Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

For a long time now, I had been wishing to live alone. Both my hometown and my family there had completely faded from memory, and even now my family register remains pristine white, those distant blood relations beginning to fade from recollection.

The only one was Mother, who often sent letters scolding me in my faltering state, saying— You may resent me for being your mother and seeing how your Stepfather’s troubles weigh on us, but here—press your hand to your chest and think on it proper. They say you’re reliable and I do trust you, but if we keep messin’ up the man’s name on papers, it’s hard on me too—they told us to send five yen from your side, but with Granny dead, you know we can’t even scrape that together. So with him bein’ like that, your Stepfather’s been puttin’ up with it all proper-like—lately he goes to the Naval Barracks carryin’ coal with just a box lunch havin’ soy sauce dribbled over his rice. They say we owe five yen, but we’re scrapin’ two together—you’ve got to bear with us. Writing letters takes a whole day, and my head throbs. If I ever thought of going back—what good would it do, even with two of us?

Mother. I kept taking out Mother’s unsophisticated letters, tears welling up and spilling over—*Who’d go back for you? Even if I returned to the countryside, I couldn’t get a decent meal... Just you wait.* What struck me hardest in Mother’s letters was how Stepfather went to work at the Naval Barracks every day carrying a lunchbox drenched with soy sauce.—I’d already been in Tokyo for four years. It wasn’t such a distant past.

In those four years, I became wife to three men. This current one—the third man—stood diametrically opposed to my temperament: an ordinary fellow devoid of embellishment. To illustrate: “Seems you’ve moved again—to quite a lonesome place this time, eh?” When people would inquire like this, I’d cheerily respond as ever—“Oh yes! A grand estate-like place with thousands upon thousands of azaleas!”—spreading my arms wide while laboring to convey those imagined azalea thickets’ beauty. Yet invariably, the third man would interject with blank-faced precision—“Two hundred bushes at most. Commonplace ones too—inferior varieties planted on what’s essentially an overgrown estate ruin.” Thus I’d find myself mortified beyond remedy. Though I often thought to display proper fury should we ever grow truly close—perhaps our newness together or some residual restraint made me prudent—I always swallowed his arid pronouncements silently, never deigning to repay them in kind.

Having already been twice married—to two different men—and because I had preserved those men’s true natures like sooty specimens within the confines of another memory (no matter how I put it), it was far too troublesome now to start arguing over “this or that.”

II

As for how the second man came to connect me with the third, Komatsu Yoichi— When he would strike you, the bones made a sound like rice being freshly cooked. In his meager wallet lay a single Chinese copper coin— a whip perfectly suited for striking. To scatter bones and flesh apart, he’d pin me against the wall: “You think this woman can eat dandelions?!” Dandelions glistening with white dew— he’d crunch them noisily while insisting it was all your fault, and beat me with that copper coin whip every time.

The second man’s name was Uotani Ichitaro. “My ancestors were probably wanderers,” he’d say. “They must’ve caught fish and crunched their way through ’em.” Even as he said this, he’d hit me when our poverty left us without food for days on end, strike me while declaring he’d made me eat boiled dandelions instead of rice, snarling, “Why can’t you shed that vulgar woman’s nature of yours?” “What kind of whore shows her collar all the way down her back?!” he’d snarl while striking me. Truly, each day my bones threatened to rattle apart—I’d become nothing but a punching bag for his blows.

I lived with that man for about two years, but after being kicked in the ribs, I mustered my resolve and fled to a distant town. Even after moving to the city where my bones no longer creaked, I still occasionally sent letters to the man I’d left—slipping one-yen bills inside—writing things that meant, *If you don’t hit me, maybe I could come back to see you once.* Then from the man I’d left came this: “You left me because you wanted to whore yourself—because you wanted to slather your collar with thick face powder and gorge on fancy food. Me? I’ve gone three days without eating now.” “By the time this letter arrives, it’ll be four days—think about that.”

In a corner of this bustling city, there was a man who hadn’t eaten a proper meal for four days—a man who kept spitting in disgust at a society that refused to let him work, ranting and raving… I could never bring myself to reply to such letters, so I’d sing that cheerful little tune—*I’ve abandoned everything for you alone*—and keep up appearances as I got through each day. Before long, the man named Uotani must have married too, for I once saw him walking with a petite woman, looking positively buoyant. At that very moment, I happened to be wearing a white apron, so I didn’t call out to him—but I’d already resolved to wash my hands of this barmaid work soon, taking secret pleasure in dropping every yen I earned into the hell jar.

And then—not many months had passed before I found myself welcoming the New Year at that rundown café, once again becoming a bride for the third time alongside Yoichi. I was made to ponder deeply: Despite having so fervently wished to live alone, what a weak-willed, loneliness-prone woman I must be.

III

“How did your previous husband used to scold you...” Yoichi removed the boneless portion of dried horse mackerel from his mouth and said. “I never got scolded or anything.”

“There’s no way that’s true—I bet you had it pretty rough.”

Sucking on the bony horse mackerel, I stared at the bathhouse chimney. “Just how much were you scolded...” What a brutish way to ask. I endured the burning heat creeping up my spine and looked up at Yoichi’s face. Yoichi slouched and licked his chopsticks. I felt as though vinegar had filled my stomach—my eyelids began to swell.

“Why bring this up now—are you trying to torment me? Look, no matter how poor we get, please don’t torment me. Don’t hit me. I know we’ll never be any better off than this—that days when we can’t even eat like this will keep coming—but don’t beat my body just because we’re poor. “If you insist on hitting me no matter what… then I’ll… I’ll have to leave you again. And if you hit me this time, my wobbly right rib will snap clean through—and then I won’t be able to work at all.”

“Oh… So your previous man was hitting you that much, huh?” “Oh yes—he called me this tattered woman, y’know.” “No wonder you often talk in your sleep. ‘Have mercy—my bones’ll shatter!’ you keep crying even in your dreams.” “But—it’s absolutely not like I’m crying because I miss the man I left. When you’re tormented too much, even a dog whimpers in its sleep, don’t you think?” “I’m not blaming you. I figured you must’ve had it pretty rough.”

“Aren’t you going to eat this horse mackerel anymore?” “Nah.” Maybe because our dining table was so small, the fish looked enormous—a whole creature from head to tail we hadn’t had as a proper meal in ages. I devoured every scrap Yoichi had left behind, licking the plate clean. Yoichi stared at the white fish bones remaining on the dish and chuckled like he’d seen something absurd. “Why’re women—creatures like you—so damn fond of fish?” “Men can’t stand scales, can they?” “Scales remind me—why don’t we smash that carp hell jar you brought? Should cover moving costs.”

“Well, the moving fees are one thing… But jumping from an eight-yen place to seventeen yen—that’s quite a gap. And when I went to see it yesterday, it looked like the kind of house where raccoon dogs would come prowling!” “What’s seventeen yen to fuss over? If I find decent work, there’s no need to be so anxious.” “But that’s because you’ve never set up a household with another woman besides me.” “But I think we’ll soon find ourselves with our hands and feet tied—”

“Hmph, you’re quite the experienced one, but you shouldn’t say such things.” Had I possessed more youth in my life with Yoichi, I might have blossomed into an innocent young woman—but instead, I remained ever like a stray dog, desperate for my next scrap of food. This shift from renting a second-floor room to maintaining a full household filled me with dread, as though we were setting out across an endless desert.

IV

The fact that I’d taken out the hell jar from the wrapping cloth and shaken it near Yoichi’s ear with such a grand gesture left me utterly mortified. For when I thought of my stepfather and mother eating nothing but soy sauce rice on their distant journey, I would use old postcards to dig through the hell jar, converting every last silver coin into paper bills to send in letters to Mother. Now, when he told me, “Go ahead and break it,” I—knowing full well the contents were nothing but copper coins—found myself with no choice but to confess.

“It’s fine to break it, but… the truth is, it’s already mostly copper coins now.”

“Coins are money too. They’re heavy enough—should be twenty or thirty sen’s worth.” This man might be emotionally numb or something. Without so much as a flicker in his eyes even at a gust of wind, he drank his tea.

“Money doesn’t stick around—ah, it’s finally raining. Hey, this is rough.” I smashed the hell jar against the pillar with all my might.

The tear-off calendar read June 15th.

It was Taian—an auspicious day marked on the calendar as favorable for wedding journeys.

From afternoon onward, thunder roared fiercely, and even hail-like rain began to fall.

Being from mountainous country—likely why his legs were as densely hairy as a forest—Yoichi began busily packing. I was intensely happy. When I saw the man packing with all his strength, I recalled the lonely dreariness of those times I'd fastened my own luggage alone, and right here—in this moment—I found myself growing strangely tender, thinking At any rate, I want us to keep going together for a long time.

I tucked into the knot of my salt-faded merino obi all manner of inseparable tools—kitchen knives, metal fire chopsticks, radish graters, dew ladles—everything. Also inside my breast pocket lay chopsticks, a hand mirror, and two slices of salmon I’d bought for five sen, wrapped in newspaper. “Don’t make such a fuss—just wrap them in a furoshiki already.” “Well yes—but I was thinking of carrying the bucket slung over like this.” From the second-floor rented house where we’d first set up our household to the estate ruins that would become our new home was perhaps five chō by road. Along that mere five-chō stretch lay a crematorium, radish fields, graves, and cedar forests—to avoid them meant a terrible detour. To save on moving costs, we decided to take that shorter path and carry our meager belongings one by one. Our belongings—if they could even be called that—consisted of a dish holder made from beer crates, a tall-legged rickety table, futon bedding, furoshiki-wrapped bundles, Yoichi’s painting tools, and things of that sort.

The futon was of course mine—something that hadn’t existed in the days of the men I’d left. It was a futon patched together from yukata cloth—Mother had written to ask whether one pillow would suffice when sending it. I had written only to Mother about the third man’s background—just a few of my thoughts—so she must have lamented inwardly, “This daughter’s gone and found herself another different man again.” Though grieving like that deep down, she rallied herself and showed consideration by writing to ask, “Will one pillow suffice?” When I saw Mother’s letter that had slipped out from the futon folds, I felt deeply ashamed. I’ve heard upper-class people feel less shame—but even if Mother tries not to feel ashamed herself as someone lowborn, having pillows sent before would mean I’ve already begged three new ones for this man. As I kept thinking this way, a sorrowful shame welled up—so sharp it made me shudder.

At that time, Yoichi had one cotton futon and a single buckwheat chaff pillow resembling a ripe persimmon. Having no pillow myself, I used a zabuton folded double—while not particularly inconvenient, I suffered from how conspicuously soiled that cushion grew. To Mother’s thoughtful inquiry about needing two pillows, though I longed to say yes immediately, I instead wrote back affecting nonchalance that one would suffice. Then came into my hands a single rustic black-lacquered pillow. Perhaps it had been my dead grandmother’s—whether from its excessive height or other reasons, it fit so poorly against my neck I couldn’t discern if I slept or lay awake.

Afterward, I sent Mother a lengthy letter of thanks regarding the futon, but as for the pillow, I made sure not to include even a single word of gratitude.

V

Azaleas surrounded the house of course—along with deutzia bushes, thistle flowers, and paulownia trees. Within this vast estate grounds beyond our home stood about four more single-story houses similarly encircled by flowering plants and trees, arranged in a circular formation. Before the house stretched fifty or sixty low-growing pine trees planted in a row. Through their needled crowns peeked a field—a vacant lot spanning some two hundred *tsubo*. At its center rose a solitary Himalayan cedar. "You could comb every corner of Tokyo and still not find a spot this fine," he remarked.

Yoichi was scraping away at the paint that had hardened like oyster shells on his palette with a palette knife, appearing thoroughly pleased with this house we'd moved into.

When I slid open the glass door labeled “Entrance/Exit,” a long corridor ran horizontally through like a dormitory, with three six-tatami rooms lined up parallel to it like birdcages. “But looking at it from outside—what would people think the owner does? I can’t help feeling it’s the sort of house a tinsmith or carpenter would live in.” “Hmph—with you being so refined, it’s all much of a muchness anyway,” he said. “We could put up a painter’s sign... But an unpretentious place like this? You won’t find another even if you try. The garden’s spacious and neighbors are far off...”

“Speaking of neighbors, we need to deliver soba tonight—what do you think?” “How many should we give to each household?” “Well, just three each should do, don’t you think?” The beginning after a move was always strangely lonely—a time when I found myself remembering things. I’d had such memories countless times. Those distant days when I’d moved with the men I’d left, distributing soba each time—by now, the world beyond the window was already beginning to darken. I abruptly looked up at the ceiling as if to shake off the illusion.

“Oh dear—the electricity hasn’t been connected yet.”

“You’re right—there’s no service line either. We’ll have to manage without for two or three days.”

The power of long-ingrained habits was truly terrifying. I stood up and jabbed the middle of the pillar two or three times with my index finger. Then, to an extent even I hadn't anticipated, the pillar shook violently, and sandy dust from the ceiling began raining down on the napes of our necks like dandruff.

“Hey you—even torn down, this shack wouldn’t fetch more than twenty or thirty yen at best.” “However you calculate it, seventeen yen rent is too cruel—it’s downright foolishness!”

Yoichi fell silent and began earnestly rubbing the tip of his red nose. This woman would fuss over every little thing even on a trip—that much was certain, he thought. In her past life, she must have gone through considerable hardship—running pawnshop errands, turning down loan requests, haggling over rent—all that sort of thing. Yoichi, seemingly having been thinking such thoughts, leaned his back heavily against the wall and spoke. “I’m such a romanticist at heart, you see… but what was it about you that drew me in, I wonder…”

When he spoke to me with such earnestness, I couldn't help but well up with tears again. "Will this man too run away from me?" Men's hearts are such troublesome things. The two men I'd left behind would always complain—this wasn't right, that wasn't right—then squander every last yen on themselves when they had money, only to take out their frustrations by striking my body when we couldn't eat.

“Hey, am I really the type of woman who isn’t all that appealing?” “Well, we are husband and wife after all, and it’s not like I have anyone else to send me money...”

Yoichi searched through the nail box and pulled out a yellow candle about two sun long, lit it, and walked briskly—almost impatiently—toward the room with the kitchen.

Left alone in the central dark room, I reluctantly lay prone on the damp tatami, covered my eyelids with my sleeve, and tentatively sang out, "I suppose I'm a romanticist too," though my voice held no particular conviction.

VI

The room—likely uninhabited for years—held a stale, coarse odor like strawboard, with faint mold traces edging the black tatami mats. “Hey! At least take soba to the neighbors! We share a well, you know!” Yoichi snapped at me while thudding something against the doorframe. I bought a thirty-sen soba voucher from the local shop and went to greet the first house on the left for our moving formalities.

Though called neighbors, the houses were spaced out in a rural manner with shrubs dotting between them, making it look practically like a stand-alone house. I wore a water-logged flannel undergarment that seemed to ooze grime, and wound Yoichi’s three-shaku obi—the one he used for his band—round and round my waist.

“They must be wondering, ‘What sort of people live there?’” In case they asked, I resolved to obscure things by saying “He’s an art instructor,” then slid open the glass door marked “Entrance/Exit” as though it were truly my own home.

The owner of this house must have been quite fond of white flowers, for in every vacant lot, early-blooming ones resembling pyrethrum bloomed like snow.

White smoke was rising from the roof.

In the shade of the flowers, a boy was urinating all by himself, singing "Let’s go home since the frogs are croaking." When I returned after greeting just one house, Yoichi had lit the thin one-sen candle I’d bought beforehand and was slapping something onto the wall of the room adjoining the kitchen.

The house was already pitch dark. "What sort of person is he?"

“He’s an accountant at the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, they say.” “Hmm, a serious sort, isn’t he.” On the earth-toned walls were pasted Modigliani’s painting of a woman missing half her head and Dufy’s sea painting awash in blue.

Even such slapdash color prints could soothe these desolate walls. Perhaps because the lamplight was dim, the sea's color burned blue and wet into my eyes. "That next house is the Kiaijutsu Clinic." "Huh, what do they actually do there?" "When I came alone to look at this house, the daughter from the Kiaijutsu Clinic showed me around—she's really quite kind." "Come to think of it, that same girl brought me here too. Seems our place is just like mine—you know, where they've got that wooden sign out front saying 'Cucumber, Tomato, Eggplant Seedlings for Sale.'"

Each time Yoichi took the lamp and circled through the three rooms, I trailed after him like a moth. In the right-side room with monk-style tatami mats, Van Gogh’s profile of a girl clung to the wall, terrifyingly emaciated. Beneath it, I could really use even a single chest of drawers. This room seemed suitable enough to serve as a bedroom, with walls on two sides and paulownia branches hanging over the window, through which Mr. Kosato Manzo’s kitchen entrance could be seen in the distance. The central room was naturally meant to serve as Yoichi’s atelier, but with all four shoji screens opening onto the corridor, it ended up being the noisiest of the three rooms.

Yoichi decorated this room with a single landscape painting of his own framed in a handmade mount. It wasn't a particularly good painting. I had never once considered Yoichi's paintings particularly skilled. And perhaps another reason was that I'd never much cared for how he drew those small roads horizontally across the canvas like this. "I prefer paintings without roads." I had indeed tried voicing such opinions before, but Yoichi would vehemently daub multiple brown roads across the canvas—he might well have been thinking to himself: "What would you ever understand about painting?"

VII

Mountains nurture nature through stillness; water soothes emotion through motion—between these two states, people find dwellings. I once heard Yoichi say there was such fine phrasing in an essay by Bashō called *The Record of Sharfudō*. It pained me that Yoichi—who knew such exquisite words—could find contentment in this dwelling that offered no real peace, with its exorbitantly high rent incompatible with our income and ramshackle state where even a horse might wander in.

Under the kitchen sink, bamboo grass and vines resembling mountain burdock had overgrown, and the base of the threshold had crumbled into an ant-riddled ruin.

“I’m sorry about this. If you’re not too tired, please hang a shelf in the kitchen.”

“Let’s leave the shelf for tomorrow and make dinner or something.”

“Yes, but with nothing that even resembles a proper shelf, there’s simply nowhere to begin.”

“My eyes are swimming. Let’s make dinner.” While removing the headband from around his head, Yoichi brought the charcoal box to the kitchen.

Two slices of salmon and no rice. So when Yoichi left for the adjacent room, I took a stone and in the gloom began tapping away at the koi-patterned hell jar I’d failed to break earlier, starting from its tail end. The fragile earthen fragments crumbled into a crumbled mess atop my apron, while the copper coins spilling across my knees held a considerable heft. Every one I looked at seemed to be a copper coin. One by one, I scratched at the edges of the coins spilled across my lap, hoping to find even a single fifty-sen silver coin mixed in.

There were exactly twenty copper coins, one ten-sen holed coin and one fifty-sen silver coin each, and for a while my heart pounded like a child’s.

If all these one-sen copper coins I’d swapped out had been fifty-sen silver pieces, they would have amounted to over ten yen—I took the bamboo basket and went out into the shadow-drenched town. Though lined with low-eaved buildings, the town held a relatively diverse array of shops, and places like the tiny bar called Hato—no larger than a shipping crate—were playing records that sang of Ginza.

In the midst of that town flowed a river. A white bridge arched across it. Beyond the bridge stood rows of cheap eateries typical of the outskirts, and there was said to be a Hokkeji Temple somewhere there. I bought about one sho of rice and, at the vegetable stall, some onions and a small bunch of Shantung cabbage. Bundling them in my apron as if concealing a kitten, I felt that familiar reassurance—*this will get us through tomorrow*—a sensation I'd known countless times before, alongside memories of the men with whom I'd had to endlessly subsist on such meager assurances. If only I'd crashed headlong into something until blood sprayed upward—if only I'd split my brow and shattered bone—maybe then the path ahead would have become clear. Was it to work? To eat? For what purpose did humans even live? Each day being nothing but scraping by was growing increasingly painful to me.

Groping through the karatachi gate, I found the house pitch-dark, save for the charcoal fire in the shichirin burning on the kitchen’s earthen floor—bright as an eye in the gloom.

“Where were you?” “I... well... there was no rice left, so I went out to the street.”

“To buy rice? Why didn’t you say so sooner? I can’t move anymore!” Yoichi seemed to be lying spread-eagle, and as he said this, he appeared to be rolling restlessly across the tatami. “I meant to say it sooner but couldn’t find the right moment… It’ll be ready in no time.” “Yeah—look, there’s no need to hold back. If there’s no money, just say so plainly. You should just say it straight. …I’ll make the rounds at the Ueno Exhibition tomorrow or something. I think there should be some scraps of painting work left. Expecting to make a living by painting without working is just too damn greedy. Exactly! All this talk about art and paintings—they’re just personal indulgences anyway. Someone like me might as well paint summer panoramas with house paint and show them to country grandpas and grannies. That’s what suits me best!”

“Are you scolding me?” “I’m scolding you.” “I’m not scolding you at all—that’s why it’s annoying. You shouldn’t twist things around like that.—What I’m telling you is poor folks shouldn’t go being vague about things.” “Kick all that reserve aside and make your demands clear to anyone!” “Self-abasing thoughts’ll only drag you down.”

As I washed the rice, tears overflowed. The man’s words—Don’t be servile—struck my chest with a thud, and my pretense of being a chaste woman, maintained until now, began clattering apart in wretched ruin. Yoichi shouted in a voice that crackled like a whip, as though dragging himself up from his current state of despair toward everything. “In this day and age, this extravagant notion that we can’t survive unless there’s something to drown in—we’ve got to purge that.” “We can’t even eat properly…”

“Even if we don’t eat, wouldn’t it be better to just drown…”

“Just how many days’ worth of hunger discipline have you built up, anyway? There’s no way it could last a year.”

8

Serene days continued.

From the roots of the mitsuba plants I had planted by the wellside, delicate white flowers resembling millet bloomed. The Modigliani on the wall, the Utrillo, the Duffy—all had faded into terribly dull colors, and once Yoichi left each morning, I spent entire days idling in the garden. The air of an unoccupied room always presses down heavily upon one’s shoulders like a human hand from above. Moreover, with no furniture and walls dominating the space, even in daytime the room felt dreary and lonely.

A blue sky stretched above. The mitsuba flowers swayed gently, their white blossoms like scattered grains of rice.

“Auntie, why aren’t you wearing your obi?” The boy of Mr. Kosato—the one who had sung the frog song—tilted his head with precocious affectation and peered curiously at the area around my waist. “Auntie gets a headache when she wears an obi.” “Hmph—my dad gets headaches too.” I fastened my front with a twisted cord of blue and yellow. —Ah, that worn-out red merino obi must have already passed from that Korean junk dealer’s hands to some nursemaid’s by now. It had been five days since I sold my obi. With no train fare to Ueno this morning either, Yoichi took his chestnut-colored shoes and went to sell them to that Park fellow.

“How much?”

“He bought them for sixty sen.” “So did Mr. Park know those shoes had four holes?”

“Anyway, while making his rounds at the mansions doing patchwork, they told him to have some miso soup before leaving—so he drank some.” “Was it good?” “Ah, it was really good… I’ll leave twenty sen here, so get yourself something to eat.” Since morning, I had stood vacantly in the garden clutching twenty sen. In the pine treetops, cicadas had begun their first incessant singing, and everything was a green that hurt the eyes. When I tried to swallow my saliva, my tongue felt oddly feverish and rough. I wanted to eat something—red bean rice, Chinese noodles, mochi cakes, udon—and fantasized about such affordable treats as I clinked two white ten-sen coins by my ear.

The cicadas sang incessantly.

Through the sparse pine grove on the other side, several unharnessed horses were being led.

“Lovely weather we’re having...” Park the junk dealer kicked open the trifoliate orange gate while rhythmically tapping his neck with a scale and entered. “Mr. Park… those shoes had holes in them, didn’t they…” “It’s fine. I’ll make my profit at the mansions anyway.” “What a relief.” “It’s fine. Does Mr. Komatsu come home late?” “Yes… he always returns after nightfall…” “That’s hard.—Now then, how about buying a kerosene stove? You can pay in three installments.”

“Well… how much would that be?”

“Ninety sen will do. It’s quite convenient to begin with.” Park, finding the coolness pleasant, lay sprawled along the long entrance hallway watching the way I was operating the kerosene stove that kept rumbling. Though quite rusty, coated in grey enamel, it looked oddly old-fashioned. When I lit it, there came a deep whirring—like the drone of an airplane descending. “We don’t need that much kerosene. One can lasts three months—same at my house.”

When Park left after setting down the kerosene stove, I placed that gray stove by the kitchen window and gazed at it. Why does furniture comfort us humans so much?

As I was discarding the water from boiling udon by the wellside in the evening, Mr. Kosato’s child came running over and looked up at the sky.

“Hey, Auntie! There’s a plane flyin’!”

“Where?” “There—you can hear it, right…”

I stroked the head of the child gazing up at the sky. "Auntie, your kerosene stove's makin' that noise—come tomorrow an' I'll show ya..." Even after being told this, the child—since Mr. Kosato's household likely still cooked with charcoal or firewood, as I'd seen smoke rising daily from their roof—kept peering at the pale evening sky with a puzzled look and insisting, "Ain't that a plane?" Nine

Yoichi kept his diary with diligence. Had it been me, I probably would have found it too foolish to write anything at all. Yet even on days that passed without purpose, Yoichi would methodically jot down notes about the rain or clear skies as if they were official records. When days of rain and clear skies kept repeating day after day, even Yoichi himself must have reached his limit, for he began writing things like “Want a mosquito net” and “Saw an advertisement in town saying ‘If I were a king’” in his diary. Such things began to appear in his entries.

But the days of hunger continued like a chain. Even the meticulous Yoichi now often abandoned his diary, letting thin layers of dust accumulate.

And so, one morning in August with the diary's pages still blank—perhaps having had a disturbing dream—when I awoke, I found myself gazing at the shadow cast on the wall as usual. It was a beautiful pale yellow dawn. The light had not yet reached the window's edge. At that moment, I heard unfamiliar footsteps. "Still around five o'clock—who could that be?" While pondering this, I pushed open the sliding door and peered through the glass-paned door that offered a view of the garden—there stood a large, ruddy-faced man who casually met my eyes and smiled. A chill ran down my spine, but I forced a smile.

“Is Mr. Komatsu awake?”

“You’re quite early. I’ll go wake him right now.” Perhaps it was the morning light that made me think this gentleman dressed entirely in new clothes—coming to visit Yoichi so early—must be some particularly close friend from afar. I hurriedly shook Yoichi awake. “I don’t have any friend like that. Did he say ‘Komatsu’—?” “Yes—he’s laughing and asking if Komatsu’s awake.”

“That’s strange—” While Yoichi was putting on his kimono, I unlocked the front door. Then what do you suppose happened? Four or five gentlemen, each holding shoes in their hands, charged down a long corridor shouting loudly and scattered in three directions. As I fled panic-stricken into the bedroom, two gentlemen blocked my path from behind and shouted.

“Are you Mr. Komatsu Yoichi?” Yoichi must have been taken aback; his lips stiffened and twitched nervously. “Come down to the station with us.” “Huh... What’s this about? If it’s ’bout getting caught pissin’ in public, I might’ve done that—but what’s the actual cause here?” “No need to play innocent.” “You are Komatsu Yoichi?” “That’s correct. I’m Komatsu Yoichi—a painter currently doing daily practice by painting seven or eight cedar trees from Toshogu Shrine at the Ueno Exposition.”

“Hmph—whether you paint or not makes no difference either way. Just come with us for now.” “Is this about thought crimes? Well, I’m just a temp right now—if I don’t go today, someone else’s gonna snatch up the job, see?”

“Well, come along like a man—once we sort it out properly, that’ll be that.”

“How many hours is this gonna take? It’s not gonna take long, isn’t it?” Perhaps having composed himself, Yoichi relaxed his lips and began to laugh. “Since I don’t want this dragging on till the 29th, I’ll show you this here thing.”

With that, Yoichi took out his draft notice from the closet and showed it to them. “Surely this must be some kind of mistake? I’m supposed to go off for three weeks’ military service at month’s end like this, you know.”

The gentlemen who had searched the other two rooms also wore blank expressions, "Hey, seems we've got the wrong man here." "That can't be. This man here—I've obtained conclusive evidence." "But that's odd—this 'Yoichi' isn't an artistic pseudonym, is it? His real name should be Komatsu Seiichi—written like this, right?" "So why don't you check the draft notice?"

A single small draft notice passed from hand to hand among the gentlemen.

“How strange. We’ll have to start our search over. By the way, there aren’t any other guests here, right?”

Outside the Kikuchi Gate, a small white automobile was waiting. Fishmongers heading to market and newspaper deliverymen peered through the commotion. “Tch—what’s their damn monthly salary even for?” “Hey! Kanayo! Go sprinkle salt over this!” “But we’ve got no salt!” “No salt? Use mud then! No mud? Dump kerosene on it!” “You tear through someone’s home without permission and can’t even say ‘Sorry’?” “What’s to say… Seein’ ’em like that—starvin’ and fumin’—makes your own face burn red.”

“When I was little, my stepfather used to set up shop by the roadside and would often get slapped by constables—but really, what more do they expect us to do?”

Ten On the evening when they said the Ueno Exposition work would finish in two or three days, Yoichi came home with his whole head wrapped in bandages. "Everything's blocked off. Hey! Maybe the heat got to me—I got antsy and wound up in a fight." "With who?" "They say painters who mess with oils get this annoying air about them, right? So I told them—if you're talking about me, say it straight to my face." "Then that punk painter goes 'Working with some half-assed artist's a real pain,' so I yelled 'Who you think you are acting high and mighty while skimming our pay?'—then he whacked a cup right on my forehead."

“Oh my, you look just like a ditch-digger. Does it hurt?” “Got some glass in there, but it’ll be fine.” From the three-shaku sash he’d tightened as a makeshift bandage, Yoichi produced thirteen days’ wages and handed them over.

“They say it’s two yen fifty sen per day, but then they go and deduct fifty sen like this. On top of that, they set our share at about four yen for the venue work and then skim off their cut—it’s just unbearable.” Even so, having nearly thirty yen in cash sent a jolt of joy through her chest.

“But did you start that fight on purpose to get them to stop?” “That might not be it, but everyone’s all complaints until they’re up front—then they start bowing and scraping.” “That’s just how it is.”

For the first time in ages, I bought one shō of kerosene.

The gray kerosene stove roared vigorously with a sound like a round airplane. The two of them went out to the garden and poured water over themselves.

While splashing water over the darkened azalea leaves, I found myself absently thinking about the day Yoichi would depart.

“Just six more days until you’re a soldier…”

“Ah.” “What should I do about the house?” “There’s nearly thirty yen here. Five yen will cover my travel and expenses, ten for rent—can’t you get by on what’s left?” “I suppose so.”

The tomato seedlings we’d gotten from the Kiaijutsu Clinic had finally produced about three yellow flowers. When those flowers fell and the red fruits ripened, he would return—or so I wondered. Reading the letter from home about my stepfather, who had gone to work at the naval barracks with a soy-sauce-rice lunchbox only to be swept away by a trolley, along with the anxiety of living alone with nothing to do, I found myself strangely consumed by darkness.

I laid out Karatsu-made bowls, plates, and rice bowls on a straw mat. “Every last one of you’s been sitting unused! Not a single bowl’s held rice! Look here—genuine Karatsu ware! Five for two bu—take a loss! If this doesn’t shock ya, c’mon—three kan! Hell, this girl here’s worth twenty-five sen! Good girl, red hair ’n’ all—snot-nosed kid, I’m tellin’ ya!”

I recalled how at the old stone-paved wharf in Nagasaki, my stepfather used to set up shop alongside Chinese satin sellers, sleeves rolled up as he hawked Karatsu pottery. Those long years when we’d shared a single bowl of yellow champon udon between parent and child; those times when road obstructions forced us to stop, and my stepfather’s sun-blackened, exhausted figure would haul our cart through the countryside of northern Kyushu—in the four years since I had come to Tokyo, I’d already received some twenty yen in remittances from these impoverished parents.

In the end, though my stepfather and the others had settled in Sasebo for over a year now, the trolley-pushing work at the Naval Barracks might have finally been his last.

A letter from my hometown under dark clouds. "So if you can manage it, send seven yen straightaway—Stepfather’s leg hurt so bad they had to amputate it, but he says it’s fine now. The coal work’s been rough on him, but they say going to the hospital might do some good."

After finishing dinner, I thought of showing Yoichi the letter from my hometown. Yoichi must have been deep in thought, leaning against the window as he sang in a lonely manner. The melody carried a deeply autumnal quality, steeped in melancholy. Time and again I sipped hot tea while waiting for a chance to present the letter, but Yoichi never stopped that lonesome singing.

Eleven "I'll send money home quietly"—thinking this, I kept bandaging Yoichi's forehead each day. "Even small injuries hurt terribly. What must it be like when they amputate an arm or leg?" "That's life over. If it were me, I'd kill myself." "If you can't work, being alive loses all meaning..." The day Yoichi left for his mountain regiment, winds raged so violently they turned the air gray. "It feels like spring—this vile wind." Everyone repeated these words as they gathered at the station.

“Did you turn off the kerosene stove?” Yoichi looked at my face and laughed—the sort of laugh that said he had no choice but to mention such mundane things. With his service bag clutched in hand and geta on his feet, he looked exactly like a newspaper subscription collector. I let out a quiet chuckle and dodged the moment with, “Maybe it’d be better if the house burned down.” “If you get lonely alone, you could ask the clinic girl to come over.” “It’s fine—really. Being alone’s easier anyway…”

I found myself feeling an almost familial affection for Yoichi. A sweetness I’d never experienced with my two former husbands left me strangely prone to tears; I clenched my double chin and looked downward.

"I can't stand this... absolutely..." For Yoichi, who loved sweets, I wrapped five-sen caramels and a bunch of bananas in newspaper for him to take along. "You'll be staying at an inn tonight anyway, won't you?" "There's no one I know there—I'll just end up at some cheap lodgings near the barracks." "There must be many households facing terrible hardships from the draft." "Ah, for farmers during harvest season—they must truly be struggling."

Beach resort guide flyers fluttered in the cold air, their edges rattling stiffly as the thin hems of women’s summer dresses passing before the station billowed up like sails. The loudspeaker crackled with departure announcements. “Keep yourself well.”

As we walked along the long platform, Yoichi kept repeating the same thing over and over. Whenever he spoke such kind words to me, my chest tightened strangely. And so, to make myself look every bit the foolish woman I was pretending to be, I puffed out my cheeks and forced a smile. As I puffed out my cheeks, the inside of my eyes ached. I pursed my lips tightly and waited for Yoichi to peer out from the window.

The train bound for the mountains remained soot-stained as it clattered open its windows like eyelids. When the windows opened, the crowd seeing them off swarmed toward them like ants. Yoichi held his hat and newspaper-wrapped parcel high on the luggage rack. His Adam’s apple protruded sharply. As I stared at that rugged neck, the tears I’d been holding back seeped into my nasal cavity, leaving me no choice but to fix my gaze blankly on the distant clock. “Hey!” Yoichi had already unwrapped a caramel and, with his cheek bulging from the candy, called out to me while working it around his mouth.

“What?”

“Here, have a caramel.”

No one was looking our way. Yoichi’s seat was back-to-back with the washroom, so he could probably stretch his legs out comfortably. He counted on his fingers as if suddenly remembering, “Three times seven—would that really make twenty-one days?” He muttered to himself with an air of weariness. “Since there’s nobody to watch over you, take care not to fall ill.” I prayed for the train to depart soon. Those five minutes felt endlessly impatient. Precisely because we couldn’t voice that painful feeling between us openly, my restlessness grew all the more intense—as I struggled to maintain focus, my smiling face nearly contorted out of shape.

Twelve

It must have been because I was alone. Even during daylight hours, countless cellar crickets scuttled noisily through the kitchen, flitting about incessantly.

It had been nine days since Yoichi departed. The first postcard from the mountains wrote that when the train arrived, he’d had an unpleasant time searching for lodging late at night in the valley town. The second postcard bore the notification: Matsumoto City 50th Regiment Reserve Unit, Second Company Conscript, Komatsu Yoichi, along with his address. The third postcard was a beautiful photograph of white birches on a highland gleaming pale beneath great cumulus clouds. The message read: “Today we marched about four ri on maneuvers. At a country house, I ate grapes—they were exquisitely sweet. All the farmers seem busy. As we march, I start feeling like we’re the only ones being so carefree, and gradually lose sight of why we’re even walking. Even as we did this, there was a man who couldn’t sit still. Are you managing things well at home? Just let me know.” This was what was written.

To pass the idle hours, I read Yoichi’s picture postcards and letters countless times to distract myself. What had become of those geta, I wondered. Now wearing sturdy military boots, he might actually be enjoying himself like a child. When I thought of Yoichi’s forlorn figure on the day of his departure, my chest burned painfully.

The fourth letter said: "It seems I'm always writing letters to you." You might think I'm being sweet—though I'm far off with no food worries myself, I keep fretting about how you're managing to eat. I still haven't gotten a single letter from you. You should start putting your life in order now—it'd be good if you could really settle down. Settling down doesn't mean playing at being some bourgeois housewife. It's about storing up strength to handle our life together. The ones with money go to the canteen. Those without stay in their squads; when loneliness hits, they sing any old nonsense. The singers must be getting antsy facing harvest time. There's a ship carpenter in the next bunk—says he left three kids and a wife behind—sent them the measly yen he got his first week here. That's how it goes sometimes. "Well, I'd ask after your little bird or how those flowers you planted are coming along—if you had such things there. But there's nothing beyond yourself in that place of yours. Stay well, I beg you."

How profoundly this man’s deep feelings—ones I’d never known before—made me weep with tenderness. I peered at my face in the hand mirror. “That wandering blood runs strong in you,” Mother would always say, yet here I was at twenty-three looking decades older, my lips cracked like parched earth. Shadows pooled beneath my eyes, and the long lashes I’d once preened over now stuck out haphazardly like plucked feathers, leaving nothing worth a second glance. In this bare-faced woman without rouge or powder—this naked version of myself—I found none of the considerate affection Yoichi lavished upon me when measured against the two men from my past. What’s more, even the love Mother gave me as a child eventually felt like something my stepfather could have replaced, leaving me warped by loneliness through all those years.

The fifth letter said, “I still haven’t received your letter. You’re drowning in that peculiar sense of obligation of yours, I suppose. In another year or two, you’ll realize how foolish it was—but I want you to resolve now to leap beyond that oldness. You seem determined not to let me hear about anything bad or see your weaknesses, but such things are as flimsy as dust in the wind. Well, let’s just call it a troublesome habit and be done with it. The enclosed money consists of what I received from the regiment and the leftover travel and lodging expenses from when we left Tokyo. I have not a single sen left. But I’m eating enough to get by. I’m managing. The mountains are perfectly clear.”

The sixth letter: “You are gradually growing more genuine within my heart. I read the letter. I read it without skipping a single character. It wasn’t like how you read things in such a hurry. I read while imagining your figure. The about twenty yen I sent seems to have made quite an impact—though I’d already sensed something was wrong. If you thought I’d get angry about sending fifteen yen to Mother, you really don’t understand me properly. I’ll send a letter to Sasebo too. You say you want to work—that’s fine as well.

Two yen wouldn’t last ten days anyway—but I absolutely oppose you working as a barmaid. It’s nothing to be proud of. At the barracks, I’ve been made to think about all sorts of things… Though sometimes I even let myself imagine something sweet—like us taking a newlywed trip to Sasebo together, you know? This place is dreary; awake or asleep, it’s all talk about women. Lately though, this traveler’s longing for you has begun creeping up on me at last. Ten more days and we’ll meet again. If it’s work other than being a barmaid—then work hard and stay alive for me. They say Mr. Kosato’s lost his mind—do what you can for that poor neighbor.”

The tomato flowers fell and three green fruits formed. A joy I had never before known made me remarkably cheerful. After Yoichi’s letters started arriving, through Park’s introduction, I began going early each morning to the scrap market with the daughter from the Kiaijutsu Clinic to sort scraps for making Asakusa paper.

Each morning, I would tear off a page from the calendar, listen to the remarkably vigorous roar of the kerosene stove, and sip hot tea—this became my refreshing daily ritual.

The seventh, eighth, and ninth letters from the mountain barracks were filled with words that would stain cheeks. Spikenard, silver grass, kariya grass—all autumn plants at their loneliest peak—these I would send to you. This couldn't possibly be Yoichi's verse. Yet it was a line that seeped behind my eyelids.

(November 1931)