Pathway to Japanese Literature

I Yozo later found himself frequenting dance halls on a whim and attended several Christmas masquerade balls. At one dance party, when the organizers forcibly made him don a Santa Claus mask and he tried smoking while awkwardly adjusting it—tilting his chin out from under the mask—he struck a match only for flames to catch on his beard's cotton fluff and flare up violently. Even then he was made to recall those days when he'd earnestly played the clown—days spent trying to hammer out dust-coated sweet dreams and bitter dregs lodged in his heart's wrinkles—until he couldn't help but grimace at this disguised and distorted self. Or perhaps this was his true form? Not knowing which was real left him cringing at himself. To speak of that self who'd actually plunged into those events wasn't because they made pleasant memories or resonated with his current life; better to tuck them away in some mental drawer's corner—yet truthfully even that felt somehow regrettable. Long ago when Yozo met her by chance at a dance hall and tried dancing one trot together—"Isn't this lovely?" she'd said—he'd felt nothing at all yet envied how she strained to rouse him. He felt an itchy-painful sensation like prodding an old unhealed scar—having fully transformed into some common woman of cheap streets—and found it wearisome dragging her unhealthily swollen body about.

Now, Yozo literally recalled a certain heart-pounding night.

At that time, Yozo—intending to take his work to a cottage-like hotel in the suburbs where sea breezes blew through—invited her—Kozue Yoko—who had been occasionally visiting from a nearby inn where she usually stayed, to enliven the gatherings of his unfortunate children who had recently lost their mother and were feeling lonely.

From the moment Yozo first saw her as Madam Matsukawa, he dimly sensed something overwhelming in her graceful figure—yet he had never dreamed she would approach so closely. At that time, Matsukawa was dressed in flowing attire of finely textured silk, possessing a beautiful countenance reminiscent of figures from classical paintings, and the girl he brought along—adorned in a pure white Western-style dress like a princess from a fairy tale—carried herself with a certain noble air. It was an atmosphere that did not suit his cramped, gloomy six-tatami study. They came all the way from afar to visit him, bringing with them a lengthy novel manuscript. This occurred two years prior in the mild spring of March. Yozo’s garden was at peak bloom with kobushi magnolias, and the gloomy study’s veranda—bathed in sunlight reflecting off clusters of fragrant white flowers—was imbued with a springlike brightness.

Yozo sat at the corner of the black desk in the center of the room, briskly flipping through the manuscript pages. The manuscript was scrawled in rough handwriting, but he sensed some untamed passion bursting between the lines. “That’s tremendous passion,” he murmured his raw impressions before promising to read it properly later. “What bourgeois splendor.” At that time—still alive—he remarked to his wife, who maintained her gracious hostess demeanor for visitors. He dismissed the work as merely a bourgeois madam’s indulgence anyway. His natural indolence compounded by slipshod prose and handwriting made him skim sections haphazardly rather than read it through. Yet he clearly detected its rebellious undercurrent against domesticity. As with countless other cases, he unhesitatingly rejected the manuscript for this seemingly happy young couple’s sake. It never crossed his mind that their life—seemingly blessed with wealth and affection—had already been teetering on bankruptcy’s edge then.

The next day, when Matsukawa came to hear his response, Yozo had sent him off with a warning that Madam’s foray into literature might very well destroy their household. At that time, her husband—who had approached his wife as she fretted over the manuscript’s fate by the university pond with their child—seemed to have cautiously explained the current situation, wary of wounding her pride. “Yoko, you must never be disappointed. It’s just that that manuscript is a bit too unrestrained. The prose also needs more refining.”

Of course, Yoko was not disappointed. And the following day, she appeared alone at Yozo’s study once again.

“I rushed through writing that, you know.” “The handwriting was also done by two or three students working together to make a clean copy, you see.” “I do intend to rewrite it eventually, you know.—If that is not published, I will lose face with the people back home, you see.” “Because even before I left, the newspapers had already written about me so flamboyantly.”

Madam placed one hand on the tatami, her face slightly flushed.

Yozo and his wife remained unaware, but she was eight months pregnant at the time. And he had told her to return once to Otaru City to become unencumbered before starting anew; Yozo reluctantly agreed to keep the manuscript until then. The manuscript's crucial role in their fates only gradually became clear through Yoko's accounts—how she had come to Tokyo that autumn with her bankrupt husband and children to establish a household in Tabata. Yet after circulating through various hands and undergoing revisions, its eventual release into the world would come much later. At times she visited film studios with Yozo and Mr. C—the popular writer he introduced—while other nights found her at that avant-garde café in post-earthquake Yamanote, functioning as an artists' club where she appeared among gathered literati and painters as a guest apprentice waitress. Long stripped of possessions, she stubbornly wore nothing but her sister's single gaudy silk outfit. That disheveled yet ostentatious silk attire occasionally materialized in his study. With each visit spilled tales of marital ruin—her once resplendent wedding as her recently deceased father's cherished daughter; Matsukawa's unexpectedly shabby household where she first settled with her cousin the Diet member (mediator of her former romance), her mother, and the groom; how opening closets revealed neighboring lamplight seeping through walls; how her Tokyo department store trousseau was pawned with her consent; how new debts kept emerging just as matters seemed resolved—all exposing a marriage doomed from its two-day town-stirring inception. Why must Yoko—beautiful and clever—have exiled herself to provincial Otaru only to be trapped in such a household? Likely she'd been captivated when Matsukawa—the hometown-admired Tokyo Imperial University elite—visited with his striking speech and demeanor. Yet her failure to secure the match her father desired probably stemmed from schoolgirl romances whose consequences even the obtuse Yozo eventually came to acknowledge much later.

“The cousin who sent us here stayed in Otaru for a whole week, you know.” “In his despair, he summoned geishas every day and drowned himself in alcohol, you know.” She shed tears. “Lately, I can’t help thinking it would be better if I just became a geisha.”

Though Tokyo was still midway through recovery from the earthquake disaster’s devastation—the tide of wartime prosperity beginning to ebb—those days had not yet been permeated by such an air of anxiety. Surrounded by a crowd of children and confined to his plain family life, Yozo understood that matters beyond his own domain lay outside his control. Feeling uneasy about these flamboyant visits from the young woman—the difficulty of sustaining conversations when alone with her, and an awkward awareness of his wife Kayoko separated only by a sliding door in the tearoom—he suggested to Yoko that she might try visiting one of the literary world’s luminaries who enjoyed better financial standing. Yoko welcomed this. And she gradually began forging connections, though it was not as though she moved through social circles without reservations.

“……And the kind of men I find suitable—they all already have wives.”

So she found herself envying demimonde women who occupied such advantageous positions when choosing men, but after beginning to frequent the Yamanote café he had introduced her to, her spirits gradually lifted. It was around that time that her long-pending novel—revised by an economic journalist from a major newspaper who had been Matsukawa’s classmate, circulated through several publishing houses, and ultimately made into a book by Isshiki, a young playwright and publisher who frequented Yozo’s home—finally saw publication. One evening, Isshiki and Yoko happened to meet face-to-face for the first time in his study. Isshiki was the sort of man who would visit Yozo—suddenly widowed and bewildered—with a thick wad of bills for funeral expenses tucked in his pocket, casually murmuring “Please use this” as he discreetly handed it over behind the sliding door; having himself lost assets worth hundreds of thousands of yen overnight. Thus when Yozo—wondering how he managed—brought up Yoko’s manuscript, Isshiki immediately agreed with an “Of course” despite having broached the matter with visible apprehension.

“I’ll take care of it after reviewing it.” “Please send me the manuscript right away.” It was just when Yozo and his wife, Isshiki, and Yoko were gathered around the table facing one another that before long, Isshiki and Yoko took their leave together.

“I wonder if those two might get together.” “Perhaps.” Later, Yozo came to feel this way and spoke with Kayoko, but by that time, Yoko had already separated from her husband and children, vacated their Tabata home, and moved into a rented room on the second floor of a commoner’s house in Ushigome. Her sister, who had been coming to learn beauty techniques, was also living in that house where their brother had been taken care of during his student days. On days when Isshiki did not come, Yoko still seemed to frequent the café from there, but this displeased Isshiki, and at times her sister would go to fetch her—yet in the eyes of the fickle Yoko, the lively atmosphere of the artist companions who always gathered there was also something she found hard to abandon.

Yozo had only ever heard about it and never once visited that café while she was there. Moreover, the rumors about Yoko swirling among them were far from savory.

It was not long after Kayoko’s funeral had concluded that Yoko, having received news of her death, emerged from the coastal house where she had secluded herself for over half a year and came to Tokyo. Kayoko had succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage on January 2nd, but the previous autumn, Yoko—looking healthy and plump—had suddenly appeared for the first time in ages.

While continuing such a romantic relationship with Isshiki, she broke away from him and ran to the painter Yamaji Kusaba, who had been the object of admiration for many young women. And after visiting Yoko’s hometown home by the beautiful sea together, they promptly began their married life in Yamaji’s new residence in Tokyo’s suburbs. This marriage—whether viewed favorably or unfavorably—must have been something that even those who had until then been enchanted by her appearance could smile and nod approvingly at.

Yoko had indeed liked Isshiki with his Edoite temperament, but being a literary-minded girl who felt particular allure toward art and fame, it was by asking him to design the binding for her debut work—finally slated for publication—that she received a letter from Yamaji resonating with the piece and was instantly drawn to him. She felt this was indeed the one she had long been searching for. And once that happened, like an impatient girl finding a doll she fancied, she couldn't rest until she had it in her hands. The illusion that a woman like her could surely delight him sufficiently—this phantom of her own beauty—constantly stoked her restless heart.

One night, Yoko was with Yamaji in a quiet small room on the second floor of an imposing house along the Okawa riverside, listening to the late-night sound of oars while engrossed in conversations about art and love. Behind her house in her hometown too, there was a river that flowed into the sea, and the water felt somehow nostalgic. Yoko spoke of when, as a child, she saw her grandmother’s corpse at the bottom of that clear current—tethered by a rope to a post on the bank to keep it from drifting too far. Her grandmother, who had never neglected her appearance even in old age, spoke of her own weariness with living and constant longing for death in that mystical manner unique to her. As Yozo’s children had described Yoko, she was like a single white lily that had grown in the valleys of Mount Chokai—by some twist of fate entangled among timber and brought to the city—appearing with ethereal poignancy in its natural form within the urban setting, yet precisely because of this, Yoko remained ill-suited to urban life.

While she and Yamaji were thus engaged, a car’s explosive roar suddenly resounded from the front; after a moment, there came the sense of someone storming up the stairs, and her sister’s voice called out to her from the hallway. Yoko quietly left the room. Her sister turned deathly pale. Isshiki had come and was in a furious rage, it turned out, directed at Yoko.

Yoko was perplexed. “I see. Then I’ll go and settle it.”

“I can’t just go carelessly. You might get killed—you might get killed!” Even faced with such ruin, Yoko had no intention of cutting all ties with Isshiki. Even if she were to enter Yamaji’s household, she must not lose a patron-like lover such as Isshiki.

When Isshiki saw Yoko returning to the inn with her sister, he suddenly leaped at her at the room’s entrance. ――For a while, the two did not separate. Soon, the two faced each other. Isshiki’s complexion changed. Condemning Yamaji’s past and present of flitting from woman to woman, he shed tears and earnestly tried to stop her. Yoko did not remain silent either. While placating and comforting him with gentle words, she also voiced her dissatisfaction with the married Isshiki. Once she started speaking, like oilpaper catching fire, her country-accented eloquence burst forth incessantly from her thin lips. In the end, she pleaded.

“Look, you do understand, don’t you? I love you. I’m always yours. But country folk’s tongues—they’re such meddlesome things. Whether praised or blamed, my affairs instantly become their business. For Mother and Brother’s sake too, I must marry Mr. Yamaji properly. If you truly love me, you’ll let this pass.”

Isshiki was completely overwhelmed.

Around that very time, after a long absence, she appeared at Yozo’s study. She wore a neat meisen silk lined kimono, her hair carelessly pulled back in a Western style.

“Sensei, I’ve decided to marry Yamaji.” “Is it not allowed?” Yoko watched his face with an unusually composed expression.

“With Yamaji, then.” Yozo showed a slight look of disapproval. It could not be denied that this was a manifestation of an emotion akin to faint jealousy. “He’s not exactly an admirable match, though….” “Do you think so?” “But I’ve already married him.” “Well, that’s settled then.”

“Yamaji says he wants to meet you, Sensei.” “Did he come with you?” “He’s waiting at Banto’s café.” “If it pleases you, Sensei, might you honor us by joining for tea?” Yozo thrust his feet into weather-worn clogs and stepped through the gate, then guided them to a fowl restaurant near the theater as a gesture of congratulation.

However, it took less than three months for their marriage to collapse. That summer, Yozo encountered the two at the Tsukiji Little Theatre. Her face—with bangs hanging over her forehead—looked haggard, and as she wore a carelessly draped yukata, he did not immediately recognize her. Yet when she smiled at him in the corridor, her face held a shyness so subtle it barely registered, making her seem like someone he must have seen somewhere before.—Eventually the three of them drank tea together, and one could well imagine how these days Yoko had been battered by both life and love.

One day, when Yozo visited a friend in Kamakura, he discovered that Yoko had unusually come by during his absence.

“What was it? She seemed terribly troubled.” “Her tone suggested things weren’t going smoothly with Mr. Yamaji.” “She insisted she absolutely must meet and talk...” “She said she’d come again later, so when she does come, listen carefully.” Kayoko had said this much, but nothing more followed. Yozo later received one or two sentimental letters from her in the countryside, but around the time he’d forgotten them without meaning to, she abruptly reappeared.

Yoko’s complexion had turned slightly russet from the sea breeze, and she had grown conspicuously stout. She informed him that she had recently received marriage proposals from two men and, after detailing their lifestyles and personalities in full, asked him to decide whether she should choose one of these suitors to settle down with in the countryside or return to Tokyo once more to pursue a creative life. “I think someone like you should definitely settle in the countryside. Even if you wander out here, nothing good will come of it anyway. Get married in the countryside.”

Instantly, Yoko shrugged her shoulders and declared flatly. “No—I have no intention of marrying anyone. I’ve always wanted to remain alone.” In such words from Yoko there dwelled a certain vigorous, country-bred determination and passion. And as they spoke, he began to feel he had discovered some new truth about her—yet there remained an unvoiced desire he could not fully fathom. He had promised to visit her lodgings later that evening and parted ways, but Yoko—who had prepared dinner and waited—grew disappointed at his failure to appear and soon returned to the countryside.

It went without saying that correspondence continued between Isshiki and her afterward, nor was it unthinkable that monthly allowance remittances came from Isshiki. Upon receiving news of Kayoko’s death, Yoko abruptly came up to Tokyo and, after settling into her previous lodgings, summoned Isshiki by telephone. Then taking him along, she visited Yozo’s house. From that time onward, her figure began appearing frequently in his lonely study; but Yozo—accompanied by young men he was close with—visited her room for the first time one evening on their way back from a walk. In that roughly ten-mat room hung an atmosphere tinged with melancholy coquetry, bearing no resemblance to his desolate quarters—a vague yet palpable presence hovering between gloom and affected charm.

II Kozue Yoko—wearing a spirited striped figured silk haori over a dull bluish-green and inky purple scale-patterned thick silk kimono, her attire perpetually immaculate—would often visit Yozo as he sat solitary in his desolate nighttime study, accompanied by Isshiki with his dashing slicked-back hairstyle and usual round-rimmed glasses. By then, his deceased wife’s memorial tablet, which had long adorned the alcove, had been enshrined in the Buddhist altar, and his once-declining body had somewhat recovered. With his wife’s sudden death, he felt as though the pillar he had been leaning on had abruptly collapsed. Kayoko, intending to survive, had worried only about what would happen after Yozo’s death, but Yozo too—lacking confidence in his health—had largely shared that expectation; this family life, begun without planning, remained utterly unprepared at every turn, their anxious hearts drawn together as they somehow managed to live each day as it came. Recently, having gained a little financial leeway, his wife—pestered by their music-loving child—had finally bought them a cello, but he did not look pleased with her. Having noticed on some occasion that love letters had been mailed, and at a time when he was already agonizing over how the child—who now seemed to be entering Ginza cafés in a suit—had gradually begun displaying rebellious attitudes toward his father, he became confrontational. However, Kayoko, fearing to have the short-tempered Yozo confront the child, always restrained him. Now, the buffer zone between father and child had been abolished. Yozo, who had lived like a creature of the shadows, found his field of vision suddenly opening up. At times like entering the bath or sitting down to meals—when nowhere could he hear his wife’s voice or catch sight of her figure—Yozo would suddenly feel a desolation as if one hand had been torn away; yet on another level, he also found himself unexpectedly regaining something akin to the freedom of his younger days. Since he had firmly denied remarriage, he felt nothing toward the well-meaning friends who were already fretting to arrange something for him; yet he was secretly sizing up unknown women of the world. The dignified demeanor and emotional distance he had maintained before women—never once relaxing his formal composure—now seemed on the verge of dissolving naturally.

Kozue Yoko had appeared in Yozo’s study two or three times paired with Isshiki—who came to meet her at her lodgings—but one evening she finally came alone and approached him as he sat at his desk.

“I was thinking of coming to your place, Sensei, to help with the household chores—what do you think?” Yoko casually broached the subject. Yozo did not truly take in those words. “Can you manage a household?” “I love household life.” “You might be skilled at embroidery and knitting, but when it comes to my household...” “Oh, don’t be like that! I can manage both the kitchen and cooking. I can even keep your children company.”

“Is that right?”

Yoko leaned forward slightly. “I want to work my hardest for you and your children, Sensei, preserving your household’s structure exactly as it has always been without altering a single thing. So while you are alive, Sensei, I will serve by your side. And when you pass away, I will withdraw gracefully so as not to burden your children.” “What will you do?” “You mean me? I have some property that I’ll receive from my mother. If I were to stay at your house, Sensei, they’d send me kimonos and such things from home, you know. When I came this time, I mentioned it to Mother. Of course Mother agreed.”

“Well… After all, my wife’s death is still recent—let me think it over carefully. It’s not something to be decided so recklessly.”

At the point where both Yozo and she had stiffened, he guided her to the children’s house in the back to listen to the gramophone so as not to let Yoko feel awkward. The adjoining old house was divided into two sections: one side housed the family of Lawyer Mr. T, who had evacuated there during the earthquake disaster and remained ever since, while the other side—comprising roughly three rooms—was where Yozo’s older children lived and slept. When the two of them crossed the garden and went up into the house, amidst the disorderly piles of bookshelves, chairs, framed pictures, and haphazard stacks of miscellaneous books and magazines, Yozo’s child Yotaro—from among the records stacked atop and beneath the tea table—put on Tchaikovsky’s *Andante cantabile*, a piece seemingly chosen to suit her tastes. Yotaro knew that even his father, who didn’t understand music, could tell it was Elman’s strings. Yoko had relaxed her legs and was listening to the serene melody with one slender hand leaning on the tatami, but Yozo had a habit of always drawing Yotaro into their company on such occasions. Next came Farrar’s “Jewel Song”—then Schumann-Heink’s “Welkennig”—as their selections proceeded, but Yozo felt something akin to shame toward Yotaro; Yotaro, for his part, couldn’t fathom what his father meant by coming here late at night with just Yoko; and Yoko herself, though wishing to converse freely with her younger counterpart, grew self-conscious under Yozo’s oddly rigid demeanor and deliberately restrained herself—until all three found themselves locked in a triangular impasse of mutual awkwardness. Before long, they withdrew to the study. Yozo was closing the storm shutter he had left slightly open while peering into the dark sky, but—

“It’s a quiet evening.” “You should go home and get some rest.” “I’ve imposed on you so late.” “Then you should get some rest too, Sensei.” Kozue Yoko left after saying that, but Yozo later found himself feeling somehow unsettled. Perhaps because he himself was ugly—prone as he was to longing for beauty regardless of gender—the impressions lingered deeply: bourgeois wife-like Yoko when she first arrived paired with Matsukawa; her emaciated figure in yukata glimpsed at the small theater; above all, the seductive whirl of flesh around her cheeks. Yet when he considered her past and present, along with the chasm of years between them, he found himself unable to accept her as she was that night.

Probably on his way back from meeting Yoko, Isshiki came by casually the next day. Yozo criticized last night’s Yoko with some vexation. “She’s a woman trying to hop from Yamaji Kusaba all the way to my place.” “If that doesn’t stop, messing with literature or whatever—it’s all pointless in the end.”

“That’s a problem.” “It’s truly a bad habit.” “No—I’ll speak to her properly.” Isshiki left in a fluster, as if he himself had been scolded.

Rather than that, Yozo found himself wanting to draw near to Misuzu Fujiko and her solitary beauty. After losing her husband—a young literary man who had frequented Yozo’s home—Misuzu had long shown her works to Yozo, driven by her desire to carry on her late lover’s unrealized literary ambitions. It was Kayoko, his wife, who had sustained the ties between Yozo and his visitors—whether men or women. At times she had been an obstruction, but without Kayoko, Yozo—prone to nervous exhaustion—would have left guests unbearably ill at ease with his awkward manner. In Misuzu’s case too, it was Kayoko who had acted as mediator. Fujiko always sat as if glued to the entrance’s sliding door. Lately Yozo had begun to show her some ease, but the specter of her late husband Sanshu Haruhiro kept flickering before his eyes. Moreover, having married another consumptive, phlegm rattled in her chest. Her child from that union had already grown up. She had maintained the same distance from Yozo both when Kayoko lived and now.

Then there was Sayama Koyoko—another woman entirely unknown to him—who, due to her excessive romantic entanglements and lifestyle shifts as a model, had been introduced by the back-alley lawyer. She had come to offer incense at Kayoko’s memorial tablet still placed before the alcove during that period. After the three of them drove to her Shiba residence where she treated them to dinner, Yozo had come to feel some lingering connection in a corner of his heart. He did not want to lose sight of her as she was. She had left the mansion of a certain German nobleman where she had cohabited for seven years and was recently deliberating on what to begin after establishing a household in Shiba.

Yozo observed her thin arms covered in messy hair; fingers glittering with magnificent diamonds, large coral pieces, pearls, and thickly studded rings; two long vault keys resembling fire tongs peeking from beneath a carelessly tied gaudy obi sash; the oversized frog-mouthed purse fit for a man—yet as they conversed over dinner, traces of what seemed like a once-cultivated grace gradually surfaced, and he realized she was an utterly enigmatic presence. She asked about Yozo's age and family circumstances, but when speaking of herself merely cast her eyes upward and said, "Well... there have been many things, but anyway, it all began when I became a waitress at Lion's first opening," before falling silent.

Yozo, the country bumpkin, recalled the early Lion establishment where once, after seeing someone off at Shinbashi Station, he had been shocked to be charged several yen for white and pink sherbet eaten together with his wife, children, relatives, and a teacher from Gyosei. “She’s about thirty-five, I’d say.” “I hear a five-hundred-yen patron is making advances now, but she’ll probably turn him down.”

On the way back, the lawyer was talking.

Yozo was startled, but given it was a time of material shortages, once his health had somewhat recovered, he tried approaching the lawyer about accompanying him again. However, there seemed to be some financial complication involved, and he declined with, “It’s better if Sensei goes alone.” —And that was the end of it.

A day later, Yoko appeared in the study. She held on her lap Sakiko—Yozo’s youngest daughter, who had just barely turned nine—a child suddenly orphaned who would cling to anyone reaching out. Sakiko had grown attached to Yoko with her pleasant touch. Yoko shed fat teardrops as she pleaded she had acted in good faith, voicing resentment over Yozo’s critical words that Isshiki had reported. He knew tearful manipulation existed as a tactic, but seeing a woman of refined upbringing—barely twenty-six—in such a state did not suit his sensibilities. Rather than avert cold eyes from her tear-streaked ugliness, he saw Yoko anew in that instant. She had likely been harshly rebuffed by Isshiki and returned to start afresh, yet even her coquettish words barely registered with him.

“It’s quite enough if you just come by occasionally to look after the house. Let’s consider other matters at a more leisurely pace.”

After playing with the children in the living room for a while, Yoko left.

III

Before recalling that frenzied night at the suburban hotel—Yozo first remembered the day she, being fond of movies, had invited him out. It had just stopped raining, and as he wore high clogs for their trip to Asakusa, he felt awkward walking beside her tall figure along the tram route. "I won't take a car," he refused, yet even after boarding the train, he grew exasperated by how Yoko hung from the strap while habitually addressing him as "Sensei" this and "Sensei" that. Then there was his fluster when her hand brushed against his coat sleeve during the film; another day when he casually visited her room to find her lying feverish in a spread-out futon. As he sat at a distance waiting for her to rise, she—wearing only red wool undergarments—finally grew embarrassed realizing she couldn't get up. When she brought her face to the hand he'd extended on the tatami, she whispered "All the way..." or something like that near his ear. But he didn't want to touch her in such half-teasing ways. There was also that night when she tearfully sought his judgment on whether she truly was the "bad woman" people claimed—recounting through sobs how her ill-fated marriage had collapsed from the start, her disownment by even her family, her recent failed marriage to Yamaji. Afterward, with rose-tinted sentimentality unique to her, she launched into a lengthy explanation about some British old statesman's romance with a young girl, as if guiding a provincial elder through a revue. These memories intertwined until one afternoon, when he suddenly packed manuscript paper, pens, and ink into his folding bag to finish urgent work at that suburban hotel—and ended up inviting Yoko, who happened to be visiting.

“Really?” “Is it really all right?” Yoko pressed for confirmation. And once that happened, he could no longer turn back. He went to the designated platform at the promised time to meet her after she had returned to her lodgings to prepare, but finding no sign of Yoko, he waited with a faint sense of disappointment. About ten minutes passed. He went outside and tried using a public telephone. The maid answered, but when he asked for Yoko, she finally appeared after three or four minutes. Considering her repeated assurances of availability, Yozo wondered whether Isshiki had visited her or if she feared medication side effects. Though ample room for deliberation remained, the masquerade character could no longer retreat. Soon Yoko descended to the platform wearing a new coat.

“I’m sorry. You waited quite a while, didn’t you?” She explained she had been in the toilet when he called, but when an empty train arrived just then, she hurriedly boarded. After alighting from the train and reaching the cottage-style hotel on the town’s heights by car, Yozo found it slightly disconcerting that no staff appeared until he signaled while inquiring about rooms. Turning right down the Western building’s long corridor and proceeding a short distance, they descended stone steps into a dark garden. Guided by the bellboy along stepping stones, they entered a Japanese-style room from the veranda and finally settled into an eight-tatami space on the second floor. For Yozo, who feared the cold, the bellboy turned on the electric heater’s switch. After bathing to warm herself and settling before the large rosewood desk, by the time her lips touched the single glass of wine she had poured, Yoko’s face gradually began glowing with apparent happiness. She spoke of her hometown’s architecture from its days as a thriving shipping brokerage before railways came, of winters in Yozo’s homeland evoked by waves heard through silent snowbound nights, of phantom-like gray gulls soaring over northern seas that seemed the world’s edge, of joyful kotatsu gatherings during sunless winters beneath gloomy skies—how even the room’s modest decor and garden now took on mysteriously shaded hues, as though painting shadows over it all.

The night grew late. By the time the shoji doors began to whiten faintly with dawn, the two of them had sunk into a deathlike slumber. In a dimness reminiscent of a passing shower, Yozo sat entranced before the desk, embracing the brazier as if his soul had been torn away. A little past noon, Yoko left the bed, entered the bath, sat at the mirror stand in the next room to fix her hair and face, then—saying she would go see Yozo’s children for a moment—departed through the back gate in a covered rickshaw, not forgetting a kiss. Yozo now felt a youth too vibrant for his parched heart and withered body to contain—a first for him—yet as he dazedly pondered the events of the previous night like one who had lost consciousness, he sensed the passion that had lain dormant within him now roused all at once. An unbearable loneliness then drove him into anguished torment. ——Her supple hands with translucent skin; thin, receptive lips resembling red flower petals; beautiful eyes like black diamonds and long eyelashes; the tormenting allure of the curve from her cheeks to her mouth—all these seared into his desiccated veins even as her youthful soul sank its teeth completely into his heart. Yozo even cursed his own long, unfortunate life.

As he did so, the room gradually grew dim. When he thought to turn the light switch and suddenly looked up, the bulb was wrapped in a red handkerchief. In that instant, Yozo’s heart jolted. Soon, he stood on the desk and freed it. He had no idea when she had done such a thing. Yozo stepped down from the desk and sniffed the handkerchief with a furtive air. Last night, Yoko had described this romance as some grand, impassioned leap on his part—and he had no choice but to accept it. Yozo gradually grew increasingly impatient for her to return. It was not even clear whether she would return. He prayed she would not return, but even so, it was painful. Just then, the bellboy appeared at the entrance to the next room,

“There’s a call from Ms. Kozue.”

“I see.”

Yozo nodded and stood up. “Sensei.” “What are you doing?” “And you?” “After that, I went to your house and kept the children company by singing nursery rhymes and such.” “Everyone’s doing well.” “I was just thinking of having dinner now—won’t you join me?” “If I won’t be in the way of your work, Sensei, I’ll come right away.” Within thirty minutes or less, Yoko—wearing a painted-sleeve haori kimono jacket patterned with seaweed motifs—passed through the garden directly below him as he sat puffing on a cigarette in the rattan chair along the corridor’s edge, then came up to the room. Having gone to her regular beauty salon and applied full makeup, it seemed the pallor of her face glimmered vividly in the dimness.

Another day found Yozo in Yoko’s room—a landlocked space removed from other quarters where no slipper-clattering echoed through corridors, letting them avoid fellow lodgers’ eyes. At the window shaded by temple pines, she had devised elegant draperies before placing her desk and bookcase there. Hours would vanish as he listened to her reminiscences and literary discussions, until around five when temple drums would sound and dawn’s pallor startle them into retreating to bed. She had once mentioned being promised to someone in two or three years—though Yozo couldn’t fathom who—and when he asked if it were Isshiki, she replied he already kept both a wife and some longstanding mistress from the leisure class.

“You needn’t worry about such things, Sensei.” “If you feel uncomfortable about it, we can settle things anytime.” “What if he comes here?” “He would never do such a thing.” Yoko sat before her desk wearing a black satin-collared yuzen-patterned winter kimono with plushly padded cotton, though in the single-flower vase she’d bought at the stationer’s, an early bloom already stood arranged, while the clatter of streetcars and footsteps outside carried an oddly uplifted air. She would often slip into the sunlit four-and-a-half-mat room at the edge of Yozo’s house to play with his youngest daughter—now wholly attached to her—even bathing together to shave the girl’s nape and trim her nails. She dabbed cream and powder on her too. Sakiko, barely nine, would crawl beneath the long coffin housing her mother and peer quizzically at its base as if searching there—but since Mother could no longer be met, and many such children existed in the world, one mustn’t speak of her anymore. When Yozo once told her, “But you’ve plenty of brothers and sisters instead,” she abruptly ceased mentioning Mother altogether. Yet when she’d sometimes fuss and hurl scissors about, Yoko would laughingly tell Yozo they must mend that habit.

“Your legs are so pretty, Auntie.” In the bath she would say while touching Yoko’s feet, but at night—when put to bed by Yoko—she would often finally fall asleep. She must have frequently searched in secret for her mother through the family room and storage closet. Yet when Yozo remembered how his own carelessness had caused his eldest daughter to perish overnight, he had no choice but to endure. Too timid and frozen to embrace romance or abandon in love or work, he could neither push his children away nor love them bodily; yet setting aside lifelong matters like education that demanded sustained sincerity, the void now gaping in their daily household should have been eased considerably simply by adding Yoko—a woman without an ounce of guile. He understood the vexation of unnaturally extending his quarter-century marriage—that track-worn life—by grafting on another woman; yet soon after stowing Kayoko’s memorial tablet away, he also felt he had unlatched a cage door.

“You’d be in trouble right away, wouldn’t you?” “You too have a lot of children to support and have to work.—Wait a moment; I have some idea myself.”

Washio, who was the funeral committee chairman and of the same generation, said. Yozo had been indirectly envisioning a somewhat more vivid fantasy than what he seemed to pursue—but it was merely that: an attempt at imagining. He firmly denied remarriage. That a marriage now would be a heavy burden both financially and emotionally went without saying. The children alone sufficed. By the glass window with drawn curtains, as they warmed themselves at the Seto brazier discussing the novel, the phone rang and Yoko went downstairs.

“Isshiki?”

From the look on Yoko’s face as she entered the room, Yozo sensed it. “He says he’ll send a car to pick me up—please keep me company for a bit. If Sensei doesn’t mind, I’ll go settle things though…” “Well, I don’t mind.” “Am I a bad woman?”

Yozo was laughing.

“Is it all right if I go?” “Should I refuse?”

“Anyway, I must keep things proper.” “I’ll do just that.” “Then please wait here for me.” “I’ll definitely return by nine, so please go ahead and sleep.” “I definitely will.” “Cross my heart!” Yoko said that and left after making a pinky swear. Yozo slipped into the bedding the maid had laid out by the wall, but before long, a girl from Akita—Yoko’s attendant—slid open the fusuma door with an “Excuse me.” Yozo had just begun to doze off when he looked up and saw her bringing to his bedside a box wrapped in blue paper and tied with string,

“Miss Kozue said to give this to you now, Sensei.”

When Yozo peeked through a gap in the packaging, he saw withered rapeseed leaves protruding and realized these were early strawberries. Leaving them by his pillow, he dozed off again. Once before, when she was about to return to the countryside, she had arrived by car and brought in a splendid Western flower planting. As it gradually withered away, he had unusually written a letter to her in the countryside.

“But Sensei, that was definitely your love letter.” He had later been told this by Yoko, though such a thing had indeed occurred. The location where Yoko was meeting Isshiki could be roughly guessed from her manner of speaking when departing, but whether she would return that night remained unclear. Yozo, lulled by the strawberries, slept as obediently as a child awaiting its mother; but amidst Yoko’s carelessly scattered magazines, books, and manuscripts, he had once unexpectedly discovered a letter from Isshiki. Knowing she was always busily summoning him from somewhere, he could mostly imagine what transpired between the two who carried on like a married couple.

However, Yoko returned exactly at the promised time.

“I’m sorry. You’ve been sleeping all this time since then.” “I must have dozed off a bit… But you made it back safely.” Yozo looked at her face where the face powder had flaked off and, “So what happened?” “I brought up that topic.” “Then Mr. Isshiki got all worked up over this and that, so I thought I should cut things short quickly, and before I knew it…” “Would you take a bath if there’s one?” “Yes, I’ll come in, okay?”

Yoko went downstairs as if being driven.

IV

One time when Yozo had gone down to the garden and was planting Eizan moss—now tinged with blue—into soil mixed with sand using a shovel, Yoko sat on the veranda that had suddenly brightened over two or three days beneath the shadow of white magnolias blooming thickly across a large tree. She wore her usual striped haori over a dark bluish-green-and-purple scale-patterned meisen silk everyday kimono. When Kozue Yoko had brought Matsukawa and the children along with a bulky manuscript—it being precisely during this magnolia bloom—she seemed to fondly recall that season whenever it returned; but just then, a visitor arrived for Yoko, and upon learning it was Akimoto, her hometown Diet member, Yozo discarded his shovel and came up to the veranda. Akimoto, a landed gentry from her hometown, was an admirer of Tolstoy and Gandhi and had authored some literary works, but originally a poet, it was he who had organized Yoko’s numerous songs for imminent publication. Yoko made an awkward smile and said, “Could you meet him?” so he started washing his hands to come up, but Akimoto had already entered the room. Akimoto possessed a noble and imposing demeanor; like most people from Yoko’s hometown, he had a well-proportioned frame and limbs as slender as young cedars. Around the rosewood table, the two sat facing each other, exchanging probing glances and only brief words. Yozo had been shown drafts of her poetry anthology—marked with circles and dots—at Yoko’s inn and had read his writings praising soil, yet he confronted Akimoto with something akin to a sense of superiority, caught between certainty and doubt that this was the man to whom Yoko had promised marriage. After a while, Akimoto was seen off by Yoko to that point and left. Much later, it seemed Akimoto had long proposed that once he liquidated his provincial assets—leaving only a modest portion for his children—he would bring everything to Tokyo, purchase land in the suburbs to manage a farm, and there build a joyful love nest with Yoko; in that case, he wanted her to completely sever ties with literary circles. Yet while Yoko needed such patrons precisely as a means to break into those circles, she herself did not know whether she could follow through to that extent.

Soon Yoko returned.

“He’s a handsome man, isn’t he?” “Do you think so?”

Yoko smiled. At that time, she hadn’t yet fully moved out of the inn, so whether this was her first meeting with Akimoto remained unclear; though he knew they had been talking at the entranceway, seeing Yoko return to his side with a bright face—despite some shadows—it seemed nothing more than a mentor-student relationship regarding poetry. Around then, a faint unrest surrounded Yozo. Rumors about them had even reached the newspapers, with anonymous postcards occasionally arriving or signed protests being lodged. Each time this happened, Yozo would sink into gloom or grow jittery, but Yoko would soothe him repeatedly, as if shielding him from these criticisms gradually reaching their ears. When tensions rose at home, he would slink back to the inn; other times, she herself would turn spiteful and bolt out abruptly. Though Yozo sometimes felt a flutter of anxiety, afterward Yoko would send a girl with a letter summoning him to the inn or wander through late-night streets with curious children trailing behind her.

One day—apparently having come into money from somewhere (she claimed it was her mother’s monthly allowance)—after doing some heavy shopping, she bought a splendid pot of gladiolus from a street florist that made Yozo grimace in disapproval. For the seasonal festival, she purchased several dolls from the department store to liven up the children’s tiered doll display, and would sometimes drag all four children out to see movies before stopping to eat something on the way home. This led Yozo to visit her room one day with the intention of giving her spending money.

“Sensei’s money—I couldn’t possibly accept an artist’s money.” “I’m not visiting you with that sort of intention, you know.” “Please don’t trouble yourself over such things.” She had kept refusing, but realizing Yozo wouldn’t relent,

“In that case, I’ll accept it for now—since this is unexpected money, I think I’ll use it to redeem the items I’ve pawned.” “Of course. You know about such things too?”

“Indeed I do. When I kept house with Matsukawa in Tabata, it was an absolute struggle. He’d go out every day job-hunting while my manuscripts weren’t getting anywhere—I even thought about becoming a movie actress. I went as far as accepting an offer, but after hearing all the details, I lost heart… And above all, Matsukawa kept making that disapproving face…” Yoko went out, but soon returned—apparently by taxi—and, breathing heavily, brought in a bundle of clothes with the maid. Gaudy formal attire, obi sashes, and undergarment kimonos were spread out there.

“I know this is terribly presumptuous of me, but if you wouldn’t mind… I’d like your daughter to wear this one piece.”

“Hmm. Since she’s a student and still has nothing, that should be fine.” The two soon left the inn, and Yoko herself returned to Yozo’s house carrying a floral-patterned Kobama-style small-sleeved kimono wrapped in a furoshiki cloth. She wanted to stay as far away from money matters as possible. She had wanted to avoid dragging her relationship with Yozo into matters of livelihood—knowing it would constrain her freedom at every turn and deepen his emotional involvement—but his feelings had now completely engulfed Yoko, just as she herself had described.

V

At that time, Yoko had taken Yozo’s daughters to a renowned yarn shop three blocks away, bought her preferred wool, and began knitting a sweater for Sakiko. During such times, she was truly a good friend to the children, but when she came to Yozo’s side or went out with him, the children grew lonely. Around that time, after Kayoko’s death, Yozo’s sister—who had stayed behind alone to manage the household—had already returned to the countryside, and Kayoko’s brother-in-law, who had helped around the funeral, had likewise drifted away without notice. Kayoko had two yakuza-like younger brothers. Except for the youngest brother—who, despite his youth, had received higher education and was settled into a prestigious large temple—the rest were the sort who would turn to their older sister for everything. Moreover, since it was Kayoko’s kind-hearted mother who was looking after the children, Yozo sometimes felt almost like an adopted child himself. Severing such connections was quite difficult. As the children grew in number, she too gradually began to think ahead and had been relying on her youngest brother, but once Yoko entered the picture, those people vanished all at once. Yozo had set down the long-carried luggage, and that alone brought him a sense of relief, but what perplexed him was the confrontation between his sister—who had strived for the children’s sake—and Yoko. Of course, it wasn’t certain that someone who had come after the household’s wife died and settled into the tearoom to such an extent did so out of mere goodwill. If one were to remain in a daze, it could easily lead to being softly overwhelmed.

“If you claim you can be a proper housewife, you should try preparing meals too.” Yoko—raised in Akita—had considerable skill in cooking, yet what she prepared upon entering the kitchen that day was a Hokkaido dish called sanpeijiru, a salt-based soup with salmon and vegetables. When Yozo came to inspect her work, she flushed crimson and, “Oh, stop it! Don’t come peeking.” The sister—versed in her native kaiseki cuisine—narrowed her piercing eyes at the massive pot of sanpeijiru Yoko had cooked up. But even beyond such moments, enduring meals under that sister’s unyielding gaze by the long brazier while seated with the children proved unbearable for Yoko. How profoundly the mood of three daily meals could shape human existence was a truth often learned through generations of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, stepmothers and stepchildren across ordinary households. Even had Yoko never entered their lives, Yozo would surely have later regretted entrusting domestic affairs to this sister. His displeasure deepened when he noticed—in the back house—that someone had prepared an unexpectedly large piece of luggage without his knowledge.

However, Yoko’s daily routines consisted of entertaining the children by singing nursery rhymes, applying makeup on Sakiko, skillfully wielding knitting needles, or—when the mood struck—whipping up simple Western dishes; losing herself in romance novels; and discussing new literature and musical films with the eldest son. The only one managing the kitchen was Osu, a maid whose compact frame belied her age. Although the number of maids later increased, Osu still retained a rough understanding of the household routines from Kayoko’s time and knew exactly where everything was stored. However, even Kayoko had noticed her innate tendency to steal growing increasingly brazen, and that too had eventually been dismissed.

On a day of light rain, Yoko put on makeup, dressed in a black figured-nishiki crested kimono and other such attire, and unusually went out alone. “May I go get my photo taken?” She came to Yozo’s desk and said. “Of course. “Where….” “It’s called Sone in Ginza—a splendidly artistic photo studio.” “I’ll be right back.” “You simply must stay put at Sensei’s house.” “I promise.” “Well then, cross my heart!” In such situations, her considerate way was typically to seal the promise with a kiss and a pinky swear. Yozo recalled how during his boarding house days—when he would visit and the woman moved to another room—her leaving behind that striped Omeshi haori there had brought him some comfort. Yet even as he felt a faint unease that this dubious woman might slip away, he had obediently waited as instructed. When he thought about it later—seeing how soon that photo with its affected pose arrived—even if it wasn’t entirely a lie, neither was it the truth. She had probably visited Isshiki—or if Akimoto had still been in Tokyo at the time—it seemed she might have stopped by his inn. While Yozo pictured her in the Ginza streets—her light lacquered geta carrying her across asphalt where the pitter-patter of rain steadily intensified—the taxi she had hired might have been slipping through some unknown route. That waiting for the woman brought far greater happiness than actually meeting her was something he had no way of knowing from the start. Yozo chased after visions of her—her hair styled in that ambiguous way of hers, neither fully Japanese nor Western—walking beneath a navy umbrella through spring rain across every corner of Ginza. But as he did so, his chest began to feel constricted. Yozo had not, however, been troubled for long. Before long, Yoko returned and nestled sweetly against his lap.

“Don’t abandon me.”

On a day of rough April winds, there was someone at the entrance, and Yoko—who had gone out—soon returned holding a small tied letter. When she read it, a look of astonishment immediately crossed her face. “What could this mean? That man has come.”

It was Matsukawa—the one who had gone bankrupt in Hokkaido. “He’s at an inn in Yushima.” “He says since he’s leaving soon, could I just meet him briefly… but…” “I won’t go—I.”

Yozo’s head began to grow oppressively heavy. After he—having become unable to manage and retreated to Tabata—had returned to Hokkaido with his three children, nearly two years had already passed. In that interval, various changes had occurred in Yoko’s circumstances. It was when the New Year’s Eve temple bells began tolling that year that Yoko—her married life at the Tabata house having reached an impasse—settled her affairs and parted from her children too. She made the children bathe before having them prepare for their journey. Yoko would often recount that unforgettable night and weep.

“But they’re children who’ve grown distant from me. They’ll manage on their own somehow. There’s no use dwelling on things you can’t change—best not to think about them at all.”

In their hometown, people seemed to harbor considerable sympathy for the man whose fate had been shattered, but according to Yoko, his character too had its flaws. Given that this beautiful couple had been the envy of their local social circles, for someone as flamboyant as him to satisfy a wife like Yoko, he inevitably had to dabble in dangerous work; moreover, no matter what life-shattering ruin loomed before them, he could not bring himself to disturb her dreams. He had always possessed enough tolerance and affection to gently soothe his wife with kind words when she—misunderstanding something—grew angry at the peculiarity of there being only one tokobashira pillar in the Japanese-style room of the modern house that a young engineer had built half as a hobby; yet when the Tabata period arrived, the true collapse of their love finally came. It was precisely when Yoko was attempting to gain permission to join the studio.

“With your looks, you could certainly become a star overnight—but in exchange, you’d have to stake your chastity, wouldn’t you?” Instead of denying it, Yoko smirked.

Now, when Yoko saw the letter from Matsukawa—who had unexpectedly come to Tokyo—her heart was suddenly thrown into turmoil. Even if there was some fear, in every situation she never doubted the other’s love. “Something feels off—I’ll try calling.” With those words, Yoko went to the boarding house behind the telephone exchange where she often borrowed the phone. When the person on the line answered, she casually addressed them.

“Hello? It’s me—you know who this is?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” “On my way to a rather distant place for certain reasons, I thought I’d drop by secretly to see you—it’s been ages, there’s so much to discuss, and I’ve been worried about you.” “So there’s something I absolutely must give you in person—that’s why I want you to come here for a bit.” “Alright, I’ll go right away.” Yoko returned to Yozo’s side and informed him accordingly. “It might take a little longer than expected, you know.” “But believe in me, okay?”

When Yoko saw Matsukawa at the inn he had taken in Yushima, she offered her lips to him as he suddenly rushed toward her. Matsukawa had not even removed his suit, but compared to when they had parted in Tabata, he had made himself presentable. He had embezzled thirty thousand yen from the company where he was serving as legal advisor—using it to provide for his family during their absence and settle pressing debts with henchmen—and was now preparing to flee to Shanghai with ambitions of making his fortune. He would lay low for the time being and summon his second wife and children once establishing a foothold. Yoko teared up.

“This must stay absolutely secret.” “You’re likely in need—I thought to give you this… This should cover your studies for some time.” Matsukawa spoke these words and pulled a bundle of bills from his pocket, counting out ten large notes before handing them over. With the student attendant he’d dispatched earlier now absent from his post, they talked like lovers accustomed to clandestine meetings. “That Sensei fancies you too.” “Is he always hovering around?” “No… And Sensei’s rather advanced in years.”

As evening approached, Yoko parted ways and returned, but even after stepping outside, her tears did not dry in the slightest.

Yozo waited anxiously for Yoko’s return while listening to the clamor of the wind. The depths of his gloomy mind grated like sandpaper, his mouth parched dry. He was physically spent.

Yoko’s eyes were moist when she returned. “You can forgive that much.” Yozo had no choice but to come to feel that way, but Yoko denied it.

“He’s already using such formal honorifics with me—like I’m a stranger—he gave me a thousand yen.” “I went and took it.” “Keep this secret.” “Deposit it at the bank.” “I will.”

Whether she had done so or not, Yozo made no attempt to broach the subject of money; yet when he finally remembered to ask much later, he found that not a single sen remained. Of course, since she had done some shopping the very next day after receiving it, he understood that the money had been promptly spent, but...

The morning after that was when Yoko went to see Matsukawa off at Tokyo Station. Though she asked Yozo if he would come along to see him off, and he did accompany her, he felt somewhat awkward, and Yoko, her mood having shifted, went up to the platform alone. “I said, ‘Couldn’t you give me at least one child?’” “But it seems he wouldn’t allow it.” “He’s taking them to Shanghai after all.” “If that’s their fate, then there’s nothing to be done, I suppose.”

While eating strawberry cream at Senbikiya in the Maru Building, Yoko was tearing up. However, after a day or two passed, such sentimentality had already blown away, and Yoko urged Yozo to go buy at least a chest of drawers with that money. “Hey Sensei, don’t you think it’s unbearable how I have nothing and can’t manage?” “Even if I stay at your house, I hate feeling like I’m just there to get something.” “I want to use Mr. Matsukawa’s money to buy just a chest of drawers and a mirror—could you come along and take a look?”

From the street they had often walked together lately, the two descended toward the cut-through path. And on Nakadori Street, she tried inviting him to the shop where his wealthy friend made purchases. Handwarmers, tables, tea cabinets—all crafted from mulberry and paulownia in intricate styles—were packed tightly there. Yoko purchased a rather high-quality mulberry mirror stand from among two or three options of mulberry and lacquerware, then through an introduction there, also bought one chest of drawers at a store on the main avenue. Over two hundred yen had been spent—even for present-day Yoko, it felt somewhat excessive. Basking in the April sun still holding traces of shadow, the two circled the edge of the pond and climbed the stone steps of Tōshōgū Shrine. Yoko kept up a constant stream of chatter, but when they reached a less frequented spot, the conversation somehow turned to Kayoko. Then, jostling him playfully like in a game of sardines, she teased Yozo relentlessly—yet within her words flickered a youthful sensibility that resonated with him, a man long buried in domesticity.

“I’m sorry for criticizing your wife like that.” “But your wife is quite well-regarded in the neighborhood.” “The madam at the beauty salon was praising her.”

Yozo felt as though he were being bewitched by a fox, but just around that time, abnormalities began appearing in his eyes—the road seemed uneven, and hazy ripples floated within the light. He had felt an agonizing dread toward this romance marked by such disparity in age and physicality from the very beginning, but now the chronic diabetes he had long neglected suddenly began weighing on him.

"My eyes feel strange."

Yesterday, when he was going to Tokyo Station, he suddenly felt it.

“You need to get examined right away. Let’s head back now.”

However, as he grew accustomed to it, it didn’t cause him much discomfort, but now while walking along the pond’s edge, he realized it was right behind O——Ophthalmology Hospital. Though examination hours were nearly over, the director readily examined him. He was made to enter a darkroom, undergo blood tests, and be checked for tuberculosis—after rigorous testing lasting over an hour, it became clear this too stemmed from his diabetes.

“For the time being, continue with the calcium injections.” The director said.

On his way back, Yozo bought Nylander’s solution, took out the dust-covered alcohol lamp and test tubes, and attempted a urine test on the veranda. At the time his illness was discovered, he had gone to the hospital daily while also weighing each item of food; back then, he had performed urine tests on himself multiple times a day. It had long been discontinued, but now, seeing the liquid in the test tube—boiling from the blue flame’s heat—rapidly turn tea-brown and then soot-black, he felt a pang of discouragement.

“Look! It’s pitch black!” He laughed. “Those sarcastic-looking eyes of yours.” Yoko laughed too. When Yozo visited her family home on the northern coast at Yoko’s urging, paulownia flowers perfumed the air along both sides of the road. Yoko wore a pale brown kimono with scattered splash patterns—her casual handbag and parasol accentuating the voluptuousness of her slightly plump figure. She had returned to her hometown once before too, having unexpectedly whisked away both of Yozo’s daughters who came to see her off. That day was Saturday. As the younger girl attached to Yoko boarded first, the eldest daughter followed suit.

“Auntie’s house isn’t that bad!” Precisely because she had grown up in a snow country where nature’s transformations were dramatic, the reality fell short of what the children had been proudly told by Yoko—who was ever inclined toward poetic sentiment—and so they were disappointed.

After transferring to the coastal line—likely heading toward Sakata, which she’d heard brimmed with entertainment districts—boarding alongside a troupe of performers brought them some relief. In truth, Yoko had kept watch with vigilant eyes until settling into her sleeper berth the previous night. Their mismatched costumes meant they were spotted wherever they went. Yozo became recognizable through Yoko, just as Yoko became noticeable through Yozo. Gossip and whispers of condemnation and ridicule constantly plagued their nerves—they hadn’t intended to come this far. Yozo’s surroundings too were tumultuous.

The performers were making merry, passing around popular haiku that were all the rage in their world and such.

The train was sluggish. At first, Yoko told him about the local customs around Sakata and old romances from the heyday of the shipping agents near her home—referred to as a snowy village—but as she continued, she grew bored, and drowsiness began to set in. Her stories always carried a tinge of sentimentality and lingering emotion—the six-year struggle with tuberculosis that had defined her father’s life, the blare of a horn from the old-fashioned carriage she rode when first leaving town to attend Akita Girls’ School, the academic atmosphere of an era roiled by a homosexuality scandal in education circles, the fates of beautiful young people in its aftermath.

At the station could be seen Yoko’s mother and sister, along with Koyama—a local literary youth connected by marriage—and others of that ilk. The house was not truly as grand as made out, but with its splendid thick pillars of straight-grained cedar, ceilings of fine wood grain, and cedar doors, it presented the solid appearance befitting a shipping agent’s residence. Separated by a long earthen floor leading to the backyard were rooms such as the children’s room, dining room, maid’s quarters, and kitchen. After the greetings concluded, Yozo was guided to the second floor, where there was a wide veranda with an aged chair as well. The hall there, which she had often heard about, seemed to bear traces of her wedding night with Matsukawa—who had been immersed in drink for two days and nights—but she, likely feeling as bashful as when she had brought Kusaba there before, quietly drew near to plant a kiss on him, then swiftly pulled away. Footsteps sounded on the staircase.

“Mother says it’s not funny at all.” He opened the high window, looked out at the blue sea, then went downstairs. His suitcase containing Yoko’s change of clothes had already been carried in—passing by the well and bath, crossing the earthen floor—to the next room of the detached building deep beyond. Yoko guided Yozo there. “It’s truly a humble room, but this is where Father always stayed.” “Father never let anyone near him.” “He did nothing but read books here.” “On winter nights, we could even hear his coughing fits from our side. It was truly pitiful.”

The shelves were packed with things like translated novels and poetry collections. Miscellaneous small antiques were also arranged there. Yozo went out to the six-mat veranda overlooking the garden and was looking at the framed items.

“Let’s go see the backyard.”

Following her invitation, he slipped on his garden clogs and stepped out to the back. There were fruit trees, vegetable fields, and flower beds. To even the modest trees and flowers, Yoko seemed to feel a beautiful nostalgia; standing beside the old plum tree and pomegranate trunk, she recounted memories from her childhood. Descending many steps, they found a grassy embankment where a broad expanse of river waves spread imposingly. At its edge, the Japan Sea stretched vividly blue under the glow of the setting sun. Countless black-tailed gulls cried out, hovering motionless over the waves.

That evening, after Yozo had taken a bath and finished his meal, two more reporters arrived. He reluctantly decided to let them in. “We received a report from Fukushima, you see.” One of them, who seemed aflame with literary passion, relaxed as he said this. And then, he looked back at Yoko, “There’s such an elegant room here?” And as Yoko poured beer and such, the mood gradually relaxed, and he found himself nodding in agreement that there was nothing resembling a social page reporter’s demeanor here.

“The rumor is that you’ve come this time to hold a wedding ceremony—is that true?” Yozo was flustered. Though Yoko said that if Yozo had such intentions, Uncle Yokoyama would have come to discuss it, he could not bring himself to feel that way. “I will not marry anyone.” Having said this, he earnestly explained his living circumstances and state of mind. The reporters bluntly voiced impressions typical of their generation’s youth before finally taking their leave.

VI

Even within this coastal town embodying the lonely beauty of snow country, the area known as Snow Village—having preserved traces of its past prosperity as a port before railways could reach here—now held faint drumming from brothels whose locations were impossible to discern, sounds that might catch one’s ear while returning from strolls toward the brighter, more walkable parts of town. Along the way, two or three cars parked outside traditional restaurants with seemingly vast depths behind their walls lent an air of coquettish allure to the scene.

“The dance instructor here is Madame.” “Lately she’s been inviting Ms. Yukie to teach new dance styles too.” Having said this, Yoko explained that Madame was an intellectual woman who understood nuanced conversation. Yozo was guided to her brother’s house—who had come promptly on his arrival day—and to the residence of a literature-loving medical scholar with whom he was acquainted. Her dentist brother had installed equipment so rare that even Tokyo had fewer than three units, earning favorable reception in town. One evening at a traditional restaurant, while eating turban snails and such, he was shown a dance performance by many beauties; another time, invited to the newly built mansion across the river—the marital home of her aunt who had married into the mayor’s family—he was guided through an expansive sake brewery and drank liquor suited to his palate while watching carp float in water flowing beneath ornate banisters. When visiting such houses, Yoko would grow docile like an adopted cat, sitting perfectly still at the lowest seat in her black underrobe with white embroidered patterns. However, there existed a young man who had long read his works and even once met him in Tokyo, so Yozo never lacked occupation. This young man—something like Yoko’s second cousin—ran a bookstore in town while also operating a sports equipment shop. His wife was this mayor’s adopted daughter.

The beauty of the water flowing through the steeply sloped streets of that area suited sake brewing perfectly. Descending that mountainous terrain and crossing the old wooden bridge over the familiar river brought them to a rural outskirts common to any countryside—with Yoko’s house not far off. Before the detached house where Yozo slept and woke, charming zinnias bloomed abundantly, yet beneath the summer-like sunlight lingered faint shadows that disrupted his body’s equilibrium with the outside air, making him cough. Yoko would fetch shirts from the neighboring house while her mother rummaged through old items stored in the warehouse—producing things like a yellow figured-weave lined kimono that looked natural on Yozo, or a coarse-textured dark navy unlined garment. One day when sudden heat returned, Yoko invited him onto a crab-fishing boat departing beneath a bridge. They rowed across deep waters while gazing at rocks beyond dense reeds reminiscent of Chinese landscape paintings. From behind Yoko’s house, the river gradually widened until nearing flocks of black-tailed gulls rippling on waves—where an endless blue seascape merged with a crystalline azure sky.

“I’ll bring crab roe tomorrow morning. I promise.” “You know where my house is, right?” Yoko took out a pouch from her obi and gave some money to the boatman, but the boat had already put out to sea and was soon rowed up to the shore. Yoko walked boldly across the beach she had played on since childhood, whistling as she went, the hem of her stripe-patterned serge summer kimono tucked up. In Yozo’s eyes as he chased after her beckoning figure, the form of Mount Chokai—still bearing patches of white snow upon its bluish-black skin scorched to a burnt hue—appeared vividly close before him. At that moment, Yozo felt something otherworldly—the sight of her frolicking in the sea seemed almost like a mountain spirit. Yozo stood at the water’s edge where glittering silver sand showed through the waves. The wide beach held no human figures.

“It’s much more beautiful and brighter than the sea in my hometown.” “It is.”

He struck a match within the sleeve she had spread out and lit his cigarette.

“Can you swim?”

“Whenever I went into the sea, my father would scold me, so…” “Somehow I feel like going in now.” Yozo stripped naked and, just as he had done long ago in his hometown’s sea, gradually waded into the waves that lapped against his awkward shins—thighs—until he was about eighteen meters out. He tried swimming, but the chill after all raised goosebumps, so he soon emerged onto the warm sand and basked in the sun. The fresh sunlight seemed to be absorbed into the smooth white skin where beads of seawater slid.

Kozue Yoko let the waves toy with her straight, pale shins, retreating again and again.

It was not long after this that Yoko returned to the coastal house, taking along her eldest daughter Rumiko, whom she had unexpectedly reclaimed from her stepmother’s care. She commuted between her hometown—a sixteen-hour journey—and Tokyo with the same nonchalance as going out to Ginza. The last time she tried to return to Tokyo, when she actually approached the ticket counter, she became somewhat difficult, momentarily troubling Yozo. The two of them left the ticket counter and, with no other choice, walked for a while along the trackside fence through a backstreet reeking of muddy ditches. The young poplar leaves fluttered in the wind, and rain clouds hung in the sky. Since Yozo had rejected formalizing their union, the prospect of being unable to return with him—given her mother and relatives’ scrutiny—likely weighed on Yoko’s mind to some degree. Yet having always lived freely as she pleased in open spaces, she stood no chance of enduring the stifling tension that lingered in Yozo’s cramped household. But Yozo, thoughtlessly, had laid everything bare without reserve. Though she had always been gossiped about by society—reduced to a flapper-like specimen of scandal—her movements over recent years, wandering hither and thither in search of respite for her unsteady soul, carried within them the elaborate dreams and passions befitting a country girl who had fled to pursue literature. This stirred, all at once, the emotions of Yozo, who had long secluded himself at home and now felt life nearing its twilight. Above all else, her youth and beauty had buoyed up his soul, which had begun to harden unfulfilled. The tear-streaked face of a child lashing out would appear ugly to him; the urgent words of a close young man who came rushing in to confront him would feel cursed. All the distant voices of criticism reaching his ears only served to fan Yozo’s defiance. He was completely uneducated in the techniques of love. Even in his youth, he had lacked mental pliability. His timid heart gradually became shameless, mixed with something petty-seeming at times, and was reeled up to a point beyond retrieval.

It was not only Yozo who was unable to withdraw. Having lost any means of escape from Yozo, who had utterly claimed her as his own, now she too found herself at a loss.

“You’re trying to send me back alone, aren’t you?” Yozo reproached Yoko as she walked nearly brushing against him. Her face, holding a wisp of shadow, looked all the more beautiful.

“That’s not it, but I did leave some things unfinished—isn’t it all right if I come along later?”

“I suppose so.”

“Sensei is fine. But it’s the children, you see.” Yoko wanted to live apart, but she understood he was not someone who could leave the children. And Yozo’s worries also lay there. He knew their age difference made taking seriously Yoko’s past vow—“I’ll uphold Sensei’s family traditions as they’ve always been…”—too impractical, but it pained him all the more to leave his children behind to devote himself to her. It was the perennial dilemma faced by solitary individuals, yet simultaneously an immediate economic problem. Above all, he lacked objectivity toward Yoko’s difficult position.

In any case, after waiting for the next train to A—City, Yoko too boarded cheerfully. And while waiting for the night train to Tokyo, they took a taxi to briefly tour the town. They also strolled through a park where a statue of a feudal lord with a striking appearance stood.

Even after boarding the train, Yozo remained preoccupied by the atmosphere during their stay—his own demeanor, and Yoko’s behavior that seemed to suggest some lingering reluctance. Having their commemorative photo taken at the town photographer’s studio left him with an unsettled feeling. The studio stood in a quiet residential district dotted with beautiful willow-lattice fences. Yoko wore a long furisode she had once donned for a wedding ceremony—fastening an obi embroidered in gold and silver thread with cranes and pine trees—while her sister, soon to marry a Bachelor of Science residing in Taiwan, entered the studio in similar formal attire. The mother and sister-in-law sat flanking the sisters on either side, with the tall brother and shorter Yozo standing behind them. Yozo felt he would never return to this place again.

When the train carrying Yoko and Rumiko arrived, Yozo was standing on the platform with his eldest son. For Yoko, his older children were nothing short of a bane, but when discussing literature, music, and films with their young peers, the two became good companions. Even as he made a sour face toward his father, he couldn’t help directing playfully teasing words toward Yoko with her smooth touch. Once, Yozo had gone with her to see a Kikugoro play at Hongo-za theater.

“Do you dislike plays?”

“I love them. Take me.” When they entered, the performance was *Chūshingura*, with the sword assault scene underway, but being alone together amidst the crowd felt overwhelmingly intense to Yozo. Moreover, he always found the presence of a third party desirable. Being face-to-face with just each other felt lonelier than solitude itself. The presence of a third party—especially some unfamiliar young man—put him most at ease. Watching Yoko chat animatedly with another person felt particularly comforting to him. When the companion happened to be a child, a faint unease accompanied him, yet he still felt more secure than if children had drawn near.

“I should have brought the children along.” When Yozo said this, “Shall I call them to come?” With that, Yoko stood and left—but as the play progressed scene by scene, for some reason she did not readily return. He grew irritated. He couldn’t understand why. He went out to the entrance, slightly annoyed. And as he wandered the corridor, he caught sight of Yoko entering. Yoko quietly informed him that she had entered a café, since she thought it better to have tea rather than watch the play.

On another occasion, she sought Yozo’s permission to go to Yokohama to see an ocean liner on a foreign route, while also accompanying a child—who was seeing off a friend departing for Paris—along with three or four classmates. “Can I go?” Yozo hesitated.

“Well, if you want to go.” “That’s why I wanted to ask. If Sensei says I can’t go, I’ll refuse.” “I can’t say anything.” “Then I’ll refuse.”

“There’s no need to refuse.” “If you want to go.”

When the day arrived, Yoko ultimately went with the children. Yozo happened to be out running errands, but when he returned that night, she spoke in a tone suggesting she had been impressed by the cultured young men’s nocturnal endeavors. While they likely were too at the time, his children revered Baudelaire’s demonism and the Cocteau faction’s surrealism. The fresh literary theories emerging from these circles also stimulated Yoko.

“Here they are! Here they are!”

When Rumiko, who was leaning out the window, came into view before them, the child called out with a beaming smile, but Yozo felt an anxiety akin to being herded into an unwanted adventure. His heart remained barred shut, yet he thought this constraint might let Yoko maintain her composure.

After their father fled to Shanghai, Rumiko, her young sister and brother—along with their stepmother and her children—closed the house in Otaru and moved to a town some distance from Yoko’s, where the stepmother’s family home stood. When news of their circumstances reached Yoko’s mother and her family, and their miserable living conditions became known, a plan to seize custody was devised. When Matsukawa stopped by Tokyo in April to give Yoko money, she pleaded with him for the first time to at least return Rumiko—but he refused. She had wept to Yozo over this, yet now that she had settled into his home with the child, she swiftly discovered a different Yozo there.

Striving not to lose sight of Yoko’s substitute maternal love, Yozo’s youngest daughter Sakiko clung to her, while Rumiko—having returned to her birth mother’s care after years apart—also sought her affection. To avoid wounding either young heart, Yoko applied both affection and hands with impartial care. When going out, she would usually hold Sakiko’s hand, but Sakiko would then walk holding hands with Rumiko. At night when putting them to bed, Yoko would either tuck both girls under her arms or hold just Sakiko until she fell asleep, singing nursery rhymes or telling fairy tales. To Yozo’s eyes and heart, it appeared and felt that way—but the delicate task of managing the children’s sensitive nerves proved too burdensome even for her.

Another day when Sakiko returned from school, she played with Rumiko—who had been waiting for her—arranging toys on the engawa. Tiny dolls, tea ceremony utensils, kettles and pots and buckets and washboards—along with colored paper, Nankin glass balls, and red-, yellow-, and green wheat-stalk-like strands—were all pulled out in a cluttered heap.

“Share with Rumiko too, okay?” When Yozo, who had been watching nearby, said this,

“What? This?” Sakiko gave her some colored paper and wheat stalks, but Rumiko looked so lonely that she soon discarded both the paper and stalks into the garden. Yoko fidgeted anxiously nearby, standing up and sitting down again, but Yozo had come to think—ever since that time—that instead of making Sakiko, who kept her belongings meticulously organized, share her things, it would be better to buy Rumiko separate items of the same kind.

The large doll—handed down from her deceased sister and more precious to Sakiko than anything else—once again made Rumiko feel lonely and darkened the mother’s heart. "Sensei, I feel bad saying this since she’s your child, but Sakiko is being rather selfish. I think we must correct that." "If you say so, I’ll heed you." Yozo had answered thus, but in truth, he hadn’t wanted to let Rumiko—who seemed unlikely to take proper care of things—handle the doll beloved by his deceased daughter Kumi-ko. So one day, when taking Yoko and Rumiko to the department store for shopping, he bought Rumiko a medium-sized doll instead. As it was smaller than Sakiko’s, neither Yoko nor Rumiko appeared pleased—yet Yozo acted as though this were satisfactory.

It wasn’t until much later—even now, he recalls it with regret—that Yozo realized: that day when he had taken Yoko and the children out for a stroll through Ueno with its deepening shadows under fresh green leaves and shown them the zoo. At the time, his eldest daughter—whose attendance at school had grown painful due to her father’s romantic scandal—was also with them, but when Yozo noticed her turning her face away even from classmates encountered within the zoo grounds, he too felt guilty and abruptly moved away from Yoko to sit alone on a bench. Then, of all moments, when he saw Sakiko sniffling and sulking for some reason, he had at first watched her with benevolent concern—but finally growing irritated, he unwittingly struck the back of her head with his thick-gripped rattan cane.

Not long after that, one morning when Yozo woke and went to the tearoom, the children had all gone out, leaving Yoko alone by the brazier. Tiny winged insects swarmed under the eaves beneath a listless midmorning sun nearing ten o'clock. As was his habit upon waking, Yozo's facial muscles remained stiff; wearing a sullen expression, he came to sit by the long brazier. The housemaids too seemed to have withdrawn to what served as nursery quarters in the back house, leaving no trace of their presence. Yet Yoko appeared unsettled as she prepared breakfast atop the dining table. When someone wondered what had become of Rumiko, quite some time later came a voice calling for her mother from the four-and-a-half-mat room partitioned by waist-high screens. Yoko hurried to her side, dressed her in a kimono, and brought her out to the tearoom.

“Say good morning to Uncle.” Rumiko did as she was told. “Sleepyhead.” Having said that, Yozo remained sullen. Yoko went out to the kitchen briefly but soon returned and sat beside him. No sooner had she sat down than she stood up and left again. Yozo felt he ought to say something kind yet deliberately kept his silence. Feeling somehow guilty watching Rumiko pick up her chopsticks by Shio, he eventually stood up. He then came to the desk and began puffing on a cigarette. Suddenly Yoko came tumbling into the room, covered her face with her sleeve, collapsed onto the tatami mats, and began to sob. Her shoulders trembling, she cried out loud while voicing the dissatisfaction she had been suppressing all along.

“You’re such a cold person, Sensei! Because you had such a stern face, even though I anxiously tried to get Rumiko to bow to you, you kept an utterly frozen expression and wouldn’t show even a single smile. While that child is nervously watching your face, you turn away like a stranger on the roadside! I grew so despondent that I kept going out to the kitchen to wipe away my tears. We mother and child have no desire to become charity cases at Sensei’s place.”

Yoko spoke haltingly, her body trembling violently from emotional turmoil. Startled, Yozo drew near and offered placating words, but they proved ineffective. She scrambled to her feet and stood rattling drawers at the chest in the adjoining room before yanking Rumiko by the arm and bursting out the entryway like a miniature tornado.

Flustered, Yozo went out to look, but she hurled a sharp voice at him—"Never cross the threshold of my house again!"—and slammed the shoji shut. Before long, Sakiko returned early from school and wandered searching through room after room until she came to stand forlornly in her father's study. Yozo felt some semblance of relief, yet loneliness gradually began crawling through his chest. He also regretted the blunder of his behavior that morning which had provoked her outburst.

“Where’s Auntie?” "Auntie left." “Rumiko-chan too?” “Yes.” “Are they not coming back?” "They won't come back." Yozo said this, but he couldn't shake the sensation that somewhere nearby, a parent and child were walking. After a while, he took the hand of the forlorn-looking Sakiko and drifted outside.

7

The entire town was desolate as a cemetery. Everything that met his eyes—the shops lining the streets, the people hustling along narrow sidewalks—appeared cramped and cluttered. The faces of passing women were expressionless as stone. It was as if the bleakness he'd felt when losing his wife had deepened into a more profound desolation; even the summer sun's light hung dull and heavy. He used to find joy in gazing at the ginkgo trees—their new spring buds, their deepening summer greens, their golden winter hues—each season sparking particular memories. But now, walking beneath their shade, those pleasant sensations only served to remind him of life's lost joys. For twenty or thirty years now, chronic neurasthenia had plagued him—street noises sounded lethargic as if rising from hell's depths, even brief visits to Ginza made his vision swim. Yet since cohabiting with Yoko, he sensed something desolate and anguished; if this continued two or three years, he mused, life would turn irrevocably gray. Still, though distrusting his own vitality, he couldn't deny the smoldering passion within.

The opposite sex's allure—he had never felt it so acutely before, nor had he ever become attached to it.

“Where did Auntie go?”

Sakiko asked.

“Who knows.” Having just passed by the front of the inn where she had been staying, he arrived at the intersection of the Third District. As he passed before the inn, he felt she and the child might be in that familiar second-floor room, so he peered toward the back of the front desk—but having passed by and gone about a block away, just then a familiar young woman came from the opposite direction and bowed. She too was from the same hometown as Yoko, her hair parted in a peach-like split and tied up as she briskly attended to Yoko’s errands. Yet whenever clearing trays, she would settle there and eagerly discuss novels and films. After he had drifted completely apart from Yoko too, he had encountered her by chance at Salon Haru—which he entered with four or five dance companions—but over two or three years she had become quite an accomplished waitress.

“Didn’t you go to Yoko’s place?” “Ms. Kozue? No. Isn’t she at your place?” He thought she might know something, but they parted without further words. This area was where he used to take evening strolls with his wife, shopping for his bread, side dishes for the children’s lunchboxes, geta, tabi socks, and tableware—a place where many shops would bow to her due to her amiable nature. But after he began walking with Yoko, even the geta sellers and bean shops stopped greeting him warmly. Yozo found it increasingly awkward to shop there. When he went out with Yoko, they would invariably turn left at the intersection to peer into bookstore windows one after another, or walk all the way down to enter the department store, or visit a thriving grocery shop on Hirokoji Avenue. When the mood struck them, they sometimes ventured into vaudeville theaters too. As Yoko rarely missed visiting Cinema Palace—being fond of motion pictures—he would accompany her by train to watch films. But upon entering the smoking lounge, young men would invariably stare at her face, and at times he even caught whispers of her name, compelling him to remain silent. “Darkness and Light” and “Resurrection” were among the silent films they watched there together. Moreover, she read a great many translated works, and for Yozo—who often found reading tiresome—hearing her recount these stories through her talkative thin lips, tinged with her own interpretations, became a curiously engaging part of daily life.

Yozo boarded the train from Third District and went to the Hirokoji department store. He had thought to buy something for Sakiko, but he also harbored the foolish hope that perhaps Yoko might be there holding the child's hand while buying a doll or such. He was haunted by visions of Yoko like a fox-possessed man. Then when he realized she couldn't possibly be there, his already wandering mind spurred him onward—he hurriedly left the place and headed to Ueno Station this time—but upon learning that the Tohoku Main Line limited express departed only once around seven-something in the evening, he grew abruptly irritated with his own actions and hastily left the station.

After night fell, he tried sending an inquiry telegram addressed to Yoko's mother, but YOKO HAS NOT ARRIVED The reply telegram stating this arrived late into the night.

One evening, Yozo went out for a walk along the street with his son Yotaro. He felt as though he had lost a bird that had finally flown into his bosom—from that moment onward, though he had no particular plan—he found himself ceaselessly pursuing visions of Yoko. That Yozo had passed through life without incident until now was never because he possessed cultivated humanity or rational self-reflection. It stemmed solely from the poverty of his upbringing—a timidity rooted in agonizing awareness of his innate dullness and meager talent—and this desolate existence that merely cast a dim pall over his daily life. His youthful passion smoldered like blocked smoke, his scant talent pointlessly churned. Unwittingly, he had become someone who could only stare at his own feet. Though belatedly roused by love's mischievous goddess—her disquieting flames of confusion fanning his passion—he now found himself displaying worldly vanity and theatrical curiosity, assuming a posture from which there could be no retreat.

Yozo had not slept well the previous night either, and his recent physical fatigue had yet to subside. Later on, Yoko would repeatedly run away and Yozo would drive her out; after their separations, they would invariably end up spreading bedding on the floor to sleep, though sometimes they would have the neighborhood doctor come. When awake, he tended to be driven by an impulse to take some action, so he decided to lie still and wait for his mood to settle—but at that time, he was still unaccustomed to such things. Nor was there any trace of the occupational psychology that would later come to frequently dominate his state of mind. It was nothing but a fundamental turmoil of directionless vitality.

The child walked alongside the father while clinging to him. “I wonder if she’s here after all.” As they approached the front of the usual inn, the child, seemingly sharing the same thought, spoke those words.

“Let’s ask.” Yozo, caught up in the notion, stepped over the entrance threshold and inquired. A middle-aged maid stood in the shop. “Ms. Kozue? She came by yesterday to collect her tailoring at the usual place…” “Where might she be now?” “Ah, I wouldn’t know about that.”

The “usual tailor” referred to Ms. Kami—the neighborhood’s top seamstress whom his wife had long commissioned for tailoring work—and whenever Yozo wore garments sewn by that high-strung Ms. Kami, nothing stitched by anyone else would ever fit him quite right. Yoko had also had a few items tailored there and knew how skilled the tailor was. While listening to that story, Yozo suddenly felt as though his weak heart had stopped. “She was right by the house…”

That instantly plunged him into despair. And as he staggered out of there, the surroundings suddenly darkened; unable to be supported even by the child's hand, he crumpled onto the stone-paved alley beside the liquor store. These cerebral anemia attacks had occurred since his youth, persisting into adulthood during dental treatments or writing struggles. There were times he'd collapsed in hospital corridors or lain by roadsides listening to street clamor. Yet this time he couldn't remain fallen long. On that summer evening's streets, what might have been a passerby's voice reached his ears—then suddenly he revived and started walking.

After some time had passed, one day a letter from Yoko arrived. It was addressed to Sakiko, but neither her name nor her whereabouts were written. The moment he took hold of that bulky envelope, he felt a pang of gloom, but he opened it anyway. Sakiko had been ill for three or four days. It was an illness that struck in sudden attacks, seemingly caused by some congenital defect in the heart valves or similar issue, and appeared to bring chest pain. Though Yozo had long been accustomed to children's illnesses and deaths, when it came to Sakiko's illness—she who had lost her mother long ago—his heart ached all the more.

“It will heal as she grows older, but for now, it’s a bit…” The doctor said. “Auntie! Auntie.” As Sakiko’s voice crying those words seeped into his ears, Yozo’s soul stung sharply. Once told, from that moment she ceased mentioning her birth mother entirely, making Yoko’s affection all the more necessary. The soft touch of young Yoko’s hands—stroking her chest with lullabies and fairy tales, buying chocolates whenever they went out, trimming her neck hair and cutting her nails during walks—these small attentions alone had made Sakiko perfectly happy. But for that same Yoko to leave her behind as Rumiko’s mother was nothing short of a cruel fate.

“Sakiko has been putting Ms. Yoko’s photograph under her pillow, you know.”

The sister told Yozo. When he went to check at the bedside, it was indeed just as described. Yoko was Rumiko’s mother and could no longer love you as she once had—Yozo could not bring himself to make her understand this and had no choice but to endure passively. He also felt that dying together with this child might be one means of salvation.

Then came Yoko’s letter. Along with several letters written on colored paper were also a great many beautiful sheets of colored paper intended as gifts for Sakiko. After delivering it to the sickbed, he and the child held up envelopes plastered with several stamps to examine the postmarks against the light. "The stamp is from the Sarugakuchō post office." “Hmm… Then it’s Kanda. But Kanda is a large area.” “Maybe Mr. Isshiki might know.”

He thought it impossible. He also felt Isshiki might know, but considering how he was trampling on Isshiki—who remained silently withdrawn—without regard for seniority, he didn’t want to think so. How Yoko had managed to talk Isshiki around—he didn’t want to touch on that either. He had resolved not to look at Isshiki even if forced, but he couldn’t shake the sense that Isshiki was sneering at him behind his back. It was a pain akin to feigning ignorance while exploiting a friend’s leniency—a friend clutching one’s promissory note.

“A man with a wife… I still don’t feel right about it.” “Besides, Mr. Isshiki has a society lady of leisure on his hands, you know.” Yoko had been offering placating words, but they were unlikely to help Yozo’s excuses. On the contrary, Yozo was now even trying to seek clues about Yoko through Isshiki. “Why don’t you go over to Isshiki’s place and check on things for me?”

“Well… I could go, but… Maybe I should try calling first?”

Yotaro went to make a phone call nearby but soon returned. "It seems he isn't going after all." "He says he'll come now." "He said we shouldn't make you worry too much... Mr. Isshiki is a good person, isn't he?" Yozo could not deny being aware of Isshiki's kindness—how he had brought money when his wife died and installed a radio to distract the lonely children—but some self-serving motive was at play. The contradiction didn't even register as a contradiction anymore. He had even been quietly weaving something like a claim over Yoko into his nebulous calculations.

Isshiki came speeding over in a taxi.

“So, Ms. Yoko isn’t here, I hear.” Yozo deliberately described the circumstances surrounding Yoko’s departure as if Isshiki knew nothing of them. ——including the postmark. “In that case, checking theaters changing their programs would be fastest.” “Their schedules rotate on Thursdays.” “She often goes to the Minamieiza Theater.” The Minamieiza Theater... Could that be it? Yozo had briefly considered visiting the Cinema Palace they’d frequented together, but recognized that random searches would only deepen his later desolation. He also dreaded she might be out with some younger man—a proper couple perhaps.

"If even that doesn't work out, I have a contact at Kanda police station who could investigate—they'd surely find her." "No need to go that far..." "She'll resurface eventually." After this exchange, Isshiki lingered in conversation awhile longer, wrote a referral to his police contact on a business card, then took his leave.

The following afternoon, Yozo headed out toward Kanda. For no particular reason, the child was also with him. And while wandering around Sarugakuchō, he visited two or three inns, but since there was no way the child would be interested, he peered into used bookstores here and there before heading out to the bustling district of Jimbocho for tea and returning home. At that time, films still came with narrators dripping with suggestive commentary, and the voiceless figures moving across the screen had unnaturally stiff expressions—so Yozo had no particular desire to visit movie theaters, nor any interest in coffee shops. Yet with a child in tow, he would occasionally find himself stepping into such places nonetheless.

The next morning, Yozo wandered through Surugadai's inn district, driven by a residual impulsive mood. Long ago, he had been appalled by a friend's madness-tinged obsession—how the man had tracked down his estranged wife by combing through every inn near Nikko, scrutinizing guest registers with bloodshot eyes until he finally uncovered both the lover's name and verified the very room they had stayed in. But now he found he couldn't even laugh at such behavior. Given the right circumstances, he too might end up playing such a role himself.

First, he inquired at two or three small boarding houses in the side streets near the entrance. It was exactly the time when maids with work sashes were cleaning vigorously, but at one house he felt perceived as a detective. Colonies of Shina students stood row upon row in that cluttered area. Having given up halfway through, he eventually crossed that block and tried two inns on the broad street plus one Western-style apartment-like building—all fruitless. As he wandered purposelessly, he somehow emerged onto Ogawamachi's wide tram thoroughfare and walked toward Jimbocho. Though passing through this area normally left him indifferent, now—walking with focused intent for this specific purpose—he began catching whiffs of his carefree boarding house days from that era, when he would stroll these streets nightly amid the period's urban atmosphere. When his moatside boarding room grew oppressive, he would invite a painter friend from nearby to what might be called Tokyo's first café—ambiguous whether milk hall or fruit parlor—where they ate pineapple and drank cocoa. Some nights they visited vaudeville halls to hear Enzō's machine-gun renditions of Hachishōjin and Ukiyodoko, his words sputtering like oiled paper catching flame. Amid this lifestyle he developed severe gastric atony.

"How many years had passed since that time?"

He looked back. On the bustling streets of Jimbocho, he suddenly turned into the back alley of a large bookstore and was astonished by the transformation of the side street—the entire area had been overrun with cheap cafés and bars. Peering through an opening, Yozo noticed a red flag bearing the name "Shunkokan" in white dye at the edge of the property. Though certain it would prove futile, he went to investigate. As he ascended the stone steps of the shabby barrack-like boarding house and entered the entranceway, an open sliding door at the end of the corridor behind the staircase came into view. There at the room's threshold sat Yoko in a sheer summer kimono, her hair gathered at the crown in her signature style, perched primly. With relief he called out, "Hey"—she turned toward him, flushing slightly in flustered recognition. After propping his rattan cane against the entrance step, Yozo made to clomp inside, but she shook her head sharply. Rising fluidly, she pointed upward with her eyes toward the staircase, signaling him to ascend. Yozo climbed steadily upward. She followed close behind.

“This is our room.” With those words, Yoko guided him to the bright room at the front. A not-unpleasant six-tatami space where girls’ magazines and playthings lay cluttered on the shelf of a glass window draped with white curtains, a half-knitted green sweater resting atop a red zabuton cushion. A Korean-style mat had been laid across the floor. Yoko seated him there before going downstairs alone, returning after a short while with Rumiko in tow.

“Bow to Uncle.” As Rumiko bowed with her hands on the floor, Yozo patted her head and tried to pull her onto his lap. “What’s wrong? Is someone there in the downstairs room?” “It’s a craftsman. Since that room has such a peaceful atmosphere, I’ve been having him put up wallpaper right now.” “So what happened then?” “I had been thinking I should come to see you soon. I’ve been thinking of enrolling Rumiko in the Futsu-Ei-Wa Kindergarten, but I thought it might be a bit too much for her coming from there… How is Sakiko doing?”

“She kept crying and it was a problem.” “And she was sick…” “You’re terrible, aren’t you?” “Even if I’m at fault, you left without a single word.” Yozo wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. Yoko sat slightly turned away, her hands moving through her knitting.

"But I do think it's been terribly difficult." "It's only just started." "The children will grow close soon enough." "They'll quarrel too—that's inevitable." "Rumiko talks of Sakiko-san too." "But my own children doted on Rumiko so." "Poor as I am, I wanted to make this my peaceful place—to study." "I meant to bring my writings to Sensei...but that won't do now."

“No, no good. I confronted this head-on to settle your past.” “The master and mistress here also say I mustn’t visit Sensei’s place.” “The master here knows Sensei well.” “His late father was from Sanjō in Echigo Province—he used to visit Sensei’s place dealing in silk goods.” “That man passed away, and his son is now the master here.” “Fair-skinned and docile...”

“He’s a good man.” “Why would you…”

“This is Mr. Akimoto’s inn.” “That person had him organize my tanka poetry and do other things here too, you know.” Yozo recalled that merchant from Echigo—the one with the burly build typical of the region, who would often bring his son along and haul in heavy loads of luggage. At the same time, he tried to imagine the romance that had unfolded there between that noble-like passionate poet and Yoko. Yet for all that, the actual backdrop felt somewhat sparse, leaving an unsatisfying impression. In the end, driven by his overwhelming and rather shrewd passion, Yoko decided to return after all.

“Well, I’ll go in a little while.” “I’ll definitely go.”

"Right." Yoko's face flushed. As Yozo moved to leave, she pressed herself against the wall and cried out, "Lips! Lips!" Yozo turned sharply. She arrived by car as dusk hues crept into the garden corner. With Yotaro—sent ahead by him to scout—leading the way, she directed her belongings to be carried through the entrance and brought Rumiko inside. "I was having tea with Mr. Yotaro earlier..." "And though it's modest, I thought...if you'd like...you could stay in this room..."

Having said that, Yoko tried laying out the bedding she had brought.

“How do you like this necktie!” On the veranda, the child held up to the light the gaudy French-made necktie Yoko had bought. When school let out, all the children went to the sea. Rumiko was made to join them too. He read and wrote, watched movies and listened to records; evenings meant visiting night stalls along the street or sometimes walking as far as Ueno—yet with anxiety about how long this life might last… and anxiety about what would happen if it did… Yozo’s heart grew timid. For every human drama, the true difficulty always lay in its final act—as hard to foresee as a clean break from history. Moreover, Yozo tended to consign all phenomena to endless prolongation.

At the end of August, Yoko called for Rumiko from the coast and departed together for the countryside. It was because her mother’s letter had made it clear that Rumiko’s younger sister and brother could likely be taken back from their stepmother’s hands. After seeing the two off at Ueno Station, Yozo felt a momentary relief, but with a sense of returning to that old void, loneliness surged over him.

“I’ll have you come again, Sensei.” “In return wait until I let you know.” “I’ll send my letter when it’s time.”

Even so, Yoko hadn't truly settled by his side all summer. Though she had accomplished nothing, she continued worrying over troubles she couldn't confide in Yozo—troubles that would remain unresolved even if she did. She burned with her own literary desires but also had to maintain a livelihood. Her pride toward Rumiko was also important. When viewed from the beginning, there were also significant changes in living conditions.

After about two days, Yoko's letter arrived. He wrote. After that, he generally wrote about every three days. His viscous anguish sought an outlet in those letters, but there were some he immediately regretted after mailing. He could not determine whether Yoko would return or not, so this turmoil of mind in pursuit of its truth was nothing but the anguish of his soul. He would often visit nearby friends and get deep into conversation.

On a certain rainy day, he recalled a certain woman. It was that woman—the one who had come to offer incense at his wife’s mortuary tablet during those days. It had been quite some time since he had received notice from that woman about her establishment’s opening. He had been treated to lavish meals without reciprocation and wanted to hear her stories of the various worlds she had seen. Though the rain was torrential, for him—raised in rainy country—it felt almost comforting. At Taxii, locating it took some time, but the place had a better atmosphere than he had anticipated.

“Miss Kami has gone to Ginza for dinner, but she’ll be back shortly. Please do come in.” Yozo left his umbrella there and entered. He crossed the bridge over the narrow courtyard and settled into one of the compact rooms. The faintly murky water of the great river lay immediately before his eyes. Warehouses and what resembled stone yards on the opposite bank blurred in the rainy haze, while from one of several gray buildings at the base of an ominous large bridge visible to the right, gray smoke crawled and billowed with melancholy.

“What a terrible rain, isn’t it?” A twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old maid with chapped skin opened the half-open sliding door and wiped the handrail of the bay window and such things. On the water, boats were coming and going, and Yozo was glad he had come. The maid had brought the tobacco tray and tea, then made a phone call, but since it was a business establishment, she couldn’t keep that up once he had entered. “Miss Kami will be back shortly.” The maid came to inform him.

“Don’t you have any interesting middle-aged women around here?”

“There are. Shall I call one?” Before long, a gangly woman who looked just past forty appeared. She didn’t give the impression of a geisha, but suited the situation perfectly. Her stories proved entertaining too. There was the tale of a young geisha who’d claimed her mother was ill to swindle money from her patron, only to be caught by the shop manager on Shijō Bridge while carousing with a Shinpa actor in Kyoto—thereby losing her benefactor. Then the rumor about a woman who’d dallied with an aging actor in the park and had all her hair chopped clean from the roots. Such tales of romantic scandals from the pleasure quarters provided endless fodder for the papers.

At that moment, Miss Kami entered. Madame suited her better than Miss Kami... When he had seen her in spring, there had been something rather dowdy about her, but now she looked much more beautiful in her striped silk hitoe, her hair tied back like an intellectual woman's.

Eight Miss Kami Sayoko had beautiful eyes that darted coquettishly - this alone set her apart from the common women scattered about - yet she retreated toward a corner dining table bearing a lone sake decanter with cup rinser and appetizers, wiping its surface with a kitchen cloth while— "It must be difficult," she said through half-lowered lashes while scrubbing at an invisible stain, "you being tangled up in Miss Yoko's affairs too..." Yozo had drunk two or three cups already; his cheeks burned like cheap paper lanterns.

“This is new territory for me too—I was hoping to get your perspective.” “How delightfully complicated.” She gave Yozo a piercing look. “Oh, it should last a year at least.” Sayoko made this prognosis casually. “Is she staying with you now?” “She’s gone back to her hometown for a spell.” He rubbed his temple. “Truthfully, I’m at a loss myself.” “What business takes her to the provinces?” “Apparently to reclaim her child from the stepmother.”

And after Yozo spoke at length about the details of this incident, “Why did you start this kind of business?” “I did give it a lot of thought. Mr. Kurube did say that if he’d held on a little longer, he could’ve managed something more—but with that big venture of his falling through, things just didn’t work out.” Kurube, the German noble, had apparently been thriving by dealing in new military equipment and such, but when he attempted to sell arms to Chinese authorities, investing nearly his entire fortune into procuring goods and lobbying expenses—just as his preparations were fully laid—a direct contract between government channels and China was finalized. All the plans he had poured his entire effort into bringing that far had now turned to bubbles in an instant. When he received that telegram, he collapsed at the Fujiya Hotel.

But Sayoko was not so imprudent as to confide such matters to him now, when they had only just met. Regarding her seven-year lavish life together with Kurube—a relationship that had been full of color—she would occasionally allude to it in passing afterward. Though she seemed to sometimes recall that it was ultimately this German noble who had loved and indulged her most of all, now she overflowed with joy at having escaped that existence which had made her feel like a captive to love.

“It seems your past has been quite eventful.” “Me?” “Were you never in Shinbashi?” “I was.” “Back then, photos of people from the pleasure quarters often appeared in Bungei Club, didn’t they?” “Mine was featured prominently too.” “But why?” “Somehow I feel like I’ve seen you before.” “Once, when I took the train from Shinbashi, there were three geisha sitting on a cushion, busily doing embroidery.” “You resemble one of them.” “Back when I was still young…”

“I’ve done embroidery too, but… Well, you see—the senior sister at the house where I stayed was quite someone. She came into a foreigner’s inheritance and became a full-fledged wealthy woman. When she went to New Year’s banquet rooms, they say she wore garments with hems patterned in genuine koban coins and isshu and nishu coins. So when she returned from the banquet rooms, in summer she’d sit in some grand chair, have us wipe her down or fan her, and at bedtime—it’d be like having one person massage her while another read novels…”

“Ah, so even you…” Sayoko’s slender fingers were gaudily studded with rings—three-carat diamonds both large and small, and a chunky coral piece surrounded by seed pearls. “What became of that person?” “The senior sister?” “That senior sister now keeps Mr. Shibano—the husband who did that double suicide in Karuizawa with the famous Professor Takemura—as her swallow.” “Ah, I see.” “With all that money she’s got, she built herself a grand house in Omori and plays the lady of leisure to perfection.”

“Do you know someone called Shibano?” “Yes, sometimes the three of us stroll around Ginza.” “I shouldn’t say this, but he’s such a detestable man.” “Though I’ll admit—among all those Ginza men, you’d be hard-pressed to find one as good-looking as him.” “Wearing a red tie like that is so pretentious.” “So even though he has ties coming out his ears whenever he spots a nice one in a display window, he acts all spoiled wanting to buy it.” “How ugly—an old woman like that keeping a young toyboy.” “I truly find it repulsive.”

Yozo forced a wry smile. "That hits close to home." "No, it's different for men. No matter how advanced in years men may be, it's never something laughable."

As he did so, he began to want something to eat. Since losing his wife, his meals had become the perfunctory work of an elderly, diminutive maid who had merely observed his wife’s methods over time, so picking up his chopsticks invariably filled him with gloom.

“Shall we go with Ginsui or Naniwaya?” “Well, I don’t know either of them, but…” “Naniwaya seems to have a good reputation considering the reasonable price.” Yozo took three or four dishes—a sweetfish rice pot along with bowls and sesame vinegar dressing—ate his meal, and soon had a taxi hired.

One morning, Yozo woke up in that room along the river. The busy comings and goings of motorboats, steamboats, and cargo boats had already grown frequent upon the water.

Last night he had hired a taxi to escape the desolation of his study, but with two groups of guests and Sayoko being slightly tipsy... Yozo hadn't particularly intended to summon any woman. It was only much later—when dining out with friends—that he would occasionally call geisha, but he himself lacked sufficient leeway in both spirit and means for such entertainments. "Just having you come dine with us is plenty." "Even if you did call a geisha, it wouldn't amount to much for me."

Sayoko’s purpose lay elsewhere. She had been thinking of gradually having his companions come over. Moreover, under pretext of showing him her newly opened business’s state of affairs, she introduced her sister who had come from the countryside and seemed intent on borrowing his assistance in various matters. Last night she entered his bedroom again and talked until nearly dawn while listening to water splashing beneath the window in the deep night—mere literal conversation devoid of real meaning. Even lying close enough to touch, they never brushed a single finger. In the dim electric lamp’s glow, both lay on their backs. This house—which thrived during its Masagozu theater days with its fine signboard—cost such-and-such to purchase and such-and-such more for renovations, but most funds came from her sister’s husband now asleep in the middle room: a provincial tea producer and major taxpayer serving as her brother-in-law, with monthly interest duly paid. Strangely enough, her connections to good relatives gradually became clear afterward—Mitsubishi directors, Furukawa Copper Mine veterans, Osaka’s factory owners—yet Sayoko never flaunted them. That she walked such shadowed paths wasn’t unimaginable—perhaps due to differing parentage—but having started at sixteen or seventeen among Lion’s Seven café beauties and honing self-reliance since, she needed no wealthy relatives and detested constraints. Raised in Shiba Shinmei, she’d been an irrepressible mischief-maker since peach-splitting days—back then leading neighborhood delinquents through Shinmei and Kotohira festivals, flaunting innate savvy.

When Yozo rose from bed and peered into the dimly lit middle room from the hallway, he found Sayoko—who had gotten up at some point—sitting before the Buddhist altar ablaze with ritual lamps, her rosary-clasped palms pressed together as she chanted sutras with devout fervor. To Yozo, this was an entirely unexpected sight; yet whenever she reflected on her own past—replete with vulgar conduct toward numerous men, though occupational in nature—she couldn't suppress a shudder in her heart. Through Kurube's devoted affection, her elderly mother—who had died several years prior—had received meticulous nursing during her long illness along with no-expense-spared care, yet even she had agonized over Sayoko's path, remarking, "How have you avoided getting yourself killed doing such things?" So perilous were the acts Sayoko had committed. This behavior had first emerged during her café waitress days when young aristocrats would loiter about the establishment.

In the middle room with the Buddhist altar stood three paulownia chests alongside what might have been mahogany furniture, a shamisen case placed in the corner. The cluttered altar bore small ornaments and a photograph of her mother strikingly resembling a veteran Shinpa actor, while an identical oil portrait hung on the wall. Sayoko kept praying fervently, seemingly oblivious to Yozo's presence. Yozo crossed the hallway as instructed and went to the bathhouse. The high-ceilinged bath required descending two or three steps from its changing room outfitted with toiletries. As Yozo bathed and shaved his face, Sayoko entered too. For her—well-versed in managing men—this held no more significance than sharing a taxi ride.

Before long, Sayoko stood by the furnace and combed her hair. Her gently sloping shoulders, well-proportioned hands and legs, and the figure of her tying her hair with one knee raised seemed the very model of beauty as depicted by Harunobu. However, even in such moments, Yozo had not forgotten the beautiful vision of Yoko. This too might be considered a model of beauty, but the naturalness lay with Yoko. "Sensei, would you like something to eat? Some toast perhaps?" "Well,"

“I’ve already had my meal.” “I’m about to visit the mountain shrine—won’t you come along?” “The mountain?” “Matsuchiyama.” “Visiting such an odd place.” “Expecting some divine favor?” “They enshrine Shōten-sama there.” “A most revered deity.” “Though it’s best reached by boat.” Around noon, Yozo accompanied Sayoko—still in her everyday clothes—to the mountain’s base. He waited in the taxi while she descended the stone steps, later joining her on two or three more pilgrimages—once even climbing to where incense smoke curled above the worship hall.

Another day, Yozo pulled up in a taxi to this waterside house. Around the third day, he wrote a letter to Yoko in the countryside. There were some he wrote but didn’t send, though he mostly mailed them. He tried to calculate how many letters Yoko might already have by now. He fully intended to retrieve every last one someday—indeed, he had already cleverly talked his way into taking nearly all of them on a certain occasion—but even while anticipating this outcome, he still couldn’t stop writing. He had never noticed before—a strangely warped self had surfaced there. At times he would passionately write things that might even alarm Yoko. Letters capable of delighting a woman like Yoko with her literary affectations were something he was naturally unskilled at composing and found mortifying besides.

At such times, one day when he was alone in his gloomy study, a female poet came to visit with poetry manuscripts. Though young and small in stature—and not exactly well-dressed—there was something about her that wasn’t disagreeable. She currently worked as a café hostess in Kagurazaka, but before that had spent some time doing household work at the suburban home of Yozo’s close friend. She now seemed to dwell in utter despair, yet in the intervals between serving customers would lose herself in composing verse. Her daily existence had become a poetry of lamentation, a relentless march of cruel fate.

Among the poetry manuscripts she had brought, many had already been printed, but as Yozo read one or two of them—he who did not understand poetry—he felt something akin to touching the anguish of her soul until his eyes grew hot and tears flowed from his vulnerable heart. "I wonder if there might be somewhere that would publish this..." "Well, I might not be the best person for that." "Truthfully, I would like to self-publish, but it seems I can’t come up with the funds."

“Well, I suppose I could try worrying about it...” Yozo could only contemplate her circumstances with a gloomy heart. “Sensei, you’re having quite a hard time too...” “So many children...” “What happened to Ms. Kozue?” “Yoko is in the countryside now, but…” “If someone like me would suffice, I’d like to look after your children.” “You...” “That’s very kind of you, but...” “Depending on circumstances, I may ask for your help.”

“Yes, anytime…”

She gathered up the poetry manuscripts spread out on the desk and left.

He wrote a letter to Yoko that same day. In it, he praised her poetry while also mentioning his consideration of entrusting childcare duties and other matters. Then on the third day came a reply from Yoko—a lengthy letter filled with indignant phrases stating her opposition. Moreover, others had voiced opinions that someone who had worked as a café hostess might not be suitable for managing Yozo’s household affairs, so he resolved to abandon the idea.

After washing off the sweat in the bath, Yozo was in his usual well-ventilated small room discussing the matter with Sayoko.

This ambitiously constructed waterside house, by virtue of its proximity to water, had initially felt remarkably pleasant when first visited. Yet upon frequent visits, one noticed furnishings that seemed to narrate her former life—such as a safe claimed to be one of two largest German-made specimens ever brought to Japan, installed by twenty-five laborers. While these lent an air reminiscent of a leisured madam’s abode, the interior decorations were ultimately far from agreeable.

“I’ll replace them all gradually in time.” Yozo was lying by the window. Sayoko brought her face almost perpendicular to his head and lingered there. As they kept talking, something strange and intense flashed in her eyes. “When I was in Shiba—right around the time I first had the honor of meeting you, Sensei—this sort of thing happened.”

Sayoko began to narrate.

“There was this person—I had just left the Kōjimachi mansion and hadn’t yet decided on my course of action,” she said. “Then that person told me: ‘You’re already past thirty and have done all sorts of things. Since you’re like the leftover scraps from what was once a prime sea bream, you should cut your losses and sell cheap’—then left me five hundred yen.” “So that’s your patron,” Yozo remarked.

“There’s no such thing as a patron.” “Just how old are you?” “Me?” “Well...” Her answer was evasive. He had no right to ask a woman her age. “What about the man?”

“That was the end of it.” “The money?” “The money—I used it up.” That was the compensation for her chastity over a single night. She appeared to still value it at around 1,000 yen. “That man—a stockbroker?” “He wasn’t a stockbroker. If you mean stockbrokers—there was one rather prominent man I came under when working here long ago. But even he was completely destroyed in the earthquake disaster.”

And then she began to talk about that stockbroker’s circumstances. “Back when that man was still a shop clerk—around twenty-four, I suppose—there was a time I was summoned to a banquet room and found him somewhat charming.” “As we kept meeting frequently, our relationship deepened—he said that if he could get a branch store from his shop, we should be together. But then another customer came along, so that ended there. And since I soon became respectable myself, I ended up completely forgetting about it.” “Then, after ten years had passed and I had returned to business, when I was invited to a banquet by stockbroker associates—among them was that man’s friend—meddlesomely, four or five of them took me to the theater and made me meet that man in the same box seat.” “Now that man—with his master having died and being seen as reliable—was installed as an adopted son-in-law to inherit the household, taking the reins. Since this wasn’t such a bad prospect, I too became inclined, and the thread between us was respun.” “When that happened, I resented Okami-san’s presence and couldn’t stand sending her back.” “Okami-san was three years older than me and would stay up all night waiting in jealousy—when it came to his hands, they were perpetually covered in purple bruises.” “In the end, we fled that shop and set up a household together, but after that, things didn’t go well at all.” “I too had given up and taken up with Mr. Kurube, but during all that commotion of the earthquake disaster—apparently seizing the opportunity—that man sent a request for money from the shop’s funds.” “He came himself, I must say.” “It was only a small amount of money, but when I returned to my room and thought about it, it all seemed utterly absurd. Worried that Mr. Kurube might notice something amiss, I gave him five yen and drove him away.” “But really—he looked utterly shabby in straw sandals or something like that.” “I couldn’t stand even looking at his face.”

As the timing happened to be convenient, at Sayoko’s suggestion he decided to go see Kabuki for the first time in a long while. Rather than the wordless films Yoko favored, the habit of Kabuki appreciation he had cultivated over many years still clung to his bones. He could not grow accustomed to dark and gloomy movie theaters. Sayoko went out to the front desk and inquired by phone whether seats were available. “For second-floor box seats, the fifth one is available.” “That’s fine.”

“I’ll get ready, so Sensei should go home to fetch your kimono.” “I suppose so.”

As he waited in the room as directed, the maid came and, “Okami-san says Sensei should come and take a look at what she should wear.”

“Right.” When Yozo went to look, he found several drawers and doors of the chest open wide. On top of the blue rush mat spread beneath and spilling beyond it, underrobes, unlined kimonos, and obi sashes lay scattered like fallen flower petals.

"It shouldn't be too flashy, don't you think?" "That's true." "It's better not to stand out too much."

In the end, they settled on a rain-patterned kasuri kimono paired with a black haori bearing woven ground patterns. Her face—less heavily made-up than usual—had taken on a crisp definition there, achieving an attractively composed appearance. She owned enough garments to last a lifetime, provided she ignored passing fashions. Her collection of formal sashes alone filled a safe measuring six feet long by four feet wide. When she later pulled out those magnificent Chinese-style robes and old-fashioned Western dresses on some occasion, they all proved to be post-earthquake creations—gaudy pieces made entirely to Kurube’s flamboyant taste.

When the car arrived, Yozo alighted from the kitchen entrance. Sayoko emerged from the room, slipping a compact into her obi. “Would it be all right if we made a slight detour?” “It won’t take long.”

Having said that, Sayoko instructed the driver to head to Nagatacho.

Soon they arrived at the quiet district of Nagatacho. Sayoko got out of the car at the edge of a long ivy-covered fence and entered the alley. Her cool figure swayed lightly as she walked ahead of him, but he couldn't quite discern which house she entered. It was only much later that he realized it had been Kurube's mansion.

In the sweltering heat of midsummer, the Kabukiza Theater wasn't particularly crowded. The cast of actors was sparse, and the program wasn't particularly good. Yozo encountered theater acquaintances he knew by sight at the entrance, but in the corridor he also saw the company president standing there. Since Sayoko requested an introduction, he briefly introduced her before they proceeded to the second floor. Yet even within that vast auditorium, Sayoko's appearance—seated at the front and clutching a folding fan—conspicuously stood out. But precisely because there was no such relationship, compared to when he was with Yoko, he couldn't help but realize how much more at ease he felt.

The two of them, appearing cheerful, looked down at the audience gradually filling the hall while waiting for the wooden clappers signaling the play's start.

Finally, one day, a telegram came from Yoko. The moon hung pale and misty over the water—a message urging “Come to me” or something of the sort. Yozo had already been waiting two weeks for it. He had grown desperate. He even considered suddenly barging into her hometown, taking lodgings in town to secretly investigate her movements, and—together with a friend living nearby—having an elderly monk diviner perform a reading. He had often visited a young I Ching researcher who lived much later; having become interested in that man’s more objective approach, he had even considered taking up I Ching studies himself, but the old monk’s perspective in that instance had not been off the mark. That friend who enjoyed divination had long made it his custom to consult diviners well-versed in Eastern and Western physiognomy whenever embarking on new work or seeking insight into his general fate. A rare edition of the *Sanshisō* from China, along with Chinese classics and such, were at his bedside.

“I don’t mind driving Kozue out. I’ll take responsibility.” Though he was one who encouraged Yozo’s children with such words, he also served as Yozo’s compassionate listener. The old monk would occasionally cast sharp, white-eyed glances toward Yozo and the others while muttering words that seemed like jabs at nonbelievers as he explained other people’s circumstances. But when Yozo’s turn came and he approached, the monk’s demeanor shifted to one of tending to the unfortunate, meticulously rolling crystal beads and counting his rosary.

“This person will certainly return to you.” “She’ll come back clinging to a compassionate father’s hand.” “Even if you were to go yourself, now would be premature.” “You should wait until near month’s end.” “By then there will be word.” The diviner pronounced.

In any case, Yozo decided to visit Yoko’s house once more and sent a return telegram. And on the evening of the following day, he packed some souvenirs into a trunk and departed from Ueno. In truth, Yoko had come out to a hot spring somewhere around Fukushima where they had arranged to meet, so now that he found himself riding the train this way again, he felt depressed at facing her family and townspeople once more. But when he arrived at the station the next afternoon, Yoko’s sisters and brothers were there to meet him too—no different from the first time. He settled once again into that detached room. Besides Rumiko, there were two children she had just reclaimed from her stepmother’s care. Yoko seemed restless about something but said “Sensei…” and invited him out. Crossing the earthen-floored entryway, she headed upstairs—he followed without thinking.

Yoko offered him a chair on the veranda and explained the circumstances of how she had retrieved the children. The stepmother, who had returned to her family home in the Yamate district not far from here, had two children of her own by now and often treated Yoko’s children harshly. “She was a maid I took under my wing and employed during my time in Hokkaido, you know. “Back then, she was kind to the children, and though she was an unattractive woman, she proved to be a loyal maid, you know.” “Matsukawa seems to have left a considerable amount in her care, you know.” “Once he settles in Shanghai, he’s supposed to send for them, but those children weren’t even properly fed, you know.”

“Did you bring them?” “I barged in and negotiated.” "I couldn’t hold my head up to them." “So from now on…” “I won’t trouble you, Sensei.” “...” "Sensei, don’t be angry." "I met him." Yozo stiffened. This concerned Akimoto—the same Akimoto Yozo had once met and knew. “With whom?” “I need money to raise the children."

Yozo suddenly grabbed Yoko’s shoulders with both hands in a terrifying fury, shook her violently, and began pushing her toward the wall.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” “Don’t be so angry.” “Am I a bad woman?” Eventually, Yozo moved away. And then he sat down in the chair.

As this was happening, Rumiko came up the staircase calling, “Mommy! Mommy!” “Rumiko, go downstairs now.” Yoko said gently,

“Mommy, I need to talk to Uncle now.” Before long, Yoko seemed to have completely forgotten the matter and changed the subject—that her younger sister would soon be sent to Taiwan by their mother to marry her fiancé, that it was fine for her to stay leisurely until their mother returned— While Yozo sensed a gray path ahead, the mere fact of being before Yoko, who spoke cheerfully, brought his heart momentary comfort. It was a feeling like a refreshing sea breeze.

Nine

Yozo’s current visit had lasted far longer than his previous one, and while mutual affection had certainly deepened between them, it was equally true that weariness had begun to set in on both sides—so much so that by the end, even an unspoken discomfort permeated the air, as a dark cloud lingered over the atmosphere around them, impossible to overlook. The reason his return had been delayed was Yoko’s anal fistula—a condition she had only recently become fully aware of—which had abruptly worsened, assailing her with prickling, nerve-stabbing pain alongside a fever exceeding forty degrees. He could not bring himself to abandon her to this state and return home, so he ended up idly passing each gloomy day in vain.

In the early days after arriving, they would often go down to the beach, drift along the river in a small boat, or take a train ride of an hour or two to a beautiful coastline for picnics with a large group. There were also days when he would reluctantly write characters on the colored paper and silk fabrics that various people brought to him. Among those people were figures such as a clerk from their days as a shipping agent and an old man who tilled the fields belonging to Yoko’s family. Running around the vast living room were Rumiko’s young sisters and brothers—who bore a strong resemblance to Yoko’s ex-husband—and sometimes Yoko’s youngest sister would join them, at which point dances to children’s songs might begin. Yoko appeared blissfully happy as she clapped her hands and sang. Sometimes they would take the children by the hand to visit night stalls in the entertainment district; other times, they would walk through dark streets on the outskirts just the two of them, or often stop for tea at a café along the way. Yoko’s family had once operated a shop selling salt goods and hardware on the town’s main street, and though her handsome father had married into the family, he was an honest, diligent man with a talent for business who expanded their farmland and other holdings. Even after railways were laid and shipping declined, he continued conducting trade across regions despite his ailing body. Not long after Rumiko was born, her father died, but that he had loved Yoko specially could be understood from the tone of her everyday accounts. Given that it was a girls’ school notorious enough to stir the educational world at the time with student homosexual affairs that had spread through its academic halls, and since those scandals had also sparked romantic entanglements between students and teachers, even when considering her father’s extravagant wedding preparations—sparing no expense on the three-day feast despite her likely not being a virgin—one could imagine just how fervently his love must have driven her.

According to Yoko’s account, the day after the wedding, she had offered strong-brewed green tea to Matsukawa—still nursing his hangover—in a room on the second floor. She felt that both her body and soul had completely become his. She leaned one hand on the tatami and poured Sūko’s tea into a bowl. By the time she entered his bedroom, it was already past one in the morning. Until then, he had been in the reception room accepting cups passed around by various people, so he ended up in a drunken slumber until dawn broke at the windows, completely unaware. Having finished her morning toilette, as Yoko sat facing Matsukawa, footsteps suddenly sounded on the staircase—and there appeared halfway up the man who had arranged their marriage: a cousin of Yoko’s.

“Well now, you’re playing the part of a dutiful wife to perfection, aren’t you?” “This one’s been caught good.” The cousin—a scion from an old-money family serving as a prefectural assemblyman—said this, widening his eyes at the blushing newlyweds. Yoko’s past romantic entanglement with this cousin, combined with when she had accompanied the newlyweds—alongside her mother—to Otaru, formed a triangular emotional knot among the three. Through her storytelling—richly textured like brocade—it emerged as a bewitching romance akin to something from a Maupassant tale. During a dreary rainy evening at an inn along their journey, Yoko’s coquettish manner toward her cousin abruptly stoked Matsukawa’s jealousy into an uncontrollable blaze. Claiming he had matters to discuss, Yoko was suddenly hauled into a dim side room.

“I am your husband!” He said this and passionately caressed Yoko until she trembled violently. Even after arriving, the cousin remained in town for some time. Night after night, he immersed himself in drink and women. One day, as Yoko and Yozo were engrossed in literary conversation in the detached cottage, her mother appeared at the entrance of the adjoining room from the earthen floor area and hurriedly reported that Rumiko’s stepmother and two students had arrived by automobile in this snowbound town—they must have come to reclaim the children through counterattack.

“Oh!” Yoko had a slight fever at the time and looked haggard, but when it came to the children, she hurriedly slipped into her geta and dashed toward the main house like a mother cat trying to protect her kittens from being taken away. Yozo strained his ears, wondering what would happen, but Yoko’s voice—suddenly ablaze like oil paper catching fire—came carried on the wind. Though he couldn’t make out the words, they gradually reached his ears. The stepmother—once a trusted servant of Yoko’s—seemed to be treated with outright contempt from the start; rather than negotiating with her as Matsukawa’s second wife might, Yoko adopted the manner of a mistress reprimanding a maid. Yet devoid of any venom or malice that might spark hatred or resentment, the encounter never escalated into a quarrel. The stepmother had no choice but to bow her head, while the students, for their part, carried on exactly as before! He was letting it flow past with a laugh, as if thinking, “Well, they’re still at it!” At this point, even that once-fluent city dialect of hers—reminiscent of romance novel dialogue—completely shed its veneer, her raw country accent surging forth as crude words pierced through her thin lips, cascading endlessly one after another. Suddenly, there came a rustling sound, and over the wooden boundary fence where pomegranate branches grew thick, the faces of neighbors began appearing one after another. From there, the inside of the room where Yozo was sitting was fully visible. Yozo felt awkward and abruptly went out to the living room to see. Yoko sat by the hearth with one knee raised, adopting a boss-like demeanor,

“If you think someone like you could ever be loved by Mr. Matsukawa, that’s a colossal delusion.” “I could take him back right now if I wanted—anytime at all.” These words pierced his ears. As the squall subsided, the students placated boys darting about nearby; the sun-tanned stepmother with faintly protuberant eyes bowed brusquely and withdrew; while Yoko, her composure crumbling at the children’s antics, nevertheless maintained gracious decorum toward the students. Soon enough, the students too withdrew after downing two or three beers with accompaniments of squid sashimi and crabs heaped whole on platters.

That evening, as Yozo wrote a short piece for a Tokyo newspaper under an electric lamp swarming with noisy insects, Yoko developed a fever and took to bed in the street-facing room beside the shop—accessible from the living area where the Buddhist altar stood. Her forehead and hands burned like fire when touched. Her face flushed crimson, eyes bloodshot. "Is it painful?" "Terribly. The fever comes in waves. And my buttocks burn like being stabbed with a blade—it hurts so much I can barely breathe."

“It’s anal fistula after all.” Yozo had undergone anal fistula surgery himself, so he could fully sympathize with the pain. She wheezed with flame-like gasps, but when the pain grew unbearable, she suddenly sat bolt upright. When that became unbearable, she would emerge from the mosquito net to stand on the veranda or kneel in seiza. Of course, that night was not the first time she had suffered. For several days now, she had been aware of the anal pain and had been running a slight fever, but what was visible appeared as a small, isolated swelling—slightly inflamed at the base—not yet pronounced enough to be immediately identified as an anal fistula.

“It might be hemorrhoids.”

He had been saying. Even afterward, they remained intermittently concerned, but when there was a slight fever, the spiritual anguish consuming them both had eaten so deeply into their inner selves that their affection stagnated into something thick and dreg-like—his tormenting manner growing so severe that even Yoko’s heart could no longer bear it. At times she would be called by her sister and leave the detached room, crossing the earthen floor to go to the main house—not returning for some time—but when she did come back, there was nothing particularly different about her demeanor.

“That you can’t trust me… Sensei, you truly are an unfortunate person.”

Yoko would say this, but given the circumstances, their conflicts remained internalized, never escalating into loud arguments. Before long, that hemorrhoid swelled up rapidly and began to discharge pus.

Yozo, feeling self-conscious about lying beside her, started to leave the mosquito net when she—delirious from fever as if in a dream-state—

“Stay a little longer…” ...she entreated, holding him back. By morning, she had calmed somewhat. A cool breeze from the narrow garden path played over her hands and feet as she dozed fitfully—though this respite lasted only briefly. The time when she went to see Dr. K, a trusted gynecologist, was still early enough for a rickshaw ride; the pain had not yet become so severe it made her leap up, nor was the fever particularly high. It was through this examination that they definitively identified it as an anal fistula. The immediate treatment plan was to apply cooling medicine to disperse the swelling while they still could, yet the abscess only festered and spread further. Therefore, today Yoko separately decided to also summon the director—a literature-loving internal medicine bachelor with whom she was acquainted, and whose residence connected to the hospital building she had once visited with Yozo—to come examine her.

After the director finished his hospital rounds, he came by rickshaw. At that time, Yoko’s sickbed had been moved to a bright six-tatami room facing the inner courtyard at the back of the living area—which usually served as her mother’s sitting room—and Yozo was keeping watch by her side. He had been worrying alone whether he should withdraw from here after hearing the diagnosis results, but the director—who was pressing on the painful swelling below with his fingers— “It’s already suppurated. This must be painful.”

he said with a smile,

“Have you ever had surgery before?” “I had my breast removed in Hokkaido, you see.” “Another surgery, Doctor, you see.” “This is what’s called perianal inflammation.” “In this state, there’s no choice but to cut it out.” “Should I go to a surgical hospital to have it cut out?”

“That would be preferable, but well—since it doesn’t seem too large yet, and given that Dr. K has already examined you—we two could take care of it for you.”

“Is it local anesthesia or something?” “Well,” “If you can endure five or ten minutes, it might not even come to that.” “Compared to this relentless pain you’ve been bearing all along, it’s nothing at all.”

Such exchanges continued for a while, and in the end, it was decided to have it cut out in one go with unanimous resolve.

"For hemorrhoids, cutting's the only solution," Yozo said. "I still believe having mine removed was the right choice. If excision won't help, leaving it untouched would be worse. You'll just keep being gnawed at otherwise." As he spoke these words with practiced detachment, Yozo suddenly remembered lying emaciated in bed thirteen years prior—his digestive system ruined—for three weeks after surgery. His thirteen-year-old eldest son and eleven-year-old eldest daughter had occasionally visited, though some observers had already half given up hope given his severe debilitation. That eldest daughter—the one who'd prayed to God—died within a year. The anxious, bashful face of that young girl remained seared into some recess of his soul, unchanged even now. Had she lived—how would she have judged this incident involving her father that followed so soon after her mother's death? The pain of connecting with a dead child's spirit cut deeper than interacting with living children. By comparison, he could say his wife's affection during their twenty-five year marriage had been reasonably requited.

The next day around three o'clock, two doctors arrived together. With practiced nonchalance, they laid out disinfecting equipment, scalpels, and tweezers from their folding bags onto a waterproof cloth spread across the veranda—the metal instruments glinting coldly. Summer had already begun fading toward its end, and in that place sunlight perpetually carried a muted quality. Within that subdued light they performed the crude procedure. Following the doctor's directions, Yozo pressed his knee firmly into Yoko's flank while clamping her thighs with both hands—but when the scalpel began excavating the abscess, she screamed sharply and arched upward violently.

“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!” Instantly, oily sweat beaded on her forehead and nose. The gynecologist holding the scalpel flinched and slightly withdrew his hand.—This time, the internal medicine director inserted the scalpel into the rosy flesh. Yoko moaned as if her breath might give out, but by the time Yozo—who had turned his face away—withdrew, the wound had already been disinfected. Soon came the smell of iodoform, and gauze was applied. By the time the doctor finished packing his instruments to leave, even a faint smile had begun to appear on Yoko’s face. And from that moment, the fever suddenly subsided.

Through his mother and brother's kind services, Yozo spent one day driving a taxi to explore scenic foothills at a moderate distance from town—dining on river fish at a restaurant by a lotus pond, then venturing into nearby mountains where he floated a boat on a lake in the drizzle and walked along the water's edge at the mountain's base, which held the serene beauty of an antiquated medieval Western painting—returning at dusk. Thus another two or three days passed.

At such times, a shadow crossed Yozo's heart—the suspicion that someone had been by Yoko's side all along—but Yoko, in contrast, knelt on one knee outside the mosquito net and whispered words of gratitude to him.

“If this were an ordinary romance, no one would say a thing.” “What else could the coincidence of two people of different ages meeting be but a miracle?” But Yozo could not help but also consider the true meaning hidden within those words. If she endured three or five years—ten at most—Yozo too would eventually exit this stage. And everything would be settled. By then, she would have successfully ridden out the tides of journalism, and another happy married life would be waiting for her.

Yozo was now in his study, diligently working his pen across the paper. As he wrote, a surge of sentiment welled up within him until hot tears blurred the characters beyond recognition. He wiped away tears with his fingertips and the backs of his hands as he kept writing. His heart swelled with emotion thinking of the young children sleeping soundly in dawn's pleasant slumber in the next room. The evening's telegram from Yoko lay at the desk's edge. ASHITA 7 JIKU

it read. Two weeks had already passed since he returned from shaking hands with her in her sickbed, and during that time his tormented heart was gradually returning to normal. There, he came to think of completely rebuilding himself. When his heart inclined in that direction, the load suddenly felt lighter, and the path began to open before him. He had been working in just a short-sleeved summer kimono with the wooden sliding doors left wide open; by the time he finished writing, when the sparrows’ chirping had grown noticeable, the unrelenting emotion still tightened his chest.

When he took hold of the telegram, he felt that what he had been waiting for had finally come—but he was also flustered.

“...I’ve prepared enough to study near you, Sensei, for a year or two...” The letter containing those words had arrived three or four days prior, but having had to complete two works in quick succession, Yozo—who had been writing to her as frequently as he had—had yet to send any reply. In truth, he was utterly exhausted by this situation. A life with more suffering than pleasure—and yet that suffering was itself a form of pleasure, meaning pleasure too became suffering—and without such anguish he might have succumbed to ennui. Still, there in that place, he thirsted for the thought of breathing deep beneath a blue sky.

As an interlude to this affair, he occasionally went to Sayoko’s waterside home to distract himself from his loneliness. During those days there had always been people around spaces like the middle parlor and tearoom; now with even her sister having returned home to the countryside, he too found himself no longer being exclusively ushered into reception rooms. When the time came, Sayoko would enter the bath, then sit before the mirror. She would apply a thick layer of makeup, lightly brush her eyebrows with ink, and though she used little eye shadow, she colored her lips with lipstick like pomegranate blossoms. Her eyes and eyebrows were lightly defined, and though the bridge of her upturned nose rose somewhat unnaturally from its base, it wasn’t particularly striking. If anything, her eyes—which at times shone like planets—imparted an air of instability, yet her overall expression remained unhurried, perhaps owing to her Nara birth. Her pride in her beauty had not yet been lost, and it seemed as though countless splendid things still lay ahead for her. She was desperate to try something. Writing novels was another aspiration of hers, and Yozo had even been shown a small wooden box filled to the brim with scattered manuscripts.

“I believe there’s nothing I can’t do if I put my mind to it, but novels seem to be the exception.” “It doesn’t work like manipulating men.” “Oh, I wouldn’t do such a thing to you.” When her makeup was done, she would change into a kimono and appear in the guests’ rooms herself like an actress entering her dressing room. After servicing one or two rooms in succession, she would invariably become drunk. Sometimes intoxicated from gulped whiskey—her eyes growing bleary, legs slightly unsteady, speech tending to slur—she would approach Yozo in this languid state.

“That’s quite something.”

Yozo, unable to remain indifferent,

“You drink quite heavily,” Yozo said. “Is it all right for you to drink like that?” “It’s fine—that little whiskey’s nothing. When I get drunk, things get messy.” “O-Kami-san!” A voice called from the hallway. “They’re all leaving now.” Yet on such nights, he could never tell where she slept. Feeling he might be intruding on her business dealings, he would ask her to call a taxi—though it wasn’t rare for them to keep talking late into the night with the electric lamp by their pillows, listening to the creak of oars on water in the dark hours.

One day, Yozo stepped out through her gate together with Sayoko. "Sensei, if you're free today, would you accompany me to Kanda? I want to have my fortune told there." "Of course—depending on how things go, I might have mine done too. What are you wanting yours read about?" "There's nothing particular at present, but I feel... peculiar. We've had this terribly long relationship—we even kept house together once before. There's nothing between us now. But when they flee, I give chase; when I try to escape, they come pursuing me—it's this endless dance where just when I think we've severed ties, time passes and we become entangled again... Isn't it strange?"

Sayoko was more solemn than usual.

“What kind of person?” “It hasn’t been going well at all lately.” Yozo wanted to probe what sort of man Sayoko might favor, but she merely said this without offering even a conceptual outline of her paramour. However, much later, one evening when Yozo sat beside the large rosewood brazier in the tearoom—the day having been overwhelmed with guests, the kitchen staff frantically calling restaurants nonstop—even Sayoko remained in her everyday clothes, heating sake and ferrying items about, when suddenly a man slid open the entrance’s sliding door and entered wearing a padded robe with a toothpick clenched between his teeth.

“Ah, this is it.” In an instant, Yozo’s sixth sense stirred, but upon seeing this, Sayoko suddenly smirked and led the man away. Then three or four more years passed—years during which he would often pass time with that man in Sayoko’s second-floor room and even began visiting Yozo’s house. By then, however, he had grown quite haggard in appearance, aged nearly beyond recognition. And by that time, Yozo had come to learn many things. He realized that dragging her from Hon Kurube’s house had also been his revenge for having once been forced to drink scalding water.

Now, Sayoko had broken away from Kurube—who had intended to start a new life with her, even considering marriage and taking her back to his home country—but when lured out, she found her hopes utterly dashed. To begin a new life aligned with his present circumstances, Sayoko’s lifestyle proved too extravagant, and her tastes excessively Westernized. Therefore, Sayoko had started this hospitality business exactly as she wished.

After emerging onto Ginza-dori, whose form was still taking shape, Sayoko hailed an en-taku taxi and decided to go as far as the guardhouse beneath Kanda Station.

However, since they summoned people upstairs one by one for fortune-telling, Yozo waited downstairs while Sayoko had hers read. Before long, Sayoko came down. Her expression remained unchanged from before the divination. Eventually, Yozo decided to have his own fortune told too.

“Your compatibility is excellent.” “However, this person lacks stability.” “Unless you supervise her quite strictly, problems are prone to arise.” The fortune-teller said. It concerned Yoko. When they left there, neither showed any interest in discussing the fortune-telling results. After wandering the streets for a while, the two of them ended up returning to Yozo’s study. Sayoko sat down in front of the rosewood desk and was looking through magazines when— “Sensei, I’d like you to write something for me.”

“I’ll write, but mine won’t carry over to your place.” “I’ll bring you something before long.” “That’s a bit too rough, you see.” “I’ll replace them little by little, you see.”

Then the conversation shifted to the construction of her house, touching on topics like the price when she had acquired it, costs for renovations in some sections and new construction in others. Yozo looked around the smoke-darkened old room as though seeing it anew. "I have to do something about this house too." "Well, if you do decide to rebuild, why not let that carpenter handle it? Do give him a try." "That's Toriyaso's regular master carpenter from Hirokoji." That bourgeois fowl restaurant gradually came to be understood as having some connection with her partner too.

It was at that time that he went out for dinner, taking along his youngest daughter to view the elaborate architecture and garden of that Toriyaso restaurant. With splendid Chinese windmill palm plantings forming the distant view, water spread abundantly throughout the garden where a crystal curtain waterfall cascaded over rock formations, and as it was dusk, the stone lanterns' light filtering through lush green winter bamboo thickets appeared refreshingly cool. Countless black and scarlet carp swam effortlessly beneath the handrail where lapping water reached. Cherry blossom tofu, chicken with wasabi, and bowl-like dishes lay arranged on the dining table. Sayoko's figure—neat in a black crepe haori she had worn coming there—seemed somewhat chilled, though she had barely touched her chopsticks.

Sakiko seemed unaccustomed to both the people and the place, and though she didn’t look particularly happy, she kept smiling all the while. "There was a time when Mr. Kurube and I suddenly decided to go to Nikko on some impulse. We made it to Ueno Station, but I realized I'd forgotten my wallet," she said. "There was no time left, so I had no choice but to come to this house and explain the situation—and someone silently covered three hundred yen for me once."

As such topics arose, on their way back the three of them walked along Hirokoji, where night stalls were set up. Sayoko was holding the child's hand, but even as she walked like that, there was something about her that seemed to shrink from prying eyes.

Suddenly, the conversation turned to Yoko. "I've grown thoroughly sick of it all." "I think I'll end it."

“Just end it.”

“Will you take over after that?”

he said in a hesitant voice,

“I will take responsibility.” Though Yozo wasn’t particularly relying on that outcome, he felt this moment—now that he had found such diversion—was opportune for parting with Yoko. He neglected to go meet her, instead entering the mosquito net where he laid down his weary body. He closed his eyes firmly. The gentle slope through a deep pine forest where he had often walked with Yoko floated before his eyes. It was a quiet, bright pine-covered hill suitable for townspeople’s spring and autumn picnics. Large pine trees that blocked the heat stood sparsely towering. For Yoko, who never grew weary of recounting happy childhood memories, how nostalgic that place must have been. At the upper cliff edge among miscellaneous trees grew cornelian cherries, with bush clover and pampas grass growing thickly. The sound of waves was not distant. The azure sky filtering through pine branches held a purity unseen in the capital. Yozo, having been raised in the countryside, felt more affinity for this quiet nature than grand scenic views. The two of them, wearing straw sandals, ran about like wild children.

When one crossed the river behind Yoko's house, there too lay an area resembling snow country farmlands with a wild air—where groves stood dense, paths lay buried under grass, and houses neither fully farmhouse nor townhouse could be seen among them. Yoko stepped into the earthen-floored entry of one such poor dwelling and called out “Pardon me” while peering into its depths. There sat an old woman who divined fortunes by candle flame’s sway, hunched in a damp dim room, already beginning to read Yoko’s fate. She tossed back her disheveled hair, offered prayers before the altar, then fixed eyes like one deity-possessed upon the flame’s wavering.

“Rely on the person from the east.” “That person will lend you strength.” In her thick dialect, she had offered this veiled suggestion. When speaking of “east from here,” that could only mean Akimoto—the affluent poet from old money. Yozo couldn’t help recognizing that Yoko’s spirited return to Tokyo now relied on such shadowy patronage, yet his mood remained bleak nonetheless. Accompanied by Shimano Tasogare—a young local writer distantly related to Yoko as a sort of cousin—Yozo boarded the homebound train, feeling as though he’d wandered into some fathomless dark path.

Now that his distress had somewhat subsided, he remained torn between going to meet her or leaving her be. However, when he thought of the spirited tone in those letters she had sent while lying bedridden—wielding her brush with abandon on scroll paper to report her postoperative progress—he found himself unable to remain still even in sleep.

After changing into a kimono, grabbing a cane, and exiting the gate, he turned the corner of the side street. Then, before he walked even twenty yards, he encountered her figure approaching with a warm smile. Her compact form, clad in an old-fashioned small-patterned ro-chirimen summer kimono, seeped into his vision with nostalgia. Yoko indeed stared at Yozo for a while with eyes that clung to him like those of a child seeking a benevolent father, her gaze dewy and forlorn. "Sensei, you look young."

It seemed she hadn’t fully recovered yet—her silkworm-pale face bore a faint sickly flush, eyes glistening with moisture. Yozo found it difficult to maintain his aloof demeanor as Yoko turned toward the crossroads square. "I only brought my two daughters with me," "and Mother sent along one maid too." "I must find a house immediately." With these words she retreated toward the automobile—just as young children emerging from the car and a trunk-laden maid drew near where Yoko stood waiting.

“Come on, bow to Uncle.” The children bobbed their heads in polite bows, smiling brightly all the while, but the mother’s hardship in gathering these children together to begin a new life was no simple matter. That too was merely an artistic life blueprint drawn by Yoko—a woman full of dreams who didn’t find things too bothersome. Yozo quickly found a house in the next alley parallel to the narrow alley where he had lived for thirty years. Her belongings that had been stored at the house behind Yozo’s—the chest of drawers and dressing table they had bought together by the pond, along with items like the bookcase with pink fabric gathered on its glass doors, the trunk, and the futon wrapped in a large pale green arabesque-patterned wrapping cloth—were transported using the cart driver Yozo regularly employed. Then Yoko too led the children away, vacating the neighboring lodging.

Having grown up in a rural household steeped in extended-family traditions, it must have been nothing short of delightful for Yoko to finally create a new world of her own there with the children. The country house could no longer be managed according to her mother’s wishes. Her brother’s family—the legal inheritors—had left that remote house to establish themselves in a quiet residential district at the town’s center. However much they loved their sister, they could hardly take pleasure in her behavior, which so often became fodder for public gossip. They had wanted to give her enough capital for a business venture, have her stay quietly in the countryside, or remarry someone dependable and settle down—but they understood all too well that Yoko was not one to smolder away in rural obscurity. Yoko had frequently caused this brother and mother worry, and even when she came out this time, she had merely covered some expenses herself. There were times when Yozo glimpsed her bedridden form frequently taking money from her worn-out wallet. Yozo—whose prolonged stay had reached a point requiring action—was not unaware of the situation’s urgency, but found himself at a loss after even his modest payment of a restaurant bill had forced extraordinary measures from her brother.

The place where Yoko and the others settled was a narrow single-story house, but with a south-facing courtyard that gave it a cheerful design. There was also a bay window ideal for displaying flowers, where white curtains perpetually fluttered against the wind. Moreover, Yoko knew how to brighten rooms—with literary maiden-like tastes, she would experiment by placing wicker chairs on the engawa or arranging an elegant shaded lamp on the desk, transforming the space as deftly as a pastel drawing.

However, her complexion remained pallid, and she couldn't endure sitting upright for long. As the wound hadn't fully healed yet, she required medicine, tweezers, and fresh gauze. "Sensei, I'm sorry—it's too difficult with just a mirror. Won't you change my gauze?" "Of course."

Yozo said this and, in the bright area of the engawa, placed a zabuton cushion to peer at her supine wound. While most of it appeared fused in a pale purple hue, there remained a hole that seemed to plunge deep when probed, from which something like lymph fluid had seeped out. Following her instructions, he gently wiped the area with alcohol-disinfected tweezers, applied fresh gauze, and secured it with a slenderly cut pick to prevent slippage.

If the tweezers so much as grazed it, she would cry out, “Ouch!” “Thank you very much.” Yoko would try to rise, but day after day brought only repetitions of the same routine, with no real progress. Yozo would sometimes arrange pillows alongside the children within the cramped confines of a single mosquito net in the back room. Yet this being her household—complete with children and a maid—he found no peace of mind. When Yoko occasionally fixed him with eyes meant for an intruder, harmony became impossible. He would storm out in irritation, though even his old study offered no solace. There were moments he’d turn back to strike her pale cheek through the mosquito netting. Yoko would simply stare blankly, her face frozen in mute astonishment.

Moreover, Yoko was not always at home; when Yozo went to see, there were times when only a maid was house-sitting, or the door was shut. It was around that time that Yozo would often take her shopping in his automobile with her perched on his lap, frequently going out to Ginza and Kanda. Things like purchasing a grandfather clock, resizing a ring, or buying cosmetics. The habit of dining out took hold too, with them regularly taking taxis to top-tier restaurants. This was because Yozo's kitchen—left entirely to two maids—stood woefully neglected: excess vegetables rotted in piles beneath the sink; perfectly serviceable utensils lay discarded about; cheap dishes and bowls were thoughtlessly stockpiled. Simmered seafood from distant waters always emerged cloyingly oversweet like candied preserves, while the pickles stank like stagnant water in a ditch. Moreover, losses occurred frequently, and the purposes of the petty cash given to them often remained unclear; but given the severe maid shortage of those days, there was no recourse but to turn a blind eye.

However, it wasn’t always Yozo who settled the restaurant bills. Rather, in most cases, Yoko would produce a clasp purse from her obi sash, “Let me pay.” she would insist with practiced generosity. She gave the impression of possessing some inexhaustible treasury. Before long, cool breezes began blowing. From the two-story boarding house next door that she had moved into for the second time, Yoko now relocated much closer—to a two-story house directly facing Yozo’s. By then, through Yozo’s connections, she had begun serializing a work in a women’s literary magazine—but the wound that had appeared temporarily healed remained unclosed, and even forgotten pains now resurfaced. Ultimately, the scalpels of those internal medicine and gynecology specialists proved inadequate. A radical surgical revision became necessary. Yozo had privately contemplated introducing her to an eminent surgeon, but those crude provincial treatments had left Yoko thoroughly wary of medical interventions.

“I think I’ll go to a hot spring instead.” “How about Yugawara?” Yoko proposed one day. “That sounds fine.” “Do you have money? “You needn’t worry about me, Sensei—with four hundred yen for two people, couldn’t we stay about two weeks?” Yozo made some preparations, and they boarded the train from Tokyo Station the following afternoon. Yoko packed her recently acquired rubber ring appliance into the suitcase and wore a black haori over the uniquely woven lined kimono they had found together at the department store. Yozo wore formal clothes—garments his late wife had discreetly commissioned for him that he seldom wore—as they settled into the crowded second-class car.

Ten

In Yugawara, they settled into a commonplace room at N—— Hotel, but no trace remained of when Yozo had stayed here less than a month during golden orange-ripening season with disciples and friends. The location had been expanded deeper into the mountainside, now fully transformed into a first-class establishment. The heir who had once guided them around had long since died, and the daughters his friends used to fuss over had been married off elsewhere and become mothers themselves. Yozo, who could neither drink nor command disciples anymore, soon fell into complete loneliness; warding off drunken friends who accosted him became exhausting, and his nerves frayed until he was utterly spent—but looking back now, even that had been a pitiful version of his former self. Looking back later, what they were now acting out might have been something even uglier than that.

Yoko fidgeted as if grateful he had brought her here upon arrival. After bathing and changing her usual gauze dressing, she crossed the bridge to stroll through the hot spring town. When they reached the town center, he gazed around with faint nostalgia. Stopping before a modest inn, “There used to be a billiard hall here.” “The owner had marvelous skill—he taught me how to hold a cue from scratch. But no matter how many days I practiced, I never improved. Can you play?”

“I used to play billiards in Hokkaido though.” “Back then, there were all sorts of social gatherings for us wives—we even took up dancing.” “I learned from the wife of S——’s younger brother, the agricultural scholar.” Yoko never lacked material for romantic tales, no matter the situation. There was the grotesque wife’s affair with her brother at the local merchant marine school; how that brother had an older lover who now raised their child alone through ikebana and tea ceremonies; or how Yoko, hospitalized to have a breast abscess lanced, became infatuated with the surgeon who wielded the scalpel—only to later stagger unsteadily to his hospital and face rejection. At other times, she would suddenly vanish with manuscript paper in hand, causing people to fuss—incidents that frequently became fodder for newspaper gossip columns.

As the town’s dim lights came on, they returned to the inn and sat down to a cheerful meal. Whether imagined or not, Yozo felt something oppressive in the sharp-eyed clerks’ gazes whenever passing through the entrance, while Yoko ordered sweets from the maids with the familiarity of regular patronage, her attention fixed solely on whether newspaper reporters might be in the adjacent room. However, the intensely stimulating hot spring water proved counterproductive for her. After three days of soaking and replacing gauze, the pain only intensified until she sometimes had them lay out bedding even at midday. Until yesterday she had endured intermittent discomfort to visit Okura Park—climbing staircases between autumn-tinted trees, descending to white-streamed rock formations, strolling paths where bush clovers and cockscombs bloomed wildly, walking deep into town to Fudo Falls then circling water-dripping cliffs to gaze nostalgically at shallow mountains whose bonfire smoke drifted across clear autumn skies—but now she furrowed her brow as if dragged somewhere absurd, her mood turning thoroughly foul. When this happened, Yozo too felt culpable, secretly agonizing over his weak heart. Being near her—with tear-filled eyes and obstinate silence, alternately dozing wallward then startling awake—grew increasingly oppressive.

Another evening, after using the tweezers, Yozo took a bath and sat down at the dining table under a dim electric light. Yoko lay beside him with feverish eyes. Her cheeks had flushed crimson. In this state—pretending the money came from her mother while actually using funds she had Akimoto send from the countryside, forgetting she had come to the hot spring with him—Yozo reflexively felt she might even resent his seemingly unperturbed face. Yet sensing there was no need for such spiteful thoughts, he gazed at the dishes the maid had laid before them.

“I’m not eating anything.” She seemed to indicate refusal through a slight movement of her eyes, but when Yozo began eating with apparent distaste, Yoko appeared to feel a stinging pain, emitting a thin moan as her face contorted. He kept his expression rigidly fixed elsewhere, absorbed in separate thoughts, and did not turn toward her. “How can you sit there eating so calmly while someone’s suffering like this? Some esteemed author you are.”

Yozo flinched. And then he flew into a rage. He left the table halfway through his meal, folded his change of clothes along with the scattered books and manuscript paper, packed them into his suitcase, removed his wadded robe, and prepared to leave.

“I didn’t come here to nurse you.” “This is such a nuisance.” “Handle it yourself.” Yozo, fuming, asked about the train times over the phone and struck a match for his cigarette. The clerk came over,

“Are you departing?” “I’ve got a bit of business to take care of.”

The clerk tilted his head slightly as if to suggest they could make the last train if they hurried, but Yozo could not remain still. When the automobile’s engine rumbled, he put on his Inverness coat and scrambled out of the room, but once the vehicle began moving, he felt a lingering reluctance—fully aware of the awkwardness of this situation yet half-wishing he would miss the train. He considered taking a drive to Atami, yet also felt it would be more pleasant to return home and lie down in his study.

Along the stone-strewn path, the automobile clattered and jolted as it accelerated. Yozo was nearly thrown about at times, and as the wind blew, the jolting motion nearly slammed his head against the window frame—in that instant, his cap flew out through the half-lowered window. As if someone had flung it out on purpose. “You—the cap just flew off.”

The driver stopped the car and searched for the cap in the wind-lashed thicket, but it took no more than two minutes. The station lights drew near. And just as they were about to pull into the station square, the train began moving. Yozo returned to the room like a chastened child who'd played a prank. "Sensei! Say it that way about the orange!" Eventually Yoko too rose from her bed. Preparing for Yoko's hospitalization took considerable time. As she was then serializing a novel in a women's magazine—needing to stockpile two months' worth of installments—and wanting to secure some bright future for Rumiko, her immediate plan was to have Rumiko live as an apprentice under Yukie—a dancer pioneering new styles while maintaining public favor—so once arrangements were settled, she needed to make that request too. Most urgently, she required her mother's presence.

Even on the return trip from Yugawara, Yoko had been lying on the train seat in such a state that when they disembarked at Odawara, her face turned deathly pale—her heart seemingly stopped—leaving her unable to speak or see. Supported by Yozo’s hands and brought to a rest teahouse beside the station, she lay utterly limp as if dead. Finally carried by male attendants into a quiet back room, she slept there awhile until the cold, greasy sweat that had soaked into her forehead subsided and her rapid pulse gradually calmed. She had desperately tried to avoid the painful surgery, only to become acutely aware of its necessity.

One day, Yoko visited Yukie with Rumiko in tow, wearing a dark gray kimono patterned with arrow-notch motifs and an obi of green ground adorned with red and ocher arabesques, Yozo’s letter tucked into her kimono. Yukie had gladly agreed to take Rumiko on as a live-in apprentice, but since she composed poetry with elegant penmanship and held a passion for literature, Yoko found their conversation flowing as if they were old acquaintances. It was one evening not long after that when Yozo was taken by Yoko to see the rehearsal.

“I too wanted desperately to write novels but found no way.” In her cramped room overflowing with gaudy decorations, while being treated to an exquisitely prepared dinner, Yozo listened to her artistic atmosphere and northern-accented passionate words—though the commitment and energy required to sustain oneself through art proved extraordinary indeed. When talk turned to her past romantic affairs, those limpid eyes abruptly brimmed with fervor.

Yet she was not alone. There was Kiyokawa, the young literary scholar whose name Yozo had heard before—a man with the bearing of a young master from the downtown district. When Yukie first introduced him, Yozo realized this was her young lover even as he momentarily grew uneasy about their pairing, sensing some faint disquiet. This was what suited Yoko. Yozo thought so. The wadded robe Yoko had made for wearing in the hospital room—coarse stripes of tarnished red and navy—now showed faint stains from constant use, yet even though November was already more than half over, she still alternated between lying down and getting up in the back room on the second floor. By that time, replacing gauze had become insufficient, and sometimes she would shake her bobbed head violently, stamp her feet in frustration, and hop around the room to distract herself from the pain. She used makeshift ointment to somewhat alleviate the pain. Yozo often slept beside her, but one night he heard from her lips that Akimoto would be coming to Tokyo under pretext of visiting.

"That person comes to Tokyo sometimes." Yoko said lightly. "Even when he comes, it's just two or three days." "But since I receive money from him, please let me go just this once." It might have been considered a sick visit, or perhaps meant to monitor Yoko's activities, but there was no change in her condition. From the second floor, smoke from bonfires could be seen rising daily in Yozo's garden. Winter had deepened slightly more, and the roof-raising for the addition had been completed. He found himself compelled to somehow resolve the house situation.

Eleven

One afternoon, with Yozo's consent, Yoko went to visit Akimoto's lodgings wearing a newly tailored heavy silk kimono—its dark silver-gray fabric patterned with interlocking arrow-feather motifs in slate-blue. Her face bore a morbid beauty, perhaps from hemorrhoids that hinted at tubercular pallor, eyes glistening with a damp inner light. Though she had distant Akimoto fund much of her living expenses while devoting herself to Yozo nearby—even if this served her irrepressible ambition to master fiction writing, even if draining a fraction of Akimoto's excessive wealth meant little—the guilt of deceiving him at times tormented her nerves as keenly as her anal pain. Simultaneously, Yozo—who seemed to bind her body in exclusive possession—now struck her as an insufferably obtuse yet wily man, stoking her frustration. To outside eyes, her actions might appear thoroughly tainted, but from her own view—though their manifestations warped—this stemmed from complex, contradictory circumstances: fragile devotion itself being mercilessly crushed beneath a reality that defied her ideals. Her literary passion and self-sacrificing ardor resembled nothing so much as the beautiful, frail wings of a butterfly ensnared and quivering in reality's spiderweb.

“Is it really all right to take so much money?” Whenever her funds dwindled to two or three hundred yen, she would hastily request money through telegraphic transfers—a behavior that grew increasingly blatant around this time, paining Yozo as he watched. “It’s fine—where there’s a source, there’s a way.” “Well, I hear there’s not much left anymore.” “Even if it seems like there’s nothing, when it comes to rural family assets, there’s always something tucked away somehow.” Yoko remained optimistic, but since she seemed rather reluctant to write things like receipts for the money being sent or thank-you notes, Yozo had mentioned that as well.

“That’s why I’m in such a bind. When I have to send a letter, I need to write something a bit coquettish to satisfy that person—and if I try to write that way, your eyes are always watching, aren’t they?” With those words, Yoko gave a bitter smile, though she would sometimes deliberately show off her elegant handwriting in front of Yozo. Yozo could generally imagine the content of those phrases, so he deliberately pretended not to see them.

Now, it so happened that on that very day, Yozo was supposed to show Mother—who had cared for him in the countryside—around the Kabukiza Theater, and naturally Yoko was also expected to accompany them, so he had bought three tickets. "Sensei, please take Mother and go." "I'll visit Mr. Akimoto's hotel and finish up in thirty minutes—or an hour at most." "I promise." "All right?" After hurriedly preparing, Yoko left the house a step ahead with those words.

Yozo and the mother were soon settled into the second box seat on the second floor of the Kabukiza Theater. It was a performance by Ganjiro's troupe—beginning with some newly written period drama and featuring Ganjiro's signature Daianji piece in the middle. Precisely because Yozo still retained some fondness for kabuki theater then, he felt an inexplicable loneliness with Yoko—she who mattered most—not being beside him. The mother was quite talkative herself, but nine-tenths of her country dialect remained incomprehensible.

As the number of acts progressed, Yozo gradually lost his composure. He had wanted to see the play, but the atmosphere of the hotel room she had gone to meet him in also weighed on his mind. Waiting for someone in such a place of pleasure tends to make anyone nervous, no matter who they might be—but in this case, Yozo’s theater-going mood was especially mercilessly disrupted. He frequently left his seat, went as far as the staircase entrance, but eventually proceeded to the main entrance, and even then, while occasionally inspecting people emerging from automobiles, he wandered around the area. In the midst of this, two frustrating hours had passed. In the end, fatigue set in his nerves, and half from a sense of resigned ease, he deliberately settled into his seat. The crucial middle act of Daianji was already approaching its start. The wooden sounds from backstage drew near.

There, Yoko entered unsteadily.

“I’m terribly sorry. You waited for me, didn’t you?” Yoko sat down beside Yozo with those words. “But it worked out. The middle act is about to start.” “I see.” Yoko nodded, but her face and voice were weary. The moment Yozo saw her haggard face, all scenes came vividly before his eyes. Yoko’s usually black eyes had lost their luster, drying to a russet hue, and her lips lacked vitality. It was precisely at such times that she seemed to feel affection for another body—even as all eyes around them were fixed on the stage—her hand would gently reach out to touch Yozo.

Ganjiro’s *Daianji* was one of Yozo’s favorites. Beneath the tragic fate of Haruto—the role he played—it was fascinating to see how his larger-than-life personality would amusingly lift its head with a wriggling motion, much like his large cranium. “Hmm...” Yoko watched, captivated, smiling faintly. When viewed directly from above, the second role played by the same actor—Chubei—revealed a sinewy white neck where wrinkles stood out starkly, while his retreating figure from shoulder to back carried an undeniable loneliness. Having long watched his flamboyant stage presence since first seeing him in his thirties in Osaka, Yozo couldn’t help but find the traces of time etched into this popular actor to be intensely desolate.

Then, after an interval of about two days, one evening when the two of them were in Yoko’s second-floor room, the maid O-hae came in and said, “The driver has come with this and is here to pick you up,” then quietly handed Yoko what appeared to be a tied letter. Since meeting at the hotel in Azabu, Yoko had not spoken much about Akimoto. She found his hands too thick and rugged to bear, derided the overcoat hanging on his wall as the mark of a provincial gentleman, and scoffed at how he still prattled on about Tolstoy and Gandhi like some rustic literary youth who’d never outgrown his naivety. Then, on the very next evening, when a newspaper solicited her for a lecture event and a women’s magazine commissioned a serial novel, her sudden rise into the glamorous literary world—her existence as a new-era woman writer, her radiant future—already felt irrevocably assured. Against this backdrop, Akimoto, whom she’d met again after so long, struck her as hopelessly antiquated, reeking of musty provincialism.

Yozo had been letting her words wash over him like a form of self-comfort, but he found himself thinking that some of it might actually be worth believing. “Let me go meet him again this time, okay? Even though he went out of his way to come all this way, that day I was also in such a rush we couldn’t have a proper talk—so we decided to find some quiet place and spend the night together.” Yozo nodded.

"That man seems quite the passionate type." "That's right." "When I entered the room, he suddenly jumped at me and lifted me up to the ceiling... But there's something strange about him."

Yoko's face turned red as she bowed her head. "Where are you meeting this time?" "That person did mention wanting somewhere with water..." She had often spoken of a stylish house near Yanagibashi—a place imbued with memories of a delightful night spent listening to creaking oars on late-night waters when she'd fallen for the painter Kusaba—and now he suspected this time too would likely be somewhere around there.

"Let me see that." Yozo said this and took the letter, but the location was on the opposite riverside, with the house's name also written there. Moreover, the phrasing felt antiquated and affected—even the use of "Your Excellency deigns to come" left a disagreeable impression. Contrary to his expectations, Yozo found it rather made his teeth ache with its cloying distastefulness. "Maybe I'll slip into that house for a look." Yozo said this as if joking. "By all means—you're welcome to come." Yoko replied nonchalantly before standing up.

“What time will you be back?” “I’ll be back by ten—eleven at the latest.” She made a pinky promise and went downstairs. Without even needing to consider where to direct his empty heart, Yozo once again sped by taxi to Sayoko’s house along the same Ōkawa riverside he always frequented. Just as he reached the vicinity of the intersection, his eldest son and the young man Hirata—who had been strolling nearby—noticed him, and the two suddenly approached the car.

“Where are you going?” “Nah, just going to grab a bite…” Yozo, somewhat flustered, ended up saying, “Why don’t you ride with me?” The two climbed in with eager satisfaction. Among his many children, Yozo had from earliest childhood doted most excessively on his eldest son, taking him to various places. He’d shown him rare circus troupes visiting town, world-famous aviators, acrobatic shows and operas—even Kabuki performances perhaps too mature for a child. One year when Mukojima flooded, meaning to demonstrate both the poor’s plight and relief efforts, Yozo dragged his seven- or eight-year-old son—dressed in stifling Western clothes and school cap—through suffocating heat all the way to Senju. That night brought thirty-nine-degree fever and black soot-like vomit.

“That was rather rough, wasn’t it?” Yozo had been laughed at by the pediatrician but had also been warned by others about taking his child to so many places indiscriminately. Yet by the time he later found himself learning from this very child about strolling through Ginza, visiting coffee shops, and attending music halls, he came to realize his educational approach had been mere blind affection, often leaving him exasperated by the boy’s daily habits. Moreover, it became routine for the child to collapse once or twice yearly from gastrointestinal issues or tonsillitis. When attempting entrance exams for schools beyond middle school, he developed sudden high fevers on test days for two consecutive years—returning home by automobile—delaying admissions until even his once-devout studiousness from middle school inevitably slackened. Here too lay exam hell’s curse warping young destinies—a persistent torment for Yozo.

But looking back now, he rather felt it might have been good to let him know about his own past to some extent. Even if it were a particular case like romantic love, his son would not lack the modern sensibilities and sentiments befitting a contemporary person—capable of offering more fitting criticism than even he in his old age could muster. Though Yozo hadn’t articulated this thought clearly, he at least harbored such an indulgent feeling. When it came to Rūzu, rarely was there someone with a brain as Rūzu-like as Yozo’s.

The mere fact that this place faced water meant that upon entering the room, anyone would momentarily feel removed from the dusty streets. For Yozo and his companions, however, it held no particular air of social incongruity. As they engaged in idle chatter with Sayoko—who possessed a certain literary allure—while sharing a casual meal, the tribulations surrounding the Yoko incident became somewhat easier to bear. "I did ask you before, but novels really are such difficult things, aren’t they?"

Sayoko, having apparently been writing lately as well, had brought out a manuscript folder and was flipping through her scattered novel drafts, but Yozo thought this woman belonged not among writers but among those written about. “You really need to put in five or ten years of apprenticeship first.” “Above all, you have to start with the prose.” He said with a laugh, but now that they had grown closer, he found he couldn’t access any coherent narrative thread regarding her eventful past.

As the child and Hirata gazed at the busy waterway, before long Sayoko entered, her evening makeup applied meticulously. Sitting cross-legged, she watched the round-faced child beaming before her,

“This is the young gentleman you once met at your home.” Yozo laughed too but, after properly introducing young Hirata and requesting food arrangements, went to bathe. He imagined Yoko must be drinking with Akimoto upstream along this same riverbank right now—perhaps even getting agitated—and precisely because she had confessed this liaison, he felt no particular displeasure. Yet contemplating his own strange position in this affair gave him an oddly ticklish sensation. Then from a small riverside room beyond the hallway, he thought he heard Sayoko’s charming laughter; when she returned to them later, her eyes were faintly reddened as if from beer. Yozo had noted how many in their circle lately treated this place as a carefree haunt, so he wondered if the neighboring guest belonged to that group—but asking Sayoko revealed it was a local doctor who’d recently taken to slipping in alone. This eccentric madam counted him among her admirers too; since Yozo had once consulted him professionally, they’d since met here once. Strangely enough, this doctor was kin to those with whom Yoko had briefly lodged after finishing girls’ school. No wonder Yoko knew Ningyocho’s backstreets well enough to specially visit for date-maki omelets. Now that he considered it, traces of the Kozue lineage showed in the Doctor’s face—that molded countenance with waxed mustache tips standing at attention. His stocky frame held an absurd dignity, and he danced superbly. When Yozo visited Hoeru in Ningyocho with Sayoko to observe dancers, he’d spotted the Doctor among the crowd—executing textbook-perfect steps with earnest precision—and involuntarily smiled.

“How about it? Why don’t you take up some exercise? When you try it for the first time, it’s really quite interesting.”

The doctor approached closer and urged. The doctor was here again tonight. Sayoko let slip a tone that seemed particularly annoyed by it, but Yozo himself had no way of knowing what was being said about him behind his back.

Yozo imagined Yoko having taken refuge at this Doctor’s house, but the notion that some unpleasant rumors had arisen around the time of her girls’ school graduation—leading her to be temporarily sheltered at the Doctor’s home to avoid them—was an especially malicious conjecture; the truth appeared to be that she had actually come to take entrance exams for music school. During the time Yozo had been involved with Yoko, and even after their relationship had completely ended, the gossip that kept reaching his ears was invariably about her misdeeds. Once, when he had earnestly tried to defend her publicly, it only dragged him deeper into a whirlpool of mockery, leaving him utterly powerless.

At the promised ten o'clock, Yozo left Sayoko's house. After dismissing the taxi on the street near his home, he quietly looked up at Yoko's second floor across the way. The wooden shutters on the second floor were closed tight, and no electric light shone through, but from the six-mat room below—just inside the wooden fence—her voice leaked out as she spoke with her mother. Relieved, Yozo opened the lattice door.

“An hour—no, even earlier than that. That’s when I returned.” She came up to the second floor with an unperturbed expression. “Is something wrong?” “I’ll explain properly later, but I ended up having a fight.” Yozo was not troubled. “At the promised house, I…” “Hmm… I didn’t like the house, so I left there and strolled along the embankment.” “Then I tried going to another house.” “That was fine at first, but once we started drinking, that person’s attitude became so affected that I got angry and dashed out into the hallway.” “When that happens, I’m a woman who doesn’t look back.” “That person chased me all the way to the entrance, though.”

“Then it’s practically like you went there to start a fight.” “It’s fine—I’ll see them off to Ueno tomorrow anyway.”

Yoko said this, glossing over her loneliness.

The next day, Yoko left the house after carefully timing her departure. Then, after having a basket of fruit prepared in Ginza, she sped by car to Ueno Station. But by then, it was already too late. When she had the Red Cap carry the heavy fruit basket and hurried out to the platform, the train had already begun moving. Yoko dejectedly loaded the fruit basket into the car and returned home. Without even changing clothes, she and her mother began packing to send that basket to his country house. The basket was packed with clusters of large grapes in emerald green and golden oranges visible through their wrapping paper.

“Even if they get a bit damaged, things like this are quite a novelty in the countryside, you know.”

Yoko was indeed beside herself. Yet how profoundly her capricious demeanor that night would reverberate through their future fate only became clear much later—and it was not until then that Yozo could accept how Yoko’s two dubious reports from the previous night, made upon returning from rare outings to Kobiki, had in fact been truthful.

Twelve

After finally sending Yoko to the hospital, Yozo felt abruptly liberated from the struggles of this romantic entanglement and experienced temporary relief. The long-pending house expansion project also played a significant role in shifting his mindset. Though the construction outcome naturally betrayed Yozo's expectations, once he had acquiesced to the contractor's demands, paid a substantial sum, and let the freight-delivered materials pile in the garden's center—even recognizing from those very materials that they violated their agreement—there remained nothing to be done. With limited funds on hand and it being no grand architectural endeavor, Yozo hesitated to make specific design requests himself, intentionally keeping his requirements vague.

“I don’t need any unnecessary embellishments. Just build something solid for me.” “Understood. We happened to find some reasonably priced lumber.”

With those words, the contractor took the money and left. This contractor maintained a rather impressive office near the antique dealer Yozo frequented, and they would occasionally encounter each other at that shop. Even judging from his wife’s refined taste—evident when she handled Sencha tea utensils at the same shopfront—it had seemed reasonable to entrust the construction entirely to her engineer husband. Yet it soon became apparent that the work had been subcontracted to another carpenter. The contemptuously slapdash construction soon began and progressed haphazardly. While one couldn’t entirely dismiss that “sturdiness” implied crude aesthetics, as the structure took shape, Yozo grew increasingly disgusted. But he could no longer intervene. That costs had nearly doubled was unavoidable. He could only take solace in the mere expansion of living space. There remained only his old six-mat study—its floor joists repaired, ceiling restored, walls repainted. For thirty years in that room, he had strained his meager intellect and limited talent through each creative struggle; yet it was also where visitors would survey the impoverished space with startled eyes. This same room had served as marital bedroom and sickroom for ailing children. Here too, within half a day and night, his wife had numbly combed their twelve-year-old daughter’s lush hair spread across tatami mats as summer dysentery claimed her—all while voices outside chanted “Come forth!” and July seventeenth’s morning breeze caressed the girl’s translucent forehead transformed overnight. And here, over a decade later on this New Year’s second afternoon, that same wife—who had then lost all joy in living—would lie as an empty husk where their children’s cries for mother still lingered. Though acknowledging these epochal sorrows within the room, Yozo found nostalgia only in how life’s imprints stained its modest confines: tobacco-resin darkened ceiling beams, fractured shoji screens, eaves weathered to dusky woodgrain. The space’s austere composure—so pared-down it seemed incapable of further simplification—stood glaringly apparent when he sat in his garish new study, making the addition feel utterly repugnant. Yet when arranging his desk in this protruding six-mat room—built where garden met neighboring third-floor windows, its floor slightly elevated—the scent of Taiwan cypress conjured shedding grimy old robes for fresh attire however flawed. Here, he resolved, would be his pristine workspace henceforth—a domain where Yoko’s footsteps would never trespass.

There were times when Yoko would come to see the nearly completed construction, and in her good moods, she would offer opinions derived from her own experience and tastes regarding things like the windows of the second-floor children's study. Together with the children, using that characteristically charming, spoiled-child tone of hers, she even had them remodel the traditional Japanese sliding glass doors by incorporating Western-style window frames to create openable windows. However, this expansion of Yozo's house for the children was not particularly pleasant for her.

“It’s nice, Sensei’s place—the house has become splendid.” Though Yoko would sometimes let slip an envious tone as if joking, she couldn’t help feeling infuriated at times by Yozo’s incomprehensibly selfish attitude—demanding exclusive love while making Akimoto pay hefty living expenses. Even if it hadn’t been Yozo’s calculated action but rather a trick derived from her own shrewd mind, the fact remained that Yoko herself had fallen into such a painful predicament. She was the sort of woman who could blithely undertake any unreasonable task—innocent if one called it innocence, sweet if one called it sweetness—possessing a self-intoxicating romantic sensibility. With nerves attuned to an uncanny sharpness in perpetually recasting her own life from one scheme to the next, she often appeared as a scheming woman without a moment’s lapse, forever plotting some new stratagem. Yet despite her passion that flared up moment by moment, her lack of domestically feminine virtues meant she frequently gave the impression of a fickle woman of the courtesan type. She was like a child enamored with novelties—leaping toward each new partner with heedless abandon, much as such a child would grow bored of even the most fascinating plaything and reach one after another for fresh diversions. Once captivated, she would fix her gaze upon some man and throw herself at him without proper discernment. Yet when life failed to match her soaring desires, or when a seemingly more appealing prospect appeared nearby, the flames of insatiable craving would drive her to flit toward another. In reality, however, this narrow earthly existence offered nothing capable of satisfying her hypersensitive yearnings. Everywhere her rainbow-hued hopes were betrayed, until petulant lamentations and sorrows shattered her beautiful dreams into dust. However, what coursed through her voluptuous body—steeped in the beautiful natural spirits of the northern seas’ tempestuous gloom—was always fresh blood of passion and an unceasing yearning for life. Even in her pilgrimage of love, which seemed so resistant to compromise with everyday life, there was an excess of neurotic calculation. In the northern region where she was born—to be precise, this wasn’t limited to the north—there was nothing as easily converted into material terms as a woman’s chastity. Yozo, juxtaposing the lingering atmosphere reminiscent of a red-light district—a vestige of the once-thriving port town around her ancestral home he had visited twice—with her acute awareness as a modern woman and her literary-learned tricks of new romance, perceived that while she remained prone to blind impulsiveness, there also dwelled within her a decadence akin to women of bygone eras: ambiguous calculations that cheapened chastity below material worth, nearly indistinguishable from ignorance. Of course, if these were calculations at the periphery, nearly all modern people possessed them. Yozo was also one of those suffering from it.

Since attending Yoko's anal fistula surgery, Yozo had come to recognize within himself a certain indolent tendency to keep his distance from her. Of course, this had been his longstanding disgust toward their impure, convoluted affair—a dark cloud looming over his mind—but it was also something warped by fierce condemnations and the children’s discontent into a strangely twisted defiance and stubbornness, compounded by the tenacity of lonely old age’s timid, desolate sexual urges—something he had never before experienced—which had dulled his capacity for self-assessment and reflection into an unrecognizable blur. Yet even as the festering anguish in his heart grew more excruciating by the hour, what allowed him now to faintly brush against something resembling his true feelings was her recent hysterical state of mind—a hostility toward him that increasingly merged with her physical suffering into something venomous. At times, Yoko would tuck the money that had arrived from the countryside into the fold of her obi and, to buy a light, warm futon like those used on hospital beds, lay her aching body across Yozo’s lap as they rode an automobile all the way to Ginza. From the white fox fur wrapped around her neck, a supple warmth brushed against his cheek. If she wore this fur around her neck, she’d never catch a cold. While thinking this, he had to endure the pain in his skinny thighs. On another occasion, when a year-end recital dance performance—where Rumiko, Yoko’s beloved daughter entrusted to a live-in apprentice—was to be held at Yukie’s house, Yoko invited Yozo to attend as well. Though reluctant, Yozo deliberated for a time before arriving somewhat late at the master’s residence in Aoyama, where he discovered her among the crowd, appearing strangely despondent about his arrival—exactly as he had anticipated. Yozo was sitting slightly toward the back of the stage’s front section, watching the adorable girls dance to nursery rhymes, when he also spotted the face of the master’s young lover—a man deeply versed in dance—in a corner at the rear. Yoko wore a black haori adorned with family crests throughout, lowering eyes that seemed burdened with thought as she sat modestly slightly behind Yozo. Yet seen amid such a bright gathering, how conspicuously her face and figure had grown gaunt of late stood out starkly. On their way back one day, Yoko had apparently encountered this young man by chance at the bridge of Shinjuku Station on the government railway line. She later told Yozo about the pleasant impression he made, yet from her subsequent tone, one could infer they had in fact grown somewhat more intimately acquainted than she let on. Dark shadows would sometimes cross Yozo’s mind, but considering Yoko’s position relative to the master, he would forcibly reassure himself. The sense that he was her ideal match had been evident from their first impression when visiting the master together with Yoko, and he felt that with this young man, even the capricious Yoko might perhaps finally build a nest of love as her last haven. Given Yoko’s quick-wittedness and his reputation as a promising modernist, it seemed almost inevitable that something would transpire between them—yet there remained one lingering hope.

"In that case, he'd make a truly good match for Yoko." Yozo spoke it aloud. The young man's work titled The Distance of the Flesh—then enjoying acclaim in literary circles—proved perfectly suited to provoke precisely such emotions in Yoko. Yoko's heart, perpetually seeking something new, must have already been secretly plotting rebellion against the master who cared for her daughter, but through Yozo's clouded mind, such depths remained impenetrable. Even were it true, like a patient dreading a skilled doctor's diagnosis, he could do nothing but flee from that emotion. That a man like Yozo—elderly and mired in wholly unfavorable living conditions—could permanently retain the heart of a young woman spinning ceaselessly like a windmill, when marriage itself remained impossible, became his fateful torment. Each time he contemplated how long this tragic romance might endure, he shuddered with anguish. Visibly, his brief life was being eroded away.

After the rehearsal ended, Yozo and Yoko—alongside the young man and two or three ladies—were treated to a light supper. Seated around a table draped in a white tablecloth, they spent some time in casual conversation centered on the quick-witted master, whose amiable face was well-liked. Yet throughout this, Yoko kept her pale face bowed low, wearing an expression that suggested deep brooding as she remained silent. Even if that was due to her illness, such behavior was rare before and after.

And another thing—a single unexpected scene in the operating room had shown him Yoko’s—but in reality, the true nature of all women—crystal clear before his eyes. At that moment, Yozo followed Yoko as she was carried out of the hospital room on a stretcher and entered the room adjacent to the operating room. Yoko, who through gossip and public rumor seemed already known as an object of intrigue among those doctors, had within her first day of hospitalization grown familiar enough with chief surgeon Dr.K to behave coquettishly. But after exchanging a few words with Yozo as preparations concluded, she was soon laid upon the operating table. Yozo disliked seeing blood and felt hesitant to approach, so he deliberately remained standing in the next room. However, when Dr.K—now fully prepared—approached the operating table with a beaming smile as if dealing with a spoiled child, Yoko—as if sensing the scalpel's cold glint—suddenly cried out in a mischievous, defiant tone.

“Dr. K, don’t make it hurt.” Dr. K’s hair stood wildly disheveled as he murmured “There now” and swiftly applied the scalpel. “Come look at this.” The doctor turned to Yozo and spoke bluntly. Though reluctant, Yozo moved to the operating table’s foot. What met his eyes was a wound on her wax-pale flesh—crimson as a dahlia in full bloom—hollowed to rice-bowl proportions and packed so densely with fresh blood that no seepage could occur. To speak of beauty—here lay flesh of peerless perfection. At that instant, Yoko knit her brows and cried:

“Don’t look.” Of course Yozo left after just one glance, but even after the surgical cleanup finished and they moved Yoko to her hospital room, he didn’t stay long at her side. Soon he left the hospital with an unpleasant feeling. For two or three days afterward, he felt no desire to visit. Yozo’s feet kept turning toward that riverside house. Around this time, a bookstore had planned a mass publication—he was due to have one volume distributed through it—so even when not writing manuscripts, money remained accessible. His wallet wasn’t too empty. Still, his handling of money stayed neurotically stingy; poor at calculations, he grew all the more miserly. Yet having a solid sum in his own pocket to go out with was something entirely new in his life. That he’d survived day by day taking sudden jobs might have been unavoidable for his frail body lacking stamina—but he was also lazy by nature.

“If only you could get started on even a single page tonight.” For days on end, his wife would worry over Yozo’s sullen reluctance to write as he sat making a sour face at his desk, urging him with those very words. Yet it was only when driven to the brink that Yozo would finally take up his pen in resigned defeat. Once he began writing, he could manage to give it form, but it was always work that left him gasping for breath. With his meager income, he rarely had chances to keep money of his own. His wife possessed a certain temperament that kept the household pleasantly lively, and though lacking any knack for calculation, she designed everything according to her own aesthetic sensibilities. Though devoid of education or true understanding, she had an intuition keen enough to grasp his work and moods; thus he entrusted even the arrangements around his workspace entirely to her care, down to where each letter should be placed. Under her hand, the daily pickles took on a crisp vibrancy in their hues, and she never faltered in selecting the finest fish and vegetables. When Yozo spoke of rural dishes from his childhood, she would recreate them with ingenuity, soon setting them upon the dining table. Thus he never needed to dine out or employ servants, but having been steeped in the ways of long boardinghouse life, his domesticity never quite matched that of a proper family man. Though shaped by his upbringing, some strain of incorrigible laziness seemed to flow in his blood, making the stifling nature of family life impossible to ignore. His own modest domestic happiness inevitably influenced his literary ambitions too. By nature, Yozo was ever a man of the parlor. Whether in his study or receiving guests, she was usually present there as well. Moreover, he could never bring himself to distress the wife who cared for their numerous children. Now, along with the loneliness and inconveniences of solitude, Yozo could keep money in his pocket and claim time and a world of his own.

Liberated from the narrow, joyful prison into the vast desolate world, while bearing the heavy burden of sentimentality upon himself, he could also return to his own life.

That day too, Yozo—now habituated to going out—left the house listlessly and hailed a car on the street. Having no desire to visit Yoko’s gloomy hospital room, his feet naturally turned toward the riverside house. Though his mood shouldn’t have been poor given the house’s increased spaciousness, upon seeing the finished work he found himself vexed by slipshod craftsmanship everywhere—the crude work of country carpenters who might have been rounded up from god knows where. Moreover, during construction they’d failed to properly organize their furnishings and books—simply piling everything into the back house—so numerous items had gone missing. The evidence showed local ruffians had broken through the old wooden fence and invaded from the alleyway, haphazardly stealing whatever they could grab—scattered books from fence gaps to veranda attested to this—yet even sturdy old fixtures like antique fittings, worn tatami mats, and construction remnants had mysteriously vanished. Realizing things that should be present were missing—searching fruitlessly for them—left him with an indescribable loneliness. The lack of a competent maid and utter disarray of the kitchen grated on Yozo’s nerves. He was plagued by Osuzu—a long-serving, childlike-faced stocky maid—who kept removing items, and exasperated by Ohikari—the new hire who compulsively bought unnecessary things. Osuzu remained stubbornly silent even when her guilt was obvious, while Ohikari petulantly threatened resignation at every turn.

Thirteen By that time, the house along the river had grown quite lively. Madam Sayoko’s unconventional approach to her trade—so different from others in this business—drew a clientele composed entirely of intellectuals: literary figures, painters, journalists, and their ilk. The character of her patrons had completely changed since the establishment first opened. Yet even then, there still seemed to be occasional visitors from her pre-Kurube days—from when she had worked in geisha houses. At year’s end, she would sometimes sway into Yozo’s room hopelessly drunk, trailing the hem of an exquisite spring kimono whose blurred pattern extended all the way to its lining. He suspected these were stockbrokers or wholesalers’ bosses—lingering connections from her Yoshiwara geisha-house days—but Sayoko never spoke a word about such matters. During her seven years cohabiting with a German nobleman, she had gradually shed the airs of the pleasure quarters that had never truly suited her, growing increasingly out of step with merchant-class townsfolk. Even those self-styled divinities who now lounged about with their hair parted seven-to-three—listening to vulgar jokes while reclining in affected poses—struck her as utterly insufferable. Now she delighted in sitting knee-to-knee with literary luminaries she had once only admired from afar in magazines and newspapers—exchanging sake cups, drawing lots, befriending them without pretense or calculation—and found equal pleasure in receiving visits from women of status and renown.

Yozo had once brought Yoko there around November. Since her marital collapse, Yoko would occasionally mention the waterside house where she had spent a night at the start of her romance with that now-distant painter—so wanting to show her Sayoko's house located much farther downstream, he had thought to introduce them. It was on their return one evening from dining at a relocated Yamanote ryotei after the earthquake that Yozo had curiously broached the idea. When he contemplated his burdensome elderly self maintaining this relationship with young Yoko indefinitely, darkness seemed to cloud his vision; yet considering when he might lose her also filled him with gloom. Even now—or perhaps from the start—he had never imagined Sayoko becoming his own. Though fully aware she—a former merchant accustomed to high-value transactions—was an impossible burden for him to shoulder, he seemed to harbor this notion: without mentally sketching such scenarios, there would be nowhere for his heart to turn when Yoko eventually flew away. Yet bringing Yoko there had been mere momentary caprice. Some time earlier, when Yozo was engrossed in conversation with Sayoko and another old friend in the downstairs eight-mat room, a call came from Yoko. Having just arrived, he felt disinclined to answer. During this period, Yoko's house stood somewhat removed, and she would often go out wearing a new georgette one-piece dress with her eldest daughter Rumiko. For Rumiko's sake, Yozo frequently became an obstruction. On one occasion before Mr. F—editor of a women's literary magazine—their atmosphere inadvertently turned hostile. As Mr. F prepared to leave, Yozo descended to the entrance with him and berated her harshly. Yet after parting ways, he still had to suffer alone.

At that time too, Yozo’s feelings grew slightly distant from Yoko. He was looking at a photograph of one of Sayoko’s friends—a woman who was said to be willing to work as a housemaid. While ostensibly for a housemaid, the arrangement seemed to include the implication that if both parties were agreeable, they wouldn’t mind things progressing further. “She’s prettier than in the photo.” “She comes from a good family in my sister’s hometown.” “She was settled into a fine household, but her husband’s business failed and the family fell apart, you know.”

Sayoko had been saying this, but that woman was not Yozo’s preferred type.

Just then, a call came from Yoko, but Yozo felt no urge to hurry back.

“Sensei, this isn’t working because you’re too soft on Ms. Yoko.” “Just cast her aside.”

When another friend of Sayoko's who was nearby said this,

“You should go back to her.”

Sayoko said. Yozo rode with Sayoko's female friend, dropped her off near Shiraki, and returned to Yoko's place. The female friend wrote her address and name with a pencil on the corner of a notebook in the car and handed it over, saying, "Please come visit."

"Why don't you go see it for a bit?" The two had finished their meal and were peeling pears.

“I could go… Let’s go see the water.” Yoko said without missing a beat, though her heart wasn’t in it. “I don’t know… I just don’t like people like that.” After boarding the car, she grew visibly tense. “We’re only going to look at the house.” “If that’s all then.” In the lower guest room they were ushered into, Yoko stood by the window gazing at the water. Yet her reluctance stemmed not solely from dreading this Madam who seemed accustomed to finer living. Across from Sayoko’s gate loomed that concrete hospital—its proprietor nightly slipping past her protests to linger inside—and this very place had once sheltered Yoko herself when newly graduated and dreaming of music school; this too must have given her pause.

At Sayoko’s house, unlike usual, the service wasn’t particularly good. And just as they were about to leave, Sayoko—who had been glimpsed moments earlier in the slightly dim corridor—took considerable time to appear before them dressed in formal attire. They both flushed with embarrassment, but Yoko made an effort to start a conversation to fill the room’s emptiness. Just then, Sayoko—her face painted white and wearing a haori adorned with seamless pictorial designs—entered the room with graceful composure. And she sat down at the entrance.

"You must be Ms. Kozue." Sayoko said this and exchanged greetings. Then, remarking that it was rather chilly tonight, she closed the glass-paned window and sat back down precisely at the entranceway, her expression stiff. Yoko stood up and approached, doing things like comparing heights with Sayoko in an attempt to show friendliness, but none of it managed to ease her discomfort.

“So that’s how it really was.”

Yozo regretted. In the midst of this, he went to call Sayoko. Guests had apparently arrived. “May I write here tonight?” Yoko, seeming to feel some superiority in having writing work, went straight to the entranceway phone when Yozo nodded and instructed the maid through a nearby boarding house to have her newly tailored pictorial haori and manuscript paper brought by automobile.

However, before long the brocade-patterned furoshiki bundle arrived. Yoko put on her haori as intended and, having worked herself into a solitary fluster, called for the maid to insist she wished to stay there overnight. After some time passed, that maid came and,

“I’m afraid tonight is inconvenient. We’re rather busy at the moment.”

Yozo exchanged glances with Yoko at the curtness. Before long, he called for a car and left there. "Sayoko-san won't be satisfied unless it's Koichi."

Yoko said in the car. One night, Sayoko was terribly drunk. Her drunken words were hard to follow, but from the fragments she let slip, it sounded like Kurube—whose connection should have been severed long ago—had taken up with some geisha in Shinbashi or was fooling around. The money he was supposed to send had either been lost through Sayoko's financial haggling or through Kurube's own miscalculations; regardless, his attitude so grated on her that she seemed ready to storm over and get rebuffed—a prospect that rankled deeply.

Kurube still clung to lingering feelings for Sayoko. He had persistently tried to persuade her to remain at the Kōjimachi residence until economic conditions improved somewhat, but Sayoko had grown weary of the seven years of unnatural living. There had been no one else who loved her like Kurube, nor anyone who overlooked her whims as much as he had. When she returned late at night after carousing with a young kabuki actor, he would always come out to the balcony and wait there silently.

“You’ve been unfaithful.” “This won’t do.”

The handsome and imposing Kurube was indeed furious, his face flushed bright red. Another time, using her illness as a pretext while meeting a lover at a hot spring inn—one with whom she had maintained an intermittent relationship since her Yoshicho days—Kurube suddenly appeared, causing the man to hastily gather his Western clothes and flee into the garden as if tumbling from the veranda, leaving behind a watch. However, Kurube did not hate Sayoko. As long as she avoided outright scandal, he had resolved to overlook minor indiscretions conducted discreetly behind his back. He had lost all hope of returning to his homeland after his only son died from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. Since their failed attempt to sell weapons to China, even within Japan's military circles, a trend of gradually rejecting German products had begun to take hold. Yet Sayoko's departure from his mansion also stemmed from prolonged persuasion by a man with whom she maintained an irresolvable entanglement. When she finally broke free from Kurube, she came to understand she could only be with that man if she hid away in back-alley tenements.

Even after Sayoko started the waterside house, Kurube would quietly come by and say she could keep running this business if they occasionally met, but Sayoko flatly refused, explaining that having him linger would cause trouble since the neighborhood was noisy and it was an establishment reliant on public patronage. Sayoko had spoken in that manner, but it didn’t seem their connection had been completely severed. Sayoko had never been as drunk as she was tonight, but since Yozo was also somewhat inebriated, on some impulse he ended up bringing her home together in the automobile. It wasn’t as if this were the first time Sayoko had entered Yozo’s new room. But when the two of them passed through the gate—easily visible from the second floor of Yoko’s empty house—even Yozo began to doubt his own impulsive actions. Even if Yozo and his wife had merely been mutually restraining each other, the power of silence wasn’t entirely without effect.

When he showed Sayoko to the back room, Yotaro—his eldest son—emerged together with one of the young writers who had been visiting, watching the drunken Sayoko with evident amusement. Sayoko pounded the rosewood table with her clenched fist while spewing heated words through a tongue thickened by drink.

“I’m thirty-three.” Only that reached Yozo’s ears with clarity; no matter how he strained to listen, nothing else came through. Before long, she staggered to her feet. “Can you see her home for a bit?”

Yozo instructed his child, but when the child escorted her to the parlor, Sayoko suddenly stopped and, without any awareness of who might be watching, impulsively pressed her mouth to his. Before long, they went down to the entranceway.

Forty minutes later, Yotaro returned. “That woman’s something else.” “What happened?” “She said she wanted to go to the German’s mansion in Bancho, so when I went along with her, the door was shut tight. No matter how much we pressed the doorbell or knocked, no one came out, so she ended up smashing the glass door. The one who came out was an impressive bald-headed German, and he pushed her back when she tried to force her way in. Then he looked at my face and said, ‘Since you’re a gentleman, take this drunk home.’ Since he said it was bad for appearances to be knocking on doors so late at night, I managed to calm her down and take her home, but in the car she started kissing me like crazy… Blood was flowing from my hand, so I tied it with a handkerchief, but… Well, something must have really gotten under her skin.—Still, that German was quite the distinguished old gentleman.”

Yozo remained silent and listened. One day, his old friend Yamamura suddenly appeared in Yozo’s room. Yamamura, who had been a writer with a penchant for collecting Seto ceramics, now displayed antiques in a location quite removed from Yozo’s house. He had collected Buddha statues with broken-off hands, flawed ceramics, exotic water jars and vases, swords and sword guards, and rare chintz fabrics. Having separated from his wife—a woman writer with whom he had shared three years of married life through a romance between fellow artists—and having lived with his current wife for some time now, he would occasionally come across her works in newspapers at unexpected moments. The woman writer who had crossed to America pursuing a new lover—news of her had already become sporadic.

He had always been a romanticist. One day when Yozo was taking his young daughters Sakiko and Rumiko for a walk around Ueno with Yoko, he happened to encounter him after some time apart; now Yamamura was candidly describing his impression of Yoko from that occasion in his characteristic way. After Yamamura confessed his love affair with a pure white girl he had kept hidden in a downtown boarding house—a confession to which Yozo listened attentively—the two ended up visiting the hospital room together.

“At that time on Hirokoji, I suddenly caught sight of that person’s figure. Her attire was plain and utterly unadorned, yet there was this faintly alluring atmosphere about her—I stopped in my tracks wondering what it was, and that’s when I noticed you standing nearby.”

Yamamura spoke. Until now, all criticisms of Yoko that had reached Yozo's ears and come before his eyes were those that disgraced her as a shameful woman—yet in truth, they couldn't be wholly taken at face value. Among them existed criticisms that only applied to her in circumstances involving Yozo. Of course, physical beauty and virtuous character stood apart—the past remained the past—but until he collided with the various incidents Yoko would later instigate, Yozo's very soul had been utterly intoxicated by the radiance of her youthful flesh.

The hospital was quiet. Facing the wall where a blackboard noting her diagnosis hung—the one about which Yotaro had jokingly remarked "It says 'suffering from literary disease'"—Yoko lay with her bobbed black hair spilling thickly across the pillow, still wearing her red-and-black striped nightgown and clutching a book as she slept, until she finally turned toward them. “Mr. Yamamura.”

When Yozo said this, Yoko brushed back the hair falling over her forehead and— “Forgive me for being in this state.” While gazing into her large, moist eyes peering from beneath her black hair, Yozo found himself imagining Dr. K—who likely came every other day to change her gauze—exchanging half-mocking banter with Yoko as she spoke in that coquettish manner, as though they had known each other since childhood. “Sensei, are you busy right now?” “Not particularly.”

"Sensei, you're such a heartless person." Yoko's face grew severe. "Why?" "Fine. Sensei's life is Sensei's life." Yozo too felt irritated but kept silent. "When a woman's hospitalized, a man should at least bring money sometimes." "So you need money." "Isn't that obvious?" As Yoko spoke with increasing sharpness, Yozo—already feeling disadvantaged—felt his nerves sting.

Around that time, she had received a long letter from Akimoto, who had left disappointed by her attitude. The monthly living allowance he had been sending her so freely until now might very well be cut off. She was disheartened. At that moment, Yozo—knowing nothing of this—appeared for the first time with a friend. Her frustration had exploded.

Yozo left the hospital room resolved never to visit her again, leaving behind an unresolved move. He had grown thoroughly disgusted with her attitude during the surgery. He even hated her.

"That woman is always scheming something." Yozo went on talking to Yamamura. "Hmm, that's right." "There's a certain edge to her."

A few days later, Yozo nevertheless visited the hospital room again, carrying in his pocket a bundle of advance royalties. Putting other matters aside, he feared that if they parted ways, he would face various criticisms from people on Yoko’s side regarding money. And if there were circumstances requiring him to write... he had considered even that possibility. Even though Yoko was being bombarded with criticism from all sides, Yozo understood that among those who criticized her, there were not a few who still held an interest in her.

A thick bundle passed from his pocket into Yoko's hand. She flipped through it briskly but, after taking twenty bills, returned the remainder entirely to Yozo. "I'm sorry." "Don't mention it." Yozo feared becoming fodder for hospital gossip and, sensing something brewing, soon left the room. Yoko was discharged forty days after the surgery. It was already early February by then. In the interim, her second daughter had contracted a cold that nearly developed into pneumonia, and no sooner had she barely recovered than Sakiko at Yozo's house took to her sickbed.

Yozo had visited the hospital room about twice more at night after that, but neither time had left him with a favorable impression. Once she had called an outside sales clerk from the department store to make spring clothes for Rumiko—who was apprenticed to a master—spreading gaudy Yuzen fabrics across the entire room; another time she clapped her hands from bed while singing her usual nursery rhyme, making Rumiko dance. She had gathered nurses and young doctors on night duty for boisterous revelry, but Yoko sat with her long sleeves trailing to the floorboards, singing in a voice that seemed to melt away.

Yozo couldn't help feeling bitter toward her—this woman who seemed unable to settle down unless she carried on in that manner wherever she went—but when the day came to confront her about it, he would have to endure listening to her eloquent justifications. However, since being discharged from the hospital, Yoko had completely lost that frivolous air. Moreover, the wound had not fully healed.

"I'll have to keep going for now." She came quietly to his room, fragrant with the scent of tatami mats and wood, and said such things.

“It’s not tuberculosis?” “There seems to be some of that as well—they made me buy iodine agent too.”

And then Yoko took out Akimoto's letter—received at the hospital—from her obi. "After all his efforts, he's angry because I didn't leap at him like he expected." "He even itemized all the money he'd sent monthly until now." "He wrote that he's grown utterly sick of life and plans to wander aimlessly from now on." As she spoke, she unfolded a letter nearly five shaku long to show him. Yozo took it briefly in hand. The characters—seething with fervor—pierced his eyes painfully, making proper reading impossible. This finally verified that everything Yoko had ever said about Akimoto was true. He felt remorse for having doubted her. He now saw himself sharing equal culpability with Akimoto.

“The people who give me money have all vanished. What a predicament.”

Yoko muttered while hugging her long knees drawn up before her. "Maybe I should come back to your place again... Sensei." "I'll leave the child with Mother and return to the countryside..." "You can come."

Yozo answered. Something was bound to happen again—he couldn't help thinking that—but for now there was nothing else to be done. Her guileless attitude wasn't disagreeable.

However, Yoko was slightly more cautious than before. Even when entering Yozo's room, remaining glued to his side from morning till night proved inconvenient in various ways. Whether negotiating directly with Akimoto—who hadn't yet fully abandoned hope—or through her mother who had returned to the countryside, situations inevitably arose where she couldn't confide in Yozo. She needed somewhere to catch her breath regardless. As precaution against such eventualities, Yoko rented a room in the neighboring boardinghouse and moved all her belongings into the house at the rear. The usual chest of drawers and mirror stand were carried into Yozo's room, and from that day onward, the faint scent of cosmetics lingered in the air.

Fourteen Even by that time, Yoko had continued writing her serialized pieces for the women's magazine, though the readership never swelled with the initial fervor she'd hoped for. The magazine had originally sought journalistic value in how her past and present—ever prone to stirring societal controversies—projected a florid aura about her, whether admirable or scandalous. Yet after commissioning two installments and finding them unexpectedly compelling, they pressed her for more vigorous output. But as Yozo's scandalous entanglement with her was then provoking widespread censure, even her impassioned works failed to win over the general readership. Though those ethereal, dream-like works overflowed with her singular brand of passion and lyricism, they lacked the qualities to resonate broadly. Her pieces happened to run alongside those of an established female social critic. Comparing them with her own, Yoko found the other's writing gratingly dated and occasionally felt compelled to criticize it outright.

Given Yozo's indolent nature, even when occasionally approached about her work, he would have only read it once—asking things like "What does this mean?" about parts he didn't understand and smiling at her explanations—and from their differing literary qualities and positions, he made no particular effort to offer guidance. When it came to short stories, she would sit respectfully before him, maintaining the decorum of teacher and disciple, and beseech him to look over her work. And then, after finishing reading, when Yozo would offer a few critical comments, she would bow with apparent delight, saying, "Thank you so much." Yozo thought that if someone were to imitate his literary style, they would surely suffer a great loss, and he could not imagine there being anything he could teach them. But it wasn't that she lacked talent. He had thought that if she built a stronger framework, her work would flourish, and so he considered that drawing her somewhat into the field of his own realism might not be a bad approach. Love was love, but according to Yoko's professed stance, her longstanding wish had always been literary training and being propelled into society; thus if his literary reputation were to collapse overnight, it was only natural that the flames of romance would vanish in that instant. Yet despite the recent unfavorable reception of her works and Akimoto's whereabouts having ceased entirely—even when she went to the trouble of searching for him, his hiding place remained undetermined—with all these circumstances combined, Yoko had become thoroughly disheartened.

However, Yoko was not one to cling persistently to the Akimoto matter as if nursing lingering attachment. She pitied having driven him to such despair and regretted losing a reliable financial conduit; while not entirely stripped of confidence and hope, she felt a lonesome ache in her heart as though she'd lost something vital. Then spring came. In Yozo's cramped garden where piled stones and displaced potted plants remained, nimble bush warblers darted through branches seeking food while a biting residual winter wind stung the skin. When rape flowers—Yozo's favorite—began appearing in the single-stem vase on his desk, vitality returned to Yoko's pallid face, her eyes gaining firmness beneath moist lashes. The contours from cheeks to jaw regained fullness, harboring an indefinable subtle allure. Yozo, who'd cautiously weathered winter, usually contracted bronchial infections around this season that would bedridden him—yet that year saw no such illness; though societal censure and literary anxieties persisted, he passed days carelessly entwined with her nonetheless.

Yoko went out about every two days claiming hospital visits, though she sometimes appeared at the women's magazine's editorial office she was affiliated with. There were days she drank tea with young reporters in Ginza, evenings when someone treated her to dinner. “Today ××-san treated me to a meal and told me about Izumi Shikibu.” She would relay these conversations to Yozo afterward. The young reporter who had started dropping by with manuscript matters when she first began writing still visited occasionally. As deadlines neared, Yoko vanished not just from her boarding house but occasionally holed up in a quiet inn nearby—though at times they couldn’t locate her anywhere. Yozo nursed constant dread that this untrustworthy woman might flee beyond reach any moment, however affectionately entwined they now appeared.

“Tokyo is a place that grows vaster the more one settles into it,” Yoko said. “Even if Sensei were to suddenly vanish, I probably wouldn’t be able to find you at all.” She had made such remarks before—of course stemming from her own thoughts of fleeing—but having failed once already, she must have long been cautious about being careless with this old man involved. Yet when Yozo found her absent from both boarding house and inn—and considering she’d forbidden him from visiting while writing—her attitude grated on his nerves. He couldn’t determine when she’d begun staying at the inn. Was she holed up studying the whole time? Or did she sometimes seek creative stimulation at Cinema Palace or Musashino-kan? Perhaps sipping tea in cafés while listening to phonographs to stir inspiration? Even that might have been tolerable, but he couldn’t shake the suspicion she might be bringing young men to her room. At such times he too sought emotional refuge, habitually visiting the riverside house. Sayoko, chastened by past failures, had completely abstained from drink. More than that—she’d long since renounced beef and chicken. Tea too she’d resolved to avoid. Whether this was merely some superstitious fad among pleasure quarter women or deeper atonement mattered little—for Sayoko, newer than those courtesans yet older than modern girls, this teetotalism could only signal a sturdy lock fastened deep within her heart.

Sayoko's house was still thriving. Beautifully made up, she sat at the counter making calls to geisha houses and heating sake, but claiming it was a special request from a customer, she would also order whiskey. Society had not yet reached such a standstill. The lingering effects of the postwar economic boom still remained in places, and people all rose up for the city’s reconstruction following the earthquake disaster. Ginza-dori and Hamacho Park had already taken shape, and the grand Kiyosu Bridge stood completed. Nevertheless, the location advantages of this area had deteriorated; the old downtown atmosphere from the Masago-za Theater days had faded into shadows, and despite waterborne traffic growing more frequent, all the widened main roads remained dimly lit. However, despite the desolate environment, Sayoko's house was always lively. To her demeanor as a proprietress—unlike those in the pleasure quarters—people who seemed familiar with manuscript paper and palettes connected and noisily crowded in.

When dealing with unfamiliar clientele, Sayoko would occasionally offer some attentive service before whisking herself away to Ginza by taxi for respite. Yozo sometimes took her to Ginza-area establishments where he half-recognized faces; among these was a bar run by a plump madam with a bobbed haircut. This compact bar in Ginza's backstreets had indirect lighting that cast a pale glow. Sitting on cushions while sipping low-alcohol cocktails made to order, patrons naturally found their frayed nerves settling into the bar's tranquil atmosphere. The madam had once mentioned being introduced to Yozo by someone on a train long ago, but no matter how he probed into her past history or social standing, he could never grasp such matters. Of course, Yozo kept his investigative efforts equally focused on Sayoko—whose past he understood only in outline—but far from uncovering her history, even the hidden aspects of her present life remained utterly mysterious to him. Yozo had that unfortunate habit of excessive curiosity about people.

Around that time in Ginza, large-scale cafes of dubious taste began sprouting up aggressively, painting the entire area's atmosphere in garish hues. For someone with delicate nerves like Yozo, the intense stimulation verged on blinding, while jazz blaring from loudspeakers deafened the ears everywhere. Rumors about top-tier hostesses filled entertainment magazines and newspapers, as a gaudy modern flair set the cozy masses adrift. Those who came crowding into Sayoko's place were sometimes part of that very crowd; though Yozo would occasionally dip into such new pleasure worlds when gatherings with his circle dissolved, even nursing a single cocktail felt laborious—his inherent solitude and generational remove leaving him perpetually disoriented. In all such realms of indulgence, he found only the lonely silhouette of a pierrot within himself. The plump madam's establishment alone—where he crossed paths with a handful of quietly drinking intellectuals—suited his Ginza strolls; yet he resented how Yoko might notice his frequent riverside visits, probing his innocent intentions, and even in this wandering found no peace of mind anywhere.

When he returned to the study, there came the sound of the gate opening followed by the glass entrance door sliding open. Yozo had been talking with his child about Yoko when she burst into the room, abruptly enlivening the space. That day too, Yoko had visited the hospital and dined in Kanda with two or three young doctors she'd befriended during her hospitalization; after parting ways with them, she'd gone to Cinema Palace to watch *Light in Darkness*. Though her flushed face could arguably suggest traces of dubious excitement or exhaustion—given her tendency to become emotionally stirred before artistic works—this reaction might well have been genuine.

“Was Dr.K—— with you?” Yozo asked about the gentleman who had shown such scalpel mastery during Yoko’s surgery. “No, Dr.K—— didn’t come.”

Yoko shook her head. "They're all so innocent and interesting." "They're in a completely different mood compared to writers."

A literary discussion began between the child and Yoko, and rumors emerged about associates who never surfaced in journalism's public sphere. Yoko, who was trying to sniff out the future of literature, kept provoking interest; among the young students he mentioned were those who had already turned to left-leaning ideologies, and he seemed to hold respect for their passionate theories attacking the established literary circles. "And what's more, he's a splendidly handsome man."

Yoko was such a romantic fantasist that merely hearing such rumors made her ears burn hot with excitement. As the ideas of this Marxist youth—not yet influential at that time—felt remarkably fresh, Yozo too could envision him as some dashing figure of upheaval. Simultaneously, there was an unavoidable premonition that Yoko might someday have occasion to meet this young man face-to-face. Yozo couldn't help but feel privately disconcerted, yet he also sensed this might indeed be a suitable match for Yoko. And in that moment, he even briefly imagined what stance he himself should take should some incident arise.

“Want to go get something to eat?” Yozo said. “I want mitsumame. Let’s eat.” “Let’s eat.”

Before long, the three of them went out together.

Then, on a warm evening, Yoko once again vanished from the boarding house.

As she was leaving, Yozo’s eldest son Yotaro, who was at Frutsu Paara on the streetcar corner, caught a fleeting glimpse of her figure. “That seems to be the case. She was wearing a black haori coat, holding a rain umbrella, and seemed to have some kind of package in her hand. She might have gone to write her manuscript.” He spoke. Just moments earlier, Yotaro had casually reported seeing Yoko get out of a car with her regular women’s magazine reporter and enter the usual inn while passing by. Having deliberately kept his distance for a while, Yozo went to investigate, only to find that by then the young reporter had already left, and Yoko was eating an orange while reading the evening paper. And upon seeing Yozo enter, she did not look pleased.

According to Yoko’s response to Yozo’s questioning, she had simply invited the reporter and treated him to dinner at their regular Chinese restaurant. Since the reporter was one of Yoko’s admirers, Yozo felt a twinge of suspicion. “But with people like that, a woman like me has to do those things occasionally. I’ve even taken advances on my manuscript fees.” Yozo thought this might indeed be true and fell silent. That evening, intending to take a short stroll around the area, they left the inn together and deliberately avoided main roads, walking through Shinhanamachi’s newly redeveloped neighborhoods where land readjustment had transformed everything. From Tenjin’s back slope, they entered a shiruko shop operated by their usual confectioner near Hirokoji. It was an unconventional establishment run by the elder brother of a young man versed in English literature who frequented his study.

And as they walked on like that, he eventually lost sight of the tide for parting and ended up spending the night in Yoko’s room.

Around the time when Yoko had first established a household nearby, Yotaro and another young man—H——, who had recently developed an interest in English literature—had come visiting under the pretext of launching a campaign to publish Yozo’s complete works. Since then, Young Man K——, who now assisted with Yozo’s increasingly strained household management as if he were family, happened to be in Yozo’s room. With a slightly altered complexion, he had gone to search for Yoko at both her boarding house and the inn, but she was nowhere to be found.

Before long, Young Man K—— brought O-Hae—Yoko’s maid left in charge at the boarding house—to Yozo’s room. Last summer, O-Hae had come up to Tokyo from Yoko’s hometown to look after the children—a simple eighteen-year-old girl with well-proportioned features and a plump yet balanced figure. She had occasionally become a subject of rumors among the young people visiting Yozo’s place. Now that she had been brought before Yozo, she appeared deeply flustered yet oddly composed, sitting there with her face flushed red.

“Where did Ms．Yoko go？” “You know where she went，don't you，O－Hae？”

Young Man K—— casually inquired. Even when he pressed her two or three times, she merely smiled uncomfortably and gave no answer at all. From her demeanor, it seemed she knew all too well about various incidents in the boarding house room—things one couldn’t sense in Yozo’s room—so much so that Yozo and the others asking such questions must have appeared utterly ridiculous to her. The phone calls coming to Yoko, the phone calls Yoko made—what Yoko was actually doing was something beyond O-Hae’s understanding given her youth, but she did know that Yoko had some male friends besides. It was possible that Yoko had perhaps even confided her secret with a man to O-Hae, who was right there beside her.

Yozo vividly envisioned Yoko's striking figure—her bobbed hair adorned with an Oroku comb, clutching a furoshiki bundle containing manuscript paper and compacts, wearing black-lacquered tall geta as spring rain fell on the streets where entaku taxis flowed—all while O-Hae had been made to see her off. The utter lack of any discernible clue felt both vexing and frustrating, but tormenting the girl further was futile. For Yoko, molding this maid into an utterly reliable subordinate was a matter of no trouble at all.

After the child and Young Man K—— went out to the late-night streets to get something to eat, Yozo lay down on his sickbed like a semi-invalid. As he buried himself alone in the soft kapok futon, his weary mind would calm and his frayed nerves find solace, yet beyond this ugly world of carnal passion, he harbored a more significant anxiety. In such circumstances, had his creative drive been flourishing and journalism's reception favorable, his spirit need not have become so despondent.

How long had Yozo kept Confessions of a Fool propped open over his upturned eyes? As he did so, his eyelids grew heavy and he fell asleep, the lamp dimming into a faint glow. Then, as the room grew pale with dawn, he felt the weight of someone's knee settling at the edge of his bed and jolted awake—only to realize it was Yoko, her gaunt face peering down at him from above. "Forgive me.—I wrote this much last night."

Yoko said this and pulled out ten-odd manuscript pages from her writing folder, flipping through them briskly. Seeming to feel a sentimental surge of pity in her exhausted body, she shook Yozo's still sleep-dazed form. Then one night, he lost sight of Yoko once more. Yozo found himself driven by a curiosity to pinpoint exactly who this vaguely sensed person might be. The doctor who had wielded the scalpel on her affected area first drew his suspicion, though doubts also turned toward others—the dance instructor's paramour and that persistent magazine reporter. Yet above all, it became clear from her occasional remarks that she seemed to find fresh stimulation in the life of this doctor—a man of exceptional skill and character holding a position beyond ordinary scrutiny. For her—accustomed until now to temperamental artists—securing the affection of such an esteemed physician must have kindled some bright delight. Should Dr.K indeed assume the role of new patron, that would only heighten the allure.

“Yoko’s gone missing again.”

Yozo reported to Sayoko.

Sayoko was undoubtedly someone who had experienced various situations involving secret meetings and other such matters. She had just gotten out of the bath, finished applying her makeup, and was sitting at the front desk. "Why does she do such things, I wonder." "Even though you're her Sensei." Sayoko said while gazing at her reflection in the mirror propped against the front desk.

“She’s in love with Sensei, isn’t she?” “Well… occasionally.” “Since when? She didn’t even leave any message.” “Since last night, apparently.” When he mentioned the doctor, Sayoko suddenly grew interested. “Then why don’t we hire a private detective?”

Sayoko also had a bit of a mischievous streak.

“I suppose so.” Yozo grew gloomy, but once he began delving into such matters, he would end up digging endlessly deeper and deeper, with no solid ground to plant his feet—this was his inherent nature. And he gradually became accustomed to deriving pleasure from that stimulus and suffering. “Sensei, why don’t we go to the I Detective Agency in Nihonbashi now?” “Will you come too?” “Yes. But let me make a quick call first.”

Sayoko picked up the desk phone's receiver. After arranging with the detective agency, she also called the garage. Before long, Sayoko—having thrown on an embroidered haori over her French velvet coat with a black fox fur stole draped over her shoulders—settled into the hired car's seat cushion, but Yozo felt somehow reluctant to proceed. That said, there was no particular intention behind Sayoko's actions either. In her occasional role as a mischievous but harmless delinquent girl gang leader, her actions were nothing more than a childlike notion.

After returning the car, the two of them entered the dimly lit reception room of the detective agency, but while they were kept waiting for some time, Sayoko—as if struck by a sudden thought—

"I have a feeling it might be around the XX Pavilion in Gotanda." “XX Pavilion? What’s that?” "It’s a large restaurant built after the earthquake—the sort of place people use for secret rendezvous, you see… If you hole up there, you’ll be perfectly safe, I tell you." Yozo knew nothing of such establishments, though truth be told, neither did Yoko. Yet when Sayoko asserted this with such certainty, he found himself imagining Yoko and Dr. K making their way there.

Sayoko was fidgeting restlessly, but since she suggested trying to call XX Pavilion, she hurried out into the hallway and picked up the receiver. Yozo was also standing nearby. "Hello, a woman named Ms. Kozue should be at your establishment..." From the other end came the voice of a maid.

Sayoko briefly covered one side of the receiver with her hand,

“Seems I hit the mark.” She widened her eyes playfully, but according to the maid’s renewed response through the receiver, Yoko still didn’t appear to be there. “The initial reply made it sound like she was present. A name like Kozue isn’t one you hear every day. Why don’t we go for a drive instead of wasting our time here?” “I suppose so.”

The streets had transformed into a world of electric lights. With a sense of being unable to retreat, they promised an additional fare in their drunken exhilaration and raced off in the taxi. Sayoko was unusually excited, but Yozo also wanted to take this opportunity to see such a house. “Since we’re going to have a meal anyway…” “That’s right,” Sayoko said after a brief pause, “But I can’t go there.” “Ah, right.” “When I was living at the mansion in Kōjimachi, I once stayed there for over a month due to illness.” “That’s when someone came and was lying there, and then another suddenly arrived, I tell you.” “Because the maid came rushing in to report this matter, he was in such a panic that he jumped down into the garden still clutching his Western clothes—which was all well and good—but he’d gone and left his crucial hat behind in the alcove, I tell you.”

“Who is this ‘someone’?” After moving in to cohabit with her elderly mother at a German noble’s mansion, Sayoko had long since lost even the slightest interest in telling Yozo the name or status of that man with whom she had once kept a household for several years. As they spoke, they reached Gotanda. At a spot just before the main gate of XX Pavilion—encircled by a long hedge, its shadows deepened by a grove of trees—Sayoko had the car stopped and sent the driver to inquire, but it was reported that no such person had yet arrived. Simultaneously, headlights suddenly flashed on as a car emerged from the gate, swerving toward them. Under the room’s lamplight glowed the ruddy face of a plump woman in her early forties—her unfashionable bun wrapped in a black serge coat, a velvet shawl about her shoulders—while a Western-suited gentleman with a slender, sharply defined face bent forward to strike a match for his cigarette. Yozo felt a sickening sensation, as if he could now roughly grasp this house’s atmosphere. Until this moment, Yozo had been fantasizing about Yoko’s face and demeanor in one of those rooms—how she would deliberately write manuscripts to display beside that distinguished Dr. K, or read them aloud with apparent pride, naively flaunting her dignity as a woman writer—but even that vision had now effortlessly dissolved into nothingness.

“At times like these, unless we do something like this, Sensei’s feelings won’t settle.” It seemed as though Sayoko said this. Eventually, with a feeling as if a possessing fox had deserted them, they began their return journey. “How foolish—we’ve squandered twelve yen.” When stepping down from the automobile before the riverside house’s gate, Sayoko laughed while saying this. Late that night—Yozo walking along a dust-settled street with Young Man K and the children, gazing at stars in a springtime-seductive sky—on impulse opened that inn’s heavy door. Asking the maid behind the white curtain, he learned Ms. Kozue was present.

"She has already retired for the night, but…" Disregarding this, the three of them clomped their way up.

Sure enough, Yoko lay in bed. Her hair held beautiful waves, her face apparently made up before sleeping with a slightly thick layer of cold white powder applied - a serene beauty showing not a shadow of unease, as if ready to dream peacefully. She wore a red figured-satin nagajuban undergarment. Yozo hurled violent curses and suddenly struck her head and face three or four times. Yoko's black eyes flew wide open.

"My head matters. I need to survive." "What's one or two heads?"

And then tried to leave together with the young people who stood aghast beside him. “Wait.” Yoko’s voice came from where she lay. Yozo was instantly pulled backward. When he looked, Yoko’s expression abruptly softened, and a melting seductive smile surfaced.

"Stay here, Sensei." A white hand was extended. Given the circumstances, he too had no way to resist her allure tonight.

Fifteen

Yoko's post-discharge health still hadn't fully recovered at that time. Even after such episodes occurred, she would sometimes develop fevers - though it was a surgical condition - but the powdered medicine Dr. K provided seemed perfectly suited to her constitution, so much that she always kept some in her handbag, and she had been wanting to visit somewhere slightly warmer. Yozo happened to be writing for the newspaper, making it convenient for them to go together. Yoko didn't particularly appear to want to go alone either. Moreover, it hardly qualified as what one would call a proper trip. It simply meant enduring several days of harsh lingering cold at a modest suburban hotel where this thoughtless pair's karmic bond had been forged.

Yet when they arrived at the hotel, Yoko did not seem to have settled into her room in any cheerful mood. However, in the salon—which had sunroom-like wide verandas to the east and west—the coal in the furnace always burned crimson, steam circulated through the rooms, and one could read or write without awareness of the cold outside where morning frost pillars glittered in the garden. Moreover, except on Sundays, there were few people during the day, but at night, young foreign men and women returning from their workplaces would gather in the salon, continuing their cheerful conversations without becoming too boisterous. Yoko often went there wearing a black haori when there were few people. And, keeping some distance from the heater's warmth, she would look through American fashion magazines and such, though she didn't particularly dislike the foreigners' atmosphere.

“Sensei…” She would say this and sometimes invite him to stand before the deserted heater, but usually when being alone together in the room grew stifling, they would fidget their way out into the corridor. Yozo had vaguely sensed something between himself and Dr.K, though the doctor was after all a man of established character known to all, one who attended upon esteemed circles and bore boundless honor. If someone had been charmed by Yoko’s coquettish behavior, he thought it might be other young men at the hospital or perhaps that women’s magazine reporter—or maybe the truth was indeed as he imagined, that it had been Dr.K himself who wielded the scalpel. However, Yozo also felt somewhat responsible for her loss of material patronage and was considerably conscious that he had yet to lend any substantial material support himself; and though aware that she—never vague in such matters—was likely finding some means to advance her schemes in that direction, he—prone as he was to losing rationality to anxiety and jealousy—even amidst such gloomy anguish, wished to somehow sustain her presence in literary circles against the onslaught of censure from all sides. Their love was indeed love, but if there was any way for this crumbling affair to find resolution and for his utterly shattered reputation to retain even a shred of dignity, it lay in nurturing her talent rather than any other means.

In the quiet town warmed by winter sunlight, the two would occasionally go out for walks. As Yoko walked beside Yozo, she often fell into nervous melancholic sensitivity, sometimes uttering cryptic words that seemed to hint at something—though their meaning eluded his dulled perceptions. When they grew tired of the hotel's somewhat distinctive meals, they would invite even the young people who had come to visit, enter the lively alleyway eatery beyond the Guard station, and often eat fresh crab and shellfish dishes characteristic of a coastline town. Around the time when proletarian literature was beginning to emerge, and such shadows were falling over young people’s literary discussions, Yoko—who loved conversation—was particularly keenly attuned to gleaning something from these youths. There had been a time last autumn, at its very height, when he took her—before she had decided on the surgery—on a drive all the way to Hakone. The night had grown quite late, and she—suffering from hemorrhoids—lay slumped with half her body on the cushion, but when they had the automobile stop before a certain inn in Miyanoshita around nine o'clock, numerous drunken students were spilling out of the entranceway and clamoring noisily, so Yozo suddenly grew timid, starting to step down only to try retreating back into the cushion again. And just as he tried to direct the driver, four or five students had already surrounded the car.

“Dr. X is also here.” “He says he wants to meet you.”

In the midst of their verbal sparring, one young man said this and persuaded Yozo. He thought stubbornly breaking away would be unseemly, so he decided to entrust himself to their goodwill. They did not mock the two who had suddenly appeared before them. Rather the opposite—"Attacking such a romance is feudal ideology. You should enjoy yourselves to the fullest," they said, surrounding Yoko—who had gone up to the entrance—and hoisting her up while shouting "Banzai!" Yozo felt awkward and, seizing the chance to slip away through that opening, settled into a room on the second floor guided by the clerk. Before long, when Yoko entered the room, even her tired face showed signs of excitement.

"This is troublesome. "We've come to a bad place." "They all seem pleasant." "They're from Teidai." Given Yoko's brazenness, they were capitalizing on it.

The two took a bath together and then began their meal. About ten students arrived with more serious demeanors than before to debate literary theory. Yoko took it all upon herself, brushing aside Yozo—who sat smirking—and with even her beautiful hands becoming expressive, she chattered away incessantly through her thin lips without pause. This wasn’t limited to that occasion; whenever young men visited, it was always Yoko who engaged in their pleasant discussions, while Yozo, though not unhearing, said little. At times, beautiful poems beyond Yozo’s imagination would flare from her careless lips, yet to him, they carried a scent reminiscent of the mysterious world of women—something floral or lunar.

One evening again, the two had a meal in a private room at their regular small restaurant. Yozo had developed a habit of noticing alcove scrolls and vases wherever he went, often determining whether the food would be crude based on flower arrangements. Now hung an old Nanga-style scroll signed "Buson." Though its status as a forgery was evident from both the painting style and establishment's nature, a curiosity that it might still be some hidden treasure compelled him to repeatedly gaze at this painting that didn't seem entirely worthless to discard. He felt faint vexation and irritation toward Yoko's restless mood—as if she perpetually sought escape routes—yet lacked both courage to confront it and skill to deftly extricate himself, pretending belief while actually doubting their situation, his feet caught in anguish's mire. This stemmed from her coquettishness in such moments being more nervous and provocative than usual, with jealousy-mingled hatred and attachment driving him into unhealthy lust, leaving them both mired in carnal tug-of-war.

That night too, Yozo was slightly sullen, but at some moment,

“Sensei, if you find me too burdensome…” Yoko suddenly said this with a lonely expression. Yozo had been thinking about something else and couldn’t clearly hear her words, nor did he have presence of mind to ask their meaning—he kept silent as the shadow behind her grew faintly indistinct. When the salon emptied, Yoko would sometimes close her book and leave Yozo’s side. He sat before an overly high desk gripping his pen on a swivel chair, yet strained to catch every rustle of her unseen movements. Once during her early days at Yozo’s house, she had gone alone to see an actress’s play at the Imperial Theater. Her expression at the time must have invited what followed—a young American gentleman occupying the adjacent seat addressed her in broken Japanese. Their languages never quite bridged understanding, though he grasped whether she had companions. Though long intrigued by white foreigners, Yoko knew many were disreputable and hated being pestered by such spectators. She abandoned her seat for the corridor. Passing concession stands, she emerged onto a balcony overlooking moatside nightscapes. It might have been May—street trees already bore blue-black foliage under drizzling rain. Whether fleeing foreigners or luring them remained unclear from her account alone, but some curiosity surely drove her. Later rumors of her brief entanglement with a German student confirmed what all modern young women shared—this longing for foreigners. Standing there on the balcony, Yoko must have listened to approaching footsteps with chest trembling from inexplicable dread. The youth indeed approached. In faltering Japanese he offered to call an automobile below for a drive together. Uncertain of his character and feeling insulted by his presumption, Yoko refused through gestures—yet he persisted. As their tussle drew usherettes and passersby, Yoko summoned Ms.O——an acquaintance from earlier corridor chatter involved in women’s movements—who finally established her social standing. Ms.O——deliberately declared her a renowned woman writer.

After that, on her way back from a photoshoot at Sone Studio in Ginza, when Yoko stood before a shop window, she noticed that same young foreigner standing beside her again, smirking; this time their eyes merely met with shared smiles, and though she felt him discreetly trailing her for two or three blocks, nothing came of it. At that time, Yoko still had both the delicate charm of girlishness and the dignified pride characteristic of a literary young woman. Yozo was now staying at the foreigners' hotel with Yoko, and he could not help but recall such things. The young foreigners staying here mostly seemed to be engineers working for government offices or companies, but among them were also newlywed couples who had just arrived, bringing several trunks to use as temporary lodgings while they searched for a rental house. That Yozo never neglected to monitor Yoko's movements—stealthily muffling his footsteps as she went out into the hallway time and again throughout the day—was in part due to that very reason.

At times, he would faintly sense her presence—as if she had slipped away stealthily to the telephone near the office by the entrance to make a secret call somewhere—but at night, she would sometimes spend hours listening to the radio. When there were visitors or when he visited a young writer who had built an unconventional love nest with a renowned female author in a slightly distant location, Yozo could finally face his manuscript paper once the hotel staff had retired for the night. He often mingled with the foreigners in the salon, having tea and cake with her, but he was someone who—had he mustered a bit more courage—would have liked to engage in conversation with those who appeared eager to speak.

Then one night, Yoko was lying in bed with her usual nervous fever reading a book when she began to doze off only to call out hysterically to him and stretch out her white hand. During the day Yoko had visited a town clinic on Yozo’s recommendation riding in a covered car to receive medicine; however the doctor—a humorous physician also knowledgeable in literature—had become thoroughly familiar with her after briefly examining her body. But in this case that prescription did not work for Yoko.

Yozo too had grown weary of this life for no particular reason. Even when writing a single newspaper article, he couldn't settle his mind. When Yoko fell ill, he grew even more depressed. He would approach to calm her, but she would always wear an expression as if stifling sobs, her eyes moist. “You’re such a pitiable man too, Sensei.” Yoko said this and took his hand, but the oppressive weight of this burdensome attachment tormented her—it was nothing but her groaning voice.

"You're so slow on the uptake..." She muttered inwardly. The fever persisted through the following day. Then, as dusk approached, at Yoko's desperate insistence—having endured all she could—they resolved to call Dr. K for a house visit.

In a stitched-pattern haori and stiff hakama, Dr. K arrived before long. Yoko's complexion suddenly brightened after learning Dr. K would come. Just as Yozo had come near the office to buy cigarettes, Dr. K—his large eyes gleaming—timidly entered and politely addressed him.

“I’ve come to pay my respects…” "I'm sorry to have troubled you when you're so busy." “Please.” Seated in an armchair in traditional Japanese attire, Dr.K appeared every bit the solid, unassuming middle-aged gentleman. As the damp drizzle lifted, Yoko raised her upper body on the pillow as if sunlight had broken through, calling out “Dr.K!” with affectionate familiarity. Waving Yozo aside with her cheerful voice, she engaged him in conversation. Yet Dr.K responded calmly—mindful of Yozo’s presence—his glances rather seeming to encourage her to sustain the dialogue. The conversation mostly concerned Dr.K’s life during his time abroad.

After sipping the tea, he began the examination. That the burning eyes of love—which surpassed what was proper between doctor and patient yet were restrained by Dr.K's conscience—exchanged smiles could not have clearly appeared to Yozo under the dim electric light; but when they lifted the blanket's edge to reveal the slow-to-heal wound, he hurried out of the room. And what words were whispered then, he had no way of knowing.

Yozo was walking down the corridor with a feeling of being crushed when, just then, Reporter R from the women's literary magazine arrived.

By the time Yozo ushered Reporter R into the room, the long-overdue wound dressing had been completed, and Dr.K had returned to his original chair. Yozo offered Three Castles tea from a tin while recounting how he had undergone anal fistula surgery performed by the hospital director at that same institution long ago. At that time, Dr.K had only just returned from Germany. As this unfolded, Yozo came to imagine that while the doctor maintained affection for him, proper treatment would likewise be administered to Yoko's licentious fever. Above all, Dr.K held lofty honor and status. He belonged to a class that could occasionally ride in carriages dispatched from aristocratic households.

Yet even Yozo, his vision clouded by unexamined obsession, could not ignore Yoko's brazen mischief. He grew agitated. When the reporter began speaking—both requesting a manuscript from him and suggesting Yoko write something short—he abruptly lashed out with insults. "What could anyone possibly write in this sort of thing?" "But if Sensei would review it..." "I must decline." Yozo felt he'd partially relieved his frustration at being made a clown before Dr.K through this outburst, but after both the reporter and doctor departed, his indignation swelled further. He paced beside the bed and grilled Yoko. She offered not one syllable of excuse regarding the matter.

Before long, Yozo began carelessly stuffing manuscript paper, magazines, spare shirts and such into a trunk. Then he locked it, called the bellboy, and requested the bill. "Dr. K is an honorable man—please at least consider that much." Yoko pleaded with tears pooling in her eyes. "And Sensei—you're jumping to conclusions. I'll explain everything later."

After settling the bill, Yozo grabbed his heavy suitcase and abruptly tried to leave the room, though getting to the station would require calling a car. Given his growing familiarity with the hotel master and bellboys, abandoning the ailing Yoko would have looked unseemly. He was also concerned about how far things had progressed between Dr. K and her. Above all, even if he couldn't hope for sincere reconciliation at an appropriate time, he wanted at least superficially to return together as they had come. If he returned alone, he would undoubtedly spend a sleepless night in that lonely study, suffering through the endless hours with no respite.

Yozo eventually had the meal brought to the room and took up his fork, but Yoko sipped a few spoonfuls of consommé and was eating an orange.

"I'm sorry." Yoko said this and lay back on the bed again.

Yozo went out to the salon where coal was burning bright red.

After a day's interval, one afternoon Yoko—wanting to check on Rumiko, whom she had placed as an apprentice with her dance instructor some time ago—left with two young men who had come to visit. As the young men prepared to return via the government railway line—though it seemed a sudden notion—Yozo made no move to see them off as usual, and Yoko departed after leaving behind words that sounded like a final retort. Yozo told her she should never return to the hotel again, but she in turn hinted at her immediate request—as if suggesting that if he were kind enough to build her a house—in her own way.

When he found himself alone, the room suddenly appeared spacious, and the gloomy, turbid air seemed to brighten. Before he noticed, spring had already visited even the closed glass windows, and a hazy light streamed in. The cineraria he had bought at a town florist during a walk some time ago was beginning to wilt forlornly in the corner of the table cluttered with magazines, letters, and manuscript paper. Night soon fell. Yozo had no interest in going out. After taking a bath, he entered the dimly lit dining room. Western music records were playing, and four or five foreigners were scattered around various tables.

That there had been a distinct French professor residing at this hotel—built by an American-returned master—for over ten years since its founding was something Yozo had heard from an elderly bellboy acting as manager when he first stayed in the Japanese-style room with Yoko; yet Yozo had never once glimpsed any elderly gentleman matching that description, whether in corridors or salon. When settling into his room, he had semi-permanently re-laid the flooring to his taste, replaced wallpaper and window drapes, and modified fixtures to improve comfort—all without altering the building's fundamental structure.

His lifestyle was exceedingly strict; he hardly ever went out at night, and it was rare to hear of him dining out. When school was out, he made it a practice to go every year; spending a summer at a temple in Nagasaki had also been his long-standing custom. He appeared to be about the same age as Yozo. Yozo had someone pour him a glass of wine and, while taking forlorn sips, contemplated the life of that foreigner—of which he understood only fragments—comparing it to his own existence weighed down by endless troubles. Yet to force himself into religious norms and forms without faith felt hollow, and immersing himself in some academic research was not in his nature. He had grown utterly weary of his long-standing family life and had become completely exhausted by this miserable love affair. He always thought about finding respite for his mind and body in some mountain forest, but such a life was already quite a luxury in modern times.

A glass of wine lured his crushed spirit into a drowsy intoxication and kindled a faint flame in his muddled head. After finishing his meal and taking a chair by the salon stove to smoke, perhaps due to the accumulated fatigue of several days, a pleasant drowsiness began to set in. Before long, he returned to his room and got into bed still in his clothes. In this situation, stretching his limbs freely on the wide bed and resting his body was for him the greatest respite.

Yozo felt that Yoko might return, yet also felt she might not—initially rather preferring the relief of her absence—but after dozing off into a brief sleep that might have lasted an hour and a half, he suddenly awoke to the sound of a neighboring guest returning. By then, voices had ceased even in the salon beyond the fireplace, leaving the hotel completely silent. The ticking of the office clock’s second hand and occasional door sounds from distant rooms began registering distinctly in his ears. When a knock came at the entrance door, his nerves sharpened as if it were Yoko.

What time could it have been? His sickly sluggish nerves suddenly leapt at the telephone bell. The phone rang shrilly and continuously, but the bellboys seemed to be sound asleep, and no one came out to answer. The guests were all salarymen with early morning commutes, so there was no reason for a call to come in this late. Yozo felt it was probably Yoko and thought about getting out of bed, but his consciousness was hazy, so that too felt bothersome. While this was happening, he dozed off again.

The next day, Yozo departed from there and returned to his study for the first time in a while. It felt as though he had jolted awake from a nightmare, yet the dregs clinging to the depths of his mind would not easily come loose. And as he sat before his desk, he realized how severely his body had become exhausted from continued lack of sleep. He had Dr.Watase from the neighborhood come over to examine his body. Dr.Watase knew all about his recent lifestyle but, having been living with 'Number Two' all this time, took up his stethoscope with more seriousness than usual.

“Well, it’s likely neurasthenia.” “I’ll regulate your medication to help you sleep better.”

"I must say this kind of life terrifies me, but it's really no good, is it?" "Still, this room must feel terribly lonely when you're alone."

After Dr. Watase left, he slept until evening.

By the end of April, Yoko had moved to the coast in Zushi. By that time, her relationship with Dr. K had already become something of an open secret. During moments when both were in amiable moods, Yoko would laughingly let slip intriguing fragments of that secret. “The lives of people like that are truly simple and innocent, you know.” “They probably imagine our lives to be so glamorous and exciting.” “He knew a certain geisha in Shitaya through his professional connections.” “She was hospitalized for the same hemorrhoid treatment as me. After being discharged, he’d call her over now and then.” “They say that woman’s features bore quite a resemblance to mine.”

“Hmm. When did your relationship begin?” Yozo asked. “Hmm, I’ll tell you all about that later, but… If I just adjust his position a bit, I could write about it, you know. I’ll teach you all sorts of interesting things. But Sensei would get angry.” Yozo gave a wry smile.

"At first... where did you go?" "When we drove somewhere far at night, that person got quite startled." "After you were discharged, then."

“Right. When I stayed late, he kissed me in his room.” He could easily imagine such scenes. “There are some interesting letters too. He’s earnest like a true man of virtue should be, yet simple like a child.” “Let me see them.” “That too, later.”

However, Yozo, out of conscience, did not want to probe too deeply into those secrets of the doctor's. The more he learned, the more it merely dredged up his own baseness. "Does he have money, I wonder?"

He briefly touched on that as well. Yoko began roughly estimating that income, though there was no way to know how much his assets totaled. Naturally, since it appeared Yoko generally covered their outing expenses, there seemed no ulterior motive on her part. Even had there been some calculation involved, before the guileless Dr.K it wouldn't have mattered. Judging by outcomes, Dr.K appeared slightly more skillful.

Yoko, as a patient, seemed to have visited Dr.K's residence too and had roughly estimated his standard of living from that. "But Dr.K said that. 'You should cherish Sensei since he's a good person.' My moving to Zushi will help settle this matter properly." Yozo listened in silence yet sensed that physical distance would let her freely arrange meetings with Dr.K. Though he understood the doctor was withdrawing, he doubted whether Yoko's passion—like flames doused with water—would truly extinguish.

“I want to give Dr. K a thank-you gift, but what would be good?” He felt that even as their relationship had progressed to such a point, it still fell short, but he also considered that proceeding this way might finally bring about a reckoning. “About how much would it be?”

“We can’t be too stingy about it, can we? How about leaf tobacco?” “That should do.” “With about thirty yen, can we get something decent?” “I don’t know...” Yoko went to Zushi to look for a house two or three days later, and by that time she had purchased a box of leaf tobacco wrapped in two sheets of formal Japanese paper with an ornamental cord, which she then brought to show Yozo in his room. At exactly the same time, a round birdcage hung by the window of her lodgings, and on quiet mornings the lovely chirping of a canary would reach his room as well. Though it was claimed to be a farewell gift from her younger brother celebrating Yoko’s move, this was a lie—the careless Yozo only realized much later that it was actually a present from Dr.K, and through this he finally came to understand that this romance had reached its climax.

Yozo had gone to Zushi for the first time four or five days after moving there, led by Yoko. He had actually felt reluctant to go, but seeing how eager she seemed for him to visit the house, he ended up deciding to go. In the coming season, that coastal area would be bustling, and young people were sure to gather at that hotel. He knew that a certain young popular writer had been renting a house there for some time, and was also aware of the mansion belonging to a brilliant Marxist—the only son of a bourgeois family who was his eldest son’s classmate. It wasn’t unthinkable that Yoko’s house might become a carefree, pleasant salon for those young men. It was embarrassing to drag their tattered romance all the way to such a place now, and being so far from his children made him uneasy.

Yoko was happily explaining the layout of the rented house—the entryway garden’s design and other details. “It’s fifty yen. That’s cheap, isn’t it?” The cautious Yozo grew worried, wondering what they would do by renting such a house. While she was writing serialized works, that was fine, but it wasn’t something that could last forever. Of course, it wasn’t as though she was always extravagant—there were times when she gave the impression of being a truly clever housewife—but a household remained a household, inherently structured to require money. Even the cosmetics she bought around Mei Ushiyama were of considerable quality. Even if Yozo occasionally subsidized her, collapse was inevitable someday.

However, Yoko intended to resolve her past life and study there with earnest diligence. Even if she left Rumiko in someone else's care, it would weigh on her mind, so she wanted to keep the girl nearby. Regarding the relocation, she had received some money from her mother. Her mother still had not abandoned Yoko.

Yozo left the house casually, carrying a briefcase. He arrived at Tokyo Station by taxi, but by the time he reached the coastal station, the drawn-out days of late spring were already beginning to fade.

The coastal town they passed through by taxi was quiet and lonely, the evening wind carrying a damp, desolate chill. Yozo had some foreboding, but being unnerved by the frequent gossip, he found himself in an unsettled mood. Unusually, upon returning home, Yoko immediately changed into her everyday meisen kimono with a scale pattern and, her hair still disheveled, took the maid O-Hae to shop at the fishmonger beside the hotel and the greengrocer a short distance away to prepare dinner. She hastily tucked up her kimono and drew water for the bath.

“I’ve got such fresh shrimp here, and I ordered squid sashimi too.” Yoko brought the shrimp delivered from the fishmonger and showed them to Yozo. “Are you really serious about this?” Yozo felt similarly, but there was no trace of that possessed mood from when she had abandoned him at the suburban hotel. Though he recognized how sparkler-like passion might flare up again through some chance trigger—and though he felt the stimulation of momentarily embracing a new life—he wasn’t blind to how quickly boredom would follow. Yet these were things one couldn’t truly grasp until they arrived. Moreover, while evading life’s responsibilities—a habit justified by her inherent inability to face reality—Yozo unknowingly harbored within himself a selfish desire to steal fragments of her love. Worse still, even if some order were imposed on his own life, he still craved total knowledge of hers. Of course, this rationale was mere pretense—his feelings moved with far blinder urgency beneath. Through Yoko, his eyes had opened to other women from his past—those with whom he’d maintained only faint connections.

In the inner eight-tatami room enclosed by gardens on two sides, after finishing a somewhat unfocused dinner, while eating fruit and drinking black tea, the bath was drawn, and Yozo soaked in the hot water as O-Hae scrubbed his back.

Before long, when Rumiko fell asleep, the surroundings grew hushed, and the sound of waves became audible. “Would you like to go down to the sea?”

As Yoko invited him, he took his cane and went out through the gate. The hotel entrance stood right there. "If you would like to listen to the radio, you can do so at the hotel." Yoko said this and descended to the beach through the back alley behind the hotel, though she already possessed intimate knowledge about the establishment's layout and the personalities of its proprietors. The sea lay dark. The towering offshore waters faintly mirrored the dim skyglow. A chill permeated the sea breeze. Whistling as she shuffled through the sand, Yoko suddenly turned and pressed close to Yozo—struggling with his match—using her sleeve to block the wind.

"Isn't this enjoyable?" "I suppose." Yoko wandered along the shore as if walking through a dream, floating lightly while endlessly meandering across the beach. Yet compared to her usual self—one who sank into melancholy akin to the night sea's sorrow—the man beside her seemed to inhabit an entirely separate world, leaving her appearing vaguely unfulfilled given who he was. Still, through him, Yoko was now trying to take a slightly more certain step forward once again.

16 It was still too early for summer visitors to come to this ordinary inland sea. The figures of children and women frolicking in sandcastles, splashing in water, or hunting seaweed, small crabs and sea urchins multiplied daily along shores finally hinting at summer's approach—even eager kappa-like figures could be seen swimming through waves glittering under early summer sunlight. Yoko took Rumiko and their maid along receding-tide rocks to chase minnows darting through shallows while gathering chestnut-husk-shaped shells. She knew how to extract fresh sea urchins from those spiny cases. Yozo wandered listlessly with his cane along stone ridges until reaching distant outcrops where their figures vanished—crouching at cliff edges with cool breezes brushing his neck, he became ensnared in midday melancholy resembling his chronic hypochondria yet defying rational cause. Even then he couldn't savor life for an instant. Though driven by urgency to reclaim his former existence, he remained paralyzed before reality's precipice—a stageman ashamed of blundering onto this absurd theatrical set yet unable to execute graceful exit. Nanshi Fudo stood nearby. Yozo detested designated historic sites but occasionally climbed there with Yoko. They sometimes accompanied Mr.K—the popular author lodging at their hotel—to film studios; since their enviable newlywed life then seemed assured of future happiness while spawning fresh acclaim, Yoko increasingly voiced confidences she wished to share with Mr.K during their trio walks.

“Isn’t the current situation sufficient?”

Dr. K had said that, but afterward, there was some disturbance in Yoko's feelings. Since the incident with the doctor, after moving here, she seemed to deeply regret her indiscretions. At least for now, it appeared she had no choice but to return to her initial path with Yozo and suppress her impulses—though depending on perspective, unresolved matters might still remain. To maintain her relationship with the doctor long-term, she reasoned that keeping distance would better protect his vulnerable reputation; one couldn't deny she might be deliberately using Yozo as camouflage. At that time still unaware the canary was the doctor's gift either, Yozo would often sit in the rattan chair beside its cage—this small bird he disliked—watching its movements while nursing latent premonitions that made him want to subtly probe Yoko's feelings toward the creature. He had kept birds as a boy but never liked caged ones as much as those on branches. The thought that even this delicate canary would soon die under Yoko's inexperienced care left him unsettled.

Before long—as if the rainy season had arrived—the coastal air took on an oppressive gloom each day. One afternoon, Yoko went alone to Tokyo to visit a women's magazine editorial office. Yozo hadn’t remained there continuously either. Cohabiting with Yoko was never comfortable. Only when a woman grew accustomed to his household could she become his daily companion—someone to converse with morning and night. But under living conditions where she couldn’t blend into his existence, he found himself wanting to shed this burden altogether now, especially after that incident. The pain of straining both body and mind to keep pace with her youthful lifestyle proved unbearable. Nor could he disregard the financial strain.

When he returned to Tokyo, he would go again to the house in Okawabata, take baths, have meals, and could finally feel a sense of liberation. In their place, the children went to Zushi led by the eldest son, but by that time, his suspicions regarding her relationship with the doctor had faded into faint shadows. After going two or three times, even to the towns of Zushi and the beaches of Hayama that had felt somehow unpleasant, a faint nostalgia unwittingly arose, and he began to feel that spending this one summer there with the children might not be so bad; he even went looking for a house together with Yoko.

As Yoko was leaving the house that day, she had said she would surely return by evening to have dinner together, so Yozo waited with that expectation, but even as the sun was about to set, she had not come back. In addition to the housemaid, there was also a woman named Kitayama—who had been assisting Yoko with her manuscripts since their Hokkaido days and would occasionally check on Rumiko, now an apprentice to a dance instructor in Tokyo—so Yozo wasn't bored. Yet without Yoko at home, it still felt like a flower had withered, and even the lamplight seemed lonely. Moreover, as time passed, he gradually grew increasingly disheartened.

Before long, eight o'clock passed and it turned nine.

In the narrow town where car horns resounded several times delivering guests to hotels, when night had deepened considerably and the sound of a car engine came from before the gate, Yoko returned with a stereotyped beauty—her black hair styled in immaculate waves at Mei Ushiyama gleaming slickly, eyebrows, eyes and lips sharply delineated with heavy white powder and eyeshadow. The black haori she wore—its woven pattern stitched here and there with silver plovers—made her face appear even more rigid, like a plaster cast.

“I kept thinking you’d be back any moment, kept waiting without eating a thing.”

Yozo was angry. Yoko sat with her back to the kitchen. Perhaps due to her makeup, her eyes lacked their usual melting softness—though no dark shadows lingered there either. "But they insisted on treating me since it'd been ages," she said, "and when meeting editors, a woman can't just stick to formalities." Though Yozo tried to consider her circumstances—acknowledging this might be unavoidable—he now turned his criticism to her hair and makeup. Yoko wore a dazed expression while Kitayama and O-Hae gazed enviously at her flawlessly powdered face. This only deepened Yozo's irritation. He finally shoved himself up from his seat. Donning his haori, he grabbed his folding bag and cane before storming out. He wanted proper dinner somewhere—something requiring effort to prepare.

Yoko followed from behind, bringing Kitayama with her.

“I’ll carry it.” Kitayama said this and tried to take the folding bag from his hand, but Yozo walked briskly down the dark road, swinging his cane. Warm raindrops began striking faces here and there. And when they reached the shaded teahouse, he too was breathing heavily. Around the time he settled into the second-floor room, there were voices of Yoko and the maid talking at the entrance, but by the time he went down to the bath below, there was no sign of them.

Listening to the intensifying rain, Yozo—his mind unsettled—would doze off only to startle awake again, spending a desolate night there.

Seventeen

The next morning when Yozo left his bed, his eyes felt gritty and his head remained foggy after managing only brief deep sleep. The garden trees glistened with rain-freshened verdure under a shadowless deep blue sky, but Yozo—his weak heart predisposing him to such moods—sank into turbid thoughts. During Yoko's hospitalization period when she alternated between staying in the neighboring boardinghouse room and visiting his study, she would storm out during their fights. Now that Yozo found himself effectively self-exiled, he felt an awkward displacement. Though wanting to make a clean withdrawal, he remained indecisive, pulled back by lingering attachments. Escaping an entrenched snare proved excruciatingly difficult for him. While partly regretting his childish jealousies, he also sensed this wasn't the moment to violently cast off their anguish-filled life—not when no new romance had yet begun for her. Yet precisely such transitional periods made severance hardest. Jealousy wasn't confined to third parties' emergence. Around a woman like Yoko—born with coquettish grace—one might imagine countless phantom suitors, but more crucially, within her very being spread innumerable ovarian tendrils of love.

Through his own carelessness, he found his wallet growing alarmingly light. Visiting Yoko would have resolved this easily enough, and simply informing the innkeeper of his departure would have sufficed, but burdened by a relationship that drew society's censure and ridicule upon him like a lightning rod - making him perpetually self-conscious - he detested the thought of compounding even minor discomforts. These petty fixations left him barely able to swallow his breakfast. Yet when he settled the bill, paying it along with a tip still left him with more than enough for train fare. Having lost even this pretext to visit Yoko's place and feeling his resolve weaken, he finally asked them to summon a car.

Outside came the roar of an engine. Yozo felt vaguely guilty about departing without informing Yoko as he glanced left toward the narrow street where her house stood, imagining what she might be doing now with those two women and the child, then followed the path tracing the watercourse.

When he boarded the train, his feelings finally began to calm down. While feeling dissatisfied as usual with Yoko's absence by his side, there was also a sense of ease from having distanced himself from the gloomy prison. Upon returning home and entering his study, he felt a semi-invalid-like bodily fatigue and weakness; immediately having a futon laid out to lie down, he ordered the maid to summon Dr. Watase, his regular physician, as usual.

Before long，Dr.Watase arrived wearing his stiffly starched examination gown，kneeled beside the bed，and began applying his stethoscope． “I too suffer from troubles with women，you see…” As Yozo awkwardly murmured，the doctor smiled a wry smile，

"Oh, that's quite alright." “I feel slightly feverish, though.” Yozo had long suffered from a weak trachea, and though Dr. Watase had been advising him for five or six years to live by the coast, the doctor was now meticulously examining his chest.

“It’s neurasthenia after all. I’ll give you some medicine—you must get proper rest.”

While drinking black tea and conversing briefly, after Dr. Watase departed, Yozo found himself drifting into a doze. Though his daily existence felt like being tormented by nightmares—making him simmer with revulsion—he became aware he had again been dreaming of her. When morning came, he—having slept to satiety—could no longer remain abed. Seeking mental composure, he rummaged through the disorderly stack of books in the tokonoma, extracted a Strindberg novel, and opened it. He felt a literary thirst yet recognized his creative impotence; alone in his study, he was overwhelmed by a loneliness that left him unable to sustain himself. While modernist new arts blared florid marches across society, Marxist studies had begun trending and proletarian literature was gaining momentum everywhere—a turbulent current swirling into chaotic eddies.

For a while, Yozo managed to spend several days and nights with Sayoko and her close-knit friends. Among Sayoko's circle were women of all sorts. The woman whom Sayoko had once shown him a photo of while suggesting he hire a housekeeper numbered among them. When walking beside Sayoko, this woman even appeared rather distinguished; yet upon drawing near and conversing with her, certain aspects proved disappointing. He found himself distracted by how her gums showed when she smiled with protruding front teeth—though her manners weren't precisely vulgar, there lingered something crude in her speech and general air. There was a stiff coarseness about her bearing; as Sayoko had mentioned, she seemed to have been the proper wife of a wealthy provincial family back home. Her dignity wasn't entirely absent, yet her conversation invariably sank to base topics. Yozo would occasionally glimpse her sitting primly at Sayoko's reception desk; her soberly tailored clothes remained immaculate, but clunky gold teeth grievously marred her appearance.

During his married years, Yozo had never let his eyes linger on any beautiful woman; even when opportunities for fleeting interest arose—occasionally over long periods—with women whose faintly alluring airs suggested commercial appeal, he never considered himself qualified to love them, having naturally rejected romance from the outset. But now that his relationship with Yoko had been reduced to a state of utter collapse, a certain stubbornly tainted gaze increasingly tended to fall upon women in general.

He was led by Sayoko and once visited the house of this woman called Ms. Okei. Ms. Okei had rented a house with a gate in a quiet area of Mita. A sixteen- or seventeen-year-old niece had come from the countryside, and about two Mita students lodged on the second floor. In the old-fashioned courtyard, there was a pond, with azaleas spreading across the ground and the young leaves of maple trees creating dense shadows. In the four-and-a-half-mat alcove stood a lush floral arrangement in a white flat bowl, and neither the scroll nor the cloud-shaped shelf appeared particularly shabby. Ms. Okei seemed to have some knowledge of tea ceremony. The neat and compact space gave the impression of a mistress's house.

After being treated to tea and yōkan, they left. "I'm hardly fit to be a conversation partner, but please do visit from time to time...."

Ms. Okei said this and escorted them to the exit leading to the street. “There’s something going on, I tell you.”

“Well… For now, I don’t think there’s anything like that. Lately she’s been acting a bit strange, though. She’s been talking quite a lot about erotic topics, you know.” Due to the relationship between Sayoko’s sister’s house—a large tea wholesaler in Shizuoka—and Ms. Okei’s family home, with whom they were close, the two had become intimate with each other even in Tokyo.

“Why don’t we stop by Ms. O-Tama’s place at Heinzelmann’s?”

After they came out onto the street, Sayoko said. “Heinzelmann, you mean...” “You didn’t know about this yet, did you, Sensei? A nun cohabiting with a German man named Heinzelmann.” “What about the German?” “A young engineer.” Due to her seven-year cohabitation with von Kurube of Germany, Sayoko appeared acquainted with various Germans; once while walking in Ginza, they encountered a fifty-something, rather unrefined German man at the corner of Owari-chō who persistently followed them with a mocking expression despite her attempts to avoid him.

“What was that about?” Even when asked, Sayoko just laughed and said, “Oh, he’s just a nasty guy.” Heinzelmann lived in a house with a modest gate. A neatly kept mother with a traditional chignon sat in the entranceway and bowed; Ms. O-Tama too, hearing Sayoko's voice, emerged from the back. She wore a plain Western-style dress, and her perfectly round face—not particularly good in complexion—smiled with a lonely air. Her hair was of course bobbed. All the rooms resembled stage sets for translated plays, but on the second-floor eight-tatami room, a cheap blue carpet had been laid out with a simple table and chairs arranged upon it, while several bottles of Western liquor stood lined up atop a sturdy large vanity.

At first glance, Ms. O-Tama appeared to be a woman embodying simplicity and obedience, yet inwardly she seemed burdened by an inferiority complex that left her far from cheerful. “Would you care for a cocktail?” While peering into several liquor bottles kept with apparent care, she turned to look at the two drinking tea at the table. Yozo waved his hand. Between Sayoko and Ms. O-Tama flowed talk of their German acquaintances’ whereabouts, romantic entanglements, and worldly gossip—until eventually all three found themselves heading out to Ginza.

In Ginza, Ms. O-Tama entered her regular cosmetics shop, had them bring out items like rouge and cream, and examined various things, but ultimately left without buying anything; then she also briefly entered a hat shop. By all appearances, her lifestyle seemed modest and frugal, as though she didn’t waste material things. She did not linger long in Ginza, and when her master’s return time approached, she promptly took the train home.

Observing such women would always only make Yozo think of Yoko instead, but one day as he sat solitary in his study, Sayoko brought along yet another different woman. The woman named Yoshiko, who carried herself with striking presence, was slightly younger than Sayoko, with a face of mature beauty. She wore a black haori bearing family crests and had her hair arranged in a glossy traditional chignon. "This is Sensei's neighbor," Sayoko introduced them. "And she's from the same hometown as you."

Sayoko introduced her with those words.

“Ha ha.” Yozo had been laughing, but gradually came to comprehend her romantic backstory and straightforward disposition that cut clean as split bamboo. It emerged she had been employed by the same household during her Shinbashi years; that while working as a maid in a renowned economics professor's residence, she had fallen into a romance with the young master; that after the youth was dispatched to a provincial high school, she left to become a geisha in Shinbashi; and that even after the young man finally tracked her down post-graduation and marriage—lured by some new allure—their relationship persisted clandestinely as secret lovers. These fragments of her past took on the quality of a tawdry dime-store novel. Moreover, he occasionally encountered her strolling through the neighborhood in yukata—her washed hair styled in an elegant chignon while cradling a Setter breed dog—and came to recognize her reputation as the district's celebrated beauty. He grew equally impressed by her prowess at hanafuda and mahjong, where her brilliant strategies were paradoxically undercut by an artful flair for graceful defeat. Unlike Sayoko, she was no practical soul.

“Care for a game?” Sayoko had a mischievous look in her eyes and touched the tip of her nose with her index finger. “Well... You’re probably planning to make me your easy mark again. Back when my wife was alive, I kept making blunders and getting scolded, but lately there’s been a change in my character.” “I see you were even worse before.”

Sayoko laughed. That evening, Yozo stayed late at Sayoko's house playing cards with journalists and manga artists who had come to socialize.

One evening, Yozo and Yoko went to see a Denishawn dance performance, where they also encountered Yotaro who had come with alumni friends. At that time, Yozo had been away from home for a while. Unable to let that be the end of it, he found himself dining with Yoko at the sparsely frequented Monami restaurant in Ginza through some chance opportunity, and while quietly visiting the newly opened Musashino Cinema, they ended up going to Zushi again.

At that time owing to postwar exhaustion, first-rate Western artists visited Japan—which still maintained a relatively better economic situation—and garnered strange acclaim among youths just as recod music was beginning to spread. Yozo had long attended outdoor performances by military bands and listened to Italian operas, but the murky traditional Japanese music that had finally developed a taste for recod was beginning to give way to beautiful Western music. Through listening to Elman, he came to appreciate violin tones that had previously struck him as cloyingly unpleasant, reaching a point where he could discern stylistic differences between performers like Zimbalist and Heifetz. Though this remained merely an old Eastern-style appreciation habit, from the perspective of romantic studies he was finally sweating through in his advancing years, it could at least be said to have some grounding in reality. The conflicts that had once existed between Yozo and his wife and their children over new and old tastes within the household had already disappeared. There had been an occasion when Yozo and his wife waited near the zoo while running errands in Hirokoji for Yotaro returning from hearing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Ueno Music School; as the performance ended precisely then, he soon came hurrying past them in uniform—shoulders hunched, wearing a terribly solemn expression without glancing sideways—but even that had now become part of the distant past.

Prior to this Denishawn performance—though that had been last year’s event—the same American dance troupe had visited previously, and at that time too Yozo had made Yotaro purchase advance tickets so they could watch with three seats arranged side by side. Yoko, wearing a newly tailored Sharmuse haori among other things, took the innermost seat, followed by Yotaro next to her and then Yozo in that order, positioned near the orchestra box. It was still early before the performance began, with both the lower floor and second floor having only sparsely occupied seats here and there. In the twilight-like dimness, the three of them looked through their programs for some time, but Yoko seemed to resent having Yotaro positioned between them.

“Let’s step out.” When Yozo went out to the corridor to smoke, the two followed. This Western-style theater—barely saved during the earthquake disaster—had only recently completed its renovations then, its former classical decorations now made strikingly elegant. The three entered the women’s lounge and were surveying the red-striped wallpaper when Yotaro suddenly addressed his father. “Have you seen the second-floor hall?” “Well now, I wonder what it was like?”

"That's quite beautiful. Here, the style of that place is most tasteful." "Yes, I want to see it."

Yoko said in a coquettish manner. "Shall we go take a look?" Then Yoko began to move, "What about you, Sensei? You aren't coming." "Ah, you should go take a look."

Yozo felt slightly tense but, true to his restless nature, began wandering the corridor after the two figures disappeared upstairs. When he stepped out into the entrance hall, he saw two or three groups of foreigners in resplendent dresses chatting here and there, though the space remained far from crowded. Walking alone with Yoko through these ostentatious theater corridors—she who might as well have been declaring "Take full pride in possessing me"—filled him with such embarrassment that his usual method involved enlisting a child as an accomplice to maintain appearances. Yet leaving everything to the child still left him uneasy. Though deliberately exposing himself to danger, his mind found no peace.

As familiar faces came into view there, he sat on a round cushion and made small talk for a while. "You're truly enviable, having such a young beautiful lover." When told this by his ever-jovial friend, Yozo looked down despondently. Then after meeting one or two acquaintances and exchanging greetings, when he suddenly looked up, he noticed Yotaro and Yoko descending the stairs. The pair descended slowly with shoulders pressed tight and toes aligned, wearing somewhat formal expressions as they talked while carefully stepping down. Yozo averted his gaze as if having witnessed something improper, but the two—likely unaware—passed directly before his eyes at a measured pace without glancing aside.

When he returned to his seat after quite some time had passed, the two were already there, “Where have you been?” Yoko asked. “We were looking for you, Sensei. When we came back here and found you weren't there, we searched everywhere.” “Oh, never mind.”

“This won’t do at all. You getting displeased has ruined my mood for watching the dance. That’s why I thought if I invited you properly, you’d come without fuss.” Yoko's eyes had moistened, but when viewed from that period—even beyond the incident that occurred after her discharge—their nerves had grown considerably frayed. This time they had taken seats on the upper floor where the leg movements were clearly visible, but during the intermission, Yozo suddenly received a distressing report from his child in the lower corridor.

"There’s something I need to talk to you about, Dad… No—it’s not really anything to worry about." When Yotaro said this and led him to the circular cushion seating area, Yozo—who had already been constantly anxious about household matters even without this—felt his nerves fray a little. "I thought maybe it would be better not to say anything, but I figured I should at least let you know..." Yozo couldn't quite grasp what this was about. Whether it concerned his eldest daughter, who had been growing despondent from always being looked at strangely by everyone at school, or whether something had happened to his young second daughter—his vision momentarily darkened as these possibilities flashed through his mind.

“Actually, Shōji withdrew some money and acted rather recklessly.”

Shōji was Yozo's second son.

“About how much?” “He withdrew five hundred yen and spent three hundred of it in a single night.” “Where did he spend it?” “In Yoshiwara.” “Actually, we received a notice from the Nihonzutsumi police box, and yesterday Ms. Sayoko and I went to vouch for his identity and bring him back, but apparently they grew suspicious because of how recklessly he spent the money.”

So it had finally come to this—Yozo was somewhat overwhelmed. He couldn't bring himself to blame Yotaro, who had been keeping custody of the passbook. As the bell resounded, father and son separated to their upper and lower levels. That night, after leaving Yoko at their usual neighborhood inn, Yozo returned home only to find that even the remaining two hundred yen—which Yotaro had supposedly stored in the household cabinet drawer—was now missing. In place of money inside the empty envelope lay a scrap of paper scrawled with something in red ink.

"Ah... Done in again."

Yotaro laughed as he brought the paper scrap and showed it to Yozo. "I'm borrowing this money temporarily" - so it was written in red ink. Just recently, when Shōji - who should have been taking entrance exams for higher school - came before Yozo with Yoko present, he had protested about the futility of further education in these times and his complete disinterest in schooling. No matter how much Yozo tried to reason with him, that pale face refusing to bend its conviction now suddenly floated before his eyes.

Eighteen Another evening, Sayoko had come to visit. After taking his youngest daughter to see Tenkatsu's magic show in Asakusa and stopping by following their meal in Ueno, Yozo found himself caught in crossfire—from external assaults by journalists and the internal rebellion of his second son, who harbored resentment toward both his eldest son's attitude regarding Yoko's scandal and the first flames of domestic insurrection. Though he maintained a general awareness of his dwindling social credibility, he still could not bring himself to sever ties with Yoko, who herself struggled to find a new direction.

Around that time, he had gotten a brief glimpse of Marx Booi's appearance at Yoko's salon—this alumnus of his eldest son who was said to reside along that coast. It was evening. At the hotel's billiards room where the young man was playing, Yoko—introduced by her eldest son Yotaro who had come with Yozo—immediately struck up a friendship with him. After leaving the hotel, she dragged him back to the house. The fair-skinned youth with a prominent nose and high shoulders sat slightly hunched under the melancholy glow of a French lampstand—its two bulbous protrusions resembling women's breasts—while Yozo, having been in the inner tatami room, emerged to the salon upon hearing of Yoko's guest, observing paternal decorum toward his son's schoolmate. Yotaro happened to be bathing. As Yoko seemed already to have forged an emotional connection with the young man that bypassed her original introducer, she now showered coquettish attention toward Yotaro steaming in the bath.

“How’s the bath?” she called out toward the bathroom. When Yozo saw the shyly stiffened young Sonoda, struck by his handsome features and sapling-like vigor of youth, he felt a faint shadow of premonition brush his sixth sense—though it remained more an objectively beautiful illusion than anything concrete; even had there been any trace of base jealousy within him, it would have been something easily restrained through rational will. Even Yoko would surely refrain from defiling this pure younger man, and there seemed no cause for concern about any incident arising; yet when coming to this coast, the presence of this youth must have already taken form in her consciousness, and imagining their first impression at the billiards hall, it seemed as though fate’s program had long since prepared some explosive event.

Be that as it may, he now seemed to have completely forgotten about that matter and had distanced himself for a time from the gloomy, hostile atmosphere of the Zushi house.

“Come over to my place. Let’s arrange flowers or something to pass the time.”

Sayoko had been saying this when the sound of the gate opening rang out, and Yotaro—who had gone to Zushi again yesterday for leisure—suddenly returned. He wore a slightly dejected look, as if it were his own affair.

“What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously.

Yozo asked anxiously. “Something happened that I need to tell you about…” “In Zushi?” “Yes.” According to Yotaro’s account, though the three of them—Sonoda, Yoko, and he—had spent time together again that day, her mischief directed at Sonoda was sufficient to indicate their contact had already descended into dangerous territory. Yoko walked along whistling her usual tune, sometimes holding hands with the young man and other times hooking her cane’s handle onto his collar to pull him from behind.

“I was seen off by the two of them and boarded the train.” “Hmm, just as I thought.” Yozo thought that what was coming had come. “So... what time is it now? The train’s still running, right?” “It does.” “Let’s settle this matter tonight. Let’s go now.” Yozo said impatiently. This Yokosuka-bound train that Yozo had recently come to frequent was never pleasant for him, whether accompanied by Yoko or traveling alone. Yet tonight as well, unable to fully contain a thread of loneliness beneath his somewhat refreshed mood, he sat in silence on the cushion between Yotaro and a young man he had brought along. There were not many passengers.

The late-night town of Zushi lay quiet and deserted. He was fully aware that this behavior of his might appear composed yet was in truth unsparingly base, but seeing how unexpectedly desolate the town had become only made this reality clearer, until he found himself inwardly regretting having come at all. He had even considered staying at a hotel overnight to handle matters tomorrow, but once his turbulent emotions had been set into motion, restraining them proved difficult.

“You reserve a room at the hotel and wait there.”

Yozo got out of the car a short distance before reaching the gate and, upon arriving at the entrance, spoke to Yotaro and Young Man Gondo. When he touched the gate, the door was already locked. Yozo knocked two or three times as if mindful of the neighbors, but receiving no response, he grew slightly irritated. He abruptly grabbed the door beam and vaulted over it with gymnast-trained agility, straddling it in one swift motion before cautiously lowering himself inside. That he could execute such quick work was something he had never imagined until this very moment—nor had he ever contemplated attempting it.

“Hey, hey.” Yozo moved from beneath the dark tea room window around to the garden partitioned by sleeve fences, pressed himself against the wooden door of the engawa, and called out softly. Before long came Yoko’s voice responding as a single panel of the door slid open. From there Yozo stepped up into the sitting room. “Pardon me for coming so late.” He sat down heavily and looked around the room, but nothing appeared out of the ordinary. There was no trace suggesting Sonoda had been present until now. Even had there been a corridor connecting to the bath area, storage room, and kitchen entrance, there had been no need to consider that possibility.

Yoko looked somewhat haggard, but near the pillow of the bedding laid out along the wall opposite the engawa—where the back opened into a corridor—she sat distanced from Yozo as though wary of him. "What's wrong?" "I had meant to discuss this with you at a proper time..." "So..." "Did I ever tell you about Mei Harumi, Sensei?" "No, I haven't heard."

“Oh. Then this must remain strictly confidential, you know. You absolutely mustn’t write about it or anything of the sort. It concerns their reputations.” “Go on and tell me—it’s quite all right.” “Ms. Harumi had set up a temporary beauty salon branch in Karuizawa during the summer before last while escaping the heat. There was this Keio University boy who kept calling her ‘auntie’ and grew attached to her, you see. Now even she—though her capable husband’s leadership had skillfully developed the business that way—apparently found such success brought internal hardships too. She ended up developing this self-sacrificial resolve toward the young man and decided to marry him. So she confessed everything to her husband, intending to start anew with the youth after settling their marital affairs.”

When the conversation turned to such stories, her unique expressive charm provided some sweet respite to Yozo's tense mood that night, though it couldn't match the interest of those foreign romance novels he'd once heard through her lips. Yet since it seemed tangentially connected to real-world matters, listening didn't bore him. According to Yoko's account, while Harumi's Master had tentatively consented to her marriage with the young man, since this marked a crucial turning point in Harumi's life, it required careful deliberation. Even if resolved to proceed, the Master needed to first obtain consent from Harumi's uncle in the countryside given his position. Thus soon after including the young man in their party, the three visited Harumi's hometown where her uncle and brother-in-law served as witnesses for discussions regarding dissolving her marriage with the Master and marrying the youth instead—yet none approved of this new love marriage. At that moment, the Master questioned the young man with solemn severity. "If you truly love each other with genuine passion, I might still surrender Harumi even now. But do you possess the confidence to responsibly care for her? Give us an answer here that leaves no doubt." At these words, the young man faltered. "Forgive me," he murmured, bowing his head low. And in that instant, Harumi's trust in the Master's masculine authority grew firmer.

"I thought this was leading somewhere important, but it's just this?" Yozo felt a creeping discomfort. "When morning comes, I'll call that person here, so I'd like you to hear it from Sensei..." "I can't engage in such theatrics."

Yozo answered. He couldn't tell whether this was merely a desperate excuse from Yoko, or whether—given the other party's ambiguous attitude—her true intention in taking advantage of his visit tonight was to have Yozo serve as witness. In any case, given the young man's family background and his father's social standing, their marriage—lacking in sincerity as it was with Yoko—seemed unlikely to proceed smoothly; even if it did, there remained doubt whether it would last. Yoko must have sufficiently factored in her own weaknesses as well.

“Is that not allowed?” “I detest such sarcastic remarks.” Age aside, he considered such meddling futile even against Sonoda's character. As they continued, the clock struck two. Yozo's mind was growing weary. Yoko, her eyes perpetually glistening, was also growing weary.

“Since it’s late, please get some rest…” Yozo lay down using his arm as a pillow, while Yoko stretched out atop the futon. “That person’s body is so large.” “Yet he seems so frail.” “It seems he also has a chest condition, you know.” “He was applying ice or something to it.”

“That person’s body is so large,” Yoko said sorrowfully.

As they murmured on，the shoji screens began paling with dawnlight. "In another hour I'll send someone to that person's place—won't you meet him just once?" "I'm begging you."

“Are you saying you want to make that man talk about something?” Yozo thought so too, but eventually, after Yoko went out to the taxi stand intending to send someone to Sonoda’s place, he—setting aside all rationale—found himself unwilling to face this child’s friend who served as Yoko’s romantic partner in these circumstances, and so stealthily slipped away back to the hotel. Then, urging Yotaro and the others on, he left that place without even having breakfast.

Yozo felt a loneliness as if flames had been abruptly extinguished. Even when alone in his study or amusing himself at Sayoko's house, he couldn't escape sensing a void within his heart. When he ventured to Ginza with Sayoko or paused at bars and cafes to rest his feet, each movement further eroded his mental composure. He had gradually learned that for someone as earthbound as himself, the most immediate method to suppress psychological turbulence lay first in restraining his physically unsteady frame—though not through strict religious asceticism, he desired to mold his daily life into such discipline if possible. Yet precisely because he now possessed income beyond manual labor, it was as if he sought recompense for twenty-five years of marital poverty confined by those very strictures—his spirit remained miserly while his practical calculations grew lax. The intolerable dinners prepared by an inexperienced maid contributed to this state, but so too did the desolation of being discarded by contemporary journalism—neither could anchor him in his study. Yet even amidst these unstable days, the recent Zushi incident acted like a scalpel slicing through festering flesh—from beneath oppressive anguish emerged smoldering remnants of vitality—kindling fresh interest in foreign works he'd previously skimmed with detachment. Should a decade yet remain in his lifespan, this desire for renewal now raised its head.

Moreover, Yozo had recently demolished the single-story building in the rear, creating flower beds and vegetable patches on the vacated plot, adding water lilies and brocade carp to the garden pond, and erecting a wisteria trellis. In the shade of the Chinese parasol tree, he also installed an assembled swing for his youngest daughter. Yet as he went about these tasks - having the maid assist with watering via hose, taking out hoes and shovels to transplant bush clovers and hibiscuses, tending to roses and dahlias - the figure of his aged loneliness grew ever more poignantly reflected in his heart. Even when coming to rest on the veranda, he found it wanting that there was no one to bring him so much as a single cup of tea.

The incident involving Yoko in Zushi left several young men around Yozo half-jealous and resentful or filled them with loneliness, though in both journalistic circles and society at large, people seemed to breathe easier. One day, a call came in from a certain young newspaper reporter who had long shown interest in Yoko's activities. At that time too, Yozo happened to be at Sayoko's house. At Sayoko's residence as well, near the windows of riverside rooms they had planted several young willow trees and hung electric lanterns of unusual design above the entrance plantings, keeping the parlor perpetually lively.

When Yozo picked up the desk phone at the counter, it turned out someone wanted to hear about the recent incident.

"Well, I have no particular thoughts beyond hoping their marriage goes well." "Even if I had some, I don't wish to say anything now." Though he didn't press any further, Yozo found himself somewhat intrigued by this opportunity to learn about subsequent developments regarding the Zushi Incident. He had no intention of drawing Yoko any closer to him now, but neither could he deny harboring some interest tinged with jealousy.

The next day, having been told by Sayoko—who was insistent on adopting Western attire—Yozo went with her to Hitsujiya to examine fabrics. Sayoko owned luxurious Chinese dresses fit for women of status, and having danced at hotel soirées as part of Kurube's retinue, she also possessed dresses and daywear—though their fashions had since become antiquated.

"Well... perhaps it's better to give up on Western clothes, don't you think? Chinese clothes would be fine, though." "In a different sense, he said the same thing. 'There's no need for Japanese women to discard the kimono they've grown accustomed to and wear Western clothes.' But I do want to try them on." After coming to know many literary figures, painters, and reporters, Sayoko began to view the stockbrokers and wholesale merchants she had previously associated with as vulgar, finding these patrons of the pleasure districts increasingly unsatisfying. Even if she had no choice but to deal with the regular geisha, she couldn't get along with the conventional madams and maids of ordinary teahouses either. In their eyes, Sayoko was an outsider of a different stripe.

After buying floral-patterned jacquard at Hitsujiya, they visited the residence of a certain Madam in Yotsuya who operated a Western dressmaking school. Yozo had come to know this Madam at a handicraft exhibition held by a women's magazine company, and after visiting her home once, there was a time when they went together to Sayoko's house to have a meal. Madam lived in a spacious Western-style residence with a tranquil atmosphere where Western liquors were also available. Several years earlier, she had dissolved her marriage and gone to France to learn Western dressmaking techniques.

In the guest room furnished with sturdy smoke-tinted furniture, they partook of melons and black tea while idling away the time, then as evening fell ventured out to Ginza as a trio. Yet they found themselves in such discordant moods that they couldn't begin to sound out each other's true circumstances. The next day, Yozo held discussions about the Zushi rumors with Yotaro and Young Man Gondo. "Well now, what should we do?" "Shall we go investigate?"

Young Man Gondo spoke up. "I think they might already be in need of money, you know." "He may be the only son of a bourgeois family, but he's still just a student, you know."

“What’s the situation? Shall I go check it out?” “Well… if money’s needed, I don’t mind giving a little…” Yozo now felt something like wanting to investigate a bit further.

Gondo, who had gone to Zushi, returned around eight o'clock that night. Yozo was lying down engrossed in reading a Strindberg play.

"Ms. Yoko had brought a chair and tea table out to the garden, wearing what looked like a beret while writing her manuscript," reported Young Man Gondo. "When I visited, she seemed guarded yet clearly needed funds. She mentioned having business in Tokyo tomorrow and wanting to meet with Sensei then." Gondo relayed having finalized the meeting details. When the appointed day came, Yozo prepared modest funds and visited his usual fowl restaurant in Ueno. The establishment boasted an expansive banquet hall upstairs, while downstairs numerous small windows of varied designs bordered expansive water features. A waterfall cascaded from moss-capped crags through groves of moso bamboo, where summer lantern lights—dappled with spray—nestled among winter bamboo and bush clover trembling in cool breezes.

Yozo sat in the bay window of a detached second-floor room directly opposite the banquet hall, gazing at the blue-tinged yellow Moso bamboo leaves below him as he waited for Yoko to arrive. Before long, Yoko arrived, though it seemed she had left Sonoda waiting at Monami in Ginza or somewhere else. Since this location offered no visibility from outside, Yozo merely picked at his food. Yoko fidgeted restlessly.

“Mr. Gondo is such a disagreeable man! It’s like he came to spy on our lives with that arrogant attitude of his.” Yozo merely smiled slyly. “Please don’t say anything about us to the newspapers for now.” “That’s my intention too…” “Though I call him ‘brother,’ he’s actually my cousin—a man named Kurosu. He used to work at the Foreign Ministry and now seems involved with political parties. He apparently has many subordinates too. But he’s a proper gentleman. Since he handles all matters for the Sonoda family, he’s agreed to take care of this situation as well. He says once the timing’s right, he’ll get his father’s consent, but for now when the Ushigome house sells, he’ll quietly provide ten or twenty thousand yen from the proceeds so we can set up a household temporarily. He lives in Kugenuma with his wife—they have quite a comfortable life. His wife is very cultured too.”

Though it hadn't sounded particularly pleasant to Yozo's ears, he didn't feel displeased that Yoko had secured such stable footing. "How splendid." "But I'm in trouble now. He does lay his wallet out for me, but I can't bring myself to touch it. It feels grasping and sordid, don't you think? All the more because those people have never known financial hardship." Then, while describing in her characteristic observational style the outer framework of her parents' stock-supported lifestyle, she scarcely touched her chopsticks to the simmering fowl. Upon receiving the money, she carelessly crammed it into her handbag,

“We’ll discuss this properly next time.” “I think I’ll take my leave now for today.”

Yozo nodded. Yoko, who was starting to get up, drew close to his body. As if trying to give him a farewell kiss. Yozo hurriedly blocked it with both hands while recoiling.

Nineteen

Had Yozo not been someone who wrote—or rather, had he been an ordinary man who valued conventional living without making a habit of probing human nature or maintaining more than passing interest in worldly affairs—he would never have persisted in investigating their circumstances even after Yoko found herself a younger partner. Yet knowing this affair had now reached its anticipated climax here, and recognizing the opportune moment to return to his own life, he found himself driven by curiosity to track her movements through successive romances—even while eighty percent of his emotional reckoning was settled, some faint attachment lingered like Yoko’s scent still clinging to his body, not yet fully dissipated. At times he would firmly lock away his heart and, feeling an ease liberated from that gloomy daily life, go out to tend the flower beds in the garden, cut back the creeping weeds, or read a half-finished book; yet even as he did so, he would often find himself assailed by a single man’s timidity—where beyond the still-fresh memories of his deceased wife, the blurred visage of his beloved daughter lingering deep within, along with events surrounding her death, would suddenly lure him into sentimental tears. When he awoke in the dead of night and thoughts of his daughter surfaced, his chest would constrict as if pressed upon, and morbid tears would seep endlessly forth, spilling onto his pillow. And next, until death—he was drawn into a weakness that made him want to apologize to his mother, whom he had always left neglected. As for his wife, Yozo—who believed he had loved her sufficiently—had no regrets.

Yozo often had bedding laid out even during daytime, spending hours drowsing in half-sleep, but at the urging of Young Man Gondo—who was indignant about Yoko having betrayed him—he did create another opportunity to meet her. However, after handing over money and parting ways at Ueno's fowl cuisine restaurant, she abruptly became someone distant in his perception, leaving him to discover an emptiness within himself as if exorcised of some clinging spirit. He would find himself hoping for Yoko's marriage to proceed smoothly, yet it was equally true that—knowing her nature was ill-suited for a conventional household—he secretly desired the inevitable collapse that would follow when her innate fickle passion led her to recklessly throw herself into it. Even if they were to meet again in the future, he thought, he could no longer face her with his former feelings; a reactive disgust would send chills coursing through his entire being. Yet simultaneously, he found himself unable to suppress the sprouting of a devilish ambition—to thoroughly torment her as some form of vindication.

Then Yoko, who had stashed the money in her handbag and joyfully flown back home, called from the nearby An’ei Inn not even three days later.

It was still early evening; he sat in the dreary parlor drinking tea with the child while listening to records, but when he tried being a family man like this, he became vividly aware of something ephemeral in the daily life of this motherless child and could not feel any joy.

Yozo, hearing that the call was for him, exited the gate and entered the telephone room at the boarding house that always handled his calls. Assuming it was probably Sayoko calling about ordering flowers or something, he picked up the receiver only to be startled by the unexpected sound of Yoko’s voice. “Oh, Sensei. It’s me.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?” “The An’ei Inn. Sensei, there’s something I need to discuss with you—I’ve just come here now. I thought we could talk over dinner.” “What could it be?” “Come here. Right away.”

Yozo, still undeterred, went to meet Yoko again.

Yoko was in the front second-floor room. A suitcase and handbag were in the tokonoma, giving the impression she had just returned from a trip, and her hair and makeup were disheveled. "I'm terribly sorry for calling you out like this..."

She offered the zabuton that was by the gold folding screen.

“What’s with the suitcase? Traveling?” “That was my intention, you know.” “Mr. Kurosu, Sonoda’s cousin—the one who’s supposed to protect us—you know.” “He’s somehow unsettling, you know.”

“How exactly is he unsettling?” “The problem is that he’s taken a fancy to me, you know.”

"I see," Yozo thought. "And he's frightening, you know," she continued. "They say he used to work in foreign affairs, but now he's part of some extra-parliamentary group or something—apparently he has lots of underlings." "He doesn't seem particularly bad or violent, but there's something unsettling about him." "He's quite handsome and still young." "His wife is an intellectual and perfectly nice, but his attitude toward me feels strange." "The other day when I was removing dead skin for Sonoda on the engawa, he came over and started making sarcastic remarks that were half-teasing."

"There's no need to worry about such things." “Well, that may be…” Yoko’s face reddened slightly, “But he says such things.” "He said the rumors are getting too much, and even if we sell the Ushigome house, it can’t be done immediately—so I should stay hidden somewhere out of sight for now." "And there happens to be a perfect place for that." “He says there are familiar old inns and villas on a hill in the outskirts of Numazu and such towns, so I should go stay there.”

“The two of you?” “Hmm, no—just me alone.” “Does he intend to separate you?” “It doesn’t seem exactly like that, but Mr. Kurosu said he’ll come later, so he told me to go ahead first anyway.” “It seems quite rural, you know.” “At the time, I was fully committed to the idea, but after Mr. Kurosu and Mr. Sonoda saw me off to the station, I started having second thoughts.” “I wondered whether to go through with it or call it off.” “But since Mr. Kurosu had bought the ticket for me, I couldn’t very well not board.” “I had no choice but to get on—and get on I did—but somehow I just couldn’t bring myself to go through with it.” “So I suddenly changed my mind and got off at the next station.” “Just then an upbound train arrived there, so I took it and ended up coming here.”

While Yoko was indeed someone who easily grew familiar with others and had a charmingly pleasant demeanor, it was precisely for that reason that she remained cautious around members of the opposite sex—something Yozo had long understood. He tried imagining the man’s appearance and character, even sketching out a titillating incident and scene that seemed like something straight out of a pulp novel. “So after arriving here, I tried calling Mr. Kurosu on the phone,” she said. “To settle this matter between us clearly, I told him I wanted him to meet you once—I’m sorry, don’t refuse! Just arrange to bring you out or something.” “But I had no choice but to do that.” “Please—you must meet Mr. Kurosu.”

When it came to such matters, Yozo was utterly vague, but since this wasn't as significant as finalizing his daughter's marriage arrangement, he thought that at least hearing what the other party had to say might be acceptable to take on.

“I don’t mind meeting him. Should we go to him, or have you already arranged a place somewhere…?” “That man is supposed to come here, you know. We agreed on around noon tomorrow. He seems worried about whether I’ve truly cut ties with you. That makes it all the more necessary for you to meet him.” “So you’re saying that man has his eye on you, then?”

"I'm not certain about that either..." "In any case, it should suffice if you maintain your resolve—but handling matters this way would make even Sonoda seem pitiable, wouldn't it?" "Yet since the terms likely favor Sonoda's position, my own standing might prove disadvantageous." "That person's personal sentiments operate separately." "And while I doubt he'd stoop to deliberately disadvantaging me for his gain—setting aside such scheming—the conditions proposed for me remain unfavorable regardless."

From Yoko's tone, it was not lost on Yozo that Kurosu's hope seemed less about advancing marriage talks than about first confirming whether Yoko herself had proper resolve regarding her preparedness for married life. Whether she could truly become a chaste and devoted housewife, whether she could live frugally within the means of the allotted amount—Yozo considered that such questions might be presented by Kurosu with himself as the observer. However, even for Yozo himself, when it came to requiring Yoko—as she entered married life with a young man like Sonoda, who had such a brilliant future ahead of him—to make certain demands of her, and resolving this issue would depend on her resolve; but when it came to Yoko’s mental preparedness and determination for this new life, the truth was that the key did not lie in Yozo’s hands. The key was supposed to lie within Yoko herself. Even if Yozo were placed in a position of guarantee, he could not take responsibility, and at the same time, attempting to forcibly redirect the course of Yoko’s life at an abrupt angle would be meaningless. That would be equivalent to losing Yoko herself as an individual, and consequently, the current fervent love affair should never have arisen.

However, on the other hand, Yozo also harbored another naive notion. Depending on the partner, he thought, she too might become an attentive and cheerful housewife who handled all daily matters with care. She had liked things like knitting and embroidery. Just by glancing at a magazine, even the most complicated knitting patterns would stick in her mind, and she had her own sense of style in room decoration and cooking. She also liked reading. Her literary talent was not as inferior as the world disparaged it to be. Thanks to being by Yozo's side, even those talents and virtues were disparaged as if they were mere mud—and one could not say this situation lacked the spitefulness of mob psychology. Even now, Yozo continued to appraise Yoko in this manner, and he felt that once her life truly stabilized through marriage with Sonoda, she might smoothly make her way into society. And he wished for that. He thought that alone was his atonement for society's ridicule. He also thought that had she not fallen into love, he could have sustained her to some extent through his own efforts. Moreover, Yoko’s desperate struggle to cling to literature as her lifeline in any circumstance struck him as profoundly pitiable.

The next day when the maid delivered Kurosu's calling card, the two of them had only just woken up. The previous night after taking a walk around Hirokoji together, Yozo had returned to the inn with her once again. Even after bathing—with Yoko having done her nighttime makeup—and eating chilled fruits together, the night had grown late. "Please show him in." Having said that, Yoko hurriedly got up and asked, "Do you have another available room?"

“Unfortunately, we’re fully booked…” The young maid answered. Yoko was perplexed. “Then please have him wait for a moment…” She helped the maid hurriedly put away the bedding, went to the dressing table to fix her face, then went out to the corridor to greet the visitor.

It was around nine in the morning.

Yozo still felt as though he hadn't fully awakened from sleep. While sensing the puffiness of his face and the stiffness in his facial nerves, he nonetheless straightened his posture and smoked a cigarette. A tall gentleman in a tailored suit entered. With a dashing figure that somehow resembled the visage of an esteemed children's author Yozo had long known, he composed himself with brazen self-assurance.

Tea trays and bowls of chilled fruits lay scattered about. Moreover, since a single maid seemed to be sluggishly carrying out the bedding into the hallway, there was an awkward air. “This is Mr. Kurosu.”

Following Yoko's introduction, they exchanged brief greetings. Kurosu surveyed the room—which seemed permeated by some ominous energy—with unsettled eyes while visibly agitated. "Well now, Ms. Yoko—since you requested I meet Mr. Inamura, I've gone out of my way to come here." Muttering fragmented phrases that conveyed "What sort of situation is this supposed to be?" he glared down at Yozo with severe eyes.

“With that intention, I had Sensei come as well and was waiting for you.” Yoko said this while preparing the tea, but noticing Kurosu’s stormy demeanor, she couldn’t help feeling daunted. “What sort of discussion is this? If I may inquire...” Yozo too spoke up, but Kurosu—as if unable to contain his displeasure—assumed an imperious air as he extracted a cigarette from his metal case and lit it.

“Naturally, I presume this concerns the marriage arrangements, but regarding that...” “Well, that is part of it, but first and foremost—if you’ll pardon my bluntness—the issue lies in whether Ms.Kozue possesses sufficient sincerity to begin with. Until that determination is made, I too, as Sonoda’s guardian, must thoroughly observe both your sentiments and conduct.” “As for that matter, Yoko herself will prove it in time, but I believe now presents the ideal opportunity for her to settle her past.”

Kurosu puffed on his cigarette while scrutinizing them both, as if demanding an explanation for this situation—he couldn't help perceiving Yozo, this elderly man of letters, as some scheming rogue manipulating Yoko from behind the scenes. "In any case, I'll take my leave today." "Perhaps another opportunity will arise..." Kurosu flashed Yoko a meaningful look before scrambling to his feet and exiting the room. Having seen Kurosu out, Yoko immediately returned, her face flushed with irritation.

"My apologies." Yozo murmured, "But Sensei, you didn't say anything!" Yoko's voice held a piercing sting. "But he didn't say anything either! As for me, there's really nothing to say." "You're always like this, Sensei. When it comes to important matters, you never considered a single one of them, did you? Trying to drag me along with your declining social credibility—that's impossible!"

While chattering hysterically, Yoko grabbed one of Yozo’s split-toe socks that had been scattered in the corner and tore it sharply in a fit of anger. Yozo was growing irritated, but when Yoko kept talking at him, he understood there was no way to oppose her. He lacked the dexterity to clearly distinguish between embraces as embraces and their respective positions as positions. Before long, Yoko finished getting ready and left the room; however, out of consideration for the inn’s propriety, he too departed after waiting a short while. Imagining Yoko chasing after Kurosu to mend this rupture.

One day, Yozo was meeting with a social affairs reporter from a major newspaper in one of the water-facing rooms at Sayoko’s house. Regarding Yoko's recent incident, Mr. Hamura had previously requested an interview as well; however, Yozo had deliberately declined, fearing that careless remarks might hinder her marriage prospects—or so it seemed from his distant demeanor. Mr. Hamura's attitude toward Yozo and Yoko was always sincere and natural. It wasn’t the sort to pry with curiosity or mock with sarcasm. That day too, he had first called to confirm Yozo’s intentions before coming.

“If Sensei has no objections.”

“Well...” “I think it might be all right to speak now, though.” When Yozo spotted Mr. Hamura at the entrance, he stood up from where he had been talking with Sayoko at the front desk and personally showed him in. Mr. Hamura’s modern questions were delicate, but Yozo, with his old-fashioned sensibilities, remained merely childish in his adult-like posturing.

“What do you think—will this incident be resolved smoothly? What’s your assessment, Sensei?” “Well... I don’t know myself, but I’m hoping things will work out. This time it might be genuine.”

“I see. When Ms. Yoko cut her hair short like that, I sensed something—the stirrings of her heart, or perhaps subtle nuances—within her.” Such talk continued for some time. “If you’re going to write about this, please do so in a way that helps the story progress smoothly. Yoko isn’t as bad a woman as the world makes her out to be. Of course she has her calculations and ambitions, but largely, it’s because her first marriage started off on the wrong foot that her fate has become so twisted. Even her literary talent—if nurtured, it should develop—but whether you call them dreams or desires, she always succumbs to them.”

"But Sensei, what about your own feelings? All this time you've been watching her so intently..." “Well—I wasn’t exactly staring, but there’s something that ceaselessly demands attention.” Yozo said this and haltingly began to voice words of genuine hatred. And finally, “This is just between us, so please keep it that way. This is my personal criticism—you mustn’t write it.”

Mr. Hamura eventually left. When he went out to the front desk around ten o'clock the next morning, Yotaro was already up there, reading the morning paper from Mr. Hamura's company.

Sayoko sat pressed close beneath the Buddhist altar in the dimly lit inner room where the oil lamp burned brightly—as was her custom—rubbing her prayer beads while reciting sutras with single-minded devotion. Both she and Yoko shared an abundance of life's dreams, but having been professionally honed through long years, Sayoko's heart held a steely resolve that contrasted with Yoko's lingering young-lady-like disposition. This faith served both as atonement for a mother-instilled past and as her daily discipline of hope. Just as one rinses their mouth and brushes their teeth each morning, without this ritual her mind would wander scattered through the day.

Yozo had stayed up late playing cards again last night and went to bed exhausted as the glass-paper doors began paling at dawn. Yotaro had also joined them. "Is there something in it?" Having only half-heard the question, Yozo couldn't bring himself to look at the newspaper. Whether for better or worse, that article must have drawn an insurmountable line between him and Yoko—one that could never be crossed from either side. "Ah, this isn't good."

Because Yotaro said this, he also became somewhat concerned and glanced through the article. Indeed, trusting in Mr. Hamura’s understanding, the faint words of personal hatred that Yozo had inadvertently let slip were now embellished and exaggerated—it was as though Mr. Hamura had discerned Yozo’s animosity through his own sensibilities and hurled it at her in his stead. Yozo was somewhat grateful for the young reporter’s consideration, yet it also left him feeling uneasy. Suddenly, Yozo grew melancholy.

“It seems Mr.Hamura grasped things a bit too keenly.” “It’s pitiful for Ms.Yoko.” “Plus they’re calling her a ‘poisonous flower’ or whatever—that might come from Baudelaire’s work—but here it means something completely different.”

At that time, Yotaro had also fallen under the influence of that poet’s diabolism. In his actions too, this could be discerned. However, Yozo felt these were not matters that could be resolved with pretty words, leaving him no choice but to turn a blind eye.

Sayoko seemed uninterested; even after leaving the Buddhist altar, she made no attempt to broach the subject. It was something noticed much later, but Sayoko had already been his child's friend at that time.

A few days later, on another evening, Yozo was again visiting Sayoko's house.

He had gone out to the balcony with one of the journalists he encountered there, letting the river wind blow over them as they gazed at the night view from Ryogoku to around Kiyosu Bridge, when suddenly he was called into the hallway.

“Sensei, there’s a phone call for you. It’s Ms. Yoko.” The niece who had recently been helping out here said in a hushed voice. “Did you tell her I was here?” “But... the young master was...” Yotaro had been at the front desk. “This is troublesome.”

Perplexed, Yozo went down. The receiver was off the hook. "You should've just said I wasn't here." Yozo said to Yotaro. "But..." Yotaro’s attitude in that moment seemed to him like weakness, but also like strength. However, that would come much later, and at that time, his state of mind was something the obtuse Yozo could not possibly have understood. When he picked up the receiver, the call was somewhat distant at first, but Yoko’s heated voice gradually grew clearer. Just when he thought she must be furious and about to voice her resentment, she instead adopted a pleading attitude. Yozo tried to put her off by saying it was late or suggesting they meet tomorrow morning—they exchanged a few words back and forth—and attempted to explain that if this was about the newspaper article, he too was somewhat troubled by it, but Yoko replied in a voice choked with suppressed agitation,

“No, it’s not about that. There’s something I absolutely must discuss with you tonight.” “You’ll come right away, won’t you?” “You must.” “The usual spot.” “I’ll be waiting.” After hanging up the receiver, Yozo sighed, but even he felt things were slipping beyond his control. “What’s wrong?” “She’s telling me to come.” “You should go.” Yotaro urged him. “Then I’ll have a car arranged.”

Sayoko telephoned Naniwa Taxi. When he got out of the car at the side entrance of the An'ei Inn, he belatedly realized how late the night had grown. He had recently lost all sense of time, so the nights felt especially short. Yoko appeared from the side entrance and approached him unsteadily, like a phantom. “I’m at the Mayflower right now.” “Why?” “It’s a bit inconvenient at the inn. “You’re in danger too, Sensei.”

"Why is that?" "Mr. Kurosu is misunderstanding us. He’s making it seem like you're involved in this collusive work too, Sensei."

“Huh.” “But do come inside for a moment. The Madam’s perfectly kind.”

Yozo allowed himself to be led and stepped into the beauty parlor. During his stay here, at the house Yoko occasionally visited, he had become acquainted with a dog-loving Madam. Yozo had also heard from her that the master managing Restaurant Oran sometimes came from Yokohama. There had even been a time when he once brought a three-month-old Fox Terrier for Sakiko, who loved animals. The Madam had already retired to her living quarters and gone to bed, but her apprentices brought tea and such.

Yoko's nerves were frayed, restless and unsettled. "Let's go somewhere." "I went by your place earlier, you know." "Then about an hour ago, Mr. Gondo came to the inn saying Shōji from your household is drunk now and threatening to confront you." "Anyway, let's leave." "This is becoming a nuisance for us here."

The two of them went outside again. On the street, all the shops were closed. The only light came spilling out from the cafés and bars in the side streets. A speeding car streaked past like a meteor toward Komagome. Before long, an empty taxi finally came from the direction of Komagome, so they hurriedly got in. The place they entered was a pleasure district in the northwest part of town, but as it was late, everywhere was quiet as a forest. Yoko got out of the car in front of a house that stood exposed on the wide street, went around to the back entrance, called out "Auntie! Auntie!" and knocked on the gate; after some time, a reply came from within.

“I’ve been here before, you know.” “You understand that, don’t you?” “But please don’t despise me for it.” Hearing this, Yozo was instantly reminded of that young man Isshiki. “I used to visit this house with him and theater people.” When the entrance door finally opened, they went inside and settled into a quiet back room on the second floor. “I want something to eat.” “What about you, Sensei?” “I suppose eating would be all right.” Yoko took a pen and scrap of notepaper from her handbag, wrote down three or four dishes, and handed it to the maid.

“And sake?” When the maid inquired, “I’d like some. Just one bottle. Sorry to trouble you so late.” There was a brief interval before the four Western dishes arrived. Yozo kept his composure to avoid exposing vulnerabilities, while Yoko restrained her agitation yet still edged toward mentioning the article. “Everyone was saying that article went too far,” she said. “They called it conduct unworthy of your usual self, Sensei.”

“That was Mr. Hamura’s misunderstanding.” “Haven’t I always told you? You simply must resolve never to meet newspaper people at all—I keep saying this!”

“It depends on the situation and the person involved. I thought Mr. Hamura would certainly write favorably about us. I kept repeating that myself, but later I did offer some criticism of you. But I don’t think that was any worse than what’s been written in the papers so far.” “Let the world say whatever they want. The fact that it came from Sensei’s own mouth is what’s significant.”

"But if that's unjust slander, wouldn't I be the one getting blamed?" "You're a master, Sensei. You can't lump someone like me together with yourself. At a time when you should be protecting me, you went and pushed me off the edge instead. A single word from you could warp my entire fate." "I don't think there was that much malice in what I said." Just then, Western dishes and sake were brought in.

“I’m terribly sorry. Let’s not have such talk now, shall we?”

The maid spread a tablecloth over the table scattered with cigarette ashes and arranged serving dishes, sake cups, and chopsticks there.

It had been clear from the start, but once Yoko began her tirade, there was no defending against it. Yet tonight she bore too grave an injury to sustain her onslaught. What mattered now for Yoko was containment. And this required above all else making Yozo atone for Yozo's transgressions.

Even as this was happening, Yoko listened intently to the occasional blare of car horns and roar of engines that reached her ears. To her frayed nerves, it felt inescapably like Kurosu’s relentless pursuit. The entire world—even Yozo now—was persecuting her.

Twenty

A suffocating night of blatant conflict and feigned reconciliation had dawned. Yoko had to somehow whitewash the newspaper article as favorably as possible through Yozo, but now that he was ensnared by her, Yozo had no means of escape. When she woke around ten, Yoko took out her makeup kit from the toilet case and fixed her face. Then, retrieving a curling iron from the brazier, she made Yozo assist her in hard-to-reach places under the guise of camouflage. Yozo had once before been made to use a curling iron on her at some hotel, but lacking the dexterity to trim her lush, overgrown hair—which now reached down past her ears—in her preferred style, the hot edge of the iron accidentally touched her neck, causing her to leap up with a shriek. Yoko was always intoxicated by her own phantom and would often gaze lovingly at her deep black eyes reflected in the mirror, saying, “Look.” “I look beautiful today,” she would murmur innocently. Yozo had convinced himself that this was true, but of course she herself could never witness the beauty of those fleeting expressions—like when she had shrieked upon being touched by the curling iron. Yozo would often imagine those moments when she would make the same expression—or perhaps even more sorrowful, pitiful faces—for other men as well, but last night he found himself drawn to the allure of her harsh demeanor.

Ever since being brought here last night, Yozo sensed something dubious about this house. Long afterward, it would leak from the proprietress's lips that Yoko had brought that surgeon here during those days, and had even arrived in taxis with other young men. Yozo realized the moment he was brought here that this house had been a meeting place for Yoko's lovers before him, but he hadn't thought her so brazen. However, disliking being seen by the maid and proprietress, he deliberately seated Yoko before the alcove and positioned himself with his back to the entrance. The sliding door at the entrance had a lock mechanism that could be engaged from the inside along its frame, but the room itself was a stiff, gaudy space devoid of any charm.

The lingering summer heat showed no signs of relenting. The electric fan had been pushed aside already, autumn grasses arranged in the alcove's basket vase, but Yozo found himself drained both mentally and physically. Having stepped away from the mirror, Yoko applied pale pink rouge to her blanched cheeks - her face now utterly transformed from last night's tear-streaked visage, though her forehead still carried a shadow of anguish. They soon ate a light meal of two plates of toast. "I'm going to the newspaper office now." "I suppose. But wouldn't going there just layer more shame over what's already happened? And even if we issue a retraction, it would only be a formality."

“Then what should I do?” “I understand your feelings well, Sensei, but how could you fall for journalists’ tricks?” “Even they wouldn’t dare sensationalize things you never actually said.” “If this continues, my fate will be utterly destroyed.” “Isn’t it pitiful that a single careless word from you could bury me in society’s grave?”

"But marriage…" "That’s not even the point. I can’t face those people anymore. And those bourgeois types—once you enter their circle, they’re still just as loathsome. Even he drones on about stock prices rising and falling."

Soon it was noon. Last night Yoko had become hysterical for a time and snapped Yozo's fountain pen barrel in two, so he had spread out manuscript paper intending to write a little but ended up leaving it untouched. Yoko slammed down the broken fountain pen and shattered the ink bottle as well. The ink dripped and spilled even onto the tatami mats. Yozo had the stationery store on the tram line deliver a fountain pen this morning and bought one for himself, but he also took the opportunity to get Yoko a lady's fountain pen with a transparent barrel. However, even after getting up today, he still couldn't bring himself to spread out the manuscript paper, so setting that aside for what it was, he had no choice but to try negotiating with the newspaper office by phone at least.

The telephone was on the outer wall of a slightly recessed, dimly lit futon room at the bottom of the staircase. Yoko also came down and stood watch nearby. Mr. Hamura was not present, but when someone who appeared to be the head of the social affairs department eventually came out, Yozo insisted that the article did not reflect his true intentions. "Mr. Hamura overinterpreted my feelings through rose-tinted glasses." "That article doesn't just criticize Yoko—it utterly crushes her. I can't even open my eyes in the morning without this nausea." "I want at least one retraction issued..."

“Is that so? However, regarding the retraction—don’t you think that’s rather difficult? At our company, unless there's a truly egregious error, we have a policy of not retracting anything once it's been published, you see. But isn't that article fine as it is?” “No—this is a problem. Because it’s my position that’ll be ruined before hers.” For a while the conversation grew chaotic, but with Yoko irritably listening nearby, Yozo too began getting worked up. Moreover, the telephone connection grew distant, and with various noises interfering, he found it difficult to clearly articulate the crucial points. At last, Yozo set down the receiver. Then, noticing someone eavesdropping at the end of the corridor, he hurriedly made his way upstairs.

“It’s no use.”

Yozo said dismissively. Not long after that, Yoko mobilized Kurosu, and through the goodwill of the newspaper’s upper management that he knew, a special article was published ostensibly to correct the previous one while actually serving her interests.

Along Zushi's coast too, before one knew it, an autumn wind was blowing.

By that time, Yozo had once again come to stay at Yoko’s house.

“I’ll have to stay away again for a while longer, so make sure to look after the house properly.” When leaving the house, Yozo said those words and entrusted domestic affairs to his eldest son. Even with the published correction article, it remained a desperate stopgap measure, leaving Yoko socially devastated. The retraction piece was drafted in the newspaper’s conference room where Kurosu attended in full ceremonial dress—haori jacket, hakama trousers, and black tabi socks—his appearance evoking an extra-parliamentary faction leader. For Yozo, erasing the original article proved no simple task. The presence of Kurosu—clearly aligned with Yoko—during journalist interviews created an unseemly spectacle. Yoko had naturally informed him of this plan beforehand. She took meticulous care to spare Yozo any sense of humiliation.

At the appointed time, when Yozo arrived, Yoko had not yet come; but as he was speaking with Mr. Kimoto, the department head, she arrived. Kurosu also entered smiling, but after exchanging a harmless greeting with Yozo, he soon disappeared. “Now then, Ms. Kozue, you should take this seat.” The plump, round-faced department head Mr. Kimoto had Yoko sit in a large armchair. He appeared captivated by Yoko’s beauty, which he was seeing for the first time,

"No matter what people say about you, you are fortunate," he murmured softly to Yozo. Much later, when Yoko began appearing at Ginza bars, Yozo heard rumors that this man had become one of her regulars there, serving as some sort of kindly confidant—a notion he found oddly amusing rather than disagreeable. Yoko responded to the department head's questions with her characteristic atmospheric phrasing: while romance mattered, she explained, the struggles of daily life and maternal love had brought her current existence to an impasse; that seeking a way forward meant literature must ultimately sustain her; and that regardless of how this new marriage issue resolved itself, she still had no choice but to depend on Yozo. Wearing a black haori that accentuated her facial contours, her smooth obsidian-like eyes glistened moistly beneath long lashes, brilliant in their shadowed frame.

Yozo too was asked, “Your current state of mind—” He was perplexed when asked such rhetorical questions. “When it comes to such matters, it’s only natural for anyone to have lingering attachments.” “To claim the marriage will proceed smoothly—isn’t that just a lie?” “After all, don’t you think it would be better for you to take Ms.Kozue away?” The department head pressed further. “No—my true intention is for this marriage to proceed smoothly.” “It’s precisely because I intend to settle things that I’ve also been critical.”

Yozo knew this love was nothing but fleeting vanity, yet even that might have been a wretched disguise for his pitiful lingering attachments.

When the phone call came through, Yozo was right there in his room, having had a feeling that something might be said around today. So when he went down to the boarding house’s telephone room, it was indeed Yoko’s voice. "Sensei, it's me. I'm at Shinbashi right now—could you come to Monami now!"

The voice remained pleasantly familiar to his ears. "Yes, I can go." "Then right away!" "I'll be waiting!" Yoko said her usual line and hung up the phone.

Yozo returned to his room and prepared to go out, yet felt vaguely unenthusiastic. The moth-like agitation that once consumed him like insects drawn to flame had long since dissipated; though the phone call offered stimulation, his heart refused to kindle. He wondered how much longer this would persist. It being precisely dinnertime, Monami—having only just opened—was crowded with patrons. As it was always on the second floor, when he glanced downward while ascending the stairs, there a familiar woman's face smiled teasingly up at him. Yozo lacked even the composure to return her smile and continued upward—only to find the dining room deserted, Yoko yet to arrive. He had settled at the window-side table and lit a cigarette when Yoko finally materialized.

“I’m sorry—I stopped by Harumi’s place.” Yoko showed no sign of recalling that incident yet seemed somewhat guarded. Yozo too felt no spark of anticipation. “What became of the marriage?” “There’s no telling when the house will sell.” “In the meantime, we’ll be left at Mr. Kurosu’s house, won’t we?” Yoko wore a strained smile when a celadon-hued soup arrived. With the tall waiter—napkin draped over his arm—standing at a discreet distance, their conversation lapsed into silence.

“The sea at Zushi has grown utterly desolate now,” she said. “Since that person won’t be coming anymore, Sensei, you must bring your work and visit again. Don’t you think that’s necessary for restoring my reputation, at least for now? After we eat, let’s go see a moving picture together—you’ll come with me, won’t you?” “I could go...” Yozo replied vaguely while drizzling sauce over his chicken sauté. Contemplating Yoko’s coastal house in the wake of that incident only deepened his gloom.

Just as Yoko had finished using her powder puff and the two were about to leave the table, a group of guests came upstairs, so Yozo hurriedly descended the staircase. Since that incident, he had felt an increased sense of social discomfort.

The future duration of her relationship with Yozo remained unclear even to Yoko herself; yet she clung to the expectation that regardless of circumstances—even should new romantic entanglements arise between her and others—he would continue revering her as his mentor while still offering paternal affection and protection from his precarious dual role as both mentor and father figure. However, given how events had unfolded, she now found herself with no choice but to temporarily use Yozo as a facade. She handled Yozo as though touching a festering wound, but she could do nothing to quell the smoldering hatred that burned within her. Yozo had steeled his resolve to end things honorably, factoring in both the self-negating notions he'd long held—that he was born incapable of inspiring women's affection—and his advancing age and living conditions. Yet when the few critical remarks he'd cautiously uttered after their discussions became so exaggerated through Mr. Hamura's pen, he found himself unable to face Yoko without appearing as though his ulterior motives were laid bare, leaving him no choice but to perpetually maintain a bitter expression.

One day, that Kurosu from Kugenuma unexpectedly came to visit. At that very moment, Yoko was chasing the sole surviving male canary that had escaped from its cage, searching the neighboring vacant lot still in her slippers. The cage door stood slightly ajar. Yozo stepped down to the veranda edge too, gazing up at the coral tree hedge and neighboring pine and zelkova branches from below. It struck him that these were the canaries Yoko had received when leaving Dr. K—the pitiful male who'd lived alone since its mate died a month prior had now flown toward open wilderness, though whether its wings were even functional remained unclear. Yoko had regarded this commemorative bird as a pleasant interlude in her trying life with Yozo—a faintly amusing memento of that brief cheerful romance among her many affairs—but its escape jolted her into panic. Though she searched everywhere, only the lonely wind through branches and grass answered; convinced it lingered nearby yet unable to find it, she couldn't bring herself to give up.

“It’s better that it escaped than died.” Yozo muttered, but Yoko didn’t dwell on it. As she stepped up to the engawa and brushed burrs from her hem, Kurosu arrived. By then, the maid she had brought from her hometown was gone. Her father—a craftsman-like man not yet forty, wearing a new happi coat—had come all the way to Zushi to retrieve her. At that time, Yoko had been standing on a coastal dune; she understood this visit resulted from her hometown newspaper sensationalizing her latest romantic scandal yet again, and could imagine how troubled her mother and brother must be. The usual Yoko would never have simply let this father who came so far return empty-handed, yet when she saw him, she merely flushed slightly and hid her face. Yozo, standing some distance away, also pretended not to notice.

"There’s a marriage proposal, I hear." Yoko had said this; in Tokyo she had become the talk among young people. Even her ever-loyal maid was taken away without a chance for farewells due to the train's departure time.

While Yoko met with Kurosu in the salon beside the entrance, Yozo sat smoking tobacco in the inner tatami room. He could hear their voices and catch Yoko's light laughter, but what they were discussing remained unclear.

“If you open a café, I’ll take care of the money.” “You’re certain to succeed.” “He’s saying things like that.”

After seeing Kurosu off, Yoko came to Yozo's side and said. "But I'm not so naive that I'd recklessly join forces with those people."

Yoko was laughing. "Oh yes, right after that incident, three or four men apparently came to my place while I was out and gave the children a proper scare," Yozo said. "They kept saying things like 'He must be exploiting your absence' and 'Your father's good name has already hit the gutter'..." "That morning's meeting at the inn left a terrible impression." "And that whole romance business—they've gone and convinced themselves I was the scheming mastermind pulling your strings from behind the scenes." "Though it's nothing now," Yoko replied.

At that time in the newspaper company's reception room, Yozo and they had merely exchanged smiles and nods. As dusk fell, both grew melancholy. Though their private world held moments of joy, Yozo had developed an ingrained habit of feeling oppressive gloom without outlet whenever they sat facing each other too long. He perpetually nursed an inexplicable dissatisfaction; haunted by society's maledictions and his children's distress, his nerves quivered with blade-edge anxiety as if pursued by knives. Even without these burdens, beneath his bewilderment flowed an ever-present lonely void - one demanding constant environmental shifts to distract from its ache.

“Why don’t we go check out the hotel?”

Yoko invited him. Yozo felt hesitant to show his face in the hotel salon, but since he was also feeling hungry, he found himself wanting to enter the dining hall after some time. At the hotel, they could listen to the radio, and if requested, a bath would be prepared.

Around the time of the romantic incident, Rumiko had returned to her instructor’s place.

They locked the gate from inside and exited through the adjacent gate on the same continuous plot of land. Crossing a sandy path and ascending a long gradual slope brought them to the hotel entrance. A radio played Western music. Through Yotaro's influence before the earthquake, Yozo had finally begun memorizing the names of great composers and their works—during that transitional period when the gidayū and tokiwazu ballads he'd heard since childhood were starting to yield to Bizet and Mozart—yet no music demarcated the divide between old and new eras as starkly as this.

There was still some time before the dining hall would open. Yozo took a chair in the corner of the salon, while Yoko sat some distance away listening to the radio. She listened intently, as if trying to extract her fantasies from the beautiful melody of what sounded like a trio's chamber music, yet found the instruments' sounds brought only a modest calm to her mind.

Light filtered through the frosted glass above the billiard room's entrance door, the faint clack of balls just audible beyond. Yozo sensed the phantom presence of that young man lingering nearby—the very romance he had foreseen before Yoko ever went to Zushi now lay shattered against reality's unyielding surface. While his wish for their marriage to bear fruit held truth, so too did his secret hope for its inevitable failure.

The two were soon in the dining hall.

“Were you planning to study Marx?” Holding a wine glass, Yozo asked with a mocking expression. “You mean I’m too much of a young lady? He’s a spoiled rich boy too.” It was a time when the proletarian movement had not yet gained noticeable momentum. Though Yozo knew nothing of Marx’s actual doctrines, he felt pierced by this peculiar atmosphere of the era. Yoko explained how Kusaba had once taken rolls of pristine figured satin from her under the pretext of painting illustrations—how people like him already harbored this rotten, calcified sentiment that taking whatever resources existed was only natural, a logic born from life’s necessities.

“Mr. Kusaba would often press me, saying, ‘When are you going to give me the promised money?’” “I used up all the money I received from my mother and brought with me too.” Yet this Marx Boy too, being an only son of bourgeois parents, found confronting reality far harder than Yoko had imagined. To do so would require enduring years of modest living and obedience to parents-in-law like any ordinary well-bred young lady. He couldn’t separate love from these practical considerations.

One afternoon, Yozo and Yoko were strolling through Hyakkaen Garden, still too early for autumn grasses; after writing poems and songs together on raku pottery, they stopped by the nearby Torikane to eat. It was a venerable establishment of longstanding repute, designed such that no matter where one might be within its confines, they would never chance upon another soul—a tranquil house with several old-fashioned rooms partitioned by corridors and small courtyards, reminiscent of theatrical set pieces. On another moonlit autumn evening, prompted by Yoko—who loved water—they had driven along a long embankment veiled in mist to Shirahige Bridge and stayed there. In a dim, low-ceilinged room with smoke-stained walls reminiscent of ghost-story theater sets, Yoko had deliberately disheveled her hair and leaned over him. Yet after two love incidents that left her suffering and forced Yozo to swallow bitter draughts—even hurling words of hatred at each other—their moods could no longer harmonize.

They drank two or three small cups of sake with local specialties—clam soup, signature simmered potatoes, sashimi with grated yam—but beneath Yoko's flattering words lay unresolvable resentment; her eyes faintly reddened from the unaccustomed alcohol as she kept needling Yozo about that newspaper article until finally he could no longer maintain his cringing apologies. After their bath, they rested in that gloomy living room again, but before long Yoko loomed over him with a thin cord. With a look that couldn’t be mistaken for playful mischief, she wrapped it around Yozo’s neck.

“I might kill you, Sensei.” “Killing you still wouldn’t satisfy me.” Yoko wrenched the cord taut. From below, Yozo laughed while staring up at her face—eyes stretched wide, mouth twisted between grin and grimace. “Go on then. Kill me.” Astride him, Yoko alternately slackened and yanked the cord tighter until his breathing faltered. Pain contorted his features as he clawed at the binding.

Before he could loosen the cord and spring back, a silent struggle - half in earnest and half in jest - continued for some time. When he sat up, his throat felt a slight, sore pain like that of a swelling whenever he touched it with his hand or swallowed saliva. In Yoko's eyes, there sat a wily old man she couldn't quite bring herself to hate, partly hiding his embarrassment as he kept stroking his throat.

Twenty-One

In the scorching western sun that crept through gaps in garden trees and reed blinds to spread across the tatami mats of his gloomy west-facing study, Yozo had been living apart from Yoko for some time. From the repulsive emotions stirred by the social column article, various peripheral unpleasant incidents continued occurring thereafter; at one point they even stood to grapple with each other, pushing and being pushed throughout the room. He always detested physical force, and since Yoko lacked those temperamental flaws common in women—obstinacy or willfulness that might irritate others—initiating combat was impossible unless she erupted like oiled paper catching fire or resorted to outright insults. Yet when her hysterical outbursts demanded physical tussles to vent frustrations, he had no choice but to pin her arms and gradually press her against the wall, or engage in knee-wrestling as they squirmed across tatami mats in inevitable entanglement.

It was a time when he had been made to write a pledge in response to her persistent request. That said, it was no amorous votive pledge—rather a document as deceptive as a child’s trick, containing his oath never to write about her in any work henceforth, stipulating that should he pen even the slightest reference, he must pay without objection the considerable sum of one thousand yen in compensation. Yozo wrote it carelessly on manuscript paper as he was told.

“Is this acceptable?” “Thank you very much.” Yoko, appearing somewhat reassured by this, folded the pledge and tucked it into her handbag as a shadow of a smile rose to her face that had until now been tinged with anguish—though her anxiety about not knowing what might be written about her at any moment had not been entirely dispelled. Since that article, what had been reflected in Yoko’s eyes was his character now operating in double and triple layers. Even if one couldn’t consider him a villain, he was no saint to be trusted. She had come to perceive that beneath this man's infatuation—so intense it made one marvel such blind passion could exist within him, yet which now in certain moments felt rather burdensome and even seemed an unforeseen misfortune upon her—there lay concealed something different from either playful detachment or cold criticism: a writerly disposition of sorts. When it came to love, Yozo was nothing more than an ordinary man devoid of any tricks or reason, yet in his persistent attempts to draw her close time and again, he had not failed to factor in the byproducts of such experiences. In Yoko’s eyes—which always viewed reality through a beautiful, diaphanous veil—her own phantom reflexively appeared as if every pair of male eyes directed at her burned with yearning and admiration. That she had managed to ignite passionate flames in this unfortunate old writer—who until now had been confined to a stifling household knowing only a single woman of the old type in her marumage hairstyle, who had dispassionately observed even sensational love scandals—whether through capricious mischief, calculation, or some vestige of sincerity, having at least stripped away that single cold-seeming layer of his skin; this alone gave Yoko a secretly ticklish sense of achievement. Yet that this should instead rebound to become her own undoing was mortifying beyond measure.

Yozo found it somewhat unpleasant to have had this pledge taken from him. Whether such a document existed or not, if one wanted to write something they could write anything; if they didn't want to write they wouldn't—such matters depended entirely on one's own will. This sense that the pledge might as well be scrap paper gave him an unpleasant feeling akin to the melancholy peculiar to his professional psyche. Whether hypothetical or a momentary notion, her attempt to bind him through monetary terms hardly seemed endearing.

However, with some slight trigger, that momentary peace would shatter, and the two would fight like monkeys and dogs. In the end, even Rumiko, who had been nearby, began to cry and lunged at Yozo. Before long, Yozo gathered the scattered items on his desk into his briefcase, rushed outside, and walked through the falling rain in his geta to the nearby rickshaw stand. Yozo, on the train, recalled his stubborn attitude from that time and their overt struggle, but the figure of her who had pulled Rumiko away from him and was embracing the child to her chest while lamenting also rose before his eyes.

“A passion-worm has infested this body!” In the aftermath of their fight, Yoko uttered these words as tears streamed down her face. Amidst the two distinct currents surging powerfully through the literary world—the emerging arts and Proletarian Literature—Yozo, bearing wounds across his entire being, felt something akin to a restless itch stirring within him. There were foreign works he had previously found difficult to accept that now, at this age, began merging with his sensibilities, while he could not avoid confronting the folly of creating through his own meager strength alone. At times it seemed life’s twilight already encroached, making him fear he might self-destruct as he was; yet there were moments when he resolved not to collapse into utter despair—not yet—believing he might still reclaim something in time. He engaged with those works through an interest and understanding altogether different from his younger years.

Then one afternoon, as he sat at his desk where the western sun crept in, before his eyes suddenly appeared Yoko's elegant Western-style attire, unseen for so long. The lovely outfit with its cool-looking white lace at the collar made her body appear somewhat smaller, but emaciation showed on her face.

“Sensei.” With a somewhat timid demeanor, she approached the desk, holding in her hand a small booklet that remained half-opened and folded. Yozo started. He felt as though something forbidden to behold had materialized, but with eyes glistening with tears, she placed the book on the desk and— “Lately I’ve been reading nothing but things like this.” “It’s Confessions, you know.” “I’ve read quite a lot of Tolstoy too, you know.” “Thanks to that, I too seem to be reviving.” “I intend to settle all accounts with the past and embark on a new life.” “Sensei, please forgive me for everything up until now.” “I intend to become a serious Yoko from now on.” “I intend to take this seriously.”

Yoko implored him repeatedly with mournful words. He had read little of either Rousseau or Tolstoy. There were works he respected upon reading, but it would be truer to say he disliked them unread. Yet even if this were mere caprice born of transient enthusiasms, he found no grounds to ridicule her sentimental fervor. Moreover, she had once recounted Anna Karenina's plot to him in her own idiosyncratic manner. When it came to Tolstoy or Goethe though, their summits seemed too lofty and vast to scale—yet now he felt compelled to attempt them. Upon his desk lay Balzac and Poe in curious juxtaposition.

Yozo, recalling how such things had once been in his bookcase as well, skimmed through a few chapters of Confessions, but Yoko remained restless, her mood seemingly ill-at-ease with the home atmosphere.

“Sensei, I’m truly sorry to ask this, but would you mind stepping outside for a moment? There are so many things I want to discuss with you.”

“Well, but…” Yozo said, but sensing something significant afoot, his heart had already begun to stir.

“It should be fine if it’s just a short distance. “Let’s keep it a secret from your children….” “In that case.” Yozo would later gradually come to understand its meaning, but at that time he simply went out, drawn by her restless mood. Yoko all but dragged him toward the tram street, but upon spotting an empty rickshaw passing by on the opposite side of town, she hurriedly waved her hand and dashed in that direction, then beckoned him over. The sun had sunk far to the west, and the ginkgo trees along the roadside were beginning to wilt with a pale yellow tinge. Yoko pushed Yozo into the vehicle, got in herself, and clanged the door shut. Yozo felt somewhat uneasy, but as his curiosity was also piqued, he remained silent and let her proceed.

“Where on earth are you staying?” “Still in Zushi after all?” “No, I recently vacated that place.” “Now I’m renting a modest house in Shibuya.” “Though rather cramped, it does have a carefully arranged tatami room with a tranquil atmosphere.” “The garden connects to the neighbor’s nursery – there’s sasanqua flowers, Chinese parasol trees, bush clovers... it has a certain charm.” “You’d surely be able to write peacefully there.” “That’s why I’ve been wanting to invite you...” “Let’s go now.”

“Who knows?” Yozo sat with an unsettling feeling, his mind crowded by anxiety that this accursed affair might be sprouting new complications and wonder at why her manner had grown so unnervingly polite—leaving him no mental space to parse her true intentions. This wasn’t unique to the moment—he fundamentally lacked the sharpness to immediately grasp the significance of realities confronting him. Thus Yoko, misled by society’s whispers, had either convinced herself some romantic entanglement already existed between Yozo and Sayoko—that riverside house’s proprietress—or at least predicted such an incident would occur between them. Deeming this a calamitous crisis either way, she’d consequently tried whisking Yozo away to her own home. But this sprang purely from a literary girl’s overactive imagination—Yozo and Sayoko shared nothing beyond playfully familiar companionship slightly exceeding typical teahouse madam-client relations. Naturally unversed in such romantic stratagems, Yozo had never leveraged his friendship with Sayoko as counterbalance against Yoko’s maneuvers—though neither had he particular reason to conceal it.

In any case, he was invited to the house in Shibuya. The house stood on an elevated spot slightly removed from the street, amidst a dense growth of trees. And just as Yoko had said, it had a rather comfortable layout—upon entering the genkan and passing through a salon where chairs and tables were well-arranged into the corridor, then proceeding further back, there was a ten-mat tatami room detached from the living quarters, its quality wood grain and elevated floor giving a favorable impression. Curtains and table centerpieces with fairy-tale-inspired decorations were characteristic of her taste, yet in a single back room, there existed an oddly imitative quality—disproportionately sturdy floors and built-in cupboards that seemed contrived.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Yoko brought out a zabuton cushion near the veranda and, with even greater care than when she had invited him to her country home, tried to make Yozo feel at home. There were also the Kanjigaku-style female painter from that Otaru incident and Rumiko.

“Good day, Uncle.” Rumiko came near, smiling as though she had forgotten that previous incident. No talk of Rousseau or Tolstoy emerged there either. As she worked preparing dinner in exactly the same manner as when she had taken him to the house in Zushi—busying herself with the evening meal preparations—something indissoluble had lodged itself between them. Yozo felt as if the home and study he had finally grown close to were receding once again, leaving him unable to relax. He couldn’t even foresee what would happen next, but for now, there was no need to dwell on it.

Before long, dinner began. When the meal concluded, they laughed and amused themselves with things like Rumiko’s nursery rhyme dances, and for a while their idle chatter bloomed into lively conversation. Talk of newspaper serials’ rumors, literary circle gossip, one-yen books’ sales figures—and so on. “Wouldn’t you care to host a Nikkai picnic sometime soon?” “Ah, perhaps.” “What say you to Tamagawa?” “Let’s charter a net boat and make merry all day.” “It’s been an age since I last saw everyone.” “We simply must do it.” “I’ll dispatch the notices.”

As was typical of his underhanded ways, several days had passed in this manner when one day Yoko, as if she had just remembered, confronted Yozo.

“There was a Matsuya yukata at your place before, wasn’t there? What did you do with it? I want one bolt.” The yukata fabric in question had been created through a department store collaboration—someone’s idea at the time for writers to design patterns. Yozo had received a commission to use his own haiku as motifs, which Yoko had helped design. Yoko’s interrogating face abruptly twisted into a hostile expression. It held the fierce beauty of when a beautiful consort to some foolish daimyo of old would arch her willow-thin brows and press her selfish demands. Against this, Yozo found himself powerless to resist.

He gave one bolt of the yukata fabric that had arrived from the department store to his daughter and one bolt to Sayoko. His daughter and Sayoko had already had them tailored and were wearing them. Yozo explained it exactly as it was. Dressing his daughter in it was only natural, but when he insisted there was no reason to give any to that woman by the water, Yoko flew into a hysterical rage.

“But there was nothing I could do.” “We were separated at the time.” “Even so, you could have considered how sick it makes me feel.” “That’s too good for a woman like her.” “Then just buy a bolt.” “I don’t want some newly bought one.” “Get that original one back.” “It doesn’t have to be right now.” While muttering, Yozo reluctantly wrote a few lines. After briefly scanning the text, Yoko finally seemed reassured. She waited until the envelope could be addressed, then sent painter Kitayama Kikuno to Sayoko’s place with en-taxi fare.

Outside blazed with midday sun, but the room stayed cool. Yozo rested his head against the black persimmon wood floor threshold, listening to Yoko and Rumiko's voices in the next room as through a dream haze until he drifted into sleep. When he awoke, Kitayama had already returned with the yukata.

“Just as that person was about to go out, you know,” Yoko said, spreading out the yukata that had been wrapped in paper and sent over. “Since she was going to Shikokuchō in Shiba anyway, she told us to ride along to that area—so Mr. Kitayama and I came together in the taxi.” She added, “Mr. Kitayama says her beguiling appearance is quite something to be wary of.” Yozo knew how Sayoko’s restless black eyes would sometimes emit a cold light—a fleeting beauty that conjured ancient enchantresses—yet this quality differed from Yoko’s own. Forged through years in her profession, it held something steely at its core while retaining traces of the delicate disposition from her days leading delinquent girls.

“Mr.Kikuno just told me now that ‘Ms.Kozue really must pull herself together,’ you know.” Yoko’s words clearly contained hostility toward Sayoko, though this stemmed less from romantic rivalry than from the vaguely unsettling impression made by the atmosphere of Sayoko’s home—always bustling with literary and artistic circles in splendid fashion. The yukata had a seafoam-colored background with white-outlined patterns of the Yamanoi well’s latticework and autumn grasses, yet its design suited Yoko remarkably well. She briefly tried draping it over her shoulders, but the moment she thought of it having passed through Sayoko’s hands—as if her pride had been wounded—she suddenly crumpled the garment violently and tossed it aside, then with a hysterical expression stomped down to the garden and trampled it under her geta. Yozo stared in astonishment, but she remained unsatisfied. She went upstairs to fetch matches, then descended to the garden again and began setting it on fire. The yukata burned fiercely, sending up white smoke, but she continued poking at the smoldering remnants with a stick fragment.

Finally seeming to begin feeling a certain emptiness, Yoko quietly gathered the ashes before dejectedly coming up to the veranda. “That I would take you? You’re quite the delusional one.” The flickering eyes of Sayoko—who was somewhere uttering those words—rose in Yozo’s mind. Yet after five or six days of this, even such a life eventually grew tedious. He had grown weary of brushing against the thorny nerves of Yoko, this delicate tyrant. Still he remained ensnared by her black eyes, those cheeks with their bewitching curves, those hands and legs imbued with the delicate sensibility of Japanese paintings. He could not begrudge this allure—unattainable from Sayoko with her merchant upbringing—no matter how he tried. He found himself dragged through bitter sentiments born of clashing aversion and obsession. Though he knew time had long since slipped away, precisely this awareness made the lingering attachment all the harder to sever.

And yet Yozo, wearied by surfeit of emotion, often found himself longing for the appearance of a third party savior. Whether they were his friends or Yoko's, he found it preferable to be seated with young people or women as conversational companions. In such situations Yozo always remained silent while Yoko became the cheerful interlocutor for guests; yet compared to when facing each other directly, this arrangement rather afforded his nerves some measure of respite and calm. When rooms containing just the two of them grew stiflingly tedious, he could not help but seek environmental change again. That he secluded himself in places equipped with fine bathrooms and dressing rooms, in Japanese-style rooms exuding calmness alongside gardens, or in quiet retreats isolated from society had utterly transformed the habits of this former family man. He attempted to anchor his rootless spirit in these momentary lodgings of successive instants, but this amounted merely to savoring transient shifts in mood—wherever he went, nothing but desolate emptiness awaited him.

On one occasion, having escaped from Yoko's oppressive Shibuya house that made his body shrink inward, he found himself at one such house in the suburbs. It wasn't particularly far from Shibuya, and having visited two or three times before, he had also become acquainted with the maid who was extremely fond of Yoko.

On a cool evening, as he had finally begun feeling melancholy about being confined in that room, Yoko’s unsatisfied mood grew harsh once more. Occasional skirmishes of emotion would flare up. From Yozo’s perspective, their relationship—long since like glue that had lost its adhesive power—now remained connected only through literature, meaning through her writerly ambitions alone. Were she to abandon even that pretense, she could at any moment free herself from this agonizing charade of romance. Yet through Yoko’s eyes, this socially oblivious old writer amounted to nothing more than a massive overgrown child who shamelessly imposed himself upon others. She despaired of him—this man who lacked any concrete strategy for securing a young lover and merely writhed aimlessly in love’s muck without clear direction for their actual life—but knew that clumsily rebuffing him would only repeat the Zushi incident’s failure.

Yozo decided to wrap things up here. After settling the bill, he waited for the car to arrive, but a low-pressure system threatening to erupt into a storm at any moment was settling over their moods.

While waiting for the car, he took advantage of the moment when Yoko was chatting with the maid on the veranda and suddenly had an idea and tried calling Sayoko’s house. He hadn't particularly meant it as a slight against Yoko, but there was no longer any room left to shelter her feelings. “Is Madam there?” When Yozo inquired in a soft voice,

“Ah, Sensei? “Madam departed for Shizuoka last night.” In Shizuoka lived Sayoko’s stepsister—a substantial taxpayer who was often ill.

"But isn't Madam there?" "Where are you now?" "Let me see."

Suddenly, Yoko approached and snatched the receiver. “Where did you call?” “What does it matter where? You go back to Shibuya. I’ll return alone.” When the car arrived, he shook free of Yoko and rushed to the entrance to board it—but she already gripped the door handle. In the speeding vehicle, no sooner had their fierce quarrel erupted than Yoko abruptly ordered the driver to stop and tumbled out. After traveling a block or two, just as a voice seemed to call from behind, another taxi carrying Yoko accelerated in pursuit. The car with her damp face pressed against the window alternately drew perilously close then fell back. When she looked, Yozo’s vehicle had already lagged a full block behind. Now it became Yozo’s turn—this man with his frail heart—to tail her cab.

22 It was also around that time that marriage discussions emerged between them—an attempt to artificially stabilize their position, which had become untenable both socially and privately. Such sentiments had already existed among her mother and relatives when Yozo was first invited to Yoko's provincial hometown. Everything depended on Yozo's attitude—her maternal uncle was meant to come finalize arrangements based on his response. Yet Yozo's feelings had never truly advanced to that stage. That he now inclined toward this course stemmed partly from the inertia of prolonged infatuation clouding his capacity to rationally assess consequences, but equally from foolish vanity—a stubborn determination to salvage some social dignity from their romance's wretched decline.

“If Sensei would arrange matters so I won’t face immediate hardship after your passing, then Uncle would also consent.” Yoko had said this, but Yozo thought it would be acceptable to allocate the remaining balance from the smallest portion of royalties coming from three bookstores for that purpose. During that period, while the children were away at the coast, Yoko would make Yozo’s old six-tatami room her living space, immersing herself in translations of Proust and Colette. In her spare moments, she would clean the rooms as if they were her own and sprinkle water on the garden stones and lanterns, spending each day in seeming contentment. Yet when the children returned from the coast, her mood would abruptly shift.

Yozo did not necessarily feel confident about this marriage, yet he believed she would eventually have to settle with a younger spouse. For his frail elderly heart, this was undoubtedly painful, but keeping her feminine spirit—which seemed to crave marriage for honor’s sake—in check became one immediate recourse. One day they visited Takashimaya. Yozo, responsible for two motherless daughters—one a graduating schoolgirl and the other still in elementary—could never maintain composure in such situations. He knew his eldest daughter suffered silent persecution at school. Boys would be boys—capable of taking action whether passive or active—but girls had to endure steadfastly and protect the household even amidst such tempests. This agony pierced Yozo’s nerves too. Coming to department stores made his heart ache all the more, shamed and fearful of his own impropriety. Yet seeing Yoko brimming with May-flower happiness lent even his leaden heart some buoyancy. As they perused wedding attire patterns together, visions of her wearing them surfaced. The design selection was swiftly agreed upon. Then Yozo ordered a modest tsumugi silk kimono with family crests for himself.

However, even as they carried on like this, their feelings continued to waver incessantly. Yozo wanted by all means to avoid making an appearance on the ostentatious stage of marriage, and there were times when Yoko too seemed preoccupied with entirely different matters. “If we end up separating this time, let’s have someone reliable mediate to avoid dragging things out again,” Yozo said. “Who would be good?” Yoko, too, was surprisingly nonchalant, ready to part ways at any moment.

“Let’s leave it to Mr. Kasuga.” “He’s shown us goodwill all along and will keep looking after you even after we part.” “If he mediates, I’ll gladly give a thousand yen to make a clean break.”

“I see.”

Yoko smiled. She seemed on the verge of using that money at any moment. “But don’t tell anyone, okay?” “Of course. I don’t want to seem too lenient either.”

In the midst of this, the ordered ceremonial attire was completed with embroideries added to two or three places as Yoko had wished. Yozo, now seemingly poised to step into the spotlight, forced himself onward despite his crushed heart. Yozo had once taken a photograph with her in her hometown—she wearing a Kohama-style furisode of coarse azuki-colored fabric, its obi embroidered with a thousand cranes in gold and silver thread that she had reportedly worn on her wedding night with former husband Matsukawa, joined by her brother and sister-in-law along with her sister. It had been a commemorative family photograph taken when they welcomed Yozo, but he thought that perhaps this might become their formal wedding portrait.

However, one time Yozo told only his eldest son Yotaro about the matter and decided to solicit his opinion.

“Well, since Ms. Kozue doesn’t seem like someone who particularly desires material things, I don’t think there should be any issues there. But entering the family register—that’s another matter.” “I don’t think that’s advisable.”

“Well, I suppose.”

Yozo nodded. When Yozo confided this matter to Yoko, her expression suddenly turned harsh. "If Mr. Yotaro says such things as the heir," she said, "then I'll stop too." "But going through family register procedures would bind us both—wouldn't that disadvantage you too?" "That's your egoism speaking." "I can't stay here anymore." Her nerves when irritated were always unbearable to him.

“Fine, do as you please.”

Yozo's tone was harsh. Yoko flew out like a whirlwind. Kasuga had been a close lawyer since Yozo's late wife's time. He maintained an office in Sukiyabashi and had once worked at an English lawyer's office known for antique collecting, which led him to develop a taste for mediocre antiques and exotic interior decor. Yozo began associating with him after he handled a joint debt settlement. Moreover, since Kasuga's beautiful wife happened to be Yoko's school friend, even after Yoko came to live with Yozo, she was invited to alumni tea parties and taken to their regular café and theater outings. Though the truth remained uncertain, they outwardly showed goodwill toward both parties. With Kasuga mediating now, Yozo thought this long-troublesome matter might finally be resolved and Yoko's situation settled. He also reasoned that even if his weaknesses were exposed, it wouldn't matter since Kasuga was a gentleman acting outside professional duties.

Nevertheless, when Yoko left, Yozo found himself unsettled. While he thought it more reassuring than her going to anyone else’s place, the fact that she had rushed to the Kasugas’ home still worried him. This time things couldn’t be left unresolved—when he imagined unbreakable conditions being imposed, he felt a belated loneliness. It wasn’t hard to picture Mrs. Kasuga behind it all, holding the reins. Even so, he recognized that binding themselves together now was the wisest course—

After a day's interval, on the evening of the third day, Kasuga indeed came to visit. Just as Sayoko, who had been visiting, was leaving—around the time she passed through the gate—Kasuga entered through the front entrance.

The two did not proceed in their usual familiar manner. They had been facing each other in a heavy atmosphere when Kasuga broached the subject. "Actually, regarding Ms. Kozue..." Due to Yozo's lack of awareness about both the significant misunderstanding between them and her own increasingly difficult position—all of which Yoko had laid out completely while weeping through the night—he could largely infer these circumstances from Kasuga's demeanor. "How about it, Sensei? Since you must be in a difficult situation, let's make a clean settlement here." "Moreover, Ms. Kozue doesn't seem to love you at all."

Kasuga spoke frankly, and the matter of the promised money came up. "So that came from your own mouth too, Sensei? Ms. Kozue insists she absolutely must receive it—" "Well, I too actually want to settle things cleanly."

“That’s right.” They promised to arrange the money within a day or two and soon parted ways. Then on the following evening, while Yozo was in the usual small downstairs room at Sayoko’s house with its pattering water sounds, he was unexpectedly informed that the popular writer Kamiyama and Kasuga had arrived, so he went up to inspect the second-floor parlor. Yozo brought up Yoko’s problem in the course of conversation. And he pressed the point further. “Regarding the money for Yoko—of course I’ll give it as agreed—but if she’s taken up with someone new, that would complicate matters.” “It would be most helpful if you could guarantee that.”

Yozo found it unpleasant to be acting so pettily at this late stage, as if probing Kasuga’s true intentions, and felt guilty that he might be perceived as underhanded—yet when push came to shove, he still balked at the money. “Well, I don’t know either, but that’s probably not the case. But I’ll say this now.” “In any case, I will deliver the money tomorrow.”

Yozo was escorted home by Kamiyama that night, but the tempestuous romance between Kamiyama and Sayoko—who had timed the tides to invite Yozo out—was just then in its overture. Several days had passed since Yozo handed over the money to Kasuga at his office—days spent with a mindset akin to someone shifting positions to peer through gaps in the Kasugas' wall-like presence, trying to catch glimpses of Yoko concealed behind them. When handing the money to Kasuga, Yozo wore a tearful expression; yet at the same time, he felt as though he could glimpse blue sky through a rift in the clouds that had long shrouded him.

Then one afternoon about a week later, Yozo found himself summoned by Yoko through a telephone call once more. As might be expected when nursing such emptiness in his heart, he had taken to frequenting friends' homes in the neighborhood since breaking things off with her. Though facing meals prepared by countrified maids depressed him, his newly formed habit of going out left him feeling there was no purpose in remaining alone in his study—a man besieged on all fronts. Yet some secret defiance still smoldered within; he hadn't yet plunged into total despair, sensing even that his chronically gloomy disposition might be undergoing change. When reading now, fresh interests sprouted in previously incomprehensible matters—unlike his fever-addled youth's engagements, this felt like heart-to-heart communion. He lamented being too aged for fresh sowing yet saw possibilities for supplemental growth, though where to begin preparing eluded him at this late hour. The wretchedness of clinging to life had become apparent, yet neither did he wish to botch imitating genius. In such moments within his affluent old friend's study—so starkly divorced from his own mental landscape—his mood would find precarious calm.

“There’s something else,” the friend said. “There are plenty of women who don’t struggle financially but still feel lonely being alone.” Though his friend had spoken these words, Yozo still felt gloomy when considering women who might fit neatly into domestic life or marriage. On one occasion, Yozo was taken by this friend to visit a woman living in Azabu whose lifestyle operated on an entirely different scale from his own. While seeing the woman served as a pretext, their true purpose had been to inspect the house she wished to sell—a structure whose architecture proved truly magnificent. This was of course the hidden residence of a scion from one of the great zaibatsu lineages—not some grand estate, but rather a space refined with tea-ceremony aesthetics permeating every corner. Yet merely listening to the portly woman recount her three-year architectural ordeal proved no simple matter. The Western-style house at the rear—reportedly costing three thousand yen per tsubo—appeared truthfully accounted for, but the elderly gentleman in full ceremonial dress depicted on its wall—having meticulously managed every aspect of the woman’s affairs—had since transferred his attentions to a new companion. The garden too held a desolate air, its undergrowth crowded solely with alpine plants.

"If you like, why don't you write here?" She made this gracious offer, but clearly had no conception of what a writer's life—particularly that of someone like Yozo, associated with this wealthy patron—entailed. "They say it cost three hundred thousand yen originally," the friend remarked in the car afterward, "but with stock losses and all, it's become rather cumbersome now. If we must sell at a loss, it'll be substantial—though honestly, our residence feels absurdly overdecorated for actual living."

In the car on the way back, the friend spoke. In this latest phone call from Yoko, she explained that circumstances now required her return to her hometown, and having matters to discuss before departure, she insisted he come to the Yamatoya Inn near Ueno Station. By that time, Yozo's state of mind had settled. The town still retained some summer heat. Yozo wore his usual dust coat and carried a thick-gripped rattan stick. When ushered into a narrow room cluttered with two or three pieces of luggage, he settled heavily between Yoko and her maid Kitayama—a female art student. He now felt everything was a dream. The notion of returning to her hometown carried the crispness of a clean break. Her tear-streaked, rambling explanation about retreating to the countryside—fraught with what seemed like hidden deceptions regarding her current mindset and reasons—struck him as a contrived little scheme hatched on a whim, yet he merely nodded along with a knowing smirk.

“Why are you laughing so much today?” Yoko pressed nervously. “It’s nothing. I just feel unburdened somehow.” According to Yoko, her mother was getting on in years, and she didn’t want to cause her any further hardship. As the household income had decreased, the annex where Yozo once wielded his pen had been rented out to others, and on this occasion, she wanted to give him some money. She had come to deeply realize how beneficial country living would be for Rumiko’s health, and so on...

Seeming to think Yozo was deliberately putting on an act, even after stepping outside, Yoko kept talking as if pitying him during their parting there—gradually becoming sentimental herself through her own words as she spoke. "Well then, this is goodbye." "You do understand, don't you?"

She extended her hand. “Farewell.” Flipping up the flaps of his dust coat, he had just started walking toward Hirokoji when a voice called out from behind him. Yet before two days had passed, Yozo once again heard her cheerful voice through the summoning telephone receiver. “Come right away. I quarreled with Mother and came back.” No matter what conditions had accompanied their parting, Yoko took it for granted that Yozo remained someone she could summon at will. Moreover, precisely because money now factored into things—he had taken it, yes—some sediment lingered in his heart afterward. His demeanor during their farewell at Ueno preoccupied her thoughts. Yozo had to consider Kasuga’s position too and had grown weary of this endless sequence of incidents, but the crispness of Yoko’s current call—as though she’d utterly forgotten their parting words—stirred an irrepressible urge within him to trail her ceaselessly shifting maneuvers as far as he could.

It was still early morning. Autumnal light showered down upon ginkgo trees lining the streets, their branches and leaves slightly wilted, while the faint dust stirred up by passing one-yen taxis lingered visibly in the air. The inn stood in a narrow alley at the edge of Shinjuku's café district; having stayed there once before, they managed to take a one-yen taxi directly to its entrance. As they alighted and approached on foot, Yoko's voice called down from above. Looking up, he saw her leaning both hands on the handrail, peering downward with laughter.

The inn's atmosphere wasn't unpleasant precisely because it was new. Moreover, wherever she went, she managed to earn the goodwill of managers and maids alike. "Did I startle you?" "Not particularly." Looking around, he saw suitcases and karakusa-patterned cloth bundles of various sizes piled in the corner, giving the impression they'd only just arrived. "What happened?" "No—I quarreled with Mother almost immediately after arriving. I just grabbed whatever filthy geta were within reach and dashed out here."

“What about Rumiko?” “Because she was crying and chasing after me, Rumiko came along too. She’s downstairs taking a bath with Ms. Kitayama right now.” When he looked, an unfamiliar slender watch was glinting like an insect on her wrist. “Did you buy such a thing?” Yozo said reproachfully. He assumed it must have been something she’d bought just before leaving. “I’m sorry. I took the money... But I haven’t used that much of it yet. Let’s go on a trip together.”

Yoko said with rising eagerness. Even with that much money, there was nothing they could really do anyway—so she made it sound like they should just spend it all together properly. "But something more interesting happened." "I met a friend from my girls' school days on the train." "She’s the daughter of a large kimono dealer in the city, but she married into the Kogochi family—they own banks and are major taxpayers—and she’s become quite the talk of the town." "Since Mr. Kogochi was also there, I was introduced to him—it seems he graduated from Mita University’s economics department and has a house near Kojimachi." "He did say I should visit sometime—from his suits to ties to shoes, everything was flawlessly chic, with that sharply defined face you might call austerely handsome. A thoroughly modern sort of man." "That type always smokes good cigars, don’t they?" "He took out a case and gave me one too, but——"

In Yoko’s story, there emerged a protagonist straight out of a popular novel. “The wife’s face is rather plain—second-rate, you might say—but she wears these flashy visiting kimonos. The man himself is nothing more than good-natured.” “When it comes to novels or movies, our conversations never quite click with someone like me.” “That husband might have ended up with a slightly dull wife, but she does carry herself well.” “That’s nice.” “Can’t we do something about it?”

"But he already has a wife—there's nothing to be done about it now," she said. "Still, I do think it might be all right to try seeing each other." Just then Kitayama and the children emerged from their bath. Yoko served tea with fruit sweets, and with money in her pocket now, everything about her seemed transformed. With watchful eyes around them, they couldn't venture out even after sunset and instead stayed up late talking together. Then somehow Kitayama's favored liquor appeared, and long after the children and Yozo had gone to bed, the women kept their conversation going.

During the time when Yoko had set up her house near Yozo, rumors also emerged about a young sculptor who often visited Kitayama and kept earnestly professing his pure love to Yoko as well. If he could endure Kitayama being somewhat far away, his father was supposed to build an atelier near the shop in Kanagawa, but she, disliking entering the atmosphere of a rigid old family, continued living in meager cohabitation in the Ekoda area for some time. “You should set your sights on someone too.”

Yoko was slightly drunk. “Yes, but I can’t find anyone.” “If you’re going to set your sights on someone, you should aim for a big catch.” “I’m no good. “I can’t be like you, Sis.”

She was exhaling cigarette smoke.

"Formidable women." Yozo pulled the futon over himself while thinking.

When autumn finally reached its peak, the two of them traveled to Hakone for two or three days to view the autumn foliage, but by the time they returned, Yoko's funds had dwindled considerably.

They settled into a Kowakidani inn buried in a blazing brocade of autumn leaves, but even Yozo—who had steeled his resolve to live each day as it came, knowing the low-pressure system would arrive eventually—found himself powerless against the thistle pricks that occasionally pierced him. At times she behaved as cheerfully as a boy, speaking with a joy akin to small birds chirping in a morning forest—but just when one thought she might drench him in a spray of voluble chatter that left no room for response, utterly exasperating him, she would then irritate him with a darkness and harshness akin to the melancholy tide sounds of northern lands or the scowling visage of rain-laden mountains. All this from a literary girl naive to reality, yet who could shrewdly see through people like a seasoned courtesan.

At times she would display behaviors that made it seem as though her lover had come to one of the inn’s rooms, or let slip a tone suggesting they should at least spend their final days together happily for future memories. Even when walking through Gora Park—its paths strewn with rocks—under a single umbrella in the drizzling rain, she would whisper as if wanting to live there together for a summer, then immediately assume an air suggesting her next lover was already drawing near. She was, in every way, a buoyant sleepwalker.

“Ah, I have so many dreams!” “Without dreams, I’d be so lonely.”

Yoko was already tearing up. The time had come when the stove began to feel nostalgic.

By that time, Yoko had moved her luggage and child into a boarding house in Kanda. The mirror stand and chest where she had applied cream and rouge every morning and night still remained in Yozo’s room. This was because debts from her marital days in Hokkaido—for which she bore joint liability with her ex-husband Matsukawa—had finally caught up to her here. During Yozo’s absence, even his desk had been inventoried and seized in the process. Though resolving this required considerable effort, she had ultimately entrusted everything to a young lawyer at Kasuga’s office.

There had been no word from Matsukawa since he fled to Shanghai. More than Yoko, it was Yozo who would occasionally recall this. He thought that if Matsukawa—who seemed ready to return home anytime—could establish a foothold, settling there might not be a bad idea. But Yoko lacked the audacity to go as far as Shanghai.

One time at Tokyo Kaikan’s second floor, they ate Kansai-style sukiyaki, and among Yozo’s three children, Rumiko was also present. They had been serving meat from the hotpot onto small plates behind the screen and feeding the children when Yoko noticed a group entering—a man around fifty wearing a rustic fur-lined double-layered kimono accompanied by a slightly younger man, along with a dark-complexioned thirty-five-or-six-year-old gentleman in a chic dark brown suit who looked like he’d been golfing obsessively, and a woman in flashy attire who appeared to be his wife.

“Look, that’s Mr. and Mrs. Kogochi.” Yoko whispered to Yozo, but they had taken seats diagonally across the partition behind her. He wasn’t particularly striking, but his slender face with its straight nose had an air of refinement, and his well-proportioned figure was trim. Yoko partially revealed herself from behind the edge of the partition and bowed, but this side—with its chaotic domestic bustle—left her feeling somewhat self-conscious. Then, about a week later at an Imperial Theatre concert, Yoko once again encountered the Kogochi couple.

The performer was Russian pianist Godowsky—a stout, solidly-built gentleman who looked every bit the Russian. While one couldn't discern the quality of his technique as easily as with the more familiar violin, his hands with their elongated white cuffs appeared to tame the keyboard with such ethereal mastery, much like how in beloved gidayū shamisen performances, a skilled player's nimble plectrum and strings become inseparably entwined.

Yoko had been aware of the Kogochi couple’s presence from the very beginning. They were seated exactly two rows ahead, positioned at a slanted angle where from her vantage point, the nape of his neck, an ear, one cheek, and jaw became visible. Yozo could barely discern the area from the slightly tapered back of the head to the jawbone that seemed to manifest a strong will, but Yoko’s eyes—repeatedly drawn in that direction—somehow resonated with his own perception. When the intermission concluded, Mrs. Kogochi passed by them on her way back to her seat and exchanged greetings with Yoko.

As the solemn concert finally came to an end, Yozo followed the surge of the crowd and made his way briskly out into the corridor. But when he looked back, Yoko was nowhere to be seen. Thinking she had probably passed by the orchestra box and exited into the southern corridor, he went to check that direction as well, but by then no figures could be seen there either. However, it was at that very moment that Yoko appeared at the corner and called out to him.

“I’ve been looking for you, Sensei. While I was just greeting those people as I stood up, you went off in such a hurry…”

The boarding house in Kanda where a leftist Diet member would later be assassinated held a fateful connection for both Yoko and Yozo. This was because Akimoto—who had been sending her monthly living expenses under the promise that when the time came for her to write novels for major newspapers, she would leave Yozo's side to enter married life and build a love nest on some quiet suburban farm—now kept his regular lodgings in that very makeshift barracks-style boarding house; it was also where Yoko, who received singing lessons there, met with Akimoto. Moreover, Akimoto had recently been embroiled in another novel-worthy incident. Having long been separated from his wife, he had lived with her elder sister in a quasi-second wife arrangement where she managed his household and cared for his children—until she recently absconded with a substantial sum to join an older man purported to be a former Salvation Army officer. This incident became that summer's social page sensation in the newspapers, amplified by the officer's notoriety as a leader of leftist factions.

“Mr. Akimoto was a most peculiar sort of person—his mind was rather odd indeed.” The boarding house owner remarked. Akimoto had come to Tokyo to search for the woman following that incident’s outbreak. Here he met both the woman and the man several times, yet her resolve remained unshaken. According to Yoko, he kept geishas in his hometown and could hold his liquor well, but for a man of such means to have every wife flee from him suggested there must have been something fundamentally aberrant about him.

"Now that you mention it, I can think of something." However, Yozo knew the boarding house owner in another sense. His father—who had died four or five years earlier and was born in Echigo Ojiya—had come to sell Echigo textiles over several years spanning from Yozo's boarding house days into his family life era. At that time, the still pale-faced young man was now master of this house and father to two children.

“We often talk about you and your wife, Sensei.” Yoko would say this, but it was also this house where someone had coincidentally discovered her after she first fled Yozo’s home and vanished into obscurity. Having brought her belongings from the Shinjuku inn, Yoko settled into the downstairs room she had earlier redecorated with new wallpaper herself. She hung childish curtains over the windows, while the French lamp she’d carried since her Hokkaido days—with its two bulbs and silk shade weighed down by gaudy embroidery—projected an atmosphere redolent of foreign bordellos.

Yozo would sometimes sleep beside Rumiko in that gloomy room, but Yoko would also spend nights in his study. Then, early one morning—unfortunately just as Yoko had stayed up all night in her boarding house room—a telephone call came. Yoko hastily threw on her haori and rushed out, but when she returned shortly after, she began getting ready with a confused look. “Mr. Akimoto’s clerk has come.”

By now, Yozo had come to understand that Yoko was employing various means to pull him back. He had hoped for that outcome himself. Yet at times Yoko would act as if influenced by Yozo’s prompting, calling the Kogochi residence to exchange pleasantries with his wife. “Well now, your husband isn’t home.” Tilting her head mischievously, Yoko stepped away from the telephone.

But no matter what, Akimoto still seemed the more promising prospect. Now that Akimoto had gone out of his way to send his clerk to investigate her movements, the situation proved unfortunate for Yoko. Eventually, in a separate room of the boarding house, Yoko met the clerk, but she felt that her whereabouts from the previous night had already been noticed. “There was no other way, so I told him I’d gone out to work on my manuscript elsewhere to smooth things over, then treated him to a meal and sent him home.” There being a forgotten handbag as well, when she sent off the clerk, she promptly returned and reported to Yozo.

“He really came at a bad time.” Yoko came to Yozo, who had just woken up, and let out a hollow laugh, but her figure leaning despondently against the table with her cheek resting on her hand also appeared pitiful.

Eventually, that eventful year too drew toward Christmas. Yozo would sometimes find himself heading toward Yoko's boarding house, but by then the light from that familiar lamp no longer consistently glowed behind her ocher curtains.

"Something else is about to begin."

Yozo, working his sixth sense, headed back toward the bustling street.

23

The main street was bustling, but the side street leading to the boarding house located slightly further in was lively in a different sense. The main street formed a prestigious shopping district lined with renowned bookstores, stationery shops, and Chinese restaurants that served as its backbone, but stepping into the side alley revealed cramped rows of shoddily built cafes and salons—manifestations of modernism's cheap popularization—from which raucous jazz melodies streamed forth from every direction. Even when Yozo went to the trouble of visiting, if Yoko wasn't there, it felt pointless, so he tried to avoid going whenever possible—yet he still found himself concerned about her movements. In the cramped boarding house room, having to sleep three in a row with Rumiko added to their number was undeniably gloomy, and idling about there while eating boarding house meals during the day proved irritating, but whenever something came up, his feet would still turn in that direction. They would go out together to eat Chinese food or visit variety theaters he used to frequent with Minegishi—a painter and haiku poet who had lived in Jinbocho back when Yozo himself had boarded in Nishikicho. In those days there was Enzo—a rapid-fire talker who performed like oilpaper set ablaze—delivering works such as The Eight Laughers and The Cherry Blossom Revenge, where they would listen to Sanba's The Floating World Bed. But coming here now revealed no storytellers of that caliber anymore, and the atmosphere had completely transformed. How many years had passed since then? Japan had experienced a great war that brought rapid change to all aspects of society, while the world too had witnessed unprecedented tragedies that threw European culture into disarray. In both intellectual and literary circles there had been remarkable surges and ceaseless transformations of various ideologies and isms, but amidst those undulating waves, Yozo's youthful prime during his bachelor years had come to an end without particular distinction, his twenty-five years of married life had reached their climax, and twilight's hues were already encroaching upon his surroundings. Driven by some urge to dance, he began an awkward dance in the corner—though his steps were naturally prone to falter. Left alone to handle the dance without knowing how to conclude it—even as he made a complete spectacle of himself—his heart gradually grew cold, yet the moment of transformation did not come so easily.

On another occasion, he was told by the plump boarding house landlady that Yoko wasn't in her room and descended the stone entrance steps. Though he thought he sensed some human presence inside, he considered it might be fine to wait if she had gone out for tea or to her usual haunts like the Nanmeiza theater or Cinema Palace. Yet it also troubled him that she didn't offer her customary "Why don't you come up and wait..." It was precisely when the Hamaguchi Cabinet had emerged in the wake of the Seiyukai Party's profligate policies to implement fiscal austerity. Suddenly, the Prime Minister's broadcast reached Yozo's ears. The radio was coming from an electric appliance store at the crossroads corner located slightly further in from the boarding house, and since it was something he had wanted to hear, he leaned half his weight on his cane and listened for a while, all the while keeping an eye on the boarding house in case Yoko might appear. Her aimless boarding house life, sustained only by his modest assistance, was unlikely to last indefinitely, and with no clear method for Yoko to recover her position after being abandoned by journalists, it was not unthinkable that she might be taking some action to forge a path forward. While believing this outcome was inevitable, there remained something in Yozo’s heart that he couldn’t fully reconcile. However, he had also thought it better to keep things vague this time rather than half-heartedly trying to uncover the truth or do something about it, and so he had avoided visiting as much as possible—yet when he did come, he still found himself concerned. Even so, he was gradually coming to realize that reckless actions were inadvisable. Once his heart began to waver, it would not easily settle; at such times, it was best to remain still in his room. And it was best to consider the gloominess of times when the two of them would shut themselves in their boarding house room as if avoiding light, and to reflect on those unhealthy cycles of futile repetition when they would indulge in amusement as though it were life's ultimate absolute bliss.

Without listening to the Prime Minister's broadcast until the end, Yozo eventually came out to the bright main street. And at such times, walking alone was also enjoyable.

The love affair that arose in Yoko's life—unprecedented in her past and unlikely to recur in her future—came about in the spring of the following year. Given their circumstances, ages, and compatibility, this outcome proved utterly natural for them both, as ominous premonitions like demonic wings had been casting faint shadows since earlier times. Precisely because Yozo didn't wish for it, he had deliberately made repeated feigned suggestions. "That man would undoubtedly succeed."

However, he wasn’t entirely denying it either. If she was going to leave anyway, he couldn’t entirely dismiss the notion that it would be better for her to settle with someone promising rather than end up in the grasp of some mediocre person. While being selfish on one hand, he also felt reluctant to let those under his influence be dragged through the mud. It wasn’t so extreme as to be at odds with each other. They could only be said to be emotions common to humans.

It was during the year-end recital gathering held at Yukie, Kiyokawa’s elder lover’s home, that Yozo first felt an unpleasant premonition. Yozo had grown reluctant to cross the boarding house threshold, sensing some new incident brewing in Yoko’s life, and even when invited to the year-end gathering, his response lacked vigor. This reluctance stemmed from an earlier incident when he’d attended a dance performance by the Takata couple in a Marunouchi building’s hall, only to be given the slip upon leaving—an experience that left him feeling sour; thus even earnest invitations now carried a fox-tricked sensation. Yet with Yoko’s affections proving inherently untrustworthy, there remained no grounds for righteous anger.

“That’s true. It might not be appropriate for me to show up every single time.” “But Sensei, it would be strange if you didn’t come. The dance teacher wants you to see it too.” Yozo had been watching this person’s dancing for a long time. Twelve or thirteen years earlier, when he had first seen her at the Nihonbashi Club, she had been young and her dancing vibrant. Gradually she began handling new themes and carving out her own artistic realm. Though Yozo seemed to understand dance without truly comprehending it, he enjoyed watching it enough that after gaining Kiyokawa—a young lover deeply versed in dance—he never missed any premieres of new works.

However, precisely because tonight's gathering was private, he felt less able to blend into the social atmosphere of the attendees than into the dancing itself; moreover, he somehow seemed to perceive the degree of closeness that had developed between Yoko and Kiyokawa since that time. Thus he found himself disinclined to attend. Even in Yoko's recent manner of speaking, the affection between them both—with Rumiko caught between—could be sensed, so there was a chance they might be subjected to some scene tonight, and moreover that this might be part of their preparatory actions. Though the slow-witted Yozo hadn't clearly formulated this thought, one could extrapolate as much.

Near Yukie's recently relocated home in Shinanomachi, Yoko—having dismissed the taxi and changed into a black satin Western dress with white lace collar trim—lacked the luster in both face and figure that she possessed when wearing Japanese attire, giving off a somewhat chilly impression while her mood tended toward gloom. The not particularly spacious room was roughly filled with people, and with their backs slightly against the right wall near the entrance, he could see Kiyokawa and a familiar young person’s face, but on stage, the children’s dance had already progressed quite far into the program. Before long, Rumiko and her group’s charming new dance had concluded, the parents donned their proud costumes, the child who seemed unnaturally mature for her age withdrew, and several more substantial acts worth watching followed in succession. Yoko was in the back, so her movements were unclear, but tonight she was slumped listlessly like a completely withered flower. Under the cheerful gaze of the dance teacher who was looking after Rumiko and the wary eyes of Yozo—who had already been made to swallow bitter draughts countless times—she, concealing the aimless ache of her soul, had already been utterly crushed before this romance.

Eventually, Yozo was told by the dance teacher and went up to the second floor. There, tea preparations were ready, and sandwiches, sushi, and sweets had been laid out. “Those people are geisha from Sensei’s hometown of Nishishinchi.” When he looked where the dance teacher indicated, two blank-faced middle-aged women sat in the adjacent room with its partition removed. “They’re quite skilled entertainers, you know. Their banquet performances are most diverting.” After the dance teacher went downstairs, Yozo nibbled a sandwich while conversing with Kiyokawa and others until Yoko came to fetch him. Descending, he found the teacher’s unaccompanied dance already in progress. When it concluded, they quietly arranged tables for a banquet. The love-supremacist widow said to have been swept away by the tsunami at Yuigahama during the Great Kanto Earthquake, her sister—a theater proprietor’s wife—alongside Yukie and her formally accredited disciples, assumed positions in a key-shaped formation. Opposite them sat Yozo, Yoko, and Kiyokawa in an identical arrangement. While Yukie’s group maintained cheerful conversation with determined effort, this faction remained listless as a paralyzed half-body.

Yozo felt suffocated and soon hurried outside. Yoko urged Rumiko, who had been playing around with Kiyokawa, to follow along. When they emerged beneath the star-glittering night sky, she too finally breathed a sigh of relief. That was New Year's Eve. Yozo found himself alternately tormented by doubts about Yoko and Kiyokawa's behavior from that evening and dismissing them altogether. Considering Yukie's age and presumed expertise in such matters—no matter how passionate Yoko might be—she surely wouldn't pursue a romance that violated the master-disciple relationship with Rumiko. Nor would the young Marxist Kiyokawa readily accept such a thing. The reasoning was tenuous at best. Though fully aware this logic offered no real defense, Yozo deliberately kept turning his face away from the issue.

Around that time, Yoko had been choosing styles that seemed suitable for her from American fashion magazines brought by beautician Mei Harumi. Having found one she particularly liked, she especially pestered Yozo into buying fabric and buttons before beginning to cut out the pattern. She had never formally learned Western dressmaking but cut it out anyway. The orange satin fabric formed a skirt composed entirely of fine pleats—a design that could be called distinctive. Yoko sewed while looking forward to showing it to Kiyokawa; unaware of this intent, Yozo tilted his head at both the design and fabric color but found no opening for criticism and silently watched.

At that time, Yoko intended to see in the New Year at Yozo's house and had just brought Rumiko along. Yozo's eldest daughter was busy making spring preparations with the maid, while Rumiko played battledore with Eiko in the ten-mat children's room. Some of the older children had gone out to Ginza. Yozo tried not to remember that New Year's Eve two years earlier when he had gone to a hotel on business. He did not want to recall how he had gone to the jostling crowds of Ginza with a friend and eaten at Fūgetsu, how he had seen the kabuki play *The Gate of Seki* on New Year's Day, how he had been awakened early on the second morning by a shrill bell to learn his wife had suddenly collapsed, how upon rushing home that afternoon—leaving behind the sound of children clinging and weeping—he had found her already dying. Yet as he watched Yoko diligently working her needle in his room, he felt something irritating stir within him.

Yoko quietly moved her white hands and then said in a somber voice.

“Now that I look back, I can’t help but wonder how I’ve managed to come this far.” “I wasn’t supposed to end up like this.” “My own feelings have become so clear to me now.” At that moment, Yozo started. Something within her that defied identification—the shadow at her back had begun to make its faint presence known.

"You're saying I dragged you this far, aren't you?"

“That’s not it,” she said. “I’m talking about the result.” “Yes, I understand,” he replied. “Then let’s break up.” Yet as the night wore on and the distant tolling of bells marking the 108 earthly desires faded away, after Yoko had modeled the completed dress and retired to bed, Yozo would drift toward sleep only for his eyes to snap open again—his nerves, which had begun to settle through her demeanor, now surging back with two or three times their former intensity. He sprang from the bed and sat at the desk. Yoko stirred awake, noticed him sitting there, and reached out her white hand.

“What are you getting angry about?” “Go to sleep.” “How mean.” “Go back to your boarding house and get some sleep.” Yoko sat up abruptly from the bed. Muttering to herself, she put on her clothes and went to pull Rumiko from the children’s room. “To drive someone out into the street on New Year’s Eve like this—that’s no way for a landlord to act.”

While speaking through tears, she dressed Rumiko in clothes and left without ceremony. The clatter of the glass-paned entrance closing was followed by the gate’s slam, their echoes reaching his study as dawn neared.

24

After New Year's arrived, wanting to leave their separation somewhat unsullied, Yozo decided to send Yoko a substantial sum through the dance teacher—this time entirely of his own volition. This stemmed from his perception that circumstances suggested both the dance teacher and her young lover Kiyokawa would likely look after Yoko and Rumiko in various ways, combined with Yoko's own limitations—being unable to rise to prominence either in life or literature—which had fostered a particular atmosphere. Under these conditions, Yoko and her child would make a splendid resurgence within their group's new-era social sphere, while Yozo—left behind—could well imagine how shabby his own figure must appear. Of course, this wasn't unique to the present occasion—there had always been such psychological foundations beneath Yozo's jealousy. His reckless decision to lay everything bare from the outset, ostensibly to sustain Yoko's literary career, had been both a matter of social appearances and his own fragile self-esteem. This balancing of appearances and calculations perpetually weighed in Yozo's mind, the two sides eternally rising and falling against each other.

Moreover, at year's end Yozo had received a visit from Yukie and Kiyokawa, and had even been given some unexpected year-end gifts. It happened to be a time when Yoko was also present, and while the gifts could have been interpreted as blessing them both, upon deeper reflection—considering how Yoko had already emotionally distanced herself from Yozo recently—one might alternatively view this as Yukie’s mediation attempting to achieve a peaceful resolution without provoking Yozo’s anger, perhaps even advancing one step further through this means. Of course, Yozo at that time had no capacity to see through things to such an extent, and Yukie’s cheerful conversation and demeanor showed not the slightest hint of such shadows—yet one could not say that Kiyokawa’s attitude lacked something suggestive. His youth and honesty could not allow for half-hearted formalities before this old writer.

"I would think matters could be managed a bit more smoothly." Kiyokawa said with visible impatience. It was as if he implied that had he been in charge, he could have made her happier and led her more skillfully. Had Yozo possessed sharper instincts or a more analytical mind, he would undoubtedly have countered Kiyokawa's somewhat provocative remarks without hesitation. Then Kiyokawa might have gone on to expound on the irrationality of this crumbling, unnatural affair - vehemently arguing for her liberation both for Yozo's sake and Yoko's own. Moreover, it wasn't impossible that Yukie, who might have already been persuaded, had collaborated in preparing a scenario where she would publicly confess the romance between Kiyokawa and Yoko through her own words. In such circumstances, it naturally followed that Yukie had to have personally taken the lead in approving their relationship.

However, Yozo did not have the capacity to deeply probe their true intentions that evening. He merely felt the trembling of leaves before a storm and, amidst the oppressive atmosphere of that moment, could do nothing but vainly grope for Kiyokawa and Yoko’s true feelings. Eventually the four of them went out together, but Yoko walked just as she had in the room—perpetually lost in thought, her head bowed—while only Kiyokawa's footsteps echoed warmly through the quiet town nearing month's end, already clad in spring's attire.

Soon, an incident occurred in the dead of night on New Year's Eve. This likely spurred their actions even more, but regarding where the money Yozo had sent ultimately went, it gradually took clear form in his speculation-prone mind.

One day, Yozo suddenly decided to visit the boarding house in Kanda. Some days had passed since he had entrusted the money placed in a side-sealed envelope to Yukie. When he went to deliver the money to Yukie, Kiyokawa happened to be by her side as well, but she hesitated slightly over whether it was acceptable to take it. “Oh, that much?” “But I don’t want to feel guilty later either.” “Then I’ll take custody of it. Given her nature, I wonder if giving it all at once is advisable.”

“I’ll leave that to you.” “No—that still isn’t something you should be keeping, is it?” When Kiyokawa spoke, the teacher also gave a slight nod. “I suppose so.” After this brief exchange, just then an earthquake occurred, so Yozo and the teacher went up to the dance floor, stepped toward the window to look, but soon took their leave.

Around that time, there was a young poet staying at Yozo's house. This poet Shiro Koike was an odd creature both physically and temperamentally. He had come to rely on Yozo through some provincial connection with Yoko's family, though even Yozo couldn't deny his genius for poetry. His perpetual outfit—a black serge suit worn morning till night with a russet tie and beret—combined with his petite frame made it no wonder most mistook him for a woman in men's clothing. His sickly pale skin and flaccid muscles had an unpleasantly spongy quality. He worshipped Yoko like a rabbit cowering before a leopardess, submitting to her every whim. One moment he'd display virginal bashfulness, the next streetwise cunning—yet ultimately he struck one as nothing but a pitiable human wreck. Like some wounded dove, he suffered frequent angina attacks that kept him never without a vial of digitalis in his coat pocket. Once when accompanying Yoko to Mei Harumi in Ginza—the building having a barber shop downstairs—he'd decided to get his hair trimmed while she received her permanent wave upstairs. But when Yoko's coiffure was done and she still hadn't descended after endless waiting, going down to check revealed him sprawled in the barber's chair getting a manicure and primping.

Even after Yoko's whereabouts were lost, he still seemed to visit her occasionally, but never uttered a word about anything crucial. Gradually, both his figure and footsteps grew increasingly scarce. No matter what course Yoko might take, it was like a balloon slipping from his hand into the clouds—utterly beyond retrieval—and while he felt this should suffice, something still refused to settle in his gut. When he kept his composure, it resembled a windless lake without ripples. But once his heart stirred slightly, waves would surge endlessly, and his feet would naturally turn toward the boarding house like a compass needle pointing north. She had likely already moved out, but speaking with the landlord might reveal facts previously unknown.

The one who came out to the entrance was Okami, but—

“Oh, Sensei.” “Oh please do come up this way.”

Okami hurriedly led Yozo up to the second floor and,

"Ms. Kozue is moving today. The cart has just arrived and they're about to load the luggage, so come take a look over here." It was a close call. Yozo had noticed the cart in front of the boarding house but hadn't realized it was Yoko's moving cart; he had brushed past it and climbed the stone steps. Told this, he went out to the corridor and quietly peered down through the glass door. Below, young movers in work jackets and slightly soiled brown fedoras were just carrying out Shioji's bookcase.

“Heh, I see.” Yozo forced a bitter smile, but when the young poet Shiro suddenly appeared beside the cart, he gasped and knelt back into a formal seated position. “Has anyone been coming around lately?” “Oh yes—someone has come two or three times.” “What sort of man?” “Well, he didn’t give his name, but he’s young.” “Has a high nose and big eyes—like an actor.” “Hmm, I see.” The figure that had always surfaced in Yozo’s premonitions was indeed Kiyokawa, but since Kiyokawa’s visit to Yukie with money, that premonition had temporarily faded. A sudden surge of excitement gripped Yozo as he leaned against the glass door’s handrail, watching the belongings being loaded one by one. After observing Koike direct the full loading and securing of ropes, he took out a cigarette and began smoking while waiting for the cart’s departure. Now at this juncture, he suddenly begrudged the money—yet still wanted to see their faces. Yozo peered in the direction the cart would move, paused briefly, then went downstairs—but by the time he stepped outside, the cart had already crossed the main road stretching from Suidobashi to Hitotsubashi.

This area was where Yozo and Yoko would often abandon their car or hail one together, and where they had gone out late at night to buy freshly sold brotchen and bread during that time. Keeping a distance of one or two blocks, Yozo followed along while alternately hiding and revealing himself. Those trailing the cart weren't limited to the young poet carrying Yoko's toilet case—there was also Rumiko with her heron-like slender legs, and nursemaid Kitayama who held a cloth-wrapped bundle in one hand while gripping Rumiko with the other, veering this way and that as they walked playfully. The town was nearing dusk, and a cold wind blew against the wings of Yozo's coat.

When they approached Kudanzaka Hill, the figure of the young poet could be seen pushing at the back of the cart, lagging slightly behind the group of women as he labored up the slope. But upon reaching that point, Yozo found himself suddenly deflated and came to an abrupt halt. There’s no need to pursue this any further—Yozo thought—yet soon began walking again. The cart had stopped on a bustling street in Fujimichō—reached after climbing the slope and making two turns, left then right—but upon arriving, it turned out to be a florist. Behind the thick glass of the display window, pale pink begonias bloomed profusely, like flower ice sculptures.

What a fitting love nest—Yozo thought with a wry smile as he entered the alley where the luggage was being carried in. The florist’s back entrance was there. Yozo climbed the ladder staircase in the back corridor, passed through the three-tatami entryway cluttered with luggage, and suddenly burst into the room—but contrary to expectations, only Rumiko and Kitayama were there; neither Kiyokawa nor Yoko was in sight. “Huh. So they’re not here.”

Yozo settled heavily cross-legged on one of the new plush merino floor cushions and laughed with a wry smile. "Where's Mommy?" He asked Rumiko as she approached him. The girl showed no trace of hesitation. "You know, Mommy went to stroll Ginza with me today." "But then she had to go somewhere else." "So she called Ms. Kitayama to come get me."

He couldn't make sense of what she was talking about. Asking Kitayama or Shiro proved futile. Yozo smoked his cigarette, lay down for a while with his eyes closed, but finding this too self-indulgent, soon left the place. It went without saying that the young poet—introduced to Yozo by Yoko—found himself in a disadvantageous position here, but this wasn't something that warranted indecision about his course of action. Around that time, he had been taken in by an arts section journalist from a major newspaper who was associated with Yozo and worked under him. Though it lasted just two or three months, he was at least assigned a role as a journalist, which had made him quite cheerful for a time. Just when he thought he'd finally managed to scrape together some coffee money and cigarette funds, the printing workers refused to deal with him, and the supervisor made him quit; but in exchange, he came to be somewhat known among literary circles and even managed to approach the famous Omori poet. However, once unemployed, finding odd jobs for pocket money proved no easy task. Around that time, he began teaching French to Yozo's eldest daughter, and for Yozo—who always looked so lonely—he would also relay news of Yoko's recent whereabouts. He too found that his heart would grow parched if he went too long without seeing Yoko. According to his account, last winter when Yoko was still living in the boarding house, she would occasionally take Kitayama and Rumiko to visit Kiyokawa's home in Banchō. They would play records and have Rumiko dance, their lively conversations always blossoming. When he heard this, Yozo came to understand her once-stiffened feelings toward him.

One day, Shiro went to see Yoko. He occasionally kept pocket money received from Yoko in his pocket, but in Yozo’s imagination, Kiyokawa’s lifestyle seemed rather affluent, and he was certain that in this recent love affair, a considerable amount of money must have been taken from home. From Yozo's perspective, the two phantoms appeared so extravagant. As a pair, they left nothing to be desired. Of course, that was only if Kiyokawa was seen as having completely rebelled against his family.

Shiro entered Yozo’s study with slightly excited eyes and, “When I went there today, Mr. Kiyokawa was going to sell his books—the whole room was in disarray.”

“Why?”

“Since that place is a rented house behind Mr. Yamagami’s residence, it must feel cramped for various reasons. They’ve apparently found a house near Tabata this time and plan to move there, so they’ll need money.” Yozo couldn’t make sense of it. Had the money he provided already run out in less than a month? Even if Kiyokawa deemed it improper to touch those funds, could his finances really be so strained that selling books became necessary to afford the move?

"That can't be right." "No, it's true. Mainly books on dance and art—he said it was truly a shame to sell them."

Yozo felt a pang of sorrow at how seriously committed they were.

Then, after some time had passed, Shiro specially went to visit them shortly after their move to Tabata. It was an old two-story wooden Western-style house with a front garden fit for growing cosmos. But at that moment, Kiyokawa struck Shiro's head, and he returned having been driven away while wiping his tear-stained face. "What?!"

When Yozo asked, Shiro clutched his head in pain, "That guy must be worked up about something." "And I’ve been dropping by to check in now and then." "But I don't think that's going to work." “Ms. Kozue did apologize to me, though.” Shiro too seemed indignant, lamenting that Kiyokawa wasn’t worthy of Yoko, but after that, all news of Yoko ceased.

<25>

After March arrived, on one such day, Sayoko appeared in Yozo’s study. Even now, Yozo would occasionally take a taxi to the riverside house for dinner. Sometimes he brought others along, but found solitude preferable. By then, Yotaro seldom appeared in his father’s study unless accompanied by Sayoko—an arrangement that ultimately suited Yozo’s purposes. Though initially wary of this dynamic, his vigilance proved unnecessary. Provided he maintained visual contact with the children, he generally entrusted matters to their discretion. Whether this qualified as parental kindness mattered less than his practice of regarding each child as a distinct individual. In his worldview, each generation naturally surpassed its predecessor. Yet he often drew them too deeply into his own orbit—even openly discussing his episodic affairs with Yoko to Yotaro, sometimes displaying tangible evidence. Though these revelations occasionally thrilled him, he resolved to trust them. In Sayoko’s case too, one might say Yozo himself had planted the seeds. All his children thirsted uniformly for maternal affection. For Yotaro, Sayoko had gradually assumed a quasi-maternal role. Their outings often included all three together. Even when alone with Sayoko, Yozo found himself missing Yotaro’s presence.

“I’ve come because there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Sensei.”

Sayoko broached the subject, but it was nothing more than some trivial matters of friendship between women. The reason was that the dance teacher—with whom Yozo had recently become acquainted through Yoko—had unexpectedly appeared at the riverside house last night with a friend. Though from different eras, both the teacher and Sayoko had once worked in Shinbashi's entertainment quarters, so their conversation flowed naturally as they enjoyed keeping each other company through half the night. Then upon leaving, they disregarded Sayoko's protests and insistently left behind a monetary gift.

"But when I checked later, it was a bit too much. There’s no reason for me to receive such an amount, so I thought I should return the favor with some sort of gift. What do you think would be appropriate?" As a woman in the nightlife trade, Sayoko was always meticulous. "Something like a handbag or cosmetics."

“Let me see.” “But that person was wearing a Chinese dress, wasn’t she?” It was quite recent that the three of them—Sayoko, Yotaro, and Yozo—had encountered the dance teacher in her Chinese dress while strolling through Ginza one night. When Yozo realized that Yoko’s partner was Kiyokawa, he immediately reported it to the dance teacher using a nearby public telephone, but her response when she answered struck him as perhaps imagined and terribly flustered. When he went to check three or four days later, things were not as dire as he had feared—she was conducting a lesson with her students gathered around. She was so composed as she laid the foundation of the dance that Yozo ended up feeling embarrassed instead. The sharp notes resounded clearly through the cold room.

When he waited in the next room, the dance teacher soon came after setting aside her plectrum, but whether this was his overimagining or not, her expression seemed slightly rigid—as if she were on guard—and he couldn't help feeling somewhat slighted. However, when he later reflected on it, perhaps Kiyokawa and the teacher's relationship had not been entirely severed in reality despite appearing broken. To cut it off completely—hadn't Yozo's money played some role? Even as minimal compensation to Rumiko's respected mentor, that Yoko and Kiyokawa had likely furnished such material support wasn't entirely groundless speculation for Yozo to reconcile the events he had perceived at that time. Yet even this proved to be a narrative Yozo had later concocted through curiosity—casting no shadow whatsoever during the incident's immediate aftermath.

“You’re something—starting practice already.”

When Yozo said this, she smiled charmingly. “Oh, I started today.” “I’ve managed to sort out my feelings now.” “And though I don’t mean this as sour grapes, to tell the truth, this way feels much more refreshing.” After talking for about thirty minutes, Yozo left the teacher’s house. But when he suddenly spotted her in the Chinese dress at a Ginza grocery storefront, she was as cheerful as a young girl. Yozo introduced Sayoko and Yotaro, and after the four of them walked while talking for a while, they parted ways; however, that became the trigger for the visit to the riverside house.

The Chinese dress, being perfectly suited to an Oriental-style beauty, made the teacher look younger and more charming. Following Sayoko’s suggestion, they decided to give shoes as a gift, but since they wanted to present something nice if they were going to give anything at all, she proposed making an outing of it and going together to Yokohama to look for something suitable. “So, since we have her foot measurements, I’d like that person to come along as well.” They decided to make it a casual group outing. “I’ll treat everyone to some Chinese food at least.”

“Very well.”

26

They promptly arranged matters via telephone and met Yukie at Shinbashi. Then Yozo, his son, and Sayoko—four in total—drove to Yokohama that next afternoon for a half-day outing. They got out of their taxi before reaching Isezakicho and wandered the bustling streets, where Yukie—youthful in spirit despite her years—skipped about cheerfully in her Chinese dress like a child. Eventually they strolled along Motomachi Street, their intended destination, peering at Western furniture stores’ and hat shops’ display windows before checking shoe stores, though having the gift recipient present made things awkward. Their excursion hovered between purposeful and whimsical—Yukie grew vaguely disenchanted midway through this ambiguous stroll—but upon reaching the town’s outskirts, Sayoko bought an embroidered wall hanging for her second-floor room while Yozo purchased a cheap machine-embroidered piece, household items having vanished since his wife’s death, even the Javanese chintz tablecloth. They then visited the pier area. On returning, they had a quick meal at Hakuga and stopped by Fujiya, but by the time they reached the station front again, six o’clock had arrived.

After arriving at Shinbashi, Yukie suggested they visit the home of an elderly woman from their hometown whom they had long known, so they decided to enter the old-fashioned house. However, Yukie—who loved her drink—had food brought from her favored restaurant, and as her intoxication deepened, the conversation flourished; she summoned familiar geishas and grew cheerfully animated on her own. Finding himself still surrounded by adversaries, Yozo—now an elderly man who had lost his young lover—maintained vigilant politeness, ever wary of malicious rumors taking flight. That evening too, he found no desire to touch his sake cup, and soon the three of them withdrew from the place.

“How about we head to Ginza now and buy some earrings to present?” “That might be best.” Sayoko decided to comply. Sure enough, the next day’s newspaper carried gossip about Yukie and Yozo. When they promptly submitted a formal retraction request, it spitefully mocked them by publishing their photographs this time. Yozo felt nauseated and crumbled into decay.

27

In February, Yoko called again. Through Yozo's hazy conjecture, Yukie and Kiyokawa's relationship had likely ended yet not been fully severed; tormented by this situation, Yoko's insistence on moving far away had prevailed. Since they'd relocated to Tabata, their new life must have been blissful in some way. Given those particular individuals involved, this time things were sure to go well—he made himself believe that formulation, yet refused to believe it. The impulse toward infidelity had taken root within her too, but even this proved insufficient to fill the bottomless void of her loneliness.

When he answered the phone, it was indeed Yoko’s voice. “I’m in Sanchome right now.” “I need to meet and talk with you, so come right away.” Having casually made his way to Sanchome and glancing about here and there, he found Yoko suddenly appearing before his eyes. She was wrapped in that navy coat with light, bold stripes—the Yankee-style one she had bought from Yokohama through Mei Harumi—but her hair was disheveled and her face markedly haggard. They immediately hailed a taxi and had it speed to their usual place, but even after settling into the room—Yozo feeling as if he were wearing borrowed clothes—his spirit was overwhelmed.

As it was mealtime, Yozo took Yoko’s order and had the meal served. “You’ve lost some weight.” “Well, I work every day.” “Look at my hands like this.” “All my joints are swollen.”

Even so, Yoko was still beautiful. "That person does fetch water and wash dishes for me, but..." "No maid?" "Yes." "Because he's been getting more insistent about that lately - says he can't stand having beautiful hands." "He says they need to grow calloused like a laborer's."

“I see. It’s a bit too much for you, isn’t it. But your situation’s decent enough, isn’t it.” “But it isn’t really that good, you know.” According to her account, Kiyokawa’s father—having been indulged by an elderly master and accustomed to luxury—disapproved of taking in a woman like her. Only his mother, born into higher status than his father and possessing refined sensibilities, understood her situation, sending a fixed monthly allowance through their senior Yamagami. Though he himself did have some income, since rent also had to be paid from it, she stated it wasn’t comfortable.

“But we have to get by with this much.” “Isn’t that sufficient?”

“But I’m lonely.” “After all, coming from the countryside—even if it wasn’t particularly luxurious—I’d always eaten my fill of whatever I wanted.”

The conversation gradually took on a sordid tone. Contrary to her appearance, at her core she remained a woman. Kiyokawa's meticulous consideration of his parents and siblings, along with his family's financial circumstances and atmosphere—precisely those aspects of reality Yoko found most challenging—came to form the foundation of their romance. Yozo couldn't avoid contemplating that he too, at this new affair's inception, had likely fallen prey to her thin-lipped entreaties—perhaps even more completely than Kiyokawa—and that she must have tearfully lamented her dissatisfactions with Yozo before Kiyokawa too, just as she'd done before others.

"Everywhere's like this." "Since nothing in this world meets your exact demands, you've settled in there for good." Unlike his own gloomy love affair, Yozo had evaluated their romance as splendidly radiant and secretly yearned for it; yet upon understanding the methodical soundness of Kiyokawa’s rational approach, he felt that Yoko’s allure had somewhat faded.

“Sensei, haven’t you got something going on with Ms. Reie?” “Don’t be ridiculous—there’s nothing going on.” “I see.” Yoko had nodded in agreement, but Yozo had not realized that their move to Tabata was meant to completely wrest Kiyokawa away from Yukie, with whom he still hadn’t truly severed ties. Nor could he have known that Yoko’s questioning had arisen from her anxiety that he might be aware of this. “That person is pitiful too. When I was in Banchō, there was a time I ran out. When I thought of going to Sensei’s place and boarded the tram at Horibata, that person came chasing after me too, so I got off at Suidobashi and trudged off toward Masagochō. So then he too followed me from behind, hiding and reappearing, and after playing hide-and-seek in those backstreets for a while, he gave up and went home, you know. I very nearly tried calling Sensei from the telephone booth at Akamon-mae, but then the atmosphere of your house suddenly came to mind, and I hurried back to Bancho, you know. Even though he wasn’t there, when he eventually returned and saw me, he came inside still wearing his russet shoes and suddenly clung to me, crying. It seems he stopped by his mother’s place and came back crying.”

“So the act begins anew.” Yozo had grown pleasantly mellow from nursing his wine, but envisioning that scene left him faintly agitated. Time slipped by swiftly; after giving her some spending money, he saw her home around ten. Yet these occurrences were hardly rare. Sometimes he would visit the house at the appointed hour; other times he'd wait thirty minutes or more. As he lingered alone, a light early summer rain began falling, transforming the bonsai arranged on the azure-tiled balcony into glistening wet sculptures within moments. Though train noises echoed nearby and late-night freight cars rattled the foundations, the place remained tolerable if one endured those disturbances. On occasion, that popular novelist who'd carried on with Sayoko for nearly a year would commandeer the parlor, keeping up boisterous revelries till dawn—during such nights both Yoko and Yozo maintained guarded vigilance, though ordinarily it served as their sanctuary. Yoko had been caught in the downpour midway—

“I couldn’t find a good chance to get away, so I pretended to go to the greengrocer’s and slipped out along the way.” “He absolutely detests that I receive money from you.” “Did you tell him?” “Not exactly.”

While feeling that this was a way to earn pocket money during hard times, Yozo was nevertheless interested in her account of daily life. “Have you been writing anything lately?” “When we write, he’s upstairs and I’m downstairs.” “I write downstairs, you know.” “Kiyokawa’s having trouble writing.” “Because my pen keeps racing along, it seems to irritate him even more.” “You’re not letting him work, are you.” “Nuh-uh, when writing, I still think being alone is better.” “He probably wouldn’t like what you write.” “Wouldn’t he get completely crushed?”

“Nuh-uh, we do argue a lot, but—”

Every time he saw her, Yoko appeared more stained by life's grind. The soiled chemise she carelessly shed in the dressing room before bathing stood out conspicuously; her stockings' heels had worn translucent. Those same base complaints still poured forth, while even the occasional oranges she bought with such longing seldom reached her lips—the meat and fish too, she claimed, were heartlessly snatched away before her. Like some unwanted stepchild, Yoko wore sorrow as her most defining aspect.

“The other day when I was short on money, I thought of selling about ten collars I had, so I told Mother, and she bought them for ten yen.” “There are some in there that cost ten yen each, you know.”

Of course, Yoko herself was not truly such a young lady either. "Won't he marry you?"

When Yozo asked, “Back then too—since you’d make such a well-suited couple—he said he’d settle things properly.” “But Father can be a bit stubborn.” “After all, in that household, the husband and wife don’t get along.” “Father’s this rigid merchant from the old downtown quarter through and through, while Mother has her bookish tastes and retains that old Edoite refinement—so naturally the Kiyokawa brothers found encouragement to pursue literature.” “His younger sister’s an oil painter too.” “They all take after Mother’s side.” “Even so, the atmosphere those people wrap around me isn’t exactly pleasant.” “Just the other day when Mother treated us to tempura, even then I had to take the inferior seat below his sister.” “Even when getting into a taxi, I’m still the one in back.”

As they spoke, Yoko quickly began to tear up.

“But marriage is a woman’s graveyard.” Yozo lay sprawled on his stomach, puffing at his cigarette, but the dissonance between her miscalculations and Kiyokawa’s failure to comprehend stood out with crystalline clarity.

“What about Rumiko?” “Since he finds her troublesome, I’ve been keeping her elsewhere lately—but even though he loved her so much when we started living together, he says she’s not cute at all.”

“That’s clear.” “It’s the truth. Young people these days—they’re all so resolute. To a degree someone like you couldn’t even imagine.” “And then you come sniveling here.” “And lately he doesn’t even do the dishes, you know. When I cook meals, I can’t read books either, and my brain gets all parched. I’m thinking maybe we should just break up—what do you think, would that be bad?” “Well... If you were my daughter, I’d make you endure it.”

“Yes...” Yoko also smiled.

28

That summer too passed in a flurry, and when cool breezes began to stir, the long-pending matter of Yoko’s separation suddenly started taking concrete form. Yozo neither schemed nor actively tried to restrain her, but with the young poet shuttling between both parties, the matter of her moving out to a boarding house seemed on the verge of being settled before anyone realized. There was something unresolved in her demeanor, and with her cautious hands always playing both sides, he could not bring himself to intervene decisively—but since things were already falling apart, he thought it might be good to play a role in the final act.

That evening, Yozo had pressing work to attend to, but due to an unexpected phone call, he packed his manuscript paper and pens into his briefcase and went out. “I’m busy tonight. I don’t have time for this conversation.” With unease, he took out last month’s issue of the women’s magazine from his briefcase the moment he saw Yoko’s face. He had been writing a serialized work for that magazine. Yoko was unusually wearing a kimono, but they sat facing each other drinking tea without exchanging a word. Her demeanor lacked composure, but Yozo too was irritated because the arrangement of the scene he needed to write that night had not yet clearly formed in his mind; moreover, there was something unresolved lingering in her words.

“Then I’ll stay.” “That’s not how it is.” “It’s just that I feel sorry for that man.” He thought she might be refusing indirectly, but that wasn’t actually true. In any case, fearing it would disrupt his concentration, he decided not to press the matter tonight. Once his emotions began swaying, they tended to persist uncontrollably—he had no choice but to steel himself accordingly. Yozo, pressed for time and wanting to eat quickly first decided to bathe before dinner, hurrying toward the bath area. The bathing facility was rather opulent for a traditional restaurant, its partitioned dressing room in a separate chamber exuding tasteful refinement.

The rain began falling heavily. Yozo remained in the bathhouse listening to the rain pattering in the desolate garden, but started feeling uneasy when Yoko failed to appear. Earlier in the room, there had been an abrupt phone call that sent her downstairs through the maid's mediation. Yet no sooner had she returned and sat down than she slipped out into the corridor again. When her prolonged absence made Yozo suspicious enough to investigate, he found her lurking near the stairwell landing, pacing agitatedly. But Yozo dismissed it as inconsequential—he'd inquire later. Waiting for her return to the room, he proceeded to bathe first. Now that thought resurfaced abruptly, prompting him to hurriedly don his kimono and ascend to the second floor.

Then he found that the room’s entrance led to an inner corridor, with a small tatami room adjoining it, but Yoko was nowhere to be found. In the inner corridor, his hat and coat hung on the wall with a foolish look, and that was all. Just then, the maid arrived. “She said she was going out briefly and has just stepped outside.” “She slipped on the household’s garden geta and took the oil-paper umbrella.” “She was carried off.” Yozo hurriedly put on his coat. “I don’t think that’s the case,” the maid said while laughing as she saw him out.

Yozo hurriedly put on his coat. "I don't believe that's true, though." The maid saw him off with a laugh. The following afternoon, when Yozo visited the house again with Shiro in tow, the Madam emerged and informed them that Yoko had come that morning to return the umbrella and geta—with Kiyokawa accompanying her. Afterward, Yoko embellished the events of that night in grotesque hues: how she had been summoned into the drizzling rain and found herself forcibly dragged into a car by an overwrought Kiyokawa, who then drove off into the darkness. Of course, Yoko's frequent trips to the corridor had undoubtedly been part of a calculated revenge plot against Yozo—with Kiyokawa, pulling the strings from a separate room, having arrived there beforehand.

29

When autumn came, Yoko moved to the fourth floor of an apartment in Sanchome. The love nest she had painstakingly maintained in Tabata had already collapsed, and since then she had been living on the second floor of a private home in Sakuragicho near Kaneiji Bridge. During this period, it was that young poet who maintained contact between them—summoning Yozo when needed, intercepting taxis at alley corners during Yozo's outings to draw Yoko out. Though her departure from Tabata made the separation from her lover appear superficially genuine, reality suggested their ties remained unbroken. Yozo had contemplated storming that never-shown residence, but still shied from breaching her secrets. During this time, Yozo heard frequent accounts from Yoko about Komura—an emerging writer residing in Negishi. She recounted details of Komura's marital life, affairs, and literary devotion—how he voraciously consumed foreign novels from Maruzen—using nicknames with mock-humorous inflections as she conjured the tranquil modern ambiance of his household she frequented casually. This very casualness confirmed their association held no deeper significance. Once, on Yoko's whim, Yozo dined with the Komuras at a Sanno restaurant; afterward Komura—whose family had generations-deep Ueno roots—guided them to a Hirokoji vaudeville theater his ancestors patronized. Had Yoko's social circle truly been limited to the Komuras alone, necessity would have compelled occasional invitations to her quarters. Her avoidance proved she maintained connections with Yozo as emergency leverage while desperately preserving her crumbling affair with Kiyokawa. Thus their dealings seemed destined to languish into gradual dissolution.

Then, after a prolonged silence, Yoko called again. Yozo could only ever imagine himself waiting for her with open arms, no matter the circumstances.

“Sensei, it’s me.” “I’m at Enrakuken now.” “Come here.” “Right away.” She spoke in a commanding manner, yet there was an urgent tone to her voice. Unable to refuse, Yozo left the room after all. When he entered the spacious earthen-floored hall of Enrakuken, Yoko—dressed in Western clothing—was by the window on the right. Noticing his approach, she looked up with a face filled with sorrow unlike anything he had ever seen. When he sat on the front chair, she—with a hysterical expression—

“We can’t talk here. Let’s go.”

She murmured, then hurriedly paid for the coffee and rose. The town was in rush hour, but the desolate autumn light rendered the crossroads even more chaotic. Yoko hurried across to the other side as if hesitant to be seen walking together, hailed a rickety car there, and closed the door after waiting for him to arrive. When they drove a short distance, she removed the crumpled handkerchief from her tearful eyes as if to say something but then covered her face again.

“What’s wrong?” “I’ve finally been cast aside by Mr. Kiyokawa.” “Hmm.” Yozo’s voice caught in his throat, a momentary unpleasant sensation passing through him. Though he had secretly anticipated this outcome—and could even sympathize with Kiyokawa’s struggle before ultimately discarding her—he found himself unable to reproach or mock Yoko now that she had been cast off. “I’d only thought things were going well since then.”

“Yes, that’s right. Because of that, even my brother came all the way from the countryside recently. After all, he’s a top student from Mita—he said this was the perfect chance to finally clear my past and restore my honor, so he tried convincing Mr. Kiyokawa to marry me. He asked me to give him two or three days to think it over, so I waited until today for his reply. So then, this must be his reply.”

Yoko said this and took out a crumpled half-torn scrap of paper from her handbag to show him. Yozo briefly took it in hand to look, but from the wording alone, he couldn’t quite grasp the full context. To put it succinctly, it was a tactful rejection—essentially stating that while he appreciated the kind overture, after much consideration, he regrettably couldn’t comply with her request and hoped she wouldn’t take offense.

“I can’t quite make sense of it from this alone.” Yoko folded the scrap of paper and placed it into her handbag; having cried, her face now looked somewhat brighter. “Am I really such a bad woman?” “Well... “You’ll have to decide that for yourself.” “I see.” The car departed from Hirokoji toward Sakamoto and, after entering the bustle of a cramped town, stopped at the foot of an overpass; yet whenever Yozo came to that house, he always felt at ease. Moreover, even if that household had been of any kind, it was no suitable place to keep Yoko. What she tried to escape was precisely what she had always sought. Though her wish was neither grand nor lofty, the moment she grasped it, reality’s unpleasant stench assailed her nostrils. She lacked the backbone to support herself.

"Did Mr. Kiyokawa ever love me?" "Or did he never love me at all?" Those words seemed to prove Kiyokawa's rationality—so opposed to Yozo's—in refusing to indulge her unrestrained dance of jaded love, yet they also measured Yoko's affection for Kiyokawa as a man.

"He apparently told my brother too—'If I'm with Yoko, I can't study.'" Yoko smiled a wry smile devoid of composure or dignity, becoming like a bouquet mercilessly cast down by the roadside through Mr. Kiyokawa's doing.

Thirty

The apartment in Sanchome was the first apartment built in that area after the earthquake disaster. The city was still in the midst of reconstruction, but the newly built townscapes had largely regained their outward form. The reinforced concrete apartment in Ganjōippō had a drugstore on its first floor; though the lot was narrow, it boasted a balcony with a good view on the fourth floor. On the second and third floors were four or five tatami-matted rooms each, with tokonoma alcoves and built-in cabinets recessed into the walls, all adorned with beautiful decorations. It had been built by the son of an educator and the pharmacy owner, who had jointly invested one hundred thousand yen, but the fourth-floor room Yoko had contracted was only about six tatami mats in size—it had gas but no running water. When one opened the heavy wire-meshed large window doors, the blue and red neon stripes—like ribbons framing a painting—of the Hirokoji department store could be seen forlornly suspended in midair. Below eye level, the lamplight of cafés that had already infested the backstreets and the sound of records flowed upward, yet the noise from the main thoroughfare did not reach here. In the back-to-back rooms with separate entrances, only occasional voices could be heard; with no tenants in any of the rooms, it was as silent as a castle tower under siege.

“I have something I’m writing, you know. I intend to have you look at it once it’s finished—that’s why I’m working as hard as I can.”

Yoko had hinted at this long before - her attempt to shut herself away in the apartment stemmed from wanting to finish it. This work was meant for submission to the Kokumin Shimbun's literary contest; through this single piece, she sought to make a new start and engineer her rehabilitation into literary circles, pouring her very lifeblood into it. Faced with such raw sincerity, Yozo found himself unable to completely write her off, feeling compelled to offer some guidance to this woman who thrashed about in defeat yet kept struggling to rise again. He paid three months' rent upfront, became her guarantor, and visited the apartment nearly every day.

In that room, Yozo often drank coffee and ate grilled bread instead of proper meals, but at night he would go out to eat at oden stalls and cheap restaurants that Yoko had somehow become a regular patron of. Two young men jointly ran a street stall serving oden; one was a literary youth from Noto who attended the humanities department of a private university by day and had already established with Yoko a relationship akin to that between a backstreet queen and her knight. By that time, the young poet who had been cherished by a certain poet and his mistress in Omori had developed beriberi and a pathologically weakened heart; utterly spent in the same black Western suit he wore day and night, he returned to his remarried mother in his hometown. Kitayama had also established a household in Egota and was dedicating himself to painting, while Rumiko remained perpetually entrusted to her cousin's house in the suburbs, where roads had recently been paved. This was because even Kiyokawa—who had so thoroughly endeared himself to Rumiko—abruptly changed his attitude once their cohabitation began, which itself became one factor hastening disillusionment in their romantic life.

Yoko had brought a coffee-brewing retort from the department store and kept busily boiling coffee. That story about the senior overseeing Kiyokawa having brought a large quantity from Germany and stored them under the floor was from years past—now they were even available in department stores. In Yoko’s bookcase were separate provisions like ham, corned beef, apples, and oranges, and as it grew increasingly colder, she would rise in the morning without washing her face, take a light meal while lighting the gas stove—but when her writing grew troubled, Yozo’s presence would sometimes become a hindrance. Moreover, the pharmacy owner managing the apartment would sometimes try to use Yoko’s presence on the fourth floor as a selling point to people coming to view rooms, so Yozo had taken to using the back entrance. However, climbing up and down the stiff and unyielding stairs was quite taxing, and just when he thought he’d finally reached her room, he’d often find it locked. Her destinations were typically places like Cinema Palace or Nanteiza—when her writing stalled, she would go seek salvation in movies—but it wasn’t clear if opening her room was solely for that purpose.

Yozo did not have nearly as much interest in Yoko's literary work as she imagined. He could not take as much interest in her literature as he did in her beauty, but he could not deny the purity of her sentiment and pathos—like a wildflower too delicate for the breeze. While discussing the plot and themes, she showed him the manuscript. Yozo read page after page while drinking coffee. At one moment it contained fresh depictions of a cohabitation between an astonishingly venerable playwright and his young actress lover—bound by a master-disciple relationship—and at another, passionate love scenes between that same actress and a youth who had returned destitute from a wandering journey to seek shelter under the playwright, his senior. It had been crafted into an intriguing play that vividly evoked the events of a certain rainy night from the past. It had been embellished with the floral flourishes of her distinctive imagination, such that one could not clearly identify who the models were.

“How is it?”

Yoko peered into Yozo’s face as she asked. “Hmm...” “Is it bad?” “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Before long, the transcription work began, and an assistant appeared in the room. She was the wife of an emerging proletarian writer whose name Yozo had heard before; upon being introduced and recognizing her as an upright woman—and learning that this work provided some supplemental income for their household—he found himself compelled to respect her earnest dedication. At times, while the two women slept together under a single futon conversing intimately, Yozo lay on the cramped closet-bed beside them with his head pressed against the wall.

Before long, ten, then twenty contest submissions were brought into his study.

At first, Yoko had intended to keep her plan completely secret from Yozo. This was because, unfortunately, one of the two judges happened to be Yozo himself—and yet Yozo also held half the authority over selection; depending on how he managed the scoring, it was not impossible for him to determine the fate of her work with a single adjustment, which was why she wanted to obtain his critique in advance.

“As a judge, causing you distress would weigh on my conscience, which is why I wanted to keep it secret from you. But Sensei, you come nearly every day. I’m truly at my wit’s end. Of course Ms. Kurihara says it’s excellent and will surely win, and I’m in full stride myself. I ended up unable to keep it secret, but with anonymity, your position as judge isn’t really compromised, is it? I don’t expect any preferential treatment in the scoring, Sensei. If—hypothetically—two works tied for the same score while you maintain impartiality, couldn’t you choose mine then? That wouldn’t do.”

Of course Yozo undoubtedly wanted to maintain an objective stance, but he also understood that if the work were to be selected, it was indeed worthy of selection. Yozo began earnestly reading each submitted work one by one. As far as their themes and settings went, there were some that had been beyond the reach of previous literary figures—and he found himself intrigued. Works depicting miners' wretched lives; escapes by lifers in Hokkaido; the decline of that once-thriving opera troupe at Kinryukan and the fates of its actors and surrounding delinquents—among these, Yozo found himself utterly overwhelmed by one work's raw vitality and pulsating intensity, its thick brushstrokes depicting Asakusa's decadent atmosphere through disbanded opera singers.

“There are some quite good ones.” Yozo appeared in Yoko’s room with two or three works tucked in his kimono. “Right—let me read them too.” Yoko said that and began reading the roughly scribbled work. “The work itself is good, but as a newspaper serial, the subject matter is somewhat unsavory and there’s too much backstage jargon—it might be ill-suited for general readership.” “Moreover, the latter half sags.” “Right…” However, after Yozo had painstakingly scored the entries and managed, without undue favoritism, to bring her work titled *Rainbow on Earth* to the brink of being selected for second place, the fact that she had used Mrs. Kurihara’s name came to light, ultimately consigning it to oblivion.

At another time, Yozo visited the apartment.

The town was now fully in the grip of midwinter, and not a trace remained of the golden leaves on the ginkgo trees lining the streets. With Yoko’s plans ending in disastrous failure and her attempts to rebuild through renewed devotion to the path of novel writing being thwarted, her fate could no longer be supported by Yozo’s hands.

"Is she not here anymore?" When he inquired at the pharmacy, Yoko was absent that day as well. A week had passed since the air in the room had turned hostile, driving them both into irritated states and leading them to exchange harsh words before parting ways. Yozo, who had recently been occasionally sharing meals and tea with Fujiko, had brought her along that time too. "She’s already gone."

The owner answered, beaming more than usual, “No, really, Ms. Kozue is beyond help. If someone like you doesn’t keep a firm watch over her, Sensei, there’s no telling what she might do.” “Is she up to something?” “I don’t know about that, but she certainly isn’t normal.” “Did she take the security deposit?”

“Well, she said she would come later to get it.” “Then I’ll take care of it.” It wasn’t a significant amount of money, but now that matters had come to this point, he found himself begrudging it. The security deposit receipt was just inside the paper holder. Two months’ worth of the security deposit remained.

Fujiko stood waiting squarely in the light rain, holding open her black-and-white umbrella. She was a beautiful widow who had long frequented Yozo's residence and remained one of the attentive listeners to his accounts concerning Yoko.

Before long, intending to have dinner at Sayoko’s house together, they hailed a car. Ultimately, it could be said that his illusions had been utterly shattered by the romance with Kiyokawa. After considerable time had passed—when she opened a bookstore in Shibuya, turned its back room into a salon for young people, and somehow managed to secure a livelihood—Yoko wanted Yozo to see it too, and so she specially dispatched Kitayama as her envoy to request a meeting. At that time, Yozo was taken by Yoko—with whom he had arranged to meet—to see the store; but after visiting two or three times, the young man working there as shopkeeper and book delivery person turned out to be the literary youth from the oden shop in the third block. Through this man’s accounts, news of Yoko’s recent circumstances occasionally reached Yozo’s ears, and her life in the streets—seemingly the opposite of her admiration for Madame Colette—appeared to be taking shape.

Around that time, through a chance opportunity, Yozo found himself at a standstill on a landing where he cast off the pretentious airs of his meticulous haori and hakama attire. Becoming liberated in his Western suit, he found he could even heal from the exhaustion of romance. And from that time onward, the dust-laden phantom of her gradually faded away.