Pathway to Japanese Literature

Prelude

The window stood open toward the wide wheat field's waves of deep green. A ticklish May breeze drifted in, heavy with grass swelter thick enough to choke, lightly stirring the white cotton window curtains.

Along the south-facing windows, a reinforced concrete upper structure stood half-completed. The two large cranes assembled atop it stretched their long iron skeletal hands down from a sky like frosted glass—overcast and diffuse—as if trying to seize the blue wheat fields and surrounding small buildings.

Directly outside the north-facing window, a concrete mixer hoist had been assembled, and a large-scale factory was beginning to be constructed.
Between that construction site and the schoolyard spread expanses of residential land planned for development—a burnt-out wasteland.
Dust, paper scraps, shards of pottery, rope ends, wood fragments, and the like lay scattered and piled up across a vacant lot where patches of short bluegrass grew sparse.
From the schoolyard, children would sometimes tumble into that place.

Over the construction site’s sky, the crane clatter-clatter-clattered incessantly.
The sound of concrete being poured shook the glass of every window at regular intervals throughout the day.

In the fifth-year elementary classroom, geography class began.
In a corner of the blackboard hung a 1/5,000 scale "Entire County Map."
To solidify their understanding of maps, he was providing fieldwork-based instruction using maps of land with which the students were familiar.

“On this map, the areas colored brick-red are towns in the county extending from the urban area, and these green sections are the countryside.”
“In other words, our village is this green section.”
“However, this map was created three or four years ago, and though we make annual revisions, it has now become quite different from reality.”

Thereupon, the teacher struck the map with a thin bamboo pointer with a tap.
The students' gazes, which had begun to wander, all converged there once more.

"What parts have changed, and how?"
"Today, I'd like you all to find those changed parts for me—well then, does anyone here know?"

The teacher struck the map again with a tap.

"The color of the water in the river flowing through the center of the map has changed."
"Previously, because clean water flowed here, it's colored light blue. But ever since residential areas were built upstream, the people there have been dumping all sorts of filth into the river—things like dust and laundry water—so now black water flows through it."

“The river’s water color?”

“Hmm.”

The teacher let out a low hum.
And then he said:
“However, rivers being colored light blue on maps primarily serves as a marker meaning (This is a river!), so even if black water flows there now, if we were to draw them black instead, don’t you think they’d be mistaken for roads or something?”
“Anyone else…?”

“A new straight four-ken (7.2-meter) road has been built from in front of the school heading toward the residential area.”

“The new road from in front of the school heading toward the residential area.”
“Good!”

As he spoke, the teacher drew a single straight line on the map with red chalk.

“This new road is one of those built from around this time last year up to today.”
“And then, are there any other places that have changed?”
“Now, anyone…?”

The teacher smiled at the students and said:

“Doesn’t anyone know?!”
“All right!”
“Well then, let me try finding one myself.”
“Ready?”
“This brick-colored section here.”
“As I mentioned before, this color represents urban areas—densely built-up city zones—so on this map, places that should rightly be colored this hue seem to have been left blank… Does anyone know why?…”

“Even though the urban area has expanded all the way to the school’s front, on the map it still looks like it only reaches up to the irrigation ditch.”

“Good! That’s right. This time last year, the urban area had only expanded as far as the irrigation ditch. And this school, as you can see on this map here, was right in the middle of blue wheat fields. But in just one year—like how the principal’s belly swells out—the urban area bulged in an arc all the way up to the school’s front gate. And now this elementary school’s become something you can’t even tell anymore—is it a country school or a city school?”

The teacher said as he drew a curved line on the map with brick-colored chalk.
The students suppressed snickers and whispered to each other in hushed tones.

“Don’t make a racket.
Now, look over here…”

The area inside the curved line was filled in with brick color.

“But then—why on earth is the urban area expanding so steadily like this? It’s not as if it’s stuffed itself on a feast like the principal.”

“It’s because the population has increased.”

“Hmm.”
“That is indeed one of the reasons.”
“Yes!”

“It’s because rural people are abandoning farming and all heading to town to become merchants.”

“That might also be the case.”
“Anyone else…?”

“It’s because industry has developed.”

Crash!

A ferocious sound reverberated at the construction site.
The concrete mixer’s chute had come loose.
The sound of the crane that had been roaring overhead ceased, and the laborers shouted and clamored in commotion.

“Whoa!”

“What’s going on?”

The students all stood up and looked toward the window.

“Don’t make a commotion.”
“Don’t make a commotion.”

The teacher, bending his whip, stepped down from the podium and slowly walked over to the window.

I

In the central part of the village stood a slightly elevated plateau area.

The entire plateau formed a south-facing, gently sloping incline.
From west to north stretched undulating thickets of mixed woods.
From patches among these blue-tinged thickets emerged black cedar groves that embraced the plateau's slopes like great arms reaching down from the sky.

In the early spring storms that carried sprays of red earth, this area—protected by a natural screen—was the finest farmland in the entire village. Here, three landlords had settled in, and eight or nine families of tenant farmers had entrusted most of their livelihoods to them.

However, a new tenant appeared who wanted to lease that land—which they had been renting out for fifteen yen a year for farming—at five sen per tsubo per month. It was to become a residential area. The annual land rent of fifteen yen had suddenly soared to eighty yen.

For landlords living off land rent, agricultural value meant nothing at all. All they knew was ownership value. No matter what purpose the land served, the landlords were content as long as the rent remained high. Without hesitation, they seized the farmland from the tenant farmers, raised the rent further still, and waited for new tenants to come forward.

"But what are we supposed to do?"
"You lot might be raking in more rent now—good for you—but where in hell’s name are we supposed to dig up our food from?"

Thus shouted the tenant farmers there.

"Still, from our perspective, there’s no reason to turn down those offering fifteen yen a month just to keep lending at fifteen yen a year."
"At least if you people could cough up two-thirds of that rent, we might reconsider…"

Gunzan gave a response on behalf of the other two landlords.

"Ridiculous! Paying over a hundred yen in land rent just to scrape back every last sen of it!"
"Mr. Gunzan."
"Did that baldy put such fool notions in your head?"

Jinkichi said, crossing his thick arms over his chest.
Because Gunzan’s tone of speech was exactly like that of the man who had built a house on his land.

“But you see—even without lifting a finger here, over a hundred eighty yen per tan comes pouring in. Keeping it as fields is just plain wasteful, don’t you think?”

“Wasteful?”
“Ha ha ha…”

Jūjirō burst out laughing.
The landlord Nomoto fixed a suspicious gaze on the young tenant farmer who had laughed.

“If you call that wasteful, then making it housing’s the real waste.
Leave it as fields, and all kinds o’ food’ll spring up!
Turn it into houses, and dust’s all you’ll get at best.”

“But if y’all just sit there arms crossed, d’ya think 180 yen per tan’ll come rollin’ in?”

Nomoto thus rebutted.

“No matter how much rent you rake in, that money doesn’t just sprout from the ground itself.”
“Ain’t that money you get from folks breaking their backs elsewhere?”

“In any case, since what ends up in our pockets stays the same, as landlords we’ll naturally lease to whoever offers better rent.”
“We’re not making an issue of who the tenants are at all.”
“The issue is solely the land rent, so…”

Gunzan crushed the tenant farmers from the outset with those words.
Due to the land’s intended use and their inability to match the rent, the tenant farmers could do nothing more with words.

“I’m sorry to say, but given how things stand with this land, why don’t you all quit farming altogether and try starting some kind of business?”

Kawakami said with a smile.
In response to this gentle landlord’s words, no one offered any opposition.

“Now then.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll do whatever we can in some way.”
“In the case of opening a shop…”

Thus, Kawakami added further.

“If we had capital, opening a shop would be fine—but how could we possibly start a business? There’s no choice but to go work at a factory or something.”

“That’s precisely the point. What I’m saying… Of course, I can’t do anything grand, but... Well, I’ll do what little I can…”

“But if everyone starts businesses, who exactly will buy anything?”

Jinkichi lit a cigarette and remarked sarcastically.

“So you see, we’ve decided to lease residential areas from now on and steadily bring more people into the village.”
“If we do that, the village will develop rapidly.”
“We’ll have land rent pouring in abundantly, and your businesses will thrive—isn’t that right?”

“That’s certainly true.”
“Well then, we’ll humbly ask for your assistance and become merchants.”

“That’s not what I said.”
“You’ll understand soon enough—no need for me to explain.”
“What world would entertain this absurd idea—abolishing farmers to turn everyone into merchants?”

二

The south-facing slope, in the embrace of the mixed woodland, was reorganized from farmland into residential areas.

Roads with concrete-lined ditches swelled into checkerboard grids of gravel straight lines through blue-green weeds. Within the checkerboard pattern, cross-shaped fences of sawara cedar had been erected. The weeds spread thicker with every rain. Wild chrysanthemums smothered the bare soil while young mugwort rose like shadowy hemp groves. Knotweed forced open thin, winding paths that crept across the gravel itself.

“They steal it from us and then dare say we should leave it wasted like this!”
“If they’d just let us farm it till they find tenants—we’d still get some harvest from it…”

The tenant farmers, including Jinkichi, who had their land there seized, saw this and spat out curses.

However, in this case, had the three landlords divided a corner of the cultivated field according to the tenants' demands, they would have faced double or even triple losses.
They had united under a single stake of "residential land subdivision leasing" through clever tactics.

"At first glance, leaving it idle like this might seem wasteful."
"Oh, come now. The town's practically spreading right to our doorstep already."
"If the three of us keep pushing..."

“Just leave it like this—why, in less than a year, the whole place’ll be nothing but houses.”

The one thing left for the landlords was the plan to connect that residential area to the urban area with a road.

“No matter what we do, we can’t make it narrower than a two-ken road—but even if we agree to sell at ten yen per tsubo…”

“Ridiculous! You! Can you afford to buy the land for the roads? If there are buyers and we’re the ones selling, that’s a different matter though. We’ll have them make the donations, you see.”

“If we can get them to make donations, well, of course, there’s nothing better than that.”

“That’s precisely the point.”
“You!”
“By shouting ‘For the development of the land!’, we’ll incite those itching to open shops, you see.”
“Admittedly, if that happens, we can’t just have roads leading exclusively to our residential areas.”
“Over there, we’ll have to lay out two or three extra roads as well.”

“So, will you agree to make the donations?”
“Everyone’s calculating how much per tsubo, you see.”

“Oh, come now. Everyone will donate.”
“It’s all people who’ve abandoned farming and are itching to open shops, after all.”
“After all, when opening a shop, they’ll inevitably want a bustling road right next to their own land, you see.”

3

The urban area spread like a black cloud over the green farmland, widening day by day.

And within this dark swelling, storm-like shouts continued unceasingly as the urban area tore its way into the heart of the farmland.
House…… house…… house… house, house, house.
Houses were built, shops opened, factories erected—the black cloud of urban sprawl linked to fragments within the green farmland, spreading until it swiftly transformed them into darkened cityscape.
Then once more, black fragments tore away from the swelling’s tip and scattered while the cloud spread wide toward those fragments.
The same process repeated itself again and again—an expansion that knew no shrinking.

The roads were first laid from the urban area to the residential subdivisions—the primary artery was established.
However, as the landlords had planned, things came to a point where that alone would no longer suffice.
This was because throughout that entire area, each and every one of the self-cultivating farmers harbored the desire to have roads pass through their own land plots.

“For the development of the land.”
“Even if fifty tsubo or a hundred tsubo get turned into roads, there’s no helping it.”

They willingly donated land for the roads.
It was because they were planning to open new shops targeting the people newly moving into the area before that new road.
And furthermore, it was because the land around that new road was rising boundlessly from agricultural value to ownership value.

For this purpose, the four-ken road connecting the urban area to the residential subdivisions was made the main artery, from which two-ken roads running at right angles were opened in countless numbers.

“Ridiculous!”
“They’re making us donate our own land just to build roads.”
“Losing the very fields we farm…”

Having said this, Jinkichi, the tenant farmer, glared at it with scornful eyes.

"But those people find it more profitable that way..."

“I don’t know if it’s profitable or not, but even if it is—if you turn all the farmland into town areas, what the hell are people supposed to eat?”
“Even if you turn everything into town areas and build factories, do you think food’ll magically come out of those factories?”
“Saying that makes it sound like I’m just being a greedy fool about food, but…”
“I don’t know if food comes out of factories or not, but I’ve got no choice but to go work in one anyway.”
“Since there ain’t no land left to farm, there’s just no way around it.”

As agricultural value abruptly shifted to ownership value and ownership value skyrocketed, the tenant farmers without farmland—who had conversely lost their livelihoods—were in any case not welcoming the land's development.

“We’re farmers, but since we never owned any land from the start, there’s just no way around it.”
“When it comes to work, whether it’s fields or factories, it’s all the same no matter where we labor.”

“Well,”
“Even for our livelihood, things made in factories are necessary, you know.”

“I’ll go work in a factory.”
“Even if I can’t farm anymore, if they’ll just let me work there, that’s good enough for me.”

4

The flat new road opened through the farmland became terribly muddy every time it rained.
Especially during the rainy season, it turned into mud as deep as a rice nursery.
The people who opened shops along the edge of that new road and leased their land for housing to make a living busied themselves collecting donations to lay gravel on the new road.

To the farming households within the hamlet, the self-cultivating farmers Hōsaku, Eizō, and Kanpei made their rounds every rainy day.

“My, it does rain quite a lot.”
“The new road is practically a mud paddy.”
“So here’s the thing.”
“We’d like to receive donations from the residents as well to lay gravel—any amount you wish will suffice—and we’d very much appreciate your contributions.”

Hōsaku was first to broach the matter in this brisk tone.

“Lay gravel, you say?”
“I’ve got a real hatred for walkin’ on gravel-laid roads.”
“Just keep a narrow path open where I walk.”
“All these gravel-laid bumpy roads—no matter how I think about it, I just can’t stand ’em.”

Having said this, Jinkichi rejected the donation.
He intensely disliked the development of the land.
This was because he intended to continue steadfastly as a farmer no matter what.

"Jokes aside, it's quite pitiful for the residents too, and it's all for the sake of the land's development, don't you think?"

“Might be development for those tryin’ to do business, but for us tenant farmers, it’s the exact opposite.”
“The plots we’ve been farmin’—they keep sayin’ ‘lease this for factories’ an’ ‘lease that for housing,’ snatched up one after another. Can’t exactly till fields in the middle of some gravel-laid road now, can ya?”

“But just ’cause you’re a farmer don’t mean you never use roads, y’know.”

“So I walk where they ain’t laid no gravel.”
“Anyway, it’s not like they’ll lay gravel over the whole road.”
“After all, no matter which road you look at, they always leave a bit of muddy edge along the ditches.”

Jinkichi smoldered his tobacco and didn’t even glance their way.

“So, Mr. Jinkichi, you’re saying you don’t care whether your land develops or not?”

Kanpei finally spoke in a tone edged with sharpness.

“I guess I don’t care.”

“So you don’t care? What’s your reason for that, Mr. Jinkichi?”

“What reason you gotta pry into that? Where’d this donation idea even come from? You all decided on your own I ain’t donating—if you’re so damn certain about it, why’s it a problem anyway?”

“Now now, Mr. Jinkichi, no need to get worked up...”

Eizō placated him with a smile carved on his face.

“This ain’t funny.”
“Snoopin’ into folks’ business, you bastards…”

“Well then, we’ll just wait for your donation whenever you feel inclined…”

Eizō said as he rose to his feet.

“Ain’t happenin’.”
“Me… No matter how much time passes…”

5

However, gravel was soon laid on the new road.
The donations for laying gravel were no longer a problem for them.
Not donations—for them, it was a kind of investment.
It was an investment to open stores and to drive up the land’s ownership value.

The hamlet’s structure there began a complete process of dispersal.

Each and every person washed their hands of semi-self-sufficient material production, becoming artisans of adornment and striving to turn into consumers.

First, shops lined the edges of the new road, houses were built within the fields, factories were erected, and the farmland abruptly began taking on the form of an urban area, developing an assertive infrastructure.
This was exactly like a wisp of cloud drawing near to a swelling mass of clouds.
To merge with the ever-expanding mechanism, one must also expand while drawing near.

And so, the farmland transformed into urban areas.
The farmers who had been drawing their livelihood from there now faced the necessity of either switching to other occupations or relocating to some other farmland.

“It’s finally becoming lively around here.”
“Now that things have reached this point, I suppose our house can’t remain as it is either.”
“Such an eyesore...”

Kawakami said to his fellow landlords.

“Perhaps we should rebuild it in the manner of a grand residence?”
“In this entire town, thatched roofs just won’t do.”

They eradicated their incongruous thatched-roof houses from the urban area and erected new tile-roofed mansions. These dwellings now stood as the most fitting abodes for their current lifestyles. For with land values having soared astronomically, they—the landlords—no longer required any semblance of legitimate occupation.

And people like Kanpei, Eizō, and Hōsaku, who had been self-cultivating farmers, mostly opened shops in corners of their own land adjacent to the road. As their funds allowed, they went on building rental houses.

“I’ve opened a shop this time, you see.”
“Well, if you think about it, I was just a farmer—it’s not like I need to make a big profit now…”

They went around distributing postcard-sized business cards from house to house, saying such things.

“If you happen to know anyone who’d like to rent some land, we’ll set the rent lower than elsewhere.”

Thus, they had not forgotten about the wasteland adjoining their mansions.

Tenant farmers like Jūjirō and Nagasuke—seven or eight in total—who had no farmland of their own whatsoever, had no choice but to enter and work at nearby factories unless they relocated elsewhere.
This was because the land they had cultivated had been completely taken away for housing and factories.
And that was because the landowners, even as they left their land to waste, refused to lease it for cultivation.

“Ah well—whether we work at factories and eat our meals—for us, it’s all the same either way…”

“As for me—no matter what I do—I ain’t settin’ foot in any o’ them factories round here. Ain’t nothin’ funny ’bout it. What the hell—I don’t even know what kinda machines they’re cobblin’ together, but they go wreckin’ land that puts food on our tables just to build them damn factories. In the end, you think you can eat them damn machines or somethin’? I’ll keep right on farmin’, no matter where I gotta go.”

With these words, Jinkichi moved to the neighboring hamlet. And there, he continued his small-scale tenant farming. Jinkichi’s state of mind remained unclear to Jūjirō, who had gone to work at the factories.

“If you let Jinkichi tell it, growing food’s the best thing there is—but ain’t factories just the same? Hey! Listen here—if it’s farm machinery we’re talkin’ about, you use that on other land and get a big harvest there instead. That’d be fine, right? So what if they wreck a bit of farmland for that—so what if some farmers quit and become factory hands…”

6

For Jinkichi, the tenant farmer who had moved to the neighboring hamlet, the current urban area—once the hamlet where he had lived—had become a place utterly unrelated to him.

Jinkichi, living a life that was nearly self-sufficient, never went to sell his harvest in the urban area. The only remaining connection to the hamlet where he had once lived was the occasional trip he made pulling a cart to collect night soil.

However, that too had become a tenuous link connecting his own feelings with those of his former tenant farmer comrades. Jinkichi went to collect night soil and would sometimes encounter people commuting to the factories. And they had standing conversations about matters of the past, present, and future. However, encountering Jūjirō and having a standing conversation was the first time since then.

“How ’bout you?”
“Mr. Jinkichi, how’s it been since then…”

Jūjirō was smiling cheerfully, but across his face flowed an indefinable shadow of exhaustion.

“Hmm.
“I’m gettin’ by somehow, but hell, they’re still chasin’ me outta everywhere.”
“How ’bout you?”
“Any luck on your end?”

“Luck? Ain’t nothin’ lucky ’bout it.”
“Can’t get no worse.”
“With seven mouths to feed on one-eighty a day—you think that adds up to prosperity?”
“But mark my words—somethin’s gonna blow real soon.”

“Knew it.”
“So all them factories struttin’ ’round like they own the place—business ain’t exactly boomin’, huh?”

“The factories are booming,”
“They’re making profits hand over fist—talk of building another branch factory now.”
“That’s why we couldn’t just keep quiet anymore.”
“No matter how big those factories get, our wages ain’t budged one bit—it’s downright miserable.”

“They just keep growing and growing,”
“While we… we’re stuck here…”

“This new branch factory’s supposed to be huge.”
“See that mulberry field along the river by your plot, Mr. Jinkichi?”
“Word is they’re putting it right there.”

“They’re going to build it by my field?”
“What the hell kind of bastards are these factory bastards?!”
“How far do they plan to chase me out?!”
“If a factory gets built there, they’ll just take back the field I’m farming under the pretext of leasing it for residential use…”

Jinkichi widened his eyes and suddenly burst out shouting like a madman.

“So there you have it.”
“Mr. Jinkichi!”
“Even as the factories keep growing like this, we’re still not…”

“Just how far the hell do they plan to spread their reach?!”
“How far the hell do they plan to build these factories?!”
“This ain’t fucking funny.”

“We—we ain’t lettin’ ’em build a damn thing ’til they hear us out! No matter what happens!”
“I did tell you once before, Mr. Jinkichi.”
“Even if they destroy farmland to build factories—even if some farmers quit to become factory workers—as long as those factories bring in more money than what we harvested from the fields, that should’ve been just fine.”
“But no matter how much they harvest—we’re still in the same damn spot.”
“They wreck the farmland and get fat off it, while we’re stuck right where we always been.”

Jūjirō also widened his eyes and shouted.

“Bringing factories there—where on earth are farmers supposed to go to farm?!”

“The factories go and destroy our farmland—no matter how much they profit, it changes nothing for us. So we couldn’t just stay silent anymore."
“This is beyond ridiculous.”

Seven

The plateau that had been at the center of the village was now entirely filled with houses, having fully transformed into a residential area.

The mixed grove that had once embraced the south-facing slope like an arm extending from the sky had been cleared away unnoticed, now buried beneath a sea of red, black, and blue roof tiles.
Radio antenna poles stood densely from every rooftop.

In the distant reaches of this tiled expanse, a crane assembled high in the air clattered incessantly, its long steel arm stretching out from smoke-stained skies.
Large chimneys here and there spewed countless plumes of black smoke.
And the sea of tiles had overrun the neighboring village, spreading endlessly onward until it vanished into verdant foliage.

—April 25, 1930—

――April 25, 1930――