Pathway to Japanese Literature

Purple Bottle

The prosecution authorities were trying to charge me with either murder or assisted suicide.
I was being forced to confess.
But confessing to something I had no memory of would mean telling a lie.
At this late hour, I did not want to lie.
In military life, I had been taught to lie with composure.
There was also part of me that wanted to settle that.
I wanted to speak only the truth.

Even so, how few and trivial were the clear truths available to me as the person involved.
That was my sad misfortune.
Moreover, within those meager truths lay something utterly shameful and difficult to voice.
It appeared the situation had pivoted around that very matter.
Why had I done such a foolish thing?

I was completely crushed.
And a profound pathos overflowed in the chest.

“When are you leaving for Hokkaido?”
“Do let me know.”
“I’ll see you off to Ueno Station.”

In a tone that could be taken as irony, Yumiko said.

—The words I had been longing for were completely the opposite.
Don't go—no, don't go—those were the words I had been fantasizing about.

But then—what on earth had happened—Yumiko drew my shoulders close and allowed me a long kiss.
No—she hadn't allowed it; she had initiated it with me.
It was a manner of kissing I had never known before.
Lips and tongue continuously undulating in gentle waves...
Had her past been present there too?
Both were drunk.
Breath and lips alike reeked of alcohol.
Alcohol erases body odor, leaving behind only pure tactile sensation.
Guided by the skillful undulations of her lips and tongue, I sank into an ecstasy resembling anguish, drowning as I writhed and clung desperately to her entire body.

At that moment, she slipped smoothly out of both my arms.
――Why hadn’t I held her tightly?
It must have been a posture as if clinging to fragile glassware.

“Don’t go getting sentimental on me now.”

With hot breath, she whispered.
On her gaunt cheeks, a frozen smile was etched.
And completely separate from all those things, beautiful droplets gathered on her eyelashes and trickled down.
I certainly saw that.
It was not a hallucination.

I silently poured whiskey into the glass and diluted it with water.
She too started to hold out her glass but stopped her hand.

“I have something good.”
“I’d forgotten.”

She rummaged through the cupboard with hollow clattering sounds and pulled out a cheese tin from its depths.
Then she stood and headed toward the shopfront.

In that brief interval, I steeled my resolve.
No—rather, something decisive that could be called resolve had arisen naturally within me.
Beside the cupboard stood a writing desk cluttered with an inkstand, writing box, doll, cut-glass vase, trinket cases and such—and at one end sat a small purple bottle.
It was the poison bottle she had shown me earlier during our conversation.
Had she carelessly left it on the desk and forgotten about it?
Yet deep in my consciousness, it seemed to have lodged itself.
Her cold words offering no handhold, the unexpected fervent kiss, her dreamlike tears, and above all, the sorrow of realizing my own wretched, miserable love—all these things layered upon me, pressing down until I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper, and from that abyss I seemed to catch flickering glimpses of the purple bottle.
When she left the room, I could see the bottle clearly.

I had not become sentimental.
What had she been thinking when she said such a thing?
She had likely said it to herself.
I was drunk, but I was by no means disarrayed by sentimentality.—Listening to the noises from the shop area, I calmly picked up the purple bottle.
There was no leap called resolve.
My resolve had already been set.
After gazing at the bottle for a while, I unscrewed the lid and poured the contents into my palm.
It was a pure white crystalline powder.

I sensed her approaching.
I returned the bottle to the writing desk, poured the powder from my palm into the glass, then covered it with my palm and pressed down briefly.

She arranged the cheese tin and flat plates on the dining table, pushed aside the existing dishes of peanuts and roasted seaweed to one side, and began cutting the cheese into small pieces with a knife.
The ordinary act appeared vividly as if viewed through a lens.

At that moment, something resembling terror seized my entire body.
I felt cold; my knees trembled.
I pressed my palm against the iron kettle hanging over the long brazier, but it wasn’t hot at all, and the kettle clattered.
I must not make any careless mistakes, I told myself.
Then I gently hid that glass under the dining table and stood up.—I felt the urge to urinate.

Her eyes, looking up, appeared like those of a fish.

“I need to go... take care of something.”

“Oh, the bathroom’s this way.”

The image of that narrow, dirty bathroom came to mind, and I hated it.

――If I must die, let it be an honorable death.

I opened the wooden door and went out toward the back exit.
There was a small vacant lot there, and I had developed a habit of relieving myself there when drunk, among other times.

It seemed there was a moon somewhere, casting a dim glow over everything.
I went to the vacant lot and, swaying unsteadily, took a long piss.
As I turned to go back, I staggered and dropped to one knee.
A large round stone stood there, and I crouched down as if leaning against it.

――What was there even to think about? Just immerse yourself in sorrow. There lies your life.

Sorrow was not mere sentimentality. Something that devoured both life and death―that was my life, I suppose.―In the distance, I could hear what seemed to be the sound of a night train running. After some time had passed, suddenly, a rooster crowed.

I stood up as if waking from a dream. I carefully brushed the dust off my trousers. I adjusted my clothing with care and fastened even my jacket buttons. Was this preparation for meeting death or embracing life? I could no longer tell even myself. I made sure to walk with steady footsteps.

I closed the back door and returned to the room.
I hadn’t clearly observed the state of the room, but somehow I knew there was not the slightest change or disarray from before.
Only, she was lying face down with her legs half outstretched.
I sat at a slight distance.

Suddenly, an indescribable shudder coursed through me.
I placed my hand on her shoulder.
She was dead.
―The next moment, I realized.
The glass that should have been left under the dining table was half-drunk and on the table.

At that moment, under those circumstances, why did Yumiko develop an appetite for something like cheese? If she hadn't gotten up to open the cheese tin, the situation would have been different. Or rather—why did I feel that urge to urinate? What I find unbearably shameful in this entire incident is precisely that single act. And yet because of that shameful act of mine, the situation took an abrupt turn. I don't believe the urge came from some incomprehensible fear. Nor do I consider it cowardly that I went to relieve myself out of caution against making any careless mistakes in an emergency. But I feel ashamed of the very fact that I needed to urinate at all. On top of that humiliation came another entirely separate one.

“That night, it appears you two still hadn’t engaged in physical intimacy.”

I underwent an interrogation imbued with a knowing smirk. In other words, it appeared they had deduced that I harbored strong carnal intentions.

The complete narrative of events seemed to be interpreted in one of two ways: either I had methodically poisoned her after she refused my advances, or I alone had cowardly abandoned our mutual suicide pact midway—there was no conclusive evidence to disprove either theory.

I simply state the truth as I know it. Yet how much of that truth do I truly grasp?

Yumiko probably thought to have a drink after cutting the cheese, noticed my glass was missing at that moment, found it under the dining table, and—taking advantage of the whiskey inside—gulped it down without hesitation.—This remains the most reasonable interpretation.
That I harbored even the slightest intention to ensnare her in a poisonous death is something I myself cannot acknowledge.
Moreover, it's difficult to infer from the surrounding circumstances that she knew the glass contained poisoned whiskey.

And yet, something that could not be fully resolved by rational interpretations settled like sediment in the depths of my heart.
Was it something that had crept in afterward?
Moreover, my subsequent actions had many points that appeared disadvantageous to me—I am a weak human being.

Yumiko seemed as though she had merely lost consciousness and nothing more.
Nowhere were there any signs of agony.
That potent poison—paralyzing respiratory nerves to bring sudden death by suffocation—took life directly without even inducing rigor mortis.
When I let go of the hands supporting her upper body, her form collapsed softly with a dull thud.
I laid her straight on her back and closed those half-open eyelids.
I found her handkerchief and covered her face with it.
Then I took down the iron kettle from the long brazier and stoked the charcoal fire.
Then I crossed my arms.
I had meant to close my eyes and think, but they refused to shut—a great anxiety came over me.

Unlike the terror of covering the poisoned glass with my palm, and unlike the shock of discovering her death, this was a vast, unknowable anxiety.
It thickened until it filled every corner of the room.
This wasn't about becoming aware of having committed a crime.
Nor was it about how to dispose of evidence.
This anxiety connected directly to her corpse itself.
Even so, it wasn't that she might open her eyes to stare at me.
Nor that she might sit up facing me.
This was an anxiety that felt like my flesh being slowly dragged toward her corpse—preserved exactly as in life yet infinitely cold.—I had once passed hours beside countless corpses on battlefields.
Yet back then I'd felt neither fear nor unease.
Military uniforms work strangely—they form a partition between oneself and external reality.
I no longer possessed any such uniform.
In that room I stood completely exposed.
The room's trapped anxiety pressed against my bare skin.
I couldn't even close my eyes.

I stood up.
It was as if the countless spider threads binding me had been severed.
When I looked around vacantly, there remained a glass with unfinished drink.
I poured it out onto the earthen floor by the back door.
I even emptied the remaining whiskey from the bottle onto the dirt.
I feared she might drink it again.
What a foolish thing I had done—even in my dazed state.
Needless to say, this became a major liability for me.
And yet, I had clean forgotten about the purple bottle on the writing desk.

After discarding the poisoned drink, I felt a slight sense of relief.
I lifted the white cloth covering her face slightly and kissed her forehead.

With cold detachment—a resolve to take her away—I left that place.
Putting on a coat and hat, I passed through the shop and went out through the front door.

I turned my steps toward the desolate burnt ruins.
A half-moon hung in the western sky.
No one walked the streets at this late hour.
I threw myself into the stand of withered weeds, crouched there and wept—I existed within a deep, fathomless loneliness.

This was not surrender to loneliness.
Rather, I could no longer endure it.
And as I wept, my own being gradually came into focus.
Yumiko's reality clarified itself.
The incident's full scope revealed itself.
Even its outer contours took shape.
What I saw then—what I felt—defies encapsulation in mere words.

I should not have left her abandoned like that all alone.

My thoughts returned time and again to that central point.
I stood up and, with resolute steps, returned to her house.

The light was still on.
I entered from the front.
Her room appeared disheveled, but that was likely due to the change in my state of mind.
She lay perfectly still.
Her hair was disheveled, clinging limply to her skin.
Her body seemed terribly emaciated.
I adjusted her collar slightly and smoothed out the wrinkles in the white cloth covering her face.
Then I stood at the staircase entrance on the side of the shop and shouted loudly up to the second floor.

“Aunt, Aunt, please wake up.”
“Yumi-chan’s in trouble.”
“She’s dead!”

I grew furious.
I grabbed the Seto ashtray and slammed it against the staircase.

“Aunt, wake up.”
“It’s an emergency!”

Aunt came tumbling down the stairs, her nightclothes half-covered by a padded tanzen robe.
I hurled the ashtray onto the earthen floor and wordlessly led Aunt to Yumiko’s room.

The fact that after learning of Yumiko’s death, I neither immediately woke Aunt nor rushed to a doctor’s care, instead squandering over an hour, became a decisively disadvantageous condition for me.
Yet that so-called squandered time had been—for me—such a profoundly fulfilling and meaningful interval.

Next came the most critical issue concerning the poison.
Where had I or she obtained it from?
If she had been in possession of it all along, how had I come to know of its existence?
These were the points I was rigorously questioned about.

I do not scorn physical evidence.
Nor do I resent that Yumiko's body was later autopsied and minutely examined.
But regarding the poison alone, it had now become clear that the prosecution authorities and I stood on entirely different ground.
For them, it was a concrete matter of criminality - for me, a symbolic matter at the heart of this case.

One year after the war ended, I was demobilized from the continent and returned home.
I learned Yumi-chan had recently opened a modest bar and went to see it with my heart racing.
On the continental battlefield, I had increasingly conjured her image in my heart—to my own surprise.
Having no object for affection in that foreign battlefield was unbearable loneliness.—After returning home, through my mother's and sister's words and others', I came to know the outline of her circumstances.
I knew she had first worked as a live-in maid at a poultry restaurant.
Afterward—meaning after my conscription—that poultry restaurant became unable to operate and eventually closed.
She returned home and helped at their modest milk hall.
Then she moved into a patron's house from that restaurant as a live-in maid.
After the women and children evacuated to the countryside, rumors spread she'd become something like a kept mistress.
When air raids intensified, that house burned down.
The old man perished in flames while she sustained minor injuries.
She returned home again only to suffer another air raid there.
Afterward, her family lived with acquaintances while she used severance pay from her former employer to rent a house's downstairs and open a bar.
That was roughly how it went.

I went to visit that bar while night was still young.
In a valley-like depression among the fire-scarred ruins, rows of aged merchant houses stood preserved.
There were several drinking stalls resembling oden shops.
Hers was one among them.
Only her bar's entrance receded slightly from the eaves' alignment, flanked by potted trees growing into dense clusters.
This solitary distinction defined the place—within, chairs lined up before the counter offered nothing but ordinary liquors and basic snacks.
It was precisely the sort of shabby establishment where Yumiko's practiced movements stood out with unnatural clarity.

When I mustered my courage and walked in, she immediately recognized me.
She opened her long-lidded eyes wide and made a sound caught between surprise and joy.
When I extended a hand, she clasped it between both of hers.
The hands were strangely cold.
She entrusted the bar to Aunt and led me to her private room behind the counter.
In that compact space lined with small chests, cupboards, a desk, a brazier and a vanity mirror, I found myself oddly ill at ease.
The woman I saw after five years no longer resembled the milk hall girl of memory, but appeared instead as a polished woman of experience.
Yet her cheeks had an unnaturally gaunt look devoid of vitality, with burn scars running from her left earlobe down to her neck.
She offered me liquor and cigarettes, then helped herself to both.
She hungrily listened to my stories while scarcely speaking of herself.
Still, she did share some details of her present circumstances.
She ran the bar jointly with Aunt—her landlady—having provided the initial capital herself.
Aunt and her husband lived in a single six-mat room upstairs; her husband apparently worked for some public corporation.
From the room's condition, there seemed to be no husband or lover in her life.—With this modest yield gleaned, I took my leave at what seemed an appropriate moment.

After that, I began visiting her bar to drink as often as my finances allowed.
Once, after getting drunk, I reached for her lips.
She laughed and permitted it for just an instant.
They were completely passive - unresponsive cold lips.
Instead, I would often grip her hand tightly.
She never refused this.
It felt strange.
In the past—yes, it feels like another era now—we used to hold hands frequently.
In corners of her family's milk hall, in festival night shadows where we avoided watching eyes.
Those old memories now revived themselves in different hues.
I found myself gripped by restless impatience at times.
She persistently kept her gaze lowered.

The faint affection I had nurtured on the battlefield transformed into something tangible.
I began visiting her place even when it strained my means.
She never presented me with a bill.
―The bar's regulars now seemed to consist mostly of older, well-to-do patrons.

Before long, a change occurred in my circumstances. Before being conscripted, I had been working at a medical equipment store, but upon returning home, I found it had been destroyed with no clear prospect of recovery. During the war, Mother and Sister had managed to get by through helping other households and doing home-based work, and since the war’s end, they had been engaged in modest black-market brokering. Since I had no promising job prospects, I decided to help with the secret family business for the time being. There were times when we made unexpected profits, and times when nothing worked out at all. It was during this period that express letters began arriving frequently from my uncle in Otaru.

—that finding decent employment would prove difficult for me.
That my sister had reached an age where one might say she was past marriageable years, so wedding preparations needed consideration.
That Tokyo appeared deficient in clothing, food, and shelter—especially since they'd taken in an acquaintance's disaster-stricken family to live upstairs—leaving little room for proper rest.
Whether I harbored no intention of coming to him.
That while currently experiencing some lull, this promising seafood processing plant required someone dependable.
That my status as demobilized soldier and age made it an ideal position.
And various other points.

The successive letters from my uncle began taking on the tone of demand notices.
I had sent an ambiguous reply.
It seemed an ambiguous letter had also come separately from Mother.
Eventually, Uncle came demanding a definite reply by year's end with a firm deadline.
If no reply came by year’s end, he would have to hire someone else, it was said.
It seemed there were pressing circumstances of some sort.
――I tried to ascertain Mother’s and Sister’s intentions too, but they merely seemed vaguely anxious and lonely, and I couldn’t grasp the gist at all.

Such circumstances made me cling even more tightly to Yumiko. I told her about Uncle’s letters. I presented it as a joke. She deliberately showed an attitude of retreating into her shell. She pretended it was a matter of no consequence. I thought she was putting on an act. And deep down, I had expected her to try to stop me. Moreover, within myself, I resolved to confess—I had been fantasizing about marrying her. Through marriage, I thought I could make that bar thrive magnificently. If that happened, Mother’s livelihood would be secure, and Sister’s marriage could be easily arranged. I would contact my uncle in Otaru and begin trading processed seafood products.

I was determined to obtain Yumiko’s decisive words by year’s end.
In my daydreams, I envisioned her bringing up marriage, my heart racing.
And I grew increasingly obsessed with her.

Then suddenly, that scene unfolded.
For her, it was like an explosion of anguish.
For me, it was akin to a lightning strike.
――To me now, recounting it has become a joy that transcends pain.

Over business matters, I drank and became tipsy—then found myself wanting to see Yumiko.
It was somewhat late, but I went to see her.

The bar stood pitch dark, but light existed in the back room.
I called out and began smoking a cigarette.
After quite some time, the light suddenly turned on, and Yumiko appeared.
"It was a day off—I'm sure I locked up," she said.
I started to leave.

“You want a drink, don’t you.”
“Go ahead and have some.”
“Since it’s a day off today, I’ll treat you.”

The second time I came, I was shown to her room.

On the dining table were a whiskey bottle and peanuts.

“Customer?”

Yumiko shook her head and pointed to the stationery scattered across the writing desk.
She seemed to have been writing a letter.

“How nice.”
“Writing love letters while drinking...”
“I think I’ll start doing that too.”

Yumiko pretended to glare.

“There’s nothing at all. If Aunt were awake, she’d prepare all sorts of treats for you…”

“Then go wake her up.”

“How pitiful.”

She took this seriously and set about tending to the long hibachi by adding charcoal, opening a new bottle of whiskey, and arranging glasses and cups. And once she had settled down a bit, as if suddenly remembering, she gathered up the stationery on the desk, tore what she had written into small pieces, and threw them into the hibachi to burn. I drank while silently watching.

“Because they’re getting on my nerves, I’ll burn them.”

While the flames from the burning paper lit her face, she fixed me with an oddly somber look.

“Toshio-san,” she called my name, “how old have you become?”

“How old? I’m two years older than you, aren’t I? It’s been that way since long ago.”

“That’s how it was in the past…”

She laughed with irritation.

When I thought about it, I was thirty-one, so she must have been twenty-nine.
There had always been a two-year difference between us.
But now, she seemed to know the world far better than I did.
If saying she “knew” sounded harsh, then she’d become jaded.
――Something akin to sadness welled up in my chest, and I tried to take her hand as I always did.

She withdrew her hand.

“We used to hold hands often back then.”
“But now... how ridiculous all that seems.”

“Then...”

I leaned forward to kiss her lips.
She evaded me and grabbed the glass.

“If you threaten me, I’ll strike you.”

“Threaten? That’s...”

“That’s what coercion is.”
“All men do this.”

She gulped down the whiskey in one go and fixed me with a piercing stare—her face not what you’d call full-featured, with oddly gaunt cheeks yet charmingly shaped ears.
She wore her hair piled up as if deliberately hiding those ears.
Avoiding her eyes, I sought that ear amidst her black tresses only to find its base twitching where it met a large brown scar running down her neck.
A burn from wartime fires.
I lowered my gaze, sipped from my glass, planted both elbows on the table like a man folding in on himself, and let my forehead sink into my palms.

“It was the same at Tominaga-san’s place too.”

As if condemning me—my face lowered between love and sorrow—she let fall abruptly.

I looked up in surprise.

“That’s right. Even if you try to love me, it’s no use.”

She was already completely drunk, I thought.
And I wanted to match her drunkenness.—As I drank, I told her that love wasn’t what she imagined it to be.
“Love means two people building a life together,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about marrying you.”

For the first time, I spoke those words.
I said what I had wanted her to say.

“Then why didn’t you say it back then? It’s too late now.”

“That time?”

“That time… long ago.”

She was talking about when we used to secretly hold hands.—Had I spoken the word “marriage” to her then, she wouldn’t have needed to work at that fowl restaurant or end up at Tominaga-san’s house.
What she endured at Tominaga-san’s house.
It wasn’t the young master, but the patriarch—over sixty already—who had done it.
The half-senile old man treated her like a plaything in his bedchamber.
She complied with every shameful demand—assumed every degrading posture, performed every humiliating act.
Yet when the air raids came, she risked her life trying to save that same man.
Amid smoke and flames, she suffered severe burns from neck to shoulder dragging his collapsed form—all while the young master watched from the sidelines.
Watched with such cold detachment he might as well have feigned ignorance…

Neither confession nor soliloquy—her fragmented, blunt words carried an odd cadence.
It seemed like drunken rambling, yet also like genuine anger.
That abruptly faded, and she spoke solemnly.

“Why didn’t you say one word about marriage back then?”
“How I had waited for it…”
“But no matter how long I waited, nothing came… Isn’t that absurd?”

Suddenly, she laughed.

That laughter cheered me up.

“Then why didn’t you say it yourself?”
“You think I could have?”
“Of course you could have.”

“It’s not about love… It’s about marriage.”
“I was poor.”

“Even if you were poor…”

I started to say but fell silent.
I had collided with something cold and desolate.

“Let’s stop this kind of talk.”
“I want to get drunk today.”

There was something in me that made it oddly impossible to get drunk.
And my feelings sank in that direction—that’s right—perhaps those who are poor can’t bring themselves to speak of marriage.
That I, poor as I was, had now brought up the matter of marriage to her was only after prolonged hesitation.
Then what of love…?
For the poor, love that exists apart from marriage might be an even more impossible prospect.
As for me, I had been thinking solely of marriage rather than love.

As I sank into some profound thought, she lightly tapped my shoulder.

“Let’s make things more enjoyable.”
“While we’re alive…”

Even so, her face seemed somehow rigid.

“The air raid days were more interesting.”

She stood up, rummaged through the back of the upper drawer in the small cabinet, and produced the purple bottle.

“Do you know what this is?”

I took the bottle and tried to remove the stopper.

“Don’t open it.”

She took back the bottle and whispered the poison’s name.

“For emergencies, I got this from the old man at the Tominagas’.”
“Having this gave me something to live for.”
“But I’ve grown tired of this now.”

Carelessly, she placed the bottle in the corner of the writing desk.
And we drank whiskey.

“When are you leaving for Hokkaido?”
“Do let me know.”

While staring intently at my face, she said.

All these things came vividly back to me now.
Had Yumiko already lost interest in that purple bottle?
Or was she feigning disinterest on purpose?
However, that bottle became something fateful—both for her and for me.
And now those memories of the bottle and her later passionate kiss—so actively given—came back to me in stark contrast.

In the weeds of that burned-out lot, I saw the wretchedness and sorrow of my own love.
I saw the wretchedness and sorrow of Yumiko's love.
I resolved to cast aside that kind of love.
Instead, I would keep Yumiko alive within myself.
She and I were not of opposing factions.
We were comrades meant to walk hand in hand.
And that purple bottle had lost its purpose.
Even if it had remained in our possession, its use would not be for hurling at ourselves, but against the opposing camp.

That I returned to her corpse was a good thing.
If I had fled then and there, I would never have been saved.
I will bravely affirm the truth.
And I will not tell any lies.
I am now confined and being coerced into making a dishonest confession, but victory should always lie with the truth.

Since then, I had no opportunity to return home. Anticipating this as well, I wrote a concise letter to my sister using Yumiko’s stationery—the remaining sheets from the long letter she had started writing to someone before burning it herself. I wrote only that I might be unable to return home for some time due to bearing false charges, that there was absolutely no need to worry, and finally, that I had resolved to go to Hokkaido—though I did not know when I would be able to depart—and that I wanted Uncle to be urgently informed of this intent. And then I asked the aunt’s husband to have it secretly delivered home.

I have nothing left to worry about.
Only, there is something pressing down on me, trying to overpower me.
Could it be the pressure from the prosecution authorities?
Could it be the pressure from these crude walls on all sides?
However, I have the confidence to oppose it.

High up, there was a window fitted with iron bars, through which a fragment of blue sky appeared cut out. If I sat upright, gazed at it, and clung to it, I could indeed breathe freely.