Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Since they hadn’t realized the electric clock was nearly thirty minutes slow, by the time the two got off at the Government Railway station, the buses had long since stopped running.

Moonlight from high above fell upon the parched asphalt road before the station, and the sparse figures emerging from the building—its large doors left half-open—scattered darkly toward the broad street to the left as if by prearrangement, their hurried footsteps carrying them away.

“What do you say—shall we walk?”

“Let’s do that. Would you hold Teruko for me?”

“Alright, Mineko—you take care of this stuff.”

Shinichi took hold of Teruko—wrapped in the thin woolen shawl her sister-in-law had lent them—while Mineko, lightly pressing her white-clad body against his arm as they matched their strides, began walking with the energetic stride of a young couple who might go mountain-climbing together.
The two lived about ten bus stops away from the station, further along the route.

“I hope she doesn’t catch a cold.”
“I’m a bit worried—it’s gotten so late.”

“She’ll be fine.”

Slowing his pace slightly, Shinichi lifted the sleeping Teruko and brought his face close to touch his nose to the baby’s.

“The tip of her nose is really warm.”

After walking awhile, their steadily paced legs caught up to three or four students ahead.
The young men—slightly drunk, likely returning from a wedding—formed a line across the sidewalk, linking uniformed arms as they raised boisterous yet harmless voices—

Takasago ya—Takasago ya ah—

From this bay's inlet we hoist our sails

Takasago ya—Takasago ya ah—

they were singing in chorus, having parodied the melody of the wedding march.

Naturally spilling over toward the roadway as they passed the group, Mineko felt laughter bubble up within her.
The cheerful chorus overflowed with youth and innocence, yet clearly no one had devised further lyrics, so they kept circling back to repetitions of "Takasago ya ah"—their voices gradually receding into the distance until finally dissolving near a street corner where moonlight mingled with the town's dim eave lights.

When they had covered two-thirds of the distance, their footsteps slowed as if by unspoken agreement.

“Don’t you want to smoke? Shall I take over?”

This time, when Mineko took the child, their pace slowed even more, and Shinichi walked with his face slightly upturned, exhaling tobacco smoke with apparent contentment, when suddenly—without any preface—

“How about that, Mineko? My credibility’s pretty impressive, don’t you think?”

he said.
His voice held a laugh.

“Credit?... Ah.
“But that’s only natural.”

“Maybe I should just follow your brother’s advice and become that so-called general affairs section chief...”

Not answering this, Mineko walked in silence for some time before speaking in a sigh-laden tone.

"Brother really favors you, doesn't he?"

she said.

"Well, with our family being all girls, it's not entirely unreasonable... But you know, Brother's partiality—truth be told—is always a worry."

“—There might be some truth to that.”

“We can’t honestly say we truly understand Brother, can we?
“The curiosity lies with us.
“Or am I mistaken?
“Brother, in his own way, wants to make something striking happen—there’s that aspect to him, don’t you think?”

"For your sake and Teruko’s—whether you call it stability in life or security for the future—I suppose he’s been considering those things lately too."

“So does that mean if it’s that Manchurian steel company or whatever, there’s security to be had?”

“Given the nature of his backing and connections, Brother would naturally view it that way.”

With a muttered “There,” Shinichi took Teruko back once more and began rewrapping the shawl around the child’s body as he—

“Mineko’s serene composure—compared to wives in society—might well be an exception, you know.”

he said.

“Being a researcher at Oriental Economist—in the current climate—isn’t the sort of position you could call socially prestigious from the outset.”

The calm, almost detached tone with which he spoke made Mineko sense that Shinichi was beginning to seriously consider her brother’s job proposal—and this realization gripped her with a fleeting unease.

Kōzō, Mineko’s eldest brother from her family home—nearly twenty years her senior—had attempted to arrange employment for his brother-in-law Shinichi for the second time.
The first time had been before Teruko was born, when the proposal involved work abroad that would utilize Shinichi’s expertise in foreign languages.

“If Mineko’s language skills had truly reached that level, they wouldn’t have been something to discard."
“How about it?”
"Why don't you two make a bold leap together as husband and wife?"
“It’s not a bad idea to gain that kind of experience while you’re young.”

Kōzō, unaware that his exaggerated manner of speaking also served to demonstrate his social standing, had phrased it that way.
At that moment, Shinichi,

"I don't seem suited for that sort of thing."

He said clearly, though with a laugh.

"I'm hardly the man for that sort of rough work."

Though large-framed, there was a depth in Shinichi's gaze as he reclined comfortably in his chair while saying this—a depth that conveyed meticulous consideration and inner tranquility.

Kōzō remained silent for a short while, stroking up both ends of his mustache from below, and after gazing into Shinichi’s eyes,

"Well, that might unexpectedly be accurate," he conceded readily.

"It would be troublesome if those who retrieve mummies turned into mummies themselves."
“Well, I’ll find my proper niche sooner or later.”

The work Shinichi currently held—the very job sustaining their livelihood—seemed not to even register as proper work in Kōzō’s estimation.
Later, when Mineko heard from her sister-in-law that Kōzō had already committed to that matter as something ninety-nine percent certain in his own mind with a certain military contact, she did not feel good.
She came to reassess their young lives as something separate from the life paths their brothers were following.

“Hmm, so that’s how it was.”

When Shinichi heard the full story, he showed a youthfully unassuming surprise while being simultaneously impressed.

“When someone’s lived that sort of life for years, people like us must start looking like shogi pieces to them.”
“Even something like personality must only be visible through its utility value, I suppose.”

This second proposal tonight from Kōzō would have been one made in accordance with Shinichi’s earlier statement about being unsuited for rough work.
The newly established company had its headquarters in Manchuria with plans to open a branch office in a certain Hokuriku city.
There was liaison work between there and Tokyo involving information management.
Directly under corporate executives—this was what they were proposing to Shinichi.
The presentation implied that settling Shinichi there would benefit not just Kōzō personally but military connections too.
The topic had come up while Mineko—who’d put Teruko to bed—was in the back with her sister-in-law.

“By the way, how old are you now?”
“Already that age, eh?”
“If you’re thirty-two or three, it’s about time you started building a serious foundation for your future.”

At that moment, Mineko—having rested a while, tied her hair, and now looking bright-eyed—appeared carrying a bowl of fruit,

“What are you talking about?”

she said as she emerged.
Shinichi remained silent.
Comparing this situation with her brother’s demeanor, Mineko—ever embodying her role as the family’s youngest daughter—

“Oh, Brother!” Mineko glared at Kōzō, who carried himself with fatherly authority.

“You’re not scheming to peddle it to some lackeys again, are you? I won’t have it!”

“Hmph, that’s just as well,” Kōzō conceded.

Mineko glanced once more toward Shinichi, who remained silent—a gesture both concerned and deliberate.

Given how matters had unfolded, she hadn’t fully grasped the discussion’s details. Though her arrival had cut the conversation short, something in Shinichi’s present demeanor now held her attention with quiet insistence.

When they turned right from the main street onto a gravel road, passing vacant lots overgrown with grass here and there, Mineko walked on with her hand supporting Shinichi’s arm from below as he carried Teruko.
Though there was no wind at ground level, clouds that had formed at some unknown time occasionally skimmed the moon’s surface, their swift movement making the moon itself appear to drift away.
As their path brightened and darkened, their faces catching the shifting light and shadow, Shinichi whistled low and soft.
The sound of two people’s footsteps crunching gravel like a single walker’s tread, along with the quiet whistle, echoed through the deeply still night.

At the bend in the cedar fence leading to their house, there was a dog barking furiously.
When returning late at night, Shinichi would always whistle his way home with that distinctive tune the dog had come to recognize, all while knowing Mineko too would notice the sound.

II

How many people were there in Tokyo?
The total population was said to be approximately six and a half million—within that number, those classified as salarymen must have comprised several hundred thousand.
Among them were those who hadn’t managed to grasp any special ladder of success amid the state of affairs at the time.
People who had neither seized each fleeting opportunity nor made any particular moves.
Numerically speaking, such individuals existed in abundance—but what must those rooted salarymen have been feeling as they lived through each day back then?

From noon until just past one o'clock, Shinichi would leave his third-floor concrete-built room—sometimes eating alone, sometimes with several companions—then wander about while observing his surroundings with detached interest.
There had been newspaper articles claiming salarymen found life easier in Osaka than Tokyo.
Yet when one turned attention to these entrenched salarymen—differing in seniority and specialization—heatedly discussing their topics, there inevitably emerged talk of those who had leveraged the current climate, their exploits being dissected.

While one might say idle chatter always follows such patterns, there was now something added to it—a sort of shared nervous undercurrent peculiar to these times.

A classmate named Iijima, who had been in Hokkaido ever since graduation, suddenly called four or five days earlier saying he had come to Tokyo.
Claiming he had no time to linger, he invited two or three close acquaintances to Ginza that very noon.
Since they had graduated from the same school, Iijima too had majored in linguistics but was employed at a trading company in Hakodate—and as that company was now extending its reach into the South Seas, he had come to negotiate with the relevant parties.

Listing several unfamiliar names of South Seas islands and hinting at complex background circumstances while speaking, Iijima—

"Well, that’s more or less the gist of the business."

Thrusting both hands into his trouser pockets, he assumed a chest-out posture on the tube chair,

"Separately from that, this time I'm going all out!"

Shinichi laughed involuntarily.

"You're really going all out, aren't you?"

Over the five or six years he had spent exclusively in Hakodate, Iijima’s countenance—which had always tended toward the rough-hewn since his student days—had acquired a fleshy thickness and ruddy complexion across his forehead, brows, and cheeks.
The contrast between this and the cobalt blue of his roughly striped necktie hanging before his chest had evoked in Shinichi, from that first glance, both a familiar sense of him and something resembling vague melancholy.

Toyama from the foreign-language newspaper company had his characteristically somewhat ironic smile gleaming in his sharp, intelligent black eyes.

“Heading off to the continent or something?”

“Heading off to the continent or something?” Toyama said.

“It’s not like that.”

He leaned forward as if wrapping both hands around the beer mug.

“I don’t know what you all think,” he said, leaning forward with both hands around his beer mug, “but Hokkaido specialties are going to take on major significance from here on out.”

As public order on the continent was restored, grains and seaweed products from Hokkaido had come to be exported there in increasing quantities—or so he claimed.

"They’re already making significant progress."
"The future sales potential could expand beyond anyone’s ability to predict."
"When I told a few people about it on the incoming train, they were delighted, saying I’d given them valuable information."

"Is it really okay to go disclosing your special products like that?"

"But what I’m really trying to do isn’t seaweed."

Iijima shrugged slightly and laughed,

“What I’m handling is the scallop adductor muscle.”

“If a European war were to break out, that would truly be something, but even without that, there’s already such demand for Hokkaido’s scallop adductor muscles bound for China that we can barely keep up.”

“Since all Chinese people use that in their cooking… So how about it—care to invest?”

“Do they really eat that much of it?”

Toyama smirked as he looked at Iijima’s face.

"I saw The Good Earth, but they weren’t eating that stuff in it, I tell you."

"You’re hopeless—a man with no luck who does nothing but wield that sharp tongue. Didn’t I go out of my way to write you that letter telling you to buy up all that gold? And yet you did nothing, didn’t you?"

Having thus bluntly rebuked Toyama, Iijima turned toward Shinichi, who was listening in silence,

"Even when we say 'scallop adductor muscle,' it's actually dried into these white, pretty confection-like pieces—about this big—"

and showed the size of the box with his hands.

"They’re boxed, so there’s absolutely no odor."
"They'll easily last two or three years."

Iijima explained with great enthusiasm how the scallop adductor muscles were white, beautiful, and resembled confections.

The notion that one could amass vast fortunes through such white, small, and beautiful scallop adductor muscles appeared to hold a different kind of stimulating appeal compared to conventional targets like forests or mines.
In fact, one of the region's leading industrialists had built up his assets through precisely this.

“He was an executive at a transportation company, you know. You couldn’t build up assets like that just by being some director at a place like that.”
“It was quite some time ago, but when I asked him point-blank on one occasion—no, actually, he had a sideline in scallops—that’s how it came out.”
“That’s how I came up with the idea.”

“So you’re planning to corner the market?”

“That’s right.”

At the table, Iijima tapped his cigarette rhythmically while,
“Just when I was about to start, I suddenly had to come here… But this time I’ll do it.”

“When did you manage to get such capital?”

When Shibata—who was usually tight-lipped—asked this with an awkwardly stiff, overly earnest expression,

“I’ll borrow from the bank!”

With a retort implying Shibata lacked such nerve—comparing bank interest rates to how those scallop adductor muscles had surged over six months—Iijima addressed each friend in turn, his face flushed more from zeal than beer.

“How much will you borrow?”

“As much as the banks will lend.”

The moment he heard this, Shibata shifted in his chair. Eyes downcast, he exhaled smoke and ground his cigarette tip hard into the ashtray’s base.
Every twitch articulated the misgivings churning within him.
Shinichi felt it pierce his chest.
Shibata’s father had destroyed their rice merchant house during the Taisho 9 market crash.

Regarding the fact that global circumstances had become entirely different between the era of the previous Great European War and the present—words Shinichi had spoken from his professional standpoint—Iijima listened with his arms crossed, his expression overtly skeptical.

“Well, Koyanagi’s always been the scholarly type,” he retorted in a displeased tone.

“But even something like statistics always lags several steps behind reality. Moreover, do we even have anything nowadays that truly deserves to be called statistics? Businessmen will try to make profit no matter what they do. And when it comes to profit opportunities—mark my words—they only exist where no book has ever written about them. This is an axiom.”

Toda maintained an utterly bystander-like attitude,

“First thoroughly investigate all of Hakodate and secure a warehouse that isn’t damp.”
“After three years pass and you finally reach that stage, if those once white and beautiful scallop adductor muscles end up covered in blue mold, it would all be for nothing, wouldn’t it?”

Even in the resonance of Toda’s voice—which lingered over their whiteness and beauty as if describing a woman—there now reflected Iijima’s excitement that had already permeated the gathering’s atmosphere, with a faintly nervous shrillness layered beneath.

Shinichi felt as if his entire face were becoming somehow coated in grime.

"I don't seem blessed with much good fortune myself, so I'll humbly pray for the success of your grand ambition—but... something feels off."

With a thoroughly puzzled look,

"That might be what they call the salaryman mentality, but tell me—when it comes to scallop adductor muscles, can you really be sure those business veterans would've left such an opportunity untouched in the same region until you came up with it?"

Iijima—who this time remained silent as Shinichi spoke, countering only with his bulky frame—stayed quiet awhile before finally arching his upper body in a vigorous stretch and thrusting both legs out under the table.

"But... when you think about your kids," he blurted out abruptly to his listeners' faces.
"I've got three born back-to-back.
In this house? That makes me yokozuna material.
Can't let some old man's drunken whims leave 'em homeless now."

Then Toda called out,
"Hey, hey."

In a deep voice that wasn’t entirely mockery, he reproached.

“Which is it? Do you want someone to egg you on or talk you down? Make up your mind—you’re just causing a stir.”

Everyone burst out laughing.
Iijima grinned wryly yet showed no sign of dropping the matter, blinking repeatedly as he stared at the large window where a red-and-white striped awning hung half-drawn.
When Toda stood up from the table, he clicked his shoes against the mosaic floor while,

“So your bold proclamations disappear with the beer foam, huh? What an Alt-Heidelberg farce from Iijima!”

He snapped with metropolitan irritation.

Walking alone along the embankment sidewalk on his way back, Shinichi reflected on the earlier atmosphere and recognized within it precisely the sort of nervous agitation characteristic of their era.
While everyone maintained an observer’s detachment, they simultaneously found themselves drawn into Iijima’s fervor through their pointed skepticism.

And finally, when Iijima uttered something dejected and became agitated, the capacity to keenly perceive that agitation had already taken root in each of their hearts.

In Shinichi's immediate circle, there existed examples far more complex than Iijima's talk of what might be called utterly simple, innocent dreams; in the current dignified appearances of those who had made such special moves over the past year or two, the winding main streets and back alleys of social conditions were reflected exactly as they were. In reality, there were quite a few examples of people who had undergone such transformations. It had become customary for people to discuss that man these days in terms of "such and such," imbued with a third-party's detached perspective, but just as Shinichi himself felt no societal envy toward such transformed figures, so too would the majority among the tens or hundreds of thousands who remained entrenched in their positions likely feel no envy either—if one were to phrase it using that very word. The distance between those types of people and their own lives was not accidental; it was understood—consciously or unconsciously—as arising from differences in human disposition itself, differences that encompassed every divergence in the ways they had lived until now.

But setting aside all such comparisons，there were moments when I felt myself purely as myself and a different sensation emerged．At times，with a momentary hazy intensity，I was overcome by a sensation of being ceaselessly washed away—as if I were a bridge girder looking down at a swift current flowing beneath me．Though I said “everyone，” I unconsciously had in mind the lives of people around my own age—those in their thirties to mid-thirties—but what solitary feelings did all these people hold in their hearts as they lived through each day and night？

On the government railway during his commute, he would often feel a strong interest in the faces of people who spread out their newspapers with relative composure; through a subtle wordless understanding, he came to share a sense that the essence of their lives was not entirely confined within the vertical and horizontal confines of those newspaper pages.

The Oriental Economist was not a particularly robust institution in economic terms.
However, Shinichi had taken that job due to his interest in the nature of the work itself.
Even within language studies, it could be connected to the world's moment-to-moment developments and put to practical use.
This aspect had met with Shinichi's approval.
The shortfall in his salary he supplemented with writing-related side income, maintaining what might be called a principled poverty as an intellectual, and thus they had sustained their circumstances.
Yet lately, there were moments when he would be struck by the sensation of a rapid current flowing beneath his feet, and simultaneously—though without clear reason—feel that a time was approaching when it would become difficult to continue living their principled poverty with the same peace of mind as before.
However, even that sensation was complex in reality; within the uncanny momentary feeling, the sense that his own soles remained firmly planted on the riverbed as he moved persisted unchanged, and even the sensation of being washed carried with it an awareness that it only reached around his shins.

If such a feeling about life were to be called anxiety, Shinichi strongly felt inclined to view the current era—which generated such things along with his very anxiety—as a fascinating social phenomenon within history's shifting currents.
It was terrible, to be sure, but also interesting.
He came to view his own mentality—living with such thoughts—as one element constituting the Japan that was shaping today.

III

The house owned by an honest elderly carpenter couple was compact yet well-built with a sturdy staircase, making it quite comfortable to live in. What Mineko particularly favored was the window in the second-floor six-tatami-mat room. Facing south toward the quiet cedar-fenced avenue and the small garden within their gate stood an ordinary bay window, while another room opened westward. From lintel to threshold, this space stretched uninterrupted, its white shoji screens deepening the room's ambiance whenever zelkova shadows played across them. Outside ran a broad handrail that formed a modest yet serviceable veranda.

“No thanks to us both taking a tumble together or whatever you’d call that.”

When they first moved in, after inspecting the exterior, during summers they both went out there to feel the night breeze, and over these three years they spent many different kinds of nights.

“Oh, that tall light. Could it be the fire station? I wonder if it’s visible from here.”
“Could it be the fire station?”
“I wonder if it’s visible.”

“The light here’s turned off.”

And so the two of them kept discussing whether Mineko would continue working after having a child.
Even after graduating from technical school and marrying, Mineko had worked at a magazine.

In the four-and-a-half-mat room at the bottom of the stairs, Mineko was ironing white shirts. Near the veranda, Kotoko—her former classmate—was holding Teruko facing this way and watching her hands.

“The ‘Breed and Multiply’ campaign that’s all the rage these days is all well and good, but with our situation… the effects are rather complicated, don’t you think?”

After returning from spending about a year and a half in Central China, Yamazaki had begun to fret persistently over the absence of children between him and his wife. And it seemed he had been sending Kotoko to doctors and making her undergo injections.

“I can’t blame Yamazaki for feeling that way.”
“But even though it’s not all my fault… it’s so frustrating.”

“How about you—are you still in demand these days?”

“It seems it’s no longer like when he first came back.”

Kotoko forced a pained half-smile.

“But you know, Yamazaki does have his good points as that type of person, don’t you think?”
“So I’ve made it absolutely clear—no matter what happens, I refuse to raise any child that isn’t our own.”

No matter how much had been stated, that this didn't equate to peace of mind was being driven into Kotoko's core with far greater visceral force than Mineko—listening nearby—could comprehend.
The sufferings and anxieties of being this man's wife were contemplated in various configurations.
And even into such ordinary marital matters, the stain of the era was seeping through.
Mineko sympathized with this.

Kotoko continued fervently,

“Teruko-chan, Teruko-chan.”

Calling her name through the soft-scented hair of the infant she held, she pressed her heavily rouged face against Teruko’s round cheeks.

“Teruko-chan, why didn’t you come to be born to me, your auntie?”

“That part can’t be helped, right Teruko? Don’t you think?”

At the same time, her hands automatically reached out, and with a smoothness she herself didn’t notice, she drew Teruko—who was facing her way, bouncing up and down while waving her hands and laughing—onto her own lap.
After catching her like that, Mineko was startled by her own maternal feelings that had stirred so subtly within her, but Kotoko appeared oblivious to such things as she adjusted her slightly disheveled kimono collar and drank the tea that had been sitting there gone cold.

“Oh, I do apologize.”

“It’s quite all right, really. We often let it get cold and drink it that way at home.”

Unlike Shinichi, Yamazaki was employed at a prominent life insurance company through his father's connections—the sort of man who would kill time at mahjong clubs until around two o'clock during his lunch breaks.

“People say ‘Welcome back safe and sound’ to celebrate, but having gone through such harsh experiences is different, don’t you think? Mineko-san, didn’t you notice anything when we both visited the other day?”
"Yamazaki has changed somehow—how should I put it—it’s… not something I can put into words."

Kotoko adjusted her posture impatiently.
That was something Mineko later discussed with Shinichi as well.
“Mr. Yamazaki must have felt he’s become quite the grown-up in his own mind, I suppose,” she said.
In response to his wife saying something, he would either ignore her as if from different worlds or remain silent and laugh.
Within that laughter, something unsettling seemed to seep through and linger.

“Oh my, it’s already so late!”
“If Yamazaki finds out I’ve been grumbling like this, he’ll scold me again.”

Leaving Kotoko's troubles unresolved by any external words, Mineko saw her off to the bus and then headed to the market.
At this market, eggs were sold during set times—up to 375 grams per person.
"They set egg prices without setting feed costs—that's why they don't come out," the male vendor said.

Shinichi was going to be late tonight due to a meeting at work.

"Come on, Teru-chan, you're facing me so intently tonight. How impressive!"

Saying such things, Mineko quickly finished a dinner that felt both lonely and lively, put Teruko to bed, then brought out the ongoing translation of a boys' novel she had been working on.
This was her second job; the first had become a book.
In the summer of the year before last, as draft notices were being issued in rapid succession, Shinichi too had begun preparing his gear.
Around that same time, someone from the company had been conscripted a year apart.

Shinichi, who returned from the farewell party with an unusually flushed face, was vigorously scrubbing his back with a damp hand towel as he spoke in a tone still charged with excitement,

“That Suzuki must’ve been really worried—he kept entrusting people with his wife’s care.”
“And he told them to make sure his salary gets sent to his wife without fail.”
“His wife is an orphan, apparently.”

Since Suzuki’s parents did not approve of their marriage, he must have felt unable to leave his young wife—who had no relatives—completely alone in Tokyo.
He had said he would leave her with relatives in Okayama or such places on his way and departed on the same train.

“With a face dotted with freckles like a small child’s, she kept bowing to everyone she met.”

After changing into a pleasantly starched yukata and finishing wrapping the heko-obi sash with a broad leg motion, Shinichi,

“How about it, Mineko?”

He placed a hand on the shoulder of Mineko, who was standing there assisting with the change of clothes, and turned her face toward him.
And with an expression half-joking, half-serious, he stared fixedly into the eyes of his young, earnest wife,

“Even I might die, you know. Take good care of me,” he said.
Then Mineko’s face flushed crimson upon hearing this.
“Oh, don’t say such things.”

Grabbing one of Shinichi’s hands and pressing it firmly against her own chest without thinking,

“Haven’t you known this all along? Why…”

She stared at Shinichi with eyes that seemed nearly indignant, but tears soon welled up in them,

“Yes... you truly have no idea, do you? Yes, that’s right.”

she said with a smile.
The earnest tenderness welling up in her held such intensity that it profoundly moved Shinichi.
Every time he later recalled that moment, Shinichi realized there had been—at least in his own feelings at the time—something more frivolous than in his wife.
In truth, until that moment, Shinichi had never imagined his wife had been waking so often and for such extended periods in the middle of the night.

When the white mosquito net was hung fully, the second-floor room took on the feeling of a semi-transparent basket.
The usual west side—devoid of footholds anywhere—remained open, and with faint tree shadows cast from there onto the mosquito net's hem, they went to bed.
After sinking into a deep sleep that intertwined them both, some time later Mineko abruptly awoke.
Her eyes opened wide and clear from sleep's very depths.
The night air grew cold around them, the white mosquito net hanging heavy with dew.
Westward-shifting moonlight cast its glow along the net's edge.
When Mineko reached out—worried Shinichi might grow cold as he slept barely covered—her hand accidentally touched her husband's chest where he lay breathing soundly, her attention caught by an intrusive noise that pierced her ears despite its distance.
The sound came from the direction of distant Yoyogi Training Ground.
Clang.
Clang.
A noise like steel springs from powerful modern weapons releasing sharp bullets that unfailingly pierce living flesh when triggered.
As Mineko listened with her hand resting lightly on Shinichi's chest, she gradually felt connections forming—the metallic clangs linking with his body's warmth and heartbeat along an invisible thread.
The more she listened to those terrifying late-night sounds—clang clang clang—the more they seemed bound to their very survival.
Mineko found herself leaning forward until her own chest shielded Shinichi's sleeping form.
She strained her ears.
The noise seemed to persist for nearly an hour.
Then stopped.

At that time, in the outskirts of the great metropolis of Tokyo, various sounds could be heard all night long.

There were people who did not sleep.
And the nighttime noises were sounds never heard by day.
The soldiers working through the night could not be distinguished in daylight as those who had kept vigil.

Come morning, as Mineko gazed at Shinichi spreading his newspaper across the bay window, she found it strange that during the night she had felt such heartrending anguish upon hearing the sound that had sliced through the air to reach her ears. Moreover, it was an experience of the heart that she couldn’t find words to describe.

Though she hadn’t particularly meant to dwell on it, the following night Mineko awoke in the same manner—and upon waking found it was midnight once more, with that sound ringing out. In just the same way, Mineko was filled with heartrending sorrow. Yet precisely because this emotion pierced so deeply, her inclination to wake Shinichi at that moment grew even weaker, and she embraced her husband’s fragrantly solid body with single-minded devotion for sleep’s sake.

How many nights had this continued? One night, she awoke with a start, and out of habit Mineko lifted her head from the pillow to listen intently. The dark night stretched endlessly around them, but the sound that used to split the darkness was nowhere to be heard. She listened in anxious anticipation, yet the noise never came. Then tears welled up—overflowing uncontrollably—and Mineko sat on the floor, tilting her head slightly as if puzzling at herself while soaked in weeping, until at last she wiped her tears with the sleeve of her camellia-patterned nightgown and brought her lips close to her husband. Shinichi responded with a boyishly dreamy expression, mumbling incoherently. Even that struck Mineko as both absurd and endearing.

Mineko laughed alone.

Yet those nights' experiences became the impetus that drove Mineko to ponder deeply on many things.
The ache remained unforgotten, and from it she grew all the more resolute to live their marital life in every facet as days without remorse.
Both physically and mentally, Mineko matured remarkably during this time, her features acquiring a profound depth of radiance.

It was around this period that she began translation work.
Even without living carelessly, the mere fact of their days slipping away one after another left Mineko vaguely unfulfilled; this yearning for something tangible to emerge clearly from their shared existence transformed itself into translation.
When Teruko had been in her womb, compressing both the child soon to be born and the era's reality they must inhabit into that small life had made existence unbearable - this woman who seemed only to peer into a world where heaven and earth had been folded into her child.
The feeling intensified when she imagined Shinichi no longer being able to remain at home.
For Mineko burned with desire to confirm within herself the resilient strength needed to shoulder all modern fate that her husband, herself and child must inevitably encounter together.

After working until she reached a stopping point, Mineko went downstairs, checked the iron kettle, and prepared a light meal.
When Shinichi returned from meetings at work, he would unfailingly ask, "Can you manage some tea over rice?"

IV

Near noon on Sunday, the sound of neighborhood junior high school students playing catchball outside the cedar fence could be heard.

Shinichi was sitting out on the canvas chair they had placed in the small garden, in a posture that looked less like holding Teruko and more like balancing her across his lap and stomach.
It was a charmless garden, but the bush clover they had dug up during their early summer stroll had taken root and was beginning to open small purple blossoms by the lattice fence.

“Mineko, do you know there’s something starting to sprout spikes next to the bush clover?”

Mineko stood at the small kitchen sink that overlooked the garden.

“It’s even more remarkable than the bush clover. I wonder what it could be.”

When they had dug up the roots with a shovel, what appeared to be a wild plant clinging to those roots was now extending slender leaves like pampas grass and beginning to show spikes of silvery-brown granules.

“Ah, did you see the letter that was there?”

“I don’t know.”

"But it’s under 'Denden'."

The voice speaking to Teruko subsided, and he seemed to be reading the letter, but before long—

"Hey, come here for a second."

Shinichi called out, his face still turned toward the letter.

"Just a moment."

"Come look."

"What is it?"

When Mineko glanced over the letter that had been presented, her expression turned puzzled,

"Hmm..."

and looked at Shinichi's face.

"I feel strange somehow. Can they really build a house these days?"

“Since Sawada’s brother has the land secured and Architect Sawada says he’ll build it, I suppose it’ll get built.”

"But—it's an apartment complex, isn't it? It’s not even small. Even if it's fifty yen each year for ten years on an installment plan..."

The initiators' meticulous planning for their lives—having drawn up such plans by assuming current living conditions would remain unchanged over the coming decade—did not align with Mineko's present sensibilities. Yet Mineko lived preparing precisely for that eventuality—considering how their lives might be forced to change even tomorrow—while... And she felt this too must be the emotional reality for tens of thousands of young married couples across Japan today.

“If Sawada had a son, he’d probably come around to this way of thinking too.”

Mineko, wearing a skirt with her bare feet in zori sandals, placed her hands on the back of the canvas chair and remained silent for a time before—

“Tell me—am I just being stubborn?”

She slowly circled around to stand before Shinichi, resting her soft chin on the armrest as she let Teruko—perched on her husband’s lap—grasp her little finger.

“I don’t share these people’s sentiments.”
“Even when I think about Teruko... there’s still something different.”
“Even if she’s adorable.”

“If we’re going to be paying rent either way, it’s just this mindset of ‘might as well build our own place instead of wasting money.’… But then again, this place is only twenty-four yen.”

Shinichi laughed.
That they had no intention of joining this installment-plan housing construction—not merely for financial reasons but because their sensibilities clashed with what was called the cultured, refined atmosphere of those resident families—was something Mineko understood through that wordless mutual comprehension particular to married couples. Yet as she considered how violently their own feelings had changed in such a short time, Mineko found herself wondering: what if this proposal had come two or three years earlier?

Watching his wife rest her rounded chin on the arm of the canvas chair, wiggle the pinky finger clasped in Teruko’s hand to fuss over their daughter, and settle into a natural smile, Shinichi felt he understood her emotions quite well.
From a sentiment entirely separate from what might be called stubbornness or pride, Mineko disliked seeking scattered footholds atop something like thin ice that might crack and give way at any moment; rather, she wanted to keep moving forward without losing her chosen direction, even if it meant wading through ankle-deep water.
And might there not be, in that very place, a manifestation of the youth of their generation and a form of sincerity?
In Shinichi's heart, his so-called "greatness" being intriguing coincided with his present resolve to live authentically today.

At that moment, as if sensing something shared flowing between them, Mineko lifted her face and looked at Shinichi with a calm, unswerving gaze.
Her eyes glistened with golden-brown hues in the sunlight.
Shinichi thought her beautiful.
Mineko made a slight motion as if to tilt her curly-haired head,

“Were you thinking roughly the same thing?” she asked.

“Why don’t you ask Teru-chan?”

Mineko laughed.
And then, in the seamless continuation of that natural mood,
“About what Elder Brother mentioned the other day—”
she began.
“Are you rushing to reply?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Don’t go deciding things alone, okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Elder Brother may be fond of laying out life plans these days, but even so, I think there are various ways to approach them.”
“Right?”
“When people shamelessly rise to prominence like that—I find it somehow distasteful, even when imagining ourselves in that position. Please.”

Mineko’s manner of speaking was simple, yet within her artless expression about shamelessly rising to prominence lay an articulation of something intuitively grasped from the surrounding reality.