Pathway to Japanese Literature

I took my wife to visit my deceased mother's grave for the first time that day. The neighborhood of Ukejimachi where Enzūji Temple stood wasn't particularly far from our home in Mukōjima. Those outlying districts around there had been familiar to me since childhood, so thinking I should show my wife such places at least once, I decided we would walk along Hikifune Street all the way to the temple. Leaving our house and walking along the Genmori River for a while, we soon reached Hikifune Street. Then following that canal northward, wooden bridges with nostalgic names kept appearing before our eyes—Kōshinzuka Bridge, Kōme Bridge, Shichihonmatsu Bridge—only to vanish again. This area too had changed completely after the earthquake disaster, yet somehow reverted to its former state—large factories lining the right bank, low shabby houses packed tightly along the left bank, facing each other across the canal. The stench and murky color of the water remained just as they had been in former days.

We crossed an old wooden bridge called Jizō Bridge and entered a narrow side street on the other side. There already, on the left side, stood an ancient ginkgo tree belonging to Tobigi Inari—withered and leafless—soaring into the sky. Enzuji Temple was situated at the back, with only the cemetery lying on the right side of the road, separated from that ancient ginkgo tree. Through gaps in the black tin fence, gravestones of various sizes were left exposed to the eyes of passersby. …

A little further on lay the Ukoji railway crossing, but here lingered an especially cluttered, dirty, run-down scene befitting the outskirts. At a florist's in name only—sandwiched between a dried goods store and an oil shop—we bought a few flowers. Then, after stopping by the temple to call out to the caretaker, we proceeded ahead to the cemetery on our own. The cemetery, being lower than the road, was eerily clammy with dampness, and here and there you could even see puddles forming around old graves that appeared abandoned.

“Were you surprised by how filthy the temple is?” I turned toward my wife and said. “It says ‘the eighth year of Genroku’...” My wife didn’t immediately respond. Instead, she stopped walking and gazed at one of the old graves beside her. Then she murmured almost to herself: “It’s quite an ancient temple.” My mother’s grave stands facing east in the northeastern corner of the cemetery spanning about two hundred tsubo. I stood before that grave with my wife for the first time. Within its fence grew boxwoods and Japanese box trees, both bearing flowers. Yet though called my mother’s grave, it shelters not her alone. This is the ancestral burial ground of my paternal Joujou family. There my mother—who perished in the earthquake disaster at fifty-one—lies interred among my grandfather said to have been a temple samurai in Ueno, my grandmother who served at court in her youth, my uncle who built his household as an Edo-style metal engraver during Meiji times, and others I never knew.

My wife and I stood before the grave, blankly waiting for the caretaker to arrive for some time. “Whose is that small grave over there?” “Well, I’m not sure who...” When she said that, I turned my gaze to the tiny gravestone standing pertly under a boxwood tree beside my mother’s grave. Even the existence of such a gravestone had almost entirely escaped my notice until now. Though I might have noticed it before, I had always dismissed it without a second thought.

“It does look like a child’s grave, but I’ve never heard of it.”

My wife didn’t particularly try to learn anything more about it, and I merely felt a slight suspicion at the time. While the temple caretaker brought a ritual water bucket and incense sticks and swept the moss from the graves, we stepped back several paces from the tomb and surveyed the entire cemetery anew. The surroundings were enclosed only by a rusted tin fence, with not a single thriving tree to be seen—everything lay starkly exposed beneath countless gravestones that crowded together there, each bearing half-rotted wooden stupas. —And above that uneven cluster of gravestones of varying heights spread a late April sky nearing noon, while sounds from a nearby factory ebbed and flowed intermittently.

I found myself fondly remembering my mother—lying in this shabby cemetery on the outskirts—as if she were distinctly herself, while simultaneously feeling that my wife standing beside me, her voice and face brightening as she prepared to face this mother for the first time, seemed slightly out of place against such gloomy surroundings—and I thought that was just as well. In that moment, I found myself—almost inadvertently—discerning within my mind, as if in a half-dreaming state, the subtle interplay between shadows cascading from the past and faint light filtering in from what lay ahead, their mingled balance within that singular psyche.

After the temple caretaker swept away the moss and offered incense and flowers, I noticed again as he proceeded to sweep the neighboring small grave's moss too. I nearly began to ask whose grave it was, but reconsidered there was no need to inquire now. Silently signaling my wife with my eyes, we both approached my mother's grave and offered incense together. "This will do..." I found myself thinking such things without clear reason.

II

The place where we first settled was deep in the mountains of Shinshū.

There, about ten days passed without anything particular happening. Everything was still ahead—he felt a clear, unburdened sensation.

Then one dawn while we still slept, we received a telegram. It had come to inform us of Father’s critical condition. With no prior warning whatsoever, we hurriedly prepared ourselves, locked up the mountain house just as it was, and departed for Tokyo.

When we arrived at our home in Mukōjima near noon, Father—who had collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage that morning and remained in a coma ever since—was unaware even of our return. Such a comatose state persisted for another two or three days. During that time, we received visits from various people. Relatives from my father’s side in Yotsugi and Tateshi came. Those who had been apprentices at our house since my childhood, along with subcontractors, came in a steady stream. Then my maternal relatives from Tabata—the aunts—came. Cousins came. Then even the Aunt from Azabu—the sole remaining relative of the Hori family I had succeeded as head—came to visit.

I had not yet informed any of those people that I had gotten married. So at first, I had been introducing my wife to each visitor who came, but "Right, Father might die," I thought, and I felt I should stay by his side as much as possible.

From then on, I entrusted matters concerning my wife to the Aunt from Tabata and made sure to stay by Father’s bedside as much as possible. In other words, Father remained completely unaware of me doing such things—and that very fact allowed me to do them without feeling the slightest shame. I occasionally found myself wondering what my wife was doing in the other room. Then, an image of my wife—flusteredly serving tea among all those strangers—appeared vividly before my eyes, and I found something rather endearing in that unfamiliar sight. My suffocating state of mind would occasionally be unexpectedly and slightly alleviated by that.

Father finally began to regain consciousness around the fourth day. However, by then he could no longer speak, and the right half of his body had become almost completely paralyzed. He had become utterly unrecognizable. However, in his own way, Father’s condition improved day by day. “If things keep going like this, we can rest easy.” Everyone began to say so.

It was about half a month later that we finally returned to our mountain house in Shinshū. Just as Father had managed to settle down in that way, this time I fell ill. So, since Father could now be entrusted to the devoted people caring for him, we resolved to return to our mountain house. Furthermore, I had to start working as soon as possible. Not only for our own livelihood but now also having to send some amount to the patient, I was at such a loss about what to do that I couldn't find my bearings for some time.

Just then, a certain senior arranged a magazine serialization, and there I found myself writing my first serial novel. At that time, I turned to my childhood for material that seemed most suited to capture my present state of mind. I had long contemplated writing about my early experiences, and having recently read Hans Carossa's Childhood—which deeply resonated with me through its creative motive of seeking life's essential truths rather than mere nostalgic recollections—I resolved that while I held little hope for this particular endeavor, I would nonetheless attempt everything possible as one such exploration in that vein.

So it was that he began writing Childhood. Summer passed and autumn came, yet we were still living in the mountains.

As winter approached, we hurriedly left the mountains and settled temporarily in a small villa belonging to a certain friend in Zushi. From one temporary dwelling to another, I always carried Childhood with me along with my other work. As for Father, when autumn came and he began to improve, he recovered rapidly. On days of Indian summer, news came that he had walked as far as Azumabashi Bridge with a nurse supporting his arm. It was mid-December when Father, who had been starting to improve so much, suffered a second attack. When we saw the telegram and rushed from Zushi, it was already midnight. Father remained deeply comatose; though he still drew breath, this time we too had to resign ourselves.…

III

After Father's death, I was told for the first time that my biological father existed elsewhere and had died when I was still small. The person who told me this was the Aunt from Tabata—that is, one of my mother's younger sisters, an aunt who had lived right next to our house until before the earthquake disaster.— In truth, after Father's hundredth-day memorial had passed, I had been told by that aunt at the temple: "There's something I want to tell only you, so come by alone sometime."

At the time, I was still in seclusion in Zushi, and what with being prone to illness besides, I often found myself preoccupied with what my aunt had told me—yet I simply couldn’t bring myself to go up to Tokyo alone. But then, from somewhere I heard a rumor that my uncle—who had been suffering from eye problems since around last year’s end—was now on the verge of losing his sight. Thinking I must go see him soon, one day I accompanied my wife to Tokyo as she had business at her family home. I alone brought gifts and made my way to the small house at the foot of the slope in Tabata where my uncle and aunt had been living in quiet solitude ever since the earthquake disaster.

It was already June.

At my uncle’s house, all the shoji screens had been thrown open wide, and in the small three-tsubo garden where fatsia plants had been planted almost as an afterthought, saxifraga spread out from the edge of the veranda in full bloom, their blossoms truly magnificent.

“The saxifraga are blooming beautifully, aren’t they? It’s rare to see something like this.…”

I sat near the edge of the veranda and casually remarked this when I involuntarily startled myself. The Uncle afflicted with eye trouble seemed unable to see even those clearly anymore. However, Uncle, remaining seated before the Flower-Viewing Table, answered with unexpected cheerfulness. “Yeah, saxifraga must look beautiful when they bloom like that.” “...” I remained silent, shifting my gaze from Uncle’s face back to the saxifraga.

At that moment, Aunt brought over some brewed tea. Then she began offering fresh apologies for her prolonged silence and expressing gratitude for the gifts I’d brought. The taciturn uncle suddenly straightened his posture. So I too found myself asking—for the first time—about Uncle’s recent condition, directing my inquiry more toward Aunt instead. The time I spent hearing every meticulous detail of my origins lasted until evening fell, throughout which the saxifraga blossoms kept fluttering at the edge of my vision. Aunt had been doing nearly all the talking, though the reticent uncle occasionally interjected brief remarks into her account……

Until then, I had never been clearly told this by anyone, but at some point I had arbitrarily come to think that the reason why, despite being Joujou's only son, I had succeeded to the Hori lineage from childhood must have been due to some circumstance surrounding my birth. By the time I was seventeen or eighteen, I had gradually come to think—inferring from various things that had naturally reached my ears up to that point—that around the time of my birth, there must have been some minor drama where Father had temporarily separated from Mother and lived in Yokohama or somewhere with another woman, and that the elderly couple next door, who had no heir of their own, took great pity on Mother and made me their successor immediately after I was born—that such a small drama must have unfolded there. After such events had occurred, Father must have returned to Tokyo again and welcomed Mother and young me into the house with a fig tree on the outskirts of Mukojima. In any case, that person who was Koume's father was not someone who had been there before young me from the very beginning; rather, I felt he had suddenly appeared before me at some point along the way.

However, that Koume’s father—who had suddenly appeared before me—might not be my real father was something I never once doubted, even when I had grown much older and reached an age where I might have noticed there was likely some secret hidden in my origins. And even after my mother died and I had to live alone with my father, I never doubted it in the slightest.

After I married last year and departed for Shinshū, Aunt one day visited the house in Mukojima where Father was in remarkably high spirits. Though they exchanged many stories about me from childhood during that visit, even then—speaking of me who had reached this age still unaware my true father lay elsewhere—he reportedly said, “That boy’s pitiful if you think about it, but well, nothing could make me happier…” before begging Aunt repeatedly: “Please don’t let him know anything until I die.” It was within days of that when Father’s illness finally claimed him.……

The man I had until then believed to be merely my nominal father—Hori Hamanosuke—was in fact my biological parent. He was a samurai of the Hiroshima Domain who had reportedly served as a page attending his feudal lord during childhood. After the Meiji Restoration, he moved to Tokyo and worked at a court. He appears to have served as something like a supervisor of clerks. Hamanosuke had brought a wife from his home province. However, this wife was sickly, they had no children together, and theirs was a lonely marital relationship.

How my mother—a daughter of an impoverished Edo merchant family—came to know this Hamanosuke, a man of different age and social standing, and what circumstances led to my birth—these points I still know nothing about. In any case, I was made successor to the Hori lineage immediately after being born. At that time, the Hori residence stood in Koji-cho Hirakawa-cho. There I came to be raised by the Hori couple, and until I could leave my mother's embrace, she too lived with us in that house. Yet even as I gradually grew able to leave her arms, Mother found herself unable to relinquish me. That said, remaining together as mother and child in that house grew all the more untenable.

Finally, Mother made up her mind alone and, without informing anyone, took me and ran away from that house. This happened when I was three years old. Around that same time, a relative’s daughter named Ms. Kaoru was being looked after at the Hori household. Ms. Kaoru favored my mother, knew all the circumstances, and even then came along carrying Mother’s luggage. Leaving the house in Koji-cho, Mother holding young me went first to rely on her younger sister and brother-in-law—who owned a home near Koume's nunnery in Mukojima, and who are now the Uncle and Aunt from Tabata—at their residence. Just as we had finally settled into that house and Mother was thinking this might work out, Ms. Kaoru suddenly suffered a violent spasm and began writhing in pain. Since her condition showed no signs of improving and there was no telling when she could return alone, Mother finally called the office and told Hamanosuke everything. Hamanosuke immediately rushed over from the office. That was both the first and last time Hamanosuke came to Koume’s aunt’s house. In the evening, when Ms. Kaoru’s spasms had finally subsided and Hamanosuke was to take her back, everyone went to see them off as far as Lord Mito’s statue. And on the embankment, Mother and I parted with Father, who was accompanied by Ms. Kaoru.

By all accounts, I had been terribly slow in developing speech—even at around three years old, I could only manage utterances like “yum-yum…”—but that evening when I met my father at Aunt’s house, I became so overjoyed that for the first time in my life I was able to say “Daddy… Daddy…” It appears I had been extraordinarily happy at unexpectedly encountering my father there. However, I was told this became the last time I could meet that father of mine.

Not long after that, his father Hamanosuke suffered a brain ailment and thus became someone who could no longer function in society. My mother had the grandmother who had been staying with her younger brothers come over, and opened a small tobacco shop beneath the embankment behind Lord Mito’s statue.

The Hori residence in Koji-cho where we had been living until then was an estate with an imposing gate structure, its entranceway laid with stepping stones and such. Given this background, even after we came to live in a small rented house beneath the embankment, when I was three or four years old—still toddling unsteadily while being led by Mother and Grandmother—I would suddenly cry out “My house… my house…” upon spotting any residence in the area with stepping stones or a gate structure and go scampering inside, often causing everyone considerable trouble, I’m told.

And there was one more thing. ―Back then, large Jintan billboards often stood at street corners, each depicting a bust of a man wearing a top hat adorned with fluffy white plumes and sporting a splendid beard―whenever I spotted one, I would invariably point at it and insist "Daddy…", this being the newly learned word for me, a toddler who had just begun to say "Daddy". ……That was likely because I clearly remembered my father as a man who had sported such a splendid beard. Moreover, perhaps I had also seen my father dressed in such formal civil servant attire on some occasion and still retained some memory of it somewhere……

When Father Hamanosuke, who had long been suffering from a brain ailment, finally passed away, I must have been around seven or eight. From the time I was three years old—when I parted with my father on that embankment while still holding my mother’s hand—it seems I never saw that father again. By the time that father died, I already had a new father—which must have been why—so I wasn’t told anything. As for my stepmother, she seems to have remained alive until I was twelve or thirteen, but I lived unaware of her death as well.

As for that stepmother, I have no memory of her whatsoever, but she seems to have been a sickly woman with a perpetually pale face and gloomy disposition. However, she was unfortunate if ever there was one. In her later years, she had brought close a blood nephew of hers named Fujimori or some such, but that nephew apparently dabbled in mines or something similar, failed, and disappeared without a trace.

IV

I remember a certain photograph of my mother from her youth. That too had been burned in the earthquake disaster, but whenever I thought about my deceased mother, I sometimes found myself recalling that photograph of her from her very youth. She still retained a girlish quality about her and didn’t resemble my mother in the slightest, yet that very fact seemed to make her all the more alluring to me.

Several years ago, upon being asked by a certain magazine to write something under the title "The Woman I Found Most Beautiful," I suddenly recalled that old photograph and wrote a short essay. It is but a mere sketch, but as I believe it captures well my feelings toward my mother from that time, I wish to include it here.

⁂

The Woman Holding Flowers

It was when I was still a child. I would often take out photographs of my family from the writing box and proudly explain each one in front of everyone: "This is Father’s," "This is Mother’s," "This is Uncle from Oshiage’s," and so on. Before long, I would always end up holding a photograph of an unfamiliar young woman and become utterly perplexed.

No matter how many times they told me that was a photograph of your mother from her youth, I simply couldn't bring myself to believe it. "But my mother is so plump while this person in the photograph is so slender—and far more beautiful than Mother too..." I thought suspiciously, comparing the photograph with my actual mother. There, that unfamiliar woman was captured arranging flowers. She had placed a vase near her knees and held what looked like plum blossoms in her hands. I liked that woman very much. Even more than my own mother.

――

Several years passed. I too gradually came to understand things. My mother had grown even plumper than before. This was partly because she had made a vow at Asakusa Kannon to get me through middle school entrance exams, which required her to give up her usual indulgences in alcohol and tobacco. And my mother, as substitute for those habits, suddenly took up learning flower arrangement. I began occasionally catching glimpses of my mother engaged in these flower arrangement lessons. Through such moments, I abruptly recalled that photograph of the flower-holding woman—the one I had unwittingly let slip from memory over time. The photograph remained preserved in my heart with its original vivid beauty. Though I could rationally accept this as my mother's youthful portrait, some part of me still resisted conflating that image with my actual mother.

Several more years passed. My mother died in the earthquake.

That photograph too was lost along with her.—Now, strangely enough, those two things have finally begun to blend into one within my mind. And somehow, the unfamiliar youthful image of my mother in that photograph feels far dearer to me than the familiar figure from her later years. I’ve come to realize that my childhood inability to accept the photographed woman as my mother stemmed perhaps from her being too beautiful to believe she was my own. It wasn’t just her beauty—there was a strangely sensual allure in her appearance that even my childish self must have sensed, making me somehow ashamed to think of her as my mother. Now that I mention it, the clothes she wore in that photograph seemed neither like a married woman’s nor an amateur girl’s. To my present eyes, they appear rather like the attire of geishas from that era. Such observations have led me lately to privately imagine that my mother might have been a geisha before marrying into my father’s household.—Considering how impoverished her family apparently was, how most of her so-called sisters and brothers worked as music hall entertainers or teahouse servants, and how my father seems to have been quite the playboy in his youth—given all this, I can’t definitively claim these fantasies of mine are entirely baseless.

I can say that even now I hardly know what geishas are. Ever since my boyhood, I have loved reading novels by Kyōka and others, and from feeling even a faint attachment to the heroines in such stories, perhaps such things are what make me project these dreams onto my deceased mother.

⁂

From a single photograph of my mother in her youth, I indulged in such novelistic fantasies, yet refrained from probing further—about her younger days or my own origins—not even attempting to force such knowledge by questioning others. By nature since childhood, I found complete satisfaction in what had naturally become clear to me alone—within the scope of my own understanding, I could freely shape my early years and find pleasure in that construction.

V

My aunt also told me in detail about my mother's family home. However, even then betraying my expectations, I could hardly get her to tell me anything about my mother's youth. For now, I decided not to press the matter—perhaps I might naturally find an opportunity to ask about it someday…

My mother’s family home was the Nishimura family. Her father was a man named Yonejirō who had maintained a shop in Reiganjima until before the Restoration and served as financial agent to various feudal lords. Even as townspeople, theirs was a family of such standing that they had been permitted surname and sword-bearing rights. My mother was of the Chino family; her name was Tama, and she too had been the daughter of an old chest shop in Kanda. Tama had served in the inner quarters of the Kaga household in Hongō since she was sixteen. And then at nineteen she married Yonejirō—their wedding procession still apparently quite lavish. As they paraded from Kanda toward Reiganjima with tall paper lanterns held aloft, they encountered a me-gumi brawl along the way. When the procession hesitated about detouring, the carpenters engaged in fighting—mistaking them for some daimyo’s retinue—abruptly cleared a path so they might pass straight through. ――Everyone again rejoiced at this incident, declaring it most auspicious.

But the newlyweds' fate was not so fortunate. Before long, their household collapsed. This sudden collapse dealt a decisive blow to the young couple. With no immediate prospect of collecting the gold they had lent to feudal lords, Yonejirō consequently resorted to a desperate measure—relocating his residence to Iikura Katamachi in Azabu and opening a sword shop called Daikokuya. This venture proved successful, and for a time the shop flourished. It was in that Iikura that my mother Shige was born as the eldest daughter.

However, Meiji 6, the year my mother was born, was also the year the Sword Abolishment Edict was issued. Yonejirō found himself in a predicament once more. Just then, someone was trying to sell pawnshop shares, and Yonejirō’s heart was strongly inclined in that direction, but Tama opposed it to the end. She detested the pawnshop business. Thus Yonejirō too had no choice but to move to Shiba no Karasumori and open a small antique shop. However, this too became increasingly unfavorable year by year, leaving Yonejirō with no means to recover his fortunes. He ultimately retreated to a back-alley shop below Atagoyama, becoming a man who spent his remaining years in lonely seclusion.

Yonejirō passed away from a stroke in that modest dwelling below Atagoyama around Meiji 28 or 29 (1895-1896).…… At that time, my mother was twenty-four or twenty-five. Between the deceased Yonejirō and Tama, there were—beginning with my mother as the eldest daughter—four daughters and two still-young younger brothers.

For nearly ten years until my birth, my mother—burdened with those young sisters and small brothers, supporting a timid grandmother who seemed faint of heart—how valiantly she must have worked, and what unseen hardships she must have endured; even now I cannot begin to imagine it. People who knew my mother all uniformly say she was an exceptionally capable person—there was no one as competitive and strong-willed as her. I dimly remember hearing this story—that not long after Grandfather died, my young mother had run night stalls and peddled various wares—directly from her own lips on some occasion when I was still small.

Among my mother’s younger sisters were those who had entered teahouse service. There were those who became geisha and married a rakugo artist called Kinchō-san. Then the youngest brother ultimately chose of his own accord to become a rakugo artist. However, all those people died young and are now deceased.……

In these vicissitudes of my mother's family, I discerned one pitiful end among old Edo merchant houses, sensing some ineffably dark shadow cast over my own origins—yet that was all it was. Should such things pain my heart even slightly, it would merely be one expression of this yearning I feel for my mother.

VI

It seems that when I was four or five years old, my mother—who had been running a small tobacco shop beneath the embankment—closed down the shop and settled in with Koume’s father. In the beginning, no matter how many times they told me to call my new father "Papa," I always called him "Uncle Bell." And whenever I spotted a Jintan advertisement in town, I would point at it by myself and keep saying "Papa," so my mother and the others apparently had quite a hard time managing me.…

“Bell” was the name of a large Western dog kept by a man who lived near the nunnery at that time, and I was great friends with that dog. As a small child, I would always pet that much larger dog, saying “You’re so cute…” so I’m told. And around that time, whenever I saw a dog—no matter how large—I would approach without fear and call out “Bell, Bell.”

One day, I was taken by the man who would become my new father to see a foreign film featuring dogs. I enjoyed watching it very much until the very end. After such incidents, I ended up calling my new father "Uncle Bell."

But in time, I eventually grew attached to my new father as well. Once that happened, I had completely convinced myself he was my real Papa, and until the day he died, I never once doubted it.

Around the time Koume’s father began living with my mother—right after sweeping away his previous dissolute lifestyle—he appears to have been in dire straits. According to my aunt’s account, when my mother first visited that house on the outskirts of Mukōjima, there wasn’t a single item resembling proper household furnishings—in what amounted to little more than a hovel, my father was living alone as a widower, utterly dejected.…

My father was a metal engraver. He was of the Joujou family, Matsukichi being his given name. His father Takejirō had been a temple samurai residing for generations in ukechi lands and serving Ueno’s Rinnō-ji no Miya, but after the Restoration he retired and had his eldest son Toramatarō become a disciple of Ozaki Kazumi—then a flourishing Edo-school metal engraver. He was recognized by Ozaki Kazumi among his many disciples for his talent, granted his master’s only daughter in marriage, and came to inherit his position. That was Joujou Kazutoshi, who tragically passed away from illness before completing his life's work. He had three younger brothers who had all entered Kazutoshi’s school, but after their elder brother’s death, each established their own households and took up engraving as their profession. The youngest brother, who was called Toshinori, became my father.

In his youth, Matsukichi did not devote himself to the family business, spending all his time wandering about with friends. He seems to have done quite a few mischievous things. One summer midnight, when Matsukichi and a friend jumped into the Ōkawa River from Azuma Bridge trying to cool off, they were mistaken by a patrol officer for attempting a lovers' suicide; while people on the bridge were in an uproar, the pair stealthily swam upstream and slipped away—he left behind such anecdotes. I think this must have been around that time—Matsukichi had been visiting a young kouta teacher in Kawaramachi with those friends of his, half in jest and half for practice, but before long he became intimate with that young kouta teacher.

Matsukichi finally established a household with the young kouta teacher named Oyō on the outskirts of Mukōjima. After living together for two or three years, they had a child who died young. Beside the Joujou family grave in Ukechi stood a single small gravestone. This marked the resting place of that ill-fated infant. Matsukichi had initially devoted himself to his work, taking in a live-in apprentice named Yujirō and personally making regular rounds to clients in Yokohama. But after losing his child, he began indulging solely in drink and increasingly left his home unattended.

During that time, the apprentice Yujirō continued working tirelessly by himself. Matsukichi too had taken Yujirō under his wing and left nearly all matters of the workshop to him.

However, one night when Matsukichi returned home dead drunk, he suddenly saw something he should never have witnessed there— After tormenting himself alone at length, Matsukichi resolved without a word to let Oyō stay with Yujirō. He found them a small house near Kameido, gave them every last household item from his own home, and thus remained alone in his original house—stripped bare as a bone...... Of course, my mother must have known this entire backstory. Yet despite knowing it all, she took me—utterly adorable beyond resistance—and remarried such a man. There must have been some profound calculation behind this decision.

Anyone would do, as long as they would cherish me. ――That seemed to have been what Mother had considered most. For that purpose, it wouldn’t do if she had to keep bowing her head before that person. So that he would never be able to hold his head high before Mother alone for the rest of his life, she did everything she possibly could for him when he was in dire straits. It was better that he be such an unfortunate person.—At last, there in that place, she had found a person who met Mother’s requirements.

A strong-willed, reliable person; someone who became utterly devoted when it came to me—this is how everyone describes my mother. When my stubbornly competitive mother entered his life after Oyō-san, Father suddenly turned sober and threw himself into his work. As a result, Koume’s house grew brighter than ever before, bustling with constant visitors. Both my father and mother, being true Edoites with straightforward dispositions, never once quarreled over me—so much that everyone saw us as genuine parent and child. They maintained their former relationship with Oyō-san too, while keeping Yujirō steadily employed in our family business.

Little me, completely unaware of anything, eventually grew attached to Yujirō too—whenever he came over, he would give me shoulder rides, and I would tag along on his errands.

Around five or six years old—unlike my present self—I seem to have been quite the little performer. When my parents took me to places like my aunt’s house, I would have her immediately strum the shamisen vigorously, place a hand towel atop my head, strike peculiar poses with my hands and hips, and sing “It’s a cat, it’s a cat…” while performing a solo dance for everyone. Those folk dances I had somehow learned through observation and imitation before even realizing it.

My biological father, it seems, was not strictly solemn even when appearing in places like court, and was said to have loved the sound of the shamisen above all else. Having completely forgotten about my biological father whose bloodline I carried, there now appears before me—when I look back—the image of my young self as a little clown: dancing obliviously to my aunt’s shamisen accompaniment while chanting “It’s a cat, it’s a cat…” among my new father and mother and others who cherished me. Though it’s my own past, I cannot help feeling it profoundly pitiable……

VII

In my uncle and aunt’s house in Tabata where the Saxifraga were blooming so magnificently, I dashed down exactly as I had heard them—these stories of my origins and my mother—which I listened to unaware of the June day slipping away.

As I was now, finding myself unable to resume writing the novel Childhood—which had become increasingly fragmented around the time of Father's death—I abandoned it entirely, merely adding the stories I had newly heard from my aunts here as a sort of addendum.

As I now prepare to conclude this manuscript, I recall that faintly overcast June day several days after visiting Tabata—when I suddenly felt compelled to go to Tokyo alone and visit Entsu-ji Temple in Ukechi.

――Around my parents’ grave, something had changed strikingly. It did not seem to be solely due to the several stupas standing behind the grave for my deceased father’s hundredth-day memorial service. Nor did it seem to be solely due to the morning glory flowers that had entwined themselves around the broken fence of the neighboring grave—their pale hues now trailing forlornly before our family plot—after the shikimi blossoms that had bloomed everywhere during my previous visit with my wife had already scattered.

The change had instead been occurring only within myself. At that moment, I stood completely alone. This marked the first time I had ever stood before this grave by myself. Wanting solitude for a while, I came directly to the gravesite without visiting the temple. There I simply remained outside the fence, facing the moss-clad grave with my eyes firmly closed.

"Why hadn't I visited Mother's grave more often until now?" I kept thinking. "...I'd always maintained that dismissive attitude—'Even if it's Mother's, it's just a grave'— With that mindset, I could feel completely secure about Mother's existence—as if whether I did anything for her or not, whether I thought about her or not, it all amounted to the same thing. But now that I knew everything, Mother seemed so pitiful I couldn't bear it. "It was around this time that thoughts of Mother finally began to truly sink in for me......"

Here in this shabby temple on the outskirts, among these moss-covered graves alongside people I'd never met in life—or rather, even that desolate grave itself now felt, to me in this moment, like something irreplaceable.

I walked around the grave. And for the first time, I searched for where my mother’s posthumous name was engraved. Then, I found "Smiling Temple..." inscribed in one corner of the grave’s side. To tell the truth, I had feared I might have forgotten it, but upon recognizing those three characters, everything immediately came back to me. The fact that "September 1, Taishō era year 12 (1923)" was carved below struck me as peculiarly painful—whether this was mere imagination or not.

I had circled around the grave and now stood before it once more. To the left of the grave stood a boxwood tree; there now stood a small grave that had become half-hidden in its shadow and was barely visible. That small grave which my wife and I had once wondered about—why this childlike tomb alone stood apart—must be that of the child born between Koume’s father and Oyō-san. Wondering what might be inscribed there, I lifted a branch of the boxwood tree from outside the fence to look, but apparently due to the fragile stone quality, the surface had nearly completely eroded away, leaving only the single character for "child" remaining. Whether it had been a boy or a girl, there was now no way to know—

As I gazed at this ill-fated infant’s grave—now forgotten by all—with a peculiar sense of emotion, there suddenly flashed before me, with vivid clarity, the youthful figure of Koume’s father from a time I never knew: that child’s parent in his younger days……

From those youthful days onward—this commoner’s long life up to now; the lonely, near-hermitic existence over the dozen or so years since losing my mother in the earthquake disaster; and especially his uncertain final years spent caring for me, sickly and constantly relocating—Father, quite fond of drink and somewhat given to indulgence yet endlessly kind-hearted, had always held my mother in high regard. Even after Mother’s death, Father continued to cherish me—I who had been made selfish for her sake—just as before, never once neglecting me. Though I knew nothing of the circumstances during that time, I had always trusted completely in Father’s love and had never been betrayed by it.

When I thought of how I had failed to properly care for Father in his final years, an indescribable regret tightened around my chest. I stood motionless before my parents' grave for a while, trying to endure that feeling.

After spending about twenty or thirty minutes by the grave in this manner, I finally left that spot and slowly examined each of the old tombstones—seemingly abandoned—lined up along the rusted tin fence until at last I departed from the cemetery. Heading east from Tobiki Inari Shrine for about one or two blocks brought one to Ukechi railroad crossing. I decided to take the Tobu Railway to Asakusa and headed toward that crossing. Walking through what seemed like a shabby part of town lined with low, dirty little houses, I began to feel like a complete outsider in this unfamiliar place when it occurred to me that visiting my biological father’s grave—a man I could barely remember—might not be such a bad idea. I could simply go out casually as if it were nothing—just visit the grave and casually return. That would suffice. But where on earth was the temple containing my biological father’s grave? (Note 1)

When I was very young, I faintly recall being taken by Mother once or twice to visit graves at some distant temple in the Yamanote hills. Only the black gate of that temple has remained strangely lodged in the depths of my memory. It stood at the end of a deep alleyway, with what might have been a large tree growing beside its gate. As a young child led by Mother, I returned home after paying respects without ever knowing whose grave it was. Even then, Mother never explained anything to me. Could that have been my biological father’s grave? Where in the world was that temple from back then—so quintessentially Yamanote with its abundant groves and neatly compact form? Ah yes—now that I mention it—I’m certain this memory comes from our train ride either to or from that visit. Young as I was—whether going or returning—the journey always proved so long that I would fall fast asleep on the train every time, only to be suddenly shaken awake by Mother.

“Tatsuo, Tatsuo—look! See that alleyway there? That’s where the house you were born in stood……”

Being told that, I rubbed my sleepy eyes repeatedly and opened them. As Mother pointed out the alley from the train window to me, I hurriedly turned my gaze in that direction. But the train had already left that alley behind and was running along a tree-lined road through a residential area. Though somehow this felt insufficient, I asked nothing more and simply drifted back into a doze leaning against my mother...

Now that I think about it, since I was born in Kōjimachi Hirakawachō, that must be somewhere around Miyakezaka and Akasaka Mitsuke. If that’s the case, my biological father’s grave must be somewhere around Aoyama or Sendagaya. Wondering whom to ask about this, I suddenly remembered the aunt who had been a tea ceremony instructor in Azabu—now quite advanced in years yet still alive. That’s right—now that aunt alone remained the person connected to my biological father. Apparently she was my real sister. Having known nothing until now, I had naturally been rather distant toward that aunt, but before long I felt compelled to visit her no matter what.…

At Ukechi Station—dingy in that particular way of outlying areas—I kept pondering these matters alone as I waited endlessly for the Asakusa-bound train. Footnote 1: Even the aunt in Tabata hadn't clearly remembered details about the temple housing my biological father's grave. She only knew it was famous for containing Kouchi-yama Sōshun's grave and had apparently never visited. Afterward, though I occasionally considered calling on my aunt in Azabu, before I could make the journey, that elderly woman had suddenly passed away. I had done something utterly irreparable. Yet regarding the grave of my biological father that I'd longed to locate—when that same aunt came to be buried at the very temple—I found myself unexpectedly able to learn of it. The temple was called Kōtoku-ji and indeed stood in Aoyama. When I discovered that black gate at the end of an alley along a quiet backstreet—Ah, this was it, I realized. The octogenarian-looking old man breaking shikimi branches beside the gate seemed someone who might still recall details about my biological father had I asked. But without posing a single question, I merely kept my gaze fixed on the elderly man awhile before continuing straight past his hut.