Pathway to Japanese Literature

*Yami Rongo*

The world was a farce.

No sooner had there been a young man who orchestrated a robbery at his own home than there emerged a twenty-one-year-old woman named Ms. Kinuko who carried out a robbery at her own residence with an identical four-person group.

There existed a farcical play—perhaps by Tristan Bernard—about an idiotic amateur thief who targeted acquaintances' homes for his crimes, reasoning that unfamiliar houses would be too disorienting to navigate and getting caught would create an awkward predicament.

This too must be a kind of psychology.
An unfamiliar house is indeed difficult to navigate.
One knows the layout of an acquaintance’s house, but if it’s one’s own home—here you understand its nature—there’s nowhere more comfortable than this.

Originally, delinquent boys and girls begin their mischief by pilfering items from home for pocket money—this being the standard pattern. But when they resolve to turn professional, it’s only natural they should target their own homes.

A farce exists in the realm of plausible yet impossible absurdity, sustained by people’s laughter—but lately, farcical subject matter has become ordinary reality.

With a "Hyaah!", thinking "I don't care if I die!", someone gulped down dubious alcohol and collapsed with a thud.
It was tragic, but this wasn’t shinpa tragedy—it was material for a farce.

They deigned to urinate in the Diet.
A former minister became master of Tenpura Palace, while high-ranking bureaucrats—long acquainted with his temperament—deigned to partake in black-market tenpura.
Seikō intelligence scandals, Shaku festivals, power-saving theft—Japan was now one grand farce.

Twelve people died in the Teigin Incident.
The robber killed however many people.
But when rundown trains flipped over or caught fire as scheduled—no matter how many were killed—such premeditated murders were deemed inconsequential.
A delightful code of murderous conduct this was.

Mr. Preaching Robber, having been lectured about societal trends, declared, “Thieves of old had honor.”
There was no such thing as the ABCs of thieves’ honor, but the journalists earnestly writing about this must have been out of their minds.

When farcical elements are treated with undue seriousness—when societal trends are imbued with artificial meaning and sensationalized—it becomes mere provocation. By framing everything as farce, the solemnity and realism of wrongdoing vanish, causing amateurs to lose their appeal.

In the past during Christian persecutions, they would impale believers and burn them at the stake.
Because these martyrs died with such dignity, spectators and even execution officials kept converting to Christianity without end—but when they invented that bizarre execution method of suspending people upside-down in pits, the spectators grew disgusted. From that point onward, there were no more converts.

However, to discern farce in what was farcical required cultivation.
Moreover, belief and passion that cherished the truth lying opposite to farce were also required.

The primary shortcoming of Japan-as-farce was likely this lack of cultivation.
To borrow the language of the Analects: it was not the thief who broke into one’s own home who was at fault, but rather the rigid heart of an era devoid of tolerance and humor—a heart incapable of recognizing that such acts belonged solely to rakugo tales like those of Kumakō.

*Teigin Incident: A Digression*

The release of a composite sketch of the Teigin Incident perpetrator would likely be impossible.
Long ago at a certain newspaper company’s entrance exam, a lecturer gave a speech and withdrew—after which candidates were reportedly unable to provide correct answers when questioned about his facial features and clothing.

Even if the suspect’s face were exposed to dozens of witnesses, compiling their impressions would not yield a definitive answer; all it achieves is fabricating a realistic yet fundamentally fictitious entity whose constraints only further obscure the truth.
The act of circulating an actual photograph of the criminal and posting it at every crossroads differs fundamentally in nature.

Because the police had become democratic and could no longer conveniently throw every suspect into holding cells for interrogation like in the old days, investigations were delayed—or so they complained.
Then, it was terrifying how much of public opinion seemed on the verge of shouting, “Exactly! Exactly! Let’s unhesitatingly return to the past!”

It remains impossible to fathom how much more crucial respecting human rights is than swiftly apprehending the Teigin Incident criminal. These two imperatives exist beyond all comparison. Even should the arrest of this criminal be delayed, we must unwaveringly safeguard and cement a national character rooted in human rights respect.

That police authorities—of all institutions—would fabricate excuses about delayed arrests in the name of human rights defies reason, while Japan’s reality—where no outcry arises against such preposterous claims—stands as a pitiably impoverished condition.

Something like “welcoming informants” was also appalling.
Informing on tax evasion, informing on hoarded goods—the government seemed to be zealously cultivating a national ethos of informing, but they failed to realize how much more this ethos damaged the nation and degraded its moral character than any tax evasion or hoarded goods ever could.

Things like welcoming informants and posting composite sketches on wanted notices were tactics inherited from Edo-period okappiki (informants), whereas in modern times, the very foundation of policing had to be rooted in cultural principles.
Rather than catching a single criminal, establishing the principle of protecting the people was more important.

Last year, a police officer rushed into a house that had been robbed. Because chasing the criminal around took time, there had been cases where victims who could have been saved died due to delayed treatment, and there was an article stating that this officer regretted letting the criminal escape more than the victim’s death. Concerning this police approach as well, there seems to have been no public outcry.

It doesn’t matter if the arrest of the Teigin Incident criminal is delayed. The establishment of a democratic police force and the eradication of the okappiki mentality are immeasurably more significant.

Strikes and Other Matters

Among the small-capital publishers around me, there were even places where editors' salaries fell below 1,800 yen. It was so pitiful that I once pleaded with the president, arguing they needed at least three thousand yen to survive.

In such small companies, if you started a labor dispute, you'd just get fired—so none were ever initiated. This was a pitiable situation.

In contrast, at places like Zentei*, strikes became a powerful weapon. Therefore they carried out strikes. The problem was that if these people would only get fired without strikes being effective weapons, they wouldn't carry them out. Not being able to make reasonable demands was problematic, and opportunistically wielding strikes as weapons proved equally inadvisable.

The crucial point was this: one must not be subjective—one had to objectively consider their own position.

The issue lay in the objective validity of both the demands and the compromise ground between labor and management; therefore strikes had to remain an absolute last resort, with mediation forming the central concern.

While nationally structured large organizations like mediation courts were necessary, it was equally essential to apply objective scrutiny to both labor and management’s positions—and what contemporary strikes lacked was precisely this quality, rendering them indistinguishable from blind actions driven by unilateral subjectivity.

Using strikes as weapons must be an absolute last resort.
In small companies, if you go on strike, you get fired.
They’ll do it even if they get fired.
This was a time of dire straits.
When using strikes as weapons, it had to be that same state of absolute desperation.

What most sorely lacks in contemporary society is sufficient objective self-examination.
It manifests as a failure to view both oneself and reality's manifold aspects—along with their interrelations—through objective and materialist lenses.
All operate with excessive unconsciousness and uncritical self-interest.

This tendency particularly thrives in collective bodies, strikes being emblematic of such nature.
Conversely, bureaucrats and policymakers themselves exemplify this decay—forcing unsellable cigarettes upon people while posturing arrogantly with "take it or leave it" ultimatums—thus revealing fascism's utter degeneration in its purest form.

The same applied to trials.
The other day, when a seemingly earnest university associate professor and doctor who had stitched an infant corpse into an adult cadaver's abdomen went unprosecuted, it struck me as deviating from trials' essential nature—skewed toward the prosecutor's subjective considerations.

I thought:
What we must truly call decay and corruption in reality is this facile epidemic of subjectivity.
At least streetwalkers don't self-righteously justify themselves, making their crimes comparatively mild.

Children's Wisdom

A person appeared in Nagoya declaring “Wanting to sell one’s life,” showing signs of a trend, and reportedly, a twenty-five-year-old former sub-lieutenant who put up flyers saying “Wanting to sell one’s life” has now appeared in Ginza as well.

There’s no way one’s life can truly be bought, but since several buyers have appeared, it’s wretched.
Children are eager to bet their necks or lives, getting into fights over trivial promises like demanding each other’s necks—but lately, adults have ended up seriously engaging in schemes as childish as theirs.

If there was a female office worker who swindled eight hundred thousand yen, there was also a fourteen-year-old boy who ran off with a hundred thousand.

The Teigin Incident criminal—despite his salt-and-pepper hair—killed twelve people just to steal a mere 160,000 yen.
The lack of wisdom was staggering.
The recent surge in pickpocketing was largely said to be children’s work, yet here we had a so-called mastermind who—after months of practice—killed twelve people to steal a mere 160,000 yen; with comparable effort, pickpocketing would have yielded greater profits and sustainable income, proving this adult could not match even children’s wisdom.

In an inflationary era—a system where idlers, children, and those normally lacking survival skills thrive—merely moving goods from right to left could earn them a laborer’s monthly wages overnight. The wisdom of ordinary people in ordinary times had already suffered total defeat; it couldn’t hold a candle to children’s cunning.

The other day, Eguchi Shin’ichi of Teijin got too drunk to go home, ended up staying at Shinjuku Station’s police box, and spent the night hugging some vagrant child who was there. When leaving the next morning, the child said, “You don’t have train fare, do you, mister? Here—take this,” and gave him ten yen.

Eguchi was deeply moved. “You’re a good kid,” he said. “How about becoming my child? Want to come home with me?” At this, the police officer at the station burst out laughing: “Mr. Eguchi, if you raise five or six vagrant children, you could lie around and still eat!”

It seems we live in times where children are the more resourceful ones.
People without homes or clothes are leading far more comfortable lives.
A child of about nine calmly puffs on a cigarette and graciously bestows ten yen.

However, to distill this: once we confront a period of chaos, the training and education of normal times—which lose their life’s foundations, ideological convictions, propriety and justice, only to be defeated by children’s raw vitality and primal benevolence—reveal themselves as lacking some crucial central pillar. To recognize this and start anew is, I believe, the greatest lesson now before us.

The masses are honest.

The Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, in a street-recorded address, said, "I too eat black-market rice," and was met with the crowd’s cheers.
The masses have no theory, but they are honest.
Japanese politicians, putting on a facade of not engaging in the black market themselves, were imposing their politics.
That is not something the people can accept.

However, even the Agriculture Minister’s seemingly honest confession becomes suspicious when it turns out he engages in the black market not as a minister but as a private individual.
Does the private self’s hidden depths contain a minister’s belly that feeds on mist?
From this ambiguous expression one can discern nothing more than a confession of desperation; it lacks sincere recognition of the inescapable reality requiring black market survival—revealing how policies rationalizing this contradiction hold no prospect of success.
After thrice reflecting on this painfully real truth beneath the masses’ anguished cheers,I want them to dedicate heart and soul—from bluster to substantive policies.

Professional baseball was beginning to gather the interest of the masses.
The masses were honest.
It was not that the era’s tastes were shifting toward sports.
The masses’ interest gathered precisely because professional baseball’s substance had been enriched.

Shogi was no different.

When Kimura remained undefeated for a decade, they lined up rows of aging eighth-dan players yet completely failed to capture public attention.
But when Masuda emerged and newcomers began rising frequently, the masses became genuinely captivated.

During shogi's decline, go still managed to draw public interest through active newcomers like Wu and Kitani—though now we have Santan.
This too made perfect sense, for competitions like the Honinbo tournament—a squabble over some family lineage title—were nothing but laughable absurdities.
Had we not entered an era where family names meant nothing?

There was no point in holding matches while excluding Wu Qingyuan—the foremost in skill. They should have conducted the Meijin tournament with Wu included. Was it not acceptable for China to take the Meijin title?

In other foreign sports, athletes were each attempting to challenge foreign Meijin titles. The first Meijin of Go would be taken by China. Naturally, wouldn’t this signify the globalization of Go? If there was no ability, there remained nothing to be done. It was likely the era to discard this stingy mentality and—rather aiming for Go’s globalization—include Wu along with Sakata and Kajiwara to conduct the Meijin tournament.

The masses are honest; they will only be drawn to what genuinely interests them, and only to the extent that it does.
If there are no other substantial interests surpassing eroticism, then the prevalence of eroticism can’t be helped.
Eroticism cannot be eradicated; what is needed is something else substantial.
If refined and substantial interests emerge, eroticism will naturally be driven to the margins.
Prohibiting eroticism only backfires; when driven to the margins naturally, the lives of the masses become wholesome.

Cheek Dance

A certain newspaper exposed live photographs of the Cheek Dance, laying bare the dance's current state of affairs, where hall operators, dance instructors, esteemed male and female representatives, dancers, the Ministry of Education, the Metropolitan Police Department, and assorted dignitaries convened to hold deliberations.

Until I saw these photographs, I had been wholly engrossed in rotgut and the like, and hadn't even heard the term "Cheek Dance." At first glance, it was not a dance but something verging on copulation, with women who appeared to be students and office workers clinging tightly to men in ecstatic states. One summer day, I recalled frogs copulating in my pond, floating and sinking rapturously—yet this lacked even their crude grace. That might be what passes for subtle profundity in humans.

On the same day I saw these photographs, a friend came to show me Hokusai’s erotic art.
He showed me five volumes of Utamaro alongside them, but compared to Utamaro’s works being merely conventional erotic pictures, Hokusai’s paintings possessed a demonic intensity.
The paintings depicting the human body were imbued with a demonic energy that he could not help but render to such an extent.
They were not pornographic art but paintings of humans, tinged with a sense of despair.

Hokusai depicted copulation while rejecting vulgar sensation, but this was likely due to the depth of the artist’s soul and his aesthetic cultivation.
The Cheek Dance was nothing but dancing that reduced copulation to its basest form and obscenity.
The Cheek Dance was merely somewhat less graceful than that of frogs.

It was the kind of thing that did publicly what ought to be done in secret.
The government had recently created something called the Minor Offenses Act to regulate such matters, but if people were doing it in secret anyway, there was no helping it if they did it publicly.
This was because life behind closed doors itself amounted to nothing but the lowliness of obscenity.

In other words, when many of us spoke of male-female relationships, we focused solely on things like the Cheek Dance.
The breadth and depth of marital relationships were no greater than that level.
On the surface lay a relationship between domineering husband and submissive wife, while beneath festered the vulgarity of the Cheek Dance.
And then children were born.
Raising and loving them became a relationship governed by animal instinct.

Whether in secret or in public, crime is crime and innocence is innocence.
Even when Hokusai depicted private chambers, there was no baseness of obscenity.
This is the result of aesthetic cultivation.

Bad taste and lack of culture are stubbornly entrenched; even if you throw them in jail, nothing will change.
Because Cheek Dance enthusiasts are simply matters of bad taste and lack of culture, I believe the countermeasures for them are separate from the issue of stubborn entrenchment.

The private chamber must be elevated.

The World of Kōdan

There was a robbery where a gambling den was attacked.
They made off with 150,000 yen and about six wristwatches, then delivered a lecture: “This is how you make real money—don’t waste your time on petty ventures like gambling,” before withdrawing.
The gambling den operator, unable to bear his frustration, filed a report through gritted tears, while the fourteen regular patrons of the gambling den were handcuffed together in a line.
This was adding insult to injury, but if their single-minded desire for revenge outweighed even their own handcuffing, then calculations factoring in this interplay of fortune and misfortune, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, loss and gain would grow truly labyrinthine—an equation whose correct solution would likely remain undiscovered.

However, calculations were derived from a state of mental equilibrium, but among the gambling den gang, an abnormal psychology of “sheer frustration”—a loss of balance—was at work, causing them to increasingly lose their way in calculation.
In short, no matter how much they lowered ryūin, the result—regret, that is to say, regret—meant that the starting point of their calculations had been mistaken.
However, even so, this did not lead to the conclusion that not filing a complaint would have been wiser.
Psychological calculations are difficult.

While heinous crimes have been increasing in recent social conditions, there must at least exist this psychological pain—that crimes are evil deeds and criminals wage war against their own wickedness.
In literature it remains common sense that criminals battle their crimes; within general societal norms too it stands taken for granted that offenders contend with their sins.
Yet within kōdan—that realm which ought properly constitute an Edo-period literary form—no legitimate interpretation of crime exists.
To consciousness of sin applies neither adequate introspection nor calculation.

Acts such as a lord’s execution, street slayings in pursuit of new swords, gambling den raids, or vendettas—these were dramatized and humanized in a realm separate from proper awareness of sin, then passed down through storytelling.

*Kōdan* is still told today—and being told means it retains public support. To support means the masses still inhabit kōdan’s realm.

The yakuza world remains kōdan made flesh, yet even among ordinary people flows an undercurrent connecting to kōdan’s domain.

For this stark evidence we have trials.
Even murder differs—yakuza killings get interpreted through kōdan’s lens, treated as exceptional acts that somehow warrant lighter sentences.
Thus even courts provisionally legitimize kōdan’s realm.
But this realm should never be mistaken for normality.

I believed one contributing factor to today’s rising crime rates lay in the residual *kōdan*-like elements that persisted in our daily lives.

Gender Equality

There was a banquet at a certain elementary school.
The female teachers were forced to prepare the dining tables in place of maids, and what’s more, they were subjected to insulting remarks from drunken male teachers.
Because one female teacher who took offense reported this incident to Director Yamakawa Kikue, the Director—distressed by the escalating arrogance of the male teachers—drafted an indignant essay decrying the lack of gender equality.
At said elementary school, deeming it improper to expose internal drinking gatherings to public scrutiny, all teachers unanimously deigned to pass a resolution recommending the resignation of said female teacher.
Repeatedly incensed by their escalating arrogance, Director Yamakawa stormed into the elementary school to confront the principal; however, the principal responded that this was a democratic resolution reached unanimously, showing not the slightest inclination to submit to Madam’s reprimands—or so the story goes.

Among our literary circles too there were women writers who exercised their skills with full equality, yet compared to elementary school teachers they appeared lacking in discernment.

For when banquets occurred, they would willingly perform various menial tasks—carrying dishes like maidservants, serving food portions, pouring drinks—conducting themselves with servile decorum.
Even when we drunken ones voiced rude remarks, there came no reports of anyone growing incensed enough to draft written protests.

Being a man of such low cultivation that I inherently wished by all means to prevent the emergence of this new neuter species, there lingered in me an incomprehension toward Director Yamakawa Kikue’s insights. Therefore, I had thought in a topsy-turvy way that ladies—when banquets arose—were not ones to be made substitutes for subservient wives but were by nature those who would willingly serve; moreover, being more cultured and broadly magnanimous in sentiment than drunken men and their ilk, they would likely forgive any abusive remarks.

The Teigin Incident criminal terrifies me.
The image of someone coldly watching people collapse in a heap after swallowing potassium cyanide sends a slight chill through me—yet when I think of the telephone operator who, upon receiving a call pleading "There's a fire! Connect me to the fire department!", flipped the switch and replied "Can't do it—we're on strike," I shudder convulsively with a terror far greater than anything the Teigin Incident criminal inspires.
Therefore, I feel some sympathy for the teachers who, trembling with fear, unanimously passed a resolution recommending the female teacher's resignation.

The Foolish Lord’s Idealism

An incident occurred where a Kyoto University student pressured a female coed into a joint suicide and, upon being rejected, stabbed her to death in a frenzied attack.
While newspapers largely framed this as a new problem stemming from coeducation, the fact remains that where men and women coexist, romance arises naturally; unless Japan’s traditional ideology—which condemns such romance as instantly immoral—is itself valid, such incidents cannot possibly affect coeducation.
The problem lies in the perpetrator’s approach to love.

According to the Asahi Shimbun’s report, the perpetrator explained his motive as follows: torn between materialism and idealism, he had sought salvation through his romance with Yaeko but, growing disillusioned, came to believe that killing Yaeko would grant him complete deliverance.

While it remains woefully insufficient to criticize the incident based solely on this level of reporting, I believe we must harshly condemn the deficiencies of modern idealism—that which leaps from idle abstractions to acts of murder while attempting to rationalize such leaps.
The greatest source of my dissatisfaction with Dostoevsky and Gide too had lain precisely there.

Modern idealism leans too heavily upon abstractions, compelling it to rationalize these leaps—yet leaps from love to murder, from social discontent to homicide, to armed revolution defy all rationalization.
This stems from the countless relationships surrounding any matter and the infinite gradations that must exist above and below it.

Modern philosophical idealism has conducted research into principled methods for conceptually processing these countless relationships and gradations; however, in actual human life, one must address each individual relationship and gradation materially, and what philosophy teaches remains confined to those abstract principles.
By forgetting life's harsh reality—where people must materially confront each circumstance—and maintaining the composed demeanor of clueless feudal lords, foolishness runs rampant: sanctifying reckless theories that leap from romance to murder while rationalizing such jumps, never questioning their inherent absurdity.
The miracles of ancient people exist only within modern idealism.

In Professor Ide Takashi’s leap to the Communist Party out of idealism’s vacuity, I discern at its root the intellectual deficiencies inherent to those nurtured solely on abstract thought.
I perceive here the same defect as in that defective leap from love to murder.

Concerning its connection to real life—or in my terms, its connection to literature—I believe we have entered an era that ought to recognize the immaturity of this self-absorbed academic posture: one that abandons rigorous attention to reality—where we must confront each circumstance and address it materially—in favor of idly manipulating mere concepts alone.

Pickpockets and Vagrant Children

The pocket of my overcoat had been cut from the inside.
This was a pickpocket's handiwork.
That winter, I was pickpocketed twice of money kept in my overcoat's inner pocket.
The publishing house staff—who had mocked Mr. Sakaguchi with remarks like "What an idiot! Should've seen it coming!" after all the royalties he'd just received from them were stolen—now found every last one of them falling victim to pickpockets: some had their briefcases snatched and now dangled furoshiki-wrapped bundles during their commutes, others lost wristwatches, with groups emerging categorized as "frog-mouthed wallet" or "overcoat" victims.
Having one's overcoat stolen was unusual.

On the fifth as well, six members of a certain publisher’s staff were victimized.
On their way back from the company meeting around ten o’clock, they were surrounded by a group of pickpockets on Kanda Station’s platform and were completely wiped out by wave after wave of coordinated tackles.
The platform was crowded with other passengers, and it was tragic that nothing could be done about these gangsters.
The next day, when I happened to stop by that publisher's office, they were puffing themselves up with feigned sternness about how "we've finally risen to a status worthy of being targeted by gangs"—but thanks to this, my manuscript fee payment has been postponed for now, leaving it unclear who the real victim is.

Among my acquaintances, there were hardly any who hadn’t been pickpocketed, so perhaps Tokyo Metropolis residents who remain unpickpocketed were the rare ones.

Forty-two members of a pickpocket gang had been arrested, with most of those involved being vagrant children.

Thus, the problem became less about the crime of pickpocketing itself and more about the critical challenge of providing relief for vagrant children—yet the current situation appeared to involve sending them to shelters only to have them escape, repeating the same cycle endlessly.

Vagrant children reportedly earned a thousand yen a day through odd jobs, feasting on sashimi and sushi until stuffed with eel, Western dishes, and Chinese cuisine—so even when given special three-gō rations and snacks at shelters, it was said to prove useless.

Because they had been eating sashimi and eel until then, it was strange that they were being given a special three-gō ration along with snacks. With that line of reasoning, it ultimately meant one could only save them by letting them pickpocket and filling their stomachs with Western food.

To perceive vagrant children as an undifferentiated mass simply because they formed groups was misguided—indeed, this very notion of collectivity harmed them most profoundly. In receiving them, particular attention to individuality became essential.

In Nagano Prefecture, a foster care movement had emerged where all temples in the prefecture were raising two or three vagrant children each—but unlike ancient times when priests represented the intellectual class, today’s priests were neither intellectuals nor educators, but rather anachronisms of their era, mere parasitic dependents.
Entrusting vagrant children’s upbringing to private individuals was no cultural act.
I thought it necessary to appropriate a large budget and implement robust research institutions and educational facilities.

The Epidemic of Familial Collusion

Parent-child robberies, family burglary rings—rural areas were even more flamboyant: among local farmers, there were cases where they mobilized everyone from legal wives to mistresses, even recruiting their daughters’ lovers to amiably rampage together.

I believe this trend will become even more prevalent in the future.
In the past, if someone in a family harbored malice, there was sure to be someone else who would raise rational resistance.
Now, that does not exist.

I can’t help but consider that even the Teigin Incident criminal might have similar familial collusion.
Consider those who spent fifty years diligently saving meager sums for a peaceful retirement, or ordinary families who maintained some semblance of stability through inherited assets—when such people lost their treasured children to war’s flames, when they lost kin on battlefields, when their daily murmurs cursing politics and cursing the world gradually molded a household’s atmosphere and shaped its very character.

Before long, the daughters who graduated from girls' schools—who by their parents' old dreams should have entered peaceful marriages—found even that unattainable and ended up becoming dancers.
They drifted from man to man.
The son who had eagerly awaited university could no longer afford tuition and turned to black market dealings, learning indulgence.
Fathers shouldn't just lounge about exploiting their daughters and sons—if they wanted luxury, they should earn it themselves.
Robbery or murder—anything would do, wouldn't it?
It was all a shattered, broken world anyway.

In this way, the family’s atmosphere assimilated into crime, and before long became crime itself with seamless ease.
A family that should have remained ordinary had there been no war found itself veering into unimaginable crimes.
Such cases could arise with utter naturalness.

Do not rashly condemn the collapse of morality.
It was precisely those philistines—invoking “100 million hearts as one” when speaking of war, parroting “democracy” mindlessly when addressing governance, drifting with every passing trend without ever examining their own lives—who so glibly condemned others for moral decay.

Confront squarely the root of this impending devastation.
By establishing the foundation of concepts for moral revival and social reconstruction there, policies must be sincere and solemn.

Every day at 10:40, repatriates from Siberia arrived at Shinagawa Station.
Through microphones and news reports, they recklessly whipped up sentimental scenes of pathos.
And that was all there was to it, wasn't it?
They were placed in temporary lodgings at Kan'ei-ji.
And that was all there was to it, wasn't it?
Eventually, someone among them became a streetwalker and formed parent-child robbery rings.

For the social rehabilitation of repatriates and vagrant children, the government had to allocate a large budget and confront it head-on.
Before pursuing black-market gains and such, they should have thoroughly pursued war profits and applied them to reconstruction.
In summary, even the collapse of morality had to be said to originate from political contradictions and poverty.

Youth should be trusted.

Student theft rings, rowdy groups in dance halls—the clamor of criticism toward students grew ever louder.

Even in this war’s early days—while brothers shed blood on battlefields and compatriots strained every effort in factories and rural villages—students had been indulging in baseball while squandering themselves on movie-going.
Students were denounced like traitors then beaten down for lacking awareness of current affairs.

Soon came student conscription orders followed by deployments of student volunteer corps; battlefield dispatches told of their factory feats and combat gains until yesterday’s traitors found themselves paradoxically recast as frontline saviors—all while newspapers swelled with odes to these scholar-soldiers.

Because that age was sensitive to the times and most adaptable, students' conduct turned out like this.
They didn't study and only played around—it was disgraceful.
When such criticism became a prevailing trend, the students themselves began to conform to that trend and attempt to rationalize it.
There had always been bad students in every era, but because the whole was tarnished by a part, even other students came to imitate them and attempt to rationalize it.
Public opinion often tended to commit such crimes.

In today’s distorted social life, it was only natural that students became distorted, for as long as parents remained salaried workers, tuition could never be sufficient.
Students had to either depend on their parents’ black-market dealings or become self-reliant through their own—inevitably warping themselves—and in today’s world where ordinary salaries fell short of covering even a family’s food expenses, it was only natural that this self-insufficient group called students occupied the forefront of distorted figures.

Fundamentally, in Japan, there was almost no entertainment to be found in either homes or schools. When it came to entertainment, it had to break away from home and school, becoming something unrestrained. In those times when daily life had reached such extreme poverty, home entertainment might have seemed impossible; nevertheless, it was necessary to establish an attitude that viewed entertainment as indispensable as daily household necessities—as essential as staple food.

Schools were no different.
Despite their inadequate facilities, they admitted too many students.
They had to provide entertainment alongside academics and maintain proper recreational facilities.
Sports needed to be made accessible to all students rather than just athletes, and student halls equipped with facilities such as movie theaters and dance halls had to be permanently established.

There was no need to fear things like romance arising from coeducation.
Even if mistakes were prone to occur at times, since romance itself was not a mistake, what was needed was to trust in the sense of justice unique to youth and show compassion by nurturing the characteristics of that dream-filled age.

Cheering Squads and Dissolute Students

Due to some students of ill conduct, an autonomous movement was reportedly arising within universities; however, depending on how this autonomy would be implemented, one could only hope the movement did not result in students forming their own private militia.

While I was out for a walk the other day, I came across a crowd gathered around a radio shop and ended up listening to the fervor of the Kei-Mei rivalry cheering squads for about five minutes.
It was exactly as it had always been.

These cheering squads might represent what one expects of model students—their captains and executives perhaps being particularly upstanding specimens—but if the leaders steering this autonomous movement were such people, I found myself sympathizing with those students of ill conduct.

Fundamentally, the atmosphere surrounding cheering squads carried far more belligerence than military drills ever could.
It stood diametrically opposed to sports' inherent nature.
Where sports differ from mere conflict through their cultural essence—contests governed by reason and restraint—cheering squads aligned wholly with confrontation's baser instincts.
They lacked any capacity to appreciate humor or derive joy from play, their entire being consumed by combative frenzy.
This breed of school spirit proved equally warped as fascist ideologies or right-wing patriotic fervor.
Not an iota of critical thinking tempered their zeal.

I have no particular desire to side with delinquents, but compared to those lunatics who join these cheering squads' orderly ranks and scream themselves hoarse about "white clouds billowing" or some such nonsense, the delinquents sneaking into dance halls instead of joining such groups appear far more human.

While delinquents' character at least shows traces of individuality, self-awareness, and some autonomy, in cheering squads' character one can perceive nothing but the traits of unreflective dolts—screaming themselves hoarse as radical fascists during the fascist era, then abruptly transforming into "democratic citizens" who uncritically carry the palanquin of whatever trend dominates the democratic age, devoid of critique or introspection.

If what they call campus autonomy amounts to cheering-squad students manufacturing student consensus to judge delinquents, berate them, and lecture about academic propriety, then I say the corruption of autonomy merits greater lament than any delinquency among those troublemakers.

To hastily seek a return to the old order based on partial evils emerging during this transitional period is dangerous—no progress can be expected from such regressions.

Those who deem restoration of the old order a righteous cause strike me as far more diseased and fascistically warped; by comparison, certain evils of this transitional age appear almost wholesome.
For only through these can a new, higher form of life eventually take shape.

I do not like robber students or scandal-prone university students, but I detest the autonomous spirit of cheering squad students even more.

Charity and Donations

When the child of a former count was arrested for theft, volunteers reportedly flooded in wanting to take him in for rehabilitation.
From women resembling former nobility to back-alley tenement landladies—they were all ladies.

Those who denounce aristocracy worship and feudalism while flaunting democratic airs miss the mark.
Hero worship and beauty worship exist everywhere.
There must have been numerous men who applied to marry Ms. Abe Sada upon her release, and no shortage of others wishing to take in and reform shoplifting beauties regardless of aristocratic pedigree.
Though they might harbor such thoughts privately, it was mere inaction—women had rarely done such things before, but recently they act without compunction.

It did not appear to be a loss of shame.
They had never felt shame to begin with.
For he was both the child of a former count and a beautiful boy—a secret that had remained unknown to those very people themselves.
They simply pitied him and seemed to believe they were doing good.

In other words, they were simply uneducated and ignorant.
And current Japan stood as evidence both that such ignorant ones possessed vitality for living and the capacity to perform charity, and that pedigree and cultivation were losing their vitality for living.
Profound cultivation and noble pedigree were becoming targets of charity by ignorant, uneducated survivalists.

In the nature of charity there was invariably contained—to a greater or lesser extent—such ignorant absurdity and hypocritical contradiction. Such absurdity, when it manifested this obviously, remained innocent; one could not fathom how much of this absurdity actually ran rampant in reality, remaining unacknowledged.

They claimed political donations were not transactions of profit but mere donations. In other words, it was charity. Profit transactions might have constituted crimes, but donations and charity did not constitute crimes. Instead, they dragged human life into a world of ignorance and mindless stupidity. It was a godless act.

I propose marriage to Ms. Abe Sada and offer my admiration to those men who propose marriage to beautiful shoplifters.
That is not charity.
It is clearly lustful.
Though it may be a deed without shame, it requires courage that does not fear society's scorn.
In other words, it requires the courage to become a sinner oneself.
It is an attitude that openly declares itself a transaction of profit rather than hiding behind terms like donations or charity.

These modern political donations they call charitable enterprises closely resemble back-alley tenement landladies taking in a count's son.
They are merely absolved of sin through their ignorance and mindless stupidity.

Without knowing one’s own sin and possessing the courage to submit to it, there can be no advancement in knowledge or culture.

Dazai's Death

When it comes to Dazai, I do not particularly wish to speak.
As a matter concerning myself—since I do not consider my own death to be a significant issue—even in Dazai’s case, I see no particular need to dwell on his suicide.
His suicide does not serve to elucidate his literature.
Regardless of what became of his suicide, his literature was outstanding from the start; whether that real-life suicide occurred or not is of no consequence.

A writer’s suicide may be rare news as a social issue, but among fellow writers, it’s just a matter of “Oh? Dazai died? Well, well—with a woman, was it?”

In human thought, there exists no absolutely inescapable compulsion that one must die.
If one does not die, one merely continues living.
It’s the same thing.
For a literary figure, the entirety lies in the works they have written; their death is nothing more than ceasing to produce those works.

In his recent works, Dazai clearly committed suicide, but that does not mean it was necessary for him to do so in reality.

What I find pitiable about Dazai, however, is that he cared about criticism.
It was his nature; there was no helping it.
That alone made him pitiable.

Critics were, in their very souls, nothing more than ignorant vulgar pragmatists.
Long ago there was a boar-like fool named Sugiyama Heisuke who would hurl abuse at works into which people had poured their lifeblood as though he were a nightmarket banana vendor, strutting about self-importantly.
Yet even other critics were, in essence, no different.

Dazai sincerely agonized over each and every one of those criticisms.
Admittedly, this was also because the essence of his literary struggle had become anchored in that particular aspect of human nature.
Therefore, even as he suffered torment from it, that very torment also transformed into fresh vitality.
Thus, there had been no need for him to die.
He should have let it become new blood.

Suicides ought to be left undisturbed as they occur.
For the works themselves are everything.
All the more so with love suicides—such things are ultimately matters of complete indifference.

I had not yet read his posthumous work，so I could not say for certain，but among the novels he had published thus far，there appeared to be none that took Stakkora Sacchan—a nickname Dazai had given to the deceased woman—as its subject.
Therefore，whether he had died before completing it or found no reason to write it，in either case，it was clear that for Dazai as a writer，that woman had not been a significant issue.

Yesterday，a certain newspaper claimed that Dazai was still alive and that I was sheltering him，then pursued me all day long.
What a sneaky newspaper that was.

The Social Responsibility of Literature and the Nature of Protest

A protest statement was submitted by the Meiji University cheering squad leader in the June 20th issue of Sekai Nippo regarding my article "Cheering Squads and Lazy Students," which I had written in this column.

It was not of a nature that particularly demanded an apology from the author, but rather merely offered explanations regarding the nature of the cheering squad and Meiji University’s student self-government movement, while also critiquing the author’s literature in a manner akin to a cheering squad’s approach. Therefore, I had no intention of offering either explanations or rebuttals.

However, there is one thing I wish to clarify—not as an issue between the Meiji University cheering squad and myself, but as a matter of literature.

Literary issues, even if they happen to have superficial connections to certain real entities, are discussed in a comprehensively human manner as fundamental problems of humanity that transcend the individual.

Of course, writers bear all responsibility for their own writing.
They bear not only social responsibility but also a strict and absolute human responsibility.
I do not intend to be judged by society, but I fear being judged by humans.
What I constantly lend my ear to is solely the voice of humanity from within, and this judgment is absolute for me.

Literature is read in various ways. Critics offer a thousand different criticisms, and readers each have their own way of reading. Even when such outcomes cause social effects unforeseen by the writer, I believe writers must still bear social responsibility. Social responsibility means precisely this: even the most innocent errors are judged by their consequences.

In the Meiji University cheering squad’s case, this amounts merely to a protest rather than demanding an apology from me. Having already written all that needed saying, there remains nothing to add regardless of how they interpret it. Yet their leader’s text remains unacceptable as written. Rather than critiquing my literature, he should have concretely detailed the nature of both the cheering squad and Meiji University’s self-government movement, empirically demonstrated they don’t foster privatized military police tactics, and dispelled my ignorance in truth’s name—that would have sufficed. Disputes and protests must adhere to such principles.

In Hisaita’s case, it was said that Keio University students had demanded an apology.
This missed the point entirely.
They ought to have filed a lawsuit instead.
That Mr. Hisaita himself declared demands for apologies should be pursued through legal action demonstrated this was the proper attitude and resolve expected of a literary figure—Keio students needed to learn from his stance.

Writers always bore full responsibility for their works, precisely what they most fearfully dreaded: being judged in humanity’s name.
Regarding social responsibility—as individual literary figures, it could not be subjected to judgment under literature’s banner; as societal members, it must be judged and atoned through civic duty.
For writers found self-judgment far more terrifying and absolute than legal judgment; thus demanding apologies from them as private individuals was misguided—lawsuits were the proper recourse.
As this would recur indefinitely, I believed clarifying this matter remained essential.

On the Necessity of Learning from Disaster

The Fukui earthquake caused great damage.
Even if regions differed, earthquake damage was nearly an annual occurrence.
It had been natural for people in earlier times to call these natural calamities, but in a cultured nation where countermeasures were clearly established, it remained incomprehensible to still designate them as such.

The Yellow River is one where floods will inevitably occur if only levees are built.
Because its flow carries loess and deposits about one meter annually, within ten years at earliest—or twenty at latest—the riverbed rises above the levees and floods result.

Even though it was perfectly clear that merely building levees would be ineffective, they implemented no other measures and regarded this as a natural disaster.
Because humans had multiplied too much, each time a flood occurred about five hundred thousand would die—and this esteemed theory that it constituted divine population control had held sway for over a thousand years.

Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say; turn calamity into blessing. To learn from disasters—learning is a crucial thing.
I consider the failure to learn from experience to be a sin.

The Japanese people failed to learn from earthquakes.
Given recent conditions, they seemed to have learned nothing even from war.

The mindset of utilizing misfortune—of harnessing anything toward improvement—forms civilization's foundation, but this first requires learning from disaster.

Through war, all lost their homes.
Household possessions were lost too.
Yet even these losses could breathe vitality into calamity if properly utilized.

By devising urban plans amid scorched ruins and reorganizing districts, even destruction gained purpose.

Given the lack of materials, barracks were unavoidable for now; however, as a future plan, they should prohibit wooden private homes and adopt reinforced concrete flat-style collective high-rise housing as the standard.
By doing so, these structures would withstand earthquakes while increasing usable land in our narrow nation.
One would think such plans should naturally have been drafted as a matter of course, yet no such advocacy could be heard.
Personal surroundings and private lives ought to be simplified as much as possible; given our constricted national territory’s limitations, it represented the height of folly for people to each inhabit individual wooden houses.

If what might be termed a new life movement were to emerge, now—when most of Japan has become scorched ruins and reconstruction stands poised to begin—would be the most fitting time to wield this circumstance as the starting thread for building a cultured nation.

Calamities—harness them.
And advance.
The very phrase "natural disaster" must be utterly exterminated.

Souls that refuse to learn from earthquakes will never learn from war either.

Collectively Willed Trends

I heard the Ministry of Communications was drafting a plan to create “cultural” stamps featuring portraits of cultural figures, replacing the abolished military stamps depicting Admiral Tōgō, General Nogi, and others.

This originated from a proposal by the Japan Publishing Association suggesting that a stamp bearing this literary giant’s portrait be created to commemorate the first anniversary of Koda Rohan’s death on July 30.

The above being newspaper miscellany, its veracity remained uncertain—but this was precisely the sort of thing associations like the Japan Publishing Association or other cultural organizations would do.

Was Koda Rohan truly a national literary giant?
Which of Rohan’s novels lived on in the bloodstream of Japanese history?

A minority might have been reading works like *The Five-Storied Pagoda*, but whether that work deserved the title of historical masterpiece aside, Rohan’s literature could not be said to dwell in the ethnic bloodstream of the general populace; rather, Higuchi Ichiyō’s *Growing Up* was likely far more beloved by the nation.

If one dismisses popular trends among the general populace as trivial, then I must declare it a laughable fallacy. To die and leave one's mark on history—such is the claim. For literature to endure in history means being beloved across all eras—indeed, there exists no literary criticism greater than this. No matter how many meticulously contrived criticisms may exist in certain specialized circles, there can be no criticism greater—nor more truthful—than that of being beloved throughout the ages.

For example, even if someone like Sakaguchi Ango—a third-rate critic—were to sweat profusely while ranting that Natsume Soseki’s works constitute vulgar, lowbrow literature, works like *Botchan* and *I Am a Cat* had already begun merging with the nation’s bloodstream, had they not? Compared to this, the contrived theories of third-rate critics were hardly worth considering—there was nothing more to say.

Among Rohan’s works, are there any that are becoming part of the nation’s bloodstream like *Botchan* or *The Cat*? What has he left in our bloodstream? Third-rate critics may freely trash Soseki against popular trends, but when placing portraits on stamps symbolizing national consensus, personal literary criticism should not be permitted. No matter how vulgar a trend born of national consensus may be, if it is genuinely a collective trend, there’s simply no helping it.