Pathway to Japanese Literature

○ Shadows Reflected in Clouds

○ Chino's New Year

○ The Inner Workings of the Gogol Society

○ Alma

○Overwhelmed by Flowers (Okarakyo’s Husband and Wife, Dog, Son (Tuberculosis))

○The Adjoining Room (Shimosuwa man, two geishas.
Myself, Y, hot spring)

○Dreams,

○ Face Reflected in Clouds

○ Gazing at the Sunset Sky

○ Mother Who Left Home

○ Clouds Resembling Mother’s Face

○ Disappearing Beyond Children's Mountain

○ Chino

○ Many wooden frames for making agar lay atop the snow.
○ Cold, sunny spots were best.

○ Freeze it overnight.

○ Kofu

○ Jagged, crystalline mountain skeletons

○ Low houses clustered from the foothill slopes toward the basin.
○ Glacial snow streams cascaded waterfall-like down from the mountain ridges.
○ Mountain slopes wrapped in withered-tree snow. A color scheme of brown and hue. Yet there was something akin to a feminine delicacy of crystalline structure.

○ Mountains and Basins

○ A kind of complex, intriguing terrain around Shimotsuke—yet small.

Upon entering Shinshu, evergreens abounded.
The mountains too had an overwhelming presence.
The evergreens created a black-and-white composition.

Majestic mountains and valleys

○ Shinshu Women

○ Eyes were comparatively large, with double eyelids that held a resolute strength.
A wild quality.

○ Silkworm Egg Kanshinta Manufacturing

Conversation from the Adjoining Room

A man; a middle-aged or older woman called 'Sis'.

An even younger woman,

She wasn't a geisha either. A crude conversation. They were factory girls.

"How 'bout takin' me to Ueno Park an' Hibiya Park this time?"

"You gotta make sure we don't get separated."

"Since Shinjuku's only on the 27th, guess we'll just visit Asakawa for worship."

"How wonderful!"

"But their periods, you know..."

"Hmph!"

"Well, I don't recall seein' any women... Just wanted to go now an' then—now an' then—"

“We just got whisked away in the car and had no idea what was what—we never used our legs at all!”

“When we asked how much the lodging fee was, they said five yen—five yen?!”
“They actually said that!”

“Goodness!”

“We won’t make a fuss over lodging fees.”

“You’re talking big!”

**Rural Newspaper**

**“Agar Prices Continue to Plummet**

**“Alert! Agar Prices in Freefall”**

**Central Sericulture**

**Crimson Resentment, Violet Grudge**

◇ Twice-Adjusted Left Sleeve

At Kamisuwa Nigo Kabukiya, first Sōnosuke and Kikugorō—the first Fukusuke—returned to the stage out of longing for their old nest, and now it seems the first Kanya has followed suit…

Chino

From the mountain’s base to the basin, snow lay in all directions. There, straw stacks—unlike those in Kanto—stood black and numerous, their shapes resembling large awamori bottles.
When viewed from afar, it felt as though a flock of penguins were gathered and playing atop the frozen white snow.

○ Frozen mandarins stinging teeth

○ A young geisha—gold-tipped long hairpins, Shimada hairstyle.

Peony-colored half-collar, matching striped kimono.

○ Women of the cold country—black eyelids, red cheeks emerging beneath white powder.

○ Light blue, white, and black striped shawl.

○ Red-patterned hem

○ Beating the Drum
On the warped wooden plank lingered something ambiguous, as though written with "Ichiriki" and white.

○ Front Renko Lattice

○ Second-floor storm shutters covered with galvanized iron.

○ Twice-monthly holidays for the factory girls.

From the 27th to the 8th.

○ From the smallest ones to those around twenty with white powder and rouge applied.

Creaking shamisen

When "Lost in the Seated Fragrance" (hauta) concluded, a dodoitsu...

A Shimosuwa-style advertisement

Grand Opening of O-Machiai (Geisha Tea House)

This time, thanks to the kind support of all esteemed patrons, from February 18th,

O-Machiai (Geisha Tea House) along with Udon Shop

We have commenced business with kindness and care as our guiding principle and strive diligently in our endeavors; we humbly request your esteemed patronage.

Udon/Kisoba O-Machiai Nyūsen

[Marginal note:] You... kari-ne’s bed

○ Shimosuwa, Kami-Suwa, Chino Shared Bus

Red, green bodies.

Female conductor

Wearing a tea-colored overcoat and red ruby-like rings, she perched each foot on the entrance steps and boarded briskly.

Street Observations

○ Two boys in woolen hoods imitating action movies, swinging broken-off sticks.

○ Motorcycle

“I can’t stand this unresponsive handlebar.”

They were observing the engine’s combustion while keeping it idle.

**Characteristics of Women's Speech**

Heeey—as if dragging out their words while speaking.

I tell ya

You came.

Ain’t that right?

Ain’t here, huh?

[Marginal note:] Jingeru singer

Kiso

The mountains were rounder than those of Shinshu.

Mountain dwellings with koba-style roofs had round river stones placed upon them.

Cedars and red pines stood abundant across the mountains.

Along the riverbed, bushes grew thick in reddish-brown hues while a clear stream flowed—melting white snow.

Near the train window lay shallow mountains.

A broad mountain stream.

Trees of one particular type held distinctive features.

Slenderness. Complexity of lines. Finely detailed branches. Maples and mountain cherries also present.

Delicately beautiful painterly fragments of scenery.

A shallow river gurgled and flowed.

Dried vegetables and firewood were laid out under the sunny eaves of a mountain house.

Mountain village spring snow.

Nostalgic landscape.

As though sweetfish were glinting their backs beneath the surface,

small whitecaps rose here and there

in the racing river water.

In the middle of the rice fields stood trees like solitary figures.

The withered trees held an austere beauty.

From Kiso-Fukushima onward, the scenery changed -

mountains and valleys carved more boldly, their notches deepening.

The Kiso suspension bridge.

The water of the Kiso River along the Ochiai riverside was deep and alum-colored, contrasting with the browns of the cliffs and withered trees.

The width was also great.

[Marginal note:] Around here—already near the station—no snow.

Chino

Rubbing her face with both hands,

“Is it that bad?”

“Hmm.”

From nearby came chatter.

"Oh Shii-san, you’ve turned into a tengu! Whenever you drink, your nose always goes red."

Twenty-two years old. A mature, innocent body. The emanation of dormant desire.

○ A gaze that tugged at a strong, straight heart like an ox's

○ Red cheeks

○ Food and such—slowly consumed at times with audible chewing sounds

Filippov

○ Ogasawara

○ Ressha seller

○ Baroness Rosen

○ Tailor couple
○ Youths coming to learn Russian
○ Younger children, the elderly
○ German missionary
○ A Russian woman who became the wife of a Japanese man
○ Miss Fusshe the Boxer

Peasant Novel Collection · June
Mr. Kimura Iwao
Wakatsuki Yasuharu

Modern Literary Selections

Street Scene · June 30th

When I came to Shimbashi Station around seven in the evening, a black-uniformed man at the shared bus shed was looking at his face in a compact he had picked up.

July 29th

There were no flowers on the desk.
She took small komachi grass blossoms from the garden and arranged them.

Perhaps because the leaves soaking in the glass water had fine downy hairs, tiny droplets glistened.
The water's coolness felt sharp yet beautiful.

The same.

Yesterday in the alcove, she had combined white, pink, and vermilion with a tiger lily stalk, arranging them in a red-glazed vase.

The sandy alcove wall—greenish-black—framed the flowers in perfect harmony.

A painting—she wanted to capture it in oils.

A midnight when fearsome winds howled.

The moon shone brightly.

Clouds like a black dragon.

White flowers

Sulfur Mountain

May, Nasu

○ Ishiko

○ Kimiko – Allure present

“Alright, let’s go get some sleep now.”

“I won’t let you sleep.”

Kimiko. The biwa master was a good person,

○ Midori

“Indeed, indeed.”

“However much we tried not to cause you trouble, our parent bank is in difficulties.”

“Quite so.”

“Was it the earthquake year? Or perhaps the next? When Suzuki Shoten collapsed, we suffered terribly.”

“No—it was ultimately the Vehicle Department Chief.”

“Still, they were quite relentless about coming to our homes for payment. I worried the bailiff might appear.”

Dream

June 9th

As she used small scissors to mend the manuscript,

"Oh, these tips aren't crushed,"

she murmured strangely, recalling how the scissors' crushed tips had existed only in a dream.
Then she remembered another dream from last night.
From within soft green young leaves' treetops emerged countless black chicks fluttering up like dark butterflies.
As she watched in astonishment, someone said "It's a such-and-such bird"—the name held fleeting beauty, but she couldn't remember it.

Y’s Dream of the Same Night

In Y’s dream, Beco-chan was playing the piano—her touch deft. He considered buying a used one: a flimsy-looking instrument resembling an organ.

"Agufa"—that was its name.

“Huh… Same name as the film.”

But with a baby piano being too small to play anything substantial—even if it was cheap (fifty yen)—I supposed it was no good.

From Ueno

○ Old Man from Shirakawa

The old man from Shirakawa faced the university student and chatted about various things.

“At that school you attend—any Shina international students come?”

“Well now, Shina’s in an uproar—how’re they handlin’ the money there, eh?”

“Just like ’em political party squabbles, I reckon.”

[Marginal note:] Their tones gradually rising in pitch.

“They claim to aim for the people’s happiness, but seems they ain’t really.”

“They’ve awakened now, haven’t they?”

The student’s retort to that.

Ueno—Kuroiso

From Ujiie, female students boarded.

Navy serge uniforms, bands of green with white lines.

In Asaka-style tones: "We’re supposed to have a trip on the twelfth," she said.

They seemed to be planning visits to Tokyo’s Hibiya, Tokyo Station, Yokosuka, and Enoshima. They eagerly discussed these plans,

Among them stood a girl wearing a wristwatch with a red ribbon—her braid fastened in Tokyo style, her exclamations of “Oh how dreadful!” equally metropolitan in tone, her fair complexion accentuated by small shoes adorned with ribbons. During their previous outing,

“A wave went sploosh and soaked me up to here! I tried desperately to dry off, but since there was still time, I went out again—then sploosh! Another wave hit! I dried myself once more but couldn’t manage it properly, so I ended up buying it.”

“They said anything that doesn’t dry completely here costs fifty sen.”

[Marginal note:] Accent falls where the ヽ mark is placed.

“Well, it ended up coming out, huh?”

“Huh? Something-something...”

“Ugh! I ended up getting properly scolded after all!”

“What are you doing?”

“We’re so worried about the trip we keep blabbering nonsense—just thinking about food all the time, writing lists and whatnot.”

“Should we bring chocolates and cream puffs?”
“Since it’s about what to bring, I don’t have any snacks or anything.”

“It’d be easier to buy them over there, don’t you think?”
“And so on.”

The two in front of Beco were busily memorizing English. They folded a sheet labeled "Dictation" in two; looking at it revealed words like Roll, accident, adapt, angel. It also read angel and emperor.
Slender girls, small and dark as black beans.

Shared

Kuroiso–Nasu, May 1

“We might be fated to live cramped in the mountains like this,” remarked the Matsukawa Inn Mistress and Old Woman from Arie.

[Marginal note:] Parched voice

A single motorcycle passed by.

“Who’s that?”
(With an accent on “re”)

“It’s Jun-chan.”

“Oh, so who’s ridin’ it?”

“He’s a veterinarian.”

“Did a cow or somethin’ get sick?”

“It’s a horse.”

“There’re horses too?”

“They keep horses and cows.”

“Hmm, plantin’ trees’s better than horses ’n cows—don’t gotta feed ’em, for starters.”

The man in the back seat

A man in his forties wearing a mouse-gray spring coat and sporting a mustache, first—

“Isn’t that bag gonna fall?”

Having said that, once they started moving—

“Ah, what a fine road this is! This’ll do nicely—all thanks to the Imperial Villa being built. Yes, all thanks to the Imperial Villa.”

[Marginal note:]

At that moment, I felt slightly odd.

Then Matsukawa Inn Mistress sneered and glanced sideways at the driver beside her.

He sang a Noh chant to the child passenger.

“Miss, do you hear any sound?”

He had barely mentioned his Noh chant when the child failed to comprehend.

“...”

“Hey, Jo-chan—not ‘Jo-chan’ but pronounced ‘Jō-chan’ in the Tohoku way—what do you think that sound was?”

He sang a Noh chant again.
Mother.

“I wonder what it could be,”

she said flatteringly.

The child

“Ping!”

the child answered in a small voice.
The car sent gravel flying, and when it struck the wheel, it let out a ping at that moment.

The man seemed slightly simple-minded as he chanted, "The waterwheel turns as the water flows—ceaselessly circling, ever circling."

He sang, straining to produce a thin voice at times and a low voice at others.

The accompanying man looked annoyed and remained silent.

“I wonder if this is a bit of an incline?”

“It’s a sustained six-degree gradient. From here on, it’ll be one long climb.”

“Hmm, so it’s one long climb, eh?”
The man mimicked Matsukawa Inn Mistress’s hand gesture—raising his arm straight up and holding it there.
Before long, they shifted gears, and the engine’s roar intensified.

“See, we’re climbing now—you can tell by the sound. This kind of noise means they’re putting out full horsepower. You can tell by the sound.”

Noisy—so noisy.

H.K.’s Prank

The Literary Girl came.

“I want to write an I-novel.”

“Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“Trying to write novels without even experiencing love—well, for instance, say you were to use me as your romantic subject. How does being here with me like this make you feel?”

“Yes.”

With that, he wore the girl out completely.
Eventually, he took her to places like Hakone.

April 28th, Nasu

○ Far from young leaves—the buds shed their outer skins.
○ Mixed among the bamboo grass and lawn grass, small blue Shunrindō flowers were blooming.
○ Snow still lingers in the mountain’s folds.
○ Around April-May, the hot springs were not particularly favorable.
○ On the withered mountain, white wild kobushi flowers—the view from afar was fine.

Hibiya Park

Hibiya Park June 27th

○A drizzly afternoon typical of the rainy season, with light showers falling and letting up intermittently,

○ Pond, Willows, Cranes

Pelican—a neck where feathers had molted, revealing pale reddish skin,

○ Separated from Uchisaiwaicho Street by nothing more than a single row of trees and an iron fence—through gaps in the wood, yellow streetcars, green watermelon-shaped buses, and automobiles could be seen darting past.

○ Bench Under the Plane Trees

A woman in a green coat sat with a bob-haired woman.
The coat adjusted the bob-haired woman’s hair for her.

Pedestrians.

Old men clutching portfolios, students, craftsmen in alpaca work jackets, young women in yukata with bare feet and Chinese-style topknots—they all kept stealing glances at the bob-haired women.

The men, contrarily, showed no emotion.

All the women—Oh!—thought something or other and immediately...

Hibiya Intersection

Streetcars raced crosswise, red flags, blue flags.

Three men from the naval band, wearing white Western-style military trousers with red stripes, leaped over the muddy puddles and entered the park.
At the park entrance stood a signboard announcing “Winnecke Comet Grand Welcome Evening of Music and Film.”

Through the glass doors of an En-taku, a Packard, and a sedan, glimpses could be caught of girls’ powdered napes.
A red woolen hat flew by on a bicycle.

Two horse-drawn carts loaded with seaweed for iodine extraction crossed.

A boy came led by his father’s hand; the rubber boots on his small legs squelched noisily.

[In the margin]

Winnecke came closest to Earth on the 27th.
Compared to yesterday’s distance of 1,530,000 ri, it had drawn 30,000 ri closer—at exactly 1,250 ri per hour, which translated to just under 21 ri per minute. It was literally flying through space.

Ueno Public Telephone Booth (10:00 PM)

Right next to it was a banana hawker; the phone conversation became tangled with their patter.

“Oh, hello? (Bananas here!) Yeah, just get on with it!”

“My goodness! What on earth are you saying?”

“Damn it!”
“(Banana hawker) I’m telling you, this is impossible—my banana stall’s right next to this phone booth!”

Inner Workings of the Gogol Society

Director: Kochiji (likes the name)

Governor’s annual salary: 5,000 yen.

Nowadays they were pocketing nearly seven thousand yen here and there.

Takeuchi kept his wife back in his hometown while planning to engage in “practice” with a male lover in the fields.
He was involved with Murai from the workshop and another woman.
Not wanting the men to find out about this matter, a male staff member would go over to the women’s side and raise a fuss.

On Shishido’s night duty day, he was in the janitor’s room. A woman came there, and while they were talking, Takeuchi suddenly entered. The next day, he threatened to fire them—all stemming from cowardice.

Takenaka—a man formerly in the business world who had gone bankrupt in the Taisho 9 crash, hung around Takeuchi’s orbit, and was permitted entry into the society. The man who’d been made to clean up his entanglement with an Akasaka geisha among other messes gradually amassed influence at the settlement house, now fanning the flames of anti-Takeuchi sentiment in his bid to seize control. This same man, judging it ill-advised, put a stop to Shishido’s resignation.

○ Takeuchi gave Shishido padded coats and such.

Yokota: A man from Central who, caught between both sides, considered how to maneuver cleverly.

○ Ono

Karasawa: An old man who slept yet always grasped Takeuchi’s weaknesses.

○Miwata

○ Takenaka: Though he had become thoroughly indebted to Takeuchi, he was now vigorously stoking anti-Takeuchi fervor.

He ordered Moya to quit. Yet when face-to-face with him, he said things like, "Why resign? If there’s something unpleasant, surely we can work it out."
He spread lies about yelling "You idiot!" over the phone, merely telling people such things; while ordering Yokota to quit, he secretly had Yokota conduct adult education.

[In the margin]

A cat-and-mouse game.

Takenaka called Takeuchi mentally deficient; Moya called Takenaka morally deficient; Takeuchi called that Moya an imbecile.

It became known through Osumi’s words.

May 22

I pondered various things about Mutter and recently made a different observation.

Before entering old age, when vestiges of youth still remained, the discord arising from this imbalance and their tenacious grip on life bred pain, leaving their moods unsettled.
They were deeply jealous of young women.
Ordinary women—by fifty, they would have completely aged, but the pain lay precisely in still retaining many youthful traits.
That youth thrashed about, yet found no purpose—in life—.
Therefore they suffered.
Not young, not old—that pain deserved sympathy.

One day in June

At his desk, Y was writing a letter to send to Kamo requesting the seal for the guarantee document attached to his passport application.

“Hey Beco-chan, don’t I need to put a stamp on this—a revenue stamp, I mean?”

“Ha ha ha! Even Moya makes those kinds of mistakes! Ha ha ha! How delightful!”

“Don’t I need it?”

“You don’t need one—it’s called a revenue stamp for a reason.”

—With this, I hit upon an idea.

To the man who received a hefty dowry,

“Your marriage registration requires a revenue stamp, right?”

Katai

Well, he read short stories too.

That was Tayama Katai’s style, wasn’t it.

A certain literary youth

Poetry Talk

Activity: Nana called "Bojest" "Jesutobō."

They were solemnly discussing various matters when Mr. Karita arrived, and the atmosphere somehow shifted.

“Mr. Karita studies Russian, you know.”

She lightly teased him.
“You’re engaged in such gloomy literature, aren’t you?”
I—
“Gloomy… like recent things?”
“Ah, such lively and wholesome literature!”

“Even beauty becomes somewhat gloomy when taken to extremes,” he said. “Even Nana—even French passion—if it burns—”

“Well, Maupassant’s gloomy too,” I retorted.

The conversation turned completely lighthearted, becoming a contest of one-upmanship. It was amusing.

Oka Ra Kyo—the characters stared up at me.

What?
Red pickled scallions? What did that mean?

Bursts of laughter erupted.

"I’ll take my leave” = “I’mma head outta here."

Pillow = Omakuwa.

They stuck out their tongues and jeered.

They scoffed.

Nakajima Sadako.

Tokyo Women’s University

Tohoku University German Humanities and Philosophy

“Humanities—what’s that?”
“That’s the problem.”

“Actually, I studied in the English department at Tokyo Women’s University—it would make sense if I were still there—but instead I’m stuck studying German.”

“You—what does your father do at home?”

“He’s passed away.”

“What?”

“—He’s become a Buddha.”

A photograph was taken.

“Oh, are you photographing legs?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d send it to Mr. Tanizaki.”

○ There’s a beauty when she says something clever and falls silent.

○ The sensation of being called a beautiful intellectual woman

[In the margin]

Twenty-four years old. A type that suited light blue crêpe de Chine shawls.
Peach-colored half-collar; fair-skinned.

Four children: Kusuo.

○ The seven-year-old sister—who wrote クソオ in her newly learned katakana—was also called Kusuo-san.

○ Her cheeks puffed up high, but her hands remained slender and frail.

○ The boy: “Eaty? Eaty?”

○ Unable to pronounce “kakikukeko,” he called his mother “Ta-chan.”

○ Unaware that potatoes needed boiling, he mashed them into a pulpy mess, chanting “Jojonjinai, Jojonjinai.”

○ Rhythmically poking their belly buttons

○ Thank you, Ano-touto-no-mikoto (having learned the ceremonial response to the imperial rescript)

○ On the apron were a moon and rabbit, their eyes made of blue seashell buttons. “I’ll take those eyes!” Y declared, covering the moon with one hand and the rabbit’s eye with the other.
Even afterward, he kept his hands in place.

“I won’t take them anymore.”

Only when told this did he finally release them.
In that way, the child proved quick to learn, timid yet persistent—pitiable.

○ That a four-year-old child could so readily grasp adult speech and expressions was astonishing in itself.

“Ah, Issun-neesan!” [the child] called out, following after Ms. Seki as she stood.

“Whoa! Ta-daaan!”

The child immediately started running.

“Ah! Dangerous!”

Someone started running.

○ Bath: Splish-splash

The skin on the foot was scraped off.

“Look here, see how it’s like this? That’s why you can’t put on your shoes.”

After gazing at it for a while,

“It hurts!”

“There, there, let me make it better.”

“Where did the ouchy spot go?”

“The mountain—that mountain over there.”

“What’s the ouchy spot seeing up there on the mountain?”
“I’m looking at the valley.”

Dream

1. Triangular House

There was snow.

Walking with a boatman-like man—just two figures—a row of tenements came into view ahead.
Each one-ken unit stood lined side by side.

Within each one-ken unit, I saw various people living in various ways.
A couple sat face-to-face eating their meal; an elderly person and child warmed themselves at the kotatsu.
There was even a prostitute lying alone on a pure white futon, dressed in bright red undergarments.
It felt beautiful yet somehow strange.
Then that boatman-like man—

“After leaving it like that, quite a lot of people started moving in. It’s a makeshift structure.”

Dream 2

The house—inside again triangularly enclosed on three sides with shoji screens, tatami mats within and wooden flooring outside.
The wooden flooring felt pleasant to walk on; along the wide edge were attached a bath area, a toilet, and something stylishly understated.
I found it somewhat intriguing.
If I were inside those bright shoji screens, how fascinating that would be—I felt a childlike curiosity, as if engaged in make-believe play.

Dream 3

Climbing the gentle slope, passing through a narrow corridor-like cluttered space, heading toward where the workers were—an old woman swept the floor, leaving newspapers and such scattered as they were, raising terrible clouds of dust. She paid no heed to the man beside her doing something. What a disagreeable old woman, I thought.

[Marginal note] At night, these became visible by electric light.

Before long, the man I had come to visit emerged.
I came to look at Y’s suit.
When I saw what had been brought out, it was shaped like this.
Kaishi-made checkered fabric

The midsection here, where the band’s width had become so loose, was utterly unbearable.

“There’s just no helping it, is there?”

“Well then, let’s gather this width into pleats—one fold on the right and one on the left. That way, there’ll be a center seam line, so it should take on a bit of shape,” she explained with hand gestures.

Dream 4

The Emperor, from within the train stopped at the station, proclaimed something.

Shaking his body all the while—now a loud voice, suddenly a soft one, then loud again—it felt unnervingly unsettling.
The crowd laughed. "Why do you laugh?" he proclaimed angrily.

[Marginal note]

In the newspaper, I saw a melancholy photograph of the Emperor standing at the train window during his visit to Tama Mausoleum.

Then this time, I was standing and talking.

"I can’t sleep—there’s too much thought in the world. Since before humans knew writing, they’ve expressed ideas in forms like this—" (forming the shape of cuneiform with her fingers) "—and now tens of thousands of years’ worth of thoughts have piled up. How could anyone sleep? Ah, there’s simply too much thought!"

"And with tens of thousands of years’ worth of thought piled up since then—how could I possibly sleep? Ah, there’s simply too much thought!"

She pressed her chest with one hand and cried out with a grief-stricken emotion.

Even after waking, that sad feeling—as if my heart had shriveled—lingered.
Long before—when I had dreamed of Kunio hanging himself and lowering dead into the bathwater—even after waking, that grief-stricken feeling had lingered unbearably; this resembled that.

A, Y, Mr. Shiga

A, Y—faced with Y’s kindness toward me—I couldn’t bring myself to hurt her.

I am physically drawn to A.

It’s agonizing—having Mr. Shiga come.

Having said that—the memory of a dream.

The details remained unclear.

There was some kind of large inn-like place.

Entering such a room

Can two people sleep here?
Is this okay?

A memory of having heard—(there was the thought of Chigataki)

The tedium of women nurtured by women

The power to create lifeless things—lacking electricity’s vitality—was one that resided among women.

No matter how dearly one woman loved another, there persisted this psychological mutual negation between those of the same sex—just as men raised exclusively among men developed flaws, so too did lives confined solely to women’s company.

[Marginal note] Capacity for tolerance—lack of illusion.
The aspect of steadfast focus.

┌ Just when I think it isn’t so,

┤ Miyasu Yasu—a mother-daughter pair like Tsuyako, dressing up to become same-sex companions for men

└ Tsuchida Toshiko and what resembled a daughter—their true mother-child bond tenuous at best.

Kyoto dialect

“Hey, He- ×han”

“Aren’t you gonna take a look?”

“What nonsense!”
“What a weirdo!”
“Dunno.”
“Thanks a bunch.”
“Is that so?”

“I dunno.”

“Well, ’course I know that!”
“Dunno—ain’t you the one sayin’ it?”

“That’s how ’tis, innit?”

“Hmm, that so?”
“What a shameless fellow.”
“Call it that if you like.”
“Thick’n heavy, innit?”

“Well now, he’s grown right plump, hasn’t he now?”

Booming voice

“Do you have any business today? Tofu-ya’s here! Auuui! Eeeh! Auuui!”

Foreign affairs clerk

A fat man

A navy-belted overcoat

“Over there, they’d been doing this.”

Using both hands as if playing a piano—it was a typewriter.

“I don’t think they came to promote books, but I can’t quite make out their specialty.”

March 13th Snow

Pressing against the already budding cherry and pomegranate branches, the soft snow piled up thickly.

In the tokonoma, peach blossoms were arranged.

Osen listened to the sound of snow sliding off bamboo with a pleasant, calm feeling.

The Tale of Misawa

There was a certain Priest Kōsen—renowned.

A monk went out,

“I’ve long heard of the renowned Priest Kōsen—is he Wheat Kōsen or Rice Kōsen?”

“Taste and see.”

“Katsu!”

“Did you choke? Did you choke?”

The day after the snow, around March 13th.

Snow-throwing.

There was a cheerful uproar.

"I'll borrow a kimono and head back."

"Just go back like that."

"Nooo, no no!"