Pathway to Japanese Literature

Beautiful words and mental images streamed forth nearly without cease.
Gushing from rifts in the deep sky's clouds to come flying toward me.
I wondered how many years it had been since I last slept.
My eyes were bulging, my lips were dry.
This unsteady space where even breathing felt exhausting—could this too truly have been part of the universe?
Faintly within me arose the vague sensation that nearly everything existing in the universe might be present here.
Thus my years without sleep seemed but a faint event adrift in cosmic happenings.
How did I conceive of this thing called human? Through excessive contemplation of such matters, I appeared to have finally lost all capacity for sleep.
My eyes were bulging, my lips were dry—this unsteady space where even breathing felt exhausting...

I want to keep my mind clear.
I want to clearly grasp myself.

When not a single grain of rice remained in my stomach, my stomach turned transparent, revealing my tottering self walking up the fresh-leafed slope.
At that time I thought that was what made a human.
Do not live for yourself—live only for the laments of the dead—I repeated to myself again and again.
It had become like my breathing and tears.
When tears pooled deep in my eyes, the scorched ruins quivered gently and were shrouded in mist.
I thought I saw you in the sky beyond that mist.
I walked.
My feet supported me.
Human feet.
What astonishes are human feet.
Toward the ruins they walked in droves—human feet.
Those feet supported humans as they endlessly carried things.
Little by little, little by little, humans built their own houses.

Human feet.
At that time I walked supporting a wounded soldier on my shoulder.
The soldier pleaded with me to abandon his legs since they could no longer take another step.
It was a morning of utter exhaustion.
Survivors' handcarts passed vigorously across the bridge in great numbers.
I realized mornings still existed in this world.
I left the soldier there and walked onward.
My feet.
The instant darkness slid and plummeted overhead, my feet staggered yet supported me.
My feet.
My feet.
These feet of mine.
Those were terrible days.
It was a time of absolute chaos.
My feet ran across fire.
They dashed along water's edge.
I kept walking sorrowful roads.
I kept walking famished long roads.
I walked through pitch-dark endless famished sorrowful night roads.
I kept walking to live.

Can I go on living? I asked toward the starry sky.
Do not live for yourself—live only for the laments of the dead.
What keeps me alive is your laments.
What makes me walk onward is also their laments.
You all were stars.
You all were flowers.
This was something I had known since long, long ago.
I walked.
My feet supported me.
When tears pooled in my eyes' depths, I felt human eyes watching this way.

Human eyes.
At that time, eyes thin like a thread gazed at me.
On a face swollen blacker than black, eyes narrow as silk thread.
The eyes of grotesquely wounded patients lining the riverbank turned curiously to stare at unharmed humans.
With wonder upon wonder—eyes fixated on something dreadful through unsteady swaying, swayed then swaying anew, caught in endless flux.
The eyes of a child dead in water snapped open like glass marbles beneath the surface.
Hands and legs splayed wide in water—a sorrowful child with oversized head and face.
The child lay at the river's edge like some discarded death specimen.
Then death specimens began appearing everywhere.

Human corpses.
Was that truly a human corpse?
Limbs swelling as if about to twitch into motion; torsos cast toward the Absolute; fingers convulsing to grasp heaven…
Necks pierced by rays, teeth clenched white and exposed, entrails swollen and spilling out…
Torn apart in an instant, countless rhythms surging forth to challenge that same instant…
Those who lay facedown in ditches, those fallen sideways onto their backs, those in the burned and mangled depths of the abyss, those who had plunged into the abyss’s furthest reaches—all gazed sorrowfully up at the sky.

Human corpses.
They appeared in scattered heaps at survivors' feet.
They seemed to entangle themselves around my feet.
Whenever I walked, I could no longer free myself from what clung.
I walked along Tokyo's scorched streets through morning pavements lined with snowbell trees.
Each dawn those trees tinted my eyes green; my eyes turned toward some cool-eyed gaze.
My eyes each morning recalled flowering fields' aura; my ears each dawn trembled at birdsong's cheer.
Do not live for yourself—live only for dead voices' lament.
If anything sustains and moves me still, it's all your grieving's work.
The bell resonating within me—I had discerned its chime but...

But what was this space to me—this unsteady swaying space that shifted post-shift only to shift again, unsteady still swaying unsteadily? What was this persistent flame to me—flaring fiercely then burning out only to reignite again endlessly chasing? I was nearly thrown from the train. I was nearly crushed inside the tram. I had no room. The room rejected me. Pushed and cast out I wandered. Wandered. Wandered. Is wandering what makes one human? I wander alongside human concepts.

Human concepts.
It throws me off, rejects me, crushes me, makes me wander, and sinks its teeth into me.
When I was myself in the past, when I attempt to become myself in the future, I am struck sharply by myself.
The mechanism inside me that is mine.
The unknowable mechanism within humans.
The core of humans.
Human concepts.
Conceptual humans.
Words and humans flooding like a deluge.
Words and humans bustling like a crowd.
Words.
Words.
Words.
I reflect on the words of ESSAY ON MAN that exist within me.

On death: Death made me grow.

On love: Love sustained me.

On loneliness: Loneliness made me me.

On madness: Madness tormented me.

On lust: Lust bewildered me.

On balance: My saint is balance.

On dreams: Dreams are my entirety.

On God: God silences me.
On officials: Officials made me gloomy.
On flowers: Flowers are my sisters.

On tears: Tears call me back

On laughter: I want to possess a splendid laugh.

On war: Ah, war brings ruin to humanity.

Eerie words and thoughts had flowed almost ceaselessly onward.
I was washed away, swept away, and seemed utterly exhausted.
How many years had it been since I could sleep?
My eyes were fixed wide, my space swaying.
This unsteady space where even breathing felt languid...
Suddenly, within the swaying void, a large white edifice came into view.
I approached unsteadily.
As if tunneling through the firmament itself...
The chalk-white monument drew nearer to me.
I reached the structure's gate.
The gate seemed to detach from the sky as it advanced toward me.
I stared at the characters engraved on the obelisk.
I gasped.
I whispered.

Atomic Bomb Memorial Hall

I unsteadily climbed the stairs.
I was astonished.
I muttered.
I was perplexed.
The stairs drew me in step by step, the corridor quietly guided me inward.
Here was—this was—here was—this was…… I suddenly found myself bewildered by something void-like.
Clack-clack went the footsteps as the guide appeared.
He silently pushed open the door and led me into a chamber.
I silently followed behind him.
Before a large glass-paneled case, he came to a stop.
Inside the case was nothing.
I was made to wear a strange mask connected with glasses and a listening device over my head.
He quietly twisted the switch beside the case.
......Suddenly, the panorama of Hiroshima City just before the atomic bomb came into view.

......Suddenly, everything pressed upon me as actual phenomena.
This no longer seemed an event contained within the case.
I turned pale.
The plane had already arrived.
It became visible.
A faint roar sounded within the clouds.
I searched for myself.
I was there.
I was there at that house...
I remained there just as I had been then.
My eyes raced through every position of all the people—in the town's midst, beneath roofs, upon roads—from that moment.
I shouted.
(Disgusting device.
An accursed contraption that peers through every spatial angle at every spatial phenomenon, unfolding every temporal progression at every conceivable speed.
A shameful trick.
"For what purpose—for what purpose—do they try to force that upon me again?!)

I shouted.
In my eyes appeared the light flashing over Hiroshima’s sky.
The light spread slowly and gently, dreamlike and unhurried.
The moment I thought “Ah!”, the light abruptly surged in speed.
But, as if the moment were being divided again, the light advanced slowly and gently, hesitantly.
Suddenly, the light darted down to the ground.
Everything on the ground was transformed abruptly.
The city was transformed.
But now, the collapse of houses was repeating its progression slowly and gently at that dream-like speed once more.
I searched for myself.
I was there.
There...
I convulsed against myself.
I shouted to myself.
(Delusion.
Delusion.
I was here.
I was not on that side.
I was here.
(I was not on that side.) I flailed in anguish and tried to wrench the mask from my face.

And the struggling within the pitch-black mass that had fallen upon my head then became one with the mask I tried to wrench away.
I groaned.
I staggered and nearly collapsed.
I struggled not to fall.
In that lightless mass existed both the me that groaned and the me that resisted collapse...
I tried tearing off the mask.
I thrashed wildly.
...The switch halted.
Eventually the guide removed the mask from my face.
I lay utterly spent as though bludgeoned.
The guide led me to the sofa.
I collapsed onto its cushions.

〈On the Sofa: Thoughts and Recollections〉

I am here.
I am not on that side.
Here.
Here.
Here.
Here I am.
This here is me.
Ah, but why must I shout this at myself?
Now the sofa I lay upon began gradually comforting me, becoming—suddenly—a sofa for calm thought.
……I am here.
I am not on the opposite side.
I am here.
Ah, but why do I still want to shout it?

...Suddenly, I recalled lying on the sofa at K Hospital and seeing the young maple leaves visible beyond the glass window. At that time, had I been told I was ill—penniless as I was—I would have had no choice but to kill myself... Was I not within those beautifully trembling young leaves beyond the windowpane back then? Within those young leaves, I felt as though your dead gaze and lament remained vividly... I tried to remember more clearly. One day—the swaying sunlight on young bamboo in the garden you were gazing at—the face of yours I was gazing at... I was also on the other side of myself. I was also on the other side of myself. You were alive.

In the cramped single room of an apartment, I sat dazedly by your side.
It was a beautiful quiet May day.
There was a mirror.
There was a mirror by your side.
In the mirror, a few young leaves from outside the window were reflected.
I felt an irrepressible surge of nostalgia toward the faint glimpse of verdant leaves outside the window reflected in the mirror.
“Why don’t we go see a world overflowing with even more verdant leaves?”
“Right now, right this instant.”
You smiled at my overly abrupt tone.
But already you too were being drawn toward that glittering surge.
A light, buoyant something brimming over welled up.
When a tone wells up in one person, immediately resonating within another—is this what I suddenly find myself contemplating?

I seemed able to recall more clearly now.
I was on the opposite side of myself.
There had been a mirror.

That might have been the first time I began to become aware of this thing called myself.
I was in the mirror.
My face was in the mirror.
In the mirror were young leaves behind me.
Suddenly I felt a throbbing - as though wandering into that space beyond the beyond of the mirror's depths.
Could that have been a lost child's nostalgia?
Was I a lost child of this earth?
Yes - I seem able to remember more clearly now.

I was on the opposite side of myself.
The child I had been had not clearly noticed it.
But was that child not still a human being cast down?
I—enshrined in a tranquil, serene place where scarcely any menacing rays could reach—was suddenly seized by an anxiety beyond control.
From there lay the abyss at my very feet.
An infinite sensation of falling...
That which had existed at my core since childhood—was this what kept haunting my thoughts?
I seemed able to recall more clearly now.

I am on the opposite side of myself.
There were trees.
I stood by the trees and gazed at the opposite side.
There were trees on the opposite side as well.
That might have been the earliest days when I began trying to gaze at the opposite side of what is called myself.

The boy I was saw a phantom human beyond the trees on the opposite side.
Under a sky threatening to storm, a giant—violently cast down—walked.
Upon that person’s forehead were carved all of humanity’s misfortunes, all of humankind’s miseries—yet still that person walked proudly.
Hair like a lion’s mane, eyes as sharp as an eagle’s—that person walked proudly.
The boy I was kept looking up at the phantom human and appealing.
I am weak, I am weak, I am—I am so weak.
Yes, I must remember more clearly.
I am weak, I am weak, I am weak—a voice seems to say.
Even now inside me, inside me, that voice….
Do not live for yourself.
Live only for the laments of the dead.
Another voice comes welling up inside me.

I stood up from the couch.
I began to walk.
The Guide had vanished; his figure was nowhere to be seen.
I walked blankly alone before the display cases.
I no longer felt any curiosity to peer into the display cabinets within this Atomic Bomb Memorial Hall.
Even if something beyond my imagination had already been invented and displayed here, would this truly have been something beyond my imagination?
That very thing had already been invented and displayed here.
The fact of being displayed, the very act of displaying—that alone was what lay beyond my imagination.
I grew melancholy.
I became wretched.
Like madness that couldn't process itself, they tormented me.
I paced gloomily alone, listening to my own soliloquy.

Spring.
Spring.
Spring alone…

Yes, Spring alone might have been a faint, faint salvation.
A spring where the seriously injured came to drink.
A spring where burn victims came to drink one after another.
Because I had that Spring, perhaps there was a faint salvation even amidst those horrific times.
Spring.
Spring.
Spring alone…
That illusion of salvation was soon projected onto a celestial spring when starvation began closing in on me.
When I grew dizzy and lightheaded, a Spring in the distant sky seemed to appear.
Then at night... I, shelterless in my hiding place, thought of where the unceasing Spring might be.
Spring.
Spring.
Spring alone….

I had somehow exited the Memorial Hall and was wandering unsteadily about. The crowd trudged past before my eyes. The crowd seemed to have ceaselessly flooded the earth since that time. I walked unsteadily through the bustle. I wandered unsteadily. To me, the people passing through my surroundings were like my own disjointed thoughts. Inside my head, within my habitual patterns, a disjointed crowd had somehow come flooding in. I suddenly spotted Isaku’s face in the crowd and tried to call out to him. But Isaku disappeared into the crowd. Suddenly, Okimi’s face appeared before my eyes. As I was about to call out, she too disappeared into the crowd. I was dazed. Yes. I wanted to remember more clearly. Is that a crowd? Is it my thoughts? Suddenly, a voice came.

〈The Soft Terrain of My Skull〉 I read books.
The words of books flooded into me like a crowd.
I thought about novels.
The humans from novels flooded into me like a crowd.
I encountered humans.
Real humans only made contact with me as if through a novel.
The thoughts, habits, and expressions of countless humans—those things trudged about like a crowd.
The scattered zones seemed ready to collapse.

〈The Swampy Terrain of My Skull〉 I stay awake, tormented by the rooster’s cries.
Clawing and clawing at the wound in my soul, I go on groaning within myself.
Is this simulation me?
Is this sin truly mine?
I spin through void.
My core turns pale.
Something sniveling, something unresolved seeps through skin and nerves.
Space threatens to tear apart.
I can no longer endure.
No matter what, I cannot keep surviving in this world.
I want to flee.
Somewhere—deep in mountain recesses—I want to hide and weep away my days alone.
Alone, until death comes—until death comes.

〈The Highland Region of My Skull〉 I suddenly trembled with survival's exultation.
To live, to keep living—like a small bird reviving each dawn through waters bathed in from the spring—only the simple things within me, the unadorned things, those alone refreshed me.

〈My Skull's……〉

〈My Skull's……〉

〈My Skull's……〉

I seemed to have my own singing voice.
But I was searching for Isaku.
Isaku too was searching for me.
Then I was searching for Okimi.
Okimi too tried to search for me.
I know Isaku.
I know Okimi.
But Isaku and Okimi were my illusions, my disordered images—things existing beyond reach, things existing within grasp...
Suddenly a voice began.
Isaku's voice reached me.

〈Isaku’s Voice〉

The world was shattered.
I was searching.
I was always searching for something.

Over the ruins, people trudged in droves every day.
Were people trudging in droves searching for something?
Like a freshly severed wound in the cosmos, the ruins glistened harshly.
The spasms of immense void remained frozen in space.
Beneath accumulations of collapsed matter and in crevices of shattered concrete, death's foul stench hung thick.
Midday blazed pitilessly bright and sorrowful.
A great white cloud swelled with glittering light.
Mornings grew terrifying and mournful through their stillness.
The mountain ranges and island-hills encircling those distant ruins stirred faintly awake.
Evenings chilled desolate to the bone with what approached.
Nights became boundless nightmares incarnate.
Dogs gnawing human flesh, new madmen, scar-crusted humans wandered like nightmare phantoms.
Was everything some new nightmare phenomenon?
Every day over the ruins, people trudged in droves.
Through their endless wandering, might that place gradually become imprinted with footprints and prayers?
I too wandered through the crowd. Having just been demobilized and returned, I hadn't witnessed tragedy's day with my own eyes.
But horrific tales from catastrophe's survivors and lingering phenomena remained plentiful enough.
Humans transformed in an instant's flash, unknowable things lurking in cosmic depths... what pressed upon me seemed endlessly vast.
Yet I found myself shaken, beaten, burned through and confined.
The house had burned away, but my parents and brothers had relocated to a small town beyond the ruins.

Having just been demobilized and returned, I found myself suddenly confined by something at my parents' side. Was this a time when everything became confined through humans tearing fiercely at each other? Yet I had memories—from long ago, from nearly the moment I first gained awareness—of being shaken, beaten, burned up, and confined. I wanted to break through. I wandered aimlessly through the ruins. My face had become one that menacingly smashed something unknowable inward. Human eyes had become eyes that battered harshly against space. Were hopeless humans and their reflections making those gazes grow increasingly savage? Blazing flames, spurting blood, twisted arms, lips contorted in death throes, festering corpses—they existed, they existed, still not vanished from people's eyes. The remnants of steel reinforcements, collapsed bricks, countless fragments, and trees left scorched yet straining to tear through the sky stood right before my eyes. The world was shattered. Shattered—horribly shattered. And yet I kept searching. Searching for something indistinct. Things existing somewhere far away that faintly consoled me; things indiscernible and impossible to grasp; things vanished to dwell only within memory; things that seemed about to emerge abruptly from space again; things I believed had surely existed once though not even within memory—these I dimly pondered.

The world was shattered.
It was horribly shattered.
But my world had not yet been shattered.
I had not yet seen the momentary flash.
I had not yet been struck by the momentary flash.
But finally, a momentary great chaos came to my world as well.
Until that moment, I had known nothing.
From that moment, my past had capsized.
From that moment, my memory grew ambiguous.
From that moment, my thoughts began to unravel.
I had come to know things better left unknown.
I am startled by the me who did not know, I am torn apart by the me who came to know.
I had come to know.
I had come to know.
that my mother was different from the mother who had given birth to me…
Suddenly, I had been made aware.

Suddenly?
...But until that moment, I might still have been vaguely searching.

It was during my uncle’s funeral.
They had gathered in the house with fallen walls and warped pillars.
Amid them, I found a friendly-looking woman.
She was the woman who had once come to the station when I was leaving for military service and silently seen me off.
I was somehow drawn to her.
It was when my uncle’s corpse was placed on a door plank and carried to the crematory.
I walked with that woman and her husband, the three of us tending to lag behind the others.
Both the woman and her husband I was somehow drawn to, but I vaguely thought they were probably distant relatives.
Suddenly, the woman’s husband said to me.

“I see you’ve already learned about Mother being different.”

Though I found it strange, I nodded nonchalantly.
I had nodded nonchalantly, but I had been struck by a flash.
Then I churned with unease.
The trembling, shifting things would no longer settle.
And before long, my quest began.
I stealthily visited their house for the first time.
At the foot of the mountain was their temporary dwelling.
Then I understood everything.
That woman was my aunt—the elder sister of my dead mother.
My mother died when I was three.
My father had divorced my mother before she died.
The circumstances were complicated, and because of that, everything had been kept hidden from me until now.
I was shown a photograph of my dead mother.
I had no memory but…
My father had also been photographed with that mother and me—the three of us together.
I had no memory but…
I had been blindfolded and spun around and around.
For a long time, far too long a time—I alone, I alone…

My blindfold was removed.
This time my surroundings whirled around.
I too began whirling around.

Inside me, a great cavity opened and something began whirling around.
Something incomprehensible within me kept spinning me around.
As I walked across the ruins, I thought: This isn't me.
But as I walked across the ruins, something pressed upon me: This is me, this is me.
I began to feel for the first time there upon the ruins like a human just born.
I was wind-scoured.
Was the wind-scoured naked body what I had been?
"Do you understand? Do you understand?" something pressed upon me.
And so, I felt I’d come to understand.
As a child, by some trigger I had been plunged into a pitch-dark abyss.
By some trigger, I found the entire world had vanished from before me.
Rattling, my core paled as I continued my crimson wailing.
But no one would save me.
I was in pain.
I was sad; it had been a time more unbearable than death.
I had to crawl up from the pitch-dark depths myself.
I crawled up.
And I no longer wanted to fall.
But some trigger trying to push me back down there always flickered before my very eyes.
I was restless and couldn't settle.

I was always gauging someone's expression.
I always felt someone might push me off at any moment.
I did not want to be pushed off.
I did not want to fall.
I gazed at people's faces—only people's faces.
They accepted me, rejected me, and had been keeping me apart.
The single sheet of intricate, complex, transparent glass stretched over human faces... That was something I thought I had understood in my own way.

Oh, a single pane of intricate, complex, transparent glass! Had this been the human relations stretched between me and my father, between me and my stepmother, then between all relatives and me, between all society and me? That monster lurking in every moment of human relationships—had I grown frightened of it? Had I grown resentful of it? I don't truly comprehend. My fear only deepens. A universe where destruction lies loaded in every instant, a universe where tremors lurk in every moment—I feel as though I glimpsed in dream a human face listening intently to this reality. What terrifies me now extends beyond human relations alone. Entities seeking to devour me, to gnaw at me—beings too vast and unknowable for my grasp. These unknowable forces dwell too within the ruins I traverse. I recall when first I saw these ruins—passing through the station square, halting at the bridge—where nearly the full vista lay revealed. From within the stillness of that flattened wasteland, something incomprehensible suddenly shrieked from beyond, then another wailing mystery came pressing against my cheek. Those incomprehensible forces make me spin—me me me—round and round within myself.

I search round and round within myself.
When I do that, faces of people from various times come into view.
Faces smiling at me, faces gazing briefly at me, indifferent faces toward me, faces with goodwill, faces bearing hostility—but all those faces within me become a harmonious quiet rural landscape with patches of shade and sunlight.
I am connected—connected to various things by various threads.
I am, at any rate, in a stable world.

A piercing resonance that stabbed at the ears reverberated.
The world I inhabited was being torn apart.
They were gone! They were gone!
And I kept shouting.
They all scattered away.
Only the velocity of fragments remained before my eyes.
They were gone!
They were gone!
I kept shouting.
Then—the thread tethering me to the ground snapped.
This time I became fragments and scattered away.
Dizzying cliffs, valleys at emotion's root, trees glittering with flame—all appeared as an azure azure stream to my dispersing self.
I was gone!
I was nothing!
I kept shouting. ...Was I dreaming?

I searched round and round within myself even more intensely.
Suddenly, an infinite blue sky appeared within me.
It felt exactly like my chest.
Had I not stared wide-eyed since long ago at the blue sky before me?
Long ago, my chest had absorbed that blue sky—I was still young.
Now my chest felt hard and remarkably sound.
Indeed, my chest was like an infinite blue sky.
Indeed, my chest seemed capable of charging forward infinitely.
Even if the world surrounding me was shattered, even if the world I inhabited was wretched, overwhelming me and seeking to lead me to ruin, I—
I wanted to go on living.
I seemed able to go on living.
I…
Yes—I wanted to become something different, something even greater...
Enormously, enormously the universe swelled up.
Enormously, enormously...
I wanted to leap onto that enormous universe.
In my eyes, desire burned wildly.
In my eyes, everything burned wildly.

And then did I begin to love?
I walked through a long, long, wide, wide expanse from one entrance of the ruins to the other exit.
Across a desolate desert, I existed on both its sides.
My parents’ temporary lodging and my aunt’s temporary house and….
When I walked toward my aunt’s house, my footsteps lightened.
In my eyes floated glimpses of beautiful kimono patterns I had once seen long ago—trivial little objects that had suddenly delighted me for no reason at all.
When such things surfaced, I grew nostalgic for myself.
Each time I met my aunt, more nostalgic things accreted within me.
If it was something my aunt told me—if they were her words—all became nostalgic to me.
Was I trying to find my mother on the other side of my aunt’s face?
But what existed on the other side of my dead mother?
O other side—O other side—suddenly something echoed within me.
I grew lighter.
I softly swelled.
I grew tender with tears.
I grew prone to lament.
Lament?
Something like a beautiful lament I had never known embraced me.
Then everything began to look beautiful.
Lament?

I lament beautifully even as far as the ruins quivering in haze.
Ah—is that because the laments of the dead and our laments resonate with each other?
Lament?
Lament?
In my life—was lament truly its only beauty?
I don’t know—I am young.
My life has only just begun.
I want to keep searching.
Lament? Is lament life’s sole beauty?

And then I wandered off.
I was still searching for something.
The fact that I had come to know about my dead mother had been discovered by my father.
Not long after that, I was sent to Tokyo.
And then I wandered through Tokyo.
Tokyo made me wander on.
(The noise within me that I heard…
The lighter had broken.
There was no soap.
The shoe’s heel came off.
The watch went mad.
I wanted books.
The notebook was crumpled.
I was crumpled.
I was shattered.
Books did not understand me.
I too could not understand books.
I was preoccupied.
Everything weighed on my mind.
My entire existence, filled to bursting and scattered with trivial things—each one weighed on my mind.)

In the classroom, someone was talking with someone.
Are people talking about me?
On the opposite sidewalk, people were walking.
Is that me?
Music came drifting in.
I had been made into music.
The clatter of wooden clogs raced past beneath the boarding house window.
The one running was me.
Don't dwell on the past—things were growing more difficult here each day... Father's letter.
Father's letter shook me.
Isaku, become splendid, splendidly... It’s my aunt’s voice.
That voice also shook me.
How everyone keeps living on—I have absolutely no idea.
All humans are like glass shattered into splinters.
The world is shattered.
Humanity, O humanity, humanity.
I cannot understand.
I cannot connect.
I am swaying.
Humanity, O humanity, humanity, I want to understand.

I want to connect.
I want to keep living.
Is it only me who's swaying?
Always, inside me, there is the sound of something exploding.
Always, something is chasing me.
I am shaken, beaten, burning up, and stifled.
I want to break through and keep moving.
(Somewhere, somewhere) And then I sometimes traveled between Tokyo and Hiroshima, but my confusion and my noise only kept increasing.
My close friend from junior high said nothing to me and abruptly committed suicide.
My world shattered again.
It felt as though another cavity had opened within me.
Fragments swaying in the wind, my noise, the noise that was me—my life had only just begun.
Ah, how I wanted to hear a single pure singing voice beyond my noise...

Isaku's voice snapped off.
In the noise—a single pure singing voice... Having said he wanted to hear it, Isaku's voice vanished.
I walked unsteadily.
My surroundings came walking unsteadily.
Within the crowd's din—low, low, yet ceaselessly audible—a sorrowful, tender, quiet whisper beautiful as lamentation, tiny tiny; I too wanted to listen intently to that whisper, but...
My surroundings kept rustling and swaying.
Amidst the swaying, a voice abruptly began.

Okimi's voice reached me.

〈Okimi's Voice〉

How many years had I been running frantically since that time? That was when my husband died. My house was warped by the rays. The fire had burned close by. It was on the third day that I learned my husband had died. My son hid in the shelter with me. I couldn’t tell what had ended or what had begun. The fire seemed to have gone out. On the second day, my son went out to check the situation and returned. He crouched with an unsteady, pale face. He was vomiting. Because it was too horrific, he had been rendered speechless. The next day too, my son went out again to check the state of the town and returned. At the place where my husband had been, no one had survived. Ever since that time, I had to start running frantically to survive.

The water supply was broken.
The lights did not come on.
Rain lashed; wind raged.
I suddenly nearly collapsed.

Feet, feet, feet overtook me as I swayed toward collapse.
Again I nearly went down with a thud.
Feet, feet, feet overtook me as I swayed toward collapse.
My son took his father's tie to the black market and traded it for cash.
To everyone I met, I timidly poured out my sorrows.
But tears were a luxury I couldn't afford.
No time remained for weeping.
Timidity had long since burned away.
I had to keep running, had to keep running...
My foot worked the sewing machine pedal in feverish rhythm.
I clung to every survival trick I could devise.
The schemes I concocted drew wry smiles even from myself—yet somehow they held.
My junior high-aged son became my cheerleader and helper.
I had to keep running, had to keep running...
The shout echoed through my sleeping hours too.

Suddenly, with a thud, I collapsed.
After that, my resourcefulness gradually stopped working.
I wandered on, misled by my own self.

It was an evening when a blue crescent moon glimmered over the new town built upon the scorched ruins.
I was on my way to deliver the finished sewing work to the department store.
In the bustle, I saw the back of my former lover.
That couldn't have been.
My lover had died long ago.
Yet that figure's back would not leave my sight.
I stealthily followed from behind.
On and on—a desperate need not to lose sight even to the world's farthest edge suddenly whispered through me.
That couldn't have been.
I had no memory of ever burning so fiercely.
I began fearing myself.
Suddenly, that figure's back turned toward me.
With a gaze that pierced... In that instant snapping into place—it was my husband.
That couldn't have been.
My husband had died that day.
That piercing gaze stabbed clean through me.
A scalding heat raced down my spine as my legs quaked violently.
"Wrong person, wrong person," I barked, fighting the urge to flee.
Still, I steadied myself.
The man who'd pierced me with his gaze vanished into the crowd's blue-dark swirl.

The back figure still flickered, but…

Wrong person, wrong person, I tried to reassure myself.
The back figure still flickered... I tried to believe these eyes.
I wanted to keep them wide open and clear.
I wanted to regain that vision—one appearing clear as crystal.
I wanted to reclaim that sensation—the kind where you see fish swimming in the depths of crystal-clear water.
But perhaps because disappointment struck, the vision had blurred severely.
The slackened sight after that terrifying, terrifying thing had bulged out was unmistakably mine.
I walked leaning against the loose flow of the surrounding crowd.
The back figure still flickered, but...

Even so, I regained my composure.
Leaning against the loose flow of the crowd as I walked, I did not lose my way.
As usual, I climbed the stairs from the department store’s back entrance and reached that point, but now and then something gritty scraped through the space around me.
When I tried to hand over the goods and receive the money, I suddenly felt like crying.
The act of receiving money—this ordinary, commonplace, utterly mundane act—suddenly made me feel like a criminal.
I must not feel this way—right now I must be going mad.
I tried to brace myself.
Right now I must be going mad.
I must stay composed—if I don’t, somehow the space will snap and split apart.
When I mechanically offered thanks and took the money, I felt as though I had escaped a crisis.
Then I hurried onward.
I must hurry, must hurry—something chases from behind.
Though I was meant to be walking briskly, I sometimes nearly halted in dazed stillness.
The back figure still flickered.

Even when I returned home, I could not calm down.
I must be going quite mad.
I must be going quite mad.
Right now right now I had to get a grip or something terrible would happen.
I tried to support myself.
I leaned against myself.
Through the space just before my loosely, ever loosening sleepy eyelids, a terrible lightning bolt streaked.
When I began to doze off, I was jolted back.
The figure's back flickered again.
In the blue-dark of my spinal marrow….

I seem to have been misled by myself.
I seem to have begun fearing myself.
It's nothing, it's nothing—someone like me doesn't even exist.
From long ago, from long ago, I had never once thought of myself as myself.
The water that had spilled on the tray—that water resembled me more.
Water...water...water...I thought I wanted to become water.
A mercury bead rolled round and round on a blue lotus leaf; a single droplet raced along a spider's thread—to such tender little things, such beautiful little things, could I not become them, I wondered.
When I tried to soothe myself, quiet water flowed before my eyes.
Quiet water flowed over moss.
The stream's water flowed quietly.
Rivers flowed from that direction and this direction.
White sails appeared; a swallow darted.
The river water ran joyfully toward the sea.
The sea swelled full.
It felt joyous.
It seemed joyous; it felt nostalgic.
Seagulls fluttered and glinted.
The sea seemed to dream boundlessly.
When the dream gradually grew dim, suddenly, a ray raced across the sea.
The sea split and tore apart in pitch-darkness.

I was jolted back by myself.
I began growing irritated with myself.
I am myself, I must be myself.
There is no one like me besides myself.
I tried to sink lion's teeth into myself.
I shrunk and hardened.
Smaller and smaller, as small as possible—I couldn't get any smaller.
I couldn't harden any further.
I am myself, I must be myself.
A small hard lump of shell, I thought I was okay. The moment I thought that, a ray came again.
I seemed split clean in two.
After that, all manner of things assaulted me from every direction—front and back, left and right, vertically and horizontally—in a chaotic tangle.
I was in anguish.
I writhed.

A fissure in the Earth appeared.
That was the seabed where the waters of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean joined, collided, and swirled.
With a groaning creak, the seabed split apart, yet those on land remained oblivious.
The world lay utterly still.
In the flower fields of the Himalayan Mountains, blue flowers absorbed moonlight.
The Earth was so quiet, yet the seabed's vortex whirled furiously.
"It's going to be terrible—it's become terrible," I shouted.
A grating, unpleasant sound echoed within my forehead.
I thought of taking even just the scissors and fleeing.
I was about to burst from the strain of premonition.
And then the Earth split apart.
Nothing but thick smoke billowed up as my surroundings lay utterly still.
The space visible through smoke gaps stayed quiet as a mirror.
Then from afar came a clamorous roar like surging waves.
The commotion gradually drew nearer.
Before my eyes I saw a swirling mass of countless humans.
Suddenly cliffs soared up on both sides of the vortex.
Then the blue sky stretched into infinite distance.

“World reform!
“World reform!” cried the swirling mass of humans in anguished unison, pushing and jostling against one another.
The swirling mass of humans, struggling against one another, all attempted to scale the cliff toward heaven.
I was clinging to the hollow at the hard base of the cliff.
If I stayed there, I thought it would be okay.
But the commotion of the swirling mass of humans had spread toward me.
I was pushed and was about to be crushed.
I walked, pushed by something shuddering forward.
As I walked pushed by things that kept jostling me from behind—by creaking, moving things—the hardened soles of my feet grew soft and pliant.
As I walked plodding along, I suddenly noticed I had come to a place like a desert. Everywhere there were puddles.
The puddles reflected the blood-like clouds of the evening sky and were burning.
I could tell—the Earth had truly split apart.
The puddles raged, reflecting the gear-like shadows of charred trees.
An enormous bat cried out sorrowfully.
I too was gradually becoming sad.
I felt as though I was gradually growing transparent.
I felt as though I was growing transparent, yet both at my feet and before my eyes, everything grew faint and dim with unease.
Truly, I seemed to have become a human who had lost any place to return to.
I crouched down at the edge of a puddle.
Clutching my cheeks in both palms, I eventually bowed my head and sank into quiet weeping alone.

Silently entranced， I wept as if a lifetime’s tears were flooding forth.
When I suddenly noticed—at that puddle over there， at this one here—in every single puddle everywhere， someone was crouching alone.
They were crouching quietly and crying.
So， were those people too humans who had lost any place to return to? Ah， then truly，the Earth had cracked and split apart.
When I suddenly noticed，a staircase had appeared directly beneath my puddle.
I walked unsteadily down a staircase that seemed to lead far below.
In a dim corridor-like space，there suddenly appeared a gap so dizzying it made my eyes swim.
From that gap，a faint breeze carrying a scent like mint brushed against my cheek.
When I looked，there before me were a deep blue sky and a red brick wall.
Oleander flowers were blooming.
Along that wall，I once walked with my lover.
Then，was that school building still standing?
That couldn’t be right—because that area too had been properly burned up back then.
Beside me，a grating scissor-like sound rang out.
Startled by the sound，I walked on unsteadily.
Another gap came into view.
The well in the garden of my birthplace stood surrounded by kerria flowers swaying in bright daylight.
……That couldn’t be right—because that place had been completely burned up.
Again by that jagged scissor-like sound，I was startled.
Another gap came into view.

The dim corridor-like space continued endlessly.
……Then once more I walked, pushed along by the sluggish crowd.
I had wanted to sit down.
I sat down and tried to eat something.
Then suddenly, something inside me slid and fell with a clatter.
I meekly stood up and walked quietly along with the shuffling mass.
If I kept at it, I might somehow have returned to myself.
All humans seemed to crawl forward in one viscous stream.
The footsteps' echo reached my ears without respite.
My ears wandered dazedly through countless intersecting footfalls.
Footsteps, footsteps—why did their rhythm ache so sweetly within me?
The trampling sounds where people swarmed came to feel like my own pulse.
In my eyes, human forms had nearly dissolved.
Only shadow-things quivered now.
Amidst these phantoms, endless footsteps……they alone made my spine tremble.
Footsteps, footsteps—I hungered for them beyond reason.
I walked engulfed in the sluggish procession.
As I persisted, as I endured, selfhood flickered at my edges.
One day I hazily neared reconstitution.
My son showed me a sketch.

It was a sketch of the river's upper reaches drawn by my son.
I suddenly realized I had a son.
I must not have been misled by myself.
I still had a son.
Suddenly I felt strange.
Is my son truly alive?
Was that really not a shadow?
I suddenly wanted to run away.
I walked around barefoot.
Pushed along by the sluggishly moving crowd, swayed by the rustling commotion, I walked unsteadily alone through a space where nothing but shadow-like things moved.
If I kept at it, keeping at it still felt more like myself.
My son grabbed my sleeve.
“Let’s go home, Mom.” …Home?
Was there still a place to return to?
Even so, I became resigned.
I will not be led astray by myself.
I still have a son.
And yet something inside me slides and falls with a clatter.
At that, I immediately want to start walking again.
Footsteps, footsteps…the countless footsteps I heard lured me.

I heard something like a gentle low song amidst them.
I walked through that space.
As I continued, footsteps began walking through my insides.
I would sometimes stop.
I still have a son.
I still have myself.
And then I walked unsteadily again.
I no longer had myself—walking, walking, there were only things that walked.

Okimi's voice snapped off.

I walked unsteadily around.
The crowd passing through my surroundings seemed like my shadow.
Was I searching for myself?
Was I being led astray by myself?
I am not Isaku.
I am not Okimi.
I am not me.
Are Isaku and Okimi also humans who have been torn away?
Isaku’s life had only just begun now.
Okimi still had a son.
And as for me—as for me, did I already have nothing at all?
What was I searching for within myself—what was I trying to lose myself in?

A rift in the Earth, or a tear in the dream—could it be either?
A tear in the dream?…Yes.
I can certainly recall.

That strange rift floating up within me, threatening to tear me apart.
I had seen that dream several times since the catastrophe.
The bottomless visage of the pond filled with blue water remaining in the collapsed garden.
I felt as though it resided within me.
I also felt as though I was inside it.
And then I suddenly jolted.
To a chill that pierced me to the bone…….
Was I a human who had lost all place of return?
……Do not live for yourself; live for the laments of the dead.
Do I live within lament inside myself?

Neighbors, O neighbors, O neighbors who have died. I heard the screams of people being swept away by the high tide back then. I jumped into the water and managed to rescue one person. The girl with bloodless lips trembling in fear faintly thanked me before leaving. The cries of those being carried off still rang in my ears. Yet I could no longer bring myself to leap into those waters again when it mattered most......Neighbors, O neighbors. Yes—you too were my neighbor for those few hours. O man with one hand and leg twisted by the rays, thrashing upon the earth as you lay there. When I pressed that sliver of cucumber to your lips with my fingers—that quiver of yours...could such sorrowful trembling truly exist in this world? ...It does. It does exist......O neighbors, O neighbors swollen black and torn crimson—that trembling of yours. O countless neighbors who writhed through death's agonies. Did your innumerable unknown deaths—your infinite laments—ever reach heaven? I don't know—I still don't truly understand. What I do know is this: even before witnessing your countless deaths before me—one year prior—I had already seen one death clearly.

Did that single death reach up to heaven?
I don't know, I don't know—that too I do not understand.
What is clear to me is that I alone was pierced through by that single lament.
And I survived.
Do you hear my voice?

Let what pierces me pierce me.
Let what pierces me pierce me.
O single lament, pierce through me.
O countless laments, pierce through me.
I am here.
I am on this side.
I am not here.
I am on the opposite side.
I live my lament.
I am a human torn away.
I am walking.
I am a human who has lost my place of return.
The humans walking around me—that is not me.

When I was parted from you by death, I knew my penal servitude had already begun from that moment.
I shut up the house.
I returned to Hiroshima.
That horror came.
Famine persisted.
I came to Tokyo.
Famine persisted again.
Survival kept being denied.
The penal servitude did not end.
For what purpose—for whose sake—this penal servitude?
I don't know—I don't know—I just don't understand.
But within me, a single voice cries out like this.

Endure—endure only enduring—endure.
Endure all that rends me apart, endure what makes my hair stand on end, endure death's scream.
Then endure still more—to dizzying sickness, to hunger's groans, to devilish creeping fog, to every tender premonition coaxing tears, to all phantoms never returning……
Endure—endure only enduring—endure.
Endure through the end—to madness tearing body from self, to solitude stabbing through flesh and bone, to annihilation like death itself…… Then endure still more—to eternal images flashing through an instant's span, to beautiful laments past the clouds…….

Your death shocked me to the core.
The affliction shook the house's ridge at that time.
The magnitude of what you had endured crushed my chest.

Your deaths sent shudders through me.
The death-frenzied voices upon voices echoed through my hometown's night riverbed.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT NO

RIVERBED NO MIZU GA

STAINED WITH BLOOD NO MICHIAFURE

KOE NO KAGIRI WO

CHIKARA NO ARITSU TAKE WO

O Mother O Mother

DEATH THROES NO GNASHING VOICES

That voice

Climbing this embankment—
Fleeing to the opposite shore—

Where could those voices have fled to?
Has the utmost suffering you all were burdened with vanished into nothingness?
I wander unsteadily.
The countless crowds walking around me... are not me.
They are not me.
They are not me.
Those voices that were not me—have they truly vanished away completely?
Those voices come back.
They come back to me.
The grandeur of what those voices had carried crushes my chest.
They come back, come back—all sorts of voices return to my ears.

Ahh, O Mother, O Father, won't morning come soon?

The prayer of the schoolgirl who writhed in death throes in the hollow came back to me.

Soldier! Soldier! Help me!

The crimson crying voice of the burned girl twisting beneath the torii came back to me.

Ahh! Someone please help me! Nurse! Doctor!

The voice of a young man with a pitch-black gaping mouth, pleading in fragmented feeble entreaties, came back to me—came back, came back—emerging from among myriad lamenting voices,

Ahh, it hurts—it hurts

And then your final voice echoed within me.
Yes, I was finally beginning to understand.
When had I first lost the ability to sleep? How many years had I gone without sleep?...... Ever since that time, even in the most ordinary timbres of human voices, I would suddenly hear the timbre of death throes.
Beneath voices of people laughing as if amused, something deep and chest-crushing began reverberating.
Even within ordinary faces showing nothing amiss, death's convulsions and life's fissures began emerging.
Everywhere, in every moment, they existed.
They were branded into each human core.
From every person, countless soul-crises seemed poised to erupt.
They existed.
They existed.
They existed.
They existed.
They relentlessly confronted me.
I stood on the verge of being crushed by them.
I asked myself:
"Is there no salvation? Is there no salvation?"
But I did not understand.
I wanted to wrench out my eyes.
I wanted to sever my ears.

But they existed, they existed—was I going mad? The people swarming around me... that was not me.
They were not me.
But it existed.
They existed.
The crowd walking around inside my head... that was not me.
They were not me.
But they existed.
They existed.

They existed.
They existed.
And then, suddenly within me, your voice came echoing.
From long, long ago, they had existed, and...
Yes, I had come to remember more and more clearly.
Had you been staring at them within me?
Had I not also been seeing them within you?
"Is there no salvation? Is there no salvation?" Had we been crying out like this since time immemorial?
Was that alone not the memory we had lived?
But salvation—
I still did not understand.
Had you been saved?

I do not understand.
All I comprehend is that we dwelled within lamentations seeking salvation.
And I exist, still exist now, surviving impaled through by that lament.
And you exist, still exist now, likely beyond that lament...

"There is no salvation—no salvation," a voice suddenly speaks within me.
I startle.
Is that your voice?
Friend—friend—distant friend—is that voice yours?
Instantly before my eyes revives your youthful image.
Symphonies—symphonies!—friend who dreamed of humanity's grand symphony.
Friend who envisioned days when human would clasp human, soul embrace soul, cheers kindle answering cheers.
That image of swelling waves from mankind's great theater...
But "No salvation—no salvation," my friend keeps calling to me.
(Sinking down—sinking down—all sinks beneath earth.
Even we numbed ones find no salvation now.
To redeem one soul would demand ruining an entire lifetime—even this lies beyond us now.
Abyss—abyss—now all becomes abyss.
Now I only whet my eyes to witness this chasm's depths.) Friend—friend—distant friend—sorrowing friend—mysterious friend.
Endure—endure—enduring through—O friend.
Is there no salvation? No salvation?
...I stagger through my circling walk.
Still wandering?
The crowd circling around me.
The crowd inside my head.

Am I still wandering unsteadily through the bustle?
From within the bustle, another voice reaches me.
A gentle, gentle voice speaks to me.

〈A gentle, gentle voice〉

...At that moment, I felt myself being abruptly torn away.
Afterward I went outside, but where it had been ripped away rustled restlessly.
From sundry parts came spewing fire and blood and human corpses, startling me, yet from other torn sections I sensed something refreshing—new buds about to sprout.
I felt as if being healed.
I believed I could keep living through what had opened within me.
And so I left that place for distant foreign lands.
Yet those foreigners' eyes saw only a survivor in me.
Was I truly some escapee from hell?
People discerned only death-screaming figures within me.
“Survivor, survivor,” they cursed me.
With eyes reserved for plague-bearers.
As if I existed solely as their morbid fascination’s object.
Then my destitution bottomed out.
Foreign laws proved too cruel.
Are refreshing premonitions forbidden to wretched souls……?
But what became of that refreshing premonition within me?

I am inexplicably bothered by that.
Every single day presses heavily upon me, and my surroundings merely drag on and on.
I feel something refreshing suddenly about to leap out from within myself.
But the days drag on and on…….
The refreshing thing within me…… but the days drag on and on.
Within me—but, dragging on—my back is gradually bent by what I carry.

〈Another gentle voice〉

……I had likened that to a nightmare, but as time passed, the dreams I actually dreamed had somehow become something terribly drained of vitality. In dreams, the roofs of that town would tilt and crumble away at a slow, languid speed. Pale blue hazy rays filled the sky. In this eerie dreamscape—rather than anything resembling fear—it seemed as if a far more unmanageable nostalgia had taken root. Then too, those horrific rows of severely injured naked figures that had lined the riverbank that day would appear in my dreams as strange yet delicate clay figurines packed tightly within some small cave. The uncanny clay figurines even bore colors like waxen dolls. And at times they squirmed listlessly. That no longer felt like a threat or anything of the sort. It resembled a melancholy creeping quietly toward me from an unmanageably infinite distance. And even in dreams of that house reduced to ashes, the places where I had sat on tatami or leaned by the window never once appeared. Instead—a single rain-soaked garden stone, a pillar at the veranda’s bend rotting away—nothing but these unmanageably desolate things would drift in softly, like earth spirits. What on earth had made the thing connecting me, my dreams, and that tragedy grow so hazy and drained of spirit?

〈Another gentle voice—〉

……I alone survived and reached the African coast.
When I wondered if I alone was humanity’s last survivor, my body trembled violently, and I realized each breath I exhaled seemed to bid me farewell.
Whenever I thought each moment I witnessed might be the end of everything, I began losing consciousness.
When I thought that everything ended with me now, that nothing would ever begin from me again, all lamentations swarmed within me.
The blue, blue waves I gazed upon… even those intensely blue waves—ah, long ago, long ago… humans must have felt something, thought something, depicted something when they saw them… yet now these blue, blue waves were nothing but my… nothing but a lament from before my time.
Death·love·loneliness·dreams……what could such abstract concepts mean to me now.
In each breath I exhaled, all memory spilled and fell away; symbols lost their place for storage.
Ah, life... life... Was this the final struggle of living things?
Ah, life, life... When I thought that humanity’s last person drawing their final breath had come so quickly, so quickly, all my regrets surged up within me.
Why must humans... why must humans... why must humans... Ah, but... everything had become beyond retrieval now.
Alone, I could no longer manage anything.
Alone, I could no longer do anything.
Was I carving myself clearly into each breath I exhaled, verifying that I still lived?
Was I being drawn into each breath I exhaled, resigning myself to my own disappearance?
Ah, but either way, it already felt like the same thing.

〈Yet another voice〉

……I had nearly been killed then, yet was miraculously saved, and suddenly felt I’d discovered a rhythm. As the rhythm welled up from within me, everything outside transformed into rhythm—I became a mechanism that raged with fervor each second only to cool the next. Picking up a violin fallen to the ground, I tried walking while playing it, but my inspiration would tense and slow, convulse and flow, becoming untethered from direction or purpose. I tried contemplating poetry too. For me poetry was—trembling fingers tangling, tangling; slender characters’ heartbeats—but also poetry was—not collapsing into emotion but a will clawing up harsh ridges—and so I wandered endlessly through human tides. Had what I thought I discovered been mere impulse? Were convulsions driving my wandering? Still I wandered lost amidst countless traces of the primordial age.

〈Yet another voice〉

……I had died at that time, yet by some chance now seemed to have been called back to earth. When I thought how long, long years might have passed since then—a blue-blue coat of wind, white-white shoes of rain… Hat? That hat had never suited me.

The surviving humans were once again trudging along in lines.
I thought long, long years had passed—and yet.

The town's plane trees shone summer-like, and people's attire had taken on an endearing air.
One day, suddenly, at the street corner where I walked, sound and light exploded with a crack.
It was thunder.
In an instant, rain and wind rushed across asphalt with a roaring sweep.
I found myself captivated by the beauty of wildly rushing white fierce rain.
As I gazed, something so intense welled up it made me want to cry.
In there—in there—I wanted to leap into that very midst.
But seeking shelter from rain, I entered a clock shop.
A strange clock sat inside a glass cylinder.
A small bird toy fixed atop kept shifting direction every second.
Blankly watching this bird, I suddenly recalled a young man whose hopes lay shattered.
A youth broken by worldly aspirations... gazing vacantly alone at this spinning bird toy...
But why was I thinking such things?
I too must be one whose hopes lie ruined.
I have no son. No wife.

I am a white-haired old teacher—but if I had a son, it would likely be a lone lizard surviving in the desert. I wanted to buy that clock for that son. I wanted to see that son slam it down on the ground with a smack.

…………………

Voices speak to me one after another.
From the bustle, from the crowd, from inside my head, from inside me.
Every voice circles around me.
Every voice keeps repeating: Is there no salvation? Is there no salvation?
The voices press low and sluggish against me like a throng of blind figures.
They press.
They press.
Yes—how many years have I been pressed through?
I want to clearly confirm that I grasp myself.
But I should have confirmed myself time and again by now.
What exists within me at this very instant?
Salvation?
Is there no salvation? Is there no salvation? Am I spinning within myself?
Spinning while being pressed?
Is that my salvation?
Wrong.
Absolutely wrong.
I now declare to myself with finality.
I leap at myself and declare.

……There is no salvation.

I am a human cast adrift.
I am a human who has lost where to return.
There is no salvation for humans cast adrift.
There is no salvation for humans who have lost where to return.

So, am I done for now?
Is there nothing left inside me anymore?
Must I not spin?
Must I not exist?
Wrong.
That too is wrong.
I lunge at myself and declare.

……I have.

I have.
I have.
I still have a lament.
I have.
I have.
I have one lament.
I have.
I have.
I have countless laments.

One lament intertwined with countless laments.
Countless laments resonated with a single lament.
I resonated within myself.
Resonated.
Resonated.
The lament intertwined with me.
I intertwined.
I intertwined with the countless.
They resounded.
Countless laments resounded.
Resonated.
One lament resounded.
Resonated.
One lament became as countless.
Intertwined—one lament as if countless.
As one, as countless.
Resonated.
Intertwined.
Lament resonated with lament.
Beyond lament, beyond lament, beyond lament—resonating, intertwining, as one, as countless……

O single lament pierce through me.
O countless laments pierce through me.
What pierces me pierce me through.
What pierces me pierce me through.
Laments laments pierce through me……Returned returned—my song-voice had come back to me again.
Could this be my madness?
Could this be my infinite rotation?
Yet it seemed to return seemed to come back.
Something seemed to return now with relentless urgency.
Within me all of me…….
I seemed gradually to regain human composure with strange freshness.
The space where I lived seemed at last to become clear.
I did not seem only to wander through crowds.
Nor did I seem only to wander within my head.
It seemed I had not merely dwelled in this unsteady universe stumbled into long ago.
For ages now since what already felt like ages past I seemed to have been trying to write a Requiem.
Requiem requiem—the requiem returning within me…….

I bought cigarettes at the street-corner tobacco shop.
I am a human cast adrift.
But I bought cigarettes here almost every morning.
I put the cigarettes in my pocket and crossed the rotary.
I walked along the pavement.
The morning’s requiem overflowing on the pavement…….
In front of the diner I always went to, there was, as usual, a shoeshiner.
In the narrow vacant lot along the pavement was a box containing chickens; inside the box, the chickens stirred.
Everything existed as usual.
Trains, automobiles, various sounds, swallows crossing over roofs, pedestrians, shops—all existed as usual.
I am a human who has lost a place to return.
But my lament has turned transparent.
Everything exists.
The existence of that which is not me appears transparently within me.
It pierced through me and spilled over to the other side.
To the other side, to the other side, toward infinite distance……, it flows away.
Everything flows away.
Innocently and quietly, unaware of its own flowing, everything flows on and on.
The countless noises around me, countless objects, things swirling dizzyingly, dizzyingly—they are quiet, they are innocent, resonating and intertwining in infinite distance, unaware of their flowing away, always and always flowing away.
New books in the bookstore’s display window, a man carrying a bag, a potted ground cherry plant placed at the shopfront—……all things resonate and intertwine in infinite distance, quietly, quietly, like the most beautiful, most tender whisper.

I entered the coffee shop I always went to and sat down in a chair.
The ever-present girl brought coffee as usual, even when I remained silent.
I am a human of a stripped-away world.
But I slowly smoked a cigarette and drank coffee.
The white lilies were arranged in the vase on my table.
The world around me had not been stripped away.
The voices of strangers at tables around me, the sound of a record from the shop’s corner, the noise of passersby moving through the door just behind the chair I sat on.
The sound of a bicycle bell.
The beloved world that had not been stripped away brimmed with sound and form.
They flowed toward me.
They pierced through me and passed to the other side.
With transparent infinite speed—to the other side, to the other side, to the other side—toward infinite distance.
The world that had not been stripped away brimmed with the will to live.
Human endeavors, daily endeavors, the existence of endeavors……they were reduced to sound and form and always transparently crossed through me.
They flowed away at infinite speed, quietly and innocently, in infinite distance, resonating, intertwining—like longing, like the most intense longing; like prayer, like the most fervent prayer.

And then, the evening’s requiem overflowed at the intersection…….
I strolled along the moat-side as usual, dreaming a quiet, sorrowful story.
The quiet, sorrowful story walked me along like the sound of footsteps.
And then, as usual, I found myself at the bustling intersection.
As usual, countless humans were restlessly moving about.
As usual, there overflowed a crowd waiting for the train.
They were returning home.
They all seemed to be returning to their respective homes.
Each carrying a story.
Each carrying something nostalgic.
I was a human who had lost a place to return, a human of a stripped-away world.
But I could even pray for them.
I prayed.
(That their death be growth.
That their love be endurance.
That they not be alone.
That lust be not bewilderment, and madness not too violent.
That they be blessed with balance and dreams.
That they not be abandoned by God.
That their officials be gentle.

That they might weep at flowers.
That they might know days brimming with shared laughter.
(That war be eradicated.) They all passed before my eyes.
They all passed through me.
The torn paper of a standing signboard at the intersection whirled round and round in the wind.
That too crossed through.
Through me.
Through transparent space.
At infinite speed—like longing, like prayer—quietly, innocently, in infinite distance, to resonate and overflow, to intertwine...

And then night.
The night's song resounding within me.

Into the depths of life…… I, bearing death’s weight, into the depths of life…….
O dead, O dead, what submerges and guides me into these depths of life is your lament.
Days piled upon days, time distanced from time, and that which was distant now made no sound—ah, from these depths of life, gazing up at space’s solemn grandeur.
Phantoms dwelled.
The phantoms, the phantoms had become the visages that once most vividly captivated me, residing within my prayers.
Father, you were there, on the engawa’s easy chair.
Mother, you were there, by the pomegranate tree in the garden.
Sister, you were there, beneath the dripping morning dew under the grape trellis.
As if regaining their former appearance in that brief moment when they had been so beautiful—everyone was fresh and innocent.

Friend, friend, you are there—beaming with new books in your arms, dangling from train straps in the cool wind—so joyously, in such vital form.

Neighbors, O neighbors, you are there—in those immovable forms that briefly moved me in passing—so sorrowfully.

And then, O wife, you are there—throughout nearly all I survey, to what lies closest and most distant—like the most fervent prayer.

O dead, O dead, what submerges me into the depths of life…… Ah, the stillness of you I gaze up at from these depths of life.

I must endure; endure the stillness.
Endure the phantoms.
Endure life's depths.
Endure enduring, endure enduring, endure the enduring onward.
Endure one lament.
Endure countless laments.
Laments, laments—pierce through me.
Pierce me who has lost any place of return.
Pierce me within this world thrust apart.

Tomorrow, the sun would rise again and flowers would bloom profusely upon the earth; tomorrow, birds would sing brightly.
Earth, O Earth, ever remain beautiful and brimming with emotion.
Tomorrow, I would pass through there filled with emotion.