Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Kite, the Persimmon, and the Chicken

1

From the path atop the hill, separated by a gently sloping field, it became a steep cliff where shrubs and dwarf bamboo grass grew thickly.
In the thicket of that cliff, a rustling that made one think it might be a bear or wild boar arose, and at the same time, a loud cry went up as a young man burst forth, followed by three children rushing out.

Yoshimura was startled and stood frozen on the path.

When he looked, the young man was indeed Lee Yeong-tae.
He was hatless, wearing an athletic shirt and what appeared to be old school drill trousers.
The three children seemed to be from the village.
Whether Lee hadn't noticed Yoshimura or not, he was playing around with the children while toying with a chestnut in one hand.

As Yoshimura stared fixedly, eventually—perhaps having caught that gaze from the other side—Lee glanced furtively in Yoshimura’s direction, then opened his mouth in surprise and took off running straight across the field.

“Mr. Yoshimura?
“What are you doing in a place like this?”

It must have been quite some time since they last met, but such a thing probably didn’t matter.
Yoshimura’s coming here seemed merely strange.

Yoshimura smiled and explained that he had come to that crude seaside inn about a week earlier due to urgent work, planning to stay for about three weeks.

“Do you work in a place like that?”

“Why do you ask?”

“That place must be boring, isn’t it?”

The tone of his voice seemed to imply that novelists were the sort who always dwelled in nothing but showy atmospheres, so Yoshimura cut straight to the point.

“That place is affordable and convenient come autumn, you know.”

As Lee blinked rapidly, his meaning still unclear, Yoshimura pressed further.

“And why are you here?”

“Me? I’m the villa’s caretaker.”

“Caretaker…”

“Yeah.
“Mr. Shida’s villa—you know it, don’t you?”

It was unclear whether he was speaking seriously or not, but upon closer inquiry, it appeared that when the Shida family members who had come that summer returned to Tokyo, Lee had initially arrived to assist with odd jobs but had ended up staying on with the villa caretaker for the time being.

“Hey everyone, let’s do this!”

Lee turned around and flung the chestnut in his hand high into the sky toward the children playing in the field.
In the autumn afternoon sun, the chestnut glittered brightly.

Leaving behind the children picking chestnuts from the grass, Yoshimura and Lee descended toward the coast.

“Actually, I had ambitions,” Lee said.
“I’m terrible at swimming.
“There’s no harm in improving at anything.”
“So, wanting to improve my swimming too, I stayed there as caretaker with Mrs. Shida’s permission, but it didn’t work out.”
“When mid-September comes, the seawater gets cold and isn’t good for the body, you know.”
“So, rather than swimming, going to the mountains to gather chestnuts became more fun, and I got better at tree climbing.”

“Is tree climbing also one of those ambitions?”

“Afterwards, it did.”

And Lee laughed too, but suddenly declared that he would treat him to delicious persimmons and there was someone he wanted to introduce, so he insisted he must come along.

“Persimmons are fine, but spare me the introduction. I’m here for work, you know.”

“Yes, I understand. She’s a beautiful woman. She wanted to meet you, Mr. Yoshimura.”

He was making assumptions entirely on his own.

Since it was Yoshimura’s first day meeting others here and there was no reason for anyone to want to see him, he immediately conjured up a novelist-like imagination—perhaps it was some woman Lee fancied—and allowed a wry smile to escape.

Passing through the settlement of half-farming, half-fishing households, they entered what had now become a completely quiet villa area, and near its outermost edge, Lee stopped and spoke.

“Please wait a moment.”
“Hmm... This is a problem.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Mr. Yoshimura, let’s go in from the back.”
“It’s the same either way, isn’t it? If it’s a villa, there’s not much difference between front and back anyway.”
“Oh, right. You’re absolutely correct.”
Excessively impressed, he started walking again but soon pushed open the lattice-fence gate ahead and went inside.

Yoshimura widened his eyes in surprise.
He had thought they were heading to Mr. Shida’s villa or some such place, but there was no mistaking it—this was indeed the back of Kamiyama Kimie’s house. Just inside the fence, two persimmon trees spread their low branches, heavy with red fruit.
Lee approached the persimmon tree, pulled down a reachable branch, and while examining them, plucked several fruits.

“Let’s go this way.”

Holding persimmons, he headed around to the front lawn garden.

Yoshimura hesitated, yet felt a certain curiosity, and deliberately lagged behind as he followed.

On the *engawa*, Lee’s voice was already audible.

“Today, since I brought my teacher along, I received quite a lot of persimmons.”
“Since he’s such a distinguished person, he wouldn’t mingle with children.”
“You must know the name—Mr. Yoshimura… that one who writes nothing but difficult novels and even troubles himself with them.”
“Allow me to introduce you.”

“Yoshimura... What kind of person...”

“Yoshimura Kiyoshi… the other day too…”

As Lee chattered away, Kimie tilted her head slightly—one hand lightly touching her cheek, the other sweeping back a strand of hair at her temple—hiding her expression from him while flashing two or three exaggerated blinks toward Yoshimura, who stood apart in the garden. It seemed to be a signal to remain silent.

But more than that small mischief, Yoshimura discovered something unexpected in her demeanor. Afflicted with a lung disease, nervous, thin, bony, her complexion sallow—moreover, her everyday speech was peculiarly cerebral yet abruptly truncated, and her movements, though brisk, remained awkward—in short, she lacked all feminine softness and curves. Yet in that moment, her demeanor bore a spontaneously flowing childlike quality. Struck by this unexpected discovery, Yoshimura found himself unable to muster even a smile, his demeanor disarmed as though meeting her for the first time, and he approached with a formality befitting that initial encounter.

Lee immediately began to introduce them.

“This is Mr. Yoshimura… And this is Ms. Kamiyama Kimie—a person who loves literature immensely, no, a woman writer, and my teacher.”

“My, this has become quite a situation,”
“Before I knew it—a woman writer and Mr. Lee’s teacher…”

Yoshimura laughed alone, but neither Kimie—who had uttered those words—nor Lee joined in.

Kimie brought over knives and plates and, while offering persimmons, began recounting her first meeting with Lee—

One evening, as Kimie sat on the veranda reading a magazine, a child’s voice called from beyond the lattice fence: “Our ball went in—please let us get it!”
“Please take it,” Kimie replied.
It seemed someone was coming in through the back gate.
A considerable time had passed since then, and just when she had nearly forgotten about it, a young man came running up.
In his hand, he held persimmons.
Because they were such beautiful persimmons, when touched lightly, they were already ripe and sweet.
“So we each received one,” he said.
“Please take this.”
With a sharply defined, pale face stretching from eyebrows to eyes to nose bridge—somehow softened by a relaxed quality—his blunt way of speaking struck an amusing contrast. (Of course, she never mentioned this part in front of Lee.) Most absurd of all was how she cheerfully replied, “Yes, please take it,” despite his having already declared they’d taken persimmons.
Then the young man said:
“There were four of us, but we ended up picking five persimmons, intending to take one each.”
“Since there’s one extra, I’ll return this.”
“They’re delicious persimmons, so please try eating them.”
And as if he had brought it from his own home, he placed one persimmon on the engawa and ran off—that became the trigger for him to occasionally come take persimmons, bringing two or three village children along to pick three or four each.
Thus they had grown close.

“Ah, indeed—that’s quite the display of Lee’s pride.”

Yoshimura said cheerfully, but Lee neither appeared disheartened nor acted proud, remaining perfectly calm.

After eating the persimmons, the three of them took a short walk along the seaside.

"Mr. Yoshimura, how is your work progressing?"

Forgetting what had just occurred, Kimie asked this question.
But whether Lee noticed or not—not only were Yoshimura and Kimie acquainted from before, but even here their prior interactions were clearly evident in their attitudes and conversations—he showed no sign of paying any heed.

Two

Kimie had apparently been hesitant to visit Yoshimura’s lodging. After Yoshimura first called on her, she visited him once, and thereafter only came as far as the garden. After that, however, she and Lee began frequently visiting Yoshimura’s lodging together—sometimes to socialize, other times to invite him on walks. There at that place, Yoshimura was single-mindedly filling manuscript pages with characters, and precisely because this involved no indulgence in planning or daydreaming, he gradually came to begrudge the time spent socializing with the two.

The reason Yoshimura had come to visit Kamiyama Kimie was in fact not only to inquire after her health—though her lung ailment was minor—but also partly to sound out her state of mind.
Kimie’s husband Masahiko was an old acquaintance of Yoshimura’s, and it was Masahiko who had suggested that Kimie have Mr. Yoshimura take a look at her essay-style or novel-style writings once she began composing them.
It seems that even by that time, their marriage had already begun to sour. After Kimie fell ill with a lung condition and moved to the seaside villa, Masahiko—relying on his considerable wealth—indulged in dissipation and became embroiled in a certain romantic entanglement.
Regarding this romantic entanglement, Yoshimura and Kamiyama had never openly discussed it, but it had come to be mutually understood between them that even Kimie had grown vaguely aware of the matter.
Yoshimura had come to perceive with stark clarity that they stood at a perilous threshold, and he even found himself contemplating whether there remained any path he ought to take.

However, upon meeting Kimie, he could only reaffirm his sense that there was no way to gain a foothold.
It seemed Kimie knew Masahiko’s actions quite well, as she would say such things.

“I think he’s quite pitiful too, drinking nothing but alcohol.”

This was not pity for him having a sickly wife like herself, but a dispassionate critique of a man teetering into self-destruction—and precisely because these were a wife’s words about her husband, Yoshimura felt an icy chill. If one were to speak of chilliness, Kimie possessed that quality in all matters. It manifested even in her written works. It was Yoshimura’s longstanding conviction that women capable of writing exceptional prose or works invariably possessed a certain feminine allure in their appearance, gestures, or speech—something wholly distinct from facial beauty or plainness, bodily proportions, vocal timbre, or social graces. There existed what one might call a natural feminine softness, a kind of fragrance; and the more intensely this atmosphere enveloped its bearer, the more exquisite their prose became—for writing, he maintained, blossomed from that very essence. Of course, exceptions existed in some measure, and great literary creations stood apart as another matter entirely—this pertained to ordinary writings by ordinary women. Yet while Kimie was undeniably beautiful, she sorely lacked what Yoshimura termed “womanly atmosphere,” and her writings only served to confirm his theory.

Having found no clues to sound out Kimie’s state of mind, feeling no interest in her herself, and only having his time consumed, Yoshimura set everything aside for later, pushed his work to the forefront, and secluded himself in his inn room as much as possible.
However, she often came as far as the inn’s garden for walks—Lee usually accompanying her—and Yoshimura found himself able to feel a certain affection for Lee.

After dinner, when the three walked along the rocky shore, their conversations would grow oddly mismatched.
Kimie would immediately steer discussions toward literature and philosophical issues; Lee would shift topics to shells, fish species, tree types, or cloud colors; and sandwiched between these gender-reversed exchanges sat Yoshimura—both sides directing their words solely at him, to which he would offer nothing but brief replies.
As October approached, the beach stood already empty of strollers; the sea glowed red beneath the sunset while a faint breeze carried a sting that seeped into the skin.

Yoshimura picked up a flat pebble and skipped it across the sea surface.
Lee did that too.
Making a stone skip ten times on the water’s surface was nearly impossible.
Lee was particularly bad at it.

Suddenly, Kamiyama Kimie burst into laughter.
It was a bright laugh—one Yoshimura had never heard from her before.
When he turned to look, it was because Lee’s posture while throwing the stone looked comical.
Upon closer inspection, Lee did indeed swing his arm back grandly, but the moment he threw, his posture became one of hurling from the shoulder.

“Lee, you’re just like a baby!” Kimie said, laughing brightly again.

Lee, trying to imitate Yoshimura, repeated that baby-like motion over and over.

The fact that Kimie’s rare, bright laughter from that occasion lingered so distinctly in Yoshimura’s mind only emphasized how their walks had always been nothing more than ordinary.

Yoshimura had been at his desk since morning, but when his head grew weary, he would wander out toward the hill in the afternoon.
When he followed the path along the hillside, he would emerge at the field where he had first encountered Lee.
After proceeding a little further, at the hill’s tip, a cultivated field forming a basin between this and the opposing hill came into view below, while to the right, the sea spread out.

There, on the grass in the shadow of the thicket, Yoshimura often saw Lee crouching and reading a magazine, as if sunning himself.

The second time they met, Lee smiled and answered Yoshimura’s question.

“I’m catching a kite.”

“Huh? Can you really… catch a kite?”

“I plan to catch it.”

According to his explanation, he had attached bait so that when a small bird pecked at it, a net would abruptly fall from above; he had set up a slightly larger version of that contraption in the field across the way.
However, since the target was a kite, it was unclear whether it would properly fall into place, but in exchange, the mesh of the net was just large enough for its head to poke through.
The bait was sardines.

“Huh, do kites eat fish?”

“The kites at the zoo eat fish.”

At the clear answer, Yoshimura gave a wry smile.

But he kept watch, ready to dash out immediately should the kite get caught.
Perhaps he felt uneasy after all—his target was a bird of prey.

“But what are you going to do with a kite if you catch it?”

“It’s enough to just capture it alive.”

With that, Lee looked up at the sky.

In the sky soared two kites.
Within the clear blue expanse—now high, now low—the pair drew near and apart, wings spread rigidly wide with scarcely a flap, simply floating and gliding through their dance.

“Wouldn’t watching them be better?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it be better not to catch them?”

“Yes—it’s fine even if I don’t.”

Though he’d gone through the trouble of setting his trap, his answer came terribly frail.

The two kites continued to soar.
Their flight was the very essence of the azure sky.
Perhaps because they were floating weightlessly in the sky while still gliding, one kite soon began to flap its wings gently—and in an instant, it rose higher and higher into the azure sky, with the other following suit until both vanished beyond the mountains.

“Mr. Yoshimura, let’s go eat persimmons.”

To Yoshimura, who was dazedly watching the kites depart, Lee suddenly called out, then stood up and started walking. Then he lowered his voice.

“About the kite—please keep it from Ms. Kamiyama.”

“Why?”

“I want to surprise her.”

Yoshimura doubted whether it could be caught, but taking Lee’s words at face value, he felt a heartwarming amusement.
Then he followed along to Kimie’s place.

In a corner near the back entrance of Kimie’s garden, two black chickens were kept.
Kimie had said that the gardener claimed black chicken eggs were especially good for invalids, and that he had taken care of everything from the coop to the chickens themselves, but since they were Shamo crossbreeds, Yoshimura found himself unable to feel any affinity for them—just as he couldn’t with Kimie herself.
However, the rooster’s black feathers were partially covered by reddish ones around its neck that glistened golden and looked beautiful.

Lee opened the chicken enclosure and brought them over, calling out as he did.
The chickens ran around a bit in the wide lawn, came up to the veranda, and pecked at the discarded persimmon peels.

“Among chickens, Shamos are the greediest eaters,” Lee explained to Yoshimura before turning to Kimie and saying: “Caterpillars—are there still any?”

“Well, there might still be some.”

Lee went to the large camellia tree at one side of the garden, looked up intently for a while, then skillfully climbed up.

Kimie also thrust her feet into her geta and headed that way.

“How… Be careful!”

From above where rustling had been heard, a voice suddenly rang out.

“I’m throwing this down now.”

“No, no, you mustn’t!”

Letting out a startlingly high-pitched voice, Kimie ran away.
She was laughing as she ran away.

With a rustling sound, small branches still bearing green leaves came falling down.
After a brief silence, Lee dangled loosely by both hands from a large middle branch—and by the time Kimie cried “Ah! Be careful!” and pressed a hand to her chest, he had already leapt down to the ground.

Cluck-cluck-cluck... Summoned by the call, the chickens came running and began pecking at insects clinging to camellia leaves. Lee watched with satisfaction, Kimie with relief.

Yoshimura sat smoking at the veranda edge.
The sight of Kimie fleeing from beneath the camellia tree up until her cry of "Be careful!" had registered in his vision as something extraordinary.
It was merely an ordinary feminine gesture, but precisely because this was Kimie—whose every motion from teacup handling to minor gestures typically carried angular stiffness—such normalcy paradoxically stood out.
Even her demeanor when first visiting this place with Lee days earlier resurfaced in memory.
That previous encounter had left him feeling ambushed, but now he found himself oddly pleased—wanting to act gladly for her sake.

"If things continued like this, she would gradually improve," Yoshimura thought.
Of course, this wasn't about her illness, and he didn't understand what exactly would improve or how—but regardless, a bright mood had begun to take root.

Yoshimura hurried through his work.
Once finished, he wanted to spend two or three days leisurely wandering about with all three of them.

At that very moment, something entirely unexpected occurred.

One evening, during their post-dinner stroll, as the three of them were descending from the hill toward the highway—

Along the highway came a uniformed policeman and a man who appeared to be a laborer walking shoulder-to-shoulder from the distance. As they drew nearer from both directions, the man—wearing a black work jacket and tabi boots—was now recognizable as likely Korean. Their figures disappeared into Shichihachigi’s cedar grove, but just as they began reemerging, the man took two or three running steps—perhaps yanked back by the policeman’s one-handed pull on the arrest rope—spread his arms wide sideways, then collapsed with a thud when the policeman’s leg sweep connected. He immediately scrambled onto all fours and suddenly unleashed a roar-like shriek. Even as his collar was grabbed and he was nearly hauled up, he clung desperately to the ground, his voice transforming into an unmistakable wail. Crying and screaming, he writhed across the earth with one hand and both legs.

Bicycle passersby stopped, and people came running out from the village.
And before long, the man swallowed his screams, kept his face lowered, and this time, with both hands bound behind his back, walked ahead of the policeman through the crowd.
That passed right by Yoshimura and the other two.

After watching him go, they walked in silence for a while when suddenly Kimie asked Lee.

“That man started screaming earlier, didn’t he? What did that mean?”

The remark was far too ill-timed.
For a moment, there was no reply.

“I don’t know.”

“There’s likely no particular meaning to it,” Yoshimura said almost simultaneously.

“That resistance was meaningless too, wasn’t it.”
“...Yet it’s cowardly.”

There was no response, yet she continued speaking.

“Mr. Yoshimura, don’t you agree? The substance of words must differ greatly across ethnicities.”

Yoshimura attempted to deflect her with an ambiguous response, but she pressed on heedlessly.

“Even that man—likely arrested for burglary or theft—trying to flee while being escorted is cowardly.”
“And when Chinese people try to take whatever they find but abandon it silently when challenged—that too is cowardly.”
“Yet this perception of cowardice may belong solely to us Japanese. Though China and Korea must have their own words for ‘cowardice,’ ultimately I believe the essential meaning differs between peoples.”
“It’s a matter of blood—ethnic blood.”

“If you say that, foreigners won’t be able to converse with each other,” Yoshimura tried to force a laugh.

“Yes, I believe genuine conversation is difficult… Even translation…”

And as she launched into a discussion about translation, Yoshimura breathed a sigh of relief.
There were works absolutely difficult to translate and others relatively easy, but to the pessimistic argument that a perfect translation was nearly impossible in essence, Yoshimura gave perfunctory responses.
When he considered it, Yoshimura himself had done some Japanese translations of foreign literature in the past.
That being settled, she turned to address Lee once more.

“What do you suppose those words that man was screaming really meant?”

Neither Yoshimura nor Lee responded.
The words that vanished left behind something cruel and tenacious.

Even after returning to the inn, Yoshimura remained strangely troubled by the matter.

III

The next day, when night fell, Lee visited Yoshimura alone.

“I’m returning to Tokyo tomorrow,” Lee said.

Staring intently at his face, Yoshimura felt glad his heart was opening naturally toward him, and immediately spoke out.

“It’s about yesterday’s incident, isn’t it? You don’t have to dwell on it so much.”

“I’m not concerned about it.”

And Lee smiled slightly.

“I feel like I’ve wasted my time.”

“Huh… You say you wasted time, but I don’t get it.”

“When I think about it carefully, I’ve wasted about half a month. I suppose… because I liked Ms. Kamiyama—it’s not romantic or anything, I just liked her—so while I was fooling around, I ended up wasting about half a month on my studies.”

And Lee smiled again.

“If you realized that, then you’re still concerned about yesterday’s matter, aren’t you?”
“It doesn’t suit you either.”

“No, that’s not it.”
“It’s like this.”
“I liked Ms. Kamiyama.”
“The reason I was trying to catch a kite was because Ms. Kamiyama said she wanted to keep one.”
“I thought I’d be a bother to you, but the reason I kept inviting Ms. Kamiyama over was because I wanted to be with her.”
“Please forgive me.”

“That’s a kind of affection, isn’t it?”

“No, that’s not it.”
“She’s intelligent, isn’t she?”
“I was fooled by that.”
“I was happy just being able to spend time together.”
“But in truth, far from being intelligent—she’s lowly.”
“Yesterday, at that moment, she kept staring intently at my demeanor.”
“You were too carefree to notice, Mr. Yoshimura, but she was scrutinizing me.”
“I felt that gaze through my entire body.”
“It’s not resentment.”
“From her perspective, it seems all Koreans are considered identical.”
“It’s not about the word ‘cowardice’ or anything like that.”
“It appears all humans become homogenized.”
“For instance, suppose someone sees a Japanese beggar and declares to every Japanese person: ‘Do Japanese people shamelessly eat others’ leftovers?’”
“Rather than anger—don’t you think someone who says such things… someone who thinks that way is lowly?”

“Rather than lowly… it’s more that she doesn’t understand things, I suppose.”

“Exactly—she doesn’t understand things. Doesn’t understand human beings at all.”

Yoshimura found himself in agreement with that.
The beggar analogy in particular struck him to the core.

“Even so, you don’t have to return to Tokyo right away—I’ll be going back myself soon enough. Why not wait until then?”

“I’ll come see you again in Tokyo.”
“But I liked that lowly person, and it’s regrettable that I wasted half a month.”
“I’m not angry about it.”
“Still, I want to make some clear statement of intent.”

“So that’s why you’re leaving here immediately?”

“Not exactly.”
“I want to make a statement of intent and leave, but I’m still considering how to do it.”

“Rather than that—on the contrary—you’ll catch a kite alive, present it, and then leave, will you?”

“Yes… A kite… A kite would be nice.”

The words, uttered so abruptly, carried a strangely lonely echo.
Lee fell silent for a while, his gaze distant as if lost in thought.

After seeing off Lee, who insisted on returning to Tokyo early the next morning, Yoshimura lay down in his room. As he thought about him and then about Kimie, he suddenly collided with a faint... perhaps unconscious affection that existed between the two of them.
It was difficult to grasp clearly, but it felt less like something he had imagined and more like something he had physically encountered.

And then, the next morning, something unexpected happened.

Around nine o’clock, Yoshimura was awakened by a phone call from Kimie, but unlike her usual self, she rambled on in a drawn-out plea for him to come immediately.

When he went there, Kimie was out in the garden waiting for him.
She seemed slightly agitated; her features appeared more drawn and sculptural than usual.

“What’s wrong?”

Kimie wordlessly led Yoshimura to the chicken coop.
Inside the chicken coop, two black chickens lay stiffened on a pile of straw in one corner.
When the maid woke up and tried to feed the chickens, she found both birds dead; their current state was exactly as they had been found, untouched.

“That’s cowardly.”
“Are you saying it was Lee’s doing?”
Yoshimura’s tone unintentionally turned confrontational.

“If Lee did it—and if I were Lee—I wouldn’t leave them lying here like this.”
“…Yes, I’d hang them by their necks from one of those garden trees.”

Kimie turned slightly pale.
She must have imagined the two chickens hanging from a tree with ropes around their necks.
Then she immediately started walking toward the veranda.

“Couldn’t it have been Lee?”

Her voice sounded frail.
Yoshimura didn’t answer.
When asked about Lee however, it seemed he had suddenly been called back to Tokyo for urgent business and had only stopped by briefly yesterday evening to say goodbye.

“Well, can’t we just assume that Lee did such a thing out of anger or lingering attachment and leave it at that?”

Kimie’s agitation had now subsided, and she seemed to be reminiscing about Lee as she silently blinked her eyes.
When Yoshimura noticed that her eyes appeared slightly misted with tears, he chastised himself for a novelist’s foolish habit and turned his gaze toward the sky.
In the sky, high within the morning sun, a single kite was already soaring.

“Oh right—I hear persimmons chilled by morning dew are terribly delicious. Let me have one.”

Yoshimura went to get persimmons with a slight urge to avoid being near Kimie.