Pathway to Japanese Literature

It was a night in early April.
The train was traveling along the Kitakami River.
Surrendering my body to the shaking and noise, I had been dozing off drowsily. Perhaps because the air had leaked from the pillow I'd propped against the window, I found myself in an oddly unstable dreamlike state and vaguely half-opened my eyes.
But moving my body felt like too much trouble, and as I remained still like that, right before me there was a man’s face—bathed in faint electric light and smiling.
Hmm, I thought. When I looked closely, it was the man who had been sitting there since I boarded the train in Sendai.
Indeed, in this late hour well past midnight when most passengers were dozing off, he alone showed no sign of sleepiness, sitting bolt upright on his seat with a persistent smile.

"What a strange fellow," I thought, though simultaneously recalling I'd sensed this peculiarity from the very beginning.
When I had boarded in Sendai, that man and another in his fifties were sitting side by side on the front seat; while retrieving my baggage through the window, I'd addressed the window-side man with an "Excuse me."
Whether he heard me or not, the man remained seated rod-straight—not merely withholding a response but refusing even to shift position.
I adjusted my seat, read my magazine awhile longer, then drifted into sleep; throughout this time he appeared to have maintained that rigid posture.
Even now he persisted in sitting like a rod while smiling quietly to himself.

From an angle diagonally opposite, I stealthily observed his demeanor.
The window glass chilled by night air had grown so misted with condensation that one could gauge the carriage's warmth, yet he remained tightly wrapped in his black serge mantle, sitting rod-straight at the exact center of a two-person seat.
He possessed a high nose and narrow face—features that would class him among handsome men—but his forehead where long hair drooped slightly, along with his gaunt cheeks, showed skin devoid of luster and utterly pale.
That same pallor permeated his eyes.
They held a faintly milky film—clouded over, not intensely so but unsettling in their gaze.
He fixed those eyes diagonally ahead, nostrils flaring as if scenting something invisible while maintaining a faint smile.

As I watched this demeanor, I began to feel unsettled, and while feigning having just awoken, I lifted my head and sat up to trace the direction of his gaze.
There, in the seat one row back across the aisle, a five- or six-year-old girl lay sleeping with her head pillowed on the lap of a woman who herself slept leaning against the seatback.
A child with thick hair, plump cheeks—rather cute.

Being someone who had never much liked children to begin with, I felt an absurd sense of anticlimax, but having lost all drowsiness because of it, I had no choice but to light a cigarette.
Then the man shifted his gaze from the child and stared fixedly at me.
Throughout my two drags on the cigarette, he kept staring directly at me.
I felt somewhat disconcerted but steeled myself to ask.

“Do you dislike cigarette smoke?”

“No.”

He answered with just his lips, yet still did not look away from me.
In defiance, I tried speaking again.

“Where are you headed?”
“Otaru.”

Even so, he still did not take his eyes off me.
Moreover, it was a gaze that completely ignored my existence—as if he were looking at mere wood or stone.
I turned away in discomfort, but unfortunately it was toward that child from earlier.
And for a while, I glared at the child’s sleeping face.

“You seem to dislike children.”

When I turned around with a start, the man was still staring intently at me.

"Yes, I don't particularly like them," I answered bluntly.

“I do love children, you know…”

When I turned back, expecting him to continue, he merely let out a faint smirk.
At that moment, I noticed the lack of firmness in his thin lips.
And from those slackened lips and clouded gaze, I felt strangely unsettled.

“Is that so?”

After what felt like a ridiculously long pause even to myself, I answered.
Yet he remained utterly composed and promptly replied to my words.

“That’s right.”
“That’s why I’m being taken back to my hometown.”
“There are strange things in this world.”

I stared blankly at his face.

“It seems I’m not permitted to stay in Tokyo because I dote on children too much.”

And again he smirked faintly.

I was momentarily stunned into speechlessness.
Yet he didn’t appear to be mocking me.
Though his gaze, the shape of his mouth, his manner of smiling—none seemed ordinary—the tone of his voice remained composed and earnest.
A flicker of curiosity stirred within me.
Whether he’d chosen me as a diversion from the night train’s tedium or harbored some ulterior motive, I resolved that either way it mattered little—and steeled myself to become his interlocutor.

“So you can’t stay in Tokyo because you dote on children too much… Quite a strange story, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it’s strange.”

Even so, he smirked faintly again, not seeming to find it strange in the least.

“So do you have any children?”

“There was one, long ago.”

“Long ago, you say!”

“Yes, it was long ago.”
“There isn’t one now.”

I found myself staring at his face again.
Though he appeared to be not yet thirty, the idea that he’d had a child long ago struck me as absurd no matter how I considered it.
But what surprised me even more was how the cloudiness in his eyes suddenly cleared, revealing a deep void within.
And his thin lips grew even more slack.
Despite feeling an involuntary shudder at this transformation, I forced myself to speak.

“What on earth is this? What’s this whole story about?”

“That’s what’s so strange, you know…”

His eyes clouded over again.
And, as if frightened by something, he glanced to one side.
On the seat across the aisle there, the fifty-year-old man who had been sitting next to him in Sendai lay with his upper body stretched out, asleep.
Having confirmed that, he turned back to face me.

“Actually, it’s quite strange, you know.
Will you listen?”

He swallowed audibly before beginning to speak.

“I live in Hongo, Tokyo—behind Nezu Shrine—and there are always crowds of children playing in those shrine grounds.
I love children—watching them play gives me my greatest joy.
They’re innocent and free of malice—utterly fascinating.
Since I watched them so constantly, they eventually started approaching me themselves—calling me ‘Uncle! Uncle!’.
When I buy them rice crackers or such treats, they eat them up happily.
If I come empty-handed, they cluster around begging: ‘Uncle! Buy us something!’.
There are countless cheap sweet shops there—I bought them mochi cakes and candy sticks and game cards and all manner of things.
It left me poor—but being for the children’s sake—it was no hardship.
But letting children know we’re poor...that’s a parent’s disgrace.
When they said ‘Uncle eats stuff like this?’—I burned with shame.”

He even managed a bashful smile.

“Ah, that child? She came to my house to play.”
“A five- or six-year-old girl with perfectly round eyes that seemed to take in everything.”
“It was evening when I was about to head home—she followed quietly behind me, so I brought her inside, utterly delighted.”
“The child looked happy enough.”
“She kept glancing around the room at first, but once she grew comfortable, she played quietly—rummaging through desk drawers and pulling things out of the china cabinet.”
“The real trouble came with meals.”
“Back then, my maid had left, so I was living alone. Whenever I went to work at the company during the day, I’d lock up the house.”
“That meant I had to make my own dinners.”
“But leaving a child alone while going shopping felt risky somehow—I had no choice but to use whatever was on hand.”
“There happened to be some nori and takuan left, so we ate those together.”
“Spoiled thing—she kept demanding side dishes or eggs, and I didn’t know how to placate her.”
“Well, after we finished eating anyway, I started telling her stories. She must’ve gotten sleepy—suddenly went quiet and began blinking her eyes.”
“I laid out bedding right away, but just as I was spreading it out—she burst into tears.”
“‘I want Mommy,’ she kept sobbing.”
“I opened a small closet and pointed to the new memorial tablet inside. ‘Mommy’s right there,’ I coaxed desperately, ‘so sleep quietly with Daddy.’ But she shook her head and cried harder.”
“Finally tried to bolt outside.”
“Never been so flustered in my life.”
“In the end though—she must’ve cried herself out on my lap. I held her while she slept.”
“Do you know what children smell like?”

He relaxed his already slack thin lips even further and began to smirk to himself.

“It’s a strange smell—sweet yet sour.”
“There’s milk that’s starting to spoil—it’s that sort of smell.”
“But it varies slightly depending on the child.”
“That sweet-sour scent comes in all varieties—some mixed with the smell of sweat, others with a moldy odor, some tinged with mint, others with lemon.”
“The child sleeping over there must be one with a hint of mint.”

He wrinkled the sides of his nostrils and smiled furtively.

“Moreover, children’s bodies are sturdier than one would think.”
“Even when plump, their joints are strangely sturdy.”
“Only their fingertips and cheeks are soft like mochi and smooth.”
“The thicker their bone joints and the softer their fingertips and cheeks, the more value they have as children.”
“If their frames are spindly and their cheeks are rough, they’re completely worthless.”
“Don’t you think so?”

“Maybe so,” I answered vaguely.
“And what happened to that child?”

“That child… Ah, that one.”
“I sent her back the next morning.”
“Since I work for an insurance company, I have to go out every day.”
“Since I couldn’t leave a child alone at home all day, when morning came, I would take her into Nezu Shrine, tell her ‘Come again tonight,’ and let her go—she would happily scamper off.”
“But after that, she never showed her face again.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
“Still, it doesn’t bother me.”
“There are plenty of other children out there.”
“Sometimes they come to stay at my house.”
“I bought plenty of picture books and toys in preparation for those times.”
“However, children are honest beings.”
“Even if I try to let them have things as much as I can, when morning comes they shrink back strangely and won’t take a single one.”
“On my part as well, there hasn’t been a single child I’ve wanted to force it upon.”
“Even if I think a child is good, they’ll start crying oddly in the middle of the night or have some disagreeable trait—truly ideal ones are quite hard to come by.”
“There was one I thought would be just right, but that ended in failure.”

“Among the children playing in Nezu Shrine—excluding those two or three years old—most had no one accompanying them.”
“However, among them was one child of about seven years old, always dressed in a strikingly beautiful kimono and brand-new bright red tabi socks, with slightly curled flowing hair, accompanied by a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old maid.”
“The whites of her eyes were so clear they seemed blue, and her gaze—peering intently with small black pupils—was indescribably adorable.”
“I tried repeatedly to give that child sweets and such, but she absolutely refused to take them.”
“The maid accompanying her was also dim-witted—‘If I give such things to the young lady, I’ll be scolded,’ she said.”
“But I once thought of having that child stay at my house and was looking for an opportunity.”
Seeing how her chest was broad for being so docile, her bone joints must certainly have been thick and sturdy all over; when I once lightly poked her cheek, it felt firmly packed beneath with a squishy softness on top.
I wanted to hold that child and let her sleep through the night.
“As this went on, one evening—the sun still faintly shining, so it couldn’t have been very late—I finally found that child standing alone before Nezu Shrine’s gate feeding pigeons.”
“I quietly approached, gently placed a hand on her shoulder, and said, ‘I’ll show you something interesting, so come along.’”
The child looked bewildered and gazed up at my face with a curious expression.
So I took her hand, saying things like “What a good girl,” and was trying to coax her along as I started walking when she suddenly burst into tears.
“I was the one who got startled!”
“Then immediately, from somewhere, the usual maid came running out—‘What do you think you’re doing?’—scolded me in a shrill voice and pushed me away with all her strength.”
“I was truly startled, but once that surprise subsided and I began smiling, the maid took the child and ran off in the other direction.”
“After that, that child never showed her face in Nezu Shrine again.”
“I did a truly regrettable thing.”

He furrowed his brows slightly but then began to smile again.

"But it's not limited to that one child."
"There might be all sorts of good children somewhere, you see."
“Even if they’re wearing dirty clothes, some have splendid bodies.”
“I still sometimes targeted children and dragged them into my house.”
“Some would start crying right away, so I’d send them back as they were, but there were also those who stayed quietly through the night.”
“But here’s the strange thing.”
"One evening, as I was trying to drag another child home, a mean-looking man in a hunting cap suddenly leaped out from the side and mercilessly twisted my wrist."
“‘You’re the one kidnapping children, aren’t you?’ he said."
I burst out laughing.
“Apparently I—who love children so much—am the kidnapper!”
“It’s too absurd to even discuss.”
“Even so, I was dragged all the way to the police.”
“Despite their sensible-looking faces that seemed logical, their questions were ridiculous—‘Then why do you only kidnap girls?’”
“Just think—aren’t real children always girls?”
“Besides...my own child was a girl too.”

He suddenly pulled his neck in and stared intently into my eyes.
At those clouded eyes with their fixed pupils, I felt somewhat startled, but feigning nonchalance, I began to ask.

“What happened to that child of yours?”

“She died.”
“She was almost always with her mother.”
“It seems I didn’t cherish that child enough.”
“Well, the child was dear to me, but you see, the mother wasn’t all that dear.”
“She was from Tokyo, three years older than me, with a terrible temper—did nothing but torment me.”
“Calling me a coward, a slowpoke, an idiot—she’d berate me outright.”
“Sometimes in her fits, she’d even shove me around while sneering—‘What weakling can’t stand up to a woman?’”
“If that’s how it was, she shouldn’t have gotten involved with me. Because of her, I failed at school, ruined my health—went through hell.”
“Even so, she did look after me.”
“From kimono-wearing to geta-strapping to speech patterns—taught me every detail.”
“My insurance company job? She pulled strings for that.”
“But once a child came, she pushed me aside—stopped caring altogether.”
“Some days she wouldn’t feed me.”
“Not that I wasn’t annoyed either—clung to stubborn pride, never once held the child.”
“Then when the child turned three, she died of dysentery.”
“The child died too—dysentery or similar—almost same time.”
“Yes—last autumn.”
“I buried them together in her family grave—feels like both a good and regrettable deed.”
“But there’s still time.”
“Cremated her—can retrieve the bones anytime.”

“Even now I can retrieve them.”
“After all, they don’t decay easily.”
“Right? You see?”

He pursed his lips, seeming to lie in wait for my answer.
I said.
“It’s perfectly fine. After all, it was last autumn.”

“Yes, last autumn… That’s right.”
“Since then, I’ve done nothing but think about children.”
“Why didn’t I cherish her more? When I think that way, her face comes into sharp focus.”
“She was always smiling.”
“She was still smiling when she died.”
“Since she lay there smiling with one eye half-open and her mouth agape, I had such trouble closing them.”
“She was three then—four… five… six… she just keeps growing cuter.”
“If she were alive now, we’d probably be taking walks together in the park.”
“It’s about time she’d be starting school.”
“She’d surely excel—she was such a clever girl.”
“And she’d grow more beautiful each year.”
“The mother wasn’t pretty, yet strangely enough, the child had such refined, delicate features.”
“But even that feels like ancient history now.”
“Sometimes everything grows hazy—moments when I nearly forget it all.”
“At those times, I’m overwhelmed by unbearable loneliness—this gloomy darkness.”
“But then I resign myself again.”
“There are endless children in this world.”
“Overflowing everywhere you look—anytime, anywhere.”
“Children will never vanish from this earth—never.”

He momentarily adopted a deer-like expression as the cloudiness in his eyes began to clear, revealing a deep hollow beneath—but then it clouded over again, and a faint smile played at the corners of his mouth.

“Children are warm creatures, you know.”
“It’s a cozy, indescribable warmth.”
“There’s truly nothing else like it.”
“Look here.”
“Over there, you see the child sleeping with her head on her mother’s lap.”
“That mother’s lap—it’s just a child’s head resting there, but it must feel even cozier than being under a kotatsu, all warm and toasty.”

And he, as if having completely forgotten about me, kept his eyes fixed on that mother and child, at intervals letting escape a faint smile.

I had been observing his demeanor for quite some time but finally could no longer contain myself and spoke out.

“And then, what did you do?”

“What?”

He turned to face me directly, looking at my face with a puzzled expression.

“You mentioned being taken by the police, but then…”

“Police… Oh, right.”
“That place is utterly absurd.”
“They locked me in a dark room with high lattice windows but wouldn’t even give me proper food or bedding.”
“Then this mustached man came—the sort who stares through his glasses yet uses oddly polite speech—and though taking me to a bright spacious room seemed reasonable enough, he made me do things like recite numbers from one to a hundred or calculate dates by adding days, exactly like elementary arithmetic.”
“And then they asked me all sorts of other things too.”
“In the end, they flipped my eyeballs inside out, pressed something like a leather belt against my chest to listen, and made me do calisthenics.”
“That’s when I fully realized it.”
“They’re all treating me like a madman.”
“I got so irritated—‘I’m not a madman!’—and shouted at the top of my voice.”
“And after that, no matter what they asked, I kept silent and feigned ignorance.”
“Then immediately, I was handed over to Uncle from Otaru.”
“I find it strange how Uncle managed to come from Otaru to Tokyo so quickly.”
“Uncle scolds and coaxes me, trying to take me back to Otaru.”
“They say I can’t stay in Tokyo because I dote on children too much.”
“Isn’t that absurd logic?”
“When I resist, he scolds me—says getting involved with that woman was my fundamental mistake.”
“Then he’ll say something kind like how there are plenty of adorable children in Otaru.”
“I laughed at him.”

“Even Uncle treats me like a madman, you see.”
“And yet here I am now—being taken back to Otaru.”

And because he glanced sharply at the seats to the side, I realized that the man sleeping there was his uncle.

"There's just one little thing that even I find strange," he began in an extremely low voice, almost whispering.

“At times I perceive all people as wooden stakes.”
“When those wooden stakes suddenly start walking around or speaking, it makes me feel rather strange.”
“I think I’ve read or heard about this somewhere before.”
“It’s said that when a man who’d been imprisoned for ages was abruptly released into society, he suddenly began chattering away at a standing tree there.”
“That man must have seen standing trees as people.”
“However, I am the opposite.”
“I can’t help but see people as wooden stakes.”
“I suppose my mind really might be going a bit mad.”
“But they say that as long as one remains self-aware, one can’t possibly be a true madman. I wonder if that’s really the case.”

“That may be so,” I replied.

“Yes—or rather, that’s certainly true.
Yet the strange thing is, children have never once appeared to me as wooden stakes.
Only the children remain alive and vibrant.
Children are wonderful.
In this world where everything else might as well be wooden stakes, only the children bounce about full of life.
There’s nothing like their beaming smiles.
My own child used to laugh like that all the time too, you know.
When I’d get caught up in it and start smiling back, wouldn’t you know it—the children would come nodding over to gather around me.
There are always crowds of children playing at Nezu Shrine.
Lots of girls too.
They used to come stay at my house quite often.”

And then he once again began gazing at the girl diagonally across.

“If you like children so much,” I ventured, “why not make one yourself or take one in?”

However, he no longer responded to my words.
He stared intently at the child while occasionally letting out a strange solitary laugh.
I too had no choice but to fall silent, listening to the train’s vibrations and gazing absently around the compartment.
Except for one man puffing vigorously on a cigarette in the far corner, most passengers slumped in slovenly slumber, the air thick and murky.

After a considerable time had passed, he suddenly leaped up, startling me into staring wide-eyed. When I looked where he was gazing, the girl across appeared to have turned over in her sleep, now lying prone while her half-asleep mother kept instinctively patting her back with vacant lightness. The man stood rigidly staring that way before abruptly collapsing into his seat, burying his chin in his cloak collar, crossing his arms over his chest, closing his eyes, and remaining motionless indefinitely. For a long time I watched this man who might have been either mad or sane with gloomy fascination, until an oddly eerie oppression began weighing on me. Likely he perceived me and all other passengers as wooden stakes while settling himself like a rigid rod sitting perfectly still.

The train had already passed Morioka.
As it approached a tunnel, it made a monstrous noise and seemed to run at full speed.
I wiped away the condensation on the windowpane with my fingertip and peered outside, but there was only an impenetrable night—nothing met my eyes.
I pressed my head against the air pillow again, but my mind remained unnervingly alert with anxiety, making sleep seem impossible.
The man in the front seat—whether asleep or awake—remained in his earlier posture, sitting perfectly still like a rod.
I continued watching him for a long time, but when my eyes began to tire, I swung around to the side and pressed my face into the pillow propped against the seatback.
I seemed to see various visions but apparently dozed off in a daze.

When I awoke, the night had already whitened into dawn.
Startled by the commotion in the carriage, I sat up to find the train had just left Asamushi.
Thinking we'd soon reach Aomori, I began deflating my air pillow to prepare for disembarking. When I happened to glance up, the man in the front seat remained sitting rod-straight at the bench's center, though he now lightly moved his head while beaming with an utterly delighted smile.
I gazed at that smile and felt faint surprise.
The smile I'd seen under electric light at night had possessed a vacant, hollow eeriness, but now—not solely due to being lit by dawn's faint glow—it seemed filled with such radiant brightness that it naturally drew people's hearts.
Yet his eyes still held a pale cloudiness, his thin lips kept their slack looseness, and his forehead and cheeks showed skin drained of luster.
That such eyes, mouth and cheeks could wear so radiant a smile seemed utterly mystifying.
What further astonished me was how the child across the aisle had walked over to his seat's front—the very bench where I sat—and now stood gripping its edge with both hands, beaming back at his smile.
The two looked like old friends.
The child's mother—a young woman with bobbed hair—calmly watched this from across.
Then a man who seemed to be his uncle—wearing a fur-collared cloak—approached from the side, sat half-beside him, and began insistently tugging his sleeve.
He nevertheless maintained an air of obliviousness, still smiling at the girl while subtly twitching his smiling expression ever so slightly—as if signaling something.

Taking in all these scenes, I recalled his words from throughout the night and simultaneously began feeling a formless anxiety.
I grew increasingly concerned that some sinister entanglement might arise among him, his uncle, the daughter, and her mother—the four of them.
And then I began to feel as though I myself might become entangled in that web.
While half-rising from my seat, I still found myself unable to do anything.

But that lasted only a very brief moment.
That scene was suddenly and rudely shattered.
Just as the girl, lured by his smile, was about to step out from the edge of the seat, his uncle abruptly stood and positioned himself between them.
His smile froze into a vacant expression, but in the next instant, his face became utterly blank—devoid of any discernible emotion—and he hunched his shoulders.
The child had slipped back unnoticed to her original seat and was beginning to playfully engage with the mother.

I somehow felt sorry for him.
However, he seemed to have completely forgotten not only my presence and his uncle’s, but even the child’s existence.
He didn’t even glance toward the child.
Even when spoken to by his uncle, he remained silent with a vacant stare.
While the uncle was tidying up the luggage, I tried speaking to him.

“Did you manage to get some sleep this morning?”

He gave no reply.
I spoke again.

“Will you be crossing over by ferry soon?”

At that moment, he gave his first reply.
But whether he answered "Yes" or "No," his voice was too low for me to discern, and he seemed equally indifferent to either response.
My drive drained away, and I no longer attempted any conversation.

After a while, he suddenly stood up and took an apple from the basket on the overhead rack.
And he began gnawing on that bright red one, skin and all.
I watched from the side as he bit cleanly into it with crisp crunching sounds, but found myself idly thinking that if his pathological condition worsened further, he might even gnaw at a child’s red cheek in that manner—a thought that stirred both pity for him and, conversely, a resentful emotion akin to envy.
And I furiously puffed on cigarettes.
He gnawed off about half the apple and threw it down at his feet, then remained sitting rod-straight, fixing his clouded eyes on the sky.
And he stayed completely still, not making a single movement.

Before long, I had to prepare to disembark.
Because the items wouldn’t fit properly into the suitcase at first, I had to repack them several times while we traveled until the train arrived at Aomori.
All at once, the passengers stood up.
He remained sitting motionless until prompted by his uncle—who carried hand luggage in both hands—then carefully cradled the basket and hat as he stepped down ahead of him.
I watched his tall, thin figure retreat into the crowd—long hair slightly disheveled—clad in a black serge mantle.

After handing my luggage through the window to the redcap, I hurriedly chased after him. But amidst the noisy crowd, I lost sight of him.

Even after boarding the ferry, I continued searching for him. Out on the sea under the morning sun, I wanted to speak with him once more. Yet his figure was nowhere to be seen. I even checked the second-class cabin area, thinking he might have slipped in there, but neither he nor his uncle could be found. Then I tried looking for that mother and daughter too, but they were nowhere to be found either.

And I sank into a strangely anxious mood.
While vividly picturing his clouded eyes and slack thin lips, I stood on the ship's deck and gazed vacantly at the Aomori mountains—hazy under the morning sun—gradually receding into the distance behind us.