Pathway to Japanese Literature

A dust-filled north-facing house.
A low-roofed two-unit tenement with wooden shingles where an old policeman with many children had lived and left dilapidated.
A 4.5-tatami room and a 3-tatami room lay side by side, with an engawa attached facing south.
The sunlight poured into every corner of the house, laying everything bare… In the dim kitchen, plates, bowls, cutting boards, and charcoal stoves could be seen messily scattered about, while in the perpetually open closet, wads of quilt batting and ragged scraps lay haphazardly stuffed together for no discernible reason.
The shoji screens, removed during summer, remained as they were—all torn or soot-stained—propped up beside the toilet.
Though the autumn chill had already grown piercing enough to seep into one’s bones by morning and evening, the Katsumi family’s weariness and neglect—even more than that of the old policeman’s household—couldn’t be bothered with the simple task of mending and reinstalling the shoji screens.
When it rained, they would shut the storm shutters tight and huddle listlessly in the dimness—the four of them moping about in the gloom.
Even on fine days, they kept only the lattice door’s storm shutters tightly closed, coming and going through the kitchen entrance.
No matter how much they changed the water, after every rain four or five earthworms would inevitably squirm at the bottom of the water basin.
It must be because the house is old that they seeped in from the roof.
Master Yuzo, past thirty and still unmarried, continued to burden his mother in every way.

Yuzo did not work anywhere.
He would always sit down at the large old desk with a perpetually dissatisfied expression, as though something were lacking, but once bored, he’d flop onto his side and rock listlessly until drifting off to sleep at some indeterminate hour.
At times, he would go out for walks in the fields behind.
On his desk, there was never a day when manuscript paper and brush were not properly arranged; yet despite this, there were scarcely any instances of completed manuscripts.
It was because his mind had grown utterly lax, losing all coherence.

Today as well, Yuzo woke around eleven o’clock, spent two or three hours loafing around, and had already smoked twelve or thirteen Shikishima cigarettes.
The cigarette butts had piled conspicuously in the corner of the brazier; his mouth grew bitter, his head grew dully weary, and when he gave it a slight shake, the back of his head felt heavy, as if packed with lead.
By now, even grinding ink felt like too much trouble; he was nothing but a raw sack.
In the two-tatami space beside the kitchen, mother worked on a long straw sack……peering at Yuzo through her glasses,

“What’s become of the old woman next door?” she muttered as if to herself.
When no reply came, she pressed further.

“Has she died?”

Her voice wavered with uncertainty.

“What does it matter? Think of something else.”

Yuzo snapped irritably and turned his gaze outside.
A blue sky, blazing sunlight… As he stared at that serene autumn day, Yuzo felt somehow like a prisoner in his own skin.

"But it's scary, you know," Mother said haltingly, her voice heavy.

"If you're just careful, it's fine."

“That may be so, you know,” she said uneasily.

“It’s fine. Dysentery—if you’re just careful—is something you’ll never catch, nor will it spread.”

“Is that so, you know?”

Having said that, Mother fell silent.
The old woman next door had hidden her dysentery for an entire week before being carried off to the isolation hospital yesterday afternoon.
The isolation hospital was right in the neighborhood.
Even sitting there, only the disinfection room’s chimney was visible.

“I hate it, you know,” Mother said apprehensively. “This year, people are dying so often.
“Maybe it’s the bad weather too, you know.”

With that, she chanted a Buddhist prayer in a small voice.

“Sure, people die, but plenty of houses see new births too.”

And Yuzo counted about six houses where births had occurred.
“And haven’t there been three babies born in this tenement alone since spring?”
he added.

Perhaps because a contagious disease had emerged nearby, it was so quiet one wouldn’t think people lived there. In that stillness, from the tenement’s far corner came a thud-thud, clatter… The autumn-clear air quivered as the loom-weaving sound drifted in with rustic nostalgia.

Yuzo closed his eyes and conjured fragmented thoughts. A desolate sensation—as though someone had whispered “What will become of us like this?”—lightly constricted his chest and head.

Mother fidgeted with something. “I might just pass away around this winter,” she remarked casually, as if discussing another’s affairs.

Yuzo opened his eyes with a start.
“Huh… Why?” he pressed.
“There’s no logic to it—but I just can’t shake that feeling.”
“What would dying now achieve?”
“What can you do? If it’s your time, there’s no fighting it.”

She laughed desolately.
Indeed, since early autumn, the mother had contracted chronic kidney disease and drastically weakened.
Swelling had come to her face and limbs, and her complexion turned strikingly sallow.
She grew indifferent to everything, her hair left disheveled and coated in dust, making her sores appear all the more severe.
And she yearned intensely for her hometown.
Back home, her birth mother was still alive at seventy-eight—she wanted them to meet at least once while they both remained in good health.

It had been fourteen years since they had parted.
For Mother, her hometown had grown terribly distant.
And as old age crept steadily upon her too, her yearning for her elderly mother back home grew keener—for these past four or five years she had done nothing but gaze longingly at the northern sky.
Yuzo understood her heart well.
He would strain himself, resolve to earn enough money to send her back home—but time and again some immediate circumstance shattered his plans.
One reason was likely Yuzo’s own lack of resolve—worn down as he was to the bone.
Lately Yuzo grew wearier still of considering repatriation.
The very act of thinking about it—or having it mentioned—grew so utterly loathsome he could barely endure it.
And at times there were moments when even seeing his mother’s face became unbearable.

When the conversation lapsed, the clattering sound of crows pacing across the roof echoed... As Yuzo contemplated his life—devoid of even a leaden luster—he abruptly rolled onto his side. Ceiling, tatami mats, walls, shoji screens, fusuma—though it was a small world, the shadows of decay and decline were starkly visible to the eye. Then his nerves grew fiercely restless; remaining rigidly still like this, he felt as though both body and soul were being bound tight by this air of decay and dust, until staying home became unbearable. Rather than loneliness, it was a sensation of emptiness that pricked his nerves like needles. Even so, there was no decisive moment when he could resolutely leave home.

"Haven’t I already become utterly incapable of doing anything?"

It felt as though he were being crushed.
A sorrow of having fallen to rock bottom assailed him.

In the damp garden, autumn sunlight spilled down, glistening moistly.
There, blue grass grew short, with seven or eight potted roses and Miyagino bush clover left neglected without fertilizer. On the roses, two or three small flowers bloomed lonesomely.
In a corner stood a single slender-leaved persimmon tree, spindly and curving like the character く.
A fruitless persimmon tree.
Under it, the garbage pit of the house across—dug into the ground—was visible over the fence.
A short distance away, the kitchen could also be seen.
It too was part of the tenement—diapers hung drying here, an outhouse visible there—and from this side, one was forced to confront the exposed rear of the house across.
On the opposite side too stood a persimmon tree, its branches bowed under early-ripening yellow persimmons that hung heavy.
The persimmon leaves trembled faintly, and sunlight shifted through them in flickers.

Yuzo had drifted into a drowsy state at some point.
The hazy autumn warmth seeped into his body, giving him the sensation of soaking in tepid water... Illusions spawned endlessly from illusion, various shadows passing before his eyes... And when he looked, there he was—climbing onto the roof of a tall, towering spire like Nikolai Cathedral, leaping and bounding about.
Beneath him swarmed countless faces observing his mad antics.
They were all sneering faces.
Enraged by them, he leaped even more wildly... Then, just as suddenly, his foot slipped and he plunged headfirst!
He thought he’d fallen—yet didn’t.
As if wings had sprouted, he hovered weightlessly in midair—some kind of golden light glittered dazzlingly before his eyes.
And then it transformed into a sharp blade and thrust into his eyes.
There, as the hallucination began to fade, he felt a sharp numbness in his arm.
He realized it was because he was using his arm as a pillow, yet even so, he didn’t attempt to turn over.
He resolved to let it go numb until it could numb no more.
When all sensation from fingertips to elbow had vanished, Yuzo finally opened his eyes.

Rubbing his completely numb arm, he slowly sat up and looked for Mother—only to find her lying face down on the two tatami, making soft snoring sounds.
A house without a Shinto altar, a Buddhist altar, or even a clock was desolate.

Yuzo felt vaguely irritated and called out, “Mother.”

He barked harshly.
Then he abruptly stood up and stomped on the tatami with a thud.
He had no real purpose—he simply wanted her to remain awake.
He drifted out onto the veranda to look.
The bright sky, the crisp air—Yuzo felt as though even the deepest recesses of his dark heart were being laid bare.

“Maybe I should go out,” he thought.

With that notion, he turned back toward his desk—only to find his mother squinting dazedly in his direction with dull eyes,

“What?” she said sluggishly.

“What’s this—it’s hardly the season for midday naps anymore,” he said sarcastically. “I’m going to Hongo for a bit.”

“To Hongo… What for?”

“I thought I’d go buy some meat or something…”

“Meat, you say…”

“Well, I’ve forgotten the taste of meat for a while now, you see.”

In Yuzo’s eyes, the crimson meat on the butcher’s chopping block now appeared vividly clear, and his parched appetite craved it fiercely. But he had resolved to leave home—partly because he thought breathing in some bustling town air might stir his desolate heart.

After a short while, Yuzo put on a pale brown bowler hat that had been crushed out of shape, donned an ill-fitting haori over his indigo-dyed linen kimono—its length and sleeves both too short—and slipped out stealthily through the garden side of the house.
Feeling oddly reluctant and keenly avoiding lingering there, he hurried through the tenement passageway… On either side, four out of ten tenement units stood vacant, their aged rental signs peeling in the wind, ready to fall.
When passing by the well, both the well bucket and its rope had been drawn up to the sink, parched and bone-dry, with lime clinging thinly and grimily around the area.

Passing by the isolation hospital’s side and proceeding a short distance brought him to the shabby outskirts of town. There, he encountered a stretcher being carried into the hospital. The pungent smell of carbolic acid assaulted his nostrils. Yuzo, gripped by an indescribable feeling, turned to look and saw beneath the covering the legs of a man drained of blood. The soles of the feet, illuminated by the sun, became unnaturally white. After walking a short while, there were graveyards on both sides of the road, and signs reading "Cemetery No. 3 of ×× Temple" caught his eye. A road that was dim even in daytime. The cemetery on one side ended at a large Western-style building painted in glossy paint. It was the school building of the Shingon-shu Chugakurin Seminary. Fifteen or sixteen apprentices wearing Western clothes had come out to the sports ground and were energetically playing tennis.

Before long, the road opened up into Sendagi-cho.
From there, he pondered about winter preparations for their household, pondered about turmoil and anxieties deep in his mind, pondered about themes he wanted to write about—and before he knew it, had reached the slope near the high school.
There were graveyards and temples again… Suddenly, he shuddered at the peril posed by his indolent way of life.

He turned along the slope.
After walking a short distance, it became Oiwake-dori.
The city's clamor buzzed in his ears until he felt faint... His mind grew agitated, as if he might blindly collide with someone.
Itabashi-dori's rattling horse carriage was rounding the intersection, its bell clanging violently.
Rickshaws, handcarts, horse-drawn carts converged from three directions and came to a brief halt here.
Yuzo passed through this bottleneck and ambled aimlessly from Morikawa-cho toward Hongo-dori.
Amid the bustle, he paused briefly before used bookstores, glanced into haberdasheries and kimono shops, then emerged from Hikage-cho into Haruki-cho as usual.
He skimmed magazines at two or three stores before turning from just past Central Hall toward Hongo-za.
There being no particular purpose, he drifted into Hongo-za's plaza to look around.
It was closed.
But with notices announcing an opening in three or four days—a standing signboard erected and posters reading "Opening on ×× Day" pasted at the entrance.
Before the teahouse glinted twelve or thirteen rickshaws clustered together, creating an unearned air of prosperity.
Yuzo felt as though he'd brushed against another world's atmosphere, his mood growing slightly buoyant.
He meandered back out to the tramway.
A gentle wind began blowing.
Dust swirled up lightly.

With the vague intention of walking without any particular destination, he turned from beneath a small clock tower into Ooyokocho, suddenly remembered, and purchased meat at a butcher shop set back from the main street.
Then he went straight down Ikinosaka Slope along that street and came out beside the artillery arsenal.
Soot swirling upward into the bright sky; chimneys standing starkly; factories with corrugated iron roofs lined like train cars; buildings of blackened red bricks; white plaster smeared with dust; shattered glass windows; and now and then deafening roars that pierced the ears—feeling an indescribable mix of discomfort and oppression from these sounds and sights, Yuzo walked along a long, crumbling earthen wall toward Koishikawa.
From Masago-cho and Tamachi through Kawakatsumae to Yanagi-cho, that street had many antique shops.
Yuzo had a habit of peeking into antique shops whenever he came across them, sometimes even stopping to look.
He had no particular intention to buy, but if prices were listed, he would look at those too.
Disliking the blazing sun, Yuzo unconsciously took to walking on the shaded side of the street.

Suddenly, he came to a stop in front of a small antique shop. There was nothing particularly eye-catching—just a shop cluttered with odds and ends. In the front area were plates, bowls, teapots, donburi bowls—all flawed Seto ware coated in dust and turned white. Bowls with peeling lacquer were also visible. In the dimly lit depths of the shop, a single gold-framed painting emitted a dull glow. It was a portrait of a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl wearing a purple haori. The depiction and colors were those of an old-fashioned oil painting; even the purple hue appeared muddled, yet those eyes—gazing upward with an intensity—alone remained vivid. Cheeks, nose, lips, jaw—all softly defined in low relief—formed a face of voluptuous beauty, reminiscent of some renowned geisha whose name hovered just beyond recall.

Ah, that woman… Yuzo’s heart surged tumultuously.

It was unmistakably the face of the woman from the past.
Then Yuzo, feeling as though a youthful breath had been blown into him, stepped unsteadily inside.
With fingertips trembling slightly, he lifted the painting and looked it over from left to right,

"How much is this?" he asked.
His voice came out off-key, ringing in his own ears as if emanating from the crown of his skull.

"That one, eh? Well then," he said curtly, "let’s set it at one yen and thirty sen." His tone suggested he didn’t care whether it sold or not as he remained motionless by the brazier, watching this way.
He was a large-faced old man of about forty-five or forty-six, with prominently jutting cheeks, bulging eyes, and a nose tip tinged reddish.

“Hmm.” After a brief silence: “Can’t you come down on that?”

“Well now, I can’t do much more than that…” he said grudgingly as he rose and stepped down into the shop. He took the painting in his hands. He droned through an incomprehensible lecture about the frame’s gold leaf and the painting’s execution, then bluntly stated, “I’ll take off ten sen.”

“Ten sen’s no use. Make it eighty sen,” he grumbled.

“Then please take it for ten sen less.”

With that, the negotiation concluded, and Yuzo emptied nearly the bottom of his purse to purchase the portrait of the woman from the past. And having had it wrapped in old newspaper, he started walking off, dangling it as he trudged along. His spirits grew strangely restless, and he felt as though he were floating weightlessly through the air. The rumble of vehicles, people’s faces, the glitter of glass on eaves reflecting sunlight, the flickering shadows and sounds before his eyes—all seemed far removed from himself. Memories of that and this flickered through his chest like illusions. He captured them in his heart and held on, but lacked even the leisure to scrutinize them thoroughly… they continued to flash away.

The woman was called Aya-san.
The first time they became acquainted was when Yuzo was fourteen or fifteen and she was eleven or twelve; at that time, Yuzo was being raised in his uncle’s household.
Uncle had joined forces with five or six small capitalists to operate a small-scale beer brewing company then, but Aya-san frequently visited Uncle’s house.
Aya-san’s father had been a samurai from Kawagoe who served as a clerk at the Ministry of Communications since around 1874–75—a clerk he may have been, but as an official of that era, he apparently wielded considerable influence and lived comfortably.
Yet he was suddenly swept up in a business fever and joined the beer brewing venture.
Though they called it joint capital, in reality it was just Uncle—fresh from the countryside—and Aya-san’s father who had some money; the rest were speculators trying to hit the jackpot by targeting others’ pockets.
Without even hiring a single engineer in that field—a half-hearted approach—the amateur brewing method had spoiled from the very first batch.
When Uncle had turned his assets to smoke and Aya-san’s father breathed his last, the company dissolved.
Aya-san’s family moved into a grimy tenement in the Shiinoki district of Nishikata-cho and lived on a government pension for a year or two, but when that became insufficient, they started a cheap candy store through her mother’s resourcefulness.
Even so, Aya-san still always wore a purple merino haori, her hair and obi arranged entirely in the manner of a mansion-district girl as she attended school.
Moreover, being a girl with fine features, a graceful figure, and refined bearing, even when the purple fabric grew faded and frayed from repeated washing, it never made her appear particularly impoverished.

About three years had passed.
At Uncle’s house, they decided to take over a boarding house within a temple compound in the sixth block exactly as it was and begin an unfamiliar guesthouse business.
Then Aya-san came to sell cheap candies nearly every day, clutching a cloth-wrapped candy box.
Hair tied in a peach-split style carried shadows of festering household hardships somewhere in her figure, yet she still hadn’t shed the air of a mansion-district girl.
Refined yet speaking with an older woman’s mannerisms—though she prattled endlessly about everything—her agreeable tone kept others from disliking her.
Combined with dignified bearing, approachable nature, and pretty face meant students invariably bought candies each visit even when not eating.
Yuzo too saved his pocket money elsewhere to make purchases.
At times Aya-san would settle in to talk at length—being asked lately by some Western painter to model; receiving silver crosses and sweets from a mission madam; seething hatred for beer-brewing swindlers who ruined her family; heartening kindness from neighborhood wives; her mother secretly borrowing daily loans; her father idling about tending birds while doing nothing else—brooding over each matter with sober discernment.
That winter came word her father with heart trouble had taken night watchman duties at a mansion; soon after Yuzo found himself obliged to return homeward—three years passing without chance to see Aya-san.

Four years had passed.
Having lost his father, Yuzo—still barely past twenty—became his household’s pillar and moved his entire family to Tokyo.
In Tokyo, this was an era when people here and there wore plain white clothing.
After first settling at his uncle’s house, he discreetly inquired about the Hasunuma family—Aya-san’s surname—and learned they remained as poor as ever though all were healthy; they had recently opened a small ice shop, with Aya-san now working as a factory girl at a pencil manufacturing plant.
Yuzo found himself wanting to live in a quiet mansion district for no particular reason, so while house-hunting he passed by Aya-san’s home.
He felt an aimless urge to stop by.
Compared to his memories, the house had decayed drastically, now leaning at such an angle it seemed ready to collapse.
Only the grape trellis thrived wildly, making the small dim dwelling appear recessed deep within.
They had enclosed the vineyard with reed screens to create an ice shop—a cutting platform stood there alongside three or four siphon bottles.
Shelves displayed twenty-odd bottles: wine, strawberry soda, ramune, empty jars papered over, cans—while three benches draped in old gingham sat at the storefront.
Aya-san had brought a washbasin outside and was vigorously scrubbing laundry.
When he saw her, everything about her had transformed utterly.
She wore a medium-patterned yukata, but her obi’s knotting and hairstyle showed complete erosion by hardship.

When she caught sight of Yuzo’s figure, she stood dumbfounded and said, “Goodness, Yuzo-san, what happened to you?”

Her voice now carried a vulgar downtown edge; the face that once held a dignified air had lost its refinement, replaced by a somewhat forced charm. Only her wide-open eyes retained the same moistness they’d had in her maiden days, vibrantly alive with an undeniable power to draw people in.

Inside the house, several birdcages still hung, and the rustling of Japanese white-eyes fluttering within their cages could be heard quietly. The clock that had always been there ticked dully as it marked the time, and three moon lutes—which hadn’t existed before—now hung on the wall.

Father sat by the brazier, smoking a cigarette and scrutinizing Yuzo’s appearance intently, not uttering a single word.
And from time to time he would hack violently, his ashen face flushing crimson.
He had always been an unfriendly man.
Edema had developed on his face.

Yuzo, seeing how severely weakened he was,
“Are you unwell?” he asked.
“Ah,” he said arrogantly, “They say there’s heat in the lungs.”
He stated this coolly, utterly unperturbed.
“Not good at all.”

As he frowned,

"What can you do?" he cut in. "They say I'd be fine if I just rest up, but with the household in this state, things don't go as they should."

he remarked casually and gave a wry smile.

While his daughter and wife wore yukata, he still donned a soiled lined kimono under a cotton black crested haori, maintaining the same stiff demeanor as before.

Yuzo felt as though a cold hand were somehow stroking his chest.

Aya-san had no male siblings.
There were two younger sisters; the next one was called Okane and was even more beautiful than her elder sister.
She was already sixteen.
She had recently begun commuting to the printing bureau, but the youngest child, Oyoshi, remained quite the spoiled brat—even at nine years old, she would still clamber onto her mother’s lap and grope for her shriveled breast as if seeking sustenance.
The mother was a good-natured woman who, while letting Oyoshi play with her exposed chest, began speaking rapidly and at length about their poverty.
And when she mentioned that Yuzo had come looking for a house, Aya-san and she began bustling about, discussing this place and that as if relatives were coming to move in.
Aya’s father remained completely aloof; when the conversation began, he abruptly stood up and went out to the engawa, where he ground mealworms for the nightingales.

In the end, Aya-san took charge of guiding him and began searching for vacant houses in the neighborhood.
After identifying a suitable house and deciding to rent it, Aya-san handled all negotiations regarding security deposits, rent, and other matters while Yuzo merely followed behind to exchange formal greetings. Yet Yuzo felt an indescribable discomfort at Aya-san’s worldly-wise way of managing things.
Even so, once all arrangements were settled, Yuzo’s family immediately moved into that house.
During that period, the two of them would sneak out for nighttime strolls around the area or invent pretexts to wander about, even attending the theater two or three times.

However, over roughly two months, their relationship had grown distant without either noticing when.
Even so, Aya-san came almost daily, talked with her mother and sister individually each time, and then left.
At times, she would claim she was on her way back from the factory, flaunting her hands blackened with pencil lead dust.
Both hands were chapped and cracked, rough and dry.
Whether in speech or appearance, she was just like that—laying everything bare without reserve, with the hardships of managing a household constantly on her lips.
She would come to borrow rice without an ounce of shame—even pocket money.
When there was a need on our part—if we consulted her about something like a pawnshop matter—she’d immediately latch on with a “Right away!” and briskly set out herself to handle it, without a shred of concern for appearances or reputation, even if we asked her to do something mortifying to ask for.

“What can you do? They say it’s one of those households around here,” she murmured in a low voice. “No matter how grandly they keep up their entrances, if you’re talking about homes in this area without a pawnshop ledger—well, those are few and far between,” she added with an airy giggle.

Aya-san knew the circumstances of each household in the neighborhood house by house. She would casually boast about this family or that one pawning their belongings. At times she adopted the airs of a teahouse waitress—her manner gratingly spirited—slathering on thick white powder and tittering over rumors about actors from the small theaters in Nezu or Misakichō. It was even rumored in hushed tones that she chased after Nezu’s underlings.

The ice shop remained hushed throughout spring, with people rarely entering. Mother often dozed off; Father was always by the brazier, smoking cigarettes while hacking phlegmy coughs; Oyoshi had joined the neighborhood boys and played caked in sand under the blazing sun on the main road. But when night fell, the shop’s business transformed completely. By the time Aya-san and Okane-san put on their makeup and came out to the shop, young students began gathering one or two at a time, and on busy nights as many as eight or nine of them assembled in a row, chattering noisily about something. They were all regulars. There were those who played the moon lute and those who blew reed flutes, and with the sisters joining in as well, the raucous ensemble continued until eleven or twelve o’clock. There were often times when Mother slipped away from the commotion to fret over the next day’s rice. Yuzo found another place where he could indulge his youthful restlessness, so he never joined their company. He stood as a bystander with cold eyes.

Autumn arrived.
The ice shop grew utterly desolate, and the regulars who gathered there at night dwindled.
As autumn deepened, the father’s decline became pronounced, and the family’s decay grew evident; Aya-san began hurrying off to the factory.
And Aya-san's hands were always jet-black with pencil dust.
Even so, she rarely became despondent or sullen, but at times would let out a sigh and say, “With Father’s condition being what it was, no matter how much I earned, it was never enough.”
“I sometimes think of just running away from home, but…” she sighed.
At other times, she would nonchalantly recount the plot of a kyogen she’d seen at Nezu’s replacement theater or gossip about actors, amusing herself alone.
Amidst all this, talk arose of Aya-san taking a husband.
The groom was a factory worker at the factory where Aya-san worked; he expressed a desire to marry into a poor family.
Of course, the groom came prizing Aya-san’s appearance above all.
Aya-san, too, did not seem entirely dissatisfied.

And during the progress of that discussion, Yuzo moved with his family to Shitaya’s Shichikenchō.
And communication with Aya-san’s household abruptly ceased.

Four or five years after that, Yuzo once encountered Aya-san on Hongō-dōri.
It was already mid-October, but Aya-san was trudging along one side of the street in a washed-out, vertical-striped unlined kimono.
In her dazed state, she didn’t notice Yuzo standing abruptly before her eyes.
When he called out to her, she fixed her restlessly uneasy gaze on him for a moment, stiffened her expression into a stern face, and offered a greeting—such was the state of things.
When he asked about her home, she said they had moved to the Koshigaya area.
When he asked a bit more about her family’s circumstances during their brief conversation: her father had soon died after that; the son-in-law turned out to be far less persevering than expected—not only utterly incapable of supporting the household but also too sickly to earn properly—and the household was constantly in turmoil.
"In the midst of this, Okane became involved with one of the regulars and eloped to Kobe, where she set up a household."
"The household became increasingly unsustainable until we finally had to close it down; Oyoshi was taken in by relatives in Kawagoe; Mother entered domestic service in Tokyo; we withdrew to Koshigaya until arrangements could be made to set up a new household—and so our family was utterly scattered."
"And today—she said—her mother had fallen ill at her place of service, so she had rushed to Tokyo for the first time in ages without even gathering her belongings—but she herself, whether from the strain of managing a household or illness, had hair so thin her scalp showed through, a pallid face, and a silk handkerchief wrapped around her neck where the marks of a boil were visible."
And her voice caught strangely in her throat, her form now drained of color and scent, a pitiful sight.

Yuzo simply listened and parted ways without showing any particular sympathy. But for two or three days, he kept the faded image of Aya-san alive in his heart and felt a strange sensation. However, he immediately forgot all about it and never once tried to recall it. And after that, all news of her was completely cut off.

Yuzo continued to wander aimlessly, conjuring and dismissing such past events in his heart. When he conjured up the image of Aya-san from the time she wore her purple haori, he could not help but feel a slight pain in his chest. He also recalled being told by his uncle, “Why don’t you marry her?” Both of them had dreams—though their meanings and forms differed—and he also thought about how they had lived.

Yuzo entered Hakusan’s forest at some point and circled the temple grounds.
The air within the trees hung damp and cold.
This was where he had first gripped Aya-san’s hand and been startled by its parched roughness.
Now he startled at his own heart’s desiccation... Yet treading this memory-saturated ground, Yuzo tasted nothing—no sensation, no flavor.
From his thoroughly glutted heart’s depths rose something pleading its emptiness, making him think again and again of life’s withering.

I just hate going home!
Returning to that dust-choked home pervaded by an air of decadence, I always feel as though I'm plummeting to the depths... I hate that feeling!
When he stepped outside, he tried to escape that feeling, if only for a little while.
Today was no different.
Yuzo passed the time meaninglessly looking at the Kagura-den's plaque, standing abruptly before the Haiden, or reading the Shirahatazakura Monument.
And when there was finally nothing left to see, he listlessly left the forest and made his way up toward Gotenmachi.
Then he took the road beside the botanical garden and emerged at Hikawa rice fields.
When he came out in front of a certain factory, he remembered that this was the factory where pencils had once been manufactured.
And he thought that the gate and the road there were all places Aya-san had passed through every day.
He merely thought.
Yuzo felt his dry heart grow sad for no particular reason.

A sudden light chill seeped into his very being.
When he looked up, the sunlight had thinned imperceptibly—the air and sky now utterly clear—while the western horizon blazed brilliantly.
Dark shadows pooled across that area.
Yuzo felt the weight of the dangling portrait straining his arm and repeatedly thought of either discarding it or giving it to some child.
Now he regretted having spent his meager savings to buy it.
Yet simultaneously, he found himself longing for that time when he’d returned to his hometown and vividly remembered Aya-san.

Again, he continued walking aimlessly for a little while.
Then exiting Hayashichō onto Sugamo-dōri, he followed the red brick earthen wall of the mental hospital and emerged at Fujimae.
When he entered Ugatsuzaka, the area already lay steeped in hazy twilight, breaths of passersby hanging visible in the air.
The evening scene was thick with fog.
Passing beneath tall groves of trees revealed rows of houses.
A cold-seeming firelight flickered dimly through the mist, every home hushed.
Yuzo dragged his stick-like legs through the town, stomach hollowed empty.
While questioning why he had wandered purposelessly about, he passed through the tenement's main gate.
He felt as though crawling into a hole.
The ground lay thoroughly dampened, gray vapor misting upward around the well.
Beyond this gloom, fox-colored firelight glowed on shoji screens.
Desolation assailed him.

He entered the house.
The lamp had not yet been lit, and the mother was fumbling around in the dark kitchen doing something.
From the kitchen of the house across the way, firelight was shining, and it appeared unnervingly deep.
Even in that cramped space, the fog’s hue appeared dense... Yuzo felt as though he were stepping into a realm of extinction and tossed the portrait he had been dangling toward a corner.
And then he lit the lamp.
The dim firelight drifted through calm—or rather stagnant air—illuminating the tattered state of the dilapidated house.
Yuzo threw out his legs, more exhausted than he’d been in recent days, and collapsed heavily against the desk.
And he closed his eyes and thought up nothing in particular.
Suddenly, the figure of Aya-san from the portrait flickered before his eyes... He couldn’t help feeling as if he’d bought some worthless junk.
He opened his eyes and stared intently at the portrait he had thrown into the corner, but then abruptly stood up and picked up the portrait as if dragging it.
And with the old newspaper still covering it, he furtively threw it into the back of the cupboard.

After a short while, Yuzo tasted meat for the first time in ages with a feeling akin to having witnessed foolishness himself.
And no matter how much time passed, Yuzo did not take out the portrait from the cupboard.