Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

With his knapsack slung over his shoulder, Yūkichi finally returned near his village as dusk fell.
To call it a village stretched the definition—houses stood scattered here and there, one in this spot and another in that, lacking the clustered cohesion of inland settlements.
Moreover, most dwellings resembled makeshift huts.
They were structures cobbled together from felled trees in the vicinity, roughly hewn into planks with logs serving as pillars, all haphazardly assembled.
Yūkichi too had been living in such a dwelling.

"Two years had already passed."

Yūkichi would often dwell on such thoughts.
Back when he had been teaching in a coastal village, life had still held some semblance of comfort.

"After all, it was just an ambition buried in the countryside. Living among innocent children was what suited me." He consoled himself with this thought. The wife—whom her brothers from her home province had sent out of concern—had joined him before he crossed the sea to reach this land; he had wandered from place to place with her in tow. Even before arriving at the coastal village, he had taught at no fewer than four elementary schools. In one mountain region, he had lived alone and carefree, teaching fifteen or sixteen pupils. That was a place where one could eat nothing but millet cakes, millet rice, potatoes, buckwheat, beans, and the like. Yūkichi still could not help but look back and think about the life there.

"Why did I ever leave that place? Why hadn’t I stayed there? There was no place as good as that. There was no place as well-suited to me as that…… After all, was I lonely? Did I want to get out into the world?" Whenever he voiced such thoughts aloud, he regretted having left that place.

Turning to his wife, he said: "Leaving that place is your responsibility too. You wanted to leave too, after all." At times Yūkichi would say such things, but being someone who rarely made demands on his wife, he had no intention of engaging with her too deeply. Moreover, his wife maintained her own independent domain and constantly oppressed Yūkichi through both physical and material means.

“What on earth are you thinking about so hard?”

When she said such things, she would scold Yūkichi as he sat under the dim window—pallid-faced with frayed nerves—scribbling something in his notebook with a pencil.

Yūkichi walked from village to village for three days, his knapsack slung over his shoulder.
He even ventured out to places twenty to thirty ri from his own village.
Inside the knapsack was a great quantity of medicine.
Cold remedies, stomach medicines, children’s tonics, iodoform, quick-acting medicated papers—all lay jumbled together in a chaotic mess.
Yūkichi had gone to the station town located about five ri from his own village, had a doctor he was acquainted with prepare the prescriptions, and managed to get them supplied as cheaply as possible from a small pharmaceutical company.

“Would you care for some medicine?”

Having said this, he entered the scattered houses in the wasteland.
To go from one house to the next, there were times when he had to cross hills thick with pampas grass and dwarf bamboo, and other times when he had to detour around swampy areas filled with murky, stagnant water.
“Medicine seller, eh… Today’s fine, though.”
A farmer who had migrated from somewhere around Ise spoke in this manner.
“Well now, rest a spell... I don’t need medicine, but you must be tired from coming all this way,” said some old women who would invite him to sit by the hearth.
When passing through areas where he had to traverse three ri of desolate mountain paths from village to village, Yūkichi’s courage faltered more than once.
Self-reliance—living entirely by my own efforts is the only way.
If they won’t employ me at the elementary school, then I’ll just have to work and feed myself.
*Socialist*! What a fine name they’ve given me.
Am I a *Socialist*?
When it came to ideology, there might indeed be some such leanings.
In those songs I published in the country’s newspapers, I primarily wrote about such things—that is a fact.
Yet by merely singing of facts, one could see the ignorance of those officials who branded me a *Socialist*.

"I am an artist."
"No matter how much I explained I wasn’t a *Socialist*, they never understood."
As Yūkichi thought these things, the scene of those many people being executed rose vividly before his eyes.
Every time he recalled it, his body would quiver uncontrollably.
That was a scene he had believed could never occur in Japan or anywhere like it.
Foreign countries—it was a gruesome spectacle he had believed could only exist in places like Russia.
At that moment, the hand holding the newspaper trembled violently.
There lay written the name of a friend he knew.
That friend was a man he had grown close to during his Tokyo years; they would often visit each other and exchange fervent ideologies.
Yet even then, Yūkichi had never abandoned art.
He did acknowledge *Socialist*, but only as an artistic *Socialist*.
Yūkichi was soon summoned by the county educational inspector and called in by the police.
Suspension—his sole means of livelihood thus was permanently stripped from him.

At that time, his wife was pregnant with their daughter.
“Are you really such a thing?”
“Then I’ll leave right now.”
“I’m scared—scared of dying.”
Even his wife said this and began searching Yūkichi’s body.
“If that’s not the case… then you should be able to give a proper account of yourself…”
“Even those in power wouldn’t do something so unreasonable…” she said.
Yūkichi recalled how he had spent one bitterly cold winter trembling in a shack-like house by the coast and shuddered.
There, detectives would sometimes come to check on him.
There were times when one sat silently for an hour.
Each time, Yūkichi offered explanations that proved utterly useless.
“But coming here like this—it’s our duty,” said the detective with a laugh.
Yūkichi showed every letter from his friend and painstakingly interpreted the meaning behind songs published in provincial newspapers—all to no avail.
Through that winter he scraped by on meager savings.
Yet ceaselessly resurrecting within him remained the tragic vision of his young friend—ascended to the guillotine and left utterly lifeless.

There was a compassionate doctor who took pity on Yūkichi’s circumstances and suggested he peddle medicine, so he managed to secure a means of livelihood.
The following year, throughout one summer, he walked from place to place.
Fortunately, that year proved bountiful, and the medicine sold better than anticipated.
"I’ll become a farmer.
That’s the best path.
Cultivate my own land and feed myself.
Let them call me a Socialist or whatever—I won’t care."
Thus Yūkichi resolved time and again.
Yet each time he hesitated, considering his physique ill-suited for wielding a plow.
His frame was slight, gaunt, and weak.
"If only I had a body like my wife’s——."
More than once had he thought this while eyeing her sturdier build.

As he walked along the mountain path,

"I can do it! I can do it—even if they make me a tenant farmer! I can make it work! I can definitely do it!"

Having suddenly shouted like this, he sat down on the roadside grass, pulled a scrap of paper and pencil from the knapsack slung over his shoulder, and hurriedly began writing numbers and calculating.
"That’s right—this ten yen here, twenty there, five over here. It’ll work! If I petition them to release just one plot for cultivation—let me work that land—it’ll take two years at most."
Then I won’t have to trudge these endless roads anymore.
Rich soil will give us all we need to live.
Yes—yes—I’ll start as soon as I get back.
No reason to cower before officials.
"Self-reliance!"
As if struck by revolutionary inspiration, Yūkichi slapped his knee and sprang up.
The vista stretched wide in all directions.
Beech woods and birch stands marched across distant hills.
No settlers had yet reached this area—only scrubland and bamboo grass through which snaked a single thread of path, devoid of farmers.
Summer sunlight bathed his grassy seat in warm brightness.

“That’s right, that’s right.”
“That’s the only way!”

He screamed again.
And as if he had noticed something new once again, he swiftly moved the pencil across the paper and began calculating.

Not limited to such moments，Yūkichi was fond of lying down on the grass to rest.
Above，there was nothing but sky and sunlight.
No matter how loudly he shouted，no one said a word.
There were no detectives stalking his every move，nor a strong-willed wife berating him.
The child’s cries that constantly grated on his nerves were also absent.
Whatever he did was his own business.
Only there did he feel he could breathe freely.
“The sky，the sun，the birds… What a free and vast world this is!”
Having muttered this to himself，he would press both hands against the back of his head as if crushed by nature’s immensity，lie there like a corpse，and remain sprawled across the grassland for an hour or two.

“Hey!”

He would raise such loud shouts and wave his hands like a madman.

As he walked along the long mountain path, Yūkichi often found himself thinking of the past.
For him, walking alone along the mountain path, these thoughts could well be called his sole companion.
Countless thoughts surged up in his head, gathering and scattering.

The year he had lived in Tokyo—that life resurrected within him with a force that always surged up first.
With trembling nerves, he stood at the entrance of a certain writer’s house.
There, he saw various people.
He saw novelists and poets who were renowned in the literary world of that time.
He also encountered groups of beautiful young women aspiring to literature.
Love, ambition, wealth—he seemed to shrink and tremble amidst such things.
The writer he admired lived on the outskirts of Tokyo, in a sweltering study lined with corrugated iron, where he earnestly wielded his brush as he attempted a grand work.
Yūkichi saw vividly on that mountain path the man whose feelings and hopes, imagined back in the countryside, had melted away like ice all too quickly.
He who had spent a year there to no avail and was constantly restless with frayed nerves; he who was tormented by his inability to put his ideas down on paper; he who tossed and turned in longing for the phantom of a beautiful woman; he who cradled a head perpetually dazzled by stimuli as intense as glittering sunlight; he with his pale, long-haired face agonizing over ill-metered poems; he who quarreled with a vulgar, corpulent housemaid, struck her head in anger, and was met with her fury; he who returned home startled by the illusion that telegraph poles moved like humans; he who lay awake all night envious of his hometown friends’ school lives—such were the companions that always accompanied Yūkichi as he walked alone.
After returning from Tokyo, he would sometimes recall how, in a fit of anger and self-destruction, he had attempted to set fire to a house in his hometown, been deemed a madman, and been sent away to a remote countryside.
"Why is it like this?"
"Why am I so stupid?"
He had often thought this way before—frowning and hitting his head or doing similar things—and even now he remained constantly preoccupied with his mind.
As he walked, he occasionally tapped his own head with a rhythmic knock.

“Such splendid ideas I have—and yet...”
Even now, when these thoughts occasionally surfaced, Yūkichi felt it pitiful that he was growing old in this remote hinterland.
“While everyone else manages to build bright, peaceful lives and homes for themselves, why does only my existence persist in this dark, wretched, suffocating routine?”
When he pondered thus, the path he had traversed appeared ever more vividly as a sequence of panels painted with somber hues.
There in the final frame sat his corpulent wife, a daughter whose disproportionately large head mirrored his own features, and his pallid self—all battling cold and hunger within a single gloomy room.

Gradually, he became acquainted with the people in the hamlets he visited, and later came to be called things like “Medicine Seller! Medicine Seller!” There were even households that treated him to lunch for free. “That medicine you gave me worked wonders—look how it’s healed up,” a farmer would say while showing his injured leg. Yūkichi saw people everywhere who had journeyed from distant lands to this barren wilderness. There were places where entire villages spoke with the same thick country accents. Everyone worked with desperate vigor. “Still, we mean to return home within our lifetimes,” people would declare. “It’s freezing here—who’d want to live out their days in such a place? Better save up money, go back home, buy decent fields, and take it easy in our old age,” others muttered. Then there were those who cleared patches of wasteland just enough to sell to newcomers before moving closer to towns with proper roads. From forests and thickets alike, Yūkichi watched smoke from burning felled trees climb high into the sky.

When he filled the knapsack with medicine, it weighed about seven and a half kilograms.
It gradually became lighter with each passing day.
Yūkichi walked, finding pleasure in that.

In any case, if he could sell that much, he had resolved to always turn back toward home.
However, he never knew whether it would sell out after ten miles or twenty.
On one occasion, he had gone nearly thirty miles, yet still without selling out, crossed over mountains to reach the coast, and only then managed to return home.
In villages without inns, he had to plead to finally secure lodging.

2

One night, Yūkichi arrived at a dilapidated small station and stayed there.
It was a place connecting one highway to another, having become a post station where travelers changed horses.
Along the wide road stood twelve or thirteen houses.
There were also brightly lit restaurants resonating with shamisen music.
Early October already had the climate of inland regions' early winter, with forest leaves turning yellow and scattering haphazardly.

As he was about to pass by the inn's shop, he suddenly noticed a tattered and well-thumbed short story collection titled *Gorky Collection* placed on the desk there.
Yūkichi picked it up and examined it.
Strangely, a yearning for art surged up within him like a revived force.
There had been two or three times before when, at post stations and such, he had discovered works by his worshipped writer on scraps of old newspapers and felt nostalgic for Tokyo—but never had he experienced such intense, fervent longing as now.
Yūkichi was flipping through the pages when,

“Whose is this?”

The innkeeper turned around to look,

“Ain’t no ‘whose’ about it.”
“A guest left this story collection behind the other day.”

“I’ll just borrow this for a while.”

“Why, sure ’nuff…”

That night, he did not let go of the short story collection all night long.
He read before dinner, read before bed, and even read after getting under the futon.
There, he saw travelers, beggars, robbers—the sorts he encountered daily.
Foolish farmers, plain country girls, itinerant peddlers—these were all people he constantly saw with his eyes or heard about in talk.
The natural settings forming the backdrop of the crops were strikingly similar too.
Indeed, they were surrounded by birch groves, poplars, white birches and such.
The sky stretched vast, and the stars twinkled brilliantly.

"They’re exactly alike, exactly alike—there are plenty of people like this."

While reading, Yūkichi repeated this phrase countless times.

“This is how I should write it!”

Having said such things, he excitedly clapped his knee. He mentally reviewed the people he had met.

"That one too! That one’s perfect! Even that guy could work!" Having said this, he clapped his knee again.

"That’s it, that’s it!"

Having said this, he plunged back into deep reading. Within two or three hours, he had completely read through it and even reread the parts he liked. "I must try this!" He muttered to himself as if whispering.

The tinkling sound of a late-arriving traveler’s horse bell softly echoed beneath the window.
Yūkichi opened the window and looked out.
The vast sky was ablaze with stars shining brilliantly.

3

After establishing solid calculations, he purchased fields that had been partially cultivated from someone at a low price, enlisted day laborers, and began developing the land.
Though he himself continued venturing far as a medicine peddler, Yūkichi nevertheless resolved to become a farmer.
He even came to think there was no other path forward besides this one.
Returning from his travels, seeing his own wasteland being gradually cultivated was a pleasure.
However, within less than half a year, Yūkichi gradually discovered that the numbers he had firmly believed were based on solid calculations were not turning out as expected.
To fully cultivate the wasteland stipulated for one year still required a great deal of money and effort.
While there existed a multitude of unexpected obstacles in battling nature, the day laborers slacked off and idled about on one pretext or another.
On the land that had been cultivated and rented out, the tenant farmers sowed rapeseed and such, but even that failed to yield a sufficient harvest.
The money he earned from medicine was gradually siphoned into the land.
Yūkichi would often lower his overgrown, pale face onto the notebook where he had written numbers in pencil and sit there deep in thought with a troubled air.

However, even if the calculations didn’t add up—so long as there was adequate weather—it seemed his plan would gradually succeed.
“Ah, come on—there’s no need to worry so much.”
“In three years’ time, things’ll take shape well enough.”
The elderly local farmer told him this.
However, unfortunately, in the second year, the weather was not favorable.
The rapeseed, the legumes, even the millet—all utterly failed.
The farmers ate potatoes and corn, letting some fall as they did.
The very year they vowed—“This time for sure, this time!”—to recover from last year’s crop failure brought weather even harsher than before.
There were almost no instances of scorching sunlight—one could say none at all.
A chill reminiscent of late autumn dominated what should have been the height of summer—the most critical season for crops.
Here, even five days—no, a week—of scorching sunlight spreading across the land had been desperately needed.
In this land, if only the crops received strong sunlight, they would grow three or four feet in just a day or two.
And so, the crops all ended without maturing.
Not a single proper ear formed on the millet either.
Even the potatoes failed to fully develop.
Beans, wheat, millet, buckwheat—all stunted and shriveled, unable to bear fruit before autumn’s frost arrived early.
The cry of crop failure filled every corner.
Prices suddenly rose.
Saying they couldn’t handle it anymore, those who sold off their half-cultivated land and left for other regions became frequent.
To Yūkichi, who was traveling around and seeing various places, the severity of the disaster appeared all the more clearly to his eyes.

In some villages, Yūkichi saw that they had fallen into a devastating state with virtually no harvest at all.
The village along the hill was so silent that there was scarcely a house with smoke rising.
He rarely encountered the groups of packhorses that would usually cross mountains and fields with lively bell sounds on their way to the station.
Every village was utterly silent.

Yūkichi received a tremendous blow.
While the farming venture was of course in such a state, what troubled him even more was that his medicine had abruptly stopped selling.
Though there were actually more sick people than usual, no household bought any medicine.
Most made do with prepackaged medicines from Toyama.

“Medicine Seller… I feel sorry for you, but… with this crop failure, we can’t even buy medicine to take.”

Yūkichi was told this everywhere he went.

Yūkichi shouldered his knapsack and returned from a distant journey.

“No good. No good.”

Having said this, he entered his small house.
There was only a single six-mat room with a small two-mat space in the back.
The end of October was already cold.
Snow had already fallen two or three times.
In the tin stove, firewood smoldered while smoke filled every corner of the dim room.
The wife had gone to the back area but came this way upon hearing his voice.
On her back she carried their malnourished daughter.

“How did it go?”

“No good. No good.”

“Even a little, though…”

“No good. No good. Completely no good.”
Yūkichi made a nervous, gloomy expression and said, “There’s not a single person buying medicine.”

“This is bad...”

“Oh, come inside,” the wife said. “They came from over there while we were away. They said they’d do whatever they could to help…”
“I see.”

With that, Yūkichi removed his straw sandals and went inside.
He was hungry, but he couldn't bring himself to eat.
The millet-and-barley gruel—the fact that they didn’t even have the ingredients for it from this year into the next was what gripped Yūkichi’s chest first.
Yūkichi looked at the daughter—malnourished and shriveled, not even smiling as she clung to her mother’s back—with a sense of displeasure.

An old sooty chest of drawers, a tin-plated cheap hibachi, a half-broken charcoal scoop, and such were placed there.
The portrait of Tolstoy pasted on the wall looked blackened with soot.
Yūkichi sat down in front of the stove, clasped his hands behind his head, and imagined the cold winter that would soon arrive.
Snow, snow, snow—the terrifying snow was bearing down right before his eyes.
“I can’t go on like this.”
Yūkichi felt like he could neither sit still nor stand still.

“What about dinner?”

“I’ll eat now…”

Having said this，Yūkichi frantically shoveled down two or three bowls of warm food from the meal tray．With that，he regained some vigor．“Well…I’ll think．” Thinking this，he dragged out the futon and buried his face in its old，dirty collar，but being exhausted，he soon fell soundly asleep．

Yūkichi spent a day or two completely holed up in thought．He thought it would be a shame to abandon his farming venture entirely，but when he considered that crop failures might continue every year from now on，anxieties arose one after another．Moreover，turning the land he owned into something usable still required no small amount of money．Even now he was struggling with borrowed funds；there was no way he could manage to raise even more．Though he had some savings，those had to be kept reserved for emergencies．Yūkichi sighed．

One day, as if struck by some idea, he suddenly roused himself and set out for a coastal village; yet when he returned, his face was once again haggard and agitated.
He saw that from the people of the village where he lived, he could obtain nothing at all.

“Anyway, I can’t go on like this.
If we keep dawdling like this, the three of us will end up starving to death in the snow.”

When he thought this,Yūkichi felt a restlessness that left him unable to sit still or stand still.Moreover,the authorities' policy toward Socialists that he had learned of in the coastal village made his blood run cold with terror.A detective was always following behind him,knowing every thought in his mind.When he thought this,Yūkichi was terrified beyond measure.He never knew a moment's peace of mind.I hadn't done anything wrong,yet my past actions had already become a great crime,and I even suspected detectives or police officers might suddenly come to take me away.

He regarded the lone police officer in the village as a fearsome presence and would always detour around the police box when passing by.

It suddenly came to him.
He slapped his knee as usual.
With a brightened face, he exclaimed inwardly:
"That’s it.
That’s it—I’ll do that.
I’ll take that thing and go to Tokyo.
That thing’s certain.
It will definitely sell.
Everyone needs such a handy thing…"
He recalled how during his time in the coastal village he’d desperately worked to invent a special kind of calendar.
It could accurately calculate the positions of the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions and Seven Luminaries for any date between a thousand years past and a thousand years future through numerical combinations.
He’d devised it from his peculiar mathematical mind.
He’d sent it to a doctor of physics from his hometown and earned praise.
Indeed Yūkichi still kept that doctor’s letter.
"That’s it—this settles it.
Calendars are cheap necessities—they’ll sell endlessly.
If I go to Tokyo and have it printed cheaply, costs will stay low.
If I price each sheet at twenty or thirty sen they’ll absolutely sell.
That’s it."

"I've hit upon a good idea."
Thinking this, he pulled out the calendar manuscript from the bottom of his knapsack and once again read through Dr. Yoshida’s letter.
"The method for deriving the numbers of the Seven Luminaries is indeed your new research—"
This was written.
Yūkichi wondered why he had never used the talent he possessed until now.
Boundless courage surged through his entire body.
God!
God has saved me!
He even thought this way and leaped for joy.

Yūkichi thought that even the oppression he faced as a Socialist could be dealt with once he went to Tokyo.
“Tokyo is vast.
If I just hide myself away, they’ll never find me.
Even police officers or detectives won’t go around searching so diligently.
Moreover, Tokyo had plenty of substitute elementary schools.
Finding a teaching position wouldn’t be difficult if he looked.
That’s it.
That’s it.
There’s no need to stay mired here and end up starving to death in the snow.
That’s the one!”
Yūkichi thought about telling his wife immediately but reconsidered that it would be better to wait until everything was fully decided, keeping the pleasant plan to himself.
Yūkichi searched through the closet for thick cardboard and spent that day revising the incomplete manuscript.
Yūkichi painstakingly crafted it by spinning round and round a circular-cut cardboard piece to align with numbers on another sheet.
Everything went exactly as he had planned.
He tried writing out the instructions in bullet points.

“Great, great. It’s done.”

He said with a delighted expression.

“What should I name it?”
Then he thought:
Ten Thousand Generations Calendar—too rigid, he decided.
New-Style Ten Thousand Eras Calendar, Chronological Calendar—these he also considered.
Yet none satisfied him.
He tried more approachable names: Longevity Calendar, Hundred-Year Calendar.
Still no name matched his vision.

Yūkichi spent three days—four—pondering this.
Suddenly: "Tokoyo" characters surfaced.
Tokoyogoyomi—Good! Perfect! He rapped the tray excitedly.
Yamada-style Tokoyogoyomi—testing it aloud—"No, drop 'style'."
Yamada Tokoyogoyomi—yes! This worked!
Proudly, he inscribed it Gothic-style atop the manuscript.
Above this, he added: Certified by Dr. Yoshida Takuuji, Professor of Physics.

“This is it, this is it.”

Yūkichi, feeling as though he had completed some grand undertaking, bounded about the cramped room in exhilaration.

4

Preparations for leaving the capital proved more time-consuming than anticipated. Wanting to dispose of the land to raise as much money as possible, he went to consult with the lenders he had borrowed from. He also visited the doctor he was acquainted with.

Even when the end of November arrived, the disposal of the land still hadn’t been fully completed.
Yūkichi grew increasingly restless.
“Calendars sell best from December through New Year’s.”
“If I keep dawdling and lose time, it’ll be disastrous.”
Having thought this way, he ultimately had to part with the land cheaply.
“It doesn’t matter. With the savings, we can manage through January and February once we get to Tokyo.”
“Even if it’s a bit cheaper, it’s better to go sooner.”
Yūkichi pressed his seal on the land sale contract, thinking this way.

Naturally, Yūkichi's wife was also pleased with the plan to go to Tokyo.
For the woman who did not yet know Tokyo, the city seemed like a place where anything was possible.
If her husband's words were indeed true, she couldn't imagine how much better it would be than living in this cold wasteland.
She thought it would be good enough if they could just avoid the suspicion of being Socialists that she was constantly worried about.
It could even be considered that, for the first time, their luck was beginning to turn.
Because she had known her husband for many years, there were times when she couldn't make sense of what he was saying.
She couldn't make sense of whether such a calendar would sell or not.
Though not entirely free from these anxieties, the wife thought that enduring any hardship to go to Tokyo was still preferable to trembling and starving in the snow.

“I don’t mind any hardship, but if you don’t get your act together, there’s nothing to be done at all.”

Thus, the wife said to Yūkichi.

5

The various scenes from the small coastal station to the bustling grandeur of Ueno Station appeared before Yūkichi’s wife’s eyes like a continuous scroll of paintings.
Snow, snow, snow—one moment she saw a train station in a vast desolate field where wherever one looked there was nothing but snow; the next moment she saw a large town with countless smokestacks belching thick, dreadful black soot that saturated the air.
At the station where they transferred from one line to another, the two of them trembled from the cold as they ate chilled rice balls they had brought from home.
Their daughter cried and cried, refusing to be soothed no matter what they did, so she once took her down from her back and tried nursing her, but this only made the child arch back and burst into even fiercer wails as if set ablaze.

“You—hold her for a bit.”

Having said this, the husband made a grim face, silently held her, and walked around shaking her here and there.
It was a dark, dark platform.
The train, glowing like a giant eye and emitting a thunderous rumble, entered the station.

Yūkichi's wife conjured before her eyes the third-class compartment teeming with passengers.
Carrying bulky luggage, they entered but found every seat occupied.
Though the wife somehow wedged herself into a space to sit, Yūkichi had to set down their large bags and lean against the toilet door.
The toilet door kept swinging open and shut behind him.
At last, the husband—weary from standing beyond endurance—lowered himself onto the piled luggage.

Scenes of large towns buried in snow also came into view. Sushi, bento, Masamune, matches, tobacco—the long, drawn-out calls of vendors still seemed to linger in her ears. When they arrived at a town near the sea, got off the train, and ate breakfast at a small inn beside the station, she was so exhausted that she wished she could sleep for even an hour or two before moving on, thought the wife. That place was filled with memories for both Yūkichi and his wife. The year after they married, the two had crossed the sea from the mountains and come there. They had stayed there for about a week. The wife found herself thinking of things like, “Those days were happy.”

As if being driven out, the figures of two people running toward the pier kept appearing before her eyes.
The white-painted steamship bound for the opposite shore stood out distinctly against the jade-green sea.
That morning was unseasonably clear.
The morning sun blazed brilliantly across the water, its light shattering into dazzling fragments on the waves.

In the cold, filthy confines of the ship’s cabin, people sat or lay like beasts.
A foul stench assailed them from nowhere in particular.
The wife saw herself drowning in unbearable drowsiness.
“I’m heading up to the deck.”
Hearing Yūkichi declare this and leave, she nursed her daughter while folding her legs shrimp-like among the crowd, then fell sound asleep—everything forgotten.

At the station where they had disembarked from the ship, she saw a train bound for their hometown now preparing to depart, smoke billowing from its stack.
“We can’t afford to stop by our hometown.”
“We don’t have time for that.”
“Even without that, we’re already late.”
“It’s already December!”
Having said this, they had resolved to pass through without stopping, but now that they were here, they couldn’t help but feel drawn to their hometown.
“If we go to Tokyo like this, I wonder when we’ll be able to return to our hometown and see our parents and compatriots again.”
Thinking such thoughts, Yūkichi’s wife quietly wiped her tears with her sleeve.

Even there, they did not rest at the tea shop before the station. They feared spending even a single sen more. Until they could sell calendars or find some occupation in Tokyo, theirs was a situation where they had to endure hunger and scrape by. Yūkichi’s wife had merely bought two or three cheap sweets there for the crying child.

The third-class car was packed as expected.
Their bodies, having been jostled aboard trains and steamships for one or two days straight, were utterly exhausted; the moment they leaned against anything, they would immediately doze off.
Yūkichi sat shriveled as though pressed from both sides, his face pale and agitated.
He would lean his broom-like disheveled head against the window glass and drift into unconsciousness.

Yūkichi's wife saw the gradually increasing number of lively towns, villages, and stations.
People were passing along the road in great numbers.
It seemed strange that there could be so many people.
The person who had crossed the sea with them said, “Hokkaido’s had a terrible crop failure.”
“This winter will be unbearable,” he said, going on to tell the passengers in the train car how none of the millet, barnyard grass, or potatoes had grown.

The climate had gradually grown warmer.
In the fields, wheat grew lush and green.
Compared to over there, what a wonderful place this was.
How happy must the people living in such places be?
Yūkichi’s wife, thinking such thoughts, gazed with wonder at the ground entirely free of snow and the lush green growth of grass and trees.

“It’s warm.”

She tried saying this to Yūkichi.

A bustling station jolted them awake—fortunately, a distant male relative they had notified in advance by letter of their arrival that day had come to meet them there. Along with their luggage, only Yūkichi and his daughter were loaded into the carriage, until everyone finally settled into the narrow three-unit row house resembling a back-alley shop that had been rented for them. It was a place shaped like a mortar's bottom, where houses stood packed across every inch without the slightest gap.

“What a place with so many houses—I was shocked.”
Yūkichi’s wife exclaimed.

A small house with a three-tatami and six-tatami room, without even an alcove.
Even so, the wife thought this might be somewhat better than that cold dugout hut over there.
New ladles, new buckets, Seto-made pots, pans, kettles—such things the male relative eventually bought and brought for them.
The man was Yūkichi’s maternal cousin and seemed to work at a factory nearby.
The wife couldn’t help but find it strange that they had suddenly come to such a place from that barren wasteland.
“I still feel like my body’s swaying.”
Even two or three days later, the wife said such things to Yūkichi.

Six

From the day after arriving, Yūkichi began searching all over for printing shops, making inquiries everywhere he went. However, places that would calmly listen to his requests were rare. Some shops stared intently at Yūkichi’s appearance and from the outset didn’t take him seriously. “Well, you see—with year-end approaching, we’re too busy to take on your request.” “Once spring arrives, we would be happy to discuss it at a more leisurely pace, but…” An old man at a small print shop said this and laughed. Yūkichi was beside himself with anxiety. He went from one shop to the next, eagerly inquiring and looking around.

He had to waste three full days just searching for print shops.
The place he finally found was a small printing shop in the outskirts; though he thought the estimate wasn't particularly cheap, worrying that dawdling would make him miss his chance, Yūkichi decided to have it printed there regardless and brought the manuscript the very next day.

The bearded proprietor, a man in his forties, listened to Yūkichi’s explanation of the manuscript and said, “I see—this is quite an interesting thing. Even a thousand years in the past or future, you can clearly tell what day of the week any date falls on. This is a new invention,” he said, spinning some round object himself.

“With even a Dr.’s certification attached—this must be solid,” he said. “Though we’re busy, at any rate, I’ll have it made for you by the 20th.” “A thousand copies, eh…” After saying this, he paused briefly. “So what color would be good for the paper?”

Yūkichi flipped over the small notebook he had presented as a sample and examined it. There were few color varieties, and none of them were appealing. Suddenly noticing a color there that resembled the cover of a short story collection by a writer he revered, he said rapidly, “This one—let’s go with this one.”

“Since I know an artist, shall I have them add some decorative designs around the edges? It won’t cost much. If there’s nothing around the edges, it would look too plain—since people will hang it as decoration on study room pillars or such…” The considerate proprietor obligingly said such things. After taking the manuscript, even the proprietor’s sudden change in attitude seemed to Yūkichi like the first sign of success.

When he visited Dr. Yoshida’s residence in Hongō Heights, the large dog at the entrance barked at him as if to bite, leaving him flustered.
Fortunately, Dr. Yoshida was at home and met him in a grand room overlooking an impressive garden.
“That’s quite good. It would be even better if you registered it—though I doubt anyone would copy it right away.”
“Best to do that after you’ve sold some copies,” he added, explaining the copyright registration process.
Yūkichi felt ashamed to produce the gift he had brought.

As he was leaving, he finally mustered his resolve and said, “These were grown over there—though it’d be better if I claimed I cultivated them myself… Not that that’s true, but I made sure to bring them anyway.”

With this, he pulled out a newspaper-wrapped bundle of white kidney beans—less than one shō—from a soiled cotton furoshiki and laid them before the doctor.

“No, thank you kindly for this. They do grow fine beans over there, after all.”

Dr. Yoshida said with a gentle smile.

Yūkichi merely idled away his days.
While the printing remained unfinished, he couldn’t begin working on distribution channels, so he had no choice but to inquire about work here and there.
He even entered houses along the street plastered with countless job placement posters.
There were young men there like himself seeking employment—some pulling five-yen bills from their meager wallets.
Yūkichi asked about various matters and returned from there.

A school friend of his—who had once come to Tokyo aiming for theater by entering Waseda University—had now become quite prominent in literary circles, with his writings even being staged occasionally. He had considered visiting him once but, deciding to wait until the printing was finished, turned back halfway.
"Fifty-three yen for a thousand copies... I’d thought it could be done for twenty yen. What a huge difference."
Thinking this, he walked while tallying his savings mentally.
"February and March might be manageable, but even so—I can’t just idle about supporting a wife and child."
Without even stopping at a soba shop, he returned to his cramped home in the back-alley tenement, clutching his empty stomach.

The printing made no progress whatsoever.
Even by the 20th—a date he already considered too late—the calendar still hadn’t been completed when the 21st arrived.
When he went to press them about it, the owner would say things like, “The rotating mechanism simply won’t function properly,” and show him the half-finished product.
Indeed, it refused to rotate smoothly.
“You’ll need to use somewhat thicker paper,” he remarked.
The border designs were executed rather skillfully.
Small outlined floral motifs representing the four seasons adorned each corner.
“You must finish this by tomorrow.
Otherwise I’ll be in dire straits.”
Having made this forceful appeal, Yūkichi left the shop.
It was a disagreeably overcast cold day, with choking soot from a nearby factory hanging low and spreading across the vicinity.

When he returned home, his wife was sitting with an unpleasant, worried expression on her face.

Suddenly,

“You… they came again.”

Yūkichi shuddered.
“Huh? They came?”

Yūkichi felt a shudder, as though a crisis he had barely escaped was closing in on him once more.
Yūkichi stood there like a rod.

“As expected, it’s no good.”

The wife said disappointedly.

About an hour ago, a police officer came in and asked, “Did you come from Hokkaido?”
“You were near Shibetsu, weren’t you?”
Having said this, he proceeded to ask various questions.
The police officer was fully aware that he had been treated as a Socialist.
He said various unpleasant things and left, adding that he would return when your husband was home.

“Is there truly no way?”

Yūkichi remained silent, his face dark.
If he went to Tokyo, he could escape that loathsome surveillance—he had clung to that sole hope until now.
But even that had been a vain hope.
The cruelty of a society that torments the weak like this had become profoundly felt.
Yūkichi grew terrified and shuddered.

“There’s no use you worrying about it like this, is there? Even though I haven’t done anything wrong, they’re following me around on their own—there’s nothing to be done about it, right?”

Though he admonished his wife this way, Yūkichi himself feared that surveillance more than she did. To him, it now seemed his hope of leaving for the capital had been eighty or ninety percent crushed.

Two or three days later when the detective came to visit, it happened to be just when the completed calendar had been delivered from the print shop. Yūkichi politely ushered the detective into the sitting room and provided a detailed explanation about his relationship with the executed friend. Yet whenever he met the detective's piercing eyes that scanned his body, at times his voice quavered. The detective saw Yūkichi as a gaunt, neurotic man. The detective found the ominous glint in Yūkichi's eyes disturbing. Through the detective's gaze, he appeared as a dangerous figure whose actions defied prediction.

“Well, that may be so… but it’s my duty too.”

The detective said such things.

“It’s truly absurd.”
“When I try to work, being viewed that way causes immense difficulty.”
“Since my name was in my friend’s letter, it’s been entered in the ledger—that’s why you keep following me everywhere. Couldn’t you remove my name from that ledger?”
“Investigate me all you like.”
“In fact, I welcome it.”
“What’s unbearable is being trailed without any proper investigation.”
“I want a thorough investigation—truly.”

Yūkichi said with a trembling voice.

“There’s really no helping it.”
Even the Detective finally managed a sympathetic smile as he said this, but upon noticing the stack of printed materials there, asked, “What is that?”

Yūkichi took one copy and handed it over.
The Detective was reading it as “Yamada Tokoyogoyomi” and such.
He could tell it was a calendar, but what exactly this “Tokoyogoyomi” calendar was, the Detective couldn’t quite grasp.
The detective stared intently at Yūkichi’s face. “What’s this?”

Yūkichi, with a face that seemed to say "As if someone like you could understand," proudly explained the mechanism.

“Ah, I see. This is indeed quite interesting.”
Saying this, he twirled the section for Taishō 3. “With this, you can display all seven days of the week for next year. How clever.”
The detective, having said this, twirled this year’s section as well.

“I’ll give you one.”

“I see,” he said. “Oh, no—I’ll buy it.”

When Yūkichi implored him fervently, the detective replied, “It’s not that I suspect you of anything—it’s my duty. But over time, we’ll gradually assess your conduct and remove it from the ledger… After all, I’d prefer having fewer matters to handle on my end too.”
Eventually, the detective relented and made these remarks.

Seven

Carrying five or six copies of the calendar, Yūkichi went around visiting magazine shops and such in the city center by the 25th or 26th day, when the year’s end pressed in.
The city center bustled with gaudy decorations, electric lights illuminating the streets at night as if it were daytime.
Carriages and automobiles passed by briskly.

At every magazine shop, many refused to deal with him.
Even when he explained the mechanism, they were all people who couldn’t grasp it easily.
“Well then, why not leave two or three copies here and see.”
The shops that offered this counted among the kindest.
At one shop they said: “Calendars are too late now.
By this point nearly every household has already bought one... Had you come a bit earlier we might’ve managed sales, but it’s hopeless this close to year’s end.”
Yūkichi had to content himself with getting them placed on a trial basis.

Even so, he managed to get about a hundred copies placed by trudging until his legs felt like lead, going from store to store.
He went from Hongō to Koishikawa, Ushigome, Shitaya, and as far as Asakusa.
Every day, Yūkichi returned home utterly exhausted.

After two or three days had passed, Yūkichi went around to the shops where he had left them.
Yūkichi returned home extremely disappointed.
It was practically as if not a single copy had sold at all.
Everywhere, they had been placed in the corners of the shops merely as a formality.
“They’re right there, so take a look if you want,” they said.
“They’re not selling after all. If you don’t take your time with some proper advertising, no matter how good something is, it won’t sell.”
At one shop, he was told such things.
Yūkichi returned home with a dark expression, covered in the city’s grime.

In the wasteland, when he had been selling medicine—how much better that had been, Yūkichi couldn’t help but think.
There was wide-open nature there.
The people living there were not busy, cold-hearted humans like those residing in the city.

Along the paths he walked, there were neither soba shops nor tempura restaurants to whet his hunger, nor any gaudily dressed women to stir his lust.
Yūkichi felt his plan had turned utterly futile and sank into disappointment.

According to his wife’s account, the Detective had also come by frequently since then.
At times, it even seemed to Yūkichi that some came sneaking around at night to observe the situation.
He ended up losing even the motivation to search for a job.
If it became known that he was under suspicion of being a Socialist, there seemed to be no place anywhere that would employ him.
The elementary school teacher who had placed hopes in him was especially so.
Even were he to attempt becoming a teacher while keeping silent about his past, an official inquiry would inevitably arrive from his registered domicile.
When Yūkichi visited Dr. Yoshida for the second time with his calendar and finally broached the subject, the doctor responded, “This is problematic—that—”
“Unless you somehow get that suspicion cleared, you truly won’t be able to do anything at all.”
“This has become quite a predicament, hasn’t it.”
Dr. Yoshida said this while looking over Yūkichi’s entire body as if searching it.
It seemed to Yūkichi that the doctor’s attitude had abruptly shifted—as if he now thought it troublesome to have someone under such suspicion frequenting his residence—though this was mere conjecture on Yūkichi’s part.

Yūkichi felt so restless he could neither sit nor stand still.

"The savings would be gone soon, and…"

Yūkichi constantly thought this and tried calculating with that pencil.

New Year arrived.
Shimenawa decorations were splendidly made, and lively laughter could be heard coming from here and there.

Yet Yūkichi couldn't remain still.
At the start of the New Year, he searched for a cheaper house in a different area and moved as though fleeing.
He also harbored the intention to evade the detective's surveillance.
If possible, he wanted to skillfully disappear into the crowds and chaos of this city.
However, that too proved a futile effort.
Within less than a week, the detective had already come there.
Yūkichi quivered with agitation.

(March 1914, "Waseda Bungaku")