Pathway to Japanese Literature

From his residence separated by a single valley to the national railway train running along the lower slopes of a plateau beyond—a distance that would take about twenty minutes on foot—Kishimoto Shohei walked slowly every day, taking as long as thirty minutes.
It was less like commuting back and forth than akin to taking a stroll.
The path changed depending on his mood.

At the company, there was almost nothing resembling proper work, and what might be called working hours were essentially discretionary.
This was the Tokyo office—nominally a headquarters—of a trading company newly established in French Indochina during the war; by the time he returned from Indochina at April's end in the year following the war's end, most remaining tasks had already been settled, leaving several employees idly smoking amid trivial work and vague plans for trade ventures that might take years to materialize.
To there he showed his face every day, though at his own convenience.
His residence was a friend’s house whose family had relocated to their rural hometown, leaving him living leisurely alone in two rooms—one of six tatami mats and the other four and a half.

Such leisurely living was something entirely novel to him now past forty. Moreover, for him as a new repatriate, the entire environment felt novel. Needless to say, the postwar shifts in politics, intellectual currents, and social mores—but the transformation of Tokyo through air raids surpassed all imagination.

The corner of Hongo where he settled was no longer a town but had become a complete village.
In all directions stretched vast burned ruins; though small houses stood here and there, most of the area had been partitioned into tiny cultivated plots where wheat leaves swayed in the wind, legume flowers bloomed, and weeds grew tall.
In the distance beyond that blue-green field, the windows of passing trains and the figures of people on the road were visible.
When he took shortcuts early in the morning on his way to the bathhouse, his feet got wet from the dew on roadside leaves.

At first, this village-like scenery struck him as uncanny, but as he grew accustomed to it, it ceased to register as urban ruins and came to be enjoyed purely as countryside. Had his birthplace been Tokyo City—had various urban sensibilities been etched into his childhood life—he would not have found it so easy to forget the devastation. But he had grown up in a rural village in Gunma Prefecture. It was those childhood memories that rendered the scorched fields enjoyable to him.

The pond below the cliff was regarded as a large reservoir.
There should have been many carp, crucian carp, dace, and the like swimming there.
Even if it were sewage water, the small flow of water was regarded as a stream where catfish and loaches should have been lurking among the waterweeds.
The thickets of weeds were no different from those of shrubs, and beneath their shade, small birds should have been nesting.
Several large trees formed a sacred grove, and there should have been a moss-covered shrine there.
Where rows of trees stood in lines, there should have been a deep river, with the sound of a weir echoing.
And in the distance beyond the thicket stood a large river embankment; a short way downstream from it spanned a long bridge, and at the bridge’s foot there was a single eatery.
There was a beautiful woman called Ms. Chiyo there, and one night when he was still a middle school student—on their way back from seeing the Bon Festival dance in town—somehow, they ended up drinking alone together in a small room on the eatery’s second floor and got drunk…

Such memories—why Kishimoto Shohei found them amidst the scant cultivated plots of burned ruins, he could not quite understand. In truth, not a single one of the rivers most crucial to his memories existed in the burned ruins. Along the route between Nippori Station—which he enjoyed walking back and forth to as if on a stroll—and the valley where the streetcar ran, there had once been a small stream flowing from Tabata to Shinobazu Pond, but it had now completely turned into an underground culvert. There was not even a trace of any other small streams. There was nothing resembling river embankments, and the distant plateau was a broad cemetery in the valley where a five-storied pagoda—unseen in rural areas—soared.

However, are the workings of human emotion concerned not with mountains and rivers, grasses and trees, but rather with people? If one were to remove the lid from the valley’s buried culvert, would the old stream come flowing back? Such was the uncanny phenomenon that had occurred. To put it plainly—amidst the burned ruins stripped of their urban shroud—there she stood: that same Ms. Chiyo from the bridge’s foot.

Of Ms. Chiyo, Kishimoto Shohei retained only a vague impression of her character, her features entirely forgotten from memory. Yet now she had been resurrected whole. Ms. Chiyo must have been past thirty back then. This revived woman too was of that age—an ordinary oval face paired with a sleek neckline, skin appearing thin and smooth over a medium build neither plump nor lean. Yet between splendidly rounded brows and sharply elongated eyes stretched an oddly blank expanse where puffed eyelids dominated. Her slightly undershot lower lip hung slackly, its right corner sagging downward. When gazing intently, her left eye would narrow as it lifted—distinctive traits all, yet within them dwelled something surpassing feminine softness or fullness; something one might grandly call an “idiot beauty.”

This particular idiot beauty became the thread binding her to Ms. Chiyo—to Kishimoto’s mind, Ms. Chiyo must have been such a woman herself, or perhaps this woman was Ms. Chiyo reborn. Moreover—were any woman to emerge quietly from these clusters of surviving homes and meager cultivated plots amid the ruins—she could only be this sort of creature and none other. In other words, she—not some rational or modern woman but one endowed with a kind of idiot beauty—was precisely where she belonged.

When exactly and where Kishimoto Shohei first began having his eyes and heart drawn toward her remained unclear. When he himself became aware of it, he seemed to have caught glimpses of her in various places—at street corners and tram stops, before shopfronts and beneath trees in the burned ruins—sometimes gazing at the pronounced swell of her eyelids, sometimes at the slackness of her lower lip, sometimes at how her left eye narrowed when focusing on objects, sometimes at the thin smoothness of her skin. And when these fragments coalesced into an impression of irrational beauty lingering in his mind, he had already begun seeking out her figure of his own accord.

The reason Kishimoto Shohei’s daily commute between home and Nippori Station took ever-changing routes and felt like a leisurely stroll might have been primarily her influence.

She typically wore simple dresses or cotton yukata, carrying a shopping bag or clacking along in worn-out geta—her outfits were threadbare yet immaculate, maintaining an understated elegance. A faint dusting of powder always graced her face, her hair meticulously arranged into smooth waves. There were moments when she would fixate on Kishimoto Shohei with unblinking intensity. Other times she would pivot sharply away as if burned by his presence. Occasionally she inclined her head in cursory acknowledgment. But never once did her lips curve into a smile—not even the ghost of one ever surfaced.

During past air raids, both incendiary bombs and regular bombs fell upon this neighborhood.
A single small Western-style building that had been destroyed by the bombs remained collapsed atop a high cliff.
The walls had half collapsed, and the steel framework tilted.
Three or four men were demolishing it in an extremely leisurely manner.
They climbed up the steel framework to knock down wall plaster with hammers and tied ropes here and there.
When viewed from far below the cliff, it seemed not at all dangerous, resembling nothing more than play under the glaring sun.
In the shade of trees along the road below the cliff, triggered by a single passerby stopping, the number of onlookers gradually increased.
Kishimoto Shohei was also among them.

Beside him—he didn’t know when she had arrived—she stood.
She stood motionless, gazing at the work being done atop the cliff.
The work seemed like an apparition in broad daylight.
Each time the man atop the steel framework swung his hammer, a delayed sound would reach them after a pause.
Suddenly, the man’s figure vanished, and a large mass came crashing down from the steel framework.
A billowing dust cloud rose.
As the dust cloud thinned, only the slender steel framework remained, and there the man’s figure reappeared, beginning to walk a tightrope across the framework……
A passing cloud cast its shadow and moved on.

She pressed close against Kishimoto.

“What could they be doing?”

It was a low, firm voice.

"They probably intend to destroy that... but with such methods..."

Kishimoto started to speak but, in that moment, felt the foolishness of his response.

"It’s just like practicing magic tricks."

She did not reply, tilted her head slightly, then suddenly turned fully toward him and stared fixedly at his face. Her left eye lifted slightly and narrowed, her slightly drooping lower lip tightened as it was, and her entire expression took on the semblance of a smile. Then she walked away without so much as a glance in his direction, as though he meant nothing to her.

After watching her retreating figure, Kishimoto felt as though he had collided with something entirely unforeseeable.

However, such things drew him ever closer to her.

After that, he even discovered her residence.
From a street where foot traffic ebbed and flowed with the hour, a short way into an alley beneath a nameplate reading Hirao Masasuke, there was a smaller one bearing Koizumi Michie.
Yet whether this woman's name truly belonged to her was something he ultimately couldn't bring himself to verify.

July arrived, and the heat intensified abruptly.
On that sweltering afternoon, within the crowded national railway train, Kishimoto Shohei spotted her.
In her usual simple clothes, she was carrying a large bag.

She got off at Nippori Station.
As she climbed the stairs toward the exit, the bag appeared exceedingly large and heavy.
Kishimoto quickly caught up, and after a moment’s hesitation, adopted a bold, familiar attitude.

“That looks awfully heavy.
Let me carry that for you.”

She looked at him and, without any particular surprise, answered straightforwardly.

“I’m truly sorry. I’m terribly tired.”

Even though she had already finished climbing the stairs, she handed the bag to him.
The bag was heavily weighted, and there was a faint scent of perfume about her.

When they exited the station, she tried to open the bag to show him.

“Pumpkin, eggplant, cucumber, tomato… and then, there was still something else.”

In the middle of the street, Kishimoto was somewhat startled by her gesture of nearly opening the bag.
But strangely, thoughts of Ms. Ochiyo flashed through his mind.
Could it have been due to the rustic charm of Nippori Station’s back exit?
Had it been Ms. Ochiyo, she would have made her middle school-aged companion carry heavy luggage.
She would have scattered the vegetables from her bag across the public street without a care.
However, while Ms. Ochiyo had always been laughing, now she did not show a single smile.

“I went to Funabashi to buy these.”
“I went to buy fish, but they were completely sold out, so I got vegetables instead.”
“But if you add some meat, vegetables would make a tastier bento.”

“Are you preparing a bento?”
“Are you working somewhere?”

She did not reply, merely looking up at him with a puzzled expression.
That gaze pierced his chest with an unnatural sharpness.

He frowned.
That she might be preparing bento for her husband, a child, or some family member was entirely plausible.
Why had he assumed from the start that she lived completely alone?
Could it have been through association with Ms. Chiyo?
He frowned, then leveraged the weight of the bag he carried to press forward.

“Actually, I know your address…”
“Um, that Ms. Koizumi Michie…”

Before he could finish speaking in his slow manner, she came to a stop.

“Michie is me. I am Michie.”

She gazed at him quizzically.
Her left eye—lifted and narrowed, slightly cross-eyed—became the focal point from which an expression that could only be called cruel swept across her entire face.
The moment she did so, she made a polite bow.

“I’m terribly sorry. Thank you very much.”

She tried to take back the vegetable bag.

He refused it.

“What seems to be the matter?
“Please forgive me if I’ve offended you.
“Let me accompany you near your home.
“I won’t come into your home at all, so…””

She lowered her head and began to walk.
He matched his pace to her slow one.

For a while, silence continued.
In that silence, he could not quite surmise what lay within her—what lurked beneath the surface of that superficial kind of idiot beauty.

He said quietly.

“It has already been three months since we first met.”
“And… somehow I found myself wanting to know more about you—all sorts of things.”
“There are also various matters I wish to discuss from my side.”
“In Japan, relationships between men and women may still prove socially difficult, but so long as both parties remain steadfast in spirit, it need not be something condemnable.”
“Might we meet at leisure before long?”
“We could wander about outside or go somewhere…”

As he spoke, he grew disgusted with himself.
Ms. Chiyo had dragged him around as she pleased.
Shouldn’t he have dragged her around as he pleased?

“Say, why don’t we go somewhere quiet?”

After a while, she answered as if soliloquizing.

“Will you take me there?”

“Yes, let’s go.”
“Will you really take me there?”
“It’s true.”
“When shall we do it?”
“Tomorrow… the day after… yes, how about the following Saturday?”

“What time shall we make it?”

“Well, how does around three in the afternoon sound? Let’s meet at that five-storied pagoda along the tree-lined path in the cemetery.”

“Saturday at three….”

“That’s correct.”

While making such a promise, Kishimoto Shohei felt vaguely unsettled. He harbored affection for her, but her true nature remained even more elusive. Moreover, the tone of their dialogue struck him as peculiar. There was no time for such reflections; he had already arrived near her residence. He stopped at the entrance to the alley and handed her the vegetable bag. She spoke without looking at him.

“Won’t you come to my house?”
“Please forgive me today.”

She carried the heavy bag and walked away, apparently without a thought in her mind.

Kishimoto Shohei was seized by an anxiety akin to restlessness.
As time passed, he began to feel he might be charging headlong into an adventure that, if not dangerous, was at least wildly imprudent.
Or perhaps he began to feel he might be inflating some trifling matter beyond proportion.
And this ambiguity of indeterminacy only exacerbated his agitation.
He regretted all the more having shown such fastidiousness as to postpone for three days rather than act immediately that day—or at least the next.
Now there came back to him memories of his time in Hanoi, French Indochina—how he had once coaxed a certain madame away from a tea gathering, driven with her by motorcar to a mountain villa, and whiled away the hours until midnight.

When the promised Saturday arrived, he sprinkled some souvenir perfume from French Indochina on his body and went to the five-storied pagoda before three o'clock.
He fixed his eyes on the imposing pagoda with its layered turquoise-green roofs and steeled his resolve to brace himself.

However, Michie had arrived before him.
When her figure emerged from the shade of the cherry tree-lined path and approached him directly, he stared wide-eyed.
She had applied heavier makeup than usual, combed every curl into immaculate order, and wore with crisp precision a lightweight kimono—its pale gray base scattered with aqua lattice patterns. The jade carving on her single-layer obi sash sat slightly askew from center front. Her white tabi socks peeked from zori sandals with woven tatami soles, while a ro lace handbag held a Western parasol boasting a thick silver handle.
To the extent that he could take in all that, she was dressed in a stylish manner rare for the times.
Even so, she still did not show a smile.

“I have been waiting for you,” she said.

Then, saying they should walk a little, she invited him into the cemetery.
They circled wordlessly around the large ginkgo tree vying in height with the five-storied pagoda, then returned to where they had started.

She looked up at his face as if questioning.

“Anyway, let’s find somewhere to settle down.”

She nodded.

In case of any eventuality, he searched for a place nearby that wouldn’t require crowded transportation.

On the outskirts of a surviving section of burned ruins—a quiet, densely wooded area with large trees—stood a Western-style building bearing the name of a high-class inn. It had been a large mansion repurposed as it was. After ascending a slight slope from the gate and pressing the entrance bell, the maid from the previous day—when Kishimoto had made arrangements—appeared: a young woman of simple, rustic demeanor. The two were guided to where a six-tatami Japanese-style room and circular Western-style room directly adjoined each other. Outside the window were tree shadows and plantings, their refreshing coolness drifting into the room.

Kishimoto removed his suit jacket and loosened his tie, while Michie sat upright, using her fan, and they faced each other across a table on the tatami-matted side.

“I waited for you there yesterday as well.”
“I waited for you the day before yesterday as well,” she said.

“But today was supposed to be our Saturday appointment, wasn’t it?”

Whether she hadn’t taken it in or simply didn’t care, she offered no reply and remained gazing out the window.

“It’s truly a quiet, lovely house.”

Kishimoto felt slightly unsettled.
Dressed like a noblewoman, she now appeared completely different from Ochiyo-san, apart from that air of idiot beauty.
She was entirely different from that certain madame in Hanoi.
Kishimoto chain-smoked.

When the sake was brought in with some simple side dishes, Kishimoto let out a sigh of relief.

“Will you be staying overnight, or…?”

In that regard, Kishimoto had also been careless.
After the maid left, he asked Michie as if it were someone else’s affair.

“Whichever is fine…,” she answered calmly.

Kishimoto gazed uncannily at her blanched face.
It was abundantly clear that she was neither a woman steeped in the ways of the demimonde nor one who secretly entertained male clients.
If that were the case, was she an androgynous woman with some sexual defect?
No such signs were visible.
Kishimoto was perplexed by the way he was handling his own emotions.
Even so, on the other hand, he felt a certain reassurance in her composure.

He quickened his pace and drank the sake.
He also drank whiskey.
She too drank the sake as he urged.
For a woman, she seemed to be drinking quite a considerable amount.

In the garden, cicadas were singing.
Long ago, cicadas had sung in Ms. Chiyo’s room as well.
Despite it being midnight, a single tsukutsukuboushi cicada had flown into the room and perched upside down on the cord above the lampshade, singing loudly.
Ms. Chiyo stopped her joking and looked up at the cicada.
When Ms. Chiyo began talking again, the cicada began singing again.
He still does not remember a single word of what Ms. Chiyo said, but he clearly remembers the cicada’s song and even the translucent wings of its small body.
At that time, he caught the cicada and released it outside, but seizing that opportunity, he fled from Ms. Chiyo as if escaping, running home through the dark night on drunken momentum.

Kishimoto found himself uncertain whether that moment had been reality or a dream.
Though still only lightly drunk, his emotions alone deepened dreamlike into profound realms.

In those depths, he settled completely and felt toward Michie a familiarity like that of a childhood companion.
As for the past—well...the conversation about what came afterward proceeded in fits and starts.
She had encountered an air raid in Asakusa, lost her husband and his parents, nearly died herself yet miraculously survived without injury, and now lodged at an acquaintance’s house while awaiting her brother who’d gone missing after being sent south as a soldier—such appeared to be the general shape of her circumstances.
Of course, even that had sprung from her ambiguous words and was something imagined by the drunken Kishimoto—its truth impossible to verify.

“There was a tree exactly the same size as that ginkgo in the cemetery. The fire came swirling around it, chasing after me. I ran around in circles trying to escape. It was like a game of tag. When I tripped over something and fell—when I thought I’d been caught—the fire had already gone out.”

Kishimoto laughed cheerfully.
She did not laugh, but still seemed to be enjoying herself.

Kishimoto talked about the continent. He mainly talked about insects and animals. Human matters seemed to hold almost no interest for her.

They grew tired of the sake, ate some sushi, and slept inside the mosquito net.

As far as the drunken Kishimoto could remember, she had shown almost no sexual impulse and taken no proactive attitude. At the same time, she seemed to have no sense of shame whatsoever. As if stripped entirely of the artifices a courtesan might employ in the boudoir, she surrendered her pure white body to him. Perhaps she had passed out drunk?

When Kishimoto suddenly awoke, she was sleeping with her back turned.
Through the pale light of the mosquito net, he gazed fixedly at her white flesh from neck to shoulder.
From the black hair curled outward to where her nightgown’s collar had slipped down, the naked body lay abandoned to its natural weight, its bones—if they could even be called bones rather than cartilage—merely delineating smooth curves and undulations.
The thin, delicate skin melted into the flesh beneath, giving the impression of looking at the smooth, glossy surface of a rice cake.
It was no longer hers—Koizumi Michie’s—nor by any means Kishimoto Shohei’s; it had become something like a substance divorced from humanity.
What relation could that have to him?
What relation could there be between the woman he had embraced earlier and this?
It was a novel, distant substance—precisely because it was white, warm, and soft that it felt all the more eerie.

Kishimoto awoke fully with a sensation of having been hexed.
The mosquito net quivered as something flapped violently within it.
A faint dusting of white powder lingered in the air.
When he lifted his head, he saw an enormous snow-white moth—larger than a palm—struggling to perch on the netting as it beat its wings.
Burdened by an abdomen thick as a thumb, it fluttered incessantly.
Those four immaculate wings spanning wide seemed less beautiful than bizarrely alien.

Kishimoto stared fixedly at it.
Then Michie—who should have been asleep—quietly raised her upper body and, with her nightgown slipped off one shoulder, stared at the white moth.
Her cheeks were like wax, her body showing no sign of breathing movement.
She stared at the moth for a long time before finally exiting the mosquito net.
Without so much as glancing at the moth again, she slowly began putting on her kimono.

Kishimoto, startled, seized her hand.

“What’s wrong?”

She stared fixedly at him and shook her head.

“Let’s go back now.”

Her voice was perceived by Kishimoto as if submerged in water yet concealing something irresistible—such was the quality that impressed itself upon him.

To his words, she offered no further reply.
And when he pleaded—saying she could return tonight but would she meet him again in a week—she nodded slowly twice in a gesture whose meaning hung unresolved: whether it answered him or merely convinced herself.

When he looked at the watch, it was eleven o'clock.
The white moth had already gone somewhere and was no longer visible.

Within Kishimoto Shohei’s chest, a love for Michie flared up with an intensity that surprised even him.
He wandered near her address during his commute to and from the company, wanting to see her, but her figure was nowhere to be found.

And one week later, just before three o'clock in the afternoon, he went to the appointed five-storied pagoda.
It was a muggy day under a cloudy sky.
Yet she did not appear there.
He wandered repeatedly between rows of cherry trees and to the ginkgo tree near the cemetery.
Even when four o'clock came, she did not arrive.

He resolved himself and visited her nearby residence. At the latticed door, when he looked up, the small nameplate bearing the name Koizumi Michie was already gone, leaving only a vague white patch in its place. He opened the latticed door and requested to be let in. An old man with a shaved head and missing teeth came out. When he inquired about Koizumi Michie, the reply was that she had suddenly moved to Shizuoka four days prior. Kishimoto stood dumbfounded.

The kind-looking old man scrutinized Kishimoto’s condition and then spoke.

“It was completely out of the blue; even we were surprised.”
“Though to be fair, there was something a bit… about that person.”

The old man tapped his forehead with his index finger.

“She was a bit off, you see. There were strange things happening from time to time.”
“Just before moving to Shizuoka, she went out every day all dressed up, but one night she came back late and seemed to be sobbing quietly.”
“The thing is, she seemed perfectly sane normally, so people couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”
“She probably wasn’t like that from the start, but with all the misfortunes that kept piling up… It’s truly pitiable.”

The old man seemed to want to talk at length, but Kishimoto—unable to bear it—asked only about the Shizuoka residence before taking his leave.
The house in Shizuoka was said to correspond to her aunt.

Kishimoto felt everything had grown clear. In that clarity, she became unbearably dear to him while he himself felt repulsive. Loathing this repulsive self, he drowned in drink, and whenever sobriety returned, thought of her again. Once he bought a train ticket to Shizuoka, but tore it up and instead wrote a letter.

In one passage of that letter were words to this effect: "Day and night, I conjure up that large white moth in my mind like a phantom."
That moth ignites my love and self-reproach.
To speak frankly, now I truly love you, and I wring blood in self-reproach for having seduced you by taking advantage of a certain weakness in your spirit.
I kneel at your feet as a human being.
Please, you too—as a human being—take notice of this me.
Even if it’s just a single postcard or a single line of text, please grant me some token of that gaze of yours.

He did not know whether even such a letter centered on that meaning had reached the addressee.
There was no reply from Koizumi Michie.