Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Pit

I

The 5-yen note he had submitted was a counterfeit bill.
That fact was discovered at the field post office.

It was an incident that occurred in P— Village along the Ussuri Railway line.

A Military Police officer came stomping across the earth to the hospital, a leather holster containing a pistol slung diagonally over his shoulder.
His face was tense and arrogant, and his large boots seemed to possess the right to crush anything that lay before them.

He—he being a man named Kurishima—was an utterly ordinary soldier.
He was not a clever enough man to have produced counterfeit bills.
He himself had no recollection of ever making counterfeit bills.
Nor did he have any memory of receiving a five-yen note from such a suspicious individual.
But when he saw the Military Police officer approaching with a demeanor so ferocious it seemed ready to knock objects flying, he could not help feeling an agitation as though he had become a criminal.

The Military Police Sergeant called his full name with a stern expression seething with anger.
He found himself unwittingly giving an obedient reply while inwardly rebelling against its severity.

“Come here as you are.”

The long-jawed, ferocious-looking Sergeant remained standing rigidly as he spoke.

He was about to ask why he had to go there.
However, the high-handed tone—as if addressing a criminal—strangely bore down on him.
Forgetting to conceal the large-eyed photograph from a townswoman in his pocket, he entered the office as summoned.

At the Army Hospital—where he was stationed—he was being forced to save one yen each month.
The Chief Medical Officer, the hospital director, had ordered the soldiers to save money.

At that time, their military salary—apparently with a wartime bonus supplement—was five yen and sixty sen per month.
The soldiers had to make do with that amount of money for a month’s living expenses.
On top of that, yet another one yen would be taken from their pay for forced savings.
Even matters that fell under personal discretion—once an order was given—soldiers became those who had to override all else to carry it out.
That was a soldier's duty.
He had submitted the 5-yen note he received from his military salary toward those savings.
And then, he received four 1-yen bills as change from the janitor who was taking the money to the field post office.
The postal clerk had discovered that the 5-yen note was counterfeit.

It had been printed with extreme precision and meticulous care.
It appeared to be the work of someone who had worked at the printing bureau and knew how to produce them.
At first glance, it appeared well-used and crumpled.
However, upon closer inspection, the hand grime had not soaked into the paper.
The wrinkles too had been intentionally created all at once.

At the post office, soldiers from the neighboring telegraph unit immediately came over, holding the bill up to the light and snapping it between their fingers.
They gazed at it with curiosity.

“Someone’s done a neat job here.”
“They’ve managed to copy even the tiniest details perfectly.”

“The watermark isn’t quite clear, is it?”
The clerk in charge of deposits with good handwriting said.

“Well...”

“It’s that the paper’s source is different. The paper for bills is made by Oji Paper, but this one seems to come from a different source.”

“At first glance, there’s almost no difference.”
The telegraph soldiers took out their own bills from their frog-mouthed purses and compared them.
“They’re identical.”
“...Actually, even the ‘Five’ here is printed without being a tenth of a millimeter off.”

“Let me see.”

A few residents who had come to the post office to read newspapers from mainland Japan approached the reception desk, their eyes gleaming with curiosity.

The janitor—a man over thirty with a dark past that had made it impossible for him to remain in mainland Japan, driving him to Siberia where ex-convicts gathered—was such a man.
In both his expression and demeanor, something dark and impure had naturally manifested itself.
He was aware of it.
In such situations, he immediately felt with piercing clarity that suspicion would instantly fall upon him.

“This has taken a strange turn,” he said. “This bill was submitted by Kurishima, a 1st Class Nurse Soldier. I remember it clearly. Since he was the only one who handed over a 5-yen note, he must’ve done something.”

He deliberately raised his voice loud enough to imprint itself on people’s ears while feigning naturalness.

“The bill Kurishima submitted?”
The postal clerk retorted.
There was a doubtful note in that voice.

“Ah, that’s right.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”
“That’s definitely it.”

The bespectacled Director with a severe gaze emerged from the back room.
The Director looked suspiciously at the janitor with upturned eyes, glaring sharply.

“Who submitted this bill?”
The Director shifted his suspicious gaze from the janitor to the postal clerk and spoke.

The janitor saw that the Director’s gleaming eyes still harbored suspicion toward him.
He was overcome by a rebellious, conflicted sentiment.
He pretended not to hear the Director’s words and spoke in a loud voice to those gathered there about how the nurse soldier named Kurishima had always been somewhat questionable.

Before long, people who had heard the commotion came flooding in from the street.

The commotion at the post office immediately spread to the hospital.

When Kurishima heard such stories about his own submitted bill being exposed as counterfeit, he was struck by a strange feeling—as if he himself had unknowingly produced forged currency. He felt terrified and dreadful. A person can commit sins even without intent to do so, unknowingly, outside their own awareness. He felt as if he had experienced such a thing somewhere before. He couldn’t quite recall where it had been. When I was attending elementary school, I was punished by the teacher. At that time, even though I hadn’t intended to do anything wrong, what I had done also seemed like a bad thing in the teacher’s eyes. Indeed, that had been the case. There were often times when children did things driven by their own impulses and desires—things their teacher saw as bad. Children must be punished in such cases. Moreover, this wasn’t limited to children. It’s something that happens to anyone. Humans can never know where sin lies in wait for them. There are those who lie in wait to pin sins upon those with weaknesses. He became terrified at the thought.

II

“Show me your wallet.”

“Yes.”
“Do you have any other money stashed away?”
“There isn’t any.”
“This bill—you’re the one who submitted it, aren’t you?”

The Military Police Sergeant carefully produced the counterfeit bill from his pocket and held it up.

“Well? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten—or maybe you did submit it after all.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“…………”

Kurishima, under the surveillance of a Military Police Superior Private, was confined to the office and sat dazedly in a chair for about two hours.
On the desk lay a photograph of a town woman laughing with wide-open eyes.
The Superior Private picked up the photograph and smirked while staring at his face.
Though sneering at him for treasuring this picture of a prostitute, Kurishima felt bitter knowing this same private had caroused through town and seen the actual woman's face.
Liking women was neither wrong nor shameful.
Yet when soldiers stood for interrogation, their affections became contemptible filth.
Moral failings were magnified.
He was degraded like some third-class patient.
When he pulled out the photo along with two or three folded postcards from his pocket, the Sergeant—

“What do you want me to say about this photo?” he sneered.

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

“Even with this one—” he flung the photo onto the desk with contempt “—you’re pouring money into her, aren’t you? ...Can’t keep up unless you forge some bills, eh?”

His tone hovered just shy of outright accusing him of minting counterfeits to fund his dalliances.

Kurishima detested sounding defensive. He stayed silent, trusting time would reveal the truth. Yet enduring this grated on him. Military Police often slunk into the hospital for discreet treatment of their third-class ailments. On those occasions they’d bow and simper, buttering up the nurses. Now that obsequiousness had vanished like a flipped hand. The Superior Private’s face wore the callous look of a stranger who’d never begged for ointments behind closed doors.

Such sudden changes in attitude were something military police and police officers were prone to.
Not only military police and police officers—humans in general were prone to having such unreliable facets.
He wasn’t unaware of such things.
Even so, for some reason, he couldn’t quell the anger in his gut.
He wanted to berate them by pointing out how the Military Police had come dragging their boil-induced limps to the hospital.
But if I did that, right now, I would only end up harming myself instead.
He thought that.
He stubbornly remained silent.

While I sat dazedly in a chair for about an hour, the Sergeant and another Superior Private were in the barracks thoroughly searching through my personal locker—turning out knapsacks, beds, straw mattresses—leaving no corner unchecked.
Not only that, they made the other nurse soldiers place their personal lockers and wallets on their beds and held the bills inside up to the light to verify whether they were counterfeit.

For the Military Police, the discovery of a single counterfeit bill was not a matter that concerned their own interests in the slightest.
If they were counterfeit bills that remained undetected, whether a hundred circulated or a thousand, it was not something they needed to make a fuss over or investigate.
However, once it had been discovered and become known, as their duty, they had to investigate it.
If they didn't track down the culprit, they couldn't fulfill their duty.
Failing to fulfill one's duty was a grave matter that related to their promotions and implicated their necks.

The soldiers had experienced being made to stand before their beds during their first year of service while their squad's Superior Privates checked whether the money in their wallets matched their financial ledgers' balances—they'd been ordered to keep these records upon enlistment.
If amounts didn't match balances, they'd be grabbed by the collar, shaken violently, and wrung dry.
When money went missing, particular suspicion fell on those with unbalanced accounts.
Though it couldn't be definitively proven that those with discrepancies had stolen anything.
This was a vulnerability.
But it didn't constitute proof of theft.
Yet in reality, precisely those careless soldiers who neglected their bookkeeping—they were invariably decent men—ended up suffering terrible fools' fates.

Even during interrogations conducted by the Military Police, the eyes of the Sergeant and Superior Private remained fixed on exploiting those weaknesses.
If they could just produce someone with enough weaknesses to appear culpable, their duty would be fulfilled.

When he was permitted to leave the office and went to the barracks, his fellow soldiers burst out complaining one after another.

“Kurishima.”
“Didja really make counterfeit bills?”

Matsumoto asked.

“Don’t mess with me.”
He laughed.

“The Military Police seem t’ve made ’em—that’s what folks were sayin’!”

“Cut it out with the threats already.”

On his bed were scattered notebooks, books, picture postcards, and such, tossed out from his personal locker and left in disarray. The savings passbook that the janitor had taken to the office lay open without the one-yen deposit amount recorded. He was accustomed to humiliations like having his personal locker searched without permission. But even though it was clear soldiers had no way to obtain paper money except through salaries from the regimental accounting office, he couldn't help feeling contempt for the Military Police's servility in persistently hounding him—someone with vulnerabilities—for so long. They can't stand up to the accounting officers, so they throw their weight around among us soldiers. He thought that way.

“Hey, Kurishima.”
The Sergeant, who had been conferring with the military doctor, thrust his ferocious face through the door’s gap and called out to him in the barracks.

“Did you really use it without knowing it was counterfeit?”

“Yes.”
He answered.

“Don’t you lie to me!”

“I’m not lying.”

“Stay right there and don’t go anywhere. We might have to interrogate you more.”

3

The Military Police headquarters stood directly above the railway tracks.
It was a three-story red brick building.
They had seized it from what had once served as a Russian brigade headquarters or similar facility.
No light reached the corridor from any direction.
The air hung dim and damp.
It resembled a basement.
Guided by the Superior Private, he climbed the stairs along a handrail fouled with grime.
About a week had passed.
Reaching the second floor gave him the sensation of having merely ascended from basement to ground level.
Yet he knew unequivocally this was the second floor.
To leave meant descending those stairs and traversing the shadowed corridor.
He attempted flight through that space.
Military Police would thrust hands from flanking doorways to seize him.
They brought him to a place severed decisively from the outside world.
Here lingered the aura of an unfeeling prison.
“Nothing serious.”
“Just need a quick word.”
“Won’t you come along?”
The Military Police Superior Private’s casual manner when summoning him to the hospital instead roused suspicion.
How many guiltless souls had been cast into these murky dungeons!

He thought such things.
I’ll be next—they’ll come for me too!

He was shown into a room where long benches were arranged on both sides of a long desk.

The Sergeant Major entered holding a pencil and sat down on the bench facing him.
He was a boyish Sergeant Major who seemed younger than the ferocious Sergeant.
So they’re going to interrogate me about something. But no matter what they ask, there’s nothing suspicious about me!
He braced himself.
The Sergeant Major asked how much Russian he had studied.
His demeanor lacked any stiffening of the shoulders and remained relaxed.

“Since coming to Siberia, so only a little.”

As he spoke, it suddenly flashed through his mind—why did the Sergeant Major know that he had dabbled in Russian?

“Can you hold a conversation?”
The Sergeant Major asked casually.

“How did you find out I’ve been dabbling in Russian?”

“I’ve heard you talking with a baryshnya—a young woman—at the station. She was quite a beauty, wasn’t she?”

“That woman is no one important.”
“She has nothing to do with it at all.”
He recalled Liza Lievskaya and flusteredly said, “She came here for treatment of pleurisy, so that’s how I know her.”

“You don’t need to make such excuses—I’m not saying you’ve done anything wrong.”

The Sergeant Major laughed.

“I see.”

He thought he mustn’t panic.

The Sergeant Major then spent about an hour engaging in aimless chatter—asking about his brothers, what work he intended to do after returning to mainland Japan, what acquaintances he had in P Village, mentioning that he himself planned to take the ordinary civil service examination.
The Sergeant Major had enlisted as a volunteer for active duty.
For a Sergeant Major, he was a young man.
From his manner of speaking, it was immediately clear that he harbored petty ambitions for climbing the social ladder.
He thought, What—this man?

As the two were talking, the interpreter brought in a flat-faced Korean man with drooping eyebrows.
A pungent opium smell struck his nose.
The man sported a wispy mustache, and the stench of squalid hovels had seeped into his very flesh.
He was an old man stained with grime.
The interpreter said something in Korean and gestured with his hand.
From his position nearby, he understood it as a command for someone else to sit on the bench.
But the Korean man, like stubborn taffy, kept twisting his upper body and refused to sit down.

“Sit down. It’s nothing.”

The old man said something in a suppressed, pained voice.

The interpreter first sat down beside him.
And then, once again, he moved his hand in the same manner as before.

The old man placed his thick-fingered hands with rounded nails on the edge of the desk and, sitting down so abruptly it seemed the bench might splinter, braced his arms and lowered himself fearfully yet quietly.

The Korean speech heard nearby sounded shrill, like someone shouting coded signals.
The old man spoke with a serious face using tones that seemed comical.
Yellow teeth coated in grime peeked through withered lips as a trumpet-shaped stench spread out, invading even this side's nostrils.
He felt contaminated, as if breath had been exhaled directly onto him.

“Please wait here a moment.”

The Sergeant Major abruptly stopped discussing which legal scholars held authority and other civil service exam topics, then left through the door like someone heading to the latrine.

He shifted his position to the very edge of the bench to avoid the old man’s breath.
He watched the movements of the interpreter’s and the old man’s lips as they continued their shrill exchange.
The old man moved his tongue with a pained expression, as if it were stiff.
Eventually, the interpreter too went out.
The elderly Korean man and I were left alone in the room.
We looked at each other’s faces and bodies.
The old man had the dispirited face and expression common among Koreans.
He had rarely interacted with Koreans to the point that whenever one spoke of them, they all seemed to share the same profile and expression.
Their faces uniformly expressed nothing but the gloom of people who had endured submission upon submission, continuing to suffer humiliation.
The old man had a sad expression that looked on the verge of tears.

When it came to Korean, he knew only the word “obso.”
With just that, conversation was impossible.

“Where do you live?”

He tried asking in Russian.

The old man bared yellow teeth and said something.
The tone carried mournful despondency.
As lips moved, the wispy mustache rose and fell.
The reply came in Russian, but he couldn’t grasp its meaning.

“Why did you come to a place like this?”

He asked again in Russian.
The old man tilted his head in puzzlement and continued watching him timidly with sad, suspicious eyes for what felt like an eternity.
He too stared fixedly at the old man.

IV

Not understanding why he had been brought to the Military Police, he was told to return through the damp basement corridor.
He felt mocked and grew angry.
One door in the corridor had been left open as he went out.
When he peered inside, it was the military prison.

“They’ve caught the guy who made the counterfeit bills, haven’t they? Did you see him?”

When he returned to the barracks, Matsumoto—who had been moving shogi pieces alone on a board he’d brought out—looked up and asked.

“No.”

“They say it’s a Korean.”
“They say he had about three counterfeit five-yen bills placed between the pages of a book.”
“Who told you that?”

“The Military Police who came for a urethral injection said so.
“The informant tracked him down.”

The informant was Korean.
He was a man quite proficient in Japanese and Russian, employed by the Military Police for thirty yen a month.
The captain had announced that he would give a ten-yen reward for apprehending the culprit.
The informant, lured by ten yen, sniffed around for the culprit like a dog.
And he’d happily taken the ten yen.
The Military Police reportedly told Matsumoto that story while laughing.

“Well, it might be that Korean man.
He was sitting at the same desk in the Military Police office until just now.”

He suddenly made the connection.

“What kind of man is he?”

“He’s a filthy, pitiful-looking old man.”

“They asked you whether you knew that old man, didn’t they?”
Matsumoto asked with an insinuating look.

“No.”

“Weren’t you going to the Korean’s place pretending to learn Russian?”

“When?”
“Lately.”
“Why are you asking such things?”

About half a ri beyond, on the edge of a marsh, there was a Korean settlement.
There lived a fair-skinned young woman with an oval face.
She was an unusually refined woman among the Koreans in this area.
Matsumoto asked whether he didn't know about that.

And he remembered having been persistently questioned by the Sergeant Major at the Military Police about those very same things—the geography of the Korean settlement, the shapes of its houses, their internal structures, and the beautiful girl.

“Women are terrifying creatures, I tell you. That one will drain you of every last yen.”

Matsumoto spoke again, not specifying whom he meant, yet hinting that it was that big-eyed woman in town.

When the other same-year soldiers entered the barracks with eyes filled with distant suspicion, he finally realized they were probing whether he had indeed received counterfeit bills from that Korean man.
He felt an unreasonable anger.

V

In the shadow of a birch tree in the valley, a pit had been dug.
About ten soldiers stood nearby.
They had just dug the pit with the shovels they were holding.
An officer, his hand resting on the hilt of his military sword, was pacing round and round beneath the birch tree.
He was a tight-lipped young man with blazing eyes.
The soldiers' faces showed expressions of anticipation.
The officer appeared conscious of the pit, the birch tree, and the soldiers' somewhat brightened complexions, yet seemed to be trying to distance himself from these things and pursue other metaphysical thoughts.

After crossing the stream and emerging from behind a stack of dried grass, an old man came trudging along, driven forward by three military policemen.
He kept his head lowered, dejected, devoid of vitality.
That was the Korean man who had been confined in the Military Police prison.

“Ah! Here they come! Here they come!”

From the hill hospital, four or five nurse soldiers came running down in their barracks shoes.

The old man’s steps were slow, as though his legs had given out.
From both sides, the Military Police grabbed his arms and dragged him forward.
The old man's expression gradually darkened.
Drooping eyes, a flat face, the stench of hovels and opium.
He twisted his withered lips as if about to burst into tears, baring teeth stained with yellow tartar.

Both arms were being dragged forward by the Military Police.
But his torso and legs remained obliquely behind.
One of them struck his buttocks with a sword scabbard.
However, the old man did not flinch, as if he had lost all sensation.
He instinctively avoided approaching beneath the birch tree.

“Ah, here he is! Here he is!”

The nurse soldiers who had come down from the hill arrived where the old man was walking.
And then one of them spoke.
They kept about six feet away from the Korean man as if fearing infection from some filthy disease, gazing curiously at the old man clinging to the ground like syrup.

“Sergeant, sir.”
To the man striking the old man’s buttocks with a sword scabbard, one from the earlier group spoke in a resolute tone.
That was Kurishima.
“Have you found any evidence that I made counterfeit bills?”

“Hold it!”
The Sergeant turned back to Kurishima.

“Did you say this old codger handed me the bills?” he said with malicious sarcasm. “The culprit’s been decided—it’s this guy. There’s nothing more to say, is there?”

The superior private pulling the old man’s left arm turned around and spoke.

“What’s this? How could some old peasant grandpa possibly make counterfeit bills! It must be some mistake.”

The old man was taken to beneath the birch tree, then made to face the pit. An interpreter who had come afterward said something in Korean. There was nothing to worry about. He had instructed him to stare fixedly ahead and stand perfectly straight. However, the old man felt both terror and that this was a lie. He made a tearful face where nose and mouth seemed to merge into one.

“I don’t want to be killed. When did I ever do anything bad enough to be killed?!” his eyes pleaded. “I want to live as long as I can! Even Koreans have the right to live!” He looked as though he were saying this.

The soldiers fell deathly silent and stood on both sides of the old man.
Their eyes were all directed at the hilt of the officer’s military sword.

The military sword was drawn and brandished high behind the old man.
The eyes that had been pursuing something metaphysical and the powerful-looking hands concentrated their attention on a single point behind the old man.

The old man twitched.

An ice-like chill ran swiftly through the soldiers' entire bodies like an electric current.
They shuddered.
Kurishima could not stop his thighs from trembling uncontrollably, no matter how long it went on.
The military sword was swung down.

A desperate, sharp wail and scream erupted simultaneously from the old man’s entire body.
It was a powerful, rebellious voice—utterly unlike the dispirited tones one would expect from an oppressed old man.
He seemed to scream, “What are you doing?! What have I done to deserve being executed?!”

In the next moment, Kurishima saw the old man leap into the pit.
It might not have been a leap.
He might have fallen in.
The old man thrashed about in the pit like a severed lizard's tail.
He clawed frantically at the soil with his large, filthy hands.
Then he blindly tried to clamber out of the pit.
"I don't want to die!"
He screamed it with his entire being.

The officer, still holding the bloodstained military sword, stared blankly at the old man as though there were no way to bring the sword down upon him again.

The soldiers involuntarily stepped back two or three steps, trembling from fear.
The Sergeant kicked the old man, who was trying to climb out, back into the pit with his boot.

“I want to live!”

The old man sought pure pity.

“Drop dead!”

Russian spilled from the interpreter’s mouth.

“I want to live!”

When kicked down, the old man thrashed about in the pit like a lizard’s tail.

Then he tried blindly crawling up again.
Again a hard boot kicked him down.
He writhed desperately with all his strength in the narrow pit.

He had been cut about a foot across his right shoulder.
Kurishima saw blood overflowing from the old man’s wound seep into the soiled, opium-stained kimono, the garment turning clammy as if doused from head to toe, its hem dripping with blood.
The pale blue kimono had turned a dull black with blood.
The blood would not stop, no matter how much time passed.

The blood was the driving force behind the old man’s thrashing.
That driving force was flowing out of his body with each passing moment.

He began to wither and collapse like discarded vegetable leaves.

He squeezed out his last strength.
He tried to crawl up again.

The officer could not bring down the great sword.
The officer had grown tired of inflicting small wounds on the old man’s hands and face that looked like those made by a kitchen knife.
The officer had tried to test the cutting edge of the great sword.
But it simply wouldn’t cut properly.

“Tch! No helping it! Bury him alive! It’s a hassle.”

The officer gave a wry smile to hide his embarrassment.

The soldiers holding shovels hesitated.
The old man was still alive and thrashing about.

“Do it!”
“Never mind that.”
“Bury him alive!”

“Are you sure this is okay?
“Sir!”

The soldiers’ hands were trembling; they couldn’t move their shovels.
They looked at the eyes of those beside them as if wanting to ask something.

The officer barked.

Onto the old man—flailing his limbs like a half-dead snake at the bottom of the pit—the soil began to cascade down.

“Help…”
The old man struggled and groaned.

The soil cascaded down, indifferent to the old man’s screams pleading for mercy.
The soldiers shuddered when they heard the old man’s groan.
They frantically moved their shovels, scooping soil in a desperate attempt to block it out.

The soil filled the pit, piled two or even three shaku thick over it, until it finally formed a small hill…

VI

This was nothing more than a trivial, minor incident.
The soldiers, their attention seized time and again by partisan activities, iron bridge destructions, and movements of garrisoned troops, soon forgot about the old man.

From the hospital on the hill, one could see the birch tree in the valley and what remained of the pit now formed into a small mound.
A stream flowed quietly.
Kurishima would sometimes go out to the hospital grounds and gaze down toward where the birch stood.

He felt as if screams and groans still echoed from beneath that mounded earth. In the narrow pit, the old man kept thrashing desperately with all his strength—still visibly struggling. He shuddered violently.

Days passed.
The next payday arrived.
The soldiers received their military salary from the accounting officer dispatched from the regimental pay office.
They had thought that since exterminating that old man, there were no longer any who produced counterfeit bills.
The more cruel the method of extermination had been, the more effective it seemed to them.

They stamped their seals beneath where their names were written and received five yen along with some odd change.
With that money, they could go out to town for fun.
They thought.

“Oh, this one’s another counterfeit bill.”
Suddenly, Matsumoto started and let out a shattering cry.

“What? What?”

“This is another counterfeit bill.—It really is a counterfeit bill!”

The voice was filled with despair, as if mourning their ruined trip to town.

“Let me see… Let me see.”

It was indeed a counterfeit bill.
Exquisitely printed, with elements like the “Five” indistinguishable from genuine currency.
Yet upon closer inspection—S, H, Y, even Kurishima—all had been handed counterfeit bills.
The Surgeon General too.

But the counterfeits weren’t confined to the hospital—they’d infiltrated the regiment, the Military Police, even Russians.
Now they flowed endlessly across Siberia’s wilderness....…………

(May 1928)