Pathway to Japanese Literature

I.

When there was about one child, it was still manageable, but when it became two or three, raising them was far from easy.
As parents, they wanted to give their children as much of what they desired as possible.
Sweets, toys, hats, tricycles—these days, even in the countryside, tricycles were all the rage.
When girls grew a bit older, they developed preferences for kimonos.
When they were still in single-bolt or four-bolt kimonos, it was manageable enough.
However, when transitioning from four-bolt to full-body kimonos, even if they made them, made them, the children still demanded more.
They were constantly growing.
As they grew, their eyes changed and their desires progressed.

Seikichi had three children.
The third was a boy, but the first two were girls.
The eldest daughter was already fourteen.

Because both parents doted on their children, they could never bring themselves to outright refuse any request made of them.
Shawls, umbrellas, gloves, tabi socks—even one or two pairs proved insufficient.
—Geta sandals, rubber zōri, combs, and on and on.
Beyond kimonos came demands for all manner of things.
Even kimonos—plain striped cotton or machine-spun fabric—no longer satisfied them.
Oshina had coveted Tomoshiba Kohama-dyed fabric since the previous year.

The two struggled desperately to meet their children’s demands.
However, after Seikichi fell ill and was left idle, they could no longer fulfill their children’s demands entirely.
Osato began to struggle even more in juggling the household finances.

When year-end arrived and fabric stores began their Seimonbarai sales, the children would come back after seeing the muslin, sarasa fabrics, and detachable collars beautifully displayed at shopfronts and crave them.
When they learned that their same-aged peers had each received something desirable, they wanted those things all the more.

“Yocchan had a matching Oshima set made.”

Oshina returned from the sewing shop and said.

“I want you to buy me a wool shirt.”
The second daughter, Kimi, said.

The children refused to go out often unless they had clothing that could keep up with others.
Oshina wanted a new shawl because the one that had been bought three or four years prior had grown old.

When Seikichi found himself alone in the kitchen with his wife,

“Let’s fell a mountain,” he proposed.

Osato agreed immediately.

Cutting down the mountain’s oak trees and selling them as firewood would bring in a fair amount of money.

II

Before New Year’s, they cut down the oak-covered mountain.
They left the tree-cutting to hired lumberjacks.
As for transporting the lumber from the mountain to the coast, Osato carried it on her back using a carrying frame.
This was because if you hired someone to transport the lumber from the mountain, they would take five sen per bundle.

Osato had always been a hardworking woman.
For over a year while Seikichi lay ill and unable to work, she single-handedly managed everything from household matters to fieldwork, mountain labor, and even village porter duties.
She looked after the children without neglecting Seikichi's care.
Seikichi, feeling guilty toward his wife, tried to handle his own affairs as much as possible.
But Osato worried that if her husband troubled himself over such things and prolonged his illness, it would spell disaster.
Before Seikichi's eyes, she worked with cheerful vigor, sparing no effort.

There were about three hundred bundles of lumber.
Transporting all that lumber to the coast alone was no easy task for a woman.

Watching Osato traverse the rugged mountain path strewn with jagged rocks—never once complaining or showing strain—Seikichi couldn’t bear it.

“If you have time, carry out the lumber.”
He instructed Oshina, who had returned after the sewing shop closed.

“Kimi—you carry some out too. I’ll give you five sen per bundle.”

He also said this to the younger sister who had returned home earlier than her older sister. Kimi was still small and couldn’t properly carry even a single bundle, but—
“You’ll give five sen per bundle?”
“Then I’ll do it!”

Kimi pursed her lips, her eyes sparkling.

“Can you manage it?”

“Yeah, I’ll do it! If I can’t carry a full bundle, I’ll do half bundles at a time!”
“Is that so?”
He laughed.

III

The lumber payment had come to about sixty yen，but after settling the year-end accounts，only a small amount remained.
In addition to the payments they had planned for in advance，a considerable amount went toward the dyer，gutter repairs，massage fees，municipal day labor wages，and other expenses.
Because of his illness，he often had stiff shoulders.
And so he had frequently called masseurs.
When they checked the year-end tabs，even those alone had grown quite substantial.
And they had to make New Year’s preparations as well.

Osato had secretly been thinking of getting herself one set of everyday clothes as well，but seeing how little money remained，she was disappointed.
Seikichi felt sorry for his disappointed wife.

“It’s fine to use up all that remains without holding back.”
“And once February comes around, we’ll probably find a way to get some money coming in again,” he said.

“Yes…”

Her voice thickened, and she kept her face turned downward, refusing to let him see it.…

On the second day of New Year’s, during the first sale, Osato gripped ten yen and went to the village kimono fabric store to buy fabric rolls.
The children had been waiting for their mother to return, but when friends soon came to invite them, they went out to play.
Seikichi was lying in bed.

Osato returned home after ten o’clock.

“I just… borrowed this much for now.”
She came to Seikichi’s bedside and spread out the furoshiki bundle to show him.

There were dyed kasuri, muslin, meisen kasuri fabric, shawls, gloves, and such.

“This… I thought I’d make into a haori jacket for Oshina...”

Then she took the meisen kasuri fabric and showed it to Seikichi.

“Hmm.”

“I thought I’d make this striped fabric into a quilted jacket—”

“Hmm.”

Osato spread out the fabric rolls—which she had likely borrowed after carefully inspecting them—once more at his bedside, examining the striped patterns and testing the fabric’s texture between her thumb and forefinger.
She seemed to think that after obtaining his advice, she would eventually settle on exactly what to buy.
However, Seikichi had no idea what items were suitable or which patterns were in fashion.
He lay on his back for a long time with his eyes closed.
She wrapped the fabric rolls into the furoshiki while tallying their worth in her head.

“What are you going to buy for Tomokichi?”
Seikichi asked with his eyes still closed.

“Corduroy tabi socks.”

“I see,” he said, opening his eyes that had been closed.

The wife had taken the furoshiki bundle and gone out again, looking forlorn.

If he gave her more money, she might regain her vigor… With this thought, he closed his eyes.
For ten days now, he had been weakening under the sudden cold that had descended.
The neurasthenia prone to accompany his mild chest ailment had also taken hold.
And an uneasy churning had settled in his mind.

“About these two bolts I borrowed… Marumojiya doesn’t know…”

Seikichi had thought Osato had already left, but she came back to his bedside again.

“The clerk recorded Oshina’s shawl and the kimono with haori I borrowed and returned, but these two bolts… I took them later without putting them on the account…”

“What?”

“I thought it’d be wrong not to mention these two bolts even once, so I waited, but there were so many customers, and neither the owner nor the clerk would so much as glance my way, so I just quietly took them….”
She continued as if to explain.

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“……”

“Even if they don’t know about it over there, we can’t just take it without a word.”

Osato muttered a few words about something else.
Her manner seemed painfully awkward.
Seikichi felt he had spoken too harshly and done something wrong.

Osato was a kind, simple woman.
Even if she tried to hatch some cunning scheme, it would slip away from her of its own accord.
Yet precisely because his wife was too timid and honest, Seikichi had often found himself frustrated—missing out on gains or being taken advantage of by others time and again.

Around twenty years old, he had believed humans must be honest and upright.
But now he knew such things served no purpose whatsoever.
He keenly felt honesty and integrity could no longer sustain them in the present.
Yet he found himself unable to counsel dishonesty to his wife.

IV

After Osato left the house, Seikichi closed his eyes and tried to imagine his wife's state of mind.
To him, Osato seemed childlike.
Through their long years of cohabitation, he felt he had come to understand every nuance of his wife's sensations and emotional fluctuations.

The two bolts she had shown him—he had only glimpsed them briefly—were precisely the sort of thing a child would covet.
At his bedside, she kept murmuring about how fine the fabric's quality seemed.
What the children desired was what she herself desired.

The churning in his head thickened and grew hazy, only to clear and become transparent again, like clouds scattering. He imagined disjointed thoughts. Imagination, once it surfaced, dragged him along relentlessly. It was beyond the control of his will. He was dragged around like a servant, trailing after his imagination.

Imagination had, unbeknownst to him, dragged him all the way to Marumojiya’s store. A great many wealthy customers frequented Marumojiya. And there, Osato stood dejectedly. She even walked timidly, overly conscious of others’ gazes. Even when buying goods with her own money, she worried whether others would laugh at her for things like having too little to spend or purchasing shoddy items. If she were to pay with ten old one-yen bills, she would hesitate. She was deliberating how to explain the muslin and splashed-pattern fabric she had borrowed without informing the clerk and brought home. Her heart was wounded.—Unbeknownst to him, he had slipped into Osato’s state of mind.—The clerk might think: She took three bolts home but only brought back two.
“No—it was definitely two bolts,” she said.
Then the clerk said, “Is that so? But I saw with my own eyes that you took three bolts home.”
“And as proof, it’s properly entered here…”
Osato imagined such a scenario and trembled anxiously.

She trembled anxiously, still not having taken the fabric rolls out of the cloth wrapper. She stealthily entered the store, went to where the apprentice was in the corner, and watched the patterns others were looking at from the side. While pretending to look, she tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible, keeping watch for the moment when she could pay the clerk. The mistress of Marumojiya was a suspicious, avaricious woman. Buying from the mistress was more expensive than buying from the clerks or apprentices—this was common knowledge throughout the village. The mistress sat down beside the brazier and glared at the clerks and apprentices. She was watching to see if they were embezzling money.

Around the clerk, five or six customers were haggling over prices and examining the fabric.
Buying from the clerk was cheaper.

Osato waited and waited, but the opportunity never came.
She tried to mentally tally whether the money from the clasp purse would exactly cover the fabric rolls wrapped in cloth, but her head spun dizzily, and she couldn't make sense of it...

While letting such imaginings run through his mind, Seikichi thought on the other hand that this might actually be happening, or perhaps right now, at this very moment, his wife was doing exactly this.

As Osato, trembling nervously, approached the clerk,

"Oh, is that so?"
The clerk nonchalantly took out the recorded ledger and examined it.
He was unsettled.
He fussed about.

“△ yen △△ sen.”
“Is that so?”
Osato produced the money.
She wavered inwardly about what to do regarding the portion she had borrowed without permission.
If I bring it up now, wouldn’t it only make the mistress suspect me even more?……

The clerk received the money and gave out the change.
Osato stood there, uneasy about the bulky cloth-wrapped bundle.
The eyes of the mistress, sitting hunched by the brazier, glinted sharply.
Osato felt as though the ground swayed unsteadily beneath her.

The clerk was recalculating on the abacus.
He pressed his seal on the receipt and brought it over.

“What’s this about?”

Suddenly, the mistress’s shrill voice rang out.
She was staring at the receipt and the cloth-wrapped bundle.

The clerk, caught off guard, stood dazedly.

“I haven’t taken anything at all!”
“Nothing…”

Osato bowed her head and muttered in confusion...

V

Seikichi’s heart lurched.

“It’s nothing.”
“Nonsense!”
“It’s just neurasthenia—nothing more than that!”

He immediately tried to dismiss his imaginings.
However, the current imaginings somehow clung stubbornly to his mind.

Before long, from the direction of the gate came the clacking sound of geta sandals.

"She’s back," Seikichi thought.

He wanted to see his wife’s face as soon as possible.
From her complexion alone, he would know what had transpired at Marumojiya.
The dread that his earlier imaginings might hold truth tormented him.

Whenever something troubled her, she would lose all expression, her facial skin appearing to thicken and harden.
Her eyes would stare rigidly forward, adopting an air of complete obliviousness to peripheral matters.

“It should be about time she comes in.”

Because his wife was slow to come up to the sitting room, he grew suspicious.

The sound of geta sandals grew quieter after passing through the gate—perhaps she was walking stealthily.
When he strained his ears, he detected someone rearranging straw mats and empty sacks in the shed.
Before long, Osato grunted to clear the phlegm lodged in her throat, and then the sound of her urinating reached him.

“She hid it,” Seikichi muttered inwardly.

His wife had indeed brought back the fabric rolls without returning them and hidden them under the straw mats or empty sacks in the shed, he thought.

He was well aware that when his wife’s heartbeat grew rapid, phlegm would accumulate in her throat, and she would try to clear it with those “Unn, unn!” grunts.

He thought he no longer needed to observe his wife’s gestures, complexion, or eyes.
He felt as though he understood everything.
But he tried not to let her know that and feigned a nonchalant air.
And he tried to remain as indifferent as possible to what she had done.
But his nerves were unconsciously drawn to his wife’s every move and gesture.
After finishing urinating, Osato went to the shed again and busied herself furtively.
And after a while, she entered the kitchen.

Seikichi closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.
The wife put the cloth-wrapped bundle in a corner and went outside.

At lunchtime, she returned with the children.

“Mom, what’d you buy?”

The children, clinging insistently to their mother, hurried to see what she had bought.
“Here, this one.”
“Where’s mine?”

“This one’s for Oshina…”
“And this one’s for Kimi…”

Osato opened only one side of the cloth bundle to show the fabric rolls to her daughters.
Seikichi kept his gaze deliberately averted.

“Mom! Where’re my corduroy tabi socks?”
“Where’s mine?” Tomokichi screeched.

“Oh—I forgot.”
Osato flinched. “I forgot them.”
“I’ll get them next time!”

“Ugh! That’s no good!”
“You bought heaps for Sis and nothing for me!”
“I want those corduroy tabi socks today or never!”

“I’ll buy them for you tomorrow.”

“Ugh! If it’s not today, I won’t have them!”
Tomokichi struck the mother with both small hands.

“Alright, alright. Then we’ll do just that.”
“I’ll go to the new shop—or somewhere—tonight and get them for you.”

From midday onward, while Osato was away in the fields for her first day of farm work—carrying sake and pine branches—Seikichi crawled out of bed and quietly opened the cloth bundle.

At first, the fabric rolls were wrapped exactly as they had been when borrowed.
Judging by their value, there was no way this much could have been bought with ten yen.
Yet that what he had assumed was hidden under the shed’s straw mats now lay in the kitchen where anyone might see it struck Seikichi as somehow suspicious.

He took out the two bolts of fabric that were supposed to be returned from the cloth-wrapped bundle and hid them under his futon mattress. After removing the fabric, he carefully retied the cloth-wrapped bundle exactly as it had been.

It was unthinkable that his wife could have had money he didn’t know about. However, even if she was simple and guileless, he couldn’t believe she would calmly leave stolen items lying around in the kitchen.

“It couldn’t have been stolen.
“It was bought.”

He tried saying that to himself. By saying that, even if they were stolen items, it was as though they had miraculously become purchased ones.

Both inside the house and out on the street, everything lay hushed and utterly still, as befitted the New Year.
The cold bit fiercely, yet not a breath of wind stirred.
Normally he could sprawl out and sleep soundly, but now Seikichi found himself unable to settle into slumber.
He slung a padded jacket over his nightclothes and stepped outside.
The New Year pine decorations stood mute sentinel by the gate.
Before them lay offerings of buckwheat noodles and rice.
The ice in the hand-washing basin remained frozen solid.

When he peered into the neighboring house from outside, not a single human voice could be heard; it lay hushed and utterly still. Only the chickens were busily pecking at their feed. Everything was unchanged from usual. But he couldn’t settle, the fabric weighing on his mind.

He circled around the house and went into the shed to look.
The straw mats that had been neatly folded into fours and tightly stacked were now scattered in disarray.
The empty sacks had shifted two or three feet from where they had originally been placed.

"So she hid it once under here and then took it out again."
He turned his attention to such a place.
"It’s because people are more likely to notice a place like this."

The cold sent shivers across his skin.
He went back inside the house and tried to get into bed.
Then he saw that the futon was unnaturally raised.

“I can’t leave it here!”
“They’ll find out immediately!”
“The vital thing is to hide this properly.”

He looked around the room. Where should I hide it now? In the sliding door compartment attached to the outer wall—when he closed the two doors, there remained just enough of a gap. He took the fabric rolls from beneath the futon and, using a ruler, pushed them into the roughly two-inch space to avoid pinching his hands. He shoved them in until they hit the back of the compartment.

“Now I can breathe easy!” For an instant, he felt this way.

He was indeed suffering from neurasthenia. When he lay down on the bed, he wished that ten years might suddenly vanish. He wanted to forget everything. He couldn’t stop worrying about his wife having stolen the fabric rolls. It seemed as though a flaw had appeared in his wife, who had until now been perfect, and he couldn’t shake the thought from his mind.

He knew now that he couldn’t survive on honesty alone.
While he worked to produce food for their table, someone was siphoning off its sweetness at his expense.
The fabric store too was one of those siphoning off that sweetness.
So it’s only fair we get our revenge too.
He had always carried such thoughts.
But whenever his wife did wrong by the fabric store, he couldn’t help fixating on it.

VI

After returning from the field, Osato, seemingly concerned about the fabric rolls, opened the furoshiki bundle to check.

“Oh!”
To her, the fabric rolls wrapped in the furoshiki seemed to shift.
“Those two bolts are gone!”

She looked around to see if they were nearby.
She searched the closet for storing futons, the shelves, and the drawers of the chest.
But they weren’t there.
She felt like she might have left them under the straw mat in the shed and forgotten about them.
She went to the shed and searched.
But even after searching, she could not find them.
She swayed as though the very structure of her brain had been overturned.
Everything appeared to scatter apart and whirl around chaotically.
She also felt like she might have taken them all the way to the storage shed.

“What’s going on?”

Even though she knew full well she had no memory of taking it to the storage shed, she relied on nothing but a desperate feeling and entered the dark, musty shed to search frantically.

“You! Did someone come while I was out?!”

Hesitantly, she went to Seikichi’s bedside and asked.

“No—
“No one came.”
Seikichi kept his eyes closed.

“Was it Kimi? Has Oshina come back?”

“No.”
“What’s the matter?”
Seikichi was thinking that she had indeed stolen them after all.

“It’s nothing.”

“You say it’s nothing? What’s the matter?”

As he spoke, a faint smile seemed to form around Seikichi’s lips.

“No, really—it’s nothing.”

Seikichi knew silence was wrong, yet he couldn’t admit he’d hidden it himself.
Osato wondered if Oshina or Kimi had taken them somewhere.
Seikichi often dozed so deeply he remained oblivious even when the children returned.
Perhaps one had gleefully carried them off without his notice; she went to fetch the children playing at the temple square.

“He already knows.”
“He knows?”
As she walked, the words slipped out unbidden.
And she jolted.

Oshina and Kimi were jumping rope with seven or eight other children.
They were shrieking and squealing with delight.
The two of them refused to come home even when Osato called.

“Hey! I need you here!”

“What?”

“There’s something I need!”
She put on a stern look.

The two daughters reluctantly followed their mother, looking back at the square as they went.
Osato asked about the fabric rolls as she walked.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”
Oshina said.

“That’s gone.”

“Why isn’t it here? I need that!”

“You didn’t take them anywhere, did you?”

“Hmm.—We haven’t been back home since noon!”

When she returned home, Osato sank down in the kitchen.
She turned pale and was trembling violently.
Oshina and Kimi were silently watching their mother’s face.
And both of them began trembling violently, as if infected by their mother’s shudders.

"He knows. He knows?"
Osato was thinking.
"He knows everything!
What should I do?…"

Seikichi closed his eyes and thought that he had to say something about this.
But how to say it—he was a bit at a loss.

“Mom, where are the corduroy tabi socks?”
Suddenly, Tomokichi came rushing in from outside.
“Where are the corduroy tabi socks?—I need the corduroy tabi socks!”

Osato did not respond.
She took out a futon from the closet, pulled it over her head, and buried her face in it.

“Corduroy tabi socks!”

From beneath the futon, instead of an answer to that, a sob was heard.

“Mom, what’s wrong?
“Mom!”
Oshina’s voice choked.
“What’s wrong?”

The sobbing had persisted unabated.

“Mom, what’s wrong! Hey, Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Mom!” “Dad!” “Dad!” Kimi started crying.

Seikichi remained silent.
His cheek jerked rigidly in a spasm.

(March 1923)