Pathway to Japanese Literature

People ended up moving into the back house that had been vacant for some time.

Since it faced the open space serving as the children’s playground, the house didn’t seem particularly problematic at first glance. Yet we found ourselves subjected to such unwelcome nuisances—being forced to hear their siblings’ quarrelsome wails and having to cautiously avoid approaching the fence—that everyone in our household came to appreciate how peacefully we had lived while the back house stood empty.

Being on the outskirts where homes occupied spacious plots with rare moving commotions, this incongruously wedged-in house grew all the more irritatingly conspicuous.

Since it was built as a rental property, there was no reason people shouldn’t rent it—but still, I couldn’t help hoping that at least a family of such vulgar disposition wouldn’t come to occupy it.

The previous tenants had been quite cultured people who led quiet, settled lives, but on one occasion—due to the wife’s carelessness—their crawling infant drank kerosene and died, an incident that made the newspapers. Apparently finding this unbearable, they moved away.

They were said to be graduates, and indeed, there seemed to have been quite a number of books left there.

"I wonder what sort of people have come this time."

While we were saying this to each other, the boy had somehow returned from his scouting mission,

“Kō-chan’s family came back.”

he reported.

“Kō-chan’s house?”

“Oh, so they have come back again.
So that little girl is there too,
and that unpleasant-faced father too.”
“Yeah,
somehow it seems they’ve had about two more babies.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Mother, I hear Kō-chan’s family has come back,” I said.

It was truly absurd.

What in the world could have happened?

I couldn’t help laughing as I recalled the various stories attached to Kō-chan’s house, where they had lived until about a year ago.

I seem to remember it was summer.

After the master had left for work and the children for school, Kō-chan’s house—which had grown quiet—suddenly erupted into commotion.

Amidst two shrill voices shouting unintelligible arguments about “this” and “that,” accompanied by thunderous thuds and crashes, all the maids who had been working at the water outlet quietly muffled their footsteps and peered through gaps in the hedge—a living fence so carelessly maintained it was riddled with peepholes—only to gasp in shock: Good heavens, what on earth was happening?

The mistress and the maid were in the midst of a scuffle.

The hysterical mistress was gaunt and wiry, while the maid was so corpulent it looked painful.

The sight of those two fighting so frantically was as terrifying as it was terrifying, but the absurdity of it all struck me first.

The mistress was shouting something as she yanked the maid's hair, and the maid bared her teeth and clawed wildly at whatever she could reach—the mistress's hands, her face, everything.

Their hair had come undone, with messy tufts spilling from their disheveled bangs, and as their feet got tangled in their trailing sashes, they both tumbled like straw sacks.

After tumbling over four or five times and struggling back up each time, they finally became completely exhausted and plopped down where they were—and then began a vulgar shouting match like rickshaw drivers’ quarrels.

“Idiot.”
“Moron.”
Having escalated beyond mere insults into saying things too unbearable to hear—and occasionally lashing out as if reminded of something—they kept at it until finally it was the mistress who broke into tears.
“Idiot! Moron! Good-for-nothing!”
“Get out!”
“No matter how much you apologize, I won’t keep you around!”

“Come on,

“Come on, just get out already!”

At this, the maid began wailing unrestrainedly,

“I’ll leave, you know!

Even if you tell me to help out, who’s going to stay and do it?

Ridiculous.

It’s not like the sun shines only on this place.

Just you wait.”

As soon as she said this, she gave the mistress a shove and headed off—perhaps intending to gather her belongings—while the mistress, for her part, wobbled unsteadily,

“Get out! Get out!”

She chased after her.

The maids, utterly dumbfounded and watching without even blinking, were recounting the scene to us while—

“Women are such disgraceful creatures.”

“To think a person addressed as mistress would behave in such a manner—what could one possibly say?”

“And yet it reflects on the master’s dignity.”

“Could there possibly exist a mistress who would do such things even in Tokyo?”

they were saying.

They were scowling yet couldn’t suppress their laughter.

The thought of that demon-mask-like woman’s face—pulling a childish pout while spewing insults—became utterly unbearable.

When word spread that the mistress had returned again, everyone found it absurd for no particular reason.

“Do you suppose such a thing might happen again?”

The maids were making gestures as if something were expected.

For two or three days, the mistress had appeared busy with household tidying, bustling about from early morning, but once things were more or less in order, there she sat with a small child on her lap, rocking back and forth as if rowing a boat—a scene so vivid it seemed one could reach out and touch it through the sparse pine needles.

“It seems that person has softened—now she just dozes off all day.”

“She must be having a good long life.”

Such things were being gossiped about in our household.

They had one maid and a relative’s foster child—a girl of thirteen or fourteen named Kiyoko—who appeared to handle water chores and such.

“Kiyoko! Do something about this already.”

When the mistress shouted loudly, and hearing Kiyoko respond in the brisk tone of a shop boy, Mother and the others—

"She doesn't seem to be a maid,"

"Oh, if she's worked from dawn till dusk without rest, there's no way she could be raised properly."

"How pitiful."

Mother would murmur this sympathetically, and whenever I caught snatches of their endless "Kiyoko! Kiyoko!" calls, I kept thinking—wouldn't it be better to make her just watch the children? What a twisted girl she'd turn into otherwise.

The eldest was a thirteen-year-old boy called Kō-chan, next a girl of six or seven, followed by two more little ones whose genders were unclear—whether boys or girls—making mornings and evenings thoroughly clamorous.

When the eldest child would shout something like a school song in a horribly out-of-tune voice, and seeing the mistress grow flustered as she tried to intervene among the little ones squabbling over toys nearby, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them.

Though our household had now grown up and become mostly quiet, when I thought there must have been such incidents in the past too, I came to deeply realize that Mother—who endured everything without letting slip even a hint of foolishness—was truly no ordinary woman.

Since Kō-chan and the second child of our household were in the same elementary school, one grade apart, once their initial exchanges over the fence had concluded,

“Tadashi!” he called out as he swung around to the front gate and entered.
With his round face and head—and that high-strung air about him—he bore not the slightest resemblance to his mother.
While the mistress kept a slovenly appearance, that child always carried himself with neat propriety.
He often brought his younger sister along.
She had her bobbed hair tied back in a braid with a ribbon that seemed ready to slip loose from its weight, dressed in a tidy kimono with large sleeves.

She wasn’t exactly a spirited child, but there wasn’t the slightest hint of petty annoyance about her.

When her older brothers played ball games, she would be assigned to retrieve those that strayed into tree shadows or distant corners, carrying out this duty quietly and contentedly, which evoked an air of modesty.

Whenever I went out to say something to her, she would blush and scamper away immediately, so we never once had a proper conversation.

Though I couldn’t help wishing she had just a bit more sparkle to her, I found myself incapable of mustering any real effort to draw her out.

The children said Kō-chan’s father worked at some bank, yet he appeared to maintain a modest, restrained lifestyle quite unbefitting such a station.

His head was oblong-shaped, thin hair combed from the right, giving every impression of a nervous disposition.

I’d occasionally glimpse him wandering listlessly about the veranda where scarlet crape myrtles bloomed right before me, hands tucked in his sleeves as though at loose ends.

That such an emaciated frame could manage to feed so many mouths—though it was hardly any concern of mine—the sheer disproportion between that man’s gauntness and the size of his household struck me as downright strange.

In any case, he was the sort to clumsily bulldoze through various matters exactly as he appeared, so members of our household often found themselves displeased.

Given my household’s custom of not socializing too closely with neighbors like them, I would think, "Well, it’s no concern of mine," yet inevitably end up...

"That man is truly peculiar," I would catch myself muttering.

About two years prior—back when Kō-chan’s family still lived in the back house—my eldest brother had begun raising chickens, successfully hatching eight chicks that spring during his second attempt.

The dismal results of his first venture made this unexpected success all the sweeter, sending our naive poultry keeper into raptures. He fussed endlessly about optimal feed formulas and weather precautions, until we finally concluded his existing chicken coop had become impossibly cramped.

Moving the coop wasn’t just a haphazard affair—they insisted on proper drainage patterns, ensuring adequate light exposure while avoiding overly windy spots, ultimately deciding to construct it at the edge of the open space that had long served as our playground.

Having called the gardener and given instructions since early morning—busily weaving wire mesh himself next to where the gardener was leveling the ground, all while insisting that it be stretched to prevent crows from entering from above—the younger brother began noticing the neighbor’s master, who was pacing the garden with an indolent air, persistently peering toward them.

Pretending not to watch yet unable to look away, he seemed utterly tormented by the gardeners' activities here—digging post holes and assembling the coop's wooden framework.

Nevertheless, my younger brother remained purely delighted, utterly unconcerned with such matters as he pressed forward with the work. Meanwhile, the gardeners—having erected four posts between them—began laying floorboards from post to post before vigorously nailing backboards onto the side facing the neighbors.

With each thudding hammer blow, the neighbor's master—who had been furrowing his brows—seemed unable to endure it any longer. He stomped over and, perhaps thinking him a mere child, began issuing various instructions to my younger brother across the fence.

"That post should be moved closer here—it must be done this way," he insisted, prescribing his construction method. My irritated younger brother’s face flushed red as it always did when angered, yet—

"Yeah, yeah."

He gave vague replies and resolutely pressed on as he intended.

“It felt gratifying.”

Whenever that story came up, even now, he often said—though in truth, it had been about bending two grown men to his will—

“What should we do about this spot here, young master?”

“This section seems problematic—could you devise some clever solution here, if you please?”

While being told this, imagining the feelings of that still-fifteen-year-old dazed boy checking the meddler’s nose—someone making unreasonable interferences from beyond the fence—even my own chest began to ache.

Not that the boy was my precious younger brother or anything, but—

Later, I heard that for nearly half a day until the coop was completed, someone had been glaring through a gap in the fence with terrifying, glinting eyes—it was said.
Everyone in the household disliked this situation.

There’s no justification for meddling in another household’s affairs and adding nonsensical criticisms just because the person overseeing it was a child.
As they went on about how this was an insult to our household or some such thing, the second brother—built like a sumo wrestler—

“I’ll go give them a piece of my mind, Mother.

That’s utterly outrageous!”

Though we laughed it off as he shook his head and fumed about, whenever I thought how even at the bank someone like him must surely be treated like vermin, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the members of his household—those who pompously referred to him as “Mr. Banker” and “Father” with such self-importance.

We who lived in complete openness without affectation found their showy way of life doubly disagreeable, making it impossible to regard the back house with cheerful goodwill.

More than anything, given that their master—who above all should have been magnanimous and tolerant—proved instead a nitpicker of trivialities, I must confess we likely entertained more varied thoughts about him than reality justified.

Even so, had the mistress been a sharp-witted woman, she might have skillfully handled what needed doing with grace—but time and again,

This was utterly unmanageable.

With that vacant-eyed stare of hers, the children ran amok, the maid was summoned until dizzy with fatigue, and insults never ceased.

I didn’t know their exact financial standing, but if they could afford to dress their children so well, I often thought they ought to have managed a more comfortable, compact lifestyle.

Since they were people engaged in work entirely different from my family’s, our household must have appeared rather peculiar to them.
When their father returned around dinnertime and promptly began playing with the little ones or amusing everyone by producing skillful flute-like sounds through his lips, he must have drawn attention too—but it was always me who became the black dot at the center of sixteen eyeballs, fuming and ready to smoke.

One could say there was no woman like me in the backyard—but driven by a curiosity I could scarcely fathom, the moment I even stepped outside, they would scrutinize everything from how I placed my feet to how I pursed my lips.

With my dry, unruly hair bundled into a clumsy bun at the nape and still wearing hakama trousers, I would be playing ball with my younger brothers until flushed crimson—only to perch on the swing beneath the trees as dusk blurred the surroundings, utterly absorbed in reading. Or crouching before a small child, scribbling something on the ground with a twig while speaking earnestly. Witnessing such scenes, they apparently found it impossible to look away.

At school where I spent daylong hours, the overcrowding and constant clash of disparate temperaments made the strain of maintaining decorum just to get by unharmed unbearable; thus I kept my interactions minimal, preserving what quietude I could. This made returning to our spacious backyard truly delightful—roaming at dusk with a book in hand wherever my feet might lead, or regaling my formidably imaginative younger brother with tales starring fungi that sprouted about us.

Sitting indoors and prone to overusing my head, engaging in vigorous ball-throwing about once every ten days—enough to work up a sweat—was by no means a waste for me.

However, knowing I was being constantly watched made it an unpleasant feeling no matter how unperturbed I might have been.

Somehow it was disagreeable like this.

Because I had been engaged in intensely focused work for five or six days prior, when I finally stepped onto the garden soil after what felt like ages, even the stiffness in my neck was forgotten—the sky’s color and earth’s texture alike appeared beautifully vivid and bright to my eyes.

As I wandered about, wanting somehow to move my limbs, my eldest younger brother happened to come with a ball and invite me to play—so I immediately slipped into my sandals and began.

When bracing to catch a ball thrown with full force, as it slammed into my palm with such intensity that the trapped air burst out in a sharp pop followed by a soft puff—our coordination reaching perfect sync—an indescribably fierce masculine vigor would surge through my entire body.

With my eyes glittering, when I leapt high like a swallow to catch the ball that was nearly flying over my head—just then, across the fence of the back house I had completely forgotten until now—

“Your sister’s quite skilled at this, isn’t she.”

A child’s voice, teasing in tone, rang out loudly.

When I looked, there at the very edge of the kamoi in the room visible through the fence stretching all the way over, Kō-chan and the maid sat side by side, smirking.

Though I just furrowed my brows slightly and kept pretending not to notice, my younger brother glanced at me and threw the ball back without a word. As we continued our exchange, I became engrossed again—completely forgetting those two faces—when Kō-chan's voice rang out once more...

“Hey, you—!”

When I tilted my head at his shout, they remained in the same position as before.

The younger brother made a sympathetic face.

If it were just Kō-chan—a child after all—I wouldn’t have cared what he did, but when even a woman in her mid-twenties joined in, using a stepping stool or some such thing to carry on like that, I became unbearably furious.

Truly thinking her a detestable woman, I spun around to face forward and declared in a solemn voice,

“That’s no way to behave.”

I said.

Even she must have felt some shame, for the woman immediately lowered her head.

Since that was sufficient, I didn’t say anything to Kō-chan, but I found myself utterly dumbfounded—how could someone with such a large frame have pulled off such a thing without a shred of embarrassment?

All these matters seemed nothing but the mistress's mismanagement.

After the chicken coop was placed near the back house, the chicks gradually grew into full-fledged hens and began laying eggs, so that six or seven fresh ones came to be left in the nest each day. This meant our household had almost no need to buy eggs anymore.

At their most productive, the three older hens and six new ones would lay about nine eggs altogether. Before long, Kō-chan's father must have noticed this with his characteristic gaze—he promptly brought in three laying hens and a rooster from somewhere.

When Kō-chan's father began imitating us, my younger brother—knowledgeable about poultry keeping—watched with amused vigilance.

After the birds arrived, he built a coop,

“Do they eat nothing but rice?”

Upon hearing him mutter such things,

“That way they’ll eat you out of house and home,”

he would say.

The coop they built over an entire Sunday with Kō-chan’s assistance had no doors whatsoever—just a perch and what resembled an uncovered oil crate with boarded flooring, all surrounded on three sides by a bamboo fence low enough for humans to duck under.

It was as though they’d been deposited in some land devoid of cats and dogs—but however one looked at it, such excessive leniency meant everyone in our household clearly pitied this young poultry family forced to reside where their lives hung perpetually in the balance.

Yet surprisingly enough, neither cats nor dogs seemed to have bothered them, but whether due to their feed or lack of exercise, not a single egg had been laid even after days passed. This led Kō-chan—visiting under his father's private orders—to consult the family's poultry expert about what might be wrong.

He had apparently advised that chickens wouldn't lay until accustomed to their new coop, suggesting occasional loach bones and regular fresh vegetables—yet these instructions seemed to yield little result.

The chickens, gradually growing accustomed to the garden's layout, could no longer endure being confined within the narrow bamboo fence. Most of the time they would flap about wildly across the entire yard, leaving the veranda caked in dirt, or while we were eating meals, four heads would pop out in unison through the lattice of the shoji screens. Come dusk, the commotion of driving them back into the coop was like a fire and earthquake erupting simultaneously.

Though it was still far too early in the day, unable to keep up with the chickens darting every which way, the two children, the maid, and Kiyoko ran around barefoot,

“Oh dear, they went that way!
Please catch them quickly.
Oh, they've gotten away! You're not helping at all, young master!
When the chickens come, you're the one who scares them off!”
they were running around saying such things.

When the chickens flew toward us, screeching and leaping up, the group united their voices in shooing sounds, which startled the chickens just as they were about to enter the coop. Panicked, the chickens let out piercing cries rivaling the women’s as they flung themselves at trees or tried to scale the fence. Only when both sides were utterly exhausted did the chickens finally settle onto the coop’s roost.

By that time, the chickens had become half-blind.

Viewed from afar, this indescribably comical scene looked as though four figures—both large and small—were playing with the chickens.

Moreover, for the maids and Kiyoko—constantly driven from task to task in their busy work all day—this overt playtime became their only chance for respite.

When the deafening screeches and cock-a-doodle-doos began, the family would,

“Ah, so it’s begun,”

they said and laughed.

For quite some time, the chickens forced to live this terribly anxious existence had somehow managed to endure, but when a large hen had its eyeball pecked out during a squabble and ended up one-eyed—a calamity it hadn’t been born with—this major incident threw Kō-chan’s entire household into consternation.

“If you make it one-eyed and put glasses on it, you can kinda pass it off.”

We had been making such playful remarks when, not long after that incident, Kō-chan’s younger sister came to our house.

My younger brother began speaking while feeding greens to the chickens.

“Your chicken got pecked.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Which one did the pecking?”

“Brother’s...”

“Brother’s—which one?”

The little girl tried peering through the fence edge but apparently couldn't discern anything,

"A plump one that's sort of yellowish."

"Brother's chickens keep doing awful things,"

"I simply can't bear it anymore!"

she declared, raising her sleeve hem high and tilting her head like a marriageable young lady might do.

Appearing deep in thought, my younger brother—relaxing the corners of his mouth where a faint mustache had innocently begun to sprout—smirked.

"If she becomes one-eyed, that'll be trouble," he said.

"Listen, go back to your house right now and search the whole yard.

That eyeball must be lying around there somewhere.

If you wash it well and put it back in, I guarantee it'll return to normal.

Right?

Go quickly and look for it."

When he said this, the girl—who had worn a puzzled expression for some time—seemed to reach a decision,

“Yes, I’ll go look for it.”

No sooner had she spoken than she gathered her sleeves and dashed back as if about to tumble.

The little girl, determined to find the lost chicken eyeball no matter what, pitifully flushed red in the face as she rummaged through uneven tree roots and stirred through dust beneath the eaves in search of a single eyeball.

The younger brother seemed to be silently watching this.

After some time had passed, the girl who had been struggling with her search,

"I can't find it! What could've happened? I just don't know what to do!" she appealed nasally while turning toward my Younger Brother,

“That really would be a problem. Then what could it be? It must’ve been washed away by the rain the other night. By now, it must surely be riding on Shinagawa’s Odaiba. No matter what, it’s too late now,” he said with feigned seriousness.

“It really must be like that!”

And so, having thoroughly resigned themselves—or so people said—it settled into being just another innocent children's tale.

The fact itself was a simple matter of that alone, yet when considering the feelings of those two children, there lay an intrigue surpassing the story itself.

Whenever I noticed how my younger brother's attitude toward the smaller child next door—along with other aspects—was beginning to take on a manly quality, I would feel both a sense of reliability and something akin to loss; it was generally during such moments that I would discover something new within his familiar habits.

My younger brother, who always occupied a mediator-like position between our house and the back house, seemed to have been watching with his developing critical eye the two entirely different groups of people with great interest.

On one unbearably hot August day, when my younger brother saw the back house’s mistress lying sprawled in the middle of the open tatami room wearing nothing but a swimsuit meant for sea bathing—snugly lined up with her children like sunbathing hatchling turtles—he became indignant and began complaining about how utterly slovenly and disgraceful it was.

After all, this neighborhood was known as a scholars’ town where many people led rather settled lives; consequently, I had heard that it ranked among Tokyo’s wards with thriving music scenes, since so many of these residents’ daughters and wives engaged in music as a leisurely pursuit.

Setting aside actual skill, sounds representing each household’s tastes resonated along the row of houses almost uniformly, so before anyone knew it, Kō-chan’s household too began playing an old-fashioned accordion that was once popular.

The sound itself—terribly gaping like some wide-open maw—hardly left a favorable impression to begin with, and coupled with the fact that its source was none other than that father, it naturally became yet another fine subject for ridicule.

The children surrounding their father—who had gathered under a single electric light, sitting cross-legged with his hairy shins exposed, clumsily guiding his bony fingers through a halting "One... Two... Three..."—sat rigidly with both hands planted on their knees, their gazes fixed as if awaiting some miraculous apparition, caught between his stiffened fingers and the occasional sudden bursts of squeaking, honking sounds that erupted as if he’d just remembered how to play.

The very act of imagining that scene was comical enough, but when my younger brother proceeded to recount it with gestures and vocal imitations, I couldn’t help but laugh.

Even we, from the perspective of those more refined and accomplished one tier above us, must have appeared utterly ridiculous in countless ways; yet when confronted with matters so utterly mismatched in every aspect—like poorly strung marionettes—

How on earth could they remain so unperturbed?

I couldn’t help but think.

It was as if the adults from both households—excluding the children—relied on that single fence like an imperishable castle wall, much like feudal-era kingdoms differing in climate, culture, and artifacts.

I often thought children were truly generous and fair beings, but when the father said,
"Hey, you going again?"

No matter what was said to them,
"Yes, that's right,
"Dad."
With some such smooth talk, they’d carry things off effortlessly and keep playing with unfazed expressions until being called for dinner.

If adults could harbor even a little of that sentiment in some corner of the heart, how pleasant it would be, one couldn’t help but think.

As a woman who expends social niceties on the tedious complexities inherent in ordinary female relationships, whenever I witness such things, I find myself unbearably envious,

If only I could be like that…

the thought would involuntarily surface.

One particularly cool evening—already past mid-autumn, a night when a single layer of flannel seemed insufficient against the chill, when the stars appeared ready to spill from the sky.

While putting the baby born in August to sleep in the innermost room, I heard the raucous laughter of a crowd of men somewhere—voices collapsing into guffaws that clamored loudly and incessantly right by my ears.

Mother, who was fanning away mosquitoes while nursing the baby,

“Where on earth could it be,

Is it Mr. Yamamura?

"It’s quite noisy, isn’t it,

With this racket, the baby will never get to sleep.

As she spoke, she began to take notice of the raucous, undulating noise.

While I had been reading a book beside [the baby] and lightly fanning [them], it became so unbearable that, worried about the stuffiness, I closed the windows and shut the doors—but when I suddenly paid attention, it was unmistakably coming from Kō-chan’s house.

When I paid attention, thinking that the always-quiet Mr. Yamamura’s house must indeed be empty as usual, there were no less than ten people making drunken commotions inside.

“It’s Kō-chan’s house,

“What on earth is causing that commotion?”
“Everyone is drunk.”
“How dreadful.”
As we spoke, something apparently extremely amusing must have occurred next, for a deep voice surged like a wave into drawn-out laughter that broke into guffaws. Within this cacophony, two sounds became particularly audible—one feminine yet unmistakably male in its thinness, another so low it seemed to crawl along the ground—their distinct pitches persistently cutting through the multitude of noises as they flowed onward.

One was a slender man in his twenties with long, parted hair, while the other was undoubtedly a red-faced man of thirty-five or six.

The younger man wore Western clothes, while the owner of the deep voice—undoubtedly cinched tightly into a kimono with its broad obi—could be vividly imagined through his vocal timbre.

After a while, they began singing things like folk songs and popular ballads—and while one or two people doing so might have been tolerable, having around ten people burst into song all at once was enough to make one go deaf.

Though we too engage in witty banter and collapse into laughter, since each of us always takes care to maintain refined and sophisticated humor, hearing them loudly shouting phrases unfit for children's ears made me flush with shame; then thinking how my younger brother—nearing the age of questioning various worldly matters—might be receiving this, an unease that I couldn't let this continue unrestrained welled up within me, mingled with a sense of powerlessness that there was nothing I could actually do about it, until this indignation laced with the shameful urge to yell reprimands at the top of my voice came surging forth.

I alternated between standing by the window and planting myself motionless in the center of the room, fuming alone with a fierce glare.

Mother and the others were initially buzzing with irritation,

“What on earth is this commotion?”

“Or something,”

“Goodness gracious, what a nuisance.”

They had been saying such things but soon fell completely silent, which only made me feel all the more dissatisfied,

“Oh, Mother,

what on earth should I say?

With all those men making such a racket, what on earth are the women of the house doing?”

“Are they just silently watching?”

The noisy vulgarity really made me sick.

I kept saying such things and pressing for agreement.

Evenings were always my most precious time, when most of that day’s work would get done between after dinner and around eleven or twelve o’clock—but that night, disrupted by hoarse voices, I paced about the house clutching a book I absolutely had to read in one hand while harboring a prickly, arid state of mind devoid of any refreshment.

In this area, such commotions were rare to hear, so for someone like me whose life up to now was as short as an ant's leg, this marked the first clamor I had ever experienced.

That is why I found myself affected more profoundly than most people would be.

I even came to think that men were creatures capable of uttering and doing utterly vulgar things with complete nonchalance.

Apparently some distraction had arisen, for seizing the moment when things had quieted down briefly, I entered my study—only to have them start up again almost immediately this time with voices ten times as loud as before.

“Asamayama this and that,”

“This won’t die down!”

When they started shouting again, the fragile peace I’d barely begun to feel was utterly demolished. It felt unbearable, and tears threatened to spill over.

Thinking how he’d abandoned his own children and wife to carry on like that, I came to detest beyond measure that household’s master—the man who always put on such a composed, sanctimonious face while maintaining his air of respectability.

Even if it's wrong to hate or think ill of others, right now I simply couldn't feel any other way.

Exhausted from anger, I went to bed around eleven-thirty with a sullen face, but according to Mother, they had left the storm shutters wide open and kept up their clamor past midnight.

Since this wasn't an everyday occurrence, by the next morning I had settled into somewhat calmer thoughts.

I thought it was probably Monday or Tuesday when a light rain began in the afternoon, and by the time I returned from school, my spirits had grown unbearably heavy. Moreover, the complete derailment of last night's plans and the crucial day's worth of work that had piled up because of that commotion left me thoroughly vexed. Resolving that no matter how frantically busy I became that night, I must accomplish two days' worth of tasks, I arrived home carrying the thick, heavy book I'd checked out from the library, my hands already going numb from its weight.

As soon as I finished dinner, I went to my room.

My attention became wholly absorbed by the rain softly soaking into the moss-thick garden soil and the plip-plop of droplets falling with rustic tranquility, so that I continued working with such taut energy from fingertips to toenails that I nearly lost all sense of self.

My heart pounded as if with joy.

Everything had been perfectly peaceful until around eight-thirty when unexpectedly, last night's commotion began repeating itself. However, between the dampness from the rain and the relatively small number of people, it was somewhat more manageable—but...

"Again?"

I couldn't suppress such contemptuous feelings.

The next day, when I asked the girl who had come to play,

“Because we’re going to Aizu.”

she said.

Observing this, it became clear they were hosting farewell revelries by inviting their bank colleagues in turns—but even so, one would think there was no need for such utterly senseless behavior.

Though no one had claimed they’d never meet again in this world unless they shouted, there ought to be some limit to such unfathomable conduct.

On the final night of this truly astonishing grand banquet that had continued for three days, my younger brother, driven by irrepressible curiosity, went out to spy over the fence.

After standing rooted beside the chicken coop for a good thirty minutes and returning, he burst into speech with a face that seemed both amused and incredulous.

The shoji screens and fusuma sliding doors had all been removed, and the room was packed with people.

While Kō-chan's mother, looking as though she’d been drenched with water and her clothes sodden, was carrying around sake and such, the maid and Kiyoko lined up their primly powdered faces to pour drinks.

Some were dozing on the veranda, others gazing at the garden, still others slumping their shoulders strangely while groaning about something—all sorts of people gathered in chaotic disarray like an overturned toy box.

“There’s hardly any proper feast to speak of,”

everyone was carried away in full revelry.

“Kō-chan’s father was swaying unsteadily, you know.”

...and other such things my brother told me.

The next day—whether because the night had been so drastically altered—when Kō-chan’s family finally awoke it was already nearly nine o’clock, so the maid who had risen later than school’s start time couldn’t possibly eat the rice she’d cooked and make it in time.

"I'm in such a bind,

“I don’t wanna… What am I supposed to do?”

“Hey you, why didn’t you wake up early?”
“You’re late!”

“You’re okay with that?”

Kō-chan’s tearful voice confronting the maid came through clearly.

One couldn’t help but question the unreasonableness of parents who exposed their young children to drunken dissipation, kept them up late with trivialities and excessive stimulation, then turned around to fuss over their school performance.

While forbidding them from going to activities or evening strolls, those very same prohibitors calmly orchestrated situations forcing them into deeds twice as objectionable.

The way they formalized children's education—limiting it to occasions when both parties sat properly composed, or declaring it inappropriate to instruct children when the parents themselves were being amused—became so glaringly apparent that it grew unbearable.
I thought them unfortunate children.

Those who had been conditioned to such ways since childhood came to consider reckless revelry as nothing out of ordinary; when drinking alcohol, they believed it permissible to lay bare every last shred of their foolish disposition, thereby being instilled with terribly misguided notions.

Such things felt all the more precarious and wretched precisely because they were settled matters.

In this manner, four or five days had slipped by unnoticed; with urgent work keeping me occupied indoors throughout that time, by when I next looked out, 23rd Address—Kō-chan's house—stood vacant.

What had become of the chickens and other things?

While thinking they surely couldn't have carried everything off on their backs, I found myself in an odd mood, gazing without any lingering reservations through the thinned fence at Kō-chan's fair-copied papers lying in scattered dust and the tightly closed storm shutters outside bearing the thick-brushed inscription "IDIOT."