Pathway to Japanese Literature

While I was sipping coffee alone, Togawa came in, gave a somewhat embarrassed smile, and sat down across from me.

"As expected… it’s just the usual, isn’t it."

“Hmm, just a habit.”

“Habit…,”
Togawa seemed perplexed. “But… I wonder if there’s really such a thing as a once-a-week habit.”

“There are even yearly ones, you know.”
“New Year’s, Obon…”

“Well, those are set to happen once a year from the start, but yours…”

When coffee arrived before Togawa, I whispered to Madame and ordered two whiskeys.
I poured one into his coffee for him.
I’d wanted to show this pale bookworm a shred of respect.

Habit—that was just something I said offhandedly. The truth was, even if I told him, someone like Togawa probably wouldn't understand.

I returned from the overseas battlefronts and became a university student again.
Because my family's fortune back home had collapsed, I became self-reliant.
I tried various jobs.
The handy term "student part-timer" had caught on widely, making work easy to find.
But that didn't last either—after three days and nights of deliberation, I switched course completely and begged an upperclassman to get me into a publishing firm.
Through his influence, this too was registered as student work, sparing me from income tax deductions on my wages.
The tax savings alone covered my tuition with money left over.
Financial stability achieved.
In return came obligations to the company.
Not to boast, but I'd grown confident in my skills as a journalist.
I couldn't betray that responsibility and confidence.

I decided to attend university lectures only once a week, in the mornings.
Admittedly, among the university professors, there were some whom the company had commissioned to write manuscripts, so this method served the dual purpose of attending lectures and pressing for manuscripts—a way to kill two birds with one stone.

The fact that I was working at a publishing company was something I kept to myself, but my peers had gradually caught on, and the professors became aware of it through manuscript matters, so I seemed to be viewed as somewhat of a unique presence.
When I noticed that, I instead adopted an arrogant attitude.
The fact that the war had left me without close friends in class turned out to be rather convenient; I spoke little to anyone and took a seat near the center of the classroom where professors could easily notice me.
Once a week, I would attend only two-credit lectures.
Even if some unfavorable incident occurred and my abysmal attendance rate became a topic at faculty meetings, I had heard from someone that as long as one or two professors usually took notice of me, they would surely come to my defense.
Moreover, I was always fair and aboveboard, after all.
I would never take exams for any courses other than the two-credit ones I audited.
However, since I did take exams, I would submit outstanding papers.
In humanities departments without special research or experiments, something like that was easily within my capabilities.
When I secretly asked someone in the academic affairs office, my exam scores were generally around ninety points—in other words, excellent.
Serves you right.
However, graduation should be prolonged as much as possible.
It’s impossible to know when or what kind of upheaval might occur in society, and being a university student serves as a form of status guarantee.

This was the secret stratagem I harbored.
It wasn't much of a secret stratagem, but carrying it out with feigned ignorance was precisely what made it one.
Even if you understood it in theory, there was practically no one among my peers who could actually execute it.

Even so, sitting through a two-credit lecture once a week—roughly three hours—was quite painful.
I would sometimes take notes, doodle, think about things unrelated to the lecture, or crack my knuckles, but the boredom remained unchanged.
Even the most erudite and insightful professor cannot always deliver consistently engaging lectures, and university lectures in general seem predetermined to stride with dignified elegance while maintaining an air of authority—yet when their rhythm inevitably becomes disheveled, curiously enough, the professors deliberately put on satisfied smiles, and the students craft obsequious grins.
Amidst this, even as a convenient pretext, I had to adopt a pious demeanor.
It was quite exhausting, and my appetite diminished.

Therefore, the day I went to school—currently Thursday—I made it a habit to stop by a coffee shop on my way back. Skipping lunch, I ordered cake and coffee, then poured whiskey into the coffee to lift my spirits. This whiskey was something I had specially arranged with Madame—a service in recognition of my standing.

At this coffee shop, I often met classmates.
Togawa was one of them.
However, I did not reveal to them the whiskey I had entrusted to Madame.
I wasn't that soft-hearted of a man, and I wasn't particularly close with them either.

By the way, I have a strange habit.
Even when meeting an old acquaintance, I sometimes feel as though it were our first encounter; conversely, meeting someone new can feel like reuniting with someone I've known forever. The gradation between these extremes varies widely.
Though I clearly understand our actual relationship, this peculiar illusion takes hold emotionally.
It seemed to be an unhealed habit lingering since my postwar repatriation to Japan.
It had abruptly surfaced.

When Togawa entered and sat before me with an embarrassed smile, I felt as though we were close friends who hadn’t met in a very long time.
At school, when he had tried to speak to me and seemed eager to talk about something, I had coldly brushed him off.
Was that the reason?
Despite that, he was the top student in the class, and it was clear that we usually met once a week.
So in truth, it seems I treated him to whiskey more out of a desire to reminisce about old times than out of any respect for him.

He sipped my coffee laced with whiskey without relish, yet with an air of hesitation.
He didn't seem to like alcohol.
His long hair lacked oiliness yet held a healthy sheen, his lean face was pale—a pallor that seemed to extend to his very spirit—while the eyes behind his nearsighted glasses remained beautifully clear.
I gazed intently at that face.

“Didn’t you have some business with me at school today?”

He wore a bashful smile and shook his head.

“No—you did have business with me.”

I’d intended it as a mocking remark, but he suddenly turned a sharp, gleaming gaze toward me.

“It’s not exactly business... I just wanted to ask about Nagata...”

“Nagata... you mean that Nagata Sumiko?”

“Hmm, yes.”

That was unexpected.
Nagata Sumiko was one of the two female students in our class—a petite girl with bobbed hair, a mere schoolgirl.
With her innocent, cheerful disposition, I had invited her out several times to watch movies or have coffee.
Someone once sarcastically remarked, “You shouldn’t seduce female classmates.”
To the extent that I can no longer remember who it was, my feelings toward her were utterly detached.
However, whether watching movies or drinking coffee, there were often days when being with a young woman lifted my spirits more than solitude or the company of male friends.
According to Togawa, Nagata Sumiko was in quite serious condition with pulmonary infiltration or something.
So then, Togawa said, his face slightly reddening, that he wanted to pay respects to their female classmate by sending flowers as a get-well gift and asked what I thought about it.

I nearly burst out laughing.
First whiskey to show respect to Togawa, and now flowers to honor some schoolgirl?
But the next moment, a nauseating wave of disgust rose within me.

"What does it matter if some female student gets sick or does whatever?"
"Ditch the sentimentality."
"Just leave her be."

And then I ordered whiskey—not in glasses, but in two cups.

Togawa was watching my demeanor with a puzzled look.

"But weren’t you the one closest to Nagata?"
"Haven’t you heard anything at all?"

“I don’t know anything.”

To my own surprise, Kimura Eiko’s face rose in my mind at that moment.
It stared at me from within my chest.
Irritating, yet unavoidable.
To lay it bare—when desire stirs, I want her; when it fades, I detest her.
I considered this natural, yet from that same chest of mine, she kept gazing at me, probing for something deeper.
She’d said she would visit tonight, but whether she’d actually come remained uncertain.

“Wasn’t there any affection on your side?”

“Who... Nagata? Don’t be absurd.”

Togawa might harbor feelings for Nagata Sumiko, or perhaps he was concerned about me and her.
In any case, that much was clear.
Precisely because it was clear, it grated all the more.

“You people are too soft on life.”

Togawa fixed his startled-looking eyes on mine.

“Do you people know about piss-stinking women?”
A venomous mood swelled within me.
“Female students—they’re all piss-stinking women.”
“Even if we set aside delicate matters—just looking through common-sense eyes—their ears are clogged with wax, their noses stuffed with snot, they don’t wash feet that’ve stewed in shoes all day before crawling into bed… anyway, they’re filthy.”

Kimura Eiko’s polished skin, steeped in perfume’s fragrance, flickered through my vision. She couldn’t even be measured against those schoolgirls.

“If we follow that logic,” Togawa countered, “then we male students aren’t exactly paragons of cleanliness either.” He leaned forward slightly, fingertips brushing his cup’s rim. “The crux lies in the psyche—don’t you think love between men and women dwells beyond mere physicality?”

“Nah, love’s nothing but sexual desire reshaped. To borrow one of those phrases going around lately—it’s just the body thinking, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so.”
“The body has desires but does not think.”
“It is the mind that thinks.”
“As evidence, while physical things have fixed limits, mental thought progresses infinitely.”

“That’s abstract theory.” “What matters most to me is reality. First you’ve got to stare reality in the face and dig into it—otherwise your mind’ll just keep spinning its wheels forever.”

"But organizing reality is…"

"I get it already. The spirit organizes reality, consciousness organizes phenomena, and within that ordered structure, thought progresses infinitely… the superiority of intellect over sensibility… fine, let’s go with that. But I—listen—I don’t ever want to overlook that there’s something in reality we can’t so much as scratch, something that knocks us flat on our backs."

This sort of debate was something I was truly bad at and goddamn uninteresting.

When I finished my whiskey, other customers happened to come in, so I started to get up.

“You must have had some unique experiences on the battlefield, but…”

“My ideas are banal, you think?”
“No—not banal, but... it feels like you’re forgetting something.”

Togawa said this in a low voice like a soliloquy while licking his whiskey, but I felt unnervingly chilled. Didn't he too have some part that felt like he'd forgotten something? Even thinking that, my chilled sensation didn't change. That's right—this sense of having forgotten something was what I myself had felt all along. Every time someone asked about my battlefield experiences, I'd only give harmless answers, but truthfully there were several things I didn't want to tell anyone. Things I wanted to keep hidden even from myself. Those things might have been related. What had that pale-faced idealist bastard Togawa noticed?

He seemed slightly drunk, holding his head with both hands on the table.

I stood up, settled the bill, and left without a word.
If there were to be any greetings, Togawa should have been the one to make them.
The autumn sunlight was harsh, and my eyes swam.

That afternoon, I was depressed.
Everything felt pointless.
It was a depression born of senseless anger—wanting to rage openly but being unable to, fretting in bottled-up frustration.
This was something that happened occasionally—I knew it wouldn’t last long, passing within half a day at most.
Yet this time’s seemed more entrenched.
Surely I wasn’t manic-depressive—this wasn’t clinical depression—yet I felt something undeniably morbid.
Alcohol still lingered in my system with faint intoxication, yet accompanied by that debilitating exhaustion one feels after a hangover fades.
What was wrong with me?
The absurdity stoked my fury until it seeped inward like damp rot, leaving me despondent enough to weep.

Leaning over the company desk and pretending to check proofs, I didn’t speak to anyone.

In the evening, Professor Sugiyama stopped by the company.
He was one of the writers under my charge.
An extremely laid-back old scholar who—unlike difficult novelists—didn’t pay attention to what others said, which was a relief, but his troublesome fondness was for drinking shochu at street stalls.
Yet he never went alone, requiring someone to accompany him.
The editor-in-chief had business elsewhere and couldn’t go, so I ended up being paid a modest sum to escort him.
My melancholy deepened.

Professor Sugiyama drank his shochu in small, deliberate gulps.
As he grew drunker, he began chattering about all sorts of things in a tone like an inverted newspaper article—a manner that seemed to take pleasure in making even truth appear false.
On my end, though not particularly inclined, I sipped shochu while giving half-hearted replies and repeatedly addressing him as "Professor."
Yes, Professor. Hey, Professor. And then Professor. But Professor... yet none of it reached him at all.
I really wanted to cry and resolutely stopped calling him "Professor".
Even so, it didn’t reach the Professor.

“It’s true that natural disasters come when forgotten, but it’s also true that calamities arrive when least desired.”
“You get sick when you least want to.”
“You die when you least want to.”
“You become poor when you least want to.”
“War breaks out when you least want it.”
“You get injured when you least want to.”
“All such things.”

“Does anyone ever actually want such things?”

“Of course there are.”
“Human beings desire happiness, yet they also desire calamity.”
“That’s especially true when you’re young.”
“Otherwise, heroism couldn’t exist.”
“Otherwise, there’d be no one left drinking shochu either.”

Professor Sugiyama laughed with apparent cheer.
But what struck me as odd was the word "heroism."
I had thought it was something that only lingered in the extreme political spheres of left and right, yet here was a sense of heroism even in getting drunk on shochu.
Irritation surged through me, and I gulped down the glass in one go.

“Let’s go now, Professor.”

I paid the bill, put Professor Sugiyama on a train, and took another train home myself.

On the way, near the train transfer area, I carried a sushi box in one hand.

My premonitions are usually right.
Sure enough, Kimura Eiko was there.

“She’s been here since earlier.”

When the boarding house landlady told me that, I steadied myself firmly.

It wasn’t because I was happy and buoyant.
Nor was it because I was perplexed.
She said she had important business to discuss at my place, and even though she’d gone out of her way to decline giving details beforehand, I could mostly imagine what that business entailed.
Yet, when the moment finally arrived, an intensely ominous shadow pierced my heart.

Eiko boiled water with an electric heater, arranged drinking vessels on the dining table, and was drinking alone.
A large sake bottle stood nearby.

“Welcome back.”

She smiled with a quiet, composed greeting.

I held out the sushi box.

“It’s from that house over there.”
“Sorry I’m late.”

“My, it’s been quite a while.”

She opened the sushi box with studied curiosity.

This was fate-bound sushi.

I heard from others that the sushi at that shop near the train transfer area was good, so I sometimes stopped by on my way back from work. Eiko often came there too. Her upswept hair revealed a beautiful nape, her silk crepe kimono—with its deep back seam—worn with the hem shortened, her features clear and refined. That sushi shop had many female customers, but she stood out with her somewhat ambiguous background. Sometimes she'd briefly discuss movies with the landladies or horse racing with the proprietors. But what caught my eye was the earthenware bottle beside her sushi plate. The way she drank from the tea bowl filled from that bottle clearly wasn't tea. One time, I took out a pocket flask of whiskey and drank in front of her. That was the decoy. She smiled with her eyes, asked the proprietress, and soon they were serving me sake from an earthenware bottle too. Compared to my usual self at the coffee shop near campus, she had a far more approachable demeanor. Of course, this didn't cost her anything.

Afterwards, at a café in the backstreets of Ginza, I met her.
By day, this place specialized in coffee; come nightfall, it transformed into a bar.
She capriciously worked as the daytime-only waitress.
If I had known that, there would have been no need to use a decoy bottle at the sushi shop.

“I haven’t been to that sushi shop over there at all lately.”

“Why?”

She didn’t answer that and stared straight at me.

“And you?”

“I don’t go there either. It’s been a while since I last went.”

They met each other’s gaze and spontaneously smiled. I felt myself wanting to cling to her—a desire even I found pleasurable—yet somehow sensed an icy barrier within her. If that’s how it had to be, then so be it, I decided. After our bodies became intimate, we both gradually stopped visiting that sushi shop. What possible meaning could that hold?

“You’ve been drinking quite a bit already, haven’t you?”

“Hmm. Whiskey and shochu. Still, sake’s the best.”

She took the sake bottle and poured with practiced hands, but suddenly stared intently at my face.

“You’re somehow cold today.”

I had forgotten. I embraced her shoulders and kissed her. But she too seemed cold. I was filled with an irritating feeling. The daytime lethargy returned. And now, I had no sexual desire. “Your passion makes me happy,” she would whisper, often constricting my body like a snake, but since we’re not beasts, one can’t sustain constant sexual desire—no, compromise—and maintain passion indefinitely. When I grew cold, she would occasionally complain of lacking affection, but what exactly is affection?

“Hey,” she said with unusual force. “There are various things I want to ask you about today. Your past and your current feelings. Won’t you tell me everything without holding back? And then, I want to make my decision.”

However, what could there possibly be left to confess now? Even I didn't know her well.

She lived in an apartment not far from that sushi shop. It was a luxurious place with an eight-tatami room, six-tatami room, and kitchen. The windows and door frames were Western-style, but inside lay tatami mat flooring and even a tokonoma alcove. Two tansu chests stood side by side; atop the low utility chest gleamed shrine fittings; beside the radio lay two shamisen alongside a long hibachi, low table, and occasional flower arrangements. A woman she called "auntie" apparently came to help every five days, but the place felt too immaculate for a single woman's residence. She worked daytime café shifts, often watched evening films, and frequented horse races when season began. Money she likely had, but whether through a patron remained unclear. Probably an ex-geisha or similar—in lifestyle or history, she stayed an enigma. She'd never worn Western clothes. The oddest thing was how she'd proposed writing an autobiographical novel after learning I worked at a publisher, asking me to get it printed. I'd worried this might grow serious, but eventually it fizzled out.

Beyond that, I knew nothing.
But that was fine.
As for me, she knew this poor eight-tatami room and the general shape of my life, and wasn't that enough?

“I’m exactly the man you see before you, and I don’t plan to start confessing anything anew, but I’ll answer your questions.”
“You can ask me anything.”

That was an awkward way to put it.
I frowned at myself.
However, she said something similar.

“I’m exactly as I appear. But I’ll answer your questions—feel free to ask anything.”

The air had become painfully awkward.
This won't do.
Right now - push her down, pin her down, beat her senseless or assault her... If only she'd resist... No - more likely we'd just end up rolling together into some lukewarm mud pit.

“You aren’t going to ask me anything at all, are you.”
“You don’t have real love.”
“I was wrong after all.”

Suddenly, she collapsed onto the table, her shoulders shaking as she began to cry.
She spoke through her tears.

“I… I wanted to live with you, just the two of us, even if only for a month or two.”
“Then I thought I could die right then and there.”
“But it’s too late now.”
“No, it’s already over.”
“Go along with what I want, okay?”
“I’ve made up my mind.”
“Don’t say anything.”
“I will never, never forget you for my whole life, my whole life.”

“I too…”

The rest of my words wouldn't come out.
No matter what I said, it would inevitably become a lie.
It felt like someone had stripped off my underrobe, sending chills down my spine.
I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs.
I wanted to run around screaming.
Calling myself "idiot, idiot," I drank sake.

"Swear you'll never forget me either, okay? Promise."

“I swear it.”
“I know you will.”
“Mmm, I swear it.”

This was not a lie.
But I suddenly grew angry.
Because I felt indebted to her in that moment.
She had looked after me in countless ways.
Whenever I mentioned my hat looking shabby, she bought me a new one.
Shoes, socks, linen handkerchiefs, neckties...
She pulled out a bolt of yukata fabric from the bottom of the dresser and had it made into a nightshirt.
Was she perhaps a year or two older than me? She fussed over my appearance like an elder sister.
From my side, I only repaid her with bedroom pleasures—in this transaction, she should have come out ahead.
Because tending to my daily needs gave her profound self-satisfaction.
The idea of being some kept man—not an ounce of that sentiment existed.
But—but—in reality, I was the one who profited.
This feeling—this awareness of having received kindness—couldn't be scrubbed away.
As long as she lived, and as long as I lived, it would never disappear.
If only I could kill her here and now...

Once again, I want to scream at the top of my lungs, want to run around screaming...

She was still crying.
As he watched, tears streamed down with uncanny abundance.
The handkerchief was sopping wet.

“I’m sorry.
“It was my fault.”
“But I didn’t mean to tempt you.”
“I really did love you.”
“I’m grateful to have known this feeling of love. You understand, don’t you?”

Damn it.
I, of all people, felt tears welling up.
Now I’d drink with reckless abandon.
And then I’d scream.
I’d scream ‘Waaah, waaah!’
That’s right—back then, that woman had screamed too.
After the gunshot rang out, that scream had been unmistakably heard.

Why had that woman smiled brightly and welcomed me back then?
She’d indeed been an upper-class lady.
She’d treated me to a feast and plied me with sake.
I’d taken advantage of that goodwill.
That night, I’d violated her body.
There’d been almost no resistance worthy of the name; it had been merely entirely passive.

The next morning, I had my subordinate soldiers carry pistols and storm into the woman’s private quarters.
After the gunshot—no, simultaneously—a bloodcurdling scream rang out.
There was indeed a sound.
I ran out.
I had witnessed numerous brutal situations, but only at that moment did every hair on my body stand on end.

That morning, why didn't I prostrate myself at that woman's feet and apologize?
Or perhaps I should have been stabbed in the back by that woman?
It wasn't that I lacked so much courage.
I had merely considered that woman's happiness from a different angle.
At that time, I was suffering from an abominable disease.
The happiness I had envisioned for that woman—where had it gone?
With a wail-like scream, it was obliterated in an instant.

It was the feeling of peering into a bottomless abyss.

Fill the abyss, fill it.
Fill it and make it flat.

“What are you thinking about, may I ask?”
“What’s come over you?”

Her eyes alone were unnaturally large, now completely drained of color.

With a roar, I lunged at her and sank my teeth into her neck.
But I rolled and could no longer get up.

Late that night, or perhaps near dawn, I rose up, quietly opened the rain shutters, went out into the garden, and slipped out through the wooden gate.
Eiko was dead drunk and asleep, the household was asleep, every house was asleep.
It was strange that I alone was awake.
A cold drizzle was falling.

As I walked through the rain, I was thinking desperately.
I myself didn’t know what I had been thinking.
Suddenly, with a sensation as if a hazy light had lit up in my mind, I stood aghast and stopped in my tracks.

I had been thinking of a plan to kill Eiko.
Yet somehow, it wasn’t me who had been thinking—it seemed as though some other entity had been doing the thinking.
What was it?
Was it the lingering dregs of heroism, like the intoxication from shochu?
No, it wasn’t anything so petty.
It was a monstrously huge entity.

The brightness in my head flared up suddenly, sent out a great flame, burned out immediately, and plunged into total darkness.
Nothing was visible.
I started walking again.
Stumbling again and again, I walked.

My body, my nerves, my spirit—all felt utterly spent.
Something—a small corner—seemed to be beginning to crumble.
It was a grave matter; if that corner were to crumble, everything would plunge into crisis.
My entire life, my entire ideology—they might come crashing down.
I had to hold on resolutely.
But what should I do?
Even keeping my head upright on my neck was no easy task, and I found myself slumping forward more and more.

A light flickered faintly in the distance, then vanished instantly.
That sent a terrifying shock through me.
I spun around sharply and began retracing my steps home.
Strength surged back.

That's right—I had been thinking of a plan to kill Eiko. It was akin to child's play. I had to recover. Yet I seemed to have forgotten something. Ah—Togawa had said it. He'd forgotten something too, and I couldn't exactly act high and mighty about it—just some forgotten thing... No—that wasn't it. I was somehow incomplete. It felt as though I'd lost half my body. I had to recover...

The rain grew slightly heavier, its drops larger.
Rain harder, pour down.
But I returned to my room without fear.