Pathway to Japanese Literature

I After seeing off their comrades of the same year who were returning to the homeland and coming back from the train station, they lay down on their bunks in the barracks and sighed deeply, not speaking for a long time. They would have to endure another year before they could return to the homeland. The two of them reflected on how tedious and interminable their past year in Siberia had been. After becoming second-year soldiers and working briefly at the garrison hospital, they had been dispatched to Siberia. Over a hundred same-year soldiers had sailed together by steamship from Tsuruga. When they arrived in Siberia, the fourth-year soldiers and some third-year soldiers who had been stationed there until then returned to the homeland.

Siberia was wrapped in snow as far as the eye could see. The river had frozen, and sleds pulled by packhorses passed over it. To avoid slipping on the ice, they put on winter boots with woolen cloth affixed to the soles, donned fur hats and coats, and ventured out into the open. Crows with white beaks gathered on the snow, busily pecking at something. When the snow melted, barren fields stretched endlessly in every direction, baring their raw earth. Herds of horses and cattle began wandering about, roaring and moaning. Before long, green buds sprouted from the roadside grass. Then across the distant grasslands and on this hill too, patches of green grass began appearing here and there. Within about a week, what had been completely barren grasslands turned entirely green—the grass sprouting lushly, trees extending their branches, geese and ducks crawling about everywhere. In summer, they moved with the infantry unit near the Russo-Chinese border. In October came clashes with the Red Guards. They withdrew from the front lines aboard an armored train.

The grasslands were blanketed in fog for about a week, so thick they couldn’t see even fifty meters ahead. They occupied a brick building on a certain hill that had formerly been a Russian military barracks, cleaned it, divided the rooms into smaller sections with wooden partitions to set up operating tables, brought in medical supplies, and hung a wooden placard labeled “Army Hospital” on the front.

In November, snow began to fall. The fallen snow did not melt, and upon it, more snow fell, piling up and piling ever higher. Along the path where coolies carried water up from the valley spring to the hospital, the spilled water froze. Since this happened daily, ice piled high on both sides of the path, stretching like mountain ranges. They lit the pechka and shut themselves indoors. The two of them reflected on the year that had passed. While witnessing soldiers who had been injured, had their legs or arms amputated, or were dying right before their eyes, they constantly thought of the homeland and waited for the day when replacement troops would arrive, allowing them to return.

The replacement troops arrived. It was exactly the same time of year when they had been dispatched and arrived the previous year. The fourth-year soldiers and the majority of the third-year soldiers were to return. However, among the third-year soldiers, only two had to be retained to mentor the second-year soldiers who had just completed their first-year training back in the homeland.

The Military Doctor and the Head Nurse consulted with each other. They wanted to send back the ill-natured, rough, and difficult-to-handle soldiers at this point. And so Yoshida and Komura—obedient, hardworking, and easy to handle—were ordered by the Military Doctor to remain.

II

No one wanted to stay long in Siberia. There was a man named Yashima—bold and fond of bloodshed—who would often brandish his bayonet to cut down Russians, and when there were no opponents, he amused himself by spearing wandering cows and pigs in the fields. He had a small mustache beneath his nose. “Things like this—you can’t do ’em once you’re back in the homeland, see.” “We’re gonna have ourselves a grand old time in lawless Siberia where there ain’t no rules or nothin’.”

He often confronted the Military Doctor and Head Nurse. There was even a time when he gripped a pistol and chased the Military Doctor around. He had apparently been infuriated by the Military Doctor’s demand for regular attendance. He took aim at the fleeing Military Doctor from behind and fired his pistol with a thunderous roar. The aim was off, and the bullet pierced the double-layered window glass. Everyone thought he would want to stay in Siberia.

“Whether we stay in Siberia one year or two—in the grand scheme of a whole lifetime, what’s the difference? It’s no big deal!” He made carefree remarks in front of everyone. However, when deciding on repatriates, the Military Doctor and Head Nurse had added Yashima’s name first and foremost. In other words, leaving behind those who brandished bayonets or fired pistols would be dangerous and troublesome.

There was a man named Fukuda who had volunteered to come to Siberia. Fukuda could speak a little Russian. He had volunteered to come to Siberia intending to practice Russian. He had a certain boldness, and once he started talking with Russians, he would set aside his work and engage in conversation for two or even three hours. His hope had been to return to the homeland once he had become sufficiently proficient in Russian.

However, Fukuda’s name was also clearly inscribed in the repatriation roster. There were still other such examples.

A man left the hospital without permission and stayed at a Russian’s house for three days. That constituted desertion, and desertion during wartime was punishable by execution. But by keeping that under wraps, the man managed to avoid punishment. However, as a substitute for that, both he and everyone else had steeled themselves for the likelihood that he would be kept there until becoming a fourth-year soldier. However, that man too was clearly listed as one of the repatriates.

And so, those left behind were Yoshida and Komura—two who worked diligently and were easy to manage.

Both of them had always strived under the belief that if they behaved obediently and worked diligently, they would be rewarded with an early return. Even when slightly under the weather or finding it burdensome, they forced themselves and did not neglect their duties.

And what they had gained as their reward was nothing more than having to remain in Siberia for another year—for the sake of their country. The two of them felt as if they had been ambushed; their chests churned so violently they couldn’t help but recklessly lash out at everything around them.

III As they waited for the train, Yashima said: “You’re all just fools in the end—if you wanna go home quick, do like I did! Anyone’d wanna keep sheep-like people who’ll obey quietly under ’em—ain’t it natural? But whether you stay in Siberia a year or two or not, in the long run of a lifetime, it’s all the same damn thing. Well, take care of yourselves.”

Listening to this, Yoshida and Komura were both listless. What were their same-year comrades doing now that they had already returned to the homeland? And how was that girl who’d been there before their enlistment faring these days? Who would come to meet them? They had clean forgotten about the prostitute they’d been so eager to visit until just recently, and instead kept talking incessantly about those things. “When I get home, I’m gonna get myself a wife right away.” Fukuda, who had volunteered to come to Siberia, was now hurrying to return to the homeland.

“Who cares if I don’t understand Russian anymore—if I take over my old man’s business, I won’t starve. I’m sick of this Siberia where you could get killed by partisans any day.” The two alone had been excluded from those returning home and now huddled in a corner of the waiting room. They had never been comrades who got along well from the start. Komura was timid—he reliably did what others told him but never took initiative. Yoshida was pushy. But being good-natured meant his meddling inevitably left him shouldering responsibilities. When together, Yoshida always decided matters his way. He put on adult airs. This secretly grated on Komura. Yet now they both sensed they must stay on good terms. Even dislikes had to be endured. They were the only same-year soldiers left. For the coming year, they’d need to rely on each other to survive.

“Well, thanks for making a special trip to see us off.”

When the train arrived, those returning home, carrying backpacks stuffed with rare souvenirs, pushed their way into the train cars ahead of others. There, they took their seats, removed their winter caps, and pressed their faces against the glass windows.

There was no platform raised one step above the tracks. The two of them stood between the tracks and looked up at the large train. From inside the windows, those returning each laughed and said something. However, when the two of them tried to laugh in response, their cheeks stiffly contorted for some reason, and they felt on the verge of tears. The two of them, not wanting to be seen making such faces, stayed silent and sullen.

……The train began to move.

The faces that had been peering out from the windows quickly pulled back.

The two of them could do nothing as what they had been holding back—the urge to cry—now flooded their faces all at once.……

“Hey, let’s head back to the hospital.” Yoshida said. “Mmm.”

Komura’s voice whimpered weakly. As if rebelling against this, Yoshida— “Let’s race to that bridge.” “Mmm.” Komura spoke in his usual voice. “Ready, one, two, three!” With Yoshida taking the lead, the two ran about a hundred meters, but before they were even halfway to the bridge, their enthusiasm drained away and they stopped. The two of them dragged their heavy legs back to the hospital. For five or six days, they left all their duties entirely to the second-year soldiers and slept soundly in the barracks.

IV

“Hey, let’s go rabbit hunting.”

It was Yoshida who said this. "Are there even any rabbits around here?"

Komura pulled the blanket up over his nose and was sleeping. "They’re there… Look, they’re scampering around right there."

Yoshida pointed outside the window. He had been lying on his stomach, watching the hill in the distance through the double-paned window for some time now. The hill undulated, stretching all the way to the distant mountains. On the hill, here and there were clumps of grass, clusters of shrubs, and mounds where small stones had been gathered into piles. They were now covered in snow, rendered uniformly white and indistinguishable. Apparently, the rabbits would scamper out from around where the grass clumps had been, disappear into the snow, and after a while, emerge again from another spot, darting about. Those large ears were the first thing that caught the eye. But unless you paid close attention, they looked just like the snow and were impossible to distinguish.

“There they are.” Yoshida whispered urgently. “They’re ping-ponging around.” “Where…?” Komura lumbered up and came to the window. “You can’t even see them.” “Look closely. They’re hopping around.” “…There, they’re running toward that pile of stones.” “You can see their long ears, right?”

Both of them had grown tired of sleeping. Even so, their duties felt so idiotic that they couldn’t bring themselves to take them seriously. Had the soldiers from their cohort who had returned home reached Tsuruga by now? Their term of service would soon be up, and they’d be going home! The two of them had been thinking of nothing but such things. The night before boarding the ship to Siberia, they had stayed overnight in Tsuruga. They recalled the events of that night. That port town was remembered with nostalgic brilliance. How many years had they gone without seeing the sea! The two of them felt that since coming to Siberia, it had already been over three years—no, it felt like five. Why was it necessary to send soldiers to Siberia and keep pushing on like this? The soldiers were killing Russians and being killed by Russians. If they’d never started sending troops to Siberia in the first place, we wouldn’t have been held back in a place like this even after becoming third-year soldiers.

The two of them regretted how earnest and docile they had been until now. They had to start acting recklessly, doing exactly as they pleased—otherwise they’d be getting the short end of the stick. They’d live out the coming year exactly as they pleased. They had been thinking that way.

Yoshida put on winter gear, gripped a rifle loaded with bullets, and ran out of the barracks. “Hey, is it okay to use live ammunition to shoot rabbits?” Komura voiced his concern while putting on winter gear like Yoshida. “Who cares!” “I wonder if Bu—the Head Nurse—will get angry...” Though guns and live ammunition had been distributed to the hospital too, their use was strictly prohibited except during emergencies. The term “emergency” specifically referred to situations like enemy attacks.

Yoshida went out regardless. Komura—feeling that things would work out later—likewise took his rifle and followed after Yoshida.

Yoshida jumped over the hospital yard’s fence, walked twenty or thirty paces, then stopped and pulled the trigger. He had often gone deer hunting in the homeland. He had grown accustomed to firing a hunting rifle. To fire an infantry rifle at targets required calmness—taking careful aim before pulling the trigger—but in hunting, there was no time for such luxuries. The target was an animal fleeing for its life. He had to aim in an instant and fire. He had grown accustomed to firing the instant he positioned the rifle in his hands—and that had been enough to hit his mark consistently.

No sooner had a gunshot, like those heard in battle, rang out than the rabbit arced through the air about six feet high and leapt away. There had definitely been a solid kick.

“Got it! Got it!” Yoshida lowered his rifle, glanced back at Komura with a quick eye signal, and dashed forward.

There lay the rabbit, entrails exposed, staining the snow crimson like a child sprawled in blood. "I can shoot too, you know." "Wonder if another'll show up somewhere." Komura's competitive spirit surged.

“There are some. I saw two or three of them.” They climbed a hill, descended into a valley, then climbed up the next hill. In a slightly sunken part of the land along the way, there was a cluster of bushes. As soon as they crunched through the snow and reached it, a long-eared creature leaped out from the base of the bushes ahead. The one who first spotted it was Yoshida. “Hey, let me shoot—hey!...” Komura stopped his friend’s raised rifle.

“Think you can handle it?” “You bet I can.”

Komura took more time than Yoshida to set his aim. But the bullet did not miss. The rabbit leaped another ten to eighteen feet through the air before collapsing.

Five

The two secretly took out the live ammunition stored in the warehouse. They each stashed about ten rounds in their pockets and headed out to the hills every day. On their return, they always came back with game. “At this rate, we’ll wipe out Siberia’s rabbits.” Yoshida would say things like that.

But when they went out the next day, the rabbits—startled by the crunch of their boots in the snow—would lower their long ears and leap out from the grass. Whenever they found prey, they never let it escape.

“You all—where’d you manage to get these bullets?” The Head Nurse, neglecting her duties, implicitly tried to keep the two men—who were engrossed in hunting—from leaving the hospital grounds. “I got them from the regiment,” Yoshida said. “Partisans have been prowling around lately! Don’t go blundering into dangerous areas!” “If partisans show up, we’ll shoot ’em down like rabbits.”

Winter deepened. The two would go out hunting to vent their frustrations and stave off boredom. The rabbit footprints gradually became fewer. Over the snow trampled by their boots, fresh snow fell as if flattening it smooth. However, new footprints were hardly left there anymore. “At this rate, we’ll wipe out Siberia’s rabbits.” The two laughed at that. Day by day, they ventured farther—crossing distant hills, traversing valleys, climbing mountains, slipping through the barbed wire of the regiment’s security perimeter to push into areas beyond. The snow was deep, reaching knee- to waist-deep. They found this amusing and kicked through the snow as they strode broadly.

The game gradually grew fewer. There were times when it took half a day just to bag one each. At such times, on their way back, the two would turn around halfway up the mountain and recklessly fire all their remaining bullets aimlessly into the sky.

One day, the two slipped through the barbed wire and descended into a valley. From the valley, they now climbed to the next mountain. As far as they could see, there was nothing but snow. The sun hung pale and weak, the wind stilled, leaving only the crunch of their boots through the snow to reach their ears. The town where the regiment was stationed and the hill with the hospital were both blocked from view by the mountains behind them. After walking along the mountain ridge for a while, they found themselves descending into the next valley. In the valley lay a marsh. It had welled up through the ice. On the far side of the marsh, a few houses could be seen half-buried in snow.

The two had not yet shot down a single piece of game. Once, they had flushed out a long-eared one, but both missed their shots. They tracked and searched the area where it had fled and hidden, but no matter what, the rabbit never showed its ears again. “Let’s go back.” Komura stopped in his tracks, unnerved by the presence of unfamiliar houses. “Going back without a single one? — I won’t have it.” Yoshida trudged down toward the marsh. Komura reluctantly followed after his friend.

The valley was deep. In the valley, there was a river flowing into the marsh, and it appeared to be frozen. And the river entered the marsh, then seemed to flow out from it and continue downward.

As they descended, suddenly, a large rabbit leaped out from beneath their feet. The two instinctively regripped their rifles and fired. The rabbit was shot down before it could get even a dozen meters away. The two men's bullets had likely struck almost simultaneously. The endearing creature had been struck by bullets meant for humans, its long-eared head mercilessly torn from its body. It was likely that the two bullets had struck its neck about an inch apart.

The two rested there awhile, placing before them the prey whose blood dripped and froze across the snow. They were tired, and their throats had gone dry.

“Let’s go back.” Komura urged.

“No—let’s go check out that marsh up ahead.”

“No—I’m going back.” “It’s practically right there!”

With that, Yoshida—carrying the prey still dripping blood—briefly glanced back at the mountain they had descended as he stood up.

“Oh—!”

He involuntarily let out a cry of shock.

Until they had descended, the mountain—where nothing but snow had stretched as far as the eye could see, without a single dog or person in sight—now stood a brown-bearded Russian man in a fur coat, holding a gun and looking down at them from above. That was either a bandit or—no, without a doubt, a partisan.

Komura’s legs went as if paralyzed; he couldn’t stand up. “Hey, let’s get out of here!” Yoshida said. “Wait a second!”

Komura’s legs simply wouldn’t hold him up.

“There’s nothing to fear.” “It’ll be fine.” Yoshida said. “Come near us and I’ll put a bullet through your skull.”

But he panicked and tried to flee. They had thought this mountainside held no houses—that their escape route lay open—yet right there beneath the snow crouched six or seven dwellings. There could be no doubt these were Russian homes. The Russians on the mountain scattered. Soon they closed in from all sides, encircling the two men.

Yoshida took his rifle and began firing at the approaching men. Komura also took up his rifle. However, unlike when shooting rabbits—when they could fire with something akin to a smile, carefree and effortless—now they could not. Even when they took aim, their hands trembled, and their rifles wouldn’t obey as intended. The fewer than ten bullets were soon gone. The two men swung up their rifles and tried to strike the approaching bastards, but soon strong men who had gathered from all sides grabbed their arms and wrested away their rifles.

Yoshida was pinned down by a young man reeking of burlap sack stench, his breath nearly stopping.

A sturdy old man with large, intensely gleaming eyes issued a command in a resonant voice to the men restraining the two. The young man pinning Yoshida down gave the old man a brief reply. Yoshida was made to stand up. The old man approached the two men—held immobile by seven or eight unyielding hands—and fixed them with an insistent gaze that brooked no evasion as he questioned them in Russian.

Yoshida and Komura did not understand Russian. However, through the old man’s gaze and gestures, they discerned he suspected they had come to gather intelligence and was attempting to interrogate them about how many Japanese soldiers were currently stationed in the town. Even while this was happening, Japanese soldiers might come swarming down from the mountain. The old man even seemed to pay attention to such matters. Yoshida said in halting Russian, “Neponimayu” (I don’t understand).

The old man stared fixedly at the two with an insistent gaze for some time. The young man wearing a navy cap interjected something. “Neponimayu.” Yoshida repeated. “Neponimayu.” The tone had, without his realizing it, taken on a pleading quality. The old man said something to the young men. Then the young men set about stripping them of everything—from their winter uniforms down to their military-issue shirts, long johns, boots, and even their socks. ……The two men were stripped naked and made to stand in the snow. The two men realized they themselves were about to be shot dead. A few of the young men were methodically going through the pockets of the stripped military uniforms. The other two young men, holding rifles, began moving a short distance away.

Yoshida thought that that guy was going to kill them. Then, involuntarily, in the Russian he’d picked up, he cried out: “Help! Help!” But the words he remembered were not accurate. The words he had meant as “Help!” (*Spasite*) came out sounding like “Thank you” (*Spasibo*).

The Russians showed no sign of heeding the two men’s pleas. The old man’s fierce eyes grew indifferent toward the two men.

The two young men who had gone to the other side raised their guns. Yoshida, who until then had been standing quietly on the snow, suddenly broke into a run forward. Then, Komura also started running after him.

“Help!”

“Help!” “Help!”

The two men ran across the snow as they shouted. But to the Russians, the two men’s cries—

“*Thank you!*” “*Thank you!*”

“Thank you!” sounded like "Thank you!"

……Soon, two gunshots resounded through the valley.

The old man made the young men gather the rifles, military uniforms, winter gear, boots, and other items wrested from the two men, then withdrew toward the house buried in snow. “Hey, don’t forget that headless rabbit too!”

VI

On the third day, when they were finally discovered by a full complement of officers and soldiers from two companies, the two men lay frozen with their bodies still retaining the color of living flesh. On their backs was only a wound no larger than a fingertip. Their faces bore expressions as though calling out to something, stiffened with eyes wide open.

“I warned them beforehand—if they hadn’t gone out rabbit hunting, this never would’ve happened!” The Head Nurse stood before the two men surrounded by the crowd of soldiers and spoke as if he bore no responsibility himself. He did not consider that if he had simply sent them back with the other third-year soldiers, none of this would have happened!

He was thinking that he had to draft a report explaining the loss of two weapons and two sets of equipment. (March 1927)