Pathway to Japanese Literature

The bliss of being chosen

Ecstasy and dread,

Two dwell within me

Verlaine

He had been thinking of dying.
This past New Year, he received a bolt of kimono fabric from elsewhere.
As a New Year’s gift.
The kimono fabric was linen.
Fine gray stripes had been woven into it.
This was likely a summer kimono.
He decided he would live until summer.

Nora also thought.
When she stepped out into the corridor and slammed the door shut behind her with a bang, she thought.
Should I go home?

When I returned home without doing anything wrong, my wife greeted me with a smile.

He merely dragged through each day as it came.
The nights at the boarding house—drinking alone, getting drunk alone, then furtively laying out the futon to sleep—were especially painful.
He did not even dream.
He was exhausted.
He felt listless in everything he did.
There had even been a time when he bought a book titled “How Should Night Soil Toilets Be Improved?” and seriously researched it.
At that time, he had been quite satisfied with the conventional disposal of human waste.

On the Shinjuku sidewalk, he saw a fist-sized stone crawling along sluggishly.
A stone is crawling along, huh?
He had simply been thinking that.
But he immediately realized it was being dragged by a grimy child walking ahead of him, tied with string.

It wasn't loneliness from being tricked by the child.
It was loneliness from his own despair that could calmly accept even such cataclysms.

If he were to spend his whole life battling this melancholy only to die in the end, he thought, the notion made his very existence seem pitifully poignant.
The blue rice paddies suddenly blurred into haze.
He had cried.
He began panicking.
He felt slightly ashamed of shedding tears over such cheap sentimentality.

When he got off the train, his brother laughed.

"Don't mope around like an idiot."
"Hey, snap out of it!"

And then he lightly tapped Ryū's small shoulder with his folding fan.
In the twilight, that folding fan appeared frighteningly white.
Ryū became so happy that his cheeks flushed.
Having his shoulder tapped by his brother was what he felt grateful for.
He faintly wished his brother would always open up to him at least this much.

The person he went to visit was not there.

Brother said.
“I don’t think your novel is trivial.”
“To me, it’s just a bit too drawn-out.”
“You’re crafting a hundred pages of atmosphere just to state a single line of truth.”
I answered resentfully, deliberating as I spoke.
“Truly, words are better the shorter they are.”
“If that alone could make them believe,”

Moreover, brother detested suicide as something self-indulgent.
However, I had just been considering suicide as a calculated social strategy, so my brother’s words took me by surprise.

“Confess, I say. Huh? Whose imitation is this?”

When water arrives, the canal forms.

He wrote a short story titled “Mourning Mosquitoes” in the winter of his nineteenth year. It was a fine work. At the same time, it became the crucial key to unraveling the chaos of his entire life. In its form, the influence of “Hina” was recognized. But the spirit was his own. The original text remained unchanged.

I have seen a strange ghost. That was from when I had just started elementary school, so it must certainly be hazy and blurred like a magic lantern projection. No, but strangely, those blurred memories—like a magic lantern projected onto the blue mosquito net—seem to grow ever clearer to me with each passing year.

It seems my elder sister had taken a husband—oh, that very evening it was. It was the evening of the wedding celebration. Many geishas came to our house that evening—I recall having a beautiful half-apprentice geisha mend the torn family crest on my formal kimono—and Father was engaged in sumo wrestling with tall geishas in the pitch-dark corridor of the detached guest room, all on that very night. Father passed away the following year, and now resides within the large photograph on the wall of my family’s parlor, but whenever I look upon this photograph, I invariably recall the sumo wrestling of that evening. My Father was not one to ever bully those weaker than himself, so that sumo wrestling must surely have been Father’s way of disciplining the geishas for some grave misdeed they had committed.

Considering this and that, it was indeed that honorable wedding celebration without a doubt.
I truly must apologize, but given that everything is in such a state—exactly like a magic lantern projection on a blue mosquito net—I find myself quite unable to relate the tale in a manner that might bring you honorable satisfaction.
Though it may seem a mere dream-tale—no, but Grandmother’s own eyes as she told me of the Mourning Mosquitoes that night, and then the ghost—those alone, those alone—no matter what anyone may say, are never ever a dream.
To dismiss it as a mere dream—how foolish! Could you possibly say such a thing when it has already risen so vividly before your very eyes?
Grandmother’s own eyes, and then—

That is indeed so.
There are not many grandmothers as beautiful as my own.
She passed away last summer, but that deathly visage of hers—truly was it not astonishingly beautiful?
Upon her white-waxen cheeks, even the shadows of that summer grove might well have been reflected.
Despite being so exquisitely beautiful, she remained unwed and lived her entire life without ever applying black tooth dye.

“It’s by using these permanent white teeth of mine as bait that I built up this million-ryō fortune, I tell you.”

During her lifetime she would often repeat this in that well-practiced Tomimoto voice of hers—austere yet mellifluous—so there must indeed have been some curious fate behind it all.
Refrain from such clumsy prying into what manner of destiny this might be.
Grandmother must be weeping.
For my Grandmother was a woman of exquisite refinement who never once removed her crepe haori embroidered with family crests.
That she summoned instructors to her chamber to commence Tomimoto lessons must date back to times long past.
Even one such as myself—from when first I gained awareness—would spend whole days entranced by Grandmother’s mournful renditions of Old Pine and Asama ballads, their melodies choked with sobs, so much so that Society derided her as a “retired geisha,” though Grandmother herself would only laugh with exquisite grace when hearing this epithet.
For reasons unknown, I adored this Grandmother from earliest childhood, tearing myself from my wet nurse’s arms to plunge into her honorable embrace.
Though in truth my Mother being infirm paid scant heed to her child.
Since neither Father nor Mother were Grandmother’s true offspring, she seldom visited Mother’s quarters but remained daylong in her detached chambers—thus I too would cling to Grandmother’s side for three days or four without glimpsing Mother’s face.
Therefore did Grandmother favor me far above Elder Sister and suchlike, reading me picture storybooks nearly every eve.
Among these I still savor most keenly the emotion felt upon hearing that tale of Yaoya Oshichi.
And too the joy when Grandmother would playfully call me “Yoshizō,” “Yoshizō” in jest.
The beautiful honorable form of Grandmother reading picture storybooks forlornly beneath yellow lamplight—yes, every particular I remember without exception.

Above all else, I find myself strangely unable to forget that honorable bedtime tale of the Mourning Mosquitoes from that evening. Now that I mention it, it was indeed autumn.

“Mosquitoes that survive until autumn are called Mourning Mosquitoes.”
“Mosquito-repellent incense is not burned.”
“It is out of pity.”

Ah, every single word exactly as it was, I remember.
Grandmother spoke those words in a despondent tone while lying down, and ah yes—when she would deign to sleep holding me, she would invariably tuck both my legs between her own to warm them.
On one cold night, Grandmother deigned to strip me of all my nightclothes, then graciously bared her own radiantly beautiful skin and held me to sleep, warming me with her body.
To such an extent did Grandmother deign to cherish me, truly was it not.

“Oh, it’s nothing. The Mourning Mosquitoes are this old one.”
“Fleeting…”

As she spoke these words while gazing intently at my face, such beautiful eyes as hers do not exist in this world.
The commotion from the wedding celebration in the main house had already fallen into hushed silence—it must have been nearing midnight then.
The autumn wind rustled against the storm shutters, and with each gust, the wind chime beneath the eaves would faintly ring—even that I can dimly recall.
Yes, it was on that night I saw the ghost.
I suddenly awoke and said, “I need to pee.”
When there came no reply from Grandmother, I looked around drowsily only to find her gone from my side.
Feeling uneasy yet slipping out of bed alone, I timidly made my way down the long corridor of glossy black-lacquered zelkova toward the lavatory—the soles of my feet oddly chilled—but so drowsy was I that it felt as though I were swimming languidly through deep fog when it happened.
It was then I saw it—
There in the corner of that interminably long corridor, hunched white and forlorn—seen from quite a distance—it appeared small as in a film reel, yet undeniably, unmistakably peering into the room where Elder Sister and that evening’s honorable groom lay sleeping together.
A ghost—no, this was no dream.

The beauty of art is ultimately the beauty of service to citizens.

There was a flower-mad carpenter.
He was an obstruction.

Then, Machiko lowered her eyes and whispered this.

“Do you know the name of that flower?”
“If you touch it, it snaps open with a crack, splatters out foul liquid, and rapidly rots your finger—if only I knew the name of that flower.”

I sneered, stuffed both hands into my trouser pockets, and then answered.

“Do you know the name of this tree?”
“The leaves stay green until they fall.”
“Only their undersides slowly wither and get eaten by insects, but they hide it away and keep pretending to be green until the end.”
“If only I knew that tree’s name.”

“Die?”
“Are you going to die?”

Kobayakawa thought he might really die.

It might have been last autumn—apparently, when tenant disputes arose at Aoi’s house and all sorts of troubles befell him personally—even then he had attempted suicide by chemicals and remained in a coma for three days.
Moreover, even recently, the reason I haven’t ceased my debauchery must ultimately be that my body can still endure it.
I thought that if I could become like a castrated man, I might finally avoid all sensory pleasures and devote myself to providing financial support for the struggle, so for three days straight I went to P City Hospital and drank water scooped from the muddy ditch beside the infectious disease ward.
Yet when Aoi later recounted this with flushed cheeks—"I only had a bit of diarrhea and failed"—Kobayakawa found that pretentious intellectual game utterly distasteful, though it was also true that Aoi’s desperation struck his heart not insignificantly.

“It’s best to die.”
“No—it’s not just me.”
“At the very least, all those wretches contributing negatively to society’s progress should just die.”
“Or do you have some kind of scientific reason why even minus humans—or anyone at all—mustn’t die?”
“Th-that’s absurd!”

To Kobayakawa, what Aoi was saying suddenly began to seem absurd.

“Don’t you dare laugh.”
“But isn’t that right?”
“We’ve only ever been taught to live for ancestor worship or completing human culture—nothing but these crushing ethical obligations.”
“No scientific explanation has ever been given.”
“Then all us minus humans should die.”
“When you die, you become zero.”

“Idiot! What the hell are you saying? Fundamentally, you’re far too self-serving! That is indeed true—both you and I are people who have no part in production whatsoever. Even so, I don’t believe we’re living a minus life at all. Do you on earth desire the liberation of the proletariat? Do you believe in the great victory of the proletariat? There may be differences in degree, but we are parasites on the bourgeoisie. That is certain. But that is entirely different in meaning from supporting the bourgeoisie. You spoke of one contribution to the proletariat and nine to the bourgeoisie, but what exactly do you mean by ‘contribution to the bourgeoisie’? In going out of our way to enrich the capitalists’ pockets, even we and the proletariat are no different. If living in a capitalist economic society constitutes betrayal, then what kind of hermits would warriors become? That’s precisely what ultra-leftist rhetoric is. It’s a case of infantile disorder. One contribution to the proletariat—that’s more than enough. That one is precious. For that one alone, we must strive to keep living. And that constitutes a splendidly plus life. Dying is foolish.”

“Dying is foolish.”

For the first time in his life, he held an arithmetic textbook.
A small, jet-black cover.
Ah, how beautifully the rows of numbers inside pierced his eyes.
The boy fiddled with it for a while, but eventually discovered that all the answers were written on the page at the end.
The boy frowned and muttered.
"How rude."

Outside was sleet. What were you laughing at, Lenin statue?

Aunt said.

“Since you’re not much to look at, you should at least cultivate some charm.”
“Since your body’s weak, you should at least better your heart.”
“Since you’re so good at lying, you should at least mend your ways.”

Knowing full well, she forced that confession.
What an underhanded punishment this was.

A full moon night.
In waves that flashed and crumbled, surged and crumbled, churned and writhed, when in my desperation I deliberately tore free from the hands we had joined to keep from being separated, the woman was instantly swallowed by the waves and called out a name.
It was not my name.

I am a bandit.
I shall steal away thy pride.

Surely such a thing won’t happen—no, it won’t—but listen: when erecting my bronze statue, have the right foot half a step forward, posture relaxed and leaning back, left hand tucked into the vest, right hand crushing spoiled manuscripts—and do not attach a neck.
No, no—it’s all meaningless.
Having sparrow droppings showered on the tip of my nose—I can’t stand such things.
And have this engraved on the pedestal.
Here lies a man.
Born, died.
He spent his life tearing up spoiled manuscripts.

It is written that Mephistopheles perished, his chest, cheeks, and palms scorched by rose petals falling thick as snow.

After spending five or six days in the detention cell, one midday when I stretched up from the cell window to peer outside, the courtyard lay bathed in late autumn sunlight—the three pear trees near the window all tentatively blooming, while beneath them twenty or thirty policemen underwent drills.
At the young police sergeant’s command, they simultaneously drew arrest ropes from their waists and blew whistles in unison.
I gazed at that scene and contemplated each policeman’s household.

We held an aimless wedding celebration at a mountain hot spring resort.
Mother kept chuckling constantly.
She explained she was laughing because the inn maid’s hairstyle looked strange.
She must have been happy.
My uneducated mother called us to the hearthside and lectured us.
She started to say “You’re sixteen years old,” but likely losing confidence, peered closer at the uneducated bride’s face and asked for agreement: “Right? Isn’t that so?”
Yet Mother’s words had been correct.

He spent a full three years educating his wife.
Education—around the time it had been completed—he began to think of dying.

Ailing wife—
lingering clouds
demon pampas grass.

Crimson smoke—thickly billowing like a serpent’s body up to heaven—swelled, swayed, struck like a great wave, whirled round and round; soon the flames roared violently, tremors shook the earth, and it all began climbing the mountain, I tell ya.
The mountain—all the way to its peak—was bathed in a drowsy glow, I tell ya.
Roaring fiercely, threading through thousands upon thousands of winter trees ablaze, a jet-black horse carrying people galloped like the wind, I tell ya.
(In his hometown dialect)

Just send me a single word!
“Nevermore”

On days when the sky was clear and blue, the cat would come from somewhere and nap beneath the camellias in the garden.
A friend who painted Western-style paintings asked me if it wasn't Persian.
I answered that it was probably a stray cat.
The cat wasn't affectionate toward anyone.
One day, as I was grilling sardines for breakfast, the garden cat let out a listless cry.
I too went out to the engawa and said, "Meow."
The cat got up and quietly walked over to me.
I threw it one sardine.
The cat ate while keeping its body poised to flee.
My chest surged like a wave.
My love had been accepted.
Wanting to stroke the cat's white fur, I went down into the garden.
The moment I touched the fur on its back, the cat crunched through my little finger's flesh to the bone.

I want to be an actor.

The old Nihonbashi Bridge measured thirty-seven ken, four shaku, and five sun in length，but now stands at merely twenty-seven ken.
We must conclude that the river’s width had diminished by that measure.
Thus in times past—be they rivers or humans—all things were far grander than what remains today.

This bridge was first built in ancient Keichō 7, subsequently rebuilt about ten times thereafter, with the current structure having been completed in Meiji 44.
During the 1923 earthquake disaster, the bronze dragon wings adorning the bridge's railings were enveloped in flames and burned crimson.
In the woodblock-printed Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō board game that I loved during my childhood, here was marked as the starting point, with an illustration peacefully depicting several servants each carrying long spears as they walked across this bridge.
It must have once been bustling in such a manner, but now it had become terribly desolate.
Since the fish market moved to Tsukiji, its name had fallen even further into obscurity, and nowadays it was mostly excluded from Tokyo’s scenic picture postcards.

On a certain night in late December of this year, when the fog lay thick, the foreign girl stood alone at the base of this bridge, separated from the crowd of beggars.
The one selling flowers was this girl.

For about three days now, when dusk fell she would come by train carrying a bundle of flowers and stand silent beneath the bronze Chinese lion statues frolicking around Tokyo City's round municipal emblem for three or four hours.

Japanese people had a detestable habit: whenever they saw a down-and-out foreigner, they immediately concluded it must be a White Russian.
Even now—seeing this small child standing in the thick fog holding a bouquet while fretting over torn gloves—most Japanese people would undoubtedly murmur with relief: “Ah, Russia,” their minds at ease.
Moreover, if it were a young man who had read Chekhov, he would slacken his pace slightly, lost in reverie while constructing his own narrative: his father a retired Army second lieutenant, his mother an arrogant aristocrat.
Moreover, if it were a student who had just begun peeking into Dostoevsky, they might cry out, “Oh, Nelli!”
They might shout aloud and hurriedly adjust their coat collar.
But that was all—they had no intention of attempting any deeper investigation into the girl.

However, someone wondered.
Why would they choose Nihonbashi Bridge?
In such a dimly lit bridge with so few passersby—trying to sell flowers here couldn't be wise, yet—why?

To this doubt could be given a simple yet highly romantic answer.
It derived from her parents' illusion about Nihonbashi Bridge.
It was none other than their calm conviction that Japan's liveliest and finest bridge must be Nihonbashi.

The girl's trade at Nihonbashi Bridge proved exceedingly sparse.
On the first day, a single red flower sold.
The customer was a dancer.
The dancer selected a red bud just beginning to loosen its petals.

“Will it bloom, right?”

she asked roughly.

The girl answered clearly.

“It will bloom.”

On the second day, a drunken young gentleman bought one.
While drunk, this customer wore a sorrowful face.

“Any will do.”

The girl selected a white bud from yesterday’s unsold bouquet and handed it over.
The gentleman received it stealthily, as if stealing.

The sales ended with just that.
The third day was—that is, today.
She stood in the cold fog for a long time, but no one turned to look her way.

The male beggar from the far side of the bridge came over, leaning on a crutch as he crossed the tram tracks.
The beggar picked a quarrel with the girl over territorial claims.
The girl bowed three times.
The beggar with the crutch clenched his pitch-black mustache between his teeth and pondered.

“Today’s the last day.”

he said in a low voice, then was swallowed back into the fog.

The girl soon began preparing to leave.
She shook the bouquet.
Having had the florist part with the leftover flowers to her, and with three days already passed since she put them out for sale like this, the flowers had become quite wilted.
The heavily drooping flowers trembled their heads each time they were shaken.

She tucked it gently under her arm and entered a nearby Chinese soba stall, hunching her shoulders against the cold.

For three consecutive nights, she ate wontons there.
The proprietor there was Chinese and treated the girl as an ordinary customer.
She was happy about that.

The proprietor asked while rolling wonton skins.

“Were you able to sell any?”

She widened her eyes and answered.

“No… I’m going back.”

These words struck the proprietor to the core.
She was returning to her homeland.
“That must be it,” he lightly shook his beautifully bald head two or three times.
While thinking of his hometown, he scooped wonton fillings from the pot.

“This is wrong.”

The girl peered into the yellow bowl of wontons she had received from the proprietor and muttered in apparent bewilderment.

“It’s all right.”
“Char siu wonton.”
“That’s what I ordered.”

The proprietor said stiffly.

Regular wontons cost ten sen, but char siu wontons are twenty sen.

The girl fidgeted for a moment, then set down the small bowl of wontons, plucked a large-budded flowering plant from the bouquet cradled in her arm, and held it out.
She offered to give it to him.

After leaving the stall and heading toward the tram stop, she began to feel pricked by regret over having handed the wilted, poor flowers to three people.
Suddenly, she squatted down by the roadside.
She made the sign of the cross over her chest and with incomprehensible words
she began to pray fervently.

At the end, she whispered two words in Japanese.

“Bloom… Please bloom.”
“Bloom… Please bloom.”

When living in comfort, one writes poems of despair; when living a crushed life, one continues to write of life’s joys.

Was spring near?

After all he would die.
He wanted to write just one dreamlike romance.
The man began making such entreaties during what was likely the most oppressive period of his life.
The man turned over various thoughts, until at last he loosed a golden arrow at Sappho, the Greek poetess.
Ah—Sappho, she whose fragrant talents and beauty are still recounted even now—truly she alone was the woman who could set this man’s muddled heart trembling.

The man opened one or two books about Sappho and learned the following facts.

However, Sappho was not a beauty.
Her complexion was dark, and her teeth protruded.
She fell madly in love with a beautiful young man named Phaon.
Phaon did not understand poetry.
Believing in the superstition that if one attempted a love suicide, even if they did not die completely, the lingering feelings in their heart would vanish, she leapt from Cape Leukadia toward the raging waves.

Life.

After doing good work
I sip a cup of tea
In the tea bubbles
My beautiful face
Countless countless
Is reflected, I tell you
Somehow it will work out