Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Hara Tamiki A breath pierced through him and was gone. A story was nearing its end. The world, for him, had not yet ended. "From where all things end begins renewal; from where all things end begins renewal..." he murmured as he walked his accustomed path at the appointed hour.

The woman was gone—the woman who had removed her glove to exchange a farewell handshake with him… Had that hand’s touch been warm? Had it been cold…? He clenched the hands thrust into his overcoat pockets tighter inward. But he could grasp nothing. She had been a shadow-like woman, but he too had been no more than a shadow-like man to her. Shadow and shadow walked along the paved road following the moat’s edge with hushed footsteps. And in the end, they had exchanged a farewell handshake just once—it was nothing more than that single encounter, a lonely, lonely story.

A surge pierced through him and was gone. As if following the trail of that lonely, lonely story, he walked along the paved road following the moat’s edge. The soft shadows of withered willow trees and the sight of quiet water nearby seemed to lull him into a daze while bringing tears to his eyes. From where all things end, all things begin anew… He pivoted sharply on his heel, chest thrust out and eyes wide open. And then, the landscape too faced him—thrusting out its chest and opening its eyes wide. The resolutely branching paved roads and procession of high-rise buildings, and above them the vivid crimson sky spread out—suddenly cast upon him a world of grandeur. The world has not yet come to an end. The world had also been about to begin anew at that time. At that time… the city destroyed by the atomic bomb—that city—had become the height of atrocity with silver-smoldering fragments and crimson-lacerated corpses. Under the tilted summer sunlight, the sky was dreamily, hazily bright. The bridge had not collapsed and remained strangely over the river. A crowd of survivors filed across that bridge. On that bridge, he saw a young, seemingly healthy woman approaching by bicycle, her hair fluttering briskly in the wind. It contained the strange rhythm of survivors trying to resist tragedy. But from that moment, though its focus remained unclear, the phantom of a new woman crossing a vast space flashed through his mind.

Eve

New Eve Eve still seemed to be crossing a corner of the sky he gazed up at. In the vivid crimson sky， faint horizontal clouds drifted， and it came to resemble the sky of that day following Hiroshima’s tragedy. A breath surged through him and was gone.

He first made the acquaintance of that woman on the occasion of a gathering. The unheated room in the office building appeared sorrowful, hazy with cigarette smoke. The woman wore a red muffler. Her eyes were cold as the building's windowpanes. Their second meeting too was in one of those dreary rooms of the building. When the gathering ended, the woman spoke to him for the first time. Then they walked together to the station.

“Please try keeping company with me. “Let us meet again someday.””

"Please try..."—the words now twined through his consciousness. But he nodded coolly, nonchalantly. Coolly... yet at that time, he didn't even possess a single room to inhabit, drifting between spaces borrowed from others. In corners of such rooms, he wrote in his notebook.

With no stairs to misstep on, my feet float suspended in midair. Could it be that he is degenerating? But my eyes are turned completely upside down, facing upward, and contrary to my body that sinks into degeneration, they’re steadily being pulled higher and higher. I hear no screams. No joy wells up; everything remains suspended in midair. (Infinite Staircase)〉

The woman returned home on a train heading in the opposite direction from his. She seemed lonely—but does she at least have somewhere to return to like that?—and somehow he kissed. The fact that humans had distinct nests on earth (something that wouldn't have seemed particularly strange in the days when his wife was alive) now struck him as bordering on miraculous. At that time... when a pitch-black mass came crashing down over his head, from that moment onward, space itself began surging toward him in almost ceaseless waves. From that moment on, he lost his earthly nest, and space ceaselessly reverberated around him.

...Cutting through the flames and fleeing to the riverbank, he found grotesquely disfigured naked gravely injured people lined up in rows. He found the grotesquely transformed girl among them. That was the maid from his brother’s house. From that moment on, he stayed by the suffering girl’s side and took care of her. When he supported her puffy swollen limbs—the eeriness of what should have been a girl’s body beyond comprehension—the lips that begged for water held an infant-like pathos. In the end, after two nights of sleeping rough, he evacuated to a farmhouse in a chilly village with his injured brother’s family. But this girl alone could not be accommodated in the house and was moved to the village shelter. One day, he visited the shelter with a futon for the maid. On straw mats spread across wooden floors, among gravely injured people lying scattered, there was the blackened swollen face of a girl. When those eyes recognized his figure, only her eyes suddenly revived with girlish vitality.

“Please take me back—take me back to where everyone is.”

Those eyes—with only her eyes—were trying to cling to him.

“That’s something I’d like to do for you, but…” He muttered in a faintly tearful voice, placed the futon he had brought down, and left as though fleeing. After that, the girl died. But that sorrowful girl’s gaze remained piercingly etched within him forever.

He tried to recall the gaze of the woman who had promised "Please try going out with me" and parted ways with him at the station in opposite directions. Could those eyes have held prayer? Would they thrust themselves into him?... It all seemed like a phantom glimpsed amid the undulating waves of that reverberating space. The ship capsized with a thunderous roar. Monstrous waves snatched people away; flashes of light sliced through the darkness. Human screams filled every direction.... Thrashing through waves as though screaming himself, driven back by swells as if howling, he existed within a terrifying vortex. Spray battered his cheekbones; water clawed at his limbs, trying to wrench them away. In eyes growing more tormented by the second, a boat faintly shimmering in dim light suddenly appeared. And toward that direction—single-mindedly, desperately—inch by inch, everything writhed its way forward. But when they finally reached it, the boat was already packed with survivors. He frantically grabbed its edge—and instantly, a sharp shout rang out overhead.

“Let go! You bastard!”

But he desperately tried to crawl toward the boat. “You damn bastard! I’ll chop that hand off!” Now the man truly raised his hatchet, aiming for his hand. He looked up at the man’s eyes from between the waves as if clinging desperately. With only his eyes, clinging desperately, from between the waves… from between the waves… from between the waves…

Homeless and out of consideration for his fellow lodgers, he would drive his emaciated body forward while walking through bustling streets with feigned purposefulness. He had no money, and the magazine he was involved with had long ceased publication. Though clinging to a faint hope that a room in a building owned by his acquaintance K might become available, he walked through the crowds feeling adrift between undulating waves.... From ahead along his path, winter's slanting sunlight poured down heavily as pedestrian traffic thickened into density. He had reached the square before the National Railway station. At that moment, crowds disgorged from trains were scattering through ticket gates into the plaza. He casually turned his gaze toward one shifting mass of people—when something flashed straight through the moving crowd like lightning. They were the eyes of the woman with the red muffler. The instant he thought it might be her—he had already averted his gaze elsewhere. But within thirty seconds at most, he found himself called from behind.

“Mr. Hirai... I wondered if it was you.”

The woman did not attempt to laugh after saying this. He stood without expression. "I must excuse myself today as I have somewhere to visit now, but I’m sure we shall meet again before long." Abruptly, the woman left in haste. He too made no attempt to call her back.

It remained unclear whether a room in that building would be opened for him, but the handcart loaded with all his household belongings already stood parked before the structure. He pushed open the building's door together with the mover and called toward what appeared to be an office space at the rear. In billowing smoke that hung thickly, human faces swayed unsteadily. The diminutive old man who had emerged before him looked down coldly and stated: "There was never any arrangement made about opening rooms."

He was startled. In any case, meeting K would clarify matters, but he had to leave at least his luggage here—there was simply nowhere else to take it for now. "In that case, you can just leave it in the dirt-floor area."

As the bedding, bundles, and trunk were dumped onto the dirt-floor area, he headed out into the street regardless. At once, the reverberating space had grown larger. He felt as though it were the old man from earlier, swinging a hatchet to sever his wrist. As he walked dazedly along, he suddenly came across his acquaintance K accompanied by a man who looked like a lawyer. K had been renting out the building he owned to others but had been piling negotiation upon negotiation since long before to have half of it vacated for his own use. The promised day had arrived today.

As dusk approached, a second-floor room was finally made available. From that moment on, he was lent that second-floor room. ...the reverberating force ceaselessly besieged that room.

The office across the sliding doors and corridor was thrown into disarray by telephone clamor and footsteps, emitting various inflections of people wrestling people down and people stroking people at length. Men and women and men—it was both a unified chorus of voices and fragmented acoustics. When that unrelated group withdrew at dusk, a swarm of rats now held dominion through the unlit corridor. Then, whenever he went out for meals or stopped by a nearby magazine company, the city streets, printed words, music—something would provoke something else, something would collide with something else.

After moving into a room in that building, he had begun to frequently encounter that lonely-looking woman. He came to realize her workplace wasn’t far away. A short distance from the streetcar thoroughfare lay a quiet road with sparse foot traffic. At times she would wander aimlessly down such roads. Whenever they chanced upon each other there, she would fall into step beside him with practiced familiarity. He walked mostly in silence. “You must be busy,” she said without preamble. “I’ll take my leave.”

The woman slipped away smoothly at the corner. She then bowed and walked off with quick, short steps. Only the retreating figure, driven onward by some urgency, remained etched in his eyes. No matter how many times they met—each encounter proving fleeting—the woman would immediately spot his figure even amidst the crowd. As the woman vanished into the crowd...the waves of reverberating space suddenly swelled.

That the woman existed alone in this world like that—what exactly was that? And now, what was this that I was contemplating here—what exactly did it mean to me? Suddenly a pathetic wave surged up, and the figure of the very last of the last of those suffering in this world flashed with a burst of light.

……Flame’s Lips……Flame’s Lips

Suddenly, he thought he had heard the whisper of a novel he had been wanting to write around that time.

……………………………………… Just when I thought the raging crimson flames had subsided, that cold lucid strange flame came. It was hunger’s flame. After evacuating to a farmhouse with my brother’s family and widowed sister, I found myself thereafter perpetually besieged by this tenacious sorrowful flame. It blazed fiercely even upon the soiled tatami mats of the kitchen and behind soot-blackened shoji screens riddled with holes. Then over green rice fields too—over mountains visible ahead too—the lucid blazing flames wavered. Space quivered in minute tremors, and my mind’s core grew hazy. At such times—what do humans think?—at such times humans’… humans’ white fangs would flash forth. My sister and sister-in-law were constantly arguing about something.

“It’s maddening—so maddening—I want to tear that woman limb from limb!”

The neighboring farmer’s wife, who was not starving, ground her teeth in the front garden. Those words, however, struck me sharply. To tear her limb from limb… Humans tearing humans apart… The woman’s face transformed in an instant, bursting forth vividly within me. Surrounded by countless sorrowful flames, when I found myself unable to move, people nevertheless went about their lives with lightness. The male relative who had been affected by the disaster at the hypocenter and completely lost his hair miraculously regained his health deep in the countryside, and before the tragic year had even ended, took a new wife from those rural parts. Countless survivors wandered through ruins that swirled with innumerable twisted faces. The black market upon the muddy ruins was like a festival day. Had people reclaimed the festival day while staggering? I too walked while staggering and observing. An emaciated man who looked about to collapse at any moment fluttered banknotes toward a stall, already stuffing into his mouth what he'd grabbed with his hand. Fiercely flickering flames were everywhere. Demobilized soldiers were returning here and there, and the collapsed station became bustling with crowds. The man whose family had been snatched away by the flash was walking with a new wife adorned in fine clothes. Swiftly, lightly, casually, new nests were built here and there.

“I’ll never believe in anything again. Not even myself…”

The middle-aged woman who had escaped disaster with her house still intact declared proudly— ……the widowed sister ceaselessly schemed to escape starvation’s grip. Her face—gaunt from bearing the rucksack—masked its youthful vitality, hardening into a final protest against survival itself: an expression striving to bat away falling cinders of existence. Yet at times this visage would fixate on visions of blood-drenched wraiths, eyes transforming into the hue of one screaming their final piercing cry. When those eyes—contorted in silent torment—turned sympathetic gazes upon me, I shuddered. Those were indeed eyes that already foresaw within me the form of bleached bones.

But when that year ended, a remarriage proposal suddenly arose for my sister as well. On the day I first heard this news, I abruptly encountered my sister at the village entrance bridge as she approached shouldering a rucksack. While we stood talking, tears suddenly welled up in my eyes. (Tears?) They seemed to be tears of joy for one person escaping starvation—or so I later realized. But I myself had not yet been saved. The flame came chasing after me.

After flailing about in utter desperation, I fled to an old friend’s place in Tokyo.

But the friend’s house that had taken me in was also instantly surrounded by strange flames. The flame of hunger smoldered relentlessly, and human white fangs flashed forth. In an instant, human faces transform. Humans transform in a momentary flash. What surprise or lament could there be in the fact that long, long misfortune had transformed people?—Day and night, trembling before the mistress of the house’s fierce countenance, I whispered to myself.

Those raised in crimson robes now clung to the dust—with a beggar’s gait, I walked through bustling crowds and paths of scorched ruins. In the ash heaps of burnt-out wastelands, my vision swam dizzyingly while famished knees threatened to buckle forward—when suddenly, the blue sky overhead pierced through with crystalline clarity, radiating light. (This heart’s throbbing, this vertigo of visions) I strained to stare into a world so dazzling it seared the eyes. Then came the day when the householder who’d sheltered me departed on a journey from which he never returned. In time it emerged that this friend had found a lover during his travels and would not be coming back to Tokyo. Thus I was forced to leave that dwelling. Thus I became one without shelter—but then... Anguish pursued anguish.—There knelt a woman praying toward mountains of accumulated suffering.

"Once I had someone show me my face in the mirror. That was no longer me. The me with a face that wasn’t mine was no longer afraid like that. Even the very concept of fear seemed to have already vanished from me. I am perishing. Is it that my festering breasts and right elbow—that this continuous pain—that only pain—is me now?"

With a swish, the light suddenly slashed my face. When I cried out “Ah!”, my right hand had instinctively tried to shield me. A single force slid through both face and hand at once. Thinking “Ah!”, I staggered back. I hadn’t fallen. I realized I was still standing. Only the residual rush of whatever had passed roared in my ears. When I opened my eyes, the hazy veil had cleared—what lay collapsed before me now held its silence. Countless tiny shrieks echoed from somewhere. Though something resembling wind had passed, its roar still pressed in on me. At that moment, everything had already ended. Yet with something new about to begin, a restlessness swayed and stirred within me……”

He had written the opening passage of "Flame's Lips" in his notebook, but who exactly this woman dying within the tragedy was remained unclear. Yet the whispers of monologue persisted unceasingly. While gazing into eternity's visage, as death drew near, an infinite vista clarified within her heart... Suddenly life's rapture—like lightning—assaulted this woman, shaking her more violently than a gale. Indeed, that music sought to shatter her. Ah—could such joy, such joy truly be permitted in one woman's breast?—she knelt weeping, moved by her own trembling emotion. Then time ceased eternally—only to begin flowing once more with languid motion.

While chasing these visions, he remained perpetually cornered by life’s demands. Then when the long-dormant magazine resumed publication, a frantic urgency descended. No matter when he went to the office, visitors swarmed and manuscripts towered on desks. There arose a surge of restless energy in meeting people and dispatching miscellaneous tasks. When that surge crested, he would often scream: “Humanity mangling humanity beyond recognition.”

(Humanity grinding humanity…). Long ago, I fought against all of humanity like an untouched maiden. Human countenances, human words and gestures and voices—these directly contracted my heart and warped my vision into trembling. Were but a single human before my eyes, tens of thousands of volts would course through me instantly, neural sparks scattering across my face. I was catastrophically afraid of humans. At any moment I might have fled. And yet—even as I quaked and cowered so violently—how desperately did I yearn to love and comprehend humanity!

But now—even though I remain as awkward in life as ever—when meeting people, a different pattern from before had taken shape. I would try to meet with someone. I would flip the switch within myself. Then a swift, light current would flow through me, and from that point on both conversation and demeanor would almost automatically begin to proceed. What was happening to me? I understood the other person—did they now know me in return?—but without time for such reflection, those before me were replaced as time flowed away. And late at night, the fragmented faces, voices and gestures of various people would jumble together into a hazy halo reverberating within me. I seemed about to drift dimly into sleep within that halo. Then suddenly a shudder rushed through my spine.

"I mustn't! I mustn't! Pierce through that over there!"

Tens of thousands of volts of current became a scream and raced through me.

(Humanity grinding humanity… For that girl, the existence of a single human being had been nothing but continuous terror and prolonged agony. Everything tangled into strangeness; everything cornered her to the brink. Even eating, sleeping—down to breathing—everything became difficult. This young, anguished soul writhed in futile reversal while crying out: “Living—living is so very, so very painful.” Yet at a certain moment, something refreshing brushed against the girl’s forehead. Then across the way, a new space drifted into view.)

The image of "Flame's Lips" flickered within him as it wavered.

Before long, due to work obligations, he began frequenting back-alley bars and deep-lane cafés in the entertainment districts more often. Then alcohol—it might well have been his first drinking since the war—seeped into his eyes and brain marrow, while through night's narrow backstreets flowed a swollen, wavering space... Behind his chair swayed strangely dressed youths rustling past. At a food stall moved a young woman like a living accent mark, seized by some swaying force. Her eyes shone varnish-bright, rouge-wet lips blood-like. That must be what defines a woman's eyes and lips—I thought. The quivering gas-form seemed ready to burst into flames. Yet something cold flowed beneath my shoe soles. An irredeemable coldness... Had that woman too once run barefoot through blazing fires that scorched her cheeks? Even now some rhythm—avoiding and grasping—kept swaying. Fiercely it swayed. Still that cold kept flowing beneath his soles...

Suddenly, right behind where he sat, an unsteady student approached. Taking a cup from his coat pocket, he had someone pour sake into it. “How nice… How nice… If only humans could be trusted…” swayed the student with a cloying expression. The coldness swirled restlessly. Fire, fire, fire—but there seemed to be no fire here anymore. Was this a puddle in the aftermath of the fire?

When he thought he had stepped over the puddle, his friend was conversing with the “night woman” in the shadow of an object at the intersection. Then the woman silently followed them. They entered a dim corner of the café. “Why did you become such a ‘night woman’?” the kind friend tried asking her. “The house was too… I couldn’t stay, so I ran away.” A small shriveled nose—twitching this way and that—appeared distorted to his eyes, just like that, exactly like that. Then beneath the table, her feet clad in worn-out geta suddenly caught his eye. Ah—geta, geta, geta…the flow of coldness…(“Well then, I’ll just have tea and excuse myself”)—the kind friend parted from the woman outside the café. She was a quiet woman. Without another word, she nodded and left.

Then again on a certain day，this kind friend took him to a café deep in the back alleys．Every table was boiling with human voices． Through thick swirling tobacco smoke—voices，faces，contrived things，clingy things，irredeemable things—they became audible，visible，flickering．Amidst this，a girl with swollen-looking cheeks and gleaming eyes was carrying tea． (Here too，humanity grinding humanity…．) But for humans to understand each other here，about twenty types of code words sufficed． For example：

Cleanliness Splendid Resistance Twist Support Collapse Snap Shift Cover Fiction etc.

Through such a linguistic mechanism alone, they stimulated one another, inspired one another; humans verified each other’s notions—humans manufactured each other’s notions.

But this cold flow streaming beneath my soles—what in the world is this?) …When I suddenly noticed, the figures of the group that had been fervently debating at the table across were now gone. The late night was suddenly sliding down onto the rattan chair. In the adjacent chair, the kind friend was talking with a girl who had gleaming eyes. "I'm hungry. Why don't we go get something to eat?" The kind friend invited the girl. "Yes, I'm very poor myself," the girl replied, following them through the late-night streets. Cold rain began spattering down. The rain immediately seeped into his shoe soles, soaking through to his socks. Lit eateries seemed nowhere to be found. "You’re wearing those kinds of shoes too—the rain must be seeping in," he suddenly asked the girl. “Yes—it’s seeping in terribly.” The girl nodded as if pleased.

Lit eateries were nowhere to be found. “I’m going home,” said the girl, plunging her shoes into the cold puddle and standing still.

"Flame's Lips" never progressed easily, no matter how much time passed. And before he could finish writing it, the day arrived when he had to part with that forlorn woman. Even after that, he would still occasionally bump into her in back alleys. The time they spent walking together grew longer, and there were times they entered cafés together. Life matters, love affairs, the weather, literature—she would jumble all these topics together in her chatter, then fix her gaze intently on some distant point. This combination of perpetual wariness and boundless daydreaming formed an enigma to him. He sometimes found himself enthralled by her words about weather and life and love and literature, yet always felt something might abruptly give way and slide into void.

That the woman existed alone in this world—what exactly was that? This mystery had gradually come to oppress and obsess him. Then one day—he couldn’t fathom why—the woman’s face appeared to him as if it were the final visage of all suffering beings in this world, throbbing with unbearable agony. “Please let me hear your true feelings—just a little of that.” He suddenly blurted out.

“Shall we walk on a bit?” The woman invited him toward the path following the moat’s edge. The water’s surface, the evening haze, and the forms of withered trees all seemed to carry some poignant premonition. The woman walked in silence with a sullen expression. Her expression seemed to be trying to brush something away—though what exactly she couldn’t endure remained unclear—as he absently followed along. Suddenly, the woman’s voice quivered intensely.

“The day has come when we must part.” “Tomorrow—tomorrow once more at this hour here let us meet.”

With those words, she ran off toward the opposite sidewalk.

Suddenly—though to him, it was all too sudden—….

The woman appeared at the appointed place the next day. Unlike the day before, she wore a calm, composed expression. Yet upon that face, something cold as if slipping away intertwined with a bottomless dream-like quality.

“From a faraway place, from a faraway place, my lover has returned.” The voice repeating “from a faraway place, from a faraway place” seemed to him like a song heard in a dream.

“I see… you had a lover?” “No, no—even if there were a lover, the sorrow, the loneliness, the unbearable nature of living would remain precisely the same.”

The heartache, the loneliness, the unbearable weight of living—these too seemed to him like a distant song drifting from far away. “Then why did you take interest in me?” “Because you appeared so lonely—because you seemed someone unbearably, excruciatingly solitary.” As she spoke these words, the woman removed her gloves and extended her hand toward him. “Keep living—persist in living.”

When he lightly gripped her right hand, the woman was whispering as if in prayer.