Pathway to Japanese Literature

Around the time when the old woman’s voracious appetite—"unusual for someone her age"—became a laughingstock and topic of conversation among those in the main house, she had already begun to be disliked by the family.
In other words, her body had become utterly useless.
The old woman herself had unconsciously come to sense this fact and acted self-consciously in every little thing.
Occasionally, she would apprehensively open the granary door when going to fetch rice.
“Just leave the container there—I’ll bring it over later…” When Shigeko—her granddaughter-in-law in name only—said this while working in the granary, the old woman would exclaim “Oh my, how thoughtful!” then hurriedly place the tin can serving as a rice bin there and retreat, careful not to be in the way.
That made her look painfully at a loss for what to do with herself.
Even when carrying firewood or brushwood from the shed, she would furtively transport them as if apprehensive of being seen by others.

The old woman liked lighting fires.

Back when her body wasn't as infirm as now, she used to consider it her work to go out to the mountain behind and collect deadwood or gather pine needles. What she couldn't carry in her arms, she dragged along behind her as she brought it back.

By now, that vigor was gone. Whether firewood or brushwood, bringing them from the shed filled her with apprehension. Yet when the kindling ran out, the old woman felt unbearably forlorn. She wanted to keep the firewood from running out on the earthen floor of her retirement dwelling.

So whenever there was a chance, she carried them in, even if just little by little.
And then she would sit by the hearth and light increasingly large fires.
Since she would freely burn large fires with just a single small iron kettle hung over them, the entire retirement dwelling became completely blackened with soot, white ash from the burning swirling down from the ceiling like falling snow as she sat endlessly amidst it all.
So she developed the habit of occasionally leaving fires burning unattended while going outside.

“What in the world are you lighting such a huge fire!”

Kameyo, a housewife passing by, was startled and peered into the retirement dwelling.
“Why does she want to build such big fires?” Kameyo muttered to herself, rubbing two or three logs into the ashes to put out the flames.

The old woman’s fire-tending habit had recently grown almost pathologically intense.

“Grandmother, the tea’s boiled properly!”

Kameyo quickly noticed the large log that the old woman had carried in, cradling it in her arms.
“Grandmother, that log—if you don’t have someone split it fresh like I said, it’s just too big that way...”

“What’s wrong with it? A big one keeps the fire going longer when you stoke it proper-like...”

The old woman said in a stubborn tone.

“It keeps the fire going well enough, but really, it’s dangerous… There’s nothing as terrifying as fire if you don’t take proper care…”

The old woman nodded meekly.

Because there had been several fire mishaps before, Kameyo had grown particularly persistent when it came to matters involving fire.

It had only been recently that Kameyo had suddenly noticed the danger when flames spread to items placed by the hearth, beginning to burn with a sputtering crackle.
The old woman had merely been wandering about restlessly.
She had been trying to handle it alone.
Recognizing this precarious situation could lead to disaster—and already agitated at the time—Kameyo spoke bluntly.

“Must you scold me so? I’ll die soon anyway!”

The old woman had unintentionally uttered those words out of a sad, despairing heart.

“Grandmother, saying such unreasonable things… I’m not trying to make any impossible demands on you. I’m trying to do everything I possibly can for you, Grandmother!”

Yet within Kameyo’s rough words dwelled genuine emotion. When the old woman heard this, she wanted to burst into tears like a scolded child. And then a single tear flowed down, tracing an ugly path through the wrinkles of her cheek.

No matter what anyone said, the person the old woman relied on in this house was her daughter-in-law Kameyo. It wasn’t only this house—the old woman had not a single other person she could rely on anywhere.

The old woman—who had wandered idly for five or six years without doing any proper work, and who moreover had fallen more gravely ill than anyone else with that winter's influenza—was said to be beyond recovery this time, leading people nearby to take turns visiting out of obligation under the pretense that "colds are something everyone gets." Yet whether through devoted nursing or her own tenacity, even this bedridden condition gradually improved with the warming weather, until she regained the ability to rise once more. But being over eighty years old after all, she became markedly frail.

The old woman had come to this house after she turned sixty.
Before entering another's household as a second wife after crossing the hill of sixty, she had already traversed various worlds and passed through inexpressible hardships.
The one who initially arranged for her to join this household was Mr. Katsuno, the town's stationery shop owner.

"She's simple-minded at her core, but utterly honest..."

Mr. Katsuno recounted the unfortunate old woman's circumstances.
The fact that she had no relatives had actually appealed to them.

“A great household in the mountains!” The old woman had been told this by Mr. Katsuno.

“What d’you plan to do, just staying like this? With no one to give you your deathbed water, there’s no helping it...”

She hadn’t needed others to tell her—when the old woman considered her future herself, she felt utterly forlorn. She couldn’t even think about the future. She could barely manage her present-day existence then. At that time, having parted with yet another husband, the old woman was living alone in a tenement owned by Mr. Katsuno in the backstreets. She scraped by each day through odd jobs—hiring herself out to households or doing piecework twisting paper cords.

The fact that she had taken several husbands stemmed from the misfortune of having been widowed by her first; it was with this initial husband that she had lived the longest and borne a daughter named Otoshi.
After Otoshi had passed twenty years of age, she fell ill with a trifling sickness and died abruptly.
After that, a nomadic existence had begun for the old woman.
The house where she had been born had long since disappeared, and her relatives had scattered to the winds, becoming as good as gone.
Even so, she had been energetic in her youth.
She had entered a silk mill and lived for many years as an ordinary factory worker.
There had even been times when she became the wife of a brazen swindler and wandered from place to place.
There had even been times when her life could have been said to approach rock bottom.

And before she knew it, the prime of her life had passed—
The old woman entered an unfamiliar household in the mountains through unexpected mediation during her later years.

The man called the Retired Household Head was a cantankerous old man with an eternally stern face.
He had a disposition that could keep him silent all day long.
Yet he harbored a weakness for women.
Not in his youth, but rather during his first wife's prolonged illness, there had been an incident of misconduct with another woman.
The proposal for a second wife had emerged from these circumstances through the younger members' arrangements.

However, by the time the old woman arrived, the Retired Household Head's inherent stubbornness had intensified further.
He appeared cold and awkward even toward his new spouse.

Once, the old couple went to a mountain hot spring for an overnight therapeutic stay; on their return trip, a fierce wind blew up. The old woman didn’t know the area and was unaccustomed to mountain paths—as she fumbled about, the Retired Household Head strode further and further ahead, leaving her wanting to cry as she trailed behind.

“Grandfather left me behind in the mountains…” The old woman abruptly perceived in the Retired Household Head’s figure at that moment a complete stranger with no ties or connections to her whatsoever.

In the midst of this unfamiliar life, the old woman now found herself grappling with thoughts too difficult to confront.

“All you need to do is keep the Retired Household Head company for tea.”

Mr. Katsuno had acted as matchmaker, but when she came to live here, things didn’t turn out that way.
However, the old woman had always been fond of work by nature.
From childhood, she had been accustomed to living in poverty.
Her hands—visibly knuckled and large—bore witness to a life of ceaseless labor.

The old woman was by nature someone who found staying still painful.
She had never had the chance to learn sewing, but she was confident in reeling thread.
She also liked workshop work.
She mingled with the young ones and worked vigorously.
It was a large family household that was always busy.
The old woman often spoke spiteful words but was cheerful and talkative.

“You don’t act like someone town-bred at all – always spouting such vulgar stories!” people would sometimes remark with frowns.

“Grandmother’s vegetable washing doesn’t remove a single speck of sand... It’s truly unbearable.”

The young daughter-in-law Shigeko grew increasingly vexed by the old woman as time passed.
For her part, the old woman detested the sluggish way the youngsters worked.

“A proper mistress of a house with servants ought to have the wit to even clear her throat when rising in the morning...” That was precisely how she’d make such remarks.
She was that fussy about every little thing by nature.
When irritation welled up inside her, the old woman would work all the more vigorously to make her point.

“The Yoshidas really managed to get themselves a fine elder!”

The neighbors often gossiped in that way.

The Retired Household Head soon died suddenly of a stroke.
Now without any complications, the old woman simply remained settled in the retirement dwelling.
Unlike when she had served her previous mother-in-law, Kameyo now stood in a position where she could speak freely to the old woman.

Mr. Katsuno would make his rounds through the village every winter without fail.
In old-fashioned attire of gaiters and straw sandals, he came carrying a wicker trunk filled with brushes and ink on a shoulder pole.
His refined trade made Mr. Katsuno a man of considerable dignity.
When he came to the Yoshida house at the end of the road, it was customary for him to rest leisurely before moving on.

“Iso-san.” Mr. Katsuno called the old woman by that name and came to visit her retirement dwelling as well.

"You landed yourself in a fine household!" The old man had developed a habit of uttering this remark abruptly.

"The mistress here might be clever, but she’s quite understanding..." He would say such things too.

“I’ve been too much of a fool…” the old woman muttered.

The old woman found her greatest joy in meeting with Mr. Katsuno and hearing stories from town.
Each time he visited, Mr. Katsuno brought along various tales from the town.

“Well, my household’s adopted son manages things quite capably!”

Mr. Katsuno had taken in an adopted son because he had no children of his own. Once he began talking about this capable adopted son, there seemed to be no end to it.

The old woman heard about the various changes among the people in the backstreets she had long been accustomed to living in. There were many astonishing stories—tales of long-established shops gone bankrupt and scattered, accounts of friends bedridden with strokes, and such.

No matter whose circumstances she heard about, there didn’t seem to be any favorable stories.

“You’ve got good fortune ahead, they say!”

Mr. Katsuno remarked with profound emotion.

When told this, the old woman found herself thinking—this might be what happiness was—as she considered her own circumstances.

It was the autumn festival of a certain year.
Prompted by a sudden invitation, the old woman took her granddaughter Mitsuko and made her way to the festival grounds.
What passed for a festival was merely neighbors gathering at the small shrine of the local guardian deity to drink sake.
“Honorable Retiree of the Yoshida household—care for a drink?” came offers from villagers holding out cups.
Urged repeatedly, the old woman drank several servings in succession.
There they all unfurled their tiered lacquered boxes, sharing pickled fish and vegetables between households.
Such communal feasting hadn’t occurred in years.

The old woman became thoroughly cheerful. Before long, some began to sing. Urged on by their encouragement, she closed her eyes and sang experimentally. A delicate yet clear voice emerged. The gathering abruptly came alive with merriment.

That restless excitement where one might even dance if sufficiently emboldened... She found herself recalling her free-spirited days of old - a world she had nearly forgotten. Mitsuko watched with anxious eyes as the old woman's face flushed with a youthful intoxication.

“Mitsuko-chan, go home and keep quiet for me!”

On the way home, the old woman suddenly turned to Mitsuko and said.

For the old woman, the bygone days felt inexplicably nostalgic.
All manner of things came flooding back in a jumbled mess.
And "Otoshi, Otoshi"—her daughter's name became a habitual refrain.
The memories of that time when she had lived with just Otoshi and her father kept surfacing in her mind, one after another.
All the joyful things were recalled as belonging to that era.
In secret, they often laughed together about those things.

“A daughter can’t stay a daughter forever!” she said.

But for the old woman, no matter how she tried, she simply couldn’t conceive of her daughter as someone who by actual age should have been fifty or sixty.
The image of her young, stalwart daughter never faded from the depths of her vision.

The old woman had no faith.
She hadn’t been raised in such circumstances.
Therefore, she never considered matters of the afterlife.
She only feared the process of dying.
She wished only for a sudden, painless death.
Whenever she heard that some elderly person nearby had achieved a peaceful passing, the old woman felt envious to her core.

“Grandmother, you remain so hale and hearty...”

Those nearby, lately looking terribly aged themselves, would offer that greeting when they saw the old woman babysitting her great-grandchildren.

“Healthy? Not at all! I’m already at the time when I’ll be let go!”

“Who would ever let you go? You’re such a precious grandmother!”

“Oh, it’s nothing… Well, I’ve been looked after well enough since Mother here’s a good person, but...”

The old woman couldn't help but speak in that manner. When she actually voiced the words aloud like that, the precariousness of her circumstances began emerging with startling clarity. And she couldn't help craving someone who'd engage with her - anyone who might listen to her grievances, whatever they were. She found it hollow how everyone always offered nothing but empty pleasantries. No matter how trifling the matter, speaking it aloud made her chest feel lighter. Unless she tried both pouring out everything in her heart and hearing it all said back to her, that weight in her chest simply wouldn't subside. The old woman had no choice but to try soothing that ache through voicing complaints alone.

“I’m ready to die anytime now... but mark my words—if I go making a clumsy exit, that’ll bring shame on the family name.”

The old woman would try saying to those nearby the sorts of things she couldn’t say to the family.

Despite this habit, she had a meddlesome nature—whether she went to the main house or out to the fields, she felt there was nothing she could leave untouched.

“Let everyone do as they please... Whatever happens, I won’t care anymore...” The old woman would return to the retirement dwelling with frustrations she couldn’t control and at least let them spill out in muttered soliloquies.

Granddaughter Mitsuko had long since married and moved to town.
At the time of Mitsuko’s wedding, when shown kimonos lined with hand-reeled silk even in their inner linings and told, “Thanks to Grandmother, we could make so many kimonos like this!” she had been delighted. But now the old woman’s hands had grown stiff, and she could no longer manage her beloved silk-reeling.

The old woman took on the childcare of each great-grandchild in turn as they were born.
By the time the child grew heavy and hard to handle, another baby had already been born.

In her heart she intended to work as much as possible, but her body no longer moved as she wished; what she did intending to be helpful only produced opposite results.

Helping with silkworms had been her favorite work; Kameyo used to laugh and say, “When Grandmother works on cocoon-reeling, she gets so absorbed she forgets to eat entirely...” but now they did nothing but complain behind her back—about how she “gathers even unfit cocoons” and “can’t distinguish first-grade from second-grade cocoons”—rendering her well-meant efforts more trouble than they were worth.

One time while carrying the youngest boy on her back she fell into a nearby ditch and returned with both their heads covered in blood.
The left side of her body had become increasingly immobile.
From that time on babysitting duties were no longer her responsibility.
Moreover her head wound showed no signs of healing properly.
It was said to not be a simple suppuration.
There was an illness that had been lurking within her.
She was visibly declining.

“Mr. Katsuno, I’ve become like this—it’s truly sad!” The old woman held out her left hand that no longer worked. “My hands don’t work—my legs don’t work—I’ve lived too long!” Mr. Katsuno kept an expression that suggested this was only natural. “You’ve nothing to say… A comfortable retirement leaves you wanting for nothing. As long as you’re grateful for it—that’s all that matters!”

Such a Mr. Katsuno wore a deeply troubled expression.

“It’s over—once the burden becomes too heavy, it’s truly over...”

Mr. Katsuno sighed and muttered without realizing he’d come all the way to Yoshida.
The old man too had aged remarkably, his gait now a plodding shuffle as though his shadow had grown thin.

“Mr. Katsuno doesn’t seem to have much longer either...”

Kameyo said this to her husband and listened to the irregular breathing of the old man sleeping in the next room.

“Yeah, the old man’s been abandoned by his adopted son, and on top of that, his business must’ve hit a dead end!”

Kameyo and her husband were talking about such things for a while.

Visible changes had occurred in Mr. Katsuno’s circumstances.
The old man had even been betrayed by the adopted son he had trusted so deeply.
The adopted son had taken a wife and, not long after, struck out on his own to start managing a Western-style restaurant, effectively severing ties with the elderly couple.

The old man's business had been left behind by the times.
Even when he went from village to village, it brought in little income.
By now, he was reduced to merely scraping by through village clients' hospitality—relying on longstanding ties to secure overnight stays.

Mr. Katsuno found himself in circumstances so pressing that even upon coming to Yoshida this time, he had to broach a matter that was exceedingly difficult to bring up.

He didn’t know how to broach it—as for any connection between them, there was none.
It was merely that he had taken care of the old woman.
With only that much reason, whether (the cranky head of the household) would promptly accept the request and stamp his approval...

Mr. Katsuno was racking his brains over how to broach the matter.
And his heart found no solace.

“I too thought I wanted to go visit Otoshi’s grave again, but…”
The old woman said even that in a tone that seemed merely trying out the words aloud.

The two old people conversed with frequent pauses, in a manner that suggested they had nothing particular to talk about.

The old woman gradually came to prefer times spent alone.
She rarely went out to the main house either.
Even when she did go to see them, the children would somehow look at her with distant eyes.
"Old people are dirty"—there seemed to be such coldness in their gaze.
The old woman was invited to tea at the main house and went, but amidst the lively gathering at mealtime, she suddenly felt an acute sense of exclusion.
Even as a crowd of children laughed, cried, and scolded each other in their own ways, there seemed to flow an atmosphere of warm familiarity unique to those connected by blood—parents and siblings sharing that intimate bond.
Amidst this, only she alone seemed shut out from that warmth—a faint yet persistent sensation... The old woman had no choice but to feel this exclusion time and again.

It was only a matter of feeling—

On rare occasions when Mitsuko returned from town, saying “For the retired grandmother,” she would bring some kind of gift to the old woman’s dwelling as well.
Nothing made the old woman happier than that.
And she insistently tried to hand Mitsuko the pocket money she had received from Kameyo but couldn’t.
“Grandmother still treats me like a child—” Mitsuko exchanged looks with her mother Kameyo and laughed.

Such a mother would occasionally meet her daughter, chatting endlessly as if their conversations would never run out and appearing thoroughly happy; Kameyo took pleasure in bringing up Mitsuko’s news at every turn.

The old woman found herself utterly alone no matter where she turned.
There were many times she sat vacantly by the hearth in her retirement dwelling, bearing the desolation of having neither anyone to lavish her physical affection upon nor anyone to bestow such affection upon her.

And the frustration of being unable to manage her own immobile body as she wished had vanished with the passing years.

From her youth, the old woman had been exceptionally robust with a sturdy stomach; even in old age, her appetite alone remained vigorous.
There was only the comfort of eating and sleeping left.
And cooking alone felt far more comfortable—even when occasionally told, "Come eat at the main house," she could never settle down to eat there, so she always declined and returned.

One evening.

Having been told there would be a feast tonight and to wait without eating, the old woman had waited restlessly since evening.
She sat hunched by the hearth, tending the fire while straining her ears at every footstep she might hear.

She had waited a long time, but there was no word from them. She grew tired of waiting and returned to the kotatsu to wait there instead. Still there was no sign of them bringing anything. The old woman grew increasingly fidgety as her hunger mounted.

Had they forgotten?
When this thought came, an unspeakably vexing feeling welled up within her.

Should she go check?
Even as she considered this, a reckless resignation surged—that there was no use caring anymore, that she should just abandon herself—and she found herself inclined to leave her wretched self exactly as it was. Everything turned hateful and sad. And now it struck her that she had encountered such feelings many times before.

In the main house within the compound, they had forgotten amidst the children.

Kameyo too had always paid special attention for the old woman’s sake, but tonight something had distracted her, and in the end matters had remained as they were.
It was when they had already finished cleaning up and everyone had withdrawn to the back rooms.
When Kameyo suddenly said, “Haven’t we given Grandmother hers?”, they realized their oversight—(“we’ve messed up”)—and Shigeko hurriedly brought over the bowl of ohagi.

“I’m terribly sorry for being so late,” Shigeko called out as she entered from the doorway, but the old woman had buried herself in the kotatsu.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she had meant to say lightly, but her voice trembled so much she couldn’t speak.

Shigeko left with a troubled look.
Right after that, Kameyo made a point to come over.

The bowl was still left sitting on the edge of the raised floor.

“Grandmother, I’ve done something terrible, I’m afraid. Come now, eat it while it’s still warm!”

“It’s nothing,” the old woman tried to feebly smile.

“We were in such disarray at the main house that we ended up forgetting… But Grandmother, you could have come to remind us, couldn’t you? It’s not like there was any ill intent—if you’d just said a word, that would’ve settled it all!”

When Kameyo spoke to her like that, the storm raging within her chest seemed to subside ever so slightly.

The old woman wearily stood up and carried the tray to the hearth.

It was already late autumn.

It was a morning when severe frost lay stark and white across the land.

The merciless cold that had blackened and withered every outdoor surface overnight now invaded the house itself, seeping into every fiber of the old woman's body.

From that morning onward, the old woman could no longer stand upright and crawled about her room.
Shigeko, who had casually brought water in, found herself startled by the old woman's utterly transformed appearance.
The old woman had already slipped fully into dementia and could no longer even register human voices.

Kameyo was enduring the dangerous postoperative period at the town hospital around that time after falling ill with appendicitis.

“I’m at my wit’s end with Grandmother—she insists on tending to her own backside even though she can’t manage it herself, crawling about restlessly and soiling everything around...”

Upon hearing her husband’s account, Kameyo wondered what on earth had happened.
(I was supposed to have taken responsibility for Grandmother.) Thinking this made her body itch with frustration.

Kameyo herself, thinking this way, was already an old woman past sixty whose postoperative recovery showed no signs of improvement.

Kameyo was finally discharged from the hospital at year’s end.
When the old woman saw Kameyo, she still tried to call out "Mother," but her memory soon became jumbled and she continued spouting incoherent things.
They had begged the neighbor’s daughter for assistance, but caring for the old woman proved more troublesome than tending an infant.
By the time New Year passed, an air of insurmountable bewilderment surfaced in everyone’s eyes.

The old woman suddenly regained sanity one morning.

And she clearly saw her own miserable figure leaving even the handling of soiled garments to others.

“That’s why I thought I wanted a daughter...”

The old woman attempted to articulate it clearly.
Because she had uttered this abruptly, the neighbor’s daughter sitting beside her made a perplexed face.
And she looked vaguely unsettled.

The old woman stared fixedly at one spot.

She no longer had even the strength to struggle.

Before long, the old woman slipped back into unconsciousness.

The ceaseless delirious speech was continued.
She kept calling out names without pause.
It was impossible to tell whose names she called; it sounded exactly like an infant's wail.

And then, as if the voice were gradually thinning and vanishing, she drew her last breath—.

On a clear day after heavy snow in mid-February, the old woman’s remains were placed in a coffin and buried in a corner of the Yoshida family cemetery.

“Tomb of Kakami Iso” was inscribed on the unpainted wooden grave marker. At eighty-nine years of age was written beside it.

The people from nearby who had gathered for the funeral gazed curiously at the old woman’s surname, which they now learned for the first time.

It also emerged that she had initially concealed three years of her age—a fact uncovered through an inquiry from the town office during preparations for the recent imperial accession ceremony.

Since her life could hardly be called short, no one offered formal condolences. Everyone simply voiced their own thoughts and conversed freely.

There lay the nonchalance of those unconnected.

“Thanks to everyone’s kindness, we were able to hold such a lively funeral!”
Kameyo repeated that greeting.
“What a fortunate old woman she was!”

The wives said so.
That was by no means spoken as flattery.

From the perspective of those hounded by poverty, if one could live long without want for food or clothing, there was no other way to consider it than happiness.
“Things from someone who lived long bring good fortune!” they said, happily taking away the old woman’s well-worn garments.

Kameyo had mostly finished cleaning up the retirement dwelling. It was a feeling of relief tinged with disappointment. She organized the kitchen tools and tidied the contents of old trunks and dressers. She spread out and examined the meager clothing—things like hemp summer kimonos and black satin obis. There remained not a single thing that could serve as a memento of the old woman’s youth. There was no one to whom mementos needed to be given. Nowhere could the old woman’s shadow be found anymore. It seemed as if it were a shadow that had vanished in an instant.

(What if Grandmother had had a daughter of her own?)

Kameyo found herself thinking about that for no particular reason.
And a hollow feeling welled up.
It was a hollowness born of being unable to think without disregarding social obligations.

The pitiful cries from the old woman's final moments still lingered vividly in Kameyo's ears. When she thought that one had to reach such a point just to die, a desolate feeling that blurred the line between others' affairs and her own seemed to seep into her chest.

“But even so, would having family truly make one feel secure?”

Kameyo let out a sigh as if muttering to herself.

--6・8・12--

("Tsubasa"
Second Volume, Eighth Issue)