Pathway to Japanese Literature

I was expelled, made to repeat grades, and graduated middle school at twenty.
When I was eighteen, my father died; once we realized all that remained was debt, we began living in a tenement.
Due to the prevailing argument that someone like you—a person who detests academics—would gain nothing from entering university, and though this wasn’t explicitly an order to avoid higher education, I decided to work precisely because it made undeniable sense.
Thus I became a substitute teacher at an elementary school.

By nature unrestrained, I cannot bring myself to obey others’ commands.
I learned to skip school as early as kindergarten; by middle school, I was absent for half the required days.
I left my textbooks in my school desk and commuted empty-handed to skip classes—not to go watch movies or anything of the sort.
In my hometown middle school, I would lie in the pine groves on the seaside dunes and vacantly gaze at the sea and sky—not that I was reading novels or anything of the sort.
Since I was always engaged in utterly pointless pursuits, this became my lifelong fate.
Expelled from my rural middle school, I enrolled at one in Tokyo that gathered delinquents. Even there I remained the foremost absentee, though I rarely went to watch movies or such—instead lying about in places like the cemetery behind the school, or a patch of grassland about one stride across at Zoshigaya Cemetery’s depths called the Prisoner Graveyard, encircled by trees.
The fact that I was lying there was nothing out of the ordinary; my truant companions would come searching for me at this spot.
There was a classmate named S, a famous boxer at the time, who would skip school and come to this grassland with boxing gloves to practice. However, I had a weak stomach even back then—if my stomach acted up, I’d collapse completely—so I never took up boxing.
The shaded areas beneath the trees in this grassland were swampy and teeming with snakes, so the boxer would catch them to sell, he said, and take them home. But once when I visited his house, I found snakes kept in his desk drawer.
One day at the Prisoner Graveyard, the boxer found a snake, leaped at it, grabbed its tail, and hung it up.
The moment he hung it up and realized it was a viper—suddenly gripped by terror—he began swinging the snake in furious circles with killing intent and frantic seriousness, continuing to whirl it for five full minutes without uttering a single groan.
Then he slammed the snake against the earth and crushed its head while muttering “This ain’t no joke—getting bit by a viper and croaking at Prisoner Graveyard wouldn’t even make for a funny story,” stomping the head with desperate force—a moment I strangely remember with perfect clarity even now.

I was once asked by this man to do translation work.
This man had been writing boxing essays for various magazines since middle school, but he made me translate a boxing novel and had it published in Shin Seinen.
Titled Jinshin Shūkan-jutsu—indeed, this was my translation.
He had said he’d give me half of the three-yen-per-page manuscript fee, but afterward he dodged his words and never gave me a single sen.
Even when I later came to write and receive manuscript fees myself, top magazines paid only two yen or at most two yen and fifty sen per page—it wasn’t until about fifteen years into my writing career that I received a three-yen fee.
The earnings from pure literature fell far short of what one could make translating a middle schooler’s drivel.

Ever since entering this middle school for delinquents, I developed a vague yearning for religion.
By my very nature—unable to obey others’ commands—I may well harbor a strong joy in commanding myself and submitting to those orders.
However, it was an exceedingly nebulous yearning—I felt something akin to nostalgia for the severity of the ascetic path.

It may seem strange that a delinquent middle schooler incapable of obeying school discipline would become a substitute teacher at an elementary school. Yet during those impressionable adolescent years, I indeed harbored my own dreams and ambitions—moreover, I was far more mature then than I am now at twenty.
Though I’ve become someone who can’t even manage ordinary greetings properly these days, back then I possessed both decorum and restraint, speaking to parents with all the solemnity of a seasoned educator.

There is now a man named Ban Jun working as a lawyer in Niigata; back then, he wrote pieces for magazines like Kaizō, was a dreamer, and had built a ramshackle hut deep in the mountains of Ōme where he lived a primitive life with his wife.
I too later rented this hut and lived there at one point, but since I shot down flying squirrels with a bow to eat them, snakes would come inside when I stayed there, which became a problem.
When I became a teacher, this Mr. Ban taught me such things.
"When speaking to others," he said, "begin by talking in a small voice."
"Huh? What was that?"—making them lean in to listen—"First, drag them along like that," he instructed.

In the district where my school was located, there lived an eccentric Japanese painter named Fujita—a friend of Mr. Ban’s—a deformed man with three fingers on each hand who painted nothing but catfish.
‘Since he has a rather unique artistic realm, you should visit him once,’ he wrote in a letter of introduction, so I once paid him a visit.
I said today was just a greeting visit and that I’d come back properly another time, but no—dismissing my words with “There’s cider here, you must come up,” he insisted.
Since he insisted so forcefully, I reluctantly went up—whereupon he called for his wife and barked, “Hey, go buy some cider!”—leaving me utterly flabbergasted.

★

The place where I worked as a substitute teacher was in an area called Shimokitazawa in Setagaya—back then part of Ebara District, entirely within the Musashino Plain. After I quit teaching, the Odakyu Line was constructed and the area developed, but at that time it was filled with bamboo groves.
The main school stood next to Setagaya Town Hall, but mine was its branch school with only three classrooms.
Before the school gate rose a famous temple called Awashima-sama known for moxibustion treatments, while beside it sat a lone shop selling school supplies, bread, and hard candies. Beyond these stretched endless fields in every direction—no buses ran there in those days.
Now I imagine the area where Inoue Yuichiro lives must be near that vicinity, but changes have been too drastic for me to locate it anymore.
In those days not even farmhouses stood near the school—only the boundless Musashino Plain sprawling wide, hills ranged along one side clad in bamboo thickets and wheat fields, with a primeval forest beyond.
People called this primeval forest Mamoriyama Park or such names, though it was no proper park—merely untouched woodland—and I often took the children there to let them play.

I was put in charge of fifth graders—the highest grade at this branch school—a coed class of about seventy students. But I couldn’t help suspecting they were dumping students here that the main school couldn’t handle.
Out of seventy students, about twenty could at least write their own names in katakana, while the rest couldn’t even write a single “Hello.”
There were twenty of them.
These children did nothing but fight in the classroom, and whenever soldiers passed by outside singing military songs, some would leap out the windows during lessons to go watch.
This child was violent—an abnormal child.
The child was from a clam-selling shop; when cholera spread and clams stopped selling, they declared “Can’t let our clams go to waste with this cholera!”, ate them all, and the whole family contracted cholera—the child vomited a white substance like rice gruel on their way to school.
However, it seems everyone’s lives were spared.

Truly endearing children are found among the misbehaving ones.
All children are endearing, but it is the misbehaving ones who possess truly beautiful souls, harboring warm affections and nostalgia.
Since there was no need to force these children into headache-inducing studies, it was better to nurture a character that let their warm hearts and nostalgic sentiments live strongly as their core.
Adhering to such principles, I paid no mind to their inability to even write kana.
Tanaka, the milkman’s child, milked cows himself morning and evening while making deliveries, though he was said to have repeated a grade and stood a year older than the others.
Because he was strong and bullied other children, when I first arrived, the branch school principal had specifically warned me about him—yet in truth, he was a remarkably good child.
When I visited saying I wanted to watch him milk, he would come leaping out joyfully. Though he sometimes bullied others, whenever physical tasks like ditch cleaning or hauling goods arose, he would take them on himself and silently see them through alone.
“Teacher, I can’t write my letters—so don’t scold me, okay?”
“But I’ll do any physical work instead,” he said endearingly, entreating me.
Why was such a sweet child branded a troublemaker? First off, not being able to write wasn’t something to condemn.
It was ultimately a matter of the soul.
Making them repeat a grade was out of the question.

I was at a loss when it came to the girls.
By fifth grade they were already women, and among them were two who seemed not even physiologically female.

I initially moved into the only boarding house near the school in this area, but since it didn’t have many rooms, I ended up sharing.
In this area, there was a practical training school for overseas colonization, and I ended up sharing lodgings with students from rural farming families in Tohoku. Among them was a strange man who refused to eat warm rice.
Having grown up eating nothing but cold rice from working in the fields since childhood, he said he simply couldn’t bring himself to eat warm rice and would always let it cool down first.

However, this landlord’s daughter—a twenty-four- or twenty-five-year-old woman of imposing stature who must have weighed seventy-five kilograms—had fallen violently in love with me. She would come to my room in such a flustered state that her speech grew slurred, her facial features contorted with melting eye corners, her body fidgeting restlessly as she vacillated between ceaseless chatter, abrupt silences, and stifled giggles. This sudden onslaught left even me utterly dumbfounded.

She would cook rice exclusively for my room and always bring it piping hot, leaving my fellow lodger—the man we called Cat-Tongued Teacher—to lament his culinary fate.

The elderly couple running the boarding house appeared utterly helpless against their daughter’s frenzied infatuation, but I found myself even more discomfited and moved out after twenty days.

When I explained to the elderly couple that shared lodging hindered my studies, their visible relief surpassed all expectations—as did their gratitude, which manifested in ways I could never have foreseen.

From that day forward, they reportedly praised me to the skies with unflagging zeal—an outcome as baffling as it was unintended—though this proved problematic when their other daughter, a student in my class and more precocious than any child her age, confronted me directly.

“It’s weird how Dad and Mom keep praising you so much,” she said, her parents’ admiration clearly grating on her.

“The teacher isn’t such a good person,” she insisted.

These girls resented my fondness for the male delinquents and burned with jealousy over it.

The depth of their envy—a phenomenon I first encountered at twenty—left me utterly perplexed as to how one might address it.

The place I moved to was the second floor of the branch school principal’s house.
It was located at Daita Bridge, a road of over one ri.
However, half of the branch school children walked that distance to commute, and by the time I arrived at school, about thirty students would have already gathered together.
I would sometimes arrive late, and there would be someone grinning slyly while saying things like, "Can’t blame ya—young folks gotta live," or "Where’d ya stay last night?"
All of them were children who helped with farm work when they returned home, so while they couldn’t even write katakana, they were precocious.

The branch school principal had lodging one of the teachers as a side business, and before me, there had stayed a substitute teacher from the main school named Nagaoka—a Russian literature enthusiast and eccentric—who suffered from a peculiar condition called Kaeru Denkan where seeing frogs would trigger seizures.
When my class was in fourth grade, we were taught by this teacher, but one of the students had placed a frog inside the chalk box.
“So the teacher convulsed and foamed at the mouth in the classroom—I was really shocked then,” said the milkman’s child who had been held back a year.
He might have been the one who put the frog in.
When I asked, “Was it you who put it in?”, he smirked and said, “Not really.”

This principal was around sixty but abnormally short at four shaku six sun—a deformity-like stature offset by broad shoulders and hulking muscles, his cleft lip hidden beneath a mustache that clung beneath his nostrils. He possessed a volcanic temper likely born of deep-seated timidity, venting his anger on anyone nearby. Custodians and students bore the brunt of his rage, while school committee members and village elites received syrupy flattery; when seized by fury, he’d foist his classes upon the first-grade teacher—an elderly man—and flee to influential households for tea-fueled gossip. The staff preferred his absence, never protesting their extra workload. In fits of rage, he’d pummel his wife before storming into mixed tree groves and bamboo thickets, thrashing trunks and stalks with his cane until they splintered. Madness drove these outbursts—he struck with such savage force that one marveled his hands didn’t fracture, roaring “Ei! Ei! Yaa! Yaa!” as he channeled five full minutes of frenzied battering.

The principal would constantly gripe about “the youth these days” or “greenhorns,” but at the time I was utterly detached—resolved to neither anger, grieve, hate, nor rejoice, striving to live like drifting clouds and flowing water—so his words left me entirely unfazed. Of course, if he were to anger me, there was the risk I might move out and he’d lose my boarding fees; shrewd in such matters, he hardly ever lashed out at me alone.

There were five teachers in total: first grade’s old Yamakado, second grade’s Ms. Fukuhara, and third grade’s Ms. Ishige. This Yamakado was also a detached hermit around sixty-five who commuted on foot from Azabu wearing straw sandals.
He had his daughter working as a teacher in the city—she wanted to marry—but he refused to allow it, insisting she still needed to help support the household a while longer. Since they argued daily about this, he’d recount the story to us every day with a chuckle: “My, my—she’s all worked up and raring to go! Ah-hah-hah!”
With nearly ten children to feed, life proved so difficult that he staked his existence on a nightly *go* of sake.
The Principal did not drink alcohol.

Elementary school teachers harbored a strange inversion of moral values.
In other words, educators—being mentors to others—led lives of self-restraint to avoid public censure, but they concluded that ordinary people in society were not like that, indulging freely in wicked deeds, and thus decided that even *we* could get away with this much wrongdoing.
They convinced themselves that people in society were committing worse deeds and that their own actions were trivial by comparison, but in reality, they perpetrated atrocities that ordinary people could never bring themselves to commit.
This tendency existed in rural areas too—they deemed urban people wicked, always engaged in wrongdoing, so we thought we might as well do at least a little ourselves, but in truth ended up committing more heinous acts than urbanites.
This tendency existed among religious figures too.
The act of thinking and acting not autonomously but by considering others is already problematic, but since this consideration of others was delusional, it became even worse.
Because the teachers were excessively deluding themselves with wicked and foul interpretations of the human world, I found myself astonished.

When I received my official appointment and first visited the main school, the female teacher residing at the branch school escorted me back, explaining that my assignment lay at the branch location. This woman possessed astonishing beauty. Having never encountered such beauty before that moment, I became convinced that soul-awakening loveliness truly existed in this world. She was twenty-seven and unmarried—I heard through others she intended lifelong celibacy, though whether from firm conviction remained unclear. Remarkably noble, reserved yet kind-hearted, she differed from the androgynous types common among female educators, radiating distinctly feminine grace. I secretly nurtured a profound admiration for her. With minimal interaction between main and branch schools, I never gained opportunity to speak with her again, yet for years afterward clung to her noble visage in my memory.

In the village, there was a wealthy man—said to be quite elderly—who, having lost his wife, wanted to take this noble female teacher as her replacement.
He entrusted this matter to the branch school Principal.
A reward of hundreds or thousands of yen had reportedly been promised, driving the Principal to dash about in all directions—abandoning his classes—but given the noble teacher’s complete disinterest in marriage itself, the endeavor was doomed.
For those one or two months, his near-violent fits of temper—closer to savagery than mere roughness—raged unchecked, fueled by daily outbursts of restless agitation.

I aspired to live like drifting clouds and flowing water, so I never considered confessing my love to the female teacher or seeking marriage, instead cherishing her image as something precious. Yet when I learned of the Principal’s underhanded maneuvers, I grew deeply anxious that this beautiful phantom might be crushed by such a sordid marriage—and despite my professed detachment, I found myself secretly harboring hatred toward him.

Ms. Ishige was the wife of a military police sergeant major or some such rank—a truly cold and androgynous person—whereas Ms. Fukuhara was a kindly middle-aged woman.
She must have been around thirty-five or thirty-six, but she was the type to devote herself wholeheartedly to her students without regard for appearances—more of a natural-born nursery teacher than an instructor.
So even as a single woman, she lacked any androgynous mischief and had no lofty ideals, but she was a kind-hearted person.
The fact that she was a close friend of that noble teacher and held an idol-like reverence for her pleased me.
Many of the female teachers were jealous.
When I quit teaching, though parting was painful, they said, "It's truly for the best not to end up as just a teacher," and gladly held a farewell banquet, preparing an extravagant feast.
However, I found it sorrowful that my ambition could not be fulfilled by remaining a teacher.
Why couldn’t I dedicate myself?

I liked staying in the staff room long after school ended.
After the students had left and the other teachers gone home, I alone remained utterly absorbed in my thoughts.
The only sound was that of the grandfather clock.
The absence of figures or noises in that once-bustling schoolyard rendered the silence unnervingly profound—a peculiar emptiness that made me feel as if my very self had vanished into a daze.
As I lingered in this trance, I sensed an illusion of myself peering out from behind the clock, calling “Hey!”
When I suddenly noticed—Hey, what’s this?—another me stood beside me, as though speaking to myself.
I cherished that hazy state of detachment, though at times I’d abruptly address this standing version of myself and receive a scolding.
“Hey—don’t get too comfortable,” I’d glower at myself.

“Is satisfaction not allowed?”

“Ah—I mustn’t.”
“I must suffer.”
“I must torment myself as much as possible.”

“For what purpose?”

The act of suffering itself will show the answer. Human dignity lies in tormenting oneself. Everyone desires satisfaction. Even beasts do.

I wondered if that was really true. At any rate, I was certainly wallowing in satisfaction. I had grown somewhat closer to drifting clouds and flowing water—anger, joy, sorrow all diminishing—and at twenty, I seemed to possess more composure, maturity, and enlightenment than those teachers in their fifties and sixties. I had no desire for possession of any kind. Because I did not want the soul to be confined. I wore the same Western-style clothes in summer and winter, gave away books once I finished reading them, and my only extra belongings were a change of shirts and my fundoshi loincloth. When a parent who came to visit me spread the amusing story that that teacher hangs his fundoshi on the wall just like his clothes, I was the one left astonished, thinking Huh—isn't that something people normally do?

Hanging my fundoshi on the wall was my method of organization; since I lacked any spirit of possession, a closet was unnecessary. The only thing I possessed was the phantom of the noble female teacher, and the reason I read the Bible during that time was to fantasize about the Virgin Mary based on her visage. However, I was yearning for her, but I was not in love. Since I felt not the slightest unbalanced state of mind that one might call love, the greatest thing I desired was simply this: if only we could share a desk and work together at this same branch school. The image of this person is no longer in my heart. I can no longer recall her face, nor do I even remember her name.

★

At that time, I felt life in the sun itself.
I could see countless glittering bubbles and waves of ether within the pouring sunlight.
I was already happy just gazing at the blue sky and light.
In the wind sweeping across the wheat fields and the aroma of light, I felt supreme ecstasy.

On rainy days, within each droplet of rain, and on stormy days, within the sound of its raging cries, I could gaze upon cherished life.
In the leaves of trees, in birds, in insects, and in those flowing clouds, I continually felt intimate lives conversing with my heart.
Since there was no reason I had to drink alcohol, I did not care for it.
I was satisfied with only the phantom of the female teacher and had no need for a woman’s flesh.

At night, exhausted, I slept soundly.

The distance between myself and nature gradually disappeared, and my senses became filled with nature’s textures and its vitality.
I was not directly anxious about this, but still, when walking filled with vitality through the hills of wheat fields or beneath the dim trees of the primeval forest, I would suddenly catch sight of my own figure speaking to me—deep within the trees, atop their thick foliage, upon the bare earth of the hills.
They were always quiet.
The words were calm and soft.
They always spoke to me like this.
You must become unhappy.
You must become truly unhappy, you see.
And you must suffer.
“Because unhappiness and suffering are the homeland of the human soul,” they said.

But I did not know by what means I should suffer.
I had few physical desires.
To suffer—what exactly was it that suffered?
I imagined misfortune.
Poverty, illness, heartbreak, thwarted ambitions, aging, ignorance, discord, despair.
I was truly content.
Even if I groped for misfortune, I could not even grasp its shadow.
The poignancy of delinquents’ hearts fearing reprimand was, for me, a cherished reality.
What is unhappiness?

Yet I was gradually being oppressed by my own shadow—this self that would suddenly appear and speak to me. Maybe I should visit a brothel. And then I found myself thinking—maybe I should contract the most filthy, terrible disease.

There was a girl named Suzuki in my class.
It was an open secret that this girl’s older sister had entered into a marital relationship with her biological father.
The shadow of the household’s inherent sin cast a gloomy pall over this child’s personality as well; even conversing with friends was rare, and she never engaged in carefree play.
She always sat dejectedly in a corner, and when spoken to, would only offer a faint smile.
From this child, I could sense no physicality.

Whenever I found myself perplexed about unhappiness, I would recall the figure of this twelve-year-old somber girl.

There was a girl named Ishizu and a girl named Yamada.
I sometimes doubted whether these two girls were already women in a physiological sense. Ishizu had an alluring quality—when speaking to me, she affected a coquettish charm—yet compared to other female students, she displayed the least jealousy or malice. It struck me that she possessed nothing beyond a voluptuous body fated to be manipulated.
She too had few friends, her personality lacking that common tendency among girls to form cliquish alliances with close companions.
Yet she remained cheerful, always smiling vacantly with her mouth agape as she gazed at something.

Yamada was the tofu shop owner’s child, but she was not his biological daughter—rather, the wife’s child from a previous marriage. Her younger sister and brother were the tofu shop owner’s biological children. This girl could only write her name in kana, and among the girls, she possessed the greatest physical strength. She would fight boys on equal terms and rarely lost these bouts; though large for her age, she always kept her mouth tightly shut, and her expression rather gave an impression of intelligence. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call introversion—she seemed deeply preoccupied with something, lacked brightness, and had no friends at all. She rarely engaged in conversation with others, as if finding no joy in speaking, yet still joined in games with habitual silence and dashed about with utter wildness. She never laughed and showed no signs of amusement, yet her leaping movements compared to the other children traced lines markedly larger and rougher, charged with a beast-like force and brimming with wildness. Yet she lacked sensuality. She may have seemed bold and fearless, but in reality, I had discovered a more essential kind of feminine audacity in the other small, innocuous female students—qualities like jealousy or spite—of which she lacked much. Though she now seemed precocious, I thought that when all these children grew up, this girl would ultimately be left behind by womanhood and defeated by every one of her peers.

The mother of this girl once came to visit me one night. She explained this girl’s special circumstances—that her personality had become warped because she alone among several younger siblings was not their biological child—and requested that I admonish the girl to become more open with her father, since the parents themselves were not treating her differently. This mother had a reputation as a licentious woman and indeed looked every bit the part—a woman in her early thirties who radiated promiscuity. “No, she isn’t being contrary,” I answered. “It only appears that way.” “She possesses an honest heart and the admirable quality to unerringly recognize what is right and accept it.” “My lecturing is unnecessary.” “The issue lies in your genuine affection.” “What concerns me most is that girl’s lack of capacity to be loved.” “To be loved as a woman—she lacks that aptitude.” “It isn’t because she’s contrary.” “Has that girl ever been loved by anyone?” “First and foremost—has she ever been loved by her parents? By you?” “To have me preach at her—how utterly misguided!” “Why don’t you consult your own heart?”

This mother showed not a flicker of expression as she listened to my words with a vacant, unfocused look. I thought she must be another one who could only write her name in kana. In contrast to her child, she was through and through seductive and carnal—the very essence of a woman. That wanton animality shared nothing with her daughter’s wildness beyond their commonality of nature. Her daughter stood large of build, yet the mother remained remarkably petite. Both possessed faces that might be called beautiful. After two or three minutes of silence, she began chatting in an overly familiar manner before taking her leave.

I had developed a habit of recalling Suzuki alongside Ishizu and Yamada.
I couldn’t help but feel that nothing but unhappiness lay in wait for these three.
I had begun to fix my gaze on the concept of unhappiness—not as it pertained to myself, but first through the shadows of my students.
That unhappiness is not being loved.
It is not being respected.
In Ishizu’s case, she was merely treated as a toy; I imagined her eventually living as a prostitute—a shallow mass of flesh devoid of strong emotions.
I had no knowledge of actual brothels or prostitutes, but constructed reality entirely from what I gleaned through novels and such.
However, I still think my premonition was correct.

Ishizu was the daughter of a poor family, and her body teemed with lice.
The other children would jeer at her like that.
Her face would tighten into a fierce glare, but soon melt back into a vacant smile.
I sensed a soul more foolish than good.
She could at least read and write, achieving average grades, but on life’s path she seemed more unversed in worldly matters than a woman ignorant of kana—in short, through her I glimpsed a foolish soul that had undergone no true growth.
Yet she possessed an intense allure.
That was all there was to it.

When I quit teaching, I thought about taking this girl on as a maid and bringing her with me.
And then I thought that if nature were to bind our bodies together through its natural course, it would be acceptable to marry her.
This was truly a strange delusion.
Even now I remain oddly drawn to simple-minded women; this marked reality's first manifestation of that tendency. Without any awareness of romantic feelings or inner passion, I became utterly absorbed in calmly contemplating the idea that marrying one such girl might someday prove permissible.

I can no longer even begin to picture the face of the noble female teacher—not even its outline—yet the faces of these three girls remain vividly etched in my memory. Ishizu seemed carefree and optimistic even when treated like a toy, trampled upon, and oppressed—though of course, reality couldn’t possibly be like that. When called lousy, she would still momentarily narrow her eyes fiercely, and I imagine her being trampled down, panting like horse dung on the road. My premonition proved correct, for when I later encountered prostitutes in brothels, I often came across carefree optimists of this very nature.

★

I had lately come to think that everyone experiences a period when they become more mature than actual adults during that single interval of transitioning from youth to adulthood.

Lately, two young men had been visiting me from time to time.
They were twenty-two.
These youths had once been rigid nationalists belonging to right-wing groups, but now seemed to be contemplating humanity’s true way of living.
These young men appeared to vaguely sense some truth in my “Theory of Degeneration” or “Discourse on Downfall,” yet could not endure their severity.
They prized moderation above all else.

Sure enough, there was a young poet who had just returned from the war and a failed special attack unit editor.
They would stay at my house for two or three days clattering about to make meals—and yet there lingered an unmistakable shadow of the battlefield about them.
It was truly akin to open warfare everywhere—ferocious wildness unleashed and running rampant.
Yet their souls still possessed astonishing moderation; that is to say, they all clutched close to their hearts an image of that noble female teacher.
This lot too was twenty-two.
They had not yet begun their true bodily existence.
Their minds had likely not developed to that age where one’s very flesh torments itself.
The youth of this period are more prematurely mature than adults in their forties or fifties.
Their moderation came naturally—not forcibly distorted nor artificially constructed like that of adults.
I think every human goes through a period of being Candida.
Then they fall.
Yet when their bodies fall—do they not lose much of their souls’ purity along with it?

In later years, I read Voltaire’s Candida and smiled bitterly, but when I was a teacher—driven by vague aspirations toward unhappiness and suffering—I found myself only able to grasp such things through imagination.
At that time, I had thought of going to brothels and contracting the most loathsome, filthy disease as methods to bring misfortune upon myself.
This idea had clung to my mind with a strange tenacity.
There was no particular deep meaning to it.
It was probably because I couldn’t imagine what unhappiness outside myself might look like.

During my time as a teacher, I never experienced the mundane hardships typical of working people—clashes with superiors, workplace bullying, factional strife, or such matters.
There were only five teachers.
Factions couldn't even take root.
Moreover, this being a branch school meant our so-called principal wasn't equivalent to a proper headmaster—he bore no real responsibility, being fundamentally an irresponsible man devoid of any passion for education.
Since he himself neglected classroom duties to scurry about arranging marriages for influential families, he couldn't criticize anyone's teaching methods; and as I couldn't instruct in music or abacus anyway, he raised no objections when I excised those subjects and devised my own curriculum—merely occasionally suggesting I show special consideration for the elite children.
Yet I had no reason to heed such hints; cherishing all the children equally, I felt no compulsion to do more than that.

The one the Principal specifically mentioned to me was the child of a landowner named Ogihara, and this landowner was a school board member.
However, this child was fundamentally good; though he occasionally played pranks that made me scold him, since he fully understood why he was being scolded, he would actually feel relieved when I scolded and then forgave him.
One time, this child started crying and said, "You only ever scold me!"
“That’s not true.”
In truth, he was being willful, acting spoiled toward me.
“Oh, is that so?”
“Do I really single you out for special scolding?”
When I said that and started laughing, he immediately stopped crying and began laughing too.
This kind of connection between me and the child was beyond the Principal’s comprehension.

Children are just as cunning as adults.
The milkman’s repeat student too—cunning as he undeniably was—simultaneously possessed a righteous courage willing to sacrifice for others; in short, the only difference from adults lay in the greater measure of righteous courage he held.
Cunning is inevitable.
Because cunning is not a vice, I thought, what matters is not losing the righteous courage that coexists with it.

One afternoon after school, when the students had all left and the teachers had all left, I was sitting alone in a daze in the staff room when someone began tapping on the windowpane from outside. When I looked, it was the Principal.

The Principal stopped by the influential person’s house on his way home. Then the child came back crying and said he had been scolded by the teacher. “Because my father acts all high and mighty as a school board member, the teacher hates me.” “You’re a damn fool, old man!” he shouted, throwing such a violent tantrum that no one could restrain him. “Why on earth did you scold me?” he was saying.

As it happened, I had not scolded that child that day.
However, there is always a tragic meaning behind what children do—one must never judge by surface appearances alone.
"Is that so?"
"It’s nothing serious—I only scolded him because there was cause," said the Principal with an oily grin. "Now then—you’ll go make explanations."
"They say bend before greater forces—no helping it, heh heh."
The Principal was a man who habitually tacked on that "heh heh" laugh.

“I don’t need to go.”
“Since you’ll be passing by on your way home, would you mind telling the child—just the child—to come here?”

“Is that so.”
“But mind you—you shouldn’t scold the child too harshly.”

“Well now—please leave my child’s affairs to me.”

“Is that so.”
“But do be gentle, won’t you? Especially with the children of influential people.”

And so, whether due to his foul mood that day or not, the Principal bounced off with quick, bouncy steps, surprisingly compliant.
I had forgotten until now that he walked with a slight limp—those quick, bouncy steps with his hips jutted slightly to one side.
But those legs moved terribly fast.

Before long, the child came along laughing shyly, called out to the teacher from outside the window, and hid.
I often scold him, but I truly love this child.
This affection was well understood by the child.

“Why did you go troubling your old man?”

“But it’s aggravating!”

“Tell me the truth.”
“On your way home from school—you did something, didn’t you?”

The anguish and torment hidden within a child’s breast is profound—just as in adults, nay, even more single-mindedly than theirs.
Just because its cause is childish, you must not dismiss the depth of the suffering itself due to the childishness of its cause.
The depth of such self-reproach and torment knows no difference between a seven-year-old child and a forty-year-old man.

He started crying.
He had stolen pencils from the stationery shop next to the school.
Threatened by the milkman’s repeat student—he must have had some vulnerable spot that made him susceptible to threats; such matters were better left unprobed—he had stolen them out of sheer necessity.
When I said, “I’ll pay for the pencils without mentioning your name, so don’t worry,” he went home happily.
A few days later, he sneaked into the staff room when no one was around, took out twenty or thirty sen, and asked, “Teacher, did you pay for them?”
He came to ask.

When the milkman’s repeat student sensed that his misdeed was about to be exposed and scolding was imminent, he would start working with feverish diligence. He would volunteer for cleaning duty, earnestly wiping even the windows. “Teacher, the toilets are full—want me to scoop them out?” “Can you even do that?” “I can do any kind of work!” “Oh? And where would you take what you’ve scooped?” “Dump it in the river out back!” “Don’t be absurd.” That was roughly how things went. At that time too, he threw himself into work with frantic energy, so I found it unbearably comical.

When I walked toward him, he suddenly stepped back,

“Teacher, please don’t scold me!”

He earnestly covered his ears and closed his eyes.

“Ah, I won’t scold you.”

“You’ll let me off?”

“I’ll let you off. From now on, you mustn’t go around instigating people to steal things. If you absolutely can’t keep yourself from doing bad things, then do it yourself without involving others. You must do both good and bad things by yourself.”

He would always grunt in agreement and listen.

This profession—if, for instance, I were to consider lecturing youngsters as my own way of life—was utterly empty and unsustainable. At that time, however, I had possessed confidence. Now I could never lecture children like this anymore. Back then, I had been utterly immersed in nature’s sensations, something like a hymn to the sun perpetually streaming from my soul. I had become shamelessly steeped in premature maturity, remaining unaware of its inherent emptiness. I had remained unaware.

When I resigned from teaching, I wrestled with the decision considerably.
Why must I quit?
I had studied Buddhism intending to become a monk, but this stemmed from a yearning for enlightenment and a nostalgia-tinged longing for the rigor of spiritual pursuit.
There was no reason those same elements couldn’t be brought to bear on a teacher’s life.
Having thought this, though I called it a yearning for enlightenment, it was ultimately driven by a desire for honor—and I lamented this baseness in myself.
I burned with no hope whatsoever.
My longing had taken the form of “renouncing the world,” yet within my heart lingered anxiety about this abandonment—a sustained awareness that I was discarding true hope, accompanied by unease, remorse, and despair.
It still wasn’t enough.

I must discard everything—absolutely everything.
If I did that, wouldn't things somehow work out?
With a maddened, desperate resolve, I watched myself frantically trying to discard, discard, discard—anything and everything, single-mindedly rushing to cast it all away.
Just as suicide is one means of wanting to live, I still continued to feel that this desperate resolve to discard everything was in truth nothing more than one of youth's fleeting echoes.
I had wanted to become a novelist since my boyhood.
But having convinced myself that I lacked such talent, there must have been, deep down, a resignation from the very start toward that proper hope.

That strangely fulfilling year of my teaching days—within my personal history, it feels oddly false and hollow each time I recall it, as though it weren’t myself at all.