Pathway to Japanese Literature

Such was the ship. When sailing from Hokkaido toward Yokohama, the Kinkasan Lighthouse must inevitably be seen on the starboard side.

The Daisankintokimaru—a sturdy-sounding name—had passed the Kinkasan Lighthouse on its starboard side thirty minutes earlier. The sea was moderate. It wasn’t exactly calm, nor was it stormy. Thirty minutes later, the Daisankintokimaru's helmsman saw a lighthouse to the left. The Compass was pointing southwest. Yet, there should have been no island in such a place.

The Quartermaster reported to the Mate that something was wrong. The Mate had been sleeping on the settee on the bridge, cooled by the sea breeze, but he got up, “What’s wrong?” “There’s a lighthouse visible on the port side, but...” “Another hour wasted,” answered the Mate, then kicked the Compass with all his might. The Compass whirled around and pointed northeast. Thus, the Daisankintokimaru would occasionally stagger back and forth like Senbonzakura’s military ranks. The Compass was damaged.

Again, she would enter dry dock. Sailors cleaned her grime-covered hull with clanging hammers. If they scrubbed too vigorously, holes would open in her hull. That’s how rotten her skin had become. But since it was an era of shipping prosperity—when the “righteous nations” of the world leagued together to defeat a single “unjust militaristic nation”—she had risen up.

She lumbered forward, fortified by capitalism’s alcohol. Because of this state of affairs, whenever passenger ships attempting to overtake from behind, steamships approaching from ahead, or sailboats navigating the Seto Inland Sea caught sight of the Daisankintokimaru, they would shudder as though encountering a plague god. She was utterly drunk. Her Compass was drunkenly bleary-eyed, and her legs staggered and stumbled as she swaggered down the world’s grand avenues.

Sober people couldn’t handle such wretched drunks. Everyone gave them a wide berth. She brazenly plowed through the Seto Inland Sea—though to be fair, the quartermasters worked themselves to the brink of nervous exhaustion. Given that it took thirty minutes after turning the helm for steering to respond, that she didn’t run aground anywhere in those waters could only be called miraculous. At Miike Port, she loaded her hold full with coal. Her destination was Manila.

From the Captain and First Engineer down through the Boatswain, Chief Stoker, toilet cleaner, and coal carrier, she required these players for her final endeavor just as any other ship would. Just as a wealthy lecherous old woman requires an exceptionally robust young man, the Daisankintokimaru too required exceptionally strong workers. And both had managed to acquire what they sought.

But whether as the Daisankintokimaru or as a lecherous old woman—though it might have been indispensable for them—why did they have to be employed by it? Even under capitalist rule, even as proletarians serving like dried bonito flakes, weren't they at least granted the right to choose their occupation? Wait! "You're trying to say, 'That's superficial! It's not that simple, pretty boy!'" I get it.

While you're choosing your occupation, 'opportunity' slips away. While you're busy "choosing," others outside snatch it up. And while you're busy "choosing," you'll end up scrubbing out your own guts. You're right.

The reason I must preface this for you, dear readers, is my dread that no matter what became of the Daisankintokimaru’s crew members henceforth, someone would say: “First off—they shouldn’t have boarded such a ship at all! The sun shines and rice is served anywhere—they could’ve scraped by elsewhere!” When water ran deeper than a ship’s height, one could sink her anytime by merely poking a hole in her hull. In warships’ case, everyone knew they kept researching how to sink them, how to breach their bellies.

Were warships built to float or to sink! Are soldiers meant to kill or to be killed?! That was a matter to be arbitrarily decided between one nation and the nation across from it. This applied between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat as well. The Proletariat were 'dried bonito flakes.' So the Bourgeoisie thought.

The Proletariat were “We are human.” Not “dried bonito flakes.” They thought: There was no law saying they must be shaved down, boiled into broth, devoured, and vanish. Just as nations settled scores through war, so too must the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie settle theirs through battle. When that dawn came, it would become clear which side was correct.

But the Daisankintokimaru packed her 3,030-ton hold full with coal.

She arrived in Manila. Like flies trapped in a room, the ship laborers scurried about and loaded cargo.

She loaded Manila’s products and set out on her return voyage toward Miike.

One of the sailors began to suffer terribly soon after setting sail. Beneath the scorching iron deck—hot enough without glowing red—and the sun’s direct rays that felt like lifting the lid of a smelting furnace right beside them, the crewmates thought he must’ve “gotten struck again.” The sailors were working on the scorching deck. Exactly the size of the deck—the heated iron kettle’s bottom; a red-hot iron plate with the expanse of air; and between them, the ＊＊＊＊＊＊—though not quite so. It was nothing but heat like castella in a stove—even Yoris couldn’t endure it.

So the sailors, without any fuss, carried him into the sailors’ quarters.

And without ceremony, they threw him into the bedbug-infested nest. They couldn’t afford to fuss over every little thing. Moreover, the patient—like a rubber ball fished from water—spewed copiously from both mouth and ass. When it leaked onto the deck, it baked dry instantly and clung like shoddy dried seaweed. “Tch—guy must’ve swilled Denki Bran or somethin’.” “Fuckin’ idiot!” “Course he did.” “Ain’t no way you’d get soused drinkin’ regular stuff.” “Only way to get that plastered—stuff your gut with rocket fuel and get roasted top to bottom!”

“He’s pullin’ it off real smooth, that guy. Tomorrow he’ll be ten times livelier than us!”

“I don’t give a damn. Just want to get one solid day’s sleep myself.” They wore wooden clogs, sat on planks of wood, placed water-soaked towels on their heads, covered them with hats, and while keeping time in the same rhythm as festival drums, peeled away the Daisankintokimaru’s thick, rotten outer skin. After the rust was removed, a sailor walked along applying a mixture of caulker and cement. But for what purpose was the deck being maintained?

What’s the point of maintaining the deck? Wasn’t it far more crucial for the Daisankintokimaru to repair her sides than maintain the deck? When raising the anchor, her syphilis-rotted nose might tear open at any moment. The hole would be filled with cement resembling zinc oxide ointment.

But was there not something more important? That was repairing the drinking water tank. If she were to attempt a long voyage, eventually the sailors would have to drink saltwater. The reason was that her bottom—between the tank and seawater—had become like a patient with arteriosclerosis, letting seawater seep into the drinking water supply. Thus over time, instead of the tank’s water decreasing even slightly, they would have to drink saltwater.

When sailors boarded the ship, there was a strict physical examination. But when the ship departed, there was nothing. For the sake of the ship or for how the mates operated, even if workers fell ill, the ship bore no responsibility. All of that was because “workers who possess such constitutions are slovenly.” The workers were something like the steam that moved the ship. They were used and “discarded” one after another. It was a dark, hot, suffocating, stinking sailors’ quarters crawling with discomfort—filled with noxious gases and teeming with bacteria.

The patient rolled off his bed. He was "drunk." In his stomach, cholera bacteria—more potent than pure alcohol—raged wildly. Like a steam train hurtling into the distance at full speed, he grew steadily thinner. From bed to cupboard to uneven floor, he thrashed about everywhere. Afterward, viscous filth spewed from his innards lay scattered like snail trails.

He thrashed about like a self-propelled fire-belching machine until finally reaching the triangular gratechin—the grating leading down to the bow’s storage hold. And then he fell silent.

Dark, hot, filthy—the sailors’ quarters. Despite him having grown "quiet," something, some invisible thing, was raging wildly.

The Daisankintokimaru, like a greedy widow moneylender amassing ill-gotten gains, raked in obscene profits and pressed onward. The sea was like thick blue oil.

The wind didn't blow even from hell.

On deck, the sailors; in the engine room, the firemen—each were undergoing their own torture.

The patient in the sailors’ quarters occasionally opened his eyes. His eyes had completely lost the ability to see outward. Whether he closed them or opened them, with those eyes he saw his mangled viscera. To put it another way, his nerves had flown outside his body and were peering into his own insides through his eyes.

He could not endure. Agony! It was not mere agony. The "soul" was trying to burst out. It was an agony akin to difficult childbirth—discarding his own life along with a child’s. ――Where... where am I...?―― He opened his eyes dully and wide.

He wanted to know where he was.

――Where am I dying?!―― He mustered his final reserves of strength into his eyes. But the window of the soul did not open. The soul had reached precisely to the edge of the eyelashes. If eggs had nerves, he was an egg being boiled. He was a dojo loach exhausted from thrashing in the pot. What could those whitened eyes see! ――Where... where am I...?―― Why on earth would the cholera patient have wanted to know such a thing?

As a fellow crew member, as a fellow sailor bound by camaraderie, I had to inform him—no, them—now of where that place was.

That—………………

But where exactly that was would only become clear much later. He soon rotted away while still alive on the bed grating. Like a split eel, his heart still twitched. It kept trying to. His lungs were the same. But just as there was no corner of the earth left untouched by capitalism’s poison, his heart too had been weakened by the cholera bacteria.

Just as hundreds of thousands of people—without enmity or fault—were killing each other on the battlefield— He too had become one such sacrifice—erased bit by bit in factories, villages, ships, and elsewhere, so as not to draw notice. —— The apprentice sailor, who was on the verge of becoming a full-fledged sailor, found it was already time to start preparing dinner.

So he left the “praiseworthy work” he had been doing with the sailors to return to his apprentice duties and entered the sailors’ quarters to prepare dinner. Emerging from the blinding glare into a ship’s cabin like a basement prison cell, he stomped toward the back to retrieve the dish box, relying on habit.

The dish box was inside the shelf built upon the bed grating. He tripped over the rope.

“Damn it! “Who the hell left this damn rope lying around?!”

He grumbled to himself while stepping onto the rope. The rope—the coiled rope—…… It didn’t resemble a rope at all. “What the hell?!” The apprentice sailor tested it by stepping on it again. He jumped down. Bending his torso at a right angle and pricking up his ears, he groped for the “flaccid rope” in the darkness.

The apprentice saw a comrade like a rotten rope.

“Cut it out! Quit messing with me!” “What’s wrong with you?”

The rope had rotted.

“Hey, wake up. You’ll get trampled to death. Even if it’s this hot, who’d crawl into a place like that? Hey!” As he said this, he shook the rope. But he didn’t move like soybean dregs.

The apprentice placed his hand on the patient’s forehead. The corpse was already beginning to grow cold. The apprentice suddenly broke into a run. ――Could it be that I trampled him to death? I did step on him once to check! With both feet―thud. ―― He, seized by an eerie feeling as though trapped in some nightmarish dream and pursued by unseen forces, hurried to where the Boatswain stood on deck.

“It’s no use. “Boatswain. “That guy’s dead.” He turned pale like a newly released ex-convict and said: “What?! “He’s dead? “Who the hell died?”

“This isn’t a joke! “Boatswain. “Yasuda’s dead!” “If I am so drunk I look dead to you, then leave me be! “Or if you are so worried, go dump a bucket of water over my head!” “Boatswain! Boatswain! “That might be so, but just go check on him for me.” “He is definitely dead!” “And he is already starting to stink, I tell you!”

“You damn idiot! If you are drunk and puke, it stinks to high heaven. If they die and start stinking in two or three hours, then alcohol must take a whole day to brew! Cut the crap! You goddamned moron!”

The Boatswain, thinking he was being mocked, finally flew into a rage. “Even drunks can die!” “Boatswain! Yasuda was one of us!” “I won’t stand your heartless talk! You strut around barking ‘Boatswain’ this and ‘Boatswain’ that—that ain’t no proper boatswain! A real boatswain’s different!” “You bastard! If I say check him, then check him!” The apprentice raged like a six-foot Niō statue.

“You serious?” “I’m telling you, it’s true!” The sailors, along with the Boatswain, left sledgehammers scattered and rushed out onto the deck. “What the—! Those bastards!” Pacing around the bridge, the First Engineer said to the Quartermaster. “They’ve all gone back, haven’t they?”

The Quartermaster kicked the Compass violently while, “Yeah,” he replied disinterestedly. You bastards rake in insane profits and squeeze us dry—there’ll be a strike soon. Don’t come crying—he thought bitterly. “This doesn’t add up, hey?”

The First Engineer called out to the Relief Quartermaster, who was in the chartroom (navigation room).

“Hey!”

When the Relief Quartermaster peeked out from the gangway, the First Engineer immediately barked. “During working hours, they can’t enter the deck. Go out there and tell that to the Boatswain.”

“Yes.” As he began to descend, the First Engineer barked an addition as if dousing him with it. “And go see what those bastards are up to. Make sure you get a good look before reporting.” “Right.”

He replied while already descending the saloon deck.

The First Engineer began pacing about the bridge. Unlike the stokehold, the air on the bridge wasn’t sticky like syrup.

There was only wind matching the ship's speed. There, the air was dry.

Especially there, the field of view was wide—on rare occasions ships could be seen, and islands were visible. How beautiful the islands floating on the sea must have been in the South Seas, like unopened buds and blossoms. They were inhabited by islanders suffering under severe exploitation, yet to the eye they appeared as paradise. The sailors always cherished those islands like lovers. But those islands were limited to ones the ship did not dock at. For when the ship docked, any island would be laid bare as having its life withered away by capitalism.

Islands with nothing but a single lighthouse, and islands where not a soul remained save the lighthouse keeper—such islands dotted the seas. Those islands, like a torch-lit procession night, turned the stokers into poets.

Now, the Daisankintokimaru was lurching as it gazed out at those islands.

The Quartermaster entered the "sailors' quarters". He had been imagining a noisy "sailors' quarters".

Inside the sailors' quarters (omote), however, was quiet. After letting his eyes adjust to the darkness for a while, he saw the scene laid out before him.

On the chain locker’s (anchor room) lid, Yasuda lay on his back. Within three or four hours, he had wilted like boiled greens, shriveled in volume, and gone completely limp. The sailors' quarters was stifling, filled not only with the ship's usual stench but also mixed with the smell of Yasuda.

The sailors stood silently around the corpse. And occasionally, something was whispered from ear to ear. The Quartermaster put his mouth to the Boatswain’s ear. “Did he die?” “Seems he’s dead.” “What happened?” “He must’ve really guzzled it down.” “Hmm.” “……”

“So, when’s the burial at sea?”

“I’ll go ask First Engineer once.” “The alcohol did him in, huh?” “Hmm, I can’t really tell for sure... Hope it’s not some bad disease…” It was decided that there would be a burial at sea tomorrow. Yasuda was laid on his bed by the sailors’ hands. He was as pale as soybean meal. His face in death appeared peaceful. And it seemed to be saying this.

"He will no longer be exploited by anyone." It wasn’t necessarily that being exploited any further had become unbearable, but on that night when Yasuda’s corpse had not yet slipped into the sea, one sailor and one stoker got drunk again. The Daisankintokimaru was enveloped in terror, as though sinking. "It was understood to be cholera."

The Captain and First Engineer came to the sailors’ quarters and saw the patients “drunk and rambling.” When the two officers returned to the stern, Boatswain and Number One were summoned.

They went.

The Captain was not in his cabin, where he should have been arrogantly ensconced, but on the salon deck. As soon as Boatswain and Number One appeared on the salon deck, he bellowed from afar.

“Open the forepeak’s hatch—the forward air chamber, what passes for the ship’s buoyancy bladder.” “Then throw both corpses and living patients inside.” “It’s cholera!” “Henceforth, their meals will be tossed through the hatch.” “And from today onward, no sailor shall assemble with others.” “Any man who so much as vomits or shits himself—all go into the forepeak.” “Then...” “Ah—yes. That settles it.”

The Captain—to kill germs, he thought—issued orders while puffing an expensive Manila cigar he had bought until grease oozed from its tip. Boatswain and Number One withdrew.

The forepeak was located one level below the storage room beneath the sailors' and stokers' quarters. Inside was cluttered with beams, pillars, the keel, and the like. There, like the claw-like tips of Indian shoes, the ends were sharply pointed and curved upward. The air, sealed by the gut, had stagnated no differently than it had years prior. And it rotted like a sink in an abandoned house. That area was damp because it was submerged in the sea. Especially on the Daisankintokimaru, seawater had seeped in.

Compared to dwelling in the realm of stars, that place seemed even less suited for habitation.

It was also there that the shipworms creepily squeaked. There was no way to reach it except by hanging a rope ladder from the gut and climbing down. Unless the rope ladder was fifteen or sixteen feet long, it wouldn’t reach the bottom. Even when patients and corpses were to enter there from now on, the air had no choice but to creep in through the gut’s hole—an oval roughly three shaku by two shaku. From such a small hole, there was no way for a sturdy living human to descend except “one by one” down the rope ladder.

It was impossible to lower patients by placing them on a board or such. They couldn't carry the patients down either. Yet they could lower them by tying ropes around their necks. Though doing so would make the patients die sooner still. How were they to lower them? It became a riddle-like dilemma. Yet cholera granted no reprieve. The descent from the sailors' and stokers' quarters to the storage room was executed through the method of carrying them down.

From the warehouse to the forepeak, there was no way other than to "have them descend on their own." First, the corpse "voluntarily" plunged down fifteen feet. Next, the stoker—with eyes pleading for mercy as he scanned his surroundings and made one final attempt at resistance—plunged in "voluntarily."

“Namu Amida Butsu,” a sturdy someone seemed to say. “Help…,” the falling patient seemed to say. It felt that way.

The sailor was still holding on.

“I won’t go!” he shouted.

He shouted while vomiting, rolling about, his face smeared with filth.

“I’ll recover!” “Just let me stay in the living world while I’m alive!”

He clasped his hands and begged. —When did I ever do anything bad enough to deserve being kicked in by you all?— his eyes pleaded.

The lower-ranking sailors felt as though something lurked behind them. Moreover, they all uniformly felt as though something were urgently driving them onward. They grew drunk on a cocktail blending pure pity with pure indignation.

——We too—— They stamped down this thought with all their might—with stubborn shoes and wooden clogs. But no matter how many times they stamped it down, stamped it down, it kept rising up like heartburn. The sick sailor thrashed about. Even they—who devoured humans as if salting them—recoiled like virgins feigning horror.

They went up from the warehouse to the sailors’ and stokers’ quarters. “The forepeak ain’t no place for patients.” “Only the Captain gets to live in the forepeak.” They were tormented by mud-like groans rising from beneath their feet. And day by day, the number of patients grew.

The limited number of workers were driven to their deaths like a suicide squad facing machine guns. Seventeen workers, two officers, and two cooks "voluntarily" plunged into the forepeak.

Six senior officers, two sailors, and one stoker remained.

The Daisankintokimaru had contracted gout. The ship without workers began to wander across the oil-slicked sea like a bourgeois strolling on a balcony.

The First Engineer carried coal and burned it. The Captain swung the steering gear himself and steered the ship himself. Nevertheless, the Daisankintokimaru remained imperturbably still. She "voluntarily" drifted aimlessly. In Japan, there was an uproar. —Though it was only the shipping company and the navy they had enlisted— When she was finally discovered by a destroyer, inside the ship were the half-idiot, half-mad captain—of whom the shipping company president had said, "With this, there’s no reason for the ship to move"—mummy-like workers, and many rotted corpses.

――February 7, 1926――