Pathway to Japanese Literature

The entrance to this boarding house lay in a shaded alleyway thick with humidity and trees; my six-tatami room at the end of the dark staircase existed in this miraculously unburned corner that now seemed to quietly withdraw from the glaring world emerging from the burned ruins.

When the sun that had been blazing fiercely beyond the buildings outside the window set, and the naked bulb in this room began illuminating the aged fusuma and pillars, I finally lay down on the old tatami as though regaining a sense of being human, gazing about this room that wasn’t mine as though it were my own or something akin to it. This resembled the six-tatami room I had lodged in during my student days, and somehow, I felt a stagnation of loneliness as if at the world’s end. I felt a familiar warmth, as though returning to my former dwelling after so long. (To my former dwelling? If I could truly return there!) I was now contemplating my later years. At least in my later years, I wanted a single room where I could settle down. Even if abandoned by everything in this world, I wanted to draw my last breath in peace—in a place where I wouldn’t trouble anyone, be trampled upon, or cursed. And in that moment—if I could but faintly nod in approval of the humble work I’d done—as I dwelled on such thoughts, I found myself struck by a kind of ecstasy.

O distant friend, will you never return to that house again? When you set out on your journey, we—though sharing the same roof—could no longer speak openly with one another. Long before this departure, I had been terrified to even exchange words with your wife; after you left, that house's atmosphere grew darker still. Had I possessed both relocation funds and destination, I would have fled that place far sooner. Though every silent signal in that house pleaded for my swift departure, I persisted in that suffocating state—trembling yet paralyzed—unable to breathe freely.

But... one day, I was shown a letter you had written to a friend in Asagaya, and I was shaken to my very foundations. "Is that so... So that's how it was... If things have come to this..." From the 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, night had abruptly deepened around me. "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 kind of tangible resistance. The train did not come. The night sky hanging over the quiet station seemed filled with a great suspended breath. In that distant land beyond the tracks—at the farthest reaches of this night sky in some unknown place—were you living there with your new lover? And in the direction where I, as usual, made my timid way back, lay the house you had already abandoned and sworn never to revisit. And even now, within that house dwelled your wife who remained utterly unaware of your resolve. Had you refrained from sending me letters all this time because you feared angering your wife by writing to me? I had vaguely understood such calculations, but sad friend—through you life reveals itself twice as deep. Friend—is this what humanity truly is? Something so profoundly sorrowful? Suddenly, the soles of my rubber boots gave me a sensation as though lifting my body into midair. I drew a deep breath and braced both legs.

You have found God in that lover of yours, declaring that this time, here on earth, you will truly heal the countless wounds your soul has suffered upon this ground. And for that purpose, will you abandon forever—without a backward glance—the Tokyo house you built and all its furnishings? I think I can understand what you’ve endured thus far with every ounce of human patience possible. So for you, this current matter... But even so... and this... all these things are undoubtedly momentous. O strange friend, O sad friend—I who should know you well could also say I truly know nothing at all. And yet your existence shakes me from afar, radiating something into my very being. During the war, when you emerged from prison and abruptly began writing sharp poems, you startled me. The postcard you sent after the war’s end urging me to come to Tokyo immediately jolted me. And now again, something momentous tightens around my chest... Repeating this monologue almost without cease, I made my way back to that house that night as usual, timidly. The wife of that house, who remained unaware of everything, seemed to exist quietly in its depths, and the state of the household showed not the slightest difference from before I had come to know of these matters. But I was, by all means, a man who had to leave that house immediately.

Not long after that, I came to temporarily take up residence at my nephew's boarding house. He had come from his hometown to take exams, relying on a senior's lodging arrangements, and when that senior graduated, had simply taken over the vacated room in exchange. This underage nephew could scarcely comprehend hardships like mine, but he reluctantly agreed on condition it would only be during the vacation period. My nephew's school had already gone on vacation around when summer was about to begin. I moved into this room as my nephew departed for his hometown. Thus began my temporary existence here.

While the dimly lit downstairs room of this boarding house was solely the dwelling for its owner and his mother, the refined old woman and her young son seemed to still be surviving within a quiet stagnation of bygone days. Even their conversing voices carried a harmonious calmness with a mellow quality, making me think that perhaps the season of calamity had never invaded this place. One evening, I was in the kitchen talking with the old woman about personal matters. “The atomic bomb… You endured something terrible, didn’t you?”

Her tone carried quiet urgency, yet with those few words alone I felt something deep within me strangely stirred. One day, resolved to cook some of the five gō of rice received from an acquaintance using my nephew's abandoned pot. In the boarding house's cramped dim kitchen stood a small sink basin—the moment I filled the pot with tap water and swirled white rice with my fingers, an illusion seized me that this sink perfectly mirrored the one from my former home. That summer when I lost my wife—when we could no longer keep a maid—I'd often found myself cooking in the kitchen. Just when I'd finally grown capable of managing meals, laundry and mending—clumsily though it were—my wife died. Afterward I packed up my transient lodgings and moved to my brother's house in Hiroshima. (As if fate had drawn me there to meet that city's tragedy,) yet even then I kept imposing on others' households until kitchen matters faded from memory. Now dipping fingers into pot-water, they seemed abruptly revived with joy. Across the way my ailing wife lay abed while I rustled about kitchen tasks. Long confined to sickroom sheets yet she remembered every kitchen detail clearer than I. That time feels yesterday-vivid—that corner still seems present there—yet truthfully it's become part of some unreachably distant world. But perhaps life dwells only in such hushed corners after all.

It was the room right across from me that constantly disrupted the hushed atmosphere of this boarding house. Separated by shoji screens and a narrow corridor, that room almost ceaselessly resounded toward me. The young man beyond the shoji screens was attacked by violent coughing fits two or three times a day. Listening solely to that cough, it seemed he didn’t have much life left. But when his cough subsided, he immediately resumed 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 perilous substance. From the man's movements, I suddenly found myself envisioning countless bombs scattered across the room opposite. Even while holding chopsticks, could that man have been darting about busily across the tatami? Partner-like people would come to that room multiple times a day, and then he would grow terribly animated in a voice befitting a partner. Just when one thought he’d busily head out from early morning, there were days he spent sprawled out all day chatting with his wife. Then, when a masseur doctor with a foolish voice reminiscent of a former military man came by, the two would immediately become engrossed in small talk. In the chaos following the war’s end, he would launch into impassioned stories about those who had effortlessly amassed ill-gotten gains, speaking as if their exploits were his own. The doctor with the foolish voice, calm and deliberate, murmured admiringly, “That’s just how things are, I suppose.” Before long, the conversation would certainly turn to the war. Then between them, it had already reached a state where a world war seemed about to break out imminently. “That’s just how things are, I suppose,” the masseur doctor murmured, remaining seated indefinitely.

By all means, that room must never be without commotion. When the man was away, the petite wife would mutter something to herself alone. “Ah, rice—I want rice. When will we ever live in a world where we don’t have to worry about rice?” she would sometimes cry out like a sigh. One morning, I was startled to hear the wife whisper to the man, “Even so, you’ve regained your strength, haven’t you?” Those two had also been driven to the brink of existence, huddling forlornly upon six tatami mats—but were they truly huddled together? Even that fact must have slipped beyond their notice, remaining unclear even to themselves.

At each of the three daily meals in the cafeterias, cornmeal dumplings were an inevitable accompaniment; though those sunflower-yellow lumps proved difficult to swallow, they at least filled the ache of hunger. The sense of starvation that had persisted for two years still threatened me even now, but I’d come to feel a childlike reassurance at the presence of those yellow masses. Yet the people busily eating around me would sometimes discard just those dumplings on the table. (That’s right—they must live better than I do after all,) I sometimes found myself startled by the quantity of abandoned dumplings. The crowd gathering here mixed gaunt, lifeless faces with others bearing greasy, vulgar expressions—oil and water jumbled together in line. In the morning and evening queues, I once glimpsed a woman with desolate eyes. Clutching a large commuter bag, she packed her noon rations into a lunchbox during the morning cafeteria hours. But most women coming here were young things with crimson-painted fingernails. These women had perfected brazen postures; though the narrow aisle between wall and table overflowed with seat-seekers, they leaned chairs against walls, propped legs on tables, and arched their backs as if mocking existence itself.

I left the cafeteria and walked toward the asphalt road. Emerging from the densely roofed alleyway, scorching sunlight flooded over me as the wind blew incessantly. This road led toward the station overpass, where time and space all seemed to be swept along from one direction to another. I felt it clearly, unmistakably. But just beyond my actual vision, this road now shattered instantly into fragments. Fragments—in the end, this too was a fragment from some tragedy's aftermath... Yet wasn't this road of tragic fragments beneath my feet, this sky above it, stretching toward the station overpass like a single determined impulse, chest puffed out? In the end, I was the fragment that had wandered into this place. ……But when I looked once more toward the blue sky stretched taut, something small glinted far down this road. Then came the bizarre panorama of Earth's annihilation—scattered and obliterated by a single gust of wind.

In this way, quiet tragedies ceaselessly repeated within me, but before I knew it, I found myself near the station. When the road reached the station area, the burned ruins abruptly unfolded into a new world, and the stream of people grew suffocating like a vortex of war-ravaged survivors. Flowing, flowing—the people were still being swept along aimlessly. Then, under the overpass, black-clad men and women clutching sacks were surrounded by police officers and forcibly loaded onto the truck one by one. But the stream of people immediately dismissed such scenes, flowing from alley to alley. From alley to alley, I too walked with the gait of a beggar. War devastation, hunger, and homelessness flowed everywhere. The shuffling wave of people also came surging from the opposite direction.

However, at times, I would startle at something. Indeed, something like a diamond—from within the crowd of the tree-lined alley—pierced toward me. What in the world could that be? What could possibly be piercing me? It might seem like some misapprehension, but indeed—even now—such beautiful things may still exist upon this earth.

I was being pressured by my nephew to vacate the room immediately. He insisted I absolutely had to leave before he returned with a friend in the coming days. There had been our original agreement, and from the moment I moved into this room, I'd been constantly searching for lodgings. I even begged the publishing house people—those I visited twice weekly for work—to help find something. Through every possible acquaintance among my limited connections, I pleaded about needing a room. But ultimately, for someone without money like me, it amounted to little more than hopelessness. At times I'd catch myself feeling an illusory stability in this room that wasn't even mine (though truly, there'd been no alternative...). Yet my nephew's letters demanding evacuation kept multiplying, their tone growing ever more strident. I needed to start preparing my flight.

One day, my nephew finally returned to this room. The nephew in his student uniform slid open the room's shoji screen, then stood silent in the corridor beyond. The moment I saw that face, I startled and thought, Oh, this is no good anymore. It was a face so contorted with rage that it could hardly be called a face anymore. If it's a face like this, any number of things came to my mind. My nephew glanced back at the other student in uniform standing in the corridor outside and said, "Come in." The man who seemed to be his friend entered the room and gave me a slight nod. I tried to muster some words for my nephew but fidgeted hesitantly. But the muscles of my nephew's face had stiffened and were twitching spasmodically.

“Could you wait just two or three more days? Anyway, just two or three more days.” After finally managing to say just this much, I soon left the room. No—rather than me leaving the room, it was the spasm that thrust me out of there. I passed through the densely roofed alleyway and emerged onto the wide asphalt road. The sky above the road stretched taut toward the station overpass like some willful impulse. Dazedly, I found myself walking through the station-front throng. My feet turned toward the land agency that had surfaced in my thoughts 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 dirt-floored entryway.

“A room? There’s one nearby—a four-and-a-half tatami room on the second floor of an apartment. But again today, someone went to see it and said the communal washing area was rather dim, so they turned it down…”

"Does that communal washing area have running water as well?" I had asked something peculiar, but when the old woman nodded as if something had clicked into place, I inquired about the key money.

“It’s ten thousand yen, but since the person in charge is currently away, would you come again tomorrow?” Upon hearing “ten thousand yen,” I thought of the advance I had been negotiating with the publishing company where I worked. That was exactly ten thousand yen. If I could borrow that amount, then that alone would undoubtedly be the last money I could use.

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

〈We will wait about three days. We will be staying at a friend's place for three days. You must vacate without fail. End of notice.〉 The pressure was indeed trying to expel me from here. This was not merely my nephew’s rejection.

...The next day brought a dreary, incessant rain—a strangely viscous downpour that seemed poised to erupt into a storm.

When I visited the land company, the clerk was there. The man who seemed to be a broker immediately launched into a muddled explanation about the room rental conditions. Then he suggested I should at least go see it once. It was arranged that I would be shown around by the young boy there. The young boy who came out with me walked briskly through the rain without holding 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 it, he turned sideways and brought me to where a midwife’s sign hung. That was the apartment. Until that moment, I had not noticed there was an apartment there. But this wasn’t solely due to my slowness—the aged wooden two-story house sat nearly unnoticed in a recessed spot like some discarded crate. We entered what resembled a large dim trash bin. The decaying wooden stairs had holes here and there, and when we climbed the short flight, a single dim bulb glowed forlornly beneath the low ceiling. From there should have stretched a meter-wide corridor, but firewood and buckets completely blocked the passage. Taking two or three steps while avoiding obstacles, I soon found the boy standing at the entrance to a room whose door stood open before us. But when I then stood at that threshold, I found myself overwhelmed by some eerie murky mass squirming and writhing in the darkness. The young boy went up into the room and began whispering something.

“Please come in.” A young woman holding a young girl on her lap called out to me. On the narrow, soiled tatami mats, white rice lay fully spread across newspaper, but when I entered, a gaunt old man with jet-black arms scooped it up with both hands and cleared it away to a corner. Two old women in soiled work pants leaned against the wall, their legs stretched out. Five people living together... I found myself vaguely calculating the room's occupancy.

“The weather’s too wretched to go out.” “It’s a fine room though—gets excellent sunlight...” The young woman initiated casual conversation with practiced composure. I had already been briefed extensively by the land company agent about the room’s conditions earlier. We would secure the apartment manager’s formal consent later, but initially we were to infiltrate gradually under the pretense of being cohabitants—(he’d insisted no rooms were genuinely available otherwise these days)—meaning even during inspections, I must act as if visiting a longtime acquaintance, while artfully deceiving the apartment’s meddlesome residents. Those were the terms. For now, I appeared to have no alternative but to submit to these stipulations. The young woman began exchanging loud pleasantries meant for neighboring ears. Then, in a voice hushed to evade attention, she elaborated on the room’s particulars.

“In about three days, we’ll have the room cleared out nicely.” “However, for the time being, please let me handle paying the rent to the manager from my side.” “And please make sure to present ourselves as family to the apartment residents for now.” “No, the neighbors—they’re all such good people.”

Her explanation had a frustration as if talking about some complex threads—something right before my eyes that I couldn't see.

“So do you have somewhere to go when you leave?”

“This time we’ll move to the office’s second floor. “No, these people just came from their hometown briefly—they’ll be returning tomorrow.” I let my eyes wander over the cluttered wall edges crowded with aged chests and dressing tables, then to the broken glass window visible across the way, feeling something like a heavy sinking in my chest.

When the guide and I emerged from that dim, trash-bin-like apartment building outside, the surroundings were gloomy rain-soaked streets—yet even so, the outside light and air felt refreshingly clear.

I decided to have them wait a bit longer for my answer, but I had to lash my faltering resolve into action. However grim the building might be, however dark its environment—if only some space could be granted to me as my own room, that should suffice, shouldn't it? Then within that space, I could possess a room of my own—a room impervious to all intrusions. Yet that squirming, turbid unpleasantness I felt when first standing at the room's entrance remained unconquerable. I wandered lost in indecision... At dawn, I had a bizarre dream. The apartment room's squirming jet-black mass flashed through my mind like lightning—and then came a clear voice declaring, "That is a thieves' den." I found myself plunged into an oddly suffocating terror.

When I returned to my room after finishing breakfast out, a telegram had arrived from my nephew.

〈RETURN DAY AFTER TOMORROW〉

I could vividly see my nephew’s murderous face before my eyes. I could no longer afford to hesitate.

I went out immediately. I stopped by the publisher and asked for the advance payment I had applied for earlier. The money was conveniently provided at that time. When I received the bundle of 10,000 yen, my outlook brightened somewhat. Then I headed straight to the land company. The seasoned broker wore an expression as if he'd been awaiting my arrival.

“I still have some doubts—even if we agree to those conditions, will the other party truly have any intention of moving elsewhere?” “Well, she’s a woman with children—surely she wouldn’t do anything too reckless. It seems she’s being pressed by loan deadlines, so the matter appears urgent. She came again this morning saying to find anyone who’d make a promise.” The broker added with a cautious-looking expression. “Anyway, make sure to verify their identity properly. Have them show you either their rice ration booklet or bank passbook and keep a record—that should be safe enough.”

There was still something I couldn't resolve, but then and there I visited the apartment room. When I stood at the entrance—unlike yesterday—the room felt slightly neater (or perhaps it was just that I wanted to feel that way). In the room, the young woman from yesterday was leaning against the wall alone. “It must feel a bit more spacious now, don’t you think?” “This morning, I sold off the chest of drawers—that’s why it feels more cleared out now.” The woman looked around the narrow room in a self-deprecating tone. That was indeed the face of someone driven into a corner.

“The children were taken back to the countryside by my mother.” “From now on, I’m really planning 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 the row upon row of various names entered there, she pointed out and showed me the one that read “Sugimoto Hanako.” The address in that ration booklet was listed as Fukushima Prefecture. The woman began to explain the matter. “We used to receive rations here, but since there are no shortages in the countryside and it’s much better there, we transferred our registration.” “That’s why we’ve been hauling our rice from there on our backs.”

I couldn’t quite grasp the situation. Then the woman said something like this. “Do you have many belongings?” “I intend to move out of here by tomorrow or so, but there’s just one small request I have.” “I’ll take the noticeable belongings, but might I leave things like this mirror stand and the trunk in the closet here for the time being?” “In any case, I’ll be paying the rent to the landlady myself for now.” The woman seemed to have already decided that I would be renting this place.

That evening, the man from the land company came to visit me and demanded my answer. I still hadn’t been able to reach any decision. Then again the next morning, the man from the land company came. Since the other party was in a hurry, he pressed me to at least hand over the deposit today—otherwise he’d take the matter elsewhere—and began rushing me. In the end, I accepted the offer. As he was leaving, the apartment woman came to collect the money. After receiving the money, she immediately said she wanted me to move some belongings in that very day. I thought that even if I tried moving my belongings over there now, it still wouldn’t make any difference. I wasn’t particularly inclined to do so, but I went ahead and carried a single trunk to that room……When my trunk was placed in the corner of that room, my very existence felt painfully incomplete. But even this difficult situation seemed like something unavoidable for me, who had been burned out.

The next day, it was agreed that I would hand over the remaining payment and have the room vacated, at least provisionally. When I visited at the appointed time, the room was cluttered with various belongings. “Ah, I’m exhausted,” the woman sighed deeply. “I couldn’t sleep at all last night with all these things on my mind,” she continued, still rustling through small items. However, when she received the remaining payment from me, the woman suddenly assumed a serious expression,

"Then please use this room starting today," she muttered in a low voice. Then, suddenly—as one does when broaching something disjointed and hard to explain—she said the following.

“I’ll leave right away. However, I’ll still be imposing on you from time to time. And I’ll leave one key—this one—with you. Be careful. In this apartment, items often go missing, so please make sure to keep it locked.”

After packing her belongings for a while, she soon shouldered a large bundle and left carrying baskets and cloth-wrapped packages in both hands. When she left, I thought about my own possessions and tried opening the closet there. The closet remained more than half blocked by the woman's luggage. This was untenable as things stood, but for now I resolved to at least move my bedding from the boarding house across the way.

When I brought my bedding to that apartment that night, my life in that room began from that moment. But is this really my room…? Here before me lay the dressing table and low dining table the woman had left behind, while inside the closet, traces of her self-indulgent lifestyle stood clearly visible. But that was none of my concern. I do not want to be influenced by unrelated matter surrounding me. Yet before my eyes gaped a windowpane with a large hole, washi paper pasted over it now wrinkled and creased, looking ready to peel away at any moment. The sliding door's warped frame rattled unsteadily with every opening. Walls, tatami mats, sliding doors—all horribly filthy—occasionally assaulted by a garbage-pit stench wafting through. And then... if I were to speak of this room's oppressive atmosphere, there would be no end. Since the room lay level with the corridor, clattering geta sandals outside struck directly at my pillow as I slept. The sink by the stairs—untouched by light—resembled a sooty spiderweb in its blackness; turning its faucet yielded not one water drop. The plumbing had been broken for years. In narrow unventilated corridors, every room burned firewood. Smoke crept through the building to mercilessly attack eyes and nose. Returning to this apartment meant confronting a thick human stench mass at its entrance. Climbing creaking stairs to dim corridors revealed bloated landlady making infants urinate by doors... I remembered childhood. As a child I'd felt sick seeing stained walls in our storehouse—others' wretched houses chilled me to nightmare shivers. That frail child-self still lingers within arm's reach now though...

One morning, there was knocking at this room's door early on. As I rubbed my sleep-deprived eyes and unlocked it from inside, the woman stood outside dressed like a traveler with a large rucksack on her back.

"I'm back," said the woman as she clomped into the room uninvited and shrugged off her shoulder load. "I just made a quick trip home," she added, still riding the exhilaration of her journey. I had only assumed she'd gone to the office she mentioned moving to this time. But she disregarded my expectations completely, behaving as if returning to an old nest. Untying the rucksack's cords, she spread newspaper and poured out white rice with a dry rustle. Then she kneaded the grains with both hands, took water from a bowl into her mouth, and sprayed it out with a wet spitting sound.

“Ah, rice! Rice! These troubles never end because of rice!” Muttering such things between bursts of raucous laughter, she measured the grains with a wooden masu box and poured them into cloth bundles. After transferring several portions this way, she suddenly grabbed one wrapped parcel and slipped out. Moments later she returned—only to be followed by a lanky black-market dealer who clomped up into the room. The man disregarded my presence entirely, standing motionless while glaring down at the rice spread across the tatami with undisguised contempt before wordlessly departing. Throughout the morning she kept flitting in and out restlessly like some demented sparrow, but by midday her comings and goings ceased altogether—she’d vanished without trace.

Nightfall brought nightly blackouts, plunging the apartment into total darkness, but having no will to light a candle, I remained squatting in the pitch-black room, staring blankly into space. Someone knocked at my door and called out "Ms. Sugimoto" in a gravelly voice.

“Ms. Sugimoto isn’t here.” I called out from behind the door like that, but the visitor showed no sign of leaving. Opening the door, I inquired about his business. “This is a problem—isn’t Ms. Sugimoto here?” “I need you to keep one bicycle for me.”

“A bicycle?” “In this room here?” I could only stand there in shock. Eventually, the visitor left in silence. Almost every day, various inexplicable people came to visit Sugimoto. Young men who came claiming to have been referred by the matchmaking agency, and even the proprietor of that agency himself began showing up. Then men who seemed to be creditors also began frequently arriving with palpable impatience. No matter what complicated circumstances the previous occupant of this room might have had, I was filled with the thought that I wanted them to vacate as soon as possible.

And then one morning early on, I was awakened by the sound of someone knocking at my door. The woman stood there with the same rucksack on her back as before, looking determined. "When exactly will you vacate this room?" I demanded immediately. As if she'd hit an unexpected obstacle, something snapped sharply within her, and suddenly her face took on a terribly withered expression.

“I have my own circumstances to deal with... And what’s more, I’ve just been swindled out of two thousand yen over rice.” “I handed the money to the black marketeer, but they didn’t give me the promised rice… It was because they were dishonest.” She muttered such things with apparent worry but soon began untying the rucksack’s strings. The white rice was spread out on newspaper and roughly mixed with both hands. “Eat or be eaten.” With a ghastly look, the woman muttered to herself.

I could not sleep almost every night because of the child crying and screaming in the adjacent room. Were the parents trying to bully that child to death?—the sharp smacks of striking hands resonated in my ears. The state inside my head began to resemble this apartment's irreparable, scarred appearance. Hopeless humans descended the decaying stairs and spilled out into the streets. The hopeless crowd shuffled along in a sluggish mass, jostling toward the station. Those people survived in the chaotic trains and markets through coded exchanges and animal force, completely independent of me. And those people always trampled through my mind with their muddy feet. In my head, an inexplicable anger gradually welled up. Anger filled this room.

Is this truly the room I rented? Or was even this filthy room trying to mock who I was now? ……Stop thinking about anything, I told myself as night inevitably brought a blackout. The nightly blackouts made me immediately lie down on the bed in despair when darkness fell. I thought up such a poem.

A sea within the desolate room. A sea within the head—a sea dissolving murky anger—sleepily sinking toward something vast, vast, overwhelmingly vast—a sea swirling with gnashing turbulence inside the skull.

After the pitch-black night of thought, morning came to this room again each day. Then I found myself feeling somehow newly scrubbed clean. Even upon these tatami mats—so soiled they could scarcely be called tatami—the autumn light now rested quietly. That pure light... Distant friend, I am calling out to you.