Pathway to Japanese Literature

Kaji told his wife Yoshie that such a thing had occurred.
It was a hot spring resort on a certain coast in Tohoku.
Kaji had come to rest his fatigue after traveling around Europe, but the September beach, now that the summer visitors had left, was merely a place where the white sand hurt the eyes.—

It wasn’t particularly interesting.
It was an event that occurred in a certain city in Switzerland.
At that time, it was right in the middle of World War I, and since Switzerland—a non-belligerent country—had become a refuge for thinkers from various nations, the city was like a garbage dump that had collected nothing but heads.
If one were to take a single step outside Switzerland, the world was a frenzied slaughter.
There was no such thing as good or bad.
No one knew why they killed each other.
Simply put, if they killed, that was justice.
At a time when Europe’s intellect had completely fallen to such depths, an inaugural ceremony for a psychological form called Surrealism was held in that Swiss city.
The leader of the group was a Romanian poet.
The group sent invitations to all the influential figures in the city whom they were inviting to the inaugural ceremony.
Now, when the day finally arrived, gentlemen and ladies in full dress came flocking to the venue one after another—beginning with the Mayor in a silk hat and morning coat.
However, no matter how much time passed, the ceremony showed no sign of beginning.
Thereupon, everyone began to mutter.
The night merely continued to deepen to no purpose.
At last, the anger of the gentlemen and ladies erupted, but there was nothing to be done—not a single surrealist had come to the venue for them to direct their fury at.

Eventually, having realized they had been deceived, the entire group went home one by one, grumbling incessantly with nowhere to direct their anger.
However, the next day’s newspapers all prominently featured photographs of that night’s inaugural ceremony.
That, in essence, was the inaugural ceremony.

Having said that much, Kaji looked at his wife’s face.

“And then what happened?” Yoshie asked.

“That’s all there was to it.”

“What does that mean? Are you saying that because the world had gone mad, they decided to act that way too?”

“Well, if that’s how it is...” Kaji couldn’t help but say.

Whenever Kaji met friends, he would try telling them this same story and observe their faces.
Then, everyone fell silent and assumed serious expressions.
Among them were those who gradually turned pale and others who suddenly burst into laughter after a while.
Kaji, having returned from his travels around Europe, found this story most intriguing; however, as it was not the kind of tale that could be easily explained, he kept silent.
If one were to forcibly attempt an explanation, one would have to bring up the story of Stavrogin—the protagonist of Dostoevsky’s Demons—and a certain action of his.
Stavrogin, the only son of the region’s wealthiest family, had returned to his hometown after a long absence. As he stood in the gathering place of the town’s upper class, politely and cheerfully smiling while listening to people’s conversations, there came a moment when he quietly approached the most influential figure—the mayor—and suddenly, without any reason, seized the man’s nose and shook it.
Moreover, at that moment, Stavrogin’s expression remained just as amiable as before he initiated the action, not differing in the slightest.
When explaining this psychology, the author Dostoevsky never utters a single word.
It was a work that left a thoroughly unpleasant aftertaste.
Kaji certainly viewed the fact of the Surrealists’ inaugural ceremony that had occurred in Switzerland as being under Stavrogin’s influence.
If it was a mistake, he believed it at least belonged to the same lineage of psychological vein.

Kaji had developed a habit of following up his previous story with this next one for friends who showed no interest.
This story too was in fact a hidden incident that had occurred in Europe, but among company executives, presidents, and politicians, there was not a single one who remained unastonished by it.
One of Kaji’s acquaintances—a high-ranking official in an important position—had even entreated him to give a lecture about it.
Kaji’s story went as follows.
However, though this story and the previous one were entirely different incidents, they were strangely connected at an uncanny level.

Kaji traveled to Hungary in late June.
When one day he asked a Hungarian man to lend him a match, the man promptly produced a small match from his pocket and explained that while each one cost just one sen, the government sold them to us for six sen.
Intrigued by this economic trickery, Kaji had the Hungarian investigate it from various angles.
Then from the price of a single match emerged layer upon layer of Europe’s unexpectedly complex wounds.
Moreover, this fact amounted to nothing less than an inaugural ceremony of economic surrealism—a perfect specimen of contemporary Europe where intelligence found itself compelled toward the most irrational actions.
It aligned precisely with Japan’s romanticism, where merely recording facts became satire’s surest form.
If Japan had its own Stavrogin, now would be the ideal moment for him to seize some mayor’s nose and swing it about with a smile.

According to Kaji’s investigation, the conclusion of the story was the suicide of Ivar Kreuger—the Swedish Match King—from the previous year. His suicide was something Kaji had known about through Japanese newspaper reports even before he went to Europe. However, Kreuger’s suicide—which the world still believes—was in fact a false report. Kaji believed that such falsehoods took on a guise more truthful than the actual truth itself.

Ivar Kreuger, this Match King, was originally an obscure architectural engineer in Sweden. Once, in northern Sweden, there arose a sudden need to construct an industrial exhibition hall for a winter event, but the rapid erection of buildings during winter was impossible in this country. Therefore, all architects abandoned this work. At that moment, Kreuger appeared. He took on the construction work and simultaneously hurriedly built only the outer shell of the house, then conducted his work inside that shell. And thus, when he succeeded in this unprecedented architectural venture, his name swiftly became renowned. Kreuger’s business acumen that had propelled him from architect to tycoon crowned as the “Match King of the World” was beyond Kaji’s comprehension, but he knew through rumors about the man’s brazen conduct that had stirred up Europe’s financial circles. Certainly, no one could deny that within Kreuger’s mind lay the makings of a great psychologist—one who could gaze leftward even as the masses looked right.

In 1925, there came a time when three countries—Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Romania—found themselves compelled to borrow money from the United States.
Due to insufficient collateral for this joint loan application, America refused.
The moment he learned this fact, Kreuger crossed alone to New York.
Then, having invited three hundred American bankers and entrepreneurs, he successfully secured a four hundred million dollar loan at ten percent interest by distributing eighty dancers and gold-tipped cigars to win their favor.
In other words, Kreuger—Sweden's lone Match King—proved more creditworthy than fifty million people across three nations.
When Kreuger's credit spread through Europe, Italy built warships as proof to its citizens of wanting to borrow from him—though this was deception.
The warships fabricated for this deception had seized Ethiopia before anyone noticed.
Meanwhile, Kreuger lent four hundred million dollars to Romania, Yugoslavia, and Hungary, obtaining match monopoly rights from all three.
At that time Hungary—having borrowed thirty-six million dollars—distributed leftover funds from land readjustment to landlords before confiscating their land and allocating it to tenant farmers.
Yet this scheme's outcome forced tenant farmers to shoulder Hungary's entire debt.
This explains why they must buy one-sen matches for six sen.

All of Ivar Kreuger’s methods had been the result of such calculations, but the time had finally come for even his plans to collapse.
For even the reliability of his joint venture with America had faced difficulties in fulfilling the exceptional promise—one that had astonished all Europe—to pay ten percent interest.
Kreuger lied again about discovering a new gold mine in northern Sweden, but there was no one left to lend him money.

Paris reported Kreuger's suicide.
However, it is reported that the French government secretly allowed him to escape to South America.

Whether Kreuger's death was factual could not be confirmed with certainty, as Kaji had not witnessed it himself, but it was an undeniable fact that his relatives and heirs had each become immensely wealthy individuals.

It was early July when Kaji returned to Paris from Hungary.
However, by sheer coincidence, about a month before his departure for Hungary, he had visited the house of Kreuger’s daughter in Montmartre, Paris.
At that time, Kaji had not the slightest inkling that the woman was Kreuger’s daughter.
Through his friend’s acquaintance with her husband—the poet—Kaji had been taken one night by this companion to visit their home.
What intrigued Kaji further was that this lady’s husband turned out to be Tristan Tzara—the very leader who had presided over the Swiss Surrealists’ founding ceremony.
Before marrying Kreuger’s daughter, Tzara had been a Romanian poet so impoverished he was called a beggar; yet through some temporal alchemy, his innate poetic brilliance blazed forth until he wielded such absolute authority in France’s new poetry circles that none were said to rival him.
Some in artistic and literary circles went beyond refusing to call Tzara an unparalleled great poet.
They claimed even Baudelaire could not equal Tzara alone.

On a back slope slightly below the summit of Montmartre stood stone walls resembling a castle rampart with wings spread out. In its center was a black iron door resembling an ancient castle gate that remained always tightly shut—a sight Kaji had often passed by and observed. Amidst the surrounding scenery filled with crumbling antique charm, this structure served as a sturdy central pillar at the heart of the hill. This was Tzara’s house. Given that this structure retained features reminiscent of Nordic-style iron and stonework, one might imagine it could perhaps have been designed by Ivar Kreuger. Since his suicide had occurred in Paris, there could be no doubt that this house’s iron door held some secret of it. The gaze of Kreuger—who saw the entire world as teeming with fools—had been fixed upon the hillside overlooking all of Paris, a glare befitting a revolutionary figure. Yet Tzara was the monster who had thoroughly duped in Switzerland that very group of industrialists akin to his father-in-law. The vague smiles exchanged between him and Kreuger within this house formed a solemn arena where Europe’s two extremes had once clashed fiercely, sparks flying. It had likely unfolded amidst social obligations and human emotions no different from those of ordinary people. Kaji had been one of those who thought intelligence was precisely such a thing.

Past nine o'clock in the evening, Kaji pressed the gate button with his friend and was guided inside by the maid.
The narrow courtyard extended from both white sides of stairs that rose immediately upward, carrying the smell of paint.
The guest room on the upper floor—appearing spacious enough for twenty tatami mats—had stone flooring.
A single long table stood there, dark black like a camp stool crafted from thick oak.
Only a framed line drawing of a nude hung on the front wall, yet African tribal carvings of blackened buried wood filled the space with intellectual luminosity through their unrefined solidity.
After surveying the room, Kaji stepped out onto the side terrace.
Numerous chairs stood arranged there.

The famous windmill of Montmartre was resting its blades on the tower immediately above the hill's surface where dusk was approaching.
Kaji was gazing at the moon rising above it while waiting for Tzara to appear when about four new guests gathered at the terrace chairs.
They were all artists—poets, writers, sculptors, and the female president of an art magazine.
Soon their numbers grew to six or seven, and just as there was no time for Kaji to be introduced, Tzara appeared for the first time.

Tzara appeared slightly hunched. He was short in stature but solidly built. His voice was low and unassuming. Yet such a person who constantly maintained this passive exterior knew the undercurrents beneath the surface. This passive form constituted a preparatory phase that cultivated the discernment to impose unity upon its object; thus when its power reached fullness, it would stir up black clouds beyond all anticipation. There exists an expression about being "crowned by a cat," but this cat would likely represent subterranean calculations continuing beneath a veneer of quiet decorum. Truly, passivity was none other than peaceful combat imbued with proactivity.

After being introduced by Tzara, Kaji settled into one of the chairs arranged in a circle among the gathered gentlemen and ladies.
The conversation centered entirely on the major strike unfolding in Paris.
At that moment, from the high cylindrical terrace of the neighboring house to the left, a dog began barking shrilly at the group below.
The artists surrounding Tzara had initially persisted in their ideological discussion, but as the dog's barks grew louder, their conversation soon became difficult to maintain.
Even had they tried to chase the dog away, another household's garden lay between them like a sunken fault line.
For some time they murmured quietly among themselves.
Yet their adversary remained a dog.
Once it started barking with mad intensity, nothing could restrain it.
The group could only exchange wry smiles and gaze upward at the circular tower.

When Kaji involuntarily recalled the scene of Tzara’s faction’s founding ceremony in Switzerland at that moment, he felt a smile rise to his lips.
To quiet a dog, one must raise a voice louder than its bark; otherwise, it will not flee.
Who among these ladies and gentlemen would raise a voice louder than that dog?
Kaji looked up at the dog with interest while thinking that Tzara’s past actions of turning reality into tea resembled this creature.
However, he was now a preeminent real-world celebrity in France.
If he perceived this world’s most crucial fertile ground precisely in reality’s utter foolishness by any measure, then before this sudden surge of heart-piercing irony now welling up before him, he must surely have been tasting bitter defeat.—

While Kaji was thinking this, Tzara shushed at the dog in a small voice—"Shh, shh"—trying to chase it away.
However, of course, the dog showed no signs of quieting at his excuse-like voice.
The other group lost its equilibrium under the dog’s increasingly strident barks, anxious muscles surfacing on their faces—it became clear that if things continued this way, tonight’s gathering would have no choice but to disband with everyone’s dissatisfaction unresolved.
Then, suddenly, Kaji’s friend looked up at the circular tower and,

“Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!”

he bellowed in quick succession.
That voice was indeed louder than the dog’s bark.
The dog continued barking two or three more times, but when a household member heard the angry shouts in Japanese, they finally came out to the terrace and dragged the dog inside.
Once again, conversations on lofty topics began here and there around Kaji’s terrace; yet to Kaji, his friend’s Japanese shouts directed at the dog felt far more intriguing and lingered more persistently than those discussions.

Some time after the dog’s barking had completely ceased, Madame Tzara appeared among the guests.
The Madame, wearing a silk ikat-patterned garment cinched with a crimson band, approached Kaji while pouring wine for everyone, then gently shook his hand and settled down beside him.
This Madame Tzara—daughter of Ivar Kreuger—was not only the most elegant among the gathered women but also a first-rate beauty even among the many Parisian women Kaji had observed until then; her tranquil expression and eyes of refinement exuded a beauty of lineage akin to that of Japanese nobility who seldom ventured out.
She was truly an ethereally elegant lady.

“Please, do have this.”

Madame Tzara occasionally offered wine to Kaji and drank it herself.
Though the light streaming from the hall vividly illuminated Madame Tzara’s profile, even as the group’s conversation—unable to escape speculation about the strikes—flowed with an air of unease, her refined face grew subtly somber as the discussion progressed.

“Although the French government empowered workers and promoted strikes, if these strikes persist like this, the capitalists will collapse.”
“Crush them, and you’ll crush the workers too.”
“Yet since strikes must be conducted regardless, the government has been driven to utter desperation,” said one guest.

“However, they say the government is secretly providing funds to bankrupt capitalists to revive them,” said another guest.

“So they’re starting another strike on top of that?”

After a burst of laughter rose up, anxious whispers immediately continued.
The ten gathered people each carried an air of left-wing affiliation, but given their status as interest earners, the progression of strikes resulted not only in lowered interest rates but also in consequences that directly impacted them daily.
As prices soared, there was a fear that the right wing’s drastic measures might erupt at any moment.
In other words, the anxiety of the group as reflected in Kaji’s eyes was an inescapable anguish between ideology and reality.
However, Parisians do not speak of their own or others’ interest rates.
If one were to even mention it, the very foundation of Parisian life would be destroyed.
It was akin to Japan’s giri-ninjo—social obligations and human emotions—leaving no freedom to destroy this way of life.
Ideology is ideology precisely because it respects the freedom of living.
However, in this present age where that very ideology reduces the interest rates forming citizens’ foundation and spews flames leading to the destruction of free life—what manner of thing could citizens’ ideology possibly be?
It was at this moment, as Kaji was thinking these thoughts.

Suddenly, Tzara,

“There is no longer any common sense except in the left wing. That’s decided.”

He muttered under his breath and raised his wine glass.

When Kaji heard those words, he observed his own expressionless heart as if hearing some ancient incantation. Ten years prior, Kaji had been mercilessly pierced by people wielding similar phrases. Now there stood Kaji—a Japanese man through whose being a vent had already formed, allowing such barbs to pass through unimpeded. Yet he now began contemplating Japanese bodies as wondrous things—bodies that would suffocate entirely were this vent sealed shut.

Here must reside some perfected intelligence unique to Japan that people had yet to discover. It undoubtedly lies within the beauty of giri-ninjo—that cognitive order without parallel in this world—Kaji concluded. Still, the fact remained that Tzara, who once staged an ideology-free ceremony in Switzerland to trample social obligations, now found novelty in leftist thought that lent substance to those very acts. This amounted to conducting another real-world founding ceremony that wholly denied those obligations anew.

In his case, Tzara's surrealism—born as rebellion against intellect—had merely intensified into a form that rebelled even more fiercely.

When wine was poured anew among the gathered guests, a woman poet entered in splendid attire.
The gathered guests turned toward her, lightly raised their hands, and then resumed their respective conversations.

Then, the sullen woman who until now had spoken to no one beside Kaji suddenly turned to him,

“Why do Japanese people commit harakiri?”

she asked.
Kaji, caught off guard, couldn’t respond immediately.
If he were to attempt an interpretation that foreigners could comprehend, he would have to explain it through the intricacies of Japanese giri-ninjo.
The friend who had been beside Kaji like an interpreter,

“This lady asks whether Japanese people commit harakiri for appearances or out of a sense of responsibility.”

he explained to Kaji.

Kaji said to his friend.

“That is neither vanity nor responsibility.”
“Please tell her that those who feel they have disrupted societal order perform it to justify their own actions.”
“Because Japanese people value social order above all else, they must naturally negate the individual.”
“In other words, to perfect life’s order, humans must cultivate the resolve to consciously annihilate themselves.”
“Could you tell her that all foundations of Japanese culture have blossomed from this simplification through negation, and that Japan constitutes a social form modeling what all earthly cultures would become if perfected?”
“In other words—owing to giri-ninjo’s perfection having reached intellect’s ultimate limit—I believe Japan no longer requires intellect as other nations do.”

While watching the face of the friend interpreting Kaji’s words, the woman fell silent without showing any emotion.
In fact, Kaji thought that if Western intellect was necessary for Japanese culture, it existed only in the natural sciences.
However, Kaji felt that Japan had already reached the very limits of what Europe could achieve.

Then where could Japan’s proper direction lie?
While he was thinking this, another young writer asked Kaji.

“What is the current state of Japan’s left wing?”

“The left wing has indeed prospered at times. However, unless Japan has historically sensed an absolute necessity for the ideological conditions of any given era, all ideologies and actions become futile. Consequently, when a threat to order arises from this, there exists a terrifying natural force that withers it away. This natural force is a physical entity, and every time European intellect attempts to invade Japan, it must contend with this natural force. In other words, in Japan, neither any thought nor any object can be chosen through individual will. One must entrust oneself to the natural force and obey as it commands. In such a Japan where individuals are of no use, therefore, the foremost artists and thinkers are the order called nature. The Japanese left wing too proceeds through a pattern of natural emergence to natural dissolution, but this stems not from the impotence of ideology, but rather from the formidable strength of an order as meticulously structured as ideology itself.”

When Kaji’s friend interpreted his words, the young writer hunched his shoulders, raised both hands, and revealed an expression of surprise. However, he said nothing and immediately spoke to the sculptor beside him. At that moment, the woman poet who had entered last whispered excitedly to Tzara.

“If I met Picasso today—apparently he’s finally gone left-leaning and is painting a mural of the Bastille disturbances!”

“That’s right—that’s correct.”

Enveloped by such voices, the group's conversation gradually transformed into a low, uneasy silence.
The French left-wing artists now faced the crisis of destroying art for their own sake.
In contrast to this, Kaji recalled Japan destroying art for the sake of order.
Yet this was not limited to art alone.
Indeed, the arc of the world's progression was entering a stage of unprecedented darkening.
Moreover, the countless hands trying to halt this stage frantically searched for the button they needed to press, yet remained unable to find it.
The world simply continued its dark, solitary rotation while maintaining its inherent form.
As Kaji gazed into the void with demonic laughter seemingly echoing from nowhere, people stood up and shook hands with Tzara.
They each began departing.
As Kaji prepared to leave with his friend and reached out to shake hands,

“Won’t you stay a little longer?”

“Won’t you stay a little longer?” Tzara said to the two of them.
When the group was no longer visible, Tzara led them to his third-floor study.
There, countless jet-black carved masks of African tribespeople covered every surface—tables and walls alike.
As Kaji surveyed the room, surrounded by strange visages, Tzara stood facing him.

“With so many guests, I couldn’t properly hear about Japan. What sort of country is it?”
“When it comes to other nations, I can at least form some mental image—but Japan alone remains utterly incomprehensible to me.”

Tzara’s eyes gleamed piercingly as he regarded Kaji and spoke in hushed tones.
Each time he spoke in Europe, Kaji felt freshly burdened by this inescapable awareness of his Japanese identity—yet nothing left him more tongue-tied than being asked to define Japan’s essence.
Still, he had no choice but to traverse this treacherous bridge of encapsulating Japan in a single breath.
What Japan revered as noble open-mindedness became here the very emblem of folly.
What cosmic expanse could possibly span these two polarities?

“The first thing I wish foreigners to understand about Japan is that earthquakes are our nation’s foremost external enemy.”
"The incursions by that external enemy have occurred approximately 270 to 280 times in recorded history."
"In a single major earthquake, cultures painstakingly built over generations collapse in an instant."
“Then the people must immediately begin constructing the next culture—each time Japan adopts the finest elements from other civilized nations.”
“This stratified national character—forged through generations being vanquished by natural violence and trained to graft foreign cultures—has nurtured within our collective psyche an order that values nature above all else, unmatched by any other country.”
“Thus it follows that our nation’s entire intellectual capacity has naturally cultivated habits directed not at transforming nature as foreigners do, but solely at utilizing it.”
“Now European leftist intellect infiltrates these customs—yet these intellects never consider how Japanese and European leftists differ in their objects of struggle.”
“Consequently, while Europe’s left wing manifests as methods for transforming social structures, Japan’s left wing has emerged as a struggle against what constitutes our unique natural order.”
“This means the left wing must inevitably lose.”
“Put simply—because it defies nature.”
“Whereas Europe’s [left wing] seeks to return unnatural systems back to nature, Japan’s left wing constitutes a movement attempting to defy nature itself.”
“You’re surely aware Japan recently experienced an incident called February 26th—that was neither an anti-leftist purge nor a capitalist overthrow movement.”
“European colonial pressures have merely superimposed another layer of complex order upon Japan’s existing order.”

When Tzara heard Kaji’s friend’s interpretation, he simply nodded and remained silent.

As Kaji reflected that to Europeans—who lived clustered together in cultured nations—matters of Japan at Asia’s edge remained but a vacant blank image, like a sky where mist hung like draped shelves, it seemed certain that from one corner of this void, Japan’s presence—illuminating every recess of the world to bedazzle gazes—must be performing lightning-swift maneuvers through the clouds like Son Goku.

“Has surrealism been successful in Japan?” Tzara inquired after another pause.

“In Japan, surrealism is sufficiently provided by earthquakes alone, so it doesn’t flourish.”

This is what Kaji had wanted to say.
However, he simply said it was no good and returned home with his friend that night.

When France’s general strike had finally subsided like a receding tidal wave, Spain’s turmoil ignited its fuse.
Kaji drove straight through Siberia amid Europe’s clamorous division between left and right wings, and upon returning to Japan, immediately retreated into the Tohoku region.
He bowed to his wife’s parents with “I’ve returned,” then went directly before the Buddhist altar to offer a silent bow.

"Phew."

After changing into a yukata, Kaji flopped down on the twelve-tatami mat in the back room and gazed at the garden.
When he realized that European culture—which Japanese people had pursued with such desperate fervor—amounted to nothing more than this, his former self that had groveled so strangely now appeared clouded over with gentle pathos.
Near the chilly fingertips of Kaji’s crossed leg, his wife Yoshie flushed crimson with shyness as she spoke.

“Thank you for writing me so many letters,” she said with formal gratitude.

“Did I really send that many?”

Yoshie remained silent with a look of being at a loss for a response.
Kaji did not particularly consider himself a devoted husband, but when he recalled not having touched a single woman’s skin while abroad, he thought that perhaps in that regard, he might indeed be counted among such men.
However, the reason Kaji had not touched European women was not particularly because he loved his wife.
It was simply that he could not bring himself to approve of people who engaged in such comical antics—those who were always devoting themselves to the elaborate rationalizations they had painstakingly constructed.

“Well, you claim to be Japanese, but aren’t the women of Paris beautiful?”

In Paris, there had been an instance where a foreigner seated next to Kaji asked him,

“No, Japanese women are more beautiful,” Kaji replied.

“Then, have you been to a dance hall?”

“Japanese people don’t care for women or dance halls.”

When Kaji said this, the foreigner had tilted his head slightly in surprise and seemed to be pondering something, but now, suddenly recalling that expression, Kaji found it amusing and burst out laughing.

“I had been boastfully claiming that Japanese women were more beautiful than foreign women, but when I crossed over from Manchuria into here, I was truly astonished by how beautiful they were.”

As Kaji said this and casually shifted his legs, the tip of his foot suddenly brushed against Yoshie’s hand.
It was the first time their skin had touched.
Kaji instinctively pulled back his foot, then averted his gaze from Yoshie’s flushed face as he stood up,

“Can I have some water?” he urged.

Though their eyes had met repeatedly since earlier—each time Yoshie would awkwardly lower her gaze—Kaji too found himself hastily looking elsewhere, unable to meet her face directly.
Even Kaji’s usual habit of barking orders at his wife in a loud voice when at home now left him somehow lacking composure; his eyes remained fixed on the massive pine tree in the garden, which he stared at intently as though it were truly a peculiar tree.

"Traveling the world has robbed me of my enlightenment!"

When Kaji, grinning to himself, had forgotten all about the water his wife had brought, their four-year-old child came running in and—seemingly startled upon seeing his father Kaji—stopped abruptly without smiling.

“Hey, come here.”

When Kaji said this, the child remained silent, dragging the hat he was wearing down below his nose and making no attempt to remove it from his face.

“You should say, ‘Welcome back, Papa.’ It’s embarrassing.”

Even when told by Yoshie, the child—while biting the edge of the hat that continued to hide his face—still stood blocking the way and remained silent.

As he drank the water, Kaji thought once more that his former settled daily life was about to resume.
Yet Kaji's senses—having been divorced from Japanese time for a spell—now recognized his family's existence in this eastern corner of the world, and he began groping to retrieve his wife and children as if encountering strange artifacts.
Even so, what vast things I have witnessed.
"Is this what they call the world?" Kaji wondered, gazing at his child's face as he felt profound awe at existence's true magnitude.
When he realized nihilism and ideology alike existed nowhere but in that witnessed realm, the half-dreamt visions of society he'd nurtured seemed to dissolve instantaneously.

Just where have I been wandering?
What kind of place is this where I am sitting?

Despite being before his wife and children, Kaji occasionally glanced around furtively in all directions like Urashima Taro.
His wife Yoshie—who remained unaware of all he had witnessed yet still considered him unchanged—now appeared pitiable beyond measure through Kaji’s eyes.

"What in the world are you?"

As Kaji looked at his wife and children while this feeling arose within him—that the anxieties of future life must be taking root in unexpected places—he began vigorously scrubbing at the vague, unidentifiable non-conductive substance enveloping his body. Yet suddenly he felt only the soft sensation of Yoshie’s skin, which his foot had briefly touched earlier, shining intensely from what seemed like an illusory world of wakefulness. The truth of creatures relying solely on tactile sensation now struck him as this world’s most precious tangible reality. Returning to the ease of having glimpsed the secret depths behind his children’s births, he lay down again with his arm for a pillow.

The fact that my child exists somewhere in this world is utterly impossible to disregard.
How could I not love this land?
Namu, Tenchi, Busshin—may you dwell in robust health.
"Drive away enemies and demons," Kaji prayed—dazzled by sunlight piercing through walnut leaves—as he lay spread-eagled beneath the sky's boundless blue expanse, then peered about restlessly once more with undiminished delight at being atop tatami mats.

Despite having visited the Tohoku region many times before, Kaji had never felt the beauty of this land as profoundly as he did now. Even though parents, children, and siblings lived in the same town, whenever they met, they would press their foreheads to the tatami mats in greeting—a sight Kaji found more strangely beautiful than bizarre. The lines of deep indigo mountain ranges towering beyond the rice paddies where abundant ears of rice hung heavy also appeared profoundly serene to Kaji, who had witnessed foreign landscapes—it even seemed as though the distant chant of Namu Amida Butsu he had heard long ago now drifted to him from somewhere.

Kaji had wanted to consider it happiness at least—being born enveloped in this scenery and dying nourished by these ears of rice—and now that he had finally attained the joy of realizing this, he rejoiced that even belatedly, it was a gift from foreign lands.
Truly, within these uniquely small ears of rice, the drama of our ancestors—who had grown in frenzied oblivion while pushing, jostling, and twisting against one another—had undeniably congealed into blood and flesh within all things.

Laugh if they will.
There can be no incident more piercing than this—not even genuine tragedies or comedies.
Within Kaji’s contemplative mind, the faces leaping at Europe’s intellect—swinging their legs—remained unclear as to what exactly they found so laughable.

Where in the world is society headed?
The meditations in Paris—those midnight reflections during sleepless nights when such thoughts would occasionally arise—had already begun crumbling away from Kaji, settling into tranquil repose.
At times like these, even when enemy spear tips pierced into him, he found himself wanting to first grasp the shaft and see his opponent’s face before kicking it away.
Even when imagining Spain’s conflict—its daily exchange of gunfire and mutual slaughter—the stubbornness of a life driven by greed would emerge like a bandit, overshadowing the terror of ideological games.

“Whether turning right or left, there’s truly no real choice to be made.”
“They’re simply gravitating toward where they can eat.”

Kaji had once told a friend how after witnessing the French strikes, he had traveled through Germany, Austria, and Italy before returning to Paris.

“That’s right.”
“They’re all like that.”

And his friend—a correspondent well-versed in European politics—replied to him.
When Kaji and this man parted ways and he was reading the newspaper in a corner of Tohoku, less than a month had passed, yet this suave gentleman friend was already flying around Spain’s turmoil in an airplane, his exploits from the skies vividly captured on the pages.

“There are no journalists in the world who work as hard as Japanese journalists. Because we work too much, there was a Pole who called us plague bacteria,” he once remarked with a wry smile.

Moreover, an excellent political science professor at a certain university, while observing the flourishing activities of Parisian leftists,

"I had sympathized with the left wing, but when Japan has come to this state, I find it utterly unbearable."
"But even so, I simply can’t bring myself to tell my students, ‘You must become fascists.’"
"Even if I returned now, with things like this, there’d be nothing left to teach them."
"It has become quite a predicament."

There had been a time when he muttered this to Kaji while crossing his arms pensively.
However, ideology cannot exist apart from a people.
Kaji himself fully understood the importance of logic’s universality, but that did not mean intelligence was inherently universal.
Kaji thought that the flaw of modernity—where scientists who had transcended ethnic psychology prized universality above all else—lay in the fragility of their ideal equating each ethnic group’s inhabited nature.
In fact, Kaji had developed a habit of thinking that modern intelligence’s blindness—which forgot temporality—lay precisely in how scientists discovering natural laws, their methods rooted in internationally shared logic, consequently conflated both natural/historical movements and a universalized nature across nations.

Ever since before Kaji departed for Europe, if he carelessly used the word "ethnicity," he would come under fierce fire from certain elements within the intellectual class.
Yet by silencing the ethnic groups that form the very foundation of this clear reality, what intelligence could possibly become the intelligence of a people?
Kaji thought as follows.

"The reason I place greater value on the intelligence of the ethnic group in which I dwell than on the universality of logic is that I cherish the international nature of ethnic groups."

Truly, the most abstract place that had caused Kaji the greatest confusion up to this point was there.
Moreover, this was not merely the place of Kaji’s personal confusion, but also the bizarre source of disarray for Japan’s entire intellectual class.
Were the issue to touch upon that point even once, the entire intellectual class would leap to their feet and erupt into uproar.
Now that Kaji had returned, he found debates about humanism raging at their peak, yet upon closer observation, this too appeared as a hazy smoke rising from the indistinguishable dark interface between ethnic intelligence and the universality of logic.

All members of the intellectual class walked about with these dark holes hollowed out in their minds.
Observing their gaits and directions as they walked, every last one of them wore expressions of discomfort while exchanging glances at others’ smoldering fires and consoling one another.
Among them were those who did nothing but recklessly brandish the sword of internationality, swinging and slashing indiscriminately.
Many of these people wore masks as they rampaged about, but since smoke also sullenly rose from within their masks, others could immediately discern where the screws on their backs had been manufactured.

In the coastal hot spring towns of Tohoku, there was no longer any sign of people.
Kaji sat in the inn room facing the sea where long waves surged in relentless assault, oriented toward the water-dripping rocky mountain behind him, and did not move from that spot all day.
Sudden showers occasionally poured into the rock garden.
He did nothing but watch the pristine black carps leaping up from between the spring-fed rocks.
At such times, four children—scratched by the village children and crying—would enter his room; upon seeing their silent father, they would pick up a stick fragment,

“Alright, I’ll go beat them up!”

When he saw him say that and dash out again, Kaji secretly rejoiced at the thought that this kid was Japanese.
When Kaji was told by Yoshie about how this child—who had come to live in the village for the first time during his absence—had one day been surrounded by the older school-going children of the village and yet remained still without fleeing even as they pressed upon him with stones in hand, he again found reason to rejoice.
He felt immeasurable interest in what these children might do when he considered how such youths now filled Japan, each growing year after year.
When Kaji was in Europe, whenever he saw a child of the same age as his own, he would approach and try playing with them in parks, but he never felt that Japanese children were inferior to their European counterparts.
The only difference was that these children from both hemispheres grew along the rails of their respective nations’ intellects.
Kaji believed that both poles of the rails laid here implicitly ought to converge, but for now, he could not help but think that any international train still required several transfer points.
Kaji could not agree with the scholars who taught that since the rails for international trains should be a single common track across all nations, the trains would have no need to transfer.
Particularly with trains, there were differences in time zones between nations, and despite the clear existence of variations in rail gauge—broad and narrow—due to differences in mountains and rivers, when he saw those who taught that even the steel for rails should not be Japanese-made and the faction insisting that timetables must adhere to the same time across all nations, they appeared to him like blissfully ignorant retirees.

One day, Kaji examined how rails had been laid across the region centered on the hot spring resort where he stayed. He reasoned that if one section were inspected closely, there must be a point where those rails connected to the national network. Then an unexpected latent capacity of the rails revealed itself before his eyes.

The city held a population of roughly thirty thousand. Enveloped by the fertile Shonai Plain—renowned as rice country—its primary product remained rice. Since the city's lord had once maintained a special closeness with the Tokugawa family, its samurai were naturally fated to perish alongside them during the Meiji Restoration. Thus when these domain samurai resolved to confront the Imperial Court, Saigō Takamori secretly infiltrated the region.

At this juncture emerged an exceptional chief retainer within the household. Through discussions with Saigō, their personalities proved complementary; they sheathed their spears and peacefully stabilized the domain. Yet to erase evidence of rebellion, they covertly entrusted military funds to a single trustworthy merchant. To this day, it's said, the living expenses for the lord-centered samurai group have remained in that merchant's hands. None could ascertain how much truth lay in this rumor—it belonged to that breed of secrets endlessly sinking through layers of obscurity until vanishing altogether.

Nevertheless, that citizens tolerated the samurai faction—who still called their lord "tonosama" and prostrated before him—as a privileged class dubbed the Gokaroku faction stood as evident fact. This faction's current livelihood sprang from their ownership of the region's foremost warehouse formed by their coalition. Designed for storing rice—the plain's great bounty—these warehouses' completeness and the people's guileless nature endowed local rice with Japan's finest substantive quality.

However, a new and different warehouse had risen there.
This was the work of an agricultural cooperative centered on farmers.
The cooperative handled everything from storing rice and grains managed by the farmers themselves to sales negotiations, while also providing monetary loans and even fertilizer supplies.
This convenient organization naturally proved sufficient to win over the farmers' hearts.
Yet what caused trouble here was not the decline of their enemies—the Gokaroku faction—but rather the city's main contingent: the merchants.
With all the farmers' money now falling into the agricultural cooperative's hands, it stood to reason that city merchants' goods would stop selling.
Bankruptcies among merchants immediately began proliferating.
According to reliable investigations reaching Kaji's ears, nearly ninety percent of merchants now teetered on bankruptcy's edge.
What surprised Kaji further was how this phenomenon represented not merely a local crisis but a desperate cry echoing through rural cities across Japan.

Kaji had sensed this before, but he had not imagined it was undergoing such a profound transformation.
When the political season arrived, the banner of the Rice Control Law would be raised as usual—which in essence represented voices calling to rescue rural communities that formed the core of industrial associations destroying local merchants.
It was clear to anyone that unifying rice and grains produced by farmers through an already existing unified organization and eliminating middlemen constituted commendable work.
Yet behind this control law’s failure to pass through parliament lay desperate sabotage campaigns by merchant associations’ central bodies.

Before the difficult question of whether to save the farmers or the merchants, no clear answer could emerge.
To save both, there was no good method other than reforming the organizational order.
This was a settled matter, no matter who considered it.
The crowded train raced onward through this strange progression where logic deeming status quo maintenance the safest calculation had in fact become the most dangerous ideology.

However, in this region where Kaji resided, there remained yet another altered form apart from the crowd eagerly awaiting new institutions—a band of suicide corps prepared for battle when the lord’s chief retainer, heeding Saigō Takamori’s counsel, relinquished actual authority into Meiji hands. When they learned their lord had already submitted to the new regime, they banded together refusing to “eat Meiji’s rice” and withdrew into mountain fastnesses, where they still maintained a communist village united as one. There they reclaimed wild lands into fields, sustained an austere life with communal sericulture facilities and a school within their compound, all while preserving an attitude of pure defiance that brooked no outside interference as they gazed down upon the world. To any observer lay a solidity and simplicity surpassing even that of the Communist Party itself. Yet this too found protection under the state. What pinnacle of European intellect could dare mock such purity in these twin forms of Japanese intelligence—social obligations and human emotions?

——

With these thoughts, Kaji soon returned to his home in Tokyo.

When Kaji first returned to his home in Tokyo, the season was turning cold.
When he came back and surveyed his house's surroundings, the once-spacious vacant lots had vanished completely; houses now stood packed densely in all directions—east, west, south, and north.
As he contemplated how this city had achieved such explosive expansion—becoming so densely packed with dwellings in barely half a year—Kaji thought with astonishment that Japan's transformation during those same six months must have been equally drastic.
While having his house cleaned, Kaji went out alone to tour the city for the first time in ages.
Then Ginza—which had once gloried in being the heart of a great metropolis—now stood low and grimy, rendered utterly unrecognizable.

"Was this really Ginza?"

Kaji stood surveying the streets awhile longer, but even the figures walking in modern dress through the wind’s bitter gusts carried a soot-stained desolation and loneliness that mimicked no particular nation’s mannerisms.
He had always believed Japanese culture’s distinguishing feature lay in intellectual substance residing within objects themselves—yet to purge this shabbiness visible from without would require such prodigal waste of vanity that catching up with the West seemed impossible.
If external form ought to manifest internal fullness by its very nature, then Japan’s interior must still be a blazing cart indeed.

Kaji visited a friend at a company to inform him that he would finally settle in Tokyo starting today. This friend served as an executive director for multiple companies and had relatives connected to prominent figures in the Kansai financial world; consequently, he possessed the most reliable early information regarding movements in Japan’s financial circles. In the director’s office, when Kaji met his friend, he inquired about the behind-the-scenes movements that had changed during his absence.

“Right.”
“It’s changed completely while you were gone!”
“It's turned into a real mess!”
“Under the tax reforms, those making a million yen a year get taxed five hundred thousand yen!”
“And since it's a progressive rate, the more you earn, the more you have to pay out! Inheritance tax takes more than two-thirds of your assets!”
“If this keeps up, even two million yen in assets will dwindle to nothing by your grandchildren's generation, leaving them destitute!”
“Everyone with an income over a hundred yen is already getting hit!”
“You need to think about this too!”

Kaji listened to his friend’s words like a bolt from the blue.

“That’s practically a great revolution happening, isn’t it? I haven’t asked anyone else yet, but is it true?”

“Who’d lie? It’s just that nobody’s noticed yet. The financial world has been in complete chaos these past few days. From Kansai it’s nothing but telegrams, but nobody knows what to do about it, I tell you. In that case, there’s simply no way to hide assets anymore, I tell you. On top of that, there’s no point in making profits anymore—all the seasoned financial experts have been reduced to first-graders! In fact, Shinto’s stock has remained frozen in the default-ridden market. Isn’t that proof? It can’t rise or fall anymore, I tell you. They don’t know what to do about it, I tell you.”

“However, this is getting interesting.”

“It’s fascinating! If my company’s reached this point, there’s no choice left but to pour money into machinery and make quality products. We held a board meeting yesterday—I insisted on that approach. Everyone agreed. We’ll hand out hefty bonuses too. We’re channeling funds into employee outings and hosting parties to treat them properly. Well, they really did it, I tell you—the Ministry of Finance finally pulled it off! Damn impressive! The wealthy can’t live off interest anymore, I tell you. Anyway, this past week every company’s been doing nothing but holding board meetings nonstop.”

"But will the Diet actually pass it?" Kaji still felt it all seemed unreal amidst such overwhelming changes.

“It’ll pass.”
“It’s already been decided.”
“That’s why all the financial bigwigs resigned from their executive positions.”
“Those fellows—that’s what makes them remarkable.”
“You simply must have intellectual executives nowadays.”
“What about Europe?”
“How’s Europe these days?”

“No—after hearing such fascinating developments, Europe seems trivial by comparison.”
“That continent’s affairs feel antiquated now.”
“Though what truly intrigues me is how France’s leftists—mostly Trotskyists—will fare against their Stalinist counterparts.”
“This constitutes a far more complex issue than anything we might conceptualize in Japan.”
“When I visited Moscow, I heard about June’s train collision in Chita.”
“They held summary trials and executed everyone responsible by firing squad—stationmasters, deputies, engineers—the whole lot.”

“Hmm,” the friend exclaimed, his eyes widening.

“They claimed it was because they were Trotskyists who tried to obstruct the Stakhanovite movement—this cargo efficiency campaign—but tell me, among Japan’s left wing, which holds more influence: the Stalinists or Trotskyists?”
“Aren’t you going to answer?”

“Well, that’s not my place to say.”
“But they’re going too far,” the friend still seemed to be pondering.

“However, now that it’s become reality that the left wing’s greatest enemy isn’t the right wing but their own kind, there’s no telling how far these ideologies will run wild.”
“It’s as if reality itself is being utterly mocked.”
“That’s precisely where the Jews keep clinging on with their smirks.”
“Sooner or later, people will get properly fed up and start emerging.”
“In any case, the world’s intellectual class has nothing left to say or do anymore.”
“Intelligence devours intelligence while dancing the Okesa dance.”

“However, with the progressive tax rates, Japan’s culture will now steadily advance by leaps and bounds.”
“What the left wing couldn’t achieve has been pulled off by the unlikeliest of quarters.”
“Isn’t that something?”
“The punishment for the rich hoarding too much wealth has finally come home to roost, I tell you.”

While looking at his friend’s face—this corporate executive who nevertheless spoke such words—Kaji found himself marveling once more at the splendid, staggering scale of Japan’s transformations.

He found himself wondering why he kept being impressed with every aspect of Japan these days. That he wanted to pause and fix his gaze even on ordinary weeds—as though it were a morning after sufficient sleep—seemed to him evidence that he had finally matured into a full-fledged adult.

By the time Kaji parted from the friend and returned home, night had already fallen.

Since both the house cleaning and the move had been safely completed, everyone gathered in the dining room to have dinner.
Then, the eldest son, who had been playing outside, returned, but the four-year-old second son never showed up no matter how long they waited.
Even when Kaji asked where he had gone, no one knew.
He immediately had people run in all directions to search.
However, all those who returned had been unproductive.
At first, they hadn’t been particularly concerned, thinking he would pop back home before long, but upon receiving replies from the children playing nearby that none of them knew his whereabouts, everyone’s complexions gradually began to change.

“Since it’s the first time coming back, he must have gotten lost and wandered far away.”
“What should we do?”

Yoshie ran outside, her face deathly pale.
Following her, the regular rice merchant and liquor store clerk, three helpers, and the eldest son scattered once more in all directions to search.
Kaji too set out alone from the rear as part of a separate team, but outside was pitch black.
Moreover, in the complex twists of the newly built-up houses stretching in all directions, even Kaji often got lost, unable to find the exit, and had to stop to think.
The area where the houses ended was an open field spanning over ten thousand tsubo where no one passed through.
When Kaji thought of his four-year-old child—the one who had been staying at his grandfather’s in the countryside during their absence—he could foresee how difficult finding the way back would prove once lost.
Even small roads continue endlessly, so there was no telling where one might wander; moreover, the roads surrounding Kaji’s house branched out in all directions.

As Kaji walked along the pitch-black night road searching for his child, he suddenly wondered whether he himself might now be experiencing circumstances similar to those of his own child.
Without realizing it, an intricate web of night roads he had never contemplated had spread out in all directions around him, making him feel uncertain about where exactly he was wandering.
Even when he returned after exhausting his search for the child, there remained no trace of him.
The reply they had requested from the neighborhood police box too had been futile.
Yoshie waited at the entranceway, weeping as she anticipated the return of those who had gone searching.
Yet everyone came back blank-faced and silent.
Kaji still believed the boy would eventually return, but as time wore on his anxiety grew unbearable, driving him to venture out once more in search.
However, since even running failed to clarify his objective, he found himself unable to determine which direction to sprint.

He wandered aimlessly with a sense of futility,

"This must be what they call the suffering of the intellectual class," he thought.
Yet this was no laughing matter to Kaji.
As he wandered up and down multiple slopes with his face buried in his increasingly desolate chest, he wondered whether such anguish had awaited him upon returning to Japan.
He would occasionally stop to call his child's name, but since the boy wouldn't likely be pausing anywhere himself, no reply came.
Each time he heard distant voices calling the child's name - other searchers still unsuccessful - his anxiety grew more acute.
Walking through it all, he thought how this might recur countless times in the future, and wished sorrow would overwhelm him completely now while he was already steeped in grief.

When Kaji returned home exhausted from searching，the lost child was standing blankly alone by the kitchen door holding a rubber balloon．
For some reason，no one in the group uttered a word．
When Kaji saw his son’s figure，he tried to slip past into the inner room without speaking．

“Apparently he was sitting blankly alone on the police box’s chair.”
“Please go and thank them right away.”

After some time had passed like this, Kaji was admonished by Yoshie.
Yet Kaji found his body unwilling to move.

“It would be best if you went soon.”

the helper urged again.
Such matters were things Kaji knew full well, but precisely because he was in a state of ecstasy—thinking his current emptiness-borne joy bore no comparison to European travels’ pleasures—the words from Yoshie and the helper lashed at him like a whip, filling him with irritation.

"But I suppose this is what they call willfulness."

Kaji rose heavily to his feet and walked along the night road toward the police box.
While thinking he would never again hold his head high before these officers, he walked briskly through night-damp grassland—yet as he pondered how even his own analyses, those intellectual efforts spent contemplating world ideologies and Japan's various affairs, might become this powerless when uprooted from their foundations, he grew oddly forlorn.

That night, Kaji lay down for the first time in his own room—the one where he had slept every day before going abroad—in bedding that remained exactly as it had been laid out before.
He looked up at the ceiling.
His back adhered firmly to the futon, and with each breath, the gentle movement at his collar caught his eye.
Then, along the base of the warped shoji, a familiar mouse scurried out and, fixing its gaze on Kaji, kept perfectly still while observing him.

“Ah... Back to Mokuami again.”

Kaji inadvertently let the words slip out.
Yoshie, who seemed to have settled into bed in the next room, burst out laughing in amusement.