Pathway to Japanese Literature

Six ten-sen silver coins and three one-sen copper coins. Gripping that meager sum, I resolved to walk from Osaka to Tokyo along the railway tracks. Looking back, it was madness. Yet recklessness seemed my inborn disposition from the start; moreover, even that journey from Osaka to Tokyo—whose distance in ri I couldn’t fathom—felt no great stretch when I thought of it as going to meet Fumiko. That said, I couldn’t entirely dismiss the notion of waiting until I’d scraped together train fare first. But in the end, these legs—exhausted from scraping together funds—trudged along anyway, driven both by the urge to draw nearer to Tokyo where Fumiko was and by a certain nostalgia for wandering itself.

Now that I mention it, my wandering had indeed begun the moment I was born… Of course I had no memory of when I was born, but apparently I'd only been in Mother's womb for eight months. I was what's called a premature birth by a month—a common enough start in life—but of all times, about ten months before my birth, Father the rakugo performer had left home for a month-long Kyushu tour. If one were to count the days normally, it wasn't impossible to suspect I'd been conceived during his absence. Whether that suspicion held water or not, they say Father had restlessly peered into my newborn face—searching only for traits resembling Mother: the fair complexion, straight nose, slight underbite—and wound up thoroughly bitter somehow. Father was so dark-skinned that he'd immediately mention his complexion upon taking the rakugo stage, and his nose was rather flat.

At that moment, Mother wore an expression that seemed to say making excuses would be futile, though in truth she was too weakened to even muster the strength to speak in her defense. She faltered even in nursing me, and when the startled midwife pulled my mouth from her breast, Mother’s face had already turned the color of wax, her tongue tip protruding between gritted teeth as she groaned. And so Mother died, and immediately after sending her to Abeno’s funeral parlor, I was sent off as a foster child like a fugitive. Though becoming a sudden widower made it unavoidable—and it wasn’t as if I couldn’t be raised on milk—sending me to foster care before even the first week’s memorial had passed was rushed all the same; perhaps Father’s lingering suspicions had spurred it on—or so Okimi told me when I was fifteen. Granny Okimi’s words had been far too cynical, but with a child’s heart, I nodded and put on a precocious face that said *it made perfect sense*. The reason for this was that by then, the feeling that I wasn’t loved by Father had become quite deeply ingrained in me. But now, it’s different. Now, I firmly believe that I am indeed my father’s child…….

I don’t remember it well, but they say my first foster home was with a farming family by a large pond in Sayama, Minamikawachi—apparently one ri in circumference. Given that they took in foster children, theirs was already a meager existence as impoverished tenant farmers—unable to even keep a single cow—living in a cramped shed. While the master worked the fields, his wife would paste paper balloons while nursing both me and another child of her own born the same year. But within a year of my arrival, the Russo-Japanese War broke out, the master was conscripted, and his wife tended the fields herself. However resolute she might have been, tending the fields with an infant in each arm must have proven too much for even the mistress to handle. One winter morning, when they went to Osaka to collect night soil, they stopped by my birthplace in Takatsu and said that while it wasn’t impossible to have their four-year-old eldest daughter watch the infants, there was also a pond in the neighborhood. And saying, “Since we’ve gone to the trouble of coming here, we’ll take this night soil,” they left me behind in exchange for what they had collected, or so I was told.

To say “in exchange for collected night soil”… well, that careless quip slipping out must be my inherited trait from Father. He may have doubted it, but I was indeed my rakugo storyteller father’s son through and through. Not that it’s any boast, but being skilled at talking—or rather, being a chatterbox to the point of annoying even myself—seemed to hold some charm for shallow-minded women. Truth be told, there were women who stayed up late ensnared by my life stories—neither harmful nor healing—and found themselves bound by inescapable bonds. I too told those tales extensively to women, perhaps hoping to elicit some sympathy. Though even when aiming for sympathy, my temperament wouldn’t allow pitiful displays. Since it was a dreary story anyway, I decided to tell it spiritedly; with childhood memories being hazy and the tale being half-imagined, I embellished it as humorously as possible—delivering everything in that “night soil exchange-style” banter. There was no point mumbling gloomy childhood anecdotes only I found amusing. Believing no one would listen unless I lied, my storytelling naturally took on this vulgar tone that sized up listeners—yet it’s not wrong to say this coarse manner was my only way of self-consolation.

This is how I told my story.

“...So that’s how I got left behind instead of night soil, but by sunset that same day, they’d already dumped me with some farmers under the stone shrine of the Boil Deity. Father was a man in a hurry, sure—but then again, I didn’t exactly hang around either, seeing as I’d jumped ship from my mother’s womb after eight months. Guess patience wasn’t in my blood.” “So basically, I’d managed to latch onto some milk quick enough—but when it rains, it pours. Not ten days later, the farmer’s wife came down with typhus.” “However much the Stone-Cutter might be the Boil Deity, typhus was outside his expertise.” “He could cure fields, but typhus was out of his field.” “So then, a quack doctor comes rushing in.” “A policeman comes holding a notebook to check.” “They’re saying I’ve got to go to Momoyama—the infectious disease hospital—talking about disinfection. What a huge commotion!” “In the end, they decided I mustn’t be allowed to drink milk anymore.” “Well, of course—no matter what, you can’t have milk from someone with typhus, can you?” “So there I am—stomach growling empty, crying my lungs out, but nobody gives a damn.” “They don’t even change my swaddling clothes.” “Adding insult to injury.” “They treated me like dirt, see? There I was wailing at the top of my lungs when—ah, right—this stove repairman came around carrying his balance scale. When he heard what was going on, he took pity and looked after me. Turned out to be a relative of his from Yamato’s Saidaiji, that stove repairman did.” “Well, I managed to get some milk and avoid starving to death, but that woman there was one jealous lady. Come watermelon season, her husband would go off to Osaka to sell melons and not come back for days—caused a huge uproar.” “In the end, they ended up in a brawl, with her shouting ‘Get out!’ and him retorting ‘Ah, I’m outta here!’” “The woman finally went and left—when she did, she took her furoshiki bundle with her—fine by me—but me, the foster child, got left high and dry.” “Thanks to that, I couldn’t drink milk, my stomach grew emptier, no one changed my swaddling clothes—left completely neglected.” “They treated me damn cruel—so there I was bawling a thousand times while staring daggers at the husband’s face: ‘What’re you gonna do about this, old man?’ Till finally, with troubles piling on troubles, he ended up carrying me on his back to my father’s place.” “However, Father immediately sent me off to Yamataki Village in Izumi.” “Yamataki Village—now that’s a place in the backwoods of Kishiwada, famous for autumn leaves and waterfalls—real scenic spot—but this time, I was the one who ran away.”

“But once I got hooked on that, from then on, no matter where they placed me, I’d always be the one to run away…” “But hold on—you were still just a baby back then, right?” “What a precocious baby I was, even as an infant…” My life story was such a muddle of truth and lies that even women laughed at its absurdity, but one thing remains certain: by the age of seven, I had been shuttled between foster homes roughly six or seven times—like postcards with forwarding labels—and by then, the habit of wandering had already seeped into my young bones.

The summer I turned seven, it was decided I would return. Even Father must have pitied me as a foster child. However, the one who came to pick me up from rural Yao where I was staying at the time wasn’t Father—it was Granny Okimi, the shamisen player.

Passing through the back gate of Takatsu Shrine brought me immediately to a bridge called Umenoki. Though said to be Osaka’s shortest bridge—crossable in two or three steps even by a child—my heart raced when Granny Okimi told me the tidy little tenement just beyond it would be my home from that day on. Yet there already waited Hamako, a stepmother. I later learned Hamako—formerly a geisha in Minami—had essentially forced herself upon Father with such persistence after being discarded by her patron that she arrived uninvited as his wife four years prior. A boy had been born by then, now three years old; Shinji they called him, with twin trails of snot beneath acorn-shaped eyes perpetually wide with surprise that mirrored Father’s own. Father’s features were all perfectly rounded, his stage name being Maru Danji. Thus Hamako called Shinji “Little Maru Danji,” delighting in his future as an entertainer—a fact that had long nettled Granny Okimi with envy. Using the very feet that had escorted me there, she climbed up and launched into barbed commentary—“The Yasui Inari shrine in Takatsu’s precincts is called Yasui-san (‘Cheap Birth’), the childbirth goddess, yet this child’s mother died of birthing sickness right beside Yasui-san… What karmic cruelty…”—deliberately invoking my birth mother’s memory to unsettle Hamako. Then, wearing an expression of smug satisfaction, Granny Okimi left for the vaudeville theater. Soon Father too departed for his performance hour, leaving me abruptly adrift in loneliness. But when evening came, Hamako took Shinji and me to Futatsui and Dotonbori—where I beheld night stalls for the very first time.

Let me try to recount that moment in a bit more detail. This was partly because the nighttime world I witnessed then left some imprint on my life, but more than anything, because I feel such profound nostalgia—now grown even keener in retrospect—for Osaka’s neighborhoods that it might well be called cherished affection.

When we left the house and passed through the front gate’s torii, there was already the slope of Takatsu Omotesuji—and on the south side at the top of that hill stood a sweet red bean soup shop called “Kanidon,” though hardly anyone would remember it now. Even if there are people who know the Futatsui “Kanidon,” no one knows this “Kanidon.” However, that night we didn’t go to that “Kanidon,” immediately descending the slope instead. The path downward held temples whose lamplight glowed visible from the road, white-walled sanctuaries, glimpses of Ikukunitama Shrine’s northern gate between street corners, alleyways enshrining Jizō statues at their entrances, shops selling golden lanterns, stores peddling stone foxes clutching scrolls for Inari worship, vendors offering coin purses woven from bagworm nests, caterers with red glass eaves-lights bearing family crests, oil merchants occupying broad storefronts, and bathhouses where naked figures showed through gaps in crimson noren curtains. Being precisely the slope connecting Osaka’s upland districts of Uemachi with the lowland mercantile quarter of Senba Shimanouchi, it carried a jumbled charm—the retrospective quietude of temple towns mashed together with the cluttered liveliness of common streets.

Descending the slope and turning north brought us to the market, where under eaves reeking of raw fish—sunshades pulled tight beneath the roofs—a young man who’d apparently closed up shop sat playing shogi in nothing but a loincloth, bathed in the dim glow of an eaves lantern. Spotting Hamako, he called out, “Where ya off to?” Then Hamako said, “Just heading south a bit,” and added, “You’ve got a fifty-sen fine for that state of undress, y’know.”

The market interior was narrow and dim, but upon passing through it and turning west, the road suddenly opened up into brightness—Futatsui. There were shops selling otter seal meat darkened from curing; vendors offering monkey skulls and what they called dragon miscarriages blackened through roasting; apothecaries peddling geraniums and houttuynia; just as I marveled at the concentration of medicinal shops, several stores dealing in measurement tools and scales appeared; rock-breaking stalls flanked by two wells at their eaves. At the base of Shimo-Yamato Bridge stood a small house with sunken eaves hugging the ground, selling tri-colored uiro confections, while across from it at the kamaboko shop, unsold white hanpei fish cakes floated in water tanks. At the wild boar butcher’s shop, an inverted carcass dangled from hooks. When I passed the kelp vendor’s storefront, the pungent reek of boiling salted kombu assaulted my nostrils. The glass bead curtain shop resonated with crystalline clinks and wind chime tinkles that conjured coolness, while inside a comb merchant’s stall, an apprentice dozed behind the counter. Beneath the stairs descending to Dotonbori River’s embankment stood a blue-painted public toilet building. There were potato sellers, haberdasheries, silk clothiers. Before the obi specialty store called Makaran'ya—literally “It Won’t Do”—Hamako lingered motionless for an extended time.

Shinji, having frequented Futatsui so often that it held no novelty for him, kept yawning repeatedly—but I, overwhelmed by the electrifying allure of this nocturnal world, felt my young heart quiver. Gazing at the lights of Dotonbori ahead, I felt as if bewitched by a fox—how could this world hold a place even brighter than Futatsui we’d just passed through? Thinking that if Hamako hadn’t taken me here, I’d have dashed into that flood of light at the first chance, I waited for her to move from where she stood halted before “Makaran’ya.” When she finally resumed walking, I hurried alongside her, and the moment we crossed Sakaisuji’s tram tracks, Dotonbori’s brilliance swept over my entire being, leaving me utterly dazed.

Benten-za, Asahi-za, Kado-za… And walking a bit further eastward along the row of five theaters—Nakaza, Naniwaza, and others—whose signs back then were so magnificent you’d crane your neck in leisurely admiration, Hamako suddenly turned at the fruit stall corner beside Kado-za toward Sennichimae and adjusted her yukata collar before a glasses shop’s mirror. Hamako wore a yukata patterned with bullseye umbrellas, its hem cut conspicuously short. Perhaps because of this, even now when I see a bullseye umbrella, I’m reminded of this stepmother and feel an ache of nostalgia. Another thing I recall is Hamako’s gesture—peering into the alley before Hōzenji Temple as we passed by, then pointing toward Kagetsu while telling us “That’s the vaudeville house where Father used to perform,” before abruptly sticking out her tongue.

Before long, the Rakutenchi building came into view. But Hamako didn’t take us all the way there; she abruptly turned toward Nipponbashi 1-chome and then entered Meyasuji Temple just beyond. The place had numerous votive lanterns hanging, lamplight flickering, and incense sparks blinking—still bright, yet with sudden dark corners lingering here and there, different from Dotonbori’s brilliance. Hamako offered a lamp before Fudō Myōō and was chanting some unintelligible words in a peculiar melody when, without a word to us, she moved to the Mizukake Jizō and began pouring water over the Jizō’s face with its worn-down features and the discolored chest area stained by water deposits, scrubbing it with a brush. I exchanged glances with Shinji.

When we left Meyasuji Temple, darkness enveloped us. But Hamako swiftly guided us back into illumination. The Ouma Night Stalls had emerged in full splendor. These stalls lining Dotonbori from Asahi-za Theater’s corner to Kotohira Street in Sennichimae—appearing every Day of the Horse—reignited my moth-like yearning for this nocturnal realm. Beside the toy shop stood an imagawayaki stall; adjacent to that lay magic trick exposés; lanterns with spinning silhouettes revealed themselves as zoetropes; crimson lanterns at insect vendors displayed paintings of bell crickets and katydids; neighboring honey-drizzlers sold syrup-glazed Gion dango—and beyond them, what wonder awaited? Peering closer revealed roasted bean stalls, konpeitō candies, glass-lidded jars of broken sweets; then came taiyaki stalls where fresh cakes oozed red bean paste to their tapered ends—scorching even through newspaper wrappers. Clay figurines, wooden blocks, storybooks, menko cards, glass marbles, fireworks, pufferfish lanterns, Oshu Saikawa beetles, folding fans, almanacs, ranchu goldfish, sandal cords, wind chimes... This kaleidoscopic jumble beneath acetylene lamps and oil lights—chaotic yet methodically arranged—transformed before my provincial eyes into pure dreamscape. Dazedly wandering onward, I reached plant shops where acetylene’s blue glow revived dewy foliage—here marked the market’s edge. Beyond lay shadowy desolation pierced only by an enka singer’s violin, its mournful strains echoing the night bazaar’s ephemeral sorrow.

However, before I could voice my desire to turn back, Hamako had already returned to the brighter area—past plant shops, wind chimes, sandal thongs, ranchu goldfish, almanacs, folding fans, Oshu Saikawa ground beetles, blowfish lanterns, fireworks, glass marbles... I thought her a good mother. What's more, Hamako—without any pleading from me—kept exclaiming "Should we get that too? Oh, that one's nice too, sir! Wrap this up as well, won't you?" Her eyes practically gleamed as she bought two of everything—one for Shinji and one for me—until I found myself wandering about in a daze. Overwhelmed with joy to the point of needing to urinate, I rubbed my thighs together at the insect vendor’s stall in urgency to leave—but Hamako kept browsing through insect cages, showing no sign of moving.

Hamako was not inept at household management, yet she could not shed her old habit of compulsive shopping. Moreover, with a stepchild like me now returned, she likely felt obliged to consider the neighborhood’s scrutiny from tomorrow onward—and perhaps even intended to show a kindness surpassing that of a birth mother, fearing the wagging tongue of Granny Okimi who meddled unasked. Of course, such complexities lay beyond my child self’s comprehension. After being treated to Kanidon’s shaved ice dessert at Futatsui on our return, I walked up Takatsu Slope in a daze, intoxicated by the sweetness of a mother’s love I’d never before tasted, gazing up time and again at Hamako’s beautiful profile.

Yet this mother who was so kind—according to the neighborhood adults—was a stepmother. "This child here, that child there—the soba shop’s stepchild! Come up and play, they’d say—then with a chipped teacup, we’ll give your head a good whack!" The one who went out of her way to teach me this rhyme was Granny Okimi—who would always give me half-sen candies bought from a shop called “Sennichidō” (“Fifty Percent Discount”) across from Tokiwa-za Theater in Sennichimae, saying, “Jūkichi here’s not like Shin-chan—since you’re a stepchild, you’ll suffer something terrible, poor thing.” Pressing her ohaguro-blackened mouth against my ear while already tearing up, she would scold me—“Put on a more delicate act!”—when I stared blankly in confusion, then urge, “If you’re sad, cry with this old woman! C’mon, give me a proper cry!” Granny Okimi had once been the wife of a second-rate Osaka actor but was driven from the Horie household—where she’d borne two children—by a geisha-turned-mistress. For twenty-five years since, she had lived alone in rented rooms above a toothbrush artisan’s shop in Nodōmachi, brooding over her children’s fate as stepchildren. Thus her unasked-for act of fetching me from rural Yao, her persistence in meddling with Maru Danji’s household despite knowing Hamako found her irritating—these were perhaps not mere kindness, but impulses laced with a cruelty she herself failed to recognize. So words like “stepchild,” “stepmother,” and “terrible ordeal”—terms whose meanings I hadn’t understood at first—had ended up clinging to my ears before I knew it.

Then my face gradually took on the look of a stepchild soon to be tormented, and when I turned that face toward Hamako, this young stepmother grew properly stepmother-like in turn. Hamako had likely reached the point where even the novelty of me was wearing thin. At night when Father left for the vaudeville theater and Shinji begged Hamako to take him to the Ouma and Enoki night markets, she would glance my way while saying there was no one left to mind the house. At such times I’d claim “Night markets make me sleepy—I hate ’em,” spouting lies I didn’t mean—and of course it was always me who said them. Partly I wanted to secretly eat the candy Okimi had given me that afternoon, keeping it all to myself. The very phrase “keeping it all to myself” was something Okimi had taught me too. With her voice grown sharper lately—perhaps from marital troubles with Father—Hamako would say, “What a peculiar child you are,” before adding, “Well then Jūkichi, you stay and watch the house.” When I took Shinji out to play during daylight hours, the neighbors only ever saw it as me being forced into babysitting duty. I must have looked thoroughly dejected. Whenever Shinji cried, Hamako invariably blamed me for it. So during times like when Shinji’s ear infection made him wail all day long, I—who’d been dodging Hamako’s gaze—used an ice-fetching errand as pretext to linger endlessly at the shrine’s outdoor stage. Then the ice I carried shrank until it slipped from its rope and shattered when it fell. Startled, I gathered the pieces but couldn’t retie them, so I tried bundling them in my apron—only to trip on stone steps and fall. Though I’d only scraped my hands and knees, I must have thought this gave me excuse enough to return empty-handed without a beating from Hamako—for even when a passerby lifted me up, I lay there corpse-still.

Yet that winter during my third year of elementary school, when I returned home after classes and heard Shinji’s crying, I braced myself for Hamako’s scolding and cautiously went upstairs—only to find her nowhere in sight. Instead, Father sat before the long brazier like a lump of lead, vaguely watching the weeping Shinji as he smoked his tobacco. When night fell, Father left for the vaudeville theater. After a while, two portions of a meal were delivered from the neighborhood lunchbox shop. As I ate it with Shinji and asked him about it, he said Hamako wasn’t coming back anymore. I didn’t actually snap “Don’t talk nonsense,” but the next day Granny Okimi bustled over and declared, “Rejoice, rejoice! She’s finally been driven out!” She claimed Hamako had been expelled by Father as punishment for tormenting me, his stepchild—but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to believe Father cared for me that much.

Shortly after Hamako disappeared, the family immediately moved to Kasaya-cho. On the east side, about half a chō south along Suōmachi-suji, there was an alley. It was a south-facing house at the farthest end of that alley. This narrow lane resembled an eel’s burrow, but being near Sōemonchō’s pleasure quarter, it differed from the poor row houses common in Uemachi or Nagamachi. The alley’s flanking homes displayed shamisen instructors’ signs, theater prop workshops, geisha okiya, and even a house where an independent geisha lived with her mother and cat—three occupants(?). Some row houses had telephones installed, and the area grew livelier after midnight, giving the whole alleyway a peculiar allure. Yet this allure manifested differently in Tamako—a stranger helping with the move—who wore white powder only on her neck and sported a yukata with a shortened hem like Hamako’s. Even my child’s mind recognized her suggestive air. Tamako, whom we expected to leave after cleanup, instead lingered and became our new mother.

Tamako, much like Hamako, took me and Shinji to the night stalls along Yahatamichi. While Shinji, oblivious to everything, seemed delighted by Tamako’s arrival, how did I truly feel about it? The Yahatamichi night stalls began where exiting our alley and walking just ten steps brought you to a street crossing Kasaya-cho’s avenue east to west. This was Yahatamichi—a thoroughfare dense with tool shops, scroll-mounting workshops, and antique dealers. To explain *tōri* and *suji* here: In Senba district where east-west arteries saw greater development than north-south ones, they called east-west routes *tōri* while north-south became *suji*. But in Shimanouchi area the pattern reversed—north-south lines opened up wider as *tōri*, leaving east-west as *suji*. Exceptions existed like Shinsaibashi-suji and Midosuji remaining *suji* despite running north-south, but Yahatamichi being east-west was firmly *suji*—and along this *suji* the night stalls emerged.

This night market stretched across Shinsaibashi-suji to Midosuji, but when Tamako reached the corner of Shinsaibashi-suji, she casually turned south. Then she crossed Ebisu Bridge, turned south from its end toward Dotonbori, passed before Naniwa-za Theater, moved past Naka-za Theater, and arrived at the fruit shop beside Suma-za Theater—but unlike Hamako, she did not turn toward Sennichimae. Instead, she veered toward Tazaemon Bridge on the opposite side, paused briefly to cool herself on the bridge, then headed straight north back to the alley in Kasaya-cho. I found myself dazed by the lights of Shinsaibashi-suji, which I was seeing for the first time—but even more than that, my heart was captivated by the lights lining both banks of the river as viewed from Ebisu Bridge and Tazaemon Bridge. The brothels of Sōemonchō and Dotonbori’s theater teahouses stood facing away from each other across the river. And on the backs of both buildings, summer curtains hung, their lights casting the people fanning themselves inside into silhouette like shadow puppets. When I saw those lights eventually reflected in Dotonbori River’s gentle current, my overly sensitive heart would leap—yet I was no longer so naive as to view Tamako, who had shown me this scenery, through the same eyes that had once seen Hamako as a good mother on that long-ago night. I would look at Tamako with eyes that seemed to say, *What do you know—a stepmother*, then seize Shinji—who was at the age where he’d be entering Daibōji Elementary School next year—and take cruel pleasure in telling him, “You’re a stepchild.” When I thought about how Shinji—who had seemed so enviable during Hamako’s time—was now a stepchild just like me, I felt a certain grim satisfaction.

However, Shinji was a strange child—showing no signs of missing Hamako, he seemed to cling solely to the monstrously tall Tamako. However, when Tamako eventually gave birth to a girl, Shinji began nodding at my repeated use of the word “stepchild” while wearing a sorrowful expression. Seeing him look after that girl, I too felt a pang of pity. And when I observed Father, he kept quarreling with Tamako instead of doting on the girl, so I—seeing that neither myself nor Shinji were being cherished by him either—came to the precocious conclusion that some resignation might be warranted. However, Tamako was such a stingy woman—never giving us even a coin for snacks—that when I suddenly recalled Hamako’s past generosity and spoke of it with Shinji, tears welled up as if Hamako had truly been our birth mother. Looking back now, it strikes me as rather strange. Tamako was not only tall but utterly lacking in charm, and her face was incomparably ugly compared to Hamako’s.

However, around the time I was about to graduate from the higher elementary course at Daibōji Elementary School, I found a photograph of my birth mother tucked away at the bottom of the family altar’s drawer. And as I listened to Granny Okimi’s voice exclaiming “Ah, this one here! This one here!” while staring fixedly at that photograph, I resolved to leave home and enter service. I felt this path carried a sense of tragic heroism. When I confided in Granny Okimi, she wept and approved. I had been melodramatic—but then so had Granny Okimi. Around that time, there was a girl named Urushiyama Fumiko commuting from Tatamiya-chō to Hanagumi class in Daibōji Elementary School’s fourth year. True to being a geisha’s child, she wore a yukata with bold wisteria patterns even at school, applying white powder and rouge after dismissal each day. Yet this bittersweet notion—that entering service meant never seeing her again—only hardened my resolve further. But what truly steeled my determination was Father’s complete lack of opposition to my proposal. Though perceptive enough to interpret this as paternal indifference, I understood—in those Osaka days—that apprenticeship awaited all but privileged sons from respectable families. There was no escaping it.

Generally speaking, I tend to think in exaggerated terms—the reason I've gone on at such length about my childhood of being fostered out, raised by stepmothers, and entering service was because I believed these experiences had drastically altered my fate. But now, upon reflection, it occurs to me that who I've become might not be due to environment or circumstances after all. That person called me—no matter what environment or circumstances I grew up in—could I have ultimately become anything other than who I am now? No—when I consider it properly, the story of how an ordinary man like myself was raised hardly matters at all. Realizing this makes me regret having rambled on so long already. Yet this too is rust oozing from my innately talkative nature; though I'd prefer to row straight to that encounter at Tennōji West Gate and conclude my tale, having begun with childhood stories means I'm now stuck aboard this vessel—obliged to continue this rather dull narrative awhile longer. Still, I'll try to row as swiftly as possible. That said, whenever Osaka enters the conversation, nostalgia inevitably takes hold and I find myself wanting to recount every minute detail…

Now, it was in the spring of my fifteenth year that I began my apprenticeship at a pottery shop in Nishiyokobori. It was what’s commonly called Setomono-cho—stretching from the base of Sudaibashi Bridge on Kōraibashi-dōri to Yotsubashi, a span of roughly fifteen chō along the Nishiyokobori River where nearly every building housed a pottery shop. The house where I served stood two or three houses south from Hiranomachi-dōri on the west side, neighboring a tsukudani shop. I was made to wear a cotton workman’s jacket with a white-corded apron; breakfast was rice porridge with pickles, lunch—so-called banzai—was boiled vegetables or konnyaku in a watery clear broth, and dinner again brought pickles with ochazuke. There was no salary, and my allowance came to fifty sen a year—less than five sen per month. Even senior apprentices seemed to fare little better; clutching their pitiful allowances like sacred treasures, my peers would visit Hiranomachi’s sixteenth-night markets to eat skewers of pork belly miso stew at two rin apiece or vegetable tempura for five rin a piece—greasing their bellies with such indulgences. But as the newest recruit, I wasn’t permitted to visit the stalls. Instead, nights found me practicing penmanship behind locked shop shutters. Moreover, in the mornings I was made to rise earliest. I would open the doors and clean, but this cleaning was difficult. Since rope scraps and garbage served as fuel, I had to sweep them up gently to avoid mixing in dirt, or else I’d be scolded. The master was the sort to fly into a rage over even a single stray straw. Even after finishing cleaning, I wasn’t immediately given a meal—instead, I was made to run errands. When I was sent on an errand before breakfast, they said it made the errand quick. In return—they said it was because I’d overeat upon returning from errands—the pickles were horribly poorly made. It was a considerate arrangement—if the pickles tasted bad, you wouldn’t overeat the porridge. However, this wasn’t a custom unique to that household alone—as I later came to understand after serving in various places, it seemed to be a tradition throughout all of Senba.

In every way, I couldn’t in good conscience claim apprenticeship wasn’t harsh—but when I returned home for my first Obon leave, I found our family home had moved from Kasaya-cho to Kaminomiya-cho two or three days prior. The second house in the alley directly across from Kurowa-an Temple near Kaminomiya Middle School. And there, Tamako was no longer present; a woman named Shigeko had become the new mother, and Yukino—my sister whom Tamako had left behind—had become a stepchild together with Shinji. I thought that, after all, it was good I had gone into service. At the time, I must have worn quite a pained expression—but now, reflecting on it, I find it rather odd that Father had this habit of moving houses whenever he changed wives, and that it always happened in summer. The cause of Father’s marital separations remains unclear to this day, but he was, after all, a carefree man befitting a rakugo performer.

Be that as it may, it was somewhat lonesome that our house had moved to Kaminomiya-cho. This was because Tatamiya-cho—where Urushiyama Fumiko lived—lay one block west from Kasaya-cho toward Shinsaibashi-suji, meaning I could have seen Fumiko right away—something I had been eagerly anticipating. I returned to Setomono-cho without meeting Fumiko. However, even if our house had remained in Kasaya-cho at that time, looking back at my apprentice appearance would likely have left me too ashamed to meet her regardless. Yet on July 24th of the following year during the Pottery Festival—when ceramic dolls crafted by potters filled Setomono-cho for its annual bustle—my heart floated light with anticipation until I suddenly came face-to-face with Fumiko amidst that clamorous crowd. She had come to see the festival with her mother. Though Fumiko coldly feigned ignorance upon seeing me—this being only natural since I had never spoken to her before and she was still twelve— At sixteen, I jumped to conclude her coldness stemmed from my apprentice appearance and abruptly came to loathe everything about Setomono-cho.

Were my feelings for Fumiko what people call love? Or was it nothing more than longing—a faint nostalgia? But no—dissecting these childish emotions of my youth serves no purpose. Still, after that incident, I began neglecting my apprenticeship duties—though to say so might be half a lie. Truth be told, I'd already been growing lazy by then. When sent on errands, I'd dawdle endlessly. Park my bicycle outside Unagidani's broth shops to slurp soup before returning. Stand devouring kintsuba at Deai Bridge. Slink off to Kanemata's beef restaurants for their "Imo-nuki" stew. Kanemata had branches in Shinsekai, Sennichimae, Matsushima, Fukushima—I sampled them all. Yet what truly captivated me wasn't food, but those night stall lights—the acetylene's sharp tang and cobalt glow; sixty-candlepower bulbs blazing in bromide shops' displays; fortune-tellers' paper lanterns bobbing above their stalls; firefly peddlers flickering like lost stars beneath bridges... My dreams would form halos swirling endlessly about those lights. On nights ending with a 1 or 6 when Hiranomachi's stalls lit up, I'd grow restless and slip out from the shop. Then there was Tsūtenkaku Tower's beacon in Shinsekai—Lion Hamigaki's toothpaste ads pulsing red-blue-yellow in southern skies, agitating my chest until I'd crack open commercial school textbooks vowing to become worthy of marrying Fumiko... only for my thoughts to drift from the pages, lured by distant Taishō koto melodies as I wandered light-drunk through luminous skies.

Before long, I took my leave from the pottery shop and began an apprenticeship at a drug wholesaler in Doshomachi. In Setomono-cho, I wore an apron with white cords, but in Doshomachi, it was brown cords. However, two years after that, I was already wearing an apron with blue cords at a dried goods store in Utsubo. My wanderlust was already beginning to rear its head, I suppose. However, one aspect of my troublesome nature was that while I threw myself into things with twice the enthusiasm of others, I would just as quickly grow tired of them. In other words, a classic case of starting strong but ending weak—take a thousand-meter race, for instance: I'd exhaust all my strength recklessly in the first two hundred meters, only to collapse completely for the remainder—that was my pattern. So it was that whenever I started a new apprenticeship, I would work with such devotion that even the master was impressed—but once boredom set in, I could no longer bear it and would change employers.

From age fifteen to twenty-five—a span of ten years—I remembered three colors of apron cords: white, brown, and blue. Beyond those, I changed employers so frequently that I retained no memory whatsoever of what other cord colors I might have worn. This mirrored my childhood as a foster child being shuttled between homes, but even Father must have forgotten those earlier days by then, for he summarily labeled me a delinquent and disowned me. Yet once disowned, no place would hire me—still, without work I couldn’t eat. Thus in my twenty-fifth autumn came the bitter irony: finding myself selling out-of-season fans at those very night stalls I’d once so yearned for. Phrases like “finding myself” likely stemmed from my nibbling at Western terms in those lecture notes—though truth be told, I’d only devoured the first three months’ worth in feverish absorption, never paid for more, and consequently never received further shipments. But my ambition—or rather, my desire to become someone worthy and marry Fumiko—was something I still couldn’t relinquish.

However, that winter—to be precise, on November 10th—the grand imperial enthronement ceremony was held, and Osaka’s neighborhoods grew so lively with dance troupes carrying bamboo clappers that even the local economy became buoyant. Thinking these were peak days for night stalls, I had set up shop at Tanimachi 9-chōme’s night market selling Showa 4 calendars and daily tear-off almanacs instead of out-of-season fans. Even there, dance troupes from the pleasure quarters came streaming in—their chaotic cries of “What a commotion! What a commotion!” mingling with the clamor—when suddenly a festival dancer with hair styled like eyeglass frames and a tie-dyed towel around her neck was shoved forward, staggering toward my stall as if to collapse onto it. Worried about my goods getting soiled, I instinctively caught her—and found myself staring at Fumiko’s unexpected face. Fumiko looked up with nostalgic familiarity—“Jūkichi-san? Is that you? It’s been ages!”—proving she still remembered her upperclassman from Kasaya-cho days. By then Fumiko was already a geisha in Sōemonchō—one might say her profession and dance-induced giddiness prompted this greeting to a childhood acquaintance—but I felt gladness nonetheless. Simultaneously, shame overwhelmed me—my apprentice self from a decade past and current pitiful state as a night stall vendor seemed unbearably forlorn against the surrounding revelry.

While watching Fumiko’s retreating figure depart again with the dance troupe, I not only grew thoroughly sick of being a night stall vendor but also felt I could no longer bear to remain in an Osaka where Fumiko existed. My temperament, prone to lurching from one extreme to another, eventually drove me out of Osaka. And three years later—to use that phrase “found myself” once more—I found myself having drifted to become a solicitor at a hot spring inn in Nanki’s Shirahama. Though truth be told, during those three years, there was not a single day when I didn’t think of diligently saving money to go meet Fumiko openly. While I carried on with maids at the inn and such, I never married any of them—naturally, because Fumiko remained ever in my thoughts.

However, once coincidences begin accumulating they become endless—and such is what makes life worth living—when one day Fumiko came on an excursion to Shirahama with a client and ended up staying at none other than the inn where I worked. The client was an executive from a Tokyo record company, but Fumiko appeared to dislike him—so taking advantage of her childhood acquaintance (myself) working there as a solicitor, she would claim souvenir-shopping errands to have me guide her around. And though we became engrossed in childhood reminiscences, Fumiko seemed abruptly captivated by my storytelling. Since the inn's garden led directly to the sea, we'd steal away from guests' eyes to talk on that white-sanded beach. Even if caught, my position as solicitor justified it—making our meetings half-public in a sense. During those three days with Fumiko in Shirahama, I had utterly lost myself. To recall it now brings nostalgia—and shame aplenty.

Fumiko stayed for three days and returned to Osaka with the client. With a foolish look on my face, I spent over half a month restlessly thinking of Fumiko until finally, unable to bear it any longer, I went to Osaka. When I climbed up to a house called Kikyōya in Sōemonchō and asked them to call Fumiko for me, she had already been taken away to Tokyo by that record company executive about ten days prior. “She’s gone to make a record,” came the reply. Shocked and furious, I squandered nearly all the money I’d brought from Shirahama on drinks and geisha fees trying to quell my anger before staggering out of Kikyōya just before dusk the next day. Leaning against Taizaemon Bridge’s railing as I stared at Dotonbori River’s filthy water, I suddenly resolved to go to Tokyo.

At that moment, I had only sixty-three sen on me. Six ten-sen white copper coins. Three one-sen copper coins. Gripping just that, I resolved to walk from Osaka to Tokyo along the railway tracks. Looking back, it was not an act of sanity. Recklessness had always been my innate disposition, and moreover, the road from Osaka to Tokyo—whose distance in ri I didn’t even know—didn’t feel far when I thought of it as going to meet Fumiko. That said, it wasn’t as if the thought of at least securing train fare before setting out hadn’t fleetingly crossed my mind. But in the end, I trudged onward with legs worn out from scraping together funds—driven by both the desire to draw even a little closer to Tokyo where Fumiko was and a certain nostalgia for wandering.

The midsummer sunlight was harsh. From under my straw hat, I let a hand towel hang down to shield myself from the sun as I trudged along. When I reached Kyoto, the sun had already set, but I kept walking anyway until I made it to Ishiyama and finally camped out for the night.

In the morning, I washed my face in the Setagawa River and ate breakfast at a diner in front of the station—leaving me with only fifteen sen. So I bought tobacco and matches, put the remaining three sen inside the matchbox, and started walking without even looking at the boat race happening on the Setagawa River. But by the time my tobacco ran out, I’d somehow dropped the three sen from the matchbox and couldn’t even afford a single daifuku rice cake. My walking must have been that absentminded. My stomach grew hungry. To make it worse, the heat left me dizzy. At such moments, if I went crying to a farmhouse by the road and explained my situation, there were kind mistresses who’d give me a meal. But eventually, even that became impossible. The truth was, while explaining might have earned me charity, more often than not I lacked the energy to speak at all. It might sound like a lie, but when exhaustion and hunger grew severe, even talking felt bothersome. If it meant enduring tedious conversation, I’d rather go hungry—and once that state dragged on, my lips wouldn’t move even if I tried. So when I finally reached the outskirts of Toyohashi, I couldn’t take another step—my vision went white—and in desperation, I stole a railway worker’s lunchbox. I braced myself to be caught and handed to the police. Strangely, I couldn’t stop imagining the meals I’d get in a jail cell. I wondered if humans could truly sink this low. But the railway workers never spotted me—it felt like having my expectations upended. That lunchbox gave me enough strength to trudge on to Shizuoka, but as I staggered forward, my first stop was a police box—where I finally confessed to stealing the lunchbox in Toyohashi.

The kind-looking policeman didn’t take me seriously but gave me a lunchbox and suggested I work. It was a job cleaning the Abe River. I tried it immediately, but being the type to throw myself into things only to collapse soon after, I didn’t know how to ration my strength. So even if I worked frantically for the first two or three hours, I’d become utterly useless later—while the other laborers made seventy or eighty sen a day, I could only earn thirty-four. Back then, three meals and tobacco required at least forty-five sen no matter how I scrimped. After five days of work, I walked along the railway tracks again. When night came, I camped in a thicket behind a farmer’s house. From that thicket, I had a full view of a room with a mosquito net hung. There must have been a radio inside, for music reached my ears. As I listened while mosquitoes bit me, it eventually ended, followed by a rakugo broadcast. But the moment I heard the announcer’s introduction, tears fell unbidden. The performer was my father, Maru Danji—utterly unexpected. Hearing his familiar voice—while everyone else lay inside mosquito nets laughing uproariously—there I sat alone, tears dripping down as mosquitoes fed on me. The thought made me wretched beyond measure, yet Tokyo where Fumiko waited lay just ahead. Thinking this revived some spirit in me; I wept through the night and set out walking again.

I arrived in Tokyo on the evening of the eighteenth day after leaving Osaka. It was late that night when I found Fumiko’s residence in Shiba no Shirogane Sankōchō—the address given by the mistress of Kikyōya. Fumiko had already gone to bed—living with her maid—but when she opened the front door thinking her patron was knocking, she seemed startled to find a man who looked practically like a beggar standing there dejectedly. However, when she finally realized it was me, she still let me in with apparent nostalgia. Yet when I told her how I had walked all the way from Osaka specifically to see her, she suddenly seemed to find me repulsive—even letting me stay that night appeared burdensome. Before growing utterly disgusted with such feminine caprices, I first grew disgusted with myself. Looking back, I was such a fool. What made it even more foolish was that when the agonizing night ended and I left that house, I carelessly accepted travel expenses back to Osaka from Fumiko. This money likely meant: “Don’t loiter around Tokyo causing me trouble—hurry back to Osaka.” Of course, I should have thrown it back. No—had I flung it at her with a “Don’t mock me!”, then I might have died a man. Yet there I stood shamelessly accepting it... though even as I took those coins, I resolved to die upon returning to Osaka. Having accepted such charity, drowning myself became the only way to resurface. I thought I’d see Osaka’s lights one last time before dying. Analyzing those feelings now reveals complexity, but I’ve lost interest in such dissection. Besides, complexity doesn’t equate to worthiness. Let me press onward.

Now we were about to reach the heart of this tale, but reflecting on it now, I’d become too engrossed in laying the groundwork and had lost all fervor for elaborating on the crucial parts still ahead. No matter what I attempted, my usual flaw of exhausting all vigor upfront only to flag as things dragged on had seeped even into this storytelling—a self-made predicament, you might say. But with matters having come to this pass, there was no help for it—I’d simply have to race through the remainder at breakneck speed.

I arrived at Osaka Station at night. The money Fumiko had given me barely covered the train fare; after eating my fill in the dining car and buying cigarettes upon disembarking, I was penniless. However, with a refreshingly unburdened feeling, I walked from Osaka Station to Nakanoshima Park. I entered the park, sat down on the riverbank, and smoked a cigarette. The opposite bank of the river was right around the middle of Kita-hama 3-chome and 2-chome, facing the back of a Chinese restaurant where the open basement kitchen was nearly level with the river’s water. In that kitchen, naked cooks bathed in the dim electric light writhed like shadow puppets. Above was the dining room, where by the riverside window, young men and women were picking at their food. They were likely conversing, but with their voices inaudible, it resembled a pantomime performance. The neighboring house appeared to be a dentist’s office, and on the second floor, I could see a doctor in a white medical coat working diligently in silence. The patient receiving treatment appeared to be a lady from somewhere; wearing an apron dress with both slippered feet neatly aligned, she lay on her back. There was an air that evoked a nostalgia for the rhythms of daily life.

I suddenly felt a sodden traveler’s melancholy, and my attachment to life abruptly revived. And suddenly, the face of Fumiko that I recalled was one with a narrow forehead, a slightly upturned nose, swollen eyelids—an altogether ugly face. Her shrill voice, too, was off-puttingly youthful for a woman of twenty-four…

Lantern-lit boats went back and forth on the river like living creatures. When a train passed over Naniwa Bridge, its lights fell into the water, drawing the shape of an inverted train upon the waves. Eventually—how much time had passed?—even after the lights in the Chinese restaurant’s dining area went out, those on the dentist’s second floor went dark, the trains stopped running, and the boats’ shadows vanished from view, I remained motionless there. The depths of the night grew deeper still. I stood up weakly and peered into the river’s depths when someone called out, “Hey.”

When I turned around, there stood what appeared to be a *bataya*—what they call a scavenger in Osaka. The voice that asked “What are you doing?” sounded aged, but he was likely twenty-seven or twenty-eight—my own age—lanky and tall, with a large mole beside his nose. While looking at that mole, I answered that I was doing this because I had nowhere to stay. I couldn’t possibly admit that I’d been thinking of dying. The man stared intently at my face for a while, then said “Follow me” and started walking. I followed as if I had lost my will.

Exiting the park and emerging into Kita-hama 2-chome, the man continued eastward. Eventually veering from Tenma toward Baba, proceeding along Nipponbashi-dōri to Abeno, then following the Hanwa Line tracks until arriving near Bishōen Station’s underpass, there stood something like a ramshackle shack walled with corrugated iron and straw mats. The man ducked inside. That was indeed the man’s dwelling. The man said that while there was a municipal free lodging house in Imamiya, if a man’s reduced to relying on such places, he’s done for—and let me stay in that shack.

The next morning, the man bought four gō of rice for ten sen from a nearby rice shop and five sen of green peas from a vegetable stand, then cooked pea rice and let me eat. And then, "How about it—you want to try scavenging?" he said. Perhaps out of sheer loneliness, I found myself feeling a womanly sort of nostalgia toward the man. Just as he instructed, I slung a tin can over my shoulder and began rummaging through trash bins with him. It was the year of the Manchurian Incident, when the economic depression had hit rock bottom—a time when newspapers reported law graduates in Tokyo becoming ragpickers—so being a scavenger wasn’t particularly shameful. Moreover, I found myself bustling eagerly with the joy of working alongside that man, completely putting thoughts of Fumiko out of my mind.

However, one morning about ten days after starting as a scavenger, when I went to fetch well water at a farmer’s house near the railroad underpass, the owner remarked that while being a scavenger was all well and good, making only thirty-seven sen a day was no way to get by. "Why not try pulling carts instead?" he said. It seemed an elderly relative of his named Kameyan came daily from Kita-Tanabe to peddle green goods, but with his body grown frail, they’d been asked to find a young man to haul his cart. When I went back and consulted Mr. Akiyama—the man’s name was Akiyama—he gave his approval, so I left Mr. Akiyama and became a cart hauler.

Every morning, Kameyan would leave Kita-Tanabe empty-handed, retrieve the empty cart he kept at the Kawahoriguchi rice shop, haul it to the nearby vegetable market, load up on greens—that is, vegetables—and set out peddling toward areas like Ishigatsuji and Ikukunitama. I rented a three-tatami room on the second floor of that rice shop, and whenever I spotted Kameyan, I would go out with him to pull his cart, earning seventy sen a day. However, after about three months had passed, Kameyan dropped dead suddenly. When I went to visit Mr. Akiyama under the railroad underpass to become a scavenger again, he had already vanished—perhaps gone somewhere. Even when I asked the farmer’s family who had given me well water or inquired at the junk dealer’s where Mr. Akiyama used to frequent, I couldn’t find out anything.

Ad balloons floated in the sky, their banners proclaiming department stores' grand sales dangling beneath them. Trudging along the road back to Kawahoriguchi, when I saw a kamishibai performer gathering children before his bicycle, I stopped abruptly and stood listening vacantly—so utterly lost was I that day. Yet as I listened, the moment I thought, "I could tell this better myself," my eyes suddenly lit up. The next day, I became a kamishibai performer.

During the three months I worked as a cart hauler, I saved nine yen and three sen. That became my capital. With it, I bought a used bicycle for five yen at Gokai secondhand market in Nihonbashi 4-chome. Then paid three yen to borrow picture cards and equipment from the Tokiwa Association kamishibai group in Ōimazato. In Tanimachi: fifty sen for half-pants; at Matsuyamachi's candy shop: fifty sen for sweets. With the remaining three sen, I bought potatoes to stave off hunger while pushing my bicycle. Candy cost five rin per stick—fifty sen bought a hundred sticks. Normally they'd split one stick into two pieces sold at one sen each, making two yen if all sold. But I sold them whole at one sen apiece. That day I kept circling until everything sold, though after eating my share, earnings totaled ninety-seven sen.

About half a month later, I moved from the second floor of the rice shop in Kawahoriguchi to the second floor of an udon shop in Imazato. This was because the Tokiwa Association was nearby, making it convenient to borrow picture cards, and since there was an udon shop downstairs, I didn’t need to cook for myself. However, since that udon shop also served alcohol, on nights when I returned exhausted from the cold streets, I couldn’t help wanting a drink. I could handle my liquor, and credit came easy, so I’d end up drinking through the night. Though I no longer harbored grand ambitions or thoughts of becoming wealthy—considering my disowned status—I still wanted to become someone slightly more respectable who could meet my parents and siblings with pride. To that end, I thought saving money should come first, but because of the alcohol, even that proved impossible.

However, one night as the year was drawing to a close, after finishing my kamishibai rounds and heading back, I found a standing signboard for a temperance advocacy lecture in front of the Imazato Youth Hall. Curious about what they would say and wanting to observe their speaking style, I went inside to listen. And by the time the second lecturer’s speech had ended, I—prone to extremes as I was—had already signed my name on the temperance membership roster. At that time, the propaganda chief of the Higashinari Temperance Society was a square-faced man named Taniguchi. At Mr. Taniguchi’s request, I would sometimes perform temperance-promoting kamishibai at lecture halls and, having received the title of president of the Higashinari Temperance Society’s affiliated youth temperance society, showed kamishibai promoting temperance and savings to the neighborhood children. And since I was promoting savings, I thought it would be odd if I didn’t save money myself. In addition to setting aside ten yen each month for temperance savings, I created another savings passbook under Akiyama’s name. Akiyama was that scavenger who had rescued me in Nakanoshima Park. I considered that man my lifesaver, and though his whereabouts were now unknown, I decided to put the passbook under Akiyama’s name and deposit one yen on the tenth of every month, resolved to give him the entire savings should we ever meet again. I chose the tenth because that night in Nakanoshima Park had been August tenth and because my name was Jūkichi—if you dismiss it as a childlike notion, then so be it—but in the end, without such notions, someone like me might never have managed to save at all.

If my story were to be considered an edifying tale, it’s from this point onward that it would truly become one—but since such tales are by their very nature rather tedious, I’m afraid you’ll have to endure even more from here on out.

Now, when the balance in the passbook I’d been saving into one yen at a time finally reached forty yen, I felt an overwhelming urge to see Mr. Akiyama. To be fair, even before that moment, while making my kamishibai rounds through Osaka’s neighborhoods, I had been discreetly searching for his whereabouts—but found nothing. One day, I confided this to Mr. Taniguchi, our propaganda chief, and he became so enthused that the very next day we packed lunches and combed through Osaka together from dawn till dusk. But with only the name “Akiyama” and his former scavenger occupation to go on, it proved as futile as grasping at clouds—nothing like searching for a lost child. Just as we’d exhausted ourselves, Mr. Tadokoro—head of the Kosai Association’s childcare department involved with Imazato Nursery’s work (since Mr. Taniguchi too had connections there and was close to him)—heard of our quest and suggested involving the police, bringing the matter to the prefectural police department. Then an Asahi Shimbun reporter stationed at the government offices caught wind of it, promptly sensationalizing the story under the absurd headline “Where Is Mr. Akiyama? The Kamishibai Life Searching for a Lifesaver,” leaving me mortified thinking This has become a real mess. Yet that very article would ultimately reunite me with Mr. Akiyama.

It was our reunion after four years. To put it that way makes it sound like a newspaper article—and indeed, that very reunion was written up by the same Asahi reporter. Though I burned with embarrassment, perhaps even someone as ordinary as myself feels a faint pleasure at being featured in print—I can still recite every word of that article to this day.

“The whereabouts of Mr. Akiyama Hachirō—the counterpart in our previously reported ‘Life Kamishibai’—have been discovered through this very newspaper’s article serving as the catalyst.” Four years prior—on the night of August 10, 1931—Mr. Akiyama Hachirō had saved Mr. Nagafuji Jūkichi (then twenty-eight) as he stood resolved to die on Nakanoshima Park’s riverbank and taught him rehabilitation’s path before vanishing without trace. Afterward he drifted through transient hardships until lying ill and unemployed at button manufacturer Mr. Furutani Shinroku’s residence in Kitainuno-chō 1-chōme, Higashinari Ward. Upon reading our article on the 22nd ultimo, Mr. Furutani—realizing his second-floor lodger likely matched this “Life Kamishibai” counterpart—took our paper to visit Mr. Nagafuji Jūkichi (now thirty-two) at Mr. Miyake Harumatsu’s Ōimazato-chō home. Finding Nagafuji-kun preparing kamishibai gear for neighborhood children, Mr. Furutani’s account sent him into raptures. He immediately reported this to Mr. Tadokoro Katsuya (48)—Osaka Saiseikai Branch Director and the original story’s supporting role—and Mr. Taniguchi Naotarō (38), Higashinari Temperance Society’s propaganda chief. The group then visited Mr. Furutani’s residence together, achieving their four-year-awaited reunion. “Mr. Akiyama!” “Nagafuji-kun!” They clasped hands trembling with emotion while reliving old memories. When Nagafuji-kun presented the passbook saved under Akiyama-kun’s name, the latter choked through tears—“So the saved becomes savior”—vowing to take it as rehabilitation’s token. With this triumphant “Life Kamishibai” finale, Mr. Tadokoro proposed embarking on “life sugoroku.” The men pledged: “Working self-reliantly while saving one yen monthly for each other, we’ll reunite beneath Tennōji’s great torii gate at 5:53 PM on March 21, 1940—equinox sunset.” Thus did life sugoroku’s dice—bearing existence’s joys and sorrows—tremble in their hands before being cast east and west.

There were about ten more lines written after this, but I felt ashamed and decided to omit them. The reason we decided to meet on the equinox day was that since our reunion had fallen on March 23rd, we followed Mr. Tadokoro’s suggestion that meeting on the 21st—the actual equinox—would be more fitting than the 23rd. Mr. Tadokoro came from a Buddhist family—a long-eyebrowed man who’d devoted years to childcare work and had an amusing habit of flicking out his tongue whenever he cracked a joke. I heard his daughter was studying traditional dance.

The newspaper had written that we parted ways east and west that very day, but in reality, it was about half a month later that Mr. Akiyama left me to head toward Shikoku. On my part, I remained in Osaka as always, continuing with kamishibai. Yet the world works in strange ways—perhaps because I’d been featured twice in the papers like that, I suddenly became something of a local celebrity. After all, this was an era obsessed with publicity; even a major bar came offering me work as a waiter. Had I carelessly accepted, I’d have become newspaper fodder again and doubled my shame—but I wisely refused. Then came a woman’s letter proposing marriage. She claimed our circumstances were similar. “Let’s join hands and take life’s kamishibai first step together,” she wrote—whether earnest or mocking, it defied all reason.

When I walked through town carrying my kamishibai equipment, whispers of "Life Kamishibai" would reach my ears. The newspaper had promoted my picture-story shows, but precisely because of that exposure, I ultimately quit performing them. I simply couldn't bear the embarrassment of being recognized anymore. Through Mr. Tadokoro's connections, I took jobs as a shipyard warehouse guard and hospital orderly, continuing both my temperance savings and deposits into Mr. Akiyama's account from those meager wages—yet no word ever arrived from Mr. Akiyama himself. We had indeed promised not to contact each other before our appointed meeting, but still, not knowing his whereabouts filled me with unease.

Five years passed in the blink of an eye. As the promised equinox day drew near, I grew increasingly anxious about Mr. Akiyama’s well-being, voicing my doubts—“Will he really come?”—each time I met with Mr. Tadokoro and the others. Then, on the morning of the 18th—the first day of the equinox period—the Asahi Shimbun, which had previously sensationalized my “Life Kamishibai,” ran a special feature: “Success Sugoroku: Five-Year Ascent Nears Its Pledged Day—But Where’s the Other Player?” Under a headline questioning “Will he come?”, they wrote it up again, so on the promised day when I went with Mr. Tadokoro and the others to the torii gate at Tennōji’s west entrance—perhaps due to it being the equinox—the area around the torii was a sea of people so dense we could barely move. When I realized the crowd swarming Tennōji—curiosity-seekers whipped up by the newspaper article—had come to witness our fifth-year reunion under the guise of shrine visits, I was suddenly ashamed of my shabby appearance, so utterly mismatched with phrases like “Success Sugoroku” splashed across the papers. This, I thought, must be what they mean by wishing the ground would swallow you whole. However, there was no way I could run away now, and as I wondered whether Mr. Akiyama would actually come, I fixed my gaze—eyes naturally lighting up—toward the west gate bus stop.

Mr. Akiyama came after all. He pushed through the commotion—his figure clad in a worn national uniform, clutching a furoshiki bundle. "The newspaper later wrote, 'At 5:53 PM, the moment the sun was about to set directly west of the torii gate at Tennōji’s west entrance'—but it was over ten minutes past." We couldn’t even engage in a standing conversation there, and as we tried to head to Shunpūsō spiritual dojo in nearby Ōsaka Town where I’d reserved a room beforehand, the newspaper’s photography team told us to wait for photos. We held our pose—Mr. Akiyama’s hand on my shoulder, me laughing up at his tall face—until just as they lit the magnesium flash, a voice shouted “Wait! Take me too!” and bursting through the crowd came my father Maru Danji, entirely unexpected.

When we had settled into a room at Shunpūsō, Father said, “I scolded you for youthful recklessness back then and disowned you—but upon reflection, I was being just as reckless myself.” He continued in his rakugo-performer’s cadence while surveying me: “After seeing that newspaper article I rushed here—look at us both now! I’ve aged sure enough…but you’re no spring chicken either! Thirty-seven already?” Turning toward Mr. Akiyama with sudden gravity, he bowed his snow-white head deeply.“Was it you who saved my son?” Mr．Akiyama laughed softly．“If anything，he saved me．” As he explained，after crossing to Shodoshima Island in Shikoku and working as a hauling laborer for Marukin Soy Sauce，Mr．Akiyama had grown close to a local girl—only for her parents to forbid their union due to his scavenger past．Driven to despair，he nearly abandoned life itself until remembering our five-year pact．Rededicating himself，he crossed to Kyushu where he drifted between mines before joining Yamashiro Mining last June—though whether he would have survived without our pledge remained uncertain． “Truth be told，”Mr．Akiyama said while tears moistened his signature mole，“it feels like Nagafuji-kun here saved my life instead．” Then，as if reading my mind，he proposed：“How about we part east and west once more？Five years from today—same time，same place？” Those were precisely my intended words．We simply showed each other our respective savings passbooks before resolving to keep them．

On the evening boat the next day, Mr. Akiyama departed for Kyushu. After seeing him off at Tembōzan with Father and Mr. Tadokoro, I went with Father alone to his house in Sennichimae. Behind the Kabukiza Theatre, next to Jiyūken eatery, lay an alley called Ganjirō Lane. I never learned why it bore that name, but at its dead end stood a Jizo statue, and among the jumble of tempura shops, sushi stalls, and other eateries sat a small lattice-windowed house—Father’s home.

Father was already seventy-five years old. With rakugo having fallen out of fashion and himself no longer able to perform, he was living out his days in reduced circumstances alongside what must have been his third or fourth elderly wife. The old woman, who had blackened her teeth just like Okimi—long since dead—had once worked as a hairdresser; under the eaves of the house hung a lantern bearing Father’s brushstrokes that read “Beautification Parlor.” But two or three years prior, when her right hand had become paralyzed, she had apparently given up hairdressing altogether. My younger brother Shinji had gone to Manchuria; my sister Yukino and another half-sister born after her had both married off. When I realized Father’s livelihood depended entirely on remittances from these three, I resolved to live with him and fulfill my filial duties.

Because Father disliked the medicinal smell clinging to my body, I soon quit my job as a hospital handyman and became a salesman for a savings company. I’d done plenty of savings promotion through kamishibai, and given my background, I had to wryly admit I was perfectly suited for this work—yet my one bad habit remained: this crude tongue of mine, born unable to wield proper honorifics. You can probably tell from how I talk—just when you think I’m using polite language, out comes something rough. Because of this, even when making my rounds as a salesman, I often ended up angering people.

However, since I managed to keep my job without being fired, Father—perhaps reassured upon seeing me like that—achieved a peaceful death at seventy-six in May two years later. As he had been a rakugo performer, his death received a small notice in the newspaper, but neither Hamako nor Tamako came. They might have died. Having joined the Temperance Society, I had saved ten yen each month until my temperance savings exceeded a thousand yen by then, so with that money I held the funeral and erected Father’s grave. On August 10, I went with the elderly wife Father had left behind to Koyasan to inter his bones. The date I deliberately chose—August 10, Showa 16, exactly ten years after that night I met Mr. Akiyama at Nakanoshima Park—left me feeling deeply sentimental, though this was partly due to the elderly wife’s words that August 10 marked the start of Obon.

After placing Father’s bones—which had been clattering in the ossuary—inside, I left the temple with relief and entered Nakanoin’s tea shop. An out-of-season old record was playing, feeling utterly incongruous with the setting, but as I half-listened to the voice singing “Today too, light balloons in the sky…”, it somehow seemed to resemble Fumiko’s voice. But perhaps it was just my imagination. I didn't feel particularly inclined to verify it, but as I listened to that song—somehow both shrill and sorrowful—I found myself recalling events from ten years ago. That was a distant memory. But even when I look back at my current self, it’s not the kind of success people would clamor about as some “Success Sugoroku.” Still a salesman for the savings company—you could say I’m going nowhere—but I no longer have any grand hopes. The lights of Osaka that once tempted me have completely vanished, and instead, I find my mind strangely at peace. As I made my rounds as a salesman, opportunities to profit weren’t entirely absent, and when I imagined the newspapers writing about a second meeting with Mr. Akiyama years later, I couldn’t say the thought never crossed my mind—but precisely because they might write about it, I found myself wanting to exercise restraint; I couldn’t bring myself to do anything dishonest. And I wonder if Mr. Akiyama, sharing similar feelings, is working earnestly—albeit modestly—in Kyushu…

After leaving the tea shop, I walked toward the cable car station while listening to the cicadas’ cries, but as I looked at the wrinkled face of Father’s elderly wife trotting along behind me, I suddenly thought I should show filial piety to this old woman. And before I knew it, I found myself murmuring under my breath, “Today too, light balloons in the sky...”