Pathway to Japanese Literature

A dull mountain village south of Izu, where hot springs gushed forth but offered nothing else worth mentioning.
It was a village of about thirty households.
I chose that desolate mountain village for no other reason than the likelihood of cheap lodging fees.
It was Showa 15, July 3rd.
At that time, even I had a little financial leeway.
But what lay beyond that remained pitch dark.
There might come a time when I couldn’t write a single word of my novel.
If I couldn’t write a single word of my novel for two months, I would surely return to being penniless.
Looking back, it was a meager leeway, but even that much leeway was something I hadn’t experienced once in these ten years.
I began my life in Tokyo in the spring of Showa 5 (1930).
By that time, I already had a shared house with a woman called H.
My Eldest Brother back home sent me sufficient funds every month, yet foolish as we were, even while admonishing each other against extravagance, by month’s end we inevitably had to carry an item or two to the pawnshop.
Finally, in the sixth year, we parted ways with H.
All that remained to me was a futon, a desk, an electric lamp, and just one trunk.
A substantial debt also lingered ominously.
Two years later, through the assistance of a certain senior, I entered into an ordinary arranged marriage.
After another two years had passed, I finally caught my breath.
Nearly ten volumes of my meager creative works had already been published.
Even if no orders came from them, I had begun to feel that if I wrote desperately on my own and brought it to them, two out of three pieces might be bought.
This was to be the unadorned work of adulthood—no charm, no pretenses.

I want to keep writing only what I want to write.

It was a precarious, anxious sort of respite, but I felt truly happy from the depths of my heart.
At least for another month, I could write what I liked without worrying about money.
I found my own circumstances at that time to be like a lie.
This strange restlessness where ecstasy and anxiety intertwined left me unable to work and unbearably agitated.

Tokyo Eight Views.
I had thought that someday I would take my time and laboriously write that short story.
I had wanted to chronicle my ten years of Tokyo life through the landscapes of each period.
I was thirty-two years old that year.
In Japanese social mores too, this age already meant one was entering middle age.
And when I questioned my own flesh and passion, sadly I could not deny it.
Mark my words.
You have already lost your youth.
He was a thirty-year-old man with an earnest face.
Tokyo Eight Views.
I wanted to write it as a valediction to my youth, without currying favor with anyone.

"That guy's turning into a proper philistine too, eh?"
Such ignorant whispers would drift into my ears with every faint breeze.
Each time they came, I answered fiercely within myself:
I was a philistine from the very beginning.
Had you truly not noticed?
The truth runs counter.
When I first resolved to make literature my life's work, fools conversely judged me easy prey.
All I could do was smile faintly.
Eternal youth belongs to actors' craft.
Literature knows no such creatures.

Tokyo Eight Views.
I thought this very period was when I ought to write it.
There were no pressing literary commissions at the time.
I had over a hundred yen in reserve.
This was no time to wander about my cramped room sighing idle breaths that mingled rapture and unease.
I needed to keep climbing.

I bought a large map of Tokyo City and boarded the train bound for Maibara from Tokyo Station. This wasn't some pleasure trip—let me make that clear. Over and over I told myself: I was going to painstakingly construct a lifelong monument. At Atami I transferred to an Ito-bound train, then took a Shimoda-bound bus from Ito; jostling along the Izu Peninsula's eastern coast for three hours southward until alighting at that pitiful mountain village of thirty households. Here at least, I reasoned, lodging wouldn't exceed three yen per night. Only four wretched little inns stood in dismal procession—unbearably shabby things that reeked of melancholy. I chose the one called F. Among those four hovels, it still seemed marginally less appalling. Led upstairs by a vulgar-looking maid with spiteful eyes and shown to my room, I felt tears welling up—pathetic for a man of my age. It reminded me of that Ogikubo boarding house room I'd rented three years prior. That place had been Ogikubo's very dregs of lodging houses. Yet even so, this six-tatami space beside the bedding closet appeared cheaper and more desolate than that former den.

“Don’t you have any other rooms?”

“Yes. They’re all occupied. It’s cool here.”

“I see.”

It seemed I was being made a fool of. Perhaps it was because my clothes were shabby.

“The rates are 3 yen 50 sen and 4 yen.”
“Lunch will be charged separately.”
“What would you like to do?”

“Please go with the 3 yen 50 sen option.”
“As for lunch, you can say so when you want to eat it.”
“I came here thinking I wanted to work for about ten days, but—”

“Just a moment, please.”
The maid went downstairs and, after some time, returned to the room. “Um, if your stay will be lengthy, we’re supposed to receive payment in advance, but—”

“I see.”
“How much should I give you?”

“Well, whatever amount,” she mumbled.

“Shall I give you fifty yen?”

“Oh.”

I arranged the banknotes on the desk.
It became unbearable.

“I’ll give you all of it. I have ninety yen. I’ve kept the tobacco money in this wallet here.”

I wondered why I had come to such a place.

"My apologies. We'll keep this as deposit."

The maid left.
I must not get angry.
I have important work to do.
Forcing myself to believe this treatment might suit my current station, I pulled out pens, ink, manuscript paper and such from the trunk's bottom.

The first respite in ten years yielded this outcome.
But telling myself with specious logic that even this sorrow was fated, I steeled myself and began working here.

This wasn't a pleasure trip.
I had come here to do grueling work.
That night under the dim electric lamp, I spread Tokyo City's large map across the entire desk.

How many years since I'd last unfolded such a complete Tokyo map?
Over a decade earlier when first living in Tokyo, even purchasing this map felt mortifying; after repeated hesitation—fearing others would laugh at me as some country bumpkin—I'd finally resolved to buy one copy. Affecting brusque self-mockery in my tone, I'd acquired it, pocketed it, and shambled back to my boarding house.
At night I locked my room and furtively opened that map.
Red, green, yellow—beautiful painted patterns.
I held my breath gazing at them.
Sumida River.
Asakusa.
Ushigome.
Akasaka.
Ah—everything was here.
If I wanted to go, I could go anytime immediately.
I even felt I was witnessing a miracle.

Now, even when I gazed upon Tokyo City’s entire form—like a mulberry leaf devoured by silkworms—all I could envision were the people living there, each immersed in their own way of life. To think that in this charmless barren field, people streamed in from all over Japan, pushing and shoving until drenched in sweat, fretting over every inch of land, eyeing each other with envy and spite—females calling out to males, males wandering about half-mad. Quite abruptly, with no connection to what came before or after, a sorrowful line from the novel Umoregi rose in my heart. “Love is” “One who dreams of beauty yet doth engage in foul deeds.” The phrase bore no direct connection to Tokyo.

Totsuka.
—I was there at the beginning.
My immediate older brother had rented a house alone in this area to study sculpture.
I graduated from Hirosaki High School in Showa 5 (1930) and entered Tokyo Imperial University's French Literature Department.
Though I couldn't comprehend a single French character, I still wished to attend lectures on French literature.
I maintained a vague reverence for Professor Tatsuno Yutaka.
I rented a back room in a newly built boarding house three blocks from my brother's residence.
Even between brothers as close as parent and child, cohabitation under one roof risked discomfort—though neither voiced this aloud. Through such unspoken mutual consideration, we settled on living three blocks apart within the same neighborhood.
Three months later, this brother succumbed to illness.
He was twenty-seven.
Even after my brother's death, I remained at that Totsuka boarding house.
From the second term onward, I scarcely attended classes.
I coolly assisted in that shadowy enterprise most feared by society.
I regarded with contempt the literature that pompously claimed affiliation with that work through grandiose gestures.
During that period, I became a pure politician.
That autumn, a woman arrived from the countryside.
I had summoned her.
It was H.
H and I had become acquainted in early autumn of my high school enrollment year, thereafter maintaining association for three years.
She was an artless geisha.

I rented a room for this woman in Honjo Ward, Higashi-Komagata. It was on a carpenter's second floor. There had never been any physical relationship between us until that time. From our hometown came Eldest Brother regarding that woman. The brothers who had lost their father seven years earlier met in that dimly lit room of the Totsuka boarding house. Eldest Brother shed tears when faced with his radically changed younger brother's ferocious attitude. On condition that he would make us husband and wife, I decided to hand the woman over to Eldest Brother. The brother receiving her must have suffered several times more than the arrogant younger brother who handed her over. On the night before transferring her, I embraced the woman for the first time. Eldest Brother took the woman and temporarily returned to the countryside. The woman remained in a daze throughout. Only one stiffly formal letter came stating "I've safely returned home now," after which no further word arrived from her. The woman seemed utterly relieved. To me, this was an outrage. While I fought so fiercely that I shocked all my relatives and made even my mother taste hellish suffering, I found it disgraceful that you alone lay there limp with your ignorant confidence. I thought you should write me daily. I thought you could have liked me much more. But the woman wasn't one to write letters. I despaired. From dawn till late at night, I ran about assisting with that work.

When asked by others, I never refused. The limits of my abilities in that field gradually became clear. I despaired doubly. The woman from the back-alley bar in Ginza took a liking to me. There comes a time when everyone is liked, if only once. It was a filthy season. I invited this woman and went with her to Kamakura's sea. When things collapsed, I thought it would be time to die. I nearly failed at that blasphemous work too. Work so physically impossible that I only accepted it to avoid being called cowardly. H thought only of her own happiness. You're not the only woman here. You're getting this retribution because you never acknowledged my suffering. Serves you right. What pained me most was being cut off from all my blood relatives. The realization that I'd horrified Mother, Brother, and Aunt through my involvement with H became the direct cause of my suicide attempt. The woman died; I lived. Of the dead, I've written many times before. It's the black stain on my life. I was placed in a detention center.

After the interrogation came to an end, I was granted a suspended indictment.

It was the year-end of Showa 5 (1930).
The brothers showed kindness to their sibling who had failed at dying.

Eldest Brother released H from her geisha profession and had her sent to me in February of the following year.
He was a man who kept promises with fastidious integrity.
H arrived wearing an expression of utter nonchalance.
We rented a thirty-yen house beside the Shimazu Company's subdivided plot in Gotanda and settled there.
H worked with diligent efficiency.
I was twenty-three; H was twenty.

Gotanda was the era of fools.
I was utterly devoid of will.
There was not a shred of hope for a fresh start.
I spent my days doing nothing but catering to the whims of friends who occasionally visited.
Far from feeling ashamed of my past disgraceful conduct, I even took faint pride in it.
It was truly a shameless, feeble-minded period.
As for school, I hardly attended that either.
I detested all effort and spent my days idly watching H.
I was an idiot.
I did nothing.
Once again, I halfheartedly began helping with that work and such.
But this time, I had no passion whatsoever.
The vagrant's nihilism.
That was my state when I first had a home in a corner of Tokyo.

We moved again that summer.
Kanda Dōbōchō.
Then in late autumn, Kanda Izumichō.
In the early spring of the following year, Yodobashi-Kashiwagi.
There was nothing worth telling.
I took the pseudonym Shurindō and became engrossed in composing haiku.
He was an old man.
For helping with that work, I was put into detention twice.
Every time I was released from the detention center, I would relocate to a different area, following my friends’ instructions.
There was neither excitement nor disgust.
If that was best for everyone, then so be it—an attitude of utter apathy.
In a daze, H and I spent each day in our squalid cohabitation.
H was cheerful.
She would harshly berate me two or three times a day, then nonchalantly start studying English.
I had made a study schedule for her and made her follow it.
It seems she didn’t retain much.
As for English, she had barely reached the point of being able to read Romanized letters before quietly abandoning it altogether.
Her letters were still clumsy.
She didn't want to write.
I made a draft for her.

She seemed to enjoy playing the elder sister role.
Even when I was taken by the police, she didn't get particularly flustered.
There were even days when we interpreted that ideology as something chivalrous and took pleasure in it.
Dōbōchō, Izumichō, Kashiwagi—I turned twenty-four.

In the late spring of that year, I had to move yet again.
Once again on the verge of being summoned by the police, I fled.
This time, it was a slightly complicated matter.
I told my eldest brother in the countryside some nonsense, had him send two months' worth of living expenses all at once, and with that withdrew from Kashiwagi.
I had friends here and there take portions of my household belongings into their care, and carrying only my personal effects moved into an eight-tatami room on the second floor of a lumber merchant’s shop in Nihonbashi-Hatchōbori.
I became a man from Hokkaido named Ochiai Kazuo.
Even so, I felt uneasy.
I guarded carefully what money I possessed.
I tried to deceive my anxiety with feeble delusions that things would somehow work out.
I made no mental preparations for tomorrow.
I could do nothing.
Occasionally I would go to school and lie silent for hours on the lawn before the auditorium.
One day a student from the Economics Department who’d graduated from the same higher school told me an unpleasant story.
It felt like being forced to drink scalding water.
"No way," I thought.
I came instead to hate the student who’d told me.
If I asked H directly, I thought I’d understand.
I hurried back to the lumber merchant’s second floor in Hatchōbori but found it hard to broach the subject.

It was an early summer afternoon.
The western sun entered the room, making it hot.
I had H buy a bottle of Oragabiru.
At that time, Oragabiru cost twenty-five sen.
When I drank it and said, "Another bottle," H yelled at me.
The scolding stiffened my resolve, and I managed to tell H in deliberately casual tones what I'd heard from the student that day.
H frowned momentarily as if angered and muttered "Half-baked" in country dialect.
She simply kept sewing quietly.
No shadow of guilt lingered anywhere.
I believed H.

That night I read something bad.
It was Rousseau’s Confessions.
Rousseau reached the part where he tasted bitter experience concerning his wife’s past, and it became unbearable.
I became unable to believe H.

That night, I finally made her confess.
What I had been told by the student was all true.
It was even worse.
As I dug deeper, I began sensing something boundless.
I stopped halfway.

Even I had no right to blame others in that regard.
The Kamakura incident—what had that been about.
Yet I seethed that night.
I realized I had until then treasured H like a jewel in my palm and taken pride in her.
For this woman's sake I had been living.
I had thought only that I'd saved her while she remained pure.
I'd accepted everything H said with a hero's simple faith.
I'd even proudly told my friends about it.
That H's strong will had let her protect herself until coming to me.
There were no words—not "auspicious," nothing—to describe it.
I was a fool of a son.
I hadn't known what women were.
I felt no hatred toward H's deception.
I even found her confession endearing.
I wanted to stroke her back.

I was simply filled with regret.
I became disgusted with myself.
I wanted to smash the shape of my life to pieces with a club.
In short, I could no longer bear it.
I turned myself in.

After the prosecutor's interrogation came to a temporary halt, without dying, I found myself walking Tokyo's streets again. The only place left for me to return to was H's room. I rushed to H's place.

It was a desolate reunion.
While laughing servilely together, we shook hands weakly.
I withdrew from Hatchōbori and moved to Shiba Ward, Shirokane Sankō-chō.

I rented a detached room in a large vacant house and lived there. The brothers back home, though utterly exasperated, quietly sent me money. H had regained her vigor as if nothing had happened. However, I was gradually awakening from my stupor. I composed a suicide note. “Reminiscences”. It was one hundred pages. Now, this “Reminiscences” has come to be regarded as my debut work. I thought I wanted to write down my own evils from childhood without embellishment. It was the autumn when I was twenty-four. While gazing at the vast abandoned garden overgrown with weeds, I sat in a detached room and completely lost my laughter. I intended to die again. Pretentious? If you want to call it that, then pretentious it was. What a self-satisfied fool I was. I was still viewing life as a drama. No—I had been viewing drama as life. Now I am of no use to anyone. Even my only H bore the grime of others’ hands. There was not a single shred of purpose left to keep living. Stupid. I had resolved to die as one of a doomed people.

I resolved to faithfully perform the role that the tide of the times had assigned to me.
The sad, servile role of always letting people defeat me.

But life was not a drama.
No one knows the second act.
There are men who make their entrance bearing the role of 'destruction' yet never exit until the very end.
Intending it as a modest suicide note, I had written a confession of my childhood and boyhood—testimony that such a tainted child had existed—but that very suicide note instead became an overwhelming preoccupation, lighting a faint candle within my void.
I failed to die.
With just that single "Reminiscences," I had become utterly dissatisfied.
Well, I had written this far.
I wanted to write down everything.
I wanted to spill out all of my life up to today.
This and that—all of it.
Things I wanted to write down came flooding out.
First, I wrote about the Kamakura incident—no good.
There's some oversight somewhere.
I wrote another piece, yet remained dissatisfied.
With a sigh, I began work on the next piece.
I couldn’t bring myself to place periods—only a relentless string of timid commas.
By that eternal beckoning demon, I was beginning to be devoured.
It was a mantis trying to stop a chariot.

I had turned twenty-five.
It was Showa 8.
I was supposed to graduate from university that March.
But far from graduating, I hadn't even shown up for the exams.
The brothers back home knew nothing of this.
Though I'd done nothing but foolish things, they must have believed that graduating would serve as my apology.
They seemed to secretly hold this expectation—that I was still capable of such basic integrity.
I betrayed them gloriously.
I had no intention of graduating.
To deceive those who trust you—this verges on madness.
For two years thereafter, I dwelled in that hell.
"Next year," I vowed each time.
"I beg you—grant me one more year," I would weep to my Eldest Brother before betraying him anew.
That year repeated itself.
The next year did too.
Amidst self-laceration and terror bordering on death—yet refusing death—I obsessed over crafting what I pretentiously called suicide notes.
If only this could be completed—
It may have been mere pretentious sentimentality. Still I staked my life upon it.
I stored finished works in three or four large paper bags.
Gradually their numbers grew.

I wrote "Twilight Years" on those paper bags with a brush.
I had intended it as the title for that series of suicide notes.
It meant that this was the end.

Apparently someone had bought the vacant house in Shiba, so we had to vacate the place in early spring of that year.
Because I couldn't graduate from school, the remittance from my hometown had been significantly reduced.
I had to practice even greater frugality.
Suginami Ward, Amanuma 3-chōme.
He rented a room in an acquaintance’s house and lived there.
That person was employed at a newspaper company and was an upstanding citizen.
For the next two years we lived together, during which time I truly caused them much worry.
I had even less intention of graduating from school.
Like a fool, I remained solely consumed by completing that collection of works.
Fearing reproach, I told a stopgap lie—that I would graduate next year—even to that acquaintance and to H herself.
About once a week I would properly don my uniform and leave the house.
At the school library I haphazardly checked out books, skimmed through them, dozed off, worked on rough drafts of my writings, then left in the evening to return to Amanuma.
Neither H nor the acquaintance doubted me in the slightest.
On the surface everything remained perfectly fine, but secretly I grew frantic.
Moment by moment my anxiety mounted.
I wanted to finish writing before the remittance from home ran out.
Yet it proved excruciatingly difficult.
I wrote only to tear up what I'd written.
I had been grotesquely devoured by that demon down to the very marrow of my bones.

A year had passed.
I did not graduate.
My brothers were enraged, but I tearfully pleaded as usual.
I clearly declared I would graduate next year—a bald-faced lie.
There existed no other pretext for requesting funds.
The truth could not be told to anyone.
I refused to make accomplices.
I wanted to stand utterly alone as a castaway son.
Thus I believed those around me would remain untainted—their positions clear, never dragged into my ruin.
To demand another year for suicide notes? Unthinkable.
Nothing repelled me more than being seen as some self-indulgent poetic dreamer.
Even had my brothers wished to send money after such mad talk, they could only have stopped.
Had they funded me knowing the truth, society would brand them accomplices.
That was intolerable.
I resolved to play the cunning silver-tongued brother deceiving them—a thief's warped logic I embraced with deadly seriousness.
Still I donned my uniform weekly for school.
Both H and that newspaper acquaintance clung beautifully to next year's graduation fantasy.
I stood cornered.
Each dawning day turned pitch black.
I am no villain!

Deceiving people is hell. Before long, Amanuma 1-chōme. Due to 3-chōme being inconvenient for commuting, the acquaintance had moved residence behind 1-chōme's market that spring. It was near Ogikubo Station. Having been invited, we too followed along and rented the second-floor room of that house. I couldn't sleep every night. I drank cheap liquor. Phlegm kept coming out incessantly. I thought I might be ill, but this was no time for that. I wanted to quickly compile that collection of works in the paper bag. It may have been a selfish, self-satisfied notion, but I wanted to leave it behind as an apology to everyone. It was the utmost I could do. In the late autumn of that year, I somehow managed to finish writing. From over twenty pieces, I selected only fourteen and burned the remaining works along with the discarded drafts. There was enough to fill a trunk. I carried them out to the garden and burned them clean away.

“Why did you burn them?”
That night,H suddenly brought it up.

“Because they became unnecessary.”
I answered with a smile.

“Why did you burn them?”
She repeated the same words.
She was crying.

I began tidying up my surroundings.
I returned all borrowed books to their owners and sold letters and notebooks to a scrap dealer.
Into the “Late Years” bag I secretly slipped two letters.
Everything seemed ready.
Each night I went out to drink cheap liquor.
Facing H filled me with dread.
Around that time, a classmate proposed starting a coterie magazine.
My commitment was half-hearted.
“If we call it ‘Blue Flower,’ I’ll participate,” I replied.
What started as jest took root.
Comrades emerged from unexpected quarters.
With two of them I formed sudden intimacy.
There I incinerated youth’s final passion—or so one might say.
It was death’s-eve revelry.
Drunk together, we beat dull-witted students.
Defiled women I cherished like kin.

H’s dresser had been emptied without her knowledge.
The purely literary magazine Blue Flower was completed in December of that year.
Only one volume was published, and the comrades scattered.
I was appalled by the aimless, bizarre fervor.
In the end, only the three of us remained.
We were called the three fools.
But these three were lifelong friends.
There was much that I had been taught by those two.

The following year, March—graduation season was approaching once more.
I was taking the entrance exam for a certain newspaper company.
To the acquaintance I lived with, and also to H, I wanted to pretend I was busily preparing for the approaching graduation.
"I'll become a newspaper reporter and live an ordinary life," I would say, brightening the household with cheerful laughter.
Though it would inevitably come to light, wanting to prolong that peace for even a day or moment longer—and being utterly terrified of shocking anyone—I desperately told lies meant only for that instant.
I was always like that.
Then cornered, I would think of dying.
In the end it would be exposed, only shocking and enraging people all the more—yet I couldn't bring myself to voice that disillusioning reality, sinking ever deeper into my own hell of falsehoods moment by moment.
Of course I had no intention of joining any newspaper company, nor did I expect to pass the exam.
The perfect fortress of deception was now beginning to crumble.
The time has come to die, I thought.
In mid-March, I went alone to Kamakura.
It was Showa 10 (1935).

I attempted to hang myself in the mountains of Kamakura.

It had been five years since I had caused that commotion by jumping into the sea at Kamakura. Since I could swim, dying in the sea would have been difficult. I chose hanging—a method I had long heard was certain. But I made yet another bungled failure. I came back to life. My neck might be abnormally thick after all. With my neck still raw and inflamed, I returned in a daze to the house in Amanuma.

I tried to define my own destiny and failed.
When I staggered home, an unfamiliar and strange world had opened up.
H gently stroked my back at the entrance.
All the others said "Good, good" and took care of me.
I was dumbfounded by life's kindness.

Eldest Brother had also rushed over from the countryside.
Though I had been severely scolded by Eldest Brother, I couldn't help feeling nostalgic and affectionate toward him.
I experienced nothing but strange emotions, as if for the first time in my life.

Unforeseen fate unfolded in rapid succession.
A few days later, I was struck by intense abdominal pain.
I endured a full day and night without sleep.
I applied a hot water bottle to my abdomen.
Nearly losing consciousness, I called a doctor.
While still in my futon, I was placed on a stretcher and transported to Asagaya Surgical Hospital.
I was immediately operated on.
It was appendicitis.
I had delayed showing myself to the doctor, and warming it with a hot water bottle had been a mistake.
Pus had flowed into the peritoneum, making the surgery difficult.
On the second day after surgery, clots of blood came pouring from my throat.
The pre-existing chest illness had suddenly surfaced.
I was left gasping for breath.
Even the doctor had clearly given up on me, but I—steeped in sin—gradually began to recover.
After a month had passed, only the abdominal wound had healed shut.
However, I was transferred to Kyodo Internal Medicine Hospital in Setagaya Ward as a contagious disease patient.
H was constantly by my side.
"The doctor said no amount of fussing would help," H told me with a laugh.
The director of that hospital was Eldest Brother’s friend.
I was treated with special care.

I rented two spacious wards—moving all my household belongings inside—and essentially relocated into the hospital itself.
May, June, July—around the time bush mosquitoes began appearing and white mosquito nets were being hung in the wards—I was transferred to Funabashi Town, Chiba Prefecture on the hospital director’s orders.
It was the coast.
On the outskirts of town, I rented a newly built house and lived there.
It was meant to be a convalescent relocation, but even there proved ill-suited for me.
The hellish turmoil began.
From my time at Asagaya Surgical Hospital, I had grown accustomed to an abominable habit.
The use of narcotics.
At first, even the doctor used it during the morning and evening gauze changes to alleviate the pain in my affected area, but before long I could no longer sleep without relying on that drug.
I was extremely vulnerable to the pain of insomnia.
Every night, I pleaded with the doctor.
The doctor there had given up on my body.
He always kindly granted my requests.
Even after being transferred to the internal medicine hospital, I persistently pleaded with the director.
The director reluctantly complied about one out of every three times.
It was no longer for the sake of my body, but to eliminate my own shame and agitation, that I had come to beg the doctor.
I had no strength to endure the desolation.
After moving to Funabashi, I went to the town clinic, complained of my insomnia and addiction symptoms, and demanded the drug.
Later, I forcibly had that timid town doctor write a certificate and directly purchased pharmaceuticals from a town drugstore.
When I came to my senses, I had become a wretched addict.

Suddenly, I was strapped for cash.
At that time, I received ninety yen per month in living expenses from Eldest Brother.
When it came to any additional temporary expenses beyond that, even Eldest Brother refused.
It was only natural.

I had made not a single effort to repay my brother’s affection.
I did nothing but selfishly toy with my own life.
From that autumn onward, whenever I occasionally appeared on Tokyo’s streets, my figure was already that of a dingy semi-lunatic.
I know all the pitiable versions of myself from that era.
Unforgettable.
I had become Japan’s most base youth.
I would come up to Tokyo to borrow ten or twenty yen.
There were times I wept before magazine editors.
Times I begged so persistently they shouted at me.
Even then, my manuscripts held some potential for money.
During my stays at Asagaya Surgical Hospital and Kyodo Internal Medicine Hospital, friends managed to get two or three “suicide notes” from that paper bag published in decent magazines. Both the scathing criticisms and words of support that followed overwhelmed me—flustered and frantic with anxiety, my drug addiction deepened further. In desperation, I’d shamble to publishing houses to beg editors or even presidents for manuscript fee advances.
Too consumed by my own torment to recognize others were struggling just as fiercely.
I sold off every last work from that paper bag.
Nothing remained to sell.
New pieces wouldn’t come.
My materials exhausted, I could write nothing.
Literary circles then pointed at me declaring “Talent without virtue,” yet I believed myself to have “a sprout of virtue but no talent.”
I possess nothing called literary talent.
Knew no method but hurling my entire being forward.
A hopeless oaf.

Being morbidly fixated on such rigid morals as repaying obligations of food and lodging—becoming unable to endure it—and instead recklessly committing nothing but shameless acts—that’s the sort I am. I was raised in a strict, conservative household. Borrowing money was the worst sin. Trying to escape debt only plunged me deeper into it. Even that drug addiction—to erase the shame of borrowed money—I myself intensified more and more. Payments to the pharmacy kept mounting. There were times I wandered through Ginza in broad daylight, sniveling as I walked. I wanted money. I ended up borrowing from nearly twenty people as if robbing them. I couldn’t die. Only after repaying every last yen of that debt did I want to die.

I was no longer acknowledged by others.

After relocating to Funabashi and one full year passing, in the autumn of Showa 11 (1936), I was placed in a car and transported to a hospital in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo.
After sleeping through the night and opening my eyes, I found myself in a room of the mental hospital.
Having lived there for a month, on an autumn afternoon beneath clear skies, I was finally permitted discharge.
I entered the car with H who had come to retrieve me.

It had been a month since we last met, but both of us remained silent.
The car started moving, and after some time had passed, H spoke.

“You’re quitting the drugs now.”
Her tone was angry.

“I’m not going to trust anything from now on.”
I said the only thing I had learned in the hospital.

“I see.”
The pragmatic H seemed to interpret my words in some financial sense, nodded deeply, and said, “People can’t be relied upon.”

“I won’t believe in you either.”

H made an awkward face.

The house in Funabashi had been discontinued during my hospitalization, and H was living in a room of an apartment in Amanuma 3-chome, Suginami Ward. I settled there. Requests for manuscripts had come from two magazine companies. Immediately, from the night of that discharge, I began writing. I completed two novels, took the manuscript fees, went to Atami, and drank without restraint for a month. I didn't know what to do after this. From my Eldest Brother, it had been arranged that I would receive monthly living expenses for three years now, but the mountain of debt from before my hospitalization remained untouched. I had even conceived a plan to write a good novel in Atami and use the money earned from it to repay at least the most pressing debts before me, but far from writing a novel, I found myself unable to bear the desolation surrounding me and did nothing but drink. I truly came to think of myself as a hopeless man. In Atami, I only ended up increasing my debts further. Whatever I did, it was no use. I appeared utterly defeated.

I returned to the Amanuma apartment and stretched out my emaciated body that had relinquished all hope. I was already twenty-nine years old. There was nothing left. I possessed nothing but a single padded robe. H too wore only the clothes on her back. I thought this must be what they called rock bottom. Clinging to the monthly remittance from my Eldest Brother, I lived silent as a worm.

Yet even this was not rock bottom.

In the early spring of that year, I received an unexpected consultation from a certain Western-style painter—one I hadn’t even remotely anticipated.
He had been an extremely close friend.
I listened to his story and felt like suffocating.
H had already made a sad mistake.
When I left that ominous hospital, riding in the car, I suddenly recalled how terribly flustered H had become at my insignificant abstract rant.
I had caused H much hardship, but I had intended to live with her as long as I was alive.
Because my expressions of love were clumsy, neither H nor the Western-style Painter had noticed it.
Even after receiving his consultation, there was nothing I could do.
I thought I didn't want to hurt anyone.
Among the three of us, I was the oldest.
I thought that if I alone could stay calm and give proper guidance, but in the end, I was thrown into such disarray by the overwhelming situation—panicking, fumbling helplessly—that I even ended up being scorned by H and the others.
I couldn’t do anything.
Over time, the Western-style Painter gradually became evasive.
Even in my own suffering, I pitied H.
H seemed to have already resolved to die.
When things became utterly unbearable, I too would think of death.
The two of us should die together.
Even God would forgive us.

We set out on our journey like close siblings.
Minakami Onsen.
That night, we committed suicide in the mountains.
I must not let H die, I thought.
I devoted myself to that task.
H survived.
I too failed resoundingly.
I used chemicals.

We finally parted.
I lacked the courage to detain H any further.
One might say I had abandoned her.
Even feigning patience through that hollow humanist bravado, I could already see with terrible clarity the grotesque hellscape of days to come.
H returned alone to her mother in the countryside.
The Western-style Painter vanished without trace.
I stayed behind in the apartment and began cooking for myself.
I learned to drink shochu.
My teeth started crumbling away.
My face grew wretched.
I moved to a boarding house near the apartment.
It was the lowest grade of lodgings.
I felt it suited me.
"This shall be my final glimpse of the world"—standing by the gatepost, ah! Moonlight! Withered fields racing past, pines standing motionless.
In my four-and-a-half-mat room, I'd often drink alone, then stumble out drunk to lean against the gatepost and murmur such nonsense verses under my breath.
Apart from two or three inseparable friends, nobody acknowledged my existence.
Gradually I came to understand how the world saw me:
An ignorant arrogant rogue—or imbecile—or base cunning lecher—counterfeit genius swindler; living in luxury till funds ran dry, then staging suicide farces to terrorize provincial parents.
He'd abused his virtuous wife like some stray cur before finally casting her out.
Other such legends circulated through society—narrated with scorn, loathing and fury—until I lay fully interred, treated as human wreckage.

I became aware of this and no longer wanted to take a single step outside my boarding house. On nights without liquor, gnawing on salt crackers while reading detective novels brought me dim pleasure. There were no manuscript requests from magazines or newspapers. Again I wanted to write nothing. Couldn't write. Yet though no one demanded repayment for that money I'd borrowed during my illness, I suffered even in my nightly dreams.

I had already turned thirty.

What turning point had brought this about?

I thought I had to live.
Was it the misfortune of my family home that gave me the strength that was due?

My eldest brother was elected to the Diet only to be indicted shortly thereafter for election law violations.
I held my eldest brother’s stern personality in awe.
There must have been bad people around him.
My sister died.
My nephew died.
My cousin died.
I learned of those through hearsay.
From early on I had lost all contact with the people from my hometown.

The successive misfortunes of my hometown gradually raised my prostrate upper body.
I was embarrassed by the grandness of my family home.
I was driven to reckless desperation by the handicap of being a wealthy man's child.
The unpleasant fear that I was unduly privileged had from childhood made me servile and misanthropic.
I held the belief that children of the wealthy must fall into great hell in a manner befitting children of the wealthy.
Running away is cowardly.
I strove admirably to die as a child of wickedness.
But one night, when I came to my senses, I realized I was no wealthy man's child—I was a pauper without even decent clothes to wear out.
The remittance from home was supposed to run out within this year.
The family register had already been separated.
Moreover, the house in my hometown where I was born and raised was now mired in misfortune.
I no longer possessed any innate privileges that would make me feel beholden to others.
On the contrary, there were only negatives.
That realization and one more thing.
While I lay in a boarding house room, having even lost the spirit to die, I must also cite as a greatly significant factor the fact that my body had mysteriously grown remarkably robust.
One could also list various factors—age, war, fluctuations in historical perspective, aversion to indolence, humility toward literature, the existence of God—but explanations of human turning points always end up feeling somehow hollow.
Even if an explanation strives for utmost precision, the stench of falsehood inevitably lingers in some crevice.
People probably do not always choose their path by thinking this way or that.
In many cases, people find themselves walking a different field before they know it.

I resolved earnestly that early summer at thirty years old to devote myself to literary life.
Looking back, it was a belated resolution.
In my four-and-a-half-mat boarding house room—utterly devoid of proper furnishings—I wrote desperately.
When leftover boarding house rice remained in its tub, I would secretly form it into rice balls to stave off late-night hunger.
This time I wasn't writing suicide notes.
I wrote to survive.
A senior encouraged me.
Though all others scorned and mocked me, that senior writer alone continued steadfastly supporting my very being in secret.
I had to repay that precious trust.
Eventually I completed a work titled Obasute.
I wrote truthfully about when H and I went to Minakami Hot Springs seeking death.
It sold immediately.
There remained one editor who hadn't forgotten me and still awaited my work.
Without wasting that manuscript fee, I first reclaimed decent clothes from pawnshop pledges, dressed properly, and journeyed forth.
To Kōshū's mountains.
With renewed resolve I planned to begin a full-length novel.
I stayed one full year in Kōshū.
Though completing no long novel, I published over ten short stories.
Voices of support reached me from many quarters.
I came to regard literary circles as something worthy of gratitude.

Those who could spend their entire lives there were fortunate indeed, I thought.
The following year, in January of Showa 14, through that senior writer's good offices, I entered into what seemed an ordinary arranged marriage.
No—it wasn't ordinary.
I held my wedding ceremony penniless.
On Kōfu City's outskirts, we rented a small two-room house and lived there.
The rent for that house was six yen and fifty sen per month.
I published two story collections in succession.
A small margin had emerged.
I began gradually sorting out my lingering borrowed debts—no small undertaking.
That early autumn, I moved to Mitaka Town on Tokyo City's outskirts.
This was no longer Tokyo City.
My Tokyo City life had already been severed when I left Ogikubo boarding house for Kōshū with a single suitcase.

I was now a man who lived by his manuscripts.
When traveling, I would write "Writer" in guest registers without reservation.
Though there was suffering, I seldom spoke of it.
Even when facing greater anguish than before, I maintained a feigned smile.
The fools declared I had grown vulgar.
Each day, the Musashino sunset loomed vast.
Quivering and seething, it plunged downward.

I sat cross-legged in the three-tatami room where the sunset was visible and said to my wife while eating a meager meal: “I’m this sort of man—I can’t achieve success or become wealthy. But I intend to protect this house by any means necessary.”

At that moment, I suddenly conceived of Tokyo Eight Views.
The past revolved within my chest like a panorama lantern.

Though this lay outside Tokyo City proper, since Inokashira Park nearby counted among the capital's celebrated sights, there could be no objection to including this Musashino sunset within the Tokyo Eight Views.
To determine the remaining seven views, I flipped through the album within my chest.
However in this case, what became art was not Tokyo's scenery.
It was myself within that scenery.
Had art deceived me?
Had I deceived art?
Conclusion.
Art was myself.

Totsuka's rainy season.
Hongo's twilight.
Kanda's festival.
Kashiwagi's first snow.
Hatchōbori's fireworks.
Shiba's full moon.
Amanuma's evening cicada.
Ginza's lightning.
Itabashi Brain Hospital’s cosmos.
Ogikubo's morning mist.
Musashino's sunset.
The dark flowers of memory fluttered about; organizing them was nearly impossible.
Moreover, I thought that forcibly cobbling them together into eight views was a shabby thing to do.
Before long, I ended up finding two more views this spring and summer.

On April 4th of this year, I visited Koishikawa’s esteemed senior, Mr. S.
To Mr. S, I had caused considerable concern during my illness five years prior.
In the end, I had been severely reprimanded and effectively cast out, but this New Year I went to pay my respects, offering both apologies and gratitude.
After that, I had long neglected to visit him again, and on that day went to ask him to sponsor my close friend’s book publication commemorative event.
He was home.
He granted my request, then I listened to his discourses on paintings and Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s literature.
“I may have treated you rather harshly,” he said, “but looking back now, it seems to have borne good fruit after all—for which I find myself glad.”
He spoke these words in his characteristically weighty tone.
We went by car to Ueno together.
At the museum we viewed an exhibition of Western-style paintings.
Many were unremarkable.
I stopped before one painting.
Soon Mr. S too came to my side and pressed his face close to the canvas,

“It’s sentimental,” he said innocently.

“It’s no good.”
I too stated clearly.

It was H’s—that Western-style painter’s work.

After leaving the museum, we then went to Kayabacho where Mr.S treated me to a preview screening of a film titled “The Beautiful Struggle,” and later headed to Ginza to drink tea and spend the day out.
When evening came and Mr.S said he would return by bus from Shinbashi Station, I walked with him to Shinbashi Station.
On the way, I informed Mr.S about the Tokyo Eight Views plan.

“Indeed, the Musashino sunset is grand.”

Mr. S came to a stop on the bridge in front of Shinbashi Station,

“That would make a painting,” he said in a low voice, pointing toward Ginza’s bridge.

“Ah.”
I too stopped and gazed.

“That would make a painting.”
He repeated, as if muttering to himself.

Rather than the scenery being viewed, I decided to include in one of the Tokyo Eight Views the figures of Mr. S gazing at it and his excommunicated bad disciple.

Then, after about two months had passed, I obtained another brighter scene.

One day, an express letter arrived from my wife’s younger sister: “It’s finally been decided that T will depart tomorrow.
It seems we can meet briefly at Shiba Park.
Please come to Shiba Park at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.
Please skillfully convey my feelings from Eldest Brother to T.
Because I’m a fool, I haven’t said anything to T.”
The younger sister was twenty-two years old but looked like a child due to her small build.
Last year she had an arranged marriage meeting with T-kun and become engaged, but immediately after exchanging betrothal gifts, T-kun had been conscripted into a certain Tokyo regiment.
I too had once met T-kun in military uniform and spoken with him for about thirty minutes.
He had been a bright, well-mannered young man.
It appeared he would finally be departing for the battlefield tomorrow.
Less than two hours after that express letter arrived came another from my younger sister.
It read: “Upon reconsidering, I realized my earlier request was frivolous.
You needn’t say anything to T-kun.
Just see me off.” Both my wife and I burst out laughing.
One could easily imagine her flusteredly rushing about alone.
The younger sister had been helping at T-kun’s parents’ house since two or three days prior.

The next morning, we got up early and went to Shiba Park.

A large crowd had gathered in Zojoji Temple's precincts. When we stopped and questioned an old man in khaki fatigues who was busily shoving through the crowd, he told us T-kun's unit would pause briefly at the main gate for a five-minute rest before moving on again. We left the temple grounds and took position before the gate to await their arrival. Soon my younger sister appeared too, clutching a small flag alongside T-kun's parents. This marked my first encounter with his family. Being neither properly related nor socially adept, I offered no real greeting—merely a curt nod of acknowledgment.

“How’s it going? Settled down?” I spoke to the younger sister.
“It’s nothing.”
The younger sister laughed cheerfully.
“Why does it have to be like this?”
My wife frowned.
“Laughing so uproariously...”

T-kun's send-off party was remarkably large.
Six large banners bearing T-kun’s name stood lined up before the temple gate.
The male workers and female workers from T-kun’s family factory also took a day off and came to see him off.
I moved away from everyone and stood at the edge of the temple gate.
I was being petty.
T-kun’s family was wealthy.
My teeth were chipped, and my clothes were disheveled.
I wasn't wearing traditional trousers, nor even a hat.
I was a poor writer.
The somewhat disreputable relatives of their son’s fiancée have come—T-kun’s parents must be thinking this.
Even when my younger sister came over to talk to me, I said, “You have an important role today, so stay by your father’s side,” and sent her away.
T-kun's unit was taking forever to arrive.
Ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, twelve o'clock came and went, and still they did not arrive.
Groups from girls’ schools on excursions passed before my eyes one after another, riding tour buses.
On the buses’ doors were pasted slips of paper bearing the names of their respective girls’ schools.
The name of my hometown girls’ school was also there.
Eldest Brother’s eldest daughter should also be attending that girls’ school.
She might be riding on one.
I thought she might have passed by, innocently gazing at the lumbering figure of her foolish uncle standing before this Tokyo landmark—the main gate of Zojoji Temple—without knowing it was her uncle.
About twenty buses passed intermittently before the temple gate, and each time, the bus conductress would point directly at me and begin some explanation.

At first I pretended not to care, but in the end I even tried striking poses. Like a Balzac statue, I leisurely crossed my arms. Then I even began to feel as if I myself had become one of Tokyo’s famous sights. When it neared one o'clock, shouts of "They're coming! They're coming!" arose, and soon a truck loaded with soldiers arrived before the temple gate. T-kun had mastered Datsun driving techniques, so he was riding in the truck’s driver’s seat. I stood gazing absently from the back of the crowd.

“Brother.”
Before I knew it，the younger sister who had come to my side said in a low voice and pushed my back forcefully.
When I composed myself and looked，T-kun—having descended from the driver’s seat—was saluting with an air of having swiftly noticed me standing at the crowd’s farthest edge.
Even then，I doubted momentarily，scanning my surroundings and hesitating，but there was no mistake—he was saluting me.
Resolved，I pushed through the crowd and advanced with the younger sister until we stood before T-kun.

“There’s no need to worry about what comes after. Though my younger sister may seem foolish like this, she should know the most important disposition a woman must uphold. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about. We’ll all take responsibility,” I said without so much as a smile—uncharacteristically serious. When I looked at my younger sister’s face, hers too was slightly upturned and tense. T-kun’s face reddened slightly as he silently saluted again.

“Anything else you want to say?”
This time I laughed and asked my younger sister.
The younger sister,

“That’s enough,” she said, lowering her face.

The departure order was immediately given.
I tried to sneak back into the crowd, but once again my younger sister pushed me from behind, and this time I ended up right beneath the driver’s seat.
Only T-kun’s parents stood in that area.

“Go forth with peace of mind.”
I declared in a loud voice.
T-kun’s stern father suddenly turned and stared at me.
A flash of displeasure—Who does this fool think he is?—crossed that strict father’s eyes.
But in that moment, I did not waver.
Is not the ultimate foundation of human pride the self-awareness of being able to declare, “I have suffered these things unto death”?
Though classified Class C and poor besides, I now felt no need for restraint.

As for Tokyo’s famous sights, in an even louder voice:

“There’s nothing left to worry about!” I shouted.

Even if difficulties were to arise henceforth regarding T-kun and my younger sister's marriage, I thought—being a lawless man who cares nothing for social propriety—I would surely become their ultimate bulwark.

Having secured this view of Zojoji Temple's main gate, I felt my work's conception had now drawn its bowstring taut as a full moon.

A few days later, carrying a large map of Tokyo City along with a pen, ink, and manuscript paper, I hurriedly departed for Izu.

After arriving at the Izu hot spring inn—what had happened then?
Though ten days had passed since my departure, I still seemed to be lingering at that hot spring inn.
What on earth was I doing there?