Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

At first, what caught the eye was—it’s somewhat hard to describe—in any case, scarlet crepe.
That blazingly vivid garment was an underkimono with vermilion gradations here and there.
The woman was not tucking up her skirt.
She had lifted the hem high, holding it at her knees—from where crimson damply dripped and clung to her white ankles—apparently having pulled it up like that due to the eerie discomfort of being thoroughly drenched.
Her bare feet stained by dye, though the crimson fabric seemed ready to reflect upon them, she sat in a corner of the waiting room beneath relentless rain—wooden clogs with wisteria-colored thongs, heavy and thick, caked in mud yet feebly aligned inward, her posture marked by one thigh slightly twisted.

Though it was the season of long days and not yet fully dusk, soon five o'clock had passed.
The location was that elevated waiting room at Manseibashi Station on the Institution Line tramway.

The willows faintly budding, flowers plumply budded—just in these recent days, green, crimson, haze-purple—all imbued with spring’s very peak approaching its zenith. The more intense their hues and vitality grew, the more they became enveloped in this rainy season-like downpour’s harshness. Scenery, people, even Kanda River’s boats—all swallowed into blackness. Neither red plum nor crimson peach could describe it—amidst the horizontal spray, a flowering quince red as dripping blood, drenched yet bursting into bloom—its vividness so striking it burned the cheeks of any who beheld it.…

The one who witnessed this striking sight and became the story’s protagonist was Dr. Sōkichi Hata—a man employed in the internal medicine department of the university hospital, known for his scholarship and skill, who had recently returned from studying abroad.

As this man of unassuming appearance and modest means resided in Shiba-Takanawa, his daily commute to the hospital involved taking the Institution Line train to Ochanomizu Station, then walking from there to the university’s location—a routine established by habit. But after five or seven days of such relentless rain, every road had become a veritable sea of mud, so that workers trudging along main thoroughfares in their brown or black suits and shoes—though utterly unsuited to the conditions—appeared as absurd as tanuki piloting earthen boats.

Dr. Hata was no exception—though his fair complexion and straight nose rather placed him in the rabbit category—struggling to walk, he today alighted from the Hongō-dōri train at Manseibashi, passed through the familiar massive brick structure beside the bronze statue, and ascended the high stone steps.
……With this, he thought, the Kōbu Line would pierce through Tokyo's great center and reach Shinagawa in a single breath with just a short walk…

But that was mere procedural planning—given the hour and the rain... There too, the congestion proved far more overwhelming than anticipated, teeming with comings and goings—one couldn’t dismiss it as merely being a station or treat it like some post-town waystation.
A logjam? The black mass of crowd surged and jostled like wildfire.
Both platforms—the right waiting for Nakano-bound trains and the left for Shinagawa—formed double and triple layers of human walls pressed onto the tracks.

Even if the train had come immediately, they wouldn’t have been able to board in one go anyway.

Resigned to this, Sōkichi shook the droplets from his Western umbrella, tucked it lightly under the arm of his black overcoat, and slid his thin leather gloves snugly to his wrists. He then stepped into the waiting room—a space oddly reminiscent of a glass-walled greenhouse, relatively translucent yet stifling with damp air and human odors—the tips of his shabby shoes clack-clacking against the floor (now muddied after all) when he abruptly caught sight of that striking figure.

Surely, a large box-shaped brazier still sat on the central platform... There, as he abruptly averted his gaze from that crepe-clad figure's fiery presence and tried to sidle out toward the platform, another red object collided with the doorway pillar.

II

Intimidation would not do.
There, amidst the seething black mass of people, a red-capped station employee leaned backward with arms crossed. When Sōkichi’s face appeared, the man—his small white profile adorned with a stubby brown beard—twisted his neck sharply to glare.

“Upbound suspended for power outage… Downbound stalled from mechanical failure.”

He delivered this response mechanically whenever he saw a human face, as though reciting predetermined lines.
Then, digging the nape of his neck against the pillar he leaned on, he struck an aloof pose.

“Hah! Upbound’s out.”

“The downbound line has failed mechanically.”

As if echoing this, four or five people began chattering over one another.

“Oh dear, oh dear,”

“This is intolerable!”

“How efficient,”

“What a nuisance,” muttered an unaccompanied female student, drawing in her thick neck as if involuntarily caught in the complaint.

Yet none seemed newly informed—the understanding dawning from how mechanically the red-capped employee repeated his lines.

Beneath the rippling agitation of the crowd, the cold railway tracks sank dimly into the waning daylight—curving like a cove within the metropolis' muddy sea, stretching out in utter stillness as if waiting for sharks to be caught at any moment—yet sneering as they revealed their gleaming, tooth-like embankments.

Even if one interpreted the red-capped employee's words charitably, a university professor who had returned from abroad—wearing a bowler hat, his overcoat and suit impeccably fitted—ought not to be pushed toward the edge and flail about in such circumstances.

Sōkichi—though he didn’t smoke—attempted to retreat toward the brazier, turning his shoes as he went. When he glanced at his toes, there in the sodden earthen floor, the red hem once again rippled across it like flowing water.

It was like a scarlet carp leaping.

Involuntarily shifting his gaze and turning his shoulders, at that moment there was another woman who rose from her seat.
When he saw the tall, oval-faced woman with sharply defined features wearing a marumage chignon and an Ōshima-patterned haori—who had been sitting beside the one in scarlet crepe and seemed to be her companion—Sōkichi thought, "Ah!"

Oh! he thought again.

For though he had been out of touch lately due to busyness, here was someone familiar—one who had even attended the wedding—bearing a striking resemblance to his cousin’s wife. Were this a worldly person, they might have immediately exclaimed “Oh!” at how closely they resembled each other. Yet it was neither surprise at the resemblance nor shock at an unexpected encounter that gripped him. What startled him was how—just as he became certain it must be her, their faces nearly meeting—she abruptly turned away to gaze out the window at the rainy sky, her demeanor so utterly detached and stranger-like that it left him dumbstruck.

No—she was unquestionably a complete stranger.

Yet from her build and features—the slightly disheveled hairline, fair complexion with comely looks—she appeared precisely the sort of wife whom a light blue haori would suit perfectly; but this woman too, strangely enough, wore that same light blue haori.
From the alluring sweep of hair at her temples… there, precisely there—her face tilted slightly upward.
Where others might slightly furrow their brows, this wife had a habit of wrinkling from nostrils to mouth.
All remained exactly so—her weariness from waiting for the train, her rain-worn desolation plain in those wrinkles gathered at her nostrils.

Of course, while convincing himself she was a stranger, he bit back the greeting that had nearly slipped out. Collecting himself, he found his feet had drawn somewhat closer without his realizing. Turning his back on the awkwardness of having reached for his hat, he straightened up. There beneath low-hanging clouds, across the rain-swollen and haze-filled roofs of Shitaya and Kanda, through the murk, he could see the woods of Kanda Myojin.

And the woman in scarlet crepe was gazing fixedly in the same direction.

III

The face with its prominent nose lapped closer sideways, and he thought the white face powder might adhere to his chest.

Until he was stunned, Sōkichi once again discovered in that woman the visage of someone resembling a person he knew.

The woman in scarlet crepe had her hair tied in a traditional chignon and wore a black crepe haori with family crests draped neatly over her sloping shoulders. She inserted her thin hand into the limp collar and, as if pinning down the raised hem, clutched a chartreuse opera bag with care in her hand resting upon her knee.
From someone who had long passed thirty, she held what appeared to be a crude handbag—like a plaything meant as a child’s souvenir—with exaggerated care.
Her footwear, underkimono, bare feet, chignon, and crested haori—all somehow mismatched—were topped by a pale complexion caked in heavy makeup, lips painted a dripping crimson so thick they seemed to enlarge her mouth. With her slender neck stretched long, her snow-white throat thrust upward as if reaching toward the distant woods of Kanda Myojin, her face—abruptly tilted back, large eyes fixed wide—resembled nothing so much as a wooden doll’s head attached to a living body: less beautiful than ghastly.
Yet those eyebrows alone were peerless—beautiful, gentle, yet sharply defined.

The eyebrows matched perfectly those of the woman Sōkichi could never forget—so he thought. Yet this resemblance differed fundamentally from that of the woman with the marumage chignon, whose likeness to his cousin's wife had been so striking. Perhaps overwhelmed by that excessive similarity, the visage etched in his heart had instead taken residence within the woman clad in scarlet crepe.

So be it—even through mere eyebrows alone, Sōkichi Hata's heart gleamed with noble radiance as though having swallowed a crescent moon in dream, pulsing with vitality as it leapt within him.

Osen—that woman—was indeed the one who had given seventeen-year-old Sōkichi his life.

Moreover, the place was the precincts of Kanda Myojin on a spring night, visible right there before them.

“Ah... One more breath, and with the razor...”

Even now, the sight made his hair stand on end. [...] The storm clouds encircling the woods resembled a terrifying visage shaded in rat-gray gloom. The rooftops gnashed their tile fangs, layer upon layer, while here and there red brick eaves and peeling zinc roofs bared crimson gums against the high sky—a demon’s maw poised to devour men.
...That forest, those trees—to eyes seeing nothing but the mist-shrouded spring rain—would appear as three or five pale purple eyebrow brushes arranged vertically.
When he thought of that time when he had tried to die, those too—inversely—resembled a thickly grown, wild beard.

Oh, those eyebrows of the woman in scarlet crepe—floating like wild geese toward that sky! Her pupils fixed and unblinking, staring vacantly at the same spot—Sōkichi glanced at her once more.

Ah, that woman?

As his chest surged and roared like crashing waves, this station—like the deck of a great ship turning—swung its prow toward the woods of Kanda Myojin. They were close enough to touch—closer still.

"It’s become inexplicably lower—that must be Myojinzaka."

At the house at the dead end of the alley on the right side……

On the morning of the day he meant to die—Sōkichi had his face shaved by an older friend of his. ...That night in Myojin's precincts, it was that same razor he pressed to his throat.

(Let me put things in order.)

Sōkichi had left his hometown without tuition funds—recklessly—and finding himself adrift, came under the care of a certain group of disheveled, aimless day-to-day survivors during that period, barely keeping the rain off his back.

These people were primarily failed medical students—cast aside by society due to laziness and debauchery—with members of appropriate age and even those with wives among them.
Among them were failed politicians, apprentices to businessmen, speculators, and even those earnestly considering becoming police officers.

There, where Sōkichi had been staying at the time was one of the row houses along Myojinzaka, inhabited by a married couple—a failed medical student named Matsuda who barely scraped by from day to day.

The beautiful woman who seemed about to shed dew, residing in the rented room of someone’s mistress house at the dead end—with its willow tree and eaves lantern offering a good view—was none other than Osen-san... he thought she resembled the woman in scarlet crepe there.

IV

Osen was a woman who lived concealed from society, avoiding others' gazes.
For Sōkichi had come under the care of their group—effectively led by Kumazawa, that colossus who resembled an illustrated roadside Jizo statue and would later be heard of as a great industrialist—who had ostensibly legitimized redeeming some local woman from her registry, paraded her publicly as such, yet kept her sequestered in private.

Needless to say she belonged to the demi-monde—whether geisha or common courtesan remained unclear even now—but to Sōkichi she was simply an elegant older sister figure three or four years his senior (perhaps more), the captivating Osen-san.

Until the previous night—the drizzling rain that had been falling like the present downpour had cleared as though a flower had bloomed—on that Sunday morning before the equinox, Sōkichi had been before breakfast... or so it was said, but soon it became ten o'clock. ...Here, we beg even readers unacquainted with hunger to kindly interpret our meaning.
But no matter how much time passed, there was no breakfast that morning.

At the mistress’s house, knowing that the previous night—once in the evening with an order of tendon, and around one o’clock in the morning with a soba delivery—the pungent aroma had wafted to the bedside as they entered the alley, he figured there would be something if he went... And if the weather stayed fair, he’d want to eat all the more.
Hollow with hunger, as if sinking into gauntness, he opened the lattice door of the dilapidated back tenement—its gutter worn shallow—when from under the willow tree at the dead-end mistress’s house, three people ambled out leisurely.

The person with broad shoulders wearing a soiled yellow Hachijō student’s haori draped neatly over him—this was the landlord of the tenement.
Once he had pulled Sōkichi back into the doorway, he glanced sidelong at him and extended his little finger,

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.
“She’s still asleep.”
With no will to rise—his wife remained swaddled like a rice cake in her nakedness—when he said this, the landlord stuck out his tongue slightly and left without another word.

Next was a monk with a freshly shaven head, its blue-tinged scalp clean and neat. The pale, narrow-faced figure wore a black crepe haori with five crests—Osen’s, with its red lining—over a mouse-gray monastic underrobe. Last night, when he had entered this alley, he had worn a purple kesa draped nobly like clouds and carried crystal prayer beads—yet now... —— From behind, he mimicked knocking the round head before him with a fist—konk—then continued with a sidelong glance at Sōkichi and a grin. This was a swarthy man with sunken eyes, a large mouth, and a dish-like bald spot at the center of his hair; a former politician who had recently turned to commerce, having discarded his crested garments to wear a short-sleeved cotton meisen haori and meriyasu leggings taut over spindly legs. ...Heishirō "Kozara".

All of them, having stayed up all night playing hanafuda cards, now headed to Tokiwa Bathhouse on Myojinzaka.

As they passed each other, Sōkichi—in a daze—entered the mistress’s house, only to be abruptly ordered to clean up the aftermath rather than receive any food.

“I’m sorry to make you work like this, student.”

With a single elegant flourish of her decorative sash, Osen-san smoothly adjusted the hem of her layered silk kimono, holding the black velvet zabuton cushion as she retreated from the brazier and spoke.

“Oh, he’s our errand boy at present.”

This was Amaya—a corpulent man with a squat frame and unkempt long hair, his barrel-like belly constrained by a stiff obi and Sanada-style apron fastened neatly—another failed medical student. The would-be industrialist delivered this line with a laugh.

While the pair moved to the adjacent room—shared with this rented house’s mistress (now solidly middle-aged)—Sōkichi, gaunt and swaying, his hollow stomach occasionally growling in humiliating protest, nevertheless swept every corner clean.

“Good work there.”

Getting carried away,

“There, you.”

With that, Amaya snatched up the zabuton cushion and returned to his original spot.
……A man of fickle hips unbefitting his build.
Though Amaya himself had, until merely ten days prior, been lolling about like a caterpillar in the same tenement as Sōkichi—clad in a single rented futon’s nightclothes—Master Kumazawa, who was often away on business ventures, had installed him in the mistress’s house to serve as both Osen-san’s watcher and caretaker. Thus even as a shadow-dweller, Osen remained mistress here.
This much was only natural.

Tapping the pair of futons into order, he arranged them toward the interior of the small oblong brazier.

“There, there, you.”

He stepped back,

“Here... this way.” His words and demeanor were light, yet his movements dragged like a stone mortar, thudding heavily.
——Ah, no wonder—he had beriberi.
Even if they stayed up all night, they couldn’t go to the morning bath.

“How utterly detestable.”

With alluring eyes peering from the sliding door’s edge, she stood trailing the hem of her tomojiro-patterned kimono, her hair coiled in a comb-wrapped chignon.

Five

A bit early for cherry blossoms—quince or something—the shadow of flowering branches cast upon the shoji, accompanied by the faint fragrance of citrus, and Osen returned to her original seat.

Over there, Master Kumazawa—with his grand Kamishimo Oshima gold chain—would sit cross-legged in that imposing manner.

“Is he not here?”

Sōkichi somehow said to Amaya.
He wasn’t here either—nor among those who had gone to the bath.
He had inquired about Kumazawa.

At the corner of the veranda,

From inside the toilet came a house-shaking cough: “Hrmph!”

“Kumazawa’s right here, I tell ya.”

“My word.”

“How perfectly dreadful,” she tittered elegantly.

As the landlord’s mistress laughed while passing through to the kitchen, Osen-san bowed her head with a faint smile,

“That’s utterly lacking in charm.”

“That is precisely the madam’s poison.”

And Amaya knocked his apron rhythmically,

“Osen-san fell right into the boss’s trap over there.”

"My, how... That’s simply awful, Amaya-san. You’re going too far."

Even to Sōkichi, who knew nothing, this mistake was immediately clear—it was undoubtedly dirty.

“Ah—this is a blunder, how rude of me, my apologies.”

Amaya repeatedly kowtowed,

“So, as an apology, let me have the honor of shaving your face.”
“Well, not to boast—but as I’ve been saying since last night—though this oaf’s hands are clumsy, I can handle a razor well enough.”
“I’ll handle the razor for sure.—Hata-kun, go to the back and borrow one.”

Sōkichi, nodding in understanding of Osen-san’s circumstances—that she could only visit the bathhouse in secret, could not go to the barber, and must avoid being summoned—borrowed a razor from the mistress and returned.……

“Oops!… And while you’re at it, a metal basin… Show some initiative, show some initiative.”

In the meantime, it seemed some exchange had now occurred.

"Now then—if you show your face here but I don't demonstrate a single stroke of skill, the madam won't grant us her trust."

“No, that’s not it, but... well, I’m still not quite like that yet.”

“No need for such modesty.
“Even if I slip up, it’s just the kid’s face.
“Just… look, with all that fluffy hair growing out, it’s like a dumpling someone’s taken a bite out of.”

Sōkichi gulped down his saliva, captivated by her loveliness.

“Tilt your head back and grit your teeth.”
“There, how about that? Smooth as smooth can be—quite vivid, isn’t it?”

“Somehow, this feels dangerous.”

While slightly lifting her knees and peering at her hands with apparent concern, her moving face—as if draping thin silk over the heat haze rising from the iron kettle—flickered in Sōkichi’s eyes, flickering.

“There, see? Just a few quick swipes—swish-swish.”

“Stop it, please! Stop!”

Her slightly lifted knees swayed unsteadily as her sleeve billowed up with a faint fragrance.

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s dangerous! So dangerous! What if you shave off these gentle eyebrows of mine?”

“Is that all?”

He pressed the razor—momentarily paused—against her skin once more.

“No need to fret.”

“The edges near my eyes are one thing, but stop with the upper part—I implore you!”

“Just shaving the nape of your neck. What’s the fuss over this little bit?”

“Ah—aaaaah! Aaaaah!”

A cavernous yawn tore through the toilet, vaulting up to the roof tiles.

“Ahaha… Won’t do, won’t do.”

“Ha ha ha ha! Laugh or cry—what’s it matter? They’re just some brat’s eyebrows.”

“No, no, no.”

Remaining on his propped-up knees, the smooth rustling of approaching garments resonated through Sōkichi’s chest like feathered robes drawing near from afar… A mermaid’s torso adrift in tatami waves.

“What kind of mother could this person be?”

Supporting Amaya’s razor-holding hand with arms pale as snow raised skyward—thrusting and releasing—she drew it to her chest and gazed intently as if cradling it.

“How enviable! Oh, what beautiful eyebrows he has.”
“His parents must have been adorable, I bet.”

Her breasts luminous white, tenderness and nostalgia seeming to shine through them—the patterns of her robe, her collar’s hue, her black hair—all vanished as Sōkichi’s vision plunged into darkness. When her sleeve draped his shoulder, he pressed his face into his collar, wringing his tormented chest until hot tears trickled unbidden.

The mistress from the next room,

“Does the razor cut well?... I thought about sharing it... but I ended up...”

To commit suicide—“I’ll take this razor to a barber,” said Sōkichi as he took it and left.
It was after nightfall on the same day.

The details…

VI

Now then, when the three returned from their morning bath at last, Kumazawa—who had been in the toilet for ages—joined them at the gathering, and they resumed playing hanafuda. Breakfast was decided to be sushi with some hot tofu soup and a drink.

On this errand’s way, in Miyamoto-chō’s side alley—down the steep steps behind Kaikarō, past Kanda Myojin’s stone slope—there existed Sōma crackers: salt crisps whose baking method left soy sauce blotches that somehow appeared embossed in the shape of a horse’s bit.
Amaya proposed having these with tea—he absolutely wanted Osen-san to try them too.
And it was Sōkichi being sent to buy these that became the root of the matter.

After all—for a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old in his voracious age, who had been devouring three meals daily with relentless intensity—to descend stone steps so steep they felt like a sheer plummet, only to reach a hunger one might call "pre-breakfast" rock-bottom emptiness.
The mingled aromas of tempura, soba, roasted sweet potatoes—and above all, the pungent saltiness of Sōma crackers—assailed his nostrils with such intensity that the hand clutching the paper bag trembled violently.
From near-starvation came the unbearable sensation of cold sweat streaming profusely down his body.

At the prices of that time… the unforgettable seven sen bought from among the considerable bulk of crackers… like koban coins, about two pieces.

Sōkichi returned up one slope to a flat area where the stone steps—divided into slightly segmented tiers before abruptly steepening again as if propped by hands—offered no shade from ginkgo foliage still sparse, fir and hackberry treetops distant. At the edge of the cliff’s ditch, he leaned fully forward and, for the first time in his life, bit into the forbidden fruit he wasn’t supposed to taste: crunching into the Sōma-brand cracker as fiercely as a horse clamping its jaws around a bit.
But overwhelmed by sweetness, sorrow, and shame, his hardened chest heaved forward over the ditch’s edge, broke—and the cracker, rather than staying in his mouth, shattered with a crunch in his stomach.

His forehead struck the sharply protruding eave, his eyes pierced by anti-intruder spikes—crimson blood searing his entire body as he transformed into a sinful snake. The ascending stone steps felt like Oshichi scaling the fire watchtower, while the sun burning in his mind streamed down the steps in hues of blood.

Sōkichi thus found himself once more at Kanda Myojin’s purification font, feeling as if sealed in ice, and shuddered with a chill that pierced him to the core.

“Snicker, snicker.”

Amidst the hanafuda circle—his body entangled in the ring, sensing its peril—Sōkichi unwittingly flushed crimson and passed the cracker bag into Amaya’s hand.

“Oh, here we go. Dig in, Osen-san.”

Flipping open the bag and passing it to Osen-san, he found her wearing a somewhat weary air that suggested disinclination to join the group.
The one across the brazier received it and, peering over with their knees, opened it—

“Thanks for the meal… Let’s get right to testing for poison.”

he said.

This made his chest ache again.
Had it ended there, things wouldn’t have become so dire.

“Snicker, snicker.”

When Sōkichi entered the parlor, he had already caught the sound of that suppressed snickering. At that moment, as he averted his gaze from the cracker Osen-san had taken and turned his face slightly aside, it was Heishirō "Kozara" who struck him from the side... his diamond-shaped face with prominent cheekbones narrowed its sunken eyes and flared its nostrils—

“Snicker, snicker.”

And struck again.
He appeared to have abandoned his cards for mischief—gripping a silver-plated pipe while hiking up his meriyasu loincloth in front and kneeling with one leg raised—then drove Sōkichi’s cheekbone against that very knee.

“Snicker, snicker, snicker.”

He continued his suppressed snickering.

He continued,

“Snicker, snicker, snicker.”

VII

“Should I make you cry over here, brat?”

When Kihachijō flipped the hanafuda card, the monk in black crepe briskly turned over its crimson backing,

"You brat!"

he spat.

Heishirō’s suppressed snickers escaped through his teeth: “Snicker, snicker, snicker.”

“Snicker-snicker-snicker-snicker-snicker-snicker.”

“What’s this?” said Kumazawa—his massive frame cross-legged on a black velvet futon, muddy eyes fixed on the embroidered clash of bush clover, irises, cherry blossoms, and peonies—as he turned his glare toward Heishirō, sake cup in hand. At this, the laughter demon flared like a mouthful of red pepper, burning crimson as it raged unchecked.

“Ha ha ha ha, snicker, snicker.”
“Snicker.”
“Huh—no—ah—ah—*tsk*—Ah-ha-ha-ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! *Tch*—Ugh—Huh? Huh? Huh? Heh-heh… Snicker… Ah-ha-ah-ha-ah… Ah… Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha… Ah-ha-ha-ha!”

“Ridiculous.”

Licking his lips sideways, Kumazawa thrust out his sake cup—but as he tried to pour from the copper flask, Osen-san stayed his hand,

“What’s wrong?”

“Ohoho! Well now—*I’m honored by your inquiry*—Ahaha! Tch—huh?”
“Eh-heh… Eh-heh-heh… Ugh—*Tch*—I can’t— I can’t take this!”
“Ah ha ha ha!”

“It’s as if a demon has possessed him.”

Amaya muttered in exasperation, and… a heavy silence fell.

In the wake of that desolate silence, there was nothing but laughter—

“Hngh-hngh-hngh… Ugh… Hah… Ffu… Heh heh… Hahaha… Heh-heh-heh… Huh? Heh… Ahahaha! Ugh… Ugh… Ughaha!”
“Hah! Ehh... Tch—heh heh—Eh—ha ha ha—ha ha ha ha—Ugh—ugh—Eh-heh-heh-heh!”

Tilting sideways, Heishirō stabbed his own flank with the pipe’s mouthpiece and writhed in agony,

“Guh... It hurts... Ugh... Ugh... Ugh-ffu-ffu-ffu... Tch... Ugh... Uuuugh, it hurts.”
“Ahh, it’s agonizing—ah ha ha ha! Ah-ha! Ha! Ha! Oh, c-co—this is—ahaha! Cha-ha-ha! Tch—tch—I can’t— I can’t take it! Ha ha ha!”

Flushed crimson and gasping erratically, he grabbed some chilled tea and gulped it down—
“Gack!” He choked, grabbing for the ash tray—too late. When he spat ptooey into the brazier’s ashes, they swirled up in a murky cloud.

“Ah, you there—open one shoji panel.”

The monk in black crepe said, brushing ash with his sleeve.

Sōkichi leapt up as if from a bed of needles and opened the second shoji panel at the elbow-rest window—whereupon the ash blizzard that burst forth swept across the azure sky and vanished into the distant sea of Shinagawa.

But Kuramae’s chimney and the Twelve-Story Tower—both caught in a blink’s worth of northern gaze—crumbled into cliffs beneath his eyes through a landslide, and beyond the cluttered roofs below those cliffs, the small senbei shop in Hinata with its oil-paper doors came into view.

When the form—slanting sharply, sagging darkly between cliff and stone wall, continuing distantly to the rear stone steps of Myojin Shrine—undulated like a giant centipede across his chest, and beneath the covert eave of a small black wall that clashed fang-like at its abrupt end, the ugly, filthy line of maggots crawling up from the gutter trembled violently as if tasting wheat gluten, all of this vivid in his own eyes—Sōkichi had already turned deathly pale.

It must have been noticed from there.

Thinking this, Heishirō stroked his wet knee sideways with a handkerchief while drooling.

“Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh.”……The lingering laugh—dragging its tail with a deep sigh—then struck the boy’s ears like thunder reverberating, crashing through him!

“Please have some tea, Dr. Hata.”

Had the cliff beneath his eyes been sheer, Sōkichi would have plunged headlong with Osen-san’s voice and shattered his body to pieces on the spot.

Until he came to cherish his birth parents, he felt ashamed solely before the one who had shielded a sliver of his brows……

“To my place, for a moment.”

she gasped—her place being that tenement in the alleyway.

Sōkichi, however, even passed by the front of that tenement as if fleeing from sight, stood here and there in the precincts of Myojin Shrine—in every nook and cranny where people’s eyes could not reach—forgot even his hunger, and spent half the day weeping until he was spent.

On a starless, clouded night,

“Landlady—I shall retrieve the razor from the barber’s. As I’ve business there regardless...”
“As I’ve business there regardless...”

Sōkichi deliberately avoided the lattice door, crawled like an earthworm through the kitchen, stealthily visited the mistress’s residence, and took the razor from the landlord’s hand.

In the tatami room across the way, a glamorous shadow was cast vigorously, and the scent of perfume wafted down to the base of the stairs.
Yet desolation lingered.

Under the red lamplight of the alleyway tenement moved figures rarely seen—giant monk-like men, buzz-cut thugs, and among them Kozara’s bald shadow—their hushed voices leaking through concealed eyes and muffled footsteps. For Sōkichi, this furtive commotion proved rather fortuitous for his discreet comings and goings.

VIII

“What are you doing? What are you doing, you fool? This isn’t some game!”

Behind the shrine hall, inside the reed screen of an empty teahouse—when Sōkichi leaned against the trunk of a large ginkgo tree used as one of the corner pillars and pressed the Awaya razor to his throat, a rustling sound came—and there was Osen-san’s figure, embraced by waterfall-patterned sleeves… To Sōkichi’s eyes, she appeared like a strange bird with a beautiful woman’s face swooping down from the high treetops——

After the razor was wrenched away, he stood dazed, almost in a trance.

“Oh! Thank goodness.”

Twisting her body while embracing his shoulder and praying with one hand toward the shrine,

“A little bird told me, didn’t it?”
“Just now—when I heard you in the kitchen saying you’d take the razor—I was startled.”
“I kept calling ‘Dr. Hata, Dr. Hata,’ but you weren’t there anymore.”
“Somehow… I just can’t shake this feeling that something’s gone wrong.”
“So I—well—ran right out after you.”
“But I had no idea where to look, so I tried asking at that barber shop before the torii gate.”
“Well… They said you hadn’t come at all.”
“Oh no, I thought.”
“Half in a daze, yet my coming here was through divine aid.”
“Dr. Hata, you mustn’t think I’m the one saving you.”
“Is this acceptable? Is it quite alright with you?”
“…Your parents are watching over you from the shadows.”
“Is this acceptable? Do you understand?”

Like a child pressing both obi and sash tightly against soft chest,

“Look—the Moon! Oh—the Buddha!”

I will never forget—how the crescent fifth-day moon descended through black clouds to hang from a ginkgo branch’s tip, its outline mirroring the cherished contour of his late mother’s breast.

“Oh! Just when life begins… Even for a woman still in bud-like youth—why would you try dying?”
“For me… I… Yes—this shames me so—”

The quivering of her breast resonated through his chest.

"What’s two salt rice crackers? I don’t care if you’re a thief—As for me… Well, anyway, let’s go inside."
"It’s a good timing—no one’s here now."

Urging him onward, when she hastily searched for the discarded clogs, scarlet fabric fluttered against pale shins.
Osen too seemed frantic; heedless even of Sōkichi’s footwear, she pulled him by the hand with hurried breaths, focused solely on escaping that fearsome place.

Likely an apotropaic rite to dispel demons and ward off death gods, she scooped water from Myojin Shrine’s purification font and sprinkled droplets over Sōkichi’s hair—

“...Health and safety; longevity; health, safety, and longevity; academic studies; school; fulfillment of heart’s desires.”

Then, closing eyes wetter than her hands, her neck pale, she bowed deeply toward the sacred hall,

“Have a bite… Calm yourself—I will too.”
she brought the ladle to her mouth with weight.
“Look here at my heart’s pounding.”

The throbbing of that chest—he had indeed known it before now.

“Dr. Hata—I’ll take you away, and we’ll never go back there. …I’d stake my body and soul to help you, but… truth is—just now, when I made amends to Lord Myojin and wetted your head—the truth is—well—I thought we’d go back inside once… …and with this razor, make you clean-shaven in fresh monastic devotion, then sleep together.”
“You see… the truth is… tonight or thereabouts, when I would be embraced by that monk from Kii Province—that’s when Kumazawa and Amaya were supposed to barge in… They roped me into this scheme to trap us in guilt for immoral mischief—no matter what, they said—”

“...That monk must have come to sell valuable treasures—things from Koyasan or such places. They’d claim they’d sell them to some tycoon or ministry bigwig—deceiving him—then Kumazawa would pawn everything off and squander the money. When the repayments came due, in their desperation—all while knowing the monk was giving me those reproachful looks—well, what a preposterous honey trap scheme it turned out to be.”

“Because I was weak—leaning on that man who seemed so formidable in both strength and nerve—I wound up in this mess… But after they dragged me into that plot… And then when I saw these eyebrows…”

And Osen tenderly stroked Sōkichi’s shoulder.

“I’ve truly come to loathe those people.—There—they’ll come barging in any moment now.
I thought of embracing you, rising properly, composing myself, declaring my disavowal outright, rushing out at midnight to ease my resentment… But considering what reckless violence those desperate people might inflict—if they harmed you under any pretext, it would be irreparable—so now I’ve pressed a hand to my chest and regained my senses.”

“Now, let’s go somewhere just as we are. Leave it to me and rest assured… You must never associate with those people again.”

As they descended the stone steps of the rear cliff, Sōkichi felt as though he had crossed Ōkami Pass and glimpsed a vibrant metropolis.

“Here… yes…”

Osen-san smiled and, to buy salt rice crackers, used what appeared to be an inexpensive day-and-night obi—but with a light green money pouch.

“Let’s walk while eating.”

“You’re a coward.”

In the shadows leading to the main street, she crushed it sweetly and fragrantly with pearly teeth, then transferred it mouth-to-mouth…

Nine

When Sōkichi returned from night school to the poor boarding house in an alley of Toshimachi between a bottle shop and rag dealer, and as a man slipped out from the six-mat room with its sagging, rain-dampened veranda, Osen-san flung open the shoji screen.
But she had already laid out the futon...

At the bedside brazier, having added measured charcoal and placed the torn metal net diagonally, Osen-san fanned with kaishi paper while baking pea cakes for him.

And blowing on what was hot, she told Sōkichi—who looked delighted—the story of Urato.

Osen was more beautiful than that—though there was no snow—in the pitiable sorrow of coal cinders accumulating in the wetland of a small garden where petals scattered like flurries, in her heartrending fragility.

It wasn’t Tokujirō; the one with the covered face peered out abruptly from beyond the black wall.

Osen stood with a start, her shins pale, attempting to close the shoji—but right before her eyes, they thudded down and clomped toward the veranda.

“Oh.”

“Hey, sorry ’bout this, but we’ve got business.”

And from his sleeve, he thrust out the arrest rope like a snake’s head.

Supporting herself as if her knees were giving out, Osen surrounded Sōkichi from behind,

“...This person...”

“Nah, I got no business with the kid.”
“Come here now.”

“Sō-chan… For breakfast—simmered beans bought and put in a lidded container… with red pickled ginger… all covered with paper.”

The Vice Officer, holding the zori sandals in one hand, had already opened the entrance sliding door.

While Osen searched for something to wear on her feet, the Vice Officer unlocked the door from inside, and upon stepping beyond the eaves, swiftly fastened a restraining rope around her waist.

The slender waist suddenly vanished as hunched shoulders floated amidst shadow-draped willows.

...As for that Osen—already without overcoat or undergarments, her skin merely white, only the withered striped underkimono remained.

Sōkichi, barefoot, chased after her while sobbing pitifully.

His eyes and mind were plunged into utter darkness; he could no longer recognize the town or any place.
It was when a single cold gust swept through, drawing cherry blossoms into the slender light of an electric lamp.

“Sir.”

And Osen stopped,

“Sō-chan—Sō-chan.”

Without turning around—the one who had hung his head—sensing something—gently turned his gaze.

“…………”

“I will give you my soul.” —she said while tracing and folding.
...A white paper crane folded from kaishi lay in her palm.

“Come quickly to where this flies, Sō-chan.”

A breath exhaled—tinged faintly red—left the paper crane ashen pale as it alighted upon flower petals and fluttered away into the sky. …It was beneath this grand gate where it fell that Sōkichi was found.

The electric trains on both the up and down lines arrived almost simultaneously.

Sōkichi did not move a muscle.
When he looked, the Woman with Marumage Chignon rushed to the side of the scarlet crepe woman and, as her shoulder slipped free from the haori—its lining having slid down to render it ineffective—pulled it closed from above while...
“There, it’s come.”
“Is it a car?”
With her eyes wide open, the scarlet crepe woman was staring blankly.

Ten

A young station employee,

“And you all?”

said the young station employee.

The crowd left behind also wondered at the two women—and one other—along with Sōkichi who still had not exited the waiting room, even though three or four consecutive trains had thoroughly cleared away even the mud.

Sōkichi said.

“This lady is ill.”

And then—still shielding with his coat’s elbow the scarlet crepe woman who lay sprawled on her back—he said.

After the station employee left,

“We shall have an automobile prepared at once.”

Sōkichi gently peered at her face before turning his gaze back to the Woman with Marumage Chignon.

“Might I ask you to wait at Sugamo?
“…I shall most assuredly tend to her.
This is who I am.”

When she saw the nameplate bearing "Medical Doctor—Sōkichi Hata,"... there was another woman—one with a short Western-style haircut and haori—who stood rigidly in a P-shape and saluted like a Z.
This was an accompanying maid—Dr. Hata had previously approached the Woman with Marumage Chignon under the pretext that she resembled his cousin’s wife, and due to her respectable demeanor, she aroused no suspicion; the group was composed of courtesans from a certain brothel in Shinagawa, and they were sending [her] to Sugamo Hospital due to her madness, but she insisted on going by car—otherwise, she refused.
With that intention, they deceptively came by train, but upon arriving there and claiming it wasn’t a car, they stubbornly got off and sulked.
...the Woman with Marumage Chignon was a junior member of that certain brothel.
Until she learned the courtesan’s real name was Osen—this maid had been glaring sullenly.

Startled by an unexpected inspection round one day, Medical Doctor Sōkichi Hata calmly waved aside both left and right the assistants in their scattered haste and white-clad nurses gathering quietly yet urgently.

"No, I will visit her privately... Everyone, please carry on."

At length Dr. Hata—alone in the special ward with the madwoman whose exposed knees and chest lay disheveled, her vacant eyes staring blankly—somehow... while letting her keep clutching the razor in her hand, knelt by the sickbed, pressed his forehead into her chest, clung desperately, wept torrents even as he smiled, as though having forgotten both self and world to regress into folly, letting tears flow unconstrained down his beard.

Taishō 9 (1920), May