Pathway to Japanese Literature

○

Minoe was sitting in the wooden-floored room.
The wooden-floored room was pitch-black.

Only the gas stove before Minoe blazed with fierce blue flames in the darkness.
By that faint light, Minoe could see the tip of her nose and her hand.

The tip of her own nose, and then the glistening hot gas flame.
While staring fixedly, Minoe listened with her whole being to the voices from over there.
Having closed the sliding door of that room, Mother and Yui sat around the brazier.
Yui was a man with neatly parted black hair wearing a shirt with a crisp white soft collar beneath his Japanese clothes.
He let out a nasal high-pitched voice.
That night in a low tone, he told the mother and daughter about the woman who had trampled his heart and become another's.
When Yui reached the part where he'd gone to Odawara with the woman for their final farewell, Okiyo—

“Oh, Minoe, you go boil this for me.”

and pressed the Seto-yaki kettle firmly into Minoe’s hands.

“Mr. Yui, please speak loud enough to be heard over there. Will you?”

Minoe couldn’t help listening to what followed.
There in the darkness, her nerves burned exactly like the gas flame—freshly colored and blazing.

“So she just went and got married after that?”

“She certainly did.”

“...But that’s too cruel, if that’s how it was.”

“So you’re saying I’m a lonely person, then?”

“...”

When the two over there fell silent, that atmosphere slowly spread throughout the cramped house.
Minoe truly felt the deepening night, finding sweetness in the silence of that brightly lit room where Yui’s white soft collar stood out.

The only sound was the hiss of the gas flame.
Watching the transparent flickering flame colors, Minoe found herself strangely absorbed as she waited for the water to boil.
To her, this late-night silence following the love story had an unusual effect.
Sitting directly on the boarded floor yet feeling no cold.

The bottom of the kettle thudded with a sliding clunk.

Shhh...……

Minoe, as if drowning, concentrated with bated breath and listened to the sound of the water beginning to boil.
When she lifted the lid with her Genroku sleeve cuff, the sound of bursting water droplets suddenly became distinct.

A little more... a little more... a little more.
The surroundings were dark, the wait interminable; with a piercing, dizzying intensity of feeling, she kept it boiling right up to the brink of overflowing. Minoe turned off the gas, withdrew her hand slightly, and stood up holding the kettle now heated enough to transmit a drowsy warmth through the padded Genroku sleeve cuffs.
She opened the sliding door.

Dazzling.
A bundle of light needles stabbed into her pupils, and a headache struck.

Minoe,

“I’m exhausted!”

Putting down the kettle, she plopped down beside Yui.

“Thank you for your trouble.”

Okiyo poured out the coarse tea with an overly earnest face and demeanor.
That seriousness grated on Minoe.
Minoe, resting her chin on the padded shoulder of her arrow-patterned haori as she looked at Yui, smiled with her eyes and lips.
Yui flashed a brief smile in return but swiftly recomposed his expression into a mock glare.
Minoe shifted her body slightly and turned toward Mother.

When he finished drinking the coarse tea,

“Well then,”

Yui stood up and brushed off the knees of his meisen kimono.
“I really should be going.”
“Is that so—well my, has it gotten this late already?”

Yui went out to the entrance hall and put on his coat and scarf.
Okiyo helped him into his coat.
Minoe leaned against the pillar and watched Yui's every movement.
When he had neatly wrapped the pure white scarf around his neck, Minoe said in a small voice,

“That suits you,” she whispered as if deeply moved.

“Goodbye then, please do come again. And give my regards to Father.”

Minoe, holding onto her mother’s shoulder, kept silently watching Yui pass through the lattice gate without saying goodbye or anything else.

When they returned to the eight-tatami room, only the scattered tea utensils suddenly stood out.

“Ugh, it’s gotten so late!”

Okiyo gathered the cleaning things while muttering through a yawn as though greatly inconvenienced.
But Minoe knew that wasn’t genuine and despised her mother.

With unwavering earnestness, Okiyo instructed the daughter.

“Now, go lock up the front.”

Sugimoto Koichi, father and husband, was on duty that winter night.
Minoe was sixteen.

○

Minoe had three younger sisters.
Minoe had to put the children to bed after eight o'clock.

Minoe too lay down beside the chintz bedding and told them some folktale while the children fiddled with her face.
The traditional Crab and the Monkey, or Urashima Taro.

“Hey, Mr. Urashima rode on the baby turtle and went off to sea!”

Urashima Taro rode the turtle

Over the waves and beneath the sea

Minoe regressed into a childlike state of mind as she sang.
A childhood both blunt yet sharp, liquid-like, enveloped Minoe’s anxious nerves in the throes of development.
She was lying there dazedly, blending with the children.

——

Suddenly,

“Good evening.”

As Minoe’s consciousness snapped into sharp focus with a start, she felt her mother trying to foist her children onto someone else, nimbly welcome Yui, and start a conversation, and she wanted to cry.

Minoe was the very one who wanted to rush out first.
But she could only gaze at the rays of light leaking in streaks from where the sliding doors met, unable to move from that spot.
The children still hadn’t fallen asleep.

If she got up and left now, the children would cry.

Okiyo, her mother, would once again confine Minoe to the dark, musty-smelling room.

Children who never slept, a mother who wouldn’t even think of taking my place.
Minoe felt red and blue things inside her body rise and fall, writhing like the eerie papercraft toys sold at Ginza’s night stalls.

Yui spoke in a voice that seemed to come from his Adam’s apple.

With the anxiety that Yui might leave before she could go out, Minoe felt like she was going to die.
This moment was crucial.
If she made a single movement and the children woke up, it would all be over.
Minoe clung single-mindedly to Yui’s voice while desperately—
“Sleep, sleep, sleep.”
She chanted the incantation and tightly closed her own eyes.
Before Minoe, who held her breath while listening for the children’s slumber, an aching anticipation lay as a luminous path.

○

Mother led the way.
Yui and Minoe followed close behind, not even a ken’s length away.
Even so, amidst the crowd, Okiyo’s retreating figure would frequently become lost to them—from Okiyo’s perspective, they disappeared.

Minoe walked excitedly between the sales floors, thrilled by it all.
Yui had invited Okiyo and her daughter under the pretext of buying a kimono.

“You should just go buy it yourself—the clerk will help you choose. Really now.”

“Well, that may be true—by thirty most men would have a wife to handle such concerns.”
“It’s lonely for me, stuck doing everything alone.”

Okiyo said with a laugh, “It’s not like there’s no one else around—what an absurd task to impose.”

she said and laughed.

But the bundle she now carried ahead contained Yui’s fabric.

3 PM at the department store.
Balloons floated up to the ceiling.
Gorgeous parasols.
Rhythmic patterns, the latest modern prints.

“Going up, going up.”

“We’ll demonstrate beauty techniques for you!”

“Well there’s a twenty-sen difference—of course that’s how it is.”

The orchestra in green uniforms played The Marriage of Figaro while Rococo-style mannequins on display shelves cast sidelong glances through their black-clad attendants.
The clatter of countless wooden sandals reverberated as distinctly Japanese noise from the stone floor to the glass-domed ceiling.

The crowd thrown up by the escalator mostly peered down from the building’s arcade.
From the eighth floor down, step after step—vivid cross-sections of capitalist commerce in all their hues.
No one’s jumped from here yet.

“Please come closer.”

Amidst sounds and gazes and colors so overwhelming they became equivalent to nothingness in the crowd’s noise, Yui took Minoe’s hand and drew her to his side. That Yui was a grown man satisfied Minoe. He was not some stingy middle school boy with a straightforward ruddy face. Even though her mother’s profile remained visible just three or four people away, the joy of knowing it was actually her hand Yui kept gripping without letting go sent Minoe into ecstasy. Yui, his beard and eyelids bathed as if in the western sun’s light, inquired softly.

“I’m exhausted.”

Minoe silently shook her head in denial.

——

“Well—Mr.Yui，what will you do now?”

Coming out into the street, Minoe suddenly felt as if the air had lightened.

“I might as well go around to Hamacho since I’ve come all this way…”

Okiyo looked at Minoe.
“Coming to your uncle’s?”
“No.”

Yui did not look toward Minoe,
“Well then, Mrs., you go on ahead. I’ll take Miss Minoe home,”
he said.

“Is that so? Well then, I suppose I’ll take you up on that offer.”

“Perfect timing. It’s here—Tsukiji-Ryogoku will do, won’t it?”

After pushing Okiyo onto the streetcar and keeping her aboard as it started moving—she who had bowed toward the sidewalk from the window—Yui took Minoe and began wandering aimlessly.

“Let’s take a little stroll through Hibiya, shall we?”

They lingered by the park pond’s edge for a long while.
The fountain swayed yonder and shifted hither with the changing winds, creating a beautiful spectacle.
Beyond the low iron fence, through gaps in the trees, yellow buses, bicycle messengers in red caps, and motorcycles streamed ceaselessly down the street.
The streetcars rumbled thunderously.
The park’s pelican stood emaciated, its neck feathers reddened and peeling.

Passing through the flowerbeds arranged around the benches, they entered a path dense with evergreen trees.
They walked on in endless silence.
Eventually, they came to a bamboo thicket.

“Minoe.”

Yui kissed the mouth that had looked up at him.

○

The shortest distance between two fixed points is the line segment connecting those two points.

However, Minoe would take narrow zigzag back alleys on her way to the girls' school, sometimes stopping by Yui’s house.
Yui, being a company employee, had to catch the eight thirty train.

“Won’t you come with me?”

One morning, Minoe took out fifty sen from a red leather wallet and bought one small bouquet of flowers.
In front of the cooper’s shop, Minoe encountered the teacher who had taught gymnastics at her elementary school.
Pink carnations, asparagus, crimson globed roses.
In the morning sunlit street, the vivid hues of flowers visible through paraffin paper drew the teacher’s attention.
He extended the black gakuran cuffs toward Minoe,

“Give me that,”
he said.
Surprised, Minoe hid the bouquet behind her back.

“Unwilling? — Who are you giving them to?”

“A good person!”

Minoe said this indignantly with full earnestness and briskly set off on her own path.

She regretted how the teacher’s breath had tainted the crisp morning bouquet.
When she opened Yui’s front door, looking somewhat sorrowful,

“I’ll give you this,”

she said, presenting the bouquet.

○

Minoe lived amidst glowing things.
The glare from the light source within her left her blind to both herself and the world outside.

○

Yui invited Okiyo and her husband along with Minoe to go see moving pictures and such.

“It’s gotten to be such a hassle going back now.
“Please let me stay.”

The next morning, Minoe awoke at dawn.
With her heart feeling like it might leap out, she climbed up to the second floor where Yui was staying.

“You’re up early—already awake?”

Yui was also awake, and they sat side by side on the window frame.
The garden of the neighboring house, its gate still closed, could be seen below from there.
Leaves were scattered on the stepping stones.
A small spiderweb glistened with dew in the gate lamp’s light.
The air hung damp with the scent of plants and grasses.

Yui said after a while.

“Ah, this feels good—do you like mornings, Minoe?”

“I do.”

Drawing his face even closer,

“Do you like me too?”

“…………”

Smiling, he took Minoe’s hand—her cheeks like acorns—and

“Come over here.”

he stood up.

He stood abruptly in the center of the unswept tatami room and firmly pulled Minoe close.
And he kissed her over and over, then covered her with his body to bend her backward.
The second time, he bent her back even more forcefully.

Thinking she might fall, Minoe grabbed the back of Yui’s haori with both hands,
“Careful, careful,”
she laughed.

she laughed.
Yui, with a serious face and in a voice emerging from his Adam’s apple,
“Swedish exercises,”
he said.

○

From Minoe’s body, clad in a new flannel kimono with Genroku sleeves striped in purple, yellow, and vermilion, a sweet fragrance emanated.

Yui was gazing at Minoe’s seated figure as though observing freshly cut flowers, but

“Why are you so beautiful?”

he murmured.

Minoe laughed happily and contentedly.
Minoe, too, had felt that morning that she was emitting a sweet fragrance and had become some other creature.

“Hey, Minoe, will you marry me?”

The word “marriage” made Minoe vaguely anticipate some leap forward, and the emotion itself—a frightening, unfamiliar thrill whose true nature eluded her—felt pleasant.
Minoe remained silent, nodding so vigorously that the black ribbon in her sidelocks swayed.
“Then you promise? If you promise, you won’t mind not marrying anyone else?”
Minoe nodded again.

Suddenly, the beard pricked Minoe’s cheek.
Yui’s face filled Minoe’s entire field of vision.
She felt that Yui’s eyes were red like a rabbit’s, and in her frenzy, she buried her face in his chest.

○

Mother was spreading out her sewing.
Minoe was leaning on a small side desk, absentmindedly.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

“…………”

“Do you think Mr. Yui will come again?”

“Hmm, I wouldn’t know.”

Minoe camouflaged her emotions with coldness.

Okiyo sewed the rounded curves of the sleeves in silence for a while, then turned the fabric right side out and, while shaping the finished form, spoke as if to herself.

“He should just go get himself a wife already—though who knows what’s really going through his mind.”

Abruptly changing her tone, Okiyo continued as if divulging some amusing secret.

“The other day when I went to his house—I didn’t mention this before—it’s not that his father was unpleasant. No, that’s not it.
“Even though he went to all that trouble inviting us because his father wanted to meet me, you know…
“He didn’t show even a shadow of himself until I returned.
“So I told him—‘Mr. Yui, you’re not what you appear to be.’
“Even he had some excuse ready, but…”

That day, Okiyo took Minoe to Yui’s house.
From Yui’s place, Minoe alone was sent to Hamacho as mother’s proxy.
While facing the aunt through gaps between facial features sat mother on Yui’s second floor facing this way kept flitting images and Minoe couldn’t understand what she herself was saying.
That feeling came back through mother’s words into Minoe’s memory.
She held that emotion close while clenching teeth at heart,

“So what did you do then?”

she said.

“Not that he’d actually do anything…but isn’t it strange? If I were single, he’d be insisting on marriage this and outings that—yet that day he wouldn’t agree to go see the theater.”

“Hmm.”

To Minoe, who was sulking and didn’t want to go to Hamacho,

“Be a good girl and go now, okay? Okay?”

Yui said “Okay? Okay?” with a particular look and tone, then escorted Minoe to the entrance and kissed her.

When she returned to Yui’s house again, Yui immediately came down from the second floor. And then, pulling Minoe’s hand, he led her up to the second floor.

There seemed to be so many things she wanted to say—yet she couldn’t grasp what any of them were—they simply weighed heavily on her heart. Minoe sullenly fell silent. Yui seemed like an unpleasant person, and she grew sad.

Okiyo too had at some point adopted a serious expression as she worked, but then gazed at the pillar clock,

“Well then,”

“Well then,” she said, and began tidying up the sewing materials.

“Don’t tell anyone about this.”

Minoe obediently nodded.

It was already autumn.

Hot, yet the sunlight piercing through the plants held a crystalline clarity, and the wind blew with a parched sound.

Minoe left the house and walked through the vacant lot of pockmarked red earth.
In the wide vacant lot, small hills of red earth stood here and there.
Children played by running up and down.
Their shouts bounced faintly into the high autumn sky.
Sparse patches of grass grew from the red earth, and narrow-gauge rails lay rusted.

Minoe climbed a gentle slope shaped like an inverted L.
At the top of the slope lay a grassland, with a mixed grove to the left.
Beyond this stretched a pond.
The pond felt forbidding; Minoe couldn't bring herself to approach it alone.
She settled onto the grassy slope that sloped lazily downward.

A shrike called out.
White clouds hung palpably close in the sky.
Among the grass surrounding Minoe grew plants bearing black berries.
Some leaves had flushed crimson.
A ladybug crawled up from the earth and scaled a slender blue blade of grass.
Its weight made the leaf quiver as it appeared to deliberate over its path.
The damp musk of soil intertwined with the fragrance of sunlit autumn grasses.

Minoe sat on the verge of tears, yet did not cry, stretching out her legs as she gazed at the insects and grass. As if she had come down with a slight illness, Minoe found herself in a strange state of mind. She disliked both her mother and Yui, felt utterly disappointed; the wind pierced her, the sky's height pierced her, even the dragonflies darting about pierced her. Her soul lay exposed to the air.

A long time passed.

Minoe heard rough footsteps crushing through the grass behind her. When she looked from where she sat toward the sound, there stood a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old boy urinating. He wore a white shirt fastened with a belly wrap, yet his legs were completely bare for some reason.

Minoe immediately turned to face forward.

The boy pushed through the grass, drawing gradually closer to her. She could sense his step-by-step approach, but terror left her body numb and immobile. As he brushed past the edge of her vision—near enough that she saw his bare thighs and part of his soiled body—the boy spoke in a low, quivering voice:

"—…"

he said, and tried to stand directly in front of Minoe.
Minoe slowly rose to her feet, glared at the adolescent boy, then without uttering a word brandished a glittering object in one hand and lunged at him.

When she came to her senses, Minoe had been flung much farther up the grassland than where she’d originally been.
The adolescent boy had also fallen about seven to nine meters below.
They rose up like beasts while glaring at each other.
Minoe, while slowly backing up toward the upper slope, kept glancing back toward what seemed to be the spot where they had grappled.
She had swung the Ever-Sharp pen attached to her obi with a ribbon, but it had come loose from its ring and vanished somewhere.

The adolescent boy, staring fixedly at Minoe as he parted the grass and emerged at the edge of the grassland, began putting on his patched-up leggings.

At that moment, an adult man appeared along the path in the distance.
fluttering the brim of his Panama hat—

Minoe began descending the slope.
Ahead lay faint children's cries and the vacant lot of red earth.
The surroundings remained as quiet as before, bathed in autumn sunshine, and white clouds shone in the sky.
Minoe found it strange.
She felt as though the Earth had made one violent, whirling rotation.
As Minoe walked, nature on both sides stood out with an unpleasant clarity.