Pathway to Japanese Literature

Milky Mist

The Central Meteorological Observatory announced that it was a heat not seen in forty years.
In the once-every-forty-years heat, political giants scrambled about in disarray.

In Spain and Italy, facing Napoleon's direction, the political world retreated.

Atop Akashi Mountain, there existed a stomach-shaped fetto that had been carried up while lying on a stretcher.

The times were turbulent.
The newspapers blared all these events with blinding intensity.

That was the coming and going of clouds scudding past Mount Fuji's peak.

At the foothills, in towns and rural areas, people were dying, killing, and being killed amid the heat not seen in forty years.

The air hung stiflingly thick as people inhaled tempura oil smoke.

For one side, the matters of the other held no relation whatsoever.
Clouds drifted aimlessly while cockroaches crawled about unchecked.

When people lifted their eyes to world events, they perceived chaos like overlapping visions of hell and paradise.
But when they turned their gaze to their own lives - so unbearably hot, so grindingly harsh - they simply couldn't endure.

To think that in this fortieth year's heat, the Earth had become parched and all the crucian carps surfaced with their eyes glazed white—that was a mistake.
There were summer resorts everywhere you looked.
In Japan there was Karuizawa; in India, Darjeeling; and in America, Rocky.

“People keep yammering about how damn hot it is while clinging to these sweltering hellholes like limpets.”
“Everyone’s legs get shackled one way or another.”
“Whether it’s some wife chaining your legs down or your own greedy gut hog-tying you – hell, look at me! Ain’t I been trussed up same as them?”
“Mine got snarled in chains!”
“Couldn’t budge an inch.”
“Then they drag you in there, tie your mitts behind your back, string you up from the rafters.”
“Bamboo swords whacking your kidneys raw – no mercy in those swings.”
“Turns a man into a spineless whelp gasping like landed fish.”
“Hah... Still boils your blood though.”

He gazed out at the station square from the waiting room.

The sunlight pierced with unnatural sharpness, baking the gravel.
Over this surface, cars, trains, and people tumbled about like black beans on a roasting pan, crackling as they rolled.

"Unbearable..."

He continued looking out through the window.

“Don’t look around.”
If it's just the back of my head, they won't get suspicious.
Don’t go looking around.
Eyes jerking!
When his eyes jerked, he immediately shifted them to the next spot.
Damn it—I was starting to look around restlessly on my own.
Five or six of them—landowners had their people here.
Strange.
I knew damn well.
No matter how much you lot tried to look like country bumpkins—whether disguising yourselves as shop clerks or office workers—first off, you there! Your jacket’s alpaca, but those pants were all wrong.
Not even bleached cloth—just cotton official trousers, weren’t they?
First off, these days even office workers wouldn’t be wearing black thick-soled rubber shoes.
Those were prison-issue shoes.
And another thing—you didn’t look nothin’ like a shop clerk.
Those flashy gold-rimmed glasses of yours? They were only good for scarin’ inmates down at the detention center.

Nowadays, even shop clerks don't wear such thick-framed glasses—Lloyd frames, for Christ's sake.
Me? I've only been out here in the real world a month, but I already know the streets better than you lot who've been stuck here ten damn years.
When it comes down to it, disguising's my real trade.
I don't go around draggin' no tail or nothin'.
No good.
Even if they keep starin' at the back of my head like that.
Look, those two're discussin' somethin'.
Heh. No need to keep twitchin' your nose like that.
Damn it.
Ain't no good comes from thinkin' like this.
"Now then."

“Dowwwwwn train for Shimo no Seki.”
“Dowwwwwn train for Shimo no Seki.”

The station attendant’s cheerful voice resounded through the third-class waiting room.
The waiting room began to stir.

People sprang up one after another.

He instantly looked back over the bench's backrest.
No one was watching him.
The two likely suspects were shambling toward the ticket gate near the entrance while he scanned the crowd moving in that direction.

He stood up, went to a bench about three rows ahead, and with sidelong glances scanned the entire waiting room.
Fortunately no eyes were gleaming.

Of course there’s nobody who knows my face.
Besides I’m the only one who doesn’t even look suspicious.
After all to those bastards every last one of us looks like thieves.

He lay down on the bench.
Then he inspected the outer bench adjacent to where he lay.
He pantomimed scratching his head.
By then, he already wore a hat.
A straw hat.
When his hand shivered across his face, a mustache sprouted.
Now then, threading his arms into a summer haori, he dissolved into the crowd jostling at the entrance.

The four eyes of the landowners saw him, but what they saw was a different person.
It wasn't him.

"They're just staring at faces, damn 'em."
"You can't go forgetting about hands and feet."
"In his hands was a basket; on his feet were geta."
"It's exactly the same as before—just like this."
"Ah, my mistake."

The train was divided into second- and third-class cars with a dining car sandwiched in between.

He entered the third-class car next to the dining car.
Conveniently, the third-class car was unusually crowded.
It was packed to the point where one might want to climb onto the luggage racks.

By then, his face was already clean-shaven.

He placed the basket on the seat and then entered the dining car.
While drinking beer, he took out a newspaper from his pocket and began reading.
There were five or six newspapers.
He picked out one article from those five or six newspapers.

"Hmph. They're calling it a club-wielding robbery."
"They all say club."
"But I didn't bring any damn club on the train. Found traces of someone hiding in the mountain forests nearby, huh?"
"Heh heh. With the fire brigade, youth association and police force all mobilized, those rabbits must've had one hell of a time."
"The culprit still isn't caught, huh?"
"If they've caught someone, it's a fake."
"They're so desperate to catch anyone—even a fake—they're scrambling around in panic."
"Poor bastards who don't know shit—probably getting beaten like they swallowed clubs."
"Like snakes that swallowed frogs."

When he thought of torture, he felt his head suddenly burning up.

The first torture—the one that forced him to live like a mole, shunning sunlight!
Back then, they'd forced him to vomit mud he hadn't even swallowed.
What came out wasn't mud but blood-soaked viscera.

For sleeping rough in parks—what else could I have done?!—they'd thrown him into that damn detention box for half a year.
The moment he got out, they'd chase him down again, pinning him with vagrancy charges.
That became the steady beat of his life.

If I'm fated to end up like that anyway, then I'd better do something equal to it—otherwise what's the damn point! I'll beat the hell out of 'em!

For that purpose, detention centers and prison cells were filled with invaluable textbooks.
Even if they arrested him by mistake, the place he ended up in was, so to speak, his home.
There were many acquaintances there.
In broad daylight, all those who knew him were enemies.
But if he were to return, there were (friends) who would say, “Hmph, that was a close call.”

The (work) gradually grew larger and bolder.

The train glided smoothly and swiftly.
The dining car swayed pleasantly, and a comfortable intoxication circulated.

There were mountains, there were woods, and the sea was rippling in golden hues.
Everywhere there was (life).
Every form of life was something he had no ties to.

His rebellion had not yet been organized.
His eyes had grown nearsighted from staring at prison walls.
In the life above the mountains and sea that he gazed upon as if it were heaven, there was constant struggle and unending torture, but he could not see them.

He dealt with things in his own signature way.

It was around 2 AM.
The sweltering summer night had grown cool under the light wind that blew in caressingly from the forest and river surfaces.

The Honda residence appeared to lay in silent slumber, concealed by a magnificent building—so grand one would hardly think it a Taisho-era mansion—along with the vast garden that encircled it and its walls.

The rear of the mansion connected to a dense evergreen forest with nothing but a single wall, its garden continuing seamlessly. In front, come autumn, it faced green rice fields destined for tenant rice—so abundant they couldn’t fit into five large warehouses.

From the forest behind the estate, a small stream passed through the garden pond within the grounds before spreading out toward the front rice fields.

People in red fire brigade coats and youth group members were drowsily swatting mosquitoes here and there across the estate with sleepy hands.

The head of the Honda family, protected by his family members and attending physician, lay with his head—now as inert as ceramic, incapable of thought or sensation—wedged between ice pillows and ice bags.

The family members—the head’s wife and their children, two sons and three daughters—could not shake off a feeling as if they were waiting for something.

The family head had been struck suddenly with a log—an oak bar meant for a sliding gate—while he slept, leaving him no time to wake, whether to write a will or not.

And so, the family members could not help but feel like hungry children being made to sit at the dining table while crying.

It was gloomy.
But it was somehow ominous.
It was too early both for burning incense and for chanting sutras.
First, the room was too large.
It was too meticulously arranged, leaving no edges to grasp.
Eating and drinking to stave off boredom felt uncomfortably like a premature celebration.

Strangely enough, not a single one of the children had cried their eyes red.

As long as Honda Fujijirou’s brain had been able to function at all, he had been the most capable man in the region.

The other landowners also followed his example and enforced entry bans.
And they were barely able to safeguard the (landowners' rights) that stood as precarious as stacked eggs.
The tenant farmers were all clamor and no action; they couldn’t do a thing about it.
Most of the prominent figures in the tenant farmers’ union—(the troublemakers)—had all been thrown into the town prison.

"The landowners had just begun to feel relieved, thinking, 'Now we can sleep with our pillows high for the time being,' when—"

Mr. Honda Fujijirou, who had been resting easy with his pillow high, suddenly had his skull smashed with a loud crack by an oak bar meant for a sliding gate.

The youth association and fire brigade surrounded the mountain from a distance and were hunting down the culprit.
But the youth association and fire brigade members were almost entirely tenant farmers!

Of course, there was no reason the authorities wouldn’t keep a close eye on the tenant farmers’ union.
However, the notion that the ringleaders imprisoned in prison would sneak out late at night, clobber someone, then slip back into their cells to feign sleep was far too convoluted.
However, the idea that a plan like that had been devised well in advance wasn’t entirely beyond consideration.

Consequently, the ringleaders who had been imprisoned were dragged out to court.
As a result, they learned that “Someone has boldly started something!”
They roused their spirits.

Those who remained were also dragged off in a systematic crackdown.
Even the youth association members and fire brigade personnel who had been guarding the Honda estate—those not part of the tenant farmers’ union—were subjected to questioning.

This was a single omen.

The landowners—whom could they trust?

For what purpose were the fire brigade and youth association guarding [the estate], setting up cordons, and moreover being investigated?

Even the family members could not avoid undergoing questioning.
Could there be something between all these siblings from different mothers?
Could recent crime trends suggest fratricide?

People lost what they believed in.
It was chaos.
It was an age of nihilism.
It was an age of terror.

Clubs were feared more than swords or pistols.

For the peasants, life was famine.
It was arrest after arrest.
But like dysentery, no matter how much they scrubbed, something foul still lingered.

"If this state continues," thought the "heavenly deities," "we'll have to jail the good people and set the criminals loose—there's no other way to uphold the law."

But despite the efforts of the prefectural police department—supported by the Youth Association and Fire Brigade—they couldn’t produce even a single footprint’s worth of evidence.

Against the monumental fact that Mr. Honda—a wealthy man, a major landowner, a prominent figure in prefectural politics—had suffered a fractured skull, the evidence remained but a dream.
The one who struck him wasn’t any real person—it was as if some will-o’-the-wisp had done it.

It had long been a customary saying that one could be possessed by living spirits or dead ones.
And it was not uncommon for a family to perish due to vengeful spirits.
But no vengeful spirit had ever struck with the tangible form of an oak bar.
Now, for vengeful spirits—which ought to be intangible entities—to wield a tangible club was an unsettling matter.
But the problem was this: while they could suppress the vengeful spirits’ tools—speech, writing, clubs—what of the spirits themselves? These beings permeated every inch of ground like air itself, yet proved impossible to capture.

A second- and third-class direct train bound for Shimo no Seki ran.

He killed a long time in the dining car, then returned to his seat while sticky all over with beer sweat as if someone had doused him in syrup.

However, the basket he had left on the seat was nowhere to be found.
There, hanging a soft sash from the luggage rack and hooking his chin into the loop as if to hang himself, was a man snoring away.

The train compartment was unusually crowded.
On the deck lay three or four people sleeping atop spread newspapers.
Even the aisle held thirty souls standing or crouching.
Some kept blinking vacant eyes while their minds slept.
The compartment air hung thick and stagnant as if trying to haul Tokyo's atmosphere wholesale to Shimo no Seki.

"Bold bastard," he thought.
Heh heh heh—what a freak.
Trying to hang himself, the freak.
"Where'd they take my damn basket?"
"Oh! Steppin' all over it—goddammit!"
"No way this works with these lowlifes around."
"But this bastard's lyin'—probably set a trap."
"Someone peeked in my basket?"
"This ain't funny—their tricks're too damn stubborn."
"Gives me the creeps."
"What's this? Mockin' me? Still just a punk kid."
"Seventeen? Eighteen?"
"Cute face—look, sweat's drippin' right into his mouth."

He leaned back for a while, observing the boy.
The boy had thrust his exhausted face into the loop of the sash and fallen into a deep sleep.

“Brother.”
“Hey, Brother.”
“This ain’t funny—gonna suffocate in here.”

After a while，he shook the boy awake.
The Boy dully opened his eyes.
Then he raised both hands with a groan.
While prodding his neighbor’s ear，when prodded，that man tilted his head heavily toward...

“What’s wrong?”
“You ain’t actually plannin’ to hang yourself there, Brother?”

“Hn.”

The boy tried to close his eyes again.

“Hey, Brother.”
“Is that your basket?”

He jerked his chin toward the basket the boy was stepping on.

“Then it’s yours?”

The boy responded with eyes still closed.

He was stunned.
To hide his embarrassment, he took out a Shikishima from his sleeve and lit it.

(What a bastard!
What an outrageous bastard.
"Huh? 'Then it's yours?'"
He had the nerve to say that.
Then whose hell was that basket?
Of course, putting it that way—what this young punk said was true, really true.
It ain't mine, and it ain't this young punk's either.
But does that punk even know about it?
If he didn't know, there's no way he could spout such nonsense, right?
Huh... Depending on how this plays out, this might be dangerous.)

But he couldn’t afford to blunder there.
No matter whose it was, that basket had to be his own to resolve the situation.

“But Brother.
“That’s mine.”
“Don’t go stomping on it.”

“If it’s that important, you shouldn’t have left it lying around.”

The boy kept his eyes closed as he removed his foot from the basket.

A moon like a raw wound between the eyebrows hung caught in thin clouds.
The train suddenly sliced through the darkness and raced onward.

“Don’t joke around. I haven’t been standing all night either.”

“Don’t joke around. I don’t wanna stand here either after setting down my basket.”

“Tch. This won’t even become a fight.”

“Course not.”

The boy opened his eyes.
And then, as if capturing him through a lens, took him in in an instant.

“There ain’t gonna be a fight. But someone like you should get over to the second-class car. That way you can sleep easier. I mean, you’re wearing a haori even though it’s not cold. That haori must’ve cost you at least ten yen. Instead of that, get yourself to second class and make third class even a bit more comfortable. Look at this third class. Even a garbage dump’s got more breathing room than this. It’d be a miracle if we make it to wherever we’re going without rotting away. We’ve got work starting tomorrow, so we wanna get some sleep on this train.”

“Where you headed?”

“Are you a spy?”

“Huh?”

“Don’tcha get it? I’m askin’ if you’re a police officer.”

He was both astonished and relieved.

(This guy... might be one of us!)

“I’m a merchant.”

“Is that so? After all, there are as many as twenty spies on this car. I thought you might be one too.”

“Why’s that?”

But this time, he was surprised.

(He’s trying to scare me.
Twenty!
This ain’t peaceful.
But how does this young punk know that?
How far's this young punk gonna keep mocking me?)

“Well, they’ve got one tailing each of us. There’s so damn many I can’t remember every face.”
“Even they’ll probably mess up during the handover. See?”

The boy jerked his chin toward the passengers standing in the aisle.

“Those are your fine folks right there.”

(But why the hell doesn’t this brat act like a kid?)
He talks as if he’s my age, pushing forty.
And everything he says is just logical arguments.
He’s a bastard who doesn’t even look the part!
But wait.
"He claimed they’ve got one tailing each of us, huh?"
Then what?!
What about these guys?—He had learned that phrase 'then what' in prison.
"Then what the hell is this kid?"
They bring one person along, yet he goes and hangs his head from the luggage rack, sleeping with a snore and that arrogant look on his face.
What were they doing? What?
(Who the hell are you?)

“So what’s this about?”
“What’d you do to land yourself in this mess?”

“I ain’t done squat.”
“Where I’m headed’s where I’ll settle things.”
“But listen—keep jawin’ with me, and you might just catch some heat yourself.”

(This bastard.
He went and said what I was gonna say first.
But how 'bout it—we've gone and gotten ourselves into a damn dangerous spot.
Damn.)

“And what’s that supposed to mean now?”

“What reason d’you think there is?
If you keep talking with us, you’ll get tailed every which way for sure.”

“So I’m asking you—what the hell are you?”

“Me?
I’m a laborer.”

“A laborer? So you’re one of the straight-laced folks then?
And why’re you being tailed then?”

“Because we’re in a labor dispute.”
“Starving brothers are fighting.”

“Huh.”
“I don’t get it.”
“But talking with you seems really dangerous, so I’m heading over there.”
“Hey, grab that basket for me.”

“Hey.”
“Be careful.”

“You’re the one who should watch out.”
“That’s the biggest crock I’ve ever heard.”

He jolted as if he’d stepped on a nail.

(He’s telling me to be careful.)
(The brat’s seen right through me.)
(This is dangerous business.)

He carried the basket and passed through the dining car into the second-class compartment.
In the second-class car, the electric fan had grown hot and was groaning toward the empty seats.

He sat down in the airflow of the electric fan.
There was ample air and seating there.

He had been freed from the roasting heat that felt like being baked alive, but the baffling brat had dealt him a heavy blow.

(That punk—acting like some greenhorn barely old enough to be my own kid!) And yet how that whelp saw things, felt things, thought things, spoke things—(how could a hardened vet like me not get any of it?)

He swept his eyes across the train car.
The space sat nearly empty.
No one had trailed him inside.

(No doubting it now.)
That was too damn close—cheeky little shit.
(That bastard—)

Between him and the boy who had startled him lay a distance as vast as that between two nations speaking different tongues. To him, that boy was—in a word—a monster. In police stations and towns, it bore no resemblance to the youths he'd known—a bizarre, incomprehensible creature. It stabbed at him with an urgent sensation, as if something were hunting him down. Through his instinctive—and moreover, honed from perpetually walking life's back alleys—keen intuition, he'd grasped nearly everything. When he'd think, "How long this time?" the sentence usually differed by no more than a year from his estimate.—A year of human life wasn't brief. But when measuring vagrants, it became merely a conceptual numeral—one year. That human life could be contained within such a span was unthinkable. That was a year having nothing to do with him. That single year could never belong to those engaged in professions reducing millennia of others' lives to chrysalises. Those people could discard entire lifetimes while being socially revered and domestically content. He had three hundred sixty-five days of living! He had three hundred sixty-five days of dying.—

Whenever he thought, "This time I want to live three months in the free world," roughly a hundred days of free-world winds would blow for him. By the layout of a house, he could discern what sort of life was lived there. Through faces and how belts were fastened, he discerned what manner of person stood before him.

But that defiant boy—he couldn't make sense of him at all.

(That punk had his feet shoved into two burlap sacks.
From between the coiled belt rested a gentle face that didn't match his grit.
What he was thinking—the light in those eyes was something I couldn't grasp.
They didn't gleam coldly like the landowners'.
Nor was it a light filled with anger.
They hadn't pooled tears either.
But he'd managed to startle me in one go.
Hmph, I've really let the heat get to me.
Getting all worked up over some young punk—this ain't someone else's problem. It's my own damn fault.
Keep hesitating, and you'll end up thin and short.)

The train slowed its speed.
He feigned sleep as he surveyed the platform.
The platform plunged him once more into a terror bordering on despair.

White-uniformed or plainclothes police officers—as many as forty or fifty of them—had set up a dragnet there.

The train stopped dead.

Dull, lethargic, sleepy—amid the sweltering midnight heat, a whirlwind arose unlike anything in that stagnant atmosphere. Police officers swarmed into over a dozen train cars simultaneously.

He felt a chill throughout his entire body.

(Damn them!)
They'd really gone overboard.
Fine—if it had come to this, screw it all.)

The chill of terror transformed into the taut strain of fury.
The dagger in his breast pocket reared its head like a snake.
But his appearance seemed utterly lost in sleep.

Uniformed and plainclothes police officers—four of them—came thudding in from both ends.
They opened the toilet door.
They peered into the washroom.
But there was no one there.

“He’s not in this car!”

“This is second class! Go check third!”

“Keep watch on the exits until departure!”

Two uniformed police officers remained at both exits while the others left.

The platform descended into chaos.
The shouts, the thud of blows, the sound of kicks spread across the dimly lit platform.

He still hadn't removed his hand from the dagger in his breast pocket.
And while keeping an eye on both officers, he looked at the form.

Not toward the ticket gate but rather heading for the baggage claim area, a crowd of thirty or forty people moved slowly and laboriously like a dislodged boulder—shouting, cursing, hitting, and grabbing each other's hair as they went.

Amidst them, the boy (who he couldn't get a read on) leaped onto the baggage claim counter with an agility that even he himself found surprising.
And he let out a sharp, loud cry—as if his entire face had become a mouth.
He pulled off his hat as if tearing it away and slammed it down.
One leg of his flour-sack-like trousers flung forward at a ninety-degree angle.
When his foot struck something with a hollow thud like a wooden temple block being struck violently—a hole formed there as if someone had yanked out a pole-sized object.

“Comrades! Break through...”
“Break through...”

The boy let out a piercing shout.
At the same instant his leg was wrenched from the baggage counter, and as he thudded against the concrete with his buttocks and back—keeping time with each impact—he was dragged down.

The train began to move quietly.
The uniformed police officers who had been standing at both exits jumped down.

(Damn it! Can't even buy a damn lunchbox.)
(What the hell is that?)

Involuntarily，he let out a deep sigh．And panicked by the loudness of his own sigh，he glanced around the train compartment．As the train began to move，the passengers stretched out or pressed their heads against the headrests and continued sleeping．

“Who are they? If those guys are really being escorted，they should’ve had restraints on them．Those bastards went empty-handed．Ain’t got a clue．I ain’t got a clue．‘Break through!’ that young punk had to go and bellow．What’s he gotta go and say ‘Break through’ for? Why’d he go and not say ‘Run!’? I can’t make heads or tails of any of this．I’ll give him this—he’s got some nerve．They went and kicked him down．His head must’ve made a hollow thud．I don’t feel bad about it．Serves him right．”

By the way—um—what should I do?
Wouldn't it be better to pull a job around here?
After all, if I see that many of 'em gathered there like that, the other spots must be thin on guards.
That's for damn sure.
Plus, if I hit somewhere close by, those bastards'll catch wind of it.
Right.
Don't give a rat's ass about anything.
I'll get off where it stops this time.
But what the hell are those bastards anyway?
What a goddamn over-the-top bunch of fools.
Twenty of 'em bunch up and go charging in.
Total clusterfuck.
They go in ready to get nabbed, for Christ's sake.
I ain't making that kinda dumbass move.
Gotta work solo.
Still...they're in a different game from me.
Otherwise, there's no way they could operate by hauling folks in one by one.)

The train ran along the coast.
The moon sank like a wound.
The sea slept blackly.

His innately sharp reason and emotions were entirely consumed by thoughts of the young punk.

For forty years, he had believed there was only one method of revenge against the authorities who had ceaselessly beaten him.
And he had bravely charged down that one and only path.

That tactic—if he returned to his “home”—had been the one and only path on which all his comrades relied.

Yet, just as one sees a light through milky frosted-glass haze, just as one discerns a city's layout through prison walls from distant clamor, the boy cast an incomprehensible light into his mind.

The light beyond the haze might have been moon or electric lamp or window—its nature unclear—but its luminous essence stood undeniable.

Seeking light, the insect flew.

He adopted the insect’s approach.
But there was no law dictating that all people had to adopt the insect’s approach.
There were other ways.
But to him, the other ways were incomprehensible.

(Incomprehensible young punks—those bastards see through different eyes than us.)
Eerie, fearsome young punks—terrifying in their potential.
Yet they go acting all annoyingly open about it.
Completely acting like they're doing some grand good deed.
I’m sorry to say, but I just don’t get it.
Make sure you don’t get hurt.)

The train continued to run.

He had forgotten his instinctive and professional plan—his signature approach to exploit the cluster of police officers—and found his entire mind seized by that young punk.