Pathway to Japanese Literature

Such was the ship.

When sailing from Hokkaido toward Yokohama, the Kinkasan Lighthouse must inevitably appear on the starboard side. Third Kintoki Maru—a sturdy-sounding name—had passed by Kinkasan Lighthouse on the starboard side thirty minutes prior. The sea was in a middling state. It wasn’t exactly calm, nor was it raging violently.

Thirty minutes later, the Third Kintoki Maru’s helmsman saw a lighthouse to port. The compass was pointing southwest. Yet no island should have existed in such a place. The quartermaster informed the mate to the effect that something was amiss. The mate had been sleeping on the sofa on the bridge, cooled by the breeze, but got up and, “What’s wrong?” “A lighthouse is visible on the port side, but...” “Another hour wasted,” answered the Mate, then kicked the compass with all his might.

The compass spun around and pointed northeast. Thus did the Third Kintoki Maru occasionally zigzag like Senbonzakura’s military ranks—advancing and retreating. The compass was damaged. Moreover, she would sometimes enter dry dock. The sailors used clanging hammers to clean her grime-covered hull.

If they scrubbed too vigorously, holes would open in her hull. That’s how rotten her skin was.

But it was during this shipbuilding boom era—when all the "righteous nations" of the world had leagued together to defeat a single "unjust militaristic nation"—that she had risen up. She reinvigorated herself with capitalism’s alcohol and set sail. Because of this state of affairs, when passenger ships attempting to overtake from behind, steamers approaching from ahead, or sailboats navigating the Seto Inland Sea caught sight of the Third Kintoki Maru, they would shudder as though encountering a plague god.

She was a complete drunkard. Her compass was drunkenly bleary-eyed, and her steps staggered and reeled as she strutted imperiously across the world's thoroughfares. Sober folk couldn't keep up with a lousy drunk. Everyone would steer clear of her.

She brazenly plowed through the Seto Inland Sea—though to be fair, the Quartermasters strained themselves to the point of nervous exhaustion. Given that it took a full thirty minutes after turning the gear (rudder) for the steering to respond, the fact that she hadn’t run aground in the Seto Inland Sea could only be called miraculous— She loaded her holds full of coal at Miike Port. Her destination was Manila.

From the Captain and Chief Engineer down to the Boatswain, Chief Stoker, latrine cleaners, and coal haulers, she required these actors—just like any other ship—to make her final attempt at activity. Just as a wealthy, lecherous old woman requires an exceptionally robust young man, so too did the Third Kintoki Maru require exceptionally strong workers. And both of them could obtain it.

But for the Third Kintoki Maru—or for that lecherous old woman—while it may have been an indispensable necessity, why on earth did they have to be employed by her? Even if they were proletarians under capitalist rule, toiling like dried bonito flakes, weren’t they at least granted the right to choose their occupation? Wait! You’re trying to say, “That’s just surface stuff! It ain’t like that at all, sonny boy!” Understood.

“While you’re busy choosing a profession, the ‘opportunity’ slips away.” “While you’re ‘selecting,’ your comrades outside snatch it up.” “And while you’re busy choosing, you’ll end up gnawing through your own guts from hunger.” “You’re absolutely right.”

The reason I must forewarn you, dear readers, is this: no matter what becomes of the Third Kintoki Maru’s crew from here onward, I am terrified of being told, “First off, they shouldn’t have boarded such a ship to begin with! The sun shines and rice fills bowls everywhere—wasn’t there anywhere else to go?” When the water’s depth exceeded the ship’s height, all it took was opening a hole anywhere in her hull for her to sink at any time. In the case of warships, everyone knew they were constantly researching how to sink them or how to open holes in them.

Are warships built to float or to sink?! Are soldiers meant to kill or to be killed?! That is a matter arbitrarily decided between one nation and the nation on the opposing side.

This holds true between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat as well.

"The proletariat were 'dried bonito flakes'." That was what the Bourgeoisie believed.

The Proletariat declared, “We are human beings.” “We are not ‘dried bonito flakes’.” There was no law saying we had to be shaved into flakes, boiled for stock, consumed until nothing remained—so they resolved. Just as nations wage war to settle scores, so too would the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie fight theirs to conclusion. When that day dawned, it would become clear which side was right.

But the Third Kintoki Maru loaded her 3,030-ton hull full of coal.

She arrived in Manila. Like flies in a compartment, the ship laborers scurried about loading cargo. She loaded Manila’s products and set out on her return voyage toward Miike.

One of the sailors began suffering terribly soon after departure. Beneath the scorching iron deck that stopped just short of glowing red and the sun’s direct rays—as if a blast furnace lid had been thrown open right beside them—the others figured he had gotten “hit again.” The sailors were working under the deck’s scorching heat. It was precisely like being sandwiched between the scalding base of an iron kettle as large as the deck and a red-hot iron plate as vast as the sky—though what lay between them wasn’t quite＊＊＊＊＊＊. It was nothing but heat like a castella cake in a stove—heat that even Yōrisu couldn’t withstand.

And so, without any particular fuss, the sailors carried him into the sailors’ quarters. And without ceremony, they tossed him into his bedbug-infested nest. They couldn’t afford to tend to every little thing like that. Moreover, the patient spewed copiously from his mouth and anus, like a rubber ball plucked from water. When it leaked onto the deck, it immediately dried bone-dry and clung stubbornly like inferior dried seaweed. “Tch, he must’ve gone and drunk some Denki Bran.” “Dumb bastard!”

“Of course.” “No way you get drunk off that swill!” “Only by shovin’ rotgut down his gullet and roastin’ him top to bottom could that bastard get so soused!” “Slick move—tomorrow he’ll be ten times spryer’n us!”

“I don’t give a damn—just let me get one solid day’s sleep for once.” They wore wooden clogs, sat on wood scraps, placed dripping-wet cloths on their heads beneath their hats, and—keeping rhythm like uchiwa-daiko drummers—peeled away the Third Kintoki Maru’s thick, rotten outer skin. After scraping off the rust, a sailor walked along slathering a mix of coal tar and cement.

But for what purpose were they maintaining the deck? What was the point of maintaining the deck? Wasn’t repairing her sides far more vital for the Third Kintoki Maru? Whenever they raised anchor, didn’t her syphilitic nose threaten to spring leaks at any moment? Those holes were stuffed with cement like zinc ointment.

But was there not still something more crucial?

That meant repairing the drinking water tanks.

If she were to consider undertaking a long voyage, in the end, the sailors would have to drink saltwater.

Why? Because her bottom—between the tanks and seawater—was like a patient with arteriosclerosis, letting seawater seep into the drinking water supply. Thus over time, instead of the tank water diminishing even slightly, they had to drink saltwater. When sailors boarded the ship, there was a strict physical examination. But when she departed, there were none. Even if workers fell ill for the ship’s sake or how the mates were deployed, the ship bore no responsibility. That was all because “workers with such bodies lacked discipline.”

The workers were like the steam that drove the ship. They were used up and 'discarded' one after another.

Dark, sweltering, suffocating, stinking, crawling, filled with noxious gases and bacteria—such was the sailors’ quarters.

The patient tumbled from his bed. He was “drunk.” In his stomach, cholera bacteria—more “effective” than 100% alcohol—were rampaging.

He grew thinner by the moment, like a train at full speed receding into the distance. From bed to cupboard to uneven floor—he thrashed about everywhere. In his wake lay trails of paste-like filth expelled from his innards, like slime left by a crawling snail. He convulsed like a self-propelled fire-breathing Daruma doll until finally collapsing onto the triangular grating at the bow that led down to the storage hold. And fell still.

Dark, hot, and filthy—despite him falling “quiet,” the sailors’ quarters seethed with something, an invisible force rampaging uncontrollably. The Third Kintoki Maru, like a greedy widow moneylender amassing unjust profits, continued its journey while reaping hefty gains.

The sea was like viscous blue oil.

The wind did not blow—not even from hell. On the deck, the sailors were being tortured; in the engine room, the firemen were being tortured, each in their respective places. The patient in the sailors’ quarters occasionally opened his eyes. His eyes had completely lost the ability to see the outside. Whether he closed or opened them, with those eyes he saw his own mangled viscera. So to speak, his nerves had leapt outside his body and were peering into his own insides through his eyes.

He could no longer endure. Agony! It was no mere agony. “Soul” was trying to leap out.

To abandon his own life along with a child—it was a torment akin to difficult childbirth.

——Where... is this place...—— He stared dully.

I wanted to know where I was.

——Where the hell am I dying?!—— He gathered his final strength into his eyes. But the window of his soul did not open. The soul had reached just to the edge of his eyelashes. If eggs had nerves, he would have been an egg boiled alive. In the pot, he was a loach exhausted from thrashing. What could those whitened eyes see! ——Where... is this place...?——

Why on earth would a cholera patient have wanted to know such a thing? As a fellow crewman and sailor bound by comradeship, I had to tell him—no, them—where that was now. That was………………

But where that was would become clear in time.

He soon lay rotting alive on the floor grating.

Like a split eel, his heart still twitched feebly. It had been trying to keep going. His lungs were the same. Yet, just as there was no corner of the earth untouched by capitalism’s poison, his heart too had been weakened by the cholera bacteria.

Just as hundreds of thousands of people, harboring neither grudge nor fault, had slaughtered each other on battlefields— He too had been one such sacrificial victim, quietly disposed of in factories, villages, ships, and the like—eroded away where no eyes would notice.

——

The apprentice sailor, who was on the verge of becoming a full-fledged sailor, now reached the time when he needed to start preparing dinner.

And so, he entered the sailors’ quarters to prepare dinner, returning from the “praiseworthy work” he had been doing alongside the sailors to his apprentice duties. Rushing suddenly from the glaring light into the ship’s cabin—resembling a basement prison cell—he stomped toward the back, trusting to habit, to retrieve the dish box.

The dish box was inside a shelf built over the floor grating.

He tripped over a rope.

“Damn it! Who the hell carelessly tossed this damn rope here?!”

He stepped onto the rope while grumbling to himself. The rope—the coiled rope—… It didn’t seem like a rope at all. “What the…?!” The apprentice sailor stepped on it once more to check.

He jumped down.

Bending his torso at a right angle and pricking up his ears, he sought the “limp rope” in the darkness. The apprentice saw his comrade—like a rotten rope. “Cut it out! Quit tryin’ to scare me! What’s wrong with you?”

The rope was rotting.

“Hey, wake up! You’ll get yourself trampled. What kinda guy crawls into a place like this even if it’s boiling? Hey!”

As he said this, he shook the rope. But he did not move, like a sack of meal. The apprentice placed his hand on the sick man’s forehead.

The corpse was already beginning to grow cold.

The apprentice suddenly dashed off.

——Could it be I trampled him to death? I did stomp down on him once! With both feet—thud. ——

He was seized by an uncanny dread as if trapped in a nightmare—feeling pursued—as he rushed to where the Boatswain stood on deck. “It’s no use! Boatswain! That guy’s dead!” He said this, turning as pale as a convict fresh out of prison.

“What?!” “Dead?” “Which bastard’s dead?”

“This ain’t no joke! Boatswain! Yasuda’s dead!” “If he’s dead enough to make me look drunk, leave him be! Or if you’re so worried, go dump water on his head!”

“Boatswain! Boatswain!” “Maybe so, but just go take a look for me!” “He’s definitely dead!” “And it’s already starting to stink!” “You idiot!” “If he’s drunk and pukes, ’course it’s gonna stink.” “If he’d died and started stinking in two or three hours, then sake’d take a whole day to brew.” “Don’t mess around.” “Don’t mess around, you capitalist lackey!”

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 for your heartless talk—strut around callin’ yourself ‘Boatswain’ this and ‘Boatswain’ that, actin’ all high and mighty! A Boatswain like that ain’t no real Boatswain! You bastard—go look already! Go look!”

The apprentice became enraged like a six-foot-tall Niō statue. “You serious?” “I’m dead serious!” The sailors, along with the Boatswain, left their clanging hammers behind and rushed out onto the deck.

“What?! Those bastards…” The First Engineer, who was pacing the bridge, said to the Quartermaster.

“They’ve all up and left together, haven’t they?”

The Quartermaster kicked the compass violently while replying, “Dunno,” he answered flatly. “You lot rake in profits hand over fist while squeezing us dry—there’ll be a strike soon enough.” “Quit your whining—” he seethed inwardly. “This makes no damn sense,” he snapped.

The First Engineer called for the relief Quartermaster in the chartroom. “Hey!” When the relief Quartermaster peered out from the gangway, the First Engineer immediately barked. “Go tell Boatswain they ain’t allowed topside during work hours.”

“Aye.”

As he began to descend, the First Engineer added sharply, as if dousing him with words: “And go see what those bastards are up to. Make sure you get a good look before reporting.”

“Right.”

He answered while already descending the salon deck.

The First Engineer began pacing back and forth across the bridge.

Unlike the sailors’ quarters, the air on the bridge wasn’t sticky like candy. There was only the wind generated by the ship’s speed. There, the air was crisp.

Moreover, there offered a wide field of view where one could occasionally see ships and glimpse islands.

How stunning those South Seas islands must have been, drifting on the ocean like tufts of cotton and unopened buds. They were inhabited by islanders living under harsh exploitation, yet appeared paradisiacal to the eye. The sailors always cherished those islands like lovers. But such islands existed only where ships never called. For whenever a vessel arrived, no matter the island, it exposed how capitalism had drained its lifeblood.

Islands with no more than a single lighthouse, islands where not a single soul remained save the lighthouse keeper—such islands floated in great numbers across the sea. Those islands, like nights aglow with festival lanterns, turned the stokers into poets.

Now, the Third Kintoki Maru was lurching along while gazing at those islands.

The Quartermaster entered omote. He had imagined the noisy “omote.” Inside omote (the sailors’ quarters), however, was quiet. After letting his eyes adjust to the darkness for a while, he saw the scene laid out there.

On the lid of the chain locker (anchor room), Yasuda lay on his back. Within three or four hours, he had withered like boiled greens, his bulk diminished, gone limp and flaccid. The sailors’ quarters were suffocating，its usual shipboard stench now mingled with another odor—Yasuda’s.

The sailors stood silently around the corpse. And now and then, something was whispered from ear to ear.

The Quartermaster brought his mouth to Boatswain’s ear. “Did he die?” “Looks like he’s dead.” “What happened?” “He must’ve really knocked it back.” “Hmm.” “…………” “So when’s the burial at sea?” “I’ll go ask the First Engineer once.” “The booze must’ve done him in.”

“Hmm, can’t quite figure it out.” “Hope it ain’t some bad sickness…”

It was decided he would be buried at sea tomorrow. Yasuda was laid on his bed by the sailors. He was as pallid as soybean lees. His face in death looked peaceful. And it seemed to say: "No one will exploit me anymore." It wasn’t that he had grown weary of being exploited any longer—but on that night when Yasuda’s corpse still hadn’t slipped into the sea, a sailor and a stoker were pronounced "drunk again."

The Third Kintoki Maru was enveloped in terror as though it were sinking.

It had become clear: this was cholera.

The Captain and First Engineer came to the sailors’ quarters and saw patients declared “drunk and rambling.”

The two officers returned to the stern, and Boatswain and Number One were summoned. They went.

The Captain was not in his cabin, where he should have been haughtily ensconced, but on the saloon deck.

No sooner had Boatswain and Number One appeared on the saloon deck than he bellowed from afar.

“Open the forepeak’s hatch (the deck’s air chamber—the ship’s so-called buoyancy bladder). “And put the dead and the sick inside.” “It’s cholera!” “And then—you’ll throw the patients’ meals in through the hatch.” “And then—those on deck are not to assemble together from today onward.” “And then—if there’s even one person vomiting or shitting themselves, you throw them all into the forepeak.” “And then—” “Uh… and then—ah, that’ll do.”

The Captain, to kill the germs—or so he reasoned—issued orders while sucking furiously on an expensive Manila cigar, the kind he’d purchased exclusively there, until resin oozed from its tip.

Boatswain and Number One withdrew.

The forepeak was located one level below the warehouse beneath the stokers’ quarters.

Inside, beams, pillars, and keels cluttered the space. There, like the tapered tips of Indian shoes, the structure narrowed to a pointed end that curled upward. Because the hatch had sealed the air tight, it had stagnated unchanged from years past. And it had putrefied like a washbasin left in an abandoned house.

That area lay submerged beneath the sea, perpetually damp. Particularly aboard the Third Kintoki Maru, seawater had seeped through its corroded plates. Compared to dwelling among celestial constellations, this space appeared even less hospitable to human life. There too did shipworms scuttle with their eerie clicking sounds. Access required lowering a rope ladder through the hatch - no other means existed. The ladder needed fifteen or sixteen feet of length to touch bottom. Even when receiving patients and corpses hereafter, air could only infiltrate through the hatch's elliptical opening - three shaku by two shaku at most - leaving no alternative.

From such a small opening, there was no way but for a “single” able-bodied person to clamber down using the rope ladder.

Placing patients on a plank or something and lowering them down was impossible. They couldn’t carry the patients down on their backs. However, they could tie ropes around their necks and lower them. But doing this meant the patients would die sooner.

How were they supposed to lower them? It was like a conundrum.

But cholera showed no mercy. The descent from the stokers’ quarters to the warehouse was carried out by carrying them down on their backs.

From the warehouse to the forepeak, there was no method other than “having them descend on their own.”

Fifteen feet—first, the corpse “on its own” jumped down. Next, the stoker—with eyes begging for mercy, glancing frantically around him while attempting one final act of defiance—plunged in “on his own.” “Namu Amida Butsu,” a sturdy someone seemed to say. “Help—” the falling patient seemed to say. That’s how it felt.

The sailor was still holding on. “I won’t do it!” he shouted. He shouted while vomiting, thrashing about, his face smeared with filth. “I’ll recover!” “Just let me stay in the world above while I’m still alive.” He pleaded, clasping his hands together.

“What bad thing did I ever do that you’d kick me down like this?” his eyes pleaded. The lower-ranking seamen felt as if something were behind their backs. Moreover, they all uniformly felt as if something were frantically driving them onward. They were drunk on a cocktail of pure pity and pure fury. --We too-- They stomped on this thought with all their might, using their stubborn shoes and wooden clogs. But no matter how hard they stomped, no matter how they crushed it, it kept welling up like bile.

The ailing sailor writhed in agony. Even they, who devoured humans like salt-cured meat, recoiled like virgins exaggerating their horror.

They ascended from the warehouse to the stokers’ quarters.

“The peak ain’t no place for sick men.” “The peak’s only for the Captain to live in!”

They were tormented by mud-like groans welling up from beneath their feet. And day by day, the patients multiplied.

The not-so-numerous workers were driven to their deaths like suicide squads facing machine guns. Seventeen workers, two officers, and two cooks “voluntarily” jumped into the forepeak. Six senior officers, two sailors, and one stoker remained. The Third Kintoki Maru had contracted gout. The ship, now devoid of workers, began to drift idly across the greasy sea like a bourgeois strolling along a promenade deck. The Chief Engineer carried coal and burned it.

The Captain himself steered the helm and operated the engine. Nevertheless, the Third Kintoki Maru remained motionless, utterly composed. She drifted aimlessly "of her own accord."

A great uproar occurred in Japan. —Though it was only the shipping company and the navy they had enlisted— When she was finally discovered by a destroyer, inside the ship there remained a half-fool, half-madman of a captain—the one whom the shipping company president had declared “With this, there’s no reason she should move”—alongside mummy-like workers and a multitude of rotted corpses.

―1926, 2, 7―