Pathway to Japanese Literature

*The Old Couple*

I

The four long-awaited years passed for Tamekichi and Oshika.
Therefore, their only son Seizo was supposed to graduate from Higher Commercial School.
The couple had poured their meager property into their son’s school expenses and endured every possible hardship.
However, just as graduation approached, Seizo sent a letter saying that since the Higher Commercial School had been upgraded to a university, he wanted to stay enrolled for another year to earn his bachelor’s degree.
Once again, Oshika’s grumbling was repeated.

“I told you from the start—once he finished elementary school, I said we shouldn’t send him further! But you kept pushing and pushing, and now see what’s come of it!”
“There’s no mending this!”

It was around mid-February.
The storm sweeping down from the valley was cold.
Saving firewood and working through the night without lighting the hearth, Oshika reproached her husband Tamekichi.

Oshika held the stubborn belief that academic pursuits harmed one’s health.
When Seizo graduated from elementary school, she had insisted that health should come first—that they shouldn’t send him to middle school but instead make him establish the family as farmers.
However, Tamekichi had discerned that from this point onward, farmers with just five or six tan of fields could never make ends meet.
About twenty years prior, their lives had not been so bad, but as the years passed into recent times, the lives of farmers had grown increasingly harsh.
Despite prices continuing to rise ever higher, agricultural products did not increase proportionally.
If possible, he hadn’t wanted to make his son a farmer.
He had thought it might be good to let him have a bit of education.

Seizo persistently wanted to attend middle school.
Then finally, without even informing Oshika, he went to take the entrance exam in a town about two ri away.
When he passed, he stubbornly began commuting.
His grades were excellent.

After graduating middle school, he once again enrolled in Higher Commercial School through a school recommendation, nearly without permission.
Oshika grumbled complaints, but even though their son wouldn't obey his parents' instructions, they couldn't simply cast him aside.
He was their irreplaceable son.
After all, he was their only child who would need to care for them in their old age.

However, yet again, he was saying that he wanted to stay enrolled for another year.
Their savings had long since been exhausted, and nearly all their fields had been mortgaged against debts.
Oshika laid into her husband, declaring that all of this had ultimately happened because Tamekichi had initially let slip remarks about wanting to send their son to school.

“Now, don’t go on like that.”
“Once he starts earning money proper-like, he’ll pay back the debts and we’ll finally get some rest.”
Tamekichi said this and continued twisting the rope.

“As if that’ll ever happen!”

“Kenyan said that nowadays, if you graduate from Higher Commercial when the economy’s good, you can make a heap of money.”

They lowered the lamp wick, making the light small enough to just barely discern their surroundings as they worked.
Even so, the kerosene they’d bought—a full sho of it—was gone in no time.
During their night work, the lamp would often sizzle with a jiji-jiji sound before eventually going out.

“Dammit! Shit!
“Damn thing went out.”
Oshika said this as if even the lamp had drawn her ire.

“We’re out of kerosene already?!”

“There’s still some! When you’re poor, even the kerosene runs out quick.” Oshika said harshly.

“In that case, bring me the earthenware vessel.”

“Yeah, yeah.”
Oshika took down an earthenware vessel from the household altar, poured in seed oil, and lit the lamp’s wick.

The couple continued their night work for a while longer by that light.

Then, from the kitchen came a clattering sound.

“Shit!”
Oshika turned around.
In the darkness, two yellow orbs glowed.
The cat, having been discovered, let out a bewildered cry.
It was a stray cat that had been trying to knock off the rice tub lid with its nose.
As Oshika, wearied by the cold, didn’t go to chase it away, the cat once again clattered the lid.

“Damn it!
That damn cat came to eat our rice!”
Oshika shouted and gave chase.
When the cat saw someone coming, it suddenly jumped down to the dirt floor and crawled under the floorboards.
And then, it cried as if seeking something.

Oshika placed a weight stone on the rice tub lid and returned to the threadbare zabuton cushion.
Eventually, the cat crawled out from under the floorboards and drifted through the kitchen.
When it found no food, it went to the cooking hearth and began pattering about.

“Damn it!” Oshika stood up again and went after it.
“That damn cat licked up the miso soup left in the pot—about a bowl’s worth!”

“Let it have just a bowl of miso soup.”

“It’ll get used to it!
These days you don’t even bother to fix a sagging roof or crumbling walls, yet that damn cat keeps crawlin’ in through the holes!”

Even as she said such things, Oshika resented that they couldn’t repair their house because they needed money for Seizo’s education.

“Let’s just make him quit school today and be done with it,” she repeated. “I told ya from the start not to do it, but you went and started this without thinkin’—look where it’s got us! Now he says he’ll keep at it another year… That boy can’t see past his nose to spare a thought for what we’re sufferin’ now—or what’s still comin’!”

“If we go makin’ him quit halfway now, he’ll end up half-baked—and all the money we’ve scraped together so far’ll be wasted.”

“Then you go on and work by yourself!”
“I’m past fifty now—workin’ day and night’s somethin’ I won’t have!”

“Oh, I’ll do the night work alone then.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m sleepy.”

Tamekichi remained calm and patient through it all.
From early morning until late at night, they worked in the fields, and in the evenings, they never failed to do their night work.
For they wanted to reduce their debt by even a single sen.

Though Oshika kept grumbling under her breath, whenever Tamekichi continued working through the night, she never left him to it and went to bed.

Outside, a valley storm scattered oak leaves across the ground.
Cold wind seeped through cracks in doors and walls.
The couple finally stopped working near midnight.

The cat kept prowling the dirt floor and under the floorboards even after they slept.
No matter how often they chased it away, it refused to leave outside.
The inside must have felt warmer regardless... Just as they were drifting off, the Minorca hen in the makeshift coop at the dirt floor's corner suddenly began clattering noisily.

“That damn cat’s after the chickens now.”

Oshika got up in her nightclothes and struck a match.
“What do you think’s gonna happen if you don’t fix that wall?!”

II

Despite their awkward arguments about their son, whenever they received a letter from him expressing filial concern or saw his face during summer visits, they would suddenly forget all their hardships and rejoice as if none had ever existed.
At first, Seizo helped draw water from the pond and picked adzuki bean pods in the fields during summer breaks.
But as he advanced through school years—gradually transforming into someone urbane and polished, until even his parents perceived him as acquiring refined qualities—Oshika began feeling it wasteful to assign him farmwork.
The couple found joy in their son's rising distinction.
Through this, their accumulated struggles felt nearly redeemed.
Even when extending his studies by another year, they couldn't help finding solace in believing it meant their son was growing that much more accomplished.

“Sei, where’s this here book from?”
Tamekichi spread open his son’s book—which he couldn’t read—and turned the pages as if it were his own.
To him, the fact that Seizo knew all sorts of difficult things and could read abstruse foreign books brought joy—as if he himself had gained those very abilities.
And whenever he had time, he would go over to Seizo and strike up a conversation.

“German.”

“...Even among German books, this’un must be right difficult.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can Sei talk with Chinese folks too?”
Oshika also cheerfully spoke up.
Seizo had returned from seawater bathing and was taking out his books.

“I can.”

“Then how d’ya say ‘good morning’—?”

“...”

“How d’ya say ‘eat your meal’—what’s that?”

“Tch!”
“Shut up, old woman!”

“Can’t ya at least hear me out?”
Oshika admonished.

“Enough! Shut your mouth!”

“Oh, saying such things to your parents—divine punishment will strike you.”
Oshika kept on with the laundry.

Seizo was gazing at his book.
However, after a while, he started complaining of a headache.

“See there? That’s divine punishment.”
Oshika laughed.

But Seizo’s headache gradually worsened.
He also seemed to have a fever.
Oshika promptly brought out the Toyama patent medicine.

Seizo’s fever did not subside.
Not only that—it rapidly rose higher.
It was typhoid fever.

She didn’t want to send her son to the isolation ward.
Because it seemed that once he went there, he would never return alive.
After repeatedly pleading with the doctor, she finally managed to have him convalesce at home.

The high fever persisted for a long time and would not easily subside.
Tamekichi and Oshika abandoned their fieldwork and devoted themselves to nursing their son.
Nephew Kōkichi rode his bicycle twice a day to the town about four kilometers away to fetch ice.

Oshika stayed by Seizo’s side for about two weeks without sleeping even at night.
Having invested so much money already, they were determined to preserve his life at all costs.
Though never spoken aloud, this awareness certainly existed within both Oshika and Tamekichi.
They spared no effort for their son’s sake, no matter what it required.
Dissatisfied with just the village doctor and anxious, they summoned a physician from town too.
The physician came daily by motorcycle.
Each house call cost five yen.

The crisis was finally weathered and passed.
However, Seizo had to subsist on nothing but rice porridge and eggs for a long time.
The eggs from their chickens weren't enough, so Oshika went to buy some in the neighborhood.
The meager amount of rice they had kept, anticipating that market prices would rise at the end of the season, was already half eaten.
Even so, when Oshika saw Seizo off to Tokyo in early October after he had recovered his health, she felt relieved as if she herself had been saved.
All they had to do was wait until March of the following year.
Seizo would take care of the debts and everything else...

Tamekichi was sixty, and Oshika was fifty-four.
The couple had grown old and weary from years of hardship.
Their mountains and rice fields had been mortgaged, and the interest on their debt kept chasing them relentlessly.
The estate they had kept until last and even the nearby fields had to be mortgaged because of Seizo’s illness.

Seizo was supposed to have his employment secured before graduation.
The couple waited in eager anticipation for news from their son.
They imagined and discussed Tokyo, which they had yet to see, speculating that he would likely enter a major company.
Before long, they might also be able to go to Tokyo.

On a day in mid-March, Oshika returned from the fields a step ahead of Tamekichi to prepare dinner.
Then through a tear in the shoji screen at the entrance came a letter from their son.
She promptly opened the envelope.
Oshika could not read the characters.
But for some reason feeling nostalgic she brought the letter the son had written in ink on ruled paper to her nose and sniffed.
She thought she could smell Seizo's scent.
When Tamekichi returned shortly after she immediately showed him the letter.

Tamekichi crouched before the stove and tried to read it by the firelight, but his aged eyes couldn’t make it out.
He crawled up into the tatami room with his dirt-covered feet and turned up the lamp’s flame.

“Anything good written there?”
Oshika sidled up beside Tamekichi and asked.

“What’s it sayin’?”

But Tamekichi silently read it twice over.
No smile appeared.

"What's it say?"

"He says he needs a new Western suit made for working at the company."
Tamekichi looked displeased.

"We've been making clothes all this time!"

"Those were school clothes."

"So now he needs money again?"

"Hmm."

"How much's he asking for?"

"Says he needs about a hundred fifty yen."

"A hundred fifty yen!"
Oshika was stunned.
"Where would we get that kind of money?!
"There's nothing left in this house anymore!"

“If he doesn’t have a suit, he can’t go to company… This is a real problem!”
Tamekichi limply hung his head.

III

Three years after graduating, Seizo acquired a house in Tokyo.
He married the daughter of a Reserve Army Colonel connected to the company.

Tamekichi and Oshika had aged enough to be rightly called "old man" and "old woman."
They no longer had the vigor for fieldwork or night work like in days gone by.

Even when debt demons took their ancestral fields, Oshika did not complain.
After graduating, Seizo neither earned the money the couple had counted on nor sent them any.
Yet Oshika voiced no complaints.
She still waited, clinging to the hope that her son would someday rise to greatness.

About a year later, the couple left the countryside and moved to Tokyo.

The village farmers envied Tamekichi.
Spending their whole lives stuck in the village, cutting wheat the same way every year and weeding rice paddies under the scorching sun was no easy matter.
The valley’s soil was barren; even with double the effort, the harvest was never enough.
The villagers had to work relentlessly with hoes in hand until they grew old and entered their graves.
How much better it might be to go to the city and live comfortably eating rice every day.

The couple had no attachment to the countryside.
They resolutely gave away their well-worn old tools, tattered rags, and stored-up firewood to relatives and neighbors.

“You’re off to a fine place, I hear. Splendid for you.” The neighbor who had received the old winnowing baskets and buckets said enviously.
“We should’ve put our assets into makin’ our kid successful too.”
“Then we wouldn’t’ve had to keep bein’ farmers like this forever!”

“Should we give ’em this hoe?—Ain’t like we’ll be usin’ it anymore.”
Tamekichi brought out an old hoe from the corner of the storehouse.

“Just leave that be.”
The old woman was reluctant to part with anything that might be worth money.

“We can’t be takin’ this stuff to Tokyo, and even if we said to leave it with relatives, it’d just be a bother for ’em to keep!”

“Even if we leave it, might still come in handy someday.”

“...Once we’re in Tokyo, we ain’t wearin’ these grubby handwoven stripes no more.”
Tamekichi was imagining the beautiful, uncluttered life in Tokyo.

“You make it sound so simple, but every single one of these was bought with money everyone scraped together.”

The old man paid no heed to Oshika’s protests and gave away even the sieves and secondhand hoes to the neighbors and relatives who had helped them over the years.

An aged stray cat had crept into the open cupboard and was devouring dried sardines.

“Oh! That sly devil’s gone and riled us up good!”
The old woman, even upon finding it, did not try to scoldingly chase it away as she once had.

It was one evening in late February when the couple arrived at Tokyo Station, led by Seizo who had transformed into a respectable gentleman sporting a camel-hair overcoat. The snow that had begun falling around Gotemba had grown heavier. Seizo hired an automobile in front of the station. Tamekichi and Oshika, jostled about in their first-ever automobile ride, stole glances at the face of the daughter-in-law sitting beside Seizo. The daughter-in-law seemed to bear a slight resemblance to the female clerk who had worked at the country post office. The clerk had been a woman with large, showy yet well-proportioned features, though she always spoke in a coquettish manner. She had barked harshly and been unkind to the elderly and children, but for some reason had shown relative kindness to Tamekichi too on those occasions when he went to send money to Seizo.

The couple each kept the handbaskets they had brought from the countryside on their laps.

“Just leave those down below.”

When they got into the automobile, Seizo said that to his parents.
However, they refused to let go of their handbaskets, as if leaving them below would result in theft.

“I’ll carry it.”
The daughter-in-law, seeing that, reached out her hand.

“No need for that, ma’am.”
Oshika deliberately used overly polite language.

“You must be tired from the trip.
I’ll carry it.”

“No need for that, ma’am.”
Oshika stiffened and refused to let go of the handbasket.
Tamekichi was unsure what words to use.

Before long, they arrived at the house in the suburbs.

It was a new two-story house.
Electric lights were glowing inside.
It was completely different in appearance from their cluttered, haphazard rural house.
Oshika was perplexed about where to take off and leave her next pair of tabi socks.

“I wonder if that trunk we sent from Kobe won’t get stolen?”
After drinking a cup of tea, Oshika asked Seizo.

Seizo gave a wry smile as he glanced toward his wife,

“You don’t need to worry so damn much!” he said bitterly.

“The luggage will be brought over for you, Grandma.”
The daughter-in-law laughed as if unable to contain her amusement.

Four

The daughter-in-law’s name was Sonoko.
The first impression they had received was not mistaken.
That had not been a favorable impression for the old couple.

At the station, as they stepped off the train onto the platform and walked hesitantly among the hurried disembarking passengers rushing toward the exit, a youthfully dressed woman—who still did not look entirely unlike a young girl—appeared from somewhere and began speaking to Seizo as if about to grasp his hand.
Seizo momentarily seemed to forget he was with the old couple, his attention wholly captured by the woman.
Tamekichi and Oshika stood behind Seizo, waiting for the conversation to end.
The young woman, while speaking, cast a gaze that was both scornful and probing several times at the old couple.
Then Seizo turned toward the elderly couple.
The woman’s face momentarily flooded with revulsion, but suddenly becoming aware of it, she tried to conceal it—

“Welcome,” she said with a bow.
That was Sonoko.

The couple felt their daughter-in-law belonged to a world entirely separate from the one they had known.
The post office clerk had been the village headman's daughter - a woman who scorned rural ways and favored city tastes.
Though they'd occasionally seen her in their village, she'd remained unapproachable - now, without conscious effort, the couple immediately associated her with that very woman.

When their daughter-in-law was near, they found themselves unable to speak freely even between themselves.
They grew convinced their odd country dialect might draw mockery.

Just as the female clerk had been kind only to Tamekichi, Sonoko was excessively polite toward the couple.
However, they could not accept that her strained, unapproachable politeness stemmed from genuine feelings.

“We should buy Grandma a kimono.”

“She doesn’t need a kimono.”

“But that striped pattern of hers…”

Sonoko was worried about the old woman’s kimono.
The rural striped pattern of the old woman’s kimono, stained with grime as she worked within her line of sight, seemed to bother her.
When her own affairs were discussed, the old woman’s ears naturally grew sharper.
Just then, she had finished cleaning the second-floor veranda and, still holding a bucket filled with dirty water, was gazing over the roof at the large neighboring mansion where they were replanting trees.
Sonoko, apparently under the assumption that the old woman had already gone downstairs, seemed to have consulted Seizo.

“It’s because we look so ridiculous that she’s laughing at us.”
The old woman grew suspicious.
“It’s because we’re wearing such musty hand-woven stripes.”

The old man sat idly in the four-and-a-half-mat room assigned to them downstairs.

"But even so, we ain't got any better clothes than this,... She ain't laughin' at ours—she's laughin' at yours, I tell ya."

"Ours was still bought proper," he said.
The old man examined his own kimono.
It was a lined pattern bought at the village fabric store some fifteen years back—considered right decent in its day.
But now it'd gone all rustic and old-fashioned.
It weren't much different from the old woman's hand-woven stripes.

“Ain’t there a better one?”

“There ain’t any! We ain’t made a single kimono these past ten years!”
The old woman opened the trunk and looked inside.

As for silk garments, there were only two or three pieces of Morimura and Chichibu.
Those too were old-fashioned rustic patterns.
Apart from those, there were cotton striped fabrics mended with patches, red-cotton under-kimonos, and patches.
They had brought these garments thinking they might wear them, but fearing the daughter-in-law would see and laugh at them, they pushed everything deep into the trunk.

The old woman did almost all the work from cleaning indoors to cooking by herself.
When Sonoko woke up in the morning, she would sit before her mirror stand before meals and thickly apply white powder to her face.
After finishing serving Seizo his breakfast, she would retreat to the second-floor room, idly flipping through magazines or scribbling something.
But mostly she lay about listlessly asleep.
And when it neared around five o'clock, the time when the company let out, she would suddenly rise, fix her hair, wash her face and ears thoroughly with soap, and apply makeup.
And then, with her sleeves tied back, she would set about preparing dinner.
When the daughter-in-law began working, the old woman too somehow found herself unable to stay still and headed over to the kitchen.

“You should rest.
“I will do it.”
Sonoko said.

“Mm.”

“Please do rest. You must be cold.”

“Mm.” The old woman built up the fire and washed pots.
She washed the dirty dishes and peeled potatoes still caked with soil.
She wiped the corners of the cupboard and the grimy wooden floor.
She found nothing painful about doing such things.
She wanted to work because idling about felt wasteful.
However, she couldn’t figure out how to say this to her daughter-in-law; afraid her country dialect might slip out, she could only mutter “Mm” over and over.

“Well then, once this is ready, please put it away.”

When Oshika furtively busied herself with every little task, Sonoko would eventually say those words and retreat upstairs.
When the stew in the pot was done, Oshika poured hot water over it.

“It’s done… I’m sorry.”
When Seizo returned home, Sonoko came running down from the second floor and spread out the dining table.

“Old man, it’s time for rice.”
The old woman came to the four-and-a-half-mat room and whispered.

“Calling it ‘gozen’ is absurd.
Say ‘rice’!”
Seizo, having overheard those words, admonished them when his wife wasn’t around.

“Aye, reckon so.”

However, Oshika simply couldn’t bring herself to say “rice,” and the country words she’d grown accustomed to using would immediately rise to her lips.

“Grandmother, please stop wearing those clothes and do wear this… Grandfather too should have this for everyday wear.”
Sonoko then laid out the newly tailored cotton-padded Yūki-striped fabric before the old couple.

“Well now, my my—you needn’t have gone to such trouble.”
“Old man, she’s gone and made us proper fine clothes.”

“Do please wear these for everyday use.”
Sonoko felt ashamed at the thought of visitors seeing the old couple’s country-style striped garments.

“Here now—how’s this look?”
After Sonoko left, the old man picked up the new garment to inspect it.
“This’s too fine for daily wear.”

“This’s supposed to be lined, but it’ll be cold.”
The old woman tested the fabric by rubbing it between two fingertips.

The garments remained wrapped in a furoshiki cloth in the old couple’s room for two or three days, but eventually the old woman packed them away into the wicker trunk. And though they said folks would laugh at them, they still wore their country-striped padded jackets.

“This’s warmer an’ better!”

Five

The old man, bored and restless, tinkered with the small vacant plot of land in front of the house.

“Should’ve kept that hoe instead o’ getting rid of it and brought just one along.”

“You went and did it all on your own, then go saying such things after.”
The old woman spoke sarcastically, but her tone lacked the venom it once had.

“At that time, I never thought we’d need a hoe here, even though I was the one who got rid of them.”

Before long, he bought a small hoe nearby and pulled up weeds that had just begun to sprout and dug up the soil.

“This here hoe’s too darn short to dig deep proper.”
He felt nostalgic for the old woman standing watch beside him and for those big country hoes that once bit deep into good earth.
Then he dug through that soil careful-like, two times over, then three.

“It’s a waste to let this soil sit idle.”
“What if we plant some vegetables?” the old man suggested to the old woman.

“Even this should yield enough vegetables for us to eat,” said the old woman.

Before long, he went to get seeds and,

“People here even pay money to have others collect their own excrement.”
“What a waste,” he muttered as he sprinkled the collected manure over the dug-up soil.

“This’ll get them veggies growin’ good!”

“My, you’re working hard, aren’t you?”
Sonoko came down from the second floor and said amiably.

“Aye.”
The old man spoke in a tone reminiscent of a country landowner.

“What might you be planting there?”

“Aye.”
“Leavin’ this soil unused’s a waste, though.”

“My, you’re working hard, aren’t you?”
With that, Sonoko gently pressed the handkerchief moistened with perfume to her nose and went back upstairs to the second floor.
The sound of the shoji being shut tight echoed.

“You’re lavishin’ manure about though, seems she can’t stand it, can she?”
The old woman whispered.

“Aye, reckon so.”

“We’ve been laughed at again for somethin’, ain’t we?”

"Hmm," the old man blinked.

"It stinks. This won't do,"
Seizo said when he came home from work.
"You should plant flowers instead of vegetables."

“The smell’ll vanish soon enough if you bear with it a day or two.”

“That may be so, but planting vegetables out front where guests can see them looks bad.”

“Reckon so.”
The old man seemed unable to understand.

“You should plant pretty flowers.”

“Flowers? No—”
The old man wasn’t at all keen.

“Even if you plant flowers, it’s just like leaving the soil unused.”

He was so discouraged he stopped tending the soil.
Even when the night soil collector came,

“People here even pay money to have others collect their own excrement. What a waste, I tell ya,” he repeated.
“If there were manure buckets, I’d collect it for ya, but…”

Even when he saw the night soil collector’s manure buckets, he found himself remembering how he used to carry manure buckets to the fields back in the countryside.
He found himself remembering how he had enjoyed watching the green wheat grow tall and strong.

Before long came the time of cherry blossoms.
The old man and the old woman removed their thickly padded country-style striped cotton garments.

“Since it’s warmed up and easier to get about, let’s get someone to take us sightseeing in Tokyo.”

“Hmm. Might have someone take us this comin’ Sunday.”

“If only someone’d take us to Nikko or Zenkoji Temple.”

“What I want more’n anythin’s to visit Asakusa Kannon.”
“Been near fifty days since we came to Tokyo, yet we still ain’t even seen the bridge His Majesty crosses.”

The couple, restless with idleness, repeated this conversation time and again.
The bridge His Majesty crosses was none other than Nijūbashi.

“Today, when Seizo gets back from the company, we oughta tell him to take us.”

“Hmm.”
The old man nodded.

However, Seizo had scheduling conflicts twice consecutively on Sundays.
Once, he went to Asukayama with his company colleagues, taking Sonoko along as well.

“Then the flowers will scatter, and it’ll get too hot—that wouldn’t do.”

Sonoko said with apparent sympathy.

“I’d be happy to show you around tomorrow.”

The couple had absolutely no desire to be shown around by Sonoko.
They adamantly refused.

When Seizo and his wife went out on Sundays, the couple relaxed completely, stretching out their arms as they slept soundly.
They were glad there was no one around to make them feel self-conscious.

"How about we make some sticky rice cakes to eat whenever we have the place to ourselves?" proposed the old woman.

"Oh."

"If we keep eating nothing but rice every day, we'll get sick of it.
We need to make something a bit more special!"

But even the rice cakes weren't as good as the millet cakes they occasionally made and ate on holidays back in the countryside.
The old man couldn't eat more than about four.

“Eat up.”
The old woman urged him to eat the rice cakes arranged on the lids of two rice tubs.

“Nah. Can’t eat no more.”
“Can’t eat no more.”

“Just that little bit… With all this plenty left, if they come back and see it, they’ll laugh at us.”

“Then give it to someone else.”

“Even if we say we’ll give them away, there’s no one here we know… If this were back home, we’d give them to the neighbors or the Ikkeshi children.”

The old woman was remembering the countryside.
Their home referred to their house in the countryside.
“Oh, I tell ya—even being dirt-poor farmers in the village where we were born was better.”

In the evening, their son and his wife returned together.

“A souvenir,” Sonoko said, tossing the paper-wrapped bolt of cloth before the old woman.

“Huh?”
Taken aback, the old woman looked up suspiciously at her daughter-in-law’s face.

“Don’t wear those country stripes; put on the clothes we made for you,” said Seizo, following slightly behind his wife as they went upstairs.

The old woman opened the package in front of the old man and looked at it.
It was meisen silk that seemed too gaudy for the couple.

"What's the use of old folks like us wearing fancy clothes anyway!"
The couple weren't particularly grateful.
"Silk tears so easy."

Six

“Rather than havin’ them take us, it’d be more comfortable for the two of us to go ourselves.”
One day, the old man said this.

“Won’t we get ourselves lost?”
“No matter how big Tokyo is, long as we keep askin’ our way through, there ain’t a place we can’t reach, I tell ya.”

And one early morning, the couple set out.

“Where do you two think you can go on your own?”
As they were about to leave, Seizo stopped them anxiously.

“Nah, no need to fret. We’ll go ourselves,” the old man said.

“If you don’t go today, I’ll take you some other time.”

“Nah, we’ll go ourselves.”

Seizo, seeming to pity his old father’s state of mind, interjected half-hearted attempts to dissuade them while explaining the route to Asakusa, then accompanied them to the tram stop and saw them onto the train.

The old man and old woman saw large buildings, crowds of people, women who looked like criminals, and automobiles and trams coming and going in a dizzying manner.
But it was neither interesting in the slightest nor had any redeeming qualities.
At autumn festivals back home, villagers carrying drums, planting banners, and going to town in their one good kimono had always sparked some interest and given them things to talk about, but everything they saw in Tokyo’s streets felt completely alien.
The Asakusa Kannon didn’t strike them as particularly sacred either.
The couple stood vacantly watching people and vehicles bustling past.
Their heads spun dizzily till they felt they might collapse.

“Old man, I’m gettin’ hungry,” the old woman said after wandering uncertainly through the crowd and finally managing to make her way through to the park.

“Then let’s get somethin’ to eat.”

“I sure would like to try eatin’ sushi.”

The couple walked around searching for a sushi restaurant.

“The sushi places round here might be too dear.”
When they finally found a sushi restaurant, they hesitated before lifting the curtain.

“What if we come up short on money after all this... We’d be right stuck then.”

“Should’ve brought ourselves a packed lunch.”

“Let’s just call it off.”
The old woman trudged back through the crowd without even tasting the sushi she’d craved.
At a park corner, they bought grilled buns marked “80 sen” and finally quieted their hunger.

“These geta are makin’ my legs feel heavy.”

“Straw zōri’d be way easier to walk in—ain’t that right?”

Exchanging these grumbles between them, they trudged on once more.

On the way back, they got lost.
Even after walking until they were utterly exhausted, they kept walking and finally managed to figure out the direction of their house.

“Welcome back, Grandmother, Grandfather.”
Sonoko came out to the entrance.

As the couple moved to step up and began removing their geta, there before them lay a pair of shoes and elegant women’s geta with woven rush soles arranged.
It turned out that Sonoko’s parents had come.

The Reserve Army Colonel was a man of few words who carried himself with a solemn gravity unlike anything seen in rural areas.
The colonel's wife appeared every bit the formidable woman at first glance.
Her enunciation was crisp and precise.
When they had first met, the old couple found themselves utterly bewildered by her excessively formal address, reduced to bowing repeatedly while murmuring “Yes, yes” in response.
From that day onward, they had regarded the Colonel with superstitious dread akin to facing an evil omen.

Once more they found themselves subjected to these stiff formalities.
The couple stood rigidly upright, bobbing their heads in repeated bows.

“You must be hungry,” Sonoko said as she was leaving the sitting room.

“Oh no, it’s quite all right.”

The couple finally crawled into their four-and-a-half tatami mat room.

“I’m starvin’,” the old woman said, lowering her voice so it wouldn’t be heard in the next room.

“Aah, that was exhaustin’.”

The old man was completely drained.
Yet despite their exhaustion, the couple remained curled up in their cramped space, too mindful of the Colonel in the next room to stretch out properly.

“You ain’t hungry?”

“We only ate four measly grilled buns!”

For a while, the couple remained silent.
They listened to the voices in the next room.

“Ain’t they ever gonna leave?”

“Well, who knows.”

“Well then, I’ve been waitin’ to eat a meal.”

Once again, the couple fell silent and listened intently.

“Farmers still have it better,” the old woman whispered again.

“No matter how poor we get, staying in the village would’ve been better,” the old man said with a sigh.

“What—leave now and take up day laborin’ or tenant farmin’? No matter how filthy the place might be, bein’ able to stretch out easy—ain’t nothin’ better than that, I tell ya.”

Suddenly there appeared her parents about to leave.
The old man and old woman flustered into hasty bows.

Seizo stood awkwardly nearby watching.

(September 1925)