Pathway to Japanese Literature

I

That day, I went to visit my deceased mother’s grave for the first time with my wife. The Ukechi-machi district where Entsū-ji Temple was located wasn’t particularly far from our home in Mukōjima. Moreover, those outlying neighborhoods had been familiar to me since childhood, so I decided we would walk along Hikifune-dōri to the temple, thinking I should show my wife such places at least once. Leaving our house and walking along the Genmorikawa River for a while, we soon reached Hikifune-dōri. Then following that canal northward, wooden bridges with nostalgic names kept appearing before our eyes—Kōshinzuka Bridge, Koume Bridge, Shichihonmatsu Bridge—only to disappear again. This area too had changed completely after the earthquake, but somehow it had returned to how it used to be—large factories lining the right bank, low shabby houses crammed along the left bank, facing each other across the canal. The stench and murky color of the water remained exactly as they had been in the past.

We crossed an old wooden bridge called Jizō Bridge and entered a narrow side street on the other side. Immediately on the left stood the ancient ginkgo tree of Tobiki Inari Shrine, its branches withered and leafless, towering into the sky. Entsū-ji Temple was situated at the back, and only the cemetery lay on the right side, separated from that ancient ginkgo tree by the road. Through gaps in the black corrugated iron fence, gravestones of various sizes were left exposed to the eyes of passersby. ...

A little further on, we would have come to the Ukechi railroad crossing, but this area retained an especially cluttered, dirty, seedy-looking scene. At a shopfront wedged between a dry goods store and an oil shop—a place that was a flower shop in name only—we bought a small offering of flowers, then stopped by the temple to call out to the attendant before proceeding to the cemetery on our own. Because the cemetery was situated lower than the road, it felt unnervingly damp and soggy—here and there one could even see old graves that appeared unattended, their surroundings turned into stagnant puddles.

“Were you surprised by how dirty this temple is?” I turned to face my wife and said. “It says Genroku 8…” My wife didn’t immediately respond. Instead, she stopped and gazed at one of the old graves beside her. Then she murmured almost to herself: “This temple really is ancient.” My mother’s grave stood facing east in the northeastern corner of the cemetery spanning about two hundred tsubo. For the first time, I stood before that grave with my wife. Within its fence grew boxwood and muku trees, both in full bloom. Yet though called Mother’s grave, it was not hers alone— this was the ancestral resting place of the paternal Jōjō lineage. There among strangers—a grandfather said to have been an Ueno temple samurai; a grandmother rumored to have served at court in her youth; an uncle who’d established himself as an Edo-school metal engraver during Meiji—lay interred my mother, who had died at fifty-one in the earthquake.

My wife and I stood before the grave, blankly waiting for the temple attendant to arrive for a while.

“Whose is that small grave over there?” “Well, who could it be…” When she said that, I turned my eyes to the extremely small gravestone perched beneath a boxwood tree beside my mother’s grave. Even the existence of such a gravestone had hardly registered with me until now. Even if I did notice it, I would disregard it without a second thought. “It does look like a child’s grave, but I’ve never heard of one here.”

My wife made no particular effort to learn more about it, and I too at that moment merely felt a flicker of suspicion. While the temple attendant brought a holy water bucket and incense sticks and swept the moss from the grave, we stepped back several paces and surveyed the entire cemetery anew. The grounds were enclosed solely by a rusted corrugated iron fence with not a single thriving tree in sight—utterly exposed in feeling—where countless gravestones stood crammed together, each bearing half-rotted sotoba memorial tablets. And above that uneven cluster of gravestones varying in height stretched the late April noon sky, while intermittent noises from a nearby factory drifted faintly through the air—now distant, now near.

As I nostalgically remembered Mother lying in this shabby cemetery at the seedy outskirts—in a way that felt truly hers—I suddenly sensed how my wife standing beside me, her voice and expression brightening as she prepared to face my mother for the first time, clashed faintly with the gloomy surroundings, and found even that dissonance pleasing. So to speak, within a single heart, I had somehow found myself half-dreaming of the interplay between light and shadow—a darkness falling from the past and a faint light streaming in from my future, mingling there.

After the temple attendant swept away the moss and offered incense, I noticed him cleaning the neighboring small grave’s moss as well. I nearly asked whose grave it was, but deciding there was no need to inquire now, I silently signaled my wife with a glance. Together we approached Mother’s grave and offered incense side by side. "This will do…" I found myself thinking this without any particular reason.

II

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

There, about ten days passed without incident. Everything was still ahead—I felt a clear, unburdened sensation.

Then one dawn, while we still slept, we received a telegram. It brought news that Father lay critically ill. With no prior warning, we frantically prepared, locked the mountain house, and departed for Tokyo. When we reached the Mukojima house near noon, Father had remained comatose since collapsing from a cerebral hemorrhage that morning, unaware even of our return. That 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 Tateishi came. Those who had been disciples since my childhood days and subcontractors came in an unbroken stream. Then from my mother’s side came the Tabata Aunt and others. Cousins came. Then even Aunt from Azabu—the sole remaining relative of the Hori family whose headship I had inherited—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"—the thought struck me, and I felt I should stay by Father’s side as much as possible. From then on, I entrusted all matters concerning my wife to Aunt Tabata, while making sure to keep vigil at Father’s bedside. Put another way—that Father remained utterly unaware of me acting this way—precisely this allowed me to continue without a shred of shame.

In the other room, I occasionally wondered how my wife was faring now. Then an image would come to mind of my wife—flustered and unaccustomed—moving among all those strangers while serving tea, and I found something poignantly endearing in that sight. My suffocating state of mind would sometimes be unexpectedly, if only slightly, alleviated by this.

Father gradually regained 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 taken on an utterly transformed appearance.

Nevertheless, Father improved day after day. “At this rate, we can rest easy.” Everyone began saying so.

It was about half a month later that we finally returned to our mountain house in Shinshu. Just as Father had managed to settle down in that way, this time it was I who fell ill. Thus, with Father now entrusted to people who would care for him as their own, we resolved to return to the mountain house.

Moreover, I had to start working as soon as possible. Not only did I have to provide for our own livelihood, but now I also had to send some support to the patient as well, leaving me utterly at a loss about what to do for quite some time. Just at that moment, a senior arranged for me to contribute to a magazine, and there I found myself writing my first serialized novel—the first in my life. At that time, as what seemed most suitable for expressing my current state of mind, I sought material in my own childhood. I had once thought of writing about my own childhood experiences, and having recently read Hans Carossa’s *Childhood*, I deeply resonated with his creative motive—not merely nostalgic recollections of youth, but an attempt to seek something essential about life within them. Though I held little expectation for this current work, I resolved to try my utmost as one such attempt.

It was in this manner that I began writing *Childhood*.

Even after summer passed and autumn arrived, we were still living in the mountains. As winter approached, we hurriedly left the mountains and settled for a time in a small cottage belonging to a friend in Zushi. From one temporary lodging to another, I always carried *Childhood* with me alongside other work.

As for Father, once autumn arrived and he began to improve, his recovery progressed rapidly. On mild Indian summer days, news came that he would walk as far as Azumabashi Bridge with the nurse supporting him by the hand. It was mid-December when Father, who had been on the verge of recovering so well, suffered his second attack. When we saw the telegram and rushed over from Zushi, it was already midnight. Father remained deeply comatose; he was still breathing, but this time we too had to resign ourselves.……

III

After Father’s death, I was informed for the first time that I had another biological father who had died when I was still small. The one who told me this was Aunt Tabata—one of my mother’s younger sisters, an aunt who had lived right next to our house until before the Great Kanto Earthquake.—

In truth, on the occasion of Father’s hundredth-day memorial service, that aunt had said to me at the temple: “There’s something I want to tell only you, so come by alone sometime.”

At the time when I was still staying in Zushi—and moreover, it was a period when I was often ill—I would occasionally find myself troubled by what Aunt had told me, yet I couldn’t quite bring myself to go to Tokyo alone. But then, from somewhere or other, I heard rumors that Uncle—who had been suffering from eye trouble since around last year’s end—was now on the verge of losing his sight entirely. Feeling I must visit them soon, I one day accompanied my wife to Tokyo as she had business at her family home. Bringing gifts alone, I made my way to the small house at the foot of Tabata slope where Uncle and Aunt had been living in quiet solitude ever since the earthquake.

It was already June.

At Uncle’s house, the shoji had been thrown completely open, and in the three-tsubo small garden where fatsia and other plants stood as if arranged in formal greeting, saxifrage had spread out in profusion from the veranda edge, blooming with astonishing beauty. “The saxifrage have bloomed beautifully. It’s rare to see them like this...” Sitting near the veranda edge, I spoke those words casually—then couldn’t help but startle myself.

To Uncle, whose eyes were failing, even that seemed no longer clearly visible. However, Uncle, remaining seated before the Ka-rin table, answered with unexpected cheerfulness. "Yeah, saxifrage must look beautiful when they bloom like that." "......"

I silently shifted my gaze from above Uncle’s face back toward the saxifrage.

At that moment, Aunt brought over some brewed tea. And then she began apologizing to me anew for her long silence and thanking me for the gifts. The taciturn Uncle also suddenly straightened his posture. At that point, I too—anew—proceeded to inquire about Uncle’s recent condition for the first time, though rather directing my questions toward Aunt. It was from then until evening that I heard every minute detail of my origins, all the while the blooming saxifrage flickered incessantly before my eyes. Aunt had been doing almost all the talking, but the taciturn Uncle occasionally inserted brief remarks into her account.……

Until then, no one had ever clearly informed me of this truth, yet at some point I had arbitrarily settled on the notion that while being Jōjō’s only son, my succession to the Hori lineage since childhood must have been arranged due to circumstances surrounding my birth—a conclusion I never thought to question beyond that. By the time I was seventeen or eighteen, I had begun piecing together a narrative from fragments overheard over the years—that around my birth, my father had temporarily separated from my mother to cohabit with another woman in Yokohama or some such place, during which time an elderly couple living nearby took great pity on my mother and, lacking an heir themselves, adopted me immediately after I was born. Gradually I convinced myself this modest drama must have unfolded exactly so. After such events had occurred, perhaps Father returned once more to Tokyo and welcomed Mother and my young self into the house with the fig tree at the edge of Mukōjima. In any case, that man who was Koume’s father had not been present before my young self from the very beginning; he was someone who seemed to have abruptly materialized before me partway through.

Yet even as I grew older—reaching an age when I might have noticed hints of some secret concealed in my origins—I never once doubted that Koume’s father, who had so abruptly appeared before me, might not be my true father. And even after Mother died first and I had to live alone with Father, I never doubted it at all.

After I married last year and departed for Shinshu, Aunt Tabata one day visited the house in Mukōjima, where Father was in remarkably high spirits. Though they exchanged various stories about my childhood during this meeting, even then—speaking of me, who had remained unaware until this age that my true father lay elsewhere—he reportedly said, "That fellow... pitiful as he may be, well, nothing could make me happier than this." He then repeatedly entreated Aunt: "Please... keep it from him until my dying day." It was within days—perhaps not even that—after this that Father was struck down by illness.……

Hori Hamanosuke, whom I had until then believed to be merely my nominal father, was in fact my biological parent. He was said to have been a samurai retainer of the Hiroshima Domain who had served as a page to the feudal lord from a young age. After the Meiji Restoration, he moved to the capital and served at the court. He seems to have been doing something like supervising clerks. Hamanosuke had a wife he had brought from his home province. However, his wife was in poor health, they had no children between them, and theirs was a lonely married life.

As for how my mother—the daughter of a fallen Edo merchant family—came to be acquainted with Hamanosuke, a man of different age and social standing, and what bonds formed there to bring about my birth—on these points I still know nothing at all. In any case, I was made the Hori family heir immediately after birth. At that time, the Hori household was located in Koji-machi Hirakawa-cho. And so I came to be raised in that house by the Hori couple, and until I was able to leave Mother’s embrace, she too continued living together with us in that house. However, even after I had gradually become able to leave Mother’s embrace, she could not bring herself to let go of me. That being said, continuing to live there as mother and child was even more difficult.

Finally, Mother resolved herself alone and, without informing anyone, fled that house with me in tow. This happened when I was three years old. Around that time, a relative’s daughter named Ms. Kaoru was being looked after in the Hori household. Ms. Kaoru, who favored my mother and knew all the circumstances, came along then too, carrying Mother’s luggage. After leaving the house in Koji-machi, Mother—holding young me in her arms—first sought refuge with her sister and brother-in-law, who had a house near the Koume nunnery in Mukojima and who are now Uncle and Aunt Tabata. Just as they had finally settled into the house thinking this would do for now, Ms. Kaoru was suddenly seized by violent spasms and began writhing in pain. When her condition showed no sign of improving and there was no telling when she could return alone, they finally telephoned the government office and informed Hamanosuke of everything. Hamanosuke immediately rushed over from the government office. That marked both the first and last time Hamanosuke came to Aunt Koume’s house. By evening, when Ms. Kaoru’s spasms had finally subsided and Hamanosuke prepared to take her back, everyone saw them off as far as Lord Mito’s shrine. And on the embankment, Mother and I parted with Father, who was accompanied by Ms. Kaoru.

I was apparently very slow to develop speech; even by age three, I could only manage things like “ma-ma…” Yet that evening, when I met 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 seems I was overjoyed to have unexpectedly encountered Father there. However, that apparently became the last time I was able to meet that Father of mine.

Not long after that，his father Hamanosuke fell ill with a brain disease and became someone who could no longer take part in society. My mother had the grandmother，who had been staying with my younger brothers until then，come over，and opened a small tobacco shop behind Lord Mito’s shrine under the embankment.

The Hori house in Koji-machi where we had lived until then was an imposing residence with a grand gate and stepping stones laid out before its entrance. And so it was that even after we began living in that small rented house beneath the embankment, three- or four-year-old me—led by the hand by Mother and Grandmother while toddling unsteadily—would suddenly exclaim “My house… my house…” upon spotting any residence nearby with stepping stones or a gated entrance, then scurry inside, often troubling everyone.

There was one more thing. ――In those days, large Jintan billboards often stood at street corners, depicting busts of men wearing top hats with luxuriant white plumes and sporting magnificent beards――whenever I spotted one, I would invariably point and insist “Daddy…”, this being the fledgling utterance that my young self had only just managed to articulate. ……This was likely because I still vividly remembered my father as a man who had worn such a splendid beard. Moreover, perhaps I had glimpsed my father dressed in a civil official’s formal attire on some occasion, and might still have retained some memory of it deep within.……

When Father Hamanosuke, who had long been afflicted with a brain disease, finally passed away, I must have been around seven or eight years old. When I was three years old, while being led by Mother’s hand after parting with Father on that embankment, I apparently never met that father again. Even when that father died—by which time I already had a new father—I was told nothing, perhaps out of deference to this circumstance. My stepmother seems to have remained alive until I was twelve or thirteen, yet I lived without ever knowing of her death.

As for that stepmother, I have no memory of her at all, but she was apparently a sickly, gloomy woman who always had a pale face. However, she was unfortunate in every sense of the word. In her later years, she had taken in a nephew of her own bloodline named Fujimori or some such, but this nephew apparently dabbled in mines or something, failed, and then vanished without a trace.

IV

I remember a certain photograph of my mother from her youth. That too was burned in the earthquake, but when I think about my deceased mother in all her facets, I sometimes recall that photograph of her from when she was very young. She still retained a somewhat girlish air, bearing no resemblance to my mother as I knew her—yet precisely for that reason, it seems to stir something within me.

Several years ago, when a certain magazine requested that I write something under the title "The Woman I Considered Most Beautiful," I suddenly recalled that old photograph and wrote a short essay. Though it amounts to little more than a mere sketch, I believe it captures well my feelings toward Mother from that time, and so I wish to insert it here.

⁂

Woman Holding Flowers

When I was still a child.

I would often take out photographs of my family from the document box and explain each one proudly before everyone: "This is Father," "This is Mother," "This is Uncle from Oshiage," and so on. Before long I would always find myself holding a photograph of an unfamiliar young woman and becoming utterly perplexed. No matter how many times they told me "That's your mother when she was young," I simply couldn't bring myself to believe it. "But Mother is so plump," I would think skeptically while comparing them, "while this woman is slender—and far more beautiful than Mother too..."

There, the unfamiliar woman was captured mid-arrangement of flowers. She had placed a vase near her knees and held what might have been plum blossoms. I liked that woman intensely. More than my own mother or any other. ――

Several years passed. I too gradually came to understand things. My mother had grown even more stout than before. This was partly because she made a vow to Asakusa Kannon to somehow get me to pass the middle school entrance examination, which led her to give up the alcohol and tobacco she had habitually enjoyed. And my mother suddenly resolved to begin learning flower arrangement in place of those habits. I began to occasionally catch sight of my mother engaged in such flower arrangement. From such things, I suddenly remembered that photograph of the woman holding flowers—the one I had unwittingly forgotten over time. That photograph remained in my heart, exactly as it was originally, with its fresh beauty. At that time, while I could fully acknowledge in my head that it was a photograph of my mother from her youth, deep in my heart I still felt an unwillingness to associate the woman in the photograph with my actual mother.

Several more years had passed.

My mother died in the earthquake. That photograph was lost along with her.—Now that all this has come to pass, strangely enough, those two things have finally begun to merge into one within my heart. And somehow, the unfamiliar image of my young mother in that photograph feels far dearer to me than the familiar visage of her later years. I have come to understand that my childhood inability to believe the woman in that photograph was truly my mother stemmed from her being too beautiful to accept as my own. Not only was she beautiful, but there was also an inexplicably alluring charm in her appearance—something my childish heart sensed—and I must have felt somehow ashamed to think of her as my mother. Now that I mention it, the clothing Mother wore in that photograph was neither what one would expect of a married woman nor that of an ordinary girl. To me now, it seems unmistakably like the attire of a geisha from that era. From such observations, I have lately come to secretly speculate that Mother might have been a geisha before marrying into Father's household. Considering that her family home was apparently quite impoverished, that most of her sisters and brothers were engaged in vaudeville or teahouse service, and that Father in his youth seems to have been something of a libertine—when I put all these together, I cannot say my speculation is entirely without basis.

I can safely say, however, that even now I know almost nothing about geisha. Having loved reading novels like Kyōka’s since my youth—and even feeling a faint attachment to the heroines in such works—it may be that these very inclinations led me to project such imaginings onto my deceased mother.

⁂ I indulged in such novelistic fantasies inspired by a photograph of my mother from her youth, yet refrained from pressing further—never attempting to force knowledge of her younger days or my own origins by interrogating others. By nature since childhood, I found complete satisfaction in what I had naturally come to understand alone, shaping my early years as I pleased within the confines of my own knowledge and deriving enjoyment from this self-contained world.

V

Once again, the aunt told me in detail about my mother’s family home. However, even then—betraying my expectations once more—I could hardly get her to tell me anything about Mother’s youth. In time, I might naturally find out on some occasion, so for now I decided not to press the matter any further… Mother’s family home was the Nishimura clan. Father was a man named Yonejirō who, until before the Meiji Restoration, had established a shop in Reiganjima and served as a purveyor of financial services to various feudal lords. Even as townspeople, theirs was a family of such standing that they were permitted the privileges of bearing a surname and wearing swords. Mother was of the Chino clan; her name was Tama, and she too was the daughter of an old, large chest shop in Kanda. Tama had served in the inner quarters of Lord Kaga in Hongō from the age of sixteen. Then at nineteen, she married Yonejirō, and their wedding at that time still seems to have been quite an extravagant affair. With numerous tall paper lanterns held aloft, the bridal procession paraded from Kanda toward Reiganjima—only to encounter a Me-gumi gang brawl midway along their route. As the procession hesitated over whether they would have to detour, the carpenters who had been fighting—mistaking them for some daimyo’s retinue—suddenly parted the way in unison, allowing them to pass straight through.—And everyone had rejoiced, saying it was an auspicious omen.

However, the fate of the bride and groom was not so fortunate. Before long came collapse. This dealt an immediate and decisive blow to the young couple. With no prospect of collecting gold loans made to feudal lords, Yonejirō—as a last resort—relocated to Azabu's Iikura Katamachi district and opened a sword shop called Daikokuya. The venture succeeded, and for a time the shop flourished. My mother Shige was born there in Iikura as their eldest daughter.

However, the year my mother was born, Meiji 6, was also the year the Sword Abolishment Edict was issued. Yonejirō found himself in dire straits once again. Just then, someone was trying to sell shares in a pawnshop business, and though Yonejirō felt sorely tempted to pursue this opportunity—Tama remained steadfastly opposed. She detested the very notion of pawnbroking. As a result, Yonejirō had no choice but to relocate to Shiba Karasumori and open a small antique shop. Yet this venture too grew increasingly unfavorable with each passing year, leaving Yonejirō devoid of any means to recover until finally he retreated to a backstreet shop in Atagoshita, becoming a man who spent his remaining years in desolate solitude.

Yonejirō died of cerebral hemorrhage in that humble dwelling in Atagoshita around Meiji 28 or 29 (1895–96)...

At that time, my mother was twenty-four or twenty-five. Between the deceased Yonejirō and Tama, there were four daughters—beginning with my mother, their eldest—and two still-young younger brothers.

From then until my birth—over nearly ten years—how valiantly my mother must have worked, burdened with those young sisters and little brothers while supporting a timid, introverted grandmother; and what unseen hardships she must have endured—now I cannot even begin to imagine it all. People who knew my mother all say she was an exceptionally capable woman—that there was no one so fiercely competitive or spirited as her. I dimly remember that when I was little, I had heard from my mother herself on some occasion the story that shortly after Grandfather’s death, she—still young—had run night stalls peddling something or other.

Among Mother’s younger sisters were those who had entered teahouse service. Some became geisha and married rakugo artists like Kinchō-san. The youngest brother ultimately became a rakugo artist of his own volition. Yet all those people died young and are now gone... In the vicissitudes of my mother’s family, I discern one pitiful end among Edo’s old merchant houses and sense an indescribable dark shadow cast over my own origins—yet that is all it is. If such things pain my heart even slightly, it is but one manifestation of my yearning 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 moved in with Koume’s father. At first, no matter how much I was told to call my new father "Daddy," I always referred to him as "Uncle Bell." Whenever I spotted a Jintan advertisement in town, I would point at it alone and keep saying “Daddy,” so my mother and the others were apparently quite at their wits’ end……

“Bell” was the name of a large Western-breed dog kept by an uncle living near the nunnery at that time, and I was very close with that dog. Though the dog was much larger than myself, little me would always say “You’re so cute…” while stroking its head, or so I’m told. And around that time, whenever I saw any 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 some foreign motion picture featuring dogs. I found it very entertaining and watched it through to the end. After that incident, I came to call my new father “Uncle Bell.” However, I eventually grew attached to my new father as well. Once that happened, I completely convinced myself he was my real father—and until the day Father died, I never once doubted it.

At the time when Koume’s father began living with Mother—having just swept away his previous dissolute lifestyle—Father appears to have been in dire straits. According to Aunt’s account, when Mother first visited that house on the outskirts of Mukōjima, there was not a single item resembling proper household furnishings; within what seemed little more than a shack, Father was living dejectedly as a widower.…

Father was a metal engraver. He belonged to the Jōjō clan, with Matsukichi being his given name. His father Takejirō had lived for generations in Ukechi as a temple samurai serving the prince of Ueno’s Rinnō-ji Temple, but after the Meiji Restoration he retired and apprenticed his eldest son Torama Tarō to Ozaki Kazumi—then a flourishing Edo-style metal engraver. Recognized by Kazumi among numerous disciples for his talent, Torama was granted his master’s only daughter and succeeded to his position. This successor was Jōjō Isshu, who regrettably died from illness midway through his career. Isshu had three younger brothers who all entered his school; following their elder brother’s death, each established their own households and practiced engraving. The youngest of these brothers—called Toshinori—became my father.

In his youth, Matsukichi did not devote himself to the family business and spent his days wandering about with friends. He apparently got up to quite a bit of mischief. One summer midnight, he and a friend tried to cool off by jumping into the Ōkawa River from Azumabashi Bridge—only to be mistaken by a patrolling officer for a lovers’ suicide—and while people on the bridge were in an uproar, they secretly swam upstream and made their escape. Around that time—or so I imagine—Matsukichi began attending lessons at the home of a young kouta instructor in Kawaramachi with those same friends, half-teasingly. But before long, he grew close to that young instructor.

Matsukichi finally set up a home together with the young instructor named Oyō in a corner of Mukōjima. After living together for two or three years, they had a child who died young. Beside the Jōjō family grave in Ukechi stands a single small gravestone. That was the grave of that ill-fated child. At first, Matsukichi devoted himself to his work, took in a live-in apprentice named Yujirō, and made regular rounds to clients in Yokohama himself. But after losing his child, he began indulging solely in drink and increasingly neglected his home.

During that period, the apprentice Yujirō continued working tirelessly on his own. Matsukichi also took notice of Yujirō and left almost all matters of the workshop to him. However, one night, Matsukichi returned home dead drunk and there glimpsed something he should never have witnessed— After suffering alone for so long, Matsukichi resolved without saying a word to let Oyō stay with Yujirō. He found a small house near Kameido for the two of them, gave them every last household item he possessed, and thus remained alone in his original home, stripped bare……

Of course, Mother must have known about such circumstances. And yet she took me—so unbearably endearing—and remarried such a man. There must have been some profound calculation behind that decision.

Any person would do, as long as they would take good care of me. ――That seemed to have been what Mother considered most important. In that case, it would be problematic if Mother always had to bow her head before that person. That person would ensure Mother could never hold her head up before him for the rest of her life, while she would do everything she could for him in his time of dire need. It would be better for him to be such an unfortunate person.—At last, there in that place, a person who met Mother’s intentions was found.

A spirited and capable person—someone who becomes utterly devoted when it comes to me—everyone says that about my mother. When my determined mother came after Ms. Oyō’s time, Father suddenly turned clear-eyed and began applying himself to his craft. Thus Koume’s house grew livelier than before, with more visitors coming and going.

Both Father and Mother, being true Edoites at heart with straightforward dispositions, seemed never once to have had any disputes over me—to such an extent that in everyone’s eyes they appeared as true parent and child. Moreover, he continued associating with Oyō-san as before and had Yujirō keep working for our household all along. Young as I was, knowing nothing of all this, I eventually grew attached to Yujirō as well; whenever he came over he would give me rides on his shoulders and take me along on his errands.

At around five or six years old, I—unlike my present self—seem to have been quite the little clown. When taken by Father and Mother to Aunt’s house, I would have her vigorously pluck the shamisen for me, then place a hand towel atop my head, strike peculiar poses with my hands and hips, and perform a solo dance for everyone while singing “It’s a cat, it’s a cat…” all by myself. I somehow managed to learn such folk dances just by watching and imitating them.

My biological father, it seems, was not solely a man of strict solemnity even while attending court and such, and was said to have loved the sound of the shamisen above all else. Having completely forgotten about my biological father from whom I inherited my bloodline, the figure of myself as a little clown—dancing obliviously and wholeheartedly to Aunt’s shamisen accompaniment, singing “It’s a cat, it’s a cat…” among my new father and Mother and others who doted on me—now strikes me as profoundly poignant when I look back, even though it was my own self.……

VII

At the house in Tabata of my aunt and uncle, where the saxifrage was blooming so beautifully, I have written down here just as I heard it—my own origins and my mother’s story—which I listened to without even noticing the June day growing late.

In my present state, I could no longer bring myself to resume writing *Childhood*—the novel that had become increasingly interrupted around the time of Father’s death—and so I abandoned it outright. The stories I had newly heard from Aunt and others I merely appended here as a mere supplement.

As I now prepare to conclude this manuscript, I recall a faintly overcast June day—a few days after visiting Tabata—when I felt a sudden urge drawing me out to Tokyo, where I went alone to Entsū-ji Temple in Ukechi.

Around my parents' grave, something had changed so strikingly.

It didn’t seem to be solely due to the several wooden memorial tablets from Father’s 100-day memorial standing behind the grave. Moreover, it didn’t seem to be solely because the shikimi flowers that had been blooming here and there when I had come with my wife before had already scattered, nor because the morning glories that had entwined themselves around the broken fence of the neighboring grave were now trailing all the way to the front of this one in their forlorn hues.

The change had likely occurred only within myself.

At that moment, I was utterly alone.

This was the first time I had stood alone before this grave. Because I had wanted to be alone for a while, I came straight to the grave without stopping at the temple. And so I merely stood facing the moss-covered grave from outside the fence, keeping my eyes tightly shut. "Why hadn't I done even something as simple as visiting Mother’s grave more often before now?" I kept thinking. "……Always, no matter that it was Mother’s, I had maintained an attitude that graves were just…" In such a state of mind, whether I did anything for Mother or not—or rather, whether I thought of her or not—it was all the same; I had felt utterly secure in her existence. But now that I knew everything, I found myself unbearably, unbearably sorry for Mother. Around this time, I had finally come to profoundly contemplate Mother’s circumstances.……

In this shabby temple in the seedy outskirts, amidst these moss-covered graves, surrounded by people I never knew in life—or rather, even that desolate grave now seemed to me something irreplaceable. I walked around the grave. And for the first time, I searched for where Mother’s posthumous Buddhist name was engraved. Then I found "Smiling Enclosure…" inscribed in one corner of the grave’s side. Truth be told, I had feared I might have forgotten it, but upon recognizing those three characters, I immediately recalled. Below that, "Died Taisho 12, September 1" was engraved—whether it was my imagination or not, I found it strangely poignant.

Before I knew it, I had walked around the grave and stood once more at its front. To the left of the grave stood a single boxwood tree; now a small grave lay there half-hidden in its shadow and barely visible. There was that time when I wondered with my wife why only that child-like grave stood apart alone—it must be the grave of the child born between Koume’s father and Ms. Oyō. Wondering what might be engraved there, I lifted a branch of the boxwood tree from outside the fence to look—but with its brittle stone surface nearly eroded away—only a single character remained faintly visible: “…Child…” Whether it had been a boy or a girl—there was no longer any way to know.—

While gazing at this ill-fated infant's grave that no one would ever look upon again with a certain depth of feeling, I suddenly—in one vivid instant—felt as though the youthful figure of Koume's father from an era I never knew, appearing in his role as that child's parent, had surfaced before me.……

This ordinary man’s long life from youth onward—his lonely, near-solitary existence for over a decade after losing Mother in the Great Kanto Earthquake; his frail later years spent almost entirely relocating for his health, with me as his unreliable companion during those precarious twilight years—though Father had been quite fond of drink and some indulgences, he remained kind-hearted to his core and seemed always to have held Mother in quiet reverence. Even after Mother’s death, Father had continued to treat me—who had been made selfish through her indulgence—with undiminished care, never once neglecting me. I knew nothing of the circumstances during that time, yet I had always trusted Father’s love completely and had never been betrayed by it.

When I thought of myself—how I had failed to properly care for even that Father in his final years—an unspeakable remorse clutched at my chest. For a time, I stood rigid before my parents' grave as if bracing against it. Having lingered by the graveside like that for twenty or thirty minutes, I finally stepped away and slowly examined each of the old, seemingly abandoned gravestones lined up against the rusted corrugated iron fence, until at last I left the cemetery.

Heading east from Tobiki Inari Shrine for one or two *chō* brought me to Ukechi Crossing. I thought about taking the Tobu train to Asakusa and headed toward the crossing. As befitting this shabby outskirt town, I walked through rows of low, grubby houses, feeling every bit a stranger in a foreign land, when it occurred to me that visiting the grave of my biological father—whom I could scarcely remember—might not be such a bad idea. I could just casually go out as if it were nothing, visit the grave, and casually come back. That would be enough. But where on earth was the temple containing the grave of my biological father, whom I could scarcely remember? (Note 1)

I have a faint memory of being taken by Mother once or twice when very young to visit a grave at some distant temple in the Yamate area. Only that temple’s black gate remains strangely etched in my memory. It stood at the end of a deep alleyway, with what might have been a large tree beside its gate. As a child led by Mother’s hand, I returned home after bowing at the grave without ever knowing whose it was. Even then, Mother offered me no explanation. Could that have been my biological father’s grave? Where in the world was that temple from back then—so characteristically Yamate-like with its groves of trees and tidy compactness? Ah—now that I think of it—it must have been during the train ride there or back. Young as I was, both going and returning, the journey stretched so long that I would always fall fast asleep on the train—only to be suddenly shaken awake by Mother.

“Tatsuo, Tatsuo—look, see that alley over there? That’s where your birth house stood.……”

Being told this, I rubbed my sleepy eyes again and again. Then I hurriedly turned my gaze toward the alley Mother was pointing out from the train window. But the train had already left that alley behind and was now moving along a tree-lined road flanked by mansions. Somehow this felt insufficient, but without asking anything more, I simply leaned against Mother again and drifted into a drowsy sleep……

Now that I think about it, since I was apparently born in Kōjimachi Hirakawa-chō, that must place it somewhere between Miyakezaka and Akasaka Mitsuke. If that were the case, then my biological father’s grave would likely be in Aoyama or Sendagaya. Wondering whom I should ask about this, I suddenly recalled an aunt in Azabu who had been a tea ceremony instructor and was now quite elderly yet apparently still alive. That’s right—now, that aunt was the only person still connected to my biological father. She was said to be his actual younger sister. Having known nothing until now, I had been nothing but distant toward that aunt, but before long, I felt compelled to visit her without fail.…

At Ukechi Station—thoroughly seedy and grimy as befitted the outskirts—I continued to think such thoughts alone while waiting a long time for the Asakusa-bound train.

Note 1: Even Tabata Aunt had little recollection of the temple where my biological father’s grave was located. She apparently knew only that it was a temple famous for housing Kōchiyama Sōshun’s grave and had never actually visited there herself. Afterward, though I occasionally thought of visiting the aunt in Azabu, while being unable to go for some time, that elderly aunt suddenly passed away. I had done something utterly irreparable. However, regarding the grave of my biological father I had longed to find—when Aunt too came to be buried at that same temple—I was able to learn of it unexpectedly. The temple was called Kōtoku-ji and was indeed in Aoyama. When I spotted that black gate at the end of an alley along a quiet backstreet, I thought: Ah, so this was it. The old man plucking shikimi branches by the gate appeared well over eighty, and I felt he might still remember things about my biological father if asked. Yet without asking anything, I merely gazed at him awhile before simply passing by the front of that hut.