Pathway to Japanese Literature

Morning Wind

In that area, high red brick walls had encircled the neighborhood since the Meiji era, shaping the unique atmosphere of one particular corner of Tokyo.

When speaking of Hongō, there were places like the temple where Oshichi had set her fire, but its overall impression remained bright.
Yet when it came to Sugamo—though right next door—that crisp clarity somehow transformed into a mood of dim shadows pooling in the town's corners, and indeed, the lamplight from the houses now clung closer to the ground.
Those red brick high walls—distinct from military barracks—existed as a presence imbued with particular character within the lives of people of all ages who wore jumbled stripes and patterned clothes, alongside men occasionally seen in persimmon-colored cotton work pants and split-toe socks. The air between them, familiar yet never fully reconciled, brewed a singular atmosphere that lingered along those streets.

After the Great Earthquake, the city’s appearance changed considerably.
This area of the town too, upon being incorporated into the new city limits, saw city planning reforms commence simultaneously—asphalt roads opening from Ikebukuro around Asukayama toward Nippori, and twelve-ken roads intersecting these to cut vertically between Otsuka and Itabashi—until its entire appearance was completely transformed.

For ten-odd months, a pattern persisted where one side of the road would be clogged and closed to traffic until just days prior, only for another section to become impassable today—until one spring year, when sunlight finally cast its white gleam along the brand-new concrete sidewalk that had at last become traversable. At that moment, people gazed from the sidewalk with breath-catching wonder at the vast vacant lot that had burst open before their eyes.
The high red brick walls that had stood since olden times had vanished without a trace.
Partitioned off from the sidewalk by a crude barbed wire fence—its weeds spilling through onto the pavement as if mimicking scenery from the town’s outskirts—the grassland spread vast and far into the distance.
The terrain sloped gently downward ahead, and amid the distant grass could be seen what appeared to be remnants of tea fields.
What looked like modest plots could also be glimpsed.
The local children would never leave such a vacant lot untouched; their playing voices carried through the air, though their figures remained elusive.
The vacant lot stretched so expansively.
Unobstructed overhead, the blue sky brimming with spring light shone down upon it.

Yet the view of this vacant lot was not monotonous. If one lingered awhile, they would come to realize that what gave this grassland its scenic interest was the turquoise dome of a small, old-fashioned red brick tower rising in the distance to the right—serving as its crucial accent.
The gray concrete wall extended around the tower, and in contrast to that section’s modern white reflections, on the left side of the vacant lot beyond—even from this wide distance—the houses stood precariously in blackened rows, their aged decay and rickety disarray impossible to conceal.
It must have been thoroughly weathered by wind and rain.
Even from a distance on sunny days, the black color of those houses showed no change.
At one such two-story house at the vacant lot’s edge—left inexplicably open from front to back—the view through its black square cutout of daily life revealed an unobstructed glimpse of sky behind it, treeless and raw, until the emptiness there seeped into the hearts of those who gazed.

While there were no trees across the vacant lot area, several old cherry trees stood like a row at the left edge, and when their widely spreading branches burst into bloom, the east-facing blossoms bathed in morning sunlight presented an indescribably fresh spectacle of full bloom.
And the more beautifully fresh and vivid their colors became, the more sharply the precarious blackness of the row houses behind them stood out in contrast, creating a beauty of decay there—one so profound it could only be captured with oil paints—that mirrored the profound depths of the human heart.
How many thousands of tsubo it spanned one couldn’t tell, but precisely because the vacant lot’s equilibrium had been disrupted in this general manner, the scenery came together in an oddly striking way.

As often happens, the wire fence partitioning this vacant lot from the sidewalk already had several breaches.
From there, threading through the grass, there was a path that had been trampled down unnoticed.
At first indistinguishable from one another, those narrow footpaths gradually revealed their divergences as one followed them deeper. One veered persistently leftward, cutting diagonally across the grassland's edge to form a shortcut between towns, while another branch—thinning until barely recognizable—ultimately emerged beneath that familiar red brick tower crowned with its turquoise dome.
Coming down and looking up, one could also see there was a watchman inside the tower.
The walls of the similarly constructed houses in that area were all made of red brick, each and every one built with old bricks that looked identical to those with their mortar stripped away; when the question naturally arose as to why only such bricks had been gathered, it was then that people nodded deeply in understanding.
These old bricks were precisely those taken from the high walls that had stood since the Meiji era. Though this section had retreated to occupy about a quarter of its original site, it had not vanished from the land entirely; people came to know it now stood there newly modernized, sustaining many while being maintained.

From a distant view near the edge of the vacant lot—where the concrete’s height remained indiscernible—when that building which resembled some large factory was completed, an article appeared in the newspaper.
It was said that all facilities had been improved, making it resemble an apartment where people could live freely.
And it was an article stating that the interior would soon be opened to the public.

On the veranda of a small house atop a low cliff, Sayo noticed the newspaper article.

“Oh!”

Leaning forward, she gathered her gaze on the article once more.

"Wait, this... can we see it?"
"—I do want to see it."

With cheeks slightly flushed, the person holding the newspaper across from her was not Shigeyoshi, who should have been in this house, but Tomoko, who had come to visit Sayo—living alone—with her knitting in hand.

"I wonder how it really is… But let’s go see anyway."

“Hey.”

Sayo wore an expression that delighted in a friend’s consideration,

“There’s no reason they shouldn’t show it to someone like me.”

She laughed with the air of someone declaring, “But we’re family.”

Sayo truly felt she wanted to catch just one glimpse of the interior. Ah, so he lived in a place like this and walked these corridors? If she could know that, how much more real Shigeyoshi’s days would feel—how much lighter her heart would become.

Even while organizing rosters at her office, Sayo would occasionally fantasize about it with an almost childlike eagerness. Such modest happiness seemed like something that could rightfully be hers as a wife.

When the day arrived, Sayo met Tomoko at Ikebukuro Station and boarded a bus from there.
This was her first time on that bus as well; after getting off in front of a certain school and turning at the corner of a fabric shop—a path she had never taken before—and especially since this was her first glimpse of the vacant lot, Sayo walked with an expression that could hardly contain her curiosity.
A steady stream of people was heading in the same direction, with several matronly women in formal haori coats adorned with family crests mixed among them.
Two or three cars waited by the roadside.
An arch wrapped in red and white cloth stood there bustlingly.
Sayo,

"Where do we go in?"

With a face that seemed to restrain her eager breath, she peered into the depths of the arch and at a distant gate further along the wall.
It was a day after rain, and the ochre soil around them had turned into such a muddy mire that it seemed ready to swallow Sayo's shoes whole.

“I just can’t make sense of it at all.”

As Sayo returned with muddied shoes and a dejected air, Tomoko raised her hand, beckoning her over.

“Wait, the place they’re opening to the public is here.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

The two of them cast unconvinced looks toward the tented area behind them. A tent had been erected in the vacant lot where coke cinders were spread to improve footing, and there, as if at an exhibition, household goods were piled high and displayed—new pots, chopping boards, washbasins, large and small baskets, tissue paper, bookshelves, dressing tables, and the like. The scent of fresh wood spilled out beyond the tent. There was a man wearing an armband selling them on the spot. The women in crested haori coats who had gotten off the bus with Sayo and the others were excitedly handling the items—apparently thrilled by their affordability—chattering away as they casually amassed heaps of purchases.

Stepping slightly aside, Sayo and Tomoko watched such a scene for some time.
When they suddenly noticed, on the other side of the street before shops lined with geta tooth inserts and old straw bag stores, there were men and women watching them.
Despite the road not being particularly wide, the townspeople watched from their own eaves without crossing over, their expressions suggesting they recognized an impassable distance between themselves and the red-and-white arch.

Before long, Sayo gently took Tomoko’s hand.

“Shall we go?”

Tomoko began walking with an air of half-admiration,

“They’re selling quite well.”

she said.

“It’s not that selling isn’t ideal, but… pots and such.”

Since pots were something like a symbol of family togetherness, Tomoko’s sense that those found at an ordinary cooper’s shop in town made meals feel more natural there felt genuine.

After boarding the bus, Sayo,

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“I made you take this wasted trip.”

“It’s fine, really.”

Walking in step as if returning from an errand, they hurried back to Sayo’s house in one go. As she worked on unlocking the latticed door, Sayo burst into laughter as though overcome by absurdity.

“Oh my, I really am such a fool.”

If she told Shigeyoshi about this matter—what would he say? He wouldn’t blame her. He’d probably laugh with that crinkled-nose expression of his and call her silly while looking her way.
Feeling quiet and tender, Sayo stopped laughing and opened the latch.

When summer came, the grass in the vacant lot grew thick enough to conceal everything below the waist of those taking shortcuts through it. Children chasing grasshoppers ran through the vegetation all day long. On the far right side of the lot, Hinomaru flags began fluttering where an automobile training ground had been established - tattered canvas-roofed vehicles could be seen advancing and reversing in the distance. Rumors claimed the vacant lot would remain as-is until being converted into an aviation park. They said they were preparing this treeless grassland for sudden airplane landings. Given the wartime circumstances now unfolding, even such hearsay couldn't be dismissed as baseless.

Sayo’s pale blue parasol, entering through a gap in the wire fence and cutting across the vacant lot, swayed over the scorching summer grass as it gradually grew smaller in the distance.

When people passed by, grasshoppers would burst from their feet in sudden flurries, and pausing to look revealed simple red flowers blooming too.
That summer, at one of the darkened houses on the vacant lot’s edge—where they lacked leisure to notice nature’s cycles—several men worked with fierce urgency. A woman in a workman’s coat and headscarf joined them as they clustered around a truck, vigorously hauling rags on and off.

When the grass began to wither and frost formed, winter arrived, making the vacant lot difficult to traverse as the thawing frost turned the ground treacherous.
The number of pedestrians taking the shortcut through the large triangle also decreased significantly.

When that season arrived, Sayo would no longer pass through the vacant lot but instead come around from the direction of the improved roads. And before she knew it, she had become acquainted with the old man from the geta repair shop on that road. This was because that area, both before and after the road repairs, had developed such deep, ferocious mud that even dogs appeared to struggle passing through. That winter, when the thong of her geta had snapped—an incident that led Sayo to visit the geta repair shop—she found its layout peculiar: in a corner of the shop, which was only about three or four shaku deep, lay the workspace for tooth insertion, while the back abruptly extended along an alley into what might have been a four-and-a-half-tatami-mat space. Just as the old man’s face and limbs were parched and dry, so too was his dwelling utterly desiccated, with only a few old umbrellas scattered about.

Why do they give such auspicious, flashy names to Tokyo's most impoverished districts?
Like Tomigaya, Tomikawa, Asahi, or Hinodecho.

On a neighborhood map, the geta repair shop stood at the forefront of hundreds of struggling households spreading diagonally behind it—maintaining its existence by barely keeping a few shaku's distance from being engulfed by the inward-leaning concrete wall built directly across.
When entering the fan-ribbed alley that widened deeper in, box-like houses stood densely packed with barely enough space for a single umbrella-bearing person to pass through.
Beneath the houses' interlocking eaves moved all manner of laundry along with Mainland Japanese and Peninsula womenfolk, children, and invalids.

A dry, biting wind raged fiercely through the town.
The women walking against the headwind leaned forward in unison and covered their mouths with their shawls.
When she had returned to the improved roads, a sudden sharp train whistle made her look up—the dead end was blocked by railroad tracks, beneath which freight cars clattered slowly past.
There were times when snow lay on the roofs of the freight cars.
The glimpsed snow, its color somewhat stained with soot, felt both rare and nostalgic—as though true winter had finally arrived in the gray-dried city—and in that moment, Sayo’s chest tightened fiercely with longing for life’s vanished joys.

However, as the year drew to a close, the state of the geta repair shop somehow began to change.
Around the time leather sandals and hon-ten cords were becoming common substitutes in society, the old man’s geta repair shopfront grew increasingly empty, suddenly exposing the faded green patterned paper that had been pasted inside the hollow glass cabinet.
Despite this, a certain liveliness had emerged in the shopfront—barely large enough for customers to enter.
From the street, one could see red yuzen cloth shifting in the depths of the shop.
The one handling it was not the old man but the large-framed, sharp-featured Mr. Kami of the geta repair shop.
Neighborhood wives in workman’s coats sat before him, busily fiddling with some cloth while consulting.
In front of the cutting board spread out across the back, Mr. Kami—large-framed and exuding a certain authority—was consulting with customers.
When the old man stood under the eaves, basking in the winter sun, a faint sheen appeared on his face.
Day after day, Mr. Kami sat facing his cutting board, and in the depths of the shop—where it had been unclear until then what they ate—there now stirred the lively signs of people taking meals.

The appearance of red yuzen cloth in this town was none other than a harbinger—the first swell of even greater changes yet to come.

When spring came, a block of four-unit rowhouses rotting behind the improved roads was demolished, and a new machine plant was built there. Workers and female factory workers punched the time clock and entered through the office entrance. When the Datsun stopped and a bureaucrat-like man emerged from inside, the driver wearing a national defense uniform hurriedly guided him to the office entrance. The clerks who had been watching nearby stepped aside to clear the road and bowed their heads in unison. Such sights were still novel in the neighborhood.

From that area onward, scrap metal shops, foundries, machine factories, and all manner of subcontractor factories sprawled densely. Beneath wire-meshed windows blackened with grime, where young men labored through daylight hours, the café district lined itself like tentacles—stroking then stripping away their youth—splashing stimulating colors across the scene.

At the very moment the noon siren sounded, the aproned figures of factory girls rushing out from the factory’s back entrance carried an air of vitality.
Calling out to one another, the factory girls swiftly vanished into the winding alleyways.
Some had husbands who returned for lunch.
There were also women who hurried in that manner.

As though drawing a single bold line that gathered all the town’s transformations seen at dawn and dusk, the city tram began running through its backstreets.

It was a certain day not long after the tram had begun running.

Sayo made her way through an alley lined with dark, dank shops—those displaying barrels of dried cod and bean sprouts, those of old cotton repair shops—and emerged onto the newly opened tram street.
Emerging from the cluttered narrow street into that space, she found herself struck by its astonishing tranquility. To the far right at the terminus, red shop banners were visible, but to the left lay a distant slope where the broad midday road—now devoid of trams—stretched into a serene sky dotted with white clouds.
A mixed grove stood right there.
In the grove, various trees—zelkova, maple, and others—were budding under the spring sun that grew steadily brighter and warmer.
Pointed green bead-like dots converged into a fine mesh, absorbing the cascading sunlight without respite.

Sayo gazed enraptured at the mixed grove from the sidewalk, her soft white chin lifted in spirits and tinged with a delicate sheen. Then, crossing the roadway beside an elderly Peninsula woman whose white robe billowed as she strode briskly, she entered the alley on the opposite side. Once again, the chaotic and filthy streets began. And beside the vacant lot where trash cans were piled high, the road forked into three branches. At that corner, Sayo hesitated over which path to choose. Not only could she not tell which direction each of the roads led, but if someone moved by sudden kindness were to appear at that moment and ask, “Where are you headed?” Sayo might have involuntarily flushed and faltered slightly. Sayo herself did not know where she was going. Rather, Sayo had walked this way intending to look for a house—but she had no idea which direction such a rental house might lie or which path would lead there.

The three paths were similar, but drawn by the sight of the zelkova's lofty treetop ahead, she took the leftmost alley.

Houses had become scarce throughout Tokyo.
The small house on the cliff where Sayo lived was not the home she had shared with Shigeyoshi but rather one she found by walking around with Tomoko and others after beginning to live alone and moved into.
When that house was found,

“Oh, this house is nice.”
“It’s not lonely, and the ventilation’s good too.”

Sayo was overjoyed.
And when it was decided she could rent it without any complaints being raised—despite being the landlady—

“See? This should work here, don’t you think?”
“It really worked out well, didn’t it?”

Separated by just one valley town away, its proximity to Tomoko’s residence was also counted among its merits.

By moving briskly and cheerfully—with the thought that she could also infuse a proactive spirit into the circumstances of their lives, which had come to leave their former home—Sayo relocated energetically.

To live in this manner of life with uncluttered emotions was also the form of love that women had been pressed into. Thinking that way, Sayo lived.

In the winter of the year she moved, on one cold night, shortly after falling asleep, a thunderous boom like an explosion suddenly shook the entire house, and Sayo instinctively jerked upright on her futon. She turned on the lamp. As she kept vigil over the light alone, her body rigid, two thunderous booms sounded in succession—boom... boom—each time making the glass doors clatter violently. It seemed to be coming from the Ōji direction. It was now evident these were explosions. Where was it? She waited for the next roar, but it had already ceased; this time, a distant siren began to sound through the winter night. A dog's bark arose from that direction's sky.

The moment she became aware of the cold seeping through her single layer of nightclothes to her shoulder, Sayo could vividly sense that beneath every roof in the vicinity except her own, couples were jerking upright in bed at this very moment and turning on lights. "What in the world?" they exclaimed.
She could vividly sense the scene of couples huddled together in fright, exchanging glances.
"What in the world!"
The whispers seemed to brush against Sayo’s ear, yet were also her own voice.

At this moment, the vividness of the solitude surrounding Sayo, together with the stark loneliness of the lamp's brightness illuminating the tatami mat's grid, formed an extraordinarily clear and peculiar impression.

After opening the high window and gazing at the cloud-filled sky dimly reflecting hues of flame, even as she lay down in bed, Sayo reached that impression—as though vividly illuminated within the night—in a state of wide-eyed awareness.
What an overflowing desolation this was.
What a desolation it was—overflowing, unmistakable, piercing through from that unmistakable purity to a feeling of strange beauty.

She did not know how much of Tokyo lay awake at that hour, but Sayo cherished this awakening of her own thoughts amid the shared night’s terror as contemporary life’s endearing quality.

Day to day, she lived with that mood.
The emotion Sayo felt that spring noon—emerging from the alley of dried cod shops, gazing at the newly opened tram street, drawn to the vigorously budding mixed grove, then entering once more into the congested alley—was an indescribable turmoil of heart.

The intensity of her desire to live with Shigeyoshi drove Sayo forward yet would not let her rest; but with no means to fulfill it, in a fit of desperation she conceived of drastically altering her daily patterns for momentary relief—thus envisioning these transient apartment lifestyles.

Walking down the alley where zelkova treetops showed above, she reached the florist's corner where hand buckets overflowed with verdant sacred anise leaves, red bands on incense sticks lending an odd vitality to the storefront.
The path ended at Zōshigaya Cemetery.
Though called a cemetery, nothing gloomy lingered here—bright sunlight fell upon the roadside gate.
Behind the florist's latticed rear wall stood an apartment.
Having stumbled upon it by chance, Sayo—torn between genuine intent and resistance to her own impulses—entered the sunbaked earthen entryway that appeared cavernous to eyes adjusted to outdoor light.

In the dimmer-looking depths of the corridor, several doors stood in a row, and a shirt-clad man carrying a bucket emerged from that direction without particular haste.
Sayo asked if there was a vacancy.

“Well, I doubt anyone will be moving out of here anytime soon.”

The manager, who must have originally been a craftsman, answered in a straightforward tone.

“This place is cheap, you see.
“With the new term starting, they were all snapped up at once, you see.”
“The trade-off for being cheap is that the kitchen’s shared, you see.”

He smiled faintly and acknowledged the inconvenience.
After thanking him and leaving, Sayo walked back toward the three-way intersection she had come from, her heart unsettled and aching.
Though she had been wandering through this neighborhood with lingering attachment, the closer she drew, the more acutely she felt the unnatural distance from Shigeyoshi—a raw, visceral pain that tormented her.
Battling the anguish and mustering the resolve to tear her heart and body free from it, Sayo boarded the government railway.

After climbing the rough stony slope beside the bamboo grove with its poor footing, there came further stone steps, where a large acacia tree spread its branches over a weathered gate. Within that gate lay the residence of Tomoko and her husband. She tried to open the lattice gate planted with Fatsia, but its warped frame refused to budge easily. After several attempts, Sayo finally—

“Tomoko-saaan!”

—shouted at the top of her voice.
There came a sense of Tomoko descending cautiously yet hurriedly from the second floor.
The old house had ladder-like stairs spaced wider than normal—even Tomoko, who had lived there for years, couldn’t afford to relax her vigilance.

“Really, this house!”

In a tone one might use to scold a living creature of her own household, Tomoko rattled the lattice from inside.

“Just the other day, when I went out and closed the door behind me, I couldn’t get back in at all!”

The way Tomoko declared “Well, this mistress of mine!” overflowed with the unique banter inherent in their married life, spilling forth effortlessly, and Sayo felt her mood shift.

When she appeared at this hour, there was no need between them to explain where Sayo had been returning from.

“I’ll make some tea, then.”

While the water was coming to a boil, Tomoko took up her side-job knitting on her lap again.

This couple had long been searching for a house.
The house had grown too old, and on nights when the wind blew fiercely, they couldn’t sleep soundly.
But what they were searching for here was merely a house.
Until they found one, Junzō would lose his footing while clenching a pipe in his mouth and tumble down from the second floor—and though he would get furious, the two of them carried on.
What was it about herself—this way she sometimes took on a look as if a small fire smoldered in her eyes while searching—that puzzled her?
It wasn’t just about houses.
That too, Sayo knew.

From Tomoko’s knitting needles emerged, row by row, an adorable pink woolen baby cape.
As she gazed at it, Sayo abruptly recalled a scene depicted in a certain woman writer’s novel.
It portrayed a young woman—forced to separate from her husband after years together due to collapsed love—walking through a hilltop town bathed in autumn’s western sun with a female friend while searching for a house.
When they turned a corner onto what seemed a new road, there stretched before them the same sunlit street continuing onward.
No matter how exhaustively she walked with her child seeking a rental home to begin anew, finding nothing as she trudged wearily beneath evening osmanthus blossoms, the deep sigh escaping her lips—a humble murmur of “Must I truly endure such feelings too?”—was all she could muster.
Yet within that single phrase seemed distilled every burden women must bear through life, etching something profound into Sayo’s heart from that scene.
In the process through which women come to maintain houses of their own as an attitude toward living—how very much must they learn?

Tomoko said,

“Oh, right—Otome-san, did she stop by your place?”

she asked.

“When?”

“Last night.”

“She didn’t come.”

“That person—do you think it’s true she went to the countryside…”

Sayo’s expression grew anxious.

“Did she say anything?”

“She says far too little for someone who just made a trip.”
“It was the third anniversary of Tsutomu-san’s death.”
“Perhaps she simply forgot all about it, don’t you think?”

When Tsutomu—a friend to all—ended his earnest, bitter young life, several close friends had come to feel a vague sense of responsibility toward the surviving Otome and her young daughter’s livelihood, though no one had asked this of them.

Tsutomu’s elderly parents were determined not to let go of their daughter-in-law Otome as the family’s breadwinner in place of their deceased son.
Otome found this a burden and took her daughter to work as a live-in employee at a mahjong club.
There was a kind-hearted cook who would invite Otome for walks and say he wanted to be with her—something she herself mentioned to friends.
The deceased Tsutomu had been trying to become a poet.
But if the man was kind-hearted, then for Otome, was being a cook truly such a troublesome profession?

However, that matter settled on its own, and when Sayo acquired her new house, Tomoko proposed that Otome might come to live there.
At that moment, Otome—her petite frame still clad in gaudy attire, her long eyebrows arched as if lifted while displaying her old habit of licking her lower lip—said, "Well, if we can live together like that, I think it'd be fine by me too."
Then, after carefully licking both upper and lower lips once more, she fixed her gaze intently: "But y'know—if I ended up all alone somehow, wouldn't that cause trouble?"
"Sayo-san and them can keep growing even through times like that, but I'm just an ordinary woman—no matter how long I keep at it, I'll probably stay nothing but an ordinary woman."

Otome, whose face had the simple, beautiful look of a startled hare—when had she learned to draw such distinctions between her female friends and her own self, to lay herself bare like that?
Thinking this, Sayo felt profoundly sad at that moment.

Around that time, there had been talk about something between Tsutomu and a painter he had known during his lifetime.

“Because Tsutomu-san was too stoic, I can understand some of Otome-san’s feelings… but…”

That Tsutomu had truly respected the painter was hard to believe given all the circumstances.

If the earnestness with which Tsutomu had lived and died with good intentions was now being dismissed as trivial through his wife Otome’s very being, then to Sayo, this seemed nothing less than a cruel act—both for the deceased and for those like herself who remained alive.

Early summer arrived, and the fresh green mixed forest appeared as though even the trunks were stretched soft and black by the vigor of young leaves striving to unfurl day and night, swaying like they were being pulled taut.

That summer saw the dragonfly-catching children’s domain in the vacant lot grow ever more restricted.
When the rains ceased over the patch of land rumored to become an Aviation Park, they raised a large tin-roofed workshop and built laborers’ quarters.
Day after day the earth was turned over, while trucks heaped with timber roared their engines in a dreadful clamor.

Sayo had stopped cutting through the vacant lot.
Not only there, but near the torn wire fence leading into the lot too, white ritual streamers fluttered at the ground-breaking site where land had been divided.
Nails were nowhere to be found.
Lumber had vanished from circulation.
Yet despite these shortages across society, multiple construction projects began simultaneously on that empty land.
The Hinomaru flag at the distant automobile training ground had disappeared from view.
Gasoline supplies had run dry.

As autumn deepened, shapes began emerging from the chaotic human accumulation at the construction site—the outlines of structures being raised through constant labor. Today’s dismantling of workshop shelters gave way to tomorrow’s disappearance of open-air cookstoves from the laborers’ camp, until finally several buildings stood completed behind lengthy concrete walls.
There rose the Mint Bureau.

With that, the view of the vacant lot from the improved roads became completely different from its initial state.
To the left stood an elementary school built squarely beside that row of cherry trees.
Further back rose the newly constructed Mint Bureau, separated only by an even longer concrete wall that had receded to that point and a single black road.
The grassland now lost its impression of sprawling expanse, reduced to fragmented patches of empty land.
Yet until late autumn deepened, insects continued swarming thickly from those remnants.

When another summer came around, the neighborhood’s appearance had shifted in minute detail once more—a tofu shop’s glass door showed a red doll carried on a little girl’s back lying overturned on an okara tub, while a scrawled notice announced twice-monthly closures due to material shortages.

At the rice shop fronting the dried cod vendor, a blackboard displayed “Domestic rice 20%, foreign rice 80%” beside a printed flyer stating “Rice orders payable in cash.”
“Matches Rationed Here.”
Such notices hung at the hardware store.
And flanking the short street’s communal water supply stood two notice boards erected by the town association, each bearing the names of war dead from households where earlier notice boards had once stood.

Luxury cars like Packards and Hudsons began to occasionally be seen parked beside the gate in those long high walls.

From around spring of that year, such scenes seemed to narrate how society began shifting at an increasingly steep angle.

Though she felt distressed several times, Sayo nonetheless continued living in the same residence and, alongside her job that allowed some free time, gradually began retraining in Western painting.

Under conditions that could only be called pure for Sayo's spousal feelings toward Shigeyoshi, she remained vigilant against fixating on what might be termed that emotion's pure singularity—both for Shigeyoshi's spiritual growth and her own enrichment of being.
If there existed any means for Sayo to express to herself the various emotions she hadn't even noticed harboring, it could only come through painting—the act she cherished.
Just as Sayo could gradually discover her own inadequacies, pent-up frustrations, and emotional superficialities within her paintings, Shigeyoshi too might grasp this reality of hers through her awkward sketch postcards—and if through this, Shigeyoshi himself gained power to vividly heighten the chiaroscuro within his own heart, nothing could have made her happier.

As for what was expressed in her paintings, her friends around her shared their impressions candidly. That too was a joy for Sayo. After she began painting, one spring she wandered through Zoshigaya Cemetery filled with poignant sorrow. Those impulses too—Sayo learned to live with them by converting their energy into something like passion’s latent force.

One evening in early August, Sayo went to her younger sister and brother-in-law’s house.
Yukiko was due for her first childbirth.
Being sisters who had lost their mother early, Yukiko would turn to her elder sister for support at such times.

With her heavily filled-out body adorned in a slightly charming salon-style apron, tilting her face—its upper eyelids faintly freckled—Yukiko declared in an oddly assertive manner,

“I have a bad feeling tonight might be the time.”

Yukiko declared.
Shin’ichi was sprawled out on the engawa, lighting a post-meal cigarette.

“You’re just trying to scare us again, aren’t you?”

“That’s mean—you’re just scared yourself!”

Sayo looked between them flusteredly.
“Hey—wait a second.”
“Is he coming?”
“I don’t want to,” she said.

It had been arranged that Sayo would accompany her to the hospital.

It was truly past two in the night when Sayo was startled awake by Yukiko’s shrill voice saying something and the sound of the lattice door opening.
When she went down to the parlor, Yukiko stood beneath the blazing lamp—already changed into a fresh yukata—adjusting the watch on her wrist against the wall clock.

“Oh, thank you for rousing me! What a relief!”

She spoke in a voice slightly altered from her usual tone, winding the watch while staring at its face.

Sayo hurriedly changed her kimono and helped Yukiko into the car that Shin’ichi had driven up front.
Yukiko gripped Sayo’s hand, tightening her hold and holding her breath with each new wave of pain.

“Are you all right? Can you bear it?”

As she spoke these words, Sayo unconsciously curled her toes inside her zori within the car racing through the empty streets.
When the intervals between pains grew shorter and Sayo’s anxiety peaked at last, the car reached the hospital and Yukiko was promptly led to the delivery room.

In the second-floor room, after opening the tightly closed windows completely, Sayo arranged two rattan chairs that were there and stretched out her legs on them.
They said the birth would be quick and it would be morning by then.
A windless, muggy night filled the rooms across the corridor—doors left open—with dim lamplight and the breathing of women in labor.
Careful not to wake those people while also minding the chair’s creaks, Sayo gripped her fan with an unsettled, constrained feeling.

There was indeed a rattan round table in the corner of the room, with something like magazines placed on the lower shelf. Sayo lowered each leg from the chair, stood up, went over, and brought it back. One was a movie magazine. The other was a quasi-society entertainment magazine published from Osaka, featuring an editorial approach that emphasized illustrations and such. Since there were also works by a woman painter she knew, while flipping through the pages to pass the time, Sayo made an expression of disbelief and looked again at one particular illustration. The woman depicted there was Otome. If it wasn’t Otome, who else could possibly possess such distinctive features—those arched eyebrows, that upper lip with its beauty mark and slightly pointed shape? The two initials indicated the surname and given name of that painter who had been acquainted with Otome’s husband long ago. The Otome in the painting was completely naked, wearing absolutely nothing on her body. Drawn with rough ink lines were thin, small yet prominent shoulders, their shape unmistakably Otome’s. The naked Otome sat earnestly facing straight ahead in a posture with one bony knee raised, both arms dangling limply, her eyebrows lifted in an expression that seemed to say she was barely restraining herself from licking her lips any moment now. The artist had rendered this small, rounded woman with rough brushstrokes, exaggerating her two wide-open eyes, the armpits of her spread arms, and the shadows across her abdomen.

Otome.
Otome.
Sayo ached as she called out in her heart the name of this unexpectedly rediscovered companion from the past.
This painter had drawn her naked.
Though rendered with Otome's characteristic lack of artifice—no trace of coquetry—had Otome ever truly contemplated what meaning lay in that portrayal?
Whatever the painter sought to express, there was something piercing in Otome being captured thus.
Did she know this?

Closing the magazine, Sayo leaned her head against the back of the chair.

The night broke into dawn, the mugginess lingering.
The plane trees lining the street just outside the window gradually revealed their vivid green foliage, and the morning sun's rays glistened upon them.

Suddenly, somewhere downstairs, a baby let out a loud cry.
Sayo reflexively stood up from the chair but hesitated upon thinking it sounded like a boy’s robust cry—then realized a nurse was running through the corridor and ascending the second-floor stairs toward her.
Feeling her heart suddenly race, Sayo stepped out just as the nurse reached the top of the stairs.

“Was it born?”

“Congratulations.”
“She’s a fine baby girl.”

At that moment, Sayo experienced for the first time a joy that felt like the strength was draining from her knees.
As she descended the stairs, the baby’s cries continued this time—their unseen baby’s full-throated call to life—and Sayo felt such overwhelming tenderness gushing up her throat.

She entered the nearby telephone room and called Shin’ichi.
Sayo said in an excited voice,
“The delivery went smoothly just now!”
she announced.
“A girl. Can you hear how vigorously she’s crying?”

Shin’ichi gave an ambiguous reply.
Sayo,
“Wait a moment—I’ll let you hear.”

With those words, she opened the telephone room’s glass door and stretched the receiver’s cord to its full length toward the corridor.

“Look! She’s crying. She has a good cry, doesn’t she?”

However, it was impossible to make the newborn baby’s cries audible over the phone. Given that Shin’ichi would be arriving soon, she hung up.

This was at the far end of the corridor adjoining the delivery room, where two doors opened onto a cramped inner courtyard typical of the city. On a flat stone wet with morning dew sat a large pot of Japanese sweet flag, its slender, clustered leaves still holding droplets. The color of the beautifully moistened blue slender leaves seeped into Sayo’s eyes, which had stayed open all night.

A profoundly deep, tranquil joy filled Sayo’s heart.
Such joy and relief were emotions she had not anticipated.
They were that overwhelming.
Separate from that joy and relief, the figure of Otome she had seen earlier in the magazine’s pages remained within Sayo’s heart.

The sparrows' animated chirping had just reached her ears from beyond the wall when the radio calisthenics record began playing somewhere. That familiar recording with its perfunctory "Aaalright, let's begin!" followed the piano's simple melody—but as Sayo listened intently to the piano tune, her upturned face catching the morning sun, her body started trembling in small shivers and a quiet sob surged upward.

This melody belonged to those pristine mornings of awakening during the early days of Shigeyoshi and Sayo's marriage, a simple tune that had once drifted into their bedroom from some distant place.

With the melody came the memory of that summer morning wind that had blown through their room and swept over their bodies, and Sayo found herself weeping.

Because of this memory of unalloyed joy that flowed into her present joy, Sayo shed tears.