Pathway to Japanese Literature

About a year after Murao Shoji suddenly disappeared, Shimamura Yoichi encountered him in an unexpected place.
Shimamura liked the small passenger boats that traveled up and down the Okawa River; back when they were called one-sen steamers, he would even extend his walking route specifically to ride them, and even recently, whenever he had the chance, he would take a slight detour to board them.
The streets were paved solid, buildings lined up with right-angled shoulders, and transportation systems gaining speed—amidst all this, the small steamers that carried shopkeepers and clerks while slowly chugging along, rocked by river waves, seemed like ventilation holes drilled through the city’s bricks, stones, and concrete.
Especially in the evening, it was at its best.
The sun had hidden behind the shoulders of buildings, its lingering glow drifting brightly across the river surface. Under the reflection of an oily sky and water, a subtle purplish atmosphere emerged. The houses along both banks blurred into flat planes, only their outlines standing out sharply. From the large cargo boats returning to seek mooring, slender trails of smoke rose.
At such times, the sound of the small steamer’s engine reverberating throughout the entire hull somehow seemed like a brisk, satisfying laugh.
Shimamura, who had boarded from the foot of Eitai Bridge, stood outside for a while gazing with a pleasant feeling he hadn’t experienced in some time, but after passing under two or so bridges, he felt his head being pressed down by the imposing iron bridge framework and entered the cabin.
The passengers were sparse, and it was quiet.
Sitting on a corner seat and peering through the slightly grimy glass window, he saw that the boat was proceeding close to the riverbank. Just as he was about to move to the opposite side for a broader view, his eye caught the figure of a man who had seemingly been looking his way but now averted his face and fixed his gaze on the water’s surface—a man sitting beyond a woman holding a child on her lap.
Wearing a black soft hat pulled down low and leaning against the window—that profile, no matter how he looked at it, was Murao.
From his carefree nature that didn’t dwell on things, Shimamura leapfrogged over a year’s time and various incidents as he walked toward him.
When he was just a few steps away, Murao, as if suddenly aware of him, abruptly raised his face and looked toward him.
He greeted it with a smile.

“Hey, it’s been a while.”

Murao remained silent, staring intently at Shimamura settling into the seat directly across from him. Though devoid of hostility, his gaze held a chill. The frayed navy suit revealed a white shirt collar beneath, its woolen tie haphazardly knotted—an ensemble that harmonized with his gaunt, pallid face grown even thinner than before, lending him an almost youthful air. Only the black soft hat remained unchanged from former days.

“What happened to you since then…?”

At that moment, Murao formed an ambiguous smile, took Shimamura’s hand, and gripped it tightly.
The forceful handshake conveyed something different from the Murao of old to Shimamura.

“I... wanted to see you, but...”

And this time, Murao smiled a somewhat bashful smile.

His emotions and words seemed somehow out of sync...

Now, before tracing the story of these two further, let us recount past events here.
And since this story is rather ambiguous and complex, we will use the memoir that Murao himself sent to Shimamura as the framework, supplemented with the author’s annotations and additions, striving to avoid errors as much as possible.

……I simply could not love Shinko.
For some reason, no matter how much I asked myself, I couldn’t understand.
Her facial features and cultivated manner were more than I deserved, and if I were to marry her, a happy household should have been possible.
Moreover, her father and my mother were cousins, and since I was well acquainted with her family circumstances, I should have been able to trust her more than any other woman; furthermore, her family being wealthy and having assisted me in various ways before, marriage would have naturally brought me material support.
Even so, I could not feel any affection toward her.
As for the cause, there was only one thing I could grasp.
It was her ear.

Her earlobe was normal in the upper part, but midway along the back, it was indented and shriveled as if chipped away, while the lower portion curled back in an ugly manner. That was all there was to it, but in my eyes, it appeared magnified to the point where it could be called a physical defect of her body. To make matters worse, that defect seemed somehow connected to something internal—her organs, perhaps. Indeed, among human physical flaws, there are those that remain merely as such and become lovable by accentuating the healthy beauty of other parts. However, those that suggest connections to internal organs become horribly repulsive. I felt such repulsion in Shinko’s ear. That being said, she was a healthy, youthful girl. Why on earth had she been born with that damningly ugly ear? I could say the derangement of my fate originated largely from that ear of hers.

When I met her, I was repelled by that ear. Whether consciously or not, she had styled her Western-style hair in a slightly aged manner to hide it, but my malicious eyes—privy to the secret—refused to be deceived by such efforts. Even when I tried not to look, I would part her hair and seek it out. During my four-month hospitalization for an intestinal perforation, she sometimes visited me. I would lie silently in bed staring at her ear, startling and flushing when she turned around. In those moments, speaking grew distasteful; I even caught myself wishing she would leave sooner. At my mother’s funeral, while relatives stood lined before the altar, her ear alone persistently ensnared my awareness. The day before during the wake, I had overheard Shinko’s mother tell someone: “I’m sure your mother wished she’d lived at least until Mr. Shoji’s wedding.” Knowing my mother had wanted Shinko as my wife, I abruptly visualized that ear and felt a surge of disgust.

The fact that I foolishly became infatuated with Chiyotsugu and fell into a chaotic lifestyle seems to me half attributable to Shinko’s ear.
Chiyotsugu had thin, unassuming earlobes.
The seemingly ill-fated, delicate earlobes peeking out from Shimada’s sideburns struck me as a symbol of her fragile existence.
As her voice calling my name while she fell to her death from the second floor faded into the distance, I always find myself recalling her thin, unassuming earlobes.

――Here, if I may add a brief note, this section appears to be an exaggeration in the memoir.
It seems the narrative had slipped into centering around that very ear, starting from Shinko’s.

Chiyotsugu was a geisha Murao frequented, with whom he initially became deeply involved out of romantic sentiment. However, due to rumors about her possibly having ties with the president of the trading company where he worked, their relationship grew intermittent for a time. Then after his mother's death, for reasons unclear, it suddenly intensified from both sides.
Even so, Chiyotsugu never abandoned her professional detachment, but Murao plunged in with what seemed like self-destructive abandon and amassed a chaotic pile of debt.
And curiously, while maintaining a nonchalant facade before Chiyotsugu—affecting an attitude that they could part ways or even die together at any moment—he secretly became utterly infatuated with her, wandering the area late at night to monitor her movements.
She began to feel an eerie terror as if someone were stalking her, but one night after an awkward parting with Murao, when she returned drunk from another banquet and realized her stalker was actually him, she peered down from the second floor searching for his figure. As Murao's true feelings struck her profoundly, she leaned out to call his name—partly due to drunkenness—causing the window frame to give way and sending her plunging to her death below.
However, since this episode bears little relevance to the main narrative, we shall omit it—but it remains true that Murao made a grim resolve because of these events, and equally true that his life faced severe hardship.

Furthermore, I should add one more noteworthy point: in connection with Chiyotsugu, Murao once made an interesting remark about geishas’ romantic relationships in general, though he presented it as unrelated.
“—When it comes to that matter, a peculiar association always arises in my mind.
I recall the moneylender’s room.
Nothing is as uncluttered as a moneylender’s room.
One or two zabuton cushions, a single desk, occasionally a small table in the corner—hanging scrolls and framed works, both typically bearing writings by notable figures.
And then there’s a single one of those things—like deer antlers or water buffalo horns—hanging from a pillar.
That’s all there is—nothing else whatsoever.
Flowers are naturally absent—not even a vase exists.
There are no unnecessary furnishings whatsoever.
On the desk there’s a writing box, and in the drawer of either the desk or small table lies printed paper.
It is an extremely simple room.
And this simplicity is concentrated solely on the single matter of business.
Geishas’ romantic relationships resemble this kind of moneylender’s room.
It is nothing more than a simple transaction.
Where in a moneylender’s room can human warmth be found?
Where in geishas’ romantic relationships can genuine feeling be found?
I have doubted that for a long time…”

In the aforementioned statement, if one replaces the plural term "geishas" with the singular, it would apparently refer to Murao and Chiyotsugu. And while Murao likely found no humanity in the moneylender's room, he did discover—or believed he had discovered—genuine sincerity within Chiyotsugu. Moreover, it was through Chiyotsugu's death—undoubtedly an accidental one—that he had discovered it. The nature of his desperate resolve can be roughly imagined.

Let us continue tracing his memoir.

My life was often swayed by chance events.
This may have been because I lacked the vigorous vitality needed to control chance and transform it into necessity, but more than that, I even harbored a fatalistic sense about how chance operated.
When chance exerted its influence, it became rendered as the word "opportunity."
When I met Hamada Yukiko, the timing was ill-fated.

It was nearly time to leave the office when the office boy informed me that a visitor named Ms. Hamada had come to see me.
The name meant nothing to my memory, but I had her shown to the reception room regardless; when I went out to meet her, everything came back clearly.
Toward a woman whom I had forgotten over time yet could recall completely at a single glance—perhaps it was permissible to feel a faint tenderness.

“You did realize it was me, didn’t you?”

She gave a slight bow as she said this, smiling while gazing at me.
Tilting her head slightly, with squinting eyes and pursed lips—that smile remained exactly as it had been in the past.
But she had aged significantly and grown heavier.

“I had no idea at all.”
“It’s because you said ‘Ms. Hamada’…”
“Was it all right for me to come see you?”
“No, not at all…”

My heart was strangely calm.
She too appeared completely composed.
Her gold-threaded kimono and embroidered-crest haori seemed to have gone through water several times, taking on a shriveled appearance, yet her shabby attire clung naturally to her body—she had grown plump and thoroughly domesticated.
After returning to Nagoya back then, she had tried running a small shop for a while, she explained with a smile, but since it didn’t go well, she was now staying at her sister’s house—she had come to Tokyo for some errand and thought she’d check how I was doing.
From that smile and her demeanor, the her of seven or eight years ago faintly surfaced.
Back when I was at a small bar in a Kanda back alley, over about half a year, I would take her out two or three times a month.
It was the kind of bar where such things could be done openly; she conducted herself without secrecy; I knew there were several other male patrons; since everything was a transparent transaction, I felt oddly at ease.
Knowing she wanted to return to Nagoya, I had no ulterior motives whatsoever in giving her around a hundred yen.
She would say things like “You helped me back then…” trailing off through cigarette smoke, or ask with feigned seriousness whether I was still unmarried.
As we sat facing each other, gradually a certain charm emerged in her pointed mouth; a luster appeared in her myopic-looking eyes; simultaneously her thick neck became conspicuous; her hoarse voice grew raspier—and within this plump appearance thoroughly hardened by domesticity over two or three years, something murky and squalid surfaced.
For some reason feeling awkward, I made plans to meet her later and sent her home.
Then I returned to my room, calmly tidied my work, and left the company as slowly as possible.
And I couldn’t help but give a wry smile at myself for having decided—through a spur-of-the-moment idea to make our meeting place as far from the company as possible—on Nakamise Street before Kaminarimon Gate in Asakusa.

At that time, I was living in a peculiar state of mind.
On one hand, after Chiyotsugu’s death, I continued clinging to the illusion of her sincerity while nurturing an ambiguous conviction—a bright confidence or resolve—that no woman could stir my heart, a freedom that conversely bred contempt for all romantic entanglements.
In short, it was a sensation suspended midair, transcending notions of purity and corruption.
Yet simultaneously, I found myself in dire financial straits, with some vague spirit of rebellion simmering within.
I no longer squandered money—nor could I have even if inclined—but the mounting debts from unpaid obligations and moneylenders only grew more oppressive with time. In a desperate bid to settle everything at once, I approached Shinko’s father for help, but whether due to my history with Chiyotsugu becoming common knowledge, I received a stinging rebuke before being flatly refused, leaving me utterly devoid of any solution.
Memories resurfaced of when I’d associated with Sugiura and Nishida—discussing social issues and the plight of the exploited class while attempting to form a small activist group—those days now feeling like ancient history, yet a different breed of fervent indignation had taken root within me.

If I had been fairly wealthy or steeped in debauchery, I likely wouldn’t have glanced at someone like Hamada Yukiko.

In the crowd along Nakamachi Street before Kaminarimon Gate, I spotted her figure from afar—standing before a notions shop gazing at hair ornaments—and let slip another wry smile.
Her thick neck, short stature, rough skin, and appearance far older than her nearly thirty years—combined with Azuma clogs and small furoshiki bundle—made her stand out among the crowd.
Self-conscious of my Western suit, I led this woman who gazed up at me with clinging eyes into a cheap beef restaurant nearby, drank sake, ate rice, let time idle away, then—with her murmuring things like "I needn’t return tonight"—mentally counted the notes in my wallet as we sought cheap lodgings behind the park.

In that room—barely furnished with a bed and low dining table, where daylight would likely reveal stains everywhere—I drank sake while studying her curiously. She mentioned helping at her sister's house lately—the hand she let me touch was hard and rough-skinned. Counting mentally with downcast eyes, she murmured, "How many years has it been?" then smiled her old coy smile through those nearsighted-looking eyes. "I've been thinking of you often lately." Even as she added, "I drink quite a bit these days," she kept up her nonchalant act, her voice grown far huskier than before. The country-style crimson collar of her kimono hung loose, her body odor—whether real or imagined—outdoing any cosmetic fragrance. Both of us sat content with this faint residue of old dreams as our sole intimacy, exchanging empty phrases without probing questions, facing each other like two animals at rest.

The events of that night...

"The memoir abruptly continues with 'The events of that night...'—but what is curious here is that not a single word mentions Shinko's ear, which had been treated with such gravity earlier."
Hamada Yukiko's ear was likely so utterly ordinary as to be not worth mentioning.
Or perhaps his emphasis on Shinko's ear—even if unconsciously—had served as some sort of pretext.
And regarding the content of "the events of that night," there is a suggestive passage later in the memoir.
I will quote it here.

Nearly all employees and the president's close acquaintances had gathered.
Though framed as a birthday invitation for the president, this annual assembly could equally be called Yoda Shokai Company's commemorative event.
Viewed through this celebratory lens alone, the trading company appeared to be progressing steadily.
The invited guests—excluding company staff—seemed to ascend in social standing and accumulate personal gravitas with each passing year.
Several newly prominent figures were also present.
Despite being an informal gathering with simple fare, the spectacle of these people—most sporting gleaming tie pins and sharply creased trousers, some even clad in morning coats—dining decorously around white-clad tables adorned with floral arrangements in Toyo-kan's grand hall made for an undeniably impressive sight.
I sat at one of the lower seats, sipping sake while observing how the white and red wines brimming in tall-stemmed glasses shimmered under electric lights, when I caught two colleagues nearby whispering in tones blending admiration and sarcasm: "Wouldn't we all want such lavish birthday banquets? I wonder what today's expenses total." This accidental eavesdropping forced me to confront my own circumstances of scrambling for meager funds, filling me with desolate melancholy.
That plunged me deeper into remembrance of when I took Hamada Yukiko to that cheap inn behind Asakusa Park.
It felt nearly illusory.
Then I wondered:
What if I substituted my current self sitting here with that former self?
Would I be expelled?
No—even among these dignified gentlemen maintaining such reserved composure here, there must exist shadowy corners of their lives never exposed to public view.
No one knows what anyone might do or where.
Yet these upstanding gentlemen might abstain from acts they themselves find repulsive, even when possible.
But I had calmly committed deeds I found both repulsive and wretched.
What in the world had I become?

These weren't matters one should dwell on amidst a crowded banquet.
Yet I pursued that night's phantom with odd persistence.
Her voice hoarse and breath labored—that body growing plump yet coarsening—I toyed with her flesh as if examining a nude statue held in both hands.
No longer existed questions of beauty or ugliness, nor matters of emotion.
There were moments I wanted to trample both myself and the other, but greater still was this vague sense—wondering where rock bottom lay as I kept sinking deeper.
Even had Chiyotsugu lived and I remained enamored with her, I still would have done the same.

The next morning, after making her hold several remaining fifty-sen silver coins from the payment and glimpsing her dejected figure seeing me off as I jumped into a one-yen taxi, that momentary thought—of wanting to embrace her shoulders with warm-heartedness—must have been my sole shred of human decency.
I thought myself wretched and pitied her.
And I rebelliously both cursed and despised these splendid gentlemen at the banquet.

As for having pleaded with Mr. Ogata Hisahira—Shinko’s father—to financially rebuild my life, I had briefly mentioned this before, but at that time I was only met with a lecture in return.
It was Mr. Ogata’s opinion that to constantly presume upon others’ goodwill and take advantage of it by making escalating demands was despicable.
In reality, I had borrowed money from him two or three times, and my mother had also received various kinds of assistance from him during her lifetime.
He posed two questions to me.
“There’s someone drowning in a river—if jumping in to save them would inevitably result in you drowning too, would you still jump in?” That’s what he asked.
I thought it was an absurd question.
If one person dies, why should two have to?
But then came the follow-up question: “What if it were between parent and child or spouses? Could you still declare so decisively that...?”
As I remained silent and thought, he concluded: “You regard all people in the world as being in parent-child or marital relationships—that this was your fundamental misconception.”
And he continued speaking.

“Even in an ordinary case of saving someone drowning—if you knew this person would inevitably fall back into the water time and time again—would you still have the courage to jump in each and every time?”
“Or do you have the goodwill to constantly monitor that person to keep them from falling back into the water?”
“You would think that’s absurd.”
“From my perspective, you’re a man who deliberately jumps into water time and again.”
“Your way of living is like pouring water into a bamboo basket.”
“If you manage to patch that bamboo basket so it stops leaking water, then I’ll consider advising you.”
“Your mother was also worried about that trait of yours.”
“I suggest you think carefully and make up your mind.”

I had already made my resolve—a resolve of an entirely different nature—and so I left his presence without a word.
At that time, I was indeed terribly young.
There were debts of social obligation I absolutely had to repay; I was being hounded by interest payments to moneylenders; and worst of all, having been coerced by Koga into becoming his loan guarantor—only for him to depart promising to sell rural land yet never sending word—I had fallen into a situation where I had to shoulder the entire burden myself.
I considered all of this to be a pitfall of the credit finance system.
It was my fault for using it, I thought—but theirs for letting me use it until I fell into that pit.
And if I could have organized everything properly—being single and unattached—I was confident I could have repaid it gradually.
But if this world was such an irksome place where even that organization proved impossible, I thought it permissible to simply beg off.
To keep water from leaking through a bamboo basket required first patching its holes.
And what I came to understand was this: that patching became most difficult precisely when it was most necessary.

My attitude stemming from such feelings apparently left an impression on Mr. Ogata and consequently became a topic of conversation in his household.
At the very least, it seemed to me that whenever Shinko came to my house, she must have received some instruction or request from her mother.
First of all, it was strange that she brought flowers just because it was my mother's death anniversary.
Given that she had left her marital home soon after marrying and had idled away her days at home until reaching twenty-five—dabbling in literature and music—it wasn’t unusual for her to occasionally visit me. But bringing flowers to my mother’s altar was ostentatiously virtuous beyond measure.

It was a Sunday afternoon when we had our conversation on the sunlit engawa warmed by spring.
In the narrow, charmless garden where fatsia, cypress and azaleas grew, blue-green weeds had begun sprouting here and there.
"Why don't you have the maid pull the weeds?" she said.
I simply smiled bitterly, but at that moment found myself thinking the opposite.
What if I let the garden weeds grow wild as they pleased?
Might nameless little white and red flowers bloom?
Would various insects come fluttering through...?
I framed these imaginings as living in accordance with nature.

Then she snorted derisively through her nose.
"Finding nature in weed overgrowth is just an excuse for slovenly resignation," she declared.
"Such nature means lost willpower," she added.
When I considered she might be right, an unpleasant feeling crept over me.
My furtive glance caught her eyes flickering with leaf-reflected innocence, yet her sharp-tipped nose radiated haughtiness. The coral obidome and opal ring clashed garishly against her plain Meisen kimono and habutai obi.
With nowhere else to look, I compulsively sought that ear—the ugly ear—half-hidden beneath her lightly waved hair.

“Whether it’s a loss of willpower or misguided nature—none of that matters to me. It’s just that I want to let the weeds grow as they will—that’s all—and now that feeling resonates perfectly with me.”

As I said this, tears welled in my eyes.

But though neither those words nor those tears were lies, I found myself strangely compelled to speak that way and shed tears in that manner. This was uncharacteristic behavior in how I typically acted toward Shinko.

We continued talking about various things.
Looking at the books in my study, she advised me to read more poetry and novels.
Surveying the lonely house, she suggested I buy a phonograph.
At that moment, the phonograph struck me as absurdly extravagant.
She seemed to be reconnoitering both my home's interior and living conditions.
Feeling as though I'd abandoned all resistance, I would occasionally make conscious efforts to seek out her deformed, ugly earlobe.
She sat before my desk and picked up a bat with a gesture suggesting indecision about what to do.
Just then, though I'd meant to take a match myself, I instead gently grasped her left hand lying carelessly on the desk.

Though I was half-surprised myself, she seemed completely taken aback, her whole body jolting. Yet in the next instant, I found myself tightly gripping her smooth hand, while she let me keep holding it and gazed absently out the window.
Before long, she threw away the cigarette.
I released her hand.

“Oh, there’s a butterfly flying.”

She stood up as if startled and watched the white butterfly skim past the eaves before flying away.
I also stood up and looked at it.
Then we talked about the weather and suburban matters.
And after some time had passed, when she was leaving, we exchanged a cheerful handshake this time, laughing like friends.

It was a trivial matter, but this reckless act precipitated the next incident.
And what drove me to such recklessness, it seemed, stemmed from what had occurred between Yukiko Hamada and me.
I realized I had touched not her hand, but that ugly ear of hers.
I had become sickened with myself.

――At this point, I would like to insert a brief note.

Murao once spoke like this.

"In my relationship with Shinko, holding hands seemed like nothing at all."
"If I were to feel love or hatred toward her, it would have had to manifest in some intense expression—either embracing her or striking her down."
"But I found myself quite unable to do so."
"I must have been cowardly."

If we accept this statement as true, it becomes clear why he used the term "adventure," and his meticulous detailing of those "trivial matters" cannot be dismissed as mere stylistic flourishes in his memoir. And following this comes a rather lengthy stretch of reflective passages, but judging by how oddly detached the prose feels here, he seems to have felt frustrated by his inability to fully articulate what he wanted to express. Let's skip over that part and move forward.

It seems I had been putting on a kind of performance for Shinko. When alone, I would feel like scorning her outright, but facing her, I inexplicably wilted and lost all vigor. She seemed to delight in looking down upon this version of me with arrogance. “Do you visit geishas these days?” she asked and laughed. “What sort of friends do you keep?” she inquired, then advised, “One must choose good people for close friends.” When I complained about the company, she declared, “Only those with courage to abandon their profession at any moment can truly excel at their duties.” In conversational tones, she mentioned her father consulting her about something. When asked how much money was needed and I answered two or three thousand yen might suffice, she dismissed it with contemptuous “That’s all?” She invited me to concerts and plays, but I no longer wished to attend such places. Though she promised to bring a phonograph and records, it remained an empty vow. She would describe novel plots seeking my criticism, though my opinions mattered little—her manner suggested she merely wanted to recount them. Yet to me, those novels were naught but sentimental trifles. And secretly, I made certain to remain conscious of her ugly earlobe.

One time, she opened a cloth-wrapped bundle, took out a large envelope, and presented it before me.
Inside were eighteen 100-yen industrial bond certificates and ten 20-yen ones.

“Some time ago, I requested this from Father.”

And she cautioned.
She cautioned that while one could borrow money using those bonds as collateral—since doing so would prove somewhat inconvenient for women like herself—she wanted me to arrange for her to take out the loan through her own company.
A receipt listing all the bond numbers had to be obtained and kept.
If two thousand yen was won in this upcoming lottery draw, that could be used to repay the money and retrieve the bonds.

“You simply must promise me.”
“Have your company arrange it, and you must never sell them or anything until two thousand yen is won...”

She smiled faintly and extended her hand toward me.

I had enough composure to amiably dismiss the sweet delusion about winning a two-thousand-yen lottery prize.
And while gazing at the intricate patterns printed on the paper, I abruptly asked:

“Does your father know about this?”

It seemed to have been a sharp tone that allowed no respite.
But she answered without losing her haughty composure.

“It’s been arranged as if he doesn’t know.”

That clear answer stabbed through my chest and plunged me into utter wretchedness.
Rebelliously, I seized her outstretched hand.

It was nighttime in a lone second-floor room. After his mother’s death, he had moved his study downstairs to what had been her living quarters and turned the remaining space into a parlor; however, with guests being rare and furnishings incomplete, it felt desolate and unsettled. Only the electric light glared unnaturally bright. At the oak round table where she had entrusted her hands to me, she shifted her eyes with playful intent.

“I’m sure we’ll win the lottery.”

That was precisely the sort of remark that would have suited Chiyotsugu.
And the room's desolation resembled that cheap inn I'd shared with Yukiko.
This absurd association—or rather, instinctive impression—made me into a clown.
Without releasing her hand, I gathered a tender force born of sincerity into my palm, shifted my body slightly, rested my face against her forearm, and felt tears well up from deep within.
A long time passed.

“Mr. Murao…”

Her tone was subdued, but I didn't wait for her next words and had already raised my face. She had clearly grown sentimental from observing my show of emotion. Her cheeks flushed faintly, and she lowered her gaze. In the shadow of her lustrous hair bathed in electric light, a prominent, sharply pointed intellectual nose gleamed white; at the center of that profile lay a misshapen, shriveled ugly ear. In my heart, I kept trampling that ear over and over, and with tears welling up, I reached out and embraced her shoulders. She turned cold and rigid. I sought the stone statue's lips. In an instant, the stone statue became a mass of flesh. I came to know the stiffness of her shoulders and the strength of her arms. But when she began to slightly open the eyes she had kept shut, I pulled back, threw myself face down on the table, and this time shed real tears. I wanted to press my lips to that ear—so grotesquely deformed it seemed to share a visceral connection with internal organs, that same ear I felt I had trampled beneath my feet. I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to be that cruel—not toward her, nor even toward myself. The sentimental tears would not stop.

“You mustn’t cry.”
“There may be far, far sadder things to come because...”

I found both those words and the hand resting on my back to be bothersome.
When I wiped away my tears and sat up，her intellectually haughty nose was facing directly toward me.
Her cold，clear eyes were momentarily averted and fixed in midair.
The color had slightly drained from her cheeks and her lips trembled，but she said nothing more.

“Please forgive me.”

I said that and teared up again, but strangely enough, my heart remained cold, and those words seemed to return to me without reaching her.

――There seemed to be a slight contrivance in how this scene appeared in the memoir.
This should have been regarded not so much as a description of an actual scene but rather as Murao's own psychological dissection.
Psychological dissection―that sort of thing―habitually overlooked something, achieving order through that omission.

In a much later section of the memoir, there appears a passage that reads as follows.

In reality, I took pleasure in maintaining a free and cheerful state of mind regarding romantic relationships—unbound by anything.
Yet this conviction might have been mistaken.
Had I been in love—or even possessed some singular affection—I likely wouldn’t have treated Yukiko, Shinko, or anyone else in that manner.
Nor would I have sunk into such wretchedness.
To state it bluntly: remaining single may have been my undoing.
Yet had I possessed sufficient funds for unrestrained indulgence, the problem would naturally have differed.
In short, poverty coupled with lacking a lover proved my downfall.
That said, I now find myself feeling almost grateful for precisely those circumstances.

――When we consider this passage together, it seems something has been overlooked from the earlier scene.
Murao also said such things.

"In my being tempted by her ugly ear, there may have actually been a defiance against my own reason."

In the end, the matters with Shinko—which had merely rendered myself miserable—made me indifferent to the 2,000-yen industrial bonds.
Regarding that, I felt neither particularly grateful nor did I particularly hesitate.
Moreover, I had always tended to hold this carefree view that money was like water level—that water naturally flows from higher elevations to lower ones, and once my own level rose, I would then let it flow out to others.
Moreover, even though Mr. Ogata Hisahira was aware of it, I could generously overlook the fact that bringing industrial bonds was a scheme by the mother and daughter who had considered the trivial good fortune of a lottery drawing, and I also thought that borrowing from the company would be more convenient for repayment.

The next day, I promptly tried asking the president, saying they were something my mother had cherished... The president seemed to furrow his brow and think for a moment, but without particular probing, arranged for a secured loan. Moreover, precisely because I was a company employee, he made a special exception and granted me a loan for the full face value despite the lottery date still being far off. I stuffed the 2,000-yen bills into my pocket and that very night immediately visited only two places requiring urgent attention to settle payments. And with about half remaining—though insufficient—I considered how to allocate it to other areas. Such matters, given my nature and past precedents, should have been carried out brightly and cheerfully, yet for some reason, this time it instead plunged me into melancholy. Just when I had nearly given up, an unexpected path seemed to open before me—yet my heart remained utterly closed, growing ever more stifled.

――Let me interject here that the memoir contains nothing more than what's written above.
However, Murao kept repeating:
"I used that money with the mindset of acquiring found money and putting it to use."
"Because doing so would only further entrench my clownish attitude toward Shinko and plunge me deeper into the mire."
"And I wanted to know...so to speak, the depths of my own lack of conscience."
This statement appears to explain what caused his melancholy.

And in a gloomy mood, I spent the next day, and when I returned home in the evening, there was a letter from Shinko.
I tried opening it with the feeling that it might have come from Hamada Yukiko—who had said she’d return to Nagoya right after that—but…

I must write this letter with a sorrowful heart.
After thinking it through for a full day and night, I concluded that I must tell you everything after all, and so I have taken up my reluctant pen.
Please forgive me.
I simply wanted to give you strength—you may laugh—but worrying that I didn’t know what you might do, I ended up taking such actions after discussing it thoroughly with my mother.
And having unexpectedly encountered your love...
I knew you loved me, but I believed it was a different kind of love.
And then it turned into... that kind of situation...
I am crying now.
I make this confession through tears.
There is someone I love.
For that reason as well, I cannot accept your love.
Please forgive me.
But you will surely endure this sorrow, won’t you?
You will endure any sorrow, won’t you?
I believe in your strength as a man.
If you love me, please do not betray this conviction of mine.
Even if I should cry, you will not cry, will you?
(Omitted.)

(Here she had written things like life being akin to misaligned gears, that treading down sorrow constitutes the path of living, how she herself had followed such a path in the past but now lived gazing at a single beam of light.) You are now, in many respects, facing a time of trials, I believe.
And for the sake of a powerful, brilliant future, you must endure your current trials.
I believe in such a you.
While I cannot accept your love, it is my heartfelt wish to become your good friend.
Might I ask for your forgiveness?
(Omitted.)
(Here was stated her wish that he honor their promise from that time by putting the bonds to their best possible use.)

My despondent mood was churned to its darkest depths by this letter.
I felt something igniting within me.
Like probing an enemy's vulnerability, I read through the letter repeatedly yet found no outright falsehood.
The clearer it became that Shinko had written this earnestly and truthfully, the more intensely my irritation flared.
Why hadn't I pressed my lips against that misshapen ear of hers instead of her lips back then?
I immediately started drafting a reply but proved too cowardly to follow through.
Moreover, just as nothing could be properly explained here now, I found myself incapable of articulating my feelings clearly.
I tore sheet after sheet of stationery to shreds.
Unable to remain still, I bolted from the house to drink.
As intoxication took hold, that memory surfaced with razor clarity—the moment she'd briefly relinquished her pride and allowed me her lips.
To think she had a lover... What had I done?
Wasn't this even more contemptible than how I'd treated Yukiko?
"Serves you right," I spat at her letter.
"Look at that ear," I sneered at her haughty nose.
Serves you right—look at that ear.
And exploiting the money obtained through her goodwill now lining my pockets, I summoned two or three frivolous geishas in some unfamiliar district, carousing until collapsing in drunken stupor.
By all accounts, I'd made quite the disgraceful spectacle.

The next day I took off from work and formulated two plans amidst my pounding headache.
The first was to prepare the exact amount of money I had paid and spent, retrieve the bonds, and return them to Shinko.
The other was to forcibly kiss her ear.
Then I set about working frantically to realize the first plan.
I consulted with any friends who seemed even remotely promising.
But deep down I knew full well it wouldn’t work.

To add a note—he had disclosed everything about Shinko and the bonds to all his close friends.
His tone remained terribly cold and calm.
And when the money matter was ultimately rejected—"But I thought it would work..."—he only said that much with a bitter smile.
He did not appear to feel any urgent need for money.
He seemed content merely to confirm what was impossible.
He left his friends with the impression that he was mocking them.
Calm self-exposure does not win people's sympathy.
Afterward, he simply ignored it and carried on.
Almost no one had discerned his psychological state.
Moreover, his mental equilibrium at the time seemed to have been considerably disrupted.

Let us retrace the memoir.

I felt a cold emptiness gradually forming around me.
The close social bonds between people grew distant from me.
I was conversely glad of this.
I gradually came to take to drink.
I developed a habit of silently staring fixedly at people's faces.
My absences from work also became more frequent.

Around four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon, I was following Shinko along Ginza Street.
She walked briskly straight toward Shinbashi along the shadier, less crowded side of the street, without glancing sideways or revealing the soles of her zori.
Her figure from behind—wearing a bright striped silk crepe kimono and a black single-layer haori coat with embroidered crests—had slightly broad shoulders but carried herself like a proper lady.
While recalling phrases from her letter and stoking the pent-up emotions in my chest, I trailed her at a distance of about thirty-six meters.
When she reached the crossroads, she stopped with about ten others at a red light.
I kept walking until I stood beside her.
There was something glint-like in the air.
Meeting her sharp gaze directly, I bowed politely.
“Where are you headed?” I asked with feigned composure.
“Just some shopping,” she answered, inexplicably blushing.
I spoke with forced authority.

“Would you care to have some tea?”

That it was accepted with what seemed like a relieved smile made my resolve crumble. After walking a short distance and settling on the second floor of Senbikiya, until she—laughing as if to say "rather than something impure"—had ordered melon and black tea, I simply behaved like her attendant. My gaze kept shifting back and forth between the tabletop and the medallion-like patterns on her obi.

“Please understand my feelings...” she said.
“Since there was no reply from you, I’ve been a bit worried.”

I desperately tried to suppress the clown within me that wanted to weep or put on a tragic face, now twitching to life inside me. I wanted to express my feelings in some concise way, but the words eluded me. With a sense of exerting tremendous effort, I gazed at her face. I stared as though discovering for the first time how her slightly gaunt forehead, haughty nose, and thin lips that seemed ready to argue any sophistry—their harmonious arrangement ultimately appearing unsuited to my taste—formed her features. She looked at me searchingly, then asked if I wasn’t suffering from neurasthenia. I merely shook my head and stayed silent, but became aware that my hand sipping tea and fingertips holding the cigarette were trembling faintly—realizing I couldn’t stop their quivering. This is dangerous, I thought. That I had neurasthenia—sleepless nights, foggy-headed days, no appetite, dizzy spells… I might thoughtlessly blurt out such things; had there been no onlookers, I might have knelt before her weeping… Yet it wasn’t because of such things that my hands trembled. If I were to beat her down, kick her away, trample her utterly… Then press my lips against that ugly ear—as devotees kiss Christ’s feet… But the clown within me seemed desperate to say: "How tragic that I cannot love you." I stared unflinchingly at her. When facing her, everything—the two-thousand-yen bonds, that evening’s clownish performance, that letter, even her earlobe—why did it all become so momentous? Weren’t they all just trivial matters… She stiffened as though cowering, forcing a rigid smile.

“Since I’m in a bit of a hurry today, may I come visit tomorrow, on Sunday?”

I stood up.
"Please postpone it until later as I have business tomorrow," I said.

"Once things have become clear in due course, I will inform you."

"That's all I said. After parting with her, as I gazed at the greasy polluted water in the canal, I mocked myself. What an utterly pointless meeting that was. How utterly trivial everything must have been."

At this point, the memoir turned into ordinary remarks delivered with an ironic tone.
Within those remarks were listed trivial matters not even worth writing down.
Presumably, various trivial unpleasant matters had accumulated.
There were letters I was waiting for that never arrived; a merchant coming to collect payment at an inconvenient time; the buttons on my raincoat still missing; company paperwork dragging on when I wanted to leave early; encountering an acquaintance I didn’t want to meet only to be subjected to lengthy conversation; forgetting a Western-style umbrella on the bus; smoking too much and hurting my throat; the company president not showing up when needed—and various other such things.
And in the same tone as these trifles, the following matters were briefly recorded.
When he threw aside his work and looked out the window, he was called by the president.
"You've been absent frequently lately, and it seems you can't even handle your work properly—what's going on?" he was asked.
He answered with feigned seriousness that he had matters to consider, adding that whether he resigned or not was his own decision, but whether he would be allowed to resign was the president’s prerogative.
From then on, the president became extremely cold and stopped so much as glancing his way.
On another occasion, when a creditor connected to Koga came to the company, he stated that everything would be settled by month's end—repeating only those words "month's end" several times—whereupon the creditor simply left.
Also, he thought about having a splendid Western-style suit made and meticulously imagined everything from the fabric and striped patterns to hats, neckties, shoes, and more.
Such matters were recounted dispassionately, and finally—though likely referring to something from slightly earlier—the tone abruptly shifted to recollect an occasion when President Yoda Kenzo’s brother was assigned to a London bank, during which he became one of the receptionists seeing people off at Tokyo Station.
Let us trace that account.

When I stood before the crude little desk bearing a name card receptacle, numerous gentlemen and ladies presented their name cards and bowed courteously.
There were also those who had forgotten their name cards, announcing their names while blushing in embarrassment.
With a certain haughty dignity that even surprised myself, I reflexively responded to them.
Five minutes before departure, after entrusting the organizing of name cards to someone else, I entered the platform.
I made sure to walk deliberately slowly.
Centered around Yoda's brother leaning out from the train window, a crowd of well-wishers had formed a circle.
Immediately the train began moving, and a chorus of banzai cheers arose.
As the voices faded and the train receded, the crowd that had until now been unified in one mood dissolved into individuals, each person already thinking of other matters.
Amidst this, I was suddenly overcome with lonely, wretched feelings.
No one paid any attention to me.
I walked toward the boarding gate area with my head hung low, when at that moment, I recalled something strange.
Just as it was morning commute time, when a crowd of people was streaming out from the station premises toward the Marunouchi Building, a sudden gust of wind came, sending a brown fedora flying until it tumbled down near the train tracks.
The man kept his hands thrust into his overcoat pockets as he toddled three or four unsteady steps forward, then freed both hands to chase after the hat—no sooner had he retrieved it than he hurriedly placed the dust-covered hat back on his head, wiped his face once with a handkerchief, and walked straight ahead.
There was something undeniably comical about that dignified facade.
Recalling that, I felt an irritatingly itchy sensation and, beneath the station’s high domed ceiling, hurled my black soft hat with all my might.
I caught it mid-air as it fell and threw it up again.
As I tried to throw it a third time, my arm was forcefully restrained.
A colleague from the company, having become angry, was restraining me with fierce intensity.
I too was angry but resigned myself and placed the hat on my head.
Throwing my hat in such a place was probably not permitted.

—The memoir ends here.
Presumably, he had intended to write more, but it seems to have been discontinued for some reason.
Normally, such an abruptly ended memoir would not exist.

Murao entrusted this memoir to Shizuba, who maintained a publicly acknowledged close relationship with Shimamura.
It was already past eleven at night at an unfamiliar location, but Shizuba went there at the client's specific request—only to find Murao thoroughly drunk.
He handed her a newspaper-wrapped bundle tied with string, explaining it was too important to mail and too awkward to deliver directly to Mr. Shimamura, then asked Shizuba to pass it along personally.
Having concluded this errand, Murao began drinking voraciously again—demanding she listen as Shimamura's proxy—while rambling about matters Shizuba struggled to comprehend.
"I intend to completely overhaul my life from now on," he declared. "To do that, I must steel myself to accept how every worldly affair rests on trivial connections."
"You all inhabit such a simple, unambiguous world—how fortunate you are," he remarked.
"I wanted to love a certain woman but found myself utterly incapable," he confessed through tears.
"Once a man falls for a geisha," he pressed Shizuba, leaning closer, "he becomes unable to love ordinary women with their complicated minds—what perverse logic governs this?"
"I could do anything—turn thief or even murderer." He laughed ominously. "Isn't it terrifying to realize that?"

In short, he got thoroughly drunk—alternating between tears and laughter—and rambled on as if silence were unbearable, spouting various things Shizuba couldn’t comprehend. Yet he still managed to settle the bill without forgetting and was put into a car by Shizuba to be sent home.

When Shimamura read his memoir and went to visit him, he had already relocated as if fleeing in the night.
The new location was unknown.
He disappeared while leaving trouble in his wake for various people.
However, this was something his friends had secretly feared, and consequently, it wasn’t particularly surprising.

The year-long reunion amidst the river steam left Shimamura with an unusually pleasant and composed mood.
He gazed intently at Murao’s face.

“Do you sometimes ride this kind of boat too?”

“When I have leisurely errands, I make it a practice to ride.”
Murao also spoke in a composed manner.
“I suppose there’s still something romantic lingering within me.”

And then he formed an awkward smile once more.
Traces of his former self remained centered around that.
They fell silent and gazed out at the water’s surface and the banks.
The riverside houses were already tinged with the colors of dusk.
The two disembarked from the boat at Azumabashi Bridge, wandered aimlessly, and had drinks at a small house in front of the park.

“It was in Nakamachi over there, wasn’t it—your ‘historic site’ where you were involved with that woman from Nagoya.”

“That’s rather clever—calling it a ‘historic site.’”
“But truthfully, I have several such historic sites scattered around the city myself. Though now they feel less like my own and more like someone else’s.”
“Life’s changes really do sweep everything far away.”
“Back then, I had two lingering regrets.”
“The first was never letting Shinko know I wasn’t truly in love with her. The second was never collecting my retirement allowance after quitting the company.”
“Receiving a retirement allowance isn’t just about money—it means settling accounts for years of working life.”
“But now both of those things have become irrelevant.”
“In the end, they’re just trivial matters.”

Feeling something new and vigorous within him, Shimamura was glad.
Murao continued talking about those days while laughing.

“It was utterly sudden—even I was taken aback.”
“Matsuura Hisao—a comrade who’d previously formed a small group, a man who rose from being a day laborer—suddenly pulled me out of that life.”
“If I’d stayed like that, I might’ve just rotted away in my indecision.”
“Matsuura’s usually a sluggish man, but when it comes down to it, he’s surprisingly quick.”
“He snatched up the money I hadn’t used yet, took over a small printshop, then secretly carried out necessary tools from my house, sold off the unneeded ones, dismissed the maid, and moved to disappear without a trace.”
“I was absurdly busy and didn’t even have time to finish that memoir.”
“I’d completely lost my willpower and became exactly what Matsuura said I should be.”
“Looking back now, it seems I’ve been performing nothing but foolish farces from the start—as if I’d never truly lived at all.”
“Right now, while running the printshop with Matsuura, we’re working on a certain plan—we may need to ask for your help eventually.”
“I’ll introduce you to Matsuura properly someday.”
“He’ll definitely get along with you.”
“The funny thing is—he’s such a sharp man, but he hasn’t noticed I never collected my retirement allowance from the company.”
“I’ve been hiding it too.”
“If he knew, he’d absolutely order me to go claim it.”

Murao laughed slyly.
Because that laughter was so hearty, Shimamura imagined his life through it, recalled that memoir, and felt strange about the change.

“I do often feel like I’m just indulging in foolish fantasies, but sometimes those very fantasies turn out to be useful. That was also true when I escaped that life, and even now there are things that prove useful in real life.”

“That plan you mentioned earlier—about formulating something—might that too be an unexpected product of such fantasies, don’t you think?” Shimamura said frankly.

Murao’s eyes glinted sharply for an instant, but without offering any rebuttal, he simply said, “Well, let’s drink.” Shimamura nonchalantly accepted the cup.