Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

Thud.
Thud.
In the dawn light where even a hesitant sound seemed strangely loud to her own ears, after tying her haori cords, Sai shifted the standing mirror aside and opened the bag of jam buns she had bought the night before for this purpose, still half-crouched.

Between sleep deprivation and undefined agitation, the dry buns merely absorbed what moisture remained in her mouth, stubbornly resisting being swallowed.
Having barely managed one, she clutched the bag and pushed it into the corner before gathering her handbag and shawl to head for the kitchen area.

The faucet was already open.
At the pump’s matching fixture, the newly lit stove crackled with splitting firewood.
Flames spouting through smoke carried hues that evoked lingering depths of sleep still clinging to the air.
As Sai pulled her good clogs from newspaper wrapping, wind brought the government railway’s roar—a first-run train tearing through distant darkness.

Outside proved windier than expected—the red tobacco sign groaned on its chains while glass panes rattled behind a candy shop’s burlap curtain still drawn tight.

It was approximately twenty minutes before five o'clock when she arrived at Ueno Station.
At the cavernous exit stood two men in inn workers' coats, their faces devoid of interest as they puffed on cigarettes and fidgeted incessantly, with scarcely another soul in sight.
After winding the red-enameled watch strapped to her wrist to match the central station clock, Sai grew anxious again and opened her handbag.
The creased postcard bore a penciled note: He should arrive at Ueno Station around five o'clock.
When speaking of trains arriving around five, even during her deliberate trip to Oji Station the previous evening to confirm schedules, there had only been the 4:58 service listed.

As she stood leaning against a platform pillar to block the cutting wind, a freight transport vehicle soon entered and stopped just short of where Sai was standing.
Station staff came out.
Every face she saw bore an unfriendly expression that belonged neither to night nor fully to morning, and from this atmosphere around her, Sai’s fragile state of mind grew more intense.

With a ground-shaking rumble, the long train from Aomori entered the station. Sai braced herself against the locomotive's buffeting wind and began hurrying toward the rear car while scrutinizing each third-class window. Her view was immediately blocked by the surge of passengers spilling from the train. Jostling against apple baskets and trunks, she forced her way to the very end of the platform only to find no trace of him in the crowd. She dashed back toward the station exit and kept watch, but the dark mass of travelers gradually dissipated until only two women remained—their round chignons draped with hand towels over coat collars as they awkwardly carried a large cloth bundle between them. When they too disappeared, nothing remained on the platform but freight handlers circling the cargo cars.

From beneath the locomotive that had run all night and now stood halted, white steam hissed and spurted out only to be scattered by the buffeting wind. Looking down at it and lightly biting her lip, Sai felt tears well up. If it was the next train, would that be 5:34? Would he even come then? Startled by the thought that she might have mixed up the date, she checked the postcard again. No matter how she looked, there it remained—March 25th.

Sai leaned against a pillar for a while intending to wait like that, but feeling somehow unsettled, she approached the freight handler wearing a thick cotton apron.

"Um, is it all right to wait here for the 5:34 upbound train?"

"Huh?"

"That's on the Joban Line."

Another man gestured with one gloved hand,

"That platform over there. Over there."

"You'll need to exit here first, then go up to the right."

“Oh! I’m sorry.”

Flustered and blushing, Sai ran up the stairs she had been directed to after informing the ticket inspector. She had thought it would be a confusing place, but upon climbing the stairs, there it was—the Joban Line’s low-ceilinged waiting room, where a considerable number of people had gathered on the benches at the back: military men in officer’s cloaks and women wearing black lace shawls. Because a train bound for Chiba was departing from one side of the same platform, the congestion was terrible.

This elevated platform proved even more exposed to the wind, though before she knew it the sky had grown much brighter. The view revealed an orange eastern morning sky characteristic of a windy dawn, clustered with mouse-gray clouds, while Yamanote Line trains arrived incessantly to disgorge countless men and women who moved through the dim light of dawn with sallow complexions, busily walking in shoes or geta—a sight she found novel to observe from her vantage point.
At this hour, she would normally be walking along Oji’s streets like that girl over there on the other platform, clutching a small cloth bundle in front of her chest.
When the vividness of this morning’s exceptional nature struck Sai and she instinctively spread out her shawl again, the loudspeaker overhead abruptly blared to life.

“Third-class cars are located behind the platform’s central office.”

Not only Sai, but also the woman in the black lace shawl, men in khaki uniforms carrying large suitcases, men with puttees, and the entire group shuffled in disarray toward that direction beneath the loudspeaker repeating the same message.

From a single window far toward the rear of the train that had slowed and slid into the platform, she saw a paper Hinomaru flag being held out.
"Oh!" exclaimed Sai, her eyes widening—

"That's it! They told us to wave the Hinomaru flag!"

The harried man's booming voice rang out simultaneously.
The man with puttees who had spoken produced his own Hinomaru paper flag from somewhere and pushed through the crowd using his body's width, brandishing it high overhead.
Sai's chest tightened with goosebumps prickling her cheeks as she hurried after him to keep up.

Slipping past the man with puttees—who stood clutching both the signal Hinomaru flag and his cap in one hand while greeting a simple-faced young teacher—Sai peered at each face among the approximately thirty boys lined up in two rows there.

“Yukichi!”

Standing on the platform like all the others in his kogura outfit and geta, a small old Chinese-style suitcase at his feet, Yūkichi kept his dazed gaze fixed on the surrounding commotion—perhaps not hearing Sai’s voice.
Sai unintentionally slipped into her full hometown dialect,

“Hey, Yukichi! Over here!”

She shook her brother’s shoulder.

“What’re you spacing out for?”

When Yūkichi finally realized the young woman wearing a vivid pink lace shawl—laughing through teary eyes while shaking him—was his sister Sai,

“I thought you were somebody else.”

He said this without laughing, his face flushing slightly.
During three years of Tokyo life without meeting, Sai had turned twenty, and thus Yūkichi had graduated from elementary school. Unable to put her myriad feelings into words, Sai—

"Is this all your luggage?"

she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Is Granny Taoka well?”

“Yeah.”

“Who else came from the village?”

Yūkichi gestured with his chin toward the boy standing next to him.

“Only two came from the higher grades too.”

At that moment, the supervising teacher came forward to the middle of the line and—

“Now, we will proceed to Nijubashi.”
“Everyone, be very careful when boarding and alighting trains and with traffic.”

he issued instructions in a loud voice.

The man with puttees started walking at the front alongside the teacher.
Basket.
Cloth-wrapped bundle.
Trunk.
An old-fashioned suitcase like Yukichi's.
The children’s luggage, with their varied shapes and colors, seemed to speak of rural life, stirring a nostalgic ache in Sai.
The boys wordlessly started moving with their luggage.
Sai joined the people following from behind.

By the time they approached the square before Nijubashi Bridge from Tokyo Station’s frontage, the morning sun brightly illuminated the faces of buildings not yet beginning their day’s activity, yet the wind’s force showed no sign of abating—Sai’s long sleeves were blown apart from her haori down to her underrobe.
The procession pressed forward against the wind, heads bowed as they trod over gravel.

They proceeded to just before the partition and came to a stop in a horizontal line.

“Now then, everyone—we shall first solemnly pay our respects from afar and pledge ourselves as industrial soldiers protecting the home front before disbanding. But before that, I would like to introduce those who from today onward shall serve as both your teachers and parents, guiding your future.”

The teacher who had led the children mobilized from several village elementary schools to the capital took out a notebook from his pocket as he spoke.

“Those whose names are called, please step three paces forward.”

Kiyoshi Sato of San'in, Tadashi Ichihara.
The boys whose village names and personal names had been called stepped out of the line as instructed and came forward.
Then the teacher stepped slightly aside and called out to Mr. Teiji Asai of Showa Nobundo Company in Sakaimachi, Joto Ward, and the group of adults clustered to the side.
From among them, a fiftyish man in mouse-gray clothes removed his hat and took a step or two forward.
Bow!
To the two boys' bow,

“Ah.”

While offering such acknowledgment, his face instantly took on a cheerful look as he returned their bow, then stepped back into the crowd. Each boy whose name was called tightened his lips and fixed an unblinking gaze, intently watching whoever emerged from that direction. As the boys in Kokura uniforms—their shoulders bathed in morning sunlight and exposed for the first time to Tokyo’s sweeping winds—maintained earnest expressions, Sai found her lips beginning to tremble and discreetly brought her shawl to her mouth. What kind of person would his new employer be? Would he be kind? Would he be frightening? She remembered too the feeling she’d had when that distant uncle from Oji first took her to the seamstress.

In reality, among the men called forward there were those who appeared simply quiet and unassuming, and others who didn't look particularly kind. The paired groups who had completed introductions now shared a different quality of mutual interest from a distance—the boys seemed tense not to let a single face escape their notice, while the adults appeared to scrutinize the youths with more layered intensity.

Which of these was Yamada Partnership Company, the woolen fabric wholesaler where Yukichi would be working? Sai felt a suffocating tightness, as if she wanted to loosen the knot of her obi cord.

"Yukichi Beppu of Shiroyama!"
Yukichi spread his legs as if in a gymnastics stance and stepped forward one, two, three paces.
"Nihonbashi Ward, Yoshicho 2-chome, Yamada Partnership Company, Mr. Fujii Kinnosuke."
Seeing the woman in the stylish komon-patterned haori—a black lace shawl draped lightly over her hand—step forward in response to the call, Sai found herself inexplicably averting her eyes. From Ueno Station onward, the nervous-looking profile of this thin, thirty-four or thirty-five-year-old woman had not given Sai a favorable impression.

The woman approached the teacher, slightly bending at the waist as she said a few words.

“Ah, no—thank you for your efforts.”

She turned back toward Yūkichi and,

"This morning, the company manager was supposed to come, but I hear he’s taken ill, so his wife has come in his place instead."

Yukichi bowed properly and returned to the line.
The employers and the family members who had come to greet the boys were formally introduced to one another, but even counting Sai among them, there were only five or six people in total.

Then the teacher gave a short address.
"Do not succumb to Tokyo's corrupting temptations and strive to become exemplary industrial soldiers."

“Even if difficulties arise, do not forget the determination you felt when taking this first step upon Tokyo’s soil this morning—please summon your courage.”
“Let us give three cheers of banzai.”

The employers formed a front line with the boys behind them, and they shouted “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!” three times.
The morning sunlight spread ever wider across the gravel square, shrinking the group’s figures and carrying their cries into the wind.

The neighborhood stretched with wholesalers’ buildings, and through the glass window against which Sai and Yukichi leaned, the drying area behind the adjacent building appeared directly before them.
There, a woman was hanging laundry.
In the twelve-tatami room with wooden cabinets along one wall, all the shop’s young workers seemed to live and work—three or four small desks stood by both the street-facing window and beneath this one.
The remaining space lay empty; sunlight slanted through the glass onto Ryukyu-patterned fabric while an indefinable masculine presence lingered.
With eyes both narrowed and restless, Sai surveyed the desks and cabinets.
Yukichi had come under the promise that they would send him to commerce school by military conscription age.

After the woman who had come to fetch them, saying she would call when breakfast was ready, went back downstairs, the surroundings—seemingly both busy and quiet—were intermittently pierced by the ringing of a telephone bell. After a while, Sai began speaking in a hushed voice, as if pressed down by the vast emptiness of the vacant room.

“Sis, I caused a real scramble this mornin’.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the time straight?”

“Didn’t know clear m’self!”

“―No changes at home?”

“Yeah.
“Ma’s bein’ all competitive with Sis—tellin’ herself not t’ push too hard—y’know?”
“Said if ya ever wanna come home，just come on back.”

"Did Mom really say that?" Sai asked.

She laughed casually, but her mother's message sank deep into her heart. Even when she developed pleurisy after ten months at the seamstress's shop, Sai hadn't returned home—this February she kept working night shifts to send twenty yen back to her family. Yukichi gazed at his sister with a boyish look full of heartfelt affection and newfound maturity.

"Ma said I should tell ya proper when I saw Sis."

"It's fine. Lately Sergeant goes so far as to praise Miss Sai for keeping at it."

Sai’s feeling of not wanting to return to the countryside was something she couldn’t properly convey even to this close brother.

That village.
The house within that village.
The daily life there, measured down to the hour when chickens would crow.
When she recalled it, there was something inexpressibly nostalgic, but thinking of being woven back into that existence made both body and mind hesitate, until she found herself wanting to stay right where she was.
After having lain ill in Oji for nearly two months - during which time Sai had cried many times - she ended up staying.
What might be called her future life now hung in such vague outline that it could only be imagined as continuing directly from these present circumstances.

The sunburned red cheeks of Yukichi—who had begun unpacking his belongings by the wall—and his way of sitting cross-legged still carried the atmosphere of the countryside, as if straw might come scattering about his knees; yet even this Yukichi had unwittingly stepped into the continuity of life here—a life that would soon make him understand those very feelings.
Yukichi, unaware that his sister was watching him intently with feelings that went beyond their seven-year age difference, continued taking out newspaper-wrapped packages one by one from his Chinese-style suitcase and placing them on the tatami.

“Masachan from Yamakita came back sudden-like after finishin’ up his preparations,” he said.

“Hmm.”
“Then everyone must be overjoyed.”

“They’re goin’ again, they say.”
“They’re sayin’ everyone only came back inland during winter to eat up the rice.”

“Hmm.”

The newspaper-wrapped packages that Yukichi had laid out before his sister’s knees were miso pickles, mugwort rice cakes, roasted barley powder, persimmon rice cakes, and other goods from their hometown.

“Oji and here can be split up, they say.”

“That side just needs a token amount.”
“I’m always careful and doing all sorts of things, you know.”
“—Are these mugwort ones filled?”

“’Cause they’d spoil, so they didn’t put any in.”

Even back home, sugar must be scarce. As Sai was noisily putting away the newspaper-wrapped packages—thinking she could sort them out later—from below the ladder steps,

“The meal is ready.”

A voice called out.
Uncertain whether they were being addressed, the brother and sister exchanged hesitant glances—when the woman who had come to fetch them spoke again:

“Now, both of you come down.”

Sai hurriedly responded “Yes” in a city voice.

“Come on, let’s go.”

Sai went first down the ladder, and when she knelt to open the sliding door upon being told “Here” from within, there lay a six-tatami room untouched by sunlight, with a large table placed at its center.
The maid looked down at Sai’s body clad entirely in rayon with an unreserved gaze while bringing soup bowls from the kitchen.

That she too would be invited to breakfast here was something Sai had never imagined.

“To avoid making things awkward for you, Miss Ogen—let’s leave the rice tub to Sis.”

Though he must have been hungry, Yukichi only took three bowls.
Suppressing the urge to say “Eat more,” Sai carried the dishes to the kitchen herself.

Before long, a portly man with dark blue habutae silk wrapped around his neck entered the room with his hands tucked in his sleeves.

“Well, you made it.”

Assuming he was the master of the house, Sai and Yukichi bowed politely.

“How are you finding Tokyo? Well, endurance is what matters most.”
“Once you get used to things, there’ll be nothing left to worry about.”

He took a couple of puffs on a cigarette,

“What was it again... Yu—kichi-kun? Seems sturdy enough.”

Sai was looking at her own lap.
Yukichi, who was earnestly looking at his counterpart, made a troubled expression as if his voice wouldn’t come out properly when trying to respond.

“Ha ha ha ha ha, well never mind. The master will be coming later—make sure you greet him properly.”

So this was what they called the manager? Keeping her gaze lowered, Sai felt absurdity and foolishness welling up within her. How dare he speak like he was the master?

“Where’s your place, Sis?”

Handling the question where “Sis” carried a rural inflection,

“Somewhere around Oji, they say.”

From beside them, the landlady answered while lighting a brazier.
“It’s a factory district, they say.”

“From here—it’s quite a distance.
“Better for you that it’s not too close.
“Do inform your family back home.
“Not that taking you in means anything special.”

“Please look after him properly.”

Sai bowed her head.

“Now go get dressed properly.”

“But sir, you should’ve told Shindon about that.”

“Ah, right.”

One of them stood up while keeping his hands tucked in his sleeves,

“I’ll bring out the work clothes now. Once changed, come to the shop.”

“Well, I can’t be idling here either.”

Therefore, Sai and Yukichi could no longer remain seated and went out into the hallway.

When they returned to the second floor, Sai began silently dividing the newspaper-wrapped gifts with a lonely look in her eyes.

Afraid that speaking would bring tears, she closed the lattice without looking at her brother’s face, stepped out into the wholesalers’ district, and found herself utterly adrift.
It had barely just turned a little past nine.
There was still plenty of time before sunset.
Yesterday, when she earnestly requested to take today off, Sergeant said, “If Miss Sai is insisting that much, it must be truly necessary. Very well,” and granted permission.
At that time, her heart had been so full of simply meeting Yukichi that the thought of being at a loss for how to spend this entire leftover day after such an abrupt parting had never even crossed her mind.

She had no intention of returning straight back to the house in Oji. Wasn't there somewhere I could go? With spring sunlight that swayed in the wind hitting her full face, what floated through Sai's mind as she walked toward the bus stop were things like the hunchbacked seamstress of vicious disposition, the salaryman's house where she'd worked as a maid for three months, or else Fusai's place from the same village. Fusai was in Meguro and worked as a maid herself—even if I went there suddenly, it would only mean a brief exchange at best. Since I was the only one who'd taken time off to come out, it stood to reason my current workplace friends wouldn't be home either. Wasn't there anywhere I could go? What Sai wanted was to open her newspaper bundle before someone other than that old woman from Oji—to roast hardened mugwort mochi while telling how Yukichi hadn't recognized her at the station after three years, how he'd stared like she was some stranger. This feeling of hometown being both painfully near and impossibly distant—today's whole mood—I wanted to share it with someone. Where could I possibly speak of such things?

Under the red pillar of the tram stop, her cherry-patterned haori’s sleeves and hem buffeted by the wind, Sai absently let a tram pass by.

II

Several types of workshops were divided into separate buildings, and paths paved with coal cinders led from the poplar-lined main gate in various directions.

The guard standing at the gate would make the girls redo their morning greetings even once or twice if they seemed impudent or performed them poorly.
That was precisely the kind of ethos they took pride in.
And when April came, they no longer allowed the women to wear haori jackets.
They were required to wear the prescribed work uniforms complete with sashes and pass through the gate.

In that part of the vast grounds—what it might have been originally—there was a slightly elevated mound of earth about three or four shaku high, where dandelions bloomed amidst lush weeds.
Sitting down there, a girl gazed at the white glint of her tabi sock toes—stretched out and aligned without particular thought—in the spring sunlight.

The girls lined up facing away from the workshop's wooden paneling, their backs illuminated as they chattered.
Bringing books into this area was strictly prohibited.
Thus their lunch breaks too were spent in this fashion day after day.

Sai and Yumiko, wearing work uniforms numbered across the chest, walked along the coal-cinder path toward the commissary.
Behind the office buildings, at a hub accessible straight from any workshop, stood a commissary about the size of a small market.
The high ceiling beams fastened with bolts and the dust coating the skylight glass stood out conspicuously in the mild seasonal weather.
The two made their way through the crowded doma corridor to the confectionery section.
The soba borou buckwheat cookies here were a favorite of the old woman at their Oji lodgings, which Sai occasionally bought to bring back for her.

At the fabric department, while lightly touching and examining fabrics like silk serge and summer-patterned meisen spread out on display cases,

“Is this really meisen silk?”

Yumiko murmured with feigned nonchalance.

“Even when we work so hard to make things, it feels like we don’t even know what these recent ones are good for anymore. It’s so dreary, isn’t it?”

Between the installment plans being available and their lack of time, the girls inevitably ended up getting things at the commissary.

“Sai-chan, are your installments done already?”

“Nope, there’s still a month left.”

As they strolled along, Yumiko gave a sharp tug to the sagging sleeve of Sai’s work uniform.

“What is it?”

When Sai saw Yumiko gesture with her eyes toward the Western goods section, a cluster of girls there were selecting small ribbon bows popular these days for hairstyles. Among them, Ayako picked up a bluish one,

“Let me see...”
“It’s nice enough, but rather plain, don’t you think?”

She brought it to the hair of the girl standing beside her and examined it. With her medium-high nose and a mole on her upper cheek, Ayako's showy features stood out, and even in her ribbon-selecting motions there persisted a self-conscious pose of someone perpetually aware of being observed.

"The other day at Mitsukoshi I saw a simply divine one. Satin—one side silvery mouse-gray, the back pale pink—so modern. One shaku for sixty-eight sen."

After they had passed by and walked on for a while, Yumiko looked about to burst with anger,

“Hmph,” she said.

“Look,” she said. “Mention a picnic just once and that’s what you get.”

Some girls surrounding her remarked how Miss Ayako resembled one of Kagyo’s painted women. Sai maintained a detached skepticism toward such comparisons, but Yumiko’s loathing of Ayako knew no bounds. Their conflict never erupted into open quarrels—instead, it persisted through silent drafting sessions where they worked side by side at identical boards without exchanging a single word.

“Even this morning during calisthenics, she went out of her way to correct someone’s posture. How utterly petty can you be?”

“Was that really how it was?”

“Where on earth are your eyes looking?”

Suddenly finding herself able to laugh, the amusement became unstoppable—Sai wiped her tears with the back of her hand, her delicate features flushing crimson as she doubled over laughing.

“What’s wrong? What’s so funny?”

“Dunno.”

“That’s not fair! Tell me.”

“Sorry, I just suddenly thought it was hilarious.”

Once, Ayako dropped a pencil onto the floor.
It rolled over to Yumiko’s feet beside her.
Yumiko, of course, did not pick it up for her.
At that moment, Sergeant Hirata came around,
“There’s a pencil on the floor.”

“There’s a pencil on the floor,” he said.
As Yumiko and Ayako remained stiffly silent over their drafting boards, Sergeant Hirata bent his pomade-stiffened head and retrieved it.

“Don’t mishandle issued supplies! Material conservation! Material conservation!”

While handing back the pencil and scanning the area, Ayako—who had feigned ignorance until now—

“Oh!”

—turned her left palm upward with theatrical grace, ruby ring glinting,

“Thank you.”

She accepted the pencil.

Yumiko had looked down on people and later puffed up with anger.
As Sai responded with a troubled look, Toyoko, who had been scraping nails nearby,

“Hehehe, you’re really getting all the trouble, aren’t you, Sai-chan?”
“Do you know why she says such things?”

Without looking at Sai, [Toyoko] continued scraping her nails with her work uniform’s sleeve and asked in a way meant to draw attention.

“Well...”

“Miss Yumiko likes the Sergeant too.”
“That’s why, see? You get it now, right?”

She had been able to laugh upon remembering that, but when her laughter subsided, Sai felt there was something peculiar—as if Toyoko’s manner of speaking, delivered without even looking at her, carried some special intent.

The room where Sai and the others worked was a newly constructed section that jutted out like an extension from the large workshop where the men labored, housing just under twenty girls.
They were all new temporary workers who had completed their two-month training period there as well.

Around three o'clock, Sergeant Hirata's angry voice resounded from the larger room. A low voice that sounded like an excuse was heard, then suddenly came the sharp report of an open-handed strike.

"Don't any of you dare think it was Hirata's doing!"

Her calves had grown heavy from leaning against the drafting board where she'd propped both elbows during her brief rest. Sai's face twitched nervously as she righted her ruling pen. Soon enough, when Sergeant Hirata came around to their section in his armbanded work uniform—jaw clenched and expression sour—all the girls tensed up, quietly bent over their boards while showing off their varied hairstyles.

The scheduled siren resounded through the air far and wide.
Beginning low before gradually swelling into a thick, towering pillar of sound that stood in the vast sky, then fading away—this siren's wail always filled Sai with vague dread whenever she heard it.
Though sirens blared everywhere around them, theirs alone overwhelmed those varied tones with its prolonged cry that rose toward heaven like some colossal demon.
When this siren began its blare, the sheer weight and height of its sound made the rows of small houses nearby feel all the more insignificant now.

On this overtime day, after the air that had been shaken by the siren finally settled and the clear evening sunlight streaming in through the window caught the color of weeds in her eyes, Sai felt an emotion she hadn’t known all winter flow from her chest down to her legs.
The feeling—something like faint languor or perhaps lingering melancholy—during these evenings with their soft air of late, made Sai’s thick single eyelids grow heavier still.

Having brought out a small round stool to the window edge and placed her bento bundle on her lap, Sai was lingering in that mood when Teruko came to her side,

“Let’s eat together.”

Teruko came over.
The young Teruko, lively and picking up rice grains stuck to her bento box lid with the tip of her chopsticks,

"Oh no, Mother put this in again—I hate Suehiro fans... It's those relatives in Chiba giving us this stuff."

As she said this, she peered into Sai's bento.

“How about we swap some side dishes?”

Sai ate simmered dried radish again at lunch.
It was the same thing that had been in yesterday’s bento.
The old woman from Oji had always done such things indifferently to any of her lodgers.
These days, with prices having gone up, it had gotten even worse.
Therefore, the men soon stopped bringing their lunchboxes altogether.

“Hey, what do you think?
“Sergeant, do you really think he’ll take us on a picnic?”

“Well... who knows?”

While saying this, Sai’s eyes were drawn to the old newspaper photograph spread out beneath Teruko’s bento.

“Hey,”

“What?”

“That photo.”

When Sai turned her hand—still holding chopsticks—toward it to look, she found exactly what she’d suspected.
There they were: elementary school graduates from Yamagata Prefecture who’d arrived at Ueno Station that same morning she went to meet Yukichi, captured in a group photo. Boys from snowbound Tohoku wore straight-cut kasuri garments and carried large wicker trunks.
One boy facing the camera struck her particularly—his round nose glistening under the light, jet-black eyes wide with surprise, all framed by the new trunk at his feet.
The headline proclaimed: “Lovely Industrial Soldiers Make Triumphant Entry to Capital.”
On that fourth Sunday of March, over ten thousand such boys—fresh from graduation ceremonies the previous day—had been paraded into Tokyo under their teachers’ supervision.

Sai recalled stories of people being overjoyed when newsreels unexpectedly showed the faces of sons or brothers who had been drafted. If this child's parents back home saw this newspaper, what would they have felt?

"Ah... They actually took photos," Sai said with an involuntary sigh.

Sai let out an involuntary sigh as she spoke.

“My brother has come to Nihonbashi this time.”

Teruko—who had grown up here and worked here—did not share those feelings, her expression innocently routine as she spoke,

“It must be nice not to feel lonely.”

Then, while humming the theme song from *Aizen Katsura* through her nose, she began putting away the round stool.

Although nearly three weeks had passed, Yukichi still hadn't sent any letters.
There, they were strictly prohibited from speaking to others about their work details, and they had been told this applied even to parents and siblings.
It seemed she had to maintain this distance from her brother herself, and Sai—not understanding what any of it was truly for—let her girlish gaze, heavy with unspoken pleas, fall upon the ink lines she drew from morning till night across thin white paper.

III

After working the night shift, she returned around seven-thirty in the morning, but by four in the evening, she had to prepare to go out again.
From five until midnight, and the following day was a regular daytime shift—this was now the rotation.
After the picnic, night shifts suddenly started up again, and things grew busy once more.

Going to the Arakawa embankment had been pleasant enough, but when rain began falling from noon onward, they all hitched up their hems, hung towels over their obis, and hurried back.

Creak-creak-creak-creak went the pump as she drew water into the washtub, and Sai recalled fragments of that day’s scenes.
The town’s streets were packed with foundries, and deep within their cave-like dark workplaces, flames roared upward.
The figures of the Kamis—who wore old aprons cut off at the stomach section hanging down in front—poked through charcoal husks by the roadside with their chopsticks.
When they emerged from that dark, quivering town, the embankment stretched so vast it seemed to blur into the distance.
The river felt truly refreshing.

“Come start a household in Kawaguchi—good living.”

Sergeant Hirata, who was still single and commuted from there, said such a thing.
Someone was looking around both sides of the road while,

“But I mean...”
“No matter which way you look, they all seem pitch-black.”

“That’s exactly why it’s good.”
“The metal seepage keeps bugs away.”

The figure of Ayako, wearing a fine purple-and-white arrow-feather-patterned lined kimono, squatting by the riverbank with her parasol propped before her knees as she watched the current, resurfaced within the soap bubbles.

When the laundry was mostly done, the old woman popped her head out from the back.

“Oh, doing laundry? You’re so diligent, Sai-chan—it warms my heart to watch. Young folks have it good.”

She had been watching the pale red, plump hands dripping water as they wrung out an undergarment, but no sooner had they withdrawn than—

“Excuse me, dear—while you’re at it, would you give this a proper scrubbing?”

She slipped on her charred cedar clogs and fetched her own light-blue checkered apron.

“I’ll leave this here now—sorry about that.”

Before Sai could say anything in response, she swiftly placed it directly on the concrete floor where soapy water flowed and went off toward the engawa.

Suppressing the urge to click her tongue in genuine disapproval, Sai bit her lip.
What an unpleasant way of doing things this old woman had.
She doesn’t even know how to ask for something properly.
Tomiyo, the landlady they called Sis here, was related by blood to Sai’s mother, and Sai had come to Tokyo because her spouse had arranged a position at a tailor’s shop that handled all of Takashimaya’s sewing work.
However, all household affairs and the care of the four lodgers besides Sai were completely managed by this old woman—her spouse’s mother.
Tomiyo was preoccupied with her children, and between tasks could barely manage her paid work, never speaking up in any organized manner.

The one who had redirected Sai to her current employment and made her leave her position as a live-in maid was Tomiyo's spouse—the work of someone who ran a business akin to an employment agency.

“That’s wonderful. Really now, in this day and age, it’s so thoughtless for a fine young lady like you to be crawling around someone else’s kitchen.”

The old woman said this to Sai, who still looked uneasy even after returning once.

"Well then, since Sai-chan here is such a dutiful worker, there ought to be a proper place for her to stretch out comfortably."

Taking out a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear, Hidetarō lit it using a bean tin's flame while pondering something.

"That two-tatami room would work if we clear it out," he said.

"With that room, our family can keep an eye out so you'll feel secure too, Sai-chan. Fifteen yen for three meals and your own room—what a bargain! Don't you think?"

“Hmm… Still, can’t we manage to find three or four more girls looking to work in Tokyo?”
“What do you think, Sai-chan? Don’t you have friends back home like that?”

And so, the matter of paying ¥15 monthly had been settled.

After hanging up even the laundry forced on her by the old woman, Sai felt fatigue as if the cores of her eyes—having stayed up all night—throbbed with pain.

The garbage swept out from the tearoom rose beside the washbasin where aspidistra leaves clung, and Sai opened her room’s door.
This two-tatami space wedged between toilet and wash area formed a peculiar room—it had lacked proper walls or ceiling boards from its very creation.
From just above one’s lowered head, three sides were enclosed by papered walls bearing embossed white patterns.
The amateurish papering—softly warped with stains seeping across ceiling and sides—made Sai feel upon first sitting there as though she’d crawled into a cardboard box fouled by rat urine.
And now with warmer weather settling in, the room truly exuded that paste-like cardboard stench.

Having spread out the futon piled in the corner at an angle, Sai lay down.

No sooner had she begun to doze off than the children from the house came running into the cramped vacant lot right outside her room with loud war cries, joined by neighborhood friends.
Clang!
Clang!
“What the—?!”
“Acting like a Chinese soldier!”
“If you don’t lose, I’m not playing with you!”
“Whoo!”
The sound of bamboo sticks clashing rang out.
As she listened to those voices at the border between dream and reality that grew distant then near, one of the children, in their frenzied running about, slammed violently against the two-tatami room’s window, making the glass—devoid of any lattice—rattle as if about to shatter.

Sai frantically pulled the futon over her head as if shielding herself from the commotion.

“Whose kids are you?! If you’re gonna roughhouse, take it to the vacant lot out front!”

The old woman was yelling from inside the toilet. Startled into a pounding heartbeat, Sai thrust her flushed face out from the futon with a pained expression. Her eyes had woken completely. Her eyes were open yet still numb with sleepiness, her back too sluggish to lift from the futon. These moments were the most painful and sorrowful for Sai. She didn't mind the work itself—what she wanted was to at least eat her fill after night shifts and sleep as much as she needed. That feeling became an emotion she herself couldn’t name, and tears spilled forth, pulsing through her young body.

In winter, because of this, Sai once thought about quitting her current job.
In the previous household where she had worked as a live-in servant, there had been plenty of food and time to sleep.
If the wages became fifteen yen, that would have been preferable.
Just as things were getting busy, when Sai’s expression had turned rather sullen from all this and that, Sergeant Hirata noticed keenly and—

“Miss Sai, what’s wrong? You’ve seemed down lately.”

“If you don’t like it, I could transfer you to another position here,” he said.
Sai blushed.

“It’s not that I dislike this job itself.”

Even if one were to quit there, there was also a condition that immediately taking up employment elsewhere would not be permitted.

After shedding tears，she felt somewhat relieved．Judging by the letters，Yukichi seemed to be gradually settling in．But how could three pairs of rubber-soled sandals and two bars of soap have been taken from him in less than a month？Could it be they were making fun of him for being a country bumpkin？Yukichi’s round face—perplexed and silent—seemed to float before Sai’s eyes．

Having put away and piled up the futon, she placed stationery on top and was beginning to write a letter when—

“There’s something I really want to show you, Sai-chan.”

The old woman entered, a heavy-looking furoshiki bundle dangling from her hand.

“Now look here—what do you think? What lovely stripes!”

What had been unfurled was Ina tsumugi—authentic first-quality silk from the renowned production region, supposedly available this once only at twenty yen per tan.

“The shipment from my uncle’s friend just arrived, you know. For you, Sai-chan, I’ll specially make it a five-month installment plan. For four yen a month, you can get something like this—isn’t that nice? When a daughter turns twenty, even a single obi becomes an important asset.”

After hesitating, Sai ultimately ended up taking one tan of the indigo and yellow fabric in a manner where she had been half-persuaded into it.

“I won’t tell you not to wear it before you’ve finished paying—rest assured.”

Throughout lunch, the old woman kept prattling on about the leftover goods she’d managed to acquire, so Shimizu the lathe worker—who had also just come off night shift and had been sleeping upstairs before coming down to eat at the same low dining table—

“Ugh, can’t stand this, I tell ya.”

Shimizu suddenly turned it into chazuke and gulped it down,
“You’re quite the schemer, Granny. It’s stuck in my throat—my stomach’s suddenly full.”
He stood up and strode off, the hem of his imitation meisen lined kimono tangling around his legs as he went.
“Hmph. Get a little money coming in, and they immediately start putting on airs like that.”
The old woman was serving boiled okara while,
“You ought to take a look at other places for once!”
she said.
“Take Mr. Inoue next to the liquor store—he’s renting out a six-tatami room to four people at seventeen yen each! Even so, you won’t find anyone around here nowadays who’d complain about that!”

At such times, the old woman would speak in a manner that drew Sai to her side as if she were family.
Sai, feeling as though she were shaking free from the sleeve that had seized her, let her thick single eyelids harden with severity and remained stubbornly silent.

IV

The thousand-stitch cloths, unseen for some time, began appearing sporadically around the station.
Sai had come to live, so to speak, in a Tokyo of thousand-stitch cloths—but even the yellow fabric for sewing red threads, which she had recently been asked to handle, was no longer cotton. It had become a strange rayon twill-like material.
As she wound double red threads doubly around her needle, it seemed that with this fabric, nothing would remain but the thread balls.
When she thought about what the thousand-stitch cloths had become, it seemed absurd yet pitiful.
Even so, the earnest faces of those who asked remained unchanged from when they had used pure cotton.

The paper used at work had grown subject to stricter controls lately, no longer permitting disposal as easily as before.
As she pinned the numbered paper to the corner of the original diagram, Teruko—returning from the restroom—approached with eyes wide.

“Hey, a red draft notice!”

Though uttered in a breath-held whisper, several faces around them turned sharply as if startled.

“It seems someone in the next room got one too.”

Instantly the mood permeated the entire workshop, yet another undercurrent seemed to counteract this agitation, and everyone simply kept working without speaking further.

The entire town lay beneath skies trembling with siren wails—a community seemingly composed of commuting families—so even in just the time since Sai’s arrival, countless temporary youths and family men had departed.
Each time this happened, more women had arrived there.

Girls who resided there but hailed from distant regions like Tohoku and San’in had been increasing in number. There were even girls who reportedly had two family members conscripted back home. Around that time, it was said to be a ratio of fifteen women to one man. Was it Tokyo that had become this way, or had Japan adjusted to make it so? It remained unclear whether this ratio included all women from infants to grandmothers, but such words had settled and seeped into the depths of the working girls’ ears, becoming a kind of unspoken sentiment.

When the red draft notices had faded from everyone's thoughts for a time, Sergeant Hirata entered. After slowly inspecting each drafting board one by one, he stood with his back to the window,

“Hold on—keep your positions and just stop your hands.”

He commanded in his usual tone.
After waiting for all faces to turn fully toward him, Hirata gave a light cough-like sound,

“I have something I must report.”
“Actually, just now—”

A sound like “Oh!” seemed to ripple through the air, sending wave-like unrest across the drafting boards.
Hirata continued as if quelling it with his own voice.

“The fact is, I have just now received the honorable conscription order.”
“As this long-awaited opportunity I’ve always desired, I intend to devote my full strength to fulfilling my duty—though you and I share bonds forged since our training days.”
“We have worked together joyfully until today, but now I, Hirata, will be at the front while you remain on the home front—each fulfilling our respective duties.”
“As you know, I still have a few days before departure. Until the very eve of my leaving, I wish to continue working alongside you all as before, to the best of my ability.”

Having said that, Hirata made a slight bowing motion, and then,

“Resume your work.”

And once again, he too began walking between the drafting boards.

Everyone looked down; Sai absentmindedly made a motion to sweep back stray hairs that weren’t even disheveled. Drafting pens and rulers were picked up haphazardly as if out of obligation. Then, near the drafting boards at the back of the room, a woman’s choked voice escaped—whether stifling laughter or suppressing tears remained impossible to discern in that instant—and soon it became clear it was Toyoko, her work uniform’s shoulders trembling with unmistakable sobs as she pressed a hand to her face and hurriedly exited the room.

An indescribable atmosphere settled over the room.
Hirata maintained the same steady pace until he had made his rounds to the last drafting board, then ran wordlessly into the adjacent room.

After quite some time had passed, Toyoko returned to her drafting board with an awkward air, her face—as if freshly scrubbed—downcast. And then, still not fully composed and with a somewhat dispirited manner, she began fidgeting with her drafting pen.

Yumiko arched her eyebrows in a tsk-like gesture. When Sai saw Ayako working with unexpected calm—flaunting the gaudy beauty mark on her upturned cheek while wearing a peculiar half-smile about her lips—she felt a wave of revulsion. It seemed as though invisible whirlpools were streaming out from around each drafting board and swirling through the workroom; Sai found herself incapable of focusing on her task.

What sort of sergeant would come after Hirata?
Even for Sai, being separated from Hirata—who had taught her everything down to how to saturate a drafting pen with ink—was no ordinary feeling.

Teruko said innocently,

“Ah... I don’t know why, but I’ve gotten this strange feeling.”

As if pushing her ruler to the far side of the drafting board, she arched her back and glanced around.

“Hey, don’t you think we should give some kind of farewell gift? What’s everyone giving?”

No one responded.

“Why don’t we all make him a satin thousand-stitch cloth?”

“Shut up!”

Yumiko snapped irritably.

“We can all consult about it later, can we not?”

Both Teruko’s “Ah... I” utterance and Yumiko’s voice that had scolded her were hushed whispers only audible within their circle. If one spoke during work hours, they would be harshly reprimanded.

Due to the auspicious wordplay of “exceeding the death line,” some people attached five-sen coins to thousand-stitch cloths.
The girls from Sai’s section decided to give Hirata one of these thousand-stitch cloths with five-sen coins attached.
They also agreed to chip in fifty sen each.

“His mother will be all alone now. Poor thing.”

“Her candy store’s doing a roaring trade—she’ll manage just fine.”
“If you’re that worried, Teru-chan, let’s go visit her regularly from now on.”

“You don’t have to go on about it like that.”

Teruko grew agitated, tears pooling in her eyes.

“Miss Yumiko… You’re being mean.”

Though Yumiko and Teruko snapped at each other, their hearts hadn’t truly severed ties.

A restless, dissonant mood seeped through the girls’ workshop.
The air—until now smooth as water pooled in a basin—tangled into knots none could name. When Hirata entered, nerves swarmed like living things, colliding against each other as they trailed his movements forward and back, side to side.
The young sergeant found himself stiffening under that invisible pressure, pacing between drafting boards while avoiding every face.
This tension rebounded through the room’s stifling air.
After another day that pressed down on her shoulders, Sai trudged home more exhausted and irritable than ever before.

When she stepped over the threshold, six-year-old Taeko—who had been eating in the earthen-floored area—abruptly said, “Your brother came!”

“Brother?”

“Yeah.”

“Yukichi-san came by just now,” said the old woman, “but since you weren’t home, he said he’d come again—”

The old woman’s thoughtless words—spoken as if Yukichi were someone who could drop by anytime—irritated Sai’s frayed nerves.

“Didn’t he have any business?”

The matter of the three pairs of stolen rubber sandals and the soap came to mind, making her anxious.

“Didn’t he say anything?”

“He didn’t say nothin’, I tell ya. He just parked his bicycle there and we talked a bit...”

“...But he actually found this place.”

“I thought the same thing. Then apparently they sell maps with every address in Tokyo—he uses that when running errands for the shop, they say.”

I wonder if he had some business over this way.
I wonder how many ri the round trip from Nihonbashi to here would be.

From this hour until it grew darker still, one side of the Twelve-Ken Road out front became filled with bicycles returning from Tokyo toward here, until in no time at all it resembled exactly a swarm of dragonflies. As she watched the ceaseless stream of bicycles passing by one after another at an unvarying speed, she felt an odd mix of fascination and sorrow—as if the blood in her body were being pulled toward them. Occasionally, when one went the opposite way along the same roadway, even the movement of legs pedaling looked visibly laborious.

Somewhere along a distant road, Yukichi must be heading back that way around now.
Whenever she tried to imagine that figure, there would float up in Sai's heart the image of her brother from their country days - having removed the saddle, hooking one leg over the opposite pedal through the crossbar frame, twisting his waist as he rode circles around her.

V

“Good morning.”

Sai absentmindedly approached the group of five or six people gathered there.

“Good morning.”

One of them turned around and said that much, then everyone fell silent and sullen.
Blinking her eyes rapidly, Sai asked in a small voice,

“Is something wrong?”

“Hmph.”

“Well anyone’d feel bad about that—hey, what did we all agree on Tuesday? I don’t know who it is, but sneaking off to play the goody-two-shoes all alone—bringing Fudo Myo-o’s amulets and bulletproof mirrors and whatnot—that’s just hateful.”

As representatives of the workroom girls, Tomoko and Minoru had gone to Sergeant Hirata’s house in Kawaguchi last night to deliver the thousand-stitch cloth and farewell money.
Hirata was out, and his mother—wiping her tears with the edge of her apron—expressed gratitude, saying how touched she was that members of your group had brought Naritasan amulets and even gone out of their way to deliver some sort of iron mirror.

“Someone should’ve asked for their name!”

“How could the old woman possibly know? They were acting so clueless—they’d never manage something like that.”

When everyone had gathered, before exercises began, Tomoko spoke in a tone of unresolved frustration,

“We delivered the thousand-stitch cloth and farewell gift last night without fail, but his mother even thanked us for amulets and mirrors we knew nothing about—it made our whole exchange so awkward.”

Tomoko reported.

“Oh! Then I should’ve brought my black cat mascot too.”

Teruko said regretfully.

“That’s not it. There’s someone who isn’t following what we all decided.”

Even when Sergeant Hirata expressed his thanks for the gifts to everyone, the room's mood held lingering tension and felt oppressively damp.

“Ah, so it’s finally tomorrow.”

Strolling between drafting tables, Sergeant Hirata rubbed his dull face—showing traces of sleeplessness and drink—with his palm, speaking as if he wished the moment would arrive sooner.

“Work hard when the new sergeant comes so they won’t laugh at you.”
“Get that right if nothing else.”
“If they say that’s how I taught you, I’ll never find peace.”

Standing by the window and stretching,

“I was deployed during the Manchurian Incident too, but…”

He began to say, then stopped.
He stared gloomily outside for a while, then as if regaining his composure, swung back around,

“Come on, everyone—cheer up! Brightly now, come on!”
“Show me bright faces.”

Even when told this, the girls’ eyes showed no brightness.

During the lunch break, Toyoko turned slightly pale,

“Miss Tomoko, a moment.”

Toyoko approached.

“About that talk of amulets or mirrors—I cried the other day, so everyone might think I’m acting strange, but I truly don’t know anything about it—”

She said in a stiff tone and walked away, her face growing even paler.

What a tangled, peculiar mess everything was. Sai rubbed both her temples with her index fingers.

According to local custom here, on the day of deployment, everyone would gather in the square inside the gate to see them off, while the reservists and National Defense Women’s Association members waiting outside would form into a procession and march through the streets.

What had come over Hirata,

“Tomorrow, absolutely no one is to be absent.”

He stressed.
The official reason was the new sergeant’s impending arrival, though these past few days had carried an atmosphere thick with something more palpable than that alone.

The regular hours continued unusually long.
That day, the sudden rain that had begun in the afternoon fortunately let up before quitting time.
The rain-soaked low roofs glistened in the western sun, and somewhere sparrows were cheerfully chirping.
The washed main street stretched farther than usual, the color of the ginkgo trees lining it resembling a row of blue candles.
Sai, inhaling the crisp air with pleasure, walked slowly and approached the corner where the pavement split—one side curving right with the rotary along the main street, the other continuing straight across Massugu Bridge.

Right at the fork in the bridge’s sidewalk stood a large brown-painted truck with its cargo covered by a tarpaulin, facing away.
A white motorcycle had pulled up to the sidewalk.
On Sai’s side of the walkway, people had clustered together.
As she drew nearer, Sai instinctively pressed her serge sleeve against her mouth.
Between the truck’s rear wheels lay something shrouded in straw matting.
A bicycle lay overturned a short distance from the truck.
They must have died instantly.
When cars and trucks approached this wide stretch of rain-washed roadway, they all uniformly eased off their accelerators with a hiss—unable to stop at the corner—and crawled past while drivers strained to look back.
The undamaged bicycle lying overturned and the pitiful shape beneath the straw mat pierced Sai’s heart like an icepick through her nasal bone.
A skid.
Both had failed to swerve in time.
From within the crowd on this side came such murmured words.

Keeping her mouth covered with the sleeve, Sai started walking again, but the pity that brought no tears lodged painfully in her throat. The way the straw matting lay heaped didn't suggest a large man's form, and at this thought, a tremor ran through her thighs. Those boys who had newly arrived in Tokyo—boys who didn't yet understand asphalt skids. Yukichi's figure on his bicycle rose vivid among them too, and Sai wiped beside her nose with the sleeve's edge in anguished motion.

Public telephones these days didn’t have telephone directories.
Remembering this, Sai made a long detour and stopped by the post office.

When she asked them to call Yukichi, she could hear someone shouting “Hey!” over the phone.
Sai waited, pressing the receiver tightly against her ear until it ached.
Before long, sensing someone had come on the line, a faint voice drifted uncertainly:

“...Yeah?”

The response came through.
Sai stood on tiptoe and strained upward toward the mouthpiece.

“Oh—hello? Hello? Yukichi?”

After a pause: “...Yeah?”

“Yukichi!
Speak up!
Hello? Hello?
Can you hear me?
It’s me...”

While even these moments felt like time was about to run out, leaving her frantic with worry, Sai strained with all her might to grasp her brother’s faint voice drifting uncertainly from the distant edge of vast Tokyo.