Pathway to Japanese Literature

Chiyo was slightly mentally disabled.
When she had been bedridden with a high fever, her house was burned in an air raid, and after being taken into Akagi’s household, she had nearly developed meningitis—Akagi claimed that was the cause, but the truth remained unclear.
Her mouth was twisted, the corners of her eyes drooped oddly, her pupils stared vacantly into space, and the flesh of her cheeks lacked firmness, as if she were about to break into a grin.
Her skin was unnaturally pale.
She liked going out and walked slowly, shuffling along as if gravely ill or as though her legs were injured.
She always wore worn-down, flattened wooden clogs, one more eroded than the other, leaving them uneven.
She wore a meisen kimono with a merino obi—her attire was ordinary enough, but the sloppily tied obi and gaping collar gave her an unsavoriness worse than if she had been draped in filthy rags.

When I was demobilized and came seeking help from Akagi, she turned her unfocused eyes toward me. In those vacant eyes and the pallid whiteness of her skin stretching from cheeks to neckline, I felt as though I were brushing against fish scales. When Akagi’s wife Kayo-san urged, “Isn’t this Mr. Shinji Nakamoto? Greet him properly,” she grinned and said, “Hewwo.” I suddenly wondered—just how old was Chiyo? Twenty perhaps? Chiyo was Kayo-san’s niece, and I was kin to Akagi—so Chiyo and I hadn’t been strangers from the beginning.

Akagi’s house was located at the base of a large slope, on what could be called the outskirts of a settlement that had survived the fires.

In the past, it had been a modest café with about three waitresses.
After the war, Akagi renovated that shop and began operating an oden restaurant.
The buses had already stopped running on the slope, and though Mrs. Kayo had worried about opening in such a place where only burned ruins stretched out expansively, contrary to expectations, it flourished remarkably.
Before long, the lid remained closed on the oden pot, and it became a specialty small-dish restaurant—a gathering spot for wealthy regulars.
In addition to the front earthen floor, there was one room in the back and two rooms on the second floor.
Occasionally, special customers would come, close the front door, and only use the rooms on the second floor.—Chiyo was nearly useless, and with just Akagi and his wife being short-handed—that’s where I conveniently showed up.

I had to repeat my battlefield story again—on a small southern island where food supplies had been cut off for so long that soldiers were even beginning to go mad from starvation. It wasn’t mere hunger—it was outright starvation. When planting bulbs and creeping stems of wild plants for food, they couldn’t support their bodies with just their legs and had to get down on all fours. I imitated that—since I was a bit drunk—and crawled across the tatami mats to demonstrate.

Chiyo, who had been watching nearby, burst into raucous laughter.
I glared at her.

“This isn’t a laughing matter.”

Chiyo showed no sign of stopping her laughter.

Even my most profound experiences were reduced to a farce.
I stopped talking and drank in frustration.

If that had been all, it might have been bearable…
The next day, Chiyo weeded the back field.
Various seasonal vegetables were grown there and served as ingredients for the restaurant’s dishes.
Cultivation was handled by Akagi, and weeding was mainly forced upon Chiyo.
However, that day, Chiyo was crawling on all fours between the ridges of the field using her knees and elbows, getting her kimono covered in mud.
It was exactly the posture I had described the previous night.
Noticing that, I moved forward.
I clenched my fist and stared silently.
Chiyo turned slightly and grinned.
I slapped her buttocks as hard as I could.

Chiyo toppled over sideways.
I just watched.
Eventually, she got up and, still barefoot, headed back toward the house, suddenly began to sob, and went in through the back door.

I peered in from outside.
Chiyo was sobbing convulsively.
Mrs. Kayo was brushing mud from the kimono while asking probing questions.
“What happened?”
“Did you fall?”
“Did someone play a prank on you?”
“What happened?”
No matter how much she asked, Chiyo didn’t respond and just kept crying.

I entered there.
Chiyo didn’t even glance at me, but Mrs. Kayo said imploringly.

“Really, this child is just like a baby.”
“Since her mind isn’t all there, I thought at least her appearance… No matter how much I try to take care of her, she ends up like this right away.”
“And yet she keeps crying for no reason at all.”
“Even though she’s grown up… how long is she going to keep crying?”
“Alright, that’s enough now. Go wash your feet.”

I had nothing to say.

I went to the shop and lit a cigarette.
I was furious.
I could understand Mrs. Kayo’s feelings of pitying her idiot niece and looking after her.
But what on earth was Chiyo thinking?
Why didn’t she say that I had hit her?
She wasn’t someone who could discern that she had been in the wrong.
Or perhaps she was completely ignoring me.

It wasn’t just me she was ignoring—she seemed to be ignoring herself as well. As I pieced together Kayo’s occasional remarks, Chiyo’s true nature gradually became clear.

Chiyo always went to the bathhouse with Kayo.
At such times, Kayo would make Chiyo walk as quickly as possible.
Shuffling along while dragging her geta and walking like a critically ill patient—Kayo refused to match that pace, instead forcing Chiyo to keep up with her own.
Was she trying to train her to walk like ordinary people?

One time, Chiyo tried crossing the street side by side with Mrs. Kayo to avoid falling behind.
The moment they began, a truck came speeding through.
Mrs. Kayo halted, but Chiyo took two or three steps forward.
They hadn’t been holding hands.
Mrs. Kayo caught her breath and seized Chiyo’s sleeve.
Instantly, the truck grazed past their faces.
At the same time, Chiyo shook off the gripped sleeve, pressed both sleeves against her face, and stood rigid.
She didn’t move for some time.

“A pitch-black whirlwind passed by,” Chiyo finally said.

“It’s not a whirlwind. It was a truck.”

“No, it was a pitch-black whirlwind.”

And until they reached the bathhouse, the truck and the pitch-black whirlwind repeated themselves.
Then, when she was about to enter the bath, Chiyo abruptly scooped bathwater into a bucket and doused herself from head to toe.
She must have meant to wash away that pitch-black whirlwind.

Be that as it may, such a thing was truly rare.
Chiyo always stood rigidly by the bathtub, never making any move to enter the water.
Instead, she only dipped into the water briefly and immediately got out.
What came next was the problem.
She let both hands hang limply and stood rigidly in the washing area.
In the midst of many people crouching down, she just stood rigidly looking down at her feet as if thinking about something.
The lower abdomen pubic area and thighs were all exposed.
She seemed to lack any sense of shame whatsoever.
When Kayo ladled hot water into the bucket and urged “Come on wash yourself” she finally crouched down there.

The mere sight of Chiyo’s figure gave off a repulsive feeling even in imagination. Standing completely naked in the washing area, letting her hands hang limply without attempting to hide a single part of herself—this brazen attitude had sunk to such baseness that it could no longer even be called an attitude. Yet with her strangely pallid skin—though I knew nothing of her physique—judging by how her wooden clogs were worn down unevenly, her legs were likely mismatched in length; as for her facial features, her mouth twisted, the corners of her eyes drooped severely, and her cheeks slackened as if about to break into a grin—one could rightly call her hideous. If this had been a beauty, one might have imagined classical aesthetics—a marble statue or a figure bathing quietly in dappled shade—but Chiyo stood as the complete opposite.

When that nude figure overlapped with the usual Chiyo, I felt not only disgust but even hatred.
Merely being an idiot wasn't excuse enough.
Even idiots have their own form of idiot beauty.
But I could recognize no beauty in Chiyo.
She was nothing but base and hideous.
That Chiyo ignored herself—well, that was her own business—but she was ignoring *me*.
It wasn't just me.
And that went for the customers who came to the shop, and for Akagi too.
In daily life, she hardly seemed to take in what Akagi said or what I said.
Strangely enough, she obeyed what Mrs. Kayo said quite well.

At first glance, Chiyo’s condition could be seen as a result of meningitis, or perhaps hereditary syphilis, or other malignant diseases.
Thanks to Mrs. Kayo’s attentiveness, she was not particularly unclean and wore crimson-toned clothing, but this very fact made something about her evoke a disease-like eeriness.
The fact that so many people came to eat and drink at this restaurant where she existed was something I could not fathom.
If it were me, I wouldn’t have come a second time after seeing Chiyo.

Admittedly, the food here, while amateurish in style, was of relatively good quality given its location.
While most customers came here more to drink than to eat, the alcohol—whether it be sake or Japanese-made whiskey—did not pale in comparison even to that found in Ginza back alleys.
In this regard, Akagi made considerable efforts.
Moreover, in reality, Chiyo was made to rarely appear before customers.
In the back room, she would heat sake, sort vegetables, make geta straps, and unstitch clothes.
Such tasks, much like weeding the fields, she handled deftly.
When there was no work, she would nap and be woken up for the final cleanup.
Even so, she would still sometimes appear before customers, but if she lingered even slightly, Mrs. Kayo would send her to the back.
When Mrs. Kayo was inattentive, Akagi would sometimes caution her.
Akagi almost never spoke directly to Chiyo.
He just glared at her.

The vulgar drunk customers from the neighborhood occasionally teased Chiyo.

“Chiyo-chan, when are you getting married?”

“I don’t know,” Chiyo answered.

“There’s a fine husband right here beside you, isn’t there?”

“I don’t know,” Chiyo answered.

Chiyo indeed seemed to have no interest in such matters.
Her companions seemed to consist solely of the charcoal fire in the brazier, the vegetables in the field, the grassy fields of the burned ruins, and the stray cats that sneaked in.
However, even to me, washing dishes in the corner, it was clear that the drunk customers’ jokes were using me as their material.
Usually I just forced a bitter smile, but when my mood turned foul, I started seething.
There were times I felt like smashing plates and small bowls against that man’s head and Chiyo’s face.

If Chiyo weren’t here, how much brighter this place would be.
Such thoughts had festered within my chest.
That notion would eventually hold true for the world at large.
If Chiyo were not here, how much brighter the world would be—I affirmed that.

The gruesome war had ended.
Our world was about rebuilding.
Peaceful nations, democracy, bloodless revolution—all these seemed utterly remote to me.
What mattered was expanding my life—my world—into a realm of freedom.
In that freedom, beauty and ugliness held greater weight than justice or injustice.
Beauty opens hearts freely.
Ugliness constricts them.
Ugliness had to be eradicated from my world.
And Chiyo embodied that ugliness in every conceivable way.

For that reason, I agreed to Chiyo’s hospitalization.

It was Akagi who had secretly consulted me about that matter.
Among the special customers using the second-floor room was a middle-aged man called Mr. Koga—one of whose acquaintances happened to be a doctor at a mental hospital.
When they described Chiyo’s condition to him, he said that while she wouldn’t fully recover from such a mild case, there might be some improvement if they took her in for two or three months.

“How about it?” Akagi said, looking at my face probingly.

From every angle I considered, I was in agreement.

However, Akagi lowered his voice even though it was just the two of us.

“The problem is Kayo.”
“She dotes on Chiyo as if she were her own daughter.”
“She probably won’t let go easily.”
“Plus, she’ll fuss about the hospitalization fees.”
“But you see, not treating a curable illness just because she’s cute or over hospital costs—in the grand scheme, isn’t that pitiful?”
“It’s just… difficult for me to broach it.”
“If she thinks we’re trying to drive her out, it’ll cause problems.”
“Could you persuade her without ruffling feathers?”

This meant a heavy burden for me. Even when it came to Mr. Koga’s proposal, I hadn’t heard it directly myself. But anyway, I decided to drop subtle hints to Mrs. Kayo and have everyone discuss it together to reach a decision.

However, while I kept dragging my feet, Mr. Koga—impatient as he was—took matters into his own hands one evening and brought up the subject directly with Mrs. Kayo. This was my own carelessness too. It stood to reason that Mr. Koga himself should speak to her directly rather than someone like me.

But that evening had a strange air about it.
Mr. Koga came alone and settled himself in the room beyond the stairway entrance instead of going upstairs, drinking by himself.
Akagi kept him brief company and appeared to be whispering about something.
Meanwhile, the customers at the earthen-floored front area left early.
Akagi kept insisting there was no more sake.
Yet after closing up the front entrance, he poured endless cups of sake for Mr. Koga.

Mr. Koga was already quite drunk.
Akagi and Mrs. Kayo both freely accepted drinks from him.
A loud laugh erupted.
Voices rose and fell.
Words like "hospital," "nerves," "electricity," and such were heard.
"Ah, I see," I realized.
The conversation lapsed into silence for a while.

“Chiyo-chan, please come here for a moment,” called Kayo.

As I thought I might be left alone to clean up the shop, Akagi called out to me.

"Hey Nakamoto, have a drink too."

Mr. Koga seemed to be in a good mood.
Though his company didn’t appear to be anything significant, he was its president and served as some sort of commissioned officer for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry—when in good spirits, he had a habit of thrusting his thumb into his vest’s breast pocket.
While still maintaining this mannerism, he was conducting an odd question-and-answer session with Chiyo.

“Chiyo-chan,” he said warmly.
“Chiyo-chan, do you prefer sparrows or swallows?”
“I like sparrows,” Chiyo answered.

“Well then—which do you like, sparrows or crows?”
“I like sparrows,” Chiyo answered.
“Well then—which do you like, sparrows or pigeons?”
“I like sparrows,” Chiyo answered.
“Well then—which do you like, sparrows or kites?”

“I like sparrows,” Chiyo answered.

“Well then—which do you like, sparrows or cranes?”

“I like sparrows,” answered Chiyo.

With that, the Q&A came to an end.
Mr. Koga leaned toward Mrs. Kayo and said in a low voice.
Even though he lowered his voice, he was so drunk that I could still hear him.

“It’s clear. It’s clear, but it’s obsessive.”
“Since it’s just that, she’ll recover.”

I nudged Akagi and gulped sake demonstratively with a cup.

Everything—yes, everything—was hateful.

Mr. Koga put a piece of tempura into his mouth—mackerel cutlets deceptively prepared and fried in inferior peanut oil. After all, it was amateur cooking. Then he drank sake, his short-cropped large face smiling broadly.

“Chiyo-chan, which do you like better—Auntie or Uncle?”

Auntie and Uncle meant the Akagi couple.—Chiyo kept a composed face and did not respond.

“Well then—which do you like better—Auntie or Mr. Nakamoto?”

Chiyo maintained a composed face and did not respond.
"It’s cruel to torment her so much."
I blurted out without thinking.

Mr. Koga must have looked my way, but he immediately laughed.

"That's right.
She lacks judgment, you see.
But if it's just this much, she'll recover.
Let's have her treated slowly at the hospital."

Everyone was silent.
After some time had passed, Akagi blurted out.

“Let’s have that done. Nakamoto, that sounds good, doesn’t it?”
“Nakamoto, that sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“That might be good,” I answered mechanically.

Rather than that, I was more preoccupied with Mrs. Kayo’s demeanor since earlier.
Mrs. Kayo kept her eyes downcast, her forehead twitching faintly.
While she wasn’t actually moving, her tension seemed visible.
While she wasn’t exactly obese, the faint twitching of the forehead—bearing the weight of a woman in her forties engaged in this line of work—held an undeniable presence.

Mr.Koga grabbed Chiyo’s wrist.
Her mouth twisted,the corners of her eyes drooped,the skin unnaturally pale-he gripped his hand around hers like shaking hands with an idiot.

“Chiyo-chan, let’s go to the hospital starting tomorrow.”
“And once your head is truly clear, you’ll come back.”
“Auntie, Uncle, and everyone will come to pick you up.”

He pulled Chiyo’s hand and seemed about to drag that ugly girl onto his lap.
He let go of her hand and tumbled backward.—I couldn’t quite tell, but it seemed Chiyo had dug her fingertips—the ones gripping his wrist—into his skin with all her might.

Despite such a thing happening, strangely, Chiyo wore her usual expression—a face that seemed about to break into a grin—and with that vacant look amid the gathering, she was gazing at the tear-off calendar on the cupboard.

I stood up from my seat.
It was a fundamentally absurd feeling.
I went to the shop area—no need to mind anything—poured chilled sake from the one-shō bottle into a cup, and while gulping it down, clatteringly washed the dishes.
Even after that was done, since everyone was still lingering around the dining table, I went out through the back door.

A brilliantly radiant moonlit night stretched before me. I walked some distance and pissed steadily in the middle of the hardened thoroughfare rather than on the soft farmland. Having emptied what had built up considerably, feeling relieved, I walked beneath the moonlight. Even at spring's zenith, the night air carried a chill.

When I returned home, everyone appeared to have already gone to bed. The Akagis slept in the second-floor room, Chiyo in the small adjacent room, and I in the downstairs quarters—our sleeping arrangements were fixed. Though the electric light alone shone brightly, it felt dimmer than the moonlit world outside. I drank another cup of sake followed by two glasses of water from the same cup, then burrowed into my futon.

The next day proved tumultuous.
I was oversleeping when Akagi shook me awake and told me to cook rice.
After all, both morning and night, it was always Kayo-san who cooked the rice herself.
It didn’t sit right with me, and I stared at Akagi’s thick-skinned face.

“She’s in a bit of a sulk.”
“Even though I was supposed to accompany her to the hospital, Kayo insisted on going herself and told me I mustn’t come along.”
“Well... I’ll let her have her way.”
“Just cook the rice anyway.”

All things considered, they were a strange couple.
Akagi was a worldly schemer who left nothing overlooked.
Kayo-san was somewhat pretentious and strong-willed, yet harbored a bedrock of kindness as solid as her broad hips.
On the surface, it appeared as though the wife had the husband under her thumb, while in truth the husband manipulated the wife.

But somehow, Akagi now seemed to be struggling to control Kayo-san.
He was restless about something.
For her part, Kayo-san too appeared to be trying to keep Akagi under her thumb.—He likewise was restless about something.
I was no exception.
There was a hint of hangover lingering, but the fire beneath the pot refused to catch properly.

“Chiyo-chan? Chiyo-chaaan, where are you?”

Mrs. Kayo’s booming shout reverberated through the house.

Thinking that once the rice was done nothing else mattered, I used the restless atmosphere as an excuse to sneak a morning drink.

“Don’t you know where Chiyo-chan is?” Mrs. Kayo demanded, looming over me.

I hadn’t seen Chiyo since this morning—no, since last night when I went out. Upon inquiry, it was said they had changed her clothes to go to the hospital for an examination, but after that she had vanished completely.

Akagi calmly tilted his head, peeked around various places in the house, then went out saying he would check outside.

Mrs. Kayo pulled me to the corner of the earthen floor and said.

“We won’t send her to the hospital anymore—please find her and bring her back.”

I couldn’t make sense of it.

“Even though that child was resisting, we told her we were going flower viewing and made her change into a kimono.”
“It’s toward the shrine.”
“Definitely.”
“Please bring her back.”

As I was about to leave, Kayo-san suddenly burst into tears and grabbed my arm.—I had heard an outrageous story.
Mr. Koga seemed to be hiding a large amount of sugar.
It was said to be a quantity worth nearly ten million yen at market price.
He wanted to have a portion of it stored on Akagi’s second floor.
Being a restaurant made it less conspicuous—a desperate measure.
The only problem was Chiyo, the idiot.
With sane people you could secure their silence, but silencing an idiot bordered on impossibility.
Therefore, they had been able to consult with Akagi about temporarily putting her in the hospital.
However, with Mr. Koga’s actual stockpile, the current situation brought the imminent danger of exposure.
Upon hearing the circumstances, Mrs. Kayo too seemed to have been driven into a state where she could neither consent nor refuse.
From the beginning, there was an enormous reward attached.
But beyond that, she was simply too kind.
That seemed to be the gist of it.

Kayo-san was crying.

My emotions flipped inside out.
I gulped down the cold sake, slammed the glass onto the earthen floor, and smashed it to pieces.

Even so, I steadied my resolve and did not break into a run.
I slowly climbed up the slope.
To the left at the top of the slope, within the shrine precincts, several cherry tree trunks bore blooms past their peak.
The faintly hazy sunlight filled the atmosphere, giving the flowers an unnervingly artificial appearance.

Turning aside from the main road leading up the slope, I headed toward the cherry blossoms.
In the distance beyond the shrine precincts stood houses, but this side lay entirely in burned ruins where scarcely a soul could be seen.

Whether Chiyo was even in such a place—this was likely Kayo-san’s delusion, an excuse to cover up her own lies. If Kayo-san truly believed that, then why hadn’t she gone out to search herself?

At that moment, I was suddenly struck through the chest. I remembered Kayo-san’s last words.

“If I go, she’ll definitely cry.
“You’re just the right person.
“Please bring her back quietly.”

That person was an idiot. Were we supposed to care about that idiot's feelings? But what would happen after I brought her back? Wouldn't Mrs. Kayo cry? Even if she cried... Right—this was a family matter. There was no such thing as social propriety involved.

When I thought about it alone, I seemed to be used as everyone's broth ingredient. It was utterly absurd. Let everything go to hell. There was no way Chiyo would be in a place like this.

I quickened my pace.
The morning air was refreshingly calm, but at times, a strangely strong wind would blow.
If the wind blew more strongly, the faint haze in the sky would surely clear away.

The shrine precincts were hushed.
Even when looking around, Chiyo wasn't there…….
But there, in the distance, standing motionless—it was Chiyo after all.

Her clothing remained crimson-toned as always, but unlike usual, a large oxcart pattern stood out distinctly. Her neck was short, her hair pulled back taut, and her face at first glance bore the unmistakable features of an idiot. She stood motionless, gazing vacantly upward. A petal or two of cherry blossoms seemed to be drifting down, but when another gust swept through, it became what one might call a veritable blizzard of flowers. Chiyo caught the petals in her sleeve, gathered them with her fingertips, brought them to her mouth, and began nibbling.

I was the one consumed by madness.
Any sense of hatred had been blown away—not love, but a feeling of kinship with her.
The thought that I had lost flickered through my mind, then there was only silence.
Petals from the flower blizzard still danced in the air.
I approached Chiyo.
She didn't even glance my way.
On that cheek, I landed a slap. At the same time, I took her arm and, without a word, started walking toward the house.