Pathway to Japanese Literature

I A desolate wind blew in, and the crown-like tip of a single exceptionally tall cypress swayed frailly in the wind. The early January dusk sky hung heavily clouded in a sullied shade tinged with pale yellow, and through bare branches sketched like pen strokes emerged the celadon-colored roof of a Five-Storied Pagoda.

Minoru stood at the second-floor window with her hands in her pockets, gazing at the sky while thinking of where her husband might have gone after leaving early that morning to search for work without any particular destination in mind. A faint rectangular evening sun like a stain had been dimly casting light on the side wall, but before long that too vanished, and outside the dimness erased everything from one end to the other. Minoru tried not to forget to buy tofu for dinner but found it too wearisome to go downstairs; though she heard the tofu seller’s whistle and noticed them pass two or three houses ahead, she did not go down. And so she kept gazing at the evening sky.

If it were a clear day, a purple mist would hang over Ueno’s Forest around this time. The sky that had spent the day intimately with the forest’s treetops must have been playing a prank as they parted—blowing purple breath across those very places—or so Minoru thought as she gazed out. This evening’s trees and roofs each congealed into parched hues before being swallowed by dim shadows that crept forward in silence. As Minoru steeped herself in this desolate scene and lowered her gaze, she saw the daughter from the neighboring koto teacher’s house step through its latticed door. The girl looked up at Minoru’s face with a smile and bowed her head. Every time Minoru saw this girl’s face, she remembered last summer’s shame—that evening shower when she had rested her hand on her husband’s shoulder as they gazed toward the forest together, caught unaware by this very girl. Even now, as that memory flashed through her chest alongside traces of the girl’s smile, Minoru returned the bow with a gesture that unwittingly mimicked a young maiden’s propriety. Then at once she rattled shut the storm shutters and descended downstairs.

The tofu seller’s whistle could be heard somewhere in the direction of the main thoroughfare, but he no longer came this far. Minoru closed all the storm shutters in the lower sitting room, turned off the light in the living room, and then went out to the gate to check.

In the communal cemetery before her eyes, two or three new grave markers had multiplied. With the cemetery flanking one side, the bleak path stretching to the corner's ginkgo tree—like a strip of silver foil stretched taut—showed no trace of human presence. Their emaciated dog, ribs protruding, displayed a plaster-like hue in the dusk's hazy shadows as it raced about gnawing a twig. Then coming up to Minoru's feet—she who stood staring fixedly toward where her husband would return—the dog sat facing her direction, faintly wagging its tail tip against the ground while keeping watch toward the distant ginkgo tree.

“Mei.”

Minoru called in a low voice while looking down at the dog’s head nestled under her sleeve. The dog she had called remained frozen in place, only lifting its face to stare up at her, but immediately tilted its head and twitched its small ears as if trying to catch some mysterious sound from surroundings now fallen completely silent—all traces of living things having vanished. From the cemetery that held countless deaths came a cold wind, as if plucking each strand of human hair from its root. Minoru—who had been gazing to the right and looking back to the left of the path lying before her—entered inside, carrying in her heart only the lonely lamplight that seemed to shrink the single gleam from a lodging house’s eaves two or three houses away into this pallid world.

When Yoshio returned, a sporadic light rain had begun to fall. Turning his head—smaller than average—and the disproportionately large shoulders of his Western-tailored suit toward Minoru, Yoshio removed his wet shoes. Smoothing back his drooping hair as he entered the bright tea room, he proceeded straight to the inner tatami room where he lay down as if tossing himself alongside the furoshiki bundle he had been carrying.

“No good.” “No good.” “No matter where I went, my manuscripts wouldn’t sell.” “It’s fine.” “It can’t be helped.”

Minoru had thought it must have been a failure because Yoshio had returned carrying a furoshiki bundle. The fact that he had wandered around endlessly struck Minoru as pitiable, like a sparrow lost in the rain. “Are you hungry?” “I haven’t eaten anything.” “How many bookstores did I go around?”

Yoshio lay prone with his face pressed against the tatami, so his voice sounded muffled to Minoru as if wrapped in cloth.

While Yoshio was away, Minoru couldn't bring herself to take up her chopsticks alone, so she had eaten nothing that day, just like Yoshio who had been out. Upon hearing Yoshio's words, Minoru was suddenly filled with a full measure of joy at preparing a meal and went out to the kitchen to begin working. Until the meal was ready, Yoshio remained as he was and did not move.

II

“I’m a hopeless person after all.” “I don’t have the strength to support you either.” Having silently finished his meal, Yoshio put down his chopsticks and lay down again after saying this. Minoru didn’t respond. After clearing the meal trays, she went to stand before the chest and pulled out various considered items from its drawers, stacking them there.

“Hey.” “Are you going out?” “Yes.” “But there’s nothing else I can do.” After preparing the bundle, Minoru put on a coat over her everyday clothes and tied the knee strings at Yoshio’s bedside.

“Well, I’m off.” “You’ll be all right alone.” “You won’t feel too lonely, will you?” Minoru knelt down and stroked Yoshio’s forehead. Yoshio’s narrow forehead was cold. “I’ll go with you.” “Then you need to change into a kimono.” “Western clothes would look strange.”

While Yoshio was removing his Western clothes, Minoru went to the mirror, wrapped a scarf around her neck, and stood holding a large bundle. She thought that had she been alone she could have taken a rickshaw there and back, but going with this person meant walking through the rain—yet she didn’t utter a word of this.

Minoru went about locking doors and taking umbrellas down from shelves while clutching the heavy bundle under one arm. When the bundle became cumbersome, she would abandon it in the center of the tatami room only to forget where she’d left it and search frantically about. The two each took an umbrella and circled around from the garden gate to the front path. “You’re keeping watch over the house,” she called. “I’ll bring back a treat for you.” In the garden’s dark corner where rain fell in thick droplets, Minoru spotted the dog’s white form and spoke. The dog had grown accustomed to being shut indoors whenever they went out together. This clever little creature, hearing their departure sounds, now tried to wriggle under the veranda eaves before they could confine it.

Even after closing the gate and stepping outside, Minoru remained unable to shake the image of the dog sitting quietly—its subdued presence lingering in her mind long after they had left. After walking a short distance, Yoshio seemed to notice something and tried to take the bundle from Minoru’s hand. “I’ll carry it for you.” The rainy station was crowded with people waiting for the delayed train. Though the rain had only just begun falling, everything—the soil, trees, and people’s clothes—exuded the sodden scent of dampness, while beneath the cold air hummed a faint, resonant undertone. Minoru kept Yoshio at a distance as he held the bundle beneath his coat, refusing to draw near his side. Even after boarding the train, they continued silently observing their own wretched circumstances mirrored in each other’s hearts, all while avoiding any deliberate meeting of their faces—those marital visages—within the brightly lit car where strangers’ eyes converged. Minoru occasionally glimpsed the edge of the furoshiki bundle peeking out from under Yoshio’s coat. The narrow coat’s hem hung awkwardly parted at his knees. Turning her face away, she pictured Yoshio’s pitiful figure and fixed her gaze on the rain-drenched lights beyond the train windows.

Eyelashes fluttering as though pitying herself flickered beneath the trembling shadows cast by raindrops falling from her umbrella as Minoru emerged from an alley in Nakamachi. When she came to Yoshio’s side—where he had stood waiting straight-backed under a corner store’s light with his Western umbrella held upright—her face wore a smile like a whispered secret, seemingly from nowhere.

“Did it go through?” “It’s all right.”

The fact that the bulky bundle had been removed from between them, leaving only light paper money in the woman’s coat pocket, returned the two of them to something resembling ordinary people of the floating world. As they let the absurdly large streetcar—dripping water and lumbering sluggishly right before their eyes—pass by, Minoru stared at the man’s face with an expression that seemed determined to reclaim, in this interval, the obligation of intimacy between them that had until now been shoved aside somewhere, and deliberately smiled.

“Doesn’t matter.” Yoshio laughed as well, rubbing the tip of his chin with one hand while he spoke. Yet in Yoshio’s eyes, Minoru’s smile cast a sharp shadow that seemed to conceal depths, and he felt an unpleasant sensation.

“I’m cold.” “I need to drink something.”

Minoru walked ahead of Yoshio. Looking across, every shopfront lay blurred by rain, their lights dripping wet through the downpour. Oil-paper umbrellas sliced through the street’s lamplight—in the muddy road, scattered glimmers sparkled where clogs and cart wheels had left their waterlogged traces.

The two of them entered the small Western-style restaurant in front of the ward office. The room held not a single customer. Minoru, who had gone to the mirror and looked at her reflection, was called by Yoshio; sitting shoulder to shoulder with him in front of the stove, she warmed her hands. Minoru knew that at times like these, Yoshio would become sullen and take to gazing despondently at their poverty as if it were some wretched abyss of destitution. Minoru deliberately jabbed her shoulder into Yoshio’s body—Yoshio, whose hollow-seeming eyelids were wrinkled as he stared vacantly at the stove flames, the flesh of his cheeks tracing languid curves. And while looking sideways at Yoshio’s face,

“You shouldn’t make such an unsightly face.” She said with a laugh. Yoshio harbored antipathy toward the woman’s attitude that seemed to mock his shabbiness and remained silent. He detested the woman’s mentality—how even in such circumstances she put on an air thick with powder, as if determined not to let herself appear shabby, trying to tint her emotions like rouge. Yoshio suddenly recalled the woman of some means from the trade world with whom he had briefly cohabited before joining lives with Minoru. Although that woman served drinks for the man every night, during times of poverty she would grieve over their shared circumstances with equal sorrow, and she possessed a tenderness that nearly wiped away Yoshio’s work-weariness with her own tears. Though she was a woman of loose profession, unlike Minoru who would immediately—

“It’ll work out somehow.”

She had never uttered such a desperate statement before.

“What’s wrong? Be quiet.” Minoru swayed her body back and forth, laughing each time the motion’s force struck Yoshio’s shoulder. “I had something unpleasant happen today.”

Yoshio said this while bending his back before the stove. “What is it?” In contrast to Yoshio’s words tinged with a gloomy tone, Minoru’s reply floated with rouge-tinted allure throughout.

“In ××, you know,” he said. “A review of my work came out.” “What did they say?” “They called it trite—said they couldn’t fathom why anyone would dredge up something like this now.” Minoru laughed aloud. “Well, there’s no helping it.” “No helping it?”

Yoshio raised his voice heedless of their surroundings and glared at Minoru’s face. Minoru turned around silently, but in the empty room her obliquely sweeping gaze found only the white tablecloth fluttering in her vision. Then the lamplight reflected in the glassware steadfastly holding their positions on the dining table appeared to Minoru like the shadow of a smile secretly directing its attention to the depths of her mind where she now pondered something. Minoru turned her face directly forward and laughed by herself again.

“So you think that way too, don’t you?” “That’s right.”

Yoshio’s eyes—their swollen lids making them appear even narrower—and Minoru’s eyes—their thin lids stretched taut—stared at each other for a long time. When Minoru had read that work in manuscript form,

“It’s interesting.” “Quite good.” Having said that, she returned it to Yoshio’s hand. To the extent that Yoshio found value in his work solely for himself, he had assumed Minoru would correspondingly devote herself to her own endeavors. That Minoru had suddenly shown such an aloof attitude—in a cold tone that seemed to resonate with society’s scorn and the depths of her heart—was something Yoshio had never anticipated. That the frivolous woman’s contempt for Yoshio—born of economic hardship—had spurted forth even here was something Yoshio failed to grasp.

“You’re quite the one to say such unsympathetic things.”

Some time after saying this, Yoshio’s eyes had turned bright red.

As Minoru turned her body to receive the plate the waiter had brought, she said nothing.

III

“You think of me as such a worthless person, don’t you?”

After leaving the station, the two walked up a pitch-dark slope while exchanging words. The lamplight filtering raindrops through its glass looked exactly like the shadows of two people crouched weeping in some dark corner of humanity.

The fact that neither of them could find occupations to sustain their livelihood, and that his meager authority as a literary figure had gradually dissolved over years of societal neglect, struck Yoshio as utterly pitiful no matter how he considered it. And along with hating the world that was turning its back on his years of work, he grew furious that one of those turning away was Minoru. When he thought how, if one person were to throw a stone at another, the woman targeted would grovel her heart toward the thrower, Yoshio felt that even if he hurled every possible insult at the woman before him, it would still feel insufficient. Yoshio could not shake off how Minoru’s earlier sneer now seemed clamped between sharp teeth right at the center of his chest.

“You can stand being with such a worthless person, can you?” “How can you keep calling a man of no value your husband?” “How can you keep smiling like that in front of a man you’re mocking?” “You’re more frivolous than a prostitute.”

Yoshio continued uttering these words as he strode ahead relentlessly. Minoru followed in silence from behind. The soaked hem of Minoru’s kimono clung tightly behind her tabi socks and geta sandal straps, hampering her ability to walk. No matter how she tried, she couldn’t match Yoshio’s rapid strides. By the time Minoru finally entered the house, Yoshio had already stretched out before the small oblong brazier. Taking the bread she’d bought from its bag, Minoru twisted off pieces to toss to Mei—who had trailed her into the dirt-floored entryway—all while stubbornly keeping her face turned away from Yoshio’s illuminated form.

“Hey.”

Yoshio called out to Minoru in a sharp voice. “What.”

After saying that, Minoru stroked the puppy and spoke: “Were you lonely all alone?” Keeping up such talk, she did not enter from there. Yoshio abruptly stood up, raised his foot, and kicked the flank of the dog that had lifted its head onto Minoru’s lap. “Get it out of here.” Yoshio gathered his commanding force into his facial muscles as though concentrating it there—thrusting out his jaw in a way that signaled *Out*—then stood rigidly fixed in place. The puppy immediately crawled back beneath Yoshio’s kicked foot and pressed its teeth against the tip of his tabi sock, trying to cling on.

“Go over there.” Minoru grabbed the puppy’s collar, pulled it close to herself once, then dragged it toward the rain-soaked lattice as if to hurl it outside. After closing the door and coming inside, she sat down before Yoshio—who lay sprawled by the brazier as he had been before—and looked up at him with an expression that seemed to clamp down on both her tears and the breath surging up with them, her lips pressed tightly together. “Why don’t we just separate?”

Yoshio lay sprawled out as he said this. The thought that this woman's heavy body—saturated with wanton blood—would entwine itself around the tips of his fragile arms and persist through decades yet to come proved unbearable to Yoshio. He reflected how their near year of arduous marriage had never known a single moment graced by her genuine tenderness. In retrospection, only her slack smile—branded with licentious vitality—stood vivid at the core of their impoverished existence. And always there lingered her soft-fleshed form before his eyes, bearing its scent as it shifted sluggishly through their shared space.

“Even if you cling to someone like me, you won’t be able to do anything.” “I don’t have what it takes to support a wife.” “Because I don’t even have what it takes to support myself as it is.” “I know.”

Minoru said this clearly. When she opened her lips, tears overflowed from her eyes.

“Then let’s separate.” “It’d be better for both of us to split up now.” “I’ll work independently.” “In time.”

The two fell silent for a while.

From the communal cemetery before this house, a neurotic fear—as if whispers of resentment that began cursing human existence each night were filtering through the rain—suddenly passed between the two who had fallen silent. “What do you mean by ‘work’?” “You’re already finished, aren’t you?” “You’re the one without a pulse compared to me.” After saying this, Yoshio enumerated other women who had begun similar literary work around the same time as Minoru, then praised those very women who still adorned the world of art with their brilliance.

“You can’t do it, you know.” “If I’m washed up, then you’re washed up too.”

Minoru was silently crying. When she thought of themselves—that man and woman born unluckily into the world of art yet devoid of talent, now abandoned even by that realm, their exhausted hearts pressed back-to-back in the depths of their destitution—she could not help but weep. “What are you crying about?” “But doesn’t it make one sad?” “I’ll take revenge.” “For your sake, I’ll take revenge on the world.” “I swear I will.”

Minoru said this while crying. “How could such a thing ever be reliable? If you’re going to work, then start now. Letting yourself be toyed with by a spineless husband only lowers your value. If you’re so confident you can do it, you’d be better off working for yourself.”

“I can’t work now—not until the time comes.” “That’s just impossible, don’t you see?” Minoru raised her eyes, glittering with tears, and looked at Yoshio’s face. When she perceived a certain resolve manifesting in the depths of his unfathomable eyes—a resolve suggesting he might someday plunge alone into those impenetrable depths—a fresh surge of antipathy rose in Yoshio’s chest. “Talking back won’t help. “No matter what you say, none of it ever amounts to anything. “We’d be better off separating.”

Having said this as though cutting off the conversation, Yoshio stood up to prepare his own bedding in the back room and headed there.

Minoru silently watched the man’s movements from where she sat. Yoshio pulled down the sleeping quilt from the closet with one hand, then roughly spread it out diagonally and crawled inside still wearing the clothes he had on. Gazing at the hem of the chilled sleeping quilt, Minoru suddenly realized they had been arguing for a long time without any fire and abruptly felt cold—yet she remained huddled against the sliding door, hands tucked in her sleeves and chilled feet wrapped in her kimono’s hem. And as she dwelled on how the man—overwhelmed by hardships he alone could never bear—kept trying to cast her from his grasp, and on herself having to cling regardless, fresh tears welled in her eyes.

Minoru knew that Yoshio's strength fell short of even a single layer when measured against the stratified might of the man she had imagined until then. She did not want to cling eternally to this unreliable man's power. She was frequently driven by the urgent resolve that she too must act. Yet Minoru could find no work whatsoever. As Yoshio had just told her, she possessed no capability to demonstrate anything before him. Though her frustration burned so intensely she wanted to gnaw through her own entrails, Minoru remained incapable of action. She still had no choice but to depend on being sustained by this powerless man's hand.

Minoru stood up with a sigh and stomped over to Yoshio’s bedding. And then, thrusting out her right hand, she shoved aside the sleeping quilt.

“I’m going to sleep too.” “Give me the bedding.”

Between them existed not even one shared set of night bedding. When Yoshio heard that voice, he immediately rose and searched for his glasses by the pillow—but upon leaving his makeshift bed, “Sleep.”

Having said this, he went back out to the tearoom. Minoru, who had been watching the man’s retreating figure for a while, carefully straightened the curled-up futon, then fetched her own pillow and slipped inside. After entering her bedding, Minoru looked back upon days that knew no end—days where the unyielding heart of a man, devoid of suppleness, and the tenacious heart of a woman, intricate in its machinations, perpetually clashed, each day a ceaseless cycle of mutual jabs and quarrels. There, she could not find the cherished heart of a man that would weave even those emotions—tangled like crimson threads—into something more.

Four

Yoshio finally secured employment when the cherry blossoms bloomed. To obtain the means for their livelihood, Yoshio’s emaciated body—devoid of strength—was transported to the city’s heart, a sight Minoru would see off to the station each morning with their small dog. At times, pale fingertips sending kisses from her lips like a lover toward the train window would interrupt the warm sunlight’s glow. Minoru would often return home through the cemetery while murmuring to her small dog. After throwing open the second-floor window, she spent days reading while baring her forehead to sunlight whose fierce warmth felt like children’s nails clawing down human flesh. The new words flowing into her thoughts from books were flavors she often tasted alone. When page after page of art-scented scenes quietly guided her heart—withered like crushed silk by formless longing—into phantom worlds, excitement flushed her cheeks crimson as if blood might seep from the slightest scratch, driving her to wander among graves. Even thorn-tips brushing her sleeve tugged at her heart until nostalgia for everything overwhelmed her, tears spilling forth. When turbulent emotions defied containment, she pressed her forehead against nameless cemetery stones. Through Tennoji’s evening skies—where towering pines and riotous cherry blossoms stained twilight’s shadows—Minoru paced endlessly with brimming tears.

One evening, the two of them wandered aimlessly around Ueno Hill. The night sky, white with cherry blossoms, was clear in a pale yellow hue. The lights in the forest, like the eyes of a beautiful woman blurred by intoxication, intermingled their brilliance among the hazy blossoms. “It’s a lovely evening, isn’t it?” Minoru said this and skipped along gaily, her body adopting postures that seemed to showcase exaggerated gestures. When she imagined how spring’s cherry blossoms now carried forth the tender echoes of thousands of loves once wholly concealed within this mountain forest—each petal drifting from the quiet slopes bearing their lingering whispers—her chest quivered faintly. Beneath a cherry tree whose branches arched low like a canopy, Minoru deliberately spread both sleeves wide to see how it looked. Mingling the aged perfume clinging to her coat with the floral scent, she chased that elusive fragrance step by step—each breath feeling like a brush against something cherished yet perpetually vanishing.

Yoshio walked with his arms tightly crossed and an indifferent expression, keeping his distance from Minoru as he trudged along separately. The notion of poverty clinging to Yoshio’s mind stirred no interest, even as he wandered beneath night-blooming boughs. Minoru—who after long privation could no longer manage proper outerwear—walked with only a coat slung over her everyday clothes. To Yoshio’s eyes gazing at her impoverished form from behind, Minoru’s manner—forgetting everything on this stage of life while cavorting about—seemed a foolishness framed by ugliness.

“Shouldn’t we go back now?”

Having said this, Yoshio stopped in his tracks. The two of them stood for a while on the hill, gazing at the lights across the pond that encircled them like a ring. The distant twang of a shamisen—resembling what might be taken for flickering lantern light—stirred something in both their chests. Minoru suddenly found herself longing for the weight of a soft kimono hem she hadn’t felt in so long. The hem that Minoru’s higeta clogs managed with their tips rustled coldly, its folds stiff with chill.

“I hear there’s a gathering in Yoshiwara.”

Having said this, Yoshio started walking. Leaving Hirokoji behind—where light stained the sky pale red—the two turned their steps toward Yanaka’s depths. The clamorous sound of a distant town’s band, tempered by the mountain’s chilled air, lapped gently at their ears like Kanze water before flowing into cherry blossoms. Spring’s warmth brimmed in Minoru’s chest. She imagined beyond these slopes lay a world clamoring with drunken revelry—people enlivening the spring night. When Minoru looked down at her own feet, rooted from stepping into that world, an unspeakable loneliness gripped her.

“I wish I could live like a proper human being for just one day and go about enjoying myself.”

Just as Minoru was about to say this and turned to look at Yoshio, a single car passed by their side with the serene quiet of a heavenly carriage gliding through Miho no Matsubara. As though peering into a brocade print pasted on a dimly lit wall, a deep crimson yuzen-dyed pattern from beside the carriage hood blocked their view. And so the car’s canopy, wrapped in spring’s hubris, merely swayed gently, lingering stubbornly before their eyes. Minoru said nothing beyond that. While wondering what kind of dream now dissolved the entirety of that silent man’s heart within itself, she kept walking without end in wordless step.

Five

The news that the wife of the master teacher, who had shown profound kindness to both Yoshio and Minoru, had finally passed away reached them one morning in late April.

After Yoshio left in his one good suit, Minoru—who had budgeted only enough to retrieve their clothes from Nakamachi—determined this financial inflexibility was insurmountable. Thinking there was nothing for it but to visit her friend in Koishikawa, she left while devising a plausible pretext.

Along the fence of her friend’s house, several cherry trees in full bloom stood aligned, their branches hanging toward the street as if to flaunt the household’s prosperity. Minoru reunited with her friend after a long time in the master’s reception room of that house. Minoru could not bring herself to say she was the one needing to borrow it. The thought kept circling through Minoru’s mind—that were she single, she could declare herself the borrower, but as one maintaining a household, even considering her husband’s dignity, such an indigent request could not be voiced.

The astute friend formed a composed smile that seemed to say indulging in others’ unkind suspicions was not a woman’s proper conduct, and while feigning belief in Minoru’s claim about lending it to another acquaintance, she brought out one set of crested kimono. “Funerals require black garments, but unfortunately I don’t possess any.” The crested kimono the friend had brought out was a pale reddish-brown. On the hem was an embroidery of small butterflies.

That day, it was raining. Minoru boarded the boat from Azumabashi Ferry Landing, holding white magnolia flowers. As the boat pulled away from shore—bringing that gentle slippage of heart—a shadow of reminiscence from six or seven years prior pierced through Minoru’s chest. From inside the boat, she saw the memory-laden embankment. Like one of those indispensable backdrops to a rain-soaked embankment in cherry blossom season, the tea house’s reed screen lay exposed in its damp, bedraggled loneliness. Then, like combed strands, fine streaks of rain swept swiftly across the flat surface from earthen bank to river water. Minoru dropped her gaze straight down upon the river where the boat traced meandering curves in its onward rush. A sadness lingered there—as though her youth had been slowly dissolved and erased by those ripples. The cherry blossoms on the embankment still bloomed just as they had years before, scattering droplets on young Minoru’s face as she wandered absently in deep thought. To her now, they seemed a cruel semblance of smiles meant to deceive youthful feelings—and even there, she found resentment.

When she ascended from Kototoi, cherry blossom droplets spilled onto Minoru’s umbrella with a sound, like lingering remnants of past tears. While encountering two or three old acquaintances midway along the embankment who seemed intent on heading to the same destination as her, by the time she passed through the master’s gate, she was later than the time she had promised Yoshio.

When she stepped inside, the crowd’s commotion resounded with a dampened murmur beneath rain-heavy eaves. Every shoji screen visible from the front stood wide open, clusters of black and striped kimono hems spilling over engawa edges like pooled ink. Behind the lattice door at the rear, mud-caked geta lay scattered in disarray. Minoru handed magnolias to an elderly maidservant she’d found in the kitchen before slipping into a corner near the raised tatami room’s entrance. There, motherless children were being cradled by clusters of women murmuring sorrowful endearments. The eldest daughter stood among them, gaze fixed on figures passing beyond the shoji screens. When this girl—whose childhood Minoru had filled with beanbag catches and handball bounces—saw her after years of separation, she shaped a smile across her pallid face, eyes swollen crimson from weeping, and bowed in greeting. Minoru’s stare remained anchored to the girl’s form.

“This child was quite skilled at imitating you.” When the master teacher laughed and said this to Minoru, the girl had still been about four years old. Holding a furoshiki bundle just as Minoru would, she made an affected bow and then— “This is Minoru-chan’s.” With that, she made everyone laugh. Ever since she was little, she had been a girl whose laughter would crease numerous lines at the upper edges of her high-bridged nose. In the shadow of this girl’s growth to this height, Minoru found herself retracing the altered brief span of her own days, unable to quell a sense of futility.

“Hey.”

When Minoru turned at being called this way, Yoshio stood on the engawa beckoning her with his chin. As she approached, Yoshio— “I’ll go borrow condolence money from the company now.” —said in a low voice. “How much?” “Five yen.” The two of them parted immediately after laughing and exchanging these words.

Minoru left the room and, while searching here and there for the Master Teacher, encountered him for the first time in the dimly lit inner corridor halfway along her path. Through the darkness where faces remained indistinct, Minoru heard the Master Teacher’s voice brimming with tears. “How has your health been lately?”

The Master Teacher asked this as Minoru was about to take her leave. Minoru thought she saw traces of her former fragile Master Teacher, and her reply was choked with tears.

VI

That night, Minoru could not sleep. In her chest, the brocade of memories remained tangled in disarray, its colors in chaos. And so the scent of Western violets sent by her Master Teacher on a certain spring day clung sweetly to those memories within Minoru, resonating with the nostalgic thrum of her pulse. Thinking how many years had passed since she left that beloved Master Teacher, Minoru tried to count them. It had been five years since she had left her Master Teacher’s side. And now eight years had passed since the time when she had devotedly adored and clamored for that person while basking in her Master Teacher’s affection. At that time, Minoru’s very life had been entirely enveloped within those small eyes of her Master Teacher—eyes that contained a sharp light as if honed by the ways of the world. Minoru had convinced herself that were she to leave her Master Teacher’s side, her heart would have nowhere to turn. And so Minoru, who commuted daily by boat to Mukojima, would stand on the ferry landing each time she went and returned, dropping drop by drop a single crimson thought onto the smooth river water.

A time came upon Minoru too when she had to turn her back on the heart of the Master Teacher she had so admired and revered. It was when her eyes unknowingly opened to the true life Minoru had to actually live. For the time had come when she could no longer afford to idly pass her days in good spirits, entering the Master Teacher’s study each day to inhale the old camphor scent of books. Then came even a time when she harbored a wretched curse upon how his affection had temporarily paralyzed the vitality of her heart that sought to truly live. Believing no new path would open unless she left her Master Teacher’s side, Minoru had long since parted from this deeply compassionate mentor—yet not a single new work bearing any mark of awakening had ever come to fruition in her hands thereafter. Minoru often spent days recalling how his affection had once enveloped her during that time, her chest moistened with idle tears. And there was scarcely a day when her heart—now battered daily by the world—did not ache with longing for those innocent childhood days tethered to an unwavering belief in one person, never swayed by others’ gazes.

Tonight, those thoughts weighed particularly heavy on her. Minoru kept thinking of how the Master Teacher had looked today—weeping as if collapsing while listening to the sutra recitation before his wife’s coffin, his right hand covering his face.

Yoshio went to the wake that evening and did not return home.

“What happened to that crested kimono?”

Yoshio, who had returned from the funeral a step earlier, waited for Minoru to come home and immediately asked this. Minoru silently laughed as she thought about how Yoshio’s striped Western-style suit had stood out alone at today’s ceremony. “I borrowed it.”

Minoru, who had nodded, and Yoshio, who had been nodded at, both wore expressions of equal discomfort. At times like these, the fact that they didn’t have a single set of formal attire between them was felt all the more keenly after being surrounded by so many properly dressed people. “Your outfit is such a problem, isn’t it?” “Well, it’s fine—as long as you’re presentable.”

Yoshio said that and then gazed once more at Minoru’s borrowed attire. Yoshio asked where she had borrowed it from, but Minoru did not say it was from Koishikawa. For she thought that if she had claimed to have obtained such ill-fitting garments through an old school friend, Yoshio would have felt even more disgusted. Minoru mentioned the name of a merchant household that visited her residence like relatives and said she had arranged it through them. And then, recalling how the wife of Yoshio’s friend—rumored to be perpetually struggling—had appeared properly dressed, Minoru told Yoshio about it with an air of admiration.

“It seems none of your friends have people as destitute as us.” “I suppose so.” Yoshio took off the suit he had been wearing. Then, after turning up his trouser cuffs and examining them briefly, “It’s gotten this bad too.”

As he said this, he showed Minoru the frayed spot. Yoshio had no choice but to wear a suit meant for autumn or spring even during sweltering heat or snowfall. And whenever she thought of Yoshio donning that broad-shouldered Western suit for every occasion, today’s Minoru found herself unable to dismiss their poverty with her usual self-mockery as she always had. From a heart long accustomed to scenes of sorrow, tears welled in Minoru’s eyes—tears that made her truly taste the wretchedness of their poverty.

“How pitiful.”

Minoru turned away and, changing into her kimono herself, said as much. When they ended up having to expose their destitution to the world, Minoru thought, the two of them would inevitably—in such moments—display a closeness akin to clasping each other’s hands tightly without quite realizing when it began.

“I must find a way to at least keep your things close.” Yoshio went out to bathe as he said this. When she was left alone, images of today’s funeral procession rose before Minoru’s eyes. Along the flower-covered embankment where the procession continued at length, she encountered several times the flower-viewing crowds who, wearing visors, were dancing as they walked through the mud. And as one of the drunkards saw off the procession, right beside the carriage Minoru was riding in,

“What a lively affair you all have here.”

She recalled how he had muttered in a low voice among other things. Minoru thought she would tell Yoshio about it when he returned. Seeing the small children who had lost their mother gathered before the coffin, Minoru too had been one made to cry bitterly, but that sadness had already vanished somewhere.

Seven

Days came when Minoru’s favorite white lilies were constantly arranged in the tokonoma alcove and on top of the bookcase in the sitting room. On Yoshio’s days off, the two of them would sometimes take excursions to Oji with their small dog in tow, gazing at the green fields along the way. At Kōyō-ji Temple’s back stream, they threw the dog into the water and, getting covered in soap suds, washed its body. In the stream, the fresh blue of the mountain’s young maple leaves mingled with sunlight, creating a color like translucent agar. After chaining the small wet dog to a pillar at the mountain teahouse, the two spent half a day gazing at the expanse of young maples spread below—so thickly clustered they seemed walkable underfoot. When they stood before what seemed to be a villa along their route, Yoshio would always gaze up at the Western-style building’s second floor—visible sideways through its surrounding hinoki trees, its walls painted pale gray—and say, “I don’t need anything else. At least let me build my ideal house.” It was around that time that Minoru began frequently fussing with her hair. Minoru developed a habit of going to the hairdresser at Ike no Hata every other day to have her hair styled. In the small drawer of Minoru’s clothing chest, several pieces of scarlet-dyed cloth stained with oil had accumulated.

Even during such days, the unyielding straightforwardness of the man’s emotional rhythm and the tenacious intricacy of the woman’s emotional rhythm remained perpetually at odds, their conflicts—each thrusting against the other—never ceasing. Days when the man’s prideful posturing—refusing to concede before the woman—and the woman’s obstinate resolve—refusing to yield before the man—would snarl at the merest brush of sleeves, escalating until they traded blows alongside insults, were anything but rare between them. When insights Minoru had gleaned from books lent an altered nuance to their dynamic, they would shout loud enough to reach the main street, arguing relentlessly whether it was two or three in the morning. And then, when Minoru—having finally fallen silent—fixed Yoshio’s narrow forehead with eyes brimming with pitying scorn, Yoshio’s own eyes immediately flushed crimson,

“Don’t act so smart.” “What could someone like you possibly accomplish?” Having said this, he made a face like a day laborer badmouthing someone—an expression that looked ready to spit in a person’s face. Such words at times could not help but provoke Minoru’s emotions. When she wondered how she could get anyone to prove that this man was intellectually inferior to her, Minoru found herself pitifully alone, without a single ally. And then,

“Go on, say it again.”

Having said that, Minoru immediately reached out and pushed Yoshio’s shoulder. “I’ll say it as many times as you want.” “I’m telling you—someone like you is worthless.” “What could someone like you possibly understand?”

“Why?” “Why?”

By this point, Minoru would not be silenced until she had been beaten by the man to where her body could no longer move. “Since you’re at fault, why won’t you apologize?” “Why won’t you apologize?” Minoru raised her hand to Yoshio’s head and tried to force it down, only to be met with harsh treatment from the man’s hand. “You’ll end up a cripple in the end.”

The next day, Yoshio looked at the wounds remaining here and there on Minoru’s body and said this. The cruelty of grasping and twisting the woman’s soft flesh as if to tear it apart later repeated itself in Yoshio’s mind like a dream. It was a day when light rain had fallen during the daytime. Early in the morning, Minoru—having done a great deal of laundry—found her body exhausted, feeling as though a plank had been pressed against her flesh. Near the eaves, smoke-like gentle white clouds passed by many times, as if peering into Minoru’s heart. The sunlight filtering through the moisture-laden air of early summer brimmed before Minoru’s eyes as she stood on the engawa, its beauty akin to shards of colored glass cascading down. It was a vaguely muggy morning. The texture of the serge Minoru was wearing prickled against her sweat-dampened skin.

By afternoon, it turned to rain. Minoru took in the laundry from the engawa, then stood on the veranda again and gazed at the small garden where rain was falling. In this roughly three-tsubo garden, only the hydrangea Yoshio had planted last summer occupied the central position. Though two or three boxwood trees in the corner showed a meager yet elegant display with their branches full of hail-like tiny white blossoms, it was the hydrangea—grown and spread over the past year—whose shadow dominated most of the garden’s soil. There was nothing else beyond that. The sound of light rain occasionally rustled the hydrangea leaves. Minoru, hearing that sound, suddenly felt nostalgic and gazed unwaveringly at the rain falling there.

When Yoshio returned at his usual time, the rain had already stopped. Minoru noticed, observing Yoshio’s demeanor since his return, that there was something profound in the depths of his heart.

“Hey—what’re you going to do?”

As Minoru calmly began clearing away the evening meal, Yoshio called out like this. “Why haven’t you started that job yet?” “Are you planning to give up?”

Hearing that, Minoru immediately realized. About a week earlier, when Yoshio had returned from work, he had said, “There’s work you can do,” and shown Minoru a newspaper clipping. It was a regional newspaper containing an advertisement for a contest. Yoshio—who knew Minoru had been gradually writing and saving pieces until then—advised her it would be better to add just what these regulations required and send them in.

“If it wins, we could catch our breath.”

Yoshio said this. Yet Minoru had only given noncommittal replies and had not started working on it to this day. Moreover, by the time Yoshio found that job, the submission deadline was already fast approaching. It was because Minoru thought she couldn’t possibly write anything worthwhile in such a short span of time. “Why aren’t you writing?” Yoshio, his mouth tensed neurotically, pressed Minoru with these words.

“Because I hate doing such a gamble-like thing—that’s why I’m not writing.”

Yoshio saw Minoru’s familiar haughty demeanor flash across her cheeks. Minoru felt displeasure at the fact that Yoshio was thinking of using that one-in-ten-thousand chance of good fortune to try to escape his economic hardship. When Minoru thought about how this man knew nothing of letting a woman engage with art for pleasure, but only knew how to drive her art into something akin to gambling and force her to work, she grew furious. “I don’t have a brush so frayed it would be used for such things.”

Minoru said this again. “Don’t get cocky.”

Thus Yoshio bellowed. His contempt when faced with the woman’s arrogance had always taken this form: “Don’t get cocky.” Minoru hated those words. Her face—locked in a stare at Yoshio—turned deathly pale.

“What did you say?” “Didn’t you say you’d work?” “Didn’t you say you’d work for me?” “What’s happened to that?”

“I’m not saying I won’t work, you know.” “But I never intended to use the brush I’ve cultivated until now in such a place.” “If you’re going to insist I work no matter what, then I’ll go work at the telephone exchange or something.” “But I refuse to use my brush for such gamble-like things.”

Yoshio suddenly threw the tobacco tray that was by his hand at Minoru. "You don't have the slightest understanding of cherishing our life." "If you don't like it, then quit." "What kind of remark is that?" "What kind of remark is that to your own husband?"

Yoshio stood up as he said this. “If that’s the kind of life we’re living, then go ahead and destroy everything!” Yoshio kicked away the tray that had touched his foot just as it was and came over to Minoru’s side. Minoru had never so fearfully anticipated the man’s violence as she did at that moment. “What are you doing?” Minoru’s voice—thin, transparent, like strained metal—drew near as if to pierce into Yoshio’s pounding chest. At that moment, she mustered all her strength into both arms and shoved his chest away. And then, with the feeling that she had finally escaped this man’s terror, Minoru ran out from the kitchen door to the front.

Outside, the lingering twilight had not yet completely faded, streaming with a pewter-like hue. In the shadows of dusk where deliberate darkness was about to envelop the entire cemetery, Minoru stood motionless for what felt like eternity. Amidst the heavy silence of loneliness gathering inexplicably around her ears came the nerve-wrackingly clear sound of violent crashes—as though someone were kicking through paper screens and wooden doors. Then she sensed it—a woman’s shriek, thin and sharp as a silk needle, threading through the chaos. It had sounded like her own voice. The blood throughout Minoru’s body still trembled as if freshly agitated. In some hidden vein, it continued pounding in fierce, sudden waves. Yet with clinical clarity—as though taking her heart’s pulse one beat at a time—she bowed beneath the dark force pressing upon her head and thought. And within that lucid mind, pure as water...

“You don’t know how to cherish our life.” Yoshio’s words, laden with manifold meanings, continued to reverberate endlessly. Minoru was truly a woman who did not cherish a man’s life. In return, Yoshio knew nothing of cherishing her art. Minoru still endured unpleasant feelings for the sake of their impoverished life together with the man, even frequenting pawnshops, yet Yoshio knew nothing of providing even a single new book for the art a woman might favor. To prevent the woman from wounding his petty self-importance, Yoshio even went so far as to deliberately humiliate her efforts whenever she strove to acquire new knowledge. Yoshio, who knew nothing of bestowing upon the heart of this woman yearning for new art an allure that dripped like dew upon petals, was a man satisfied merely by having her hands materially compensate for his own inadequacies—this truth clung obstinately to Minoru’s mind, repeating itself relentlessly.

“If you claim I don’t cherish your life, then you have no right to claim you love my art.”

When Minoru thought she should have told Yoshio this earlier, she felt as though blood were seeping into her eyes.

A woman who knew nothing of cherishing a man's livelihood and a man who knew nothing of cherishing a woman's art—they were fundamentally incompatible from the start. To Yoshio, a woman who refused to cherish his way of living might have offered no incentive to persevere. In the frog-mouthed purse Yoshio carried out daily, there had never been more than two or three small silver coins. That Minoru could gaze upon this sight with vacant eyes might have rendered her inconceivable to Yoshio as a woman he could walk through life hand in hand with.

The two must inevitably part after all.

Minoru began to walk with that thought. For the first time, tears that seemed to melt and flow from the depths of her congealed pupils came seeping into Minoru’s cheeks.

Before and behind Minoru as she walked, darkness so thick it seemed immovable crowded in from all sides. Around her face swarmed a cloud of mosquitoes, their faint buzzing encircling her. When she looked back, within that darkness, the heads of stone pagodas jutting up here and there seemed to sway with an ethereal illusion, undulating and creeping closer toward her. Minoru, feeling as though she alone had been left behind in this dark loneliness, quickened her pace and emerged outside the thorny hedge encircling the cemetery.

When Mei, who had been prowling about that area, spotted Minoru appearing there, he came darting over and stood before her, tilting his face upward while wagging his entire body along with his tail. When Minoru suddenly saw the small dog’s form, she felt as though she had seized upon the shadow of the sole thing in this world that held any care for her—and found herself compelled to gather the dog’s body into her arms.

“Thank you.” After saying this to the small dog, tears once again welled up and fell from Minoru’s eyes. Minoru walked homeward, wiping her face with her right sleeve as she tasted the feeling—as though for the first time in her life—of walking outside while weeping.

8

Minoru stood outside, observed the situation inside the house for a while, then went in. When she turned on the light in the tearoom and looked around, all she found was the disarray—the ashes spilled from the tobacco tray Yoshio had thrown earlier, the meal remnants scattered across the kicked-over dining tray—messily strewn about in squalor. Yoshio was nowhere to be seen. After a while, when Minoru was cleaning up in the sitting room, she heard a solid thud from upstairs, as if someone had tossed in their sleep. So she thought Yoshio must be sleeping on the second floor. The image of Yoshio came to Minoru then—his gaunt cheekbones, his neck as thin as a child’s, his face and head buried in his folded arms as he lay sprawled on the flat tatami.

And thus, Minoru’s heart weakly yielded before Yoshio. Her act of picking up the brush had come to mean the "work" Yoshio desired—and if becoming one of the things that pleased him required no particular effort, her heart returned to this with womanly complacency. Minoru’s heart, which had struggled beneath society for so long without grasping anything until now, grew timid without her realizing, and upon that heart, fatigue’s shadow already cast itself. No matter how much resolve Minoru began to muster, it would vanish like the morning star—just like this. And so it ended with Minoru herself—observing from some detached corner of her mind this feeble sorrow of needing to cling solely to Yoshio’s affections to survive—casting her body before the man.

Minoru began sitting at her desk every day starting the following day, resuming work on a half-drafted story she had left unfinished. At every turn she grew sick of it, and countless times Minoru tried to quit. She couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for it at all.

The work she had been writing until today and stored away in her desk was not something Minoru liked. It was that half-written piece—the one she had finally abandoned her brush upon, having keenly felt how her art bore an inescapable taint from the realm it had once entered. Therefore, before Minoru could attempt to immediately continue the latter half, she needed to revise the first half more thoroughly. Minoru’s honest heart toward her own art would not easily yield to such derisive notions as taking a work she herself had cast aside and presenting it unchanged in broad daylight. Minoru endlessly fiddled with the first half.

“How long are you going to keep at this?”

Noticing this, Yoshio immediately came to Minoru's side and said: "It's no good after all. I'll quit." "Even if it's no good, keep going." "I'm just no good after all."

Minoru said this and destroyed the manuscript before her. “This sort of thing…” “It doesn’t depend on whether the work’s good or bad.” “It all comes down to nothing but your luck.” “Even if the work’s no good, as long as your luck holds it’ll turn out fine—so finish it.” “If you keep dawdling like this, you’ll never make the deadline.”

Yoshio snatched away the first half of the manuscript that Minoru had been reworking from her hands. Seeing that, Minoru— “Is it enough just to write?”

With her eyes brimming with such meaning, she gazed at Yoshio’s face. At the bottom of her heart, a vaguely self-destructive mood began to rise. It was a self-destructive mood—the sense that all she had to do was write whatever Yoshio compelled and then hurl it before him.

“If I absolutely cannot write, what will you do?” “You can write if you try—so write.”

“I can’t write this. I don’t like any of it.” “Nonsense—just dash it off carelessly and be done.” “I dislike it too much to continue.” “A wretched habit of yours. You could’ve written two or three pages in the time spent complaining.”

Yoshio counted the days. Though over two hundred pages still remained until reaching the stipulated number, the days left barely amounted to twenty. Yoshio found this woman—skilled only in empty talk, incapable of tackling anything decisively—as irritating as boiled beans snapping sharply against one’s face, her presence grating on his nerves with petty detestability. “So you truly are a hopeless woman.” “Enough.” “Enough.”

Yoshio brought out the manuscript he had previously taken from the bookcase and scattered it before Minoru. A cold shadow unlike any before had cast itself across those downcast eyes. "If I stop, what will you do?"

Minoru leaned against the desk, pressing her head with her right hand as she looked askance at the man’s face. Yoshio’s face—the blinking of his eyes, the twitching of his pallid facial muscles, the quivering of his lips—all clashed in a flash of electric intensity. “We’ll just end up splitting apart.” Yoshio said this sharply, as if to push the woman away.

Once Minoru had determined she could accomplish nothing, Yoshio couldn't help but immediately feel an obvious burden weighing on them both. For Yoshio, what bound them together wasn't affection. It was strength. Unless the woman possessed some power he himself lacked, he had no desire to remain united. He thought dragging around a woman's burden—especially that of a willful creature like Minoru—would only sink his own body deeper into humanity's mire. Yoshio had to sever himself from this woman now. In such moments, he became a man capable of showing even stiffer resistance toward Minoru. He became a man who could clearly manifest the resolve that someone—right there on the spot—would leave this household. Not a speck remained of any love the man might have cherished specifically for Minoru alone.

“I’ll write.” “It can’t be helped.”

Tears had already welled up in Minoru’s eyes. And then she began gathering the scattered manuscript pages there.

Nine

Minoru wrote on with single-minded intensity. The man’s eyes—like a whip lashing at her—shone before Minoru’s desk through much of the time. Minoru wrote on recklessly while fearing them. After bringing a lamp and desk into the mosquito net and lying on her back like a corpse for a while, she would suddenly sit up and write. From morning till evening, she would flee the summer sunlight pouring into their house—darting here and there until reaching a corner wall where she rhythmically struck her head against it before starting to write again.

And so it was completed on the afternoon of the final day of the deadline. Yoshio wrote Minoru’s name on it, packaged it into a parcel, and then took it himself to the post office.

Minoru wiped her face with the sweat-soaked sleeve of her pale blue yukata and looked back on herself over those ten-odd days. At the tip of the brush driven by the man’s looming presence, not a shadow remained of the beautiful art she had imagined. It was nothing but dark clouds dreading the man’s judgment—a force devoid of art. What could she possibly create with this blind, unartistic power in her own hands? Thinking this, Minoru found herself drowning in disappointment.

It was after mid-August had passed.

One morning, on that day’s newspaper, there was an article that suddenly caught Minoru’s attention. After Yoshio left for work, Minoru drove a nail near the entrance and then went out herself. When she arrived at Hirokoji, she boarded the Edogawa-bound train from there. Clad in a faded Akashi summer kimono and holding a similarly faded purple Western-style umbrella, Minoru wandered through a certain narrow street in Ushigome—an area bleached white under the scorching sun’s glare after some time had passed. Each tightly packed pebble caught in the prongs of her wooden sandals, making it unbearably difficult for her to walk. Each time, her heart throbbed and sweat ran down her underarms. The heat seeping up from the ground into her hem and the blazing sunlight beating down from above pricked at Minoru’s thin skin. Minoru’s face turned a flaming bright red.

Minoru asked about a rental hall called "Seigetsu" at the police box on the bridge corner, then turned and headed along the Edogawa riverbank from there. Seigetsu stood on the right side of that street. It was an old house built in a style reminiscent of what might have once been a hatamoto's residence. Minoru stood at its formal entrance and inquired with the maid who came to attend about someone named Koyama.

Minoru was immediately led to the inner rooms. In the vast empty tatami room, Minoru waited with her back to the garden for the person she was about to meet to appear. Though every sliding panel stood wide open, not a wisp of breeze passed through. The stifling heat and stillness of midday—as if all existence held its breath—lurked like shadows in every corner of the sun-reddened mats. Pressing a narrow cloth to her face, Minoru worked her folding fan with desperate diligence.

A small-statured man emerged from the depths carrying a tobacco tray and sat down before Minoru. His eyes—with jet-black pupils and long lashes—were puffy as if from an afternoon nap. Like many Osaka natives, he had a habit of collecting spittle at the corners of his mouth when speaking. When he laughed, a feminine charm flooded across his diminutive face.

Koyama did not know Minoru’s name, but he knew Yoshio’s. While toying with Minoru’s business card in his hand, Koyama spoke with her. Koyama opened by discussing the theater troupe they had organized. He then expounded at length about how their first production had been arranged through a certain promoter, resulting in unfortunate public misunderstandings, but that this second performance would be structured in an intensely artistic manner with support from individuals like Sakai and Yukita. He added that they planned to select only actresses of proper conduct and reasonably refined backgrounds. The fluid Osaka dialect, thickened by the sweltering air, reverberated in a drowsy, undulating cadence.

As he spoke, Koyama occasionally regarded her with an expression that seemed to assess her as a woman who understood some things, at times taking cues from Minoru’s words to advance his own talk. “Given such enthusiasm on your part, I shall consult thoroughly with both Mr. Sakai and Mr. Yukita before giving our formal response.” “I believe it will likely be acceptable, but as this cannot be decided by my considerations alone, I shall send you a postcard with our final decision afterward.”

With that, Minoru bade farewell to Koyama and went outside.

While watching the solitary festival lantern swaying at the edge of the sweltering shade beneath the eaves of the deserted house, Minoru finally entered her home—by which time shadows already covered half the garden. Minoru sat in the center of the spread-open tatami room without even removing her sweat-soaked kimono, lost in thought.

When night fell, Minoru went out with Yoshio to visit the shrine where the festival was being held. In the backstreet flanked by the cemetery on one side, red lantern lights floated here and there in a blurry wash of color—as if they had torn off fragments of the main street’s bustle—seeping dimly into the surroundings. There were also gates where women in white yukatas stood in the shadows of those lights, displaying the alluring flutter of their sleeves. When they came out onto the street, the always-desolate outskirts town—through the night stalls’ lights and the dizzying tangle of the crowd’s hems—had a new world in motion.

The two of them were pushed back by the crowd as they made their way into the shrine. From in front of a stall selling sweet red bean soup with red bowls piled mountain-high, they turned sideways and emerged before a sideshow tent where a dark-skinned woman in her forties—sleeves rolled up—was bellowing to passersby. When they stood before the fluttering curtain and peered inside, they glimpsed the upper bodies of two young women in ceremonial shoulder garments performing what resembled a dramatic ballad recitation. Each woman possessed startling beauty. From within the dim hut, their eyes occasionally swept toward the crowd with languidly fluid expressions rippling through those dark pupils. The matte white makeup—thick as powdered oyster shell—blended with the gaudy yuzen-dyed kimono’s garish hues at her breast, heightening her striking appearance. Her nose stood straight and noble, her mouth a delicate bud.

“Oh, she’s such a beautiful woman.”

Minoru pulled Yoshio’s sleeve. “That must be the Rokurotsukubi.”

Yoshio also laughed while peering in. On the upper signboard was painted an image of a woman’s head in Shimada coiffure writhing free from a shoulder-robed body, gazing down upon the crowd. Yoshio had always liked the white powder worn by these low-tier female performers. Though captivated by the woman’s eyes, Yoshio resumed walking. The two came around to the cliffside teahouse overlooking Mikawashima. Reed screens draped the eaves where rows of paper lanterns hung, their light glinting off soda bottles and heaps of shaved ice. Yoshio stood at the cliff’s edge eating roasted chestnuts he’d bought there, staring at Mikawashima’s sea-like darkness. People entering the festival grounds streamed ceaselessly past them from below.

“I have something to discuss with you.”

As she spoke, Minoru turned her back on the crowded shrine grounds and attempted to descend the cliff. “What is it?”

"I think I'll try doing theater again." "You?" "Heeeh..."

The two of them descended the cliff and crossed the railroad crossing, then set out walking toward Nippori. As they walked, Minoru spoke of her intention to join the new theater troupe that Sakai and Yukita were attempting to organize. Yukita was someone Yoshio knew. He was a new playwright who had just returned from abroad. They were set to stage a one-act play scripted by him, but as Koyama had mentioned during the day that they were struggling to find an actress capable of portraying the demanding heroine, Minoru clung to hope. However, without mentioning that far, she asked Yoshio whether it would be good or bad for her to appear on stage. Yoshio walked on, silently eating roasted chestnuts as he went.

Yoshio knew Minoru had clamored about becoming an actress before their marriage. Yet he remained ignorant of what actual skill this woman might possess. Judging by the complete absence of rumors when she'd joined some theater troupe and performed years ago, her stagecraft appeared decidedly deficient. Moreover, Yoshio considered her features—plainer and less comely than average—utterly unfit for standing before an audience. Having grown accustomed to observing beautiful foreign actresses, he could only view Minoru's theatrical aspirations as monstrous recklessness.

“Why did you think of such a thing now?”

Yoshio asked this between bites of roasted chestnuts. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while now.” “I’ve simply been holding back because there wasn’t a good opportunity.” Yoshio doubted Minoru’s stage capabilities and remained unwilling to grant permission.

“Why can’t I?” Minoru’s tone had already turned confrontational.

Yoshio, now naked, lay sprawled on the veranda smoking a cigarette. Minoru sat down abruptly in front of him and gazed at Yoshio’s unsettled appearance. “We can’t afford such a leisurely life.”

Yoshio was thinking this after having said so. If Minoru had genuine theatrical talent and could secure well-paid work through it, that would be one thing—but the prospect of her plunging back into that nebulous, unstable realm, with no telling where she might ultimately veer off to, struck Yoshio as nothing but dead weight. Moreover, for the small social circle he entered every day, the thought of those ill-natured colleagues witnessing his unattractive and unskilled wife on stage was a humiliation to Yoshio. While Minoru was preoccupied with such thoughts, Yoshio would have been far more satisfied had she found a steady-income occupation that could assist him.

Without a thought for their livelihood, the woman’s inclination to indulge in art like this once again began to stir resentment in him. “You’d do better to just keep quiet and write.”

“What am I supposed to write?” “Find yourself some proper writing work.” “In literature and art—no matter how much I devote myself—society refuses to acknowledge me.” “This time presents a good opportunity—I’ll make my move through theater again.” “I do have confidence.” “And with Mr. Sakai and Mr. Yukita handling stage management—I know I can manage it.” Minoru declared this with shining eyes. In truth, she had grown utterly disillusioned with her own writing. This realization had come through her recent work. Minoru—who had secretly prided herself on nurturing new vitality through her pen alone—found herself repulsed when reflecting on how none of this essence had manifested in those pages. Yet she withheld this from Yoshio. For she had previously retorted to him—declaring she wouldn’t squander her precious pen on such gamble-like endeavors. Even regarding those very words—she couldn’t bring herself to voice such self-reproach before him.

Having resolved to abandon her writing herself, she wanted to try enduring hardships on the stage once more. The article about the new theater troupe recruiting actresses that she had seen in the newspaper was a godsend to Minoru in this situation.

“I think you’re someone who can write.” “So why don’t you support our livelihood through that instead?” “In the first place, even if you were to do such a thing, isn’t your age already too late?” “Does art have an age?” “That’s just what artists say.” “Aren’t you just about to begin?” “Then that’s perfectly fine.” “I’ll proceed on my own terms.” “It’s neither art for your benefit nor work for your sake.” “Because it’s my art.” “Because it’s my work.” “Given that, where do you derive any right to support me?” “Even if you forbid it, I’ll still do it.”

Having declared this, a long-dormant flame of desire blazed up recklessly in Minoru’s chest. And she resolved that she must use her stagecraft to force this man—who belittled her very being—into utter submission.

“Where are you going to get the money for such preparations?”

“I’ll take on the debt myself.”

Ten

After a postcard arrived from Koyama indicating Minoru’s acceptance into the troupe, notification of the script reading date followed shortly thereafter. Watching these new work procedures advance day by day before Minoru, Yoshio could not remain composed. There were days when Yoshio found himself unable to endure observing from the sidelines as Minoru—her face impassive, eyes wide and unblinking—fixed her gaze upon some distant shred of hope caught like a burr in the far reaches of her vision.

“If your stage performance turns out clumsy and shameful, I’ll never show my face at the company again—since your way of doing things will cost us everything, you’d better be prepared for that.”

When she heard this, Minoru found herself made to clearly perceive Yoshio’s petty social vanity, and felt an unpleasant sensation. Why did this man lack any sincerity? she wondered. Thinking that he showed not the slightest inclination to wholeheartedly embrace the passion she held for her art, she grew furious. And then she deliberately gazed at his small, shallow face with coldness.

“Then wouldn’t it be better if we just separated?” “If we do that, you wouldn’t have to suffer humiliation on my account anymore.”

Such words had come from the woman this time, but Yoshio now lacked that sharpness of edge. To see her appear on this garish stage—he had even begun nurturing a certain shallow curiosity toward her. "If you've got that much confidence," he said, "then fine."

Yoshio said that and fell silent.

At Seigetsu, Minoru met both Sakai and Yukita. Both were people Minoru already knew beyond mere acquaintance. Sakai was someone who worked under a certain doctor training many students in a deeply substantive manner with the aim of launching an ideal form of theater. Minoru had once seen this Sakai’s Hamlet and been enraptured by its innovative artistry. Around the eyes and nose, there was a resemblance to a Westerner, but he was a person of short stature. Yukita was an exceptionally tall person. He always had a face that seemed to harbor thoughts deep within his eyes. Even when he laughed, there was a composed demeanor about him, as though the laughter remained confined to the recesses of his mind.

The sharply upright Sakai and the heavily stooped Yukita would always sit side by side in a corner of the rehearsal room, the two of them with their knees neatly aligned.

Amidst them, the aforementioned Koyama moved his long-lashed, charming eyes from corner to corner while his small body bustled about. Besides Minoru, there were two or three actresses. They were all young and beautiful. Hayako had a thin face, but when she closed her eyes, a strikingly dark shadow would drift across her features. And she was a small-mouthed woman. There was a woman named Tsuyako. She possessed a noble beauty in her facial features that resembled Sadayakko. Amidst them, Minoru had indeed been assigned to play the heroine of the play written by Yukita.

The heroine was a musician and an aging spinster. After she unexpectedly fell in love, she tried to break free from the cold artistic world that had enveloped her until then and build a warm home with that lover. At that moment, hearing the half-jealous domestic views from her lover’s wife, she resolved to return alone to her lonely artistic world and live out her days there. Such was the story. All the other actors laughed at the script. The other actors were a group selected from third-rate political activist troupes for their skill. From among them, about two men had been assigned to portray the characters that appeared in this script. They were at a loss and laughed as difficult words their minds couldn’t fully explain kept pouring forth.

By the time Minoru began attending rehearsals regularly, it was already early autumn with cold, persistent rains. There were days when actors stood on Seigetsu’s rain-soaked veranda in flimsy unlined robes, lamenting the autumn’s chill. On early mornings when Minoru went to Seigetsu and practiced her lines alone, Sakai would sometimes arrive wearing a damp overcoat, his neck exposed to the cold. Mornings when their breath seemed to freeze in the air as they exchanged greetings had grown more frequent.

Both Yukita and Sakai always came out by the appointed time early in the morning. And so, until the lazy actors half-heartedly gathered, the two of them would waste time idly every day. Between these two—tense with artistic fervor—and the rough actors, unruly as itinerant performers and lacking unity, there always flowed a tangled discord. Sakai in particular would snap into anger and openly reprimand those actors who clung to their showman’s mentality. All of Sakai’s translated Pinero comedies were to be performed by these disunited actors. Complaining that the rehearsals weren’t engaging at all, Sakai said, “It hasn’t become an artwork in the slightest.” “This haphazard mess won’t do at all,” he added, fidgeting restlessly by himself.

However, this group who made their living in theater held a clear aversion to having even their lines corrected by the likes of Sakai. The actors often showed their silent rebellion through sleeves of tucked hands, wearing awkward expressions before Sakai’s nagging. “Since this was our agreement from the beginning, I must ask that you all work together consistently even if there are minor dissatisfactions.” “What do you say, everyone?” “With so few days remaining, I must request your utmost effort in memorizing your lines.”

There were also times when Koyama, seated beside Sakai, would say such things while furrowing his mouth and gazing at the actors gathered across from him.

Among them, the actresses alone were praised one and all. Everyone listened well to what the stage director said and worked hard during rehearsals. “Since this is the first time actresses are taking on such weighty roles, I would like you to show us a splendid, resolute performance of artistry.” “I want you to perform believing that this new troupe’s fate rests entirely on your skills.” “Through this production, show them actresses aren’t to be trifled with.” Sakai coaxed them with this deft flattery.

Amidst them，Minoru’s usual bad habit had already begun．The fact that her own disposition failed to harmonize with this troupe of actors had completely severed her from her obsession with theater．She had grown tired of acting．And so，she had grown increasingly weary from always trying to lower herself into these actors’ vulgar tastes and blend among them．When I reflected on myself during my time at Seigetsu，there I stood—transformed into a frivolous，uneducated woman．

There was another unpleasant matter. There was an actress named Rokuko who played the supporting role to Minoru's part. She was older than Minoru and had emerged from among the veteran actors. She was a beautiful woman with large eyes, a high nose, and striking actor's features. Whenever Minoru was with this Rokuko, she suffered persistent anguish from emotional desolation—that peculiar sense of being crushed beneath this woman's thoroughly worldly disposition. Rokuko—a strong-willed, stubborn woman who had moved through society alternating between actress and geisha—displayed an attitude of defiantly asserting her own feelings against everyone, forcefully shoving others aside. Minoru fidgeted uneasily under this pressure and grew afraid of Rokuko. Even when Rokuko, in her supporting role, kept making demands about Minoru's performance techniques, Minoru—though conscious of her own artistic authority—found herself unable to offer any rebuttal to this Rokuko.

Ever since Minoru began attending elementary school as a child, there had always been one or two students in her class who bullied her no matter what grade she reached. Minoru would bring something every morning to give those students while offering flattery. And so there came a time when she could hardly bear going to school. The way she now felt toward Rokuko was exactly like that. Rokuko had been cast as the wife of the heroine's lover. Both Yukita and Sakai said "This won't do," having grown accustomed to old-fashioned plays yet struggling with the dim-witted Rokuko—but Rokuko remained unfazed by such things. When it came to acting, she was utterly earnest. Minoru had ultimately lost to this Rokuko. Then she told Yukita of her decision to abandon the role. Minoru had been crying at that time.

“You shouldn’t get so sentimental.” “We can’t have you quitting now.”

The taciturn Yukita brought Sakai along while repeating the same thing over and over. Sakai was crouched by a pillar, “If you say such things now, we won’t be able to stage the play at all—I implore you to endure this.” “We’ve always praised your artistry—please rally your spirit for our sake.” “There’s a girl at my school performing Hedda right now, yet we’ve even been discussing your current work with her.” “I beg you to reconsider this.”

Sakai skillfully calmed Minoru. But Minoru had simply grown too fed up. At the same time as she could no longer acknowledge the troupe’s authority, Minoru’s pride swelled to the utmost—this arrogance that having her highest artistic sensibilities trampled in such circumstances was utterly intolerable—and she had no intention of obeying anyone’s words. With the resolve that she would not attend rehearsals starting tomorrow, Minoru returned home.

But before Minoru’s eyes, the obstacle called Yoshio immediately appeared. Minoru thought that if she told Yoshio about this, he would surely direct even harsher criticism at her, calling her a spineless woman all talk and no action, and would undoubtedly look down on her. However, in the end, she had no choice but to tell Yoshio about this matter.

“You’d better quit.”

Yoshio simply said this. And Yoshio had been thinking about Minoru exactly as she had imagined. “I’ve ended up with nowhere left to turn.” Minoru said this while lying on her back and assumed a forlorn expression.

Eleven

The things done for Minoru were, from others’ perspective, nothing more than a cheap nuisance. In the end, she still had to go through with it. At first, Yoshio said this to Minoru.

“You applied to join on your own, and now you’re quitting on a whim—that’s inexcusably rude.” “If you absolutely refuse, I’ll take responsibility by saying I prohibited you from attending.”

Yoshio then submitted his refusal to the troupe’s office. Both the troupe’s manager and Yukita gathered around Yoshio for this reason and came to plead for Minoru’s return to work. For the troupe, finding an actress to replace Minoru might have been a simple matter, but they lacked sufficient time to rehearse such a difficult role from scratch. The opening day was already approaching. When he considered the financial losses, Koyama had no choice but to have Minoru return to work. Yukita also sent Yoshio a long letter.

“It’s unsightly, so you’d better get a grip and go.” “I’m tired of dealing with this.” Yoshio, having said this, felt disgusted by Minoru’s slimy emotions—emotions that seemed to half-torture living things and then abandon them. And so, even now, the determination to leave this woman glinted in the depths of his eyes. A few days later, Minoru began attending Seigetsu again.

In the theater world, Minoru’s reputation wasn’t bad. Everyone praised her newfound artistry. Yet at the same time, it made it clear to anyone who saw her that Minoru’s appearance lacked the qualifications to belong on the stage.

Art-centric theater reviews even hailed Minoru’s artistry as having pioneered an actress’s vitality for the first time. Yet reviews that measured purely by theatrical standards disparaged her. Some derided her demeanor as vulgar and reminiscent of a tavern girl. Minoru’s looks were truly unsightly. If forced to name a redeeming feature, only her eyes held merit. In every other respect, her appearance fell short of what might pass for an ordinary woman.

Minoru knew full well her own ugly appearance. Yet her desire to ascend the stage stemmed solely from artistic passion. The fiery force burning within her did nothing but boldly guide Minoru onward. However, actresses—women standing on that stage—were required to possess a certain measure of beauty. Even should a woman wield diamond-hard artistic power, without flower-like features she could never maintain charm's equilibrium. From certain angles, Minoru's performances met with derisive laughter that struck like flung mud.

Minoru clearly saw that an abyss of disappointment lay there as well. One day after the play concluded, Minoru walked back along the edge of the pond—umbrella in hand—as the rain had stopped. Tonight as well, Yoshio—who had been watching Minoru’s performance from the box seats—was there with her. Minoru had never felt as sorry for Yoshio as she did at this time. Yoshio had been coming to the theater every night since this production began. And so, his small eyes always trembled incessantly, determined not to miss a single word of others’ criticism. Yoshio’s friends also came in great numbers to watch. Having to maintain a composed expression while watching an unattractive woman on stage before all these people was, for this man, an excruciating ordeal. To possess a woman who, even if her artistry was crude, had enough beauty to astonish people on stage—this was the man’s ideal. Because of this, Yoshio found himself encountering bitter stimuli—the kind that forced him to maintain a constant wry smile even at the assembly site he visited daily.

Yoshio was also exhausted. Their nerves, while confronting a certain sorrow, were charged with an agitation that sought to hurl that very sorrow into a sky of mockery—each thrusting it at the other. "I wonder how it went tonight... Maybe it went somewhat well." “It was excellent tonight.” The two of them continued walking, exchanging only these brief remarks. The fatigue of her nightly dedication to an art that wrung out her life’s blood drop by drop onstage now swirled around Minoru as she walked, pulling her toward some distant, sorrowful realm. Through the torment of her beautiful yearning, voices of mockery pierced Minoru’s burning emotions like a drill. As she walked while gazing at the lights along the pond’s edge, Minoru’s eyes had unknowingly filled with tears.

“You truly do have talent in theater.” “I was genuinely impressed this time.” “But having an unsightly face costs you several tenths, you know.” “You incur tremendous losses because of your looks.” Yoshio delivered this critique with grave sincerity. He detested finding himself in situations where he had to appraise his wife’s features while she sat before him. Simultaneously, he resented how Minoru had manufactured opportunities to lay every aspect of herself bare before public scrutiny.

“You should’ve just left it alone.”

Yoshio could not help repeating such words.

Twelve

In just a few days, the theater run had ended. The final evening when Minoru loaded her mirror stand onto a cart and returned home, rain was falling. On that last night when the troupe of actors faced another prolonged separation, each carried a faint sadness in their hearts. The male actors wrapped dressing-room props into cloth bundles or packed them into bags, holding these in one hand while tipping their hat brims with the other to exchange farewells. The nomadic grief of not knowing where they might find work next hovered over their pale cheeks should this troupe disband. This new theater company, lacking any solid foundation, was already fated to perish entirely there and then. The actors who had gathered hoping to seize some opportunity now found themselves cast adrift once more, each forced to contemplate how they would secure tomorrow's livelihood. Minoru watched from the cart as these departing actors faded into the distance.

During the theater run, the actress Minoru grew closest to was Hayako. The lovely Hayako’s husband—a low-ranking male actor specializing in female roles in Shinpa theater—often visited the shared room where Minoru and Hayako stayed. Hayako had an illness. On days after nights when she had coughed up blood, her body would appear so limp and lifeless that even to an observer, it seemed she might fade away entirely. Even as she complained they did nothing but fight daily, whenever her husband came, she would fix his wig and check his makeup. It had been this same Hayako who frequently clashed with Koyama over wages. Minoru could not forget this Hayako. Hayako, who had said she would visit soon when they parted, never came to Minoru’s place no matter how many days passed.

Once again, they had returned to days where they faced each other before the small long hibachi, gazing at one another’s forms from the depths of their beings.

Before they knew it, autumn had deepened, and the color of the sunlight on the veranda had begun to fade into a watery pallor. And as if autumn’s loneliness were confined solely to the wind that tousled people’s forelocks, the forest of Yanaka always maintained a hermit-like tranquility, remaining utterly still. From the surface of that forest, a blue hue began imperceptibly fading away, as if peeling from some unseen origin.

Their livelihood was becoming increasingly difficult. There was no prospect of managing clothing expenses once the cold set in. When they still had their house, their affection had painted even the meager furnishings in such vivid hues that loneliness seemed unthinkable; but now, with their hearts anchored apart and each vigilantly guarding themselves, this empty parlor at winter’s onset served only to sharpen the harshness between them. Disliking this atmosphere, Minoru sold her own books and bought expensive Western flowers to scatter about the rooms. Such wastefulness by Minoru had become something Yoshio could no longer endure in silence these days.

Yoshio kept thinking that this life—which felt as though they were carrying on with a lover—had to be decisively ended. When Yoshio thought of his father back home—over seventy yet still serving as mayor and overseeing petty cash—tears welled up in his eyes. Not even once had Yoshio sent even a single gift for sweets to his father. Even Yoshio had undoubtedly been working to the best of his ability. That they always had to endure such bone-chilling hardship like this was nothing but the result of Minoru’s profligacy.

Yoshio found himself recalling the time he had lived with that woman who used to be a merchant. Even with less income than now, they had somehow maintained a respectable life back then—Yoshio bitterly cursed Minoru’s profligacy. If he could just leave this woman, he felt he might regain the literary career he had once lost. When Yoshio considered how Minoru’s clinging to him—preventing him from boldly conquering the world—was bringing ruin upon himself, he became convinced he must separate from her even if it meant driving her away.

“Can’t you find some work and help me out?”

Yoshio repeated this day after day. Minoru was aware that the time had finally come when she would be cast aside by him. For over a decade, Minoru had nearly exhausted herself yearning for just one thing. Somehow, between her eyes and the distant sky there hung a single shining thing—its light forever tugging at her heart as if to make hope’s hue linger. Yet that light never descended upon her as blazing radiance. Through the shadow cast by Yoshio’s heart, Minoru gazed intently at this life that seemed maliciously bent on tormenting her alone.

“Just give up everything.” “You’re just unlucky.” “And you’re far too spineless.” “You were born to resign yourself to a mundane life.” Minoru recalled Yoshio’s words like these. But still she longed to pursue that glimmer of light endlessly. Even if it was destined never to fall into her hands, she wanted to chase that glimmer her whole life. And through that endless pursuit, she still hoped to find meaning in her existence.

One evening after returning from the Tori no Ichi Fair, the two of them seriously discussed separating. “First of all, it’s pitiable for you too.” “My efforts are below those of an average man, you see.” “I certainly don’t have the ability to support even you alone, so please let us separate for a time.” “In return, if I can manage to let you live in luxury, we could be together again.”

This was Yoshio’s declaration when their separation was decided.

“If I were to part with Yoshio, what would become of me? How am I to go on?” Minoru immediately thought this. And the sudden loss of the shadow of a companion from her side felt unbearably lonely. The helplessness of being slid off the pillar she had long leaned against—a pillar that held the warmth of her own skin—left Minoru’s heart unable to settle. “I’ll have to part with Mei too, won’t I?” Minoru said this while watching the puppy playing in the garden. This puppy had a profound connection that bound the two of them together through their long months and years like scenes in a narrative. The one that had often comforted the two of them was this puppy. Tears spilled from Minoru’s eyes unbidden.

“Parting with Mei would pain me more than parting with you.” “Isn’t that strange?”

After putting on a playful tone, Minoru kept crying without end.

Thirteen

Minoru was to return to her mother’s place for the time being. Yoshio sold off all their remaining belongings and settled on living in a boarding house for the time being.

After dragging them this far, the hand of fate—as if mocking the pair—suddenly plopped an unexpected happiness right onto their heads. It was that Minoru’s manuscript, which Yoshio had forced her to write at the beginning of summer, had been selected in the judging.

It was mid-November. Outside was clear.

While Minoru was tending to the morning kitchen chores, the bearer of this happy news arrived. That person spoke to Minoru on the second floor. After that person had left, the two sat facing each other in the back room for a while, exchanging glances.

“Could it really have been selected?” Yoshio said this in a feeble tone.

It was less than five days later that ten hundred-yen bills were placed in Minoru’s hands. The economic hardship that had plagued them like a cancerous growth was finally lifted by this. “This isn’t thanks to anyone else—it’s my doing.” “You remember how furious I was back then, don’t you?” “If you hadn’t finally listened to what I kept telling you, none of this good fortune would’ve come.” Yoshio declared this as if he alone had granted Minoru her salvation.

“It’s not thanks to anyone.”

Minoru thought exactly that. There had been a time when Yoshio grew angry, saying she didn't know how to cherish life itself - at that moment, Minoru herself had wept in grief over protecting her art. If letting such matters roughen her brushwork, she might as well consider earning money through other writing jobs - she had even thought that. Yet when she reflected on how the work she'd completed under Yoshio's relentless urging had yielded such favorable results, Minoru found herself unable to refrain from feeling grateful to him.

“It’s all thanks to you.”

Minoru said that. When she thought this result might become the beginning of opening a single new path for herself, Minoru felt a joy as if reborn. “With this, we won’t have to separate after all, will you?”

“Far from it. From now on, both you and I will work with all our might.”

Among those who had judged was Mukojima’s Master Teacher. Because of that person’s low score, Minoru’s work had teetered perilously close to rejection. Yoshio cursed Mukojima’s Master Teacher with every obscenity imaginable. Yet he proclaimed it a blessing that this very man had spurned Minoru. There were two other judges. Those judges had awarded Minoru’s work high marks. Yoshio urged Minoru to visit them. One was a renowned master of modern fiction. This man was absent from home due to illness. The other was a lecturer at Waseda University—an authoritative critic in contemporary letters. Minoru went to see him. As she prepared to leave, Yoshio ordered her to bring along the short story she had once composed and treasured. He declared she must request its publication in the influential literary magazine he edited.

Minoru followed Yoshio’s orders and went out carrying that short story. The Minoru of before would never have done something like suddenly thrusting her own work upon someone she had just met—in such situations, she would have felt at least a small sense of her own authority. Yet Minoru’s heart had abruptly gone numb. When Minoru visited, that person happened to be at home. And granted Minoru an audience. “That has indeed become a work of art.” “It’s a fine piece.”

The man crossed his arms, his gaunt face tilted downward, and spoke those words. The short story manuscript Minoru had submitted was also accepted by this man with the words, “I’ll take a look at it.” He said that what women write has too many digressions and lacks substance. He said they didn’t know how to dig to the roots. He said that was the flaw in women’s works. Minoru returned home repeating those words over and over. And during their meeting, she chewed over each and every one of the many scholarly terms that had come from that man’s mouth, lingering on them endlessly.

Fourteen

"That work had absolutely no authority."

Minoru began to feel these things. The ten or so hundred-yen bills—the kind that would leave not even a scrap visible if clenched in one fist—disappeared almost immediately. Yet this should never have been just about such a small sum of money. Though the work Yoshio had forced her to complete brought unexpected happiness into their household, Minoru’s creation lacked any authority. It held no social authority.

When it came to authority in her work, Minoru thought, the theater—which had been ridiculed from one perspective—still carried an impression coursing with hot blood. Minoru's heart retreated step by step. Yoshio paraded a joy as if they were being bodily hoisted by fortune's hands, yet even this left her unsatisfied. What had suddenly descended upon them wasn't fortune, but merely a mischievous trick by the god of fate to retie their frayed bond. Their life was fated to soon resume its former cycle.

Minoru clearly thought, “I must do something.” She thought she had to start over again. She thought she had to strengthen her own power to pierce through the void. Though Minoru’s authority-less work had struck no resonant chord anywhere, it was true that this faintest ripple—taking form in society through the caprices of the wind—had for the first time violently shaken her heart in a worldly manner, producing an effect.

After that, Minoru began studying with neurotic intensity. Her eyes, which until now had so often been on the verge of closing in sleep, now opened wide and clear. At the same time, Yoshio grew distant from her own heart. There were increasingly more times when she did not engage with Yoshio. No matter what Yoshio said, she increasingly found herself turning away from him. What governed Minoru was no longer Yoshio. What governed Minoru now came through her own power for the first time. The arrogance of Minoru that Yoshio had so detested had, by this time, been hidden away where he could no longer see it. And in that hidden place, Minoru’s arrogance operated even more powerfully.

“You could even say it’s all thanks to me.” “If I hadn’t pushed you so hard.”

By this time, Minoru had come to receive Yoshio’s words with a malicious smile. The work of the woman driven by Yoshio’s lash was rewarded with the very money he had desired. There should have been no debt of gratitude owed to the man from that. As for Minoru’s new efforts—the necessity to carve out her own path anew—the man had nothing left to offer. Gradually, the woman’s attitude seeped into Yoshio’s heart. Yoshio would sometimes watch the retreating figure of the woman as she diligently sought to climb to a new stage, having severed herself from him in her heart. That fragile woman was steadily growing stronger like this—yet he could not bring himself to think that one wrenching motive for her newfound strength was indeed the result of that published work. And he thought that the one who had given her the strength of self-awareness was indeed himself.

However, Yoshio said nothing. The work done for Minoru was undeniably Minoru’s own work. Minoru’s art was undeniably Minoru’s art. Minoru found her own strength and began to move forward. Yoshio could not interject himself into that. When Yoshio thought this, he tasted an anxious feeling of being left behind step by step by this woman.

One day, a man came to visit them. This was a man from Yoshio's hometown who studied literature at Imperial University. Through this man's account, Minoru learned of the other genuine selector who had chosen her work on that particular day. That person was Minomura, an emerging writer. It became clear through this man that one of the judges publicly listed in the newspaper had fallen ill, and Minomura—the literary scholar who essentially served as his disciple—had acted as substitute selector. This university student was one who privately revered Minomura, the literary scholar.

Not long after that, Minoru was taken by this university student to visit Minomura, the literary scholar. His house was located at the top of Kagurazaka.

When they entered the house, Minoru saw a man standing facing a chest of drawers in the dimly lit tatami room near the entrance. He had the air of someone hiding there until first-time guests were ushered deeper inside. Since the shoji screen stood open, he was fully visible from where Minoru stood. After being led to an inner room by a middle-aged woman whose beauty in youth still lingered in her features and left there to wait, the man who had been standing with his back turned earlier entered. This was Minomura, the literary scholar. Both his manner of speech and physical presence suggested a man weighed down by gravity.

This literary scholar spoke of the hardships he faced when selecting the work. When the manuscript was in the literary scholar’s possession during a summer storm and flood that nearly drenched it completely, his wife had carried it out out of concern. At that time their house had been destroyed by a cliff collapse so they had apparently moved here. “When I first read that I didn’t think much of it at all,” he said, “but midway through I began finding it interesting.” “But just when I thought I couldn’t possibly give you full marks along came Arino visiting my house.” “If I’d consulted him he’d have insisted I award you a hundred twenty points just to avoid wasting my own careful consideration.” “Arino makes such reckless suggestions because he bears no responsibility himself—but I couldn’t possibly go that far.” “So I resolved to set your score twenty or thirty points apart from all others.” “Seeing how liberally other judges inflated their scores—you were quite precariously positioned.”

The literary scholar gazed at Minoru with a belated look that seemed to declare this woman’s fate had rested entirely in his hands. Then he picked out the parts he thought were good from that work and praised them.

Minoru listened, enraptured by the literary scholar’s words steeped in artistic sensibility. And she thought there was yet another person here wearing an expression that seemed to claim having bestowed fortune upon her. The literary scholar Arino who had just been mentioned happened to arrive. The man sat small with his thin knees drawn tightly together, rubbing his face with one hand as he prattled on. "But you see..." he would say repeatedly—this verbal tic of his held a certain charm in the lingering resonance of that "ne" and in the expression that gradually let a smile seep up from the depths of his face.

Minoru, amidst this, felt as though her emotions were dancing brilliantly for the first time in ages. Minomura and Arino disjointedly discussed what each was pondering in their heads, then tried to drag the other toward their own pet topics. Minoru found it amusing to listen to the two men clashing in their self-absorbed debate.

Before long, Mrs.Minomura returned. She was a beautiful woman with the formal grace reminiscent of traditional kabuki onnagata. Moreover, young Russians would come there to receive dance lessons from Mrs.Minomura. Minoru, her face flushed crimson, was kept there until late into the night. And then, led by the university student, she left the house. When leaving, Minoru exchanged farewells with Arino—the literary scholar who had emerged together with her—and parted ways at a dark roadside.

When she returned home, Yoshio was on the second floor. When Yoshio saw Minoru sitting there, he noticed in the lingering traces of her bloodshot eyes that this woman was suggesting disordered emotions. Feeling a jealousy toward her unlike any he had felt in recent days, Yoshio remained silent no matter what Minoru said.

“When I went in, you see, Mr. Minomura was standing facing away in the corner of the entryway tatami room.” “I could see him completely from where I was.”

Minoru kept repeating just this and laughing to herself.

That night, Minoru had a strange dream. It was a dream of mummies. A male mummy and a female mummy lay overlapping one atop the other, shaped like the eggplant spirit horses of Obon. Their color was gray. The puppet-like woman’s face—all eyes—was turned upward. Her lips were vividly crimson. This was a dream where Minoru stood watching them enclosed within a large glass case. She didn’t know what they were, but felt as if someone had told her they were mummies.

When she woke up in the morning, Minoru thought it had been an interesting dream. I thought that if I were a painter, I would try to fully capture that color. What struck her as strange was how clearly the awareness that those were mummies lingered.

“I had such a dream.”

Minoru went to Yoshio’s side and spoke. And saying, "This must be some kind of omen," she went to her desk, trying to sketch just its form.

“I hate talking about dreams.”

Having said that, Yoshio combed the thin dog’s body in the cold sunlight.