed toward the Chinese-style room.
Since it seemed he had something to discuss with me, I quietly followed him.

Dr.Miyake went to stand behind the wall hanging in the Chinese-style room and stopped.

"I can hear crackling sounds."

Dr. Miyake said.

“It isn’t infiltration, then?”

“No.”

“Is it bronchial catarrh?”

By now, I was on the verge of tears as I asked.

"No."

Tuberculosis!
I didn't want to believe it was tuberculosis.
If it were pneumonia or infiltration or bronchial catarrh, I could surely cure her myself.
But if it's tuberculosis—ah, then it might already be hopeless.
I felt as if the ground were crumbling beneath me.

"Are the sounds... that bad?"
"You can hear crackling sounds?"

Overcome with desolation, I broke into a sob.

“Both the right and left—it’s all affected.”

“But Mother is still healthy!”
“Even her meals—she says they’re delicious, delicious, and…”

“There’s nothing to be done.”

“That’s a lie! Right? That’s not true, is it? If she eats lots of butter, eggs, and milk, she’ll recover, won’t she? If her body builds up resistance, even the fever will go down, right?”

“Yes, she must eat plenty of anything.”

“Right? You see? She eats about five tomatoes every day too.”

“Yes, tomatoes are good.”

“Then she’ll be fine? She’ll get better?”

“However, this illness may take her life. You should prepare yourself for that possibility.”

I felt as though I had realized for the first time in my life the existence of a wall of despair—that there are so many things in this world that human effort simply cannot overcome.

“Two years? Three years?”

I asked in a trembling whisper.

“I don’t know. In any case, there’s nothing more to be done.”

Dr.Miyake then departed together with the nurse—having apparently made reservations at Nagaoka Hot Springs in Izu for that day.
I saw him off to the gate before frantically rushing back to sit at Mother’s bedside in the parlor and smiling as if nothing were wrong—whereupon Mother inquired:

“What did the doctor say?”

“He said as long as your fever subsides, you’ll be fine.”
“What about my chest?”

“It doesn’t seem to be anything serious.”
“See? It’s surely just like that time you were ill before.”
“Once the weather cools down, you’ll steadily regain your strength.”

I tried to believe my own lies.
I resolved to forget those terrifying words—"fatal" and such.
To me, the idea that Mother would die felt like my own flesh would vanish along with hers—something I simply couldn't accept as reality.
From now on I'd forget everything else and prepare feast after feast for Mother.
Fish.
Soup.
Canned goods.
Liver.
Meat broth.
Tomatoes.
Eggs.
Milk.
Clear soup.
If only we had tofu.
Tofu miso soup.
White rice.
Rice cakes.
Whatever looked delicious—I'd sell every last thing I owned and treat Mother to it all.

I stood up and went to the Chinese-style room. Then I moved the chaise lounge from there to near the parlor's veranda and sat down where I could see Mother's face. Her resting countenance showed no trace of illness whatsoever. Her eyes remained beautifully clear, her complexion vibrant. Each morning she would rise at fixed hours, go to the washroom, then in the bath area's three-tatami space arrange her own hair and tend to her appearance with care before returning to bed. There she would take meals while seated upon it, alternating between lying down and sitting up through the morning as she read newspapers and books—the fever only coming in afternoons.

"Ah, Mother is healthy.
She’ll surely be all right."

I vehemently rejected Dr. Miyake’s diagnosis in my heart.

As I thought about October arriving and chrysanthemums blooming, I drowsily began to doze off.
Though it was a landscape I had never seen in reality, in my dreams I sometimes visited this scenery—there I found myself again at the lakeside in that familiar forest, thinking "Ah, I've come back here."
I walked soundlessly with a young man wearing traditional Japanese clothes.
The whole landscape seemed shrouded in green-tinged mist.
And there at the lake's bottom lay submerged a white, delicate bridge.

"Ah, the bridge has sunk. We can't go anywhere today. Let's rest at this hotel. There must be a vacant room."

By the lakeside stood a stone hotel. Its stones were damp with green mist. On the stone gate, thin gold letters spelled HOTEL SWITZERLAND. As I read "SWI," I suddenly remembered Mother. What would become of her? Would Mother come to this hotel too? I grew doubtful. Passing through the stone gate with the young man, I entered the front garden. In the misty garden, large red flowers like hydrangeas blazed in bloom. When I was a child, seeing crimson hydrangeas scattered across a futon's pattern had made me strangely sad, but I'd concluded red hydrangeas must truly exist.

“Aren’t you cold?”

“Yes, a little,” he said with a laugh. “The mist has dampened your ears—the backs feel cold.”

“What will become of Mother?” I asked.

Then the young man smiled with profound sadness and deep affection. “She lies beneath the grave,” he answered.

“Ah!” I cried out softly.
That’s how it was.
Mother was gone.
Hadn’t Mother’s funeral been concluded long ago?
Ah—when I realized Mother had already died, I shuddered with unspeakable dread and awoke.

The veranda was already steeped in dusk.
It was raining.
A green-tinged loneliness lingered through the air, still part of the dream.

“Mother.”

I called.

In a quiet voice,

“What are you doing?”

came her gracious reply.

I jumped up in joy and went to the parlor,

“Just now, I was sleeping.”

“Yes.
“I was wondering what you were doing.
“What a long afternoon nap!”

she said with an amused laugh.

I was so overjoyed and grateful that Mother was still breathing and living with such elegance that tears welled up in my eyes.

“What would you like for this evening’s meal?
“Do you have any requests?”

I said in a slightly animated tone.

“That’s quite all right.”
“I don’t require anything.”
“Today it reached thirty-nine point five degrees.”

Suddenly I went completely limp. At a loss, I stared blankly around the dim room and abruptly wished to die.

"What's wrong?"
"Thirty-nine point five?"

“It’s nothing at all. It’s simply that the time before the fever comes is disagreeable. My head begins to ache slightly, I feel chills, and then the fever arrives.”

Outside was already dark; the rain seemed to have stopped, but the wind had started blowing.
When I turned on the light and was about to go to the dining room, Mother—
“It’s too bright; don’t turn it on.”
Mother said.
“Lying still in the dark like this must be unpleasant for you.”

I inquired while still standing,

“It’s the same thing—I am lying here with my eyes closed.”
“I’m not at all lonely.”
“Rather, it’s the brightness I dislike.”
“From now on, you must never turn on the parlor light.”

“It’s too bright; don’t turn it on,” Mother said.

To me this too felt ominous; I silently turned off the parlor light, went to the adjacent room and lit the lamp there, then became unbearably desolate and hurried to the dining room where I ate canned salmon over cold rice until tears began streaming down.

The wind grew stronger as night fell, and around nine o’clock rain began mixing in until it became a true storm. The veranda blinds we had rolled up days earlier flapped noisily as I read Rosa Luxemburg’s *Introduction to Economics* in the room adjoining the parlor with peculiar excitement—books I’d taken from Naoshi’s upstairs room days before along with Lenin’s selected works and Kautsky’s *Social Revolution*, all placed unceremoniously on my desk.

That morning Mother had paused by my desk after washing her face—noticing those three volumes she picked each up in turn, examined them with a small sigh before replacing them quietly and glancing at me with desolate eyes.

Yet her gaze held no rejection nor disgust despite its profound sorrow.

The books Mother reads—Hugo and Dumas père et fils, Musset and Daudet—contain revolutionary undercurrents even within their lyrical tales. Someone like her—possessing what one might awkwardly term innate refinement—might surprisingly accept revolution as natural course.

As for me reading Luxemburg—I know it makes me seem affected yet still feel genuine fascination.

What passes here for economics proves tedious when read as such—nothing but simplistic truisms.

Or perhaps I simply fail to grasp economics altogether.

At any rate I find it utterly dull—this discipline predicated on humanity’s eternal stinginess holding no interest for those unburdened by greed.

Yet still I read on finding strange thrills elsewhere—in the author’s reckless courage demolishing old ideologies wholesale without hesitation.

However immoral it seems I even envision a married woman coolly hastening to her lover’s side.

Destructive ideology.

Destruction—pitiful yet beautiful in its sadness.

The dream to destroy rebuild complete.

And yet even if destruction might mean completion’s day would never come，still，compelled by this yearning love，one had to destroy．
One had to start a revolution．
Rosa harbored a tragically single-minded love for Marxism．

That was twelve years ago, in winter.

“You’re that girl from The Sarashina Diary.”
“There’s nothing more to say.”

Having said that, my friend walked away from me. To that friend, I had returned Lenin’s book unread at the time.

“Did you read it?”

“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t read it.”

It was on the bridge overlooking Nikolai Cathedral.

“Why? How come?”

That friend was about an inch taller than me—a beautiful person who excelled at languages, looked splendid in a red beret, and had what people called a face resembling the Gioconda.

“It was the color of the cover I disliked.”

“You’re strange,”
“That’s not the real reason, is it?”
“The truth is, you got scared of me, didn’t you?”

“I’m not scared.”
“I couldn’t stand the color of the cover.”

“Oh.”

She said with a lonely look, then called me *Sarashina Diary*, and concluded that nothing she said would get through to me.

We remained silent for a while looking down at the winter river.

"Farewell.
If this should be our eternal parting,
then forevermore stay safe—
Byron."

Having said that, she quickly recited Byron’s verses in their original English and lightly embraced me.

I was ashamed,

“I’m sorry.”

I apologized in a small voice and walked toward Ochanomizu Station. When I looked back, my friend remained standing on the bridge, motionless, staring intently at me.

After that day, I never saw her again.
Though we had attended lessons at the same foreign teacher’s home, our schools were different.

Twelve years had passed since then, yet I still hadn't advanced a single step beyond *The Sarashina Diary*. What on earth had I been doing all that time? I had never yearned for revolution, and had not even known love. Until now, adults in society had taught us to regard revolution and love as the most foolish and detestable things—before the war, during the war, we had believed it exactly as they said. But after our defeat, we stopped trusting these adults, and came to feel that true living must lie in the opposite direction of whatever they proclaimed. Revolution and love—they're actually the finest, most delicious things in this world. Precisely because they're too wonderful, I've grown certain those adults spitefully lied to us, calling them sour grapes. I want to be certain. Human beings were born for love and revolution.

The sliding door opened smoothly, and Mother showed her face while laughing,
"You're still awake? Aren't you sleepy?"

Mother said.

When I looked at the clock on the desk, it was twelve o'clock.

"Yes, I'm not sleepy at all. When I was reading a book on socialism, I got rather excited."

"Oh. Don't we have any wine? In times like these, if you drink some wine and rest, you can sleep quite well."

She said in a teasing tone, but her demeanor held an allure that was but a paper-thin line from decadence.

Eventually October arrived, but instead of crisp autumn skies, days continued muggy and damp like the rainy season, sweltering day after day.
And then, Mother's fever still rose and fell between thirty-eight and thirty-nine degrees every evening.

And then one morning, I saw something dreadful.
Mother’s hand was swollen.
Mother, who had always said breakfast was her favorite meal, had lately been sitting up in bed eating just a small bowl of thin gruel, unable to tolerate strongly flavored side dishes. That day, when I brought her matsutake clear soup, she seemed to recoil even from the mushroom’s fragrance—lifting the bowl to her lips only to set it quietly back on the tray. It was then that I noticed Mother’s hand and gasped.
Her right hand was swollen and had become perfectly round.

“Mother! Your hand—is it really all right?”

Her face appeared slightly pale and swollen.

“It’s nothing. This much is nothing.”

“Since when has it been swollen?”

Mother made a face as if dazzled and remained silent. I wanted to cry out loud. This wasn’t Mother’s hand. It was some stranger’s hand. My mother’s hand had been more slender and delicate. A hand I knew well. A gentle hand. A lovely hand. Had that hand vanished forever? Though her left hand wasn’t yet as swollen, it pained me to look—I averted my eyes and glared at the flower basket in the alcove.

Tears threatened to spill, becoming unbearable—I abruptly stood and went to the dining room, where Naoshi sat alone eating a soft-boiled egg.
Even when he was occasionally at this house in Izu, he would invariably go to Osaki-san’s place at night to drink shochu, then return in the morning with a sullen face, eat nothing but four or five soft-boiled eggs instead of a proper meal, and afterward go back upstairs to alternate between sleeping and waking up.

“Mother’s hand is swollen…”

I spoke to Naoshi and looked down.
Unable to continue speaking, I remained bowed, crying into my shoulders.

Naoshi remained silent.

I raised my face,
“It’s hopeless now.
Didn’t you notice?
If it’s swollen like that, there’s no hope left.”

I said, gripping the edge of the table.

Naoshi’s face darkened.

“It’s close now. That’s how it is.”
“Tch. What a pointless mess this has become.”

“I want to save her one more time.
“I have to save her.”

As I said this while wringing my left hand with my right hand, Naoshi suddenly burst into sniffling sobs,

"There ain't nothin' good at all.
"There ain't nothin' good at all for us,"

he said while roughly rubbing his eyes with his fists.

That day, Naoshi went to Tokyo to report Mother's condition to Uncle Wada and receive instructions about what lay ahead, while I spent nearly the entire day from morning till night crying whenever away from Mother's side. Whether fetching milk through the morning mist, smoothing my hair before the mirror, or applying lipstick—I kept crying throughout. Memories of happy days spent with Mother—each moment and every detail—rose before me like paintings, leaving me helpless to stop the tears no matter how I tried. When evening darkened into night, I went out to the veranda of the Chinese-style room and wept quietly for hours. Stars glimmered in the autumn sky while a stray cat crouched motionless at my feet.

The next day, the swelling in her hand had grown even worse than the day before.
She had eaten nothing at all.
She said even orange juice stung her chapped mouth and she couldn't drink it.

"Mother, why don't you try using Naoshi's mask again?"

I had intended to say this with a laugh, but as I spoke, it became too painful, and I burst into tears.

“You must be busy every day and tired.”
“Please hire a nurse.”

She said this quietly, but I understood she was more worried about Kazuko than herself—which made it all the more heartbreaking. I stood up, ran to the three-tatami bathroom, and wept as hard as I could.

A little past noon, Naoshi brought Dr. Miyake, the elderly physician, and two nurses.

Even the elderly physician, who always joked around, entered the sickroom at that moment with heavy steps as if angered and immediately began his examination.
And then, addressing no one in particular,

“She has weakened considerably,” he said quietly, administering a camphor injection.

“Where are you staying, Doctor?”

Mother said as if in delirium.

“It’s Nagaoka again.
“It’s been reserved, so please don’t concern yourself.
“The patient mustn’t worry about others and should be more self-indulgent—she must eat anything she wants, and plenty of it.
“If she takes nourishment, she will improve.
“I shall come again tomorrow.
“I’ll leave one nurse here, so please make use of her.”

The elderly physician declared this loudly to Mother in her sickbed, then gave Naoshi a meaningful look and rose.

Naoshi alone went to see the doctor and accompanying nurse off, and when I saw his face upon returning, it was the face of someone struggling to hold back tears.

We quietly left the sickroom and went to the dining room.

“Is it hopeless?”
“Isn’t that right?”

“How pointless.”

Naoshi twisted his mouth into a smile and laughed,

“The decline seems to have come on alarmingly fast.”
“He had the nerve to say he can’t even tell if she’ll last through tomorrow now.”

As he was saying this, tears overflowed from Naoshi’s eyes.

“Do we need to send telegrams to everyone?”

I, on the contrary, said calmly and quietly:

“I did consult Uncle about that, but he said this isn’t a time when we can gather people. Even if they did come, this house is too cramped—it’d be rude to them—and there aren’t any decent inns nearby either. We couldn’t even reserve two or three rooms at Nagaoka Hot Springs. Basically, we’re too poor now to have the means to invite such distinguished guests. Uncle should be arriving soon after, but that guy’s always been a cheapskate—you can’t count on him for anything. Just last night, he completely ignored Mother’s illness and lectured me endlessly. There ain’t a single example in all of history—east or west—of someone having their eyes opened by being lectured at by a cheapskate. Even though we’re sister and brother, Mother and that guy are as different as heaven and earth—it’s sickening.”

“But anyway—you must depend on Uncle from now on...”
“Never.
“We’d be better off becoming beggars.”
“You should be the one clinging to Uncle’s coattails from here on.”

“For me…”

Tears welled up.

“I have somewhere to go.”

“A marriage proposal? Has it been arranged?”

“No.”

“Living on your own? A working woman? Cut it out.”

“It’s not self-reliance either. I’m going to become a revolutionary.”

“Huh?”

Naoshi made a strange face and looked at me.

At that moment, the nurse who had accompanied Dr.Miyake came to call me.

“Madam appears to require something.”

She hurriedly went to the sickroom and sat down beside the futon,
“What?”
she asked, bringing her face closer.
But Mother, seeming to want to say something, remained silent.
“Water?”
she asked.
She faintly shook her head.
It seemed she didn’t want water either.

After a while, in a small voice,

“I had a dream.”

Mother said.

“Oh?”
“What kind of dream?”

“A snake dream.”

I was startled.

“There’s a female snake with red stripes on the veranda’s shoe-removal stone.”
“Go and see.”

With a chill running through my body, I abruptly stood up and went out to the veranda. Through the glass door, I looked—there on the shoe-removal stone lay a snake, stretched long under the autumn sun.
I felt a dizzy spell.

I know you. You’ve grown a bit larger and older since that time, but you’re still that female snake who had her eggs burned for my sake. I’ve come to fully understand your revenge—now go away. Hurry up and get out of here.

I kept staring at the snake, willing it in my heart, but no matter what, the snake showed no sign of moving. For some reason, I didn’t want the nurse to see that snake. I stamped my foot hard,

“It’s not here, Mother. Dreams aren’t reliable at all.”

I said in an intentionally overloud voice and glanced toward the shoe-removal stone. The snake finally stirred, sluggishly sliding down from the stone.

It was hopeless.
Seeing that snake and understanding it was hopeless, resignation welled up from the depths of my heart for the first time.
When Father passed away, they said there had been a small black snake by his pillow, and during that time too, I had seen snakes coiled around every tree in the garden.

Mother seemed to have lost even the strength to sit up in bed now, drifting in and out of consciousness as she entrusted her full care to the attending nurse. Her meals had almost entirely stopped passing her throat.
After seeing the snake, I felt a peace of mind that had pierced through sorrow's depths—or perhaps I should call it a sense of ease akin to happiness—and resolved that from now on, I would stay by Mother's side as much as possible.

And so from the next day onward, I sat clinging close to Mother’s bedside and did knitting and such.
When it came to knitting or sewing, I was much faster than others, but I was unskilled.
So Mother would always take my hand and teach me each of those clumsy parts.
That day too, I had no particular desire to knit, but to make my clinging closely to Mother’s side appear natural, I brought out the yarn box and began knitting with feigned absorption.

Mother stared intently at my hands,

“Are you knitting your socks?
In that case, you need to add eight more stitches, or they’ll be tight when you wear them.”

Mother said.

As a child, no matter how much I was taught, I could never knit well, but fumbling just as I did then—feeling embarrassed and nostalgic—ah, thinking that even this act of being taught by Mother would now come to an end—my tears made the stitches disappear from view.

Mother, lying like this, did not seem to be suffering at all.
She had taken no food at all since morning, and all we could do was occasionally moisten her mouth with tea-soaked gauze, yet her mind remained clear, and she spoke to me calmly from time to time.

"It seems there was a photo of His Majesty in the newspaper—let me see it again."

I held that part of the newspaper over Mother’s face.

“His Majesty has aged.”

“No, this photograph simply isn’t good.”
“In his previous photograph—the one before this—he looked quite youthful and lively.”
“If anything, His Majesty might actually be content with an era like this.”

“Why?”

“Because His Majesty has been liberated this time too.”

Mother smiled with a lonely expression.
Then, after some time,

“Even if I want to cry, the tears won’t come anymore.”

Mother said.

It suddenly occurred to me—might Mother be happy now?
Happiness might be something like gold dust sunk at the bottom of a river of sorrow, faintly glimmering.
Having passed through sorrow’s extremity to this strange twilight of the heart—if that is what we call happiness—then His Majesty, Mother, and I were surely happy now.

Quiet, an autumn morning.
A garden in autumn, bathed in soft sunlight.
I stopped knitting and gazed at the sea shining at chest height,

“Mother.
“Until now, I’ve been quite ignorant of the world.”

I said, and though I had more I wanted to say, I felt too embarrassed at the thought of the nurse preparing an intravenous injection in the corner of the room overhearing me, and stopped myself.

“Until now, you mean…”

Mother smiled faintly and inquired,

“Then, do you understand the world now?”

For some reason, my face turned bright red.

“The world is incomprehensible.”

Mother turned her face away and said in a small voice, as if to herself.

“I don’t understand.”
“There’s no one who truly understands, is there?”
“No matter how much time passes, we’re all children.”
“They don’t understand a thing.”

But I had to go on living.
Though I might still have been a child, I could no longer afford to indulge in such dependence.
I had to go on contending with the world from now on.
Ah—those who can end their lives beautifully and sorrowfully without conflict, hatred, or resentment, like Mother... Could it be that Mother was the last of them? That such people will no longer exist in the world to come?
Those who go to their deaths are beautiful.
Living.
Surviving.
It also felt like something terribly ugly, reeking of blood—a sordid thing.
I became pregnant and tried to visualize the figure of a snake digging a hole on the tatami.
But there was something I could not bring myself to abandon.
Even if it was shameful, I would survive and fight against the world to accomplish what I must.
As it became certain that Mother would soon pass away, my romanticism and sentimentality gradually faded, and I began to feel myself transforming into some cunning creature not to be underestimated.

That afternoon, as I was moistening Mother’s mouth by her side, a car stopped in front of the gate.
Uncle Wada had come rushing from Tokyo by car with Aunt.
When Uncle entered the sickroom and sat silently by Mother’s pillow, she covered the lower half of her face with a handkerchief and gazed at him as she began to cry.
But though her face twisted into a crying expression, no tears came.
She looked like a doll.

“Where is Naoshi?”

After some time had passed， Mother looked at me and spoke.

I went upstairs to where Naoshi lay sprawled on the sofa in the Western-style room， reading a new magazine，

“Mother requests your presence.”

When I said that,

“Ugh, another tearful scene?”
“You people can really endure and keep up appearances there.”
“You’re thick-skinned.”
“You’re heartless.”
“We’re in such agony—our hearts burning yet bodies weak—we haven’t the strength to stay by Mama’s side.”

While saying this, he put on his jacket and came downstairs with me.

When we sat side by side at Mother’s pillow, she suddenly brought her hand out from under the futon, silently pointed at Naoshi, then at me, turned her face toward Uncle, and pressed both palms firmly together.

Uncle nodded deeply,

“Ah, I understand. I understand.”

Uncle said.

Mother, as if relieved, lightly closed her eyes and quietly placed her hands back under the futon.

I also wept, and Naoshi hung his head and sobbed.

At that moment, Dr.Miyake, the elderly physician, arrived from Nagaoka and administered an injection as a temporary measure.
Had Mother perhaps come to feel she had no lingering regrets after meeting Uncle?

“Doctor,” she said in her frail voice that now carried unexpected clarity, “please let me find peace soon.”

The elderly doctor and Uncle exchanged glances, fell silent, and in that moment tears glistened in both their eyes.

I stood and went to the dining room, prepared kitsune udon that Uncle liked, took four portions to the Chinese-style room for Dr. Miyake, Naoshi, Aunt, and Uncle, then showed Mother the Marunouchi Hotel sandwiches Uncle had brought as a gift and placed them by her pillow.

“You must be busy.”

Mother said in a small voice.

In the Chinese-style room, everyone engaged in small talk for a while before Uncle and Aunt—insisting they had urgent business requiring their return to Tokyo that very night—handed me an envelope of condolence money. Dr. Miyake too decided to leave with the nurse, having instructed the attending nurse on various care methods. Since Mother remained fully conscious and her heart showed no significant decline, they concluded injections alone would suffice for another four or five days. Thus, everyone withdrew to Tokyo by car that day.

After seeing everyone off and going to the parlor, Mother bestowed upon me alone an intimate smile,

“You must have been busy.”

she said again in a small, whisper-like voice.
Her face looked radiant, rather glowing.
She must have been happy to see Uncle, I thought.

“No.”

I too felt a faint buoyancy rise within me and smiled softly.

Thus ended my final exchange with Mother.

Three hours later, she died.
In autumn’s hushed twilight—her pulse checked by the nurse, watched over by her sole remaining kin, Naoshi and me—my beautiful mother passed: Japan’s last true noblewoman.

Her face in death showed scarcely any alteration.
When Father died, his complexion had transformed abruptly, but Mother’s remained utterly unchanged—only her breathing stopped.
We could not even clearly mark when that cessation occurred.
The facial swelling had subsided since yesterday; her wax-smooth cheeks and faintly twisted lips seemed to cradle a smile, rendering her more alluring than she’d ever been alive.
She reminded me of Mary in the Pietà.

**Six**

The battle begins.

I could not dwell in sorrow forever.
For me, there was something I absolutely had to fight for.
New ethics.
No—even saying that reeked of hypocrisy.
Love.
That was all.
Just as Rosa could not survive without relying on new economics, I now found myself unable to go on living unless I clung to love alone.
When Jesus sought to expose the hypocrisy of this world's religious leaders, moralists, scholars, and authorities—when he prepared to send his twelve disciples forth to proclaim God's true love without hesitation—the words he taught them seemed to me not at all unrelated to my own predicament.

“Do not carry gold, silver, or copper in your belts.
Do not take a traveling bag, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff.
Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.
Therefore be wise as serpents, and innocent as doves.
Beware of people, for they will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues.
And ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake.
And when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak.
For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.
And ye shall be hated of all for my name’s sake.
But he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
When ye are persecuted in this city, flee into the next.
Verily I say unto you, ye shall not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.”

Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul, but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
Do not think that I have come to cast peace upon the earth; I have not come to cast peace, but a sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a bride against her mother-in-law.
A person’s enemies will be those of their own household.
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.
He that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
“He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”

The battle begins.

If I were to swear to uphold every one of Jesus’s teachings exactly as they are for the sake of love, would Jesus rebuke me, I wonder?
“Why is ‘koi’ considered wrong while ‘ai’ is right? I cannot understand.”
I can’t help but feel they’re one and the same.
For the sake of some incomprehensible ai, for koi, for their sorrows—ah, I want to insist that I myself am precisely one who would let both body and soul be destroyed in Gehenna.

Through the arrangements of my uncles, we held Mother’s private funeral in Izu and completed the formal service in Tokyo. Afterward, Naoshi and I returned to live an inexplicably strained existence at the mountain villa in Izu—a life where we would pass each other without speaking. Naoshi took all of Mother’s jewels under the pretext of securing capital for a publishing venture, drank himself to exhaustion in Tokyo, then staggered back to the villa with a deathly pale face like a gravely ill man and collapsed into bed. Once he brought along a young woman who looked like a dancer; even Naoshi seemed somewhat abashed, so...

“Today—may I go to Tokyo?”
“I’d like to visit a friend’s place for the first time in ages.”
“I’ll stay over for two or three nights and come back, so you keep watch over the house, okay?”
“You can ask that person to handle the cooking.”

Exploiting Naoshi’s weakness with serpentine shrewdness—so to speak—I stuffed cosmetics and bread into my bag and managed to visit Tokyo quite naturally to meet that person.

After alighting at the north exit of Shosen Ogikubo Station in the Tokyo suburbs, it seemed one could reach that person’s new postwar residence in about twenty minutes from there—a fact I had previously heard in passing from Naoshi.

It was a day when the cold, dry wind blew fiercely.
By the time I alighted at Ogikubo Station, the surroundings had already grown dim. I stopped passersby to state his address and had them point me in the direction, then wandered through dark suburban alleys for nearly an hour. My anxiety swelled until tears welled up, and soon I tripped on a stone in the gravel road—the thong of my geta snapped with a pop. Standing frozen in uncertainty, I suddenly noticed a nameplate glimmering whitish in the night on one unit of a two-unit duplex to my right. Thinking it read “Uehara,” I rushed barefoot in one tabi sock to the entrance. Upon closer inspection, the plate indeed read “Uehara Jiro,” but the house lay dark inside.

What should I do? I stood frozen for an instant, then pressed myself flush against the lattice door of the entrance as if to throw myself against it.

“Excuse me,” I said while stroking the lattice with my fingertips. “Mr. Uehara.”

“Mr. Uehara,” I whispered in a hushed voice.

There was a reply. However, it was a woman’s voice.

The entrance door opened from within, and a slender-faced woman with an old-fashioned air—seemingly three or four years my senior—gave a fleeting smile in the darkness of the entryway,

“Who may I ask is calling?”

The tone of her inquiry held neither malice nor wariness.

“No, um...”

Yet I failed to state my name.
To this person alone, even my love felt strangely guilty.
Nervously, almost servilely,

“Is Mr. Uehara here?”

“Ah,” she answered, gazing at me with pity, “but where he goes is usually…”

“Far away?”

“No.”

She said, covering her mouth with one hand as if amused, “Ogikubo. If you go to the oden shop called Shiroishi in front of the station, you should generally be able to find out where he went.” With my heart racing, I replied, “Oh, I see.”

“Oh, your footwear—”

Urged inside, I entered the entranceway and was allowed to sit on the step. The mistress gave me what might be called an emergency thong—a leather repair cord for fixing broken *geta* straps—and I mended my sandal. While I worked, she brought a lit candle to the entrance,

“Unfortunately, both bulbs have burned out. These days they’re absurdly expensive yet break so easily—if my husband were here, he’d replace them, but he hasn’t come home last night or the night before either. We’ve gone to bed penniless three nights running now.”

she said with a laugh that seemed genuinely carefree.
Behind the mistress stood a slender girl of twelve or thirteen with large eyes—the sort who rarely warms to others.

Enemy.
I myself didn’t think so, but I knew without doubt that someday this mistress and her daughter would come to regard me as an enemy and despise me.
At this realization, my love seemed to cool all at once. After replacing the geta’s broken thong, I stood and clapped my hands briskly to brush off the dirt. Yet as loneliness surged violently around me—its approach unbearable—I nearly rushed into the parlor to seize the mistress’s hand and weep in the pitch darkness. But when I suddenly envisioned my own wretched self afterward—that insincere, formless, pitiful figure—disgust overwhelmed me,

“Thank you very much.”

With an absurdly polite bow, I stepped outside, buffeted by the wintry wind. *Battle begins*. To love. To yearn. To ache—truly love, truly yearn, truly ache. There’s no helping it—I’m lovesick. There’s no helping it—I’m smitten. There’s no helping it—I’m consumed. That mistress was undeniably a rare good soul; that young lady was lovely too. But even if I stood before God’s judgment seat, I’d feel no guilt. Humans are born for love and revolution. God would never punish me. I’ve done nothing wrong—I’ll hold my head high, for this is true love. Until I meet that person face-to-face, I’ll sleep outdoors two nights, three nights if needed—without fail.

The oden shop called Shiroishi in front of the station was found immediately.
But he was not there.

“It’s Asagaya, I’m sure.”
“Head straight from Asagaya Station’s North Exit—let’s see—about one and a half blocks?”
“There’s a hardware store there—turn right at it and go about half a block, maybe?”
“There’s a little restaurant called Yanagiya—Mr. Uehara’s been head over heels with the mistress there lately, completely wrapped up in her. Can’t keep up.”

I went to the station, bought a ticket, boarded the Tokyo-bound national railway line, got off at Asagaya, exited through the North Exit, walked about one and a half blocks, turned right at the hardware store, went half a block further—and there Yanagiya lay quiet.

“He just returned a moment ago,” said the staff member, “but with a large group—they said they’re heading to Aunt Chidori’s place in Nishiogi now to drink through the night.”

She was younger than me, composed, elegant, and kind-looking—could this be that O-Sute-san I’d heard about, the one he was so infatuated with?

“Chidori?”
“Where in Nishiogi?”

Feeling desolate, I was on the verge of tears.
Am I going mad? I suddenly wondered.

“I’m not entirely sure myself, but they say it’s to the left after exiting Nishiogi Station’s south exit. In any case, if you ask at the police box, they should know.”
“You see, he’s not one to stay put—he might’ve gotten sidetracked somewhere else before even reaching Chidori.”

“I’ll try going to Chidori. Goodbye.”

Again, I turned back. From Asagaya Station, I boarded the Tachikawa-bound national railway line, got off at Ogikubo and Nishi-Ogikubo, exited through the south gate, wandered buffeted by the wintry wind, found a police box to ask directions to Chidori, then hurried along the nighttime road as instructed until I spotted Chidori’s blue lantern and opened the lattice door without hesitation.

There was an earthen entryway, followed immediately by a six-mat room hazy with tobacco smoke, where about ten people sat around a large table, their raucous drinking party in full swing. Three young ladies, perhaps younger than me, were among them smoking and drinking.

I stood in the earthen entryway, looked around, and found him. Then I felt as if in a dream. This wasn’t him. Six years. He had become an entirely different person now.

Is this—this—my rainbow, M.C., the one who was my reason for living?
Six years.
His disheveled hair remained as wild as ever but had faded to a pathetic reddish-brown and thinned; his face sallow and swollen, the rims of his eyes red and festering; front teeth gone, mouth constantly working as if chewing—he resembled an aged monkey hunched in a corner of the room.

One of the young ladies noticed me and signaled my arrival to Mr. Uehara with her eyes.
He remained seated, stretching his slender neck to look my way, then wordlessly jerked his chin upward in a gesture to approach.
The group maintained their boisterous clamor with apparent indifference toward me, yet gradually compressed their seats to create a space directly beside Mr. Uehara.

I sat in silence.
Mr. Uehara filled my glass to the brim with sake, then added more to his own glass,

“Cheers,” he said in a low, hoarse voice.

The two cups feebly touched each other with a faint, mournful clink.

Someone chanted “Guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu,” and another echoed “Guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu,” clinking glasses loudly before gulping their drinks. The nonsensical refrain—“Guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu”—rose from all corners as they toasted repeatedly, using that absurd rhythm to force momentum into shoving alcohol down their throats.

“Well, I’m off.”

No sooner would someone stagger out after saying this than a new guest would lumber in, give Mr. Uehara a brief nod, and push their way into the gathering.

“Mr. Uehara—about that place over there—Mr. Uehara—about that—ah… um… how should I put it? What’s the right way to phrase that?”
“Ah… um… is that right?”
“Ah… um… is that right?”

The person leaning forward to ask was indeed Fujita, a new theater actor whose stage face I recognized.

“Ah, uh, that’s...”
“Ah, well—Chidori’s sake isn’t exactly cheap, if you catch my drift.”
said Mr. Uehara.

“All you ever talk about is money.”

“All you ever talk about is money,” said the young lady.

“Two sparrows for a penny”—is that considered expensive? Or cheap?”

“There’s that saying about repaying every last *rin* without fail,” said the young gentleman, “and then there’s that terribly convoluted parable about five talents, two talents, one talent—Christ was quite meticulous with his accounts.”

“And what’s more—he was a drinker,” another gentleman continued. “I always thought it strange how the Bible abounds with wine parables—and sure enough, there it’s written: ‘Behold, a man who loves wine,’ condemning him. Since they specify he wasn’t just a drinker but a wine-lover, he must’ve been quite the heavy drinker. First off—the man probably downed nearly two liters at a go!”

And another gentleman.

“Stop it, stop it.”
“Ah—you cower before morality and use Christ as your shield.”
“Chie-chan—drink with me.”
“Guillotine! Guillotine! Shu-shu-shu!”

Mr. Uehara clinked his glass violently against that of the youngest beauty present, gulped his sake until it dripped from his mouth’s corner down his chin, wiped it away savagely with his palm like someone deranged, then erupted into five or six thunderous sneezes.

I quietly stood up and went to the neighboring room, where I asked the frail, pale, and emaciated landlady where the restroom was. When I passed through again on my way back, the youngest and most beautiful one called Chie-chan was standing there as if she had been waiting for me.

"Aren't you hungry?" she asked with a friendly smile.

"Yes," I replied, "but I brought some bread with me."

"We don't have much to offer," the landlady said listlessly from where she sat leaning against the long brazier, her posture slumped sideways.

The landlady, who appeared to be in poor health, said while sitting sideways in a listless manner, still leaning against the long brazier.

“Please have your meal in this room.”
“If you keep entertaining those drinkers, you won’t be able to eat a thing all night.”
“Please sit down here.”
“Ms. Chieko as well.”

“Hey, Kinu-chan! We’re out of sake!”

In the neighboring room, a gentleman shouted.

“Coming, coming.”

Responding, Kinu-chan—a stylish maid around thirty wearing a striped kimono—appeared from the kitchen with about ten sake decanters on a tray.

“Hey.”

The landlady called out to stop her,

“Two bottles here as well,”

she said with a laugh,

“And then, Kinu-chan—I’m sorry to ask, but could you go to Suzuya-san out back and get two orders of udon right away?”

Chie-chan and I sat side by side next to the long brazier, warming our hands.

“Please use the futon,” she said. “It’s gotten cold, hasn’t it? Would you care for a drink?”

The landlady poured sake from the decanter into her own tea bowl, then filled two other tea bowls with sake as well.

And then the three of us drank in silence.

“You’re all quite strong, aren’t you.”

For some reason, the landlady said in a somber tone.

The rattling sound of the front door opening could be heard,

“Mr. Uehara, I’ve brought it,”
a young man’s voice said,
“You see, our president’s terribly stubborn—he dug in his heels about twenty thousand yen, but we barely managed ten thousand.”

“A check?”

Mr. Uehara’s hoarse voice.

“No, it’s cash.”
“I’m sorry.”

“Ah, whatever. I’ll write a receipt.”

The drinking chant of "Guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu" continued ceaselessly among the group all the while.

“What about Naosan?”

The landlady asked Chie-chan with a serious face.
I started.

“I don’t know. It’s not like I’m his keeper or anything.”

Chie-chan flustered and blushed charmingly.

“Lately，haven’t you had some sort of awkwardness with Mr.Uehara？ You two were always together without fail.”

The landlady said calmly。

“He’s taken a liking to dancing instead，they say.”
“He must’ve gotten himself a dancer lover or something。”

“That Naoshi… oh my，with drinking and now women—he’s really a handful。”

“It’s Mr. Uehara’s influence, you see.”

“But Naosan’s the worse one. A spoiled brat like that…”

“Um,”

I smiled and interjected. If I remained silent, I thought it would be rude to these two ladies.

“I am Naoshi’s sister.”

The landlady seemed startled and studied my face anew, but Chie-chan remained composed,

“You bear such a striking resemblance,” she said. “When I glimpsed you standing in the shadows of the earthen-floored entryway, I nearly gasped—I thought it was Naosan.”

“Is that indeed so?”

The landlady adjusted her tone,

“To think you’d come to this wretched place... Well then? Have you... known Mr.Uehara for some time?”

“Yes, six years ago I met him, and…”
I stammered, looked down, and felt tears about to spill.

“Thank you for waiting.”

The maid brought the udon.

“Please eat.
While it’s hot.”

The landlady urged her.

“Thank you.”

Burying my face in the steam of the udon and slurping it up smoothly, I felt I was now tasting the very extremity of the desolation of being alive.

Humming lowly “Guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu, guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu,” Mr. Uehara entered our room, plopped down cross-legged beside me, and wordlessly handed a large envelope to the landlady.

“With just this, you can’t go skimping on the rest now.”

The landlady put it into the long hibachi’s drawer without looking inside and said with a laugh.

“I’ll bring it.
The rest I’ll pay next year.”

“That sort of thing...”

Ten thousand yen.
With that much, how many light bulbs could you buy?
Even I could live comfortably for a year with that much.

Ah, these people are so mistaken. However, these people too—just as with my own love—might be unable to go on living unless they do this. If one is born into this world and must by all means persist in living, then perhaps even this manner of persistence by these people should not be despised. The act of living. The act of living. Ah—what an unbearable, breathless great enterprise it must be!

“Anyway,”

the gentleman from the adjacent room said.

“To live in Tokyo from now on, you’ve got to be able to casually say ‘Konchiwa’—that utterly frivolous greeting—without batting an eye. Otherwise you’ll never make it. To demand virtues like dignity or sincerity from us now is like kicking the legs out from under someone who’s already hanging. Dignity? Sincerity? Pah! Bah! You can’t even survive like that! Look, if you can’t toss off a casual ‘Konchiwa,’ then there are only three paths left: return to farming, put a bullet in your head, or live off some woman’s purse.”

“For the pitiful bastards who can’t even manage one of those—at least there’s one final, sole means.”

“Descend on Uehara Jiro and drink ourselves blind,” said another gentleman.

Guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu—guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu.

“You don’t have a place to stay, do you?”

Mr. Uehara said in a low voice, as if speaking to himself.

“Me?”

I became aware of a snake rearing its head inside me.
Hostility.
With a similar emotion to that, I stiffened my body.

“Do you think you can sleep here haphazardly? It’s cold.”

Mr. Uehara muttered, unconcerned by my anger.

“That’s impossible,”
the landlady interjected,
“How pitiful.”
“Tsk,” Mr. Uehara clicked his tongue,
“Then you shouldn’t have come to a place like this.”

I remained silent.
This person had certainly read that letter of mine.
And then—that this person loved me more than anyone—I quickly sensed from the atmosphere of that person’s words.

“There’s no way around this.
“Maybe I should try asking Mr. Fukui’s place.”
“Chie-chan, can you take me there?”
“No—if it’s just women, the journey might be dangerous.”
“What a pain.”
“Ma, sneak this person’s footwear around to the kitchen and leave them there.”
“I’ll come to deliver it.”

Outside, the midnight air hung heavy.
The wind had somewhat subsided, and the sky was filled with shining stars.
We walked side by side,

“I can sleep anywhere, you know. I don’t mind roughing it.”

Mr. Uehara said in a sleepy voice,

“Yeah.”

he said only that.

“You wanted us to be alone, didn’t you? Isn’t that right?”

When I said that and laughed, Mr. Uehara,

“This is exactly why I can’t stand it.”

He twisted his mouth into a bitter smile.
I became acutely aware of how thoroughly I was being doted on.

“You drink an awful lot of sake, don’t you?
Every night?”

“Yes. Every day.”
“Starting from morning.”

“Is it good?
The sake?”

“It tastes terrible.”

At Mr. Uehara’s voice as he said this, I shuddered for some reason.

“What about your work?”

“It’s no good.
No matter what I write, it feels utterly foolish—and then it just becomes so unbearably sad.
The twilight of life.
The twilight of art.
The twilight of humanity.
That’s pretentious too.”

“Utrillo.”

I had said it almost unconsciously.

“Ah, Utrillo.
Seems the bastard’s still alive.
A slave to alcohol.
He’s a carcass now.
In the last ten years, that guy’s paintings have become oddly vulgar—all of them are worthless.”

“It’s not just Utrillo, is it?
The other Meisters too, all of them…”

“Yes, decline.
But even new buds wither while still sprouts.”
“Frost.”
“Frost.”
“It’s as if an untimely frost has fallen across the entire world.”

Mr. Uehara lightly embraced my shoulders, and my body became enveloped within his double-layered sleeves, but I did not refuse—instead clinging tightly as we walked slowly onward.

Branches of roadside trees.
Branches without a single leaf, slender and sharp, piercing the night sky,

“Tree branches are such beautiful things, aren’t they.”

When I unintentionally murmured this as if to myself,

“Yeah, the harmony between flowers and pitch-black branches.”

he said in a slightly flustered manner.

“No, I like branches like these—with no flowers, leaves, or buds. Nothing at all attached.”
“Even so, they’re still alive, aren’t they?”
“They’re different from dead branches.”

“Is nature alone exempt from decline?”

After saying that, he was seized by another violent fit of sneezes, one after another.

“You don’t have a cold, do you?”

“No, no—it’s not that at all. The truth is, this is a peculiar habit of mine—when my drunkenness reaches its saturation point, I immediately start sneezing like this. It’s like a barometer of drunkenness.”

“What about love?”

“Huh?”

“Is there someone? A person who’s reached their saturation point?”

“Oh, come on—don’t tease me like that.”
“Women are all the same.”
“It’s too damn messy.”
“Guillotine, guillotine, shu-shu-shu—actually, there’s one—no, half a person or so.”

“Have you read my letters?”

“I read them.”

“And your reply?”

“I hate aristocrats.
"No matter what, there’s always some insufferable arrogance lurking somewhere."
“Your brother Naoshi is quite an accomplished man as an aristocrat, but at times he shows a cheeky side that’s utterly unbearable to deal with.”
“I’m the son of a country farmer, you see. Whenever I pass by a stream like this, I can’t help but remember catching crucian carp and scooping up killifish in the streams of my hometown when I was a child—it becomes unbearable.”

In the depths of darkness, we walked along the path following a creek that flowed with a faint murmur.

"But you aristocrats not only fail completely to understand such sentiments of ours—you despise them."

"What about Turgenev?"

"He's an aristocrat.
That's why I can't stand him."

"But *A Sportsman's Sketches*..."

"Yeah, that one's at least somewhat decent."

"That's the sentimentality of rural life..."

"Shall we compromise and call that bastard a country noble?"

“I’m a country person now.
“I work the fields now, you know.
“A poor country person.”

“Do you still like me now?”

He said in a rough tone.

“Do you want my baby?”

I did not answer.

With the force of a falling boulder, his face drew near and I was kissed recklessly.
It was a kiss reeking of carnal desire.
As I endured it, tears streamed down my face.
Bitter tears—tears akin to those of humiliating remorse.
The tears flowed endlessly from my eyes.

Once again walking side by side,

“I messed up.
I’ve fallen for you.”

He said and laughed.

Yet I could not laugh.
I frowned and pursed my lips.

It can’t be helped.

If I were to put it into words, that’s how it felt. I noticed myself dragging my wooden clogs in a slovenly gait.

“I messed up.”

The man repeated.

“Guess we’ll just have to see it through.”

“How corny.”

“You bastard.”

Mr. Uehara knocked my shoulder with his fist and sneezed loudly again.

At the household of someone called Mr. Fukui, it seemed everyone had already retired for the night.

“Telegram, telegram! Mr. Fukui! Telegram for you!”

Shouting loudly, Mr. Uehara banged on the entrance door.

“Uehara?”

A man’s voice came from inside the house.

“That’s right. The prince and princess have come to request lodging for the night.” He sneezed violently again. “This damned cold—can’t stop sneezing. Our grand romantic procession’s turned into some cheap farce.”

The entrance door creaked open from within. A man well past fifty—small-framed with a balding head—stood there in garish pajamas, greeting us with an awkward, sheepish smile.

“Please.”

Mr. Uehara said this and entered the house without removing his cloak,

“The studio’s too damn cold.
“I’ll take the second floor.
“Come on.”

He took my hand, led me down the hallway, climbed the stairs at the end, entered the dark tatami room, and flipped the switch in the corner with a click.

“This looks like a restaurant’s private room.”

“Yeah—nouveau riche taste.
“Too good for some third-rate painter.
“Guy’s got rotten luck but never gets hit by disasters.
“Might as well make use of it.
“C’mon, let’s sleep.”

As if it were his own home, he opened the closet without permission, took out the futon, and laid it down.

“Sleep here.”
“I’m leaving.”
“I’ll come to pick you up tomorrow morning.”
“The toilet is down the stairs and immediately to the right.”

With a clattering racket, he tumbled down the stairs as if falling headlong, and then there was complete silence.

I turned the switch again to extinguish the light, removed the velvet coat fashioned from Father’s overseas-brought fabric, loosened only my obi sash, and slipped into bed still wearing my kimono.
Fatigued and perhaps owing to the alcohol I’d consumed, my body felt leaden, and I soon sank into a drowsy half-sleep.

Before I knew it, that person was lying beside me... For nearly an hour, I resisted desperately in silence.

Suddenly feeling pity, I gave up.

"If we don't do this, you won't feel at ease, will you?"

“Well, something like that.”

“You’re not taking care of yourself, are you? You’ve been coughing up blood.”

“How did you know? Truth is, I had a terrible spell recently—didn’t tell a soul.”

“It has the same smell as before Mother passed away, you know.”

“I’m drinking myself to death.”
“Living itself—it’s so unbearably sad.”
“It’s not things like loneliness or solitude—those are luxuries. It’s sadness.”
“When gloomy sighs of lament echo from every wall around us, how can there possibly be happiness just for ourselves?”
“When someone realizes that their own happiness and glory will never exist while they’re alive, what do you suppose they feel?”
“Effort.”
“Such things are merely prey for starving beasts.”
“There are too many miserable people.”
“Too corny?”

“No.”

“It’s just love, huh? Exactly like you preached in your letter.”

“That’s right.”

That love of mine had vanished.

The night dawned.

As the room grew dimly light, I gazed intently at the face of that person sleeping beside me.
He had the face of someone about to die.
His face was utterly exhausted.

A victim’s face.
Noble sacrifice.

My one.
My rainbow.

*My child.*
An infuriating person.
A deceitful person.

It seemed there could never again exist a face in this world so exquisitely beautiful; with what felt like love reborn making my heart race, I stroked that person's hair and kissed him of my own accord.

A sorrowful, sorrowful consummation of love.

Mr. Uehara closed his eyes while embracing me,

"I was being resentful, you know.
Because I'm just a farmer's son."

I will never leave this person.

"I'm happy now.
Even if lamentations echo from every wall around me, my present happiness has reached its saturation point.
I'm so happy I could sneeze."

Mr. Uehara chuckled quietly,

"But it's already late.
It's twilight."

"It's morning."

My brother Naoshi had committed suicide that morning.

Seven

Naoshi’s suicide note.

“Sister.”

“No good.”
“I’ll go first.”

“I don’t understand at all why I must go on living.”

“Let those who wish to live go on living.”

“Just as humans have the right to live, they must also have the right to die.”

“My way of thinking isn’t new or anything special at all. People just irrationally fear these obvious, primal truths and avoid stating them openly.”

Those who wish to live must persevere through any hardship—this is admirable, and human glory must surely reside in such perseverance—but I believe dying cannot be called a sin either.

As for me—this grass called me—it struggles to live in this world’s air and sunlight.
To go on living, there’s something essential missing in me.
I’m incomplete.
Up until now, even living like this was all I could manage.

When I entered high school and first began associating with friends from an entirely different class—strong, resilient grass-like people who had grown up in circumstances completely unlike my own—I was overwhelmed by their vigor. In my struggle not to be defeated, I turned to drugs and resisted in a half-mad frenzy.
Then I became a soldier, and there too, I used opium as a last resort to survive.
Sister, you probably wouldn’t understand these feelings of mine.

I wanted to become vulgar.
I wanted to become strong—no, violent.
And so I came to believe that was the only path to becoming what they call a friend of the people.
Alcohol alone simply wasn’t enough.
I was constantly plagued by dizzy spells.
For that, there was no choice but narcotics.
I had to forget home.
I had to rebel against my father’s blood.
I had to reject Mother’s kindness.
I had to be cold to my sister.
Otherwise, I believed I couldn’t obtain the admission ticket to enter that room of the people.

I have become vulgar.
I’ve taken to using crude language.
But half—no, sixty percent of that was a pathetic facade.
A clumsy contrivance.
To the people, I remained a pretentious, aloof man straining to seem refined.
They’d never truly open up and mingle with me.
Yet I can’t go back to the salon I abandoned either.
Now even if sixty percent of my coarseness remains artificial, forty percent has curdled into genuine vulgarity.
That upper-class salon’s nauseating refinement makes me want to retch—I can’t endure it another moment—and those so-called dignitaries would surely recoil at my boorishness and cast me out immediately.
I can’t return to the world I left behind, and all the people offer me is a spectator’s seat dripping with venomous, shitty courtesy.

In every age, a defective blade of grass like me—so feeble in vitality, so lacking—may be fated to simply wither away without ideology or purpose. Yet even I have grievances worth voicing.
I find living excruciatingly difficult; I can sense the underlying circumstances.

All people are the same.

Is this, in the world’s name, an ideology?
I think the person who invented this strange phrase was neither a religionist, a philosopher, nor an artist.
It is a phrase that welled up from the bars of the masses.
Like maggots breeding, before anyone knew how or who started it, [the phrase] welled up thickly, engulfed the entire world, and made the world an awkward place.

This strange phrase has absolutely no connection to democracy or Marxism.
That is, without fail, a phrase hurled by an ugly man at a handsome man in a bar.
It’s mere irritation.
It’s jealousy.
It’s not ideology or anything at all.

Yet those jealous shouts from the bar—phrases that should have remained utterly divorced from democracy or Marxism—began parading among the people with a false ideological air, until before anyone noticed, they became entangled with political and economic thought, warping into something strangely vulgar.
Even Mephisto might have hesitated out of shame to his conscience at the feat of passing off such reckless remarks as ideology.

All people are the same.

What an abject phrase this was.
A phrase that humiliated others while degrading oneself, leaving no pride and making one abandon all effort.
Marxism asserted the superiority of workers.
They never said "we're all the same."
Democracy asserted the dignity of the individual.
They never said "we're all the same."
Only Gyutaro said that.
"Heh heh. No matter how highfalutin you act, we're all just humans in the end."

Why must they insist we’re all the same?
Why can’t they admit superiority exists?
This is the slave mentality’s revenge.

Yet I believe this phrase is truly obscene and eerie—it makes people cower before one another, violates all ideologies, mocks effort, denies happiness, defiles beauty, drags glory into the mire, and from this single cursed utterance springs what they call the “anxiety of our age.”

Though I detested those words, I too found myself compelled by them—trembling in fear, fumbling through every action, endlessly anxious with my heart pounding and nowhere to anchor myself. I craved even a moment’s respite through alcohol’s haze or narcotic vertigo until I became utterly broken.

I must be weak.
I must be a blade of grass with some critical flaw.
No matter how I might reel off such petty arguments, Gyutaro would likely sneer and say, “Ah, but you were always just a wastrel at heart—a lazy, lecherous, self-indulgent hedonist.”
And even when told such things, until now I would only blush and vaguely nod in agreement—but now, as I face death, I want to leave behind at least one protest.

Sister.

Please believe me.

I never enjoyed myself even when I played around. Perhaps it was impotence in the face of pleasure. I simply wanted to escape the shadow of being an aristocrat—so I went mad, played around, and became depraved.

Sister.

Do we bear any guilt at all? Is being born aristocrats our sin? Merely by being born into that house, we must live forever in perpetual apology, shrinking back and blushing like Judas's kin.

I should have died much sooner.
Yet there was one thing—Mother’s love.
Thinking of that, I couldn’t die.
Humans have the right to live freely and also possess the right to die at any moment they choose—yet I believe that while Mother lived, this right to die had to be withheld.
For that would have meant killing Mother too in the process.

Now that I’m gone, there is no one left who would grieve over my death so deeply as to fall ill—no, Sister, I know full well the depth of sorrow you would feel upon losing me—but let us set aside such ostentatious sentimentality. You would surely weep upon learning of my death—yet if you could but consider the agony of my existence and the joy of my complete liberation from this wretched life, I believe your grief would gradually fade away.

Those who condemn my suicide and smugly criticize me—insisting I should have clung to life despite offering no real aid—must undoubtedly be great personages of such stature that they could casually suggest His Majesty open a sweetshop.

Sister.

I should die.
I have no so-called ability to live.
I lack the strength to fight over money.
I can't even bring myself to sponge off others.
Even when going out with Mr. Uehara, I always paid my own share.
He detested this as stingy aristocratic pride, but I wasn't paying out of pride—I simply couldn't bear using money he earned through his work to frivolously eat and drink or sleep with women.
To claim it's because I respect his work would be a lie—truthfully, even I don't fully understand myself.
It's that being treated by others fills me with utter dread.
Most of all, accepting hospitality funded by money someone earned through their own labor is unbearably painful—it wracks me with guilt.

And so I just kept taking money and items from our home, causing grief to Mother and you, while I myself felt no joy whatsoever—and even when I planned ventures like publishing, it was merely a facade to hide my embarrassment—I wasn’t serious about any of it in the slightest.
Even if I were to try earnestly, a man who couldn’t even accept being treated by others could never possibly make money—foolish as I am, I’ve at least realized that much.

Sister.

We became poor.
Though I had wanted to treat others in life, I couldn't survive without being treated by others.

Sister.

In this situation, why on earth must I go on living?
I'm done for.
I will die.
There exists a drug that lets me die painlessly.
I obtained it when I was a soldier and kept it.

Sister—you're beautiful (how proud I was of our beautiful mother and sister)—and wise, so I needn't worry about you.
I don't even have the right to worry.
It's like a thief fretting over his victim's well-being—all I can do is blush in shame.
I imagine you'll surely marry, have children, and depend on your husband to live out your life.

Sister.

I have one secret.

For so long I kept it buried deep—even on the battlefield, I would fixate on that person, dream of them, wake up tear-streaked more times than I can count.

That person’s name—I could never speak it even if my tongue rotted away.
Now that I’m dying, I thought I should at least tell you plainly, Sister—but still I’m too terrified to utter it.

But if I were to die keeping this secret absolutely hidden—never confessing it to anyone in this world, burying it deep within my heart—I felt that even were my body cremated, only the flesh behind my chest would remain raw and reeking, refusing to burn away. This thought filled me with unbearable dread, so I resolved to leave you, Sister, an indirect and vague account of it—like a fiction.
Though I call it fiction, Sister, you will surely realize immediately who that person is.
Rather than fiction, it’s simply a deception to the extent of using pseudonyms.

Sister, do you know?
Sister must know of that person, though you’ve likely never met her.
She was slightly older than you.
She had single eyelids with upturned corners, never permed her hair—always kept tightly pulled back in a plain style—and wore modest clothing that was never slovenly, always neat and clean.
She was the wife of a middle-aged Western-style painter who rose to sudden fame after the war by continuously exhibiting works in a new style; despite her husband’s violent and dissolute conduct, she maintained a composed facade, living always with a gentle smile.

I stood up,

“In that case, I must take my leave.”

That person also stood up, approached me without any wariness, and looked up at my face,

“Why?”

In an ordinary tone of voice, she said this, tilting her head slightly as if genuinely puzzled, and continued gazing into my eyes for some time.
And so, in her eyes—devoid of any malice or pretense—I, who would normally grow flustered and avert my gaze whenever meeting a woman’s eyes, felt not the slightest hint of shyness this time. With our faces barely a foot apart, I gazed into her pupils for sixty seconds or more in perfect contentment, until finally I found myself smiling—

“But…”
“I’ll return right away.”
she said with the same serious expression as before.

Honesty—is this what they mean by an honest expression?—the thought suddenly struck me. This wasn’t the stuffy, textbook virtue from moral education classes—could the true essence of honesty be something this utterly lovely? I found myself wondering.

“I’ll come again.”

“Right.”

From beginning to end, it was all just trivial conversation.
One summer afternoon, I went to visit that Western-style painter’s apartment. He wasn’t there, but since he was expected back soon, his wife suggested I come inside and wait.
Following her suggestion, I went up to the room, read magazines for about thirty minutes, and when it became clear he wouldn’t return, I stood up and took my leave—that was all there was to it. Yet on that day, in that moment, I fell into an agonizing love with that person’s eyes.

Noble—if I should even call it that. Among the nobility around me—Mother included—I can assert there was not a single person capable of such unguarded "honest" eyes.

Then there was a winter evening when I was struck by her profile. Again at that Western-style painter’s apartment, I found myself keeping him company—huddled under the kotatsu from morning as we drank, trash-talking Japan’s so-called cultural figures until we were doubled over with laughter. Eventually the painter collapsed into thunderous snores, and I lay down to doze off myself. Suddenly a blanket settled over me. I cracked my eyes to see Tokyo’s winter evening sky washed in pale blue behind her. The wife sat on the apartment windowsill cradling her daughter, her posture casual as if nothing were amiss. Her refined profile, set against that distant azure dusk, stood out as vividly as a Renaissance portrait—every contour sharply defined. This kindness of covering me held no flirtation or ulterior motive. Ah—*humanity*—this was the moment for that word to resurrect itself! It felt like a natural, almost unconscious act of desolate compassion, performed with the same quiet grace as the painting she resembled, her gaze fixed on the far horizon.

I closed my eyes, overwhelmed by a longing so fierce it verged on madness. Tears spilled from beneath my eyelids until I dragged the blanket over my head.

Sister.

I first began visiting that Western-style painter’s home because I had been intoxicated by the singular touch of his works and the fervent passion hidden within them. Yet as our acquaintance deepened, I grew disillusioned with his lack of refinement, his recklessness, his vulgarity—and inversely, found myself drawn to the beauty of his wife’s spirit. No—it was rather that I craved someone capable of true affection, yearned for her presence, ached even for a glimpse of her figure—this became my reason for returning to that painter’s house.

If there is even the slightest hint of what might be called a noble essence of art in that Western-style painter’s works, I now even think it could be a reflection of his wife’s gentle heart.

As for that Western-style painter—I will now state my true feelings plainly—he is nothing but a heavy-drinking, pleasure-chasing merchant of cunning.
Out of desire for money to fund his indulgences, he merely slaps paint haphazardly onto canvases, rides the tide of trends, and peddles them at inflated prices with pretentious airs.
What that man possesses is the audacity of a country bumpkin, foolish self-assurance, and sly business acumen—that’s all there is.

That person probably didn't understand anything about others' paintings—whether by foreigners or Japanese. What's more, he likely didn't even comprehend what his own paintings were about. He just mindlessly slapped paint onto canvases in his desperate craving for money to fund his debauchery. What truly astonished me was how he seemed to harbor no doubt, shame, or fear about this senselessness of his.

He was utterly self-satisfied. After all, he was someone who didn’t even understand his own paintings—so there was no way he could recognize the merit of others’ work. No—he just criticized and criticized.

In other words, while that person’s decadent lifestyle might have sounded full of anguished talk, the reality was that he was just a foolish country bumpkin who had come to the city he’d always idolized, achieved more success than even he expected, and now giddily indulged in his revelries.

Once I said—

“When all my friends are slacking off and playing around, studying alone feels too mortifying and dreadful—utterly impossible—so even when I don’t want to play at all, I force myself to join them.”

When I said this, the middle-aged Western-style painter:

“Huh? So that’s what you call aristocratic temperament—”
“So that’s what you call aristocratic temperament? How repulsive.”
“When I see people having fun, I think if I don’t join in, I’m missing out—so I go all out.”

He answered with complete composure, but in that moment, I despised the painter from the depths of my heart. This person’s debauchery held no anguish. Rather, he took pride in his reckless carousing. A true fool’s hedonist.

Yet no matter how vehemently I disparage this Western-style painter further, it holds no bearing on you, Sister. Now facing death, I find myself recalling our long association—nostalgic, even feeling an impulse to meet and revel with him once more—yet I harbor no hatred whatsoever. Since he too is a lonely soul possessing many admirable qualities, I shall say nothing more.

All I want, Sister, is for you to know this one thing—that I restlessly wandered in torment, yearning for his wife. So even if you come to know this, there’s absolutely no need for you to go telling others or meddle in some pretentious way to fulfill your brother’s lingering desires or anything of the sort. If you alone know it—if you quietly think to yourself, “Ah, I see”—that would suffice. And if I may be so bold as to ask more—through this shameful confession of mine—if even you alone could come to understand more deeply the anguish my life has held until now, nothing would make me happier.

I once had a dream where I held hands with the wife.
And then I realized that she too had actually liked me for a very long time. Even after waking from the dream, the warmth of her fingers lingered in my palm, and I thought that with just this, I should be satisfied and resign myself.

It wasn’t morality that frightened me—what terrified me was that half-mad, or rather, practically lunatic Western-style painter.
I tried to resign myself and redirect the fire in my heart elsewhere, indulging wildly with any woman I could find—so recklessly that even that Western-style painter grimaced in dismay one night.
I wanted to somehow break away from the phantom of the wife, forget her, and become free of it all.
But it was no good.
In the end, I am a man who can only love one woman.
I can state this plainly.
I have never once felt any of the wife’s other female friends to be beautiful or endearing.

Sister.

Before I die, let me write just this once.

...Suga-chan.

That is her name.

When I brought that dancer—a woman I didn’t care for at all (she had a fundamentally foolish streak)—to the villa yesterday, it wasn’t because I intended to die today.
I had long resolved to die soon, but yesterday’s trip arose from her pestering me for a getaway. Exhausted from Tokyo’s revelries myself, I thought a few days’ rest at the villa with this simpleton might not be so bad—though I knew it would inconvenience you, Sister. Yet when we arrived to find you away visiting Tokyo friends, it struck me with sudden clarity: if I were to die, now was the moment.

I had always wanted to die in the back room of that house in Nishikata-cho.
The thought of dying in some street or field and having gawkers paw at my corpse was utterly unbearable.
But since that house in Nishikata-cho had passed into others' hands, I resigned myself to dying here at the villa instead—yet when I imagined you being the first to discover my suicide, how horrified you'd be in that moment, the weight of killing myself on a night when we were alone together pressed down too heavily, and I simply couldn't do it.

It was, well, what a chance.
With Sister not here, that rather dull-witted dancer would become the one to discover my suicide.

Last night, we drank sake together, had the woman sleep in the second-floor Western-style room, and I alone spread out a futon in the lower Japanese-style room where Mother had passed away. Then I began writing this wretched account.

Sister.

I have no ground for hope. Goodbye.

In the end, my death is a natural one.
People cannot die through ideology alone.

And then, there’s one more terribly awkward request I have to make.
Mother’s memento hemp kimono.
That one you altered for me, Sister—so I could wear it next summer—didn’t you?
Please put that kimono in my coffin.
I wanted to wear it.

Day has broken.
I have caused you hardship for so long.

Goodbye.

The drunkenness from last night’s sake has completely worn off.
I will die sober.

Once again, goodbye.

Sister.

I am a noble.

Eight

A dream.

Everyone is leaving me.

After handling the aftermath of Naoshi’s death, I lived alone at the winter villa for one month.

And so, with a heart as calm as water, I wrote and sent him what would likely be my final letter.

It seems you too have cast me aside.
No—it appears you’re slowly forgetting me.

But I am happy. It seems I’ve conceived a child exactly as I wished. Though I feel I’ve lost everything now, this small life within me has become the seed of my solitary smile.

I cannot bring myself to see it as some filthy mistake. Lately, I’ve come to understand why this world contains things like war and peace and trade and unions and politics. You likely don’t realize it. That’s why you’ll remain forever unhappy. Let me tell you—it’s so women can bear good children.

From the very beginning, I never intended to rely on your character or sense of responsibility. My only concern was achieving my single-minded romantic quest. Now that this resolve of mine has been fulfilled, my heart has become as still as a marsh deep in the forest.

I believe I have won.

Even if Mary were to bear a child not her husband's, if she maintained her shining pride, that would make them the Holy Mother and Child.

I have the satisfaction of unflinchingly disregarding old morals and having obtained a good child.

You must still be there even now, chanting “Guillotine, guillotine” while drinking with gentlemen and young ladies, persisting in your so-called decadent life.
But I will not tell you to stop that.
For that too must be your ultimate struggle.

Quitting drink, curing your illness, living long to do splendid work—I no longer wish to voice such transparently hollow formalities.
“Rather than ‘splendid work,’ seeing through a so-called immoral life with total abandon—one resolved to cast everything aside—may yet earn future generations’ gratitude.”

Victim.
Victims of the transitional period of morality.
You and I must surely both be just that.

Where on earth is this revolution unfolding?
At least within our immediate surroundings, the old morality remains utterly unchanged—not a whit altered—barring our path forward.
Though surface waves may churn in uproar, the sea’s depths lie motionless—no revolution there—playing possum like a raccoon dog.

Yet through this first round of battle, I believe I’ve managed to push aside that old morality, if only slightly.
And now, together with the child soon to be born, I mean to fight through second and third rounds.

Giving birth to and raising my beloved's child will complete my moral revolution.

Even should you forget me, even should you drink yourself to death, I find myself able to live strongly for my revolution's completion.

I recently heard from someone about the wretchedness of your character—yet it was you who granted me this strength.
You painted the rainbow of revolution across my breast.
You gave me my reason for living.

I am proud of you, and I intend to make the child to be born proud of you as well.

Illegitimate child and her mother.

But we intend to fight the old morality to the very end and live like the sun.

Please, continue fighting your battle.

The revolution hasn’t even begun—not the slightest bit of anything has been achieved.
It seems that more and more—so many more—precious noble sacrifices are necessary.

In this present world, the most beautiful are the victims.

There was another little victim.

Mr. Uehara.

I no longer have any intention of asking anything of you, but for the sake of that little victim, there is one thing for which I must beg your forgiveness.

That is—since just once will suffice—I would like to have your wife hold the child I have borne.
And at that time, I would ask you to let me say this:

“This is the child Naoshi secretly had with a certain woman.”

Why I must do this—that alone I could tell no one.
No—even I myself did not fully understand why I felt compelled to do this.
But I simply had to have you allow me to do this.
For the sake of that little victim called Naoshi, I simply had to have you allow me to do this.

Are you displeased?
Even should it displease you, I must have you endure it.
Please deem this the sole faint act of spite from a woman cast aside and half-forgotten, and grant this earnest entreaty.

M.C. My Comedian.

February 7, 1947.