Pathway to Japanese Literature

At that time, I had only sixty-three sen on me.

Six ten-sen white copper coins and three one-sen copper coins. Clutching that meager sum, I resolved to walk from Osaka to Tokyo along the railway tracks. When I think about it now, it was sheer madness. But recklessness had always been my innate disposition, and besides—though I didn’t know how many ri lay between Osaka and Tokyo—the thought that I was going to meet Bunko made the distance feel trivial... Not that the idea of waiting until I could scrape together train fare never flickered through my mind. Yet still I trudged onward with those same feet that had wasted daylight scrambling for coins—driven partly by the urge to draw nearer to Tokyo where Bunko waited, and partly by some inexplicable nostalgia for wandering itself.

Come to think of it, my wandering had indeed already begun the moment I was born... Of course I had no memory of being born, but apparently I’d only spent eight months in my mother’s womb. I was what’s called a premature baby—a common enough occurrence—but as fate would have it, my rakugo-performing father had left home for a month-long Kyushu tour about ten months before my birth, and if you counted 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 peered restlessly at my newborn face, searching only for features resembling Mother’s—the fair complexion, the straight nose, the slight underbite—and ended up thoroughly bitter. Father was dark-skinned—so dark that he’d comment on his own complexion the moment he took the stage—and had a rather flat nose.

At that moment, Mother wore a look that said making excuses would be pointless—though in truth, she was too utterly weakened to even muster the strength for explanations. She struggled to nurse me properly, and when the startled midwife pulled my mouth from her breast, they say Mother’s face had already turned waxen, her tongue protruding between her teeth as she groaned. And so Mother died, and immediately after her body was sent to the funeral parlor in Abeno, I was rushed off to become a foster child. Though my father becoming a sudden widower made it unavoidable—and it wasn’t as if I couldn’t be raised on milk—sending me into foster care before even the first week of mourning had passed seemed excessively hasty. Was it perhaps that lingering doubt about my parentage had spurred them on? This was what Okimi Bāsan told me when I was fifteen. Okimi Bāsan’s words were brutally cutting, but in my child’s heart I nodded along, putting on a precocious face that seemed to say, “That figures.” The reason being that by then, the conviction that my father didn’t cherish me had already taken root within me. But now, it’s different. Now, I firmly believe that I am indeed my father’s child...

I don’t remember clearly, but my first foster placement was apparently with farmers living beside a large pond in Sayama, Minami-Kawachi—one said to measure one ri around (about four kilometers). Given that they took in foster children, they were impoverished tenant farmers to begin with, living a meager existence in a barnhouse where they couldn’t even afford a single cow. While the master was out working the fields, his wife would make paper balloons while nursing both me and another child of her own born the same year. But less than a year after I arrived, the Russo-Japanese War broke out, the master was conscripted, and his wife had to tend to the fields herself. However, even as spirited a woman as she was, tending to the fields with an infant in each arm must have proven too much to handle. One winter morning, when she went to Osaka to collect night soil, she stopped by my birthplace in Takatsu and said that while it wasn’t that she couldn’t have her four-year-old daughter look after me, there was also a pond in the neighborhood. And saying, "Since I’ve come all this way, I’ll take some night soil," she left me behind in place of what she’d collected.

To say I was left behind "in exchange for night soil"... It sounded like a slip of the tongue that accidentally became a joke, but I suppose this was my inherited family trait. Though Father might have doubted it, I was indeed my rakugo-performing father's son. It’s nothing to boast of, but I was skilled at talking—or rather, a chatterbox—to the point of sickening even myself, though shallow women seemed to find this trait somewhat appealing. In truth, there were women who stayed up late ensnared by my inconsequential life stories—neither harmful nor helpful—forming bonds that couldn’t be broken. Perhaps hoping to elicit some sympathy, I told those tales extensively to women. That said, my temperament made it impossible to present matters pitifully even when seeking compassion. Since it was such a dreary story anyway, I decided to tell it spiritedly—with childhood memories being hazy and fantasies mixed in, I resolved to embellish everything humorously using this "night soil exchange" approach. There was no use mumbling childhood anecdotes only I found amusing in such a dismal tone. Feeling nobody would listen unless I lied, my storytelling naturally adopted this vulgar tone that catered to expectations—though it’s not entirely untrue that this manner was my only means of self-consolation. This was how I told it.

“……So that’s how I ended up being left behind in exchange for night soil. But by sunset that same day, I’d already been handed off to farmers beneath Ishikiri-san’s stone shrine—the Tumor Deity’s turf. Sure, Father was a man always on the move, but let’s face it—I wasn’t exactly patient myself, seeing as I’d leapt from Mother’s belly after just eight months.” “In other words, I managed to get my hands on some milk quick enough, but misfortune kept piling up—that farmer’s wife came down with typhus within ten days.” “No matter how much of a tumor god Ishikiri-san was, typhus wasn’t his specialty.” “Fields he could cure, but typhus? Different field altogether.” “Next thing you know, some quack doctor comes flying in.” “A cop peers through the door with his notebook out.” “Off to Momoyama’s quarantine hospital they go—disinfect this, sanitize that—whole place turned upside down.” “In the end, they declared she couldn’t breastfeed me no more.” “Rightly so—who’d drink milk from a typhus case anyway?” “So there I was—belly growling, crying my lungs out, but nobody gave a damn.” “Wouldn’t even change my diapers.” “Talk about adding insult to injury.” “When they started kicking me around for good measure, I wailed straight at the husband’s face—‘Mister, what’re you gonna do about this?’—a thousand times over. With trouble piling on trouble, he finally hoisted me onto his back and hauled me to Father’s place.” “But Father just packed me off again—this time to Yamataki Village in Izumi.” “Yamataki Village—deep in Kishiwada’s hills, all autumn leaves and waterfalls, real scenic spot. But this time? I was the one who ran.”

"But that became addictive, and from then on, no matter where I was placed, I’d always run away on my own…"

“But hold on now—you, you were still just a baby back then, weren’t ya?” “Awfully precocious for a baby, weren’t ya….”

My life story was so riddled with half-truths that even women would laugh, unable to discern where fact ended and fiction began. Yet one thing held true: by age seven, I’d already been shuttled between six or seven foster homes like a postcard bearing forwarding slips—proof that this habit of wandering had already seeped into my young bones long before I knew its name.

In the summer when I was seven, it was decided I would return home. Even my father must have pitied me, his own foster child. However, the one who came to fetch me from where I was staying in the rural outskirts of Yao was not Father, but Granny Okimi the shamisen player.

Passing through the back gate of Takatsu Shrine, one immediately encounters a bridge called Umenokibashi. Though when Granny Okimi told me that crossing what was said to be Osaka’s shortest bridge—a mere two or three strides with a child’s legs—would lead straight to the modestly tidy row house where I’d live from that day on, my heart raced, yet there already was a stepmother named Hamako. Later, I would learn that Hamako had been a geisha in Minami whom Father had taken in—or rather, whom she had aggressively inserted herself into his life—and that four years prior, immediately after being cast off by her patron, she had barged in as his wife. They’d had a son—Shinji, now three years old—whose two streams of snot and startled acorn eyes mirrored his father’s. My father’s face was all rounded features, and his stage name was Maru Danji. Thus, Hamako called Shinji "Little Maru Danji" and delighted in saying he’d become an entertainer, but Granny Okimi must have long envied this. No sooner had she climbed back up using the same legs that had sent me off than Granny Okimi launched into sarcasm—"That Yasui Inari shrine in Takatsu's precincts, they call it Yasui-san ('cheap birth'), the childbirth deity! Yet this boy's own mother died of childbed fever right beside it—what cruel irony..."—pointedly dredging up my birth mother's story to unsettle Hamako. No sooner had Granny Okimi left for the vaudeville theater with that look of smug satisfaction than Father too departed for his performance hour, leaving me suddenly adrift in loneliness—but when evening came, Hamako took Shinji and me to Futatsudo and Dotonbori, letting me see night stalls for the first time since birth.

Let me recount that time in a bit more detail. The reason being that the nighttime world I witnessed back then did exert some influence on my entire life, but above all else, because for me the streets of Osaka are nostalgic—now more than ever nostalgic—to the point where I might call it a bittersweet fondness.

Leaving home and passing through the front gate’s torii brought us immediately to Takatsu Omotesuji slope—atop its southern crest once stood a zenzai shop called “Kanidon,” though scarcely anyone remembers this now. While there were people who knew the "Kanidon" in Futatsudo, none knew this "Kanidon". However, that night we did not go to that "Kanidon," instead immediately descending the slope—a path where temples glowed with votive lights visible from the road, their white walls intermittently appearing between bends; where alleyways housed Jizō statues at their entrances; where shops sold golden lanterns and stone foxes clutching scrolls for Inari worship; where coin purses crafted from bagworm nests hung for sale; where catering houses displayed red glass eaves-lights etched with family crests; where oil shops spread wide frontages; where glimpses of naked figures flashed through red noren curtains at bathhouses—this slope connecting Osaka's elevated Uemachi district with the lowland mercantile Semba area carried an atmosphere where temple-town nostalgia and urban clamor collided in chaotic harmony.

Descending the slope and turning north brought us to the market, where under eaves reeking of fish beneath rolled-up sunshades, a young man wearing nothing but a loincloth sat playing shogi in the dull glow of an eaves light, who seemed to have closed up shop. Upon spotting Hamako, he called out, "Where ya headed?" Then Hamako said, "Just south a bit," and added, "You’ve got a fifty-sen fine for that half-naked look of yours!"

The market interior was narrow and dark, but upon passing through and turning west, the road suddenly opened up into brightness—Futatsudo. There were shops selling blackened fur seal meat, charred-remedy stalls peddling monkey skulls and dragon miscarriages, apothecaries stocked with hydrangea root and lizard’s tail—just as I began thinking this area teemed with medicine vendors, several stores selling measuring rods and scales appeared, with two wells standing before a rock candy shop’s eaves. At the small house with sunken eaves beneath Shimoyamato Bridge, they sold tricolor uiro cakes, while across from them at the kamaboko shop, unsold white hanpei fish cakes floated in water. At the wild boar butcher’s shop, a boar carcass hung upside down. As we passed the kelp shop’s front, the reek of boiling salted kombu assaulted our noses. At the glass bead curtain stall, the clinking of crystal strands and tinkling wind chimes conjured coolness, while inside the comb shop, an apprentice dozed at his post. The blue-painted building beneath the stairs descending to Dotonbori River’s bank housed public toilets. There stood a potato vendor, a notions shop, and a kimono fabric store. Before the obi specialty shop called “Makaran-ya,” Hamako lingered endlessly.

Shinji, having frequented Futatsudo so often that it held no novelty for him, kept yawning repeatedly, but I found my young heart stirred by the tingling allure of this nocturnal world. Gazing at the lights of Dotonbori ahead, I felt as if bewitched by a fox—could this world contain a realm brighter even than Futatsudo we'd just passed through? Thinking that if Hamako didn't take me there, I'd seize any chance to dash into that deluge of light, I waited while she stood motionless before Makaran-ya. When she finally resumed walking, I eagerly followed alongside her across Sakaisuji's tram tracks—only for Dotonbori's brilliance to instantly sweep over my body, leaving me utterly dazed.

Benten-za, Asahi-za, Kado-za... And a little further on were Nakaza and Naniwaza—completing the five theaters lined up eastward—whose signs people back then would leisurely gaze up at in admiration. But Hamako suddenly turned at the fruit shop corner next to Kado-za toward Sennichimae and adjusted her yukata collar in front of an eyeglass shop’s mirror. Hamako wore a yukata patterned with snake-eye umbrellas, its hem cut conspicuously short. Perhaps because of this, even now whenever I see a snake-eye umbrella, I remember this stepmother with bittersweet fondness. Another memory surfaces—that gesture she made when passing Hōzenji’s alleyway: peering inside for a moment before pointing toward Kagetsu and telling us, “That’s where Father used to perform,” then suddenly sticking out her tongue with a playful flick.

Eventually, the Rakutenchi building came into view. But Hamako didn’t take us all the way to its entrance—she abruptly turned toward Nihonbashi 1-chōme instead, then immediately entered nearby Meyeiji Temple. There, numerous donated lanterns hung where votive lamps swayed and incense flames flickered—still bright overall, yet unlike Dotonbori’s brilliance, dark corners lingered here and there. Hamako had just finished offering a lamp before Fudō Myōō while chanting unintelligible words in a peculiar melody when, without a word to us, she moved to the water-pouring Jizō statue. There she scrubbed its weathered face and chest—the latter discolored by mineral deposits—while pouring water over them. I exchanged glances with Shinji.

When we left Meianji, it was dark. However, Hamako immediately led us into the light. The Days of the Horse night stalls were out. The Days of the Horse night stalls—so named because they appeared every Horse Day along the north-south streets from Asahi-za Theater’s corner in Dotonbori to Kotohiradori in Sennichimae—left me once again drawn to this world like a nocturnal moth. Next to the toy shop stood an imagawayaki stall; adjacent to that, a magic trick demonstration revealing secrets; the lantern with spinning round-and-round contents was a zoetrope; on the red lantern of the insect vendor's stall were painted bell crickets, pine crickets, and katydids; beside the insect seller, the honey-drizzling stall sold Gion dumplings glazed with syrup—and what shop could be next to this honey stall? Looking over, there was a bean cracker shop, star-shaped candies, and cut barley candies all nestled under glass lids; next to them stood a taiyaki stall—freshly baked with red bean paste filling reaching clear to the tail, so piping hot you couldn’t hold them even wrapped in newspaper. Clay crafts, wooden blocks, picture books, menko cards, vitro marbles, fireworks, pufferfish lanterns, Ōshū Saikawa mantises, folding fans, almanacs, ranchu goldfish, obijime cords, wind chimes…—this jumble of colors and shapes arranged chaotically yet with a peculiar order under acetylene gas and oil lamp lights was to me, raised in the countryside, nothing less than a dream world. As I walked in a daze, I soon arrived before a nursery where the smell of acetylene gas and blue lamps vividly revived greenery wet with watering can spray—this must have been the outskirts of the night stalls, dim as if the bottom had dropped out, the street musician’s violin strains carrying a melancholy that only those who’d reached the market’s edge would know.

However, before I could voice my desire to turn back once more, Hamako had already led us again toward the brightness—past the nursery stall, wind chimes, obijime cords, ranchu goldfish, almanacs, folding fans, Ōshū Saikawa mantises, pufferfish lanterns, fireworks, glass marbles… I thought she was a good mother. What's more, Hamako—without any pleading from me—began exclaiming, "Should we get that too? Oh, you want this one? Well now, that's fine too! Sir, wrap up two of these as well," her eyes lighting up as if possessed, proceeding to buy two of everything for both Shinji and me until I found myself wandering about in a daze. Overwhelmed by joy to the point of nearly wetting myself, I rubbed my thighs together at the insect vendor’s stall, eager to hurry home—but Hamako kept browsing through cages of crickets and katydids, showing no sign of moving.

Hamako wasn’t inept at household management, yet she couldn’t shake her old shopping habits. Moreover, with me—a stepchild—now returned, she had to consider the neighbors’ speculations starting tomorrow and feared the meddlesome tongue of Granny Okimi, who insisted on interfering unasked. Perhaps she also intended to show a kindness surpassing even that of a birth mother—though such complexities were naturally lost on my childish self. On our way back, treated to shaved ice with sweet beans at Futatsudo’s “Kanidon,” I ascended Takatsu Slope in a daze, enraptured by the sweetness of maternal affection I’d never before tasted, gazing up time and again at Hamako’s beautiful profile.

Yet this mother who seemed so kind was, according to the neighborhood adults, a stepmother. “Whose kid is this? The soba shop’s stepchild! Come up and play—I’ll whack your head with a chipped bowl, I will!” The one who went out of her way to teach me this rhyme was Granny Okimi. Whenever she gave me five-rin candies bought from Sennichidō—a shop nicknamed “Fifty Percent Off” across from Tokiwa-za in Sennichimae—she would say, “Jūkichi-chan, unlike Shin-chan here, you’re a stepchild—you’ll have it rough, poor thing.” She pressed her blackened-teeth mouth—grotesque and unsettling—against my ear while already tearing up. When I just stared blankly in confusion, she scolded me to “act more refined,” then urged, “If you’re sad, cry with me! C’mon, cry your heart out!” Granny Okimi had once been the wife of a second-rate Osaka actor but was driven from her Horie home—despite having two children—by a geisha-turned-mistress. For twenty-five years since then, she had lived alone in Nodocho, renting a room above a toothbrush artisan’s workshop while brooding over her own children’s fate as stepchildren. Thus her coming unasked to fetch me from rural Yao, her persistent meddling in Maru Danji’s household despite knowing Hamako’s dislike, may have stemmed not just from kindness but from a cruel curiosity she herself failed to recognize. Thus words like “stepchild,” “stepmother,” and “hardships”—terms whose meanings I hadn’t understood at first—had gradually become ingrained in my ears.

Then my face gradually took on the look of a stepchild anticipating imminent mistreatment, and when I turned that face toward Hamako, this young stepmother began resembling quite the stepmother indeed. Hamako had likely reached the point where even my novelty was wearing thin. At night when Father went to the vaudeville theater, Hamako—after Shinji begged to visit the Days of the Horse and Enoki night stalls—would glance at me while saying there was no one left to mind the house. At such times, it was always me declaring things I didn't mean—like how night stalls made me sleepy and I hated them. Partly I wanted to secretly eat alone the candy Granny Okimi had given me that day. The very phrase "secretly eat alone" came from Granny Okimi too. In a voice grown increasingly sharp lately—perhaps from marital troubles with Father—Hamako muttered, "What an odd child." "Well then, Jūkichi, you stay here and mind the house."

During the day, when I took Shinji out to play in front of the house, to the neighbors it only looked as though I were being forced into babysitting. I must have worn such a dejected face. Whenever Shinji cried, Hamako would invariably blame it on me. So during times like when he developed otitis media and wailed all day long, I—who’d been dodging her gaze—used being sent to buy ice as an excuse to linger endlessly at the shrine’s stage. Then the ice I’d been carrying shriveled until it slipped free from its rope and shattered upon impact. Startled, I gathered the pieces, but when they wouldn’t stay tied anymore, I tried bundling them in my apron—only to trip on the stone steps and fall. Though I’d only scraped my hands and knees, I likely thought this gave me an excuse to return empty-handed without a beating from Hamako; even when a passerby lifted me up, I lay limp as a corpse.

However, one winter during my third year of elementary school, when I returned home after school and heard Shinji’s crying, I braced myself for Hamako’s scolding and timidly climbed upstairs—only to find her conspicuously absent. Instead, Father sat before the long brazier like a lump of lead, absentmindedly gazing at the weeping Shinji while puffing on his tobacco. When evening fell, Father left for the vaudeville theater. After a while, two portions of boxed meals were delivered from the neighborhood bento shop. As Shinji and I ate them together, I asked him about it—he said that Hamako wasn’t coming back anymore. I didn’t actually retort "Don’t be stupid," but the next day, Okimi Bāsan came bustling over and declared, "Rejoice, rejoice! She’s finally been kicked out for good!" Hamako had been driven out by Father as punishment for tormenting me, his stepchild, or so they said—but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to believe Father cared about me that deeply.

Shortly after Hamako disappeared, our family moved to Kasaya-cho. On Suōchō-suji Street, about half a chō south on the eastern side, there was an alley. It was a south-facing house at the very end of that alley. The narrow alley resembled an eel’s burrow, but being near Sōemonchō’s pleasure quarter, it differed from the poor tenements common in Uemachi or Nagamachi. The houses lining both sides included a shamisen instructor’s signboard, a theater prop workshop, geisha houses, and even a home where an independent geisha lived with her mother and cat—three occupants(?)—all while paradoxically having telephone lines installed. More than that, it grew livelier late at night rather than by day, giving the entire alleyway an indefinably alluring quality. Speaking of allure, even through childish eyes I recognized something coquettish about Tamako—this stranger who’d come to help us move—with powder dusted only on her neck and her yukata hem cut short like Hamako’s. When Tamako showed no signs of leaving after helping clean up, she simply lingered on and became our new mother.

Just like Hamako, Tamako took Shinji and me to the Yahata-suji night stalls. Oblivious to everything, Shinji seemed delighted by Tamako’s arrival—but how did I truly feel? This was the Yahata-suji night market—ten steps beyond our alley lay a street crossing Kasaya-cho’s thoroughfare east to west. Yahata-suji: a lane dense with tool shops, scroll mounting workshops, and antique dealers. Let me explain about tōri and suji. In Senba, where east-west lines developed more than north-south ones, we call east-west routes tōri and north-south ones suji. But in Shimanouchi, the opposite holds—north-south lines open wider, becoming tōri while east-west ones become suji. Exceptions exist—Shinsaibashi-suji and Midosuji remain suji despite running north-south—but Yahata-suji being east-west makes it a suji, and along this suji the night stalls bloomed.

This night market stretched across Shinsaibashi-suji all the way to Midosuji, but when Tamako reached the Shinsaibashi-suji intersection, she veered south without hesitation. Crossing Ebisu Bridge, turning south from its end toward Dotonbori, passing before Naniwa-za Theater, moving past Naka-za Theater, and arriving at the fruit shop beside Kado-za Theater—unlike Hamako, she didn’t turn toward Sennichimae but instead veered toward Tazaemon Bridge on the opposite side. After pausing to cool off on the bridge, we headed straight north back to Kasaya-cho’s alley. I found myself dazed by Shinsaibashi-suji’s lights—my first time seeing them—but more than that, I was captivated by the riverside illuminations visible from Ebisu Bridge and Tazaemon Bridge. The brothels of Sōemonchō and Dōtonbori’s theater teahouses stood back-to-back across the river’s divide. Summer curtains draped both buildings’ rears, their lights casting fan-wielding patrons as shadow puppets—a sight that sent my oversensitive heart leaping when reflected in Dōtonbori River’s languid flow. Yet I’d grown too wary to view Tamako—who showed me this scene—through those same eyes that once deemed Hamako a good mother. I glared at Tamako with eyes saying “What’s this—a stepmother?” then seized Shinji—nearing Daibōji Elementary age—and hissed “You’re a stepchild,” savoring cruelty’s bitter tang. When I realized Shinji—so enviable under Hamako—now shared my stepchild status, some vicious part of me rejoiced.

However, Shinji was a strange child—without showing any signs of missing Hamako, he seemed to cling devotedly to the monstrously tall Tamako. However, when Tamako eventually gave birth to a girl, Shinji began nodding at the word "stepchild" that I kept repeating to him and wearing a sorrowful expression, so whenever I saw him watching over the girl, I felt a bit sorry for him. And when I observed Father, he showed no inclination to dote on the girl, instead constantly quarreling with Tamako—so I formed a precocious conclusion: that even if Shinji and I weren’t cherished by Father, there was some resignation to be had. However, Tamako was a stingy woman who never gave us money for snacks, so when I suddenly remembered Hamako’s generosity and talked about it with Shinji, I found myself thinking of Hamako as if she were my birth mother, tears welling up—a reaction that now strikes me as rather strange. Tamako was not only tall but utterly lacking in charm; her face was incomparably ugly next to Hamako’s.

However, around the time I was about to graduate from the higher elementary division at Daibōji Elementary School, I found a photograph of my birth mother that had been tucked away in the bottom of the Buddhist altar’s drawer. And as I listened to Granny Okimi exclaiming, "Oh, this is her! This is her!" while staring fixedly at that photograph, I resolved to leave home and enter into service. I felt this would lend my departure a more tragically heroic air. When I confided in Granny Okimi, she tearfully agreed. I had been dramatic, but Granny Okimi matched my drama measure for measure. Around that time, there was a girl named Urushiyama Bunko in Class Hanagumi’s fourth-year elementary division at Daibōji Elementary School who commuted from Tatamiya-chō. True to her geisha lineage, she wore a yukata with bold wisteria patterns even at school, applying white powder and rouge after dismissal. Yet the bittersweet melancholy of parting—knowing apprenticeship would sever our fleeting connection—only steeled my resolve. But what truly cemented my decision was Father’s complete lack of opposition to my proposal. Though perceptive enough to interpret this as paternal indifference, in those days Osaka custom dictated that all but the most privileged sons be sent into errand apprenticeships—an inevitability requiring no particular fuss.

Generally speaking, I have a tendency to exaggerate things, and the reason I went on at such length about my childhood until now was because I believed that being sent off as a foster child, raised by stepmothers, and going into service had completely altered my fate—but upon reflecting now, I came to feel that who I had become wasn’t due to my environment or circumstances after all. No matter what environment or circumstances I might have been raised in, wouldn’t I have inevitably become exactly who I am now? No—when I thought about it, the story of how an ordinary man like me was raised amounted to nothing worth mentioning. And upon reflection, since continuing this tale any further would be futile, I found myself regretting having rambled on so long already. However, even that was but corrosion seeping from my inherently talkative nature—though I’d preferred to row swiftly to the encounter at Tennōji West Gate and end this tale there, having begun with childhood stories, I had to sail this boat already launched and continue this uninteresting narrative a while longer. However, I resolved to row as quickly as possible. That said, when it comes to stories about Osaka, I can’t help feeling nostalgic—I end up wanting to recount every little detail...

Now, it was in the spring I turned fifteen that I entered into an errand boy apprenticeship at a pottery shop in Nishi-Yokobori. This was what people called Pottery Town—a stretch of about fifteen chō along the Nishi-Yokobori River, spanning from the foot of Sudaibashi Bridge on Kōraibashi-dōri to Yotsubashi, where nearly every building housed a pottery shop. The household where I served my apprenticeship stood two or three shops south from Hirano-machi-dōri on the western side, adjacent to a tsukudani shop. I was made to wear a cotton workman’s coat with a white corded apron—mornings brought rice porridge with pickles, lunch was what they called a 'banzai'—either boiled vegetables or konnyaku in a watery clear broth—and evenings brought more pickles with tea over rice. There was no salary, and my allowance came to fifty sen a year—less than five sen per month. Even senior apprentices didn’t fare much better—my peers would clutch their meager allowances like sacred treasures. At the Hirano-machi night stalls that opened every sixteenth night, they’d savor skewers of pork belly stewed in miso—two rin per stick—or vegetable tempura at five rin a piece, trying to keep some meat on their bones. But as the newest recruit, I wasn’t permitted to visit the stalls; instead, I spent evenings practicing penmanship behind locked shop shutters. Moreover, in the mornings, I was made to get up earliest. And I would open the doors and clean, but this cleaning was difficult. Since rope scraps and garbage were used as fuel, if I didn’t sweep them up gently to avoid mixing in soil, I’d be scolded. The master was the sort whose eyes would blaze even over a single straw. Even after finishing cleaning, I wouldn’t get to eat right away—instead, I’d be sent running on errands. When I was sent on errands before breakfast, they said it made the errands quick. In return, when I returned from errands, they said I would eat too much, so the pickles were pickled awfully unpalatably. If the pickles were unpalatable, it was a considerate arrangement—they reasoned—so that we wouldn’t overeat the rice porridge either. However, this wasn't merely that household's custom—as I later realized after serving in various apprenticeships—but appears to have been a tradition throughout Senba.

In every way, I couldn't honestly claim my apprenticeship wasn't harsh—but when I returned home for my first Obon, I found my family had moved from Kasaya-cho to Kaminomiya-cho two or three days prior. The second house in the alley directly across from Zōroan Temple by Kaminomiya Middle School. And there Tamako was already gone, replaced by a woman named Shigeko as our new mother, while Yukino—the sister Tamako had left behind—had become a stepchild alongside Shinji. I thought to myself that entering service had been the right choice after all. At the time, I must have worn a rather pained expression, but now upon reflection, Father had this habit of moving house immediately whenever he changed wives—and that this always occurred in summer strikes me as rather odd. The cause of Father's marital separations remains unclear to this day, but he was, true to his nature as a rakugo performer, an easygoing man.

Be that as it may, the fact that my family had moved to Kaminomiya-cho left me feeling a bit lonely. This was because Tatamiya-cho, where Urushiyama Bunko lived, was a street one block west from Kasaya-cho toward Shinsaibashi-suji, and I had been looking forward to being able to see Bunko right away. I returned to Setomono-chō without meeting Bunko. However, even if our house had remained in Kasaya-cho at that time, looking back at myself in my apprentice’s garb, I might still have been too ashamed to meet her.

However, on July 24th of the following year at the Pottery Festival—a day when Setomono-chō displayed pottery artisan dolls for its annual bustle, my heart aflutter with excitement—amidst that commotion, I suddenly came face to face with Bunko. She had come to see the festival with her mother. Though Bunko coolly feigned ignorance upon seeing me—which was only natural, as I had never once spoken to her before, and besides, she was still twelve—at sixteen, I jumped to the conclusion that her aloofness stemmed from my apprentice’s garb, and abruptly came to loathe everything about Setomono-chō.

Were my feelings for Bunko what people call love? Or was it merely longing—a faint nostalgia, something of that sort? No—dissecting trivial sentiments from my boyhood serves no purpose. But regardless, after that incident I began neglecting my apprenticeship—though calling it neglect might be half a lie. Even without such cause, I was already cultivating lazy habits by then. When sent on errands, I would dawdle. I'd park my bicycle outside Unagidani's broth shop, slurp some soup, then return. I'd gulp down kintsuba while standing at Deiri Bridge. I'd visit every Kanemata beef restaurant for their "Imo-nuki" stew—branches in Shinsekai, Sennichimae, Matsushima, Fukushima—I tried them all. Yet more than these culinary detours, what truly captivated me were night stall lights. The acetylene gas reek and its azure glow. Sixty-candlepower brilliance reflected in promenade photo shop displays. The fortune-teller's stall lantern burning demurely. Then firefly sellers flickering beneath shadowed bridges... My dreams would swirl like halos around these luminous orbits. Whenever Hirano-machi stalls lit up on days ending with one or six, I'd grow restless and sneak from the shop. And Tsutenkaku Tower's lights in Shinsekai— The southern sky where Lion Hamigaki ads blinked red-blue-yellow tormented my heart. Resolving to become worthy of marrying Bunko, I'd study middle school commerce notes—only for my thoughts to drift from textbooks, lured by distant Taishō koto melodies toward that luminous void, wandering ever skyward.

Before long, I took my leave from the pottery shop and entered an apprenticeship at a medicine wholesaler in Doshomachi. In Setomono-chō, I wore a white-corded apron, but in Doshomachi, it was a brown cord. However, two years after that, I was already wearing a blue-corded apron at Utsubo's dried goods store. By then, my wandering tendencies must have already been taking hold. But one reason was that I had a troublesome trait—while I threw myself into things with twice the fervor of others, I’d grow bored just as quickly. To put it another way—a dragon’s head and a snake’s tail. If it were a thousand-meter race, I’d recklessly expend all my energy in the first two hundred meters, then collapse for the remainder—that was my pattern. For that reason, when I first entered service, I would work so diligently that even the master was impressed—but once I grew slightly bored, I could no longer stand it and would end up changing employers.

From age fifteen to twenty-five—a span of ten years—I remember three apron cord colors: white, brown, and blue. Beyond those, I changed apprenticeships so frequently that I’ve utterly forgotten what other hues my aprons bore. It resembled my foster child days of being shuttled between homes—but perhaps even Father had forgotten those old times, for he promptly branded me a delinquent and disowned me. But once disowned, there was nowhere that would hire me—yet I had to work to eat—and by autumn of my twenty-fifth year, I found myself selling out-of-season fans at the night stalls I had once so yearned for. What bitter irony. This phrasing about "finding myself" was likely influenced by my superficial dabbling in Western texts through lecture notes—though as for those very notes, I only ever feverishly read the first three months' worth, never paid for the subsequent ones, and consequently, they stopped arriving. But my ambition—or rather, my desire to become successful and marry Bunko—was something I still had not abandoned.

However, that winter—to be precise, on November 10th—the grand enthronement ceremony was held, and Osaka’s streets grew clamorous with dance troupes wielding bamboo clappers every night, the town’s mood buoyed by festivity. Thinking such days meant good business for night stall vendors, I had set up shop at Tanimachi 9-chōme’s night market selling Shōwa 4 calendars and daily tear-off almanacs instead of out-of-season fans. Then dance groups from the pleasure quarters came streaming even to this place, their “What a commotion! What a commotion!” chants blending with the general uproar—and amidst this, a female dancer with hair styled into spectacles-shaped loops and a checkered tenugui towel around her neck was suddenly thrust forward, staggering perilously close to collapsing onto my stall. Worried my merchandise might get soiled, I reflexively grabbed and held on—only to find myself staring at Bunko’s unexpected face. With nostalgic warmth fitting her newfound adulthood, Bunko said, “Why, if it isn’t Jūkichi-san—it’s been ages,” proving she still remembered her upperclassman from Kasaya-cho. By then Bunko had become a geisha in Sōemonchō, and one might say her profession combined with dance-induced exhilaration compelled her to address me, her childhood acquaintance—yet I felt glad. Simultaneously, I couldn’t help burning with shame at my apprentice self from ten years past and my current figure as a night stall vendor tonight—so pitifully dejected compared to the surrounding revelry.

As I watched Bunko’s retreating figure leave once more with the dance troupe, I not only grew thoroughly sick of being a night stall vendor but also felt somehow unable to remain in an Osaka where Bunko lived. My feelings, prone to swinging from one extreme to another, eventually drove me out of Osaka. And three years later, if I were to use the expression "found myself" once again, I found myself drifting until I ended up working as a tout at a hot spring inn in Shirahama, Nanki. That said, during those three years, as I diligently saved money, not a single day passed when I didn’t think of taking that money and openly going to meet Bunko. While I became involved with maids at the inn and such, the reason I never married any of them was, of course, because Bunko was always on my mind.

However, once coincidences begin accumulating, they become endless—and indeed, that’s what makes living in this world interesting—but one day, Bunko came on an excursion to Shirahama with a client and ended up staying at none other than the inn where I worked. This client was an executive from a Tokyo record company, but Bunko appeared to dislike him. Seizing the chance that I—her childhood acquaintance—happened to be working as a tout at that inn, she would claim she needed to buy souvenirs and have me guide her around. As we became engrossed in reminiscing about our childhood days, Bunko seemed suddenly captivated by my storytelling skills. Since the inn’s garden opened directly onto the beach, we would steal past the guests’ notice and converse on that stretch of white sand. Even if we had been spotted, my role as a tout provided ready justification—making our meetings half-public, so to speak. During those three days of Bunko’s stay in Shirahama, I completely lost myself. To this day, remembering it fills me with nostalgia and profound embarrassment.

Bunko stayed three days before returning to Osaka with her client. With a foolish look plastered on my face, I spent over half a month stewing restlessly about Bunko until finally reaching my limit and heading to Osaka. I climbed up to the Kikyōya establishment in Sōemonchō and asked them to call for Bunko, only to learn she'd been whisked off to Tokyo by that record company executive some ten days prior. They said she was getting recorded onto a proper record now—that was their reply. The shock left me reeling, then furious—but between drowning my anger in drink and squandering money on flowers, nearly all my savings from Shirahama vanished. I ended up staggering out of Kikyōya just before dusk the next day.

I was leaning against the railing of Taizaemon Bridge, gazing at the filthy waters of the Dotonbori River, when I suddenly thought of going to Tokyo.

At that time, I had only sixty-three sen on me. Six ten-sen white copper coins. Three one-sen copper coins. Clutching just that, I resolved to walk from Osaka to Tokyo along the railroad tracks. In hindsight, it was no act of sanity. But recklessness had always been my innate disposition, and besides, that road from Osaka to Tokyo—whose distance in miles I didn't even know—never felt far when imagined as a path to meet Bunko. Though to be fair, the thought of at least securing train fare first did occasionally cross my mind. Yet ultimately, I trudged along on legs exhausted from scrounging up funds—driven both by the urge to draw nearer to a Tokyo that held Bunko and by a certain nostalgia for his wandering days.

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

In the morning, after washing my face in the Setagawa River and eating breakfast at a station-front eatery, only fifteen sen remained. So I bought cigarettes and matches, put the remaining three sen in the matchbox, and without even glancing at the boat race then taking place on the Setagawa River, set off walking. However, by the time my tobacco ran out, I had somehow dropped the three sen in the matchbox and could no longer even buy a single daifuku. I must have been walking in such a daze. My stomach began to growl. On top of that, the heat was getting to me, and I felt dizzy. At such times, if I went crying to a farmhouse by the roadside and explained my situation, there were kind housewives who would provide me with a meal. But in the end, even that became impossible. That is to say, while explaining my circumstances might have gotten me some charity, more often than not I lacked even the energy to plead my case. It may sound like a lie, but when fatigue and hunger truly grew severe, the very act of speaking felt bothersome. Ah well—if talking was such a bother, I might as well go without eating, I thought. And once that state persisted, eventually even when I wanted to speak, my lips wouldn't move. When I finally reached the outskirts of Toyohashi, I couldn't move another step—my vision went completely white—and in desperation, I stole a railroad worker's lunch. If I'd been discovered, I was prepared to be handed over to the police. Oddly enough, the thought of the meals I'd get once thrown in a detention cell kept flickering before my eyes. I thought to myself: Could a person really sink this low? But I wasn't discovered by the railroad workers—it was as if my expectations had been dashed. Thanks to that meal, I regained some strength and trudged all the way to Shizuoka; while staggering along, the first thing I sought out was a police box—when I finally reached one, I confessed to stealing the lunch in Toyohashi.

The kind-looking policeman didn’t pursue the matter, gave me a meal, and suggested I find work. It was a job cleaning the Abe River. I tried it immediately, but being the type to throw myself into things recklessly only to collapse soon after, I didn’t know how to ration my energy. So even when I worked with furious efficiency for the first two or three hours, I’d be completely spent afterward—while the other laborers made seventy or eighty sen a day, I only managed thirty-four. At that time, eating three meals and buying tobacco required at least forty-five sen no matter how tightly I budgeted.

After working five days, I again walked along the railroad tracks. When night fell, I camped in a thicket behind a farmhouse. From that back thicket, I could clearly see a room with a mosquito net hung inside. There must have been a radio—music drifted out to me. As I listened while mosquitoes bit me, the music eventually ended and a rakugo broadcast began. But when I heard the announcer's introduction, tears suddenly spilled from my eyes—the performer was my own father, Maru Danji. Hearing his familiar voice while everyone else lay laughing inside their mosquito nets, while I sat alone being devoured by insects with tears streaming down my face—the moment this realization struck, I felt utterly pathetic. Yet Tokyo, where Bunko waited, was nearly within reach. This thought revived some strength in me; after crying through the night, I set out walking again.

I arrived in Tokyo on the evening of the eighteenth day after leaving Osaka. I managed to locate Bunko’s residence in Shiba’s Shirokane Sankō-chō late that night—the address I’d gotten from the mistress of Kikyōya. Bunko was already asleep in her two-person household with the maid, but when she opened the front door thinking the knocking was her patron, there stood a man who looked practically like a beggar, slumped dejectedly—she seemed utterly shocked. However, when she finally realized it was me, she still let me in with what seemed like nostalgia. Yet when I told Bunko I had walked all the way from Osaka just to see her, she suddenly appeared to find me unsettling—even letting me stay that night seemed an imposition. Before losing patience with her feminine sensibilities, I had already lost patience with myself. Looking back now, I was such a fool. But what made it even more foolish was that when that agonizing night ended and I left her house, I inadvertently accepted travel expenses back to Osaka from Bunko. This money surely meant: “Having you loiter around Tokyo would trouble me—return to Osaka quickly.” Of course it was money I should have refused. Had I thrown it back with a “Don’t mock me!”, then I might have been a proper 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, death became my only means of escape. I thought I’d gaze upon Osaka’s lights one last time before dying. Examining those feelings now reveals their complexity, but they hold no interest for me anymore. Besides, complexity alone isn’t worth boasting about. Let me hurry onward.

Now we reach the heart of this tale, but upon reflection, I realize I've poured too much into its prologue and lost all fervor to elaborate on the crucial parts ahead. No matter what I attempt, my perennial habit of overexerting myself early only to flag later has manifested even in this storytelling—my own undoing, so to speak—but now that it's come to this, there's nothing for it but to gallop through the remainder.

I arrived at Osaka Station at night. The money Bunko had given me barely covered the train fare—after buying food in the dining car and cigarettes upon disembarking, I was left penniless. Yet with an unburdened clarity, I walked from Osaka Station to Nakanoshima Park. I entered the park and sat smoking on the riverbank. Across the water lay the midpoint between Kitahama 3-chome and 2-chome, where a Chinese restaurant's open basement kitchen sat nearly flush with the river's surface. In that kitchen's dim electric light, half-naked cooks moved like shadow puppets. Above them in the dining room, a young couple by the riverside window picked at their dishes. Though presumably conversing, their silence rendered them actors in a pantomime. Next door appeared to be a dentist's office—on its second floor, a white-coated practitioner worked soundlessly. His patient, likely some neighborhood matron wearing an appa-appa work apron, lay supine with slippered feet neatly aligned. The scene carried nostalgic echoes of life's daily rhythms. Suddenly drenched in wanderlust's ache, I felt my grip on life violently renew. Then Bunko's face surfaced—narrow forehead, upturned nose, puffy lids coalescing into unexpected ugliness. That shrill voice too—disconcertingly girlish for twenty-four...

Boats with lanterns moved back and forth on the river like living creatures. When a train passed over Naniwa Bridge, its lights fell into the river and outlined the inverted shape of the train on the ripples. Before long—how much time had passed?—the lights in the Chinese restaurant’s dining area went out, the second-floor lights of the dentist’s office went out, the trains ceased running, and even the boats’ shadows vanished from view, yet still I did not move from that spot. The depths of night gradually deepened. I weakly stood up and was staring fixedly into the riverbed when someone called out, "Hey!"

When I turned around, it was a bataya—that is, what Osaka calls a ragpicker—a man who seemed to be just that. The voice that asked "What are you doing?" sounded aged, but he appeared to be around twenty-seven or twenty-eight—the same age as me—tall and lanky, with a large mole by his nose. While looking at that mole, I answered that I was doing this because I had nowhere to stay. I couldn't possibly say I'd been thinking of dying. The man stared intently at my face, then eventually told me to follow him and started walking. I followed along like someone who had lost all will.

Exiting the park and emerging into Kitahama 2-chome, the man walked steadily eastward. Eventually veering from Tenma toward Baba, he went along Nipponbashi Street to Abeno, then followed the Hanwa Line tracks until coming to a spot near Bishōen Station under a railway overpass. There stood a shack cobbled together from corrugated iron and straw mats—like something out of a hobo shack. The man crawled inside it. That was indeed the man’s home. While saying there was a municipal free lodging house in Imamiya—but that relying on such places meant you were finished—he 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’s worth of green peas from a greengrocer, then cooked pea rice and fed me. Then came his question: "How about it—want to try ragpicking?" Perhaps out of sheer loneliness, I found myself feeling an oddly womanly sort of nostalgia toward this man, and just as he instructed, I slung a tin can over my shoulder and scavenged through trash bins alongside him. It was the very year the Manchurian Incident occurred, with the economic depression having hit rock bottom—an era when newspapers reported law graduates in Tokyo becoming ragpickers—so being a ragpicker myself was nothing to be ashamed of. Moreover, I found myself bustling with the joy of working alongside the man, completely putting thoughts of Bunko out of my mind.

However, one morning about ten days after I started ragpicking, when I went to fetch well water at a farmhouse near the railway overpass, the owner there said, "Ragpicking's all well and good, but if you're only making thirty-seven sen a day, that won't do." "Instead of that, why not try cart-pulling?" he said. An elderly relative of the owner’s named Kameyan, who came daily from Kita-Tanabe to peddle vegetables, but as his body had grown quite frail, had apparently asked them to find a young man to pull his cart. When I returned and consulted Mr. Akiyama—the man in question was called Akiyama—he approved, so I parted ways with Mr. Akiyama and became a cart-puller.

Kameyan would come empty-handed from Kita-Tanabe every morning, retrieve the empty cart stored at Kawahorikuchi's rice shop, pull it to the nearby vegetable market, load it with purchased produce—vegetables—then peddle his goods around Ishikatsuji and Ikukunitama. I rented a three-tatami room above that rice shop, and whenever I spotted Kameyan, we'd set out together—pulling that cart earned me seventy sen daily. But after three months or so, Kameyan up and died, so I resolved to return to ragpicking and went looking for Mr. Akiyama under the railway overpass—only to find he'd vanished without trace. I asked the farmhouse folks who'd given me well water and the junk dealer Mr. Akiyama used to visit, but neither knew anything.

Gas balloons floated in the sky, with department stores’ grand sale advertisements hanging from them. Trudging back toward Kawahorikuchi, I saw a kamishibai performer gathering children before his bicycle and abruptly stopped to listen vacantly—so utterly lost was I that day. However, as I listened, the moment I suddenly thought, "I could narrate this better myself," my eyes suddenly lit up. From the next day onward, I became a kamishibai performer.

During the three months I spent pulling carts, I had saved nine yen and three sen. This became my capital. At Gokai secondhand market in Nihonbashi 4-chome, I bought a used bicycle for five yen. Then I paid three yen to borrow pictures and tools from the Tokiwa Association kamishibai organization in Ōimazato. In Tanimachi: half-pants for fifty sen; at Matsuyamachi's candy shop: fifty sen's worth of sweets. With the remaining three sen I bought potatoes and walked pushing my bicycle while staving off hunger. The candy cost five rin per stick—fifty sen bought you a hundred sticks. Normally you'd break each stick in two to sell at one sen per piece, making two yen total. But I sold them whole at one sen each without breaking them. That day I kept circling until everything sold out—though after accounting for what I'd eaten myself—the earnings came to ninety-seven sen.

About half a month later, I moved from the second floor of the rice shop in Kawahorikuchi to the second floor of an udon shop in Imazato. This was both because the Tokiwa Association was nearby, making it convenient to borrow pictures, and because the downstairs being an udon shop meant I didn’t have to bother with cooking. However, since that udon shop also served alcohol, on cold nights when I returned exhausted, I’d inevitably feel like drinking. Since I could hold my liquor and they extended credit, I’d end up drinking too much. Though I no longer harbored any grand ambitions or thoughts of becoming wealthy, considering my disowned status, I still wanted to become at least a marginally better person who could meet my family with pride—and for that purpose, I’d resolved that saving money came first. Yet in the end, I couldn’t even manage that because of alcohol.

However, one night as the year was drawing to a close, after finishing my kamishibai performance and heading back, I found a signboard for a temperance lecture meeting standing in front of Imazato Youth Hall. Wondering what they’d be talking about and thinking I’d check out their speaking techniques, I went inside to listen. By the time the second speaker finished his address, I—being someone naturally prone to extremes—had already signed my name on the temperance society membership roster. At that time, the Higashinari Temperance Society’s propaganda chief was a square-jawed man named Taniguchi. At Mr. Taniguchi’s request, I began performing temperance-themed kamishibai at lecture halls, and after being given the title of Youth Temperance Society President under their association, I started presenting kamishibai about temperance and savings to neighborhood children. Since I was promoting savings myself now, thinking it’d be hypocritical not to practice what I preached, I created another savings passbook under Akiyama’s name alongside my monthly ten-yen temperance deposits. Akiyama was that ragpicker who’d found me at Nakanoshima Park. Considering him my lifesaver and though his whereabouts remained unknown, I decided to deposit one yen into this Akiyama-named account every tenth of the month—resolved to hand over the entire passbook should we ever meet again. I chose the tenth because that night at Nakanoshima Park had been August tenth and my name was Jūkichi—you could dismiss it as childish reasoning if you like—but truth be told, without such whimsical motivations, someone like me might never have managed to save at all.

If this story of mine were to be considered an edifying tale, then it’s from this point onward that it should properly become one—but as such tales are rather tedious by nature, I’m afraid you’ll have to bear with me even more from here on out.

Now, when the balance in the passbook I’d been saving one yen at a time finally reached forty yen, I found myself overwhelmingly wanting to see Mr. Akiyama. Admittedly, even up to that point, I had been making rounds through Osaka’s streets with my kamishibai while quietly searching for any sign of him—but found nothing. So one day, when I confided this to Mr. Taniguchi, the propaganda chief, he became tremendously enthusiastic. The next day we packed lunches and combed all over Osaka together all day long—but with only Akiyama’s name and the knowledge that he’d once been a ragpicker to go on, it was like trying to grasp clouds—no way to search for a missing person properly. Just as we had exhausted ourselves searching, Mr. Tadokoro—head of the childcare department at the Kōsai Association, who was involved with Imazato Nursery at the time—heard of this matter (which was because Mr. Taniguchi had also been working with Imazato Nursery then and was close to Mr. Tadokoro) and suggested it would be better to have the police conduct the search, contacting the prefectural police department on our behalf. Then an Asahi Shimbun reporter stationed at the prefectural office caught wind of this and promptly sensationalized it in a newspaper article under the bizarre headline: "Where Is Mr. Akiyama? The Life Kamishibai of Searching for One's Lifesaver." This left me thoroughly mortified, thinking, "Now I'm really in trouble." However, that very article is what allowed me to meet Mr. Akiyama.

It was our reunion after four years. If I put it that way, it sounds just like a newspaper article—but indeed, the same Asahi reporter wrote about our meeting at that time. Though I felt embarrassed, perhaps even someone as ordinary as myself couldn't help feeling a flicker of pleasure at being written about in the paper—I still remember every word of that article to this day.

"As previously reported in our 'Life Kamishibai' coverage, the whereabouts of Mr. Akiyama Hachirō—the counterpart in this human drama—were discovered through an extraordinary coincidence facilitated by this very newspaper's article." "Four years prior—on the night of August 10, 1931—Mr. Akiyama Hachirō, who had saved Mr. Jūkichi Nagafuji (then 28) as he stood resolved to die on Nakanoshima Park’s riverbank and imparted the path to rehabilitation before vanishing into thin air, had since drifted through a transient existence until finding himself worn down by illness and unemployment at the residence of Mr. Shinroku Furutani, a button manufacturer in Kita-Ikuno 1-chome, Higashinari Ward. On the 22nd of last month, after seeing this newspaper’s article, Mr. Furutani realized in shock that the counterpart to this 'life kamishibai' was likely none other than Mr. Akiyama residing on his own second floor; clutching this paper, he visited Mr. Jūkichi Nagafuji (now 32) at the residence of Mr. Harumatsu Miyake in Ōimazato Town." "At that very moment, Mr. Nagafuji—preparing to head out for his kamishibai performance for neighborhood children—was overjoyed upon hearing Mr. Furutani’s account and promptly reported this development to Mr. Katsuyasu Tadokoro (48), director of the Osaka branch of the Saiseikai and supporting player in the previously reported 'life kamishibai,' and Mr. Naotarō Taniguchi (38), propaganda chief of the Higashinari Temperance Society. The entire group then proceeded to the aforementioned Mr. Furutani’s residence where their long-awaited reunion after four years was conducted." “Oh, Mr. Akiyama!” “Oh, Nagafuji-kun!” The two men, overcome with emotion, grasped each other’s hands and lost themselves in reminiscences of four years prior." "When Mr. Nagafuji then presented the savings passbook accumulated under Mr. Akiyama’s name, Mr. Akiyama—choking up with tears at how 'the saved had become the savior'—vowed to take this passbook as a symbol of rehabilitation and strive forward. As the grand finale of their 'life kamishibai' drew to a triumphant close at this opportune moment, the aforementioned Mr. Tadokoro proposed: 'Why not take this chance to step onto life’s sugoroku board once more?' The two men then exchanged a written pledge: 'We shall harbor no dependence on others, work independently and self-reliantly, save one yen each month for each other’s sake, and reunite beneath Osaka Tennōji West Gate’s great torii precisely at 5:53 PM on March 21, Shōwa 15—the vernal equinox day when the sun sets directly west of this gate—to continue our journey through life’s game of light and shadow.' Thus did life’s sugoroku dice—bearing all human vicissitudes—tremble in these moved men’s hands as they vowed to part ways east and west, each setting sail on their respective life’s course."

There were still about ten more lines written after this, but I felt too ashamed and decided to omit that part. The reason we decided to meet on the vernal equinox day was that since the original reunion date fell on March 23rd, we followed Mr. Tadokoro's suggestion that if we were to meet anyway, the 21st—the actual equinox day—would be preferable to the 23rd.

Mr. Tadokoro came from a Buddhist family—a long-eyebrowed man who'd devoted years to childcare work, amusingly prone to flicking out his tongue whenever he cracked a joke. They said his daughter studied traditional dance. Though the papers made it sound like we'd parted east and west that very day, Mr. Akiyama didn't actually leave me for Shikoku until half a month later. As for me—I stayed put in Osaka, doing kamishibai. But society's a peculiar beast; getting written up twice like that somehow turned me into the neighborhood celebrity overnight. This being the golden age of publicity, some fancy bar even tried hiring me as their boy. Had I taken that bait, I'd have become fresh tabloid fodder—double-layered shame—but thankfully I refused. Then came a woman's letter proposing marriage. Our circumstances were alike, she claimed. "Let's join hands and take life's kamishibai first step together"—whether sincere or mocking, the whole thing felt absurd. Carrying my storyboards through town, I'd catch whispers of "life kamishibai" trailing behind. The papers had promoted my performances alright—so thoroughly that I quit kamishibai altogether. Couldn't stomach the embarrassment of parading around anymore. Through Mr. Tadokoro's connections, I worked as a shipyard warehouse guard, hospital janitor—from those paltry wages kept up both temperance savings and Mr. Akiyama's account. No word ever came from him. We'd agreed on radio silence till meeting day, true—but not knowing his whereabouts gnawed at me.

Five years passed in the blink of an eye. As the promised vernal equinox day drew near, I grew increasingly concerned about Mr. Akiyama’s well-being and kept asking Mr. Tadokoro and the others every time we met whether he would truly come. Then, on the morning edition of the 18th—the first day of the equinox period—the Asahi Shimbun, which had previously sensationalized the “life kamishibai” story, featured a special article titled: “Career Sugoroku: Five-Year ‘Ascent’ Nears Its Vowed Day—But Where’s the Counterpart?” With a headline asking “Will he come?” they had sensationalized it again, so on the promised day when I went with Mr. Tadokoro and the others beneath the torii gate at Tennōji West Gate—partly due to it being the vernal equinox day—the area around the torii was packed with a sea of people, making it nearly impossible to move. When I realized that these curiosity-driven people, whipped up by the newspaper articles, had come to Tennōji partly for worship but mainly to witness our fifth-year reunion spectacle, I suddenly felt ashamed of my shabby appearance—so utterly mismatched with phrases like “career sugoroku” that the papers had written—and thought, so this is what it means to want to crawl into any hole that might open. However, there was no way I could run away now, and as I wondered whether Mr. Akiyama would actually come, I kept my eyes—naturally brightening with anticipation—steadily fixed on the tram stop by the west gate.

Mr. Akiyama had indeed come. He pushed through the clamorous crowd—his figure clad in a shabby national uniform, carrying a cloth-wrapped bundle. "The moment at 5:53 PM when the sun was about to set directly west of the torii gate at Tennōji West Gate" was how the newspaper later described it, though in reality it was over ten minutes past. Standing around talking proved impossible there, so when we tried heading to Seishun-sō—a spiritual dojo in nearby Ōsaka-chō where we'd reserved a room beforehand—the newspaper's photo team told us to wait while they took pictures. Thus we remained—Mr. Akiyama with his hand on my shoulder, me laughing up at his tall face—holding that pose until just as the photographers prepared to ignite the magnesium flash, a voice shouted "Wait! Let me in too!" Through the crowd came bursting none other than my father, Maru Danji—utterly unexpected.

Once we had settled into a room at Seishun-sō, Father said, “Back then, I condemned your youthful recklessness and disowned you—but upon reflection, it was I who had been recklessly youthful, and I later came to regret that.” “I couldn’t bear it after seeing the newspaper and rushed here—but looking at us, I’ve aged and you’re not exactly young anymore either. ‘So you’re thirty-seven now,’” he said in that rakugo-performer’s cadence, then turned to Mr. Akiyama and bowed his snow-white head. “Was it you who saved my son’s life?” Then Mr. Akiyama laughed and said, “No, it was I who was saved by you.” “After we parted ways back then,” he continued, “I crossed over to Shōdoshima in Shikoku and worked as a transport worker for Marukin Soy Sauce. During that time, I grew close to a local girl, but her parents declared they wouldn’t hand their daughter over to a man who’d been a ragpicker in Osaka and forcibly separated us. In my despair and resentment toward the world, I even considered giving up on life altogether—but remembering our five-year reunion promise, I rallied myself again. Crossing over to Kyushu, I drifted between mines in Takashima and Shinyashiki before finally joining Yamashiro Mining in Saga last June. Whether I would have survived until now without that pledge…” As he spoke about how it was practically Nagafuji-kun who had saved his life, Mr. Akiyama’s tears dampened the mole beside his nose. “And then—how about it—Nagafuji-kun—let’s part ways east and west right here once more and meet again at this same time and place five years from today!” Mr. Akiyama proposed—words I myself had been about to say. And so we simply showed each other our respective savings passbooks and decided to keep holding onto them.

On the evening ship the next day, Mr. Akiyama departed for Kyushu. After seeing him off at Tenpōzan with Father and Mr. Tadokoro and the others, I eventually went to Father’s house in Sennichimae with just him. Behind Kabuki-za theater, next to Jiyūken restaurant, there was an alley called Ganjirō Yokochō. I don’t know why it was called Ganjirō Yokochō, but at the dead end stood a Jizō statue, and amidst the jumble of tempura shops, sushi stalls, and other eateries sat a small dilapidated house with latticed windows—that was Father’s house. Father was already seventy-five; with rakugo having fallen out of fashion and himself no longer able to perform it, he nonetheless spent his destitute days together with yet another elderly wife. The old woman—who had dyed her teeth black like Okimi Bāsan long deceased—had formerly worked as a hairdresser. Under the eaves hung a lantern sign reading “Omekashi-dokoro” (“Beautification Parlor”) in Father’s brushwork, but two or three years prior when her right hand became paralyzed, she seemed to have abandoned hairdressing altogether. My brother Shinji had gone to Manchuria while my sisters Yukino and another half-sister born later had both married off. Upon realizing Father’s livelihood relied on remittances from these three alone, I resolved to live with him and fulfill my filial duty.

Because Father disliked the smell of medicine clinging to my body, I soon quit my job as a hospital handyman and became a solicitor at a savings company. I’d done plenty of savings promotion through kamishibai, and given my life story, you could say I was laughably well-suited for the role—though there was just one bad habit of mine: being born with a crude tongue that couldn’t handle polite language properly. You can probably tell a bit from how I’m speaking now—no sooner would I try to use polite language than rough words came tumbling out. Because of this, even when making my rounds as a solicitor, I often ended up angering people. However, since I managed to keep my job without getting fired, Father—perhaps reassured upon seeing me like that—passed away peacefully at seventy-six in May two years later. Because he was a rakugo performer, it received a small mention in the newspaper, but neither Hamako nor Tamako came. They might have already died. Since joining the temperance society, the temperance savings I had been setting aside at ten yen each month had by then exceeded a thousand yen, so with that money, I held the funeral and erected my father’s grave. And on August 10th, I went with the elderly wife my father had left behind to enshrine his bones at Mount Kōya.

My deliberate choice of August 10, Shōwa 16—exactly ten years since that night I met Mr. Akiyama at Nakanoshima Park—came from deeply sentimental feelings, though partly it was due to my father’s elderly wife remarking that the tenth was good as it fell within Obon.

After placing my father's bones that had been clattering in the urn, I left the temple with relief and entered the Naka-no-in tea shop. An out-of-season old record was playing there—an incongruous presence—and as I absently listened to the voice singing "Today too, gas balloons fill the sky...", it somehow began to sound like Bunko's voice. But perhaps it was just my imagination. I felt no urge to verify it, yet listening to that shrill yet mournful song inevitably brought back memories from ten years prior. Those were distant recollections. But even reflecting on my present self now—this hardly qualified as the sort of success they'd sensationalize as a "career sugoroku." I remained a savings company solicitor—stuck in mediocrity, you might say—but truth be told, I no longer harbored grand ambitions. The glittering Osaka lights that once tempted me had long since vanished, leaving an unexpected tranquility in their wake. Making my rounds as a solicitor did present opportunities for profit—and when I imagined newspapers someday chronicling a second reunion with Mr. Akiyama years hence—well—the thought did cross my mind... But anticipating such publicity only made me want to exercise restraint; I couldn't bring myself to act dishonestly. And I suspected Mr. Akiyama shared these sentiments—steadfastly continuing his modest yet earnest work in Kyushu...

After leaving the tea shop, I walked toward the cable car station while listening to cicadas' cries, but as I looked at the wrinkled face of my father's elderly wife scurrying along after me, I suddenly thought I should be filial to this old woman. And before I knew it, I found myself murmuring under my breath, "Today, gas balloons fill the sky..."