Pathway to Japanese Literature

Author: Hara Tamiki A gust pierced through him. A story was about to end. For him, the world had not yet ended. "From where all ends, all begins anew; from where all ends, all begins anew..." he repeated as he walked his usual path at the usual hour. The woman was no longer there—the woman who had removed her glove and exchanged a farewell handshake with him... Had that hand's sensation been warm or cold... He clenched inward the hands thrust deep in his coat pockets. But he could grasp nothing. She had been a shadow of a woman, and he too had been no more than a shadow of a man to her. Shadows and shadows walked with hushed footsteps along the paved path following the moatside. And in the end, they had exchanged a farewell handshake just once—a transaction amounting to nothing more—a lonely, lonely story it had been.

A gust pierced through him. Following in the wake of the lonely, lonely story, he walked along the paved path by the moatside. The soft shadows of withered willow trees and the form of quiet water nearby seemed to lull him into a daze and bring tears to his eyes. From where all ends, all begins anew…… He swiveled on his heel, straightened his posture, and opened his eyes wide. And the landscape too confronted him, puffing out its chest and opening its eyes wide. The decisively branching paved roads and the sequence of high-rise buildings, the vermilion-hued lush sky spreading above them—suddenly hurled a violent world at him. The world had not yet ended. The world had also been attempting to begin anew at that time. At that time...the city destroyed by the atomic bomb—that city was a scene of utmost horror with silver-smoldering fragments and charred, crimson corpses. Under the slanting summer sunlight, the sky was hazily bright like a dream. The bridges did not collapse and remained miraculously over the river. Across that bridge filed a straggling line of survivors. On that bridge, he saw a young, healthy-looking woman approaching by bicycle, her hair fluttering briskly in the wind. It contained the strange rhythm of survivors trying to resist their misery. But from that moment, though indistinct in focus, a vision flashed through his mind—a new woman traversing a vast expanse.

Eve New Eve

Eve still seemed to traverse a corner of the sky he gazed upon. In the vermilion-hued fresh sky, faint horizontal clouds floated, resembling that day's sky over Hiroshima's tragic aftermath. A gust pierced through him.

He first met that woman at a gathering. The unheated room in the building seemed mournful, thick with cigarette smoke. The woman was wearing a red muffler. Those eyes were as cold as building window glass. The second time they met was also in one of those desolate building rooms. When the gathering ended, the woman spoke to him for the first time. Then they walked together to the station. “Please try having a relationship with me. We shall meet again someday.”

"Please look..."—the words now entangled in his consciousness. But he nodded coldly, nonchalantly. Coldly... but at that time, he couldn't even secure a single room of his own, living transiently by intruding into others' spaces. In the corner of such rooms, he wrote in his notebook. 〈With no staircase to misstep, feet float in midair. Is he perhaps becoming decadent? But my eyes are turned straight upward, and contrary to my body sinking into decadence, it's being hoisted higher and higher upward. No screams could be heard. No joy wells up; everything remains suspended in midair. (Infinite Staircase)〉

The woman returned home on a train heading the opposite way from his. She seemed lonely, but he found himself wondering whether she at least had somewhere to return to like that. That humans maintained distinct nests on earth—something that wouldn’t have seemed strange when his wife was alive—now struck him as bordering on miraculous. At that moment... when something pitch-black collapsed over him, space began rippling almost ceaselessly like waves from that instant onward. From then on, he lost his earthly nest, and space reverberated incessantly. When he broke through the flames and fled to the riverbank... there lay rows of grotesquely naked severely injured people. He found the transformed girl among them. It was his brother’s maid. From that moment, he stayed by the suffering girl’s side to care for her. When he supported her swollen limbs, her body seemed too eerie to recognize as human, yet her lips craving water were as pitiful as an infant’s. Eventually, after two nights outdoors, he evacuated with his injured brother’s family to a desolate village farmhouse. But this girl alone couldn’t be accommodated in the house and was moved to the village shelter. One day, he visited the shelter bringing a futon for the maid. On the wooden floor strewn with straw mats, among scattered severely injured people, lay a blackened swollen girl’s face. When those eyes recognized his figure, only her eyes suddenly revived with girlish vitality.

“Please take me back, take me back to everyone.” Her eyes tried to cling to him through their gaze alone. “I’d like to do that for you, but…”

He muttered as though faintly weeping, laid down the futon he had brought, and left as if fleeing. Afterward, the girl died. Yet that sorrowful girl’s gaze remained standing sharply within him forever. He tried recalling the gaze of the woman who had pledged “Please try being with me” before parting at the station in opposite directions. Did those eyes contain a prayer, or would they too come to stand sharply within him?... It felt like a phantom glimpsed amid the undulating waves of some reverberating space.

The ship capsized along with the roar. A giant wave seized the people, and a flash of light sliced through the darkness. All around, human screams... Parting the waves as if screaming, pushed by the waves as if howling, he was caught in a terrifying vortex. Spray struck his cheekbones; water tried to wrench his limbs away. To eyes that grew more distressed by the moment, a boat suddenly appeared rippling in faint light. And toward it, single-mindedly, inch by inch, everything wriggled onward. But the boat that had finally drawn near was already full of disaster victims. He frantically grabbed onto the edge of the boat. And then, suddenly, a sharp angry voice rang out overhead.

“Let go!” “You bastard!” But he desperately tried to crawl up toward the boat. “Damn you!” “I’ll chop those hands off!”

Now the other man was truly raising a hatchet and eyeing his hand. He gazed up at the man’s eyes from amidst the waves as though clinging. With only his eyes—clinging—from amidst the waves... from amidst the waves... from amidst the waves....

Homeless, he walked through the bustling streets as if on some errand, whipping his starved body out of consideration for his fellow lodgers. He had no money, and the magazine he was involved with had long ceased publication. There had been a faint hope that he might be able to borrow a room in the building owned by his acquaintance K, but he walked through the bustle with a feeling as though floating between waves... From ahead of where he walked, the winter sun poured down abundantly, and human traffic had grown dense. He had come as far as the square before the National Railway Station. At that moment, a crowd disgorged from the train was scattering from the ticket gates into the square. He casually turned his eyes toward a moving cluster of people. And then, within the moving crowd, something flashed in a straight line—the eyes of a woman wearing a red muffler. The instant he thought it might be her... he had already averted his gaze elsewhere. But within not even thirty seconds, he was called from behind.

“I thought it might be Mr. Hirai.” The woman did not attempt to smile after saying that. He stood expressionlessly. “I must excuse myself today as I have somewhere to visit now, but we may meet again before long.” Abruptly, the woman left in a hurry. He made no attempt to stop her either. It was unclear whether a room in the building could be opened, but the single handcart loaded with all his household belongings was already parked in front of that structure. He, together with a mover, pushed open the door of that building and called out toward what seemed to be an office in the back. Within the thickly billowing smoke, a human face swayed unsteadily. The small-statured old man who had come out before him looked down at him coldly and said.

“There was no agreement to open any rooms.” He started. At any rate matters would clarify upon meeting K, but he needed to leave his luggage here—for now there was nowhere else to take it. “Then just leave it in the dirt-floored area.” When bedding, bundle and trunk were tossed into the earthen space, he went out into the street regardless. Instantly the reverberating space expanded. He imagined someone swinging a hatchet to sever his wrist like that old man moments before. Staggering along, he suddenly encountered his acquaintance K walking with a lawyer-like man. K had leased his building to others but had negotiated repeatedly to reclaim half for himself. The appointed day was today. At duskfall a second-floor room was finally relinquished. From then he had borrowed that second-floor room. ……Reverberations endlessly surrounded that space. Beyond sliding doors and corridor lay an office roiling with phone shrieks and footsteps—humans pinning humans down, humans stroking humans through chaotic rhythms. Men women men coalesced into one vocal mass yet scattered acoustically. When that unrelated group withdrew at evening’s edge, rats now scampered through unlit hallways. Then when he ventured out to eat or visited the nearby magazine office—city type music something agitating something colliding with something else.

After moving into a room in that building, he began to frequently encounter that lonely-looking woman. He came to understand that the woman’s workplace was not too far away. A short distance from the main street lay a quiet road with sparse foot traffic. Sometimes, the woman would walk aimlessly along such roads. When she suddenly encountered him on the street, the woman immediately walked alongside him sociably. He walked mostly in silence.

“You must be busy. I’ll take my leave.” The woman smoothly detached herself at the corner. She then bowed and walked away with quick, small steps. Only her retreating figure, driven onward by some urgent matter, remained in his eyes. No matter how many times they met, their encounters remained fleeting, yet the woman would immediately spot his figure even amidst the crowd. When the woman disappeared into the crowd,...the waves of reverberating space suddenly grew larger. What, in the world, was the meaning of her existing alone like that? And what is this that I am contemplating here and now—what in the world does it mean to me? Suddenly, a passionate wave surged up, and the form of the very last of the last of those suffering in this world emitted a flash.

……Flame’s Lips……Flame’s Lips

Suddenly, around that time, he felt as though he had heard the whisper of a novel he wanted to write.

………………………………………

Just when the raging crimson flames seemed to calm, that cold transparent strange flame arrived. It was hunger's flame. After evacuating to a farmhouse with my brother's entire family and widowed sister, I found myself ceaselessly besieged by this tenacious sorrowful flame. It burned fiercely across the kitchen's soiled tatami mats and behind sooty shoji screens riddled with holes. Then over green rice fields and distant mountains visible beyond, those fiercely burning transparent flames swayed. The space quivered minutely—the core of my head grew hazy. At times like these—what do humans think?—at times like these... human white teeth would flash. My younger sister and sister-in-law kept arguing about something.

“So resentful—so resentful—I want to tear that bride to pieces!” The neighboring farmer’s wife, who was not starving, ground her teeth in the front garden. Those words struck me sharply. I want to tear her apart… humans tearing humans apart… the woman’s face transformed in an instant—it snapped and burst inside me. When I was surrounded by countless sorrowful flames and could not move, yet people moved about with ease. A male relative who had been exposed at the hypocenter and lost all his hair miraculously regained his health deep in the countryside and took a new wife from there before the tragic year had even ended. Through the ruins that swirled with countless ravaged faces, countless survivors wandered. The black market atop the muddy ruins was like a festival day. Were people staggering as they reclaimed the festive day? I too walked about watching while staggering. An emaciated man on the verge of collapse fluttered banknotes toward a stall, and what he clutched in his hand was already in his mouth. Fiercely flickering flames were everywhere. Demobilized soldiers returned everywhere, and the collapsed station thronged with crowds, bustling with activity. The man whose wife and children had been taken by the flash walked with a new wife adorned in fine clothes. Swiftly, lightly, unassumingly, new nests were built here and there.

“I will never believe in anything again... not even myself.” The middle-aged woman who had escaped disaster with her house still intact proclaimed grandly—but ……the widow’s sister ceaselessly plotted her escape from hunger. The haggard face beneath the rucksack concealed youthful vigor, taking on the expression of a final protest to keep living—an attempt to brush away falling sparks. Yet at times it would become transfixed by the visage of a blood-smeared specter, eyes taking on the hue of one emitting a final shriek. When this sister looked at me with eyes writhing in anguish and offered sympathy, I shuddered. Those eyes undoubtedly already foresaw the skeletal figure within me.

But when that year ended, a remarriage proposal had suddenly arisen for the sister as well. On the day I first heard that news, I unexpectedly encountered my sister—who approached carrying a rucksack—at the village entrance bridge. As we stood talking, tears suddenly welled in my eyes. (Tears?) When I later reflected, they seemed like tears of joy that one person had escaped starvation. But I myself had not yet been saved. The flames pursued me. After thrashing about in desperation, I fled to take refuge at an old friend’s place in Tokyo.

But even the house of the friend who had taken me in was soon surrounded by a strange flame. Hunger’s flame smoldered relentlessly, and humans’ white teeth flashed. In an instant, human faces transform. Humans transform in an instant's flash. What surprise or lament could there be if long, long misfortune had transformed humans?—Day and night, trembling before that house’s mistress and her fierce countenance, I whispered alone to myself.

One raised in crimson garments now clung to dust heaps—with a beggar’s gait, I walked through bustling crowds and along paths of scorched ruins. My eyes blurred over the burnt ruins’ ash mounds, my starved knees threatening to buckle forward—when abruptly, the azure sky above pierced through with crystalline light. (This heart’s throbbing, this vertigo of delusion) I strained to gaze into a world so dazzling it burned the eyes. Then, the master of that house who had sheltered me departed on a journey one day and never returned. After some time, it became known that this friend had taken a lover during his travels and would no longer come back to Tokyo. After that, I had no choice but to leave that house.

After that I became homeless, and after that... Anguish chases anguish.—There was a woman kneeling in prayer before mounting anguish.

“Once I had someone show me my face in a mirror. That was no longer me. The me with a face not my own was no longer afraid. Even fear itself seemed to have vanished from me now. I am perishing. Are my festering breasts and right elbow—this endless pain, nothing but pain—is this what I am now? At that instant, the flash suddenly slashed my face. When I cried out 'Ah!', my right hand had indeed been trying to shield my face. A single velocity sliced through both face and hand simultaneously. Thinking 'Ah!' I staggered. I did not fall. I realized I hadn't fallen. Only the speed left behind by whatever had streaked past now roared at my ear. When I opened my eyes, the turbid haze within them had settled, and what collapsed lay utterly silent. From somewhere came countless tiny shrieks. Though the wind-like thing had passed by, its howl still pressed close. At that moment, everything had already ended indeed. And yet something seemed about to begin now—a restless quivering swaying within me...”

He had jotted down the opening lines of Flame’s Lips in his notebook, but who exactly this woman dying amid the tragedy might be remained unclear. Yet the whispers of monologue persisted unceasingly. While gazing into eternity’s visage, as death drew near, an infinite vista grew ever clearer within her heart… Suddenly—the joy of life struck her like lightning, shaking her more violently than any gale. Truly, that music sought to shatter her. Ah—could such joy, such boundless joy dwelling within a single woman’s breast truly be permitted? Moved to tears by her own overwhelming emotion, she knelt in reverence. Then time ceased eternally—only to begin flowing once more with languid grace.

While pursuing such scenes, he was constantly driven into a corner by life. Then when the long-suspended magazine resumed publication, a sudden flurry of activity arose. No matter when he went to the magazine office, visitors would crowd the place and manuscripts lay piled on the desk. In meeting various people and handling miscellaneous tasks, there arose a kind of wave of excitement. When that wave crested, he would often scream, "Humans trampling humans into chaos!"

(Humans trampling humans…) Long ago, I struggled against all of humanity like a virgin. Human faces, human words, gestures, voices—those directly contracted my heart and distorted my vision into trembling. If even a single person were before my eyes, instantly tens of thousands of volts would course through me, and sparks of nerves would scatter across my face. I was terribly afraid of humans. I always wanted to run away immediately. And yet, even as I trembled and cowered so, how fervently I had thought to love and understand humans!

But now—though my awkwardness in life remained unchanged from before—when meeting people, a different pattern had formed compared to the past. I attempted to meet someone. I flipped the switch inside myself. Then, a swift light current would flow through me, and from there on out, both conversation and attitude would begin to flow almost automatically. What was this that had occurred? I understood the other person—did the other person now know me?—but before I could even reflect on such things, the people before me flowed past as time slipped away in a ceaseless rotation. And late at night, all those scattered faces and voices and gestures of various people would jumble together inside me, reverberating like a hazy halo. I seemed to have drowsily dozed off into that haze. And suddenly, a shudder raced down my spine.

"No good, no good—pierce through that beyond." Tens of thousands of volts surged through me as a scream. (Humans trampling humans... For the young girl, the very existence of a single human being meant nothing but terror without end and anguish without respite. Everything tangled into strangeness, everything pressed her toward extremity. Eating became torment, sleeping became ordeal, even breathing—each act a trial. This tender, anguished soul writhed and wailed without purpose. "Living—living is so, so painful," she... Yet one day, something cool brushed her forehead. Then across from her—abruptly—a new space bloomed into view.)

The image of “Flame’s Lips” flickered within him as it wavered. Before long, due to work-related reasons, he suddenly began frequenting bars behind the entertainment district and cafes deep in alleyways more often. Then the alcohol—it could be said this was his first time since the war ended—seeped into his eyes and brain, and through the narrow back alleys of night flowed a swelling, wavering space… Immediately behind the chair he sat on, boys and young men of strange appearance swayed restlessly past. At the stall, a young woman moved ceaselessly like a vivid accent, engulfed by the swaying figures around her. Her eyes gleamed as if varnished, and her lips, wet with rouge, were like blood. That must be the woman’s eyes and lips, I thought. The swaying gaseous body seemed about to ignite with a crack at any moment. But beneath my soles, something strangely cold flowed. An inescapable coldness… That woman too had probably had her cheeks scorched by blazing flames and run barefoot across the ground. Even now, the rhythm that tried to avoid something or latch onto something swayed as well. Flickering fiercely as it swayed. Even so, the cold thing flowing beneath his soles… Suddenly, right behind his seat, an unsteady student approached. Taking out a cup from his own jacket pocket and having someone pour sake into it. “Ahh, if only… If only one could believe in humans…” The student swayed unsteadily with a saccharine expression. The cold thing swayed restlessly. Fire, fire, fire—but the fire seemed to no longer be here. Is this scorched ground here now a puddle?

As soon as he stepped over the puddle, his friend was conversing with the "night woman" in the shadow of the four corners. Then the woman silently followed the two. They entered a dimly lit corner of the café. “Why did you become such a ‘night woman’?” The kind friend attempted to speak to her. “The house was too… I couldn’t stay there anymore, so I left.” Her small, pinched nose—tugged and pulled this way and that—appeared distorted to his eyes, like that, like that. Then the woman’s feet under the table, and the worn-out geta she wore on those feet, suddenly caught his eye. Ah, geta, geta, geta... The cold flow beneath... “Well then, I’ll just have tea and be off”—the kind friend parted with the woman outside the café. She was a docile woman. With that, the woman nodded and parted.

Then again, on another day, this kind friend took him to a café deep in an alleyway. And every table imaginable seethed with human voices. From within the thickly swirling tobacco smoke—voices and faces, contrived things, clingy things, hopeless things—heard, seen, flashing—amidst it all, a girl with swollen cheeks and glinting eyes was carrying tea.

(Here too, humans trampling humans… But for humans to understand one another here, about twenty types of codes suffice. For example: Cleanliness / Splendor / Resistance / Twist / Support / Collapse / Abruptness / Displacement / Cover / Fiction / etc.)

Through such linguistic mechanisms alone, they stimulated one another, moved one another emotionally, and humans mutually verified their notions while humans went on producing human notions. But this cold current flowing beneath my soles—what in the world was this?... When I suddenly noticed, the figures of the group that had been fervently debating at the table across were now gone. The deep night abruptly slid down onto the rattan chair.

At the adjacent chair, the kind friend was talking with the girl with glinting eyes. “I’m hungry. Why don’t we go get something to eat?” The kind friend invited the girl. “Well, I’m quite poor myself,” the girl said, following the two through the late-night streets. Cold rain began pattering down. The rain quickly seeped through his soles, soaking into his socks. It seemed there were no longer any food shops with their lights on anywhere. “You’re wearing those shoes too—the rain must be seeping in,” he suddenly asked the girl. “Yes, it’s seeping through. Really badly.” The girl nodded cheerfully. Food shops with their lights on were nowhere to be found anymore. “I’m going home.” The girl thrust her shoes into the cold water puddle and came to a stop.

“Flame’s Lips” showed no signs of progress, no matter how much time passed. And before he could finish writing it, the day came when he had to part with that lonely-looking woman. Even after that, he kept running into the woman in back alleys and such. The time they spent walking together grew longer, and they began entering cafés together too. Life, love, the weather, literature—the woman would jumble them all in her chatter, then fix her gaze intently into the distance. There was her constant vigilance toward everything around her and her bottomless propensity for daydreaming—to him, this seemed an enigma. The weather, life, love, literature—there were moments when he found himself enthralled by her words, yet he also sensed something snap and slide away.

In that way, the fact that this woman existed alone in the world—what exactly was it?... That mystery had gradually come to oppress and compel him. Then one day—he couldn’t fathom why—the woman’s face seemed to him to throb violently, like the final visage of all suffering things in this world. “Let me hear your true feelings—just a little of them.” He suddenly blurted out.

“Let’s walk a bit more,” the woman invited him toward the path skirting the moat-side. The water’s surface, the evening haze, the silhouettes of dead trees—they all seemed like some pitiable premonition. The woman walked in silence wearing a resentful expression. As he trailed absently behind, her face appeared to fend off something—though what exactly it couldn’t endure remained unclear. Suddenly, her voice quivered tautly.

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

With those words, she ran off toward the opposite sidewalk. Suddenly—it was far too sudden for him—but...

The woman appeared at the promised location the following day. Unlike the day before, the woman wore a calmly composed expression. Yet her face held something cold that seemed to slip away and something like a bottomless dream, both intertwined.

“From far away, from far away, my lover has returned.”

"From far away, from far away"—the sound of those words seemed to him like a song heard in a dream. "So, you had a lover?" "No, no—even if I had a lover, the poignancy, the loneliness, the unbearable nature of living would remain just the same." The poignancy, the loneliness, the unbearable nature of living—they too seemed to him like a song heard from afar.

“Then why did you take an interest in me?” “Because you seemed lonely—because you seemed so very, very unbearably lonely a person.” As she said this, the woman removed her gloves and extended her hand toward him. “Please keep living. Please go on living.”

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