Pathway to Japanese Literature

1
As the lanky regiment commander’s speech from atop the platform positioned before the covered gymnasium concluded and the ranks began to disperse, Omoto rose from the low bench—the kind used by elementary schoolchildren during gymnastics—with a relieved expression that mirrored the surrounding commotion.

Genichi removed his military cap, wiped his sweat, and approached the planted shrubs.
In that area, not only Omoto but also young wives carrying newborns in serge swaddling cloths and elderly individuals in crested haori—families of mobilized soldiers had formed a cluster and been watching since earlier.

When Genichi came to mother’s side, he smiled broadly yet with a hint of bashfulness,
“How was that?”
he said in a gentle tone.

“Did you see?”

“Oh, I saw everything clearly.”

Omoto, rejoicing deeply in her heart at her child’s sturdy appearance, slightly lowered her voice,

"There are quite a few who've aged considerably. Some even need help putting on their knapsacks."

"This draft has reservists mixed in too... All sorts," he said.

Genichi glanced at his wristwatch. "What should we do, Mother?" he asked.

“You should go rest at the lodgings first,” she said. “It’s a kind ordinary household with a second floor over there—Sergeant Nagata’s people have come too.”

“Do you still have something to do here?”

“I’ll go in about thirty minutes.”

Having received detailed directions, Omoto exited the elementary school gate—where a signboard bearing their unit name hung large—carrying her black Western umbrella and furoshiki-wrapped bundle. A temporary guardhouse had been erected there.

Beyond the wheat fields stretched a newly developed residential area where distant city-outskirts mountain ranges could be seen. Rows of identical houses continued—each with women in Western clothes and geta clogs flitting about kitchen entrances. Soldiers moved along the thick gravel path that proved difficult to walk on between them.

After finally locating a house with lodging assignments posted at each door, Omoto opened the lattice door of one where deep purple Japanese irises bloomed by a small front ditch.

Due to the intense comings and goings over the past few days, even the house bearing the nameplate "Murasaki" appeared to have an unsettled air, left open all the way to the back.
A woman who appeared to be a helper knelt down and responded succinctly to Omoto's polite greeting,

“Please proceed to the second floor.”

said the woman.

“The stairs are over there.”

When Omoto hesitantly climbed up and looked inside, she found in the drafty room—where waist-high windows on both sides of the six-tatami space stood wide open—a male student collapsed face down in deep sleep, while a young woman with legs stretched out in a T-shape toward the entrance lay similarly prone, her back showing the strained curve of an obi as she slept.
In the three-foot tokonoma alcove were piled the Hinomaru flag signed by Genichi when they left the village five days earlier, along with other military personnel's personal effects such as a tea-colored bag.

The woman who appeared carrying zabuton cushions and tea glanced at the two sleeping figures with a kind expression.

“These people also came from quite a distance and arrived at five this morning,” said the woman. “Please don’t hesitate to make yourself comfortable and lie down as well.”

Omoto leaned against the western window, sipping the tea that had been served, her tense state of mind leaving her disinclined to stretch out her legs. This second floor—neither an inn nor an ordinary residence—was permeated with an urgent atmosphere that had filled every place Omoto had encountered since morning, making it impossible for her to settle.

Before long, the sound of heavy military boots echoed from the entrance below as Genichi returned. Even in this city home of strangers many ri from their village, having slept there several nights now made him bold enough to enter freely. He casually greeted the two awakened youths with a "Well then," removed his sword belt, stretched his neck and jaw with apparent irritation, and unfastened the hook on his military collar. With her slightly wrinkled face flushed and watching his every move without blinking, Genichi cast a gentle gaze at his mother,

“You should take off that haori jacket,” he said.

“Ah… It’s not really that hot though.”

Mechanically reaching toward the spot, Omoto immediately assumed an air that showed the haori was no longer on her mind.

“So, are you done already?”

and looked at her son sitting cross-legged beside her.

“From three I’ll have to go again for about two hours.”

“It seems there’s truly no spare moment until you depart.”

Even after arriving, their conversation lasted only about twenty minutes, and afterward Omoto intently watched everyone putting on and taking off their military knapsacks.
To his mother, who let out a somewhat childlike sigh, Genichi burst out laughing.

“Even so, Mother, today’s better. When you came yesterday, you saw how it was. We couldn’t just stay like that yesterday.”

At that moment, Sergeant Nagata also returned.
Nagata, who had remained with the unit continuously even after Genichi was discharged last year, was now Genichi’s superior officer.

“When I was a rookie soldier, Mr. Imai here looked after me a great deal.”

Plainly showing her reliance on that past bond in her expression, Omoto entrusted her son’s welfare.

“Being told such things leaves me quite overwhelmed. Since we’re all experiencing this for the first time—well—we’re resolved to help each other and act with sufficient bravery and wisdom, so you needn’t worry at all.”

Even with phrasing that differed from Genichi's, this young sergeant—having finished exchanging formalities with Omoto—turned briskly toward her younger son and said:

“Listen—this is an important matter.
“Put it away on the second-floor shelf.
“Take full responsibility for safeguarding this—understood?”

With that, he began organizing the trunk.
Naturally, Omoto and her children gathered as far from there as possible by this window, their voices hushed,

“Take a look at this now while you can.
If there’s anything missing, you’ll have to go buy it now.”

Before her knees, she spread out the furoshiki bundle she had brought.

The mother and son first sat facing each other when night was past seven o'clock. Sergeant Nagata left for a farewell party at the regiment, the younger siblings went to meet their parents arriving at the station, and as the once-stirred air in the room settled, the May night air—faintly scented with flowers—hung thick and soft outside the windows. Genichi, his liquor-warmed forehead bathed in lamplight, sat cross-legged in his unbuttoned military uniform with one elbow propped on his knee, snapping a toothpick between his teeth. Watching him occasionally crumple his face and gesture as if rubbing under his nose, Omoto pushed the folded zabuton cushion toward him.

“Why don’t you get a bit of sleep if you like…… If you tell me the time, I’ll wake you.”
“Nah, I’m fine.”

Having said this—as if his mind had cleared—Genichi,

“Ah, this feels good.”

He stretched his broad chest to its fullest.

Even though they had grown somewhat accustomed to the place, it remained someone else’s house—and since Omoto’s arrival, parent and child had naturally refrained from speaking in usual voices from home.

“What should I do about the fifteenth... Should I have Hiroji come to see you off?”

The entire unit was scheduled to depart the city on the fifteenth and cross over to China.

“Hmm...”

He assumed a serious expression and thought for a while,

“Then please send Hiroji.”
“Mother, it’s better if you don’t come.”
“This is plenty as it is.”

And Genichi, his eyes brimming with a friendly smile at their corners, looked at his mother’s face while saying,

“Human emotions are strange things.”

“Even though you can’t tell where in that big crowd waving flags they might be, just knowing someone from home is there among them makes all the difference in morale, they say.”

“That’s right! I’ll have Hiroji come. If we come here early in the morning, we’ll know for sure, right?”

“Yeah.”

As the tightening in her chest grew increasingly suffocating, and she tried not to let it dissolve into tears, Omoto’s voice and eyes took on a strained intensity, almost as if she were angry.

“Really now, just make sure to take care of your health.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it. Even if you come back missing a hand or a leg, I’ll make sure you get a wife I won’t be ashamed of.”

“……”
“Alright?”
“Ah.”

Though the things she wanted to say pressed so heavily upon her shoulders she could feel their weight, when the moment came, Omoto found herself unable to voice anything beyond repeating "Take care of your health."
This feeling seemed shared by Genichi too, and for a time parent and child sat awkwardly bereft of words to bridge the silence.

The stillness lifted without either initiating it, and Omoto addressed her eldest son—the one who had truly partnered with her in business—in that familiar collaborative tone:
"Earlier at school, Mr. Sato had Ms. Shige relay that selling the truck to the company for four thousand yen would be acceptable."

And then, having somewhat returned to her usual state of mind,

“Four thousand yen isn’t a bad offer.”
“Once Hiroji enlists, we might as well sell ours too.”

she said offhandedly.

"If we have to pay the driver's salary, we simply won't be able to carry on as before…"

In six months' time, the enlistment of their second son Hiroji was also approaching.

"That's entirely up to your thinking, Mother..."
"But trying to buy another one later would be quite a problem."
"If we store it in the garage, it should easily last two or three years."

Such matters had already been thoroughly discussed by now.
When Omoto heard and counted the nine o'clock chimes from downstairs,

"Is it really that time already?"

Her face took on a strained look.

"If you're taking the 10:30 train, we should probably get going soon."
"But even so, Orita Station doesn't arrive until past twelve."

As Genichi stood up, averting his eyes from his mother’s expression while winding his wristwatch’s crown, Omoto pulled the bundle closer.

“What will you do?”

Genichi did not answer immediately, his expression tightening slightly at the mouth as he blinked repeatedly, but soon—

“I’ll walk you.”

He lifted his chin and fastened his collar hook.

Beneath the gate lamp’s illumination where irises alone showed their vivid colors, Omoto expressed earnest thanks to the wife who had accompanied her to the edge of the small bridge, left payment for her lunch, and departed from the house.

Though the interior had seemed hushed, outside it was still early evening with multiple squads of soldiers crunching gravel underfoot as they moved about.
Genichi, who had been standing beside his mother, soon merged with a group that approached from behind in the dimming light.

She walked quite some distance through darkness where her feet became barely visible.
The lights of the main street at the dead end came into view, and at the corner that had become something of a small square stood a brightly lit stationery shop with display windows that also served as a tobacco store.
Just then, a nearly empty bus entered the square and began turning around.
Only the female conductor got down to the ground and signaled "All right! All right!" while watching the rear.
When Omoto saw this, she suddenly felt rushed. Switching both the Western umbrella and bundle to one hand while half-turning back toward Genichi, who stood clustered by the corner store, she called out in a loud voice,

“Is this bus going to the station, huh?”

she asked.
The female conductor, having mistaken the question as directed at herself, made no effort to conceal her weary brusqueness,

“You need to board from over there.”
“The bus stop is over there.”

Without another word, she climbed the steps, called out “All right!”, and began revving the engine.
Omoto grew even more flustered and glanced around the area.
Then, from the three or four people still standing at the corner, not Genichi but a soldier Omoto didn’t know moved his white-gloved hand in the darkness,

“Ma’am, it’s over there.
“The bus stop is in front of that dry goods store.”

The soldier informed her in a loud voice.

Omoto hurried anxiously toward it with half-jogging steps until she reached the spot and, muttering breaths of exertion, sank down near the entrance.
Assuming Genichi would naturally come sit beside her, Omoto neatly arranged the bundle on her lap and waited.
Yet Genichi did not come—instead boarding from right behind her came a splendidly attired officer wearing an impressive sword, accompanied by two middle-aged women speaking Tokyo dialect.
As Genichi lingered too long, she peered through the rear bus window and saw them still clustered in their original spot.
Omoto thought she glimpsed Genichi’s face turned toward hers, lit by sidelong glare from the tobacco shop.
Placing both bundle and Western umbrella on the seat, she started toward them.
Waving her hand, she had meant to signal Genichi to hurry.
When she began walking,

“Thank you for your patience. We will now depart.”

The bus jolted violently along with the female conductor’s voice, and Omoto nearly tumbled over. Before she could muster the presence of mind to call out “Wait!”, the bus accelerated, and unfamiliar night streets began streaking past the windows.

Omoto stood dumbfounded for a moment until an indescribable feeling welled up, her stomach’s depths quivering. She had thought Genichi would come to the station and hadn’t exchanged proper words of farewell. Now that moment had arrived. Though her tears didn’t spill, such anguish gripped her that she had to clutch something to keep from folding double—her knobby-knuckled hand seizing the nickel-plated rail behind the driver. Eyes fixed rigidly ahead, she let herself be rocked along.

II

Within about a year and a half, over forty people from the village had been mobilized as soldiers.
Already, some had returned as remains placed in white wooden boxes.
It was almost strange that Genichi hadn't been drafted until now.
They were being drafted from practically every household.
Within this situation, each time he escaped conscription, it conversely created a strange unease that left even mothers somehow unsettled.
That evening too, upon hearing that a red draft notice had arrived for a same-year soldier in the neighboring village, she had gone out there—and during that time, Genichi’s own conscription order had come through.

On the morning of the 15th, Hiroji left home at three o'clock at dawn.

A little before noon, a telegram was delivered.

ゲ ンキニテゴ コ三シタツ

Standing at the shopfront, when she opened and read the telegram, Omoto slipped into Hiroji’s wooden-soled sandals that were there and went to show it to the house across.
Then she lit the ritual lamp at the family altar and placed the telegram before it.
Her late husband had fought in two wars—the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese conflicts—and was the sort of man who would use phrases like "strategic maneuvers" even when discussing rice trade.

Hiroji returned home well after dark, clutching a small Hinomaru flag carefully rolled in paper, his appearance disheveled as if wearing his older brother’s hand-me-down navy suit that had been all rumpled.
While untying his shoelaces, he turned to his mother standing behind him,

“He’s doing great!!”

he said in a voice that still carried traces of his earlier excitement.

"Is he really doing that well?"

“In perfect health!”
“There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”

In that voice—so characteristic of a young man on the eve of enlistment—there seemed to resonate a spirited determination that he too would rise to the occasion. Omoto, who until now had simply viewed her second son’s sturdy shoulder width as a source of reliable strength, now felt something akin to a mother’s wistful affection stir within her.
With a face that seemed both sunken and relieved, Omoto sat down beside the meal table she had laid with a dishcloth for Hiroji.
“You must have been hungry.”

“Yeah.”

Though she had set out a bowl right away, Hiroji did not eat.
Raising his eyebrows, he sipped the hot water little by little.

“It’s really something.
“Mother, the send-off crowd over there—what a sight!
“It’s not just some story from around Sakai or anything!”

Omoto involuntarily broke into a smile.

“That’s only natural.”

Sakai was a small station on a branch line about two kilometers from the village, and Genichi had departed from there.

Genichi’s name frequently came up in conversations among those who frequented the shop, and Omoto lived busily for the time being.
Since Hiroji was now alone, she hired new laborers.
She cautioned Hiroji—who was climbing into the truck in his overalls—that based on her years of experience, people’s spirits being what mattered most, he should buy them bread or something during breaks when the work grew particularly demanding.

“In times like these when there’s no help to be had, we’ve got to grit our teeth and work through the small stuff ourselves—no other way about it.”

As fertilizer distribution season approached, the reason Imai’s shop could handle bulk orders separately from the cooperative was that residents of remote mountain hamlets—finding it inconvenient to transport fertilizer themselves—were drawn by the service of having trucking costs covered by the store. Paying meticulous attention, they would load rice, charcoal, or something on return trips without wasting gasoline. Through laborious and troublesome earnings, by means of Omoto’s resourcefulness and her sons’ physical labor, over the past seven or eight years the Imai family had finally managed to somewhat rebuild themselves from a state of bankruptcy.

“Mother, you don’t need to worry. I’ll work hard these six months before enlistment.”

“Exactly!”
“There’s no way we can manage without you doing just that.”

The Veterans Association and the National Defense Women’s Association took the lead in holding a comfort meeting for families of deployed soldiers at the village guardian shrine, and Omoto entrusted her shop to the wife from the house in front before attending and being photographed there.

A bearded man in a suit, carrying a briefcase, entered the store without so much as a nod, sidled up beside Omoto as she kept the accounts, and fixed her with unsettling eyes.

“Families of deployed soldiers everywhere are joining this...”

There were days when he would thrust at her a donation solicitation paper printed with the name of some unfamiliar newspaper company, acting as if he’d come straight from a government office. This was something that hadn’t existed when the war first began.

The notification of Genichi’s safe arrival came nearly a month after his departure.
Written in restless pencil strokes, it stated formal thanks for their send-off while reporting his safe arrival at post ○○ on the 27th of last month, followed by: "The Chinese mainland I see for the first time consists solely of desolate plains that leave me feeling strangely lonesome."
The daytime heat was no different from back home, but nights grew cold enough to require wearing a thermal vest; that he had gone out on his first sortie but only heard a few gunshots, which he found disappointing; along with domestic concerns inquiring whether the truck had suffered any major breakdowns—all written on a sealed postcard.
The sealed item was a picture postcard.
A Japanese soldier sitting on a rock against a backdrop of sorghum was depicted in light watercolors giving some sweets to a Chinese boy and girl holding up a Hinomaru flag.
Even things like this—are we really the ones preparing and sending them over?—thought Omoto as she showed it to Hiroji.

“See? It’s really quite clear—isn’t that right?”

While envisioning their livelihood, she peered again from beside. Silently, Hiroji said nothing and climbed into the shop on his tabi-clad knees, going to the newspaper's appendix map nailed to the plank wall.

“Can you see? It’s probably some mountainous backcountry that doesn’t even appear on maps.”

Hiroji patiently pressed his face close and stared for a long time.

“It’s here, Mother. Here it is. This is ○○.”

“There it is!”

Omoto hurried over to the shop, picked up the dusty reading glasses from the counter, and brought them up to her eyes.

“Where is it?”

“It’s here, look—it says ○○.”
“Since it’s Northern China, this has to be the only place there.”

“Hmm.”

That voice resonated with unconcealable disappointment.
Though not unfamiliar with maps, having momentarily felt buoyant as if peering through some color-revealing viewer, that spot marked only by a solitary circle made Omoto lonely.
The fact that Genichi was there felt both comprehensible and somehow mystifying.
Eventually removing her glasses, Omoto spoke in a somewhat raspy, lusterless voice,

“Let me see that letter.”

Omoto reached out to Hiroji.

“We mustn’t let it get lost.”

The next morning at daybreak, Omoto went to the village shrine, wrapped soil from beneath the eaves in washi paper, and brought it back. She sealed it inside and wrote a reply to Genichi.
"The enclosed soil is from the shrine. They say if you keep this close to your body without parting from it, you’ll surely return safely—please take good care of it."
She also wrote that matters with Funazawa’s daughter still remained unsettled since that time.
This referred to Funazawa’s daughter, whom Genichi had once been introduced to through an arranged meeting elsewhere.
Once successive departures of young men for military service began, marriage talks had come to be temporarily suspended everywhere.

When the second letter from Genichi, written in pen on ordinary stationery, arrived, the village was in the midst of May rains.
That year’s rainy season lingered long and fell more intensely than usual, leaving all the wheat fields—their harvest slightly delayed—flooded everywhere.
Standing beneath the shop’s low eaves and gazing through passing traffic, she saw water stretching to the cedar grove beyond, only the wheat ears swaying like reeds in the pelting rain.
It was also during that season that a train lay buried under a landslide, killing many elementary schoolchildren on a school trip.
The rain—dull-gleaming through daylong downpours as it fell upon unyielding waters—weighed heavily on people’s spirits.
There were rumors it was because they were firing cannons in great quantities over in China.

Every time Omoto opened or closed the shop doors, she would notice and gaze out at the flooded fields.
Several years ago, when her father was still alive, during the rainy season as well, water had surged in from that direction, and there had been a great commotion trying to keep the rice and fertilizer from getting wet.
Though there were men available to help, several bags of lime had ended up hardening into solid lumps.
What would happen if I were alone?

The rains stopped before reaching that point, but the wheat ears rotted jet-black, and wheat prices remained unsettled.
Even in the rice fields where planting had been completed, the fertilizer was washed away.
The rain washed away their money—or so it felt—and people went out during the muggy break in the rainy season rains.

Before the rainy season had clearly ended, draft notices again came to the inner villages.
To reach the station from those villages, one inevitably had to pass before Omoto’s shop.
With purple and white banners at the lead—the village chief in rubber boots, mobilized soldiers in red sashes, and a straggling line of well-wishers trailing behind—they had departed their village several ri away under umbrellas and tall rain clogs during rainfall. Now they pressed toward the station under midsummer sunlight’s intense glare that scorched everything in its path.
The pale lavender and crimson hues of young women’s haori coats in the passing procession flashed across the shop’s glass door—that door redolent of damp malt and starved of feminine presence.
Omoto stood at the rear of the earthen-floored area seeing off the procession.
Unlike townsfolk processions with bands and songs, these people walked on, their splattered mud drying white as they went.
She didn’t know what others had thought watching her own family make that same walk before, but now standing at her shopfront seeing off such a procession, Omoto’s body grew taut until she felt a stinging pain pierce her nose’s bridge.

Three

“Auntie—! Auntie—!”

She heard a child returning from school calling out.
Omoto stopped operating the pump and went out front.

“Here, just give me the usual oil.”

The child thrust out a soda bottle hung by a rope.

“What kind of oil was it again?”

When she sniffed at the bottle, it was the smell of sesame oil.

"Sesame hasn’t been arriving from anywhere since last month."
"From now on, we’ll be giving out cabbage seeds instead—make sure to tell your mother that properly."

No sooner had the child nodded in understanding and left than—

"The rabbit’s out!"

came another report.
The rabbit was being kept as a side business by the house in front.
Because both meat and fur had suddenly become valuable, the husband who commuted to the factory—along with his son who also worked there—had built a makeshift hutch in the back.
Omoto, unable to figure out how to catch the bright-eyed rabbit that had somehow escaped into the street, clattered her geta and herded it back into the enclosure.

While wiping her hands on her apron, Okome came out from the sink area.

“Did it get out again?”

Omoto stood by watching as they put the rabbit into a hutch and replaced the straw,

“How did things turn out with Shinzo-san’s job situation after that?”

she recalled and asked.

“Ah, we’ve decided to discontinue that.”

Okome answered in a metropolitan manner completely different from her ironworker husband.

“Things may seem fine where he is now, but if he were to go elsewhere, it would likely be temporary work, and since there’s no telling how things might turn out, we thought it best not to leave the place he’s worked at for twelve years.”

The waves breaking upon Omoto’s household were reshaping the lives of families in their own ways, violently shaking even the upright Shinzo’s family.
The eighteen-year-old eldest son, who operated a lathe, took four days off from his current workplace under the pretense of a cold and went by train to a factory in a town four or five hours away to check things out.
During his absence, the supervisor from the factory where he currently worked made a special trip to their house and raised his daily wage by twenty sen all at once.
A story too unbelievable to be true had become reality.
And people’s hearts lost their place to rest.

With the same feeling she had when watching the water—gradually glowing white and swelling on this side of the pine grove—during the rainy season from beneath the eaves, Omoto stared intently at the shifting rhythms of life around her. When she heard the rumor that the barber's second son intended to obtain a driver's license and operate a truck, what flashed through Omoto's mind was the desolate emptiness of their shop's garage—kept tightly shut once her two sons were gone. Tears that could scarcely be called tears welled up in the corners of her eyes.

“Is Rokusan truly intent on this?”

Hiroji remained hunched over the newspaper, perched stiffly as if uncomfortable.

“Well…”

He said, then fell silent.
However, that he was listening to the conversation without any pleasure showed in Hiroji’s youthful profile—somewhere sullen and tight-lipped.

“Well, I suppose that’s fine too.”

Eventually, Omoto spoke in a tone tinged with faint contempt and resignation.

“How about having some woman drive the truck?”

Once Hiroji enlists and I’m left alone, I’ll keep the millet and tobacco shop running on a small scale and manage to get by for two or three years.
That had been Omoto’s long-standing plan.
It was only because her sons had been there that she had managed to come this far.
When she imagined herself alone through the days and nights, for the first time in her life, she felt pressed by the realization that this must be what loneliness truly was.

“Once you all are gone, I’ll come lie down at the shop.”
“If anything happens, just call out loud and someone from the house across will come help.”

As she said such things and looked around the storefront, under the night's electric light only the depths beyond the weathered beams and floorboards where mice scurried appeared dark and deep.
Omoto joked with forced cheer and laughed on one of her better days.

“Not having borne even a single daughter was a mistake.”

From Genichi at the front came letters as promised.
He had grown accustomed to life in that land where waters rose swiftly yet receded with equal suddenness—his correspondence now detailing local prices with meticulous care showed a marked maturity compared to those initial pencil-scrawled notes.
Days of unutterable hardships and responsibilities could be sensed beneath ordinary reports about making pickles.
Omoto read her son’s letters again and again.
And wrote replies.
When writing, she inevitably penned earnest assurances—“I am living well”—this compulsion to reassure her distant son springing from genuine sincerity.

Rumors from households with mobilized soldiers spread through whispered exchanges—truths and falsehoods tangled together. When draft notices arrived, people would bring women procured through town arrangements to parents' homes; these women supposedly worked there for years until sons returned, even laboring in rice paddies for income. From that angle, they said there were lucky parents too—such stories circulated. There were tales of daughters-in-law who abandoned half-paralyzed elderly mothers-in-law and three-year-old children when death benefits came after battlefield losses. Stories about disputes between brides' birth families and in-laws. Omoto thought how much more bearable it would have been had Genichi at least had a wife—the two working and waiting together—and even voiced this aloud. Yet hearing such examples and imagining if something befell Genichi, she realized even having such a wife couldn't truly be called fortunate in this world.

IV

That summer saw an especially large-scale air-raid drill conducted, and in the village, officials—overcome by excitement—ran about tearing laundry off houses under the pretext that it could be seen from planes, an act that later became a subject of controversy.
And autumn arrived.

Rumors arose early that this year's enlistment might come sooner than usual.
In some regions, enlistment was said to be in October.
Such talk did not seem entirely groundless.
Rumors about the war situation varied widely.

Hiroji began reading the newspaper more intently than before.
He read it while cross-referencing a map, taking in the information as something directly relevant to himself.
Omoto watched her son’s figure with a pressing sense of urgency.

"It’s all coming earlier than expected."

“Can’t say for sure yet. We’ll face it when the time comes.”

Such was Hiroji’s kindness—before driving out with the truck, he would draw bathwater without fail, even lay out firewood, then leave without a word of mention.
Omoto had envisioned only herself waiting once they were gone—hunched in the shadow of her sons’ broad shoulders as she counted two years, three years—but then unexpected news reached her ears.
A seventy-two-foot road spanning ten ri would cut through Omoto’s village; survey results showed her backyard would be carved away until the road loomed higher than her house.
Omoto involuntarily

“Heavens!”

She widened her eyes and looked back at her home’s backyard—where a small ditch scattered with asari clam shells held a single wild rose bush and three or four chrysanthemums planted along its edge, where to the right spread a cramped fan-shaped area with the chicken coop. That place where rice paddies and Matsuyama beyond now lay quietly bathed in evening sun—to think a concrete seventy-two-foot road would run through there.

“They say there’s a plan to cut through Higashiyama and flatten it. The road’ll pass exactly seven shaku higher than our house.”

“Hmm.”
“So then, what about this road here?”

Omoto pointed with her chin at the street in front of the shop where they were sitting.

“This one will stay as it is.”
“People and bicycles go through this side, and apparently the back’s mainly for trucks.”

Omoto,

“Hmm.”

There was nothing more she could say.

“When did they come to survey? I hadn’t realized.”

Then the man in the striped haori—wearing a look of proprietary understanding as though this were his own affair—lit his tobacco from the charcoal fire of the lion-mouthed brazier while remarking:

“Well, they’ll do it without anyone knowing—that’s how these things go.”

He tapped his pipe.

“Even during the Matsuura construction project, not a single soul knew until right before the land purchase. Over there, they say there’s a thousand laborers working today.”

The man who made his living by lending small sums and brokering land deals gazed absently toward the pine-covered hill behind them with an air of mental calculation and muttered.

“This area’s gradually becoming a thriving development zone now.”

That evening, Omoto wore a smile that seemed to transform her daytime astonishment into wry humor,
“Once the road’s built, maybe we’ll put up tobacco signs front and back?”
she laughed.
While this house was theirs, the land was not owned by the Omoto family.

Hiroji blinked slightly, shaking his crossed knees as he was looking at his mother’s face, then casually—

“All the cars that leave Ohara zoom through here.”

he said, drawing from his own experience.

“They’re just hitting their stride around then.”

“Won’t they even stop to buy tobacco?”

“They speed all the way to Shimochi, they do.”

Shimochi was a slightly larger village two stops ahead.
Omoto spent some time carefully comparing the shop’s glass door, where bicycle lights occasionally flashed past, with the back side where old shutters stood closed.

“If that happens, this house will lose its depth—there’ll be no proper backyard left either.”

Even this house that was supposed to bear the loneliness of their absence—what state it might change into by the time her two sons returned remained unclear. Omoto keenly felt that fact. And who had shown any proof that the two of them would surely return? When this thought struck her, Omoto’s chest began to tremble with an even deeper, more raw pity for her sons—young men who, when thinking of their hometowns, inevitably found themselves thinking of their mothers. Of course, even Omoto had dimly sensed there must be aspects of her sons’ lives that only they themselves knew. For example, on the evening she had gone to visit Genichi, why had he missed the return bus? Hiroji had mentioned that his elder brother possessed an official pass. If he had that, there had been no reason he couldn't have left. There must have been some circumstance. That incident remained unforgotten, often surfacing in Omoto's memory; yet rather than feeling anger at having been deceived, she found herself pitying the tender-hearted Genichi who had resorted to such deception—his true nature as it had been before his departure now seeming profoundly sorrowful.

It was precisely because she believed they would return that she could focus her heart solely on waiting, allowing herself to be troubled by the loneliness of their absence. When she thought she might never again see her sons alive, Omoto's heart ached with that same acutely tender pain she had felt long ago when Genichi and his brother were small—when her breasts would swell painfully as she opened her collar to nurse them. She wanted desperately, in these days she still lived, to bring her sons some measure of joy. This longing rose in her throat until she could scarcely breathe.

In Omoto's eyes that had seemed to gaze outward searching for something undefined, a deep shadow turned inward emerged. When Hiroji was out working, Omoto would examine gasoline ration forms, meticulously work the abacus, and become absorbed in her thoughts—yet there was more than mere profit calculations in the contours of her cheeks.

On one such day arrived mail stamped as usual with a purple-ink rubber seal bearing the unit name. "Participated in the XX Operation," it read, listing several place names unfamiliar to Omoto. There were considerable casualties, but fortunately I remained in full health throughout the operations without catching even a cold. The harmonica entertains the soldiers by playing popular songs. It proved particularly useful during drowsy night marches.

Omoto read and reread the passage about "during sleepy night marches." She pictured Genichi going out onto the second-floor roof where he used to play—the clear tones of his harmonica coursing vigorously through the weary, sleep-drenched darkness. It was a nostalgia so palpable that Genichi's very likeness seemed to hover there.

When departing, Genichi stuffed both the harmonica and his diary with torn pages into the broken-lidded book box. Having seen this, Hiroji on impulse placed it into a comfort package for him.

There was a night when Hiroji worked straight through until morning transporting a large demolished house. It was mid-November—the season when shops hung rows of dried daikon radishes in their backyards. After claiming the tires looked worn and catching a brief nap, Hiroji began repairs in the garage. Tires that once cost thirty-five yen apiece had now nearly doubled in price.

“Are you alone? Where’s the worker?”

“He’s sleepin’.”

While whistling a rather unpolished tune, Hiroji worked the jack without any sign of physical strain.
Omoto repeatedly went back and forth beneath the persimmon tree in the rear yard to dry firewood.

“Tomorrow, when Yamada returns, make sure not to forget to load the charcoal.”

“Yeah.”

After arranging the firewood, Omoto came to the garage’s hard-packed floor and crouched down beside Hiroji.

“Here, I’ll hold that part.”

“A bit more this way… yeah.”

After helping together for a while, Omoto eventually asked,
“Hiro-chan, do you know where that postcard from Tomio is?”
“It should be in the letter holder.”
“Hey, Hiro-chan.”
Omoto shifted her weight on her crouched legs, adjusted her posture, and with her eyes fixed on the tire, said,
“If Tomio can come, I intend to keep this business going even after you both leave.
How about it?
If he gets serious and doesn’t rush for profits, I think we can manage it.”

The driver named Tomio, who had worked for Genichi about three years ago during his enlistment, recently became available due to the truck requisitions. If Imai would take him on, he sent a postcard suggesting.

For Hiroji, even his mother’s words felt abrupt.

“Well, Tomio’s honest enough, but...”

“Since your brother left, my heart has gone through many changes, but now it has settled on just one thing.”
“No matter what comes, I suppose in the end I’ll have to live according to how you all want things.”
“If you think this mother is just smoldering away quietly alone, it’d dampen your momentum.”

Then Omoto turned to her gentle son with a half-teasing air,

“There, see?”

She tried to laugh, but hot tears she herself hadn't anticipated spilled from her eyes.
Omoto wiped her tears with the edge of the serge apron fastened over her work pants, then pressed both hands firmly on the edge of the tire Hiroji was adjusting while earnestly explaining her plans with concrete numbers.