Pathway to Japanese Literature

I. On "Japanese-ness"

I possessed almost no knowledge of Japan’s ancient culture.
I had never seen the Katsura Imperial Villa that Bruno Taut so lavishly praised, nor did I know Gyokusen, Taigadō, Takeda, or Tessai.
Much less had I ever even heard names like Harada Zoroku or Chikugen-saishi, and above all, since I seldom traveled, I knew nothing of my own country’s towns and villages, its customs, or its mountains and rivers.
I was born in Niigata City—which Taut had called the most vulgar city in Japan—and loved the streets from Ueno to Ginza and the neon signs he scorned.
In place of knowing anything about tea ceremony formalities, I knew only how to indulge wantonly in drunkenness; living alone in my home, I had never once deigned to glance at the alcove.

However, I do not consider my life—a life that has lost sight of my nation's glorious ancient cultural traditions—to be impoverished (though I am tormented by the self-awareness that it is impoverished for other reasons—).

One day, Taut received an invitation from a certain Japanese tycoon who was an enthusiast of Takeda.
There were a little over ten guests.
The host, without enlisting the maid’s assistance, shuttled between the storehouse and sitting room himself, bringing one scroll at a time to hang in the alcove and present to the gathering before retrieving another—finding his own joy in how these masterpieces delighted his guests.
After concluding this, he changed seats and served a tea ceremony along with a formal meal, it is said.
When it comes to claiming that such a lifestyle—one that "does not lose sight of ancient cultural traditions"—is inwardly rich, the very measure of this so-called inner richness becomes an absurdly simplistic and nonsensical notion. However, needless to say, I—who have lost sight of cultural traditions—am certainly no richer for it either.

Once, when Jean Cocteau came to Japan, he remarked, "Why don’t the Japanese wear kimonos?" lamenting how Japan had forgotten the traditions and was obsessively pursuing Westernization.
Indeed, France is a curious country.
When war broke out, the first things evacuated were the Louvre Museum’s exhibits and gold bullion, and they traded their nation’s destiny for the preservation of Paris.
They have inherited the legacy of tradition, yet they seem utterly unaware that those who ought to create their nation’s traditions are none other than themselves.

What is tradition?
What is national character?
Do the Japanese people possess some inevitable disposition—a definitive predisposition that compelled them to invent the kimono and wear it?

When reading kōdan tales, our ancestors are portrayed as fiercely vengeful, becoming beggars who scoured the land, parting grass roots in their relentless search for enemies.
Though barely seventy or eighty years had passed since the samurai era ended, this had already become a tale from a dream to us.
Among all peoples in the world, today’s Japanese are likely one of those with the scantest capacity for hatred.

This is a story from when I was still a student: there was a welcome party for Professor Robert at the Athénée Français, where name tags had been placed on the tables assigning seats, and for some reason I alone found myself sandwiched between foreigners with Professor Cocteau directly facing me.
As Professor Cocteau was a vegetarian, he alone had a separate menu and ate only things resembling oatmeal.
Having no one to talk to and feeling bored, I focused entirely on observing the professor’s eating habits; once he picked up his spoon, he moved it between mouth and plate with such ferocious speed that he never set it down until finished, polishing off an entire bowl of oatmeal in the time it took me to eat one piece of meat.
I thought it no wonder the Professor developed stomach troubles.
The table speeches commenced.
Professor Cocteau rose.
Then, in a grave voice, he abruptly began delivering a eulogy for Clemenceau.
Clemenceau—the French Prime Minister during the previous Great War known as “the Tiger,” a politician fond of dueling—had just had his death reported in that day’s newspapers.
Professor Cocteau was a Voltairean nihilist and atheist.
He particularly loved Élégies, took pleasure in teaching students Voltaire’s epigrams, and often recited them himself.
Thus I never dreamed the Professor would speak about death through raw sentiment rather than intellectualized thought.
I thought his speech must be a joke.
I assumed some humor poised to overturn everything was being prepared.
Yet as the Professor’s speech deepened from solemnity into anguish, it became unmistakably unfeigned.
So utterly unexpected was this that I gaped in astonishment and inadvertently burst out laughing—I shall never forget the look in the Professor’s eyes at that moment.
The Professor glared at me with a hatred so bloodthirsty that even murder could not sate it.

Such eyes do not exist among the Japanese.
I had never once seen such eyes in a Japanese person.
After that, I made a conscious effort to look for them, but I never encountered them again.
In other words, such hatred does not exist among the Japanese people.
The hatred found in *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*, the hatred in *Lady Chatterley’s Lover*—that bloodthirsty, insatiable loathing that would not be sated even by tearing someone into eight pieces—is almost entirely absent among the Japanese people.
The naivety of “yesterday’s enemy being today’s friend” remains rather a sentiment shared among the Japanese people.
Many Japanese people must surely be keenly aware that they themselves are ill-suited for vengeance.
It is nearly impossible for them to sustain thorough hatred over long years, with their utmost limit being a glare that looks ready to bite.

Even in what is called tradition or national character, such deception is sometimes concealed.
One must bear habits and traditions utterly at odds with one’s nature as though they were innate yearnings.
Therefore, the notion that something is inherently Japanese simply because it existed in Japan’s past does not hold.
Foreign customs never practiced in Japan could in fact suit Japanese people best, just as Japanese customs never seen abroad could in fact suit foreigners best.
Not imitation, but discovery.
Just as Goethe drew inspiration from Shakespeare’s works to create his masterpieces, even in art that respects individuality, the process from imitation to discovery most frequently occurs.
Inspiration most often begins with the spirit of imitation and bears fruit through discovery.

What is a kimono?
It was simply that our engagement with Western clothing came about a thousand years later.
And it was merely that no other approach—one hinting at new inventions—had been granted beyond the limited methods we possessed.
The frail physiques of Japanese people did not specifically give rise to the kimono.
For Japanese people, the kimono is hardly the sole embodiment of beauty.
The sight of well-built foreign men in kimonos undeniably appears more magnificent than we ourselves do.

When I was an elementary school student, there was a wooden bridge called Bandai Bridge spanning the mouth of the Shinano River that was demolished, and because they were going to fill in half the river’s width to build an iron bridge, I felt sad for a long time.
The disappearance of Japan’s foremost wooden bridge, the narrowing of the river’s width, and the loss of my own pride—it was a heartrending pain as if being flayed alive.
That peculiar manner of sorrow now feels like a dreamlike memory.
This way of grieving only continued to fade as I grew into adulthood—even as my engagement with those things deepened alongside my maturation.
And now, I had come to consider the replacement of wooden bridges with iron ones and the narrowing of the river not only not sad but entirely natural.
However, this kind of change was not unique to me.
Most Japanese people felt not sorrow but rather joy whenever the old appearance of their hometowns was destroyed and Western-style buildings appeared.
New transportation systems were necessary, and elevators were necessary as well.
What was needed wasn’t things like the beauty of tradition or Japan’s original form, but a more convenient way of life.
Even if all of Kyoto’s temples and Nara’s Buddha statues were annihilated, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but if the trains had stopped running, that would have been a problem.
What truly mattered to us was solely “the necessities of life”—even if ancient culture were annihilated, life would not perish, and as long as life itself endured, our uniqueness remained healthy.
Because we did not lose our own necessities and the desires that arose from them.

When Taut gave a lecture in Tokyo, eighty to ninety percent of the audience were students, and the remaining ten to twenty percent were architects, or so I heard.
Despite sending invitations to every architectural specialist in Tokyo, it still ended up with such a result.
In Europe, such a thing could never happen, or so I heard.
He said that eighty to ninety percent were invariably architects, ten to twenty percent were people in honorary positions like mayors or town heads who took an interest in urban culture, and there should be no room for students or others to squeeze in.

I am not well-versed in architectural matters, but even taking literature as an example—for instance, even if André Gide had given a lecture in Tokyo—about ninety percent of novelists likely wouldn’t have attended.
And indeed, eighty to ninety percent of the audience would have been students—what’s more, perhaps thirty percent of those students might have been female students.
When I was a student in Buddhist studies and attended lectures by French and British Buddhist scholars, despite Japan being teeming with monks, the entire audience consisted of students.
Though admittedly, they were probably would-be monks.

It might be that Japanese cultural figures are negligent, but Western ones are socially diligent—or so one could argue. Social diligence isn’t true diligence, just as social negligence isn’t true negligence. But setting aside diligence and negligence altogether, these Japanese cultural figures are truly insufferable creatures. I’ve never laid eyes on Katsura Imperial Villa, know nothing of Takeda or Gyokusen or Tessai, and remain ignorant of tea ceremony formalities. Bring up Kobori Enshū and you’ll hear them spouting nonsense—was he an architect? A garden designer? Some daimyo? A tea master? Or maybe even a ninjutsu grandmaster? They demolish their hometowns’ historic architecture to erect shoddy Western-style barracks, preening over their handiwork—yet can’t be bothered to attend lectures by Taut or André Gide either. Then they go staggering drunk beneath neon signs, guzzling bootleg whiskey with permed-hair girls as drinking companions. Utterly appalling creatures.

Not only do they lack any awareness of Japan’s authentic traditions, but their aping of Western ways lacks substance, retains not a shred of beauty, and amounts to pure fakery.
Gary Cooper draws crowds so large they must turn people away, while Umewaka Manzaburō counts his patrons on one hand.
Are such cultural figures not poverty incarnate?

Yet between Taut’s discovery of Japan and its traditional beauty, and our present existence as Japanese who have lost sight of those very traditions, lay a chasm Taut could never fathom.
To put it plainly: Taut needed to discover Japan, while we require no such discovery—we are Japan.
We may have lost ancient culture, but we cannot lose Japan itself.
What constitutes the Japanese spirit? We need not debate such matters.
Japan cannot emerge from an explicated spirit, nor can this “Japanese spirit” ever be explicated.
So long as Japanese lives remain healthy, Japan itself stays sound.
They yank trousers over bowed short legs, don Western suits, scuttle about dancing, discard tatami mats, and preen atop cheap chairs and tables.
No thread connects Westerners’ derisive laughter at this spectacle to our contentment with its convenience.
A gulf separates their condescending mockery from our lived reality.
Provided our lives spring from legitimate needs, their pitying smirks reveal only profound superficiality.
That their stumpy legs in trousers invite ridicule cannot be denied—but were we to fixate less on such trifles and aim somewhat higher, would those mockers truly prove wiser?

As I have already confessed, I have never seen Katsura Imperial Villa and know nothing of Sesshū, Sesson, Takeda, Taigadō, Gyokusen, Tessai, the Kanō school, or Unkei.
However, I intend to speak of my "Personal View of Japanese Culture."
It may seem strange for a fellow who knows nothing of their homeland’s traditions—who knows nothing but neon signs and jazz—to speak of Japanese culture, but at the very least, I had no need to “discover” Japan.

II. On Vulgarity (Humans as Humans)

From the early winter of Showa 12 to the early summer of the following year, I lived in Kyoto.
I went to Kyoto without any particular aim—carrying nothing but an unfinished novel and a thousand sheets of manuscript paper, not even towels or a toothbrush—and visited Oki Waichi, intending to have him find me a room where I could complete the novel in solitude.
When I think back on it now, it seems that loneliness itself was something I felt purely nostalgic for.

Oki asked me—weaving into the most casual of small talk—what I wanted to see in Kyoto and what foods I liked.
I had only expected the rough-and-tumble camaraderie of Tokyo friendships, yet Oki in Kyoto was no longer the Tokyo Oki—he had transformed into a scion of the old capital who exercised meticulous care in entertaining guests.
I blurted out “Gion’s maiko and wild boar”—truly, it was a thoughtless answer.
For on the eve of my departure, Ozaki Shirō had taken me out for a farewell meal where I first tasted wild boar—and though I’d let it slip in that impulsive moment—it was also because I never imagined boar meat could be so readily obtainable.
Yet from the very next day onward, I found myself besieged by wild boar every night—and to compound matters, by around the third day it became decisively clear that boar’s taste aligned not at all with my preferences.
But endure and eat it I did.
As for the maiko—on that very night of arriving in Kyoto—I was promptly escorted to a teahouse on Hanamikoji Street. At that time, they said there were thirty-six or seven maiko in Gion—but when twenty-some of them materialized one after another before my drunken bleary eyes, I felt so overwhelmed that I nearly resigned myself to fate and shut my mind’s eye entirely.

I had seen more than half of the maiko, but rarely does one encounter such a preposterous existence as this.
I thought they must have received specialized training in refinement, but there wasn’t a shred of such cultivation—their dancing remained half-formed, their conversation limited to trivialities about Turkey and Oriya.
If they possessed some innocent charm befitting objects of admiration, you might ask? They proved merely flustered creatures devoid of any wholesome allure.
Though meticulously crafted as playthings modeled after children, they lacked all childish virtues.
Without shame, a child amounts to nothing.
Being children yet not children—could there exist some intermediate charm combining both? That too proved absent.
They say in Guangdong there exists a type of courtesan called “blind girls”—fair-faced maidens blinded young and rigorously trained in dance, music, and cultured arts.
The Chinese approach things with ruthless thoroughness.
If you’re determined to artificially fashion objects of adoration anyway, this method suffices.
Blinding them—now there’s an inspired touch.
Cunning indeed, yet even upon reflection one senses an uncanny allure.
The maiko appeared as thoroughly artificial constructs yet lacked artifice’s subtle grace.
Being girls devoid of girlish modesty, they naturally lacked nature’s delicate charm altogether.

We went to Higashiyama Dance Hall accompanied by five or six maiko.
It was approaching midnight.
One of the maiko was said to have a favorite dancer there and had declared she wanted to dance with him.
The dance hall was located halfway up Higashiyama, removed from human settlements, and far more beautiful than Tokyo’s dance floors.
The place was packed to capacity, but what astonished me then was how the maiko—who had looked utterly unremarkable when chattering mindlessly or dancing in tatami rooms—now dominated the crowd at the dance hall, radiating dignity and brilliance as they stood out.
In other words, the maiko’s unique kimonos and trailing obi overpowered the men in Western clothing, outshone the ballgown-clad dancers, and rendered even Westerners utterly devoid of visual impact.
Indeed, things rooted in tradition possess their own formidable power—I found myself somewhat impressed by this.

I always felt the same way whenever I watched sumo. Following the yobidashi’s call, the referee announced their names; then the wrestlers bowed to each other, stomped their legs, sprinkled water, leisurely scattered salt, and assumed their starting positions. They reset their stance, glared at each other for a short while, and then leisurely grabbed salt. The wrestlers atop the dohyo were overwhelming the Kokugikan. Compared to the wrestlers atop the dohyo, even the tens of thousands of spectators and the grand architecture of the Kokugikan seemed far too small and feeble.

Comparing this to baseball made two differences strikingly clear.
What an immense field this was!
The nine players were overwhelmed by the field’s vastness, chased about, and appeared pitifully powerless compared to the tens of thousands of spectators.
Compared to the field’s vastness, the players looked so feeble they could be likened to grass-cutting laborers; they weren’t playing but seemed to be frantically chased about.
When I once saw Babe Ruth and his entourage, it indeed felt different.
Seasoned stand plays dominated the field, rendering its vastness unnoticeable.
Even if they couldn’t completely overwhelm the field, they were at least its equal.

It wasn't about their physique.
Even sumo wrestlers aren't all large men.
Nor was it necessarily about technique.
It was, so to speak, tradition's gravitas.
This gravitas overwhelmed the dohyo ring, overwhelmed the Kokugikan's grand architecture, overwhelmed the tens of thousands of spectators.
Yet tradition's gravitas alone cannot sustain eternal life.
Even when maikos' kimonos overwhelm dance halls and sumo rituals overwhelm the Kokugikan, tradition's gravitas alone cannot grant maikos or wrestlers eternal life.
Without substance sufficient to maintain this gravitas, they must eventually perish.

The issue lies not in tradition or gravitas, but in substance.

Until I found a room in Fushimi, I stayed at Oki’s villa in Saga for about three weeks; even when Kyoto’s skies were clear, Mount Atago would summon snow, and daily flurries fell in this area.
About thirty ken from Oki’s villa stood a peculiar shrine.
It’s called Kurumazaki Shrine, but despite enshrining someone called Kiyohara no Nanigashi—likely a scholar—it’s an unabashedly blatant deity of moneymaking.
In front of the shrine hall was an area enclosed by a fence, within which tens of thousands of rounded pebbles formed a mound.
People would write their desired amount of money along with their name and date of birth on a pebble, offer it there, and make a wish—or so it was said.
There were stones inscribed with fifty thousand yen and others that seemed pitiful at around thirty yen; rarely, some bore detailed numbers specifying monthly salaries, bonus amounts, and desired raises.
On Setsubun night, by the light of lingering sacred flames, I picked up these stones one by one to read them—but for someone like me, adrift without an established place in this world, entrusting my life to a single pen while battling confidence that crumbled all too easily, they were not comforting stones.
Makino Shin’ichi was an odd man—one who could never pass by a shrine or temple without stopping.
He would invariably bow reverently, ring the large clanging bell if a rope hung there for that purpose, offer coins, then bow deeply with closed eyes for some time.
It made no difference which Buddhist sect the temple belonged to.
Though intensely shy—a man who loathed even minor attention-seeking acts in public—this alone was an exception he couldn’t avoid.
Once when he brought his son Hideo along during a walk, stopped by my place, and the three of us went to Ikegami Honmon-ji Temple, he urged Hideo to approach the main hall, made him offer coins, and bowed reverently with his son—but it looked as though they were trying to bind some inscrutable desperate wish to their bloodline, and it pained me to watch.

Each and every stone read by the light of the Setsubun fire.
Naturally, such sentiments and emotions could not have been profound, nor could they have been intense.
Yet even now, I remember them vividly.
And so, during those days when snow fell daily on bamboo groves, I wandered through the temples of Saga and Arashiyama, trekking aimlessly as far as the depths of Kiyotaki and the remote corners of Mount Ogura’s cemetery—yet Tenryū-ji and Daikaku-ji only struck me with a certain hollow chill that felt more unpleasant than anything, leaving no impression whatsoever.

Behind Kurumazaki Shrine stood a shack called Arashiyama Theater—a name that was undeniably real, though the place itself was terribly rundown.
The area around the theater was fields, with houses sparsely dotted here and there.
In the evening street before the theater, a drunken farmer slept in an empty oxcart as the ox wandered freely on its way.
When I arrived in Kyoto and was wandering around restlessly with a driver searching for Oki’s villa, a poster for Arashiyama Theater dangled from a utility pole, announcing “Nekoyōken Nekohatsu” and promising a reward of fifty bales of rice if the act turned out to be counterfeit.
Of course, there was no way it could be counterfeit.
Tokyo’s Nekohatsu was “Edo ya.”
Because it was Nekohatsu.

Needless to say, I promptly went to see Nekoyōken Nekohatsu.
It was fascinating.
Nekoyōken Nekohatsu was a hulking, sinister-looking man with seemingly formidable strength—a man who not only lacked any artistic skills beyond mimicry but knew none whatsoever.
There were various dances, such as women in kimonos suddenly hiking their garments up to their buttocks, and finally Nekohatsu appeared.
His entrance was magnificent—wearing an impressive kamishimo ceremonial attire, the table draped with a lavish curtain that rivaled even the Ungetsu curtain.
Then, while scanning the audience with a peculiar smile that seemed to say *Anyone who wants a fight should feel free to come at me*, he declared: "You all came to watch—must've been quite a show, eh?"
He followed this by urging them to return the next night with even more acquaintances, bringing the performance to a close.
For what reason had he draped the table with that grand curtain and appeared in kamishimo?
He was a truly unique performer.

Troupes of traveling performers generally held shows for just one day, or at most three.
And those traveling performers were not all ones who relished fights like Nekohatsu.
Rather, Nekohatsu was the exception.
I went to watch them each time they changed troupes—sometimes even returning two or three times to see the same act—and among them was a group of farmers from Fukui Prefecture’s mountains who formed a troupe only in winter to tour around. They did comedy routines, plays, and magic tricks, all uniformly inept in skill, with what seemed to be their sole seasoned middle-aged man—likely their troupe leader—visibly agonizing over their ineptitude yet caring for his people so earnestly it pained one to witness.
There was a beautiful girl of about eighteen, and they had no other means to attract customers.
By day, they paraded her along roads flanked more by fields than houses, accompanied by a single attendant, recklessly putting the girl on stage for comedy routines, plays, and dances—but her art remained unpolished, growing only more excruciatingly awkward to witness.
I went to see them again the next day, but on the second day there were only fifteen or sixteen spectators, so they canceled the third day’s performance and moved on to the next town.
Late that night, when I passed behind the theater to eat udon, the gate stood wide open with luggage being loaded onto a large cart, and the troupe leader was grilling sardines by the roadside.

When crossing Togetsu-kyo Bridge in Arashiyama, teahouses line the streets in rows. Though spring brings bustling crowds, tour buses stop there for lunch—so they keep operating even through winter, albeit on a reduced scale.
One evening while walking with Oki, we thought to have a drink there and went from shop to shop, but everywhere lay dark and devoid of human presence.
At last we found one.
On winter nights, they said, guests never strayed in.
A gentle proprietress around forty and a nineteen-year-old maid were there; with no fire elsewhere, we drank sake warming ourselves by a single hearth in the family’s living room—until the maid, a former dancer from an acrobatic troupe—suddenly began talking about Arashiyama Theater.
Arashiyama Theater always had urine overflowing in the audience restrooms, reeking pungently.
They had to painstakingly choose the least affected spot before relieving themselves.
There were times when one had to wade through a sea of urine to reach the urinal.
If the audience restrooms were like that, one could only imagine how filthy the dressing rooms must be.
“How utterly filthy it must be,” the maid suddenly blurted out with visceral conviction.
She was an innocent girl.
The hardest part about the acrobatic troupe, she said, was having to drink soy sauce when winter came.
Drinking soy sauce warms the body, they claimed.
Thus they were always forced to drink it before going onstage naked.
They apparently surrendered at this point.

In Saga, I spent my days writing novels.
At night, I would generally go to Arashiyama Theater.
Kyoto’s streets, its shrines and temples, its historic sites—none held the slightest interest for me.
In those urine-stench-filled theater seats, laughing through yawns at idiotic puns among a shivering audience of fewer than a hundred—that sufficed completely.

Given how I was, Oki seemed to have grown somewhat exasperated and decided to give me a good scare.
Forcing me out—it was snowing that day too—we boarded a train up the Hozu River and went to a place called Kameoka in Tanba.
This was the former Kameyama, the site where Akechi Mitsuhide’s castle once stood.
At that castle’s ruins stood the grand headquarters of Omoto-kyo.
They had been charged with lèse-majesté and dynamited immediately afterward.
We went out to see that.

The castle ruins had moats encircling the hill, with blast-shattered roof tiles piled in heaps from top to bottom—even within the empty moats themselves.
The desolate ruins retained not a single tree or blade of grass, nor even the shadow of a stray dog.
Wooden fences surrounded the perimeter, supplemented by barbed wire-like barriers and a distant watchtower—but having ridden the train all this way along Tanba Road (though not particularly far) for this very purpose, how could we leave our goal unachieved? We climbed over the barbed wire and stepped into the remnants of Ōnisaburō's dream.
From the summit, the town of Kameoka and the small plain encircled by Tanba's mountains spread out before us.
The snow intensified, beginning to accumulate on the ruined tiles.
Anything noteworthy had been confiscated before the demolition, leaving only roof tiles at the peak with gold-lined patterns, a stone head the size of a sake barrel lying on the steps, and near the mid-slope's cluster of small rooms—where thirty-some concubines serving Ōnisaburō were said to have lived—fragments of courtyard scenery remained, along with several shattered statues.
In any case, it had been reduced to utter and complete ruin.

We climbed over the barbed wire again and walked along the moat down the highway, entering a teahouse at the town’s edge where we drank local sake unworthy of Hozu River’s reputation as a clear stream. A cart driver appeared there, tethered his horse, and began drinking Hozu sake too. On his way home from buying scrap paper around town, he muttered complaints like “This scrap profit won’t even buy one bottle” and “What’s the damn point,” downing several bottles while seeming torn between wanting to speak with us and being thoroughly intimidated. When he finally drunkenly addressed us—“You gentlemen here on official business from Tokyo?”—we answered “Exactly,” prompting him to groan and bow five or six times in overwhelmed deference. Through conversation we realized he’d mistaken us for detectives on special assignment. Oki wore a sleeveless coat and hunting cap like a merchant family’s prodigal heir, while I swung a walking stick in my dotera lounging kimono without even an overcoat despite the snow. Our bizarre pair had emerged nonchalantly from restricted territory over barbed wire—he’d followed out of fearful curiosity, which explained why even the guards kept their distance. We’d wandered the ruins about an hour, during which the watchman sweeping his post would hurriedly look away whenever we turned toward him. Pretending to be detectives, we questioned him about Omoto-kyo’s hidden believers, but the cart driver—though thoroughly drunk—turned deathly pale, began stammering, and pleaded “I might know something but I’ve done no wrong—please spare me these questions,” prostrating repeatedly as if in an interrogation room.

Ōbaku-san Manpuku-ji in Uji is a temple founded by Ingen, and according to him, the essence of temple architecture lay in solemnity; he reportedly stated that its form must be designed to elevate the worldly minds of believers.
Also, since people deepen their bonds by eating and drinking together, he reportedly said that meals were important.
Indeed, the dining hall (shokudō) of Manpuku-ji was magnificent, and its Fucha cuisine was renowned throughout the land.
However, it was said that associating meals with social interaction and valuing this connection was a general custom in China, so it might not have been a philosophy unique to Ingen alone.

As for the engineering aspects of architecture, I know nothing at all, but at least, the defining characteristic of temple architecture is first and foremost that a temple is not a residence. Here there exists not merely an absence of suggestions toward secular life; deliberate attention concentrates on expressing its opposite—a non-secular ideal. Thus too, it follows naturally that the temple grounds of the Shin sect—which affirm secular life itself as religion—become instantly suffused with the stench of mundanity.

However, Shin Buddhist temples (Nishi and Higashi Hongan-ji in Kyoto) borrow the architectural style of temples that has long evoked solitary thought wholesale and try to apply it to their own philosophy affirming secular life; consequently, they lack harmony and are vulgar.
There’s nothing wrong with what should be vulgar being vulgar—the crux lies in needing a distinctive kind of vulgarity.

Kyoto was a place teeming with temples and historic sites, where every two or three blocks walked brought one face-to-face with large temple grounds or sacred precincts.
If you planned to stay for about a week, it was better to let your feet wander aimlessly than to walk with set purpose.
As one historic-looking site after another appeared before you, if your interest was somewhat piqued, you could ask its name or examine it carefully.
Since it was a compact city, walking from corner to corner posed no great challenge.
I sometimes walked in that manner.
I traversed mountain passes connecting Fukakusa to Daigo, Ono no Sato, and Yamashina; as for the urban areas—being a place where one could walk anywhere without fear of getting lost—there had been an occasion when I started from Fushimi and ended up stumbling upon Kitano Tenmangu at dusk, leaving me flustered.
But when I ventured into the city, it was either to seek pleasure or solitude—one or the other.
And while temple grounds were indeed suitable for such strolls, their calmness amounted to little more than being less disquieting than dodging wandering cars in bustling streets.

Indeed, temples sought through their very architecture to evoke solitude.
They permitted no associations with cooking smells or notions of wives and children; there existed an intent to sever all connection to the mundane mind—the vulgar heart.
Yet however earnestly they endeavored to materialize such ideals through architectural means, what they achieved remained immeasurably distant from those very concepts.

Japanese gardens—those with trees and springs—were not necessarily imitations of nature.
They appeared to have sought to give tangible form upon these gardens with trees and springs to the solitary philosophies and spirits expressed in Southern School paintings and similar works.
The architecture of tea rooms (which applied equally to temple architecture) and gardens with trees and springs were, so to speak, expressions of thought rather than imitations of nature—they were creations of nature. The constraints of limited space were, in other words, akin to the limitations of a canvas in painting.

However, when contemplating the loneliness of vast oceans, deserts, great forests, and plains, one cannot help but realize that no matter how contrived the solitude of gardens with trees and springs may be, it pales in comparison.

What is Ryōan-ji’s stone garden trying to express?
What concepts is it attempting to link?
Taut lavished praise on the black-and-white wallpaper of Shugakuin Imperial Villa’s shoin hall, claiming it represents the sound of a waterfall—but how pathetic that one must resort to such strained explanations to justify their appreciation.
Indeed, gardens with trees and springs and tea rooms are the same as Zen monks’ enlightenment—castles in the air constructed upon Zen hypotheses.
What is Buddha? they ask.
They answer, “It is the excrement scraper.”
They place a single stone in the garden and declare that this is both an excrement scraper and Buddha.
It’s fine if they see this as possibly being Buddha, but once the excrement scraper is recognized as an excrement scraper, it’s all over.
In reality, the sheer obviousness that an excrement scraper is nothing but an excrement scraper holds more persuasive power than any Zen contrivance.

It mattered not whether Ryōan-ji's stone garden expressed profound loneliness or weathered austerity, nor was it relevant what concepts or ideologies the stone arrangement might be connected to through its profound Zen insights. In essence, when we contemplated the infinite nostalgia evoked by boundless seas or the grand sunsets over deserts, and found the emotion stirred by the stone garden falling short of those experiences, we needed no hesitation to disregard the stone garden entirely. The very notion that containing infinite oceans or plateaus within a garden was impossible held no meaning.

Bashō left the garden, saw his own garden within nature, and created it anew.
Not only did his life love travel, but his haiku themselves could be said to have transcended garden-like elements and created gardens within nature.
In that garden there might be only a single chinquapin tree; or perhaps only summer grass in full flourish; or rocks with the permeating sound of cicadas.
This garden contains no stones imbued with meaning nor gnarled pine trees—it exists as both an immediate landscape and an immediate concept.
And yet, it remains far more beautiful than Ryōan-ji’s stone garden.
But having said that, realistically creating such a garden with merely a chinquapin tree or summer grass proves utterly impossible.

Therefore, there had long existed in Japan a resigned acceptance that creating "something eternal" in gardens or architecture was an impossible proposition.
This did not mean architecture was “not eternal” because it would eventually burn down in fires.
The notion that “architecture burns in fires and people eventually die, making life akin to a bubble on water” originated from *Hōjōki*’s philosophy—a work Taut cherished, though his own ideas never rose above such superficiality.
Yet this lifestyle attitude—utterly disregarding houses, gardens, and furnishings—born from resignation at being unable to realistically create Bashō’s gardens and despair over artifice’s limits, came to be particularly cherished by Japan’s substantive spiritual practitioners.
Taigadō possessed no studio; Ryōkan required not even a temple.
Yet they did not make enduring poverty life’s essence.
Rather, in spirit they were too deeply desirous, too extravagant, too aristocratic.
That is to say—it was not that studios or temples held no meaning for them—but from the stance that absolute things could not exist, they rejected half-measures and chose nonexistence’s purity.

The tea room takes simplicity as its essence.
However, it is not a creation born of the spirit that deems nonexistence preferable.
For this spirit, all the attention particularly devoted becomes unclean and verbose.
No matter how much the alcove may feign natural simplicity, the care invested for that purpose already belongs to what should be better off nonexistent.

To the spirit deeming nonexistence preferable, both the simple tea room and Nikkō’s Tōshō-gū are products of the same “existence”—in the end, they’re birds of a feather.
Viewed through this lens, there exists no distinction between Katsura Imperial Villa’s simplicity and nobility versus Tōshō-gū’s vulgarity.
Both remain equally verbose—constructions unfit to endure the eternal admiration of the “spiritual aristocracy.”

However, even if a cold-hearted critical spirit that deems nonexistence preferable exists, art that deems nonexistence preferable cannot exist. There can be no such thing as art that does not exist. And so, if one—proceeding from this spirit yet setting it aside—nonetheless attempts to return to tangible beauty, it would be natural to reject the unnatural simplicity of tea rooms and instead seek flowering at the pinnacle of extravagance and vulgarity achieved through exhaustive human effort. If both simplicity and extravagance are equally vulgar, then rather than the wretchedness of denying vulgarity yet still being unable to escape it, the unrestrained freedom of embracing vulgarity as vulgarity becomes its true virtue.

It was in Hideyoshi that I found this spirit.
Just what degree of understanding and appreciation for art did this man Hideyoshi possess?
And to what extent did he meddle in the various arts he commanded?
Though Hideyoshi himself was no craftsman and should have harnessed their individualities, the art he commanded possessed a remarkably consistent character.
It represented the pinnacle of artifice and the greatest luxury; as long as it remained on this trajectory, it possessed the capacity to swallow both purity and impurity.
When he built a castle, he brought in enormously large stones.
As for the wall of Sanjūsangen-dō, it stood as a giant among walls; as for the screen of Chishaku-in, Hideyoshi sitting before it must have looked like a small monkey among flowers.
There appeared to be neither art nor excrement.
It was an enterprise born of the most vulgar will.
Yet there existed an undeniable composure.
There was a sense of stability to it.

In other words, in fact, his spirit could be said to have been that of "a true hegemon."
Ieyasu too grasped control of the realm, yet his spirit was no true hegemon's.
And though many generals seized dominion over the land, only Hideyoshi possessed the spirit of a true hegemon.
Both Kinkaku-ji and Ginkaku-ji stand as creations utterly divorced from a hegemon's spirit.
They were, in essence, the dilettantish indulgences of moneyed aesthetes.

In Hideyoshi, there existed no refined elegance, no indulgent pastimes.
There was only the manifestation of his insane drive that demanded everything he did be supreme under heaven.
No trace of hesitation remained; not a single step bore any sign of restraint.
He coveted all the beautiful women in the land, and when denied, went so far as to kill Sen no Rikyū.
He could throw every imaginable tantrum.
And indeed, he threw every imaginable tantrum.
Thus did the ungovernable stability inherent to a spoiled child blossom consistently across the many things he left behind—all on the scale befitting a true hegemon.
Yet there lingers the regret that this hegemon's scale remained characteristically Japanese in its smallness.
And so we glimpse the nihilism of a true ruler—one who could indulge every whim yet never fully bend all to his will.
Extreme splendor generally carries with it a peculiar melancholy—and Hideyoshi's legacy too holds such quality, along with something fundamentally inscrutable.
The Taikō Wall of Sanjūsangen-dō now survives only in fragments, a work that scarcely considered symmetry with the temple itself.
Any symmetry present seems but empty competition between grandiosity and composure; walls by nature require interior architecture to justify their existence, yet this wall alone stood self-sufficient, wholly indifferent to Sanjūsangen-dō.
Herein lay its robust self-sufficiency and composure—qualities transcending those of Sanjūsangen-dō.
Within its unique curves that naturalized such enormity resided a beauty surpassing even Sanjūsangen-dō.

When I visited Kameoka, I imagined that Onisaburō—albeit in an extremely eccentric form—might have been someone who embodied Hideyoshi’s spoiled-child willfulness in the modern age, and I held some expectation for remnants of that vision; yet this proved unconscionably minuscule in scale, nothing but vulgarity itself.
It was utterly meager and impoverished.
Needless to say, there was not even a wisp of the melancholy that seeps through when extravagance reaches its zenith.

If there were sake barrels, what would an emperor be to me?—one might compose; then sing of longing to become a shoe and be trod upon by that girl’s feet.
In the Manyō poets, among Anacreon’s companions, in China, in Persia—wherever culture existed, there were inevitably such poets and such ideas.
However, such ideas are tedious.
Far from being an emperor—not only does one lack the innate qualities of an emperor from birth, but even if one were to become an emperor, such a person would be incapable of accomplishing a single remarkable thing.

The sight of the vulgar living true to their vulgarity, the petty to their pettiness—each earnestly pursuing their respective solemn vows while remaining as they are—struck me as profoundly endearing.
Art too must follow this principle.
It must be authentic through and through.
Temples do not precede monks—monks precede temples.
Ryōkan endures without temples.
If we require Buddhism at all, it is monks we need rather than temples.
Were every ancient temple in Kyoto and Nara to burn to ashes, Japan's traditions would remain unshaken.
Not even Japanese architecture would falter.
When necessity demands it, we need only build anew.
Makeshift shelters suffice.

The temples of Kyoto and Nara were much of a muchness, leaving no deep impression on memory; yet even now, the chill of Kurumazaki Shrine’s stone lingers in my hands, and I cannot forget Fushimi Inari’s vulgarly extravagant red torii gates—a tunnel stretching over a *ri*. They were utterly hideous to behold and not beautiful in the least, but when bound to people’s heartfelt prayers, they could genuinely stir the heart. This was not something that “should not exist,” but rather something that had to be there—even if its existence was petty and vulgar. And so, I did not wish to rest at Ryōan-ji’s stone garden, but there were times I wished to lose myself in thought while watching the tacky revue at Arashiyama Theater. Humans yearn only for humans. There can be no art without humans. I did not wish to rest under a grove devoid of nostalgia.

I consider "Hinagaki" to be world-class literature, but I do not wish to see Noh performances.
It is because we cannot endure sitting through expressions and singing styles that no longer speak directly to us—patiently waiting, bored, for even a speck of gold dust.
The stage is something I imagine and create myself—that suffices.
Though Zeami the genius remains eternally fresh, Noh's stages, singing styles, and forms of expression being eternally new seems doubtful.
What is old and tedious should rightly perish or be reborn.

III. On Home

I had lived mostly alone for the past ten years.
I lived alone in various Tokyo neighborhoods; I also lived alone in Kyoto, in Toride—a small town in Ibaraki Prefecture—and in Odawara.
Yet a house—or even just a room—when inhabited alone always carried regret.

I would leave for stretches—sometimes drinking out, sometimes flirting with women, occasionally returning from aimless trips.
Then regret inevitably followed.
There was no mother to scold me, no angry wife or children.
It was a life that didn’t even require greeting neighbors.
And still, whenever I returned home, I couldn’t escape this peculiar sadness and lingering guilt.

On my way back, I stopped by a friend’s place.
There was not a trace of sadness or guilt there.
Then I mundanely made the rounds of four or five friends’ places and returned home.
Then, as always, sadness and guilt arose.

The act of returning is a mysterious demon.
"If one does not 'return,' there is neither regret nor sadness."
"Returning"
Even without a wife, children, or mother, I still cannot escape regret and sadness.
Within the act of returning dwells inevitably a demon that turns to look back.

To escape this regret and sadness—in short—one need only not return.
And so one should always keep moving forward.
Napoleon always advanced; he never retreated even as far as Russia.
Though Hitler never retreated once, even geniuses of their caliber cannot avoid returning home.
And so as long as there exists a home, one must inevitably return.
And so I believe that as long as one returns, they cannot escape the same strange regret and sadness as I do.
But are those great geniuses made of different steel than I?
No—precisely because they are made of different steel...is what I think.
And so in a lonely room I ponder the musings of this pallid steel figure.

There is no mother to scold me, no wife to be angry—yet when I return home, I end up being scolded.
People are lonely, and even in a life without needing to mind others, they are never free.
And so, I believe that literature is born from such circumstances.

"There was a moving picture titled 'Freedom for Us.' It appeared to be a satire on machine civilization. The premise suggested that if every day were Sunday—with no bosses or workers—and people could spend their days fishing, drinking, and amusing themselves, that would constitute freedom and joy. However, freedom wasn't something so simple. Even without needing to mind anyone's feelings, people couldn't truly be free. To begin with, if all one did every day was play, play would lose its uniqueness and become neither enjoyable nor meaningful. There must be suffering for there to be pleasure—if everything were pleasure alone, it would be like the whole world turning to nothing but water, robbing pleasure of its very essence. People inevitably die. It's precisely because death exists that we have joys and sorrows—if it were decreed that one could never die, existence would become unbearably tedious. Life inherently lacks special significance. While the foolishness of 'Freedom for Us' hardly mattered in itself, when I considered that even René Clair—let alone so-called social reformers—held notions of freedom equally half-baked as this film's premise, I found myself compelled to reaffirm my faith in literature. Literature is omnipotent. Because literature scolds you when you return home—even without a mother to reprimand you or a wife to get angry. It originates precisely from such circumstances. Thus, this conviction also holds that if we can no longer trust literature, we cannot trust humanity itself."

IV. On Beauty

Three years ago, I lived in a town called Toride.
It was a small town along the Tone River where, aside from a tonkatsu restaurant and a soba shop, there were no other eateries. I ate tonkatsu every day and by the sixth month had grown utterly sick of it, but I made it a habit to go to Tokyo roughly twice a month and return home drunk.
Admittedly, there were liquor stores in the town.
However, there were no oden shops; at regular liquor stores, one would sit on the threshold and drink sake by the glass.
They called this “Tonpachi,” said to mean “Tōhachi” (lit. “eight per measure”).
In other words, one shō only amounts to eight cups.
In other words, it means that each cup holds more than one gō, filled generously to the brim.
The villagers would say, “That’s Tonpachi, ain’t it?”
Of course, I was a regular user, but while a cup might cost fifteen sen or seventeen sen—varying daily based on the purchase price at the time—friends visiting from Tokyo would drink while grimacing.

It took only fifty-six minutes from this town to Ueno, but one had to cross three great rivers—the Tone, Edo, and Arakawa—and on the bank of one of them stood Kosuge Prison.
The train ran past this large modern-style building.
A towering concrete wall loomed; the prison building spread majestically in a cruciform shape with wings, and at the center intersection of the cross, a rugged watchtower rose even higher than a large factory’s smokestack.

Of course, this large structure had not a single instance of aesthetic decoration; no matter where one looked, it was unmistakably a prison—presenting an appearance that could be nothing other than a penal institution—and yet it was a strangely captivating sight.

It was tied to the concept of a prison yet differed in nature from how its oppressive presence might bear down on my heart.
Rather, I felt almost nostalgic.
In other words, ultimately it was somehow its beauty that captivated my heart.
Neither the scenery of the Tone River nor Lake Teganuma had captivated my heart as much as this prison did.
Is it truly beautiful? I sometimes wondered.

Another experience similar to this—one more—remains clearly etched in memory.

It was over a decade ago now.
At that time I was still a student who didn’t drink alcohol. Having started a coterie magazine with friends for the first time—and since we didn’t drink—we inevitably ended up wandering while continuing our debates for five or six hours straight.
As a result, we walked wherever our feet took us.
Even when it wasn’t late at night, we were frequently interrogated by police; this being an era of vigorous leftist movements, they subjected us to thorough and petty questioning.
Generally speaking, walking around late at night with several people while not drinking alcohol was exactly what made us seem suspicious.
That being said, it’s not as though this led me to reform and become a heavy drinker.

We would often walk from Ginza to Tsukiji, board the ferry, and cross over to Tsukudajima.
This ferry operates all night, so there’s no worry about being unable to return home.
Tsukudajima had houses labeled “Tsukuda Mo” or “Tsukuda Ichi” lining both sides of its dim, narrow paths—each about six feet wide—that might have been tsukudani shops, exuding a fishing village atmosphere; stepping off the ferry, I suddenly felt as though arriving on a distant journey.
I couldn’t believe that across the river lay Ginza.
I enjoyed this sense of traveling to another world, but one reason I frequented this area was that a member of our magazine coterie worked at a dry ice factory near St. Luke’s Hospital.

Now, as for the dry ice factory—this strangely captivated my heart.

In factory districts, it might have been an unremarkable building.
There were cranes and rails; both sides were concrete, and high overhead something like elevated rails extending from a warehouse jutted out—here too not a trace of aesthetic consideration existed—the entire structure had been erected through nothing but equipment necessitated by need.
When I saw this within the townscape, it was imposing and strange, but I came to realize it was exceptionally beautiful.

St. Luke’s Hospital’s majestic grand structure.
Compared to it, the factory was far smaller and poorer in construction, yet when contrasted with this factory’s dense sense of mass and solidity, St. Luke’s Hospital became a trifling thing akin to a child’s craft.
This factory sank deep into my chest, possessing an expansive beauty that stretched into distant nostalgia.

Kosuge Prison and the dry ice factory.
Regarding the connection between these two, I had occasionally wondered—but beyond recognizing that both possessed a vigorous beauty capable of stirring my nostalgia, I never forced myself to consider it further.
It was utterly unlike the beauty of Hōryūji or Byōdōin.
Moreover, Hōryūji and Byōdōin—when viewed with their ancient history in mind—possess a kind of beauty one must grudgingly acknowledge.
They do not strike directly at the heart or claw into one’s viscera.
One cannot embrace it without compensating for that persistent sense of insufficiency.
Kosuge Prison and the dry ice factory struck more directly—with nothing needing compensation—and held power to steer my heart straight into nostalgia.
I never troubled myself to ask why.

One early spring, I set out on a trip to a port town at the tip of a peninsula.
In that small inlet rested our Empire’s invincible destroyer.
It was a small warship that somehow gave a humble impression, yet at first glance alone, its beauty shook my very soul.
I rested on the beach and gazed endlessly at the black, unassuming iron mass floating on the water. Then, unifying Kosuge Prison, the dry ice factory, and this warship into one entity, I came to recall the true nature of their beauty.

Why are these three things so beautiful?
There is not a trace of beauty artificially crafted for the sake of being beautiful here.
There is not a single pillar or steel beam added from the standpoint of beauty, nor a single pillar or steel beam removed because it was deemed unbeautiful.
Only what was necessary had been placed where it was needed.
And thus, all unnecessary things had been stripped away, and what remained had taken on its own distinct form—shaped solely by necessity.
It was a form that resembled nothing other than itself.
Pillars were unapologetically bent by necessity; steel beams were unevenly laid out; rails suddenly jutted down from overhead.
It all came down to necessity.
No other traditional concept of any kind could have become a force to obstruct the inexorable generation born of this necessity.
And thus, there came into being three things unlike anything else.

My work—literature—is exactly the same as that. There must not be a single line intended to make it beautiful. Beauty does not arise from places consciously crafted with beauty in mind. Things that must be written no matter what, things that need to be written—these must be written out entirely, solely in response to that unavoidable necessity. It is nothing but “necessity”—one, two, a hundred—from start to finish, solely “necessity” alone. And thus, it is the unique form demanded by this “unavoidable substance” that gives birth to beauty. Even if one deviates from the demands of substance and erects a pillar based on aesthetic or poetic principles, that becomes nothing more than a trifling crafted object. This is the spirit of prose and the pinnacle of the novel. And simultaneously, it is the grand path of all art.

The problem lay in whether what you sought to write was truly necessary.
The question was whether it constituted your own jewel—something you couldn’t rest without expressing even at life’s cost—or not.
And whether that, answering necessity’s demands through your own hands alone, had stripped away all excess and been rendered truly appropriate.

The distinction between Owens’ beauty when sprinting a hundred meters and second-rate athletes’ movements lay in perfection of motion fulfilling necessity versus ungainliness failing its demands.
When I was in middle school, we absolutely believed hundred-meter runners needed thin, light bodies with long legs and trim physiques.
Heavy, stocky men got funneled into throwing events—relegated to field corners heaving shot puts or swinging hammers.
This held true until Paddock and Simpson’s era—athletes who’d even visited Japan.
But when Metcalfe and Tolan emerged, they revised sprinting’s final requirement to heavy-body acceleration, reassigning sleek builds to middle-distance.

Once at Haneda Airport, I saw a captured Type 16 fighter—it appeared at the airfield’s left edge only to vanish at the right with stupefying speed.
Japanese fighters prioritized maneuverability over velocity, making them incomparable in raw pace.
The Type 16’s stubby, thick fuselage exuded solid heft—perfectly matching modern sprinters’ physical requirements.
Not an ounce of sleekness remained in its obstinately awkward form, yet its mass-driven acceleration birthed aerodynamic beauty that left graceful passenger planes far behind.

Mere sleekness of appearance alone cannot become true beauty.
Everything is a matter of substance.
Beauty pursued solely for beauty’s sake lacks authenticity and ultimately fails to be genuine.
In short, it is emptiness.
And thus, empty things never strike people with truth; in the end, they are inconsequential—things that might as well exist or not.
Even if Hōryūji and Byōdōin were to burn down, it wouldn’t be any trouble at all.
If necessary, demolish Hōryūji Temple and build a train station.
Our nation’s glorious culture and traditions will never perish because of such acts.
The tranquil sunsets over Musashino have vanished, but the setting sun still falls upon jumbled barracks roofs, clear days grow hazy with dust, and neon signs now blaze where moonlit vistas once reigned.
As long as our actual lives here are grounded in soul, how could this not be beautiful?
Behold, airplanes soar through the sky, steel courses across the sea, and trains roar along the elevated tracks.
As long as our lives remain healthy, even if we complacently imitate Western-style cheap barracks, our culture is healthy.
Our tradition is also healthy.
If necessary, overturn parks and make them vegetable gardens.
If that is truly necessary, true beauty will inevitably arise there as well.
Because that is where true life resides.
And as long as one truly lives, there is no need to be ashamed of aping others.
As long as it is true life, even imitation possesses the same superiority as originality.