Pathway to Japanese Literature

Bright Seaside

1

The rented room Yōko had secured was located about three blocks from Fukiko’s house, just off the main road.
It was one of those lodgings—the kind inevitably found at any somewhat famous seaside resort, where old boatmen who also worked as villa caretakers rented out side rooms.

That year, her cousin Fukiko had damaged her health and resided in Kamakura all winter.

On a certain day in February, Yōko went with her younger brother for a visit and some leisure.
No sooner had they left the station than the air here already felt different from Tokyo’s.
The large stone first torii, the pine tree avenue, and the rickshaw’s rubber wheels glided pleasantly along the sandy road.
The quintessentially Kamakura scenes of town and seaside—rendered all the more bright and expansive by sparse winter crowds—imprinted themselves on Yōko’s heart with singular clarity.

“Winter in Kamakura is nice, don’t you think?”

“It’s nice, right? The longer you stay, the more you’ll love it—it’s somehow soothing.”

The sparsely furnished dwelling—distinctly villa-like with its small, elevated sand dune thick with young pines incorporated into the garden—also struck Yōko as comfortable. As she basked in the translucent sunlight on the whitish, rough-textured veranda—where no matter how much they wiped it, sand kept creeping in to dull its sheen—she found herself wishing she too could live amid such nature, even if only for a little while. The winter sunlight, crisp with ozone and redolent of pine resin, cast her life in Tokyo in a somber light. Yōko’s married life was not going well, and discussions of separation had arisen.

“Ahh… Maybe I’ll stay here for a while.”

“That’s a great idea! You’ll be able to unwind properly.”

“...I wonder if there are any rooms for rent around here.”

Fukiko looked startled,

“Oh—are you serious, Yō-chan?”

she said.

“I might get serious about this—are there any?”
“Such a house... If I really looked for one,”

“Of course there are! They’d rent out anywhere—but if you’re coming, don’t bother with that—just stay at my house!”

“A couple of days would be fine, but...”

“Staying long is perfectly fine—the longer the better for me!”
“Right?”
“You really must come stay at my house—I’m so lonely I could die!”

“Oh, come on—it’s not like anything’s been settled yet, no matter what you say—”

They laughed it off and left that day, but Yōko couldn’t bring herself to give up and eventually sent Fukiko a letter.
The rickshaw man they often used was an acquaintance and had selected that house for her.

Three days later, Yōko, her younger brother Chūichi, and Fukiko noisily trooped over to inspect the place.
On the left side a short way from the main road stood a townhouse with four panes of glass at its entrance.
From the earthen-floored entryway opened abruptly a four-tatami space, followed by a six-tatami room partitioned by decorated paper sliding doors—this was the tatami room Yōko intended to rent.

“It’s still new.”

“Oh, we constructed it newly last year, so we’ve only rented it out for one summer.”
“In our case—unlike others—we prefer not to rent to just anyone… Especially when it comes to someone ill, you understand.”

Kami-san, a sixtyish man in a tube-sleeved work jacket, offered such a greeting from beyond the threshold of the four-tatami room.
Yōko said in a small voice to Fukiko, who sat on the south-facing bay window surveying the room,

“Professional Granny,” Yōko whispered.
Fukiko kept her smile intact while glaring at Yōko with youthful eyes.
Though Yōko disliked Old Man Kami—who, despite it being his own house, never ventured into the six-tatami room yet remained talkative—the tatami room proved convenient to rent, having been prepared from the outset for that very purpose.
There were ample cupboards, and the eastern side boasted a fairly spacious veranda that also allowed passage to the rear.

Yōko finally,

“Will you provide meals?”

she pressed.

“Well, not that we can make anything delicious, but we’ll give it a try.”

“How much would it be including meals?”

Old Man Kami

“Well...”

Old Man Kami hesitated.

“Unfortunately, as the old man has gone to the main house and we cannot confirm at present—unless you specify each meal requirement individually…”

Chūichi,

“Well, obviously,” he said.

“It’s better to keep meals separate—there’ll be times when you’re away.”

“That’s correct.”

“The room rate—that’s as Mr. Minamoto said, then.”

The rate came to two yen per tatami mat.

“Well, in summer that rate would hardly suffice, but given the current off-season...”

After leaving there, they wandered leisurely to Momijiya to drink black tea.

“Yō-chan, you’ve finally ended up imposing on this place too, haven’t you?”

Fukiko’s tone carried a hint of excitement.

“...Really, though.”

A feeling both joyful and sorrowful had dwelled in Yōko’s heart since earlier, when she had been looking at the tatami room.

“That house turned out to be surprisingly nice.”
“But the meals will surely be terrible. Come stay at my house, okay?”

Chūichi, leaning his elbows on the marble tabletop, spun the metal clip holding the brown menu paper like a top.

"What's the big deal? If they stockpile enough upfront, a glass of water later'll do."

He stopped spinning it and pointed to one spot.

“What?”

Peering in, Yōko burst out laughing.
“It’s not as if it’s you.”
“What? What?”
Fukiko stuck her head out in front of her cousin’s chest and tried to see the menu in Chūichi’s hand.
“Sandwich.”
Then she suddenly assumed a solemn expression and,

“Oh, but the ones here are delicious,” she said with a straight face.
They had black tea and sandwiches at the small shop while watching the passersby.

二

It was the day after it snowed that Yōko departed for Kamakura with all her belongings in tow.
Springlike soft snow filled the narrow backstreets behind villas, and from bamboo branches that had brushed against cloth banners, snow pattered steadily into the ruts left by passing rickshaws.
Yōko bought a desk, a rattan chair, a light bulb, and other necessary items for the time being.
As the surroundings were growing dark, she returned to the rented room.
In the four-tatami mat space at the top of the stairs, the futon bundle lay where it had been deposited upon arrival from the station.
Today, the old man (landlord) was there.

“Since I thought it would be improper for you to handle it alone—I’ll carry it up for you.”

The small-statured old man—wearing a striped kimono, his face as fleshy as a woman’s—brought in the futon bundle and wooden box packed with books and provisions to the six-tatami room.
When she saw the couple together, Yōko felt a faint impulse to smile wryly.
From their dingy rotundity to their nosiness about trifles, their greedy airs—they matched each other perfectly in their affectionate harmony.

While feeling interest in her first experience of rented-room living, Yōko set up the room to be comfortable. Facing the south-facing glass window were a desk and chair; on the right side by the sliding door, she laid a wooden box sideways, draped a cloth over it, and made this serve as a tea cabinet. When she placed the well-worn lampshade over the light bulb, the narrow room took on a sense of settled calm that made it feel unlike part of someone else’s house. Yōko settled herself before the new desk to take it in. Ahead was the glass window at night. On its surface, the light bulb and the primroses on the desk were reflected small and clear. It felt strikingly new. The night air hung intricate as a forest, and far, very far away, the sound of waves could be heard. Why does the sound of waves resonate so muffled in the darkness at night? As she strained her ears,

“Pardon me.”

The old woman opened the sliding door.

“There isn’t much, but your meal is ready. Shall I bring it up?”

Yōko had been so absorbed that she suddenly spaced out.

“Huh?”

“Shall I prepare your meal?”

“Ah. Please do.”

The old woman retreated and brought something. Though quite hungry, Yōko found herself unable to watch the meal being delivered. Alone—unable to leave her room even for meals, reduced to accepting this meager-looking food—the bizarre sense of her life shrinking made Yōko lose all composure.

“I’ll leave it here. Please come up.”

“Yes, thank you.”

After the old woman left, Yōko turned to look and found a vermilion-lacquered round tray bearing a soup bowl, rice bowl, and pickled vegetables placed directly on the tatami beside the box-shaped brazier. Yōko stood up, went over, and placed the tray on the wooden box. Beyond the four-tatami space at the top of the stairs was a three-tatami small room. That was where the couple slept and lived, and their dinner seemed to have begun. They too appeared slightly different in mood tonight, speaking in hushed tones between which clattered the sound of chopsticks.

Yōko started cutting into the corned beef can; it was hard and wouldn’t open easily. She placed it on the wooden box, set it down on the tatami, strained with effort as she struggled to procure her own meal—and in this struggle grew sorrowful at her own pitiable state, tears threatening to spill. The loneliness of one who had lost her home closed in from the night around her. Yōko stopped her hands; she nearly set out for Fukiko’s place then and there. But she restrained herself and finally opened the can. Aren’t all boarding students’ dinners like this? You spineless coward! From her three-tatami room came

“Would you care for more soup? If it pleases you, I shall refill it,” she called out.
Yōko barely managed to force down the meal on the tray.

Three

When she went around to the garden, Fukiko was standing before the parrot cage hung in the corner of the corridor. Her purplish kimono vividly caught the eye; through the glass, it appeared like a flower blooming afloat over a hill dotted with young pines. Yōko muffled her footsteps, then suddenly appeared before her eyes and gave a quick bow.

“Ah!”

She instinctively took a step back and pounded her chest with a fist,

“Yō-chan, you!”

It was a voice just barely audible.

“You scared me! Oh, I really thought it was someone else—you awful thing!”

She took down the seat cushions from atop the chairs and lined them up on the veranda.

“How’s it going? Settling in?”

“Last night during dinner, I was at my wit’s end.”

“See? I told you—it’s the same with Ms. Okamoto at my place.”
“Right about now, Yō-chan must be at your wit’s end, so—”
“Serves you right—punishment for not coming over!”

“Come tonight. That old woman’s quite efficient.”
“When it really matters, she doesn’t seem willing to do anything at all.”

Fukiko,

“Ms. Okamoto.”

She called out in a loud voice.

“Yes.”

“Since Yō-chan has come, please make some tea.”

“Yes.”

“See? That’s how it is, right? That’s why I sometimes can’t stand it anymore—there are days when I eat meals without saying a single word all day long.”

Fukiko cast a troubled look toward the back room where Okamoto—her companion and housekeeper—had withdrawn, and pleaded her case.

“Isn’t she weak?”

“Well… Can you believe she told me to leave after quarreling with the maid?”

Okamoto brought the black tea, her pale flat face framed by hair pulled back tightly.
She was especially gloomy today, speaking without moving her lips—
“Welcome.”
she greeted.
“Ms. Okamoto, do join us.”

“Ah, I’ll have mine over there.”

Compared to Yōko’s room, Fukiko’s house—being closer to the shore—was brighter, flooded with sunlight so intense it nearly dazzled.
Fukiko brought out a chair to the veranda and, with her back illuminated by the sun, began ribbon embroidery.
Yōko read the book she had brought.
From the warmed sand rose a thick mingling of heat haze and the briny scent of the tide.

Gradually, Yōko began spending more time at Fukiko’s place than in her own rented room.
Having come to take a bath, she ended up staying over, and when the next night came, she returned to the desk where her translation work lay.
There were days like that.
They lived in Fukiko’s living room—the only space with chairs—but their conversations never coalesced into anything substantial.
In the green rattan chair, Fukiko worked diligently on her intricate embroidery; in those moments,

“Flowers just won’t grow around here—even though they brought soil from the mountains, still no good, they say.”

they talked of such things.

“Ah, right there—there’s a copy of *Art et Décoration*, isn’t there?
“This—I took it from such a place, you know.”

She lifted a small piece of white linen and showed the partially embroidered thistle pattern.
With the open book still resting on her lap but her attention drawn to her hands, Yōko parted her lips slightly as she gazed at her cousin’s profile—peering this way and that at the embroidery being worked on with such fervor—and found herself lost in a swirl of emotions.
Yōko, who had left her husband Sumio and was living with surface freedom, was by no means truly free in her heart.
Beside her young cousin, this fact became all the more keenly apparent.
From Fukiko’s inner being overflowed an unhindered radiance; each and every moment of whatever she was doing passed by unconsciously in the fullness of young life.
Around Fukiko was something akin to the profound beauty of a flower blooming innocently—a beauty the flower itself could never know.
Yōko couldn’t bring herself to say a single word to Fukiko about the hardships of her own life.

IV

With Momoyo, Tei, Chūichi, Tokusuke, and even Yōko joining them, Fukiko’s living room was packed. Centered around the round table, Fukiko sat in the usual green chair in front of the chest of drawers at the back. Chūichi was enthusiastically playing the classical records he had brought. Next to him, Momoyo—wearing a yellow-green kimono with a raised pattern—sank deeply into her chair and talked to Chūichi in a low, ceaseless voice. Chūichi sat sideways on the same chair’s armrest as if wrapping his hand around Momoyo’s back. Directly across from them, Tokusuke sat in his uniform with another movie magazine spread out. The brightness of the seaside room at two in the afternoon—only the occasional sound of large pages turning in a foreign magazine and the whirring release of a spring mechanism broke the stillness.

Tei, a fifth grader, sat cross-legged on the tatami at Yōko’s feet and had been tinkering with a broken alarm clock since earlier.
The outer casing had long since vanished, leaving only the spring mechanism and gears clinging to the back of the clock face—he was trying to get them moving.
Yōko looked down at the boyish fair-skinned nape and patient fingertips, her mind ensnared by inner thoughts.
That morning, she received a letter from her family home.
It had informed her that Sumio refused to consent to her divorce, and that there seemed to be a woman in his life.
To Yōko, who had lost all attachment to Sumio, such things didn’t matter at all.
However, how strange it was to think that here was a man and woman with no love between them, living separate lives, yet legally still husband and wife—and moreover, that under this very law, Tamura Sumio, as her husband, held such varied power over her.
Yōko increasingly felt her own halfway position and, so to speak, was as melancholy as a kite caught on a branch.

――As if dissolving into stillness and light,

“Huh? Huh?”

Momoyo’s voice came softly through her nose.
The sixteen-year-old had wrapped one patterned silk-clad arm around her older cousin Chūichi’s back and kept writing something on it.

“See? That’s why.”

She must have been writing some such thing.
Chūichi pushed apart his solemnly pursed lips and nodded with a series of thoughtful “Hmm, hmm”s.
Tokusuke lifted his head from the movie magazine and casually gazed at the two across from him engaged in their antics.
They seemed utterly indifferent to his presence.
Growing increasingly self-conscious, he stuck out his tongue in a boyish gesture and buried himself back in the magazine.
A wry smile drifted across Yōko’s lips.
At that very moment, the hallway parrot let out a shrill cry and thrashed about wildly.

“Is there no feed left?”

Fukiko asked her sister.

“Momoyo, did you do it this morning?”

Momoyo either couldn’t hear or didn’t respond.

“Alright, I’ll check it out.”

Tokusuke darted sideways into the hallway.

“A cat went through.”

While twiddling the spring mechanism, Tei began pompously—when suddenly,

“What?
“Huh? What was that just now?”

With that, he abandoned the mechanism and stood up to go over to Tokusuke.

“What’re you doing with this thread?”
“It’s not thread.”
“It’s thread.”
“It’s horsehair.”

“Hmm, really? Where’d you get this?”

“I yanked it out myself.”

“You’re full of it! I’ll kick you!”

“Horses can’t bend their legs sideways. They’d go ‘heh heh heh’ if you tickled ’em.”

Fukiko stretched as she arched her back and rose from her chair,

“Doesn’t everyone want some black tea?”
“Agreed!”

Chūichi knit his brows in apparent anguish,
“Anyway, it must’ve been mantis shrimp.”

“Anyway, it must’ve been mantis shrimp,” he said.
“Seriously,”

From the hallway, Tokusuke shouted in a booming voice.
“Mantis shrimp? That’s just putting on airs!”
“But truly,” Fukiko murmured softly, as if struck by an afterthought, “were there no proper shrimp at all?”
Yōko’s body quivered with laughter.

They had stayed up making noise until past two o'clock last night.
When they woke up past ten o'clock, Fukiko—
“Ms. Okamoto, for lunch—what should we do? How about fried shrimp?”
The voices carried to where they were.
“Fried! Fried!”
Tei most honestly voiced everyone’s wishes with a shout, and they took their seats at the table with beaming faces.

However, Fukiko made a strange face and—

“This—shrimp?”

Fukiko blurted out.

“No way—this isn’t shrimp!”
“It’s not shrimp.”
“What the hell?”
Amidst their chorus of complaints, Okamoto remained unperturbed, her brow twitching ever so slightly with a hint of spite as she—
“Unfortunately, we were out of shrimp, so I prepared mantis shrimp instead.”

she replied.—Chūichi and Tokusuke did not get along with Okamoto; even as she remained in that room, they would gaze out at the garden,

“Hey, look at that second-rate thing.”
“They say watermelon sugar’s impossible to come by.”
and things like that.

The rude remarks, Okamoto acted as if she hadn’t heard them at all,
“Mr. Chūichi, shall I serve you some tea?”

With a polite voice and gaze, she held out her hand.
There were times when Yōko perceived—almost painfully—the contempt etched upon those pale cheeks.
……

When Okamoto, who had brought the black tea, disappeared from view, the men raised their voices in unison,

“Wahahaha!”

they burst out laughing.
This time, however,

“That’s enough.”

they were harshly scolded by Fukiko.
To Okamoto—who had returned from an unfortunate marriage and was living such a life—both Fukiko and Yōko must have seemed too blissfully content, enough to provoke resentment.
Yōko felt she could understand Okamoto’s silent struggle against the carefree youths from a different world.

They all went to the beach.
Around the front of the Seaside Hotel there were quite a few people, but from the river to this side it was completely deserted.
The wide beach quivered briefly in the heat haze…….
A single black dog came sniffing along the river’s edge.
While sitting in a row under the breakwater sunbathing, Tokusuke whistled at the dog.
The dog pricked up its ears and looked this way, but then, as if in a hurry, rubbed its snout into the sand once more and dashed off toward the water’s edge.

“Oh, look at this little bug!”

Yōko peered beneath Fukiko’s eyes as she lay prone on her stomach.
A small brown insect resembling a spider was trying to bury itself, its four tiny legs kicking up sand in sharp bursts.
No matter how often Fukiko lifted it to the surface with her hairpin’s tip, the creature kept kicking vigorously and burying itself again.
From nearby, Chūichi appeared and watched for a moment before suddenly flipping into a somersault and rolling down the sandy slope in a loose-limbed tumble.

“Woo-hoo!”

Tei flailed his limbs wildly and chased after him.
Nonchalantly returning,

“It’s absolutely fantastic!”

Chūichi said to Tokusuke.

“Go on, try it—you’ll see the sea up above!”

“Heeere goes!”

Tokusuke slowly pulled his hat down over his ears, crossed his arms, and rolled down with solemn weight.
Tei, the instant he lay flat, chased after him like a madman.

“Woo-hoo!”

“Whee!”

“Woo-hoo!”

The waves struck the fine sand, advancing only to retreat and retreating only to advance as if keeping rhythm with their cheers, roaring all the while.
Yōko felt a kind of joy—a swelling elation, as though something were calling to her.
She moved a little away from the men and securely wrapped both legs with the hem of her kimono.

“Whee!” Closing her eyes, she rolled all the way to the base of the sand dune in one breath. It was a sensation of fading consciousness. Far from seeing the sea above, all anyone could manage was to watch how red their own eyelids glowed when backlit by the sun. But that terrifying yet exhilarating feeling—tumbling blindly without knowing where her body would stop—how utterly liberating it was! Roll! Roll! My body!

“Alright, now we’ll form a single horizontal line!”
“Ready?”
“One, two, three!”

As she rolled through scattering sand，a small，sharp sadness pierced Yōko’s chest alongside youthful elation．
Roll，roll，my body！
To a world without her husband．
To a world without sorrow！

“Woo-hoo!”

Like a puppy, Yōko tumbled down the spring sand dune time and time again—now lining up with Tei, now colliding with Tokusuke—all while setting off small fireworks of sorrow.