Pathway to Japanese Literature

——Mencius——

1 On the screen, a live-action depiction of South Seas natives' lives was being projected. Narrow-eyed, thick-lipped, flat-nosed native women—wearing nothing but scraps of cloth wrapped around their waists, their breasts swaying—were voraciously picking at something from dish-like objects placed before them. It appeared to be rice. A completely naked boy came running. He too hurriedly picked up the rice and stuffed it into his mouth. While stuffing his mouth full, his face—turned squinting toward this side—had festering boils above his eyes and around his mouth. The boy turned to face the other way and began eating again.

That disappeared, replaced by a lively scene—perhaps a festival. The booming drumbeats ebbed and flowed, now distant, now near. The rows of men and women facing each other began moving in unison, shaking their hips to the rhythm. The intensity of the tropical sun blazing down on the sandy ground—through the white light of the screen—was vividly imagined. The drums resounded. A rough male chorus intermingled with it, reaching the ears. Hips shook; the cloth pieces wrapped around their waists rustled and swayed. At the center of the old men slightly removed from the dance, a man who appeared to be the chief sat cross-legged. An emaciated, high-cheekboned old man wearing multiple rosary-like ornaments around his neck. Perhaps conscious of being filmed, he watched the dance with eyes strangely restless—utterly devoid of the confidence he had once held in the uncivilized region. Apart from occasional violent leaps, shouts, and powerful drumbeats that erupted as if suddenly remembered, he stared fixedly at the same monotonous dance with bleary eyes—a dance that never changed no matter how long it continued.

As he watched, Sanzō felt a certain strange anxiety—one he had long forgotten—stealing back into him unnoticed.

It was something that happened long ago. At that time, whenever Sanzō encountered such things—whenever he read records of primitive barbarians’ lives or looked at photographs of them—he would wonder whether he himself could not have been born as one of them. "Indeed," he had thought back then. Indeed, could I not have been born as one of those barbarians? And under the glorious tropical sun—could I not have lived out my life without knowing any of these: Materialism, Vimalakīrti, the Supreme Moral Law, human history, or the structure of the solar system? This way of thinking—concerning the uncertainty of fate—had strangely unsettled Sanzō. "Similarly, I—" he continued to think. "I—could I not have been born as a higher existence different from present-day humans—whether they be dwellers of other planets, beings invisible to our eyes, or entities emerging on Earth after humanity's extinction in some distant era?" What we, not knowing its true nature, fearfully call chance—had it altered its course even slightly, who could assert that such a thing would not have happened to me? "And had I been born as such a being—all things that my present self can neither see, hear, nor even conceive of—I could have seen, heard, and contemplated." Thinking this way had been unbearably terrifying to him. At the same time, it had been unbearably irritating. In this world, there could exist things that I am incapable of seeing, hearing, or even conceiving of—not experientially, but by capacity. What I could have contemplated had I been a different being, I was incapable of contemplating merely because I was my current self. As he followed this line of thought—even while steeped in vague anxiety—Sanzō of that time had come to feel something akin to humiliation.

On the screen, the earlier dance scene had vanished, replaced by a jungle landscape. Several jet-black monkeys with long hands and tails were leaping from branch to branch. One of those monkeys abruptly stopped and looked this way; it had white rings around its eyes that made it appeared to be wearing glasses. A bird with a beak that looked two feet long let out an unpleasant cry and flew off from its branch.

Sanzō’s thoughts returned once more to the "uncertainty of existence."

He first began to feel this kind of anxiety when he was still a middle school student. Just as characters grow strange when scrutinized—when broken into component parts and questioned for their correctness, their necessity eroding with each examination—so too did everything around him seem increasingly uncertain in existence the more carefully he observed. Where lies the reason it must exist as it does now? It should be able to be something vastly different. Moreover, isn’t what exists now the most repulsive among all possibilities? Such feelings perpetually haunted him throughout his middle school years. Even contemplating his father—those eyes and that mouth (which struck him as particularly bizarre when isolated and examined)—he would often find himself aghast, bleakly studying his father’s face as if demanding why this man bearing every exact feature had to be his father, why such intimate bonds were necessary. Why did it have to be that way? Couldn’t it have been another man? ...Toward everything surrounding him, Sanzō felt this distrust in every matter. How utterly devoid of necessity was all that enveloped him! What a wretched accumulation of contingent illusions this world makes! He remained perpetually irritated, thinking of nothing else. At times he nearly sensed everything verging on coherence. That is—in such moments—that very accident: the notion that absolute randomness might itself constitute necessity, a boyishly nebulous conception. There were instants when an answer seemed granted. There were others when it did not. The latter far outnumbered the former. His fledgling thoughts circled the word “necessity” with vexed frustration, only ever doubling back.

The film showed an old-fashioned river steamer making its way down a low-banked river. It was likely depicting the group of white people withdrawing after completing their exploration of the uncivilized regions.

When that too vanished and the final subtitles disappeared, the electric lights suddenly turned on.

When he exited the movie theater, Sanzō entered a nearby Western-style restaurant to have an early dinner.

When the waiter placed the meal on the table and left, he noticed a man eating alone two tables away. The man (he was showing his left profile to this side) had a peculiarly reddish, swollen lump at the base of his neck. So large and so boldly gleaming was it that at first he thought it might be an illusion, but upon closer inspection, it was undoubtedly a large growth. A glossy fist-sized mass of flesh protruded between collar and ear. Utterly different from the man’s profile and neck—where dark reddish, grimy skin revealed visible pores—the swelling emitted a coppery-red glow, taut as the skin of a freshly washed ripe tomato. The fleshy mass crouched between the navy-blue suit collar and coarsely cropped short hair—a malicious entity trampling this man’s will, utterly independent of him—resembled an ugly, tenacious parasite that alone remained secretly awake and smirking even when its host slept. This sight somehow made Sanzō think of the spiteful gods who stalked Greek tragedies. At such times, he could not help but think—with an inscrutable discomfort and anxiety born of some unknown entity—of how narrow (or nonexistent) the scope of human free will truly was. We are born for something—something not of our will, something incomprehensible. We die for that same unknowable thing. Indeed, every night, we fall into that supremely mysterious state called sleep—transcending our will—for the sake of some entity.

...At that moment, abruptly and without any connection, he recalled the story of Roman Emperor Vitellius. The gluttonous emperor, lamenting that he could eat no more due to being full, would—upon satiation—induce vomiting through his unique method, empty his stomach, and return to the dining table—or so the story went. Why did he recall such an absurd story? On the white wall of the restaurant hung a large electric clock, its long yellow second hand reflecting the lamplight as it rotated like some sinister creature. With cold relentlessness that ticked away life, it spun ceaselessly.

Beneath it, the middle-aged man with the tumor diligently worked his mouth, and with that motion, the fleshy mass on his neck seemed to shift ever so slightly.

Sanzō, having completely lost his appetite, stood up leaving about half of his meal uneaten.

Along the canal-side path, he headed back toward the apartment. Lights began to come on in the houses and streets, but against the not yet fully darkened sky beyond, the silhouettes of Yamate’s high ground—with church spires and peculiar gabled roofs—stood etched. Appearing to be the rising tide, debris lapped gently against the hulls of the filthy boats moored along the riverbank. On the water’s surface drifted what seemed a bleak interplay of light and shadow. Faint shadows rose up from there again and again, vanishing without a sound.

With the feeling of being followed by a pursuer whose presence he could sense but who never showed themselves, he walked alone along the riverbank.

Was it during his fourth year of elementary school? The long-haired teacher—emaciated as a tuberculosis patient—had one day spoken on impulse about Earth's fate. How the planet would cool, how humanity would go extinct, how utterly meaningless our existence was—with spiteful persistence, this teacher had drilled these truths into young Sanzō and his classmates. Even in retrospect, it was clearly a sadistic act: injecting venom into childish minds without offering antidote or palliative. Sanzō had been terrified. He must have listened with ashen face. The Earth cooling, humanity perishing—these he could still endure. But then came the ultimate revelation: even the sun would disappear. The sun too would cool and vanish, leaving only black frigid stars spinning endlessly through lightless space—unseen, unremarked. This thought proved unbearable. Then what purpose does our living serve? Only through believing Earth and universe persist unchanged can I die peacefully as one human being. But if the teacher spoke truth—our birth, humanity itself, even the cosmos—all become meaningless! For what purpose was I ever born?

Afterward, for some time, he—the eleven-year-old Sanzō—had become neurasthenic. To both his father and his older student relatives, he earnestly posed questions about this matter. Then they all laughed while nevertheless acknowledging it in theory. Why weren't they afraid of that? How could they keep laughing like that? How could they stay calm saying things like "Such a catastrophe won't happen for five or ten thousand years"? Sanzō was perplexed. For him, this was no mere question of his own life and death. It was a matter of trust in humanity and the universe. Therefore, even though it concerned events tens of thousands of years hence, he couldn't bring himself to laugh. At that time he was caring for a dog. "If I should live to see the Earth freeze over," he would imagine after lying down to sleep, "I'll dig a hole in the ice-covered ground and die there embracing this dog." Then strangely the fear would vanish as affection for the dog and its body warmth rose gently in his mind.

But usually, at night after lying down, he would close his eyes tightly and imagine the meaningless, pitch-black, infinite flow of time after humanity’s extinction—unable to bear the terror, he would often let out a loud “Agh!” and leap up. Because of this, he would often be scolded by his father. At night, walking along the tram thoroughfare, this fear would abruptly arise. Then, the tram sounds he had been hearing until now would fade away, and the passing crowds would vanish from his sight, until he felt himself standing utterly alone at the center of a world plunged into piercing stillness. At that moment, the ground beneath his feet was not the usual flat earth, but the surface of a cold, dead, spherical planet where all life had perished. The sickly, neurotic eleven-year-old boy stood frozen there for a while, thinking “Everyone will perish, everyone will grow cold, everything is meaningless,” gripped by a terror so real it brought cold sweat to his brow. In the midst of this, when he suddenly noticed, around him people were still coming and going, lights were shining brightly, trams were moving, and automobiles were running. "Ah, thank goodness," he sighed in relief. This was always how it went. (Note 1) (Note 2)

Just as food that poisoned one in childhood becomes hated for life, Sanzō thought, this simple distrust toward humanity and our planet had perhaps taken root in his body no longer as an idea but as a sensation. Even now, in moments like waking from a humid afternoon nap, he would be assaulted by an inescapable, inexplicable terror and futility. At such times, he could not help but recall the terror of that neurotic elementary school student from long ago. Even after the raw husk of concepts had been somewhat cast off (or so it seemed) amidst life’s entanglements, only that former anxiety remained, detached and enduring. In ancient times during Earth’s glacial epochs, the llamas of South America possessed a certain refuge that remained safe even when danger struck. Though in Earth’s current age both the nature of dangers assailing them had changed and their former refuge had lost all meaning, llamas now inhabiting the New World were said to invariably flee toward where their ancestors’ sanctuary once lay whenever sensing death or peril. Sanzō’s anxiety might perhaps be a remnant of this kind from bygone eras. Yet this utterly unmanageable, vague anxiety was apt to become the basso continuo of his life. Beneath all phenomena of life ran this unseen dark current, carving out life’s forward path and its every periphery; like a sewer flowing beneath the city, it would occasionally let slip faint, hollow echoes through some tiny crack—or so it seemed to Sanzō. Even when he was still relatively healthy and intoxicated by physical sensations, or when leading his current passive solitary existence, this faint resonance from the undercurrent had always been audible as a Pascal-esque accompaniment, emerging from nowhere in particular. As long as this could be heard even faintly, all happiness and honor were but restricted forms of honor and happiness.

Truly, how hard he must have strived to avoid being conscious of this resonance. How many times had he repeated hollow sermons to himself—words he didn’t truly believe?

Would we refuse to eat unless it’s the finest food? Would we refuse to clothe ourselves unless in the finest garments? If we aren’t so extravagant as to think we cannot inhabit anything less than the finest planet, might we not discover quite decent aspects even among what we’ve been given now… And so on… Let me show you the simple path to optimism. What do you think of this idea: that even the differences between genius and talentless, healthy and infirm, wealthy and poor cannot compare to the chasm between those who were born and those denied existence? And so on…

"Behold the splendid man who declared: 'Should one live out a fully accomplished life in this world, God bears the obligation to guarantee the next.'" And so on…

Who decided that you must be happy? Everything truly begins with the abandonment of the will to happiness. And so on…

And then there were Gide’s *The Fruits of the Earth* and Chesterton’s optimistic essays—how feeble their voices must have sounded as they tried to persuade him. Yet what he desired was an “evaluation of reality” not taught or imposed by others—one that was his own and genuinely convincing. Having followed such twisted logic only to then try convincing myself—“Well now, my existence is a happy one!”—this kind of happiness that needed persuasion was utterly futile.

Occasionally—though exceedingly rare—there were moments of elated exaltation. There were times when he could truly believe life seemed like a flash ripping through the pitch-black expanse of infinite time and space—that the darker the surrounding darkness grew, and the briefer the flashing instant became, all the more did that light’s beauty and preciousness intensify. Yet his volatile heart would plunge the very next moment into bitter disillusionment’s depths, invariably finding itself mired in an emptiness more wretched than usual. Thus, in the end, even amid such spiritual exaltation, dreading future disillusionment’s bitterness, he came to strive to smother even his present fleeting joy.

Now, as he walked along the riverbank, the feeble common-sense persona within Sanzō was—for once—ridiculing and admonishing his own absurdly nonsensical behavior. “Don’t be ridiculous. At your age—still brooding over such trivial nonsense? Aren’t there far weightier, more immediate problems? What preposterous extravagance—indulging in such unrealistic trifles! Isn’t this something people outgrew eons ago—or rather one of those matters too utterly absurd for anyone to ever take seriously? You ought to feel some shame.” “But have people truly outgrown this problem?” countered the other self dwelling within him.

"The general habit of dismissing outright any problem with no prospect of resolution was an exceedingly convenient thing. Those who basked in this habit’s benefits were fortunate. Truly, most people never felt such absurd anxieties or doubts. If that were so, then those who constantly sensed such things must be deficient. Just as a lame man hides his limp, should I too conceal this mental abnormality? But then—what exactly were these things called normal and abnormal, truth and falsehood? Were they not merely statistical matters? No—such distinctions meant nothing. What mattered most was this fact: for my disposition, this anxiety—one might call it metaphysical—took precedence over all other problems, however much others might mock me. This alone defied remedy. Unless this point were resolved, all phenomena of the human world held only limited meaning for me. And yet—the countless answers proposed since antiquity only proved all too clearly that resolving this doubt was impossible. Thus emerged the sole necessity for my soul’s tranquility: the 'metaphysical abandonment of metaphysical bewilderment.' This too I knew all too well. Still—there was no helping it. That I had been born with this greed for such foolish matters (and lacking any philosopher’s cold deliberation) was my one irreplaceable given. In the end, each person had no choice but to unfold their innate qualities as they would. To fret over being mocked as childish or to make excuses to myself—that was far more absurd. Just as there were men who ruined themselves with women and drink, so too must there be men destroyed by metaphysical hunger. Though fewer in number than those who wrecked their lives over women—there certainly existed men who stumbled at epistemology’s threshold and found themselves paralyzed."

"The former are gladly taken up as literary material—so why aren’t the latter addressed in literature? Is it because they’re abnormal? But doesn’t the abnormal Casanova command such a readership?"

Amidst his incoherent self-justification, he suddenly recalled Dürer’s print *Melencolia*—the despair of an angel seated dazed amidst chaos.

By now, the surroundings grew dark, the shadow of the Yamate church indistinct. A single Japanese-style boat silently overtook him from behind, gliding past right beside him. The stern’s lantern light trailed across the water as the boat slid leftward beneath the bridge. Lured by that motion, the thread of his thoughts too began straying down unforeseen paths.

“In the end, I have no choice but to be martyred to my own foolishness.” “After everything has been said and considered, people ultimately follow where their own disposition points.” “This happens completely independent of all that debate and thought.” “And every subsequent effort shall be poured solely into justifying those choices made by their disposition.” “Depending on how you look at it, aren’t all philosophies throughout history nothing but justifications each thinker has directed at their own disposition?……”

(Note 1) This wizened and wretched boy was thereafter tormented by two conflicting yearnings. "The desire to know all things (or first principles) completely" and "the wish—utterly opposite to the former—that as many things as possible (or their causes) might remain beyond his understanding." The former was a desire everyone possesses—or in adult terms, "to make oneself a god"— while the latter was its inverse: a powerful yearning born from terror toward this world’s uncertainty and wretchedness—the wish "to believe this world worthy of absolute trust, to believe it unshakable." "In a world where everything could be comprehended by an insignificant being like myself," "It was a reckless, desperate yearning—born from a small being’s terror—to surrender oneself to some vast, unshakable existence whose very edges lay beyond the comprehension of one such as myself." Despite these wishes, as he grew, he came to know clearly—all too terrifyingly clearly—that not only was the fulfillment of his first hope impossible, but so too was that of the second, even stronger one. Neither the world nor human endeavors were as unshakable as this boy had hoped. It seemed to him that this remained equally true whether he substituted the Second Law of Thermodynamics for the doomsday theory drilled into him by his elementary school teacher, or whether he ignored such simplistic scientific appraisals of the world and evaluated it from an entirely different perspective. That is to say, to the nihilism constructed solely in the boy’s mind was now added a direct perception of impermanence arising from actual observations of his immediate surroundings. Like the Persian king who, while surveying tens of thousands of troops under his command, wept at the thought that not a single one among them would survive a hundred years later, this boy now recognized in everything around him “the mark of the finite,” piercing his heart with its truth. It was not limited to objects. Above all, he felt a searing sadness and loneliness at how even the most genuine forms of love would vanish as helplessly as the most trivial things. (After several more years had passed, he now felt—conversely—a heart-chillingly cruel emotion at how even the most base and ugly things possessed the same right to exist as noble ones, ending their being no differently from beautiful things, without receiving any unsightly recompense.)

(Note 2) Strangely enough, as an elementary school student he had been so consumed by visions of humanity’s collective extinction that he felt scarcely any direct fear toward his own individual death. It was much later—after entering middle school—that this awareness came upon him. When his body grew noticeably frail following his enrollment there would lie awake after lights-out eyes closed contemplating “death”—not as some abstract concept but as an imminent inevitability for his sickly self (indeed at that time he remained convinced his lifespan must be brief)—death’s visceral reality. He would envision his own final moments imagining how life’s brevity would feel when looking back from that terminal instant (whether twenty years or two hundred mattered not—it would assuredly feel equally fleeting). Ah how truly short it all must be—he would think without pretense profoundly suffused with helpless sincerity. Like worldly people he too must have spent those moments until the end utterly absorbed wholly oblivious to his place within some vast design busily fretting over mundane affairs—(no perhaps once or twice amidst life’s clamor like a man pausing mid-stride he might have fleetingly glimpsed his true station)—only to startle into awareness upon reaching that final brink. Startled then what? … Merely imagining such things at random he lacked strength for direct confrontation procrastinating like one postponing spring cleaning day after day evading their stark reality. (Yet paradoxically he despised those who declared “He who knows not life cannot know death.” “He who knows not death— (He believed some were born feeling “He who knows not death cannot know life.”) To put it another way: like impatient readers skipping past pitiful episodes where protagonists suffer flipping straight to novels’ final pages desperate for conclusions—for such people process meant nothing. Only results mattered—but he too found himself incapable of enduring intermediate contemplations. Lacking courage or stamina for frontal assaults he craved only ultimate resolutions—definitive endpoints. (To whom? To God?) “Is our soul immortal? Or does it perish with our flesh?” Even were I told “immortal” salvation wouldn’t follow—(or rather this death-aversion seemed rooted less in fear of annihilation than attachment to my present existence though he couldn’t articulate this)—but above all losing this “I” proved unbearable; moreover (secondarily) it felt perverse that all humans must endure such terror. “The horror of eternal life?” That’s another matter entirely. We needn’t ponder such things now.)

Moreover, that was—so to speak—the luxury of a wealthy man agonizing over how to spend his money, or so Sanzō of that time thought.

II

The spare room key he had fished from his pocket left such a chill in his palm that it spoke to how far the season had advanced.

He entered the dark room, turned on the electric light, and first threw open the front-facing window to air it out. Then, after peering into the parrot cage hung in the corner to check for food, he lay face up on the bed without changing his clothes, cupped his hands beneath his head, and rolled over. Even though there was no reason to be so exhausted, he felt utterly drained. What had I done all day today? I had done absolutely nothing. I had woken late that morning, eaten a combined breakfast and lunch in the downstairs cafeteria, then forced myself through about ten pages of an unwanted book with dictionary in hand. When I wearied of this, I remembered needing to write a condolence letter for a relative’s deceased child—but try as I might, I couldn’t compose it. In the end I abandoned the letter, rushed outside into town where I entered a movie theater before returning—that was all. What a wretched day! What of tomorrow? Tomorrow was Friday. A workday. When this thought brought me paradoxical relief, my own reaction filled me with fury.

A mere impoverished scholar—too sluggish to adapt to the times, too timid to interact with others. By profession, a biology teacher at a girls’ school attending twice weekly. He was neither particularly enthusiastic about his classes nor especially indolent. Rather than instruction itself, he took interest in interacting with his pupils and nurturing toward them what he termed “benevolent disdain,” all while privately contemplating whether to emulate Spinoza by compiling a geometric treatise of cynical theorems—and their corollaries—concerning female students’ conduct. (For instance: Theorem XVIII. Female students shall detest fairness above all else. Proof. For they cherish solely such unfairness as advantages themselves.) Ultimately, this man strove to believe that his two weekly school days held scant significance in his life—yet of late found himself appalled to realize this was far from true. At times it seemed not the institution itself but rather its pupils occupied an alarmingly substantial space within his existence.

In the second year after graduating from school, Sanzō—now left completely without dependents due to his father’s death—laid out plans for his subsequent life based on the modest assets remaining to him at that time. How squishy, how soggy, how shamefully slovenly was that pit he had tried to snugly burrow into at the time according to his design? Sanzō was infuriated—infuriated beyond endurance.

At that time, he considered two possible ways of life for himself. One was the so-called path of success—a way of life dedicated to striving for fame and status as one’s lifelong objective. Of course, paths like businessman or politician were out of the question for Sanzō, both given his inherent disposition and the academic field he had pursued. Ultimately, it would mean gaining honor in the academic world—but even so, in essence, it remained a way of life that sacrificed each present day for some future objective (one he might die before ever reaching). The other path was a way of life that completely disregarded the pursuit of fame or professional success, seeking instead to make each passing day feel sufficiently fulfilled in its moment—however, this approach, infused into that molderingly trite European-bred hedonism with a dash of Eastern literati-style contrived austerity, resulted in an existence that was (as he now reflected) pathetically spineless.

And so, Sanzō chose the second way of life. Looking back now, what compelled him to choose this was ultimately his physical frailty. His body—perpetually afflicted by asthma, a weak stomach, and sinusitis—aware that its lifespan would likely be brief, had likely recoiled from the hardships of the first path. His "cowardly self-respect"—incurable to this day—must also have been one of the factors that led him to choose this path. Despite being intensely ashamed to appear among people, his disposition—which never lagged behind others in esteeming himself highly—must have naturally rejected the first way of life, which might have exposed his lack of talent both to others and to himself. In any case, Sanzō chose the second way of life. And now, two years later—what of my current life? What of the dreariness of an autumn night in this sparsely decorated single-person dwelling? The reproductions with their garish colors hung on the wall—now even looking at them was unbearable. In the record box too, he had collected only Beethoven’s late quartets—but now he felt no inclination to play them. The great sea turtle’s shell brought back from his trip to Ogasawara no longer whispered invitations to journey. On the bookshelf by the wall stood volumes of Voltaire and Montaigne—works quite divergent from his field of study—pointlessly gathering a thin layer of dust. Even feeding the parrots and yellow peach-faced lovebirds felt like a chore. Lying face up on the bed, Sanzō simply stared blankly. Both body and mind felt as though their central axis had been pulled out. Had the emptiness of his daily life hollowed out a cave within him? That was completely different from the bottomless anxiety I had just summoned from memory. He had become gutless, reduced to a state of paralysis where he could no longer feel anxiety or pain.

In the dim corners of his blurred consciousness, however, the atmosphere of tomorrow's schoolgirls surfaced brightly—as if this alone were the sole living element within his deathlike existence. Were these girls—ugly, base, foolish when viewed individually—truly the only living beings I could make contact with in my life? How meager and hollow these days proved that were meant to be abundant! Must humans ultimately have some object of obsession, madness, or pursuit to keep living? After all—did even I crave that world? That society which applauds, hates, envies, flatters? For instance—he couldn't refrain from thinking— For instance—last week at school when that elderly Chinese classics teacher recited his new heptasyllabic quatrain to colleagues in the staff room—I, raised in ancestral Confucian tradition, had half-jokingly improvised a matching rhyme. More than its merit—precisely because a young biology teacher from unrelated fields performed such a feat—the old teacher expressed astonishment and praised me with exaggeratedly effusive gestures! And truly then—how my self-esteem (which should have remained dignified)—was titillated by such petty delight! Indeed—hadn't I been so gratified as to remember every single word of that praise? Weininger claims women remember every compliment ever paid them throughout life—but apparently this isn't exclusive to women. Come to think—I hadn't heard a single word of praise directed at myself these past years and months. Had my starvation been for something this trivial? Then why—you who yearn to satisfy such paltry vanity—did you choose this life so removed from society? I—who believed life could subsist on the Odyssey, Lucretius, Mao Shi Zheng Jian commentary, even that literal 'Small Latin and Less Greek' I could barely digest—what a fool ignorant of human nature! That void which even Du Fancuan's poetry, César Franck's music, and Spinoza's philosophy couldn't fill—instantly satisfied by mere praise and flattery! To this all-too-human truth (that even applied to an innate clumsy bookworm like myself)—Sanzō found himself astonished anew.

It was still too early to sleep. Besides, even if he were to get into bed now, it was certain he wouldn't be able to sleep for two or three hours as usual. Sanzō wordlessly pushed himself up, sat on the edge of the bed, and gazed vacantly around the room. A few days earlier, while rummaging through his desk drawer, he had found a packet of sparklers mixed among scraps of paper. Forgotten since summer's end, a few sparklers still remained inside. He had stuffed them back into the drawer at the time—now he suddenly remembered. He stood and pulled them out. Examining the sparklers, they didn't seem too damp yet. He turned off the electric light and struck a match. In the darkness raced a thin, hard, lackluster line of light; pine needles and autumn leaves bloomed only to vanish instantly. Gunpowder stung his nostrils as his stagnant heart—in that moment—registered faint emotion at this unseasonal, delicate beauty. A wretchedly stunted and desolate emotion.

III

Inside the quiet natural history specimen room. Amidst alligator taxidermies, giant bat specimens, and platypus models, Sanzō sat alone reading a book. On the desk were specimens and tools for the next mineralogy class, scattered haphazardly. Alcohol lamps, mortars, crucibles, test tubes—pale blue fluorite, peridot, white translucent barite and calcite, garnet displaying its precise cubic crystals, chalcopyrite with glinting crystalline faces... In the dimly lit room, exterior light streaming through the ceiling skylight fell upon these orderly mineral specimens, even illuminating the thin dust coating long-unused samples. Sitting among those silent stones and observing their beautiful crystals and precise cleavages, he felt as though he were touching some cold, lucid, voiceless will of nature—a natural wisdom. From the rather noisy staff room, Sanzō would always escape into the company of these cold stones and dead plants and animals, indulging in reading whatever he pleased.

What he was reading now was a novel titled *The Burrow* by a man named Franz Kafka. Though it was called a novel—what a strange novel it was! As for this protagonist referred to as "I"—whether a mole or a weasel, he was undoubtedly one of those creatures—but in the end, this was never made clear. That I—underground—wringing out every ounce of my intellect to construct my dwelling: a burrow. Every conceivable enemy and disaster was met with meticulous precautions to ensure safety, yet one still had to live in constant trepidation, perpetually fearing that one’s defenses remained incomplete. Above all, the terror of the great “Unknown” surrounding me and my own helplessness when standing before it plunged me into ceaseless obsessive thoughts. “The threats I faced were not limited to external enemies alone. There were enemies even in the depths of the earth. I had never seen these enemies, but legends spoke of them, and I did indeed believe in their existence. They dwelled deep within the earth. Even legends could not depict their form. Those offered as their sacrifices perished without ever seeing them. They came. You heard the sound of their claws (for that very sound was their essence) in the earth directly beneath you. And by that time, you were already lost. Even though you were in your own home, you could not rest assured. Rather, you might as well have been in their dwelling.” I was being driven into an almost fatalistic terror. A nightmare that assailed fever patients drifted hazily through the terror and anxiety of the small creature dwelling in this burrow. This author always wrote nothing but such bizarre novels.

As he read on, a feeling of being threatened by something of unknown nature in a dream inevitably clung to him.

At that moment, there came a knock at the entrance door, and the face that appeared belonged to Mr. M from the office. Upon entering, he said, "A letter came for you," and placed the envelope on the desk. Since the office was quite some distance from this specimen room, his going out of the way to bring it here undoubtedly meant he had come seeking someone to talk to. He was a man over fifty—not thin but short-statured—with features of utmost grotesqueness. His nose was red, dotted with pores like a strawberry’s surface, jutting abruptly from his face’s center with no relation to its other parts. Above deeply sunken acorn eyes clung absurdly thick black eyebrows that practically merged with the lids. Thick lips curled outward in the Negro style were framed by a goatee, while his dyed hair—though lacking any bald patches—had uneven growth density across areas, as if each clump had been transplanted from elsewhere; despite its short length, it coiled fiercely like that of the Buddha.

Everyone in the staff room seemed to mock this Mr. M. No one could mention his name without smirking. Indeed, his conduct appeared dull-witted—even in speech, uttering phrases like “Well… that’s… how it… is… I suppose…”—he would pronounce each word slowly, verifying his own enunciation with his ears before proceeding to the next. He had apparently been working at this school for over twenty years, but what made him more famous than his years of service was how several of his wives had either died or left him during that time. Moreover, there was another thing widely known about him: without distinction between staff and students, he had a habit of immediately grabbing the hand of any young woman he saw. It wasn’t that he harbored any ill intent (it was generally believed he lacked the mental capacity for such malice); rather, he simply couldn’t restrain himself and would suddenly grab their hands. No matter how many times people screamed at him, pinched him, or glared at him, he seemed utterly unfazed—and even if he did notice, he’d likely forget by the next time. Some staff members would laugh, saying it was a wonder he hadn’t been fired for it, but with that face of his, he must be safe enough. Perhaps because no one would engage with him, this Mr. M would seize upon Sanzō—who only came in twice a week—and insistently try to discuss all manner of things. “I study French,” he would say, but when pressed to explain, it turned out he had merely tuned into an elementary radio lecture once or twice. However, he wasn’t saying this to boast; he genuinely believed this qualified as having studied French. In this manner, Mr. M claimed to tackle German, Chinese poetry, and waka alike. While listening to such talk, Sanzō would sometimes notice something ferocious lurking within Mr. M’s dull eyes. It felt like the desperate recklessness of a cornered weakling suddenly launching an offensive.

Even after handing over the letter, Mr. M showed no sign of leaving; he settled himself beneath the alligator taxidermy and began speaking in his usual slow manner. In the midst of this, for some reason, the conversation turned to his current wife—twenty years his junior—and with utmost seriousness, he began recounting her life history prior to their marriage. Just as I thought This is odd, Mr. M opened the cloth-wrapped bundle in his hands (I hadn’t noticed it until now—he had come specifically to show this) and pulled out a thick volume from within, placing it on the desk. When he looked at the cover, he saw pale purple silk fabric with a white piece of paper pasted on it, upon which was written 『日本名婦伝』.

“My wife’s story is written here,” Mr. M said very, very slowly, then grinned with delight. “Huh?” At first, Sanzō couldn’t comprehend it at all, but when he looked at the spot Mr. M had opened—where a white birch bookmark that would delight any young girl was inserted—he saw that indeed, the page was divided into upper and lower sections, with his wife’s name written in Gothic script across the top. Following this were listed her date of birth, birthplace, graduated school, and so forth; then, upon marrying Mr. M, there was written praise for her virtue and domestic contributions… But then, oddly enough, the text abruptly shifted to a biography of Mr. M himself as her husband, lining up phrases about his career—his gentle disposition, how people regarded him as a sage and gentleman—words resembling those found in funeral eulogies.

Finally, everything clicked into place for Sanzō. Mr. M had fallen victim to what amounted to a fraudulent publishing scheme. In other words—they must have lured him with flattery about including his wife in this 『日本名婦伝』, extracted substantial sums from gullible couples across the land to produce this worthless tome, then resold it at inflated prices—a swindle too pathetic to even merit being called a proper con. Moreover, Mr. M seemed to be proudly displaying it to everyone he encountered, utterly oblivious to having been deceived. What’s more, this text was unmistakably Mr. M’s own handiwork.

When he flipped through to the earlier pages, there they were—Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shōnagon, and their ilk—lined up in rows, each occupying half a page in the same layout as Mrs. M. Sanzō raised his eyes and looked at Mr. M. Perhaps mistaking Sanzō’s dumbfounded expression for one of admiration, Mr. M displayed irrepressible delight, his nose twitching with pleasure. (When he laughed, his yellow teeth were bared, and along with that, his red nose—without exaggeration or metaphor—literally began to twitch and squirm.) Sanzō immediately averted his eyes. He found it unbearable. Farce? Perhaps so. But what an unbearable human farce this was! A coelenterate comedy? Sanzō averted his eyes from the small chameleon model on the shelf and vaguely thought such words.

Four

That night, when Sanzō was invited by Mr. M and passed through the oden shop’s curtained entrance, he realized upon reflection that this constituted a truly peculiar occurrence. For one thing, Sanzō had never before heard that Mr. M drank alcohol; moreover, the very notion of him venturing out for drinks bordered on inconceivable—let alone extending such an invitation. From Mr. M’s perspective—having grown sufficiently intimate to discuss his wife’s particulars (or so he undoubtedly believed)—he must have felt obliged to demonstrate some gesture of goodwill toward Sanzō. The joy of this universally disregarded man—perhaps believing himself earnestly acknowledged by another—had likely compelled him to this preposterous act of oden shop patronage: an endeavor wholly alien to his nature. Even Sanzō found his own acquiescence inexplicable. Given his chronic asthma that necessitated alcohol abstinence and his lack of substantial dialogue with such an opaque figure as Mr. M, his compliance stemmed less from inability to refuse those sluggish yet tenacious overtures than from a spiteful curiosity kindled by *Biographies of Notable Women*.

Without particularly urging Sanzō—who drank little—to imbibe more, Mr. M continued refilling his own cup alone, his red nose growing ever redder and greasier as he persistently bared his yellow teeth in a grin. And then, as usual, he continued talking about his wife in vague terms, slowly and laboriously. He elaborated on rather risqué matters in an utterly plain manner. The man himself showed no awareness that these were delicate topics; he simply couldn’t stop himself from speaking and seemed compelled to continue of his own accord. He would bring up some regrettable aspect of his current wife’s conduct in the bedroom, ramble on at length about it in his meandering way, and conclude with a polite “It’s most unfortunate,” as though discussing a third party. What on earth compels you to speak of such things? Sanzō stared back at the man’s face for a while, but ultimately found himself cast adrift by that slimy, directionless smile. What pose should one adopt, what expression should one wear when listening to such talk? Sanzō, utterly perplexed, forcibly lifted his sake cup to conceal his awkwardness.

When he noticed—atop the pure white Seto ware plate before Sanzō—how had it arrived there?—a single dazzlingly vivid emerald-green katydid perched daintily and was quietly moving its antennae. The splendor of its smoothly spread wings. Under the white, intense electric light, it was a green so vivid it seemed to stain even the plate. While staring at the white and green, Sanzō continued listening for some time to Mr. M’s stories about his wife.

As he listened, the usual absurdity he felt toward this man vanished, replaced by an uncanny dread and peculiar irritation—not anger directed at Mr. M, nor quite the frustration toward his own absurd position—a strange intermingled emotion that assailed him. Unbeknownst to himself, Sanzō had apparently been drinking quite a bit; for a while none of the man’s words registered at all—but when he suddenly noticed something different about the man’s manner of speaking and looked up, Mr. M had already stopped discussing his wife and was now speaking of “some other matter.” The reason for this designation lay in how utterly it differed from Mr. M’s usual topics—(though at first Sanzō had no inkling of its meaning, he gradually came to understand as he listened)—for it was, astonishingly, a kind of abstract reflection, a fragment of his worldview. However, his expressions remained as always excessively foolish and inane; his delivery ambiguous and sluggish, repeating the same phrases until comprehension became nearly impossible. Yet when he patiently discerned and gathered their meaning—rephrasing them into ordinary words—the sentiments Mr. M had expressed were roughly as follows.

“Life is like climbing a spiral staircase,” he said. “You come upon a view of the landscape, and if you ascend another spiral, you once again encounter the same vista. The first view and the second are nearly identical—but ever so slightly, the latter allows you to see a bit farther. Those who’ve reached the second level can discern that faint difference, but those still at the first remain oblivious. Even those at the second level believe they perceive nothing but the exact same view as their own. After all—if you only listen to their words—there’s scarcely any difference between them at all.—”

He repeated expressions like—*since instead of a spiral staircase*, *you could say going round and round*, *you see*, *like when climbing one of those tall towers with steps*, *you know*—*going round and round as you ascend while still seeing the surrounding scenery*, *with handrails attached here and there and steps along the way*—over and over until it became unbearable to listen to. Following this pattern, it took him a full thirty minutes just to convey the previously mentioned meaning in an excruciatingly roundabout manner. Yet much like extracting scarce metal from ore, if one carefully parsed his words, they indeed amounted to precisely that meaning. It somehow seemed like something even Montaigne might have said, and Sanzō found himself looking back at Mr. M’s face with renewed interest—but since Mr. M was no reader, he certainly hadn’t acquired such ideas from books. These must have been his own reflections born from the sluggish observations of his fifty-year life. While gazing at Mr. M’s face—which showed not the slightest trace of wisdom one might expect from someone capable of uttering such words—Sanzō began to think as follows.

Everyone looks down on this man, but if we possess the patience to parse through his clumsy expressions, might we not find thoughts equivalent to the reflections he just uttered scattered throughout his words? Is it not simply that we lack the ability and perseverance to discern them? Furthermore, if we thoroughly dissect those ponderous, inscrutable words of his, might we not clearly discern—even for us—the inevitability of this man’s foolishness? That psychological necessity which demands: “Why must he perpetually commit actions that appear idiotic to others?” Once we reach that point, we will soon come to feel that it becomes impossible—at least subjectively—to establish a hierarchy of value between the necessity of Mr. M being Mr. M and the necessity of us being us—or indeed, between the necessity of Goethe having had to be Goethe. Indeed, in his earlier reflections, Mr. M had clearly positioned himself as having reached the upper stairs, and he must have regarded us—we who mock him—as “presumptuous fools on the lower stairs daring to ridicule those above.” Is our belief in the absoluteness of our value judgments not merely our own arrogance? (Taking this example of Mr. M and shifting it slightly along the line of analogy) Similarly, if we possessed the ability to comprehend the language and other modes of expression of beasts like dogs and cats, we too might come to physically understand the necessity of their way of life through our own being, and might even discover that they possess wisdom and ideas far superior to our own. Is it not merely that we, for the simple reason that we are human, arrogantly consider human wisdom to be supreme?...

When thinking became burdensome in his drink-addled head, he inevitably reached his usual conclusion: "Ignoramus, ignorabimus." Sanzō, as if pursued by something, frantically gulped down three or four cups in quick succession. The green insect had long since disappeared somewhere. Mr. M too seemed thoroughly drunk, eyes closed yet still mumbling incoherently as he leaned against the rear pillar.

Five

Hmph—not even thirty yet, and look at that composed composure of yours. What need is there to put on airs like Monsieur Bergeret or Abbé Jérôme Coignard at this stage? If I fancy myself leading some solitary, spiritually fulfilling life that transcends the mundane—what a laughable fool I am! Isn't it simply that I'm being left behind by society because I lack the capacity for action? That one lacks worldly activity doesn't mean one therefore lacks worldly desires. Though brimming with vulgar desires yet unable to attain them—to affect such refinement is in wretched taste! Cornered isolation holds no shred of tragedy. And another thing: lacking worldly talent doesn't mean possessing any in spiritual work—absolutely not! Fundamentally, this so-called enjoyment-oriented life is merely the last presentable refuge for those utterly incapable of living—I tell you! *What's that?* "Life is too long spent doing nothing yet too short to accomplish anything"? What insolent drivel! Whether too long or too short—that's something you declare after having tried doing something! To spout such pretentious insights without understanding or effort—a thoroughly vile habit! That is true insolence incarnate! Those "existential doubts" you claim to have nursed since childhood—absurd as they are—very well, I'll address them! Listen: humans are built to conceive everything through notions like time, space, and number. Hence we're structured to comprehend nothing beyond these forms.

That is precisely why the existence—or non-existence—of gods, the supernatural, and such things cannot be proven theoretically. In your case too, it's exactly the same. Your mind is structured to harbor such doubts, so you harbor them; and because your—that is, human—mind is structured to prevent their resolution, you cannot attain it. That’s all there is to it. Absurd.

Really, you should stop with those vague generalizations—"What is the world?" or "What is life?"—you know. First of all, don’t you find it shameful? If a man possesses even a modicum of aesthetic delicacy, he couldn’t possibly utter such things without shame. Moreover—and I know it’s ill-advised to immediately resort to such terms, but since I’m trying to make *you* understand, there’s no helping it—through such sweeping perspectives, the world will never become grander, deeper, or more beautiful. Conversely, by deeply observing details and actively engaging with them, *you* can expand the world infinitely. Without having mastered this secret, *you* have no right to so insolently act like a full-fledged pessimist. If anyone matures as a person, they don’t go around despising every little thing—worldly matters or conventions—like that. Rather, one finds the most excellent wisdom within them. Even when the bare facts of life observed as they are hold no wonder, the moment one processes them with something added and handles them through a systematic approach, they can suddenly become meaningful and intriguing. This is precisely why life’s conventions are necessary. Of course, to be engrossed solely in this would be the height of folly, but to despair or scorn it at first glance is equally absurd. You know about perfect squares in elementary algebra, don’t you? An equation that would be nearly impossible to solve without knowing that method can be solved immediately with just that alone. In the same way, even when faced with the given facts of life, one should master the technique of adding (b/2a) squared to both sides of the equation to render them clear and meaningful. There will be plenty of time for doubt after that.

Anyway, I’ll say it again—I want you to stop that affected, pseudo-enlightened, insufferably cheeky way of talking. Honestly, I’m more ashamed than you—I could crawl into a hole right now. Take the day before yesterday. What about how you spoke when discussing marriage with your fellow bachelors? What did I say again? Ah yes. “Just as even the most fascinating work becomes dull once used as a classroom text, even the finest woman turns tedious once made a wife.” Remembering that smug, shallow leer you wore while spouting this—considering your age and experience—I feel not just embarrassment but a visceral revulsion that raises gooseflesh. Truly. There’s more. More still to expose. You’re not just an insufferable poser—you’re a filthy lecher too. I know it.

There was a time when I took two students to Coastal Park for an outing. Back then, when you were all sitting on the lawn resting, two or three laborer-like men nearby—also taking a break—must have been exchanging obscene talk in voices that clearly sounded deliberate. And your attitude and gaze at that moment! Utterly flustered, pretending not to listen by looking away—yet with what a lecherous stare (and a sidelong one at that) did you ogle those girls who couldn't possibly avoid hearing it! Good grief.

Now, it wasn't that I particularly meant to scorn humanity's innate instincts. Lecher? Perfectly fine! But if you're a lecher, then why not act like one openly? What I meant was—how disgraceful to hide your lecherous nature behind pretentious poses and elaborate justifications. This wasn't the only instance. Even in other situations—why couldn't you behave more candidly? When sad, cry; when frustrated, stamp your feet; whenever something amuses you—no matter how vulgar—laugh with your mouth gaping wide. While declaring how little you care for society's opinions, aren't you ultimately most obsessed with how your own posturing appears? Of course, you alone worried about it—society paid you no heed whatsoever—meaning you neurotically performed these mannerisms for your own eyes, by your own self. Honestly, what an elaborate fool you were—a hopeless ham actor beyond redemption. You, as a man...

When he came to his senses, Sanzō found himself clutching the handrail before some shop’s display window, his forehead pressed against the glass as he precariously supported his body while apparently half-asleep. Squinting his eyes against the brightness of the display window to look properly, he saw it was a shop selling nothing but pearl products—necklaces, bracelets, and such things.

After parting with Mr. M in front of the oden stall, he must have wandered aimlessly until he found himself at Benten-dōri—this port town's distinctive shopping street catering to foreigners. When he turned to look back down the street, most shops had already closed their shutters, leaving it quiet and deserted—yet somehow this shop alone appeared to remain open. In the display window before him, pearls lay still upon lustrous black velvet cushions, their surfaces drinking deeply of the light. Under the electric lamps' influence, each white pearl stood arranged—some dulling their luster to milky opacity, others casting faint azure shadows. Sanzō gazed blankly at them through eyes still clearing from drunkenness, his face frozen in surprise. Then he stepped back from the window and wandered buoyantly through the deserted street for a time, forgetting both Mr. M and his earlier self-flagellation.