Pathway to Japanese Literature

Though it wasn't my own room, I gazed upon this space as if it were mine - the aged sliding doors, the pillars crumbling with rot, the walls bearing water stains from past leaks - with a tranquility as though peering into the depths of my own heart. The entryway to this boarding house stood in a shaded lane heavy with humidity and trees; my six-mat room lay at the top of a dark staircase's final landing - yet this surviving corner alone now seemed to quietly withdraw itself from the glaring world burgeoning across the burnt ruins.

When the sun that had glared beyond the buildings outside finally sank, and around the time this room's bare bulb began illuminating the weathered sliding doors and pillars, I lay sprawled across the old tatami—having at last regained a sense of being human—gazing upon this room that wasn't mine as though it were my own or something of the sort. This resembled the six-mat room I'd lodged in during my student years, and somehow there lingered a sediment of loneliness as if at the world's extremity. I felt a familiarity like returning to an old nest after long absence. (An old nest? If only I could truly return!) I found myself contemplating my final years. At least for my declining age, I wanted one room where I might settle my body. Let the entire world forsake me—it mattered not—so long as I could draw my last breath peacefully somewhere unresented, unkicked, uncursed. And in that moment—if I might but faintly nod approval at the meager work I'd done—as I dwelled on such thoughts, something like rapture pierced through me.

Friend in distant lands—will you never return to that house? When you first set out on your journey, though we still shared the same roof, we could no longer speak openly with one another. Even before then I had dreaded conversing with your wife, but after your departure the very air of that house turned yet more oppressive. Had I but possessed the means and prospects for relocation, I would have fled that place far sooner. Every silent inch of that dwelling beseeched me to leave—yet there I remained, trapped in that suffocating state, trembling and gasping for breath.

But... one day, I was shown a letter you had written to a friend in Asagaya, and I was profoundly shaken to my core. "Is that so... So that's how it was... If that's how things stand... I can't go on like this"—from the very moment I read your letter's confession, I kept muttering these words without cease, but when I left that friend's house and walked to the National Railway station, the night abruptly deepened. "So that's how it is," I thought, staring fixedly at the train tracks and blue signals. The chilly night's rails and utility poles offered no answers to anything, yet to me they felt like some form of tangible response. The train did not readily come. The night sky hanging over the quiet station seemed filled with a great sigh. At the edge of this night sky, beyond the tracks—in some land I had yet to know, in that distant place—were you living there with a new lover? And so, in the direction where I would timidly make my usual way home lay the house you had already abandoned—the house you declared you would never return to under any circumstances. And so, even then in that house remained your wife who still knew nothing of your resolve. Did you refrain from sending me letters for so long, considering your wife would grow angry whenever you wrote to me? Vaguely I had sensed such considerations within myself, yet O sorrowful friend—through you, life now revealed itself to me with double depth. O friend, is humanity such a sorrowful thing? Suddenly, the soles of the rubber boots I wore gave me the sensation of lifting my body into midair. I took a deep breath and had to brace both legs.

You found God within that lover of yours, declaring that this time, truly, you would heal on this earth the countless wounds your soul had suffered here. And for that purpose, did you mean to abandon forever the house you built in Tokyo and all its household possessions, never to look back? I felt I could almost comprehend what you had endured thus far with the utmost human endurance possible. So for you, this matter too... But even so, and this... all these must have been matters of no small consequence. Strange friend, sorrowful friend—I who should have known you well—yet in truth I could say I did not know you at all. And yet your very existence shook me from afar, radiating something into my core. During the war, when you emerged from prison and abruptly began writing those piercing poems, it startled me profoundly. The postcard you sent after the war urging me to come to Tokyo immediately repelled me in an instant. And now once more, something formidable tightened its grip on my chest... Repeating this soliloquy almost without pause, I made my way back to that house that night as timidly as ever. The wife who knew nothing of these matters seemed to exist quietly in the depths of that house, and the state of that house showed not the slightest difference from before I had come to know of this affair. Yet I was a man who absolutely had to vacate that house immediately.

Not long after that, I came to temporarily stay at my nephew's boarding house. He had come from his hometown relying on his senior's lodging for entrance exams, and when that senior graduated, he simply took over the vacated room. This underage nephew could not comprehend hardships like mine, but reluctantly consented under the condition it would only be during his vacation period. My nephew's school had already gone on vacation around when summer was beginning. I moved into this room just as my nephew departed for his hometown. And then, my temporary life here began.

The dimly lit downstairs room of this boarding house had become the dwelling place solely for its owner and his mother, yet this refined old woman and her young son seemed to have survived within the quiet stagnation of bygone days. Even their conversing voices carried a soothing calm and richness, as if the season of calamity had never encroached upon this place. One evening, I was speaking with the old woman in the kitchen about personal matters.

“The atomic bombs… You suffered terribly, didn’t you.” Her tone was quietly tense, yet with just those words, I felt a strange sensation as if something deep within me had been unexpectedly touched. One day, I thought to try cooking some of the five gō of rice I'd received from an acquaintance in the pot my nephew had left behind. The boarding house’s narrow, dimly-lit kitchen had a small sink, but the moment I filled the pot with tap water and stirred the white rice with my fingers, I was struck by the illusion that this sink was exactly like the one in my old home. In the summer when I lost my wife—as we had already stopped employing a maid by then—I often did the cooking in the kitchen. Just when I had become able, albeit clumsily, to handle cooking, laundry, and sewing, my wife died.

After that, I folded up my travel lodgings and moved to my brother's house in Hiroshima. (It was as if I had moved there expressly to meet Hiroshima's catastrophe,) but even then, having continued imposing on others' homes without respite, I had nearly forgotten the very idea of kitchens. Now when I dipped my fingers into the pot's water, my fingers suddenly seemed to spring back to life with joy. In the room right across, my sick wife lay sleeping while I busied myself noisily with kitchen tasks. Though bedridden for so long, my wife remembered every minute detail of that kitchen more clearly than I. That seems like only yesterday—that corner still feels within reach—yet in truth it has become something from a world infinitely removed. But perhaps life exists only in such hushed corners.

It was the room right across from me that constantly disrupted the hushed atmosphere of this boarding house. Separated only by shoji screens and a narrow corridor, that room almost constantly resonated toward me. The young man beyond the shoji screens was seized by violent coughing fits two or three times a day. Just hearing that cough alone made it seem he didn't have much life left. But once the coughing subsided, he would immediately resume talking in an excited voice. The way he talked and moved about with his wife beyond those shoji screens was as if tiptoeing and darting across some dangerous substance. From that man's movements, I suddenly found myself envisioning countless bombs scattering across the room opposite. Even while holding chopsticks, wasn't that man darting about busily across the tatami mats? Partner-like individuals would come to that room multiple times a day, and whenever they did, he would grow terribly excited in a voice that matched theirs. At times he would busily go out from early morning, while at other times he would lie around all day talking with his wife. Then, when a masseur with a foolish voice who seemed to be an ex-soldier would come by, the two would immediately become engrossed in small talk. Amid the chaos of the postwar period, he began passionately talking about those who had easily made illicit profits as if they were his own exploits. The masseur with the foolish voice murmured with admiration, "Such is the way of things, I suppose," maintaining his deliberate calm. Before long, the conversation would inevitably turn to the war. Then between them, it already reached a state where a world war seemed on the verge of breaking out at any moment. "Such is the way of things, I suppose," the masseur remained sitting indefinitely.

There had to always be commotion in that room without fail. When the man was away, his petite wife would mutter something to herself all alone. “Rice... I need rice. When will there ever be a world where we can live without worrying about rice?” she sometimes cried out like a sigh. One morning, I was startled to hear his wife whisper to the man, “Even so, you’ve recovered your vigor, haven’t you.” Those two as well had been driven to the edge of existence, now huddling forlornly upon six tatami mats—but were they truly huddled together? Even that fact they no longer noticed, nor could it be clearly discerned.

In those third-rate diners, cornmeal dumplings were a staple; though those bright yellow dumplings—vivid as daylily flowers—were difficult to swallow, they nonetheless filled our empty stomachs. The sensation of hunger that had persisted for two years still threatened me even now, but I’d come to feel a childlike reassurance at the existence of those yellow things. Yet the people busily eating around me would casually discard just those dumplings on the table. (Yes, they must be living better than I am after all,) I sometimes thought, astonished by the number of abandoned dumplings. The people gathering here—gaunt-faced companions drained of vitality and those with greasy, vulgar expressions—sat jumbled together like oil and water. In the morning and evening queues, I would sometimes catch sight of a woman with desolate eyes. The woman clutching a large commuter bag was packing her midday meal into a lunchbox at dawn. But the women who gathered here were mostly young things with crimson-painted fingernails. Perhaps these women had grown accustomed to their wanton postures; though the narrow aisle between wall and table brimmed with people awaiting seats, they leaned chairs against walls, threw legs across tabletops, and arched their bodies as if mocking existence itself.

I exited the cafeteria and walked toward the asphalt road. Emerging from the narrow alley with densely packed eaves into that space, I found scorching sunlight spilling over everything while the wind blew incessantly. This road led toward the station's overpass, where both time and space seemed to be swept from one direction to another. I felt it clearly—certainly. But just beneath my actual vision's surface, this road now shattered into fragments. Fragments—in the end, even here lay fragments from some tragedy's aftermath... And yet this road of tragic shards beneath my feet and the sky above stretched taut toward the station overpass like a single determined will. In the end, I was the fragment that had wandered into this place. ...But when I cast my eyes once more toward that taut blue sky ahead, something small glinted far down this road. Then came the bizarre panorama of Earth's annihilation—scattered and vanished by a single gust of wind.

Thus within me quiet tragedies endlessly repeated themselves, yet I found myself near the station. When the road reached the station area, a new world of scorched ruins abruptly unfolded, and the stream of people grew suffocating like a vortex of war survivors. Flowing, flowing—people were still being swept away without purpose. Then, under the overpass, black-clad men and women clutching sacks were surrounded by police officers and forcibly loaded one by one onto a truck. But swiftly, the stream of people dismissed such sights and pressed onward from alleyway to alleyway. From alleyway to alleyway, I walked with the gait of a beggar. The scourges of war devastation, hunger, and homelessness flow everywhere. From the opposite direction too, the crowd came shuffling along.

Yet at times I was suddenly struck by something. Undeniably—undeniably—something like a diamond pierced through me from within that tree-lined alley’s crowded throng. What could that possibly be? What entity would dare shoot through me? It might have been mere delusion… yet even now such radiant things may still exist upon this earth.

I was being urged by my nephew to vacate the room quickly. He said he would be bringing a friend back soon and insisted I vacate here before then. There was our initial agreement, and from the moment I moved into this room, I had been constantly searching for lodgings. To the people from the publishing company who went out twice a week to receive work, I did my utmost to ask them as well. As much as possible, I had been pleading about the room through my few acquaintances from one to another. But ultimately, for me who had no money, it could be called nothing but hopeless. At times, I found myself nearly clinging to a sense of stability in this room that wasn't even mine (though truly, there was no other choice but to do so...). However, my nephew’s demanding letters continued to arrive, their tone growing increasingly vehement. I had to begin making preparations for my imminent escape.

One day, my nephew finally returned to this room. The nephew in his school uniform opened the shoji door, then stood silently in the corridor outside. The moment I saw that face, I started and thought: Ah, this won't do anymore. It was a face so contorted with rage it could hardly be called a face—a visage on the verge of bursting apart. When faced with such an expression, several possibilities come to mind. My nephew glanced back at another uniformed student in the corridor and said, "Come in." The man who appeared to be a friend entered the room and gave me a curt nod. I tried to form words for my nephew but only fidgeted in hesitation. Yet the muscles of my nephew's face had stiffened into spasmodic twitches.

“Could you wait just two or three more days? Anyway, just two or three days.” When I finally managed to say this much, I soon left the room. No—rather than me leaving the room, it was the spasm that pushed me out. I passed through an alley of densely packed eaves and emerged onto a wide asphalt road. The sky above the road stretched taut toward the station’s overpass like a single will. Dazedly, I found myself walking through the station-front bustle. My feet carried me toward the real estate company that had surfaced in my mind two or three times before. I entered the cul-de-sac and stood before its door. When I pushed open the door and entered, an old woman sat alone in the narrow earthen entryway.

“A room? There’s one nearby—a four-and-a-half-mat room on the second floor of an apartment. But today again, someone went to see it and refused, saying the kitchen area was a bit dark...”

“Does that kitchen area have running water as well?” I asked a strange question, but since the old woman nodded—as if prompted by something—I inquired about the key money. “The key money is said to be ten thousand yen, but as the person in charge is currently away, would you be so kind as to come again tomorrow?” When I heard “ten thousand yen,” I thought of the advance payment I had been negotiating with my workplace publisher. It was exactly ten thousand yen. If I could borrow that amount, then that sum would undoubtedly become the last money I could ever use.

When I returned to the room, it was cluttered everywhere with my nephew’s belongings, but now neither my nephew nor the friend was there. Seeing the scrap of paper on the desk, I was startled.

〈We will wait about three days. We are staying at a friend's place for three days. You must vacate by then. That's all.〉 The pressure was still trying to expel me from here. This was not, for me, merely my nephew's rejection. ......It was a day of dreary rain—strangely clinging, as if threatening to become a storm. When I visited the real estate company, the person in charge was there. The man who appeared to be a broker immediately launched into a muddled explanation about the room's rental conditions. Then he suggested I at least take a look. It was arranged that I would be shown around by the errand boy there. The errand boy who had gone outside with me walked briskly through the rain without an umbrella. He led me toward the alley where my nephew’s boarding house was located. But when we came to the corner just before that one, he turned sideways and arrived at a place where a midwife’s sign was displayed. That was the apartment. Until that moment, I hadn't noticed there was an apartment there. But it wasn’t solely due to my obtuseness—the old wooden two-story house existed so inconspicuously in its recessed spot, almost like a dustbin or something. We entered into a large, dimly lit dustbin-like structure. The decaying wooden stairs had holes here and there, and when we climbed the short flight, a dim light bulb glowed forlornly beneath the low ceiling. From there, the corridor was supposed to be one meter wide, but firewood and buckets completely blocked the passageway. After advancing two or three steps while avoiding obstacles, the errand boy stopped at the entrance of a room whose door stood open right before our eyes. But then, when I stood at that entrance, I was nearly overwhelmed by the sight of some sinister, murky mass squirming and swarming within the darkness. The errand boy went up into the room and was whispering something.

“Please come in.” A young woman holding a girl on her lap called out to me. On the narrow soiled tatami lay white rice fully spread across newspaper pages, but when I entered, a gaunt old man with pitch-black arms swept it up with both hands and stashed it in a corner. Two old women in stained work pants leaned against the wall with legs stretched out. Five people living here... I was vaguely contemplating this room’s occupants.

“The weather’s been so dreadful lately.” “It’s a good room—plenty of sunlight too...” The young woman began everyday conversation with calm composure. I had already been informed about various details of the room’s conditions by the man from the real estate company earlier. The terms were these: we would secure the apartment manager’s approval afterward, but initially infiltrate under the pretense of being cohabitants—(“Otherwise these days,” he had stated, “there are absolutely no rooms available”)—so even when inspecting the room, I must act as if visiting an acquaintance, while artfully concealing matters from the apartment’s nosy residents. For now, it appeared I had no alternative but to submit to these constraints. The young woman engaged in loud small talk meant for neighboring rooms to overhear. Then, modulating her voice as if wary of eavesdroppers, she elaborated on the room’s particulars.

“The room should be cleaned out and ready in about three days.” “However, for now, please let me handle paying the rent to the manager on my end.” “And whatever you do, pass us off as family members to the apartment residents.” “Not that it matters—everyone in the neighborhood is perfectly lovely.”

Her explanation had a vexing quality, as if speaking of some complex thread that existed right before my eyes yet remained invisible to me.

“So do you have plans to leave?” “This time we’re moving to the second floor of the office.” “No, these people came from their hometown for a short while, but they’ll return tomorrow.”

I let my gaze wander over the cluttered wall edges with old chests of drawers and shelves, and the broken glass window visible across the way, feeling something leaden in my heart.

When I and the guide emerged from that dim dustbin-like apartment building outside, the surroundings were a gloomy rain-soaked street, yet even so, the light and air felt distinctly refreshing. I decided to have them wait a bit for my answer, but I had to lash my timorous feelings into action. No matter how grim the building might be, no matter how dark the environment—if only I could be granted some space as my own room, wouldn't that suffice? By doing so, I could have my own room within that room—a space unassailable by anything. But still, that squirming murky unpleasantness I felt when first standing at that room's entrance remained inescapable. I was utterly bewildered about how to decide...At dawn I had a strange dream. No sooner had that squirming pitch-black mass from the apartment room flashed through my mind like an electric shock than I distinctly heard a voice declare: "That is a den of thieves." I was plunged into a strangely oppressive terror.

When I finished having breakfast out and returned to my room, a telegram from my nephew was there.

〈ASATSUTEKAHERU〉 I could almost see my nephew’s murderous face materializing before my eyes. This was no longer a time for hesitation.

I promptly went out. I stopped by the publishing company and requested the advance payment I had previously applied for. The money had been conveniently arranged for me at that time. When I received the 10,000 yen bundle, my outlook brightened a bit, at least for the moment. Then, on my way, I stopped by the real estate company. The broker, with his practiced demeanor, wore an expression as though he had been waiting for my arrival.

“I still have some doubts—even if we agree to those conditions, is there really any chance the other party will actually move out?” “Well, she’s a woman with children to care for—I doubt she’d do anything reckless.” “Apparently she’s being pressed by debt deadlines and seems in a hurry to settle things.” “She showed up again this morning saying ‘Find me someone—anyone—who’ll commit.’” The broker added further with a careful-looking expression. “In any case, make sure to clearly verify the other party’s identity.” “If you have them show you their rice ration booklet or bank passbook and keep a copy, that should be safe.”

I still had unresolved misgivings, but then and there I visited the apartment room. When I stood at the entrance—unlike yesterday—the room seemed somewhat tidier (or at least, perhaps there was a part of me that wanted to perceive it that way). In the room, the young woman from yesterday was leaning against the wall alone. “It feels a bit more spacious now, don’t you think?” “I sold off the chest of drawers this morning—that’s why it feels more open now.”

The woman looked around the narrow room in a self-deprecating tone. That was still the face of someone being driven into a corner.

“The child has been taken back to her hometown by my mother. From now on, I truly intend to start fresh.”

I brought up the matter of the rice ration booklet. “Ah, a background check?” The woman took out a soiled ration booklet and spread it open before me. From among a row of various names entered there, she pointed out where it read Sugimoto Hanako and showed me. The address on that ration booklet was registered in Fukushima Prefecture. The woman began explaining the situation. “We used to collect rations here, but since there are no shortages in the countryside and it’s far better, we transferred our registration there.” “That’s why we’ve been carrying the rice over from there.”

I couldn't quite grasp the circumstances. Then the woman broached this matter: "Do you possess many belongings? "I intend to vacate this place around tomorrow, but there's a slight favor I must ask. "I'll take my essential items with me, but might I leave things like this vanity table and closet trunks here temporarily? "In any case, I'll continue paying rent to the superintendent for now." The woman already seemed to regard my tenancy as settled.

That evening, the man from the land company came to visit me and demanded my answer. I still hadn't reached any decision. Then again the next morning, the man from the land company appeared. Since they were in such haste, he pressed me to at least hand over the deposit that very day—otherwise he'd take the offer elsewhere—and began hurrying me along. Finally I agreed to accept. As he was leaving, the apartment woman arrived to collect payment. Upon receiving the money, she immediately insisted I move some belongings into the room that same day. I thought even if I moved my things there now, it would still amount to nothing. Though reluctant, I nevertheless carried a single wicker trunk to that room.... When my trunk was placed in its corner, my very existence felt horribly incomplete. Yet even this precarious state seemed an unavoidable circumstance for someone like me who'd been burned out of home.

The next day was set for handing over the remaining payment and having the room vacated for me—at least tentatively. When I visited at the appointed hour, the room lay cluttered with assorted belongings.

“Ah, I’m worn out,” the woman said with a deep sigh, “I couldn’t sleep at all last night thinking about everything,” as she kept rummaging through small items. However, when she took the remaining payment from me, her face suddenly turned earnest, “Please use this room starting today,” she murmured softly. Then—as one might speak of something disjointed and hard to explain—she began saying these things.

“I’ll be leaving right away.” “But I’ll still need to come by occasionally, if you don’t mind.” “Then I’ll leave one key here with you.” “Please be careful.” “Things often go missing in this apartment, so I must ask you to keep it locked.”

After that, she spent some time preparing her luggage, then shouldered a large bundle and left carrying baskets and wrapped packages in both hands. When she left, I thought about my belongings and opened the closet there to inspect it. The closet was still more than half blocked by her belongings. This was no help, but for the time being, I decided to at least move my bedding from the boarding house across the way. That night, when I brought my bedding to the apartment, my life in that room began. But was this truly my room…? Here before me were the dressing table and dining table she had left behind, while inside the closet a slovenly way of life lay plainly visible. But that was none of my concern. I did not want to be influenced by the unrelated substances surrounding me. Yet the windowpane before my eyes had a large hole, with washi paper pasted over it now crumpled and looking ready to peel off at any moment. The mullions of the glass door were warped and loose, rattling unsteadily each time they were opened or closed. The walls, tatami mats, and sliding doors were all horribly filthy, and at times there was a pungent stench like that of a garbage dump. And then… When it came to the oppressive atmosphere surrounding this room, there seemed no end. The room lay level with the hallway, so the clattering of geta outside directly reached my bedside as I lay there. The sink beside the stairs, untouched by light, was pitch-black like a sooty spiderweb—but when I twisted its faucet, not a single drop of water came out. The water supply had been broken for several years already. In the poorly ventilated narrow corridor, they burned firewood in each room. The smoke crawled through the building and mercilessly attacked my eyes and nose. When I returned from outside and entered this apartment, at its entrance I encountered a stifling mass of human stench. Climbing rickety stairs to reach the dim corridor, I found a swollen-faced landlady holding an infant in the hallway—making it urinate right beside a door… I recalled my own childhood.

As a child, even seeing the soiled patches on the rough walls of my family's storehouse would fill me with profound disgust, but whenever I glimpsed the wretched state of others' homes, an icy dread would seize me—the sort that might invade one's dreams. That fragile child-self still hovers within arm's reach even now...

One morning, there came someone knocking on this room early. When I, rubbing my sleep-deprived eyes, unlocked the door from the inside, the woman stood outside dressed as a traveler with a large rucksack on her back.

“I’m back,” the woman said, clomping up into the room without permission and removing the load from her shoulder. “I just went back to my hometown,” she added, still carrying the buoyant energy of her travels. I had thought she’d gone to the office she mentioned moving to this time. But she paid no heed to my expectations and began behaving as if returning to an old haunt. When she untied the rucksack’s cord, she spread newspaper and transferred white rice with a rustle. Then she mixed the grains with both hands, took a mouthful of water from the bowl, and sputtered it out in a wet spray.

“Oh rice, rice—because of you, our troubles never cease.” While muttering such things with raucous laughter, she measured it out using a masu cup and transferred the grains into cloth bundles. Soon she hoisted one bundle and darted outside. Before long, the woman returned to the room. Following her came a lanky man who resembled a black-market dealer, trudging up into the space. He disregarded my presence entirely, standing rigidly as he glared down at the white rice spread across the tatami with contemptuous eyes before wordlessly departing. Thereafter she kept bustling in and out until past noon, only to disappear unnoticed sometime later.

When night fell, there was a nightly power outage that plunged the apartment into total darkness, but having no will to light a candle, I stayed crouched in the lightless room in a daze. Someone knocked on my door and called "Sugimoto-san" with a gravelly voice.

“Sugimoto-san isn’t here.” I responded thus from beyond the door, but the visitor showed no inclination to depart. I opened the door and inquired about his business.

"This is troublesome. Is Sugimoto-san not here?" “I’d like you to keep a bicycle here for me, you see.”

“A bicycle?” “To this room?” I was simply shocked. Eventually, the man wordlessly turned and left.

Almost every day, various inexplicable individuals came to visit Sugimoto. Young men who claimed to have been referred by the marriage brokerage office began showing up, and even the old man from that office started coming around. Then a man who appeared to be a creditor also began arriving frequently and irritably. No matter how complex the circumstances surrounding the previous occupant of this room might be, I was filled with the desire to have them vacate it as soon as possible.

And then, early one morning, I was awakened by the sound of knocking on the door. The woman was carrying a rucksack on her back just as before, looking eager. I immediately asked when this room would truly be made available to me. As if encountering an unexpected obstacle—a sharp snap flashed—and then suddenly the woman’s face took on a terribly withered expression. “I have various circumstances of my own to deal with… And to be honest, I was just swindled out of 2,000 yen over rice.” “Even though I gave the money to the black marketeer, they didn’t give me the promised rice… It was just bad luck with who I dealt with.”

She muttered such things gloomily, but soon began untying the rucksack's cord. The white rice was spread out on newspaper and roughly stirred with both hands. “Eat or be eaten.” In a ghastly manner, the woman muttered to herself alone. I was unable to sleep almost every night because of the child wailing and screaming in the adjacent room. Were the parents trying to torment that child to death?—The smacking sounds of blows reverberated in my ears. The state inside my head came to resemble this apartment's hopeless, scar-riddled form. Hopeless people descended the decaying stairs and went out into the streets. A crowd of hopeless people shuffled and pressed against each other toward the station. Those people survived in chaotic trains and markets through their own coded language and animalistic force, existing completely apart from me. And these people always came stomping through my mind with their muddy boots. My head gradually filled with inexplicable anger. Anger filled this room. Is this truly the room I’ve rented? Or is even this filthy room now trying to mock me? ……Stop thinking about anything—and the night inevitably brought a power outage. The nightly power outages forced me despairingly to bed the moment darkness fell. I thought of such a poem.

A sea within the desolate room. A sea within the head—a sea dissolving dark anger—trying to fall asleep toward that enormous, overwhelming vastness—a sea swirling with creaking turbulence inside the head.

After nights of pitch-black thought, morning would invariably come to this room too. Then I would find myself somehow feeling newly scoured clean. Upon these mats—if they could still be called mats at all in their utter filth—the autumn light now lay hushed. That clear light...

O distant friend, I am calling out to you.